Bernard Cornwell - Rebel

‘Ethan Ridley?’ Starbuck, trying to follow the tortuous changes in Bird’s conversation, asked in surprise.

‘Remarkably talented,’ Bird confirmed rather wistfully, as though he envied Ridley’s skill, ‘but lazy, of course. Natural talent going to waste, Starbuck. Just wasted! He won’t work at his talent. He prefers to marry money rather than make it.’ He accentuated this judgment by playing a gloomy minor chord, then frowned. ‘He is a slave of nature,’ he said, looking expectantly at Starbuck.

‘And a son of hell?’ The second half of the Shakespearean insult slipped gratifyingly into Starbuck’s mind.

‘So you have read something other than your sacred texts.’ Bird seemed disappointed, but then recovered his malevolence as he lowered his voice into a confiding hiss, saying, ‘But I shall tell you, Starbuck, that the slave of nature will marry the Colonel’s daughter! Why does that family contract such marriages? God knows, and he is not saying, though at present, mark my words, young Ridley is in bad odor with the Colonel. He has failed to recruit Truslow! Ah-ha!’ Bird crashed a demonic and celebratory discord on the piano. ‘No Truslow! Ridley had better look to his laurels, had he not? The Colonel is not best pleased.’

‘Who is Truslow?’ Starbuck asked somewhat despairingly.

‘Truslow!’ Bird said portentously, then paused to play a foreboding couplet of bass notes. ‘Truslow, Starbuck, is our county’s murderer! Our outlaw! Our hardscrabble demon from the hills! Our beast, our creature of darkness, our fiend!’ Bird cackled at this fine catalog of mischief, then twisted on the piano bench to face Starbuck. ‘Thomas Truslow is a rogue, and my brother-in-law the Colonel, who lacks common sense, wishes to recruit Truslow into the Legion because, he says, Truslow served as a soldier in Mexico. And so Truslow did, but the real reason, mark my words well, Starbuck, is that my brother-in-law believes that by recruiting him he can harness Truslow’s reputation to the greater glory of his ridiculous Legion. In brief, Starbuck, the great Washington Faulconer desires the murderer’s approval. The world is a strange place indeed. Shall we now go and buy petticoats?’

‘You say Truslow’s a murderer?’

‘I did indeed. He stole another man’s wife, and killed the man thus to obtain her. He then volunteered for the Mexican War to escape the constables, but after the war he took up where he left off. Truslow’s not a man to ignore his talents, you understand? He killed a man who insulted his wife, and cut the throat of another who tried to steal his horse, which is a rare jest, believe me, because Truslow must be the biggest horse thief this side of the Mississippi.’ Bird took a thin and very dark cigar from one of his shabby pockets. He paused to bite the tip off the cigar, then spat the shred of tobacco across the room in the vague direction of a porcelain spittoon. ‘And he hates Yankees. Detests them! If he meets you in the Legion, Starbuck, he’ll probably hone his murdering talents still further!’ Bird lit the cigar, puffed smoke and cackled amusement, his head nodding back and forth. ‘Have I satisfied your curiosity, Starbuck? Have we gossiped sufficiently? Good, then we shall go and see if the Colonel’s uniforms are truly ready and then we shall buy Anna her petticoats. To war, Starbuck, to war!’

Thaddeus Bird first strode across town to Boyle and Gambles’s huge warehouse where he placed an order for ammunition. ‘Minié bullets. The nascent Legion is firing them faster than the factories can make them. We need more, and still more. You can provide minié bullets?’

‘Indeed we can, Mister Bird.’

‘I am not Mister Bird!’ Bird announced grandly, ‘but Major Bird of the Faulconer Legion.’ He clicked his heels together and offered the elderly salesman a bow.

Starbuck gaped at Bird. Major Bird? This ludicrous man whom Washington Faulconer had declared would never be commissioned? A man, Faulconer claimed, not fit to be a cookhouse corporal? A man, if Starbuck remembered rightly, who would be commissioned only over Faulconer’s dead body? And Bird was to be made a major while professional European soldiers, veterans of real wars, were being turned down for mere lieutenancies?

‘And we need still more percussion caps’—Bird was oblivious of Starbuck’s astonishment—‘thousands of the little devils. Send them to the Faulconer Legion Encampment at Faulconer Court House in Faulconer County.’ He signed the order with a flourish, Major Thaddeus Caractacus Evillard Bird. ‘Grandparents,’ he curtly explained the grandiose names to Starbuck, ‘two Welsh, two French, all dead, let us go.’ He led the way out of the warehouse and downhill toward Exchange Alley.

Starbuck matched strides with the long-pacing Bird and broached the difficult subject. ‘Allow me to congratulate you on your commission, Major Bird?’

‘So your ears work, do they? That’s good news, Starbuck. A young man should possess all his faculties before age, liquor and stupidity erase them. Yes, indeed. My sister bestirred herself from her sickbed to prevail upon the Colonel to commission me a major in his Legion. I do not know upon what precise authority Colonel Brigadier General Captain Lieutenant Admiral the Lord High Executioner Faulconer makes such an appointment, but perhaps we do not need authority in these rebellious days. We are, after all, Robinson Crusoes marooned upon an authority-less island, and we must therefore fashion what we can out of what we find there, and my brother-in-law has discovered within himself the power to make me a major, so that is what I am.’

‘You desired such an appointment?’ Starbuck asked very politely, because he could not really imagine this extraordinary man wanting to be a soldier.

‘Desired?’ Pecker Bird came to an abrupt stop on the pavement, thus forcing a lady to make an exaggerated swerve about the obstacle he had so suddenly created. ‘Desired? That is a pertinent question, Starbuck, such as one might have expected from a Boston youth. Desired?’ Bird tangled his beard in his fingers as he thought of his answer. ‘My sister desired it, that is certain, for she is stupid enough to believe that military rank is an automatic conferrer of respectability, which quality she feels I lack, but did I desire the appointment? Yes I did. I must confess I did, and why, you ask? Because firstly, Starbuck, wars are customarily conducted by fools and it thus behooves me to offer myself as an antidote to that sad reality.’ The schoolmaster offered this appalling immodesty in all apparent sincerity and in a voice that had attracted the amused attention of several pedestrians. ‘And secondly it will take me away from the schoolroom. Do you know how I despise children? How I dislike them? How their very voices make me wish to scream in protest! Their mischief is cruel, their presence demeaning and their conversation tedious. Those are my chief reasons.’ Suddenly, and as abruptly as he had stopped his forward progress, Major Thaddeus Caractacus Evillard Bird began striding downhill again with his long ragged pace.

‘There were arguments against accepting the appointment,’ Bird continued when Starbuck had caught up with him. ‘First, the necessary close association with my brother-in-law, but upon balance that is preferable to the company of children, and second, the expressed wish of my dear intended, who fears that I might fall upon the field of battle. That would be tragic, Starbuck, tragic!’ Bird stressed the enormity of the tragedy by gesturing violently with his right hand, almost sending a passing gentleman’s hat flying. ‘But my darling Priscilla understands that at this time a man must not be seen laggard in his patriotic duty and so she has consented, albeit with sweet reservations, to my going for a soldier.’