It was midday before the ruins of McComb's Tavern were cool enough to let a work party retrieve the bodies from the heart of the wreckage, and even then the salvage work had to be done by men wearing protective strips of water-soaked sacking around their boots and hands. The corpses had been shrunk by the fierce heat into black, brittle manikins that smelt disturbingly of roasted pork. Starbuck supervised the work. He was still officially under arrest, but no one else seemed willing to take charge of the salvage, and so, while the Brigade marched off to witness the executions and while General Washington Faulconer waited at General Jackson's headquarters, Starbuck took a dozen men from his own company and set them to work.
'So what's happening?' Truslow had asked Starbuck at dawn when the early light revealed the blackened and smoking wreckage.
'Don't know.'
'Are you under arrest?'
'Don't know.'
'Who's commanding the Legion?'
'Medlicott,' Starbuck said. Faulconer had made the appointment during the night.
'Dan Medlicott!' Truslow said disgustedly. 'Why in hell's name appoint him?'
Starbuck did not answer. He felt slighted by the appointment, for he had been a captain long before Daniel Medlicott had bribed his way to the rank in the spring election, but Starbuck also understood that Washington Faulconer would never have appointed him to command the Legion. 'I've got a job for you,' Starbuck told Truslow instead. 'The prisoner's being unhelpful.' The man they had captured was called Sparrow and came from Virginia's Pendleton County, one of the fractious western counties that had declared themselves to be a new state loyal to the Union.
'I'll make the sumbitch squeal,' Truslow said happily.
The morning wore on. Most of the Legion witnessed the three executions, but even when they returned to their encampment, they still seemed dazed and stupefied by the night's disasters. Of the Legion's captains only Medlicott, Moxey, and Starbuck remained alive and unwounded, and of the officers who had attended Major Hinton's birthday supper only Lieutenant Davies had survived serious harm. Davies had received a bullet slash on his left forearm but had escaped the worst of the massacre by taking cover behind the small church. 'I could have done more,' he kept telling Starbuck.
'And died? Don't be a fool. If you'd have opened fire they'd have hunted you down and killed you like a dog.'
Davies shook at the memory. He was a tall, thin, bespectacled man, three years older than Starbuck and with a perpetually worried expression. He had been reading law in his uncle's office before the war began and had often confided in Starbuck his fears that he might never master the intricacies of that profession. 'They knew there were women in the house,' he now said to Starbuck.
'I know. You've told me.' Starbucks tone was callous and peremptory. In his view there was little point in endlessly discussing the night's tragedy in the vain hope of finding some consolation. The mess had to be cleaned up, avenged, and forgotten, which was why he was employing his company in retrieving the bodies from the burned-out tavern. Davies had come to watch the salvage, perhaps to remind himself how narrowly he had escaped being one of the shrunken, charred bodies.
'Murphy told them there were women inside,' Davies said indignantly. 'I heard him!'
'It doesn't matter,' Starbuck said. He was watching the Cobb twins, who were rummaging among the ashes in the center of the burned building. Izard Cobb had found some coins and an ivory cribbage board that had somehow survived the fire undamaged. 'Those go to Sergeant Waggoner!' Starbuck called across the ruins. The newly promoted Waggoner had been charged with collecting what few pitiable valuables might be rescued from the burned tavern.
'But it does matter!' Davies protested. 'They killed women!'
'For Christ's sake'—Starbuck turned on the pale, bespectacled Davies—'you're about to get a captaincy, which means your men don't want to hear what went wrong last night. They want to hear how you intend to find the son of a damned bitch who did it to us and how you're going to kill him.'
Davies looked shocked. 'Captaincy?'
'I guess,' Starbuck said. The night's disasters had virtually beheaded the Faulconer Legion, which meant there would either have to be wholesale promotions or else new people drafted in from other regiments.
'Maybe Pecker will come back?' Davies said wistfully, as though Colonel Bird could make everything in the Legion better.
'Pecker'll be back when he's mended,' Starbuck said, 'and that won't be for a few weeks yet.' He suddenly whipped around to look at the wreckage again. 'Cobb! If you've pocketed that silver I'll hang you!'
'I ain't pocketed nothing! You want to search me?' 'I'll search your brother,' Starbuck said, and saw his suspicion that Izard Cobb would palm the coins to his brother Ethan had been plumb right. 'Give the money to Sergeant Waggoner,' he told Ethan Cobb, then watched as his orders were obeyed. 'Now pick up that body.' He pointed to the blackened figure of one of McComb's cooks.
Izard Cobb made a great display of horror. 'She's a nigger, Captain!' he protested.
'If she was alive you'd have been happy enough to bed her, so now you can carry her to the grave. And do it respectfully!' Starbuck waited until the Cobb brothers had stooped to their work, then turned back to Davies. 'They're lazy sons of bitches.'
'All the Cobbs are lazy,' Davies said, 'always were. The family ruined some prime bottom land off Hankey's Run, just let it go to rack and ruin. A shame.' His knowledge of such matters was a reminder that the Legion was still largely composed of men who came from within a day's walk of the town of Faulconer Court House; men who knew each other and each other's families and each other's business. Men like Starbuck, an outsider, were the exception. It was that close-knit family feeling that had added to the regiment's pain; when Major Hinton was killed, the Legion lost not just a commanding officer but a friend, a sidesman of the church, a brother-in-law, a creditor, a hunting companion, and above all, a neighbor, and if Murphy died they would lose another. 'Still,' Davies said, 'Dan Medlicott is a decent man.'
Starbuck believed Daniel Medlicott was a sly, ponderous, and cowardly tool, but he also knew better than to criticize one local man to another. Instead he turned away to watch as hard and Ethan Cobb carried the distorted body free of the ashes. Truslow's inquisition of the captured cavalryman had revealed that it was not Adam who had been responsible for this massacre but a man called Blythe, yet Starbuck still felt an extraordinary bitterness toward his erstwhile friend. Adam had ridden the high moral horse for so long, preaching about the sanctity of the North's cause, and now he rode with men who slaughtered women.
'Starbuck!' Colonel Swynyard called from the road beside the burned wagon park.
Starbuck shouted at Truslow to take charge, then went to join Swynyard. 'Five dead women.' Starbuck delivered the final tally in a harsh voice. 'Two cooks, McComb's wife, and the upstairs girls.' 'The whores?' 'They were decent enough girls,' Starbuck said. 'One of them, anyway.'
'I thought the tavern was out of bounds?' 'It was,' Starbuck said. 'And I didn't think you had any money?' 'I don't, but she was a sweet girl.'
'Sweet on you, you mean,' Swynyard said tartly, then sighed. 'I do pray for you, Starbuck, I do indeed.'
'Fitzgerald, her name was,' Starbuck said, 'from Ireland. Her husband ran off and left her with a pile of debts, and she was just trying to pay them off.' He stopped, suddenly overwhelmed with the misery of such a life and death. 'Poor Kath,' he said. He had been hoping Sally Truslow might help the girl, maybe by finding her a more lucrative job in Richmond, but now Kath Fitzgerald was a shrunken corpse waiting for a shallow grave. 'I need a goddamned drink,' Starbuck said bitterly.
'No, you don't,' Swynyard said, 'because you and I are summoned to headquarters. To see Jackson, and he's not a man to visit if you're stinking with whiskey.'
'Oh, Christ,' Starbuck blasphemed. He had hoped that the night's raid would have finished his troubles, but now it seemed Jackson himself had taken an interest in his derelictions. 'What does Mad Jack want?'
'How would I know?' Swynyard said. He scuffed a foot in the road, which was still imprinted with the hoofmarks of the night's raiders. 'He's seeing Faulconer now.' 'Who'll be bitching about us.'
'But we were right about Dead Mary's Ford,' Swynyard said in a hopeful voice. 'Maybe Jackson will acknowledge that?'
'Maybe,' Starbuck said, but without any real hope that justice might be done. General Washington Faulconer
