The Bloody Ground by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9780061091988
Publisher: HarperTorch
Published: 1997-09-14T14:00:00+00:00

THE NORTHERN ARMY groped cautiously into the deserted Maryland farmlands, where General McClellan left nothing to chance. He watched his flanks, secured his communications, and advanced his forward units at the pathetic pace of ten miles a day. Pinkerton, head of the army's Secret Service, assured McClellan that he faced at least 200,000 well-armed rebels, and McClellan imagined that horrid horde waiting to ambush him like Apaches falling on an army supply train. The White House urged McClellan on while the War Department sent him contrary dispatches declaring that the further he went from the capital the more likely it was that the rebels would swarm over the river to assault the city. McClellan just inched forward, always ready to spring back if danger threatened.

Colonel Thorne had abandoned his Washington office. He could not stand the oppressive heat in the capital, where the only news from the army was grudging while every rumor of Lee's apparent ambitions was only too readily reported by the press. Philadelphia was expecting a siege; the city fathers of Baltimore had forbidden the sale of alcohol to protect the nerves of their fearful citizens; while the British Ambassador, a genial aristocrat, was reported to be packing his bags in preparation for a declaration of war against the United States. "All nonsense, Thorne," Lord Lyons told the Colonel at a White House reception. "No point in going to war with you,"

he added lightly, "at least not until Bobby Lee's won the thing for us. We might come in then, of course, to pick up the pieces and get some revenge for Yorktown."

"It might come to that, Ambassador," Thorne had answered gloomily.

Lyons, hearing the Colonel's despair, patted his arm. "It won't, Thorne, and you know it won't. Not while you've got that man," he nodded across the crowded room at the President of whom Lyons was famously fond. "1 admit that some in Britain are not unhappy to see you embarrassed, Thorne," the Ambassador went on, "but I don't think we wish to risk embarrassment ourselves. Believe me, I'm packing no portmanteaus. Pay a call on us, see for yourself."

But Thorne had no patience for Washington's diplomatic niceties, not while the fate of the Republic was being decided in Maryland and so, with the President's permission, he packed his saddlebags and rode west to join McClellan's headquarters where, seeking Adam, he found that his protege had disappeared. Allen Pinkerton's Chief of Staff, James Starbuck, whom Thorne had encountered earlier in the war, declared that Adam had ridden toward Frederick City two days before. "If he did," McClellan, who was visiting Pinkerton's quarters, had overheard the comment, "then he deserved what he got."

"Which is what, pray?" Thorne asked.

"Capture, I suppose. The man had no business there. I thought he was here to advise our signal people?"

"He was," Thorne lied, and knowing that McClellan knew he lied.

"Then he should have been working with the telegraphers, not exercising his horse. Unless, of course, he was here for another purpose?"

Thorne stared

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