guard was the one who tortured Billy. The reason it bothers me is, I lost control. I've seen the elephant often enough. I thought I could handle tight spots.'
'But how many prison escapes have you staged?' Orry asked.
'Yes, there's that.' Charles nodded, but he remained unconvinced.
'How did Billy look?' Madeline asked.
'White and sickly. Feeble as the devil. I don't know if he can make it even halfway to the Rapidan.'
'How is Brett? Did he say?'
Charles answered her with a shake of his head. 'He hasn't heard from Brett in months. That guard, Vesey, destroyed every letter Billy wrote, so I'd guess he destroyed any that came in, too. Orry, can you spare some cash for the liveryman? He'll never see his mule again.'
'I'll take care of it,' Orry promised.
Charles yawned. He was worn out, ashamed of his loss of self-control, and most of all saddened by the reunion with Billy. It seemed to him their talk had been trivial and difficult to carry on. Years of separation, their service on different sides — everything took its toll. They were friends and foes at the same time, and every halting sentence they had spoken expressed that without words.
'One more drink, and I'm going to get some sleep,' he announced. 'I'd like to be out of Richmond early in the morning. We'll be in the field soon —' He extended his glass to Orry; the liquor trickled noisily from the brown bottle. 'Have you heard Grant's bringing a new cavalry commander from the West? Phil Sheridan. I knew him at West Point. Tough little Irishman. Greatest man with a cussword I ever met. I hate to see him in Virginia. Still —'
He tossed off the two inches with a speed that made Madeline frown. 'It just means things will wind up that much faster.'
Orry watched him a moment. 'You don't think we can win?'
'Do you?'
Orry sat still, his gaze wandering through the pattern of the carpet.
Presently Charles stretched and yawned again. 'Hell,' he said,
'I'm not even sure we can sue for peace on favorable terms. Not with Unconditional Surrender Grant turning the screw.'
'I knew him,' Orry mused. 'We drank beer together in Mexico.'
'What's he like?'
'Oh, it's been years since I saw him. Our keen-minded Southern journalists scorn him for being round- shouldered and slovenly. Really important considerations, eh? Ask Pete Longstreet whether he respects Sam Grant. Ask Dick Ewell. Three years ago, Ewell said there was an obscure West Point man somewhere in Missouri whom he hoped the Yankees would never discover. He said he feared him more than all the others put together.'
'God help us,' Charles remarked, reaching for a blanket. 'Would it be all right with you two if I went to sleep now?' Orry turned off the gas, and he and Madeline said good night. Still fully dressed, Charles rolled up in the blanket and shut his eyes.
He found it hard to rest. Too many ghosts had arisen and roamed tonight.
He dragged the blanket against his cheek. He didn't want to think about it. Not about Billy in enemy country, riding for his life. Not about the Union horse already surprisingly good but now with a chance at supremacy under Sheridan. Not about Grant, who preached something called 'enlightened warfare,' which meant, so far as he could make out, throwing your men away like matchsticks because you always had more.
He fell asleep as some distant steeple rang five. He slept an hour, dreaming of Gus, and of Billy lying in a sunlit field, pierced by bullet holes thick and black with swarming flies.
When he woke, the comforting aroma of the Marshall Street substitute for coffee permeated the flat. In the first wan light, he trudged to the privy behind the building, then returned and splashed water on his face and hands and sat down opposite his cousin over cups of the strong brew Madeline poured for them.
Orry's expression indicated something serious was on his mind. Charles waited till his cousin came out with it.
'We had so much to talk about last night, I never got to the other bad news.'
'Trouble back home?'
'No. Right here in the city. I uncovered a plot to assassinate the President and members of his cabinet.' Disbelief prompted Charles to smile; Orry's somber expression restrained him. 'Someone well known and close to both of us is involved.'
'Who?'
'Your cousin. My sister.'
'Ashton?'
'Yes.'
'Great balls of Union-blue fire,' Charles said, in the same tone he might have taken if someone had told him the paymaster would be late again. He was startled to probe his feelings and find so little astonishment; scarcely more than mild surprise. There was a hardening center in him that nothing much could reach, let alone affect.
Orry described all that had happened thus far, beginning with Mrs. Halloran's visit and ending with the abrupt and mysterious disappearance of the chief conspirator and the arms and ammunition Orry had seen at the farm downriver on the James.
'For a few days after that, I thought I was crazy. I've gotten over it. They may have highly placed friends helping them cover the trail, and I know what I saw. The plot's real, Huntoon's involved, and so is Ashton.'
'What are you going to do?'
Orry's stare told Charles he wasn't the only one whose hide had thickened.
'I'm going to catch her.'
103
They surprised him on the creek bank at first light, creeping up while he slept. None of the three identified himself. He named them silently — Scars, One Thumb, Hound Face. All of them wore tattered Confederate uniforms.
To allay suspicion, he shared the last of his hardtack and ham. They shared their experiences of the past few days. Not to be sociable, Billy guessed, merely to fill the silence of the May morning.
'Grant put a hundred thousand into the Wilderness 'gainst our sixty or so. It got so fierce, the trees caught on fire, and our boys either choked to death on the smoke or burned up when the branches dropped on 'em.' One Thumb, whose left eyelid drooped noticeably, shook his head and laid the last morsel of ham in his toothless mouth.
'How far are the lines?' Billy asked.
Hound Face answered, 'Twenty, thirty mile. Would you say that?' His companions nodded. 'But we all are goin' the other way. Back to Alabam.' He gave Billy a searching look, awaiting reaction; condemnation, perhaps.
'The omens are bad,' One Thumb resumed. 'Old Pete Longstreet, he was wounded by a bullet from our side, just like Stonewall a year ago. And I hear tell Jeff Davis's little boy fell off a White House balcony a few days ago. Killed him. Like I say — bad omens.'
Scars, the oldest, wiped grease from his mouth. 'Mighty kind of you to share your grub, Missouri. We ain't got much of anythin' to aid us on our way home' — smoothly, he pulled his side arm and pointed it at Billy — 'so we'll be obliged if you don't fuss an' help us out.'
They disappeared five minutes later, having taken his mule and his pass.
Lanterns shone on the bare-chested black men. The May dark resounded with shouting, the clang and bang of rails being unloaded from a flatcar, the pound of mallets, the honk of frogs in the marshy lowlands near the
