Valley of the Shadow: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

in Maryland, with fewer than eighteen thousand men and more peeling off each day, and no, it wasn’t enough for Lee that he might get to Washington and turn Abe Lincoln out of house and home, making a great damned rumpus they might hear in London and Paris, no, that was not enough. Lee was still on the rocking horse of his cockamamie scheme for freeing the thousands of prisoners at Point Lookout. As if wishing would make it so.
    Pendleton stood by, awaiting instructions.
    “Well, sit down, son. You’re not on dress parade. Take me a minute or two to digest all this here strategic wisdom.” He spit again.
    Rereading the message left him just as incredulous, if not more. He’d figured that Lee had been just flirting with the notion when the Old Man first raised it. But Lee was serious as a deacon, believing that Early could cross Maryland, march on Washington, and, just for a side bet, send part of his force to the farthest tip of Maryland, where those angels of deliverance would free twenty thousand Confederate prisoners, load a goodly portion into boats that would appear like spooks at a table-rapping, just blithely sailing through the Northern blockade, while the rest of the men newly freed would join Early’s army armed with weapons taken from their guards, instantly organizing themselves into regiments and brigades. And since the guards were thought to be colored troops, there would be little resistance when a mob of Southern gentlemen reared right up before them.
    One look at the map revealed the absolute madness of the scheme. Any force that reached the camp would be trapped on that peninsula. Even if the Yankees didn’t seem to have figured out what he was up to yet, they’d surely know by the time he got to Washington. He’d be sending thousands of soldiers into a trap, sending them not to free those prisoners, but to become captives themselves. And not one boat was going to appear off the Maryland shore to rescue anybody. His men wouldn’t have the prospects of a corncob in a shithouse.
    It wasn’t that Lee was mad, he understood. The old man was just desperate. He needed those men, any men. Never came up against a bastard like Grant before. Fought like a crazy drunk, too fool to go down. Just came back swinging again, crimson from crown to gizzard. The losses of May and June had been horrendous, on both sides. But the North could replace them, and the South could not.
    He had not wanted this damned-fool war. But Jubal Early surely meant to finish it.
    “What do you plan to do, sir?”
    Early grunted.
    “It’s not specifically an order,” Pendleton went on. “It says—”
    “I can read, boy. Oh, hell. Send Johnson off, once we’re past Frederick. He’s a Marylander, he knows the lay of the land. See if he can do something. Cavalry’s worthless, anyway. Bundles of rags on broken nags, and that’s putting it sweet. Damned banditti, all of them. Can’t be either trusted or relied upon.” He snorted and took the last swig of lemonade. “Jackson and his damned lemons. I always think about that when confronted with this beverage. Old Jack knew what he was about, give him that. Put his faith in the infantry and artillery, arms you can count on.” Early rose, straightening his back as best his arthritis permitted. Even standing was an effort in the sickening heat.
    He took up his hat, pressing a thumb into the side he kept turned up toward the crown. “Draw up orders for Johnson. Give him some latitude, don’t want him humbugging that we forced him to make mistakes he can make just fine on his own. And don’t send them yet, let me read them first.” About to descend from the porch, he turned again. “He still fussing with those Yanks on the Frederick road?”
    “He was pushing them back through the pass. According to his last dispatch.”
    Early drew out his pocket watch and grimaced. The timepiece rarely gave him cause to smile. “Don’t even report regularly. Scouting’s all this