The Devil in Gray (29 page)

“Lieutenant?”

Decker looked up a second time, and then he jumped up and saluted. “Yes,
sir!
”

She smiled and said, “At ease, Lieutenant. I'm off duty now.”

“You look—well, you certainly
look
off duty.”

“Thank you.” She lifted a brown leather briefcase and said, “I discovered these papers yesterday afternoon in one of Major Drewry's research files, and I've been reading them for most of the night.”

“Oh yeah?” Decker said, dubiously.

“Major Drewry bought them in October last year, when he went to an auction of family effects from the Longstreet family, out in Hopewell. He hadn't even had the chance to read most of them, let alone categorize them.”

She opened the briefcase and took out a sheaf of old discolored papers, tied together with gray string, which still had fragments of crusty yellow sealing wax clinging to it.

“Listen,” Decker said, “do you think I can twist your arm and persuade you to do this some place more comfortable? I could really use a drink around now.”

“All right,” Captain Morello said. “Consider my arm twisted.”

They left police headquarters and walked along East Grace Street to the Raven Bar, which was one of Decker's favorites. It was decorated to look like a turn-of-the-century library, with oak paneling and Tiffany lamps and deep leather banquettes. Decker guided Captain Morello to a corner booth, underneath a framed engraving of Edgar Allan Poe, his forehead like the full moon.

“Beer, please, Sandie,” he asked the waitress, who was dressed in a mobcap and floor-length apron. “And what's it for you, Captain?”

“Old-fashioned, plenty of ice.”

“Wouldn't have taken you for a whiskey drinker.”

“Just goes to show that even hotshot detectives can misjudge people sometimes.”

He rested his elbow on the table and stared at her narrowly for a full thirty seconds. She met his inspection with unflinching boldness, her eyes challenging him to tell her what kind of a woman she was.

“Daddy was something high-ranking. Mommy was a dancer.”

“Wrong again. Daddy was in recycled paper products. Mommy was a paralegal.”

“So why did you join the army?”

“My best friend, Marcia Halperin, wanted to sign up, so I did, too. After three weeks she decided that she hated it, and quit. But I loved every minute, and I still love it. I guess I'm the kind of woman who likes discipline and organization.”

“And history?”

“Sure—but this is history with an up-to-date purpose. Most people think that the Office of the Command Historian does nothing but keep musty old archives, but the Pentagon always consults our records whenever they're planning to go into offensive military action. They can see how tactical problems were tackled in the past—what went right in the gulf and what went wrong in Somalia. An army that knows its history, Lieutenant, that's an army that knows its strength.”

“Well, thanks for the lecture.”

Their drinks arrived, along with a bowl of mixed nuts. Decker took a deep swallow of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Captain Morello laid her briefcase on the table and flipped open the catches. “I kid you not, Lieutenant. These documents are real historical dynamite. These are the
personal
diaries that Lieutenant General James Longstreet kept while he was in the hospital after the Battle of the Wilderness.

“Of course he wrote an official report of the action, but he never admitted to the First Army Corps what really happened, and most of those men who had inside knowledge were killed that night, or at Spotsylvania, or Appomattox, or else they refused to discuss it and took what they knew to their graves.”

She untied the papers and spread them out. They smelled vinegary, like all old papers, but they had another smell, too, which reminded Decker of dried lavender that has almost lost its fragrance. “Here it is, over ninety pages of it, a firsthand account of the Devil's Brigade. It's amazing. Over the years there must have been scores of rumors and myths about it.”

She picked up a photocopy of the front page of a Civil War newspaper. “The
Memphis Daily Appeal
, June 1864. This is the first public mention of what could have been the Devil's Brigade. A young soldier named Josiah Billings was sent home after he lost his left forearm in the Battle of the Wilderness. He said that during the evening of May sixth he and his fellows had been trying to reach the unfinished railroad from Gordonsville to Fredericksburg when they became lost in the thick undergrowth behind enemy lines. All of a sudden they were surrounded by ‘crackling bolts of lightning, not solid shot,' and he saw a Union soldier ‘riven by a lightning flash from his head to his groin, so that he looked like a split-open side of beef.' He saw another Yankee turned inside out—‘easy as a pulled-off glove.'

“Then he said that ‘fires started all around us, spontaneous, and the woods were burning so fierce that hundreds of men were trapped and burned alive.'”

Decker nodded. “Billy Joe Bennett told me a similar story. You know Billy Joe Bennett? He runs a Civil War memorabilia store on Cary Street.”

“Oh, sure, the Rebel Yell. Known Billy Joe for years. He's absolutely
obsessed
with the Civil War, isn't he? But he often turns up original maps and diaries and rare Civil War artifacts and he always brings them down to us to take a look. About a month ago he brought me a tiny square of silk … it was part of the battle flag of the Second Company Howitzers. After the Confederate army had surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, the company's guidon cut it up into pieces and handed them out to the artillerymen as keepsakes. Only a tiny square of silk, but what
history
it represented. What emotion.”

Decker scooped up a handful of nuts. “This stuff really means something to you, doesn't it?”

“Of course it does. It's real. And so are these documents. Think about it. The first account of the Devil's Brigade by the man who actually formed it.”

Decker picked up the first page. The writing was in faded purple ink—a scratchy, sloping script he could barely decipher, except for one or two odd words.

“You can
read
this?” he asked.

“You get used to it. The trick is to tilt the page at an angle.”

“Hmm,” Decker said, trying it. “Still can't work out more than one word in ten. What's ‘paffage'?”

“‘Passage.' His double Ss always look like Fs. Here … I've done a transcript for you.”

Decker took the thick sheaf of double-spaced print. “Thanks. But why don't you tell me the bare bones of it yourself? You have the time, don't you?”

“Well, okay … I don't have to be at the Berkeley Hotel till eight.”

“You really have to go? I don't often have the opportunity to go out with a woman who's dressed as fancy as you.”

“It's an American Legion fund-raiser, and, yes, I do have to go. But thank you for the compliment anyhow.”

She opened her purse and took out a pair of gold-framed half-glasses. She leafed quickly through the transcript of Lieutenant General Longstreet's diary, and then she said, “Here it is.

“
On April eleventh, I received orders at Bristol from the adjutant and inspector general to report with the original portion of the First Corps (Kershaw's and Field's divisions and Alexander's battalion of artillery) to General R.E. Lee, commanding army of northern Virginia. On the twenty-second I marched my command to Mechanicsville, and encamped in the near neighborhood thereof. I was advised by the commanding general that a portion of the enemy was advancing swiftly and had reached the Culpeper Mine Ford on the Rapidan River and were preparing to cross into Orange County
.

“
During the night of June twenty-ninth I was unexpectedly approached by Colonel Frederick Meldrum from Heth's division, who was accompanied by his Negro servant, a man known only as John. Colonel Meldrum in civilian life was a wealthy tobacco planter and a man of considerable presence and intelligence. He said that he understood that our military situation was now parlous, and that General Grant was on the point of breaking through our Confederate lines and driving us all the way back to Richmond herself
.

“
He asked if he could speak to me further in the conditions of greatest secrecy, to which I agreed. He informed me that his servant John was an adherent of a magical religion from West Africa called Lucumi, or Santería, or sometimes voodoo. Being a man with a greatly inquiring mind, Colonel Meldrum had taken the trouble to learn the religious beliefs of his servant, and had persuaded him to demonstrate some of its rituals and spells
.

“
You may understand that I was very tired and preoccupied with all manner of other considerations, in particular the late arrival of my reinforcements, which was occasioned by want of transportation on the railroad. Yet Colonel Meldrum asked me to witness one Santería spell to demonstrate its effectiveness. John produced some stones from the pockets of his vest, as well as strings of black and green beads, and proceeded to chant monotonously and at some length. I was beginning to grow impatient when before my eyes his skin appeared to melt away, like brown butter melting in a hot skillet, and he became a skeleton, a man of bones, still dressed, still animated, but completely fleshless. To say that I was horrified and frightened would be an understatement. For a moment I doubted my sanity, and thought that the pressures and conditions of war must have turned my mind
.

“
But the skeletal John rose from his chair, and approached the mockingbird which I always keep caged in my quarters as a mascot. He raised both of his bony hands and it was plain that the poor bird was highly agitated. It screamed and screeched and dashed itself wildly against the bars of its cage. John spoke no more than two words to it, and these were instantly followed by a sharp rapping sound not unlike a musketball hitting a cartwheel. The bird instantly exploded into a tangle of feathers and bones and grisly intestines, and dropped dead to the floor of its cage
.

“
Gradually, John's flesh began to reappear, as if they were shadows collecting after the sun has gone down. Before half a minute had passed, he was fully clothed in his own skin again, and smiling at me with a knowing impudence that I found profoundly disturbing. I am a religious man, but to witness such a powerful manifestation of heathen magic shook my faith to their very core
.

“
Colonel Meldrum explained to me that in times of war the West Africans could call upon their various gods to possess them, and that John had been temporarily possessed by a fearsome god called Oggún, who represents war and death and the act of slaying. Even here in America, he informed me, our slaves continue to worship Oggún by pretending to their masters that they are worshipping Saint Peter. It was Oggún who had given him the ability to be able to kill the mockingbird through fear alone, because the poor creature had turned itself out rather than face the terror which Oggún inspired in it
.

“
I now began to grasp what Colonel Meldrum was suggesting to me. If we were to form a brigade of perhaps a dozen volunteers, he said, his servant John could perform the necessary summonings and incantations, so that these volunteers would be possessed by some of the most powerful and warlike of Santería's gods. They would wreak such havoc among the advancing Union forces, and spread such elemental terror, that our enemy would flee from the battlefield and never have the courage to return
.

“
I asked Colonel Meldrum to give me time to reflect on his suggestion. After all, we were Christian men, fighting a Christian cause, and to call on the forces of African darkness would be tantamount to admitting that we did not ourselves have the strength or the moral courage to defeat our foe
.

“
In the morning, however, a dispatch rider came to my quarters to inform me that the Union forces had crossed the Rapidan River. Generals Hill and Ewell had been heavily engaged and were retreating in confusion. I knew now that the South was on the brink of being overrun, and that Richmond herself was in immediate peril
.

“
I considered sending a letter to General R.E. Lee, asking his permission to employ the magical forces of Santería, but I knew that he would never consent. Even if I had been able to spare the time to locate him, and to give him a demonstration of the powers that Colonel Meldum's servant had already displayed to me, I doubt very much if he would have agreed to it. He was a man of such unassailable honor and integrity, and his belief in the Gospel was so strong, that I believe he would rather have surrendered our army there and then rather than call upon the works of any devil
.

“
I prayed for forgiveness if the choice I was about to make flew in the face of everything that we in the South held to be glorious and dear. Having done so, I summoned Colonel Meldrum and his servant John and instructed Colonel Meldrum to select twelve of his most competent men, with my authority, for a special duty. He was to explain to them clearly what was expected of them, and to make it explicit that what he was asking of them was entirely voluntary
.

“
Only one of the officers and men he approached declined the assignment, even though it was clearly explained to them that they would be surrendering their minds and their bodies to un-Christian influences. The one who refused, Captain Hartnett, was the son of a fundamentalist preacher
.

“
Consequently—and in utmost secrecy—our brigade was prepared for their strange and terrible task. Colonel Meldrum himself said that he would be possessed by Oggún (Saint Peter). The remaining officers and men were as follows:

Major-General M.L. Maitland (
commanding) (Yegua, the bringer of death, often known in Santería as Saint Erasmus.
)