'While the General's real bad for Yankee blood!' Lewis said with a laugh. 'He sure is lethal for Yankee blood!' Lewis dipped a pail in the General's bathtub, then carried the water toward the kitchen at the back of the house, while the aide carried his second lantern to the far end of the porch. Voices sounded inside the house where candlelight shone at a muslin-curtained window.
'Win battles, Starbuck, and you can be whatever it pleases you to be,' Swynyard said bitterly. 'You can be mad, you can be eccentric, you can even be rich and privileged like Faulconer.' The Colonel paused, watching the dark fall over the far woods and fields where the host of campfires glimmered. 'You know what Faulconer's fault is?' 'Being alive,' Starbuck said sourly. 'He wants to be liked.' Swynyard ignored Starbuck's venom. 'He really believes he can make the men like him by treating them leniently, but it won't ever work. Men don't like an officer for being easy. They don't mind being treated like dogs, like slaves even, so long as you give them victory. But treat them soft and give them defeats and they'll despise you forever. It don't matter what kind of man you are, what kind of rogue you are, just so long as you lead the men to victory.' He paused, and Starbuck guessed the Colonel was reflecting on his own career rather than Faulconer's.
'Colonel Swynyard? Captain Starbuck?' Another aide appeared in the doorway. His voice was peremptory and his manner that of a man who wants to discharge an unpleasant duty quickly. 'This way.'
Starbuck plucked his coat straight, then followed Swynyard through the hall and into a candlelit parlor that was much too small for the trestle table that served as a stand for the General's maps. Not that Starbuck had time to take in the room's furnishings, for as soon as he entered he felt himself come under the fierce and off-putting gaze of the extraordinary figure who glared at the two visitors from the table's far side.
Jackson said nothing as the two men were shown in. The General was flanked by Major Hotchkiss and another staff officer. Swynyard, hat in hand, gave a short, sharp nod in salute, while Starbuck just stood to attention and stared at the gaunt, rough-bearded face with its bright wild eyes and malevolent frown; a face, Starbuck suddenly realized, that was uncommonly like Colonel Swynyard's own ravaged visage. 'Swynyard'—Jackson finally acknowledged his visitors– 'once of the 4th U.S. Infantry. But not a good record. Accused of drunkenness, I see.' He had a sheaf of papers that he glanced at continually. 'You were court-martialed and acquitted.'
'Wrongly,' Swynyard said, causing Jackson to look up from the papers in surprise.
'Wrongly?' the General asked. Like many artillery officers he was notoriously hard of hearing, his eardrums having been hammered by too many cannon blasts. 'Did you say you were wrongly acquitted?'
'Wrongly, sir!' Swynyard spoke louder. 'I should have been cashiered, sir, for I truly was drunk, sir, frequently drunk, sir, helplessly drunk, sir, unforgivably drunk, sir, but thanks to the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, sir, I shall be drunk no more.'
Jackson, confronted with this ready admission of guilt, seemed rather taken aback. He drew another sheet of paper from the sheaf and frowned as he read it. 'Brigadier General Faulconer'—he said the name with a wry tone of distaste– 'talked with me this morning. Afterwards he saw fit to write me this letter. In it, Swynyard, he says that you are a drunkard, while you, young man, are described as an immoral, womanizing, and ungrateful liar.' The hard blue-gray eyes looked up at Starbuck.
'He's also a fine soldier, General,' Swynyard put in.
'Also?' The General pounced on the word.
Starbuck suddenly resented the inquisition. He had been trying to win a damn war, not run a Sunday school. 'Also,' he said flatly and then, after a very long pause, 'sir.'
Hotchkiss looked intently down at his feet. Two of the candles on the map table were guttering badly, sending streams of sooty smoke to the yellowed ceiling. In the back of the house a voice began singing 'How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds.' Jackson looked momentarily annoyed by the sound; then he slowly lowered himself into a straight-backed chair, or rather he perched on the edge of the cane seat with his spine held rigidly parallel to, but not touching, the back. Starbuck supposed that his stupid belligerence had just destroyed any chance of receiving lenience, but it was too late to back down now.
Jackson turned his gaze back to Swynyard. 'When did you find Christ, Colonel?' he asked, and Swynyard answered with a passionate testimony of seeing the light on the battlefield of Cedar Mountain. For a moment he ceased to be a soldier talking to his superior, but became just a simple man talking to his brother in Christ. He told of his former sinfulness and of his continual drunkenness, and he contrasted that fallen condition with his newfound state of grace. It was a testimony of salvation like the thousands of others that Starbuck had heard, the same kind of transforming story that had comprised the bulk of his youthful reading, and he supposed that the General, too, must have heard a myriad of such tales, but Jackson was plainly enthralled by Swynyard's tale.
'And now, Colonel,' Jackson asked when the testimony was done, 'do you still crave ardent spirits?'
'Every day, sir,' Swynyard said fervently, 'every minute of every day, but with the help of our Lord Jesus Christ I shall abstain.'
'The great danger of temptation,' Jackson said in a rather puzzled voice, 'is how very tempting it is.' He turned his gaze on Starbuck. 'And you, young man, were brought up in a Christian household, were you not?'
'Yes, sir.' A tabby cat had started to wind itself around Starbuck's ankles, rubbing its flanks on his frayed trouser ends and playing with the tags of his bootlaces.
'This letter claims you're a Northerner?' Jackson said, gesturing at Faulconer's letter, which now lay on the table. 'From Boston, sir.'
'So why then are you fighting for the South?' Jackson frowned.
'That was the womanizing, sir,' Starbuck said defiantly. He sensed Swynyard stir beside him, and he guessed the Colonel was trying to convey the message that Starbuck should quell his combativeness, but Starbuck was annoyed by the implication that he needed to prove his loyalty to these Southerners. The cat was purring loudly.
'Go on,' Jackson said in a dangerously toneless voice. Starbuck shrugged. 'I followed a woman south, sir, then stayed on here because I liked it.'
Jackson stared into Starbuck's face for a few seconds. He seemed to dislike what he saw and looked down at the papers instead. 'We have to decide what to do with the Brigade. It isn't in a good state, eh, Hotchkiss?'
Hotchkiss gave a very small shrug. 'No reserve ammunition, no transport, and one regiment virtually officerless.'
Jackson looked at Swynyard. 'Well?'
'We'll just have to take the ammunition from the enemy, sir,' Swynyard said.
Jackson liked that answer. He turned his gaze back to Starbuck, who was suddenly and belatedly realizing that this interview was not a disciplinary affair but something altogether different. 'What is this army's greatest failing?' Jackson asked Starbuck.
Starbuck's mind whirled in panic. Its greatest failing? For a second, remembering the morning's executions, he was tempted to say desertion, but before his tongue could frame the word a previous thought blurted itself out. 'Straggling, sir.' Some regiments lost a quarter of their number through men falling out of the ranks during long marches, and though a good number of those stragglers reappeared within a day or two, some went missing forever. He had given the General a good answer, but even so Starbuck wished he had thought for a moment longer and given a more considered
response.
Then, astonishingly, he saw he had answered correctly, for Jackson was nodding his approval. 'And how have you prevented straggling in your unit, Starbuck?'
'I just tell the sons of bitches they're free to go, sir,' Starbuck said.
'You do what?' Jackson barked in his high voice. Hotchkiss looked alarmed, and the other staff officer shook his head as though he pitted Starbuck's stupidity.
'I just tell them they can leave the regiment, sir, but I also tell them that they ain't allowed to leave with any property of the Confederate government just in case they straggle all the way home or into the enemy's arms. So I tell them they're free to go, but first I strip the sons of bitches stark naked and confiscate their guns. Then I kick them out.'
Jackson stared at him. 'You do that? Truly?' It was hard to tell whether the General approved or not, but Starbuck could not back out of the tale now. 'I did it once, sir,' he admitted, 'just the once. But I only needed to do it the once, sir, because we haven't had another straggler since. Except for the sick, sir, and they're different.'
Starbuck's voice tailed away as the General began to behave in the strangest fashion. First he brought up a bony knee, then he clasped the raised knee in both his huge hands, and after that he rocked his body back as far as
