He shivered even though he was sweating under his thick woolen uniform coat and trousers. Somewhere to his left a man shouted an order, but the sound was small and faraway, like a voice heard from a sickbed in a distant room. The sun had still not risen, though the eastern horizon was now suffused with a rosy brilliance and it was light enough for Colonel Faulconer to make a slow inspection of his Legion’s ranks. He reminded the men of the homes they had left in Faulconer County, and of their wives, sweethearts and children. He reassured them that the war was not of the South’s making, but of the North’s choosing. “We just wanted to be left alone, is that so terrible an ambition?” he asked. Not that the men needed the Colonel’s reassurance, but Faulconer knew that a commanding officer was expected to rouse the spirits of his men on the morning of battle, and so he encouraged his Legion that their cause was just and that men fighting for a just cause need not fear defeat.

Adam had been supervising the piling of the Legion’s baggage, but now rode back to Starbuck’s side. Adam’s horse was one of the best beasts from the Faulconer stud—a tall, bay stallion, glossily beautiful, a disdainful aristocrat among beasts just as the Faulconers were lords among common men. Adam nodded toward the small house with its dimly glowing windows that stood silhouetted on the hill’s flat top. “They sent a servant to ask us whether it would be safe to stay there.”

“What did you say?”

“How could I say anything? I don’t know what will happen today. But do you know who lives there?”

“How on earth would I know that?”

“The widow of the Constitution’s surgeon. Isn’t that something? Surgeon Henry, he was called.” Adam’s voice sounded very stilted, as though it was taking all his self-discipline to contain his emotions. He had put on a soldier’s coat for his father’s sake, and worn a captain’s three metal bars on his collar because to do so was simpler than wearing a martyr’s sackcloth, but today he would pay the real price of that compromise, and the thought of it was making him sick to his stomach. He fanned his face with his wide-brimmed hat, then glanced to the east where the cloudless sky looked like a sheet of beaten silver touched with a shimmer of lurid gold. “Can you imagine how hot it will be by midday?” Adam asked.