“‘Don’t know, sir,’” Evans mimicked Starbuck, “or perhaps you’re telling me lies, you miserable twist of shit. Maybe you’re trying to drag my men away from the bridge, is that it, you shit-belly?” The Colonel’s vehemence was terrifying, overwhelming, blistering, forcing Starbuck to take an involuntary backward step as the Colonel’s harangue spattered him with spittle. “You’re trying to sell me down the river, you cuffee bastard. You want me to open the pike so the northern bastards can swarm over the bridge and then we’ll all be hanging from the trees come nightfall. Ain’t that right, you son of a no-good bitch?” There was a few seconds’ silence, then Evans repeated his question in a voice that was a high-pitched scream. “Ain’t that right, you son of a cuffee bitch?”

“There’s a column of northern troops in the woods beyond the Sudley Fords.” Starbuck somehow managed to keep his voice calm. He gave his hands a futile jerk, trying to point to the north, but the pinion at his wrists was far too secure. “They’re marching this way, sir, and they’ll be here in another hour or so.”

Another shell crashed into the pasture beyond the turnpike where Evans’s two reserve artillery pieces stood waiting in the uncut grass. The resting gunners did not even look up, not even when one of the giant shells fell shorter than usual and tore a branch from a nearby tree before exploding forty yards away in a turmoil of dirt, leaves, iron fragments and hot smoke.

“How’s my barrelito, Otto?” Evans shouted.

“No harm, Colonel. Don’t you vorry.” The German sounded impassive.

“I vorry,” Evans growled, “I vorry about lunkhead pieces of shit from Boston. What’s your name, boy?”

“Nathaniel, sir. Nathaniel Starbuck.”

“If you’re lying to me, Nathaniel Shitface, I’ll take you to the woodshed and cut your balls off. If you’ve got any balls. Have you got balls, Nathaniel?” Starbuck said nothing. He was feeling relieved that this furious, foul-tongued man had not connected his surname to the Reverend Elial. Two more shells screamed overhead and an overshot rifle bullet made its odd whistling noise as it flicked past. “So if I move my men to face your column, fairy-shit”—Evans thrust his face so close to Starbuck that the Bostonian could smell the mephitic mix of whiskey and tobacco on the South Carolinian’s breath—“I’ll be letting the enemy across the bridge here, won’t I, and then there’ll be no Confederacy anymore, will there? And then the emancipating shit-heads from Boston will come down to rape our women, if that’s what the hymn singers from Boston do. Maybe they’d prefer to rape our men? Is that your taste, cuffee-boy? You’d like to rape me, would you?”