The Bloody Ground - Starbuck 04

by Bernard Cornwell

  Adam's astonishment took him past a schoolhouse, then by an empty livery stable and a Negro chapel. He splashed through a ford and spurred up the far bank onto a long stretch of road that left the town behind to run between fields blotched with the scars left by rebel camps. He passed a small orchard that had been stripped bare by soldiers and it was just past that orchard, where the road bent leftward and began to run gently down toward the Linganore Run, that he saw the rebel horsemen.

  He reined in. The five men were a quarter mile away, motionless, and watching him almost as if they had been expecting him. Two of the horsemen were on the road, one was well to the north, while the others were in the pasture south of the road. For a few seconds the six men all watched each other without moving, then Adam wrenched his mare's head around and spurred her back toward the town.

  He had thought of trying to outrun the handful of rebels, but his horse had covered too many miles on a hot day to be capable of a lung-stretching gallop across miles of country. A McClellan-like caution was the best plan and so he kicked his heels to urge the mare back past the plundered orchard.

  Adam felt a tremor run through the mare, then she stumbled, and he had to lean to his right to help her keep her balance. For a second he thought she must have put a foot into a hole, but then the sound of the shot arrived. He kicked his heels back again and the mare tried to respond, but a bullet had hamstrung one of her back legs and there was no more she could do for him. She tried one last gallant pace, then buckled and whinnied aloud with the pain. Her blood splashed bright on the dusty road.

  Adam kicked his feet free of the stirrups. The dying echo of the single carbine shot crackled about the hot countryside, fading into the heat haze that cloaked the day. He glanced behind and saw the five rebels spurring toward him. He pulled the gold free, then scrambled away from the thrashing horse. He ran into the trees and drew his revolver. Sweat stung his eyes. The horse was crying pitifully, her hooves banging on the road as she fought against the pain in her leg.

  Adam steadied himself against the trunk of an apple tree and leveled the revolver. The enemy was still two hundred yards away, a hopelessly long shot for a revolver, but he might be as lucky as they had been with their one fateful shot and so he emptied the cylinder chamber by chamber, aiming at the two closest men who were advancing on the road itself. His view of the enemy was blocked by the smoke of his shots and he had no idea where his bullets were going. He fired his last round, then ran back into the orchard where he crouched, panting, as he reloaded the gun. He was hurrying, and so he fumbled with the cartridges before forcing himself to be methodical. Fear battered him, but he kept it at bay by reminding himself of the stolen order in his pocket. He had to survive.

  He pushed percussion caps onto the revolver's cones, then peered eastward. The two horsemen on the road had paused, reluctant to ride closer to his fire, but the other three men had vanished and Adam suddenly realized they must be riding north and south to outflank him. He would be trapped in the orchard and hunted down like a cornered fox.

  He ran to the orchard's western edge. The town did not look so far away and there were stands of trees, a straggling hedge, and the remnants of a haystack to give him cover. He looked left and right and could see no enemy and so, committing his safety to God, he ran into the sunlight.

  He aimed for the haystack that had been pulled apart by rebels seeking bedding, but there was enough hay left to offer hiding while he gathered his breath for the next stretch back to Frederick. Would any townsfolk hear the gunfire and come to his aid? He ran hard, expecting to hear the whistle of a bullet at any second, then threw himself into the warm, scented hay where he dragged great breaths of humid air into his lungs.

  Two rebel horsemen appeared to the south a second or two after Adam had taken cover. The two rebels paused, staring at the orchard, and Adam was tempted to keep running, but knew they would spot him as soon as he left the broken stack. He twisted in his nest of hay to look north, but he could see no enemy there, but then a rumble of hooves made him look south again to see a whole troop of enemy horsemen spurring toward the orchard. The sound of the shots had not brought the townsfolk, but a whole pack of rebel soldiers instead.

  They were not Jeb Stuart's cavalry. These men, as the butcher had said, were bushwhackers. They were from the northern counties of Virginia, farmers by day and fighters by night, only on this day they had given up farming to come north and see what pickings could be gleaned from the abandoned rebel camps and to ambush any Northern cavalry patrols probing west toward Lee's army. Their uniforms were the same coats they wore when they wrestled with a plow or gelded a calf, their weapons were hunting rifles and ox-killing pistols, while their hatred of Yankees had been intensified by the frequent Federal invasions of their farmland. They had been robbed, they had been insulted, they had been impoverished, and now, with the fervor of starving dogs seeking carrion, they sought revenge.

  Adam checked the percussion caps on his revolver, then looked up to see the newly arrived troop trotting toward the orchard. Dust from the hay clung to the grease on Adam's gun while the smell of the dry grass reminded him of childhood games with his sister Anna, then, with a shameful pang, an unwanted memory came to his mind of the time when he had glimpsed his father clamber off a haystack, carrying his clothes on his arm, then turn to give a hand to Bessie. She had been a house slave then. A year later his father had freed all his slaves, making them servants instead, but for years Adam had been frightened of Bessie because of what he had seen. He had been confused at the time, but later he was tormented by the memories of her lissome, gleaming black body and the bright sound of her laughter as she had jumped down beside his father and pulled her pale blue dress over her head. Adam hated slavery.

  But the men who hunted him now, he knew, were no slaveowners. They had barely enough money to own a horse, let alone a Negro, and they did not fight to preserve slavery, but to defend their land, and in that defense they were grim and unforgiving. He wriggled deeper into the hay, pulling great clumps of it over his body, but keeping a loophole free through which he could watch his pursuers.

  The rebels had surrounded the orchard and now the majority of them dismounted, hitched their horses to tree trunks, and walked into the apple grove with rifles leveled. Adam's horse was still whinnying with pain, but a sudden shot brought silence. None of the mounted rebels who had stayed outside the orchard was looking toward the haystack and that lack of vigilance persuaded Adam to twist round and look for an escape route. There was a patch of dead ground a hundred paces away, and beyond it, in a field of long grass, a surviving rail fence offered a hint of cover that might let him work his way back to the town, where he would be much safer than in this warm but treacherous refuge. When the rebels discovered that he had escaped from the orchard they were bound to search the haystack and Adam did not want to be found hiding like a child and so he crawled to the haystack's edge, looked back once to check that he was unobserved, then burst out of the hay and ran in a low crouch toward the dead ground.

  His saber scabbard tangled in his legs, making him sprawl noisily onto the grass. He unbuckled the saber's belt, let it fall away, then ran on. He heard the shout almost at once and ran as fast as he could. He should have twisted and turned like a beast trying to escape pursuing dogs, but he ran straight toward the dead ground and so gave the rebel who had first spotted him an easy target.

  The rebel fired and the bullet slammed into Adam's right buttock. The sledgehammer force of the shot twisted Adam round and threw him forward so that he slid on his back into the shallow valley where he was momentarily hidden. There was blood on the grass, pain in his hip, and tears in his eyes. He gritted his teeth and forced himself upright. The pain was terrible, like a poisoned mist that clouded his thoughts, but he retained enough sense to know that he must save the stolen order. He limped north, intent on reaching the rail fence even though he knew it offered him no salvation now, but he was convinced that if he could just reach the
fence he would somehow survive. He forced himself on, though every time he put his weight on his right leg he gave an involuntary cry of agony. Behind him he could hear the whooping calls and galloping hooves of the rebels.

  He was trapped. He dropped the bag of gold from his belt, hoping that the loss of its weight would give him speed, but the pain was getting worse and, in a moment of clarity, he knew there was no chance of escape now. The hooves were getting louder. He had seconds, just seconds, to decide what to do, but all that was left was sheer despair and so he staggered up the hollow's far lip, where he plucked the envelope with its cigars and the Special Order from his pocket, then skimmed it into the long grass. A bullet stung the air near him as he twisted back toward the lower ground. The envelope had fallen in the meadow's long grass and Adam could only pray that the rebels had not seen him discard it and would not find it. McClellan's army must come to these fields in time and maybe the order would be discovered. Or maybe not, but Adam had done what he could and now, he knew, he must suffer capture.

  He struggled another dozen paces eastward, then collapsed. His pants' right leg was soaked in blood. He lifted the revolver, waiting for his enemies to appear, and he felt a terrible regret for all he had missed in his life. He had never taken a girl into a haystack. He had been dutiful, so very dutiful, and now he could have wept for all his uncommitted sins, and that thought made him close his eyes and utter a prayer for forgiveness.

  His eyes were still closed as the rebels gathered about him. They were wiry, hard-faced men who smelled of tobacco, manure, horses, and leather. They slid out of their saddles and one man plucked the revolver from Adam's nerveless fingers. The gun had been his father's and was an English-made Adams, a beautifully engineered weapon with ivory grips, and the rebel who had taken it gave a yelp of triumph as he recognized the gun's quality.

  "Got ourselves a Yankee major," a second man said, peering at Adam's badges. "A real major."

  Someone kicked Adam's right leg to see if he was conscious. Adam cried aloud in pain and opened his eyes to see a ring of bearded, suntanned faces. One of the men stooped and began searching Adam's pockets, pulling his coat roughly and jarring pain through Adam's side with each tug. "A doctor, please," Adam managed to say.

  "Sorry son of a bitch, ain't he?" a man said, then laughed.

  Another man had found the gold and that caused new whoops of excitement, and then a third man brought the wondrous saber from the field where Adam had discarded the blade. The leader of the rebels, a thin, clean-shaven man, took the saber and slid it from the scabbard. He read the inscription and, though he knew no French, he could recognize the names. "Faulconer," he said aloud, then, with wonder in his voice, "Lafayette! Son of a bitch." The man wore a black hiked saber at his side, a weapon as crude as a butcher's blade, and now he replaced it with Adam's belt and scabbard before looking again at the inscription on the French made blade. "Faulconer. That's a Virginia name."

  "His name's Faulconer," the man who had searched Adam said. He had found the letter from the Inspector General's Department in Washington that appointed Adam to McClellan's army. The letter stated he was inspecting signal arrangements and it was the piece of paper designed by Colonel Thorne to explain Adam's presence in the Federal Headquarters. Now it only served to make things worse.

  "What the hell's a signal inspector doing in Frederick?" the rebel leader asked.

  "And carrying gold," another man added.

  The leader squatted at Adam's feet and pushed the saber's tip into the underside of Adam's chin. "Are you a Virginian, Major?"

  Adam stared up at the blue sky.

  "I asked you a question, boy," the leader said, giving the saber a prod.

  "An American," Adam said. He was feeling faint. He could sense the blood flowing out of his wound, seeping into the ground and making him delirious, but the pain was magically subsiding. He was warm, almost comfortable. "I'm an American," he managed to say.

  "Hell, we're all Americans," the rebels' leader said. "But are you a Virginian?"

  Adam said nothing. He was thinking of Bessie, who had looked so black and slim and beautiful as she had pulled the blue dress over her smiling face. He thought of Julia Gordon in Richmond. He thought of the dream in New England; the preacher's house, the books, the kitchen, the sound of children laughing in a tree-shaded yard.

  "Son of a bitch is crying," one of the rebels crowed.

  "So would you if your ass had been shot off," another man said, provoking a gust of laughter.

  "Hell of a shot, Sam," a third man said admiringly, "must have been forty rods if it was an inch."

  "Fifty at least," Sam said.

  The saber pricked at Adam's chin. "What were you doing here, Major?"

  "No damn good," one of the rebels answered for Adam, then laughed.

  "Son of a bitch," the rebel leader said, then stood and sheathed the lovely saber. He pulled out his revolver and aimed it at Adam's head. "I don't have all day, Major, and nor do you, and I ain't got the patience to wait on you seeing sense. So talk now, you son of a bitch. Just what were you doing here?"

  Adam closed his eyes. In heaven, he was telling himself, there would be no tears and no pain and no regrets. No tangle of crossed allegiances. No war. No slavery. There would just be joy and peace and endless calm happiness. He smiled. Such happiness in heaven, he thought, such warm, dreamy happiness.

  "He ain't going to talk," a man said.

  "He's Faulconer's son," a new voice intervened. "You remember? The son of a bitch deserted in the spring."

  "Faulconers never were any damned good," a voice growled, "nigger-loving rich bastards."

  The rebel leader fired. The sound of the shot crackled along the hollow and faded as the bullet thumped with a terrible force into the dirt beside Adam's head. "What's your name?" the leader demanded.

  Adam opened his eyes. "Faulconer," he said proudly, "and I'm a Virginian."

  "So what were you doing here, you bastard?" the rebel asked.

  "Dreaming of heaven," Adam said and would say no more.

  "You're a traitor, you son of a bitch," the leader said when he realized Adam was determined to stay silent. He fired a second bullet, and this one slammed into Adam's head, making it jerk up once as the bullet drove a fist-sized chunk out of the back of his skull. The head flopped back, blood on the fair hair and with its eyes open, then was still.

  The rebel holstered the revolver. "Leave the son of a bitch where he is."

  A fly crawled onto one of Adam's eyeballs, then flew down to the wound in his open mouth. The rebels walked away. They had made a good haul: gold, a fine saddle and bridle, a saber and a revolver. They did not find the envelope.

  When the Virginian horsemen had gone back south a group of men came from the town to investigate what the shooting had been about. They discovered Adam's body. One of them sent for two slaves and a handcart on which the corpse was wheeled into the town, where there was a discussion about what to do with it. Some wanted to wait until McClellan's army reached Frederick City and then hand the body over, but the Episcopalian minister insisted that no one knew whether the Northern army would even come to the town and that by the time anyone did arrive the corpse would surely be stinking and so a hole was dug in the graveyard where Adam, uncoffined, but in the uniform of the country he had loved, was buried with prayers. The postmaster remembered the dead officer's name, though not how to spell it, and "Adam Falconer" was burned into the wooden cross that marked the heap of soil.

  While out in the pasture, close to the hollow and near to some scars of old rebel campfires, the envelope lay unnoticed in the grass.

  Billy Blythe stood next to Captain Thomas Dennison and watched Starbuck. Neither man said a word, neither had to. They were both experiencing the same mix of envy and dislike, though in Dennison the dislike was nearer to hatred.

  Starbuck was oblivious of their scrutiny. He was stripped to the waist, sheened with sweat, and hauling on a ten-pounder Parrott gun that
needed to be taken to the final crest overlooking Harper's Ferry. The route up the hill was too steep for horses or oxen, and so the gun had to be manhandled to the summit and the Yellowlegs had drawn the duty. A dozen other guns were being similarly dragged uphill and so far the Special Battalion had made the best time, but even with fifty men hauling on ropes and another half-dozen heaving at the gun's wheels, their efforts were now blocked by a deep cleft in the rocks, and by a screen of tough undergrowth. "Son of a bitch," Sergeant Rothwell cursed the heavy weapon, then chocked its wheels with rocks so that the gun would not roll back down the last few precious yards gained. There were only fifty paces to go, but those yards could prove to be the most difficult of the climb, and could also cost them the first place in the unofficial race to reach the crest.

  Starbuck smeared sweat out of his eyes then pulled free his bayonet and tried to saw through the base of one of the tangling shrubs. "Cut them down," he explained to the men around him, "and fill the gap," he gestured at the fissure in the rock just beyond the clump of bushes, but when he stooped back to the bush he found that the bayonet would not do the job. The tough, fibrous trunk took a clean initial cut, then just stubbornly resisted the steel.

  "We need saws and axes," Rothwell said.

  Captain Potter, who had been offering encouragement rather than muscle, jerked his head northward. "There are some Georgian boys with saws over there," he said.