Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen Read online

  I found the wooden picket stakes driven into the ground to mark right where the watch should have been, but there wasn’t a soul about except for an owl hooting high up in an oak tree. Hoping it was just that one guard who’d abandoned his post, I hurried along to the next set of stakes. Nothing and no one. When I saw that every blessed post was deserted, I tore out for camp like a kerosened cat.

  “Solomon,” I gasped, out of breath when I got there. “There’s not a single, solitary guard out there on the picket line. We don’t have any lookout.”

  Though I expected him to leap to his feet and sound the alarm, Solomon stayed right where he was, resting his behind on a stump, digging at the bowl of the clay pipe he took in the evenings.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” I asked when all he did was poke around with a twig until the embers flared, sending sparks into the dark night.

  “I heard you fine. Also heard Terrill and Wright laughing about General maybe being a little spooked. Maybe needing the Rebs to seem worse than they are to impress folks in Washington. Maybe needing to big himself up enough so’s he’d get him another star.”

  “You hoaxing me?”

  “Cathy, we beat them Rebs like a drum. We beat them, burned them, next little bit we gon bury them. You been jumpy as a wild yearling since General left. Rest easy now. Not a Reb within a hundred miles. Least not a live one. ’Sides Sheridan’s only twenty mile away in Winchester.”

  “Twenty mile? Might as well be twenty thousand, them Rebs sneak in on us.”

  Solomon rolled his eyes and took a long, sucking draw off his pipe, signifying that he was wore out with my foolishness.

  Though I planned to stay awake and on guard all night long, sleep overtook me. This time I dreamed my grandmother’s dreams. In them, I wore a necklace of boar’s teeth and fired an ancient flintlock musket that had a garden of flowers scrolled on the silver trigger plate. I fired until the rifle grew too hot for me to hold and still King Ghezo’s enemies marched forward. They held fiery spears above their heads and carried shields of flame out front. They were coming to kill us. Or worse, they were coming to take us as slaves and sell us to the Portugee.

  As I watched my bullets bounce off the attackers’ shields, I realized that the attackers had survived Sheridan’s Burning. They were demons from the other world, and no human hand could kill them for they were already dead. As they drew nearer, I found my legs had disremembered how to run. I could not escape even as I saw that, there at the front, leading those dead soldiers, was Old Mister, his black and rotting hand held high. He had come to seek vengeance on me, his murderer.

  Clemmie appeared at my side, clutching me and whimpering, “Stop him, Cathy. Stop him. Don’t let him touch me.”

  As she went on begging, “Save me. Save me. You have to save me,” I realized it wasn’t Clemmie at all. It was Iyaiya and she was screaming back to me from the coffle of slaves being marched away to be fed alive to a pack of cackling hyenas.

  I wondered idly in my dream how I’d come to know what a hyena shriek sounded like. But the nonsense of it did nothing to stop the nightmare and the awful cries went on causing my heart to race until I woke up, gasping. But though my eyes were wide open, the hideous hyena shrieks did not stop and I knew them then for what they were: Rebel yells.

  Chapter 17

  The shrieking surrounded us, but it was dark and a thick fog clouded our camp so that I couldn’t get a fix on where the demons were coming from.

  A Yankee private, wearing nothing but the long muslin shirt he slept in, came out of his tent. His sleep-dazed bunkies trailed behind. He put his hands on his waist and yelled, “This someone’s idea of a joke?”

  In answer, a crimson flower blossomed across the front of his pale undershirt. “What in the name of—” he started to ask, irritated as if a strange bug had bit him. But he pitched down dead before he could finish.

  A volley of lead thick as hail falling sideways cut down every man beside him.

  The way they fell—dropping to their knees like they were praying, not fierce or fighting, dying without a word much less a fight—was so different from Iyaiya’s glorious battle stories that I couldn’t credit what I was seeing. It couldn’t be an enemy attack, I thought. I must still be dreaming.

  But the balls pinging off black cast-iron pots, tearing bark from trees, and kicking up dirt near my feet convinced me otherwise. Clumps of rags lifted from the ground nearby and turned into contrabands who’d been sleeping raw out in the open.

  “Rebels!” I screamed. “Get down!”

  They dropped back to the dirt and minié balls whizzed over our heads.

  “Rebels!” we all hollered loud as we could, trying to rouse the white soldiers nearby.

  Like dogs hearing their names called, though, it was the Rebs we roused and they swarmed out of the woods and came raging through the rows of tents. The sight of an army of half-starved, crazy-eyed men in ragged uniforms gray as the fog screaming their hyena screams froze my brain. I watched bullets ripping into tent canvas and heard men, asleep a moment before, shrieking in shock and agony, but I couldn’t move.

  Instead of sabers glistening in the sun and rows of advancing enemies, an ashen cloud swirled through the camp. Rebels and fog. It was impossible to tell one from the other. Instead of soldiers marching forward, powerful and brave, there were scrawny boys dying as they hitched up their trousers. I had no place to point the warrior courage I had believed was in my blood. Faced with real battle for the first time, I was scared down to my toes. Lily-livered, teeth-chattering, yellow-bellied, pants-pissing terrified.

  Certain that Solomon, the veteran campaigner, had known enough right off to take cover, I snatched up his old hunting musket and dug in beneath the stout logs of the woodpile. Burrowed in like a badger in a hole, I prayed for the only thing that mattered to me at this the moment of my greatest test. And it wasn’t courage or teeth sharpened to points. It was my life. Pure and simple. I prayed the Rebels wouldn’t find me. I prayed they’d take every other soul in camp but not find me. Nothing and no one could of poked me from my hidey-hole. And it was there I had my first look at the whole of the elephant, every terrible part of that frightful beast.

  In the row of tents nearest the mess, a young captain pulled a jacket on, then stared wide-eyed with fear at the Rebel fog screaming his way. A grizzled old sergeant with a bugler at his side shouted to his superior officer over the roar of shrieking Rebs, the crack of muskets firing, the screams of dying men, the terrifying whump! whump! of mortars landing, “Captain, give the order for the troops to form up!”

  “Where’s the colonel?” the captain whimpered like a lost boy. “What’s the colonel say?”

  “He ain’t here! Give the goddamn order!!” the sergeant bellowed. But the boy captain stayed still as a rabbit staring at a fox, while a dark spot spread across the crotch of his pants.

  The sergeant, seeing the captain had pissed hisself, cursed, and ordered the bugler to sound formation. The young bugler died fitting his horn to his lips. The captain, who’d yet to unfreeze, fell next.

  “Fire at will,” the sergeant commanded all the soldiers who could hear him. The Yankee boys, finally recalling that they were soldiers, shouldered their arms, and drawing beads on an enemy more fog than foe, blasted away at anything that moved.

  “Reload!” their brave sergeant ordered. “Fire at—” A minié ball cut his last order short, yet his troops kept fighting.

  Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

  A volley of shots hit the logs I hid behind and I hugged the ground so hard the smell of dirt and damp filled my nostrils. Through a chink between the logs, I saw gray ghosts creeping out of the fog. The Rebels were shooting anything that moved then stabbing a bayonet into the bodies.

  My nightmare had come to life. The dead killed by the Burning were coming for us and the living couldn’t stop them. They hadn’t yet noticed the gang of ex-slaves, runaway and emancipated, huddled off at the edge of camp, hiding in sparse cover. But
they would. They would come for them and do them worst of all.

  I was hidden, but the others, they needed to break for the tall timber. Scatter. Fan out. Head north. And they needed to do it right quick. But they had done nothing but obey orders their entire lives and nobody’d ordered them to run. They were frozen up stiff while the Rebs kept creeping closer.

  I thought of Iyaiya on the Other Side watching me and seeing how the royal purple blood she had given me was running yellow in my veins. Though the thought mortified me all to pieces, it wasn’t enough to force me to move. No, that didn’t happen until who should appear amidst the helpless band of ex-slaves but Solomon Yarnell, bright as a new penny in his green britches and shiny-patched vest. The man didn’t even have sense enough to take off that damn top hat. He was out there shooing the others toward the woods like he was driving sheep. And they were too scared and balky to move.

  “Y’all git!” he ordered. “Now! Rebs is comin’! Git into them woods off yonder! Move!” he yelled, but they stayed put. Who could blame them? We’d all come from places where woods might be full of Rebs waiting with chains and whips, track hounds, and nooses.

  One second there was nothing but fog, the next a Reb with a slouch hat pulled down over his eyes materialized pointing a rifle at Solomon’s back. “Well, now, what we got here?” he asked in the sneery way of the Southern yahoo. “Put your hands on your head, Uncle, and turn around.”

  Instead of obeying, Solomon showed more guts than any other man, white or black, in or out of uniform, I’d ever seen. Solomon crossed his arms in front of his chest and real slow, annoyed, almost bored, he faced the Reb, looked at him with an expression of disgust that said he had seen enough jackasses of this Reb’s class and would rather die than deal with one more, and stated, “Uh-uh.”

  Solomon’s defiance rendered the Reb apoplectic for the man had his heart set on a gratifying show of cowering and kowtowing. After a close-up cursing that left Solomon’s face drenched in Secesh spit but caused no other reaction, the Reb jammed the barrel of his rifle into Solomon’s mouth and yelled, “You traitor! We took you out of darkest Africa, got you civilized, gave you the word of our Redeemer Jesus Christ, and this is the thanks?” He lowered the barrel to Solomon’s crotch and continued yelling, “I’ll shoot it off, nigger, don’ think I—”

  The Reb lived long enough to see he’d been shot dead by me, a daughter of darkest Africa. I rammed in another charge as fast as any soldier been drilling for months could have done.

  “I was fixin’ to disarm the man,” Solomon said casual-like, though he trembled as if he had the ague. The next instant a bullet blew Solomon’s hat off. I whirled around and plugged the shooter while he was ripping open a paper cartridge with his teeth.

  I said “I” did it, but it wasn’t me at all who hastened those Rebs to their Maker for I wasn’t in my body anymore. I had left the real me huddled up in terror back behind those big, stout logs. From somewhere off high and distant, I looked down and saw this other me help Solomon lead the contrabands to safety in the woods.

  Not three seconds later, an artillery barrage thundered down onto the exact spot they had just vacated. We were all knocked sideways to the dirt as trees fell around us. Solomon took the fall on his hip so as not to land on Matildy, who was quivering and chittering beneath his jacket, and we dug in, hiding ourselves under the fallen branches.

  The Rebs advanced. I reloaded. Three gray jackets strutted into the bombed-out place where our mess had been. I aimed and laid out the one in the lead. The other two scrambled for cover. I reloaded twice and shot. No fire was returned. The rest of the contrabands scattered. Like them, I was still terrified, but now I knew something they didn’t. Something that Iyaiya and Mama knew and only Solomon near getting laid out had showed me: fear can be ordered about.

  When Rebels surged in from all sides with more coming on, a Yankee boy hollered, “We’re surrounded!”

  Seeing their camp overrun, their commanders and friends lying dead at their feet, the soldiers lost hope and began stampeding in the one direction that meant safety, meant home. They fled north. They abandoned camp. They surrendered the General’s line at Cedar Creek and they took to their heels.

  The Rebs took out after the fleeing Yanks.

  “Solomon,” I said, crawling from my blind of fallen boughs. “We have to hold the line for the General.”

  “The line? Baby sister, in case it’s escaped your attention, the line just packed up and run off.”

  “Grab a rifle, Solomon, we’ll pick off what we can.”

  He yanked me back down. “What we’ll do is, we’ll wait until night falls then try our damnedest to slip on outta here without getting killed or captured by some Reb itching to venge himself on a slave not grateful enough for the chains he put on him.”

  “Chains that’ll be put right back on us if we let those devils run us off. Sheridan loses Cedar Creek and Mr. Lincoln’ll lose the election to that chickenshit traitor McClellan who wants to make peace with the slaveholders. Then we for sure be back in chains,” I said, already leaving.

  “Cathy!” Solomon called after me as I skinned out, fully expecting to give my life that day for my commander. Oh, I was still plenty afraid, but I’d demoted fear to just another condition you have to work around. Like being tired or hungry or hurting. I ran through the abandoned camp, grabbing up abandoned Yankee cartridge boxes where I could. The Rebels had swarmed on past and I didn’t see one again until I came to the quartermaster’s tents set along the Valley Pike road for supply deliveries.

  There a great flock of starved Rebs had congregated. They had thrown down their weapons and were stuffing their flytraps with salt pork, hardtack, molasses, and every other edible they could get their hands on. I even saw a couple attempting to gnaw on a brick of desecrated vegetables, though they’d of had more luck gumming down an actual brick.

  I dropped back into the woods that ringed the clearing and climbed the tallest tree I could find, figuring I’d pick off a few of those gluttonous Rebs before they plugged me. All I knew for certain sure was I’d rather die than either let the General down or ever again be that whimpering coward hiding in the woodpile. Cursing the burdensome skirt Solomon made me wear, I shinnied up the tree until I had a clean view of the hogs at the trough.

  I was sighting in on the wide target of a broad-shouldered old boy punching his bowie knife into one of the General’s airtights of condensed milk when the whole flock of them scattered like a covey of blue quail and I spotted what had caused them to run: roaring down the Valley Pike was General Philip Henry Sheridan.

  He must of heard the artillery from Winchester twenty miles away because he was burning a breeze down the pike, making for camp like he had Lucifer himself on his tail. His horse’s nostrils were open wide and showing red. The Morgan’s black coat was frothed white and his hooves were striking fire. It was a sight to stir the soul.

  The road was lined with the Yankee yellow bellies who’d turned tail and were fleeing. Sheridan boomed at them, “Come on back, boys! God damn the ______ Rebs! We’ll make ______ coffee out of Cedar Creek tonight!” He held his saber out in front, pointed to camp, and bellowed, “Smash ’em up, boys! Smash ’em up!”

  The General swept up those chickens and made them into eagles. They turned around to follow their commander and charged back into camp. Their ranks swelled until the field below my post in the tree was flooded with waves of blue jackets. They fell on the plundering Rebs whose hands were so slick with pork grease the little piggies could barely grab up their rifles.

  For the next few hours, I remained at my post and potted as many Grays as I could. Toward twilight, I emptied my last cartridge carton and shinnied down the tree to hunt out more loads. I hung back in the woods until I saw a Reb shouldering his arm to shoot a Union private in the back, then I plugged him. I ran out and was claiming his rifle since I knew it was already loaded when I heard, “A wench! A darkie wench.”

  The Reb who was fool eno
ugh to yell out his amazement at my presence was as bad a shot as he was good at warning me he was there, and his shot went wild. I fired directly at him. Sadly, the barrel of the rifle I’d grabbed was out of true. I didn’t know to correct for the pull to the left, so my shot went wild as well and we stood there, both of us alive. Since my rifle didn’t have a bayonet, I swung it around and was fixing to club him with the heavy stock when someone behind me blew a hole in the middle of my attacker’s chest, throwing him onto his back with his arms flung out wide on either side.

  That same someone then grabbed the rifle from where I held it behind my back. I whirled around, ready to bust a head open, and bumped right into Sheridan’s horse’s whiskery muzzle. Sheridan’s brave warhorse snorted hot breaths onto me from the red chutes of its nose and his master, who was holding the rifle he’d yanked from my hands, yelled down, “Who authorized you to take up arms! It is against the natural order for a woman to bear arms!”

  The General was wild-eyed and panting as hard as his mount. I’d heard that battle took a true warrior that way. Heat they called it, the heat of battle, and I knew it myself now. “Yessir, General. Careful, though. Barrel’s out of true.”

  The General blinked at me as though a gopher had popped up out of its hole and started quoting Scripture at him. In just that amount of time the battle craziness left him. He handed back the rifle. “By thunder, contraband, you held our ground, didn’t you?”

  “I tried, sir.”

  “You didn’t cut and run, did you, contraband?”

  I couldn’t answer for that is what I had really wanted to do. Would have done, too, if that Reb hadn’t tried to blow out Solomon’s lamp.

  “Good work, contraband.” Sheridan was already wheeling the gelding around, searching among the dead for a Graycoat might still need killing when I called after him, “Sir. Sir!”