Ghosts of Time (7 page)

“Then, Mr. President, our Confederacy must decide whether it wishes to keep its independence or keep its slaves. I fear it can no longer do both. For make no mistake: if the Negro becomes a soldier, he can never again be a slave. I do not presume to dictate your choice in this matter. I merely put the issue squarely before you.”

There was another long silence before Davis spoke. “You know that I agree with you. I only wish we had acted as you propose long ago, before Lincoln’s hypocritical ‘Emancipation Proclamation’ that didn’t free a single slave in the border slave states still adhering to the Union. That would have taken the wind out of the Yankees’ canting self-righteousness! But the political problems . . . !” He audibly drew a deep breath. “General, I will only ask this: maintain your silence for another two months. Then, I believe, the time will be right to propose it to the Congress.”

“I fear, Mr. President, that by then it will be too little and too late.”

“You do not understand the difficulties of my position!” Davis lowered his voice. “General, I pray you to indulge me in this. Your endorsement, issued at just the right time, will undoubtedly assure the measure’s passage.”

“Very well, Mr. President,” sighed Lee. “Have I your leave to go?”

“Of course. Oh, and General . . .” Davis’s voice took on an almost ingratiating quality. “It will not be made official until the end of January, but I have the pleasure to tell you informally that I intend to appoint you General-in-Chief of all the armies of the Confederate States!”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” Lee’s voice was oddly somber, as though he wondered how long there would be any such armies left. “But I am unworthy of such an honor.”

“Nonsense! It is long overdue. And I fancy the announcement will have a heartening effect on our people. As you are no doubt aware, they have come to regard you as their great defender, under whose leadership our arms cannot fail.”

“If, indeed, they place such exaggerated confidence in me, I can only do my poor best to justify it. Good day, Mr. President.”

Jason shot to his feet as Lee emerged from the president’s office and entered the waiting room. As they turned toward the circular staircase, there was a burst of childish laughter from behind them. Turning and looking through a door beside the stairway to the third floor, Jason could glimpse what looked like a nursery. Three children—a girl of nine or ten and two boys, apparently aged about eight and three, came running out, squealing. They were followed by another little boy, obviously of half-African descent. The girl took him by the hands and swung him around, sending him spinning off and causing him to collide with Jason’s booted legs. He looked up with round dark eyes. Jason wondered who he could be.

“Children! That will do!” A dark-haired woman of about forty, no beauty but not unhandsome, bustled out of the nursery carrying an infant. “You must excuse Jim, Captain . . . Oh! Good day, General Lee!”

“Mrs. Davis,” said Lee with a courtly inclination of his head. “I am pleased to see you and your children are in good health.”

“
Excessively
robust health, as some might say! Come, children.” Varina Davis, first lady of the Confederacy, hustled her brood, including the biracial boy, back into the nursery.

As they descended the staircase, Jason worried that Lee would be too preoccupied with weightier matters to remember the requisition. But once on the street the general wrote it down and handed it to him along with the dispatch for the cavalry corps commander—which, Jason reflected, General Hampton would have to get along without. He wondered why that troubled his conscience.

“Farewell, Captain Landrieu,” Lee said as he returned Jason’s salute. “Give my best regards to General Butler. I know you will continue to honorably perform your duty.” A shadow crossed the still-handsome face. “As will we all.” Then he turned, boarded the carriage, and was gone.

Only then did Jason notice that a baker’s wagon was in front of the kitchen. Mary Bowser was there, in furtive colloquy with the driver. In the guise of reassembling his men, Jason walked over as the driver gave a final nod and departed.

“I’ve got to get back inside,” Mary Bowser told them. “But here: this is a note for Gracchus.”

“I see it’s in Elizabeth Van Lew’s code,” Jason noted.

She smiled briefly. “Yes. It comes in handy even in ways she doesn’t know about.”

“But where is he?”

“Rectortown, up in Fauquier County. You’ll just have to find him.” She handed him another note, this one in plain language. “This is the only address I have that might do you some good. Memorize it, and then destroy the note.”

“Right.” Jason started to go, but curiosity got the better of him. “Let me ask you something. When I was inside, I saw the Davis children, and there was this little black boy with them. Mrs. Davis called him ‘Jim.’ Who was he?”

“Oh, that’s James Henry Brooks—or ‘Jim Limber’ as they call him. He’s the son of a free black woman. His stepfather was mean to him—
real
mean. Mr. and Mrs. Davis got him out of there and have brought him up with her own children. He’s their inseparable playmate.”

“I see. That was good of them. But it almost seems . . . well, sort of incongruous . . .”

“Yes. I know what you’re trying to say.” Mary Bowser sighed. “The Davises are not bad people. There are a lot of slaveowners who aren’t bad people.” Jason thought of Lee. “But there are those that are. And when you’re a slave, all you can do is trust to luck that you’ll get the first kind, because there’s no limit to what the other kind can do—no real limit, because how can laws against cruelty be enforced when slaves’ testimony isn’t admissible in court? It’s slavery itself that’s evil, even when the people aren’t.”

Dabney spoke softly, as though quoting:

“Bury the unjust thing

That some tamed into mercy, being wise,

But could not starve the tiger from its eyes

Or make it feed where beasts of mercy feed.”

Mary Bowser looked at him sharply. “What?”

“Oh, it’s from a poem. You won’t have heard of it.”

She looked at him, and at all of them in turn. “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t need to know. I’m not even sure I
want
to know. But good luck in your own war.” She turned and vanished into the kitchen.

“What was the poem?” Jason asked after a moment.

“
John Brown’s Body
, by Stephen Vincent Benét. The reason she hasn’t heard of it is that he’ll write it in 1929.” Dabney shook himself and turned to Jason with a pleading look that would have melted the heart of an iron statue. “Commander, please tell me what you saw and heard in there.”

“You’ll have a chance to review it all when we get back and my recorder implant is downloaded,” Jason assured him. But he recounted Lee’s meeting with Davis. Dabney nodded his head sadly.

“Yes. Lee will go public with his long-standing support for freeing and arming the slaves in mid-February. And in mid-March—about three weeks before the fall of Richmond—the Confederate Congress will narrowly pass a bill to enlist black soldiers . . . but
without
offering them freedom, although Davis will override that part by executive order.”

“
What!
” blurted Mondrago. “You mean to say they expect the slaves to . . .” He trailed to an incredulous halt. “Talk about too little and too late!”

“Lee used those exact words, just now,” Jason recalled.

“He would,” sighed Dabney. “He was always ambivalent at best about slavery. And he was flatly opposed to secession—spoke out against it strongly, in fact, arguing that the framers of the Constitution wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble if they’d intended for the Union to be broken up at will by any of its members. But once his Virginia voted to secede despite his advice, that was the end of it as far as he was concerned. He turned down an offer from Lincoln to command the United States army. Only a stern sense of duty induced him to accept a commission from the nation he would come to symbolize, and which he kept alive for four years against impossible odds.”

They all turned as one and looked down Clay Street, where a departing carriage could still just barely be seen.

“He was,” Dabney said simply, “the last of the knights.”

CHAPTER TEN

Three days later they were riding through Fauquier County, Virginia in steadily worsening weather.

Lee’s requisition had worked its expected magic at the Government Stables. Officials had practically fallen over themselves in their haste to provide “Captain Landrieu” and his men with the best mounts available. Of course, that didn’t mean as much as it once would have, even though the Confederate government still had agents making the rounds of horse farms and buying all the horses they could with increasingly worthless paper currency and even more worthless promissory notes. There simply weren’t as many horses to be had as there had been earlier in the war, and the conditions under which they were raised were harsher. So the agents brought in horses that were too young or poorly nourished or both.

Still, the time travelers had been given their pick of what was available, and they also got tack whose leather was still supple, not dry and stiff. They had even been able to obtain items like bedrolls and rations on the side. The rations consisted mainly of the corn bread which the Southerners generally used in place of the Yankees’ hardtack, and which attracted vermin even better than the latter. They had no intention of eating it except as an alternative to starvation.

Then they had departed the city, riding northwestward more or less parallel to the railway tracks, through Gordonsville, Orange and Culpeper, spending their first night at a very basic inn. Then they reached Warrenton, county seat of Fauquier County, a town of twelve hundred with various amenities, including three small hotels. After a relatively comfortable night (thanks to Jason’s gold dollars), they set out along the dirt road to Rectortown, leaving what was called “Lower Fauquier” and entering “Upper Fauquier,” west of what were rather exaggeratedly called the Bull Run Mountains, with the Blue Ridge Mountains (more worthy of the name “mountains”) looming to the west.

It was a rolling countryside whose richness was obvious even in December. Miles of stone walls marked off farms whose substantial stone, brick or clapboard houses crowned the hills. Water-powered mills were a common sight. Jason wished he were seeing the land in the spring or autumn, but even now it had a wintery beauty.

At the little town of Salem, they could see a railway which Jason’s map told him they would have to follow the rest of the way to Rectortown. But he thought it prudent to continue a little further along the road, for the sake of inconspicuousness.

“The Manassas Gap Railroad,” Dabney told him. He pointed westward to what appeared to be a notch in the Blue Ridge. “It passes through the Manassas Gap, from the Shenandoah Valley, and continues east through the Thoroughfare Gap in the Bull Run Mountains. It’s strategically important in the war, because it made it possible to rapidly transfer armies from the valley to the main theater in the east. That was what enabled the Confederates to win the first battle of the war, at Bull Run. It later got torn up by the Confederates to prevent the Union forces from using it. But back in October General Phil Sheridan, the Union commander in the valley, began restoring it, using it as a supply line for an operation General Grant had in mind. The idea was for Sheridan to move southeast from the valley, take Charlottesville, and threaten Richmond from the west while Grant has Lee’s army pinned down at Petersburg on the other side.”

“Seems to make strategic sense,” said Jason, mentally expanding his map to show all of central Virginia. “Does that mean the Union is currently in control of this area?” He asked anxiously, glancing at the color of their uniforms.

“Well,” answered Dabney with a smile as they trotted around a curve in the road, with woods on both sides, “that’s always been an interesting question where Fauquier and Loudoun Counties are concerned. You see, we’re now in Mosby’s Confederacy.”

“What does that mean?” Jason wanted to know. But before Dabney could reply, they rounded the curve and came almost face to face with a string of supply wagons, under guard—extremely heavy guard, Jason thought, for the size of the caravan—by cavalry. Cavalry in blue uniforms.

After a second of startled immobility, a blue-clad officer shouted, “Take ’em!” His men whipped out their sabers and thundered forward. Almost immediately, they were upon Jason and his party before the latter could wheel their mounts around and even try to flee. Besides, the bluecoats’ horses looked better than theirs.

Resistance couldn’t even be thought of. They were too few, and their revolvers were unloaded for traveling. “We surrender!” shouted Jason. “We cry quarter!”

The Union troopers crowded around them, collecting their weapons, which they handed over with expressions ranging from Mondrago’s surliness to Nesbit’s obvious terror. The Union officer, whose shoulder insignia was the two silver bars of a captain, rode up alongside Jason, who extended his saber hilt-first.

“My sword, sir,” he began. But the captain cut him off.

“Silence, you damned horse-thief!” He snatched the saber with a cold grin. “I never thought to take any of you partisans this easily.”

“What do you mean, sir? I am Captain Jason Landrieu of the Natchez Cavalry, Jeff Davis Legion, and as an officer of your own rank I expect—”

“I said silence, you lying bastard! You’re nothing but a common highway robber dressed up in a uniform, and your kind doesn’t deserve any military courtesies. And don’t fling the so-called Partisan Ranger Act of your so-called Confederate Congress at me.” The captain’s anger was of a sort Jason recognized from experience: the kind that had long-standing fear trembling behind it. “Oh, yes, I know: ever since the chieftain of your gang sent that letter to General Sheridan last month, threatening to retaliate on his own prisoners, we’re not supposed to hang you as you deserve. But if I had my way—”

A nerve-shattering, ululating yell split the air, and gray-clad horsemen burst from the woods alongside the road, bridle reins in one hand and revolver in the other, their horses bounding like jumpers, almost like deer. At their head was a man on a magnificent gray horse that he rode like a steeplechaser, wearing a red-lined cape and with an ostrich plume in his hat, shouting, “Boys, go through ’em!” in a high-pitched but powerful voice.

The panic that flashed through the Union troopers was almost physically palpable. Clearly this was something that, to them, meant more than an ordinary attack. They tried to line up in correct alignment as called for by standard cavalry tactics, but the headlong attack that crashed into them was more like a horse race than the trot or controlled canter of traditional Napoleonic cavalry charges. The attackers were in among them before they could form up, firing at point-blank range, emptying one revolver and pulling out a second.

Jason had no leisure to wonder how a cavalry unit could possibly have approached so closely without being heard before charging. He spurred his horse against that of the stunned Union captain, reached out, and grabbed his saber back. Whipping it out of its scabbard, he slashed at the head of the captain, who instinctively brought up his left arm. Jason’s saber almost severed it. With a scream, the Union officer went over, causing his horse to capsize and Jason’s to rear in panic, throwing him. He managed to hit the ground in a roll.

As Jason scrambled to his feet he had an instant to look around him. The fight had dissolved into a maelstrom of noise, smoke, and out-of-control riderless horses. Some of the Union horsemen were trying to ply their sabers, but ineffectually in the face of the momentum and firepower of the Confederates, who when their second revolvers were empty would gasp the heavy weapons by the barrels and use them for pistol-whipping. Most simply scattered, galloping back down the road past the wagons, whose drivers were jumping down and scrambling into the woods. Jason’s own men found themselves unguarded, and had all they could do to control their horses.

Incredibly, the Union captain had also gotten to his feet, his face a mask of agony. With his good arm, he brought up his revolver. Jason struck it from his hand with his saber and, bringing the blade around, brought the point up to the man’s throat. “Do you surrender, Captain?”

The captain nodded weakly, and sank to his knees with glazed eyes.

The fight was over. Some of the Confederate riders, including the leader, had galloped off down the road, where revolver shots could still be heard as they pursued the fleeing Federals. Others were busying themselves plundering the contents of the wagons. Jason now had the leisure to study these men. By and large, they seemed very young, superb riders, and neatly uniformed. One, who wore captain’s insignia and seemed to be the senior officer still present, trotted up and dismounted. He was a conspicuously handsome man no older than his early twenties, with a neat mustache and strikingly blue eyes in a face whose tan hadn’t entirely faded in December. He was an inch shorter than Jason (which made him fairly tall for this milieu) and strongly built. His uniform was nattier than most of his men’s.

“I see you have a prisoner, Captain,” he said to Jason. “And a wounded one. Doctor!”

A Mediterranean-looking man who had only just ridden from the woods approached. “This is our surgeon, Dr. Aristides Monteiro. He will tend to your arm.” The Union captain mumbled something as the doctor led him aside, hopefully to get him into shape for his journey to Libby Prison.
From which
, Jason thought,
Elizabeth Van Lew may be able to get him out.

“And who might you be, sir?” the handsome young Confederate captain asked Jason.

Jason gave his cover identity and indicated his men, who had by now gathered around. “We are in your debt, sir, for the timely arrival of you and your men. Who do I have the honor of addressing?”

“Adolphus Richards, sir. And while I am glad we were able to be of service, you mistake me. I am only second in command here. However, the colonel should be returning shortly . . . Ah. I see him coming now.”

The riders were returning, the man with the red-lined cloak at their head. Dismounting, he took off his plumed hat and ran his fingers through his light-brown hair as he approached with the brisk, energetic step of a man who would find it difficult to stay still for more than a few minutes.

He was about thirty, and a striking contrast to the stalwart Richards. Standing no more than five feet seven or eight inches tall, he was so slight—surely weighing less than a hundred and thirty pounds—that his uniform looked a couple of sizes too large. His fair-complexioned, clean-shaven face was as lean as the rest of him, with a slightly cleft chin, thin lips and a long narrow nose. He looked, in short, totally ordinary and undistinguished.

But then he drew closer, and Jason got a better look at his face.

The thin lips were a line of fierce and restless resolve. The nose was like the sharp beak of a bird of prey. And then there were the eyes: dark-blue, piercing, luminous, as though there was a fire behind them that powered the dynamic personality of a born fighter.

He may be a shrimp
, thought Jason, unable to look away from those eyes,
but I don’t think I would want to get on this man’s bad side.

“Who have we here, Dolly?” the colonel asked, after exchanging a casual greeting (but no salute; this was obviously a pretty informal outfit) with Richards. “Dolly” seemed an odd nickname for such a tough-looking customer, but Jason decided something of the sort had to be expected by a man whose parents had burdened him with “Adolphus.”

“Sir, this is Captain Jason Landrieu of the Natchez Cavalry in the Jeff Davis Legion, in Young’s Brigade. He personally captured the commanding officer of the Yankee escort . . . who had just captured him.”

The colonel laughed easily. His smile was actually quite charming, and the blue flame in his eyes died down to a twinkle as the heat of combat ebbed. His voice, high-pitched in battle, was now low and pleasant, and his speech was that of a well-educated man. “A most satisfying turnabout, I’m sure, Captain. And an impressive feat, considering that you were using
that
.” He indicated the saber that Jason was still holding. It occurred to Jason that he hadn’t seen a single saber among his rescuers. “Those things belong in a museum for the preservation of antiquities! I’m glad to see you also carry a Colt revolver.
That’s
what you want for close action!” (
Especially when it has a laser target designator
, Jason did not interject.) “But for the best effect, you should be carrying at least two of them, loaded, into battle. We must also see about getting you better horses, even though yours aren’t as bad as most of the wretched plugs our regular cavalry has to make do with these days.”

“Thank you, Colonel. Your men are splendidly mounted.”

“Indeed! We have the best thoroughbreds the Union army can provide.” The colonel laughed again, then the dark-blue eyes immediately grew shrewd. “But what brings you and your men up here from Petersburg?”

“Actually, sir, we came from Richmond. We are on a special assignment for General Lee, about which I am not permitted to speak.” The young colonel’s eyebrows went up, and Jason pulled out the copy of Lee’s requisition he had been careful to get. “That is why the general gave me this, which of course is how we were able to obtain fairly decent horseflesh in Richmond. We are currently enroute to Rectortown.”

“Well, that’s most fortuitous. I’m on the way there myself. I’m to attend the wedding of one of my men tomorrow, on the twenty-first, two miles north of Rectortown. You will accompany us.”

“Again, sir, thank you. And my men and I are most profoundly grateful that you showed up when you did. But you have the advantage of me. May I know the name of my rescuer?”

“Lieutenant Colonel John Singleton Mosby.” It was said in the tone of a man who expects his name to be recognized. “Commanding the 43rd Battalion Virginia Partisan Rangers. And now, Captain, I need to attend to a few things—most notably, the fair division of spoils from these sutler’s wagons. Come, Dolly.” And he and Richards walked toward the captured wagons, leaving Dabney staring after him.

“The Gray Ghost!” the historian whispered in awe.