Copperhead

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Did he have children?” Starbuck asked and chided himself for needing to ask. An officer should know these things.

  “Boy and a girl. Boy’s a slobbering idiot. Doc Billy should have strangled him at birth like he usually does.” Truslow raised his rifle above the log’s parapet, sighted briefly, then fired and ducked straight down. “The girl’s deaf as a stone. Carter never should have married the damn woman.” He bit the top off a cartridge. “The women in that family all have weak litters. It’s no good marrying for looks. Marry for strength.”

  “What did you marry for?” Starbuck asked.

  “Looks, of course.”

  “I asked Sally to marry me,” Starbuck confessed awkwardly.

  “And?”

  Starbuck knelt up, aimed the rifle at the top of the slope, pulled the trigger, and dropped down just an instant before a whole hornets’ buzz of bullets slapped into the tree. “She turned me down,” he confessed.

  “So the girl’s got some sense left then?” Truslow grinned. He was reloading his rifle, doing it lying down. The Yankees were cheering because the Confederate assault had been stopped so easily, but then a rebel yell announced the arrival of the Faulconer Brigade’s second line and the Yankee fire seemed to double itself as they tore at these new attackers among the trees. Some men of the first line managed to throw themselves over the valley’s lip and scrambled down the slope to find shelter. Cannon fired at point-blank range, hurling men back from the gray line. Starbuck was tempted to try and advance a few yards farther, but the second attack went to ground even faster than the first and the Yankee rifle fire switched back to the valley bottom where water and mud were churned by the bullet strikes. “Bastards have got their dander up this afternoon,” Truslow grumbled.

  “Reckon we’re here till nightfall,” Starbuck said, then bit a bullet off a cartridge. He shook the powder into the barrel, then spat the bullet into the muzzle. “Only darkness will get us out of this.”

  “Unless the bastards run,” Truslow said, though not with any optimism. “I’ll tell you one thing. We won’t see Faulconer down here. He’ll be keeping his pants dry.” Truslow had found a niche in the fallen tree that offered him an oblique view up the enemy slope. Most of the enemy had gone to ground in rifle pits or trenches, but Truslow found one target on the crest and took careful aim. “Got you,” he said, then pulled the trigger. “She really turn you down?”

  “Gave me a tongue-lashing,” Starbuck said, ramming the new bullet down his rifle barrel.

  “She’s a tough one,” Truslow said with grudging admiration. A barrelful of canister slashed through the topmost branches, provoking a shower of broken twigs and torn leaves.

  “She takes after you,” Starbuck said. He knelt up, fired, and ducked back. He wondered, as the retaliatory bullets thudded into the log, just what Sally’s new job entailed. There had been no opportunity to visit Richmond, nor would there be till the Yankees were driven away from the city, but when that happened both he and Truslow planned to visit Sally. Starbuck had other errands in the city. He wanted to make a social call on Lieutenant Gillespie. The anticipation of that revenge was a pleasure he relished, just as he relished seeing Julia Gordon again. If, indeed, she would receive him, for he suspected that her loyalty to Adam would most likely make her keep her front door shut.

  The northerners began to jeer the stalled rebels. “Lost your spunk? What happened to your yelling, Johnny? Your slaves won’t help you now!” The jeers stopped abruptly when the rebel artillery at last got the range of the far crest and began dropping shells onto the enemy. Truslow risked a quick look up the slope. “They’re dug in deep,” he said.

  Too deep to be easily shifted, Starbuck reckoned, which meant the company was in for a long, hot wait. He took off his gray coat and dropped it beside the fallen tree, then sat with his back against the decaying wood to try and determine where his men had gone to earth. Only the dead were in plain sight. “Who’s that?” he asked, pointing to a body that lay facedown and spreadeagled in a patch of water thirty yards away. There was an enormous hole in the gray jacket through which a mess of blood, flies, and the glint of a white rib could be seen. “Felix Waggoner,” Truslow said after a cursory glance.

  “How do you know it’s not Peter?” Starbuck asked. Peter and Felix Waggoner were twins.

  “It was Felix’s turn to wear the good boots today,” Truslow said. Somewhere a wounded man was moaning, but no one could move to help him. The valley was a death trap. The Yankee cannon could not depress far enough to rake the valley’s bottom with canister, but the northern riflemen had a fine sight of anyone who tried to move across the swamp and so the wounded man would have to suffer.

  “Starbuck!” Colonel Bird called from somewhere beyond the valley’s rim. “Can you move?”

  “Come on, Starbuck! Move!” a Yankee shouted, and suddenly a score of the enemy were chanting his name, mocking him, inviting him to try his luck against their rifles.

  “No, Pecker!” Starbuck shouted. The wood fell silent again, or as silent as a battle could be. An artillery duel still thrashed the sky overhead, and every half hour or so a crescendo of rifle fire and cheering would mark yet another rebel attempt to push a brigade or a battalion across the swamp, but the Yankees had the whip hand here and were not going to let it go. They were a rearguard placed north of the Chickahominy to protect the bridges while the rest of the army crossed over to the southern part of the peninsula that McClellan had declared would be his new base of operations. Till now the steamers had unloaded their supplies at either Fort Monroe or West Point on the York River, but from now on they would sail to Harrison’s Landing on the James. McClellan described the southward redeployment as a change of base, and had declared that it was a move “unparalleled in the annals of war,” but to most of his soldiers the change of base felt more like a retreat, which is why they were taking such pleasure in whipping the rebels into quiescence in the bottom of this swamp-fever valley that ran a mile north of the Chickahominy River. And every hour that they kept the rebels at bay was an hour in which more men of the northern army could cross the river’s precarious bridges to the temporary safety of the southern bank.

  Starbuck took his brother’s Bible out of his jacket pocket, turned to the blank pages at the back, and used a stub of pencil to write down the names of the men who had died thus far in the afternoon. He already knew about Sergeant Carter Hutton, Felix Waggoner, and Amos Parks, but now he learned another six names by calling to men nearby. “We’ve taken a licking,” Starbuck said as he laid the Bible on top of his discarded coat.

  “Aye.” Truslow fired through his loophole in the log, and the puff of his rifle smoke was sufficient to draw an angry response from a score of northerners. The bullets chewed into the rotten wood, thumping splinters into the air. An Arkansas man fired, then another from K Company, but the sniping was desultory now. There were no reserves to feed into this part of the valley, and General Faulconer was making no effort to stir his men out of their muddy refuges. Farther up the valley, well out of Starbuck’s sight, a more sustained attack was generating a storm of rifle and cannon fire that slowly died away as the rebel assault failed.

  A black snake slithered across the heel of the mudbank where Starbuck and Truslow had found cover. It had a diamond pattern on the back of its skull. “Cottonmouth?” Starbuck asked.

  “You’re learning,” Truslow said approvingly. The cottonmouth paused at the edge of the water, tasting the air with its tongue, then swam upstream to disappear into a tangle of fallen branches. A fire had started on the far side of the valley, burning and flickering in the dead leaves under a fallen tree. Starbuck scratched his belly and found a dozen ticks had buried themselves in the skin. He tried to pull the ticks away, but their heads broke off and stayed buried in the flesh. The afternoon heat was thick and humid, the marsh stagnant. The water in his canteen tasted salty and warm. He slapped and killed a mosquito. Somewhere upstream, out of sight around the valley’s curv
e, another attack must have just started, for there was a sudden splintering of fire and the sound of screams. The attack lasted two minutes, then failed. “Poor bastards,” Truslow said.

  “Come on, rebs! Don’t be shy! We’ve got enough bullets for you too!” a Yankee shouted, then laughed at the rebel silence.

  The day seemed to grow even hotter. Starbuck had no watch and tried to judge the afternoon’s passing by the motion of shadows, but it almost seemed as if the sun were standing still. “Maybe we won’t be eating Yankee rations tonight,” he said.

  “I was looking forward to some coffee,” Truslow said wistfully.

  “It’s thirty bucks a pound for real coffee in Richmond now,” Starbuck said.

  “Can’t be.”

  “Sure is,” Starbuck said, then he twisted around, raised his head, and aimed the rifle at the scar of a rifle pit on the opposite slope. He fired and dropped, expecting the usual retaliatory fusillade of bullets to shiver the rotting trunk, but instead the Yankees began shouting at each other to hold their fire. A couple of bullets slapped at the log, but immediately an authoritative voice demanded that the northerners cease their fire. Someone plaintively asked what was happening, then a score of voices shouted that it was safe. Truslow was staring in amazement at the rebel-held side of the valley. “Son of a bitch,” he said in astonishment.

  Starbuck turned. “Dear God,” he said. The northerners had ceased fire and now Starbuck shouted to make sure that his own men did the same. “Hold your fire!” he called. Colonel Bird was shouting the same order from the top of the slope.

  Because Adam had come to the battlefield.

  He was making no effort to hide, but just strolling as though he were enjoying a late afternoon’s walk. He was dressed in civilian clothes and was unarmed, though it was not that which had persuaded the Yankees to hold their fire, but rather the flag that he carried. Adam was holding a Stars and Stripes that he waved to and fro as he walked slowly downhill. Once the firing had stopped he draped the flag around his shoulders like a cape.

  “He’s gone soft in the brains,” Truslow said.

  “I don’t think so.” Starbuck cupped his hands. “Adam!”

  Adam changed direction, angling downhill toward Starbuck. “I was looking for you, Nate!” he called cheerfully.

  “Get your head down!”

  “Why? No one’s firing.” Adam looked up at the Yankee slope and some of the northerners cheered him. Others asked him what he wanted, but in reply he just waved at them.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Starbuck kept his head below the makeshift bullet-scarred parapet of the rotting log.

  “What you told me to do, of course.” Adam grimaced because he needed to wade through a patch of filthy swamp and he was wearing his best shoes. “Good afternoon, Truslow. How are you?”

  “Been better, I reckon,” Truslow said in a suspicious voice.

  “I met your daughter in Richmond. I’m afraid I was unkind to her. Would you apologize to her for me?” Adam limped through the mud and water to reach the patch of dryer land where Truslow and Starbuck were sheltered. He stood upright and careless, as though no battle were taking place. Nor, for the moment, was there a battle in this part of the valley. Instead men on both sides had broken cover to stare at Adam and wonder just what kind of fool would walk so brazenly into a nest of rifle fire. A Yankee officer shouted to ask what he wanted, but Adam just waved again as if to suggest that all would be made clear in a short while. “You were right, Nate,” he said to Starbuck.

  “Adam, for God’s sake, get down!”

  Adam smiled. “For God’s sake, Nate, I’m going up.” He gestured toward the enemy-held slope. “I’m doing what you did, I’m changing sides. I’m going to fight for the North. I’m deserting, you could say. Would you like to come with me?”

  “Just get down, Adam.”

  Instead of taking cover Adam looked all around the green, humid valley as though it were a place where no dead lay festering in the stagnant air. “I fear no evil, Nate. Not any longer.” He put his hand into a coat pocket and brought out a bundle of letters tied in a green ribbon. “Will you make sure these reach Julia?”

  “Adam!” Starbuck pleaded from the mud.

  “Those are her letters. She should have them back. She wouldn’t come with me, you see. I asked her and she said no, and then things got kind of bitter, and the long and short of it is that we won’t be married.” He tossed the bundled letters onto Starbuck’s folded jacket and noticed the Bible there. He stooped, picked up the Scriptures, and leafed through the pages. “Still reading your Bible, Nate? It doesn’t seem like your kind of book anymore. I’d have thought you’d be happier with a manual on hog butchery.” He looked up from the Bible and gazed into Starbuck’s eyes. “Why don’t you stand up now, Nate, and come with me? Save your soul, my friend.”

  “Get down!”

  Adam laughed at Starbuck’s fear. “I’m doing God’s work, Nate, so God will look after me. But you? You’re a horse of a different color, aren’t you?” He took a pencil from his pocket and made a note in Starbuck’s Bible, which he then tossed down beside the letters. “A few moments ago I told Father what I was doing. I told him I was doing God’s will, but Father thinks it’s all your doing rather than God’s, but Father would think that, wouldn’t he?” Adam gave the rebel slope one last glance, then turned toward the Yankees. “Good-bye, Nate,” he said, then he waved the bright flag in the warm air and clambered over the black log to wade knee-deep toward the far side of the valley. He lost his good shoes in the muddy bottom of the stream in the swamp’s center, but just pushed on in his stockinged feet. The slight limp caused by the Yankee bullet he had taken at Manassas was more pronounced as he began to climb the hill on the far side of the quagmire.

  “He’s gone mad!” Truslow said.

  “He’s a holy goddamn fool,” Starbuck said. “Adam!” he shouted, but Adam just waved the bright flag and kept going. Starbuck knelt upright. “Adam! Come back!” he shouted across the fallen tree. “For Christ’s sake, Adam! Come back!” But Adam did not even look back; instead he just climbed up into the trees on the valley’s far side and disappeared where the turned earth marked the Yankee entrenchments at the slope’s crest. Adam’s disappearance broke the spell that had held the two sides in suspense. Someone shouted an order to fire and Starbuck ducked down behind the log just a second before the whole valley snapped and whistled with the sound of bullets. Smoke sifted among the leaves and across the black pools and broken tree stumps and dead soldiers.

  Starbuck picked up the Bible. Adam had marked a page somewhere in the book’s center and Starbuck now leafed through the pages to find his friend’s message. Bullets whipcracked the valley as he flicked through the Psalms and the Proverbs and the Song of Solomon. Then he found it, a circle penciled around the twelfth verse of the sixty-fifth chapter of the book of Isaiah. Starbuck read the verse and, in the valley’s mordant heat, suddenly felt cold. He closed the Bible fast.

  “What does it say?” Truslow asked. He had seen Starbuck go pale.

  “Nothing,” Starbuck said curtly, then he put the Bible back into his jacket pocket and pulled on the frayed, threadbare garment. He pushed the letters into a pocket, then pulled the blanket roll over his head. “Nothing at all,” he said and picked up his rifle and checked that a percussion cap was mounted on its cone. “Let’s go and kill some goddamn Yankees,” Starbuck said, then he flinched because the whole valley was suddenly crackling with the sound of killing. Artillery crashed and rifles splintered. The demonic rebel yell filled the trees as a new assault spilt gray over the valley’s edge. Another infantry brigade had been sent to attack just to the left of Major Haxall’s Arkansas men and the newcomers screamed their challenge as they leaped down the slope. The Yankees fired back, their rifle flames stabbing like fiery swords in the day’s lengthening shadows. Shells burst on the far side of the valley, spreading patches of bitter smoke. Northern canister obliterated whole files of s
outhern attackers, churning the leaf mold bloody where it struck, but still more men in gray and brown came surging from the upper woods and down the blood-slicked slope until the whole valley was filled with a scrabbling flood of yelling soldiers who charged through the mud and over the drowned dead.

  Starbuck stood up. “K Company! Attack! Follow me! Come on!” He did not care now. He was accursed of God, a lost soul in the outer darkness. The slope ahead was dotted with smoke clouds, bright with flames. Starbuck began to scream, not the rebel yell, but a scream of a man who knows his soul is damned. He ran into the stream, forcing his steps through the clinging, sucking mud. He saw a Yankee take aim from a rifle pit ahead, then the man was snatched backward by a shot fired from the rebel side of the valley. Another northerner scrambled out of the hole and clambered upward and Starbuck looked past the fleeing man and thought this was how Ball’s Bluff must have looked to the dying Yankees on the day when he and the other rebels had lined the crest and poured a dreadful fire down into their helpless ranks.

  “Come on!” he yelled. “Kill the bastards, come on!” And he threw himself at the slope, pulling himself up on its roots and brambles. He passed two abandoned rifle pits, then there was a sudden movement to his right and he looked to see another pit half hidden by a screen of brushwood. A Yankee was taking aim at him, and Starbuck threw himself forward just as the man’s rifle fired. Acrid smoke billowed around Starbuck’s face. He was screaming defiance now, wanting the man’s death. He rolled onto his back and pulled his rifle’s trigger, firing from the hip. The gun crashed smoke and the bullet went wide. The Yankee scrambled out of his trench and began climbing to safety, but Starbuck was chasing him, screaming. The man turned, scared suddenly, trying to fend off Starbuck with an empty rifle, but Starbuck clumsily swatted the gun aside, then slammed his own rifle hard into the man’s legs to tangle and trip him. The Yankee was keening in panic as he fell. He scrabbled for his sheathed bayonet, but Starbuck was above him with his rifle raised and its heavy brass-tipped butt pointing downward, and the man shouted something just as Starbuck struck. The blow jarred up through Starbuck’s arms, blood spattered his boots, then he was aware that all around him the slope was moving with gray-clad bodies and the whole green valley was echoing with the murderous scream of a rebel attack. The star-crossed banners were moving forward and the Yankees’ flags were going back. Starbuck left his victim bleeding and hurried upward, wanting to reach the valley’s crest first, but all around him the rebels raced uphill, whipped on by the bugle calls that drove them up to a plateau skeined in smoke. A handful of Yankee gunners tried to save their cannon, but they were too late. A gray rush of men swarmed from the woods and the land between the swamp and the river suddenly became a chaos of panicked northerners.