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

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THE FIRST ATTACK OF the Saturday morning was an advance by two companies of Northern infantry who emerged from the trees in skirmish order. They walked gingerly and with bayonets fixed, almost as if they suspected that their orders to advance on the railbed were a mistake. "Oh, my God." Captain Davies began the idiotic refrain that had the mysterious power to convulse Jackson's army.

"Don't," Starbuck growled, but he could have saved his breath.

"Just lay me down." A half-dozen of Davies's men finished the sentence and immediately began laughing.

"Imbeciles," Starbuck said, though no one could tell whether he referred to the Legionnaires or to the handful of Yankees who were crossing the open ground where hundreds had died the day before.

"Some idiot got his orders confused," Davies commented with an indecent relish. "Lambs to the slaughter, march!" He eased his rifle over the parapet.

"Hold your fire!" Starbuck called. He was waiting for the enemy's main body to appear at the edge of the trees, but it seemed the handful of Northern skirmishers was expected to capture the railbed on their own. Such suicidal behavior suggested Davies was right and that some poor Northern officer had misunderstood his orders, or perhaps the enemy believed the rebels had abandoned the railbed during the night. Starbuck disabused them of the notion. He used just two of his companies. He wanted the other companies to conserve their ammunition, but the fire of F and G Companies was sufficient to send the Northern soldiers scuttling ignominiously back to the tree line. Two skirmishers were left on the ground and another half-dozen limped as they fled. One of the wounded men repeatedly flapped an arm as though gesturing at the rebels not to fire again. None did. "I suspect our Northern neighbors were feeling us out, Starbuck. Taking our pulse to see if any life remains in us. Good morning to you!" The speaker was the exuberant Colonel Elijah Hudson, who was ambling down the railbed as though he were merely taking a morning stroll. "I trust you slept well?"

"Half well," Starbuck said. "It was a noisy night." "So it was, so it was. I confess I abandoned my efforts to sleep and retired into the woods to read Homer by lantern light. I was struck by the line about arrows rattling in their quivers as the archers advanced to battle. You remember it? He must have heard the noise to have described it. Those were the days, Starbuck. None of this loitering in a trench, but up with the sun, a quick sacrifice to all-seeing Zeus, and then a chariot ride to glory. Or to death, I suppose. You breakfasted?"

"Cold chicken and hot coffee," Starbuck said. Lucifer was proving adept at feeding Starbuck, though admittedly the boy still had the supplies taken from the Manassas depot as his larder. Lucifer's real test would come when all he had was weevil-ridden hardtack, rancid bacon grease, and rotting salt beef. If the boy even stayed long enough to face such a culinary test. So far the fugitive slave seemed amused at being a part of the Confederate army, but doubtless he would run whenever the whim took him.

"My son came to see me last night," Hudson now told Starbuck, who had to think for a second before remembering that Hudson's eldest son was an aide of Robert Lee. "Tom told me that Lee arrived yesterday," the Colonel went on, "but Pete Longstreet declined the order to attack. Our Mr. Longstreet is a meticulous fellow. He likes to make certain he has a sufficiency of mud and water before he makes his pies. Let us hope the Yankees stay long enough to be attacked. Or maybe I shouldn't hope that. My boys are wicked low on cartridges."

"Mine too," Starbuck said.

"Well, if all else fails," Hudson said, "we shall just have to throw rocks at them!" He smiled to show he was jesting, then prodded his stick into the cutting's bank like a farmer testing the dirt at planting season. "Did your fellows suffer badly yesterday?" He asked the question in a deceptively casual tone.

"Badly enough. Twenty-three killed and fifty-six with the doctors."

"Much the same, much the same," Hudson said, shaking his head at the news. "A bad business, Starbuck, a bad business. But can't be helped. What fools we mortals be. I have some coffee on the boil if you want to make a neighborly call." Hudson gave a wave with his stick and strode back to his own regiment.

Lieutenant Coffman had resumed his role as Starbuck's aide. He had been slightly wounded the day before by a bullet that had cut a ragged, dirty groove in the flesh of his upper left arm. Truslow had cleaned and dressed the wound, and Coffman kept touching the makeshift bandage as if to make certain that the badge of his courage was still in place. He bore no other badges; indeed, it was now impossible to tell that the ragged Coffman was an officer, for he carried a rifle, had a haversack and cap box on his belt, and had the half-starved, half-fearful, dirty face of a common soldier. "What happens now, sir?" he asked Starbuck.

"That's up to the Yankees, Coffman," Starbuck said. He was watching Sergeant Peter Waggoner lead a small prayer group and remembering how another group of men had willingly followed the big Sergeant into the railbed's cutting, where Waggoner had swung his rifle like a club to break apart a knot of Yankee resistance. It was not so much the Sergeant's bravery that now impressed Starbuck as the fact that men had so willingly followed Waggoner into the fight. "Captain Pine!" Starbuck shouted at Company D's commanding officer.

"Six cartridges apiece," Pine said, leaping to the conclusion that Starbuck needed to know the bad news of how many rounds his men had left.

"Who's your best sergeant after Waggoner?" Starbuck asked instead.

Pine thought about it for a second. "Tom Darke."

"You might have to lose Waggoner, that's why."

Pine flinched at that news, then shrugged. "To replace poor Patterson?"

"Maybe," Starbuck said vaguely. "But don't say anything to Waggoner yet." He walked back to the south, passing the remnants of Patterson's Company C, now under the command of Sergeant Malachi Williams, who offered a curt nod as Starbuck passed. None of Company C had joined Medlicott's retreat the day before, nor indeed had every man in A and B Company. The rot, Starbuck decided, was confined to a stubborn handful who doubtless assumed that Washington Faulconer still wielded more power in the Legion than Nathaniel Starbuck.

Starbuck resisted the temptation to crouch as the trench became shallower. "Keep your head down," he told Coffman.

"You're not keeping yours down," the Lieutenant replied.

"I'm a Yankee. I lack your valuable blood," Starbuck said just as a sharpshooter in the Northern-held woods tried for him. The bullet struck a branch in the new abatis and ricocheted up into the air while the sound of the gun echoed back from the hillside. Starbuck gave a derisive wave to his unseen assailant, then jumped down into the spoil pit, where Medlicott and Moxey were standing beside a small fire over which a coffeepot was suspended. A half-dozen of their men were lounging near the fire and looked up suspiciously as Starbuck and Coffman arrived. "Is that coffee fresh?" Starbuck asked cheerfully.

"There isn't much left," Moxey said guardedly.

Starbuck peered into the pot. "Plenty enough for Lieutenant Coffman and me," he said, then gave his tin mug to Coffman. "Pour away, Lieutenant." Starbuck turned to Medlicott. "I had a letter from Pecker. You'll doubtless be pleased that he expects to be back soon."

"Good," Medlicott said forcefully.

"And Murphy's well. Thank you, Lieutenant." Starbuck took the proffered mug and blew across the steaming coffee. "Is it sweetened?" he asked Medlicott.

Medlicott said nothing but just watched as Starbuck sipped the coffee. "We heard from General Faulconer," Moxey blurted out, unable to keep the news to himself.

"Did you now?" Starbuck asked. "And how is the General?"

For a moment neither man answered. Indeed Medlicott seemed annoyed that Moxey had even mentioned the letter, but now that its existence was known the Major decided to take responsibility for its contents. "He's offered Captain Moxey and I jobs," he said with as much dignity as he could muster.

"I am glad," Starbuck said feelingly. "What sort of jobs? In his stables, perhaps? Serving at table? Kitchen hands, maybe?" Somewhere a cannon barked flat and hard. The noise of the shot rolled and faded across the countryside; then a train whistle sounded in the far-off depot. The whistle was a very homely sound, a reminder that a world existed where men did not wake to sharpshooters and bloated corpses. "The General needs a pair of boot-cleaners, maybe?" Starbuck asked. He sipped the coffee again. It was very good, but he made a disgusted face and poured the liquid onto the spoil pit's stones so that it splashed onto Medlicott's boots. "What sort of a job, Major?" Starbuck asked.

Medlicott was silent for a few seconds as he controlled his temper; then he managed a grim smile. "General Faulconer says there are vacancies in the Provost Guard at the Capitol."

Starbuck pretended to be impressed. "You'll be guarding the President and Congress! And all those Richmond politicians and their whores! Is it just the pair of you who are needed? Or can you take the rest of us with you, too?"

"We can take enough men, Starbuck," Medlicott said, "but only the right kind of men." He added the childish insult, and there was a murmur of agreement from the nearby soldiers, who had clearly been invited to share Medlicott's supposed good fortune.

"And that explains why you're avoiding all the fighting!" Starbuck said as though the idea had only just dawned on him. "Dear Lord above! And I thought you were simply being cowards! Now you tell me you're keeping yourselves safe for higher and better duties. Why didn't you tell me before?" Starbuck waited, but neither man answered. Starbuck spat at their feet. "Listen, you sons of bitches, I've served in the Richmond provosts, and General Winder runs that crew of spavined leprous bastards, not General Faulconer. General Faulconer has about as much influence in Richmond as I do. He's promising you an easy berth just to make you unhappy here, but I ain't going to let you play that game. You're here to fight, not dream, so this morning you sons of bitches are fighting with the rest of us. Is that clear?"

Moxey looked apprehensive, but Medlicott had more faith in Washington Faulconer than Moxey. "We'll do what we have to do," he said stubbornly.

"Good," Starbuck said, "because what you have to do is fight." He walked to the edge of the spoil pit and leaned with pretended nonchalance on its slope. He propped his rifle against the bank and started cleaning his fingernails with the bodkin he used for reaming out the cones of his revolver. "I forgot to shave this morning," he said to Coffman.

"You should grow a beard, sir," Coffman said nervously. "I don't like beards," Starbuck said, "and I hate cowards." He was watching the men around Medlicott, seeing their hatred and wondering if any dared threaten him with violence. That was a risk he would have to take when the moment came, and until it came he would wait in the spoil pit that he turned into a temporary regimental headquarters. Bandmaster Little, who served as the battalion's chief clerk as well as its fussy maker of music, brought him a bagful of tedious paperwork, and Starbuck passed the time filling in the lists of dead, indenting for rations, and sending urgent pleas for ammunition.

No ammunition came, but nor did the Yankees. The sun rose to its height and still no attack came. Once in a while a rattle of gunfire would crackle across the country, but otherwise there was silence. Two armies were poised side by side, yet neither moved, and the peace of the day frustrated Starbuck. He needed a fight to bring his confrontation with Medlicott to fruition.

"Maybe the bastards have gone home," he told Lucifer when the boy brought him a midday meal of bread, cheese, and apples.

"They're still over there. I can smell them," Lucifer said. The boy glanced at the brooding Medlicott, then looked back to the cheerful Starbuck. "You've been tugging on his chains," Lucifer said with amusement.

"It's none of your business, Lucy."

"Lucy!" The boy was offended.

Starbuck smiled. "I can't call you Lucifer, it isn't proper. So I shall call you Lucy."

The boy bridled, but before he could think of a response, there was a sudden shout from one of Colonel Hudson's pickets, and then a great rushing and trampling noise in the woods beyond the killing patch. Starbuck abandoned the bread and cheese, snatched up his rifle, and ran to the pit's forward edge, where a squad from Moxey's company was lying on their bellies with their rifles trained under the abatis. "See anything?" Starbuck asked.

"Nothing."

Yet the noise was getting louder. It was the noise, Starbuck reckoned, of hundreds if not thousands of boots trampling down the undergrowth. It was the noise of an infantry attack designed to break through Jackson's line once and for all. It was the noise that foretold battle, and all along the railbed men pushed rifles over the parapet and cocked hammers.

"Sumbitches don't give up," the man next to Starbuck said. He was one of those who had stayed and fought the day before.

"What's your name?" Starbuck asked him.

"Sam Norton."

"From Faulconer Court House ?"

"Rosskill," Norton answered. Rosskill was the nearest railhead to the Legion's hometown.

"What did you do there?"

Norton grinned. "Last job I had in Rosskill was sweeping out the county jail."

Starbuck grinned back. "Unwillingly, I guess?"

"Never minded sweeping it out, Major, 'cos once you'd swept out the jail you had to sweep out the sheriff's house and Sheriff Simms had two daughters sweeter than honey on a comb. Hell, I know men who robbed stores and stood rock still just begging to be locked up for a chance at Emily and Sue."

Starbuck laughed, then went silent as the trampling of feet was translated into a sudden rush of men, hundreds of men who shouted their hoarse war cry and charged across the narrow strip of open land toward the embankment where Elijah Hudson's North Carolinians waited.

"Fire!" Hudson shouted, and the embankment was rimmed with smoke.

"Fire!" Starbuck shouted, and the Legion gave what flanking fire they could, but for most of the men the angle was too acute for their rifles to help the beleaguered Hudson.

The Yankee charge reached the embankment's foot and surged up its face. Hudson's men stood up. For a second Starbuck thought the Carolinians had merely stood to run away, but instead they advanced across the flat railbed and met the Yankee charge head-on. They swung rifles, slashed with bowie knives, and rammed forward with bayonets.

Starbuck stared into the woods directly opposite the Legion and saw no threat there. The noise of the hand-to-hand fighting to his right was terrible, an echo from the medieval days of men being butchered by steel and crushed by clubs. The bestiality of the sound was a temptation to leave well alone and stay in the railbed's cutting on the excuse that a second Yankee attack might come straight for the Legion's position, but Starbuck knew that assumption was merely an excuse for cowardice, and so he slung his rifle and jumped down to the spoil pit's floor. "Major Medlicott! We're going to help."

Major Medlicott did not move. The men with him stared sullenly at Starbuck.

"You heard me?" Starbuck asked.

"It ain't our fight, Starbuck." Medlicott summoned his courage to articulate his defiance of Starbuck. "Besides, if we leave here the Yankees could attack straight into the pit again and then where would we be?"

Starbuck did not answer. Instead he looked sideways at Coffman. "Go and send Sergeant Waggoner to me," he said softly so that only Coffman could hear, "then tell Truslow that he's got to hold the railbed with Companies G and H. He's to ignore my order to charge. Understated?"

"Yes, sir." Coffman ran off on his errand. Medlicott had not heard the orders Starbuck gave but sneered anyway. "Sending for Swynyard?"

Starbuck could feel his heart beating flabbily in his chest. "Major Medlicott," he said very slowly and distinctly, "I'm ordering you to fix bayonets and go to Colonel Hudson's assistance."

Medlicott's big red face seemed to twist in a spasm of loathing, but he managed to make his answer sound respectful. "It's my judgment we should guard our own position," he said just as formally as Starbuck.

"You're disobeying an order?" Starbuck asked.

"I'm staying here," the miller said stubbornly, and when Starbuck did not respond immediately, Medlicott grinned in anticipation of victory. "No one's to move!" he called to his men. "Our job's to stay here and—"

He stopped speaking because Starbuck had shot him.

Starbuck did not really believe he was doing it. He was aware that the act would either seal the Legion as his regiment or else condemn him to a court-martial or a lynching. He drew the heavy Adams revolver and straightened his right arm while his thumb clicked the hammer smoothly back; then his finger took the trigger's pressure so fast that the look of triumph on Medlicott's face had scarcely started to change when the bullet struck him just beneath his right eye. Blood and bone made a cloud of droplets about the Major's shattering skull as he was thrown backward. His hat went straight up in the air while his body flew back three yards, twitching as it flew, then flapping like a landed fish as it thumped heavily onto the dirt. There the body lay utterly still with its arms outstretched. "Oh, my God," Starbuck heard himself saying, "just lay me down." He began to laugh.

Medlicott's ashen-faced men watched him. None of them moved. Medlicott's dead fingers slowly curled.

Starbuck pushed the revolver into its holster. "Captain Moxey?" he said very calmly.

Moxey did not wait for the rest of the sentence. "Company!" he shouted. "Fix bayonets!"

Moxey's men ran south along the railbed to help Hudson's left-hand company. Medlicott's men still stared dumbly at the body of their officer, then up at Starbuck. This was the moment that Starbuck had half expected to turn mutinous, but none of the company made any move to avenge the dead miller. "Anyone else want to disobey my orders?" Starbuck asked them.

No one spoke. The men seemed dazed; then Peter Waggoner ran up, panting. "Sir?"

"You're a Lieutenant now, Waggoner," Starbuck said, "in charge of A Company. Take over, follow Captain Moxey, and get rid of those Yankees."

"Sir?" Waggoner was slow to understand.

"Do it!" Starbuck snapped. Then he unslung his rifle and pushed his bayonet into place. He turned toward the rest of the regiment. "Legion! Fix bayonets!" He waited a few seconds. "Follow me!"

It was a risk, because if the Yankees were waiting to attack the Legion's positions, then Starbuck was giving them victory, but if he did not help the North Carolinians, then the Yankees would probably break through into the woods, and so he took three-quarters of the Legion down the railbed to help Hudson's men. Some of those men were out of ammunition and were hurling rocks at the Yankees, throwing so hard that the heavy stones drew blood when they struck on sweat-streaked faces.

"Follow me!" Starbuck shouted again. Moxey and Waggoner were helping Hudson's left-hand companies, but the biggest threat was in the center of the Colonel's line, and Starbuck now led his reinforcements down the back of the embankment to where that Yankee pressure was fiercest. Some of the Northerners had gained the flat summit of the embankment, where they were struggling to take Hudson's two standards, and it was there that Starbuck intervened. "Come on!" he screamed, and he heard his men begin the terrible, shrill rebel yell as they scrambled up the slope and into the fight. Starbuck pulled his rifle's trigger as he neared the melee, then rammed the bayonet hard into a blue jacket. He was screaming like a banshee, suddenly feeling the extraordinary release of Medlicott's death. My God, but he had cut the rot clean out of the Legion's soul!

There was a rebel on the ground trying to fight off a Northern sergeant who had his hands around the rebel's throat. Starbuck kicked the Northerner's head up, then sliced his bayonet back and upward so that the blade slit the man's throat open. The sergeant collapsed, gushing blood over his intended victim. Starbuck clambered over both men and rammed the bayonet forward again. Men were grunting and cursing, tripping on the dying and slipping in blood, but the Yankees were giving ground. They had been trying to fight up the embankment's slope, and the rebels had managed to keep most of them on that forward slope and at a consequent disadvantage until the Legion's arrival tipped the balance. The Northerners retreated.

They went down the embankment, but they were not beaten yet. The woods here grew close to the railbed, so close that the Yankees could retreat to the tree line and still fire over open sights at the rebel position, and once back among the trees they poured an immense fire at the embankment. The storm of bullets drove the rebel defenders back from the crest and down into cover. The bullets whistled and hissed overhead; they thumped into the bodies of the dead or else ricocheted off the embankment to tear through the leaves behind. Every few moments a group of Yankees would charge the apparently empty parapet only to be met by a sparse rebel volley, a shower of stones, and the sight of waiting bayonets.

"They don't yield easily, do they? My God, Starbuck, but I owe you thanks. Upon my soul, I do." Colonel Hudson, his long hair matted with blood and his eyes wild, tried to shake Starbuck's hand.

Starbuck, encumbered with a rifle, ramrod, and cartridge, fumbled the handshake. "You're wounded, Colonel?"

"Dear me, no." Hudson pushed the long, blood-thick hair out of his face. "Other fellow's blood. You killed him, remember? Cut his throat. Dear me. But upon my soul, Starbuck, I'm grateful. Grateful, truly."

"Are you sure you're not hurt, sir?" Starbuck asked, for Hudson seemed unsteady on his feet.

"Just shocked, Starbuck, just shocked, and I shall be just dandy in a moment or two." The Colonel looked up at the railbed, where a rock had just landed. It seemed the Yankees were throwing the stones back now. Starbuck finished loading his rifle, wriggled up the bank, and pushed the gun between two bodies. He sighted on a blue jacket, pulled the trigger, and slid back to reload. He had five cartridges left, while most of his men were now reduced to just one or two. Elijah Hudson was similarly short of ammunition. "One more attack, Starbuck," the North Carolinian said, "and I suspect we're done for."

The attack came almost as he spoke. It was a frantic, desperate charge of tired, bloodied men who burst out of the woods to throw themselves up the embankment. For two days these Northerners had tried to break the rebel line, and for two days they had been frustrated, but now they were on the very brink of success, and they summoned their last reserves of strength as they scrambled up the scorched bank with fixed bayonets.

"Fire!" Hudson shouted, and the rebels' last guns flamed as a barrage of rocks hurtled overhead. "Now charge, my dears! Charge home!" the Colonel called, and the tired men threw themselves forward to meet the Yankee assault. Starbuck thrust with the bayonet, twisted the blade, and thrust again. Coffman was beside him, firing a revolver; then he glimpsed Lucifer, of all people, firing his Colt. Then Starbuck's bayonet stuck in a man's belly, and he tried to kick it free, then tried to twist it free, but nothing would loosen the flesh's grip on the steel. He cursed the dying man, then felt a gush of warm blood on his hands as he unslotted the blade and pulled the rifle away from the trapped blade. He reversed the rifle and swung it overhand like a club. He was keening a mad noise, half exultation, half lamentation, expecting death at any second, but determined not to give an inch against the mass of men who pushed into the rebels' blades and rifle stocks.

Then, suddenly, without any apparent reason, the pressure eased.

Suddenly the great charge was gone, and the Northerners were running back into the trees and leaving behind a tide-line of bodies heaped on bodies, some of the bodies moving slow beneath their pall of blood, others lying still. And there was silence except for the panting of the wild-eyed rebels who stood on the embankment they had held against the charge.

"Back now!" Starbuck broke the silence. "Back!" There might still be sharpshooters in the woods, and so he pulled his men back down the embankment into cover.

"Don't leave me, don't leave me!" a wounded man cried aloud, and another wept because he had been blinded. The stretcher bearers went across the railbed. No one shot at them. Starbuck cleaned the blood from his rifle's stock with a handful of oak leaves. Coffman was beside him, eyes gleaming with a maniacal delight. Lucifer was reloading his revolver. "You're not supposed to kill Northerners," Starbuck told him.

"I kill who I want," the boy said resentfully.

"But thank you anyway," Starbuck said, but Lucifer's only response was a look of hurt dignity. Starbuck sighed. "Thank you, Lucifer," he said.

Lucifer immediately grinned. "So I ain't Lucy?"

"Thank you, Lucifer," Starbuck said again.

A triumphant Lucifer kissed the muzzle of his gun. "A man can be whatever a man wants to be. Maybe next year I'll decide to be a rebel killer."

Starbuck spat on the rifle's lock to help clean the blood clotted there. Somewhere in the woods behind him a bird burst into song.

"It's quiet, isn't it?" Hudson said from a few paces away.

Starbuck looked up. "Is it?"

"It's quiet," the Colonel said, "so beautifully quiet. I do believe the Yankees are gone." The line had held.

The Reverend Doctor Starbuck beheld a nightmare.

He had spent a second day with Major Galloway's horsemen in the hope that he would have a chance to join in the pursuit of a broken rebel army. He was aware that the next day would be the Lord's Day, and he whiled away the waiting hours planning the sermon he would give to the victorious troops, but as the hours passed and there was still no sign of a rebel collapse, the prospect of the sermon receded. Then, in the afternoon, just after the firing in the woods had died suddenly away, a message came ordering Galloway's men to investigate some strange troops seen marching to the southwest.

The preacher rode with Galloway. They passed trampled cornfields and orchards looted of their fruit. They crossed the turnpike where the battle had started two days before, splashed through a stream, then rode up a bare hillside to where two gaudily uniformed regiments of New York Zouaves were resting on the grassy crest with their rifles stacked.

"All quiet here," the young, dapper commander of the nearer regiment, the 5th New York, proclaimed, "and we've got a picket line in the woods"—he gestured downhill to where thick woods grew—"and they're not being disturbed, so I guess it will stay quiet."

Major Galloway decided he would ride as far as the New York picket line, but the preacher elected to stay with the infantry, for a moment's small talk had elicited the astonishing information that the 5th New York's commanding officer was the son of an old colleague, and that old colleague, the Reverend Doctor Winslow, was actually the chaplain to his own son's regiment. Now the Reverend Winslow galloped across to greet his Boston friend. "I never thought to find you here, Starbuck!"

"I trust I shall always be found where the Lord's work needs doing, Winslow," the Boston preacher said, then shook hands.

Winslow looked proudly at his son, who had ridden back to his place at the head of the regiment. "Just twenty-six, Starbuck, but in charge of the finest volunteer regiment in our army. Even the regulars can't hold a candle to the New York 5th. They fought like Trojans in the peninsula. And your own sons? They're well, I pray?"

"James is with McClellan," the Reverend Starbuck said. "The others are too young to fight." Then, wanting to change the subject before Winslow remembered the existence of Nathaniel, the Boston preacher asked about the 5th New York's flamboyant uniform, which consisted of bright red baggy pantaloons, short blue collarless jackets with scarlet trim, a red waist sash, and a crimson cap rimmed with a white turban and crowned with a long golden tassel.

"It's a copy of a French uniform," Winslow explained. "Zouaves are reputedly the fiercest fighters in the French army, and our patron wanted us to emulate their dress as well as their йlan."

"Patron?"

"We're paid for by a New York furniture manufacturer. He paid for everything you see here, Starbuck; paid for it lock, stock, and barrel. You're seeing the profits of mahogany and turned legs at war."

The Reverend Starbuck eyed his old friend's uniform and wished that he was able to wear such finery. He was about to inquire what arrangements Winslow had made to fill his pulpit while he served with the army but was distracted by a burst of gunfire in the woods. "Our skirmishers, I guess," Winslow said when the sound had faded. "They were probably attacking a regiment of wild turkey. We ate a couple last night, and very good eating they were, too." The resting regiment had stirred at the sudden fusillade, and some men retrieved their rifles from the stacks, but most just cursed for being half woken up, pulled the turbans over their eyes again, and tried to go back to sleep.

"Your son said there's been no sign of the enemy here?" the Reverend Starbuck inquired, wondering why the hairs on the back of his neck were suddenly prickling.

"None at all!" the chaplain said, staring toward the woods. "I think you might say we've drawn the short straw. Our part in the great victory is to be spectators. Or maybe not."

His last three words were prompted by the appearance of a group of Zouaves at the tree line on the regiment's left flank. They were evidently skirmishers returning to their parent regiment, and they were agitated. "Rebels!" one of the men shouted. "Rebels!"

"They're panicking!" the chaplain said scornfully.

More of the Zouaves snatched up their rifles. A captain mounted on a nervous black horse cantered past the two pastors and touched his hat respectfully. "I think they're imagining things, chaplain!" the Captain called good-naturedly to Winslow, then put his hand to his throat and started making a mewing sound as he struggled to breathe. Blood began to seep through his fingers, and while the Reverend Starbuck tried to make sense of this strange apparition, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the sound of firing that had somehow taken a second or two to register on his stunned senses. Stunned because the hilltop was being swept by a typhoon of fire, a whistling whipping terror of bullets that crashed from the tree line where, appallingly, regiment after regiment of rebels now appeared. One moment there had been a summer's peace prevailing on the warm hilltop, where bees had sucked at clover blossoms, then there was death and screaming and blood, and the transition had been too abrupt for the preacher's mind to comprehend.

The dying captain was jerked back from the saddle to be dragged along the ground by a foot trapped in a stirrup. He cried pathetically; then a great rush of blood silenced him forever. The chaplain began shouting encouragement to the dazed Zouaves, who seemed to shrink back from the weltering rifle fire. The Reverend Starbucks horse bolted from the unending splintering crack of rifles that outflanked the two New York regiments. The horse ran north, fleeing the attack, and it was not till he reached the edge of the hill that the preacher was able to curb the scared animal and turn it just in time to see a line of rebel regiments appear from the far trees. These were Lee's men, who had marched one day after Stonewall Jackson and who were now being unleashed from the valleys and woods where they had hidden overnight. They all made their devilish, ululating scream as they attacked, and the preacher's blood ran chill as the terrible sound washed across the hilltop.

The Reverend Starbuck dragged his revolver out of its saddle holster but made no effort to fire it. He was faced by a nightmare. He was watching the death of two regiments.

The New Yorkers tried to fight. They stood in line and returned the rebel fire, but the gray lines overlapped and decimated the Zouave ranks with an overwhelming volume of rifle fire. Brightly uniformed men were plucked back from the New York ranks, and though the sergeants and corporals tried to close the gaps, the gaps kept coming faster than they could be filled. Men slipped away, running north and east. The Reverend Starbuck shouted at the fugitives to hold their ground, but they ignored his ravings and ran downhill toward the stream. The furniture maker's regiment was reduced to three groups of men who tried to hold off the overpowering assault, but three times their number could not have stopped this rebel surge.

The New Yorkers died. There was a spatter of final shots, a scream of defiance, then the flags toppled as the last stubborn defenders were overrun. The hill was suddenly swarming with rebel rat gray coats, and the preacher, startled from his shocked immobility, kicked his horse and let it run downhill among the scattered fugitives. The first rebels were already firing after the running men, and the Reverend Starbuck heard the bullets whiplash about him, but the preacher's horse kept running. It splashed through the stream and so up into the safety of the trees on the far side. The scream of the obscene rebel yell soured the preacher's ears as he slowed the sweating horse. All around him now he could hear that terrible scream, the noise of the devil on the march, and he sensed, even if he did not understand, that another Northern army was being ignominiously beaten. Tears ran down his cheeks as he tried to understand the unfathomable ways of God.

He crossed the turnpike, going back to where he had spent so long waiting to begin the pursuit of the beaten rebels, but there was no sign of Galloway's men there, nor, thank God, any rebels either. The preacher cuffed the tears from his cheeks as he rested his horse. To his right, where the smoke from the burning depot still made a brown smear in the sky, there was only a tangle of woods and steep valleys, and it was through that broken ground, he suspected, that the rebel advance was being made. To his left, across the wider fields, lay the woods where one Northern attack after another had been launched toward the railbed, but none of those attacks had succeeded, which surely meant that the rebels still lurked among those woods, while behind him the devil's troops had just made carrion out of Winslow's Zouaves on a Virginia hilltop, which left the preacher just one place to go.

He rode northeast, his grief turning into a rage fit to fill all heaven. What dolts led the armies of the North! What strutting turkey-cock fools! The preacher felt a duty being laid upon him, the duty to awaken the North to the poltroons who were leading its sons into one defeat after another. He would go to Galloway's house, fetch his luggage, then have one of the Major's servants show him an escape route north across the Bull Run. It was time to return to the sanity of Boston, where he would begin his campaign that would wake a nation to its sins.

Cannons fired in the hills, their sound echoing confusedly around the sky. Rifles cracked, the gunsmoke showing in rills above trees and streams. Robert Lee had brought twenty-five thousand men and placed them at right angles to Jackson's beleaguered line, and not one Yankee had known the rebels were there until the starry banners came forward above the gray lines. Now the rebels' flank attack advanced like a door swinging shut on John Pope's glory. And the Reverend Elial Starbuck carried his righteous anger back toward home.

The sun sank slow toward the western hills. Nothing stirred in the woods to the east. The noise of battle rolled like distant thunder, but what the noise meant or where the Yankees were no one knew. A patrol from Truslow's Company H was the first to cross the shell-scorched strip of land into the trees, but they found no Yankees there. The sharpshooters had gone, and the woods were empty except for the litter of the abandoned Northern bivouacs.

Ammunition arrived and was handed out among the weary men. Some troops slept, indistinguishable in their exhaustion from the dead around them. Starbuck tried to compile a list of the dead and the wounded, but the work was slow.

An hour before sundown Colonel Swynyard rode his horse up to the railbed. He was leading another horse by the reins. "It belonged to Major Medlicott," he told Starbuck. "I hear he died?"

"Shot by a Yankee, I hear," Starbuck said straight-faced.

Swynyard's mouth flickered in what might have been a smile. "We're ordered to advance, and I thought you might appreciate a horse."

Starbuck's initial reaction was to refuse, for he took pride in marching like his men, but then he remembered the house with the lime-washed stone pillar at its lane gate and thanked Swynyard for bringing him the animal. He pulled himself into the saddle just as the Legion was stirred from its rest. The tired men grumbled at being disturbed but shouldered their rifles and climbed from the railbed. The wounded, the surgeons, the servants, and a sergeant's guard stayed behind while the rest of the Legion formed ranks around the color guard, where Lieutenant Coffman carried the replacement battle flag on its sapling staff. Starbuck took his place at the head of the regiment on Medlicott's horse. "Forward!" he called.

Hudson's North Carolinians advanced to the Legion's right. Colonel Hudson was mounted on an expensive black mare and was now accoutred with a sword in a gold-mounted scabbard. Hudson waved in friendly greeting as the two regiments advanced in line, but once among the trees Starbuck deliberately led the Legion to the left and so opened a gap between himself and the Carolinians.

He crossed the small pasture where they had checked their pursuit of the first Yankee attack the day before. There were still unburied dead in the field. Beyond the pasture was a strip of woods, then a wider stretch of open farmland that was bisected by a road climbing to a far crest. Starbuck rode to the left of his line. "Remember this place?" Starbuck asked Truslow. "Should I?"

"We fought our first battle here." Starbuck pointed to his left. "The Yankees came out of those trees and we waited up there"—he pointed right to the ridge—"and I was scareder than hell and you behaved like it had all happened before." "It had. I was in Mexico, remember?" Starbuck let the horse walk at its own pace across the old battlefield. There were yellowing bone fragments in the furrows, and he wondered for how many years the farmers would plow up men's bones and the bullets that put them there.

"So what happened with Medlicott?" Truslow asked. The two men were thirty paces ahead of the ranks. "What do your men say happened?" "That you picked a fight with him, then shot the son of a bitch."

Starbuck thought about it, then nodded. "Just about. Do they mind?"

Truslow twisted a piece of tobacco from a plug and put it in his mouth. "Some of them feel sorry for Edna." "His wife?"

"She has children to feed. But hell, no, they don't mind about the miller. He was a mean son of a bitch."

"He's a hero now," Starbuck said. "He's going to get his name on a statue in Faulconer Court House. Dan Medlicott, hero of our War of Independence." He crossed the road, remembering when he had watched a Northern army attack across these fields. They were not much changed; the snake fences were long gone, burned to boil the coffeepots of soldiers, and flecks of bone disfigured the dirt, but otherwise it was just as Starbuck remembered. He led the Legion on across the farmland, angling still more to his left until, rather than heading toward the eastern ridge with the rest of the Brigade, he was heading toward a stand of timber that topped a small ridge that lay to the north.

Swynyard galloped up to Starbuck. "Wrong way! Up there!" He pointed eastward up the road.

Starbuck reined in. "There's a place I want to visit, Colonel, just over the hill. Not more than a quarter-mile now."

Swynyard frowned. "What place?"

"The house of the man who took our flags, Colonel, and the house of the man whose troops burned women in a tavern."

Swynyard's initial reaction was to shake his head; then he had second thoughts and looked at Truslow's company before turning back to the two officers. "What can you achieve?"

"I don't know. But then we didn't know what we were going to achieve when we ran to Dead Mary's Ford in the middle of the night." Starbuck deliberately reminded Swynyard of that night and the implicit favor that the Colonel owed him as a result.

The Colonel smiled. "You've got one hour. We'll be going up the road," he said, pointing to the right, "and I guess it would only be prudent for someone to take a patrol north, just in case any of the rascals are lurking. Do you think one company will be enough?"

"Plenty, sir," Starbuck said and touched the brim of his hat to the Colonel. "Company!" he called to his old company. "Follow me!"

He borrowed a lit cigar from John Bailey and lit one of his own with its glowing tip. He walked the horse slowly, pacing the beast beside Truslow. The rest of the Legion climbed the gentle eastern slope toward the sound of battle that now seemed very far away—so far that none of the advancing battalions seemed in any hurry to join that distant fighting. Starbuck looked to his left and saw the white-painted pillar on the road at the end of the stand of trees. "Not far now," he told Truslow. "Through these woods and in the next fields."

"What happens if the place is full of Yankees?" Truslow asked.

"Then we'll go back," Starbuck said, but when the company emerged from the trees on the ridge, they saw that the place was not full of Yankees. Instead the Galloway homestead seemed deserted as the rebel soldiers walked slowly down the long slope toward the farm buildings that were set among a grove of leafy, mature trees. It looked a handsome house, Starbuck thought, a place where a man could settle and live a good life. It seemed to have good watered land, well-drained fields, and plenty of timber.

A black man met them at the yard gate. "There's no one here, massa," the man said nervously.

"Whose house is it?" Starbuck asked.

The man did not answer.

"You heard the officer!" Truslow growled.

The black man glanced at the approaching company, then licked his lips. "Belongs to a gentleman called Galloway, massa, but he's not here."

"He's with the army, is he?" Starbuck asked.

"Yes, massa." The man smiled ingratiatingly. "He's with the army."

Starbuck returned the smile. "But which army?"

The black man's smile vanished instantly. He said nothing, and Starbuck kicked his heels to ride past him. "Any slaves in the house?" he called over his shoulder to the black man.

"Three of us, massa, and we're not slaves. We're servants."

"You live in the house?"

"In the cabins, massa." The servant was running after Starbuck, while Truslow brought the company on behind.

"So the house is empty?" Starbuck asked.

The man paused, then nodded as Starbuck looked back at him. "It's empty, massa."

"What's your name?"

"Joseph, massa."

"Then listen, Joseph, if you've got any belongings in the house, get them out now, because I'm about to burn this goddamned house to the ground, and if your master wants to know why, tell him it's with the compliments of the whores he burned alive at McComb's Tavern. You got that message, Joseph?" Starbuck curbed the horse and swung himself out of the saddle. He jumped down, spurting dust from beneath his boots. "Did you hear me, Joseph?"

The black servant gazed in horror at Starbuck. "You can't burn it, sir!"

"Tell your master that he killed women. Tell him my name is Starbuck, you hear that? Let me hear you say it."

"Starbuck, sir."

"And don't you forget it, Joseph. I am Starbuck, avenger of whores!" Starbuck declaimed that final sentence as he climbed the veranda steps and threw open the house's front door.

To see his father.

Clouds heaped in the south, darkening a day already declining toward dusk. In the steep hills and valleys where the rebel flank attack surged forward, the fading light made the rifle flames stab brighter and the smoke look grayer. There was a sense that the weather must break soon, and indeed, far to the south, on the empty earthworks that the Yankees had abandoned by the Rappahannock River, the first drops of rain splashed heavy. Lightning flickered in the clouds.

At Manassas the rebel flank attack grew ragged. It had been launched across broken country, and the advancing brigades soon lost touch with each other as they detoured about thorn-choked gullies or around thick groves of trees. Some regiments forged ahead while others met Yankee troops, who put up unexpectedly stubborn resistance. Cannons cracked from hilltops, canister fire shredded woodlands, and rifle fire stuttered along a crooked three-mile front.

Behind the Yankees was the Bull Run, a stream deep and wide enough to be a river in any country other than America, and a stream deep and wide enough to drown a man encumbered with a pack, haversack, cartridge box, and boots, and if the rebels could just break the Yankees and hurl them back in panic, then eighty thousand men might be struggling to cross that killing stream, which boasted only one small bridge. The beaten army could drown in its thousands.

Except the Yankees did not panic. They streamed back across the bridge, and some men did drown as they tried to swim the run, but other men stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the hill where once a man called Thomas Jackson had earned the name of Stonewall. They stood and met the oncoming rebel troops with a cannonade that lit the hill's forward slope red with the flash of its gun flames and made the valley beyond crackle with the echo of rifle volleys; volley after killing volley, a stinging flail of lead that ripped the gray ranks apart and held the land west of the bridge long enough to let the bulk of John Pope's army escape. Only then did the stoic blue ranks yield Stonewall Jackson's hill to Stonewall Jackson's countrymen. It was a Northern defeat, but the Northerners had not been routed. Lines of blue-uniformed men trudged away from a battlefield where they had been promised victory but had been led to defeat, and where the victorious rebels began to count the captured weapons and captured men.

And at Joseph Galloway's farm, on the southern bank of the Bull Run, the Reverend Starbuck stared at his son, and his son stared back.

"Father?" Starbuck broke the silence.

For a second, a heartbeat, Starbuck thought his father would relent. For that one second he thought his father was about to hold out his arms in welcome, and there was indeed a sudden expression of pain and longing on the older man's face, and for that one second all the plans Starbuck had ever made for defying his father should they ever meet again vanished into thin air as he felt a swamping wave of guilt and love sweep through him, but then the vulnerable expression vanished from the preacher's face. "What are you doing here?" the Reverend Starbuck demanded gruffly.

"I've business here."

"What business?" The Reverend Starbuck barred the hallway. He was carrying his ebony stick, which he held out like a sword to prevent his son from stepping further into the house. "And don't you dare smoke in my presence!" he snapped, then tried to swat the cigar out of his son's hand with his ebony cane.

Starbuck easily evaded the blow. "Father," he said, trying to appeal to old ties of stern affection, but he was brusquely interrupted.

"I am not your father!"

"Then what kind of a son of a bitch are you to tell me not to smoke?" Starbucks temper flared high and fierce. He welcomed the anger, knowing it was probably his best weapon in this confrontation, for the instant that he had seen his fathers stern face a lifetime of filial obedience had made him cringe inside. At that moment when the door had swung open, he had suddenly felt eight years old again and utterly helpless in the face of his father's unforgiving certainty.

"Don't you swear at me, Nathaniel," the preacher said.

"I'll goddamn swear where I damn well want. Now move!" Starbuck's anger burned bright. He pushed past his father. "You want to pick a quarrel with me," he shouted over his shoulder, "then make up your mind whether it's a family quarrel or a fight between strangers. And get yourself out of this house, I'm burning the damn place down." Starbuck shouted these last words from the library. The shelves were empty, though a handful of account books were piled on a table.

"You propose to do what?" The Reverend Starbuck had followed his son into the big room.

"You heard me." Starbuck began tearing the account books into scraps that would burn easily. He piled the scraps at the edge of the table, where their flames would work on the empty shelving above.

The Reverend Starbuck's face showed a glimmer of pain. "You have become a whoremonger, a thief, a traitor, and now you will burn a good man's house?"

"Because he burned a tavern"—Starbuck started tearing apart another book—"and killed women. They pleaded with his soldiers to stop firing, but they wouldn't. They went on shooting and they burned the women alive."

The Reverend Starbuck swept the pile of paper scraps off the table with his cane. "They didn't know there were women in the tavern."

"They knew," Starbuck said, starting to make another pile of torn paper.

"You're a liar!" The Reverend Starbuck raised his cane and would have slashed it down on his son's hands had not a shot been fired inside the room. The sound of it echoed terribly inside the four walls, while the bullet ripped a scar into the empty shelves opposite the door.

"He ain't lying, preacher. I was there." Truslow had appeared in the open garden door. "I carried one of the women out of the ruins myself. Burned to a crisp, she was. Kind of shriveled to the size of a newborn calf. There were five women burned like that." He spat tobacco juice, then tossed a tin to Starbuck. "Found these in the kitchen," he said. Starbuck saw they were lucifers.

"This is my father," Starbuck said in curt introduction.

Truslow nodded. "Preacher," he said in brief acknowledgment.

The Reverend Starbuck said nothing but just watched as his son made another pile of broken paper. "We kind of got upset," Starbuck went on, "on account of not fighting against women ourselves. So we decided to burn this son of a bitch's house down to teach him that fighting against women ain't worth the price."

"They were whores!" the Reverend Starbuck snapped.

"So they're making me a bed in hell right now," Starbuck snarled back, "and you think they won't be better company than you saints in heaven?" He struck one of the lucifers and held its flame to the heap of paper scraps.

The cane struck again, scattering the new heap of paper and instantly extinguishing the small flame. "You have broken your mother's heart," the preacher said, "and brought shame on my house. You lied to your brother, you have cheated, you have stolen!" The catalog of sins was so great that the Reverend Starbuck was momentarily overcome and he was forced to hold his breath and shake his head.

"The son of a bitch drinks whiskey, too." Truslow used the silence to add his contribution from the doorway.

"Yet!" The preacher shouted the word, the shout intended to govern his temper. "And yet," he said, blinking back tears, "your Lord and Savior will forgive you, Nate. All He asks is that you go to Him on bended knee with a confession of faith. All our sins can be forgiven! All!" Tears ran down the preacher's cheeks. "Please?" he said. "I cannot bear to think that in heaven we must look down on your eternal torment."

Starbuck felt another great tidal surge of emotion. He might have rejected his father's house and his father's stem religion, but he could not deny that it had been a good house and an honest religion, nor could he claim that he did not fear the flames of eternal damnation. He felt the tears pricking at his own eyes. He stopped tearing paper and tried to summon up the anger that would let him face his father again, but instead he seemed to tremble on the brink of total surrender.

"Think of your younger brothers. Think of your sisters. They love you!" The Reverend Starbuck had found his theme now and pressed it hard. He had so often sworn to disown this child, to cast Nathaniel out from the fellowship of Christ as well as from the Starbuck family, but now the preacher saw what a victory over the devil his son's repentance and return would make. He imagined Nathaniel making a confession of his sins in the church, he saw himself as the father of the prodigal son, and he anticipated the joy in heaven at the repentance of this one sinner. Yet there was more than a spiritual victory at stake. The preacher's anger had flared just like his son's, but the father was also discovering that a year of angry denial had been destroyed by a moment's proximity. This son, after all, was the one most like himself, which was why, he supposed, this was always the son with whom he had fought the hardest. Now he had to win this son back, not just for Christ, but for the Starbuck family. "Think of Martha!" he urged Starbuck, naming Starbuck's favorite sister. "Think of Frederick and how he's always admired you!"

The preacher might have won the battle had he not spread his arms as he mentioned his son Frederick. He had intended the gesture as a reminder that Frederick, five years Starbuck's junior, had been born with a withered arm, but the gesture also released the battle flag that had been clasped under the preacher's left arm. The flag fell to the floor, where it sagged out of its fraying, abused string binding. Starbuck, glad not to have to meet his father's gaze, looked at the flag.

He saw the silk, the lavish fringe, and he looked up at his father's face and for an instant all memories of Martha and Frederick vanished. He looked back to the flag.

Truslow had also noticed the richness of the flag's material. "Is that a battle flag, preacher?" he asked.

The Reverend Starbuck stooped to snatch up the flag, but the violence of the motion only destroyed what was left of the string so that the banner spilt richly into the evening light. "It's none of your business," the preacher said to Truslow defiantly.

"That's our flag, goddamn it!" Truslow said.

"It's the devil's rag!" the preacher snapped back, bundling the silk into his arms. He had dropped the cane to make the task easier.

"I'll take the flag, mister," Truslow said grimly, stepping forward with an outstretched hand.

"You want this flag," the Reverend Starbuck said, "then you'll have to strike me down!"

"Hell if I care," Truslow said and reached for the banner. The preacher kicked at him, but Elial Starbuck was no match for Thomas Truslow. The soldier hit the preacher's arm once, but hard, then took the flag from the suddenly nerveless grip.

"You would let your father be hit?" The preacher turned to Starbuck.

But the moment when Starbuck's surrender was just a tremble of remembered emotion away had passed. He scraped another lucifer alight and put it to a page torn from an account book. "You said you weren't my father," he said brutally, then ripped more pages and piled them onto the tiny fire. He sprinkled the flames with powder from a revolver cartridge that he tore apart, so that the small fire flared violently. His father snatched up his cane and tried to sweep the burning papers off the table again, but this time Starbuck stood in his way. For a second the two stood face-to-face; then a voice called from the yard.

"Johnnies!" It was Sergeant Decker.

Truslow ran to the door. "Yankees," he confirmed.

Starbuck joined Truslow on the veranda. A quarter-mile to the east was a ragged band of men who were watching the house. They wore blue, and some were on horseback and some on foot. They had the look, Starbuck decided, of a cavalry troop that had been put through hell. One of the men had golden hair and a short square beard. "Is that Adam?" he asked Truslow.

"I guess."

Starbuck turned to see that his father was obliterating the last vestiges of his fire. "Truslow," he said, "burn this damn house down while I go and tell those Yankees to get the hell out of Virginia. And I'll take the flag."

There was a spear-tipped lance pole in a corner of the room. Starbuck took the lance, stripped it of its spearhead and swallow-tailed cavalry guidon, then slotted the silk flag onto the staff. Then, ignoring his father's angry voice, he jumped down into the yard and called for a man to bring his horse.

He rode eastward, carrying the flag.

Adam rode to meet him, and the two erstwhile friends met in the middle of the pasture next to the farmhouse. Adam looked ruefully at the flag. "So you got it back."

"Where's the other one?"

"I'm keeping it."

"We always used to share," Starbuck said.

Adam smiled at the remark. "How are you, Nate?"

"Alive. Just," Starbuck said.

"Me too," Adam id. He looked tired and sad, like a man whose hopes have taken a beating. He gestured at the ragged band of men and horses behind. "We got ambushed in some woods. Not many of us left."

"Good." Starbuck turned in the saddle to see a wisp of smoke showing at a window of the house. "I know it wasn't your fault, Adam, but some of us took badly to women being burned alive. So we thought we'd do the same to Galloway's house."

Adam nodded dully, as though he did not really care about the destruction of the farmhouse. "The Major's dead," he said.

Starbuck grimaced, for it seemed that he was burning the house for nothing. "And the son of a bitch who killed the women? Blythe?"

"God knows," Adam said. "Billy Blythe disappeared. Billy Blythe has a way of making himself scarce when there's trouble about." Adam leaned on his saddle's pommel and stared toward Galloway's farm, where more smoke was showing at a half-dozen windows. "I can't imagine Pecker giving you permission to do this," he said with an obvious distaste for the destruction.

Adam clearly had not heard about Bird's wound, nor any of the Legion's other news. "Pecker's back home wounded," Starbuck told him, "and I'm the new colonel."

Adam stared at his friend. "You?"

"Your father was thrown out."

Adam shook his head in apparent disbelief, or maybe denial. "You have the Legion?" he asked.

Starbuck twitched the reins to turn his horse. "So the next time you want to play games with a regiment, don't choose mine, Adam. I'll goddamn kill you next time."

Adam shook his head. "What's happening to us, Nate?"

Starbuck laughed at the question. "We're at war. And your side says that houses have to be burned and goods taken from civilians. I guess we're matching you stride for stride."

Adam did not even try to argue the point. He stared at the farmhouse, which was now gushing thick smoke from several windows. Truslow had clearly set about his incendiarism with an expertise that quite outstripped Starbuck's feeble efforts. "Is that your father?" Adam had seen the black-dressed figure come from the burning house.

"Send him safe home, will you?"

"Surely."

Starbuck clumsily turned his horse away. "Look after yourself now. And don't interfere with us. We'll be gone in five minutes."

Adam nodded his agreement; then, just as Starbuck was urging his horse forward, he spoke again. "Have you heard from Julia?"

Starbuck twisted in his saddle. "She's well. She's a nurse in Chimborazo."

"Remember me to her," Adam said, but his onetime friend had already ridden away.

Starbuck rode back to the house, where his old company had gathered outside the yard fence to watch the flames. His father shouted something at Starbuck, but the words were lost in the roar of the fire. "Let's go!" Starbuck called and turned away from the burning house. He did not say farewell to his father but just rode up the hill. He thought how close he had come to a tearful reconciliation, then tried to convince himself that there were some roads that could never be revisited, no matter what lay at their ends. He stopped at the wooded ridge and looked back. A roof beam collapsed into the fire, spewing a fountain of sparks into the evening air. "Come on!" he called to the company. They caught up with the Brigade a mile to the east. Swynyard was resting the men and waiting for orders. There were rain clouds in the south and a fresh wind gusting, but to the west, above the Blue Ridge Mountains, the sun flared bright as it dipped behind America's rim. In the North an army was in full retreat, while to the east and south, wherever a man looked, there were only rebel banners advancing in victory. And now a brighter banner joined the triumph as Starbuck kicked back his heels and let his borrowed horse run free, so that the shining colors of the recaptured flag streamed and rippled in the breeze. He rode in a curve, bringing the flag back to its Legion, and as he turned the horse toward their ranks, he raised the flag higher still, standing in the stirrups with his right arm braced aloft so that the battle flag's white stars and blue cross and crimson silk were made livid and brilliant by the last long rays of daylight. He was bringing the bright flag home, and in the sudden cheer that filled the sky Starbuck knew that he had made the Legion his. It was Starbuck's Legion.