Rebel

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‘Now, Nate,’ Washington Faulconer said heartily when he had decided to buy the twelve-dollar guns, ‘you promised us a story. There’s coffee there, or something stronger? Do you drink? You do? But not with your father’s blessing, I’m sure. Your father can hardly approve of ardent spirits, or does he? Is the Reverend Elial a prohibitionist as well as an abolitionist? He is! What a ferocious man he must be, to be sure. Sit down.’ Washington Faulconer was full of energy and happy to conduct a conversation with himself as he stood up, pulled a chair for Starbuck away from the wall, poured Starbuck coffee, then sat back at his desk. ‘So come! Tell me! Aren’t you supposed to be at the seminary?’

‘Yes, sir, I am.’ Starbuck felt inhibited suddenly, ashamed of his story and of his pathetic condition. ‘It’s a very long tale,’ he protested to Washington Faulconer.

‘The longer the better. So come along, tell!’

So Starbuck had no choice but to tell his pathetic story of obsession, love and crime; a shameful tale of how Mademoiselle Dominique Demarest of New Orleans had persuaded Nathaniel Starbuck of Yale that life had more to offer than lectures in didactic theology, sacred literature or the sermonizing arts.

‘A bad woman!’ Washington Faulconer said with happy relish when Starbuck first mentioned her. ‘Every tale should have a bad woman.’

Starbuck had first glimpsed Mademoiselle Dominique Demarest in the Lyceum Hall at New Haven where Major Ferdinand Trabell’s touring company was presenting the Only True and Authorized Stage Version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Complete with Real Bloodhounds. Trabell’s had been the third such traveling Tom company to visit New Haven that winter, and each had claimed to be presenting the only true and authorized dramatic version of the great work, but Major Trabell’s production had been the first that Starbuck dared attend. There had been impassioned debate in the seminary about the propriety of attending a thespian performance, even one dedicated to moral instruction and the abolition of slavery, but Starbuck had wanted to go because of the bloodhounds mentioned on the playbill. There had been no bloodhounds in Mrs. Beecher Stowe’s fine work, but Starbuck suspected the animals might make a dramatic addition to the story, and so he had visited the Lyceum where, awestruck, he had watched as a veritable angel who was playing the part of the fugitive slave Eliza had tripped lightly across the make-believe ice floes pursued by a pair of lethargic and dribbling dogs that might or might not have been bloodhounds.

Not that Starbuck cared about the dogs’ pedigree, but only about the angel, who had a long face, sad eyes, shadowed cheeks, a wide mouth, hair black as night, and a gentle voice. He had fallen in love instantly, furiously and, so far as he could tell, eternally. He had gone to the Lyceum the next night, and the next, and the next, which was also New Haven’s final performance of the great epic, and on the following day he had offered to help Major Trabell strike and crate the scenery, and the major, who had recently been abandoned by his only son and was therefore in need of a replacement to play the parts of Augustine St. Clair and Simon Legree, and recognizing Starbuck’s good looks and commanding presence, had offered him four dollars a week, full board, and Major Trabell’s own tutelage in the thespian arts. Not even those enticements could have persuaded Starbuck to abandon his seminary education, except that Mademoiselle Dominique Demarest had added her entreaties to those of her employer, and so, on a whim, and for his adoration of Dominique, Starbuck had become a traveling player.

‘You upped stakes and went? Just like that?’ Washington Faulconer asked with obvious amusement, even admiration.

‘Yes, sir.’ Though Starbuck had not confessed the full extent of his humiliating surrender to Dominique. He had admitted attending the theater night after night, but he had not described how he had lingered in the streets wanting a glimpse of his angel, or how he had written her name again and again in his notebooks, nor how he had tried to capture in pencil the delicacy of her long, misleadingly ethereal face, nor how he had yearned to repair the spiritual damage done to Dominique by her appalling history.

That history had been published in the New Haven newspaper that had noticed the Tom company’s performance, which notice revealed that although Mademoiselle Demarest appeared to be as white as any other respectable lady, she was in truth a nineteen-year-old octoroon who had been the slave of a savage New Orleans gentleman whose behavior rivaled that of Simon Legree. Delicacy forbade the newspaper from publishing any details of his behavior, except to say that Dominique’s owner had threatened the virtue of his fair property and thus forced Dominique, in an escape that rivaled the drama of Eliza’s fictional flight, to flee northward for liberty and the safeguard of her virtue. Starbuck tried to imagine his lovely Dominique running desperately through the Louisiana night pursued by yelping fiends, howling dogs and a slavering owner.

‘Like hell I escaped! I was never a slave, never!’ Dominique told Starbuck next day when they were riding the cars for Hartford, where the show would play for six nights in the Touro Hall. ‘I ain’t got nigger blood, not one drop. But the notion sells tickets, so it does, and tickets is money, and that’s why Trabell tells the newspapers I’m part nigger.’

‘You mean it’s a lie?’ Starbuck was horrified.

‘Of course it’s a lie!’ Dominique was indignant. ‘I told you, it just sells tickets, and tickets is money.’ She said the only truths in the fable were that she was nineteen and had been raised in New Orleans, but in a white family that she claimed was of irreproachable French ancestry. Her father possessed money, though she was vague about the exact process whereby the daughter of a wealthy Louisiana merchant came to be performing the part of Eliza in Major Ferdinand Trabell’s touring Tom company. ‘Not that Trabell’s a real major,’ Dominique confided to Starbuck, ‘but he pretends to have fought in Mexico. He says he got his limp there off a bayonet, but I reckon he more likely got stabbed by a whore in Philadelphia.’ She laughed. She was two years younger than Starbuck but seemed immeasurably older and far more experienced. She also seemed to like Starbuck, who returned her liking with a blind adoration and did not care that she was not an escaped slave. ‘How much is he paying you?’ Dominique asked Starbuck.

‘Four dollars a week.’

She laughed scornfully. ‘Robbing you!’

For the next two months Starbuck happily learned the acting trade as he worshiped at the shrine of Miss Demarest’s virtue. He enjoyed being on stage, and the fact that he was the son of the Reverend Elial Starbuck, the famous abolitionist, served to swell both Trabell’s audiences and receipts. It also brought Nathaniel’s new profession to the attention of his father who, in a terrifying fury, sent Starbuck’s elder brother, James, to bring the sinner to repentance.

James’s mission had failed miserably, and two weeks later Dominique, who had so far not permitted Starbuck any liberty beyond the holding of her hand, at last promised him the reward of his heart’s whole desire if he would just help her steal that week’s takings from Major Trabell. ‘He owes me money,’ Dominique said, and she explained that her father had written to say he was waiting for her in Richmond, Virginia, and she knew Major Trabell would not pay her any of the six months’ wages he owed and so she needed Starbuck’s help in purloining what was, by rights, already hers. For the reward she was offering, Starbuck would have helped Dominique steal the moon, but he settled for the eight hundred and sixty-four dollars he found in Major Trabell’s portmanteau, which he stole while, in the next-door room, the major took a hip bath with a young lady who was hoping for a career upon the stage and had therefore offered herself to the major’s professional inspection and judgment.

Starbuck and Dominique fled that same night, reaching Richmond just two days later. Dominique’s father was supposed to have been waiting at the Spotswood House Hotel on Main Street, but instead it was a tall young man, scarce a year older than Starbuck himself, who waited in the hotel’s parlor and who laughed with joy when Dominique appeared. The young man was Major Trabell’s son, Jefferson, who was estranged from his father, and who now dismissed Starbuck with a patronizing ten dollars. ‘Make yourself scarce, boy,’ he had said, ‘before you’re strung up for crow bait. Northerners ain’t popular in these parts right now.’ Jefferson Trabell wore buckskin breeches, top boots, a satin vest and a scarlet coat. He had dark knowing eyes and narrow side-whiskers which, like his long black hair, were oiled smooth as jet. His tie was secured with a large pearl pin and his holstered revolver had a polished silver handgrip. It was that revolver rather than the tall young man’s dandyish air that persuaded Starbuck there was little point in trying to claim his promised reward from Mademoiselle Dominique Demarest.

‘You mean she just dropped you?’ Washington Faulconer asked in disbelief.

‘Yes, sir.’ The shameful memory convulsed Starbuck with misery.

‘Without even giving you a ride?’ Ethan Ridley laid down the empty revolver as he asked the question and, though the query earned him a reproving glance from Washington Faulconer, it was also clear the older man wanted to know the answer. Starbuck offered no reply, but he had no need to. Dominique had made him into a fool, and his foolishness was obvious.

‘Poor Nate!’ Washington Faulconer was amused. ‘What are you going to do now? Go home? Your father won’t be too happy! And what of Major Trabell? He’ll be wanting to nail your gizzards to his barn door, won’t he? That and get his money back! Is he a Southerner?’

‘A Pennsylvanian, sir. But his son pretends to be a Southerner.’

‘So where is the son? Still at the Spotswood?’

‘No, sir.’ Starbuck had spent the night in a boarding house in Canal Street and, in the morning, still seething with indignation, he had gone to the Spotswood House Hotel to confront Dominique and her lover, but instead a clerk had told him that Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson Trabell had just left for the Richmond and Danville Railroad Depot. Starbuck had followed them, only to discover that the birds were flown and that their train was already steaming south out of the depot, its locomotive pumping a bitter smoke into the spring air that was so briskly filled with the news of Fort Sumter’s capitulation.

‘Oh, it’s a rare tale, Nate! A rare tale!’ Washington Faulconer laughed. ‘But you shouldn’t feel so bad. You ain’t the first young fellow to be fooled by a petticoat, and you won’t be the last, and I’ve no doubt Major Trabell’s a scoundrel as deep as they come.’ He lit a cigar, then tossed the spent match into a spittoon. ‘So what are we going to do with you?’ The lightness with which he asked the question seemed to imply that whatever answer Starbuck desired could be easily supplied. ‘Do you want to go back to Yale?’

‘No, sir.’ Starbuck spoke miserably.

‘No?’

Starbuck spread his hands. ‘I’m not sure I should be at the seminary, sir. I’m not even sure I should have been there in the first place.’ He stared down at his scarred, grazed knuckles, and bit his lip as he considered his answer. ‘I can’t become a minister now, sir, not now that I’m a thief.’ And worse than a thief, Starbuck thought. He was remembering the fourth chapter of first Timothy where St. Paul had prophesied how in the latter times some men would depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, and Starbuck knew he had fulfilled that prophecy, and the realization imbued his voice with a terrible anguish. ‘I’m simply not worthy of the ministry, sir.’

‘Worthy?’ Washington Faulconer exclaimed. ‘Worthy! My God, Nate, if you could see the plug-uglies who shove themselves into our pulpits you wouldn’t say that! My God, we’ve got a fellow in Rosskill Church who preaches blind drunk most Sunday mornings. Ain’t that so, Ethan?’

‘Poor old fool toppled into a grave last year,’ Ridley added with amusement. ‘He was supposed to be burying someone and damn near buried himself instead.’

‘So I wouldn’t worry about being worthy,’ Faulconer said scornfully. ‘But I suppose Yale won’t be too happy to have you back, Nate, not if you walked out on them for some chickabiddy trollop? And I suppose you’re a wanted man too, eh? A thief no less!’ Faulconer evidently found this notion hugely entertaining. ‘Go back North and they’ll clap you in jail, is that it?’

‘I fear so, sir.’

Washington Faulconer hooted with amusement. ‘By God, Nate, but you are stuck in the tar patch. Both feet, both hands, ass, crop and privates! And what will your sacred father do if you go home? Give you a whipping before he turns you over to the constables?’

‘Like as not, sir, yes.’

‘So the Reverend Elial’s a whipper, is he? Likes to thrash?’

‘Yes, sir, he does.’

‘I can’t allow that.’ Washington Faulconer stood and walked to a window overlooking the street. A magnolia was in bloom in his narrow front garden, filling the window bay with its sweet scent. ‘I never was a believer in a thrashing. My father didn’t beat me and I’ve never beaten my children. Fact is, Nate, I’ve never laid a hand on any child or servant, only on my enemies.’ He spoke sententiously, as though he was accustomed to defending his strange behavior, as in truth he was, for, not ten years before, Washington Faulconer had made himself famous for freeing all his slaves. For a brief time the Northern newspapers had hailed Faulconer as a precursor of Southern enlightenment, a reputation that had made him bitterly unpopular in his native Virginia, but his neighbors’ animosity had died away when Faulconer had refused to encourage other Southerners to follow his example. He claimed the decision had been purely personal. Now, the furor long in his past, Faulconer smiled at Starbuck. ‘Just what are we going to do with you, Nate?’

‘You’ve done enough, sir,’ Starbuck said, though in reality he was hoping that far more might yet be done. ‘What I must do, sir, is find work. I have to repay Major Trabell.’

Faulconer smiled at Starbuck’s earnestness. ‘The only work around here, Nate, is common soldiering, and I don’t think that’s a trade to pay off debts in a hurry. No, I think you’d better raise your sights a little higher.’ Faulconer was taking an obvious enjoyment in solving Starbuck’s problem. He smiled, then gestured about the lavishly appointed room. ‘Maybe you’d consider staying here, Nate? With me? I’m in need of someone who can be my private secretary and do some purchasing as well.’

‘Sir!’ Ethan Ridley sat bolt upright on the sofa, his irate tone betraying that the job being offered to Starbuck was one Ridley considered his own.

‘Oh come, Ethan! You detest clerking for me! You can’t even spell!’ Faulconer chided his future son-in-law gently. ‘Besides, with the guns purchased, your main job’s done. At least for the moment.’ He sat thinking for a few seconds, then clicked his fingers. ‘I know, Ethan, go back to Faulconer County and start some proper recruiting. Beat the drum for me. If we don’t raise the county, someone else will, and I don’t want Faulconer County men fighting for other Virginia regiments. Besides, don’t you want to be with Anna?’

‘Of course I do, sir.’ Though Ridley, offered this chance to be close to his betrothed, seemed somewhat less than enthusiastic.

Washington Faulconer turned back to Starbuck. ‘I’m raising a regiment, Nate, a legion. The Faulconer Legion. I’d hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, I’d hoped common sense would prevail, but it seems the North wants a fight and, by God, we’ll have to give them one if they insist. Would it offend your loyalties to help me?’

‘No, sir.’ That seemed an entirely inadequate response, so Starbuck imbued his voice with more enthusiasm. ‘I’d be proud to help you, sir.’

‘We’ve made a beginning,’ Faulconer said modestly. ‘Ethan has been buying equipment and we’ve found our guns now, as you heard, but the paperwork is already overwhelming. Do you think you can handle some correspondence for me?’

Could Starbuck handle correspondence? Nathaniel Starbuck would have done all Washington Faulconer’s correspondence from that moment until the seas ran dry. Nathaniel Starbuck would do whatever this marvelous, kind, decent and carelessly generous man wanted him to do. ‘Of course I can help, sir. It would be a privilege.’

‘But, sir!’ Ethan Ridley tried one last patriotic protest. ‘You can’t trust military affairs to a Northerner.’

‘Nonsense, Ethan! Nate’s stateless! He’s an outlaw! He can’t go home, not unless he goes to jail, so he’ll just have to stay here. I’m making him an honorary Virginian.’ Faulconer bestowed a bow on Starbuck in recognition of this elevated status. ‘So welcome to the southland, Nate.’

Ethan Ridley looked astonished at his future father-in-law’s quixotic kindness, but Nathaniel Starbuck did not care. He had fallen on his feet, his luck had turned clean round, and he was safe in the land of his father’s enemies. Starbuck had come South.

TWO (#ulink_448bcf0e-7c48-5f62-a951-e072a93677b6)

STARBUCK’S FIRST DAYS in Richmond were spent accompanying Ethan Ridley to warehouses that held the stores and supplies that would equip the Faulconer Legion. Ridley had arranged for the purchase of the equipment and now, before he left to begin the major recruiting effort in Faulconer County, he made certain Starbuck was able to take over his responsibilities. ‘Not that you need bother with the finances, Reverend,’ Ridley told Starbuck, using the half-mocking and half-teasing nickname he had adopted for the Northerner, ‘I’ll just let you arrange the transport.’ Starbuck would then be left to kick his heels in big echoing warehouses or in dusty counting houses while Ridley talked business in the private inner office before emerging to toss another instruction Starbuck’s way. ‘Mister Williams will have six crates ready for collection next week. By Thursday, Johnny?’

‘Ready by Thursday, Mister Ridley.’ The Williams warehouse was selling the Faulconer Legion a thousand pairs of boots, while other merchants were selling the regiment rifles, uniforms, percussion caps, buttons, bayonets, powder, cartridges, revolvers, tents, skillets, haversacks, canteens, tin mugs, hemp line, webbing belts: all the mundane necessities of military paraphernalia, and all of it coming from private warehouses because Washington Faulconer refused to deal with the Virginian government. ‘You have to understand. Reverend,’ Ridley told Starbuck, ‘that Faulconer ain’t fond of the new governor, and the new governor ain’t fond of Faulconer. Faulconer thinks the governor will let him pay for the Legion, then steal it away from him, so we ain’t allowed to have anything to do with the state government. We’re not to encourage them, see? So we can’t buy goods out of the state armories, which makes life kind of difficult.’ Though plainly Ethan Ridley had overcome many of the difficulties, for Starbuck’s notebook was filling impressively with lists of crates, boxes, barrels and sacks that needed to be collected and delivered to the town of Faulconer Court House. ‘Money,’ Ridley told him, ‘that’s the key, Reverend. There’s a thousand fellows trying to buy equipment, and there’s a shortage of everything, so you need deep pockets. Let’s go get a drink.’

Ethan Ridley took a perverse delight in introducing Starbuck to the city’s taverns, especially the dark, rancid drinking houses that were hidden among the mills and lodging houses on the northern bank of the James River. ‘This ain’t like your father’s church, is it, Reverend?’ Ridley would ask of some rat-infested, rotting hovel, and Starbuck would agree that the liquor den was indeed a far cry from his ordered, Boston upbringing where cleanliness had been a mark of God’s favor and abstinence a surety of his salvation.

Ridley evidently wanted to savor the pleasure of shocking the Reverend Elial Starbuck’s son, yet even the filthiest of Richmond’s taverns held a romance for Starbuck solely because it was such a long way from his father’s Calvinist joylessness. It was not that Boston lacked drinking houses as poverty stricken and hopeless as any in Richmond, but Starbuck had never been inside Boston’s drinking dens and thus he took a strange satisfaction out of Ridley’s midday excursions into Richmond’s malodorous alleyways. The adventures seemed proof that he really had escaped his family’s cold, disapproving grasp, but Starbuck’s evident enjoyment of the expeditions only made Ridley try yet harder to shock him. ‘If I abandoned you in this place, Reverend,’ Ridley threatened Starbuck in one seamen’s tavern that stank from the sewage dripping into the river from a rusting pipe not ten feet from the stillroom, ‘you’d have your throat cut inside five minutes.’

‘Because I’m a Northerner?’

‘Because you’re wearing shoes.’

‘I’d be all right,’ Starbuck boasted. He had no weapons, and the dozen men in the tavern looked capable of slitting a congregation of respectable throats with scarce a twinge of conscience, but Starbuck would not let himself show any fear in front of Ethan Ridley. ‘Leave me here if you want.’

‘You wouldn’t dare stay here on your own,’ Ridley said.

‘Go on. See if I mind.’ Starbuck turned to the serving hatch and snapped his fingers. ‘One more glass here. Just one!’ That was pure bravado, for Starbuck hardly drank any alcohol. He would sip at a whiskey, but Ridley always finished the glass. The terror of sin haunted Starbuck, indeed it was that terror which gave the tavern excursions their piquancy, and liquor was one of the greater sins whose temptations Starbuck half-flirted with and half-resisted.

Ridley laughed at Starbuck’s defiance. ‘You’ve got balls, Starbuck, I’ll say that.’

‘So leave me here.’

‘Faulconer won’t forgive me if I get you killed. You’re his new pet puppy, Reverend.’

‘Pet puppy?’ Starbuck bridled at the words.

‘Don’t take offense, Reverend.’ Ridley stamped on the butt of a smoked cigar and immediately lit another. He was a man of impatient appetites. ‘Faulconer’s a lonely man, and lonely men like having pet puppies. That’s why he’s so keen on secession.’

‘Because he’s lonely?’ Starbuck did not understand.

Ridley shook his head. He was lounging with his back against the counter, staring through a cracked dirty window to where a two-masted ship creaked against a crumbling river quay. ‘Faulconer supports the rebellion because he thinks it’ll make him popular with his father’s old friends. He’ll prove himself a more fervent Southerner than any of them, because in a way he ain’t a Southerner at all, you know what I mean?’

‘No.’

Ridley grimaced, as though unwilling to explain himself, but then tried anyway. ‘He owns land, Reverend, but he don’t use it. He doesn’t farm it, he doesn’t plant it, he doesn’t even graze it. He just owns it and stares at it. He doesn’t have niggers, at least not as slaves. His money comes out of railroads and paper, and the paper comes out of New York or London. He’s probably more at home in Europe than here in Richmond, but that don’t stop wanting him to belong here. He wants to be a Southerner, but he ain’t.’ Ridley blew a plume of cigar smoke across the room, then turned his dark, sardonic gaze on Starbuck. ‘I’ll give you a piece of advice.’

‘Please.’

‘Keep agreeing with him,’ Ridley said very seriously. ‘Family can disagree with Washington, which is why he don’t spend too much time with family, but private secretaries like you and me ain’t allowed any disagreements. Our job is to admire him. You understand me?’

‘He’s admirable anyway,’ Starbuck said loyally.

‘I guess we’re all admirable,’ Ridley said with amusement, ‘so long as we can find a pedestal high enough to stand on. Washington’s pedestal is his money, Reverend.’

‘And yours too?’ Starbuck asked belligerently.

‘Not mine, Reverend. My father lost all the family money. My pedestal, Reverend, is horses. I’m the best damned horseman you’ll find this side of the Atlantic. Or any side for that matter.’ Ridley grinned at his own lack of modesty, then tossed back his glass of whiskey. ‘Let’s go and see if those bastards at Boyle and Gamble have found the field glasses they promised me last week.’

In the evenings Ridley would disappear to his half-brother’s rooms in Grace Street, leaving Starbuck to walk back to Washington Faulconer’s house through streets that were swarming with strange-looking creatures come from the deeper, farther reaches of the South. There were thin-shanked, gaunt-faced men from Alabama, long-haired leather-skinned horse riders from Texas and bearded homespun volunteers from Mississippi, all of them armed like buccaneers and ready to drink themselves into fits of instant fury. Whores and liquor salesmen made small fortunes, city rents doubled and doubled again, and still the railroads brought fresh volunteers to Richmond. They had come, one and all, to protect the new Confederacy from the Yankees, though at first it looked as if the new Confederacy would be better advised to protect itself from its own defenders, but then, obedient to the insistent commands of the state’s newly appointed military commander, all the ragtag volunteers were swept away to the city’s Central Fair Grounds where cadets from the Virginia Military Institute were brought to teach them basic drill.

That new commander of the Virginian militia, Major-General Robert Lee, also insisted on paying a courtesy call on Washington Faulconer. Faulconer suspected that the proposed visit was a ploy by Virginia’s new governor to take control of the Legion, yet, despite his misgivings, Faulconer could scarcely refuse to receive a man who came from a Virginia family as old and prominent as his own. Ethan Ridley had left Richmond the day before Lee’s visit, and so Starbuck was ordered to be present at the meeting. ‘I want you to make notes of what’s said,’ Faulconer warned him darkly. ‘Letcher’s not the kind of man to let a patriot raise a regiment. You mark my words, Nate, he’ll have sent Lee to take the Legion away from me.’

Starbuck sat at one side of the study, a notebook open on his knees, though in the event nothing of any great importance was discussed. The middle-aged Lee, who was dressed in civilian clothes and attended by one young captain in the uniform of the state militia, first exchanged civilities with Faulconer, then formally, almost apologetically, explained that Governor Letcher had appointed him to command the state’s military forces and his first duty was to recruit, equip and train those forces, in which connection he understood that Mister Faulconer was raising a regiment in Faulconer County?

‘A legion,’ Faulconer corrected him.

‘Ah yes, indeed, a legion.’ Lee seemed quite flummoxed by the word.

‘And not one stand of its arms, not one cannon, not one cavalry saddle, not one buttonhook or one canteen, indeed not one item of its equipment, Lee, will be a charge upon the state,’ Faulconer said proudly. ‘I am paying for it, down to the last bootlace.’

‘An expensive undertaking, Faulconer, I’m sure.’ Lee frowned, as though puzzled by Faulconer’s generosity. The general had a great reputation, and folk in Richmond had taken immense comfort from the fact that he had returned to his native state rather than accept the command of Abraham Lincoln’s Northern armies, but Starbuck, watching the quiet, neat, gray-bearded man, could see little evidence of the general’s supposed genius. Lee seemed reticent to the point of timidity and was entirely dwarfed by Washington Faulconer’s energy and enthusiasm. ‘You mention cannon and cavalry,’ Lee said, speaking very diffidently, ‘does that mean your regiment, your Legion I should say, will consist of all arms?’

‘All arms?’ Washington Faulconer was unfamiliar with the phrase.

‘The Legion will not consist of infantry alone?’ Lee explained courteously.

‘Indeed. Indeed. I wish to bring the Confederacy a fully trained, fully equipped, wholly useful unit.’ Faulconer paused to consider the wisdom of his next words, but then decided a little bombast would not be misplaced. ‘I fancy the Legion will be akin to Bonaparte’s elite troops. An imperial guard for the Confederacy.’

‘Ah, indeed.’ It was hard to tell whether Lee was impressed or aghast at the vision. He paused for a few seconds, then calmly remarked that he looked forward to the day when such a Legion would be fully assimilated into the state’s forces. That was precisely what Faulconer feared most—a naked grab by Governor John Letcher to take command of his Legion and thus reduce it to yet another mediocre component in the state militia. Faulconer’s vision was much grander than the governor’s lukewarm ambitions, and, in defense of that vision, he made no response to Lee’s words. The general frowned. ‘You do understand, Mister Faulconer, that we must have order and arrangement?’

‘Discipline, you mean?’

‘The very word. We must use discipline.’

Washington Faulconer ceded the point graciously, then inquired of Lee whether the state would like to assume the cost of outfitting and equipping the Faulconer Legion? He let that dangerous question dangle for a few seconds, then smiled. ‘As I made clear to you, Lee, my ambition is to provide the Confederacy with a finished article, a trained Legion, but if the state is to intervene’—he meant interfere, but was too tactful to use the word—‘then I think it only right that the state should take over the necessary funding and, indeed, reimburse me for the monies already expressed. My secretary, Mister Starbuck, can give you a full accounting.’

Lee received the threat without changing his placid, somewhat anxious expression. He glanced at Starbuck, seemed curious about the young man’s fading black eye, but made no comment. Instead he looked back to Washington Faulconer. ‘But you do intend to place the Legion under the proper authority?’

‘When it is trained, indeed.’ Faulconer chuckled. ‘I am hardly proposing to wage a private war on the United States.’

Lee did not smile at the small jest, instead he seemed rather downcast, but it seemed triumphantly clear to Starbuck that Washington Faulconer had won his victory over Governor Letcher’s representative and that the Faulconer Legion would not be assimilated into the new regiments being hurriedly raised across the state. ‘Your recruitment goes well?’ Lee asked.

‘I have one of my best officers supervising the process. We’re only levying recruits in the county, not outside.’ That was not wholly true, but Faulconer felt the state would respect his proprietorial rights inside Faulconer County, whereas if he too openly recruited outside the county the state might complain that he was poaching.

Lee seemed happy enough with the reassurance. ‘And the training?’ he asked. ‘It will be in competent hands?’

‘Extremely competent,’ Faulconer said enthusiastically, but without adding any of the detail Lee clearly wanted to hear. In Faulconer’s absence the Legion’s training would be supervised by the Legion’s second in command, Major Alexander Pelham, who was a neighbor of Faulconer’s and a veteran of the War of 1812. Pelham was now in his seventies, but Faulconer claimed he was as able and vigorous as a man half his age. Pelham was also the only officer connected to the Legion who had ever experienced warfare, though as Ethan Ridley had cattily remarked to Starbuck, that experience had been confined to a single day’s action, and that single action had been the defeat at Bladensburg.

Lee’s visit ended with an inconsequential exchange of views on how the war should be prosecuted. Faulconer vigorously pressed the necessity of capturing the city of Washington, while Lee talked of the urgent need to secure Virginia’s defenses, and afterward, with mutual assurances of goodwill, the two men parted. Washington Faulconer waited until the general had gone down the famous curved staircase, then exploded at Starbuck. ‘What chance do we have when fools like that are put in command? Dear God, Nate, but we need younger men, energetic men, hard-driving men, not washed-out, cautious buffoons!’ He paced the room vigorously, impotent to express the full measure of his frustration. ‘I knew the governor would try to kidnap the Legion! But he’ll need to send someone with sharper claws than that!’ He gestured scornfully toward the door through which Lee had left.

‘The newspapers say he’s the most admired soldier in America.’ Starbuck could not resist the observation.

‘Admired for what? Keeping his pants clean in Mexico? If there’s going to be war, Nate, it will not be a romp against an ill-armed pack of Mexicans! You heard him, Nate! “The paramount importance of keeping the Northern forces from attacking Richmond.”’ Faulconer gave a rather good imitation of the softspoken Lee, then savaged him with criticism. ‘Defending Richmond isn’t paramount! What’s paramount is winning the war. It means hitting them hard and soon. It means attack, attack, attack!’ He glanced at a side table where maps of the western part of Virginia lay beside a timetable of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Despite his denial of planning to wage a private war on the North, Washington Faulconer was plotting an attack on the rail line that fed supplies and recruits from the western states to the city of Washington. His ideas for the raid were still forming, but he was imagining a small, fast force of mounted soldiers who would burn down trestles, derail locomotives and tear up track. ‘I hope the fool didn’t see those maps,’ he said in sudden worry.

‘I covered them with maps of Europe before General Lee arrived, sir,’ Starbuck said.

‘You’re a brisk one, Nate! Well done! Thank God I’ve got young men like you, and none of Lee’s dullards from West Point. Is that why we’re supposed to admire him? Because he was a good superintendent of West Point? And what does that make him? It makes him a schoolmaster!’ Faulconer’s scorn was palpable. ‘I know schoolmasters, Nate. My brother-in-law’s a schoolmaster and the man isn’t fit to be a cookhouse corporal, but he still insists I should make him an officer in the Legion. Never! Pecker is a fool! A cretin! A lunkhead! A heathen! A he-biddy. That’s what my brother-in-law is, Nate, a he-biddy!’