The Bloody Ground - Starbuck 04 Read online

  A horse whinnied. It was hard to tell what direction the sound came from, at first it seemed to come from behind him, but then Billy heard the slow thump of hooves from in front of him and so, confused, and very cautiously, he raised his head out of the leaves until he could see across the corn. The shadows were harsh among the further trees, but suddenly, in a slash of bright sunlight that cut across the dark, he saw the horsemen. Northerners! Blue coats. There were glints of reflected sunlight from saber scabbards, belt buckles, curb chains, carbine hooks, then a flash of white as a horse rolled its eye and sneezed. The ears of the other horses pricked forward. The wary cavalrymen had stopped at the corn's edge. There were a dozen or so troopers there, carbines at the ready, all watching across the crop toward Billy's left, and it was their watchfulness that kept Billy motionless. What was worrying them? He turned very slowly, but could see nothing. Were there rebels nearby? A bluebird flitted above the corn and Billy decided the bright feathers were a good omen and he was about to stand fully upright and shout toward the cavalrymen when suddenly their leader made a gesture with his hand and the troopers spurred their horses out into the corn. Billy stayed still. One of the cavalrymen had holstered his carbine and scraped his saber free of its scabbard, and that persuaded Billy that this was not a good time to attract the troopers' attention. One shout now and a volley of minie balls could be his answer and so he just watched as the horses advanced noisily through the stiff cornstalks.

  A horse whinnied again, and this time the sound was definitely behind Billy and he turned softly, parted the screen of leaves, then peered hard through the dappled shadows of the woodland. He was holding his breath and wondering what the hell was going on, then suddenly he saw a movement down by the far end of the cornfield and he blinked sweat away from his eyes and saw that there was a horse there. A riderless, lonely horse. A horse all on its own. A horse that seemed to be tethered. A horse with a saddle and bridle, but no rider. A horse, he thought, for Billy Blythe and he wondered what would be the safest way to attract the attention of the nervous Yankee troopers when suddenly a blast of rifle fire ripped the warm afternoon to shreds.

  Billy cried aloud with fear and dropped to his haunches. No one heard his cry, for the Yankee horses were screaming terribly. There was a great thrashing sound from the corn, then more rifles fired and suddenly the hateful rebel yell was sounding and a voice was roaring orders. It had been an ambush. One riderless horse had been the bait that had sucked the Yankees down the long narrow cornfield to where the rebels had been hidden among the trees, and now the horsemen were either dead, wounded, or desperately trying to gallop away. Two more rifles cracked and Billy saw a blue-coated trooper arch his back, let go of his reins, and fall backward off his galloping horse. Two more riderless horses galloped north while a trooper was running desperately with his scabbard held free of his legs. Two Northern horsemen seemed to have made it safely into the shelter of the far trees, but otherwise there seemed to be no survivors from the small Yankee patrol. It had taken less than a minute.

  "Fetch the horses!" a voice snarled. A Yankee in the corn was calling for help, his voice desperate with pain. A horse was whinnying, then a flat, hard shot abruptly ended the pathetic sound. Rebel voices laughed, then Billy heard the scraping rattle as a rifle was reloaded. The rebels were evidently collecting the horses; valuable prizes for an army already short of good cavalry mounts, and Billy hoped they would be content with that booty, but then the officer shouted again. "Look for any survivors! Careful now, but look good."

  Billy swore. He thought about running, but he guessed he was too weak to outrun a fit man and besides the noise he made would bring a slew of the bastards chasing after him, so instead he feverishly stripped off his blue coat and pulled on the threadbare gray jacket, and then he pushed the betraying blue garment deep under the bushes where he covered it with a thick layer of leaf mold. He buttoned the gray coat and buckled his belt about its waist and then he waited. Damn, he thought, damn and son of a bitch and damn again, but now he would have to play the rebel for a few weeks while he found another way to get back north.

  Footsteps came nearer and Billy decided it was time to play his role. "Are you Southern boys?" he called aloud. The footsteps stopped. "The name's Billy Tumlin!" he called out, "Billy Tumlin from New Orleans." There was no future in using his real name, not when so many men in the Confederacy were eager to test a rope on Billy Blythe's gullet. "Are you boys rebs?" he asked.

  "Can't see you," a voice said flatly, neither friendly nor hostile, but then came the unmistakably hostile sound of a rifle being cocked.

  "I'm standing up, boys," Billy said, "standing up real slow. Standing up right plumb in front of you." Billy stood and held his hands high to show he was not armed. Facing him were a pair of scruffy rebels with bayonet-tipped rifles. "Thank the good Lord above, boys," Billy said, "praise His holy name, amen."

  The two faces showed only caution. "Who did you say you was?" one of the men asked.

  "Captain Billy Tumlin, boys. From New Orleans, Louisiana: I've been on the run for weeks now and sure am pleased to see you. Mind if I lower my hands?" He began to lower his arms, but a twitch of a blackened rifle muzzle put them back up fast.

  "On the run?" the second man asked.

  "I was taken at New Orleans," Blythe explained in his broadest Southern accent, "and I've been a prisoner up north ever since. But I slipped away, see? And I'm kind of hungry, boys. Even a piece of hardtack would be welcome. Or some tobacco? Ain't seen good tobacco since the day I got captured."

  An hour later Captain Billy Tumlin was introduced to Lieutenant Colonel Ned Maitland, whose men had discovered the fugitive. Maitland's regiment was bivouacking and the smoke from hundreds of small fires sifted into the early evening air. Maitland, a courtly and generous host, hospitably shared a leg of stringy chicken, some hard-boiled eggs, and a flask of cognac with the newly escaped prisoner. He seemed blessedly uninterested in

  Blythe's supposed experiences as a captive of the Northerners, preferring to discuss which prominent New Orleans families might be common acquaintances. Billy Blythe had spent just long enough in New Orleans to pass that test, especially when he figured that Maitland knew less about the city's society than he did himself.

  "I guess," Maitland said after a while, "that you'd better report to brigade."

  "I can't stay here?" Blythe suggested. Maitland would be a considerate commander, he reckoned, and the Legion would be serving close enough to the Yankees to give Blythe an easy chance to slip across the lines.

  Maitland shook his head. He would have liked to keep Billy Tumlin in the Legion, for he considered most of his present officers to be well below the proper standard, but he had no authority to appoint a new captain. "I could use you," Maitland admitted, "I surely could. It looks like we'll all be moving north soon so there'll be plenty of fighting and I'm not exactly fixed right with good officers."

  "You're invading the North?" Billy Blythe asked, horrified at the thought.

  "There's nothing north of here but foreign soil," Maitland observed dryly, "but sadly I can't keep you in the Legion. Things have changed since you were captured, Captain. We don't elect or appoint officers anymore. Everything goes through the War Department in Richmond and I guess you'll have to report there. At least if you want wages, you will."

  "Wages would help," Blythe agreed and so, an hour later, he found himself in the altogether less prepossessing company of the brigade commander. Colonel Griffin Swynyard's queries about Blythe's captivity were brief, but much sharper than Maitland's. "Where were you held?" he asked.

  "Massachusetts," Blythe said.

  "Where exactly?" Swynyard demanded.

  Blythe was momentarily flustered. "Union," he finally said, reckoning that every state in the United and Confederate States had a town called Union. "Just outside, anyway," he added lamely.

  "We must thank God for your escape," Swynyard said, and Blythe eagerly agreed, then realized he was actually
expected to fall onto his knees to offer the thanks. He got down awkwardly and closed his eyes while Swynyard thanked Almighty God for the release of His servant Billy Tumlin from captivity, and after that Swynyard told Billy he would have the brigade major issue a travel pass permitting Captain Tumlin to report to the army headquarters.

  "In Richmond?" Blythe asked, not unhappy at that thought. He had no enemies in Richmond that he knew of, for his foes were all further south, so Richmond would be a fine resting place for a short while. And at least in the Confederacy's capital he would be spared the bloodletting that would surely follow if Robert Lee took this hardscrabble army of ragged-uniformed men across the Potomac into the North's plump fields.

  "They may send you to Richmond," Swynyard said, "or they might post you to a battalion here. Ain't my decision, Captain."

  "Just so long as I can be useful," Billy Blythe said sanctimoniously. "That's all I pray for, Colonel, to be useful." Billy Blythe was doing what Billy Blythe did best. He was surviving.

  YOU DON'T SOUND like a Southerner, Potter," Captain Dennison said and the three other captains who shared the supper table stared accusingly at Starbuck.

  "My ma was from Connecticut," Starbuck said.

  "Sir," Dennison corrected Starbuck. Captain Dennison was more than a little drunk, indeed he had almost fallen asleep a moment before, but now he had jerked himself into wakefulness and was scowling at Starbuck down the length of the table. "I'm a captain," Dennison said, "and you're a shad-belly piece of ordure, otherwise known as a lieutenant. You call me sir."

  "My ma was from Connecticut, sir," Starbuck said dutifully. He was playing his role as the hapless Potter, but he was no longer enjoying it. Impetuosity, if not downright foolishness, had trapped him in the deception and he knew that every moment he stayed in the role would make it more difficult to extricate himself with any dignity, but he still reckoned there were things to learn so long as the real Lieutenant Potter did not arrive at Camp Lee.

  "So you picked up your momma's accent with her titty milk, did you, Potter?" Dennison asked.

  "I reckon I must have done, sir."

  Dennison leaned back in his chair. The sores on his face gleamed wetly in the flickering light of the bad candles set on the dinner table that bore the remains of a meal of fried chicken, fried rice, and beans. There were some of

  Colonel Holborrow's beloved peaches to end the meal, though Holborrow himself was not present. The Colonel, having carried Sally to the city, had evidently stayed to make a night of it, leaving Starbuck to share this evening meal with the four captains. There were plenty of other officers in Camp Lee, but they ate elsewhere for no one, it seemed, wanted to be contaminated by this handful of officers who remained with the Yellowlegs.

  And no wonder, Starbuck thought, for even the few hours he had spent in the camp had proved enough to confirm his worst expectations. The men of the 2nd Special Battalion were bored and dispirited, kept from desertion only by the ever-present provosts and by their fears of execution. The sergeants resented being posted to the battalion and so entertained themselves with petty acts of tyranny that the battalion officers, like Thomas Dennison and his companions, did nothing to alleviate. Sergeant Case appeared to run the battalion and those men who were in his favor prospered while the rest suffered.

  Starbuck had talked with some of the men and they, thinking that he was a harmless lieutenant and, besides, the man who had dared to take Case's prisoner off the horse, were unguarded in what they said. Some, like Caton Rothwell, whom Starbuck had rescued, were keen to fight and were frustrated that Holborrow appeared to have no intention of sending the battalion north to join Lee's army. Rothwell was not one of the original Yellowlegs, but had been posted to the Special Battalion after being found guilty of deserting from his own regiment. "I went to help my family," he explained to Starbuck, "I just wanted a week's furlough," he added, "because my wife was in trouble."

  "What trouble?" Starbuck had asked.

  "Just trouble, Lieutenant," Rothwell said bluntly. He was a big, strong man who reminded Starbuck of Lieutenant Waggoner. Caton Rothwell, Starbuck suspected, would be a good man to have alongside in a fight. Given fifty other such men, Starbuck knew, the battalion could be made as good as any in Lee's army, but most of the soldiers were near mutinous through boredom and the knowledge that they were the most despised unit in all the Confederate army. They were the Yellowlegs, the lowest of the low, and no one thing was more symptomatic of their status than the guns they had been issued. Those weapons were still in store, but Starbuck had found the key hanging behind the office door and had unlocked the armory shed to find it filled with crates of old smoothbore muskets. Starbuck had brushed the dust off one musket stock and lifted out the weapon. It felt clumsy, while the wooden shaft beneath the barrel had shrunk over the years so that the metal barrel hoops were loose. He peered at the lock and saw the word "Virginia" stamped there, while behind the hammer was written "Richmond, 1808." The gun must have been a flintlock originally and at some time updated by conversion to percussion cap, but despite the modernization it was still a horrible weapon. These old muskets, made for killing Redcoats, had no rifling inside the barrel, which meant that the bullet did not spin in its flight and so lacked the accuracy of a rifle. At fifty paces the big-bore 1808 musket might be as lethal as an Enfield rifle, but at any greater range it was hopelessly inaccurate. Starbuck had seen plenty of men carrying such antiquated guns into battle and had felt sorry for them, but he knew for a fact that thousands of modern rifles had been captured from the North during the summer's campaign, and it seemed perverse to arm his men with these museum pieces. Such antique weapons were a signal to the Special Battalion that they were on the army's hind teat, but that was probably a truth the men already knew. They were the soldiers no one else wanted.

  Sergeant Case had seen the open armory door and come to investigate. His tall body filled the doorway and shadowed the dusty room. "You," he had said flatly when he saw Starbuck.

  "Me," Starbuck agreed pleasantly enough.

  "Got a habit of poking your nose where it don't belong, Lieutenant," Case said. His menacing presence loomed in the dusty shed while his flat, hard eyes stared at Starbuck like a predator sizing up its kill.

  Starbuck had thrown the musket to the sergeant, thrown it hard enough to make Case step back a pace as he caught it. "You'd want to fight Yankees with one of those, Sergeant?" Starbuck asked.

  Case twirled the musket in his big right hand as though it weighed no more than a cornstalk. "They won't be doing no fighting, Lieutenant. These men ain't fit to fight. And that's why you were sent to us." Case's small head jerked back and forth on the ludicrous neck as he spat his insults. "Because you ain't fit to fight. You're a bloody drunkard, Lieutenant, so don't give me any talk of fighting. You don't know what fighting is. I was a Royal Fusilier, boy, a proper soldier, boy, and I know soldiering and I know fighting, and I know you ain't up to it else you wouldn't be here." Case threw the musket hard back, stinging Starbuck's hands with the impact of the weapon. The tall sergeant stepped further inside the armory and thrust his broken-nosed face close to Starbuck. "And one other thing, boy. You pull rank on me one more time and I'll nail your hide to a tree and piss all over it. Now put that musket back where you found it, give me the armory key, and bugger off where you belong."

  Not now, Starbuck had told himself, not now. This was not the time to put Case right, and so he had merely put the musket in its box, meekly handed Case the key, and walked away.

  Now, at the supper table, Starbuck was again the butt of bullies only this time it was Thomas Dennison and his cronies who had their sport with a man they believed was a weakling. Captain Lippincott rolled a peach to Starbuck. "Reckon you'd prefer a brandy, Potter," Lippincott said.

  "Reckon I would," Starbuck said.

  "Sir," Dennison said immediately.

  "Reckon I would, sir," Starbuck said humbly. He had to play the fool so long as he decided against revealing
his identity, but it went hard on him. He told himself to stay calm and to play the failure for a short while yet.

  Lippincott edged his brandy glass toward Starbuck, daring him to take it, but Starbuck did not move. "Of course there's one thing to be said for being a drunk," Lippincott said, taking the glass back, "it means you'll probably sleep away the days here. Better than sitting around doing nothing. Ain't that right, Potter?"

  "Right," Starbuck agreed.

  "Sir," Dennison said, then hiccuped.

  "Sir," Starbuck said.

  "I ain't saying I'm not grateful for being here," Lippincott went on gloomily, "butr hell, they could give us some entertainment."

  "Plenty in Richmond," Dennison said airily.

  "If you've got the money," Lippincott acknowledged, "which I ain't."

  Dennison stretched back in his chair. "You'd rather be in a fighting regiment?" he asked Lippincott. "They could always transfer you. If that's what you want, Dan, I'll tell Holborrow you're eager to go." Lippincott, a sallow man with a fringe of beard, said nothing. Most of the Yellowlegs officers had been transferred, either to garrison duty or to the provosts, but a few had been posted to fighting battalions, a fate that plainly worried these remaining captains, though not Dennison, whose skin disease was sufficient to keep him out of harm's way. He gingerly touched one of the horrid sores on his face. "If the doctors could just cure this," he said in a tone that suggested he was confident that the disease was incurable, "I'd volunteer for a transfer."

  "You are taking the medicine, Tom?" Lippincott asked.

  "Of course I am," Dennison snapped. "Can't you smell it?"

  Starbuck could indeed smell something medicinal, and the smell was oddly familiar; a thin rank odor that disturbed him, but which he could not quite place. "What medicine is it, sir?" he asked.