“Ah! That explains all. A mind that can credit the bleatings of theology professors can hardly be expected to understand plain English.” Thaddeus Bird evidently found this insult amusing, for he began to laugh and, at the same time, to jerk his head backward and forward in a motion so like a woodpecker that it was instantly obvious how his nickname had arisen. Yet if Starbuck himself had been asked to christen this thin, angular and unpleasant man with a nickname it would not have been Pecker, but Spider, for there was something about Thaddeus Bird that irresistibly reminded Starbuck of a long-legged, hairy, unpredictable and malevolent spider. “The Colonel has sent me to run some errands in Richmond, while you are to go to Faulconer Court House,” Pecker Bird went on, but in a plump, mocking voice such as he might use to a small and not very clever child. “Stop me if your Yale-educated mind finds any of these instructions difficult to understand. You will go to Faulconer Court House where the Colonel”—Bird paused to make a mocking salute—“wishes for your company, but only if the tailors have finished making his uniforms. You are to be the official conveyor of those uniforms, and of his daughter’s manifold petticoats. Your responsibilities are profound.”

“Petticoats?” Starbuck asked.

“Women’s undergarments,” Bird said maliciously, then sat at Washington Faulconer’s grand piano where he played a swift and remarkably impressive arpeggio before settling into the tune of “John Brown’s Body” to which, without regard to either scansion or tune, he chanted conversationally. “Why does Anna want so many petticoats? Especially as my niece already possesses more petticoats than a reasonable man might have thought necessary for a woman’s comfort, but reason and young ladies have never kept close company. But why does she want Ridley? I cannot answer that question either.” He stopped playing, frowning. “Though he is a remarkably talented artist.”

“Ethan Ridley?” Starbuck, trying to follow the tortuous changes in Bird’s conversation, asked in surprise.

“Remarkably talented,” Bird confirmed rather wistfully, as though he envied Ridley’s skill, “but lazy, of course. Natural talent going to waste, Starbuck. Just wasted! He won’t work at his talent. He prefers to marry money rather than make it.” He accentuated this judgment by playing a gloomy minor chord, then frowned. “He is a slave of nature,” he said, looking expectantly at Starbuck.

“And a son of hell?” The second half of the Shakespearean insult slipped gratifyingly into Starbuck’s mind.