Battle Flag. Bernard Cornwell
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Southern army to fight for the Yankees, a defection for which Brigadier General Faulconer blamed Captain Starbuck, but not even the disparity in their ranks could persuade Starbuck to abandon his fight against the man who had founded the Legion and who now commanded the five regiments, including the Legion, that made up the Faulconer Brigade. “I’ve got no need to run away,” he now told Bird. “Faulconer won’t last any longer than Swynyard. Faulconer’s a coward and Swynyard’s a drunk, and before this summer’s out, Pecker, you’ll be Brigade commander and I’ll be in command of the Legion.”
Bird hooted with delight. “You are incorrigibly conceited, Nate. You! Commanding the Legion? I imagine Major Hinton and the dozen other men senior to you might have a different opinion.”
“They might be senior, but I’m the best.”
“Ah, you still suffer from the delusion that merit is rewarded in this world? I suppose you contracted that opinion with all the other nonsense they crammed into you when Yale was failing to give you mastery of the gerund?” Bird, achieving this lick at Starbuck’s alma mater, laughed gleefully. His head jerked back and forth as he laughed, the odd jerking motion explaining his nickname: Pecker. Starbuck joined in the laughter, for he, like just about everyone else in the Legion, liked Bird enormously. The schoolmaster was eccentric, opinionated, contrary, and one of the kindest men alive. He had also proved to possess an unexpected talent for soldiering. “We move at last,” Bird now said, gesturing at the stalled column that had begun edging toward the ford where the solitary, strange figure of Jackson waited motionless on his mangy horse. “You owe me two dollars,” Bird suddenly remarked as he led Starbuck back to the road.
“Two dollars!”
“Major Hinton’s fiftieth birthday approaches. Lieutenant Pine assures me he can procure a ham, and I shall prevail on our beloved leader for some wine. We are paying for a feast.”
“Is Hinton really that old?” Starbuck asked.
“He is indeed, and if you live that long we shall doubtless give you a drunken dinner as a reward. Have you got two bucks?”
“I haven’t got two cents,” Starbuck said. He had some money in Richmond, but that money represented his cushion against disaster and was not for frittering away on ham and wine.
“I shall lend you the money,” Bird said with a rather despairing sigh. Most of the Legion’s officers had private means, but Colonel Bird, like Starbuck, was forced to live on the small wages of a Confederate officer.
The men of Company H stood as Starbuck and Bird approached the road, though one of the newly arrived conscripts stayed prone on the grass verge and complained he could not march another step. His reward was a kick in the ribs from Sergeant Truslow. “You can’t do that to me!” the man protested, scrabbling sideways to escape the Sergeant.
Truslow grabbed the man’s jacket and pulled his face close in to his own. “Listen, you son of a poxed bitch, I can slit your slumbelly guts wide open and sell them to the Yankees for hog food if I want, and not because I’m a sergeant and you’re a private, but because I’m a mean son of a bitch and you’re a lily-livered louse. Now get the hell up and march.”
“What comfortable words the good Sergeant speaks,” Bird said as he jumped back across the dry ditch. He drew on his cigar. “So I can’t persuade you to join another regiment, Nate?”
“No, sir.”
Pecker Bird shook his head ruefully. “I think you’re a fool, Nate, but for God’s sake be a careful fool. For some odd reason I’d be sorry to lose you.”
“Fall in!” Truslow shouted.
“I’ll take care,” Starbuck promised as he rejoined his company. His thirty-six veterans were lean, tanned, and ragged. Their boots were falling to pieces, their gray jackets were patched with common brown cloth, and their worldly possessions were reduced to what a man could carry suspended from his rope belt or sling in a rolled blanket across his shoulder. The twenty conscripts made an awkward contrast in their new uniforms, clumsy leather brogans, and stiff knapsacks. Their faces were pale and their rifle muzzles unblackened by firing. They knew this northward march through the central counties of Virginia probably meant an imminent battle, but what that battle would bring was a mystery, while the veterans knew only too well that a fight would mean screaming and blood and hurt and pain and thirst, but maybe, too, a cache of plundered Yankee dollars or a bag of real coffee taken from a festering, maggot-riddled Northern corpse. “March on!” Starbuck shouted, and fell in beside Lieutenant Franklin Coffman at the head of the company.
“You see if I’m not right, sir,” Coffman said. “Old Mad Jack’s got feet bigger than a plowhorse.”
As Starbuck marched into the ford, he looked at the General’s feet. They were indeed enormous. So were Jackson’s hands. But what was most extraordinary of all was why the General still held his left hand in midair like a child begging permission to leave a schoolroom. Starbuck was about to ask Coffman for an explanation when, astonishingly, the General stirred. He looked up from the water, and his gaze focused on Starbuck’s company. “Coffman!” he called in an abrupt, high-pitched voice. “Come here, boy.”
Coffman stumbled out of the ford and half ran to the General’s side. “Sir?”
The ragged-bearded Jackson frowned down from his saddle. “Do you remember me, Coffman?”
“Yes, sir, of course I do, sir.”
Jackson lowered his left hand very gently, as though he feared he might damage the arm if he moved it fast. “I was sorry you had to leave the Institute early, Coffman. It was after your plebe year, was it not?”
“Yes, sir. It was, sir.”
“Because your father died?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And your mother, Coffman? She’s well?”
“Indeed, sir. Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”
“Bereavement is a terrible affliction, Coffman,” the General observed, then slowly unbent his rigid posture to lean toward the slim, fair-haired Lieutenant, “especially for those who are not in a state of grace. Are you in a state of grace, Coffman?”
Coffman blushed, frowned, then managed to nod. “Yes, sir. I think I am, sir.”
Jackson straightened again into his poker-backed stance and, as slowly as he had lowered his left hand, raised it once more into midair. He lifted his eyes from Coffman to stare into the heat-hazed distance. “You will find it a very hard thing to meet your Maker if you are unsure of His grace,” the General said in a kindly voice, “so study your scriptures and recite your prayers, boy.”
“Yes, sir, I will, sir,” Coffman said. He stood awkward and uncertain, waiting for the General to speak further, but Jackson seemed in his trance once again, and so the Lieutenant turned and walked back to Starbuck’s side. The Legion marched on, and the Lieutenant remained silent as the road climbed between small pastures and straggling woods and beside modest farms. It was a good two miles before Coffman at last broke his silence. “He’s a great man,” the Lieutenant said, “isn’t he, sir? Isn’t he a great man?”
“Tom Fool?” Starbuck teased Coffman.
“A great man, sir,” Coffman chided Starbuck.
“If you say so,” Starbuck said, though all he knew about Jackson was that Old Mad Jack had a great reputation for marching, and that when Old Mad Jack went marching, men died. And they were marching now, marching north, and going north meant one thing only: Yankees ahead. Which meant there would be a battle soon, and a field of graves after the battle, and this time, if Pecker was right, Starbuck’s enemies would not just be in front of him but behind as well. Starbuck marched on. A fool going to battle.
The midday train stopped at Manassas Junction amidst a clash of cars, the hissing of steam, and the clangor of the locomotive’s bell. Sergeants’ voices rose over the mechanical din, urging troops out of the