Battle Flag

  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.

  Chapter 7

  THE YANKEES' SPRING OFFENSIVE might have failed, stranding McClellan's Army of the Potomac on the muddy shore of the James River below Richmond, but now John Pope's Army of Virginia gathered its strength in Virginia's northern counties. More and more supplies crossed the Potomac's bridges to be piled high in the gaunt warehouses at Manassas Junction while, on the sun-ruffled water of Virginia's tidal rivers, boat after boat carried McClellan's veterans north from the James River to Aquia Creek on the Potomac. The two Northern armies were joining forces, and though that process of union was excruciatingly slow, once the Army of Virginia and the Army of the Potomac were united, then they would far outnumber Robert Lee's rebel Army of Northern Virginia.

  "So we have to strike first," Lee said in a murmur that was intended only for his own ears. The General was staring northward in the dawn, scrying his enemies from the high vantage point of Clark Mountain, which lay on the south­ern bank of the Rapidan River. Lee's own veterans, who had first stopped and then chased McClellan away from Richmond, had all now come north to face Pope's threat­ened attack. Stonewall Jackson had served to deter Pope's belligerence for the best part of a month, but now the rebel army was once again united with Robert Lee at its head, and so the time had come to drive Pope back in utter defeat.

  To which purpose Lee had come to Clark Mountain. He was surrounded by mounted aides, but Lee himself was on foot and using the back of his placid gray horse, Traveller, as a rest for his telescope. The morning light was pearly soft. Great swathes of rain smoked across the western country­side, but it was dry to the north, where Lee could see folds of hills, small fields, white-painted farms, long dark woods, and, everywhere he looked, Yankees. The enemy's white-hooded wagons filled the meadows, their guns were parked on every road and farm track, and their tents dotted the fields, while above it all, like strands of tenuous mist, the smoke of their cooking fires mingled to make a blue-gray haze. In another ten days, two weeks at the most, that army would be doubled in size, and Lee knew there would be small chance of ever beating it out of his native Virginia.

  But now, while McClellan's men still thumped north in their requisitioned river steamers and sleek transatlantic packets, there was a chance of victory. That chance arose because John Pope had placed himself in a trap. He had brought the bulk of his army close to the Rapidan so that it was ready to strike south, but behind Pope's new position ran the Rapidan's wide tributary, the Rappahannock, and if Lee could turn Pope's right flank, he stood a chance of driving the Northern army hard toward the rivers' junc­tion, where Pope would be trapped between a horde of screaming rebels and the deep, fast-running confluence of the two rivers. But to make that maneuver Lee needed cavalry to screen his march and still more cavalry to mis­lead the enemy and more cavalry still to ride into the enemy's rear and capture the Rappahannock bridges and thus give the Yankees no way out from their water-bound slaughter yard.

  "General Stuart says he's real sorry, sir, but the horses just ain't ready," an aide now told Lee in the dawn on Clark Mountain.

  Lee nodded abruptly to show he had heard the gloomy report, but otherwise he showed no reaction. Instead he stared for a long last moment at the encamped enemy. Lee was not a vengeful man—indeed, he had long learned to school his emotions to prevent passion from misleading common sense—but in the last few weeks he had contracted a deep desire to humiliate Major General John Pope. The Northern general had come to Virginia and ordered his men to live off the land and to burn the houses of loyal Virginians, and Lee despised such barbarism. He more than despised it, he hated it. Carrying war to civilians was the way of savages and heathens, not of professional soldiers, but if John Pope chose to fight against women and children, Robert Lee would fight against John Pope, and if God per­mitted it, Lee would ruin his enemy's career. But the spring to snap the trap's lid shut was not quite ready, and Lee resisted the temptation to close that lid without the help of his horsemen. "How long before the cavalry will be ready?" Lee asked the aide as he collapsed the telescope.

  "One day, sir." Most of the rebel cavalry had only just come north from its duty of screening McClellan's army beyond Richmond, and the horses were bone tired after the long march on dry, hard roads.

  "By tomorrow's dawn?" Lee sought the clarification.

  The aide nodded. "General Stuart says for certain, sir."

  Lee showed no evident disappointment at the enforced delay but just stared at the long strands of smoke that laced the far woods and fields. He felt a twinge of regret that he could not attack this morning, but he knew it would take him the best part of a day to move his cumbersome guns and long lines of infantry over the Rapidan, and Jeb Stuart's horsemen would have to entertain and deceive the Yankees while those men and cannon moved into position. So he must wait one full day and hope that John Pope did not wake to his danger. "We'll attack tomorrow," Lee said as he climbed onto Traveller's back.

  And prayed that the Yankees went on sleeping.

  Major Galloway arrived just after dawn, guided by Corporal Harlan Kemp to where Adam's men waited in a stand of thick trees two miles south of the Rapidan. Galloway's troop was accompanied by Captain Billy Blythe and his men, who had returned from their frustrating reconnaissance. Blythe claimed the enemy held all
the high passes through the Blue Ridge Mountains and had thus prevented him from crossing into the Shenandoah Valley, but Galloway's own foray beyond the Rapidan had convinced him that the rebels were not using the Shenandoah Valley to threaten Pope's army. Instead their regiments were bivouacking all along the Rapidan's southern bank, and it was there, in the heart of Virginia, that the threat existed, and it was there, thanks to Adam's timely message, that Galloway could both strike at the enemy and establish a rakish, hell-raising reputation for his fledgling regiment of cavalry. Which was why all Galloway's sixty-eight troopers were now concealed in a thicket just three miles from the western flank of Lee's army. Sixty-eight men against an army sounded like long odds, even to an optimist like Galloway, but he had surprise and the weather both on his side.

  The weather had turned that same morning when, just one hour after dawn, a rainstorm had come from the moun­tains to hammer at the western rebel encampments. The roads had been turned into instant red mud. The rain poured off roofs and streamed down gutters and flooded gullies and overflowed ditches and spread along the plowed furrows of low-lying fields. Thunder bellowed overhead, and sometimes, way off in the rain-silvered distance, a slash of lightning sliced groundward. "Perfect," Galloway said as he stood at the edge of the trees and watched the rain claw and beat at the empty fields. "Just perfect. There's nothing like a good hard rain to keep a sentry's head down." He crouched under his cloak to light a cigar, then, because his own horse needed rest, asked to borrow one of Adam's newly acquired mares. "Let's look at your father's rebels," he told Adam.

  Galloway left Blythe in charge of the concealed horse­men while he and Adam rode east. Adam was concerned about the danger of Major Galloway making the reconnais­sance in person, but Galloway dismissed the risks of capture. "If something goes amiss tonight, then I don't want to think it was because of something I left undone," the Major said, then rode in silence for a few moments before giving Adam a shrewd look. "What happened between you and Blythe ?" Adam, taken aback by the question, stammered an inade­quate answer about incompatible personalities, but Major Galloway was in no mood for evasions. "You accused him of attempted rape?"

  Adam wondered how Galloway knew, then decided that either Sergeant Huxtable or Corporal Kemp must have com­plained about Blythe. "I didn't accuse Blythe of anything," Adam said. "I just stopped him from mistreating a woman, if that's what you mean."

  Galloway sucked on what was left of his rain-soaked cigar. He ducked under a low branch, then checked his horse so he could search the rain-soaked land ahead. "Billy tells me the woman was merely offering herself because she wanted Northern dollars," the Major said when he was satis­fied that no rebel picket waited in the far trees, "and because she wanted to save her house. Sergeant Kelley told me the same thing."

  "They're lying!" Adam said indignantly.

  Galloway shrugged. "Billy's a good enough fellow, Adam. I ain't saying he's the straightest man as was ever born, I mean he sure isn't no George Washington, but we're a troop of soldiers, not a passel of churchmen."

  "Does that justify rape?" Adam asked.

  "Hell, that's your tale, Adam, not his," Galloway said tiredly, "and when it comes to telling tales, then you should know that Billy's telling a few on you too." The Major was riding ahead of Adam on a waterlogged path that ran beside a wood. The rain had finally extinguished his cigar, which he tossed into a puddle. "Blythe claims you're a Southern sympathizer, a gray wolf in blue clothing. In fact he says you're a spy." Galloway held up a hand. "Don't protest, Adam. I don't believe a word of it, but what else do you expect him to say about a man accusing him of rape?"

  "Maybe he could tell the truth," Adam proclaimed indig­nantly.

  "The truth!" Galloway barked a laugh at the very thought of such a notion. "The truth in war, Adam, is whatever the winner decides it is, and the best way for you to prove that Blythe is a liar is to make some rebel heads bleed tonight."

  "Major," Adam said firmly, "all my men saw that woman. She didn't tear her own clothes, Blythe did, and—"

  "Adam! Adam!" There was a note of pleading in Galloway's voice. The Major was a decent and honest man who had a vision of how his irregular regiment of horse could shorten this war, and now that vision was being threatened by rancorous dissension within his ranks. Nor did Galloway really want to believe Adam's accusations, for the Major liked Blythe. Blythe made him laugh and enlivened his dull evenings, and for those reasons, as well as a desire to avoid confrontation, Galloway tried to find extenuating circumstances. "Who's to say the woman didn't attack Billy when he tried to burn the barn? We don't know what happened, but I do know that we've got a battle to fight and a war to win and we're better employed fighting the enemy than each other. Now trust me. I'll keep an eye on Billy, that much I promise, but I want you to leave him to me. His behavior isn't your responsibility, Adam, but mine. You agree?"

  Adam could hardly disagree with such a reasoned and earnest promise, and so he nodded. "Yes, sir."

  "Good man," Galloway said enthusiastically, then slowed his horse as the two men approached the crest of a shallow rise. Their blue uniforms were smothered by black oilcloth cloaks that hung down to their boots, but each knew their disguise would serve small purpose if they were intercepted by a rebel patrol.

  Yet the weather seemed to have damped down all rebel watchfulness, for Galloway and Adam were able to spy out the positions of the Faulconer Brigade without any sentry or picket challenging their presence. They mapped the Legion's turf-covered bivouacs, which were studded with pyramids of stacked arms and sifted with the smoke of the few campfires that still struggled against the windblown rain, then noted the substantial farmhouse standing among the tents that Adam knew belonged to the Faulconer Brigade's head­quarters. From time to time a soldier would run between the shelters or slouch dejectedly away from the farmhouse, but otherwise the encampment appeared deserted. Further south still was a meadow where the Brigade's supply wagons were parked and where picketed horses stood in disconsolate rows. Adam showed Galloway the white-painted ammuni­tion carts, then trained his binoculars on some unfamiliar vehicles and saw that they belonged to an artillery battery that had camped alongside his father's Brigade. "How many sentries would you expect on the wagons?" Galloway asked, peering through his own binoculars.

  "There's usually a dozen men," Adam said, "but I can only see one.

  "There must be more." "Sheltering in the wagons?" Adam suggested. "I guess so, which means the sumbitches won't see us coming." Galloway sounded enthused at the prospect of fighting. He knew he could not seriously hurt Jackson's army—indeed, this night's attack would be but the feeblest of pinpricks—but Galloway was not trying to cause grievous damage. Instead he was hoping to inflict on the South the same kind of insult that Jeb Stuart had thrust on the North when he had led his cavalry clean about McClellan's army. Few men had died in that ride, but it had nevertheless made the North into the laughingstock of the whole world. Galloway now hoped to provide proof that Northern horse­men could ride as defiantly and effectively as any Southern cavalier.

  Adam was fighting a different battle: a battle with his own conscience. He had obeyed that stern conscience when he had abandoned the South to fight for the North, but the logic of that choice meant not just fighting against fellow Southerners but against his own father, and a lifetime of love and filial obedience struggled against the inevitability of that logic. Yet, he asked himself as he followed Galloway further south along the woodland tracks, what else had he expected when he crossed the lines and pledged his allegiance to the United States? Adam had agonized for months about the war's moral choices, and at the end of all that worry and self-doubt he had reached a certainty that was weakened only by the duty he owed to his father. But this night, under a rain-lashed sky, Adam would cut that filial duty out of his life and so free himself to the higher duty of the nation's union.

  Galloway stopped, dismounted, and again stared south­ward through his field glasses. Adam joined
him and saw the Major was examining a half-dozen cabins, a plank-wall church, and a ramshackle two-story house that all stood around a small crossroads. "'McComb's Tavern,'" Galloway said, reading the sign that was painted in tar on the house wall. "'Good Licker, Clean Beds and Plenty Food.' But bad spelling. Do you see any troops there?"

  "Not one."

  "Off limits, I'd guess," Galloway said. He wiped the lenses of his field glasses, stared a few seconds longer at the tavern, then came back to where his horse was tethered and hauled himself into the saddle. "Let's go."

  By early afternoon the wind had died and the rain had settled into a persistent and dispiriting drizzle. Galloway's men sat or lay under what small shelter they could find while their horses stood motionless between the trees. The pickets watched from the edges of the wood but saw no movement. In the late afternoon, when the light was fading to a sullen, leaden gloom, Galloway gave his last briefing, describing what the troopers would find when they attacked and stress­ing that their main target was the park of supply wagons. "The rebels are always short of ammunition," he said, "and of rifles, so burn everything you can find."

  Galloway divided his force into three. Adam's troop would serve as a screen between the raiders and the bulk of the Faulconer Brigade while Galloway's troop, reinforced with half of Blythe's men, would attack the supply wagons. Billy Blythe would wait with the other half of his troop near McComb's Tavern, where they would serve as a rear guard to cover the raiders' withdrawal. "It'll all be over quickly," Galloway warned his men, "only as long as it takes the sumbitches to get over their surprise." He had his bugler imi­tate the sound of the call that would order the retreat. "When you hear that played on a bugle, boys, you get the living hell out of there. Straight down the road to the cross­roads where Captain Blythe will be waiting for us."

  "With a jigger of rebel whiskey for every last man jack of you," Blythe added, and the nervous men laughed.