The Bloody Ground - Starbuck 04 (3 page)

"Yes." Starbuck had fetched his damp clothes and was pulling them on.

"Don't you know blacks ain't supposed to carry guns?" Maitland observed.

"Ain't supposed to shoot Yankees either, but he killed a couple at Bull Run," Starbuck answered ungraciously. He had already struggled with Lucifer over the Colt revolver the boy insisted on wearing and Starbuck had no energy to refight the battle with some supercilious colonel come from Richmond. "What orders?" he asked Maitland.

Colonel Maitland did not answer. Instead he was staring through the dawn's wan light toward the mansion beyond the stream. "Chantilly," he said wistfully. "I do believe it's Chantilly."

"What?" Starbuck asked, pulling on his shirt and fumbling with its remaining bone buttons.

"That house. It's called Chantilly. A real nice place. I've danced a few nights under that roof, and no doubt will again when we've seen the Yankees off. Where will I find Colonel Swynyard?"

"On his knees, probably," Starbuck answered. "Are you going to give me those orders?"

"Aren't you supposed to call me 'sir'?" Maitland enquired courteously, though with an undercurrent of impatience because of Starbuck's antagonism.

"When hell freezes over," Starbuck said curtly, surprised at the belligerence that seemed to be an ever more salient part of his character.

Maitland chose not to make an issue of the matter. "I'm to hand you the orders in the presence of Colonel Swynyard," he said, then waited while Starbuck pissed against a tree. "You look kind of young to be a major," he remarked as Starbuck buttoned his pants.

"You look kind of young to be a colonel," Starbuck responded surlily. "And my age, Colonel, only matters to me and the fellow who carves my tombstone. If I ever get a stone. Most soldiers don't, not unless they do their fighting from behind a desk in Richmond." After delivering that insult to a man who l
ooked like a desk soldier, Star
buck stooped to tie the laces of the boots he had collected off a dead Yankee at Cedar Mountain. The rain had stopped, but the air was still heavy with moisture and the grass thick with water. Some of the Legion had drifted out of the trees to stare at the elegant Lieutenant Colonel who endured their scrutiny patiently as he waited for
Starbuck
to collect his coat. Lucifer had come back with a handful of beans that Starbuck told him to take to Colonel Swynyard's bivouac. He pulled his wet hat onto his unruly black hair, then gestured to Maitland. "This way," he said.

Starbuck deliberately forced the elegant Maitland to dismount by leading him through the thickest part of the timber where the leaves and brush soaked the Colonel's silk-lined cloak. Maitland made no protest, nor did
Starbuck
speak until the two men had reached Swynyard's tent where, as Starbuck had predicted, the Colonel was at his prayers. The tent's flaps were brailed back and the Colonel was kneeling on the tent boards with an open Bible on his cot's blanket. "He found God three weeks ago," Starbuck told Maitland in a voice loud enough to disturb the Colonel, "and he's been bending God's ears ever since." The three weeks had worked a miracle on Swynyard, turning a drink-sodden wretch into a fine soldier who now, dressed in shirt-sleeves and gray pants, turned his one good eye toward the men who had disturbed his morning prayers.

"God will forgive you for interrupting me," he said magnanimously, climbing to his feet and tugging his suspenders over his lean shoulders. Maitland gave an involuntary shudder at the sight of Swynyard, who seemed even more unkempt than Starbuck. Swynyard was a thin, scarred man with a ragged beard, yellow teeth, and three missing fingers from his left hand.

"Bites his nails," Starbuck explained, seeing Maitland staring at the three stumps.

Maitland grimaced, then stepped forward with an outstretched hand. Swynyard seemed surprised at the offered gesture, but responded willingly enough, then nodded at Starbuck, "Good morning, Nate."

Starbuck ignored the greeting, jerking his head toward Maitland instead. "Man's called Lieutenant-Colonel Maitland. Got orders for me, but says he has to see you first."

"You've seen me," Swynyard said to Maitland, "so give Nate his orders."

Instead Maitland led his horse to a nearby tree and tied its reins to a drooping branch. He unbuckled a saddlebag and took out a packet of papers. "You remember me, Colonel?" he called over his shoulder as he rebuckled the bag.

"Alas, no," Swynyard sounded suspicious, wary of someone from his old, pre-Christian life. "Should I remember you?"

"Your pa sold some slaves to my pa. Twenty years back."

Swynyard, relieved that one of his old sins was not being revisited on him, relaxed. "You must have been a boy, Colonel."

"I was, but I remember your pa telling my pa that the slaves were good workers. They weren't. They were no damn good."

"In the trade," Swynyard said, "they always say that slaves are no better than their masters." Swynyard had spoken equably, though the words made it clear he had taken as great a dislike to Maitland as Starbuck had. There was an assumption of privilege about Maitland that grated on both men, or perhaps the irritation came from the incursion into their lives of a man who so obviously spent his time far from the bullets.

"Lucifer's bringing some coffee, Colonel," Starbuck said to Swynyard.

The Colonel hospitably fetched a pair of camp chairs from his tent and invited Maitland to sit. He offered Starbuck an upturned crate and set another as a table. "So where are these orders, Colonel?" he asked Maitland.

"Got 'em right here," Maitland said, putting the papers on the crate and covering them with his hat to stop either Swynyard or Starbuck from plucking them up. He took off his damp cloak to reveal a uniform that was immaculately cut and decorated with a double line of brass buttons polished to a high gloss. The twin gold stars on each of his shoulders seemed bright enough to be made of gold, while the braiding on his sleeves appeared to be fashioned from gold thread. Starbuck's coat was threadbare, had no gold or brass or even cloth marks of rank, but only white salt marks where sweat had dried into the material's weave. Maitland brushed the chair seat then twitched up his pants with their elegant yellow stripes before sitting. He lifted the hat, put the sealed papers aside, and handed another single sheet to Swynyard. "I am reporting to you as ordered, Colonel," he said very formally.

Swynyard unfolded the sheet, read it, blinked, then read it again. He looked up at Maitland, then back to the paper. "You done any fighting, Colonel?" he asked in what struck Starbuck as a bitter voice.

"I was with Johnston for a time."

"That ain't what I asked you," Swynyard said flatly.

"I've seen fighting, Colonel," Maitland said stiffly.

"Done any?" Swynyard demanded fiercely. "I mean have you been in the rifle line? Have you shot your piece, then stood to reload with a line of Yankees taking a bead on you? Have you done that, Colonel?"

Maitland glanced at Starbuck before answering and Starbuck, puzzled by the conversation, caught a look of guilt in Maitland's eye. "I've seen battle," Maitland insisted to Swynyard.

"From a staff officer's horse," Swynyard said caustically. "It ain't the same, Colonel." He sounded sad as he spoke, then he leaned forward and plucked the sealed papers off the crate and tossed them onto Starbuck's lap. "If I weren't a saved man," he said, "if I hadn't been washed in the redeeming blood of Christ, I'd be tempted to swear right now. And I do believe God would forgive me if I did. I'm sorry, Nate, more sorry than I can tell you."

Starbuck tore open the seal and unfolded the papers. The first sheet was a pass authorizing him to travel to Richmond. The second was an order requiring him to report to a Colonel Holborrow at Richmond's Camp Lee, where Major Starbuck was to take over the command of the 2nd Special Battalion. "Son of a bitch," Starbuck said softly.

Swynyard took Nate's orders, read them quickly, then handed them back. "They're taking you away, Nate, and giving the Legion to Mister Maitland." He pronounced the newcomer's name bitterly.

Maitland ignored Swynyard's tone. Instead he took out a silver case and selected a cigar that he lit with a lucifer before staring serenely into the wet trees where the men of Swynyard's Brigade were coaxing fires and hacking at hardtack with blunt bayonets. "I doubt we'll get more rain," he said airily.

Starbuck read the orders again. He had commanded the Legion for just a few weeks and had been given that command by Major General Thomas Jackson himself, but now he was ordered to hand his men over to this popinjay from Richmond and take over an unknown battalion instead. "Why?" he asked, but no one answered. "Jesus!" he swore.

"It ain't right!" Swynyard added his protest. "A regiment is a delicate thing, Colonel," he explained to Maitland. "It ain't just the Yankees who can tear a regiment to bits, but the regiment's own officers. The Legion's had a bad stretch, but Nate here was turning it into a decent unit again. It don't make sense to change commanders now."

Maitland just shrugged. He was a handsome man who carried his privilege with a calm self-confidence. If he felt any sympathy for Starbuck, he did not betray it, but just let the protests flow past him.

"It weakens my brigade!" Swynyard said angrily. "Why?"

Maitland offered an airy gesture with his cigar. "I'm just the messenger, Colonel, just the messenger."

For a second it looked as though Swynyard would swear at Maitland, then he conquered the impulse and shook his head instead. "Why?" he asked again. "This brigade fought magnificently! Doesn't anyone care what we did last week?"

It seemed no one did, or no one for whom Maitland spoke. Swynyard momentarily closed his eyes, then looked at Starbuck. "I'm sorry, Nate, real sorry."

"Son of a bitch," Starbuck said of no one in particular. The gall of the moment was particularly bitter, for he was a northerner who fought for the South and the Faulconer Legion was his home and his refuge. He looked down at the orders. "What's the Second Special Battalion?" he asked Maitland.

For a second it looked as though Maitland would not answer, then the elegant Colonel gave Starbuck a half smile. "I believe they're more commonly known as the Yellowlegs," he said with his irritating tone of private amusement.

Starbuck swore and raised his eyes to the clouded heavens. The Yellowlegs had gained their nickname and lost their reputation during the week of springtime battles in which Lee had finally turned McClellan's Northern army away from Richmond. Jackson's men had come from the Shenandoah Valley to help Lee and among them were the 66th Virginia, a newly raised regiment that saw its first and, so far, last action near Malvern Hill. They had run away, not from a hard fight, but from the very first shells that fell near them. Their nickname, the Yellowlegs, supposedly described the state of their pants after they pissed themselves in fright. "Pissed in unison," Truslow had told Starbuck on hearing the story, "and made a whole new swamp." Later it was determined that the regiment had been too hastily raised, too skimpily trained, and too badly officered, and so its rifles had been given to men willing to fight and its men taken away to be retrained. "So who's this Colonel Holborrow?" Swynyard asked Maitland.

"He's in charge of training the punishment battalions," Maitland answered airily. "Wasn't there one at the battle last week?"

"Hell, yes," Starbuck answered. "And it was no damn good." The punishment battalion at the previous week's battle had been a makeshift collection of defaulters, stragglers, and shirkers, and it had collapsed within minutes. "Hell!" Starbuck said. Now, it seemed, the 66th Virginia had been renamed as a punishment battalion, which suggested its morale was no higher than when it had first earned its nickname and, if the performance of the 1st Punishment Battalion was anything to go by, no better trained either.

Lucifer put two mugs of coffee on the makeshift table and then, after a glance at Starbuck's distraught face, backed far enough away so that the three officers would think he was out of earshot.

"This is madness!" Swynyard had found a new energy to protest. "Who sent the order?"

"The War Department," Maitland answered, "of course."

"Who in the War Department?" Swynyard insisted.

"You can read the signature, can't you, Colonel?"

The name on the ord
er meant nothing to either Star
buck or to Swynyard, but Griffin Swynyard had a shrewd idea where the papers might have come from. "Is General Faulconer posted to the War Department?" he asked Maitland.

Maitland took the cigar from his mouth, spat a speck of leaf from his lips, then shrugged as if the question were irrelevant. "General Faulconer's been made Deputy Secretary of War, yes," he answered. "Can't let a good man idle away just because Tom Jackson took a dislike to him."

"And General Faulconer made you the Legion's commanding officer," Swynyard said.

"I guess the General put in a good word for me," Maitland said. "The Legion's a Virginia regiment, Colonel, and the General reckoned it ought to be led by a Virginian. So here I am." He smiled at Swynyard.

"Son of a bitch," Starbuck said. "Faulconer. I should have known." General Washington Faulconer had been the Legion's founder and the brigade's commander until Jackson had dismissed him for incompetence. Faulconer had fled the army convinced that Starbuck and Swynyard had been responsible for his disgrace, but instead of retreating to his country house and nursing his hurt, he had gone to Richmond and used his connection and wealth to gain a government appointment. Now, safe in the Confederate capital, Faulconer was reaching out to take his revenge on the two men he saw as his bitterest enemies. To Swynyard he had bequeathed a man of equal rank who would doubtless be an irritant, but Faulconer was trying to destroy Starbuck altogether.