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 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.

Galloway opened his watch. “Be another two hours before we leave, boys, so just be patient.”

The day darkened toward evening. The troopers’ clothes were clammy with a greasy, sweaty dampness. Galloway had forbidden fires so that the smoke would not betray their presence, and thus they simply had to endure the cloying dank as the minutes ticked by. Men prepared themselves obsessively for battle, believing that every small degree of painstaking care counted toward survival. They used cloaks and saddlecloths to keep the rain from their repeating rifles and revolvers as they loaded the weapons’ chambers with powder, wadding, and minié bullets. On top of each bullet they put a plug of grease that was intended to prevent the flame in the firing chamber communicating with the neighboring charges and so exploding the whole cylinder. They sharpened their sabers, the sound of the stones harsh on the curved steel. Those men whose blades rattled in their metal sheaths dented the scabbards so that the weapons were held tight and silent by the compressed metal. Corporal Harlan Kemp then led a score of men in prayer. He put one knee on the wet ground, one hand on the hilt of his sword, and raised his free hand toward God as he prayed that the Lord would bless this evening’s work with a mighty success and keep His servants free from all harm from the enemy.

Adam joined the circle of prayer. He felt very close to his men as he knelt with them, and the very act of praying imbued the night’s action with a sacred quality that lifted it above mere adventure into the realm of duty. “I do not want to be here,” Adam prayed silently, “but as I am here, Lord, then be here with me and let me help this war to a quick and just ending.” When Harlan Kemp’s blessing was finished, Adam climbed to his feet and saw Billy Blythe standing beside the mare Adam had taken from the Faulconer stud. Blythe ran his hand down the mare’s legs, then slapped her rump. “You got yourself some good horses, Faulconer,” Blythe said as Adam approached.

“You’re in my way,” Adam said brusquely, then pushed the tall Blythe aside so he could throw a saddlecloth over the mare’s back.

“Real nice piece of horseflesh.” Blythe peeled back the mare’s lips to examine her teeth, then stood a pace away to give the horse an admiring look. “Bet she runs like a bitch in heat. Specially with a touch of the whip. Don’t you find the whip tickles a female up real nice, Faulconer?” Blythe chuckled when Adam made no answer. “Reckon a horse like this would suit me real well,” he went on.

“She’s not for sale,” Adam said coldly. He heaved the saddle onto the mare’s back, then stooped to gather the girth strap.

“Wasn’t reckoning on buying her from you,” Blythe said, then spat a stream of tobacco spittle close to Adam’s face, “because there ain’t no point in buying things in war, not when they have a habit of dropping into a man’s lap. That’s what I like about war, Faulconer, the way things come without payment. That’s real convenient to my way of thinking. I figure it takes the sweat out of a man’s life.” He smiled at the thought, then touched a finger to the dripping brim of his hat. “You sure mind yourself now,” he said, then ambled away, grinning at his intimates and leaving Adam feeling tawdry.

Major Galloway was the first to mount up. He settled his feet in his stirrups, pushed his repeating rifle into its saddle holster, eased his saber an inch or two from its scabbard, then made sure his two revolvers were in easy reach. “Smoke your last cigars and pipes now, boys,” the Major said, “because once we’re out of this wood there’ll be no more lit tobacco till we wake the sumbitches.” His incendiarists checked their supplies: lucifers, flints, steels, tinder, and fuses. Their job was to burn the ammunition, while others of his men carried axes to splinter wheel spokes and hammers and nails to spike the rebels’ cannon.

One by one the men pulled themselves into their saddles. A horse whinnied softly while another skittered nervously sideways. Water dripped from the leaves, but Adam sensed that above the darkening canopy of trees the rain had stopped. The evening was young, but the clouds made the sky seem like night.

“For the Union, boys,” Galloway said, and the more idealistic of the men repeated the phrase and added God’s blessing. They were fighting for their beloved country, for God’s country, for the best of all countries.

“Forward, boys,” Galloway said, and the column lurched on its way.

To battle.

 

Captain Medlicott and Captain Moxey sat on the veranda of the farmhouse that served as General Washington Faulconer’s headquarters and stared at the evening rain. On the western horizon, Medlicott noted, where it should have been darkest at this time of day, the sky was showing a pale strip of lighter cloud where the rainstorm had stalled, but that evidence of dry weather showed no sign of wanting to move east. “But it’ll be a fine day tomorrow,” Medlicott grunted. The sweat dripped off his beard. “I know these summer storms.” He twisted in his chair and looked through the open parlor door to where the General was sitting at the claw-footed table. “It’ll be a fine day tomorrow, General!”

Faulconer did not respond to Medlicott’s optimism. The evening was sweltering, and the General was in his shirtsleeves. His uniform coat with its heavy epaulets and expensive braid trimming was hanging in the farmhouse hall along with his fine English revolver and the elegant saber that General Lafayette had presented to his grandfather. The General was staring at some papers on the table. He had been contemplating these papers for much of the day, and now, instead of signing them, he pushed them to one side. “I must be sure to do the right thing,” Faulconer said, by which he meant that he must be sure not to make a mistake that could recoil onto his own career. “Goddamn it, but they should be court-martialed!”

Captain Moxey spat tobacco juice over the veranda’s railing. “They should be in prison for disobeying orders, sir,” Moxey said, emboldened by the privilege of being asked to give advice about the fate of Colonel Swynyard and Captain Starbuck.

“But they’ll plead they were merely doing their duty,” Faulconer said, worrying at the problem like a dog at a bone. “Our orders are to guard the river crossings, aren’t they? And what were they doing? Just guarding a ford. How do we persuade a court otherwise?”

Captain Medlicott waved the objection away. “It ain’t a proper ford, sir, not really. Not on the maps, anyway. It’s just that the river’s running uncommon shallow this year.” He sounded very unconvincing, even to himself.

“But if I just dismiss them”—Faulconer now contemplated the alternative to a court-martial—“what’s to stop them appealing? My God, you know their facilities for telling lies!”

“Who’d believe them?” Moxey asked. “One pious drunk and a Yankee troublemaker?”

Too many people would believe them, Faulconer thought, that was the trouble. Swynyard’s cousin was influential, and Starbuck had friends, and consequently Faulconer felt as trapped as a man who has made a wonderful attack deep into enemy lines only to find that he cannot extricate his forces. Last night he had been triumphant, but a single day’s reflection on the night’s achievements had thrown up a score of obstacles to the completion of that triumph, not the least of which was that Swynyard had obstinately refused to get drunk. A drunken colonel would have been much easier to court-martial than a sober and repentant colonel, and it was Faulconer’s deepest wish to see both Swynyard and Starbuck dragged in front of a court-martial, then marched at rifle point to the Confederate army prison in Richmond, but he did not see how he could make the prosecution case irrefutable. “The trouble is,” he said, changing his argument yet again, “that there are too many people in this Brigade who’ll give evidence on Starbuck’s side.”

Medlicott sipped brandy. “Popularity comes and goes,” he said vaguely. “Get rid of the sons of bitches and everyone’ll forget what they looked like in a couple of weeks.” In truth Medlicott was wondering why Faulconer did not simply march the two men down to the river and put a pair of bullets into their heads.

“Rain’s slackening,” Moxey said.

Medlicott turned to look at the General. He was even more aware than Moxey of the privileges of being one of the General’s advisers. Moxey, after all, had pretensions of gentility; his family kept horses and hunted with Faulconer’s hounds, but Medlicott had never been anything except a hired man, albeit a skilled one, and he liked being in the General’s confidence and wanted to keep the privilege by making sure the General did indeed rid himself of the troublemakers. “Why don’t you just return the two sons of bitches to Richmond,” he suggested, “with a report saying they’re unfit for field duty? Then recommend that they’re sent to the coast defenses in South Carolina?”

Faulconer smoothed the papers on his table. “South Carolina?”

“Because by this time next year,” Medlicott said grimly, “they’ll both be dead of malaria.”

Faulconer unscrewed the silver cap of his traveling inkwell. “Unfit for field duty?” he asked tentatively.

“One’s a drunk, the other’s a Northerner! Hell, I’d say they were unfit.” Medlicott had been emboldened by the General’s fine brandy and now, somewhat obliquely, offered his preferred solution. “But why be formal at all, sir? Why not just get rid of the bastards? Shoot them.”

Moxey frowned at the suggestion while Faulconer chose to ignore it, not because he disapproved, but because he could not imagine getting away with murder. “You don’t think I need to give a reason for their dismissal?” the General asked.

“What reason do you need beyond general unfitness for duty? Hell, add indiscipline and dereliction.” Medlicott waved each word into the night with a careless gesture. “The War Department must be desperate to find men for the swamp stations in the Carolinas.”

Faulconer dipped his pen into the ink, then carefully drained the surplus off the nib onto the inkwell’s rim. He hesitated for a second, still worried whether his action might have unforeseen repercussions, then summoned his courage and signed the two papers that simply dismissed Swynyard and Starbuck from the Brigade. He regretted not recommending them for courts-martial, but expedience and good sense dictated the lesser punishment. The weather had made everything clammy, so that the ink ran thick in the paper’s fibers as Faulconer scratched his name. He noted his rank beneath his name, then laid down the pen, capped the inkwell, and blew on the wet signatures to dry them. “Fetch Hinton,” he ordered Moxey.

Moxey grimaced at the thought of walking a quarter-mile through the mud, but then pulled himself out of his chair and set off through the dusk toward the Legion’s lines. The rain had stopped, and campfires pricked the gloom as men emerged from their shelters and blew kindling into life.

Faulconer admired the two dismissal orders. “And I give them passes for Richmond?”

“Good for tomorrow only,” Medlicott suggested slyly. “That way if the bastards linger you can have them arrested again.”

Faulconer filled in the two passes, then, his work done, walked across the veranda and down to the stretch of muddy grass that lay between the house and a peach orchard. He stretched his cramped arms. The clouds had made the dusk premature, casting night’s pall over what should have been a sweet summer evening. “You’d have thought the rain would have broken this humidity,” Medlicott said as he followed Faulconer down the steps.

“Another storm might do it,” Faulconer said. He offered Medlicott a cigar, and for a few moments the two men smoked in silence. It was hardly a companionable silence, but Medlicott had nothing to say, and the General was evidently thinking hard. Faulconer finally cleared his throat. “You know, of course, that I’ve friends in Richmond?”

“Of course,” Medlicott said gruffly.

Faulconer was silent for a few seconds more. “I’ve been thinking, you see,” he eventually said, “and it occurs to me that we’ve done more than our fair share of fighting since the war began. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Hell, yes,” Medlicott said fervently.

“So I was hoping we could have the Brigade assigned to Richmond,” Faulconer said. “Maybe we could become the experts on the city’s defenses?”

Medlicott nodded gravely. He was not sure just how expert a brigade needed to be in order to garrison the star forts and trenches that ringed Richmond, but anything that took a man away from the slaughterfields of open battle and closer to hot baths, decent food, and regular hours seemed pretty inviting. “Experts,” Medlicott said, “indeed.”

“And some of my friends in the capital are convinced it’s a good idea,” Faulconer said. “You think the men will like it?” He added the question disingenuously.

“I’m sure, I’m sure,” Medlicott said.

Faulconer examined the glowing tip of his cigar. “Politically, of course, we mustn’t look too eager. We can’t have people saying we shirked the burden, which means I’ll probably have to make a show of refusing the job, but it would help me if my regimental commanders pressed me to accept.”

“Of course, of course,” Medlicott said. The miller did not really understand the prevarication but was quite happy to agree to anything that might get the Brigade back to the comparative comforts of the Richmond defenses.

“And I was thinking that I might make Paul Hinton my second-in-command,” Faulconer went on, “which means that the Legion will need a new commanding officer.”

Medlicott’s heart gave a leap of anticipation, but he had the sense to show neither surprise nor delight. “Surely your brother-in-law will be back soon?” he said instead.

“Pecker might not want to return,” Faulconer said, meaning that he hoped he could persuade Bird not to return, “but even if he does it won’t be for a long time and the Legion can’t manage without a new commanding officer, can it?”

“Indeed not, sir,” Medlicott said.

“Some people, of course, would say the job ought to go to a professional soldier,” Faulconer said, teasing the eager Medlicott, “but I think this war needs fresh eyes and ideas.”

“Very true, sir, very true.”

“And you managed a fair number of men at the mill, didn’t you?”

Medlicott’s gristmill had never employed more than two free men at any one time, and one of those was usually a half-wit, but the miller now nodded sagely as though he was accustomed to giving orders to hundreds of employees. “A good few,” he said cautiously, then frowned because Captain Moxey, muddied to his knees, was returning. Just a few seconds more, Medlicott thought, and he would have been the Legion’s new commanding officer, but now an excited Moxey was demanding Faulconer’s attention.

“Moxey?” Faulconer turned to greet his aide.

“Major Hinton’s not here, sir. Not in the lines,” Moxey said eagerly.

“What do you mean, not in the lines?”

Moxey was clearly enjoying making his revelations. “He’s gone to McComb’s Tavern, sir,” he said. “It seems it’s his fiftieth birthday, sir, and most of the Legion’s officers went with him.”

“God damn them!” Faulconer said. They were plotting. That was what they were doing, plotting! He did not believe the story about a birthday for one moment; they were conspiring behind his back! “Don’t they know the tavern’s off limits?”

“They know it’s off limits,” Captain Medlicott intervened. “Of course they know. It’s downright disobedience, sir,” he added to Faulconer, wondering whether he might not end up second-in-command to the whole Brigade after all.

“Fetch them, Captain,” Faulconer ordered Moxey. Goddamn it, Faulconer thought, but Major Hinton would have to learn that there was a new tight discipline in the Faulconer Brigade. “Tell them to come here immediately,” Faulconer said, then paused because Captain Medlicott had raised a warning hand, and the General turned to see a horseman approaching. The General recognized the rider as Captain Talliser, one of Stonewall Jackson’s aides.

Talliser saluted Faulconer by touching a gloved hand to his hat brim, then fetched a packet of papers from his saddlebag. “Marching orders, General. Reckon you’ll be busy packing up tonight.”

“Marching orders?” Faulconer repeated the words as though he did not understand their meaning.

Talliser held on to the orders, offering a scrap of paper and a pencil instead. “I need your signature first, General. Or someone’s signature.”

Faulconer took the proffered paper and scribbled his name to confirm that General Jackson’s orders had indeed been received. “Where are we going?” he asked as he took the orders.

“North, sir, over the river,” Talliser said, tucking the receipt into a pouch on his belt.

“You’ll eat with us, Talliser?” Faulconer asked, gesturing toward the farmhouse, where his cooks were busy preparing supper.

“Real kind of you, General,” Talliser said, “but I should be getting back.”

“You’ll surely take a glass of something before you go?”

“A glass of water would be real kind.” Talliser was not one of Jackson’s favorite aides for nothing. He swung himself out of his saddle and winced at the soreness in his legs. “Been a long day, sir, a real long day.”

Faulconer turned and was about to shout for Nelson, his servant, then remembered that the wretched man had not yet returned from his errand to Faulconer Court House. “Moxey,” he said instead, “before you go to McComb’s Tavern, be kind enough to fetch a glass of water for Captain Talliser.”

But Moxey was no longer paying attention. Moxey was instead staring slack-jawed and wide-eyed past the farmhouse. Slowly Moxey’s hand began to point; then he tried to speak, but the only sound he could make was an incoherent stammer.

“What the hell?” Medlicott frowned at Moxey’s pathetic display; then he, too, turned and looked south. “Oh, dear Christ!” he blasphemed; then he began to run away.

Just as the Yankees opened fire.

 

It all started so much more easily than Major Galloway had dared to hope. The raiders, riding in column of pairs, stole through the dank twilight to the empty road that stretched between the rebel encampment and the crossroads, where dim candlelights gleamed behind the tavern’s windows. No one saw the cavalrymen move through the half-light, and no one challenged them as they urged their horses up the small embankment that edged the road. Galloway chuckled as he heard singing coming from the tavern. “Someone’s sure having a good time,” the Major said, then turned to Captain Blythe. “Billy? Take your men south a little. Just make sure no one from the tavern interferes with us. And listen for our bugle.”

Blythe touched his hat and turned his horse southward. “You take care now, Major,” he called softly as he led his men away.

The rest of Galloway’s Horse rode north. The horses’ hooves sank into the mud, but the going was not nearly as difficult as Galloway had feared. In winter, once the snow and ice had thawed, Virginia’s unmacadamed roads could become impassable strips of filthy mud while in summer they could be baked hard enough to lame a well-shod horse, but this day’s rain had merely served to turn the top few inches glutinous. A small and smoky fire burned under some trees fifty yards ahead, and Galloway guessed it marked the southernmost picket of the Faulconer Brigade. The Major eased his saber in its scabbard, licked his lips, and noted how the clouds were already reflecting the great swath of campfires that burned to the east and north. Those to the east were rebel fires, while the ones across the river were the lights of Pope’s army. Only a few hours more, Galloway thought, and his men would be safe back in those Northern lines.

“Who the hell’s there?” a voice challenged from the shadows some yards short of the fire.

Galloway, his heart thumping, reined in his horse. “Can’t see a damned thing,” he answered as unconventionally as the picket had challenged him. “Who in tarnation are you?”

There was the unmistakable sound of a rifle being cocked; then a man in rebel gray stepped out from the cover of the trees. “Who are you, mister?” the man returned Galloway’s question. The sentry looked scarce a day over sixteen. His coat hung loose on his shoulders, his trousers were held up by a frayed length of rope and the soles of his boots had separated from their uppers.

“Name’s Major Hearn, Second Georgia Horse,” Galloway said, plucking a regiment’s name from his imagination, “and I’m sure glad you boys are Southerners else we’d have been in something wicked close to trouble.” He chuckled. “You got a light, son? My cigar’s plumb cold.”

“You got business here, sir?” the nervous sentry asked.

“Forgive me, son, but I should have told you. We’re carrying dispatches for General Faulconer. Is he anywhere about?”

“Another man just came with dispatches,” the sentry said suspiciously.

Galloway laughed. “You know the army, son. Never send one man to do a job properly when twenty men can do it worse. Hell, wouldn’t surprise me if our orders countermanded his orders. We’ll have you boys marching in circles all week long. Now, how do I find the General, son?”

“He’s just up the road, sir.” The sentry’s suspicions had been entirely allayed by Galloway’s friendliness. There was a pause while he made his rifle safe and slung the weapon on his shoulder. “Did you ride with Jeb Stuart, sir?” The picket’s voice was touched with awe.

“I just guess we did, son,” Galloway said, “clean round the Yankees. Now have you got that light for my cigar?”

“Sure have, sir.” The picket ran back to the fire and snatched a piece of wood out of the flames. The fire flared up, revealing two other men huddled in the shadows beyond.

“Sergeant Darrow?” Galloway called softly.

“Sir?”

“Take care of them when we’re past. No noise now.”

“Yes, sir.”

The picket brought the flame back to Galloway, who bent toward it to light his cigar. Like all his men Galloway had a cloak drawn tight around his uniform. “Thank you, son,” he said when the cigar was drawing. “Straight on up the road, you say?”

“Yes, sir. There’s a farmhouse there.”

“You keep dry tonight, son, you hear me?” Galloway said, then rode on. He did not look back as Darrow and his men disabled the picket. There was no gunfire, just a sickening series of thumps followed by silence. To Galloway’s right was the wagon park where the Faulconer Brigade’s ammunition was stored, while ahead, beyond a stand of dripping trees, he could see the farmhouse and tents that marked the Faulconer Brigade’s headquarters. Galloway curbed his horse to let Adam’s troop catch up with him. “You go on now,” he told Adam, “and burn the farmhouse.”

“Must I?” Adam asked.

Galloway sighed. “If it’s being used by the enemy, Adam, yes. If it’s full of women and children, no. Hell, man, we’re at war!”

“Yes, sir,” Adam said and rode on.

Galloway drew on his cigar and walked his horse in among the supply wagons, where a dozen black teamsters sat beneath a crude shelter made from a tarpaulin stretched between two pairs of wagon shafts. A small fire flickered in the shelter’s opening. “How are you in there, boys?” Galloway asked as he peered past the fire’s smoke, “and where do I find the ammunition?”

“The white carts, master, over there.” The man who answered was whittling a piece of wood into the shape of a woman’s head. “You got an order from the quartermaster, sir?”

“Fine carving that, real fine. Me, I never could whittle. Guess I don’t keep the blade sharp enough. Sure I got orders, boy, all the orders you’ll ever want. My sergeant will give ’em to you.” Galloway waved at the teamsters, then walked his horse on toward the nearest ammunition cart that was painted white and had a hooped cover of dirty canvas. As Galloway rode he took a length of fuse from his saddlebag and a linen bag of gunpowder from a pouch. He pushed one end of the fuse into the gunpowder, then drew aside the wet canvas flap at the back of the cart to reveal a pile of ammunition boxes. He rammed the bag between two of the wooden boxes, then touched the glowing tip of his cigar to the fuse’s end. He waited a second to make sure the fuse was burning, then let the canvas curtain drop.

The fire sputtered down the fuse’s powder-packed tube to leave a small trickle of gray-white smoke. Galloway was already assembling another small charge to place in the next wagon while more of his men were heading toward the artillery park, which was guarded by a handful of unsuspecting gunners armed with carbines. Galloway placed his second charge, then pulled his cloak back to reveal his blue uniform. He tugged his saber free and turned back to the sheltering teamsters. “Make yourselves scarce, boys,” he told them. “Go on, now. Run! We’re Yankees!”

The first bag of powder exploded. It was not a loud explosion, merely a dull thump that momentarily lit up the interior of the wagon’s hooped canvas cover with a lurid red glow. The canvas swelled for a second or two; then a fire began to flicker deep inside the stacked boxes. The teamsters were running. One of Galloway’s men leaned from his saddle and plucked a burning brand from the remains of their fire and tossed the burning wood into a third ammunition cart. The first load of ammunition began to explode in a series of short sharp cracks that sounded as close together as the snaps of a Fourth of July firecracker string, and then the whole wagon seemed to evaporate in sudden flame. The wet canvas cover flew into the air, flapping like a monstrous bat with wings dripping sparks. One of Galloway’s men whooped in delight and tossed a firebrand into a stack of muskets.

“Keep ’em burning, boys!” Galloway shouted at those of his men who had been detailed as incendiarists; then he led the rest of his troop in a charge toward the startled gunners. The Major’s saber reflected the flamelight. An artillery sergeant was still trying to prime his carbine as the saber sliced across his face. The man screamed, but all Galloway knew of the blow was a slight jar up his right arm and the juddering friction of steel scraping on bone; then the saber was free and he swung it forward to spear its tip into the neck of a running man. Two of Galloway’s troopers were already dismounted and starting to hammer soft nails into the cannons’ touchholes, others were setting fire to limbers crammed with ammunition, while still more were cutting loose picketed team horses and stampeding them into the night. Saddle horses were being captured and led back to the road. A powder charge exploded, shooting sparks high into the night air. Men were shouting in the dark. A bullet screamed high over Galloway’s head. “Bugler!” the Major shouted.

“Here, sir!” The man put his instrument to his lips.

“Not yet!” Galloway said. He only wanted to make sure the bugler was staying close, for he knew he must sound the retreat very soon. He sheathed his saber and drew out the repeating rifle, which he fired toward the shadows of men beyond the guns. The wagon park was an inferno, the sky above it bright with flame and writhing plumes of firelit smoke. A dog barked and a wounded horse screamed. In the light of the fires Galloway could see rebel gunners gathering in the darkness, and he knew that at any moment a counter-attack would swarm across the artillery park. He turned to his bugler. “Now!” Galloway called, “now!” and the bugler’s call rang clear in the night’s fiery chaos. The Major backed his horse through the gunline, where the cannons were all spiked and the limbers burning.

“Back, lads! Back!” Galloway called his men. “Back!”

Adam was inside the farmhouse when he heard the bugle call. He had found the house empty except for two of his father’s cooks, whom he had ordered to run away. Sergeant Huxtable had meanwhile chased away a group of officers standing on the lawn, killing a captain dressed in riding boots and spurs, and Huxtable now had Adam’s troop lining the ditch at the end of the farm’s garden from where they were blazing rifle fire into the shadowy lines of the Brigade. The repeater rifles made it seem as if a whole company of infantry was attacking across the ditch.

Corporal Kemp joined Adam in the farmhouse. “Burn the place, sir?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Adam said. He has found his father’s precious revolver and priceless saber hanging in the hall. Explosions sounded outside, then the ripping noise of gunfire.

“Sir!” Sergeant Huxtable shouted. “We can’t hold here much longer, sir!” The Faulconer Brigade had begun to fight back, and the rifle bullets were whipping thick above the farm’s yard and orchard. Adam seized his father’s sword and revolver, then turned as Kemp called him from the parlor.

“Look here! Look at this!” Kemp had discovered the twin standards of the Faulconer Legion on the parlor wall.

Huxtable called again from the dark outside. “Hurry, sir! For God’s sake, hurry!” The bugle sounded again from the artillery park, its call sweet and pure in the night’s angry fusillades.

Adam and Kemp pulled the two cross flagstaffs off their nails. “Come on!” Adam ordered.

“We’re to burn the house, sir, you heard the Major,” Kemp insisted. He saw Adam’s reluctance. “Belongs to a family called Pearce, sir,” Kemp went on, “rebels through and through.”

Adam had forgotten that Corporal Kemp was a local man. A bullet smacked into the upper floor, splintering wood. “Go! Take the flags!” Adam told him, then snatched up some papers that lay on a claw-footed table and held their corners into a flickering candle flame. He held the papers there, letting the fire take a good hold, then dropped the burning documents among the slew of other papers. There was a brandy bottle open on the table, and Adam spilt it across the floor’s rush matting, then threw a burning paper onto the floor. Flames leaped up.

Adam ran outside. A bullet whipped past his head to shatter a window. He jumped the veranda’s rail. The pair of captured rebel flags trailed huge and bright across the flanks of Corporal Kemp’s horse. Sergeant Huxtable had the bridle of Adam’s mare. “Here, sir!”

“Back!” Adam shouted as he pulled himself into the saddle.

The horsemen retreated past the farmhouse, where a fiery glow was already suffusing the parlor windows. Kemp had managed to furl the captured flags and now handed them to one of the troopers, then drew his saber to slash at the guy ropes of the nearest tents. A voice was shouting for water. Another voice shouted Adam’s name, but Adam ignored the summons as he galloped toward the wagon park that now looked like a corner of hell. Flames were searing sixty feet high while the exploding ammunition spat trails of vivid smoke in every direction. The bugle sounded again, and Adam and his men spurred down the road toward Major Galloway’s party. “Count!” Adam shouted.

“One!” That was Sergeant Huxtable.

“Two!” Corporal Kemp.

“Three!” the next man called, and so on through the whole troop. Every man was present.

“Anyone hurt?” Adam asked. Not one man was hurt, and Adam felt his heart leap with exultation.

“Well done, Adam!” Galloway greeted him just beyond the small stand of trees. “All well?”

“Everyone’s present, sir! No one’s hurt.”

“And us!” Galloway sounded triumphant. Another limber of ammunition exploded, punching red fire across the wounded camp. Then, from the southern darkness, there sounded a crash of rifle fire so sudden and furious that Galloway looked momentarily alarmed. He feared his men were being cut off, then realized the noise was coming from the tavern at the crossroads, which meant that Billy Blythe and his men were in a fight. “Come on!” he shouted, dug in his spurs, and galloped to the rescue.

 

“I don’t feel fifty,” Major Hinton told Captain Murphy. “I don’t even feel like forty. But I’m fifty! An old man!”

“Nonsense!” Murphy said. “Fifty’s not old.”

“Ancient,” Hinton lamented. “I can’t believe I’m fifty.”

“You will tomorrow morning, God willing,” Murphy answered. “Have another drink.”

A dozen officers had walked to McComb’s Tavern to celebrate the Major’s half-century. It was not much of a tavern, merely a cavernous house where ale and home-distilled whiskey were sold and where two whores worked upstairs and two kitchen slaves served huge plates of dumplings, bacon, and corn bread downstairs. Major Hinton’s private supper party was held in a back room, where the day’s menu, such as it was, was crudely chalked on the plank wall. Not that the Major needed to read the bill of fare, for his officers had generously subscribed to buy a rare and expensive ham that Liam McComb’s cooks had boiled especially for the dinner. Captain Murphy asked for Irish potatoes to accompany the ham, but McComb had refused the request by saying that he would be happy if he never saw another damned potato in all his born days. “Unless it’s been liquidated, if you follow my meaning, Captain,” he said. McComb was a giant man, more than sixty years old and with a belly on him like one of his own beer barrels.

“You mean poteen?” Murphy asked. “Christ, and I haven’t tasted poteen in seven years.”

“You’ll find it will have been worth the wait, Captain,” McComb said, and when the supper was finished and the shirtsleeved officers were sharing a bottle of fine French brandy taken at Cedar Mountain, the tavern keeper brought a gallon stone jug downstairs. “A few sips of that, Captain,” he told Murphy, “and you’ll swear you’re back in Ballinalea.”

“If only I was,” Murphy said wistfully.

“The wife made it,” McComb said as he placed the stone jug on the table, “before she was taken bad.”

“Not fatally, I trust?” Hinton asked politely.

“God bless you, no, Major. She’s lying upstairs with a fever, so she is. It’s the heat that does it to her. They’re not natural, these summers, not natural at all.”

“We’ll pay for the poteen, sure we will,” Murphy said, sounding more Irish than he had for many a long year.

“You’ll not pay me a ha’penny, Captain,” McComb said. “Roisin and I have two boys serving in the 6th Virginia, and they’d want you to be having a taste of it for nothing. So enjoy it now! But not too much now, not if you want to enjoy the upstairs pleasures later!” A cheer greeted this remark, for part of the night’s entertainment would doubtless be afforded by the two rooms upstairs.

“But not me!” Hinton said when McComb had gone. “I’m a married man. I can’t afford the pox.”

“Starbuck hasn’t got the pox,” Murphy said, “and he must have sneaked down here at least a dozen times.”

“He never did!” Hinton said, shocked at the news.

“Starbuck and women?” Murphy asked. “My God, Major, it’s like whiskey and priests, you couldn’t keep the two apart with a pry bar. God knows what they fed him up in Boston to give him the energy, but I wouldn’t mind a bottle or two of it myself. Now try the poteen.”

The poteen was passed around the table. Every captain from the Legion was there except for Daniel Medlicott, who had been summoned to Faulconer’s headquarters, and Starbuck, who was under guard in Colonel Swynyard’s tent. No one, not even Major Hinton, was entirely sure what fate the General planned for Starbuck, but Lieutenant Davies was certain Faulconer wanted a court-martial. Hinton averred that a court-martial was impossible. “Maybe Swynyard disobeyed Faulconer, but Nate only did what Swynyard ordered him to do.” Hinton lifted the poteen jug to his nose and smelt it suspiciously. “It’ll all blow over,” he said, speaking of Starbuck’s predicament rather than the liquor. “Faulconer will sleep on it, then forget all about it. He’s not a man for confrontation, not like his father was. Do I drink this stuff or use it as a liniment?”

“Drink that,” Murphy said, “and you’ll feel fifteen instead of fifty.”

“What in God’s name is it?” Hinton asked as he poured a few drops of the spirit into a tin mug.

“Potato whiskey,” Murphy told him, “from Ireland. If you get the recipe right, Major, it’s a drink from heaven, but get it wrong and it’ll blind you for life and tear your guts into tatters for good measure.”

Hinton shrugged, hesitated, then decided that at fifty years old he had nothing to lose and so downed the colorless liquor in one gulp. He took a deep breath, shook his head, then let out a hoarse sound that seemed to indicate approval. He poured himself some more.

“What was that?” Captain Pirie, the Legion’s quartermaster, was seated beside a window.

“That was amazing,” Hinton said. “It takes your breath clean away!”

“Gunfire,” Pirie said and pulled aside the gauze curtain that kept the insects away from the candlelight.

The sound of an explosion thumped across the damp landscape, followed by the splintering noise of rifles firing. A great red suffusion of light blossomed to the north, silhouetting the trees that lay between the crossroads and the Brigade’s lines. “Jesus,” Murphy said softly, then pulled his revolver from the holster that he had hung from a nail on the wall and went through into the tavern’s main room, which, in turn, opened onto a rickety porch. The other officers followed him, joining McComb and three of his customers under the porch’s wooden roof from which hung two lanterns. A second explosion spread its sheet of light across the northern sky, and this time the great flame outlined a group of cloaked horsemen on the road. “Who’s there?” Hinton called.

“Fourth Louisiana Horse!” a Southern voice called back. The skyline was red with flame, and more rifle shots cracked in the camp.

“It’s a raid!” Hinton called as he ran down the porch steps, revolver in hand.

“Fire!” the Southern voice shouted, and a volley of rifles slammed at the tavern from the reddened dark. Hinton was thrown to the ground by a monstrous blow to his shoulder. He rolled in the mud toward the shadows under the porch as a bullet shattered one of the lanterns and rained glass fragments down onto the startled officers. Captain Murphy fired his revolver twice, but the sheer volume of return fire made him duck into the tavern for cover. Lieutenant Davies had followed Hinton down the steps and somehow made it safe across the road to the protection of the small church, but none of the other officers succeeded in leaving the tavern’s veranda. Pirie was draped over the railings, blood dripping from his dangling hands. More blood was seeping between the planks onto Major Hinton, who was gasping with pain. Liam McComb had a shotgun that he fired up the road; then a bullet smacked into the tavern keeper’s great belly, and he folded onto the porch with an astonished look on his face. His breath came in huge shuddering gasps as blood spread across his shirt and pants.

Murphy ran to a side window, but a second before he reached his objective a bullet slapped the gauze curtain aside, then a second bullet ripped clean through the wall to strike a splinter out of the tavern’s counter. The slaves were wailing in the kitchen, while McComb’s bedridden wife was calling pathetically for her husband. The other women upstairs were screaming in terror. Murphy cupped his hands. “There are women in here! Stop your firing! Stop firing!”

Another voice took up the cry from the porch. “Cease fire! Cease fire! There are women here!”

“Keep firing!” a man shouted from the fire-rent dark. “Bastards are lying! Keep firing!”

Murphy ducked as more bullets riddled the wall. The heaviness of the rifle fire suggested there had to be scores of enemy outside. John Torrance, C Company’s Captain, was lying in the porch doorway, apparently dead. One of the Legion’s lieutenants was crawling across the floor, his beard dripping with blood; then he collapsed onto a full spittoon and spilt its rancid contents across the floor. A fire had started in the kitchen, and its flames roared hungrily as they fed on the old building’s dry wood. Two of McComb’s customers ran upstairs to try and take the women to safety as Murphy hurried into the back room, where the remains of the celebratory supper lay on the table. He snatched his coat from the nail, grabbed his cartridge pouch, and leaped straight through a gauze curtain into the night. The curtain wrapped itself round him, tripping him so that he rolled helplessly in the mud for a few seconds. He had an idea he might be able to drive the horsemen away from the front of the tavern if he could just fire at them from the darkness at the building’s rear, but as he struggled to extricate himself from the muslin curtain, he heard the click of a gun being cocked and looked up to see the dark shape of a horseman. Murphy tried to raise his revolver, but the horseman fired first, then fired again. Murphy felt something hit him with a blow like the kick of a horse; then a terrible pain whipped up from his thigh. He heard himself scream, then lost consciousness as the rider fired again.

The fire spread from the kitchen. Mrs. McComb screamed as the flames licked up the stairs and the bedrooms filled with a thick smoke. The two men who had tried to rescue the women abandoned their attempt, instead stepping out of a bedroom window onto the porch roof in an effort to save themselves from the flames. “Shoot them down!” Billy Blythe ordered excitedly. “Shoot the bastards down!” A half-dozen bullets struck the two men, who collapsed, rolled twitching down the shingled roof, then dropped to the ground. Blythe whooped with victory while his men kept pouring their withering fire into the burning building.

A bugle called to the north, summoning the raiders to their retreat, but Blythe had his enemy trapped like rats in a burning barrel, and like rats, he decided, they would die. He fired again and again while the flames spread through the tavern, leaping up the gauze curtains, devouring the ancient wooden floors, exploding barrels of liquor, and hissing where they met the blood that was spilt so thick across the planks.

A man with burning clothes crawled across the porch, then fell shuddering as bullets ripped at him. A roof beam collapsed, showering sparks into the night, and Billy Blythe, his mouth open and eyes bright, watched enthralled.

Major Galloway arrived at the head of his raiders. “Come on, Billy! Didn’t you hear the bugle?”

“Too busy,” Blythe said, his eyes wide and fixed on the glorious destruction. Flames writhed out of collapsing liquor barrels and flared fierce and brief when they caught a dead man’s hair. Ammunition crackled in the flames, each cartridge flashing white like a miniature firecracker.

“What happened?” Galloway stared in awe at the burning house.

“Sons of bitches fired on us,” Blythe said, still gazing enraptured at the horror he had engendered, “so we taught the sons of bitches a lesson.”

“Let’s go, Billy,” Galloway said, then seized Blythe’s bridle and dragged his second-in-command away from the fire. “Come on, Billy!”

A figure stirred under the porch, and two horsemen emptied their rifles’ revolving cylinders into the man. A woman screamed at the tavern’s rear; then the kitchen roof collapsed and the scream was cut sharply off. “It was a horse,” Blythe assured Galloway, who had frowned when he heard the woman’s distress, “just a dying horse, Joe, and dying horses can sound uncommon like women.”

“Let’s go,” Galloway said. There was a smell of roasting meat from the tavern, and horrid things twitching in the furnace heat, and Galloway turned away, not wanting to know what horrors he abandoned.

The horsemen rode west, leaving the sparks whirling cloudward and a whole brigade whipped.

 

Starbuck had wanted to challenge the raiders, but Swynyard stopped him from leaving the tent. “They’ll slash you down like a dog. Ever been chased by a cavalryman?”

“No.”

“You’ll end up saber-cut to ribbons. Keep quiet.”

“We must do something!”

“Sometimes it’s best to do nothing. They won’t stay long.”

Yet the wait seemed forever to Starbuck as he crouched in the tent; then at last he heard a bugle call and voices shouting orders to retreat. Hooves thumped close by the tent, which suddenly twitched and half collapsed as its guy ropes were cut. Starbuck squirmed out of the sagging wet canvas and saw Adam on horseback not five paces away. “Adam!” Starbuck shouted, not really believing his own eyes.

But Adam was already spurring south, his horse’s hooves throwing up great gobs of mud and water as he went. Starbuck saw the headquarters house burning and more fires flaring skyward among the supply wagons. The sentry guarding Swynyard’s tent had vanished.

“So how did they cross the river?” Colonel Swynyard asked as he crawled out from the tent’s wreckage.

“The same way they’ll go back,” Starbuck said. The horsemen might have withdrawn southward, but he had no doubt they would be riding a half-circle to get back to the unguarded ford, which meant a man on foot might just be able to cut them off. General Faulconer was shouting for water, but Starbuck ignored the orders. He leaped over the ditch that separated the headquarters from the bivouac lines and shouted for Sergeant Truslow. “Turn out! Fast now!”

H Company fell into ranks. “Load!” Starbuck ordered.

Truslow had rescued Starbuck’s rifle and now threw it to him with an ammunition pouch. “The General says we’re not to take orders from you,” the Sergeant said.

“The General can go to hell.” Starbuck bit a cartridge and poured powder down the barrel.

“That’s what I reckoned too,” Truslow said.

Swynyard arrived, panting. “Where are you going?”

Starbuck spat the bullet into the muzzle. “We’re going to Dead Mary’s Ford,” he said, then rammed the bullet hard down, slotted the ramrod back into place, and slung the rifle from his shoulder.

“Why Dead Mary’s Ford?” Swynyard asked, puzzled.

“Because, damn it, we saw one of the bastards there last night. Ain’t that right, Mallory?”

“Saw him plain as daylight,” Sergeant Mallory confirmed.

“Besides,” Starbuck went on, “where else would they cross the river? Every other ford’s guarded. Follow me!” Starbuck shouted, and the men ran through a darkness made livid by the great fires that burned uncontrollably in the Brigade lines. The farmhouse roof collapsed to spew a gout of flames skyward, but that inflagration was dwarfed by the huge fires in the ammunition park. Every few seconds another powder cask would explode to send a ball of fire soaring up into the low clouds. Shells cracked apart, rifle ammunition stuttered, and dogs howled in terror. The inferno lit Starbuck’s path across the waterlogged meadow and into the trees, but the deeper he ran into the woods the darker it became and the harder it was to find the path. He had to slow down and feel his way forward.

Sergeant Truslow wanted to know just what had happened at headquarters. Colonel Swynyard told him about the Northern raiders, and Starbuck added that he had seen Adam Faulconer among the enemy horsemen. “Are you sure?” Colonel Swynyard asked.

“Pretty damn sure, yes.”

Truslow spat into the dark. “I said we should have shot the bastard when he crossed the lines. This way.”

They stumbled on through the woods; then, when they were still a quarter-mile short of the river, Starbuck heard hoofbeats and saw a glimmer of flamelight showing through the black tangled silhouette of the trees. “Run!” he shouted. He feared his company would arrive too late and that the Northern horsemen would escape before he could reach the line of rifle pits at the wood’s edge.

Then he saw the riders milling at the river’s nearer bank. Someone had made a torch by strapping dead twigs to a length of timber, and the torch lit the horsemen’s passage through a ford made dangerously deep by storm water. Starbuck guessed most of the riders had long crossed the river, but a dozen cavalrymen were still waiting on the southern bank as he slipped and skidded into a flooded rifle pit. He held his weapon up high to keep it dry and saw the nearest horsemen turn in alarm as they heard the splash of his fall. “Spread out!” Starbuck shouted to his men, “and open fire!” Three horses were in the middle of the ford with the river up past their bellies. One of the cavalrymen cut with a whip to urge his horse on. “Fire!” Starbuck shouted again, then aimed his own rifle at the nearest enemy. He pulled the trigger and felt a surge of relief that at last they were fighting back.

Someone fired from Starbuck’s right. The woods were full of trampling feet, and the edge of the meadow was suddenly black with rebel infantry. The ruined house where Mad Silas lived was a dark shadow in the meadow’s center, beyond which the Yankee carried his flaming torch high; then the man suddenly realized that he was illuminating the target, and so he hurled the brand into the river to plunge the night into instant and utter blackness. A horse was screaming in the dark. More rifles cracked, their flames stabbing the sudden dark.

The Yankees returned the fire. Rifles flared on the far bank. Men were shouting in panic, calling on each other to get the hell across the water. Northern bullets whipped through the leaves over Starbuck’s head. He was up to his thighs in the flooded rifle pit. He rammed a new bullet down the rifle’s barrel, then fired again. He could not see his targets because the muzzle flashes were dazzling him. The night was a chaos of gun flames, screams, and splashes. Something or someone floundered in the water, and Starbuck could hear desperate shouts as the horsemen tried to rescue their comrade. “Cease fire!” he shouted, not because he wanted to help the rescuers, but because it was time to take prisoners. “Cease fire!” he shouted again and heard Sergeant Truslow take up the call. “H Company!” Starbuck called when the rifles had fallen silent. “Forward!”

The company advanced out of the trees and ran down the grassy slope. A few Yankee shots came over the river, but in the dark the enemy’s aim was much too high, and the bullets simply ripped their way through the black canopy of leaves. Starbuck ran past the ruined house, where Mad Silas was cradling his dead Mary. The company began screaming the rebel yell, wanting to scare the men who were still trying to rescue their wounded comrade from the river. Starbuck reached the ford first, dropped his rifle, and threw himself into the water. He gasped at the storm-given strength of the current, then grabbed at the shadows in front and found himself clasping a wet handful of uniform. A gun exploded a foot from his face, but the bullet went wide; then a man screamed as Starbuck dragged him back toward the southern bank. More rebels splashed into the river to help Starbuck. One of them fired at the Yankees, and the flash of his rifle’s muzzle showed a group of Northerners wading to the far bank and a horse and rider being swept downstream.

Starbuck’s prisoner gasped for breath while the drowning horse smashed the river’s surface with its flailing hooves. “Give them a good-bye shot, boys!” Colonel Swynyard called, and a handful of Starbuck’s men fired across the water.

“Come on, you bastard,” Starbuck grunted. His prisoner was struggling like a fiend and throwing wild fists at Starbuck’s face. Starbuck hammered the man hard with his right hand, kicked him, and finally dragged him back to the southern bank, where a rush of men overpowered the Yankee.

“Rest of the bastards got away,” Truslow panted ruefully as the hoofbeats receded across the river.

“We got all we needed,” Starbuck said. He was soaked through, bruised, and winded, but he had won the victory he wanted. He had proof that the ford had needed guarding, and it had been Washington Faulconer who had removed the guard and so let the Northern raiders cross the river. “Just let that son of a bitch put us on trial now,” he told Swynyard, “just let that son of a goddamned bitch try.”