Rebel

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Did you hear that poor Jenkins is gone?” Major Bird said in the tone of voice he might have used to remark that the spring was early this year, or that the vegetable crop was looking good.

  “Gone?” Starbuck asked, because the imprecision of the word had somehow suggested that Roswell Jenkins had simply walked away from the battlefield.

  “Vanished. Hit by a shell. Looks like something left on a butcher’s slab.” Bird’s words were callous, but the tone of his voice was regretful.

  “Poor Jenkins.” Starbuck had not particularly liked Roswell Jenkins, who had distributed bottles of whiskey to ensure his election as an officer and who had left the running of his company to Sergeant Truslow. “So who’ll take over A Company?”

  “Whoever my brother-in-law wishes, or rather whoever Truslow wants.” Bird laughed, then turned the pecking motion of his head into a rueful shake. “If there’s any point in anyone taking over at all? Because maybe there’ll be no Legion left?” Bird paused. “Maybe there’ll be no Confederacy left?” Bird involuntarily ducked as a shell fragment whipped overhead to smack into a tree just six inches above Starbuck’s head. Bird straightened up and took out one of his dark cigars. “You’d like one?”

  “Please.” Since that night with Belvedere Delaney in Richmond, Starbuck had found himself smoking more and more cigars.

  “Do you have any water?” Bird asked as he handed the cigar to Starbuck.

  “No.”

  “We seem to have exhausted our water. Doc Billy wanted some for the wounded, but there isn’t any and I can’t spare anyone to find more. There’s so much we overlooked.” A crashing volley of musketry sounded to the north, evidence that more Confederate troops had come into action. Starbuck had seen at least two more southern regiments join the right flank of Nathan Evans’s makeshift line, but for every fresh man from Alabama and Mississippi there were at least three northerners, and the reinforced Yankees were sending ever more troops up the slope to lay their weight of rifle fire at the thin-scraped rebel line. “It can’t be long now,” Major Bird said ruefully, “it can’t be long.”

  A South Carolinian officer came running up the tree line. “Major Bird? Major Bird?”

  “Here!” Bird stepped away from Starbuck.

  “Colonel Evans wants you all to advance, Major.” The South Carolinian had a powder-blackened face, a ripped tunic and bloodshot eyes. His voice was hoarse. “The Colonel’s going to sound a bugle call, and he wants us all to make a charge.” The man paused as though he knew that he was asking the impossible, then he tried a direct appeal to patriotism. “One last real good charge, Major, for the South.”

  For a second it looked as if Major Bird would laugh at such a naked appeal to his patriotism, but then he nodded. “Of course.”

  For the South, one last mad charge, one last defiant gesture.

  Before the battle and the cause were lost.

  The four companies that Shanks Evans had left guarding the stone bridge were forced away when northerners under a colonel called William Sherman discovered a ford upstream of the bridge and thus outflanked the tiny afterguard. The men fired a ragged volley, then retreated fast as Sherman’s men advanced across the Bull Run.

  A shell exploded above the abandoned bridge, then a blue-coated officer appeared on its far side and signaled its capture by waving his sword toward the northern gun batteries. “Cease fire!” a battery commander shouted. “Sponge out! Horses up! Look lively now!” The bridge was taken, so now the northern army could pour across the Bull Run and complete the encirclement and destruction of the rebel army.

  “It is now safe for you gentlemen to advance to the battery position,” Captain James Starbuck announced to the newspapermen, though his announcement was scarcely needed, for groups of excited civilians were already walking or riding toward the captured stone bridge. A congressman waved a smoking cigar at the troops, then stepped aside to let a battery of horse artillery clank and rattle by. “On to Richmond, boys! On to Richmond!” he shouted. “Give the yeller dogs a good whipping, boys! Go on, now!”

  A battalion of gray-coated northern infantry followed the horse artillery. The 2nd Wisconsin Regiment wore gray because there had not been enough blue cloth available for their uniforms. “Just hold the good flag high, boys,” their colonel had said, “and the good Lord will know we’re not rebel scum.” Once across the bridge the Wisconsin men swung off the turnpike to march north toward a distant haze of gunsmoke that showed where a stubborn Confederate line still resisted the federal flanking movement. Captain James Starbuck assumed the gray-coated Wisconsin troops would lead the assault on the exposed flank of those rebel defenders, crumpling and destroying them, and thus adding to the God-given victory that the North was enjoying. Almighty God, James thought piously, had been pleased to bless his country on this Lord’s Day. God’s vengeance had been swift, his justice mighty, and his victory overwhelming, and even the godless foreign military attachés were offering congratulations. “This is exactly what Brigadier General McDowell planned,” James said, loyally ascribing God’s doings to the northern general. “We anticipated an initial resistance, gentlemen, then a sudden collapse and a progressive destruction of the enemy positions.”

  The Frenchman, Colonel Lassan, alone seemed sceptical, wondering why there had been so little evidence of any Confederate artillery fire. “Perhaps they are saving their gunfire?” he suggested to James.

  “I would rather suggest, sir,” James bridled at the Frenchman’s scepticism, “that the rebels lack the necessary professional skills to deploy their guns efficiently.”

  “Ah! That must be it, Captain, indeed.”

  “They’re really farmers, not soldiers. Think of it, Colonel, as a peasants’ revolt.” James wondered if that was pitching it a bit strong, but anything that denigrated the rebels was music to James Starbuck’s ears, and so he not only let the insult stand, but embroidered it. “It is an army of ignorant farmboys led by immoral slave owners.”

  “So victory is assured?” Lassan asked diffidently.

  “Assured, guaranteed!” James felt the burgeoning happiness of a man who sees a difficult endeavor triumphantly concluded, and there was indeed a genuine elation of victory as yet more federal regiments crossed the stone bridge. Three northern divisions were crowding the road as they waited to cross the stream, a dozen bands were playing, women were cheering, the flags were flying, God was in his heaven, Beauregard’s flank was turned and the rebellion was being whipsawed into bloody shreds.

  And it was still not even midday.

  FIX BAYONETS!” MAJOR BIRD SHOUTED THE ORDER, THEN LISTENED AS it was echoed out toward the Legion’s flanks. The men pulled the heavy, brass-handled sword-bayonets from their scabbards and clicked them over their guns’ blackened muzzles. Most of the Legion had never believed they would use the bayonets in an infantry charge, instead, when the war was over and the Yankees had been sent back north, they had thought they would take the bayonets home and use them for pig sticking or hay cutting. Now, though, behind the thinning veil of smoke that hung above the scorched and shattered fence rails, they fixed the bayonets onto the fiercely hot rifle muzzles and tried not to think of what waited in the sunlight.

  For a horde of Yankees waited out there—men from Rhode Island, New York and New Hampshire, their volunteer ardor reinforced by the professional fighters from the U.S. Army and Marines. The northern attackers now outnumbered Nathan Evans’s men by four to one, yet the Yankee attack had been held for more than an hour by the stubborn southern defense. Those defenders had now been whittled perilously thin and so Evans wanted one last effort to throw the northern attack into chaos and thus buy a few more minutes in which the remainder of the Confederate army could change its alignment to meet the flank attack. Evans would offer one last act of defiance before his rebel line disintegrated and the mighty northern assault rolled irresistibly on.

  Major Bird drew his sword. He had still not loaded his Le Mat revolver. He gave the sword an
experimental slash, then hoped to God he would not have to use it. To Bird’s way of thinking last-ditch bayonet charges belonged in the history books or in romance novels, not in present day actuality, though Bird had to admit the Legion’s bayonets looked foully effective. They were long slender blades with a wicked upward curve at their tips. Back in Faulconer County the Colonel had insisted the men practice with their bayonets; and had even hung a cow’s carcass from a low branch to make a realistic target, but the carcass had rotted and the men could not be induced to attack it. Now, with the sweat making white channels through the powder stains on their faces, those same men readied themselves for a bout of real bayonet practice.

  The northerners, encouraged by the lull in southern rifle fire, began advancing again. A fresh battery of southern artillery had reached the right flank of Evans’s line and the newly arrived gunners cracked their canister and roundshot across the face of the federal attack, persuading the northerners to hurry. Three northern bands were now playing in rivalry, driving the heavy fringed flags forward through the smoke wraiths that hung above the meadow that had been so battered by shells and roundshot that the sulfurous stink of the powder smoke was laced with the sweeter smell of new cut hay.

  Major Bird looked at his old-fashioned watch, blinked, and looked again. He held the watch to his ear, thinking it must have stopped, yet he could still hear it ticking steadily away. He had somehow thought it was afternoon already, but it was only half past ten. He licked his dry lips, hefted the sword and looked back to the approaching enemy.

  The bugle called.

  One false note, a pause, then it rang a clean, clear triple of notes, then another triple, a heartbeat’s pause, and suddenly the officers and sergeants were shouting at the southern line to get up and go. For a second no one moved, then the gray line at the wood’s shell-torn and bullet-stripped edge stirred into life.

  “Forward!” Major Bird called, and he walked into the sunlight with his sword held shoulder high and pointing forward. He somewhat spoilt the heroic posture by stumbling as he crossed the fence rails, but he recovered and walked on. Adam had taken command of Company E whose captain, Elisha Burroughs, was dead. Burroughs had been a senior clerk in the Faulconer County Bank who had not really wanted to volunteer for the Legion, but had feared he might jeopardize his advancement in Washington Faulconer’s bank if he had refused. Now he was a corpse, his skin darkening and thick with flies, and Adam had taken his place. Adam walked five paces ahead of E Company with his revolver in his right hand and his saber scabbard in his left. He needed to hold the scabbard away from his legs to stop it tripping him. Starbuck, walking alongside Bird, was having the same trouble with his own scabbard.

  “I’m not sure it’s worth wearing a sword,” Bird commented. “I knew the horses were a bad idea, but it seems that swords are an equal encumbrance. My brother-in-law will be disappointed! I sometimes think his dream is to carry a lance into battle.” Bird snuffled with laughter at the thought. “Sir Washington Faulconer, Lord of Seven Springs. He’d like that. I never did understand why our Founding Fathers abolished titles. They cost nothing and give fools a great deal of satisfaction. My sister would dearly love to be the Lady Faulconer. Is your revolver loaded?”

  “Yes.” Though Starbuck had yet to fire a single shot.

  “Mine isn’t. I keep forgetting.” Bird slashed at a dandelion with his sword. To his right Company E was advancing in good order. At least two of the company’s men had slung their rifles and were carrying their long bowie knives instead. Butchers’ knives, Thaddeus Bird liked to call them, but the long ungainly blades seemed appropriate enough for this desperate venture. Northern bullets made their odd whistle as they whipped past in the warm air. The Legion’s colors twitched as bullets slapped and tugged at the cloth. “Notice how the Yankees are still firing high?” Bird commented.

  “Thank God for that,” Starbuck said.

  The bugle sounded again, urging the rebel line on, and Bird gestured with his sword to encourage the Legion to go faster. The men half-ran and half-walked. Starbuck skirted a patch of smoking earth littered with shell fragments where a mutilated skirmisher lay dead. The shell had ripped out most of the man’s belly and half his rib cage, and what was left of him was thick with flies. The corpse had prominent teeth in a face that was already turning black in the heat. “I think that was George Musgrave,” Bird said conversationally.

  “How could you tell?” Starbuck managed to ask.

  “Those rodent teeth. He was a wretched boy. A bully. I wish I could say I’m sorry to see him dead, but I’m not. I’ve wished him dead a hundred times in the past. A nasty piece of work.”

  A man in Company A was hit by a bullet and began uttering a succession of panting screams. Two men ran to help him. “Leave him be!” Sergeant Truslow snapped and the wounded man was left writhing on the grass. The Legion’s bandsmen, sheltering at the edge of the wood, were the stretcher-bearers, and two of them came hesitantly forward to collect the injured soldier.

  A howitzer shell screamed down to bury itself in the meadow. It exploded, and was immediately followed by another shell. The northern infantry had stopped their steady advance and were reloading their rifles. Starbuck could see the ramrods rising and falling, and could see the powder-stained faces glancing up from the weapons to eye the approaching rebel line. There seemed so few southerners in the attack, and so many northerners waiting for them. Starbuck forced himself to walk calmly, to show no fear. Funny, he thought, but at this moment his family would be taking their pew in the tall, dark church and his father would be in the vestry, praying, and the congregation would be shuffling out of the sunlight, their pew doors clicking and creaking open beneath the high windows that were left open in the summertime so that the breezes from Boston Harbor might cool the worshipers. The stink of horse manure in the street would permeate the church where his mother would be pretending to read her Bible, though in truth her attention would be solely on the gathering congregation; who was present and who absent, who looked well and who queer. Starbuck’s older sister, Ellen Marjory, betrothed to her minister, would be ostentatiously displaying her piety by praying or by reading the Scripture, while fifteen-year-old Martha would be catching the eyes of the boys in the Williamses’ box across the aisle. Starbuck wondered if Sammy Williams was among the blue-coated enemy waiting three hundred yards away in this Virginian meadow. He wondered where James was, and had a sudden pang as he thought of the possibility of his pompous but kindly older brother lying dead.

  The bugle called again, this time more urgently, and the rebel line stumbled into a run.

  “Cheer!” Major Bird shouted, “cheer!”

  It seemed to Starbuck that instead of cheering, the men began to scream. Or rather to yelp like the wounded man whom Truslow had left behind on the grass. The sound could have been translated as a screech of terror, except that in unison there was something in the noise that curdled the blood, and the men themselves sensed it and began to reinforce the weird ululating sound. Even Major Bird, running with his clumsy sword, echoed the eerie shriek. There was something bestial in the noise, something that threatened an awful violence.

  And then the northerners opened fire.

  For a second the whole summer sky, the whole heavy firmament itself, was filled with the wail and scream of the bullets, and the rebel yell hesitated before starting again, only this time there were real screams mingled with the shrill sound. Men were falling. Men were jarred back by the mule-kick force of the striking bullets. Some men staggered as they tried to keep walking. There was flesh blood on the grass. Starbuck could hear a clattering noise and realized it was the sound of northern bullets hitting rifle stocks and bowie knife blades. The southern charge had slowed and men seemed to be wading forward, as if the air had thickened into a resistant treacle in which the ordered lines of the rebel regiments had first broken and then coalesced into shattered groups. The men stopped, fired, then advanced again, but the advance was slow and hes
itant.

  Another volley came from the federals and more men were plucked back from the rebel charge. Major Bird was screaming at his men to charge, to run, to carry the day, but the Legion had been stunned by the ferocity of the northern counterfire and overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of gunfire that now crackled and flamed and whistled about them. The northern howitzer shells crashed down like thunderbolts, each shell spewing a barrow load of red earth high in the air.

  Adam was ten paces ahead of E Company. He walked slowly forward, apparently unmoved by the danger. A sergeant called him back, but Adam, his revolver held low, ignored the call.

  “Keep going! Keep going!” Major Bird screamed at his men. So far not one bowie knife nor one bayonet had been reddened, but the men could not keep going. Instead they fell back, silent, and the federals bayed a deep-noted shout of triumph and the noise seemed to spur the rebel retreat into a stumbling run. The Confederates were not panicking yet, but they were close. “No!” Major Bird was livid, trying to force his men back into the attack by sheer force of personality.

  “Major!” Starbuck had to shout to make Bird hear. “Look to your left! Your left!” A fresh northern regiment had come up on the Legion’s left and now threatened to wrap itself round the open flank of the Virginians. The new attack would not only drive back this failed bayonet attack, but would overlap the wood. Evans’s defenders had been outflanked and outfought at last.

  “Goddamn!” Bird stared at the new threat. His oath sounded very unconvincing, like a man unused to cursing. “Sergeant Major! Take the colors back.” Bird gave the order, but did not yet retreat himself.