On Secret Service (27 page)

Fred stepped into the tent, saw two men. One, an ugly lieutenant, knelt between the legs of a soldier who lay on his back. Fred had a swift impression of yellow hair, a boyish face smeared with dirt. “What the hell's this?” Fred waved his revolver. “Stand up.”

The lieutenant struggled to his feet, his erection shriveling. Fred dug in his pocket for the tin matchbox in the shape of a knapsack. He tossed the box to the lieutenant.

“Give us some light.”

The lieutenant poked a lighted match into the black tin lantern painted with a white
U.S.
He lit the candle and shut the isinglass door. He returned the matchbox, saying, “Major, please let me explain something.” He had a thick redneck accent, offensive to a Virginian.

“Never mind. You're going on report for molesting a fellow soldier.”

“Sir, look again. It's a her.”

One glance corrected Fred's mistake. He was a she, all right, blue-eyed, and shaking like a frightened child. Under her sack coat, cloth strips bound her small breasts.

Fred felt a brush of air—the sergeant, starting to leave. Fred pivoted and jabbed the revolver under the man's chin.

“Not one more step.” To the lieutenant Fred said, “Identify yourself.”

The lieutenant stuffed himself back in his pants and saluted. “Lieutenant Henry Buford, sir. Jeff Davis Legion.”

“Mississippi troops?”

“Yes, sir. Caught this piece of Yankee trash sneaking around and—”

“Shut up. You're a fucking disgrace.” Fred gigged the sergeant. “You?” The reply was a gargling sound. Fred cocked the weapon. “Don't be shy.”

“S-s-sergeant Cleatus Voss. S-sir.” Another cracker.

Fred took the LeMat from the noncom's neck. Burning tents and wagons threw firelight patterns on the canvas walls. An occasional shot resounded, but the fighting had given way to boisterous revelry as the troopers ripped through the booty of Pope's camp. All the saddle weariness Fred had forgotten during the last few minutes returned: the sore tailbone, the ache under his balls, the raw skin on the inside of his thighs. “Both of you are going on report to Colonel Martin. Now crawl out of here.”

Lieutenant Buford buttoned his pants, slid by Fred, lifted his knee to kick the noncom's rear, as though he were responsible for their predicament. The men disappeared into the drizzle.

“Get up. Fix your clothes.”

The girl sat up, then stood. She was unsteady. Fred grabbed her sleeve. Her straw blonde hair was damp. Her eyes had the vivid color of a spring sky. She was a pretty thing, with delicate features that would allow her to pass for a young man. Swallowing, he let go of her.

“How'd you get here? Where are you from?”

“Washington. I wanted to see some fighting.”

“Well, you've seen it. Go back home. This is no fancy ball, miss. Men die out here.”

What should he do with her? He decided to shirk the responsibility and let the commanding officer decide. Of course they had to let her go. If she stayed a prisoner, he could imagine how many times she'd be raped by captured Yanks and randy rebs alike.

“What's your name?”

“Hanna Siegel.”

“German?”

“The next thing to it. Austrian. You don't sound Southern.”

“Virginia. Spent a long time in the North. I've got to see the general about you.”

“Which general?”

“James E. B. Stuart, of Stuart's cavalry. My name's Frederick Dasher.”

“I'm very grateful to you for what you did, Major Dasher.”

“Fine,” Fred said, close to losing himself in the blue depths of those eyes. He hadn't been with a woman since he rode out of Richmond weeks ago. This pixie with her sooty cheeks and ragtag uniform touched him somehow. She was no taller than his shoulder; she had to turn her face up to speak to him. It made her seem vulnerable; induced emotions in him that were unexpected, and dangerous.

“Take the laces out of your shoes,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I can't trust you and I have to see the general. Sit down on the cot.” He grasped her arm again, as if to steady her. It was really because he wanted to touch her.

Hanna pulled the rawhide laces from her muddy shoes. Fred shoved the revolver in his pants, tied the two thongs into one, wrapped the rawhide around and around her wrists, behind her back.

“Not so tight.”

“Sorry.” He finished the knot. “You're on your honor to stay here until I'm back.”

“I couldn't run twenty steps right now.”

The inside of his mouth was dry as ashes.
You'll run like hell if they toss you in with men who haven't been close to women for a while,
he thought.

“You can sit if you like.”

“Thank you.” As he lifted the tent flap, she said, “Do you own slaves, Major?”

“I own a horse farm near Front Royal. Six Negroes work for me. About four years ago I signed manumission papers for all of them.”

“So you don't think the Confederacy's war is moral?”

“I didn't say that. I left the U.S. Army for the same reason General Lee did, to fight for Virginia. I'll be back.”

In the lane, faithful Baron waited, head down, without a tether. Fred patted the black, muttering about this complication in their lives. He took his canteen off the saddle, shook it. Some whiskey left. He drank it.

He found Stuart in a quadrangle of large headquarters tents. Three were ablaze but the fourth was untouched. Fitz Lee was parading in front of it in a plumed chapeau and a blue officer's overcoat with the black sleeve braid of a general, to the delight of Stuart, von Borcke, and some others.

“Look here at this, Fred,” Stuart exclaimed as Fred came up and saluted. “General Pope's finest coat. I'll take it in exchange for my hat. That's not all we found. We have field orders, cipher books—what is it? What's wrong?”

“I took a prisoner a few minutes ago, sir.”

“Congratulations. No cause for a glum face, is it?”

“This prisoner—sir, it's a woman.” With hands on his hips, Fitz Lee stopped parading and fixed his attention on Fred, as did the others. “A young woman from Washington who dressed up like a man to see some fighting. I need to know what—”

A captain ran out of the dark, breathless. “General, we can't burn the railroad bridge. Timbers are too wet. We don't have enough axes to chop them down.”

“I'll have a look.” Stuart started away, pausing at the firelight's perimeter to say to Fred, “Treat the woman like any other captive. If she's man enough to wear a uniform, she's man enough to go to prison.”

A couple of the officers smirked. Fred started to object but Stuart was already gone in the direction of rain-flooded Cedar Run.

He couldn't believe the general meant it. A Virginia gentleman didn't consign a girl of nineteen or twenty to a prison full of rats and rapists. Shaking his head, he hurried back to the tent. Hanna raised an expectant face as he walked in.

“General Stuart wants you treated like any other prisoner of war. Imprisoned until you're exchanged.” She reacted as if he'd hit her. She whispered a German word, perhaps
Himmel.

“The general isn't himself. We're in a tight place, miles behind the Union lines. We can't be burdened with a lot of prisoners, he'll wake up to that. On your feet.”

Puzzled, Hanna let him swing her around. He worked at the knot in the rawhide and broke two fingernails before undoing it.

“I'm going to lead you out of here. Keep your hands behind you, as though you're still tied. We'll walk to the nearest cover, the woods, and then you run like the devil. All the way back to Washington. And don't try such a damn fool stunt again.”

“No, no, I won't. Why are you doing this?”

“I just don't believe in throwing women into the kind of prisons they have in Richmond. They aren't fit for dogs, let alone humans.”

“Will you get in trouble?”

“I'll handle it.” Though he didn't know exactly how. “When we go outside, look scared.”

With a brave smile she said, “I've performed in plays but I don't have to act this part.”

Perhaps it was the whiskey or the rain or the lost feeling that had plagued him ever since he'd killed the little girl. Whatever it was, it drove him to clasp her fragile shoulders in his big hands, bend down, and kiss her.

She went rigid. Then her mouth responded. The touch of her lips was cool, though he felt them warming before he stepped back. His head whirled. Something had happened.

“Your name's Hanna.”

“Yes.”

“I won't forget.”

“Nor I.”

“Hands behind your back.”

They went out into the rainy dark.

 

Stuart's cavalry retraced the route to Warrenton. They had prisoners, and General Pope's dispatch books, though by happenstance the general himself had been away during the raid. The Confederate treasury was richer by $350,000, the contents of Pope's money chest.

Young ladies of Warrenton turned out at dawn to wave hankies and cheer the exhausted troopers. Stuart ordered a halt to rest the horses. He summoned Fred to the porch of a house belonging to a family named Lucas and there asked about the female prisoner.

Fred saw no point in dissembling. He admitted he'd let her go. Stuart reacted with predictable anger. “You realize you disobeyed a direct order.”

“The order was given very casually, sir. I thought I might have some latitude.”

“You did not. I can't let this pass.” Stuart jerked Fred's sleeve to distance them from listeners. “Blast you, why are throwing yourself away? What's happened? You needn't bother to answer, soldiers gossip. You're drinking yourself to death. Now this.”

Weary and savagely thirsty, Fred wanted to shout,
I drink to forget who I killed in this damned misbegotten war.
He remained stiffly silent.

“Do you have anything to say?”

“I did what I thought was right and humane, General. I'm sure the young woman was no older than twenty. She must have stumbled into Pope's camp by accident.”

“No excuse. I gave you a direct order. I won't court-martial you, we can't afford to lose a good soldier. But you are reduced in rank to private. I'll sign the papers personally.”

Rays of the misty morning sun spread over cottage rooftops. Trees dripped last night's rain. Somewhere a mockingbird sang. Young ladies mingled with the grimy troopers, praising them and offering dippers of water and slices of bread. Stuart spied someone in the crowd. He watched a moment, then wheeled back to Fred.

“To deter you from making another mistake and doing real harm, I will also transfer you. John Mosby is after me to set up a small force of partisan rangers to raid behind the enemy's lines. I'm inclined to agree to it, because I think the task and the man are suited to each other. I'll assign you to Mosby. Henceforth you'll take orders from him.”

The headlight of a southbound train lit up the rails of the Orange and Alexandria line. Hanna dove off the embankment, huddled on wet ground until the train passed. A few minutes later, distant gunfire said the train crew was getting a hot reception from the rebs.

She climbed back to the track and trudged on through intermittent rain that lasted most of the night. By morning she'd caught a chill. About midday she holed up in a thick copse, sick with fever and the quickstep. She lay there until dark, when she felt strong enough to struggle on.

She decided the pain in her middle was emptiness, not sickness, so she stopped at an isolated farm and begged a slice of bread from the woman of the house. The woman was lank as a string, with large moles on her lined face. She raised her oil lamp to study Hanna.

“What's a girl doing in that uniform?”

Hanna tried the first story that came to mind. “I'm a nurse. Lost my unit.”

“Didn't know Billy Yank had nurses with him. You can sleep in the barn, it's warm. I'll bring you a plate and fill a sack with some food in the morning.” Hanna's backpack had been stripped from her by her captors. “Wait, I'll find a blanket.”

Hanna leaned on the doorframe and closed her eyes. The war hadn't squeezed the humanity out of everyone, as she sometimes feared. She ought to know that, remembering the major. She saw his face bending toward her. Gray-green eyes with a strange, sad intensity—

“Here you are.”

“Thank you, ma'am. You're very kind.”

“I have a husband and a son fighting for Lee. If you came across either one sorely wounded, I would hope you'd tend him regardless.”

“Yes, ma'am. I would.”

“You struck me as that sort. This way.”

 

Hanna left the farm Sunday morning, trekking north. She moved away from the railroad when she saw Confederate horsemen strung along the horizon to the west. Nearing Bristoe Station, she heard small-arms fire and turned east awhile. As she walked through woods and fields, she frequently saw large masses of infantry on the march, though too far away for her to identify them.

By midweek she was near Manassas Junction. Black smoke rose from the Union supply depot there. On the road to Washington she joined a great river of refugees, white families in wagons, blacks on foot, all hurrying away from the destruction. A burly black man wearing bib overalls named the culprit. “Stonewall Jackson. He's burnin' ever'thing he can't carry.” Hanna saw blood on the black man's bare feet.

She wasn't much better off. The broad soles of her mudscows had worn through. Some greedy contractor in Maine or Massachusetts was enjoying cognac and cigars from the sale of the shoddy goods.

Sentries guarding the Long Bridge made no effort to stop the refugees. If they had, they might have been trampled or torn apart. The city streets swarmed with frightened people. Hanna heard one well-dressed matron screaming at her children, “Lee's coming with a hundred fifty thousand men!” Off in Virginia, a growl of cannon fire suggested it might not be an idle warning.

Footsore and filthy, she limped into the little cottage near the Navy Yard on Friday morning. She raided the larder for some sausages and a loaf of stale bread. She scraped mold off the crust before she fried slices of bread with the sausage.

She pumped water from the backyard well, heated it, and poured it into the zinc tub. She sank into the tub naked and drowsed in its soothing warmth. The gray-green eyes of the reb officer, Dasher, shimmered inside her eyelids. As she reached down to scrub herself, she wondered why the memory of him was so affecting.

She slept most of the afternoon and early evening. The major came home at half past ten, disheveled and ink-stained. He greeted her without affection or great surprise, saying, “I thought you might be killed.”

“No, Papa, I'm fine.”

“You don't look fine. You look sickly. Where did you go?”

“Virginia. As far as a place called Catlett's Station.”

“My God. That's where they raided Pope's camp.”

“I must have been there beforehand. I know nothing about it.” She wouldn't alarm him with the tale of her capture.

The major flung off his coat and stamped to the stove; she'd cooked a pot of lamb stew. Changes in her father were apparent. Little of his clerkship salary came home; he spent most of it dining with his superiors at the better hotels. As a consequence his middle had puffed up, losing its military trimness. His reddened eyes spoke of hours of close reading. A month ago he'd visited an optician for his first pair of spectacles. It sent him into a rage for days.

He ladled stew into a cracked bowl. “What you did was stupid, Hanna. How am I going to stop you from doing stupid things?”

She sat at the deal table, folded hands resting on the scarred wood. “Don't worry, I had quite enough. I did see some fighting. From a distance,” she added quickly.

He studied her silently for a moment. In a surprisingly mild voice he said, “Took some nerve.” It was the nearest thing to a compliment she'd heard for many years. She smiled.

“I'm glad to be here with you, Papa.”

“Well, you may not be so glad tomorrow or the next day.” He sat and began to tug off his polished knee boots. “There's more fighting at Bull Run. A big engagement. Pope trying to catch Jackson—smash him head-on, with McDowell attacking from the Gainesville flank. Nobody knows how it will come out. The President's camping in the telegraph room. This morning Stanton issued orders for all of us to collect papers and pack them up.”

“Why?”

“In case rebs come over the bridges.” The August night was warm, yet Hanna felt a faint chill.

“If that's not bad enough”—he sucked stew out of his spoon, licked his lips but left a gob on his chin—“guess what else Stanton did. He loves the colored, that man. He's ordered the Department of the South—it's headquartered on some pissy little island off South Carolina—he's ordered them to recruit five thousand niggers and train them for guard and patrol duty. What's coming next? A corps of apes? Wouldn't happen in the old country.”

Next day, Saturday, was sultry and oppressive. Hanna went to the Canterbury to ask about her job. She'd been replaced. Oddly, it didn't seem to matter, not with the whole city trembling in fear of invasion. In the streets she heard more than one drunken soldier goddamming John Pope and the entire high command.

In the afternoon she stood in a large crowd as bulletins were hung up outside the Treasury. G
REAT UNION VICTORY AT BULL RUN
! The cheers and applause stopped when the crowd saw the next long paper. T
EN THOUSAND FEARED DEAD, WOUNDED
. Subheads announced a call for surgeons and male nurses to gather at the Treasury at five o'clock.

A mob of sightseers—congressmen, families with children—streamed toward the Long Bridge as the day waned. Hanna stood awhile at the Washington end of the bridge, watching new refugees making their way against the exodus. She was struck by how easy it would be for traitors to enter or leave Washington this night.

On her long walk home, she saw a squad of cavalrymen surround a public hack. The corporal in charge ordered the driver down at pistol point and turned the two passengers into the street with six pieces of luggage.

“But we're just arrived from Dayton,” the gentleman protested as his wife sniffled. “I have business with the quartermaster corps.”

“This rig's needed for wounded. Ride shank's mare. Brewster!” A private jumped on the box of the hack and drove off.

Hanna encountered similar scenes farther on: horses herded from a livery barn while the owner vainly objected; a gold-trimmed barouche commandeered at a fine residence by infantrymen. Every home and business was being searched for a wagon, a sulky, a dogcart, anything with wheels.

Major Siegel didn't turn up until half past one in the morning. He was pop-eyed with fatigue.

“It's terrible, Hanna. We didn't whip them, the Army's in retreat. Sigel's corps broke, McDowell's too. Heintzelman and Porter are smashed. That yellow dog McClellan held his troops back so Pope couldn't win. Tonight the secretary signed a petition to the President. He and Chase worked it up. They want McClellan dismissed. Stanton said Chase wants him shot.”

“My God, Papa. Things are falling apart.”

“The bottom's out of the tub, all right. Go to bed. By Monday we may have to pack and run.”

It certainly seemed so on Sunday, with soldiers pouring across the Potomac along with terrified Virginians, white and black. All testified to the defeat. The beaten Army was taking up positions in the city fortifications. The major came home that night with more bad news.

“Two days, we had twelve, fourteen thousand casualties. Pope's finished. But Lincoln wants McClellan to take the Army again, can you believe it? He wants to put a failure in charge! He thinks the troops still have confidence in McClellan. The secretary ranted for an hour when he heard. It would be comical if it wasn't so disgusting. Pack a bag.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes. By tomorrow we may evacuate the department. If it goes, we go.” Undoing his cravat, he took closer notice of her. Hanna continued to sit in the parlor rocker, her body in repose, her smile pensive.

“What's the matter with you?”

“What do you mean, Papa?”

“Ever since you came back from that lunatic trip, you been acting peculiar. I don't know how to say it exactly—not yourself? Dreamy? Did you tell me everything? Did some roughneck soldier get hold of you and—and…?”

“No, Papa. Nothing like that. I'm happy to be home with you, that's all. I was terribly scared most of the time in Virginia. I realized I'd made a mistake.”

His face said he doubted the explanation. He took the parlor candle, leaving Hanna to sit in the steamy dark and rock, head back, eyes shut. She hadn't told the major anything close to the truth. What had happened to her was the encounter with the Confederate major. There was something gallant but sad about him. As though he were with her in the room, she smelled his wet wool uniform, the rain on his skin, his sweat, and whiskey.

She imagined his gray-green eyes. She saw his face come down to hers. She felt and tasted his kiss.
That
was what had happened.

 

Monday, September 1, the city again listened to the crash of artillery in Virginia. Hacks and dogcarts and omnibuses and hay wagons and rockaways rumbled in across the Long Bridge with their freight of sobbing and screaming wounded. Drunken deserters brawled in the middle of the Avenue with no one to stop them. Late in the day a torrential rainstorm broke the heat and drove people indoors. By midweek, when it became apparent that the Army had survived, the city was again defended, McClellan again in charge, the crisis passed. But not the air of defeat and despair that infected everyone, soldier and civilian, except those who saw second Bull Run as a triumph for their side.

Hanna thought continually of her gallant officer. She prayed he was alive and safe. She longed to see him again.