Rebel

by Bernard Cornwell

  Sally examined the effect of the small gold ring on her finger, then laughed. “Does this mean we’re married?”

  “It means you should look respectable for a landlord,” he said, then took her right hand in his and tugged the silver ring over her knuckle.

  “Careful!” Sally tried to pull her hand away, but Ridley kept firm hold.

  “I’m going to have it cleaned,” he said. He placed the silver ring in the wash-leather bag. “I’ll take good care of it,” he promised, though in truth he had decided that the antique ring would make a good keepsake to remember Sally by. “Now come!” He glanced at the big clock above the carving table. “We have to meet my brother.”

  They walked through the spring sunshine and folks thought what a fine couple they made; a handsome southern officer and his beautiful, graceful girl who, flushed with wine, laughed beside her man. Sally even danced a few steps as she imagined what happiness these next months would bring. She would be a respectable lady, with her own slaves and living in luxury. When Sally had been small her mother would sometimes talk about the fine houses of the wealthy and how they had candles in every room and feather mattresses on every bed and ate off golden plates and never knew what the cold was. Their water did not come from a stream that froze in winter, their beds had no lice and their hands were never chipped and sore like Sally’s. Now Sally would live just like that. “Robert said I’d be happy if I just stopped dreaming,” she confided in her lover, “and if he could see me now!”

  “Did you tell him you were coming here?” Ridley asked.

  “Of course not! I’m not wanting to see him ever again. Not till I’m a great lady and then I’ll let him open my carriage door and he won’t even know who I am.” She laughed at that fine revenge on her previous poverty. “Is that your brother’s coach?”

  They had come to the corner of Cary Street and Twenty-fourth. It was a grim quarter of town, close to the York River Railroad that lay between the cobbled street and the rocky riverbank. Ridley had explained to Sally that his brother did business in this part of town, which is why they needed to walk through its streets. Now, on the point of ridding himself of the girl, he felt a pang of remorse. Her company this afternoon had been light and easy, her laughter unforced, and the glances of other men in the streets had been flatteringly jealous. Then Ridley thought of her ambition that was so unrealistic and of the threat she represented, and so he hardened his heart to the inevitable. “That’s the carriage,” he said, guessing that the big, ugly, close-curtained coach was indeed Delaney’s vehicle, though there was no sign of Delaney himself. Instead there was a massive Negro on the box and two gaunt sway-backed horses in the dilapidated harness.

  The Negro looked down at Ridley. “You Mister Ridley, Massa?”

  “Yes.” Ridley felt Sally’s hands clutch fearfully at his arm.

  The Negro knocked twice on the coach roof and the curtained door opened to reveal a thin, middle-aged white man with a gap-toothed grin, dirty hair and a walleye. “Mister Ridley. And you must be Miss Truslow?”

  “Yes.” Sally was nervous.

  “Welcome, ma’am. Welcome.” The ugly creature leaped down from the carriage to offer Sally a deep bow. “My name is Tillotson, ma’am, Joseph Tillotson, and I am your servant, ma’am, your most obedient servant.” He looked up at her from his bowed position, blinked in astonishment at her beauty and seemed to leer in anticipation as he swept his hand in an elaborate gesture inviting her into the coach’s interior. “Be so pleased, dear lady, as to step inside the coach and I shall wave my wand and turn it into a golden carriage fit for a princess as lovely as you.” He snuffled with laughter at his own wit.

  “This ain’t your brother, Ethan.” Sally was suspicious and apprehensive.

  “We’re going to meet him, ma’am, indeed we are,” Tillotson said and offered her his grotesque welcoming bow again.

  “You’re coming, Ethan?” Sally still clung to her lover’s arm.

  “Of course I am,” Ridley reassured Sally, then persuaded her to walk toward the coach as Tillotson folded down a set of steps covered in threadbare carpet.

  “Give me your parasol, ma’am, and allow me.” Tillotson took Sally’s parasol, then handed her up into the dark, musty interior. The coach’s windows were covered by leather-blinds that had been unrolled from their spindles and nailed to the bottom sill. Ridley stepped toward the coach, uncertain what to do next, but Tillotson pushed him unceremoniously away, folded up the carriage steps then leapt nimbly into the coach’s dark interior. “Got her, Tommy!” he shouted to the driver. “Go on!” He tossed the brand-new parasol into the gutter and slammed the door.

  “Ethan!” Sally’s voice called in pathetic protest as the big coach lurched forward. Then she called again, but louder. “Ethan!”

  There was the sound of a slap, a scream, then silence. The Negro coachman cracked his whip, the carriage’s iron-rimmed wheels screeched on the cobbles as the heavy vehicle slewed around the corner, and thus Ridley was rid of his succuba. He felt remorse, for her voice had been so pathetic in that last desperate cry, but he knew there had been no other alternative. Indeed, he told himself, the whole wretched business had been Sally’s own fault, for she had made herself into a nuisance, good for one thing only, but now she was gone and he told himself he was well shot of her.

  He still held Sally’s heavy bag. He pulled it open to find there was no gun inside, just the one hundred silver dollars he had originally paid to bribe her into silence. Each coin had been separately wrapped in a torn sheet of blue sugar paper, as if each was peculiarly special, and for a moment Ridley’s heart was touched by that childish tribute, but then he realized that Sally had probably wrapped the coins to stop them chinking and thus attracting predatory attention. Whatever, the coins were now his again, which only seemed right. He tucked the bag under his arm, pulled on his gloves, tipped his uniform hat over his eyes, tugged his saber to a jaunty angle, and sauntered slowly home.

  “It seems”—Anna reached across the table for a bread roll that she broke in two, then dipped one-half in gravy as a titbit for her noisy spaniels—“that Truslow has a daughter, and the daughter got herself pregnant, so he married her off to some poor boy and now the daughter’s run away and the boy’s in the Legion, and Truslow is angry.”

  “Damned angry,” her father said in high amusement. “Hit the boy.”

  “Poor Truslow,” Adam said.

  “Poor boy.” Anna dropped another morsel of bread among her yapping, scrapping dogs. “Truslow broke his cheekbone, isn’t that right, Papa?”

  “Broke it badly,” Faulconer confirmed. The Colonel had managed to repair the ravages imposed on him by the abortive cavalry raid. He had bathed, trimmed his beard and donned uniform so that he once again looked like a dashing soldier. “The boy’s called Robert Decker,” the Colonel went on, “the son of Tom Decker, you remember him, Adam? Wretched man. He’s dead now, it seems, and good riddance.”

  “I remember Sally Truslow,” Adam said idly. “A sullen thing, but real pretty.”

  “Did you see the girl when you were up at Truslow’s place, Nate?” Faulconer asked. The Colonel was trying very hard to be pleasant toward Starbuck to show that the morose disregard of the last few days was over and forgotten.

  “I don’t remember noticing her, sir.”

  “You would have noticed her,” Adam said. “She’s kind of noticeable.”

  “Well, she’s bolted,” Faulconer said, “and Decker doesn’t know where she’s run to, and Truslow’s mad at him. Seems he gave the happy couple his patch of land and they’ve just left it in Roper’s care. You remember Roper, Adam? He’s living up there now. Man’s a rogue, but he knew how to manage horses.”

  “I don’t suppose they were ever properly married.” Anna found the plight of the unhappy couple far more interesting than the fate of a freed slave.

  “I doubt it very much,” her father agreed. “It would have been one quick jump over the broomstick, if the
y were even that formal.”

  Starbuck stared down at his plate. Dinner had been a dish of boiled bacon, dried corn pie and fried potatoes. Washington Faulconer, his two children and Adam had been the only diners, and Truslow’s attack on Robert Decker the only topic of conversation. “Where can the poor girl have gone?” Adam asked.

  “Richmond,” his father said instantly. “All the bad girls go to Richmond. She’ll find herself work,” he said, glancing at Anna and making a rueful face, “of a kind.”

  Anna blushed, while Starbuck was thinking that Ethan Ridley was also in Richmond. “What happens to Truslow?” he asked instead.

  “Nothing. He’s already full of remorse. I put him in the guard tent and threatened him with ten kinds of hell.” In fact Major Pelham had arrested Truslow and done all the threatening, but Faulconer did not think the distinction important. The Colonel lit a cigar. “Now Truslow’s insisting that Decker join his company and I suppose I’d better let him. It seems the boy’s got relatives in the company. Can’t you keep those dogs quiet, Anna?”

  “No, Father.” She dropped another scrap of gravy-soaked bread into the noisy free-for-all. “And speaking of jumping over broomsticks,” she said, “you all missed Pecker’s wedding.”

  “That was a very proper wedding, surely?” her brother said sternly.

  “Of course it was. Moss officiated very damply and Priscilla looked almost pretty.” Anna smiled. “Uncle Pecker glowered at us all, it poured with rain and Mother sent six bottles of wine as a present.”

  “Our best wine,” Washington Faulconer said stonily.

  “How would Mother have known?” Anna asked innocently.

  “She knew,” Faulconer said.

  “And the schoolchildren sang a very feeble song,” Anna went on. “When I get married, Father, I do not want the Tompkinson twins singing for me. Is that very ungrateful?”

  “You’ll get married in St. Paul’s, Richmond,” her father said, “with the Reverend Peterkin officiating.”

  “In September,” Anna insisted. “I’ve talked with Mama, and she agrees. But only if we have your blessing, Papa, of course.”

  “September?” Washington Faulconer shrugged, as though he did not much mind when the wedding took place. “Why not?”

  “Why September?” Adam asked.

  “Because the war will be over by then,” Anna declared, “and if we leave it later then there’ll be bad weather for the Atlantic crossing, and Mother says we need to be in Paris by October at the latest. We’ll have a winter in Paris, then go to the German spas in the spring. Mama says you might like to come, Adam?”

  “Me?” Adam seemed surprised at the invitation.

  “To keep Ethan company while Mama and I take the waters. And to be Mama’s escort, of course.”

  “You can go in uniform, Adam.” Washington Faulconer clearly did not resent being left out of the family expedition. “Your mother would like that. Full-dress uniform with saber, sash and medals, eh? Show the Europeans how a southern soldier looks?”

  “Me?” Adam asked again, this time of his father.

  “Yes, you, Adam.” Faulconer tossed his napkin onto the table. “And talking of uniforms, you’ll find one in your room. Put it on, then come to the study and we’ll fit you out with a saber. You too, Nate. Every officer should carry a blade.”

  Adam paused and for a second or two Starbuck feared that this was the moment when his friend would make his pacifist stand. Starbuck tensed for the confrontation, but then, with a decisive nod that suggested he had made his choice only after a great effort of will, Adam pushed back his chair. “To work,” he said quietly, almost to himself, “to work.”

  The work proved to be a glorious early summer of drumbeats and drill, of exercises across pastureland and of comradeship in tented encampments. They were hot days of laughter, weariness, sore muscles, tanned skin, high hopes and powder-stained faces. The Legion practiced musketry until the men’s shoulders were bruised from the impact of the guns and their faces smeared black by the explosion of the percussion caps and their lips powder stained from biting open the paper-wrapped cartridges. They learned to fix bayonets, to form a firing line and to make a square to fend off cavalry. They began to feel like soldiers.

  They learned to sleep through discomfort and discovered the long loping march rhythm that would see a man through endless, sun-racked days on heat-baked roads. On Sundays they formed a hollow square for a service of prayer and hymns. Their favorite was “Fight the Good Fight,” while in the evenings, when men were feeling maudlin for their families, they loved to sing “Amazing Grace” very slowly so that the sweet tune lingered in the hot evening air. On other nights of the week groups of men formed Bible classes or prayer meetings, while some played cards or drank the liquor that was sold illegally by peddlers come from Charlottesville or Richmond. Once, when Major Pelham caught such a peddler, he broke the man’s entire stock of stone-bottled mountain whiskey, though the Colonel was less inclined to take the hard line. “Let them have their good time,” Faulconer liked to say.

  Adam feared that his father was trying too hard to be popular, yet in fairness the lenience was all a part of Washington Faulconer’s theory of soldiering. “These men aren’t European peasants,” the Colonel explained, “and they certainly ain’t northern factory drudges. These are good Americans! Good southerners! They’ve got fire in their bellies and liberty in their hearts and if we force them into hours of drill and yet more drill and still more drill we’ll simply dull them into witless fools. I want them eager! I want them to go into battle like horses fresh off a spring pasture, not like nags coming off winter hay. I want them full of spirit, élan, the French call it, and it’s going to win us this war!”

  “Not without drill, it won’t,” Major Pelham would answer gloomily. He was allowed to give four hours of drill a day and not a minute more. “I’ll warrant Robert Lee is drilling his men in Richmond,” Pelham would insist, “and McDowell his in Washington!”

  “I warrant they are too, and so they should, just to keep the rogues out of mischief. But our rogues are better quality. They’re going to make the best soldiers in America! In the world!” And when the Colonel was in this sublime mood neither Pelham, nor all the military experts in Christendom could have changed his mind.

  So Sergeant Truslow simply ignored the Colonel and made his company do the extra drill anyway. At first, when Truslow had come down from his high home in the hills, the Colonel had imagined employing him as one of the fifty cavalrymen who would be the Legion’s outriders and scouts, but somehow, after the raid, the Colonel felt less willing to have Truslow so close to headquarters, and so he had let Truslow become company sergeant to Company K, one of the two skirmishing companies, but even from there, on the outer flank of the Legion, Truslow’s influence was baleful. Soldiering, he said, was about winning battles, not about holding prayer meetings or hymn singing, and he immediately insisted that Company K triple the amount of time it spent in drill. He had the company out of bed two hours before dawn and, by the time the other companies were just beginning to light their breakfast fires, Company K was already tired. Captain Roswell Jennings, K Company’s commanding officer who had secured his election with lavish quantities of homemade whiskey, was happy so long as Truslow did not demand his presence at the extra sessions.

  The other companies, seeing the extra snap and pride in Company K, had begun to lengthen their own time on the parade ground. Major Pelham was delighted, the Colonel held his peace, while Sergeant Major Proctor, who had been Washington Faulconer’s bailiff, deviled through his drill books to find new and more complicated maneuvers for the rapidly improving Legion to practice. Soon even old Benjamin Ridley, Ethan’s father, who had been a militia officer in his younger days, but who was now so fat and ill that he could scarcely walk, grudgingly admitted that the Legion was at last beginning to look like real soldiers.

  Ethan Ridley had returned from Richmond with caissons, limbers and ammunition for the
two artillery pieces. The Legion was now fully equipped. Each man had a double-breasted gray jacket with two rows of brass buttons, a pair of ankle-high boots, gray trousers and a round cap with a crown and visor stiffened with pasteboard. He carried a knapsack for his spare clothes and personal belongings, a haversack for his food, a canteen for water, a tin cup, a cap box on his belt to hold the percussion caps that fired his rifle, and a cartridge box for the ammunition. His weapons were one walnut-stocked 1841 Model Rifle, a sword-handled bayonet and whatever personal weapons he chose to carry. Nearly all the men carried bowie knives, which they were certain would prove lethal in the hand-to-hand combat they confidently expected. Some men had revolvers, and indeed, as the June days lengthened and the rumors of impending battle intensified, more and more parents provided their soldier sons with revolvers in the belief that the weapon would be a life-saver in battle.

  “What you need,” Truslow told his men, “is one rifle, one mug, one haversack, and damn all else.” He carried a bowie knife, but only for scavenging and cutting brush. Everything else, he told them, was just weight.

  The men ignored Truslow, trusting instead in the Colonel’s largesse. Each man was issued an oilcloth groundsheet in which he rolled two gray blankets. Washington Faulconer’s only economy was a refusal to buy the Legion any greatcoats. The war, he declared, could not possibly last into the cold weather, and he was not spending his money to provide the men of Faulconer County with churchgoing coats, but only to make a great name for themselves in the history of southern independence. He did provide each man with a sewing kit, towels and a clothes brush, while Doctor Billy Danson insisted that every Legionnaire also carry a roll of cotton strips for bandages.

  Major Thaddeus Bird, who had always been fond of long walks and was the only one of Faulconer’s officers who resolutely refused to ride a horse, contended that Truslow was right and that the men had been provided with altogether too much equipment. “A man can’t march cumbered like a mule,” he contended. The schoolmaster was ever ready to express such military opinions, which were just as readily ignored by the Colonel, though as the summer passed a group of younger men found themselves drawn more and more to Bird’s company. They would meet in his yard of an evening, sitting on the broken church bench or on stools fetched from the schoolhouse. Starbuck and Adam went frequently, as did Bird’s deputy, Lieutenant Davies, and a half dozen other officers and sergeants.