Confederates (31 page)

Cate himself was in a sweat. When will you do it, ole boy? he was asking himself. And how?

Well, about eleven in the morning he grasped a brush by its handle and held it up vertically, the bristles towards the ceiling. With the umber paint that sat all over its hairs, it looked a little like a weapon which had just been used. Then, for one of those mysterious artist's purposes Ephie understood nothing of, he advanced on her, one eye closed, bisecting his view of her face with the brush held in front of him. She watched him out of alarmed, dark eyes.

They were hugging each other before Ephie even knew it, Ephie still sitting, Cate lowering crookedly above her. When he dragged her upright, his hands moved wildly around and over her, looking for that point of flesh somewhere – on her back perhaps or her shoulders – which if held would give him the greatest sense of possession. And Ephie … she was shuddering worse than someone with malaria but her mouth, a little open, was moving madly over his face.

‘You'll come with me to California, ma'am,' he said as a statement.

‘No,' she said, but like someone who can't help herself.

‘You'll come with me to California,' he reiterated, starting to chuckle. ‘Because of our great desire, ma'am, our great …'

‘For Lord's sake, Mr Cate,' Ephie begged him, whispering, panicked, ‘Bridie'll hear you.…'

But Cate was talking quiet enough. Only to Ephie did it seem he was talking at the high top of his voice.

Just like a grandee in a play, Ephie thought in her panic. He said: ‘This great desire wasn't put there for no purpose, Mrs Ephie Bumpass. We'd be happy, so happy in California. I would teach you all those things.… I can see in you this wish to be taught, darling Mrs Bumpass. You can't deny that.'

Mrs Bumpass couldn't, so she just twitched there, caught in his arms, in the parlour. Oh, she wished Aunt Sarrie hadn't gone away to Goshen or Millboro or Warms Springs or whatever town it was. And oh, at the same time, she was so pleased Aunt Sarrie
was
away.

‘Our lives would be so different there,' Cate whispered. ‘War would mean nothing there. My queen, my queen.…'

‘I …,' said Ephie, shaking her head, ‘I can't speak of it.'

‘Let me tell you this,' he said. She was beginning to squirm and pull away towards that chair again, the one in which she was meant to be posing. Cate noticed but thought it didn't matter that some of his paints had come away on the fabric of her dress. ‘You have never been loved by a man like me,' he said in a solemn way.

For some reason this statement worked powerfully on her, but she tried not to let him see it. ‘Love is a big word,' she muttered. She felt she might just choke there, in the parlour, and so she found the chair again and sat sideways in it. And while she sat, there was also in her the urge to run out the door and up amongst the hills that were covered with Aunt Sarrie's timber leases. And, of course, at the same time, the urge to put out her hand to Cate's face.

Cate could see it struck a potent chord. ‘You haven't ever been loved by someone like me,' he repeated. He shook the brush. ‘You
want
to go with me, Ephie. You can't even hide it. You
want
to.'

Ephie whimpered and shook her head and, almost by accident, put her hand along the line of his jaw, part to caress him, part to push him off. When he tried to clasp her again, it was the quickness of her mouth that surprised him, the way it found his lips and worked at them in that strange fated manner that belongs to people who can't much help themselves any more.

Then, using the chair for leverage, she forced herself away and sat for a while with her hand on her forehead, and made those breathy sobbing noises he understood too well, for they begged him both to leave her and to take her.

It was impossible of course to have her in the parlour by day, with the slave outside or upstairs or in the cookhouse or somewhere close.

‘You must come to the barn tonight, Ephie,' he said. ‘You know you can't avoid it. When does Mrs Muswell get home?'

‘All she said to me,' Ephie told him, still crouched in the seat and caressing her forehead, ‘is she meant to be home soon as she could.'

‘Yes?' Cate asked, for she had more to tell.

‘But I heard her say to Montie …'

‘Yes?'

‘That she feared it mightn't be till tomorrow noon.'

He'll be watching, that black man, Cate thought. He'll have orders to watch and he'll know what to watch for.

‘Is Montie partial to drink?' he asked.

‘As much as any man,' Ephie said. Oh Lordy, I am making plans with the man. But it excited her. In the pit of her belly it excited her.

Cate said: ‘I could give him liquor.'

‘You give him liquor, Mr Cate,' Ephie whispered, ‘and he'll guess your purpose. For he is no fool.'

Cate smiled at her with great certainty, but her eyes were still down and she did not see. ‘You'll come to me,' he said. ‘You'll come to the barn. After Montie and Bridie have tucked themselves up tonight. You'll do that, won't you? You'll come?'

She raised her face, her eyes bunched close, sweat showing either side of her mouth. She shook her head wildly, like someone trying to come to terms with pain.

‘You'll visit me,' he said. ‘I'll wait all night, Ephie. And I'll die if you don't come.'

She went over to the mantelpiece and stood there, still nursing her forehead. ‘Oh mercy, Mr Cate, how can I …' But she meant more how could she sit calm for any more painting. Cate came up to try to touch her again.

‘Forgive me for bringing you this distress,' he said.

But she sidestepped him and shook her head again, whatever that meant.

‘I'll die,' he said, as if for the first time. ‘If you don't come …'

He'd stayed there in the parlour and painted devotedly the rest of the day, telling himself all the time it was certain she would get to the barn that night, and yes, they would go to California, leaving no trace behind them, except this one portrait to remind Aunt Sarrie and all the other folk of Bath County of the beauty they'd lost.

Alone in the rain, Cate remembered the flavour of the certainty of that morning the way an old man remembers the flavour of a distant June and a vanished girl.

21

Tom Jackson had got energy to chastise colonels at three a.m. on a steaming summer night from somewhere, and it was from the papers that lay on his desk. Twenty-four hours past Jeb Stuart had taken three cavalry regiments all the way round to Catlett's Station, way up the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. One regiment tore up railway track, another tried to set fire to the bridge to the north, but the drenched timbers wouldn't take flame. A third swept up the main street of the town from two directions at once and made prisoners of a good half of Pope's staff – adjutants, engineers, artillery officers and a clutch of field officers of various rank. In a downstairs hallway of a house just off Main Street a coat was found that had a tag inside its collar with Johnny Pope's name on it, though there wasn't any sight of the general himself. But most important of all, the cavalry found secret papers there, right in that house. Copies had been given to Longstreet and Jackson only last evening, and they lay on Jackson's desk now.

These captured memoranda and despatches showed that at least two of McClellan's corps were back in the Washington area from the James River and, not needing too much re-equipping and reorganising, would be able to march to join Pope within six days at the most and come under Pope's management within a week. Other forces from Pennsylvania and some traitorous West Virginians (7000 in all) and some further corps of McClellan's would unite with the remaining three corps of McClellan's army. So that, even allowing for the traditional Yankee slowness of movement, it could happen that within ten days at most, Pope would have at his call some 130,000 troops where now he had just near on 50,000.

Now this kind of news should have depressed some men. In Jackson it made for a great and nearly sinful excitement. It gave him back the sort of conditions that suited his soul and his health best, the sort of conditions he'd missed for years as a professor and as a loving husband. It made the taking of wild risks a needed and a proper thing. It made gambling legal.

When the colonels came in to get their ears pinned back, Tom Jackson – anticipating the gamble – had been working at movement orders for his three divisions. He worked through till eight a.m., not even noticing the chimes of the clock or the coming of light beyond the windows. He studied commissary and quartermaster returns, he read the latest reports from his surgeon, young Hunter Maguire, and from his Chief of Artillery, and studied Hotchkiss's reports and maps for a likely line of country to use during the next few days.

At eight a.m. he ate a solid breakfast with Sandie and Kyd, then worked on till eleven, when he mounted up and rode with most of his staff a little way south. After two miles he reached a flat open field where a table had been placed in the sunny middle, far out from the copses that surrounded it. All kinds of staff officers crowded into the shadows of the trees, but only Lee himself was out there in the middle, wearing a wide-awake hat for shade, his leonine head bent down over a large map.

Jackson stepped out to join him in the harsh light, bowed, took a seat at the table and – everyone at the edges of the field could tell – straight away began talking map-talk.

A minute before the due time for the conference to start, General James Longstreet arrived. He could tell as he stepped through the fringe of respectful officers and out into the middle of the field amongst lupins and bees and clicking insects that it might have been a mistake not coming early. Because Lee and Jackson were nodding at each other like men who'd already come to an agreement.

Longstreet was from South Carolina. He was a little over forty years old, a tall man with an orderly mind, and he didn't exactly trust those two, there was a mad streak in both of them. Lee took horrible risks – like when for the sake of hitting McClellan's flank along the Chickahominy, he left Richmond wide open some seven weeks back with only 1500 boys in the defences. It happened that the ploy had been a success only on account of George McClellan's weakness of soul. One day the Union might get a soldier of firm intent and then all these temperamental risks Lee took would wreak quite a whirlwind, yessiree!

As for Jackson, well, James Longstreet didn't respect him much more than Ambrose Hill did. He thought he was given to impulse.

General Lee looked up now and called, ‘G'morning there, James.' And dammit there was already some quiet excitement about him. Longstreet bowed, solemn and proper towards both men, and took a chair at Jackson's side.

‘Well,' said Lee in a low voice, ‘you know of our situation, James, and I know already that Tom here knows. At the moment we've got about 50,000 boys of ours outfacing about 50,000 boys of Pope's to no one's particular benefit. We've got here what they call a static front and we want to make it fluid as fast as we can on account of there being some 80,000 Union soldiers on the road to join Pope. Now we've about a week to devour Pope in detail, and we may not even have a week when it comes down to it. Yes, I understand you know all this. I just recapitulate, that's all.

‘Now Tom and I've been talking about a ploy, James, and I wonder if you see any value in it. It's this. Tom takes his three divisions and a cavalry screen and clears
way
off to the west and round Pope's flank. He moves at great speed, as seems to be the tradition of his divisions …'

James Longstreet thought, it might be the tradition but I haven't seen much evidence of it. He said nothing though.

‘Tom has a route already planned,' said Lee.

Jackson looked up with those blank, staring eyes. He pointed to one of the maps, showing the country off towards the Blue Ridge and behind the Bull Run Mountains. ‘My engineer Captain Boswell grew up in the country we'd be travelling,' Jackson explained. ‘He recommends taking a line through Amissville, Orleans, Salem, Thoroughfare Gap and Gainesville to put us square across Pope's rear and communications at Manassas.'

Manassas again. Well, Manassas couldn't be avoided, Longstreet knew. There was a grand junction there where the Manassas Gap Railroad and the Orange and Alexandria met. The O & A was essential to Lincoln for shipping troops south from the capital, and the Gap line for despatching them across to the Valley. The first massed battle of the war had been fought for Manassas and it was sure to be fought for again. It was not the name of Manassas that fretted James Long-street. It was the way of getting round to it that James Longstreet felt doubtful about.

‘It's a long flank march,' he said, a little breathless, because it really scared him. ‘It's a long, long march.'

Lee looked away, a faint benevolent smile on his face, towards the shade trees his staff lolled beneath. ‘Well, I suggest, James, it's better than the front-on style of attack that cost us so many boys at Malvern Hill and other places.'

Longstreet shook his long patrician head, ‘We've got just about equality in numbers with Pope now?' he said, and Jackson's eyes came over drowsy.

‘In fact there are new boys up from Louisiana, from Mississippi and Alabama,' said Generalissimo Lee. ‘We're likely doing just a little better than Johnny Pope at this moment.'

‘Yes, well that's excellent. But in terms of what's coming Pope's way, General Lee, we're way down. So what you want to do – and correct me if I misunderstand – what you want to do is split up a numerically lesser army – ours – right in two – in the presence of the enemy, in very contact with him …!'

‘That's a mite pessimistic way of stating it, James,' said General Lee.

‘… and on top of that, you want to send nearly half of it on a fifty-mile loop right round the back of the enemy. And I ask for what purpose? I simply want to know. I want to measure the purpose, sir, against the risk.'