Bernard Cornwell: Copperhead

THE NATHANIEL STARBUCK CHRONICLES

BOOK TWO

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The right of Bernard Cornwell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

COPPERHEAD. Copyright © 2006 by Bernard Cornwell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © JULY 2009 ISBN: 9780007339488

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Version: 2017-05-08

“The battle scenes are gripping and realistic and Cornwell has studded the narrative with colorful and…accurate portraits of real civilian and military figures…. [He]’s particularly skillful at portraying the complexity of men in…inner conflict…. A superb series.”

—San Jose Mercury News

“Fast-paced…[and] gripping entertainment.”

—Daily Telegraph

“The most entertaining military historical novels…. Always based on fact, always interesting…always entertaining.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“[A] wonderful series…. A rollicking treat for Cornwell’s many fans.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Highly successful.”

—The Times (London)

Copperhead is for Bill and Anne Moir.

COPYRIGHT

PRAISE

MAP

PART ONE

THE INVASION BEGAN AT MIDNIGHT

MAJOR ADAM FAULCONER ARRIVED AT THE FAULCONER

WE’RE TOO FAR LEFT.” TRUSLOW HAD GROWLED AT

PART TWO

GEORGE WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY WAS FIXED AS THE

COLONEL GRIFFIN SWYNYARD WAS GREEDILY EATING A

JOHN SCULLY AND PRICE LEWIS ADMITTED NOTHING, NOT

TWO SOLDIERS FETCHED STARBUCK FROM HIS CELL

WHAT IS THIS?” BELVEDERE DELANEY HELD A BANK

PART THREE

THE ARMIES CAME TO A STOP IN A CURVE WHICH RAN

THE REBEL ATTACK STALLED AMONG THE ABANDONED

EPILOGUE

HISTORICAL NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER BOOKS BY BERNARD CORNWELL

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

THE INVASION BEGAN AT MIDNIGHT.

It was not truly an invasion, just a heavy raid on a rebel encampment that a patrol had spotted among the thick woods that crowned the high bluffs on the Virginia side of the river, but to the two thousand men who waited to cross the bleak slate-gray swirl of the Potomac River this night’s exertions seemed more momentous than a mere raid. This fight across the river was their opportunity to prove their critics wrong. Nursery soldiers, one newspaper had called them; wonderfully trained and beautifully drilled, but much too precious to be dirtied in battle. Yet tonight the despised nursery soldiers would fight. Tonight the Army of the Potomac would carry fire and steel to a rebel encampment and if all went well they would march on to occupy the town of Leesburg, which lay two miles beyond the enemy camp. The expectant soldiers imagined the shamefaced citizens of the Virginia town waking to see the Stars and Stripes flying over their community again, and then they imagined themselves marching south, ever farther south, until the rebellion was crushed and America was reunited in peace and brotherhood.

“You bastard!” a voice shouted loudly from the river’s edge where a work party had been launching a boat carried from the nearby Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. One of the work party had slipped in the clay, dropping the boat’s stern onto a sergeant’s foot. “You no-good son of a bitch goddamn bastard!” The Sergeant hopped away from the boat.

“Sorry,” the man said nervously.

“I’ll give you sorry, you bastard!”

“Silence! Keep it quiet now!” An officer, resplendent in a new gray overcoat that was handsomely lined in red, clambered down the steep bank and helped lift the skiff toward the river’s gray water from which a small mist crept to hide the lower slopes of the far bank. They labored beneath a high moon, no clouds, and a spread of stars so bright and clean they seemed like an augury of success. It was October, the fragrant month when the air smelt of apples and woodsmoke, and when the sweltering dog days of summer gave way to clear sharp weather that held just enough promise of winter to persuade the troops to wear their fine new overcoats that were the same color as the river’s drifting mist.

The first boats pushed clumsily off the bank. The oars clattered in the oarlocks, then dipped and splashed as the boats receded into the mist. The men, who a moment before had been cursing and cumbersome creatures clambering down the clay bank into the clumsy boats, were mysteriously transformed into warrior silhouettes, spiky with weapons, who glided silent and noble through the vaporous night toward the misted shadows of the enemy shore. The officer who had remonstrated with the Sergeant stared wistfully across the water. “I suppose,” he said softly to the men around him, “that this was how Washington felt on the night he crossed the Delaware?”

“A much colder night, that one, I think,” a second officer, a young student from Boston, replied.

“It’ll be cold enough here soon,” the first officer, a major, said. “There’s only two months till Christmas.” When the Major had marched to war, newspapers had promised that the rebellion would be over by fall, but now the Major was wondering whether he would be home with his wife and three children for the family rituals of Christmas. On Christmas Eve they sang carols on Boston Common, the children’s faces lit by lanterns hung on poles, and afterward there were warm punch and slivers of cooked goose in the church vestry. Then on Christmas Day they went to his wife’s parents’ farm in Stoughton, where they harnessed the horses and the children laughed in delight as they trotted down country roads in a cloud of snow and a tinkling of sleigh bells.

“And I rather suspect General Washington’s organization was superior to ours,” the student-turned-lieutenant said in an amused voice. His name was Holmes and he was clever enough to awe his superiors, but usually intelligent enough not to let that cleverness alienate their affections.

“I am sure our organization will suffice,” the Major said just a little too defensively.

“I am sure you’re right,” Lieutenant Holmes said, though he was not sure of that fact at all. Three regiments of northern troops waited to cross, and there were just three small boats to carry them from the Maryland shore to the island that lay close to the river’s far bank, upon which island the troops must land before reembarking on two more boats for the final short crossing to the Virginia mainland. Doubtless they were crossing the river at the spot closest to the enemy encampment, but Lieutenant Holmes could not really understand why they did not cross a mile upstream where no island obstructed the river. Maybe, Holmes surmised, this was such an unlikely crossing place that the rebels would never think to guard it, and that seemed the best explanation he could find.