“Yup,” Caudell said. “I felt the same way about him. That’s why he bothers me so much now.” Ballentine had seemed like a person to Caudell, not just some Digger, because he’d got to know him. In the same way, Mollie seemed like a person to him, not just some whore—because he’d got to know her. He kept that part of his thought to himself, but went on in musing tones, “Maybe a lot of niggers seem like people to somebody who knows them.”
“Maybe.” But Mollie sounded dubious. “Some, though, you got to sell South, and that’s the truth. They ain’t nothin’ but trouble to their own selves an’ everybody around ‘em.”
“That’s true enough. But you know what else?” Caudell waited for her to shake her head, then said, “If Billy Beddingfield was black, I’d sell him South in a minute, too.”
She giggled. “And that Benny Lang, he knocked Billy sideways. So there’s one up for him, to go with the one down for Georgie.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. It’s not as big an up as Georgie is a down, not even close, but it’s there. Reckon it goes to show nobody’s all good or all bad.”
“You got that right. He brung us the repeaters, too, to whup the Yankees with.”
“So he did. That has to count for something, I suppose.” Right then, Caudell did not care to give Benny Lang any points, but he was too just to find a way around it.
Mollie looked at him out of the comer of her eye. “Did you just fall by to chat, Nate, or did you have somethin’ else on your mind?”
“I hadn’t thought about anything else, but as long as I’m here—”
Robert E. Lee took off his reading glasses, slid them into his breast pocket. “So Lieutenant General Grant will go through the Wilderness, will he? I had rather expected him to try to duplicate McClellan’s campaign up the James toward Richmond. It is the shortest route to the capital, given the Federals’ regrettable control of the sea.”
“He will send the Army of the Potomac through the Wilderness, General, at the beginning of May, as I’ve written there,” Andries Rhoodie said positively. “His aim is not so much Richmond as your army. If Richmond falls while the Army of Northern Virginia lives, the Confederacy can stay alive. But if your army is beaten, Richmond will fall afterwards.”
Lee thought about that, nodded in concession. “It is sound strategy, and accords with the way Grant fought in the west. Very well then, I shall deploy my forces so as to be waiting for him when he arrives.”
“No, you mustn’t, General Lee.” Rhoodie sounded so alarmed, Lee stared at him in sharp surprise. “If he knows you’ve moved and are lying in wait for him, he can choose to attack by way of Fredericksburg instead, or up the James, or any other way he pleases. What I know only stays true if what leads up to it stays the same.”
“I—see,” Lee said slowly. After a few seconds, he laughed at himself. “Here I’d always imagined no general could have a greater advantage than knowing exactly what his opponent would do next. Now I know, and find myself unable to take full advantage of the knowledge for fear of his doing something else because I have prepared for this one thing. Thinking of what is to be as mutable comes hard to me.”
“It comes hard to almost everyone,” Rhoodie assured him.
Lee tapped with his forefinger the papers Rhoodie had given him. “By these, I am to have General Longstreet’s corps returned to me from Tennessee before the campaign commences. I am glad to see that would have happened, for otherwise I should have been leery of requesting it, lest in so doing I disrupt the chain of events ahead. Yet were I without it, the Army of the Potomac would have overwhelming weight of numbers.”
“May I suggest, General, that when it does come next month, you station it around Jackson’s Shop or Orange Springs, rather than farther west at Gordonsville?” Rhoodie said. “As the fight developed, Longstreet’s men nearly came too late because they had so far to travel.”
“Will this change not make Grant change his plans in response?” Lee asked.
“The risk, I think, is small. Right now, Grant doesn’t look at the Wilderness as a place to fight, only a place to get through as fast as possible so he can battle your army on open ground. He’ll be wondering if you will choose to fight anywhere this side of Richmond.”
“Is that a fact?” Lee meant the phrase as nothing but a polite conversational placeholder, but Rhoodie nodded all the same. Smiling a huntsman’s smile, Lee said; “I expect we shan’t keep him long in suspense as to that point, sir.”
“The AK-47 s should also be an unpleasant surprise for him,” Rhoodie said.
“I should have attacked without them,” Lee said. “Where better than the Wilderness? In the forest and undergrowth, the Federals’ superiority in artillery is nullified—there are few places for it to deploy, and few good targets at which to aim. And my soldiers, farmers most of them, are better woodsmen than the Yankees. Yes, Mr. Rhoodie, if General Grant wishes to allow a fight there, I shall be happy to oblige him.”
“I know that,” Rhoodie said.
“Yes, you would, wouldn’t you?” Lee looked down at those irresistibly fascinating papers. “Will you excuse me now, sir? I confess I feel the need to study these further.”
“Certainly.” Rhoodie stood to go. Then he said, “Oh, I almost forgot,” and reached into a pants pocket. He handed Lee a bottle of small white tablets…If your heart pains you, let one or two of these dissolve under your tongue. They should help. They may bring a spot of headache with them, but it shouldn’t last long.”
“Thank you, sir; you’re most kind to have thought of it.” Lee put his glasses back on so he could read the bottle’s label…’Nitroglycerine.’ Hmm. It sounds most forbiddingly medical; I can tell you that.”
“Er—yes.” Rhoodie’s inscrutable expression made his face unreadable as he said, “It is, among other things, useful in stimulating the heart. And now, General, if you will excuse me—” He ducked out under the tent flap.
Lee stuck the jar in a coat pocket. He forgot it in moments, as he resumed his study of the information Andries Rhoodie had given him. Here, a month and more in advance, he read the ford by which each Federal division would cross the Rapidan and the road south it would take. Altogether without such intelligence, he had smashed the Yankees the year before at Chancellorsville, on the eastern fringes of the Wilderness. With it—
“If I cannot whip General Grant with what is in these papers,” he said to no one in particular, “I am willing to go home.”
A few minutes later, Perry brought in Lee’s dinner, set it on the table in front of him, and hurried away. He did not notice the black man enter or leave; the food sat a long time untouched. Lee’s eyes went back and forth from Rhoodie’s documents to the map spread out on the cot beside him, but his mind did not see the names of units or the symbols that represented roads and hamlets. His mind saw marching men and flashing guns and patterns of collision…
Lee slid off Traveller. The horse’s grassy, earthy smell mingled with the perfume of dogwoods at last in blossom. Spring had taken a long time coming, but was finally here in full force.
Sergeant B. L. Wynn came out of the hut that housed the Confederate signal station on Clark’s Mountain. “Good morning to you, Sergeant,” Lee said pleasantly.
“Morning, sir,” Wynn answered, his voice casual—Lee was a frequent visitor to the station, to see for himself what the Federals across the Rapidan were up to. Then the young sergeant’s eyes went wide. “Uh, sirs,” he amended quickly.
Lee smiled. “Yes, Sergeant, I’ve brought rather more company than usual with me today…, He paused to enjoy his own understatement. Not only were his young staff officers along, but also all three of the Army of Northern Virginia’s corps commanders and a double handful of division heads. “I want them to get a view of the terrain from the mountaintop here.”