Battle Flag. Bernard Cornwell
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trader before the war,” Galloway said.
“You should never have told the minister that, Joe!” Blythe said with a smile. “Everyone knows that us horse traders are the crookedest folks this side of tarnation, but God bless me, sir”—he had turned back to the preacher—“I tried to be as honest a trader as a Christian man could.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” the Reverend Starbuck said stiffly.
“A hundred cents to an honest dollar, sir, that was always my way,” Blythe said cheerfully, “and if I ever rooked a man, sir, why it was never on purpose. And I’ll tell you another thing, sir.” Blythe dropped his voice confidingly. “If ever a man of the cloth wanted a horse, why sir, I swallowed the profit and sometimes a good bit more besides. I confess I was never a churchgoing man myself, sir, to my regret, but my pa always contended that a bucketful of prayer never hurt no one and my dear ma, God bless her dear soul, fair wore out her knees on the church planking. And she sure would have liked to hear you speaking, sir, for they all say you do a mighty sermon!”
The Reverend Starbuck seemed pleased by Blythe’s forthright and friendly manner, so pleased that he did not even show a sign of distaste when the tall Captain draped an arm around his shoulders to conduct him into the bare-shelved library. “You say you’re not a churchgoing man,” the preacher inquired, “but I trust you are saved, Captain?”
Blythe released his grip so that he could turn an astonished face to the Reverend Starbuck. “Washed white in the blood of the lamb, Reverend,” Blythe said in a voice that suggested shock that anyone might have taken him for a heathen. “In fact I’m fair swilled in that precious blood, sir. My dear ma made sure of that before she died, praise the Lord and God rest her dear soul.”
“And your mother, Captain, would approve of your allegiance in this war?” the Reverend Starbuck asked.
Captain William Blythe frowned to show his sincerity. “My dear mother, God bless her simple soul, sir, always said that in the eyes of God a nigra’s soul was the same as any white man’s. So long as that nigra’s a Christian, of course. Then come heaven time, she said, we’d all be white as snow, even the blackest nigra, praise the Lord for His goodness.” Blythe raised his eyes to the ceiling, then, over the unsuspecting preacher’s head, offered Major Galloway an outrageous wink.
Galloway cut short his second-in-command’s blarney by seating his guest at the library’s large table, which was heaped with account books. Galloway, Adam, and Blythe sat opposite the preacher, and the Major described his ambitions for his regiment of cavalry; how they would ride the Southern paths with a confidence and local knowledge that no Northern horseman could hope to match. The Major spoke modestly, stressing the army’s need for good reconnaissance and his own ambitions for a tightly disciplined regiment of horsemen, yet his words were plainly disappointing the Boston preacher. The Reverend Starbuck wanted swift results and dramatic victories, and it was the bombastic William Blythe who first sensed that desire. Blythe intervened with a chuckle. “You have to forgive the Major, Reverend,” he said, “for not talking us up overmuch, but the real truth is we’re going to twist Jeff Davis’s tail, then we’re going to scald the skin straight off that tail, and dang me if we won’t then cut the thing clean off! I promise you, Reverend, that we’re going to make the rebels squeal, and you’ll hear that squeal all the way to Boston Common. Ain’t that so, Major?”
Galloway merely looked surprised, while Adam stared at the table’s scarred top, but the Reverend Starbuck was delighted by the implications of Blythe’s promise. “You have specific plans?” he asked eagerly.
Blythe looked momentarily shocked. “We couldn’t say a danged thing about specifics, sir, it would be downright unsoldierlike of us, but I do promise you, Reverend, that in the weeks to come it won’t be Jeb Stuart you’ll be reading about in the Boston newspapers, no sir, it’ll be Major Joseph Galloway and his gallant regiment of troopers! Ain’t that a fact, Joe?”
Galloway, taken aback, nodded. “We shall do our best, certainly.”
“But there ain’t nothing we can do, sir”—Blythe leaned forward with an earnest expression—“if we don’t have the guns, the sabers, and the horses. As my sainted mother always said, sir, promises fill no bellies. You have to add a lick of hard work and a peck of money if you want to fill a Southern boy’s belly, and sir, believe me, sir, it hurts me, it hurts me hard, to see these fine Southern patriots standing idle for want of a dollar or two.”
“But what will you do with the money?” the Reverend Starbuck asked.
“What can’t we do?” Blythe demanded. “With God on our side, Reverend, we can turn the South upside down and inside out. Why, sir, I shouldn’t say it to you, but I guess you’re a closemouthed man so I’ll take the risk, but there’s a map of Richmond up in my sleeping room, and why would a man like me need a map of Richmond? Well, I ain’t going to tell you, sir, only because it would be downright unsoldierly of me to tell you, but I guess a clever man like you can work out which end of a snake has the bite.”
Adam looked up astonished at this implication that the regiment was planning to raid the rebel capital, and Galloway seemed about to make a firm demurral, but the Reverend Starbuck was gripped by Blythe’s promised coup. “You’ll go to Richmond?” he asked Blythe.
“The very city, sir. That den of evil and lair of the serpent. I wish I could tell you how I loathe the place, sir, but with God’s help we’ll scour it and burn it and cleanse it anew!”
The horse trader was now speaking a language the Reverend Starbuck longed to hear. The Boston preacher wanted promises of rebel humiliation and of dazzling Union victories, of exploits to rival the insolent achievements of the rebel Jeb Stuart. He did not want to hear of patient reconnaissance duties faithfully performed, but wild promises of Northern victories, and no amount of caution from Major Galloway would convince the preacher that Blythe’s promises were exaggerated. The Reverend Starbuck heard what he longed to hear, and to make it a reality he drew from his frock coat’s inner pocket a check. He borrowed a pen and an inkwell from the Major and then signed the check with a due solemnity.
“Praise the Lord,” William Blythe said when the check was signed.
“Praise Him indeed,” the preacher echoed piously, thrusting the check across the table toward Galloway. “That money comes, Major, from a consortium of New England abolitionist churches. It represents the hard-earned dollars of simple honest working folk, given gladly in a sacred cause. Use it well.”
“We shall do our utmost, sir,” Galloway said, then fell momentarily silent as he saw the check was not for the fifteen thousand dollars he had expected, but for twenty thousand. Blythe’s oratory had worked a small miracle. “And thank you, sir,” Galloway managed to say.
“And I ask only one thing in return,” the preacher said.
“Anything, sir!” Blythe said, spreading his big hands as though to encompass the whole wide world. “Anything at all!”
The preacher glanced at the wall over the wide garden doors, where a polished staff tipped with a lance head and a faded cavalry guidon was the room’s sole remaining decoration. “A flag,” the preacher said, “is important to a soldier, is it not?”
“It is, sir,” Galloway answered. The small guidon over the door had been the banner he had carried in the Mexican war.
“Sacred, you might say,” Blythe added.
“Then I should esteem it an honor if you would provide me with a rebel banner,” the preacher said, “that I can display in Boston as proof that our donations are doing God’s work.”
“You shall have your flag, sir!” Blythe promised swiftly. “I’ll make it my business to see you have one. When are you returning to Boston, sir?”
“At month’s end, Captain.”
“You’ll not go empty-handed, sir, not if my name’s Billy Blythe. I promise you, on my dear mother’s grave, sir, that you’ll have your