Battle Flag

stock with a handful of oak leaves. Coffman was beside him, eyes gleaming with a maniacal delight. Lucifer was reloading his revolver. 'You're not supposed to kill Northerners,' Starbuck told him.

'I kill who I want,' the boy said resentfully.

'But thank you anyway,' Starbuck said, but Lucifer's only response was a look of hurt dignity. Starbuck sighed. 'Thank you, Lucifer,' he said.

Lucifer immediately grinned. 'So I ain't Lucy?'

'Thank you, Lucifer,' Starbuck said again.

A triumphant Lucifer kissed the muzzle of his gun. 'A man can be whatever a man wants to be. Maybe next year I'll decide to be a rebel killer.'

Starbuck spat on the rifle's lock to help clean the blood clotted there. Somewhere in the woods behind him a bird burst into song.

'It's quiet, isn't it?' Hudson said from a few paces away.

Starbuck looked up. 'Is it?'

'It's quiet,' the Colonel said, 'so beautifully quiet. I do believe the Yankees are gone.' The line had held.

The Reverend Doctor Starbuck beheld a nightmare.

He had spent a second day with Major Galloway's horsemen in the hope that he would have a chance to join in the pursuit of a broken rebel army. He was aware that the next day would be the Lord's Day, and he whiled away the waiting hours planning the sermon he would give to the victorious troops, but as the hours passed and there was still no sign of a rebel collapse, the prospect of the sermon receded. Then, in the afternoon, just after the firing in the woods had died suddenly away, a message came ordering Galloway's men to investigate some strange troops seen marching to the southwest.

The preacher rode with Galloway. They passed trampled cornfields and orchards looted of their fruit. They crossed the turnpike where the battle had started two days before, splashed through a stream, then rode up a bare hillside to where two gaudily uniformed regiments of New York Zouaves were resting on the grassy crest with their rifles stacked.

'All quiet here,' the young, dapper commander of the nearer regiment, the 5th New York, proclaimed, 'and we've got a picket line in the woods'—he gestured downhill to where thick woods grew—'and they're not being disturbed, so I guess it will stay quiet.'

Major Galloway decided he would ride as far as the New York picket line, but the preacher elected to stay with the infantry, for a moment's small talk had elicited the astonishing information that the 5th New York's commanding officer was the son of an old colleague, and that old colleague, the Reverend Doctor Winslow, was actually the chaplain to his own son's regiment. Now the Reverend Winslow galloped across to greet his Boston friend. 'I never thought to find you here, Starbuck!'

'I trust I shall always be found where the Lord's work needs doing, Winslow,' the Boston preacher said, then shook hands.

Winslow looked proudly at his son, who had ridden back to his place at the head of the regiment. 'Just twenty- six, Starbuck, but in charge of the finest volunteer regiment in our army. Even the regulars can't hold a candle to the New York 5th. They fought like Trojans in the peninsula. And your own sons? They're well, I pray?'

'James is with McClellan,' the Reverend Starbuck said. 'The others are too young to fight.' Then, wanting to change the subject before Winslow remembered the existence of Nathaniel, the Boston preacher asked about the 5th New York's flamboyant uniform, which consisted of bright red baggy pantaloons, short blue collarless jackets with scarlet trim, a red waist sash, and a crimson cap rimmed with a white turban and crowned with a long golden tassel.

'It's a copy of a French uniform,' Winslow explained. 'Zouaves are reputedly the fiercest fighters in the French army, and our patron wanted us to emulate their dress as well as their йlan.'

'Patron?'

'We're paid for by a New York furniture manufacturer. He paid for everything you see here, Starbuck; paid for it lock, stock, and barrel. You're seeing the profits of mahogany and turned legs at war.'

The Reverend Starbuck eyed his old friend's uniform and wished that he was able to wear such finery. He was about to inquire what arrangements Winslow had made to fill his pulpit while he served with the army but was distracted by a burst of gunfire in the woods. 'Our skirmishers, I guess,' Winslow said when the sound had faded. 'They were probably attacking a regiment of wild turkey. We ate a couple last night, and very good eating they were, too.' The resting regiment had stirred at the sudden fusillade, and some men retrieved their rifles from the stacks, but most just cursed for being half woken up, pulled the turbans over their eyes again, and tried to go back to sleep.

'Your son said there's been no sign of the enemy here?' the Reverend Starbuck inquired, wondering why the hairs on the back of his neck were suddenly prickling.

'None at all!' the chaplain said, staring toward the woods. 'I think you might say we've drawn the short straw. Our part in the great victory is to be spectators. Or maybe not.'

His last three words were prompted by the appearance of a group of Zouaves at the tree line on the regiment's left flank. They were evidently skirmishers returning to their parent regiment, and they were agitated. 'Rebels!' one of the men shouted. 'Rebels!'

'They're panicking!' the chaplain said scornfully.

More of the Zouaves snatched up their rifles. A captain mounted on a nervous black horse cantered past the two pastors and touched his hat respectfully. 'I think they're imagining things, chaplain!' the Captain called good-naturedly to Winslow, then put his hand to his throat and started making a mewing sound as he struggled to breathe. Blood began to seep through his fingers, and while the Reverend Starbuck tried to make sense of this strange apparition, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the sound of firing that had somehow taken a second or two to register on his stunned senses. Stunned because the hilltop was being swept by a typhoon of fire, a whistling whipping terror of bullets that crashed from the tree line where, appallingly, regiment after regiment of rebels now appeared. One moment there had been a summer's peace prevailing on the warm hilltop, where bees had sucked at clover blossoms, then there was death and screaming and blood, and the transition had been too abrupt for the preacher's mind to comprehend.

The dying captain was jerked back from the saddle to be dragged along the ground by a foot trapped in a stirrup. He cried pathetically; then a great rush of blood silenced him forever. The chaplain began shouting encouragement to the dazed Zouaves, who seemed to shrink back from the weltering rifle fire. The Reverend Starbucks horse bolted from the unending splintering crack of rifles that outflanked the two New York regiments. The horse ran north, fleeing the attack, and it was not till he reached the edge of the hill that the preacher was able to curb the scared animal and turn it just in time to see a line of rebel regiments appear from the far trees. These were Lee's men, who had marched one day after Stonewall Jackson and who were now being unleashed from the valleys and woods where they had hidden overnight. They all made their devilish, ululating scream as they attacked, and the preacher's blood ran chill as the terrible sound washed across the hilltop.

The Reverend Starbuck dragged his revolver out of its saddle holster but made no effort to fire it. He was faced by a nightmare. He was watching the death of two regiments.

The New Yorkers tried to fight. They stood in line and returned the rebel fire, but the gray lines overlapped and decimated the Zouave ranks with an overwhelming volume of rifle fire. Brightly uniformed men were plucked back from the New York ranks, and though the sergeants and corporals tried to close the gaps, the gaps kept coming faster than they could be filled. Men slipped away, running north and east. The Reverend Starbuck shouted at the fugitives to hold their ground, but they ignored his ravings and ran downhill toward the stream. The furniture maker's regiment was reduced to three groups of men who tried to hold off the overpowering assault, but three times their number could not have stopped this rebel surge.

The New Yorkers died. There was a spatter of final shots, a scream of defiance, then the flags toppled as the last stubborn defenders were overrun. The hill was suddenly swarming with rebel rat gray coats, and the preacher, startled from his shocked immobility, kicked his horse and let it run downhill among the scattered fugitives. The first rebels were already firing after the running men, and the Reverend Starbuck heard the bullets whiplash about him, but the preacher's horse kept running. It splashed through the stream and so up into the safety of the trees on the far side. The scream of the obscene rebel yell soured the preacher's ears as he slowed the sweating horse. All around him now he could hear that terrible scream, the noise of the devil on the march, and he sensed, even if he