He tried to minimize it to Constance, shrugging. "I expressed my views, and he put them down, pretty viciously. He wants congressional control of reconstruction and he wants blood from the South." George didn't mean to grow emotional, but he did. "Stevens is willing to go to war with Mr. Johnson to get what he wants. And I thought it was time to bind up the Union. God knows our family's suffered and bled enough. Orry's, too."
Constance sighed, searching for some way to ease his unhappiness. With a forced smile on her plump face, she said, "Dearest, it's only politics, after all —"
"No. It's much more than that. I was under the impression that we were celebrating because the war is over. Stevens set me straight. It's only starting."
And George did not know whether the two families, already wounded by four years of one sort of war, could survive another.
BOOK ONE
LOST CAUSES
We all agree that the seceded states, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those states, is to again get them into that proper, practical relation. I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even considering whether these states have ever been out of the Union, than with it Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad.
Grind down the traitors. Grind the traitors in the dust.
1
All around him, pillars of fire shot skyward. The fighting had ignited the dry underbrush, then the trees. Smoke brought tears to his eyes and made it hard to see the enemy skirmishers.
Charles Main bent low over the neck of his gray, Sport, and waved his straw hat, shouting "Hah! Hah!" Ahead, at the gallop, manes streaming out, the twenty splendid cavalry horses veered one way, then another, seeking escape from the heat and the scarlet glare.
"Don't let them turn," Charles shouted to Ab Woolner, whom he couldn't see in the thick smoke. Rifle fire crackled. A dim figure to his left toppled from the saddle.
Could they get out? They had to get out. The army desperately needed these stolen mounts.
A burly sergeant in Union blue jumped up from behind a log. He aimed and put a rifle ball into the head of the mare at the front of the herd. She bellowed and fell. A chestnut behind her stumbled and went down. Charles heard bone snap as he galloped on. The sergeant's sooty face broke into a smile. He blew a hole in the head of the chestnut.
The heat seared Charles's face. The smoke all but blinded him. He'd completely lost sight of Ab and the others in the gray-clad raiding party. Only the need to get the animals to General Hampton pushed him on through the inferno that mingled sunlight with fire.
His lungs began to hurt, strangled for air. He thought he saw a gap ahead that marked the end of the burning wood. He applied spurs; Sport responded gallantly. "Ab, straight ahead. Do you see it?"
There was no response except more rifle fire, more outcries, more sounds of horses and men tumbling into the burning leaves that carpeted the ground. Charles jammed his hat on his head and yanked out his .44-caliber Army Colt and thumbed the hammer back. In front of him, strung across the escape lane, three Union soldiers raised bayonets. They turned sideways to the stampeding horses. One soldier rammed his bayonet into the belly of a piebald. A geyser of blood splashed him. With a great agonized whinny, the piebald went down.
Such vicious brutality to an animal drove Charles past all reason. He fired two rounds, but Sport was racing over such rough ground he couldn't hope for a hit. With the herd flowing around them, the three Union boys took aim. One ball tore right between Sport's eyes and splattered blood on Charles's face. He let out a demented scream as the gray's forelegs buckled, tossing him forward.
He landed hard and came up on hands and knees, groggy. Another smiling Union boy dodged in with his bayonet. Charles had an impression of orange light too bright to stare at, heat so intense he could almost feel it broil his skin. The Union boy stepped past Sport, down and dying, and rammed the bayonet into Charles's belly and ripped upward, tearing him open from navel to breastbone.
A second soldier put his rifle to Charles's head. Charles heard the roar, felt the impact — then the wood went dark.
"Mr. Charles —"
"Straight on, Ab! It's the only way out."
"Mr. Charles, sir, wake up."
He opened his eyes, saw a woman's silhouette bathed in deep red light. He swallowed air, thrashed. Red light. The forest was burning —
No. The light came from the red bowls of the gas mantles around the parlor. There was no fire, no heat. Still dazed, he said, "Augusta?"
"Oh, no, sir," she said sadly. "It's Maureen. You made such an outcry, I thought you'd had a seizure of some kind."
Charles sat up and pushed his dark hair off his sweaty forehead. The hair hadn't been cut in a while. It curled over the collar of his faded blue shirt. Though he was only twenty-nine, a lot of his handsomeness had been worn away by privation and despair.
Across the parlor of the suite in the Grand Prairie Hotel, Chicago, he saw his gun belt lying on a chair cushion. The holster held his 1848 Colt, engraved with a scene of Indians fighting Army dragoons. Over the back of the same chair lay his gypsy cloak, a patchwork of squares from butternut trousers, fur robes, Union greatcoats, yellow and scarlet comforters. He'd sewn it, piece by piece, during the war, for warmth. The war —
"Bad dream," he said. "Did I wake Gus?"
"No, sir. Your son's sleeping soundly. I'm sorry about the nightmare."
"I should have known it for what it was. Ab Woolner was in it. And my horse Sport. They're both dead." He rubbed his eyes. "I'll be all right, Maureen. Thank you."
Doubtfully, she said, "Yes, sir," and tiptoed out.
All right? he thought. How could he ever be all right? He'd lost everything in the war, because he'd lost Augusta Barclay, who had died giving birth to the son he never knew about until she was gone.
The spell of the dream still gripped him. He could see and smell the forest burning, just as the Wilderness had burned. He could feel the heat boiling his blood. It was a fitting dream. He was a burned-out man, his waking hours haunted by two conflicting questions: Where could he find peace for himself? Where did he fit in a country no longer at war? His only answer to both was "Nowhere."
He shoved his hair back again and staggered to the sideboard, where he poured a stiff drink. Ruddy sunset light tinted the roofs of Randolph Street visible from the corner window. He was just finishing the drink, still trying to shake off the nightmare, when Augusta's uncle, Brigadier Jack Duncan, came through the foyer.
The first thing he said was "Charlie, I have bad news."
Brevet Brigadier Duncan was a thickly built man with crinkly gray hair and ruddy cheeks. He looked splendid in full dress: tail coat, sword belt, baldric, sash with gauntlets folded over it, chapeau with black silk cockade tucked under his arm. His actual rank in his new post at the Military Division of the Mississippi, headquartered in Chicago, was captain. Most wartime brevets had been reduced, but like all the others, Duncan was entitled to be addressed by his higher rank. He wore the single silver star of a brigadier on his epaulets, but he complained about the confusion of ranks, titles, insignia, and uniforms in the postwar army.