Battle Flag. Bernard Cornwell
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the ford without first removing their tattered boots. Mad Jack Stonewall Square Box Jackson was reputed to detest such delays, but he seemed oblivious to this holdup. Instead he just sat, hand in the air and eyes on the river, while right in front of him the column bunched and halted. The men behind the obstruction were grateful for the enforced halt, for the day was blistering hot, the air motionless, and the heat as damp as steam. “You were remarking, Coffman, on the ineffectiveness of generals?” Starbuck prompted his new junior officer.
“If you think about it, sir,” Coffman said with a youthful passion, “we haven’t got any real generals, not like the Yankees, but we still win battles. I reckon that’s because the Southerner is unbeatable.”
“What about Robert Lee?” Starbuck asked. “Isn’t he a real general?”
“Lee’s old! He’s antediluvian!” Coffman said, shocked that Starbuck should even have suggested the name of the new commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. “He must be fifty-five, at least!”
“Jackson’s not old,” Starbuck pointed out. “He isn’t even forty yet.”
“But he’s mad, sir. Honest! We used to call him Tom Fool.”
“He must be mad then,” Starbuck teased Coffman. “So why do we win battles despite having mad generals, ancient generals, or no generals at all?”
“Because fighting is in the Southern blood, sir. It really is.” Coffman was an eager young man who was determined to be a hero. His father had died of consumption, leaving his mother with four young sons and two small daughters. His father’s death had forced Coffman to leave the Virginia Military Institute after his first year, but that one year’s military schooling had equipped him with a wealth of martial theories. “Northerners,” he now explained to Starbuck, “have diluted blood. There are too many immigrants in the North, sir. But the South has pure blood, sir. Real American blood.”
“You mean the Yankees are an inferior race?”
“It’s an acknowledged fact, sir. They’ve lost the thoroughbred strain, sir.”
“You do know I’m a Yankee, Coffman, don’t you?” Starbuck asked.
Coffman immediately looked confused, though before he could frame any response he was interrupted by Colonel Thaddeus Bird, the Faulconer Legion’s commanding officer, who came striding long-legged from the rear of the stalled column. “Is that really Jackson?” Bird asked, gazing across the river.
“Lieutenant Coffman informs me that the General’s real name is Old Mad Tom Fool Square Box Jackson, and that is indeed the man himself,” Starbuck answered.
“Ah, Coffman,” Bird said, peering down at the small Lieutenant as though Coffman was some curious specimen of scientific interest, “I remember when you were nothing but a chirruping infant imbibing the lesser jewels of my glittering wisdom.” Bird, before he became a soldier, had been the schoolmaster in Faulconer Court House, where Coffman’s family lived.
“Lieutenant Coffman has not ceased to imbibe wisdom,” Starbuck solemnly informed Colonel Bird, “nor indeed to impart it, for he has just informed me that we Yankees are an inferior breed, our blood being soured, tainted, and thinned by the immigrant strain.”
“Quite right, too!” Bird said energetically; then the Colonel draped a thin arm around the diminutive Coffman’s shoulders. “I could a tale unfold, young Coffman, whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, and make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres.” He spoke even more closely into the ear of the astonished Lieutenant. “Did you know, Coffman, that the very moment an immigrant boat docks in Boston all the Beacon Hill families send their wives down to the harbor to be impregnated? Is that not the undeniable truth, Starbuck?”
“Indeed it is, sir, and they send their daughters as well if the boat arrives on the Sabbath.”
“Boston is a libidinous town, Coffman,” Bird said very sternly as he stepped away from the wide-eyed Lieutenant, “and if I am to give you just one piece of advice in this sad bad world, then let it be to avoid the place. Shun it, Coffman! Regard Boston as you might regard Sodom or Gomorrah. Remove it from your catalog of destinations. Do you understand me, Coffman?”
“Yes, sir,” Coffman said very seriously.
Starbuck laughed at the look on his Lieutenant’s face. Coffman had arrived the day before with a draft of conscripted men to replace the casualties of Gaines’ Mill and Malvern Hill. The conscripts had mostly been culled from the alleys of Richmond and, to Starbuck, appeared to be a scrawny, unhealthy, and shifty-looking crew of dubious reliability, but Franklin Coffman, like the original members of the Legion, was a volunteer from Faulconer County and full of enthusiasm for the Southern cause.
Colonel Bird now abandoned his teasing of the Lieutenant and plucked at Starbuck’s sleeve. “Nate,” he said, “a word.” The two men walked away from the road, crossing a shallow ditch into a meadow that was wan and brown from the summer’s heat wave. Starbuck limped, not because he was wounded, but because the sole of his right boot was becoming detached from its uppers. “Is it me?” Bird asked as the two men paced across the dry grass. “Am I getting wiser or is it that the young are becoming progressively more stupid? And young Coffman, believe it if you will, was brighter than most of the infants it was my misfortune to teach. I remember he mastered the theory of gerunds in a single morning!”
“I’m not sure I ever mastered gerunds,” Starbuck said.
“Hardly difficult,” Bird said, “so long as you remember that they are nouns which provide—”
“And I’m not sure I ever want to master the damn things,” Starbuck interrupted.
“Wallow in your ignorance, then,” Bird said grandly. “But you’re also to look after young Coffman. I couldn’t bear to write to his mother and tell her he’s dead, and I have a horrid feeling that he’s likely to prove stupidly brave. He’s like a puppy. Tail up, nose wet, and can’t wait to play battles with Yankees.”
“I’ll look after him, Pecker.”
“But you’re also to look after yourself,” Bird said meaningfully. He stopped and looked into Starbuck’s eyes. “There’s a rumor, only a rumor, and God knows I do not like passing on rumors, but this one has an unpleasant ring to it. Swynyard was heard to say that you won’t survive the next battle.”
Starbuck dismissed the prediction with a grin. “Swynyard’s a drunk, not a prophet.” Nevertheless he felt a shudder of fear. He had been a soldier long enough to become inordinately superstitious, and no man liked to hear a presentiment of his own death.
“Suppose,” Bird said, taking two cigars from inside his hatband, “that Swynyard has decided to arrange it?”
Starbuck stared incredulously at his Colonel. “Arrange my death?” he finally asked.
Bird scratched a lucifer match alight and stooped over its flame. “Colonel Swynyard,” he announced dramatically when his cigar was drawing properly, “is a drunken swine, a beast, a cream-faced loon, a slave of nature, and a son of hell, but he is also, Nate, a most cunning rogue, and when he is not in his cups he must realize that he is losing the confidence of our great and revered leader. Which is why he must now try to do something which will please our esteemed lord and master. Get rid of you.” The last four words were delivered brutally.
Starbuck laughed them off. “You think Swynyard will shoot me in the back?”
Bird gave Starbuck the lit cigar. “I don’t know how he’ll kill you. All I know is that he’d like to kill you, and that Faulconer would like him to kill you, and for all I know our esteemed General is prepared to award Swynyard a healthy cash bonus if he succeeds in killing you. So be careful, Nate, or else join another regiment.”
“No,” Starbuck said immediately. The Faulconer Legion was his home. He was a Bostonian, a Northerner, a stranger in a strange land who had found in the Legion a refuge from