Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (36 page)

The cries and curses, smash of shot on stone, the awful splintering. Men bleeding, blinded, lost.

“Steady, boys,” Gordon trumpeted. “Look at Patton’s Virginians, aren’t they fine?”

“They’re fine with me,” a soldier called, “’long as they stay between us and the Yankees.”

Hooting. The unstable merriment of soldiers facing death.

“Now, that’s a fact,” a powder-burned soldier agreed.

Hold until dusk. Until the Yankees had to quit. After that, an orderly withdrawal.

He just did not know how long he could master these men. Good men they were, the finest, fighting on with empty cartridge cases and empty bellies. But there came a point …

“I do believe,” Gordon called as he rode the line, “that you boys have just about tuckered out the Yankees. You just hold on now. Night’s coming. You hold on.”

Fragile, the hearts of men. Immensely strong, and then abruptly fragile. War had less to do with rifles and guns, the external totems, than with the unmeasured depths within each breast.

Should’ve made Fanny go back South. Early had been right, that sour old man. But Gordon had found excuses to keep her near, blaming her own stubbornness.

The Yankees weren’t barbarians, of course. She would not be mistreated. Quite the contrary, he expected. Knowing his Fanny, she’d soon be celebrated and waited on. But even the looming shame of her “capture” paled against the pain of separation.

The remnants of Patton’s Brigade were caught in the fight of their lives. Gordon wished he could advance to support them. But he knew that the best he could hope for now was to keep his men steadied right here, behind these walls. Advance? He had all he could do to keep them from running.

His men. On this bad day.

Last until dusk.

Fanny.

All but deafened, he heard the growl of battle, the endless crack of rifles and thump of cannon, as if through water. There was bile in his empty belly and shit pressing his guts, but he didn’t dare dismount even to piss. The men had to see him in the saddle now. He feared that simply getting down to water a tree would trigger a rumor that he had been wounded, even killed. And then they would run. Even the bravest longed for an excuse.

Their bodies were used up. All the folly of rushing off to Martinsburg, then that killing night march to get back. Shoulders bruised to a terrible tenderness by the kick of rifles, and forearms worn to cramping. Thirst. Spirit and temper were all that remained. Even loyalty, that loyalty on which he had relied for three grand years, would crack like sugar brittle.

“Good Lord! Look!”

Gordon turned, eyes following a captain’s outstretched arm.

Hardly a rifle shot to the north, lines of blue-clad cavalry advanced at a trot, aimed at the flank and rear of Patton’s Brigade. As Gordon watched, mortified, bugles sounded and the Yankees sped to a gallop, bending toward their horses’ manes and leveling their sabers. The thunder of hooves pierced Gordon’s deadened ears.

The scene robbed him of suitable commands, of any words.

His men had been positioned to spot the Yankees before Patton’s boys could do so. The Virginians were fighting desperately, their flank refused and Yankees feeling beyond it. Each man out there had been occupied with his own immediate war.

Now the first of Patton’s men grasped the danger. A few ran for the rear, toward the imagined safety of Gordon’s line. Most stood, though. Brave men face-to-face with their executioners.

Nearing the Virginians, the Yankees raised a hurrah. Then came the crash, the human-animal-metal collision, the uproar. Horses leapt walls. Sabers flashed, hacking.

A few of Gordon’s men fired at the Yankees, but the riders in blue jackets swarmed among the Virginians, making clean shots impossible.

There was not one thing to be done. Leaving the wall in a rescue attempt would only feed his men into the rout. For once, John Brown Gordon was at a loss.

More Virginians turned to run. The Yankees rode them down, slashing their blades into shoulders, at necks, across backs. Here and there, a soldier swung a rifle and unhorsed a rider, who could expect no mercy. But Patton’s Brigade was being annihilated. As Gordon and his men watched.

“Goddamn them, god
damn
them,” a soldier cried.

A fallow field away, hundreds of men in gray or shades of brown threw down their rifles. Well-drilled Yankee horsemen began to herd them. Like cattle.

“God
damn
them!”

Virginians who escaped leapt over the walls his men defended. Blind to anything but a vision of safety, they would not be stopped short of being shot down dead. And Gordon was not about to shoot down Confederates and risk destroying his future.

He was glad that poor George Patton had not remained to see his brigade end thus.

Then things got worse.

The Yankee cavalry parted, revealing advancing ranks of Federal infantry, rifles leveled at their waists, bayonets shimmering. The blue-backed horsemen wheeled to the north again, ready to sweep deep into Gordon’s rear.

Where’s
our
cavalry? Gordon demanded of no one. He knew the Confederate horse was weak, but, surely, Fitz Lee …

Where was the rest of Breckinridge’s Division?

Confederate artillery began to shell the advancing Yankees. Some of the rounds landed amid the men just taken prisoner.

The sight further horrified Gordon’s soldiers.

There was no one to dispatch to correct the guns. No time, anyway.

Some of his own men began to run, joining the fleeing Virginians. Then more broke. Gordon rode after them. Not far. Just far enough to turn on them.

“For God’s sake, men! Stand! Stand! We’ll beat them again, stand with me one more time!”

The fight was out of them, though. The trickle of those running became a flood.

Gordon tore off his hat and hurled it down.

“Don’t shame your states! Georgia! Louisiana! Don’t shame yourselves, boys!”

No one paused to reply.

Yankee artillery shells gave chase. Gordon pleaded, unwilling to show his rage. That was Early’s foolish manner, not his.

A private grabbed his bridle and tried to turn Gordon’s horse toward the rear.

“Save yourself, General! Save yourself!”

Tears flecked the boy’s eyes.

Gordon looked down on him, burning. “Release my horse, son.”

The private let go the leather strap, but didn’t join those fleeing. Instead, he positioned himself in front of Gordon, back to the general and rifle across his chest, defying the entire Yankee army to try to get past him.

Gordon recognized the lad. Twelfth Georgia. If the boy was a day more than sixteen, it didn’t tell.

The regiment’s flag-bearer limped up and positioned himself by the private. He held up the banner, waving it.

More men joined them.

Nearby, another color-bearer paused, doubt on his face.

Gordon rode over to the man, grasped the pole from his hands, and said, “You’ll let me borrow this?”

Lofting the tattered battle flag, Gordon rode through his men, making a miracle. Soldiers who had fled returned to the stone wall, took aim, and fired at the oncoming, hollering Yankees.

A Confederate battery found the correct range and pounded the Federals. For all Gordon knew, those were the same guns that had fired into the prisoners.

Fortunes of war.

His men applied themselves to the fight again. There were fewer of them now, far fewer. But those who remained meant to stand.

For Christmas—for that last, impoverished Christmas—Fanny had given him William Cowper’s translation of the
Iliad,
an old copy with a leather cover burnished by many hands over the decades. She knew he loved that book above all others—although he favored the rendering by Pope.

Now he took his own stand, not on the plains of windy Troy, but on the fields before Winchester. Not an Achilles, but, perhaps, a Hector. With the doomed city at his back.

Lofting the flag and calling out encouragement, Gordon knew it was only a matter of time. But with his men rallied around him, it was a glorious time.

5:00 p.m.

Union center

“Faster!” Emory Upton demanded. “Get up to the top of that rise, I need to see!”

The firing threatened to outdistance them.

His litter bearers picked up the pace, but not enough to satisfy him. The officers and orderlies accompanying the stretcher appeared doubtful, though they had given up on attempts at reason.

This was no time for reason. Not when he was winning.

He
knew
his wound was severe, didn’t need to be told. He had tied off the thigh himself when the others hesitated. The pain blazed, not least when one of the bearers put a foot wrong. But pain could be endured. Jesus Christ had suffered worse than this, as had the Martyrs.

Think on the Oxford Martyrs.…

His men had broken through, that was what mattered, and now they raced the rest of the army to Winchester, brushing aside the last, enfeebled resistance. After a bloody afternoon’s frustration, including a confrontation with a Nineteenth Corps colonel who proved a coward, Upton had driven his men on without mercy. And Mackenzie and the others had cracked the Rebel defense, bursting through their lines at last like a horde of avenging angels. His wounding amid that triumph had been a sign, a warning to shun mortal pride in an hour of glory. Perhaps it was even a riddle-wrapped sign of grace.…

He had kept faith. And the Lord had given him victory.

When he rose to his elbows, he saw the steeples of Winchester. The fighting was not done, the godless slavers harbored too much spite. Satan did not bow at the first blow. But Upton was determined that his men would be the first Union troops to reach the town. No matter the cost.

He prayed. Not for the Lord to ease the pain in his thigh, but for the strength to endure it and finish his work.

He had been granted a vision of how to smite them. All his reading in military science, his dedication to the art of war, was as naught before revelation. He had studied his trade until the last candle guttered, but Jomini shed little light beside the fiery sword of Jesus Christ.

“And there was given unto him a great sword … a great sword…”

Upton caught himself swooning. Much blood had been lost. He propped himself higher. Pain pierced him.

Nothing, he told himself, this is nothing.

“Tell Mackenzie he
must
press on.” He wanted to add, but did not, “Show no mercy.”

The true mercy would be to end this war, to break the chains of bondage forever and ever.

At an aide’s command, the bearers lowered the stretcher to let a fresh team take it up. When they lifted him again, a bolt of pain made Upton want to shriek. He had forced himself to examine the wound at first, to confront this mortification of his flesh, but now he found it unsettling to view the ruptured meat.

We are but carrion, dross …

If the Lord wished to take his leg, even his life …

Not before
I
take Winchester, he blasphemed, surprising himself.

“Faster!” he snapped. “How can I command, if you can’t keep up?”

Horsemen rushed out of the lengthening shadows. The first cool of evening preceded them, balm in Gilead.

“Put him down, for Christ’s sake,” a no-nonsense voice commanded.

Balancing care and haste, the bearers lowered Upton to the ground again.

“Damn it,” the voice profaned. “I sent orders for you to go back to the surgeons.”

Sheridan.
Gazing down from that great black mount of his. The horse’s mouth dripped slime.

“I can lead my division.”

“The hell you can.”

“Sir, I request…” Upton rallied against the pain. “I
demand
to remain in command of my division.”

He could feel the air change around him, grasping that Sheridan would brook no man’s defiance. He stiffened himself to withstand a blast of rage.

Instead, Sheridan slipped down from the saddle, instantly small when parted from his horse. He knelt over Upton.

Audible to the officers and men surrounding the litter, Sheridan announced, “General Upton, your performance has been heroic, selfless. No man has done more to turn the tide of battle. You have my personal thanks.”

Then Sheridan leaned close, bitter of breath and flashing eyes as hard as the hardest gemstone. Lips almost kissing Upton’s ear, he whispered, “Upton, you will go to the rear right now, or I will break you down to fucking private.”

5:00 p.m.

The eastern edge of Winchester

“Halt, you cowardly sonsofbitches,” Jubal Early cried. “Stop, you cowards. God almighty, halt! Stop, I say, and fight like goddamned men.”

5:00 p.m.

The northern approach to Winchester

What a jolly afternoon! Nothing like it in the great, wide world, Custer decided. Mankind had never devised a better sport. They’d run the Rebs mile after mile, the sorry devils.

Grinning, he returned to the head of his re-formed column of fours, facing the last scraps the enemy had mustered to guard his flank: a few bled-out troops of horse, a section of guns that could be enveloped easily, and a ruptured fort on a knoll. The fortification didn’t interest Custer—an experienced cavalryman let fixed defenses rot—but he fancied taking those guns and finishing off the graybacks who’d dropped from the backs of their nags. Couldn’t let Devin have all the fun, now, could he?

Turning to an orderly, Custer said, “Bring up the band.”

He drew his saber.

5:15 p.m.

The northern edge of Winchester

Damnedest thing. Fitz Lee felt about the best he’d felt all day. He’d started out weaker than an old maid with the ague, got worse rushing about, sweating like a hog and worrying like a churchgoing gal on her wedding night, and then got whipped by Yankees more times than he could count, ending up here with his rump all but touching Winchester. His men had done their best, but they were scattered now, he’d lost contact with most of their commanders, and Breathed’s guns appeared to have been put to another man’s use. But, damnation, if he didn’t feel almost peppery.