Jacob's Ladder (28 page)

“Why did you take up with me?” Marguerite once asked him.

“I will prove you as fine as any lady in the land!” Silas said.

Marguerite learned gentle manners so quickly it seemed she had always possessed them, and from the start she knew how to bend a conversation from indiscreet inquiries.

Silas believed they could both become anything they pretended to be. Marguerite was unconvinced.

“Are you a native of these islands?” her dining partner asked.

Marguerite's smile meant the young man should have known her people, that everyone did. He flushed. Forgiving him, she said, “Do try the mango sherbet. I do not believe you have mangos in your country.”

The sherbet had been chilled by ice that had been cut from Maine's Androscoggin River. Once an insignificant Caribbean trading port, the war had transformed Nassau into a mercantile capital with a hundred ships at the wharves or waiting to dock—ships from Europe, Britain, not a few from New York and Boston. King Cotton made it all possible. The Confederacy financed its purchases with cotton in hand or promised when the Confederacy won the war. Cotton drove the English and New England mills alike; cotton was better than money.

Guests were standing to leave. The young Englishman was enthusing about his portion of the
Kestrel
's cargo. “Pins and needles, ma'am. Two full rolls of silk. Ribbons. Oh, the ladies must have their ribbons. Five cases of finest French brandy . . .”

When Silas came to her, Marguerite felt the calm she always felt in his presence.

“Mr. Billings was just telling me about silks, Silas.”

“Perhaps he'll be good enough to send samples. We should have some new gowns made up for you when we get home.”

The young man stood up too quickly and knocked over his chair. “Delighted,” he said. And stuck out his hand and gave his name again, and his boat's name and his firm's name, all in a thundering hurry, but did not alter Silas's cool smile.

“To be sure,” Silas said.

The young man was primed to continue babbling, so Marguerite smiled her goodbye and led Silas out of doors.

The trade winds blew their cinnamon breath across the brick veranda, and bay bushes flowered below. It was so gentle, this wind, that Marguerite thought, Here is a place we could live forever.

Red lantern at its masthead, a fishing smack was beating out of the harbor. It wouldn't be bothered by Federal cruisers. No blockader depended on sail. The blockade runners, lean, gray, low-freeboard sidewheelers—the
Wild Darrell, Atlantic, Kestrel, Albemarle—
rocked gently in the harbor swell, some already loaded for the voyage. They carried no armament and couldn't survive a real blow, but were the fastest boats afloat. Some had hinged funnels and flush deck cabins to reduce their silhouette. Showing no lights, with muffled paddles, exhausting excess steam underwater, in the shoal waters off the Carolina coastline they were ghosts.

“It is a beautiful night. I don't believe I've ever seen anything so beautiful. When I was a girl looking through the pictures in Miss Abigail's weeklies, I saw engravings of such places but never dreamed I'd see them. Have you thought, Silas, what we'll do after the war?”

“Darling Marguerite, the vista between now and that happy day is as impenetrable as the fog banks on Frying Pan Shoal. Have you a scheme?”

“I would assure Jacob's future.”

Lanterns clustered on the wharf below. “That'll be the
Hessian,”
Silas said. “Bound for Galveston. With her centerboard up she draws less than five feet.”

He paused. “Men are sometimes comforted by the notion that however much they err and sin, long after their deaths, perhaps, there will be another, a scion, who will do better, succeed where they failed. My unwed mother sometimes told me that I am the very image of Robinson Omohundru, the first Omohundru to settle in Virginia. Naturally, in her circumstance, she was wont to grasp at straws, assert the most frivolous connections to a family that offered her and her child nothing but disdain. Apparently Jacob is to be my only child. I will care for him.”

Marguerite blinked back hot tears. Marguerite would not bear Silas's baby. Would not! Twice, Marguerite had sent Kizzy to the herb woman for the stinking iris. Twice she had denied Silas's dreams. How could Silas care for Jacob—another man's child—once she bore a child with Omohundru blood? Marguerite knew Silas as a generous provider and more of a gentleman than many with gentler blood. But she did not trust him to create their family. Marguerite would see to that.

The
Hessian
's funnels were creating twin smoke banners in the light air. Silas said, “In France, I am told, they are indifferent to race. One of Napoleon's marshals was a colored man. I believe that the case also in Scandinavia. But Scandinavian winters would be insufferable.”

Marguerite drew her shawl about her shoulders. “Silas, we must make do with what we have.”

Starlight glistened on a silvery-black ocean.

Silas said, “Next Thursday we clear Nassau for home.”

A BIG SCRAP

F
REDERICKSBURG
, V
IRGINIA
D
ECEMBER
12, 1862

“WE ARE NOT
a nation of manufacturers,” Lieutenant Catesby Byrd observed, wrapping his bleeding feet in rags.

“Least our general isn't,” Duncan agreed, stirring the pot. Parched corn didn't taste like coffee, but if you stirred it long enough it looked like coffee. “No sir. A man who thinks raw beef-hides will make shoes for men in the wintertime, that man isn't the sort of man you'd ask to hold your money before a fight. You know, I lost three men from those damn things? Payne slipped and broke an ankle. That plowmaker, Hebard? He fell out of ranks and never did come back. And last time I saw Ben Jones, he was sitting beside the road, weeping, holding his feet in his hands. Ben fought at Manassas and Gaines's Mill and Sharpsburg, but he'd had enough.”

In that particular December twilight, the two Confederates' worldly goods consisted of:

Enfield rifles (2)

cartridge boxes (2)

bayonets (1) (Catesby's)

sabers (1) (Duncan's)

revolving pistols (1) (Duncan's)

coffeepots (1)

metal cups (2)

tobacco (1 pouch)

pipes (2)

trousers (2)

slouch hats (2)

knife, fork, and spoon set (1) (Catesby's)

Barlow knife (1) (Duncan's)

butternut-dyed overshirts (2)

blankets (2) (in which they wrapped their goods before a march)

long johns (2)

boots (1 pr.) (Duncan's)

rawhide shoes (1 pr.) (Catesby's)

Each cartridge box contained sixty bullets, because General Lee expected a big scrap.

“Those boots of yours weren't made in the Confederacy,” Catesby noted gloomily.

“Blockade runners brought 'em in. My father bought 'em for me in Warm Springs. Four hundred dollars Confederate. We march anytime soon, I'll put you up on Gypsy.”

“Uh-huh. Shoeless lieutenant rides while his shoeless men walk? You know better.”

“You're not playin' cards tonight?” Duncan asked.

“That damned Fisher cleaned me out. Including the four bits you lent me. Do you think President Davis intends to pay his army anytime soon?”

Across the Rappahannock River, a Federal regiment was corduroying a road. They'd been at it since the 44th Virginia got here last week but weren't making much progress. One afternoon Federal gunboats steamed up the river, but Confederate batteries laid into them. The puffs of white smoke wreathing the gunboats, the near misses' colossal waterspouts, the cheers when a napoleon ball hit home: naval battles were, the foot soldiers believed, wonderfully entertaining.

Catesby and Duncan sat on doubled blankets. The ground was frozen hard, the sky darkening. One boy plunked on a banjo, others had built fires; some were cooking salt pork in their metal cups.

A gangly figure in a brand-new private's uniform and overfat haversack picked his way through the regiment. Twice he stopped and asked directions.

“I believe we know that fellow,” Catesby said.

“Christ Almighty,” Duncan said.

The figure made his way around campfires and apologized as he stepped across men's legs. “Hullo,” Alexander Kirkpatrick said. His face was pale as a girl's.

Duncan drawled. “I'll be damned. Last time I saw you was Christmas, two years ago. I understood you were in jail.”

“I'm paroled into the army. In Keeper Tyree's words, ‘Few patriots would wish to linger behind bars while their new nation is imperiled.' He had a way with words, the keeper, though his tenses were not always reliable.”

“How the hell did you find the 44th?”

“I am not acquainted with many men of the profession of arms, and when we replacements were sorted at Madison Courthouse, I exaggerated our previous connection.”

“How so?”

Alexander smiled his thin smile. “I have become your half brother.”

Duncan stood and put out his hand. “You might have done better if you'd kinned up with General Lee,” he said. “Welcome to the 44th. It's a fighting regiment. Division commander's Jubal Early, and he's all right unless you get on the wrong side of him, and there's no right side. We're Colonel Walker's brigade. Walker's got more sense than he's got hair, and he'll give a man a second chance but nary a third. Walker and Old Blue Light fell afoul of each other at Sharpsburg, so our brigade usually marches last in the column and gets sent to the front soon as it comes up. I'm a captain now, which means you listen to me or if you don't I tell Catesby here, who's a mere lieutenant, to shoot you. Anything else you want to know?”

“What if I make a mistake or get confused?”

“Then he shoots you twice. Disobedient soldier's bad enough, dumb one's worse.” After a long moment Duncan grinned. “Just joshing you, Alexander. Just a joke. When's the last you ate?” Duncan unwrapped a hardtack biscuit from his handkerchief.

“Not since this morning,” Alexander said and bit down on the gift.

Since the parched-corn coffee was likely to be Duncan and Catesby's only meal of the day, Catesby looked away.

“I see they fitted you out proper. New uniform like that—everybody's going to think you're a staff officer. Those shoes fit all right?” Catesby asked.

“They are a little loose. . . .”

“Too loose is better than too tight. When you lie down at night, they'll serve as a pillow. Other than that, don't take them off or someone will steal them.”

“Our boys aren't overparticular when it comes to shoes,” Duncan added. He gestured at the rifle Alexander had laid carelessly beside him. “They show you how to use that thing?”

“No one has instructed me in my duties.”

“Well then.” Duncan circled Alexander like a horse buyer inspecting a horse. “What do you hear from your wife, Sallie?”

Alexander shrugged.

Duncan nudged the rifle with his foot. “Austrian,” he said.

“You disapprove?”

“Oh, these muskets are allright unless they blow up. When we start to fighting, you'll do well to get yourself another one.”

“Couldn't I ask your Colonel Walker for a more suitable weapon?”

“Won't be any more rifles until somebody gets killed,” Duncan said. “You happen across one of those breech-loading Spencers the Federal sharpshooters carry, bring it to me.” He picked up Alexander's rifle. “Meantime, let me show you how you load this thing. Pay attention now. When minié balls start snapping past your head, it's easy to get confused.”

For ten minutes, Duncan instructed the new soldier in the nine-step ritual of preparing a musket. The recruit's long-fingered hands were defter than Duncan had expected, and when the final test came, the insertion of real powder and shot, they executed their task to perfection.

“Hold up with that primer, now,” Duncan said. “Officer'll tell you when to prime.” He paused. “You might just make a soldier.”

Alexander's face brightened. “Do you think so? Although I did not seek this employment, I do hope to fulfill my duties.”

The drum rattled its insistent command, and couriers rode from regiment to regiment. “Strike the bivouac! Fall in by regiment! Officers' call!”

Sergeant Fisher took Alexander in tow.

“He won't live long,” Catesby said.

Duncan lifted a shoulder in a shrug.

“Whoever fights next to him will be unsupported.”

Duncan said, “I'll find him duty where he can't get into trouble. For Sallie's sake.”

As the last light left the sky, the gray column lined up on the frozen road and started north. The first two regiments had good footing; those behind marched through greasy mire. Ice shards and stones embedded in muck tore at bandaged feet, and some of the soldiers wished for the rawhide shoes they had discarded.

“Time I get to those bluebellies, I'm gonna be so touchy you could set me off with a squib.”

“Damn, boy! Watch where you're walking!”

A mutter. “Officers got to ride while we walk. Do they got to gallop too?” Jeers slowed a young aide to a trot as foot soldiers reluctantly made room for his passage.

Although Colonel Walker was overweight with a bad heart, he marched beside his horse.

“They might have brought us up in daylight.”

“Daylight and nighttime—all the same to Stonewall.”

“Stonewall's ‘foot cavalry.' That mean we're no smarter than a horse?”

“No smarter'n a cavalryman, anyway.”

“Anybody ever see a dead cavalryman?”

“Keep it quiet back there in the ranks!”

“Who's that talkin'?”

“This is Colonel Walker talking. That you, Spottswood Bowles?”

“No sir. That was some other fellow.”

“Well, you stop jabberin' and maybe that other fellow will follow your example.”

“Yes, sir.”

“God damn you! I hate a man who steps on my heels!”

“Baldy, you overheard the couriers. Where we goin'?”

“Fredericksburg.”

“I got a cousin in Fredericksburg.”

“Maybe this time we'll whip 'em for good.”

“Maybe this time we'll get kilt. If I write out my testament, will you carry it for me?”

“Marse Robert won't let us get kilt.”

“Lookee over there. There's the river.”

“Look at them Federal bivouac fires! God Almighty!”

“Right smart of Federals.”

“Got any tobacco?”

Stumbling and weaving, the sore-footed column reached its destination after midnight, and Colonel Walker passed the word to bivouac.

Duncan and Catesby saw their men settled before they bundled up themselves: Catesby's blanket on the ground, Duncan's blanket and Gypsy's horse blanket on top of them. They curled tight around each other and closed their eyes.

An eyeblink later the crash of drums brought them awake. Above the Rappahannock the sky was transparent red.

Catesby had the thought that blood is thicker than sunrises. You can't see through blood.

Some of the soldiers gobbled hardtack, some built fires. The men with soldier's disease hurried to the sinks.

Duncan saddled Gypsy while Catesby rolled their blankets.

“Quartermaster's wagons!” Men hurried to draw their issue of salt pork and hardtack, and a few even got cornmeal, which they'd boil with the salt pork.

Duncan said, “Must be expecting a scrap. This is the soonest I ever saw those wagons. Sergeant Fisher! Tell that man to go down to the sinks! This isn't a stableyard!”

“Might not see sunset this day,” Catesby said quietly.

“Don't think too much. After we get to fighting and the blood gets up it's all right then.”

Below the blue sky, the great plain at their feet was a fog ocean. Colonel Walker briefed his officers. “The Federals have crossed the Rappahannock and occupy Fredericksburg. They are just there . . . underneath that, and General Lee anticipates their general attack. They have the plains, we hold the hills: Longstreet anchors our left, Jackson in the center, J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry on our right. For the moment our brigade is in reserve.”

“The men will be grateful to eat and rest, sir.”

“Yes, but God knows when we'll be needed. I'll require some couriers.”

Duncan said, “I've a man for you, sir. He's educated. Was a schoolteacher.”

Alexander sat away from the others, rifle leaned against his new haversack. He was sleepy and sore-legged—no question, prison was more agreeable than this military life. But if he could make something of this, if he could . . .

“Kirkpatrick, report to Colonel Walker.” Sergeant Fisher was a crude man, with a saber scar that had quilted his forehead. Alexander supposed Roman centurions must have looked like Sergeant Fisher.

“Up the hill, new fish. Colonel's the bald man on the horse. He wants you as a courier, although I've got a dozen men better.”

Staff officers clustered around the colonel, who was searching the fog with a brass telescope.

“Can't see a damn thing,” Walker said. “But they're down there. J.E.B Stuart says it's Reynolds's corps.”

“Pennsylvanians.”

“They'll fight,” Duncan Gatewood observed.

“We've a gap in our front.”

“Don't worry. No troops can get through that swamp, and anyway, Firebrand Gregg's behind the swamp with his Carolinians.”

“Hsst. It's the general.”

Horsemen trotted down the ridgeline: Lee, Jackson, A. P. Hill, and their aides. The usually ill-dressed Jackson was in full dress uniform today, the sun glittering his epaulets.

As the party passed, soldiers rose to their feet, and many removed their hats.

Alexander Kirkpatrick wondered if he should announce his presence; he cleared his throat, but Duncan Gatewood shifted his horse and Alexander found himself facing a horse's brown rump.