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The Deserter

Murder at Gettysburg

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THE SHAME

Your great-great-grandfather did something shameful?" Homer couldn't believe it. "But all you Morgans are so stalwart with Yankee integrity. Your ancestor couldn't have done anything very bad." Homer stared up at the names on the marble tablet. "He was in the class of 1860? Then he must have known all these men."

"Well, I suppose so," said Mary. "But then in the Civil War there was some sort of scandal. Nobody wanted to talk about it. I can remember my father shaking his head and keeping his mouth shut about Seth Morgan."

"Gettysburg," murmured Homer, still gazing at the tablet. "They all died in the Battle of Gettysburg."

The pale inscribed stone was enshrined within a wooden frame. The pointed gothic arch was only one of many, each with its solemn tablet, lining the central corridor of the monumental building that towered above the city of Cambridge next to the firehouse. Above the tablets rose the wooden vaults, gleaming with new varnish, and the upper reaches of the walls glittered with heroic Latin remarks in gold.

But nobody any longer understood the quotations and hardly anyone paused to read the names of the 135 men who had walked so long ago in Harvard Yard and read the Iliad with Cornelius Felton and modern literature with James Russell Lowell and mathematics with Benjamin Peirce before going out to die for the Union cause in the bloody battles of the Civil War.

All those young men had lived and died so long ago. Widows no longer wept for their husbands, mothers no longer sorrowed for their sons. The Civil War was several wars back in time.

But Memorial Hall was still a familiar landmark in Cambridge, celebrated for its medieval immensity and for the polygonal tower that loomed above the university. It was especially famous for Sanders Theatre, the wooden chamber that rounded out one end of the building like the apse of a cathedral.

Otherwise, Mem Hall was useful for the enormous dining hall that projected like the nave of a church from the transept of the memorial corridor. Here the first-year students ate their meals in the colored light of stained-glass windows, never glancing at the marble busts of long-forgotten professors that lined the walls, never looking up at the painted portraits of Union soldiers. But the soldiers looked blandly down at them year after year, and the busts gazed out at them with their white stone eyes.

Until today, Homer and Mary Kelly had been as oblivious as everyone else to the tablets, the portraits and the marble busts. They had taught classes in the building for years, they had lectured in Sanders Theatre. Homer had even climbed the tower, where he had looked down on the wooden vaults from above, teetered along swaying catwalks, climbed shaky ladders and hurled himself across perilous chasms to witness something amazing. Gaping upward, he had seen a president of the university fall from the topmost rung of the topmost ladder and break his neck in one of the upside-down vaults.

Well, all of that had happened long ago. But Memorial Hall was still one of the spindles around which their lives were wound. Therefore it was odd that in all these years they had paid so little attention to the marble tablets in the memorial corridor.

But today a yellow ray from the colored window over the south door had fallen on one of the tablets like a pointing hand, and they had stopped, transfixed.

"Maybe you could find out what your great-great-grandfather did that was so shameful," said Homer, glancing sideways at his wife.

"I'm not sure I want to know."

"I'll bet there are records somewhere. If you looked up these men from his class you might learn something about—what was his name?"

"Seth. Seth Morgan."

The yellow beam from the stained-glass window drifted away, and now the tablet was flushed with red.

"Good," said Mary. She whipped out a notebook and wrote the names down. "I'll ask about Seth, and then I'll get to work on Mudge, Fox, Robeson and—who's the other one?"

"Pike, Otis Mathias Pike."

PRIVATE OTIS PIKE

Otis Mathias Pike
Class of 1860

Pvt. 2d Massachusetts Vols. (Infantry) 12 July, 1862. Killed at Gettysburg, Penn., 3 July, 1863.

—Harvard Memorial Biographies

Otis was sensible enough to recognize the error of his ways on several occasions in the past.

For one thing, he should never have loaned five dollars to a penniless classmate.

In the second place, he should never have accepted a bowie knife as collateral for the loan. What use did Otis have for a bowie knife? Nevertheless he had stuck it in his belt because it gave him a certain air.

In the third place, he should certainly have avoided the low tavern on the Boston waterfront where his pocket had been picked, last year in the summer of '62.

In the fourth place, he should never have attacked the pickpocket with the bowie knife.

The fact was that if Otis Pike, the witty darling of his class, had not been kind enough in the first place to help out a friend, he would not have had to choose between a prison term and recruitment into the Second Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

What kind of choice was that? The prison was an infamous black hole.

"You are fortunate, young man," the judge had said, "that your classmates in a distinguished regiment have spoken up for you."

Oh, that was all very well and good, but his dear old college classmates had entered the service as officers, whereas poor old Otis was only a private.

"But, Your Honor," he had pleaded, "when I confronted that man, he attacked me. I could have been killed."

"Whereas," the judge had said sourly, "it was he who had the misfortune to be killed."

"But it was self-defense, Your Honor, that's all. Pure self-defense."

Self-defense! For over a year now, self-defense had been Otis Pike's watchword in all the battles in which the regiment had been called upon to fight.

In self-defense he had run from the carnage in Miller's cornfield at Antietam. In self-defense he had fled the slaughter of Chancellorsville. Where now were some of his old comrades in the Second Massachusetts? Where were Wilder Dwight and Tom Spurr and George Batchelder? And Stephen Emerson and William Temple?

Dead at Antietam, dead at Chancellorsville.

"Watch your step, Otis," his captain had warned him. "One more desertion and you're a dead man." The captain of Company E was Tom Robeson, fellow reveler and funny fellow.

"I warn you, Otis," his colonel had said, "if you run again, we'll have no choice." The colonel of the entire Second Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was good old Charley Mudge, another comrade from the Hasty Pudding Club, comic gymnast and consummate artist of the banjo.

Otis had snapped a salute. "Yes, sir, Colonel, sir. But, hark! do I hear a mockingbird?" It was a passage from the Minstrels of the class of 1860, every line and note of which had been composed by Otis Pike.

But Charley Mudge had looked at him solemnly and said, "I mean it, Otis. It's no joke."

LIEUTENANT COLONEL MUDGE

Charles Redington Mudge
Class of 1860

First Lt., 2d Mass. Vols., 28 May, 1861; Capt., 8 July, 1861; Major, 9 Nov., 1862; Lieut. Colonel, 6 June, 1863; killed at Gettysburg, Penn., 3 July, 1863.

... Straightway he gave the brief order, "Rise up,—over the breastworks,—forward, double-quick!" And up rose the men at the word of their dauntless commander.... He led them boldly and rapidly over the marsh straight into ... thick, fast volleys of hostile bullets ... in the middle of the marshy field a fatal ball struck him just below the throat. —Harvard Memorial Biographies

They were resting at last in the small Pennsylvania crossroads of Two Taverns. The whole Twelfth Corps had marched all night. When the halt was called at last, eight thousand men lay down on their rubber blankets and went to sleep beside the Baltimore Pike, their heads pillowed on their haversacks. They were deaf to the creaking of the wagons moving past them, deaf to the thudding hooves of the six-mule teams hauling ammunition trains toward something that was about to happen up there farther to the north.

Or maybe it was already happening. They could all feel it, a sense of the gathering of forces, the massing of opposing armies. There was a rumor—thousands and thousands of men were flowing together from a dozen different directions. As the men of the Twelfth Corps lay down, they murmured to each other, "The ball's about to open."

Colonel Mudge was asleep with the rest of them when he was prodded awake at dawn.

It was a sergeant from the Tenth Maine, the regiment of provost guards. "Sorry, sir," said the sergeant, "but the goddamn fool's done it again."

"Done what again?" Mudge pushed himself up on one elbow. When he saw what the sergeant was dumping on the ground, he said, "Oh no. Oh God, Otis, it's not you again."

Otis had fallen with his left arm twisted under him. "You're in for it now," said the sergeant, jerking him roughly to his feet.

Rubbing his shoulder, Otis looked at Mudge piteously and whimpered, "I was drunk, Charley, that's all. I couldn't help myself."

"He's Colonel Mudge to you," said the sergeant, giving him a shove. The sergeant nodded at the colonel. "He wasn't just drunk, the dumb fool. He was skedaddling again, hightailing it for Baltimore."

The morning of July first was already hot. Mudge had not slept well. He picked up his coat and stood up, trying to absorb the fact that this old friend had done something so fatally stupid as to desert for the third time.

Otis pulled out his best card. It had saved his neck twice before. "Come on, Charley," he said, his voice shaking, "you wouldn't shoot an old classmate? Not a fellow thespian from the good old days in Hasty Pudding, would you now, Charley? My God, Charley, who was it wrote that farce with the Female Smuggler? And all the songs? And all those hilarious playbills? Remember the whistling, Charley? Remember the stamping feet?"

"You promised me, Otis," said Mudge in a low voice. "You swore you'd never do it again."

"Oh, Charley, everybody was drunk, back there in Frederick." Otis scrambled up from his knees with a winning smile. "I couldn't help myself. God's truth, Charley, I didn't know where in the hell I was going. I was just trying to catch up, coming after you double-quick." Otis made a comical pretense of trotting at high speed. "I wasn't going to let my colonel down, not good old Charley Mudge, nor my captain neither, not good old Tom Robeson."

Mudge looked wretched. He muttered something to the provost guard, who grunted and turned on his heel. Mudge walked away from Otis and stood in the shade of a tree.

Thoroughly frightened, Otis fumbled at the cork of his canteen. His throat was parched. Swallowing the warm water, he kept anxious eyes on Mudge's back. Was Charley calling for a firing squad? Were they going to put an end to him here and now? They wouldn't do it on the march, would they? Not without a court-martial?

But Otis had seen it happen in another regiment, and that boy had only skedaddled twice. He had screamed for mercy, but they had shot him anyway.

Then Otis took a shaky breath of relief. It was only Tom Robeson. And, thank God, good old Tom Fox was strolling up with his sack coat slung over his shoulder, eating cherries from his hand.

And Seth Morgan was right behind Fox. Oh, Seth, Seth, you won't hurt me, will you, Seth? Not sweet-natured dear old Seth?

Otis watched as the four of them stood murmuring with their backs to him. Fear always made him sick to his stomach.

He couldn't keep quiet. "Tom," he called out to Robeson, "remember that piece I wrote for you? It was my piece, Tom, remember? Oh, those were good times, weren't they, Seth?" Then Otis's sentimental pathos gave way to a cry from the heart, "Oh God, Charley, oh Jesus, Seth, how did we get into this mess?"

They were deciding his fate. Otis couldn't stand it. He hurried forward into the pool of shade and fell on his knees. He could only jabber, "A classmate, boys, you wouldn't shoot an old classmate."

Somehow, against all hope, it worked again. Mudge glanced at the others, then looked down at Otis and said severely, "Listen, Otis, I don't know exactly what's coming, but there's going to be a fight. And every man in this regiment will be told to shoot you dead if you're caught skulking one more time."

Otis got up from his knees, sobbing and gushing his thanks. Mudge strode away. Fox and Robeson hurried off and didn't look back. Seth hurried away too, but he looked back and smiled.

... a mighty work was before them. Onward they moved, night and day were blended, over many a weary mile, through dust and through mud, in the broiling sunshine, the flooding rain ... weary, without sleep for days ... yet these men could still be relied upon, I believed, when the day of conflict should come.—Lt. Frank Haskell, 16 July, 1863

THE BLANK PAGE

Your great-great-grandfather?" said the woman at the reference desk in the Archives department of the Pusey Library. "What was his name?"

"Morgan, Seth Morgan." Mary found it oddly uncomfortable to say the name aloud.

The Pusey Library was a small jewel tucked away underground. Its highly visible neighbor in Harvard Yard was Widener, a monumental building with a vast stone staircase and towering granite columns, one of the great libraries of the Western world. Tourists understood its importance at once, and they clustered on the steps to be photographed before gathering around the bronze figure of John Harvard to be photographed again.

No pictures were taken on the steps of Pusey. It was too self-effacing. The broad stone stairs descended from ground level to a glass wall of doors that led to a pair of specialized libraries, the Harvard Archives and the Theatre Collection.

The Archives library was a cheerful well-lighted space. The librarian was cheerful too. "What class did he belong to?"

"That's the only thing I'm sure of," said Mary. "He was in the class of 1860. And I'm pretty sure he served in the Civil War."

"We'll find him in a jiffy." The librarian whisked away, returned with a thick book, smacked it down on the counter, and flipped briskly through the pages. "The Quinquennial Catalogue. Everybody's in here, absolutely everybody."

"Everybody?"

"Everybody from the dawn of time, 1636 to 1930." She ran a finger down a page. "Lots and lots of Morgans. Look, here he is, Morgan, Seth. You're right, he was class of 1860." She swirled the book around and tapped the name with her finger.

"Oh, thank you." Mary stared at the long column of people named Morgan, grateful that her ancestor's name had not been crossed out. There he was, one of dozens of Morgans who had attended the university at one time or another—

Morgan, Seth, 1860.

She looked up at the librarian gratefully. "My name's Mary Kelly. I teach around here, but I've never been in this library before. I'm so glad to see what it's like."

"Oh, yes, Professor Kelly, and I'm glad to meet you in person. You and your husband are famous." The librarian reached her hand across the counter. "Angelica Doyle."

Mary doted on librarians. She took Angelica Doyle's hand and shook it heartily. "I'm delighted to meet you. I should explain that my maiden name was Morgan, but I confess I don't know much about my great-great-grandfather. Do you have records about individual students, even that far back?"

"I'll see what I can find. Meanwhile you can see if his photograph is in our picture collection." Angelica Doyle nodded at a set of file cabinets against the wall. "The drawers with the blue labels."

Mary was charmed by the old-fashioned wooden drawers, but when she pulled out the M–N drawer and flicked through the index cards, she found no Seth among the Morgans.

"Well, there's an album for the class of 1860," said librarian Doyle. "Make yourself comfortable and I'll bring it out."

Mary looked around the room, chose a table and sat down. Nearby an elderly man was crouched over a gray box of files—was he looking up an ancestor? In one corner a young woman tapped away softly at a computer keyboard.

"Here we are," said Angelica Doyle, approaching with a large box. She set it down with a thump and removed the cover. Inside lay a big book, its gold-stamped binding crumbling at the edges. Angelica dropped a pair of white cotton gloves on the table and went away.

Mary took the hint and pulled on the gloves before lifting the cover of the album and turning the pages. They were of heavy stock with gold edges. Only a single photograph was mounted on each page.

Young men's faces, solemn and unsmiling. Mary guessed that the reason for their quiet dignity was not merely that the exposures were too long to capture a fleeting expression. Perhaps in those days people didn't have to pretend eternal happiness.

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Excerpted from The Deserter by Jane Langton. Copyright © 2003 Jane Langton. Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com.
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