Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (27 page)

“Yanks try coming up out of that ravine, I’ll prescribe a dose of canister.”

To the north, miles off, the sound of fighting intensified. Lee imagined sabers clashing with sabers. He needed to be
there,
not here any longer.

About to ride off, he wiped his beard and addressed the horse-artillery major a last time.

“Hold this position, son,” Fitz Lee told Breathed. “You hold this position.”

11:00 a.m.

The rear of Sheridan’s army

Rud Hayes rode at the head of his brigade, confounded by the beauty of the day. Beyond the dust of an army on the march, a mild sun flirted with autumn. Dreaming of colors to come, the green groves slept. Fields gleamed and cornstalks faded. The earth, the air, emanated a grace past understanding, the transcendence philosophers struggled to explain. Swedenborg, Emerson, it mattered not: The language of men could not confine such wonder, this brilliance of life.

It often struck Hayes how nature remained unmoved by human folly. Up ahead, cannon grumped—not yet with the full growl of battle—but these fields would meet soldiers or lovers impartially. It put Man in his place.

Men were such small things, really, measured against the stars, and yet each life was the center of a universe. In West Virginia, they had clashed in a war of ants atop mountains as grand as Eden. Men had perished miserably amid splendor, and those who gave them orders could only hope their deaths had a greater meaning, that this hard war made sense.

Riding by his side, Russ Hastings asked, “Think we’ll go in, sir?”

Hayes judged the distant smoke. “Only if things go badly.”

The young man longed to prove his worth, to show that he could rival Will McKinley’s skills as an adjutant, but Hayes felt no craving to see his men bloodied again. If they remained out of the fight this day, it would bring no shame upon them. They had done their duty before and doubtless would do it again. But killing had to be confined to duty, never a matter of personal advantage. This murder condoned must not become a passion.

In the early days of the war, it had alarmed him that men killed so readily, then gloated. Sometimes he felt that the true purpose of discipline was not to get men to fire when ordered to do so, but to ensure they ceased firing when that command was given.

Hayes had never caught the contagion of common religion, but there had been times in this war when he feared for his soul.

He could not deny that battle thrilled the senses—disturbingly so—but he never lusted for it between-times. Content to follow orders, he did his best when required, and that was enough. He knew too many of the men he led, not only by sight and name, but in the deeper ways rooted in shared hardships and winter encampments. No glory gained at their expense appealed to him.

Nor could he feel hatred toward those across the lines. He would fight them and kill them because it was a necessity, because his cause was true, however scarred. But he could not, would not, hate them. Instead, he worried over Southern friends. He hoped, when peace returned, to renew acquaintances from his Harvard days and others forged of convivial evenings back in Cincinnati. How could he hate Guy Bryan, all but a brother?

He longed to see Guy again, whether in Ohio or Texas, and he hoped that Guy could put his own rancor behind him. Surely this war would long haunt its survivors, but Hayes did not mean to let it master his span, should he be spared. War might take his life, but it would not blunt his affection for his friends.

A pair of birds winged through the dust. Hayes wiped cracked lips with a rag. His boils bit.

At times, it seemed that the greatest challenge was not to defeat those who wore a different uniform, but to avoid becoming a man of demeaned worth. If he could not share Lucy’s Methodism, he certainly shared her faith in goodness and honesty, in the value of dealing justly with all men. If a fellow could not be great, he could be good.

War made that hard.

Hard, but not impossible, and Hayes refused to give in. Even in politics, he had proved that a man need not be craven. If politics asked compromise, it need not feed dishonesty. In this brief life, all a man possessed of value was his character. That and the love of those who adorned his life.

Lucy, above all, Lucy! He dreaded disappointing her as other men dread Hell.

A courier hastened toward him, raising dust within dust.

His brigade had not received its marching orders until well into the morning, hours after even he had expected to go forward. All matters had run late, which meant that blistering urgency lay ahead.

To live amidst war was akin to enduring a plague year: The man who rose hale and merry at dawn could not know if he would live until the evening. Dafoe would have understood.

The courier could not stop his horse and pounded past Hayes and his staff before managing to halt his mount and turn it.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” the lieutenant cried, “General Crook and Colonel Duval request your presence up yonder at the crossing.”

“How do things look?” Hayes asked.

Gleaming with sweat, the young man answered, “Confused.”

11:15 a.m.

The Union line at Winchester

Despite the presence of the man’s brigade commander, Ricketts felt compelled to speak directly to the major leading the 14th New Jersey now:

“You’ll be the man at the heart of it, Vredenburgh. This division’s at the center of the advance, the flanking divisions guide on us. That makes your regiment the unit of direction. Do not veer from the line of that damned road.” He pointed at the Berryville Pike. It led out past the skirmish line, where trees and smoke obscured it. “Follow it, if it leads to the Pit of Damnation. And maintain contact with Getty on your left. You understand?”

The major nodded. Vredenburgh had performed heroically at Monocacy, but this was another day. It irked Ricketts that despite his efforts to rebuild his division, he still had majors and even captains leading regiments. While no end of colonels prowled the army’s rear.

Bill Emerson, the man Ricketts had moved up to replace Truex as his First Brigade commander, felt obliged to put down a few cards:

“Just hug that road, Pete,” Emerson told Vredenburgh. “Put your color guard on it and tell them to stay on it, or you’ll blow their brains out yourself.”

That was hardly the tone to take when speaking of good men. Ricketts nearly fired off a remark, but restrained himself: Too late now to propound a theory of leadership.

Ricketts’ mood had turned surly enough as his watch ticked round the hours. A day that had started off well enough, with ham biscuits and fair weather, was turning as ugly as a squaw with smallpox. The entire Sixth Corps, in position for hours, had waited all this while for a single division of the Nineteenth Corps to appear, at last, on its right. Ricketts did not doubt that the delay would prove worth more than a division to the enemy.

Had Sheridan possessed the manliness to attack with the Sixth Corps alone, Ricketts was certain they could have crushed the meager Reb defense. With Getty on his left and Russell in reserve—without Russell, for that matter—they could have struck the Johnnies like an avalanche. But Sheridan, despite his swagger, moved with a spinster’s caution. Limited to prodding the Johnnies with skirmishers, Ricketts had watched as Reb artillery rolled into position, battery upon battery. And the guns, no doubt, would soon be followed by infantry. If Reb reinforcements had not already arrived. With the broken terrain, the swaybacked fields, odd groves, and overripe cornfields, the ground over which he had to advance was a division commander’s nightmare.

Couldn’t Sheridan see it? Why hadn’t he struck the Johnnies early and hard? Their line had been thin as rice paper.

“All right, Major,” Ricketts told Vredenburgh. “When you hear the advance sounded, move immediately. We’ve lost too much time already.”

“Yes, sir. New Jersey will do its duty.”

Profoundly ill-tempered, Ricketts almost said something completely unfair. Again he controlled himself: You never took out your spleen on your subordinates. The 14th New Jersey had fought magnificently at Monocacy, and the regiment had paid for it. It would not do to scorn decent men because he was mad at Sheridan.

Monocacy.
Truex had led the brigade then. And the fellow had led it well. Then, in August, Truex had lied to him over a matter of horses. It had been a small enough thing in the midst of a war, but Ricketts was old Army. The subordinate who lied to his commander and went unpunished would one day do worse. Despite the man’s battlefield record, Ricketts relieved him.

He hoped he would not regret the action this day.

Monocacy, Monocacy.
Poor Wallace, the man of the hour, had gone unrewarded, barely allowed to cling to his Baltimore post, while Ricketts had come in for praise beyond all deserving, in his own opinion. He had tried to speak up for Wallace, to do the man justice, only to find that the politics of the Army, once the arbiters turned against a man, remained unforgiving.

His old wounds ached, both of the flesh and of the spirit.

Ricketts turned his horse from the New Jersey line just as another surge of artillery fire probed his position. Oh, yes, the damned Rebs were waiting for them now.

Bill Emerson trotted beside him, yapping about the effectiveness of the breechloaders his old regiment, the 151st New York, had been issued. They were out on the skirmish line now, popping away.

“Arm the whole brigade like that, and you’d see something,” Emerson assured him.

“Well, it won’t happen today. Christ. There’s Wright again.” Ricketts spurred his horse.

His corps commander rode at a canter behind Ricketts’ second line. With a full complement of aides and all flags flying.

What now?

“Shall I come along, sir?” Emerson asked.

“Stay with your brigade,” Ricketts called over his shoulder. “Get your boys moving the instant you hear that bugle.”

He knew his men would go forward, but Ricketts was unsure of how much grit they’d show in a crisis. They’d behaved well enough in the minor scraps over the past month, but something had bled out of them on the Monocacy, a spirit that went beyond the casualty count. The officers would need to stay near the front of today’s assault.

As Ricketts closed on Wright and his coterie, Warren Keifer, his other brigade commander, rode toward the corps commander, too. As ambitious as he was brave, Keifer had a fondness for the company of his superiors. An Ohioan with political connections, Keifer had defied the doctors to return to the war after his serious wounding in the Wilderness. Now the colonel rode with one arm in a sling and a star on his mind.

Well, let him win his promotion, Ricketts told himself. If he can hold his half-wrecked brigade together.

Amid a flurry of salutes, Horatio Wright asked, “Everything ready, Jim?”

“We’ve
been
ready,” Ricketts replied. Demonstratively, he drew out his pocket watch. “Going on three hours.”

Wright nodded. “Order’s bound to come down any time now. Where will my courier find you?”

“Up by those guns.”

“Good.”

“We ought to be in Winchester by now.”

“Well, we’re not,” Wright said.

“Any word on Early’s movements?”

Wright shrugged. “I expect they’ll be reinforcing. Nothing to be done.”

For the third time in a matter of minutes, Ricketts held his tongue. Nothing to be done, indeed. Was Wright as blind as Sheridan?

No. But Wright had not risen to corps command through incautious speech or public displays of temper.

Ever so briefly, after praise spread for his stand on the Monocacy, Ricketts had flirted with the notion that he might be granted a corps command himself. His disillusionment had required no more than a look in the mirror as he shaved one morning. Every corps commander he knew had a pleasing appearance that he, drab and growing paunchy, would never possess.

He still marveled that he had somehow married not one, but two, true beauties. And both of them as good-hearted as Saint Clare.

In quick succession, two Reb shells exploded just to the rear of the party on horseback. Close enough to make every officer flinch.

“I suppose we’ve made ourselves a bit conspicuous,” Wright declared.

Yes, Ricketts thought, and thanks for calling further attention to my division’s position. He only hoped his soldiers wouldn’t break. He didn’t want to face the shame of that. Oh, they’d fight, they’d fight. But for how long?

It would come down to the dwindling number of veterans. They had to carry the new men and the shirkers, to drag them toward the Confederates. If the veterans quit …

He had to hit the Johnnies hard and fast, to avoid any faltering.

“All right, then,” Wright added. “I’ll leave you to your task. Give them the devil, Jim.”

“What about Russell’s division? Can I count on him behind me?”

Reining in his mount at another shell burst, Wright said, “I can’t move Russell without Sheridan’s consent.” He offered a smile in lieu of soldiers’ flesh. “Your boys can do this, Jim. Russell won’t be needed.” The corps commander’s horse would not be steadied, but Wright managed a nod toward Keifer’s sling. “Don’t show yourself too openly, Colonel Keifer. Johnnies see that sling, they’ll think we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

And Wright, with his flags and paladins, went off, bracketed by shells. As Union batteries replied, smoke drifted down the lines of waiting men.

The waiting was terrible for them, Ricketts knew. Long delays made cowards of good men.

“This makes no sense,” Keifer told him.

“Damn it, Warren … I know that much.” Despite the mildness of the day, Ricketts found himself sweating. “Go back to your men. Stay ready.”

“I’ve been ready since nine o’clock,” Keifer said. “Longer, for that matter.”

For a fourth time, Ricketts held his tongue. He simply rode away, back to an eminence affording what passed for a view of this wretched terrain. The battery occupying the ridge kept up a perfunctory fire. The old artilleryman in him wanted to dismount and give the crews a lesson in gunnery.