Battle Flag

  Starbuck watched the disorganized enemy run past; then another flicker of movement closer to the hill made him look right to see a small group of gray-clad men running par­allel with the enemy but keeping well away from danger. Major Medlicott and Captain Moxey were in the lead of a score of men who now tried to rejoin the Legion's ranks without their arrival being noted. Starbuck ran toward the fugitives. "Where were you?" he asked Medlicott.

  "What do you mean?" Medlicott demanded. He turned away from Starbuck and aimed his rifle at the Yankees running past fifty paces away.

  Starbuck slapped the rifle down. "Where were you?" "The Yankees pushed us back," Medlicott said, his tone daring Starbuck to contradict him. "We tried to rejoin."

  Starbuck knew the man was lying. He could see from the state of Medlicott's soldiers that none of them had been fighting. Their eyes were not reddened by smoke, their lips were not blackened by powder, and their faces did not have the feral, half-scared, half-savage look of men pushed to the edge of endurance. All still wore the red crescent badge denoting their loyalty to Washington Faulconer, and all of them, Starbuck was sure, had skulked for the best part of the day. Yet he could prove nothing, and so he settled for a feeble acceptance of Medlicott's lie. "Keep fighting," he said. He knew he had handled the confrontation badly, a suspi­cion confirmed when Moxey laughed aloud. The laughter was drowned by a sudden ear-hurting roar as a flight of shells crashed into the killing patch beyond the railbed. The rebel artillery, which had been preoccupied these last long min­utes with Yankee attackers further south, had switched their fire back to the ground opposite Swynyard's brigade, and the effect of the shrieking, bursting, smoke-riven shells was to drive the enemy's howitzers away from the tree line and the retreating Yankees into the shelter of the railbed cutting.

  "You've got to get them out of there, Starbuck!" Swynyard immediately shouted from the hillside.

  The Yankees had suddenly learned the value of the railbed and were using its protection to start a galling rifle fire on the Legion. The men returned the fire, but the rebels were getting by far the worst of it. Starbuck, still standing beside the recalcitrant right-hand companies, cupped his hands. "Fix bayonets!" He watched as his men crouched behind the thin cover of the fire-blasted saplings and slotted long blades onto the black, hot muzzles of their rifles. He turned and saw Moxey's resentful men doing the same. Moxey was wearing one of the frilled shirts he had looted at Manassas Junction, and somehow the finery made Starbuck hate the man even more. He pushed that hatred out of his mind as he capped the five chambers of his new Adams revolver. "Ready?" he called to Medlicott's men. One or two nodded, but most ignored him. He looked to his left and saw the strained, anxious faces of the other companies. "Charge!" he shouted. "Charge!"

  The Legion rose from its crouch like men snapping from nightmare. The Yankees in the railbed responded with a volley that billowed smoke along the lip of their makeshift parapet. A shell cracked overhead to make an instant black cloud. Men were falling, bleeding, calling in pain, but most of the Legion were still running through the blackened scrub and reeking smoke. They screamed their war scream. The smoke of the Yankee volley cleared, and the Northerners, armed now with unloaded rifles, saw a glitter of bayonets fast approaching, and so they scrambled hurriedly out the railbed's far side.

  Just as a salvo of rebel-fired shells crashed into the dirt and exploded shrapnel into their faces. Most of the Northerners instinctively shied away from that high-explosive death just as the rebel line leaped into the trench.

  "Kill them!" Truslow shouted and rammed forward with a bayonet that he abandoned in his first victim so that he could unsheath his bowie knife. Most of the Yankees decided that fleeing through the shells offered a better chance of survival than being disemboweled in a blood-sodden trench, and so a horde of Northerners scrambled out of the railbed and ran across the open ground. Others stayed and surrendered. A handful tried to fight the rebel counter­attack and were killed. Starbuck saw Peter Waggoner lead­ing a squad of men against a stubborn group of Northerners; there was a volley, a scream, then Waggoner swung his rifle by the muzzle to smash its stock against a man's head, and the other Northerners began to shout their surrender. Out in the open ground another salvo of shells ripped smoke, flame, and metal shards through the fugitives. Starbuck, a smoking revolver in his hand, saw a man's head bowling along the ground like a spent cannonball. He gaped at it, not sure that his eyes were really seeing what his brain was registering.

  "No, no, no, no, please!" A Northerner was staring up at Starbuck with horror on his face. The man's hands were raised. He was shaking in terror, thinking that he was about to be executed by the tall Southern officer with the bitter eyes and smoking gun.

  "You're safe," Starbuck told the man, then turned to see that neither Medlicott's men nor Moxey's company had charged with the Legion. Instead they were in the spoil pit, where they were attempting to look busy by rounding up prisoners. There was unfinished business there, and business that had to be settled soon or else there would be no Legion left to command. "Major Medlicott?" he shouted across to the spoil pit.

  "Yes?" Medlicott's tone was cautious.

  "I want the Legion's ammunition pooled, then redistrib­uted. And search the dead for cartridges." He looked up at the sky. It would be dark soon. "Your men have first picket duty. And keep a careful watch."

  "They always do," Medlicott said defiantly. He had been half expecting a reprimand for disobeying the order to charge the railbed, and his tone suggested the scorn in which he now held Starbuck for not daring to impose discipline.

  Starbuck ignored him. He had other things to do. He had the dead to count, the wounded to rescue, and ammunition to find. So he could be ready to fight again. Tomorrow.

  "A good day's work, gentlemen, an excellent day's work." John Pope was ebullient about his army's achievement as he strode into the farm that was his field headquarters. A dozen men awaited his arrival, and so infectious was the General's pleasure that they actually burst into applause as he came through the door. Most of those who had been waiting for Pope were general officers, but there was also a congressman from Washington and the Reverend Elial Starbuck from Boston carrying, inevitably, the bundled rebel flag that was his precious trophy and souvenir. The Reverend Starbuck had spent the day on the field and was as dusty, dirty, and tired as any of the soldiers, though Pope himself looked very fresh as he lifted the lid of one of the supper tureens on the long dining table. He sniffed its contents appreciatively. "Venison steak? Good! Good! I hope there's some cranberry jelly to go with it?"

  "Alas, sir," one of the aides murmured.

  "Never mind." Pope was in a forgiving mood. The rail­road bridge at Bristoe had been repaired, so that trains could now run the length of the Orange and Alexandria, which meant that the last regiments being carried north from Warrenton could be transported all the way into the smok­ing ruins of Manassas Junction, from where it was a short step to tomorrow's battlefield. Or rather to tomorrow's vic­tory, for John Pope was now convinced that he was on the brink of a historic triumph.

  General McDowell, who had lost the first battle fought at Manassas but who now led Pope's Third Corps, was sim­ilarly confident of victory, especially as more troops were arriving hourly. Those reinforcements were coming not just from Pope's own Army of Virginia but also from McClellan's Army of the Potomac. "Though I doubt we'll see the young Napoleon here tomorrow," McDowell said heavily.

  "I doubt it, too," Pope said, sitting at the table and help­ing himself to a piece of venison. "George won't want to witness another man winning a victory. That would take far too much shine off his buttons, eh?" He laughed, invit­ing the table to laugh with him. "Whereas I don't mind who gets the credit so long as the U.S.A. gets the victory, ain't that a fact?" Pope threw this outrageous statement at one of his aides, who blandly confirmed its truth. "You know what George wants me to do?" Pope went on as he helped himself to buttered beans. "George wants me to pull the army back to Ce
ntreville and wait there! Here we are with Stonewall Jackson skewered to the wall, and I'm sup­posed to walk away to Centreville! And why? So the young Napoleon can take command!"

  "He doesn't want you to win the victory he couldn't win," McDowell suggested loyally.

  "And I've no doubt that if I did pull back to Centreville," Pope went on without actually disagreeing with McDowell's statement, "then the very first thing our young Napoleon would do is hold a parade. I hear George is uncommon fond of parades."

  "Very fond," the visiting congressman said, "and why not? Parades are very good for the public's confidence."

  "A victory might be better for their confidence," McDowell suggested. The Third Corps's commander had piled his plate with venison steaks and sweet potatoes.

  "Well, damn George's parades," Pope said, wondering like everyone else about the table whether McDowell could pos­sibly add another spoonful of supper to his heaped plate. "I shall not retreat to Centreville. I shall win a victory instead. That'll astonish Washington, isn't that so, Congressman? You're not used to generals who fight and win!" Pope laughed, and his laughter was echoed about the supper table, though the General noticed that the famous Boston preacher alone seemed unamused. "You look tired, Doctor Starbuck," the General observed genially.

  "A day in the saddle, General," the preacher said. "I'm most unaccustomed to such exertions."

  "No doubt I'd be weary if I spent a day in your pulpit," Pope responded gallantly, but the preacher did not even smile at the response. Instead he put a notebook on the table, pulled a candle close to its open pages, and expressed a polite puzzlement at some of the events he had witnessed that day. "Such as what?" John Pope asked.

  "Men attacking, other men doing nothing to help them," the preacher said succinctly. It seemed to the Reverend Starbuck that the Federal attacks had come so close to suc­cess, yet the survivors complained that the reinforcements who might have guaranteed Northern victory had never stirred from their bivouacs.

  John Pope felt an impulse of anger. He had no need to explain himself to meddlesome priests, yet Pope knew that he possessed few allies in the army's highest reaches, and fewer still in Washington. John Pope was an abolitionist, while most of his rivals, like McClellan, were fighting not for the slaves but for the Union, and John Pope knew that he needed public opinion to be on his side if he was to pre­vail against his many political enemies. The Reverend Starbuck was a powerful persuader of the Northern public, and so the General subdued his irritation and patiently explained his day's achievements. He spoke between mouth­fuls, gesturing with a fork. What the Army of Virginia had done, he said, was to pen Stonewall Jackson up against the western hills and woods. Pope glanced at the congressman to make sure that he was listening, then went on to explain how Jackson had wanted to escape down the Warrenton Turnpike but had instead been corralled.

  The preacher nodded impatiently. He understood all this. "But why do we need wait till tomorrow to kill the snake? We had him trapped today, surely?"

  Pope, mindful of what the pencil in the preacher's hand could achieve, smiled. "We've pinned Jackson into some rough country, Doctor, but we haven't quite cut off all his escape routes. What you were witnessing today was a gallant fight to keep Jackson staring in this direction while our other fellows curled around his flanks." The General demon­strated the strategy by surrounding a gravy boat with cruets. "And tomorrow, Doctor, we can attack again with the absolute assurance that this time the wretches have no escape." He dropped a salt cellar into the gravy, splashing the tablecloth. "No escape at all!"

  "Amen!" McDowell said through a mouthful of venison and butter beans.

  "You only saw a small part of a greater design," Pope explained to the preacher. "Does not the good book have something to say about there being more things in heaven and earth than we can dream of?"

  "Shakespeare said it," the preacher remarked stiffly, still penciling his notes. " 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Hamlet, Act One, Scene Five." He closed the book and slipped it into his pocket. "So tomorrow, General, we might expect a victory to rank with Cannae? Or with Yorktown?"

  Pope hesitated to claim ground quite that high, especially in front of a congressman, yet he had raised the expectation himself. "So long as McClellan's men fight as they should," he answered, neatly shifting the responsibility onto his rival. No one responded. Indeed, no one liked to stir that can of worms. McClellan's men were famously loyal to their gen­eral, and many of them resented being under the orders of John Pope, and there was a fear that resentment might be translated into a reluctance to fight.

  "I wonder what Lee's doing?" an artillery officer at the table's far end asked.

  "Robert Lee is doing what Robert Lee always does best," Pope declared, "which is sitting on his hands and letting someone else do the scrapping. Lee's waiting south of the Rappahannock, digging in. He sent Jackson to disrupt our preparations, but he reckoned without the swiftness of our response. He underestimated us, gentlemen, and that will be his undoing. Is that a plate of pears? Might I trouble you for a serving? Thank you." An orderly brought a jug of lemon­ade for the teetotalers and a decanter of wine for the others. Beyond the farm windows there was a pretty sprinkling of firelight where the nearest battalions were bivouacking on a hillside. A band was playing in the distance, the music sweet and plangent in the warm summer darkness.

  "Did anyone discover what those rebel troops were doing beyond Groveton?" one of McDowell's officers asked as he spooned thick cream onto his pears. There had been a hand­ful of reports about rebel troops arriving on the open western flank of Pope's army.

  "Alarmist rumors," Pope said confidently. "All they saw were enemy cavalry scouts. The last throes of a dying army, gentlemen, are always the sight of its cavalry scouts looking for a way out. But not tomorrow, not anymore. From now on this army marches forward. To Richmond!"

  "To Richmond," the assembled officers murmured, "and to victory."

  "To Richmond," the congressman said, "and reelection."

  "To Richmond," the Reverend Starbuck said, "and emancipation."

  All in the morning.

  During the night Hudson's North Carolinians made a new abatis in front of the railbed, where neither the cutting nor its adjacent embankment offered a real obstacle to the Yankee attackers. "I should have thought of it before," Hudson admitted.

  "So should I," Starbuck said. He paused. "Except I thought Lee was coming. I never reckoned we'd have to fight alone all day."

  "I told you," Hudson said in a kindly voice, "always to expect the worst."

  "But where is Lee?" Starbuck insisted on the question despite the older man's advice.

  "The Lord only knows," Hudson said softly, "and I guess we'll just have to go on fighting till the good Lord lets us into the secret."

  "I guess so, too," Starbuck said bleakly. He was morose, aware that his first day in command of a fighting regiment had not been a success. The Legion had twice been driven from its position, and though it had twice regained the railbed, it had suffered cruelly in the process. Worse, two whole companies of the regiment were in virtual mutiny. Starbuck remembered Moxey's laughter, and he knew as cer­tainly as he knew anything in all his life that the mocking laughter had been his opportunity to crush the defiant right-hand companies once and for all. Starbuck knew he should have pulled out his revolver and put a bullet smack between Moxey's eyes, but instead he had pretended not to hear, and so had given his enemies a victory.

  The construction of the new abatis was harassed by Yankee sharpshooters, whose fire did not end at nightfall. In the dark the sharpshooters fired wherever they saw move­ment beside a distant fire, and that constant danger drove men to take cover in the railbed or else to seek the safety of the hill's rearward slope, where the Brigade's surgeons worked by candlelight. The Brigade's own sharpshooters replied to the Yankee fire, the flames of their heavy-barreled rifles spitting long and whip-thin in the darkness.
The marksmen held their fire only when a shout requested that they respect the movements of a stretcher party, but whenever the stretcher bearers had finished their task and had called their thanks for the enemy's courtesy, the firing would begin again.

  The only good news of the night was the arrival of a mailbag that had been brought from Gordonsville with Lee's advancing troops. Sergeant Tyndale distributed the letters and parcels, making a sad pile of mail addressed to dead men. One of the parcels had come from the Richmond Arsenal and was addressed to the officer com­manding the Faulconer Legion. The big package proved to contain a standard-issue battle flag: a four-foot-square banner woven from common cloth that was intended to replace the captured silk standard. There was no flagstaff, so Starbuck sent Lucifer to cut down a straight, ten-foot sapling.

  Then, in the light of a campfire at the rear of the hill, he opened his two letters. The first came from Thaddeus Bird, who reported that he was recovering remarkably well and hoped to return to the Legion very soon. "Priscilla does not share this hope and constantly discovers new symptoms that might require a further period of convalescence, yet I feel my absence from the Legion keenly." The letter went on to say that Anthony Murphy had safely reached Faulconer Court House and was also recuperating, though he was not expected to be on his feet for a week or two yet. "Is it true," Bird then asked, "that Swynyard has seen the divine light? If so then it proves Christianity must be of some use in this world, but I confess I find it hard to com­prehend such a conversion. Does the dragon purr? Does he pray before he beats his slaves, or after? You must write to me with all the malicious details." The letter finished with the news that Washington Faulconer had not been seen in Faulconer Court House but was rumored to be stirring up political trouble in Richmond.