“And?”
Her face twisted into a wry grin. She still wasn’t pretty in any conventional sense of the word, especially with her black hair clipped off short like a man’s, but her wide, full-lipped smile made her seem much more feminine when she smiled. She said, “Didn’t like get tin’ shot worth a damn, I tell you that, Nate.”
“I believe you.” He thanked his lucky stars he was still unwounded. Few bullets were as merciful as the one that had found her. The ghastly piles of arms and legs outside the surgeon’s tent after every fight, the screams of men shot in the belly, the dying gurgles of men shot through the chest.
He was glad to forget those images when she went on, “But for that, though, y’all in the company are more like family ‘n anything I ever knew ‘fore I got here. Y’all care about me like you was my brothers, and y’all keep th’ officers from findin’ out what I am”—her wry grin flashed again—” ‘cause you know blamed well I ain’t your sister.”
He laughed at that. He’d never asked before, though she’d been with the regiment a year. He didn’t know what he’d expected to hear—perhaps something more melodramatic than her plain story. He took out the twenty dollars Confederate he’d won from Allison High, gave the bills to her.
“Wish it was Federal greenbacks,” she said, “but it’ll do, Nate, it’ll do. Want to go another round?”
He thought about it, but shook his head. “I’d better not. I can’t afford the time; I’ve been away too long as is.”
“You care about what you’re doin’, That’s a good thing.”. Mollie made a face at him. “Or is it just I’m gettin‘ old? Cain ‘t think o’ many who would’ve turned me down if I’d asked ‘em when I was down in Rivington.”
“You’re a damn sight younger than I am. You—” Caudell stopped. “You were in Rivington before you joined up? They say these new repeaters come from there, and the people who make them or sell them or whatever it is they do.”
“I’ve heard that, too,” Mollie said. Caudell reflected that she’d probably heard it well before he did; she usually got news even before Colonel Faribault heard it. She went on, “Don’t know nothin’ about it, though. Them fellers weren’t there when I left the place a year ago. Not much else was, neither, ‘specially not men, so I got out. Sure you don’t want to go again?”
“What I want to do and what I have to do are two different things,” Caudell said. “This is the army, remember?”
Her laugh followed him as he returned to the cold and military world outside her cabin door. He looked down the lane toward the parade ground. George Hines was out there on his hands and knees, gathering up brass cartridge cases.
* III *
The locomotive snorted and hissed as it slowed. The shriek of the locked driving wheels against sanded rails reminded General Lee of the cries of wounded horses, the most piteous sound on any battlefield. The train stopped. There was a last jolt as the cars came together with a clanking clatter of link-and-pin couplings.
Lee and the other passengers got to their feet.” All out to Richmond!” the conductor called before hurrying down to the next car to repeat the cry.
Carpetbag in hand, Lee descended to the muddy ground outside the Virginia Central Railroad depot at the corner of sixteenth and Broad. The depot was a plain wooden shed; much in need of paint. A banner on the door of the tavern across the street advertised fried oysters at half price in honor of George Washington’s birthday.
The banner made Lee pause in mild bemusement: strange how the Confederacy still revered the founding fathers of the United States. Or perhaps it was not so strange. Surely Washington, were he somehow to whirl through time to the present, would find himself more at home on a Southern plantation than in a brawling Northern factory town like Pittsburgh or New York. And, of course, Washington was a Virginian, so where better to celebrate his birthday than Richmond?
A young man’s brisk voice brought Lee out of his reverie and back to the here and now: “General? I have a carriage waiting for you, sir.”
He turned around, exchanged salutes with a lieutenant who wore a uniform nattier than any still to be found in the Army of Northern Virginia. “I hope you were not waiting long for me?”
“No, sir.” The lieutenant pulled out a pocket watch. “It’s but a few minutes after four. The train was due in at a quarter past three. I arrived then, on the off chance it might be on time.” Both men smiled, knowing how unlikely that was. But a wise lieutenant did not take chances, not when he was meeting the senior officer of his army. He held out his hand for Lee’s bag, “If you’ll come with me, sir—”
Lee followed him to the carriage. Its black driver tapped a finger against the brim of his tall silk hat as Lee got in. “Evenin’, Marse Robert.”
“Hello, Luke. How are you today?”
“Oh, middlin’, sir; I expect I’m about middlin’.”
“That’s a fair enough place to be,” Lee said judiciously.
The lieutenant put a snap of command in his voice: “Back to the President’s office, Luke.”
“Yassuh.” Luke flicked his whip. The two-horse team started northwest up Broad Street. Like the lieutenant, both animals were in finer fettle than the beasts Jeb Stuart’s troopers rode. It was the same in Washington City, Lee had heard. He believed it. The farther one drew from the front lines, the easier one found comfort.
Train tracks ran down the middle of Broad Street, connecting the Virginia Central depot with that of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac eight blocks away. Lee heard an engine coming their way, puffing at full throttle to haul a fully laden train up steep Shockoe Hill. The horses heard, too, and tossed their heads to show they did not approve. Luke calmed them with a few soft words.
Before the bellowing, cinder-belching monster appeared, the carriage turned left onto Twelfth Street. It rattled through capitol Square on the way to the new building that had been the customhouse before Virginia left the Union.
Off to the left, twin rows of oaks led to the governor’s mansion. To the right, Lee got a quick glimpse of the equestrian statue of George Washington before it vanished behind the severely classic bulk of the Virginia state capitol, now also the home of the Confederate Congress. The white columns and walls were remarkably handsome in spring and summer, when set against the rich green of the lawns and shrubbery and trees that surrounded them. Now the lawns were dead and yellow, the trees skeletal without their cloak of leaves.
The Confederate flag waved bravely over the Capitol, red canton with blue saltire cross and thirteen stars on a white ground. The Stainless Banner would come down soon; sunset was near. It was both like enough to the Stars and Stripes and different enough from it to stir conflicting feelings in Lee. He remembered the day, almost three years gone now, when he had gone into the House of Delegates to take charge of Virginia’s forces. He shook his head. Four days before that, Winfield Scott had offered him command over the armies of the United States, to lead them against their seceded brethren. He still thought he had made the right—for him, the only—choice.
The massive rectangle of the former customhouse took up a whole city block. Built from concrete and steel, it might have served duty as a fortress. Unlike most of Richmond’s major buildings, it was in Italianate rather than neoclassic style, its three stories shown by the tall windows with arched tops.
Luke hitched his team to the rail in front of the building. The lieutenant said, “He will be at your disposal for the length of your stay in the city, sir. Now I will take you up to President Davis. Let me have your bag there, if you would.”