As evening drew on, James Starbuck was still free. He had hidden himself in a stand of trees, and now he crawled in the bottom of a deep ditch toward the Bull Run. His mind was in chaos. How had it happened? How could defeat have happened? It was so bitter, so terrible, so shameful. Was God so careless of the right that he would allow this awful visitation upon the United States? It made no sense.
“I wouldn’t go a foot farther, Yankee,” an amused voice suddenly spoke above him, “because that’s poison ivy just ahead of you, and you’re in enough trouble like it is.”
James looked up to see two grinning lads whom he rightly suspected had been watching him for the last few minutes. “I’m an officer,” he managed to say.
“Nice to meet you, officer. I’m Ned Potter and that’s Jake Spring, and this here’s our dog, Abe.” Potter gestured at a ragged little mongrel that he held on a length of rope. “We ain’t none of us officers, but you’re our prisoner.”
James stood and tried to brush the dead leaves and stagnant water from his uniform. “My name,” he said in his most officious manner, then stopped. What would happen to Elial Starbuck’s son in southern hands? Would they lynch him? Would they do the terrible things his father said all southerners did to Negroes and emancipators?
“Don’t care what your name is, Yankee, only what’s in your pockets. Me, Jake and Abe are kind of poor right now. All we captured so far is two boys from Pennsylvania and they didn’t have nothing but cold hoe cakes and three rusty cents between ’em.” The musket came up and the grin widened. “You can give us that revolver for a beginnings.”
“Buchanan!” James blurted out the name. “Miles Buchanan!”
Ned Potter and Jake Spring stared uncomprehendingly at their prisoner.
“An attorney!” James explained. “I’ve been trying to remember his name all day! He once accused Chief Justice Shaw of being costive. Intellectually costive, that is…” His voice died away as he realized that poor Miles Buchanan was dead now, and Abigail Buchanan was a widow, and he himself was taken prisoner.
“Just give us the revolver, Yankee.”
James handed over the blackened revolver, then turned out his pockets. He was carrying over eighteen dollars in coin, a New Testament, a fine watch on a seal-heavy chain, a pair of folding opera glasses, a box of pen nibs, two notebooks and a fine linen handkerchief that his mother had embroidered with his initials. Ned Potter and Jake Spring were delighted with their luck, but James felt only a terrible humiliation. He had been delivered into the hands of his bitterest enemies and he could have wept for his country’s loss.
One mile away from James, Nathaniel Starbuck searched a meadow that was pockmarked with shell fire and scored with hoofprints. The Yankees were long gone and the meadow was empty except for the dead. It was the pasture where Washington Faulconer had struck him with his riding crop, the place where Ethan Ridley had died.
He found Ridley closer to the tree line than he remembered, but he supposed all his recollections of the battle were confused. The body was a horror of blood and bone, of torn flesh and blackened skin. The birds had already begun their feasting, but flapped reluctantly away as Starbuck walked up to the corpse that was beginning to stink. Ridley’s head was recognizable, the small pointed beard being oddly clear of blood. “You son of a bitch,” Starbuck said tiredly and without real anger, but he was remembering the scar on Sally’s face, and the child she had lost, and the rapes and beatings she had endured just so that this man could be free of her, and so some insult seemed fitting to mark the moment.
The sick-sweet stench of death was thick and nauseous as Starbuck crouched beside the corpse and steeled himself. Then he reached out for what was left of his enemy. There but for the grace of God, he thought, and he pulled the neck of Ridley’s jacket to free the remnants of the garment from the bloody corpse, and something deep in the body made a gurgling sound that almost made Starbuck retch. The jacket would not come clear of the bloody mess and Starbuck realized he would have to undo the leather belt that was somehow still in place around the eviscerated mess. He plunged his fingers into the cold, jelly-like horror, and found the buckle. He undid it, heaved, and a portion of the corpse rolled away to reveal the revolver that Ridley had fired at Starbuck.
It was the pretty, ivory-handled English gun that Washington Faulconer had shown to Starbuck in his study at Seven Springs. The gun was now choked with Ridley’s blood, but Starbuck wiped it on the grass, cuffed more of the blood away with his sleeve, then pushed the beautiful weapon into his empty holster. He then unthreaded the cap box and the cartridge case from Ridley’s belt. There were a dozen dollar coins in the case, which he pushed into one of his own blood-soaked pockets.
Yet he had not come here simply to loot his enemy’s body, but rather to take back a treasure. He wiped his fingers on the grass, took another deep breath, then went back to the bloody remnants of the gray jacket. He found a leather case which seemed to have held a drawing, though the paper was now so soaked with blood that it was impossible to tell just what the drawing might have shown. There were three more silver dollars in the pocket and a small, blood-wet leather bag, which Starbuck pulled open.
The ring was there. It looked dull in the fading light, but it was the ring he had wanted; the silver French ring that had belonged to Sally’s mother and which Starbuck now pushed into his own pocket as he stepped back from the corpse. “You son of a bitch,” he said again, then he walked away past Ridley’s dead horse. Across the valley the smoke of the camp fires drifted away from the hill to veil the sunset.
Dark was falling as Starbuck climbed the hill to where the southern army made its weary bivouac. A few officers had tried to order their men off the hilltop and down to where the ground did not stink of blood, but the men were too tired to move. Instead they sat around their fires and ate captured hard tack and cold bacon. A man played a fiddle, its notes wondrously plangent in the graying light. The far hills were darkening and the first stars gleaming pale and sharp in a clean sky. A Georgia regiment held a service, the men’s voices strong as they sang praises for their victory.
It took Starbuck an hour to find the Legion. It was almost full dark by then, but he saw Pecker Bird’s distinctive face in the light of a fire made from a dozen fence rails which radiated out from the flames like spokes. Every man about the fire was responsible for a rail, nudging it into the fire as the rail burned down. The men around the fire were all officers who looked up astonished as Starbuck limped into the flame light. Murphy nodded a pleased greeting to see the Bostonian, and Bird smiled. “So you’re alive, Starbuck?”
“So it seems, Major.”
Bird lit a cigar and tossed it to Starbuck who caught it, sucked in the smoke, then nodded his thanks.
“Is that your blood?” Murphy asked Starbuck, whose uniform was still thick with Ridley’s blood.
“No.”
“But it’s very dramatic,” Bird said in gentle mockery, then twisted himself around. “Colonel!”
Colonel Faulconer, his shirt and jacket now wrapped around his wounded arm, was sitting outside his tent. He had made a huge commotion about the Legion’s missing baggage and finally a reluctant search party had discovered Nelson, the Colonel’s servant, still guarding as much of the Colonel’s baggage as he had managed to carry away from the Yankee attack. Most of the baggage was gone, looted by successive waves of northerners and southerners, but the Colonel’s tent had been salvaged and a bed of blankets laid down inside. Adam was lying on the bed while his father sat on a barrel in the tent’s door.
“Colonel!” Bird called again, his insistence at last making Washington Faulconer look up. “Good news, Colonel.” Bird could hardly keep from grinning as he made his mischief. “Starbuck is alive.”
“Nate!” Adam reached for the makeshift crutch that a man had cut from a thicket nearby, but his father pushed him down.
Faulconer stood and walked toward the fire. A mounted staff captain chose that same moment to appr
oach the fire from farther along the plateau, but the captain, who had a message for Colonel Faulconer, sensed the tension around the camp fire and checked his horse to watch what happened.
Faulconer gazed through the flames, flinching from Starbuck’s horrid appearance. The northerner’s uniform was dark with blood, stiff with it, black in the flame light with the blood that had soaked into every stitch and weave of the gray coat. Starbuck looked like a thing come from a nightmare, but he nodded pleasantly enough as he blew a stream of cigar smoke into the night. “Evening, Colonel.”
Faulconer said nothing. Bird lit himself a cigar, then looked at Starbuck. “The Colonel was wondering how Ridley died, Starbuck?”
“Got hit by a shell, Colonel. Nothing left of him but a mess of bones and blood,” Starbuck said, his voice careless.
“Is that what you want me to put in the book, Colonel?” Thaddeus Bird asked with a studied innocence. “That Ridley died of artillery fire?”
Still Washington Faulconer did not speak. He was staring at Starbuck with what seemed like loathing, but he could not bring himself to say a word.
Bird shrugged. “Earlier, Colonel, you ordered me to arrest Starbuck for murder. You want me to do that right now?” Bird waited for an answer and when none came he looked back to Starbuck. “Did you murder Captain Ethan Ridley, Starbuck?”
“No,” Starbuck said curtly. He stared at Faulconer, daring the Colonel to contradict him. The Colonel knew he was lying, but he did not have the guts to make the accusation to his face. Men had come from the Legion’s other camp fires to watch the confrontation.
“But the Colonel saw you commit the murder,” Bird insisted. “What do you have to say to that?”
Starbuck took the cigar from his mouth and spat into the fire.
“I assume that expectoration signifies a denial?” Bird asked happily, then looked around the men who were crowding into the flame light. “Did anyone else here see Ridley die?” Bird waited for an answer as sparks whirled upward from the burning rails. “Well?”
“I saw the son of a bitch get filleted by a shell,” Truslow growled from the shadows.
“And did Starbuck fire the fatal shell, Sergeant?” Bird asked in a pedantic voice, and the men around the fire laughed aloud at the major’s mockery. Faulconer shifted his weight, but still kept his silence. “So I reckon, Colonel, that you were wrong,” Bird went on, “and that Lieutenant Starbuck is innocent of murder. And I further reckon you’ll be wanting to thank him for saving the Legion’s colors, isn’t that right?”
But Faulconer could take no more humiliation from these men who had fought while he had been swanning across the countryside in search of fame. He turned away without a word, only to see the staff captain watching him from horseback. “What do you want?” he snapped bitterly.
“You’re invited to supper, Colonel.” The staff captain was understandably nervous. “The president has arrived from Richmond, sir, and the generals are eager for your company.”
Faulconer blinked as he tried to make sense of the invitation, then saw in it his chance of salvation. “Of course.” He strode away, calling for his son. Adam had struggled to his feet and was now limping to welcome Starbuck back, but his father demanded his son’s loyalty. “Adam! You’ll come with me.”
Adam hesitated, then gave in. “Yes, Father.”
The two men were helped onto their horses and no one spoke much as they rode away. Instead the men of the Faulconer Legion fed their fires and watched the sparks fly high, but said scarcely a word until the Faulconers had ridden far beyond the flame light and were just two dark shadows silhouetted against the southern sky. Somehow no one expected to see Washington Faulconer back again in a hurry. Bird looked up at Starbuck. “I guess I’m in command now. So thank you for saving our colors, and more important, for saving me. So now what do I do with you?”
“Whatever you want, Major.”
“Then I think I shall punish you for whatever sins you undoubtedly committed today.” Bird grinned as he spoke. “I shall make you Captain Roswell Jenkins’s replacement, and give you Sergeant Truslow’s company. But only if Sergeant Truslow wants a miserable Boston-bred overeducated beardless preacher’s son like yourself as his commanding officer?”
“I reckon he’ll do,” Truslow said laconically.
“So you feed him, Sergeant, not me,” Bird said, and raised a dismissive hand.
Starbuck walked away with Truslow. When the two men had gone beyond the earshot of the soldiers gathered around the officers’ fire, the sergeant spat a stream of tobacco juice. “‘So how does it feel to murder someone?’ You remember asking me that? And I told you to find out for yourself, so now you tell me, Captain.”
Captain? Starbuck noted, but said nothing of the unwonted respect. “It felt most satisfying, Sergeant.”
Truslow nodded. “I saw you shoot the son of a bitch, and I was kind of wondering why.”
“For this.” Starbuck took the silver ring from his pocket and held it out to the small, dark-bearded Truslow. “Just for this,” he said, and dropped the ring into the powder-blackened palm. The silver glinted for an instant in the blood-stinking smoke-darkened night, and then Truslow’s hand closed on it fast. His Emily was in heaven, and the ring was back with him where it belonged.
Truslow had stopped dead in the darkness. For a second Starbuck thought the sergeant was weeping, but then he realized it was just the sound of Truslow clearing his throat. The sergeant began walking again, saying nothing, but just gripping the silver ring as if it was a talisman for all his future life. He did not speak again until they were a few yards from the fires of A Company, and then he put a hand on the blood-hardened cloth of Starbuck’s sleeve. His voice, when he spoke, was unwontedly meek. “So how is she, Captain?”
“She’s happy. Surprisingly happy. She was treated badly, but she came through it and she’s happy. But she wanted you to have the ring, and she wanted me to take it from Ridley.”
Truslow thought about that answer for a few seconds, then frowned. “I should have killed that bastard myself, shouldn’t I?”
“Sally wanted me to do it,” Starbuck said, “so I did. And with much pleasure.” He could not keep himself from smiling.
Truslow was still for a long, long time, then he thrust the ring into a pocket. “It’s going to rain tomorrow,” he said. “I can smell it in the air. Most of these bastards have lost their groundsheets and blankets so I reckon in the morning you should let us scavenge a while.” He led Starbuck into the light of his company’s fires. “New captain” was Truslow’s only introduction. “Robert? We’ll have some of that fat bacon. John? Break that bread you’re hiding. Pearce? That whiskey you found. We’ll take some. Sit down, Captain, sit.”
Starbuck sat and ate. The food was the most wonderful he had ever tasted, nor could he have asked for better company. Above him the stars shimmered in a sky of dissipating smoke. A fox called from the distant woods and a wounded horse screamed. Somewhere a man sang a sad song, and then a gunshot sounded in the lost darkness like a final echo of this day of battle in which a preacher’s son, far from home, had made himself a rebel.
HISTORICAL NOTE
THE FIRST BATTLE OF MANASSAS (OR BULL RUN AS NORTHERNERS call it) was fought much as described in Rebel, though the novel ignores some tough but scrappy fighting that filled the gap between the retreat of Nathan Evans’s half-brigade and the first engagement of Thomas Jackson’s Virginia Brigade, and it ignores the presence of Jeb Stuart’s cavalry on the battlefield, though in this battle, as in most of the big set-piece engagements to come in the War between the States, the cavalry was unimportant to the outcome. First Manassas was won by infantrymen, and it was Shanks Evans, who really did have a “barrelito” of whiskey on constant tap, whose timely maneuver saved the Confederacy, though it was “Stonewall” Jackson whose name became famous that day and whose statue still dominates the hilltop where he earned his nickname. Around nine hundred men died on July 21, 1861, and at lea
st ten times as many were wounded.
The battlefield has been marvelously preserved by the National Park Service. The visitor center on the Henry House hill offers a splendid introduction to a site that is well signposted and explained, and is an easy drive from Washington, D.C. There is no Faulconer County in Virginia, nor was there a Faulconer Legion in the state’s service.
About the Author
BERNARD CORNWELL is a native of England, where he worked as a journalist in newspapers and television. In addition to Rebel, Copperhead, Battle Flag, and The Bloody Ground, the four novels in the Nathaniel Starbuck Chronicles, he also wrote the bestselling Sharpe series, featuring the adventures of Captain Richard Sharpe of the British Army in the wars against Napoleon, which has been dramatized for television by Masterpiece Theatre; the Warlord Chronicles, about Arthurian England; Stonehenge: 2000 B.C., a Novel; and The Archer’s Tale. A resident of the United States for fifteen years, Bernard Cornwell now lives with his American wife on Cape Cod.
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Praise for
Bernard Cornwell’s
REBEL
“Starbuck is a worthy hero, smart enough to be interesting, callow enough to be real. Virginia is a great stage, teeming with Confederate and military politics, and the battle scenes, when they come, are presented with real mastery. They hurt.”
Rebel Page 43