Wearing, for the first time, the uniform of a full colonel of artillery, Andrew Strong walked out of Chicago’s Illinois Central terminal and headed for Lake Street. He was relieved to have put behind him the horrors of the state prison at Joliet. It was a vile place. The dank stone and clanging metal seemed to give off an ugly miasma and while he appreciated that it was necessary for some men to be confined to safeguard the rest of humanity, the conditions he had witnessed at Joliet had appalled him. Any place in which men were confined like animals could only be degrading, brutal and cruel.
A great many Southerners had been arrested and sent to Northern prisons after the capture of Memphis on June 6. The citizens of Tennessee and Mississippi made no secret of their antipathy towards the Federal Army and clashes were frequent. Grant had been ordered by Halleck – promoted by Lincoln on July 11 to command of all the Federal armies – to live off the land and especially upon the resources of citizens hostile to the government. ‘Handle rebels within our lines without gloves’, he was instructed. ‘Imprison them or expel them from their homes, and from the Federal lines’. Grant decided to turn a blind eye to these orders, but many of his subordinates did not. As a result, perhaps sixty or seventy men had been arrested and sent north in chains. As soon as he learned of the arrests, Grant sent Andrew Strong to Chicago with his personal authority to arrange for the release of the men so imprisoned.
It was going to be a quiet summer, he told Andrew. ‘Old Brains’ would have his hands full, wondering how to cope with arming and outfitting the hundred thousand volunteers Mr. Lincoln had called for, and at the same time how to come up with the major victory Lincoln and the country were demanding. ‘I want those men in Joliet freed,’ he told Andrew, the ever-present cigar in his mouth. ‘I’d wager they’re no more guilty of treasonable actions than we are. There’s plenty sitting in their homes down here much likelier to harm our cause, but that class ain’t the type to get itself arrested. And anyways, I’d as soon have a few guilty men set free as have a lot of innocent ones in prison.’
As for Chicago, it was a pleasant change from the sweltering heat of the South. A brisk breeze snapped the banners flying atop the mercantile buildings, putting a coolness into the air. But the sun was bright and warm when you had buildings between you and the blustering wind.
Andrew walked up Lake Street. The shop windows were all shaded with awnings, some with red and white stripes, others colored green, yellow, or blue. There were signs everywhere. Andrew had a technique for finding excellent restaurants in strange cities. Bookshops invariably kept guidebooks; by comparing them it was usually easy to come up with the name of a good place. He could always stay at the Tremont House of course, but he figured you didn’t get the feel of a place at all if you just checked into a hotel and ate and slept there the whole time. The streets were abustle with people and carriages: some of the horses, he noticed, were particularly fine.
The thought led naturally to his father. The last letter he had sent to Washington Farm had not been answered. It was infuriating to be unable to contact David, but Culpeper had been occupied by the Confederate Army early in August. The last news he had received from home had been in April, when David wrote him that Jed had managed to get to the farm for a brief visit while delivering dispatches. Jed was in good shape, Pa had written, and serving on the staff of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson. Things were very quiet on the farm, he said. There was no point in trying to raise a crop. If you did the damned soldiers only came along and either commandeered it or trampled it flat. They didn’t even let the corn ripen: roasted it green and to hell with the squitters that followed. He wrote that if Andrew got a chance he should drop a note to Sam in New York, just to let Sam know that he was all right. Don’t want him worrying any more than he’s got to, David wrote. I imagine he has enough on his plate trying to sell his guns to the government.
I’ll send Sam a postcard, Andrew decided. He saw a sign: Giddy & Joy, Booksellers. Felicitous name indeed, he thought, pushing open the door. A bell tinkled as he went inside, and a young man in a dark suit directed him to the guidebooks. He was immersed in his ‘research’ when a remembered voice made him turn around in delighted surprise.
‘Well, well! Colonel Strong, no less!’
It was Jessica McCabe. She was wearing a lemon-colored dress with white bows down one side of its flared skirt. A wide-brimmed straw hat shaded her face. She was carrying a lemon and white parasol which exactly matched the colors of her dress. She looked absolutely stunning and Andrew told her so.
‘My, my, sir!’ she said, making a little mock curtsy. ‘You’ll quite turn my head! Now tell me, what brings you to the metropolis of the Midwest?’
He told her about his assignment. ‘It’s a sort of promotion furlough as well,’ he said. ‘I return to Corinth in three days. We’ve got a war on down there, you know.’
‘When were you promoted?’
‘After Shiloh,’ he said, without elaborating. ‘Now tell me what you are doing here.’
‘We have a house here.’
‘We?’
‘No, no, Andrew,’ she replied, and he saw the hint of dimples. ‘Not that kind of “we”. I mean my father and I.’
‘You’re not married, or anything?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not married. Or anything.’
‘That’s good,’ he said.
‘Now,’ she said briskly, after a little silence, ‘where are you staying in Chicago?’
‘I thought the Tremont House—’
‘Oh, that dump!’ she said scornfully. ‘Come and stay with us. I’m sure my father would be delighted to see you.’
‘He’s where?’
‘Daddy made his fortune in Chicago, Andrew,’ she replied. ‘I thought everybody in the world knew that.’
‘Why should everyone in the world know it?’
‘Oh, he’s been written about in so many newspapers, the self-made millionaire, you know the kind of thing.’
‘Never read that kind of stuff,’ he said. ‘Rots the brain.’
‘You’ll have to work harder than that to tease me, Colonel.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Have you had luncheon?’ Jessica asked abruptly. ‘No. I was going to—’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘You can take me. I know a very nice place.’
‘I’d forgotten how little you stand on ceremony,’ he said.
‘Don’t be stuffy, Andrew,’ she said, taking his arm. ‘Come along.’
There was a carriage waiting outside. The driver, whose name was Henry, saluted and helped Jessica into the carriage. As they bowled along, Jessica told Andrew a little about her father. His story was a real rags-to-riches one. The oldest son of a Maryland miller, McCabe was apprenticed at fifteen to a lawyer named Philip Ziegler. After five years, young Angus won a two-hundred-dollar appointment with the Baltimore law firm of Wadsworth, Banham & Locke. He saved half his salary by volunteering to act as night watchman, sleeping on the premises instead of renting lodgings. They called him Gus; he was a quiet, serious, reliable young man. He had no social life; all he thought of was work and money. By degrees Henry Wadsworth raised his salary to fifteen hundred dollars a year, a lot of money in 1833. With it Gus speculated in land in Chicago, a thriving new town burgeoning on the shores of Lake Superior. Town lots were selling then for one hundred dollars each. Gus bought a hundred, scratching together every cent he had to do it. Three years later, when the same lots were selling for one hundred and fifty times as much, he sold his holdings and all at once he was a rich man. He became a partner in the firm on the death of old James Banham and in the same year married Jane Wadsworth, his partner’s daughter.
Angus, as he was now respectfully addressed, continued to speculate in railroad stocks and land out West, notably in Washington Territory. He was a firm believer in the policy of westward expansion and manifest destiny. In 1846 he entered politics, and in 1854 was involved in the founding of the new Republican party at Ripon, Wisconsin. Later that year he became a Congressman and in 1859, when Oregon was separated from Washington Territory and achieved statehood, Angus McCabe was elected its first senator.
‘Daddy’s a man who likes to be on the move all the time,’ Jessica said. ‘So we keep the house in Washington, this one in Chicago, another in Portland. Daddy’s here for a board meeting of the Illinois Central.’
The carriage pulled to a stop outside a white frame house with a trellised fence. Inside music was being played; it sounded like a string quartet.
‘Thank you, Henry,’ Jessica said to the driver. ‘You may pick us up at three. Please tell my father that we shall have an overnight guest, Colonel Andrew Strong.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ the driver said, touching his cap.
‘What is this place?’ Andrew asked.
‘It’s a restaurant, silly! The most expensive one in Chicago. They even have a French chef. And you’re buying, don’t forget!’
‘I hope it’s not too expensive,’ Andrew said. ‘We haven’t all got millionaire fathers.’
‘Oh, I’ve heard about you Strongs,’ said Jessica with an airy wave of the hand. ‘Absolutely rolling in it, they say.’
The entrance to the restaurant was a discreet door with a brass knocker and a small brass plate upon which was engraved one word: Lucullus. It was light and airy inside. They were conducted to a table near an open French window looking out upon a lawn, where four musicians were playing a bacarolle. A waiter handed them menus and withdrew. Andrew looked around: there were perhaps twenty tables, no more. The conversation was muted, discreet.
‘Quite a rendezvous,’ he observed.
‘I like it.’
‘You come here often, then?’
‘Oh, drat!’ she said with a mock gesture of annoyance. ‘You’ve caught me out!’ Then she grinned like an urchin. ‘Don’t expect the prim Victorian miss from me, Andrew. I go where I please and I do what I want. You’ll just have to get used to it!’
‘I’m sorry,’ he smiled. ‘I’d forgotten just how … determined you can be.’
She was silent for a long while. He wondered if she was remembering telling him that she was going to forget him, no matter what. Or perhaps the time he had taken her in his arms and kissed her. He looked into her fine eyes. She did not pretend pretty confusion but looked back at him boldly.
‘ Jess,’ Andrew said softly. ‘It hasn’t changed, has it?’
‘It … seems not,’ she said very quietly.
Andrew reached across the table and touched the back of her hand with his fingers. She turned her hand around and took his and kissed it. Andrew felt a sudden rush of desire for her that took him completely by surprise. His ears closed, his throat constricted. He could see nothing except her face, her eyes, her lips.
Jessica’s smile turned suddenly conspiratorial and wicked.
‘I’m flattered that you feel the way you do, Andrew,’ she whispered. ‘But do try not to leap across the table, won’t you?’
He burst out laughing. No other response was possible. His laughter infected her and she started to laugh as well. Heads turned to stare at them but they could not stop. The head waiter came across to their table, his expression one of delicate pain.
‘Madam, sir, if you please,’ he murmured. Andrew managed to nod, and slowly mastered the urge to burst out laughing all over again. He felt drunk with the sheer headiness of the moment.
‘Jessica McCabe,’ he said. ‘You are a woman in a million, and you are about to eat the best damned lunch you have ever had in your life!’ He turned and waved to the waiter, who hurried over to their table again, as if he feared that by delaying he might precipitate another outburst of laughter.
‘We would like some champagne,’ Andrew told him. ‘The Bollinger, I think.’
‘No, the Krug,’ Jessica said. Andrew turned to look at her. She regarded him sweetly, almost challengingly. He felt a little fizz of annoyance.
‘Why?’ She saw the flicker of anger in his eyes and a feline smile of satisfaction touched her perfect lips.
‘Because it’s better,’ she answered, as if the veriest fool in the world knew that. Andrew looked at the waiter. The waiter looked at Andrew expectantly.
‘Well, man,’ Andrew said. ‘Don’t just stand there. Bring us the Krug!’
‘Yes, sir,’ the waiter said, vastly relieved. ‘Would you like the ’54 or the ’58?’
‘The ’54,’ Jessica replied. The waiter looked at Andrew and made one of those ‘what-can-a-man-do?’ faces, then hurried away.
‘He’s telling them in the kitchen that there’s a poor ox of a soldier out here who’s caught a tiger by the tail,’ Andrew said.
‘He’s entirely correct,’ she said.
They had a wonderful lunch. They ate sliver-thin slices of smoked salmon, lobster and fresh strawberries. And they talked. Andrew was not surprised; neither was Jessica. There was something almost preordained about it. They agreed on nearly everything, and could argue without anger over those things on which they did not. He knew instinctively that there would be no subject that Jessica McCabe would declare taboo and consequently he was bolder than he had ever expected to be with a woman. She did nothing at all to discourage him. It was as if each of them knew: it would always be like this.
‘What will you do when the war is over?’ she asked him.
‘I haven’t given it a lot of thought,’ he said. ‘Somehow just getting through it seems as far as the mind will go.’
‘You were an engineer.’
‘Yes, but I don’t want to do that anymore.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Something … for other people,’ he said. ‘To try to make the world a better place. Does that sound pompous?’
‘A little,’ she replied with a gentle smile. ‘But honest.’
‘There is so much death, so much misery,’ Andrew went on. ‘It will be worse when the war is over. All those kids who’ve lost arms, legs. Men who will be sick for the rest of their lives because of what happened to them on the battlefields. Someone will have to do something for them.’
‘And you want to be that someone?’
‘I don’t honestly know,’ he said. ‘This is the first time I’ve ever even put my thoughts into words.’
‘There is only one way you could do what you want to do,’ Jessica said. ‘Politics.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not me. I’d never make a politician.’
‘Why not?’
‘They’re all liars,’ he said. ‘Or frauds.’
‘I’ll tell Daddy,’ she said, with a touch of malice in her voice. ‘He will be flattered!’
‘Oh, Jess, you know what I mean. There are exceptions, of course. Mr. Lincoln is the perfect example. But most of them … most of them have to settle for less than they aimed for, to compromise, to trade off.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what politics is all about.’
‘My father says the only thing you can be sure of with a politician is that he will lie to you.’
‘If you want to change that,’ Jessica countered, ‘get into the arena yourself.’
She told the driver to take a circuitous route so that Andrew could see the lakefront. It was hard to think of such a vast expanse of water as a lake: it looked like the sea itself. The sun picked dancing diamonds off the top of waves cut by the prows of a dozen passing ships. The fine houses along the lakefront faced a maze of temporary wharves with a board sidewalk and a dirt beach beyond which lay the trestled tracks of the Illinois Central, its depot, and the immense ugly Sturges & Buckingham grain elevators. As far as the eye could see, ships dotted the glittering water.
The McCabe house was as imposing as Andrew had expected it to be, a big house with turrets like a French chateau, set well back from the avenue and approached by a semi-circular driveway. There was a large open space opposite. Jessica said that there were plans to turn it into a public park.
A butler showed Andrew to his room. The furniture was solid and old, the bed soft and inviting. Jessica told him that her father would join them for dinner; he had been delayed in town.
‘Tell me about your mother,’ he said. ‘When did she die?’
‘Five years ago.’
‘Your father has never considered remarriage?’
‘I think he was so relieved to be free, it was all he could do to pretend grief at her funeral,’ Jessica said.
Startled by her frankness, Andrew said nothing for a moment. Jessica looked at him and smiled, then shook her head.
‘You’ll just have to get used to me, Andrew.’
‘I’ll try,’ he said. ‘But it’ll take some doing.’
‘That’s all right,’ she said, her face quite serious. ‘There’ll be time.’
She took his hand and led him into the sitting room. There was a portrait above the huge fireplace of a woman in a ball gown. She was tall and slender, with an imperious Roman nose and small disdainful eyes. ‘Your mother?’ he asked.
‘Yes. She was such an unhappy woman.’
‘She looks as if she might have been,’ he said. ‘Yet your father …’ He let the sentence taper off.
‘What made an interesting man like my father marry a dull provincial little snob like Mama?’ she said. ‘You’re not the first one to wonder about that, Andrew.’
‘Tell me, then.’
‘She was very pretty when she was a girl,’ Jessica explained. ‘And Daddy knew nothing about women. He was thirty years old when he took Mama out for the first time. He didn’t know what else to do, except marry her. It was almost inevitable.’
‘Like you and I?’ Andrew asked teasingly.
‘No, not like you and I at all,’ Jessica said. ‘They had no sooner got married than Daddy made all that money selling his land here in Chicago. She was bewildered. She probably thought that they would have a nice, safe, dull, ordinary life, a little house, children. He would go to the office every day. She would cook and sew and invite friends around for tea on Sundays. Instead of which she found she was married to a ruthless, restless man who was determined to get to the top – and did. And she just didn’t know how to handle it.’
‘He didn’t love her?’
‘It depends what you mean by love,’ Jessica replied. ‘I’m not sure men like Daddy can ever love in the conventional sense. He was fond of her, kind to her. He indulged her. She was absolutely no use to him at all intellectually. She was as pretentious as a cockatoo. She tried very hard to be clever and bright but she was hopeless at it.’
‘I think that’s a very sad story,’ he said.
‘Yes. Mama was a very sad lady. She had everything in the world except the one thing she wanted. And she hadn’t the remotest idea how to get that. She never learned it.’
Not all stories have happy endings, Andrew thought, as he put on clean linen before going down to dinner. It gave him a different perspective on Senator Angus McCabe, an understanding of that ruthless driving force he might otherwise have found off-putting.
Dinner was simple and informal. There was a good rack of lamb, plenty of fresh vegetables, roast potatoes, a cabinet pudding to follow. When the maid had cleared away the dishes McCabe brought a port decanter to the table with three fine crystal glasses.
‘Well, Andrew,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk. I’ve been watching you and Jess.’
‘Oh, Daddy!’ Jessica laughed. ‘You’re not going to ask Andrew what his intentions are, are you?’
‘You know damned well that I am not, Miss!’ Angus McCabe said fiercely. ‘But there are one or two things I want to say to this young man, if he plans to get involved with you!’
‘Well, sir,’ Andrew said. ‘I think you could take it that I plan to do just that.’
‘Really?’ said Jessica, imps of devilment in her eyes.
‘Very well,’ McCabe said. ‘Then listen to me, young feller-me-lad! You’d best know what you’re getting into. As you see by the fact that she’s sitting here with us, breathing our cigar smoke and drinking the same port we’re drinking, I’ve brought my daughter up a bit differently to what is considered the ideal for a young woman. I’ve taught her to have a healthy disrespect for humbug. I’ve shown her that the only sensible way for a human being to live is to take life head-on and grab everything it offers. We may of course get a second chance, just as the Bible-bangers would have us believe. That, I contend, would be a bonus, and in the meantime, the best plan is to use this life as if it were the only one we’re going to get!’
‘And you may have noticed that I do just that,’ Jessica said.
‘Yes,’ Andrew grinned. ‘I noticed.’
‘I think you also ought to know that Jess has a temper that makes mine look like a child’s tantrum and an edge on her tongue – if you get on her wrong side – that would flay skin off an elephant. She’s opinionated, she’s stubborn and she’s intelligent. Those are qualities a lot of men find off-putting in a woman.’
‘Would you rather I left the room, Daddy?’ Jessica said. ‘I wouldn’t want to inhibit you.’
‘She’s a good-looking girl,’ McCabe went on, unperturbed by Jessica’s sly shaft. ‘And she knows it. She can use her … charms to get her own way, and does.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Andrew said, vastly amused by all this. ‘I’d noticed that, too.’
‘It doesn’t bother you?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Andrew said. ‘Let’s say it doesn’t bother me enough to matter.’
‘By God, she’s right!’ McCabe said. ‘You are an honest man!’ He filled Andrew’s glass and raised his eyebrows at Jessica. She shook her head.
‘I’ll leave you two … gentlemen alone for a little while,’ she said. ‘I’m going to change into something more comfortable.’
‘She’s quite a girl,’ McCabe said, as the door closed behind Jessica. ‘Bull-headed as her father and, if anything, smarter. You know about Hardisty, I take it?’
‘Only the barest details,’ Andrew said.
‘Ach, it was a schoolgirl infatuation!’ McCabe said. ‘They were children. Grew up together – the family lives just up the avenue here. I blame myself for not seeing what was going on.’
‘They planned to marry.’
‘I’ll tell you the truth, boy. I never expected to see it happen. It was like one of those medieval romances, the “Song of Roland”. Pure and mystical. I don’t think he ever did more than kiss her. He went off to war. Like one of the Knights of the Round Table, off to joust with dragons. They were in love with love, both of them. Not with each other.’ He took another cigar from the box and pushed it across towards Andrew. Andrew shook his head. McCabe cut his cigar carefully and lit it, squinting through the wreathing smoke at Andrew.
‘Yes, Senator,’ Andrew said, sensing the implicit question. ‘I was engaged. She was killed during the battle of Manassas.’
‘She was a nurse?’
‘No, sir.’ Andrew told him about the Black Horse Panic and the way that Ruth Chalfont and her mother had died.’ We met when I came back from serving in the northwest. I was fresh out of the army. I resigned my commission and went into civil engineering.’
‘Why did you quit the army?’
‘It sounds stupid when I say it now,’ Andrew said. ‘With this war going on. But I could not take the senseless slaughter. It appalled me, disgusted me. We killed people and destroyed their way of life simply because they opposed our taking their lands.’
‘It’s manifest destiny, lad!’ McCabe said. ‘The future of this nation lies in the West. We can’t keep this giant fettered, kept back from what is its natural destiny because of a few heathen savages!’
‘You may be right, sir,’ Andrew said. ‘Maybe that is this country’s destiny. I think it repugnant that we should use such means to realize it.’
‘Well said, well said,’ McCabe agreed. ‘You’ll not find it a popular viewpoint, I fear. But I see you believe it.’
‘Yes, sir, I do,’ Andrew said. ‘You praised me a few minutes ago for being honest. You wouldn’t want me to lie now.’
‘If you should ever get into politics, Andrew,’ McCabe said reflectively, ‘you may find there are times when it is necessary … not to tell the truth. I do not mean to advocate that any man should lie, though I know that many do it as readily as drawing breath. But there are times, lad, when the blunt truth is not what people want to hear. At such moments, wisdom lies in saying nothing.’
‘I’m sorry, Senator,’ Andrew said. ‘I fear we’ll have to agree to disagree.’
‘For now,’ McCabe said. ‘Maybe you’ll alter your point of view one day. And remember me when you do. Tell me about this Ruth you were engaged to.’
Andrew explained how Ruth was the daughter of Quakers, themselves from Quaker stock. Jacob and Eleanor Chalfont had come to America in the late 1840s from England, a little hamlet whose churchyard contained the bones of William Penn. They had only the one child, Ruth.
‘She was just a little thing,’ Andrew went on, his voice soft with fond remembrance. ‘Her hair was blonde, almost white, and soft as gossamer. Blue, blue eyes. She was bright, too, went to college. They set a lot of store by education, Quakers. Ruth had trained as a nurse. We just … liked each other, right from the start. It all seemed so natural, me working for Jacob, becoming a partner. It seemed natural that we’d get engaged, although there were plenty of others who came calling.’
‘And you were in love with her?’
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ Andrew said. He could say it now, without feeling any grief. She had been beautiful, quick, ashine. He had been like some great clumsy bear, paying court to a hummingbird, but he had loved her. And now she was gone and there was only the faintest touch of regret inside his heart for what had been.
McCabe nodded, as if what Andrew had said confirmed what he had been thinking. They sat in silence for a while, the only sound in the room the shifting of the coals in the fireplace. The door opened and Jessica came back in. She was wearing a Japanese kimono embroidered with dragons in greens and golds that set off her eyes and her rich, auburn hair.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Have you two run out of things to talk about?’
‘No,’ her father said. ‘We just kind of ran out of the need to say any of them.’
‘Oh, Daddy!’ Jessica said, kissing the top of her father’s head. ‘Somehow you always manage to say just the right thing.’
‘Sometimes I get it righter than others,’ McCabe said with a smile. He got heavily to his feet and stuck out his hand. ‘I’m turning in,’ he said. ‘Andrew, I’ve enjoyed talking to you. I hope you’ll consider my home as your own while you’re here.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Andrew said. ‘And not just for that.’
‘He’s all right,’ McCabe said to his daughter. ‘I think he’ll do.’
‘So do I,’ Jessica smiled, and the dimples showed as she kissed her father good night.
‘He’s an interesting man,’ Andrew said, when McCabe was gone.
‘He’s a darling,’ Jessica said. ‘Come, let’s sit in the parlor. Would you like a cognac?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Good! I’ll join you.’ Jessica brought the golden liqueur in two goblets and they sat on a leather chesterfield in the fire lit parlor.
‘He told me he didn’t even start learning to learn until he was thirty,’ Jessica said, in answer to Andrew’s question about her father. ‘He told me that one day he woke up and looked at himself in the mirror, and realized that he was a nobody. He remembers it so clearly, even now. He stood in front of the mirror and vowed he was going to be a lot more than that. He put every cent he had into one, big gamble. And it paid off. He made a million and a half dollars.’
‘He could have lost everything.’
‘Yes, but that wouldn’t have stopped him. He’d’ve done something else. He’s lost that much half a dozen times since those days.’ She frowned. ‘I’m talking too much.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I want to hear it. All of it.’
‘Some other time,’ she said. Her voice was drowsy and soft. ‘Not now.’ She turned to face Andrew and something in her eyes told him what he wanted to know. He took her in his arms and Jessica chuckled.
‘Why are you laughing?’ he whispered, his lips brushing hers.
‘Because you thought you had to ask,’ she said, locking her hands behind his neck and bringing her lithe young body hard against his.
Much, much later, they tiptoed up the stairs and kissed again on the shadowed landing.
‘Another place, another time,’ he whispered. ‘Is this it, Jess?’
‘Don’t hurry me, Andrew,’ she whispered back, ‘if it is to be, it will be.’
He kissed her again and went into his room to undress. His head felt full of cotton wool: I ought to feel bad about feeling this good, he thought. He fell asleep smiling, his last thought to wonder what was happening at headquarters.
And then the dream began again
and in the dream it was as if he was in a balloon, soaring high above the ground. He could see the whole battlefield below, laid out like a diorama: the Federal gunboats on the Tennessee, the woods and ravines of the plateau above the Landing, the long lines of advancing men, bayonets like steel thickets. He saw men dying in ghastly heaps in the open field by the peach orchard, or crawling like mangled insects to the pond beside the River Road, turning its waters pink and then red with their blood. And more dying and hundreds more, all in the April sun, as Braxton Bragg threw wave after Confederate wave against the entrenched Federal troops in what they called the Hornet’s Nest, twelve unbelievably brave attacks across open fields, every one of them doomed, nothing but slaughter from nine-thirty in the morning until after four. He saw General Albert Sidney Johnston clearly, sword high, rallying an attack against Hurlbut’s position, saw him wave a hand to indicate that the wound in his leg, which was to kill him, was not serious. He saw terrified men running to rear, insane with fear, stinking with their own wastes. He saw men being scythed down between the mud-blood-slick walls of Hell’s Hollow. He could hear every bullet, every shell.
and in the dream, General Grant was scowling at him he could not understand why he was angry.
‘Thousands dead, thousands!’ Grant snarled. ‘And every one of them your fault! Look at them, man! Look at them!’ He threw out his hand in a gesture of despairing sorrow and Andrew turned to see a field. All across the field, as far as the eye could see, lay bodies: broken, mangled, smashed, ruined bodies, a slaughterhouse of human flesh over which hung the strange, flat, metallic stink of death. The field was big: an acre, maybe one and a half. You could have walked across it in any direction, stepping on dead bodies the whole time, without a foot ever touching the ground.
‘It’s not my fault,’ Andrew protested. ‘How can you say that?’
‘Not your fault?’ Grant shouted. ‘Aren’t you the man who insisted on lining that bluff with artillery? Aren’t you the advocate of attrition? Wasn’t it you who told me that if we kill more of them than they do of us, we’ll win every time?’
‘Yes,’ Andrew said. ‘But—’
‘No buts!’ Grant snapped. ‘Get out there and line up all those bodies in rows for the burial details!’
and in the dream Andrew went out to the field and took hold of an arm, one of the Confederate dead. The body was as heavy as lead. The head lolled back, mouth gaping, eyes sightless.
‘Jed?’ Andrew said. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, Jed!’
I’ve got to get him out of here, he thought. Got to get him to a doctor. Maybe he’s not dead. Maybe he’s just unconscious. He pulled harder on his brother’s arm and it came away from the shoulder with a horrid, sucking sound, leaving a great dark bloody hole full of slimy, seething maggots and he screamed in the dream out of it and …
He woke up, shouting wordlessly, to find Jessica holding him in her arms, pressing a soft, cool cloth against his forehead. Her skin was soft and warm and he smelled the remembered perfumes of her body. He was wet with perspiration, empty with relief.
‘It’s all right,’ she murmured. ‘It’s all right, you’re safe, it’s over.’
Andrew took a deep, deep breath and then let it out in a long sigh. He saw that Senator McCabe was standing in the doorway, a lamp held high. His white hair shone like a halo.
‘You were having a nightmare, lad,’ he said. ‘And a bad one, by the sound of it.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Andrew said. ‘Sorry to have disturbed you.’
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ McCabe said. ‘You want a drink?’
‘No, thank you, sir,’ Andrew replied. ‘It’s happened before. I’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll away to my bed, then,’ McCabe said. ‘Jess?’
‘In a while, Daddy,’ she said, without taking her eyes away from Andrew’s. McCabe nodded and put down the lamp on the washstand. He went out of the room without another word. Moments later they heard the sound of his bedroom door closing.
‘Tell me about it,’ Jessica said.
‘It’s just a dream. ‘
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘I’ve had it ever since Shiloh,’ he said. ‘Do you remember it? Pittsburgh Landing?’
‘I remember it,’ Jessica said. ‘It was a pretty place. The peach trees were all in blossom. And there was a calliope playing.’
‘It wasn’t pretty for long.’
The battle had started soon after dawn. Forty thousand Confederate troops attacking along a front of three miles. Most of the Federal soldiers were still asleep when the attack started, he told her.
‘I was with Grant at Savannah. Downriver. We were having breakfast when we heard the cannon. We rushed up to the Landing, and got there just as Prentiss’ line broke. McLernand’s men – they had fought at Donelson, they were veterans by comparison with most of the troops there – steadied the line at the Purdy Road. But most of our lads were green kids. Half of them didn’t even know how to load their rifles.’
Hurlbut took the left flank, defending a peach orchard. Prentiss and W.H.L. Wallace took positions on his right in a sunken farm lane sheltered by a crest which was crowned with dense brush. It could only be approached across open fields. This was the place the soldiers later called the Hornet’s Nest. Between the two flanks lay a scummy pond, fringed by brush and trees.
Against this line, the Confederate general, Albert Sidney Johnston, hurled his men, from nine in the morning until nearly five in the afternoon. Long before nightfall brought the first day’s battle to a close, the giant Johnston was dead and the hundreds of wounded and dying men who had crawled to the scummy pond had turned it red with their blood. Bloody Pond, they named it afterwards.
‘We didn’t know Johnston was dead, then, of course,’ Andrew continued. ‘We only knew that we had been rolled back to the river, and that we were as damned nearly defeated as made no odds. Prentiss had been flanked and surrendered with over two thousand men. Wallace was mortally wounded in a place they called Hell’s Hollow. Our people fell back behind the line of artillery that I had set up the preceding day on the bluffs. The day you left.’
‘I remember,’ Jessica said. She shivered slightly but he did not notice. He was back on that bloody battlefield, seeing the dreadful sights and hearing the awful sounds.
During the night, he said, it rained in torrents. Grant and his staff huddled miserably beneath a tree. There were no fires. The river purled past the drenched bluffs, beneath which, shivering with cold and terror, crouched four thousand men who had fled the battle. At around midnight the rain grew so intense that Grant elected to shelter in the log house which stood near the Landing, below the bluffs. But when they reached the house they found it had been commandeered as a hospital. A constant stream of bearers brought screaming, mangled wounded to be lifted unceremoniously on to the blood-slick operating tables. There was not enough of anything: not enough surgeons, not enough orderlies, not enough bandages, not enough morphia. The scene was as bad as the bowels of Hell itself. The torn, bloody bodies lay everywhere, the living screaming and weeping and the dead. Piles of amputated limbs, gouts of flesh, puddles of blood which the rain turned to red mud gave off a horrible stench. The suffering was unendurable. After an hour they all gladly chose to go out again into the driving rain.
‘The following morning, we counter-attacked,’ Andrew said. ‘Buell had come up in the night, with nearly twenty thousand men and Lew Wallace with another five. We needed every one of them. General Grant told me that our casualties on the first day had been estimated at around seven thousand. What we didn’t know was that we had Beauregard outnumbered by two to one.’
By mid-afternoon of that second day it was all over. The Confederate Army was in full flight back to Corinth. Grant had won the day, but the cost was stunning.
‘We had nearly two thousand men dead and over eight thousand wounded,’ Andrew said. ‘The other people about the same. The nurses tore up their clothes to make dressings, everything they had on. In the end they were using leaves and grass to dress wounds; there was nothing else. Nine-tenths of our wounded were still lying on the field on Tuesday, some of them untouched since early Sunday morning.’
‘And that was what you were dreaming about?’
‘There was one field,’ he told her. ‘Below the Hornet’s Nest. It was carpeted with Confederate soldiers, dead, dying, wounded, two and three deep.’
‘My God,’ Jessica whispered. Her hair hung down like folded wings around her lovely face. The lamplight was dim. He could not see her eyes at all, so did not know that she was silently weeping.
‘In the dream … it’s ... all my fault. General Grant was shouting at me that it was all my fault, that all those dead men were lying there because of me. And I went out there and … and … and one of them was my brother. One of them was Jed, and it was my fault he was dead.’
‘But you know that it was not so. You won promotion on that field. You were not to blame for the men who died there.’
‘I know,’ Andrew sighed. ‘I know it’s just a dream. But I can’t stop it, Jess. I keep thinking, what if Jed is lying dead in some field, somewhere, and we never find him and—’
‘Hush, now,’ she said softly. She got up off the bed and went across to the washstand. She blew out the light. He heard the soft, sibilant whisper of silk.
‘Are you going now?’ he said.
‘No,’ she replied, turning back the bedclothes. ‘No, I’m not going.’ She was naked. Her skin was hot against his.
‘But … your father—’
‘Hush,’ she said again. ‘We’ve done enough talking.’