Bernard Cornwell – Battle Flag (страница 2)

“You mean the Yankees are an inferior race?”

“It’s an acknowledged fact, sir. They’ve lost the thoroughbred strain, sir.”

“You do know I’m a Yankee, Coffman, don’t you?” Starbuck asked.

Coffman immediately looked confused, though before he could frame any response he was interrupted by Colonel Thaddeus Bird, the Faulconer Legion’s commanding officer, who came striding long-legged from the rear of the stalled column. “Is that really Jackson?” Bird asked, gazing across the river.

“Lieutenant Coffman informs me that the General’s real name is Old Mad Tom Fool Square Box Jackson, and that is indeed the man himself,” Starbuck answered.

“Ah, Coffman,” Bird said, peering down at the small Lieutenant as though Coffman was some curious specimen of scientific interest, “I remember when you were nothing but a chirruping infant imbibing the lesser jewels of my glittering wisdom.” Bird, before he became a soldier, had been the schoolmaster in Faulconer Court House, where Coffman’s family lived.

“Lieutenant Coffman has not ceased to imbibe wisdom,” Starbuck solemnly informed Colonel Bird, “nor indeed to impart it, for he has just informed me that we Yankees are an inferior breed, our blood being soured, tainted, and thinned by the immigrant strain.”

“Quite right, too!” Bird said energetically; then the Colonel draped a thin arm around the diminutive Coffman’s shoulders. “I could a tale unfold, young Coffman, whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, and make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres.” He spoke even more closely into the ear of the astonished Lieutenant. “Did you know, Coffman, that the very moment an immigrant boat docks in Boston all the Beacon Hill families send their wives down to the harbor to be impregnated? Is that not the undeniable truth, Starbuck?”

“Indeed it is, sir, and they send their daughters as well if the boat arrives on the Sabbath.”

“Boston is a libidinous town, Coffman,” Bird said very sternly as he stepped away from the wide-eyed Lieutenant, “and if I am to give you just one piece of advice in this sad bad world, then let it be to avoid the place. Shun it, Coffman! Regard Boston as you might regard Sodom or Gomorrah. Remove it from your catalog of destinations. Do you understand me, Coffman?”

“Yes, sir,” Coffman said very seriously.

Starbuck laughed at the look on his Lieutenant’s face. Coffman had arrived the day before with a draft of conscripted men to replace the casualties of Gaines’ Mill and Malvern Hill. The conscripts had mostly been culled from the alleys of Richmond and, to Starbuck, appeared to be a scrawny, unhealthy, and shifty-looking crew of dubious reliability, but Franklin Coffman, like the original members of the Legion, was a volunteer from Faulconer County and full of enthusiasm for the Southern cause.

Colonel Bird now abandoned his teasing of the Lieutenant and plucked at Starbuck’s sleeve. “Nate,” he said, “a word.” The two men walked away from the road, crossing a shallow ditch into a meadow that was wan and brown from the summer’s heat wave. Starbuck limped, not because he was wounded, but because the sole of his right boot was becoming detached from its uppers. “Is it me?” Bird asked as the two men paced across the dry grass. “Am I getting wiser or is it that the young are becoming progressively more stupid? And young Coffman, believe it if you will, was brighter than most of the infants it was my misfortune to teach. I remember he mastered the theory of gerunds in a single morning!”

“I’m not sure I ever mastered gerunds,” Starbuck said.

“Hardly difficult,” Bird said, “so long as you remember that they are nouns which provide—”

“And I’m not sure I ever want to master the damn things,” Starbuck interrupted.

“Wallow in your ignorance, then,” Bird said grandly. “But you’re also to look after young Coffman. I couldn’t bear to write to his mother and tell her he’s dead, and I have a horrid feeling that he’s likely to prove stupidly brave. He’s like a puppy. Tail up, nose wet, and can’t wait to play battles with Yankees.”

“I’ll look after him, Pecker.”

“But you’re also to look after yourself,” Bird said meaningfully. He stopped and looked into Starbuck’s eyes. “There’s a rumor, only a rumor, and God knows I do not like passing on rumors, but this one has an unpleasant ring to it. Swynyard was heard to say that you won’t survive the next battle.”

Starbuck dismissed the prediction with a grin. “Swynyard’s a drunk, not a prophet.” Nevertheless he felt a shudder of fear. He had been a soldier long enough to become inordinately superstitious, and no man liked to hear a presentiment of his own death.

“Suppose,” Bird said, taking two cigars from inside his hatband, “that Swynyard has decided to arrange it?”

Starbuck stared incredulously at his Colonel. “Arrange my death?” he finally asked.

Bird scratched a lucifer match alight and stooped over its flame. “Colonel Swynyard,” he announced dramatically when his cigar was drawing properly, “is a drunken swine, a beast, a cream-faced loon, a slave of nature, and a son of hell, but he is also, Nate, a most cunning rogue, and when he is not in his cups he must realize that he is losing the confidence of our great and revered leader. Which is why he must now try to do something which will please our esteemed lord and master. Get rid of you.” The last four words were delivered brutally.

Starbuck laughed them off. “You think Swynyard will shoot me in the back?”

Bird gave Starbuck the lit cigar. “I don’t know how he’ll kill you. All I know is that he’d like to kill you, and that Faulconer would like him to kill you, and for all I know our esteemed General is prepared to award Swynyard a healthy cash bonus if he succeeds in killing you. So be careful, Nate, or else join another regiment.”

“No,” Starbuck said immediately. The Faulconer Legion was his home. He was a Bostonian, a Northerner, a stranger in a strange land who had found in the Legion a refuge from his exile. The Legion provided Starbuck with casual kindnesses and a hive of friends, and those bonds of affection were far stronger than the distant enmity of Washington Faulconer. That enmity had grown worse when Faulconer’s son Adam had deserted from the Southern army to fight for the Yankees, a defection for which Brigadier General Faulconer blamed Captain Starbuck, but not even the disparity in their ranks could persuade Starbuck to abandon his fight against the man who had founded the Legion and who now commanded the five regiments, including the Legion, that made up the Faulconer Brigade. “I’ve got no need to run away,” he now told Bird. “Faulconer won’t last any longer than Swynyard. Faulconer’s a coward and Swynyard’s a drunk, and before this summer’s out, Pecker, you’ll be Brigade commander and I’ll be in command of the Legion.”

Bird hooted with delight. “You are incorrigibly conceited, Nate. You! Commanding the Legion? I imagine Major Hinton and the dozen other men senior to you might have a different opinion.”

“They might be senior, but I’m the best.”

“Ah, you still suffer from the delusion that merit is rewarded in this world? I suppose you contracted that opinion with all the other nonsense they crammed into you when Yale was failing to give you mastery of the gerund?” Bird, achieving this lick at Starbuck’s alma mater, laughed gleefully. His head jerked back and forth as he laughed, the odd jerking motion explaining his nickname: Pecker. Starbuck joined in the laughter, for he, like just about everyone else in the Legion, liked Bird enormously. The schoolmaster was eccentric, opinionated, contrary, and one of the kindest men alive. He had also proved to possess an unexpected talent for soldiering. “We move at last,” Bird now said, gesturing at the stalled column that had begun edging toward the ford where the solitary, strange figure of Jackson waited motionless on his mangy horse. “You owe me two dollars,” Bird suddenly remarked as he led Starbuck back to the road.

“Two dollars!”

“Major Hinton’s fiftieth birthday approaches. Lieutenant Pine assures me he can procure a ham, and I shall prevail on our beloved leader for some wine. We are paying for a feast.”

“Is Hinton really that old?” Starbuck asked.

“He is indeed, and if you live that long we shall doubtless give you a drunken dinner as a reward. Have you got two bucks?”

“I haven’t got two cents,” Starbuck said. He had some money in Richmond, but that money represented his cushion against disaster and was not for frittering away on ham and wine.

“I shall lend you the money,” Bird said with a rather despairing sigh. Most of the Legion’s officers had private means, but Colonel Bird, like Starbuck, was forced to live on the small wages of a Confederate officer.

The men of Company H stood as Starbuck and Bird approached the road, though one of the newly arrived conscripts stayed prone on the grass verge and complained he could not march another step. His reward was a kick in the ribs from Sergeant Truslow. “You can’t do that to me!” the man protested, scrabbling sideways to escape the Sergeant.