Battle Flag

“I always keep my promises, sure I do. I keep ’em in mind while I’m working out how to break them.” Blythe laughed. “Now are you going to give me aggravation for having fetched you your money? Hell, Joe, I get enough piety from young Faulconer.”

“Adam’s a good man.”

“I never said he weren’t a good man. I just said he’s a pious son of a righteous bitch and God only knows why you appointed him Captain.”

“Because he’s a good man,” Galloway said firmly, “and because his family is famous in Virginia, and because I like him. And I like you too, Billy, but not if you’re going to argue with Adam all the time. Now why don’t you go and get busy? You’ve got a flag to capture.”

Blythe scorned such a duty. “Have I? Hell! There’s plenty enough red, white, and blue cloth about, so we’ll just have your house niggers run up a quick rebel flag.”

Galloway sighed. “They’re my servants, Billy, servants.”

“Still niggers, ain’t they? And the girl can use a needle, can’t she? And the Reverend’ll never know the difference. She can make us a flag and I’ll tear it and dirty it a bit and that old fool will think we snatched it clean out of Jeff Davis’s own hands.” Blythe grinned at the idea, then picked up the check. He whistled appreciatively. “Reckon I talked us into a tidy profit, Joe.”

“I reckon you did too. So now you’ll go and spend it, Billy.” Galloway needed to equip Adam’s troop with horses and most of his men with sabers and firearms, but now, thanks to the generosity of the Reverend Starbuck’s abolitionists, the Galloway Horse would be as well equipped and mounted as any other cavalry regiment in the Northern army. “Spend half on horses and half on weapons and saddlery,” Galloway suggested.

“Horses are expensive, Joe,” Blythe warned. “The war’s made them scarce.”

“You’re a horse dealer, Billy, so go and work some horse-dealing magic. Unless you’d rather I let Adam go? He wants to buy his own horses.”

“Never let a boy do a man’s work, Joe,” Blythe said. He touched the preacher’s cheek to his lips and gave it an exaggerated kiss. “Praise the Lord,” Billy Blythe said, “just praise His holy name, amen.”

The Faulconer Legion made camp just a few miles north of the river where they had first glimpsed the baleful figure of their new commanding general. No one in the Legion knew where they were or where they were going or why they were marching there, but a passing artillery major who was a veteran of Jackson’s campaigns said that was the usual way of Old Jack. “You’ll know you’ve arrived just as soon as the enemy does and no sooner,” the Major said, then begged a bucket of water for his horse.

The Brigade headquarters erected tents, but none of the regiments bothered with such luxuries. The Faulconer Legion had started the war with three wagonloads of tents but now had only two tents left, both reserved for Doctor Danson. The men had become adept at manufacturing shelters from branches and sod, though on this warm evening no one needed protection from the weather. Work parties fetched wood for campfires while others carried water from a stream a mile away. Some of the men sat with their bare feet dangling in the stream, trying to wash away the blisters and blood of the day’s march. The four men on the Legion’s punishment detail watered the draft horses that hauled the ammunition wagons, then paraded round the campsite with newly felled logs on their shoulders. The men staggered under the weight as they made the ten circuits of the Legion’s lines that constituted their nightly punishment. “What have they done?” Lieutenant Coffman asked Starbuck.

Starbuck glanced up at the miserable procession. “Lem Pierce got drunk. Matthews sold cartridges for a pint of whiskey, and Evans threatened to hit Captain Medlicott.”

“Pity he didn’t,” Sergeant Truslow interjected. Daniel Medlicott had been the miller at Faulconer Court House, where he had earned a reputation as a hard man with money, though in the spring elections for field officers he had distributed enough promises and whiskey to have himself promoted from sergeant to captain.

“And I don’t know what Trent did,” Starbuck finished.

“Abram Trent’s just a poxed son of a whore,” Truslow said to Coffman. “He stole some food from Sergeant Major Tolliver, but that ain’t why he’s being punished. He’s being punished, lad, because he got caught.”

“You are listening to the gospel according to Sergeant Thomas Truslow,” Starbuck told the Lieutenant. “Thou shalt steal all thou can, but thou shalt not get caught.” Starbuck grinned, then hissed with pain as he jabbed his thumb with a needle. He was struggling to sew the sole of his right boot back onto its uppers, for which task he had borrowed one of the three precious needles possessed by the company.

Sergeant Truslow, sitting on the far side of the fire from the two officers, mocked his Captain’s efforts. “You’re a lousy cobbler.”

“I never pretended to be otherwise.”

“You’ll break the goddamn needle, pushing like that.”

“You want to do it?” Starbuck asked, offering the half-finished work to the Sergeant.

“Hell no, I ain’t paid to patch your boots.”

“Then shut the hell up,” Starbuck said, trying to work the needle through one of the old stitching holes in the sole.

“It’ll only break first thing in the morning,” Truslow said after a moment’s silence.

“Not if I do it properly.”

“No chance of that,” Truslow said. He broke off a piece of tobacco and put it in his cheek. “You’ve got to protect the thread, see? So it don’t chafe on the road.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“No, you ain’t. You’re just lashing the boot together. There are blind men without fingers who could make a better job than you.”

Lieutenant Coffman listened nervously to the conversation. He had been told that the Captain and Sergeant were friends—indeed, that they had been friends ever since the Yankee Starbuck had been sent to persuade the Yankee-hating Truslow to leave his high-mountain farm and join Faulconer’s Legion—but to Coffman it seemed an odd sort of friendship if it was expressed with such mutual scorn. Now the intimidating Sergeant turned to the nervous Lieutenant. “A proper officer,” Truslow confided to Coffman, “would have a darkie to do his sewing.”

“A proper officer,” Starbuck said, “would kick your rotten teeth down your gullet.”

“Anytime, Captain,” Truslow said, laughing.

Starbuck tied off the thread and peered critically at his handiwork. “It ain’t perfect,” he allowed, “but it’ll do.”

“It’ll do,” Truslow agreed, “so long as you don’t walk on it.”

Starbuck laughed. “Hell, we’ll be fighting a battle in a day or two, then I’ll get myself a pair of brand-new Yankee boots.” He gingerly pulled the repaired boot onto his foot and was pleasantly surprised that the sole did not immediately peel away. “Good as new,” he said, then flinched, not because of the boot, but because a sudden scream sounded across the campsite. The scream was cut abruptly short; there was a pause, then a sad wailing sound sobbed briefly.

Coffman looked aghast, for the noise had sounded like it came from a creature being tortured, which indeed it had. “Colonel Swynyard,” Sergeant Truslow explained to the new lieutenant, “is beating one of his niggers.”

“The Colonel drinks,” Starbuck added.

“The Colonel is a drunk,” Truslow amended.

“And it’s anyone’s guess whether the liquor will kill him before one of his slaves does,” Starbuck said, “or one of us, for that matter.” He spat into the fire. “I’d kill the bastard willingly enough.”

“Welcome to the Faulconer Brigade,” Truslow said to Coffman.

The Lieutenant did not know how to respond to such cynicism, so he just sat looking troubled and nervous, then flinched as a thought crossed his mind. “Will we really be fighting in a day or two?” he asked.

“Probably tomorrow.” Truslow jerked his head toward the northern sky, which was being reddened by the reflected glow of an army’s fires. “It’s what you’re paid to do, son,” Truslow added when he saw Coffman’s nervousness.

“I’m not paid,” Coffman said and immediately blushed for the admission.

Truslow and Starbuck were both silent for a few seconds; then Starbuck frowned. “What the hell do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, I do get paid,” Coffman said, “but I don’t get the money, see?”

“No, I don’t see.”

The Lieutenant was embarrassed. “It’s my mother.”

“She gets the money, you mean?” Starbuck asked.

“She owes General Faulconer money,” Coffman explained, “because we rent one of his houses on the Rosskill road and Mother fell behind with the rent, so Faulconer keeps my salary.”

There was another long pause. “Christ on his cross.” Truslow’s blasphemy broke the silence. “You mean that miserable rich bastard is taking your three lousy bucks a week for his own?”