No Spot of Ground (4 page)

True poetry, he knew, could not reside in the breast of a man as faithless as he.

*

The Starker house on its small eminence stood hard-edged and black against a background of shifting mist, like an isolated tor rising above the clouds. It was a little after four. The sun had not yet risen, but already the eastern horizon was beginning to turn gray. The ravens, coming awake, cackled and muttered to one another as they shook dew from their feathers.

Poe leaned on his stick before a half-circle of his brigadiers and their mingled staffs. Hugin and Munin sat on their perch behind him. Poe was in his uniform of somber gray, a new paper collar, a black cravat, the black doeskin gloves. Over his shoulders he wore a red-lined black cloak with a high collar, an old gift from Jeb Stuart who had said it made him look like a proper raven.

Most of his life Poe had dressed all in black. The uniform was a concession to his new profession, but for sake of consistency with his earlier mode of dress he had chosen the darkest possible gray fabric, so dark it was almost blue.

There was the sound of galloping; riders rose out of the mist. Poe recognized the man in the lead; Fitzhugh Lee, Robert Lee’s nephew and the commander of the cavalry division on his right. He was a short man, about Poe’s height, a bandy-legged cavalryman with a huge spade-shaped beard and bright, twinkling eyes. Poe was surprised to see him—— he had asked only that Lee send him a staff officer.

He and Poe exchanged salutes. “Decided to come myself, General.” He dropped from his horse. “Your messenger made it seem mighty important.”

“I thank you, sir.”

Fitz Lee, Poe realized, outranked him. He could take command here if he so desired.

He would not
dare
, Poe thought. A cold anger burned through him for a moment before he recollected that Fitz Lee had as yet done nothing to make him angry.

Still, Poe was uneasy. He could be superseded so easily.

“I think the Yankees are moving across my front,” he said. He straightened his stiff leg, felt a twinge of pain. “I think Grant is moving to his left again.”

The cavalryman considered this. “If he wants Richmond,” he said, “he’ll go to his right. The distance is shorter.”

“I would like to submit,
apropos
, that Grant may not want Richmond so much as to defeat us in the field.”

Fitz Lee puzzled his way through this. “He’s been fighting us nonstop, that’s the truth. Hasn’t broken off so much as a day.”

“Nevermore,” said one of the ravens. Fitz Lee looked startled. Poe’s men, used to it, shared grins. Poe’s train of thought continued uninterrupted.

“Moreover, if Grant takes Hanover Junction, he will be astride both the Virginia Central and the Richmond and Fredericksburg. That will cut us off from the capital and our sources of supply. We’ll have to either attack him there or fall back on Richmond.”

“Mebbe that’s so.”

“All that, of course, is speculation− a mere exercise of the intuition, if you like. Nevertheless, whatever his intent, it is still an
observed
fact that Grant is moving across my front.
Quad erat demonstrandum
.”

Lee’s eyes twinkled. “
Quod libet
, I think, rather.” Not quite convinced.

“I have heard their horses. They are well south of where they are supposed to be.”

Lee smiled through his big beard and dug a heel into the turf. “If he’s moving past you, he’ll run into my two brigades. I’m planted right in his path.”

There was a saying in the army,
Who ever saw a dead cavalryman
? Poe thought of it as he looked at Lee. “Can you hold him?” he asked.

“Nevermore,” said a raven.

Lee’s smile turned to steel. “With all respect to your pets, General, I held Grant at Spotsylvania.”

Gravely, Poe gave the cavalryman an elaborate, complimentary bow, and Lee returned it. Poe straightened and hobbled to face his brigade commanders.

Perhaps he had Fitz Lee convinced, perhaps not. But he knew—— and the knowledge grated on his bones—— that Robert Lee would not be convinced. Not with Poe’s reputation for hysteria, for seeing Yankees everywhere he looked. The army commander would just assume his high-strung imagination created illusory armies behind every swirl of mist. As much as Poe hated it, he had to acknowledge this prejudice on the part of the army commander.

“General Lee has made his plans for today,” he said. “He will attack to the west, where he conceives General Grant to be. He may not choose to believe any message from his other wing that the Yanks are moving.”

Poe waited for a moment for a reply from the cavalryman. Fitz Lee was the commanding general’s nephew; perhaps he could trade on the family connection somehow. But the bearded man remained silent.

“They are going to strike us, that is obvious,” Poe said. “Grant has his back to the bend of the river, and he’ll have to fight his way into the clear. But his men will have to struggle through the woods, and get across that swamp and the little creek, and they’re doing it at night, with a heavy mist. They will not be in position to attack at first light. I suggest, therefore, that we attack him as soon as the mist clears, if not before. It may throw him off balance and provide the evidence we need to convince the high command that Mr. Grant has stolen a march upon us.”

“Nevermore,” said the ravens. “Nevermore.”

Poe looked at Sextus, who was standing respectfully behind the half-circle of officers. “Feed the birds.” he said. “It may keep them quiet.”

“Yes, massa.”

“General Poe.” Fitz Lee was speaking. “There are two bridges across that creek—— small, but they’ll take the Yankees across. The water won’t hold up the Yanks as long as you might think.”

Poe looked at him. “The bridges were not burned after Hancock crossed the North Anna?”

Lee was uneasy. “General Ewell may have done it without my knowledge.”

“If the bridges exist, that’s all the more reason to attack as soon as we can.”

“General.” Clingman raised a hand. “Our brigades marched up in the dark. We ain’t aligned, and we’ll need to sort out our men before we can go forward.”

“First light, General,” said Poe. “Arrange your men, then go forward. We’ll be going through forest, so give each man about two feet of front. Send out one combined company per regiment to act as skirmishers− we’ll want to overwhelm their pickets and get a look at what lies in there before your main body strikes them.”

Another brigadier piped up. “What do we align on, sir?”

“The rightmost brigade of the division− that’s Barton’s?” Heads nodded. Poe continued, gesturing into the mist with his stick, sketching out alignments. “Barton will align on the creek, and everyone will guide on him. When Barton moves forward, the others will move with him.” He turned to Gregg and Law, both of whom were looking dubious. “I cannot suggest to Generals Gregg and Law how to order their forces. I have not been over the ground.”

Law folded his arms. “General. You’re asking us to attack a Yankee corps that’s had two days to entrench.”

“And not just any corps,” Gregg added. “This is
Hancock
.”

“We’ll be outnumbered eight to one,” Law said. “And we don’t have any woods to approach through, the way y’all do. We’ll have to cross a good quarter mile of open ground before we can reach them.”

Poe looked at him blackly. Frustration keened in his heart. He took a long breath and fought down his growing rage.

Winfield Scott Hancock, he thought, known to the Yanks as Hancock the Superb. The finest of the Yankee commanders. He thought about the Ravens going up that little green slope toward the cemetery, with Hancock and his corps waiting on top, and nodded.

“Do as best as you can, gentlemen, he said. “I leave it entirely to you. I wish only that you show some activity. Drive in his pickets. Let him see some regimental flags, think he is going to be attacked.”

Law and Gregg looked at one another. “Very well, sir,” Law said.

Anger stabbed Poe again. They’d do nothing. He knew it; and if he ordered them into a fight they’d just appeal over his head to Anderson.

Nothing he could do about it. Keep calm.

Poe turned toward Fitz Lee. “I hope I may have your support.”

The small man nodded. “I’ll move some people forward.” He gave a smile. “My men won’t like being in the woods. They’re used to clear country.”

“Any additional questions?”

There were none. Poe sent his generals back to their commands and thanked Fitzhugh Lee for his cooperation.

“This may be the Wilderness all over again,” Lee said. “Woods so heavy no one could see a thing. Just one big ambush with a hundred thousand men flailing around in the thickets.”

“Perhaps the Yankees will not see our true numbers, and take us for a greater force,” Poe said.

“We may hope, sir.” Lee saluted, mounted, and spurred away.

Poe found himself staring at the black Starker house, that one softly lit eye of a window. Thinking of the dead girl inside, doomed to be buried on a battlefield.

*

Virginia Poe had been beautiful, so beautiful that sometimes Poe’s heart would break just to look at her.

Her skin was translucent as bone china, her long hair fine and black as midnight, her violet eyes unnaturally large, like those of a bird of Faerie. Her voice was delicate, as fragile and evanescent as the tunes she plucked from her harp. Virginia’s aspect was unearthly, refined, ethereal, like an angel descended from some Mussulman paradise, and as soon as Poe saw his cousin he knew he could never rest unless he had that beauty for him always.

When he married her she was not quite fourteen. When she died, after five years of advancing consumption, she was not yet twenty-five. Poe was a pauper. After Virginia’s death came
Eureka
, dissipation, madness. He had thought he could not live without her, had no real intention of doing so.

But now he knew he had found Virginia again, this time in Evania. With Evania, as with Virginia, he could throw off his melancholy and become playful, gentle, joyful. With her he could sit in the parlor with its French wallpaper, play duets on the guitar, and sing until he could see the glow of his happiness reflected in Evania’s eyes.

But in time a shadow seemed to fall between them. When Poe looked at his young bride, he seemed to feel an oppression on his heart, a catch in the melody of his love. Virginia had not asked for anything in life but to love her cousin. Evania was proud; she was willful; she grew in body and intellect. She developed tastes, and these tastes were not those of Poe. Virginia had been shy, otherworldly, a presence so ethereal it seemed as if the matter had been refined from her, leaving only the essence of perfected beauty and melancholy; Evania was a forthright presence, bold, a tigress in human form. She was a material presence; her delights were entirely those of Earth.

Poe found himself withdrawing before Evania’s growing clarity. He moved their sleeping chamber to the topmost floor of the mansion, beneath a roof of glass skylights. The glass ceiling was swathed in heavy Oriental draperies to keep out the heat of the day; the windows were likewise covered. Persian rugs four deep covered the floor. Chinese bronzes were arranged to pour gentle incense into the room from the heads of dragons and lions.

With the draperies blocking all sources of the light, in the near-absolute, graveyard darkness, Poe found he could approach his wife. The fantastic decor, seen only by such light as slipped in under the door or through cracks in the draperies, heightened Poe’s imagination to a soaring intensity. He could imagine that the hair he caressed was dark as a raven’s wing; that the cheek he softly kissed was porcelain-pale; he could fancy, under the influence of the incense, that the earthy scent of Evania had been transformed to a scent far more heavenly; and he could almost perceive, as ecstasy flooded him, that the eyes that looked up into his were the large, luminous, angelic eyes of his lost love, the lady Virginia.

*

Poe sat in his tent and tried to eat an omelette made of eggs scavenged from Starker chickens. Fried ham sat untouched on the plate. Around him, the reserve divisional artillery creaked and rattled as the guns were set up on the Starkers’ slight eminence. The ravens gobbled and cawed.

Poe put down his fork. He was too agitated to eat.

A drink, he thought. A soothing glass of sherry. The Starkers must have some; it would be easy to obtain.

He took a gulp of boiled coffee, took his stick, and hobbled out of the tent. The sky had lightened, and the mist had receded from the Starker plantation; Poe could see parts of his own line, a flag here and there, the crowns of trees. His men were moving forward out of their trenches, forming up on the far side of the abatis beyond. Officers’ shouts carried faintly to his ear. The alignment was proceeding with difficulty. The battalions had become too confused as they marched to their places in the dark.

He remembered the Ravens in the cemetery, shrouded by gray gunsmoke as they were now hidden by gray mist.

Sherry, he thought again. The thought seemed to fill his mind with a fine, clear light. He could almost feel the welcome fire burning along his veins. A drink would steady him.

A color sergeant came running up from the Ravens, saluted, and took the two birds away to march with their brigade. Limbers rattled as horses pulled them out of harm’s way down the reverse slope of the hill.

Artillerymen lounged by their Napoleons and Whitworths, waiting for a target.

My god, Poe thought, why am I doing this? Suddenly it seemed the most pointless thing in the world.

An offensive would only make things worse.

A horse trotted toward him from the Starker driveway. Poe recognized Moses, another of Anderson’s aides, an eagle-nosed miniature sheeny that Longstreet had unaccountably raised to the rank of major.

One of Longstreet’s little lapses in taste, Poe thought; but unfortunately, as someone with pretensions to the title himself, he was honor-bound to treat the Hebrew as if his claim to the title of gentleman were genuine.

Sextus took Major Moses’s horse, and Moses and Poe exchanged salutes. There weren’t many men shorter than Poe, but Moses was one of them− he was almost tiny, with hands and feet smaller than a woman’s. “General Anderson’s compliments, sir,” Moses said. “He wants to emphasize his desire for a diversionary attack.”