“Those rodent teeth. He was a wretched boy. A bully. I wish I could say I’m sorry to see him dead, but I’m not. I’ve wished him dead a hundred times in the past. A nasty piece of work.”

A man in Company A was hit by a bullet and began uttering a succession of panting screams. Two men ran to help him. “Leave him be!” Sergeant Truslow snapped and the wounded man was left writhing on the grass. The Legion’s bandsmen, sheltering at the edge of the wood, were the stretcher-bearers, and two of them came hesitantly forward to collect the injured soldier.

A howitzer shell screamed down to bury itself in the meadow. It exploded, and was immediately followed by another shell. The northern infantry had stopped their steady advance and were reloading their rifles. Starbuck could see the ramrods rising and falling, and could see the powder-stained faces glancing up from the weapons to eye the approaching rebel line. There seemed so few southerners in the attack, and so many northerners waiting for them. Starbuck forced himself to walk calmly, to show no fear. Funny, he thought, but at this moment his family would be taking their pew in the tall, dark church and his father would be in the vestry, praying, and the congregation would be shuffling out of the sunlight, their pew doors clicking and creaking open beneath the high windows that were left open in the summertime so that the breezes from Boston Harbor might cool the worshipers. The stink of horse manure in the street would permeate the church where his mother would be pretending to read her Bible, though in truth her attention would be solely on the gathering congregation; who was present and who absent, who looked well and who queer. Starbuck’s older sister, Ellen Marjory, betrothed to her minister, would be ostentatiously displaying her piety by praying or by reading the Scripture, while fifteen-year-old Martha would be catching the eyes of the boys in the Williamses’ box across the aisle. Starbuck wondered if Sammy Williams was among the blue-coated enemy waiting three hundred yards away in this Virginian meadow. He wondered where James was, and had a sudden pang as he thought of the possibility of his pompous but kindly older brother lying dead.

The bugle called again, this time more urgently, and the rebel line stumbled into a run.

“Cheer!” Major Bird shouted, “cheer!”