He lay facedown in the sweet-smelling grass and remembered Ridley’s final despairing backward glance, the white of his eyes showing, the terror on his dying face the gift of a girl he had betrayed in Richmond. It had taken a second, one short second, to commit murder. Oh God, Starbuck thought, but he could not pray because he felt no remorse. He felt no sense of sin. He just wanted to laugh for Sally’s sake, for he had kept her faith and killed her enemy. He had done a friend’s duty, and that thought made him start to laugh.

“Over!” A man stirred Starbuck with his bayonet. “Turn over, you crazy bastard!”

Starbuck rolled over. Two bearded men went through his pouches and pockets, but found nothing worth stealing except his cartridge box with its handful of Savage revolver cartridges. “Thinner pickings than a starved dog,” one of the two men said, then grimaced at the awful gory mess that had been Ethan Ridley. “You want to search that pile of blood, Jack?”

“Shit, no. On your feet.” He prodded Starbuck with the bayonet. “Over there, rebel.”

A score of prisoners was assembled at the edge of the trees. Half were from the Legion, the rest were either South Carolinians or Louisianan Zouaves. The Confederate prisoners sat disconsolate, watching as the northern regiments massed on the lower slopes of the opposite hill. More and more northern regiments were appearing from the Bull Run and marching to reinforce the gathering attack. More and more guns wheeled off the turnpike and were aimed toward the Confederate defenders. “What’s to happen to us?” one of the Legion prisoners asked Starbuck.

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll be all right,” the man spoke resentfully. “You’re an officer, they’ll exchange you, but not us. They’ll keep us right through harvest time.”

A Yankee sergeant heard the exchange. “You shouldn’t have rebelled then, should you?”

An hour after midday the prisoners were marched down to the red fieldstone house that stood by the crossroads. The northern soldiers were still readying themselves for the attack that would break the last vestiges of southern resistance and, while they gathered themselves, the artillery of each side screamed their shells overhead, battery firing at battery from opposing hilltops and causing a constant trickle of wounded men who limped, staggered or were carried to an aid post that had been established inside the stone house.

Starbuck, limping from his twisted ankle and with his uniform soaked from Ridley’s blood, was pushed toward the kitchen door of the house. “I’m not wounded,” he protested.