Copperhead

by Bernard Cornwell

  Starbuck turned away from the house and walked on toward de’Ath’s waiting coach. The streets echoed with iron-shod wheels and the shouts of teamsters. Lights burned late. Down in the valley a train banged and clashed, its steam whistle mournful in the long rain. Slaves and servants heaped cabin trunks and carpetbags onto wagons; children cried. Somewhere to the east, cloaked by the night, a vengeful army came to claim back a city and Starbuck went to save himself.

  He went in through the back door, going into the kitchen where Grace and Charity were broiling venison on the black-leaded stove. The two slaves screamed when Starbuck came through the door, then greeted him with a chorus of questions about where he had sprung from and exclamations at the state of his clothes and health. “You’ve gone skinny!” Grace said. “Look at you!”

  “I missed your cooking,” Starbuck said, then managed to tell them that he needed to see Miss Truslow. “Is she busy?”

  “Busy? Busy with the dead!” Grace said ominously, but would not explain more. Instead she took off her apron, patted her hair into a rough order, then climbed the stairs. She came back five minutes later and told Starbuck to use the back staircase to Sally’s room.

  The bedroom was on the third floor and looked across the wet, tangled garden toward the stable block where the window of his old room showed as a black rectangle. The walls of the bedroom were papered in an elegant pale green stripe and her bed was canopied in green cloth. Dried flowers stood in a gilded vase on the mantel and landscapes hung in lacquered frames on the walls. The room was lit by two gas mantles, but candles stood on a table in case the city’s gas supply should fail. The furniture was waxed and polished, the draperies were clean, the rugs well beaten and aired. It was a room that suggested solid American virtue, clean and prosperous, a room of which Starbuck’s mother would have been proud.

  The door clicked open and Sally hurried in. “Nate!” She ran across the room and threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, God! I was so fretting for you!” She kissed him, then brushed at his coat. “I tried to find you. I went to the city jail, then down to Lumpkin’s, and I asked people to help, but it was no good! I couldn’t get to you. I wanted to, but…”

  “It’s all right. I’m fine,” he told her. “I’m really fine.”

  “You’re thin.”

  “I’ll grow back,” he said, smiling, then cocked his head toward the open door through which the sound of laughter came from downstairs.

  “They’re raising the dead,” Sally said wearily. She took the chignon from her hair and laid it carefully on her dressing table. Without the false curls she looked younger. “They’re having a fake seance,” she explained. “All of them drunk as Indians and trying to get advice off General Washington. It’s because the Yankees are coming, so everyone’s high on whiskey.”

  “But not you?”

  “Honey, you want to make money in this business, you stay cold stone sober.” She crossed the room and was about to push the door shut, but paused. “Or did you want to go downstairs? Join in?”

  “No. I’m going away.”

  She sensed the portentousness in his voice. “Where?”

  He showed her the pass. “I’m going across the lines. Back to the Yankees.”

  Sally frowned. “You going to fight for them, Nate?”

  “No. There’ll be no more fighting soon. It’s going to be over, Sally. The bastards have won. They’re so damn cocky that they’ve even closed their recruiting stations. Think what that means!”

  “It means they’re confident,” Sally said scornfully, then banged the door shut. “And so what? Have you ever known a Yankee who wasn’t confident? Hell, that’s why they’re Yankees. All strut and flurry, Nate, and showing the rest of the world how to suck eggs, but I don’t see any of them marching down Franklin Street yet. It’s like my pa says. It ain’t over till the hog stops squealing.” She crossed to a table and took two cigars from a humidor. She lit both from a gaslight and brought one to Starbuck, then crouched opposite him on the hearthrug. Her hooped skirts rustled as she crouched. She was dressed in an elaborate white silk dress, wide-skirted and narrow-waisted, with bare shoulders beneath a shawl of pearl-studded lace. There were more pearls at her neck and on her ears. “Did you come to say good-bye?” she asked him.

  “No.”

  “For what then? That?” She jerked her head toward the bed.

  “No.” He paused. The sound of a bottle breaking came from downstairs, followed by an ironic cheer. “Some seance,” he said with a smile. Spiritualism was rife in Richmond, condemned from the city’s pulpits, but succored by the families of men killed on the battlefield who wanted reassurance that their sons and husbands were safe on the far side of death.

  “It ain’t a proper seance. They’re just sitting around the table kicking its legs.” Sally paused and offered Starbuck a cautious smile. “So what is it, Nate?”

  He took the plunge. Adam was safe, now it was his turn. “Do you remember that night at the hospital?” he asked her. “How you told me you wanted to be ordinary? Just to be plain ordinary. Maybe to run a store? So come with me. This pass will get us both across the lines.” He was not entirely sure of that, but he was quite certain that he would not go without Sally if she agreed to accompany him. “I’ve got permission to go,” he told her, “because I’m doing something for the government.”

  Sally frowned. “For our government?”

  “I have to deliver a letter,” Starbuck said, and he saw that she still suspected he was going back to fight for the North, and so he explained more. “There’s a spy here in Richmond,” he told her, “a dangerous one, and they want me to trap him, see? And to do it I have to take this letter to the Yankees.”

  “And they don’t expect you to come back?” Sally asked.

  “They want me to come back,” Starbuck admitted, but he did not explain any further. He had already revealed as much as he dared, and he did not know how to tell her the rest; how he believed Adam was the spy and how by coming back to Richmond he would entrap his friend. Instead he had planned to carry the false letter and let that undo the damage Adam had already caused, and then he would go away with Sally and leave the armies to fight out the ragged end of the war. At best, he reckoned, there could only be a month or two’s fight left in the Confederacy and it would be better to strike out of the wreckage now than be destroyed in the final catastrophe. “Bring your money,” he urged Sally, “and we’ll go north. Maybe to Canada? Maybe Maine? We’ll start your dry goods store. Maybe we’ll go west?” He frowned, knowing he was expressing himself badly. “I’m saying you can start again. I’m saying come with me, I’ll look after you.”

  “On my money?” Sally smiled.

  “You’ve got some money of mine. I know it isn’t much, but between us we can manage. Hell, Sally, we can settle wherever we want! Just you and me.”

  She drew on the cigar, watching him. “Are you offering to marry me, Nate Starbuck?” Sally asked after a while.

  “Of course!” Had she not understood that?

  “Oh, Nate.” Sally smiled. “You’re a great one for running away.”

  “I’m not doing that,” he said, nettled by the accusation.

  She did not notice his hurt. “Sometimes I want to marry, Nate, and sometimes I don’t. And when I do, honey, God knows I’d marry you before anyone else.” She smiled sadly at him. “But you’d tire of me.”

  “No!”

  “Sh!” She put a finger to his lips. “I saw you look at that Bible girl at the hospital. You’d always want to know what it would be like to marry your own kind.”

  “That’s not fair,” Starbuck protested.

  “But it’s true, honey.” She drew on the cigar. “You and me are friends, but we’d make a rotten marriage.”

  “Sally!” Starbuck protested.

  She shushed him. “I’ll see this war through, Nate. If the Yankees come I’ll spit on them, then make money out of the bastards. I don’t know what else I’ll do, but I do
know I won’t run away.”

  “I’m not running away,” he protested, but too weakly.

  She thought for a second. “You haven’t had things hard, Nate. I know lots of boys like you. You like your comforts.” This time she saw she had hurt him and so she reached out a hand and touched his cheek. “Maybe I’m wrong. I keep forgetting this ain’t your country, but it is mine.” She fell silent for a while, thinking, then she gave him a swift smile. “There comes a time when you have to stand on your own feet, not on your father’s shoulders. That’s what my pa taught me. I ain’t a quitter, Nate.”

  “I’m not…”

  “Sh!” She touched his lips again. “I do know that the Yankees ain’t won yet, and you told me yourself that it takes five of them to beat one of our boys.”

  “I was boasting.”

  “Just like a man.” She smiled. “But the hog’s still squealing, honey. We ain’t beat yet.”

  Starbuck sucked on the cigar. He had convinced himself that Sally would come with him. He had never for one moment imagined that she would prefer to stay and risk the Yankee victory. He had thought they would run away together and make a small refuge far from the world’s troubles. Her refusal left him confused.

  “Nate?” Sally asked. “What is it you want?”

  He thought about the question. “I was happy last winter,” he said. “When I was with the company. I like being a soldier.”

  “Then if you want something, honey, go get it. Like my pa says, the world don’t owe no one a damn thing, which means you have to go out there and grow it, make it, buy it, or steal it.” She smiled at him. “You being honest about this spy business?”

  He looked up at her. “Yes. I promise.”

  “Go catch the bastard, honey. You promised to deliver that letter, so do it. And if you want to run away after that, that’s your business, but you do it on your own feet, not mine.” She leaned forward and kissed him. “But if you do come back here, honey, I’ll still be here. I owe you still.” It was for Sally’s sake that Starbuck had murdered Ethan Ridley, and Sally’s gratitude for that act was heartfelt and deep. Now she threw what remained of her cigar onto the tiles of the hearth. “You want me to give you the money that’s yours?”

  He shook his head. “No.” His certainties were vanishing, leaving him confused again. “Would you do something for me?” he asked Sally.

  “If I can, sure.”

  “Write to your father.”

  “My pa!” She sounded alarmed. “He doesn’t want a letter from me!”

  “I think he does.”

  “But I can’t write proper!” She was blushing, suddenly ashamed of her lack of education.

  “He doesn’t read too good either,” Starbuck said. “Just write to him and tell him I’m coming back. Tell him I’ll be with the company before the spring finishes. Promise him that.”

  “I thought that bastard Faulconer wouldn’t have you in the Legion?”

  “I can beat Faulconer.”

  Sally laughed. “A minute ago, Nate, you were all for running away and hiding yourself in Canada, now you’re taking on General Faulconer? Sure, I’ll write my pa. You certain about your money?”

  “Keep it for me.”

  “So you are coming back?”

  He smiled. “Hog’s still squealing, honey.”

  She kissed him, then climbed to her feet and crossed to her dressing table where she carefully fixed the chignon on her brushed-back hair. She made sure the curls fell naturally, then gave him a smile. “I’ll see you, Nate.”

  “You will, too.” He watched her walk to the door. “The Bible girl,” he suddenly remembered.

  “What about her?” Sally paused with her hand on the door’s edge.

  “She wants to come and talk to you.”

  “To me?” Sally grinned. “What about? Jesus?”

  “Maybe. Do you mind?”

  “If Jesus don’t mind, why the hell should I?”

  “She feels bad about that night.”

  “I’d forgotten it,” Sally said, then shrugged. “No, I didn’t forget. I kind of hoped to forget. But maybe I can teach her a thing or two.”

  “Such as?”

  “What a real man is, honey.” She grinned at him.

  “Don’t upset her,” Starbuck said and was surprised by that sudden impulse of protection toward Julia, but Sally had not heard him. She had already gone out of the door. He finished his cigar. It seemed there was no easy way out, which meant he had a promise to keep and a spy to betray. Somewhere in the night a clock struck the hour and Starbuck went into the dark.

  WHAT IS THIS?” BELVEDERE DELANEY HELD A BANK note between his finger and thumb as though the crumpled thing held a contagion. “‘Parish of Point Coupee,’” he read aloud from the note’s inscription, “‘two dollars.’ My dear Sally, I do hope that isn’t what you charge for your services?”

  “Real funny, ain’t you,” Sally said, then took the note from the lawyer’s hand and added it to one of the piles on the cherrywood table. “Gambling winnings,” she explained.

  “But what am I to do with it?” Delaney inquired fastidiously, taking up the offending bank note again. “Am I to travel to Louisiana and demand that the Parish Clerk of Point Coupee pay me two dollars?”

  “You know well enough that they’ll discount it at the Exchange Bank,” Sally said briskly, taking back the note and adding it to the week’s takings. “That’s four hundred and ninety-two dollars and sixty-three cents from downstairs.” “Downstairs” meant the tables where poker and euchre were played, and where the house took a straight percentage of the winnings. The policy was that any kind of money agreeable to the players could be used at the tables, but upstairs the only acceptable currencies were the newfangled northern dollar bills, gold and silver coinage, and Virginia Treasury Notes.

  “And how much of the four hundred and ninety-two dollars is in useful money?” Delaney asked.

  “Half,” Sally admitted. The rest was in fancy bills issued by a variety of southern banks, merchants, and municipal governments who had harnessed their printing presses to replace the dearth of northern money.

  “The Bank of Chattanooga,” Delaney said derisively, riffling through the bank notes. “And what in the name of Jehovah is this?” He dangled a scrap of faded paper. “A twenty-five-cent note from the Inferior Court of Butts County, Jackson, Georgia? My God, Sally, we’re rich! A whole quarter!” He tossed the note onto the table. “Why don’t we just print up some notes for ourselves?”

  “Why don’t we?” Sally asked. “It’d be a damn sight easier than the work I do upstairs.”

  “We could invent whole parishes! Whole counties! We could devise our own banks!” Delaney was quite taken with the idea. Anything that sabotaged the Confederacy appealed to Belvedere Delaney, and destroying the currency would certainly hasten the demise of the rebellion. Not that the South’s currency needed much debasement; prices were rising every day and the whole financial system was based upon loose promises that depended for their fulfillment on final Confederate victory. Even the government’s official bank notes admitted as much, promising to pay the bearer the face value of the note but only six months after peace had been declared between the warring sides. “We could put a printing press in the coach house,” Delaney suggested. “Who’s to know?”

  “The printer?” Sally suggested sourly. “You’d need too many people, Delaney, and sure as eggs they’d end up blackmailing you. Besides, I’ve got a better idea for the coach house.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Black it out, carpet it, put in a table and a dozen chairs, and I’ll guarantee you a bigger profit than you can ever make out of my bedroom.”

  Delaney shook his head, not understanding. “You’re going to serve meals?”

  “Hell no. Seances. Set me up as Richmond’s best medium, feed me gossip, charge five bucks a general session and fifty bucks for a private consultation.” The idea had come to Sally the previous night when the hous
e’s clients had conducted their fake seance in the darkened parlor. It had been a game, but Sally had noted how some of the participants had still expected a supernatural intervention, and she reckoned that superstition could be harnessed to profit. “I’ll need a helper to rap on walls and wave around the cheesecloth,” she told a fascinated Delaney, “and we’ll have to develop some other tricks.”

  Delaney liked the idea. He waved a vague hand toward the upper floors. “And you’d leave the bedroom business?”

  “So long as I’m making more money, hell yes. But I’ll need you to invest some cash first. We can’t gammon the city with a cheap room. It’s got to be done proper.”

  “You’re brilliant, Sally. Quite brilliant.” Delaney’s praise was genuine. He enjoyed his weekly meetings with Sally, whose business acumen impressed him and whose sturdy good sense amused him. It was Sally who ran the financial side of the house, doing it with a brisk efficiency and a tough honesty. The whorehouse, with its luxuries and air of exclusivity, was a gold mine to the lawyer, but it was also a place where he picked up gossip about southern politicians and military commanders, and all that gossip was passed on to Delaney’s contact in Washington. How much of the information was true or useful Delaney did not always know, nor did he particularly care. It was enough that he was siding with the North and could thus anticipate profiting from that allegiance when, as he saw it, the inevitable northern victory occurred. Now, still mulling over Sally’s proposal to turn the house’s back premises into a spiritualist shrine, Delaney took his share of the week’s money. “So tell me the news?”

  Sally gestured through the window to where refugees’ carts and coaches still jammed the street. “That’s the news, ain’t it? We’ll soon have no customers left.”

  “Or a new set arriving?” Delaney suggested delicately.

  “And we’ll charge them double,” Sally sniffed, then asked if it was true that the northern recruiting offices had been closed down.

  “I’d not heard as much,” Delaney said, taking care not to show how elated he was by the news.