Copperhead

by Bernard Cornwell

  “My God.” Jenkins spat a stream of tobacco juice that splattered onto one of the captured northern flags. “But Yankees sure make good runners.”

  There was enough light left to help the victorious rebels plunder the abandoned camps, but not enough to turn the day’s victory into triumph. The northerners would not be driven into the swamps. Instead their officers halted the panicked flight a mile and a half east of the crossroads and there ordered the chastened battalions to dig new rifle pits and to fell trees to make new barricades. Guns came from the Yankee rear to stiffen the new defensive line, but in the day’s dying light no rebels came to challenge the newly positioned batteries.

  North of the railroad Johnston’s flank attack waded through waist-deep swamps to attack emplaced guns protected by the infantry who had just marched across the river. The Yankee lines opened fire, their cannons cracking shell and canister and grape so that the gray lines reeled back, bloodied and shattered. The blue lines cheered in the twilight as they saw the shrieking enemy first silenced, then bloodied, then defeated. Wounded men drowned in the swamp, their blood oozing into the stinking mud.

  General Johnston watched his men recoil from the sudden and unexpected Yankee defense. He was sitting on his horse atop a small knoll that offered a fine view across the battlefield that was suddenly touched red by an evening sunlight that slanted underneath the clouds and battle smoke. Bullets whiplashed overhead, ripping through the leaves of a small sugarberry tree. One of his aides kept twitching in his saddle whenever a bullet came near, and the man’s timidity annoyed the General. “You can’t duck a bullet,” he snapped at the aide. “By the time you hear them, they’re past you.” The General had been wounded five times in the service of the old U.S. Army and knew what it was to be under fire. He also knew that the careful battle that should have fetched him glory and fame had gone disastrously wrong. By God, he thought vengefully, but someone would suffer for this. “Does anyone know where Huger is?” he asked, but no one did. The General seemed to have vanished as completely as Longstreet had disappeared earlier, but at least Longstreet had finally reached the battlefield. Huger was still nowhere to be found. “Who gave Huger his orders?” Johnston demanded again.

  “I told you, sir,” Colonel Morton said respectfully. “It was young Faulconer.”

  Johnston turned on Adam. “He understood them?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “What do you mean? You think so? Did he have questions?”

  “Yes, sir.” Adam could feel himself coloring.

  “What questions?” Johnston snapped.

  Adam tried not to show his nervousness. “About the troops you put under General Longstreet’s command, sir.”

  Johnston frowned. “He didn’t have questions about the attack?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, tomorrow we’ll get everyone into one room. General Huger, General Longstreet, then we’ll find out just what the devil happened today and I promise you that whoever made a hash of this day’s work will wish they hadn’t been born. Isn’t that so, Morton?”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  “And I want every aide who carried a message to be there,” Johnston insisted.

  “Of course, sir,” Morton said.

  Adam stared doggedly into the gunsmoke. Somehow, in the raw glare of Johnston’s anger, his febrile idea of the previous night did not seem so very bright after all. He had planned to plead forgetfulness, or just plain carelessness, but those excuses seemed extraordinarily weak right now.

  “I’ll have the responsible man shot!” Johnston spoke angrily, still obsessed with the failure of his careful plans, then he made a flamboyant gesture with his left arm that seemed curiously out of place, and Adam, who was terrified of what the morrow’s investigation would bring, thought for a second that the General was trying to hit him, and then he saw that Johnston had been hit in the right shoulder and that he had merely flailed his left arm in a desperate attempt to keep his balance.

  The General blinked rapidly, swallowed, then tentatively touched his left fingertips to his right shoulder. “Damn it, I’ve been hit,” he said to Morton. “A bullet. Damn it.” His breath was coming in big gasps.

  “Sir!” Morton spurred forward to help Johnston.

  “It’s all right, Morton. Nothing vital touched. Just a bullet, that’s all.” Johnston clumsily fetched out a handkerchief and began folding it into a pad, but then a Yankee shell exploded at the foot of the knoll and a piece of the shrapnel case struck the General full in the chest and threw him back off his horse. He gave a cry, more in astonishment than in pain, then his aides gathered around to strip away his sword belt, pistols, and jacket. Blood was soaking the front of Johnston’s uniform.

  “You’re going to be all right, sir,” one aide said, but the General was quite unconscious now, and blood had started to spill from his mouth.

  “Take him back!” Colonel Morton had taken charge. “A stretcher here, quick!” Another Yankee shell exploded nearby, its shrapnel hissing overhead to tear more leaves from the sugarberry.

  Adam watched as men from the nearest infantry battalion brought a stretcher for the army’s commander. Johnston’s eyes were shut, his skin was pale, and his breath shallow. So much for the inquiry tomorrow, Adam thought, and his hopes soared. He would get away with it! He had engineered failure and no one would ever know!

  Across the plain the guns fired on. The sun sank behind cloud again and the dead lay in the wet fields and the wounded cried and the living crouched to bite their cartridges and to fire their guns. The dusk made the gun flames stab ever brighter in the gloom. Then twilight brought the fireflies out and the guns slowly stopped until the cries of the dying were the loudest noise left between the city and the White Oak Swamp.

  Flames flickered in the dark. There were no stars and no moonlight, just lanterns and small campfires. Men prayed.

  In the morning, they knew, the battle would stir again like embers breathed to fire by a whispering breeze, but now, in the damp dark where the wounded cried for help, the two armies rested.

  The battle died on the Sunday morning. The rebels, led now by General Smith, pushed on in the center, but the Yankees had sent reinforcements from north of the Chickahominy and would not be budged from their new defense line. Then the Yankees pushed back and the rebels gave ground until, at midday, the two armies gave up the struggle in mutual weariness. The rebels, finding no profit in holding on to the sliver of ground they had gained, pulled back to their original lines, thus letting the Yankees reoccupy the crossroads under the seven fire-blasted pine trees.

  Work parties cut timbers and made pyres on which the dead horses were burned. The heat contracted the horses’ tendons so that the dead beasts seemed to twitch in dreamy gallops as the flames hissed around them. The wounded were taken to field hospitals or, on the rebel side, loaded onto wagons and flatcars to be carried into Richmond. The northerners buried the dead in shallow graves because no one had the energy to dig deep ones, while the Confederates stacked their corpses in carts that were taken back to the cemeteries of Richmond. In the city, as the carts and wagons creaked through the streets with their uncovered cargoes of the dead and dying, women and children watched aghast.

  The Yankees celebrated. One of the spoils of their battle was a double-decker horse bus that the Richmond Exchange Hotel had once used to carry hotel guests to the city’s rail depots. The bus had been brought to the battlefield as an ambulance, but the vehicle had bogged down in the mud and been abandoned, so now the Union soldiers dragged it about their camp, offering two-cent rides down Broadway. All aboard for the Battery, they shouted. The northerners declared the battle a victory. Had they not repulsed the vaunted, outnumbering Confederates? And when the sick, shivering, weak McClellan appeared on horseback amid the wreckage of scorched limbers and shattered cannon and bloodied grass and broken rifles, he was welcomed with cheers as though he were a conquering hero. A New York band serenaded him with “Hail to the C
hief.” The General gallantly tried to give a speech, but his voice was pallid and only a few men heard him declare that they had witnessed the last despairing lunge of the rebel army, and that soon, very soon, he would lead them into the heart of secession and there defeat it utterly.

  On both sides of the lines regiments formed squares for Sunday worship. Catholic regiments took Mass, Protestants listened to the Scriptures, and all thanked God for their deliverance. Strong men’s voices sang hymns, the sound mournful across a battlefield that stank of death and smoke.

  Starbuck and Lassan had spent the night with Micah Jenkins’s brigade, but in the afternoon, after the battle died, they worked their way back through the shell holes and past the rows of dead men cut down by canister until they found the army headquarters in a small shingled farmhouse north of the railroad. Starbuck sought directions there and afterward, standing in the road, he parted from Lassan, but not before he insisted that the Frenchman take his brother’s horse.

  “You should sell the horse!” Lassan remonstrated.

  Starbuck shook his head. “I’m in your debt.”

  “For what, mon ami?”

  “My life,” Starbuck said.

  “Oh, nonsense! Such debts come and go on a battlefield like a child’s wishes.”

  “But I am in your debt,” Starbuck insisted.

  Lassan laughed. “You are a puritan at heart. You let fear of sin ride you like a jockey. All right, I shall take the horse as a punishment for your imagined sins. We shall meet soon, yes?”

  “I hope so,” Starbuck said, but only if the gamble he was contemplating paid off. Otherwise, he thought, he would be hanging from a high beam in a cold dawn and he felt the temptation to throw away Pinkerton’s paper. “I hope so,” he said again, resisting the temptation.

  “And remember what I taught you,” Lassan said. “Aim low for men and high for women.” He shook Starbuck’s hand. “Good luck, my friend.” The Frenchman went to make himself known to the Confederate headquarters while Starbuck walked slowly north with his handful of spoils from the battlefield. There was a fine northern-made razor with an ivory handle, a small pair of opera glasses, and a stone jug of cold coffee. He drank the coffee as he walked, tossing away the empty jug as he reached the fields where the Faulconer Brigade was camped.

  It was time to do what Sally had told him to do so long before; it was time to fight.

  He walked into the encampment just as the soldiers were being dismissed from the afternoon’s church parade. He deliberately avoided the Legion’s lines, going instead to the headquarters ridgepole tents that were grouped about two pine trees that had been stripped of their branches to serve as flagpoles. The taller tree flew a Confederate battle flag, the slightly shorter carried the flag adapted from the Faulconer coat of arms with its motto “Forever Ardent.” Nelson, General Washington Faulconer’s servant, was the first man to see Starbuck in the encampment. “You must go away, Mr. Starbuck. If the master sees you, he’ll have you arrested!”

  “It’s all right, Nelson. I’m told Master Adam’s here?”

  “That’s right, sir. And sharing Captain Moxey’s tent, sir, till they find him a new one. The master’s so pleased he’s back.”

  “Moxey’s a captain now?” Starbuck asked, amused.

  “He’s an aide to the General, sir. And you shouldn’t be here, sir, you shouldn’t. The General can’t abide you, sir.”

  “Show me to Moxey’s tent, Nelson.”

  It was a big tent, serving not only as sleeping quarters but as a brigade office. There were two camp beds, two long tables, and two chairs, all set on a floor of wooden slats. Moxey’s bed was piled with dirty clothes and discarded equipment while Adam’s luggage was stacked at the foot of his neatly folded blankets. The tables held the stacks of paperwork that soldiering engendered, the piles all anchored by rocks that kept the forms safe from the small wind that stirred through the laced-back tent flaps.

  Starbuck sat in one of the canvas folding chairs. The midday sunlight, watery at best, was turned into a leprous yellow by the canvas. He saw a Savage Navy revolver among the tangled belongings on Moxey’s bed and Starbuck retrieved the gun just as the first officers began arriving back in the headquarters. Horses stamped their feet, servants and slaves ran to collect reins while the officers’ cooks carried the evening meal across to the mess tables. Starbuck saw that the Savage was unloaded, but, typical of Moxey’s carelessness, had an unfired percussion cap left on one of the cones. He turned the cylinder until the cap was in the next firing position, then looked up just as Captain Moxey ducked under the eaves. Starbuck smiled, but said nothing.

  Moxey gaped at him. “You shouldn’t be here, Starbuck.”

  “People keep telling me that. I’m beginning to feel distinctly unwanted, Moxey. But I’m here anyway, so you go and play somewhere else.”

  “This is my tent, Starbuck, so—” Moxey stopped abruptly as Starbuck leveled the heavy revolver. He raised his hands. “Now, Starbuck. Please! Be sensible!”

  “Bang,” Starbuck said, then pulled the gun’s lower trigger that cocked the hammer and turned the cylinder. “Go away,” he said.

  “Now, Starbuck, please!” Moxey stammered, then squealed as Starbuck pulled the upper trigger, making the percussion cap snap angrily. Moxey yelped and fled, while Starbuck levered the shattered and scorched scraps of copper off the cone. The tent was soured by a fine layer of astringent smoke.

  Adam came in a few seconds later. He stopped when he saw Starbuck and his face suddenly seemed drained of color, though perhaps that was just the light-filtering effect of the canvas. “Nate,” Adam said in a voice that was neither welcoming nor dismissive, but held a slightly guarded tone.

  “Hello, Adam,” Starbuck said happily.

  “My father…”

  “…won’t like it that I’m here,” Starbuck continued the sentence for his friend. “Nor will Colonel Swynyard. Nor does Moxey approve of my presence, oddly enough, though why in the name of holy hell we should care what Moxey thinks, I don’t know. I want to talk to you.”

  Adam looked at the gun in Starbuck’s hand. “I’ve been wondering where you were.”

  “I’ve been with my brother James. Remember James? I’ve been with him, and with his chief who is a rugged little man called Pinkerton. Oh, and I’ve been with McClellan too, We mustn’t forget Major General McClellan, the Young Napoleon.” Starbuck peered into the Savage’s barrel. “Moxey does keep a dirty gun. If he doesn’t clean it he’ll blow his hand off one day.” Starbuck looked up at Adam again. “James sends his best wishes.”

  The tent gave a violent twitch as a man ducked through the entrance flaps. It was Washington Faulconer, his handsome face flushed with anger. Colonel Swynyard was behind the General, but Swynyard stayed out in the watery sunlight as Faulconer faced his enemy. “What the hell are you doing here, Starbuck?” General Faulconer demanded.

  “Talking to Adam,” Starbuck said mildly. He was suppressing his nervousness. He might dislike Washington Faulconer, but the man was still a powerful enemy and a full general.

  “You stand when you talk to me,” Faulconer said. “And put that gun down,” he added when Starbuck had obediently stood. Faulconer mistook the obedience for subservience. The General had come into the tent with his right hand on the hilt of his own revolver, but now he relaxed. “I ordered you out of my Legion, Starbuck,” he said, “and when I gave that order I intended it to mean that you stayed well away from my men. All my men, and especially my family. You are not welcome here, not even as a visitor. You will leave now.”

  The General had spoken with dignity, keeping his voice low so that the curious bystanders would not hear the confrontation inside the tent.

  “What if I don’t go?” Starbuck asked just as quietly.

  A muscle twitched on Faulconer’s face, revealing that the General was a good deal more nervous than his demeanor betrayed. The last time these two men had faced each other had been on the evening of the battle a
t Manassas, and on that night it had been Faulconer who was humiliated and Starbuck who had triumphed. Faulconer was set on revenge. “You’ll go, Starbuck,” the General said confidently. “There’s nothing for you here. We don’t need you and we don’t want you, so you can crawl back to your family or go back to that whore in Richmond, and you can do it on your own or you can do it under arrest. But you’ll go. I command here and I’m ordering you away.” Faulconer edged to one side and gestured toward the tent door. “Just go,” he said.

  Starbuck opened the top pocket of the threadbare uniform jacket that he had stripped from the dead South Carolinian and took out the Bible that James had given him. He looked at Adam and saw that his friend recognized the book.

  “Father,” Adam intervened softly.

  “No, Adam!” the General said firmly. “I know your nature, I know you will appeal for your friend, but there is no appeal.” Faulconer looked scornfully at Starbuck. “Put your Bible away and go. Else I’ll call the provosts.”

  “Adam?” Starbuck prompted his friend.

  Adam knew what Starbuck meant. The Bible was a symbol of James, and James was Adam’s partner in espionage, and Adam’s guilty conscience was more than strong enough to make the connection between the Bible and his own betrayal of his father’s cause. “Father,” Adam said again.

  “No, Adam!” Faulconer insisted.

  “Yes!” Adam snapped the word surprisingly loud, astonishing his father. “I have to talk with Nate,” Adam insisted, “and afterward I’ll talk with you.” There was an utter misery in his voice.