Given our number, the Flora Temple had to make two trips to convey the battalion across the Currituck Sound. Before the first group boarded the steamer, Draper addressed the assembled lot of us. “That was some bad business back at the Burgess farm,” said he. “We are gallant soldiers, not marauders and murderers, and so I will assume it was those land pirates in their flight who laid desolate that man’s family.”
He paused then and scanned the faces around him—a searingly long pause, as though he aimed to meet each man’s eyes, trooper after trooper, before proceeding on. I set my own upon Revere, to the right rear, with Golar, as always, not far from him. Revere hawked me back, steady and unceasing, indifferent to the colonel and his admonitions.
“We’ve been at it three weeks,” continued Draper. “We’ve endured much and met the highest standards of soldiership, and this with only very little proper training beforehand. Keep your heads, men. Don’t let ungoverned passions spoil what has been, to now, a glorious victory.”
Revere’s detachment was transported over with the first group. I was spared having to watch out for ambush for a few hours. Draper, who had matters to conclude with General Wild, dispatched across the Sound with us in F, in group two. He found his way to me, standing at the forerail of the Flora Temple. Fields used his arrival as cause to excuse himself and went below with the men.
Draper and I leaned over the handrail, watching the water lap up against the ship’s prow. “Who do you think did it,” said he, “back there at Burgess’s?”
I resisted telling him what I thought—what in my gut I knew. “The bushwhackers are playing a rough game,” said I and left it there.
He didn’t say more either, but looked about at the surrounding scenery, dawning in the twilight. I wondered did the coast up in Massachusetts look like this. Was he imagining his home?
The Flora Temple dipped forward in the chop, bounded up, then down—very hard. He gripped the bar tightly. When the steamer ride evened, he said, “You did well back there to call my attention to the condition of the men.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“It was good leadership, as before. Just what is needed.”
I appreciated the compliment, though I recognized this time to be different from the other, with Thomas Artis and the three thieves. This had been just typical sergeanting.
“The men . . .” he said but did not finish.
“Sir?”
He stared over at Knotts Island, a small rise of land growing taller with our approach. “Some of the men,” said he. “I’ve heard them refer to the general as a ‘nigger.’” He winced at the word.
Indeed, we did. But how to explain it to a man whose first encounter with colored, up close, had only been a few months before?
“It’s just them being playful is all.”
He looked pained yet.
“You see, sir, when alone among ourselves, we use the word sometimes. But not in a way to mean disrespect. Quite the contrary.”
“Precisely!” said he. “When I’ve heard it, it’s said in a glowing light.”
“Right, sir. Like he is one of us.”
“And why not me?” said Draper.
Ha! thought I. I did not know him for a jokesmith.
But he was serious. “Don’t the men hold me in high regard?”
I told him, “It would be an honor to call you my nigger, sir.”
He smiled, pleased, not recognizing my attempt to smithy a joke myself.
Revere and the swamp men were nowhere about when we landed. Though our task was to hunt for irregulars, I couldn’t help but feel like it was me being hunted. I could not know when Revere or some swamp men might appear at a scene. And if they did, would it be me in their gunsights?
The battalion formed up just beyond the landing. Draper had Captain Smith and Company I and Lieutenant Conant and Company G fan out over Knotts to the homes of the bushwhackers from the muster roll. Draper himself led F north toward the White house. It was maybe a mile to our destination. Knotts Island was mostly tidal plain, with plenty of marsh, and here and there a copse of trees, but only few residences. Most looked mean and still. Likewise, there were hardly any colored out here.
The White place was very much like the others we’d passed along our route. Its inhabitants were clearly watermen, as the outbuildings were festooned with hawsers and lines and tackle, and nets of sundry length and heft hung from every wall in sight. Draper had Robinson Tynes take a squad out into the surrounding country, as pickets. Then he and I approached the door.
Before we arrived, it opened and out stepped a woman who was great with child. Very great with child. It seemed like her belly preceded her onto the porch by a full beat. Behind her came a girl of nearly briding age—fifteen, maybe sixteen. She wore the same style of homespun dress as the older one—her mother, I supposed—with sleeves to the wrists and hem to the floor and an apron overtop, and she had the same air of sass and spit.
“What is it you want?” said the woman.
Draper removed his hat, a gesture of politesse, though his voice rang of steel. “Is this the home of Henry White?”
“I’m Susan Fentress White and it is my home,” said the woman. “Henry’s, too.”
“Please call him out here,” said Draper. “I’m charged with his arrest, and that of Caleb White.”
“Caleb is his brother and stays here as well.”
“Call them out, then, madam, or my men will have to go in and get them.”
She did not blink nor did she budge. The girl looked on curiously, as though intrigued by what might happen yet.
Draper turned to me, ready to pass on the order, as Susan Fentress White next spoke. “If those niggers breach my doorstep, my husband’s men will manure the fields with their black carcasses.”
It was a hearty threat and appeared to impress the daughter.
Draper, much less so. He hatted his head and called out: “Henry and Caleb White! Come out now!”
“Holler all you want,” said Susan Fentress White, resting her hands on her bulge of midriff. “We knew of your coming and they are not here.”
“Where have they gone to?”
“They are not here” was all Susan Fentress White would say to this.
The girl looked no more inclined to answer Draper’s query than her mother.
“This must be verified,” said he. He was losing patience. “We’ll have to go in.”
“Not the niggers,” said the woman. “You.”
Draper stared at her a long stretch.
She stared right back.
Tewksbury had quit our column to return to Virginia with the general. It was the first I truly missed his presence, for I wished him here to record the scene.
Off in the distance, curling black smoke rose against the morning light. Smith and Conant were burning liberally, as Wild had ordered.
Draper whispered to me, “I’m tempted to send you in, to make a point.”
“It might cause the baby to come precociously,” whispered I back. “That lady would do it just to spite you.”
Draper went through the doorway, pistol drawn, and the girl followed after. Susan Fentress White remained outside, hands a-rest atop her bulging middle. Me, I kept at a safe remove, far enough to avoid rousening the woman’s ire.
And I wondered where was Revere. Was he out in the trees, sighting me in this woman’s yard? His shot would be readily mistaken for Henry or Caleb White’s, or that of some other bushwhacker, and my life would thus be ended with no consequences to him.
I heard, behind me, troopers shuffling from foot to foot.
Draper returned, his expression confirming what the woman had claimed. The girl emerged, too, returning to the side of her mother. Draper holstered his pistol and descended off the porch, telling the woman, “You’ll have to pack up what you urgently need and vacate the premises. As this is the home of known guerrillas, the penalty for their disloyalty is dispossession.”
“If you attempt to dispossess me of my house,” shot back the other, “there will be no houses left standing on this island.”
“Pardon, madam, are you threatening—”
“If you burn this house,” said she, hands now on her hips, “then them out here that have remained loyal shall find themselves without houses, too!”
Draper took a step back as though surprised by this last bit of bile. He crossed his arms over his chest, considering, then whispered to me, “What do you think, Etheridge?”
I didn’t think much about it at all, to be honest. My mind troubled my more pressing concern: Revere.
“First she threatens the men,” said he, “and now the loyal citizens of the neighborhood.”
“Indeed she has,” I said.
This appeared to have decided him on the necessary course of action. “That’s it!” said he, striding away. “She’s under arrest. She comes with us.”
Susan Fentress White’s face fell then, and her sass did, too. “But I am expecting . . .”
Draper was anew atop his horse. “Etheridge, get a squad to find appropriate transport, whatever wagon or cart they have, and let’s get on with it.”
Susan Fentress White dropped in a heap, her face blanching, her hands thrown up to the skies. “I am expecting! I am a lady, and I’m with child!”
The woman sobbed loudly, with face in hands and shoulders jerking. It was an impressive display, and quite unexpected from someone who until then had demonstrated so much pluck.
“Oh, Mama! Hush that now, you are embarrassing me,” said the girl.
It was the first she had spoken.
“I will go with them and return in a jiffy,” she continued, as much to Draper as to her mother, and she looked pleased by the prospect.
Draper stared on, no less baffled than I at the sudden and theatrical turn.
“But my, what shall I wear?” said the girl, and she disappeared into the house.
Draper watched her go, then said to the mother, “Henry and Caleb can turn themselves in at Portsmouth, in exchange for the girl’s release.”
She didn’t reply. Her head hung and shoulders shook.
He continued: “We’ll leave the house be, given your condition.” Then he turned to me. “Which is it today, Etheridge? Are we fiendish angels or lupine lambs?”
I struggled mightily to keep a guffaw from undermining my sergeantly posture.
Before long, the girl re-emerged. The dress had not changed, but she’d removed the apron and added a floral-print bonnet, white gloves, and lace-up boots that looked impractical for rough travel. She dragged a trunk—of yet more clothing and sundry affairs, I expected.
Draper didn’t protest, though he showed clear fluster.
“I shall return presently,” the girl told her mother. “You’ll be fine.”
I had Fields fit her up in a buggy we seized from one of the outbuildings, and we proceeded up the road, away from there. Susan Fentress White cried after us, “Oh, my daughter, my daughter! My only helpmeet!”
We regrouped with Smith and Conant, and the battalion traveled up the east bank of the North River, finally headed back to Portsmouth. Behind us, black smoke puffed skyward where bushwhacker residences had been set aflame.
The day gloomed cloudy, and it mirrored our mood, solemn. Our feet were swollen and sore, our backs ached from too many nights’ sleep on hard, cold ground, and freedom awaited us at Freedom—as did, for me, my Fanny, too—where only death remained out here. This caused the last stretch of our march to feel even longer.
Draper and I headed the column, and just behind us, Fields, driving the girl in the buggy. She told us her name was Miss Nancy White and did not stop there. “Papa and Uncle Caleb took to the tall timber when word come that youall was sailing over after them, and I do not blame them. Mama was sore and let him know it—but how could I be? What man would sit around, waiting to face jail and maybe the hangman’s noose? Not me, if I was a man, that is for certain sure.”
It wasn’t clear whether she intended her words for Draper or Fields or me, as she faced the open air out front of the buggy, addressing whoever was in proximity. Neither Draper nor Fields nor I responded, didn’t even acknowledge that she’d spoken. This did not slow her.
“Papa says that Knotts is its own sovereign patch, or should be, and deserves recognition as such. He taught me this term, sovereign. Do you know it? It means free and self-determining. It is why he’s taken up his musket, to defend our sovereignty.”
The North River straightened considerably as we crossed into Virginia. The bank opposite, where we had no pickets, neared within sharpshooter’s distance. No sharpshooting came. It was maybe the girl’s presence that protected us, or maybe no one was out there. My feeling was that we’d exhausted the bushwhackers. Like the White men, they were scattered and running. We’d tamed this corner of Carolina—around Elizabeth City, out in Camden, now on Knotts.
“You don’t hardly see niggers out here on the island.” Catching herself, she corrected: “Is that rude? I’m sorry. Is Negro better? African maybe? Well, you don’t hardly see Africans”—she smiled broad, first at Fields, then at me—“out here on the island, ’cause most cannot afford to keep them. So says Papa, anyway. Otherwise, he says he would have bought himself a passel.”
As foreday became noon, it became calming—this incessant jabbering. A body could get lost in it.
“I wouldn’t own one of you myself, for I find it improper and un-Christian. I have read the story of old Uncle Tom and the beautiful mulatto Eliza Harris. Papa brought it back from Norfolk once when he was selling his catch of terrapin up there. This was a few years back. He said the book was proscribed—that means forbidden by the law. But he said he was curious to know what all the hullabaloo was about, and that he wouldn’t have another man tell him what he could read and not. Though he cannot read proper himself, of course, and expected Mama to read it at him.”
Miss Nancy White leaned toward Fields and smiled slyly. “I snuck it and read it myself, by candlelight, when he and Mama were sleeping.” Then she returned to her proper seating. “I can see why Papa didn’t want me in it. I find the treatment of the niggers—I am sorry. I mean, the treatment of the Africans in it un-Christian and disgraceful. This is what he must have feared, I expect—the broadening of my mind beyond our sovereign shores.”
She smiled slyly again, more general this time. “It is not all that I have read by candlelight.”
By the overlong pause, it was clear she awaited someone to inquire what this other reading matter might have been.
Before any of us could venture a guess, though, she continued: “I have also indulged in the romance of the foundling Tom Jones, which I discovered secreted in the clothes trunk of my Auntie Charlotte. It’s said that God cast an earthquake over all of Old England as retribution when the book was put out over there. I believe this after reading it.” She held herself taller and straighter on the bench of the buggy. “I envision myself as Miss Sophia, finding a way to be with my true love, despite all the hardships and rebukes.” And she smiled coyly, seeming to imagine Draper—or perhaps even Fields or me—as the Tom Jones of her spirited fancy.
Miss Nancy White had won her way into my esteem. But the federal outpost at Pungo Point came into view, recalling me to my duties. It turned out not to be a redoubt as I’d expected, but a tall and stately manor, surrounded by fields and fields of crops. Draper called for the column to halt.
Miss Nancy White stood up in the buggy. “Why, that isn’t a federal fort, it’s the estate of Mr. Harper Ackiss.” She looked pleased. “He is very highly regarded hereabouts. His people figured importantly in the Revolutionary War. Papa says that if he were cursed to be an African, he would want to gin cotton and dance and sing for Mr. Harper Ackiss.” She leaned toward Fields. “Of course, that isn’t precisely how he put it.”
Fields ignored her, as did Draper and I. Peering more carefully, I observed that there was a boat landing aside the bridge, and docked there was a river steamer flying the Stars and Stripes. Likewise, men in blue coats came and went from the various outbuildings.
We were near to Fortress Freedom, this mission nigh on done.
Draper turned to me. “The Ninety-Eighth New York is posted here. Gather the men in that field there while I salute the commander.”
He rode off.
The girl sat back down on the buggy’s bench. She looked angry. “I would’ve enjoyed accompanying him to see Mr. Harper Ackiss. I find it rather rude that he did not ask.”
Fields scanned the trees on all sides. “Do you suppose Revere and them to already be hereabouts?”
As they were our scouts and advanced guard, it seemed impossible that they weren’t. “Unless he is derelicting duty, yes,” said I. “Somewhere.”
I passed along Draper’s orders to the officers of G and I, and we moved the battalion into position. We came across pickets from the Ninety-Eighth, but they largely ignored our halloos. Some gawked, others glared. The column hadn’t fully fallen out before a messenger came from the outpost, searching for me. He carried a note from Draper, directing me to bring the girl forward. She overheard as I told Fields and looked vindicated.
It was a short ride, with Fields and the girl side by side on the bench and me seated on the back boot, atop her trunk. A large number of the Ninety-Eighth, what appeared to be a few companies at least, were concentrated around the main house. Many looked to have no real military task, and after all the time in the field, I envied them their leisure.
And oh, the stares shot at us from the white troopers that we passed! They were especially vicious. I supposed that seeing two colored in charge of a white girl unsettled them. Well, so be it.
Fields reined to a stop the horse leading the buggy. We were afore a broad verandah. A mustachioed sergeant, waiting there, led us through the front doors. The girl was awed by the swank surroundings, strolling about, mouth agape, and running her fingers along the surfaces of things, pieces of furniture and such. We found Draper in the library. Fields had to whisk the girl in, interrupting her ogling of a finely wrought vase.
We caught the Ninety-Eighth’s colonel mid-phrase as we entered: “. . . and my jurisdiction extends from the lower end of Princess Anne County, here in Virginia, and includes Knotts Island, down below the border.”
“Etheridge, Midgett, good,” said Draper. He’d removed his sword in order to sit on the settee in the middle of the room but otherwise looked uncomfortable—perhaps just wearied by the other colonel’s apparent speechifying.
The other colonel greeted the girl with a nod and a half-bow, though not Fields and me. Rather than appearing courteous, he came off as overmuch formal, like he might not mean the niceties that he’d proffered.
He then continued, toward Draper: “I think it not improper to inform you that the inhabitants of the region have taken the Oath of Allegiance to the United States, almost without exception.”
“Yes, I know,” said Draper, “as you’ve twice already repeated this to me, Wead.”
“Many have come to me expressing fear. They believe that depredations will soon be committed on their properties and want protection from your troops.”
“If they’ve sworn loyal, they need not fear.”
“I am directed to protect private property,” continued the other, this man Wead, as though Draper had not even spoken, “and especially that of persons who’ve taken the oath, against violence of whatever nature.”
And with this, he lunged for Draper’s sword!
Draper, though obviously unexpecting, was just as quick, and each man held a two-fisted grip along the shaft of the weapon.
The girl threw a hand over her mouth. Fields and I stared, frozen.
The sergeant who’d led us in had left the room, and this was a relief. I did not relish the thought of attacking another Union man, though I would have, to protect Draper.
“In your excursion to Clapson’s farm,” said Wead, yanking at the sword, “and now onto Knotts Island, too! You’ve usurped my command authority.”
Draper yanked back. “What are you doing, man?”
“I know what you and your troopers are up to. The insulting language and profanity, committing the grossest outrages—and now this girl! It’s a violation of the laws of war and of humanity, and she will remain in my custody.”
“The hell she will.” Draper dropped one hand from the sword and landed a clean left upon the point of Wead’s chin.
Wead staggered backward, releasing his grip.
“Etheridge, Midgett, get the girl back to our men!”
Wead quickly righted himself and drew his revolver from its holster. He leveled it at Draper’s chest. But Draper didn’t hesitate, he grabbed the pistol by the barrel. The two men crashed into a bookcase.
The door we’d come through was locked, as were the French doors opposite.
“The windows!” said I to Fields. Our buggy stood not far beyond them.
We rushed there, and I flung them open. The girl followed without need of prodding.
She smiled gamely. “They’re fighting over me!”
She was living the stories she’d read by candlelight.
Fields climbed out, and the girl scrambled after him.
“Get her out of here, Fields,” I cried, “and bring the Brigade forward.”
I watched them dash to the buggy and get in. Fields whipped the horse into motion before any of the Ninety-Eighth, who were jumping to, could get at them.
When I turned, Draper had disarmed Wead and stood over him. “Are you mad?” he said.
Wead bled from the mouth.
“Let’s go, Etheridge,” Draper said to me. “Let’s go now.”
We exited the library.
But it wasn’t over. Wead followed at a few paces, wiping where Draper had bloodied his lips. As we passed through the great doors, he began to holler: “Arrest these men! Arrest them!”
The array of troopers—some on the verandah, even more out in the lane—set upon us. Draper and I were roughly handled, with fists and kicks. There were grunts and curses and swearing. “Goddamn nigger,” I heard. I was being jostled by the collar.
Draper’s sword was awkwardly bent from earlier, no longer effective as a weapon. He didn’t notice or did not care, raising it above his head and swinging vigorously.
“Back away, you dogs! Back away!”
The effort was rewarded. A halo of space opened around us, we rushed back into the house, and I closed and latched the doors. He and I plunged into the library, and I again latched the doors. We sat, side by side, our backs against them.
He looked at me, and I at him.
There were elements of the comical in this scene. Draper was hatless now, his shell jacket ripped open at the collar, the bent sword still in his hand. I noted that my forage cap was gone from my head, my clothes rumpled, several buttons missing. I thought that, if he and I survived this encounter and the war thereafter, we might laugh about it one day.
Draper, in fact, smiled. “Well, then,” he said.
With his free hand, he combed his fingers through his tousled hair.
“What do they call you, Etheridge? Your family and friends, I mean.”
“Dick, sir,” said I, and I wondered at having offered this one and not Richard. Regretted it, even. “But them closest to me call me Richard.”
He merited this. We’d come a long way, he and I.
“Mine call me Allie. Short from Alonzo.” He outstretched a hand, and I took it. “I hope to one day be in a situation where I can call you Richard and you can call me Allie.”
I hoped so, too.
There was a jostling at the door, a vigorous shaking of the knob—Wead and his men, trying to enter.
Through the window, though, we saw colored troopers amassing. Draper and I crossed hurriedly there and found the African Brigade arriving afore the house, on the double-quick.
Opposite them, the Ninety-Eighth was drawing up in battle array. They outnumbered us greatly.
Draper dropped out of the window to the ground, as did I, after. We made for our men. He yelled, “Form up on me!” Then, to Smith and Conant: “Get a skirmish line there and there!”
We were battle-hardened soldiers now, through and through. Our companies fell out as ordered.
As did the Ninety-Eighth, not thirty yards distant. Wead, his face still showing blood, stood at the head of his regiment, likewise shouting directions.
Each side leveled its muskets at the line facing it.
I heard the beat of hooves and saw Revere and the swamp men, circling around, behind the Ninety-Eighth’s position, even as white troopers continued to surge from various buildings.
Draper stood at the end of our line, bent sword raised. He glared at Wead, who likewise glared back at him. Draper’s jaw was set but his mouth seemed to tremble, as during the instant before a command was shouted, and I wondered, What would Wild do in a mess like this?
“Having bought truth dear . . .” I imagined him saying, and I knew. I knew that he would call the order to fire, on the spot and without hesitation, and that he’d see it as a justified response against these whoresons—and maybe even a needed one, too.
Yet Draper sneered, his lips a-tremble, the pause deliberate.
“Stand down!” we all heard. “Stand down, please!”
It was a chaplain, by the looks—all in black, with a gold embroidered crucifix on his collar. He ran over from the main house and placed himself between the two lines, arms outreaching, one each way.
“Please,” he said. “Please . . .”
No shot was fired, though neither was a single musket lowered.
The chaplain took in each of the two sides and decided to approach Draper. “Colonel, sir, please. You’re outnumbered two-to-one. Let cooler heads prevail.”
“Cooler heads?” said Draper. I’d never seen him angrier. “I do not care a damn if they are ten thousand!”
And neither did we, his men. I looked out over our rifle line: not a single trooper seemed to weigh the odds of victory, only the defense of our pride and dignity.
“I am a colonel, goddammit,” said Draper, “and that imbecile over there but a lieutenant colonel. Get him to cool down if you want, but my orders make no reference to any such thing. Only to me returning with my prisoner to Portsmouth.”
The chaplain recognized that he’d chosen poorly. He crossed over to Wead. The two entered into a lively conversation, though too distant for me to hear. Wead gestured broadly and with overmuch animation.
After a bit, he pulled away from the chaplain and hollered over at us. “I merely ask that you release the girl into my custody. Turn her over to me. I’ll see that she gets safe passage to Fortress Monroe.”
“I am your superior officer—and your superior!” replied Draper. “You will stand down!”
This rousened huzzahs from our line. For we were warriors, mister, and better ones than them, and we were on the side of right.
Wead conferred further with the chaplain, a mite less lively now. The latter placed a hand on his shoulder. Wead joined a collection of his officers, huddled in a bunch. It took a long minute, but then he turned and quit the field. His officers gave orders to lower arms.
We lowered our own.
Our men regrouped into companies, and we marched back down the Princess Anne road toward our camp. There, the girl, a-seat in the buggy aside Fields, encircled by a squad from F, welcomed our arrival with clapping hands and shrieks and cheers. She was as sporting a hostage as I could imagine.
The battalion didn’t tarry. Draper had us quick-time it past the Ackiss farm, and we pushed on well into the night without pause for rest. Though we were full in Union territory, we all now knew that the danger had not yet passed. No trooper needed prodding. Each one kept his step at a hearty clip. But for our footfalls, silence prevailed. Draper, hatless, trotted his mount slowly alongside us. His guard remained up, his eyes and ears vigilant, appearing mistrustful of the surrounding dark.
And likewise me. Revere was out there somewhere, this was sure. But it was too dark for him to potshoot me, if he remained desiring to, and by and by, my mind eased into the up-and-down pounding of the troopers’ brogans on the frozen road.
The march was toilsome, but I felt joyful yet and still, triumphant, and could sense that the men about me did, too. We passed within shouting distance of the Clapson farm, in the night, to our east, then into and through a sleeping Kempsville on about midnight. Next was Fortress Freedom. We attained her moated walls deep, deep in the late hours. Home, I supposed. All the home I could anymore imagine, though not a home truly. Fanny had certainly arrived by then, Ma’am was yet to come.
It was Christmas’s Eve, 1863.