As most battles did, the one for the contested hilltop lost shape and organization and soon swirled into many small, ugly skirmishes. The rebels regained the heights, lost them, rallied to take them again. Riding up a second time, Charles nearly slammed into a knot of Union troopers. He raised his sword in time to parry that of a hot-eyed officer with flowing hair and a red scarf knotted at his throat.
Pushing, pushing down, his sword against Charles's, their horses neighing and shoving, the lieutenant sneered, "Your servant, Reb —"
"I'm not yours." Charles spat in the Yank's face to gain advantage, and would have stabbed him through had not the officer's horse stumbled. Circus rider gone mad, said a voice in his memory as the Yank's eyes locked with his for an instant.
The horse fell; the Yank disappeared. Neither man would forget the other.
"Look sharp, Charlie," Ab shouted above the cannonading, the sabers clashing and sparking, the wounded crying out. Through dust clouds, Charles had a blurry view of Ab pointing behind him. He twisted, saw a Yank sergeant raise a huge pistol.
Ab closed in on the Yank. Using his empty revolver as a club, he chopped at the sergeant's arm. The sergeant changed his aim and shot Ab in the chest at a range of two feet.
"Ab!" A scream did no good. Ab was already gone, sliding sideways, his eyes open but no longer comprehending who or where he was — had been — as he sank from sight. The sergeant vanished in the melee.
Teeth clenched, Charles parried a cut from a Union trooper ramming his horse into Sport. Clang — the trooper hit a second time. Sparks hissed and leaped where metal edges met.
The trooper fought his bucking horse. He was a redhead, scarcely twenty, with a foolish grin showing under his big red mustaches.
"Lost your nerve?" Ab died thinking that. Saved me in spite of it —
"Got you this time," the redhead shouted. With a curse and a skillful dodge, Charles escaped the sword and put his own halfway through the boy's throat. He pulled it out with no remorse. Ab was right: Gus had softened and weakened him. It had taken this bloody June day to reveal the truth.
Driving on up to the heights of Fleetwood again, Charles suddenly realized a riderless horse was running beside Sport. It was Ab's mount, Cyclone. The animal kept on toward the sound of the guns. A bursting grape canister put out one of its eyes and opened a wound in its head. Like any brave, battle-trained war horse, Cyclone didn't neigh or bellow. Cyclone plowed on, slower but still moving forward in blood and silent pain until the wounds and the angle of the slope became too much, and it knelt down on its forelegs, wanting to continue but unable.
Charles sabered like a madman, weaving and feinting so fast, no one could touch him. Then another Yank charged; an ungainly man with the coaly hair and heavy-cream skin and blue eyes of the black Irish. The Yank wore corporal's chevrons and swore at Charles in a tongue he took to be Gaelic. Charles fought him nearly four minutes, blocking cuts, striking the Yank's left shoulder, parrying again, finally running him through the belly. He struck the man's ribs, yanked out the sword, and stabbed again.
The horses bucked and bumped each other. The Irishman swayed. Charles stabbed him a third time. What keeps him up? Why won't he fall? Why couldn't the hapless fools be dragged out of the saddle any more? Who had taught them to ride and fight so fiercely?
"Damned pernicious traitor," cried the trebly wounded Irishman, sounding exactly like a Maine cadet Charles had known at West Point. Were the Yanks also making troopers of lobstermen? God help the South if they could accomplish miracles like that.
A fourth stroke sent the corporal down, sliding sideways, unable to free himself from his right stirrup. An artillery limber rolled over his head and pushed it deep in soft brown loam. The man had been a devil; Charles shook with terror for more than a minute.
In the end the Southerners won and held the hill. But the Union reconnaissance in force had achieved its objective. Lee's army was found.
The Yanks achieved a second, unplanned, objective as well. They put a sword deep into the confidence of the Confederate cavalry. Charles knew it when he fought the Irishman with the Down East voice.
Pleasanton ordered a general retreat before dark. As the sun sank and the wind cleared Fleetwood of smoke and dust, legions of glistening bluebottle flies descended on the trampled red grass. The turkey buzzards sailed out of the twilight sky. Charles rode through the detritus of the charges and countercharges he could no longer count or remember separately. He searched until he found Ab's body, a hundred yards beyond the place where he had died. The carrion birds had already reached his face. Charles waved off the birds, but one rose with a piece of pink flesh in its beak. Charles pulled his Colt and killed the bird.
He buried Ab in some woods south of the railroad line, using a borrowed trenching tool. As he dug, he tried to find comfort in the memory of good times he and Ab had shared. There wasn't any.
He put Ab into the hole in the ground, then squatted at the edge, deliberating. A minute passed. He unbuttoned his shirt and lifted the thong over his head. He studied the handmade sack containing the book with the ball embedded in it. The book hadn't protected him, it had emasculated him. He threw the bag in the grave and began to shovel dirt to fill the hole.
He had seen General Hampton a number of times during the fighting, whirling that great Crusader's sword and galloping ahead of his men, as good cavalry generals always did. That night Charles saw him again. The loss of his brother made Hampton look like an old man.
Charles heard that the surgeons didn't think they could save Calbraith Butler's foot. So much had happened on Fleetwood that day — deaths and small heroisms, some noticed, some not. Charles had given up his only good friend and regained something that he had lost.
He rubbed Sport down and fed him and stroked his neck. "We made it through once more, old friend." The gray gave a small shake of his head; he was as spent as Charles.
Brandy Station made the reputation of the Union cavalry. It tarnished Stuart's. And, belatedly, it showed Charles the sharp accuracy of his fear about the relationship with Gus. Such an attachment was wrong in wartime. Wrong for her, wrong for him.
Charles had been observed in action during the assaults on Fleetwood. He received a commendation in general orders from Hampton and a brevet to major. What he got with no official action was a new direction for himself. He must think first of his duty. He loved Gus; that wouldn't change. But speculations about marriage, a future with her, had no place in a soldier's mind.
They dulled his concentration. Made him more vulnerable, less effective.
Gus would have to know how he felt. That was only fair. Questions of how and when to tell her, he was too tired to confront just now.
83
"Pack," Stanley said.
Sticky and ill-tempered from the heat of that Monday, June 15, Isabel retorted, "How dare you burst in on me in the middle of the day and start issuing orders."
He mopped his face, but the sweat popped out again. "All right, stay. I'm taking the boys to Lehigh Station via the four o'clock to Baltimore. I paid three times the normal price of the tickets, and I was lucky to be able to do it."
Uneasy all at once — he never spoke sharply to her — she moderated her tone. "What's provoked this, Stanley?"
"What the newsboys are shouting on every corner downtown. 'Washington in danger.' I've heard that Lee is in Hagerstown — I've heard he's in Pennsylvania — the rebs might have the town encircled by morning. I decided it's time for a vacation. If you don't care to go, that's your affair."