Copperhead

by Bernard Cornwell

  “A Bible?”

  “Your brother left it here for you. I’ve been meaning to send it to you for months. Now come and meet Mrs. Gordon and Julia.”

  Starbuck hung back. “I’m with a friend,” he explained, and gestured at Ducquesne’s window with its elaborate display of lotions and tortoiseshell combs and beribboned wigs, and just as he made the gesture the door opened and Sally walked out. She offered her arm to Starbuck and smiled prettily at Adam. She knew Adam from Faulconer County, but it was evident that Adam did not recognize Sally. The last time he had seen her she had been a ragged girl in a faded cotton shift who had been lugging water and herding animals on her father’s smallholding, whereas now she was in a hooped silk skirt and wore her hair looped and curled beneath a beribboned bonnet.

  “Ma’am,” Adam acknowledged her with a bow.

  “Adam, you know…” Starbuck began.

  Sally interrupted him. “My name is Victoria Royall, sir.” That was her professional name, bestowed on Sally in the brothel on Marshall Street.

  “Miss Royall,” Adam said.

  “Major Adam Faulconer,” Starbuck completed the introduction. He could see the delight that Sally was taking in Adam’s ignorance and resigned himself to endure her mischief. “Major Faulconer is a very old friend of mine,” he told Sally as if she did not know.

  “Mr. Starbuck has mentioned your name to me, Major Faulconer,” Sally said, behaving in her most demure fashion. She looked demure too, for her dress was of a very dark gray and the red, white, and blue ribbons in her bonnet were more a patriotic gesture than a display of luxuries. No one flaunted jewels or finery on Richmond’s streets, not when crime was so prevalent.

  “And you, Miss Royall, you come from Richmond?” Adam asked, but before Sally could offer any answer Adam saw Julia and her mother emerge from the Scripture shop on the opposite side of the road, and he insisted that Starbuck and Sally come and be introduced.

  Sally had her arm in Starbuck’s. She giggled as they trailed Adam over the road. “He didn’t know me!” she whispered.

  “How could he? Now, for God’s sake, be careful. These are church people.” Starbuck offered the warning and then composed his face into a stern respectability. He handed Sally up the curb, politely throwing away what was left of his cigar, then turned to face Mrs. Gordon and her daughter.

  Adam made the introductions and Starbuck lightly touched the gloved fingers of the ladies’ outstretched hands. Mrs. Gordon proved to be a thin, shrewish woman with a pinched nose and eyes as sharp as a hungry hawk, but her daughter was altogether more surprising. Starbuck had expected a mousy church girl, timid and pious, yet Julia Gordon had a forthright air that immediately destroyed his misconception. She was black-haired and dark-eyed and had a face that was almost defiant in its strength. She was not beautiful, Starbuck thought, but she was certainly handsome. She carried character, strength, and intelligence in her looks, and Starbuck, meeting her gaze, felt oddly jealous of Adam.

  Sally was introduced, but Mrs. Gordon immediately turned back to Starbuck, wanting to know if he was related to the famous Reverend Elial Starbuck of Boston. Starbuck confessed the famous abolitionist was his father.

  “We know him,” Mrs. Gordon said disapprovingly.

  “You do, ma’am?” Starbuck asked, holding his scruffy hat in his hand.

  “Gordon”—Mrs. Gordon spoke of her husband—“is a missioner of the ASPGP.”

  “Indeed, ma’am,” Starbuck said respectfully. Starbuck’s father was one of the trustees of the American Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to the Poor, a mission that carried salvation into the darkest corners of America’s cities.

  Mrs. Gordon gave Starbuck’s poor uniform a glance. “Your father cannot be pleased that you are wearing a Confederate uniform, Mr. Starbuck?”

  “I’m sure he’s not, ma’am,” Starbuck said.

  “Mother has judged you before she knows the facts,” Julia intervened with a light touch that made Starbuck smile, “but you shall be given a chance to make a plea of mitigation before her sentence is passed.”

  “It’s a very long story, ma’am,” Starbuck said respectfully, knowing he dared not describe how he had fallen in hopeless and unrewarded love with an actress for whose sake he had abandoned the North, his family, his studies, and his respectability.

  “Too long to be heard now, I daresay,” Mrs. Gordon said in a voice made brusque by years of chivvying reluctant churchgoers into some semblance of enthusiasm. “But nevertheless I am delighted to see you defending states’ rights, Mr. Starbuck. Our cause is noble and just. And you, Miss Royall”—she turned to Sally—“you are from Richmond?”

  “From Greenbrier County, ma’am,” Sally lied, naming a county in the far western part of the state. “My father didn’t want me staying on there with all the fighting going on, so he sent me to a relative here.” She was doing her best to smooth out the country roughness of her speech, but an echo of it remained. “An aunt,” she explained, “on Franklin Street.”

  “Would we know her, perhaps?” Mrs. Gordon was appraising the fineness of Sally’s dress and the expense of her parasol and the delicacy of the lace collar that made a distinct contrast to the darned, simple clothes that mother and daughter wore. Mrs. Gordon must also have noted that Sally was wearing powder and paint, accoutrements that would never have been allowed in Mrs. Gordon’s house, but there was an innocence about Sally’s youth that maybe softened Mrs. Gordon’s disapproval.

  “She’s real sick.” Sally tried to evade further inquiry about her notional aunt.

  “Then I’m sure she would like a visit.” Mrs. Gordon responded to the mention of a sickbed like a vigorous old warhorse hearing the trumpet. “And where does your aunt worship, Miss Royall?”

  Starbuck sensed that Sally had run out of invention. “I was introduced to Miss Royall at the Grace Street Baptist Church,” he said, deliberately naming one of the city’s lesser-known congregations. Starbuck was aware of Julia Gordon’s grave gaze, and aware too of trying to make a good impression on her.

  “Then I’m sure we must know your aunt,” Mrs. Gordon persisted to Sally. “I think Gordon and I are familiar with all the evangelical families in Richmond. Is that not so, Julia?”

  “I’m sure that is so, Mother,” Julia said.

  “Your aunt’s name, Miss Royall?” Mrs. Gordon insisted upon an answer.

  “Miss Ginny Richardson, ma’am,” Sally said, using the name of the madame of the brothel on Marshall Street.

  “I’m not sure I know any Virginia Richardson.” Mrs. Gordon frowned as she tried to place the name. “Of Grace Street Baptist, you say? Not that we are Baptists, Miss Royall.” Mrs. Gordon made the disclaimer in much the same tone with which she might have assured Sally that she was not a cannibal or a Papist, “But of course we know of the church. Perhaps sometime you would like to hear my husband preach?” The invitation was made to both Starbuck and Sally.

  “I most surely would,” Sally said with an enthusiasm that stemmed from her relief at not having to invent any more details about her imaginary aunt.

  “You could take tea with us?” Mrs. Gordon suggested to Sally. “Come on a Friday. We offer divine service to the wounded in Chimborazo Hospital on Fridays.” The hospital was the largest army hospital in Richmond.

  “I would like that,” Sally said sweetly and eagerly, as though Mrs. Gordon’s proposal would enliven her otherwise dull evenings.

  “And you too, Mr. Starbuck,” Mrs. Gordon said. “We always need healthy hands to assist in the wards. Some of the men cannot hold their Scriptures.”

  “Of course, ma’am. It would be a privilege.”

  “Adam shall arrange it. No crinolines, Miss Royall, there’s not enough room between the cots for such frills. Now come, Julia.” Mrs. Gordon, having got in her lick against Sally’s costume, bestowed a smile on Sally and a nod to Starbuck, then swept away down the street. Adam hastily promised he would leave a letter for Starbuck at the Pass
port Bureau, then, after touching his hat to Sally, ran to catch up with the Gordons.

  Sally laughed. “I was watching you, Nate Starbuck. You like that Bible girl, don’t you?”

  “Nonsense,” Starbuck said, but in truth he had been wondering just what it was about the plain-dressed Julia Gordon that had attracted him. Was it, he wondered, because the missioner’s daughter represented a world of piety, intelligence, and innocence that he had forever lost by his backsliding?

  “She looked a bit like a school miss to me,” Sally said, putting her hand through his arm.

  “Which is probably what Adam needs,” Starbuck said.

  “Hell, no. She’s much too strong for him,” Sally said scathingly. “Adam was always a ditherer. Never could make up his mind to jump one way or the other. But he never recognized me, did he?”

  Starbuck smiled at the pleasure in her voice. “No, he didn’t.”

  “He was looking at me real strange, like he thought he should know me, but he never did manage to place me!” Sally was delighted. “You reckon they’ll invite us for tea?”

  “Probably, but we won’t go.”

  “Whyever not?” Sally asked as they began walking toward Franklin Street.

  “Because I spent my whole damn life in respectable evangelical houses and I’m trying to get away from them.”

  Sally laughed. “You wouldn’t go for your Bible girl?” she teased Starbuck. “But I’d like to go.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t.”

  “I would too. I like to see how folks live and how they do things proper. I ain’t never been invited to a respectable house. Or are you ashamed of me?”

  “Of course I’m not!”

  Sally stopped and made Starbuck turn to face her. There were tears in her eyes. “Nate Starbuck! Are you ashamed to take me into a proper house?”

  “No!”

  “Because I earn a living on my back? Is that it?”

  He took her hand and kissed it. “I am not ashamed of you, Sally Truslow. I just think you’ll be bored. It’s a dull world. A world without crinolines.”

  “I want to see it. I want to see how to be respectable.” She spoke with a pathetic obstinacy.

  Starbuck guessed this perverse ambition of Sally’s would pass, and thus he decided there was small need to oppose it. “Sure,” he said, “if they ask us, we’ll go. I promise you.”

  “I don’t get asked anywhere,” Sally said, still close to tears as they walked on. “I want to be asked somewhere. I can take a night off.”

  “Then we’ll go,” Starbuck said soothingly, and he wondered what would happen if the missioner discovered that his wife had invited a whore to take tea, and that thought made him laugh aloud. “We’ll surely go,” he promised. “We surely will.”

  Julia teased Adam about Sally. “Was she not a little gaudy?”

  “Decidedly. Indeed.”

  “But you seemed fascinated by her?”

  Adam was too blunt a character to detect Julia’s teasing. Instead he blushed. “I assure you…”

  “Adam!” Julia interrupted him. “I think Miss Royall is a remarkable beauty! A man would have to be made of granite to remain unaware of her.”

  “It was not that,” Adam said truthfully, “but the feeling I’d seen her somewhere before.” He was standing in the parlor of the Reverend Mr. Gordon’s small house on Baker Street. It was a dark room, heavy with the smell of furniture wax. The glass-fronted bookshelves held commentaries on the Bible and tales of mission life in heathen countries while the room’s one window looked out across the pious headstones of Shockoe Cemetery. The house was in a very humble area of Richmond, built in close proximity to an almshouse, a charity hospital, the city poorhouse, and the cemetery. Nor could the Reverend Mr. Gordon afford a better house, for it was the rule of the American Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to the Poor that its missioners live among their flock, and to ensure that the rule was followed, the society’s trustees kept their missioners’ salaries at a pitiably low level. Those trustees were all northerners, and it was their parsimony which explained Mrs. Gordon’s avid adhesion to the southern cause. “I’m sure I know Miss Royall.” Adam frowned. “But for the life of me I can’t place her!” He was annoyed with himself.

  “Any man who can misplace a beauty like Miss Royall must be hard-hearted,” Julia said, then laughed at Adam’s evident confusion. “Dear Adam, I know you are not hard-hearted. Tell me about your friend Starbuck. He looks interesting.”

  “Interesting enough to need our prayers,” Adam said and explained as best he could how Starbuck had been studying for the ministry, but had been tempted away. Adam did not describe the nature of the temptation and Julia was too clever to ask. “He took refuge here in the South,” Adam explained, “and I fear that it is not just his political allegiances that have changed.”

  “You mean he’s a backslider?” Julia asked gravely.

  “I fear so.”

  “Then we shall certainly pray for him,” Julia said. “Has he backslid so far that we should not invite him to tea?”

  “I hope not,” Adam said, frowning.

  “Then do we invite him or not?”

  Adam was not entirely sure, then he remembered how his friend had been attending prayer meetings at Leesburg, and he decided that Starbuck must have retained enough respectability to earn an invitation from the missioner’s family. “I think you may,” Adam said gravely.

  “Then you shall write and invite them both for this Friday. I have a feeling that Miss Royall needs a friend. Now, will you stay for luncheon? I fear it is a poor soup only, but you are welcome. Father would like it if you stayed.”

  “I have business. But thank you.”

  Adam walked back into town. Miss Royall’s identity still nagged at him, but the more he thought about it, the more elusive the identification became. He finally managed to dismiss the puzzle from his mind as he climbed the steps of the War Department.

  His duties meant that Adam spent one or two days each week in Richmond, from where he kept General Johnston informed of political opinion and professional gossip. He also acted as Johnston’s liaison with the headquarters of the Confederate Commissary Department which requisitioned supplies and directed where they should be sent.

  It was that duty which gave Adam an intimate knowledge of where the army’s brigades and battalions were posted, which knowledge he had been so careful to pass to Timothy Webster. Adam assumed that his two recent letters had long ago been forwarded to McClellan’s headquarters and he often wondered why the northern troops were taking so long to take advantage of the peninsula’s weak defenses. The North was pouring men into Fort Monroe, yet only a handful of rebels opposed them and still the North made no move to destroy that handful. At times Adam wondered whether Webster had forwarded his letters, then he would suffer an attack of sheer terror at the thought that maybe Webster had been secretly arrested, and Adam would only regain his composure after reminding himself that Webster did not know and could not possibly discover the identity of his mysterious correspondent.

  Adam now settled in his office and wrote his daily dispatch to Johnston. It was a dull document listing the numbers of men released from the hospital fever wards in Richmond and describing what supplies were newly available in the capital’s armories and storehouses. He finished with a summary of the latest intelligence, which reported that Major General McClellan was still in Alexandria and that the forces in Fort Monroe were showing no signs of aggression, then he bundled the latest editions of the newspapers to make one large packet that a dispatch rider would carry to Culpeper Court House. He sent the package downstairs, then opened the letter from his father that had been waiting on his desk. The letter, as Adam expected, was yet another plea that Adam should leave Johnston’s staff and join the Faulconer Brigade. “I think you should take command of the Legion from Pecker,” Washington Faulconer had written, “or, if you’d prefer, you could be my chief of staff. Swynyard is difficult, doub
tless he will show his finer qualities in battle, but till then he is overfond of the bottle. I need your help.” Adam crumpled the letter, then walked to the window and stared uphill to where the fine white pillars of the noble Capitol Building were touched by the afternoon sun. He turned as his office door opened suddenly. “You might have to add some news to your dispatch, Faulconer,” a shirtsleeved officer called to Adam.

  Adam had to hide his sudden excitement. “They’re moving from Fort Monroe?” he asked.

  “Oh Lord, no. The damn Yankees have taken root there. Maybe they never plan to move! You’d like some coffee? It’s the real thing, fetched from Liverpool on a blockade runner.”

  “Please.”

  The officer, a captain called Meredith from the Signal Department, shouted for his orderly to bring the coffee, then came into the room. “The Yankees are idiots, Faulconer. Plumb crazy! Fools!”

  “What have they done?”

  “They are half-wits! Rattleheads, numskulls!” Meredith sat in Adam’s swivel chair and put his mud-stained boots up on the leather-topped desk. He lit a cigar, chucking the match into a spittoon. “They are know-nothings, dunderheads, blockheaded lubberlouts. In brief they are northerners. You know who Allen Pinkerton is?”

  “Of course I know.”

  “Harken then, and I shall amuse you. Over here!” This last was to the orderly who had edged into the room with the two mugs of coffee. Meredith waited till the orderly was gone, then took up his tale. “It seems that Pinkerton wished to send some secret agents to spy on us. They were sent to discover our darkest desires and innermost secrets, and who does he send? Does he send some secretive fellow plucked from obscurity? No, he sends two fools who, not six months ago, were employed as plug-uglies evicting southern sympathizers from Washington! Lo and behold, one of the men they evicted walks into them on Broad Street. ‘Hello,’ says he, ‘I know you two beauties. You’re Scully and Lewis!’ Our heroes deny it, but the fools are carrying papers with their real names on them. Price Lewis and John Scully, large as life! How feather-brained can you be? So now the North’s two finest spies are clapped in irons in Henrico Jail. Isn’t that splendid?”