Battle Flag

  He was about to scream at his men to turn and drive this new enemy away, then realized that the blue coats belonged to prisoners. They were Yankees who had survived the horror in the spoil pit and who had now climbed out into the open ground. "Get some of those Yankees," Starbuck said to Pine, "and have them drag the gun back. And be careful, it's loaded!"

  "Use prisoners, sir?" Pine asked, apparently shocked at the idea.

  "Do it!" Starbuck turned back to the east to see that his men were doggedly firing and loading, firing and loading. Most were sheltering behind trees, just as the Yankees were, which meant that the firefight was settling into a stalemate, but soon the Legion must withdraw to its railbed trench, and Starbuck was determined that the retreat should be made in good order. He would not lose control as he had before.

  Lieutenant Pine was arguing with a captured Yankee offi­cer. Starbuck stooped to the gun's trail and picked up a length of one-inch rope with iron prolonge hooks spliced into its ends. He threw the rope to Pine. "Shoot the bastard if he won't do as he's told!" he shouted.

  Pine finally organized a morose work party of a dozen prisoners, who were given the rope to hold. Pine himself attached one of the hooks to the lunette, the ring at the tip of the gun's trail, then shouted at his unwilling team to haul away. The trail swung around, and the gun eased itself away from the tree, so that its short, black-mouthed muzzle was turned to face back toward its erstwhile owners. "Stop!" Starbuck shouted.

  The astonished prisoners dropped the rope. "Clear me! Clear me!" Starbuck bellowed at those of his men who were firing at the enemy from in front of the cannon. "Clear me!" Two men looked around, saw the gun facing them, and ran hastily to one side. Starbuck, when he was sure the field of fire was clear of his own men, leaned across the wheel and grasped the primer's lanyard. He waited a handful of seconds until he could see some Northerners stepping from behind trees to aim their rifles, then pulled the lanyard.

  The gun cracked like the shattering hammer blow of doom. Smoke jetted thirty yards forward, while the gun itself recoiled clear out of the trees and almost ran down its blue-coated haulers. The tin canister had split apart at the muzzle to scatter its balls like giant buckshot. Starbuck's ears were ringing from the explosion. "Take it away! Hurry!" Starbuck shouted at the scared Yankee prisoners. "Whip them if they won't work," Starbuck shouted at Pine. "We slavers know how to whip!" The startled Yankee prisoners began to haul as though their lives depended on it, and the smoking gun trundled away across the rough ground so fast that it bounced two feet in the air when its wheels struck a sprawl­ing corpse. In the trees the cannon smoke cleared to reveal a patch of woodland ripped and scarred by canister. "Keep firing!" Starbuck shouted at his men; then, as Pine's team dragged the gun back across the shallowest part of the cutting and so up to the sparse woodland beyond, Starbuck ran to his right to determine where his men's line ended.

  He found Lieutenant Patterson. "Where's Medlicott?" Starbuck shouted over the rifle fire. "Haven't seen him, sir."

  "Have your men load, then go back to the railbed and be ready to fire when the rest of us come back!" Starbuck had to shout over the splintering rifle fire. Patterson nodded. He was wild-eyed and frenetic, firing a revolver again and again at the Yankees. Even when the revolver's hammer began clicking on exploded percussion caps, Patterson kept cock­ing and firing, cocking and firing. Starbuck slapped the unprimed gun down and made the Lieutenant repeat the orders he had been given. "Do it now!" Starbuck ordered, then ran northward to find Lieutenant Howes, Sergeant Tyndale, and Captain Leighton. He told them to pull their men back to the railbed. "One last volley to keep the Yankees busy," he ordered, "then run like hell, understand?" Starbuck was beginning to understand the Legion's ragged dispositions now. Medlicott and Moxey were missing, the four center companies were either in the trees or gone back with Lieutenant Patterson, while presumably Truslow and Davies had never moved from the railbed.

  "Fire!" Captain Leighton shouted, and the rifle flames speared bright in the trees.

  "Back!" Starbuck shouted. "Back!"

  They ran back, leaping the tideline of blue-coated bodies and then jumping over their own dead into the railbed. The Northerners were slow to realize that the rebels were gone, and it was a long moment before their first skirmishers appeared at the tree line. "Had enough, Johnny?" one Northerner shouted.

  "Go back, Billy, before we send you home in a box!" a rebel called back.

  "Oh, my God," another man said, panting from the exer­tions of the last few minutes, "just lay me down."

  Starbuck ran down the railbed until he came to Captain Davies's company, which, as he had suspected, had never moved from its position. Truslow had seen to that, barricad­ing the railbed with a fallen tree so that the threatening dis­aster to the South had been given no chance of spreading as far as his company. There were dead Yankees all along the front of Truslow and Davies's men, but none of the enemy had come closer than fifteen yards from the parapet. "So what were you doing up there?" Truslow asked calmly.

  "Not very well," Starbuck confessed.

  "The Legion's still in place," Truslow said in a voice so grim that it was a moment or two before Starbuck realized the words were probably meant as a compliment.

  "God knows if we can take another attack," he said.

  "Ain't none of God's business," Truslow said, "but if the bastards do come again, then we'll just have to drive them off again. Well done!" This rare enthusiastic praise was not directed at Starbuck but at Sergeant Bailey, who had brought replacement ammunition to the railbed. Two other men were tending a fire so that Truslow's company would have boiling water to scour the powder deposits from their rifles.

  Starbuck walked back along his defense line. The Yankees had settled at the tree line, from where they were directing a constant and harassing rifle fire at the railbed. Starbuck's men kept their heads down, sometimes raising themselves to fire a shot or sometimes just lifting a rifle over the makeshift parapet and squeezing the trigger blindly. "Don't waste ammunition!" Starbuck snarled at one man who had thus fired without sighting first. "If you're going to shoot, aim, and if you're not, keep low."

  There were bodies in the railbed. Some were the Legion's own dead, lying on their backs, mouths open and hands curled. Starbuck recognized a few men with sadness, some without any regret, and a handful with satisfaction. One or two of the rebel dead were strangers. He should have known them, but he had not had time to learn the names and faces of every new conscript. The Yankee dead had mostly been hoisted onto the parapet to help protect the rebel living, while the Legion's white-faced wounded lay breathing shallowly against the rear slope of the cutting.

  Starbuck resisted the urge to crouch as the cutting became shallower. An officer was supposed to show his men an example of fearlessness, and Starbuck kept his pace steady even as his mind screamed and his pulse raced with fear. Bullets slapped the air around him for the few seconds that he was exposed to the Yankees; then he was able to jump down into the spoil pit, which was grotesque with enemy dead. The smell of blood was thick, and the first flies already swarming on the bloodied wounds. It was the spoil pit, Starbuck reckoned, that had saved the Legion. The hollow had drawn the attackers away from the rest of the line because of its promise of a safe, covered route into the rebel rear. But once in the pit the Northerners had been trapped, first by the abatis and then by the fire of Haxall's battalion, which Swynyard had brought down from the hill.

  "We're thin on the ground, sir," Lieutenant Patterson greeted Starbuck.

  "Thin?"

  Patterson shrugged. "Half A and B companies are missing."

  "Medlicott? Moxey?" Starbuck need not have asked. Both men were absent, and no one knew where they might be. Coffman was safe, crouching under the railbed's shallow parapet with a rifle he had taken from a dead man, and Captain Pine's mountain howitzer was also safe. It had been parked at the back crest of the spoil pit, where it was attract­ing Yankee bullets.

  Patterson s
aw Starbuck glance at the gun. "We forgot to bring the ammunition, sir."

  Starbuck swore. Nothing was going right this day, noth­ing, except, as Truslow had said, the Legion was still in place. Which meant the battle was not lost. And happily, except for the one hapless mountain howitzer, the Yankees had not deployed any artillery against the Legion. The woods were too thick to let the gunners of either side deploy their weapons, though just as that thought occurred to Starbuck, some shells began to explode. They were rebel shells, and they burst in the woods over the Yankees, who, astonished by the shrapnel, crept back from the tree line. The gunfire seemed to be coming from far to the south, but it stopped abruptly as a surge of cheering and rifle fire sounded further down Jackson's line. Starbuck, listening to the sound of battle, guessed he was hearing a Yankee attack like the one the Legion had just, though barely, survived. The gunners had shortened their range to enfilade the attackers, and the Yankees close to the Legion crept back to the tree line to begin their harassing fire again.

  Haxall's men had returned to the hill, from where they were now sharpshooting across the railbed, while Hudson's North Carolinians were also back in place. The tall Colonel Hudson saw Starbuck and strode toward him. "A hot place, Starbuck!" He meant the railbed hard by the spoil pit.

  "I'm sorry my fellows ran."

  "My dear man, mine went as well! Scattered like barn­yard fowls!" Hudson decently refrained from pointing out that his men had no choice but to run once Medlicott had exposed their flank. "Have you the time?" the Colonel now asked. "A Yankee shot my watch, see?" He showed Starbuck the torn pocket where the watch had been stored. "Bullet went straight through without touching me, but it rather mangled the watch. Pity. It belonged to my grandfather. It kept terrible time, but I was fond of it and hoped to pass it on to my son."

  "You've got a son?" Starbuck asked, somehow surprised by the information.

  "Three altogether, and a brace of daughters. Tom's my oldest boy. He's twenty-four now and serves as one of Lee's aides."

  "Lee!" Starbuck was impressed. "The Lee?"

  "Bobby himself. Nice fellow. Still, pity about the watch." The Colonel picked a piece of shattered watch glass from the remnants of his pocket.

  "Coffman!" Starbuck shouted. "What time is it?"

  Coffman had inherited an ancient timepiece from his father, and now he fished its bulbous case from an inner pocket and clicked open the lid. "It says thirty minutes after four, sir."

  "It must have stopped this morning," Starbuck said. "It can't be that late."

  "But look at the sun!" Hudson said, intimating that it truly was that late in the afternoon.

  "Then where's Lee?" Starbuck asked. "I thought he was coming to relieve us."

  "I find it best to plan military affairs on the twin prin­ciples that whatever I am told is certain will never occur, and that whatever is proclaimed impossible is disastrously imminent. There is no good news in war," Hudson pro­nounced grandly, "only less bad news. Dear, oh dear." The mild oath had been caused by a resurgence of enemy rifle fire from the tree line. "I do believe, my dear Starbuck, that the Republican party claims our attention again. Ah, well, to our toil, to our toil."

  And the storm broke again.

  The Reverend Elial Starbuck was trying to understand what was happening. Comprehension, he thought, was not much to ask. War was as rational an activity as any other human endeavor and must, he presumed, yield to analysis, yet whenever he inquired of a general officer what exactly was occurring in the western woods, he received a different answer.

  The North was attacking, one general said, yet the gen­eral's own men were sprawling in the meadows playing cards and smoking pipes. "All in good time, all in good time," the General said when the preacher asked him why his men were not supporting the attack. One of the General's staff officers, a superior young man who made clear his disap­proval of a civilian intruding on a battlefield, informed the Reverend Starbuck that Jackson was retreating, the Yankees were pursuing, and that the commotion in the woods was nothing but a noisy rear guard.

  Major Galloway also tried to reassure the preacher. Galloway had been ordered to wait until the attacking infantry broke through Jackson's line, after which his men would join the Northern cavalry in their pursuit of the shattered enemy. The Reverend Starbuck waited on horse­back for that promised breakthrough and tried to con­vince himself that the Major's explanation made sense. "Jackson's attempting to retreat southward, sir," Galloway told the preacher, "and our fellows have him pinned against the woods over there," but even Galloway was unhappy with that analysis. The Major, after all, had failed to find any evidence that Jackson had ever gone to Centreville, so it did not make sense that he would now be retreating from that town, which raised the mystery of what exactly the Southern general was doing. And that mystery was made even more worrying by Billy Blythe's repeated assertions that he had seen a second rebel army marching toward Manassas from the west. Galloway was unwilling to share his anxiety with the Reverend Doctor Starbuck, but the Major had the distinct impression that perhaps General Pope had utterly misunderstood what was truly happening.

  Galloway's unhappiness was compounded by the acrid mood that prevailed within his small regiment. Blythe's return had stirred Adam Faulconer's anger, an anger that had come to a head the night before when the Virginian had accused Blythe of murdering civilians at McComb's Tavern. Blythe had denied the accusation. "We was fired on by soldiers," Blythe maintained.

  "And the soldiers begged you to stop firing because there were women there!" Adam insisted.

  "If a man had done that," Blythe said, "I would have ceased fire instantly. Instantly! Upon my word, Faulconer, but what kind of a man do you take me for?"

  "A liar," Adam had said, and before Galloway could intervene, the challenge had been made.

  But the duel had not yet been fought, and perhaps, Galloway dared hope, the duel would never be fought, to which end he now enlisted the Reverend Starbuck's aid. The preacher, happy to have a purpose while the infantry battle still raged, spoke first to Captain Blythe and afterward brought a report of the conversation back to Galloway. "Blythe admits there might have been women in the tavern," the Reverend Starbuck said, "and the thought dis­tresses him greatly, but he plainly wasn't aware of them at the time and he promises me that he heard no calls for any cease-fire." The preacher paused for a moment to watch the smoke trails of artillery shells arching across the distant woods, then frowned at the Major. "What kind of women would be in a tavern anyway?"

  Galloway hoped the question was rhetorical, but the preacher's expression suggested he wanted an answer. The Major cast around for a suitable evasion and found none. "Whores, sir," he finally said, coloring with embarrassment for having used such a word to a man of God.

  "Precisely," the preacher said. "Women of no virtue. So why is Faulconer making this commotion?"

  "Adam has a tender conscience, sir."

  "He is also in your regiment, Major, by courtesy of my money," the preacher said sharply, conveniently overlooking that the money for Galloway's Horse had actually been sub­scribed by hundreds of humble, well-meaning folk through­out New England, "and I will not have the Lord's work hampered by a misplaced sympathy for fallen women. Captain Faulconer must learn that he cannot afford a tender conscience, not on my money!"

  "You'll talk to him, sir?" Galloway asked.

  "Directly," the preacher said and immediately beckoned Adam to one side. The two men rode far enough for their conversation to be private; then the preacher demanded to know exactly what evidence Adam had for his accusation of murder.

  "The evidence of a newspaper, sir," Adam said, "and my own apprehension of Captain Blythe's character."

  "It was a Southern newspaper." The Reverend Starbuck easily demolished the first part of Adam's evidence.

  "So it was, sir."

  "And your other evidence is merely founded upon your dislike of Captain Blythe's character? You think we can afford the luxuries of such sel
f-indulgent judgments in wartime?"

  "I have grounds for that dislike, sir."

  "Grounds! Grounds!" The Reverend Starbuck spat the two words out. "We are at war, young man, we cannot indulge in petty squabbles!"

  Adam stiffened. "It was Captain Blythe who issued the duel challenge, sir, not me."

  "You called him a liar!" the Reverend Starbuck said.

  "Yes, sir, I did."

  The Reverend Starbuck shook his head sadly. "I have talked with Blythe. He assures me, on his word as a gentle­man, that he had no idea any women were present in the tavern, and he still maintains there were none present, but he accepts he might be mistaken, and all he asks of you is your acceptance that he would never have continued the battle had he known that his actions were risking the lives of women. I believe him." The Reverend Starbuck paused, offering Adam a chance to utter agreement, but Adam remained obstinately silent. "For the love of God, man," the preacher protested, "do you really believe that a man of honor, an officer of the United States Army, a Christian, would persecute women?"

  "No, sir, I don't believe that," Adam said pointedly.

  It took a few seconds for the Reverend Starbuck to appreciate the debating point Adam had made, and the appreciation did not improve the preacher's temper. "I'll thank you not to be clever with me, young man. I have investigated this matter. I know the wickedness of mankind better than you, Faulconer. I have wrestled with iniquity all my life and my judgments are not based on Southern news­papers, but on hard experience tempered, I trust, with prayerful charity, and I am telling you now that Captain Blythe is no murderer and that his actions that night were chivalrous. It is unspeakable that a man could behave in the way you describe! Unthinkable! Manifestly impossible!"