Читать книгу Pale Blue Light - Skip Tucker - Страница 15

Hubert Hillary despised himself. In this, he shared the sole opinion he held in common with everyone who ever knew him. Hillary despised practically everything and everyone.

His parents had displayed what he considered the decency and good sense to die from smallpox when he was away at boarding school. More importantly, they left him sufficient means for a thorough business education at a small but social college. Hillary was diminutive, plump, clean shaven and myopic. His lank brown hair, which had begun seriously to thin during his final year at school, was now but a fringe.

It was in that final year of college that Hillary’s true character began to manifest itself. He despised his college nickname, Mole, which came to him only partly because of an unfortunate resemblance to the creature, incredibly enhanced by the thick glasses he had to wear.

The name had fallen to him also because he burrowed tirelessly into schoolbooks. He enjoyed obtuse cryptograms, statistics, logistics. A long list of numbers which set his schoolmates (whom he despised) groaning would set off rare feelings of real delight in Hillary.

Last and most, the nickname was derived from Hillary’s nocturnal ramblings, the nature of which were suspected but never proven. They were thought to include an unusual interest in whips and prostitutes. But so circumspect was Hillary that no proof was ever evidenced.

Now in his thirtieth year, Hillary was set in character. He was petty, petulant, arrogant, silly and morose by turns. He was sly, shallow, vain, vengeful, dishonorable and dishonest. He took snuff up the nose. He connived, intrigued, backstabbed, mongered rumors and young whores. He dilettanted.

And he could lie, artfully and comfortably, like an expensive rug. He possessed a flawed but massive intellect. Cancer was no more malignant than he. In short, Hubert Hillary was a very dangerous little flower. He ruined people for fun, people he didn’t even know, if saw no possibility of getting caught. It was his hobby.

Hillary was also the Confederate Assistant Undersecretary of War. And he harbored a great secret hate for Stonewall Jackson. Hatred was something in which Hillary gloried. Aside from fear, hatred was the only genuine emotion with which Hillary had experience.

Hillary rarely allowed himself this luxury but when he did, he took it to his breast and nurtured it as a loving mother suckles her first born babe. To protect his hate for Jackson, he cloaked it under a guise of ardent admiration. He had met Jackson but once. He would never forget it.

Though he despised everyone in the war department, Hillary was considered to be one of the few people who were practically indispensable. Because of his genius at logistics and handling the supplies remaining to the South, Hillary held almost autonomous power where such things were concerned. He was privy to every scrap of information related to his bailiwick.

The captured stores at Manassas was the muddy point over which he ran afoul of Jackson. Hillary cared not a fig for Jackson’s lightning march from Cedar Mountain to Manassas, didn’t care that Jackson had astounded the world with the victory there. Hubert Hillary didn’t give a damn who won the war, except that he intended to have plenty of power and money. Being firmly imbedded in the Southern bureaucracy, it would serve him best for the South to win. Although he secretly despised Southern aristocracy for not letting him run amok in it.

But no matter to him, really, who won. His secret bank account in France grew a little each month or two. After all, he dealt with the black market and the blockade runners, and he picked a tiny plum or crumb here and there. Nothing big, though he did not lack greed. He was greedy as a pig. But he was also smart. And scared.

A small skimming off a big shipment could double his account. And there had been too few of those lately. When word came that the Federal supply dump in Manassas was taken, Hillary developed a tiny erection which later that evening translated itself into some cane marks on himself and a mulatto girl at a special house ten miles out of town.

When he learned next day that Jackson had not only burned most of the stores, but was keeping the rest for his own use, Hillary lost control and fell into a general keening fit at his office in Richmond. Truth to tell, Hillary had immediately come up with a plan that would not have hampered Jackson to any degree and would have secured much of the needed supplies Jackson destroyed. But Hillary had not been consulted. Not only his bank account, but his very authority had been undermined by the mad Jackson. In a snit which completely compromised his common sense, Hillary on his own authority whipped off a telegram ordering Jackson from now on to put captured supplies under the care and maintenance of himself, Hubert Hillary.

So thoroughly did Hillary inveigh against Jackson that he was taken along, again against his better judgment, to a meeting in the Shenandoah Valley of Davis, Lee and Jackson. Jackson believed Lee’s only fault as a commander was that he paid too much attention to politics and orders from Richmond, even if Davis and commanding General Braxton Bragg were graduates of West Point. Since taking over the Shenandoah and recording his great successes there, Jackson had been alert to any attempts at political intervention. It would compromise his effectiveness. For as much as Jackson demanded strict obedience from his own men, he brooked no interference from those in authority over him. He trusted only Robert E. Lee, of whom Jackson said that here was the only man he would follow blindfold.

By the time Davis and Hillary reached Jackson’s camp, Jackson’s friends in Richmond had seen to it that Southern newspapers somehow received copies of Hillary’s telegram. Hard on its heels, they had also received copies of an even more powerful document. Jackson had tendered his resignation, “regretfully,” it said. He could not lead if he did not enjoy Richmond’s confidence. He would return to VMI.

Jackson had anticipated an attempt by someone in the war department to limit his parameters and he would not have it. The resignation was both polite and real. Between the lines, Jackson said that if anyone tries to impose his will on me, I will quit.

The storm in the press was predictable. Hillary was pilloried, threatened, castigated, ridiculed and called a traitor. By the time he arrived at camp, had his presence there been known, he would not have lived an hour. Even the newspaper correspondents would have helped string him up. That evening, in his tent, Hillary was trying to think of some way to evade the storm and if possible throw it back on Jackson. It was unthinkable that a brute like a common field commander could make him into a pariah. By the morning’s meeting, Hillary was sure, he would think of some way to put the matter right.

When the tent entrance flapped back, without so much as a polite knock being given, Hillary raised himself to his full five feet five inches and prepared to give the offender a shrill tongue lashing.

To his dismay, Hillary recognized the craggy features of Stonewall Jackson. Quickly putting on a smile and holding out his hand, Hillary began to mumble placating remarks in the vein that he couldn’t think how such misunderstandings occur but that he was sure . . .

“I did not come here to pass amenities or civilities with you,” interrupted Jackson, ignoring Hillary’s outstretched hand. “I came here to tell you that you are a scoundrel and a damned liar. You have conspired against me and I will not have it. If you were any part of a man, I would slap your face and force you to resent it. And I tell you right here, right now, that if you ever interfere with me again, or cross my path in any way, you will do so at the peril of your life.”

Jackson’s eyes, those pale blue lights, seemed to strike into Hillary’s dark soul. Hillary could only gulp and nod, his heart beating wildly. Jackson turned on his heel and stamped out of the tent.

Hillary’s lily white hands fluttered about like trained doves, fanning his face, feeling his heart, grasping his constricted throat, taking his pulse. It was some moments before he was able to speak loudly enough to have his orderly bring him water, then brandy, then whiskey.

Throughout his sleepless night, Hillary suffered alternating bouts of fear and loathing. In the morning, he sent a note to the meeting that he was indisposed and not only withdrew any remarks which General Jackson might have found offensive, but seconded any plans which the hero of the Confederacy might have. He only wished to serve, Hillary added, and regretted that his fervor may well have been misplaced and misunderstood.

Back in Richmond, where the press still sent storms crashing over his balding, jowly head, he bravely appeared before them, impeccably but foppishly dressed, and read a strongly worded statement of self condemnation.

Hillary had groped for the proper verbal hair shirt, then donned it articulately for the public prints. He would never presume to order the gallant hero Jackson, he said, but in his zeal to serve the Confederacy he had been too emphatic in suggesting a plan for Jackson’s consideration. Said plan was now withdrawn. Long live Stonewall Jackson.

Since the day Hillary was, as he thought it, crucified by the press, he became on the surface the South’s most vociferous admirer of Stonewall Jackson. One mention of Stonewall and Hillary commenced to coo. It was hero worship, long and loud. Inwardly, he seethed.

Suddenly, somehow, shipments of supplies to Jackson began to go awry.

And Hillary began to research reports for a weakness in Jackson, a flaw in Jackson’s personality. He found it. Unfortunately, it was a flaw ready made for exploitation by a schemer and would-be demagogue. For the taciturn Jackson not only expected too much of his own officers, he demanded it of them. He would have them be like him. And though they tried their best to live up to his expectations, it was simply beyond them.

Since boyhood, Jackson had lived his life by one cardinal rule; he could be whatever he willed himself to be. He could not learn that he could not will other men, no matter how hard they tried, to become what he was.

At one time or other, every general officer under Jackson was under court-martial. On one occasion, every officer on his staff was under court-martial at the same time. Few of the courts-martial ever came to trial. Usually, whoever had fallen into disfavor with Jackson accepted punishment, which normally was nothing more than having to trail the marching columns for a day or two, eating the dust of twenty-five thousand men stepping doubletime. Canon swallowed his share. But it galled.

Most of the time, such punishment was given when a commander failed to depart on time with his troops, or arrive at destination on time. Canon understood the importance of such timing, especially in light of Jackson’s hit-and-run tactics. But still it galled. Stonewall Jackson’s men loved him. With his officers, the relationship was often love-hate.

Following the Battle of Second Bull Run/Manassas, though, all was well in camp and in Richmond. The Army of Northern Virginia basked in the glow created by long laudatory articles in Southern newspapers. They reveled as Northern newspapers cried out for leaders like Lee and Jackson, or at least for leaders who might give these men a decent fight.

The continued successes of Lee and Jackson were having worldwide impact. England and France seemed on the verge of pledging allegiance to Richmond, but proponents of the Southern cause, in debates in their houses of government, could not quite swing the required support.

While foreign backers pointed to Lee and Jackson, their adversaries pointed to generals U. S. Grant and William Sherman. They were winning in Mississippi and Tennessee—much like Lee and Jackson were winning in the east.

The South needed to do something truly dramatic to bring on much needed aid, and it was up to Lee and Jackson to come up with the idea. During the first three days of September, following the victory at Manassas, senior commanders spent hours in Lee’s tent. The Southern army had once again abandoned the plains of Manassas and taken to the cool mountainsides for rest and recovery. Still, commanders both North and South knew Lee was poised near the Potomac. Practically everyone knew a Southern invasion of the North was being discussed, if not planned.

The morning of September 4, Canon was called to Jackson’s tent. Canon felt wonderful, invigorated. The air was cool and bracing, pure as spring water. Smells of rich pine firesmoke mingled with the aromas of boiling coffee and bacon being fried. Banjoes and mouth harps twanged happy tunes.

The whole army was happy. Happy to be alive. Canon knew it was natural for survivors of such a holocaust as Manassas to celebrate life and victory. Word had gone around camp that the army might be about to invade the North, and that meant fighting nearly every day. Bullets would be flying again soon enough. But today they were alive and were heroes. It was a happy time.

At Jackson’s tent, Canon rapped twice on the tent pole and pushed inside the flap. Jackson had tied back one corner of the tent roof, and it was light and airy inside. Fully uniformed, sitting bolt upright on his cot so as not to compress his inner organs, Jackson held in his hands the brigadier general’s collar star he had worn as commander of the Virginia Brigade.

Jackson looked up at him, and Canon thought the look somehow different from the casual Jackson glance. The pale eyes never looked more vivid.

“Colonel,” said Jackson, “let us assume for a moment, and this is between you and me, that I have been promoted.” Canon was surprised. Jackson already held the rank of lieutenant general, which was the highest rank attainable. Canon could only assume that Lee was about to be returned to Richmond and that Jackson was going to take full command of the Army of Northern Virginia. He said nothing.

“You have a way with words. If you were going to pin my new badges of rank on me in front of the men, what would you say on my behalf?” asked Jackson.

Canon was nonplussed, then irritated. So it happens to us all, he thought. Even Jackson. Perhaps he is human after all. Jackson had never sought flattery, even shunned it. Now he apparently wished it. Disappointing. But if anyone deserved praise, Canon thought, it was Jackson. Still, he was uneasy. It was so out of character for Jackson that he couldn’t fathom it. Oh, well, thought Canon.

A bit coldly, Canon said, “General, you are a true hero. Not a man or woman, hardly a child in the South goes to bed at night without saying a prayer for your safety.” He paused a moment, decided he would not let Jackson’s newly displayed ego get by without a little barb.

“Yet you have not sought fame or flattery. All you have asked for in return for your service is confidence from your men and a great battle to fight. A grateful nation salutes you.”

“Excellent, Colonel,” said Jackson. “Please call the men of the Black Horse and the Stonewall Brigade around.” So the old man wants a public ceremony, thought Canon, leaving the tent. He signaled for a bugler to blow company call. The men came running.

“Attend the general,” Canon shouted, and Jackson stepped out of the tent. Jackson walked up to Canon, turned and faced the gathered men.

“Rabe Canon,” he called out, “you are a true hero. Neither a man nor woman, hardly a child in the South goes to bed at night without saying a prayer for your safety. Yet you have asked for little in return. All you have asked for is the confidence of your men and a great battle to fight.

“For bravery and leadership in the field at Manassas, you are hereby brevetted brigadier general and are forthwith commander of the Stonewall Brigade and the Black Horse Cavalry. A grateful nation salutes you.

“Congratulations, General Canon.”

With a mischievous twinkle in his eye, and a step slightly more jaunty than usual, Stonewall Jackson pinned his own brigadier star on the collar of a startled Canon, then walked back to his tent, leaving a new general to the roaring shouts of his men. The celebration that night was considerable, but the South’s youngest general officer had no time to dwell on it. Early next morning, Canon was given orders for the part his troops were to play in the invasion of the North.

An invasion into the North was a thing no knowledgeable officer looked forward to attempting. Better to be looked on as victims of invasion, and fight on home turf, than become the invader. Canon understood the need. He knew time was beginning to slip away for the South. Win though it did, there had never been another real chance to take Washington.

Canon heard that one crippled veteran of the Stonewall Brigade, at a fundraiser in Richmond, was asked to demonstrate the Rebel yell. The soldier replied that an authentic replication was impossible. A true Rebel yell, he said, could only be given when cold, hungry, barefoot, out of ammunition and charging up a hill in the face of enemy cannon fire.

Canon knew that Southern victories were becoming more and more pyrrhic. In more than a year of fighting, the South had not lost a battle in the Eastern Theater. But each bloody victory hurt it more than it hurt the North. In the Western Theater, in the Deep South states, Grant and Sherman were winning battles. Nashville had been under Union control since February. Raids into Mississippi were routine.

Jefferson Davis believed a serious threat to Washington might lead to an armistice and a negotiated truce. It was time to go north.

The sixth of September dawned chilly and clear as Canon led his three hundred horsemen up to the bank of a narrow ford on a shallow river. Most of the black horses were the same which Canon’s unit had brought from Alabama, but nearly fifty of the men riding them were new, brought in to replace those wounded and slain at Manassas.

The Black Horse had lost forty-seven men at Manassas, the Stonewall Brigade more than twice that number.

Canon warned the new men before leaving camp that strict silence was to be maintained throughout the morning’s reconnaissance and the first man who loosed a Rebel yell would be sent back to camp.

He nudged his knees into Old Scratch and the black stallion nimbly stepped from the low bank into the sluggish stream. Three hundred horsemen soon began to emerge on the far side, the Northern side, of the Potomac River into Maryland.

Two hours later, Canon sent back word that all was clear. By day’s end, Lee and Jackson had crossed the river with fifty-five thousand men and set up camp a couple of miles from Sharpsburg. Panic soon spread through the Northern states.

In Washington, Abraham Lincoln reluctantly turned again to George McClellan to lead the Federal army. McClellan had fallen into disfavor after Second Manassas, but wrote his wife that he was proud to resume command. She sensed a different tone in his words. McClellan was always cautious. Now he had begun to sound fearful.

Following one aborted attempt to lay siege to Richmond much earlier in the war, where Lee had mangled his army, Little Mac had not displayed any willingness to attack the Southern Army. He preferred to defend, and for once Lincoln agreed.

Under no circumstance, Lincoln told McClellan, can you let Lee get between the army and Washington. McClellan couldn’t have been happier. He could sit back, dig in, and defend the city, the Union and his honor without fear of the Southern counterattack that had greeted every Northern sally.

Robert E. Lee was happy, too. Little Mac was doing exactly what Lee and Jackson hoped, expected, gambled he would do. At the approach of McClellan’s army, Lee fell back two miles to the other side of a deep, unfordable stream called Antietam Creek.

He believed McClellan would not attack but would stay there, across the Antietam, to keep an eye on the Southern Army. And while McClellan sat there, waiting, Lee would once again split his army and play havoc with Federal posts in Maryland.

The night before Lee withdrew across the Antietam, he sent general orders to Jackson and to A. P. Hill. Jackson would take fifteen thousand men and fall on the Federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, twenty miles South, while Hill would march with ten thousand men to hold the gap at South Mountain, twenty miles North.

Jefferson Davis and his contingent were in camp for this historic invasion. Davis said little at the meetings, which was unusual. But, always willing to display his authority, he insisted on reading over the general orders for planned troop movement. Against the unspoken but evident displeasure of Lee, Davis took the document to his tent.

It was no more than two hours later that he sent it back to Lee, along with a note of approval. Davis also took a fleeting, forgotten pleasure in the fact that he chose to demean his fawning little assistant undersecretary of war by making him serve as messenger boy.

Hillary, who had kept to his tent to avoid any possibility of meeting Jackson, had committed the document to memory before he had taken fifty steps in the direction of Lee’s tent. And the aide de camp, who accepted the document from Hillary, died quickly in the coming battle. It never dawned on him to remark to anyone that he had never seen such a huge smile of pleasure on the face of the assistant undersecretary of war.

Hillary had decided to get even with Stonewall Jackson. And the instrument for his revenge now lay within his grasp. One of Hillary’s pet mischiefs was a facility for forgery. Having once seen someone’s handwriting, Hillary could within hours offer a most perfect copy.

It afforded him a wonderful avenue of revenge, or even just entertainment. Occasionally, someone who had unknowingly incurred the little flower’s displeasure would weeks later be confronted with a love letter, wielded by wife, husband or jealous lover, in his own hand. Denials were useless in front of the damning document.

It was fate, Hillary thought. Delicious, rewarding fate that he had been chosen as the president’s courier. Hillary had seen Lee’s handwriting many times and even practiced at copying it, just on the off chance it prove useful some day. In his tent, Hillary went to work. By midnight, Lee would have been hard pressed to choose his document or Hillary’s copy as the real one.

Next morning, as the army departed for the crossing at Antietam and Davis left with his entourage for Richmond, Jackson found outside his tent a box of fine Havana cigars from an anonymous donor. Jackson rarely smoked, but he kept them to hand out to his men. If he had looked inside the box, he would have likely noticed that three of the fragrant tubes of tobacco were missing. He didn’t look. He left them by the officers’ mess. And soon, by twos and threes, the cigars were gone.

Two days later, George Mitchell was lazing on a grassy knoll beside his tent, warming in the soporific fall sun. He had just finished a fine lunch of beans and salt pork. Only a couple of days ago, he had gotten new boots, a new uniform and a new Sharps rifle. And his sergeant had only this morning congratulated him on how quickly he had learned to drill.

Mitchell had mentioned to a passing friend moments earlier that if he just had a good cigar he would consider himself content with army life. Incredibly, he realized he was gazing at a rolled paper no more than five yards from his nose from which extended the butt ends of three cigars.

Almost fearful of having so specific a wish come immediately true, Mitchell crabbed on hands and knees to the paper. Sitting back down, he unrolled the paper and sure enough, three very fine looking cigars sat awaiting his pleasure.

Mitchell had placed one in his mouth, the others in his pocket, when he noticed writing on the paper. He read the document twice before it dawned on him exactly what he held in his now trembling hand. Taking the cigars from mouth and pocket, he rewrapped the package as near as he could to the way it was when found. Then he went running and shouting in search of his sergeant.

The sergeant looked at the document and went running for his lieutenant, who looked and went running for his colonel, who looked and went straight to the tent of General George McClellan.

For the Federal army now camped on the same soil from which the Confederate army had departed two days earlier. It was normal for an army to take over a prepared campsite left by another army. It was not normal for the departing army to be so kind as to leave a copy of its marching orders behind.

McClellan stared for a long moment at the fateful paper, then said to the men around him, “If I can’t take the information on this paper and whip Bobby Lee, then I’ll be ready to go back to Washington for good.”

No one ever learned exactly what happened to the cigars. Neither Mitchell nor his sergeant nor his lieutenant nor his colonel got one. But it didn’t matter. Four days later, they were dead, killed in the Battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg, which saw the bloodiest single day of the war.

“I’m beginning to hate rivers,” Canon muttered, surprising himself and the lieutenant who rode beside him as they neared the Antietam. The lieutenant looked at him but Canon could only shake his head in embarrassment. He had no idea what had originated the thought.

It was Thursday, September 15, 1862, and the Black Horse Cavalry was on the road early. Jackson and the Stonewall Brigade had departed the previous morning for Harper’s Ferry and had by now, Canon was certain, reached their destination.

Lee kept Canon and the Black Horse behind for a day. A most disturbing report had come from an itinerant actor who plied his trade at various army camps, North and South, offering soliloquies from Shakespeare in return for contributions.

The man had professed strong Southern sympathies. He said he had been in McClellan’s camp on Tuesday and had picked up rumors concerning a “lost order” which Union troops believed compromised the integrity of Lee’s war plans. Some of Lee’s advisors felt the story had the ring of truth, but Lee did not trust spies, feeling they were often bringers of incorrect information, whether by accident or design.