its equipment, Lee, will be a charge upon the state,’ Faulconer said proudly. ‘I am paying for it, down to the last bootlace.’
‘An expensive undertaking, Faulconer, I’m sure.’ Lee frowned, as though puzzled by Faulconer’s generosity. The general had a great reputation, and folk in Richmond had taken immense comfort from the fact that he had returned to his native state rather than accept the command of Abraham Lincoln’s Northern armies, but Starbuck, watching the quiet, neat, gray-bearded man, could see little evidence of the general’s supposed genius. Lee seemed reticent to the point of timidity and was entirely dwarfed by Washington Faulconer’s energy and enthusiasm. ‘You mention cannon and cavalry,’ Lee said, speaking very diffidently, ‘does that mean your regiment, your Legion I should say, will consist of all arms?’
‘All arms?’ Washington Faulconer was unfamiliar with the phrase.
‘The Legion will not consist of infantry alone?’ Lee explained courteously.
‘Indeed. Indeed. I wish to bring the Confederacy a fully trained, fully equipped, wholly useful unit.’ Faulconer paused to consider the wisdom of his next words, but then decided a little bombast would not be misplaced. ‘I fancy the Legion will be akin to Bonaparte’s elite troops. An imperial guard for the Confederacy.’
‘Ah, indeed.’ It was hard to tell whether Lee was impressed or aghast at the vision. He paused for a few seconds, then calmly remarked that he looked forward to the day when such a Legion would be fully assimilated into the state’s forces. That was precisely what Faulconer feared most—a naked grab by Governor John Letcher to take command of his Legion and thus reduce it to yet another mediocre component in the state militia. Faulconer’s vision was much grander than the governor’s lukewarm ambitions, and, in defense of that vision, he made no response to Lee’s words. The general frowned. ‘You do understand, Mister Faulconer, that we must have order and arrangement?’
‘Discipline, you mean?’
‘The very word. We must use discipline.’
Washington Faulconer ceded the point graciously, then inquired of Lee whether the state would like to assume the cost of outfitting and equipping the Faulconer Legion? He let that dangerous question dangle for a few seconds, then smiled. ‘As I made clear to you, Lee, my ambition is to provide the Confederacy with a finished article, a trained Legion, but if the state is to intervene’—he meant interfere, but was too tactful to use the word—‘then I think it only right that the state should take over the necessary funding and, indeed, reimburse me for the monies already expressed. My secretary, Mister Starbuck, can give you a full accounting.’
Lee received the threat without changing his placid, somewhat anxious expression. He glanced at Starbuck, seemed curious about the young man’s fading black eye, but made no comment. Instead he looked back to Washington Faulconer. ‘But you do intend to place the Legion under the proper authority?’
‘When it is trained, indeed.’ Faulconer chuckled. ‘I am hardly proposing to wage a private war on the United States.’
Lee did not smile at the small jest, instead he seemed rather downcast, but it seemed triumphantly clear to Starbuck that Washington Faulconer had won his victory over Governor Letcher’s representative and that the Faulconer Legion would not be assimilated into the new regiments being hurriedly raised across the state. ‘Your recruitment goes well?’ Lee asked.
‘I have one of my best officers supervising the process. We’re only levying recruits in the county, not outside.’ That was not wholly true, but Faulconer felt the state would respect his proprietorial rights inside Faulconer County, whereas if he too openly recruited outside the county the state might complain that he was poaching.
Lee seemed happy enough with the reassurance. ‘And the training?’ he asked. ‘It will be in competent hands?’
‘Extremely competent,’ Faulconer said enthusiastically, but without adding any of the detail Lee clearly wanted to hear. In Faulconer’s absence the Legion’s training would be supervised by the Legion’s second in command, Major Alexander Pelham, who was a neighbor of Faulconer’s and a veteran of the War of 1812. Pelham was now in his seventies, but Faulconer claimed he was as able and vigorous as a man half his age. Pelham was also the only officer connected to the Legion who had ever experienced warfare, though as Ethan Ridley had cattily remarked to Starbuck, that experience had been confined to a single day’s action, and that single action had been the defeat at Bladensburg.
Lee’s visit ended with an inconsequential exchange of views on how the war should be prosecuted. Faulconer vigorously pressed the necessity of capturing the city of Washington, while Lee talked of the urgent need to secure Virginia’s defenses, and afterward, with mutual assurances of goodwill, the two men parted. Washington Faulconer waited until the general had gone down the famous curved staircase, then exploded at Starbuck. ‘What chance do we have when fools like that are put in command? Dear God, Nate, but we need younger men, energetic men, hard-driving men, not washed-out, cautious buffoons!’ He paced the room vigorously, impotent to express the full measure of his frustration. ‘I knew the governor would try to kidnap the Legion! But he’ll need to send someone with sharper claws than that!’ He gestured scornfully toward the door through which Lee had left.
‘The newspapers say he’s the most admired soldier in America.’ Starbuck could not resist the observation.
‘Admired for what? Keeping his pants clean in Mexico? If there’s going to be war, Nate, it will not be a romp against an ill-armed pack of Mexicans! You heard him, Nate! “The paramount importance of keeping the Northern forces from attacking Richmond.”’ Faulconer gave a rather good imitation of the softspoken Lee, then savaged him with criticism. ‘Defending Richmond isn’t paramount! What’s paramount is winning the war. It means hitting them hard and soon. It means attack, attack, attack!’ He glanced at a side table where maps of the western part of Virginia lay beside a timetable of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Despite his denial of planning to wage a private war on the North, Washington Faulconer was plotting an attack on the rail line that fed supplies and recruits from the western states to the city of Washington. His ideas for the raid were still forming, but he was imagining a small, fast force of mounted soldiers who would burn down trestles, derail locomotives and tear up track. ‘I hope the fool didn’t see those maps,’ he said in sudden worry.
‘I covered them with maps of Europe before General Lee arrived, sir,’ Starbuck said.
‘You’re a brisk one, Nate! Well done! Thank God I’ve got young men like you, and none of Lee’s dullards from West Point. Is that why we’re supposed to admire him? Because he was a good superintendent of West Point? And what does that make him? It makes him a schoolmaster!’ Faulconer’s scorn was palpable. ‘I know schoolmasters, Nate. My brother-in-law’s a schoolmaster and the man isn’t fit to be a cookhouse corporal, but he still insists I should make him an officer in the Legion. Never! Pecker is a fool! A cretin! A lunkhead! A heathen! A he-biddy. That’s what my brother-in-law is, Nate, a he-biddy!’
Something in Washington Faulconer’s energetic tirade triggered Starbuck’s memory of the amusing stories Adam liked to tell about his eccentric schoolmaster uncle. ‘He was Adam’s tutor, sir, yes?’
‘He tutored both Adam and Anna. Now he runs the country school, and Miriam wants me to make him a major.’ Miriam was Washington Faulconer’s wife, a woman who remained secluded in the country and suffered from a debilitating variety of mysterious maladies. ‘Make Pecker a major!’ Faulconer hooted with derisive laughter at the very idea. ‘My God, you wouldn’t put the pathetic fool in charge of a henhouse, let alone a regiment of fighting men! He’s a poor relation, Nate. That’s what Pecker is. A poor relation.
