The Bloody Ground. Bernard Cornwell
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the capital’s taverns.
One young cavalry officer hurried along Pennsylvania Avenue to the corner of Seventeenth Street, where he took off his wide-brimmed cavalryman’s hat to peer up at the street lamp. At every corner in Washington the lamps had their street’s name painted in black on the glass covering the mantel, an intelligent device, and once the young man was sure he was in the right place he walked up Seventeenth until he reached a three-story brick building that was thickly surrounded by trees. Gas lights showed where the building’s narrow end abutted onto the sidewalk and where a flight of steps led to a door guarded by two blue-coated sentries, though when the young cavalryman presented himself at that door he was told to go back to the garden entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue. He retraced his steps and discovered a driveway that led through night-blackened trees to an imposing portico of six massive columns that protected and dwarfed a small doorway guarded by a quartet of blue-coated infantrymen. Gas lamps hissed yellow under the portico, lighting a carriage that waited for its owner.
A clock struck nine as the cavalryman was granted entrance into the hallway where yet another guard demanded his name. “Faulconer,” the young man replied. “Captain Adam Faulconer.” The guard consulted a list, ticked off Adam’s name, then told him to put his scabbarded saber into an umbrella stand and afterward climb one flight of stairs, turn left at the stairhead, and walk to the very end of the corridor where he would find a door marked with the name of the man who had summoned him. The guard rattled off these directions, then went back to his copy of The Evening Star, which heralded Major General George McClellan’s reappointment as commander of the Northern army.
Adam Faulconer mounted the stairs and walked down the long, gloomy corridor. This building was the War Department, the very center of the North’s military effort, yet there was little sense of urgency in its darkened passages where Adam’s footfalls echoed as forlornly as the steps of a man pacing a deserted sepulcher. Most of the fanlights above the office doors were dark, though one light showed at the corridor’s far end and in its small glow Adam saw the name COL. THORNE painted in white letters against one of the door’s black panels. He knocked and was summoned inside.
He found himself in a surprisingly large room with two tall windows that were shut against both the rain and the moths that beat against the panes. The walls of the room were covered with maps, and one large desk stood beside one window, while two smaller clerks’ tables occupied the rest of the room. All the desks were covered in papers that had flowed onto the chairs and hardwood floor. Two cast-iron gasoliers hissed beneath the high ceiling, while a longcase clock ticked hollowly between the windows. The room’s only occupant was a tall uniformed man who stood with a ramrod-straight back as he stared at the scatter of lit windows showing above the trees in the White House. “Faulconer, yes?” the man asked without turning from the window.
“Yes, sir.”
“My name is Thorne. Lyman Thorne. Colonel Lyman Thorne.” Thorne had a coarse, almost angry voice, very deep toned, and when he abruptly turned toward Adam he revealed a face that matched the voice perfectly, for Thorne was a gaunt, white-bearded man with fierce eyes and with deep lines carved into his sun-darkened cheeks. His most prominent feature was his white hair, which grew thick, long, and wildly enough to make Thorne appear like a bearded version of Andrew Jackson. The Colonel carried himself straight and proud, though when he moved he favored his right leg, which suggested that his other might have been injured. He gazed at Adam for an instant, then turned back to the window. “There have been celebrations in Washington these last two days,” he growled.
“Yes, sir.”
“McClellan is back! John Pope is dismissed and the Young Napoleon has been given charge of the army again, and thus Washington celebrates.” Thorne spat into a brass cuspidor, then glared at Adam. “Do you celebrate this appointment, young Faulconer?”
Adam was taken aback by the question. “I haven’t considered it, sir,” he eventually admitted lamely.
“I do not celebrate, young Faulconer. My God, I do not. We gave McClellan a hundred thousand men, shipped him to the Virginia peninsula, and ordered him to take Richmond. And what did he do? He took counsel of his fears. He havered, that’s what he did, he havered! He dithered while the rebels scraped together a handful of rapscallion soldiers and trounced him straight back out to sea. Yet now the ditherer is to be our commanding general again, and do you know why, young Faulconer?” This question, like the rest of Thorne’s words, was directed at the windowpane rather than toward Adam.
“No, sir,” Adam answered.
“Because there is no one else. Because in all this great republic we cannot find one better general than little George McClellan. Not one!” Thorne spat into the cuspidor again. “I admit he can train troops, but he doesn’t know how to fight them. Doesn’t know how to lead. The man’s a humbug!” Thorne snarled the last word, then abruptly turned and glared at Adam once more. “Somewhere in the Republic there’s a man who can beat Robert Lee, but on my soul we haven’t found him yet. But we will, Faulconer, we will, and when we do we shall pulverize the so-called Confederacy into bone and blood. Bone and blood. But until we do find that man then it is our duty to mollycoddle the Young Napoleon. We have to pat him and soothe him, we have to tell him not to be frightened of ghosts and not to imagine enemies where there are none. In short, we have to wean him off Pinkerton. Do you know Pinkerton?”
“I know of him, sir.”
“The less you know, the better,” Thorne growled. “Pinkerton isn’t even a soldier! But McClellan swears by him, and even as you and I stand here talking Pinkerton is being given command of all the army’s intelligence once more. He had that same command in the peninsula, and what did he do with it? He summoned rebel soldiers out of thin air. He told the Young Napoleon that there were hundreds of thousands of men where there was nothing but a huddle of hungry rogues. Pinkerton will do the same again. Faulconer, mark my words. Within one week we shall be told that Lee has two hundred thousand men and that little McClellan dare not attack for fear of being beat. We shall haver again, we shall dither, and while we piss our collective pants Robert Lee will attack. Do you wonder that Europe laughs at us?”
“Do they, sir?” Adam, confused by the tirade, asked the question feebly.
“Oh they do, Faulconer, they do. American pride is being humbled by a rebellion we seem powerless to defeat and Europe takes pleasure in that. They pretend not, but if Robert Lee destroys McClellan then I daresay we’ll see European troops in the South. The French would love to join in, but they won’t jump till Britain decides, and Britain won’t join the game until they know which side is winning. Which is why Lee will attack us, Faulconer. Look!” Thorne strode to a map of the eastern seaboard that hung behind his desk. “We’ve made three efforts to capture Richmond. Three! And all have been defeated. Lee now controls all of northern Virginia, so what’s to stop him coming further north? Here, Faulconer, into Maryland, and maybe farther north still, into Pennsylvania.” The Colonel demonstrated these threats by sweeping his hand across the map. “He’ll grab our good harvest for his starving men and beat up little McClellan and so demonstrate to the Europeans that we can’t even defend our own territory. By next spring, Faulconer, there could be a hundred thousand European troops marching for the Confederacy, and what will we do then? Treat for peace, of course, and so the Republic of Washington and Jefferson will have lasted a mere eighty years and North America, Faulconer, will be fatally weakened for the next eighty years.” Thorne leaned over his desk and glared at Adam. “Lee cannot be allowed to win, Faulconer. He cannot,” the colonel said in a grave voice, almost as if he were charging Adam with the personal responsibility for saving the Republic.
“No, sir,” Adam said, and felt it was a weak response, but he was being swamped by the sheer force of Lyman Thorne’s personality. Sweat trickled down Adam’s face. The night was oppressive, and the rain had not diminished the humidity at all, while the gasoliers’ flaring mantles only added to the room’s stifling heat.
The colonel waved Adam toward a chair, then sat down himself and lit a cigar from a gas flame that burned from a tabletop gas jet connected to a long rubber extension cord that snaked down from the nearest gasolier. Once the cigar was lit he pushed the