Killer Angels, The - Michael Shaara [68]
Longstreet looked at him vacantly, saw him, then looked at him.
"Colonel," he said abruptly, "how are you?"
"By George, sir, I am fine, I must say."
"You slept well?"
Fremantle thought: everyone seems concerned that I sleep well.
"Oh, very well." He paused. "Not long, mind you, but well."
Longstreet smiled. There seemed to be something about Fremantle that amused him. Fremantle was oddly flattered; he did not know why.
"I would like someday to meet the Queen," Longstreet said.
"I'm sure that could be arranged. Sir, you would be considered most welcome in my country, a most distinguished visitor."
There was firing below, a sharp popping, a scattering of shots, a bunch, another bunch, then silence. Longstreet put on his glasses, looked down into the valley. "Pickets," he said.
Fremantle, who did not know what to expect, started, gulped, stared. But he was delighted. He saw puffs of white smoke start up down in the valley, like vents in the earth, blow slowly lazily to his left, to the north. He looked up at the ridge, but he could see only a few black cannon, a single flag. He said abruptly, "I say, sir, you say you won't be attacking for a bit?"
Longstreet shook his head.
"Then, ah, if I may be so bold, what's to prevent the Yankees from attacking you?"
Longstreet looked at Hood.
"I mean, ah, I don't see that you have bothered to entrench," Fremantle went on.
Longstreet grinned. Hood grinned.
"An interesting thought." Longstreet smiled. "I confess, it had not occurred to me."
"Me neither," Hood said.
"But I suppose it's possible," Longstreet said.
"You really think so?"
"Well," Longstreet hedged. He grinned, reached up along the edge of his hat, scratched his head. "I guess not."
More soberly, he turned to Fremantle. "It would be most unlike General Meade to attack. For one thing, he is General Meade. For another, he has just arrived on the field and it will take some time to understand the position, like perhaps a week. Also, he has not yet managed to gather the entire Army of the Potomac, all two hundred thousand men, and he will be reluctant to move without his full force. Then again, he will think of reasons." Longstreet shook his head, and Fremantle saw that he had again lost his humor. "No, Meade will not do us the favor, the great favor. We will have to make him attack. We will have to occupy dangerous grounds between him and Washington and let the politicians push him to the assault. Which they will most certainly do. Given time. We need time."
He paused, shook his head. They rode on in silence.
Fremantle began to realize how remarkably still it was.
Down in the valley the fields were open and still, the breeze had slowed, there was no movement of smoke. A few cows grazed in the shade, rested in dark pools of shade under the trees. Fremantle could feel the presence of that vast army; he knew it was there, thousands of men, thousands of horses, miles of cannon, miles of steel. And spread out beyond him and around him Lee's whole army in the dark shade, moving, settling, lining up for the assault, and yet from this point on the ridge under the tree he could look out across the whole valley and see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, not even a trembling of the earth, not even one small slow rumble of all those feet and wheels moving against the earth, moving in together like two waves meeting in a great ocean, like two avalanches coming down together down facing sides of a green mountain. The day had dawned clear, but now there were clouds beginning to patch the sky with hazy blots of cottony white, and not even any motion there, just the white silence against the blue. It was beginning to be very hot, hotter even than before, and Fremantle noticed perspiration on all the faces.
He had not slept well, and suddenly the silence and the heat began to get to him. He was a man from a northern clime and England did not have this sort of weather, and when you have not slept...
He was most anxious to move on with Longstreet, but he saw Lawley and Ross pull