Читать книгу Rebel - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 10

SEVEN SPRINGS, Washington Faulconer’s house in Faulconer County, was everything Starbuck dreamed it would be, everything Adam had ever told him it would be, and everything Starbuck thought he might ever want a house to be. It was, he decided from the very first moment he saw it on that Sunday morning in late May, just perfect.

Seven Springs was a sprawling white building just two stories high except where a white clock tower surmounted a stable gate and where a rickety cupola, steepled with a weather-vane, graced the main roof. Starbuck had expected something altogether more pretentious, something with high pillars and elegant pilasters, with arching porticoes and frowning pediments, but instead the big house seemed more like a lavish farmhouse that over the years had absent-mindedly spread and multiplied and reproduced itself until it was a tangle of steep roofs, shadowed reentrants and creeper-hung walls. The heart of the house was made of thick fieldstone, the outer wings were timber, while the black-shuttered and iron-balconied windows were shaded by tall trees under which were set white painted benches, long-roped swings, and broad tables. Smaller trees were brilliant with red and white blossom that fell to make drifts of color on the well-scythed lawn. The house and its garden cradled a marvelous promise of warm domesticity and unassuming comforts.

Starbuck, greeted by a Negro servant in the front hall, had first been relieved of the paper-wrapped bundles containing Washington Faulconer’s new uniforms, then a second servant took the carpetbag containing Starbuck’s own uniform, and afterward a turbanned maid came for the two heavy bundles of petticoats that had hung so awkwardly from Starbuck’s saddle bow.

He waited. A longcase clock, its painted face orbiting with moons, stars and comets, ticked heavily in a corner of the tiled hallway. The walls were papered in a floral pattern on which hung gold-framed portraits of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Washington Faulconer. The portrait of Faulconer depicted him mounted on his magnificent black horse, Saratoga, and gesturing toward what Starbuck took to be the estate surrounding Seven Springs. The hallway grate held the ashes of a fire, suggesting that the nights were still cold in this upland county. Fresh flowers stood in a crystal vase on the table where two newspapers lay folded, their headlines celebrating North Carolina’s formal secession to the Confederate cause. The house smelt of starch, lye soap and apples. Starbuck fidgeted as he waited. He did not quite know what was expected of him. Colonel Faulconer had insisted that Starbuck bring the three newly made uniforms directly to Faulconer Court House, but whether he was to be a guest in the house or was expected to find a berth with the encamped Legion, Starbuck still did not know, and the uncertainty made him nervous.

A flurry of feet on the stairs made him turn. A young woman, fair-haired, dressed in white, and excited, came running down the final flight, then checked on the bottom stair with her hand resting on the white-painted newel post. She solemnly inspected Starbuck. ‘You’re Nate Starbuck?’ she finally asked.

‘Indeed, ma’am.’ He offered her a small, awkward bow.

‘Don’t “ma’am” me, I’m Anna.’ She stepped down onto the hall floor. She was small, scarce more than five feet tall, with a pale, waiflike face that was so anxiously wan that Starbuck, if he had not known her to be one of Virginia’s wealthiest daughters, might have thought her an orphan.

Anna’s face was familiar to Starbuck from the portrait that hung in the Richmond town house, but however accurately the picture had caught her narrow head and diffident smile, the painter had somehow missed the essence of the girl, and that essence, Starbuck decided, was oddly pitiable. Anna, despite her prettiness, looked childishly nervous, almost terrified, as if she expected the world to mock her and cuff her and discard her as worthless. That look of extraordinary timidity was not helped by the hint of a strabismus in her left eye, though the squint, if it existed at all, was very slight. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said, ‘because I was looking for an excuse not to attend church, and now I can talk to you.’

‘You received the petticoats?’ Starbuck asked.

‘Petticoats?’ Anna paused, frowning, as if the word were unfamiliar to her.

‘I brought you the petticoats you wanted,’ Starbuck explained, feeling as though he was speaking to a rather stupid child.

Anna shook her head. ‘The petticoats were for father, Mister Starbuck, not me, though why he should want them, I don’t know. Maybe he thinks the supply will be constricted by war? Mother says we must stock up on medicines because of the war. She’s ordered a hundredweight of camphor, and the Lord knows how much niter paper and hartshorn too. Is the sun very hot?’

‘No.’

‘I cannot go into too fierce a sunlight, you see, in case I burn. But you say it isn’t fierce?’ She asked the question very earnestly.

‘It isn’t, no.’

‘Then shall we go for a walk? Would you like that?’ She crossed the hall and slipped a hand under Starbuck’s arm and tugged him toward the wide front door. The impetuous gesture was strangely intimate for such a timid girl, yet Starbuck suspected it was a pathetic appeal for companionship. ‘I’ve been so wanting to meet you,’ Anna said. ‘Weren’t you supposed to come here yesterday?’

‘The uniforms were a day late,’ Starbuck lied. In truth his dinner with Thaddeus Bird and the beguiling Belvedere Delaney had stretched from the early afternoon to late supper-time, and so the petticoats had not been bought till late Saturday morning, but it hardly seemed politic to admit to such dalliance.

‘Well, you’re here now,’ Anna said as she drew Starbuck into the sunlight, ‘and I’m so glad. Adam has talked so much about you.’

‘He often spoke of you,’ Starbuck said gallantly and untruthfully, for in fact Adam had rarely spoken of his sister, and never with great fondness.

‘You surprise me. Adam usually spends so much time examining his own conscience that he scarcely notices the existence of other people.’ Anna, thus revealing a more astringent mind than Starbuck had expected, nevertheless blushed, as if apologizing for her apparently harsh judgment. ‘My brother is a Faulconer to the core,’ she explained. ‘He is not very practical.’

‘Your father is practical, surely?’

‘He’s a dreamer,’ Anna said, ‘a romantic. He believes that all fine things will come true if we just have enough hope.’

‘And surely this house was not built by mere hopes?’ Starbuck waved toward the generous facade of Seven Springs.

‘You like the house?’ Anna sounded surprised. ‘Mother and I are trying to persuade Father to pull it down and build something altogether grander. Something Italian, perhaps, with columns and a dome? I would like to have a pillared temple on a hill in the garden. Something surrounded by flowers, and very grand.’

‘I think the house is lovely as it is,’ Starbuck said.

Anna made a face to show her disapproval of Starbuck’s taste. ‘Our great-great-grandfather Adam built it, or most of it. He was very practical, but then his son married a French lady and the family blood became ethereal. That’s what mother says. And she’s not strong either, so her blood didn’t help.’

‘Adam doesn’t seem ethereal.’

‘Oh, he is,’ Anna said, then she smiled up at Starbuck. ‘I do so like Northern voices. They sound so much cleverer than our country accents. Would you permit me to paint you? I’m not so good a painter as Ethan, but I work harder at it. You can sit beside the Faulconer River and look melancholy, like an exile beside the waters of Babylon.’

‘You’d like me to hang my harp upon the willows?’ Starbuck jested clumsily.

Anna withdrew her arm and clapped her hands with delight. ‘You will be marvelous company. Everyone else is so dull. Adam is being pious in the North, father is besotted with soldiering, and mother spends all day wrapped in ice.’

‘In ice?’

‘Wenham ice, from your home state of Massachusetts. I suppose, if there’s war, there’ll be no more Wenham ice and we shall have to suffer the local product. But Doctor Danson says the ice might cure mother’s neuralgia. The ice cure comes from Europe, so it must be good.’ Starbuck had never heard of neuralgia, and did not want to inquire into its nature in case it should prove to be one of the vague and indescribable feminine diseases that so often prostrated his mother and elder sister, but Anna volunteered that the affliction was a very modern one and was constituted by what she described as ‘facial headaches.’ Starbuck murmured his sympathy. ‘But father thinks she makes it up to annoy him,’ Anna continued in her timid and attenuated voice.

‘I’m sure that can’t be true,’ Starbuck said.

‘I think it might,’ Anna said in a very sad voice. ‘I sometimes wonder if men and women always irritate each other?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘This isn’t a very cheerful conversation, is it?’ Anna asked rather despairingly and in a tone that suggested all her conversations became similarly bogged down in melancholy. She seemed to sink further into despair with every second, and Starbuck was remembering Belvedere Delaney’s malicious tales of how intensely his half-brother disliked this girl, but how badly Ridley needed her dowry. Starbuck hoped those tales were nothing more than malicious gossip, for it would be a cruel world, he thought, that could victimize a girl as fey and tremulous as Anna Faulconer. ‘Did Father really say the petticoats were for me?’ she suddenly asked.

‘Your uncle said as much.’

‘Oh, Pecker,’ Anna said, as if that explained everything.

‘It seemed a very strange request,’ Starbuck said gallantly.

‘So much is strange these days,’ Anna said hopelessly, ‘and I daren’t ask Father for an explanation. He isn’t happy, you see.’

‘No?’

‘It’s poor Ethan’s fault. He couldn’t find Truslow, you see, and Father has set his heart on recruiting Truslow. Have you heard about Truslow?’

‘Your uncle told me about him, yes. He made Truslow sound rather fearful.’

‘But he is fearful. He’s frightful!’ Anna stopped to look up into Starbuck’s face. ‘Shall I confide in you?’

Starbuck wondered what new horror story he was about to hear of the dreaded Truslow. ‘I should be honored by your confidence, Miss Faulconer,’ he said very formally.

‘Call me Anna, please. I want to be friends. And I tell you, secretly, of course, that I don’t believe poor Ethan went anywhere near Truslow’s lair. I think Ethan is much too frightened of Truslow. Everyone’s frightened of Truslow, even Father, though he says he isn’t.’ Anna’s soft voice was very portentous. ‘Ethan says he went up there, but I don’t know if that’s true.’

‘I’m sure it is.’

‘I’m not.’ She put her arm back into Starbuck’s elbow and walked on. ‘Maybe you should ride up to find Truslow, Mister Starbuck?’

‘Me?’ Starbuck asked in horror.

A sudden animation came into Anna’s voice. ‘Think of it as a quest. All my father’s young knights must ride into the mountains and dare to challenge the monster, and whoever brings him back will prove himself the best, the noblest and the most gallant knight of all. What do you think of that idea, Mister Starbuck? Would you like to ride on a quest?’

‘I think it sounds terrifying.’

‘Father would appreciate it if you went, I’m sure,’ Anna said, but when Starbuck made no reply she just sighed and pulled him toward the side of the house. ‘I want to show you my three dogs! You’re to say that they’re the prettiest pets in all the world, and after that we shall fetch the painting basket and we’ll go to the river and you can hang that shabby hat on the willows. Except we don’t have willows, at least I don’t think we have. I’m not good at trees.’

But there was to be no meeting with the three dogs, nor any painting expedition, for the front door of Seven Springs suddenly opened and Colonel Faulconer stepped into the sunlight.

Anna gasped with admiration. Her father was dressed in one of his new uniforms and looked simply grand. He looked, indeed, as though he had been born to wear this uniform and to lead free men across green fields to victory. His gray frock coat was thickly brocaded with gilt and yellow lace that had been folded and woven to make a broad hem to the coat’s edges, while the sleeves were richly embroidered with intricately looped braid that climbed from the broad cuffs to above the elbows. A pair of yellow kidskin gloves was tucked into his shiny black belt, beneath which a tasseled red silk sash shimmered. His top boots gleamed, his saber’s scabbard was polished to mirror brightness and the yellow plume on his cocked hat stirred in the small warm wind. Washington Faulconer was quite plainly delighted with himself as he moved to watch his reflection in one of the tall windows. ‘Well, Anna?’ he asked.

‘It’s wonderful, Father!’ Anna said with as much animation as Starbuck suspected her capable. Two black servants had come from the house and nodded their agreement.

‘I expected the uniforms yesterday, Nate.’ Faulconer half-asked and half-accused Starbuck with the statement.

‘Shaffer’s was a day late, sir’—the lie came smoothly—‘but they were most apologetic.’

‘I forgive them, considering the excellency of their tailoring.’ Washington Faulconer could hardly take his eyes from his reflection in the window glass. The gray uniform was set off with golden spurs, gilded spur chains and golden scabbard links. He had a revolver in a soft leather pouch, the weapon’s butt looped to the belt with another golden chain. Braids of white and yellow ribbons decorated the outer seams of his breeches while his jacket’s epaulettes were cushioned in yellow and hung with gold links. He drew the ivory-hilted saber, startling the morning with the harsh scrape of the steel on the scabbard’s throat. The sun’s light slashed back from the curved and brilliantly polished blade. ‘It’s French,’ he told Starbuck, ‘a gift from Lafayette to my grandfather. Now it will be carried in a new crusade for liberty.’

‘It’s truly impressive, sir,’ Starbuck said.

‘So long as a man needs to dress in uniform to fight, then these rags are surely as good as any,’ the Colonel said with mock modesty, then slashed the saber in the empty air. ‘You’re not feeling exhausted after your journey, Nate?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then unhand my daughter and we’ll find you some work.’ But Anna would not let Starbuck go. ‘Work, Father? But it’s Sunday.’

‘And you should have gone to church, my dear.’

‘It’s too hot. Besides, Nate has agreed to be painted and surely you won’t deny me that small pleasure?’

‘I shall indeed, my dear. Nate is a whole day late in arriving and there’s work to be done. Now why don’t you go and read to your mother?’

‘Because she’s sitting in the dark enduring Doctor Danson’s ice cure.’

‘Danson’s an idiot.’

‘But he’s the only medically qualified idiot we possess,’ Anna said, once more showing a glimpse of vivacity that her demeanor otherwise hid. ‘Are you really taking Nate away, Father?’

‘I truly am, my dear.’

Anna let go of Starbuck’s elbow and gave him a shy smile of farewell. ‘She’s bored,’ the Colonel said when he and Starbuck were back in the house. ‘She can chatter all day, mostly about nothing.’ He shook his head disapprovingly as he led Starbuck down a corridor hung with bridles and reins, snaffles and bits, cruppers and martingales. ‘No trouble finding a bed last night?’

‘No, sir.’ Starbuck had put up at a tavern in Scottsville where no one had been curious about his Northern accent or had demanded to see the pass that Colonel Faulconer had provided him.

‘No news of Adam, I suppose?’ the Colonel asked wistfully.

‘I’m afraid not, sir. I did write, though.’

‘Ah well. The Northern mails must be delayed. It’s a miracle they’re still coming at all. Come’—he pushed open the door of his study—‘I need to find a gun for you.’

The study was a wonderfully wide room built at the house’s western extremity. It had creeper-framed windows on three of its four walls and a deep fireplace on the fourth. The heavy ceiling beams were hung with ancient flintlocks, bayonets and muskets, the walls with battle prints, and the mantel stacked with brass-hilted pistols and swords with snake-skin handles. A black labrador thumped its tail in welcome as Faulconer entered, but was evidently too old and infirm to climb to its feet. Faulconer stooped and ruffled the dog’s ears. ‘Good boy. This is Joshua, Nate. Used to be the best gun dog this side of the Atlantic. Ethan’s father bred him. Poor old fellow.’ Starbuck was not sure whether it was the dog or Ethan’s father who had earned the comment, but the Colonel’s next words suggested it was not Joshua being pitied. ‘Bad thing, drink,’ the Colonel said as he pulled open a bureau’s wide drawer that proved to be filled with handguns. ‘Ethan’s father drank away the family land. His mother died of the milksick when he was born, and there’s a half-brother who scooped up all the mother’s money. He’s a lawyer in Richmond now.’

‘I met him,’ Starbuck said.

Washington Faulconer turned and frowned at Starbuck. ‘You met Delaney?’

‘Mister Bird introduced me to him in Shaffer’s.’ Starbuck had no intention of revealing how the introduction had led to ten hours of the Spotswood House Hotel’s finest food and drink, all of it placed on the Faulconer account, or how he had woken on Saturday morning with a searing headache, a dry mouth, a churning belly and a dim memory of swearing eternal friendship with the entertaining and mischievous Belvedere Delaney.

‘A bad fellow, Delaney.’ The Colonel seemed disappointed in Starbuck. ‘Too clever for his own good.’

‘It was a very brief meeting, sir.’

‘Much too clever. I know lawyers who’d like to have a rope, a tall tree and Mister Delaney all attached to each other. He got all the mother’s money and poor Ethan didn’t get a thin dime out of the estate. Not fair, Nate, not fair at all. If Delaney had an ounce of decency he’d look after Ethan.’

‘He mentioned that Ethan is a very fine artist?’ Starbuck said, hoping the compliment about his future son-in-law might restore the Colonel’s good humor.

‘So Ethan is, but that won’t bring home the bacon, will it? A fellow might as well play the piano prettily, like Pecker does. I’ll tell you what Ethan is, Nate. He’s one of the finest hunters I’ve ever seen and probably the best horseman in the country. And he’s a damned fine farmer. He’s managed what’s left of his father’s land these last five years, and I doubt anyone else could have done half as well.’ The Colonel paid Ridley this generous compliment, then drew out a long-barreled revolver and tentatively spun its chambers before deciding it was not the right gun. ‘Ethan’s got solid worth, Nate, and he’ll make a good soldier, a fine soldier, though I confess he didn’t make the best recruiting officer.’ Faulconer turned to offer Starbuck a shrewd look. ‘Did you hear about Truslow?’

‘Anna mentioned him, sir. And Mister Bird did, too.’

‘I want Truslow, Nate. I need him. If Truslow comes he’ll bring fifty hard men out of the hills. Good men, natural fighters. Rogues, of course, every last one of them, but if Truslow tells them to knuckle under, they will. And if he doesn’t join up? Half the men in the county will fear to leave their livestock unguarded, so you see why I need him.’

Starbuck sensed what was coming and felt his confidence plummet. Truslow was the Yankee hater, the murderer, the demon of the hardscrabble hills.

The Colonel spun the cylinder of another revolver. ‘Ethan says Truslow’s away thieving horses and won’t be home for days, maybe weeks, but I have a feeling Truslow just avoided Ethan. He saw him coming and knew what he wanted, so ducked out of sight. I need someone Truslow doesn’t know. Someone who can talk to the fellow and discover his price. Every man has his price, Nate, especially a blackguard like Truslow.’ He put the revolver back and picked out another still more lethal-looking gun. ‘So how would you feel about going, Nate? I’m not pretending it’s an easy task because Truslow isn’t the easiest of men, and if you tell me you don’t want to do it, then I’ll say no more. But otherwise?’ The Colonel left the invitation dangling.

And Starbuck, presented with the choice, suddenly found that he did want to go. He wanted to prove that he could bring the monster down from his lair. ‘I’d be happy to go, sir.’

‘Truly?’ The Colonel sounded mildly surprised.

‘Yes, truly.’

‘Good for you, Nate.’ Faulconer snapped back the cock of the lethal-looking revolver, pulled the trigger, then decided that gun was not right either. ‘You’ll need a gun, of course. Most of the rogues in the mountains don’t like Yankees. You’ve got your pass, of course, but it’s a rare creature who can read up there. I’d tell you to wear the uniform, except folk like Truslow associate uniforms with excise men or tax collectors, so you’re much safer in ordinary clothes. You’ll just have to bluff your way if you’re challenged, and if that doesn’t work, shoot one of them.’ He chuckled, and Starbuck shuddered at the errand that now faced him. Not six months before he had been a student at Yale Theological College, immersed in an intricate study of the Pauline doctrine of atonement, and now he was supposed to shoot his way through a countryside of illiterate Yankee haters in search of the district’s most feared horse thief and murderer? Faulconer must have sensed his premonition, for he grinned. ‘Don’t worry, he won’t kill you, not unless you try and take his daughter or, worse, his horse.’

‘I’m glad to hear that, sir,’ Starbuck said dryly.

‘I’ll write you a letter for the brute, though God only knows if he can read. I’ll explain you’re an honorary southron, and I’ll make him an offer. Say fifty dollars as a signing bounty? Don’t offer him anything more, and for God’s sake don’t encourage him into thinking I want him to be an officer. Truslow will make a good sergeant, but you’d hardly want him at your supper table. His wife’s dead, so she won’t be a problem, but he’s got a daughter who might be a nuisance. Tell him I’ll find her a position in Richmond if he wants her placed. She’s probably a filthy piece of work, but no doubt she can sew or tend store.’ Faulconer had laid a walnut box on his desk, which he now turned round so that the lid’s catch faced Starbuck. ‘I don’t think this is for you, Nate, but take a look at her. She’s very pretty.’

Starbuck raised the walnut lid to reveal a beautiful ivory-handled revolver that lay in a specially shaped compartment lined with blue velvet. Other velvet-lined compartments held the gun’s silver-rimmed powder horn, bullet mold and crimper. The gold-lettered label inside the lid read ‘R. Adams, Patentee of the Revolver, 79 King William Street, London EC.’ ‘I bought her in England two years ago.’ The Colonel lifted the gun and caressed its barrel. ‘She’s a lovely thing, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, sir, she is.’ And the gun did indeed seem beautiful in the soft morning light that filtered past the long white drapes. The shape of the weapon was marvelously matched to function, a marriage of engineering and design so perfectly achieved that for a few seconds Starbuck even forgot exactly what the gun’s function was.

‘Very beautiful,’ Washington Faulconer said reverently. ‘I’ll take her to the Baltimore and Ohio in a couple of weeks.’ ‘The Baltimore …’ Starbuck began, then stopped as he realized he had not misheard. So the Colonel still wanted to lead his raid on the railroad? ‘But I thought our troops at Harper’s Ferry had blocked the line, sir.’

‘So they have, Nate, but I’ve discovered the cars are still running as far as Cumberland, then they move their supplies on by road and canal.’ Faulconer put the beautiful Adams revolver away. ‘And it still seems to me that the Confederacy is being too quiescent, too fearful. We need to attack, Nate, not sit around waiting for the North to strike at us. We need to set the South alight with a victory! We need to show the North that we’re men, not craven mudsills. We need a quick, absolute victory that will be written across every newspaper in America! Something to put our name in the history books! A victory to begin the Legion’s history.’ He smiled. ‘How does that sound?’

‘It sounds marvelous, sir.’

‘And you’ll come with us, Nate, I promise. Bring me Truslow, then you and I will ride to the rails and break a few heads. But you need a gun first, so how about this beast?’ The Colonel offered Nate a clumsy, long-barreled, ugly revolver with an old-fashioned hook-curved hilt, an awkward swan-necked hammer and two triggers. The Colonel explained that the lower ring trigger revolved the cylinder and cocked the hammer, while the upper lever fired the charge. ‘She’s a brute to fire,’ Faulconer admitted, ‘until you learn the knack of releasing the lower trigger before you pull the upper one. But she’s a robust thing. She can take a knock or two and still go on killing. She’s heavy and that makes her difficult to aim, but you’ll get used to her. And she’ll scare the wits out of anyone you point her at.’ The pistol was an American-made Savage, three and a half pounds in weight and over a foot in length. The lovely Adams, with its blue sheened barrel and soft white handle, was smaller and lighter, and fired the same size bullet, yet it was not nearly as frightening as the Savage.

The Colonel put the Adams back into his drawer, then turned and pocketed the key. ‘Now, let’s see, it’s midday. I’ll find you a fresh horse, give you that letter and some food, then you can be on your way. It isn’t a long ride. You should be there by six o’clock, maybe earlier. I’ll write you that letter, then send you Truslow hunting. Let’s be to work, Nate!’

The Colonel accompanied Starbuck for the first part of his journey, ever encouraging him to sit his horse better. ‘Heels down, Nate! Heels down! Back straight!’ The Colonel took amusement from Starbuck’s riding, which was admittedly atrocious, while the Colonel himself was a superb horseman. He was riding his favorite stallion and, in his new uniform and mounted on the glossy horse, he looked marvelously impressive as he led Starbuck through the town of Faulconer Court House, past the water mill and the livery stable, the inn and the courthouse, the Baptist and the Episcopal churches, past Greeley’s Tavern and the smithy, the bank and the town gaol. A girl in a faded bonnet smiled at the Colonel from the school house porch. The Colonel waved to her, but did not stop to talk. ‘Priscilla Bowen,’ he told Nate, who had no idea how he was supposed to remember the flood of names that was being unleashed on him. ‘She’s a pretty enough thing if you like them plump, but only nineteen, and the silly girl intends to marry Pecker. My God, but she could do better than him! I told her so too. I didn’t mince my words either, but it hasn’t done a blind bit of good. Pecker’s double her age, double! I mean it’s one thing to bed them, Nate, but you don’t have to marry them! Have I offended you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I keep forgetting your strict beliefs.’ The Colonel laughed happily. They had passed through the town, which had struck Starbuck as a contented, comfortable community and much larger than he had expected. The Legion itself was encamped to the west of the town, while Faulconer’s house was to the north. ‘Doctor Danson reckoned that the sound of military activity would be bad for Miriam,’ Faulconer explained. ‘She’s delicate, you understand.’

‘So Anna was telling me, sir.’

‘I was thinking of sending her to Germany once Anna’s safely married. They say the doctors there are marvelous.’

‘So I’ve heard, sir.’

‘Anna could accompany her. She’s delicate too, you know. Danson says she needs iron. God knows what he means. But they can both go if the war’s done by fall. Here we are, Nate!’ The Colonel gestured toward a meadow where four rows of tents sloped down toward a stream. This was the Legion’s encampment, crowned by the three-banded, seven-starred flag of the new Confederacy. Thick woods rose on the stream’s far bank, the town lay behind, and the whole encampment somehow had the jaunty appearance of a traveling circus. A baseball diamond had already been worn into the flattest part of the meadow, while the officers had made a steeplechase course along the bank of the stream. Girls from the town were perched along a steep bank that formed the meadow’s eastern boundary, while the presence of carriages parked alongside the road showed how the gentry from the nearby countryside were making the encampment into the object of an excursion. There was no great air of purpose about the men who lounged or played or strolled around the campground, which indolence, as Starbuck well knew, resulted from Colonel Faulconer’s military philosophy, which declared that too much drill simply dulled a good man’s appetite for battle. Now, in sight of his good Southerners, the Colonel became markedly more cheerful. ‘We just need two or three hundred more men, Nate, and the Legion will be unbeatable. Bringing me Truslow will be a good beginning.’

‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ Starbuck said, and wondered why he had ever agreed to face the demon Truslow. His apprehensions were sharpened because Ethan Ridley, mounted on a spirited chestnut horse, had suddenly appeared at the encampment’s main entrance. Starbuck remembered Anna Faulconer’s confident assertion that Ridley had not even dared face Truslow, and that only made him all the more nervous. Ridley was in uniform, though his gray woolen tunic looked very drab beside the Colonel’s brand-new finery.

‘So what do you think of Shaffer’s tailoring, Ethan?’ the Colonel demanded of his future son-in-law.

‘You look superb, sir,’ Ridley responded dutifully, then nodded a greeting to Starbuck, whose mare edged to the side of the road and lowered her head to crop at the grass while Washington Faulconer and Ridley talked. The Colonel was saying how he had discovered two cannon that might be bought, and was wondering if Ridley would mind going to Richmond to make the purchase and to ferret out some ammunition. The Richmond visit would mean that Ridley could not ride on the raid against the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and the Colonel was apologizing for denying his future son-in-law the enjoyment of that expedition, but Ridley seemed not to mind. In fact his dark, neatly bearded face even looked cheerful at the thought of returning to Richmond.

‘In the meantime Nate’s off to look for Truslow.’ The Colonel brought Starbuck back into the conversation.

Ridley’s expression changed instantly to wariness. ‘You’re wasting your time, Reverend. The man’s off stealing horses.’

‘Maybe he just avoided you, Ethan?’ Faulconer suggested.

‘Maybe,’ Ridley sounded grudging, ‘but I’ll still wager that Starbuck’s wasting his time. Truslow can’t stand Yankees. He blames a Yankee for his wife’s death. He’ll tear you limb from limb, Starbuck.’

Faulconer, evidently affected by Ridley’s pessimism, frowned at Starbuck. ‘It’s your choice, Nate.’

‘Of course I’ll go, sir.’

Ridley scowled. ‘You’re wasting your time, Reverend,’ he said again, with just a hint of too much force.

‘Twenty bucks says I’m not,’ Starbuck heard himself saying, and immediately regretted the challenge as a stupid display of bravado. It was worse than stupid, he thought, but a sin too. Starbuck had been taught that all wagering was sinful in the sight of God, yet he did not know how to withdraw the impulsive offer.

Nor was he sure that he wanted to withdraw because Ridley had hesitated, and that hesitation seemed to confirm Anna’s suspicion that her fiancé might indeed have evaded looking for the fearful Truslow.

‘Sounds a fair offer to me,’ the Colonel intervened happily.

Ridley stared at Starbuck, and the younger man thought he detected a hint of fear in Ridley’s gaze. Was he frightened that Starbuck would reveal his lie? Or just frightened of losing twenty dollars? ‘He’ll kill you, Reverend.’

‘Twenty dollars says I’ll have him here before the month’s end,’ Starbuck said.

‘By the week’s end,’ Ridley challenged, seeing a way out of the wager.

‘Fifty bucks?’ Starbuck recklessly raised the wager.

Washington Faulconer laughed. Fifty dollars was nothing to him, but it was a fortune to penniless young men like Ridley and Starbuck. Fifty dollars was a month’s wages to a good man, the price of a decent carriage horse, the cost of a fine revolver. Fifty dollars turned Anna’s quixotic quest into a harsh ordeal. Ethan Ridley hesitated, then seemed to feel he demeaned himself by that hesitation and so held out a gloved hand. ‘You’ve got till Saturday, Reverend, not a moment more.’

‘Done,’ Starbuck said, and shook Ridley’s hand.

‘Fifty bucks!’ Faulconer exclaimed with delight when Ridley had ridden away. ‘I do hope you’re feeling lucky, Nate.’

‘I’ll do my best, sir.’

‘Don’t let Truslow bully you. Stand up to him, you hear me?’

‘I will, sir.’

‘Good luck, Nate. And heels down! Heels down!’

Starbuck rode west toward the blue-shadowed mountains. It was a lovely day under an almost cloudless sky. Starbuck’s fresh horse, a strong mare named Pocahontas, trotted tirelessly along the grass verge of the dirt road, which climbed steadily away from the small town, past orchards and fenced meadows, going into a hilly country of small farms, lush grass and quick streams. These Virginia foothills were not good for tobacco, less good still for the famous Southern staples of indigo, rice and cotton, but they grew good walnuts and fine apples, and sustained fat cattle and plentiful corn. The farms, though small, looked finely kept. There were big barns and plump meadows and fat herds of cows whose bells sounded pleasantly languorous in the midday warmth. As the road climbed higher the farms became smaller until some were little more than corn patches hacked out of the encroaching woods. Farm dogs slept beside the road, waking to snap at the horse’s heels as Starbuck rode by.

Starbuck became more apprehensive as he rode higher into the hills. He had the insouciance and cockiness of youth, believing himself capable of any deed he set his mind to achieve, but as the sun declined he began to perceive Thomas Truslow as a great barrier that defined his whole future. Cross the barrier and life would be simple again, fail it and he would never again look in a mirror and feel respect for himself. He tried to steel himself against whatever hard reception Truslow might have for him, if indeed Truslow was in the hills at all, then he tried to imagine the triumph of success if the grim Truslow came meekly down to join the Legion’s ranks. He thought of Faulconer’s pleasure and of Ridley’s chagrin, and then he wondered how he was ever to pay the wager if he lost. Starbuck had no money and, though the Colonel had offered to pay him wages of twenty-six dollars a month, Starbuck had yet to see a cent of it.

By midafternoon the dirt road had narrowed to a rough track that ran alongside a tumbling, white whipped river that foamed at rocks, coursed between boulders and worried at fallen trees. The woods were full of bright red blossom, the hills steep, the views spectacular. Starbuck passed two deserted cabins, and once he was startled by the crash of hooves and turned, fumbling for the loaded revolver, only to see a white-tailed deer galloping away through the trees. He had begun to enjoy the landscape, and that enjoyment made him wonder whether his destiny belonged in the wild new western lands where Americans struggled to claw a new country from the grip of heathen savages. My God, he thought, but he should never have agreed to study for the ministry! At night the guilt of that abandoned career often assailed him, but here, in the daylight, with a gun at his side and an adventure ahead, Starbuck felt ready to meet the devil himself, and suddenly the words rebel and treason did not seem so bad to him after all. He told himself he wanted to be a rebel. He wanted to taste the forbidden fruits against which his father preached. He wanted to be an intimate of sin, he wanted to saunter through the valley of the shadow of death because that was the way of a young man’s dreams.

He reached a ruined sawmill where a track led south. The track was steep, forcing Starbuck off Pocahontas’s back. Faulconer had told him there was another, easier road, but this steep path was the more direct and would bring him onto Truslow’s land. The day had become hot, and sweat was prickling at Starbuck’s skin. Birds screamed from among the new pale leaves.

By late afternoon he reached the ridge line, where he remounted to stare down into the red-blossomed valley where Truslow lived. It was a place, the Colonel said, where fugitives and scoundrels had taken refuge over the years, a lawless place where sinewy men and their tough wives hacked a living from a thin soil, but a soil happily free of government. It was a high, hanging valley famous for horse thieves, where animals stolen from the rich Virginia lowlands were corralled before being taken north and west for resale. This was a nameless place where Starbuck had to confront the demon of the hardscrabble hills whose approval was so important to the lofty Washington Faulconer. He turned and looked behind, seeing the great spread of green country stretching toward the hazed horizon, then he looked back to the west, where a few trickles of smoke showed where homesteads were concealed among the secretive trees.

He urged Pocahontas down the vague path that led between the trees. Starbuck wondered what kind of trees they were. He was a city boy and did not know a redbud from an elm or a live oak from a dogwood. He could not slaughter a pig or hunt a deer or even milk a cow. In this countryside of competent people he felt like a fool, a man of no talent and too much education. He wondered whether a city childhood unfitted a man for warfare, and whether the country people with their familiarity with death and their knowledge of landscape made natural soldiers. Then, as so often, Starbuck swung from his romantic ideals of war to a sudden feeling of horror at the impending conflict. How could there be a war in this good land? These were the United States of America, the culmination of man’s striving for a perfect government and a godly society, and the only enemies ever seen in this happy land had been the British and the Indians, and both of those enemies, thanks to God’s providence and American fortitude, had been defeated.

No, he thought, but these threats of war could not be real. They were mere excitements, politics turned sour, a spring fever that would be cooled by fall. Americans might fight against the godless savages of the untamed wilderness, and were happy to slaughter the hirelings of some treacherous foreign king, but they would surely never turn on one another! Sense would prevail, a compromise would be reached, God would surely reach out his hand to protect his chosen country and its good people. Though maybe, Starbuck guiltily hoped, there would be time for one adventure first—one sunlit raid of bright flags and shining sabers and drumming hoofbeats and broken trains and burning trestles.

‘Go one pace more, boy, and I’ll blow your goddamned brains to kingdom come,’ the hidden voice spoke suddenly.

‘Oh, Christ!’ Starbuck was so astonished that he could not check the blasphemous imprecation, but he did retain just enough sense to haul in the reins, and the mare, well schooled, stopped.

‘Or maybe I’ll blow your brains out anyhows.’ The voice was as deep and harsh as a rat-tailed file scraping on rusted iron, and Starbuck, even though he had still not seen the speaker, suspected he has found his murderer. He had discovered Truslow.