Battle Flag. Bernard Cornwell
Читать онлайн книгу.
classic symptoms of feeblemindedness and moral degradation,” the Reverend Starbuck announced happily, then remembered the Christian duty that was owed even to such fallen souls as these rebel prisoners. “Though your sins be as scarlet,” he called down to them, “yet you may be washed whiter than snow. You must repent! You must repent!” He had come equipped with copies of his tract, Freeing the Oppressed, which explained why Christian men should be prepared to die for the sacred cause of abolishing slavery, and now the Reverend Starbuck dropped a few copies among the wounded men. “Something to read during your imprisonment,” he told them, “something to explain your errors.” He spurred on, cheered by this chance to have spread the good word. “We have been remiss, Captain,” the preacher declared to Hetherington as the two men left the hospital behind, “in restricting our mission work to heathen lands and Southern slaves. We should have sent more good men into the rebellious states to tussle with the demons that dwell in the white man’s soul.”
“There are plenty of churches, are there not, in the secessionist states?” Captain Hetherington inquired respectfully after leading the preacher around a tangle of telegraph wire that had been dumped beside a ditch.
“There are indeed churches in the South,” the Reverend Starbuck said in a tone of distaste, “and pastors, too, I dare say, yet their existence should not deceive us. The scriptures warn us against those false prophets who shall inhabit the latter days. And such prophets have no difficulty in persuading the feebleminded to adopt the devil’s ways. But the Second Epistle of Peter promises us that the false prophets shall bring upon themselves a swift destruction. I think we are witnessing the beginnings of that providence. For this is the Lord’s doing,” the Reverend Doctor Starbuck declaimed happily, gesturing toward two dogs that fought over a dead man’s intestines close to a smoking shell crater, “and we should rejoice and be glad in it!” A less pious impulse made the Reverend wonder whether the money he had just expended on Galloway’s Horse was going to be wasted. Maybe the war would be won without Galloway’s men? Then he thrust that concern away and let this day’s good news fill him with joy instead.
Captain Hetherington wanted to drive the two dogs away from their offal, but the Reverend Starbuck was spurring ahead, and the aide’s duty was to stay with the preacher, so he galloped to catch up. “Are you saying, sir,” Hetherington asked respectfully, “that none of the rebels are Christians?”
“How can they be?” the Boston preacher responded. “Our faith has never preached rebellion against the lawful and godly authority of the state, so at best the South is in grievous error and thus in desperate need of repentance and forgiveness. And at worst?” The Reverend Starbuck shook his head rather than even consider such a question, yet the very asking of it made him think of his second son and how Nate was even now irretrievably committed to the fires of hell. Nate would burn in everlasting flames, tormented through all eternity by agonies unimaginable. “And he deserves it!” the Reverend Starbuck protested aloud.
“I’m sorry, sir?” Hetherington asked, thinking he had misheard a comment addressed to him.
“Nothing, Captain, nothing. You are saved yourself?”
“Indeed, sir. I came to Christ three years ago, and have praised God for His mercies ever since.”
“Praise Him indeed,” the Reverend Starbuck responded, though in truth he was secretly disappointed that his escort should thus prove to be a born-again Christian, for there were few things Elial Starbuck enjoyed so much as having what he called a tussle with a sinner. He could boast of having left many a strong man in tears after an hour’s good argument.
The two men arrived at a Northern battery of twelve-pounder Napoleons. The four guns were silent, their shirtsleeved gunners leaning on their weapons’ wheels and staring across the valley to where a long-shadowed stand of trees was crowned with gunsmoke. “No targets, sir,” the battery commander answered when the Reverend Starbuck asked why he was not firing. “Our fellows are inside those woods, sir, or maybe a half-mile beyond, which means our job’s done for the day.” He took a pull of his flask, which contained brandy. “Those shell bursts are rebel guns firing long, sir,” he added, gesturing at the white explosions that blossomed intermittently on the far crest. The sound of each explosion followed a few seconds later like a small rumble of thunder. “Just their rear guard,” the artilleryman said confidently, “and we can leave the peasantry to look after them.”
“The peasantry?” the Reverend Starbuck inquired.
“The infantry, sir. Lowest of the low, see what I mean, sir?”
The Reverend Starbuck did not see at all, but decided not to make an issue of his puzzlement. “And the rebels?” he asked instead. “Where are they?”
The gunner Major took note of the older man’s Geneva bands and straightened himself respectfully. “You can see some of the dead ones, sir, excuse my callousness, and the rest are probably halfway to Richmond by now. I’ve waited over a year to see the rascals skedaddle, sir, and it’s a fine sight. Our young ladies saw them off in fine style.” The Major slapped the still warm barrel of the closest gun, which, like the rest of the Napoleons in the battery, had a girl’s name painted on its trail. This gun was Maud, while its companions were named Eliza, Louise, and Anna.
“It is the Lord’s doing, the Lord’s doing!” the Reverend Starbuck murmured happily.
“The seceshers are still lively over there.” Captain Hetherington gestured to far-off Cedar Mountain, where gunsmoke still jetted from the rebel batteries.
“But not for long.” The artillery Major spoke confidently. “We’ll hook behind their rear and take every man jack of them prisoner. As long as nightfall doesn’t come first,” he added. The sun was very low and the light reddening.
The Reverend Starbuck took a small telescope from his pocket and trained it on the woods ahead. He could see very little except for smoke, leaves, and burning shell craters, though in the nearer open land he could make out the humped shapes of the dead lying in the remnants of the wheat field. “We shall go to the woods,” he announced to his companion.
“I’m not sure we should, sir,” Captain Hetherington demurred politely. “There are still shells falling.”
“We shall come to no harm, Captain. Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death we shall fear no evil. Come!” In truth the Reverend Starbuck wanted to ride closer to those bursting shells. He had decided that his exhilaration was symptomatic of a natural taste for battle, that maybe he was discovering a God-given talent for warfare, and it was suddenly no wonder to him that the Lord of Hosts had so frequently exhorted Israel to the fight. This blood and slaughter was the way to see God’s work accomplished! Sermonizing and mission work were all very well, and doubtless God listened to the prayers of all those wilting women with faded silk bookmarks in their well-thumbed Bibles, but this hammer of battle was a more certain method of bringing about His kingdom. The sinners were being scourged by the holy flail of sword, steel, and gunpowder, and the Reverend Doctor Starbuck exulted in the process. “Onwards, Captain,” he encouraged Hetherington. “The enemy is beaten, there’s nothing to fear!”
Hetherington paused, but the artillery Major was in full agreement with the preacher. “They’re well beaten, sir, and amen,” the Major declared, and that encouragement was enough to make the Reverend Starbuck hand down some copies of Freeing the Oppressed for the weary gunners. Then, spirits soaring, he spurred his horse past the quartet of fan-shaped swathes of scorched stubble that marked where Eliza, Louise, Maud, and Anna had belched flame and smoke at the enemy.
Captain Hetherington followed unhappily. “We don’t know that the rebels are yet cleared from the woods, sir.”
“Then we shall find out, Captain!” the Reverend Starbuck said happily. He trotted past the remains of a Northerner who had been blown apart by the direct hit of a rebel shell, and who was now nothing but a fly-crawling mess of jagged-ended bones, blue guts, torn flesh, and uniform scraps. The Reverend felt no anguish at the sight, merely the satisfaction that the dead man was a hero who had gone to his Maker by virtue of having died for a cause as noble as any that had ever driven