Rebel

by Bernard Cornwell

  Starbuck did not respond. The sting of the insult was not that he was being ejected from the Faulconer Legion, but that the Colonel held such a low opinion of him, and so he tried to explain his burgeoning hopes of becoming a good soldier. “I really do feel, sir, that soldiering is a profession I can master. I want to be useful to you. I want to return your hospitality, your kindness, by showing what I can do.”

  “Nate! Nate!” The Colonel interrupted him. “You are not a soldier. You’re a theology student who was caught in a snare. Don’t you see that? But your family and friends are not going to let you throw your life away because of one conniving woman. You’ve been taught a hard lesson, but now it’s time to go back to Boston and accept your parents’ forgiveness. And to make your new future! Your father declares you must abandon your hopes of the ministry, but he has other plans for you, and whatever you do, Nate, I’m sure you’ll do well.”

  “That’s true, Nate,” Adam said warmly.

  “Let me just stay one more day, sir,” Starbuck pleaded.

  “No, Nate, not even one more hour. I can’t brand you traitor in your family’s eyes. It wouldn’t be a Christian act.” The Colonel leaned toward Starbuck. “Unbuckle the sword belt, Nate.”

  Starbuck obeyed. In everything he had ever done, he thought, he had failed. Now, with his military career a shambles before it had even begun, he unbuckled the clumsy sword and unclipped the heavy pistol in its worn leather holster and handed both weapons back to their rightful owner. “I wish you’d reconsider, sir.”

  “I have given this matter my weightiest consideration, Nate,” the Colonel said impatiently, then, in a less irritated tone, “you’re a Boston man, a Massachusetts man, and that makes you a different creature from us southerners. Your destiny doesn’t lie here, Nate, but in the North. You’ll doubtless be a great man one day. You’re clever, maybe too clever, and you shouldn’t waste your cleverness on war. So take it back to Massachusetts and follow your father’s plans.”

  Starbuck did not know what to say. He felt belittled. He so desperately wanted to be in control of his own life, but he had always needed someone else’s money to survive—first his father’s, then Dominique’s, and now Colonel Faulconer’s. Adam Faulconer was equally as dependent on family as Starbuck, but Adam fitted into his society with a practiced ease, while Starbuck had always felt awkwardly out of place. He so hated being young, yet the chasm between youth and adulthood seemed so wide as to be unjumpable, except that in the last few weeks he had thought he might make a good soldier and thus forge his own independence.

  The Colonel pulled Pocahontas’s head about. “There are no northern troops out here, Nate. Keep on the road till you come to the fords by the church there, then cross the streams and follow the road toward the rising sun. You’ll not find any Yankees for a good few miles, and you’ll be coming from their rear, which means you shouldn’t run too much risk of being shot by a nervous sentry. And take the coat off, Nate.”

  “I must?”

  “You must. Do you want the enemy to think you’re a southerner? You want to be shot for nothing? Take it off, Nate.”

  Starbuck peeled off the gray frock coat with its single metal bar, which denoted his second lieutenancy. He had never really felt like an officer, not even a lowly second lieutenant, but without the uniform coat he was nothing but a failure being sent home with his tail tucked between his legs. “Where will the battle be fought, sir?” he asked in a small boy’s voice.

  “Way, way across country.” The Colonel pointed east where the sun was at last touching the horizon with its incandescent furnace glow. It was back there, far off on the Confederate right flank, that Washington Faulconer hoped to join the attack that would crush the Yankees. “Nothing’s going to happen over here,” Faulconer said, “which is why they put that no-good rascal Evans on this flank.”

  “Allow me to wish you good fortune, sir?” Starbuck sounded very formal as he held out his hand.

  “Thank you, Nate.” The Colonel managed to sound truly grateful for the wish. “And would you do me the kindness of accepting this?” He held out a small cloth purse, but Starbuck could not bring himself to accept the gift. He desperately needed the money, but he was far too proud to take it.

  “I shall manage, sir.”

  “You know best!” The Colonel smiled and withdrew the purse.

  “And God bless you, Nate,” Adam Faulconer said vigorously to his friend. “I’ll guard your traps and send them on when the war’s over. By year’s end, certainly. To your father’s house?”

  “I suppose so, yes.” Starbuck shook his best friend’s outstretched hand, wrenched the horse’s head about and plunged his heels hard back. He went quickly so the Faulconers would not see his tears.

  “He took it hard,” Colonel Faulconer said when Starbuck was out of earshot, “damned hard!” Faulconer sounded astonished. “Did he really think he might be a success at soldiering?”

  “He said as much to me this morning.”

  Colonel Faulconer shook his head sadly. “He’s a northerner, and in times like these you trust your own, not strangers. And who knows where his allegiance lies?”

  “It was with us,” Adam said sadly, watching Nate canter away down the slope toward the far woods beneath the church. “And he is an honest man, Father.”

  “I wish I shared your confidence. I can’t prove Nate danced a jig with our money, Adam, but I’ll just feel happier without him. I know he’s your friend, but we were doing him no favors by keeping him away from home.”

  “I think that is true,” Adam said piously, for he genuinely believed Starbuck needed to make peace with his family.

  “I had hopes of him,” the Colonel said sententiously, “but these preachers’ sons are all the same. Once off the leash, Adam, they go hog wild. They commit all the sins their fathers couldn’t, or wouldn’t or dared not. It’s like being brought up in a fancy-cake shop and being told never to touch the candy, and it’s no wonder they plunge in up to their snouts the moment they’re free.” Faulconer lit a cigar and blew a stream of smoke into the dawn. “The whole truth of this matter, Adam, is that blood signifies, and I fear your friend has unreliable blood. He won’t stay the course. That family never has. What were the Starbucks? Nantucket Quakers?”

  “So I believe, yes.” Adam sounded reserved. He was still unhappy at what had happened to Starbuck, even though he recognized it was the best thing for his friend.

  “And Nate’s father abandoned the Quakers to be a Calvinist, and now Nate wants to flee the Calvinists to be what? A southerner?” The Colonel laughed. “It won’t do, Adam, it just won’t do. My Lord, he even let that Tom company whore run him ragged! He’s too unsteady. Altogether too unsteady, and good soldiers need to be steady.” The Colonel gathered his reins. “Sun’s up! Time to unleash the hounds!” He turned and spurred his horse southward, back to where the Confederate army readied itself for battle beside a small stream called Bull Run that lay twenty-six miles west of Washington, D.C., near the town of Manassas Junction in the sovereign state of Virginia that had once formed a part of the United States of America, which was now two nations, divided under God, and gathering for battle.

  Starbuck rode wildly down the long slope to the far woods where he swerved off the dirt road and into the shade of the deep woodland. He yanked too hard on the curb and Pocahontas protested at the pain as she slowed to a stop. “I don’t care, damn you,” Starbuck growled at the horse, then kicked his right foot out of the stirrup and swung himself down from the saddle. A bird screeched at him from the undergrowth. He did not know what kind of bird it was. He could recognize cardinals, blue jays, chickadees and seagulls. That was all. He had thought he knew what an eagle looked like, but when he had spotted one at Faulconer Court House the men in Company C had laughed at him. That was no eagle, they said, but a sharp-shinned hawk. Any fool could tell that, but not Second Lieutenant Starbuck. Christ, he thought, but he failed at everything.

  He looped the ho
rse’s reins about a low branch, then slid down the trunk of the tree to sit in the long grass. A cricket chattered at him as he took the creased papers from his pocket. The rising sun was drowning the treetops in light, filtering green brilliance through the summer leaves. Starbuck dreaded reading the letter, but he knew his father’s wrath must be faced sooner or later, and better to face it on paper than in the musty, book-lined Boston study where the Reverend Elial hung his canes on the wall like other men hung fishing poles or swords. “Be sure your sin will find you out.” That was the Reverend Elial’s favorite text, the threnody of Starbuck’s childhood and the constant anthem of his frequent beatings with the hook-stemmed sticks. Starbuck unfolded the stiff sheets of paper.

  The Reverend Elial Starbuck to Colonel Washington Faulconer, of Faulconer County, Virginia.

  MY DEAR SIR.

  I am in receipt of yours of the 14th, and my wife unites with me in a Christian appreciation of the sentiments expressed therein. I cannot hide from any man, least of all from myself, my keen disappointment in Nathaniel. He is a young man of the most inestimable privilege, raised in a Christian family, nurtured in a Godly society, and educated as best our means would allow. God granted him a fine intelligence and the affections of a close and intimate family, and it had long been my prayerful wish that Nathaniel would follow me into the ministry of God’s word, yet alas, he has instead chosen the path of iniquity. I am not insensible to the high feelings of youth, but to abandon his studies for a woman! And to fall into the ways of a thief! It is enough to break a parent’s heart, and the pain Nathaniel has given to his mother is exceeded only, I am sure, by the sadness he had offered to our Lord and Savior.

  Yet we are not unmindful of a Christian’s duty to the remorseful sinner, and if, as you suggest, Nathaniel is ready to make a full confession of his sins in a spirit of humble and genuine repentance, then we shall not stand in the way of his redemption. Yet he cannot ever again hope that we might rekindle the kind affections we once felt for him, nor must he believe himself worthy for a place in God’s ministry. I have repaid the man Trabell of the monies stolen, but will now insist that Nathaniel repay me to the full, to which purpose he must earn his bread by the sweat of his labors. We have secured for him a place with my wife’s cousin’s practice of law in Salem where, God willing, Nathaniel will reward the liberality of our forgiveness by a diligent attention to his new duties.

  Nathaniel’s elder brother, James, a good and Christian man, is now with our army embarked upon its present sad duties, and he will, God willing, undertake to see that this missive reaches you safe. I doubt if you and I can ever agree on the tragical events that are presently rending our nation, but I know you will unite with me in reposing a continued hope in the Giver of All Good, the One God, in whose Holy Name we shall yet, I pray, avert fratricidal conflict and bring to our unhappy nation a just and honorable peace.

  I render you more thanks for your manifold kindnesses to my son, and pray fervently that you are right in describing his earnestness for God’s forgiveness. I pray also for all of our sons, that their lives may be spared in this most unhappy of times.

  RESPECTFULLY YOURS,

  the Reverend Elial Joseph Starbuck

  Boston, Mass. Thurs. June 20, 1861.

  Post scriptum. My son, Captain James Starbuck of the United States Army, assures me he will enclose a “pass” allowing Nathaniel through our army’s lines.

  Starbuck unfolded the enclosed laissez-passer, which read:

  Allow the Bearer Free Ingress

  into the Lines of the United States Army,

  authorized by the undersigned,

  Captain James Elial MacPhail Starbuck,

  sous-adjutant to Brigadier General Irvin McDowell.

  Starbuck smiled at the pompous subscription to his brother’s signature. So James had become a staff officer to the commander of the northern army? Good for James, Starbuck thought, then supposed that he should not really feel any surprise, for his elder brother was ambitious and diligent, a good lawyer and an earnest Christian; indeed James was everything his father wanted all his sons to be, while Starbuck was what? A rebel kicked out of a rebel army. A man who fell in love with whores. A failure.

  He rested the two sheets of papers on the grass. Somewhere far away there was a sudden flurry of musketry, but the sound was muffled by the day’s close warmth and seemed impossibly remote to ex-Second Lieutenant Nathaniel Starbuck. What did life hold now, he wondered? It seemed he was not to be a minister of the gospel, nor a soldier, but a student lawyer in the offices of cousin Harrison MacPhail of Salem, Massachusetts. Oh dear God, Starbuck thought, but was he to be under the tutelage of that dry, grasping, uncharitable stick of moral rectitude? Was that grim fate what the whisper of illegitimate petticoats could do to a man?

  He stood, unlooped Pocahontas’s reins, and walked slowly northward. He took off the hat and fanned his face. The horse followed placidly, its hooves falling heavily on the dirt road, which ran gently downhill between unfenced woodland and small pastures. The shadows of the trees stretched hugely long on the summer-bleached meadows. Way off to Starbuck’s right was a white farmhouse and a huge hayrick. The farm appeared deserted. The sound of rifle fire faded in the heavy air like a brushfire dying, and Starbuck thought how happy he had been in these last weeks. They had been healthy outdoor weeks, playing at soldiers and now it was all over. A wave of self-pity engulfed him. He was friendless, unwanted, useless; a victim, just as Sally was a victim, and he thought of the promise to revenge Sally by killing Ridley. So many stupid dreams, he thought, so many stupid dreams.

  The road climbed into more woods, then dropped to an unfinished railway embankment beyond which lay the twin Sudley Fords. He mounted Pocahontas and crossed the smaller stream, glanced up at the white-boarded church on the hill above, then turned east across the wider, deeper Bull Run. He let the horse drink. The water flowed fast across rounded pebbles. The sun was in his eyes, huge, brilliant, blinding, like the fire of Ezekiel that would melt metal in the furnace.

  He urged the horse out of the stream, across a pasture and into the welcome shadow of more woods where he slowed his pace, instinctively rebelling against the life of propriety that his father’s letter described. He would not do it, he would not do it! Instead, Starbuck decided, he would join the northern army. He would enlist as a private in some regiment of strangers. He thought of his promise to Sally, that he would kill Ethan, and he was sorry that the promise could not now be kept, and then he imagined meeting Ridley in battle and stabbing forward with a bayonet to pin his enemy to the ground. He rode slowly on, imagining himself a northern soldier, fighting for his own people.

  The sound of musketry had changed subtly. The noise had been fading on the summer air, but now the sound became louder again, and more rhythmic and harder edged. He had not given the change any real thought, being too immersed in his own self-pity, but as he turned a slight bend in the road he saw that the new sound was not the sound of musketry at all, but the noise of axes.

  Soldiers’ axes.

  Starbuck stopped the horse and just stared. The axemen were a hundred paces ahead of him. They were stripped to their waists and their axe blades shattered the sunlight into brilliant reflections as chips of wood skittered bright from the blades’ hard strokes. They were working on a tangled barricade of felled trees that completely blocked the narrow road. Half the roads of northern Virginia had been so barricaded by patriots trying to impede the northern invasion, and for a moment Starbuck supposed he had come across local men fashioning just such another obstacle, then he wondered why makers of a barricade would assault it with axes? And behind the axemen were teams of horses harnessed with drag chains to pull the sectioned tree trunks off the road, and behind those horse teams and half-hidden by the deep shadows, was a throng of blue-uniformed men above whom a flag showed bright in a slanting shaft of newly risen sunlight. The flag was the Stars and Stripes, and Starbuck suddenly realized these were Yankees, norther
ners, on a road where there were not supposed to be any northerners, and they were not just a few men, but a whole host of blue-uniformed soldiers who patiently waited for their pioneers to clear the narrow road.

  “You there!” A man in officer’s braid shouted at Starbuck from behind the half-dismantled barricade. “Stop where you are! Stop, you hear me?”

  Starbuck was gaping like a fool, yet in truth he comprehended all that was happening. The northerners had fooled the South. Their plan was not to advance dully on Manassas Junction, nor to wait for the southerners to attack their left flank, but rather to attack here in the undefended Confederate left, and thereby to hook deep into the belly of the secessionist army and so rip it and tear it and savage it that all the vestiges of southern rebellion would die in the weltering horror of one Sabbath day’s bloodletting. This, Starbuck grasped instantly, was Brigadier General McDowell’s version of Thermopylae, the grand encircling surprise that would give the Yankee Persians victory over the Confederate Greeks.

  And Starbuck, understanding all, understood that he no longer needed to become a northern soldier nor break his promise to a southern whore. He was saved.

  FAULCONER SHOULD BE HERE.” MAJOR THADDEUS BIRD SCOWLED eastward into the rising sun. Bird might have his sharp opinions about how soldiering should be managed, but left alone in notional command of the Faulconer Legion, he was not entirely certain he wanted the responsibility to enact those ideas. “He should be here,” he said again. “The men need to know their commanding officer is with them, not lollygagging on his horse. Your future father-in-law,” he spoke to Ethan Ridley, “is altogether too fond of excursions by quadruped.” Major Bird found this remark amusing, for he raised his angular head and uttered a bark of laughter. “Excursions by quadruped, ha!”

  “I presume the Colonel is making a reconnaissance,” Ethan Ridley protested. Ridley had watched Starbuck ride away with the Faulconers and was jealous that he had not been invited. In two months Ridley would become Washington Faulconer’s son-in-law, with all the privileges that kinship implied, yet still he feared that some other person might usurp his place in the Colonel’s affections.