Even carrying double weight, Sport performed valiantly, leading the escape to the river. Charles could feel Doan trembling. Suddenly the scout yelled, "Goddamn savages."
"Who?"
"The Yanks who buried that infernal machine in the road."
"You'll have to blame Brigadier Rains or somebody else on our side. Before we pulled out of Yorktown, Rains planted those torpedoes all over the streets and docks. How we doing, Ab?" he called to the scout riding alongside.
"We're way ahead of them thimble merchants and ribbon clerks. Look yonder — there's the bridge."
The sight stopped the shouted discussion of the torpedo that had killed Doan's mount. General Longstreet called the devices inhuman and forbade their use. Lot of good that did. What shook Charles as they raced to Bottom's Bridge was realizing that the slain horse could just as easily have been Sport. A buried bomb didn't differentiate.
The gray hammered across the river bridge, hoofs pounding a rhythmic litany. Just as easily. Just as easily.
Jealousy had as much to do with it as politics, Billy later decided. He had been primed for a scrap when he walked into the sutler's tent that evening toward the close of May.
A dour nervousness had gripped the peninsular armies for days. The rebs were dug in beyond the Chickahominy, prepared to die for Richmond. On the Union side, instead of expectancy or a giddy sense that one fierce blow could end it, there was uncertainty. The high command suffered from it, and the leakage spread. Rumor simmered with fact in a stew of negativism. Jackson was humiliating the Union in the Shenandoah. McDowell, holding near Fredericksburg, might be diverted to meet that threat. Little Mac continued to insist he had not nearly enough men, though he had over a hundred thousand. He also insisted the hounds of Washington were tearing at him, led by the rabid Stanton.
Cliques had formed, holding and arguing each side. Little McNapoleon's detractors claimed that his cadre of senior officers, Porter and Burnside among them, would execute any command of the general's without question and would support and promote his policies and reputation in defiance of Washington and at the expense of a victory.
All of this, together with the normal weariness induced by long hours on duty, wore Billy away, as it wore away many others, and primed him for trouble.
The night he visited the sutler's, a junior officer was present whom he didn't know personally but nevertheless disliked. The young man, another Academy graduate, belonged to staff; Billy had seen him dogging behind Little Mac on horseback. The officer was pale as a girl and bore himself with the relaxed arrogance of a clubman. Even the fellow's uniform irritated Billy. In a season of mud, it was immaculate. So were the sparkling boots. With long, light-colored curls and a red scarf knotted around his throat, he resembled a circus performer more than a soldier.
Most galling to Billy, hunched there at one end of the plank counter with a dirty glass in hand, was the officer's attitude. He was three or four years younger than Billy and wore no shoulder straps at all because of his junior rank. But he behaved like a senior man.
A loud one.
"The general would win posthaste if it weren't for the abolitionist scoundrels in Washington. Why he tolerates them, I don't know. Even our revered President humiliates him. He dared to call the general a traitor last week. To his face!"
Billy drank; it was his second glass. The sutler piously proclaimed that he served only cider. That cider, however, was harder than a New Hampshireman's head. Even so, it was safer to drink than some of the misbegotten combinations — brown sugar, lamp oil, grain alcohol — purveyed as whiskey.
But the cider — the sutler's name for it was oil of gladness — wasn't very good on the gut or the disposition if you hadn't eaten since noon. Superintending a detail making gabions, a routine job of the battalion, Billy had somehow been too busy for food.
The officer paused to toss off a double glass of cider. He had a lithe build and knew how to hold the stage the way actors did. His little coterie, five other officers, captains and lieutenants, waited expectantly for him to resume and paid close attention when he did.
"Have you heard the latest outrage? The estimable Stanton is attacking the general's honor and questioning his bravery — behind his back, of course — while influencing the Original Gorilla to withhold the men we desperately need."
"Sounds like a conspiracy," another lieutenant muttered.
"Exactly. You know the reason for it, don't you? The general likes and respects the Southern people. So do many in this army. I do. The estimable Stanton, however, favors only a certain class of Southerners — those with dark complexions. He's like all the Republicans."
Billy whacked his glass on the counter. "But he's a Democrat."
The long-haired lieutenant parted his group like Moses parting the sea. "Did you address a comment to me, sir?"
Back off, Billy said to himself. For some reason he couldn't. Damn strange that he, no partisan of the colored people, was defending one who was.
"I did. I said Mr. Stanton is a Democrat, not a Republican."
A cold smile from the junior officer. "Since this is an informal meeting place, may I have the pleasure of knowing who is offering such valuable information?"
"First Lieutenant Hazard. Presently assigned to B Company, Battalion of Engineers."
"Second Lieutenant Custer, headquarters staff, at your service." There was no service or respect in it, only conceit and contempt. "You must be from the Academy, then. But a few years before my time. I was in the four-year bunch graduated last June. Last of the lowest — thirty-sixth among thirty-six." He seemed to relish that. His cronies snickered dutifully. "As to your statement, sir, it is only narrowly correct. Shall I set aside considerations of rank and tell you what Stanton really is?"
The young officer walked toward Billy. His hair smelled of cinnamon oil. Behind Custer, his coterie hung on each word. A mangy dog, yellow and muddy, trotted into the tent. There were scores of dogs in camp, pets and stray; this one went straight to Custer and rubbed against his boot. A dozen other officers at flimsy tables stopped their own conversations to listen to the second lieutenant.
"Stanton is a man so vile, a hypocrite so depraved, that if he had lived in the time of the Saviour, Judas would have been respectable by comparison."
Several of the eavesdropping officers reacted angrily. One started to stand, but his companion held him back. Only Billy, with alcohol boiling in his empty stomach, was irked enough, rash enough, to answer.
"That kind of talk doesn't belong in the army. There's too much politicking already."
"Too much? There isn't enough!" The coterie responded with nods and knuckles rapped on the plank.
Billy persisted. "No, Lieutenant Custer, it's winning we should worry about, not whether —" an example flashed into mind "— whether a singing group can or cannot perform in our camps." "Oh, you mean that damn Hutchinson Family?" "I do. My brother's in the War Department, and he wrote me that it was a bad decision. Trivial in the first place, and it offended some important cabinet members and congressmen who heard about it."
Over Custer's shoulder, a captain blustered, "Your brother's entrenched behind a War Department desk, is he? Brave fellow." Billy's self-control weakened. "He's a major in the Ordnance Department. The work he does is damned important."