"He will?"
"Faulconer's scared of Starbuck."
"Scared? The General's scared of the Captain?" Coffman found that hard to believe.
"Starbuck's a proper soldier. He's a fighter while Faulconer's just a pretty uniform on an expensive horse. In the long run, son, the fighter will always win." Truslow picked a shred of tobacco from between his teeth. "Unless he's killed, of course."
"Killed?"
"You're going to meet the Yankees tomorrow, son," Truslow said, "and some of us are going to get killed, but I'll do my best to keep you from getting slaughtered. Starting now." He leaned over and ripped the bars off the Lieutenant's collar, then tossed the cloth scraps into the fire. "Sharpshooters put telescopes on their rifles, son, just looking for officers to kill, and the Yankees don't care that you're not full-grown. See a pair of bars like that, they shoot, and you're two feet underground with a shovelful of dirt in your eyes." Truslow spat more tobacco juice. "Or worse," he added darkly.
"Worse?" Coffman asked nervously.
"You could be wounded, boy, and screaming like a stuck pig while a half-drunken doctor rummages through your innards. Or sobbing like a baby while you lie out in the field with your guts being eaten by rodents and no one knowing where the hell you are. It ain't pretty, and there's only one way to keep it from being even uglier and that's to hurt the bastards before they hurt you." He looked at Coffman, recognizing how the boy was trying to hide his fear. "You'll be all right," Truslow said. "The worst bit is the waiting. Now sleep, boy. You've got a man's job to do tomorrow."
High overhead a shooting star whipped white fire across the darkening sky. Somewhere a man sang of a love left behind while another played a sad tune on a violin. Colonel Swynyard's flogged slave tried to keep from whimpering, Truslow snored, and Coffman shivered, thinking of the morrow.
***
THE YANKEE CAVALRY PATROL reached General Banks's headquarters late at night. The patrol had come under fire at the Rapidan River, and the loss of one of their horses had slowed their journey back to Culpeper Court House, as had the necessity to look after two wounded men. A New Hampshire corporal had been struck by a bullet in his lower belly and would surely die, while the patrol's commander, a captain, had suffered a glancing hit on the ribs. The Captain's wound was hardly serious, but he had scratched and prodded at the graze until a satisfactory amount of blood heroically stained his shirt.
Major General Nathaniel Banks, commander of General Pope's Second Corps, was smoking a last cigar on the veranda of his commandeered house when he heard that the patrol had returned with ominous news of enemy forces crossing the Rapidan. "Let's have the man here! Let's hear him. Lively now!" Banks was a fussy man who, despite all the contrary evidence, was convinced of his own military genius. He certainly looked the part of a successful soldier, for there were few men who wore the uniform of the United States with more assurance. He was trim, brusque, and confident, yet until the war began he had never been a soldier, merely a politician. He had risen to be Speaker of the House of Representatives, though it had taken 133 ballots to achieve that honor, and afterward Governor of Massachusetts, a state so rich in men willing to be taxed that the federal government had deemed it necessary to offer its governor the chance of immortal martial glory as a token of its thanks. Governor Banks, who was as passionate in his love for his country as in his hatred of the slave trade, had leaped at the chance.
Now he waited, ramrod straight, as the cavalry Captain, wearing his jacket like a cloak so that his bloody shirt showed clearly, climbed the veranda steps and offered a salute, which he dramatically cut short with a wince as though the pain in his chest had suddenly struck hard.
"Your name?" Banks demanded peremptorily.
"Thompson, General. John Hannibal Thompson. From Ithaca, New York. Reckon you might have met my uncle, Michael Fane Thompson, when you were a congressman. He sat for New York back in—"
"You found the enemy, Thompson?" Banks asked in a very icy voice.
Thompson, offended at being so rudely cut off, shrugged. "We sure found someone hostile, General."
"Who?"
"Damned if I know. We got shot at." Thompson touched the crusted blood on his shirt, which looked brown rather than red in the lamplight.
"You shot back?" Banks asked.
"Hell, General, no one shoots at me without getting retaliation, and I reckon me and my boys laid a few of the bastards low."
"Where was this?" the aide accompanying General Banks asked.
Captain Thompson crossed to a wicker table on which the aide had spread a map of northern Virginia illuminated by two flickering candle-lanterns. Moths beat frantically around the three men's heads as they leaned over the map. Thompson used one of the lanterns to light himself a cigar, then tapped a finger on the map, "It was a ford just around there, General." He had tapped the map well west of the main road that led due south from Culpeper Court House to Gordonsville.
"You crossed to the south bank of the river?" Banks asked.
"Couldn't rightly do that, General, on account of there being a pack of rebs already occupying the ford."
"There's no ford marked there," the aide interjected. Sweat dripped from his face to stain the Blue Ridge Mountains, which lay well to the west of the rivers. The night had brought no relief from the sweltering heat.
"A local nigger guided us," Thompson explained. "He said the ford weren't well known, being nothing but a summer back road to a gristmill, and some of us reckoned he just might be lying to us, but there sure was a ford after all. Seems the nigger was truthful."
"The word, Thompson, is Negro," Banks said very coldly, then looked down at the map again. Other patrols had spoken of rebel infantry marching north on the Gordonsville road, and this new report suggested that the Confederates were advancing on a broad front and in considerable strength. What were they doing? A reconnaissance in force, or a full-scale attack aimed at destroying his corps?
"So how many men fired at you?" Banks resumed his questioning of the flippant Thompson.
"Wasn't exactly counting the minny balls, General, on account of being too busy firing back. But I reckon there was at least one regiment north of the river and more of the devils coming on."
Banks stared at the cavalryman, wondering just why responsibility always seemed to devolve onto fools. "Did you try to take a prisoner?"
"I guess I was too busy making sure I didn't end up six feet underground, General." Thompson laughed. "Hell, there were only a dozen of us and more than a thousand of them. Maybe two thousand."
"Did you ascertain the identity of the regiment which fired on you?" Banks asked with an icy pedantry.
"I sure ascertained that it was a rebel regiment, General," Thompson answered. "They were carrying that new flag, the one with the cross on it."
Banks shuddered at the man's obtuse stupidity and wondered why the North's horsemen were so inept at gathering intelligence. Probably, he thought, because they had none themselves. So who were these rebels marching north? There was a rumor that Stonewall Jackson had come to Gordonsville, and Banks winced at the thought of that bearded, ragged man whose troops marched at the speed of wildfire and fought like fiends.
Banks dismissed the cavalryman. "Useless," he said as the man paced off down Culpeper Court House's main street, where sentries stood guard on the taverns. In the town's small wooden houses yellow lights burned behind the muslin curtains used as insect screens. An undertaker's wagon, its shafts tilted up to the sky, stood outside a church where, Banks remembered, the famous Boston preacher Elial Starbuck was due to speak on Sunday morning. The town's population was not anticipating the abolitionist's sermon with any pleasure, but Banks, an old friend of the preacher, was looking forward to Starbuck's peroration and had demanded that as many of his officers as possible should be present. Nathaniel Banks had a noble vision of God and country marching hand in hand to victory.