“Not yet, no,” Davis said.
“Among other things, they bear truly astonishing gunsmiths, marks. Some proclaim themselves to have been manufactured in the People’s Republic of China, a part of that country no one has been able to locate in any atlas. Others say they were made in Yugoslavia, a country which appears in no atlas. And still others are marked in what, after some effort, we determined to be Russian. I have learned they were made in the SSSR, but what the SSSR may be, I cannot tell you. It is, I confess, a considerable puzzlement.”
“By what you are telling us, Rivington seems more likely a transshipment point than one where the weapons are actually made,” Seddon said.
“So it does.” Lee looked toward the Secretary of War in some surprise. Why couldn’t Seddon make such cogent suggestions more often? Or was it cogent? Lee went on, “From where could the rifles be transshipped? Granted, Rivington is on the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, but the blockade runners are not bringing them in at Wilmington. They seem to originate directly at Rivington, coming, I cannot tell you how, from these unknown places I have mentioned, and travel from Rivington to us and, I gather, to other armies.”
“You have interrogated the railroad workers and our soldiers, you say,” Jefferson Davis said. “Have you not also questioned the men of Rivington, the ones who are with your army as instructors?”
“Mr. President, I have, but I confess only circumspectly,” Lee said. “They turn aside all significant queries; they are as closemouthed a band of men as I have ever encountered. And without your order, I have been unwilling to do anything that might antagonize them, lest the stream of carbines dry up as suddenly as it began to flow.”
Davis rubbed the smooth-shaven front of his chin, plucked at the beard that grew under his jaw.” I dislike our nation’s dependence upon any single small group, let alone one about which we know so little. Under the circumstances, though, General, I must reluctantly concur with your judgment.”
“Perhaps we should send agents to this Rivington, to learn of it what we may—circumspectly, of course,” Seddon said.
“A good plan. See to it,” Davis said. Seddon took a pencil and a scrap of paper from his pocket. He leaned forward, made a note to himself on the President’s desk, and put away the paper.
“Is there anything more, Mr. President?” Lee asked, hoping the Secretary of War would not forget until the next time he chanced to wear that waistcoat.
“No, General, thank you very much. You may go; I know you’ll be eager to see your wife. Please convey my greetings to her. She and her ladies have been of material benefit to the soldiers of the Confederacy, and I would not have her believe herself unappreciated,” Davis said.
Lee stood to go. “I will give her your exact words, Mr. President, as best I can remember them. I know she will be grateful to hear from you.” He nodded to Seddon. “I hope I see you again, sir.”
It was full dark outside, and cloudy, with a feel of rain in the air. Lee put on his hat and buttoned the top buttons of his coat as he walked out to the waiting carriage. Luke looked up at the sound of his footsteps. The black man quickly stowed away a small flask. Lee pretended he had not seen it. If Luke wanted a nip against the nighttime cold, that was his affair. “Gwine home now, Marse Robert?” he asked as he got down to untie the team.
“That’s right, Luke, to Mrs. Lee’s house.” It was hardly home. His proper home, Arlington, lay just across the Potomac from Washington City. It had been in Federal hands since the beginning of the war. For the last two years, he had lived with the Army of Northern Virginia. Anywhere away from it, he felt like a visitor.
“Have you there soon.” Luke returned to his seat. “It only be a couple blocks.”
The horses snorted eagerly as they began to walk. They had been cold, too. The carriage clattered northwest along Bank Street, the lower boundary of Capitol Square. When Luke got to Ninth Street, he turned right. Half a block later, at the corner of Ninth and Franklin, he went left again, onto Franklin.
Despite the holiday, lights burned at several windows of Mechanic’s Hall, which stood at the corner of Ninth and Franklin. Seddon no doubt had come from there: the building housed the War and Navy Departments. Before the Confederate capital moved to Richmond, the convention that had taken Virginia out of the United States had met there, too.
Past Mechanic’s Hall, Franklin Street was quiet and almost deserted. Two blocks away, on Broad Street, another train roared along between the depots of the Virginia Central and the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac. Its racket was in marked contrast to the serenity that seemed to flow from every brick of the United Presbyterian Church on the corner of Eighth and Franklin.
Lee smiled and shifted forward in his seat as the carriage rolled past the church. The house Mary Custis Lee was renting lay halfway down the same block, on the opposite side of the street.
“Yours is the middle house, am I right, Marse Robert?” Luke said.
“Yes, and thank you, Luke.” Lee descended from the carriage before it had quite stopped. Luke flicked the whip over the horses. As they began to move faster again, he reached down for the flask he had put away. He swallowed and sighed with pleasure.
The house across the street from 707 Franklin had in front of it a young maple in a planter painted with chevrons. “As you were, Sergeant,” Lee told it, smiling slightly. He opened the gate to the cast-iron fence in front 707 Franklin, hurried up the short walk to the porch. There he paused to wipe the mud from the unpaved street off his boots before he knocked on the door.
He heard footsteps inside. The door opened. Lamplight spilled onto the porch. Silhouetted by it, Agnes Lee peered out. “Father!” she exclaimed, and threw herself into his arms.
“Hello, my precious little Agnes,” he said. “You must be careful with your knitting needles there behind my back, lest you do me an injury worse than any those people have yet managed to inflict on me.”
She looked up at him with a doubtful smile. All her smiles were doubtful these days, and had been since her sister Annie died a year and a half before; she and Annie had been almost as close as twins. After he kissed her on the cheek, she pulled herself free and called, “Mother, Mary, Mildred—Father’s here!”
Mildred came rushing up first. “Precious life,” he said indulgently as he hugged her. “And how is my pet this evening?”
“Father,” she said, in the tone of voice any eighteen-year-old uses when her elderly and obviously decrepit parent presumes to allude to the unfortunate fact that she was once much younger than her present peak of maturity.
Lee did not mind; his youngest child was his pet, regardless of what she thought of the matter. “How is Custis Morgan?” he asked her.
“He’s happy and fat,” she answered. “Acorns are easier to come by than human provender.”
“Such a happy, fat squirrel had best not be seen in camp,” he teased, “lest he exit the stage in a stewpot-bound blaze of glory.” She made a face at him. He shook his head in mock reproof.
His eldest daughter came into the front hall a moment later, pushing his wife ahead of her in a wheeled chair. “Hello, Mary,” he called to them both. Mary his daughter bore a strong resemblance to his wife, though her hair was darker than Mary Custis Lee’s had been when she was young.
He took three quick steps to his wife, bent a little so he could clasp her hand in his. “How are you, my dear Mary?” he asked her. She stayed in her chair most of the time; rheumatism had so crippled her that she could hardly walk.