Battle Flag tnsc-3

by Bernard Cornwell

  "I'm glad to hear it," the Reverend Starbuck said stiffly.

  "A hundred cents to an honest dollar, sir, that was always my way," Blythe said cheerfully, "and if I ever rooked a man, sir, why it was never on purpose. And I'll tell you another thing, sir." Blythe dropped his voice confidingly. "If ever a man of the cloth wanted a horse, why sir, I swallowed the profit and sometimes a good bit more besides. I confess I was never a churchgoing man myself, sir, to my regret, but my pa always contended that a bucketful of prayer never hurt no one and my dear ma, God bless her dear soul, fair wore out her knees on the church planking. And she sure would have liked to hear you speaking, sir, for they all say you do a mighty sermon!"

  The Reverend Starbuck seemed pleased by Blythe's forthright and friendly manner, so pleased that he did not even show a sign of distaste when the tall Captain draped an arm around his shoulders to conduct him into the bare-shelved library. "You say you're not a churchgoing man," the preacher inquired, "but I trust you are saved, Captain?"

  Blythe released his grip so that he could turn an astonished face to the Reverend Starbuck. "Washed white in the blood of the lamb, Reverend," Blythe said in a voice that suggested shock that anyone might have taken him for a heathen. "In fact I'm fair swilled in that precious blood, sir. My dear ma made sure of that before she died, praise the Lord and God rest her dear soul."

  "And your mother, Captain, would approve of your allegiance in this war?" the Reverend Starbuck asked.

  Captain William Blythe frowned to show his sincerity. "My dear mother, God bless her simple soul, sir, always said that in the eyes of God a nigra's soul was the same as any white man's. So long as that nigra's a Christian, of course. Then come heaven time, she said, we'd all be white as snow, even the blackest nigra, praise the Lord for His goodness." Blythe raised his eyes to the ceiling, then, over the unsuspecting preacher's head, offered Major Galloway an outrageous wink.

  Galloway cut short his second-in-command's blarney by seating his guest at the library's large table, which was heaped with account books. Galloway, Adam, and Blythe sat opposite the preacher, and the Major described his ambitions for his regiment of cavalry; how they would ride the Southern paths with a confidence and local knowledge that no Northern horseman could hope to match. The Major spoke modestly, stressing the army's need for good reconnaissance and his own ambitions for a tightly disciplined regiment of horsemen, yet his words were plainly disappointing the Boston preacher. The Reverend Starbuck wanted swift results and dramatic victories, and it was the bombastic William Blythe who first sensed that desire. Blythe intervened with a chuckle. "You have to forgive the Major, Reverend," he said, "for not talking us up overmuch, but the real truth is we're going to twist Jeff Davis's tail, then we're going to scald the skin straight off that tail, and dang me if we won't then cut the thing clean off! I promise you, Reverend, that we're going to make the rebels squeal, and you'll hear that squeal all the way to Boston Common. Ain't that so, Major?"

  Galloway merely looked surprised, while Adam stared at the table's scarred top, but the Reverend Starbuck was delighted by the implications of Blythe's promise. "You have specific plans?" he asked eagerly.

  Blythe looked momentarily shocked. "We couldn't say a danged thing about specifics, sir, it would be downright unsoldierlike of us, but I do promise you, Reverend, that in the weeks to come it won't be Jeb Stuart you'll be reading about in the Boston newspapers, no sir, it'll be Major Joseph Galloway and his gallant regiment of troopers! Ain't that a fact, Joe?"

  Galloway, taken aback, nodded. "We shall do our best, certainly."

  "But there ain't nothing we can do, sir"—Blythe leaned forward with an earnest expression—"if we don't have the guns, the sabers, and the horses. As my sainted mother always said, sir, promises fill no bellies. You have to add a lick of hard work and a peck of money if you want to fill a Southern boy's belly, and sir, believe me, sir, it hurts me, it hurts me hard, to see these fine Southern patriots standing idle for want of a dollar or two."

  "But what will you do with the money?" the Reverend Starbuck asked.

  "What can't we do?" Blythe demanded. "With God on our side, Reverend, we can turn the South upside down and inside out. Why, sir, I shouldn't say it to you, but I guess you're a closemouthed man so I'll take the risk, but there's a map of Richmond up in my sleeping room, and why would a man like me need a map of Richmond? Well, I ain't going to tell you, sir, only because it would be downright unsoldierly of me to tell you, but I guess a clever man like you can work out which end of a snake has the bite."

  Adam looked up astonished at this implication that the regiment was planning to raid the rebel capital, and Galloway seemed about to make a firm demurral, but the Reverend Starbuck was gripped by Blythe's promised coup. "You'll go to Richmond?" he asked Blythe.

  "The very city, sir. That den of evil and lair of the serpent. I wish I could tell you how I loathe the place, sir, but with God's help we'll scour it and burn it and cleanse it anew!"

  The horse trader was now speaking a language the Reverend Starbuck longed to hear. The Boston preacher wanted promises of rebel humiliation and of dazzling Union victories, of exploits to rival the insolent achievements of the rebel Jeb Stuart. He did not want to hear of patient reconnaissance duties faithfully performed, but wild promises of Northern victories, and no amount of caution from Major Galloway would convince the preacher that Blythe's promises were exaggerated. The Reverend Starbuck heard what he longed to hear, and to make it a reality he drew from his frock coat's inner pocket a check. He borrowed a pen and an inkwell from the Major and then signed the check with a due solemnity.

  "Praise the Lord," William Blythe said when the check was signed.

  "Praise Him indeed," the preacher echoed piously, thrusting the check across the table toward Galloway. "That money comes, Major, from a consortium of New England abolitionist churches. It represents the hard-earned dollars of simple honest working folk, given gladly in a sacred cause. Use it well."

  "We shall do our utmost, sir," Galloway said, then fell momentarily silent as he saw the check was not for the fifteen thousand dollars he had expected, but for twenty thousand. Blythe's oratory had worked a small miracle. "And thank you, sir," Galloway managed to say.

  "And I ask only one thing in return," the preacher said.

  "Anything, sir!" Blythe said, spreading his big hands as though to encompass the whole wide world. "Anything at all!"

  The preacher glanced at the wall over the wide garden doors, where a polished staff tipped with a lance head and a faded cavalry guidon was the room's sole remaining decoration. "A flag," the preacher said, "is important to a soldier, is it not?"

  "It is, sir," Galloway answered. The small guidon over the door had been the banner he had carried in the Mexican war.

  "Sacred, you might say," Blythe added.

  "Then I should esteem it an honor if you would provide me with a rebel banner," the preacher said, "that I can display in Boston as proof that our donations are doing God's work."

  "You shall have your flag, sir!" Blythe promised swiftly. "I'll make it my business to see you have one. When are you returning to Boston, sir?"

  "At month's end, Captain."

  "You'll not go empty-handed, sir, not if my name's Billy Blythe. I promise you, on my dear mother's grave, sir, that you'll have your rebel battle flag."

  Galloway shook his head, but the preacher did not see the gesture. He only saw a hated enemy battle flag hanging in the chancel of his church as an object of derision. The Reverend Starbuck pushed back his chair and consulted his fob watch. "I must be returning to the depot," he said.

  "Adam will drive you, sir," Major Galloway said. The Major waited until the preacher was gone, then shook his head sadly. "You made a deal of promises, Billy."

  "And there was a deal of money at stake," Blythe said carelessly, "and hell, I never did mind making promises."

  Galloway crossed to the open garden door, where he stared out at the sun-bleac
hed lawn. "I don't mind a man making promises, Billy, but I sure mind that he keeps them."

  "I always keep my promises, sure I do. I keep 'em in mind while I'm working out how to break them." Blythe laughed. "Now are you going to give me aggravation for having fetched you your money? Hell, Joe, I get enough piety from young Faulconer."

  "Adam's a good man."

  "I never said he weren't a good man. I just said he's a pious son of a righteous bitch and God only knows why you appointed him Captain."

  "Because he's a good man," Galloway said firmly, "and because his family is famous in Virginia, and because I like him. And I like you too, Billy, but not if you're going to argue with Adam all the time. Now why don't you go and get busy? You've got a flag to capture."

  Blythe scorned such a duty. "Have I? Hell! There's plenty enough red, white, and blue cloth about, so we'll just have your house niggers run up a quick rebel flag."

  Galloway sighed. "They're my servants, Billy, servants."

  "Still niggers, ain't they? And the girl can use a needle, can't she? And the Reverend'll never know the difference. She can make us a flag and I'll tear it and dirty it a bit and that old fool will think we snatched it clean out of Jeff Davis's own hands." Blythe grinned at the idea, then picked up the check. He whistled appreciatively. "Reckon I talked us into a tidy profit, Joe."

  "I reckon you did too. So now you'll go and spend it, Billy." Galloway needed to equip Adam's troop with horses and most of his men with sabers and firearms, but now, thanks to the generosity of the Reverend Starbuck's abolitionists, the Galloway Horse would be as well equipped and mounted as any other cavalry regiment in the Northern army. "Spend half on horses and half on weapons and saddlery," Galloway suggested.

  "Horses are expensive, Joe," Blythe warned. "The war's made them scarce."

  "You're a horse dealer, Billy, so go and work some horse-dealing magic. Unless you'd rather I let Adam go? He wants to buy his own horses."

  "Never let a boy do a man's work, Joe," Blythe said. He touched the preacher's check to his lips and gave it an exaggerated kiss. "Praise the Lord," Billy Blythe said, "just praise His holy name, amen."

  The Faulconer Legion made camp just a few miles north of the river where they had first glimpsed the baleful figure of their new commanding general. No one in the Legion knew where they were or where they were going or why they were marching there, but a passing artillery major who was a veteran of Jackson's campaigns said that was the usual way of Old Jack. "You'll know you've arrived just as soon as the enemy does and no sooner," the Major said, then begged a bucket of water for his horse.

  The Brigade headquarters erected tents, but none of the regiments bothered with such luxuries. The Faulconer Legion had started the war with three wagonloads of tents but now had only two tents left, both reserved for Doctor Danson. The men had become adept at manufacturing shelters from branches and sod, though on this warm evening no one needed protection from the weather. Work parties fetched wood for campfires while others carried water from a stream a mile away. Some of the men sat with their bare feet dangling in the stream, trying to wash away the blisters and blood of the day's march. The four men on the Legion's punishment detail watered the draft horses that hauled the ammunition wagons, then paraded round the campsite with newly felled logs on their shoulders. The men staggered under the weight as they made the ten circuits of the Legion's lines that constituted their nightly punishment. "What have they done?" Lieutenant Coffman asked Starbuck.

  Starbuck glanced up at the miserable procession. "Lem Pierce got drunk. Matthews sold cartridges for a pint of whiskey, and Evans threatened to hit Captain Medlicott."

  "Pity he didn't," Sergeant Truslow interjected. Daniel Medlicott had been the miller at Faulconer Court House, where he had earned a reputation as a hard man with money, though in the spring elections for field officers he had distributed enough promises and whiskey to have himself promoted from sergeant to captain.

  "And I don't know what Trent did," Starbuck finished.

  "Abram Trent's just a poxed son of a whore," Truslow said to Coffman. "He stole some food from Sergeant Major Tolliver, but that ain't why he's being punished. He's being punished, lad, because he got caught."

  "You are listening to the gospel according to Sergeant Thomas Truslow," Starbuck told the Lieutenant. "Thou shalt steal all thou can, but thou shalt not get caught." Starbuck grinned, then hissed with pain as he jabbed his thumb with a needle. He was struggling to sew the sole of his right boot back onto its uppers, for which task he had borrowed one of the three precious needles possessed by the company.

  Sergeant Truslow, sitting on the far side of the fire from the two officers, mocked his Captain's efforts. "You're a lousy cobbler."

  "I never pretended to be otherwise."

  "You'll break the goddamn needle, pushing like that."

  "You want to do it?" Starbuck asked, offering the half-finished work to the Sergeant.

  "Hell no, I ain't paid to patch your boots."

  "Then shut the hell up," Starbuck said, trying to work the needle through one of the old stitching holes in the sole.

  "It'll only break first thing in the morning," Truslow said after a moment's silence.

  "Not if I do it properly."

  "No chance of that," Truslow said. He broke off a piece of tobacco and put it in his cheek. "You've got to protect the thread, see? So it don't chafe on the road."

  "That's what I'm doing."

  "No, you ain't. You're just lashing the boot together. There are blind men without fingers who could make a better job than you."

  Lieutenant Coffman listened nervously to the conversation. He had been told that the Captain and Sergeant were friends—indeed, that they had been friends ever since the Yankee Starbuck had been sent to persuade the Yankee-hating Truslow to leave his high-mountain farm and join Faulconer's Legion—but to Coffman it seemed an odd sort of friendship if it was expressed with such mutual scorn. Now the intimidating Sergeant turned to the nervous Lieutenant. "A proper officer," Truslow confided to Coffman, "would have a darkie to do his sewing."

  "A proper officer," Starbuck said, "would kick your rotten teeth down your gullet."

  "Anytime, Captain," Truslow said, laughing.

  Starbuck tied off the thread and peered critically at his handiwork. "It ain't perfect," he allowed, "but it'll do."

  "It'll do," Truslow agreed, "so long as you don't walk on it."

  Starbuck laughed. "Hell, we'll be fighting a battle in a day or two, then I'll get myself a pair of brand-new Yankee boots." He gingerly pulled the repaired boot onto his foot and was pleasantly surprised that the sole did not immediately peel away. "Good as new," he said, then flinched, not because of the boot, but because a sudden scream sounded across the campsite. The scream was cut abruptly short; there was a pause, then a sad wailing sound sobbed briefly.

  Coffman looked aghast, for the noise had sounded like it came from a creature being tortured, which indeed it had. "Colonel Swynyard," Sergeant Truslow explained to the new Lieutenant, "is beating one of his niggers."

  "The Colonel drinks," Starbuck added.

  "The Colonel is a drunk," Truslow amended.

  "And it's anyone's guess whether the liquor will kill him before one of his slaves does," Starbuck said, "or one of us, for that matter." He spat into the fire. "I'd kill the bastard willingly enough."

  "Welcome to the Faulconer Brigade," Truslow said to Coffman.

  The Lieutenant did not know how to respond to such cynicism, so he just sat looking troubled and nervous, then flinched as a thought crossed his mind. "Will we really be fighting in a day or two?" he asked.

  "Probably tomorrow." Truslow jerked his head toward the northern sky, which was being reddened by the reflected glow of an army's fires. "It's what you're paid to do, son," Truslow added when he saw Coffman's nervousness.

  "I'm not paid," Coffman said and immediately blushed for the admission.

  Truslow and Starbuck were both silen
t for a few seconds; then Starbuck frowned. "What the hell do you mean?" he asked.

  "Well, I do get paid," Coffman said, "but I don't get the money, see?"

  "No, I don't see."

  The Lieutenant was embarrassed. "It's my mother."

  "She gets the money, you mean?" Starbuck asked.

  "She owes General Faulconer money," Coffman explained, "because we rent one of his houses on the Rosskill road and Mother fell behind with the rent, so Faulconer keeps my salary."

  There was another long pause. "Christ on his cross." Truslow's blasphemy broke the silence. "You mean that miserable rich bastard is taking your three lousy bucks a week for his own?"

  "It's only fair, isn't it?" Coffman asked.

  "No, it damn well ain't," Starbuck said. "If you want to send your mother the money, that's fair, but it ain't fair for you to fight for nothing! Shit!" He swore angrily.

  "I don't really need any money." Coffman nervously defended the arrangement.

  "'Course you do, boy," Truslow said. "How else are you going to buy whores and whiskey?"

  "Have you talked to Pecker about this?" Starbuck demanded.

  Coffman shook his head. "No."

  "Hell, then I will," Starbuck said. "Ain't going to have you being shot at for free." He climbed to his feet. "I'll be back in a half hour. Oh, shit!" This last imprecation was not in anger for Washington Faulconer's greed but because his right sole had come loose on his first proper step. "Goddamn shit!" he said angrily, then stalked off to find Colonel Bird.

  Truslow grinned at Starbuck's inept cobbling, then spat tobacco juice into the fire's margin. "He'll get your cash, son," he said.

  "He will?"

  "Faulconer's scared of Starbuck."

  "Scared? The General's scared of the Captain?" Coffman found that hard to believe.

  "Starbuck's a proper soldier. He's a fighter while Faulconer's just a pretty uniform on an expensive horse. In the long run, son, the fighter will always win." Truslow picked a shred of tobacco from between his teeth. "Unless he's killed, of course."