Copperhead

WE’RE TOO FAR LEFT.” TRUSLOW HAD GROWLED AT Starbuck as soon as K Company reached the battle line. “Bastards are that way.” Truslow pointed across the clearing to where a veil of smoke hung in front of the trees. That smoke lay well to the right of K Company, while directly across from Starbuck’s men there was no gunsmoke, just empty trees and long, darkening shadows among which the maple trees looked unnaturally bright. Some of K Company had begun firing into those empty trees, but Truslow snarled at them to stop wasting powder.

The company waited expectantly for Starbuck’s orders, then turned as another officer came running through the brush. It was Lieutenant Moxey, who had reckoned himself a hero ever since taking a slight wound in his left hand at Manassas. “The Major says you’re to close on the center.” Moxey was filled with the moment’s excitement. He waved a revolver toward the sound of musketry. “He says you’re to reinforce Murphy’s company.”

“Company!” Truslow shouted at his men, anticipating Starbuck’s orders to move.

“No! Wait!” Starbuck was still gazing directly across the clearing to the undisturbed trees. He looked back to his right again, noting how the Yankee fire had momentarily died down. For a few seconds he wondered if that lull in the firing signified that the northern forces were retreating, but then a sudden charge by a yelping group of rebels triggered a furious outburst of northern rifle fire. For a few seconds the gunfire splintered in a mad tattoo, but the moment the rebels retreated the fusillade died away. Starbuck realized that the northerners were holding their fire until they could see targets while the southerners were keeping up a steady fusillade. Which meant, Starbuck decided, that the Yankees were worried about having enough ammunition.

“The Major says you’re to move at once,” Moxey insisted. He was a thin, pale-faced youth who resented that Starbuck had received a captaincy while he remained a lieutenant. He was also one of the few men in the Legion who begrudged Starbuck’s presence, believing that a Virginia regiment had no need of a renegade Bostonian, but it was an opinion he kept to himself, for Moxey had seen Starbuck’s temper and knew the northerner was more than willing to use his fists. “Did you hear me, Starbuck?” he demanded now.

“I heard you,” Starbuck said, yet still he did not move. He was thinking that the Yankees had been fighting in these woods nearly all day, and presumably they had just about used up all the cartridges in their pouches, which meant they were now relying on whatever small amounts of ammunition could be brought across the river. He was also thinking that troops worried about having sufficient cartridges were troops that could be panicked very quickly. He had seen panic at Manassas and reckoned it could bring a victory just as swift and complete here.

“Starbuck!” Moxey insisted on being heard. “The Major says you’re to reinforce Captain Murphy.”

“I heard you, Mox,” Starbuck said again, and still did nothing.

Moxey made a great play of pretending that Starbuck had to be particularly stupid. He tapped Starbuck’s arm and pointed through the trees to the right. “That way, Starbuck.”

“Go away, Mox,” Starbuck said, and he looked back across the clearing. “And on your way tell the Major we’re crossing over here and we’ll be rolling the bastards up from the left. Our left, got that?”

“You’re doing what?” Moxey gaped at Starbuck, then looked up at Adam who was on horseback a few paces behind Starbuck. “You tell him, Adam,” Moxey appealed to higher authority. “Tell him to obey orders!”

“We’re crossing the field, Moxey,” Starbuck said in a kind, slow voice, as though he addressed a particularly dull child, “and we’re going to attack the nasty Yankees from inside the trees over there. Now go away and tell that to Pecker!”

The maneuver seemed the obvious thing to do. The two sides were presently blazing away from either side of the clearing, and though the rebels had a clear advantage, neither side seemed capable of advancing straight into the concentrated rifle fire of the other. By crossing the clearing at this open flank Starbuck could take his men safe into the northerners’ trees and then advance on their undefended wing. “Make sure you’re loaded!” Starbuck shouted at his men.

“You can’t do this, Starbuck,” Moxey said. Starbuck took no notice of him. “Do you want me to tell the Major you’re disobeying his orders?” Moxey asked Starbuck cattily.

“Yes,” Starbuck said, “that’s exactly what I want you to tell him. And that we’re attacking their flank. Now go away and do it!”

Adam, still on horseback, frowned down at his friend. “Do you know what you’re doing, Nate?”

“I know, Adam, I really do know,” Starbuck said. In truth the opportunity to turn the Yankee flank was so straightforward that the dullest fool might have seized it, though a wise man might have sought permission for the maneuver first. But Starbuck was so certain he was right and so confident that his flank attack would finish the Yankee defense that he reckoned seeking permission would simply be a waste of time. “Sergeant!” he called for Truslow.

Truslow once again anticipated Starbuck’s order. “Bayonets on!” he called to the company. “Make sure they’re fixed firm! Remember to twist the blade when you drive home!” Truslow’s voice was as calm as though this were just another day’s training. “Take your time, lad! Don’t fumble!” He spoke to a man who had dropped a bayonet in his excitement, then he checked that another man’s bayonet was firmly slotted onto the rifle’s muzzle. Hutton and Mallory, the company’s two other sergeants, were similarly checking their squads.

“Captain!” one of Hutton’s men called. It was Corporal Peter Waggoner, whose twin brother was also a corporal in the company. “You staying or going, Captain?” Peter Waggoner was a big, slow man of deep piety and fierce beliefs.

“I’m going over there,” Starbuck said, pointing across the clearing and deliberately misunderstanding the question.

“You know what I mean,” Waggoner said, and most of the other men in the company knew too for they stared apprehensively at their Captain. They knew Nathan Evans had offered him a job, and many of them feared that such a staff appointment might be attractive to a bright young Yankee like Starbuck.

“Do you still believe that people who drink whiskey will go to hell, Peter?” Starbuck asked the Corporal.

“That’s the truth, isn’t it?” Waggoner demanded sternly. “God’s truth, Mr. Starbuck. Be sure your sins will find you out.”

“I’ve decided to stay here until you and your brother get drunk with me, Peter,” Starbuck retorted. There was a second’s silence as the men understood just what he had meant and then there was a cheer.

“Quiet!” Truslow snapped.

Starbuck looked back at the enemy side of the clearing. He did not know why his men liked him, but he was hugely moved by their affection, so moved that he had turned away rather than betray his emotion. When he had first been made their Captain he knew the men had accepted him because he had come with Truslow’s approval, but they had since discovered that their Yankee officer was a clever, fierce, and combative man. He was not always friendly, not like some of the officers who behaved just like the men they commanded, but K Company accepted Starbuck’s secretive and cool manner as the trait of a northerner. Everyone knew that Yankees were queer cold fish and none were stranger or colder than Bostonians, but they had also learned that Starbuck was fiercely protective of his men and was prepared to defy all the Confederacy’s authorities to save one of his company from trouble. They also sensed he was a rogue, and that made them think he was lucky, and like all soldiers, they would rather have a lucky leader than any other kind. “You’re really staying, sir?” Robert Decker asked.

“I’m really staying, Robert. Now get yourself ready.”

“I’m ready,” Decker said, grinning with pleasure. He was the youngest of the fifty-seven men in the company, almost all of whom came from Faulconer County, where they had been schooled by Thaddeus Bird and doctored by Major Danson and preached at by the Reverend Moss and employed, like as not, by Washington Faulconer. A handful were in their forties, a few were in their twenties and thirties, but most were just seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen years old. They were brothers, cousins, in-laws, friends, and enemies, not a stranger to each other among the lot of them, and all were familiar with each other’s houses and sisters and mothers and dogs and hopes and weaknesses. To a stranger’s eye they looked as fierce and unkempt as a pack of winter hounds after a wet day’s run, but Starbuck knew them better. Some, like the Waggoner twins, were deeply pious boys who witnessed nightly with the other soldiers and who prayed for their captain’s soul, while others, like Edward Hunt and Abram Statham, were rogues who could not be trusted a short inch. Robert Decker, who had come from the same high Blue Ridge valley as Sergeant Truslow, was a kind, hardworking, and trusting soul, while others, like the Cobb twins, were lazier than cats.

“You’re supposed to reinforce Murphy’s company!” Lieutenant Moxey still lingered close to Starbuck.

Starbuck turned on him. “Go and give Pecker my message! For God’s sake, Mox, if you’re going to be a message boy, then be a good one. Now run!” Moxey backed away and Starbuck looked up at Adam. “Will you please go and tell Pecker what we’re doing? I don’t trust Moxey.”

Adam spurred away and Starbuck turned back to his men. He raised his voice over the noise of the musketry and told the company what he expected of them. They were to cross the clearing at the double, and once on the far side they would wheel to their right and make a line that would sweep up through the far woods like a broom coming at the open edge of the Yankee’s line. “Don’t fire unless you have to,” Starbuck said, “just scream as loud as you can and let them see your bayonets. They’ll run, I promise you!” He knew instinctively that the sudden appearance of a pack of screaming rebels would be sufficient to send the Yankees packing. The men grinned nervously. One man, Joseph May, who had been praying as he climbed the hill, peered at his bayonet’s fixture to make sure it was properly secure. Starbuck saw the boy squint. “Where are your spectacles, Joe?”

“Lost ’em, Captain.” May sniffed unhappily. “Got broke,” he finally admitted.

“If any of you see a dead Yankee with specs, bring them to Joseph!” Starbuck instructed his men, then put his own bayonet onto his rifle’s muzzle. At Manassas, at Washington Faulconer’s insistence, the Legion’s officers had gone into battle with swords, but those officers who survived had learned that enemy sharpshooters liked nothing better than a sword-bearing target and so they had exchanged their elegant blades for workmanlike rifles and their braid-encrusted sleeves and collars for undecorated cloth. Starbuck also carried an ivory-handled, five-shot revolver that he had taken as plunder from the battlefield at Manassas, but for now he would leave that expensive English-made revolver in its holster and depend on his sturdy Mississippi rifle with its long, spikelike bayonet. “Are you ready?” Starbuck called again.

“Ready!” the company answered, wanting to get the battle over with.

“No cheering as we go across!” Starbuck warned them. “We don’t want the Yankees knowing we’re coming. Go fast and be real quiet!” He looked around at their faces and saw the mixture of excitement and nervous anticipation. He glanced at Truslow, who nodded curtly as though adding his approval to Starbuck’s decision. “So come on!” Starbuck called and led the way into the dappled golden-green sunlight that slanted across the clearing and shimmered through the pearly gunsmoke that rested like layered skeins of misty veils between the trees. It was turning into a lovely fall evening and Starbuck felt a sudden and terrible fear that he would die in this sweet light and he ran harder, fearing a blast of canister from a cannon or the sickening mulekick of a bullet’s strike, but not one northerner fired at the company as they pounded over to the inner stand of trees.

They trampled their way into the undergrowth on the Yankees’ side of the clearing. Once he was safe under the trees Starbuck could see a glint of water where the river turned away from the bluff, and beyond that bright curve he could see the long, green, evening-shadowed fields of Maryland. The sight gave him a moment’s pang, then he called to his men to swing right and form a line and he swung his left arm around to show how he wanted them to form the new line of battle, but the men were not waiting for orders; instead they were already pounding through the trees toward the enemy. Starbuck had wanted them to advance on the Yankee flank in a steady line, but they had chosen to race forward in small excited groups, and their enthusiasm more than made up for the raggedness of their deployment. Starbuck ran with them, unaware that he had begun to scream the high-pitched banshee scream. Thomas Truslow was to his left, carrying his bowie knife with its nineteen-inch blade. Most of the Legion’s men had once owned such wicked-looking blades, but the weight of the ponderous knives had persuaded almost all of the soldiers to abandon them. Truslow, out of perversity, had kept his and now carried it as his weapon of choice. Alone in the company he made no noise, as if the job at hand was too serious for shouting.

Starbuck saw the first Yankees. Two men were using a fallen tree as a firing position. One was reloading, working the long ramrod down his rifle while his companion aimed across the trunk. The man fired and Starbuck saw the kick of the rifle on the man’s shoulder and the puff of spark-lit smoke where the percussion cap exploded. Beyond the two men the woods suddenly seemed thick with blue uniforms and, more oddly, gray coats that hung from trees and twitched as rebel bullets struck home. “Kill them!” Starbuck screamed, and the two men by the fallen tree turned to stare in horror at the rebel charge. The man who had reloaded his rifle swung it to face Starbuck, aimed, then pulled the trigger, but in his panic he had forgotten to prime his rifle. The hammer fell with a click onto bare steel. The man scrambled to his feet and ran past an officer who stood with drawn sword and a look of appalled bewilderment on his whiskered face. Starbuck, seeing the officer’s expression, knew he had done the right thing. “Kill them,” he screamed, completely unaware that he was uttering anything so bloodthirsty. He just felt the elation of a man who has outwitted an enemy and so imposed his will on a battlefield. That feeling was intoxicating, filling him with a manic elation. “Kill them!” he screamed again, and this time the words seemed to spur the whole Yankee flank into disintegration.

The northerners fled. Some threw themselves off the bluff’s edge and slithered down the slope, but most ran back along the line of the summit and, as they ran, more men joined the flight, and the retreat became ever more crowded and chaotic. Starbuck tripped on a wounded man who screamed foully, then ran into the clearing where the Rhode Island cannon had plowed its ragged furrow back and over the bluff’s crest. He jumped a box of ammunition, still screaming his challenge at the men running ahead.

Not all the northerners ran. Many of the officers reckoned that duty was more important than safety and, with a bravery that was close to suicide, stayed to fight the rebels’ flanking attack. One lieutenant calmly aimed his revolver, fired once, then went down under two bayonets. He tried to fire the revolver even as he was dying, then a third rebel put a bullet into his head and there was a spray of blood as the shot struck home. The Lieutenant died, though the men with the bayonets still savaged his corpse with the ferocity of hunting dogs rending a fallen buck. Starbuck shouted at his men to let the dead man alone and hurry on. He did not want to give the Yankees time to recover.

Adam Faulconer was riding his horse in the sunlit clearing, shouting for the rest of the Legion to cross over and support Starbuck’s company. Major Bird led the color party across into evening woods full of the shrill sound of rebels attacking, of gunshots and of northern officers shouting orders that stood no chance of being obeyed in the panic.

Truslow told a northerner to drop his rifle, the man either did not hear or decided to defy the demand, and the bowie knife chopped down once with a horrid economy of effort. A group of Yankees, their retreat blocked, turned and ran blindly back toward their attackers. Most stopped when they saw their mistake and raised their hands in surrender, but one, an officer, sliced his sword in a wild blow at Starbuck’s face. Starbuck checked, let the blade hiss by, then rammed his bayonet forward and down. He felt the steel hit the Yankee’s ribs and cursed that he had stabbed down instead of up.

“Nate!” The Yankee officer gasped. “No! Please!”

“Jesus!” The blasphemy was torn from Starbuck. The man he was attacking was a member of his father’s church, an old acquaintance with whom Starbuck had endured an eternity of Sunday school lessons. The last news Starbuck had heard of William Lewis was that he had become a student at Harvard, but now he was gasping as Starbuck’s bayonet scored down his ribs.

“Nate?” Lewis asked. “Is it you?”

“Drop your sword, Will!”

William Lewis shook his head, not out of obstinate refusal, but out of puzzlement that his old friend should appear in the unlikely guise of a rebel. Then, seeing the look of fury on Starbuck’s face, he let the sword drop. “I surrender, Nate!”

Starbuck left him standing over the fallen sword and ran on to catch his men. The encounter with an old friend had unnerved him. Was he fighting a Boston battalion? If so, how many more of this beaten enemy would recognize him? What familiar households would he plunge into mourning by his actions on this Virginia hilltop? Then he forgot his qualms as he saw a giant bearded man howling at the rebels. The man, dressed in shirtsleeves and suspenders, was using one hand to swing an artillery rammer like a club, while in his other he held a short Roman-pattern stabbing sword that was standard issue to gunners. His retreat had been cut off, but he was refusing to surrender, preferring, to die like a hero than yield like a coward. He had already felled one of Starbuck’s men; now he challenged the others to fight him. Sergeant Mallory, who was Truslow’s brother-in-law, fired at the huge man, but the bullet missed and the bearded gunner turned like a fury on the wiry Mallory.

“He’s mine!” Starbuck shouted and pushed Mallory aside, lunged forward, then swayed back as the huge man whirled the rammer. This, Starbuck reckoned, was his duty as an officer. The company must see that he was the least afraid, the most ready to fight. Besides, today he felt unbeatable. The scream of battle was in his veins like a splash of fire. He laughed as he lunged with the bayonet, only to have the blade knocked hard aside by the short sword.

“Bastard!” the gunner spat at Starbuck, then slashed the short sword in quick vicious sweeps, trying to keep Starbuck’s attention on the blade while he swung the rammer. He thought he had tricked the rebel officer and bellowed with a kind of joy as he anticipated the clublike wooden head smashing his enemy’s skull, but Starbuck ducked hard down so that it hissed over his slouch hat and the momentum of the great swing was sufficient to sway the big man off-balance. Then it was Starbuck’s turn to shout in triumph as he rammed the bayonet up, hard up, pushing against the astonishing resistance of skin and flesh, and he was still screaming as the big man jerked and fell, twitching on the blade’s long shank like a gaffed fish dying.

Starbuck was breathless as he tried to pull his bayonet free, but the gunner’s flesh had closed tight on the steel and the blade would not move. The man had dropped his own weapons and was clawing feebly at the rifle in his gut. Starbuck also tried to twist the steel free, but the flesh’s suction gripped like stone. He pulled the rifle’s trigger, hoping to blast the bayonet loose, but still it would not move. The gunner gasped horribly as the bullet struck, then Starbuck abandoned the weapon and left the gunner dying on the forest floor. He unholstered his fine ivory-handled revolver instead and ran after his company only to discover that K Company was no longer alone in the woods, but was merely a small part of a gray and butternut tide that was overwhelming the northern defenders and driving the survivors in a terrible stampede off the bluffs summit and down to the narrow, muddy ledge beside the river. A New York sergeant screamed as he lost his precarious footing and tumbled down the slope to break his leg on a rock.

“Nate!” Adam had spurred his stallion into the trees. “Call them off!”

Starbuck stared uncomprehendingly at his friend.

“It’s over! You’ve won!” Adam said and gestured at the mass of rebels who had begun firing down the bluff’s steep slope at the Yankees trapped beneath. “Stop them!” Adam said, as if he blamed Starbuck for this display of gleeful, vengeful victory, then he turned his horse savagely away to find someone with the authority to finish the killing.