I
The Cursed Damozel
Wasn’t Shiloh supposed to be named after an angel or a devil? Angels and devils were both there, sorting the two armies through for who should live and who die, who go to heaven and who go to hell. We Southerners won the first day and part of the second, even after they’d killed General Albert Sidney Johnston. When I say he was about as great as General Lee, I expect to be believed. When we fell back, Bedford Forrest sent some of us to save a field piece that Bragg’s artillery left behind. But the Yankees got there fustest with the mostest men. They carried off the gun, and two or three of us Tennessee cavalry with it.
They were bivouacking on the field—sundown, April 7, 1862. I was marched far back. Passing a headquarters, I saw a fateful little man with a big cigar—General Grant. With him was a taller, red-whiskered man, who was crying. Someone said he was Sherman, but Sherman never seemed to me like a man who would cry over any sorrow, his own or another’s.
This introduction is jumbled. So was my mind at the time. I must have looked forlorn, a skinny gray-clad trooper plundered of saber, carbine and horse. One of the big blue cavalrymen who escorted the prisoners, leaned down from his saddle and rubbed the heel of his hand on my feebly fuzzy cheek.
“Little Johnny Reb’s growing some nice black whiskers to surprise his sweetheart,” he said, laughing.
“I haven’t got a sweetheart,” I snapped, trying to sound like a big soldier. But he laughed the louder.
“Hear that, boys?” he hailed the others of the escort. “This little feller never had a sweetheart.” They mingled their cackles with his, and I wished I’d not spoken. They repeated my words again and again, tagging on sneers and merriments. I frowned, and tried not to cry. This was at dusk, the saddest time of day. We’d been marched back for miles, to some sort of reserve concentration in a tiny town.
“We’ve robbed the cradle for sure,” the big blue cavalryman was saying to friends he met. “This little shaver—no sweetheart, he says!”
A new gale of laughter from towering captors all around me. It hushed suddenly at a stern voice:
“Bring that prisoner to me.”
He rolled out from between two sheds, as heavily and smoothly as a gun-limber.
He was a short, thick man in a dragoon jacket and one of those little peaked Yankee caps. There was just enough light to show me his big beard and the sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve.
“Bring him along,” he ordered again. “March the others to the stockade.” A moment later, he and I stood alone in the gloom. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“High Private Cole Wickett,” I replied. A prisoner could say that much. If he asked about my regiment, or the conditions of the army—But he didn’t. His next question was: “How old are you?”
“Fifteen next birthday.” Again no reason to lie, though I’d told the recruiting sergeant eighteen.
“Fourteen years, and some months,” the big man figured it out. “Come with me.”
He put a hand the size of a hayfork on my shoulder, and steered me into a back yard full of soldiers playing cards by firelight. He paused, and scolded them for gambling. Any sergeant in Forrest’s command who had tried that would have been hooted at, maybe struck at—we Confederates respected God and General Johnston and Bedford Forrest, and scorned everyone else. But these men put away the cards and said, “Yes sir,” as if he had been an officer. He marched me on into the house beyond the yard, and sat me in a chair in what had been the kitchen.
There he left me. I could hear him talking to someone in the next room. There was a window through which I might have climbed. But it was dark, and I was tired, hungry, sick, and not yet fifteen. I couldn’t have fought my way back through Grant, Sherman and the rest of the Yankees. I waited where I was until the sergeant opened the door and said, “Come in here, Wickett.”
The front room was lighted by one candle, stuck in its own grease on a table. There sat a tall, gray officer with a chaplain’s cross for insignia. He was eating supper—bread, bacon and coffee. My eyes must have been wolfish, for he asked if I’d have some. I took enough to make a sandwich, and thanked him kindly. Then the chaplain said, “My boy, is it true what Sergeant Jaeger heard? That you’re only a child, and never had a sweetheart?”
I stuck my chin out and stood up straight. The Yankees must be worse than all our Southern editors and speechmakers claimed, if even a preacher among them made jokes about such things. “Sir,” I said, keeping my voice deep in my chest, “it’s none of your business.”
“But it is my business,” he replied solemnly, “and the business of many people. Upon your answer, Cole, depends an effort to help some folk out of awful trouble—northern and southern both—and to right a terrible wrong. Now will you reply?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I returned, “but I never even thought much about girls. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it,” answered the big sergeant named Jaeger. “You should be proud to say that thing, Wickett, if it’s really true.”
“Sergeant,” I sputtered, “I’m a southern gentleman. If you and I were alone, with horses and sabers, I’d teach you to respect my word.”
His face grew as dark as his beard, and he said, “Respect your elders and betters, youngster. So says the Bible.”
“The catechism, not the Bible, Sergeant,” corrected the chaplain. “Cole, it’s only that we must be dead sure.” He pushed a black-bound book across the table toward me. “This is the Bible. Do you believe in the sanctity of an oath.”
“My word’s good, sir, sworn on the Bible or not,” I told him, but I put my hand on the book. “Must I swear something?”
“Only that you told the truth about never having a sweetheart,” he said, and I did so. The chaplain put away the book, and looked at Sergeant Jaeger.
“Something tells me that we have the help we needed, and couldn’t be sure of in our own forces,” he said. “Take care of this boy, for we’re lost without him.”
He went out. Sergeant Jaeger faced me. He was no taller than I, even then, but about twice as broad.
“Since you’re a man of your word, will you give your parole?” he asked.
I swallowed the last bite of bacon, and shook my head. “I’ll escape,” I announced, “as soon as there’s light enough.”
“Will you give me your parole until sunrise?” he almost pleaded.
Wondering, I gave it. He put his hand on my shoulder again, steered me to a narrow stairway and up to a little room the size of a pantry. There was a cot with a gray blanket, Union army issue, on it.
“Sleep here,” he said. “No, no questions—I won’t answer them. Be ready for orders at an hour before dawn.”
He left me. I took off my tunic and boots, and stretched out on the cot. Still puzzling over things, I went to sleep.
I woke to the touch of a hand, cold as a washrag, on my brow. Somehow there was light enough to see a woman standing there. She wore a frosty white dress and veil, like a bride’s. Her face was still whiter.
I saw a straight, narrow-cut nose, a mouth that must be very red to be so darkly alive, and eyes that glowed green. Perhaps the eyes gave the light. I sat up, embarrassed.
“I was told to sleep here, ma’am,” I said. “Is this your house?”
“Yes,” she whispered, “it is my house.” She sat on the edge of the cot. Her hand moved from my face to my shoulder. Her grip was as strong as Sergeant Jaeger’s. “Your name is Cole Wickett. You are a brave soldier, but you never had a sweetheart.”
I was tired of hearing about it. I said nothing, and she went on:
“I will be your sweetheart.” And she put her arms around me.
She was beautiful, more than anyone I had ever seen. But when she came that close I felt a horrible sick fear. Perhaps it was the smell of deadness, as of a week-old battlefield. Or all of them.
I wriggled loose and jumped off the cot. She laughed, a little gurgle like water in a cave.
“Do not be afraid, Cole. Stand where you are.”
She, too, rose. She was taller than I. Her eyes fixed mine, and I could not move. If you want to know how I felt, stare for a while at some spot on the wall or floor. After a moment, you’ll have trouble looking away. It’s called hypnotism, or something. She came near again, and this time I did not shrink when she put her hands on my shoulders.
“Now,” she said.
Then Sergeant Jaeger opened the door, took one look, and began to say something, very rapidly and roughly. It sounded like Bible verses: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God—”
The woman shrieked, high and ear-tingling, like a bat. She let go of me.
She was gone. It was like a light being blown out, or a magic-lantern image switched from a screen.
I stared stupidly, like a country idiot. Jaeger cleared his throat, and tugged his beard. “That was close,” he said.
“Who was she?” I asked, and the words had a hard time forming in my throat.
“Somebody whose call we’ll return,” he put me off gruffly. “She thought she’d destroy the one power we’re counting on. It’s time to strike back.”
I followed him outside. The night was black, but the early-morning stars had wheeled up into heaven. We passed two different sentries, and came through the sleeping street of the little town to a church, either ruined or shell-smashed. Beyond was a burying ground, grown up in weeds and walled around with stone. At the broken-down gate stood the chaplain. He held the bridle of a chunky black stallion colt, not quite full grown.
“I can vouch for the beast,” he greeted Sergeant Jaeger. “It is sad that we watch our animals so much more carefully than our own children.”
“This night I almost failed in my own duty of watching,” replied Jaeger in a tired voice. To me he said, “crawl out of those clothes. Don’t stare. Do as I say.”
By this time there had been so much strangeness and mystery that I did not argue. I shucked my uniform, and the pre-dawn air was cold on my bare skin. The chaplain motioned for me to mount. I did, and he led the colt into the burying ground.
There were wreaths and wrappings of mist. Through them I saw pale, worn-out tombstones. We tramped over them. It wasn’t polite nor decent, but I saw that the chaplain and the sergeant—he came behind, carrying some shovels and a mattock—meant business. I kept my mouth closed. Riding the colt, I was steered across that burying ground, and across again.
In the middle of the second crossing, the colt planted his hoofs and balked.
Jaeger, bringing up the rear, struck with the handle of a shovel. The colt stood firm. The chaplain tugged in front, Jaeger flogged behind. The colt trembled and snorted, but he did not move.
The chaplain pointed. A grave-mound, a little naked wen of dirt among the weeds, showed just in front of the planted hoofs.
“Your book tells the truth,” he said, strangely cheerful. “Here is a tomb he will not cross.”
“Get down, Wickett,” commanded Jaeger. “Dress, and help dig.”
I hurried to the gate, threw on my clothes anyhow, and returned. The chaplain was scraping with a shovel. Jaeger swung a mattock. I grabbed another spade and joined in.
As the first moment of gray dawn was upon us, we struck a coffin lid. Jaeger scraped earth from it. “Get back!” he grunted, and I did so; but not before he heaved up the lid with his mattock.
Inside lay the woman who had come to my cot, in her bridal dress.
“The stake,” said the chaplain, and passed down a sharp stick like a picket-pin. I judged it was of hawthorn, cut from a hedge somewhere. “Strike to the heart,” went on the chaplain, “while I strike at the throat.”
He suited action to word, driving down the blade of his shovel. At the same moment Jaeger made a strong digging thrust with the stick. I heard again the bat-squeaking; and then, was made faint by a horrid stink of rottenness.
Jaeger slammed down the lid—I heard it fall—and scrambled out of the grave. He and the chaplain began tumbling clods into the hole.
Jaeger looked at me over his shoulder, haggard but triumphant.
“I give you back your parole,” he panted. “Jump on that colt and clear out. To the west there’ll be none of our troops. If you ever tell what was done here, nobody will believe you!”
I needed no second permission.