Battle Flag

***

THERE WERE TIMES WHEN General Washington Faulconer needed to leave the problems of the Brigade behind him. Such times, he said, gave him an opportunity to assess his Brigade from what he called the distant perspective, though most of his officers suspected that the distant perspective merely served to relieve the General's distaste for the discomforts of campaigning. Washington Faulconer had been raised to luxury and had never lost his taste for cosseted living, and a month of bivouacs and army food inevitably drove him to discover a hotel where clean sheets were smoothed onto a properly stuffed mattress, where hot water was available at the pull of a bell rope, and where the food was not hardtack, worm-ridden, or rancid. The General even believed he deserved such trifling luxuries, for had he not raised the Legion with his own money? Other men had marched enthusiastically to war, but Washington Faulconer had added an open wallet to mere enthusiasm. Indeed, few men in all the Confederacy had spent as much on a regiment as Washington Faulconer, so why should he not reward himself with a few civilized trappings from time to time?

Thus, when his Brigade was properly settled into its bivouac on the western flank of Jackson's army, General Faulconer soon found reason to visit Gordonsville for a night of comfort. He was not supposed to leave his Brigade without General Jackson's permission, but in the certain knowledge that such permission would not be forthcoming, Faulconer found his own justification. "I need spectacles," he told Swynyard airily. "Can't see the fine detail on maps these days," and upon that medical excuse he mounted his horse and, with Captain Moxey in attendance, rode eastward. The town was barely three hours' ride away, so the dereliction was hardly serious, and Swynyard had been left with the strictest instructions that nothing was to be done without Faulconer's permission and that, if any emergency did arise, a messenger must be sent to Gordonsville immediately. The General considered that even a fool could understand those simple commands, and Swynyard, in the General's opinion, was a fool. The man had made an idiot of himself with the bottle but was now making himself an even more conspicuous idiot with his ludicrous addiction to the Holy Spirit.

The General's own spirits began to soar the moment he rode away from the encampment. He always felt such an elation when he could leave behind the small-minded irritations of the Brigade, where nothing was ever straightforward and where the simplest order provoked a flurry of queries, obstructions, misunderstandings, and even downright disobedience, and the more he pondered those frustrations, the more convinced he became that the root cause of all his problems lay in the hostility of men like Thaddeus Bird, Colonel Swynyard, and Nathaniel Starbuck. Especially Captain Nathaniel Starbuck. Take the simple matter of the crescent patches. It had been no small achievement to have the cloth badges made, for such furbelows were a luxury in the war-straitened Confederacy, yet Faulconer had succeeded in having the insignia manufactured in France and then smuggled into Wilmington on a swift blockade-runner. The cost of the badges alone demanded respect! And certainly the proposed function of the badges was admirable, for the red crescent had been intended both to foster pride in the Faulconer Brigade and to serve as an identification mark in the smoky chaos of battle.

Yet what had happened? Grinning soldiers had employed the patches for gambling counters or given them to girl-friends. Others had cleaned their rifles with the badges or else used them to patch the seat of their pants, an insult that had driven the General to decree severe punishment for any man not displaying the red crescent insignia on his uniform jacket, whereupon there had been a religious outcry against the wearing of a Mohammedan symbol in a Christian country! Letters had been written to hometown newspapers, prayer meetings were held to intercede for Washington Faulconer's heathen soul, and seven army chaplains had carried their protests to the War Department itself, forcing Faulconer to explain that the crescent moon was not intended to be a religious symbol but was merely a part of his family's escutcheon, yet that explanation had only prompted new complaints about the restoration of aristocratic privileges in America. The campaign against the insignia had been an outrageous farrago of lies, and now the cause was utterly lost because any man who objected to wearing the red crescent could plausibly claim to have lost the badge in battle. Which all meant that Washington Faulconer had little choice but to accept defeat—a defeat made all the more odious because he was convinced it had been Nathaniel Starbuck who had orchestrated the whole controversy. Only Starbuck could have dreamed up the religious objection or have invented the fantastic claim that wearing the patch reduced the Brigade to the level of European serfs.

Yet even the memory of that humiliation receded as Washington Faulconer rode the summer roads toward Gordonsville. He was contemplating the pleasures of a long bath, a clean bed, and a full table, and the anticipation was more than rewarded when he entered the public parlor of the Rapidan House Hotel to be surprised by the presence of four old friends from Richmond whose visit to the town happily coincided with his own. Two of the men were Confederate congressmen and the other two, like Faulconer himself, were directors of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. The four men formed a commission that was supposed to be reporting to the War Department on how the army's supply system could be improved, but so far not one of the four commissioners had ventured further than the house of assignation that lay next door to the hotel. Happily all four men had read and admired the account in the Richmond! Examiner that had described how the Faulconer Brigade had captured an enemy color at the recent battle, and now they insisted that the General and his aide join them and recount their version of the triumph.

Faulconer told the story modestly, claiming to have been momentarily unsighted when the enemy standard fell, though the modesty was beautifully calculated to encourage his listeners to draw the very opposite conclusion. "The standard-bearer was a great brute of a German, ain't that so, Mox'?" The General appealed for his aide's confirmation.

"He was indeed, sir," Moxey said, "and I was damned glad you were there to deal with the fellow and not me."

"The fellow took a half-dozen bullets"—the General lightly touched the ivory handle of his revolver—"and still he kept on coming. Some of these Northern fellows are remarkably brave, but of course there's not one of the rogues who can compare with our fine boys," and here the General paid a moving tribute to the Southern soldier, describing him as the salt of the earth, a rough diamond, and an honest warrior, each compliment being accompanied by a toast, so that it was soon necessary to order another bottle of whiskey.

"Not that it's very good whiskey," one of the congressman said, "but even the worst is better than water."

"Like the nymphs du monde next door," his fellow politician opined. "Gordonsville's whores are hardly enticing, but even the worst is preferable to a wife."

All six men laughed. "If you've nothing more pressing," one of the railroad men said to Faulconer, "maybe you'd like to saddle one or two of the ladies yourself?"

"I should be delighted," Faulconer said.

"It shall be our pleasure to pay," the other director said, then courteously included Captain Moxey in the invitation.

"Myself, I fancy the mulatto girl tonight," the fatter of the two congressmen said as he poured himself another glass of whiskey. "And we'd better enjoy ourselves this evening, because tomorrow we'll all have to look busy. Can't have Bobby Lee thinking we're idle."

"Lee?" Faulconer asked, hiding his consternation. "Is Lee here?"

"Arrives tomorrow," one of the railroad men said. "Train was ordered this morning."

"Not that any of us are supposed to know who the train's for," the other railroad man said, yawning, "but it's true. Lee's coming to take command."

"What do you make of Lee, Faulconer?" one of the congressmen asked casually.

"Hardly know the man," the General said, which was a transparent evasion, for the Faulconer family was as prominent in Virginian society as the Lees, and Washington Faulconer had been acquainted with Robert Lee almost all his life, yet even so Faulconer found himself puzzled by Lee's present eminence. Lee had started the war with a considerable reputation, but nothing he had achieved since had justified that good standing, yet, with an apparent effortlessness that Faulconer could only admire, Lee had risen to command the Army of Northern Virginia. Faulconer's only explanation for this phenomenon was that the leaders of the Confederacy were deceived by Lee's grave demeanor into believing that deep thoughts were being pondered behind the General's calm and trustworthy eyes, but he could hardly confess as much to two of those leaders. "I worry he's too cautious," Faulconer said instead, "though, of course, caution may be the right tactic to follow at the moment."

"Let the enemy come to us, you mean?" the fatter congressman suggested.

"For the moment, yes," Faulconer said, "because there's little point in maneuvering ourselves into trouble. Let them break themselves on our bastions, eh?" He smiled, sounding confident, but inside he was worrying that if Lee was arriving in Gordonsville next day, then the town would surely be filled with high-ranking Confederate officers who would look askance when they discovered Faulconer was absent from his Brigade without permission, and the very last thing Washington Faulconer needed was the enmity of Stonewall Jackson. Jackson was already suspicious of Faulconer because of his tardiness in joining the counterattack at Cedar Mountain, though happily the capture of the enemy color had gone a long way toward preserving Faulconer's reputation, but even so Jackson could prove a powerful enemy, especially as the Richmond Examiner was as supportive of Stonewall as it was of Washington Faulconer. All in all, Faulconer decided, this was a moment for a tactical withdrawal. "I think this news means that we should get back to camp tonight, Mox'," Faulconer said as he turned to his aide. "If Lee's coming there'll doubtless be orders for us and we need to be ready."

Captain Moxey concealed his surprise at so sudden a departure and his disappointment at being denied the pleasures of the house of assignation next door. "I'll order the horses, sir," Moxey said, and when the tired beasts were saddled, the two officers, without so much as taking a bath let alone partaking of the town's more exquisite recreations, retraced their steps west into the twilight. Back at the hotel one of the congressmen remarked that the country was fortunate indeed in having men as devoted and disciplined as Washington Faulconer at its service, and his three colleagues solemnly agreed before heaving themselves out of their chairs and ushering each other into the house next door.

It was black dark by the time Washington Faulconer reached the farm that was his Brigade's headquarters. Colonel Swynyard was still awake, sitting in candlelight beneath the crossed banners of the Faulconer Legion as he struggled to reconcile the Brigade's muddled accounts. He stood as Faulconer came in, hid his surprise at the General's sudden return, and offered a report on the day's happenings. Two men had been arrested for drunkenness at McComb's Tavern and were waiting for punishment in the morning. "I thought I put the tavern out of bounds," Faulconer said, stretching out his right leg so Moxey could tug off a riding boot.

"So you did, sir," Swynyard confirmed.

"But you can't keep a rogue away from his liquor, is that what you were going to say, Colonel?" Faulconer asked nastily.

"I was going to say, sir, that McComb keeps a pair of whores, and plenty of men will risk punishment for that."

"McComb keeps women?" Faulconer growled. "Then have the filthy creatures arrested! Goddamn it. I don't want half the Brigade felled by pox." He lit a cigar and half listened as Swynyard went on with his report, but while appearing to pay attention Faulconer was really thinking just how much he disliked this new manifestation of Swynyard's idiocy. The old, drunken Swynyard had been largely invisible, an embarrassment to be sure, but a predictable embarrassment and a small price to pay for the support of his cousin, the editor of the Richmond Examiner. Yet the new Swynyard was a man who flaunted his morality with an assiduity that Faulconer found grating. Where Swynyard had once been oblivious of the Brigade's affairs, he was now endlessly busy, and endless, too, in bringing complaints and suggestions to Faulconer's attention. Tonight there was a problem with a consignment of percussion caps from the Richmond Arsenal. At least half of the caps had proved defective. "Then send the damn things back!" Faulconer snapped.

"I need your signature," Swynyard pointed out.

"Can't you forge it?"

"I can, but would rather not."

"Damn your scruples, give it to me then," Faulconer said.

"And sadly there were three more desertions, sir," Swynyard said, placing the deserters' report sheets beside the document needing the General's signature. Swynyard's hand shook, not from nerves, but because sobriety had still not wholly calmed his alcohol-ravaged body.

"Who ran?" Faulconer asked in a dangerous voice. He hated desertions, translating the crime as a criticism of his leadership.

"Two are Haxall's men," Swynyard said, referring to the Arkansas battalion, "and Haxall suspects they're making for home, and the third is one of the new men from Richmond, who reckons his wife is cheating on him. He's the same fellow who ran two weeks ago."

"So catch the bastard again and this time shoot him," Faulconer said, slapping at a moth that annoyed him. "And how the hell did they run? Aren't the pickets awake?"

"All three were part of a work party carrying ammunition to Starbuck's position, sir," Swynyard said.

Faulconer pulled his left boot back from Moxey's grasp, then looked up at the scarred, bearded Colonel. "Explain," Faulconer said in a very menacing voice.

Swynyard was well aware that the mention of Starbuck's name put him in a risky position, but the Colonel possessed both the courage of his military convictions and the strength of his newfound faith, and so he confidently explained the discovery of the unsuspected ford and told how Starbuck had suggested garrisoning the river crossing. "I gave him three companies, sir, and inspected him at dusk. He's well entrenched and can't be outflanked."

"Goddamn it!" Faulconer shouted, thumping the table beside his chair. "What orders did I give you?" He paused, but he was not waiting for any answer. Indeed the General could not have listened to any answer, for all the frustrations of his last few months had swollen into an abrupt explosion that was now unstoppable. Like a volcano's molten core that had been cribbed too long by a cap of cold, hard rock, Faulconer's temper erupted into an incandescent rage that had nothing whatever to do with the point at issue. Indeed, had Swynyard merely told Faulconer that an unguarded ford had been discovered on the Brigade's open flank, then the General would doubtless have ordered two or three companies of riflemen to watch the crossing, but the mention of Starbuck's name had tipped Washington Faulconer into instant fury.

For a few seconds it was a fury so profound that Faulconer was incapable of speaking, but then the words flowed and soldiers fifty yards from the farmhouse listened in awe, while men bivouacked further away hurried closer to hear the diatribe. Swynyard, Faulconer said, was a shadbellied weakling who if he was not sucking at his goddamned bottle was clasped to the tit of his new religion. "For Christ's sake, you fool, stand on your own goddamned feet!" This was unfair, for the apparent point of Faulconer's rage was that Swynyard had dared to take responsibility for moving part of the Brigade without Faulconer's express permission, but for these first few moments the flow of white-hot anger was not directed but simply went wherever Faulconer's frustrations let it fly, and so the General's anger encompassed Swynyard's breeding, his ugly appearance, and his family's involvement in the slave trade. Then Washington Faulconer raked over Swynyard's apparent conversion, scorning the Colonel's piety as fraudulent and his newfound efficiency as a pose.

It was a spectacular explosion. Washington Faulconer was already feeling cheated because his stay in Gordonsville had been cut short, but now all the bitterness over his traitor son and his resentments over Starbuck and the mulish manner in which the Brigade reacted to his simplest orders fed the bitter torrent. Two decades of being despised by his wife and scorned by his wife's damned schoolmaster brother poured in an ugly spew from Faulconer's mouth as he screamed his insults at Swynyard, and finally, when breathlessness alone made him drop his voice from a half scream into mere loudness, he suspended Swynyard from his duties. "You will consider yourself under arrest!" the General finished.

There was silence in the room. Moxey, his face white with fear, stood backed against the flags on the wall, while not a sound came from the astonished audience outside. The tic in Swynyard's cheek had begun to quiver, and he was clenching and unclenching his maimed left hand, but when at last he spoke, he used the mildest tone. "I have to protest, sir," he began.

"You can protest all you like, damn you, but it'll do no good! I've endured too much! Too much! You're either drunk or praying, either flat on your back or down on your knees, and in either position you're no more damned good to me than a spavined bitch. You're under arrest, Swynyard, so get the hell out of my sight. Go!" Faulconer shouted the order, unable to bear the sight of the man for one instant longer. Then he stumped one-booted onto the veranda. "Major Hinton!" he shouted into the dark, confident that the summons would be passed on and obeyed swiftly. "Major Hinton! Come here!"

The General, at last, was taking command.

Starbuck took his supper in the bivouac, sitting beside a small fire with Truslow and Coffman. The night was warm and humid, darkening every moment as clouds heaped higher and higher above the Blue Ridge Mountains. For a time the moon silvered the trees; then the clouds misted and finally shrouded its light. Supper was a piece of corn bread and fat bacon. The corn had been badly milled, and Starbuck broke a tooth on a scrap of cob embedded in the grain. He swore. "Dentists' favorite bread," Truslow said as Starbuck spat out the cob and tooth fragment together; then the Sergeant offered a ghastly grin to show how many of his own teeth were missing. "Pulled half of them myself, the rest old McIlvanney yanked. He was a well-digger who doubled up as a dentist."

Starbuck flinched with pain when he took his next bite. "I don't know why God invented teeth," he said.

"I don't know why God invented Yankees," Truslow added.

"Because otherwise there'd only be Indians and Mexicans for Christians to shoot," Lieutenant Coffman unexpectedly observed.

"I know why God invented junior lieutenants," Truslow observed. "For target practice." He climbed to his feet, stretched his arms, and picked up his rifle in readiness to relieve the pickets in the rifle pits above the river. "I wish it would rain," he said.

Starbuck led the relief party through the trees to where the river flickered white in the night. The far bank was utterly black and impenetrable, its only lights the tiny white and evanescent sparks of fireflies. Then, to the west, where the clouds were building, a spike of lightning shattered the dark above the mountains and shed a sudden blue-white light that silhouetted the half-ruined barn where the outlying picket guarded the riverside track. Sergeant Mallory was now in charge of that picket, and he sent Edward Hunt back along the riverbank to find Starbuck. "Captain! Captain!" Hunt called.

"What is it?"

"Bob reckons there's some son of a bitch on the track, Captain."

Starbuck climbed to his feet. "Truslow!" he called. "I'm down at the barn."

A grunt acknowledged the information; then Starbuck followed Hunt along the river. "It was that lightning," Hunt explained.

"You saw the man?"

"Man and a horse," Hunt said cheerfully. "Plain as a pair of planks."

Starbuck was skeptical. He had learned in the last year just how deceptive the night could be. A bush that would not attract a second glance in daylight could be transformed by darkness into a monstrous threat. A herd of cows could be changed into a rampaging troop of enemy cavalry while, just as easily, a whole battalion of enemy troops could resemble a field of standing corn. Night fed the imagination, and the imagination feared enemies or craved security and made the dark fit its desires. Now Starbuck groped his way to where the picket was positioned behind the barn's broken wall. Sergeant Mallory was nervous. "There's someone out there, sir," he said. "We all saw him."

Starbuck could see nothing except the darkness and the slight quivering sheen of the river. "Did you challenge?" he asked.

"No, sir," Mallory answered.

Starbuck placed his rifle on the makeshift parapet, then cupped his hands. "Who goes there?" he shouted as loud as he could.

Nothing answered except the small stir of the wind and the sound of the river running.

"We saw something, sir," Mallory insisted.

"We did, sir, truly," one of the men put in.

"Are you sure it isn't the old black fellow?" Starbuck asked.

"This was a man and a horse, sir," Mallory said.

Starbuck challenged again and again received no reply. "Maybe they got the hell out of here?" Starbuck suggested, and just as he spoke the far mountain range was raked with another stab of forked lightning, the streaks slashing down to silhouette the tree-lined crests with fire, but closer, much closer, the splinter of light touched a figure standing beside a horse not fifty paces away—or so it seemed to Starbuck, who had but a second to focus his eyes and make sense of the sudden stark contrasts of white night-fire and pitch-black dark. "Who are you?" he shouted as the light faded, leaving nothing behind but an imprinted image on his retinas that seemed to suggest that the man was wearing a saber scabbard and carrying a carbine.

No one answered. Starbuck cocked his rifle, taking satisfaction from the solid heft of the spring-loaded hammer. He felt with a finger to make certain a percussion cap was in place, then pointed the gun just above where he thought the man was standing. He pulled the trigger.

The explosion rebounded across the river valley, echoing back from the trees on the far bank, then fading like the crackle of the thunder in the distant mountains. The muzzle flash lit a few square yards of ground beyond the barn but could not reach as far as the solitary, silent, unmoving man whom Starbuck was now certain he had glimpsed in the lightning's glare.

"Hoofbeats, sir!" Mallory said excitedly. "Hear them?" And sure enough the sound of horses' hooves and the jingling of curb chains sounded above the endless river noise. "Cavalry coming!" Starbuck shouted to warn the men in the rifle pits behind. He began to reload his rifle as Mallory's picket slid their guns across the wall. "We'll give the bastards a volley," Starbuck said, then checked his words because the hoofbeats were not coming from the west but from behind him, from the direction of the Brigade's lines. He turned to see a light moving among the trees above the ford, and after a few seconds he saw that the light was a lantern being carried by a horseman.

"Starbuck!" the horseman shouted. It was Major Hinton. "Starbuck!"

"Stand down," Starbuck told the picket. "Major?" A second horseman appeared from the trees. "Starbuck!" the newcomer shouted, and in the lantern's light Starbuck saw it was General Washington Faulconer who had shouted. Moxey's ratlike face appeared next; then the three horsemen cantered down into the open ground beside the ruins of Mad Silas's cabin. "Starbuck!" Faulconer shouted again.

"Sir?" Starbuck shouldered his half-loaded rifle and walked to meet his Brigade commander.

Faulconer's horse was nervous of the distant storm and edged sideways as a volley of thunder roared in the mountains. Faulconer gave the beast a hard cut with his riding crop. "I gave orders, Mr. Starbuck, that no changes of disposition were to be made without my express permission. You disobeyed those orders!"

"Sir!" Major Hinton protested, wanting to point out that Starbuck had only been obeying Swynyard's instructions. Hinton himself had been busy at a neighboring brigade's court-martial all day, else he would have reinforced Colonel Swynyard's instructions himself. "Captain Starbuck received orders, sir," Hinton began.

"Quiet!" Faulconer rounded on Hinton. "There is a conspiracy, Major Hinton, to subvert authority in this Brigade. That conspiracy is now at an end. Major Hinton, you will take these three companies back to the Legion's lines immediately. Captain Moxey, you will escort Starbuck to headquarters. You are under arrest, Mr. Starbuck."

"Sir—" Starbuck began his own protest.

"Quiet!" Faulconer shouted. His horse pricked its ears back and tossed its head.

"There's a horseman down the path—" Starbuck tried again.

"I said quiet!" Faulconer shouted. "I do not give a damn, Mr. Starbuck, if the archangel Gabriel is on the goddamned path. You have disobeyed my orders and you are now under arrest. Give that rifle to Major Hinton and follow Captain Moxey." Faulconer waited for Starbuck to obey, but the Northerner remained stubbornly motionless. "Or do you intend to disobey those orders, too?" Faulconer asked, and underscored his implied threat by unbuttoning • the flap of his revolver's holster. Truslow and Coffman, their faces dim in the lantern's small light, watched from the tree line.

Starbuck felt an insane urge to fight Faulconer, but then Paul Hinton leaned down from his saddle and took Starbuck's rifle away. "It's all right, Nate," he murmured soothingly.

"It is not all right!" Faulconer was exultant. His evening, which had begun so ill with his precipitate flight from Gordonsville, had turned into a triumph. "Discipline is the first requisite of a soldier, Major," Faulconer went on, "and Starbuck's insolence has corrupted this regiment. There'll be no more of it, by God, none! There are going to be changes!" Lightning ripped the west, shattering the night over the mountains, and its sudden light betrayed the blissful happiness on Washington Faulconer's face. He had confronted his enemies and he had routed them both, and the General, for the first time since he had donned his country's uniform, felt like a soldier triumphant.

And Starbuck was under arrest.

Starbuck was put into Colonel Swynyard's tent. An embarrassed private from A Company stood guard outside, while inside the tent Starbuck discovered Swynyard sitting slumped on his camp bed and cradling what Starbuck supposed was a Bible. A wax taper burned on a folding table to shed a sickly and wan light. The Colonel's head was bowed, so that his hair fell lank across his bony face. Starbuck sat at the other end of the bed and announced his presence with an oath.

"A contagion," Swynyard responded mysteriously, without offering any more formal greeting to his fellow prisoner, "that's what I am, Starbuck, a contagion. A contamination. An infection. A plague. Unclean. Out of step. Do you ever feel out of step with all mankind?" The Colonel raised his head as he asked the question. His eyes were red. "I tell you, Starbuck, that the world would be a better place without me."

Starbuck, alarmed at the wild words, looked more closely at the object in the Colonel's hands. He had presumed it was a Bible and now feared to see a revolver, but instead he saw it was an uncorked bottle. "Oh, no," Starbuck said, astonished at his own disappointment. "Are you getting drunk?"

Swynyard did not answer. He just stared at the bottle, turning it in his hands as though he had never seen such an object before. "What did Faulconer say to you?" the Colonel asked finally.

"Nothing much," Starbuck said, using a tone of indifference to show defiance. "He said I'd disobeyed orders."

"You obeyed my orders, but that won't make any difference with Faulconer. He hates you. He hates me, too, but he hates you more. He thinks you took his son away." The Colonel went on staring at the bottle, then shook his head wearily. "I'm not drinking. I took a sip and spat it out. But I was going to drink it. Then you came in." He held the bottle close to the dripping, spluttering taper, so that the feeble light refracted through the green glass and amber liquid. "Faulconer gave it to me. He says I deserve it. It's the best whiskey in America, he says, from Bourbon County, Kentucky. None of your bust-head tonight, Starbuck. No rotgut or pop-skull, no red-line special, no brain-buster, no skull-splitter, no tanglefoot tonight." The mention of tanglefoot whiskey evidently prompted some memory that made the Colonel close his eyes in sudden pain. "No, sir," he went on sadly, "only the best of Bourbon County whiskey for Griffin Swynyard. Clear as a dewdrop, do you see?" He again held the bottle to the taper's light. "Isn't that beautiful?"

"You don't need it, Colonel," Starbuck said softly.

"But I do, Starbuck. I need either God or whiskey, and whiskey, I have to tell you, is a great deal more convenient than God. It is more available than God and it is more predictable than God. Whiskey, Starbuck, does not make demands like God, and the salvation it offers is every bit as certain as God's, and even if that salvation is not as long in duration as God's salvation it is still a true and tried remedy for the miseries of life. Whiskey is a consolation, Starbuck, and a very present help in times of trouble, and never more so than when it comes from Bourbon County, Kentucky." He swirled the bottle slowly, gazing reverently at its contents. "Are you going to preach to me, Starbuck?"

"No, sir. I've been preached at all my damned life and it didn't do neither me nor the preacher one damned bit of good."

Swynyard lifted the bottle to his nose and sniffed. He closed his eyes at the smell of the liquor, then touched the bottle's rim to his lips. For a second Starbuck was sure that the Colonel was going to tip the whiskey down his throat; then Swynyard lowered the bottle again. "I guess preaching didn't do you any good, Starbuck, because you're a preacher's son. Probably hurt you rather than helped. If a man tells you all your born days to keep away from the women and the whiskey, then what else will you look for when they let go of the leash?"

"Is that why you looked for them?" Starbuck asked.

The Colonel shook his head. "My father was no preacher. He went to church, sure, but he was no preacher. He was a dealer in slaves, Starbuck. That's what it said on our house-front. Said it in scarlet letters three feet high: 'Jos Swynyard, Dealer in Slaves.'" The Colonel shrugged at the memory. "Respectable people didn't come near us, Starbuck, not near a dealer in slaves. They sent their overseers and managers to buy the human flesh. Not that my father minded; he reckoned he was as respectable as any man in Charles City County. He kept a respectable household, I'll say that for him. None of us dared cross him. He was a flogger, you see. He flogged his slaves, his women, and his children." Swynyard went silent, staring down at the bottle. The sentry shifted his feet outside the tent, and pots clattered in the farmhouse kitchen as the servants cleaned up after Washington Faulconer's late supper. Swynyard shook his head sadly. "I treated my slaves bad."

"Yes, you did," Starbuck said.

"But he never flogged his dogs." Swynyard was thinking of his father again. "Never once, not in all his years." He smiled ruefully, then lifted the bottle to his nose and smelt it again. "It really ain't a bad kind of whiskey, judging by its smell," he said. "Have you ever drunk Scottish whiskey?"

"Once or twice."

"Me, too." Swynyard was silent for a few heartbeats. "I reckon I drunk just about everything a man can pour down his throat, but I once knew a man who called himself a connoisseur of whiskeys. A real connoisseur"—Swynyard rolled the word round his tongue—"and this connoisseur told me there wasn't nothing in the whole wide world he didn't know about whiskeys, and do you know which whiskey he reckoned was the best?"

"Tanglefoot?" Starbuck guessed.

Swynyard laughed. "Tanglefoot! Well, it works, I'll say that for tanglefoot. It works like a mule kick to the head, tanglefoot does, but it ain't the best liquor in the world, not if you want your mule kick to taste better than horse liniment. No, this man reckoned he'd drunk every kind of whiskey that this vale of tears has to offer us, and the best, the very best, the absolute real stuff, Starbuck, was whiskey from Ireland. Ain't that the strangest thing?"

"Maybe he was drunk when he tasted it?" Starbuck suggested.

Swynyard thought about that for a second, then shook his head. "No, I reckon he knew what he was saying. He was a rich man and rich folks don't get rich by being fools. At least they might, but they sure don't stay rich by being fools, and this man stayed rich. And he didn't drink much either. He just liked the taste, you see. He liked his whiskey, and he'd pay a rich man's price for Irish whiskey, but the guzzle he liked most of all was the widow's champagne. Clicquot!" He raised the whiskey bottle in a tribute to Madame Clicquot's champagne. "Have you ever drunk Veuve Clicquot?"

"Yes."

"Good for you. Be a sad thing to die without tasting the widow's champagne. But sadder still to die without salvation, eh?" Swynyard asked, but he seemed confused by the question. He stared at the bottle and again seemed about to drink from it, then, at the very last second, relented. "There was a time, Starbuck, when I could afford the widow's champagne morning, noon, and night. Could have watered my horse in it! Could have watered all my horses in it! I was rich."

Starbuck smiled but said nothing.

"You don't believe me, do you?" Swynyard said. "But there was a time, Starbuck, when I could have purchased Faulconer."

"Truly?"

"Truly," Swynyard said, gently mocking Starbuck's accent with the repetition. "I wasn't always a soldier. I left West Point, class of '29, forty-sixth in my class. You want to guess how many there were in West Point's class of '29?"

"Forty-six?"

Swynyard extended a pistollike finger at Starbuck and made a clicking noise of affirmation. "Forty-sixth out of forty-six. I didn't exactly distinguish myself. Fact is, twenty years later I was still no more than a captain, and I knew I wasn't going to rise any higher than a captain, and I wasn't ever going to kill anything more dangerous to the Republic than a Comanche or a Mexican. I always reckoned I might be a good soldier, but the whiskey made sure I never was. Then one night in '50 I got drunk and offered my resignation and that was the end of my career."

"What did you do?"

"I did what every sensible soldier wanted to do. I went to the Feather River. Ever heard of the Feather?"

"No."

"California," Swynyard said. "The gold fields. Feather River and Goodyear's Bar and Three Snake Run. That's where I struck it rich. I found a lump of gold the size of a dog. Gold," the Colonel said, staring into the heart of the whiskey, "real thick gold, soft as butter, pure as love, and big as a coon dog. In just one day, Starbuck, I made thirty thousand bucks, and all of it before breakfast. That was before they made gold-digging mechanical. Nowadays, Starbuck, they sluice that gold out of the gravels with water jets. That water flies so hard you could kill a regiment of Yankees with that hose, except it takes a regiment to build all the flumes and dams, and not even the Yankees are stupid enough to stand still while you construct it. But I was lucky. I got there early when all a man had to do was climb high and start rolling the rocks aside." He fell silent.

"And you lost it all?"

Swynyard nodded. "Every last cent of it. It all went down the gullet or across the barrelhead. Poker. Women. Whiskey. Stupidity. I lost these fingers, too." He held up his left hand with its three missing fingers.

"I thought those went to a Mexican saber cut," Starbuck said.

"That's what I tell people," Swynyard said, "or what I did tell them before I met the Lord Jesus Christ, but it ain't true. The truth is, Starbuck, that I had them blown away when me and a German miner were using black powder up above Shirt Tail Creek. Otto, his name was, and he was mad as a snake. He reckoned there was a load of nuggets at the top of Shirt Tail and it took us a week to carry all our gear up there, and then we blew the thing wide open and there wasn't nothing up there but dirt and quartz. Only Otto blew it early, see, thinking he'd blow me to hell and get to keep all the gold to himself."

"And what happened to Otto?" Starbuck asked gently.

Swynyard blinked rapidly. His hands were gripping the whiskey bottle so hard that Starbuck feared he might break the glass. "I have many sins on my conscience," Swynyard said after a while, "many. I killed Otto. Took a long time a-dying and I mocked him all that while. God forgive me."

Starbuck waited a few seconds, praying desperately that the Colonel would not suck on the bottle. "And when the war started?" Starbuck finally asked.

"I came back east. Reckoned I could have a new beginning. I kind of persuaded myself I could do without the whiskey so long as I could be a proper soldier again. I wanted to redeem myself, you see? A new country, a new army, a new beginning. But I was wrong."

"No," Starbuck said, "you weren't. You've been off the whiskey for days now."

Swynyard did not answer but just stared into the golden depths of the expensive Kentucky whiskey.

"You don't want it, Colonel," Starbuck said.

"But I do, Starbuck, and that's the plain hard truth of it. I want a drink so bad that it hurts."

"Put the bottle down," Starbuck said.

Swynyard ignored him. "I never thought I could give up the drink, never, and then God helps me to do it at last and just as things are starting to be all right again, Faulconer does this to us. What was I supposed to do? Leave the ford unguarded?"

"Colonel," Starbuck said, reaching for the whiskey bottle.

"You did the right thing. You know that. And do you know why Faulconer gave you that bottle tonight?"

Swynyard would not relinquish the whiskey, but instead held the bottle just beyond Starbuck's reach. "He gave it to me," the Colonel said, "because he wants to humiliate me. That's why."

"No," Starbuck said. "He did it so you won't be in a fit state to testify at a court-martial. He wants you drunk, Colonel, because the son of a bitch knows he's in the wrong, but he also knows that no court will exonerate a staggering drunkard. But if you stay sober, Colonel, he's going to back down and there won't be any court-martial."

Swynyard thought about Starbuck's words, then shook his head. "But I did disobey his orders. Not that it matters, because Faulconer don't care one way or another about Dead Mary's Ford. He just wants to be rid of me. Don't you understand? It isn't what I did or didn't do, it's because I made an enemy. You too. We're being purse-whipped by a rich man, Starbuck, and there ain't nothing we can do about it."

"Goddamn it, there is!" Starbuck insisted. "Faulconer doesn't run this damned army, Jackson does, and if Jackson says you're right and Faulconer's wrong then it won't matter if you and I disobeyed George Washington's orders. Not all of Faulconer's money can change that, but I tell you one thing: If you go in front of Old Mad Jack with a hangover, or with whiskey on your breath, or looking like you used to look before you let Christ into your heart, then Old Mad Jack will have you out of this army faster than you can spit." Starbuck paused and held out his hand. "Now goddamn it, Colonel, give me the whiskey."

Swynyard frowned. "Why would Jackson care what happens to us?"

"Because we'll make him care. We'll tell him the truth.

So give me the bottle." He still held his hand outstretched. "Come on! I'm thirsty!"

Swynyard held the bottle out, but instead of handing it to Starbuck he tipped it upside down so that the liquor gurgled and slurped onto the tent's pine floorboards and there trickled between the cracks into the dirt. When the bottle was empty, Swynyard let it fall. "We've got a battle to fight, Starbuck," the Colonel said, "so let's both be sober."

"Son of a bitch," Starbuck said. The smell of the whiskey was tantalizing in the tent. "I was thirsty."

"And tomorrow you'll be sober," Swynyard said. Far in the distance the thunder grumbled. The sentry sneezed, and the Colonel closed his eyes in prayer. He had resisted temptation and endured despair. And now, like the soldier he knew he could be, he would fight.

Mad Silas began pulling the felled trees off the road that led north through the woods. It was hard work, especially as he had his darling Mary's skull in a sack hanging from his neck and he did not like to bump the skull too hard in case it hurt her. He talked to her as he worked, saying how he was keeping the road clear because the man in the blue coat had asked him to, and the man in the blue coat had said as how all the black folk would be better off if the blue ones beat the gray ones, and even though the white men in the gray coats had been polite to Mad Silas and had even given him some cigars, he still believed the blue horse soldier because the blue man had been young Master Harlan Kemp, the son of old Master Kemp who had given Silas his freedom.

By first light Silas had cleared the whole path. Then, very cautiously, he crept down to the riverbank and saw to his surprise that the gray soldiers were all gone. Their fires had cooled to ashes and their rifle pits were empty. He clutched the scorched skull in his arms and debated with it what the soldiers' absence might mean, but he could not really make any sense of it. Yet their absence made him feel safe again, and so he put his Mary back in the hole in the ruined chimney breast where she now lived. Then, glad to be home with her, he walked down beside the river, past the ruined barn, to the tree and bush that, at night, looked so like a man and a horse. He had a snare here, set to trap rabbits going down to the river.

Then, just as he was parting the leaves of the bush, he heard the hoofbeats. He rolled down the bank into the long grass and lay very still. The sun was not yet up, so the light was gray and flat and the river water had no sparkle, yet Silas could clearly see the far bank, and, after a time, he saw the men appear there. They were white men in blue coats. There were three of them, each on foot and each carrying a long rifle, a saber, and a revolver. They spent a long time staring across the river; then one of them ran through the ford, splashing the water high with his long boots and bright spurs. Silas lost sight of that man, but after a minute or two the man called back over the river. "The bastards were here, right enough, Major, but they've gone."

Then a whole column of blue horse soldiers appeared at the ford. Their spurs, scabbards, and curb chains jingled as they urged their horses through the river. The three men who had scouted the ford seized their reins and heaved themselves up into their saddles. Silas watched them go out of sight, then listened as their hoofbeats faded away to the south, and then he went on listening until there was nothing more to hear but the run of the river and the song of the birds.

Then, with a dead rabbit in his hand, he went back to tell his Mary just what excitements were happening at her ford this morning, while far to the south, unsuspected and unseen, the Yankee raiders went to ground and waited.