Battle Flag

  Once the ginger cakes and lemonade were secured and a suitable spot found for their consumption, Major Galloway gave the Reverend Starbuck the splendid news. John Pope's army might be retreating, but Galloway's Horse had stung the enemy. The Major forgivably exaggerated the damage his raiders had inflicted on the rebels, multiplying the wagons and ammunition destroyed at least fourfold, and while admitting to his own casualties, he claimed his men must have killed at least two score of rebels. "We left their camp smoking with fire, sir," Galloway said, "and reeking of blood."

  The Reverend Starbuck put down his mug of lemonade so he could join his hands in a prayerful clasp. "'Bless the Lord,'" he said, "'who smote great nations and slew mighty kings!'"

  "The news is better still, sir," Adam said, for while Kemp had been under the doctor's knife, Adam had found paper and string and made a parcel addressed to the Reverend Elial Starbuck on Walnut Street in Boston. He had been plan­ning to send the parcel from the depot, but now he could deliver the prize personally.

  It was obvious from the consistency of the package that it contained cloth, and the Reverend Starbuck, prodding with his finger, was scarce able to believe what he suspected. "It isn't. . ." he began, then without waiting to finish his ques­tion he tore the paper and string greedily away to reveal a bundle of folded scarlet silk slashed with white and blue. The preacher sighed as he held up a golden fringe of the rebel battle flag. "God bless you, my dear boy," he told Adam, "God bless you."

  Adam intended to keep the Faulconer standard for him­self, just as he intended to use his father's saber and revolver, but the battle flag, the red silk flag with the eleven white stars on the blue Saint Andrew's cross, was a gift for the Reverend Elial Starbuck: a trophy dragged from the filthy heart of secession that the preacher could use to show his subscribers that their donations were not being wasted. "I'm not sure if you want to know this, sir," Adam continued dif­fidently as the preacher gazed entranced at the beautiful silk, "but that flag comes from Nate's battalion."

  But the mention of his son's name only enhanced the preacher's pleasure. "You took Nate's tawdry rag away, did you? Well done!"

  "You'll take it to Boston, sir?" Major Galloway asked.

  "I surely will. We shall put it on display, Major. We shall hang it for all to see, and maybe we shall invite people to throw mud at it on payment of a small sum toward the war effort. Then we shall burn it next July fourth." He gazed at the rich red silk, and a shudder mixed of lust and loathing racked his body. '"And your altars shall be desolate,'" he said in his marvelous voice, "'and your images shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols. He that is far off shall die of the pestilence; and he that is near shall fall by the sword, and he that remaineth and is besieged shall die by the famine: thus will I accomplish my fury upon them. Then shall ye know that I am the Lord.'" There were a few seconds of awed silence from the dozens of people who had turned to listen to the preacher, who now, to show that his peroration was done, picked up his mug of lemonade. "The prophet Ezekiel," he added helpfully.

  "Amen," Major Galloway said weakly. "Amen."

  "So what becomes of you now, Major?" the Reverend Starbuck asked as he bundled the flag together. He had ripped the wrapping paper into useless shreds, but he man­aged to salvage enough string to tie the big silk folds into an approximation of neatness.

  "We'll look to do some work here, sir. Hurt the enemy again, I hope."

  "It's the Lord's work you're engaged in," the preacher said, "so do it well! Lay their land waste, Major, strike them down! And God give your arm the strength of ten while you do it. You'll write a full account of your raid? So I might publish it to our subscribers?"

  "Of course, sir."

  "Then on to victory! On to victory!" The Reverend Doctor Starbuck thrust his empty lemonade mug into Adam's hand, and then, carrying the rebel flag as proudly as though he had captured it himself, went back to wait in his car.

  Galloway sighed, shook his head in marvel at such energy, then went to find someone, anyone, who might have orders for his cavalry.

  Colonel Swynyard and a nervous Captain Starbuck waited all afternoon to see General Thomas Jackson, and they were still waiting as dusk fell and as one of the General's aides brought a pair of lanterns out to the veranda of the house where Jackson had his headquarters. "Not that he sleeps in the house," the aide said, stopping to gossip. "He prefers the open air."

  "Even when it's raining?" Starbuck forced himself to make conversation. He did not feel like socializing, not when he was facing an unpleasant interview, but the aide seemed friendly enough.

  "Just so long as it ain't storming." The aide clearly rel­ished retailing stories of his master's eccentricities. "And he's up every morning at six to take a cold dip. Jaybird naked and shoulders under. Out here he uses that old horse trough and on a summer morning that might be pleasant enough, but in winter I've seen Old Jack skim the ice off a tub before baptizing himself." The aide smiled, then turned as a black man appeared around the side of the house. "Jim!" he called. "Tell these gentlemen what the General likes to eat."

  "He don't like to eat nothing!" the black man grumbled. "He eats worse than a heathen. It's like cooking for a fighting cock."

  "Mr. Lewis is the General's servant," the aide said. "Not his slave, his servant."

  "And he's a great man." Jim Lewis's admiration for the eccentric Jackson was every bit as heartfelt as the uniformed aide's. "There ain't more than a dozen men like the General in all the world, and that's a straight fact, and there ain't any man in the wide world like the General for the whippin' of Yankees, and that's a straighter fact, but he still eats worse than a goat." "Nothing but stale bread, dirt-plain meat, egg yolk, and buttermilk," the aide said, "and fruit in the morning, but only in the morning. He reckons that fruit ingested in the afternoon is bad for the blood, you see."

  "While the General's real bad for Yankee blood!" Lewis said with a laugh. "He sure is lethal for Yankee blood!" Lewis dipped a pail in the General's bathtub, then carried the water toward the kitchen at the back of the house, while the aide carried his second lantern to the far end of the porch. Voices sounded inside the house where candlelight shone at a muslin-curtained window.

  "Win battles, Starbuck, and you can be whatever it pleases you to be," Swynyard said bitterly. "You can be mad, you can be eccentric, you can even be rich and privileged like Faulconer." The Colonel paused, watching the dark fall over the far woods and fields where the host of campfires glimmered. "You know what Faulconer's fault is?" "Being alive," Starbuck said sourly. "He wants to be liked." Swynyard ignored Starbuck's venom. "He really believes he can make the men like him by treating them leniently, but it won't ever work. Men don't like an officer for being easy. They don't mind being treated like dogs, like slaves even, so long as you give them victory. But treat them soft and give them defeats and they'll despise you forever. It don't matter what kind of man you are, what kind of rogue you are, just so long as you lead the men to victory." He paused, and Starbuck guessed the Colonel was reflecting on his own career rather than Faulconer's.

  "Colonel Swynyard? Captain Starbuck?" Another aide appeared in the doorway. His voice was peremptory and his manner that of a man who wants to discharge an unpleasant duty quickly. "This way."

  Starbuck plucked his coat straight, then followed Swynyard through the hall and into a candlelit parlor that was much too small for the trestle table that served as a stand for the General's maps. Not that Starbuck had time to take in the room's furnishings, for as soon as he entered he felt himself come under the fierce and off-putting gaze of the extraordinary figure who glared at the two visitors from the table's far side.

  Jackson said nothing as the two men were shown in. The General was flanked by Major Hotchkiss and another staff officer. Swynyard, hat in hand, gave a short, sharp nod in salute, while Starbuck just stood to attention and stared at the gaunt, rough-bearded face with its bright wild eyes and malevolent frown; a face, Starbuck s
uddenly realized, that was uncommonly like Colonel Swynyard's own ravaged visage. "Swynyard"—Jackson finally acknowledged his visitors— "once of the 4th U.S. Infantry. But not a good record. Accused of drunkenness, I see." He had a sheaf of papers that he glanced at continually. "You were court-martialed and acquitted."

  "Wrongly," Swynyard said, causing Jackson to look up from the papers in surprise.

  "Wrongly?" the General asked. Like many artillery offi­cers he was notoriously hard of hearing, his eardrums having been hammered by too many cannon blasts. "Did you say you were wrongly acquitted?"

  "Wrongly, sir!" Swynyard spoke louder. "I should have been cashiered, sir, for I truly was drunk, sir, frequently drunk, sir, helplessly drunk, sir, unforgivably drunk, sir, but thanks to the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, sir, I shall be drunk no more."

  Jackson, confronted with this ready admission of guilt, seemed rather taken aback. He drew another sheet of paper from the sheaf and frowned as he read it. "Brigadier General Faulconer"—he said the name with a wry tone of distaste— "talked with me this morning. Afterwards he saw fit to write me this letter. In it, Swynyard, he says that you are a drunk­ard, while you, young man, are described as an immoral, womanizing, and ungrateful liar." The hard blue-gray eyes looked up at Starbuck.

  "He's also a fine soldier, General," Swynyard put in.

  "Also?" The General pounced on the word.

  Starbuck suddenly resented the inquisition. He had been trying to win a damn war, not run a Sunday school. "Also," he said flatly and then, after a very long pause, "sir."

  Hotchkiss looked intently down at his feet. Two of the candles on the map table were guttering badly, sending streams of sooty smoke to the yellowed ceiling. In the back of the house a voice began singing "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds." Jackson looked momentarily annoyed by the sound; then he slowly lowered himself into a straight-backed chair, or rather he perched on the edge of the cane seat with his spine held rigidly parallel to, but not touching, the back. Starbuck supposed that his stupid belligerence had just destroyed any chance of receiving lenience, but it was too late to back down now.

  Jackson turned his gaze back to Swynyard. "When did you find Christ, Colonel?" he asked, and Swynyard answered with a passionate testimony of seeing the light on the battle­field of Cedar Mountain. For a moment he ceased to be a soldier talking to his superior, but became just a simple man talking to his brother in Christ. He told of his former sinfulness and of his continual drunkenness, and he contrasted that fallen condition with his newfound state of grace. It was a testimony of salvation like the thousands of others that Starbuck had heard, the same kind of transforming story that had comprised the bulk of his youthful reading, and he supposed that the General, too, must have heard a myriad of such tales, but Jackson was plainly enthralled by Swynyard's tale.

  "And now, Colonel," Jackson asked when the testimony was done, "do you still crave ardent spirits?"

  "Every day, sir," Swynyard said fervently, "every minute of every day, but with the help of our Lord Jesus Christ I shall abstain."

  "The great danger of temptation," Jackson said in a rather puzzled voice, "is how very tempting it is." He turned his gaze on Starbuck. "And you, young man, were brought up in a Christian household, were you not?"

  "Yes, sir." A tabby cat had started to wind itself around Starbuck's ankles, rubbing its flanks on his frayed trouser ends and playing with the tags of his bootlaces.

  "This letter claims you're a Northerner?" Jackson said, gesturing at Faulconer's letter, which now lay on the table. "From Boston, sir."

  "So why then are you fighting for the South?" Jackson frowned.

  "That was the womanizing, sir," Starbuck said defiantly. He sensed Swynyard stir beside him, and he guessed the Colonel was trying to convey the message that Starbuck should quell his combativeness, but Starbuck was annoyed by the implication that he needed to prove his loyalty to these Southerners. The cat was purring loudly.

  "Go on," Jackson said in a dangerously toneless voice. Starbuck shrugged. "I followed a woman south, sir, then stayed on here because I liked it."

  Jackson stared into Starbuck's face for a few seconds. He seemed to dislike what he saw and looked down at the papers instead. "We have to decide what to do with the Brigade. It isn't in a good state, eh, Hotchkiss?"

  Hotchkiss gave a very small shrug. "No reserve ammuni­tion, no transport, and one regiment virtually officerless."

  Jackson looked at Swynyard. "Well?"

  "We'll just have to take the ammunition from the enemy, sir," Swynyard said.

  Jackson liked that answer. He turned his gaze back to Starbuck, who was suddenly and belatedly realizing that this interview was not a disciplinary affair but something altogether different. "What is this army's greatest failing?" Jackson asked Starbuck.

  Starbuck's mind whirled in panic. Its greatest failing? For a second, remembering the morning's executions, he was tempted to say desertion, but before his tongue could frame the word a previous thought blurted itself out. "Straggling, sir." Some regiments lost a quarter of their number through men falling out of the ranks during long marches, and though a good number of those stragglers reappeared within a day or two, some went missing forever. He had given the General a good answer, but even so Starbuck wished he had thought for a moment longer and given a more considered

  response.

  Then, astonishingly, he saw he had answered correctly, for Jackson was nodding his approval. "And how have you prevented straggling in your unit, Starbuck?"

  "I just tell the sons of bitches they're free to go, sir," Starbuck said.

  "You do what?" Jackson barked in his high voice. Hotchkiss looked alarmed, and the other staff officer shook his head as though he pitted Starbuck's stupidity.

  "I just tell them they can leave the regiment, sir, but I also tell them that they ain't allowed to leave with any property of the Confederate government just in case they straggle all the way home or into the enemy's arms. So I tell them they're free to go, but first I strip the sons of bitches stark naked and confiscate their guns. Then I kick them out."

  Jackson stared at him. "You do that? Truly?" It was hard to tell whether the General approved or not, but Starbuck could not back out of the tale now. "I did it once, sir," he admitted, "just the once. But I only needed to do it the once, sir, because we haven't had another straggler since. Except for the sick, sir, and they're different."

  Starbuck's voice tailed away as the General began to behave in the strangest fashion. First he brought up a bony knee, then he clasped the raised knee in both his huge hands, and after that he rocked his body back as far as the stiff chair would allow. Then he put his head back and opened his mouth as wide as it would go though without uttering any sound at all. Starbuck wondered if the General was suffering a seizure, but then he saw the two staff officers grinning, and he realized that this odd display was Jackson's peculiar method of displaying amusement.

  The General stayed in the weird pose for a few seconds, then rocked forward again, let his knee go, and shook his head. He was silent for a few more seconds, then turned to Swynyard. "How old are you, Colonel?"

  "Fifty-four, sir," Swynyard said, sounding rather ashamed. Fifty-four was old for a soldier unless, like Lee, he was the commander in chief. Jackson himself was thirty-eight, while most of the fighting was done by boys yet to see their twenty-first birthday.

  But Jackson's point was not about the optimum age for a soldier, but was instead a theological comment. "I was myself of mature years before I found Christ, Colonel. I do not say one should be of ripe age before conversion, but nor should we blame the young for failing to do what we ourselves did not do. As for your womanizing"—he looked at Starbuck— "marriage will cure that if self-discipline fails. I find that daily immersion in cold water and regular exercise helps. Chop wood, young man, or swing from a branch. You can leap fences. But exercise! Exercise!" He suddenly stood and snatched up Washington Faulconer's letter, which he
held into a candle flame. He held the paper in the flame until it was well alight, then moved it gently and safely into the empty fireplace, where he watched it burn into ash. "War brings change," he said as he turned back to his visitors. "It changed me, it will change you. I confirm your appointments. You, Colonel Swynyard, will take over Faulconer's Brigade and you, Major Starbuck, will take command of his Legion. In return you will fight for me, and fight harder than you have ever fought in your lives. We are not here to defeat the enemy, but with God's help to destroy him, and I look for your help in that ambition. If I receive that help I will accept it as your duty, but if you fail then I shall send you both after Faulconer. Good night to you."

  Starbuck could not move. He had entered the room expecting punishment and had instead received promotion, and not just promotion, but command of his own regiment. My God! He had command of the Legion, and suddenly he felt terrified of the responsibility. He was only twenty-two, surely much too young to command a regiment; then he remembered Micah Jenkins, the Georgian who had led his whole brigade hard and deep into the Yankee army at Seven Pines, and Jenkins was not much older than Starbuck himself. There were other officers in their twenties who were leading regiments and brigades, so why should Starbuck not be ready? "Good night, gentlemen!" Jackson said pointedly. Starbuck and Swynyard were both startled from their astonishment. They allowed themselves to be led outside by an aide, who offered his own congratulations on the lantern-lit porch. "Major Hotchkiss," the aide said, "recommended you both. He felt that the Brigade had suffered enough with­out having outsiders thrust on it."