“So you picked up your momma’s accent with her ditty milk, did you, Potter?” Dennison asked.

“I reckon I must have done, sir.”

Dennison leaned back in his chair. The sores on his face gleamed wetly in the flickering light of the bad candles set on the dinner table that bore the remains of a meal of fried chicken, fried rice, and beans. There were some of Colonel Holborrow’s beloved peaches to end the meal, though Holborrow himself was not present. The colonel, having carried Sally to the city, had evidently stayed to make a night of it, leaving Starbuck to share this evening meal with the four captains. There were plenty of other officers in Camp Lee, but they ate elsewhere for no one, it seemed, wanted to be contaminated by this handful of officers who remained with the Yellowlegs.

And no wonder, Starbuck, thought, for even the few hours he had spend in the camp had proved enough to confirm his worst expectations. The men of the 2nd Special Battalion were bored and dispirited, kept from desertion only by the ever-present provosts and by their fears of execution. The sergeants resented being posted to the battalion and so entertained themselves with petty acts of tyranny that the battalion officers, like Thomas Dennison and his companions, did nothing to alleviate. Sergeant Case appeared to run the battalion and those men who were in his favor prospered while the rest suffered.

Starbuck had talked with some for the men and they, thinking that he was a harmless lieutenant and, besides, the man who had dared to take Case’s prisoner off the horse, were unguarded in what they said. Some, like Caton Rothwell, whom Starbuck had rescued, were keen to fight and were frustrated that Holborrow appeared to have no intention of sending the battalion north to join Lee’s army. Rothwell was not one of the original Yellowlegs, but had been posted to the special Battalion after being found guilty of deserting from his own regiment. “I went to help my family,” he explained to Starbuck. “I just wanted a week’s furlough,” he added, “because my wife was in trouble.”

“What trouble?” Starbuck had asked.