Confederates (55 page)

So Ash and Danny climbed the fence, and Mrs Fishburn made Ash welcome and Dan clung to Jessica, with nothing to separate the two couples, and nothing but further sedgebroom and the paling fence to screen off Ashabel's and Danny's bare-asses from the view of other regiments in other fields. And when they had finished, Ash full of gaiety and Danny sort of pensive, they raised between them some three and a quarter U.S. dollars in coin, and climbed the fence again to tell others – Gus and Cate and Usaph and all those – that fancy women had come to camp.

Then a whole string of boys came up to the fence and peeped over at Mrs Fishburn and her niece, who sat there amongst the broom with their blouses a little unbuttoned. Once more, boys began to climb the fence, but then straddled the rails deciding peaceably who should go first; and thus a waiting line of soldiers grew.

Usaph stood a while considering the question of the women being there. Knowing they
were
there, just beyond the snake fence, his need of them wasn't a thing he could readily argue with.

It had nothing to do with pleasure – you knew if you knew anything there wouldn't be much pleasure. It was more akin to the need of the blood to flow and of the breath to wash in and out.

But fighting his wish to climb the fence was a great rage against both women. As much as he wanted to have one of them, he also in equal measure wanted to drive them away, maybe with a length of knotted rope. For Mrs Fishburn and her neice seemed to be telling Usaph something about the nature of women he didn't much want to hear, not at this time of his doubts about Ephie. So you think Ephie is a loose girl under the skin, do you, Bumpass? That's what he asked himself, and he wondered if he
did
think that way, after all.

Still he didn't move. He must have waited there ten minutes, debating with himself, and he was still arguing privately about it when he saw Cate begin to climb the railings. That made him move. He couldn't bear that, somehow. To see Cate scaling a fence to get a woman! It seemed all right for him, Bumpass, to fret about Ephie's true character. That was just about a husbandly right. But the slinking way Cate mounted the barrier, Usaph believed, showed what he thought of girls, that they were each just another harlot, and Ephie was included in that.

Usaph ran after Cate, who was astride the fence now, one leg on Mrs Fishburn's side of things, one on Usaph's, and grabbed him by the ankle. ‘Is this the stamp of women you like to mix with, you son of a bitch?' he yelled. ‘Is whores the order of your goddam day, Cate? You filthy black Republican son of a bitch?'

Cate didn't want to be delayed on that fence in front of some fifty boys. He was as ashamed as anyone of his need of Mrs Fishburn and Jessica and he wanted to make his visit to them damn quick and inconspicuous. He began to kick, but Usaph hung on now with both arms.

‘Release me, goddamit, Bumpass,' Cate said, near blind with shame, grinding his teeth.

‘Come down there,' Usaph kept screaming. ‘I'll cut your goddam water off, you goddam turd of Lincoln!' And if Usaph could have got his hand in his britches' pocket and still hung on to his old enemy, he would have fetched out his clasp knife and began a wild job of unmanning Cate, not being too careful how wildly he plied the blade.

Other boys began dragging Usaph off. Ashabel Judd, sated and therefore rational, was yelling, ‘Easy 'Saph. You'll attract them goddam officers. Easy, boy! What manner of goddam behaviour …?'

Gus Ramseur could see from the half an eye he had on them that lawyer Hanks and that crazy Lucius had noticed the huddle and the brawling and were now stepping out across the meadow to inspect. He began to give Usaph brotherly little secret punches in the kidneys. ‘Goddamit, Usaph. They'll send them there sweet things back to town!' And he knew he needed the skinny one so bad he would have signed away a year's pay to her.

Gus did not know that Wheat also had noticed the fracas and was coming across the field on a different bearing.

Lucius arrived first though and started kicking at Usaph and trying to knock him away from Cate with a punch to the shoulder. That swept the last of Usaph's reason away. He sprang up and shaped his arms as if he meant to put young Lucius flat out on that pasture. ‘Don't you touch me, Mr Toffeenose!' he yelled. It was lucky for everyone, for Usaph and Lieutenant Taber and especially for Mrs Fishburn, that Colonel Wheat got there just then.

‘By hokey, Mr Decatur Cate,' he called at the artist, who was still stuck atop of the fence. ‘It gratifies your ole colonel to see how willing you are at last to come to close grips with the people of Maryland.' He hit Usaph as Lucius had done, on the shoulder, but Usaph didn't mind it, even though it struck bone. ‘Don't you go getting so goddam fantastical, Bumpass. What are you doing, boy? You taking an interest in that there conscript's morals?'

Usaph had no answer to that.

‘And I hope I didn't see aright, but I can't believe that was you making some gesture of defiance to Mr Taber. I think in case it was though, you'd better cook an evening meal for Mr Taber this very dusk and take it to him with humble regrets.'

Hanks raised his voice. ‘There seems to be some low women beyond the fence there, Colonel Wheat.'

‘Goddamit, there is? By hokey, don't that jest always lead to this stamp of nonsense we jest seen Corporal Bumpass indulge in?'

Beyond the fence Mrs Fishburn and Jess were quivering and lying low in the broom.

‘It's the chance of disease,' Hanks said, frowning, an honest man who did not like being thought a killjoy. ‘It seems to me that this army's had its fill of disease without …' and he nodded towards the fence.

Wheat blinked his big parrot eyes. ‘We must discuss this thing, Captain Hanks,' he said, drawing Hanks away out of the hearing of the boys. Everyone was in their place still, the line of boys in its exact order and place. No one was willing to give up that line until it should be broken by Wheat's order. Even Cate was still up on the fence and looking pensive. ‘Come down off there, goddamit, Cate,' called Ash Judd. ‘You resemble a goddam dazed rooster.'

When Hanks and he were out of the hearing of soldiers, Wheat said, ‘As to the diseases of Venus, captain, they say a sovereign goddam cure is lead. And half these poor boys will likely take the lead cure soon enough. You get my drift, Hanks?'

‘You mean they'll be shot, I take it, Colonel? All the more reason, sir, they should go to their God uncorrupted.'

Wheat didn't raise his voice. He lowered it and talked more secret still. ‘Do you think there's a God that will damn them boys for jumping a fence?
Them boys
, that have suffered such fear, Captain Hanks, and walked such goddam distances and ate worse than a goddam callithumpian monk in his cell? Are you about to tell me that? If so then I agree we must take some action. I want yourself and that goddam young fool Taber to get yourselves off to town, to the town of Frederick jest one mile up the road, and extend a welcome to the clergymen of the town to visit this here encampment at their convenience. I am right glad, sir, you are possessed by a sense of urgency. And I suggest you and Lucius set out at once.'

Hanks stood still awhile and frowned and said not one willing word, but he knew he had to do it. He fetched Lucius and they set off for Frederick on foot. Meantime, Wheat approached the fence and the intact line of soldiers. He was snarling, and they thought that their small joy in Mrs Fishburn and Jess was over.

‘You understand the word of my officers is your goddam law?'

Various of them said, ‘Yessir, colonel'. He was telling them that, just because he'd sent Hanks to town, it didn't mean Hanks was lacking in power over them. ‘Yessir, Colonel Wheat,' they chorused, almost pleading.

Wheat let his features settle right down. ‘I take it,' he said in a hissing voice, ‘someone from town is trading you boys plug tobacco or some such from the far side of that fence.'

‘That's about it, colonel,' called Ashabel Judd. Mrs Fishburn and her niece Jess didn't say a word though Usaph thought he could hear a hissing and a stuttering that might have been Jess with the giggles.

‘Well,' said Wheat, ‘I think there's a few things local traders have to bear in mind. A prime consideration is that a colonel of a regiment would be likely to arrest any trader that failed to give satisfaction.'

Some of the boys began to laugh and nudge each other. Cate seemed far off, up on the fence, pondering some point of ancient history maybe. Laughing, Gus Ramseur nudged Usaph to try to jolly him into laughing. But Usaph stayed most solemn of all. He still had a mind to cut Cate's genitals off.

‘Another thing,' Wheat continued, ‘is that any trader is bound under pain of military goddam arrest to take our excellent Confederate note money and coinage on the grounds that we're staying sometime in this fair state. Other than that, I think our dealing with them should follow a peaceful goddam pattern. I hereby wish you well, boys, in your commerce.'

He turned away and went off to visit a friend of his who was the colonel of one of the Virginia regiments in Ambrose Hill's division. On the way he found a huckster selling whisky and bought a bottle for four dollars, which was a damn good price by the standards of Southern whisky.

Back in the meadow Usaph kept in that black state of mind, but after an hour of brooding, composed his face and went and climbed the fence himself. He found Mrs Fishburn looked a little tired under the eyes, and some of the width had gone out of that smile she'd first flashed on Ash Judd. But her skirts were still up and her nice dimpled knees shone under the clear sky.

Usaph rode her hard and with his eyes mostly skywards.

‘Easy, honey!' she had to tell him. ‘This ain't the Chesapeake Gold Cup and I ain't no filly …'

But in her trade she must have been used to boys punishing their womenfolk through her own poor flesh.

19

Searcy had come all the way. He camped now in a small tent in the parkland called Best's Grove. It was a sizable glade – large tents and ambulances were pitched and parked close together.

Longstreet, Lee and Jackson were all camped here, within call of each other, all three of them lame or injured. Jackson kept to his ambulance, his leg still a mess of bruises, but any rumour that his head hadn't cleared seemed to be unproved, for he kept a string of staff officers rushing and galloping all over the landscape. Lee still had his hand bandaged and couldn't write, but he sat in the open at a table and dictated swathes of orders to Colonel Chilton, his adjutant.

As for James Longstreet, he could just move at the hobble. His heels had got blistered badly and then gone morbid, all because of a new pair of boots he'd got that had chafed him. General Longstreet entered the North wearing nothing more glorious than cutaway carpet slippers.

From Best's Grove, Searcy rode to town a few times to see how the people of Frederick were behaving in the presence of the Confederate army. If Frederick was any example of the way Maryland welcomed the Southern liberators, Lee was in for a deal of disappointment. Half the shops were shuttered. Few locals were in the streets buying goods. Some of the houses were shut up as if a public calamity had taken place. You would see people in the street, neat women and well-dressed middle-aged men. They would watch with polite interest as detachments marched past. Most men of military age were right out of sight. People sat up on the balconies of Main Street but didn't show much enthusiasm. There were few flags, few waving handkerchiefs. The citizens of Frederick seemed to look at the ragged passing soldiers in a way that said, yes, but how long can you stay in this county, you poor tattered nomads?

It was through living patiently in Best's Grove and observing the generals there that by Tuesday Horace Searcy began to suspect that with luck he might be able to send the North the most important spy intelligence of the war.

Actually it started at breakfast-time Monday. There was a very young officer on Robert Lee's staff called Angus. Angus was a lover of British culture. He liked to corner Searcy frequently and talk to him about how wonderful Keats was and what a novelist was Charles Dickens.

On that Monday morning, Angus and Searcy ate a breakfast of bacon and drank their coffee together. They held their meal in a little clump of woodsy boulders, away from the trestle tables, lent by the Corporation of Frederick, where most of the staff officers ate.

‘Anything happening?' Searcy asked the boy. He always did. Angus was
a source
, as newspapermen said even then. Searcy yawned and cut at his bacon while he asked, but the yawn was a fake. He had noticed last night that the lamps had burned to a late hour in Lee's tent, and Longstreet and Jackson had limped in and out and staff officers had wandered around, talking low, with maps and estimates in their hands. Lee's lamps had still been alight at three a.m. when Searcy had fallen asleep. So, ‘Anything happening?' Searcy asked.

Well, Angus had that vanity some people have, the vanity of being in the know. He said: ‘There's some revision going on, Searcy ole boy.'

‘Revision?'

‘Ole Robert' (Angus meant Lee) ‘ole Robert – he always thought that once we got into Maryland, the Yankee garrison at Harpers Ferry would clear out as a matter of course,
a matter of course
, Searcy ole boy.'

‘And …?'

‘Well, they're still there.'

Good for them, thought Searcy. Can it be? A display of resolute behaviour from the side of right? A bit of blessed stubbornness? ‘Awkward for you chaps,' he said lightly.

‘Well it seems the War Department in Washington might've ordered them to stick. But as you say, Searcy, damn awkward. There they are, stuck in the mouth of the Valley like a cork in a bottle …'

‘And of course, Lee … ole Robert … can't get his supply line running up the Valley and into Maryland while ever they remain.'