way below me, at the bottom of the hill. I was looking down at the lawn, but I couldn’t see it because it was too dark, but I could hear the sound of someone crying. It was a long way off, so I couldn’t really be sure what I heard, and I kept squinting down at the lawn, trying to make out what was down there.
“I turned on the porch light, and that just made it worse. I couldn’t see anything. So I turned it off again and stood there in the dark and just then somebody crashed into me and it was a Union soldier. He had a message for me, and I knew it would be good news, but I was afraid if I turned on the porch light to read it by, I wouldn’t be able to see what was on the lawn.
“Then I saw a light in the sky, a long way off, and I thought. Oh, good, somebody on their side has turned a porch light on, but it wasn’t like that, it bobbed and danced, and I thought, Somebody is bringing me a lantern to read the message by, and then the whole sky lit up with red and green, and I could see the bodies on the lawn.”
“Were they Union soldiers?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “only they weren’t wearing blue uniforms. Some of them were wearing long underwear, red and white, and some of them were naked, and I thought how cold they must be lying there without any clothes on. Do you know where we are?”
Oh, yes, I thought, I know where we are. I hadn’t taken her anywhere near the battlefield all day, but she had been there anyway. And why had I thought the battles Lee had won would haunt him any less than the ones he had lost?
“They weren’t wearing uniforms because the Confederates came down from Marye’s Heights in the middle of the night and stole them off the dead bodies. After the battle of Fredericksburg.”
She leaned back against the pillows as if I had said something comforting. “Tell me about the battle.”
“After Antietam, Lee retreated back into Virginia. It took forever for the Union army to make up its mind to follow him, and when they did it was at the worst possible place. In December, the Union army crossed the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg and tried to march across the plain southwest of town, but the Confederate army held Marye’s Heights above the plain. They proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can’t attack a defended ridge from an open plain.”
“And after the battle the wounded soldiers lay there crying for help on the plain?”
“Yes. It froze that night.”
“And the Confederate soldiers stole their clothes,” she said softly. “What about the message?”
“A Union courier got lost in the dark the night before the battle and wandered up to a Confederate picket line. He was captured and the orders he was carrying were taken to Lee. That same night the aurora borealis shone, lighting up the whole sky with red and green. Both sides took it as a good omen.”
She sat a long time huddled under the coverlet. “What time is it?” she asked.
“Eleven forty-five.”
She lay down. “If this time is anything like the others, I shouldn’t have any more dreams tonight. I usually don’t have them after midnight.”
“Was this dream like the others, Annie?” I asked, thinking of the “storm of dreams” Dr. Stone had said followed abrupt discontinuation of a sedative.
“No,” she said. She had propped herself up on one elbow, and she was smiling. “It was easier. Because you were here to tell me what it meant.” She yawned. “Can I sleep late tomorrow?”
“Of course. The morning after a battle the soldiers always get to sleep late,” I said, which was a lie. The morning after the battle the soldiers were marched off to the next battle, and the next, till they came to the one that killed them.
I sat down in the green chair and picked up the galleys.
“You don’t have to stay up, Jeff,” she said. “I won’t have any more dreams. You can go to bed.”
“I just thought I’d finish reading the chapter we were on,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. Go back to sleep.”
She was asleep almost instantly, but I kept on reading. Ben and Malachi made it out of their cornfield and into the dubious safety of the West Wood. Hooker opened fire on another cornfield with every battery he had, and nobody made it out of there. Ben’s brother and the rest of Mansfield’s Twelfth Corps got the order to hold the East Wood and, in the smoke and confusion, began firing at their own Union troops. When Mansfield tried to stop them he was hit in the chest by Confederate fire. It was a mortal wound, but he managed to dismount and lead his wounded horse to safety before he died.
CHAPTER SEVEN
D. H. Hill had three horses shot out from under him at Antietam. Lee rode Traveller through the whole battle, though he had trouble controlling him with his bandaged hands. When General Walker brought the last of his men across the ford into Virginia the following night, Lee was sitting on Traveller in midstream. “How many divisions are left?” Lee asked, and when Walker told him he was the last except for some wagonloads of wounded that were right behind him, Lee said, “Thank God!” It was Walker’s impression that he had been sitting there all night.
Annie didn’t have any more dreams. I dozed in the green chair until it was light outside and then went to bed and slept until after nine. Annie was still dead to the world, but Richard was up. He had already called Broun’s house and left another message for me.
“It’s obvious that you’re projecting your hostility onto me as an authority figure, but of course Broun is the real object of your anger. You’re superimposing your own revenge fantasy on Annie’s emotional illness, but it’s Broun who’s your real enemy.”
He stopped long enough for me to say, “You’re the enemy, you bastard.”
“Your conscious mind can’t acknowledge the rage you feel toward Broun for getting his name on the books you’ve researched, so your subconscious cloaks that rage by distorting Annie’s neurotic dreams into Robert E. Lee’s dreams. By so doing, your subconscious can declare war on Broun, as Lee declared war on Lincoln. It’s a common phenomenon in neurotic patients.”
“How about drugging patients? Is that a common phenomenon in neurotic psychiatrists?”
Annie was standing in the doorway in her nightgown. She looked frightened. “Who were you talking to, Jeff? Richard?”
“I wasn’t talking to anybody,” I said, and held the phone out to her so she could listen. “It’s the answering machine. Richard doesn’t know where we are, so he’s trying to get you back this way, by remote psychoanalysis. You’ll be glad to know I’m the one who’s crazy today.” I put the phone back up to my ear. “This may take a while. Broun’s answering machine can hold three hours of messages. Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll go have breakfast. We’ve got to go see the vet at eleven.”
She nodded and disappeared into the other room. I listened to the rest of Richard’s harangue, made sure Broun hadn’t called in another message, and erased everything on the machine. Broun usually didn’t call in to pick up his messages when he was out of town. He left messages for me as to where he could be reached and then let me get back to him with a list of the things that couldn’t wait. I didn’t think he’d pick up his messages this trip, especially when he thought I was there to do it, but I thought I’d better call the machine once a day to collect them and erase the tape just in case. I didn’t want Broun hearing Richard’s ravings.
Annie came and stood in the doorway again. “You were friends, weren’t you?” she said. “Before all this?”
“We were roommates. I guess we were friends, but we were headed in different directions all along.” I picked up my jacket. “He thought I should study something useful instead of history.”
“I’m sorry,” Annie said.
“About what? My studying history?” I grinned at her. “It hasn’t turned out to be all that useless.”
We went over to the coffee shop. It was crowded with people who looked like they were on their way to church. We had a different waitress from the one who had drenched us in coffee the night before, a pretty redhead not much older than Annie, but she came over immediately with the coffeepot, too. “You two must be tourists,” she said when she saw the map of Virginia I’d brought along. She pulled two menus out from under her arm and handed them to us. “Have you been out to the battlefield?”
