Bernard Cornwell - The Bloody Ground

The door opened and a rebellious Lucifer brought in a tall glass of lemonade. “I was told to bring this, Lieutenant Potter,” he said sourly, stressing the false name with a mocking pronunciation.

“You don’t like it here, Lucifer?” Starbuck asked.

“He beats his people,” Lucifer said, jerking his head toward the sound of Holborrow’s voice. “You ain’t thinking of staying here, are you?” he asked with alarm, seeing how comfortably Starbuck’s boots rested on the edge of the major’s desk.

“For a short while,” Starbuck said. “I reckon I’ll learn more as Lieutenant Potter than I ever could as Major Starbuck.”

“And what if the real Mister Potter comes?”

Starbuck grinned. “Be one hell of a tangle, Lucifer.”

Lucifer sniffed. “He ain’t beating me!”

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t. And we won’t be here long.”

“You’re crazy,” Lucifer said. “I should have kept going north. I’d rather be preached at in a contraband camp than be living in a place like this.” Lucifer sniffed his disgust and went back to the kitchens, leaving Starbuck to hunt through the rest of the papers. None of the battalion lists tallied exactly, but there seemed to be around a hundred and eighty men in the battalion. There were four captains—Dennison, Cartwright, Peel, and Lippincott—and eight sergeants, one of whom was the belligerent Case, who had joined the battalion just a month before.

Sally came to the office after a half hour. She closed the door behind her and laughed mischievously. “Hell, Nate, ain’t this something?”

Starbuck stood and gestured at the mess in the room. “I’m beginning to feel sorry for Lieutenant Potter, whoever the hell Lieutenant Potter is,” he said.

“You staying on here?” Sally asked.

“Maybe one night.”

“In that case,” Sally said, “I’m saying good-bye to my dearest husband and then the major’s going to take me in his coach back to the city and I just know he’s going to ask me to take supper with him. I’ll say I’m too tired. You sure you want to stay?”

“I’d look an idiot telling him who I am now,” Starbuck said. “Besides, there must be something to discover in all these papers.”

“You discover how the hog’s making his money,” Sally said. “That’d be real useful.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Watch that Captain Dennison, Nate, he’s a snake.”

“He’s the one with the pretty face, right?”

She grimaced. “I thought it had to be syphilis, but it ain’t ’cos he ain’t shaking or babbling like a loon. Must be nothing but a skin disease. I hope it hurts.”

Starbuck grinned. “Begged you for a kiss, did he?” he guessed.

“I reckon he wants more than a kiss, did he?” he guessed.

“I reckon he wants more than a kiss,” she grimaced, then touched Starbuck’s cheek. “Be good, Matthew Potter.”

“And you, Emily Potter.”

A few minutes later Starbuck heard the jingle of trace chains as the major’s carriage was brought to the front of the house. There was the sound of good-byes being said, then the carriage clattered away.

And Starbuck suddenly felt lonely.

A hundred miles north of Starbuck, in a valley where corn grew tall between stands of thick trees, a fugitive crouched in a thicket and listened for sounds of pursuit. The fugitive was a tall, fleshy young man who was now severely hungry. He had lost his horse at the battle fought near Manassas four days before and, with the beast, he had lost a saddlebag of food and so he had gone hungry these four days, all but for some hardtack he had taken from a rebel corpse on the battlefield. Now, a dozen miles north of the battlefield and with his belly aching with hunger, the fugitive reluctantly gnawed at a cob of unripe corn and knew his bowels would punish him for the diet. He was tired of the war. He wanted a decent hotel, a hot bath, a soft bed, a good meal, and a bad woman. He could afford all those things for around his belly was a money belt filled with gold, and all he wanted to do was to get the hell away from this terrible countryside that the victorious rebels were scouring in search of fugitives from the Northern army. The rest of the Northern army had retreated toward Washington and the young man wanted to join them, but somehow he had got all turned about during the day of pouring rain and he guessed he had walked five miles west that day instead of north and now he was trying to work his way back northward.

He wore the blue coat of a Northern soldier, but he wore it unbuttoned and unbelted so that he could discard it at a moment’s notice and pull on the gray coat that he had taken from the corpse that had yielded him the hardtack. The dead man’s coat was a mite small, but the fugitive knew he could talk his way out of trouble if any rebel patrol did find and question him. He would be in more trouble if Northern soldiers found him for, though he had fought for the Yankees, he spoke with the raw accent of the Deep South, but deep in his pants pocket he had his papers that identified him as Captain William Blythe, second in command of Galloway’s Horse, a unit of Northern cavalry composed of renegade Southerners. Galloway’s Horse were supposed to be scouts who could ride the Southern trails with the same assurance as Jeb Stuart’s confident men, but the fool Galloway had taken them right into the battle near Manassas where they had been shot to hell by a Confederate regiment. Billy Blythe knew that Galloway was dead and Blythe reckoned Galloway deserved to be dead for having got mixed up in a full battle. He also guessed that most of Galloway’s men were probably dead and he did not care. He just needed to get away to the north and find himself another comfortable billet where he could stay alive until the war ended. On that day, Blythe reckoned, there would be rich pickings for southerners who had stayed loyal to the Union and he did not intend to be denied those rewards.

But neither did he intend to land up in a Confederate prison. If capture was unavoidable he planned to discard the blue coat, don the gray, then talk his way out of trouble. Then he would fine another way back north. It just took guile, planning, a little intelligence, and a helping of luck, and that should be enough to avoid the numerous folks in the Southern states who wanted nothing more than to put a rope around Billy Blythe’s fleshy neck. One such rope had damn nearly done for him before the war’s beginning, and it was only by the most outrageous daring that Billy had escaped the girl’s family and fled north. Hell, he thought, it wasn’t that he was a bad fellow. Billy Blythe had never thought of himself as a bad fellow. A bit wild, maybe, and a fellow who liked a good time, but not bad. Just faster witted than most others, and there was nothing like quick wits to provoke envy.

He scraped at the raw cob with his teeth and chewed on the tough corn. It tasted foul, and he could already feel a ferment in his belly, but he was half starving and needed strengthening if he was to keep going. Hell, he thought, but his life had gone all wrong these last few weeks! He should never have got mixed up with Major Galloway, nor with the Yankee army. He should be farther north, in New York say. Somewhere the guns did not sound. Somewhere there was money to be made and girls to impress.

A twig snapped in the woodland and Blythe went very still. At least he tried to go very still, but there was an uncontrollable shaking in his legs, his belly was rumbling from the fermenting corn, and he kept blinking as sweat trickled into the corners of his eyes. A voice sounded far away. Pray God the man was a Northerner, he thought, then wondered why the hell the Yankees were losing all the battles. Billy Blythe had wagered his whole future on a Northern victory, but every time the Federals met the men in gray they got beat. It just plain was not right! Now the Northerners had got whipped again and Billy Blythe was eating raw corn and was dressed in clothes still damp from the rainstorm of two days before.