Copperhead

by Bernard Cornwell

  “They’re well,” Bird answered curtly.

  “Let’s hope it is well, Bird. Good and well! The General’s not sure it should be commanded by a major, you understand me?” Swynyard held his face close to Bird’s as he spoke. “So you and I had better get along, Major, if you want my good opinion to help sway the General’s mind.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Bird asked quietly.

  “I don’t make suggestions, Major. I ain’t clever enough to make suggestions. I’m just a blunt soldier who was weaned on the gun’s black muzzle.” Swynyard breathed a gust of hoarse laughter over Bird, then dragged the woolen gown tight around his thin chest before going unsteadily back to his chair. “All that matters to me,” Swynyard continued after he had sat down, “is that the Legion is ready to fight and knows exactly why it is fighting. Do the men know that, Bird?”

  “I’m sure they do,” Bird said.

  “You don’t sound sure, Bird. You don’t sound sure at all.” Swynyard paused to take some more whiskey. “Soldiers are simple folk,” he went on. “There ain’t nothing complicated about a soldier, Bird. Point a soldier in the right direction, boot his backside, and tell him to kill, that’s all a soldier needs, Bird! Soldiers are nothing more than white niggers, that’s what I say, but even a nigger does better if he knows why he’s doing it. Which is why, tonight, you will distribute these booklets to the men. I want them to know the nobility of the cause.” Swynyard tried to lift a wooden box filled with pamphlets onto the table, but the box’s weight defeated him, and so he used his foot to nudge the crate toward Bird instead.

  Bird stooped for one of the booklets, then read the title page aloud. “‘The Nigger Question,’ by John Daniels.” Bird’s voice betrayed his distaste for John Daniels’s virulent opinions. “You really want me to give this to the men?” he asked.

  “You must!” Swynyard declared. “Johnny’s my cousin, you see, and he sold those pamphlets to General Faulconer just so the men would read them.”

  “How generous of my brother-in-law,” Bird said acidly.

  “And how useful these pamphlets will be.” Starbuck spoke for the first time since entering the tent.

  Swynyard stared suspiciously at Starbuck. “Useful?” he asked in a dangerous voice after a long silence.

  “Fires are terrible hard things to get started in this wet weather,” Starbuck said blandly.

  The tic in Swynyard’s cheek began to flutter. He said nothing for a long while, but just fidgeted with his bone-handled knife as he contemplated the young officer.

  “Daniels is your cousin?” Bird broke the silence suddenly.

  “Yes.” Swynyard took his eyes off Starbuck and laid the knife back on the table.

  “And your cousin, I presume,” Bird said slowly as the light dawned on him, “wrote the editorial encouraging the army to promote Washington Faulconer?”

  “What of it?” Swynyard asked.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Bird said, though he could hardly hide his amusement as he realized just what price his brother-in-law had paid for Daniels’s support.

  “You find something comical?” Swynyard demanded malevolently.

  Bird sighed. “Colonel,” he said, “we have marched a long way today, and I possess neither the energy nor the desire to stand here and explain my amusements. Is there anything else you want of me? Or might Captain Starbuck and I get some sleep?”

  Swynyard stared at Byrd for a few seconds, then pointed with his ravaged left hand at the tent’s flap. “Go, Major. Send a man for the pamphlets. You stay here.” The last three words were directed at Starbuck.

  Bird did not move. “If you have business with one of my officers, Colonel,” he said to Swynyard, “then you have business with me. I shall stay.”

  Swynyard shrugged as if to suggest he did not care if Bird stayed or went, then looked at Starbuck again. “How is your father, Starbuck?” Swynyard asked suddenly. “Still preaching brotherly love for the niggers, is he? Still expecting us to marry our daughters to the sons of Africa?” He paused for Starbuck’s reply. One of the lamps flared suddenly, then its flame settled again. The sound of men’s singing came from the rainy darkness. “Well, Starbuck?” Swynyard demanded. “Is your father still wanting us to give our daughters to the niggers?”

  “My father never preached marriage between the races,” Starbuck said mildly. He had no love for his father, but in the face of Swynyard’s mockery he felt driven to defend the Reverend Elial.

  The tic in Swynyard’s cheek quivered, then he shot out his wounded left hand and pointed at the two stars that decorated the collar of his brand-new uniform jacket that hung from a nail hammered into one of the tent poles. “What does that insignia mean, Starbuck?”

  “It means, I believe, that the jacket belongs to a lieutenant colonel,” Starbuck said.

  “It belongs to me!” Swynyard said in a rising voice.

  Starbuck shrugged as though the jacket’s ownership were of small consequence.

  “And I outrank you!” Swynyard screamed the words, spewing a mist of spittle and tobacco juice across the remains of his cabbage and potato, “So you will call me ‘sir’! Won’t you!”

  Starbuck still said nothing. The Colonel glared at him, his maimed hand scratching at the table’s edge. The silence stretched. The singing in the near darkness had checked when the men first heard the Colonel screaming at Starbuck, and Major Bird guessed that half the Legion was now listening to the confrontation that was taking place inside the yellow-lit tent.

  Colonel Swynyard was oblivious of that silent, unseen audience. He was losing his temper, goaded to the loss by the look of amusement on Starbuck’s handsome face. The Colonel suddenly seized a short-handled riding whip that lay on his camp bed and snapped its woven thong toward the Bostonian. “You’re a northern bastard, Starbuck, a nigger-loving piece of black Republican trash, and there’s no place for you in this brigade.” The Colonel lurched to his feet and cracked the whip again, this time flicking the tip just inches from Starbuck’s cheek. “You are hereby dismissed from the regiment, now and forever, you hear me? Those are the Brigadier General’s orders, signed, sealed, and entrusted to me.” Swynyard used his left hand to fumble through the papers on his folding table, but the dismissal order eluded him and he abandoned the search. “You will remove yourself now, this minute!” Swynyard flicked the whip’s lash toward Starbuck a third time. “Get out!”

  Starbuck caught the lash. He had planned to do nothing but ward the blow off, but as the whip’s thong curled around his hand a more devilish course suggested itself. He half smiled, then tugged, thus pulling Swynyard off-balance. The Colonel clawed at the table for support, then Starbuck pulled harder and the folding table collapsed beneath Swynyard’s weight. The Colonel sprawled on the floor in a splintering mess of broken wood and spilt cabbage. “Guard!” Swynyard screamed as he fell. “Guard!”

  A bemused Sergeant Tolliver of A Company pushed his head through the tent’s flaps. “Sir?” He looked down at the Colonel, who was lying amid the wreckage of the broken camp table, then shot a despairing look at Bird. “What do I do, sir?” Tolliver asked Bird.

  Swynyard struggled to his feet. “You will place this piece of northern scum under arrest,” he shouted at Tolliver, “and you will hand him to the provost marshals and order him sent to Richmond, there to be interred as an enemy of the state. You understand me?”

  Tolliver hesitated.

  “Do you understand?” Swynyard screamed at the hapless Sergeant.

  “He understands you,” Major Bird intervened.

  “You are dismissed from the army,” Swynyard shouted at Starbuck. “Your commission is ended, you are finished, you are dismissed!” Spittle landed on Starbuck’s face. The Colonel’s self-control was gone utterly, eroded by alcohol and Starbuck’s subtle goading. He lurched toward Starbuck, fumbling suddenly at the strap of his holster, which hung with his jacket on the tent pole. “You are under arrest!” Swynyard hiccupped, still trying to pull
the revolver free.

  Bird took hold of Starbuck’s elbow and pulled him out of the tent before any murder took place. “I think he’s mad,” Bird said as he hurried Starbuck away from Swynyard’s tent. “Stark, plain mad. Addled. Demented. Moon-touched.” Bird stopped a safe distance from the tent and stared back as though he could not really credit what he had just witnessed. “He’s drunk too, of course. But he lost his wits long before he ever drowned his tonsils in rotgut. My God, Nate, and he’s our new second-in-command?”

  “Sir?” Sergeant Tolliver had followed the two officers out of the Colonel’s tent. “Am I to arrest Mr. Starbuck, sir?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Dan. I’ll look after Starbuck. You just forget about all this.” Bird shook his head. “Crazed!” he said in wonderment. There was no movement in the Colonel’s tent now, just the glow of the lamplit canvas showing through the rain. “I’m sorry, Nate,” Bird said. He still held Daniels’s pamphlet, which he now tore into scraps.

  Starbuck swore bitterly. He had expected Faulconer’s revenge, but somehow he had still hoped he could stay with K Company. That was his home now, the place where he had friends and purpose. Without K Company he was a lost soul. “I should have stayed with Shanks.” Starbuck said. “Shanks” was Nathan Evans, whose depleted brigade had long gone south.

  Bird gave Starbuck a cigar, then plucked a brand from a nearby fire to light the tobacco. “We have to get you out of here, Nate, before that lunatic decides to have you arrested properly.”

  “Arrested for what?” Starbuck asked bitterly.

  “For being an enemy of the state,” Bird spoke softly. “You heard what the befuddled idiot said. I suspect Faulconer put that idea into his head.”

  Starbuck stared at the Colonel’s tent. “Where the hell did Faulconer find that son of a bitch?”

  “From John Daniels, of course,” Bird said. “My brother-in-law has just bought himself a brigade, and the price of it was whatever Daniels demanded. Which presumably included a job for that drunken maniac.”

  “I’m sorry, Pecker,” Starbuck said, ashamed of his self-pity. “The bastard threatened you too.”

  “I shall survive,” Bird said confidently. He knew well enough that Washington Faulconer despised him and would like to demote him, but Thaddeus Bird also knew he had the Legion’s respect and affection and just how hard it would be for his brother-in-law to fight that attachment. Starbuck was a much easier target for Faulconer. “It’s more important, Nate,” Bird went on, “to get you safely away from here. What do you want to do?”

  “Do?” Starbuck echoed. “What can I do?”

  “You want to go back north?”

  “Christ, no.” Going back north meant facing his father’s bitter wrath. It meant betraying his friends in the Legion. It meant crawling home as a penitent failure, and his pride would not let him do it.

  “Then go to Richmond,” Bird said, “find Adam. He’ll help you.”

  “His father won’t let him help me.” Starbuck sounded bitter again. He had heard nothing from Adam all winter, and he suspected his erstwhile friend had abandoned him.

  “Adam can be his own man,” Bird said. “Go tonight, Nate. Murphy will take you to Fredericksburg and you can take a train from there. I’ll give you a furlough pass that should see you through to Richmond.” No one could travel in the Confederacy without a passport issued by the authorities, but soldiers were allowed to go on leave using furlough slips issued by their regiments.

  The news of Starbuck’s dismissal had spread like gunsmoke through the Legion. K Company wanted to protest, but Bird persuaded them that this argument could not be won by appealing to Swynyard’s sense of justice. Ned Hunt, who regarded himself as the company’s jester, wanted to saw through the spokes of Swynyard’s wagon or else burn down the Colonel’s tent, but Bird would entertain no such nonsense and even placed a guard over the Colonel’s tent to stop it. The important thing, Bird maintained, was to get Starbuck safely away from Swynyard’s malice.

  “So what will you do?” Truslow asked Starbuck while Captain Murphy readied two horses.

  “See if Adam can help.”

  “In Richmond? So you’ll see my Sally?” Truslow asked.

  “I hope so.” Starbuck, despite the night’s disasters, felt a small pang of anticipation.

  “Tell her I think about her,” Truslow said gruffly. It was as close to an admission of love and forgiveness as he was able to make. “If she lacks for anything,” Truslow went on, then shrugged because he doubted that his daughter could possibly lack for money. “I wish,” Truslow began, then faltered into silence again, and Starbuck supposed that the Sergeant was wishing that his only child was not earning her living as a whore, but then Truslow surprised him. “You and she,” he explained, “I’d like to see that.”

  Starbuck blushed in the dark. “Your Sally needs someone with better prospects than me,” he said.

  “She could do a lot worse,” Truslow said loyally.

  “I don’t see how.” Starbuck let the self-pity well up inside him again. “I’m homeless, penniless, jobless.”

  “But not for long,” Truslow said. “You won’t let that son of a bitch Faulconer beat you.”

  “No,” Starbuck said, though in truth he suspected he was already beaten. He was a stranger in a strange land, and his enemies were wealthy, influential, and implacable.

  “So you’ll be back,” Truslow said. “Till then I’ll keep the company good and smart.”

  “You don’t need me to do that,” Starbuck said. “You never needed me to do that.”

  “You’re a fool, boy,” Truslow growled. “I ain’t got your brains, and you’re a fool not to see that.” A curb chain jingled as Captain Murphy led two saddled horses through the rain. “Say your farewells,” Truslow ordered Starbuck, “and promise the boys you’ll come back. They’ll need that promise.”

  Starbuck said his farewells. The men of the company possessed nothing but what they could carry, yet still they tried to press gifts on him. George Finney had plundered a silver Phi Beta Kappa key from a dead officer’s watch chain at Ball’s Bluff and wanted Starbuck to take the seal. Starbuck refused, just as he would not accept an offer of cash from Sergeant Hutton’s squad. He just took his furlough pass and then strapped his blanket onto the back of his borrowed saddle. He pulled Oliver Wendell Holmes’s scarlet-lined greatcoat around his shoulders and hauled himself onto the horse’s back. “I’ll see you all soon,” he said as though he believed it and then rammed back his heels so that none of the Legion would see how close he was to despair.

  Starbuck and Murphy rode into the night, passing Colonel Swynyard’s darkened tent. Nothing moved there. The Colonel’s three slaves crouched under the wagon and watched the horsemen ride into the black rain. The hooves faded into the darkness.

  It was still raining when morning came. Bird had slept badly and felt older than his years as he crawled out of his turf-covered shelter and tried to warm his bones beside a feeble fire. He noted that Colonel Swynyard’s tent had already been struck and that the three slaves were roping the load onto the Colonel’s wagon ready for the day’s journey to Fredericksburg. A half mile north, on the far ridge, two Yankee horsemen were watching the rebel encampment through the rain. Hiram Ketley, Bird’s half-witted but willing orderly, brought the Major a mug of coffee adulterated with dried sweet potato, then tried to agitate the fire into stronger life. A handful of officers shivered about the miserable fire, and it was when those officers looked past Bird with alarm on their faces that he was aware of someone approaching him. He turned and saw the ragged beard and bloodshot eyes of Colonel Swynyard, who, astonishingly, smiled a yellow smile and held out a hand for Bird to shake. “Morning! You’re Bird, yes?” Swynyard asked in an energetic voice.

  Bird nodded cautiously but did not accept the hand.

  “Swynyard.” The Colonel appeared not to recognize Bird. “Meant to talk to you last night, sorry I was unwell.” He took his hand back awkwardl
y.

  “We did talk,” Bird said.

  “We talked?” Swynyard frowned.

  “Last night. In your tent.”

  “Malaria, that’s the trouble,” Swynyard explained. The tic throbbed in his cheek, making his right eye appear to wink constantly. The Colonel’s beard was damp from washing, his uniform was brushed, and his hair had been slicked down with oil. He had retrieved his whip and now held it in his maimed hand. “The fever comes and goes, Bird,” he explained, “but it generally strikes at night. Knocks me flat, you see. So if we did talk last night, then I won’t remember a thing. Fever, see?”

  “You were feverish, yes,” Bird said faintly.

  “But I’m all right now. Nothing like some sleep to drive off the fever. I’m Washington Faulconer’s second-in-command.”

  “I know,” Bird said.

  “And you’re now in his brigade,” Swynyard went on blithely. “There’s you, some ragamuffins from Arkansas, the 12th and 13th Florida Regiments, and the 65th Virginia. General Faulconer sent me to introduce myself and to give you the new orders. You won’t be manning the Fredericksburg defenses, but joining the rest of the brigade farther west. It’s all written down.” He gave Bird a folded piece of paper that had been sealed with Washington Faulconer’s signet ring.

  Bird tore open the paper and saw it was a simple movement order directing the Legion to march from Fredericksburg to Locust Grove.

  “We’re in reserve there,” Swynyard said. “With any luck we’ll have a few days to pull ourselves into shape, but there is one delicate matter we have to deal with first.” He took Bird’s elbow and moved the startled Major away from the inquisitive ears of the other officers. “Something very delicate,” Swynyard said.