Bernard Cornwell - The Bloody Ground

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 dénouement 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 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 Hardcastle 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 Mississippian 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 Christian 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 his 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!”