When the tool wagons arrived — late — grading of the approaches commenced. At half past ten the work was finished. Though Billy was yawning and ready to drop, nervousness kept him awake most of the night. Tomorrow there would be a battle. Would Bison be in it? He had thought of Charles frequently in the last few days. Was he still alive?
As was customary, the engineers were issued ammunition — forty rounds for the cartridge box, twenty for the pockets — and rations, but they were withheld from the actual fighting. Billy and Lije and the others sat out the bloody day on a ridge overlooking the fords constructed the night before. In view of what he saw, Billy wished he had been elsewhere. The sight of the dead and wounded induced a disloyal reaction in him for a time; how could any cause be worth so many human lives?
Rushed forward next day, the engineers acted as infantry support for a battery near the center of the line. Sporadic Confederate sniping harassed them, but caused no casualties. The day after that, the battalion withdrew toward Sharpsburg across the lower creek bridge, already being called Burnside's in honor of the general who had stormed it during the battle's final phase.
The federal pontoon bridge at Harpers Ferry had been wrecked by the rebels, so the engineers marched there, and late on the twenty-first fell to rebuilding it. Billy found the work restorative; with hands and backs and minds and a lot of sweat, the battalion created things instead of destroying them. He built a mental barrier and behind it hid the purpose of those creations.
From the shallows they dragged pontoon boats that could be salvaged and repaired them with wood from boxes in which rations of crackers were shipped. By now Billy's beard was two inches long. He existed in a perpetual bleary state and sometimes fell asleep on his feet for five or ten seconds. He longed for Brett.
During the night of the twenty-second, wagons arrived with the regular pontoon train and additional men — the Fiftieth New York Volunteer Engineers. He worked until dawn, frequently wading in chilly water, and at first light on the twenty-third was relieved to sleep a while. He covered himself with a blanket. The long separation from his wife produced night dreams and embarrassing evidence afterward.
After four hours, he woke and ate, feeling he could go on now. Some of the engineers formed a betting pool; each man drew a slip with a date on it. The date was understood to be that on which McClellan would be relieved. Choices were offered all the way through the end of December.
Billy heard no great condemnation of the commanding general, just acceptance of a fact. Little Mac had failed to pursue and destroy Lee's army when he had the opportunity, and the Original Gorilla would not like that.
Two days later came news of what Lincoln had announced publicly on the twenty-fourth. Over the evening fires, men argued and, in the time-honored tradition of armies, garbled the details. "He signed this paper freeing every goddamn coon in the goddamn country."
"You're wrong. It's only them in the states still rebelling come the first of January. He didn't touch Kentucky or places like that."
"Well," said one of the New York pick-and-shovel volunteers, "the thing is still an insult to white men. No one will back him up. Not in this army." Much agreement there.
Unsure of his own reaction, Billy went to Lije's tent and poked his head in. His bearded friend was kneeling, hands clasped, head bowed. Billy withdrew, waited five minutes, coughed and scuffed his feet before entering again. He asked Lije what he thought of the proclamation.
"A month ago," Lije said, "Mr. Lincoln was still meeting with some of our freed brethren, urging them to search out a place in Central America to colonize. So the conclusion cannot be escaped. He has promulgated a war measure, nothing more. And yet — and yet —"
Lije's index finger ticktocked, as if admonishing caution from a pulpit. "I have read books about Washington and Jefferson and foul-mouthed Old Hickory which hint of powers in events — in the presidency itself — that sometimes transmute base metal to gold. It could be so here, with the deed and with the man."
"He exempted any state that comes back in the Union by January.
"None will. That is why it is a war measure." "Then what's the worth of it, except to make the rebs mad and maybe start uprisings that won't amount to much?"
"What is the worth? The worth is in the core of it. The core of it — however equivocated, however compromised — is right. It creates, at last, a moral spine for this war. Henceforward we fight for loosing the shackles on fellow human beings."
"I think it'll bring down a hell of a lot of trouble — inside the army and out."
He hadn't changed his mind at dusk when he went for a stroll along the Potomac. He wanted to shake off lingering revulsion for the sights of the campaign and confusion over this newest twist in the war's course. He concentrated on thoughts of Brett
A melancholy bugle call sounded beneath the bluffs — a new call, played for the first time down in Virginia in June or July. Who had composed it and where, he didn't know. A last salute to a soldier.
Who was it for, who had died, he wondered. And what had died with the stroke of Lincoln's pen? What had been born? All were questions appropriate to the gathering autumn darkness.
He stood motionless, listening to the river's purl and the familiar camp noises and the fading of the final notes of "Taps."
In Virginia, Charles showed Ab An Essay on Man. Touching the lead ball embedded in the center, then the book itself, Ab asked, "Who give you this?"
"Augusta Barclay."
"Thought you told me you didn't have a girl."
"I have a friend who sent me a Christmas present."
"Is that right?" Ab fingered the flattened bullet again. "You was saved by religion, Charlie. You didn't get a Testament wound" — every month or so you heard of someone's life being spared because a shot hit his pocket Scripture — "but it's near as holy."
Silence.
"You got a Pope wound. Says so right here."
Charles didn't smile, just shook his head. Ab looked embarrassed and unhappy. Charles replaced the book, pulled the drawstring, and hid the bag under his shirt.
Cooper took his wife out of the house to tell her.
It was the hour of soft gray, with stars sparkling and a bar of orange light narrowing over the Wirral. Autumn breezes swept Abercromby Square, sending the swans to their sleeping places under the willows around the pond. A few leaves, already crisped and reddened, spun around the black iron bases of the street lamps.
"They want us home again. The message arrived in today's pouch from Richmond."
Judith didn't reply immediately. Hand in hand, husband and wife crossed the square to a bench where they liked to sit and discuss decisions or the events of the day. A part of Cooper never surrendered fatherhood; he had given Judah permission to run a while, on the condition he not stray too far. He repeatedly glanced toward the fence for a sign of the boy returning.
They reached the bench. The wind was sharp. The Mersey smelled of salt and some newly berthed spice ship. "That is a surprise," Judith said at last. "Was a reason given?"
Across the way, an elderly manservant emerged from Prioleau's house to trim the gas lamps flanking the front door. On the second floor, centered in a window lintel, a single star in bas-relief declared Prioleau's loyalty.
"The war isn't going well for the Yankees, but neither is it going well for our side. The toll in Maryland was dreadful."
And lives were not the only loss. When reports of the battle reached Europe, the outcome was construed as a defeat for the Confederacy. Despite false cheer and pretense to the contrary, those in Bulloch's section knew the silent truth of Sharpsburg. The South would never gain diplomatic recognition.