The Bloody Ground

Cartwright fumbled for his own revolver, but Starbuck pointed the gun momentarily at the frightened face and Cartwright immediately subsided. Starbuck shifted the gun back to Dennison. “Second chance coming up, Captain, sir. Dear Emily, please lay yourself down and play mattress for me. Let’s see how lucky you are the second time of asking, Captain.” He pulled the trigger and once again Dennison shuddered as the dead click echoed loud in the room. Starbuck immediately spun the chamber a third time and straightened his arm.

“You’re mad, Potter,” Dennison said, suddenly seeming very sober.

“I’m sober too,” Starbuck said and reached out with his left hand for Cartwright’s brandy, which he drank in one go. “I’ll be madder still when I’m drunk,” he said, “so how many chances do you reckon you’ve got with my wife, Captain? Are you going to ask her three times for the favor of a ride?”

Dennison considered reaching for his own revolver, but it was buttoned in its holster and he knew he would have no chance to free the weapon before a bullet slashed through the candle flames and shattered his skull. He licked his lips. “I guess I don’t have any chance, Lieutenant,” he said.

“I guess you don’t, Captain,” Starbuck said, “and I guess you owe me an apology too.”

Dennison grimaced at the thought. “You can go to hell, Potter,” he said defiantly.

Starbuck pulled the trigger, then immediately half cocked the gun and spun the cylinder a fourth time. When it came to rest he pulled the cock back and this time he could see the single percussion cap was waiting under the hammer. He smiled. “Three times lucky, Captain, but how good is your luck? I’m waiting for that apology.”

“I apologize, Lieutenant Potter,” Dennison managed to say.

Starbuck eased the hammer down, thrust the Adams into its holster, and stood up. “Never start what you can’t finish, Captain,” he said, then leaned forward and picked up the half full bottle of brandy. “Reckon I can finish this, though, but in privacy. You all have a nice conversation now.” He walked out of the room.

It was a humid, rainy night in Washington with no wind to take away the thick stench of the garbage dump that lay at the southern end of Seventeenth Street just a few yards from the hospital tents pitched on the ellipse. The sewage in Murder Bay added its own fetid smell to the air above the Northern capital that was more than usually crowded with soldiers. They were men who should have been marching in John Pope’s army toward Richmond, but instead they had been whipped backward by Robert Lee from the banks of the Bull Run and now they filled the tented camps inside Washington’s ring of forts and thronged the capital’s taverns.

One young cavalry officer hurried along Pennsylvania Avenue to the corner of Seventeenth Street, where he took off his wide-brimmed cavalryman’s hat to peer up at the street lamp. At every corner in Washington the lamps had their street’s name painted in black on the glass covering the mantel, an intelligent device, and once the young man was sure he was in the right place he walked up Seventeenth until he reached a three-story brick building that was thickly surrounded by trees. Gas lights showed where the building’s narrow end abutted onto the sidewalk and where a flight of steps led to a door guarded by two blue-coated sentries, though when the young cavalryman presented himself at that door he was told to go back to the garden entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue. He retraced his steps and discovered a driveway that led through night-blackened trees to an imposing portico of six massive columns that protected and dwarfed a small doorway guarded by a quartet of blue-coated infantrymen. Gas lamps hissed yellow under the portico, lighting a carriage that waited for its owner.

A clock struck nine as the cavalryman was granted entrance into the hallway where yet another guard demanded his name. “Faulconer,” the young man replied. “Captain Adam Faulconer.” The guard consulted a list, ticked off Adam’s name, then told him to put his scabbarded saber into an umbrella stand and afterward climb one flight of stairs, turn left at the stairhead, and walk to the very end of the corridor where he would find a door marked with the name of the man who had summoned him. The guard rattled off these directions, then went back to his copy of The Evening Star, which heralded Major General George McClellan’s reappointment as commander of the Northern army.

Adam Faulconer mounted the stairs and walked down the long, gloomy corridor. This building was the War Department, the very center of the North’s military effort, yet there was little sense of urgency in its darkened passages where Adam’s footfalls echoed as forlornly as the steps of a man pacing a deserted sepulcher. Most of the fanlights above the office doors were dark, though one light showed at the corridor’s far end and in its small glow Adam saw the name COL. THORNE painted in white letters against one of the door’s black panels. He knocked and was summoned inside.

He found himself in a surprisingly large room with two tall windows that were shut against both the rain and the moths that beat against the panes. The walls of the room were covered with maps, and one large desk stood beside one window, while two smaller clerks’ tables occupied the rest of the room. All the desks were covered in papers that had flowed onto the chairs and hardwood floor. Two cast-iron gasoliers hissed beneath the high ceiling, while a longcase clock ticked hollowly between the windows. The room’s only occupant was a tall uniformed man who stood with a ramrod-straight back as he stared at the scatter of lit windows showing above the trees in the White House. “Faulconer, yes?” the man asked without turning from the window.

“Yes, sir.”

“My name is Thorne. Lyman Thorne. Colonel Lyman Thorne.” Thorne had a coarse, almost angry voice, very deep toned, and when he abruptly turned toward Adam he revealed a face that matched the voice perfectly, for Thorne was a gaunt, white-bearded man with fierce eyes and with deep lines carved into his sun-darkened cheeks. His most prominent feature was his white hair, which grew thick, long, and wildly enough to make Thorne appear like a bearded version of Andrew Jackson. The Colonel carried himself straight and proud, though when he moved he favored his right leg, which suggested that his other might have been injured. He gazed at Adam for an instant, then turned back to the window. “There have been celebrations in Washington these last two days,” he growled.

“Yes, sir.”

“McClellan is back! John Pope is dismissed and the Young Napoleon has been given charge of the army again, and thus Washington celebrates.” Thorne spat into a brass cuspidor, then glared at Adam. “Do you celebrate this appointment, young Faulconer?”

Adam was taken aback by the question. “I haven’t considered it, sir,” he eventually admitted lamely.

“I do not celebrate, young Faulconer. My God, I do not. We gave McClellan a hundred thousand men, shipped him to the Virginia peninsula, and ordered him to take Richmond. And what did he do? He took counsel of his fears. He havered, that’s what he did, he havered! He dithered while the rebels scraped together a handful of rapscallion soldiers and trounced him straight back out to sea. Yet now the ditherer is to be our commanding general again, and do you know why, young Faulconer?” This question, like the rest of Thorne’s words, was directed at the windowpane rather than toward Adam.

“No, sir,” Adam answered.

“Because there is no one else. Because in all this great republic we cannot find one better general than little George McClellan. Not one!” Thorne spat into the cuspidor again. “I admit he can train troops, but he doesn’t know how to fight them. Doesn’t know how to lead. The man’s a humbug!” Thorne snarled the last word, then abruptly turned and glared at Adam once more. “Somewhere in the Republic there’s a man who can beat Robert Lee, but on my soul we haven’t found him yet. But we will, Faulconer, we will, and when we do we shall pulverize the so-called Confederacy into bone and blood. Bone and blood. But until we do find that man then it is our duty to mollycoddle the Young Napoleon. We have to pat him and soothe him, we have to tell him not to be frightened of ghosts and not to imagine enemies where there are none. In short, we have to wean him off Pinkerton. Do you know Pinkerton?”

“I know of him, sir.”

“The less you know, the better,” Thorne growled. “Pinkerton isn’t even a soldier! But McClellan swears by him, and even as you and I stand here talking Pinkerton is being given command of all the army’s intelligence once more. He had that same command in the peninsula, and what did he do with it? He summoned rebel soldiers out of thin air. He told the Young Napoleon that there were hundreds of thousands of men where there was nothing but a huddle of hungry rogues. Pinkerton will do the same again. Faulconer, mark my words. Within one week we shall be told that Lee has two hundred thousand men and that little McClellan dare not attack for fear of being beat. We shall haver again, we shall dither, and while we piss our collective pants Robert Lee will attack. Do you wonder that Europe laughs at us?”

“Do they, sir?” Adam, confused by the tirade, asked the question feebly.

“Oh they do, Faulconer, they do. American pride is being humbled by a rebellion we seem powerless to defeat and Europe takes pleasure in that. They pretend not, but if Robert Lee destroys McClellan then I daresay we’ll see European troops in the South. The French would love to join in, but they won’t jump till Britain decides, and Britain won’t join the game until they know which side is winning. Which is why Lee will attack us, Faulconer. Look!” Thorne strode to a map of the eastern seaboard that hung behind his desk. “We’ve made three efforts to capture Richmond. Three! And all have been defeated. Lee now controls all of northern Virginia, so what’s to stop him coming further north? Here, Faulconer, into Maryland, and maybe farther north still, into Pennsylvania.” The Colonel demonstrated these threats by sweeping his hand across the map. “He’ll grab our good harvest for his starving men and beat up little McClellan and so demonstrate to the Europeans that we can’t even defend our own territory. By next spring, Faulconer, there could be a hundred thousand European troops marching for the Confederacy, and what will we do then? Treat for peace, of course, and so the Republic of Washington and Jefferson will have lasted a mere eighty years and North America, Faulconer, will be fatally weakened for the next eighty years.” Thorne leaned over his desk and glared at Adam. “Lee cannot be allowed to win, Faulconer. He cannot,” the colonel said in a grave voice, almost as if he were charging Adam with the personal responsibility for saving the Republic.

“No, sir,” Adam said, and felt it was a weak response, but he was being swamped by the sheer force of Lyman Thorne’s personality. Sweat trickled down Adam’s face. The night was oppressive, and the rain had not diminished the humidity at all, while the gasoliers’ flaring mantles only added to the room’s stifling heat.

The colonel waved Adam toward a chair, then sat down himself and lit a cigar from a gas flame that burned from a tabletop gas jet connected to a long rubber extension cord that snaked down from the nearest gasolier. Once the cigar was lit he pushed the gas jet and papers aside, then leaned back and rubbed his face as though he was suddenly tired. “You’re a scalawag, right?” he demanded.

“Yes, sir,” Adam said. A scalawag was a Southerner who fought for the North, the opposite of a Copperhead.

“And three months ago,” Thorne went on, “you were a rebel on Johnson’s staff, am I right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And back then, Faulconer, our Young Napoleon was marching on Richmond. No, that is the wrong verb. He was crawling toward Richmond, while Detective Pinkerton,” Thorne mocked the description with his tone, “was convincing little George that the rebels had two hundred thousand troops. You sent information that would have corrected that misapprehension, only the news never got through. Some clever bastard on the other side replaced your dispatch with one of their own devising and so Richmond survived. I almost stopped that clever bastard, Faulconer, indeed I broke a leg trying, but I failed.” He grimaced, then sucked on his cigar. The smoke hung in the room like the lingering skein of a rifle shot.

“Back then, Faulconer,” Thorne continued, “I was working for the Inspector General’s Department. I did the jobs no one else wanted. Now I am more exalted, but still no more popular with this army than I was when I inspected their damned latrines or wondered why they needed so many clerks. But now, Faulconer, I have a measure of power. It is not mine, but belongs to my master and he lives in that house there.” He jerked the cigar toward the White House. “You follow me?”

“I think so, sir.”

“The president, Faulconer, believes as I do that this army is largely commanded by cretins. The army, of course, believes that the country is ruled by fools, and perhaps both are right, but for the moment, Faulconer, I’d put my money on the fools rather than the cretins. Officially I am a mere liaison officer between the fools and the cretins, but in reality, Faulconer, I am the president’s creature in the army. My job is to prevent the cretins from being more than usually cretinous. I want your help.”

Adam said nothing, not because he was reluctant to help, but because he was astonished by Thorne and his words. He was also cheered by them. The North, for all its power, seemed to be wallowing helplessly in the face of the rebellion’s energy and that made no sense to Adam, but here, at last, was a man who had a vigor to match the enemy’s defiance.

“Did you know, Faulconer, that your father has become Deputy Secretary of War for the Confederacy?” Thorne asked.

“No, sir, I didn’t.”

“Well, he is. In time, maybe, that will be useful, but not now.” Thorne pulled a sheet of paper toward him and in so doing toppled another pile that spilt close to the gas jet. A corner of paper burst into flames that Thorne slapped out with the air of a man forever extinguishing such accidental fires. “You left the Confederacy three months ago and joined Galloway’s Horse?” he asked, taking the facts from the paper he had selected.

“Yes, sir.”

“He was a good man, Galloway. He had some bright ideas, which is why, of course, this army starved him of men and resources. But it was still a damn fool idea for Galloway to get mixed up in battle. You were supposed to be scouts, not shock troops. Galloway died, yes?”

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

“And his second in command is missing, maybe dead, maybe captured. What was his name?”

“Blythe, sir,” Adam said bitterly. He had never liked, much less trusted, Billy Blythe.

“So Galloway’s Horse, so far as I can see, is a dead beast,” Thorne said. “No employment for you there, Faulconer. Are you married?”

The sudden question surprised Adam. He shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Quite right, too. A mistake to marry early.” Thorne went silent for a moment. “I’m making you a major,” he said abruptly, then waved Adam’s embarrassed thanks to silence. “I’m not promoting you because you deserve it, I don’t know if you do, but because if you work for me you’ll be constantly harassed by brainless staff officers and the higher your rank the less obnoxious that harassment will be.”

“Yes, sir,” Adam said.

Thorne drew on his cigar and stared at Adam. He liked what he saw. Major Adam Faulconer was a young man, fair haired and bearded, with a square, trustworthy face. He was, Thorne knew, an instinctive Unionist and an honest man, but maybe, Thorne reflected, those were the wrong qualities for this job. Maybe he needed a rogue, but the choice had not belonged to Thorne. “So what are you to do, Faulconer? I shall tell you.” He stood again and began pacing up and down behind his desk. “We have hundreds of sympathizers behind the enemy lines and most of them are no damn good. They see a rebel regiment march past and they’re so overawed by the column’s length that they report ten thousand men where in truth they’ve only seen a thousand. They send their messages and Detective Pinkerton multiplies their figure by three and Little George quakes in his fighting boots and begs Halleck to send him another army corps, and that, Faulconer, is how we’ve been conducting this war.”

“Yes, sir,” Adam said.