Battle Flag

  Adam heard the chuckles of those men who agreed with Blythe. Others looked grim, and Adam decided he would speak for those idealists. "We've got a job to do. That's what we volunteered for."

  Blythe nodded as though Adam had made a wonderfully cogent point. "Hell now, Faulconer, no one agrees with you more than me! Hell, if I could reconnoitre clean down to the Rappahannock, then no one would be as happy as Billy Blythe. Hell, I'd reconnoitre down to the Pee Dee if I could, down as far as the Swanee! Hell, I'd reconnoitre to the last gol-darned river on earth for my country, so I would, but I can't do it! Just plumb can't do it, Faulconer, and you know why?" And here Blythe laid a confiding hand on Adam's elbow and leaned so close that his cigar smell wreathed Adam's head. "We can't do nothing, Faulconer, and that's the plain sad truth of it. We can't even ride to the brothel and back on account of our horses being razor-backed pieces of four-legged hogshit. What's the first duty of a cavalryman?"

  "To look after his horse, Billy," one of his men answered.

  "Ain't that God's blessed truth?" Blythe responded. "So I reckon that for the horses' sake we just has to go gentle and keep ourselves unpunctured for the rest of the war. Hell now, what in tarnation was that?" The question was Blythe's response to a pair of gunshots that had sounded from some­where near the farmhouse. For a man who had just preached a gospel of staying well clear of trouble, he seemed remark­ably untroubled by the gunfire. "Reckon we'd best ride to see if old Seth's in one piece, boys," he called, and the men of his troop slowly pulled themselves into their saddles and loosened the Colt repeating rifles in their holsters.

  "Reckon your troop should stay and keep watch," Blythe told Adam. "I ain't saying we expects any trouble, but you can never tell. These woods are full of bushwhackers and every man jack of them is as mean as a snake and twice as treacherous. So you watch out for partisans while the rest of us make certain old Seth ain't gone to meet his Maker."

  Adam watched from the trees as Blythe took his troop down to the farmhouse, which was typical of so many homesteads in the Virginia Piedmont. Adam had often dreamed of settling in just such a farm, miles away from his father's pretensions and wealth. The two-story house was weather-boarded with white-painted planks and handsomely sur­rounded by a deep veranda, which, in turn, was circled by a straggling but colorful flower garden. A wide vegetable garden stretched between the house and the largest of a pair of barns that formed two sides of a yard that was completed by a rail fence. Orchards ran downhill from the house to where a stream glinted in the distance. The sight of the homestead gave Adam a pang of remorse and nostalgia. It seemed wicked that war should inflict itself on such a place.

  At the farm itself Sergeant Seth Kelley waited on the veranda for Captain Blythe. Kelley was a long thin man with a narrow black beard and dark eyes, who now lounged in a wicker chair with his spurred boots propped on the veranda's rail and a cigar in his mouth. His two men were leaning against the posts that flanked the short flight of veranda steps. Kelley took the cigar from his mouth as Cap­tain Blythe dismounted on the parched lawn. "We was fired on, Billy," Kelley said with a grin. "Two shots that came from the top floor. Came damn close to killing me, so they did."

  Blythe shook his head and tutted. "But you're all right, Seth? You ain't wounded now?"

  "They missed, Billy, they missed. But the rascals had this piece of bunting flying from the house, so they did." Kelley held up a small rebel flag.

  "Bad business, Seth, bad business," Blythe said, grinning as broadly as his Sergeant.

  "Sure is, Billy. 'Bout as bad as it can be." Kelley put the cigar back in his mouth.

  Blythe led his horse across the flower bed and tied its reins to a rail of the porch. His men dismounted as Blythe climbed the veranda steps and used Kelley's cigar to light one of his own. "Any folks inside?" Blythe asked the Sergeant.

  "Two women and a passel of brats," Sergeant Kelley said.

  Blythe pushed into the house. The hall floor was made of dark wood on which lay a pair of hooked rugs. A long case clock stood by the staircase, its face proclaiming that it had been made in Baltimore. There was a pair of antlers serving as a coatrack, a portrait of George Washington, another of Andrew Jackson, and a pokerwork plaque proclaiming that God was The Unseen Listener to Every Conversation in This House. Blythe gave the clock an appreciative pat as Seth Kelley and two men followed him through the hall and into the kitchen, where three children clung to the skirts of two women. One woman was white-haired, the other young and defiant.

  "Well now, well," Blythe said, pausing in the kitchen doorway. "What do we have here?"

  "You ain't got no business here," the younger woman said. She was in her thirties and evidently the mother of the three small children. She was carrying a heavy cleaver, which she hefted nervously as Blythe walked into the kitchen.

  "The business we got here, ma'am, is the business of the United States of America," Billy Blythe said happily. He strolled past an ancient dresser and picked an apple from a china bowl. He bit a chunk from the apple, then smiled at the younger woman. "Real sweet, ma'am. Just like your­self." The woman was dark-haired with good features and challenging eyes. "I like a woman with spirit," Blythe said, "ain't that so, Seth?"

  "You always did have a right taste for such women, Billy." Kelley leaned his lanky form against the kitchen doorpost.

  "You leave us alone!" the older woman said, scenting trouble.

  "Nothing in this world I'd rather do, ma'am," Blythe said.

  He took another bite from the apple. Two of the children had started to cry, prompting Blythe to slam the remnants of the apple hard onto the scrubbed kitchen table. Scraps of the shattered fruit skittered across the kitchen. "I would be obliged if you kept your sniveling infants silent, ma'am!" Blythe snapped. "I cannot abide a sniveling child, no sir! Sniveling children should be whipped. Whipped!" The last word was bellowed so loud that both children stopped crying in sheer fright. Blythe smiled at their mother, displaying scraps of apple between his teeth. "So where's the man of the house, ma'am?"

  "He ain't here," the younger woman said defiantly. "Is that because he's carrying arms against his lawful government?" Blythe asked in a teasing voice.

  "He ain't here," the woman said again, and then, after a pause, "There's only us women and children here. You ain't got no quarrel with women and children."

  "My quarrels are my business," Blythe said, "and my business is to discover just why one of you two ladies fired a couple of shots at my nice Sergeant here."

  "No one fired at him!" the older woman said scornfully. "He fired his own revolver. I saw him do it!"

  Blythe shook his head disbelievingly. "That's not what Mr. Kelley says, ma'am, and he wouldn't tell me a lie. Hell, he's a sergeant in the army of the United States of America! Are you telling me that a sergeant of the army of the United States of America would tell a lie?" Blythe asked the ques­tion with feigned horror. "Are you really trying to suggest such a thing?"

  "No one fired!" the younger woman insisted. The chil­dren were almost buried in her skirts. Blythe took a step closer to the woman, who raised the cleaver threateningly.

  "You use that, ma'am," Blythe said equably, "and you'll be hanged for murder. What's your name?"

  "My name's none of your business."

  "So I'll tell you what is my business, ma'am," Blythe said, and he reached out for the cleaver and plucked it from the woman's unresisting grasp. He raised it, then slashed it hard down to bury its blade tip in the table. He smiled at the younger woman, then blew cigar smoke toward the bunches of herbs hanging from a beam. "My business, ma'am," he said, "is with General Order Number Five, issued by Major General John Pope of the United States Army, which General Order gives me the legal right and solemn duty to feed and equip my men with any food or goods we find in this house that might be necessary to our well-being. That is an order, given me by the General in command of my army, and like a good Christian soldier, ma'am, I am duty-bound to obey it." Blythe turned and jabb
ed a finger toward Sergeant Kelley. "Start searching, Seth! Outhouses, upstairs, cellars, barns. Give the place a good shaking now! You stay here, Corporal," he added to one of the other men who had come into the kitchen.

  "We ain't got nothing!" the old woman protested.

  "We'll be the judge of that, ma'am," Blythe said. "Start searching, Seth! Do it thorough now!"

  "You damned thieves," the younger woman said.

  "On the contrary, ma'am, on the contrary." Blythe smiled at her, then sat at the head of the kitchen table and took a preprinted form from a leather pouch at his belt. He found a pencil stub in a pocket. The pencil was blunt, but he tried its lead on the tabletop and was satisfied with the mark it made. "No, ma'am," he went on, "we ain't thieves. We are just trying to put God's own country back into one piece, and we need your help to do it. But it ain't thieving, ma'am, because our Uncle Sam is a kind uncle, a good uncle, and he'll pay you folks real well for everything you give us today." He smoothed out the form, licked the pencil, and looked up expectantly at the younger woman. "Your name, honey?"

  "I ain't telling you."

  Blythe looked at the older woman. "Can't pay the family without a name, Grandma. So tell us your name."

  "Don't tell him, Mother!" the younger woman cried.

  The older woman hesitated, then decided that giving the family's name would not cause much harm. "Rothwell," she said reluctantly.

  "A mighty fine name," Blythe said as he wrote it on the form. "I knew a family of Rothwells down home in Blytheville. Fine Baptists, they were, and fine neighbors too. Now, ma'am, you happen to know what today's date is?" The house echoed with men's laughter and the heavy sound of boots thumping up the staircase; then a burst of cheering erupted as some treasure was discovered in one of the front rooms. More feet clattered on the stairs. The young woman looked at the ceiling, and a frown of distress crossed her face. "Today's date, ma'am?" Blythe insisted.

  The older woman thought for a second. "Yesterday was the Lord's Day," she said, "so today must be the eleventh."

  "My, how this summer is just flying by! August the eleventh already." Blythe wrote the date as he spoke, "in the year of Our Lord, eighteen hundred and sixty-two. This danged pencil is scratchy as hell." He finished the date, then leaned back in the chair. Sweat was pouring down his plump face and staining the collar of his uniform coat. "Well now, ladies, this here piece of paper confirms that me and my men are about to commandeer just about any gol-darned thing we take a fancy to in this property. Anything at all! And when we've got it, you're going to tell me the value of all that food and all those chattels, and I'm going to write that value down on this piece of paper and then I'm going to sign it with my God-given name. And what you're going to do, ladies, is keep ahold of this piece of paper like it was the sacred word in the good Lord's own handwriting, and at the end of the war, when the rebels are well beaten and kind Uncle Sam is welcoming you all back into the bosom of his family, you're going to present this piece of paper to the gov­ernment and the government, in its mercy and goodness, is going to give you all the money. Every red cent. There's just one small thing you ought to know first, though." He paused to draw on his cigar, then smiled at the frightened women. "When you present this piece of paper you'll have to prove that you've stayed loyal to the United States of America from the date on this form until the day the war ends. Just one little piece of evidence that anyone in the Rothwell family might have borne arms or, God help us, even a grudge against the United States of America will make this piece of paper worthless. And that means you'll get no money, honey!" He laughed.

  "You damned thief," the younger woman said.

  "If you're a good girl," Blythe said mockingly, "then you'll get the money. That's what General Order Number Five says, and we shall obey General Order Number Five, so help us God." He stood. He was a tall man, and the feather in his hat brushed the kitchen's beams as he walked toward the frightened family. "But there's also General Order Number Seven. Have you folks ever heard of General Order Number Seven? No? Well General Order Number Seven decrees what punishment must be given to any household that fires on troops of the United States of America, and a shot was fired at my men from this house!"

  "That's a lie!" the older woman insisted, and her vehe­mence made the three children start to cry again.

  "Quiet!" Blythe shouted. The children whimpered and shivered but managed to keep silent. Blythe smiled. "By orders of Major General Pope, who is duly authorized by the President and by the Congress of the United States of America, it is my duty to burn this house down so that no more shots can be fired from it."

  "No!" the younger woman protested. "Yes," Blythe said, still smiling. "We didn't fire any shots!" the young woman said. "But I say you did, and when it comes right down to the scratch, ma'am, whose word do you think the President and the Congress will believe? My word, which is the word of a commissioned officer of the United States Army, or your word, which is the caviling whine of a secessionist bitch? Now which of us, ma'am, is going to be believed?" He took a silver case from his pocket and clicked open the lid to reveal the white phosphorus heads of lucifer matches. "No!" The younger woman had started to cry. "Corporal Kemble!" Blythe snapped, and Kemble pushed himself off the kitchen wall. "Take her to the barn," Blythe ordered, pointing to the younger woman.

  The woman lunged for the cleaver that was still stuck in the table, but Blythe was much too fast for her. He knocked the cleaver out of her reach, then drew his revolver and pointed it at the woman's head. "I'm not a hard-hearted man, ma'am, just a simple horse trader turned soldier, and like any good horse trader I do sure appreciate a bargain. So why don't you and I go and discuss matters in the barn, ma'am, and see if we can't work out an accommodation?"

  "You're worse than a thief," the woman said, "you're a traitor."

  "Sir?" Kemble was worried by Blythe's order.

  "Take her, Kemble," Blythe insisted. "But no liberties! She's mine to deal with, not yours." Blythe smiled at the woman and her children. "I do so love war, ma'am. I do so love the pursuit of war. I reckon war is in my blood, my hot blood."

  Kemble took the woman away, leaving her children crying while Billy Blythe went to reserve the pick of the house's plunder before snatching the real pleasure of his day.

  On the Saturday after the battle Captain Anthony Murphy opened a book on how long it would take for Colonel Swynyard to begin drinking again. It had been a miracle, the whole Legion agreed, that the Colonel had lasted two nights, even if he had been concussed for much of the first, but no one believed he could last another two nights without the succor of raw spirits. Ever since his alleged conversion the Colonel had been shaking visibly, such was the strain he endured, and on the Friday night he was heard moaning inside his tent, yet he endured that night, and the next, so that on Sunday he appeared at the Brigade's church parade with his once-ragged beard trimmed and clean, his boots polished, and a determined smile on his haggard face. His was the most earnest voice in prayer, the most enthusiastic to shout amen, and the loudest in singing hymns. Indeed, when the Reverend Moss led the Legion in singing "Depth of mercy, can there be mercy still reserved for me? Can my God His wrath forbear? Me the chief of sinners spare?" Swynyard looked directly at Starbuck and smiled confidingly as he sang.

  General Washington Faulconer took his second-in-command to one side after the open-air service. "You're making a damned fool of yourself, Swynyard. Stop it."

  "The Lord is making a fool of me, sir, and I praise Him for it."

  "I'll cashier you," Faulconer threatened.

  "I'm sure General Jackson would like to hear of an officer being cashiered for loving the Lord, sir," Swynyard said with a touch of his old cunning.

  "Just stop making a fool of yourself," Faulconer growled, then walked away.

  Swynyard himself sought out Captain Murphy. "I hear you have a book on me, Murphy?"

  The Irishman reddened but confessed it was so. "But I'm not sure I can let you have a wager your
self, Colonel, if that's what you'll be wanting," Murphy said, "seeing as how you might be considered partial in the matter, sir, if you follow my meaning?"

  "I wouldn't have a wager," Swynyard said. "Wagering is a sin, Murphy."

  "Is it now, sir?" Murphy asked innocently. "Then it must be a Protestant sin, sir, and more's the pity for you."

  "But you should be warned that God is on my side, so not a drop of ardent spirits will pass my lips ever again."

  "I'm overjoyed to hear that, sir. A living saint, you are." The Irishman smiled and backed away.

  That night, after the Colonel had testified at the Legion's voluntary prayer meeting, he was heard praying aloud in his tent. The man was in plain agony. He was lusting after drink, fighting it, and calling on God to help him in the fight. Starbuck and Truslow listened to the pathetic struggle, then went to Murphy's shelter. "One more day, Murph'." Starbuck proffered the last two dollars of his recent salary. "Two bucks says he'll be sodden tight by this time tomorrow night," Starbuck offered.

  "I'll take two bucks for tomorrow night as well," Truslow added, offering his money.