Bernard Cornwell – Rebel (страница 11)

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

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.