'I would make him eat what the slaves eat!' the Reverend Starbuck said.
'I think he eats worse than any slave!' Banks jested. 'Force a slave to eat what Jackson dines on and the whole world would revile our inhumanity. Maybe we should punish the man by giving him a proper meal? Oysters and pheasant, you think?'
Banks's aides laughed, and their master turned his gaze back to the battle smoke that was already touched with a faint pink tinge of evening sunlight. In the slanting light Banks looked quite superb: straight-backed, stern- faced, the very image of a soldier, and suddenly, after months of disappointment, the politician did at last feel like a soldier. He had, Banks modestly admitted to himself, grown into the job and was now ready for the battles to come. For despite this day's splendid victory, there would be more battles. With Stonewall Jackson defeated, General Robert Lee, who was protecting Richmond from McClellan's army, would be forced north even if such a move did open the rebel capital to McClellan's forces. McClellan would dutifully overwhelm the Richmond defenses, Pope would crush Lee, and then, bar some mopping up on the Mississippi and skull-breaking in the deep South, the war would be over. Better, it would be won. All that remained was a few battles, a rebel surrender, a Federal victory parade, and most important of all, the absolute necessity for President Lincoln and the dunderheads in the United States Congress to realize that it had been Nathaniel Prentiss Banks who had precipitated the whole process. My God, Banks thought, but others would try to steal his glory now! John Pope would doubtless make the attempt, and George McClellan would certainly write to every newspaper editor in creation, which made it all the more important for this night's victory dispatch to be written firmly and clearly. Tonight's dispatch, Banks knew, would fashion history books for years to come, but more important, the words he wrote tonight would garner votes for the remainder of his career.
Federal officers gathered round to offer the General their congratulations. The commander of Banks's bodyguard, a tall Pennsylvanian
A mile south of Banks, in a belt of woodland where fires started by shell fire tortured the wounded, men screamed and fought and died. The Yankee counterattack was being slowed by the undergrowth and by the stubborn defiance of Southern riflemen, whose muzzle flames stabbed bright in the smoky shadows. Shells slashed through the treetops, thrashing the branches and hammering the sky with their explosions. Blood and smoke reeked, a man called for his mother in the voice of a child, another cursed God, but still the North pushed on, yard by hard yard, going through hell in search of peace.
'Nothing is served,' General Washington Faulconer said icily, 'by breaking the Brigade into small detachments. We shall go into battle united.'
'If there's any battle left,' Swynyard said with a manic glee. He seemed to be enjoying the panic that had infected the western side of Jackson's battle.
'Watch your tongue, Colonel,' Faulconer snapped. He was more than usually displeased with his second-in- command, who had already lost a quarter of the Legion instead of just Starbuck's company, and what was left of the Brigade must be husbanded, not frittered away by being committed to the battle in dribs and drabs. Faulconer edged his horse away from Swynyard and gazed at the woods, which were filled with smoke and thrashing from the passage of Northern shells and bolts. God only knew what had happened in the wide valley beyond those woods, but even here, far behind where the fighting had taken place, the evidence of impending disaster was awesome and obvious. Wounded men staggered back from the trees; some of the injured were being helped by friends, others crawled or limped painfully back to where the surgeons hacked and sawed and probed. Many of the fugitives were not wounded at all but were merely frightened men who were trying to escape the Yankee advance.
Faulconer had no intention of allowing that advance to enmesh his Brigade. 'I want the 65th on the right,' Faulconer called to Swynyard, referring to the 65th Virginia, which was the second largest regiment after the Legion in Faulconer's Brigade, 'the Arkansas men in the center, and the 12th Florida on the left. Everyone else in reserve two hundred paces behind.' That meant that the remaining six companies of the Legion, who were presently the foremost battalion in the Brigade, would now become Faulconer's rearmost line. The redeployment was hardly necessary, but moving the front line to the rear killed some precious moments while Faulconer tried to determine just what disasters were happening beyond the woods. 'And, Colonel!' Faulconer called after Swynyard, 'send Bird to reconnoiter the ground. Tell him to report to me within a half hour!'
'Colonel Bird's already gone,' Swynyard said. 'Went to fetch his skirmishers back.'
'Without orders?' Faulconer asked angrily. 'Then tell him to explain himself to me the instant he returns. Now go!'
'Sir?' Captain Thomas Pryor, one of Washington Faulconer's new aides, interjected nervously.
'Captain?' Faulconer acknowledged.
'General Jackson's orders were explicit, sir. We should advance quick, sir, with whatever units are available. Into the trees, sir.' Pryor gestured nervously toward the woods.
But Faulconer had no wish to advance quick. The woods seemed to be alive with smoke and flame, almost as though the earth itself was heaving in the throes of some mythic struggle. Rifle fire cracked, men screamed, and cannons pumped their percussive explosions through the humid air, and Faulconer had no desire to plunge into that maelstrom. He wanted order and sense, and a measure of safety. 'General Jackson,' he told Pryor, 'is panicking. We serve no purpose by committing ourselves piecemeal. We shall advance in good order or not at all.' He turned away from the battle and rode back to where his second line would be formed. That reserve line consisted of the six remaining companies of the Legion and the whole of the 13th Florida, two regiments that Faulconer had every intention of holding back until his first line was fully committed to the fight. Only if the first line broke and ran would the second line fight, and then merely to serve as a rear guard for the fugitive first line. Washington Faulconer told himself he was being prudent, and that such prudence might well save a defeat from being a rout.
He wondered where Starbuck was and felt the familiar flare of hatred. Faulconer blamed Starbuck for all his ills. It was Starbuck who had humiliated him at Manassas, Starbuck who had suborned Adam, and Starbuck who had defied him by remaining in the Legion. Faulconer was convinced that if he could just rid himself of Starbuck, then he could make the Brigade into the most efficient unit of the Confederate army, which was why he had ordered Swynyard to place a company of skirmishers far ahead of the Brigade's position. He had trusted Swynyard to know precisely which company of skirmishers was to be thus sacrificed, but he had hardly expected the drunken fool to throw away both companies. Yet even that loss might be worthwhile, Faulconer reflected, if Starbuck was among the casualties.
On Faulconer's left a column of rebel troops advanced at the double, while another, marching just as quickly, headed for the woods to the right of his Brigade. Reinforcements were clearly reaching the fighting, which meant, Faulconer decided, that he had no need to hurl his own men forward in a desperate panic. Slow and steady would win this fight, and that natural caution was reinforced by the sight of a riderless horse, its flank a sheet of crimson, limping southward down the turnpike with its reins trailing in the dust and its stirrups dripping with blood.
The Faulconer Brigade laboriously formed its new battle lines. In the first rank were the 65th Virginia, Haxall's men from Arkansas, and the 12th Florida. The three regiments raised their dusty flags, the banners' bright colors already faded from too much sun and shredded by too many bullets. The standards hung limp in the windless air. Colonel Swynyard gave his horse to one of his two cowed slaves, then took his place at the center of the forward line, where lust at last overcame caution and made him take a flask from a pouch on his belt. 'I see our gallant Colonel is inoculating himself against the risks of battle,' General Faulconer remarked sardonically to Captain Pryor.
'By drinking water, sir?' Pryor asked in puzzlement. Thomas Pryor was new to the Brigade. He was the younger son of a Richmond banker who did much business with Washington Faulconer, and the banker had pleaded with Faulconer to take on his son. 'Thomas is a good-natured fellow,' the banker had written, 'too good, probably, so maybe a season of war will teach him that mankind is not inherently honest?'
A second's silence greeted Pryor's naive assumption that Swynyard was drinking water, then a gale of laughter
