"Battle Flag" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cornwell Bernard)

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GENERAL STUART'S AIDE reached Lee's headquarters before dawn and found the army's commander standing outside his tent in contemplation of a crude map scratched in the dirt. The map showed the rivers Rapidan and Rappahannock, while the fords across the further river were marked by scraps of twig. It was those fords that the cavalry needed to capture if Pope was to be trapped at the rivers' confluence, but it seemed there was to be no chance of success this day, for the aide brought only a repetition of the previous day's bad news. "The cavalry just aren't ready, sir. General Stuart's real sorry, sir." The aide was very sheepish, half expecting a tirade from an angry Lee. "It's the horses, sir," he went on lamely, "they ain't recovered. The roads are wicked hard, sir, and General Stuart was expecting to find more forage up here, and . . ." The aide let his hopeless explanations trail away.

Lee's grave face scarce registered his disappointment; indeed, he seemed much more disappointed in the taste of the coffee than in the failure of his cavalry. "Is this really the best coffee we have, Hudson?" he asked one of his younger staff officers.

"Until we can capture more from the Yankees, sir, yes."

"Which we can't do without our cavalry. Upon my soul, we can't." He sipped the coffee again, grimaced, then laid the tin mug on a washstand that was set with his aides' shaving tackle. On the General's own washstand, inside his tent, there lay a dispatch that reported that 108 Federal ships had steamed up the Potomac River in the previous twenty-four hours, and what that figure meant, Lee knew, was that McClellan's forces were well on their way to reinforcing Pope's army. The ships' sidewheels and screws were churning the Potomac white in their efforts to combine the enemy armies, and meanwhile the Confederate cavalry was not ready. Which meant Pope's army would be safe for one more day. The frustration rose in Lee, only to be instantly suppressed. There was no profit in displaying temperament, none at all, and so the General looked placidly back at the crude map scratched in the dirt. There was still time, he told himself, still time. It was one thing for the Northern generals to move an army by boat, but quite another to land the troops and reunite them with their wagons and guns and tents and ammunition. And McClellan was a cautious man, much too cautious, which would give the rebels even more time to teach John Pope a lesson in civilized warfare. Lee ruefully obliterated the map with the toe of a riding boot and gave orders that the army would not, after all, be marching that morning. He retrieved his coffee. "What exactly do they do to this coffee?" he asked. "Mix it with ground goober peas, sir," Captain Hudson answered.

"Mashed peanuts!" Lee sipped again. "Good Lord." "It makes the coffee go farther, sir." "It surely does, it surely does."

"Of course, sir, we can always get some real beans from Richmond," Hudson said. "If we say they're for you, I'm sure they'll find some."

"No, no. We must drink what the soldiers drink. At least when it comes to coffee we must." The General forced himself to swallow more of the sour liquid. "The horses will be ready tomorrow, you think?" he asked Stuart's messenger very courteously, almost as though he regretted pressing the cavalryman for a decision.

"General Stuart's confident of that, sir. Very confident." Lee forbore to remark that twenty-four hours earlier Stuart had been equally confident that the cavalry would be ready in this dawn, but nothing would be achieved by recrimination, and so Lee offered the discomfited aide a grave smile. "My respects to General Stuart," he said, "and I look forward to marching tomorrow instead."

Later that morning Lee returned to Clark's Mountain to examine the enemy on the river's far bank. As he climbed the wooded slope, he saw a pyre of dirty smoke smearing the western sky, but no one on his staff knew what the smoke meant. It came from Jackson's lines, and doubtless Jackson would deal with whatever had caused the fire. Lee was more concerned with what was happening across the river, and so, once at the summit, he dismounted and rested his telescope on Traveller's patient back.

And once again the Yankee presence in the Virginia hills was denoted by a myriad of smoking fires that hazed the green land like a winter mist, but then Lee saw that something was missing beneath that mist. There were fires aplenty, but no tents. He moved the glass. No wagons, no horses, and no guns. There was nothing but the remains of campfires that the Yankees had lit in the night, stacked high with wood, then left to burn as they crept away. "They've gone," Lee said.

"Sir?" One of his aides stepped forward to hear better.

"They've gone." Lee collapsed his telescope but still stared northward. "They've gone," he said again, almost as if he did not believe his own eyes.

Pope had taken his men out of the trap. He had retreated across the Rappahannock. He had seen his danger and abandoned the land between the rivers, which meant, Lee thought, that in a week's time Pope would have been reinforced by McClellan and then it would all be finished. Blue-coated Yankees would be rampaging all across Virginia, and John Pope, the wretched John Pope who so passionately hated Southerners, would be the tyrant of all he surveyed.

Unless, that is, the Confederacy risked everything on a daring and desperate chance. Not a maneuver from the rule book, but something from the devil's box of tricks instead. Lee sensed the idea like a temptation. He suddenly saw how he could tip John Pope off balance and then savage him, and the idea burgeoned in his mind even as the well-schooled and conventional part of his training attempted to reject the notion as too risky. But another part of Lee was tantalized by the beauty and symmetry of the outrageous idea. It was a maneuver that would humiliate John Pope and drive the Yankees clean out of Virginia, and as Lee considered the rewards and risks of his maneuver, he felt the excitement of a gambler staking everything on a single run of cards. The thing could be done! Yet his face betrayed no hint of that excitement as he climbed into his saddle and settled his boots into his stirrups. "My compliments to General Jackson," he said calmly, pushing his telescope back into its case and gathering Traveller's reins into his hands, "and I would be much obliged if he would call on me at his earliest convenience."

And then, Lee thought, he would let Old Mad Jack off his leash.

And God help John Pope then.

It was not convenient for Major General Thomas Jackson to call on General Robert Lee. It would be convenient soon, but not yet, for General Jackson had two urgent duties to perform. They were not pleasant duties—indeed, lesser men might have shrunk from them altogether—but Thomas Jackson considered them simple responsibilities, and so he performed them with his customary dogged diligence.

Men had to be shot. Southern men. Except to the General they were not men, but curs and trash who had deserted their duties and thus placed themselves beneath contempt. Their commanding officers had pleaded for the condemned men's lives, but Jackson had answered that men who desert their comrades deserve to be shot and officers who pleaded for such men deserved to be hung, and after that curt response there had been no more pleas for clemency. Now, beneath a clearing sky and on a meadow still damp from the previous day's rains, Jackson had assembled his whole corps. Three divisions of soldiers, twenty-four thousand men, were paraded in rank after shabby gray rank to form three sides of an open square. The morning was hot and the air stifling.

Drums beat slow as a band played a ragged funeral dirge. The band was paraded a few paces behind Jackson, who sat on his small, rawboned horse and stared morosely at three wooden stakes that had been plunged into the dirt beside three rough-sawn pine coffins and three freshly dug graves. Behind him his staff sat silent in their saddles, some of them more nervous of this morning's killings than they had ever been of battle. Captain Hudson, Lee's aide, who was waiting to escort General Jackson back to meet the army's commander in Gordonsville, watched the gaunt, famous figure and wondered if ever, in all the history of warfare, any commander had appeared so unprepossessing. The General's beard was unkempt, and his clothes looked in worse condition than any of his soldiers' uniforms. He had an old blue coat that was vaguely military in cut but threadbare and faded, while for a hat Jackson favored a shabby cadet's cap with a creased brim that was pulled low over his eyes. His horse was a big-headed, knock-kneed, clumsy beast with a patchy chestnut pelt, while the General's enormous boots were thrust into rusted stirrups that hung from mended leather straps. The most impressive military aspect of the General, apart from his reputation, was his rigid pose, for he sat his horse straight-backed and with his head held high, but then, as if to spoil that martial stance, he slowly and inexplicably raised his left hand until it was poised higher than his scruffy, creased cap. He then held the hand motionless, as though he was beseeching the Almighty for blessing.

The three doomed men were marched onto the field, each man escorted by his own company. The General had insisted that the criminals must be shot by their own comrades, for those comrades were the men most immediately betrayed by each deserter. An army chaplain waited for the condemned men, who, on reaching the stakes, were ordered onto their knees. The chaplain stepped forward and began to pray.

A small wind stirred the sullen air. To the west a sifting plume of smoke showed where the Yankee raiders had struck in the night, and Jackson, reminded of that impudent raid, looked toward the Faulconer Brigade to see the regiment that paraded without its colors. They had lost their colors, just as they had lost most of their officers, and Jackson, brooding on the Yankee coup, felt a spasm of anger.

The prayer seemed unending. The chaplain's eyes were screwed tight shut, and his hands clenched hard about a battered Bible as he commended the three sinners' souls to the God they were about to meet. The chaplain reminded God of the two thieves who had shared His Son's death on Calvary and implored the Almighty to look as charitably upon these three sinners as Christ had looked upon the repentant thief. One of the three men was unable to check his tears. He was a beardless youth who had deserted because his sixteen-year-old wife had run away with his uncle, and now he was to die in a green field because he had loved her so much. He looked up at his Captain and tried to make a last-minute plea, but the chaplain simply raised his voice– so that the useless request could not be heard. The other two men showed no emotion, not even when the band finished its funereal music and went suddenly silent after a last uneven flurry on the drums.

The chaplain also finished. He stumbled as he stepped backward from the victims. A staff officer took the chaplain's place and in a loud, slow voice that almost carried to the rearmost ranks of the twenty-four thousand witnesses, read aloud the charges against the three men and the verdicts of their courts-martial. The bleak sentences finished, he stepped back and looked at the three company officers. "Carry on."

"No, for the love of God, no! Please, no!" The young man tried to resist, but two of his comrades dragged him to the stake and there pinioned him with rope. The three men wore shirts, pants, and ragged boots. A sergeant blindfolded the weeping youth and told him to stop his noise and die like a man. The other two deserters refused their blindfolds. "Ready!" the staff officer shouted, and over a hundred rifles were raised to the firing position. Some men aimed wide, some blatantly had their rifles uncocked, but most of the men obeyed the order.

"Aim!" the staff officer called, and two nervous men pulled their triggers instead. Both bullets flew wide.

"Wait for it!" a sergeant snarled. A company officer had his eyes closed, and his lips were moving in silent prayer as he waited for the order to fire. One of the doomed men spat onto the grass. To Lee's aide, who had not expected to witness death this morning, it seemed as though three whole divisions of troops were holding their collective breath, while Jackson, his left hand held high, seemed carved from stone.

"No, please! No!" the young man called. His blindfolded head was thrashing from side to side. "Nancy!" he shouted desperately, "my Nancy!"

The staff officer took a deep breath. "Fire!" The smoke jetted suddenly. The volley's huge sound rolled across the fields to explode birds from far-off trees.

The three men jerked in sudden spasms as their shirts erupted with blood. The companies' commanding officers walked to the three stakes with their revolvers drawn, but only one of the men was still alive. The man's breath bubbled in the wreckage of his ribs, and his bearded head twitched. His company officer cocked his revolver, held his breath, and tried to stop his hand shaking. For a second or two it looked as though he would be unable to give the coup de grace; then he managed to pull the trigger, and the living man's head was shattered by the bullet. The Captain turned away and vomited into the open grave as the band jerked into the tune of "Old Dan Tucker." Lee's aide let out a long slow breath.

"Put 'em in their boxes!" a sergeant called, and men ran forward to cut the dead men away from their stakes and lift them into the open-topped coffins, which were then ramped up on the red earth mounds so that a passer-by could see the corpses clearly. "Take the wrap off the young lad," the sergeant ordered and waited as the cuckolded youth's blindfold was removed.

Then, one by one the regiments were marched past the dead. Men from Virginia and Georgia, from the Carolinas and Tennessee, from Alabama and Louisiana, were all shown the three corpses, and after the infantry came the artillery and the engineers, all made to look into the eyes of the fly-infested dead, so that they would understand what fate awaited a deserter. General Jackson had been the first man to inspect the three corpses, and he had stared intently into the faces as though trying to understand the impulse that could drive a man to the unforgivable sin of desertion. As a Christian the General had to believe that such sinners could be redeemed, but as a soldier he could not imagine any of the three men knowing a moment's peace throughout eternity, and his face showed nothing but disgust as he twitched his horse's reins and headed toward the farm that served as his headquarters.

It was there, in a parlor that was hung with an ancient portrait of President George Washington and a newer one of President Jefferson Davis, that the General undertook his second unpleasant duty of the day. He stood with his ramrod-straight back to the portrait of Washington and, flanked by three senior staff officers, summoned General Washington Faulconer into his presence.

The parlor was a small room made even smaller by a map table that almost filled the space between its lime-washed walls. Washington Faulconer entered the room to find himself cribbed in a narrow space and faced by four men behind the map table, all standing and all looking uncomfortably like judges. He had half expected to be seated opposite the General, but instead this meeting was evidently to be conducted formally, and Washington Faulconer felt even more uncomfortable at that daunting prospect. He was wearing a borrowed sword and a borrowed jacket that was at least one size too big for him. Sweat was trickling into his golden beard. The small parlor stank of unwashed bodies and dirty clothes. "General," Faulconer said in cautious greeting as he stood opposite his commanding general.

Jackson said nothing at first but just stared at the fair-haired Faulconer. The General's face showed the exact same expression as when he had stared down at the three slack-jawed, chest-shattered deserters in their cheap pine coffins, and Faulconer, unable to meet the intensity of that blue-eyed gaze, looked guiltily away. "I gave orders," Jackson spoke at last in his clipped, high voice, "that all the crossings of the Rapidan were to be guarded."

"I—" Faulconer began, but was instantly silenced.

"Quiet!" Even Jackson's three staff officers felt a frisson of terror at the intensity of that command, while Washington Faulconer visibly shook. "I gave orders," Jackson began again, "that all the crossings of the Rapidan were to be guarded. Men of your brigade, General, discovered an unmapped ford and were intelligent enough to obey my orders. While you"—and here the General paused just long enough for a rictus to shiver his body—"countermanded them."

"I—" Faulconer began, and this time was stopped not by a word of command but simply by the look in the General's blue eyes.

"The damage?" Jackson turned abruptly to one of his most trusted aides, Major Hotchkiss, a scholarly and painstaking man who had been deputed to discover the truth about the night's incursion. Hotchkiss had arrived at the remnants of the Faulconer Brigade's headquarters at dawn and had spent the next two hours questioning survivors, and now, in a dry, neutral voice, he offered his horrid list.

"Fourteen dead, sir," Hotchkiss said, "and twenty-four seriously hurt. Those are soldiers, but there were at least six civilians killed, and three of those, maybe more, were women. We won't know for sure till the tavern ruins are cool enough to be searched." Hotchkiss's news was all the more damning for being announced in a placid voice. Major Hinton was among the dead, while Captain Murphy was wounded so grievously that no one was certain that his name would not soon be added to the grim tally.

"And among the dead is Captain Talliser, my aide," Jackson added in a dangerous voice.

No one responded.

"Captain Talliser was the son of a good friend," Jackson delivered his aide's obituary, "and was himself a loyal servant of Christ. He deserved better than to be mauled to death by

night raiders."

In the back of the house a man's voice suddenly began singing "How sweet the name of Jesus sounds." Pots clattered in that distant room; then the hymn was interrupted by laughter. The sound of the pots woke a tabby cat that had been sleeping on the parlor's windowsill. The cat arched its back, yawned, delicately stretched out each front paw, then began to wash its face. Major Hotchkiss looked back to his list. "Of material losses, sir," he said, "my preliminary estimate is that sixteen thousand rifle cartridges were lost in the fire, plus eighty-six charges of powder and thirty-eight rounds of common shell. Two limbers, four caissons, and three wagons were burned out and at least six horses taken." Hotchkiss folded the list, then raised scornful eyes to Washington Faulconer. "Two battle flags were also carried away by the enemy."

Another pained silence ensued. It seemed to stretch forever before, at last, Jackson spoke again. "And how did the raiders cross the river?"

"At a place called Dead Mary's Ford," Hotchkiss answered, "which had been properly guarded until the previous night. The raiders were intercepted during their withdrawal and a prisoner taken. The raiders also lost one horse." Hotchkiss, a dry, stern man who had once taught school, added the fact of the horse's death in a sarcastic voice. Faulconer colored.

"And it was by your orders, General," Jackson said, ignoring Hotchkiss's sarcasm, "that the ford was uncovered."

This time Faulconer tried no defense. He looked up briefly, but he still could not meet Jackson's gaze, and so he looked down again. He wanted to say that he had only been trying to instill discipline into his Brigade and that he had lost his precious saber in the night and, worst of all, that the whole humiliation had been at the hands of his own son. And not just one humiliation, for his servant Nelson had returned that same morning with the dreadful tale of Adam's raid on Seven Springs, which meant that Adam had attacked both his mother and his father, and the realization of those two awful betrayals filled Faulconer's eyes with tears.

"You must have something to say, Faulconer," Jackson said.

Faulconer cleared his throat. "Accidents happen," he suggested feebly. "The ford," he shrugged, "it wasn't on the map, sir, merely a shallow spot. Lack of rain, really." He knew he was stammering like a fool and tried to pull himself together. Goddamn it! Was he not one of Virginia's wealthiest men? A landowner who could buy this Tom Fool general a million times over? And Faulconer tried to remember all the risible stories about Jackson: how the General taught in a Negro Sunday school and how he gave a tenth of his income to the church and how he took a cold bath at six o'clock every morning, summer and winter alike, and how he held his left hand in the air so the blood would not collect and turn an old wound rancid, but somehow the catalog of Jackson's eccentricities and imbecilities did not make Faulconer feel any more confident. "I deemed that the ford was not important," he managed to say.

"And what did you deem my orders to be?"

Faulconer frowned, not understanding the question.

"I ordered all fords, regardless of their importance, to be guarded," Jackson said. "You thought I was amusing myself by delivering such a command?"

Faulconer, defeated, could only shrug.

Jackson paused a second, then delivered his verdict. "You are dismissed from your command, General." Jackson's voice was harsher than ever, prompted not just by Faulconer's dereliction of duty but also by the tears he saw in Faulconer's eyes. General Jackson did not mind tears in their proper place: at a deathbed, say, or in contemplation of Christ's miraculous atonement, but not here where men spoke of duty. "You will leave this army forthwith," Jackson continued, "and report to the War Department in Richmond for further orders. If there are any further orders for you, which it is my fervent hope there are not. Dismissed!"

Faulconer looked up. He blinked back his tears. For a second it seemed he might try and protest the hard sentence, but then he turned without any acknowledgment and left the room.

Jackson waited for the door to close. "Political generals," he said bitterly, "are as fit for soldiering as lapdogs for hunting." He reached for Major Hotchkiss's list and read its depressing statistics without showing any sign of regret or surprise. "Make the arrangements for Faulconer's replacement," he said as he handed the paper back to the staff officer. Then he picked up his shabby hat in readiness for his visit to Lee's headquarters. A final thought struck him as he reached the door and he paused there, frowning. "The enemy did well," Jackson said, apparently to himself, "so we shall just have to do better."

It was midday before the ruins of McComb's Tavern were cool enough to let a work party retrieve the bodies from the heart of the wreckage, and even then the salvage work had to be done by men wearing protective strips of water-soaked sacking around their boots and hands. The corpses had been shrunk by the fierce heat into black, brittle manikins that smelt disturbingly of roasted pork. Starbuck supervised the work. He was still officially under arrest, but no one else seemed willing to take charge of the salvage, and so, while the Brigade marched off to witness the executions and while General Washington Faulconer waited at General Jackson's headquarters, Starbuck took a dozen men from his own company and set them to work.

"So what's happening?" Truslow had asked Starbuck at dawn when the early light revealed the blackened and smoking wreckage.

"Don't know."

"Are you under arrest?"

"Don't know."

"Who's commanding the Legion?"

"Medlicott," Starbuck said. Faulconer had made the appointment during the night.

"Dan Medlicott!" Truslow said disgustedly. "Why in hell's name appoint him?"

Starbuck did not answer. He felt slighted by the appointment, for he had been a captain long before Daniel Medlicott had bribed his way to the rank in the spring election, but Starbuck also understood that Washington Faulconer would never have appointed him to command the Legion. "I've got a job for you," Starbuck told Truslow instead. "The prisoner's being unhelpful." The man they had captured was called Sparrow and came from Virginia's Pendleton County, one of the fractious western counties that had declared themselves to be a new state loyal to the Union.

"I'll make the sumbitch squeal," Truslow said happily.

The morning wore on. Most of the Legion witnessed the three executions, but even when they returned to their encampment, they still seemed dazed and stupefied by the night's disasters. Of the Legion's captains only Medlicott, Moxey, and Starbuck remained alive and unwounded, and of the officers who had attended Major Hinton's birthday supper only Lieutenant Davies had survived serious harm. Davies had received a bullet slash on his left forearm but had escaped the worst of the massacre by taking cover behind the small church. "I could have done more," he kept telling Starbuck.

"And died? Don't be a fool. If you'd have opened fire they'd have hunted you down and killed you like a dog."

Davies shook at the memory. He was a tall, thin, bespectacled man, three years older than Starbuck and with a perpetually worried expression. He had been reading law in his uncle's office before the war began and had often confided in Starbuck his fears that he might never master the intricacies of that profession. "They knew there were women in the house," he now said to Starbuck.

"I know. You've told me." Starbucks tone was callous and peremptory. In his view there was little point in endlessly discussing the night's tragedy in the vain hope of finding some consolation. The mess had to be cleaned up, avenged, and forgotten, which was why he was employing his company in retrieving the bodies from the burned-out tavern. Davies had come to watch the salvage, perhaps to remind himself how narrowly he had escaped being one of the shrunken, charred bodies.

"Murphy told them there were women inside," Davies said indignantly. "I heard him!"

"It doesn't matter," Starbuck said. He was watching the Cobb twins, who were rummaging among the ashes in the center of the burned building. Izard Cobb had found some coins and an ivory cribbage board that had somehow survived the fire undamaged. "Those go to Sergeant Waggoner!" Starbuck called across the ruins. The newly promoted Waggoner had been charged with collecting what few pitiable valuables might be rescued from the burned tavern.

"But it does matter!" Davies protested. "They killed women!"

"For Christ's sake"—Starbuck turned on the pale, bespectacled Davies—"you're about to get a captaincy, which means your men don't want to hear what went wrong last night. They want to hear how you intend to find the son of a damned bitch who did it to us and how you're going to kill him."

Davies looked shocked. "Captaincy?"

"I guess," Starbuck said. The night's disasters had virtually beheaded the Faulconer Legion, which meant there would either have to be wholesale promotions or else new people drafted in from other regiments.

"Maybe Pecker will come back?" Davies said wistfully, as though Colonel Bird could make everything in the Legion better.

"Pecker'll be back when he's mended," Starbuck said, "and that won't be for a few weeks yet." He suddenly whipped around to look at the wreckage again. "Cobb! If you've pocketed that silver I'll hang you!"

"I ain't pocketed nothing! You want to search me?" "I'll search your brother," Starbuck said, and saw his suspicion that Izard Cobb would palm the coins to his brother Ethan had been plumb right. "Give the money to Sergeant Waggoner," he told Ethan Cobb, then watched as his orders were obeyed. "Now pick up that body." He pointed to the blackened figure of one of McComb's cooks.

Izard Cobb made a great display of horror. "She's a nigger, Captain!" he protested.

"If she was alive you'd have been happy enough to bed her, so now you can carry her to the grave. And do it respectfully!" Starbuck waited until the Cobb brothers had stooped to their work, then turned back to Davies. "They're lazy sons of bitches."

"All the Cobbs are lazy," Davies said, "always were. The family ruined some prime bottom land off Hankey's Run, just let it go to rack and ruin. A shame." His knowledge of such matters was a reminder that the Legion was still largely composed of men who came from within a day's walk of the town of Faulconer Court House; men who knew each other and each other's families and each other's business. Men like Starbuck, an outsider, were the exception. It was that close-knit family feeling that had added to the regiment's pain; when Major Hinton was killed, the Legion lost not just a commanding officer but a friend, a sidesman of the church, a brother-in-law, a creditor, a hunting companion, and above all, a neighbor, and if Murphy died they would lose another. "Still," Davies said, "Dan Medlicott is a decent man."

Starbuck believed Daniel Medlicott was a sly, ponderous, and cowardly tool, but he also knew better than to criticize one local man to another. Instead he turned away to watch as hard and Ethan Cobb carried the distorted body free of the ashes. Truslow's inquisition of the captured cavalryman had revealed that it was not Adam who had been responsible for this massacre but a man called Blythe, yet Starbuck still felt an extraordinary bitterness toward his erstwhile friend. Adam had ridden the high moral horse for so long, preaching about the sanctity of the North's cause, and now he rode with men who slaughtered women.

"Starbuck!" Colonel Swynyard called from the road beside the burned wagon park.

Starbuck shouted at Truslow to take charge, then went to join Swynyard. "Five dead women." Starbuck delivered the final tally in a harsh voice. "Two cooks, McComb's wife, and the upstairs girls." "The whores?" "They were decent enough girls," Starbuck said. "One of them, anyway."

"I thought the tavern was out of bounds?" "It was," Starbuck said. "And I didn't think you had any money?" "I don't, but she was a sweet girl."

"Sweet on you, you mean," Swynyard said tartly, then sighed. "I do pray for you, Starbuck, I do indeed."

"Fitzgerald, her name was," Starbuck said, "from Ireland. Her husband ran off and left her with a pile of debts, and she was just trying to pay them off." He stopped, suddenly overwhelmed with the misery of such a life and death. "Poor Kath," he said. He had been hoping Sally Truslow might help the girl, maybe by finding her a more lucrative job in Richmond, but now Kath Fitzgerald was a shrunken corpse waiting for a shallow grave. "I need a goddamned drink," Starbuck said bitterly.

"No, you don't," Swynyard said, "because you and I are summoned to headquarters. To see Jackson, and he's not a man to visit if you're stinking with whiskey."

"Oh, Christ," Starbuck blasphemed. He had hoped that the night's raid would have finished his troubles, but now it seemed Jackson himself had taken an interest in his derelictions. "What does Mad Jack want?"

"How would I know?" Swynyard said. He scuffed a foot in the road, which was still imprinted with the hoofmarks of the night's raiders. "He's seeing Faulconer now." "Who'll be bitching about us."

"But we were right about Dead Mary's Ford," Swynyard said in a hopeful voice. "Maybe Jackson will acknowledge that?"

"Maybe," Starbuck said, but without any real hope that justice might be done. General Washington Faulconer would doubtless have his wrist slapped, but colonels and captains, especially poverty-stricken colonels and captains, made far more convenient scapegoats for disasters. Last night, when he had captured the prisoner at the ford, Starbuck had been sure that he could defeat Faulconer's malevolence, but in his interview with Major Hotchkiss, Jackson's aide, Starbuck had not felt a flicker of understanding or sympathy, just a dry disapproval. Justice, he reckoned, was a rare commodity. He swore at life's unfairness, then changed the subject by fishing a scrap of paper from his pocket. "Did you ever hear of a fellow named Joe Galloway?" he asked the Colonel.

Swynyard thought for a second, then nodded. "Cavalryman. Regular army. Never met him, but I've heard the name. Why?"

"He led last night's raid." Starbuck described what he had learned about Galloway's Horse; how it was composed of renegade Southerners who could ride the paths of Dixie with the same familiarity as rebel horsemen, and how a Captain Billy Blythe had led the detachment that had surrounded and savaged the tavern with their repeating rifles.

"How did you find all this out?" Swynyard asked.

"Prisoner talked," Starbuck said.

"I'm surprised he told you so much," Swynyard said, staring disconsolate at the scorched field where the remnants of the burned-out ammunition wagons stood.

"He struck up a kind of rapport with Truslow," Starbuck said. "It seems Galloway has a farm near Manassas that he's using as his depot, and I was kind of hoping we might get back there one day."

"To do what?"

"That," Starbuck said, pointing to the ruins of the tavern.

Swynyard shrugged. "I doubt we'll get the chance. Young Moxey says we're both to be posted to coastal defenses in the Carolinas."

"Moxey's a poxed piece of ratshit," Starbuck said.

"No doubt you once said that about me," the Colonel said.

"Oh no, sir," Starbuck grinned, "I was never that complimentary about you."

Swynyard smiled, then shook his head ruefully. "Be ready to leave in an hour, Starbuck. I'll arrange a horse for you. And stay sober, you hear me? That's an order."

"I'll stay sober, sir, I promise," for he had a whore to bury and a general to see.

Major Galloway's raiders did not survive entirely unscathed. The unfortunate Sparrow was captured, a Marylander was missing, while Corporal Harlan Kemp, the Virginian whose local knowledge had led the raiders to Dead Mary's Ford, had been shot in the belly. All those casualties had been caused during the brief and unexpected fight at the river, which had left Kemp in terrible pain. He spent the homeward journey drifting in and out of consciousness, and every few minutes he would beg one of the men supporting him in his saddle to do him the same favor they would render to a badly wounded horse. "Just shoot me, for the love of Christ, please shoot me."

Adam carried Kemp's rifle and one of the captured flags. He was continually looking for any sign of pursuit, but no rebel pursuers appeared as the raiders crossed the Robertson River, then the Hazel and the Aestham, each waterway more swollen with storm water than the last, until just after midday they came to the flooded Rappahannock and were forced to ride six miles upstream to find a passable ford. Then, safe at last on the northern bank, they rode east toward the rail depot at Bealeton.

Two miles outside the town a shell screamed overhead to explode in a gout of mud and smoke just a hundred paces behind the horsemen. Galloway ordered the Stars and Stripes unfurled. A second shell howled past to smash into a pine tree, splitting the wood with a smoky crack that startled the tired horses, so that the troopers had to struggle with their reins and slash back with spurs. They could see the roofs of Bealeton beyond the trees and see the smoke of the artillery edging one of those patches of woodland. More smoke, this time from a locomotive, plumed up from the town itself. "The rebels can't have captured the place!" Galloway said and told the standard-bearer to wave the flag more vigorously.

The field gun did not fire again. Instead an apologetic Northern artillery officer rode out to investigate the horsemen and to explain that General Pope was nervous of rebel cavalry who might be probing the Federal army's new positions on the Rappahannock's north bank. "We've seen no secesh horse," Galloway told the artilleryman, then spurred on into a town crammed with confused soldiery. Troops that had embarked in Alexandria and Manassas expecting to arrive in Culpeper Court House now waited for new orders, and meanwhile the rails south of Bealeton were being torn up and carried north for safekeeping, and the trains employed on that task were blocked by the stalled troop trains that had been heading south, so that now there were no fewer than eight trains marooned at the depot. The town's roads were equally clogged. There were men who had lost their regiments, regiments that had lost their brigades, and brigades that had lost their divisions. Staff officers sweated and shouted contradictory orders, while the townspeople, most of whom were rebel sympathizers, watched with amusement. Galloway and Adam added to the noise as they demanded a doctor for Corporal Kemp, while every few moments a nervous Northern gunner on the outskirts of the town would contribute to the chaos by loosing a shell into the steaming heat of the countryside in an attempt to see off some nonexistent Southern horsemen. "Makes you proud to be a Yankee, don't it?" Galloway said sourly as he forced a path through the chaos. "I thought these boys were supposed to be marching down Richmond's Main Street, not running away?"

A doctor was found, and Harlan Kemp could at last be lifted from his horse. His pants were stuck to the saddle's leather by a mass of dried blood and had to be cut away before the moaning man could be carried into the Presbyterian church lecture hall that was serving as a hospital. A doctor gave the Corporal ether, then extracted the bullet from his guts, but claimed there was little more that could be done for him in Bealeton. "There's a hospital car on one of the trains," the harried doctor said, "and the sooner he's back in Washington the better." He did not sound hopeful.

Adam helped carry Kemp on a stretcher to the depot, where nurses of the Christian Sanitary Commission took the sweating and shivering Corporal under their care. The hospital car was a sleeping car requisitioned from the New York Central and still possessed its peacetime cuspidors, fringed curtains, and engraved lamp shades, though now the luxurious bunks were attended by four nurses and two army doctors, who were protected by a pair of faded red flags that hung at either end of the car's roof to proclaim that the vehicle was a hospital. Perforated zinc screens in the car's roof were supposed to provide ventilation, but there was no wind, and so the car stank of castor oil, urine, blood, and excreta. Major Galloway attached a label to Kemp's collar that gave his name, rank, and unit, put a few coins into a pocket of the Corporal's uniform coat, then he and Adam climbed down from the pustulant car to walk slowly past a heap of coffins carrying stenciled labels directing their contents homeward. There were corpses going to Pottstown, Pennsylvania; Goshen, Connecticut; Watervliet, New York; Biddeford, Maine; Three Lakes, Wisconsin; Springfield, Massachusetts; Allentown, Pennsylvania; Lima, Ohio; and Adam, reading the roll call of town names and knowing that each represented a family distraught and a town in mourning, winced.

"Faulconer! Major Galloway!" An imperious voice broke into Adam's reflections. At first neither he nor Major Galloway could see who had summoned them; then they saw a white-haired man waving vigorously from a window further up the train. "Wait there!" the man shouted. "Wait there!"

It was the Reverend Elial Starbuck, who, in deference to the oppressive heat, was wearing a linen jacket over his shirt and Geneva bands. Having attracted their attention, he worked his way out of the crowded passenger car and jumped down to the trackside, where he pulled on a ragged straw hat that had replaced his lost top hat. "You have news?" he demanded. "Good news, I trust? We need good news. You observe we are retreating again?" The preacher made this speech as he plunged toward the two cavalrymen, dividing the crowds with the aid of his ebony cane. "I fail to understand these things, I truly do. We have raised an army, the largest that God has seen fit to put upon the face of the earth, yet whenever a rebel scowls at us we scuttle backward like trespassing children fleeing a householder." The Reverend Elial Starbuck made this trenchant criticism despite the presence of a number of senior Federal officers who scowled at his words, but there was an authority in the Reverend Starbuck's presence that subdued any attempt to contradict his opinions. "No one is sure, anymore, if they can capture Richmond or whether they will simply defend the Rappahannock. There is confusion." The Reverend Starbuck made the accusation darkly. "If I administered a church the way this government runs an army, then I daresay Satan would turn Boston into an outpost of hell without so much as a bleat of opposition. It's too bad, too bad! I had hoped to return home with better news than this."

"To Boston? You're returning so soon?" Major Galloway asked politely.

"I undertook to be back in my pulpit by month's end. If I believed the capture of Richmond was imminent, then I would beg my congregation's indulgence and stay with the army, but I can no longer believe any such thing. I had hoped your horsemen might inspire the army. I recall some talk of making raids on Richmond?" This accusation was accompanied by a scowl from the preacher. "We shillyshally, Major. We linger. We tremble at the slightest sign of the enemy. We leave the Lord's work undone, preferring timidity to boldness. It grieves me, Major, it truly grieves me. But I am making notes, and I shall report my findings to the Northern people!"

Major Galloway tried to reassure the preacher that Pope's retreat was merely a temporary precaution intended to give the North time to build its army into an irresistible force, but the Reverend Starbuck would have none of such reasoning. He had learned from one of Pope's aides that the retreat behind the Rappahannock had been calculated to take advantage of the defensive capability of the river's steep northern bank. "We have gone on the defensive!" the Reverend Starbuck exclaimed in a disgusted voice. "Would there have been an Israel if Joshua had merely defended the river Jordan? Or a United States if George Washington had done nothing but dig ditches behind the Delaware? The Lord's work, Major, is not done by digging and tarrying, but by smiting the enemy! 'And it shall be, when thou shalt hear a sound of going in the tops of the mulberry trees, then shalt thou go out to battle: for God is gone forth before thee to smite the host of the Philistines.' Does not the First Book of Chronicles promise us as much? Then why are we not hearkening to the mulberries and going forth!" The Reverend Starbuck asked the question magisterially.

"I'm certain we shall be advancing soon," Galloway said, wondering what mulberries had to do with the prosecution of war.

"Then, alas, I must read about your advance in the Journal rather than witness it for myself. If, indeed, I ever reach Boston again." This last sentence was uttered in savage reproof of the chaos in Bealeton's small depot. The Reverend Starbuck had been waiting a full day to leave for Manassas Junction, but his train was trapped in the town by three supply trains that were being unloaded. No one knew how long that unloading would take, nor even if the offloaded supplies might not need to be reloaded in preparation for a further retreat. "Still, we are not without our comforts," the preacher said sarcastically, "so follow me," and he led the two cavalrymen to the end of the depot, where volunteer ladies from the Christian Sanitary Commission were serving reconstituted lemonade, buckwheat bread, and ginger cakes. The Reverend Starbuck wiped the sweat from his face with an enormous handkerchief, then used his cane to force a way to the trestle table, where he demanded three servings of the refreshments. One of the ladies timidly pointed to a hand-lettered sign proclaiming that the comestibles were for the consumption of uniformed men only, but one ferocious glance from the preacher quelled her small protest.

Once the ginger cakes and lemonade were secured and a suitable spot found for their consumption, Major Galloway gave the Reverend Starbuck the splendid news. John Pope's army might be retreating, but Galloway's Horse had stung the enemy. The Major forgivably exaggerated the damage his raiders had inflicted on the rebels, multiplying the wagons and ammunition destroyed at least fourfold, and while admitting to his own casualties, he claimed his men must have killed at least two score of rebels. "We left their camp smoking with fire, sir," Galloway said, "and reeking of blood."

The Reverend Starbuck put down his mug of lemonade so he could join his hands in a prayerful clasp. "'Bless the Lord,'" he said, "'who smote great nations and slew mighty kings!'"

"The news is better still, sir," Adam said, for while Kemp had been under the doctor's knife, Adam had found paper and string and made a parcel addressed to the Reverend Elial Starbuck on Walnut Street in Boston. He had been planning to send the parcel from the depot, but now he could deliver the prize personally.

It was obvious from the consistency of the package that it contained cloth, and the Reverend Starbuck, prodding with his finger, was scarce able to believe what he suspected. "It isn't. . ." he began, then without waiting to finish his question he tore the paper and string greedily away to reveal a bundle of folded scarlet silk slashed with white and blue. The preacher sighed as he held up a golden fringe of the rebel battle flag. "God bless you, my dear boy," he told Adam, "God bless you."

Adam intended to keep the Faulconer standard for himself, just as he intended to use his father's saber and revolver, but the battle flag, the red silk flag with the eleven white stars on the blue Saint Andrew's cross, was a gift for the Reverend Elial Starbuck: a trophy dragged from the filthy heart of secession that the preacher could use to show his subscribers that their donations were not being wasted. "I'm not sure if you want to know this, sir," Adam continued diffidently as the preacher gazed entranced at the beautiful silk, "but that flag comes from Nate's battalion."

But the mention of his son's name only enhanced the preacher's pleasure. "You took Nate's tawdry rag away, did you? Well done!"

"You'll take it to Boston, sir?" Major Galloway asked.

"I surely will. We shall put it on display, Major. We shall hang it for all to see, and maybe we shall invite people to throw mud at it on payment of a small sum toward the war effort. Then we shall burn it next July fourth." He gazed at the rich red silk, and a shudder mixed of lust and loathing racked his body. '"And your altars shall be desolate,'" he said in his marvelous voice, "'and your images shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols. He that is far off shall die of the pestilence; and he that is near shall fall by the sword, and he that remaineth and is besieged shall die by the famine: thus will I accomplish my fury upon them. Then shall ye know that I am the Lord.'" There were a few seconds of awed silence from the dozens of people who had turned to listen to the preacher, who now, to show that his peroration was done, picked up his mug of lemonade. "The prophet Ezekiel," he added helpfully.

"Amen," Major Galloway said weakly. "Amen."

"So what becomes of you now, Major?" the Reverend Starbuck asked as he bundled the flag together. He had ripped the wrapping paper into useless shreds, but he managed to salvage enough string to tie the big silk folds into an approximation of neatness.

"We'll look to do some work here, sir. Hurt the enemy again, I hope."

"It's the Lord's work you're engaged in," the preacher said, "so do it well! Lay their land waste, Major, strike them down! And God give your arm the strength of ten while you do it. You'll write a full account of your raid? So I might publish it to our subscribers?"

"Of course, sir."

"Then on to victory! On to victory!" The Reverend Doctor Starbuck thrust his empty lemonade mug into Adam's hand, and then, carrying the rebel flag as proudly as though he had captured it himself, went back to wait in his car.

Galloway sighed, shook his head in marvel at such energy, then went to find someone, anyone, who might have orders for his cavalry.

Colonel Swynyard and a nervous Captain Starbuck waited all afternoon to see General Thomas Jackson, and they were still waiting as dusk fell and as one of the General's aides brought a pair of lanterns out to the veranda of the house where Jackson had his headquarters. "Not that he sleeps in the house," the aide said, stopping to gossip. "He prefers the open air."

"Even when it's raining?" Starbuck forced himself to make conversation. He did not feel like socializing, not when he was facing an unpleasant interview, but the aide seemed friendly enough.

"Just so long as it ain't storming." The aide clearly relished retailing stories of his master's eccentricities. "And he's up every morning at six to take a cold dip. Jaybird naked and shoulders under. Out here he uses that old horse trough and on a summer morning that might be pleasant enough, but in winter I've seen Old Jack skim the ice off a tub before baptizing himself." The aide smiled, then turned as a black man appeared around the side of the house. "Jim!" he called. "Tell these gentlemen what the General likes to eat."

"He don't like to eat nothing!" the black man grumbled. "He eats worse than a heathen. It's like cooking for a fighting cock."

"Mr. Lewis is the General's servant," the aide said. "Not his slave, his servant."

"And he's a great man." Jim Lewis's admiration for the eccentric Jackson was every bit as heartfelt as the uniformed aide's. "There ain't more than a dozen men like the General in all the world, and that's a straight fact, and there ain't any man in the wide world like the General for the whippin' of Yankees, and that's a straighter fact, but he still eats worse than a goat." "Nothing but stale bread, dirt-plain meat, egg yolk, and buttermilk," the aide said, "and fruit in the morning, but only in the morning. He reckons that fruit ingested in the afternoon is bad for the blood, you see."

"While the General's real bad for Yankee blood!" Lewis said with a laugh. "He sure is lethal for Yankee blood!" Lewis dipped a pail in the General's bathtub, then carried the water toward the kitchen at the back of the house, while the aide carried his second lantern to the far end of the porch. Voices sounded inside the house where candlelight shone at a muslin-curtained window.

"Win battles, Starbuck, and you can be whatever it pleases you to be," Swynyard said bitterly. "You can be mad, you can be eccentric, you can even be rich and privileged like Faulconer." The Colonel paused, watching the dark fall over the far woods and fields where the host of campfires glimmered. "You know what Faulconer's fault is?" "Being alive," Starbuck said sourly. "He wants to be liked." Swynyard ignored Starbuck's venom. "He really believes he can make the men like him by treating them leniently, but it won't ever work. Men don't like an officer for being easy. They don't mind being treated like dogs, like slaves even, so long as you give them victory. But treat them soft and give them defeats and they'll despise you forever. It don't matter what kind of man you are, what kind of rogue you are, just so long as you lead the men to victory." He paused, and Starbuck guessed the Colonel was reflecting on his own career rather than Faulconer's.

"Colonel Swynyard? Captain Starbuck?" Another aide appeared in the doorway. His voice was peremptory and his manner that of a man who wants to discharge an unpleasant duty quickly. "This way."

Starbuck plucked his coat straight, then followed Swynyard through the hall and into a candlelit parlor that was much too small for the trestle table that served as a stand for the General's maps. Not that Starbuck had time to take in the room's furnishings, for as soon as he entered he felt himself come under the fierce and off-putting gaze of the extraordinary figure who glared at the two visitors from the table's far side.

Jackson said nothing as the two men were shown in. The General was flanked by Major Hotchkiss and another staff officer. Swynyard, hat in hand, gave a short, sharp nod in salute, while Starbuck just stood to attention and stared at the gaunt, rough-bearded face with its bright wild eyes and malevolent frown; a face, Starbuck suddenly realized, that was uncommonly like Colonel Swynyard's own ravaged visage. "Swynyard"—Jackson finally acknowledged his visitors– "once of the 4th U.S. Infantry. But not a good record. Accused of drunkenness, I see." He had a sheaf of papers that he glanced at continually. "You were court-martialed and acquitted."

"Wrongly," Swynyard said, causing Jackson to look up from the papers in surprise.

"Wrongly?" the General asked. Like many artillery officers he was notoriously hard of hearing, his eardrums having been hammered by too many cannon blasts. "Did you say you were wrongly acquitted?"

"Wrongly, sir!" Swynyard spoke louder. "I should have been cashiered, sir, for I truly was drunk, sir, frequently drunk, sir, helplessly drunk, sir, unforgivably drunk, sir, but thanks to the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, sir, I shall be drunk no more."

Jackson, confronted with this ready admission of guilt, seemed rather taken aback. He drew another sheet of paper from the sheaf and frowned as he read it. "Brigadier General Faulconer"—he said the name with a wry tone of distaste– "talked with me this morning. Afterwards he saw fit to write me this letter. In it, Swynyard, he says that you are a drunkard, while you, young man, are described as an immoral, womanizing, and ungrateful liar." The hard blue-gray eyes looked up at Starbuck.

"He's also a fine soldier, General," Swynyard put in.

"Also?" The General pounced on the word.

Starbuck suddenly resented the inquisition. He had been trying to win a damn war, not run a Sunday school. "Also," he said flatly and then, after a very long pause, "sir."

Hotchkiss looked intently down at his feet. Two of the candles on the map table were guttering badly, sending streams of sooty smoke to the yellowed ceiling. In the back of the house a voice began singing "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds." Jackson looked momentarily annoyed by the sound; then he slowly lowered himself into a straight-backed chair, or rather he perched on the edge of the cane seat with his spine held rigidly parallel to, but not touching, the back. Starbuck supposed that his stupid belligerence had just destroyed any chance of receiving lenience, but it was too late to back down now.

Jackson turned his gaze back to Swynyard. "When did you find Christ, Colonel?" he asked, and Swynyard answered with a passionate testimony of seeing the light on the battlefield of Cedar Mountain. For a moment he ceased to be a soldier talking to his superior, but became just a simple man talking to his brother in Christ. He told of his former sinfulness and of his continual drunkenness, and he contrasted that fallen condition with his newfound state of grace. It was a testimony of salvation like the thousands of others that Starbuck had heard, the same kind of transforming story that had comprised the bulk of his youthful reading, and he supposed that the General, too, must have heard a myriad of such tales, but Jackson was plainly enthralled by Swynyard's tale.

"And now, Colonel," Jackson asked when the testimony was done, "do you still crave ardent spirits?"

"Every day, sir," Swynyard said fervently, "every minute of every day, but with the help of our Lord Jesus Christ I shall abstain."

"The great danger of temptation," Jackson said in a rather puzzled voice, "is how very tempting it is." He turned his gaze on Starbuck. "And you, young man, were brought up in a Christian household, were you not?"

"Yes, sir." A tabby cat had started to wind itself around Starbuck's ankles, rubbing its flanks on his frayed trouser ends and playing with the tags of his bootlaces.

"This letter claims you're a Northerner?" Jackson said, gesturing at Faulconer's letter, which now lay on the table. "From Boston, sir."

"So why then are you fighting for the South?" Jackson frowned.

"That was the womanizing, sir," Starbuck said defiantly. He sensed Swynyard stir beside him, and he guessed the Colonel was trying to convey the message that Starbuck should quell his combativeness, but Starbuck was annoyed by the implication that he needed to prove his loyalty to these Southerners. The cat was purring loudly.

"Go on," Jackson said in a dangerously toneless voice. Starbuck shrugged. "I followed a woman south, sir, then stayed on here because I liked it."

Jackson stared into Starbuck's face for a few seconds. He seemed to dislike what he saw and looked down at the papers instead. "We have to decide what to do with the Brigade. It isn't in a good state, eh, Hotchkiss?"

Hotchkiss gave a very small shrug. "No reserve ammunition, no transport, and one regiment virtually officerless."

Jackson looked at Swynyard. "Well?"

"We'll just have to take the ammunition from the enemy, sir," Swynyard said.

Jackson liked that answer. He turned his gaze back to Starbuck, who was suddenly and belatedly realizing that this interview was not a disciplinary affair but something altogether different. "What is this army's greatest failing?" Jackson asked Starbuck.

Starbuck's mind whirled in panic. Its greatest failing? For a second, remembering the morning's executions, he was tempted to say desertion, but before his tongue could frame the word a previous thought blurted itself out. "Straggling, sir." Some regiments lost a quarter of their number through men falling out of the ranks during long marches, and though a good number of those stragglers reappeared within a day or two, some went missing forever. He had given the General a good answer, but even so Starbuck wished he had thought for a moment longer and given a more considered

response.

Then, astonishingly, he saw he had answered correctly, for Jackson was nodding his approval. "And how have you prevented straggling in your unit, Starbuck?"

"I just tell the sons of bitches they're free to go, sir," Starbuck said.

"You do what?" Jackson barked in his high voice. Hotchkiss looked alarmed, and the other staff officer shook his head as though he pitted Starbuck's stupidity.

"I just tell them they can leave the regiment, sir, but I also tell them that they ain't allowed to leave with any property of the Confederate government just in case they straggle all the way home or into the enemy's arms. So I tell them they're free to go, but first I strip the sons of bitches stark naked and confiscate their guns. Then I kick them out."

Jackson stared at him. "You do that? Truly?" It was hard to tell whether the General approved or not, but Starbuck could not back out of the tale now. "I did it once, sir," he admitted, "just the once. But I only needed to do it the once, sir, because we haven't had another straggler since. Except for the sick, sir, and they're different."

Starbuck's voice tailed away as the General began to behave in the strangest fashion. First he brought up a bony knee, then he clasped the raised knee in both his huge hands, and after that he rocked his body back as far as the stiff chair would allow. Then he put his head back and opened his mouth as wide as it would go though without uttering any sound at all. Starbuck wondered if the General was suffering a seizure, but then he saw the two staff officers grinning, and he realized that this odd display was Jackson's peculiar method of displaying amusement.

The General stayed in the weird pose for a few seconds, then rocked forward again, let his knee go, and shook his head. He was silent for a few more seconds, then turned to Swynyard. "How old are you, Colonel?"

"Fifty-four, sir," Swynyard said, sounding rather ashamed. Fifty-four was old for a soldier unless, like Lee, he was the commander in chief. Jackson himself was thirty-eight, while most of the fighting was done by boys yet to see their twenty-first birthday.

But Jackson's point was not about the optimum age for a soldier, but was instead a theological comment. "I was myself of mature years before I found Christ, Colonel. I do not say one should be of ripe age before conversion, but nor should we blame the young for failing to do what we ourselves did not do. As for your womanizing"—he looked at Starbuck– "marriage will cure that if self-discipline fails. I find that daily immersion in cold water and regular exercise helps. Chop wood, young man, or swing from a branch. You can leap fences. But exercise! Exercise!" He suddenly stood and snatched up Washington Faulconer's letter, which he held into a candle flame. He held the paper in the flame until it was well alight, then moved it gently and safely into the empty fireplace, where he watched it burn into ash. "War brings change," he said as he turned back to his visitors. "It changed me, it will change you. I confirm your appointments. You, Colonel Swynyard, will take over Faulconer's Brigade and you, Major Starbuck, will take command of his Legion. In return you will fight for me, and fight harder than you have ever fought in your lives. We are not here to defeat the enemy, but with God's help to destroy him, and I look for your help in that ambition. If I receive that help I will accept it as your duty, but if you fail then I shall send you both after Faulconer. Good night to you."

Starbuck could not move. He had entered the room expecting punishment and had instead received promotion, and not just promotion, but command of his own regiment. My God! He had command of the Legion, and suddenly he felt terrified of the responsibility. He was only twenty-two, surely much too young to command a regiment; then he remembered Micah Jenkins, the Georgian who had led his whole brigade hard and deep into the Yankee army at Seven Pines, and Jenkins was not much older than Starbuck himself. There were other officers in their twenties who were leading regiments and brigades, so why should Starbuck not be ready? "Good night, gentlemen!" Jackson said pointedly. Starbuck and Swynyard were both startled from their astonishment. They allowed themselves to be led outside by an aide, who offered his own congratulations on the lantern-lit porch. "Major Hotchkiss," the aide said, "recommended you both. He felt that the Brigade had suffered enough without having outsiders thrust on it."

"Give him our thanks," Swynyard said. "And if I might give some advice, gentlemen," the aide said, "you should have your men cook as many rations as they possess and have them ready for a very early march in the morning." He smiled and walked back into the house.

"My God," Swynyard said faintly, "a brigade." The Colonel seemed moved nearer to tears than to exultation. He was silent for a few seconds, and Starbuck guessed he was praying; then Swynyard led the way to where their horses were picketed. "I wasn't altogether honest with you earlier," the Colonel said as he untied his horse. "I knew Hotchkiss was sounding me out about the Legion's new commanding officer, but I dared not raise your hopes. Or mine, I confess." Starbuck clumsily mounted the borrowed horse. "Medlicott won't be happy."

"The object of this war," Colonel Swynyard said tartly, "is to correct Abraham Lincoln's political misconceptions, not to make Captain Medlicott happy." He waited until Starbuck had settled himself in the saddle. "I thought you were going to upset Jackson."

Starbuck grinned. "Old Jack can hardly be expected to approve of womanizing, can he?"

Swynyard looked up at the sky. The last clouds had gone, and there was a splendor of stars arching over their heads. "I suppose I shouldn't pass on rumor," the Colonel said, "but there are stories that Old Jack had a love child once. Long ago. The stories are probably untrue, but who knows? Maybe you have to know sin before you can hate it. Maybe the best of Christians are made from the worst of sinners?"

"So there's hope for me yet?" Starbuck asked teasingly.

"Only if you win battles, Starbuck, only if you win battles." The Colonel looked at the younger man. "The Legion won't be an easy job, Starbuck."

"No, sir, but I'm the best man for it." Starbuck smiled at the Colonel. "I'm an arrogant son of a bitch, but by God I can fight." And now he had a whole regiment to fight for him, and he could not wait to start.

General Thomas Jackson put the interview with Swynyard and Starbuck out of his mind the very second that they left the room, concentrating instead on the maps that Major Hotchkiss had painstakingly drawn for him. Those handmade maps, spread edge to edge on the trestle table where their corners were weighted down by candlesticks, showed the country north of the Rappahannock, the country where Robert Lee's impudent and daring idea would be put to the test. It was an idea that Jackson liked because it was challenging, and because it held immense possibilities.

Which meant it also held enormous risks.

The enemy was digging in beyond the steep northern bank of the Rappahannock, inviting the rebels to throw away their lives in vain attacks across the deep river. The enemy doubtless planned to stay behind the river while more and more of McClellan's regiments joined their ranks until, at last, their numbers were overpowering and they felt confident of sweeping Lee's ragged army clean out of history.

So Lee, in response, was proposing to break one of the fundamental rules of war. Lee was planning to split his already outnumbered army into two smaller armies, each one horribly vulnerable to attack. That vulnerability was the risk, but it was a risk predicated on the likelihood that John Pope would not attack but would instead sit tight behind his steep riverbank and wait for McClellan's regiments to swell his ranks.

So Lee planned to divert Pope's attention by making threatening movements on the Rappahannock's southern bank, and while Pope watched that diversion, Thomas Jackson would march westward with the smaller rebel army. Jackson would march with just twenty-four thousand men, who would go west, then north, and then, with God's help, eastward until they had hooked far and deep into the enemy's rear, and once behind Pope's lines that small rebel army would cut and slash and burn and destroy until John Pope would be forced to turn back to destroy it. Then the small army, the vulnerable army, would have to fight like the devil itself to give Lee time to come to its aid, but at least the rebels would be fighting on ground of their own choosing and not attacking across a blood-dyed river. Jackson's small army was the anvil, and Lee's bigger army the hammer, and by God's good grace John Pope's army would be caught between the two.

But if the hammer and anvil failed to come together, then the history books would say that Lee and Jackson had thrown away a country by breaking the basic rules of war. By mere tomfoolery.

But tomfoolery was the only weapon the rebels had left. And it might just work.

So tomorrow, in the dawn, Tom Fool Jackson would march.