Prologue

December 27, 1862

Cororal Hezekiah Whately was cold, wet, and afraid, yet oddly optimistic. For days, he and his blue-uniformed comrades had been crammed into a stinking, uncomfortable space of the river steamer, an area designed for a quarter of their numbers.

The trip from Union-occupied Memphis down the foreboding Mississippi seemed to take an eternity. The scores of transports finally pulled into a large, stagnant bayou; his captain said it had the outlandish name of Chickasaw. His appointed superior officer, a beardless college boy, was excited, and communicated this to his troops. Whately, like so many of his comrades, was beginning to catch a glimmer of an end to the war here in the West. When his regiment had been herded like cattle onto the ship back in Memphis, no one but Uncle Billy Sherman, U. S. Grant himself, and possibly some of the headquarters staff had been certain of their destination. Of course, many had speculated—some had even dared to utter the name Vicksburg—but few dreamed Grant and Sherman had the nerve to try for it so soon without securing an overland line of supply.

Whately thought about Vicksburg as he and his jostling companions shuffled down planks into the frigid mud at the edge of the bayou. He had acquired some education back at the Miskatonic Academy in Massachusetts before he got that girl in a family way, refused to marry her, and had to leave for the West. He knew the significance of that small Mississippi River town, brooding on two-hundred-foot bluffs above the river. The Confederate government had crammed it with cannon. No Union vessel, not even the famed ironclads, dared come within range of its great guns. So long as Vicksburg defied the Union, the Confederacy controlled this stretch of Old Man River. Grant’s mighty army was separated from the Union forces of General Butler (which had taken much of southern Louisiana in a smart amphibious operation). The grain, meat, and hard-core fighting men of Texas could flow into the Confederacy, and the Confederacy had a better-than-fair chance of establishing its independence.

And if Vicksburg fell, it would be the beginning of the end for the Confederacy, thought Whately as he slogged through the sucking mud to relatively drier ground, peering upwards, trying to catch a glimpse of the town itself at the top of the bluffs. But with the river mist thick as pea soup, all he could see were skeletal trees dotting a gentle upward slope, disappearing into the shifting tendrils of fog, from which Whately took great solace.

Undoubtedly, the Confederates knew by now something was happening, but they could not know exactly what or where the blow would fall. They had shipped in scores of heavy cannons and their crews, but lacked infantry. Those poor souls must have believed, just as Whately had until hours ago, that Grant was not ready to thrust directly down river. Richmond did not have fighting men to spare and would not shift them to Vicksburg until the need was pressing. The mighty cannon, so deadly to ships, could not, by themselves, stop a determined infantry assault. Infantry had to be stopped by infantry. Whately knew this from experience. What Confederate infantry there was in Vicksburg should have been evenly spread along a miles-long perimeter, but there hadn’t been days for them to prepare, as there would have been if Grant had sent his ponderous army overland from Memphis.

Whately was proud of the corporal stripes his literacy, taught far from the Mississippi Valley, had gained him, although he felt he really deserved officer straps on his shoulders. He was now smugly certain he could see the simple brilliance of Grant’s plan: load twenty thousand troops under Uncle Billy onto every transport you could find, run them down the river ahead of word they were coming, and throw them straight at the unprepared Rebs. The relatively few defenders would have time for one, maybe two, volleys, and then the blue horde would overwhelm them. He knew there was a chance he could be killed in battle, but if he were out front, a colonel, or, better yet, a general, might notice him, and those officer straps could be his by nightfall.

Whately’s pulse quickened from that prospect and the effort of going up the moderate slope, as he glanced at his blue-clad companions to his left and right, frowning. The mist blurred their outlines, making them oddly unsubstantial, almost ghost-like. In an instant, wariness overcame him, and he took his Springfield musket off his shoulder, carefully checking that the percussion cap that would ignite the powder charge was firmly in place under the hammer. He now felt very lonely, even though he was surrounded by twenty thousand companions, and wished he could see more of them than his nearest neighbors.

He chided himself for a nervous fool. That’s what comes of growing up in Central Massachusetts. The stories he’d grown up with; the things he’d believed as a child. Like the whippoorwills, he thought, smiling ruefully at the memory, eyes scanning the shrouded landscape. His father had told him tales of whippoorwills that would sit outside the window of a dying person, timing their plaintive, spectral cries to the last gasps of the doomed man. His father had muttered that whippoorwills fed on souls and would try to catch them as they fled the bodies. If they caught the soul, they would titter gleefully until dawn. But if it evaded them, they would fly off immediately, silent and sullen.

Suddenly, he became conscious of something he’d half-heard for some time—the unmistakable cries of whippoorwills. He peered hard into the bare branches of the trees he was passing and noticed the familiar New England bird. As he mechanically kept marching forward, he frowned. What’s this? Whippoorwills would have long gone south. Then he laughed at his own foolishness. This is the South. A bit of the home he had left and would never see again. Strange how their cries rise and fall, almost as if …

Whately started. He could hear his own labored breathing; the slope was becoming quite a chore. Those damn birds are keeping time with my breathing! But it cannot be! My old man had just been throwing a scare into a gullible child. But what if…? I should at least let the rest of his regiment know …

Hezekiah Whately opened his mouth to shout a warning that something was up—that something was wrong. But in that instant, from the mist in front of him, the inhuman, blood-chilling scream that would become known as the ‘rebel yell’ issued simultaneously from thousands of throats, followed by a solid sheet of fire, as thousands of rifles and dozens of cannons discharged their leaden burdens simultaneously.

Then, a .58 caliber ball entered through Whately’s open mouth, blowing out the back of his head.

Major General William Tecumseh Sherman (“Cump” to the very few who counted him as a friend) sat stonily on a large black horse at the muddy shore of the bayou. He had expected some resistance, was prepared for some losses. The war had hardened him. He now thought of a thousand bleeding bodies as a small thing, something to get out of the way before breakfast. But this was starting to look like more than a thousand—a great deal more. The morning mist was beginning to clear, and he could now see up the wintry slope to the attractive little city on the bluffs … and his boys, the men of which he had become so proud. The blue lines had stopped, far short of the top of the bluffs. They wavered under the intense, continuous Confederate fire. But although they were not going forward any longer, they were not breaking and running, despite the increasing number of little blue figures falling, writhing with agony, or ominously still. Sherman ignored a flock of whippoorwills flying past him, silently and sullenly, and considered what he must do.

The assault was clearly a failure. His boys were brave, but they would not charge against impossible odds. Sherman was proud of his army being American, but that could be a drawback. American soldiers were not Prussians who would blindly follow a fatal order. Americans fought as they worked their farms or businesses, wanting to see some prospect of it making a profit.

Sherman clawed unconsciously at his scrubby, reddish beard, and then decided. “General Logan!” he shouted.

A tall, handsome brigadier with a drooping moustache rode up and saluted.

“General Logan, pass the order to withdraw. This assault has failed. More death is pure waste.”

Logan, an ambitious former Congressman who was proving to be a surprisingly able officer, saluted smartly and galloped off.

Sherman resumed evaluating the wreckage of his grand assault, destroyed in a quarter of an hour, and thought glumly about what it meant. At least it wasn’t like Bull Run.

He had been at Bull Run, the first real battle of the war, commanding a brigade under the ponderous General McDowell, confident of an easy victory over the Rebels. The war was going to be over before properly started, he was certain. Then the un­expected counterattack by the determined Confederates, a few unexpected troops materializing on the army’s flank, and, boom, it all fell to pieces. Sherman supposed that was where the rumors of his craziness began. His memories of the day were of his screaming at his troops as they began to run away, cursing them, threatening to shoot them with his Colt, and half meaning it, yelling, “Hold, you yellow bastards! Hold! The battle is ours if we hold!” But nothing could stop the blue torrent from sweeping backward, a wave of dejected, whipped soldiers washing up on the outskirts of Washington. Even Sherman had joined the wave, after finding himself alone, watching a gray line advance, thinking of the possible fate awaiting the brother of a Republican senator in Richmond.

It had shaken him more than he wanted to admit at the time. He’d been promoted and given an important command in Kentucky. But in him now was the seed of doubt. He began telling everyone that this war would last for years and hundreds of thousands would die. For that, the newspapers—Damn them to hell!—had dubbed him crazy, and his superiors had relieved him. Then a slouching failure from the pre-war army, Sam Grant, who had somehow gained two stars on his shoulders, gave him command of a new division in his army, assembling at a place called Shiloh. And at Shiloh, once again, the rebels had come at him screaming their inhuman yell.

Sherman did well with his division, in fact feeling arrogantly proud of it, but he also knew at the end of the day, the army was mauled and on the ropes. He went to the slouching little man that evening, expecting to hear orders for retreat from a beaten failure that drank too much. Instead, he saw a quiet, confident man, sober as a judge, puffing on a cigar, and heard the soft words, “They whipped us today, but we’ll lick ’em tomorrow.” Which was what happened. From that day forward, Sherman would die for Grant.

And now, drawing his thoughts to the present, focusing on his men making their way back to the transports as best they could, Sherman wished he could die. Grant’s enemies, always with him, were again whispering that he was a lucky drunkard who had no business commanding a regiment, much less an army. The brilliant thrust at Vicksburg would be presented as evidence of drunken incompetence. Sherman knew his career was at stake, too. Not even Senator John Sherman could screen forever a brother who had, with the lonely exception of Shiloh, an unbroken record of military failures. Most importantly was what this would mean for Grant. He adored the man, and he’d conducted the very operation that had let him down. He knew Grant would not reproach him, which made it all the worse.

But the plan was good! Sherman screamed in his mind, his face contorting, as he gripped his saddle horn as if to break it. There was no way it could have failed. Unless … the rebels had been warned long in advance they were coming. Soldiers talk, of course; they talk to everyone in sight. But the soldiers had not known. Only a handful of generals and staff members were informed before they got on the steamers in Memphis. And those people would have never accidentally let a word—

Sherman stilled, while his mind, always a nervous mechanism, whirled frantically. In a few moments, he had examined the possibilities and dismissed all but one. Ridiculous, but undeniable. There’s a traitor in the highest levels of Grant’s army. A traitor? Impossible! A traitor! Sherman’s wild eyes became even wilder. I must root out the traitor. But who could it be?

He couldn’t start throwing around accusations without a name to go with it. Suspicions fester in the army and sap its strength, and newspapers would start up the chant of his craziness again. He had to be sure who it was before he contacted the War Department. But the traitor would not be easy to find. He had to be among a group of people whose loyalty was considered absolute. He needed someone good, someone experienced at ferreting out secrets. “Lieutenant Brown!” he shouted in a grating voice.

From the group of staffers on horseback, waiting at a respectful distance, a slight, nervous figure detached himself and rode up to the commanding general.

Despite his building rage, Sherman had to smile at Lieutenant John Brown, whose position on his staff was loosely defined as “intelligence.” The small man always acted like he was terrified of Sherman, never dreaming the stern general rather liked him, and certainly respected him. Unlike others, Sherman never had the heart to mock Brown for the coincidence of his name being identical to that of the mad abolitionist who helped to trigger this war. After all, a man named Tecumseh cannot easily mock the name of another.

Despite his unimpressive physique, Brown had been a solidly successful detective on the Providence Police Department before the war, and he had procured the evidence that sent the abominable Professor Slaughter and his key followers to the gallows for crimes none had suspected until the nervous little man nosed around.

“Sir,” squeaked Brown in a cracked, involuntary falsetto.

“Lieutenant Brown, what do you see out there?” asked Sherman, gesturing vaguely at the men straggling to the steamers.

“Defeat, General,” muttered Brown.

Sherman nodded. This ability to instantly define a problem was why he liked Brown. “And to what do you attribute our defeat?”

“Treason,” said Brown in a low voice.

The general had to catch a gasp. “The Rebs, you mean?”

Brown paused a long moment, and then said in a whisper “In our own ranks, sir.” Sherman grimaced savagely. “Is it that obvious?”

“No,” came the apologetic voice. “Most people will not easily see it. As I assume you know, the treason must come from the highest levels, from the most trusted. It was like that with the monstrous Slaughter, a respected and honored man with a kindly manner. I was nearly fired for persecuting a public benefactor until I was able to trace what had come in on that ship from Constantinople, and that the money for the ship was Slaughter’s. No one will believe treason like this until there is incontrovertible proof.”

“Can you get the proof?”

“Perhaps—if I have your permission to pursue this inquiry everywhere in the army—with no restrictions.”

“You have complete authority,” said Sherman without blinking. “Look everywhere; spare no one’s feelings. Report only to me; tell me of anyone who impedes. I want who did this.”

“Yes, sir,” said the little man nervously. Brown saluted and cantered off, not waiting to be dismissed.

Good, he’s not wasting an instant. It might take some time. After all, Slaughter had thought himself safe for the better part of a year. But if anyone can find the bastard who caused this, the man who the papers call “The Wizard of Providence” will. And when Brown finds him …

A cavalryman originally from County Cork, Ireland, stood nearby and happened to be watching Sherman when he smiled. The Irishman, a hard trooper who’d killed his first man at fifteen, shivered and crossed himself at the sight.