The Bloody Ground

by Bernard Cornwell

  Starbuck frowned. "Is it ringworm?" he asked, then added, "sir."

  Dennison sneered. "One year at medical college and you know it all, is that it? You mind your own damn business, Potter, and I'll mind the advice of a proper doctor."

  Lippincott looked back at the glistening sores and shuddered. "It's all right for you, Tom," he said resentfully, "but what if this Starbuck wants us to fight? Holborrow can't keep us here for ever."

  "Holborrow's a colonel," Dennison said, hiccuping again, "and Starbuck's a major, so Holborrow will get what he wants and Starbuck can go piss himself. And hell," he went on resentfully, "none of us should be serving under Starbuck. He's a goddamn Northerner and I ain't taking orders from any goddamn Northerner."

  Cartwright, a plumpish man with a petulant face and fair curly hair, nodded agreement. "You should have taken over from Maitland, Tom," he told Dennison.

  "I know that, you know that, Holborrow knows that," Dennison agreed then clumsily extracted a cigar from his pocket and lit it at the nearest candle. "And Mister Starbuck will have to learn it," he finished when the cigar was lit.

  Peel, a thin young man who seemed the best of this unprepossessing bunch, wiped peach juice from his clean-shaven chin then shook his head. "Why did they send us Starbuck?" he asked no one in particular. "They must be wanting us to fight. Otherwise why send him to us?"

  "Because he's an unwanted son of a bitch," Dennison snapped, "and they want to be rid of him."

  "He's got a reputation," Starbuck said, enjoying himself, "sir."

  Dennison's dark eyes inspected Starbuck through the flickering light of the guttering candles. "It don't take much of a reputation to impress a drunkard," he said dismissively, "and I don't recall anyone here inviting you to speak, Lieutenant."

  "Sorry, sir," Starbuck said.

  Dennison went on inspecting Starbuck and finally prodded his cigar toward him. "I will say one thing for you, Potter, you've got a pretty wife."

  "Reckon I have, sir," Starbuck agreed.

  "Pretty, pretty, pretty," Dennison said. "Pretty enough to turn a head or two. Too pretty for a lunkhead like you, don't you agree?"

  "She's sure pretty," Starbuck said, "sir."

  "And you're a drunk," Dennison observed, "and drunks ain't no good where it counts with a lady. Know what I mean, Potter? Drunks ain't up to it, are they?" Dennison, half drunk himself, laughed at his own wit. Starbuck held the Captain's eyes, but said nothing and Dennison mistook his silence for fear. "You know where your pretty wife is tonight, Potter?"

  "With her cousin Alice, sir," Starbuck said.

  "Or maybe she's dining with Colonel Holborrow?" Dennison suggested. "The Colonel sure had his hopes up. Put on his best uniform coat, shined his boots, and oiled his hair. I reckon he thought your Emily might appreciate a little entertainment. Maybe a cockfight?" The other captains laughed at this jest while Dennison sucked on his cigar. "And maybe," he went on, "your Emily's so desperate after being married to you that she'd even say yes to Holborrow. You reckon she's playing the mattress to Holborrow's quilt, Potter?" Starbuck said nothing and Dennison shook his head scornfully. "You're a weak passel of shit, Potter, you truly are. God knows what that girl sees in you, but I guess she needs her pretty little eyes fixing." He drew on his cigar again as he stared at Starbuck. "Reckon I just might call on the little lady myself. Would you object, Lieutenant Potter, if I paid my respects to your lady wife? My skin might just benefit from a lady's healing touch."

  Peel looked embarrassed, but the other two captains smiled. Both were weak men and were enjoying this chance to see an apparently weaker man being mercilessly bullied. Starbuck leaned back in his chair, making it creak. "What do you reckon your chances are with her, sir?" he asked Dennison.

  Dennison seemed surprised that the question had been asked, but he pretended to consider it anyway. "A good-looking girl like that? And a handsome fellow like me? Oh, pretty fair chances, I'd say, Lieutenant."

  "Out of five," Starbuck insisted, "what do you reckon, sir? Two chances out of five? One chance? Three?"

  Dennison frowned, not entirely sure whether the conversation was going entirely to his liking. "Pretty fair, I'd say," he repeated.

  Starbuck shook his head ruefully. "Hell, sir, I know Emily, and Emily never did take overmuch to poxed sons of bitches like yourself, sir, begging your pardon, sir, and I can't reckon you've got more than one chance in five. Pretty good odds, though, seeing as how pretty she is, but how lucky are you? That's the question, sir, ain't it?" He smiled at Dennison who was not smiling back. None of the captains was smiling; instead they were watching Starbuck, who had drawn out his Adams revolver while he was talking and had used a fingernail to lever four of the five percussion caps off the gun's cones. He tipped the caps onto an empty plate then looked up at Dennison through the candle flames. "How lucky are you, sir?" Starbuck asked and leveled the revolver's blued barrel at Dennison's scared eyes as he thumbed the hammer to half cock so that the cylinder was free to turn. He spun the cylinder and not one of the captains moved as the gun sounded a series of tiny clicks that only stopped when the cylinder came to rest. Starbuck eased the cock all the way back. "One chance in five, Captain, sir," he said, "so let's see how good those odds are." He pulled the trigger and Dennison gave a tiny jump of alarm as the hammer fell onto an empty cone. "You didn't make it that time," Starbuck said, "sir."

  "Potter!" Dennison shouted, then stilled his protest as Starbuck half cocked the gun and spun the cylinder a second time..

  "Of course a gentleman like you wouldn't be content with a lady's first refusal, would you, sir?" Starbuck asked and eased the hammer all the way back once more. It made two tiny clicks as the pawl engaged. He could see that the cone under the hammer was empty, but none of the others around the table knew which of the chambers was primed.

  They would be able to see the bullets nestled inside the lower chambers, but not the cones at the cylinder's rear. Starbuck smiled. "So my Emily's refused you once, Captain," he said, "but you'd surely ask her a second time, wouldn't you? I mean you don't have the manners of a goat, so you're sure to ask her a second time." He straightened his arm as though bracing himself for the gun's recoil.

  Cartwright fumbled for his own revolver, but Starbuck pointed the gun momentarily at the frightened face and Cartwright immediately subsided. Starbuck shifted the gun back to Dennison. "Second chance coming up, Captain, sir. Dear Emily, please lay yourself down and play mattress for me. Let's see how lucky you are the second time of asking, Captain." He pulled the trigger and once again Dennison shuddered as the dead click echoed loud in the room. Starbuck immediately spun the chamber a third time and straightened his arm.

  "You're mad, Potter," Dennison said, suddenly seeming very sober.

  "I'm sober too," Starbuck said and reached out with his left hand for Cartwright's brandy, which he drank in one go. "I'll be madder still when I'm drunk," he said, "so how many chances do you reckon you've got with my wife, Captain? Are you going to ask her three times for the favor of a ride?"

  Dennison considered reaching for his own revolver, but it was buttoned in its holster and he knew he would have no chance to free the weapon before a bullet slashed through the candle flames and shattered his skull. He licked his lips. "I guess I don't have any chance, Lieutenant," he said.

  "I guess you don't, Captain," Starbuck said, "and I guess you owe me an apology too."

  Dennison grimaced at the thought. "You can go to hell, Potter," he said defiantly.

  Starbuck pulled the trigger, then immediately half cocked the gun and spun the cylinder a fourth time. When it came to rest he pulled the cock back and this time he could see the single percussion cap was waiting under the hammer. He smiled. "Three times lucky, Captain, but how good is your luck? I'm waiting for that apology."

  "I apologize, Lieutenant Potter," Dennison managed to say.

  Starbuck eased the hammer down, thrust the Adams into its holster, and stood up. "Never start what you can
't finish, Captain," he said, then leaned forward and picked up the half full bottle of brandy. "Reckon I can finish this, though, but in privacy. You all have a nice conversation now." He walked out of the room.

  It was a humid, rainy night in Washington with no wind to take away the thick stench of the garbage dump that lay at the southern end of Seventeenth Street just a few yards from the hospital tents pitched on the ellipse. The sewage in Murder Bay added its own fetid smell to the air above the northern capital that was more than usually crowded with soldiers. They were men who should have been marching in John Pope's army toward Richmond, but instead they had been whipped backward by Robert Lee from the banks of the Bull Run and now they filled the tented camps inside Washington's ring of forts and thronged the capital's taverns.

  One young cavalry officer hurried along Pennsylvania Avenue to the corner of Seventeenth Street, where he took off his wide-brimmed cavalryman's hat to peer up at the street lamp. At every corner in Washington the lamps had their street's name painted in black on the glass covering the mantel, an intelligent device, and once the young man was sure he was in the right place he walked up

  Seventeenth until he reached a three-story brick building that was thickly surrounded by trees. Gas lights showed where the building's narrow end abutted onto the sidewalk and where a flight of steps led to a door guarded by two blue-coated sentries, though when the young cavalryman presented himself at that door he was told to go back to the garden entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue. He retraced his steps and discovered a driveway that led through night-blackened trees to an imposing portico of six massive columns that protected and dwarfed a small doorway guarded by a quartet of blue-coated infantrymen. Gas lamps hissed yellow under the portico, lighting a carriage that waited for its owner.

  A clock struck nine as the cavalryman was granted entrance into the hallway where yet another guard demanded his name. "Faulconer," the young man replied. "Captain Adam Faulconer." The guard consulted a list, ticked off Adam's name, then told him to put his scab-barded saber into an umbrella stand and afterward climb one flight of stairs, turn left at the stairhead, and walk to the very end of the corridor where he would find a door marked with the name of the man who had summoned him. The guard rattled off these directions, then went back to his copy of The Evening Star, which heralded Major General George McClellan's reappointment as commander of the Northern army.

  Adam Faulconer mounted the stairs and walked down the long, gloomy corridor. This building was the War Department, the very center of the North's military effort, yet there was little sense of urgency in its darkened passages where Adam's footfalls echoed as forlornly as the steps of a man pacing a deserted sepulcher. Most of the fanlights above the office doors were dark, though one light showed at the corridor's far end and in its small glow

  Adam saw the name "Col. Thorne" painted in white letters against one of the door's black panels. He knocked and was summoned inside.

  He found himself in a surprisingly large room with two tall windows that were shut against both the rain and the moths that beat against the panes. The walls of the room were covered with maps, and one large desk stood beside one window, while two smaller clerks' tables occupied the rest of the room. All the desks were covered in papers that had flowed onto the chairs and hardwood floor. Two cast-iron gasoliers hissed beneath the high ceiling, while a longcase clock ticked hollowly between the windows. The room's only occupant was a tall uniformed man who stood with a ramrod-straight back as he stared at the scatter of lit windows showing above the trees in the White House. "Faulconer, yes?" the man asked without turning from the window.

  "Yes, sir."

  "My name is Thorne. Lyman Thorne. Colonel Lyman Thorne." Thorne had a coarse, almost angry voice, very deep toned, and when he abruptly turned toward Adam he revealed a face that matched the voice perfectly, for Thorne was a gaunt, white-bearded man with fierce eyes and with deep lines carved into his sun-darkened cheeks. His most prominent feature was his white hair, which grew thick, long, and wildly enough to make Thorne appear like a bearded version of Andrew Jackson. The Colonel carried himself straight and proud, though when he moved he favored his right leg, which suggested that his other might have been injured. He gazed at Adam for an instant, then turned back to the window. "There have been celebrations in Washington these last two days," he growled.

  "Yes, sir."

  "McClellan is back! John Pope is dismissed and the Young Napoleon has been given charge of the army again, and thus Washington celebrates." Thorne spat into a brass cuspidor, then glared at Adam. "Do you celebrate this appointment, young Faulconer?"

  Adam was taken aback by the question. "I haven't considered it, sir," he eventually admitted lamely.

  "I do not celebrate, young Faulconer. My God, I do not. We gave McClellan a hundred thousand men, shipped him to the Virginia peninsula, and ordered him to take Richmond. And what did he do? He took counsel of his fears. He havered, that's what he did, he havered! He dithered while the rebels scraped together a handful of rapscallion soldiers and trounced him straight back out to sea. Yet now the ditherer is to be our commanding general again, and do you know why, young Faulconer?" This question, like the rest of Thorne's words, was directed at the windowpane rather than toward Adam.

  "No, sir," Adam answered.

  "Because there is no one else. Because in all this great republic we cannot find one better general than little George McClellan. Not one!" Thorne spat into the cuspidor again. "I admit he can train troops, but he doesn't know how to fight them. Doesn't know how to lead. The man's a humbug!" Thorne snarled the last word, then abruptly turned and glared at Adam once more. "Somewhere in the Republic there's a man who can beat Robert Lee, but on my soul we haven't found him yet. But we will, Faulconer, we will, and when we do we shall pulverize the so-called Confederacy into bone and blood. Bone and blood. But until we do find that man then it is our duty to mollycoddle the Young Napoleon. We have to pat him and soothe him, we have to tell him not to be frightened of ghosts and not to imagine enemies where there are none. In short, we have to wean him off Pinkerton. Do you know Pinkerton?"

  "I know of him, sir."

  "The less you know, the better," Thorne growled. "Pinkerton isn't even a soldier! But McClellan swears by him, and even as you and I stand here talking Pinkerton is being given command of all the army's intelligence once more. He had that same command in the peninsula, and what did he do with it? He summoned rebel soldiers out of thin air. He told the Young Napoleon that there were hundreds of thousands of men where there was nothing but a huddle of hungry rogues. Pinkerton will do the same again, Faulconer, mark my words. Within one week we shall be told that Lee has two hundred thousand men and that little McClellan dare not attack for fear of being beat. We shall haver again, we shall dither, and while we piss our collective pants Robert Lee will attack. Do you wonder that Europe laughs at us?"

  "Do they, sir?" Adam, confused by the tirade, asked the question feebly.

  "Oh they do, Faulconer, they do. American pride is being humbled by a rebellion we seem powerless to defeat and Europe takes pleasure in that. They pretend not, but if Robert Lee destroys McClellan then I daresay we'll see European troops in the South. The French would love to join in, but they won't jump till Britain decides, and Britain won't join the game until they know which side is winning. Which is why Lee will attack us, Faulconer. Look!" Thorne strode to a map of the eastern seaboard that hung behind his desk. "We've made three efforts to capture Richmond. Three! And all have been defeated. Lee now controls all of northern Virginia, so what's to stop him coming further north? Here, Faulconer, into Maryland, and maybe farther north still, into Pennsylvania." The Colonel demonstrated these threats by sweeping his hand across the map. "He'll grab our good harvest for his starving men and beat up little McClellan and so demonstrate to the Europeans that we can't even defend our own territory. By next spring, Faulconer, there could be a hundred thousand European troops marching for the Confederacy, and what
will we do then? Treat for peace, of course, and so the Republic of Washington and Jefferson will have lasted a mere eighty years and North America, Faulconer, will be fatally weakened for the next eighty years." Thorne leaned over his desk and glared at Adam. "Lee cannot be allowed to win, Faulconer. He cannot," the Colonel said in a grave voice, almost as if he were charging Adam with the personal responsibility for saving the Republic.

  "No, sir," Adam said, and felt it was a weak response, but he was being swamped by the sheer force of Lyman Thorne's personality. Sweat trickled down Adam's face. The night was oppressive, and the rain had not diminished the humidity at all, while the gasoliers' flaring mantles only added to the room's stifling heat.

  The Colonel waved Adam toward a chair, then sat down himself and lit a cigar from a gas flame that burned from a tabletop gas jet connected to a long rubber extension cord that snaked down from the nearest gasolier. Once the cigar was lit he pushed the gas jet and papers aside, then leaned back and rubbed his face as though he was suddenly tired. "You're a scalawag, right?" he demanded.

  "Yes, sir," Adam said. A scalawag was a Southerner who fought for the North, the opposite of a Copperhead.

  "And three months ago," Thorne went on, "you were a rebel on Johnston's staff, am I right?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And back then, Faulconer, our Young Napoleon was marching on Richmond. No, that is the wrong verb. He was crawling toward Richmond, while Detective Pinkerton," Thorne mocked the description with his tone, "was convincing little George that the rebels had two hundred thousand troops. You sent information that would have corrected that misapprehension, only the news never got through. Some clever bastard on the other side replaced your dispatch with one of their own devising and so Richmond survived. I almost stopped that clever bastard, Faulconer, indeed I broke a leg trying, but I failed." He grimaced, then sucked on his cigar. The smoke hung in the room like the lingering skein of a rifle shot.