Rebel

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Scout across the bridge, will you?” McDowell requested genially, “and tell our fellows to send all captured colors back to me. Be sure of that, will you? All of them! And don’t worry about your foreign fellows. I’ll have a chat with them.” The general waved to a passing artillery troop. “Victory, boys, victory! On to Richmond! On to Richmond!” A fat and drunken congressman from New York was riding a limber westward, and the general good-naturedly saluted the politician. The congressman was a rascal, but his good opinion could be useful to a victorious general’s career when this short fighting season was done. “A great day, Congressman! A great day!”

  “Another Yorktown, General! A veritable Waterloo!” A victorious general could also be of use to a congressman’s career, and so the fat politician waved his beaver hat in affable salute to the portly McDowell. “On to glory!” the congressman shouted, and waved his hat so vigorously that he almost lost his balance on the narrow limber seat.

  “And Starbuck!” McDowell called after his aide who was already forcing his passage across the crowded bridge, “don’t let too many civilians clutter up the rear. That fellow won’t hurt, but we don’t want any ladies injured by stray shots, do we?”

  “No, sir!” James Starbuck went to hunt for flags.

  Colonel Washington Faulconer was also seeking colors, his own, and he found them in the pastureland north of the turnpike. At first all he could find were the shattered remnants of his precious Legion; a succession of powder-stained, weary men who straggled from the trees, dragging their rifles and scarcely able to recognize their own Colonel. A few men were still in good order, held so by officers or sergeants, but the majority had abandoned their expensive equipment and had lost any idea of where their companies, their officers or even their friends were. Some had retreated with the South Carolinians, some with the Louisianians, just as some men from those regiments now walked back with the Virginians. They were a beaten force, exhausted and stunned, and the Colonel watched them in appalled disbelief. Ethan Ridley, who had at last caught up with Faulconer, dared not even speak for fear of triggering the Colonel’s rage.

  “This was Starbuck’s doing,” Washington Faulconer finally said, and Ridley just nodded in mute confirmation. “Have you seen Adam?” the Colonel called to the Legion’s survivors, but they just shook their heads. Some glanced up at the beautifully uniformed Colonel who sat his horse so elegantly then turned away to spit dry-mouthed at the meadow.

  “Sir?” Ridley had glanced to his right and seen blue Yankee uniforms advancing from the wooden bridge that carried the turnpike across the small tributary of the Bull Run. “Sir!” he repeated more urgently.

  But the Colonel was not listening because Faulconer had at last seen his color party emerge from the woods, and he galloped forward to meet them. He was determined that whatever else happened on this awful day, he would not lose the two flags. Even if the Confederacy went down in blazing defeat he would carry those twin colors back to Seven Springs and there hang the flags in his hallway to remind his descendants that their family had fought for Virginia. Ridley followed the Colonel, made silent by the enormity of the defeat.

  At first the Colonel did not see Adam, who was now being helped by Sergeant Truslow and Sergeant Major Proctor. The Colonel only saw Thaddeus Bird, who was dragging the Faulconer coat-of-arms in the dirt. “What the hell did you do with my Legion!” Faulconer shouted at his brother-in-law. “What the hell have you done?”

  Thaddeus Bird stopped and stared up at the angry Colonel. It seemed to take him a few seconds to recognize Washington Faulconer, but when he did, he just laughed.

  “Damn it, Pecker! Damn it!” Faulconer very nearly slashed his riding crop across the schoolmaster’s laughing face.

  “Adam’s wounded.” Bird had abruptly ceased laughing and now spoke with an earnest intensity. “But he’ll be all right. He fought well. They all fought well, or almost all. We have to teach them to aim low, though, and there are a host of other lessons we have to learn. But we didn’t do badly for a first fight.”

  “Badly! You threw the Legion away! Goddamn you! You threw it away!” The Colonel spurred Saratoga on to where Truslow and Proctor were helping Adam. “Adam!” the Colonel shouted, and was astonished to see his son smiling almost happily.

  “Be careful of the woods, Faulconer!” Sergeant Truslow growled. “They’re full of goddamned Yankees.”

  The Colonel had intended to snap at Adam, to reprimand him for letting Bird disobey orders, but his son’s bloody leg checked his anger. Then he looked up to see a last figure in gray uniform stagger out of the trees. It was Starbuck, and the sight of him made Washington Faulconer’s anger surge up so intensely that he shuddered uncontrollably. “I’ll come back for you, Adam,” he said, then spurred Saratoga on toward Starbuck.

  Starbuck was on foot, limping. After Pocahontas had screamed he had pulled her head to the left, raked her sore flanks with his heels and then galloped clear of the stunned and scattered Yankees. He had tried to follow the fleeing color party, but instead he had felt the mare stumble and he saw droplets of blood spraying from her mouth and nostrils. Her stride had faltered, she had blown a great bubbling breath, then half-collapsed onto her knees. Still she had tried to keep going, but the life was roaring out of her punctured lung and so she had fallen to her side, sliding through the leaf mold and thorns, and Starbuck had just managed to kick his feet free of the stirrups and hurl himself out of the saddle before the dying mare crashed into a tree and stopped. She shivered, tried to raise her head, whinnied once, then her hooves beat a dying tattoo on the ground.

  “Oh, God.” Starbuck was shaking. He was crouching, bruised and frightened, his breath coming in huge gasps. The horse shuddered and a great wash of blood spilt from her mouth. The bullet wound in her chest seemed very small. Flies buzzed loud, already settling on the dead horse.

  The woodland seemed oddly silent. Flames or musketry crackled far away, but Starbuck could hear no footsteps close by. He clambered to his feet and hissed with pain when he put his weight onto his left ankle. His revolver had fallen into the litter of bloody leaves. He picked it up, shoved it into his holster and had been about to start limping away when he remembered how only that morning Colonel Faulconer had stressed how expensive the saddle was, and Starbuck was assailed by the ridiculous conviction that he would be in bad trouble if he did not rescue the saddle and so he had knelt at the belly of the dead horse and scrabbled to unbuckle the girth. Then, half-sobbing and half-panting, he had heaved the heavy saddle free and pulled the stirrups and girth out from under the deadweight of the mare’s carcass.

  He staggered through the woods, clumsy on his turned ankle and blundering under the weight of the saddle and the heat of the day. He had needed both hands to carry the saddle, so could not keep his sword from tangling in his legs. After the saber had tripped him a third time he stopped, unbuckled the scabbard slings and threw the wretched blade far off into the undergrowth. One small part of his conscious thoughts told him it was stupid to rescue the saddle and throw away the saber, but somehow the saddle seemed more important now. Voices shouted in the far woods, a bugle sounded, a man whooped in triumph and, fearing that he would be ambushed, Starbuck pulled out the revolver, worked the lower lever trigger, then held it in his right hand beneath the heavy saddle. He staggered on, at last emerging from the woodland into a wide pasture scattered with retreating rebels. Ahead of the southerners was the turnpike, then a steep hill climbing to the plateau where the Legion had started its day. He could see the small wooden house on the hilltop and, next to it, some cannon. He wondered if the guns belonged to the North or the South, to the enemy or to friends.

  “You bastard!” The shout echoed across the pastureland and Starbuck turned his sweat-stung eyes to see Colonel Faulconer spurring toward him. The Colonel slewed to a stop beside Starbuck, his stallion’s hooves slinging up clods of turf. “What in the name of Christ did you do to my Legion? I told you to go home! I told you to go back t
o your damned father!” And Colonel Faulconer, who was too angry to think what he was doing, or whether a mere second lieutenant could possibly have exercised the power he was now ascribing to Starbuck, brought back his whip hand and slashed it forward so that the riding crop slashed across Starbuck’s face. Starbuck flinched, gasped at the pain, then fell as he twisted away. Blood ran salt from his nose.

  “I brought your saddle,” he was trying to say, but instead he was on all fours, blood dripping from his nose, and the Colonel raised his whip again. “You did your filthy northern work, didn’t you? You broke my Legion, you bastard!” He slashed down a second time, then a third. “You bastard!” he screamed, then raised his hand to strike a fourth blow.

  The first of the pursuing Yankees had appeared at the edge of the wood. One of them, a corporal, had been with the group of men charged by Starbuck and now, coming into the pastureland, he saw a mounted Confederate not fifty yards away and he thought of his dead comrade as he dropped to his right knee and brought his rifle into his shoulder and snapped off one fast shot. The smoke billowed to hide the Yankee’s view, but his aim had been good and the bullet struck the Colonel on his raised right arm, splintering the bone and ricocheting down to score across his ribs and lodge in his belly muscles. Blood poured from his arm that had been thrown back by the bullet’s force and his riding crop wheeled through the air. “Oh, God,” Washington Faulconer said, astonished rather than hurt. Then the pain stabbed at him and he cried aloud as he tried to force the arm down and to comprehend the sudden mess of torn and blood-soaked cloth and sharp pain.

  “Colonel!” Ethan Ridley galloped to the Colonel’s side just as a volley of northern shots crackled at the wood’s margin. Ridley ducked and hauled on his reins as the minié bullets screamed about his ears. The Colonel was turning away, spurs slashing back, screaming with pain while Ridley was staring down at Starbuck who had brought his right hand out to protect himself from the Colonel’s beating. The Savage revolver was in Starbuck’s hand and Ridley, seeing it, thought the northerner had tried to kill the Colonel. “You shot him!” Ridley screamed in shocked accusation, then pulled his own revolver free of its holster.

  Blood dripped from Starbuck’s nose. He was still shocked, still too dazed to understand what was happening, but he saw Ridley’s face grimace and saw the revolver spurt smoke, and then the saddle which was still supported by Starbuck’s left hand kicked as Ridley’s bullet thumped into the wooden tree beneath the leather.

  The kick of the bullet hitting the saddle woke Starbuck from his daze. Behind him the northerners were swarming from the trees and Ridley was already turning away, not out of fear of Starbuck but to escape the onrush of Yankees. “Ridley!” Starbuck shouted, but Ridley kicked back with his bloodied spurs as Starbuck raised the heavy gun. He had a promise to keep and just seconds to keep it and so he aimed the big Savage revolver and pulled the upper trigger. Sparks ripped away from the exploding percussion cap as the gun hammered back in Starbuck’s hand.

  Ridley screamed and arched his back. “Ridley!” Starbuck shouted again, and the air about him whistled with a volley of northern bullets and Ridley’s mare reared up, screaming. Ridley was wounded, but he automatically kicked his boots free of the stirrups as he twisted to stare at Starbuck. “This is for Sally, you bastard!” Starbuck shouted hysterically, all sense gone, “for Sally!” He had promised that her name would be the last thing Ridley heard and he shouted it again as he worked the Savage’s lower trigger, then pulled the top one again.

  Ridley twitched as the second bullet struck and as he fell to earth. He and his horse were both screaming now, but the horse was trying to limp away while Ridley thumped onto the grass.

  “You bastard, Ridley!” Starbuck was on his feet, pointing the revolver. He fired again, but his third bullet just drove scraps of soil up from the ground beside the fallen Ridley whose wounded horse was limping away. The Colonel was fifty yards off, but had turned to stare in horror at Starbuck. “This is for Sally,” Starbuck said and fired his last bullet into his enemy’s body, and suddenly the whole ground in front of Starbuck erupted in dirt and flying blood as a Confederate shell crashed into Ridley’s dying body, eviscerating the twitching flesh and throwing up a screen of bloody scraps to hide Starbuck from the retreating Legion.

  The warm and bloody blast of the shell threw Starbuck back and soaked his gray tunic with Ridley’s blood. More shells screamed across the valley to crack black and red on the meadow where the advancing northerners had appeared from beneath the trees. The crest of the far hill grew a low cloud that pulsed as more smoke poured from the artillery. Starbuck had fallen to his knees again, while Ridley was nothing but a butcher’s mess on the grass. Ahead of Starbuck the beaten Confederates were retreating across the turnpike and climbing the farther hill with its crown of gray-white, flame-streaked smoke, but Starbuck stayed in the meadow, staring at the mess of flesh and blood, of white ribs and blue guts, and he knew he had committed murder. Oh dear sweet forgiving Christ, he tried to pray, shivering in the heat, but suddenly a rush of northerners swept past him and one man kicked the revolver out of Starbuck’s nerveless fingers and then a brass-bound rifle butt smacked the back of his head and he pitched forward as a northern voice snarled that he should lie still.

  He lay facedown in the sweet-smelling grass and remembered Ridley’s final despairing backward glance, the white of his eyes showing, the terror on his dying face the gift of a girl he had betrayed in Richmond. It had taken a second, one short second, to commit murder. Oh God, Starbuck thought, but he could not pray because he felt no remorse. He felt no sense of sin. He just wanted to laugh for Sally’s sake, for he had kept her faith and killed her enemy. He had done a friend’s duty, and that thought made him start to laugh.

  “Over!” A man stirred Starbuck with his bayonet. “Turn over, you crazy bastard!”

  Starbuck rolled over. Two bearded men went through his pouches and pockets, but found nothing worth stealing except his cartridge box with its handful of Savage revolver cartridges. “Thinner pickings than a starved dog,” one of the two men said, then grimaced at the awful gory mess that had been Ethan Ridley. “You want to search that pile of blood, Jack?”

  “Shit, no. On your feet.” He prodded Starbuck with the bayonet. “Over there, rebel.”

  A score of prisoners was assembled at the edge of the trees. Half were from the Legion, the rest were either South Carolinians or Louisianan Zouaves. The Confederate prisoners sat disconsolate, watching as the northern regiments massed on the lower slopes of the opposite hill. More and more northern regiments were appearing from the Bull Run and marching to reinforce the gathering attack. More and more guns wheeled off the turnpike and were aimed toward the Confederate defenders. “What’s to happen to us?” one of the Legion prisoners asked Starbuck.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll be all right,” the man spoke resentfully. “You’re an officer, they’ll exchange you, but not us. They’ll keep us right through harvest time.”

  A Yankee sergeant heard the exchange. “You shouldn’t have rebelled then, should you?”

  An hour after midday the prisoners were marched down to the red fieldstone house that stood by the crossroads. The northern soldiers were still readying themselves for the attack that would break the last vestiges of southern resistance and, while they gathered themselves, the artillery of each side screamed their shells overhead, battery firing at battery from opposing hilltops and causing a constant trickle of wounded men who limped, staggered or were carried to an aid post that had been established inside the stone house.

  Starbuck, limping from his twisted ankle and with his uniform soaked from Ridley’s blood, was pushed toward the kitchen door of the house. “I’m not wounded,” he protested.

  “Shut your mouth, get inside, do what you’re told,” the sergeant snapped, then ordered the unwounded prisoners to look after the dozen wounded men who had been brought into the open air to recover from their surgery.
Inside the house Starbuck found still more men from the Faulconer Legion; one from K Company had lost a leg from a shell burst, two had lungs punctured by bullets, one had been blinded and another had a minié bullet lodged in his lower jaw that now dribbled a mixture of blood and spittle.

  A red-bearded doctor was working at a table that had been shoved into the sunlight coming through the kitchen window. He was amputating a man’s leg, and his bone saw made a grating noise that set Starbuck’s teeth on edge. The patient, a northerner, groaned horribly and the doctor’s assistant dripped more chloroform onto the pad he was holding against the man’s nose and mouth. Both the doctor and his assistant were dripping with sweat. The room was foully hot, not just with the day’s natural warmth, but also because a fierce fire in the kitchen range was being used to boil water.

  The doctor discarded the saw and picked up a long-bladed scalpel with which he finished the amputation. The bloody leg, still clad in a boot and sock, thumped to the floor. “A change from treating the pox,” the doctor said happily, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “That’s all we’ve done for the last three months, treat the pox! You southerners needn’t have bothered raising an army, you could have just sent all your whores north, then you could have poxed us all to death and saved us a heap of trouble. He’s still with us, is he?” This last question was to the assistant.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Give him a whiff of ammonia, let him know he ain’t knocking at the pearly gates yet.” The red-bearded surgeon was probing with forceps for the arteries that needed tying off. He had filed the bone stump smooth and now, with the arteries tied, he let the flesh compress over the bone’s cut end before drawing the flap of skin round the patient’s thigh. He put quick stitches in the newly formed stump, then untied the tourniquet that had constricted the thigh’s blood supply during the operation. “Another hero,” he said dryly to mark the procedure’s end.