Love and War

64

"Social suicide," he said when she proposed the idea. "Even for an abolitionist like you."

"Do you think I care about that? It's a fitting place to be tomorrow night."

"I agree. I'll take you."

So here they were, George and his Roman Catholic wife, seated in one of the gold-trimmed pews of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. Only a third of the candles in the chandeliers had been lit, for this was an hour of meditation, an hour to look backward and ahead. The choir hummed the "Battle Hymn" while the minister stood with head bowed, black hands gripping the marble of the pulpit. His short message to the worshipers, most of them members of the affluent Negro congregation — there were no more than a dozen whites present — had been drawn from Exodus 13: And Moses said unto the people, Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

Midnight was near. Though not a religious man, George was moved by the experience of sitting here and seeing the dark faces upturned, many showing tears, and some with expressions approaching rapture. A shiver down his spine, he reached for his wife's hand and clasped it tightly.

All across the North, similar watch-night services were being held to observe the coming of the new year. In the morning Lincoln would sign the proclamation. George felt tension grow as the final minute passed. The choir fell silent, and the entire church. Then, in the steeple, the first bell note.

The minister raised his head and hands. "O Lord our God, it has come. Thou hast delivered us. Jubilo at last."

"Yes, jubilo." "Amen!" "Praise God!" Throughout the church, men and women proclaimed their joy, and the sound of the bell seemed to swell. The shiver rippled down George's back again. Constance had tears in her eyes.

The bell pealed, soon overlaid by a counterpoint of other bells in other churches ringing through the starry dark. The joyful exclamations grew louder. George felt like shouting too. Then suddenly, sickeningly, like a hailstorm, rocks struck the church. He heard epithets, obscenities.

Several men jumped up, George among them. He and two whites and half a dozen blacks stormed up the aisle. The hooligans were jeering shadows on the run by the time the men reached the steps.

George shoved his dress saber back in its scabbard, listening to the bells chime across the black arch of winter sky. The brief exaltation had passed. The rock-throwing brought him back to the realities of this first day of 1863.

Although the mood of the worship service had been broken, nothing could cancel the power of it. That was clear from the faces of the men and women scattering to the carriages left in the care of little black boys bundled against the cold. Rattling homeward to Georgetown through deserted streets, Constance snuggled close and said, "Are you happy we went?"

"Very much so."

"You looked so grave toward the end of the service. Why?"

"I was speculating. I wonder if anyone, Lincoln included, knows precisely what this proclamation portends for the country."

"I certainly don't."

"Nor I. But as I sat there, I had the oddest feeling about the war. I'm not certain the term war applies any longer."

"If it isn't a war, what is it?"

"A revolution."

Silently, Constance clung to his arm as they absorbed the bite of the wind. George had preferred to drive tonight rather than ask one of their hired Negro freedmen to be absent from his family. The bells kept tolling, ringing their knell of changes across the city and the nation.

Washington had undergone drastic change in the months the Hazards had lived there. Business had seldom been better, but that was true everywhere in the North. Hazard's was operating at capacity, and the Bank of Lehigh Station, opened in October, was enjoying great success.

Scores of European immigrants, attracted in spite of the conflict — or perhaps because of it; war brought boom times — added to the general overcrowding in Washington. The martial spirit of the early days was gone, washed away by bloodshed in the great battles lost by the Union. No elegant uniforms could be seen on parade on the mall; no military bands performed for the public. At book and novelty stores, people bought Confederate bank notes and kepis picked up by souvenir hunters after Second Bull Run. They paid with government promissory notes; with Treasury-issued fractional currency — green-backed bills in denominations under a dollar, derisively called shinplasterers; or with war­time coins minted by private firms and bearing their advertising. They accepted the presence of black waiters at Willard's — all the white regulars had enlisted — and they accepted the presence of maimed veterans wandering everywhere.

At the start of the war, everyone had agreed that Washington was a Southern city. Only a few months ago, however, Richard Wallach, brother of the owner of the Star, had been elected mayor. Wallach was an Unconditional Union Democrat, who wanted the war prosecuted fully to the end, unlike those in the peace wing of his party. Copperheads, some called the peace Democrats; poisonous snakes.

Emancipation had come to the District last April. Stanley and Isabel were in the forefront of those promoting it, although at one of the rare and difficult suppers arranged by the two Hazard wives to maintain a pretense of family harmony, Isabel had stated that emancipation would turn the city into "a hell on earth for the white race." It hadn't exactly worked that way. Almost daily, white soldiers fell on some black contraband and beat or maimed him or her, without subsequent punishment. Negroes weren't permitted to ride the new street railway cars shuttling along Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and the State Department. Isabel deplored such bigoted behavior when paying court to her radical friends.

In the demoralized army, change was certain. Encamped on the Rappahannock, Burnside kept planning winter advances against all advice. He was wild to redeem his failure at Fredericksburg.

On more than one occasion, George had heard senior officers say Burnside had lost his mind.

Fighting Joe Hooker was most frequently mentioned as Burnside's replacement. Whoever took command faced a monumental job of reorganizing the army and restoring pride and discipline. Some regiments refused to march past the Executive Mansion, but would go out of their way to reach McClellan's residence on H Street, where they would cheer as they went by or sing a popular song praising the general. There were some blacks in the army now. Like the contrabands, they were beaten frequently, and were paid three dollars less per month for the same duty than their white counterparts.

In the executive branch, change was likewise a virtual certainty in this new year. The congressional elections had gone badly for the Republicans, and the melancholy President held office in an atmosphere of mounting disfavor. Lincoln was blamed for all the military defeats and called everything from a "country cretin" to a "fawning Negrophile."

So change was in the air — needed, unwanted, immutable. Sometimes, as in the Presbyterian church, just imagining possible futures made George's head ache.

When they reached home, Constance looked in on the sleeping children, then prepared hot cocoa for George. As she waited for water to boil, she reread her father's letter. It had arrived yesterday.

Patrick Flynn had reached California in the autumn. He found a land of sunny somnolence, remote from the war. In '61 there had been rumors of revolt and a Pacific Confederacy, but those had died out. Flynn reported that his new legal practice in Los Angeles brought him virtually no money, but he was happy. How he survived, he didn't say, but his daughter's fears about his safety were eased.

She carried the cocoa to George in the library. She was tired but he, wearing just his uniform trousers with braces and his shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows, looked exhausted. He had turned the gas up full and spread sheets of paper in front of the inkstand. Some bore writing; some were blank.

She set the cocoa down. "Will you be long?"

"As long as it takes to finish this. I must show it to Senator Sherman tomorrow — that is, today — at the President's reception."

"Must we go? Those affairs are horrid. So many people, it's impossible to move."

"I know, but Sherman expects me. He's promised me an introduction to Senator Wilson of Massachusetts. Wilson's chairman of the Military Affairs Committee. An ally we very badly need."

"How soon will the appropriations bill be introduced?"

"In the House, within two weeks. The real fight comes in the Senate. We don't have much time."

Bending over him where he had sunk into a chair, she touched his hair tenderly. "You're a remarkable zealot for a man who never liked soldiering."

"I still don't like it, but I love West Point, though I didn't know it till long after I graduated."

She kissed his brow. "Come to bed as soon as you can."

He nodded absently. He never saw her leave.

He inked his pen and resumed work on the article he had agreed to write for the New York Times, one of the Academy's staunch defenders. The piece was a rebuttal of a favorite argument of Senator Wade, namely, that West Point should be abolished because two hundred out of eight hundred and twenty regular officers in the army in 1861 had resigned to join the Confederacy.

If that is sufficient reason to dismantle worthy institutions, George wrote under the gaslight, "we must perforce carry it into other spheres and, recollecting the divers senators and representatives who similarly resigned — among them Mr. Jefferson Davis, whom Senator Wade characterizes as "the arch-rebel, the arch­fiend of this rebellion " — dismantle our national legislative bodies, for they, too, have bred traitors. In this context, Senator Wade's argument can be seen for what it is — specious and demagogic.

He would make enemies with those last three words. He didn't give a damn. The battle had been joined, and a powerful cabal meant to bury the Academy permanently this year. Led by Wade, the cabal included Lyman Trumbull of Illinois and James Lane of Kansas. Senator Lane was so confident, he was boasting of West Point's demise all over Washington.

Sipping cold cocoa, George wrote on, shivering as the house cooled, yawning against fatigue, firing verbal cannonades in the small war whose outcome he deemed almost as vital to the nation as that of the larger one. He wrote on into the new morning of the new year, until he fell asleep on top of his manuscript around five, a strand of his hair lying across the nib of his discarded pen and getting inky.

"Yes, I'm happy to say she'll be joining me soon," Orry told the President. In his right hand he held a punch cup, but he had declined a plate. Dexterous as he had become, he still could not eat and drink at the same time. "It's entirely possible that she's on her way right now."

The President's appearance disturbed Orry. He was paler than ever, haggard, with the tight, slightly hunched posture of a man in pain. Much more than neuralgia bedeviled Jefferson Davis these days. His cotton embargo was a failure despite a shortage in British mills. Diplomatic recognition in Europe was no longer even a remote hope. Critics sniped at him for continuing to support the unpopular Bragg in the West and for causing shortages at home. In Richmond, coffee had been almost completely replaced by vile concoctions of okra or sweet potatoes or watermelon seeds sweetened with sorghum. Messages were starting to appear, slashed in paint on city walls: STOP THE WAR. UNION AGAIN!

This New Year's afternoon, officers, men in civilian clothes, and many women packed the official residence on Clay Street in the distinguished old Court End neighborhood. Davis strove to fix his entire attention on each guest, if only briefly. Despite his tribulations, his smile and manner were full of warmth:

"Good news indeed, Colonel. You hoped to have her in Richmond long before this, I recall."

"She was to join me early last year, but the plantation was struck with a series of misfortunes." He mentioned his mother's seizure but not the increasing problem of runaways. Davis inquired about Clarissa. Orry said she had regained most of her physical faculties.

Then Davis asked: "How are you getting on with Mr. Seddon?"

"Fine, sir. I'm aware of his outstanding reputation as a lawyer here in Richmond."

That was all Orry would say. James Seddon of Goochland County had replaced General Gustavus Smith as Secretary of War. Smith had served a total of four days after Randolph resigned in November to accept a commission. Orry disliked the gaunt Seddon's somber disposition and strong secessionist views. Seddon and his wife were here somewhere. He changed the subject.

"Permit me a question in another area, Mr. President. The enemy is arming black troops. Do you feel we might benefit by taking the same course?"

"Do you?"

"Yes, possibly."

Davis's mouth straightened to a tight line. "The idea is pernicious, Colonel. As Mr. Cobb of Georgia observed, if nigras will make good soldiers, our entire theory of slavery is wrong. Excuse me."

And off he went to another guest. Orry felt irritated with Davis; it was a harmful weakness, that inability to entertain opinions different from his own.

He sipped the excessively sweet punch, alone in the large crowd in the central drawing room of the mansion people called the White House because of its exterior layer of plaster on brick. It was a splendid residence, bought by the city and presented to Mr. and Mrs. Davis as a gift. There was a drawing room on the west side and a dining room on the east. There, from high windows behind the refreshment tables, Orry had looked out across Shockoe Valley to Church Hill and winter skies dark as the slate roof of the house.

Behind him, some guests discussed a rumored plot to establish yet a third country on the continent, this new one to be combination of states in the Northwest and upper South. The speakers all sounded agitated, even slightly hysterical. The reception was beginning to depress him. He edged toward the door. Suddenly he heard a voice he recognized — Varina Davis's.

"— and henceforward, my dear, I reserve the right of not returning social calls. That is my Fort Sumter — and to the devil with the objections of that pipsqueak editor Pollard."

Orry didn't turn to look at the First Lady, but he heard the strain within her sarcasm. Strain infected this crowd and Richmond like a pestilence.

He, too, had fallen victim. The cause was more than loneliness and longing for Madeline exacerbated by the months of delay. He hated his work in the War Department — the constant battle to curb Winder's excesses in the prisons he supervised and to check the reckless arrest of anyone the general deemed an enemy of the state. Currently, Winder was trying to sniff out members of a highly secret peace society, the Order of the Heroes of America.

A report from a reliable source had informed Orry of Israel Quincy and two other plug-uglies jailing and beating three suspected members. Orry's letter of protest had gone unanswered. A personal visit to Winder's office led to nothing but another nasty exchange with Quincy. The suspects had been released from Castle Thunder solely because Winder decided they knew nothing about the peace society.

Orry thought of Dick Ewell, West Point class of '40, who had lost a leg at Brawner's Farm last August but still led troops in the field. At Fair Oaks in the spring, Oliver Howard, '54, had lost an arm, but the Union high command didn't shunt him to a desk. Perhaps it was time he asked for a transfer to the war's cutting edge.

He worked his way slowly to the entrance hall, where he discovered Judah Benjamin with three admiring women. The Secretary of State hailed him cheerfully, as if the recent widely known unpleasantness had never happened. Benjamin had been nabbed when Winder's detectives swarmed into a Main Street gambling establishment. The raid, meant to net deserters, yielded only some chagrined civilians, including a cabinet member.

"How are you, Orry?" Benjamin asked, shaking his hand.

"I'll be better once Madeline's here. She's on the way at last."

"Capital. We must have dinner as soon as she arrives."

"Yes, certainly," Orry muttered, nodding and passing on. A realization had jolted him. After Madeline had struggled for over a year to reach Richmond, it would be damned unfair of him to request a transfer the moment she arrived. She would understand, but it would be unfair. Maybe he would stick it out a few more months. He mustn't blame anyone but himself for failures in dealing with the provost's men. He would try harder.

Passing by the foot of the great staircase, he stiffened at the sight of three people entering the mansion: his sister, beautifully dressed and pink-faced from the cold; Huntoon; and a third man, in the baggy trousers, fine sack coat, and round, flat-crowned hat that identified so many of his breed.

"Good afternoon, Ashton — James," Orry said as the stranger took off his hat. He hadn't seen either one of them in months.

Huntoon mumbled while looking elsewhere. With a wintry smile, Ashton said, "How delightful to see you," and rushed on to Benjamin. They didn't bother to present the handsome, sleepy-eyed chap with them, but Orry didn't care. To judge by his clothing, the man was one of those who infested the Confederacy like parasites: a speculator. Ashton and her husband were keeping peculiar company.

He jammed his hat on his head and left the White House in a foul mood.

65

At last, Madeline's heart sang, at last — the miracle day. For more than a year, it had seemed a day that would never arrive.

Now, on the same New Year's afternoon that found her husband at the Richmond White House, she closed the last ledger, locked the last trunk, checked the strip of green tickets a tenth time, and took her final tour of the house and grounds. She knew the rail trip to Richmond would be long, dirty, and uncomfortable. She didn't care. She would have detoured through the nether regions with Satan as her seatmate if only it would bring her to Orry.

Her tour done, she knocked at Clarissa's door. The spacious, well-furnished room inevitably inspired sadness within Madeline. Today was no different. Clarissa sat at the tilt-top table beside the window, the table at which she had once designed her intricate family trees, one version after another. The mild sunshine fell on a block of paper that bore a charcoal drawing of a cardinal, sketchy and barely recognizable, like child's work.

"Good afternoon." Clarissa smiled politely but failed to recognize her daughter-in-law. Small signs of the seizure remained: a slight droop at the outer corner of her right eye, a certain slowness of speech and occasional thickness of a word. Otherwise she was recovered, though she seldom used her right hand. It lay in her lap, motionless as the bird on paper.

"Clarissa, I am leaving for Richmond shortly. I'll see your son there."

"My son. Oh, yes. How nice." Her eyes, sun-washed, were blank.

"The house people and Mr. Meek will look after your needs, but I wanted to tell you I was going."

"That's kind of you. I have enjoyed your visit."

Tearful all at once, seeing in the older woman her own mortality, her own probable decay into old age, Madeline flung her arms around Clarissa and hugged her. The precipitous act surprised and alarmed Orry's mother; her white brows shot up, the left one a little higher than the right.

The melancholy light of January, the odors of musty clothes pervading the room — the awareness that a whole year of her life with Orry had slipped away — brought the tears more strongly. I am behaving like an idiot at the very moment I should be happiest, Madeline thought as she hid her face from the smiling, quiet woman. She rushed out.

Downstairs, she spoke briefly with Jane, whom she had put in charge of the house people last summer, agreeing to pay her wages. Then she proceeded down the winding walk toward the small building that by turns had been Tillet's, Orry's, and hers. It was now occupied by the overseer.

Sun shafts pierced down through the Spanish moss, lighting the base of a tree where a slave lounged, snapping a piece of bark into small pieces. He gave her an insolent stare. She stopped on the walk.

"Have you nothing to do, Cuffey?"

"No, ma'am."

"I'll ask Andy to remedy that." She swept on. Andy would not be reluctant to discipline Cuffey; the men loathed each other. Cuffey's presence made Madeline uneasy about leaving.

Last May, Hunter, the general in charge of Yankee enclaves on the coast, had issued a military order emancipating blacks in South Carolina. By the time Lincoln annulled it, word had spread, and the tide of runaways was already flowing from up-country plantations. Madeline's letters to Richmond reported each loss at Mont Royal — the total now stood at nineteen — and at Christmastime, Orry had written that he was glad his father hadn't lived to see the defection. Tillet had believed, perhaps with some justification, that his nigras loved him for caring for them and would never repay that love with flight. In Tillet's lifetime, only one had betrayed him that way; Orry had often told the story of how it had nearly undone his father mentally.

Last year, following the proclamation, Cuffey had been one of the first to go. Philemon Meek had already conceived a great dislike of the slave — most of the slaves despised him, too and had devoted extra effort to pursuit and recapture. Meek, Andy, and three other blacks had found Cuffey unconscious in a marsh, his legs under water. He had a high fever and might have drowned if he had slipped a little farther.

Meek returned Cuffey to Mont Royal in irons. He grew angry when Madeline refused to sanction additional punishment. Recapture and his sickness during flight were enough, she said.

It bothered her that Cuffey had not attempted a second escape. He was attracted to Jane, but Jane couldn't tolerate him, and that was evident. Did Cuffey stay on because he had some labyrinthine plan to harm the plantation after she departed?

Near the office, she glanced back. Cuffey was gone. She immediately changed direction, found Andy and spoke to him. Ten minutes later she knocked at the office door and walked in. Philemon Meek laid his Bible aside — he studied it for short periods every day — and removed his half glasses. How lucky they had been to find him, Madeline thought. Meek was safely past the upper limit of the second conscription act passed in September and should be able to remain at Mont Royal indefinitely — unless, of course, Jeff Davis got desperate enough to draft grandfathers.

"Are you ready, Miss Madeline? I'll call Aristotle to load the luggage."

"Thank you, Philemon. I wanted to say one thing before I go. Should any emergency arise, don't hesitate to telegraph. If that isn't possible, write. I'll come home at once."

"Hope that won't be necessary — least not until you've had an hour or so with your husband."

She laughed. "I hope so, too. The truth is, I'm fairly aching to see him."

"Shouldn't wonder. It's been a hard year for you, what with tending poor old Mrs. Main. Things should run smoothly if the bluebellies don't push any closer. I did hear yesterday that some tax collector read Lincoln's proclamation down near Beaufort.

Big crowd of nigras gathered around a tree they've already named the Emancipation Oak."

She described her encounter with Cuffey. Meek bristled. "Nothing to do, eh? I'll set that to rights."

"No need. Andy will take care of it, at my request."

"Bad one, that Cuffey," Meek declared.

"Orry says it wasn't always so. Cuffey and Cousin Charles were very close as youngsters."

"Don't know a thing about that. I sometimes regret we caught him in the marsh. He bears watching."

"I know you can handle him. You've done a magnificent job, Philemon — with the people and with planting and harvesting the crops. Do write or telegraph if there's anything you want."

He started to speak, held back, then said it. "I'd be pleased if you told Jane she can't teach any more. Learning's bad for nigras, particularly in these times." He cleared his throat. "I strongly disapprove."

"I'm aware of that. You also know my position. I made a promise to Jane. And I think Mont Royal's calmer for having her here, teaching, than it would be if she went north."

"One thing sure — if she left, we'd lose Andy." The overseer peeked from under a scraggly brow. "Still don't like nigras learning to read. 'Gainst the law, for one thing."

"Times are changing, Philemon. The laws must change, too. If we don't help the people improve themselves, they'll go straight to the Yankees at Beaufort. I accept full responsibility for Jane's activity and any consequences."

Meek tried one last sally. "If Mr. Orry knew about Jane, he might not —"

Sharply: "He knows. I wrote him last year."

No sense saying the rest. No sense telling him she believed the Confederacy would lose the war, and the people on the plantation would face freedom in the white man's world without even minimal preparation. That was the strongest reason she wanted Jane here teaching.

Meek gave up. "I wish you a safe journey. I hear the railroads are in mighty bad shape."

"Thank you for your concern." She overcame a hesitation, ran to him, and hugged him, making him cough and blush. "You take care of yourself."

"Surely will. Give my regards to the colonel."

Still scarlet, he left to summon Aristotle for the trip to the little railroad flag stop not many miles distant. Through slanting bars of sunshine and shadow, Madeline drove away, waving to some forty slaves gathered in the drive to see her off.

Standing apart, arms folded over his chest, Cuffey watched, too.

That night, Jane held class in the sick house.

Thirty-two black people crowded the whitewashed room lit by short pieces of candle. Andy sat cross-legged in the first row. Cuffey lounged in a corner, arms crossed, eyes seldom leaving Jane's face. She was uncomfortable with the attention but did her best to ignore it.

"Try, Ned," she pleaded with a lanky field hand. She tapped her writing instrument, a lump of charcoal, on her board, a slat from a crate. "Three letters." She tapped each in turn.

Ned shook his head. "I don' know."

She stamped her bare foot. "You knew them two days ago."

"I forgot! I work hard all day, I get tired. I ain't smart 'nuf to 'member such things."

"Yes, you are, Ned. I know you are, and you've got to believe it yourself. Try once more." She curbed her impatience; this was like pushing stones up a mountain. She tapped the board. "Three letters: N, E, D. It's your name, don't you remember?"

"No." Angrily. "No, I don't."

Jane exhaled loudly, wearily. Madeline's departure had affected her more than she realized. It upset the balance at Mont Royal by removing a strong, moderating hand. Meek was fair but stern, and very much opposed to these classes. Others scorned them — like Cuffey, silently standing in the corner. Why didn't he just stay away, as the rest of them did?

"Let's stop for tonight," she said. The announcement brought reactions of dismay. Her eldest pupil, Cicero, protested the most. Recently a widower, Cicero — too old for field work any longer — was a year shy of seventy but swore he would learn to read and write before his next birthday. He said he would die an educated man if he didn't live long enough to die as a free one.

Cuffey, who stood in the same place night after night, finally spoke up. "Ought to stop for good, 'pears to me."

Andy scrambled up. "If you don't want to learn anything, stay away." An older woman mumbled an amen. Cuffey searched the group with murderous eyes, hunting the culprit. The woman was careful to conceal herself behind Cicero.

Jane always took pains to hide her feelings about Andy. He was her outstanding pupil, and no wonder. They met almost every night, late, so she could give him extra work, and the last time Madeline sent him to Charleston, he had managed to secure a book of his own — an 1841 reader in the series prepared by William McGuffey for the white academies.

Proudly, he showed her the book when he returned. He produced it from under his shirt, handling it as if it were a treasure instead of tattered sections held to moldy binding by a few threads and dabs of glue. How he had gotten McGuffey's First Eclectic Reader he refused to say, shrugging off her questions about it — "Oh, it wasn't hard." Which she knew to be a falsehood. In South Carolina, a black man who acquired a book placed himself in mortal danger.

Andy was making fine progress in his studies, which was one reason Jane's feelings about him were changing. One, but not the only one. Twice, shyly, he had kissed her. The first time on the forehead, the second on the cheek. This earnest, determined young man was changing her life in ways she didn't altogether understand.

In response to Andy, Cuffey growled, "I jus' may. None of us got to stay on this place. We go down to Beaufort, we be free." Word of Lincoln's proclamation had spread through the district like invisible fire. People at Mont Royal who had never seen a picture of the Union President spoke his name with a reverence usually reserved for divinities.

"Sure enough," Cicero said, shaking a finger at Cuffey. "You go down to Beaufort — you'll starve 'cause you're an ignorant nigger who can't read or write your name."

"Mind your tongue, old man."

Cicero didn't step back or lower his gaze. Cuffey glared and addressed the group. "Won't starve in Beaufort. They gonna give land to the freedmen. Piece of land and a mule."

"So you raise a crop," Andy said, "and the white factors cheat you because you can't understand or add the figures."

Cuffey answered reason with rage. "Somebody raised you to be a real good piece of property, nigger. You ain' got no backbone; you just got yalla there."

Andy lunged. Old Cicero stepped in and barred his way, pushing, panting from the strain of holding the much younger man. Dark hands with candle stubs shook with alarm; shadows wavered violently.

"I hate being property much as you," Andy spat back. "I saw my momma sold off, my baby sister sold off. You think I love the folks who did it? I don't, but I care more about myself than about hating them. I'm going to be free, Cuffey, and I can't make a life for myself if I stay stupid, like you."

Silence.

Eyes shifted from man to man. Shadows leaped on the white­washed ceiling. Feet shifted, a whispery sound. Cuffey clenched his fist and raised it.

"One of these days, I gonna take that tongue and cut it right out of your head."

"Shame," Cicero said softly but firmly. Others repeated it. "Shame—shame." Cuffey poked his head forward and spat on the floor, a big gob of bubbly white showing his opinion of them.

"I don' want your books," he said. "I don' want your jubilo neither. I want to burn this place. I want to kill the damn people who killed my babies and kep' me chained up all my life. That's my jubilo, you dumb nigger. That's my jubilo."

"You're crazy," Jane said, moving to Andy. The chance positioning, side by side, seemed to heighten Cuffey's anger. "Crazy. Miss Madeline's the best mistress you could have right now. She wants to help everyone in this room get ready for freedom. She's a good woman."

"She's a white woman, an' I'll see her dead. I'll see the whole place burned 'fore I'm done." Cuffey whirled and kicked the door open, stormed out of the sick house and into the dark.

Shaking their heads and muttering "Shame," Jane's pupils drifted away too. Andy stayed. Jane called, "Ned? The two of us can study alone any time you want."

Ned didn't turn or act as if he heard. He just walked straight ahead out the door. She put a hand over her eyes.

Only one candle remained, the one Andy had brought. It flickered in a cracked bowl near their feet. Jane uncovered her eyes and looked at him. "There's no helping Cuffey, is there? He's gone bad inside."

"Think so."

"Then I wish he'd run again. I wish Meek wouldn't go after him. I've never met a nigra who frightens me as much as he does." Hardly thinking of what she was doing, she bent her head against Andy's shirt. He put an arm around her waist, stroked her hair with his other hand. It felt natural and comforting.

"No need for Cuffey to scare you," he said. "I'll look after you. Always, if you'll let me."

"What?"

"I said — always. If you'll let me."

Slowly, he befit and gently kissed her mouth. Something happened within her then, expressed in a bursting, amazed little laugh. She knew they had sealed their future. With just that kiss. She admitted to herself she had been falling in love for weeks —

Visions intruded, staining the moment. Instead of Andy's face, she saw Cuffey's, and, in twisting shadows on the ceiling, Mont Royal afire.

"House Resolution Number 611," Senator Sherman said, tapping the document on his desk. "As you very well know, if it fails to pass both houses, the Academy will have no money to operate."

George sneezed. Outside the senator's windows, snow slashed horizontally. The winter was proving a savage one. George wiped his nose with a huge handkerchief, then asked, "When is the bill to be introduced?"

"Tomorrow. I expect the House will consider it as a committee of the whole."

The office smelled of old cigars. A gold clock ticked. At twenty past ten, most of the town was at home and beneath the blankets. George wished he were. Though he remained bundled in his blue army overcoat with caped shoulders, he couldn't get warm.

"What will the House do with it?" His clogged head lent the question an odd thickness.

"Tinker with it," replied the general's younger brother. "Pare down the ten thousand for roofing the academic buildings. Perhaps strike out the section about enlarging the chapel. The members of the Committee on Finance will want to show their authority, but I doubt they'll do any substantial damage. The hatchets will appear when the bill's reported over to our side."

"Wade is still determined?"

"Absolutely. He's a madman on the subject. You know his hatred of the South."

"Goddamn it, John, West Point is not the South."

"That is your view, George. All members of the Senate don't share it. A considerable number are on the side of Ben Wade, though a few are wavering. Those are the ones to whom I've spoken at some length. I know you and Thayer and the others have made a maximum effort, too — You've gotten sick from it, I'd say."

George waved that aside. "What are the chances of the bill going down?"

"It will depend on who speaks and how persuasively. Wade will hold forth at great length, and he'll offer every imaginable reason for defeat of the measure. Lane will join him —"

"That isn't an answer," George cut in. "What are the odds?"

Sherman stared at him. "At best — even."

"We should have done more. We —"

"We have done everything possible," the senator interrupted. "Now we can only await the outcome." He came around the desk, putting his hand on his visitor's shoulder.

"Go home, George. We don't need officers dying of influenza."

Gray-faced, George shuffled out.

In the snowstorm, it took him three-quarters of an hour to locate a driver willing to make the long trip to Georgetown. He collapsed inside the hack, his teeth chattering. He drove his fist into the side of the hack. "We should have done more!"

"What's going on down there?"

"Nothing," he shouted. By the time he reeled into his house, he was soaked with sweat and half out of his head.

66

Judah leaned across the starboard rail. "Look, Pa. Is that a Yankee?"

Cooper peered into the morning haze and spied the steam cruiser at which his son was pointing. She lay outside the entrance to the roadstead, her sails furled and her men idling on deck. Her ensign hung limp in the bright air. He could see nothing of it except colors — red, white, and a section of deep blue. He doubted it was the national banner of the Confederacy. "I suspect so."

A small boat put the pilot aboard. Soon the sound of the engines increased, and Isle of Guernsey steamed slowly into the roadstead. The harbor, protected by small islands to the north, was crowded with vessels driven by steam and sail. Beyond, Cooper saw the pale buildings of tropic latitudes and the green blur of New Providence Island.

The steamer had brought them down through towering seas and winter gales to drowsy warmth. En route, the British supercargo had shown Cooper the essential goods the vessel carried in her packed holds: long and short Enfield rifles, bullet molds, bars of lead, cartridge bags, bolts of serge. Now it must all be unloaded and placed aboard another vessel for the perilous run through the blockade — which extended even to here, Cooper realized when he saw the enemy cruiser.

Judith, pretty and cheerful in the new poke bonnet he had presented as an early Christmas present, joined him with their daughter. "There is another argument for the point I was trying to make last night," Cooper said to his wife. "That's a Yankee vessel standing watch. I would feel much better if you'd let me find a rental house in Nassau town where —"

"Cooper Main," she interrupted, "I have said my final word on that subject."

"But —"

"The discussion is closed. I won't stay here with the children while you sail blithely off for Richmond."

"Nothing blithe about it," he growled. "It's a very hazardous journey. The blockade's tightening all the time. Savannah and Charleston are nearly impossible to get into, and Wilmington's not much better. I hate for you to chance it."

"My mind's made up, Cooper. If you chance it, so shall we."

"Hurrah," Judah exclaimed, jumping and clapping. "I want to get back to Dixie Land and see General Jackson."

"I don't want to go on a boat if they're going to shoot at it," Marie-Louise said. "I'd rather stay here. This place looks pretty. Can I buy a parrot here?"

"Hush," said her mother, tapping her wrist.

Cooper loved Judith for her determination to stay with him, yet he did wish she would follow the more sensible course. He had been debating it with her unsuccessfully since they left the coaling stop at Madeira. He supposed he might as well desist. Perhaps they would experience no difficulty; many runners with good masters and experienced coastal pilots did slip through the net without being fired on or even sighted.

He swept off his tall hat, leaned over the rail, and watched the harbor and the town rise up. These islands had been Spanish first, then British since Stuart times, and always a haunt of pirates. Nassau itself, a colonial capital with a population of a few thousand, had been thrust into sudden prominence by the war.

Gulls hunting garbage began to form a noisy cloud at the stern. The air smelled of salt and peculiar but pleasing spices. Within an hour, Isle of Guernsey dropped anchor and a lighter bore the Mains and their trunks and portmanteaus to crowded Prince George wharf.

The wharf swarmed with white sailors, black stevedores with gold earrings, colorfully dressed women of no discernible occupation, seedy vendors hawking pearls amid heaps of sponges and bananas, sparkling mountains of Cardiff coal, and cotton — bales of it, each steam-pressed to half its original volume.

Cooper had never seen so much cotton or heard such polyglot clamor as that surrounding the hired carriage that took them along Bay Street to their hotel. He heard the familiar accents of home; clipped British; and a bastardized English, odd and musical, spoken principally by the blacks. The cobbled waterfront could barely accommodate all the people and traffic. The war might be starving the South, but it had clearly brought wild prosperity to this island off the Floridas.

After installing the family in their suite, Cooper went to the office of the harbor master, where he explained his needs in vague and guarded language. The bewhiskered official bluntly cut through the circumlocutions.

"No runners in port at present. I am expecting Phantom tomorrow. She will not transport passengers, however. Just that cargo from Guernsey."

"Why no passengers?"

The harbor master peered at him as if he were mentally defective. "Phantom is owned and operated by the Ordnance Department of your government, sir."

"Ah, yes. There are four such ships. I'd forgotten the names. I'm an official of the Navy Department. Perhaps Phantom will make an exception."

"You're welcome to speak to her captain, but it's fair to warn you that other diplomatic gentlemen from the Confederacy have attempted to obtain passage on the government runners without success. When Phantom weighs anchor, she'll have every inch of deck and cabin space filled with guns and garments."

Next morning, in a steamy drizzle that reminded him of the low country, Cooper and his son proceeded through Rawson Square to the harborside and its yelling vendors, strolling whores, idling journalists, gambling sailors, strutting soldiers from the island's West Indian regiment. Judith still objected to their son's being exposed to the sights and language of a seaport, but Cooper had given Judah a couple of fatherly lectures in Liverpool on the theory that knowledge was a stronger defense against the world's wickedness than was ignorance. Striding beside his father and whistling a chanty, Judah didn't even turn when a seaman lost at toss-penny and cried, "Fucking bloody son-of-a-bitching bad luck." Sometimes Cooper's heart felt ready to burst with love and pride in his fine, tall son.

Phantom had slipped in during the night, flying British colors. Cooper had a short, unsatisfactory talk with her captain. The harbor master was right; even a deputy of Secretary Mallory would not be accommodated as a passenger on an Ordnance Department ship.

"I am responsible for precious cargo," the captain said. "I'll not add responsibility for human lives."

The drizzle stopped, and the sun shone. Two languorous days passed. Phantom put out to sea — again at night — and the Yankee cruiser disappeared, no doubt pursuing the smaller vessel. By the end of the week Cooper was sick of waiting and reading old newspapers, even the one that informed him of the stunning Union defeat at Fredericksburg.

The children quickly tired of the sights of the port. The changing of the guard at Government House was diverting once but not twice; the novelty of flamingos vanished after twenty minutes. Hiring a buggy and taking a picnic to the countryside didn't improve the situation. Judith resigned herself to mediating a quarrel between her son and daughter approximately once an hour. Cooper found the dispositions of the children influencing his; he was short-tempered and prone to strike out with the flat of his hand, as he did when Judah took a spoonful of local conch chowder, crossed his eyes, and gagged.

At last, after they had been in town almost a week, the Monday maritime column of the Nassau Guardian listed the weekend's arrivals, including "Water Witch of New Providence Is., cargo entirely of cotton from St. George's Is., Bermuda."

"She must be a runner," Cooper exclaimed at breakfast. "Cotton isn't exactly a major industry in Bermuda, and Bulloch told me those in the trade pretend to cruise exclusively between neutral islands." So they went off to the harbor again, he and Judah, held up for five minutes by the funeral procession of another of Nassau's numerous yellow jack victims.

They reached the runner's berth. "Strike me," Judah said, back in his Liverpool phase. "Look at all that bleeding cotton."

"Don't use that kind of language," Cooper snapped. But he was equally fascinated. Water Witch was a remarkable sight. An iron-plated paddle steamer, she was, by his best estimate, about two hundred feet long and something like three hundred tons. Her masts were short and raked, her forecastle built to resemble a turtle's back, so she could more easily plow straight through a heavy sea. Every inch of her — hull, paddle boxes, stubby masts — was painted lead gray.

Every inch he could see, that is. Above the gunwales she looked brown and square because every available deck space held cotton bales piled two and three high. Except for slits to allow visibility, her pilothouse was barricaded behind them.

Cooper and his son dodged aboard, avoiding bales heaved from one pair of black hands to the next. Cooper asked for the captain but found only the mate.

"Captain Ballantyne's ashore. Went first thing. I expect he's already got his nose buried in some chippy's —" He spied Judah behind his father. "You won't find him on board until tomorrow morning when we start loading." A suspicious pause. "Why d'you want him, anyway?"

"I am Mr. Main, of the Navy Department. I'm urgently in need of passage to the mainland for myself, my son here, and my wife and daughter."

The mate scratched his beard. "We'll be bound for Wilmington again. The run's damn dangerous till we're safely under the guns of Fort Fisher. Shouldn't think the captain would want to carry civilians, 'specially young'uns."

The man spoke with the heavy accent Cooper equated with the impoverished farmers of the Georgia coast. Did the mate mean what he said, or was this merely the start of fare negotiations?

"I am under orders to report to Secretary Mallory in Richmond as soon as practicable. I've been waiting nearly a week to find a ship. I'll pay whatever price you ask."

The mate scratched his armpit. "Space is precious on the old Witch. We have one cabin, but she's usually stowed full of cut nails, things like that."

"Nails?" Cooper repeated, astonished.

"Sure. They sold at four dollars a keg right after the war started. Then one of the owners of this ship and a few other gentlemen cornered the import market, and now they fetch ten." He grinned, but Cooper's eyes had narrowed with dislike.

"Tell me, Mr. —"

"Soapes. Like the stuff you wash with, but add an e."

"Where's your home, Mr. Soapes?"

"Port of Fernandina. That's in Florida."

"I know where it is. You're a Southerner, then?"

"Yes, sir, same as you and Captain Ballantyne. You said your name's Main?" Cooper nodded. "Any relation to the Mains of South Carolina?"

"I am a member of that family. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no special reason. Just heard of it, that's all."

Mr. Soapes was lying; Cooper felt certain of it but couldn't guess the reason. Nervous now, the mate shouted at a stevedore teetering down the gangway with a bale balanced on his bare back. "Any of you niggers drop cotton in the water, you'll starve till you pay for it. Sixty cents a pound. Market price."

Cooper cleared his throat. 'Tell me, Mr. Soapes, what cargo will you be taking to Wilmington?"

"Oh, you know, the usual."

"But I don't know. What is the usual?"

Soapes scratched his stomach and looked everywhere but at Cooper. "Sherry wine. Havana cigars. Believe we have a consignment of cheeses this time. Then there's tea and tinned meats and plenty of coffee —" As he recited the list, his voice grew fainter and Cooper's cheeks redder. "We've some bay rum — oh, yes, and some London-made bonnet frames."

"When the Confederacy is desperate for war materiel, you're bringing in luxuries?"

"We carry what's profitable, sir." After that retort, the mate's courage wilted. "Anyway, I'm not the supercargo. The captain handles that job. Speak to him."

"I shall, believe me."

"He won't be back from the whorehouse till morning."

Cooper felt like punching Soapes. He had said whorehouse only because he was embarrassed and wanted to strike back by embarrassing Judah.

The boy caught on and grinned. "My pa takes me to those places all the time. Maybe we'll meet him."

Cooper boxed his son's ear. The mate looked stupefied until he realized he was being made fun of. Then he grew as red as Cooper, who marched his son toward the gangway, unamused.

Later that day, Cooper called on J. B. Lafitte, local agent of Fraser, Trenholm. He introduced himself and inquired about Captain William Ballantyne of Fernandina. He learned a good deal.

Ballantyne, a native of Florida, had a reputation as a competent master, though he wasn't a popular one; he drove his crewmen hard. In the past year, Lafitte said, Ballantyne had also become a rich master. In addition to his captain's pay — the customary five thousand, which he demanded in U.S. dollars and banked in Bermuda — Ballantyne conducted some personal speculation on every voyage.

Ballantyne's vessel made only eleven knots at her best — dangerously slow in view of where she sailed. But she hadn't been built for the trade, only refitted, at Bowdler, Chaffer and Company, a Merseyside yard Cooper knew well. Lafitte said Water Witch was owned by a consortium of Southerners, a fact no one took trouble to conceal, but the names of the individual owners had never been publicized so far as he knew.

Thus Cooper developed a strong dislike of the ship's captain and owners before he returned next morning. Directed below-decks, he was overwhelmed by the smell of cured meat. Ballantyne's cabin in the stern reeked of tobacco; small crates filled every spare corner. The crates bore Spanish labels, with the word Habana prominent.

"Cigars," Ballantyne said in an offhand way, noticing his visitor's curiosity. "My private venture this trip. Be seated on that stool, and I'll be with you momentarily. I'm just finishing our manifest. It shows us bound for the Bermudas. We never sail anywhere but the port of St. George, or this one."

He beamed like a cherub. William Ballantyne was a moon­faced man with little hair left, except in his ears. He had spectacles and a small paunch and a grating accent that sounded more like the Appalachians than the deep South.

But the need to reach Richmond took precedence over Cooper's conscience; at least it did until he worked out details of the passage. Ballantyne had a fawning manner and an unctuous smile. Cooper silently characterized both as false.

"Well, then, that's done," Ballantyne said at the conclusion of the negotiations. "I'm sorry I wasn't here when you called yesterday. Mr. Soapes told me you have some, uh, quibbles about our cargo."

"Since you raise the subject, I do."

Ballantyne kept grinning but now with a dash of nastiness. "I raised it, sir, because I guessed you would."

"I wouldn't call them quibbles, Captain. They are serious moral objections. Why does this vessel carry nothing but luxury goods?"

"Why, sir, because the owners desire it. Because that's what turns the coin, don't you know?" He brushed his fingertips with his thumb, feeling invisible metal.

"Do you mean to tell me you can make a profit carrying cured meat?"

"Yes indeed, sir. Coming out, we dropped some of our cotton at St. George and in that space put a supply of Bermuda bacon. I think it's to be transshipped to the gulf for the armies in the West, but I wouldn't swear. All I know is, yesterday I sold it to an officer of the Confederate Quartermaster Corps" — beaming now — "for three times what it cost me in Bermuda. It's the finest meat available from New York State. The farmers up there would rather sell to our side than their own. Make a lot more that way." He rubbed thumb against fingers again.

Livid, Cooper said, "You're a damned scoundrel, Ballantyne. Men and boys are dying for want of guns and ammunition, and you carry bacon, cigars, bonnet frames."

"Listen here. I told you I carry what I'm instructed to carry. Plus a little something extra to secure my old age." The smile cracked, showing the creature behind it. "I'm not educated or well off like you, sir. I grew up in the North Carolina mountains. My people were ignorant. I have no schooling except aboard ship — no trade but this — and I must make of it what I can. Besides" — the ingratiating grin slipped back in place — "I don't know why you rail so. This kind of trade's common. Everybody's doing it."

"No, Captain, your own lack of scruples and patriotism are not universal. Not by any means."

Ballantyne's smile vanished. "I don't have to give you passage, you know."

"I think you do. Unless you wish governmental attention directed to the affairs of this vessel. It can be arranged."

Ballantyne rattled the papers in his hand. For the first time, his voice showed unsteadiness. "You try to sink me and you'll be sinking someone near and dear."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Mr. Soapes said you hailed from South Carolina. So does one of our owners, whose middle name is the same as your last one. She has a twenty percent equity in Water Witch and a brother in the Navy Department."

The harbor water lapped the hull. Cooper could scarcely swallow, let alone speak. Finally: "What are you saying?"

"Come on, sir — don't pretend you don't know. One of the owners is a lady named Huntoon — Mrs. Ashton Main Huntoon of Richmond and the Palmetto State. Ain't — isn't she a relative?"

Seeing Cooper's sickened expression, he grinned. "Thought so. Added up the two and two after I spoke with Mr. Soapes. You've booked passage on a family vessel, Mr. Main."

67

George leaned on the rail of the gallery and gazed down at the gilt-and-marble Senate chamber. It was the fifteenth day of January. He had slept badly, waking often, stretched between hope and dread.

Wade, the architect of the attack, rose first.

"I have so often expressed my opposition to bills of this character and to the policy of appropriating money for the establishment and support of this institution that I do not propose to take up time now to argue against it."

In the next sentence, in the universal fashion of politicians, he did exactly what he had just said he wouldn't.

"I know the institution has been of no use to the country. If there had been no West Point Military Academy, there would have been no rebellion. It was the hotbed from which rebellion was hatched. From thence emanated your principal traitors and conspirators."

The debate was joined. It grew sharp, then intemperate, as the minutes lengthened into an hour and the statements to paragraphs, then to orations.

Senator Wilson, the military affairs chairman George had cultivated, took the floor to acknowledge the existence of weaknesses in the Academy but then cited evidence contradicting Wade — the very same figures George had included in his letter to the Times.

Wilson thought West Point no "nursery of treason," though he did fault it for "an exclusiveness — a sort of assumption of superiority among its graduates in the army that is sometimes very offensive."

Senator Nesmith tried to blunt the attack by naming graduates who had given their lives for the Union — Mansfield and Reno were two of the best known — and concluded by trying to rouse the emotion of his colleagues by reciting twelve lines of a poem on heroism.

Immediately, Wade charged from the flank. The institution was worthless because it trained engineers, not leaders of a fighting army. Skillfully, he wove a repetitive phrase into his diatribe: "Traitors to the country — traitors to the country — traitors to the country."

George's head started to ache. To twist and color the truth as Wade did was abominable. Lee was an engineer but brilliant as a tactician. Why such distortions? Was it the nature of the political beast or just something peculiar to this war, this hour, this special nexus of interests and passions? Did radicals like Wade truly feel the hatreds they expressed? The possibility, by no means new, still had power to terrify him.

There might be a more cynical explanation, of course. If Wade and his crowd railed against the South until it was destroyed, they could step in as a political party and rule it.

On and on Wade went, merciless. "I am for abolishing this institution." Scattered applause. "We do not want any government interposition for military education any more than for any other education."

John Sherman left his desk, began to scurry among his colleagues, sensing a tide flowing the wrong way. Foster of Connecticut spoke in rebuttal. Had not Yale and Harvard educated as many Southerners as West Point?

Wade sneered. "Yale College is not upheld by the government of the United States."

Then there was renewed argument over whether the Academy had or had not produced quality leaders for the Union. This line of debate was interrupted by the cadaverous, mean-visaged Lane of Kansas, whose curt remarks — scarcely a sentence or two — ended with a triumphant repetition of the Academy epitaph he had been jobbing around the city for days: "Died of West Point pro-slaveryism!"

Wade stamped his feet and expressed his approval vocally. Sherman scurried faster.

On it went. Arguments that West Point was a "monopoly." More arguments that it trained men improperly. Here, the powerful Lyman Trumbull spoke for the first time.

"Because they understood the erection of fortifications, they were therefore supposed to be Napoleons? There is the mistake! What we want is generals to command our armies who will rely upon the strength of our armies! Let loose the citizen soldiery of this country upon the rebels! Dismiss from the army every man who knows how to build a fortification and let the men of the North, with their strong arms and indomitable spirit, move down upon the rebels, and I tell you they will grind them to powder!"

The applause, from a good number of gallery spectators as well as from the floor, resounded loudly this time. George's palms were cold and damp, his heart beating too fast. The arguments grew in ferocity.

Lane flashed a whole new set of verbal knives. "This institution for more than thirty years has been under the absolute dominion of your Southern aristocrats. A young man who enrolls at West Point is taught there to admire above all things that two-penny, miserable slave aristocracy of the South — he is taught Southern secession doctrine as a science!"

To George's left, someone clapped. He knew who it was and didn't trust himself to look. Senator Sherman and several of his allies raised their heads; the applause stopped.

Debate continued. Wade put forth his proposal — that West Point be abandoned so a system of separate institutions within the individual states would have room to grow in its place. By this point George felt faint — a lingering effect of the influenza, maybe — and his hands were clenched. The question was called.

"All in favor?"

The yeas were loud, fervent.

"All opposed?"

The nays were even louder but — was it hope playing tricks with his hearing? — fewer.

"I make the count," Vice President Hamlin said, "yeas twenty-nine, nays ten."

Groans in the gallery and from the aisles and desks below. But there was a mingling of hearty applause. John Sherman gave George an exhausted glance, with no sign of pleasure save a spasmodic jerk of his lips. Only then did George dare turn and gaze along the row to pale, fuming Stanley.

George got up, intending to speak some conciliatory word to his brother. Stanley rose, turned his back, and left the gallery while George was still six feet away.

From the Capitol, George rode the street railway to Willard's, where he went to the saloon bar to celebrate. Mentally cursing the trivial work waiting at the Winder Building, he kept buying rounds for other officers at the bar. Presently, all companions gone, he wandered to a table, sat, and began to recite some advertising doggerel which had caught his fancy in a newspaper.

"I think you should go home, Major Hazard," said the waiter in charge of the table.

"I very definitely think you should go home," the waiter said, removing George's not yet empty glass. He went home.

When he had paid the driver and reeled into the house, he said to Constance: "We won."

"But you look so grim. Not to say unsteady. Do sit down before you fall down." She slid the parlor doors shut so the children wouldn't catch sight of him.

"Today I saw the real face of this town, Constance." Holding his head, he watched a marble-topped table separate into two. "I really saw it. Ignorance, prejudice, disregard for the truth — that's the real Washington. Some of those damned rascals in the Senate spouted lies as if they were quoting the Ten Commandments. I can't stand this place any longer. I must get out somehow, some —"

His head lolled back against the chair doily, then fell toward his shoulder. Constance stepped behind him, loving him for an honorable but imperfect man. She reached down to stroke his forehead. His mouth sagged open and he snored.

In contrast, Stanley seemed to thrive in the Byzantine atmosphere of the city. He no longer felt himself a newcomer — quite the opposite — and he relished his growing responsibilities as a trusted aide of Mr. Stanton. Further, he was making vast sums of money on his own for the first time.

Of course, passage of the West Point appropriation bill was a setback, and it left him peevish for several days. The peevishness was enhanced by that of the secretary, which had prevailed ever since General Burnside had begun a movement against Lee on January 20, only to be balked two days later by pouring rains that changed the Virginia roads to bogs.

Burnside's apologists blamed an act of God for the failure of what was sneeringly termed "the Mud March." Those in charge blamed the general and replaced him with Joe Hooker. Fighting Joe announced his determination to reorganize the army, improve every aspect from sanitation to morale — he immediately started granting furloughs — and, above all, annihilate the rebels in the spring.

A further heightening of Stanley's peevishness occurred when Isabel discovered Laban with his drawers down and his sex organ up inside a too-willing maid they employed. Stanley was forced to apply a birch rod to his son's backside — increasingly difficult as the twins grew bigger — then dismiss the sluttish maid, which didn't pain him, and pay her an extra hundred dollars, which did.

On a gloomy day at the end of the month, Stanton called him in. Though he had stayed at his desk all night — he did so frequently — the secretary looked fresh and vigorous. A gray pinstripe drape covered him from the neck down; the War Department messenger who doubled as barber was brushing lather over the secretary's upper lip in preparation for razoring it clean, a twice-weekly ritual.

"Look at this, and I'll be with you momentarily," Stanton said, tossing something metallic onto the desk. The razor rasped.

Stanley picked up the object, which proved to be a dull brown head of Liberty crudely cut or filed from the center of one of the big copper pennies last minted in '57. The messenger finished the job, toweled Stanton's lip, and whipped the sheet off. Stanley turned the penny over and discovered a small safety pin soldered to it.

"The foes of this government are wearing those," the secretary said once the barber was gone. "Openly!" He shouted the word, but Stanley had grown accustomed to Stanton's outbursts. The man was passionate about his beliefs, if about nothing else.

"I heard the Peace Democrats referred to as copperheads, sir. I didn't know a badge like this was the reason. Might I ask where this came from?"

"Colonel Baker supplied it. He says they're numerous. Stanley, the twin abominations of this war are treason and corruption. We can do little about the latter but a great deal about the former. I want you to meet with Baker more frequently. Urge him to step up his activities and monitor his efficiency in carrying out that charge. Baker is an ignorant and headstrong man, but he can be useful. I am personally charging you with the job of increasing that usefulness."

"Yes, sir," Stanley said, enthusiastic. "Is there anyone in particular you want him to move against?"

"Not at this time. But I'm preparing lists. In the case of the worst offenders, dossiers." Stanton stroked his beard. "See Baker as soon as you can. Authorize him to hire more men. We are going to move massively against those attempting to subvert this government — especially those calling for a craven peace. One thing more. The President shall know nothing of this effort. As I've said to you before, Baker's bureau must never appear on our tables of organization. His efforts are vital, however, and we shall support him with all the money he needs." He smiled. "In cash. Untraceable."

"I understand. I'll see Colonel Baker this afternoon."

Stanley left, mildly exhilarated by news of increased covert activity against the new peace societies flourishing in the Northeast and Northwest, as well as those individuals who criticized the administration in speeches or articles. On the other hand, he didn't look forward to more dealings with the crude, enigmatic, and occasionally frightening Lafayette Baker, who had somehow ingratiated himself with Stanton before Antietam. Ever since, the secretary had referred to Baker as the department's provost marshal. He ran his peculiar organization, which Stanton privately referred to as the War Department Detective Bureau, from a small brick building across from Willard's, on the wrong side of Pennsylvania.

Stanley fingered the copper badge. Closer liaison with Baker might have advantages. Perhaps he could surreptitiously lead the bureau to look into the attitudes and actions of his brother George.

In February, George met a man who despised the methods and mazes of the government as much as he did. It happened by accident.

Hazard's had finished casting an order of fifteen-inch Rodman smoothbores for the Rappahannock line. Christopher Wotherspoon saw them aboard a freight train, which eventually shuttled them to the Washington Arsenal for inspection and acceptance. Wotherspoon traveled with them by passenger car.

During two long evenings, he and George conferred about matters at the ironworks. Then Wotherspoon supervised the loading of the immense bottle-shaped guns onto barges that would float them down the Potomac to Aquia Creek Landing. George arranged some time off and traveled downriver on a military gun­boat, arriving at the landing in a wet snowstorm typical of the miserable winter. The trip was both a matter of personal interest and a needed escape from a job he could no longer tolerate.

As the temperature rose and rain replaced the snow, George watched Wotherspoon bullying the military crew responsible for moving the fifty-thousand-pound Rodmans from the barges up specially constructed inclines, using block and tackle. Reinforced flatcars waited to roll the guns away down the Richmond, Fredericksburg, & Potomac rail line to the front.

Moving the guns took most of a day. George stamped about in the rain until the work was finished. With unconcealed pride, he stood beside one of the flatcars while men chained down the last gun. A shiny new Mason locomotive had steam up. Gilt lettering on the cab showed its name: GEN. HAUPT. The inscription on the tender read: U.S. MILITARY R. RDS.

Clouds of steam billowed around George while rain dripped from the brim of his hat. Hence he didn't immediately see the dour, mustached man wearing muddy boots, twill trousers, and an old talma who came up to stand beside him. George thought he should know the fellow but couldn't place him.

The man was more than a head taller; occasionally the mere existence of such specimens irked George. That, plus his pride, was the reason he spoke without looking around.

"My guns."

"On my train."

George turned, bristling. He knew him now. "On my rails," he said.

"For a fact? You're Hazard?"

"I am."

"Fancy that. I thought that if there was a real person behind the name, he'd be some paunchy bookkeeper, a man who'd never come near a place like this. The rails you make are good ones. I've laid more than a few."

The whistle hooted, steam hissed. Above the racket, George asked, "Are you General Haupt?"

"No, sir. I am not general anything. When I took the commission last May, it was on the condition that I didn't have to wear a uniform. Last autumn Stanton tried to hoist me to brigadier general of volunteers, but I've never officially accepted. Get to be a general and you spend all your time bowing and scraping and filling out papers. I'm Haupt, that's all."

He peered at George like a prosecutor studying a witness. "You a drinking man? I have a bottle in that building yonder — the cheap one that passes for a yard office."

"I'm a drinking man, yes."

"Well, do you or don't you want a whiskey?"

"If I could bring another person — my works superintendent over there —"

"All right, just quit talking and do it."

And in that way, in the rain, George's friendship with Herman Haupt began.

Haupt was right — the yard office wasn't much more than a shanty. Water dripped through cracks in the plank roof. Droplets glistened in Haupt's beard as he poured liquor into two dirty tumblers. Wotherspoon had declined the invitation, wanting to tour the huge military complex before he left.

"I'm a civil engineer by trade." Haupt's statement was modest; he had a reputation as one of the best in the nation. "I'm supposed to maintain the railroads the army appropriated and build new ones. They make it damn hard with all their rules and procedures. What do you do?"

"I work in Washington."

"Wouldn't wish that on a man I hated. Doing what?"

"Artillery procurement for the Ordnance Department. If you want a more accurate description, I spend most of my time dealing with fools."

"Inventors?"

"They're the least offensive." George drank. "Principally I mean the generals and the politicians."

Haupt laughed, then leaned forward. "What's your opinion of Stanton?"

"Don't deal with him much. He's inflexible politically — a zealot — and some of his methods are suspect. But I think he's more competent than most."

"He learned the lesson of Bull Run more quickly than a lot of them. When this war started, damn few understood that you can move troops faster and easier by rail than by water. Most of the generals are still living in the riverboat age, but old Stanton saw the significance when the rebs brought men from the valley by train and combined two armies to whip McDowell. They did it so fast, McDowell was dizzy."

"Celerity," George said, nodding.

"Beg your pardon?"

"Celerity — it's one of Dennis Mahan's pet ideas. More than ten years ago, he was saying that celerity and communication would win the next war. The railroad and the telegraph."

"If the generals don't lose it first. Have another drink."

"Thanks, no. I must try to find my younger brother. He's in the Battalion of Engineers."

He rose to leave. Haupt thrust out his hand. "Enjoyed our talk. Aren't many in this army as smart and forthright as you." That amused George. He had done little except sit and listen while Haupt expounded — but of course if you did that, a rapid-fire talker always thought you brilliant.

"I am forced to go to Washington occasionally," Haupt went on. "I'll look you up next time."

"Wish you would, General."

"Herman, Herman," he said as George went out.

George checked on the whereabouts of the engineers and early in the afternoon swung aboard an iron-pot coal car, part of the train bound for Falmouth. He tugged his hat down, leaning against the cold metal of the pot and speculating about Haupt. A year ago or so, after the administration had pushed through a bill establishing a military railroad system, Stanton had brought in Daniel McCallum, superintendent of the Erie, to run it. Why McCallum hadn't been satisfactory, George didn't know, but Haupt soon replaced him.

Haupt organized his department into two corps, one to handle operations, the other construction. It was in connection with the latter that Haupt's legend had spread. He was famous for laying track rapidly, building sturdy bridges virtually overnight — and losing his temper as he did it. At least the man accomplished something, which was more than George could say for Ripley. Or for himself.

After jumping off the slow-moving car at Brooks Station, he found Billy supervising construction of a stockade to strengthen the station against attack. They stayed at the work site and talked for an hour. George learned that his brother had just finished a week's leave at Belvedere. Both going home and returning, Billy had passed through Washington in the middle of the night — an inappropriate hour for calling in Georgetown, he explained.

George grinned. "I can understand your eagerness to see your wife but not your haste to get back to duty."

"I want to get this war over with. I'm sick of being separated from Brett. I'm sick of the whole damn thing."

That was the tenor of the reunion: little humor and a pervasive melancholy. George could do nothing to cheer his brother. He felt bad about that as he returned to the city.

To his surprise and delight, before a week went by, Herman Haupt stalked into the Winder Building hunting for him. They went to Willard's for lager and a huge afternoon meal. Haupt had his temper up; he had come from a meeting at the War Department. George asked what had gone wrong.

"Never mind. If I talk about it, I'll just blow up again."

"Well, I had another argument with Ripley this morning, so I don't feel a hell of a lot better. I keep telling my wife that I don't think I can stay here much longer."

Haupt chewed an unlit cigar. "If you decide you must get out, tell me. I'll put you to work building railroads."

"I can manufacture rails, Herman, but I don't know a blessed thing about laying or maintaining them."

"Twenty-four hours in the Construction Corps and you will. I guarantee it."

George smiled abruptly; a weight had vanished. "I appreciate the offer. I may take you up on it sooner than you imagine."

Raw winds, freezing temperatures, sudden snows continued to torment the armies waiting for spring. Everything, including camp life, was harder because of the weather. Charles managed to ride to Barclay's Farm for three overnight visits. The first time he brought two carbines and ammunition taken from dead Yankees, turning the lot over to Boz and Washington, an act that would have gotten him flogged in his home state. But he trusted the freedmen, and they had to be armed if the Yankees crossed the river in force when the weather warmed up.

The second visit almost cost him his life. He came straight from reporting after a two-day ride behind enemy lines with Ab. He was still clad in the uniform he wore for such missions — light blue trousers with broad yellow stripe, confiscated talma of Union blue, kepi with crossed sabers in tarnished metal. It was snowing when he approached the farm. Boz mistook him for the enemy and shot at him. The first round narrowly missed him. By the time Boz fired again, Charles and Sport had taken cover behind a red oak. The bullet hit the tree. Charles yelled to identify himself, and Boz apologized for almost ten minutes.

Charles couldn't get enough of the yellow-haired, blue-eyed widow. Not enough of talking to her, sleeping with her, touching her, or just watching her.

She wanted to know all about his life in the cavalry. Over savory beef soup, from which he plucked the ring bones and sucked the marrow, he told her about the boredom of the winter camps; Jeb Stuart's, south of Fredericksburg, had been nicknamed Camp No-Camp because of the monotony of life there.

Then he talked of Confederate cavalrymen gathering legends around their names. Of Turner Ashby, who had flashed like a comet for a year, displaying a suicidal recklessness when he rode his white charger. Some said he was wild to avenge his slain brother Richard. Ashby had been killed in the valley last summer. Of John Mosby, who had scouted for Stuart on the ride around McClellan, now commanding mounted irregulars in Loudoun, Fauquier, and Fairfax counties, an area rapidly becoming known as Mosby's Confederacy. "The Yanks want to hang him as an outlaw." Out in Kentucky, there was John Hunt Morgan, called the Thunderbolt of the Confederacy. And they were starting to hear fantastic tales of another horseman in the West, a barely literate planter by the name of Bedford Forrest.

"Does he have a nickname, too?"

"The Wizard of the Saddle."

"You've been left out, Charles."

"Oh, no. Ab and the rest of us, we're called the Iron Scouts."

"It sounds like a compliment."

He smiled. "I take it as one."

"If you're that special, the Yankees must consider you prime targets."

He glanced at her as he raised the soup bone to his mouth. There was no lightness in the remark or in her expression.

In the drowsiness after love-making, he liked to share his past with her. He described the way he had been tricked into having half his head shaved the day he arrived at West Point. He told her about the soldiers he had met and admired in the Second Cavalry, among them the Virginian George Thomas, now on the other side. He shared the story of his difficulties with the captain named Bent, who for some reason hated his whole family. And he created pictures of Texas as best he could with inadequate words: the vistas of grass, the blue northers, the pecan trees and post oaks glistening after a rain while larks sang.

"Parts of that state are the most beautiful places on God's earth."

"Would you like to go back there?"

"I thought so once." He took her hand. "Not now."

With cornmeal grits steaming on his breakfast plate, he would admire the soft, still-sleepy beauty of her morning face and, when strong coffee had wakened her a little, tell her of some of the rivalries troubling the cavalry. His old friend Fitz Lee, now an important general he seldom saw, didn't like Hampton because Stuart didn't, and because Hampton would always rank Fitz by ten days, and nothing could change that.

At the end of the third visit, Gus kissed him on the mouth four times before whispering, "How soon will you be back?"

"Don't know. We'll be heading for the lower part of the state soon, to hunt for horses. We've lost a lot of them."

"You tell General Hampton I don't want anything to happen to you."

"And you tell Boz and Washington to sleep with those carbines — loaded."

Back in camp, Ab Woolner surprised and annoyed him by joking bitterly, "Lord God, Charlie — you been here a whole hour and you ain't talked about nothing but that gal. You used to talk about Sport some and the war now an' again. You forgotten why we're all here?"

Something flip-flopped in Charles's middle when he heard that and gave him pause.

He had no reply.

68

Virgilia hated to force the visitor to leave. Odd as he was, the patients liked him and counted on his Sunday visits, though sometimes he didn't show up because he couldn't talk his way aboard a military steamer coming down to Aquia Creek Landing.

Whenever he did, he brought pockets sagging with horehound drops and a haversack of cheap pens and writing paper, cut plug tobacco, little pots of jam, and five- and ten-cent bills he distributed so the wounded could buy the fresh milk sold by vendors who came through.

Virgilia suspected that the man impoverished himself to buy the things he gave away. His job couldn't pay much; he was only a copyist in the paymaster general's office. That and his first name were all she knew about him, except that he seemed to have a need to touch and console the wounded soldiers.

It was early afternoon. A feeble February sun shone. The Landing, a vast complex of docks, rail spurs, raw pine structures, tents, and drill fields populated by thousands of soldiers, civilians, and black contrabands, was relatively quiet, as it was every Sabbath.

Patients in this long and narrow hospital building had been either wounded in skirmishes or felled by sickness on the infamous Mud March.

Virgilia could detect a better spirit in the army now. In the spring, General Hooker would lead what might be the final phase of the crusade to crush the rebels. She looked forward to tending the Union wounded and sometimes daydreamed of the suffering of boys on the other side. Every scream from a reb was another penny of repayment for Grady and all his people.

In the reception hall, she heard voices. She approached the Sunday Samaritan, who was seated beside a sleeping soldier, holding the young man's hand between his two soft and delicate ones. The visitor, in his mid-forties, was bearded and burly as a dock hand. He had mild eyes and a fair complexion. He always wore a decoration on the lapel of his baggy suit — today, a bedraggled tulip fastened by a pin.

"Walt, the visitors are here."

With slow, bearlike movements, the Sunday man lifted himself from the stool his bulk had completely hidden. The soldier felt the hands leave his, and his eyes flew open. "Don't go."

"I'll be back again," Walt said, bending to place a gentle kiss on the boy's cheek. Some of the nurses called such behavior unnatural, but most of the patients, awaiting the surgeon's saw or suffering horrible internal pain, welcomed Walt's handclasps and kisses. It was all the love some of them would know before they died.

"Next week, Miss Hazard, if I can," the Sunday man promised, settling the haversack strap on his shoulder. He shambled out the doors at one end of the aisle as the dignitaries came in at the other end. The delegation consisted of two women and four men from the Sanitary Commission, plus a seventh individual, to whom the others seemed to defer. Virgilia was glad she and her ward-masters had scrubbed the floor and walls with disinfectant last night; it muted the odors of wounds and incontinence.

"— a typical ward, Congressman. Well maintained by the volunteer nursing staff, as you can see." The speaker, one of the gentlemen from the Commission, beckoned to Virgilia. "Matron? May we have a moment of your time?"

Touching her hairnet and smoothing her apron, she hurried to the visitors. All were middle-aged except the man addressed as Congressman. He was pale and tall, stooped and unprepossessing. Yet he impressed her as he swept off his tall hat — wavy hair gleamed with too much oil, a common fault with gentlemen — and swiftly inspected her face and figure.

The white-whiskered scarecrow who had summoned her said, "You are Miss —?"

"Hazard, Mr. Turner."

"Kind of you to remember me. We have a special guest, who wished to inspect several of our facilities. May I present the Honorable Samuel G. Stout, representative from Indiana?"

"Miss Hazard, is it?" said the congressman, stunning Virgilia. Out of that clerkish body rolled the deepest, most resonant tones she had ever heard — the voice of a born orator or divine, a voice to draw tears and sway mobs. He spoke four words, peering at her with rather small, close-set brown eyes, and sent shivers down her back.

His gaze made her inordinately nervous. "That's correct, Congressman. We're pleased to have you here. A great many dignitaries from Washington pass through Aquia Creek Landing — the President and his party went down to Falmouth on the train recently — but we've not been fortunate enough to have any of them visit our ward until now."

"Next to serving on the lines," Stout said, "this is the most important work of all — restoring our lads to fight again. I don't agree with Mr. Lincoln's contention that we must treat the traitors gently. I am in Mr. Stevens's camp, believing we should punish them without pity. You are helping to hasten that task to its conclusion."

Sententious murmurs of approval came from the others. One woman, huge as a gas balloon, pressed a glove to her vast front and breathed, "Bravo." Virgilia recognized that Stout was behaving like a politician, turning a scrap of casual conversation into a platform statement. Yet his sentiments and his voice continued to touch nerves.

"You are a member of Miss Dix's corps?" he asked, managing to step closer. She said that was true. She smelted the cinnamon oil on his hair.

"Perhaps you'll tell us a little about your charges." Stout smiled. His teeth were crooked — her first impression was correct; he was unimpressive physically — yet she sensed determination and strength in him. "This young lad, for example." Directing her to a bed on the left, he contrived to take hold of her elbow.

Instantly, she experienced a physical reaction so unexpected she was afraid she might be blushing.

The boy in bed stared at the visitors with feverish eyes. "Henry was on picket duty on the Rappahannock," she said. "Rebel scouts crossed near his post. Shots were exchanged." The boy turned his cheek to the pillow and shut his eyes. Virgilia drew the visitors out of earshot. "I'm afraid his right leg can't be saved. It's just a matter of a day or two before the surgeons take it."

"I would take the lives of ten rebels for blighting a young man that way," Stout said. "I would crucify them if that form of punishment were condoned in our society. It ought to be. Nothing is too cruel for those who precipitated this war of cruelty."

One of the Commission members said, "With ail due respect, Congressman, don't you feel that's a bit severe?"

"No, sir, I do not. A dear relative of mine, an aide to General Rosecrans, was slain at Murfreesboro not sixty days ago. There were no remains fit to be returned to his wife and little ones. His body was foully mutilated by those who slew him. Certain parts were —"

He stopped, clearing his throat; he knew he had overstepped.

But not so far as Virgilia was concerned. The man excited her as few had since her acquaintance with the visionary John Brown. She led the visitors through the ward in a curious light-headed state, her mind functioning well enough for her to describe each case, yet a part of it reserved for exhilarated contemplation of the congressman. Did he possibly find her as attractive as she found him?

Unwittingly, she lengthened her description of each patient's diagnosis, until Turner started to tap his foot. When that did no good, he pulled out a large gold watch. "I am afraid we shall have to hurry along, Miss Hazard. We are due to inspect the quartermaster's stores."

"Certainly, Mr. Turner." She hesitated, then reminded herself that if Stout walked out unaware of her reaction to him, she might never see him again. "I wonder if I first might have a moment to speak privately with the congressman? This hospital has certain urgent needs. Perhaps he could help with them."

She knew it was flimsy, but she could think of nothing better. Turner and the balloon-shaped female suspected her game and exchanged sharp looks; propriety was being outraged here. Congressman Stout rolled his hat brim in white fingers, unsmiling except in his dark eyes. He understood, too.

Virgilia turned and walked away. The visitors moved in the opposite direction, one grumbling. Stout followed her. Feeling that she must be scarlet, she halted between two beds in which the patients were asleep. No one could hear when she turned and whispered to Stout.

"I lied a moment ago. Our needs are well supplied."

His eyes drifted to her breasts, then upward again. With his back to the others, he permitted himself a smile. "I thought that might be the happy circumstance. Hoped so, to be truthful."

"I —" She hardly believed it was Virgilia Hazard searching for the words, but it was the new Virgilia, conceived the night Brett came to her and brushed her hair. "— I merely wished to express admiration for your remarks about the enemy. I share your bathing of the South, and I can't tolerate the prospect of a soft peace of the kind Mr. Lincoln advocates."

Stout's lips compressed. "There will be no soft peace if certain of us in Congress have our way." He bent forward, his voice as magnificent as the low registers of a pipe organ. "If you have occasion to visit Washington, it would be pleasant to exchange views on the subject at greater length."

"I — would enjoy that, Congressman. I can understand your passion for prosecuting the war, since you had a relative tortured by the enemy."

"My wife's older brother."

He said it and let it hang between them. She felt as if he had hit her. From the slight curl of his mouth and the expression in his eyes, she knew the revelation was not accidental.

"Your —?"

"Wife," he repeated. "Since we came from Muncie, she has been preoccupied with female society — humanitarian committees, that type of thing. I accompany her in public only when some obligation demands it. I say all this to indicate we have little in common."

"Except a marriage certificate."

"That is rather stiff-necked, Miss Hazard. I am not a man given to falsehoods — except when addressing constituents." The effort to produce a smile failed. "Please, don't be angry. I find you exceedingly attractive. I merely wanted to be candid. If I lied and you found out, you'd think the worse of me."

Her head began to hurt. A queasy conviction came over her that he had said all this before. It had a practiced smoothness.

"My marriage should not be an obstacle to our meeting discreetly for a meal and some stimulating conversation."

She took a step backward. "I'm afraid it definitely is an obstacle."

He frowned. "My dear Miss Hazard, don't let foolish prudery —"

"You must excuse me, Congressman." She spun and walked away.

Virgilia was furious because she had let her emotions betray her — take her by surprise and humiliate her. She had felt a physical desire for the man stronger than any she had experienced since Grady died. The desire was all the sharper because Stout was a person of power and influence.

The image of his eyes, the memories of his reverberating voice brought a look of pain to her face as she crashed through the swing doors at the end of the ward.

"Damn him, damn him, damn him for being married."

69

The taproom was unsavory and in a bad location, down on Q Street near Greenleaf's Point. The place teemed with boisterous officers from the arsenal, goatish civilians, loitering thugs, and prostitutes — white, black, even a Chinese. Jasper Dills had gone there with enormous reluctance and only because a meeting could not be held in his usual, respectable haunts. He was, after all, responding to an appeal from an army deserter.

Dills's driver, who carried a concealed pistol, waited at the copper-clad bar, which helped to relieve the little lawyer's anxiety. One couldn't be too careful in Washington. Even these once-remote warrens of the island swarmed with new inhabitants — speculators, white refugees who had tossed loyalty aside and fled the war-blasted counties of northern Virginia, contrabands of every age and hue. Dills would never risk himself in such surroundings if it weren't for the stipend.

Across the table, Bent said, "I am desperate, Mr. Dills. I have no means of supporting myself."

Dills tapped manicured nails against his glass of mineral water. "Your somewhat incoherent letter managed to make that clear. I'll speak straightforwardly, and I expect you to heed every word. If I make the arrangements — if I write the note I have in mind — you must not place me at risk. You must deal with the gentleman to whom I propose to introduce you as if the past didn't exist. You must wipe from your mind your difficulties at West Point. Your fancied grievances —"

Bent struck the table. "They are not fancied."

"Do that once more," Dills whispered, "and I will get up and leave."

Shaking, Bent covered his eyes. What a contemptible hulk he was, the lawyer thought. "Please, Mr. Dills — I'm sorry. I can overlook the past."

"You'd better. Because of your actions in New Orleans, no legitimate avenues are open to you. This one is marginal at best."

"How — how did you hear about New Orleans?"

"I have ways. I maintain an interest in your career. It isn't material to our discussion. Now, down to cases. You assure me that, so far as you know, you've never met the gentleman under discussion?"

"No."

"But he is probably familiar with your real name. For that reason, and also because he has access to military records, we must outfit you with another. Let's call it your nom de guerre." The conceit produced a cool smile, the lawyer's first during this encounter.

Nom de guerre. Wonderfully fitting, Bent thought. He was still fighting a war, this one for survival, for life itself.

A tawny whore stroked Dills's shoulder. He lifted her hand and flung it off. She glared and waggled away to someone else. Dills sipped his mineral water.

Then he asked, "What name shall I use?"

Bent fingered his jowl. "Something from Ohio? What about Dayton? Ezra Dayton."

"Bland enough," Dills responded, shrugging. "You will have to go to the War Department for the initial meeting. Can you do that?"

"Is there no other —?" He stopped, seeing Dills's hard stare. "Yes, I'm sure I can."

Dills wasn't, but he said, "Very well. Before your late disappearance from the military rolls, you earned something of a reputation for brutality — Oh, don't gasp and feign innocence. I've seen copies of your records. In this instance, that unpleasant propensity works to your advantage. Write the address of your rooming house on this piece of paper. Tomorrow I'll send a messenger with an envelope addressed to Ezra Dayton, Esquire. The envelope will contain a second, sealed one, which you must not open. That will be my note of introduction, recommending you for employment by the secretary's aide for domestic security, Stanley Hazard."

Two days later, at half past seven in the morning, Bent brushed up the sack coat he had purchased in New Orleans. He deplored its travel-stained condition, but he had nothing else. He planned to walk the whole way to the War Department; he was down to his last few dollars and wouldn't squander them on transportation. The interview might go badly. If it did, he was done. He would be forced to thievery — or worse.

Outside his sleazy rooming house, he turned right, past a weedy lot where contrabands had erected blanket tents and shanties of scrap lumber, undoubtedly stolen. He glared at the colored people squatting around a cook fire.

A mild spell had interrupted the severe February weather. In brightening sunshine, he trudged all the way across the island, over the canal, and through the mall to the columned portico of the War Department building, which looked immense to him: three stories of brick, with chimneys jutting above bare trees.

Inside, an armed soldier demanded to know his business. With a perspiring hand, Bent presented the sealed letter. The soldier directed him upstairs. On his way, he paused to peer into an anteroom where a pudgy gnome with steel-rimmed spectacles stood at a tall writing desk that separated him from a line of petitioners — weeping women, army officers and noncoms, civilians who were probably contractors. The gnome was Stanton, Bent realized with some astonishment. Did he hold public audiences regularly?

In a spacious office on the floor above, an orderly led him to the line walnut desk of Stanley Hazard. Standing in front of it, he noticed a flake on his left sleeve: some of the hardtack he had munched for breakfast and washed down with a cup of water. He was too nervous to remove the crumb.

He felt the prod of the past. But Mr. Stanley Hazard bore little resemblance to his younger brother. Further, he was plumper and sleeker than Bent remembered. Expensively dressed, too, with a ruffled shirt and a flowing cravat whose color matched his rusty orange frock coat.

Having kept his visitor waiting while he slit open the letter and read it, Stanley at last deigned to wave. "Do sit down. My time is rather short this morning."

Stanley laid the letter in front of him. Bent had to struggle to squeeze his buttocks into the chair. The past overwhelmed him. A blood vessel in his temple started to quiver, but he forced himself to mute thoughts of violence. This man represented his best, perhaps his only, means of saving himself from poverty and total failure. He must forget the man's family.

It became easier the moment Stanley smiled, a slow smile, comfortingly greasy. "This letter from Counselor Dills states that your name's Dayton — but not really."

Bent blinked in terror. "What's that?" Had the lawyer betrayed him?

"You are not aware of the contents of this?"

"No, no."

Stanley read aloud. "Dayton is a pseudonym. His true identity cannot be disclosed because of certain connections with highly placed persons. These must be protected. His enforced anonymity, however, in no wise diminishes his ability to assist you, or my strong commendation of him to your attention."

"Very — very kind of the counselor to say that," Bent gasped, relieved.

Stanley folded his hands and studied his caller. "The counselor presents you as a candidate for what we call special or detached service with a bureau of this department which, officially, does not exist. The bureau involves itself with purging the public sphere of persons whose opinions or actions are inimical to the government. This can be done by direct order of the secretary —"

Bent knew that much; Stanton had a reputation for immense power. He had only to murmur, and a critic of the administration disappeared into Old Capitol Prison, on First Street.

"— although more frequently of late, as enemies become more numerous, action has been initiated by the bureau itself. Chief of the bureau is Colonel Baker, who is also charged with carrying out certain confidential missions behind enemy lines. Occasionally I send him a promising man. Evidently that is what Dills has in mind."

Stanley left it there, awaiting a response. Perspiring, Bent blurted, "It sounds like tremendously important work, sir. Work I could do with enthusiasm. I am staunchly behind the programs of this administration —"

"That always seems to be the case with job seekers." Stanley's smirk made Bent squirm.

A moment later, a new thought struck Bent. This particular member of the Hazard clan might be cut from the same bolt as he was — and perhaps didn't deserve his enmity. Stanley Hazard was haughty, open about his importance. Those were characteristics Bent admired.

"Bear in mind, Dayton, Colonel Baker is the gentleman who says yes or no to hiring an operative. I can, however, add my recommendation to that of Dills."

"It would be very kind if you —"

"I haven't said I would," Stanley interrupted. Another moment of scrutiny. "Why aren't you in the army?"

Terror then. He had prepared himself for the question, but it was as if he hadn't. "I was, Mr. Hazard."

"Of course we can't check on that because of the problem with your identity. Very neat." A faint smile relieved Stanley's severity. "You can at least reveal the circumstances of your separation."

"Yes, surely. I resigned. I refused to accept a transfer to command of a nigger unit."

Stanley closed his fist. "Keep that sort of remark to yourself in this department. The secretary is a devout partisan of emancipation."

Again Bent stared into the abyss of failure. "I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Hazard. I promise —"

Stanley waved a second time. "Take this bit of advice also. Colonel Baker is a strong temperance man. If you drink, don't do it before you meet him."

Bent's hope soared. Stanley continued in a more confidential way. "That caveat aside, the colonel doesn't demand sainthood or even ideological purity. He demands only two qualities. His men must be trustworthy and willing to obey orders. Any orders, no matter how —" a hand fluttered, struggling to convey meaning "— irregular they might appear to certain misguided constitutionalists." He leaned forward so fast he seemed to be swooping down on prey. "Do I communicate clearly, sir?"

"Perfectly." Baker circumvented the law whenever necessary. "I can offer those qualities."

"We need them because we are locked in a vicious struggle. Enemies of the administration abound. But no man or woman is beyond our reach. If helping us achieve our goal — the crushing of domestic treason while our generals crush its military equivalent — is to your taste —"

"Very much so, sir, indeed it is," Bent said, nearly babbling.

"Then I'll add my note of introduction to that of Dills. As I said, Baker will make the final determination. But I'm a good judge of character. I'd say your prospects are excellent."

He reached for his pen and scratched a few swift lines at the bottom of Dills's letter. Then he rang a small hand bell and told his orderly to bring a new envelope. He sealed the amended letter inside.

The visitor was almost delirious. He had completely fooled Stanley Hazard, who didn't connect him with Elkanah Bent. He wanted to ask about George but couldn't think of a pretext that would not arouse suspicion. He forced the vendetta out of his mind; winning Baker's approval came first.

Stanley handed him the sealed envelope. "Take this to Colonel Baker at 217 Pennsylvania Avenue."

"Thank you, sir, thank you." Bent heaved to his feet, extending his hand, only to realize he held the letter. He let it drop. Stanley rose and clasped his hands at the small of his back.

Seething under the rebuff, Bent controlled himself and leaned over. It was hard to pick up the letter; his belly interfered. Sharply, Stanley said, "One more thing."

"Sir?"

"Your name does not appear on my appointment calendar for today. Our conversation never took place, and you will forget you were ever in this building. If you violate that instruction, it could go hard with you." He gestured. "Good morning."

What would they do if he talked? Murder him? The possibility frightened him, but not for long. He could hardly contain his excitement. He had finally found a door, even if open only a crack, to the corridors of power.

He reeled down the stairs, vowing to please Colonel Baker at all costs. He might be able to locate George and Billy Hazard through this special bureau. And the work sounded ideal. He imagined himself interrogating a female suspect. Saw himself tear her clothing. Reach down to touch her. She could do nothing.

Feeling reborn, he launched himself into the sunshine. Clerks and a pair of braid-crusted officers took startled note of an obese man almost dancing along the walks of President's Park.

70

From the starboard rail forward of the pilothouse, Cooper watched the skies. Was it imagination, or was the heavy cloud cover growing luminous? Thinning to permit the rays of the moon to shine through?

Ballantyne had told him that he depended on two conditions for a successful run: the right tide and total darkness. They had the tide, but now, late in the night, an onshore wind had sprung up to push the clouds. The lookout, invisible ten minutes ago, was clearly silhouetted in the crosstrees.

Water Witch had steamed from Nassau in three days without incident. Federal ships were sighted hull down on the horizon, but the runner banked her fires to reduce smoke and slipped past them without detection, aided by her low profile and the gray paint that blurred her lines. Then came the dangerous hours — that short period in which a master earned his five thousand in gold or Yankee dollars. Even as late as an hour ago, however, Ballantyne had acted unconcerned, promising Cooper and his wife the traditional drink of celebration, a champagne cocktail, after they passed Fort Fisher.

Since leaving port, Cooper had repeatedly tried to deal with the revelation that Ashton was part owner of this vessel that so flagrantly ignored the plight of the Confederacy. Ballantyne cautioned him that no one else aboard knew the names of any of the shareholders. He had mentioned Ashton's solely in the hope of stilling Cooper's protests.

It did that, all right, but it also left him in turmoil. He hadn't decided yet what to do about his discovery.

Gripping the rail, Cooper felt the sea breeze on his face. The air was warm for a Carolina wintertime. To port, spectral blue lights hovered, the lanterns of the blockading squadron. How could they not hear the steady slap and thud of the runner's paddle floats. Even though Water Witch was proceeding southward dead slow, close inshore in the deepwater channel, her paddles and engines sounded thunderous as she rolled and labored in moderately heavy surf.

"Big Hill to starboard," the lookout called softly. A crewman ran aft to pass the word to the pilothouse. Cooper strained for sight of the landmark on the flat, deserted shore. He saw it suddenly, with alarming clarity, a tall hummock that told runners they were near Fort Fisher and safe water. Overhead, white patches brightened and dimmed between the racing clouds.

Had Judith and the children been able to get to sleep in their cramped berths? He suspected not. The sense of urgent work being done to the vessel in the late afternoon had conveyed itself even to Marie-Louise. The Mains watched Ballantyne's crew cover the engine-room hatchways, drape the binnacle, and haul down all but the lower masts. Special crosstrees were raised on the foremast, and the lookout sent aloft after the perpetually smiling Ballantyne issued a warning to him.

"Remember the rule on my ship. Strike so much as one match for your pipe, and I'll hang you."

Ballantyne and the pilot had agreed on the course of the final dash. They ran some twenty miles north of Cape Fear, then swung around to port, bypassing the northernmost ship on the blockade line. The maneuver accomplished at twilight, they hove to and lay virtually motionless until full dark, then began to slip down the coast toward the mouth of the river.

Slow going, hard on the nerves. Always, off to their port side, the blue lanterns shone. Now, in the growing light, Cooper detected masts and a hull big enough to belong to a cruiser.

How far away? Half a mile? If he could see the Yankee, couldn't its lookout see them?

Once more he craned his head back. Dear God, the clouds were thin as gauze. A few of the larger ones radiated light from fluffy edges, and, between, he spied stars. In a few minutes the freshening wind would completely scour the sky.

He dashed for the pilothouse, forgetting in his haste that the boats had been lowered on their davits to the level of the rail. He banged his head, letting out an exclamation that drew an angry "Keep your goddamn voice down" from a crewman crouched at the gunwale. The man had a wool cap pulled over his ears; his face and hands were blacked with coal dust. Cooper had submitted to the same treatment after questioning the need and having Ballantyne reply, "You'll do it, sir, because it's better to be dirty than dead."

In the pilothouse there was enough moonlight for him to see Ballantyne, the pilot, and the helmsman peering into a large tin cone. The cone shielded the dim light of the compass. Cooper said, "Captain, surely you've taken note of the sky. It's clearing."

"Aye." Ballantyne's grin, his universal defense against all foes and adversities, seemed to waver in the silver light splashing the enclosure. The helmsman and the pilot whispered to each other. "Bad luck, that," Ballantyne added.

"Isn't the passage too risky now? Shouldn't we turn back?"

"What, run for it? If we did, the Yankees'd give chase."

"What if they do? We can get away, can't we? You told me we're fast enough to outrun any of those ships."

"So we are."

"And the closer we get to the river, the heavier the concentration of enemy vessels — isn't that right?"

"It is."

"Then we shouldn't risk it."

"Oh, have you become the master of Water Witch?" Ballantyne asked, growing unpleasant. "I think not. You're merely a passenger. It's true we face danger because the clouds broke up unexpectedly. But the owners have given me explicit orders. No unnecessary delays. I am paid to run Cape Fear at all hazards."

Furious, Cooper stepped closer to the captain, whose fear-born sweat he could suddenly smell. "The Confederacy won't fall if a shipment of Havana cigars and bonnet frames is delayed. I'll not allow your avarice and that of my sist — your owners to place my family in jeopardy. Show a little common sense, man! Turn back."

"Get off the bridge," Ballantyne said. "Get off or I'll have you hauled off."

Cooper reached for Ballantyne's arm. "Damn your greedy soul. Listen to —" The captain pushed him. Cooper stumbled and almost fell.

The pilot let out a despairing profanity. "Christ save us — there's the moon."

Flooding white, nearly full, it seemed to sail from behind a glowing cloud. From the pilothouse entrance, Cooper saw the masts and shrouds of four huge vessels light up like stage scenery to port. A baritone voice, amplified by a speaking trumpet, hailed Water Witch.

"This is the federal cruiser Daylight. On the steamer, heave to and await boarders."

"Hell's fire, stand aside," Ballantyne cried, pushing the helmsman and bending to the engine-room speaking tube. "Engines ahead full. Give me all the steam you can." Cooper could imagine conditions below; with the hatches covered, the stokers would be working in an inferno.

"Oh, my God," he said as a host of little vessels popped into sight from behind the cruiser. Like silvery water bugs, the federal launches chased the blockade-runner. A thousand yards astern of her, they threw off moonlit bow spray.

Standing outside the pilothouse, Cooper looked ahead. Beyond the bow he saw a cluster of blue lanterns he hadn't noticed before. The engines of Water Witch grew louder; the rhythm of paddle blades slapping water quickened. A bosun's pipe sounded on the Yankee cruiser. Through the trumpet boomed the great disembodied voice. "Heave to or I will open fire."

"Ballantyne," Cooper began, "you've got to —" Curses and shouts from the scared sailors overlaid his words, as did Ballantyne's loud "Keep him out." The door of the pilothouse slammed, nearly hitting Cooper's nose.

"Steam frigate," the lookout exclaimed. "Dead astern."

And there she was, swung out in pursuit a couple of miles behind them, moonlit smoke billowing, all her square sails set to add an extra two or three knots to the speed generated by her boilers. Water Witch began to move faster, leaping free of the heavy surf rolling in to shore on the starboard side.

Cooper's gut hurt. One, two, three sparking trails appeared high above Daylight. The moon grew feeble as a trimmed lamp when the Drummond rockets burst, their calcium light whitening everything. Even the muskets of the men in the launches were visible.

A gun on the pursuing cruiser flashed and went rumph, then another. The shells fell short, raising geysers that shone like liquid diamonds under the flare light. At the first crash, Cooper ran below, his hair flying.

Their cabin door was open, Judith there, her arms around the children. She tried not to show her fright. Cooper grabbed her damp hand. "Come on, this way."

Another shell exploded, this one much closer. The vessel rocked as she strained ahead.

"Pa, what is it?" Judah exclaimed.

"The moon came out, and Ballantyne wouldn't turn back, the son of a bitch. All he cares about is getting his goods to Wilmington — Come on." He jerked Judith so hard, she cried out. He regretted it, but he had to get them to safety.

"Where are we going?" his daughter said as the hull tilted.

"To the boats. Ballantyne will have them lowered by now. Our only chance is to row ashore."

When the family emerged on deck, Cooper couldn't believe what he saw: every boat still swaying wildly on its davits. He grabbed a passing crewman.

"Put the boats down so we can get off!"

"Nobody's gettin' off, mister. We're runnin' for the river." He dashed on, whirling an alarm rattle. The ratchet sounded loud as pistol fire.

More Drummond lights spread their white glow. A shell came whining in, struck the stern and lifted it. Judith screamed. So did the children. All of them fell against Cooper, tumbling him into the scuppers and crushing him against the rail.

"Papa, I'm scared." Marie-Louise flung her arms around Cooper's neck. "Will the boat sink? Will we be prisoners of the Yankees?"

"No," he gasped, struggling to regain his feet as Water Witch rolled again, caught in the heavy surf. Cannon boomed, the glare visible above the rail. Two crewmen turned their heads at a whistling sound. One pushed the other, too late. Scattering grape felled both men and shattered the window of the pilothouse.

Judith ducked and bit her hand to hold back an outcry. A massive detonation went off belowdecks. Someone yelled, "We're hulled."

At once, the runner listed sharply to starboard. Cooper saw Captain Ballantyne on deck, running back and forth in a state of agitation, trying to find men to help him lower one boat. "Bastard," Cooper said. "Greedy stupid bastard. Come on, children — Judith — we're getting in that boat if I have to kill every man on this ship."

Balancing on the steeply tilting deck, they slid to the starboard side, where high waves spent their strength against the shoreline. If all else failed, Cooper thought, they might manage to swim and wade to the beach. Holding his daughter, he worked his way down the slippery incline toward the captain, who had flung himself into the effort to lower a boat.

"Ballantyne —" Before Cooper could shout anything else, another shell hit belowdecks. The explosion was followed by terrifying noise — the howl of metal rupturing, a furious hiss of steam, and some of the worst screams Cooper had ever heard.

Water Witch's port side came up, parallel with the sea. Cooper saw his wife's blonde head rush past him, downward. He saw her form a word — their son's name. Judah's hand had somehow slipped from her grasp. Where was he? Cooper tried to see, still holding fast to Marie-Louise as he himself fell.

In all the noise, the shrieks, the crash of surf and guns, Ballantyne, incredibly, made himself heard. Cooper had a distorted glimpse of the captain, hair standing out from his head, arms flung wide against the moon.

"Boilers have burst. Every man for —" Between Ballantyne's legs, the deck split open and swallowed him, screaming, into clouds of steam.

The mate, Soapes, and two other crewmen fought to be first to jump over the side. Belowdecks, dying men screamed in the engine room. Cooper was flung against the rail with back-breaking force. He started to clamber over, one arm circling his daughter's shoulders, the other groping for Judith's hand and clutching it. The steamer careened farther, its keel rising out of the sea. The Mains fell past the rail into white foam.

Treading water, gasping, Cooper clung to his wife and daughter. "Where's — Judah?"

"I don't know," Judith shouted back.

Then, amidst the debris falling around them as Water Witch broke apart, he spied a floating body whose clothes he recognized. He hurled Marie-Louise at his wife and swam the short distance, fighting against the opposing waves. He had a premonition that his son was dead, probably killed when the boilers burst. As he struggled the last few feet, he tried to summon hope that he was wrong.

Judah floated face down. Cooper grabbed for his son's shoulder but miscalculated the distance and caught the boy's head. The head rolled into sight, steam-scalded, bone showing in several places. Judah was barely recognizable. A wave swept between father and son, leaving nothing in Cooper's hand but a piece of skin.

"Judah!" He screamed the name. Away and under went the frail body. "Judah, Judah." He wrenched back, waves battering him, water cascading over his head, choking him, mingling with demented tears. "Judith, he's dead, he's gone, he's dead."

"Swim, Cooper." She seized his collar, jerking him. "Swim with us or we'll all die."

A section of mast fell just beyond her. Cooper started to paddle with his left arm, and kick, while his right hand supported Marie-Louise, crying hysterically now. On the other side of the girl, Judith helped support her. Cooper felt pain in his chest, then in his muscles as he kicked toward the shore, closer to drowning each time the waves broke over them from behind.

A moment more, and he felt himself bumped by floating objects. He spat out salt water and vomit, and saw they had struggled into an area where round, gauze-wrapped disks and small wood casks stenciled in Spanish floated. Sherry and cheese, cheese and sherry — sinking, then bobbing up, on the coast of war —

The sight fused Cooper's thoughts and fears and feelings, locking them in a solid black delirium. He screamed once more and kept swimming. He remembered nothing else.

71

In the deep amber dusk, Orry hurried past a wall on which someone had painted three words, only to have someone else attempt to scrub them away. Just above his head, ghostly white letters spelled DEATH TO DAVIS.

Neither the message — a not uncommon one these days — nor anything else, including his odious job, could spoil his mood. He was rushing because he had taken longer at supper than he intended. He and his old friend George Pickett had drained a forty-dollar bottle of imported Graves with their meal and packed several years' worth of reminiscences into a little more than an hour.

Pickett, who had been Orry's West Point classmate, looked as handsome as ever. Scented hair flowed over the collar of his uniform, and his smile shone as brightly as Orry remembered. They discussed subjects as diverse as their wives and the fat Yankee Bent, whose hatred of Orry had driven him to plot against Cousin Charles while both were serving with the Second Cavalry.

Pickett chided his friend for wasting himself in the job of watchdog over General Winder. "Though the Lord knows the poor lunatic ought to be watched by someone, so he doesn't disgrace us in the eyes of the world." Orry countered by saying that, menial and unrewarding as his work might appear, he was finding it important as carloads of prisoners came to town every few days, snatched up along the winter lines to swell the populations of already overcrowded Belle Isle and Libby.

"Winder administers those places, you see. The Yankees would be treated much worse than they are if the War Department didn't go in from time to time and curb the excesses."

Pickett accepted that. When they reached the bottom of the wine bottle, he admitted that despite promotion to major general in the autumn, he was unhappy. During recent months he had commanded the center of the Fredericksburg line, seeing little action. Between the old friends an unspoken truth seemed to hover. The war was not going well for the Confederacy. Soldier and civilian alike felt the stirrings of a poisonous doubt about the outcome. Someone had to be blamed; anonymous malcontents slashed DEATH TO DAVIS on empty walls.

Although the reunion had touches of melancholy, generally Orry enjoyed it, right down to the final cups of real coffee — three dollars apiece, and no questions asked about how the hotel had obtained it. They walked out arm in arm and parted on the street, Pickett to take his wife to see The Ticket-of-Leave Man at the smart new Richmond Theater, built where the Marshall had burned last year, and Orry to meet Madeline's train.

He rushed through the crowded, grimy depot, navigating around sad-eyed youths on litters or crutches, yelling peddlers, and strolling tarts. On a large chalkboard, the arriving Richmond & Petersburg train was shown as 1 ½ HRS LATE.

Night fell. The wait seemed far longer than what the board declared. Finally, out beyond the platform's end, a light appeared on the great trestle sixty feet above the river gorge. The train came in with a squeal of drivers, hissing of brakes, belching of smoke. The weather-bleached cars, most with broken windows, discharged furloughed men returning to duty and civilians of every degree from prosperous to poor. Amid the crowd, Orry stood out because of his height. He saw no one he recognized.

Had she missed a connection? Not been able to get away on schedule? Passengers waved to waiting friends or loved ones. Blurred, happy faces rushed by. His worry and anxiety deepened. Then, stepping down from the last car, there she was.

Her traveling dress had picked up the dirt so common on Southern trains these days. Locks of hair had come undone, straggling over her ears and brow. She looked exhausted and beautiful, and, whether in fact or by the alchemy of imagination, she smelled of the sweet olive of home.

"Madeline!" He shouted and waved like some schoolboy, struggling against the flow of passengers.

"Oh, Orry — my darling. My darling." She dropped a portmanteau and two hatboxes and flung her arms around his neck, hugging him, kissing him, weeping. "I thought I'd never get here."

"I thought you wouldn't either." Happy as a young bride­groom, he stepped back. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, yes — are you? We must collect my trunk. It was shipped in the baggage car."

"We'll get it and catch a hack outside. I hate for you to see my rooms. They're all I could get, and they're dismal."

"I'd sleep on a rubbish heap to be with you. Dear God, Orry — it's been so long — Oh, my. You've lost weight."

The sentences tumbled over one another, happiness cutting through the annoyances of the long, hard journey. Orry tipped a Negro porter, pointed him toward the baggage car, and located a hack. When they were on their way to the quarters he had hired a woman to clean that rooming, he sat on Madeline's left so he could keep his arm around her.

"I couldn't wait for you to arrive, but it's a bad time to be in Richmond. People are miserable. Angrier by the day. Everything's in short supply."

"One thing isn't. My love for you." She kissed him.

She treated his accommodations in the rooming house as if they ware palatial. Feasting on the sight of her by the light of a single low-trimmed gaslight, he asked, "Are you hungry?"

"Only for you. I brought some books —''

"Hurrah! We can read in the evenings —" Despite the strange, cruel tilting of the world, they might recall at least a little of the past. "Any poetry?"

"Yes, Keats. And a copy of Dickens's Pickwick Papers, which I liked very much."

"It's proscribed here. Too vulgar or something." He couldn't control his ebullience, going to her and circling her waist with his arm. He kissed her throat. "You must tell me everything new at Mont Royal. We've hours and hours of catching up to do —" He gazed into his wife's eyes, adding softly, "In many ways."

Madeline smiled. He changed position slightly so that he could touch and warmly close his hand over her breast. He kissed her with such ardor her back began to bow. Laughing, she broke the embrace. She began to unfasten the cloth-covered buttons of her bodice.

Naked with her in the cool bedroom, its door ajar to give them light, he gazed at her hair on the pillow and gently, gently pushed the tip of himself into her, experiencing a happiness almost unbearable. There came back to him then a poem they had read repeatedly during the frustrating years when honor and her marriage vows prevented this kind of consummation. Looking down at her, he spoke some of Poe's Annabel Lee.

" 'And this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me —'"

"We'll never be separated again," Madeline cried. "We mustn't be, ever. I would die."

From a second-floor window on Franklin Street, Mrs. Burdetta Halloran watched a hack arrive at the house directly opposite. A bosomy, cheaply attractive young woman with dark hair paid the driver, ascended the stoop, knocked, and waited with a tense air. A moment later, she stepped into a vertical bar of darkness, and the door closed.

Late afternoon light the color of lemons fell through lace curtains into the bay where Mrs. Halloran had kept a vigil on randomly chosen days throughout the past month. To the spinster who owned the house, she had presented herself as the aunt of a young woman suspected of falling into sin with the gentleman living across the way. She needed to be certain before pressing a confrontation, she said. Whatever the elderly spinster thought of the story, the small sum Mrs. Halloran paid each time kept her silent.

Who was the slut? Burdetta Halloran wondered. She didn't know, but she wouldn't forget the face. With short, quick tugs, she pulled on ecru mittens and spoke to the woman hovering in the dusty shadow.

"Thank you so much for the use of your room. I won't be needing it again."

"You saw your niece — ?''

"Alas, yes. Going into the house of that Mr. Powell."

"I know him only by sight. He's a very private gentleman."

"He has a foul reputation." She could barely refrain from saying more. She settled her small feathered hat on her head, smiled, and glided to the upper hall. "I shall go out by the back, as usual."

"I have come to anticipate these little visits. I almost regret that your vigil has been successful."

I'm sure you do, greedy old woman.

"If that Powell is as bad as you say, I do hope you can effect a separation between him and your niece."

"I shall, don't worry," the younger woman assured her, hurrying down the stairs because she feared her face would betray her.

Betray — that was the proper word here. Lamar Powell had betrayed her love and trust. Burdetta Halloran had no intention of concerning herself with Powell's current light of love. He was the one who merited her attention. He would get it.

Washington and Boz smelled the approaching spring in wet earth and night wind. A clergyman rode out from Fredericksburg to speak with Gus, and although the freedmen didn't hear the conversation, they guessed the reverend's purpose. He failed to accomplish it.

As the mounds of snow in the dooryard grew smaller, the two blacks began to notice bands of horsemen on the road at all hours. At night, the tree line glittered from artillery fire along the river; occasionally the explosions shook the windowpanes so hard the vibration produced an eerie whining sound. Washington and Boz conferred often about the seriousness of the situation and finally decided to approach their mistress.

They argued for an hour about who should do it. The job fell to the younger man. Boz went to the kitchen at suppertime.

"Ain't no way to get around it, Miss Augusta. Gonna be fighting soon. Union Army might roll straight across this farm. Ain't safe to stay here. Washington and me, we'd fight to the end for you. Die for you. But neither of us wants you killed, an' we don't much want to be killed either if we can help it." He took a deep breath. "Won't you please go to Richmond City?"

"Boz, I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because if he came looking for me, he wouldn't know where to find me. I could write him, but the mails are so poor he might never get the letter. I'm sorry, Boz. You and Washington are free to leave whenever you want. I must stay."

"Stayin's dangerous, Miss Augusta."

"I know. But it would be worse to go and never see him again."

When Billy left Lehigh Station at the end of his short furlough, Brett again found herself adrift in gloom. In part, her mood was a direct result of her husband's preoccupation with the army. He said the sagging morale didn't affect him; he was a professional. But she saw the changes in him — the tiredness, the cynicism, the simmering anger.

Just one medicine seemed to relieve her depression: long hours of helping the Czornas and Scipio Brown care for the lost children. She scrubbed floors, cooked meals, read stories to the smallest, and taught letters and numbers to the older ones. Each day, she worked until she was certain of falling asleep moments after she went to bed.

Late in the bitter winter, Brown took two of the youngsters out to Oberlin, Ohio, by train; he had located a black family who wanted to adopt a son and a daughter. He returned through Washington, bringing three new girls, ages seven, eight, and thirteen. On his first day in Lehigh Station, he took each for a horse­back ride. Brown had spent so much time gathering up supplies, some purchased but most donated, and searching the packed refugee camps in Washington and Alexandria that he had found it useful to move faster than he could on foot. He had taught himself to be a competent rider. Horses seemed to sense an innate kindliness in him, as did the children.

That didn't mean he had softened his spine or his militancy. Although Brett had grown to like Brown very much, she felt that he enjoyed provoking arguments with her simply because of who she was and where she came from.

One of these took place on an afternoon in March when she and Brown left the building on the hillside to buy corn meal and some other staples from Pinckney Herbert. Brown drove the buggy, and she sat beside him — something that would have caused no comment around Mont Royal, where it would be presumed that he was a bondsman. In Lehigh Station their appearance together inevitably generated hostile stares and sometimes ugly comments, especially from people like Lute Fessenden and his cousin. Both had thus far evaded military service.

They wouldn't much longer. Lincoln had recently signed an act conscripting able-bodied males twenty to forty-six for three years of duty. A man could hire a substitute or purchase an exemption for three hundred dollars. That escape hatch for the rich had already infuriated the poor of the North — Fessenden and his cousin among them, she suspected. In good weather the two men were almost always on the street, and that was true today. As Brett and the broad-shouldered black started their return trip up the hillside, the red-bearded Fessenden spied them and shouted an insult.

Brown sighed. "Wonder if this country's ever going to change. I see scum like that, I have my doubts."

"You've certainly changed since we first met."

"How's that?"

"For one thing, you hardly mention colonization any more."

Brown turned to look at her. "Why should the Negro be packed off on ships now that the President's granted us freedom? Oh, I know — the proclamation's really a war measure. Not meant to apply anywhere except down South. But Mr. Lincoln still calls it freedom, and we'll do more with it than even he can imagine. You wait and see."

"I don't believe Lincoln has changed his mind about resettlement, Scipio. The Ledger-Union said he has a program to ship a boatload of blacks to a new colony this spring. Nearly five hundred of them. They're going to some tiny island near Haiti."

"Well, Old Abe won't send me there — nor Dr. Delany, either. I saw him in Washington — did I tell you? No more robes for Martin. He wants a uniform. He's trying for a commission in a black regiment."

Over the clop of the walking horses, she said, "Billy told me Negroes aren't being received well in the army. Don't take offense, now — these aren't his words or mine — but most white officers protest that they're being niggered to death."

"Let them. For the first time I feel I'm close to real freedom. Anyone tries to deny it to me, I'll expend every drop of blood in my body. Mr. Lincoln may not have intended his proclamation to say every black man and woman in the land is free now. But that's how I take it."

"That's an extreme view of the proclamation, Scipio."

"You say so because you grew up where it was all right to steal a man's liberty. Own him like you would a side of bacon, a piece of lumber. But it isn't all right. Either the freedom in this country is for every last man or it's a fraud."

"I still say you're being extreme about —"

"Why are you defensive all the time?" he interrupted. "Because I jab a pin into your conscience deep enough to hurt?" He reined in at the shoulder. A baker driving his wagon down the hillside gave them a scornful stare. "Look me straight in the eye, Brett.

Answer one question: Do you think liberty's just for persons of your color?"

"That was the intent of the authors of the Declaration."

"Not all the authors! Anyway, this is 1863. So you answer. Is freedom for the white people and nobody else?"

"I was taught —"

"I don't want to know what you were taught, I want to know what you believe."

"Damn you, Scipio, you're so blasted —"

"Uppity?" Thin smile. "That I am."

"Southerners aren't the only sinners, you know. The Yankees really don't want black people free. Some abolitionists do, but not the majority."

"Too late." He shrugged. "Mr. Lincoln signed his order. And frankly, I don't care much about what is. I care about what ought to be."

"Pushing that attitude could set this whole country on fire."

"It's already on fire — or haven't you read the news lately?"

"Sometimes I absolutely detest you, you're so arrogant."

"I detest you for the same reason. Sometimes."

He reached over to pat her hand but held back; he feared she would misconstrue. Calmer, he went on, "I wouldn't bother with you one single minute if I didn't believe there was a sensible, decent woman inside you someplace, twisting and fighting to get out into the light of day. I think the reason you can't stand me sometimes is that I'm a mirror. I make you look at yourself. What you believe — and what you have to become unless you want to mock all the dead of this war."

Quietly, with tension: "You're right. I guess that is why I despise you sometimes. Nobody wants to be shown his errors — be pushed along a path that's hard and dangerous."

"The only other path leads you down to the dark for sure. That the one you want?"

"No — no! But —"

Lamely, she finished there, unable to marshal arguments. Why must he hammer at her conscience all the time? He did, and so did the faces of his flock. Brown or saffron or polished blue-black, they worked on it every day. Worked on it and forced her to question her father's dogmatic belief in the lightness of the peculiar institution. Worked on it so that she asked herself the kinds of questions Cooper had dared to ask their father aloud. What Brown didn't know was that she already felt the pinch and pain associated with dissecting old beliefs. She resented him for fostering the process.

Sensing her mood, Brown said, "We better quit this talk before we stop being friends."

"Yes."

"I wouldn't want to stop being your friend, you know. You're not only a good woman, but we've got two more walls to white­wash at the school. You're mighty fine with a brush. Sure there isn't slave blood in you somewhere?"

Uncontrollably, she laughed. "You're impossible."

"And bound and determined to change you around. That fine husband of yours won't recognize you when he marches home after they disband the army and discharge all those poor suffering white boys who've been niggered to death. Tell you one thing sure —"

Smile gone, he stared into the sunshine. "This country better get ready to be niggered to death, because I won't spend my life as a Dred Scott. Not a person. Nothing. A lot of my people feel the same. Our chains are going to break — the real ones and the invisible ones, too. I swear before God, the chains will break or the land will burn."

"Maybe both will come to pass, Scipio," she said in a small voice.

He, too, was quiet now. "It could be so. I do hope not."

She shivered, knowing suddenly that he was right about liberty. The moment altered her, leaving a small, hard certainty; regret and a sentimental wishing for the old way; and much fear of consequences. She felt as if she had betrayed someone or something but could and would not change the fact. The argument marked a milepost on the road they had talked about. It was a road that allowed no turning back.

He picked up the reins, said "Haw" to the horses, and they went forward.

"So," said the man with the red beard and the bolstered pistols under his frock coat. "You believe you could help our special service bureau do the work I've summarized?"

"Very definitely, Colonel Baker."

"I do, too, Mr. Dayton. I do, too."

Bent felt faint. It was not merely because success had finally come after weeks of waiting. It was March now — Baker had postponed the interview three times, pleading emergencies. Bent was light-headed because he was starving. His own money had run out, forcing him to borrow a small amount from Dills. To conserve it, he ate only two meals a day.

Lafayette Baker had the build of a dock hand and the eyes of a ferret. Bent guessed him to be thirty-five. The past hour had consisted of a few questions followed by a rambling monologue about Baker's history: work he had done for the exiled Cameron, his high regard for Stanton's opinions and methods. He spent fifteen minutes on a period in the eighteen-fifties when he had been a San Francisco vigilante, proudly purifying the city of criminals with bullets and hang-ropes. On the desk between Baker and his visitor lay a splendid gold-chased cane, California manzanita wood with a lump of gold quartz set in the head. Nine smaller stones surrounded it, each from a different mine, Baker explained. The cane had been a gift from a grateful San Francisco merchant.

"The chief duty of this bureau, as I cannot stress too often, is the discovery and punishment of traitors. I carry out that task using the methods of the man whose career I have studied and emulated."

Taking the cane, he pointed at a framed portrait on the wall. Bent had noticed it earlier, the sole decoration in the otherwise monastic office. The man in the daguerreotype had a stiff, severe countenance and small eyeglasses perched on his nose.

"The greatest detective of them all: Vidocq, of the Paris police. Do you know of him?"

"Only by name."

"In his early days, he was a criminal. But he reformed and became the hated foe of the very class from which he sprang. You must read his memoirs, Dayton. They are not only exciting, they're instructive. Vidocq had a simple and effective philosophy, which I follow to the letter." Baker slid his palm back and forth over the head of the cane. "It's far better to seize and hold a hundred innocents than to let one guilty man escape."

"I agree with that, sir." Expediency had been replaced by an eagerness to work for Baker.

"I hope so, because only those who do can serve me effectively. We do vital work here in the capital, but we also perform special services elsewhere." Baker's small, unreadable eyes fixed on Bent.

''Before employing you in Washington, I would propose to test your mettle. Are you still with me?"

Frightened, Bent had no choice but to nod.

"Excellent. Sergeant Brandt will handle the details of placing you on our payroll, but I shall describe your first assignment now." He stared, intimidating. "You are going into Virginia, Mr. Dayton. Behind enemy lines."

72

For nearly a month, they lived in a single room, a room fourteen by fourteen, which Judith divided by hanging blankets around Marie-Louise's pallet, thus affording her a little privacy.

In the crowded city they had been lucky to get any room at all. A senior officer at Fort Fisher had found this, which had but one good feature — a pair of windows overlooking the river. Cooper sat in front of the windows for hours, a blanket over his legs, his shoulders hunched, his face reduced to gray hollowness by the pneumonia that had kept him near death for two weeks. Learning of Ashton's involvement with Water Witch had done something to him, but the demise of his son had done something worse.

On the night Judah drowned, the Mains paddled and floundered through the surf and finally reached shore. They collapsed on a moonlit dune two miles above the earthwork that guarded the river mouth at Confederate Point. There were no other survivors on the beach.

Cooper had vomited everything, all the salty water he had swallowed, then gone wandering up and down the shore calling Judah's name. Marie-Louise lay half conscious in her mother's arms, and Judith kept her tears contained till she could stand it no longer. Then she wailed, not caring whether the whole damn blockade squadron heard her.

When the worst of the grief had worked itself out, she ran after Cooper, took his hand, and led him south, where she presumed they would find Fort Fisher. He was docile and burbling like a madman. The long walk under the moon had a dreamy quality, as though they were on a strand in one of Mr. Poe's enchanted kingdoms. At last they staggered into the fort, and next morning a detail was sent out to search the dunes. Judah's body was not found.

And so they had come twenty-eight miles upriver to the city, where Cooper had fallen ill and Judith had feared for his life. Now he was recovered, at least physically, and he sat by the windows, watching the piers where armed soldiers were on guard to prevent deserters from stowing away on outbound ships.

He spoke only when necessary. Blue-black shadows ringed his eyes as he watched the March sun shimmer on the river. Watched the flatboats of the Market Street Ferry put out for the opposite shore. Watched the little sloops owned by local rice planters darting over the bright water.

Wilmington was a boom town, full of sharps, sailors, Confederate soldiers homeward bound on furlough. The streets, even their room, smelled of naval stores: the pine lumber, pitch, and turpentine busy merchants sold to representatives of the British Navy. Managing to secure a letter of credit from their Charleston bank, Judith purchased new clothing for the three of them from the M. Katz Emporium on Market. Cooper's suit hung in the wardrobe, still wrapped in paper.

Walking at the upper end of their street one day, Judith spied a splendid house with a great many prosperous young men in civilian dress coming and going. From an upstairs window she heard the singing of Negro minstrels. A peddler told her the place was the residence of most of the British masters and mates who ran the blockade. Flush with new money, they held all-night parties, wagered on cockfights in the garden, entertained women of ill repute, and scandalized the town. Judith was glad Cooper wasn't with her; the boisterous house would only make him angrier.

For he was angry. His silence told her. So did the queer glitter of his eyes. They shone like metal hemispheres as he sat staring into the March sunshine. They belonged to no man she knew.

At night, Judith often cried for a long time, thinking of Judah; he could not even be given a decent burial. The sorrow was increased by Cooper's remoteness. He no longer put his arm around her or touched her or said a single word when they lay side by side in the hard bed. Judith only cried more, ashamed of the tears but unable to stop them.

One day toward the end of March, Marie-Louise burst out, "Are we going to stay in this awful room the rest of our lives?" Judith wondered that herself. For the first week or so, she had refrained from pushing Cooper about leaving; he was still weak, and tired easily. Prompted by her daughter's question, she suggested to him that she telegraph Secretary Mallory and report their whereabouts. He answered her with a bleak nod and another of his peculiar, indifferent stares.

A few days later, she ran up the stairs of the rooming house with a sheet of flimsy yellow paper. Judith had left Marie-Louise in the parlor with a February number of the Southern Illustrated News she wanted to read the romantic serial and work the word puzzle.

Cooper sat, as usual, watching the piers and darting sloops. "Darling, splendid news," she said. Three steps carried her across the cramped room. There was a message from the secretary at the telegraph office."

Smiling, hoping to cheer and encourage him, she held out the yellow flimsy. He wouldn't take it. She laid it in his lap. "You must read it. Stephen sends condolences and pleads with you to travel to Richmond as soon as you can."

Cooper blinked twice. His gaunt face, so curiously alien lately, softened a little. "He has need of me?"

"Yes! Read the telegram."

Bending his head, he did.

She almost wished he hadn't when he looked up again. His smile had no humanity and somehow made his glaring eyes appear to sink deeper into their blue-black sockets. "I reckon it is time to go. I must have an accounting with Ashton."

"I know you've been brooding about that. But she isn't really responsible for —''

"She is," he interrupted. "Ballantyne said it explicitly — the owners wanted no delays. They wanted cargo delivered at all hazards. He gambled with Judah's life because of greed. His own and Ashton's. She is very much to blame."

A shiver shook Judith's slim frame. The gay, brightly barbed speech of the old Cooper was gone, replaced by pronouncements, bitterly made. She began to fear the consequences of his rage.

"Help me up," he said suddenly, flinging off the blanket.

"Are you strong enough?"

"Yes." The blanket fell. He wavered and took her arm, grasping so hard she winced.

"Cooper, you're hurting me."

He relaxed his grip without apology, and with a curious, stony indifference. "Where's my new suit? I want to go to the depot for train tickets."

"I can buy them."

"I will! I want to get to Richmond. We've stayed here too long."

"You were ill. You had to rest."

"I had to think, too. Clear my head. Find my purpose. I have. I intend to help the secretary prosecute this war to the full. Nothing else matters."

She shook her head. "I hear you, but I don't believe you. When the war started, you detested it"

"No longer. I share Mallory's view. We must win, not negotiate a peace. I'd like to win at the expense of a great many dead Yankees — and the more of them I can be responsible for, the better."

"Darling, don't talk that way."

"Stand aside so I can find my clothes."

"Cooper, listen to me. Don't let Judah's death rob you of the kindness and idealism that always —"

He slammed the wardrobe open, startling her to silence. Pivoting, his head thrust forward like some carrion bird's, he stared with those awful eyes.

"Why not?" he said. "Kindness couldn't save our son's life. Idealism couldn't prevent Ballantyne and my sister from murdering him."

"But you can't mourn him for the rest of your —"

"I wouldn't be mourning at all if you'd stayed in Nassau with the children as I begged you to do."

The shout drove her back from him. Pale, she said, "So that's it. You must have people to blame, and I'm one."

"Please excuse me while I get dressed." He turned his back on her.

Crying silently, Judith slipped out the door and waited with Marie-Louise till he came down twenty minutes later.

73

Ashton heard the sound, a cry of many voices, before its significance became clear.

She was just entering Franzblau's Epicurean, a fine shop on Main Street that only the wealthiest patronized, never being so indelicate as to ask the sources of its merchandise. Some had come in on the last successful voyage of Water Witch. There would be no more such voyages. The steamer had been trapped and sunk near the entrance to the Cape Fear River, Powell said. It didn't matter. The profits already realized were enormous.

Last night, while Huntoon once again worked late, a messenger had brought a note from Ashton's partner. Slyly worded to give an air of courtliness and propriety, it requested that she visit him in the morning so they might give a proper farewell to their late vessel and plan their strategy. Powell loved to tease her with such pretexts — as if she needed any. Already, thoughts of the meeting filled her cheeks with a pink that matched the fluffy dyed marabou trimming the cuffs and collar of her black velvet dress.

Although it was the second of April, a Thursday, the morning was cool. She had arrived at the Epicurean shortly after ten-thirty and now addressed the frail, gray-haired proprietor.

"Mumm's, if you have any, Mr. Franzblau. And a pot — no, two — of that wonderful goose-liver pâté."

As she counted out a hundred and twenty Confederate dollars, Franzblau wrapped the two crocks in butcher's paper, which everyone saved and used for writing letters these days. Again the noise intruded, Franzblau raised his head. So did the black man seated by the door to bar undesirables.

Franzblau put the bottle of champagne beside the wrapped foie gras in Ashton's wicker hamper. "What are those people shouting?"

She listened. " 'Bread.' Over and over — 'bread.' How peculiar."

The black man jumped up as Homer bolted through the door. "Mrs. Huntoon, we better get out of here," the elderly houseman said. "There's a crowd comin' round the corner. Mighty big and mighty mad."

Franzblau paled and whispered something in German, reaching under the counter for a six-barrel pepperbox revolver. "I have feared something like this. Will, draw the blind."

Down came the canvas on its roller, hiding Ashton's open carriage at the curb. Homer motioned with urgency. Ashton's heels clicked on the black-and-white ceramic diamonds of the floor. Halfway to the entrance, she heard a crash of glass. She had seen the sullen faces of Richmond's poor and hungry white women, but she had never expected them to take to the streets.

Homer took the hamper and went outside, pausing in the shop's recessed entrance. From that vantage point Ashton saw twenty women, then twice that many, storming down the center of Main Street. More followed. Inside, Franzblau said, "Lock the door, Will." It closed and clicked.

"I run for the carriage," Homer said. Some of the women had the same idea.

"Ill follow you," Ashton whispered, terror-stricken at the sight of hundreds of shabbily dressed women pushing, screaming, hurling rocks and bricks at plate glass, ripping shoes and clothing from the shop windows. "Bread," they chanted, "bread," while helping themselves to apparel and jewelry.

A produce cart trapped in the center of Main was lifted by a pack of women. Its cargo of crated hens tumbled out with a splintering of slats, a fountaintng of feathers, a ferocious flapping and squawking. The farmer cowered underneath the wreckage of the cart.

Jumping into the open carriage, Ashton was horrified to see the women drag the man out and swarm over him. They punched, clawed, and kicked. He yelled, but the cries were quickly submerged in the chanting.

More rioters rounded the corner of Ninth Street, some pouring up from Cary, some down from the direction of Capitol Square. They were not all impoverished householders; ratty boys had joined the mob, and some older toughs as well.

Homer fumbled with whip and reins. Half a dozen women rushed the carriage, hands extended, ugly mouths working.

"There's a rich one." ;

"Got food in that hamper, I bet."

"Hand it over, dearie —"

"Hurry, Homer," Ashton cried, just as a gray-haired woman in smelly rags jumped onto the carriage step. A dirty hand clasped Ashton's wrist and yanked.

"Get her out, get her out," the other women chanted, pressing around the rag woman. Ashton writhed, struggled. It did no good. Marginally aware of Homer flicking the whip at two boys holding the horses, she bent and bit the woman's filthy hand. The woman screamed and fell off the step.

"Bread, bread!" More windows shattered. Women charged the door of Franzblau's Epicurean, broke it, tore down the blind, and jumped through the opening edged with glass. A pistol went off; someone cried out.

Homer whipped one of the white boys, then the other. He got the team started, only to have two women seize the rear of the carriage and hang on. A third attempted to leap in and grab Ashton again. The street was in tumult. "Shoes, shoes!" "Police down there —" "Jeff's coming out to speak." "Let him. We'll cook him for dinner."

"Give me, little Miss Rich," panted the woman as she put her hands on the hamper. Ashton's mouth set. She flipped the hamper open, took the champagne bottle by the neck, and swung it, breaking it squarely across the side of the woman's head.

The woman howled and let go, falling back, covered with foaming champagne and bits of glass. Ashton jabbed the broken bottle at those nearest the carriage. They melted back. Damned dirty cowards, she thought.

Grimacing, she knelt on the seat, reached over, and struck at the hands of the women holding the carriage. She slashed left and right with the bottle neck, cutting veins in the backs of their hands. Blood pumped out. "Homer, goddamn you, get moving!"

Like a wild person, he whipped horses and rioters alike. He turned the carriage and charged another group of women, who scattered. Many were running, Ashton noticed as the carriage careened around a corner into Eleventh Street. She heard shrill whistles, gunshots. The metropolitan detail had arrived.

The unexpected violence wrecked Ashton's schedule for the morning. By the time the carriage reached Grace Street it was twenty past eleven, and another impatient hour went by before she felt she could leave by herself. The servants suspected she had a lover, or so she believed; whenever she went out alone, she was careful not to confirm the suspicion with haste or any kind of outrageous behavior. So she lingered at the house, feigning a case of nerves. Curiously, once she was out of danger, recalling the riot induced a state of arousal.

The war had that same kind of stimulating effect on Ashton. It sharpened every pleasure, from totting up the profits of Water Witch to clasping Powell with arms and legs as he drove into her — love was too soft a word for the nearly unbearable sensations he created. In what other time but wartime could she have brought her husband and her lover into the same business enterprise? It was macabre, but it was exhilarating.

Finally, having washed and refreshed herself, she drove to the Queen Anne house on Franklin Street. She arrived at half past twelve, carrying the hamper with the two pots of foie gras.

"I had a bottle of Mumm's, but I had to break it to escape the mob," she explained to Powell in the parlor. He was barefoot, wearing only breeches.

"When you didn't come on time, I decided not to answer the door if you did arrive," he said. "Then I heard a drayman shouting something about a riot downtown. So I forgave you."

"It was the maddest confusion. Hundreds of ugly, utterly filthy women —"

"I'd like to hear about it." He guided her hand. "But not now."

A clock was chiming two when Ashton came swimming up through sleepy satiation. The bedding had been tangled and torn loose. Powell dozed beside her. She brushed hair from her eyes and drowsily studied two surprising objects on a taboret near his right shoulder: a map of the United States and, resting on it, his favorite gun — a rimfire Sharps pocket pistol whose four blunt muzzles gave it a menacing look. The custom grips were carved with an intricate leaf pattern. She had seen him handling and cleaning it on several occasions.

In a few minutes he woke and asked about the riot. His hand idled between her legs while she described it. "They chanted for bread, but they were stealing anything in sight."

"They'll do more than steal if King Jeff continues to run amok. The situation in Richmond — the whole Confederacy — is disastrous. It can't be borne."

"But we have all the money we need to replace Water Witch and perhaps buy a second vessel. We needn't worry about the President."

"We do if we give a damn about Southern principles." He said it softly, yet with passion. Alarmed, she realized she had unintentionally angered him. "I do. Fortunately, there is a way to curb Davis and preserve them."

"What do you mean?"

In the silence, the bedroom clock went tock-tock. Iron wheel rims rumbled over cobbled Franklin Street. Powell's thin, strong mouth turned upward at the ends, though his eyes remained chill.

"How much do you love me, Ashton?"

She laughed nervously. "How much —?"

"It's a simple question. Answer it."

"My God — you know the answer. No man has ever made me feel the way you do."

"I can trust you, then?"

"Hasn't the partnership taught you that you can?"

"I believe I can," he countered, "but if I shared a confidence, then found I'd made a mistake —" he snatched the Sharps and pushed the muzzles into her breast "— I'd rectify it."

Ashton's mouth opened as she watched his finger whiten. Smiling, he pulled the trigger. The hammer fell — on an empty chamber.

"What — Lamar — what is —?" Confused, inwardly wild with fright, she could barely form the words. "What's behind all this?"

He put the pistol aside and laid the map on the tangled bedding. In the southwest corner of the map, he had inked a vertical line through the Territory of New Mexico and to the left of it had inscribed several small squares, none overlapping, with dotted lines.

"What you see right here, love. Our inept generals in Texas lost the Southwest. The Union has it all. Including this —" he tapped the section of the map containing the squares "— the new Territory of Arizona. The Yankee Congress created it with the Organic Act, passed in February. A few regulars from California and some New Mexico volunteers are expected to guard this entire area, which of course is impossible. It's too large, and, beyond that, the red savages keep the soldiers dashing hither and yon to protect isolated settlements. The new territory is perfect for a plan conceived by myself and some other gentlemen who realize King Jeff will ruin us if we allow it."

The maddening smile stayed as he rolled up the map and dropped it on the floor. Ashton jumped out of bed on the other side, her buttocks bouncing as she crossed to the window above the garden. She folded her arms over her bosom.

"You're being mysterious to torment me, Lamar. If you won't explain what you mean, I'll dress and go."

He laughed admiringly. "Nothing mysterious about it, love. Those squares on the map are possible sites for a new confederacy."

She whirled, a figure white as milk save for the blackness of her hair. "A new —?" She shook her head. "My God. You mean it, don't you?"

"Absolutely. The idea is certainly not new." She nodded. She had heard discussions of a third country to be formed in the Northwest, and of a Pacific Coast Confederacy. "What I have done is find the ideal location for a new state, small but impregnable. A law unto itself. A place where each can prosper according to his wishes and ability, and where the breeding and holding of slaves will be encouraged."

The idea was so awesome she couldn't quite get hold of it. She padded back to the bed and sat on the edge. "How long have you been hatching this scheme?"

"For over a year. It gained impetus after Sharpsburg, when European recognition became a lost cause."

"But Davis wouldn't have any part of such a plan, Lamar. He'd use every resource of the government to block it"

"My poor, witless Ashton," he said, stroking her cheek and working his thumb into the little valley beside her nose. "Of course he would. Why do you think I had to satisfy myself that you're trustworthy? When we establish our new state, the government here will be headless. Mr. Jefferson Davis will have gone to his reward — in hell, I hope. The first order of business is to send him on his way."

"You mean — assassinate?"

"The President and key members of the cabinet," he concluded. "Those who might rally forces to oppose us."

"How — how many others are involved?"

"You need know only that I'm in charge and that we mean to go forward. Now that you're aware of the plan" — his thumb pressed her cheek; his fingers closed on the back of her neck, turning it ever so slightly, bringing a touch of pain — "you are part of it."

After the first shock passed, questions began to flood her mind. She asked the most obvious first. How would this new state or country be financed? Small as it was, it would have to be defended. How would its army be paid?

Powell circled the bedroom, tense with excitement. "First, with my share of the earnings from Water Witch. But it will take much more than that to arm and equip the kind of force we'll need to defend the borders for the first couple of years. Until the Yankees realize they can't overwhelm us, and recognize our sovereignty."

"Where will you get men for an army of that kind?"

"My dear, there are thousands of them in the Confederacy at this moment — in military service and out of it. Disaffected officers and enlisted men. Some of our very best have deserted, disillusioned by all the bungling. We will rally them, adding Westerners who were born in the South or show sympathy for our cause. I have an estimate of at least seven thousand such in Colorado alone. Finally, if need be, we'll hire mercenaries from Europe. We'll have no trouble finding soldiers."

"But you still must pay them."

A cat's grin spread again. "We have the resources. Have I ever mentioned my brother, Atticus?"

"In passing. You've never said anything about him."

Powell sat beside her and began to rub her leg. She studied his profile, momentarily wondering about his sanity. He had never struck her as unbalanced, and he didn't now. He spoke passionately but with the lucidity of one who had spent a long time plotting his course. Her doubt passed.

Contempt crept in as Powell explained. "My brother had no loyalty to the South. He left Georgia in the spring of '56, traveling west to the gold fields. A great many Georgians did the same thing. There was quite a colony in Colorado, where Atticus found and staked a claim. He worked it until the summer of 1860, and in all that time he cleared just two thousand dollars — respectable, but nothing more. About the time South Carolina seceded, boredom and wanderlust set in again. Atticus sold the claim for another thousand and started for California with the stake. He got as far as the Carson River diggings at the western border of the Nevada Territory."

"I've heard of the Carson River mines. James once talked of buying shares in one. The Ophir, I think. That was before he found out about Water Witch."

"My brother's timing turned out to be propitious. The year before, some miners, including an obnoxious, half-mad Canadian called 'Old Pancake,' because he ate nothing else, discovered promising sites in two gulches on Mount Davidson. Comstock — that was Old Pancake's real name — Comstock and the others started placer mining in Gold and Six-Mile canyons. They made a decent profit from the beginning. Five dollars a day in gold. That increased to twenty by the time they made the major discovery — two, really. The lode was richer than they dreamed. Ore pockets scattered all through the mountain. Furthermore, mixed in with the gold was something else. Silver."

"Did your brother stake a claim?"

"Not exactly. Miners are a queer, complex breed — always dickering, selling, and trading claims. It amounts to gambling on how much ore remains in a given piece of ground. One of the original finders of metal, fellow named Penrod, owned a sixth interest in the Ophir, which he wanted to sell for fifty-five hundred dollars. My brother couldn't afford that, but Penrod was making a second offering — half interest in a mine called the Mexican for three thousand dollars. Atticus bought it."

Striding across the bedroom again, Powell explained that the mining camp, christened Virginia City by another of the original claimants, Old Virginny Finney, had undergone rapid and dramatic change during the first two years of the war. By agreement among the miners, it became possible for a man to stake a lode claim, which was much larger than the regulation fifty-by-four-hundred-foot placer claim.

"With a lode claim, you can dig down into the mountain for three hundred feet — and you have rights to all the ground on either side where there are offshoots of your lode. The Mexican started with an open pit, then sank shafts, and in spite of smelting and transportation costs — at first the ore had to be carried over the mountains to California — Atticus and his partner were soon clearing three thousand dollars in silver from every ton of ore and a third as much in gold. Last year saw a great influx of Californians, but of course the richest claims were already staked, so the newcomers called Virginia City a humbug. Atticus's partner succumbed to the talk. My brother bought him out at a favorable price. Last summer, when the town had grown to fifteen thousand, poor Atticus met an untimely end."

"Oh, what a pity."

"I can tell you're deeply touched," he said, smiling.

"How did your brother die?"

"Shot," Powell said with a shrug. "A man accosted him in the elevator of the International Hotel. Robbery was presumed to be the motive. The man was never caught or identified. By coincidence, just the week before, Atticus had written a document, which I keep locked up downstairs. It deeds my brother's interest in the Mexican mine to me, his only surviving relative. He wrote the deed and posted it to a contact in Washington. The contact got it to Richmond via one of the regular mail smugglers."

Atticus Powell's act of generosity had been described with a touch of amusement. Ashton suddenly realized the story was a recitation for the credulous. Powell saw the understanding dawn and confirmed it.

"Consider what it means that Atticus and I were the only remaining members of our family. There is no one to come forward and assert that the handwriting on the deed bears only a superficial resemblance to my brother's. I now have a fine foreman superintending work at the mine, and he doesn't care who owns it so long as he's paid well and on time. I'm happy to say the Mexican is producing at a record rate. There's plenty of gold and silver for paying a private army."

He went searching for a cigar, vanishing into another room. Ashton knew Powell had hired the man who shot his brother, just as he had hired some forger to prepare the deed. Rather than being repelled, she felt renewed admiration. He had the kind of ambition and nerve Huntoon would lack through eternity.

"So you see," Powell said when he came back with matches and an unlit cheroot, "what I propose is not so fantastic. Not with the Mexican to finance it. Therefore I must ask you a question."

"What is it?"

He made her wait with elaborate match-striking and puffing. "Would you like to be the First Lady of the new confederacy?"

"Yes. Yes!"

Powell touched her breast; the ball of his thumb circled slowly on the tip. "I thought so." He was unable to keep smugness and a certain faint scorn out of his smile.

In the early afternoon, Huntoon wandered the glass-strewn sidewalks of Main Street. He couldn't go back to his prison at Treasury. Not after what had happened that morning.

Like so many other government workers in the buildings around Capitol Square, he had rushed outside when he learned of the rioting. He watched the gaunt gray President climb onto a wagon and plead for respect for the law. Davis said every citizen must endure hardship for the sake of the cause. People booed him. As a last pathetic gesture, he turned out his own pockets and flung a few coins to the mob.

It made no difference. It required the mayor reading the riot act and the sight of bayonets wielded by the provost's guard to restore order. While the riot was still in progress, Huntoon turned the corner from Ninth to Main and saw a familiar carriage out­side a fashionable food and wine emporium. He stopped and huddled by the building, morbidly curious.

His wife was in the carriage. She had a hamper and struggled with several poorly dressed women before the carriage got away; swirling clots of rioters prevented him from seeing more.

But a little was enough. The hamper and the store she had been visiting heightened his certainty, growing for months, that she was involved with someone. Ashton never bought Franzblau's delicacies for their own table. He suspected her lover was Powell, the man who was enriching him, the man he both envied and feared. Huntoon turned and went back to his office but was unable to do any work. So here he was on the streets again.

A lady's shoe lay in his path. He kicked it into the gutter, the afternoon sunshine flashing from his spectacles. He moved like a sleepwalker, brushing aside two harlots who tried to solicit him. The litter of glass and ruined goods in looted windows seemed symbolic of his life and of the Confederacy.

Davis was destroying the dream of a truly free government on the American continent. The man was contemptible. Impotent.

He had no ability to inspire people and lacked the wisdom to stop his military meddling and give his best generals their head. His answer to runaway inflation, mounting shortages, universal discouragement was to proclaim special days of fasting and prayer — or throw a few coins to a mob. He deserved impeachment, if not something worse.

Like the nation, Huntoon's personal life was a shambles. In the sleepless hours of many an early morning, with Ashton snoring lightly in the separate bed she now insisted upon, he could no longer deny the truth of that.

Yet he could find no object of blame except Davis. He couldn't bring himself to leave his wife. She had made him wealthy, and, despite the way she treated him, he loved her. The dilemma made him physically and mentally impotent. Over the past months he had lost all appetite and a dozen pounds. In his confused state, the cancerous truth of Ashton's infidelity was mingling and becoming one with the cancer of despair for the government.

His frustration grew worse each day. His eyes hurt whenever he tried to work. He perspired or suffered cold chills for no apparent reason. The top of his head frequently felt as if an auger were being screwed into it. If only he had some way to relieve the bad feelings. Some target to strike —

"What am I to do?" he muttered, wandering amid the glass. "What in God's name am I to do? Murder her? Kill myself? Both?" Two Negro women overheard and stepped off the side­walk to avoid him.

74

The wind warmed. The earth softened, The season changed. At the brigade encampment in Susses County, which they had been roaming in search of replacement mounts, Ab looked down. He and Charles were walking their horses across a muddy meadow to the traveling forge. The boots of both men were covered halfway to the tops; the stuff clung to their spurs like some evil yellow plaster.

Ab sighed. "Will you look at that?" He stamped one foot, then the other. None of the mud fell off. "If anybody asks me have I been through Virginia, I can sure to God tell them yes, sir, any number of places."

Charles laughed and put a match to the cob pipe he had taken up now that cigars were scarce. He felt good this morning. Maybe it was the springtime or the fact that Sport had survived the ordeal of winter. He still gave the gray meticulous care, but there wasn't much he could do about shortages of fodder, bad weather, or the filthy conditions of the cavalry camps. Sport had suffered with body lice, then had been struck with a siege of founder that tormented him with two weeks of fever and sweats and nearly caused the loss of his left forefoot. But Charles had rested him — nursed him through — and the gelding was in fine shape again.

Charles felt good for another reason. It was folded and tucked in the pocket of his butternut shirt.

While the farrier finished with some trooper's nag, the two scouts cleaned the feet of their horses with picks and uprooted weeds. The farrier searched for more shoes and nails, then pumped up the firebox mounted on a platform between the limber's two big wooden wheels.

Ab said, "Git your pass all right?" Charles patted his pocket. "You have a care, roamin' up there in Spotsylvany County by your lonesome. You bump into any of that Union horse, go the other way. I have the same feelin' you do about them damn ribbon clerks. They're learnin' to ride and shoot."

The uneasy conviction had been spreading since Sharpsburg. In March, farther north, Fitz Lee had sent one taunting note too many to Brigadier Bill Averell, a New Yorker whom Charles remembered from the class of '55. Fitz dared Averell to bring his boys down across the Rappahannock and fetch along some coffee to be captured. Averell's division of horse struck south like a thrown spear. The raiders killed Stuart's famed artillery officer, gallant John Pelham.

It appeared a small event, speaking relatively, but it wasn't. The passing of any soldier with the legend of glory on him could scar a Southern mind as whole fields of the fallen could not. Pelham's death and Averell's lightning attack convinced Wade Hampton's troopers of one thing: their Yankee counterparts no longer suffered from a fear of being outmatched.

"Let me see that shoe." Charles snatched the tongs from the farrier. "Heat it and put it back in the vise. It isn't wide enough at the heel. His hoof spreads when he puts weight on it." "I know my job."

Charles stared right back. "I know my horse." "You plantation boys are all —"

Charles stepped forward, handing Sport's bridle to Ab. The farrier cleared his throat and began to pump the bellows. "All right, all right."

Later that day, Charles bid Ab good-bye and rode north. In Richmond he visited Orry and Madeline, who had found larger quarters — four rooms, the whole upper floor of a house in the Court End district. The owner's mother had lived there, and the quarters became vacant when she died. Orry paid the outrageous rent without complaint, happy to be out of the rooming house.

For Charles's visit, Madeline fried up a dozen fresh farm eggs, never saying how she had gotten them. They all declined to discuss Ashton and her husband, and talked till four in the morning. Charles told them about Gus, whom he hadn't mentioned before. Orry reacted predictably when he heard the location of Barclay's Farm. Lee was crouched at Fredericksburg with Jackson, but Hooker was just across the river with twice as many men. Orry said it was folly for Gus to remain in Spotsylvania County.

Charles agreed. They talked further. He slept badly, rolled up in a blanket on the floor, and left the city next morning.

North again through the Virginia springtime. Under blue skies, he rode by lemony forsythia and burning pink azaleas growing wild. Cherry blossoms shone like snowfields. The air smelled of moist earth and, here and there, of something else he recognized: rotting horseflesh. It was getting so you could tell where the armies had been just by seeing or smelling the dead horses.

Late that night, he crouched in a grove and watched a troop of southbound cavalry pass. Jackets and kepis looked black in the starlight. Black translated to blue. Union riders were behind Confederate lines again.

Only one aspect of the incident gave him comfort. The Yankees still rode with what he jeeringly called their fortifications — burdensome extra blankets, tools, utensils — as much as seventy pounds of unnecessary gear. The weight was hard on a horse. Charles hoped the Yankees never learned the lesson.

He reached Chancellorsville, a few buildings and a crossroads unworthy of being called a village. Turning right onto the Orange Turnpike, he continued toward Fredericksburg through the Wilderness, an all but impassable forest of second-growth oak and pine entangled with vines. Even in bright sunlight, the place looked sinister.

Where the Wilderness straggled out, he cut to the northeast. The fragile good cheer generated by the weather left him. He was back in the war zone for fair.

The countryside swarmed with Confederate engineer companies, trains of supply wagons, six-horse artillery batteries, slow-moving herds of scrawny cattle. An officer demanded his pass, then asked whether he had seen any Union cavalry between here and Richmond. Charles said he had. The officer told him it was probably Stoneman, reported to be striking at communication lines to the capital.

Gray-clad stragglers wandered through the freshly turned fields, going where and doing what, God only knew. So many soldiers abroad didn't bode well for a woman living alone, even if the soldiers wore the right uniform. It was proven again when he came within sight of Barclay's Farm. A white-topped commissary wagon stood in the road, and two rough-looking teamsters were eying the house as Charles approached. He put his hand on his shotgun, and they decided to drive on.

As he rode into the dooryard, Boz threw down his ax, leaped over some split logs, and ran toward him. "Hello, hello! Miss Augusta — Captain Charles is here."

Boz sounded more than happy. He sounded relieved.

"Something's troubling you," she said. "What is it?" They lay side by side in the dark. They had supped and talked, hugged and kissed, bathed and made love. Now, instead of feeling a pleasant drowsiness, he was struggling in the web of his own thoughts. "Where shall I start?" he asked.

"Wherever you want."

"It's going badly, Gus. The whole damn war. Vicksburg's threatened — Grant's in charge there. Orry knew him at the Academy and in Mexico. He says the man's like a terrier with a bone. Won't let go even if the pieces choke him to death. Orry wouldn't say it to anyone else, but he thinks Grant will have Vicksburg by the autumn. Then there's Davis. Still coddling second-rate generals like Bragg. And the cavalry can't find enough horses, let alone the grain to feed them."

"The farms around here are stripped bare. The war doesn't help anyone catch up, either. You plow an acre, ten minutes later a battery of artillery gallops across it, and you start over."

"The superstitious boys say our luck's turned bad. Sharpsburg might have been a victory instead of a stand-off if the Yankees hadn't found those cigars wrapped in a copy of Lee's order. Courage doesn't count for much against bad luck — or the numbers the other side can muster."

But Cooper had spoken of the numbers long ago, hadn't he? Warned of them. Charles shivered in the dark. She stroked his bare shoulder, soothing. "I'd say those are all eminently respectable worries."

"There's one more."

"What is it?"

He rolled onto his side, able to see her only as a pale shape.

"You."

"My darling, don't squander a single minute fretting about me.

I can take care of myself." There was pride in the statement, and reassurance. But he heard anger, too.

"Well, I do fret. Can't sleep half the time, thinking of you stuck here by yourself."

And that's why no man should let himself fall in love in wartime. The conviction lay like a rock inside him, unwanted, upsetting — and undeniable.

"That's foolish, Charles."

"Hell it is. Hooker's sure to attack Fredericksburg — maybe within a few days. The Army of the Potomac could overrun the whole county."

"Boz and Washington and I can —"

"Hold out against bluebellies who haven't seen a pretty woman for months? Come on."

"You're being quarrelsome."

"So are you. I have good reason. I can't stop worrying."

"You could stop coming here, then you wouldn't have to worry at all."

Cold and flat, the words fell between them. He flung himself out of bed, crossed his arms, furiously scratched his beard in vexation. She rose to her knees on the bed, touched his shoulder.

"Do you think I don't worry about you? Constantly? Sometimes I think I fell in love just when I shouldn't have — with a man I shouldn't have —"

"Then maybe I should stop coming here."

"Is that what you want?"

A silence. Then he broke, spun, pulled her naked body up in his arms, hugging her and stroking her hair. "God, no, Gus. I love you so much, sometimes it makes me want to cry for mercy."

Trembling, they held each other, he standing beside the bed, she kneeling. Finally, the searing problem had been exposed. Sometimes I think I fell in love just when I shouldn't have — with a man I shouldn't have. She faced the constant threat of loss. He bore a constant concern, one that weighed him down like all the gear carried by the Yankee cavalry. Lord God, Charlie — Ab's voice — you forgotten why we're all here?

Sometimes he almost did. A lot of men did. For some the burden became too heavy; they put distant wives and sweethearts ahead of duty and deserted. He would never join that company, yet he did recognize that the cancer of worry was in him, too. He knew it while he clasped her body and kissed her clean, soft hair. "Go to Richmond," he pleaded.

She broke the embrace. "Charles, this is my home. I'll not run away."

"It's no admission of cowardice to go for a week or two. Until Hooker moves, and something's decided."

"What if the Yankees came when I wasn't here? What if they looted this place or burned it? It's all I have."

"They can loot it and burn it with you standing in the kitchen."

"Richmond's too crowded. There is no place —"

"My cousin and his wife will take you in. Boz and Washington, too. I stopped to see Orry and Madeline on the way up from Sussex County. They don't have much room, but they'll share what they have."

She sank back on her haunches, bringing her forearms across her breasts as if she were cold. "It would be a great deal of trouble to pack and —"

"Gus, stop. You're a proud woman. Strong. I love that about you. But goddamn it —"

"I wish you wouldn't curse all the time."

The soft words conveyed her anger as nothing had before. He took a breath and grasped the post at the foot of the bed to steady himself. '

"I'm sorry. But the point stands. Pride and strength and two nigras aren't enough to protect you against Joe Hooker's army. You need to go to Richmond, if not for your own sake, then for mine."

"For your sake —?"

"That's right."

"I see."

"You take that tone, I'll sleep in the other room."

"I think you'd better."

Out he went, wrapped in a blanket, slamming the door.

Just at daylight, he stole back in, whispered her name, started when she sat up, wide awake. From the raw look of her cheeks, he knew she had gotten little sleep.

He held out his hand. "I'm sorry."

They embraced, dismissed the quarrel, and over breakfast she said yes, all right, she'd close up the place and travel to Richmond before the week was out if he could get her a pass. He promised he would. He wrote directions to Orry and Madeline's and went over them with her. Things were all right again. Superficially. For a man and woman to fall in love in times like these was folly, and each had acknowledged it.

Later that morning, he prepared to leave. "I'll stop in Richmond and tell them you'll be coming."

They were standing in the dooryard. She put her arms around him, kissed him, and said, "I love you, Charles Main. You must not worry about me."

"Oh, no, never. And Old Abe will raise the Stars and Bars in Atlanta tomorrow."

He mounted, waved, and cantered to the road. After he had gone a half mile he reined in to look back, but a rattling column of caissons raised dust and forced him to the shoulder. He could see only sweating horses and grinding wheels. At last the column passed. The dooryard was empty.

When he returned to the brigade in Sussex County, he lied to Ab, saying the visit had been a fine one.

75

"Miss Jane, I have got to confess —"

He had walked her to the stoop of her cabin in the dusk, tightening up his nerve along the way. She smiled to encourage him.

"I love you. I pray for the day I'm a free man and can ask for your hand."

He had flirted with the declaration before but never said it outright. The words made her warm and happy. She looked at Andy against a background of cabins and overhanging trees and mist rolling in from the river to fill the spaces between. The hidden sun lit the mist to a dusty rose color. Softly, she said, "The day will come. When it does, I'll be proud to say yes."

He clapped his hands. "Great God! I'd kiss you if there weren't so many people watching."

Laughing, too, she said, "I don't see anyone." She pecked his cheek and ran inside. She leaned against the door, clasping her hands against the cleft of her breast. "Oh, my. Oh, my."

Then the smell assaulted her. The smell of a dirty body and spirits. It wrenched her mind, gripped her attention. He was lounging against the whitewashed wall, his eyes bleary. Where had he gotten whiskey? Stolen it from the house?

"How dare you sneak in here, Cuffey. Get out."

He didn't move. Giving her a sly smile, he reached down and fingered himself. "I heard what that nigger said. He loves you." The dark brown hand loosened one button after another until he could show her what was underneath. "He can't do it near as good as me."

"You drunken, foul-minded —"

Cuffey let go of himself and ran at her. Jane cried out and groped for the door latch. He caught her shoulder, yanking her so hard she stumbled. Then someone struck the other side of the door, driving her over to the other wall. She hit with a jolt, dazed, not seeing the door crash back or Andy peering in. Anxious blacks crowded the little porch.

Cuffey said, "Shut that door, nigger. Go do what you do bes' — kiss ol' Meek's backside."

Andy quickly took it in: Jane slumped by the wall, bracing herself with her hands, Cuffey stuffing his dangling organ back into his pants. Andy tilted his head downward slightly and walked into the cabin.

Cuffey picked up an old stool and swept it in an arc, striking Andy's head. One leg of the stool broke; somehow the splintered end drew blood from Andy's temple. The blood streamed into his eye as he jumped at Cuffey and aimed a powerful but mistimed punch. Cuffey easily avoided it, then jabbed at Andy's eye with the splintered leg.

"Let him be. Wait for help," Jane pleaded. If Andy heard, he paid no attention. He walked forward like a soldier in a skirmish line, upright, scared, but never wavering. He laced his hands together to create a double fist. Cuffey kicked him between the legs.

Andy doubled over, letting out a clenched, hurt sound. But he stayed on his feet. He lifted his joined hands and struck Cuffey where his neck met his left shoulder, a sideways blow that shot Cuffey against the wall and made him grunt explosively.

"You been begging somebody to do this," Andy said, looming over the other man, pounding downward with his joined hands. He slammed the top of Cuffey's head. This time Cuffey yelled. Andy began to hammer him like a nail, pushing him down to a crouch, then to his knees, working in sideways blows to the face for good measure. Cuffey's ear bled.

"Watch out, Andy, Mist' Meek comin'," someone called from the street. Jane stood, saw the blacks on the porch disappear and the overseer stride into view, pulling a pistol from his wide belt.

"Who's fighting in here?"

"Cuffey and Andy," a woman answered, just as Andy raised Cuffey by the front of his soiled shirt. Blood leaked from Cuffey's nose as well as his ear. He blew the blood and mucus into Andy's face.

"I kill you, nigger. You an' everybody on this place."

"Let him go, Andy," Meek ordered from the doorway. Andy turned toward the overseer. The blood from his temple blurred his vision a little. Cuffey saw his chance and gave his adversary a shove.

Andy staggered, thrown back against the overseer. Cuffey tore down the flour-sack curtains Jane had tacked over the back window. He flipped one leg over the sill. "Give me room to shoot," Meek shouted, pushing Andy.

Cuffey grabbed Jane and swung her into the line of fire. Meek jerked the pistol upward, and Cuffey dropped down outside the window. He bolted away into rose mist that was deepening to gray.

"Stop, nigger," Meek commanded, discharging one round. Cuffey disappeared behind a live oak. The mist stirred and settled.

Meek swore an uncharacteristic oath. "Andy, what happened?"

"I was outside and — I heard Jane cry out." The words were labored; he was still breathing hard.

"I came inside and found him hiding here," Jane said. "He said dirty things to me, then unbuttoned his trousers."

The listeners outside, especially the women, expostulated and groaned. Still angry at losing the culprit, Meek snorted, "If we gelded all you bucks, things'd be a sight more peaceful."

Andy glared: "Listen here —"

The overseer was too mad to pay much attention. And just then a voice rolled out of the deep rose mist behind the cabin.

"I'll kill ever one of you on this place, you hear me?"

"Get some men," Meek said to Andy. "Eight or ten at least. It's a bad night to chase runaways, but we're going to catch that one. Then I'm going to sell him off."

The pursuit ended three hours later, when the mist had become fog. By the light of a fatwood torch he was carrying, Andy reported the failure to Jane. "I 'spect he's gone for good. Toward Beaufort, most likely."

"Good riddance," she said. The dank night and the memory of Cuffey's wild face made her uneasy. She knew what kind of life Cuffey had led. His hatreds — Mont Royal, its owners, the more docile slaves — were understandable. Yet she nurtured the same hostilities and so did Andy, and neither had been ruined by them.

"Maybe I ought to keep watch here on the porch till morning," he suggested.

"He won't come back."

"You heard what he yelled after he jumped out the window."

"Cuffey's been a braggart ever since I've known him. We'll never see him again."

"Surely hope you're right. Well — good night, then."

"Good night, Andy." She touched his face below the strip of linen tied around his head to protect the clotted cut. "You're a brave man. I meant what I said about being proud to marry you."

His eyes shone in the flaring light. "Thank you."

He walked down the creaking steps into the fog. As soon as her door closed he extinguished his torch, faced about, and quietly lowered himself to the edge of the porch, where he intended to stay until daylight.

Although Jane was awake for some time, she didn't know he was out there. She heard instead the noises of the spring night beyond the window from which Cuffey had torn the curtain. She heard the doglike barks of the frogs, the three-note chant of the chuck-will’s-widow, the drone of insects. And, in imagination, she heard a voice promising vengeance. She lay with her hand clenched against her cheek, wishing she didn't hear the voice but unable to silence it.

76

In the early morning of April 28, Billy wrote by the light of a candle pushed into the mounting ring of a borrowed bayonet.

Late the next day, Billy and a detachment of twelve volunteer engineers found a farmhouse with a sturdy barn and a smaller outbuilding from which the breeze brought the powerful odor of chicken droppings.

"What d'you think, sir?" asked the senior noncom with the group, a youth from Syracuse named Spinnington. He had been appointed corporal because he seemed less lazy and stupid than the other replacements; no positive traits recommended him.

From the roadside Billy studied the neatly kept buildings surrounded by a small orchard of peach trees. The detachment had fallen out around a wagon commandeered from another farm. Other detachments, with wagons similarly obtained, were roaming the countryside just above the Rapidan. Screened by Stoneman's horse, the army had marched with great secrecy and encountered no difficulties until reaching the chosen ford. The rain-swollen river could still be crossed, but its near bank was a bog where it should be solid.

"Sir?" Spinnington prodded. Billy continued to stare at the farmhouse, wishing he could give the order to move on. He felt tired enough to drop. He knew that had little to do with the forced march from Fredericksburg and everything to do with the task at hand.

Billy's beard had grown out during the winter; it was carelessly trimmed, and matted in places. Despite a natural stockiness, he had a curiously shrunken appearance. Seen with his brother George, he might have been picked as the older — or so he thought on those increasingly rare occasions when he saw himself in the scrap of polished tin he used as a mirror. The reflected face had a saggy look, as if it were made of melting candle tallow.

Spinnington fidgeted. Billy said, "All right."

There were whoops as the new replacements charged the house, the low-lying sun gilding an ax blade, the face of a boy with a crowbar. Their elongated shadows climbed up the side of the house.

The front door opened; a man came out. A tiny man with a white tuft of beard but huge strong hands.

Billy approached the porch. Before he could speak, a woman appeared behind the man. She weighed three times what he did and stood a head taller.

"Mr. Tate," she said, "get back inside. General Hooker's men who came by said we'd be shot if we stepped one foot in the open."

"It's a bluff," the old farmer said. "They're afraid we'll slip over the Rapidan and warn Bob Lee. I wouldn't do that. I have to protect this place. That's why I must talk to these boys."

"Mr. Tate —"

"What do you boys want?" the old fanner called over his wife's continuing objection.

Billy pulled off his kepi. "Sir, I regret to inform you that we've been sent to forage for lumber and siding. We need them because the Germanna ford is a mire and must be planked so General Hooker's forces can cross the river. I'll be obliged if you and your wife will go back inside and permit us to do our work."

"What work?" the old man cried, his white tuft twitching in the twilight breeze. "What work?"

He knew. Ashamed to look him in the eye, Billy bobbed his head at Spinnington. "Get them to work, Corporal. Take the barn first, and maybe we'll get enough to fill the wagon. Maybe we can leave the chicken house alone."

"It's taken me all my life to build this place," the old man said, clutching the porch post, angry tears squeezing from the corners of his eyes. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"I'm sorry, sir. Truly sorry."

A nail squealed, a raw, screaming sound. Two volunteers pried off the first piece of siding. Another ran it to the wagon.

The old farmer lurched off the porch. Billy drew his side arm. The farmer hesitated, sat down on the steps, and gave Billy a look he would never forget. Then the farmer stared at his shoes as the engineer volunteers tore the barn apart. They brought out cross­cut saws for the pillars and beams. They had it all down by dark, leaving the unpenned milk cows and plow horses wandering around the chicken house. Billy sat on the seat of the wagon as it rolled away and didn't permit himself to look back.

An entry in his journal, made sometime between sunset that evening and dawn on April 30, read:

I hate what I am becoming because of this war.

"It's the Dutchmen," Spinnington snarled. "The fucking Dutchmen caved in."

"Shut up," Billy said, naked to the waist, swinging the ax two-handed and bracing for the shock when it bit into the five-inch trunk of the elm.

It was just daylight. An hour ago, while the Wilderness burned, set afire by shells, Billy's detachment had been rushed from Slocum's Twelfth Corps to the relatively clear ground at the Chancellorsville crossing. To judge from the heavy presence of headquarters guards and all the couriers riding up and galloping away again, General Hooker was holed up inside the white manor house. No one professed to know what he was doing, but one thing appeared certain: Fighting Joe's great scheme had come to nothing.

Hooker had gained his planned position in the Wilderness, been poised to smash Lee from the rear — and had thrown away the advantage. Why? Billy thought, timing the ax blows to reinforce the raging repetition of the question. Why?

Yesterday Fighting Joe had started his men forward to a more advantageous offensive position — higher and more open ground beyond the edge of the Wilderness. When his men encountered enemy fire, he called off the advance. Corps commanders had not concealed their fury. Billy had heard what General Meade said; it had spread everywhere, like the fire in the woods: "If he can't hold the top of a hill, how can he expect to hold the bottom?"

But now they were preparing for precisely that. Swing; why? Swing back; why?

"Stand back," Billy yelled, pushing men as the elm swayed and tilted. The men scattered, the tree crashed, the volunteers leaped forward, stirring the raw, smarting smoke that came partly from the unseen cannon, partly from the fiery forest.

Yesterday, while Hooker shilly-shallied and lost his chance at a superior position, Bob Lee and Old Jack had been busy outfoxing him. Jackson had led his men on one of their famous lightning marches, this one a damnably risky flanking movement. But he had pulled it off without discovery and by nightfall stood ready to savage the Union right. Howard's Dutchmen were at ease there, enjoying their supper. Old Jack's whooping, screaming farm boys took them totally by surprise.

That was the start of the end of Hooker's great plan. Now the rebs were on the offensive throughout the second-growth forest. God knew where they would appear next — which was the reason Union soldiers were frantically preparing rifle pits to defend the open ground at the crossroads, while axmen, including Billy and his detachment, felled trees in front of the lines.

They slashed off branches, bound others together with ropes and vines, sharpened still others and fixed them to point toward the smoke where the rebs might be lurking. The abatis was a defensive fortification, not one employed by troops who meant to march ahead and win. Perhaps Fighting Joe had lost the advantage at the same mysterious spot where he had misplaced his nerve. Even rumors that a stray reb ball had wounded or killed Old Jack last night didn't lift the army's gloom, any more than daylight had lifted the choking smoke.

Chop and chop. Spinnington worked on Billy's left, Lije just beyond. On his right, bent over so as to minimize exposure in case of a sniper attack, was a volunteer whose name he didn't know. The man's posture didn't permit much work. Billy had an impulse to split the coward's head with his ax, but he supposed Lije would object.

White beard gleaming with sweat drops, Lije lifted his heavy ax with his right hand, as if it weighed no more than a straw. He pointed the ax at a tree larger than most, an oak about a foot in diameter.

"That one next, lads. She will fall to the right if we cut her properly. We may then turn her ninety degrees and fix points on some of those topmost branches to torment the enemy." Billy managed an exhausted laugh. What a rock Lije was. Every remark to his men was round and complete as a sermon sentence.

Lije also spoke loudly, which was necessary because of the continual noise: drumming and bugling, men shouting, small arms crackling, strays from the beef herd mooing as they ran down the narrow turnpike or got snared in the forest vines and bled from thorn pricks. Catching a nap at three in the morning, Billy had had his stomach stepped on by a wandering cow.

Now, renewed artillery fire increased the din. The firing came from south of Chancellorsville. Inexplicably, Sickles had been withdrawn from another piece of high ground, a place called Hazel Grove. Had the rebs moved fieldpieces into that favorable position?

Billy and Lije attacked the oak from opposite sides. Lije met his eye, smiled in a weary, fatherly way. Chop and chop. Billy wished he had the older man's faith. If God stood with the Union, why did Old Jack surprise and whip them every time?

They had notched a white vee into the trunk when, above the noise of men, horses, wheels, guns, Billy picked up a more ominous one: the scream of a shell. "Put your heads down," he shouted to those nearby. "That one's coming in mighty —"

The earth blew up around him, hurling him off his feet in a cloud of dirt and grass. He landed on his back, dazed. He breathed the heavy smoke, then coughed. Something lay on his bare chest: a large yellow-white wedge of heartwood blown from the trunk of the oak.

Blinking, he focused on the tree as it started to topple, stirring the smoke. Men as dazed as he struggled to their feet. Lije stood well beyond the tree, and he, too, saw it coming down, directly on Spinnington. Knuckling his eyes, the corporal failed to hear the creak; the bombardment was too loud.

''Spinnington, get out of there," Billy yelled. Spinnington turned, dull-faced, still not comprehending. The rest happened very fast. Lije bowled forward and hit the corporal with his shoulder, intending to push him to safety and fall on top of him. Lije's left boot tangled in a vine. He slammed on his chest, raised his head, clutched handfuls of weedy earth, and said, "Oh," an instant before the oak fell on the small of his back.

"Oh, Lord," Spinnington whispered, standing unhurt a yard beyond Lije's open mouth, closed eyes, fists clenching grass. Billy ran forward, shouting Lije's name. Men hit the ground again; another shell struck twenty yards away. The concussion threw Billy on his rump and hurled bits of earth and stone into his face. Something grazed his left eyeball. Something else cut his cheek.

Up again, he staggered to the fallen oak. Slowly, Lije's eyes opened. Another shell hit to the left and well behind them. Pieces of a man rose up and fell back to the unfinished rifle pits. Cries and moans added to the other noise. Billy knew the pain Lije must be feeling, but only a slight moisture in the older man's eyes betrayed it.

"I'll get you out, Lije." He leaped for the tree, slipped his hands under, pulled. Pain shot through his back. The oak trunk didn't move.

He twisted around. "You men help me!"

"Fruitless," Lije murmured. He closed his eyes, licked his lips, repeated the word, then said, "Withdraw, Lieutenant. The enemy fire is growing too heavy. Withdraw — that is my direct — order."

Though badly frightened, several of the volunteers ran up and attempted to lift the oak. The trunk rose about two inches. Then the hands of one man slipped, and the oak fell again. Billy heard Lije's teeth clench and scrape.

"Withdraw," he whispered.

"No," Billy said, his control breaking down.

"William Hazard, I order —"

"No, no." He was crying. "I can't leave you to die."

" 'What man is he that liveth — and shall not see death?'"

"Don't spout Scripture at me," Billy yelled. "I won't see you left here."

"I will not be." Though Lije's voice was faint, he articulated each syllable. "I trust the Master's promise. 'He that heareth — my word'"— in the shell-struck rifle pit, men shrieked like children, without cease — "'— and believeth in Him that sent me — shall not come into condemnation but — is passed from death unto life.' I was — meant to fall here. You are — meant to live and — take these men —"

Another shell hit in the forest, shredding vines, blasting earth into the smoke, blurring Lije's faint voice with its roar.

"— to safety. I order you."

"Jesus," Billy wept. "Jesus Christ."

"Do not — blaspheme. I order you. Live and — fight on. I — loved you like a son. This was — ordained."

It was not, Billy cried in secret places. It isn't God's will but chance and your stupid Christian sacrifice —

"Come on, sir." Hands tugged. "He's dead, sir."

Billy looked down from the smoke to which his gaze had drifted. Lije's eyes were closed, his face smooth. A silver line of saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth nearest the ground. A grasshopper hopped onto his beard and sat there, as if curious about the dead giant.

"Come on, sir," Spinnington repeated. With surprising gentleness, he and another beardless volunteer took hold of Billy's arms. He was dazed, muttering to himself. "We'll come back for his body, don't you worry," said a faraway voice he didn't recognize. He ground a dirty fist into his wet eyes and let them lead him.

Near the headquarters encampment, a surgeon offered a bottle of whiskey. Two swallows jolted Billy awake, made him able to function again. He knew something he hadn't known earlier. God did not rule a war such as this — if indeed He ruled anywhere.

It was dismal to face that truth. Against it, Lije had worn the armor of his faith. It was good armor; it had protected him. Billy felt himself flawed — mean and weak — because he could not don the same armor. But he couldn't. Not after his sojourn in the Wilderness, where the treetops burned through the night, pyres for the dead and dying. Where Billy had watched Lije die. Where Fighting Joe had turned advantage to stalemate, stalemate to defeat.

The retreat to the river began in midmorning, soldiers, cannon, ambulances all pulling out in a mad melee as the reb infantry advanced while the reb artillery kept pounding. Billy, Spinnington, and two others stole forward into the shell-blasted area to retrieve Lije's body. But the guns at Hazel Grove had poured in so much heavy fire and so many trees had ignited and the flames had spread so fast that Lije's body resembled nothing human. None of them, not even Billy, could stand to touch it or look at it for more than a few seconds. They left the charred thing and withdrew.

A realization struck Billy in the midst of the retreat. Well, at least he went to his rest on Sunday.

77

Throughout Monday night, the military telegraph remained quiet for long periods. Tired men came and went at the War Department, some keeping vigil for an hour, others intending to stay until some news arrived. Stanley was among the latter, part of a small group whose status permitted waiting in Stanton's office. The President was there for a while, stretched on his favorite couch but turning restlessly every few minutes.

"Where is Hooker now? Where is General Stoneman? Why in thunder don't they send word?"

Stanley held his temples and worked two fingers down to rub his itching eyes. He was sick of the Chief Executive's impatient rhetorical questions. So was Stanton, evidently; his voice rasped as he replied, "They will break silence at the opportune moment, Mr. President. I imagine the generals are busy consolidating our victory."

It was Tuesday, nearly sunrise. For the past twelve hours, as they received only the sketchiest reports and casualty figures on the wire, an unsupported consensus had spread like a bad cold. Hooker had won a victory, though at a high price.

Not everyone had caught the cold. Welles, the bearded curmudgeon who held the Navy portfolio and had once been a newspaperman in Connecticut, had not. "Perhaps they're silent because there is nothing but bad news. If we'd had success, the reports would be coming in volumes, not paragraphs."

The secretary gave him a long look. Lincoln, too, though his, sorrowing, contrasted sharply with the spleen of Stanton's. "I am beginning to believe you're right, Gideon." Lincoln rose, wrinkled and unkempt, and put his plaid shawl around his shoulders. "Send a messenger the instant we have definitive news." The military guards in the antechamber snapped to attention as he shuffled through the door.

Falling asleep even though he had deliberately chosen a hard chair, Stanley hung on till half past eight, by which time the department's daily routine was well started. With permission from the secretary, Stanley entered Stanton's private dressing closet, splashed his face with tepid water from a basin, then some of Stanton's cologne. He stumbled out into the spring morning in search of breakfast.

He hoped to God that Hooker had won a victory. The party needed not one but several. The presidential election was little more than a year away, and if Lincoln went down, he would carry many others with him. Stanley cringed at the possibility. He had acquired a taste for his job and the power it carried. If Isabel had to retire to Lehigh Station for the rest of her life, she would blame him and make his life even more miserable than usual. A pity he didn't have an antidote for Isabel — some younger and less shrewish female who would understand and sympathize with his problems.

Even at this early hour, hawkers were out. One cried the virtues of bars of soap piled on his curbside stand. Another shoved a cheap telescope in George Hazard's face. Military wagons, private carriages, hacks, and horseback riders crowded the avenue, along with pedestrians and the mule-drawn cars of the street railway. Bell clanging, one car blocked George's passage across Pennsylvania. Short-tempered — last night he and William had argued over the boy's poor marks, and George had slept badly — he scowled at the passengers. Most were men, but a few —

A face, glimpsed and then gone, stunned him. A teamster swore at him. Wheel hubs brushed the skirts of his uniform coat. Then two horsemen blocked his view, and when they passed, it was too late for him to do anything unless he wanted to stage a one-man foot race to pursue the car. He shook himself and weaved on across the street like a drunken man.

When Stanley entered Willard's dining room, he saw his brother breakfasting alone at a table half in sunshine, half in shadow. Stanley's first impulse was to leave. He hadn't seen George since Wade's defeat in the Senate, and undoubtedly George would crow about that. Had the situation been reversed, he would have.

But the long vigil had left Stanley in a state not typical for him: he craved the companionship of someone from outside the War Department building. So he ignored the waiter motioning him to another table and proceeded to the one where George sat staring at his fried potatoes with a look Stanley thought odd indeed. George didn't raise his head till his brother cleared his throat.

"Hello, Stanley. Where did you come from?"

"The telegraph room. I've been there all night awaiting news from Virginia."

"Is there any?"

''Very little. May I join you?"

George waved at a chair. Stanley put his tall hat on another, then sat, tugging his waistcoat down over the steadily growing bulge of his paunch. "Is something wrong, George? Trouble with Constance or the children?"

Bastard, George thought. It was Stanley's style to ask such questions with a hopeful tone. "Yes, there is. Ten minutes ago I saw a ghost."

"I beg your —"

"Sir?" said the waiter, who had been hovering to take Stanley's order.

"Come back later," Stanley snapped. ''Tell me what you mean, George."

"I saw Virgilia. Riding one of the avenue cars."

Astonished, Stanley didn't speak immediately. "I presumed Virgilia had gone far away from this part of the country. I've not heard from her or about her for two or three years."

"I'm certain it was sire — well, virtually certain. You know she never cared for clothes, and this woman was smartly dressed. Her hair was stylish. Even with those differences —"

"Obviously you aren't certain at all," Stanley broke in. "But suppose it was Virgilia. Why are you concerned? What difference would it make? None to me or Isabel, I assure you. I have nothing in common with my sister except a last name and a loathing for the South."

"Don't you ever wonder if she's all right?'

"Never. She's a thief and a slut — and those are the kindest descriptions I can apply. I don't care to discuss Virgilia or any other unpleasant topic. I have been up all night, and I want to eat a peaceful breakfast. I can do so at another table if you wish."

"Calm down, Stanley. Order something and I'll keep quiet."

But he didn't. He picked at his potatoes, took a bite of cold beef-steak bathed in greasy gravy, and said, "I do wonder somelimes. Where Virgilia is. I mean."

"That's your prerogative," Stanley said, taking the same tone he would have used with a man thinking of stepping in front of a fifteen-inch columbiad about to be fired. Conversation lagged after that. Stanley ordered and ate a huge breakfast, topped off with the last of seven muffins lathered in plum preserves. George, meantime, saw distorted, sharply angled images of the woman's face sliding away in the street-railway car. In a strange way, the brothers were glad of each other's company.

As they left the dining room, Stanley paused to say hello to a pale, stooped individual just entering with some other men. George recognized Representative Stout, one of the Wade-Stevens gang. He and Stanley whispered like old cronies. George continued to believe that his brother had entrenched himself with the radicals out of expediency rather than conviction.

Stout rejoined his friends, and the brothers went outside. "Going to work now?" Stanley asked. George said no, he planned to walk down three blocks to see whether the Evening Star had posted any recent bulletins.

"I've taken to relying on the correspondents for accurate news. You boys in Stanton's office seem to publish what's favorable and quash the rest."

The insult galled Stanley, but he could think of no retort; unfortunately, his brother was right. He fell in step and accompanied him to the Star offices, a corner building on the wrong side of the avenue at Eleventh Street. They found a crowd of almost a hundred people reading the long handwritten strips hanging outside.

Latest from the Seat of War

General Lee Surprised

General Stoneman Playing

the Mischief with His Cavalry

in the Rear of the Rebels

-----

Enemy Menaces Fredericksburg;

Our Virginia Correspondents Report

Terrible Fighting Saturday & Sunday

at Chancellorsville

Scowling, George said, "Old hash. I read it all yesterday, must be going —"

"Wait a moment," Stanley said. "They're bringing out a new one."

The crowd shifted and whispered in anticipation as a man in shirt sleeves appeared with a long sheet trailing from his hand. He moved a ladder, climbed up to the line strung across the building, and attached the hand-printed bulletin.

Thrilling News from the Army!

Hooker All Right!!!

-----

Prodigies of Valor Performed

by Our Men —Thousands of

Enemy Prisoners Taken

-----

General Stonewall Jackson

Said to Be Severely Wounded

Almost instantly, there was reaction. "We won! Fighting Joe's done it!" "Bring those prisoners back, and we'll hang 'em." "Lookit that — Jackson got what he deserves." Stanley tapped fingertips against his waistcoat. "If those reports are true —"

George didn't hear. For the second time that morning, he felt as though he had been hit. Blurry pictures swam in his head. He saw the strange, shy Presbyterian boy from the hills of western Virginia who had become his friend. Even in his youth, and despite his peculiarities, Jackson had seemed to carry a promise of greatness that was indefinable but very real.

George remembered after-hours hashes and Jackson fastidiously avoiding most of the food because he feared to disrupt his digestion. He remembered calling him Tom and sitting with him, and with Orry and Sam Grant, after the capture of Mexico City. He remembered Jackson ordering a glass of wine and tasting it once, while the rest of them swilled beer.

The bulletin rattled in the breeze. It only said reported, and experience reminded George that many such bulletins proved wrong in whole or in part. He had a bad feeling about this one, though.

He realized Stanley had spoken. "What did you say?"

"I remarked that if the rumor about Jackson is true, it will be a blessing for the Union. An even greater one if the wound proves mortal."

"Shut up, Stanley. Save your stupid remarks for that vengeful crowd you're so chummy with."

"I'll say anything about a traitor that I damn well —"

"No, you won't. He was my friend."

Stanley opened his mouth, but just as quickly closed it. Head lowered slightly, George continued to fix him with a baleful stare for another few seconds. Then, stiff-backed, he turned and walked around the corner and out of sight.

Some in the crowd had overheard the exchange. One man thrust his chin toward Stanley. "What did that officer say? That Stonewall was his friend?"

"Anybody who'd admit that oughta be lynched," a fat woman said.

"I share that sentiment," Stanley declared. He regretted his impulse to breakfast with George and again thought of calling him to the attention of Colonel Baker.

78

Virgilia knew she would suffer for going to Washington. When she eventually returned to Aquia Creek, the woman recently installed as head of the hospital nurses would chastise her for leaving when so many wounded were coming in from Chancellorsville. General Hooker's great advance had met with failure there, something not yet widely known in the capital, Virgilia discovered.

Virgilia's conscience had prompted her to stay on duty, and she would have but for several circumstances. She had waited nearly four weeks for an appointment with Miss Dix. Others could pick up her work during an absence of a day and a half. And she had to do something about her situation because it had become intolerable.

The new hospital supervisor, Elvira Neal, was professionally trained. She had, in fact, traveled to Britain before the war to study at one of the Nightingale schools. During her interview on the morning George saw her, Virgilia carefully praised this aspect of Mrs. Neal's background, even though doing so made her gorge rise.

At last she came to the purpose of the appointment. She requested a transfer to another hospital. Choosing words carefully, she said that her personality and that of the widowed Mrs. Neal appeared to clash. She believed each could work more effectively if they worked separately.

"And that is why you left your post at this critical period?" Miss Dix asked. "To seek a personal accommodation?"

Virgilia's temper boiled up. "I see nothing wrong with that, so long as it promotes better —"

"There is a great deal wrong with it, given the importance of the current campaign in Virginia. I shall take your petition under advisement, but not with haste, and, I warn you, not with a positive attitude. You have a good record. Miss Hazard. But this has blemished it. Good morning."

Virgilia left, silently cursing Miss Dix as a damned opinionated cow.

She reboarded the street railway and gradually calmed down. She liked the nursing service. Hence she was glad she hadn't brought up all the accusations she might have made against Mrs. Neal. They were more personal than professional anyway. The woman was a sentimentalist, a peace Democrat who couldn't say enough in praise of McClellan or in criticism of men such as Stevens and Stanton. From the start, the two women had disliked and distrusted each other. Their politics only exacerbated the situation.

I should have expected it would go the way it did, she thought. A small sigh earned her a stare from the man sitting next to her. He noticed her bosom and started to speak. She glared, and he changed seats.

A growling emptiness reminded her she had eaten nothing since waking up in the cheap hotel where she had spent the night. She saw Willard's on the next corner and left the car. She was at the dining-room door when a group of men came out.

"Congressman Stout —"

He turned. She held her breath — did he recognize her?

Yes! He lowered the hat he had been settling on his wavy dark hair. "Gentlemen, excuse me. An old friend. Thank you for your time; we shall pursue the matter."

Sam Stout ignored the faintly lewd chuckles of a couple of his friends and shook her hand. "Miss Hazard. How are you?"

"Pleased that you remember my name."

"Did you think I wouldn't? What are you doing in the city?"

"I had a meeting with Miss Dix on some pressing administrative matters. I hated to leave the hospital, but it couldn't be helped. Is there any news of General Hooker?"

"None but what the papers carry. My friend Stanton guards those telegraph receivers carefully." Stout glanced around, quickly evaluating all the men and women in the busy lobby. He did it casually, without attracting attention, which caused Virgilia to admire him all the more.

She was elated to see him. On a previous visit to Washington, she had made some inquiries about his personal life. He had no children; his wife, a girlhood sweetheart from Indiana, was apparently barren. A description of the woman revealed another tidbit. She was thin, with a chest as flat as a piece of lumber. Virgilia thought it might be useful to know she offered something Stout's wife did not.

His face grave, Stout said, "I would be most interested in hearing about current conditions in the hospitals. Whether you have the equipment you need, drugs in sufficient quantity —"

Clever man. Using the same pretext she had employed the day they met, he was speaking loudly and clearly to offset any suggestion of impropriety. A clerk at the reception counter had recognized Stout and was listening, she noticed. "I believe there's a quiet parlor just up this hallway, Miss Hazard. We could sit and chat there, if it would not interfere with your schedule."

His steady gaze spoke what was really on his mind. Virgilia began to feel light-headed and perspire, constricted by her layers of clothing.

Taking polite hold of her elbow, he guided her along the deserted corridor that had the woolly, musty odor of hotels everywhere. The parlor, with several small tables and chairs scattered about, was empty.

Stout was no fool; he left the door wide open, though he did choose a table where they couldn't be seen unless someone walked into the room.

He laid his hat on the table and his fawn gloves and silver-handled stick beside it. His hair oil had a citrus tang. His skin was whiter than she remembered and his great hooking brows, in contrast, coal black. "I must say, Miss Hazard, you look wonderfully fit." The resonant voice reached deep inside her, stirring —

Be careful. Don't make any casual bargains. He's a married man. He can't be plucked like an apple on a low branch.

"Thank you, Congressman."

An eloquent gesture at a plush chair. "Won't you sit down? How are conditions at Aquia Creek?"

"The work's arduous, but you know how strongly I feel about the cause we serve."

"I well remember," he answered, nodding. "It's one of many reasons I admire you." He studied her mouth, smiled a little. She felt faint. He didn't press.

"Our supplies and food never seem adequate," she continued.

"Even so, the job you ladies do is remarkable."

"It's never good enough to satisfy me, Congressman."

"Sam, if you please."

"All right. My first name is —"

"Virgilia. It's a lovely name."

"You have such a grand voice it makes any name sound splendid."

His gaze moved past her to the parlor door. The corridor remained quiet. He seemed to be pondering his next gambit. Virgilia's eyes encouraged him.

At length he said, "I was sorry that our first meeting ended on a note that was rather discouraging."

"I felt I had to be candid with you, even though I greatly admired your militancy toward the rebels." She was surprised at the ease with which she had put a catch in her voice. She would never be an accomplished flirt like that empty-headed Ashton Main, but she was learning a trick or two.

"Do I detect the past tense, Virgilia?"

She smiled. "A slip of the tongue. My admiration has not abated."

Again he glanced toward the hall. Only the distant murmurs of the lobby filled its dusty spaces. Slowly, his right hand rose from his lap. How languorous the hand seemed, moving toward her bodice like some white bird sailing on currents of air. Beginning to tremble, she pressed her legs together as his thumb came to rest on her left breast, his fingers curled against the swelling side.

She swept her right hand across, closed it on his. She said his first name softly, then shut her eyes. "Oh —"

In the hall, someone rattled a pail. Stout quickly pulled his hand away. The little exchange had lasted no more than five seconds, but it had clarified everything only hinted at before.

An elderly Negro in hotel livery appeared, bucket in hand, and began sifting the contents of a sand urn just outside the parlor door. The old man drew out broken cigar butts, bits of paper, and, when he had them all, smoothed the sand and disappeared.

Virgilia's face felt as if someone had dashed hot water on it.

Stout leaned forward. "I want to see you again." "I feel the same way."

"Our next meeting should be more private, don't you think?"

For a dizzying moment, she was tempted. Then she remembered what she stood to lose — or gain. She shook her head. Stout's polished veneer cracked.

"You just said —"

"I do feel — a strong attraction, Sam. But I refuse to involve myself in some — some back-street affair."

He draped an arm over his chair and studied her. "Is my wife still the problem?"

"I am afraid so."

Coldly, he said, "If you have a notion that I might throw her over for you or any other woman, you're mistaken."

"I didn't ask —"

"Asking isn't necessary, my dear." Sarcasm and that great resonant voice combined with devastating results. "Your scheme's quite clear. I suppose I can't blame you for hoping, but the hope is misguided. I would" never sacrifice what I've achieved in this town' — and much more that I want to achieve — by making myself morally notorious. Do you know what some of my constituents in Muncie would do if I became embroiled in a scandal? They'd vote me out — and have bubbling tar and hen feathers waiting at the depot when I came home."

Having gotten the effect he wanted, he softened, grasped her hand. "Why must convention be an obstacle, Virgilia? We have a mutual desire and we can satisfy it discreetly without harming the interests of either party"

"How do you know it would work that way, Congressman? Are you an expert at philandering?"

A chill settled into his eyes. He snatched up his stick, hat, fawn gloves. "I have an appointment. It has been pleasant to visit with you, Miss Hazard. Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

He reached the door. She stood abruptly. "Sam —"

Turning, but giving nothing else, he replied, "Yes?"

How hard it was to say what had to be said. "Nothing. My terms must stand."

'They're too high, I'm afraid. Very much too high." He gave her another smile, this one scornful, meant to wound. His stooping figure vanished down the hall.

She sat again, listening to the faint lobby sounds while a sense of failure consumed her. How stupid she had been to bluff when she held such poor cards. Undoubtedly he could have his pick of half the women in Washington.

And yet, remembering his eyes, she knew he wanted her. Her breasts, her person —

What did it matter? She had played all her trumps, and she had still lost. Her despair growing worse, she sat counting rosettes in the carpet pattern until she heard a knock. Like someone rousing from sleep, she turned and saw the old black porter with the pail.

"You feelin' all right, ma'am?"

"Fine, thank you. I was merely a bit dizzy and came in here to rest."

Willing herself out of lethargy, she rose. Might it not be a little premature to count failure as a certainty? Setting a high price on her favors could have a reverse effect and make Stout want her all the more. All his back-turning and sneering might be so much sham.

With these thoughts came another, transformed almost at once into a conviction. This would not be the last time she saw Sam Stout. She didn't want it to be the last time, and despite his rhetoric about ambition, constituents, his wife, she felt he didn't either.

Where would they meet? No way to tell. No matter; it would happen. She left the parlor and strode swiftly, confidently, toward the faint sounds. She noticed that she drew covert stares from gentlemen as she crossed the lobby and went out.

79

"It's all there," said the albino. "Where's the money?"

"In due time — in due time!"

Bent's small dark eyes ran over the closely written pages. The albino, a soft, vulnerable-looking boy of eighteen or nineteen, walked away with a petulant expression. He snatched a piece of straw from one of the bales piled in the shed. His right hand drooped in a limp way as he slipped the straw into his mouth and chewed.

Bent continued scanning the pages. "You'll find everything as promised," the albino said. It sounded like a complaint. "Complete inventory of items the Tredegar is manufacturing — cannon, shell casings, gun carriages, rolled plate for Mr. Mallory's iron­clads. There's a long list with quantities shown for each. My, uh, friend who got the information together was one of Joe Anderson's top assistants."

Alerted, Bent cleared his throat. "Did you say was?"

"Yes, Mr. Bascom." Daintily, he raised his left hand to brush his pretty white hair off the shoulder of his soiled shirt. "He was discharged last week, I regret to say. Some irregularity about payments."

"What sort of irregularity?"

"Something to do with favoring certain suppliers. It doesn't affect the report. That's a hundred percent reliable."

"Oh, I'm certain it is," Bent said, nodding. He folded the pages and slipped them into a side pocket of his tentlike coat. He resembled a respectable businessman in his new suit of black alpaca, heavy boots, broad-brimmed black hat and cravat of the same color.

His mind sped. The poor warped creature, intending to please, had let slip a piece of damaging information. He was now useless as a contact. Bent knew he must act on that information. He wasn't hesitant about it; Baker had given him wide latitude.

"I have the money." He rooted in another pocket. The albino licked his lips. A bell clanged on a night packet moving down the James River & Kanawha Canal at three miles an hour, its lights visible through gaps in the shed wall. The shed was situated among several others on weedy, deserted ground at the foot of Oregon Hill. A short distance downstream, across the canal but on this side of the river, the sprawling Tredegar foundry reddened the night and filled it with the clatter of machinery.

Bent had not been in the detached service very long, but he already had a grasp of its intricacies, probably because his nature and the nature of the work meshed perfectly. Thus, counting out bills — United States bills, not Confederate; the albino had insisted — he silently ticked off points relative to the situation.

An inactive contact was potentially dangerous. The albino knew Bent was a Union spy. He could report Bent to the authorities if he felt spiteful, and be no poorer for it. Or, after Bent left Richmond, he could talk too freely, making it unsafe for Bent to return.

The albino said, "In regard to my gentleman friend who compiled the information — I have to split the proceeds with him, you know. In hard times like these, an extra dollar's welcome. Also in reference to my friend, I'm not exclusively his, in case —"

"Some other time," Bent said, only briefly tempted. He must keep duty and pleasure separate. Besides, the little sod might be diseased, like some of the pitiful males he had seen offering themselves under the trees of Capitol Square. "I think we can consider our business finished." He handed the money to the albino. "Why don't you leave first? I'll extinguish the lantern and follow in a few minutes."

"All right, Mr. Bascom." The albino sounded disappointed.

"By the way — is your friend still in Richmond?" Bent expected an affirmative answer. It wouldn't alter his decision about the albino, but it might influence the length of his stay in the city.

Unexpectedly, the albino said, "No, sir. He went home to Charlottesville for a few days to collect himself. Being sacked by Joe Anderson was a pretty hard blow. He'd worked at the Tredegar ten years. Began as an apprentice, back when the place built locomotives."

"Sad," Bent declared, injecting as much false sympathy as possible. His heart beat fast now, from nerves and anticipation. The albino gave him a last pleading look.

"Well, then — good night, Mr. Bascom."

"Good night."

While the albino sauntered to the door and reached for the latch, Bent drew the clasp knife from his coat and silently opened it. The six-inch blade flashed under the hanging lantern.

The albino heard the swift, heavy tread of Bent's boots and peeked over his shoulder. Before he could cry out, Bent had his left elbow around the albino's windpipe. He pushed the knife into the albino's back. The blade met resistance. He kept pushing until all the metal had disappeared.

He twisted it one way, then another, to be sure the job was done. The albino pulled at Bent's left arm but lacked strength to loosen it. His torn shoes scraped and twisted in the dirt. Finally the slight body was limp.

Bent extricated the bloody knife and gagged only once. He was astonished and pleased about his suitability for this work. He felt sure that since he had never met the albino's friend, the man would be unable to trace Mr. Bascom or connect him in any way with a Mr. Dayton of Raleigh, North Carolina, who was stopping temporarily at one of the city's cheaper lodging houses.

Taking hold of the collar, he dragged the body. It smelled now. He placed it against a wall and concealed it with straw bales pushed in front of it and stacked on top. Then he remembered something, removed two bales, and dug in the dead boy's pockets till he found the currency. Baker would be glad to have the cash to use again.

He replaced the bales and with his boot smoothed the dirt floor to remove the most conspicuous signs of disturbance. After a careful inspection, he blew out the lantern and went out the door into the balmy May night. The lights of Richmond twinkled on the hilltop and on either hand. Lamps gleamed on the prison island in the river, and the Tredegar spewed red smoke and light. Bent made his way back along the canal for a short distance, then turned left and climbed toward the center of the city that was mourning for a legend.

The next day was Wednesday, May 13. In full-dress uniform, including sash and the Solingen sword, Orry walked with a great many other Confederate officers in the funeral procession.

Behind the officers were hundreds of clerks and minor officials from the statehouse and the city corporation. Directly ahead were Orry's chief, Seddon, his friend Benjamin, and other cabinet members. Ahead of them, hung with great swags of black crepe, was the carriage of President and Mrs. Davis. The Davises followed the most honored mourners — raggedy veterans who had served with the man the procession honored. The veterans walked or dragged themselves on crutches. A few were borne on litters by tired comrades in butternut or fading gray.

Ahead of the veterans walked the official military escort, two companies from George Pickett's division, one of artillery, one of cavalry. Their drummers beat the slow march for the dead.

Ahead of them, led by a single soldier, was the general's favorite war charger, Old Sorrel, saddle empty, stirrups tucked up. Ahead of Old Sorrel, drawn by black-plumed horses and with four generals walking at the corners as a special honor guard, was the black hearse containing the body of Thomas Jonathan Jackson.

Jackson had died on Sunday, after his wound bred pneumonia and bodily poisons and the surgeons lopped off his left arm in a futile attempt to arrest his decline. All day yesterday he had lain in state in the governor's mansion, his coffin draped in the national flag for which he had fought with such loyalty and ferocity. As the body was being readied for the procession to Capitol Square, Jackson's widow had finally broken down and been led away.

On either side of the route of march, Orry saw stricken, tear-stained faces, male and female, soldier and civilian. Even the little children wept. Nothing in recent memory, not even Pelham's fall, had so devastated the Confederacy. Seddon had whispered to Orry as they stood beside the bier yesterday that Lee was almost beyond consolation.

It was difficult to believe that Jackson had been slain not by some Yankee but by one of his own, a Confederate soldier who would remain eternally anonymous. Probably the man didn't know he had fired the fatal bullet.

Ironic, too, that it had happened immediately after Jackson and Lee had once again gambled brilliantly. Faced with Hooker's sudden surprise sweep, they had agreed to split their army a second time and send Jackson's foot cavalry on the swift secret march to the Union right. Jackson had smashed Howard's corps of Dutchmen and by doing so had perhaps drained all the fight out of Fighting Joe. For whatever reason, Hooker had somehow lost his nerve, withdrawn from a strong offensive position at a key moment, and steadily given ground thereafter. Jubal Early had lost Fredericksburg, but the Yanks had lost the battle of Chancellorsville. The roles of winner and loser might be reversed, however, once the full cost of Jackson's death was reckoned. Orry thought the victory a hollow one.

The procession entered Capitol Square through the west gates, where Orry saw his wife in a group of women that included Mrs. Stanard, one of the grandes dames of local society. Benjamin had provided an introduction, and Mrs. Stanard had taken to Madeline instantly, favoring her with the information that she had definitely not taken to Orry's sister, Mrs. Huntoon, whom she had invited to her salon once only.

Seeing Madeline cheered him a little. But there wasn't much to be happy about any more, even setting aside this dark day. In the west, Sam Grant was moving relentlessly on the works around Vicksburg. Men no longer lowered their voices when they discussed impeachment of Davis. And General Winder's wardens continued to run the overcrowded prisons cruelly, in defiance of frequent inspections and memorandums of protest from Orry and others.

Cooper was in Richmond, had been for almost a month. His office was in the Mechanics Institute building, so Orry seldom ran into him by accident. Cooper was tragically changed as a result of his son's death, news of which had stunned Orry and his wife. Uncommunicative, totally uninterested in hospitable overtures and dinner invitations from Madeline, he was lost in his work for Navy Secretary Mallory, whom Orry distrusted, as he distrusted anyone and anything connected with the rival service.

In recent days, Orry and Madeline had received a visitor from Spotsylvania County, the stylish, intelligent, occasionally sharp-tongued widow with whom Cousin Charles had formed a romantic attachment. With her two Negroes, Augusta Barclay had come flying from Fredericksburg to take up residence on the parlor sofa until Hooker's withdrawal across the Rapidan became a certainty.

She had left only yesterday, her worry about her farm taking precedence over the public rites for Jackson.

Charles was in love. The widow Barclay didn't say so, but it was evident to Orry from the way she discussed his cousin. Well, that was Charles's affair, though these were hardly the best of times for planning a future.

Nor was Orry enamored of the way Mrs. Barclay sometimes flaunted her learning. She was fond of quoting English poets of the aphoristic school and seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of couplets for all occasions.

Still, his reaction was essentially a favorable one, as was Madeline's. Augusta Barclay was undeniably attractive, and during her stay on Marshall Street she had taken pains to see that her freedmen had adequate food and shelter in the backyard in a tent improvised from blankets. She helped Madeline with the cooking and routine chores. And before departing, she said three times that if she could repay their generosity in any way, they must not hesitate to call on her. Orry believed the offer was sincere.

The hall of the House of Representatives was filled with the sweet fumes of huge floral tributes surrounding the bier and great pyramids of white lilies heaped up beside it. Reluctantly, Orry joined the line of officers shuffling toward the open coffin. When it was his turn to gaze at the bearded head on the satin pillow, he nearly couldn't do it. He saw a callow and oddly likable West Point plebe, not the strange adult from whose convoluted, some said diseased, mind had come victory after victory. Amidst the lilies, Orry bowed his head and cried.

Somehow Madeline worked through the crowd and took his arm and held it tightly against her side until he was himself again.

Like an elephant rousing, Elkanah Bent got out of his disarrayed bed about one that afternoon. He had visited a whorehouse last night and put a black girl to good use. He had returned to the lodging house at dawn, when no one was awake to ask him whether he planned to watch Jackson's funeral parade. He certainly didn't. He had no intention of dignifying a traitor's death with his presence, though he might go take a peek at the body to see how much Jackson had changed since the days when Bent had hazed him. Even then, Jackson had displayed peculiarities; excessive concern for the way his organs hung within his body, for example. More recently, Union officers had jeered at his reluctance to go into battle on Sunday. But the mad old Presbyterian had slaughtered his enemies without pity the other six days of the week. The Union was well shed of him.

Bent lathered his face, opened his razor case, and set about making himself presentable. He was astonished at the ease with which he had accomplished his mission thus far. Of course he had taken precautions — ridden to Richmond with two pistols and a concealed knife — but the rest had been absurdly simple. Whenever he was stopped, he simply showed the pass forged by one of Baker's specialists. His speech caused him no trouble because he was in a part of the South in which the mushy accents of the cotton states sounded foreign. Furthermore, Yankees — whores and speculators, mostly — could be found all over town.

Concerning the female invaders, a barman had given him a piece of advice: "Don't you fret one minute about the safety of Richmond till you see the Baltimore whores trying to buy train tickets. Then you should worry."

Too late for breakfast but in plenty of time to eat a huge midday meal, Bent spent an uncomfortable hour with the minor bureaucrats, traveling men, and low-ranking officers who packed the two communal tables in the dining room. The landlady offered him a strip of black satin, something she was providing for every guest. Inwardly contemptuous, he nevertheless thanked her effusively and tied the armband on his left sleeve.

With the Tredegar information hidden in a special pocket in his coat lining, a pocket he had sewn shut as soon as he filled it, he trudged to Capitol Square and stood in the shuffling line of people who moaned and wept for the dead traitor in a way he found disgusting. When he reached the bier, he hardly recognized the man lying there. But he tried to affect a soulful expression and dabbed at one eye before moving on.

He was jolted by the sight of two people farther back in line: a man with round glasses, nearly as heavy as Bent but in his opinion considerably less handsome, and a woman whose dark beauty sounded chords of familiarity. He approached an officer standing by himself.

"Beg pardon, Major — do you happen to know that couple over there? I think the woman may be a distant relative of my wife."

The officer couldn't help him, but a man with the sleek look of a high-ranking government official overheard and said, "Oh, that's Huntoon. From South Carolina. He has a minor job at Treasury."

Bent almost shook with excitement. "South Carolina, you say? Would his wife's maiden name happen to be Main?"

He asked the question with such intensity that the civilian's suspicions were aroused. "I certainly couldn't tell you that." Nor would he mention to this fat, sweaty fellow, who looked more speculator than Southerner, that he was acquainted with the woman's brother, Colonel Main of the War Department. The civilian excused himself quickly.

Bent hurried into the square and paused by the great statue of Washington, whose birthday those on both sides continued to celebrate. He lingered until the couple emerged and entered a barouche driven by an old Negro. The barouche rolled past Bent where he lounged in the shade of the statue's pedestal. The woman took no notice of him or any of her surroundings; she was busy berating her husband. She struck Bent as arrogant, but she definitely resembled Orry Main. She was worth investigating.

Now that he had accomplished his first mission without a hitch, he was full of confidence. On the spot he decided to risk one more day in the Confederate capital.

In bed that night, he formulated his plan. Next morning he called at the post office as soon as it opened. He introduced himself as Mr. Bell, a native of Louisville, and persuaded the clerk to overlook any deficiencies in his accent by passing a folded bill over the counter. The clerk opened a thick book and found the address of James Huntoon.

Hiring a hack, Bent drove past the Grace Street residence twice. Then, downtown again, he searched the stores till he found some over-priced linen that could be torn up to simulate bandages. He fretted through the next few hours at his lodging house. He planned to call late in the day, before the government offices closed.

Around four, he walked out Grace Street and, when he was unobserved, paused for a swig from a metal flask kept in his side pocket. In an alley two blocks from his destination, he tied the linen into a sling and slid his left forearm through. A few minutes later, the same black man he had seen driving the barouche admitted him to the foyer.

"Yes, Miz Huntoon's at home, but she wasn't expectin' callers."

"I'm a visitor in the city. Tell her it's important."

"Your name again, sar?"

"Bellingham. Captain Erasmus Bellingham, on furlough from General Longstreet's corps." Longstreet was currently far from Richmond, which was the reason for that particular lie. "I must soon return to duty, so kindly ask your mistress to see me at once."

Homer led Bent to a small sitting room, then trudged off. Bent was too nervous to sit. He paced and chewed a clove to cover his whiskey breath. Underneath his white shirt and alpaca suit, sweat soaked him. Just as he had decided to flee, he heard a swish of skirts in the hall. Ashton Huntoon swept in, cross and sleepy-looking.

"Captain Bellingham?"

"Erasmus Bellingham, currently with General —"

"My nigger told me that."

"I dislike interrupting you without prior warning, ma'am —" Her expression made clear that she disliked it as much as he did. Though her resemblance to her brother automatically generated rage, Bent kept his unctuous smile in place as he went on. "However, I haven't much more time in Richmond. I am nearly recovered from this wound I received at the siege of Suffolk. Before I return to Longstreet's command, I wanted to inquire about an old acquaintance."

"You don't sound like a Southerner, Captain."

Bitch. He broadened the smile. "Oh, there are all degrees of Southern speech, I find. You don't sound like a Virginian" — careful; mustn't let any hostility show — "and the truth is, I was born and raised on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I left it the moment I heard the Confederacy's call to arms."

"How interesting." Ashton didn't conceal her boredom.

Bent explained that while on duty in the lower part of the state, he had heard that one of his West Point classmates was stationed in Richmond. "Last evening I was conversing with a gentleman at my lodging house — some chap with friends at the Treasury Department — and when I mentioned my classmate, he brought you and your husband into the conversation. He said you both hailed from South Carolina, as my classmate did, and that your maiden name was the same as his."

"Is your classmate Orry Main?"

"Yes."

She acted as if he had dumped a spittoon on her. "He's my older brother."

"Your brother," Bent echoed. "How extraordinary! I haven't seen him in years. Come to think of it, though, I do recall him mentioning you in an affectionate manner."

Ashton dabbed her upper lip with a bit of lace. "I doubt that."

"Please, tell me, is Orry in Richmond?"

"Yes, and so is his wife. I don't see either of them. By choice."

"Is he perchance in the army?"

"He's a lieutenant colonel attached to the War Department." Gathering her skirts, Ashton rose. "Is there anything else?" Her tone said she hoped not.

"Only the location of his residence, if you'd be so kind —"

"They have rooms on Marshall near the White House. I've never been there. Good day, Captain Bellingham."

Rudely dismissed, Bent nevertheless managed to reach the street without displaying his anger. He had brief, dizzy visions of tearing Ashton Huntoon's clothing and subjecting her to punishments that would also yield certain perverse pleasures.

The spiteful mood passed. Turning toward town, he strode along as if there were clouds under his feet. In another alley he stripped off the sling and threw it away. Orry Main was here. Bent was close to one of the objects of his hatred — closer than he had been since Charles Main eluded and disgraced him in Texas. He ought to walk into the War Department, find Main's desk, and shoot him right between —

No. Not only would hasty action imperil his life, it would rob the vengeance of savor. Bent also had the new job to think about. Baker would be expecting him in Washington. He should collect his horse from the stable and leave at once.

Instead, he decided to remain an additional night. He wanted to be thoroughly familiar with the terrain when he returned to Richmond on another mission, as he undoubtedly would. He wanted to know precisely where to look for Orry Main.

Locating the War Department offices next day proved easy. Bent watched the building for half an hour but didn't go in. Finding the flat on Marshall in the fashionable Court End district proved a little harder. He offered three-cent silver pieces to several black children before he found one who knew the colonel and his wife. The youngster pointed out their residence, a large house evidently converted into suites of rental rooms for the duration.

He approached from the opposite side of the street. The brim of his black hat protecting him from the May sunshine, he surveyed the house and got a shock when a lovely woman with a parasol came out and turned left on the walk.

Bent felt as if a thunderbolt had come down to smite him. The woman passing from view was instantly familiar because he often sat gazing at her, or someone very much like her, in the canvas stolen from New Orleans. This woman's mouth, shape of nose, color of eyes and hair were not identical with those in the picture. But the resemblance could not be mistaken.

Sweating, Bent lumbered up the steps of her residence and rang the bell. A wispy old woman answered. He swept his hat off.

"Your pardon, ma'am. I have business with a Mrs. Wadlington, whom I don't know. I was told she lived in this block, and I just passed a lady who fits the sketchy description I was given. The lady came out this door, so I wondered —"

"That's Colonel Main's wife. Never heard of a Mrs. Wadlington, and I know everyone. But I don't know you." Slam.

Flushed, elated, and short of breath, Bent went reeling away. His luck had turned at last. First the Baker connection and now this. Orry Main, a high military official, was married to a nigger whore — and he had the evidence. How he would use it, he was too overwrought to determine just now. But use it he would, of that he was —

"Murder! Mysterious stabbing by the canal!"

The shout of the newsboy on Broad Street interrupted the vengeful reverie. He bought a paper and scanned it as he walked. The cold of panic replaced his steamy delirium. They had found the corpse of Bent's informant, though he was not named. The victim was a white male of the kind commonly called "albino."

In less than an hour, Elkanah Bent packed his valise, vacated his room, saddled his horse, and took the road north.

80

That same evening, standing knee deep in the James River, Cooper sneezed.

He had caught cold. It didn't matter. Nor did the miserable, weary state of his assistant and two helpers. "One more," he said. "Rig the shell."

"Mr. Main, it's nearly dark," said his assistant, an earnest but fundamentally untalented boy named Lucius Chickering. A Charleston aristocrat, nineteen-year-old Chickering had enrolled in Mallory's Confederate Naval Academy, whose campus consisted of the old side-wheeler Patrick Henry, anchored in the river. Chickering had rapidly failed basic astronomy, navigation, and seamanship, and been dismissed, with Lieutenant Parker's regrets. Only his father's influence saved him from absolute disgrace; a job was found for him in the scorned Navy Department. Cooper liked Chickering, but he knew the boy kept quiet about where he worked.

Lucius Chickering had a huge nose with a hump in the middle. His upper teeth jutted over his lower lip, and he had more freckles than anyone deserved. His ugliness somehow contributed to his likability. And he was right about the lateness of the hour. A deep red sunset covered the James with sullen reflections. Birds wheeled against high scarlet clouds, and downstream a barge had already become a blot of shadow dotted yellow by a single lantern.

Replying to his assistant, Cooper said, "We have time. If you're all too lazy, I'll rig it myself."

He hadn't eaten since daybreak. They had been down here in the rushes, a mile from the city limits, struggling with these drift­wood torpedoes the entire day. They had not been successful even once, and Cooper knew why. The concept was wrong.

A wood cradle, newly designed within the department, held a metal canister of powder with a small opening in its domed lid. Into the opening went an impact-type percussion fuse. Cradle and canister were painted grayish brown, like the pieces of Atlantic driftwood to which they were lashed. The problem was, the movement of the driftwood in the river current — and therefore on a harbor tide — was uncontrollable. The experimenters found the wrong end of the torpedo bumping against the test target: three barrels anchored in midstream with enough open water on either side for barges and small steam sloops to pass.

To be correct about it, not all of the driftwood torpedoes had even reached the target. By Cooper's count, it was five out of two dozen launched. All had failed to detonate because the fuse and canister were on the side opposite that which struck the barrels.

As Cooper started to work, Chickering exploded. "Mr. Main, I must protest. You've worked us like field bucks all day, and now you want us to continue when we can scarcely see what we're doing."

"Indeed I do," Cooper said, his body a black reed against the red sky. "This is wartime, Mr. Chickering. If you don't care for the hours or the working conditions, submit your resignation and go back to Charleston."

Lucius Chickering glowered at his superior. Cooper Main intimidated and annoyed him. He was a Palmetto State man who acted more like a Yankee. He slopped around in mud and water as if appearances didn't matter. While the others stood by, Cooper carefully screwed the detonator plug into the canister fuse. His trousers and shirt sleeves soaking wet, he launched the driftwood torpedo and watched it turn aimlessly in the water. Five minutes later a flash of flame marked its detonation against the far bank. It had sailed past the target with twenty feet to spare.

Curtly, Cooper said to one of the helpers, "Row out there and tow the barrels in. You" — to the other helper — "load the tools in the wagon." Muttering, the helper picked up a long crosscut saw, which hummed a sad note.

The sun was down, starlight shone, frogs croaked in the sweet Virginia night. The helper grumbled and swore, sneezed again, then said to Chickering, "I'll tell Mallory the design's a failure, like the raft torpedo before it and the keg torpedo before that."

"Sir, with all respect" — having exploded, Chickering was calmer now — "why do we keep on with these fruitless experiments? Our work is so peculiar, we're the butt of jokes in every other department."

"Be thankful, Lucius. Snide remarks will never wound you the way bullets do."

Chickering colored at the suggestion that he might be happy to avoid hazardous duty. But he said nothing because Main's authority was not to be questioned; he and Mallory were close as two peas. Still, more than one person whispered that the new man was unbalanced. Something to do with his son drowning on the voyage from Nassau to Wilmington.

Like a humorless schoolmaster, Cooper continued. "We test these odd devices for one reason: our inferior position vis-a-vis the enemy. As the secretary says so often, we don't outnumber them, we can't out-spend them, so we have to out-think them. That means experimentation, no matter how ludicrous the experiments may seem to the fashionable young ladies and gentlemen you associate with here in Richmond. Mallory wants to win, you see, not merely negotiate an end to the war. I want to win. I want to whip the damn Yankees on the Atlantic and the rivers if we do it nowhere else. Now pick up that hand saw and put it in the wagon."

He sloshed down the bank to help the man who had rowed out to tow the barrels. Together they beached the target and carried the inverted rowboat to the wagon. More water dripped on Cooper's wet shirt, and he sneezed three times, violently, before they stowed the boat and climbed aboard for the homeward trip, four tired men in a world gone dark except for stars.

Cooper began to regret his sharp words. To be influenced by others was the way of the young. Chickering understandably resented a department constantly under attack for mismanagement, overspending, and dalliance with ideas that seemed to be the creations of idiots. Yet the boy, like so many others, simply didn't understand that you had to sift through all that fool's gold if you hoped to discover one nugget — one design, one idea — that might tilt everything in a decisive way.

Cooper had thrown himself into that search with ferocious energy. Mallory had been complimentary about his work in England and soon took the younger man into his confidence. In Mallory's opinion, the river war was lost. It was now their task to salvage the situation on the Atlantic seaboard. The commerce raiders, including the one Cooper helped launch, had captured or damaged an astonishing number of Yankee merchantmen. Insurance rates had risen, according to plan, to near-prohibitive levels, causing several hundred cargo ships to be transferred to dummy owners in Great Britain. Yet this Confederate success had failed to achieve its final goal — appreciable reduction of the size and effectiveness of the Yankee blockade squadron.

If anything, General Scott's Anaconda was tightening. One point of maximum constriction was Charleston, where Union monitors had attacked in force in April. Harbor and shore batteries had repulsed them, but everyone in the department anticipated further attacks. Not only was Charleston a vital port, but it was the flash point of the war — the city the enemy most wanted to capture and destroy.

If he didn't have the department, Cooper doubted that he could survive. Moreover, he believed in the work; he and Mallory were alike in that and in other ways. Each had started out detesting the idea of secession — early in the war, Mallory had been widely quoted after he said, "I regard it as another name for revolution" — but now both were fierce as hawks in pursuit of the enemy.

The secretary kept everyone busy with schemes. Schemes for new ironclads. Schemes for submersible attack vessels. Schemes for naval torpedoes of every conceivable configuration. Cooper reveled in the frantic effort, because he hated the enemy. But he hated one individual fully as much, though he had said nothing of that to anyone, not even Orry, so far. He wanted to arrange a fitting confrontation. A fitting punishment.

The struggles of the department had one additional benefit. If he worked himself to a stupor every night, his mind was less likely to cast up memories of Judah in the moonlit sea. Judah calling for help. Judah's poor scalded face disintegrating —

As the wagon rattled on toward the lamplit hills, Cooper wondered about the time. It would be quite late when he got home. Judith would be angry. Again. Well, no matter.

In the city, Chickering was first to jump off. Late for a rendez­vous with some belle, Cooper assumed. Cooper's nose was dripping. It hurt to swallow. "Be at your desk by seven," he said to his assistant. "I want today's report written and out of the way by the start of regular working hours."

"Yes, sir," Chickering said. Cooper heard him muttering as he disappeared in the dark.

The wagon driver let him off in front of the Mechanics Institute on Ninth Street, bidding him a surly good night. Cooper didn't give a damn about the disapproval; the clod failed to understand the desperate straits of the Confederacy or the problems of the department, which Mallory summed up in two words: "Never enough." Never enough time. Never enough money. Never enough cooperation. They improvised and lived by their wits. That brought a certain pride, but it was killing work.

Cooper presumed Mallory would still be in the department's second-floor offices, and he was. Everyone else had gone except one of the secretary's trio of assistants, the dapper Mr. Tidball, who was locking his desk as Cooper walked in.

"Good evening," Tidball said, tugging each of the desk drawers in turn. He then squared a pile of papers to align it with a corner. Tidball was a drone with no imagination, but with exceptional organizational skills. He complemented the other two members of the triumvirate — Commodore Forrest, a blustery old blue-water sailor who understood the ways of seamen, and Cooper, who served as an extension of Mallory's inventive nature. Those two men preferred "Let us try" over "Here's why we can't."

"He's been waiting for you," Tidball said with a nod at the inner office. Tidball left, and Cooper went in to find the secretary examining engineering drawings by the light of a lamp with a green glass shade. The wick flickered as the scented oil burned. The gas mantles were shut down, and the perimeter of the cluttered office was dark.

"Hallo, Cooper," Mallory said. He was a roly-poly man of fifty, born in Trinidad and reared mostly in Key West by an Irish mother and a Connecticut Yankee father. He had a tilted nose, plump cheeks, and bright blue eyes that often sparkled with excitement. He reminded Cooper of an English country squire.

"What luck?"

Cooper sneezed. "None. The design for the cradle and canister are good enough; the problem is the one we saw when we first examined the plans. A torpedo attached to driftwood will do one thing predictably — drift. Without guidance, it's as likely to blow a hole in Fort Sumter as it is to sink a Yankee. Most probably it would float around Charleston harbor for weeks or months, un-detonated and potentially dangerous. I'll put it all in my report."

"You recommend we forget about it?" The secretary looked extremely tired tonight, Cooper observed.

"Absolutely."

"Well, that's definitive, if nothing else. I appreciate your conducting the test."

"General Rains proved the value of torpedoes in land operations," Cooper said, sitting down in a hard chair. "The Yankees may think them inhuman, but they work. They'll work for us if we can find the proper means to deliver them to the target and make certain they fire."

"All true. But we're making precious little progress with them."

"The department's overtaxed, Stephen. Maybe we need a separate group to develop and test them on a systematic basis."

"A torpedo bureau?"

Cooper nodded. "Captain Maury would be an ideal man to head it."

"Excellent thought. Perhaps I can find funds —" Cooper sniffed and Mallory added, "You sound terrible."

"I have a cold, that's all."

Mallory received that skeptically. Perspiration glistened on Cooper's forehead. "Time for you to go home to a hot meal. Speaking of which, Angela remains determined to see you and Judith. When will you take supper with us?"

Cooper slumped farther down in the chair. "We've already refused three invitations from my brother. I'll have to satisfy that obligation first."

"I appreciate your industry, certainly. But you must take more time for yourself. You can't work every moment."

"Why not? I have debts to repay."

Mallory cleared his throat. "So be it. I have something else to show you, but it can wait till morning."

Cooper unbent his long body and stood. "Now will be fine." He circled the desk and peered into the soft oval of lamplight. The top drawing showed a curious vessel indicated as forty feet end to end. In the elevation, it reminded Cooper of an ordinary steam boiler, but in plan the bow and stern showed a pronounced taper, much like a cigar's. The vessel had two hatches, indicated on the elevation as only a few inches high.

"What the devil is it? Another submersible?" "Yes," Mallory said, pointing to a decorative ribbon in the lower right corner. Elaborate script within the ribbon spelled H. L. Hunley. "That's her name. The accompanying letter states that Mr. Hunley, a well-to-do sugar broker, was responsible for the concept and some of the first construction money. She was started at New Orleans. Her developers rushed her away to Mobile before the city fell. These gentlemen are finishing the job." He tapped a line beneath the ribbon: McClintock & Watson. Marine Engineers.

"They call her the fish ship," the secretary continued. "She's supposed to be watertight, capable of diving beneath an enemy vessel"— his hand swooped to illustrate "dragging a torpedo. The torpedo detonates when the fish ship is safe on the other side."

"Ah," Cooper said, "that's how she differs from David." The department had been laboring to develop a submersible for coast and harbor operations. The little torpedo vessel he had just mentioned carried her explosive charge in front, on a long bow boom. "That and her mode of attack. She is definitely designed to strike while submerged." David, though a submersible, was meant to operate on the surface when ramming with her boom.

An underwater boat wasn't a new idea, of course. A Connecticut man had invented one at the start of the Revolution. But few government officials, and certainly not the President, believed that the idea might have a current application. Its only proponents were Mallory and his little cadre of determined dreamers. Brunei would have understood this, Cooper thought. He would have understood us.

After a moment, he said, "Only testing will show us which design's the best, I suppose."

"Quite right. We must encourage completion of this craft. I intend to write the gentlemen in Mobile a warm and enthusiastic letter — and forward copies of all the correspondence to General Beauregard in Charleston. Now go home and get some rest." "But I'd like to see a little more of —" "In the morning. Go home. And be careful. I trust you've read about all the murders and street robberies lately." Cooper nodded, unsmiling. The times were dark with trouble. People were desperate. He bade Mallory good evening and trudged to Main Street, where he was lucky enough to pick up a hack at one of the hotels. It rattled up to Church Hill, where they had leased a small house at three times the peacetime price. Judith, a book in her lap, raised her head as he came in. Half in sympathy, half in annoyance, she said, "You look wretched."

"We splashed in the James all day. To no purpose."

"The torpedo —?"

"No good. Anything to eat?"

"Calf's liver. You wouldn't believe what it cost. I'm afraid it'll be cold and greasy. I expected you long before this."

"Oh, for God's sake, Judith — you know I have a lot of work."

"Even when you were trying to build Star of Carolina, you seldom stayed out this late. At least not every night. And when you came home, you smiled occasionally. Said something pleasant —"

"This is not a pleasant time or a pleasant world," he replied, cold and aloof suddenly. A droplet hung quivering on the end of his nose. He disposed of it with a slash of his soaked sleeve. "As Stephen says, it is no laughing matter to have the fate of the Confederacy in the hands of soldiers with swollen vanities in place of brains."

"Stephen." She snapped the book shut, held it with hands gone white. "That's all I ever hear from you — Stephen — unless you're cursing your sister."

"Where's Marie-Louise?"

"Where do you suppose she'd be at this hour? She's in bed. Cooper —"

"I don't want to argue." He turned away.

"But something's happened to you. You don't seem to have any feeling left for me, your daughter — for anything except that damned department."

One of his slender hands closed on the frame of the parlor door. He sniffed again, head lowered slightly. The way he gazed at her from under his eyebrows frightened her.

"Something did happen to me," he said softly. "My son drowned. Because of this war, my sister's greed, and your refusal to remain in Nassau. Now kindly let me alone so I can eat."

In the kitchen, seated near the cold stove, he cut into the liver, ate three bites, and threw the rest away. He went to their bedroom, lit the gas, and shut the door. After undressing, he piled two coverlets on, but still couldn't get warm.

Presently Judith came in. She undressed, put out the lamp, and climbed in beside him. He lay with his back to her, his face to the wall. She was careful not to touch him. He thought he heard her crying but didn't turn over. He fell asleep thinking of the drawings of the fish ship.

Once a week, Madeline repeated her invitation to dinner. Near the end of May, Judith finally prevailed on Cooper to stay away from the Navy Department for one evening. At four o'clock on the appointed day, he sent a message home saying he would be late. His hack didn't arrive on Marshall Street until half past eight.

In the spacious rooms on the top floor, the brothers embraced. "How are you, Cooper?" Orry smelled whiskey and was dismayed by the sight of his pale, disheveled guest.

"Very busy at the department." The reply made Judith frown.

"What sort of work goes on there?" Madeline asked as she led them in to the table set with lighted candles. She was anxious to serve the meal before it was ruined.

"We're engaged in the job of killing Yankees."

Orry started to laugh, then realized the remark was meant seriously. Judith stared at the floor, unable to conceal a look of distress. Madeline glanced at her husband as if to say, Is he drunk?

Murmuring a pretext — "May I help?" — Judith followed her hostess to the hot kitchen.

Madeline raised the lid of a steaming pot. "Can you conceive of greens selling for three and a half dollars a peck?"

The false cheer failed. Judith glanced at the closed door and said, "I must apologize for Cooper. He isn't himself."

Madeline replaced the lid and faced her sister-in-law. "Judith, the poor man acts like he's ready to explode. What's wrong?"

"He's working too hard — the way he did when Star of Carolina was on the verge of failure."

"Are you sure that's all it is?"

Judith avoided her eyes. "No. But I mustn't say anything. I promised I wouldn't. He'll tell you when he's ready."

Presently the four were seated with their food — the greens, a few potatoes sliced and fried, and the entree, a stringy saddle of lamb Madeline had purchased at one of the small farmers' markets springing up on the outskirts of the city. "Orry will pour claret, or water, if you prefer that. I refuse to serve that vile concoction of ground peanuts they're selling as coffee."

"They're selling a great many strange things," Judith said. "Pokeberry juice for writing ink —" She stopped as Cooper thrust his glass toward his brother. Orry poured it half full of claret, but Cooper didn't draw his hand back. The goblet sparkled in the candlelight. Orry cleared his throat and filled it full.

"Some —" Cooper gulped half of the claret, dribbling dark drops on his already-stained shirt bosom "— some in this town drink real coffee and write with real ink. Some can pay for those things." He stared at his brother. "Our sister, for one."

"Is that right?" Madeline said with forced lightness. Cooper's stare was sullen, his speech slurred. Something ugly was in the air.

"I'll grant you Ashton lives in a fine house," Orry said. "And on the few occasions when I've seen her on the street, she's always been handsomely dressed — Worth of Paris or something equivalent. I can't imagine how she affords it on Huntoon's salary. Most clerks in the government make a pittance."

Cooper drew a long, raspy breath. Judith clenched her hands beneath the table. The shout of a water seller reached them through open front windows, then the creak of his wagon. "I can tell you how they afford luxuries, Orry. They're profiteers."

Madeline's mouth formed a little o. Orry put down the fork with greens. "That's a serious accusation."

"I was on her ship, God damn it!"

"Dear," Judith began, "perhaps we'd better —"

"It's time they knew."

"What ship do you mean?" Orry said. "The blockade-runner that went down? The one you —?"

"Yes, I mean Water Witch. Ashton and her husband owned a substantial interest in it. The owners issued standing orders for the skipper to run the blockade at all hazards. We did, and I lost my son."

He shoved back hair hanging over his forehead, and in the midst of all the shocks, Madeline noticed for the first time that Cooper was going gray. "For Christ's sake, Orry, either pour the wine or pass it here."

Noticeably upset, Orry filled Cooper's glass again. "Who else knows about Ashton and James?"

"The other owners, I suppose. I never heard their names. The only man on the ship who seemed privy to the information was the skipper, Ballantyne, and he went down like —" Cooper's face wrenched. The memory was too hard to articulate.

He drank. Stared at the flame of the candle in front of him. "I'd like to kill her," he said, bringing the empty goblet down so hard the stem snapped.

Everyone stared. "Excuse me," Cooper said, bolting from his chair. It fell backward with a crash. He flung out his hand to prevent a collision with the wall and lurched to the parlor. He managed to reach the settee before he passed out.

They heard a rain shower starting. A sudden breeze set the candle flames in motion. Judith again apologized for Cooper's behavior. Stricken, Orry said apology was unnecessary. "But I hope he didn't mean that last remark."

"I'm sure he didn't. The loss of Judah was grievous for both of us, but it seems to have done special damage to him."

Orry sighed. "All his life he's expected the world to be better than it is. People with that kind of idealism get hurt worst of all. I hope he won't do anything rash, Judith. Ashton has already failed at the one thing she wanted most in Richmond — to belong to the best circles. I expect punishment for the profiteering will find her eventually. If he tries to judge and sentence her" — he glanced over his shoulder at the sad scarecrow figure on the settee — "he'll only harm himself."

The wind gusted, lifting the parlor curtains, stirring the gray-streaked hair on Cooper's forehead. Judith said, "I try to tell him that. It does no good. He's drinking heavily, as you surely noticed. I fear what he might do sometime when he's had too much."

Softly said, the words put dread into Orry. The three sat in silence, listening to the rain come down on the roof and the ruins of the evening.

Copies of the Richmond Enquirer reached the Winder Building every week. One issue, which George read with mingled curiosity and sadness, contained several long articles describing Jackson's funeral. On an inside page was a list of high-ranking military officers who had marched in the procession. Among the names he discovered that of his best friend.

"There it is — Colonel Orry Main," he said to Constance, showing her the paper that night. "He's listed with others from the War Department."

"Does that mean he's in Richmond?"

"I assume so. Whatever he's doing, I'm sure it's more important than interviewing lunatics and reading the fine print in contracts."

With a touch of regret, she said, "Your guilt's getting the best of you again."

He folded the paper. "Yes, it is. Daily."

Homer stepped into the dining room, pausing beside the open-fronted cabinet that contained Ashton's fine blue jasperware. Water Witch had brought the set from Britain on her penultimate voyage.

Huntoon took off his spectacles. "Mr. Main? Which one? Orry?"

As always, it was Ashton to whom the elderly Negro addressed the reply. "No. The other one."

"Cooper? Why, James, I had no idea he was in Richmond."

Thunder boomed in the northwest; bluish light glittered throughout the downstairs. It was June, muggy, the town astir with rumors of an impending invasion of the North by General Lee.

"He is here, he is very definitely here," said a thick voice from the shadows outside the dining room. Into the doorway stepped a frightening figure — Cooper, right enough, but aged since Ashton had last seen him. Horribly aged and gray. His cheeks had a waxy pallor, and his whiskey stench rolled over the table like a wave, submerging the aroma of the bowl of fresh flowers in the center. "He's here and anxious to see how his dear sister and her husband are enjoying their newfound wealth."

"Cooper dear —" Ashton began, sensing danger, trying to turn it aside with a treacly smile. Cooper refused to let her say more.

"Very fine house you have. Splendid furnishings. Treasury salaries must be larger than those in the Navy Department. Must be enormous."

Trembling, Huntoon clutched the arms of his chair. With a laconic hand, Cooper reached toward the open shelves. Ashton's fist clenched when he plucked out one of the delicately shaded blue plates.

"Lovely stuff, this. Surely you didn't buy it locally. Did it come in on a blockade-runner? In place of guns and ammunition for the army, perhaps —?"

He threw the plate down with great force. Splinters of the white Greek figure embossed in the center rebounded into the light. One struck the back of Huntoon's hand. He muttered a protest no one heard.

Ashton said, "Brother dear, I am at a loss to explain your visit or your churlish behavior. Furthermore, while you're as disagreeable as you ever were, I am astounded to hear what sounds like patriotic maundering. You used to scorn James when he gave speeches in support of secession or states' rights. But here you are, sounding like the hottest partisan of Mr. Davis."

She forced a smile, hoping to hide the fear inside. She didn't know this man. She was in the presence of a lunatic whose intentions she could not guess. Without reacting, she saw Homer edging toward Cooper behind his right shoulder. Good.

Ashton placed her elbows on the table and cushioned her chin on her hands. Her smile became a sneer. "When did this remarkable transformation to patriot occur, may I ask?"

"It occurred," Cooper said above the muttering storm, "shortly after my son drowned."

Ashton's control melted into astonishment. "Judah — drowned? Oh, Cooper, how perfectly —"

"We were aboard Water Witch. Nearing Wilmington. The moon was out, the Union blockading squadron present in force. I pleaded with Captain Ballantyne not to risk the run, but he insisted. The owners had issued orders. Maximum risk for maximum earnings."

Ashton's hand fell forward. Her skin felt as if it were frozen.

"You know the rest, Ashton. My son was sacrificed to your intense devotion to the cause —"

"Stop him, Homer," she screamed as Cooper moved. Huntoon started to rise from his chair. Cooper struck the side of his head and knocked his glasses off.

Homer seized Cooper from behind and yelled for help. Using an elbow, Cooper punched him in the stomach, breaking his hold, shouting over a thunderclap, "The cause of profit. Your own fucking, filthy greed." He laid hands on the display cabinet and pulled.

The delicate blue plates and cups and saucers and bowls began to slide. Ashton screamed again as the Wedgwood pieces dropped, Greek heads exploding, Greek arms and legs breaking. Lightning shimmered. The cabinet fell onto the dining table, where its weight proved too much. The table legs gave way at Huntoon's end. He shrieked as broken jasperware and candle holders and the flower bowl rushed toward him.

The flowers spilled onto his waistcoat. The water soaked his trousers as he kicked and pushed, sliding the chair away, out of danger, while two housemen joined Homer and wrestled the cursing, ranting Cooper to the front door. There they flung him into the rain.

Ashton heard the door slam and said the first thing that came to mind. "What if he tells what he knows?"

"What if he does?" Huntoon snarled. He picked blossoms from his wet crotch. "There was no law against what we did. And we're out of the trade now."

"Did you see how white his hair's gotten? I think he's gone mad."

"He's certainly dangerous," Huntoon said. "We must buy pistols tomorrow in case — in case —"

He couldn't finish the sentence. Ashton surveyed the Wedgwood all over the floor. One cup had survived unbroken. She wanted to weep with rage. Lightning flashed, thunder shook the wet windows, and her mouth set.

"Yes, pistols," she agreed. "For each of us."

81

At seven that same night, Thursday, in the first week of June, Bent reported to Colonel Baker's office as ordered. Baker wasn't there. Another detective said he had gone to Old Capitol Prison to conduct one of his interrogations of an unfriendly journalist who was under detention. "He'll go from there to his hour of pistol practice. He wouldn't let a day pass without that."

Bent settled down to wait, soothing his nerves with one of several apples bought from a street vendor. After two bites, he looked again at a small silver badge pinned to the reverse of his lapel. Baker had awarded the badge, which bore the embossed words national detective bureau, after Bent's return from Richmond. His success there had earned him the token of official acceptance into Baker's organization. The colonel had been especially pleased by the return of the money paid to the albino. Bent stated that he had rendered the spy harmless because he was no longer useful, but he was vague about details and didn't specifically say he had killed him. Baker asked no questions.

Despite the acceptance that the badge signified, Bent had been feeling bad for the past few days. He had caught the moods of the town — apprehension, despondency. Hooker's fighting spirit had proved as substantial as the contents of a glass of water. And while Lee had lost a mighty ally when Jackson fell, he had won not only a splendid victory at Chancellorsville but an ominous supremacy over the minds of many Northerners in and out of the army. There were now daily rumors and alarms out of Virginia. Lee was moving again, but in which direction, no one knew.

Bent was masticating his third apple when Baker reined up outside a window overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. An orderly took Baker's horse, an unruly bay stallion the colonel had nick­named Slasher. Humming cheerily, Baker strode into the office. He handed Bent a crudely printed broadside. "You may find a chuckle or two in that, Dayton." Fancy type on the front announced that this was the menu for the Hotel de Vicksburg. When he opened the piece, he understood the joke. The broadside contained the menu of a city under siege.

"Very amusing," Bent said because Baker expected it. "Where did this come from, sir?"

"O'Dell brought it back from Richmond last night. He saw large masses of troops moving west of Fredericksburg, by the way. There's truth in those rumors. Lee's up to something — ah!" Among some mail, he found a piece that he immediately tucked in his pocket. "A letter from Jennie." Baker's wife was living with her parents in Philadelphia for the duration.

The man Baker had mentioned, Fatty O'Dell, was another agent. "I didn't realize we had someone else on a mission down there."

"Yes," Baker replied, but didn't elaborate. That was his style. Only he knew all the operatives and what each was doing.

Baker leaned back and clasped hands behind his head. "That broadside is enlightening about attitudes toward Jeff Davis. It helps corroborate something Fatty got wind of from third parties. A Richmond speculator named Powell is agitating very openly against Davis."

Bent picked a bit of apple from his lip. "That sort of thing's been going on for a year or more, hasn't it?"

"Absolutely right. This time, however, there's an unusual wrinkle. Fatty said Mr. Powell's pronouncements include talk of forming an independent Confederate state at some unspecified location." "God above — that is new."

"I wish you would not take the Lord's name in vain. I like it as little as I liked those filthy yellow-backed books I confiscated and burned some months ago."

"Sorry, Colonel," Bent said hastily. "The information surprised me, that's all. What's the speculator's name again?" "Lamar Powell."

"I never heard it mentioned when I was in Richmond. Nor any new Confederacy, for that matter."

"It may be nothing more than street gossip. If they impeached Davis, it would help our cause. It would help even more if they strung him up. And I'd be the first to applaud. But it's probably a vain hope."

He opened a lower desk drawer and produced one of the folders that contained personal dossiers. Inscribed on the front in a beautiful flowing hand was the name Randolph.

Baker passed the folder across the desk. Bent opened it and discovered several pages of notes in a variety of handwritings, plus a number of news clippings. One of the dispatches carried the words By Our Capitol Correspondent Mr. Eamon Randolph.

He closed the folder and waited. When Baker began to speak, he did so in a tone that took Bent into his confidence. Bent's gloom lifted.

"Mr. Randolph, as you'll discover when you read those scurrilous articles, is not a partisan of those for whom we work. Nor is he fond of Senator Wade, Congressman Stevens, or their rigorous program for rehabilitating our Southern brethren after the war. You will find Mr. Randolph's paper, the Cincinnati Globe, to be strongly antiadministration and pro-Democratic. Further, only the peace wing of that party earns its admiration. Randolph doesn't go so far as some in the same camp — no advocacy of removal of Mr. Lincoln by violent means, nothing like that. But he definitely favors noninterference with slavery even after the South capitulates. We cannot tolerate the promulgation of that view in a period of crisis. I have been urged by certain administration officials to — shall we say —" Baker stroked his luxuriant beard "— chastise him. Silence him briefly, not only to remove an irritant but to warn his paper, and others of the same persuasion, to have a care lest the same fate befall them. Your work in Richmond impressed me, Dayton. That's why I've chosen you to handle the case."

82

The three contract surgeons in filthy uniforms sat around a rickety table. Their hands were filthy too, stained with dirt and blood, as they were whenever the surgeons examined wounds.

One of the three picked his nose. The second surreptitiously rubbed his groin, an oafish smile spreading over his face. The third doctor drained a bottle of alcohol meant for the wounded. One of these, limping pitifully, was shown in by an orderly, who acted like a mental deficient.

"What have we here?" said the surgeon who had been swilling the alcohol; apparently he was the chief.

"I'm hurt, sir," said the enlisted man. "Can I go home?"

"Not so fast! We must conduct an examination. Gentlemen? If you please."

The surgeons surrounded the soldier, poked, probed, conferred in whispers. The chief stated the consensus: "I'm sorry, but your arms must be amputated."

"Oh." The patient's face fell. But after a moment, he grinned. "Then can I have a furlough?"

"Definitely not," said the surgeon who had been rubbing his privates. "That left leg must come off, too."

"Oh." This time it was a groan. The patient again tried to smile. "But certainly I can have a furlough after that."

"By no means," said the nose picker. "When you get well you can drive an ambulance."

Roars of laughter.

"Gentlemen — another consultation," cried the chief, and back into a huddle they went. It broke up quickly. The chief said, "We have decided one last procedure is necessary. We must amputate your head."

The patient strove to see the bright side. "Well, after that I know I'll be entitled to a furlough."

"Absolutely not," said the chief. "We are so short of men, your body must be set up in the breastworks to fool the enemy."

Out of the darkness, massed voices roared again. Seated cross-legged on trampled grass, Charles laughed so hard tears ran from his eyes. On the tiny plank stage lit by lanterns and torches, the soldier playing the patient shrieked and ran in circles while the demented surgeons pursued him with awls, chisels, and saws. Finally they chased him behind a rear curtain rigged from a blanket.

Applause, yelps, and whistling acknowledged the end of the program, which had lasted about forty minutes. All the performers — singers, a banjo player, a fiddler, one of Beverly Robertson's troopers who juggled bottles, and a monologist portraying Commissary General Northrop explaining the healthful benefits of the latest reduction in the meat ration — returned for their bows. Then came the actors from the skit, who got even louder applause. Some anonymous scribe in the Stonewall Brigade had written The Medical Board, and it had become a favorite on camp programs.

Shadow masses stood and separated. Charles rubbed his stiff back. The mild June evening and the campfires shining in the fields away toward Culpeper Court House brought images of Barclay's Farm to mind. Barclay's Farm and Gus.

Ab was thinking of less pleasant subjects. "Got to find me some Day and Martin to shine my boots. Damn if I ever thought when I joined the scouts that I'd have to get so fancied up."

"You know Stuart," Charles said with a resigned shrug.

"On some occasions I wish I didn't. This is one. Goddamn if I want to go paradin' for the ladies on Saturday."

The two men crossed the railroad tracks, retrieved their horses from the temporary corral, and started for the field where they had pitched their tents with Calbraith Butler's regiment. A massive movement of forces was under way below the Rappahannock; Ewell and Longstreet were already at Culpeper with infantry.

Charles knew nothing of the army's destination, but lately there had been much talk of a second invasion of the North.

Somewhere above the river there were certain to be Yanks. Yanks who would want to know the whereabouts of Lee's army. So far as Charles could tell, no one was worried about the Yankee presence or its potential threat. Stuart had settled down at Culpeper with more horsemen than he had had in a long time — close to ten thousand. Some of those were on picket duty at the Rappahannock fords, but most were being allowed time to prepare for Stuart's grand review for invited guests on Saturday. Many women would be coming by rail and carriage from Richmond, as well as from the nearer towns. Charles wished he'd had time to invite Gus.

The review was certainly typical of Stuart, but it struck Charles as inappropriate when mass movement of the army was under way, and that army was not in the best of condition. These days he saw many sore, swollen backs among the horses; sixteen or seventeen hours a day was too long for an animal to be saddled. In Robertson's brigade he had seen horses frantically chewing each other's manes and tails — starving even in the season of growth. In the brigade of Old Grumble Jones, the slovenly general whose liking for blue jeans and hickory shirts earned him the dubious honor of being called the Zach Taylor of the Confederacy, Charles had only yesterday spied half a dozen men riding mules. The best replacements they could find, he supposed.

Sweet clover scented the June night. The fires shone along the whole southern horizon. In camp, a few men were resting, writing letters, or playing cards with decks in which the court cards were portraits of generals and politicians. Mr. Davis, popular in the first year of the war, was seldom seen in the newer decks.

Most of the troopers had no time for recreation, however. They were sewing and polishing because Stuart had ordered every man to find or fix up a good uniform for the review. Much as Charles disliked the whole idea, he intended to look as presentable as possible and even unpack the Solingen sword. If Jeb wanted a show, he would do his best to contribute.

Brandy Station had been named for an old stagecoach stop famous for apple brandy served to travelers; the apples grew in orchards close by. Now the Orange & Alexandria line served the place. On Saturday the special trains started rolling in early, the cars packed with politicians and gaily dressed ladies, most of whom would attend both the review and General Stuart's ball at Culpeper that night.

In open meadows near long and relatively flat Fleetwood Hill, just above the village crossroads, Stuart's cavalry performed for the visitors. Columns of horse charged with drawn sabers. Artillery batteries raced, wheeled, loaded, and fired demonstration rounds. Flags and music and the warm smell of summer moved in the breeze that brushed over vistas of tasseled corn and flourishing wheat. Charles and the rest of Hampton's scouts took their turn galloping past the guests and reviewing officers gathered along the rail line. Speeding by, Charles saw the black plume on Stuart's hat dip and flutter; the general had bobbed his head when he recognized his old West Point acquaintance.

After the long and tiring review, Charles returned to his encampment, anticipating a good meal and a sound sleep. Tomorrow he had to scout the river near Kelly's Ford. He was putting up Sport when an orderly appeared.

"Captain Main? General Fitzhugh Lee presents his compliments and requests the captain's company at his headquarters tent this evening. Supper will be served before the ball, which the general may not attend."

"Why not?"

"The general has been sick, sir. Do you know the location of his headquarters?"

"Oak Shade Church?"

"That's correct, sir. May General Lee expect you?"

"I don't plan to go to the ball either. Tell Fitz — the general I accept with pleasure."

That's a damn lie, he thought as the orderly left. Everyone knew Fitz was Stuart's favorite and still jealous of Hampton outranking him because of seniority of appointment. Hampton's partisans, in turn, sneered at Fitz, saying he had risen rapidly solely because he was Old Bob's nephew. Might be something to it. Two of the five brigades of horse were led by Lees — Fitz and the general's son, Rooney.

Uncomfortable about the invitation, Charles spent the next couple of hours cleaning his uniform. At least he had the gift sword to smarten his appearance. Presently he mounted Sport and rode down a lane flanked by fields where bees hummed in the white clover blossoms. The sun was sinking. Northward, the I heights of Fleetwood swam in blue haze.

Wish I could get out of here and see Gus, he thought. Something's mighty wrong about this campaign.

"Glad you accepted the invitation, Bison. I've been feeling I poorly of late. Rheumatism. I need some good company."

Fitz did indeed look pale and unhealthy. His beard was big and bushy as ever, his uniform immaculate, but he lacked his customary vigor; he talked and moved lethargically.

He expressed surprise that his old friend didn't intend to enjoy the company of the ladies gathering at Culpeper. To which Charles replied, "I have a lady of my own now. I'd have invited her, but I couldn't get a message to her soon enough."

"Is it a serious affair of the heart? Going to settle down when this muss is over?"

"Could be, General. I've been thinking about it."

"Let's dispense with general and captain for one evening," Fitz said. He gestured his friend to a camp chair. "The old names will do."

Charles smiled and relaxed. "All right."

The fireball of the sun rested on the low hills in the west. The open tent was breezy and comfortable. One of Fitz's officers joined them for whiskey served by a Negro body servant. Colonel Tom Rosser, a handsome young Texan, had been ready to graduate in the class of May '61 when he resigned to fight for the South. The three cavalrymen chatted easily for fifteen minutes. Rosser twice mentioned a cadet in the later, June, class of '61 who was with the Union.

"Name's George Custer. He's a lieutenant. Aide to Pleasonton. I used to consider him a friend, but I reckon I can't any longer."

Thinking of friendships and Hampton, Charles cast an oblique glance at the general. Why had Fitz invited him? For the reason he gave — company? Or another?

On the subject of Custer, Fitz said, "I hear they call him Crazy Curly."

"Why's that?" Charles asked.

Rosser laughed. "You'd know if you saw him. In fact, you'd recognize him instantly. Hair down to here —" He tapped his shoulder. "Wears a big scarlet scarf around his neck — looks like a damn circus rider gone mad." Softly, more reflectively, he added, "He doesn't lack courage, though."

"I've also heard he doesn't lack for ambition," Fitz remarked. "On the peninsula they called him Pleasonton's Pet."

In the universal fashion of cavalrymen, the three officers fell to discussing the strong and weak points of other opponents. Pleasonton got poor marks, but Fitz and Rosser were impressed by the exploits of a heretofore unknown colonel, Grierson, of Illinois. In late April, to divert attention from Grant at Vicksburg, Grierson had led seventeen hundred horse on a daring ride from LaGrange, Tennessee, to Baton Rouge, tearing up railroad tracks and killing and imprisoning Confederate soldiers along the way.

"Six hundred miles in slightly more than two weeks," Rosser grumbled. "I'd say they've been reading our book."

As the evening went on, Charles found himself growing depressed. He said little and watched his friend Fitz with a feeling amounting to envy. For a young man, Fitz had indeed come a long way — and not solely because of family connections. He had a reputation as a good officer, and he had certainly changed his style since Academy days, when he delighted in thumbing his nose at the rules.

Presently Rosser stood up, putting on his dress hat. "I must go. Pleasure to meet you, Captain Main. Heard good things about you. Hope we'll see you again."

Rosser's final remark seemed to pass some coded message to Fitz. As the general's Negro put tin plates of beef and spoon bread before them, Fitz said, "You're wasting your time with old Hampton, you know. I lost a colonel to gangrene a week ago. His regiment's yours if you want it."

Caught short, Charles stammered, "Fitz, that — well, that's very flattering."

"The devil with that. There are too many problems in this war, right down to and including my rheumatism, for me to squander a minute on flattery. You're a fine cavalryman, an able leader, and if I may say so, you're serving with a commander who is not all he should be — now wait. Don't bristle."

"But I've been with General Hampton for two years. I signed on with him when he raised his legion in Columbia. He has first claim on my loyalty." "Rightly so. However —"

"He's a competent officer and a brave one."

"No one doubts Wade Hampton's courage. But the man is — well — not young. And on occasion he has displayed a certain timidity."

"Fitz, with all due respect, please don't say any more. You're my friend, but Hampton is the best officer I've ever served under."

Fitz cooled noticeably. "Do you include General Stuart in that statement?"

"I'd sooner not elaborate, except on one point. What some call timidity, others call prudence — or wisdom. Hampton concentrates his forces before he attacks! He wants a victory, not casualties or headlines."

Fitz practically bit the spoon bread off his fork. "Amos? Get in here with the whiskey." As the servant poured, Fitz eyed his visitor with disappointment and annoyance. "Your loyalty may be commendable, Charles, but I still insist you're wasting your talents." No more nickname; the reunion had soured. "Most every officer who graduated from West Point when we did is a colonel or a major — at minimum."

That hurt. Charles took a breath. "For what it's worth, I was in the promotion line two years ago. I made some mistakes."

"I know all about what you term your mistakes. They're not as serious as you may imagine. Grumble Jones and Beverly Robertson are disciplinarians, too. Both lost elections to colonel because of it. But new commands were found for —"

"Fitz," he interrupted, "haven't I made myself clear? What I'm doing suits me. I don't want or need a new command."

Silence fell in the tent. Outside, the black servant could be heard pottering at his camp stove. "I'm sorry you feel that way, Charles. If you won't go where you can be most useful, why fight for the South at all?"

The faint scorn angered Charles. "But I'm not fighting for the South if that means slavery or a separate country. I'm fighting for the place where I live. My land. My home. That's why most of the men joined up. Sometimes I wonder if Mr. Davis understands that."

Fitz shrugged and began to eat quickly. "Sorry to hurry you, but I must make an attempt to get to the ball. By the way, General Lee has announced himself available on Monday. General Stuart has ordered a review."

"Another one? What's he thinking of? Today's review tired the horses and put the men in bad temper. We should be watching for Yankees north of the river, not expending more energy on military foppery."

Fitz cleared his throat. "Let us agree those remarks were never uttered. Thank you for coming, Charles. I'm afraid you will have to excuse me now."

The evening taught Charles a gloomy lesson. He and Fitz could no longer be friends. They were divided by rank, by opinion, and by all the political pulling and hauling of command. Next day an incident near Kelly's Ford deepened his gloom. Scouting north­east of the Rappahannock, beyond the picket outposts, he and Ab stopped at a small farm to water their horses and refill their canteens. The householder, a skinny old man, struck up a conversation. With a bewildered air, he told them that his two elderly slaves, husband and wife, had run off the day before yesterday.

"Couldn't get over it. Still can't. They was always so nice. Smiling, biddable darkies — been that way ever since I bought 'em six years ago."

"We had a lot of that in South Carolina," Charles said. "Folks call it puttin' on ol' massa."

"Can't understand it," the farmer said, staring right through him. "I fed 'em. Didn't whip 'em but three or four times. I fixed up presents for 'em ever' Christmas — cakes, little jams and jellies, things like that —"

"Come on, Ab," Charles said wearily, while the old man continued to condemn the ingratitude. Charles mounted, and scratched the inside of his left leg. His case of camp itch was worsening. At least the rash wasn't as bad as the clap that several scouts had caught from camp followers who dignified themselves with the title laundress.

Bound back toward Brandy Station, Charles pictured the foolish farmer with dismay, then disgust. More and more lately, he saw the peculiar institution for what it was and always had been. The reality of it — from the point of view of those enslaved, anyway — could be nothing less than fear and rage behind a deceptive mask. The kind of mask that had to be worn if the slave meant to survive.

Gus would understand his feelings about slavery, though he dared not express them to Ab or anyone else with whom he served. He was beginning to think that whereas he was fighting for his home, the politicians in charge of things were fighting for slogans, rhetoric, a "cause." A wrong one, at that.

No ladies attended the review on Monday; it was a less pleasant event for that reason. Less pleasant, too, because some idiot invited John Hood, and he brought his entire infantry division. The cavlarymen growled threats of what they would do if a foot soldier dared to taunt them with the familiar, "Mister, where's your mule?"

As Charles feared, the review exhausted everyone — and they were supposed to be ready to advance Tuesday morning. He and Ab rode directly from the review field, where they had glimpsed Bob Lee, handsome as ever but graying rapidly, to Hampton's encampment. Charles's sleep was restless, and he woke abruptly, jerking his head off the saddle and rolling out of his blanket to bugling and the drummers pounding out the long roll.

It was just daybreak. The camp was in turmoil. Ab ran up, swirling the fog that had settled during the night. He carried their coffeepot in such a way that Charles knew he hadn't had a chance to heat it.

"Off your ass, Charlie. General Stuart paid too damn much attention to the ladies an' not enough to the bluebellies. A whole cavalry division's across the river at Beverly Ford."

"Whose?"

"They say it's Buford's. He's got infantry an' God knows what else. They may be crossin' at Kelly's, too. Nobody's sure."

The bugler sounded boots and saddles with several sour notes. "They's thousands of 'em," Ab said, dropping the enameled pot. "They come out of the fog an' took the pickets clean by surprise. We're s'posed to go along with Butler to scout an' guard the rear."

Whips cracked. Great ships in a sea of soft gray mist, Stuart's headquarters wagons loomed at the edge of the camp, bound for safety at Culpeper. Damn, Charles thought. Caught napping. But it wouldn't have happened with Hampton in charge. He grabbed his shotgun and blanket, flung his saddle on his other shoulder, and ran like hell after Ab Woolner.

Charles knew Ab must have had a hard night. First he yelled at some hospital rats scurrying to the surgeons with imaginary complaints, a familiar sight whenever cannonading began. Ab cursed a blue storm when he saw two perfectly good boots lying in weeds. Unshod men, like unshod horses, couldn't fight and weren't expected to — and some fucking yellow dog, as Ab characterized him, had shed his boots to escape what looked like a very bad day.

Riding hard in thinning fog, Charles and Ab soon pulled away from the detachment of Butler's sent to screen the southern approaches to Fleetwood Hill, where Stuart's headquarters on high ground was the obvious target of enemy artillery banging away from the southeast. In a small grove of pines above Stevensburg, Charles reined in suddenly. Beyond the trees, half a dozen Union troopers were approaching on a dirt track beside a field of ripening wheat. Alarmingly, Charles saw no sign of the famous mountains of gear the Southern cavalry scornfully termed "Yankee fortifications." The enemy riders carried weapons, nothing else.

"Let's dodge around them, Ab. We'll get to Stevensburg faster."

Haggard, not to say hostile, Ab stared at him. "Let's kill us some Yanks. Then we'll get to Stevensburg for sure."

"Listen, we're only supposed to take a look and see whether —"

"What's wrong with you, Charlie? Lost your nerve 'cause of that gal?"

"You son of a bitch —"

But Ab was already galloping from the pines, double-barrel shotgun booming.

Any Southerner caught with one of those weapons was subject to hanging, the Yankees said. But the two Ab blew from their saddles would never report him. Dry-mouthed, Charles kneed Sport forward.

Bullets buzzed by. As soon as he got in range he gave the Yanks both barrels. That disposed of four. The last two wheeled right and plunged into the wheat to escape. Ab pounded toward Stevensburg without a backward glance. Charles hated his friend because he had stated the truth.

On sunny Fleetwood Hill that afternoon, Jeb Stuart's cavalry waged a new kind of war. They fought Union troopers who swung sabers and handled their mounts as expertly as any Southern boy raised to hunt and spear the hanging rings on lance point. The Yanks drove Stuart off the hill, and by the time Charles and Ab returned from Stevensburg, every available trooper was being pressed into the fight to regain it. Hampton was back from Beverly Ford, where he had been rushed for the unsuccessful attempt to stop Buford. Two more divisions of Union horse had forced Kelly's. No wonder; the untalented Robertson commanded that sector.

Stevensburg, too, had been a disaster. Near there, Frank Hampton had been sabered, then shot to death. Calbraith Butler held his position against the charging Yankees, but at the cost of having a flying shell fragment strike his right foot, nearly blowing it off. The fine troopers of the Fourth Virginia had been routed — a disastrous, confused, angry gallop to the rear — and Charles and Ab had been caught in that for a time.

At Fleetwood, the squadrons rallied, and Stuart shouted, "Give them the saber, boys!" and the buglers blew Trot and Gallop and finally Charge. Up the slopes they went, in sunshine that quickly dimmed behind smoke and dust.

Though Charles couldn't see him, he knew Ab was riding somewhere close by. They had exchanged no words except essential ones since the incident in the pine grove. Charles knew his friend had blurted the accusation because he was tired and tense. But that made it no less telling.

Sport galloped as he always did when riding to the sound of guns — head up, alert and eager. Charles could feel the gray's nervousness — it was his own. Horse and rider fused, centaurlike, in a way old cavalry hands took for granted after they had ridden one animal a long time. Old legion sword raised, Charles screamed the rebel yell, along with thousands around him.

Then they were onto the heights of Fleetwood. Artillery wheeling. Sabers ringing. Pistols flashing. Horses and men tangling. Formations dissolving. Charles fought with a fury he'd never had before. It was necessary to redeem himself in Ab's eyes. It was necessary because the enemy was a new kind of enemy.

Blood drops accumulated in his beard. He gave up the sword for the shotgun, the shotgun for the revolver, then went back to the weapon of last resort when he had no time to reload.

He came upon a dismounted man in gray, reached down to help him. The man struck at him with a rammer staff, nearly took his head off before Charles backed away and thrust his sword into the Yank's chest. Thick dust was graying many a blue uniform that afternoon. A man could die being a moment late to discern the color.

As most battles did, the one for the contested hilltop lost shape and organization and soon swirled into many small, ugly skirmishes. The rebels regained the heights, lost them, rallied to take them again. Riding up a second time, Charles nearly slammed into a knot of Union troopers. He raised his sword in time to parry that of a hot-eyed officer with flowing hair and a red scarf knotted at his throat.

Pushing, pushing down, his sword against Charles's, their horses neighing and shoving, the lieutenant sneered, "Your servant, Reb —"

"I'm not yours." Charles spat in the Yank's face to gain advantage, and would have stabbed him through had not the officer's horse stumbled. Circus rider gone mad, said a voice in his memory as the Yank's eyes locked with his for an instant.

The horse fell; the Yank disappeared. Neither man would forget the other.

"Look sharp, Charlie," Ab shouted above the cannonading, the sabers clashing and sparking, the wounded crying out. Through dust clouds, Charles had a blurry view of Ab pointing behind him. He twisted, saw a Yank sergeant raise a huge pistol.

Ab closed in on the Yank. Using his empty revolver as a club, he chopped at the sergeant's arm. The sergeant changed his aim and shot Ab in the chest at a range of two feet.

"Ab!" A scream did no good. Ab was already gone, sliding sideways, his eyes open but no longer comprehending who or where he was — had been — as he sank from sight. The sergeant vanished in the melee.

Teeth clenched, Charles parried a cut from a Union trooper ramming his horse into Sport. Clang — the trooper hit a second time. Sparks hissed and leaped where metal edges met.

The trooper fought his bucking horse. He was a redhead, scarcely twenty, with a foolish grin showing under his big red mustaches.

"Lost your nerve?" Ab died thinking that. Saved me in spite of it —

"Got you this time," the redhead shouted. With a curse and a skillful dodge, Charles escaped the sword and put his own half­way through the boy's throat. He pulled it out with no remorse. Ab was right: Gus had softened and weakened him. It had taken this bloody June day to reveal the truth.

Driving on up to the heights of Fleetwood again, Charles suddenly realized a riderless horse was running beside Sport. It was Ab's mount, Cyclone. The animal kept on toward the sound of the guns. A bursting grape canister put out one of its eyes and opened a wound in its head. Like any brave, battle-trained war horse, Cyclone didn't neigh or bellow. Cyclone plowed on, slower but still moving forward in blood and silent pain until the wounds and the angle of the slope became too much, and it knelt down on its forelegs, wanting to continue but unable.

Charles sabered like a madman, weaving and feinting so fast, no one could touch him. Then another Yank charged; an ungainly man with the coaly hair and heavy-cream skin and blue eyes of the black Irish. The Yank wore corporal's chevrons and swore at Charles in a tongue he took to be Gaelic. Charles fought him nearly four minutes, blocking cuts, striking the Yank's left shoulder, parrying again, finally running him through the belly. He struck the man's ribs, yanked out the sword, and stabbed again.

The horses bucked and bumped each other. The Irishman swayed. Charles stabbed him a third time. What keeps him up? Why won't he fall? Why couldn't the hapless fools be dragged out of the saddle any more? Who had taught them to ride and fight so fiercely?

"Damned pernicious traitor," cried the trebly wounded Irishman, sounding exactly like a Maine cadet Charles had known at West Point. Were the Yanks also making troopers of lobstermen? God help the South if they could accomplish miracles like that.

A fourth stroke sent the corporal down, sliding sideways, unable to free himself from his right stirrup. An artillery limber rolled over his head and pushed it deep in soft brown loam. The man had been a devil; Charles shook with terror for more than a minute.

In the end the Southerners won and held the hill. But the Union reconnaissance in force had achieved its objective. Lee's army was found.

The Yanks achieved a second, unplanned, objective as well. They put a sword deep into the confidence of the Confederate cavalry. Charles knew it when he fought the Irishman with the Down East voice.

Pleasanton ordered a general retreat before dark. As the sun sank and the wind cleared Fleetwood of smoke and dust, legions of glistening bluebottle flies descended on the trampled red grass. The turkey buzzards sailed out of the twilight sky. Charles rode through the detritus of the charges and countercharges he could no longer count or remember separately. He searched until he found Ab's body, a hundred yards beyond the place where he had died. The carrion birds had already reached his face. Charles waved off the birds, but one rose with a piece of pink flesh in its beak. Charles pulled his Colt and killed the bird.

He buried Ab in some woods south of the railroad line, using a borrowed trenching tool. As he dug, he tried to find comfort in the memory of good times he and Ab had shared. There wasn't any.

He put Ab into the hole in the ground, then squatted at the edge, deliberating. A minute passed. He unbuttoned his shirt and lifted the thong over his head. He studied the handmade sack containing the book with the ball embedded in it. The book hadn't protected him, it had emasculated him. He threw the bag in the grave and began to shovel dirt to fill the hole.

He had seen General Hampton a number of times during the fighting, whirling that great Crusader's sword and galloping ahead of his men, as good cavalry generals always did. That night Charles saw him again. The loss of his brother made Hampton look like an old man.

Charles heard that the surgeons didn't think they could save Calbraith Butler's foot. So much had happened on Fleetwood that day — deaths and small heroisms, some noticed, some not. Charles had given up his only good friend and regained something that he had lost.

He rubbed Sport down and fed him and stroked his neck. "We made it through once more, old friend." The gray gave a small shake of his head; he was as spent as Charles.

Brandy Station made the reputation of the Union cavalry. It tarnished Stuart's. And, belatedly, it showed Charles the sharp accuracy of his fear about the relationship with Gus. Such an attachment was wrong in wartime. Wrong for her, wrong for him.

Charles had been observed in action during the assaults on Fleetwood. He received a commendation in general orders from Hampton and a brevet to major. What he got with no official action was a new direction for himself. He must think first of his duty. He loved Gus; that wouldn't change. But speculations about marriage, a future with her, had no place in a soldier's mind.

They dulled his concentration. Made him more vulnerable, less effective.

Gus would have to know how he felt. That was only fair. Questions of how and when to tell her, he was too tired to confront just now.

83

"Pack," Stanley said.

Sticky and ill-tempered from the heat of that Monday, June 15, Isabel retorted, "How dare you burst in on me in the middle of the day and start issuing orders."

He mopped his face, but the sweat popped out again. "All right, stay. I'm taking the boys to Lehigh Station via the four o'clock to Baltimore. I paid three times the normal price of the tickets, and I was lucky to be able to do it."

Uneasy all at once — he never spoke sharply to her — she moderated her tone. "What's provoked this, Stanley?"

"What the newsboys are shouting on every corner downtown. 'Washington in danger.' I've heard that Lee is in Hagerstown — I've heard he's in Pennsylvania — the rebs might have the town encircled by morning. I decided it's time for a vacation. If you don't care to go, that's your affair."

There had been rumors of military movement in Virginia, but nothing definite until now. Could she trust his assessment of the situation? She smelled whiskey on him; he had begun to drink heavily of late.

"How did you get permission to leave?"

"I told the secretary my sister was critically ill at home."

"Didn't he think the timing — well, a bit coincidental?"

"I'm sure he did. But the department's a madhouse. No one is accomplishing anything. And Stanton has good reason to keep me happy. I've carried his instructions to Baker. I know how dirty his hands are."

"Still, you could damage your career by —"

"Will you stop?" he shouted. "I'd rather be condemned as a live coward than perish as a patriot. You think I'm the only government official who's leaving? Hundreds have already gone. If you're coming with me, start packing. Otherwise keep still."

It struck her then that a remarkable, not altogether welcome change had taken place in her husband in recent months. Stanley's survival of the Cameron purge, his increasing eminence among the radicals, and his new-found wealth from Lashbrook's combined to create a confidence he had never possessed before. Occasionally he acted as if he were uncomfortable with it. A few weeks ago, after gulping four rum punches in an hour and a half, he had bent his head, exclaimed that he didn't deserve his success, and wept on her shoulder like a child.

But she mustn't be too harsh. She was the one who had created the new man. And she liked some aspects of that creation — the wealth, the power, the independence from his vile brother. If she meant to control him, she must change her own style, adopt subtler techniques.

He postured in the doorway, glaring. With feigned meekness and a downcast eye, she said, "I apologize, Stanley. You're wise to suggest we leave. I'll be ready in an hour."

That evening, after dark, a curtained van swung into Marble Alley. The driver reined the team in front of one of the neat residences lining the narrow thoroughfare between Pennsylvania and Missouri avenues. Despite the heat, all the windows of the house were draped, though they had been left open so that gay voices, male and female, and a harpist playing "Old Folks at Home" could be heard outside. The establishment, known as Mrs. Devore's Private Residence for Ladies, was doing a fine business despite the panic in the city.

Looking like a moving mound of lard in his white linen suit, Elkanah Bent climbed down from his seat beside the driver with much wheezing and grunting. Two other bureau men jumped out through the van's rear curtains. Bent signaled one into a passage leading to the back door of the house. The other followed him up the stone steps.

The detectives had debated the best way to take their quarry. They decided they couldn't snatch a noted journalist off the street in daylight. His boardinghouse had been considered, but Bent, who was in charge, finally came down in favor of the brothel. The man's presence there could be used to undermine his inevitable righteous protests.

He rang the bell. The shadow of a woman with high-piled hair fell on the frosted glass. "Good evening, gentlemen," said the elegant Mrs. Devore. "Come in, won't you?"

Smiling, Bent and his companion followed the middle-aged woman into a bright gaslit parlor packed with gowned whores and a jolly crowd of army and navy officers and civilians. One of the latter, a satanic sliver of a man, approached Bent. He had mustaches and a goatee in the style of the French emperor.

"Evening, Dayton."

"Evening, Brandt. Where?"

The man glanced at the ceiling. "Room 4. He's got two in bed tonight. Assorted colors."

Bent's heart was racing now, a combination of anxiety and a sensation close to arousal. Mrs. Devore walked over to speak to the harpist, and from there took notice of the bulge on Bent's right hip, something she had overlooked at the front door.

"You handle things down here, Brandt. Nobody leaves till I've got him." Brandt nodded. "Come on," Bent said to the other operative. They headed for the stars.

Alarm brightened Mrs. Devore's eyes. "Gentlemen, where are you —?"

"Keep quiet," Bent said, turning over his lapel to show his badge. "We're from the National Detective Bureau. We want one of your customers. Don't interfere." The satanic detective produced a pistol to insure compliance.

Lumbering upstairs, Bent threw back his coat and pulled his revolver, a mint-new LeMat .40-caliber, Belgian-made. Used mostly by the rebs, it was a potent gun.

In the upper hall, dim gaslights burned against royal purple wallpaper. Strong perfume could not quite mask the odor of a disinfectant. Bent's boots thumped the carpet as he passed closed doors; behind one, a woman groaned in rhythmic bursts. His groin quivered.

At Room 4, the detectives poised themselves on either side of the door. Bent twisted the knob with his left hand and plunged in. "Eamon Randolph?"

A middle-aged man with weak features lay naked in the canopied bed, a pretty black girl astride his loins, an older white woman behind his head, her breasts bobbing a few inches from his nose. "Who in hell are you?" the man exclaimed as the whores scrambled off.

Bent flipped his lapel again. "National Detective Bureau. I have an order for your detention signed by Colonel Lafayette Baker."

"Oh-oh," Randolph said, sitting up with a pugnacious expression. "Am I to be put away like Dennis Mahoney, then?" Mahoney, a Dubuque journalist who held opinions much like Randolph's, had been entertained in Old Capitol Prison for three months last year.

"Something like that," Bent said. The white whore groped for her wrapper. The young black girl, less frightened, watched from a spot near an open window. "The charge is disloyal practices."

"Of course it is," Randolph shot back in a high voice, which Bent instantly loathed. The reporter's receding chin and pop eyes created a false impression of weakness. Instead of cringing, he swung his legs off the bed almost jauntily.

"Ladies, please excuse me. I must dress and accompany these thugs. But you're free to go."

Shooting a look at the black whore, Bent brandished the LeMat. "Everyone stays. You're all getting in the van."

"Oh, God," the white woman said, covering her eyes. The black girl slipped into a gown of ivory-colored silk, then hunched forward, looking like a cornered cat.

"He's bluffing, girls," Randolph said. "Leave."

"Bad advice," Bent countered. "I call your attention to the nature of this weapon. It is what some call a grapeshot revolver. I have merely to move the hammer nose like this and the lower barrel will fire. It is loaded with shotgun pellets. I presume you appreciate what they would do to any face I chose for a target —?"

"You won't shoot," Randolph said, bouncing on his bare feet. "You government boys are all yellow dogs. As for that detention order you say you're carrying, toss it in the same fire in which you and Baker and Stanton burned your copies of the first amendment. Now stand aside and permit me to put on my —"

"Guard the door," Bent growled to his helper. He hauled the LeMat up and across to his left shoulder and slashed down. Unprepared, Randolph took the blow's full force on the right side of his face. His skin opened; blood ran and dripped into white hair on his chest.

The white woman sobbed melodramatically. There were foot­falls, oaths, questions from the corridor. Bent jabbed the LeMat into Randolph's bare belly, then struck his head again, and his neck twice after that. Eyes bulging, Randolph pitched onto the bed, bloodying the sheets as he coughed and clutched his middle.

Grabbing Bent's sleeve, the other detective said, "Hold off, Dayton. We don't want to kill him."

Bent jabbed his left arm backward, throwing off the detective's hand. "Shut up. I'm in charge here. As for you, you seditious scum —" He brained Randolph with the butt of his revolver. "You're going to be fresh fish for Old Capitol Prison. We have a special room reserved for — Watch her!"

As Randolph writhed, the detective leaped for the black girl. But she already had one bare leg over the sill and quickly vanished. Bent heard a sharp cry as she landed.

Fists beat on the door. The other detective stuck his head out the window. "Harkness! One's getting away."

"Let her go. She's just nigger trash," Bent said. He gave Randolph's shoulder a hard dig with the gun. "Get dressed."

Five minutes later, he and his helper dragged the groggy journalist downstairs. They threw his blanket-bundled body into the back of the van. "You hit him too hard," the other detective said.

"I told you to shut up." Bent was breathing loudly; he felt as if he had just had a woman. "I did the job. That's all Colonel Baker cares about."

Brandt climbed into the van with them. Detective Harkness sat beside the driver. "The coon got away, Dayton," he said. Bent grunted, calming down. On the floor, the prisoner made mewling noises. Bent began to fret; had he really hit him too hard?

Ridiculous to worry. Far worse took place during many of Baker's interrogations. He would be forgiven. He had done the job.

"Let's go or we'll have the metropolitan police on our necks," he yelled. The driver shook the reins; the van lurched forward.

Wonderingly, Brett reread the remarks of Mr. Harold Skimpole of Bleak House. The author of the novel, which she was enjoying, had toured America, had he not? If he had traveled in the South, however, and if he had found the slaves merely a form of decoration, his understanding had failed him in that instance. Dickens was supposed to be a liberal thinker. Surely he understood what the Negroes really were — human beings converted to parts of an aging, failing machine. Perhaps the views of the elfin, carefree Skimpole weren't really those of the author. She hoped they weren't.

Tired of reading and a little put off by her reaction to Mr. Skimpole, she laid the novel on top of Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, which Scipio Brown had given her. The book, the most famous of the many in the escaped-slave genre, had been published a good eighteen years ago. But she had never seen a copy of it, or any work like it, in South Carolina. She was alternating Dickens with Douglass, and in the latter finding not only vestigial guilt but sympathy for the narrator and anger over his travail.

Brett lay in her camisole. Hot yellow twilight filled her room this twenty-ninth of June. She was exhausted from helping Mrs. Czorna scrub floors all day. Coming back to Belvedere, she had deliberately avoided Stanley and Isabel and their obnoxious sons, who were playing lawn bowls on the grass between the two houses.

It still surprised her that she was reading — well — differently from before. It was another result of long and frequent conversations with Brown. She resented the way he constantly thrust the issue of Negro liberty at her, but she was beginning to grasp why he did; why he must. She was also beginning to feel herself in the grip of uncomfortable personal changes.

One of the maids tapped on her door, announcing supper in a half hour. She rose reluctantly, splashing water on her face and bare arms. The yellow sun, growing red, sank in the west.

She hated to see sunset come. Fears about Billy, and her need of him, affected her most at night. In the last two weeks, coincident with Stanley's unexpected and still-unexplained arrival, Brett's fears had sharpened because of the military threat to the state. For days now, government workers and private citizens had been packing papers and valuables and leaving Harrisburg by rail, horse, or shank's mare. Last Friday, Governor Curtain had issued a plea for sixty thousand men to muster arms and defend Pennsylvania for three months. On Saturday, the invasion had been confirmed. Terrified officials surrendered the town of York to Jubal Early, and Lee's host was sighted at Chambersburg. The whole lower border was afire with panic and rumor, and the smoke blew to every part of the state.

A few minutes later, dressed and sweltering, Brett stepped onto the front veranda. No air was stirring.

"Brett? Hallo! Important news here."

The thickened voice belonged to stuffy Stanley. In shirt sleeves, he brandished a newspaper on the porch of his own residence. She wanted to be rude but couldn't do it. The supper bell would ring soon; she supposed she could put up with him till then.

In the molten light spilling from the west, she walked next door, her shadow three times her size on the brass-colored lawn. "What is it?" she said from the foot of the steps. She smelted gin on him and noticed his glassy look. She could hear the twins cursing and quarreling somewhere upstairs.

Swaying from side to side, Stanley held out a copy of the Ledger-Union. "Papers got a telegraph dispatch from Washington. On Saturday" — his slurred speech injected a sh sound — "Pres'dent Lincoln relieved Gen'ral Hooker. Gen'ral Me's now in command."

"General who?"

"Me. M-e-a-d-e. Me."

Drunk, she thought. At the other house, she had overheard some servants' gossip about Stanley's new habit. She said to him, "I'm afraid I don't know either of those men or anything about their qualifications."

"Gen'ral Me is solid. 'F anyone can stop the reb invasion, he can." A nervous glance southward. "By God, wish we'd settle all this."

He struck his leg with the paper. The sudden movement threw him off balance. He prevented a fall by clutching one of the porch posts. For a moment, Brett pitied him. She said, "You don't wish it any more fervently than I."

He blinked, then pulled at his fine linen shirt where it stuck to his armpit. "Know you'd like to see Billy home. So would I. 'Course — family loyalty isn't the only reason I want this blasted war over. Have some political ones, too. Nothing pers'nal, now" — a smarmy grin — "but we Republicans are going to change ol’ Dixie Land forever."

She fanned herself with a handkerchief, irked again by his alcoholic smugness, yet curious. "Oh, you are? How is that?"

He put his finger over his lips to signal secrecy, then whispered, "Simple. 'Publican party will pretend to be the friend of all the freed niggers down there. Ignorant lot, niggers. 'F we give 'em the franchise, they'll vote any way we tell 'em. With the niggers voting, our party'll be the majority party before you can say that."

With a broad, almost violent gesture, he managed to snap his fingers. Once more his balance was threatened. Brett caught his arm and steadied him until he lowered his heavy rear into a bent-wood rocker, which sagged and creaked loudly.

"Stanley, that's a very cold-blooded scheme you described. You're not making it up?"

The smarmy smile broadened. "Would I lie to my own rel'tive? Plan's been drawn up a long time. By a certain — inner group." He rolled his eyes. "Better not say any more."

Outraged, Brett retorted, "You said quite enough. You're going to exploit the very people you purport to champion —?"

"Purport." He dragged it out, savoring the sound. "Purrr-port. Perrr-fect word." He snickered at his own humor. "Niggers wouldn't understand it, an' they won't understand that we're using 'em, either."

"That's utterly unscrupulous."

"No, jus' politics. I —"

"You'll excuse me," she said, her tolerance exhausted. "I must go to supper."

He started to say something else, but a sound much like the bleat of a billy goat came from an upstairs window. Someone had hit someone else. One of the twins screamed, "Get out of my things, you thieving shit."

Sickened by Stanley's drunken statements, Brett walked rapidly back to Belvedere. Though she considered Billy's older brother stupid and venal, she feared that the plan he had described could very well work. The blacks, except for a few of the well-educated ones like Scipio Brown, would logically put their trust in the Republicans. And if they were given the right to vote, they could indeed elect whomever their benefactors chose. Brett had no great liking for the Yankee President, but she couldn't imagine him being party to such a vile scheme.

Hot and angry, she ate supper alone. Maude, one of the serving girls, worked up nerve to say, "Everyone's talking of a great battle. Will they come this far to fight?"

"I don't know," Brett answered. "No one's sure of the whereabouts of either army."

In darkness reddened by the light of Hazard's, Brett walked into the hills, hoping to find cooler air. Where was Billy? She had had no letters for nearly three weeks. He was fighting for what he believed while Stanley cowered in Lehigh Station, sipping gin and boasting of his political plans.

She wandered higher, through the laurel that lay thick and dim on the heights. There was no wind to stir the deep green leaves, and in the hazy night the stars had a red cast.

By chance, her walk took her past the spot where a meteorite had struck one of the slopes. She and Billy had discovered the smoking crater only hours before his departure for Washington in the spring of '61. The crater had seemed to be a warning, and what it had warned of had come to pass. By the light of Hazard's furnaces and chimneys, she saw that the crater was shallower than before. New dirt had washed into its bottom, and the chunk of what Billy called star-iron was no longer visible.

The laurel grew all around the crater, to the very edge. But none grew within the crater itself. Curious, Brett leaned down for a pinch of loose earth from the crater well. It had a gritty, sandy feel. A strange, sour smell.

Was it somehow poisoned, like the nation was poisoned? Poisoned by hatreds, by loss of lives, by the punishment the land deserved because some of its people had chained up so many others for so many years?

Why, they would take a whip to you down on the Ashley if they knew you harbored such thoughts. Yet she wasn't ashamed of them, only surprised. She had changed. She preferred the friendship and respect of a Scipio Brown over that of a Stanley Hazard.

Absently, she broke off a sprig of laurel. She remembered Billy likening the laurel to their love. He said both would survive these awful times. But would they?

Where was her husband tonight? Where were the armies? Could Harrisburg be burning and they not know it in this peaceful valley? Shivering under the red stars, she gazed away to the darkness in the southwest, imagining the unseen armies sniffing the hot night for scent of each other.

Upset and frightened, she flung the sprig away and hurried down the hill past the poisoned crater. She didn't fall asleep until the first light of morning.

84

Lee had disappeared into enemy country. A city, a government, a land held its breath in hope of good news.

There was none from the West, Orry told Madeline. Rosecrans was astir in Tennessee, and Grant's hand crushed Vicksburg more tightly by the hour. Orry's work was a blur of conferences, memorandums, constant arguments with Winder and his wardens over the increasing number of deaths among the war prisoners.

In the evenings, he and Madeline read aloud to each other. Now and then they indulged in sad speculations about their inability to conceive a child. "Perhaps Justin wasn't wholly wrong to blame me," she said once.

They studied and responded to occasional letters from Philemon Meek. And they entertained Augusta Barclay one day, enjoying her company while recognizing how anxious she was about Cousin Charles. She said she had traveled all the way to the capital to find some dress muslin, but she really wanted to inquire about him. She had received no letter in two months and feared he'd been wounded or killed in the cavalry clash at Brandy Station.

Orry assured her that he watched the casualty rolls, and so far the name of Major Charles Main had not appeared. Gus knew nothing of the field promotion. She said she was pleased, but she sounded unenthusiastic.

She accepted their invitation to supper. During the meal, they speculated on Charles's whereabouts. Orry knew that Hampton's horse had gone into Pennsylvania with Lee, but beyond that, he could provide no information. They said good-bye after ten, Gus intending to travel all night on lonely roads with only young Boz to guard her. Just before she left, she again expressed gratitude to the Mains for sheltering her during the Chancellorsville fighting and said she wanted to repay the kindness if ever she could. Madeline thanked her, and the women embraced; they had formed a liking for each other.

After Gus was gone, Madeline said, "Something's wrong between her and Charles, though I'm not sure what it is."

Orry agreed. Like his wife, he had detected a certain sadness in the visitor's eyes.

Something was wrong with Cooper, too. Orry saw his brother occasionally around Capitol Square. Cooper was abrupt in conversation and refused further invitations to dinner with a curt "Too busy right now."

"He's become a stranger to me," Orry told Madeline. "And not a very sane-looking one, at that."

For some months, Orry had known that Beauchamp's Oyster House on Main Street was a postbox for illegal mail to the North. In late June he wrote a long letter to George, addressing it in care of Hazard's of Lehigh Station. He asked how Constance was faring, and Billy and Brett, told of his marriage to Madeline, and mentioned Charles's service with the Iron Scouts. He also described, briefly and somewhat bitterly, his work for Seddon, and his constant conflicts with Winder and the prison wardens. On a sultry evening, wearing the one civilian suit he had brought from Mont Royal, he nervously entered Beauchamp's and handed the wax-sealed envelope to a barman, together with forty dollars of inflated Confederate money. There was no guarantee the letter would get any farther than some trash bin. Still, Orry missed his old friend, and saying it on paper made him feel better. The June heat continued. And the waiting.

"I'm worried," Ashton said, the same night Orry mailed his letter.

"About what?" Powell said. Naked except for drawers, he sat examining the deed to a small farm he and his associates had purchased. The place was situated on the bank of the James, below the city near Wilton's Bluff. Powell hadn't explained why owning it was advantageous, though Ashton knew it had something to do with the scheme to eliminate Davis.

Powell's perfunctory question made Ashton snap, "My husband." He heard the pique in her voice and laid the deed aside. "Every morning he questions me about my plans for the day. When I was shopping downtown yesterday, I had the queerest feeling I was being watched — and then, from the vestibule of Meyers and Janke, I spied James on the other side of the street, lurking behind a water wagon and trying to look inconspicuous."

A hot breeze blew from the garden, riffling pages of the deed. Far away, heat lightning shimmered. Powell's four-barrel Sharps lay near the document. He placed the gun on the deed like a paperweight and lightly drummed his fingers on the stock.

"Did he question you this evening?"

She shook her head. "He was still at work when I left."

"But you think he knows."

"Suspects. I don't want to say this, Lamar, but I feel I must. It might be better if we stopped these meetings for a while."

His eyes grew glacial. "Do I take that to mean I've become a bore, my dear?"

She ran to him, reached down from behind his chair and pressed her palms to his hard chest. "Oh, my God, no, sweet­heart. No! But things are going badly for James. He's — disturbed. No matter how careful you are, he might take you by surprise some night. Harm you." She began to rub slowly, near his waist, her bodice pressing the back of his head as she bent toward the chair. "It would kill me if I were responsible for something like that."

Powell guided her hand lower, murmuring, "Well — perhaps you're right."

He allowed her to continue a moment or so, then abruptly took her hand away and nodded at another chair. She sat obediently as he spoke. "My personal safety's the least of my concerns. Momentous work is under way. I wouldn't want it interrupted by some witless and preventable act of violence. To tell you the truth, I have been a bit worried about your husband." He brought his fingertips together and peered over the arch. "Last week I hit on a way to make sure he doesn't threaten us. I've pondered it since then, and I'm convinced it's sound."

"What are you going to do, get him dismissed and sent home?"

Powell ignored the sarcasm. "I propose to recruit him for our group."

"Recruit him?" She jumped up. "That is the most ridiculous, not to say dangerous —"

"Be quiet and let me finish."

His cold voice stilled her. Cowed, she moved back to the chair as he continued. "Of course that is precisely how it sounds — at first. But think a moment. You can find logical and compelling arguments in favor of it."

"I'm sorry, I fail to see them," she countered, though not loudly.

"In any enterprise of this kind, one always needs a certain number of — call them soldiers. Men to carry out the most dangerous phases of the plan. In our case, the men must be more than trustworthy; they must be foursquare against the black vomit of nigger freedom, because only that kind of fervor will beget absolute loyalty. Our soldiers must hate Davis and his coterie of West Point bunglers and Jew bureaucrats, and endorse the formation of our new Confederacy. Except for the last aspect, which he as yet knows nothing about, I submit that your husband meets the specifications in every particular."

"Well, put that way, perhaps he does."

Powell's sly smile broadened. "Finally, would it not be far better to have him close by, where he can be watched, than to have him running about on his own, as he's doing now?" The low-trimmed gas cast his shadow across her as he padded around the table and fingered a lock of her hair. "With your husband actively involved, it would be far easier for you and me to see each other. I don't think he's clever enough to suspect the ruse."

"I agree about that — especially now that he's in such a state about the failures of the President."

"You see? It isn't such a crazy notion after all."

He curled the strand of dark hair around his index finger, then moved the finger gently back and forth. "But suppose, despite every precaution against it, he did find us out. Became unbalanced, therefore untrustworthy —" He let the hair fall and laid his hand on the four-barrel Sharps. "That, too, can be dealt with."

Ashton's eyes leaped from his face to the shining gun and back again. Frightened, joyous — aroused suddenly — she flung her arms around his neck, kissed it, and whispered, "Oh, my dearest Lamar. How clever you are."

"Then you don't object to my plan?"

"No."

"Not to any part of it?"

Over his shoulder, she saw the Sharps shining on top of the deed. "No — no. Anything you want is fine, as long as I can stay with you always."

Against her skirt she felt him, large and potent. She felt she was touching more than something physical. She was touching his strength; his ambition; the power they would ultimately share.

"Always," Powell repeated, picking her up as if she weighed no more than a child, "To ensure it, however, we must agree that James Huntoon, Esquire, is expendable."

Her open-mouthed kiss gave him the answer.

Late on Wednesday, July 1, Stanley stepped from the first-class car of the train from Baltimore. Even cushioned by swigs from a bourbon bottle, he could hardly accept all that had happened to him in the past twenty-four hours.

Rumors of an impending battle had reached Lehigh Station. He and Isabel had been packing to retreat to the family's summer home, Fairlawn, in Newport, when Stanton's angry telegram arrived. Stanley had traveled most of last night and all of today, buffeted by crowds talking of nothing but the battle about to begin, if it hadn't already, in the vicinity of the market town of Chambersburg. Exhausted and half drunk, Stanley entered the secretary's sanctum at half past six. He endured ten minutes of Stanton's wrath, then took a hack to the north side of Capitol Square.

Squalid shops and barracks had grown up around the old brick building at First and A. By turns, the building had been a temporary national capitol after the British burned the official one in August 1814, a rooming house for senators and representatives — Calhoun had died there — and, since '61, a prison for a wide variety of inmates. These last included female spies working for the Confederacy; sharps and prostitutes; newsmen; fight-prone officers such as Judson Kilpatrick and George Custer.

Stanley had sent messages ahead. Baker's bay, Slasher, was tethered to the ring post at the First Street entrance. The colonel was waiting outside, truculent but clearly nervous. With him was the prison superintendent, Wood.

"Where is he?" Stanley demanded of Wood.

"Room 16. Same place we put all the editors and reporters."

"Did you clear out the others in the room? It's imperative that no one recognize me. Newsmen certainly would." He was assured it had been done. "You've bungled this, Baker — you know that."

"Not my fault," Baker complained as Stanley started upstairs through the shadows, the stenches, the flicker and play of gas­lights spaced wide apart.

"The secretary thinks otherwise. If we can't straighten this out, you may lose your precious toy — those four troops of cavalry you persuaded Mr. Lincoln to give you."

Up they went, past rooms holding inmates, and others where interrogations were conducted, sometimes lasting hours. Room 16 was a long, desolate chamber with a single gas fixture and one filthy window at the end. Spider webs festooned the ceiling corners. Strange stains discolored those portions of the wall that could be seen; bunks piled with dirty blankets and luggage hid the rest.

Packing boxes, empty bottles, items of men's clothing littered the floor. The furniture consisted of two dirty pine tables with benches. The quality of the prison's food could be judged from what was scrawled on the wall in charcoal:

MULE SERVED HERE

"Lower bunk, on the left," Wood whispered.

The floor creaked as they tiptoed toward the small, almost dwarf-like man snoring with his back to the room. The visible side of his face was heavily bruised, his eye a puffy slit yellow with matter. "Good Christ," Stanley said.

Randolph stirred but didn't waken. Stanley shoved Baker aside and walked out. Downstairs, in Wood's office, he slammed the door and said, "Here's the long and short of it. A black whore escaped when Randolph was taken at Mrs. Devore's. The whore telegraphed Cincinnati. The owners of Randolph's paper are Democrats, but they have sufficient influence in Ohio to elicit a response from a Republican administration — I speak particularly of Mr. Stanton. Habeas corpus or no habeas corpus, Randolph goes free first thing in the morning."

Baker sighed. "That clears it up, then."

"The devil it does. Who beat him so badly?"

"That man you sent me. Dayton."

"Get rid of him."

Baker stroked his beard, shrugged. "Easy enough."

"And the witnesses."

"Not so easy."

"Why not? One's in custody —"

"The white prostitute," Wood said. "She's with the other women."

"Get the nigger's name from Mrs. Devore," Stanley ordered Baker. "Find her and get both women out of Washington. Threaten them, bribe them, but I want them five hundred or a thousand miles from here. Tell them to use assumed names if they value their skins." Baker started to raise some objection, but Stanley blustered, "Do it, Colonel, or you'll no longer command the First District of Columbia Cavalry, or any other organization."

With an unintelligible mutter, Baker turned away. Wood scratched his chin. "There's still Randolph to be reckoned with. Nobody cut his tongue out, y'know."

Stanley's glance lashed the warden for joking at such a time. "Randolph is Mr. Stanton's responsibility. The secretary is calling on Senator Wade right now, and it's expected that some well-respected congressmen will soon counsel with Randolph's publishers. The message will be quite simple. It will be to their advantage to keep quiet but infinitely troublesome for them if they don't. I suspect they'll choose the former. Then, if Randolph talks, who'll corroborate his wild statements? Not his paper. Certainly no one here —" Baleful, he eyed the warden and the chief of the Detective Bureau.

"The women won't," he continued. "They'll be gone. Dayton, too. Many unsubstantiated tales of government excess are circulating these days. One more will hardly cause a ripple."

"I'll speak to Dayton tomorrow," Baker promised.

"Tonight," Stanley said and went down and out to the square, where Union officers, evidently rounded up for disciplinary reasons, stumbled from a newly arrived van while raffish men and women leaned from the prison windows, crying, "Fresh fish! Fresh fish!"

"I regret this," Lafayette Baker said to a still-sleepy Elkanah Bent. It was half past eleven. Bent had been wakened and dragged to the office by Detective O'Dell, who professed to know nothing about the reason for the urgent summons.

Baker cleared his throat. "But facts are facts, Dayton. You injured Randolph by repeatedly hitting him."

Bent clutched the arms of his chair, straining forward. "He resisted arrest!"

"Even so, it's evident that you employed more force than was necessary."

Bent struck the desk. "And what do you and Wood employ when you question someone? I've been at the prison. I've heard the screams —"

"That's enough," Baker said, his tone ominous.

"You want a scapegoat —"

"I don't want a thing, Dayton. You're an able agent, and if I could keep you, I would, believe me." Bent spat an oath. Baker colored but kept his voice level. "I am under orders from the War Department. The secretary himself. Some satisfaction must be offered for what happened to Randolph, and I regret —"

"That I'm the bone to be tossed to the wolves," Bent cried, very nearly shrieking. Someone tapped on the door, asked a question.

"Everything's fine, Fatty," Baker called back. Then, more quietly, "I understand your feelings. But it will be to your advantage to take this in good grace."

"The hell I will. I refuse to be thrown on the trash heap by you, by Stanton, or by any other —"

"Shut your mouth!" Baker was on his feet, pointing at the other man. "You have twenty-four hours to remove yourself from Washington. There is no appeal."

Like a sounding whale, Bent came up from his chair. "Is this how the government treats loyal employees? How it repays faithful service —?"

Abruptly, Baker sat again. His hands began to move through dossier folders like busy white spiders. Without raising his eyes, he said, "Twenty-four hours, Mr. Dayton. Or you will be placed under arrest."

"At whose instigation? By whose order?"

Livid, Baker said, "Lower your voice. Eamon Randolph was severely beaten. Much worse will happen to you if you make trouble. You'll disappear into Old Capitol, and you'll be a gray-beard before you see daylight again. Now get out of here and out of Washington by this time tomorrow. O'Dell!"

The door flew open. The detective shot in, right hand under his left lapel.

"Show him out. Lock the door after he leaves."

Blinking, panting, Bent was in an instant reduced to helplessness. His shoulders sagged, then his body. He uttered a single, faint, "But —"

"Dayton," Fatty O'Dell said, and stepped aside, leaving the doorway unblocked. Bent lumbered out.

A few hours earlier, an elegant gig open to the night air clipped along the perimeter road of Hollywood Cemetery, west of Richmond. Lights gleamed in distant houses. Shadows of leafy branches flitted over the faces of James Huntoon and the gig's driver, Lamar Powell.

"I can't believe what you've told me, Powell."

"That's precisely why I called for you and brought you out here," Powell replied. "I'd like to recruit you for our group, but I couldn't risk issuing the invitation where we might be overheard."

Huntoon pulled out his pocket kerchief to remove a sudden film of steam from his spectacles. "I certainly understand."

Powell shook the reins to pick up the pace on the straight stretch of road. Monuments, obelisks, great crosses, and anguished stone angels glided by, half seen in the foliage to their right. "I know we didn't begin our, ah, business relationship on the best footing, Huntoon. But, ultimately, Water Witch earned you a fine profit."

"That's true. Unfortunately, to obtain it, my wife deceived me.

"I'm sorry about that. Your wife strikes me as a charming person, but I know little about her, so it would be rash as well as rude if I commented on your domestic situation."

He kept his eyes fixed on the starlit road beyond the ears of the horse. He felt Huntoon's suspicious stare for a moment. Then a whistling sigh told him the lawyer's thoughts had jumped back to the plan Powell had described. He probed for a reaction.

"Are you appalled by what I told you a few minutes ago?"

"Yes." More firmly: "Yes — why not? Assassination is — well — not only a crime; it's an act of desperation."

"For some. Not my group. We are taking a carefully planned and absolutely necessary step to reach a desirable end — establishment of the new Confederacy of the Southwest. Properly organized, properly controlled — free and independent of the bungling that has doomed this one. There will be a government, of course. You could play a role. A significant one. You most certainly have the talent. I've inquired about your work at the Treasury Department."

Like a pleased boy, Huntoon said, "Have you really?"

"Do you think I'd be speaking now if I hadn't? You're one of a number of highly competent men King Jeff has misused — wasted in menial posts. It's deliberate, naturally. He downgrades those of us from the cotton states in order to please the damned Virginians. For you, I could envision an important post in our Treasury Department, if that appeals to you. If it doesn't, we can certainly satisfy you with some other high office. Very likely at cabinet level."

Under the wind-rustled branches, Huntoon wondered if he could believe what he was hearing. It was the call of opportunity — the kind of opportunity to which he had aspired in the early days, but which Davis had denied him.

Cabinet level. Wouldn't Ashton be pleased? She might not consider him so inadequate, publicly or — his tongue moved over his damp lip — privately.

But it was dangerous. And Powell spoke of murder so lightly. Hesitating, he said, "Before I decide, I would need more details."

"Details without a commitment on your part? I'm afraid that's impossible, James."

"Some time to consider, then. The risks —"

"They're enormous, no denying it," Powell cut in. "But brave men with vision can meet and master them. You uttered an appropriate word a few moments ago — desperation. But it applies to them far more than it does to us. The Confederacy of Davis and his crowd is already lost, and they know it. The people are beginning to know it, too. The only government that can succeed is a new government. Ours. So the question's quite simple. Will you join it or no?"

Huntoon's mind brimmed with memories: Ashton's adoring eyes at the moment she accepted his proposal; the cheering, clapping crowds to whom he had argued the case for secession from lecture platforms — even tree stumps — throughout his home state. He had starved for both kinds of approval since coming to this wretched city.

"Your answer, James?"

"I'm — inclined to join. But I must think a while before the decision can be final."

"Certainly. Not too long, though," Powell murmured. "Preparations are already going forward."

He shook the reins again; the clip-clop quickened. The breeze lifted Powell's hair and refreshed his face as he swung the gig back toward the city. He was smiling. The fish was securely on the hook.

When Lafayette Baker dismissed him, Elkanah Bent's tenuous self-control broke like a dry twig. He rode straight for the residence of Jasper Dills, passing the Star office en route. Swarming crowds read bulletins by torchlight. The armies had engaged or were about to engage near some obscure market town in Pennsylvania.

As he had once done at Starkwether's, Bent pounded the door of the Dills's house. Beat on it until his fist ached and an austere servant answered. "Mr. Dills is out of the city for several days."

"Coward," Bent muttered as the door slammed. Like so many others, the lawyer had fled at the first threat of invasion.

With his sole source of help unavailable, he knew he dared not stay in Washington. An unexpected option suddenly presented itself. Why stay in the North at all? He hated its army for failing to recognize his military talent, thus denying him the career he deserved. He hated its President for favoring the Negroes. Most of all, he hated its government for using him when it was expedient and casting him aside when it was not.

In his rooms, snuffling and cursing those who had conspired against him, he rummaged through a trunk to find the pass he had saved from the Richmond mission. Wrinkled and soiled, it was still too legible to serve his purpose. A sentry would have to be blind not to detect forgery of a new date — which he had neither the materials nor the skills to accomplish anyway.

Use the bureau's regular sources, then? No. Baker might hear of it and guess his destination. He must cross the Potomac without papers, without using any of the bridges. There were ways. The bureau had taught him a lot in a short time.

His damp hair clinging to his forehead and his shirttails flying out of his trousers, he flung clothing and a few possessions into a portmanteau and a small trunk. The last item he packed was the painting from New Orleans. As he worked, the pressure of hatred built again.

He swung to stare at his reflection in the old, speckled pier glass. How ugly he was; gross with fat. With a cry, he seized the china water pitcher and crashed it into the mirror, breaking both.

Moments later, the landlady was pounding on the door. "Mr. Dayton, what are you doing?"

In order to leave, he had to unlock the door and shove the old woman aside. She fell. He paid no attention. Down the stairs he went, trunk on his shoulder, portmanteau in his other hand while the woman bleated about rent in arrears. A sleepy boarder in a nightcap peered at him as he went out.

In the sultry dawn, he rattled south in a hired buggy. Some blustering and a flash of his little silver badge took him through the fortification lines. He went straight on along the roads of Prince Georges and Charles counties toward Port Tobacco, where certain watermen were known to be loyal to the Confederacy provided the loyalty was secured with cash.

Bent scarcely saw the countryside through which the buggy carried him. His mind picked over the decision to which he had been driven, constructing additional justifications for it. Perhaps the Southern leaders weren't as bad as he had always believed. They hated the darkies as much as he did, which was in their favor. And during his time in Richmond, he had found that he could blend in without causing suspicion. There had to be a place for him in the Confederacy; there was none in the North any longer.

He was still realistic enough to acknowledge some facts about his defection. The established government — more specifically, the army — probably wouldn't employ him. Put it another way: He did not want to ask them for employment. Though he was by no means the first person to change sides in this war, they would still distrust him, hence put him in a menial post if they put him in any at all. Second, he dared not say who he really was or reveal much about his past. To do so would lead to questions, requests for explanations.

He would find some other way to survive. One occurred to him as the morning grew hotter and the road dust thicker. Baker had mentioned a man said to be conspiring to establish a second Confederacy. What was his name? After some minutes, it came to him: Lamar Powell. As Baker said, it was probably just a tissue of rumors. But a question or two wouldn't hurt.

In the drowsy town of Port Tobacco, an old waterman with half his face stiffened from a paralytic seizure said to Bent, "Yes, I can smuggle you over to Virginny for that sum. When will you be comin' back?"

"Never, I hope."

"Then let me buy you a glass to celebrate," the old man said with half a grin. "We'll make the run as soon as the sun's down."

85

"After them," Charles yelled, and spurred Sport down the country lane. Shotgun in his left hand, he closed on the quartet of alarmed Yankees who had ridden out of a grove half a mile distant. "We want to catch one," Charles shouted to his companion, two lengths behind. He was a new-issue replacement, a farmer boy of eighteen who weighed around two hundred and thirty pounds. He was a cheerful, biddable young man with two simple ambitions: "I want to love a lot of Southern girls an' bust a bunch of Yankee heads."

Jim Pickles was his name. He had been posted to the scouts because he was deemed too bulky and inelegant for regular duty. He would probably be on the dead line most of the time, having broken the backs of his mounts because of his weight. He had been sticking close to the senior scout — who insisted on being called Charlie, not Major Main — ever since Stuart and his men began their ride northward out of Virginia and away from the main body of the army, which Longstreet was leading into enemy country.

Three brigades — Hampton's, Fitz Lee's, and that of the wounded Rooney Lee under the command of Colonel Chambers — had crossed the Potomac on the night of June 27. Their route took them almost due north, east of the mountain ranges, under rather vague orders from General Lee. They could, at General Stuart's discretion, pass around the Union army, wherever it might be, collecting information and provisions en route. They had gotten some of the latter already, together with one hundred and twenty-five captured wagons. But of the former they had gotten almost none. They pressed on without knowing the whereabouts of the main Union force.

Charles heard gripes about that, muttered statements that General Jeb was keen to pull off another spectacular stunt — something similar to the ride around McClellan on the peninsula that had brought him fame and turned out crowds to strew flowers before his troops of horse as they rode back into Richmond. Stuart's reputation had been tarnished at Brandy Station when he kept his men so busy with reviews that they failed to detect the Union reconnaissance in force. Maybe he thought a second dash around the Union army would remove the tarnish.

They rode into Pennsylvania on the thirtieth of June. Hunting for Lee, they found the Yanks at Hanover, and after a sharp little fight, read local newspapers for their first solid information about the invasion of the state by Lee and Longstreet.

Familiar history began to repeat. Short rations. Scant sleep or none. Forced marches, with men dozing in the saddle or falling out. And for Charles, contradictory thoughts of Gus. A longing to see her, and doubts about the wisdom of it.

They went on to Dover and Carlisle and then another twenty-odd miles overnight toward Gettysburg, where the army had more or less blundered into an unwanted engagement on ground not of its choosing. It was said this happened because Stuart was off gallivanting — following his vague orders — and was thus unable to provide Lee with accurate reports of the enemy's whereabouts.

Now it was the second of July. About five miles south of the spot where Charles and Jim Pickles had come upon the four Yankees, smoke drifted and cannon roared. Behind the grove from which the blue-clad troopers emerged, there arose a dust cloud of some size. Charles interpreted it as a large body of horsemen on the move — toward Hunterstown, he guessed, after examining a crude map. He wanted to know exactly who was responsible for that dust. He was sure General Hampton would want to know, too. Hence his wish to capture a Yank.

Galloping down on the surprised foursome, he felt his exhaustion slough away. He hadn't slept at all last night, and there had been plenty of excitement while the cavalry rested that morning. General Hampton, riding out alone to survey the terrain, had unexpectedly come upon a soldier from the Sixth Michigan. The enlisted man's carbine had misfired, and, like a gallant Southern duelist, Hampton had allowed him time to reload. While he did, a second Yankee, a lieutenant, approached sneakily from behind. He sabered Hampton on top of the head. Then the enlisted man fired and nicked him. Gallantry wasn't a very useful trait any more.

Even with his hat and thick hair to protect him, the general took a four-inch cut in his scalp and barely escaped. The cut was dressed and so was the light chest graze from the enlisted man's bullet. By noon, he was fully active again, wanting to know, as Stuart did, what was happening north of the main battle site.

So Charles had ridden out with Pickles, and though many times in recent days he had felt he couldn't travel one more mile without falling over, he had gone that mile and many more — and now he was wide awake, tense, and eager to catch one of the bluebellies.

The Yanks milled at the roadside for a minute, then began to snap off carbine shots. Charles heard a buzz to his left in the rows of tasseled corn. He opened his mouth and gave the Yanks one of those wailing yells that scared hell out of them. His beard flew over his left shoulder, spikes of white showing in it now. So many layers of dirt and dried sweat covered him he felt like a mud man.

Pickles closed up behind him, his weight bringing lather to his roan's flanks. Charles kept going at the gallop, howling. A bullet snapped his hat brim, and then the Yanks started a countercharge with revolvers and drawn sabers.

"Now," Charles shouted when the range was right. He brought up his shotgun, fired both barrels, and veered Sport to the shoulder, slowing a little. In the clear, Pickles fired. Between them they downed two of the Yanks. The other two reined up, wheeled about, and galloped into the safety of the grove.

"I hope one's still alive," Charles yelled as he rode on. The horse of one of the fallen men was trotting away, but the second animal nuzzled its rider where he lay in the road. The trooper didn't move. Disgusted, Charles slowed down to a walk.

Soon he could see the flies gathering around the open mouth of the trooper in the road. No information to be gotten there. The other Yank was nowhere in sight.

Charles heard thrashing in some high weeds to his left, then a groan. With an eye on the dust clouds billowing perhaps two miles to the northwest, he dismounted and cautiously advanced to the roadside. Sweat dropped from the end of his nose as he craned over and saw the Union cavalryman, a bearded fellow with his revolver still in its holster, sitting in the bottom of the ditch. Blood soaked his left thigh.

Watching the man, Charles laid his shotgun on the ground with his left hand while drawing his Colt with his right. He cocked the revolver. Wary and scared, the Yank breathed loudly as Charles clambered down to him. Pickles sat watching, an eager pupil. "What unit are you?" "General — Kilpatrick's — Third Division." "Bound where?"

The Yank hesitated. Charles pressed the muzzle of his gun to the perspiring forehead. "Bound where?" "Lee's left flank — wherever that is."

Quickly, Charles stood and scanned the hazy treetops bending in the hot wind. Reverberations of cannon fire continued to roll out of the south. With another glance at the wounded man, Charles began to back up the side of the ditch. As he leaned down for his shotgun, his eyes left the Yank for a second. Jim Pickles cried, "Hey, Charlie, watch —"

Pivoting, he sensed rather than saw the downward movement of the Yank's hand. He fired. The bullet jerked the man sideways.

Charles blew into the barrel of his Colt, noting that the Yank had been reaching for his wounded thigh with his left hand, not for his holster with his right.

"All right, Jim. Let's get the word back to Hampton. That dust is Kilpatrick, trying a flanking movement."

As they turned about and started east on the deserted road, Pickles broke into a huge grin. "Lord God, Charlie, you're somethin'. Cool as a block from the icehouse. 'Course, I feel kinda sorry for that Yank. He was only reachin' down because he was hurtin'."

"Sometimes your hand has to move faster than your brain," Charles answered with a shrug. "If I'd waited, he might have pulled the pistol. Better a mistake than a grave."

The younger man chuckled. "Ain't you somethin'. You boys in the scouts, you're regular killin' machines."

"That's the general idea. Every dead man on their side means fewer on ours."

Jim Pickles shivered, not entirely in admiration. To the south, the guns at Gettysburg kept roaring.

Pitch black ahead, pitch black behind. Rain rivered from Charles's hat. It had soaked through his cape hours ago.

In many respects it was the worst night he had ever spent as a soldier. They were bound south to the Potomac, in retreat, a train of confiscated farm wagons, most springless, each hung with a pale lantern. The procession stretched out for miles.

Hampton's men had drawn the honored position of rear guard. To Charles it was more like duty on the perimeter of hell. Full of irony, too. The day now passing into its last hours was July fourth.

Yesterday Hampton had taken a third wound, a shrapnel fragment, in a hot fight with Michigan and Pennsylvania horse, part of a failed effort to sweep around and attack Meade's rear. In some quarters Stuart was being blamed openly for the Gettysburg debacle. Critics continued to say his long ride away from Lee had deprived the army of its eyes and ears.

The Second South Carolina was down to around a hundred effectives. Visiting with his old outfit for an hour, Charles had heard that Calbraith Butler, invalided home after Brandy Station, would spend the rest of his life with a cork foot. The memory stuck with him tonight, and added to it were the outcries of the hurt and maimed packed like fish into the springless wagons whose every roll and lurch increased their pain. The voices filled the rainy dark.

"Let me die. Let me die."

"Jesus Christ, put me out of this wagon. Have mercy. Kill me."

"Please, won't someone come? Take my wife's name and write her?"

That came from the wagon nearest Charles. Feeling Sport stagger and slip in the mud, he tried to shut his mind to the noise. But it went on: the hiss of rain; the squeal of axles; the men crying out like children. It broke his heart to listen to them.

Jim Pickles rode up beside him. "We're stopped. Somebody's mired up the line, I s'pect."

"Won't someone come? I can't make it. I need to tell Mary —"

Bursting with rage, wanting to pull his Colt and blow out the screamer's brains, Charles whipped his right leg over the saddle. He jumped down, splashing deep in mud. He slapped Sport's reins into Pickles's palm.

"Hold him."

He climbed the rear wheel of the ambulance wagon and fought his way under the canvas into the slithering stir and stink. He thought of Christmas in '61. Snowing then. Raining now. But the same work to be done.

He was sick in his soul. Sick of the madness and folly of killing men on the other side to save some of his own. Why had they said not one damn word about this kind of thing back at the Academy?

Hands plucked his trousers, the shy, soft touches of frightened children. The rain beat hard on the hooped canvas top. He raised his voice in order to be heard, yet sounded quite gentle.

"Where's the man who needs to write his wife? If he will identify himself, I'll help."

From the parlor window, Orry gazed along Marshall at the rooftops and row houses reddened by the cloudless sunset. An abnormal silence had enveloped the city for several days, for reasons the general populace did not as yet understand. But he did.

"Some of the fools in the department are trying to say Lee was successful — that he did what he set out to do: reprovision the army off the enemy's land." Serious and silent, wearing gray, Madeline sat waiting till he continued. "The truth is, Lee's in retreat. His casualties may have run as high as thirty percent." "Dear God," she whispered. "When will that be known?" "You mean when will the papers get hold of it? A day or two, I suppose." He rubbed his temple, aching suddenly in the broiling heat. "They say Pickett charged the Union positions on Cemetery Hill in broad daylight. With no cover. His men went down like scythed wheat. Poor George — Why did we begin this damned business?"

She went to him, slipped her arms around him, pressed her cheek against his shoulder, wishing she could provide an answer. They held each other in the red light deepening to dark.

In a squalid taproom down by the river basin, Elkanah Bent ordered a mug of beer, which turned out to be warm and flat. Disgusted, he set it down as a white-haired man ran in, tears on his cheeks.

"Pemberton gave up. On the fourth of July. The Enquirer just printed an extra. Grant starved him out. The Yanks have got Vicksburg and mebbe the whole goddamn river. We can't even hold our own goddamn territory."

Bent added his sympathetic curse to those of others at the maghogany bar. In the distance, church bells began to toll. Had he slipped into Richmond just when everything was falling apart? All the more reason to locate that fellow Powell.

Mr. Jasper Dills suffered a headache even worse than Orry Main's. The headache started on Independence Day, a Saturday, when word reached the city of a stunning success at Gettysburg. Washington had been waiting for good news for days. Its arrival put some heart into the holiday celebration.

That very morning, he had returned from his vacation cottage on Chesapeake Bay, where he had prudently retired when rumors reached him of a possible rebel invasion. He was soon driven to distraction by the crackling of squibs that youngsters set off outside his house.

To add to the commotion, bands blared patriotic airs in the streets, and jubilant crowds surged through President's Park, serenading at the windows of the Executive Mansion as the news got better and better. Lee whipped; Vicksburg taken; Grant and Sherman and Meade heroes.

The glad tidings couldn't compensate for the debilitating effects of the din on lawyer Dills, nor for the familiar pattern that developed in the steamy days following the celebration. Like all the generals before him, Meade appeared to falter and lose nerve. He failed to pursue Lee aggressively, throwing away the chance to destroy the main Confederate army. The illuminations in the windows of mansions and public buildings went dark. The corner bonfires sparked and subsided into acrid smoke.

Head still pounding, Dills pondered two other pieces of unpleasant information, between which he ultimately perceived a relationship. His butler told him Bent had been at the front door, raving like a madman. And a sharp letter from Stanley Hazard informed Dills that the man he had recommended had nearly precipitated a catastrophe by beating a Democratic newsman when no such treatment had been ordered.

Stanton had demanded someone be held accountable. "Ezra Dayton" was dismissed, ordered out of Washington — and Mr. Dills would be so good as to make no further recommendations to the special service, thank you.

For two days and nights, messengers employed by Dills's firm had been sent out to search the city. It was true — Bent was gone. No one knew where. Dills sat in his office, head throbbing, urgent briefs piling up on his desk while he thought of the stipend, the stipend that would end if he lost track of Starkwether's son. What should he do? What could he do?

"The day has been a disaster," Stanley complained at supper on the Tuesday after Independence Day. "The secretary's furious because Meade won't move, and he blames me for the mess with Randolph."

"I thought you managed to hush that up."

"To a certain extent. Randolph won't publish anything. That is, his paper in Cincinnati won't. But Randolph's on the streets again, and his bruises are a regular advertisement of what was done to him. Then this afternoon, we had more bad news. Laurette?"

He pointed to his empty glass. Isabel touched her upper lip with her handkerchief. "You've had four already, Stanley."

"Well, I want another. Laurette!"

The maid filled the glass with red Bordeaux. He swallowed a third of it while his wife shielded her eyes with her hand. Her husband was undergoing peculiar changes. The responsibilities imposed by his position and the huge sums accumulating in their bank accounts seemed too much for him somehow.

"What else went wrong?" she asked.

"One of Baker's men was in Port Tobacco. He heard that Mr. Dayton, the fellow who brutalized Randolph, apparently deserted to the enemy after Baker drove him out of town. God knows what sensitive information he took with him. The whole business reflects shamefully on the department. No one admits publicly that we control Baker, but everyone knows it. On top of that —" he guzzled the rest of the wine and signaled the maid, who poured another glass after casting an anxious glance at her mistress "— on top of that, as of today, the Conscription Act is officially in force. People hate it. We've already had reports of protests, incidents of violence —"

"Here?"

"New York, mainly."

"Well, my sweet, that's far away from this house — and for once you might reflect on your good fortune. You could be drafted — you're still young enough — if you weren't in the War Department or sufficiently wealthy to pay for a substitute."

Stanley sipped his wine, still looking morose. Isabel ordered Laurette out of the room and came around to his end of the long, shining table. Standing behind her husband, she restrained his hand when he reached for the wine glass again. Resting her long chin on the top of his head, she patted his arm in an unusual display of affection.

"Despite all your troubles, we're very lucky, Stanley. We should be grateful Congress had the wisdom to enact that substitute clause. Thankful that it's a rich man's war but a poor man's fight, as they say."

But he wasn't comforted. He sat contemplating all of the changes in his life during the past couple of years. One was the development of a consuming thirst for strong drink — which could wreck a man's career. On the other hand, that tended to happen less often if you were wealthy. He must do his best to keep the tippling under control and keep selling shoes to the poor fools who were dying for slogans on both sides of the war.

"Constance?" In bed beside George on that sultry Wednesday after Gettysburg, she murmured to signify she was listening. "What will I do?"

The question was one she had been expecting — dreading — for months. She heard the strain in his voice, put there during an evening quarrel with their headstrong son. William had once again absented himself from his late-afternoon dancing class and sneaked off for a game of baseball with some Georgetown boys. Although George championed the game over a quadrille, he nevertheless had to reprimand William. The reprimand led to argument, and the argument ended with shouts from the father, sullen looks of rebellion from the son.

"You mean about the department?" she asked, though it was hardly necessary.

"Yes. I can't abide the stupidity and politicking any longer. And all the money being made from death and suffering — Thank God I have nothing to do with Stanley's contracts. I'd stuff them down his throat till he choked."

A pain started in her left breast. She had experienced many such dull aches lately, in her legs, her upper body, behind her forehead. She suspected the cause was a simple one — worry. She worried about her children, her father in far-off California, her weight creeping up a pound or two each month. She worried about George most of all. Night after night, he brought his troubles home and dwelled on them all evening.

Ripley's obstinacy in particular had become too much to bear. George cited a new example at least once a week. Recently General Rosecrans, hearing that Ordnance had some of those repeating coffee-mill guns in storage, had requested them for his Western command. At first Ripley wouldn't ship a single one; he still disapproved of the design. Finally, forced, he sent ten — and Rosecrans in return sent glowing performance reports to Lincoln. The President urged Ripley to reconsider the purchase of more of the guns. Ripley buried the request.

Constance knew Ripley's crimes by heart. He continued to campaign against breechloaders and repeaters, refusing to issue them to any but the mounted service. He tried to cancel existing contracts for them and wrote No more wanted across proposals from manufacturers.

"And yet," George had raged only last night, "not forty-eight hours after poor George Pickett's men were slaughtered charging our positions, I saw a report from a captured reb who fought against Berdan's Sharpshooters at Little Round Top. In twenty minutes, with single-shot breechloaders, Berdan's men fired about a hundred rounds each. The reb said his commander thought they had run into two whole regiments."

"Had they?"

George laughed. "Berdan had one hundred men. And still that old son of a bitch writes 'rejected' or 'tabled' on every plea for better shoulder weapons."

There was nothing new about such complaints from George. What was new was the frequency and the ferocity with which he voiced them. She dated that change from about a month ago, before the fall of Vicksburg, when an angry report on faulty Parrott shells crossed his desk. On investigation, he discovered the shells were part of a shipment from a Buffalo ammunition works whose samples he had inspected and turned back. The casings were pitted with holes resulting from faulty sand casting. How vividly she remembered his rage when he came home that evening.

"The slimy wretches had the gall to try to disguise the defects. They filled the holes with putty colored to match the metal."

Next day there was another blow:

"Ripley countermanded my rejection order. He approved the shipment. Seems the manufacturer's a distant relative of his wife. God, I'd love to lob some of those shells up his rear end. It would be the biggest service anyone could do for the Union."

That was the background, the accumulating bitterness that prompted his question tonight. She lay motionless in the dark of their bed, knowing the inevitable question she was duty-bound to ask by way of reply.

"What would you like to do, George?"

"Which answer do you want, the ideal or the realistic?"

"There are two? The former first, then."

"I'd like to work for Lincoln."

"Honestly? You admire him that much?"

"I do. Since that night we met at the arsenal, I feel I've come to know him well. He's in and out of our offices several times a week, asking questions, prodding, encouraging good ideas in spite of — maybe because of — our departmental dullness. I admit the man's rough-hewn, and it's lucky that campaigns aren't won or lost on the candidate's ability to look and act presentable, or he'd never be elected to anything. He doesn't dissemble, and some say that's a flaw — he never hides his doubts or dark moods. Ward Lamon told me several months ago that Lincoln's convinced he won't live to see Springfield again. But the man has qualities that are in damn short supply in this town. Honesty. Idealism. Strength. Good Lord, Constance, considering all the burdens he bears, from national to domestic, his strength is monumental. Yes, I wish I could work for him in some capacity, but there's no place."

"You inquired?"

"Discreetly. I didn't say anything to you because I felt sure it was an impossibility."

"Then what's the realistic answer?"

"I can go with the military railroads if Herman Haupt will have me. It's a good alternative. And I'm eager."

He said it so promptly she knew he had been ready with the idea for some time. Trying to keep her voice calm, she said, "That's field duty. Close to the battle lines —"

"Sometimes, yes. But what's important is this. It's work I believe I can do and take pride in."

Silence, broken by the inevitable rumbling of the night wagons. Sensing her tension, he rolled on his side — they were sleeping without clothes, as they often did — and caressed her bosom, soft, springy, wonderfully comforting in its familiarity.

"Do you not want me to do it?"

"George, in —" she cleared her throat "— in this marriage, you know neither party ever asks or answers that kind of question."

"I'd still like to know what you —"

"Do what you must," she said, kissing him, one palm against his face. She blinked rapidly, hoping he wouldn't feel the fear-inspired tears that sprang to her eyes.

"So, Herman — will you accept a new man?"

George asked that late the next day as he and the bearded brigadier leaned on Willard's bar. Haupt looked worn out. He had been shunting back and forth to Pennsylvania to get the rail lines from Gettysburg in repair.

"You know the answer to that. Question is, will the secretary release you?"

"By God, he'd better. I can't stand working within a mile of that man." He swallowed a raw oyster from the plate in front of him. "I suppose you've heard of the Randolph scandal —"

"Who hasn't? I gather he's forbidden to write about it, but he recruits listeners and repeats the story every chance he gets."

"He damn well should. It's a disgrace."

"Well, such philosophic reflections aside, I urge you to move fast. I think Stanton wants my head. I dislike him as much as you do, and he knows it. I refuse to put up with his prejudices and arrogance —" Haupt tossed off the rest of his whiskey with a dour smile. "— since I have my own to maintain."

They divided the remaining oysters. After the last one, George belched — one more irksome sign, along with joints that ached in the morning and gray hairs in his mustache, that his time was hurrying by.

Haupt asked how he hoped to effect the transfer. "It won't work if I simply request your services."

"I know. I have an appointment with the general-in-chief in the morning."

"Halleck? The master paper-shuffler? I didn't know you were acquainted with Old Brains."

"I've met him twice socially. He's an Academy man —"

"Class of '39. Four years after mine. West Point takes care of its own—is that what you're counting on?"

"It is," George said. "I've learned a little something about the way this town operates, Herman."

Henry Halleck, who allowed George ten minutes on his schedule, seemed a man of hemispheres: rounded shoulders, convex forehead, bulging eyes. He was more scholar than soldier — some years ago he had translated a work by Jomini — but an able, if pedestrian, administrator.

From the window where he stood in his familiar posture, hands locked behind his spotless, neatly buttoned uniform, he said: "When I noted your name on the appointment calendar, I called for your record, Major. It's exemplary. You are definite about wanting to leave the Ordnance Department?"

"Yes, General. I need to feel more useful. Desk duty has palled."

"I suspect you mean Ripley has palled," Halleck said with a rare show of humor. "He really is your superior, you know. You ought to apply to him for a transfer."

Understanding what he risked, George nevertheless shook his head. "With all respect, sir, I can't do that. General Ripley would almost certainly deny my request. Whereas if I could have your leave to go directly to the adjutant general —"

"No, that isn't permissible."

George knew he had lost. But Halleck kept speaking. "I do understand and sympathize with your predicament, however. I know you came to Washington at Cameron's behest, persuaded only by a strong sense of patriotic duty. I applaud your desire to get more directly into the thick of things. If you're to pull it off, it must be done properly."

Retrieving George from despair with those words, he leaned his great balding head forward till it seemed to float before the junior officer. Lowering his voice, as every good Washingtonian did when arranging some little scheme or favor, Halleck went on.

"Forward your request for a transfer to the adjutant general through channels — being sure to send a copy to General Ripley. Meantime, I shall speak on your behalf — unofficially, you understand. If we are successful, be prepared to do battle with Mr. Secretary Stanton." He extended his hand. "I wish you luck."

George had already prepared the paper to which Halleck referred. He sent them up the line immediately, and received the secretarial summons much sooner than he expected.

The War Department building to which George reported at half past two on Monday had a distinct air of gloom. Meade had dallied; Lee had gotten clean away; the Conscription Act was precipitating more incidents of street violence in New York City. The President was said to have plunged from a period of intensive activity and hope into another of his depressions.

"You wish to work for Haupt? My dear Major," Stanton said sourly, "do you know he has never officially accepted the rank of brigadier after receiving the promotion last September? Who can tell how long he'll remain in charge of the military railroads?"

In the voice of the bearded, Buddha-like man, George heard dislike and a warning. "Nevertheless, sir," he said, "I'm anxious for the transfer. I came to Ordnance at Secretary Cameron's request, and I've tried to carry out my duties faithfully, even though I've never felt fully qualified or very useful. I want to serve in some capacity more directly related to the conduct of the war."

Stanton fingered the earpiece of his spectacles; a trick of the light rendered the lenses opaque. Perhaps he knew how to hold his head to achieve the disquieting effect.

"Would it change your mind if I told you General Ripley may shortly retire?" An insincere smile. "The general is, after all, sixty-nine years of age."

And has he crossed you once too often? "No, sir, that would have no bearing on my request."

"Let me be frank with you, Major Hazard. Since you came in here, I have detected a measure of hostility in your voice — No, please, spare me the denials." George reddened; he hadn't realized his feelings were so evident. "Your determination to leave is clear from the manner in which you negotiated for the transfer. General Halleck spoke to me personally over the weekend." Stanton removed his spectacles. "I have a feeling you don't like this entire department. Am I correct?"

"Sir —" Better to say nothing, get out and be done. He knew it, yet his nature and his conscience wouldn't settle for that. "With due respect, Mr. Secretary — yes, you are. I am not in accord with some of the policies of the War Department."

Coolly correct, Stanton put on his glasses again. "May I request that you be more specific, sir?"

"There is the Eamon Randolph matter —"

Stanton overrode him with a loud, "I know nothing about that."

"As I understand it, the man was beaten by members of your Detective Bureau, solely for criticizing policies of this administration — which I thought was every citizen's right."

"Not in time of war." Stanton's pursed smile grew cold. He leaned forward, and the light-play turned his lenses to glittering disks again. "May I add, Major, that if you had ever entertained hopes of a permanent career in the military, you would have dashed them by what you just said. You have overstepped."

"I'm sorry," George said, though he wasn't. "The matter's been on my conscience, and it's widely known that Lafayette Baker works for you."

Still the smile, deadly and sly. "Search every item of official correspondence — every scrap of paper in the waste bins of this department, my dear Major — you will find not one scintilla of evidence to support that statement. Now be so kind as to leave this office. I shall be happy to approve your request — you and that madman Haupt are cut from the same bolt."

"Sir —"

Stanton pounded the desk. "Get out."

George heard the door open behind him. Someone rushed in.

"Your brother is just leaving," the secretary said. George turned and saw Stanley hovering, pasty with alarm. "Kindly see that he does it with all due speed."

Stanley grabbed George's sleeve. "Come on."

"Stanley" — George's voice went down half an octave — "I knocked you down once a long time ago. Take your hand off or I'll do it again."

Blinking, his face oozing sweat, Stanley obeyed. What an ass I am, thought George. An opinionated, loud-mouthed ass. Yet it had given him a sense of pride and relief to say his little piece — which was not quite finished.

"If this government has to win the war by beating or imprisoning every dissident who utters the slightest criticism, God pity us. We deserve to fail."

Gently, so gently, Stanton riffled the underside of his beard. But he was livid. "Major Hazard," he said, "I suggest you remove yourself unless you wish to be court-martialed for sedition."

When the office door was closed, Stanley whispered, "Do you realize who you insulted?"

"Someone who deserves it."

"But do you appreciate how this can harm your career?"

"My so-called career's a farce. They can throw me out of the army tomorrow. I'll cheerfully go back to Lehigh Station and cast cannon."

"You could at least think of me, George —"

"I do," he retorted, still angry. "I hope Stanton roasts you for having a seditious relative. Then you can go to Massachusetts and sell military bootees — to both sides, as I understand it."

"You damned, lying —" Stanley began, trying at the same time to hit George with a wild swing. But Stanley was weak and poorly coordinated. George had only to raise his left hand to block his brother's forearm and push his fist away. He jammed his hat on his head and marched out of the building.

He hurried to Haupt's office, found him gone, and left a note.

Spoke with Secretary S. & ruined my army career. Plan to get drunk to celebrate. Transfer looks certain. G.H.

86

The work train of two flatcars chugged southwest toward Manassas. The day had grown gray and heavy with the odor of rain.

Pine branches beside the track reached out to brush Billy's face. He sat on the side of one of the cars, legs dangling, carbine resting beside him. Under his shirt was a small copybook, in which he was currently keeping his journal. His dusty trousers partially concealed the legend U.S.M.R. NO. 19 painted in white on the edge of the car.

Against the shuttling rhythm of the slow-moving train, he thought of a number of things: Brett, whom he longed to sleep with for just one night; Lije, whose death seemed such a waste; the disturbing telegraphic news from New York, which they had heard just before pulling out. The city was braced for demonstrations and perhaps widespread rioting when the first names were drawn for the draft.

The engineers had taken part in the Gettysburg campaign, but scarcely in a capacity worth mentioning. They had built the usual Potomac pontoon bridges, then languished on their rumps as part of the headquarters contingent while the main army engaged. Now they were back here in Virginia, and Billy and six enlisted men had been dispatched down the Orange & Alexandria to survey a new spur line proposed near the Bull Run trestle. Guerrillas had recently destroyed the trestle for the sixth or seventh time.

A blond corporal lying on his back hummed "All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight." Another took up the melody with a small mouth organ, his elbow resting on the lacquered case containing two transits. A third man rested his legs on the folded tripod.

Smoke flowed over the relaxed soldiers riding in the open. Soot and cinders peppered them, but that was the worst of it until the shots exploded. The first rang the locomotive's bell. A volley followed.

"Where the hell are they?" the blond corporal yelled, flopping onto his belly and grabbing his carbine. Billy likewise flattened himself. He heard the enemy before he saw them. They spurred into sight from behind the caboose, eight raggy men with long beards and wiry mounts. Four rode on each side of the train.

Although the train was in territory controlled by the Union, that control was nominal. Right now they were traveling through what was boastfully called Mosby's Confederacy. Were these some of the Gray Ghost's men, Billy wondered, flinging up his carbine. He fired and missed.

A ball tore into the edge of the flatcar where his legs had dangled moments before. A long splintery scar horizontally bisected the letters U.S.M.R. The ragtag attackers whooped and wailed their rebel yells, passing the caboose.

"Stay low, Johnson," Billy shouted as the blond soldier foolishly jumped up, braced his legs, and tried to aim while the flatcar swayed. The rider leading the others on Billy's side, a stick-thin man wearing a fusty black suit, bent to avoid a branch, then fired his revolver and blew Johnson off the other side of the car.

Billy went to one knee, hoping to steady himself that way. The fireman had clambered onto the tender. Holding on with one hand, he leaned out and fired a Colt with the other. Billy felt the train lurch as the engineer opened the throttle. A private picked off a guerrilla on the opposite side, which put an end to the grinning and whooping of the partisans.

The train gained speed. The sky darkened; rain began to patter the flatcar. The guerrillas came up to flank the car on which the engineers were riding. Billy pivoted to shoot toward the far side when something fastened on his arm, dragging him.

Dizzy with fright, he went spinning and tumbling off the car, pulled by the dark-suited man, who had ridden close enough to reach him. Billy struck the shoulder of the roadbed, gasping, the wind knocked out of him. In a daze, he watched the lantern and white numerals on the caboose shrinking.

Billy's carbine lay beside the near rail. Two of the partisans cantered up the center of the right of way. The retreating train slowed, the engineer worried about the men who had fallen off. The partisans fired several volleys at the train, which speeded up again.

On hands and knees, Billy reached for the carbine. "Touch that an' I'll kill you," said a cheerful voice. He raised his head, saw the frail, black-suited man. A huge dragoon pistol filled his right hand.

"We got two, countin' the captain here," Black Suit shouted, controlling his pawing horse. "Is that there one alive?"

"Naw, he's gone," someone called from back along the line. Billy grimaced; Johnson had been anticipating news of the birth of his second child in Albany at any moment.

In the pattering rain, the guerrillas plinked a few last rounds at the train, now no larger than a toy. How dark the morning had become, Billy thought, ringed by men on horseback.

"Gone for sure?" Black Suit asked the man riding up with Johnson's body. The blond volunteer lay over the neck of the horse, head and legs hanging down.

"Deader'n a pickaninny's brain."

"Any val'bles?"

"We can pry the gold out of his teeth, but that's about it."

"Hell," said Black Suit. "This 'pears to be the only real prize we got. Stand up, Yank. Gimme your name an' unit, so we can do a proper job fillin' out the burial papers."

Billy couldn't believe the man meant it. He couldn't believe this had happened — the swift attack, the accidental capture. But then, that was the lesson of war you so often forgot. The bullet that missed you — or killed you — did so by chance.

Rain dampening his hair, Billy stood at the side of the right of way, wondering if these men were who he feared they were. "Name an' unit," Black Suit repeated, testily now.

"Captain William Hazard. Battalion of Engineers, Army of the Potomac. Who are you?"

Snickers, amused whispers, then a bull voice: "He's smack in the middle of Fairfax County an' he's gotta ask who we are."

Ugly and fat, the deep-voiced man rode around where Billy could see him. "Major John S. Mosby's Partisan Rangers, duly authorized for independent action by the 'Federate Congress. That's who we are, you piece of Yankee shit." He swiped at Billy's head with the butt of his shotgun.

Angered, Billy grabbed for the butt. Black Suit reached down and yanked his hair. Billy yelped and let go. He smelled the unwashed men and took notice of their unclean clothes, pieces of cast-off uniforms — and he knew they weren't lying to him. John Mosby had scouted for Stuart for a time but had lately established himself as a guerrilla commander. He came and went by night, ripping up track, burning supply depots, sniping at pickets — all the more feared because he and his small band were seldom seen. Gray ghosts.

Who did not operate by the regular rules of war, Billy remembered with a heavy feeling in his middle. Black Suit gave him another hard shake by the hair and cocked his pistol.

"Hands on your head, boy."

"What?"

"I said lay both hands on top of your head. I want to make this quick."

"Make what quick?"

Jeering laughter. One of those laughing loudest said, "He's real dumb, ain't he?"

"Why, your military execution, Captain Hazard, sir," Black Suit said, with the thick juice of sarcasm in every word. "Now if that's all right with you, mebbe you'll 'low me to get on with the matter and be away to other, more pressing duties."

Disbelieving, Billy stared at the dark figure on horseback. The pines moaned, the wind raced through the boiling dark sky. Why didn't the train come back for him? They must have thought him slain, like Johnson —

"Hands on top of your head!" Black Suit said. "And turn away from me so's I can see your back."

"Under —" Billy struggled to keep his voice from cracking "— under the articles of War, I have the right to be treated as a prisoner and —"

"For Christ's sake, get done with it," another man said, and Billy knew it was all over. Well, all right, he thought. All I can do is take my leave without breaking down in front of them.

Genuinely angry, Black Suit said, "One last time, Yank — put your hands where I told you."

Billy laid his left palm on his wet hair, his right on top of it. He was ashamed of closing his eyes, but he thought it would be easier to bear it that way. The summer shower pattered in the pines and then, along the track to the north he heard another sound above the snort of horses, the jingle of metal, the creak of harness. A sound he couldn't identify — as if it mattered one damn bit.

Black Suit saluted him with the dragoon pistol. "So long, Captain Engineer. Sir."

"Oh, that's rich. You're a fuckin' sketch." Bull Voice laughed as Billy tightened inside, waiting for the bullet.

At that same moment, a middle-aged man with a bald head and a face that still possessed a certain cherubic aspect, stormed a breastwork. Those storming it with him, howling for blood, were not soldiers, but civilians; about a third were women.

Instead of shoulder and side arms, they attacked with bottles, bricks, sticks, furniture legs looted from wealthy homes, and in the case of the bald man, a wide black belt he had removed from pants of a volunteer fireman knocked unconscious by another rioter. Using the belt like a flail, Salem Jones had already opened the face of one of Mayor Opdyke's policemen with the big brass buckle.

Black smoke rolled over the rooftops of Manhattan. The streets were a silvery sea of glass. The breastwork — overturned carts, hacks, and wagons — stretched across Broadway from curb to curb just below Forty-third Street. Broadway, like most of the main arteries in this city of eight hundred thousand, had been contested since midmorning and held by the rioters since shortly after noon. On Third Avenue, no street-railway cars were moving anywhere from Park Row to One Hundred and Third. Cannon had been placed around City Hall and Police Headquarters on Mulberry. The mob storming the breastwork had just come from torching the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue, where the self-appointed leaders had decided to evacuate the children only moments before lighting the fires.

Salem Jones was not the first to clamber over the wagons to attack a dozen outnumbered police, but neither was he the last. The police scattered and ran. Jones threw a brick, which struck one of the officers in the back of the head. After the man fell, Jones scrambled out from behind a cartwheel that had briefly shielded him. He snatched the policeman's thick locust stick from his limp hand. He hadn't owned a good truncheon since his days as an overseer at Mont Royal. He felt whole again.

Some rioters ran into a restaurant and reappeared with two Negro waiters. A roar went up. A couple of policemen fired futile shots from the next corner, but that did nothing to deter the crowd. Some produced ropes. Others were shinnying up telegraph poles. Within two minutes, both waiters hung from crossarms, turning, turning slowly in the smoke.

The sight brought a smile to Jones's round face. He had been in New York only ten days, drifting there as he had drifted to so many other places after that damned Orry Main had discharged him. He had found a hovel in Mackerelville where he could sleep for nothing, and in grubby Second Avenue saloons he had listened to angry men thrown out of work by a recent dock strike. One of the most effective, a longshoreman by day and a mackerel with three girls working for him at night, had bellowed his grievances at a crowd that included Salem Jones.

All they wanted on the docks was a raise to twenty-five cents an hour for the nine-hour day. Was that too much to ask? The listeners screamed, "No!" and thumped their tin pails on tables and chairs. But what did the bosses do? Locked out the white men and brought in vans of niggers. Was that right? "No!"

The following Monday, the draft was to begin dragging these same whites into the army as cannon fodder — hard-working men who couldn't pay three hundred dollars to exempt themselves or hire a substitute. "We have to go to war for the coons, while they stay here and take our jobs, and bust into our houses, and molest our women. Are we going to let the draft people and the coons get away with that?"

"NO! NO! NO!"

Listening to the screaming, Jones could have told the witless police there would be hell to pay on this Monday morning. He had decided to join the fun.

The longshoreman who had exhorted the saloon crowd was one of the organizers of a mammoth parade, which had started early. Carrying banners and placards proclaiming NO DRAFT!, some ten thousand protestors marched up Sixth Avenue to Central Park. There, speeches had incited the mob to less restrained forms of protest. One of the orators, Jones noted, had a pronounced Southern accent. An agent sent to stir things up?

After the rally, the great crowd had divided into smaller ones. Jones ran with rioters who threw glass jars of sulphurous-smelling Greek fire through the windows of mansions on Lexington. He next joined a band that invaded an office where draft names were supposed to be drawn. They found nothing except furniture to wreck; the officials were conveniently absent. Then he was swept into the crowd at the Orphan Asylum, which was now burning briskly. From Broadway, he could glimpse the flames above the intervening buildings.

Around him Jones saw few evidences of anger. After the breast­works were stormed and the waiters hanged, the mob turned sportive. Celebrants swigged from all kinds of bottles. A drunken man snagged the hand of an unkempt woman, equally tipsy, pushed her into the doorway of an abandoned pawnshop, unbuttoned his pants and displayed his stiff member while spectators, including the woman, applauded and whistled. Soon the man was down on her, bouncing busily. The onlookers stayed a short time, but grew bored and went hunting other diversions.

Never much of a drinker, Jones needed no alcohol to stimulate him. He ran with the crowd down Broadway, then toward the East River. A group of them dashed into a tea shop to overturn chairs and tables, hurl cups and pots at the walls, and generally terrify the customers. On the way out he broke a front window with the stolen truncheon.

Near the river, under black smoke-clouds roiling through the hazy white sky, they collided with a herd of milling cows, pushed on through it and discovered the two cowherds, black boys, cowering on a patch of grass down by the water. The boys were fourteen or fifteen. Jones helped lift one and fling him in the river. Others threw in the second one.

"Hep us, hep us! We can't swim —"

Laughter answered the plea, laughter and rocks thrown by the whites. Jones threw one, reached for a second, imagining he was hurling them at that damned, arrogant Orry Main, who had discovered so-called irregularities in the Mont Royal accounts and retaliated by discharging him. Born in New England, Jones had always favored the South because he loathed colored people. But the snobs along the Ashley, and especially the Mains, had given him another target for his hate.

Jones threw another rock, watched with pleasure as it struck one of the gasping cowherds square in the forehead. A minute later the boy sank beneath the water, followed shortly by the second. Laughing, the people around Jones complained that the fun hadn't lasted long enough.

An hour later, he found himself in another saloon in Mackerelville, listening to still another scruffy fellow harangue a crowd.

"We hain't gone where we really should go — over to the Eighth Ward. Over to Sullivan an' Clarkson an' Thompson streets. Over there we can tree some coons right where they live."

Fortified by free beer the owner was serving — his way of demonstrating dislike of the draft — Jones thrust his locust stick in his belt and joined the marchers, who defiantly sang "Dixie" at the top of their lungs as they tramped west.

Arms linked with strangers on either side of him, Jones reflected that he personally liked the conscription law — a sentiment he wouldn't have expressed here, naturally. He liked it because certain states were already paying handsome bounties to men who would enlist and help fill draft quotas. Though he was beyond the age for service, Jones nevertheless believed he could dye his fringe of white hair, lie about the date of his birth, and earn some of that bonus money. Something to think about, anyway — but not till this party was over.

The mob, grown to around one hundred and fifty, brushed with a squad of soldiers, many of whom wore head or arm bandages; the city had even turned out the Invalid Corps for the emergency. The mob easily scattered the invalids and marched on through the glass glitter. The day darkened more rapidly than usual. Heavy smoke, lurid red from all the fires, pressed down on the rooftops. Fire bells tolled from every quarter as the crowd surged into Clarkson Street, a lane of tenements and shacks built from packing boxes.

"Where are they? Where are the niggers?" people shouted. Except for two little girls playing beside an immense garbage heap where fat rats scampered, no human beings could be seen. Jones scanned the tenements. Broken windows, open windows — all were empty.

Some of the rioters vanished behind the packing-box shanties and began tipping outhouses. Most of the whites wanted better sport; they converged on the garbage heap. The rats and the little girls fled. Suddenly Jones spied a head in a third-floor window. "There's one!"

The head vanished. Jones led a party of ten up through the fetid building, kicking open doors in the search. They discovered a young Negro couple and an infant lying on a pallet. A smiling white woman picked up the child, rocked it back and forth a few times, then stepped to the open window, leaned out, and dropped it.

The mother screamed. Jones bashed her head with the truncheon. Outside, in the reddening light of the burning city, they carried the husband and wife to a stunted tree near the garbage heap. Ropes went up, and the two were quickly tied so they hung by their wrists. A shrieking white woman rushed forward with a butcher knife, but a man held her back.

"Don't use that. I found some kerosene."

He doused it on both Negroes; kerosene dripped on the hard-packed ground. Jones shivered, pleasurably imagining the buck was Orry Main. The husband pleaded for the mob to spare his dazed, bleeding wife. That only generated more jeers and jokes. Someone struck a match, tossed it, jumped back —

The fireball erupted with a roar. A smile spread over Jones's cherubic face as he watched the victims burn.

Horsemen. That was the sound he heard. Horsemen cantering through the pines beside the rail line. Hands on top of his head, Billy opened his eyes.

Six men, two in uniform, reined up around the others. The one to whom Black Suit and the rest immediately deferred was a slight, slender officer with sandy yellow hair showing under a hat with an ostrich plume. The man's gray cape, tossed back over both shoulders, displayed a bright red lining. The officer was about thirty. His clean-shaven face looked stern but not unkind. He seemed more interested in Black Suit than in Billy.

"What is happening here?"

"We pulled this Yank off’n a work train that went by a while ago, sir. We were preparing —" Black Suit swallowed, nervously eyeing his comrades.

"To execute the prisoner?" the officer prompted, quieting his dancing horse with a few quick pats.

Black Suit flushed, said faintly, "Yes, sir."

"That is against the rules of civilized warfare, and you know it. No matter what calumnies the Yankee newspapers print about us, we do not engage in murder. You will pay a penalty for this."

Frightened now, Black Suit hastily holstered his dragoon pistol. Billy's heartbeat slowed. "Lower your hands," the officer said to him. Billy obeyed. "Give me your name and unit, please."

"Captain William Hazard, Battalion of Engineers, Army of the Potomac."

"Well, Captain, you are the prisoner of the Partisan Rangers."

Billy caught his breath. "Are you —?"

Gauntlet touched hat brim. "Major John Mosby. At your service." He suppressed a smile. "Pulled you off a train, did they? Well, at least you're in one piece. I will make arrangements to have you transported to the Richmond prison for Union officers."

Mosby's unexpected arrival had left Billy elated and befuddled — so thankful he hadn't stopped to think of the consequences of a reprieve. Prison was better than death, but not much; paroles were becoming fewer as the bitterness of the war intensified.

He should have recognized Mosby at once; after Stuart's, his plume was the most famous in the Confederacy. Mosby addressed the other man in uniform, a sergeant. "See that he's fed and not mistreated. We must move on to —"

"Major?"

Annoyed, Mosby glanced at Billy. "What is it?"

"One of my men was shot to death just before I was captured. He's lying up there in the weeds. Might I ask that he be given a Christian burial?"

"Why, yes, certainly." A hard look at Black Suit. "You're in charge. See that you do it properly."

There was no complaint from Black Suit, not even a flicker of resentment in his eyes as Mosby and his party resumed their canter through the woods. One of their number had been left behind to take charge of the prisoner. While that trooper was loosening the saddle girth to rest his horse, Black Suit managed to whisper to Billy.

"You're going to Libby Prison. When you see how they treat Yankee boys there, you'll wish to God I'd pulled that trigger. You'll wish I'd killed you. Just wait."

87

August infected Richmond with soaring temperatures and humidity, with dusty leaves and still air awaiting a great relieving storm that muttered northwest of the Potomac but never seemed to march farther, and with a pervading despair that followed two realizations: the Mississippi was lost; and Gettysburg had not been the quasi-triumph the high command at first pretended it was. One clear signal was the state of the trade in illegal currency. A Yankee greenback dollar, of which there were thousands in circulation, cost two Confederate dollars before the debacle in Pennsylvania. Now it cost four.

Vicksburg spilled thousands of new captives into the already overcrowded camps and warehouse prisons. Gettysburg sent thousands of new wounded to the overtaxed hospitals. Huntoon absorbed this marginally as he scratched away at work he no longer cared about. Memminger had assigned him the odious task of preparing lists of those business establishments, nearly numberless, engaged in printing and distributing illegal shinplasters.

The Confederacy had no silver for small coins, so the Treasury had authorized states, cities, and selected railroads to issue paper, in denominations from five to fifty cents, for change-making. But hundreds of other businesses took up the idea, and the Confederacy was now suffering a plague of shinplasters more numerous than Biblical frogs and locusts. Huntoon wrote list after list — grogshops, greengrocers, taprooms, short-line railroads. This morning he was copying out names provided by Treasury informants in Florida and Mississippi — hateful work onto which his sweat fell as he hunched over it, blotting it like tears.

What this government did no longer mattered to him. But a new Confederacy — that was tantalizing, that mesmerized him. He lay awake nights thinking about it. Spent long periods day­dreaming about it at his desk, until some superior reprimanded him. Finally, one hot noontime, he startled his drone colleagues by seizing his hat and dashing from the office, a kind of crazed exaltation on his face.

He had already made inquiries in saloons. Most barkeeps were well acquainted with Powell, and Huntoon soon learned the Georgian's address. He refused to ask Ashton, for fear she would reveal that she knew it.

Huntoon wanted to put some additional questions to Powell. He needed more details, yet at the same time didn't want to risk offending. So he had delayed a while. Finally, however, his agitated state drove him out of the office that broiling noonday and into a hack.

"Church Hill," he called through the roof slot, rapping with his stick for emphasis. "Corner of Twenty-fourth and Franklin."

Leaves coated with dust hung motionless over the brick wall. Excited, Huntoon lumbered up the steps and knocked. A minute later he knocked again. At last, the door opened.

"Powell, I've decided —"

"What in hell are you doing here?" Powell demanded, giving a yank to tighten the belt of his emerald velvet dressing gown. The vee of flesh showing between his lapels was glittery with sweat.

St. John's Church began to ring the half-hour. Queasy, Huntoon felt that the bell was sounding a knell for his opportunity. "I didn't mean to interrupt —"

"But you have. I'm extremely busy."

Huntoon blinked, overcome with fright. "Please accept my aplogy. I came only because you said you wanted my decision promptly. I made it this morning." A swift look down the street. Then he thought he heard some unseen person stirring behind the door.

"All right, tell me."

"I — I want to join, if you'll have me."

Some of the wrath left Powell's face. "Of course. That's excellent news."

"May we talk about particulars of when and how —?"

"Not now. I'll be in touch." Then, seeing Huntoon react unfavorably to his curtness, Powell smiled. "Very soon. I would be pleased to do it today, but unfortunately I have many other affairs that demand attention. I'm very glad you're with us, James. We need a man of courage and vision in the new Treasury. You'll hear from me in a day or two, I promise."

He closed the door. Huntoon was left in the heat, his heavy coat binding his fat body and his feelings hurt. Of course he had called without an appointment, and Southerners resented such discourtesies. He had no right to harbor resentment, though he did wonder what private matter required Powell to wear a dressing gown in the middle of the day. Huntoon had a suspicion too painful to entertain for very long.

As he went in search of a hack to return him to Capitol Square, he did an emotional turnabout. Powell became the injured party, he the offending one. His mind executed the reversal because he needed to feel himself genuinely a part of Lamar Powell's plan.

And what he wanted most of all was to tell his wife of his brave decision.

"Near thing," Powell said in the foyer, slipping out of the hot velvet robe and hooking it over his shoulder by one finger. It was the closest he had come in many a year to being surprised by a cuckolded husband, and it showed in the tightness of his features. Huntoon waddled away up the sidewalk, and Ashton, buck naked, uncovered her mouth and succumbed to the laughter she had struggled to control while she was hidden behind the door.

"You nearly gave us away."

"But — I had to listen, Lamar." She laughed so hard tears came. "It was — so delicious — my husband on one side of the door — my lover on the other —" She held her sides; her breasts shook.

"I didn't hear you sneak down here while I was answering the door. Seeing you damn near gave me a seizure." He clamped her chin in his left hand and lifted it swiftly, roughly. "Don't ever do such a thing again."

Smile fading: "No, no — I'm sorry — I won't. But I'm elated that he said yes. He's been pondering the decision for days. He hasn't said a word to me, but I could tell it's been on his mind." She took hold of his arm, "You're pleased, aren't you? Now we have him where we can watch him."

"And we don't want him to change his mind. So you must allay any lingering doubts he may have. Make him very proud of his decision by rewarding him." He squeezed her chin; a spasm at the corners of her mouth showed there was pain. "Do you understand, my dear?"

"Yes. Yes. I'll do whatever you say."

"As always." He let go of her. The imprint of his fingers faded. Smiling, he gave her cheek a brief, paternal kiss. "That's why I love you."

That evening, after dismissing the servants and closing the dining-room doors, Huntoon cleared his throat in a way that signaled a pronouncement. Except for a slight scarring of the wallpaper, the room showed no evidence of Cooper's visit. New legs had been installed on the table; new jasperware filled the repaired cabinet.

She felt she must be simpering as she said, "James, what is it? You're so excited —"

"With good reason. Recently I've had some — private conversations with Mr. Lamar Powell —" He pushed aside the tureen of steaming fish bisque, jumped up. "Oh, I can't sit —" He rushed to her end of the table. "He approached me with the most astonishing scheme, Ashton — a proposal I have accepted because I feel it's my patriotic duty, because I believe it's morally right, and also because I think it will work to our very great benefit."

"Dear me," she murmured, trying for precisely the right blend of surprise and reservation. "Does he want money for another vessel?"

"God, no, nothing so mundane. I will tell you what it is, but you must prepare yourself. Open your mind. Not hesitate to think, well, daringly. Unconventionally. Sweetheart — Mr. Powell and some associates I have not met as yet intend to establish —" he gripped her arm, bent down beside her chair "— a new Confederate state."

"What?"

"Please don't raise your voice. You heard me correctly. A new Confederacy. Let me tell you about it."

Giggling inside, Ashton frowned as he pulled a chair from the corner and sat beside her. He fondled her hand, explaining, revealing, persuading while she fluttered her eyelashes to simulate astonishment, pressed a hand to her breast, and at appropriate intervals gasped. Altogether, in her own estimation, she gave a splendid performance — up to and including the dramatic rush of her palm to her open mouth when he first said the word assassination.

He took half an hour to pour it all out. The fish bisque had congealed by the time he asked, "Now tell me — did I act improperly? I've withheld none of the facts, including my strong desire to join Powell's group. I want to be his new secretary of the treasury, and I believe that's possible. The Southwest is a long way from our home state, but think of the rewards when we establish a new government. We'll command the attention — the respect — of the entire world."

"I am thinking of that. It's just a trifle — well — overwhelming."

"But you aren't furious with me?"

"James — James!" She began to press little kisses on his flabby face. "Of course not. I'm thrilled by your vision — proud of your courage — gratified to see you exhibit such intelligence and initiative. I've always known you had both qualities, but I also know that working in Richmond has been a miserable, frustrating experience. I'm so happy to learn it hasn't robbed you of your ambition —"

"The principal reason for my ambition is you, Ashton. I want you to be one of the most important women in the new Confederacy."

"Oh, darling —" Steeling herself, she squeezed his slippery face between her palms, kissed him, and pushed her tongue into his mouth. He uttered a groan as she dropped her hand to his right thigh. "I'm so proud of you."

Someone knocked softly — the kitchen, wondering about the overly long soup course. Ashton smoothed her gown, glanced into Huntoon's calf eyes — she knew what was inevitable tonight — and trilled, "Come in, Delia."

Huntoon returned to his place. But they had scarcely finished their cups of tasteless fruit ice when he was at her side again, pawing her dress and begging her to go to the bedroom. She pretended to be as breathless as he was, meekly offering her hand for him to lead her.

Undressed, she cooed over his body and manipulated him to a mammoth erection —that was something new, anyway; she couldn't wait to tell Lamar.

North of Richmond was a wayside inn whose faded paint had given the hamlet of Yellow Tavern its name. Some half a mile farther on, at the end of a deserted lane running west from Telegraph Road, rose a large grove of trees. Light from a heat-hazed moon fell all around the grove, illuminating the landscape dimly. But under the trees, where two men talked, neither could see the other.

Over soft sounds of horses moving restlessly, one said, "I must tell you for the good of all of us that you've spoken too freely, too often. They say even that damned Lafayette Baker's heard about us."

"Well, so be it. Men from my state make no secret of their convictions. Governor Brown doesn't, and neither do I."

"But you've drawn attention to yourself. Therefore maybe to the rest of us."

"Oh, I doubt that one more tale of conspiracy will be given much credence — there are so many. Besides, I've no other way to recruit men with the right sort of nerve. I can only put out a baited line and wait. It worked with you."

Grudgingly: "True."

"Are we in any immediate danger?"

"I don't think so. Davis heard some of the talk and sent a letter ordering the general to investigate. I volunteered for the assignment — patriotic zeal, loathing for traitors — the usual claptrap."

"Clever of you. Now you can block the inquiry?"

"Slow it down," the other corrected. "We don't have as much time as we did before."

"We'll move faster. Within a few months, Jeff Davis will be dead and gone."

"If he isn't, the rest of us will be."

"And we'll be enjoying the sunshine and free air of the South­west. Meanwhile — I deeply appreciate the warning."

"I know it's a long ride out here, but it's the safest spot I could think of, and I thought you'd want to know."

"Absolutely. My thanks. I'll be in touch."

They clasped hands, bid each other good night, and turned their horses in opposite directions. Wan moonlight brushed the face of Lamar Powell as he cantered from one side of the grove and the benign features of the agent of the provost marshal, Israel Quincy, on the other.

88

Prodded out of the covered wagon at musket point, Billy saw the sign that had identified the block-square structure when it was a warehouse instead of a prison. Some three dozen officers climbed from Billy's wagon and the two behind. Like the others, Billy was exhausted, hungry, and, above all, nervous.

To reach Libby Prison, the wagons had passed through a neighborhood of commercial buildings and vacant lots. Approaching, Billy first noticed the uniformed guards posted at intervals around the brick building.

The prison looked harsh in the morning light. The wagons had parked on the lower side, where the building was four stories high. On the opposite side, at the top of the sloping street, it was three. The warning said to be carved above one of its doors was known throughout the Union Army: Abandon all hope who enter here.

"Form up, form up in single file," a bored sergeant said, pushing some of the prisoners, gigging others with his musket. Most of the captives were quietly resolute about their predicament. Inevitably, one or two had insisted on cracking jokes during the ride to Richmond in a filthy freight car. But once the train arrived in the enemy capital, the jokes stopped. In the entire lot, only one prisoner, a portly captain of artillery two or three years older than Billy, seemed genuinely broken by the experience; his eyes were moist as he took his place in line.

"Look there," an officer said, pointing to a barge pulling away from a pier not far from the prison. All the open space on deck was filled by emaciated men in dirty blue uniforms. On the roof of the deckhouse, a white cloth hung from a staff. The barge was headed downriver.

Noticing the prisoners watching, a guard said, "Flag-of-truce boat. Just took a load of you boys out of this yere building for exchange. Not many of them boats leavin' these days. Be a long time 'fore any of you take the trip. Now march."

As they passed through a doorway, Billy searched for the famous inscription and didn't see it; but Libby had many entrances. They shuffled up creaking stairs. Men began to cough because of the odors: fish, tobacco, something acrid.

"What the hell's that stink?"

The prisoner was answered by a sarcastic guard. "Burnin' tar. You Yanks smell so putrid, we got to fumigate the place reg'lar."

Shuffling in line, trying to remember Brett, remember all his many reasons for clinging to hope, Billy reached a large, unfurnished room with high slot windows that admitted only a little daylight. There a private interrogated each prisoner, inscribing name, rank, and unit into a copybook. Then he turned them over to a corporal who stood beneath a window, hands locked behind his back in the rest position. The sight of the stiff-backed noncom made Billy's gut quiver.

"Line up — eight men to a rank — starting here."

The corporal was a boy, pink-faced, wholesome-looking, with blond curls and eyes as brilliant as an October sky. When the prisoners had formed their ranks — Billy was in the second one — the corporal strode to a spot in front of them.

"I am Corporal Clyde Vesey, charged with welcoming you gentlemen to Libby Prison, of whose hospitality you have no doubt heard. You will now strip to the skin so Private Murch and I may conduct a search for money and any other illegal material you may be carrying."

Shirts came off, trousers dropped; dirty hands worked the buttons on sweaty suits of underwear. There were no complaints; guards on the prison train had warned them about a search, saying that whether they were allowed to keep money or personal items frequently depended on the mood of the soldiers doing the searching. Seeing Vesey's blue eyes and listening to his speech, Billy was not encouraged.

"Open your mouth," Vesey snapped to a major in the front row. The major objected. Vesey backhanded his face twice, hard. Two places to the left, the fat artillery captain let out an audible cry of dismay.

"Open," Vesey repeated. The furious major obeyed. Vesey reached in and withdrew a small paper tube, spittle-covered, from its hiding place next to the upper gum. Vesey unrolled the ten-dollar note, wiped it on his blouse, tucked it away and moved on.

When he reached the artilleryman, Vesey smiled, sensing his weakness. After a routine search of mouth and armpits, he stepped back. "Turn around and spread your backside."

"W—what? See here. That isn't decent or —"

Vesey smiled a sweet smile, interrupting. "You have nothing to say about what's decent or indecent in Libby Prison. Such decisions are in the hands of the warden, Lieutenant Turner, and those of us privileged to serve him." His hand flew up, seizing the captain's ear and twisting. The artilleryman shrieked like a girl.

Vesey smiled. "Turn around and grab your backside and spread it."

Enraged looks passed between some of the prisoners, Billy being one of them. Red-faced, the artilleryman turned to face the rank behind him and reached for his buttocks. Billy recalled he had heard about the warden of Libby — a martinet who had resigned from the Academy in his plebe year, just before Sumter fell.

Vesey let the artilleryman stand in that embarrassing position for fifteen seconds — twenty — thirty. The captain began to shake from strain. Vesey reached around and slapped the side of his face. The captain squealed and fell forward. Men in the next rank pushed him back. The captain started to cry. Billy took a half-step forward.

Vesey said to him: "Oh, I wouldn't interfere. It'll go hard with you later."

Billy hesitated, then stepped back to his place. The search went on. Billy's mouth grew dry as the corporal moved along the second row. He bent to rummage through the clothing piled beside Billy's bare feet.

"What's this?" Vesey said, pleased. From Billy's jacket he pulled the copybook.

"That's my journal," Billy said. "It's personal."

Vesey stood and slowly waved the copybook an inch from Billy's nose. "Nothing is personal in Libby unless we declare it so. This is a book. Regular churchgoing has taught me to distrust books, especially novels, and all those who read them. It's my Christian duty not merely to hold you men as prisoners, but to reform your errant ways. 'I will take you from among the heathen,' says the prophet Ezekiel. That's just what you Yankees are, heathen. Here's a fine example. You will just have to get along without your godless books."

He's mad, Billy thought, filled with dread. "Murch?" Vesey flung the copybook to the other soldier, who caught and pocketed it. After a fleeting smile at Billy, Vesey stepped to the next man.

The search continued. Billy's legs started to ache. Finally Vesey finished and returned to the front, hands locked at the small of his back again. At last we can get out of here and sit down, Billy thought.

"It is now my duty and privilege to give you gentlemen some moral instruction." Vesey spread his feet, planting them solidly. One officer swore. Vesey glared. The artilleryman was still weeping softly. "The instruction concerns your status in this prison. As I said to the man with the concealed copybook, we don't consider you merely enemies; we consider you heathen. You —" he lunged forward suddenly, grabbing the fat artilleryman by the hair "— pay attention when I speak." He twisted the hair. The captain's flabby white breasts shook as he struggled to control his sobbing. Breathing loudly through his open mouth, Vesey stepped back, his clean pink face stiff with anger.

"Each of you mark this well. You are no longer officers. You are no longer gentlemen. Your status here is that of a nigger. No, I'm too generous. You are lower than niggers, and you will learn to feel that — sleep and eat that — breathe that every minute you are in my care. Now —"

A long inhalation. Then he smiled.

"Show me that you understand what I just told you. Show me what you are. Get down on your knees."

"What the hell —?" Billy growled. Behind him, another officer said, "You fucking reb ape —"

"Murch?" Vesey gestured. Using his side arm, the private hit the outspoken officer in the back of the head. The man staggered. A second blow laid him on his side, barely conscious.

Vesey smiled again. "I said," he murmured, "kneel down. Heathen niggers. Kneel — down."

The artillery captain dropped first, panting. Someone cursed him. Vesey dashed to the third row and hit the offender, then seized his shoulder and forced him to his knees. Anxious looks flashed between the prisoners, tired men who wanted to save themselves from this lunatic. Slowly, one by one, they knelt, until just three naked officers remained standing. Vesey studied the trio and walked to the nearest — Billy.

"Kneel down," Vesey purred, smiling broadly and fixing him with those October eyes.

Heart hammering, Billy said, "I demand that this group of prisoners be treated according to the rules of war. The rules your superior surely understands even if you do no —"

He saw the hand flying toward his face, tried to jerk aside but was slowed by his fatigue. The open-handed blow hurt more than he anticipated. He lurched sideways, almost fell.

"I told you before. There are no rules here but the ones I make. Get down."

He dug immaculate fingernails into Billy's bare shoulder. "Jesus," Billy said, tears in his eyes. Vesey's nails broke skin; blood oozed as he dug deeper.

"Now you blaspheme. Get down!"

Wanting to stay on his feet, Billy felt his legs giving out. His head began to vibrate like some faulty part in a machine. He clenched his teeth, resisting the steady downward pressure —

Unexpectedly, Vesey pulled. The shift unbalanced Billy, and he tumbled over, knees whacking the floor, bare palms skidding along it; a long splinter drove into his right hand.

He raised his head and saw the corporal turn away. "Murch?"

"Sir?"

"What's his name?"

"Hazard. William Hazard. Engineers."

"Thank you. I want to be certain to remember that," Vesey said through lips so tight with rage they had lost all color.

His eyes shifted to the two other officers still standing. First one, then the other, knelt down. "Good," Vesey said.

Billy scrambled up on his haunches. Blood leaked along his forearm from the wounds left by Vesey's nails. He watched the bright October eyes return to him again, marking him.

That day, just at five, the wind strengthened, the sky blackened, the heat broke under an assault of raging rain, pelting hail, thunder loud as massed field guns. Orry started across the capitol rotunda as the storm burst, and, with no gas jets lit as yet, found himself in near-darkness. He blundered into another officer, stepped back, astonished.

"George? I didn't know you were in Richmond."

"Yes," said his old friend Pickett in a peculiar, detached voice. Pickett's long hair was uncombed, his eyes ringed by shadows. "Yes, for a while — I'm temporarily detached. Good to see you. We must get together," he said over his shoulder as he hurried into the dark. Thunder tremors vibrated the marble floor.

He didn't recognize me. What's wrong with him?

But Orry thought he knew. He had heard the stories. Once so courtly and light-hearted, Pickett had gone up Cemetery Hill, leading his boys to a slaughter. He had come down a ruined and a haunted man. Orry stood motionless in the center of the rotunda. The whole building shook, as if the elements wanted to tear it apart.

On the same day, in Washington, George received a bedraggled envelope forwarded by means of a three-cent stamp added at Lehigh Station. So far as he could tell, the envelope bore no other franking. Curious. He opened it, unfolded the letter, saw the signature, and whooped.

Not only was Orry in Richmond, he was with Madeline, who was now his wife. George shook his head in amazement as he read on through the letter obviously sent to Pennsylvania by illegal courier. Fate had ironically shunted the two friends along similar paths. Like George, he could barely tolerate most of his war department duties.

In spite of the letter's tone of melancholy, it brought a smile whenever George read it. And he read it, aloud to Constance and silently to himself, many times before he put it away with his permanent keepsakes.

None of the drinkers in the hotel bar laughed; few raised their voices above a mutter. What was there to be cheerful about? Not even the weather. The heat wave had broken, but relief had come with a storm so fierce it sounded as if it might level all of Richmond.

Trying to shut out the voices of discontent all around him, Lamar Powell worked on a draft of a letter to the foreman of the Mexican Mine. He had chosen a table in a back corner for privacy and was writing to advise the mine foreman that sometime within the next twelve months he would personally appear at the site to take charge.

When he was satisfied with the wording, he began to consider ways to get the letter out of the Confederacy He distrusted the illegal mail couriers who operated between here and Washington; they were a duplicitous lot, sometimes dumping a pouch of letters into some gully or creek and disappearing with their meager profits. Still, they represented the fastest and most direct means of sending mail across enemy lines. Perhaps he should use a courier but send a copy of the letter by another route. To Bermuda, via Wilmington. That way —

A fraction late, he heard the wet boots squeaking. He quickly folded the draft and glanced at the man whose shadow had fallen on the table. The man was fat, huge, his fusty suit large as a tent. He had dark hair, sly eyes, a conspiratorial air. He licked his lips.

"Have I the honor of addressing Mr. Lamar Powell?"

Powell wished that he had brought his four-barrel Sharps tonight. Could this gross fellow be some spy of Winder's on the prowl for critics of the President?

"What do you want?" Powell retorted.

Put off by the nonanswer, the stranger cleared his throat. "You were pointed out as Mr. Powell. I've been searching for you for several days. I am interested in, ah, certain of your plans. May I sit down and explain? Oh, forgive me — my name is Captain Bellingham."

That night, Bent celebrated by drinking himself into a stupor in his rooming house. Mr. Lamar Powell was shrewd. He had not uttered so much as a syllable to confirm his part in any conspiracy against the government, nor indeed given the slightest indication that such a conspiracy existed. Yet by glance and inflection and gesture, he left no doubt. He was involved, and he could use trustworthy recruits — especially a Maryland-born Southern sympathizer lately wounded in service with General Longstreet.

Not only had it been necessary for Bent to tell those lies, but he had been required to state some fundamental beliefs — extremely risky, but vital if he was to convince Powell of his sincerity. He said he hated to see the South misruled, the war lost, the great principles sullied by King Jeff the First. He wanted the dictator removed, if not by the ballot, then by other means.

Powell had listened, then made a small concession. After further reflection on the captain's story, he would be in touch at the address the captain had provided, if — if — there was any reason for contact. He didn't state that there would be, but his manner clearly suggested it.

Powell questioned him hard as to how and where he had heard Powell's name. Bent refused to answer. Being stubborn on that point was a risk, of course. Yet if Powell deemed him too pliable, he might not want his services. So Bent dug in and repeatedly said no, he could reveal nothing about his sources.

He left Powell in the hotel bar, got drunk in his rooming house, and settled down to wait. A week, a month — whatever it took. Meantime, he had another little scheme to occupy him now that he was in the same city as Orry Main. Bent's presence was unknown to him. He could take him by surprise.

Ashton left the house on Grace Street at half past six the next evening. The air felt sharply cooler, though ugly black clouds continued to roll out of the northwest. The storm weather had persisted a long time, but the relief was welcome.

Tugging on her gloves, she hurried down the long front stoop. She was so busy anticipating her evening with Powell that she failed to see the man half concealed behind one of the large brick pillars at the foot of the steps. He hurled himself in front of her.

"Mrs. Huntoon?"

"How dare you startle me that — oh!" She clutched her hat in the stiff wind, recognizing him: a huge heap of dark broadcloth, a fat face beneath a broad-brimmed hat. He had called on her once before, though his name eluded her. He carried an oilskin tube under his arm.

"Excuse me, I didn't mean to frighten you," he said, darting looks at the house. "Is there some spot close by where we might hold a private conversation?"

"Your name again?"

"Captain Erasmus Bellingham."

"That's right. General Longstreet's corps."

"The Invalid Corps now, I'm afraid," Bent replied with his most soulful expression. "I am out of the army."

"When you called the first time, you said you were a friend of my brother's."

"If I left that impression, I regret it. I am not a friend, merely an acquaintance. On that occasion you stated that your feelings toward Colonel Main were — may we say — less than cordial? That is why I came back tonight — my first opportunity to do so since my release from Chimborazo Hospital."

"Captain, I am on my way somewhere, and I'm late. Come to the point."

Tap-tap went his fingers, plump white sausages, on the oilskin tube. "I have a painting here. I should like to show it to you, that's all. I am not trying to sell it, Mrs. Huntoon — I wouldn't part with it. But I think you will find it of great interest all the same."

That same evening, Charles reached Barclay's Farm. He had invited Jim Pickles to come along, explaining en route that he was romantically involved with the widow Barclay. Jim whooped and hollered and waved his hat, which now had a turkey feather stuck in the band; he was imitating Stuart but couldn't find an ostrich plume. Jim thought what Charles had said was fine news, though, curiously, Charles silently questioned his own good sense even as he related how he felt.

Gus hugged and kissed him warmly, and when she went out to supervise the killing of two hens for supper, Jim nudged his fellow scout. "You're a lucky gent, Charlie. She's a dandy." Charles continued to puff his cob pipe in silence and toast his bare feet at the kitchen hearth; the rain through which they had ridden was hard and cold.

Supper was cheerful and boisterous for a while. But talk of the war couldn't be avoided. Everyone expected a new siege of Charleston to begin soon. In the West, Bragg was being pressed by Rosecrans. Brave Morgan, after a twenty-five-day mounted raid through Kentucky and Indiana, had been captured at Salineville, Ohio, the preceding week. Nothing pleasant or consoling in any of that.

Gus remarked that she couldn't feel happy about the recent riots, which had claimed the lives of blacks as well as whites in New York City. Over two million dollars' worth of property had been ruined before units of Meade's army arrived from Pennsylvania to quell the disturbances. Those statements — more specifically, Charles's response to them — started an argument.

"You ought to feel happy about it, Gus. We need help wherever we can find it."

"You can't be serious. That was butchery, not war. Women knifed to death. Little children stoned —"

"Nasty, I'll admit. But we can't be tender hearts any longer. Even when we win, we lose. In every battle, both sides expend men, horses, ammunition. The Yanks can afford it — they have plenty of everything. We don't. If they ever find a general who catches on to that, it will be all over for our side."

She shivered. "You sound so bloodthirsty —"

His temper gave way. "And you sound disapproving."

The old defense, a brittle smile, went into place. "Mr. Pope and I wonder about the cause of your bad disposition."

"My disposition's no concern of —"

But she quoted right on top of that: " 'Perhaps was sick —' " an instant's hesitation. " '— in love, or had not dined?' "

Gnawing a chicken wing, Jim asked, "Who's Mr. Pope? Some farmer around here?"

"A poet Mrs. Barclay favors, you dunce."

"Charles, that's rude," she said.

He sighed, "Yes. I'm sorry, Jim."

"Oh — don't matter," Jim answered, his eye on the bone.

"I'd still like to know why you're so disagreeable, Charles."

"I'm disagreeable because we're losing, goddamn it!" On the last word he knocked his pipe against the hearth so hard the stem snapped.

They smoothed over the quarrel later — she took the initiative — and made love twice between midnight and morning. But damage had been done.

Next afternoon, the clouds cleared as the men started their return ride to camp below the Rapidan, where the infantry had retired behind a cavalry screen. All of the commands in the mounted service were to be evaluated again, and possibly reorganized. As if Charles gave a damn.

The sky, suffused with deep orange as the day waned, had a forlorn quality. Autumnal. Cantering beside the young scout, Charles noticed that the turkey feather in Jim's hat band, bent over behind him a few minutes ago, now bent forward, toward the road in front of them.

Jim noticed his companion's stare. "What's wrong, Charlie?"

"The wind's changed."

So it had, sharp and cold now, from the northwest. Too chilly for summer. Jim waited for further explanation, but none came. He scratched his stubbly beard. Strange man, Charlie. Brave as the devil. But mighty unhappy these days.

Buffeted by the stiff north wind that flattened the grasses of the fields and creaked the trees, they rode on through the orange evening.