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

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ALL DAY THE YANKEES tried to make sense of the storm that had broken behind their backs. The first confused reports merely spoke of bushwhackers, then it was claimed the raiding party was a large band of Jeb Stuart's horsemen, and finally there were worrying reports of rebel infantry and artillery inside the defenses of Manassas Junction, but no one could tell John Pope precisely what was happening at his supply depot. He knew that no trains were coming from Manassas and that the telegraph to Washington had been cut, but neither of these events was uncommon, and for much of the day Pope regarded all reports from Manassas as mere alarmist rumors spread by panicking men frightened by a handful of Confederate cavalry raiders. John Pope was unwilling to abandon his conviction that Lee must do what John Pope had planned for Lee to do, which was to launch a grand yet suicidal attack across the swirling Rappahannock, but slowly, grudgingly, like a man refusing to admit that the heavy clouds above his parade had begun to rain, Pope began to understand that the commotion at Manassas amounted to a great deal more than a raid. It was the opening move of a campaign he had not planned to fight but to which he was now forced to react.

"We'll be riding north tonight, you mark my words," Major Galloway observed. "Did you hear me, Adam?" But Adam Faulconer was not listening to his commanding officer. Instead he was staring at a recent copy of the Richmond Examiner that had been exchanged for a New York Times by one of the Northern pickets, then brought to John Pope's headquarters, where Major Galloway and Adam had been peremptorily summoned. The Major had scanned the ill-printed sheets, snorted in disgust at the editor's secessionist distortions, then relinquished the rag to Adam. Now Galloway was kicking his heels in the hallway and waiting while a succession of flustered aides carried maps into the parlor, where the General was trying to comprehend the day's events.

"Did you read this?" Adam suddenly demanded of Galloway.

Galloway did not need to be told what item in the newspaper had offended Adam. "I read it," the Major said, "but I don't necessarily believe it."

"Five women dead!" Adam protested.

"It's a rebel newspaper," Galloway pointed out.

The story was headlined "Outrage in Orange County." Yankee raiders, the newspaper reported, seeking to emulate the exploits of Jeb Stuart, had crossed the Rapidan to raid Lee's forces, but had instead burned down a country tavern and killed everyone inside. There was no mention of the raid on the Faulconer Brigade, nor of the guns and wagons that Galloway's men had destroyed, but only a pitiful description of the innocent civilians dying inside the inferno that had engulfed what the newspaper described as "McComb's Hotel," presumably because a goodly number of the Examiner's readers might well approve of taverns being destroyed, even if their destroyers were the hated Yankees. Hotels, on the other hand, were not necessarily the devil's way stations, and so Liam McComb's establishment had been appropriately elevated. "The reader can only imagine the terror of the women as they beseeched their attackers to spare their lives," the Examiner trumpeted, and a paragraph later, "It seems Northern cavaliers can be brave enough when their foes are women and children, but they display nothing but clean heels and horses' tails when faced by Southern soldiers."

"They're beating the patriotic drum," Galloway said wearily, "by telling half-truths and outright lies. There were soldiers in that so-called hotel, Adam, even the newspaper admits as much."

"And it says here, sir, that those soldiers called on the enemy to cease fire."

"What else would it say?" Galloway asked, and then, in grudging acknowledgment of Adam's anger, he went on, "When Billy gets back we'll ask him the truth."

"And you think he'll tell you the truth?" Adam asked hotly.

Galloway sighed. "I think maybe Billy has an excess of zeal, Adam, but I don't reckon Billy murdered any woman that night. I ain't saying no woman died, but only that it was an accident. Tragedy happens in wartime, Adam. It's why we're trying to end the war quickly."

Adam threw the newspaper down in disgust. His disgust was not so much with the Examiner but with Galloway's refusal to face the truth that Billy Blythe was a man who used warfare as an excuse for criminality. Blythe even boasted about using the war as a means of enrichment, and the more Adam reflected on Blythe the angrier he became, so that he was forced to calm himself down by taking a deep breath. He listened to the angry voices coming from the General's parlor, and it struck him that war was a dreadful instrument that stirred a whole society into turmoil, bringing the worst to the top and driving the best down.

Galloway saw the anger on the younger man's face and wondered whether Adam was too tender for war; maybe a man needed Billy Blythe's callous carapace to be a good soldier, yet it was undeniable that it had been Adam and not Blythe who had provided Galloway with his one victory. Galloway now wondered where Blythe was, for his second-in-command had never returned from his patrol into the west. Maybe he had followed the strange column to its destination and would be waiting at Galloway's farm, or maybe, more disastrously, Blythe's troop had been ambushed and cut to pieces by the rebels. Beyond the town a train whistle hooted mournfully, while further away, where the Federal army was dug in on the Rappahannock's northern bank, the thunder of cannon fire rumbled incessantly. The Southern gunners had started an artillery duel that had been raging all day, probably, Galloway now realized, as a means of diverting John Pope from what was happening behind his back.

"When this war's over"—Adam broke his silence after a long pause—"we shall have to live in this community. We shall have to make our peace with neighbors and family, but we'll never have peace if we condone murder." The North's virtue, he wanted to add, lay in its moral rectitude, but the sentiment sounded too pompous for utterance.

Galloway privately doubted whether any Southerner who had fought for the North could ever hope to make a home south of Washington again, but he nodded anyway. "I'll make inquiries, Adam, I promise you," he said, and Adam had to be content with that promise, for suddenly the parlor door was thrown open and John Pope himself strode into the hallway.

The Northern commander checked when he saw the waiting cavalry officers. "You're Galloway, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"A Manassas man, aren't I right?"

"Yes, sir," Galloway acknowledged.

Pope snapped his fingers. "The very man! You're to take your fellows home, Galloway. Jackson's there. One of our fellows saw the wretch in person and escaped to tell the tale. There's no doubt about it, Jackson's in Manassas, and you know what that means? It means we've got him in the bag! You understand me?" The General was suddenly exultant. He might have been reluctant to accept that his battle lay at Manassas and not across the Rappahannock, but a few hours of reflection had convinced him of the advantages of accepting Jackson's foolhardy challenge. "The damned fool has marched halfway round our army to maroon himself in Manassas, and tomorrow we're going to snap him up! My God, Jeb Stuart might make a fool of George Brinton McClellan by riding clean around his army, but no Stonewall Jackson will march clean round John Pope! No, sir! So, Galloway"—Pope jabbed a finger at the Major– "take your fellows north and find out just where the wretched man is, and report to me when you know. We're going to Bristoe tonight. If you want to put your horses on our train, then come now, hurry!" The commander strode into the street, followed by flustered aides clutching luggage and maps.

"So where's Lee?" Galloway asked faintly, but no one responded, perhaps because no one heard him or perhaps because no one thought the question important. All that mattered was that Stonewall Jackson had marched himself into a trap and that John Pope was about to destroy him once and for all. "We've got the fool in the bag!" Pope boasted as he hurried toward the train he believed would carry him northward to victory. "Right in the bag!"

Lucifer did return. He returned with a leather grip that had been put in store by a Northern officer but that now held Starbuck's new possessions. "Every damn thing you wanted," Lucifer said proudly, "and a silver hairbrush, too. See? Make you look real good. And I got you cigars. Good ones." Lucifer had also discarded his flamboyant clothes and replaced them with a Northern cavalryman's pants over which he was wearing a gray jacket, a leather belt, and a button-flapped holster, yet somehow his natural elegance imbued even that humdrum uniform with flair.

"Is there anything in that holster?" Starbuck demanded.

"I got myself a cooking implement," Lucifer said, "made by Mr. Colt of Hartford in Connecticut."

"You mean you've got a gun," Starbuck said flatly.

"It is not a gun," Lucifer protested. "It is a utensil for killing the food you want me to cook for you, and if I can't have a utensil I can't get meat, and I can't cook the meat I can't get, and you can't eat the meat I can't cook, and then you'll starve and I'll be so hungry I won't even have the strength left to bury you."

Starbuck sighed. "If you're caught with a gun, Lucifer, then someone will take the skin off your back."

"If I have got myself a Colt cooking utensil, Major, then there ain't no son of a stinking bitch alive who can take the skin off any one little part of me."

Starbuck gave in. He sent the boy to find some food but warned him to be ready to leave at any minute. The daylight was fading, its twilight obscured by the myriad of fires that burned among the wagons and boxcars, and Starbuck expected imminent orders to move away from the fiery smoke pillars that were surely serving as beacons to draw every Northern soldier within twenty miles. Not that the rebel army was in a fit state to move; some men snored in alcoholic stupors, while others, gorged with rich food, slept, oblivious of the incendiary parties who went from warehouse to warehouse burning what could not be carried away.

In the last of the light Starbuck shaved himself, using a new mirror and razor that Lucifer had found; then he feasted on pickled oysters and fresh bread and butter. Dark came and there were still no orders to move. Starbuck assumed Jackson had decided to run the risk of spending the night in the captured, burning depot, and so he made himself a bed from a pile of brand-new Northern overcoats, but the softness of the makeshift mattress was disconcertingly comfortable, and so he rolled off the pile onto the familiar dirt. And there slept well.

And woke to inferno.

He opened his eyes to see a sky lancing with red fire and to hear a thunderous roll of monstrous noise filling the night. He started up, reaching for his rifle, while all around him the men of the Legion woke to the same terrifying cacophony. A burning fragment fell from the sky to thump into the dirt beside Starbuck. "What the hell's happening?" Starbuck asked of no one in particular.

Then he realized that the North's great supply of ammunition was being destroyed. Boxcar after boxcar of cartridges, percussion caps, shells, and artillery propellant was being torched. The explosions thumped across the depot, each one flashing a bright illumination that pulsed its brilliance high into the sky. Monstrous flames boiled hundreds of feet into the air, where hissing missiles spat through churning smoke. "Oh, my God," a man said after one particularly sharp and bright explosion, "just lay me down." The phrase, which was spreading throughout Jackson's army, prompted an immediate burst of laughter.

"Major Starbuck! Major Starbuck!" Captain Pryor, now Swynyard's aide, searched among the startled men.

"I'm here!"

"We're to march now."

"What time is it?"

"Midnight, sir. A little after."

Starbuck shouted for Sergeant Major Tolliver. A warehouse crammed with shrapnel disintegrated in flame to make the night momentarily as bright and red as hell's deep at noon. The explosion was followed by a tantalizing smell as barrels of cured bacon caught the flames and fried. A loose horse galloped in terror past a gang of sweating demons who were destroying the last locomotives in the depot by stuffing their fireboxes with gunpowder and mangling the condenser tubes with bullets.

"Ready?" Colonel Swynyard shouted. He was already on horseback, and his gelding's eyes reflected the night's fires like some mythical beast. "March!"

They went north, blindly following the brigade in front and leaving behind a writhing pit of red horror. Explosion after explosion ripped through the burning depot as flames climbed yet higher into the night. The North had labored mightily to amass the supplies necessary to subdue the South, and now all that labor was evaporating into flame, smoke, and ash.

Starbuck's men trudged wearily, burdened by their plunder and hardly refreshed by the few hours of sleep they had snatched at the day's end. Some of the men's heaviest loot was abandoned early, joining the other trophies thrown aside by tired soldiers. In the flickering, unnatural light Starbuck saw a discarded snare drum beside the road, then two swords with chased gilt handles, a pair of post office scales, and a fine saddle. There were piles of food, candlesticks, greatcoats—whatever treasures a man had fancied, taken, then abandoned as his muscles cramped again.

No one knew where they were going, or why. Their progress was slow, and never slower than when it was discovered that the column was on the wrong road and local guides had to be stirred from their beds to guide the heavily laden soldiers across the country toward dark woods. The gun teams were whipped bloody as they hauled their heavy cannon through entangling hedges and across fields of growing wheat.

Lieutenant Coffman, still swathed in his handsome cloak, fell in beside Starbuck. "I found out what you wanted, sir," he said.

Starbuck could not even remember what he had asked Coffman to discover. "So?" he asked.

"It's just off the Sudley road, sir. There's a farm track near the fords and you go north a quarter-mile and there it is. There's meant to be a lime-washed pillar at the gate of the track, though the fellow I spoke to says it needs repainting."

Starbuck frowned down at the young Lieutenant. "What in hell's name are you talking about?"

"The Galloway farm, sir." Coffman sounded aggrieved.

"Yes, of course. Sorry." Yet now the information seemed very trivial. Starbuck would dearly have liked to visit the Galloway farm, but he realized the wish was quixotic in this night of fire and tumult. Jackson was withdrawing from Manassas, so the Legion's revenge on Galloway must wait. "Thank you, Coffman," he said, "and well done," he added, trying to soothe the young man's ruffled feathers.

Just before dawn the Legion stumbled across a road, climbed a hill, and so came to a stretch of deep woods. Behind the soldiers, beyond a fold of night-black land, the depot's fires roared like the stokehold of hell. The glow of the destruction was furnace fierce, and the smoke a gigantic pyre, so that to Starbuck, standing at the wood's edge and looking back, it seemed as though a great section of the earth itself was burning. The fires had been set four hours before, yet still the bright explosions pulsed the night and churned their smoke skyward. Beyond the fire, and dimmed by its brightness, the world's edge just showed the first cold silver line of dawn.

"Back now, back now." A mounted staff officer was pushing men away from the open meadow and into the cover of the woods. "And no fires! No fires!"

"What's happening?" Starbuck asked.

"Get some rest," the man said, "and stay hidden. And no one's to light a fire unless they want to be burned alive by Old Jack himself."

"We're not marching any further?" Captain Davies asked the staff officer.

"Not for the moment. Just stay in hiding. Get some rest. And no fires!" The staff officer rode on, repeating his message.

Starbuck pulled his men back into the wood. Jackson had come to Manassas, turned the place to hell, and gone to ground.

The Reverend Elial Starbuck hardly slept that night. At times his eyes closed out of sheer weariness, and he would lean his aquiline head against the chair's high back and begin to snore gently, but almost immediately another great explosion would rattle the windows of Major Galloway's parlor, and the preacher would wake with a start to see yet another ball of fire climbing up from the incandescent glow that marked where the great depot was now a furnace. The devil was at his work, the preacher thought grimly, then tried to sleep again. He had decided against using one of the bedrooms in case he needed to make a quick escape from marauding rebels, and so he spent the night in the half-furnished library parlor with his stick, his heavy bag, and his precious flag beside him. The only weapon to hand was Major Galloway's decorative guidon on its lance-tipped staff that the preacher leaned against the chair in the fond hope that its spear point might be useful to skewer a godless rebel. He had spent the whole of the previous day in the same parlor. His frustrations had twice driven him from the house in search of an escape from the rebel forces, but each time he had glimpsed gray-clad horsemen in the distance and so had scurried back to the dubious safety of the farm. Before the preacher's arrival there had been a guard of four cavalry troopers in residence, their job to protect Galloway's depot against the depredations of the Major's sullen Southern neighbors, but the men had fled when Jackson's troops had arrived. The farm's three black servants had stayed, and they had fed the preacher and prayed with him, but none of the servants was convinced by the Reverend Starbuck's optimism that John Pope would surely come to punish the men who had dared put Manassas to the torch.

The preacher did manage to sleep a little toward dawn. He lay slumped in the wing chair with the rebel banner clasped to his lean belly until a final massive explosion woke him to the wan light of early morning. He felt stiff and cold and tired as he climbed to his feet. From the parlor window he could see an enormous pillar of smoke climbing heavenward, but he could see no enemy cavalrymen in rat gray coats disturbing the landscape.

It seemed too early to expect breakfast, and so, leaving his luggage in the house and taking only his cane and the precious flag, he ventured timidly into the morning. There was dew on the grass and mist in the folds of land. Two white-tailed deer bounded away from him and crashed through a thicket. Just to the north he could see the glint of the Bull Run through a gap between trees, but he could still see no soldiers. He walked past the servants' cabins to the end of Galloway's yard and searched for enemies, but all that moved in the pearl gray landscape was the pillar of smoke churning from the depot. There was a sense of lonely desolation in the landscape, almost as though the preacher was the last man left on earth. He walked slowly up the farm path, ever watchful, but he saw nothing that threatened him, and when he reached the road, he turned to his left and climbed to the crest of the gentle rise so he could see across the long valley that lay to the east. There was Still no enemy in sight. The fields were stripped of livestock, the farms seemed deserted, and the land lay barren.

He walked on. He kept meaning to turn back to the farm and roust the servants to their morning duties in the kitchen, yet curiosity kept him walking just a few paces more, and every few paces he would determine to go just a little bit further still, until at last he decided he would explore as far as the crest at the valley's far side, and if he had still seen no sign of the enemy, then he would return to the farm, take his breakfast, and carry his luggage northward. So resolved, he walked doggedly on, following the pillar of smoke as Moses had followed the pillar of cloud across the wilderness. He climbed the valley's eastern side, following, though he did not know it, the course of the first Northern attack in the battle that had opened the fighting in Virginia and passing, though he would not have wanted to know it, the place where his son had first stood in the rebel battle line. This was the ground where the North's first invasion of the South had been turned back, and the fields on either side of the road still showed white where fragments of bones had been unearthed from shallow graves by scavenging animals. Someone had placed a skull atop a tree stump at the entrance to a farm road, and the macabre face grinned yellow teeth at the preacher as he passed by.

He reached the wooded crest. He had now walked a mile from Galloway's farm, and in front of him he could see the Warrenton Turnpike running empty through a valley, while, on the valley's far side, at the crest of a steep green hill, the ruins of a burned-out house stood gaunt and black against the great smear of dirty smoke that hideously obscured the dawn. The house had been destroyed in the battle fought across these Manassas fields a year before, but the preacher assumed the dwelling had been burned by the rebels on the previous day. It did not occur to him that a Southern army would hardly torch a Virginia farm; he simply saw new evidence of the devil's work and knew it had to be the responsibility of the forces of Slavocracy. "Barbarians!" he said aloud into the empty country. "Barbarians!"

Something thumped on the road behind, and the preacher turned to see the grinning skull had been tipped from its tree stump and was now rolling across the road. Beyond the skull was a horseman holding a rifle that was aimed straight at the Reverend Starbuck. To his surprise the preacher discovered he was not really frightened at thus facing one of the devils who had scourged this land. "Barbarian!" the preacher shouted angrily, waving his stick at the horseman. "Heathen!"

"Doctor Starbuck?" the horseman responded politely. "Is it you, sir?"

The preacher gaped at the cavalryman. "Major Galloway?"

"You're hardly the person I expected to meet here, sir," Major Galloway said as he spurred toward the preacher. A whole troop of horsemen followed the Major from the trees as Galloway explained to the Reverend Starbuck how he and his men had taken a train north to Bristoe during the previous night and were now trying to establish the whereabouts of Stonewall Jackson's army.

"I haven't seen any rebels this morning," the preacher said, and he told how he had spent the night at Galloway's farm. He confirmed that the property was unscathed and reported that although he had seen a handful of Southern horsemen the day before, he had seen none in this dawn. "They appear to have vanished," the Reverend Starbuck said darkly, as though the rebels possessed satanic powers.

"So has Captain Blythe," Galloway said, "unless, perhaps, he's at the farm?"

"Alas, no."

"I'm sure he'll turn up in his own good time," Galloway said wanly, then turned in his saddle and called on Adam to bring one of the spare horses for the preacher's convenience. "We were on our way to the farm," Galloway told the Reverend, "and after that we're ordered to search the country north of the Bull Run."

"I was hoping to go north," the preacher announced. "I have to reach Washington."

"I'm not sure you've much hope of doing that today, sir," Galloway said respectfully. "There's some evidence that Jackson took his troops north. Maybe they're planning to attack the Centreville defenses? He might have vanished, but he's certainly not far away." The Major peered round the empty landscape as though he half expected the rebels to appear like stage villains springing from a trapdoor.

"I can't tarry here!" the preacher protested vigorously. "I have a church to administer, responsibilities I cannot escape!"

"You'll certainly be safer here, sir," Galloway suggested calmly, "seeing as how General Pope's here now and the rest of his army is on its way." He leaned out of his saddle to hold the spare horse while the preacher clambered into its saddle. The rebel flag almost fell from the Reverend Starbuck's grip, but he managed to hold on to the bundled silk as he settled himself on the horse's back. A trooper handed up the preacher's stick, then gave him the reins. "In fact if you do stay here, sir," Major Galloway went on, "I reckon you might even see a scrap of history being made."

"History! I have been promised nothing but history all month, Major! I was promised a pulpit in Richmond, but for all those fine promises I might just as well have planned on preaching God's word in Japan!"

"But the rebels have blundered now, sir," Galloway explained patiently, "leastwise, General Pope reckons they have. Jackson's stranded here, sir, miles from his own lines, and General Pope plans to cut him off and destroy him. That's why Pope's here, sir. We're going to finish Jackson once and for all."

"You really think Pope can do that, Major?" The preacher's question was caustic.

Galloway's reply was emollient. "I reckon General Pope means to try, sir, and none of us really know just what the General can do in battle. I mean he was pretty successful in the west, sir, but he ain't fought here, and that was why he was brought to Virginia, so I guess he might astonish us all yet. Yes, sir, I reckon we might see a fair battle before the day's out, and I even reckon we might win it, too."

The prospect tempted the Reverend Starbuck. He had come to Virginia with such high hopes and had seen those hopes crumble to nothing, but now it seemed there was a chance of victory after all. Besides, it was now Thursday morning, and he knew he could never reach Boston in time for Sunday worship, which meant he might just as well stay here and see the North's nemesis beaten in battle. And what a fine subject for a sermon that would make, he thought. Like Satan plunging into the abyss, Jackson would be brought low, and the Reverend Starbuck would be a witness to the demon's shattering fall. He nodded assent. He would stay and fight.

All day long Jackson's troops waited in the woods. Most slept like the dead, so that Starbuck, setting his sentries just inside the tree line, could hear the murmur of the sleeping army like a swarm of bees. Twenty-four thousand rebel soldiers were snoring not six miles from Manassas, yet the Northern army was oblivious of their presence.

Lucifer brought Starbuck an early dinner of cold pork, apples, and walnuts. "Still eating off the Yankees," he explained the luxury foodstuffs; then he squatted beside Starbuck and stared down the hill toward the empty turnpike in search of Yankees. There were none in sight. "So where are the black folks' friends?" Lucifer asked.

"God knows. Let's hope they don't find us." The sun was low in the sky, and with any luck night would fall before the enemy found Jackson's hiding place.

"You don't want to fight?" Lucifer asked sarcastically.

"I don't want to die."

"You won't die. You were born under a lucky star. Like me. I can tell."

Starbuck scoffed at the boy's confidence. "And I tell you, Lucifer, that just about every poor son of a bitch who's died in this war thought he was too lucky to get killed."

"But I really am lucky," Lucifer insisted, "and you'd better be just as lucky as me, because you know what I was hearing back there among the other humble servant folk? That there are men in this regiment who don't like you."

"I know that," Starbuck said. The pork was tender and the apples fresh. He wondered how long it would be before he was back on hardtack and salted offal.

"But did you know they've written a letter about you?" Lucifer offered a sly sideways glance, then lit himself one of the cigars he had acquired for Starbuck. "The bald fellow wrote the letter, you know? The man you made me give his watch to, Meddlesome, is that his name? And I hear some three or four officers have signed it, and at least forty or fifty soldiers, and they're sending the letter to a congressman. They say you're too young and that you should be sent down the river just as fast as the army can get itself rid of you." The boy grinned, then drew his finger across his throat. "They got nothing but trouble for you, Major."

Starbuck told Lucifer what the letter writers could do with their damned letter. "No one's sending me down the river," he added, "not if I win battles."

"But suppose they don't let you win?" Lucifer asked.

Starbuck acknowledged the question with a deprecating shrug, then stole the boy's cigar. "You know what I've learned about soldiering?"

"To take another man's smoke away?"

"That the worst enemy is never the fellow in the other uniform, that's what." He paused with the cigar halfway to his lips because a sudden fusillade had sounded in the west. The shots were from far away, but they ripped and crackled angrily in the late afternoon. "Here we go again," Starbuck said and sucked on the cigar as his heart lurched. He wondered if fear ever decreased, or whether it got worse and worse until a man could no longer make himself stand upright in battle.

Men woke among the trees and listened uneasily to the sound of firing. All but the newest conscript had learned to judge a fight's intensity from the sound of its guns, and this fight was hard and furious, and so they expected orders that would send them to join in, but no such orders came. The fight continued into the dusk, and no one knew who was fighting or who was winning, only that a skim of powder smoke showed white above the tree line in the west.

Colonel Swynyard finally brought the Legion news. It seemed that a column of Yankee troops had been marching on the turnpike and that Jackson had ordered his own Stonewall Brigade to intercept and destroy the column. "Except the Yankees are too stubborn to run," Swynyard said. "They're standing toe-to-toe and fighting like demons."

"I thought we were supposed to be hiding from the Yankees?" Starbuck said.

"I guess we've hid long enough. Maybe Old Mad Jack reckons it's time to draw the Yankees on to us," Swynyard suggested. He looked up at the darkening sky and grimaced. "Not that they'll come tonight, but tomorrow?" He glanced over at Lucifer, who was crouched beside Starbuck's few possessions. "How's your darkie?" the Colonel asked gruffly.

"He seems willing enough."

"He looks a sly one to me. He's got soft hands, Starbuck, which like as not means he's been someone's house pet. And those pants he was wearing when you found him, the long-pocket ones, they ain't the pants of an honest man. If you want a good slave get yourself a bone-brained field hand who ain't afraid of a bit of work, but your boy looks more like the dangerous type of slave to me."

"What is the dangerous type?"

"The clever type. Not all the darkies have brains like mules, you know. Some of them are real sharp, and my father always reckoned it was the clever ones who needed breaking first. Whip 'em bloody, he'd say, then work them to death because if there's trouble among the people then you can be sure it's the clever ones who started it, so get rid of the clever ones and that way you'll have no trouble. That's the first and last rule of keeping slaves, Starbuck, and you're probably breaking it. I don't suppose it's Christian to beat a darkie without cause, so I won't suggest you do it, but I'd still advise you to send the boy away."

"I won't do that. I like Lucifer," Starbuck said.

"Lucifer? Is that what he calls himself? Dear Lord," Swynyard said, shocked by the name's impiety. "Find out what he's really called, Starbuck. Don't put up with that kind of nonsense! And have him cut his hair off. You don't want a black dandy. And for the Lord's sake take that gun off him! For a start it's illegal, but more important if you encourage him to think he's a cut above the other darkies he'll soon think he's a cut above you. Give a clever slave an inch and he'll take you for everything you've got." The Colonel checked this stream of advice to listen to the firing, which had reached a new intensity, almost as if the two sides were equally desperate to reach a victory before the sun dipped beneath the horizon. "Not our business, thank God. Get some sleep tonight, Starbuck, because I daresay we'll be neck deep in Yankees tomorrow."

The long-haired, gun-toting Lucifer watched the Colonel go. "What did he say about me?" he asked Starbuck.

"He gave me good advice," Starbuck said. "He told me to whip you bloody then work you to death."

Lucifer grinned. "You don't want to do that. I'm your good luck, Major." He turned back toward Swynyard's retreating figure and made a deliberately formal gesture with his clenched right fist, which, at the last moment, he uncurled to let fall a few scraps of fragile bone and powdery white dust.

Starbuck thought he recognized the ribs of a small bird among the litter Lucifer had let drop, but he did not like to ask what the strange gesture meant. He was afraid to know, so instead he looked out from the trees and saw, at last, Yankees. Horsemen were galloping across distant fields, spurring toward the firefight that still crackled in the west. The enemy was gathering like storm clouds heaping. And tomorrow they would fight.

The Reverend Elial Starbuck's hopes, which had plunged so low during the inconveniences of the rail journey, now soared again, and once again it was the acrid smoke of battle that filled him with that fierce exaltation. He had breakfasted with Major Galloway, and afterward, leaving his luggage in the farm, the preacher had ridden to Manassas Junction to see the damage done to the depot and to introduce himself to General Pope's headquarters. The General had been affability itself and had willingly given his permission for the famous preacher to stay with the army, even inviting him to share the headquarters' potluck suppers for the next few nights. Thus honored, the Reverend Starbuck had ridden south to Bristoe to commiserate with his old friend Nathaniel Banks, who had been given the undemanding task of guarding the rail depot. Banks, who still considered his action at Cedar Mountain a victory, complained bitterly about his present duties, but the Reverend Starbuck was in no mood to encourage such backbiting. His spirits were being revived by the arrival of train after train from Warrenton Junction, each train crammed with troops fetched from the Rappahannock defenses. The damage to the rail line north of Bristoe meant that the trains had to disgorge their passengers in the open country, and soon the line of parked locomotives and cars stretched for more than two miles. The men marched in from the fields where they had alighted and boasted that they had come to knock Stonewall down once and for all. The preacher liked their spirit. His own spirits rose even higher when, late in the afternoon, he heard the sound of gunfire coming from the north.

He took his tired horse toward the sound of the guns, passing through quiet fields and deserted woods until at last he came to the valley where the Warrenton Turnpike ran and where a rill of smoke showed where men fought in the valley's bottom. He rode toward the fighting, arriving just as an enemy regiment made an attack on the Yankees' open right flank.

The gray-coated attackers advanced in a line two ranks deep. Their rifles were tipped with bayonets that reflected the dying sun's scarlet light. They came in good order, kicking down a snake fence and then advancing across a pasture. The attack was silent, suggesting that these rebels planned to save their famous yell for the last few yards of their charge. Some rebels were screaming that weird sound off to the preacher's left, but that larger battle seemed stalemated between two opposing lines of riflemen.

The Northerners had seen the threat to their right flank and hurried three regiments to meet it. Two of the regiments were from Wisconsin and the third from New York. The Northerners formed their ranks in a fold of land where they crouched behind a fence. The attackers, oblivious to the number of Yankees facing their charge, began to hurry, and their first shrill yells yipped in the dusk. The defiant sound prompted the Northern line to stand behind their fence and fire a shattering volley across the pasture. The volley's noise ripped over the valley and rolled back. Rifle flames glittered in the failing light, while the layered cloud of powder smoke drifted across the meadow to where the Confederates had been brought to a sudden, astonished halt. The Reverend Starbuck, oblivious of the bullets that whipsawed around his horse, cheered his Northerners on. Their first volley had stopped the rebel attack dead, their second turned it into a bloody mess, and their third began to drive the gray-clad regiment backward. The rebel fire became ever more feeble as the Northern fire increased. One of the rebel's banners toppled, was plucked up, and immediately fell again as the new standard-bearer was thrown back by a dozen bullets. "That's the way to deal with devils, boys!" the Reverend Starbuck shouted. A heaped line of dead and injured men showed where the tide of the Confederate attack had stalled, and now the survivors grudgingly abandoned that writhing, bloody heap as they edged backward. Earlier in the day the preacher had equipped himself with a Colt revolver from among Galloway's stores, and now he remembered the weapon and drew it from his saddle pouch. He fired at the stubborn rebels who, though their line had been broken and bloodied, still tried to return the overwhelming Northern fire.

"By the left oblique! Forward!" a stentorian voice shouted, and the New York regiment swung forward like a gate that threatened to close on the remnants of the rebel attackers.

"Halt!" the New Yorkers' commanding officer called. "Aim!"

The preacher hurried his horse after the advancing New Yorkers.

"Fire!"

The New York volley slashed into the rebels' tattered flank. It was a killing volley, a massive blow that seemed to twitch the surviving rebels bodily backward. Blood misted the evening air as the bullets smacked home. Gray coats were splattered with red, and the field littered with still more dead and dying bodies. A man reeled out of the rebel line, blood pouring from an eye socket. He collapsed to his knees, looking as if he was praying, and the Reverend Starbuck cried in triumph as he fired his revolver at the man.

"Doing God's work?" The New Yorkers' Colonel rode across to the preacher's side.

" 'Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.'" The Reverend Starbuck trumpeted the text, then fired at a rebel who seemed to be giving orders. "Our Lord's own words," he added to the Colonel.

"We're certainly doing His work well this time!" the Colonel shouted over the sound of his men's volleys.

"I pray as much!" The Reverend Starbuck fired his gun's last cylinder and hoped he had slaughtered at least one rebel with his efforts. His wrist hurt from the gun's massive kick. It was a long time since he had fired a gun, and he was not sure he could remember quite how to load a revolver.

"I suppose you wouldn't know where Pope is?" the Colonel asked the preacher.

"I last saw him in Manassas."

"Would you be going back there, sir? And if so, can you take a message?"

"Willingly."

The Colonel scribbled on a page of his notebook. "Lord knows where Jackson's main body is, but it can't be far away. We need to bring everyone here tomorrow morning to flush the mudsill out and finish him off." He tore the page out of his book and handed it to the preacher. "Just like we've finished off these rogues," the Colonel said, gesturing at the rebel regiment that had been beaten back with terrible loss. The field writhed with bodies, while a sorry handful of survivors limped back toward the far woods. "Poor fellows," the Colonel said.

"Poor fellows? The scum of creation!" the preacher averred. "Devils in cretinous shape, Colonel, as even a casual glance at their skull shapes might reveal. They are Southerners: half-witted, morally infantile, and criminal. Don't feel sorry for them. Expend your pity on the Negroes they enslaved."

"Indeed," the New Yorker muttered, taken aback by the vehemence of the preacher's words. "You'll deliver my message to Pope, sir?"

"With pleasure, Colonel, with pleasure," the Reverend Starbuck said, and then, feeling as though he was at last making a real contribution toward the destruction of the Slavocracy, he turned his tired horse and headed back across the hills.

He arrived in the day's last light at the smoking ruins of the depot, where lines of twisted, scorched boxcar frames stood on blackened wheels amidst great drifts of smoking ashes. There was acre upon acre of ruin, of desolation, of destruction. Indeed, to the preacher's heightened senses, there was something biblical in the awful sight, almost as though he witnessed the results of a visitation of God's wrath upon a people who had been lax in their duty. The Reverend Starbuck did not doubt that God could use even the hated Slavocracy to scourge the North for its sins, but the time would surely come when the North would repent, and on that happy day the armies of the godly would inflict a destruction similar to this horror upon all the rebels' habitations and towns and farms. And perhaps, the Reverend Starbuck fervently prayed, that great revival and consequent victory was starting here and now.

He discovered the army's commanding general in a farm just north of the depot. A score of senior officers surrounded Pope; among them and outranked by all of them was Major Galloway, his face coated with dust and his uniform soaked with sweat. Pope snatched at the message the Reverend Starbuck carried. "It's from Wainwright," he announced. The General read the scribbled note quickly and was so pleased by what he read that he slapped the table. "We've got him! We've got him! He's on the Warrenton road, but he's been blocked there. He's trapped. He was at Centreville, now he's retreating toward Warrenton." Pope made a fine, slashing pencil mark on one of the maps that lay on the table.

"I saw no sign of him at Centreville, sir," Galloway said nervously.

"No wonder! The fellow was going backwards!" Pope laughed. "But who minds whether you saw him or not, Galloway? It doesn't matter where he was, but where he is now! And he's right here!" He made another pencil slash, forming a cross on the Warrenton Turnpike at the place where the Reverend Starbuck had seen the rebel attack trounced. "So tomorrow we'll bag the whole crowd!" The General could not hide his elation. For almost a year the North had shuddered at the name of Stonewall Jackson, and tomorrow Pope would end the fear and destroy the bogeyman.'

Major Galloway, though outranked by the bearded men around him, stuck to his guns. "But what about the fellows my officer saw at Salem, sir?" He was speaking of Billy Blythe, who had at last reappeared with a convoluted and not wholly convincing story of being chased by Southern horsemen and of being forced to take shelter for two days and nights in a draw of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but however false the tale rang, the final part seemed true enough. Blythe claimed he had returned to the North's lines by following the foothills of the Blue Ridge until he reached the deserted rails of the Manassas Gap Railroad, but that when he had tried to follow that rail line east, he had almost been captured by Southern cavalry pickets who had been guarding an immense column of troops hurrying toward Thoroughfare Gap. Blythe's men had confirmed that part of their Captain's story, and Galloway had brought the grim news to Pope.

"But how reliable is this fellow?" Pope asked Galloway. The Northern General did not want to believe that yet more rebels were marching toward Manassas; he preferred his own theory that Jackson's panicked retreat had been intercepted on the turnpike.

"Captain Blythe is ..." Galloway began, then could not continue. "Billy can be wild at times, sir," he admitted truthfully, "but his men are telling the same tale."

"And so they should. Men ought to support their officers," Pope said dismissively. "So what exactly did they see?"

"Men approaching the Thoroughfare Gap, sir. Wagons, guns, and infantry."

Pope chuckled. "What your fellows saw, Galloway, was Jackson's supply train slipping off to the west. Stands to reason, Major! If Jackson's retreating this way"—he slashed the pencil from east to west—"then his wagons and guns won't be going in the opposite direction, not unless he's a good deal more stupid than we suppose. No, Major, your fellow saw the rebels retreating, not advancing, and tomorrow we'll turn that retreat into a rout!" His aides murmured agreement. Tomorrow the North would turn the war around. Tomorrow the North would begin the utter destruction of rebellion in Virginia.

Only one of Pope's senior officers demurred. He was an elderly artillery officer wearing the star of a brigadier general on his collar, and he seemed worried enough by Galloway's report to ask whether it was worth running any risks. "If we pull back behind the Centreville defenses, sir, we can wait for McClellan's troops to join us. In a week, sir, with respect, we can overwhelm every rebel in Virginia."

"You want me to retreat?" John Pope asked scathingly. "This army, sir, is far too accustomed to retreat. It has been led by men who know nothing except how to retreat! No, it's time we advanced, time we fought, and time we won."

"Hallelujah!" the Reverend Starbuck interjected.

"But where's Lee?" Galloway asked, but no one had heard the question. General Pope and his staff had gone to their potluck supper, taking the generals and the visiting preacher with them, and leaving Galloway alone.

The fighting died as darkness swamped the turnpike. The North, assuming that Jackson had tried to force his way past them, claimed victory, while Jackson, whose object had been to draw the Northerners into a full attack, kept his silence. The wounded cried in the dark, while all around them, rustling in the night, an army gathered for the kill.