His men were plowing on, following Garnett’s. Poe tried to stand, but a bolt of pain flashed through him, and all he could do was follow the silent combat from his seated position. A shell had burst just over his head, had deafened him and shattered his right thigh with a piece of shrapnel that hadn’t even broken his skin.
Another line of men rushed past Poe, Armistead’s, bayonets leveled. Poe could see Armistead in the lead, his black hat raised on saber-tip as a guide for his men, his mouth open in a silent cheer, his white mane flying. And then the last of Pickett’s division was past, into the smoke and dust that covered the ridge, charging for the enemy trees and the cemetery that claimed them, leaving Poe nothing to do but sit in the soft blossoming clover and watch the bees travel in silence from one flower to another.
The first sound he heard, even over the tear of battle, was a voice saying “Nevermore.” Hugin and Munin were croaking from the clover behind him, their standard-bearer having been killed by the same shell that had dropped Poe.
The sounds of battle gradually worked their way back into his head. Some of his men came back, and a few of them picked him up and carried him rearward, carried him along with the ravens back to the shelter of the ridge that marked the Confederate line. Poe insisted on facing the Yanks the entire way, so that if he died his wounds would be in the front. A pointless gesture, but it took away some of the pain.
The agony from the shattered bone was only a foretaste of the soul-sickness that was to come during the long, bouncing, agonizing ambulance ride to the South as the army deserted Pennsylvania and the North and the hope of victory that had died forever there with Armistead. He had died on Cemetery Ridge, shot dead carrying his plumed hat aloft on the tip of his sword, his other hand placed triumphantly on the barrel of a Yankee gun.
*
“Law is dead, General Gregg is wounded,” Poe reported. “Their men have given way entirely. Colonel Bowles reports he’s lost half his men, half at least, and the remainder will not fight. They have also lost some guns, perhaps a dozen.”
Robert Lee looked a hundred years dead. His intestinal complaint having struck him again, Lee was seated in the back of a closed ambulance that had been parked by the Starker house. He wore only a dressing gown, and his white hair fell over his forehead. Pain had drawn claws down his face, gouging deep tracks in his flesh.
“I have recalled the army,” Lee said. “Rodes’s division will soon be up.” He gave a look to the man who had drawn his horse up beside the wagon. “Is that not correct, General Ewell?”
“I have told them to come quickly, General.” Ewell was a bald man with pop eyes. He was strapped in the saddle, having lost a leg at Second Manassas during a fight with those damned Black Hats. Now that Poe thought about it, perhaps the Black Hats were becoming a leitmotiv in all this shambles. Ewell’s horse was enormous, a huge shambling creature, and the sight of it loping along with Ewell bobbing atop was considered by the soldiers to be a sight of pure high comedy.
Poe thought it pathetic. All that stands between Grant and Richmond, he thought, is a bunch of sick old men who cannot properly sit a horse. The thought made him angry.
“We must assemble,” Lee said. His voice was faint. “We must assemble and strike those people.”
Perhaps, Poe thought, Lee was a great man. Poe could not bring himself, any longer, to believe it. The others here had memories of Lee’s greatness. Poe could only remember George Pickett, tears streaming down his face, screaming at Lee when the old man asked him to rally his command: “General Lee, I have no division!”
Poe looked from Ewell to Lee. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I would suggest that Rodes be sent north to contain Hancock.”
Lee nodded.
“The next division needs to be sent to Hanover Junction. If we lose the railroad, we will have to fall back to Richmond or attack Grant where he stands.”
Lee nodded again. “Let it be so.” A spasm passed across his face. His hands clutched at his abdomen and he bent over.
We may lose the war, Poe thought, because our commander has lost control of his bowels. And a case of the sniffles killed Byron, because his physician was a cretin.
The world will always destroy you, he thought. And the world will make you ridiculous while it does so.
General Lee’s spasms passed. He looked up, his face hollow. Beads of sweat dotted his nose. “I will send an urgent message to General W.H.F. Lee,” he said. “His cavalry division can reinforce that of General Fitzhugh Lee.”
Bitter amusement passed through Poe at Lee’s careful correctness. He would not call his son “Rooney,” the way everyone else did; he referred to him formally, so there would be no hint of favoritism.
Flattened by dysentery the man might be, and the Yankees might have stolen a day’s march on him; but he would not drop his Southern courtesy.
Another spasm struck Lee. He bent over double. “Pardon me, gentlemen,” he gasped. “I must retire for a moment.”
His aides carefully drew the little rear doors of the ambulance to allow the commander-in-chief a little privacy. Ewell turned his head and spat.
Poe hobbled a few paces away and looked down at his own lines. Gregg and Law’s brigades had given way an hour ago, on the fourth assault, but of the Yanks in the woods there had been no sign except for a few scouts peering at the Confederate trenches from the cover of the trees. Poe knew that the longer the Yankees took to prepare their attack, the harder it would be.
A four-wheel open carriage came up, drawn by a limping plow horse, probably the only horse the armies had spared the soberly dressed civilians who rode inside.
They were going to the funeral of the Starker girl. Battle or no, the funeral would go on. There was humor in this, somewhere; Poe wondered if the funeral was mocking the battle or the other way around.
He tipped his new hat to the ladies dismounting from the carriage and turned to study the woods with his field glasses.
Hancock had broken through to the north of the swampy stream, but hadn’t moved much since then? victory had disorganized his formations as much as defeat had disorganized the losers. Hancock, when he moved, could either plunge straight ahead into the rear of Anderson’s corps or pivot his whole command, like a barn door, to his left and into Poe’s rear. In the latter case Poe would worry about him, but not till then. If Hancock chose to make that lumbering turn, a path which would take him through dense woods that would make the turn difficult to execute in any case, Poe would have plenty of warning from the remnants of Gregg and Law’s wrecked brigades.
The immediate danger was to his front. What were Burnside and Wright waiting for? Perhaps they had got so badly confused by Poe’s attack that they were taking forever to sort themselves out.
Perhaps they were just being thorough.
Poe limped to where his camp chair waited and was surprised that the short walk had taken his breath away. The Le Mats were just too heavy. He unbuckled his holsters, sat, and waited.
To the west, Rodes’s division was a long cloud of dust. To the south, Rooney Lee’s cavalry division was another.
Another long hour went by. A train moved tiredly east on the Virginia Central. Rooney Lee’s men arrived and went into position on the right. Amid the clatter of reserve artillery battalions galloping up were more people arriving for the funeraclass="underline" old men, women, children. The young men were either in the army or hiding from conscription. Soon Poe heard the singing of hymns.
Then the Yankees were there, quite suddenly and without preamble, the trees full of blue and silver, coming on to the old Presbyterian melody rising from the Starker house. The bluecoats made no more noise on the approach than Pickett’s men had on the march to Cemetery Ridge. Poe blinked in amazement. Where had they all come from?