Battle Flag Read online

  "King David," Starbuck said aloud. King David had sent Uriah the Hittite into the front line of the battle so that Bathsheba would become a widow. "Set ye Uriah in the fore­front of the hottest battle"—the verse came back to Starbuck—"and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die." Well, damn Faulconer, who had made Swynyard set Starbuck in the forefront of the hottest battle that he might be smitten and die. "We're getting out of here!" Starbuck shouted across to Captain Medlicott.

  Medlicott, though officially in command, was grateful for the younger man's leadership. "Back!" he shouted at G Company.

  The Yankees cheered and jeered as they saw the handful of skirmishers retreat. "Enjoying your licking, boys!" one Northerner shouted. "Keep on running! We'll be right after you!" called another, while a third shouted to give his respects to Stonewall Jackson, "And tell him we'll hang him real gentle now!"

  "Steady now!" Starbuck called to his men. He kept his back to the enemy, concentrating on his company. "Back to the trees! Steady, don't run!" No one else from the Brigade was in sight. Swynyard or Faulconer must have taken the whole Brigade back into the woods, abandoning Starbuck and Medlicott to the enemy. But why had Bird not protested? A shell landed just behind Starbuck, buffeting him with its hot punch of air. He turned and saw the Yankee skirmishers running toward him. "Double back to the woods!" he shouted, so releasing his men from their slow, steady withdrawal. "Muster them by the road, Sergeant!" he called to Truslow.

  More Northern jeers and a handful of bullets followed the skirmishers' hurried retreat. The Yankees were in high spirits. They had waited a long time to give Stonewall Jackson a whipping, and now they were laying the lash on thick and hard. Back among the trees beside the turnpike Starbuck's men panted as they crouched and looked nervously at their officer, who, in turn, was watching the shadows lengthen across the wheat field. He was also watch­ing the far tree line, where still more guns and infantry had appeared. The Yankees were triumphant and the rebels beaten. "If we stay here"—Medlicott had joined Starbuck again—"we'll like as not be prisoners."

  "Swynyard put you in command," Starbuck said pointedly.

  Medlicott hesitated, unhappy to take responsibility, then diffidently suggested that the two companies should retreat further through the trees. To the east of the turnpike a furious artillery battle was deafening the evening air. Smoke poured off the hillside where rebel guns were emplaced, but those cannon were of no use to the beaten men west of the turn­pike, where the Yankee line had crushed the standing corn to drive Jackson's infantry back into the timber on the valley's southern crest. The Northern guns had the range of those trees now, and the green summer woods were filled with the whistling menace of shrapnel. Starbuck wondered where the Georgia regiment had gone and where the rest of the Brigade was hidden.

  "I can't see the Brigade!" Medlicott said despairingly. A salvo of shells cracked ahead of the skirmishers, filling the trees with whistling shards of hot metal. The men leading the retreat had followed the twisting path into a small hollow, and now they instinctively crouched rather than leave their scanty cover to walk into that zone of fire. The perplexed and frightened Captain Medlicott seemed content to let them rest. "Maybe we should send a patrol to look for the Brigade?" he suggested to Starbuck.

  "While the rest of us wait here to be captured?" Starbuck asked sarcastically.

  "I don't know," Medlicott said. The miller was suddenly bereft of confidence and initiative. His doughy face looked hurt, like that of a child struck for an offense it had not committed.

  "Yankees!" Truslow called warningly, pointing west to where blue uniforms had appeared in the woods.

  "Stay still!" Medlicott shouted in sudden panic. "Get down!"

  Starbuck would have gone on retreating, hoping to join up with the rebel reserve, but Medlicott had been panicked into making a decision, and the men crouched gratefully in the shadows. Two of Starbuck's company lowered a body they had been carrying. "Shall we bury him?" one of the two men asked Starbuck.

  "Who is it?" It was dark under the trees, and the evening was drawing in.

  "Tom Petty."

  "Oh, dear God," Starbuck said. He had seen Petty wounded but had thought he would live, and surely Petty had deserved to live, for he had been a boy, not a man. He had used to shave each morning, but the blade had made no difference to his cheeks. He had only used the razor to explain his lack of beard, but he had been a good soldier, cheerful and willing. Starbuck had planned to make him up to corporal, but now it would have to be Mellors, who was not nearly so quick on the uptake. "Scratch him a grave," he said, "and get Corporal Waggoner to say a prayer for him."

  All around them the shouts of the Yankees grew louder. The woodland was filled with screaming shells, so many that at times the torn leaves looked like a green snow drifting through the warm evening air. The trees echoed with the pathetic cries of dying men. Lieutenant Coffman hunkered down beside Starbuck, his small face showing bewilderment because his beloved Southerners were being whipped, because the North was winning, and because nothing in his world made sense.

  The Reverend Elial Starbuck shared in the joy as the realiza­tion of victory dawned on the Yankee headquarters. And what a victory it was proving! Prisoners had confirmed that the enemy commander was indeed the notorious Stonewall Jackson. "The wretch won't be fetching his supper from my supply wagons tonight!" General Banks exulted. It was true that the enemy was still holding firm on the slopes of Cedar Mountain, but Banks's staff brought message after message that told how the Federal right wing under General Crawford was driving the rebels clean across the valley and into the woods beyond. "Now we'll turn their flank!" Banks exclaimed, gesturing extravagantly to show how he meant to hook the right wing of his army around the backside of Cedar Mountain and thus surround the remnants of the Confederate army. "Maybe we'll have Jackson as our supper guest tonight!"

  "I doubt he'll have much appetite after this drubbing," an artillery major observed.

  "Fellow's reputed to eat damned strangely anyway," an aide responded, then blushed for having sworn in front of the Reverend Starbuck. "Nothing but stale bread and chopped cabbage, I hear."

  "You and I could chop the rogue some cabbage, eh, Starbuck?" General Banks thus drew his distinguished guest into the jubilant conversation.

  "I would make him eat what the slaves eat!" the Reverend Starbuck said.

  "I think he eats worse than any slave!" Banks jested. "Force a slave to eat what Jackson dines on and the whole world would revile our inhumanity. Maybe we should punish the man by giving him a proper meal? Oysters and pheasant, you think?"

  Banks's aides laughed, and their master turned his gaze back to the battle smoke that was already touched with a faint pink tinge of evening sunlight. In the slanting light Banks looked quite superb: straight-backed, stern-faced, the very image of a soldier, and suddenly, after months of disap­pointment, the politician did at last feel like a soldier. He had, Banks modestly admitted to himself, grown into the job and was now ready for the battles to come. For despite this day's splendid victory, there would be more battles. With Stonewall Jackson defeated, General Robert Lee, who was protecting Richmond from McClellan's army, would be forced north even if such a move did open the rebel capital to McClellan's forces. McClellan would dutifully overwhelm the Richmond defenses, Pope would crush Lee, and then, bar some mopping up on the Mississippi and skull-breaking in the deep South, the war would be over. Better, it would be won. All that remained was a few battles, a rebel surrender, a Federal victory parade, and most important of all, the absolute necessity for President Lincoln and the dunder­heads in the United States Congress to realize that it had been Nathaniel Prentiss Banks who had precipitated the whole process. My God, Banks thought, but others would try to steal his glory now! John Pope would doubtless make the attempt, and George McClellan would certainly write to every newspaper editor in creation, which made it all the more important for this night's victory dispatch to be written firmly and clea
rly. Tonight's dispatch, Banks knew, would fashion history books for years to come, but more important, the words he wrote tonight would garner votes for the remainder of his career.

  Federal officers gathered round to offer the General their congratulations. The commander of Banks's bodyguard, a tall Pennsylvanian Zouave, handed the General a silver stirrup ' cup of brandy. "A toast to your triumph, sir," the Zouave proclaimed. A ragged line of disconsolate prisoners trudged past the group of horsemen. One or two of the captured seceshers glanced sullenly at the Northern General, and one rogue spat in his direction, but tonight, Banks thought, he would have the most valuable prisoner as his dinner guest. He would treat General Jackson with courtesy, as a gallant soldier should, and the world would wonder at the victor's modesty. Then Banks imagined himself at another dinner table, a much grander table in Washington that would gleam with massive presidential silver, and in his mind's eye he saw the foreign diplomats and their admiring be-jeweled wives bend forward to catch his words. President Banks! And why not? George Washington might have made this country, but it had needed Nathaniel Premiss Banks to save it.

  A mile south of Banks, in a belt of woodland where fires started by shell fire tortured the wounded, men screamed and fought and died. The Yankee counterattack was being slowed by the undergrowth and by the stubborn defiance of Southern riflemen, whose muzzle flames stabbed bright in the smoky shadows. Shells slashed through the treetops, thrashing the branches and hammering the sky with their explosions. Blood and smoke reeked, a man called for his mother in the voice of a child, another cursed God, but still the North pushed on, yard by hard yard, going through hell in search of peace.

  "Nothing is served," General Washington Faulconer said icily, "by breaking the Brigade into small detachments. We shall go into battle united."

  "If there's any battle left," Swynyard said with a manic glee. He seemed to be enjoying the panic that had infected the western side of Jackson's battle.

  "Watch your tongue, Colonel," Faulconer snapped. He was more than usually displeased with his second-in-command, who had already lost a quarter of the Legion instead of just Starbuck's company, and what was left of the Brigade must be husbanded, not frittered away by being committed to the battle in dribs and drabs. Faulconer edged his horse away from Swynyard and gazed at the woods, which were filled with smoke and thrashing from the passage of Northern shells and bolts. God only knew what had happened in the wide valley beyond those woods, but even here, far behind where the fighting had taken place, the evidence of impending disaster was awesome and obvious. Wounded men staggered back from the trees; some of the injured were being helped by friends, others crawled or limped painfully back to where the surgeons hacked and sawed and probed. Many of the fugitives were not wounded at all but were merely frightened men who were trying to escape the Yankee advance.

  Faulconer had no intention of allowing that advance to enmesh his Brigade. "I want the 65th on the right," Faulconer called to Swynyard, referring to the 65th Virginia, which was the second largest regiment after the Legion in Faulconer's Brigade, "the Arkansas men in the center, and the 12th Florida on the left. Everyone else in reserve two hundred paces behind." That meant that the remaining six companies of the Legion, who were presently the foremost battalion in the Brigade, would now become Faulconer's rearmost line. The redeployment was hardly necessary, but moving the front line to the rear killed some precious moments while Faulconer tried to determine just what disas­ters were happening beyond the woods. "And, Colonel!" Faulconer called after Swynyard, "send Bird to reconnoiter the ground. Tell him to report to me within a half hour!"

  "Colonel Bird's already gone," Swynyard said. "Went to fetch his skirmishers back."

  "Without orders?" Faulconer asked angrily. "Then tell him to explain himself to me the instant he returns. Now go!"

  "Sir?" Captain Thomas Pryor, one of Washington Faulconer's new aides, interjected nervously.

  "Captain?" Faulconer acknowledged.

  "General Jackson's orders were explicit, sir. We should advance quick, sir, with whatever units are available. Into the trees, sir." Pryor gestured nervously toward the woods.

  But Faulconer had no wish to advance quick. The woods seemed to be alive with smoke and flame, almost as though the earth itself was heaving in the throes of some mythic struggle. Rifle fire cracked, men screamed, and cannons pumped their percussive explosions through the humid air, and Faulconer had no desire to plunge into that maelstrom. He wanted order and sense, and a measure of safety. "General Jackson," he told Pryor, "is panicking. We serve no purpose by committing ourselves piecemeal. We shall advance in good order or not at all." He turned away from the battle and rode back to where his second line would be formed. That reserve line consisted of the six remaining companies of the Legion and the whole of the 13th Florida, two regiments that Faulconer had every intention of holding back until his first line was fully committed to the fight. Only if the first line broke and ran would the second line fight, and then merely to serve as a rear guard for the fugitive first line. Washington Faulconer told himself he was being prudent, and that such prudence might well save a defeat from being a rout.

  He wondered where Starbuck was and felt the familiar flare of hatred. Faulconer blamed Starbuck for all his ills. It was Starbuck who had humiliated him at Manassas, Starbuck who had suborned Adam, and Starbuck who had defied him by remaining in the Legion. Faulconer was con­vinced that if he could just rid himself of Starbuck, then he could make the Brigade into the most efficient unit of the Confederate army, which was why he had ordered Swynyard to place a company of skirmishers far ahead of the Brigade's position. He had trusted Swynyard to know precisely which company of skirmishers was to be thus sacrificed, but he had hardly expected the drunken fool to throw away both com­panies. Yet even that loss might be worthwhile, Faulconer reflected, if Starbuck was among the casualties.

  On Faulconer's left a column of rebel troops advanced at the double, while another, marching just as quickly, headed for the woods to the right of his Brigade. Reinforcements were clearly reaching the fighting, which meant, Faulconer decided, that he had no need to hurl his own men forward in a desperate panic. Slow and steady would win this fight, and that natural caution was reinforced by the sight of a riderless horse, its flank a sheet of crimson, limping southward down the turnpike with its reins trailing in the dust and its stirrups dripping with blood.

  The Faulconer Brigade laboriously formed its new battle lines. In the first rank were the 65th Virginia, Haxall's men from Arkansas, and the 12th Florida. The three regiments raised their dusty flags, the banners' bright colors already faded from too much sun and shredded by too many bullets. The standards hung limp in the windless air. Colonel Swynyard gave his horse to one of his two cowed slaves, then took his place at the center of the forward line, where lust at last overcame caution and made him take a flask from a pouch on his belt. "I see our gallant Colonel is inoculating himself against the risks of battle," General Faulconer remarked sardonically to Captain Pryor.

  "By drinking water, sir?" Pryor asked in puzzlement. Thomas Pryor was new to the Brigade. He was the younger son of a Richmond banker who did much business with Washington Faulconer, and the banker had pleaded with Faulconer to take on his son. "Thomas is a good-natured fellow," the banker had written, "too good, probably, so maybe a season of war will teach him that mankind is not inherently honest?"

  A second's silence greeted Pryor's naive assumption that Swynyard was drinking water, then a gale of laughter swept the Brigade headquarters. "Swynyard's water," Faulconer informed Pryor, "is the kind that provides the Dutch with courage, puts men to sleep, and wakes them sore-headed." The General smiled at his own wit, then turned indignantly as a mounted man galloped toward him from the turnpike.

  "You're to advance, sir!" the officer shouted. The man had a drawn sword in his right hand.

  Faulconer did not move. Instead he waited as the officer curbed his horse. The beast tossed its head and stam
ped ner­vously. It was flecked with sweat and rolling its eyes white. "You have orders for me?" Faulconer asked the excited officer.

  "From General Jackson, sir. You're to advance with the other brigades, sir." The aide gestured toward the woods, but Faulconer still made no move other than to hold out a hand. The aide gaped at him. No one else on this field had demanded written orders, for surely no one could doubt the urgency of the cause. If the Yankees won here, then there was nothing to stop them crossing the Rapidan and breaking Richmond's rail links with the Shenandoah Valley, and nothing, indeed, to stop them advancing on the rebel capi­tal. This was not a time for written orders but for Southern men to fight like heroes to protect their country. "General Jackson's compliments, sir," the aide said in a tone that barely managed to stay on the civil side of insolence, "and his regrets that he has no time to put his orders into writing, but he would be most obliged if you were to advance your Brigade into the trees and help dislodge the enemy."

  Faulconer looked at the woods. Fugitives still emerged from the shadows, but most were now men wounded by the fighting rather than frightened men seeking safety. Nearer to the Brigade two small guns were being unlimbered by the road, but the cannons looked a pitiable force to withstand the noisy Northern onslaught that churned among the shad­owed woods. Those shadows were long, cast by a sun that reddened in the west. Flames started by shell fire flickered deep among the trees where rifles snapped angrily. "Am I to tell General Jackson that you won't advance, sir?" the mounted officer asked in a voice cracked with near despair. He had not given his name nor announced his authority, but the urgency in his tone and the drawn sword in his hand were all the authority he needed.