Walter Williams - No Spot of Ground

Lee’s eyes twinkled. “ Quod libet , I think, rather.” Not quite convinced.

“I have heard their horses. They are well south of where they are supposed to be.”

Lee smiled through his big beard and dug a heel into the turf. “If he’s moving past you, he’ll run into my two brigades. I’m planted right in his path.”

There was a saying in the army, Who ever saw a dead cavalryman ? Poe thought of it as he looked at Lee. “Can you hold him?” he asked.

“Nevermore,” said a raven.

Lee’s smile turned to steel. “With all respect to your pets, General, I held Grant at Spotsylvania.”

Gravely, Poe gave the cavalryman an elaborate, complimentary bow, and Lee returned it. Poe straightened and hobbled to face his brigade commanders.

Perhaps he had Fitz Lee convinced, perhaps not. But he knew- and the knowledge grated on his bones- that Robert Lee would not be convinced. Not with Poe’s reputation for hysteria, for seeing Yankees everywhere he looked. The army commander would just assume his high-strung imagination created illusory armies behind every swirl of mist. As much as Poe hated it, he had to acknowledge this prejudice on the part of the army commander.

“General Lee has made his plans for today,” he said. “He will attack to the west, where he conceives General Grant to be. He may not choose to believe any message from his other wing that the Yanks are moving.”

Poe waited for a moment for a reply from the cavalryman. Fitz Lee was the commanding general’s nephew; perhaps he could trade on the family connection somehow. But the bearded man remained silent.

“They are going to strike us, that is obvious,” Poe said. “Grant has his back to the bend of the river, and he’ll have to fight his way into the clear. But his men will have to struggle through the woods, and get across that swamp and the little creek, and they’re doing it at night, with a heavy mist. They will not be in position to attack at first light. I suggest, therefore, that we attack him as soon as the mist clears, if not before. It may throw him off balance and provide the evidence we need to convince the high command that Mr. Grant has stolen a march upon us.”

“Nevermore,” said the ravens. “Nevermore.”

Poe looked at Sextus, who was standing respectfully behind the half-circle of officers. “Feed the birds.” he said. “It may keep them quiet.”

“Yes, massa.”

“General Poe.” Fitz Lee was speaking. “There are two bridges across that creek- small, but they’ll take the Yankees across. The water won’t hold up the Yanks as long as you might think.”

Poe looked at him. “The bridges were not burned after Hancock crossed the North Anna?”

Lee was uneasy. “General Ewell may have done it without my knowledge.”

“If the bridges exist, that’s all the more reason to attack as soon as we can.”

“General.” Clingman raised a hand. “Our brigades marched up in the dark. We ain’t aligned, and we’ll need to sort out our men before we can go forward.”

“First light, General,” said Poe. “Arrange your men, then go forward. We’ll be going through forest, so give each man about two feet of front. Send out one combined company per regiment to act as skirmishers? we’ll want to overwhelm their pickets and get a look at what lies in there before your main body strikes them.”

Another brigadier piped up. “What do we align on, sir?”

“The rightmost brigade of the division? that’s Barton’s?” Heads nodded. Poe continued, gesturing into the mist with his stick, sketching out alignments. “Barton will align on the creek, and everyone will guide on him. When Barton moves forward, the others will move with him.” He turned to Gregg and Law, both of whom were looking dubious. “I cannot suggest to Generals Gregg and Law how to order their forces. I have not been over the ground.”

Law folded his arms. “General. You’re asking us to attack a Yankee corps that’s had two days to entrench.”

“And not just any corps,” Gregg added. “This is Hancock .”

“We’ll be outnumbered eight to one,” Law said. “And we don’t have any woods to approach through, the way y’all do. We’ll have to cross a good quarter mile of open ground before we can reach them.”

Poe looked at him blackly. Frustration keened in his heart. He took a long breath and fought down his growing rage.

Winfield Scott Hancock, he thought, known to the Yanks as Hancock the Superb. The finest of the Yankee commanders. He thought about the Ravens going up that little green slope toward the cemetery, with Hancock and his corps waiting on top, and nodded.

“Do as best as you can, gentlemen, he said. “I leave it entirely to you. I wish only that you show some activity. Drive in his pickets. Let him see some regimental flags, think he is going to be attacked.”

Law and Gregg looked at one another. “Very well, sir,” Law said.

Anger stabbed Poe again. They’d do nothing. He knew it; and if he ordered them into a fight they’d just appeal over his head to Anderson.

Nothing he could do about it. Keep calm.

Poe turned toward Fitz Lee. “I hope I may have your support.”

The small man nodded. “I’ll move some people forward.” He gave a smile. “My men won’t like being in the woods. They’re used to clear country.”

“Any additional questions?”

There were none. Poe sent his generals back to their commands and thanked Fitzhugh Lee for his cooperation.

“This may be the Wilderness all over again,” Lee said. “Woods so heavy no one could see a thing. Just one big ambush with a hundred thousand men flailing around in the thickets.”

“Perhaps the Yankees will not see our true numbers, and take us for a greater force,” Poe said.

“We may hope, sir.” Lee saluted, mounted, and spurred away.

Poe found himself staring at the black Starker house, that one softly lit eye of a window. Thinking of the dead girl inside, doomed to be buried on a battlefield.

*

Virginia Poe had been beautiful, so beautiful that sometimes Poe’s heart would break just to look at her.

Her skin was translucent as bone china, her long hair fine and black as midnight, her violet eyes unnaturally large, like those of a bird of Faerie. Her voice was delicate, as fragile and evanescent as the tunes she plucked from her harp. Virginia’s aspect was unearthly, refined, ethereal, like an angel descended from some Mussulman paradise, and as soon as Poe saw his cousin he knew he could never rest unless he had that beauty for him always.

When he married her she was not quite fourteen. When she died, after five years of advancing consumption, she was not yet twenty-five. Poe was a pauper. After Virginia’s death came Eureka , dissipation, madness. He had thought he could not live without her, had no real intention of doing so.

But now he knew he had found Virginia again, this time in Evania. With Evania, as with Virginia, he could throw off his melancholy and become playful, gentle, joyful. With her he could sit in the parlor with its French wallpaper, play duets on the guitar, and sing until he could see the glow of his happiness reflected in Evania’s eyes.

But in time a shadow seemed to fall between them. When Poe looked at his young bride, he seemed to feel an oppression on his heart, a catch in the melody of his love. Virginia had not asked for anything in life but to love her cousin. Evania was proud; she was willful; she grew in body and intellect. She developed tastes, and these tastes were not those of Poe. Virginia had been shy, otherworldly, a presence so ethereal it seemed as if the matter had been refined from her, leaving only the essence of perfected beauty and melancholy; Evania was a forthright presence, bold, a tigress in human form. She was a material presence; her delights were entirely those of Earth.