Rebel

скачать книгу бесплатно


Something in Washington Faulconer’s energetic tirade triggered Starbuck’s memory of the amusing stories Adam liked to tell about his eccentric schoolmaster uncle. ‘He was Adam’s tutor, sir, yes?’

‘He tutored both Adam and Anna. Now he runs the country school, and Miriam wants me to make him a major.’ Miriam was Washington Faulconer’s wife, a woman who remained secluded in the country and suffered from a debilitating variety of mysterious maladies. ‘Make Pecker a major!’ Faulconer hooted with derisive laughter at the very idea. ‘My God, you wouldn’t put the pathetic fool in charge of a henhouse, let alone a regiment of fighting men! He’s a poor relation, Nate. That’s what Pecker is. A poor relation. Ah well, to work!’

There was plenty of work. The house was besieged by callers, some wanting monetary help to develop a secret weapon they swore would bring instant victory to the South, others seeking an officer’s appointment with the Legion. A good number of the latter were professional European soldiers on half pay from their own armies, but all such petitioners were told that the Faulconer Legion would elect only local men to be its company officers and that Faulconer’s appointed aides would all be Virginians too. ‘Except for you, Nate,’ Washington Faulconer told Starbuck, ‘that’s if you’d like to serve me?’

‘I’d be honored, sir.’ And Starbuck felt a warm rush of gratitude for the kindness and trust that Faulconer was showing him.

‘You won’t find it hard to fight against your own kind, Nate?’ Faulconer asked solicitously.

‘I feel more at home here, sir.’

‘And so you should. The South is the real America, Nate, not the North.’

Not ten minutes later Starbuck had to refuse an appointment to a scarred Austrian cavalry officer who claimed to have fought in a half-dozen hard battles in Northern Italy. The man, hearing that only Virginians would be allowed to command in the Legion, sarcastically inquired how he could reach Washington. ‘Because if no one will have me here, then by God I shall fight for the North!’

The beginning of May brought the news that Northern warships had begun a blockade of the Confederate coast. Jefferson Davis, the new president of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America, retaliated by signing a declaration of war against the United States, though the State of Virginia seemed in two minds about waging that war. State troops were withdrawn from Alexandria, a town just across the Potomac River from Washington, an act that Washington Faulconer scathingly condemned as typical of Letcher’s caviling timidity. ‘You know what the governor wants?’ he asked Nate.

‘To take the Legion from you, sir?’

‘He wants the North to invade Virginia, because that’ll ease him off the political fence without tearing his britches. He’s never been fervent for secession. He’s a trimmer, Nate, that’s his trouble, a trimmer.’ Yet the very next day brought news that Letcher, far from waiting supine while the North restored the Union, had ordered Virginian troops to occupy the town of Harper’s Ferry fifty miles upstream of Washington. The North had abandoned the town without a fight, leaving behind tons of gun-making equipment in the Federal arsenal. Richmond celebrated the news, though Washington Faulconer seemed rueful. He had cherished his idea of an attack on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad whose track crossed the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry, but now, with the town and its bridge safe in Southern hands, there no longer seemed any need to raid the line farther west. The news of the river town’s occupation also promoted a flurry of speculation that the Confederacy was about to make a preemptive attack across the Potomac, and Faulconer, fearing that his rapidly growing Legion might be denied its proper place in such a victorious invasion, decided his place was at Faulconer Court House, where he could hasten the Legion’s training. ‘I’ll bring you out to Faulconer County as soon as I can,’ Faulconer promised Starbuck as he mounted his horse for the seventy-mile ride to his country estate. ‘Write to Adam for me, will you?’

‘I will, sir, of course.’

‘Tell him to come home.’ Faulconer raised a gloved hand in farewell, then released his tall black horse to the road. ‘Tell him to come home!’ he shouted as he went.

Starbuck dutifully wrote, addressing his letter to the church in Chicago that forwarded Adam’s mail. Adam, just like Starbuck, had abandoned his studies at Yale, but where Starbuck had done it for an obsession with a girl, Adam had gone to Chicago to join the Christian Peace Commission which, by prayer, tracts and witness had been trying to bring the two parts of America back into peaceful amity.

No answer came from Chicago, yet every post brought Starbuck new and urgent demands from Washington Faulconer. ‘How long will it take Shaffer’s to make officers’ uniforms?’ ‘Do we have a determination of officers’ insignia? This is important, Nate! Inquire at Mitchell and Tylers,’ ‘Visit Boyle and Gambles and ask about saber patterns,’ ‘In my bureau, third drawer down, is a revolver made by Le Mat, send it back with Nelson.’ Nelson was one of the two Negro servants who carried the letters between Richmond and Faulconer Court House. ‘The Colonel’s mighty anxious to collect his uniforms,’ Nelson confided to Starbuck. ‘The Colonel’ was Washington Faulconer, who had begun signing his letters ‘Colonel Faulconer,’ and Starbuck took good care to address Faulconer with the self-bestowed rank. The Colonel had ordered notepaper printed with the legend ‘The Faulconer Legion, Campaign Headquarters, Colonel Washington Faulconer, State of Virginia, Commanding,’ and Starbuck used the proof sheet to write the Colonel the happy news that his new uniforms were expected to be ready by Friday and promising he would have them sent out to Faulconer County immediately.

On that Friday morning Starbuck was sitting down to bring his account books up-to-date when the door to the music room banged open and a tall stranger glowered angrily from the threshold. He was a tall thin man, all bony elbows, long shanks and protruding knees. He looked to be in early middle age, had a black beard streaked with gray, a sharp nose, slanted cheekbones and tousled black hair, and was wearing a threadbare black suit over scuffed brown work boots; altogether a scarecrow figure whose sudden appearance had made Starbuck jump.

‘You must be Starbuck, ah-ha?’

‘I am, sir.’

‘I heard your father preach once.’ The curious man bustled into the room, looking for somewhere to drop his bag and umbrella and walking stick and coat and hat and book bag, and, finding no place suitable, clung to them. ‘He was impassioned, yes, but he tortured his logic. Does he always?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean. You, sir, are?’

‘It was in Cincinatti. At the old Presbyterian Hall, the one on Fourth Avenue, or was it Fifth? It was in ’56, anyway, or maybe it was ’55? The hall has since burned down, but is no loss to the architecture of what is left of the Republic. Not a fine building in my opinion. Of course none of the fools in the audience noted your father’s logic. They just wanted to cheer his every word. Down with the slavocracy! Up with our sable brethren! Hallelujah! Evil in our midst! Slur on a great nation! Bah!’

Starbuck, even though he disliked his father, felt pressed to defend him. ‘You made your opposition known to my father, sir? Or do you just start quarrels with his son?’

‘Quarrels? Opposition? I hold no opposition to your father’s views! I agree with them, each and every one. Slavery, Starbuck, is a menace to our society. I simply disagree with your father’s contemptible logic! It is not enough to pray for an end to the peculiar institution, we have to propose practical arrangements for its abolition. Are the slaveholders to be recompensed for their pecuniary loss? And if so, by whom? By the Federal government? By a sale of bonds? And what of the Negroes themselves? Are we to repatriate them to Africa? Settle them in South America? Or are we to breed the darkness out of them by forcible miscegenation, a process, I might say, which has been well begun by our slave owners. Your father made no mention of these matters, but merely had recourse to indignation and prayer, as if prayer has ever settled anything!’

‘You do not believe in prayer, sir?’

‘Believe in prayer!’ The thin man was scandalized by the very thought of such a belief. ‘If prayer solved anything there’d be no unhappiness in this world, would there? All the moaning women would be smiling! There would be no more disease, no more hunger, no more appalling children picking their snot-filled nostrils in our schoolrooms, no more sniveling infants brought for my admiration. Why should I admire their mewling, puking, whimpering, filthy-faced offspring? I do not like children! I have been telling Washington Faulconer that simple fact for fourteen years now! Fourteen years! Yet my brother-in-law seems incapable of understanding the simplest sentence of plain-spoken English and insists I run his schoolroom. Yet I do not like children, I have never liked children and I hope that I never shall like children. Is that so very hard to understand?’ The man still clung to his awkward burdens, even as he waited for Starbuck’s response.

Starbuck suddenly understood who this bad-tempered disorganized man was. This was the he-biddy, the poor relation, Faulconer’s brother-in-law. ‘You’re Mister Thaddeus Bird,’ he said.

‘Of course I’m Thaddeus Bird!’ Bird seemed angry that his identity needed confirmation. He glared bright-eyed and bristling at Starbuck. ‘Have you heard a word I said?’

‘You were telling me you do not like children.’

‘Filthy little beasts. In the North, mark you, you raise children differently. There you are not afraid to discipline them. Or beat them, indeed! But here, in the South, we need differentiate our children from our slaves and so we beat the latter and destroy the former with kindness.’

‘Mister Faulconer beats neither, I believe?’

Bird froze, staring at Starbuck as though the younger man had just uttered an extraordinary profanity. ‘My brother-in-law, I perceive, has been advertising his good qualities to you. His good qualities, Starbuck, are dollars. He buys affection, adulation and admiration. Without money he would be as empty as a Tuesday night pulpit. Besides he does not need to beat his servants or children because my sister can beat enough for twenty.’

Starbuck was offended by this ungrateful attack on his patron. ‘Mister Faulconer freed his slaves, did he not?’

‘He freed twenty house slaves, six garden boys and his stable people. He never had field hands because he never needed them. The Faulconer fortune is not based on cotton or tobacco, but upon inheritance, railroads and investment, so it was a painless gesture, Starbuck, and principally done, I suspect, to spite my sister. It is, perhaps, the one good deed Faulconer ever did, and I refer to the exercise of spitefulness rather than to the act of manumission.’ Bird, failing to find anywhere to put down his belongings, simply opened his arms and let them all drop untidily onto the music room’s parquet floor. ‘Faulconer wants you to deliver the uniforms.’

Starbuck was taken aback, but then realized the subject had abruptly been changed to the Colonel’s new finery. ‘He wants me to take them to Faulconer Court House?’

‘Of course he does!’ Bird almost screamed at Starbuck. ‘Must I state the obvious? If I say that Faulconer wishes you to deliver his uniforms, must I first define uniforms? And afterward identify Washington Faulconer? Or the Colonel, as we must all now learn to call him? Good God, Starbuck, and you were at Yale?’

‘At the seminary.’

‘Ah! That explains all. A mind that can credit the bleatings of theology professors can hardly be expected to understand plain English.’ Thaddeus Bird evidently found this insult amusing, for he began to laugh and, at the same time, to jerk his head backward and forward in a motion so like a woodpecker that it was instantly obvious how his nickname had arisen. Yet if Starbuck himself had been asked to christen this thin, angular and unpleasant man with a nickname it would not have been Pecker, but Spider, for there was something about Thaddeus Bird that irresistibly reminded Starbuck of a long-legged, hairy, unpredictable and malevolent spider. ‘The Colonel has sent me to run some errands in Richmond, while you are to go to Faulconer Court House,’ Pecker Bird went on, but in a plump, mocking voice such as he might use to a small and not very clever child. ‘Stop me if your Yale-educated mind finds any of these instructions difficult to understand. You will go to Faulconer Court House where the Colonel’—Bird paused to make a mocking salute—‘wishes for your company, but only if the tailors have finished making his uniforms. You are to be the official conveyor of those uniforms, and of his daughter’s manifold petticoats. Your responsibilities are profound.’

‘Petticoats?’ Starbuck asked.

‘Women’s undergarments,’ Bird said maliciously, then sat at Washington Faulconer’s grand piano where he played a swift and remarkably impressive arpeggio before settling into the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body’ to which, without regard to either scansion or tune, he chanted conversationally. ‘Why does Anna want so many petticoats? Especially as my niece already possesses more petticoats than a reasonable man might have thought necessary for a woman’s comfort, but reason and young ladies have never kept close company. But why does she want Ridley? I cannot answer that question either.’ He stopped playing, frowning. ‘Though he is a remarkably talented artist.’

‘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.’

‘You’re engaged to be married, sir?’

‘You find that circumstance extraordinary, perhaps?’ Bird demanded vehemently.

‘I find it cause to offer you still further congratulations, sir.’

‘Your tact exceeds your truthfulness,’ Bird cackled, then swerved into the doorway of Shaffer’s, the tailors, where Colonel Faulconer’s three identical bespoke uniforms were indeed ready as promised, as was the much cheaper outfit that Faulconer had ordered for Starbuck. Pecker Bird insisted on examining the Colonel’s uniform, then ordered one exactly like it for himself, except, he allowed, his coat’s collar should only have a major’s single star and not the three gold stars that decorated the Colonel’s collar wings. ‘Put the uniform upon my brother-in-law’s account,’ Bird said grandly as two tailors measured his awkward, bony frame. He insisted upon every possible accoutrement for the uniform, every tassel and plume and braided decoration imaginable. ‘I shall go into battle gaudy,’ Bird said, then turned as the spring-mounted bell on the shop’s door rang to announce the entrance of a new customer. ‘Delaney!’ Bird delightedly greeted a short, portly man who, with an owlish face, peered about myopically to discover the source of the enthusiastic greeting.

‘Bird? Is that you? They have uncaged you? Bird! It is you!’ The two men, one so lanky and unkempt, the other so smooth and round and neat, greeted each other with unfeigned delight. It was immediately clear that though they had not met for many months, they were resuming a conversation full of rich insults aimed at their mutual acquaintances, the best of whom were dismissed as mere nincompoops while the worst were utter fools. Starbuck, forgotten, stood fingering the parcels containing the Colonel’s three uniforms until Thaddeus Bird, suddenly remembering him, beckoned him forward.

‘You must meet Belvedere Delaney, Starbuck. Mister Delaney is Ethan’s half-brother, but you should not allow that unhappy circumstance to prejudice your judgment.’

‘Starbuck,’ Delaney said, offering a half bow. He was at least twelve inches shorter than the tall Starbuck and a good deal more elegant. Delaney’s black coat, breeches and top hat were of silk, his top boots gleamed, while his puff-bosomed shirt was a dazzling white and his tie pinned with a gold-mounted pearl. He had a round myopic face that was sly and humorous. ‘You are thinking,’ he accused Starbuck, ‘that I do not resemble dear Ethan. You were wondering, were you not, how a swan and a buzzard could be hatched from the same egg?’

‘I was wondering no such thing, sir,’ Starbuck lied.

‘Call me Delaney. We must be friends. Ethan tells me you were at Yale?’

Starbuck wondered what else Ethan had divulged. ‘I was at the seminary, yes.’

‘I shall not hold that against you, so long as you do not mind that I am a lawyer. Not, I hasten to say, a successful one, because I like to think of the law as my amusement rather than as my profession, by which I mean that I do a little probate work when it is plainly unavoidable.’ Delaney was being deliberately modest, for his flourishing practice was being nurtured by an acute political sensibility and an almost Jesuitical discretion. Belvedere Delaney did not believe in airing his clients’ dirty linen in open court and thus did his subtle work in the quiet back rooms of the Capitol Building, or in the city’s dining clubs or in the elegant drawing rooms of the big houses on Grace Street and Clay Street. He was privy to the secrets of half Virginia’s lawmakers and was reckoned to be a rising power in the Virginian capital. He told Starbuck that he had met Thaddeus Bird at the University of Virginia and that the two men had been friends ever since. ‘You shall both come and have dinner with me,’ Delaney insisted.

‘On the contrary,’ Bird said, ‘you shall have dinner with me.’

‘My dear Bird!’ Delaney pretended horror. ‘I cannot afford to eat on a country schoolmaster’s salary! The horrors of secession have stirred my appetites, and my delicate constitution requires only the richest of foods and the finest of wines. No, no! You shall eat with me, as will you, Mister Starbuck, for I am determined to hear all your father’s secret faults. Does he drink? Does he consort with evil women in the vestry? Reassure me on these matters, I beg you.’

‘You shall dine with me,’ Bird insisted, ‘and you will have the finest wine in the Spotswood’s cellars because, my dear Bird, it is not I who shall pay, but Washington Faulconer.’ ‘We are to eat on Faulconer’s account?’ Delaney asked in delight.

‘We are indeed,’ Bird answered with relish.

‘Then my business with Shaffer’s will wait for the morrow. Lead me to the trough! Lead on, dear Bird, lead on! Let us make gluttons of ourselves, let us redefine greed, let us consume comestibles as they have never been consumed before, let us wallow in the wines of France, and let us gossip. Above all, let us have gossip.’

‘I’m supposed to be buying petticoats,’ Starbuck demurred.

‘I suspect you look better in trousers,’ Delaney said sternly, ‘and besides, petticoats, like duty, can wait till the morrow. Pleasure summons us, Starbuck, pleasure summons us, let us surrender to its call.

THREE (#ulink_e991c797-7928-51bc-935c-de1a99831209)

SEVEN SPRINGS, Washington Faulconer’s house in Faulconer County, was everything Starbuck dreamed it would be, everything Adam had ever told him it would be, and everything Starbuck thought he might ever want a house to be. It was, he decided from the very first moment he saw it on that Sunday morning in late May, just perfect.

Seven Springs was a sprawling white building just two stories high except where a white clock tower surmounted a stable gate and where a rickety cupola, steepled with a weather-vane, graced the main roof. Starbuck had expected something altogether more pretentious, something with high pillars and elegant pilasters, with arching porticoes and frowning pediments, but instead the big house seemed more like a lavish farmhouse that over the years had absent-mindedly spread and multiplied and reproduced itself until it was a tangle of steep roofs, shadowed reentrants and creeper-hung walls. The heart of the house was made of thick fieldstone, the outer wings were timber, while the black-shuttered and iron-balconied windows were shaded by tall trees under which were set white painted benches, long-roped swings, and broad tables. Smaller trees were brilliant with red and white blossom that fell to make drifts of color on the well-scythed lawn. The house and its garden cradled a marvelous promise of warm domesticity and unassuming comforts.

Starbuck, greeted by a Negro servant in the front hall, had first been relieved of the paper-wrapped bundles containing Washington Faulconer’s new uniforms, then a second servant took the carpetbag containing Starbuck’s own uniform, and afterward a turbanned maid came for the two heavy bundles of petticoats that had hung so awkwardly from Starbuck’s saddle bow.

He waited. A longcase clock, its painted face orbiting with moons, stars and comets, ticked heavily in a corner of the tiled hallway. The walls were papered in a floral pattern on which hung gold-framed portraits of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Washington Faulconer. The portrait of Faulconer depicted him mounted on his magnificent black horse, Saratoga, and gesturing toward what Starbuck took to be the estate surrounding Seven Springs. The hallway grate held the ashes of a fire, suggesting that the nights were still cold in this upland county. Fresh flowers stood in a crystal vase on the table where two newspapers lay folded, their headlines celebrating North Carolina’s formal secession to the Confederate cause. The house smelt of starch, lye soap and apples. Starbuck fidgeted as he waited. He did not quite know what was expected of him. Colonel Faulconer had insisted that Starbuck bring the three newly made uniforms directly to Faulconer Court House, but whether he was to be a guest in the house or was expected to find a berth with the encamped Legion, Starbuck still did not know, and the uncertainty made him nervous.

A flurry of feet on the stairs made him turn. A young woman, fair-haired, dressed in white, and excited, came running down the final flight, then checked on the bottom stair with her hand resting on the white-painted newel post. She solemnly inspected Starbuck. ‘You’re Nate Starbuck?’ she finally asked.

‘Indeed, ma’am.’ He offered her a small, awkward bow.

‘Don’t “ma’am” me, I’m Anna.’ She stepped down onto the hall floor. She was small, scarce more than five feet tall, with a pale, waiflike face that was so anxiously wan that Starbuck, if he had not known her to be one of Virginia’s wealthiest daughters, might have thought her an orphan.

Anna’s face was familiar to Starbuck from the portrait that hung in the Richmond town house, but however accurately the picture had caught her narrow head and diffident smile, the painter had somehow missed the essence of the girl, and that essence, Starbuck decided, was oddly pitiable. Anna, despite her prettiness, looked childishly nervous, almost terrified, as if she expected the world to mock her and cuff her and discard her as worthless. That look of extraordinary timidity was not helped by the hint of a strabismus in her left eye, though the squint, if it existed at all, was very slight. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said, ‘because I was looking for an excuse not to attend church, and now I can talk to you.’

‘You received the petticoats?’ Starbuck asked.

‘Petticoats?’ Anna paused, frowning, as if the word were unfamiliar to her.

‘I brought you the petticoats you wanted,’ Starbuck explained, feeling as though he was speaking to a rather stupid child.

Anna shook her head. ‘The petticoats were for father, Mister Starbuck, not me, though why he should want them, I don’t know. Maybe he thinks the supply will be constricted by war? Mother says we must stock up on medicines because of the war. She’s ordered a hundredweight of camphor, and the Lord knows how much niter paper and hartshorn too. Is the sun very hot?’

‘No.’

‘I cannot go into too fierce a sunlight, you see, in case I burn. But you say it isn’t fierce?’ She asked the question very earnestly.

‘It isn’t, no.’

‘Then shall we go for a walk? Would you like that?’ She crossed the hall and slipped a hand under Starbuck’s arm and tugged him toward the wide front door. The impetuous gesture was strangely intimate for such a timid girl, yet Starbuck suspected it was a pathetic appeal for companionship. ‘I’ve been so wanting to meet you,’ Anna said. ‘Weren’t you supposed to come here yesterday?’

‘The uniforms were a day late,’ Starbuck lied. In truth his dinner with Thaddeus Bird and the beguiling Belvedere Delaney had stretched from the early afternoon to late supper-time, and so the petticoats had not been bought till late Saturday morning, but it hardly seemed politic to admit to such dalliance.

‘Well, you’re here now,’ Anna said as she drew Starbuck into the sunlight, ‘and I’m so glad. Adam has talked so much about you.’

‘He often spoke of you,’ Starbuck said gallantly and untruthfully, for in fact Adam had rarely spoken of his sister, and never with great fondness.

‘You surprise me. Adam usually spends so much time examining his own conscience that he scarcely notices the existence of other people.’ Anna, thus revealing a more astringent mind than Starbuck had expected, nevertheless blushed, as if apologizing for her apparently harsh judgment. ‘My brother is a Faulconer to the core,’ she explained. ‘He is not very practical.’

‘Your father is practical, surely?’

‘He’s a dreamer,’ Anna said, ‘a romantic. He believes that all fine things will come true if we just have enough hope.’

‘And surely this house was not built by mere hopes?’ Starbuck waved toward the generous facade of Seven Springs.

‘You like the house?’ Anna sounded surprised. ‘Mother and I are trying to persuade Father to pull it down and build something altogether grander. Something Italian, perhaps, with columns and a dome? I would like to have a pillared temple on a hill in the garden. Something surrounded by flowers, and very grand.’