clattered by. Adam paused by the livery stable to touch his hat to a wan, thin woman. 'I was so sorry to hear about Joseph, Mrs. May,' he said, 'sincerely sorry.' Mrs. May just stared in apparent shock. Some townsfolk followed the horsemen, but once Adam had passed Medlicott's water-mill, which marked the eastern extremity of Faulconer Court House, he quickened his troop's pace and so left the curious townspeople behind. 'They'll be sending for help,' Sergeant Huxtable warned Adam.
'There's no help nearer than Rosskill,' Adam reassured the Sergeant, 'and we'll be well gone before anyone can get there and back. And no one in Rosskill will hear that noise!' he added as someone in the town began to tug the rope of the courthouse bell. The bell was still tolling its alarm as Adam turned his troop into a white-gated entrance that opened into an avenue edged by mature live oaks. Beyond the oaks were deep, well-watered pastures, where cows stood to their bellies in cool ponds, while at the end of the avenue was a wide, comfortable house clad in creepers that smothered the house's weatherboards and encroached on its steep-gabled roofs. A weathervane shaped like a galloping horse surmounted a clock tower above the stable entrance. The only warlike aspect of the house was a pair of bronze six-pounder cannons that flanked the main entrance. The twin guns had been purchased by Washington Faulconer at the war's beginning in the expectation that the Faulconer Legion needed to have its own artillery, yet in the rush to reach the first battle the weapons had been left behind and Faulconer had found it simpler to appropriate the two cannons as garden ornaments.
Adam pointed Huxtable toward the stable. 'You'll probably find a half-dozen decent horses in there,' he said, 'and the rest will be in the bottom fields. I'll take you there when I've finished in the house.'
Huxtable paused before swerving away. 'A nice place,' he said, staring up at the house.
'Home,' Adam said with a grin, 'sweet home.'
Home was Seven Springs, Adam's father's country house where Washington Faulconer kept the Faulconer stud that was reputed to breed the finest horses in all Virginia. It was here that Adam would find the remounts for his cavalrymen, and not just any remounts, but horses sprung from the best Arab blood crossed and strengthened with sturdier American strains to breed a fast, willing, and enduring horse that could hunt a long cold winter's day among the short hills and wooded valleys of Virginia, or else be spurred into a winning gallop in the last furlongs of a lung- breaking, sweat-streaked steeplechase. Adam had risked coming this far south to equip his men with the best horses in America– horses that could outrun and outlast the best of the South's famed cavalry. Indeed, they were horses that should have belonged to the Southern cavalry, for the Richmond government had ordered that all saddle horses should be surrendered to the army, but Adam knew his father had chosen to ignore the command. Faulconer horses, according to Washington Faulconer, were too valuable to be wasted on war, and so the stud still existed.
Adam let himself into the house. He did not know whether or not his mother would want to see him, but he intended to pay his respects anyway, though as he walked into the front hall with its four portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington Faulconer, the first person he met was Nelson, his father's personal servant. Adam stopped in surprise. 'Is my father here?' He asked the question with some trepidation, for though he felt he was making a fine and defiant gesture in stealing a score of horses from Seven Springs, he did not particularly want to meet his father while he made it.
Nelson shook his head, then put a finger to his lips and gave a glance upstairs as though warning Adam of some danger. Then Nelson beckoned Adam along the corridor that led to Washington Faulconer's study. Adam followed the black man. 'The mistress sent John to Rockville, Mr. Adam,' Nelson said when he was certain that no one in the household could overhear him. 'Young Master Finney ran here from the town, saying how you'd arrived with the soldiers, so Mistress sent young John to fetch help.'
Adam smiled. 'Then no one will be here for at least an hour and a half.'
'Maybe,' Nelson agreed, 'but the mistress says you're to be held here. She says you're mind-sick, Mr. Adam. She says you're to be locked up till the doctors can see you.' The two men had reached the study, and Nelson now closed the door to give them privacy. 'They say you've clear gone plumb mad crazy, Mr. Adam,' the servant said.
'They would say that,' Adam admitted sadly. He knew his parents could not stomach his betrayal of Virginia, nor would they ever accept Adam's conviction that Virginia was best served by adherence to the Union. He looked out of a window and saw some of the stable boys running in panic from Sergeant Huxtable's men. 'What are you doing here, Nelson?' he asked the servant.
'The General sent me to deliver something,' Nelson said evasively. He was a trusted servant, much older than his master, and in charge of three younger black men who served the General as valets and cooks. Nelson, like all Washington Faulconer's servants, was a free man, though freedom, in Adam's experience, rarely lifted a Negro out of poverty or released him from the need to show an obsequious respect to all white men, and Adam suspected that the outwardly servile Nelson still harbored the secret resentments of most slaves. Washington Faulconer, on the other hand, believed utterly in Nelson's loyalty and had provided him with a pass enabling him to travel freely throughout Confederate-held Virginia.
Adam crossed to the giant map of Virginia that hung on a wall of the study. 'Do you think I'm mad, Nelson?'
'You know I don't, Mr. Adam.'
'Do you think I'm wrong?'
Nelson paused, then shrugged. Somewhere deep in the house a woman's voice called in sharp reproof and a bell rang. 'The mistress will be wanting me,' Nelson said.
'Where is my father?' Adam asked. 'Here?' He stabbed a finger at the peninsula east of Richmond, where he had last seen the Legion.
Again Nelson paused, then seemed to cross whatever Rubicon of loyalty had been restraining him and walked to Adam's side. 'The General's here,' he said, placing a finger on the banks of the Rapidan River to the west of the road going north from Gordonsville to Culpeper Court House. 'They fought against General Banks up here'—Nelson's finger moved up the Culpeper road—'then they went back again. I guess they're just waiting.'
'For what? For the North to attack?'
'Don't know, sir. But on my way here, sir, I saw ever so many troops marching north. I reckon there'll be fighting soon.
Adam stared at the map. 'How's my friend Starbuck?' he asked, half ironically, yet also interested in the fate of the man who had once been his closest friend.
'That's why the General sent me here, sir,' Nelson said mysteriously, and then, when Adam frowned in puzzlement, the servant gestured across the study to where a flag lay draped across the General's desk. 'Mr. Starbuck captured that flag, sir, from the Yankees. The General took it from Mr. Starbuck and made me bring it back here to be kept safe. It's a Pennsylvania flag, sir.'
Adam crossed the study and picked up the powder-stained, scorched, bullet-torn flag of purple cloth. He smoothed out the embroidered eagle with its long talons above the German motto:
For the moment, however, he contented himself with confiscating the Pennsylvanian banner. 'I'll return it to its rightful owners,' he told Nelson, 'but first I should visit Mother.'
'And your sister,' Nelson said, 'she's upstairs, too. But don't be long, master. Young John can ride fast.'
'I won't be long.' Outside the study window Sergeant Huxtable's men were busy saddling their wonderful new horses. Adam smiled at the sight, then crossed to the study door. God willing, he thought, those horses would carry him to a coup that would make the North ring with triumph and the South cringe with shame.
Then, his mother's bell clanging loud, he climbed the stairs and nerved himself for combat.
By sunset Dead Mary's Ford was properly protected. At the edge of the woodland Starbuck had dug a line of fifteen rifle pits that were invisible from the river's far bank. The red excavated earth had all been thrown back into the undergrowth, and the pits' parapets disguised with brush and dead logs so that if an enemy did try to cross the river, they would be met with a blast of rifle fire from an apparently deserted tree line. The advance picket was hidden inside Silas's ruined house, where four men could keep a close watch on the far woods, but the majority of Starbuck's 130 men were bivouacked two hundred yards behind the rifle pits. There they had made their
