Battle Flag

Galloway shook his head, but the preacher did not see the gesture. He only saw a hated enemy battle flag hanging in the chancel of his church as an object of derision. The Reverend Starbuck pushed back his chair and consulted his fob watch. “I must be returning to the depot,” he said.

“Adam will drive you, sir,” Major Galloway said. The Major waited until the preacher was gone, then shook his head sadly. “You made a deal of promises, Billy.”

“And there was a deal of money at stake,” Blythe said carelessly, “and hell, I never did mind making promises.”

Galloway crossed to the open garden door, where he stared out at the sun-bleached lawn. “I don’t mind a man making promises, Billy, but I sure mind that he keeps them.”

“I always keep my promises, sure I do. I keep ’em in mind while I’m working out how to break them.” Blythe laughed. “Now are you going to give me aggravation for having fetched you your money? Hell, Joe, I get enough piety from young Faulconer.”

“Adam’s a good man.”

“I never said he weren’t a good man. I just said he’s a pious son of a righteous bitch and God only knows why you appointed him Captain.”

“Because he’s a good man,” Galloway said firmly, “and because his family is famous in Virginia, and because I like him. And I like you too, Billy, but not if you’re going to argue with Adam all the time. Now why don’t you go and get busy? You’ve got a flag to capture.”

Blythe scorned such a duty. “Have I? Hell! There’s plenty enough red, white, and blue cloth about, so we’ll just have your house niggers run up a quick rebel flag.”

Galloway sighed. “They’re my servants, Billy, servants.”

“Still niggers, ain’t they? And the girl can use a needle, can’t she? And the Reverend’ll never know the difference. She can make us a flag and I’ll tear it and dirty it a bit and that old fool will think we snatched it clean out of Jeff Davis’s own hands.” Blythe grinned at the idea, then picked up the check. He whistled appreciatively. “Reckon I talked us into a tidy profit, Joe.”

“I reckon you did too. So now you’ll go and spend it, Billy.” Galloway needed to equip Adam’s troop with horses and most of his men with sabers and firearms, but now, thanks to the generosity of the Reverend Starbuck’s abolitionists, the Galloway Horse would be as well equipped and mounted as any other cavalry regiment in the Northern army. “Spend half on horses and half on weapons and saddlery,” Galloway suggested.

“Horses are expensive, Joe,” Blythe warned. “The war’s made them scarce.”

“You’re a horse dealer, Billy, so go and work some horse-dealing magic. Unless you’d rather I let Adam go? He wants to buy his own horses.”

“Never let a boy do a man’s work, Joe,” Blythe said. He touched the preacher’s cheek to his lips and gave it an exaggerated kiss. “Praise the Lord,” Billy Blythe said, “just praise His holy name, amen.”

The Faulconer Legion made camp just a few miles north of the river where they had first glimpsed the baleful figure of their new commanding general. No one in the Legion knew where they were or where they were going or why they were marching there, but a passing artillery major who was a veteran of Jackson’s campaigns said that was the usual way of Old Jack. “You’ll know you’ve arrived just as soon as the enemy does and no sooner,” the Major said, then begged a bucket of water for his horse.

The Brigade headquarters erected tents, but none of the regiments bothered with such luxuries. The Faulconer Legion had started the war with three wagonloads of tents but now had only two tents left, both reserved for Doctor Danson. The men had become adept at manufacturing shelters from branches and sod, though on this warm evening no one needed protection from the weather. Work parties fetched wood for campfires while others carried water from a stream a mile away. Some of the men sat with their bare feet dangling in the stream, trying to wash away the blisters and blood of the day’s march. The four men on the Legion’s punishment detail watered the draft horses that hauled the ammunition wagons, then paraded round the campsite with newly felled logs on their shoulders. The men staggered under the weight as they made the ten circuits of the Legion’s lines that constituted their nightly punishment. “What have they done?” Lieutenant Coffman asked Starbuck.

Starbuck glanced up at the miserable procession. “Lem Pierce got drunk. Matthews sold cartridges for a pint of whiskey, and Evans threatened to hit Captain Medlicott.”

“Pity he didn’t,” Sergeant Truslow interjected. Daniel Medlicott had been the miller at Faulconer Court House, where he had earned a reputation as a hard man with money, though in the spring elections for field officers he had distributed enough promises and whiskey to have himself promoted from sergeant to captain.

“And I don’t know what Trent did,” Starbuck finished.

“Abram Trent’s just a poxed son of a whore,” Truslow said to Coffman. “He stole some food from Sergeant Major Tolliver, but that ain’t why he’s being punished. He’s being punished, lad, because he got caught.”

“You are listening to the gospel according to Sergeant Thomas Truslow,” Starbuck told the Lieutenant. “Thou shalt steal all thou can, but thou shalt not get caught.” Starbuck grinned, then hissed with pain as he jabbed his thumb with a needle. He was struggling to sew the sole of his right boot back onto its uppers, for which task he had borrowed one of the three precious needles possessed by the company.

Sergeant Truslow, sitting on the far side of the fire from the two officers, mocked his Captain’s efforts. “You’re a lousy cobbler.”

“I never pretended to be otherwise.”

“You’ll break the goddamn needle, pushing like that.”

“You want to do it?” Starbuck asked, offering the half-finished work to the Sergeant.

“Hell no, I ain’t paid to patch your boots.”

“Then shut the hell up,” Starbuck said, trying to work the needle through one of the old stitching holes in the sole.

“It’ll only break first thing in the morning,” Truslow said after a moment’s silence.

“Not if I do it properly.”

“No chance of that,” Truslow said. He broke off a piece of tobacco and put it in his cheek. “You’ve got to protect the thread, see? So it don’t chafe on the road.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“No, you ain’t. You’re just lashing the boot together. There are blind men without fingers who could make a better job than you.”

Lieutenant Coffman listened nervously to the conversation. He had been told that the Captain and Sergeant were friends—indeed, that they had been friends ever since the Yankee Starbuck had been sent to persuade the Yankee-hating Truslow to leave his high-mountain farm and join Faulconer’s Legion—but to Coffman it seemed an odd sort of friendship if it was expressed with such mutual scorn. Now the intimidating Sergeant turned to the nervous Lieutenant. “A proper officer,” Truslow confided to Coffman, “would have a darkie to do his sewing.”

“A proper officer,” Starbuck said, “would kick your rotten teeth down your gullet.”

“Anytime, Captain,” Truslow said, laughing.

Starbuck tied off the thread and peered critically at his handiwork. “It ain’t perfect,” he allowed, “but it’ll do.”

“It’ll do,” Truslow agreed, “so long as you don’t walk on it.”

Starbuck laughed. “Hell, we’ll be fighting a battle in a day or two, then I’ll get myself a pair of brand-new Yankee boots.” He gingerly pulled the repaired boot onto his foot and was pleasantly surprised that the sole did not immediately peel away. “Good as new,” he said, then flinched, not because of the boot, but because a sudden scream sounded across the campsite. The scream was cut abruptly short; there was a pause, then a sad wailing sound sobbed briefly.

Coffman looked aghast, for the noise had sounded like it came from a creature being tortured, which indeed it had. “Colonel Swynyard,” Sergeant Truslow explained to the new lieutenant, “is beating one of his niggers.”

“The Colonel drinks,” Starbuck added.

“The Colonel is a drunk,” Truslow amended.

“And it’s anyone’s guess whether the liquor will kill him before one of his slaves does,” Starbuck said, “or one of us, for that matter.” He spat into the fire. “I’d kill the bastard willingly enough.”

“Welcome to the Faulconer Brigade,” Truslow said to Coffman.

The Lieutenant did not know how to respond to such cynicism, so he just sat looking troubled and nervous, then flinched as a thought crossed his mind. “Will we really be fighting in a day or two?” he asked.

“Probably tomorrow.” Truslow jerked his head toward the northern sky, which was being reddened by the reflected glow of an army’s fires. “It’s what you’re paid to do, son,” Truslow added when he saw Coffman’s nervousness.

“I’m not paid,” Coffman said and immediately blushed for the admission.

Truslow and Starbuck were both silent for a few seconds; then Starbuck frowned. “What the hell do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, I do get paid,” Coffman said, “but I don’t get the money, see?”

“No, I don’t see.”

The Lieutenant was embarrassed. “It’s my mother.”

“She gets the money, you mean?” Starbuck asked.

“She owes General Faulconer money,” Coffman explained, “because we rent one of his houses on the Rosskill road and Mother fell behind with the rent, so Faulconer keeps my salary.”

There was another long pause. “Christ on his cross.” Truslow’s blasphemy broke the silence. “You mean that miserable rich bastard is taking your three lousy bucks a week for his own?”

“It’s only fair, isn’t it?” Coffman asked.

“No, it damn well ain’t,” Starbuck said. “If you want to send your mother the money, that’s fair, but it ain’t fair for you to fight for nothing! Shit!” He swore angrily.

“I don’t really need any money.” Coffman nervously defended the arrangement.

“’Course you do, boy,” Truslow said. “How else are you going to buy whores and whiskey?”

“Have you talked to Pecker about this?” Starbuck demanded.

Coffman shook his head. “No.”

“Hell, then I will,” Starbuck said. “Ain’t going to have you being shot at for free.” He climbed to his feet. “I’ll be back in a half hour. Oh, shit!” This last imprecation was not in anger for Washington Faulconer’s greed but because his right sole had come loose on his first proper step. “Goddamn shit!” he said angrily, then stalked off to find Colonel Bird.

Truslow grinned at Starbuck’s inept cobbling, then spat tobacco juice into the fire’s margin. “He’ll get your cash, son,” he said.

“He will?”

“Faulconer’s scared of Starbuck.”

“Scared? The General’s scared of the Captain?” Coffman found that hard to believe.

“Starbuck’s a proper soldier. He’s a fighter while Faulconer’s just a pretty uniform on an expensive horse. In the long run, son, the fighter will always win.” Truslow picked a shred of tobacco from between his teeth. “Unless he’s killed, of course.”

“Killed?”

“You’re going to meet the Yankees tomorrow, son,” Truslow said, “and some of us are going to get killed, but I’ll do my best to keep you from getting slaughtered. Starting now.” He leaned over and ripped the bars off the Lieutenant’s collar, then tossed the cloth scraps into the fire. “Sharpshooters put telescopes on their rifles, son, just looking for officers to kill, and the Yankees don’t care that you’re not full-grown. See a pair of bars like that, they shoot, and you’re two feet underground with a shovelful of dirt in your eyes.” Truslow spat more tobacco juice. “Or worse,” he added darkly.

“Worse?” Coffman asked nervously.

“You could be wounded, boy, and screaming like a stuck pig while a half-drunken doctor rummages through your innards. Or sobbing like a baby while you lie out in the field with your guts being eaten by rodents and no one knowing where the hell you are. It ain’t pretty, and there’s only one way to keep it from being even uglier and that’s to hurt the bastards before they hurt you.” He looked at Coffman, recognizing how the boy was trying to hide his fear. “You’ll be all right,” Truslow said. “The worst bit is the waiting. Now sleep, boy. You’ve got a man’s job to do tomorrow.”

High overhead a shooting star whipped white fire across the darkening sky. Somewhere a man sang of a love left behind while another played a sad tune on a violin. Colonel Swynyard’s flogged slave tried to keep from whimpering, Truslow snored, and Coffman shivered, thinking of the morrow.

THE YANKEE CAVALRY PATROL REACHED GENERAL Banks’s headquarters late at night. The patrol had come under fire at the Rapidan River, and the loss of one of their horses had slowed their journey back to Culpeper Court House, as had the necessity to look after two wounded men. A New Hampshire corporal had been struck by a bullet in his lower belly and would surely die, while the patrol’s commander, a captain, had suffered a glancing hit on the ribs. The Captain’s wound was hardly serious, but he had scratched and prodded at the graze until a satisfactory amount of blood heroically stained his shirt.

Major General Nathaniel Banks, commander of General Pope’s Second Corps, was smoking a last cigar on the veranda of his commandeered house when he heard that the patrol had returned with ominous news of enemy forces crossing the Rapidan. “Let’s have the man here! Let’s hear him. Lively now!” Banks was a fussy man who, despite all the contrary evidence, was convinced of his own military genius. He certainly looked the part of a successful soldier, for there were few men who wore the uniform of the United States with more assurance. He was trim, brusque, and confident, yet until the war began he had never been a soldier, merely a politician. He had risen to be Speaker of the House of Representatives, though it had taken 133 ballots to achieve that honor, and afterward Governor of Massachusetts, a state so rich in men willing to be taxed that the federal government had deemed it necessary to offer its governor the chance of immortal martial glory as a token of its thanks. Governor Banks, who was as passionate in his love for his country as in his hatred of the slave trade, had leaped at the chance.

Now he waited, ramrod straight, as the cavalry Captain, wearing his jacket like a cloak so that his bloody shirt showed clearly, climbed the veranda steps and offered a salute, which he dramatically cut short with a wince as though the pain in his chest had suddenly struck hard.

“Your name?” Banks demanded peremptorily.

“Thompson, General. John Hannibal Thompson. From Ithaca, New York. Reckon you might have met my uncle, Michael Fane Thompson, when you were a congressman. He sat for New York back in—”

“You found the enemy, Thompson?” Banks asked in a very icy voice.

Thompson, offended at being so rudely cut off, shrugged. “We sure found someone hostile, General.”

“Who?”

“Damned if I know. We got shot at.” Thompson touched the crusted blood on his shirt, which looked brown rather than red in the lamplight.

“You shot back?” Banks asked.

“Hell, General, no one shoots at me without getting retaliation, and I reckon me and my boys laid a few of the bastards low.”

“Where was this?” the aide accompanying General Banks asked.

Captain Thompson crossed to a wicker table on which the aide had spread a map of northern Virginia illuminated by two flickering candle-lanterns. Moths beat frantically around the three men’s heads as they leaned over the map. Thompson used one of the lanterns to light himself a cigar, then tapped a finger on the map. “It was a ford just around there, General.” He had tapped the map well west of the main road that led due south from Culpeper Court House to Gordonsville.

“You crossed to the south bank of the river?” Banks asked.

“Couldn’t rightly do that, General, on account of there being a pack of rebs already occupying the ford.”

“There’s no ford marked there,” the aide interjected. Sweat dripped from his face to stain the Blue Ridge Mountains, which lay well to the west of the rivers. The night had brought no relief from the sweltering heat.

“A local nigger guided us,” Thompson explained. “He said the ford weren’t well known, being nothing but a summer back road to a gristmill, and some of us reckoned he just might be lying to us, but there sure was a ford after all. Seems the nigger was truthful.”

“The word, Thompson, is Negro,” Banks said very coldly, then looked down at the map again. Other patrols had spoken of rebel infantry marching north on the Gordonsville road, and this new report suggested that the Confederates were advancing on a broad front and in considerable strength. What were they doing? A reconnaissance in force, or a full-scale attack aimed at destroying his corps?

“So how many men fired at you?” Banks resumed his questioning of the flippant Thompson.

“Wasn’t exactly counting the minny balls, General, on account of being too busy firing back. But I reckon there was at least one regiment north of the river and more of the devils coming on.”

Banks stared at the cavalryman, wondering just why responsibility always seemed to devolve onto fools. “Did you try to take a prisoner?”

“I guess I was too busy making sure I didn’t end up six feet underground, General.” Thompson laughed. “Hell, there were only a dozen of us and more than a thousand of them. Maybe two thousand.”

“Did you ascertain the identity of the regiment which fired on you?” Banks asked with an icy pedantry.

“I sure ascertained that it was a rebel regiment, General,” Thompson answered. “They were carrying that new flag, the one with the cross on it.”

Banks shuddered at the man’s obtuse stupidity and wondered why the North’s horsemen were so inept at gathering intelligence. Probably, he thought, because they had none themselves. So who were these rebels marching north? There was a rumor that Stonewall Jackson had come to Gordonsville, and Banks winced at the thought of that bearded, ragged man whose troops marched at the speed of wildfire and fought like fiends.

Banks dismissed the cavalryman. “Useless,” he said as the man paced off down Culpeper Court House’s main street, where sentries stood guard on the taverns. In the town’s small wooden houses yellow lights burned behind the muslin curtains used as insect screens. An undertaker’s wagon, its shafts tilted up to the sky, stood outside a church where, Banks remembered, the famous Boston preacher Elial Starbuck was due to speak on Sunday morning. The town’s population was not anticipating the abolitionist’s sermon with any pleasure, but Banks, an old friend of the preacher, was looking forward to Starbuck’s peroration and had demanded that as many of his officers as possible should be present. Nathaniel Banks had a noble vision of God and country marching hand in hand to victory.

Now, with a frown on his face, Banks looked back to the map, on which his sweat dripped monotonously. Suppose the enemy move was a bluff? Suppose that a handful of rebels were merely trying to frighten him? The rebels had surely guessed that he had his eyes on Gordonsville, because if he captured that town, then he would cut the railroad that connected Richmond with the rich farmland in the Shenandoah Valley. Sever those rails, and the enemy’s armies would starve, and that thought reignited the glimmer of promised martial glory in Nathaniel Banks’s mind. He saw a statue in Boston, envisaged streets and towns all across New England named after him, and even dreamed that a whole new state might be fashioned from the savage western territories and given his name. Banks Street, Banksville, the state of Banks.

Those inspired visions were fed by more than mere ambition. They were fed by a burning need for revenge. Earlier in the year Nathaniel Banks had led a fine army down the Shenandoah Valley, where he had been tricked and trounced by Thomas Jackson. Even the Northern newspaper had admitted that Jackson had cut Banks to pieces—indeed, the rebels had taken so many guns and supplies from Banks that they had nicknamed him “Commissary Banks.” They had mocked him, ridiculed him, and their scorn still hurt Nathaniel Banks. He wanted revenge.

“The prudent course, sir, would be a withdrawal behind the Rappahannock,” the aide murmured. The aide was a graduate of West Point and supposed to provide the politician-general with sound military advice.

“It may be nothing but a reconnaissance,” Banks said, thinking of vengeance.

“Maybe so, sir,” the aide said suavely, “but what do we gain by fighting? Why hold ground we can easily retake in a week’s time? Why not just let the enemy wear himself out by marching?”

Banks brushed cigar ash off the map. Retreat now? In a week when Boston’s most famous preacher was coming to visit the army? What would Massachusetts say if they heard that Commissary Banks had run away from a few rebels? “We stay,” Banks said. He stabbed his finger down at the contours of a ridge that barred the road just south of Culpeper Court House. If Jackson was marching north in the hope of resupplying his army at the expense of Commissary Banks, then he would have to cross that ridge that lay behind the small protection of a stream. The stream was called Cedar Run, and it lay at the foot of Cedar Mountain. “We’ll meet him there,” Banks said, “and beat him there.”

The aide said nothing. He was a handsome, clever young man who thought he deserved better than to be harnessed to this stubborn bantam-cock. The aide was trying to frame a response, some persuasive words that would deflect Banks from rashness, but the words would not come. Instead, from the lamplit street, there sounded men’s voices singing about loved ones left behind, of sweethearts waiting, of home.

“We’ll meet him there,” Banks said again, ramming his finger onto the sweat-stained map, “and beat him there.”

At Cedar Mountain.

The Legion did not march far on the day they crossed the Rapidan. There was a curious lack of urgency about the expedition, almost as though they were merely changing base rather than advancing on the Northerners who had invaded Virginia. And next morning, though they were woken long before dawn and were ready to march even before the sun had risen above the tall eastern trees, they still waited three hours while a succession of other regiments trailed slowly by on the dusty road. A battery of small six-pounders and short-barreled howitzers was dragged past, followed by a column of Virginia infantry, who good-naturedly jeered the Faulconer Legion for its pretentious name. The day was hot and promised to get hotter still, yet still they waited as the sun climbed higher. More troops passed until, just short of midday, the Legion at last led the Faulconer Brigade out onto the dusty road.

Just moments later the guns started to sound. The noise came from far ahead, a grumble that could have been mistaken for thunder if the sky had not been cloudless. The air was sullen, moist, and windless, and the faces of Starbuck’s men were pale with road dust through which their sweat ran in dark lines. Soon, Starbuck thought, some of those rivulets would be blood red, fly-coated, and twitching, and that premonition of battle turned his belly sour and caused the muscles in his right thigh to tremble. He tried to anticipate the sound of bullets as he coached himself to display courage and not the fear that was liquefying his bowels, and all the while the distant cannons hammered their flat, soulless noise across the land. “Goddamned artillery,” Truslow said in a sour tone. “Some poor bastards are catching hell.”

Lieutenant Coffman seemed about to say something, then decided to keep quiet. One of the conscripts broke ranks to pull down his pants and squat beside the road. Normally he would have been good-naturedly jeered, but the muffled thump of the guns made every man nervous.

In the early afternoon the Legion halted in a shallow valley. The road ahead was blocked by a Georgia battalion beyond which lay a ridgeline crested by dark trees beneath a sky whitened by gunsmoke. Some of the Georgians lay asleep on the road, looking like corpses. Others were penciling their names and hometowns on scraps of paper that they either pinned to their coats or stuck into buttonholes so that, should they die, their bodies would be recognized and their families informed. Some of Starbuck’s men began to take the same gloomy precaution, using the blank end pages of Bibles as their labels.