Copperhead

by Bernard Cornwell

  A hundred paces away another man in civilian dress stood frowning at another of the Quaker guns. This man had a tough, squat, thick-bearded face out of which a blackened pipe jutted belligerently. He wore a shabby riding coat, tall boots, and a round, narrow-brimmed hat. He carried a small horsewhip that he suddenly cut viciously across the fake muzzle of one of the wooden guns, then turned and shouted for an assistant to bring his horse.

  Later that night the bearded man received a visitor in the parlor of the house that was his quarters. Houses were scarce in Manassas, so scarce that most men beneath the rank of lieutenant general were forced to live in tents, so the fact that this civilian had a whole house for his own use was proof of his importance. The chalk inscription on the house door read “Major E. J. Allen,” though the man was neither a soldier nor bore the surname Allen, but instead was a civilian who liked to use pseudonyms and disguises. His true name was Allen Pinkerton and he had been a detective in Chicago’s police force before General McClellan had appointed him as head of the Army of the Potomac’s Secret Service Bureau. Now, in the guttering light of candles, Pinkerton looked up at the tall, nervous officer who had been fetched from the tail of the army into his presence. “You’re Major James Starbuck?”

  “Yes, sir,” James Starbuck responded in the cautious manner of a man who expects any summons to presage trouble. These days James looked a disconsolate soul. From being a lofty staff officer, privy to the secrets of the army’s commander, he had been relegated to a job with the commissary department of the 1st Corps. His new duties were concerned with the supply of dried vegetables, flour, jerked beef, salt pork, hardtack, and coffee beans, duties he discharged conscientiously, but however much food he managed to supply it was never enough, so that officers from every regiment and battery and troop felt free to swear at him as a useless, black-assed son of a pious bitch. James knew he should ignore such insults, but instead they overwhelmed and humiliated him. He had rarely felt so miserable.

  Now, to James’s astonishment, he saw that the man called Allen was studying Adam’s long letter which James had sent to Major General McClellan’s headquarters back in the old year. As far as James was aware, the letter had been utterly ignored by the army’s high command, and since James had neither the authority nor the character to persuade anyone of the letter’s importance, he had assumed the letter was long forgotten, yet now this unprepossessing Major Allen had finally realized its value. “So who gave you this letter, Major?” Pinkerton demanded.

  “I promised not to say, sir.” James wondered why he was calling this shabby little man “sir.” It was not as though Allen outranked James, yet something in the man’s pugnacious demeanor brought out James’s natural subservience, though at the same time it also triggered a tiny streak of stubbornness as he decided he would not use the honorific again.

  Pinkerton stabbed at the tobacco in his pipe with a callused finger, then placed the bowl by a candle flame and sucked it alight. “You’ve got a brother with the rebels?”

  James blushed, and no wonder, for Nate’s treason was a matter of immense shame to the Starbuck family. “Yes, si—…Major. I do, alas.”

  “Did he write this letter?”

  “No, si—…Major. No, he didn’t. I wish he had.”

  Pinkerton’s pipe bubbled as he sucked on the short stem. Wind gusted at the window and howled in the short chimney, driving a billow of thick smoke back into the room. “If I assure you that I can be trusted, Major,” Pinkerton said, his voice retaining the soft burr of his native Scotland, “and if I cross my heart and hope to die, and if I swear to you upon my dear departed mother’s soul and upon the soul of her own dear mother and upon all the Bibles in all of North America as well, and if by so swearing I promise you that I will never, not ever, reveal your informant’s name to any man, will you tell me?”

  James felt the temptation. Maybe, if he gave Adam’s name, he might be relieved of his foul commissary duty, but he had given his word and he would not break it, and so he just shook his head. “No, Major, I would not tell you. I would trust you, but I could not break my word.”

  “Good for you, Starbuck. Good for you.” Pinkerton hid his disappointment and frowned at Adam’s letter again. “Your man was right,” he went on, “and all the rest were wrong. Your man told us the truth, or something close to it. He got Johnston’s numbers wrong, we know for a fact the rebel army’s at least twice the size he told you, but everything else here is spot on the mark, straight on the target, good as gold!” What had impressed Pinkerton was Adam’s description of the wooden Quaker guns. He had given their exact number and location, and Pinkerton, coming on the guns in the rainy twilight, had remembered the discarded report and had ordered it dug out of his files. There were hundreds of such discarded reports, many the work of imaginative patriots, some mere suppositions based on newspaper stories, while others undoubtedly were sent by southerners attempting to mislead the North. So much information flowed north that Pinkerton was forced to throw much away, yet now he realized he had discarded some gold with the dross. “Has your man sent you any other letters?”

  “No, Major.”

  Pinkerton leaned back in his chair, making its legs creak ominously. “Do you think he would be willing to supply us with more information?”

  “I’m sure he would, yes.” James’s greatcoat dripped water on the parlor floor. He was shivering with cold, despite the small fire that spat angrily but gave precious little warmth to the shabby room. A bare patch on the plaster above the fireplace betrayed where a picture had been hastily removed prior to the northern army’s arrival; maybe a portrait of Jeff Davis or perhaps of Beauregard, who was the victor of Manassas and the South’s favorite general.

  Pinkerton peered closely at the letter again, wondering why he had not taken it seriously before. He noted that the writing paper was of high quality, plainly from a stock left over from before the war and of much better manufacture than the discolored, fibrous, and paltry stuff the South now made. The writer had used capital letters, thus disguising his handwriting, but the grammar and vocabulary betrayed him to be a well-educated man, and the information revealed him to be a man at the very heart of the rebel army. Pinkerton knew he had made a mistake when he had first ignored this letter, yet he consoled himself that some nuggets were bound to be lost in the chaos. “Remind me how your man got this letter to you?” Pinkerton demanded.

  James had explained the circumstances in a covering letter that he had attached to Adam’s long screed, but apparently that explanation had long disappeared. “He gave it to me in Richmond, Major, when I was exchanged.”

  “And how would you communicate with him now?”

  “He said letters should be left in the vestibule of St. Paul’s Church in Richmond. There’s a bulletin board in that vestibule, criss-crossed with tape, and if a letter is placed under the tapes addressed to the Honorary Secretary of the Confederate Army Bible Supply Society, then he will collect it. I don’t think there is any such society,” James said, then paused. “And I have to confess I wouldn’t know how to get a letter to Richmond.” He added the admission humbly.

  “Nothing to it, man. We do it almost every day,” Pinkerton said heartily, then he pulled open a leather valise and took out a traveling writing case. “We’re going to need your friend’s help, Major, in these coming weeks.” He took a sheet of paper from the case, added an ink bottle and pen, and pushed them all across the table. “Sit yourself down.”

  “You want me to write to him now, Major?” James asked in astonishment.

  “No time like the present, Starbuck! Strike while the iron’s still steaming, isn’t that what they say? Tarry not! Tell your friend that his intelligence is of the greatest value, and that it was appreciated at the very highest levels of the Federal army.” Pinkerton had discovered that a little flattery went a long way with secret agents. He paused as James pulled a candle near his paper and began to write in a swift, efficient hand. The pen had a split nib that sp
attered small droplets of ink as it scratched fast across the paper. “Write something personal,” Pinkerton went on, “so he’ll know it’s you.”

  “I already have,” James said. He had expressed the hope that Adam had found an opportunity to pass on the Bible to Nate.

  “Now write that we would be obliged to your friend if he could help us with the enclosed request.”

  “Enclosed request?” James asked in puzzlement.

  “You won’t tell me who he is,” Pinkerton said, “so I’m hardly going to tell you what we want of him.”

  James rested the pen on the edge of the table. He frowned. “Will he be at risk, sir?”

  “Risk? Of course he’ll be at risk! There’s a war on! Risk is the very air we breathe!” Pinkerton scowled and sucked his tobacco pipe at the candle’s flame again. “Is your man doing this for money?”

  James stiffened at the implication. “He’s a patriot, Major. And a Christian.”

  “Then the reward of heaven is surely all the more reason for him to run a risk?” Pinkerton demanded. “But do you think I want to lose your man? Of course not! I promise you I’ll not ask him to do anything which I would not expect my own son to do, of that you can be sure, Major. But let me tell you something else.” Pinkerton, as though demonstrating how important his next words were, removed the pipe from his mouth and cuffed the spittle from his lips. “What I’ll be asking of your man could well win us this war. That’s how important it is, Major.”

  James dutifully took up the pen. “You simply want me to ask him to fulfill the enclosed request.”

  “Aye, Major, that’s what I want. Then I’ll bother you to address the envelope for me.” Pinkerton leaned back and sucked on his pipe. He would be asking Adam for information about the rebel defenses to the east of Richmond, for it was in that damp and empty landscape, any day now, that General McClellan planned to spring his surprise attack on the rebel capital. This present slow advance toward the ruins of Manassas had only ever been intended to keep the Confederate army pinned north of their capital while McClellan secretly launched the greatest fleet of history to carry his real attack force around to the rebels’ eastern flank. Richmond by May, Pinkerton told himself, peace by July, and the rewards of victory for the rest of his life.

  He took the letter and envelope from James. The envelope was made of lumpy brown paper that one of Pinkerton’s agents had brought back from a secret visit to the Confederacy and James had addressed it to the Honorable Secretary of the Confederate Army Bible Supply Society care of St. Paul’s, Grace Street, Richmond. Pinkerton found one of the cheap-looking green five-cent stamps showing Jefferson Davis’s sunken face and gummed it onto the envelope. “This informant, I suppose, will only trust you?” Pinkerton asked.

  “Indeed,” James confirmed.

  Pinkerton nodded. If this strange spy would only trust James, then Pinkerton wanted to make certain James was always close at hand. “And before the war, Major,” he asked, “what was your trade?”

  “It was a profession,” James corrected Pinkerton sternly. “I was a lawyer in Boston.”

  “A lawyer, eh?” Pinkerton stood and went close to the feeble fire. “It was my dear mother’s wish that I should be a lawyer, what in Scotland they call a writer to the signet, but alas, there was never the money for the schooling. But I like to think I would have made a fine attorney had I been given the chance.”

  “I’m sure you would,” James said, sure of no such thing.

  “And as a lawyer, Major, you’re accustomed to sifting evidence? To winnowing truth from falsehood?”

  “Indeed,” James said.

  “I ask you,” Pinkerton explained, “because of late this bureau has been suffering from lack of good order. We’ve been too busy to keep our files as neat as I’d like, and I need a chief of staff, Major, someone who can make judgments and marshal evidence. I assure you that General McClellan will authorize the move instantly, so there’ll be no problems with your present commanding officer. Is it presumptuous of me to offer you such a job?”

  “It’s most generous, sir, most generous,” James said, quite forgetting his sturdy resolve not to call this man “sir.” “I should be honored to join you,” he went on hurriedly, hardly daring to believe that he was truly being rescued from the echoing, damp store sheds of the commissary department.

  “In that case, welcome aboard, Major.” Pinkerton held out a hand of welcome. “We don’t stand on ceremony here,” he said when he had given James’s hand a sturdy grip and a vigorous pumping, “so from now on you can call me Bulldog.”

  “Bulldog?” James stuttered the word.

  “Just a nickname, Major,” Pinkerton assured James.

  “Very good,” James hesitated, “Bulldog. And I should be honored if you were to know me as James.”

  “I intended to, Jimmy, I intended to! We’ll start work in the morning, so we shall. You’ll want to fetch your traps tonight? You can sleep in the scullery here if you don’t mind a rat or two?”

  “I became accustomed to rats while in prison,” James said, “and worse.”

  “Then be on your way, Major! We need to start work early in the morning,” Pinkerton said, and then, once James had gone, the head of the Secret Service sat and wrote a brief letter that would go south inside James’s covering note. The letter asked for detailed information on the rebel defenses east of Richmond, and particularly asked how many troops manned those defenses. Pinkerton then requested that this information be delivered to a Mr. Timothy Webster, care of the Ballard House Hotel on Richmond’s Franklin Street.

  Timothy Webster was Pinkerton’s most brilliant spy, a man who had already made three forays into the Confederacy and was now in the middle of his fourth. This time Webster had established himself as a blockade-running merchant seeking business in Richmond, while in truth he was using the Secret Service’s funds to make friends with indiscreet rebel officers and politicians. Webster’s mission was to discover and betray the defenses of Richmond, a job that involved horrible risks, but now, with the advent of James Starbuck’s informant, Pinkerton felt certain of Webster’s success. He sealed the two sheets of paper into the envelope, uncorked a bottle of his precious Scotch whiskey and offered himself a toast. To victory.

  COLONEL GRIFFIN SWYNYARD WAS GREEDILY EATING A plate of fried cabbage and potato when Bird and Starbuck reached his tent. It had begun to rain and the heavy clouds had brought a premature dusk so that the Colonel’s tent needed to be lit with two lanterns that hung from the ridge pole. The newly promoted Colonel sat beneath the twin lamps wearing a voluminous gown of gray wool over uniform trousers and a dirty shirt. He flinched whenever a bite provoked a twinge of agony from one of his yellowed, decayed teeth. His servant, a cowed slave, had announced Major Bird and Captain Starbuck and then scuttled back into the night where the rearguard’s fires struggled against the wind and rain. “So you’re Bird,” Swynyard said, pointedly ignoring Starbuck.

  “And you’re Swynyard,” Bird responded with a matching curtness.

  “Colonel Swynyard. West Point, class of twenty-nine, late U.S. Army, 4th Infantry.” Swynyard’s bloodshot eyes had a sickly yellow cast in the lamplight. He chewed a spoonful of his dinner, then helped it down with a mouthful of whiskey. “Now appointed second-in-command to the Faulconer Brigade.” He pointed his spoon at Bird. “Which makes me your superior officer.”

  Bird acknowledged the relationship with a curt nod, but refused to call Swynyard “sir,” which was presumably what the Colonel wanted. Swynyard did not press the point; instead he scored across his supper plate with a sharp knife, then spooned up another mouthful of the unappetizing mixture. His tent had a newly sawn pinewood floor, a folding table, a chair, a camp bed, and a sawhorse that was being used as a stand for his saddle. The furniture, like the saddle and the tent, was all brand-new. It would have been expensive before the war, but what such equipment must have cost in this time of shortage, Bird did not like to guess. There was a wagon parked just
outside the tent that Bird guessed was being used to transport Swynyard’s comforts and was yet more evidence of the money that had been expended on the Colonel’s accoutrements.

  Swynyard bolted down his mouthful of food, then took another pull of his whiskey. Rain pattered on the tent’s tight-stretched canvas, while in the dark a horse whinnied and a dog howled. “You are now in the Faulconer Brigade,” Swynyard announced formally, “which consists of this Legion, the Izard County Volunteer Battalion from Arkansas, the 12th and 13th Florida Regiments, and the 65th Virginia. All of which are now under the orders of Brigadier General Washington Faulconer, God bless him, who is awaiting our arrival on the Rappahannock tomorrow. Questions?”

  “How is my brother-in-law?” Bird asked politely.

  “Military questions, Bird. Military.”

  “Is my brother-in-law’s wound recovered sufficiently to allow him to fulfill his military duties at last?” Bird asked sweetly.

  Swynyard ignored the mocking question. A tic throbbed in his right cheek as he used his maimed left hand to claw at his gray-streaked beard where a scatter of cabbage scraps had lodged. The Colonel had placed a wad of damp chewing tobacco to one side of his plate, and now he put the tobacco back into his mouth and sucked hard on it as he stood and edged around the sawhorse that served as his saddle stand. “Ever taken a scalp?” he challenged Bird.

  “Not that I can recall, no.” Bird managed to hide his surprise and distaste at the sudden question.

  “There’s a knack to it! Like any other skill, Bird, there’s a knack! The trouble with young soldiers is that they always try to cut them off and that won’t do. That won’t do at all. No, you have to peel them off, peel them! Help the peel with a knife, if you must, but only to trim the edges, that way you get something fine and furry! Something like this!” Swynyard had taken a hank of black hair from the pocket of his gown and he waved it to and fro in front of Bird’s face. “I’ve taken more savages’ hairpieces than any white man alive,” Swynyard went on, “and I’m proud of that, proud of it. I served my country well, Bird, none served it better, I daresay, yet my reward was to watch it elect that black-assed chimpanzee Lincoln, so now we must fight for a new country.” Swynyard made this speech emotionally, leaning close enough so that Bird could smell a mix of cabbage, tobacco, and whiskey on his breath. “We shall get on, Bird, you and I. Man to man, eh? How is the regiment? Tell me that.”