The King’s Gambit

James Rada, Jr.

10: Betrayal

Lou Preston’s eyelids fluttered open to a room still half-draped in shadow, the dawn light too timid to chase away every dark corner. He sat up slowly, his muscles protesting, and realized he couldn’t recall when or how he had drifted off the night before. The leather-bound journal of his great-grandfather lay cradled in his lap, its corners softened by years of handling. He had been lost in its faded ink when sleep claimed him.

He set the journal gently on the oaken nightstand, the wood cool beneath his fingertips, then swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The floorboards creaked under his feet. Through the window, the sky was paling to a misty blue—it was a little after six in the morning.

He stretched and shook his head to clear residual dreams. He picked up the journal and leafed through its pages again, the gritty texture of old paper under his fingertips, as if desperate to confirm he had not invented the revelation he’d glimpsed. Almost two days before the Civil War’s fiercest clash, his great-grandfather, Major Harley Preston’s old comrade Colonel Donaldson, had written of a rumored peace—an outcome Lou knew history denied. Something had gone terribly awry.

Brewed coffee called to him downstairs. He carried the journal down the creaking staircase and set it on the kitchen table. Steam curled up from the glass pot as he poured a cup, the rich, earthy aroma enveloping him. Leaning against the sink, he sipped slowly, gazing out through the glass at the rounded silhouette of Little Round Top, still shadowed in the early light.

Lou’s mind churned: how could David Donaldson, a Union officer with Confederate connections, have been so certain a treaty was imminent when, two days later, Gettysburg erupted in bloodshed? And if that promise of peace had been sabotaged, might that explain why Harley Preston never returned home to Erie?

June 30, 1863

I discovered a half-empty bottle of brandy in the tavern’s dim corner, its golden liquid sloshing with promise. Back in my rented room, I poured a stiff dram, but my nerves refused to calm. Nightfall found Colonel Donaldson still absent when he meant to be gone only hours. Now the moon had climbed twice its height, and my anxiety mounted. I would have gone after him myself, but he ventured westward, and I had no map of his course.

From the window, I watched Emmitsburg’s silent streets. Most townsfolk, unnerved by the Union encampment on their outskirts, had fled to safer havens; the remainder stayed shuttered indoors.

A sharp knock startled me. Heart pounding, I opened the door to find a dusty boy of ten, eyes wide.

“Are you Major Preston?” he asked, the cloak of night clinging to him.

At my nod, he handed over a folded scrap. Inside, in Donaldson’s precise hand: “Give the boy two bits. He will bring you to me. Come quickly and alone.” — Donaldson.

“Who gave you this?” I asked.

“A man out near Zora. He’s hurt. I said I’d get a doctor, but he sent me to get you.”

“What does he look like?”

“He’s a Union soldier like you, but older, with brown hair, a mustache, muttonchops.”

“How is he hurt?”

The boy shrugged. “I don’t know, but he was bleeding pretty bad.”

I seized my saddlebags and hurried to the livery. As I cinched the saddle, the boy piped up, “He said I’d get two bits.”

I offered him a quarter. His smile was fleeting in the lamplit darkness. I lifted him onto the horse’s withers, then prompted my mount northwest, where a narrow trail curled into the nearby woods.

“Is there to be a battle here?” the boy ventured, voice small.

“That’s what we’re trying to avert,” I replied, though my own confidence wavered.

He spoke of his father and brother—one dead at Antietam and the other still fighting somewhere in the South—and his mother’s unending grief. His wide eyes reflected moonlight as he described farm chores, tending ailing kin, and protecting his little sister.

After we passed the last outlying homes, the boy guided me down a faint track, overhung by low branches that brushed my shoulders. Then, from within tangled shadows, a figure detached itself—rifle barrel glinting in silver moonbeams.

“This is him,” the boy nearly shouted.

Alarm jolted through me: a trap! The rifle cracked. I threw myself from the saddle as the shot screamed overhead. I was looking away at the time, so I wasn’t blinded by the gunpowder flash. The horse bolted, neighing into the night. The boy’s startled cry echoed as I dove for my pistol.

I saw the attacker rush at me in broken glimpses, stark contrasts of shadow and light. I swung my pistol in wide arcs until finally his face surfaced. He leveled his rifle. I squeezed the trigger, but before I could react, a second shot rang out. The man fell.

From behind an oak stepped Colonel Donaldson, limping, coat spotted dark. He holstered his weapon and inquired, breathless, “Are you all right?”

I stared at the corpse, then back at him. “What happened?”

“He ambushed me earlier and killed my Confederate contact,” Donaldson panted, voice hoarse. “He nearly killed me.”

The colonel limped over to the dead man and rolled him over. I joined him. He lit a match.

“Do you recognize him?”

I did. I didn’t know who he was, but I recognized his face. I had seen him somewhere.

“I don’t know his name, but I have seen him before,” I said.

“Very good, Preston. He was one of the soldiers at the door to the Daughters of Charity building.”

“He’s Union? But why would he ambush us?”

“Perhaps he was ordered to.”

Things started falling into place. “Why? Who would order him to? General Meade?” It didn’t make sense, but it was the only thing that did make sense.

“He followed me out here to stop the exchange.” Donaldson had come to exchange signed copies of a document that would end the war with a Confederate officer sent by Jefferson Davis.

“But why? The general wouldn’t go against the president,” I asked.

“Remember the agent in Frederick last year?”

“This soldier is a sympathizer?”

“I doubt it. He was probably just following orders from the general, but the general…

“You’re not saying Gen. Meade is a sympathizer.” I liked Colonel Donaldson, but I wasn’t about the stand for him accusing General Meade of treason.

“He doesn’t have to be. The South is not the only place where there are war profiteers. All it would take is one who has Meade’s ear.”

“That would be treason.”

“A southern agent tipped the Union army to General Lee’s movements. Is it so hard to believe it could happen here? It had to be Meade. He was the only one who knew why we are in town.”

I noticed the spreading stain at his collar. Donaldson was bleeding.

“Where’s the boy?” I asked.

“He fled with your mount. We cannot risk a second ambush.” Donaldson’s face tightened. “I need paper, pen, light. I have them in my saddlebags.”

We retraced our steps through moonlit woods until another body lay unmoving on the leaf-strewn ground—Donaldson’s Confederate counterpart. The colonel paused, voice low: “He was a good man, though he answered the South’s call more eagerly than this Union soldier did.”

I extracted parchment, ink, and quill from his saddlebags and passed them to Colonel Donaldson. He braced the paper on the seat of his saddle. Blood trickled from his mouth as he dipped his pen.

“What are you doing? We must get you a doctor,” I protested.

Donaldson shook his head, eyes glazed. “Too late for that. They won’t let peace stand—they’ll strike down anyone who tries to make it happen. You must protect yourself…and the President.”

“Protect from whom?”

He coughed, his hand trembling. “A conspiracy at the highest levels—war profiteers embedded in both North and South. I suspect General Meade’s ear has been bought by men who profit from prolonging this slaughter.” He paused, gathering strength for his final act. “It won’t be the war’s end that saves us now, but leverage. Hide these documents. They expose families who have committed treason and murder for profit.” He pressed the confession into my hand:

“My name is Paul Dupont of the George Dupont Family of North Carolina. My family, along with others, has been working both on their own and in conjunction with other families to prolong the War of Rebellion. These families have committed treason and murder for no other reason but to profit off this war. The blood of the slain, in great part, stains their hands.”

“I am also a victim of their treachery. You can see this confession is on the back of the peace they have finally managed to stop.” On the reverse lay a peace agreement, bearing Jefferson Davis’s signature—a treaty that might have ended the war months ago, if not for these hidden hands.

“I fear this will no longer be enough to end the war,” Colonel Donaldson said. “The families I know of who are involved are….” He listed seven names. I knew two of them. “I swear to the truthfulness of this confession with by blood and my life.” Then he took the document back and signed it.

He passed it back to me. “Hide that and let it be known that it exists. It will make them hesitate, and that will give you time to take the documents from my safe. They have more proof that shows the families were conspiring against their respective governments.” Then he told me the combination to the safe in his office.

“How will these keep me safe?” I asked.

“These families have one face they show the world and one that stays in the shadows. They don’t want the light shined on the latter. Not only would it destroy their profiteering, it might destroy their legitimate businesses and their reputations. Hide these tonight. Don’t wait.”

“Are you sure it will stop them?”

“Stop them? No. Protect you and the president. Yes. They won’t make a move if they know those documents exist, and they haven’t destroyed them.”

“What about the peace?”

Donaldson sighed and shook his head. “It won’t happen. At least not with this agreement. Meade won’t stop, and Lee doesn’t know we were on the cusp of peace. Another battle. Another wedge, and when Davis doesn’t hear from his man, he will think himself betrayed.” The colonel shook his head. “I tried. I tried my best. Tell the president I’m sorry.”

Then he closed his eyes and slowly slid down the side of the horse to the ground.

I searched his neck for a pulse. Nothing.

Clutching the folded peace agreements to my chest, I felt the weight of history in my coat. The morning birds had begun their song beyond the trees. The coming storm of battle could not be halted. Gettysburg’s fields lay ahead and would be stained with blood by day’s end. I now carried proof of the treachery that had undone peace. I only wished that it could have been peace.

I rose, steeling myself for the journey to come. The truth, I hoped, might yet offer salvation—for the president, and for my own fragile soul.