On Secret Service (24 page)

Zach had his arms deep in a wooden tub of suds. When he wasn't fetching and carrying for Pinkerton, he washed dishes and cleaned up the mess, not without complaint. “You're an errand boy, I'm washin' tin cups,” he said to Lon. “Where's this important secret service we're 'sposed to do? I might as well wait on the white folks at Willard's.”

“My fault.” Lon picked a biscuit crumb out of his beard. “I'm not the boss's favorite right now.”

Zach draped his scrub rag over the edge of the tub. “You be careful up there in Washington city. You're the only friend I got. There's a whole lot of meanness swirling in the air round here.”

“Something more than usual?”

“I'd say so. Couldn't sleep last night, so I went walkin' where I'm not allowed but no one saw me. Boss's tent was lit up like always. He had a visitor. The big general, carryin' on like a crazy man. Something about soldiers pulled back to Washington.”

“McDowell's reinforcements?”

“Must be. The big general called Mr. Stanton nasty names. Called him Judas Iscariot.”

“Good God.”

“You better come back, 'fore things get worse.”

 

Bad thoughts followed Lon on his ride to Fort Monroe and his steamer trip upriver. The trip took a day and a half. Pinkerton did it often, rushing to testify at some court-martial or contractor hearing, then rushing back without sleep, which helped account for his haggard looks and foul temper.

When Lon reached Washington, he learned that McDowell had indeed been ordered back from Fredericksburg, to protect the city against Stonewall Jackson. Was there something to McClellan's claim of a cabal after all?

He found the city excited by the nearness of Jackson, and by action on the last day of May at Seven Pines station on the York River railroad. Bulletins at newspaper offices proclaimed a Union victory, with the Confederate commander, Johnston, twice wounded. At Pinkerton headquarters the perspective was different. Kate Warne, deskbound with paperwork, told Lon, “We had a telegraph about it. McClellan lost something like six thousand killed and wounded. He's never taken that kind of licking before. Heaven knows what it will do to him. They say he's losing his grip, and Lincoln's out of patience.”

“If Johnston's wounded, who replaces him?”

“Bobby Lee. Davis announced it.”

“How did we find out?”

“Our people in Richmond.”

With McClellan failing, how strong was Pinkerton's position? Lon remembered Lafayette Baker's warning at Old Capitol:
Don't back the wrong horse.
It no longer seemed foolish or self-serving.

Uneasy, he delivered sealed dispatch pouches to the War Department in President's Park. There, Secretary Stanton received petitioners every morning, standing behind a podium desk and bellowing questions and orders like the worst martinet. Dozens of petitioners jammed the hall benches, waiting to be abused in similar fashion.

The second-floor library held the telegraph office. Stanton had seized the instruments and removed them from Army of the Potomac headquarters. Lon heard the receivers clicking and clattering as he headed out of the building. At the entrance he bumped into the President. Lincoln tipped his old stovepipe hat and apologized; he didn't recognize Lon. He squeezed past petitioners who scarcely noticed him and hurried upstairs.

Lon's next delivery, to the quartermaster general's office, consisted of several bundles of ledgers seized from a contractor caught selling weevily biscuits to the Peninsula Army. Sledge had impounded the books using brass knuckles. He boasted that the contractor was laid up with a severe case of broken bones and black eyes, giving him ample time to contemplate his malfeasance.

Nervously, Lon prepared for the personal part of his visit. A barber trimmed his hair and beard. At Shillington's bookshop he conferred with a clerk over a gift. The prissy clerk recommended a relatively new translation of
The Rubáiyát
, poems of Omar Khayyám that Lon had never read. The clerk assured him they had much to do with romance, and fate, though with an elegiac tone appropriate to wartime.

“Wrap it in fancy paper,” Lon said. “It's for a lady.”

“She will appreciate your tender spirit.”

Old Capitol was the same dismal place he remembered, though it looked even bleaker and sadder on a warm afternoon with thunderheads gathering in the western sky, like a warning of Stonewall's presence below the horizon. He got no argument from the jailers when he showed his credentials, but he got a surprise. Margaret had a room of her own; the one formerly belonging to Rose Greenhow.

He took the stairs two at a time. He was determined to lay out his case, reveal his feelings, ask if she could feel the same about him once the war ended. He scanned Room 16's dispirited population of readers, writers, sleepers, and card players. She wasn't among them. He went quickly to Rose's room, knocked. Margaret opened the door.

“Yes, what is it?” She wore a dress of dark tartan cloth, black and green, that hugged her hips and breasts. She peered at him, trying to see the face behind the long beard.

“Good Lord. It's you.”

“Hello, Margaret.” Flushed and warm, he offered the wrapped book. “I know they only permit gifts of food, but no one stopped me.” Her face was thinner, colorless. The pallor made the black rings around her eyes all the more stark. She examined the package with a bemused smile.

“Thank you so much. Won't you come in?”

The room depressed him. A dim lamp sent a thread of smoke toward the water-stained ceiling. Someone had put bullet holes in the floor and outer wall; guards, he presumed. Margaret insisted he take the only chair.

“This is a distinct surprise. I assume you've been in Virginia?”

“Yes, with General McClellan.”

“He's doing poorly, and against inferior numbers.” She said it with a touch of defiance, a suggestion of pleasure. What was there about this woman that fascinated and excited him? He didn't know. He just knew he loved her.

She sat on the bed, tucking her plaid skirt around her long legs. “Have you been safe?”

“Oh, yes. Most of the time we work behind the lines, well out of danger.” Never mind about the balloon expedition. The need to confess his feelings was building like steam pressure in a machine. She began to unwrap the book.

“I know why you didn't have trouble with this. The guards are more lenient because I'm leaving.”

“Leaving? When?”

“Warden Wood's to sign the papers next week, as soon as my fiancé returns from Bermuda. You remember Donal. We'll be married the day I'm released.”

If she'd beaten his forehead with a hammer, he couldn't have been more stunned or hurt. Every hope, every declaration he'd rehearsed, was blown out of his head. She rested her hands on the book in her lap as she explained.

“Baker's dedicated to keeping me here forever, you see. Marriage is the only way around him. Donal has lived in America since he was a child, but he's kept his British citizenship. Evidently it's helpful with circumventing some export laws. He lodged an official protest about me with Lord Lyons, the ambassador. Relations with Britain are sensitive. The damned black Republicans are afraid Her Majesty's government may recognize the Confederacy, so they're cautious. They won't detain the wife of a British subject.”

“That's the only reason you're marrying him? To get out?”

“We've been engaged for quite some time. I'm very fond of Donal, he's a man of substance and—”

Lon pulled her to her feet. The book tumbled to the floor. “Do you know why I came here? To plead with you to wait, endure this war, so that when it's over, I could ask for your hand.”

“I hope—dear God, I hope I haven't led you on.”

He held her shoulders and gazed into her brown eyes. “No. In spite of all the differences between us, I've seen the looks you gave me. I thought they said you could care for me. Or I could make you care, given time.”

She fell against his shoulder. Her long dark hair tangled with his beard. He felt the fullness of her body. “I wouldn't have dreamed of it the day we met.” She drew back with a searching look. “But—yes. You could.”

He brought his mouth to hers, clasping her waist. The hell with decorum, all was lost anyway.

She was stiff in his arms for a moment. Then he felt a change, an urgency as she threw her arms around his neck and returned the kiss ardently. Her mouth was wet and sweet. She ground her hips against him. When she pulled away, she looked as young and wide-eyed as a doe surprised in the forest.

“I can't do this, Lon. This damnable war doesn't allow—”

“The war will be over in a year or two.”

“I can't spend a year in this filthy place, let alone two. I won't spend another month! You don't know all that's happened.” She spun away, hiding her face. He reached out to touch her, saw her shoulders trembling, withdrew his hand. When she turned back to him, tears gleamed on her cheeks.

“I told you before, Yankees killed my father. Men who work for the same man who employs you. I don't know whether I could ever get over that. I promised to make someone pay for Father's death. So far I've done a lamentable job, but when I'm free, I'll have a second chance.” She hesitated. “There is one more obstacle.”

“You don't care for me.”

“Heaven help me, I do. But I faced Donal in this room and promised to marry him. I don't break promises.”

“Not even if it means throwing your life away?”

“I think you had better go.”

“Margaret—”

“No, please. Go!” The last word was strident. Again she turned away, leaving him to gaze at her tangled hair, and at the book of poems he'd dated on the flyleaf, with the inscription
Affection always, L. Price.

What a witless, hopeless, adolescent gesture. He clapped his hat on his head and walked out.

Long afterward, he reflected that Margaret's rebuff was the moment, the encounter, that killed the last of his romantic feelings about the war, transforming it to a brutish task that had to be finished quickly, using whatever harsh means were necessary. He could almost hear Sledge laughing and congratulating him on his new sagacity.

He walked through Washington wrapped in a feverish daze. In the west the black clouds piled up and thunder crumped, like the cannon of Jackson's army advancing.

Madness was Fred's term for Stuart's plan. Behind their hands, some officers whispered, “Suicide.” Fred preferred madness—divine, heroic, whatever you wanted to call it, but madness.

It began June 12. After choosing men from the Fourth and Ninth Regiments and the Jeff Davis Legion, Stuart ordered them to saddle and ride at two a.m. They moved north from Richmond in the moonlight, twelve hundred troopers including detachments led by Fitz and Rooney Lee. Lieutenant Breathed of the Horse Artillery commanded a rifle gun and a twelve-pound howitzer. Von Borcke rode with them, and the general's banjo player, Sam Sweeny, a minstrel man stranded in the capital when war broke out. That damned Mosby was with them.

Since they were headed toward Louisa Court House, they assumed they would reinforce Jackson in the Valley. They bivouacked for a short time at farm near Taylorsville, close by the South Anna River. Scouts returned before daybreak. Stuart ordered signal rockets fired, but no bugling for reveille. They mounted and rode east, toward Hanover Court House, and then Stuart revealed their real mission: a secret expedition behind enemy lines, ordered by Johnston's replacement, Bob Lee. Many officers distrusted Lee because of his dismal record of defeat and retreat in western Virginia last year. Lee was a fastidiously moral man; austere, almost unapproachable. You could give Little Joe Johnston a friendly pat on his bald head and he wouldn't take it amiss. No one tried that with Granny Lee.

Gone was the convivial jocularity of the pre-dawn hours. They were heading for McClellan's right flank, to discover where it was; how well protected. They soon found out. No Yankee trenches could be seen along Totopotomy Creek, though they should have been there to protect Porter's position on the Union right.

Rooney Lee encountered the enemy first, Stoneman's cavalry, a hundred strong. Rooney Lee drew his saber and ordered a charge. His men galloped at the enemy shouting the new rebel war cry, an ululating yell that froze the blood of enemies. The Federals broke and scattered. Fred and the rest came up, chased the Yankees for nearly two miles, and collected a few frightened prisoners.

The Federals regrouped and drew some of Stuart's men into a sharp fight. Fred fought with his saber in his right hand, a LeMat in his left. He took a sword cut on his cheek. Another Yankee saber nicked Baron's ear. The gelding didn't buck or falter; Fred had time to fire into the face of the Yankee captain.

He saw the scatter-shot shred the captain's face, saw him sink from his saddle. Though he'd never taken a human life before, he was unmoved. In the smoky confusion, horses neighing, blades clanging, small arms crackling, he marveled at the ease of killing someone if that someone meant to kill you first.

In the abandoned Federal camp at Old Church they plundered stores they could carry, burned the remainder, and rested while Stuart plotted his next move. Could they cross the rain-swollen Pamunkey? No, they had no pontoons. Could they go back? No, the rear guard reported Federal horse and infantry in pursuit. What, then? Go forward, southeast. Cross the Chickahominy at Forge Bridge, beyond the Union left flank, reach the James at Charles City, and return to Richmond—riding entirely around McClellan! It appealed to Stuart's bravado and his oft-repeated warrior's credo: “Die game.”

With the plan afloat, Fred heard “suicide” whispered for the first time. It really was madness, made all the madder by the season. June was the month children burst out of schoolhouse prisons, young women became brides, farmers dug rough hands in black soil, thanked God for good growing weather but prayed for rain. No such spirit prevailed as they took the road for Enon and Haw's Shop. After two days and nights in the saddle, little or no sleep, haversacks empty, numbness and fear set in.

Even the general showed signs of it. The plume on his fancy hat seemed to droop. The red rose pinned to the lapel of his short jacket wilted. Sam Sweeny no longer sang “Camptown Races” or “Kathleen Mavourneen,” nor was he asked. They were beyond McClellan's right wing, scarcely five miles from his great base at White House. They'd be lucky to get out with their lives. Fred drank furtively from his canteen, a precious sip at a time.

On June 14, Saturday afternoon, they bore down on Tunstall's Station, a depot on the York River railroad linking White House with the Union front. Stuart called Fred to a conference in the saddle.

“Take Captain Knight's squadron along that branch road. Garlick's Landing isn't far. Destroy whatever Union stores you find and ride to Tunstall's Station.” Garlick's Landing was a hamlet on the river; scouts had reported a small garrison, and two river steamers tied up.

“Will you stop at Tunstall's, General?”

“Long enough to rip up the rails, tear down the telegraph, and see what other mischief we can do. Good luck.” He rode away before Fred could salute properly.

Fred relieved himself in a pine grove, a useful opportunity to revisit the canteen. Soon he was moving at the head of his column of twos down a lane of great elms and sycamores the sun lit like a green cathedral. Farm families rushed to the roadside to wave and call encouragement. A cry of “Shoot a few bluebirds for us, boys” made Fred laugh.

When the column emerged from the dense woods, he saw a scattering of rude buildings about a mile ahead. Tiny blue figures scurried among parked wagons. He screwed his telescope to his eye, observed a few civilians as well as soldiers, but no fortifications. He raised his hand.

“Form column of fours. Draw sabers”—the metallic slither of many swords always sent a chill down his spine—“trot.” The last word was roughly articulated; he'd taken the reins between his teeth.

He hugged Baron with his knees, pulled his LeMat from its saddle holster with his left hand and rode with saber raised. Hot air fanned his face. Behind the unpainted cottages and storehouses, masts of a small steamer could be seen.

A Union bluebird spied them and ran to spread the alarm. An iron bell clanged. The rebel horses made a rising thunder on the sunlit road. Men gave voice to the savage yell. Fred called for the charge. They roared into Garlick's Landing in the face of scattered return fire. Behind him, Fred heard a trooper cry out as he pitched from his mount. The trooper's horse veered and dragged him away through undergrowth; his boot was still caught in the stirrup.

A blond sergeant darted from behind a wagon, aiming his rifle at Fred. Fred wheeled Baron past him and cut the Yank's neck open with a violent downward saber stroke. The man's eyes opened wide with surprise. His gushing blood splattered Baron's flank and Fred's boot. Fred fired into the man's chest for insurance.

Outnumbered Yankees were already throwing down their arms. A two-story building with a sagging roof stood at the head of the main pier. Some kind of hostelry, Fred judged from the water troughs and benches and faded signboard. Upper shutters flew open. An old woman in a mobcap waved a white pillowcase. A trooper rode up beside the Union flag hanging over the main door and tore it down. A Yankee ran out of the place and shot the trooper at close range, blowing him backward off his horse.

Fred spurred ahead, saber sheathed in favor of a second revolver in his right hand. Three more Yankees ran out of the tavern, knelt to fire. Behind him he heard bluebirds chirping for mercy, but the three in front of him wouldn't give up so easily. He rode at them from the right and put two rounds into the nearest. The man seemed to leap from the ground and fly against the building, dying in the air. Fred galloped past, turned Baron a hundred eighty degrees, and without hesitating fired both revolvers.

The Yankee on the right had already fallen on his face, wounded by someone else. Fred's left-hand revolver took out the third man, throwing him sideways. At the same moment, a girl of nine or ten wearing a patched dress ran out the door waving a small bright flag bearing the cross of St. Andrew. Fred's shot from the right hand, intended for the soldier already down, struck her instead. A blood flower bloomed on her flat bosom while she was smiling radiantly to greet the liberators.

“Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus Christ.”

He jumped from the saddle, hat falling off. He ran forward, knelt in the dust. She focused on his face. Her eyes were a lovely cornflower blue. Her hand sought and closed on his. “Grandma? Grandma, it hurts.” Her head rolled sideways, raising a puff of dust.

The old woman ran from the dark doorway into the sunshine. “Why did you shoot her? We're loyal to Jeff Davis, she kept his picture under her pillow.”

“Ma'am, she appeared suddenly, I didn't mean—”

“You butcher! You murdering bastard! Oh, damn you, she's my only grandchild.” She fell onto a bench and tore at her breasts. An elderly man stepped from the tavern to comfort her, saw the child's corpse, lurched back inside, sick.

The LeMat in Fred's left hand was heavy and hot. Blinking, he gained his feet, confronted Captain Knight on horseback.

“It happened accidentally. She ran out. I didn't see her in time.”

The captain cocked his head toward pillars of smoke rising south of them. “Looks like the general's taking care of Tunstall's.”

Fred fairly screamed, “Goddammit, Captain, I didn't do this on purpose. Do you think I'd shoot a child?”

“No, sir. Not intentionally.” Knight's eyes flickered with pity or contempt. “We've taken about twenty-five prisoners, sir. What shall we burn?”

With the white iron of guilt searing his gut, Fred gave orders he couldn't remember afterward. They set fire to covered wagons laden with sacks of grain and coffee. Soon Garlick's Landing smelled strongly of roasting beans. Sentries on the two Yankee steamers gave up quickly. The rebs swarmed aboard, torching supply wagons waiting to be off-loaded.

Fred's detachment had lost two men in the skirmish; a third suffered a thigh wound. They rounded up the Yankees, mounted them on mules from a pole corral. The prisoners caused no trouble. Fred moved like one of those mechanical wonders you saw at dime museums, lifelike figures that nodded and played cards and imitated living creatures. Hiding behind Baron, he swallowed whiskey, emptying the canteen. He threw it on the ground in a burst of rage.

Leaping flames and floating sparks greeted them in the twilight as they approached Tunstall's. The little depot was a pile of black rubble. Telegraph poles had been axed and thrown across the rails. Fred reported to General Stuart, who commended him and Captain Knight.

“There was an accident, sir. A little girl rushed out of a building some Yankees were defending. My ball hit her instead of them.” The words were like gall. “I killed her.”

Jeb Stuart's blue eyes had a curious glacial quality. He no longer looked spruce, but bedraggled, mud on his boots, dirt streaking the back of his red-lined cape.

“It's unfortunate, Captain. In wartime such things happen. I'm sorry. We must press on to the Chickahominy before the men collapse entirely.” Stuart rode off, a black figure against the flames of burning wagons.

At Tallysville they came upon a Federal field hospital. Stuart ordered the patients and surgeons left alone. Some abandoned sutlers' wagons yielded beef tongue, pickles, layer cakes, ketchup, and other edibles, along with champagne and wine. The starved cavalrymen ate and drank everything. Fred sampled the champagne and then put away a half bottle of claret.

They found the Chickahominy in flood. Rooney Lee nearly drowned when he dove in to test the river's depth. Stuart's ordnance officer scouted downstream to Forge Bridge. The bridge itself was washed away, but stone abutments remained, as well as an abandoned warehouse stocked with lumber. Troopers crossed the river on an improvised plank bridge, leading their horses in the water below them. After the two fieldpieces crossed, and the prisoners and the captured animals, a rear guard torched the makeshift bridge.

On the morning of June 15, Brigadier General Jeb Stuart rode into Richmond well ahead of his troops. He could report to Lee that McClellan's right wing hung in the air, without significant protection. Tumultuous mobs cheered the return of the exhausted riders straggling in from the Charles City road. They arrived with 165 captured Yankees and nearly twice as many horses and mules. Fred Dasher arrived with a wound that would never heal.

Stuart recommended a number of men for promotion, among them John Mosby. One more reason Fred sought a tavern and drank himself into a stupor.