The Bloody Ground. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ as a grim, makeshift place. It had once been the Richmond Central Fairgrounds, but the onset of war had turned it into a giant dumping ground for the battalions that had flocked to the defense of Richmond. Those battalions were now on Virginia’s northern border and the camp was a dirty stretch of muddy ground where conscripts received a rudimentary training and where stragglers were sent to be assigned to new battalions. At the war’s beginning the camp had been a favorite place for Richmonders to come and watch the troops being drilled, but that novelty had worn off and these days few people visited the dank, derelict-looking barracks where old moldering tents stood in rows and tarpaper huts flapped in the breeze. The gallows of the camp jail still topped the hill, and round the jail was clustered an array of wooden huts where most of the camp’s present occupants seemed to be billeted. Two sergeants playing horseshoes confirmed to Starbuck that the huts were the Special Battalion’s quarters and he walked slowly uphill toward the flat crest where a half dozen companies were being drilled. A few lackluster work parties were patching the decrepit buildings among which, like a palace among hovels, stood the house that the sergeants had said was Holborrow’s headquarters. The house was a fine two-story building with a wide verandah all around and slave quarters and kitchens in its backyard. Two flagpoles stood in front of the house, one with the Confederate’s stars and bars and the other flying a blue flag crested with the coat of arms of Georgia.

      Starbuck paused to watch the companies being drilled. There seemed small point to the activity, for the men were proficient enough, though every tiny fault was enough to force the sergeant in charge to a barrage of obscene abuse. The sergeant was a tall, gangling man with an unnaturally long neck and a voice that could have carried clean across the river to Manchester. The troops had no weapons, but were simply being marched, halted, turned, and marched again. Some were in gray coats, but most wore the increasingly common butternut brown that was easier to produce. At least half the men, Starbuck noted with alarm, had no boots, but were marching barefoot.

      Sally put her arm into Starbuck’s elbow as they walked closer to the headquarters, where a group of four officers was stretched out in camp chairs on the verandah. One of the idling officers trained a telescope toward Starbuck and Sally. “You’re being admired,” Starbuck said.

      “That was the point of me wasting an afternoon, wasn’t it?”

      “Yes,” Starbuck said proudly.

      Sally paused again to watch the troops on the parade ground who, so far as the screaming sergeant allowed, returned her inspection. “They’re your men?” she asked.

      “All mine.”

      “The pick of a bad bunch, eh?”

      “They look all right to me,” Starbuck said. He was already trying to imbue himself with a loyalty toward these despised troops.

      “They can kill Yankees, can’t they?” Sally said, sensing Starbuck’s apprehension. She brushed at the ingrained dirt on his uniform sleeve, not because she believed the dirt could be swept off, but because she knew he needed the small consolation of touch. Then her hand paused. “What’s that?” she asked.

      Starbuck turned to see that Sally was gazing at a punishment horse that had been erected between two of the huts. The horse was a long beam that was mounted edgewise on a pair of tall trestles, and the punishment consisted of a man being forced to straddle the beam’s edge and stay there while his own weight turned his groin into a mass of pain. A prisoner was on the horse with his hands bound and his legs tied to prevent him dismounting, while an armed guard stood beside the steps that were used to mount the instrument. “A punishment,” Starbuck explained, “called a horse. Hurts like hell, I’m told.”

      “That’s the point of punishment, ain’t it?” Sally said. She had taken her share of beatings as a child and the experience had thickened her skin.

      The man beneath the horse appeared to ask a question of the straddling man. The prisoner shook his head and the man yanked down on his bound ankles so that the man screamed.

      “Shit,” Starbuck said.

      “Ain’t that a part of it?” Sally demanded.

      “No.”

      Sally looked at the distaste on Starbuck’s face. “You going soft, Nate?”

      “I don’t mind punishing soldiers, but not torture. Besides, think of them.” He nodded toward the companies on the parade ground who were mutely watching the horse. “A regiment’s a fragile thing,” he said, echoing Swynyard’s words to Maitland. “It works best when the men are fighting the enemy, not each other.” He flinched as the guard tugged on the prisoner’s ankles again. “Hell,” he said, reluctant to intervene, but also unwilling to watch any more brutality. He strode toward the horse.

      The guard who had tugged on the prisoner’s ankles was a sergeant who turned and watched Starbuck’s approach. Starbuck wore no badges of rank and had a rifle slung on his left shoulder, both of which suggested he was a private soldier, but he carried himself confidently and had a woman and servant, which suggested he might be an officer and the sergeant was consequently wary. “What’s he done?” Starbuck demanded.

      “Being punished,” the sergeant said. He was a squat, bearded man. He was chewing tobacco and paused to spit a stream of yellowish spittle onto the grass. “Sergeant Case’s orders,” he added as though that should be sufficient explanation.

      “I know he’s being punished,” Starbuck said, “but I asked what he had done.”

      “Being punished,” the sergeant said obstinately.

      Starbuck moved so he could see the drawn face of the prisoner. “What did you do?” he asked the man.

      Before the prisoner could give any answer the drill sergeant abandoned the companies on the parade ground and marched toward the horse. “No one talks to prisoners under punishment!” he screamed in a terrifying voice. “You know that, Sergeant Webber! Punishment is punishment. Punishment is what will turn this lily-livered rabble of squirrel shit into soldiers.” He slammed to a halt two paces from Starbuck. “You have questions,” he said forcefully, “you ask them to me.”

      “And who are you?” Starbuck asked.

      The tall sergeant looked surprised, as though his fame must have been obvious. He gave no immediate answer, but instead inspected Starbuck for clues to his status. The presence of Sally and Lucifer must have convinced him that Starbuck was an officer, though Starbuck’s age suggested he was not an officer who needed to be placated. “Sergeant Case,” he snapped. Case’s long neck and small head would have looked risible on any other man, and his ridiculous appearance was not helped by a wispy beard and a thin broken nose, but there was a malevolence in the sergeant’s dark eyes that turned amusement into fear. The eyes were flat, hard, and merciless. Starbuck noted too that Case’s gangly body was deceptive; it was not a weak, thin frame, but lean and muscled. He was uniformed immaculately, every button polished, every crease hot-pressed, and every badge shining. Sergeant Case looked just as Starbuck had imagined soldiers ought to look like before he discovered that, at least in the Confederacy, they were generally ragged as hell. “Sergeant Case,” Case said again, leaning closer to Starbuck, “and I,” he stressed that word, “am in charge here.”

      “So what did the prisoner do?” Starbuck asked.

      “Do?” Case asked dramatically. “Do? What he did is of no business to you. Not one scrap.”

      “What battalion is he?” Starbuck demanded, nodding toward the prisoner.

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