An hour before sundown Colonel Swynyard rode his horse up to the railbed. He was leading another horse by the reins. "It belonged to Major Medlicott," he told Starbuck. "I hear he died?"
"Shot by a Yankee, I hear," Starbuck said straight-faced.
Swynyard's mouth flickered in what might have been a smile. "We're ordered to advance, and I thought you might appreciate a horse."
Starbuck's initial reaction was to refuse, for he took pride in marching like his men, but then he remembered the house with the lime-washed stone pillar at its lane gate and thanked Swynyard for bringing him the animal. He pulled himself into the saddle just as the Legion was stirred from its rest. The tired men grumbled at being disturbed but shouldered their rifles and climbed from the railbed. The wounded, the surgeons, the servants, and a sergeant's guard stayed behind while the rest of the Legion formed ranks around the color guard, where Lieutenant Coffman carried the replacement battle flag on its sapling staff. Starbuck took his place at the head of the regiment on Medlicott's horse. "Forward!" he called.
Hudson's North Carolinians advanced to the Legion's right. Colonel Hudson was mounted on an expensive black mare and was now accoutred with a sword in a gold-mounted scabbard. Hudson waved in friendly greeting as the two regiments advanced in line, but once among the trees Starbuck deliberately led the Legion to the left and so opened a gap between himself and the Carolinians.
He crossed the small pasture where they had checked their pursuit of the first Yankee attack the day before. There were still unburied dead in the field. Beyond the pasture was a strip of woods, then a wider stretch of open farmland that was bisected by a road climbing to a far crest. Starbuck rode to the left of his line. "Remember this place?" Starbuck asked Truslow. "Should I?"
"We fought our first battle here." Starbuck pointed to his left. "The Yankees came out of those trees and we waited up there"—he pointed right to the ridge—"and I was scareder than hell and you behaved like it had all happened before." "It had. I was in Mexico, remember?" Starbuck let the horse walk at its own pace across the old battlefield. There were yellowing bone fragments in the furrows, and he wondered for how many years the farmers would plow up men's bones and the bullets that put them there.
"So what happened with Medlicott?" Truslow asked. The two men were thirty paces ahead of the ranks. "What do your men say happened?" "That you picked a fight with him, then shot the son of a bitch."
Starbuck thought about it, then nodded. "Just about. Do they mind?"
Truslow twisted a piece of tobacco from a plug and put it in his mouth. "Some of them feel sorry for Edna." "His wife?"
"She has children to feed. But hell, no, they don't mind about the miller. He was a mean son of a bitch."
"He's a hero now," Starbuck said. "He's going to get his name on a statue in Faulconer Court House. Dan Medlicott, hero of our War of Independence." He crossed the road, remembering when he had watched a Northern army attack across these fields. They were not much changed; the snake fences were long gone, burned to boil the coffeepots of soldiers, and flecks of bone disfigured the dirt, but otherwise it was just as Starbuck remembered. He led the Legion on across the farmland, angling still more to his left until, rather than heading toward the eastern ridge with the rest of the Brigade, he was heading toward a stand of timber that topped a small ridge that lay to the north.
Swynyard galloped up to Starbuck. "Wrong way! Up there!" He pointed eastward up the road.
Starbuck reined in. "There's a place I want to visit, Colonel, just over the hill. Not more than a quarter-mile now."
Swynyard frowned. "What place?"
"The house of the man who took our flags, Colonel, and the house of the man whose troops burned women in a tavern."
Swynyard's initial reaction was to shake his head; then he had second thoughts and looked at Truslow's company before turning back to the two officers. "What can you achieve?"
"I don't know. But then we didn't know what we were going to achieve when we ran to Dead Mary's Ford in the middle of the night." Starbuck deliberately reminded Swynyard of that night and the implicit favor that the Colonel owed him as a result.
The Colonel smiled. "You've got one hour. We'll be going up the road," he said, pointing to the right, "and I guess it would only be prudent for someone to take a patrol north, just in case any of the rascals are lurking. Do you think one company will be enough?"
"Plenty, sir," Starbuck said and touched the brim of his hat to the Colonel. "Company!" he called to his old company. "Follow me!"
He borrowed a lit cigar from John Bailey and lit one of his own with its glowing tip. He walked the horse slowly, pacing the beast beside Truslow. The rest of the Legion climbed the gentle eastern slope toward the sound of battle that now seemed very far away—so far that none of the advancing battalions seemed in any hurry to join that distant fighting. Starbuck looked to his left and saw the white-painted pillar on the road at the end of the stand of trees. "Not far now," he told Truslow. "Through these woods and in the next fields."
"What happens if the place is full of Yankees?" Truslow asked.
"Then we'll go back," Starbuck said, but when the company emerged from the trees on the ridge, they saw that the place was not full of Yankees. Instead the Galloway homestead seemed deserted as the rebel soldiers walked slowly down the long slope toward the farm buildings that were set among a grove of leafy, mature trees. It looked a handsome house, Starbuck thought, a place where a man could settle and live a good life. It seemed to have good watered land, well-drained fields, and plenty of timber.
A black man met them at the yard gate. "There's no one here, massa," the man said nervously.
"Whose house is it?" Starbuck asked.
The man did not answer.
"You heard the officer!" Truslow growled.
The black man glanced at the approaching company, then licked his lips. "Belongs to a gentleman called Galloway, massa, but he's not here."
"He's with the army, is he?" Starbuck asked.
"Yes, massa." The man smiled ingratiatingly. "He's with the army."
Starbuck returned the smile. "But which army?"
The black man's smile vanished instantly. He said nothing, and Starbuck kicked his heels to ride past him. "Any slaves in the house?" he called over his shoulder to the black man.
"Three of us, massa, and we're not slaves. We're servants."
"You live in the house?"
"In the cabins, massa." The servant was running after Starbuck, while Truslow brought the company on behind.
"So the house is empty?" Starbuck asked.
The man paused, then nodded as Starbuck looked back at him. "It's empty, massa."
"What's your name?"
"Joseph, massa."
"Then listen, Joseph, if you've got any belongings in the house, get them out now, because I'm about to burn this goddamned house to the ground, and if your master wants to know why, tell him it's with the compliments of the whores he burned alive at McComb's Tavern. You got that message, Joseph?" Starbuck curbed the horse and swung himself out of the saddle. He jumped down, spurting dust from beneath his boots. "Did you hear me, Joseph?"
The black servant gazed in horror at Starbuck. "You can't burn it, sir!"
"Tell your master that he killed women. Tell him my name is Starbuck, you hear that? Let me hear you say it."
"Starbuck, sir."
"And don't you forget it, Joseph. I am Starbuck, avenger of whores!" Starbuck declaimed that final sentence as he climbed the veranda steps and threw open the house's front door.
To see his father.
Clouds heaped in the south, darkening a day already declining toward dusk. In the steep hills and valleys where the rebel flank attack surged forward, the fading light made the rifle flames stab brighter and the smoke look grayer. There was a sense that the weather must break soon, and indeed, far to the south, on the empty earthworks that the Yankees had abandoned by the Rappahannock River, the first drops of rain splashed heavy. Lightning flickered in the clouds.