High Hearts (55 page)

“Aren’t we going to attack?” Geneva asked Mars.

“Not until we know exactly where we are. You can’t see the hand in front of your face.”

The horrendous downpour drowned out sounds. At the front of the column, Stuart questioned a prisoner taken with
the few Yankees they’d rounded up today. He was a black teamster, and upon recognizing Stuart, he offered to guide him through this mess right to Pope’s headquarters between Catlett’s Station and Cedar Run, which by now would be boiling over.

The man was as good as his word. Stuart and his men found themselves at the very edge of a large encampment which they could only see during the flashes of jagged lightning. The Ninth Virginia was ordered to hit Pope’s headquarters. The First and Fifth Virginia were to make a diversion at the adjoining camp. Captain Blackford, the engineer with the Fourth Virginia, was ordered to destroy the railroad bridge over Cedar Run.

With a surge Geneva hurtled forward in the blinding rain. As they crossed the tracks, Geneva reined in. Sam Wells, coming up behind her, shouted through the thunder and quick gunfire, “What are you doing?”

“I’ll cut the wire. Hold my horse, will you?”

Sam seized the reins, and Geneva shimmied up the telegraph pole like a monkey. At the top, she pulled her saber and slashed the wires. She slid down, leaping off about fifteen feet from the ground. As she swung into the saddle, she grasped Sam’s hands for the reins. The searing blue of lightning showed her Sam was slumped forward in his saddle. She pried his reins out of his hand and lead them both forward into the pitch, the screaming, and the commotion.

Banjo almost collided with her in the darkness. “Can’t destroy the bridge. Not enough axes.” He stretched forward. “Who’s that?”

“Sam Wells.”

Recall sounded between thunderclaps. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve done all we can do.”

Fearing harassment by pursuing cavalry, Geneva couldn’t attend to Sam until they were two miles from Catlett’s Station.

Nash helped her. “His legs are frozen on this animal.”

Mars rode up. “We can’t stop.”

“I’ve got to see if he’s alive.”

“Who is it?” Mars called.

“Sam Wells,” Nash answered.

Geneva felt his pulse. “He’s dead, Colonel.”

“If the Yankees come after us, you’ll have to dump him,” Mars shouted through the relentless downpour.

“I know,” Geneva answered.

By daybreak the cavalry was back in Warrenton.

Geneva removed Sam Wells’s personal effects to send to his family. If the army had time to bury a man, the family was told the location in case they wished to remove the body later or visit the grave. Very often there wasn’t time for that. Sometimes the body was sent home, although this was usually reserved for officers.

Geneva opened Sam’s Bible. A note fell out. The note read: The bearer of this body to Martha Wells of Charlottesville, Virginia, will receive $500.

Nash read it. “He must have had some premonition like your father.”

Banjo found a box to use as a casket.

The three of them, before resting themselves, laid Sam’s body in the sturdy pine box. They also located a young boy who was willing to drive the body to Charlottesville in his wagon. They put the note in an envelope and addressed it to Martha. They wrote a second note to Sam’s infant son, Samuel Wells, Junior.

As the wagon rolled down the Warrenton Turnpike, Geneva thought to herself, “Who next?”

The one thing Geneva liked about hard fighting was that she didn’t have to do the dishes. Camp life worked on her nerves. Life in the saddle suited her. A hot meal was a rarity. Often they awoke and leapt in the saddle without even morning coffee, although Banjo, ever hopeful, wrapped a tin coffee pot in his bedroll.

Last night when they bivouacked, they didn’t unsaddle their horses although they let them graze. The cavalry patrolled
the south side of Hegeman’s River which fed into the Rappahannock. Every ford of the Rappahannock was contested. Pope massed eighty thousand men on the other side of the river plus he had another twenty thousand at Aquia Creek. Confederate forces were half that number.

In the faint light of dawn, Geneva consulted her church almanac. It was Sunday, the Feast of St. Bartholomew, the tenth Sunday after Trinity. The lesson was Numbers, chapter 23, and Acts, chapter 28. Acts stretched through the summer. St. Paul relished his misadventures, and Geneva began to suspect that he might have exaggerated.

Geneva mused to herself that Stuart probably called yesterday’s battle a skirmish. No fighting is a skirmish if one is in it, and yesterday one thousand mounted men rode up to the Waterloo Bridge from Fords below it, firing, ducking, and running every inch of the way.

She walked down to the river to fill her canteen. The temperature was deliciously mild for late August, but then the sun wasn’t over the horizon yet. She saw a Yankee on the other side of the river, also filling his canteen.

Putting her hand on her holster, she called over, “Yank, I won’t fire if you won’t.”

“All right by me. I’ll get you later.” He waved, finished his task, and left.

An approaching Confederate rider sent Geneva back to the camp. The men were up. Mars, with field glasses, studied the bridge. The corporal saluted Mars and asked for Benserade. Mars pointed to the major.

A courier grinned as he handed Benserade a smudged envelope.

Benserade nervously opened the message and then let out a whoop. “Boys, I’m a father! An eight-pound baby girl!” He leapt in the air. The other men crowded around him, slapping him on the back. “If we ever hit civilization again, I’m going to buy every man in this regiment a drink!”

Geneva, Nash, and Mars rejoiced with Benserade, but each was inwardly glum because having children seemed impossible now.

The sun, finally free of the horizon, brought with it artillery fire from the other side of the river.

“The only reason they want this bridge is because it’s named Waterloo.” Nash quickly mounted.

“And it’s easier to get an army over a bridge than through the fords.” Geneva rode beside him.

Mars deployed his men. Most of them had already dismounted, firing across the river. He sent Geneva and Nash northward to check the videttes posted on the upper fords. The lower fords were well covered. Banjo was dispatched back to General Longstreet to inform him that the bridge was going to be hotly contested and might he show his infantry in force as well as bring up artillery?

A small stucco house, painted bright white, at the edge of the bridge already had cannonballs stuck in its side.-As Geneva and Nash galloped past it, she thought years from now these souvenirs would add to its charm, the owner bragging about the fight for Waterloo Bridge. Right now though, everyone in that house was either under the bed or running to Warrenton.

At each ford they stopped, learned that no Federals had been seen, and continued to the next one.

Nash, in ebullient spirits, was whistling. “What have we got, one vidette left?”

“Yes, but I heard there was another ford about one mile or a mile and a half above it. To be safe we ought to check it, too.”

As they approached, the four men posted on the ford straightened up. A short, stocky man saluted.

“Seen anything?” Nash asked.

“Nothing. What’s going on down there? Sounds like a tussle.” He was curious.

“Contesting the bridge. Something to do, I guess. Takes their minds off the heat.”

“Not too bad today. Bugs are fierce,” the stocky man replied.

“Thank you, Private. We’re going to check one last ford.”

“Nobody’s posted up there.”

“I figure they’ve seen our videttes same as we’ve seen theirs. If they did a decent job of reconnaissance, they may have discovered this ford by themselves.”

“Sergeant,” he said, addressing Nash, “they’re getting tougher, don’t you think?”

“No longer novices in killing.” Nash saluted and pushed on, the river on his right.

After fifteen minutes at a pleasant curve in the river, they beheld the huge gates to an estate.

The two of them stopped, tilting their heads up. The stones were pale gray and smooth, giving the gate a triumphal appearance. Carved over the left gate in Latin was the following inscription:

“Here’s to today’s fox.” Nash held out an imaginary toast.

“Makes me homesick.”

“The gate or thinking of foxhunting?” He stood up in the saddle and stretched.

“Both.”

“If you were home, you might see the Harkaway Hunt.” Nash teased her.

“I hope not. Might as well go back. I think we’ve seen everything.”

A splashing of water drew her attention away from the gate. Six Federal cavalrymen clambered up on the other side of the bank.

“Nash, let’s go!”

He turned from the gate, still saying the Latin out loud, “Et vox—”

A volley of shots rang out. Geneva felt something slide along the sole of her boot. She galloped downstream. Nash wasn’t with her.

Pulling her pistols, she turned Gallant and headed back to the gate. The Yankees were gone as quickly as they had come.

Nash was sprawled on the ground, face to the sky.

“Nash!” She bent over him. One small hole, the only evidence of damage, was through his heart. A small patch of blood seeped out of the wound. Numb, she caught her horse and with difficulty threw his body over it. She headed back for Waterloo Bridge. No need to look for a field hospital. Nash was dead.

“Then what?” Laura’s wide cognac eyes, the color of her grandmother’s, were moist.

“I remember riding back into the fight. The colonel went white when he saw me. He accompanied me to the rear of
our lines. I could move my limbs, but I couldn’t think. He assigned Banjo to take care of me, and Banjo wrapped Nash’s body in a blanket. How he found a coffin, I don’t know, but he did get one, and we rode the train down to Charlottesville. Colonel Vickers must have wired Mother, because she met us at the station. I only remember that I asked Nash’s father whether he wanted Nash buried next to his mother or buried at Chatfield. The old gentleman asked to have his son, and I didn’t fight him.

“No one seemed the least shocked at seeing me in uniform when we arrived at Chatfield. Later, I found out that Mother had told everyone.”

Pointing to the worn boots standing next to the fireplace, Laura said, “I knew those were your cavalry boots.”

Geneva picked them up and ran her finger along the groove the bullet had made from heel to toe. “Look.” She handed them to her twenty-year-old granddaughter who held them as though they were a religious relic.

“I’m glad you’re finally telling me, Mahmaw, about your first husband and the war. No one would ever tell me anything.”

“You were too young to know about such things. Now that you’re about to be married, you’re ready, I guess.”

Laura, who bore a strong resemblance to her great-grandmother Lutie, replaced the boots next to the fireplace. “What happened then?”

“Di-Peachy slept in my room just like when we were children. I stayed in the big house. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t bear to sleep in the bedroom I had shared with Nash.

“Feeling began to return to me in about six weeks. I remember that. Banjo was already back with the regiment. They’d fought Second Manassas. Mars wrote that for two full days they protected our exposed flank against heavy Federal cavalry attacks. Very hard fighting. I felt guilty as well as desolate. I belonged with the regiment. Mother didn’t try to hold me back, but she told me to release my flood of tears first. I didn’t know what she was talking about until I was alive enough to cry. That probably sounds strange to you, but you haven’t known great loss. It took some time for the loss to sink in. The actual event, for me anyway, wasn’t as terrible as the aftermath. When I finally cried, I couldn’t stop,
and I took sick for a while. Mother nursed me, and Sin-Sin would sit with me for hours telling me stories.

“As soon as I felt physically strong, I wrote the colonel and asked to rejoin the men. He and Banjo were the only ones who knew of my true identity. Banjo never spoke to me about it. He just accepted it with no fuss. In a strange way, fighting was all I knew. I had grown up in the army, and I belonged there.

“While I waited for him to reply, Gunther Krutzer, the Yankee prisoner who’d come back to Chatfield with Mother, and I began to lay out Sumner’s plans for Mother’s fountains. Little did I know at the time it would take sixteen years to complete the task.

“Well, the colonel wrote back and said that I could return. He offered no explanation other than that he needed the best rider in the Confederacy. And so I met up with the cavalry on November 11 at Culpeper, and there I stayed until April 9, 1865. At the end of the war I was still wearing the same boots I wore on that August day when Nash was killed. I was lucky. Aside from the slash on my face, I was hit only once, on the right shoulder. Took a piece out of me, but no serious mess.”

“I wish I’d been alive then!”

“You’re alive now. Make the most of it. When people tell about their war experiences, it sounds exciting. It was, but, honey, I saw things I’ll never forget. I remember seeing a man at Sharpsburg with two ribs sticking out of his body, flesh dangling on them, and he was walking. I saw men with their brains oozing out of their heads, and they lay for days in agony. I saw beautiful homes destroyed. More horses were slaughtered or suffered on battlefields than you can imagine. And by the end of the war, it was death and destruction, nothing but death and destruction. You didn’t see a woman, but what she wore black.