Soldier of the Queen (14 page)

It was full of ink spots and mistakes, but there was a headlong enthusiasm about it that made him want to laugh. He could just imagine her sitting at her desk, her wide mouth twisting with the effort of writing, a frown between her brows, her small figure hunched over the paper.

Spring came imperceptibly and they moved into a hot dry May that made the flowers sag on their stalks. The Northern troops had got into Georgia again. Their last attempt had been repulsed at Chickamauga but this time they seemed determined to sweep across it. It was unravaged, a vast granary, machine shop and storehouse supporting enormous hospitals and most of the South’s cotton and woollen trade. At Atlanta, the junction of four railroads quartered the Confederacy.

As the Northerners pushed on, the piecemeal attacks of the past stopped. From now on, it seemed, it was to be one concerted drive on every front, to bring the Confederates to battle in every possible area at once to wear down their armies so that their old habit of rushing men from one front to another could no longer be indulged in. Scouts brought news that the Army of the Potomac was on the move again, slipping away from their camp fires in thousands. Lee was already on the march to meet them.

Colby was lounging in the grass when orders came, and immediately the whole camp came to life, with men grabbing up their belongings and reaching for their horses. Earth was kicked over the fires and cursing men who were in the middle of preparing a meal, crammed half-cooked meat into their mouths.

As they hurried towards Orange Turnpike, the country changed and as the road descended into a valley, they found themselves in gloomy second-growth forest stretching for fifteen miles.

‘The Wilderness,’ Jenkins said. ‘That’s what this place is known as. And I guess the Children of Israel musta felt the same as I do, because I don’t like it.’

Dense timber filled irregular ravines and low hills in dark patches that looked full of ghosts, and it was difficult to make out the direction of the Northern advance. Columns of lean ragged hairy men with no outward detail of military show came past. Their uniforms were every shade of grey and brown and their canteens, knapsacks, sabres and revolvers all seemed to be stamped ‘US’. They seemed incredibly dirty and many carried nothing but a rolled piece of carpet for a blanket. But they were bronzed and muscular, with bright hard eyes that saw no future for themselves or their country but still saw enough faith to go on fighting.

Colby spent most of the day moving about after Farley in heavy timber and thick undergrowth, but there was no sign of the Federals, though the woods were echoing with the sound of musketry and bullets were hissing about and thumping into the boles of trees. Then they heard the artillery start and knew that the armies had met. Love’s regiment was dismounted and the horses were taken to the rear.

They were all tired and falling asleep as they waited. Shells began to land among them but Sigsbee brought up two rifled guns and began to reply in a steady banging from a field of dry broom sedge about two feet high. As Northern shells set the field on fire, they had to retire, shrapnel still crashing among them, the thud of shells, balls and fragments filling the air. Farley hung on all day but the following day Northern assaults drove back the troops on their left, and they had to retire themselves.

‘This ain’t cavalry fighting,’ Ackroyd complained bitterly as they moved back to the horses. ‘Walking about on your hinds.’

There was another brush with the Yankees in the after-noon but Love’s regiment wasn’t involved, though the roar of musketry filled their ears until nightfall. The smoke lay thick and dense over the field so that it was impossible to see more than fifty yards in front, and the sun looked like a red ball of fire through the grey haze. By this time the brushwood and timber were ablaze and fires crackled all round them. A few men began to look over their shoulders, less worried by the enemy than by the flames.

The air was filled with noise, from the roar of the conflagration and the crackle of musketry to the wails of wounded caught by the flames. As the fighting died away with dark, the woods were still ablaze, dead trees on fire from top to bottom.

They slept where they fell to the ground and, waking the following morning, Colby was aware of silence, Ackroyd was sitting up nearby.

‘It’s finished,’ he said.

‘Perhaps it just hasn’t started again yet,’ Colby pointed out.

As Ackroyd began to prepare coffee, a messenger came clattering through the woods to Farley. ‘They’re on the move,’ he shouted. ‘We have to cover Spotsylvania Court House! Fitz Lee’s men were ordered to stop ’em, but they didn’t manage it. You’re to strike camp!’

‘We ain’t go no camp,’ Farley snorted.

‘Well, whatever! You’re to join Fitz Lee.’

‘How about breakfast?’

‘Now
, the General said!’

As Farley’s men fell back slowly, Colby could see the Federals moving forward in the distance as if on parade, their brass buttons and bayonets glistening in the sun, their striped banners floating in the breeze. It seemed that the Union troops had slipped past the Confederates, but eventually they came on Fitz Lee’s men, dismounted and holding positions along a line of woods.

‘Dismount!’ Farley yelled and, as the horses were taken to the rear, they moved forward to fling themselves down.

The place where they had halted was not very imposing, a mere huddle of houses, a church, a store and a scattering of outbuildings in the middle of a level plain surrounded by low hills. It was full of cavalry and the smell of horses dominated. In the heat the air was filled with dust kicked up by wheels, iron-shod hooves and hobnailed boots. A few women in slatted sunbonnets and faded calico dresses watched in agony as they prepared to give battle round their homes. Already the litter of the army was filling the streets, putrefying and bringing flies. In every corner cavalrymen were asleep, their arms through the reins of their mounts.

Outside the town, the country was wild and barren and chiefly covered in scrub oak barely fifteen feet high but so thickly tangled it was difficult to push through it. It was difficult country to move in and well chosen for defence.

Fitz Lee, a fleshy-faced young man with a mop of dark hair and full beard, put them in the picture quickly. ‘The General says we don’t give way,’ he announced. ‘He’s herding ’em towards us. Casualties are heavy but I gather the main army’s already behind and starting to dig in. Lee’s across Grant’s path again.’

As he spoke, there was a yell and he went cantering off to another part of the line. The Federals had broken out of the wood and as Sigsbee’s guns roared to life, the charge broke up into scattered groups which retreated a little way, reformed and started again, only to suffer the same fate. Once again the Federals fell back over the brow of the slope so that the guns were firing only at a skirmishing line, the shells hissing over like steam engines.

‘Here they come again!’ Farley yelled.

As the Federals ran forward, the guns continued to bark until the last moment, then were limbered up and moved to the rear. As they did so, one of the drivers was hit and fell, and Farley jumped into the saddle to drive the piece from the field. There was a cheer for him as he appeared, but the bullets were still flying like sleet and, as the guns clattered past, Colby saw his face change and he reeled in the saddle. With the gun swinging round to come into action again, Colby ran forward and caught him as he fell.

Propped with his back against a tree, Farley sat with his legs splayed, blood dribbling from his nostrils. As Colby bent over him, he lifted his head and a burst of red blossomed from his nose like a huge crimson flower and rushed down his mouth and chin. As the blood flowed over his uniform he began to splutter and choke, drowning in a red river. Frantically Colby tried to open his jacket to find the wound, the blood flowing over them both, slippery and sticky.

‘For God’s sake–!’ Farley coughed, spraying blood everywhere. ‘Help me – I–!’ Then he gave a wheezing noise and flopped back, and the hand that was grasping Colby’s relaxed and dropped down by Colby’s foot.

As he was carried to the rear, the cavalrymen pulled back again, fighting from hill to hill, fence to fence, tree to tree. By now there were large numbers of Confederates about and unexpectedly the air was filled with bird song. As the sun came up, the temperature rose and they moved back again, winding down to a stream and up a long hill towards a bank surmounted by a rail fence and woods. Then, as the Federals charged once more, they were swept by a volley of firing from men they thought had vanished, and fell back again. As the battle flared, the cavalry retreated yet again, all that were left of four thousand-odd who had forced the Northerners to take more than a day to advance a mere seven or eight miles. Occasionally they saw Stuart moving about behind the line, and once Lee on a grey charger.

More and more Federals appeared, but the firing died down with darkness and as the battle drew to a close, Colby, his face blackened with smoke, looked at Ackroyd who stared back at him indignantly.

‘I thought I was coming over ’ere to send off messages to the
Morning Advertiser
,’ he complained. ‘Not to kep the bloomin’ Confederacy on its feet.’

In front of them the slopes were slippery with blood. The dead were piled three feet high, the wounded struggling to pull themselves from under those who lay on top.

Jabez Jenkins appeared, his long face lugubrious. ‘Heard Ed Farley was hit,’ he said.

‘Yes.’ Colby gestured to the rear. ‘I’d like to go back and see how he is now things are quiet. Can you hold it?’

The town was filled with wounded, packed everywhere among the hop vines and honeysuckle, lying on white sanded paths, stretched under magnolia, wisteria or snowball bushes for shelter. The men who had been hit early in the day had already been attended to and sent away in jolting wagons, but by now, there were hundreds more, laid out on counters in the store and filling the houses and gardens, the blankets on which they lay saturated with blood. There were men who had been kicked by horses, with broken faces and smashed limbs, men with head wounds caused by Federal canister, and bodies torn by bullets, or raw from sabre cuts. Men shot in the stomach dragged themselves in as the surgeons worked at tables hastily erected in the street, their saws crunching through bone, cutting, stitching, probing, leaving the bandaging to orderlies and the women from the houses around. The chloroform had long since run out and the screaming men were being held down by brawny soldiers. Sperm oil for cauterising was bubbling over fires and the smell of seared flesh filled the nostrils, while the flames on sweating faces and beards and the agonised cries of the hurt created a picture of Hell.

Colby found one of the doctors trying to draw breath away from the reek of disinfectant, festering wounds and frightened malfunctioning bodies that blotted out the smell of grass and flowers. On a wooden building that looked like a stable was a sign ‘EMBALMING – FREE FROM ODOUR OF INFECTION’.

The doctor was taking great gulping breaths of air. Nearby was a pile of arms and legs, at the top of which a stiff finger pointed steadily at him. The grass was stiff with blood and the one or two women who moved about had the edges of their dresses stained red.

At that moment the night birds started calling, almost as if their chorus had been started by some hidden conductor, and in the next field, a preacher in a black coat began to intone over an open hole in the ground: ‘Oh, God of love, Lord God of hosts, allow the battle to pass from our valley and halt the hand of those who slay…’

The doctor sighed, shook his head as Colby spoke, and drew deeply on his cigar. ‘I don’t recall the name,’ he said. ‘But I’m so goddam tired I guess I misremember everything. Ask the sergeant.’

The sergeant couldn’t remember either, but an orderly appeared with a list. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘I got his name on this here paper. Captain Edwin Soames Farley.’

‘Where is he?’ Colby asked.

‘He ain’t, sir.’ The orderly shook his head. ‘He’s in the field there with the preacher.’

When Colby returned to Jenkins, they could hear desperate calls and cries from the wounded still in the woods and fields drowning the owls and the maddening call of the whippoorwills. A ploughed field in front of where they stood was strewn with horses and men and the area behind the line was a trampled wreck; the dead lay among the bushes where they had been dragged during the fighting, still staring up at the sky, the startled expression they had first shown already giving way to a stretched grimace that showed their teeth.

Jenkins sighed as Colby told him about Farley. ‘I guess it’s up to you now, son,’ he said. ‘I ain’t no soldier, that’s for sure, and the boys sure as hell know
you
are. They’ll send someone along eventually but it sure enough won’t be just yet.’

He was right and at dawn the next morning as the guard emptied their rifles in case the charges were damp Colby was summoned to headquarters. Stuart looked grim. ‘I know it’s none of your business,’ he said. ‘But I beg you to look after Love’s people for a while. It’s not your war, but we’ve been badly hurt and I know they’ll follow you.’

Perhaps it was the despairing look he’d seen on Jerkins’ face that swayed Colby. It was against all common sense, he knew, but he remembered the doctor and the dressing station, and, curiously, Augusta Dabney’s small peaked face. He nodded and Stuart managed a smile.

‘The Confederacy will be grateful, Mr Goff,’ he said. ‘And now you’d better be getting back to your command. We’ve heard Grant has sent Sheridan to raid south. He’s going to cut the roads through Gordonsville, Charlottesville and Lynchburg, and the high road to Richmond. Scouts say there are around fifteen thousand troopers with artillery and wagons and they stretch over thirteen miles of highway. And this time they’re taking their time as if they’re not afraid.’

They came up with the Federals at a place called Mitchell’s Shop where they could see a whole army of blue-clad horsemen streaming away, squadron after squadron of them, regiment after regiment, in a solid mass, the sun catching stirrup irons, sabres and an occasional fluttering flag. The Confederates had been thrown back with heavy losses and were depressed at their inability to make any impression on the mass of men in front. Stuart’s presence put heart into them and there were cheers.