‘Well, Colonel! How’s the arm?’
Jed failed to realize for a moment that the words were addressed to him. He was still not accustomed to the brevet rank of lieutenant-colonel which Jackson had bestowed on him for his action in holding the line at Slaughter’s Mountain. He looked up to find Bill Stevenson riding alongside him, smiling.
‘You look a bit bedraggled, William,’ Jed observed.
‘Blasted weather!’ Stevenson snorted. ‘Choking with dust one minute, drowning in mud the next.’ He pulled a battered cheroot out of his uniform pocket and lit it. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘What can I tell you?’ Jed said. ‘Doctor Maguire says I’ve got to keep it in a sling for a while. It’s healing nicely.’
The bullet had gone clean through the fleshy part of his upper arm, tearing the muscle and leaving a ragged exit hole. Dr Hunter Maguire, Jackson’s personal physician, had tended the wound and done a fine job of it. ‘Bother you much?’
‘Hurts like Hell,’ Jed confessed.
‘They give you morphia?’
‘At night,’ Jed said. ‘Seems to hurt worse at night.’
‘Be careful of that damned stuff, Jed.’
‘I can handle it. What’s happening?’
‘ Jackson’s eager for a fight.’
‘I don’t doubt Johnny Pope will oblige him.’
‘Could be,’ said Bill. ‘He’s calling all the regimental commanders in for a conference.’ He winked and touched his spurs to the horse’s flanks, lifting the animal into a canter. Tally-ho! again, Jed thought. Old Jack’s on the move. It was no surprise. There had been something in the air ever since General Lee arrived in Gordonsville.
The Army of Northern Virginia had pulled back south after the fight at Slaughter’s Mountain. Jackson had been on fire to keep going north, to take Culpeper and maybe split Pope’s force in half, but a test of strength a few miles up the road revealed that the Federals were well-entrenched and ready to fight. Not knowing how they were off for reinforcements, Jackson decided not to risk it, and withdrew to Gordonsville. General Lee arrived on August 15, and Jed was one of the honor guard which accompanied Jackson to meet his train.
He could hardly credit the change in the man. Lee looked much, much older and very, very tired. His cheeks were still ruddy but the hair and beard were now almost snow-white and there were shadows beneath the fine, dark eyes. He wore an old gray coat and a wide-brimmed gray hat, without any kind of insignia. He moved slowly, as though he were afraid of violent exertion.
Jackson welcomed him warmly. There was obviously a strong bond of affection between the two. Like father and son, Jed thought, watching them. Undemonstrative, maybe; but you could feel the glow. The Spanish would say they were simpatico.
‘Gentlemen,’ Lee said, acknowledging their salutes. His eyes brightened when they fell on Jed. ‘Well,’ he smiled. ‘Colonel. That’s something. Colonel Strong. I’m glad to see you well, Jedediah.’
‘And I you, General,’ Jed said. Two soldiers were leading Lee’s horse, Traveller, down the loading ramp from a stock wagon. Lee climbed up stiffly and they headed out of the depot. A soldier raised his hat and cheered. Wide-eyed boys ran across the street to see their idol, their leader, ride slowly by. Lee nodded once or twice to let them know he’d seen their shy smiles, their waves, their salutes. He looked as if he felt uncomfortable being the center of such attention.
Well, he and Jackson had obviously come up with something, Jed thought, as he made his way to headquarters to hear the general’s instructions. Jed figured they would want to attack Pope again, before the reinforcements which they now knew were on their way from Washington, reached the Federal Army at Culpeper.
‘Gentlemen,’ Lee announced to the assembled officers. ‘The army will move with a view to turning Pope’s left, crossing the Rapidan behind the cover of Clark’s Mountain. General Stuart’s cavalry will precede us. You will cross the Rappahannock at Somerville’s, general, and proceed to Rappahannock Station. If you can destroy the bridge, we shall have Pope’s line of retreat cut.’
‘Very good, sir,’ Stuart said.
‘The rest of the army will cross the river and attack on Pope’s left. The assault is planned for the eighteenth. You will prepare your brigades accordingly, if you please.’ After the meeting was over, Jackson summoned Jed to his tent. His eyes were brooding, his face serious. He tapped Jed’s arm gently with a stubby forefinger.
‘The arm?’ he said.
‘Mending, General.’
‘No trouble riding?’
‘None that I can’t handle, sir.’
Jackson smiled. ‘All the same, I don’t think you’re quite ready for the front line just yet,’ he said. ‘So I want you to take a squadron and sweep out to the west of Culpeper, along Crooked Run, and come around upon the town from the west, down the Sperryville Pike.’
Jed looked at his commander. There was no expression on his face. ‘You doing this on purpose, General?’ he asked. He wasn’t sure: but could it possibly be that beneath that great bush of a beard, the dour Jackson’s lips were twitching?
‘Doing what, sir?’ Jackson asked, too innocently. He looked almost embarrassed when Jed took his hand and shook it warmly. ‘Now, now, no need for a demonstration!’
‘Thank you, anyway, General!’ Jed smiled. ‘I appreciate it!’
What Jackson was doing by sending him on this ‘scout’ was to give him the opportunity of being the first Confederate soldier to reach Washington Farm. He was little short of amazed that, with the thousands of things Jackson had to remember, he could still hold in his mind the fact that one of his junior staff officers had a father living near Culpeper.
‘Go find your people,’ Jackson said. ‘I wish to Heaven I could do the same!’ There was a light in his eye and Jed knew he was thinking of his wife, Anna. ‘Go on, lad! Get out of here!’
On the afternoon of August 18, Jed led his squadron out of camp, two companies of cavalry at about half strength, seventy-five men in all. The Army of Northern Virginia was on the move all around them, a vast, shambling horde of men, animals and wagons, ambulances, baggage carts, fieldpieces, cannon. The earth seemed to tremble as they passed over it.
The squadron reached Washington Farm on the morning of the twentieth, having had only one brief skirmish with Federal scouts, a few hastily fired shots that did no damage to either side. Here and there they saw knots of Federal stragglers, who ran for cover in the woods when they saw the approaching cavalry. They were no threat: Jed ignored them. The column splashed through Devil’s Run and up on to the road, turning east. In a few more minutes they came to the gate of Washington Farm. Jed posted half the squadron along the pike and led the rest down the hill towards the house, hidden behind the old trees below. It was not until they came around the bend in the driveway before the house that Jed realized it was gutted, looted, empty. He pulled his horse to a sliding stop in the churned mixture of mud and gravel which the drive had become, and jumped down.
‘Captain Foster, kindly send squads to check whether there is anyone in the outbuildings,’ Jed said to young Foster, and left him rapping out orders to the sergeants as Jed ran to the house. The doors hung brokenly ajar. The windows were all smashed, the wooden frames blackened by smoke, splintered.
He walked inside. Broken glass crunched beneath his feet. Doorways yawned like toothless mouths: the doors had been torn off their hinges. There was still an acrid smell of burned wood. An attempt had obviously been made to fire the house, but it had been unsuccessful.
He went into the library. Most of the books were gone. A few, battered and torn, lay waterlogged on the floor. Everything that could be taken had gone. Someone had smashed the grand piano into kindling; what was left of the lovely walnut case lay with the tangled iron frame, upside down in a corner. The carpets had all been ripped up and the fine mantelpiece, for which Jedediah Morrison Strong had once paid a thousand dollars, had been torn away from the wall. The portrait of Grandfather Davy Strong hung drunkenly askew, slashed crisscross by bayonets. The moldings on the wall had been broken off by knives or the butts of rifles. There were smears of tobacco juice and filthy graffiti on the walls.
‘Jesus,’ Jed said softly, stunned by the sheer, senseless brutality of the damage. He did not bother to go into any of the other rooms: he knew they would all be the same. He went through the doorless aperture where the French windows had been into the rear yard. It was littered with smashed china, glass, the remnants of a crystal chandelier, the embroidered seats of wooden chairs. Feathers lifted and fell in the fitful breeze: the soldiers had even slashed the mattresses open and emptied them.
Jed made his way down to the old servants’ quarters. He could see squads of his men checking out the barns and stables. There was no sign of life anywhere. The big old oak, under which Jed and his father had sat during his last visit to the farm, had been crudely girdled. Somehow, this wanton act angered Jed more than all the other destruction he had seen. What kind of men killed trees, for Christ’s sake?
He went across to the cottage in which his father had been living and pushed open the door. Everything was in chaos: the remnants of a bed smashed to kindling, its mattress torn open, pans and pots crushed flat, filthy words written on the white walls. He pulled the door closed. As he did, he thought he heard a movement. He turned very fast, lifting the huge pistol from its holster and cocking it.
‘All right!’ he snapped. ‘Come on out of there!’
Nothing moved.
‘I’m going to count to three,’ he said. ‘Then I’m going to set this place on fire! One! Two! —’
‘Oh, oh, oh, Jesus, Mahse Jed! Dat you, Mahse Jed? Dat you?’
It was Aunt Betty. She had been hiding behind the big copper washtub in the kitchen. She stumbled through the piles of wrecked furniture towards Jed, sobbing.
‘Oh, Mahse Jed! Thank God you’s come home! Thank God you’s come!’
She ran into his arms and buried her face in his coat, sobbing with relief and fear. It was a shock to see her so old and drawn and thin. He put his arms around her and rocked her gently until her sobbing began to subside. There was no point in trying to ask her anything while she was so distressed. After a while she snuffled and then pulled herself away from his supporting arms and wiped her eyes on her pinafore.
‘Mahse Jed, Mahse Jed,’ she wailed. ‘Dey killed my Moses, Mahse Jed! Dem soldiers killed my Moses!’ She started sobbing again, her shoulders heaving.
‘Why did they kill him, Aunt Betty?’ Jed asked softly.
‘He try to stop them wreckin’ de house, stealin’ all yo’ Daddy’s things,’ Aunt Betty said, the tears coming now without sobs, as though without her volition. ‘Dey just shot him an’ th’owed him into de yahd lak a dead dawg! I done buried him up dere on the hill ’longside de fam’ly, Mahse Jed. I didn’ think they’d mind.’
‘That was the right thing to do,’ Jed assured her. ‘But where was my father? Why didn’t he?’
‘Dey tooken him away, Mahse Jed,’ she explained, eyes wide as if she feared he would be angry with her for telling him bad news. ‘Dey put him in de lockup. Dey say he done somethin’ bad an’ dey goan try him at de co’thouse.’
‘Try him? What for?’
‘He gotten in some fight, Mahse Holmes say. I don’t know prezackly what. It happen in de tavern.’
‘Pa was in a fight?’ Jed said, not believing his ears. ‘In the tavern?’
‘Dass what Moses tol’ me, Mahse Jed,’ Aunt Betty wiped her eyes with the apron again. ‘Dass what he said.’
‘You stay here, Aunt Betty,’ Jed advised. ‘I’ll go into town and see what I can find out. Have you had anything to eat?’
‘No, I ain’t. Not since th’other day.’
‘I’ll get one of my men to bring you something.’ Jed turned and ran through the house to where he had left his horse. She came out of the front door as he climbed aboard, having detailed a squad to remain at the house. She watched him lead his men away and then went back inside, an old woman without hope.
‘All right!’ Jed shouted when he reached the pike. ‘We’ll ride into town, gentlemen. Flankers out, please! Scouts forward!’
They reached the town without incident a few minutes before noon. He halted the column at the head of North Main, directing twenty men to ride south on West and a further twenty to do the same on East. Then he ordered the colors to the front and led the rest of the squadron down the street. People came out to see them. There were cheers and flags appeared. All down the street the stores had been looted and vandalized. There was scarcely a whole pane of glass in the town. Doors hung swaying on broken hinges. Wooden crates littered the streets. A bolt of calico flapped idly where it had been tossed into a tree.
‘Captain Foster, be good enough to send a courier to General Jackson to say that the Federals have abandoned the town!’ he said to the young officer riding on his right. Foster saluted and wheeled away. As he reached the corner of West Street Jed saw Dan Holmes hurrying towards him, and the look on his face struck a chord of anxiety in Jed’s heart.
‘Mr. Holmes!’ he said. ‘Have you seen my father?’
‘ Jed, lad, I don’t... I can’t tell you how… .’ Holmes pointed up West Street towards the court house. ‘I’m sorry, lad. Sorry.’
Jed turned his horse towards the west and rode along the street. As he passed the jail he saw that a gallows had been erected in the courtyard outside it and that there were two corpses hanging from it. He brought the column to a halt and rode slowly across towards the gallows.
‘Sergeant-Major Blass!’ he shouted, without turning around. ‘A six-man detail, on the double, if you please!’
He heard the sergeant shouting hoarsely as he stepped down from the saddle. The two bodies swayed slightly in the soft breeze. The ropes creaked in the silence. Then Jed heard boots pounding on the hard-packed earth as Blass ran the detail across the courtyard towards him.
‘Cut them down,’ he told the non-com. ‘Gently, if you please.’
He watched as Blass cut down the two bodies. The waiting soldiers caught them and laid them on the ground. Jed knelt down and cut away the black hoods which had been placed over the heads of the hanged men.
‘Jesus!’ he heard one of the soldiers say, and he heard the man retching into the dirt.
‘Tell that man to get a hold of himself, sergeant-major!’ Jed said softly. He looked down at the two faces. The one on the right was a stranger.
‘You know these men, sor?’ Blass whispered.
‘I don’t know that one at all,’ Jed answered, getting up off his knees and looking away from the contorted faces of the men on the ground. ‘But the one on the left is my father.’
‘Oh, Jaysus, sor, I’m sorry, sor!’ Blass breathed. ‘Them murtherin’ bast—’
‘That will do, sergeant-major!’ Jed said. How odd to be so controlled, he thought. I could shout angrily, break down, cry, something. Yet I do not feel anything, not a thing. My father lies dead on the ground in front of me and it does not seem real. Strange, strange. It doesn’t seem real. ‘I’ll want a tarpaulin and a wagon, sergeant-major,’ Jed said. ‘Get a burial detail organized for the other man. I’ll take my father home.’ He would want that, he thought.
‘Very good, sir!’
‘And I’ll need a carpenter,’ Jed added.
Sergeant-Major Blass saluted and clumped away, taking the detail with him. Jed walked across the courtyard and into the street, where the troopers sat stolidly, awaiting orders. It doesn’t mean anything to them, Jed thought, angered at their indifference. Just two more dead men.
‘Captain Foster,’ he said. ‘You will take command of the squadron. I have some … personal business to attend to.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Foster said. ‘I’m truly sorry, Jed.’
‘Thank you, Henry,’ Jed answered. ‘Carry on.’
Foster saluted. He was a fresh-faced man of about forty who had won promotion, like Jed, at Slaughter’s Mountain. Next to Jed he was the senior officer in the squadron: all the others, a captain, two lieutenants and two second lieutenants had died in the battle.
Jed took hold of his horse’s bridle and led him to the hitching rail in front of the courthouse. He watched his troopers trot down the street. The horses passing by made empty thunder with their hooves. He felt alone, empty, separated from everything. He did not know what to do next. He stood there for a long time, a dark, sturdy man with empty eyes staring at nothing.
Next morning Jed rode out to the cemetery at Washington Farm behind a wagon carrying his father’s body in its rough pine coffin. He watched, dry-eyed, as the sweating pioneers dug a grave alongside that of Joanna Ten Eyck. The regimental chaplain, a fine man from Macon, Georgia, read the service: it was just words. Jed tried hard to remember whether his father had ever said anything with regard to how he wished his burial service conducted, but he could think of nothing. He would have liked Andrew here, Jed thought, and Uncle Sam. The ‘whole fan damily’ he used to call us. Well the damned war had taken care of that. The ironical thing was that, had the fortunes of battle gone the other way, it would have been Andrew and Sam Strong standing beside David’s grave, not Jed. Just so long as he’s with her, he thought. At least let that be true. He watched stolidly as the burial detail lowered the coffin slowly into the earth. Bees murmured among the nodding flowers. He heard Aunt Betty weeping. He tried to close his ears to the sound of the earth falling on the top of the coffin: it was so utterly final.
Then it was over. The chaplain touched Jed’s shoulder. ‘If there’s anything I can do, son, you come and talk to me.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Jed said. ‘I’m just going to stay up here for a while.’
‘I understand,’ the chaplain said and followed the burial detail down the hill to where the wagon waited. Jed heard the wheels rattle on the drive and then it was quiet again.
He looked up. Aunt Betty was standing by the side of the grave. Her thinned face was wet with tears. He went across and put his arm around her shoulder.
‘What I goan do, Mahse Jed?’ she said. ‘What I goan do?’
‘I don’t know, Aunt Betty,’ he said. ‘Have you any people?’
‘Dis fam’ly my people, Mahse Jed,’ she said. ‘Ain’t never had no others.’
‘I’ll give you some money,’ Jed said. ‘You can go to New York and find my father’s brother, Sam. Tell him what has happened. Maybe he’ll be able to help you.’
‘Yessuh,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Anything you say.’
They stood there for a while. It was warm; cicadas laid their whirring drone upon the silence. After a while, Aunt Betty stepped away from Jed’s embrace.
‘I goan wait for you down below,’ she said. She went away, feet silent in the long grass. Jed looked at the inscription on his mother’s tombstone. Remember me. That was what we hoped for in dying: that someone would remember. A Latin phrase he had read somewhere came into his head, as though it had been waiting, ever since that moment, for this time to come. Non omnis moriar. I will not altogether die.
That’s what I’ll put on his stone, Jed thought. He’d like that. He believed you didn’t die, that there was more waiting for you up there. Jed looked up at the sky.
‘Good-bye,’ he whispered.
He got up and walked down the hill to where his horse stood cropping the grass. Only when he got to the bottom was he able to let the tears come.