Confederates (51 page)

Searcy put his finger out and touched the little red cord that was tied to the top button of the dead man's jacket. It was the Legion of Honour. There weren't any other Americans who had it. ‘Why did you come home, Phil?' he asked the large serene face. ‘Why in God's name?'

Later in the night Union officers would come under a flag of truce to collect the body. So now Searcy took some papers from his own pocket, and into the side pocket of Kearney's jacket, he pushed a report on what he knew of Confederate strength and intentions. Phil was the best means for sending a message. Even if Mrs Whipple had by now been contacted by Federal agents and was again a depot in the line of information that passed northwards, Searcy could not reach her in her Orange hospital for at least three days. After the past four or five days Searcy had got a low idea of the skill of Union intelligence officers. But surely
someone
would go through the corpse's pockets before they buried it.

In the notes he had put in Kearny's pocket was a sentence underlined three times. It was not in Horace Searcy's nature to underline things. But you had to make the main facts stick out somehow. ‘Lee therefore,' he had written, ‘cannot take more than an army of 60,000 into Maryland.'

He feared they wouldn't believe that. That they would sooner hear McClellan's Colonel Pinkerton insist that the Confederacy had a quarter of a million young men. For only that explained why it was growing so hard for the Union to win its battles.

About the time Searcy placed his despatch in the pocket of dead Phil Kearney, Robert E. Lee was writing a letter to James Longstreet. He wasn't actually writing it in his own hand, for both his hands were bandaged. His adjutant did the writing for him.

A few nights back Lee had been waiting in the rain, standing by his horse Traveller, expecting a reconnaissance report from Jeb Stuart. A couple of cavalrymen came up yelling that there were Union horsemen all round. In stretching for Traveller's bridle, Robert Lee tripped on the long rubber cavalryman's overall he was wearing and lurched sideways. His hands went out to break the fall. A bone was broken in the right hand and the other one was sprained. Since then, hands bound and taped, he'd travelled round the area by horse ambulance.

‘Dear James,' he was dictating now. ‘I agree with you there are only two things we can do now. We can pull back to Richmond and wait for the Yankees and hope to beat them again in detail as happened in June. I know you favour that. The benefit of that is that we have short lines of supply that can easily be protected. But I wonder what would happen if the Yankees get hold of the Virginia Central Railroad. That, James, would put the squeeze on us.

‘You say our boys lack everything. They lack meat, you say. They lack leather. Well, perhaps they will find everything in Maryland. You say McClellan can get some 90,000 against us without even concentrating on it. I say, James, with respect, all the more reason for keeping moving.'

As Robert Lee dictated he moved his bandaged hands around like a man playing an imaginary piano.

‘I intend to go to Maryland, James. I intend to open up the Valley as my line of supply. I know what you're thinking. Harper's Ferry is smack in the middle of this line of supply. They say there are perhaps 12,000 Yankees there. It is my belief that all we need to do to have them surrender or drift away is to drive a wedge between them and Washington.

‘Think of this, James. All our representatives in all the European capitals say we are close to being recognised. Do you think those European countries will recognise us if we pull back to Richmond? You know the answer to that one, James. And there is this as well. In two months the North will have Congressional elections. We can affect those elections if we enter Maryland and stay there. Northerners will vote Democrat in the hope of Congress ending the war.

‘Mr Davis told me once at dinner that we don't need to win the war. Like the American colonies some ninety years back we need only to avoid losing it. There is some truth in that. But our one chance of avoiding the losing of it is there in Maryland. It's when we break the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, James. It's when we go further and pull down the Susquehanna Bridge at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and leave Abe with just one line of communication east to west, and that through the Great Lakes. And, doing that, we can win it all, James.

‘The orders will be for the army to cross the Potomac at a place called White's Ford, just near Ball's Bluff. The river is half a mile wide there. The bottom is pebbly. A depth of two to three feet. Tom Jackson has prepared maps …'

15

Rambling rose was in bloom on Granny Ambler's fence. As Aunt Sarrie's trap pulled up by the gate, Ephie saw a little plump woman sitting on a rocker under an oak in the garden.

‘That Granny Ambler?' Ephie muttered.

‘That's her,' said Aunt Sarrie.

The garden was well kept and the house whitewashed. It didn't look at all like a witchy place, and that at least took the edge off some of Ephie's discomfort.

‘Hey, Granny Ambler, you sleeping there?' Aunt Sarrie called as familiar as if they'd been girls together.

The little plump woman shook herself, struggled out of her chair and came towards the gate with her arms wide. ‘Why, it's young Sarrie. Why ain't you been to see me since that last time?'

And she thrust her front teeth forward and gave a rabbit-like giggle.

‘That potion you provided, Granny, it didn't ever land myself and Muswell with a child.'

Granny Ambler shrugged and looked solemn. ‘Man proposes,' she whispered, ‘God disposes.' Then she raised her voice. ‘And Granny Ambler does the best she can by her friends. But who's that rose by your side there, little Sarrie?'

Aunt Sarrie made the introductions in a quiet cheerful voice, like this was just a social call. Then she dropped her voice, though there was no one around in this wooded lane on the edge of the village of Millboro; there was damn near no one round in the whole village of Millboro itself. ‘I think we should talk in your parlour, Granny, if you'd be kind enough to give us an invite in.'

Granny said she was very happy to. They dismounted and she bustled them up the pathway, over her stoop, into the house. The parlour was an average farm parlour, the furnishings just a little more old-fashioned than those in Aunt Sarrie's place. A little old man almost lost in a big beard glared from a daguerreotype over the fireplace. Against one wall were shelves on which stood unlabelled jars and bottles. The smell of the place was strange and dry and herbal, but that was to be expected.

The two older women settled themselves deeply in chairs on the one side of the room. Ephie found another by the window and sat stiffly on its edge. It had been agreed between Aunt Sarrie and Ephie that Ephie should be the one to outline the problem. She was, after all, a grown girl.

It was as if Granny knew what they were there for, however, for she sat directing her chubby rabbit grin towards Ephie and ignoring Aunt Sarrie.

‘I'm with child,' said Ephie. She had meant the words to come out deliberate. They came out as they were – a shameful secret.

‘It's common enough,' Granny Ambler murmured. Now Ephie wished Aunt Sarrie would take over. But Aunt Sarrie sat pat.

‘I've a husband off with Jackson someplace,' Ephie continued.

‘Oh yes, oh yes,' said Granny Ambler, nodding her head, but not in a judging way, more as if Ephie had been describing the conditions under which she'd caught measles. ‘Well of course your husband who's off with Jackson – he's got enough grief on
that
acount alone, ain't that so?'

‘It's so,' said Ephie.

Granny Ambler thought a while.

‘How long since you bedded down with this other feller?'

‘Other feller?'

Granny grinned a little. ‘That other feller that's been and gone.'

‘Six … seven weeks,' Ephie murmured.

The old lady struggled up – her legs were very short – and approached a line of drawers. Opening one, she took out what looked like a sachet.

She brought it and dropped it in Ephie's hand. It made the little, dry, husky sound a sachet does when it's dropped in a hand. ‘Take that in your coffee for three days to come. It's bitter'n a bad end, so use plenty sugar.'

‘What is it?'

‘Why it's ergot. Don't you mind if it makes your limbs jump some!'

Ephie went home hopeful, but just round the corner of her mind she wished she could keep the child. She day-dreamed, anyhow, that it was Usaph's and could be kept.

Three days, as prescribed by Granny Ambler, Ephie took the ergot in her coffee. It brought her much discomfort. Her arms and legs crept, her belly clenched. But three weeks went by, and there was no result.

By now the idea of the child was less endearing than it had been. She was getting anxious. It was Ephie who suggested Aunt Sarrie return with her to the old lady.

Granny Ambler shook her head like some great surgeon. ‘It's known to be a potent specific and it's most times enough.'

‘What happens now?' asked Aunt Sarrie.

‘You should get out of your drawers, gal,' the old lady told Ephie.

Ephie stared at her.

‘Take off them nice drawers you got on,' said Granny, more commanding.

Aunt Sarrie nodded at Ephie. So Ephie turned away, towards the open window. It didn't matter, there was nothing but blank Virginian forest out there. She rucked her dress up and dragged her camisoles off, placing them on the edge of a sofa by the window.

Granny Ambler was already lighting a candle on a small round table in mid-room. ‘We don't need light,' said Aunt Sarrie warily. ‘Why, it's mid-morning.'

The old sorceress ignored her, fetched a blanket from a cupboard and spread it across the sofa. ‘You should lie on that, Mrs Bumpass.'

‘But why?'

The old lady surveyed her, looking more than ever like a well-meaning mama rabbit. ‘There are other means, gal. Other means than that-there ergot.'

‘Should I wait out there in the kitchen?' Aunt Sarrie wanted to know. You could tell she would have preferred to be absent now.

‘No, no,' Ephie said quickly.

Granny Ambler had picked up from somewhere a very thin skewer maybe a foot in length. As soon as she saw it, Ephie knew what was to happen – Granny Ambler meant to put that thing in her. It brought bile into Ephie's mouth to think of the wound it would make in the faceless mass inside her and maybe in her own vitals as well.

On the sofa therefore Ephie stirred and shivered as the old lady let the candle-flame play over the steel.

‘You can spend months jumping off chairs and taking them there hot baths, and all it will do is maybe make a runt of the baby. Quick methods is best.'

For some seconds Ephie was stiff and agog, staring at the needle. Then she remembered to appeal to Aunt Sarrie and turned her eyes to that lady. ‘She's right, girl,' Aunt Sarrie nodded. ‘There ain't no way it can be avoided.'

At some signal from the old herbalist, Aunt Sarrie clamped Ephie's shoulders to the sofa. She was no weak one, was Aunt Sarrie. Granny Ambler spoke on, very soothing – or so it was intended to be; it did nothing to soothe Ephie. ‘You jest have to be still. Elsewise you'll hurt yourself.'

Ephie had decided now she'd fight them both, she'd rather a wound by accident than to have Granny calmly lunging into her nether parts. She just didn't want the steel! So she tried to sit up.

‘No chance!' she yelled. ‘I ain't having that thing in me!'

Aunt Sarrie clamped her shoulders fiercer than ever and the little old herbalist clearly had some strength to force the girl's legs apart. Ephie was however a young and healthy country girl, well-shouldered, and now she began to writhe and kick in earnest. She got the old lady high up in the stomach. Granny paled and let the needle fall, and Aunt Sarrie was so shocked to see this ungrateful kick that her hold on Ephie loosened a second.

Ephie slipped sideways now, up over the back of the sofa, towards the half-opened window. Pushing through it, she fell into rose bushes, but did not feel the thorns. Struggling upwards, she'd already begun to wail, and still wailing, got through the gate and took the road back through Millboro, leaving her camisole drawers as a sort of bounty in Granny Ambler's strange parlour.

She was crossing the Cowpasture bridge, her face red but her tears choked down now, when Aunt Sarrie caught up to her in the trap. ‘Get in, girl,' said Aunt Sarrie, in an exasperated voice, but low, just in case some citizen of Millboro was observing her from one of the higher windows of that white little town.

Ephie just stood, staring at her, as if to say: ‘Yes, but can you be trusted?'

‘Get in, you young fool. We're going home. Poor ole Granny will have to rest the remainder of this day.'

So Ephie let herself climb into the trap. When they were well down the road, Aunt Sarrie said: ‘You'll have to have it done, now or later. Sure, some gals get ill by means like these. But that's part of the whole business, ain't it? Part of the business of coupling with strangers.'

Aunt Sarrie did not speak to her again for two weeks, but just waited for her to say, yes, I want to go back to Granny Ambler yet again. At meals Aunt Sarrie would talk with Bridie the slave, leaving Ephie out, and Ephie sometimes thought, to hell with it, and would speak to Bridie herself.

But Aunt Sarrie was not a vengeful person. At the end of the second week she appeared at Ephie's door late one afternoon with a plate of pie and a cup of coffee. Ephie wanted the old woman to pass her a kindly cup and plate, but not if it meant the steel needle. ‘It don't make no difference,' she muttered ‘I ain't going back to that Ambler woman.'

‘You can still have the pie if you want. And the coffee.'

‘As long as it don't mean I agree to go back to the hag.'