Bernard Cornwell - Copperhead

The editorial was pure balm to Faulconer’s soul. It declared that the time had come for bold action. The spring would surely bring an enemy onslaught of unparalleled severity and the Confederacy would only survive if it met that onslaught with bravery and imagination. The South would never prevail by timidity, and certainly not by digging trenches such as those with which General Robert Lee seemed intent upon surrounding Richmond. The Confederacy, the editorial proclaimed, would be established by men of daring and vision, not by the efforts of drainage engineers. The writer grudgingly allowed that the Confederacy’s present leaders were well-meaning men, but they were hidebound in their ideas and the time had surely come to appoint new officers to high position. One such man was Colonel Washington Faulconer, who had been unemployed since Manassas. Let such a man loose on the North, the article concluded, and the war would be over by summer. Faulconer read the editorial a second time and pondered whether he should go to Shaffers this very afternoon and order the extra braid for his sleeves and the gilded wreaths that would surround the stars on his collar wings. Brigadier General Faulconer! The rank, he decided, sat well on him.

Daniels took the editorial back. “The question is, Faulconer, do we publish this?”

“Your decision, Daniels, not mine,” Faulconer said modestly, hiding his elation as he shielded a cigar from the wind and struck a light. He wondered if publication would offend too many senior officers, then realized he dared not express such a timid reservation to Daniels or else the editorial would be changed to recommend that some other man be given a brigade.

“But are you our man?” Daniels growled.

“If you mean, would I attack and attack and go on attacking, yes. If you mean, would I abandon Manassas? No. If you mean, would I employ good men to dig drainage ditches around Richmond? Never!”

Daniels was silent after Faulconer’s ringing declaration. Indeed he was silent for so long that Washington Faulconer began to feel rather foolish, but then the small, black-bearded editor spoke again. “Do you know the size of McClellan’s army?” He asked the question without turning to look at Faulconer.

“Not precisely, no.”

“We know, but we don’t print the figure in the newspaper because if we did we might just cause people to despair.” Daniels twitched the long whip as his voice rumbled just a little louder than the seething and incessant rain. “The Young Napoleon, Faulconer, has over a hundred and fifty thousand men. He has fifteen thousand horses, and more than two hundred and fifty guns. Big guns, Faulconer, slaughtering guns, the finest guns that the northern foundries can pour, and they’re lined up wheel to heavy wheel to grind our poor southern boys into bloody ruin. And how many poor southern boys do we have? Seventy thousand? Eighty? And when do their enlistments run out? June? July?” Most of the southern army had volunteered for just one year’s service, and when that year was over the survivors expected to go home. “We’ll have to conscript men, Faulconer,” Daniels went on, “unless we beat this so-called genius McClellan in the spring.”

“The nation will never stand for conscription,” Faulconer said sternly.

“The nation, Colonel, will damn well stand for whatever brings us victory,” Daniels said harshly, “but will you lead those conscripted men, Faulconer? That’s the proper question now. Are you my man? Should the Examiner support you? After all, you’re not the most experienced officer, are you now?”

“I can bring new ideas,” Faulconer suggested modestly. “New blood.”

“But a new and inexperienced brigadier will need a good and experienced second-in-command. Ain’t that right, Colonel?” Daniels looked malevolently up at Faulconer as he spoke.

Faulconer smiled happily. “I should expect my son Adam to serve with me. He’s on Johnston’s staff now, so he has the experience, and there isn’t a more capable or honest man in Virginia.” Faulconer’s sudden sincerity and warmth were palpable. He was desperately fond of his son, not just with a father’s love, but also out of a gratified pride in Adam’s undoubted virtues. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to Faulconer that Adam was his one undoubted success, the achievement that justified the rest of his life. Now he turned smilingly to the lawyer. “You can vouch for Adam’s character, can’t you, Delaney?”

But Belvedere Delaney did not respond. He just stared down into the sopping garden.

Daniels hissed in a dubious breath, then shook his ugly head warningly. “Don’t like it, Faulconer. Don’t like it one goddamn little bit. Stinks of favoritism to me. Of nepotism! Is that the word, Delaney?”

“Nepotism is the very word, Daniels,” Delaney confirmed, not looking at Faulconer, whose face was like that of a small boy struck brutally hard.

“The Examiner could never stand for nepotism, Faulconer,” Daniels said in his grating voice, then he threw a curt gesture toward Delaney, who obediently opened the verandah’s central door to admit onto the porch a gaunt and ragged creature dressed in a wet, threadbare uniform that made the newcomer shiver in the day’s raw cold. The man was in his early middle age and looked as though life had served him ill. He had a coarse black beard streaked with gray, sunken eyes, and a tic in his scarred cheek. He was evidently suffering from a cold for he cuffed his dripping nose, then wiped his sleeve on his ragged beard that was crusted with flakes of dried tobacco juice. “Johnny!” this unprepossessing creature greeted Daniels familiarly.

“Faulconer?” Daniels looked up at the Colonel. “This is Major Griffin Swynyard.”

Swynyard gave Faulconer a brisk nod, then held out his left hand, which, Faulconer saw, was missing its three middle fingers. The two men made an awkward handshake. The spasm in Swynyard’s right cheek gave his face a curiously indignant look.

“Swynyard,” Daniels said to Faulconer, “served in the old U.S. Army. He graduated from West Point, when?”

“Class of twenty-nine, Johnny.” Swynyard clicked his heels together.

“Then served in the Mexican and Seminole wars. Is that right?”

“Took more scalps than any white man alive, Colonel,” Swynyard said, grinning at Faulconer and revealing a mouthful of rotted yellow teeth. “I took thirty-eight headpieces in one day alone!” Swynyard boasted. “All with my own hands, Colonel. Squaws, papooses, braves! I had blood to my elbows! Spattered to the armpits! Have you ever had the pleasure of taking a scalp, Colonel?” Swynyard asked with a fierce intensity.

“No,” Faulconer managed to say. “No, I haven’t.” He was recovering from Daniels’s refusal to countenance Adam’s appointment, and realizing that promotion would carry a price.

“There’s a knack to it,” Swynyard went on. “Like any other skill, there’s a knack! Young soldiers always try to cut them off and, of course, it don’t work. They end with something which looks like a dead mouse.” Swynyard believed this was funny, for he opened his gap-toothed mouth to breathe a sibilant laugh at Faulconer. “Cutting don’t work for a scalp, Colonel. No, you have to peel a scalp off, peel it like the skin of an orange!” He spoke lovingly, demonstrating the action with his wounded, clawlike hand. “If you’re ever in the Tidewater I’ll show you my collection. I’ve three cabin trunks full of prime scalps, all cured and tanned proper.” Swynyard evidently felt he had made a good impression on Faulconer for he smiled ingratiatingly while the tic in his cheek trembled fast. “Maybe you’d like to see a scalp now, Colonel?” Swynyard suddenly asked, pawing at the button of his top pocket as he spoke. “I always keep one about my person. As a good-luck charm, you understand? This one’s from a Seminole squaw. Noisy little bitch she was, too. Savages can squeal, I tell you, how they can squeal!”