“By western standards, this isn’t much of a mountain,” James Longstreet said. “How high are we, anyhow?”
“I don’t quite know,” Lee admitted. “Sergeant Wynn?”
“About eleven hundred feet, sir,” Wynn said.
Longstreet’s fleshy cheeks rippled in a snort. “Eleven hundred feet? In Tennessee or North Carolina”—his home state—”this wouldn’t be a mountain. They might call it a knob. In the Rockies, they wouldn’t notice it was there.”
“It suffices for our purposes nonetheless,” Lee said.” Standing here, we can see twenty counties spread out below us, as if on the map. Sergeant Wynn, may I trouble you for your spyglass?”
Wynn handed him the long brass tube. He raised it to his right eye, peered northward over the Rapidan. The winter encampment of Federal General Warren’s V Corps, centered on Culpeper Court House, leaped toward him. Smoke floated up from chimneys; bright divisional flags bloomed like orderly rows of spring flowers. Grant had his headquarters by Culpeper Court House. A couple of miles further east, by Stevensburg, lay Winfield Scott Hancock’s II Corps; the encampment of Sedgwick’s VI Corps was beyond it, past Brandy Station—Lee thought for a moment of Rooney, returned at last to Confederate service. Farther north and east, past Rappahannock Station and Bealeton, were the cabins and tents of Ambrose Burnside’s IX Corps, with the Army of the Potomac but not formally part of it. Colored troops made up a good part of that corps, Lee had heard.
He lowered the telescope. “All seems quiet still in the Federal camps. Soon enough, though, those people will move.” He pointed east, toward the rank green growth of the Wilderness. “They will come by way of the fords there, Germanna and Ely’s just east of it.”
“You sound very sure,” Longstreet said. Of all Lee’s generals, he was most given to setting his own judgments against his commander’s.
“I think I should have suspected it in any case, but I also have intelligence I regard as trustworthy on the matter from the Rivington men.” Lee left it at that. Had he explained that Andries Rhoodie and his colleagues came from the future and thus could view Grant’s plans through hindsight rather than guesswork, he was sure most of the assembled officers would have thought him mad. Maybe he was. But any other explanation seemed even more improbable than the one Rhoodie had given him.
“Ah, the Rivington men,” Longstreet said. “If their ear for news is as good as their repeaters, then it must be very good indeed. One day before long, General Lee, at your convenience, I’d like to sit down with you and chat about the Rivington men. Had the I Corps not spent the winter in Tennessee, I’d have done it long since.”
“Certainly, General,” Lee said.
“I want to be part of that chat,” A. P. Hill said. His thin, fierce face had an indrawn look to it; the past year or so, he’d had a bad way of taking sick when battle neared. Lee worried about him. Now he continued, “I’d like to speak to them over the way they treat our Negroes, sir. They show more care to the animals they ride. It is not right.” The commander of III Corps was a Southern man through and through, but had even less use for slavery than did Lee.
“I have heard of this before, General Hill, and have hesitated to take them to task over what one might call a relatively small fault when the aid they have rendered us is so great,” Lee said carefully. “Perhaps I am in error. Time permitting, we shall discuss the matter.”
“May I borrow the telescope, sir?” Henry Heth said. Lee passed it to him. He turned the glass toward the Wilderness. With it still at his eye, he remarked, “The place is a bushwhacker’s dream.”
“Just so, Henry,” Lee said, pleased the divisional commander saw the same thing he did. “The enemy are at their weakest in that kind of fight, and we are at our strongest.”
Something hot and eager came into Heth’s usually chilly gray-blue eyes. He fingered the tuft of light brown hair that grew just beneath his lower lip. “If we hurt them badly enough there, they may skedaddle back over the Rapidan and leave us alone for a while.”
Longstreet shook his head. “I know Sam Grant. He’s never been one to back away from a fight. He will come straight at us every day he leads the Army of the Potomac.”
“We shall see what we shall see,” Lee said. “If what the Rivington men say is to be believed, the enemy will begin their move on Wednesday, the fourth of May.”
“Four days from now,” Richard Ewell murmured to himself. “My men will be ready.”
“And mine,” A. P. Hill said. Longstreet simply nodded.
“I am confident we shall all meet the test,” Lee said. Again he saw the upcoming battle in his mind’s eye. So real, so convincing were the images he summoned up that his heart began to pound, as if he were truly in combat. And on the heels of that pounding came pain that squeezed his chest like a vise.
He set his jaw and did his best to ignore it. Then he remembered the medicine Andries Rhoodie had given him. He took the glass bottle from his pocket. He struggled with the lid before he got it open; he was not used to tops with screw threads. He removed a tuft of cotton wool, shook out one of the little pills, and slid it under his tongue as Rhoodie had told him to do.
The pill had no particular taste. That in itself separated it from the vast majority of the medicaments he knew; which displayed their virtue by being either sweet or aggressively vile.
Rhoodie had warned him the—he put on his glasses for a moment to read the name on the bottle again—nitroglycerine might bring on a headache. Sure enough, blood thundered in his temples. Still, he’d known far worse after a few goblets of red wine.
Blood also thundered in his chest. The grip of the vise eased. He took a deep breath. All at once, he seemed able to get plenty of air. He felt as if the weight of ten or twelve years had suddenly fallen from his shoulders.
He looked at the bottle of pills again. In its own way, it was as startling as the repeaters Rhoodie had furnished to his army. But then, a future without wonders would hardly be worth looking forward to. He returned the bottle to his pocket. “Four more days,” he said.
*V*
The drums beat on and on, not just in the 47th North Carolina but in all the III Corps’s winter quarters. The hoarse, monotonous sound warned of battle to come.
Nate Caudell heard the long roll without surprise. For the past couple of days, couriers had galloped back and forth between Lee’s headquarters and the encampment, a sure sign something was in the wind. Just the night before, Colonel Faribault had relayed the order that all men were to have three days, cooked rations at hand, which meant the army would move soon.
Caudell hurried to the cabin that had been his home for the past few months. A couple of his messmates were already there, frantically getting ready to move out. Dempsey Eure and Rufus. Daniel came in hard on his heels. “Gonna feel funny, never seein’ this place again,” Daniel said as he started loading his meager personal property into his blanket.
“Sure is,” Caudell said. “You want to pass me our frying pan there? I have room for it.” With it in his blanket went the latest letter from his mother, a pocket Testament, a couple of reading primers, a second pair of socks, and his toothbrush. He tied the ends of the blanket together, covered it with an oilcloth, and draped it from left shoulder to right hip.
His marching rations consisted of a big chunk of corn bread, a smaller piece of salt pork, and several of the packaged desiccated meals that had lately started showing up in their supply shipments. He thought highly of those—they were better than what the cooks turned out almost any day and did not weigh down his mess bag.