The Bloody Ground - Starbuck 04 Read online

  "Back then, Faulconer," Thorne continued, "I was working for the Inspector General's Department. I did the jobs no one else wanted. Now I am more exalted, but still no more popular with this army than I was when I inspected their damned latrines or wondered why they needed so many clerks. But now, Faulconer, I have a measure of power. It is not mine, but belongs to my master and he lives in that house there." He jerked the cigar toward the White House. "You follow me?"

  "I think so, sir."

  "The president, Faulconer, believes as I do that this army is largely commanded by cretins. The army, of course, believes that the country is ruled by fools, and perhaps both are right, but for the moment, Faulconer, I'd put my money on the fools rather than the cretins. Officially I am a mere liaison officer between the fools and the cretins, but in reality, Faulconer, I am the president's creature in the army. My job is to prevent the cretins from being more than usually cretinous. I want your help."

  Adam said nothing, not because he was reluctant to help, but because he was astonished by Thorne and his words. He was also cheered by them. The North, for all its power, seemed to be wallowing helplessly in the face of the rebellion's energy and that made no sense to Adam, but here, at last, was a man who had a vigor to match the enemy's defiance.

  "Did you know, Faulconer, that your father has become Deputy Secretary of War for the Confederacy?" Thorne asked.

  "No, sir, I didn't."

  "Well, he is. In time, maybe, that will be useful, but not now." Thorne pulled a sheet of paper toward him and in so doing toppled another pile that spilt close to the gas jet. A corner of paper burst into flames that Thorne slapped out with the air of a man forever extinguishing such accidental fires. "You left the Confederacy three months ago and joined Galloway's Horse?" he asked, taking the facts from the paper he had selected.

  "Yes, sir."

  "He was a good man, Galloway. He had some bright ideas, which is why, of course, this army starved him of men and resources. But it was still a damn fool idea for Galloway to get mixed up in battle. You were supposed to be scouts, not shock troops. Galloway died, yes?"

  "I'm afraid so, sir."

  "And his second in command is missing, maybe dead, maybe captured. What was his name?"

  "Blythe, sir," Adam said bitterly. He had never liked, much less trusted, Billy Blythe.

  "So Galloway's Horse, so far as I can see, is a dead beast," Thorne said. "No employment for you there, Faulconer. Are you married?"

  The sudden question surprised Adam. He shook his head. "No, sir."

  "Quite right, too. A mistake to marry early." Thorne went silent for a moment. "I'm making you a major," he said abruptly, then waved Adam's embarrassed thanks to silence. "I'm not promoting you because you deserve it, I don't know if you do, but because if you work for me you'll be constantly harassed by brainless staff officers and the higher your rank the less obnoxious that harassment will be." "Yes, sir," Adam said.

  Thorne drew on his cigar and stared at Adam. He liked what he saw. Major Adam Faulconer was a young man, fair haired and bearded, with a square, trustworthy face. He was, Thorne knew, an instinctive Unionist and an honest man, but maybe, Thorne reflected, those were the wrong qualities for this job. Maybe he needed a rogue, but the choice had not belonged to Thorne. "So what are you to do, Faulconer? I shall tell you." He stood again and began pacing up and down behind his desk. "We have hundreds of sympathizers behind the enemy lines and most of them are no damn good. They see a rebel regiment march past and they're so overawed by the col-umn's length that they report ten thousand men where in truth they've only seen a thousand. They send their messages and Detective Pinkerton multiplies their figure by three and Little George quakes in his fighting boots and begs Halleck to send him another army corps, and that, Faulconer, is how we've been conducting this war."

  "Yes, sir," Adam said.

  Thorne tugged up a window sash to let some of the cigar smoke out of the room. The city's sewage stench wafted in with a flutter of moths that flew suicidally toward the yellow-blue flames of the gas jets. Thorne turned back to Adam. "But I have a handful of agents of my own, and one of them is of particular value. He's a lazy man and I doubt that his allegiance to the North is anything other than a cynical calculation as to the war's outcome, but he has the possibility of revealing the rebels' strategy to us, everything! How many? Where? Why? The same kind of thing you tried to reveal on the peninsula. But he's also a timid man. His patriotism is not so strong that he fancies a hempen rope round his neck on a rebel gallows, and for that reason he is a cautious man. He will send us dispatches, but he will not use any means except those of his own devising. He won't risk his neck trying to ride through the lines, but said I could provide a courier who could run that risk, but he insisted it would have to be someone he could trust." Thorne paused to draw on his cigar, then jabbed it toward Adam. "He named you."

  Adam said nothing. Instead he was trying to think of someone who matched Thorne's description, someone he obviously knew well in his native Virginia, but he could pluck no name or face out of his tangled memories. For a few wild seconds he wondered if it was his father, then he dismissed that thought. His father would never betray Virginia as Adam had done. "Might I ask—" Adam began.

  "No," Thorne interrupted. "I'm not giving you his name. You don't need his name. If a message reaches you then you'll probably realize who he is, but it won't help you to know now. To be frank, Faulconer, I don't know what will help you. All I know is that one weak man in the Confederacy has told me he'll address his dispatches to you, but beyond that all is mystery." Thorne spread his arms in a gesture that expressed his own dissatisfaction with the clumsy and imprecise arrangements he was describing. "How my man will reach you, I don't know. How you will reach him, I cannot guess. He won't take risks, so you'll have to. All I can tell you is this. Just over a week ago I sent this man a message demanding that he find an excuse, any excuse, to attach himself to Lee's headquarters and I have no reason to think he will disobey. He won't like it, but he will do as I ask. He will stay close to Lee's headquarters and you will stay close to

  McClellan's. Little George will think you're a nuisance, but you'll have papers saying that you work for the Inspector General and are preparing a report on the efficacy of the army's signaling systems. If Little George does try to hobble you, tell me and I'll rescue you." For a moment Thorne faltered, suddenly beset by the hopelessness of what he tried to do. He had told Adam the truth, but he had not revealed how ramshackle the whole arrangement was. His man in Richmond had provided Adam's name weeks before, not in connection with this scheme, but as a messenger who could be trusted and now, in utter desperation, Thorne was recruiting Adam in the hope that somehow his reluctant Southern agent could discover Lee's strategy and communicate it to Adam. The chances of success were slender, but something had to be done to neutralize Pinkerton's defeatist intelligence and to ward off the dreadful prospect of a Southern victory that would invite the damned Europeans to come and dance on America's carcass.

  "You've got a good horse?" Thorne asked Adam.

  "Very good, sir."

  "You'll need money. Here." He took a bag of coins from his desk drawer. "United States gold, Faulconer, enough to bribe rebels and maybe get you out of trouble. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that my man will send you a message saying where he will leave his dispatches. That place will be behind enemy lines, Faulconer, so you'll need a good horse and the ability to bribe any rebel scum who give you trouble. Tomorrow morning you go to the camp on Analostin Island to meet a Captain Bidwell. He'll tell you all you need to know about the signals system so that you can talk intelligently to Little George about telegraphs and wigwaggers. After that you follow Little George and wait for a message. Take the gold with you. That's all."

  Adam, so summarily dismissed, hesitated. He had a score of questions, but Thorne's brusqueness discouraged him from asking any of them. The Colonel had uncapped an inkwell and had begun writing, so Adam just
went to the desk and lifted the heavy bag, and it was not until he had reached the hallway downstairs and was buckling on his sword belt that it occurred to him that Thorne had never once asked him whether he was willing to risk his life by riding behind the rebel lines.

  But maybe Thorne had already known the answer. Adam was a patriot, and for his country that he loved so passionately, any risk was worth taking and so, at a spy's bidding, he would ride into treachery and pray for victory.

  Starbuck carried the brandy back to the office, locked the door, and lay down with the fully loaded Adams beside him. He heard Holborrow return, and later he heard the four captains go to their beds upstairs, and sometime after that he slept, but he was wary of Captain Dennison's revenge and so his sleep was fitful, though he was dreaming by the time Camp Lee's bugles called a raucous reveille to startle him awake. The sight of the undrunk brandy bottle reminded him of the previous night's confrontation and he took care to strap his revolver about his waist before he went through the house to the backyard, where he pumped himself a bucket of water. A mutinous Lucifer glared at him from the kitchen door. "We'll be leaving here in an hour or so," Starbuck told him. "We're going back to the city." "Heaven be praised."

  "Bring me some coffee with the shaving water, would you? And bread?"

  Back in Maitland's old office Starbuck went through the papers to glean whatever other information he could about the battalion. This, he had decided, was the day that he revealed his true identity, but not till he had bargained the knowledge he had gleaned for some advantage and to do that he needed a bargainer. He needed the lawyer, Belvedere Delaney, and so he spent the dawn hours writing Delaney a long letter. The letter enabled him to put his ideas into order. He decided he would have Lucifer deliver the letter, then he would wait at Sally's apartment. The letter took the best part of an hour, but at last it was done and he shouted for Lucifer. It was well after reveille, but no one else was stirring in the big house. It seemed that neither Holborrow nor the battalion's four captains were early risers.

  The door opened behind Starbuck. "We can go," he said, without turning round.

  "Sir?" A timid voice answered.

  Starbuck whipped round. It was not Lucifer at the door, but instead a small anxious face surrounded by brown hair that hung in pretty long curls. Starbuck stared at the girl who stared back at him with something akin to terror in her eyes. "I was told—" she began, then faltered.

  "Yes?" Starbuck said.

  "I was told Lieutenant Potter was here. A sergeant told me." The girl faltered again. Starbuck could hear Holborrow shouting down the stairs for his slave to bring hot shaving water. "Come in," Starbuck said. "Please, come in. Can I take your cloak?"

  "I don't want to cause no trouble," the girl said, "I truly don't."

  "Give me your cloak. Sit, please. That chair will be fine. Might I have your name, ma'am?" Starbuck had almost called her miss, then saw the cheap wedding ring glinting on her left hand.

  "I'm Martha Potter," she said very faintly. "I don't want to be no trouble, I really don't."

  "You aren't, ma'am, you aren't," Starbuck said. He had suspected from the moment the brown curls had timidly appeared around the door that this was the real Mrs. Potter and he feared that the real Lieutenant Potter could not be far behind. That would be a nuisance, for Starbuck wanted to reveal his true identity in his own way and not have the denouement forced on him by circumstance, but he hid his consternation as Martha timidly perched on the edge of a chair. She wore a homespun dress that had been turned so that the lower skirt had become the upper to save the material's wear and tear. The pale brown dress was neatly sewn, while her shawl, though threadbare, was scrupulously clean. "We were expecting you, ma'am," Starbuck said.

  "You were?" Martha sounded surprised, as if no one had ever paid her the compliment of expectation before. "It's just—" she began, then stopped.

  "Yes?" Starbuck tried to prompt her.

  "He is here?" she asked eagerly. "My husband?"

  "No, ma'am, he's not," Starbuck said and Martha began to cry. The tears were not demonstrative, nor loud, just a helpless silent weeping that embarrassed Starbuck. He fumbled in his coat pocket for a handkerchief, found none, and could see nothing suitable to mop up tears anywhere else in the office. "Some coffee, ma'am?" he suggested.

  "I don't want to be no trouble," she said through her quiet sobs, which she tried to staunch with the tasseled edge of her shawl.

  Lucifer arrived, ready to leave for Richmond. Starbuck waved him out of the room. "And bring us a pot of coffee, Lucifer," he called after the boy.

  "Yes, Lieutenant Potter," Lucifer said from the hall.

  The girl's head snapped up. "He ..." she began, then stopped. "Did I?" She tried again, then sniffed back tears.

  "Ma'am." Starbuck sat opposite her and leaned forward. "Do you know where your husband is?"

  "No," she wailed the word. "No!"

  He gradually eased the tale out of the waiflike girl. Lucifer brought the coffee, then squatted in the office corner, his presence a constant reminder of Starbuck's promise that they were supposed to be leaving this hateful place. Martha cuffed at her tears, sipped at the coffee, and told the sad tale of how she had been raised in Hamburg, Tennessee, a small river village a few miles north of the Mississippi border. "I'm an orphan, sir," she told Starbuck, "and was raised by my grandma, but she took queer last winter and died round Christmas." After that, Martha said, she had been put to work by a family in Corinth, Mississippi, "but I weren't never happy, sir. They treated me bad, real bad. The master, sir, he—" she faltered.

  "I can guess," Starbuck said.

  She sniffed, then told how, in May, the rebel forces had fallen back on the town and she had met Matthew Potter. "He spoke so nice, sir, so nice," she said, and marriage to Potter had seemed like a dream come true as well as an escape from her vile employer and so, within days of meeting him, Martha had stood in the parlor of a Baptist minister's house and married her soldier.

  Then she discovered her new husband was a drunkard. "He didn't drink those first few days, sir, but that was because they locked all the liquor up. Then he found some and he didn't never look back. Not that he's a bad drunk, sir, not like some men. I mean he don't hit anyone when he's drunk, he just don't ever get sober. Colonel Hard' castle threw him out of the regiment for drunkenness, and I can't blame him, but Matthew's a good man really."

  "But where is he, ma'am?" Starbuck asked.

  "That's it, sir. I don't know." She began sobbing again, but managed to tell how, after Potter had been dismissed from the 3rd Mississippean Infantry Battalion, he had used Martha's small savings to take them back home to Georgia, where his father had refused to receive either Potter or his new wife. "We stayed in Atlanta awhile, sir, then his pa told us to get ourselves up here and see Colonel Holborrow. He sent us the money to come here, sir, which was real Chris-tian of him, I thought. Then Matthew and me got here three days since and I ain't seen him once in all those days."

  "So he's drunk in Richmond?" Starbuck suggested flatly.

  "I guess, sir, yes."

  "But where have you been staying?" Starbuck asked.

  "At a Mrs. Miller's house, sir, in Charity Street, only Mrs. Miller says her rooms ain't charity, if you follow me, and if we don't pay her the rent by this morning she'll throw me out, sir, and so I came here. But I don't want to be no trouble." She looked as if she would cry again, but instead she frowned at Starbuck. "You ain't Colonel Holborrow, are you, sir?"

  "No, I'm not, ma'am," Starbuck paused, then offered Martha what he hoped was a reassuring smile. He liked her, partly because she seemed so very fragile and timid, and partly, he guiltily confessed to himself, because there was an appealing prettiness under her mask of misery. There was also, he suspected, a streak of stubborn toughness that she would probably need to survive marriage to Matthew Potter. "I'm a friend of yours, ma'am," he told her. "You have to believe that. I've been pretending to be your husband and doing hi
s work so that he wouldn't get into trouble. Can you understand that? But now we have to go and find him."

  "Hallelujah," Lucifer murmured.

  "You've been doing his work, sir?" Martha asked, incredulous that anyone would perform such a kindness for her wastrel husband.

  "Yes," Starbuck said. "And now we're all going to walk out of here and go find your Matthew. And if anyone speaks to us, ma'am, then I beg you to keep silent. Do you promise to do that for me?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then let's go, shall we?" Starbuck handed Martha her thin cloak, collected his papers, paused to make certain no one was outside the door, then ushered Lucifer and Martha through the hall and across the verandah. It promised to be a hot, sunlit day. Starbuck hurried toward the nearest huts, hoping to make good his escape without being seen, but then a voice shouted at him from the house. "Potter!"

  Martha uttered an exclamation and Starbuck had to remind her of the promise to say nothing. "And stay here," he went on, "both of you." Then he turned and walked back toward the house.

  It was Captain Dennison who had called and who now jumped down the verandah steps. The Captain looked as if he had just risen from his bed, for he was in his shirtsleeves and was pulling bright red suspenders over his shoulders as he hurried toward Starbuck. "I want you, Potter," he called.

  "Looks like you found me," Starbuck said as he confronted the angry captain.

  "You call me 'sir.'" Dennison was standing close to Starbuck now and the smell of the ointment the Captain had smeared on his diseased face was almost overpowering. It was a peculiarly sour smell, not kerosene, and suddenly Starbuck placed it, and the memory of his time in the Richmond prison came flooding back in a wave of nausea. "You call me 'sir'!" Dennison said again, thrusting a finger hard into Starbuck's chest.

  "Yes, sir."

  Dennison grimaced. "You threatened me last night, Potter." "Did I, sir?"

  "Yes you damn well did. So either you come into the house, Potter, right now and apologize in front of the other officers, or else you face the consequences."