Battle Flag tnsc-3

by Bernard Cornwell

  Starbuck sighed and stepped forward. The boy tried to twist aside, but Starbuck was too quick for him. He grabbed a handful of long dirty hair and held the squirming boy still. "Search him, Coffman," he said.

  Lieutenant Coffman nervously began searching the boy's pockets. At first he found nothing; then it became apparent that the pants pockets had been elongated into long, capacious, sausage-shaped sacks specially strengthened to hold and conceal plunder, and the men watched in amazement as the evidence of the boy's thefts was dragged into the light. Coffman produced two hunter watches, a gilt picture frame, a collapsible silver cup, a folding mirror, two razors, a brass match case, a carved pipe, a signet ring, an ivory-handled shaving brush, a comb, a pack of cards, and a handful of coins. The men stared in awe at the hoard. "Oh, my God," one of them said, "just lay me down," and a bellow of laughter swept through the crowd.

  Coffman stepped away from the boy. "That's all, sir," he said.

  "They're all my property!" the boy insisted, trying to retrieve one of the watches, and the ring of men laughed and cheered at his insolence. They had been baying for his blood just a minute before, but there was something irresistible about the young man's unrepentant face and impressive haul of thefts.

  Medlicott retrieved his watch. "He's a goddamn thief. He should be whipped."

  "But I thought we were all thieves today," Starbuck said, and he was about to kick the boy on his way when a stentorian voice shouted from outside the ring of Legionnaires.

  "Hold on to that nigger!" the voice shouted, and the men slowly parted to make way for the big, bearded Captain who had been supervising the manacling of the recaptured slaves. "Another damn runaway," the man said, reaching for the boy.

  "I'm a free man!" the boy insisted.

  "And I'm Abraham Lincoln," the Captain said as he grabbed the boy's striped shirt. He cuffed the long black hair aside and displayed one of the boy's earlobes to Starbuck. "Took his earring out, didn't he? First thing a runaway does, take off the earring." Earrings denoted slave status. "So if you're free, lad," the Captain went on, "why don't you show us your papers?"

  The boy plainly had no papers. For a second or two he looked defiant; then he was overwhelmed by despair and tried to twist out of the Captain's grip. The Captain slapped him hard around the head. "You'll be picking cotton now, lad."

  "He belongs to me," Starbuck said suddenly. He had not intended to speak, and certainly he had never intended to claim ownership of the boy, but there was something appealing about the young man's spirit that reminded Starbuck of his own desperate attempts to remake himself in an image of his own devising, and he knew that if he did not speak up, then the boy would be hammered and burned into the chains and then sold down the river to the living hell of the cotton plantations.

  The Captain gave Starbuck a long, hard look, then spat a viscous brown stream of tobacco juice. "Out my way, boy."

  "You call me 'sir,'" Starbuck said, "or I'll have you arrested and charged for rank insubordination. Now, boy, get the hell out of my regiment."

  The Captain laughed at Starbuck's presumption, then twitched the fugitive slave toward the forge. Starbuck kicked the man hard between the legs, then rammed a flat palm into the bearded face. The Captain let go of the escaped slave and staggered backward. He was in terrible pain, but he succeeded in keeping his footing and was just starting forward with his fists clenched when there was the unmistakable click of a gun being cocked. "You heard the Major," Truslow's voice said, "so git."

  The Captain put a hand to his face to wipe blood away from his mustache. He looked askance at Starbuck, wondering if the youngster really was a major, then decided that anything might be true in wartime. He pointed a blood-smeared finger at the cowering boy. "He's a contraband. The law says he's got to be returned—"

  "You heard the Captain," Starbuck said, "so git."

  Starbuck waited till the man had gone, then turned and took hold of the boy's ear. "Come here, you son of a bitch," he said, dragging the boy away from the crowd and into the warehouse, where he threw the lad hard onto a pile of grain sacks. "Listen, you little bastard, I've just saved you from a whipping, and better still, I've just saved you from being sold down the river. So what's your name?"

  The boy rubbed his ear. "You really a major?"

  "No, I'm the goddamn archangel Gabriel. Who are you?"

  "Whoever I want to be," the boy said defiantly. Starbuck guessed he was fourteen or fifteen, an urchin who had learned to live by his wits.

  "So who do you want to be?" Starbuck asked.

  The boy was surprised by the question, but he thought about it, then grinned and shrugged. "Lucifer," he said at last.

  "You can't be Lucifer," Starbuck said, shocked, "that's the devil's name!"

  "Only name I'm giving you, master," the boy insisted.

  Starbuck guessed that was true, so he settled for the satanic name. "So listen to me, Lucifer, my name's Major Starbuck, and I need a servant real bad and you just got the job. Are you hearing me?"

  "Yes, sir." There was something cheeky and mocking in the response.

  "And I need a comb, a toothbrush, field glasses, a razor that'll hold an edge, and something to eat other than hardtack and shoe leather. Are you hearing me?"

  "I got ears, master! See?" Lucifer insolently plucked back his long ringlets. "One on each side, see?"

  "So you go and get those things, Lucifer," Starbuck said. "I don't care how, and you be back here within the hour. Can you cook?"

  The boy pretended to think about the question, drawing out his silence just beyond the edge of rudeness. "Sure, I can cook."

  "Good. So get whatever you need for cooking utensils." Starbuck stood aside. "And bring me as many cigars as you can carry."

  The boy sauntered into the sunlit doorway, where he stopped, plucked his disarrayed clothing into shape, then turned to look at Starbuck. "Suppose I don't come back?" "Just make sure you aren't sent down the river, Lucifer." The boy stared at Starbuck, then nodded at the wisdom of that advice. "Are you making me into a soldier?" he asked.

  "I'm making you my cook."

  The boy grinned. "How much are you paying me, Major?" "I just saved your worthless life and that's all the wages you're getting from me."

  "You mean I'm your slave?" The boy sounded disgusted. "I mean you're a goddamn servant to the best goddamn officer in this goddamn army, so get the goddamn out of here and stop wasting my goddamn time before I goddamn kick you out."

  The boy grinned. "Do I get a goddamn gun?" "You don't need a gun," Starbuck said. "In case I have to protect myself from the Yankees who want to make me into a free man," Lucifer said, then laughed. "Can't be a soldier without a gun."

  "You ain't a soldier," Starbuck said. "You're a cook." "You said I can be whatever I want to be," the boy said, "remember?" Then he ran off.

  "That's one nigger you won't see again," Truslow said from just outside the door.

  "I don't really want to see him again." "Then you shouldn't have risked a fight for him," Truslow said. "That Captain would have murdered you." "So thank you," Starbuck said.

  "I didn't run him off to save your good looks," Truslow said sarcastically, "but because it don't do the boys no good to see their Major having the shit thumped out of him. You want a pickled oyster?" He held out a jar of the delicacies; then, as Starbuck helped himself, Truslow turned and watched as a disconsolate herd of blue-coated prisoners limped past. The men were smartly uniformed but looked utterly whipped. Some of their heads showed livid saber slashes, wounds that had cut so deep that the blood had soaked their tunics down to their waists. The Northerners limped past, going to their long imprisonment, and Truslow grinned. "Just ain't their day, is it?" he said. "Just ain't their goddamn day."

  Colonel Patrick Lassan of His French Majesty's Imperial Guard, who was officially a foreign military observer attached to the rebel army but who preferred to do his observing from the front ranks of the rebel cavalry, took a handful of his horse's mane a
nd slowly drew his long straight sword through the coarse hair to scrub the blade clean of blood. He needed to clean the steel three times before it was fit to slide back into the scabbard; then, lighting a cigar, he trotted slowly back along the path of the cavalry charge.

  A brigade of New Jersey troops had come from the defenses of Washington to evict what they believed was a band of rebel cavalry raiders from the depot at Manassas Junction. Only instead of encountering a handful of ragged cavalrymen, they had marched straight into the depot's old defensive earthworks manned by Stonewall Jackson's veteran infantry and artillery. Whipped by rifle fire and flayed by cannons, the New Jerseymen had retreated. It was then that Jackson had unleashed the cavalry, who had turned their retreat into a rout.

  Dazed Northerners still reeled blindly about the field where the horsemen had charged. The Northerners were mostly wounded in the head or shoulders, the bloody wounds of men caught in the open by cavalrymen carrying sabers. Their comrades were either lying dead where the volleys of the entrenched defenders had ambushed them, or else were struggling to safety across the rain-swollen Bull Run, where, a year before, so many of their countrymen had drowned in the defeat of the first invasion of the Confederate States of America.

  Lassan watched the rebels round up the living and loot the dead. The Confederates were joking about the ease of their victory, claiming it was further proof that a half-dozen Northerners were no match for a single Southerner, but Lassan was both more experienced and more sanguine and knew that the attack of the New Jersey brigade had been a blunder by an inexperienced general. The New Jersey officers had been so new to war that they had attacked with drawn swords, oblivious that they were thus making themselves targets for Southern marksmen. The Northern officers had led their men to horror, but Lassan knew that this slaughter of the innocents was an aberration and that soon the real fighting would begin. The North had been surprised by Jackson's march, but it would not be long before the Yankee veterans arrived to snap at the bait that hung so temptingly at Manassas Junction. For the North now had Stonewall Jackson outnumbered, they had him isolated, and, so they must surely believe, they had him doomed.

  ***

  ALL DAY THE YANKEES tried to make sense of the storm that had broken behind their backs. The first confused reports merely spoke of bushwhackers, then it was claimed the raiding party was a large band of Jeb Stuart's horsemen, and finally there were worrying reports of rebel infantry and artillery inside the defenses of Manassas Junction, but no one could tell John Pope precisely what was happening at his supply depot. He knew that no trains were coming from Manassas and that the telegraph to Washington had been cut, but neither of these events was uncommon, and for much of the day Pope regarded all reports from Manassas as mere alarmist rumors spread by panicking men frightened by a handful of Confederate cavalry raiders. John Pope was unwilling to abandon his conviction that Lee must do what John Pope had planned for Lee to do, which was to launch a grand yet suicidal attack across the swirling Rappahannock, but slowly, grudgingly, like a man refusing to admit that the heavy clouds above his parade had begun to rain, Pope began to understand that the commotion at Manassas amounted to a great deal more than a raid. It was the opening move of a campaign he had not planned to fight but to which he was now forced to react.

  "We'll be riding north tonight, you mark my words," Major Galloway observed. "Did you hear me, Adam?" But Adam Faulconer was not listening to his commanding officer. Instead he was staring at a recent copy of the Richmond Examiner that had been exchanged for a New York Times by one of the Northern pickets, then brought to John Pope's headquarters, where Major Galloway and Adam had been peremptorily summoned. The Major had scanned the ill-printed sheets, snorted in disgust at the editor's secessionist distortions, then relinquished the rag to Adam. Now Galloway was kicking his heels in the hallway and waiting while a succession of flustered aides carried maps into the parlor, where the General was trying to comprehend the day's events.

  "Did you read this?" Adam suddenly demanded of Galloway.

  Galloway did not need to be told what item in the newspaper had offended Adam. "I read it," the Major said, "but I don't necessarily believe it."

  "Five women dead!" Adam protested.

  "It's a rebel newspaper," Galloway pointed out.

  The story was headlined "Outrage in Orange County." Yankee raiders, the newspaper reported, seeking to emulate the exploits of Jeb Stuart, had crossed the Rapidan to raid Lee's forces, but had instead burned down a country tavern and killed everyone inside. There was no mention of the raid on the Faulconer Brigade, nor of the guns and wagons that Galloway's men had destroyed, but only a pitiful description of the innocent civilians dying inside the inferno that had engulfed what the newspaper described as "McComb's Hotel," presumably because a goodly number of the Examiner's readers might well approve of taverns being destroyed, even if their destroyers were the hated Yankees. Hotels, on the other hand, were not necessarily the devil's way stations, and so Liam McComb's establishment had been appropriately elevated. "The reader can only imagine the terror of the women as they beseeched their attackers to spare their lives," the Examiner trumpeted, and a paragraph later, "It seems Northern cavaliers can be brave enough when their foes are women and children, but they display nothing but clean heels and horses' tails when faced by Southern soldiers."

  "They're beating the patriotic drum," Galloway said wearily, "by telling half-truths and outright lies. There were soldiers in that so-called hotel, Adam, even the newspaper admits as much."

  "And it says here, sir, that those soldiers called on the enemy to cease fire."

  "What else would it say?" Galloway asked, and then, in grudging acknowledgment of Adam's anger, he went on, "When Billy gets back we'll ask him the truth."

  "And you think he'll tell you the truth?" Adam asked hotly.

  Galloway sighed. "I think maybe Billy has an excess of zeal, Adam, but I don't reckon Billy murdered any woman that night. I ain't saying no woman died, but only that it was an accident. Tragedy happens in wartime, Adam. It's why we're trying to end the war quickly."

  Adam threw the newspaper down in disgust. His disgust was not so much with the Examiner but with Galloway's refusal to face the truth that Billy Blythe was a man who used warfare as an excuse for criminality. Blythe even boasted about using the war as a means of enrichment, and the more Adam reflected on Blythe the angrier he became, so that he was forced to calm himself down by taking a deep breath. He listened to the angry voices coming from the General's parlor, and it struck him that war was a dreadful instrument that stirred a whole society into turmoil, bringing the worst to the top and driving the best down.

  Galloway saw the anger on the younger man's face and wondered whether Adam was too tender for war; maybe a man needed Billy Blythe's callous carapace to be a good soldier, yet it was undeniable that it had been Adam and not Blythe who had provided Galloway with his one victory. Galloway now wondered where Blythe was, for his second-in-command had never returned from his patrol into the west. Maybe he had followed the strange column to its destination and would be waiting at Galloway's farm, or maybe, more disastrously, Blythe's troop had been ambushed and cut to pieces by the rebels. Beyond the town a train whistle hooted mournfully, while further away, where the Federal army was dug in on the Rappahannock's northern bank, the thunder of cannon fire rumbled incessantly. The Southern gunners had started an artillery duel that had been raging all day, probably, Galloway now realized, as a means of diverting John Pope from what was happening behind his back.

  "When this war's over"—Adam broke his silence after a long pause—"we shall have to live in this community. We shall have to make our peace with neighbors and family, but we'll never have peace if we condone murder." The North's virtue, he wanted to add, lay in its moral rectitude, but the sentiment sounded too pompous for utterance.

  Galloway privately doubted whether any Southerner who had fought for the North could ever hope to make a home south of Washingt
on again, but he nodded anyway. "I'll make inquiries, Adam, I promise you," he said, and Adam had to be content with that promise, for suddenly the parlor door was thrown open and John Pope himself strode into the hallway.

  The Northern commander checked when he saw the waiting cavalry officers. "You're Galloway, right?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "A Manassas man, aren't I right?"

  "Yes, sir," Galloway acknowledged.

  Pope snapped his fingers. "The very man! You're to take your fellows home, Galloway. Jackson's there. One of our fellows saw the wretch in person and escaped to tell the tale. There's no doubt about it, Jackson's in Manassas, and you know what that means? It means we've got him in the bag! You understand me?" The General was suddenly exultant. He might have been reluctant to accept that his battle lay at Manassas and not across the Rappahannock, but a few hours of reflection had convinced him of the advantages of accepting Jackson's foolhardy challenge. "The damned fool has marched halfway round our army to maroon himself in Manassas, and tomorrow we're going to snap him up! My God, Jeb Stuart might make a fool of George Brinton McClellan by riding clean around his army, but no Stonewall Jackson will march clean round John Pope! No, sir! So, Galloway"—Pope jabbed a finger at the Major– "take your fellows north and find out just where the wretched man is, and report to me when you know. We're going to Bristoe tonight. If you want to put your horses on our train, then come now, hurry!" The commander strode into the street, followed by flustered aides clutching luggage and maps.

  "So where's Lee?" Galloway asked faintly, but no one responded, perhaps because no one heard him or perhaps because no one thought the question important. All that mattered was that Stonewall Jackson had marched himself into a trap and that John Pope was about to destroy him once and for all. "We've got the fool in the bag!" Pope boasted as he hurried toward the train he believed would carry him northward to victory. "Right in the bag!"