The Bride of Texas (67 page)

For almost four hours the fighting shifted back and forth across the meadows around the depot and the little stronghold. Chalmers wasn’t expecting a lot of resistance; he was aware of his numerical advantage, and though he knew his experienced cavalry would have to deal with the green troops of the Sixty-sixth, he wasn’t counting on facing the Thirteenth Regiment of the regular army, with Chickasaw Bayou, Arkansas Post, Deer Creek, and the bloody massacre at Vicksburg behind it. All those had been fought in full view of General Sherman, and here too the general watched from the woods south of the depot as assault upon assault on the green meadows failed, and the depot and the stockade remained in the hands of his guard unit
.

Only one little square on the chessboard changed figures. The cannon found the range of the train, and when several wagons caught fire the Rebels attacked from two directions. Only a hastily armed group of wounded had remained in the train and they were unable to defend themselves for long. Through his field-glasses the general saw the Rebels herd them out of the wagons, line them up in a rough formation, and drive them, limping and stumbling, into the wood, where a new unit was just emerging
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From the stockade, the commander of the Thirteenth, Captain Smith, saw them too. The men in the rifle pits had just beaten back another assault, and the sergeant couldn’t tear his gaze away from a cavalryman with a bloodied leg dragging himself back across the meadow towards the shelter of the woods like a half-crushed beetle. The ball had apparently struck an artery because a red fountain was spurting from the wound. The cavalryman didn’t get far before he fell face down in the grass and lay still
.

The sergeant heard Captain Smith’s voice ordering Lieutenant Griffin to counter-attack. He turned from the loopholes and saw the band, their instruments glimmering in the dull light, and the trombone player trying to calm himself. The commander of the Thirteenth was nervously buttoning and unbuttoning his grimy uniform
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From a rise in the woods, the general trained his field-glasses on the log shack. The door opened and Lieutenant Griffin appeared, followed by a sergeant and then, one by one, the soldiers of the Thirteenth. They spread out and ran towards the train. Intermittent puffs of smoke poured from the stockade’s loopholes as the troops inside covered Griffin’s assault
.

Suddenly the stockade became a music box
.

The general turned to his aide. “Do you hear that?”

The aide nodded
.

They both listened. The band was playing “Rally Round the Flag, Boys!” The general smiled
.

“Now, that’s what I call soldiers. The Thirteenth are bored in there —”

A stray shrapnel shell exploded above the treetops and both men ducked. Then the general raised his field-glasses again and saw a private in A Company swing his rifle and slam it down on the head of a Rebel officer who was firing a pistol from the train steps. He saw the officer fall and watched the private step over him and push his way to the wagon — apparently, or so it seemed, to the rhythm of the music still emanating from the stockade
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“But Daddy, that wasn’t heroism, was it?” asked the little girl uncertainly. “Ordering a band to play?”

“Probably not,” admitted the sergeant. “But the general was amused. And it got me transferred to his staff.”

“And you never smacked anyone in the head with a rifle butt like Mister Zinkule?”

“No,” said the sergeant. “All I did was slap a man in the face.”

“A Rebel officer?”

“No,” said the sergeant. “His name was Vallandigham.”

The stable was silent and smelly. Cyril leaned back against the wall, sniffing occasionally at a handful of hay he clutched in his right hand. Pain shot through his left arm, which was splintered and bandaged. He was poking his nose in the hay to mask the stench of rotting flesh given off by gangrene-infected amputees.

The military chaplain was mumbling over a doomed Rebel casualty in the corner — both his legs were gone and pus was soaking through his bandages. A wounded man on a filthy straw mat beside him was rubbing a clove of garlic between his fingers and raising them to his nose. The Irish priest had been summoned by an orderly on the request of the dying Rebel. Cyril knew the priest. One time, back in South Carolina, he had been passing by their campfire when Shake and Zinkule were arguing about the Immaculate Conception. Zinkule claimed it referred to the conception of Christ, and Shake said it was the Virgin Mary.

“Father! We need some theological guidance,” Shake had called out to him, and the clergyman stopped, sat down with them at the campfire, listened to the dispute, and then said Shake was right.

“We often encounter that error among laymen,” he said. “Are you a faithful Catholic?”

“I’m a Catholic, yes,” Shake replied. “But I have a mortal sin on my conscience.”

The priest dropped his voice. “Would you like to confess?”

“It’s not something I can atone for by confessing,” said Shake. “The only way would be to make restitution.”

The priest frowned. “Don’t you believe in the grace of God?”

“Ah, but I do,” Shake said. “If I didn’t, I’d have gone crazy long ago.”

Cyril buried his nose in his handful of hay. He caught a whiff of potato leaves and his inner eye took him from the stinking stable to an autumn evening in the mountains, and little fires burning. But why? Suddenly the priest stood up and looked around, and the campfires went out. He came over to Cyril.

“Good evening, father,” said Cyril.

“You’re one of the Bohemian bunch, aren’t you?” asked the chaplain. He looked at the dying amputee, then back to Cyril. “The fellow barely speaks English.”

“Is he a goner?” asked Cyril.

“I’m afraid so,” said the priest. “He’s delirious. He’s babbling, it could be something about Texas, it’s hard to understand. But I’m sure he’s Bohemian.”

“OK,” said Cyril, and he rose painfully and, holding his arm out at his side like a broken wing, walked over to the man. The Rebel’s eyes were closed; his skin showed a deathly white through the stubble on his beard. Cyril felt as if he were hallucinating, perhaps from the stink of rotting limbs, the fragrance of the hay, the smell of burning leaves. He leaned close to the dying man’s face. “Jesus!” he gasped in Czech. The dying man opened his eyes. “Mary, Mother of Jesus!”

He turned and hobbled quickly, almost running, to the farmhouse where they had put the wounded officers. In the kitchen, Captain Warren sat at the table with a bandage wrapped around his head. It wasn’t a serious wound. During an assault by Hardee’s cavalry a minnie had grazed his skull; he had lost consciousness and had come to just in time to hear the jaded doctor say, “It’s nothing, just a concussion.” Now he sat at the table with Lida and Lieutenant Ferguson, who had sprained his ankle at Bentonville. They were playing Marias, a card game from Austria that the captain’s wife had introduced them to.

Regardless of what he thought of her, Cyril had to admire his sister. “I’s with Massa Captain Warren now!” Sarah declared proudly. She was a black woman whose owner had fled with Hardee, and she patted Deborah’s head. The little girl grasped her pudgy hand. “Now that Massa Fitzsimmons is gone, I’s with Massa Captain Warren and Miz Fitzsimmons!”

“You are indeed,” said the innocent.

“I’m with Captain Warren too,” said Lida, pressing up against her husband. “And I won’t let him go!”

At the time, neither Sarah nor Baxter Warren II knew that she meant it literally. But when Sherman’s great army set out to the north-east, and Captain Baxter Warren II with it, the ambulance at the rear of the captain’s company was empty except for Lida, wearing the grey dress of a nurse. The captain protested, but in fact he was glowing with pride. What other man in Sherman’s army had a wife like her? The ambulance gradually filled with casualties, and his exotic wife bandaged bleeding bullet wounds and sword cuts as if she had been doing it all her life. They had left Deborah in safety under the protection of the captain’s sister, Mrs. Fitzsimmons, whose foolish husband had joined the retreating Hardee. Both of them were under the protection of Sarah, who was now working for Captain Warren. Although she was free, she had decided to remain a nanny to children of the wealthy. She had never done anything else and didn’t want to start now
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“Lida,” whispered Cyril
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His little sister, playing-cards fanned out in her hand, turned her eyes to him
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“Yes?” Then she noticed Cyril’s face and added, “What’s the matter, Cyril?”

“Come with me,” he said softly
.

She collapsed. The doomed Rebel had died without opening his eyes. The Irish priest made the sign of the cross over him, and Lida
broke down and cried, in awful, racking sobs. Under the grey fabric of her nurse’s uniform, the farm-girl’s sturdy shoulders heaved with a bottomless, endless agony. Captain Warren stood helplessly over her. Cyril met his unknowing eyes
.

“It’s her older brother,” said Cyril. “God only knows how he ended up here, of all places. My God!”

God only knew, not Cyril. But it was Vitek, inexplicably here in North Carolina, a few miles from Bentonville.

Cyril looked at his sister, and for a second he thought Linda’s heart might break.

But her heart didn’t break. She wouldn’t give God that satisfaction. Her heart had already been broken, years ago, in the country she had had to leave alone, without the man who now lay dead at Bentonville. But like a broken bone her heart mended, and afterwards it grew stone-hard, as healed bones sometimes do.

Around midnight it started to rain. The battle had slowed down. Now and then, when the rain let up, the sergeant could hear the creaking of axles; vehicles at the rear of the Rebel line were on the move in the darkness. The general had been right. Johnston was taking advantage of the cover of night and retreating to the bridge across Mill Creek. That would mean the war was over.

Shake had fallen asleep on the palisade. He was having a beautiful dream. Suddenly he was what he had never become, and he was celebrating the May Mass in gold-embroidered vestments. He had just turned to the missal and started back to the Epistle side of the altar when a rose-bush popped out of the carpet on the steps, spread rapidly, and soon covered the Epistle side with scarlet blossoms that gave off a pungent fragrance.
He turned and the same thing was happening on the Gospel side. He turned towards the worshippers but he couldn’t see them, for the entire altar was surrounded by rose-bushes. They smelled so strong that he felt faint and began to panic. He turned quickly back to the altar, climbed the tabernacle, and scrambled up the gilded baroque façade, where statues of Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint Cyril, and Saint Methodius gazed out at him from their niches. Suddenly, like snakes, rose-covered boughs emerged above their heads and began twining down the altar. Startled, Shake fell to the altar, and the rose boughs attacked him from all directions, twining around his arms and legs like vines, and the odour became so strong that it was practically a stench — he woke up. Behind him on a tree stump sat a man dressed in tails. A Negro who looked familiar was sprinkling him with liquid from a tiny gilt flagon. Shake decided that he was still asleep and had just moved from one dream to another.

Then he heard Paidr say, “I’ll be damned, Franta! You’re all we needed here!”

“You bet you need me,” said the fellow in the formal suit. “I’m not wounded, so my place is with my unit.”

The Negro stopped sprinkling Zinkule and corked the bottle. The cruel smell of roses awakened everyone around them.

“Franta!” exclaimed Javorsky. “Is that you?”

“Who do you think it is?” the fellow in the tail-coat replied irritably.

“What’s that you’re wearing?” Houska chimed in.

“Tails,” replied Zinkule tersely.

“You sure you’ve come to the right place? This isn’t a fancy-dress ball,” said Paidr.

“It’s all Breta could find,” said Zinkule.