The weather, wet and dismal, deepened Billy's malaise and finally affected him physically. On the ninth of December he started sneezing. Then came queasiness and a headache. The next night, as the pontoon train began its advance to a previously scouted field beside the river, his forehead felt scorching, and he could barely suppress violent shivering. He said nothing.
They moved as quietly as possible. Fog had settled in, helping to muffle sound. At three in the morning, the regular battalion, assisted by the Fifteenth and the Fiftieth New York Volunteer Engineers, unloaded the boats while the teamsters cursed and coddled their horses to minimize noise. Everyone knew the significance of the pale splotches of color in the fog; among the trees and tall houses on the other shore, Confederate picket fires burned.
"Quiet," Billy said every minute or so. The men repeatedly dropped the boats as they labored across the plowed field or blundered into one another and threatened a fight. There was a bad feeling about this campaign so late in the year. It was misbegotten. Cursed.
The fever swirled his thoughts and filmed his vision, but Billy kept on, softly calling directions, maintaining order, lifting and carrying when some weaker man faltered and fell out. A misty drizzle started. Then he began to ache.
During a break in the work, he clasped his arms around his body in a vain effort to warm up. Lije appeared. Touched his shoulder.
"There are plenty to carry on here. Go to the surgeons, where you belong." Billy jerked away from his friend's hand. " 'M all right." Lije stood still, said nothing, but Billy knew he was hurt all the same. He started to apologize, but Lije turned and went back to the men.
Shame overwhelmed Billy, then uncharacteristic contempt for his friend. How could Lije believe all that Scriptural twaddle? If there was a compassionate God, how could He permit this nightmare war to drag on?
They kept at the work, continually watching the picket fires on the other side of the river. The drizzle produced heavy smoke from time to time, but the rebs kept the fires replenished with dry wood. One fire directly opposite the bridge site drew special attention because the soldier on picket duty could be seen with some clarity. He was reedy, bearded, and marched back and forth as if he had all the energy in the world.
It was nearly daybreak when the first boats went in. The men dropped one, and it smacked the shallows, loud as a shot. Superintending the work of moving more boats to the shore, Billy heard someone exclaim, "It's all up," then saw the rebel picket pluck a brand from the fire and wave it over his head, an arc of sparks.
Over the picket's cry, Lije shouted, "Press ahead, boys. No need for silence now."
They rushed forward with balks, chesses, and rails as a small signal cannon banged on the opposite shore. Running figures showed against the watch fires. A detachment of infantry came up behind the engineers, sleepy marksmen readying weapons. Artillery wheeled into place on the bluff above. Billy suspected all of it would be scant protection.
They had five boats anchored and two planked by the time enemy skirmishers appeared and opened fire. Looking bilious in the breaking light, Lieutenant Cross and a crew put out in their boats, the first to strike for the enemy shore, which they might or might not reach.
Billy worked on the end of the bridge, soon extended to midstream; he helped to cleat each boat to a pair of balks, then run it out. He heard the guns begin to crackle. A ball plopped in the water to his right; another thunked the gunwale of the pontoon boat over which he was kneeling.
"Wish I had my fucking gun," someone said.
"Stop wasting breath," Billy said. "Work."
Men ran forward with chesses. One of them jerked suddenly, stepped sideways, and tumbled into the Rappahannock.
Consternation. Hands shot down to seize and lift the wounded engineer. Billy had never felt water so icy. Lije ran out on the bridge. "Courage, boys. 'Our soul waiteth for the Lord. He is our help and our shield.'"
Dragging the man to safety — blood and water streaming from his face — Billy twisted around and said, "Shut up, Lije. The Lord our shield didn't help this man, and He isn't going to help the rest of us, so shut up, will you?"
The white-bearded man seemed to shrivel. Anger flashed in his eyes, quickly replaced by sadness. Billy wanted to bite off his tongue. Men stared at him, but only one mattered. He ran to Lije along the slippery bridge and clutched his arm.
"I didn't mean that. I'm eternally sorry for saying something so —"
"Down," Lije yelled as rebs across the river volleyed. He pushed Billy and dropped on top of him.
Billy's head smacked the bridge. He tried to rise, but too much had worn him down. Too much illness, tiredness, despair. Ashamed though he was, he let himself sink into comforting black.
Later the same day — it was Friday, December eleventh — Billy lay in a field hospital at Falmouth. There he learned that the engineers had worked all morning under constant fire and had finished two of five planned bridges across the Rappahannock by noon.
Too weak to return to duty, he spent the hours of Saturday listening to cannonading. On Sunday, Lije came poking among the cots, found his friend, and sat down on a box beside a pole where a lantern hung. He asked Billy how he felt.
"Ashamed, Lije. Ashamed of what I said and how I said it."
"Well, sir," returned the older man a bit formally, "I do confess I took it hard for some length of time."
"You saved me from a wound anyway."
"None of us is a perfect vessel, and the heart of the Master's ministry was forgiveness. You were ill, we were all exhausted, and the situation was perilous. What man can be blamed for a rash word in such circumstances?"
His prophet's face gentled. "You want the news, no doubt. I am afraid the foreboding expressed by you and many others was justified in full. Even my own faith stretches exceeding thin after events of yesterday."
Amid the rows of sick, wounded, and dying, Lije told his friend how the federals had crossed the river and what had befallen them.
61
That same Sunday night, three men kept a vigil in Secretary Stanton's office.
Potomac mist drifted outside the windows. The gas hissed, and there were soft clickings from an unseen source. Stanley wished the vigil would end so he could go home. He wanted to examine the latest statements from Lashbrook's, which had doubled its already enormous business thanks to the covert contract arranged by Butler. He tried to conceal his impatience, though unintentionally he shifted farther and farther forward to the edge of the chair. His left foot moved up and down, silently tapping.
Major Albert Johnson, the arrogant young man formerly Stanton's law clerk and now his most trusted aide, strode from the main door to that of the adjoining cipher room, where he about-faced, crossed the office, and began the circuit again.
The President lay on the couch he had occupied most of the day. His unfashionable dark suit had wrinkled. His eyes, focused somewhere far below the carpet, suited a mourner. His color was that of a man poisoned with jaundice.
Lincoln had angrily told them that a Mr. Villard, a correspondent for Greeley's Tribune, had returned from the front on Saturday and had been brought to the Executive Mansion at 10:00 p.m. There he had reported what he knew and protested the refusal of the military censor to clear his dispatches about Burnside's futile assaults on Fredericksburg. "I offered him my apology and said I hoped the news was not as bad as he perceived."
None of them knew for certain. The secretary controlled what was published — the military censors reported to him — and he also controlled the telegraph from the front. He had removed the receiving instruments from McClellan's headquarters and installed them in the library upstairs soon after he took office. He had even pirated McClellan's chief telegraph officer, Captain Eckert. Stanley admired the secretary's audacious seizure of the information lines; nothing of substance came into Washington or went out of it without Stanton knowing it first. Stanton used the telegraph like an umbilical cord to tie his department more securely to the Executive Mansion and Lincoln himself. The President continued to profess great trust in Stanton as well as a magnanimous personal admiration for the man who had once snubbed him professionally when both were lawyers. Stanton now termed Lincoln his dear friend, though he had manipulated the relationship so that the President was the dependent, not the dominant, partner.