Rebel

by Bernard Cornwell

  Once on the south lawns the cavalry, whose function was purely decorative this day, galloped once around the makeshift parade ground, then disappeared to place their horses in a paddock. The two guns were unharnessed from their limbers and parked on either side of the reviewing stand in front of which, and before the delighted gaze of nearly three thousand spectators, the Legion went through its maneuvers.

  They marched in column of companies, each company four ranks deep, then deployed into a two-ranked line of battle. There was not quite enough space at the flanks of the parade ground for the whole line of battle, but Sergeant Truslow, K Company’s sergeant, had the sense to hold his men back, which somewhat spoiled the next display, Pelham’s pride, which demonstrated how the Legion would form a square to repel cavalry, though in the end the square was decently enough formed and only a true expert could have detected that one corner of the formation was slightly battered. The officers, all of them except Major Bird on horseback, were corralled in the center of the square where the band played a gloomy version of “Massa in the Cold Cold Ground.” The Legion then came out of square to form two columns of companies, the band quickened into “Hail, Columbia,” the crowd cheered, the Colonel beamed, and then Captain Murphy, who had appointed himself chief artillerist to the Legion, spurred forward with his gunners.

  The two cannon were charged with bags of gunpowder, but without any shot or shell. The Legion possessed none of the new-fangled friction primers with which to ignite the powder, so instead Murphy used two homemade primers constructed from straw tubes filled with grade-one rifle powder. The straws were placed in the touchholes and thence down through holes pierced in the powder bags, then, on a nod from the Colonel, and just as Bandmaster Little finished playing “Hail, Columbia,” the gunners applied lit matches to the primers.

  There were two glorious bangs, two spears of flame, two boiling clouds of gray-white smoke and a host of startled birds sprang up from the shade trees behind the reviewing stand. The spectators gave a satisfying gasp.

  The cannon shots presaged the speeches. Colonel Penycrake’s speech was thankfully brief, for the old man was short of breath, then the erstwhile congressman gave a seemingly interminable peroration after which Washington Faulconer gave a fine, spirited address that first regretted the necessity of war, but then described the nest of northern vipers which, with hissing mouths, flickering tongues and noxious breath were spreading their reeking poison across the land. “Yet we southerners know how to treat snakes!” The crowd cheered. Even the assembled black slaves, brought by their owners to the annual feast and confined to a small roped enclosure to one side of the assembly, cheered the Colonel’s sentiments. The Colonel, whose voice was strong enough to reach across the whole assembly, spoke of the two races that had arisen in America, which races, though sprung from common parentage, had been separated by climate, morals and religion, and had thus grown apart until now, he declared, their ideas of honor, truth and manliness were so different that the two could no longer abide under the same government.

  “The northern race must go its own way!” the Colonel declared, “while we southerners, who have always been in the forefront of America’s fight for Liberty, Truth, Decency and Honor, will keep alive the shining dream of the Founding Fathers. Their sword has passed to us!” And he drew the bright blade presented to his grandfather by Lafayette and the crowd cheered for the idea that they, and not the degenerate, factory-sweated, education-spoilt, Roman-Catholic-infested northerners were the real heirs of those great Virginian revolutionaries, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

  The Colonel concluded his remarks by saying he did not think the struggle would be long. The North had blockaded southern ports and the South had responded by forbidding the export of cotton, which meant the great mills of England would inevitably fall silent, and England, he reminded the crowd, would die without the cotton to feed its mills. If the blockade was not lifted then, within weeks, the world’s greatest navy would be off the coast of the Confederacy and the Yankees would flee back to their harbors like snakes to their nests. Yet the South must not look to Europe, Faulconer hurried on, nor need it look to Europe, for southern fighting men would see the Yankees off southern soil without European help. Soon, the Colonel said, the Yankees will regret their temerity, for they will be sent packing and running and screaming and hollering. The crowd liked that.

  The war would be over within weeks, the Colonel promised, and every man who helped achieve victory would be honored in the new Confederacy whose flag would fly forever among the banners of the nations. That was the cue for the Legion’s flags to be brought forward and presented. And, astonishingly, the Colonel’s wife had stirred herself out of her sickroom to be the donor of the two colors.

  Miriam Faulconer proved to be a thin, black-haired woman with a very pale face in which her eyes seemed unnaturally large. She was dressed in a purple silk so dark that it appeared almost black, and had a dark, semitransparent veil falling from her hat. She walked very slowly, so that some of the spectators thought she must surely falter before she reached the reviewing stand. She was accompanied by her daughter and by the six ladies of the town who had been chiefly responsible for sewing the two heavy banners of gorgeously fringed silk that would now be the battle flags of the Faulconer Legion.

  The first flag was the new Confederate flag. It had three broad horizontal stripes, the upper and lower ones red and the center stripe white, while the upper quadrant by the staff displayed a blue field on which was sewn seven white stars to represent the first seven states to secede. The second color was an adaptation of the Faulconer coat of arms and displayed three red crescents on a white field, with the family’s motto, “Forever Ardent,” embroidered in letters of funereal black silk along its bottom edge.

  The band, having no formal national anthem to play, kept silent, all except the drummers, who tapped a solemn beat as the colors were brought forward. Adam, appointed head of the color party, stepped forward to receive the flags accompanied by the two men chosen to be the standard bearers. One was Robert Decker, whose mended face was marvelously earnest as he advanced beside Adam, while the other was Joe “Runt” Sparrow, who took the Faulconer flag after it had first been handed by Anna to her brother. Adam shook the folds out of the silk, then gave the flag to Joe Sparrow, who seemed almost overwhelmed by the weight of the heavy banner. Then Miriam Faulconer, assisted by the ladies, handed forward the yellow-fringed Confederate flag. For a moment Adam looked reluctant to take it from his mother, then he stepped back and passed the flag to Robert Decker who proudly raised the new color high.

  The spectators gave a cheer that died rather raggedly as the crowd realized that the Reverend Moss, who had been waiting patiently all day, now offered his prayer of blessing. The prayer was so long that some of the spectators thought that Joe Sparrow would surely keel over before the invocation was done. Worse, the smell of the roasting meat was ever more tantalizing, yet still Moss insisted on calling the Almighty’s attention to the Legion, to its two flags, to its officers, and to the foe whom Moss prayed would be smitten mightily by the Legion. He might have gone on for even longer had he not paused for a deep breath, which gave old Colonel Penycrake a chance to intervene with a surprisingly loud amen, which was so soundly echoed by the crowd that Moss was forced to let the rest of his prayer go unspoken. The Colonel, unable to let the moment pass without a final word, shouted that the Legion would bring the colors home just as soon as the Yankees were roundly whipped. “And that won’t be long! By Jiminy it won’t be long!” And the crowd cheered and even the Colonel’s Negro servants cheered while the band struck up “Dixie.”

  The Colonel then paraded the colors in front of the Legion, letting each man see the two flags close up, and afterward, it already being near to two o’clock and one of the beefs already smelling more like a burnt offering than a dinner, Judge Bulstrode administered the Oath of Confederate Loyalty, which the men pronounced in loud, confident vo
ices, and then, thus sworn to their brand-new country, they gave three cheers for the Colonel and his wife and, the hurrah given, the Legionnaires were ordered to open ranks, stack arms, unsling knapsacks and were so dismissed to their food.

  Adam led Starbuck toward the open-sided tent where the guests of honor were seated. “You have to meet Mother.”

  “Do I really?” The pale, dark-robed Miriam Faulconer looked rather formidable.

  “Of course you do.” Adam stopped to greet Major Pelham’s elderly sister, a tall dignified spinster whose faded clothes spoke of the hardship she endured to keep up appearances, then he and Starbuck touched their hats to the erstwhile congressman’s wife, who complained how much she regretted leaving Washington’s sophisticated society for the more homely surroundings of Richmond, and then at last Adam was able to draw Starbuck forward to the tent where his mother held court amidst her attendant ladies. Miriam Faulconer was enthroned in a high-backed upholstered chair brought from the house while the pale and timid-looking Anna sat at her side in a much smaller chair and cooled her mother’s face with a fan made from filigreed ivory. “Mother,” Adam said proudly, “this is my friend Nate Starbuck.”

  The big eyes, so oddly luminous under the deep shade of the dark purple hat, looked up at Starbuck. He guessed Adam’s mother had to be at least forty years old, yet, to Starbuck’s astonishment, she appeared hardly a day over twenty. Her skin was as smooth, white and clear as a child’s, her mouth was wide and full, her eyes strangely sad, and her gloved touch, in Starbuck’s nervous hand, as light as a songbird’s bones. “Mister Starbuck,” she said in a very soft and breathy voice. “You are welcome.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. This is an honor.”

  “To meet me? I think not. I am a most insignificant person. Am I not insignificant, Anna?”

  “Of course not, Mama. You are the most significant person here.”

  “I can’t hear you, Anna, speak up.”

  “I said you are significant, Mother.”

  “Don’t shout!” Miriam Faulconer flinched from her daughter’s scarcely audible voice, then looked up at Starbuck again. “I am afflicted with ill health, Mister Starbuck.”

  “I am sorry to hear that, ma’am.”

  “Not so close, Anna.” Mrs. Faulconer gestured the fan away from her cheek, then pushed the veil fully back from the brim of her hat. She looked, Starbuck thought guiltily, very beautiful and very vulnerable. No wonder that a young Washington Faulconer had fallen in love with this village girl, daughter of Rosskill’s postmaster, and married her despite his parents’ opposition. She was a rare thing, fragile and lovely, and rarer still when Starbuck tried to imagine her as Miriam Bird, sister to the prickly Thaddeus. “Do you like it in Virginia, Mister Starbuck?” Miriam Faulconer asked in her sibilant, quiet voice.

  “Yes, ma’am, very much. Your husband has been very kind to me.”

  “I’d forgotten how Washington can be kind,” Miriam Faulconer said softly, so softly that Starbuck was forced to lean down to hear her small voice. The still air under the tent’s awning smelt of newly cut grass, eau de cologne and camphor, the last, Starbuck supposed, rising from the stiff folds of Miriam Faulconer’s purple dress, which must have been drenched in the liquid as a repellent for moths. Starbuck, uncomfortably close to Mrs. Faulconer, marveled that anyone’s skin could be so white and smooth. Like a corpse, he thought. “Adam tells me you are a very good friend to him.” The corpse spoke softly.

  “I am most proud of that opinion, ma’am.”

  “Is friendship more important than filial duty?” There was a cat’s claw of nastiness in the question.

  “I am not competent to judge,” Starbuck said in defensive politeness.

  “Closer, Anna, closer. You wish me to die of the heat?” Miriam Faulconer licked her pale lips, her big eyes still on Starbuck. “Have you ever considered a mother’s distress, Mister Starbuck?”

  “My mother likes to remind me of it constantly, ma’am.” Starbuck gave a swipe of his own claw back. Miriam Faulconer just gazed unblinking, weighing Starbuck and not seeming to like her judgment.

  “Not so close, Anna, you will scratch me.” Miriam Faulconer pushed her daughter’s fan a half inch farther away. She wore a black-stoned ring on one slender finger, intriguingly worn outside the black lace glove. She had a necklace of black pearls and a brooch of carved jet was pinned to the heavy folds of dark purple silk. “I think,” Miriam Faulconer said to Starbuck with an undeniable note of dislike in her voice, “that you are an adventurer.”

  “Is that such a bad thing to be, ma’am?”

  “It is usually a selfish thing.”

  “Mother…,” Adam intervened.

  “Be quiet, Adam, I have not asked for your opinion. Closer, Anna, bring the fan closer. Adventurers cannot be relied upon, Mister Starbuck.”

  “I am sure, ma’am, that there have been many great and reliable men who did not shirk from adventure. Our own Founding Fathers, indeed?”

  Miriam Faulconer ignored Starbuck’s words. “I shall hold you responsible for my son’s safety, Mister Starbuck.”

  “Mother, please…” Adam again tried to intervene.

  “If I require your contribution, Adam, be assured I shall ask you for it, and until then be so good as to stay quiet.” The claws were out now, bright and sharp. “I do not want you, Mister Starbuck, leading my son into adventures. I would have been happy had he pursued his pacific ventures in the north, but it seems that the belligerent party has won his soul. That party, I think, includes you, and I do not thank you for it. So be assured, Mister Starbuck, that I shall hold you and my husband jointly responsible for my son’s safety.”

  “I am honored by your trust, ma’am.” At first Starbuck had thought this woman a vulnerable, pitiful beauty, now he thought her a bitter witch.

  “I am pleased to have seen you,” Mrs. Faulconer said in much the same tone she might have used to express some mild satisfaction at having seen a strange beast in a traveling menagerie, then she looked away and a radiant smile came to her face as she reached both hands toward Ethan Ridley. “My dear Ethan! I just knew Washington would keep you from me, but you’re here at last! I have been talking with Mister Starbuck and am consequently in need of some diversion. Come and sit here, take Anna’s chair.”

  Adam drew Starbuck away. “Dear Lord, I am so sorry,” he said. “I know she can be difficult, but I don’t know why she chose today of all days.”

  “I’m used to it,” Starbuck said. “I have a mother too.” Though Starbuck’s mother was nothing like the soft-spoken and thin Miriam Faulconer. Jane Abigail MacPhail Starbuck was a tall, fleshy, loud-spoken woman who was large in everything except the generosity of her spirit.

  “Mother’s often in pain.” Adam still wanted to make excuses for his mother. “She suffers from something called neuralgia.”

  “So Anna told me.”

  Adam walked in silence, looking down at the ground, and at last shook his head. “Why do women have to be so difficult?” He asked it so wanly that Starbuck could not help bursting into laughter.

  Adam’s gloom did not last long for he was being reunited with old friends from all across the county, and he was soon leading a troop of young people in the various amusements that had been laid out in Washington Faulconer’s park. There were archery butts with straw men targets dressed in striped clothes and top hats, supposedly representing Yankees, and any man who signed up as a recruit could fire a Model 1841 rifle at one of the Yankee dummies. If such a recruit put a bullet clean through one of the targets pinned to a straw man’s chest he received a silver dollar. There were water-filled horse troughs where the children could duck for apples, a steeplechase for officers and challengers, tugs-of-war between the ten infantry companies and a ganderpull.

  “Ganderpull?” Starbuck asked.

  “You don’t have ganderpulls in Boston?” Adam asked.

  “No, we have civilization instead. We have things called libraries and church
es, schools and colleges…”

  Adam hit his friend, then skipped out of retaliatory range. “You’ll enjoy a ganderpull. You hang up a goose, grease its neck with butter, and the first person who manages to pull the bird’s head off gets to take the body home for supper.”

  “A live goose?” Starbuck was horrified.

  “It would be too easy if it were dead!” Adam said. “Of course it’s alive!”

  But before any of these diversions could be tasted the two friends had to go to the summerhouse where a pair of photographers had set up their chairs, tripods, frames and processing wagons. The two men, specially brought out from Richmond at Washington Faulconer’s expense, were charged with taking a picture of any man in the Legion who wanted his portrait made. The pictures, printed within ornate borders, would make keepsakes for the families left behind and mementoes for the men themselves in the long years ahead. The officers could have their portraits printed as cartes de visite, a fashionable conceit that appealed hugely to Washington Faulconer, who was first into the photographer’s chair. Adam was next.

  The process was long and complicated. Adam was seated in a high-backed chair that held at its rear a metal frame into which his head was pushed. The frame, hidden by his hair and cap, would keep his head perfectly still. His saber was drawn and put into his right hand and a pistol into his left. “Do I really have to look so pugnacious?” he asked his father.

  “It’s the fashion, Adam. Besides, one day you’ll be proud of this picture.”

  The Legion’s twin colors were arrayed behind Adam who then, stiff and awkward, stared into the photographer’s machine as the sweating assistant dashed out of the wagon and into the summerhouse with the wet glass plate. The plate was put into the camera, Adam was told to take a deep breath and hold it, then the cover was whipped off.