Dennison glanced up into Starbuck’s eyes again, but could find nothing to say.

“It sure ain’t ringworm,” Starbuck said, “and it ain’t psoriasis, and I’ve never seen a case of eczema that bad. Just what is your proper doctor giving you?”

“Turpentine,” Dennison said softly.

Starbuck laid the flat of his saber blade against one of the open, gleaming sores on Dennison’s cheek. The Captain flinched from the pain, but then submitted meekly to the weapon’s touch. “It ain’t turpentine, is it?” Starbuck asked. Dennison said nothing. Starbuck twitched the blade, making Dennison flinch. “It’s croton oil, Captain, that’s what it is, and no doctor gave it to you. You’re rubbing it on yourself, ain’t you? Every morning and every night you slap the stuff on. Must hurt like hell, but it makes damn sure no one can transfer you to a fighting battalion, ain’t that it? Keeps you away from the nasty Yankee bullets, don’t it?”

Dennison could not even meet Starbuck’s eyes, let alone speak as Starbuck drew the blade slowly back along the sore. Starbuck remembered croton oil, the foul purgative that Lieutenant Gillespie had forced down Starbuck’s throat in an effort to force an admission that he was a Northern spy. Where the oil had spilled onto Starbuck’s cheeks it had formed smallpox-like pustules, and it was plain that Dennison was using the purgative as a means of fabricating an illness that would keep him safely in Richmond. “What will it be next, Captain?” Starbuck asked. “Swallowing gunpowder to make yourself vomit? I know all the tricks, you bastard, every last one of them. So what you’re going to do now is throw away your croton oil, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Throw it away, wash your face in good clean water, and I guarantee you’ll be as handsome as ever by the time you face the Yankees in battle.”

Dennison forced himself to look up at Starbuck and the look was of utter hatred. He was a proud man and he had been utterly humbled, but he had no belly to try and retrieve his pride by fighting his new commanding officer. Starbuck picked up his scabbard and coat. “We’ve started badly, you and I,” he told Dennison, “but no one but you and me knows what passed between us here, and I won’t be telling. So you can go back to Camp Lee, Captain, repair your face, and make damn sure that your company is ready to fight. Because that’s what I intend to do with the battalion, fight.” He had meant his words to be conciliatory, but he saw no grateful response in Dennison’s dark eyes, only bitterness. Starbuck was tempted to let Dennison go and let the bastard rot in his own self-inflicted misery, but he needed every officer he could get and besides, why should Dennison evade his duty? Dennison must fight like every other man defending his country.

The carriage door opened suddenly and Delaney jumped awkwardly down to the turf. Colonel Holborrow followed, but more slowly because he was exaggerating his limp. Delaney took Starbuck’s arm and steered him out of earshot of Dennison or the colonel. “The Colonel and I have come to an understanding,” Delaney said. “He believes it his patriotic duty to spare the Confederacy and expensive inquiry into his handling of the Special Battalion, even though, of course, he avers that nothing would be discovered by such an inquiry, and he also feels that under your leadership the battalion could well acquit itself nobly in battle.”