that coffee fresh?' Starbuck asked cheerfully.
'There isn't much left,' Moxey said guardedly.
Starbuck peered into the pot. 'Plenty enough for Lieutenant Coffman and me,' he said, then gave his tin mug to Coffman. 'Pour away, Lieutenant.' Starbuck turned to Medlicott. 'I had a letter from Pecker. You'll doubtless be pleased that he expects to be back soon.'
'Good,' Medlicott said forcefully.
'And Murphy's well. Thank you, Lieutenant.' Starbuck took the proffered mug and blew across the steaming coffee. 'Is it sweetened?' he asked Medlicott.
Medlicott said nothing but just watched as Starbuck sipped the coffee. 'We heard from General Faulconer,' Moxey blurted out, unable to keep the news to himself.
'Did you now?' Starbuck asked. 'And how is the General?'
For a moment neither man answered. Indeed Medlicott seemed annoyed that Moxey had even mentioned the letter, but now that its existence was known the Major decided to take responsibility for its contents. 'He's offered Captain Moxey and I jobs,' he said with as much dignity as he could muster.
'I am glad,' Starbuck said feelingly. 'What sort of jobs? In his stables, perhaps? Serving at table? Kitchen hands, maybe?' Somewhere a cannon barked flat and hard. The noise of the shot rolled and faded across the countryside; then a train whistle sounded in the far-off depot. The whistle was a very homely sound, a reminder that a world existed where men did not wake to sharpshooters and bloated corpses. 'The General needs a pair of boot-cleaners, maybe?' Starbuck asked. He sipped the coffee again. It was very good, but he made a disgusted face and poured the liquid onto the spoil pit's stones so that it splashed onto Medlicott's boots. 'What sort of a job, Major?' Starbuck asked.
Medlicott was silent for a few seconds as he controlled his temper; then he managed a grim smile. 'General Faulconer says there are vacancies in the Provost Guard at the Capitol.'
Starbuck pretended to be impressed. 'You'll be guarding the President and Congress! And all those Richmond politicians and their whores! Is it just the pair of you who are needed? Or can you take the rest of us with you, too?'
'We can take enough men, Starbuck,' Medlicott said, 'but only the right kind of men.' He added the childish insult, and there was a murmur of agreement from the nearby soldiers, who had clearly been invited to share Medlicott's supposed good fortune.
'And that explains why you're avoiding all the fighting!' Starbuck said as though the idea had only just dawned on him. 'Dear Lord above! And I thought you were simply being cowards! Now you tell me you're keeping yourselves safe for higher and better duties. Why didn't you tell me before?' Starbuck waited, but neither man answered. Starbuck spat at their feet. 'Listen, you sons of bitches, I've served in the Richmond provosts, and General Winder runs that crew of spavined leprous bastards, not General Faulconer. General Faulconer has about as much influence in Richmond as I do. He's promising you an easy berth just to make you unhappy here, but I ain't going to let you play that game. You're here to fight, not dream, so this morning you sons of bitches are fighting with the rest of us. Is that clear?'
Moxey looked apprehensive, but Medlicott had more faith in Washington Faulconer than Moxey. 'We'll do what we have to do,' he said stubbornly.
'Good,' Starbuck said, 'because what you have to do is fight.' He walked to the edge of the spoil pit and leaned with pretended nonchalance on its slope. He propped his rifle against the bank and started cleaning his fingernails with the bodkin he used for reaming out the cones of his revolver. 'I forgot to shave this morning,' he said to Coffman.
'You should grow a beard, sir,' Coffman said nervously. 'I don't like beards,' Starbuck said, 'and I hate cowards.' He was watching the men around Medlicott, seeing their hatred and wondering if any dared threaten him with violence. That was a risk he would have to take when the moment came, and until it came he would wait in the spoil pit that he turned into a temporary regimental headquarters. Bandmaster Little, who served as the battalion's chief clerk as well as its fussy maker of music, brought him a bagful of tedious paperwork, and Starbuck passed the time filling in the lists of dead, indenting for rations, and sending urgent pleas for ammunition.
No ammunition came, but nor did the Yankees. The sun rose to its height and still no attack came. Once in a while a rattle of gunfire would crackle across the country, but otherwise there was silence. Two armies were poised side by side, yet neither moved, and the peace of the day frustrated Starbuck. He needed a fight to bring his confrontation with Medlicott to fruition.
'Maybe the bastards have gone home,' he told Lucifer when the boy brought him a midday meal of bread, cheese, and apples.
'They're still over there. I can smell them,' Lucifer said. The boy glanced at the brooding Medlicott, then looked back to the cheerful Starbuck. 'You've been tugging on his chains,' Lucifer said with amusement.
'It's none of your business, Lucy.'
'Lucy!' The boy was offended.
Starbuck smiled. 'I can't call you Lucifer, it isn't proper. So I shall call you Lucy.'
The boy bridled, but before he could think of a response, there was a sudden shout from one of Colonel Hudson's pickets, and then a great rushing and trampling noise in the woods beyond the killing patch. Starbuck abandoned the bread and cheese, snatched up his rifle, and ran to the pit's forward edge, where a squad from Moxey's company was lying on their bellies with their rifles trained under the abatis. 'See anything?' Starbuck asked.
'Nothing.'
Yet the noise was getting louder. It was the noise, Starbuck reckoned, of hundreds if not thousands of boots trampling down the undergrowth. It was the noise of an infantry attack designed to break through Jackson's line once and for all. It was the noise that foretold battle, and all along the railbed men pushed rifles over the parapet and cocked hammers.
'Sumbitches don't give up,' the man next to Starbuck said. He was one of those who had stayed and fought the day before.
'What's your name?' Starbuck asked him.
'Sam Norton.'
'From Faulconer Court House ?'
'Rosskill,' Norton answered. Rosskill was the nearest railhead to the Legion's hometown.
'What did you do there?'
Norton grinned. 'Last job I had in Rosskill was sweeping out the county jail.'
Starbuck grinned back. 'Unwillingly, I guess?'
'Never minded sweeping it out, Major, 'cos once you'd swept out the jail you had to sweep out the sheriff's house and Sheriff Simms had two daughters sweeter than honey on a comb. Hell, I know men who robbed stores and stood rock still just begging to be locked up for a chance at Emily and Sue.'
Starbuck laughed, then went silent as the trampling of feet was translated into a sudden rush of men, hundreds of men who shouted their hoarse war cry and charged across the narrow strip of open land toward the embankment where Elijah Hudson's North Carolinians waited.
'Fire!' Hudson shouted, and the embankment was rimmed with smoke.
'Fire!' Starbuck shouted, and the Legion gave what flanking fire they could, but for most of the men the angle was too acute for their rifles to help the beleaguered Hudson.
The Yankee charge reached the embankment's foot and surged up its face. Hudson's men stood up. For a second Starbuck thought the Carolinians had merely stood to run away, but instead they advanced across the flat railbed and met the Yankee charge head-on. They swung rifles, slashed with bowie knives, and rammed forward with bayonets.
Starbuck stared into the woods directly opposite the Legion and saw no threat there. The noise of the hand- to-hand fighting to his right was terrible, an echo from the medieval days of men being butchered by steel and crushed by clubs. The bestiality of the sound was a temptation to leave well alone and stay in the railbed's cutting on the excuse that a second Yankee attack might come straight for the Legion's position, but Starbuck knew that assumption was merely an excuse for cowardice, and so he slung his rifle and jumped down to the spoil pit's floor. 'Major Medlicott! We're going to help.'
Major Medlicott did not move. The men with him stared sullenly at Starbuck.
