Copperhead

by Bernard Cornwell

  Then the purgative hit. He doubled over, spewing vomit onto the floor. The spasm left him breathless, but before he could recover, another spasm ripped up from his belly, then his bowels opened uncontrollably and the room filled with his terrible stink. He could not stop himself. He groaned and rolled on the floor, then jerked as another spasm of vomit tore up his body.

  The guards grinned and stepped back from him. Gillespie, careless of the awful smell, watched avidly through his spectacles and made an occasional note in a small book. Still the spasms racked Starbuck. Even when there was nothing left in his belly or bowels he kept on gasping and twitching as the awful oil scoured through his guts.

  “Let us talk again,” Gillespie said after a few minutes, when Starbuck was calmer.

  “Bastard,” Starbuck said. He was filthy, lying in filth, his clothes smeared with filth; he was humiliated and helpless and degraded by the filth.

  “Do you know a Mr. John Scully or a Mr. Lewis Price?” Gillespie asked in his precise voice.

  “No. And to hell with you.”

  “Have you been in communication with your brother?”

  “No. Damn you.”

  “Have you received letters care of the Confederate Army Bible Supply Society?”

  “No!”

  “And did you deliver information to Timothy Webster at the Monumental Hotel?”

  “I’ll tell you what I did, you bastard!” Starbuck raised his face and spat a dribble of vomit toward Gillespie. “I carried a gun into battle for this country, which is more than you ever did, you shit-faced son of a bitch!”

  Gillespie shook his head as though Starbuck was peculiarly recalcitrant. “Again,” he said to the guards and lifted the bottle from the table.

  “No!” Starbuck said, but one of the guards threw him down and both men pinioned him to the floor. Gillespie brought the croton oil.

  “I’m curious to discover just how much oil one person can endure,” Gillespie said. “Move him this way, I don’t want to kneel in his droppings.”

  “No!” Starbuck moaned, but the funnel was thrust into his mouth once more and Gillespie, half smiling, poured another stream of the viscous yellowish liquid into the brass maw.

  The spasms hit again. The pain was much worse this time, a terrible flaying raw agony that burned in Starbuck’s belly and spread outward as he twisted in his own filth. Twice more Gillespie poured the purgative down his throat, but the extra liquid yielded no more information. Starbuck still insisted he knew no one called Scully or Lewis or Webster.

  At midday the guards threw buckets of cold water over him. Gillespie watched expressionless as the inert and stinking body of the northerner was carried out of the room to be dumped in his cell and then, annoyed with himself for being late, he hurried away to the regular Bible class that met at lunchtime in the nearby Universalist church.

  While Starbuck lay in the damp and whimpered.

  Reluctantly, like a heavy beast rousing itself from a long sleep, the rebel army took itself away from its positions around Culpeper Court House. It moved slowly and cautiously, for General Johnston could not yet be certain that the North was not attempting a giant piece of deception. Maybe the much-advertised voyage of the great ships from Alexandria to Fort Monroe was merely an elaborate charade to make him move his troops to Richmond’s blind side? Such a ruse would open the roads of northern Virginia to the real Federal attack and, fearing just such a deception, Johnston sent cavalry patrols deep into Fauquier and Prince William counties, then still farther north into Loudoun County. The men of the partisan brigades, the ragged riders whose job was to stay behind and harass any northern invaders, crossed the Potomac into Maryland, yet all the patrols came back with the same news. The Yankees were gone. The defenses around Washington were fully manned, and the forts that guarded the northern enclave in Virginia’s Fairfax County were strongly garrisoned, but the North’s field army had vanished. The Young Napoleon was attacking in the peninsula.

  The Faulconer Brigade was among the first to be ordered to the outskirts of Richmond. Washington Faulconer summoned Major Bird to receive the orders. “Isn’t Swynyard supposed to be your errand boy?” Bird demanded of Washington Faulconer.

  “He’s resting.”

  “You mean he’s drunk.”

  “Nonsense, Pecker.” Washington Faulconer wore his new uniform jacket that bore the wreathed stars of a brigadier general on its collars. “He’s bored. He’s fretting for action. Man’s a warrior.”

  “Man’s a dipsomaniac lunatic,” Bird said. “He tried to arrest Tony Murphy yesterday for not saluting him.”

  “Captain Murphy has a rebellious streak,” Faulconer said.

  “I thought we were all supposed to have a rebellious streak,” Bird observed. “I tell you, Faulconer, the man’s a souse. You’ve been cheated.”

  But Washington Faulconer was not about to admit a mistake. He knew as well as anyone that Griffin Swynyard was a liquor-sodden disaster, but the disaster would need to be endured until the Faulconer Brigade had made its reputation in battle and thus provided its commander with the freedom to defy the power of the Richmond Examiner. Which paper was now open on Faulconer’s camp table. “You see the news about Starbuck?”

  Bird had not even seen the paper, let alone heard any news of Starbuck.

  “He’s been arrested. It is believed he traded information with the enemy. Ha!” Faulconer made the explanation with evident satisfaction. “He never was any good, Pecker. God only knows why you champion him.”

  Bird knew his brother-in-law was looking for an argument so he refused to offer him the satisfaction. “Anything else, Faulconer?” he asked coldly instead.

  “One other thing, Pecker.” Faulconer, his coat buttoned and belt buckled, drew his curved saber and cut it through the air with a deliberately casual motion. “The elections,” Faulconer said vaguely, as if he had only just thought of the topic.

  “I’ve arranged for them.”

  “I don’t want any nonsense, Pecker.” Faulconer pointed the saber’s tip at Bird. “No nonsense, you hear me?”

  In two weeks the Legion was required to hold new elections for company officers. The requirement had been imposed by the Confederate government, which had just introduced conscription and, at the same time, had extended the terms of service of those men who had originally volunteered one year’s service. From now on the one-year men must serve till death, disability, or peace discharged them from the ranks, but thinking that the bitter pill needed a candy coating, the government had also ruled that the one-year regiments be given another chance to select their own officers. “What nonsense could there be?” Thaddeus Bird asked innocently.

  “You know, Pecker, you know,” Faulconer warned.

  “I have not the first, the faintest, the slightest idea what you mean,” Bird said.

  The saber tip slashed around to quiver just inches from Bird’s ragged beard. “I don’t want Starbuck’s name on the ballot.”

  “Then I shall make sure it isn’t there,” Bird said in all innocence.

  “And I don’t want the men writing his name in.”

  “That, Faulconer, is beyond my control. It’s called democracy. I believe your grandfather and mine fought a war to establish it.”

  “Nonsense, Pecker.” Faulconer felt the usual frustrations of dealing with his brother-in-law, and his usual regret that Adam so mulishly refused to leave Johnston and take over the Legion’s command. Faulconer could think of no other man whom the Legion would accept as a replacement for Pecker, and even Adam, Faulconer conceded, would have a difficult time replacing his uncle. Which meant, Faulconer privately conceded to himself, that Bird would probably have to be given the colonelcy of the regiment, in which case why could he not demonstrate just a hint of gratitude or cooperation? Washington Faulconer believed himself to be a man of charitable and kind instincts, and all he really wanted was to be liked in return, yet so often he seemed to engender resentment instead. “The men certainly wo
uldn’t be tempted to vote for Starbuck if there was a good officer leading K Company,” Faulconer now suggested.

  “Who, pray?”

  “Moxey.”

  Bird rolled his eyes. “Truslow would eat him alive.”

  “Then discipline Truslow!”

  “Why? He’s the best soldier in the Legion.”

  “Nonsense,” Faulconer said, but he had no other candidate to suggest. He sheathed his saber, the blade hissing against the scabbard’s wooden throat. “Tell the men that Starbuck’s a traitor. That should cool their enthusiasm. Tell them he’ll be hanged before the month’s out, and tell them that’s exactly what the son of a bitch deserves. And he does deserve it! You know damn well he murdered poor Ethan.”

  In Bird’s opinion the killing of Ethan Ridley had been the best day’s work Starbuck had ever done, but he kept that opinion to himself. “Have you any other orders, Faulconer?” he asked instead.

  “Be ready to leave in an hour. I want the men to look smart. We’ll be marching through Richmond, remember, so let’s put on a show!”

  Bird stepped outside the tent and lit a cheroot. Poor Starbuck, he thought. He did not believe in Starbuck’s guilt for a single instance, but there was nothing Bird could do about it, and the schoolmaster turned soldier had long decided that what he could not affect he should not allow to affect him. Still, he thought, it was sad about Starbuck.

  Yet, Bird reflected, Starbuck’s tragedy was doubtless about to be swallowed in the greater disaster posed by McClellan’s invasion. When Richmond fell the Confederacy would stagger on for a few defiant months, but bereft of its capital, and shorn of the Tredegar Iron Works which were the largest and most efficient in all the South, the rebellion could hardly be expected to survive. It was odd, Bird thought as he strolled along the brigade’s camp lines, but it was just about one year to the day since the rebellion had begun with the guns firing on Fort Sumter. One year, and now the North was curling around Richmond like a great mailed fist about to crack tight shut.

  Drums beat, and the shouted orders of the drill sergeants echoed back across the damp campground as the brigade got ready to march. The sun actually appeared from behind the clouds for the first time in weeks as the Faulconer Legion left, marching south and east to where America’s fate would be decided in battle.

  On one point only did Lieutenant Walton Gillespie trap Starbuck into some kind of admission of wrongdoing, and having found that weakness Gillespie worked on it with a desperate enthusiasm. Starbuck had admitted selling passports for gain and Gillespie pounced on the admission. “You admit signing passports without verifying their validity?”

  “We all do.”

  “Why?”

  “For money, of course.”

  Gillespie, already pale, actually seemed to blanch at this confession of moral turpitude. “You mean you accepted bribes?”

  “Of course I did,” Starbuck said. He was as weak as a kitten, his gullet and belly a mass of raw pain while his face had erupted into weeping pustules wherever the croton oil had splashed on his skin. The weather was warming, but he shivered all the time and feared he was catching a fever. Day after day he had been questioned, and day after day he had ingested the filthy oil until now he no longer knew how long he had been in jail. The questions seemed unending, while the vomit and the dysentery racked him day and night. It hurt him to swallow water, it hurt him to breathe, it hurt him to be alive.

  “Who bribes you?” Gillespie asked, then grimaced as Starbuck spat a bloody scrap of dribble onto the floor. Starbuck was sitting slumped in a chair for he was too weak to stand and Gillespie did not like to interview men crumpled on the floor. The two guards leaned on the wall. They were bored. In their own private opinions, which they accepted counted for nothing, this damn northerner was innocent, but Gillespie still kept at him. “Who?” Gillespie insisted.

  “All kinds of damn people.” Starbuck was so weary, so hurt. “Major Bridgford came once with a stack of forms, so did—”

  “Nonsense!” Gillespie snapped. “Bridgford wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  Starbuck shrugged as though he did not care one way or the other. Bridgford was the Provost Marshal of the army, and he had indeed brought Starbuck a sheaf of blank passports for signature and afterward had dropped a bottle of rye whiskey on Starbuck’s desk as payment for the favor. A score of other senior officers and at least a dozen Congressmen had done the same, usually paying more than an illegal bottle of liquor, and Starbuck, at Gillespie’s bidding, named them all. The only man he did not name was Belvedere Delaney. The lawyer was a friend and a benefactor and the least Starbuck could do in return was to protect him.

  “What did you do with the money?” Gillespie asked.

  “Lost it at Johnny Worsham’s,” Starbuck answered. Johnny Worsham’s was the city’s largest gambling den, a riotous place of women and music guarded by two black men so tall and powerful that even the armed provosts dared not tangle with them. Starbuck had lost some of the money there, but most of it was safely locked away in Sally’s room. He dared not reveal that hiding place for fear that Gillespie would go after Sally. “Played poker,” he added. “No damn good at poker.” He gave a dry heave, then groaned as he tried to restore his breath. Gillespie had abandoned the croton oil these last few days, yet still Starbuck was half bent double because of the pains in his belly.

  The next day Gillespie reported to Major Alexander, who grimaced when he saw how little had been learned from Starbuck. “Maybe he’s innocent?” Alexander suggested.

  “He’s a Yankee,” Gillespie said.

  “He’s guilty of that, certainly, but is he guilty of writing to Webster?”

  “Who else could it be?” Gillespie demanded.

  “That, Lieutenant, is what we are supposed to determine. I thought your father’s scientific methods were infallible? And if they are infallible, then Starbuck must be innocent.”

  “He takes bribes.”

  Alexander sighed. “We might as well arrest half the Congress for that crime, Lieutenant.” He leafed through the reports of Gillespie’s interrogation, noting with distaste the huge amounts of oil that had been forced down the prisoner’s throat. “I have a suspicion we’re wasting our time,” Alexander concluded.

  “Another few days, sir!” Gillespie said urgently. “I’m sure that he’s ready to break, sir. I know he is!”

  “You said that last week.”

  “I’ve withheld the oil these last few days,” Gillespie said enthusiastically. “I’m giving him a chance to recover, then I plan to double the dose next time.”

  Alexander closed Starbuck’s file. “If he had anything to tell us, Lieutenant, he’d have confessed it by now. He’s not our man.”

  Gillespie bridled at the implication that his interrogation had failed. “You do know,” he asked Alexander, “that Starbuck had quarters in a brothel?”

  “You’d condemn a man for being lucky?” Alexander asked.

  Gillespie blushed. “One of the women has been asking for him, sir. She visited the prison twice.”

  “Is she the pretty whore? The one called Royall?”

  Gillespie’s blush deepened. In truth Victoria Royall had been more beautiful than his dreams, but he dared not admit that to Alexander. “She was called Royall, certainly. And she was royally insolent. She wouldn’t tell me what her interest in the prisoner was, and I think she should be questioned.”

  Alexander shook his head wearily. “Her interest in the prisoner, Lieutenant, is that her father served in his infantry company, and she probably served in Starbuck’s bed. I talked to the girl and she knows nothing, so there’s no need for you to question her further. Unless you had a different entertainment in mind?”

  “Of course not, sir.” Gillespie bridled at the suggestion, though in truth he had been hoping that Major Alexander would deputize him to question Miss Victoria Royall.

  “Because if you did have something different in mind,” Alexander went on, “then you s
hould know that the nymphs du monde in that house are the most expensive in all the Confederacy. You might find the ladies in the establishment opposite the YMCA more to your purse’s taste.”

  “Sir! I have to protest…”

  “Be quiet, Lieutenant,” Alexander said tiredly. “And in case you have a mind to visit Miss Royall privately, then do reflect on just how many high-ranking officers are among her clients. She can probably make a great deal more trouble for you than you can for her.” Some of those clients had already protested Starbuck’s imprisonment, which Alexander himself was finding increasingly hard to justify. God in his heaven, the Major thought, but this case was proving difficult. Starbuck had seemed the obvious candidate, but he was admitting nothing. Timothy Webster, bedridden in his cell, had yielded no information in his interrogations, while the man set to watch the notice board in St. Paul’s was patently wasting his time. A false letter had been placed under the tapes of the message board in the church vestibule, but no one had appeared to collect it.

  “If you’d just let me administer my father’s purgatives to Webster,” Gillespie suggested eagerly.

  Alexander cut off the suggestion. “We have other plans for Mr. Webster.” Alexander also doubted whether the ailing Webster knew the identity of the man who had written to Major James Starbuck. Maybe only James Starbuck knew.

  “The woman captured with Webster?” Gillespie suggested.

  “We are not going to have the northern newspapers claiming that we purge women,” Alexander said. “She’ll be sent back north unharmed.” The sound of a military band prompted Alexander to cross to his office window and stare down at a battalion of infantry that was marching eastward on Franklin Street. Johnston’s army, stirred at last from its positions around Culpeper Court House, was arriving to defend the Confederacy’s capital. The very first regiments to arrive had already gone to thicken Magruder’s defenses at Yorktown, while the later arrivals were now making their encampments east and north of Richmond.