Bernard Cornwell - The Bloody Ground

“We were fighting,” Swynyard said, “which meant officers got killed. Didn’t you hear about it in Richmond?”

“A rumor of it reached us,” Maitland said mildly, cleaning the lenses of his field glasses. “Even so, Swynyard, I reckon I need some better men.”

“Fellows who know what knife and fork to use on their hardtack?” Swynyard guessed.

Maitland let the sarcasm sail past him. “I mean more confident fellows. Confidence is a great morale booster. Like young Moxey. Pity he’s gone.” Captain Moxey had gone to Richmond to serve as Washington Faulconer’s aide.

“Moxey was useless,” Swynyard said. “If I was going into battle, Maitland, I wouldn’t want weak reeds like young Moxey, but men like Waggoner and Truslow.”

“But they’re hardly inspirational men,” Maitland observed tartly.

“Victory’s the best inspiration,” Swynyard said, “and men like Truslow deliver it.”

“Maybe,” Maitland allowed, “but I’d have liked to have held onto Moxey. Or that Tumlin fellow.”

Swynyard had to think for a second to place Tumlin, then remembered the man from Louisiana who claimed to have been a prisoner in the North since the fall of New Orleans. “You wanted him?” he asked, surprised.

“He seemed a decent fellow,” Maitland said. “Eager to serve.”

“You think so?” Swynyard asked. “I thought he was a bit plump for a fellow who’d spent five months in a Yankee prison, but maybe our erstwhile brethren can afford to feed their captives well. And I have to say I thought young Tumlin was a bit glib.”

“He had confidence, yes,” Maitland said. “I suppose you sent him back to Richmond?”

“Winchester,” Swynyard said. Winchester, in the Shenandoah Valley, was the campaign’s supply base and all unattached men were now being sent there to be reappointed. “At least he won’t get wished onto poor Nate Starbuck,” Swynyard added.

“Starbuck could count himself lucky if he had been,” Maitland said, raising the glasses again toward the far riverbank. That bank was heavily wooded, but beyond the trees Maitland could see enemy farmland basking in the strong sunlight.

“If Starbuck’s lucky,” Swynyard said, “he’ll be back with this brigade. I requested that his battalion be given to us if it’s ordered to the army. No one else will want them, that’s for sure.”

Maitland shuddered at the thought of seeing the Yellowlegs again. His appointment to its command had been the nadir of his career and only the most energetic string-pulling had rescued him. “I doubt we’ll see them,” he said, unable to hide his relief. “They aren’t ready to march and won’t be ready for months.” Not ever, he reflected, if Colonel Holborrow had his way. “And why would we want them anyway?” he added.

“Because we’re Christians, Maitland, and turn away no man.”

“Except Tumlin,” Maitland retorted tartly. “Looks as if they’re ready for us, Swynyard.”

A messenger was spurring toward the brigade. A horse-drawn ambulance had just splashed into the ford accompanied by a cheer from the closest troops. Robert Lee was inside the vehicle, put there by injuries to his hands when he tried to quiet his frightened horse. A wounded commander, Swynyard thought, was not a good omen, but he put that pagan thought behind him as the messenger rode to Maitland under the assumption that the elegant lieutenant-colonel was the brigade commander. “He’s the fellow you want,” Maitland said, indicating Swynyard.

The messenger brought orders for Swynyard’s brigade to cross the river and Swynyard, in turn, gave the Legion the honor of leading the brigade onto Northern soil. The colonel walked down the Legion’s column of companies. “Remember boys,” he shouted again and again, “no looting! No roguery! Pay in scrip for whatever you want! Show them we’re a Christian country! Go now!”

Truslow’s A Company waited until a battery of South Carolinian guns had splashed into the ford, then followed onto the road and down the muddy ramp into the water. The color party followed with the Legion’s single flag held aloft by young Lieutenant Coffman, who found it a struggle to hold the big battle flag high against the wind while his slight body was buffeted by the Potomac’s swirling current, which rose above his waist. He pushed on gamely, almost as though the whole war’s outcome depended on him keeping the fringed silk out of the water. Many of the men were limping, not through wounds but because their ill-booted feet were blistered and to those men the river’s cool water was like the balm of Gilead. Some men, though, refused to cross. Swynyard paused to talk with half a dozen such men who were led by a gaunt young corporal from D Company. The corporal’s name was Burridge and he was a good soldier and a regular worshipper at the colonel’s prayer meetings, but now, as respectful and stubborn as ever, Burridge insisted he must disobey Swynyard’s orders. “Ain’t our task to go north, Colonel,” he said firmly.

“It’s your task to obey a lawful order, Burridge.”

“Not if it’s against a man’s conscience, colonel, and you know it. And it is lawful for us to defend our homes, but not to attack other folks’ homes. If a Yankee comes south then I’ll kill him for you, but I won’t go north to do my slaughtering,” Burridge declared and his companions nodded their support.

Swynyard ordered the men back to where the provosts were collecting other soldiers whose consciences could not abide carrying the war off their home soil. It grieved Swynyard to lose the six men, for they were among the best in the brigade, but it had been a confrontation he could never win and so he bid them farewell then followed the Legion into the river. Some of the men ducked their heads into the water to give their hair a brief washing, but most just pressed on toward the Northern bank, climbed onto Maryland soil, then crossed the bridge over the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal that lay just beyond the river. And thus they entered the enemy country.

It was a fine place of comfortable farms, good wooded land, and gentle hills; no different from the landscape they had left, only these hills and farms and woods were ruled by an enemy government. Here a different flag flew and that gave a piquancy to the otherwise unremarkable countryside. Not that most of the men in the five regiments in Swynyard’s Brigade considered Maryland an enemy; rather they believed it was a slave state that had been forced to stay with the Union because of geography, and there were high hopes that this incursion of a Confederate army would draw a flock of recruits to the rebel’s slashed cross flags. But however sympathetic Marylanders might be to the rebellion, it was still an enemy state and here and there some farms yet flew a defiant stars and stripes to show that this was Yankee territory.

But such stars and stripes were far outnumbered by rebel flags, most of them homemade things with faint colors and uncertain design, but they were hung to welcome Lee’s army and when, at midafternoon, Swynyard’s men marched through Buckeystown they were greeted by a small crowd that was hoarse from cheering the arrival of the rebels. Buckets of water or lemonade were placed beside the road and women carried trays of cookies along the weary columns. One or two of Buckeystown’s houses, it was true, were shuttered closed, but most of the village welcomed the invasion. A Texan band played the inevitable “My Maryland” as the column passed, the tune becoming ever more ragged and the harmony more cacophonous as the bandsmen were supplied with cider, beer, and whiskey by the villagers.

The brigade trudged on, their broken boots kicking up a plume of white dust that drifted westward on the breeze. Once, a mile beyond Buckeystown, a sudden crackle of firing sounded far away to the east and some of the men touched the stocks of their worn rifles as if preparing for battle, but no more shots sounded. The countryside stretched warm away, bounteous and calm under the summer sun. God was in His heaven, all seemed well in the world, and Lee’s rebel army was loose in the North.