Medlicott sipped brandy. "Popularity comes and goes," he said vaguely. "Get rid of the sons of bitches and everyone'll forget what they looked like in a couple of weeks." In truth Medlicott was wondering why Faulconer did not simply march the two men down to the river and put a pair of bullets into their heads.

"Rain's slackening," Moxey said.

Medlicott turned to look at the General. He was even more aware than Moxey of the privileges of being one of the General's advisers. Moxey, after all, had pretensions of gentility; his family kept horses and hunted with Faulconer's hounds, but Medlicott had never been anything except a hired man, albeit a skilled one, and he liked being in the General's confidence and wanted to keep the privilege by making sure the General did indeed rid himself of the troublemakers. "Why don't you just return the two sons of bitches to Richmond," he suggested, "with a report saying they're unfit for field duty? Then recommend that they're sent to the coast defenses in South Carolina?"

Faulconer smoothed the papers on his table. "South Carolina?"

"Because by this time next year," Medlicott said grimly, "they'll both be dead of malaria."

Faulconer unscrewed the silver cap of his traveling inkwell. "Unfit for field duty?" he asked tentatively.

"One's a drunk, the other's a Northerner! Hell, I'd say they were unfit." Medlicott had been emboldened by the General's fine brandy and now, somewhat obliquely, offered his preferred solution. "But why be formal at all, sir? Why not just get rid of the bastards? Shoot them."

Moxey frowned at the suggestion while Faulconer chose to ignore it, not because he disapproved, but because he could not imagine getting away with murder. "You don't think I need to give a reason for their dismissal?" the General asked.

"What reason do you need beyond general unfitness for duty? Hell, add indiscipline and dereliction." Medlicott waved each word into the night with a careless gesture. "The War Department must be desperate to find men for the swamp stations in the Carolinas."

Faulconer dipped his pen into the ink, then carefully drained the surplus off the nib onto the inkwell's rim. He hesitated for a second, still worried whether his action might have unforeseen repercussions, then summoned his courage and signed the two papers that simply dismissed Swynyard and Starbuck from the Brigade. He regretted not recommending them for courts-martial, but expedience and good sense dictated the lesser punishment. The weather had made everything clammy, so that the ink ran thick in the paper's fibers as Faulconer scratched his name. He noted his rank beneath his name, then laid down the pen, capped the inkwell, and blew on the wet signatures to dry them. "Fetch Hinton," he ordered Moxey.

Moxey grimaced at the thought of walking a quarter-mile through the mud, but then pulled himself out of his chair and set off through the dusk toward the Legion's lines. The rain had stopped, and campfires pricked the gloom as men emerged from their shelters and blew kindling into life.

Faulconer admired the two dismissal orders. "And I give them passes for Richmond?"

"Good for tomorrow only," Medlicott suggested slyly. "That way if the bastards linger you can have them arrested again."

Faulconer filled in the two passes, then, his work done, walked across the veranda and down to the stretch of muddy grass that lay between the house and a peach orchard. He stretched his cramped arms. The clouds had made the dusk premature, casting night's pall over what should have been a sweet summer evening. "You'd have thought the rain would have broken this humidity," Medlicott said as he followed Faulconer down the steps.

"Another storm might do it," Faulconer said. He offered Medlicott a cigar, and for a few moments the two men smoked in silence. It was hardly a companionable silence, but Medlicott had nothing to say, and the General was evidently thinking hard. Faulconer finally cleared his throat. "You know, of course, that I've friends in Richmond?"

"Of course," Medlicott said gruffly.

Faulconer was silent for a few seconds more. "I've been thinking, you see," he eventually said, "and it occurs to me that we've done more than our fair share of fighting since the war began. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Hell, yes," Medlicott said fervently.

"So I was hoping we could have the Brigade assigned to Richmond," Faulconer said. "Maybe we could become the experts on the city's defenses ?"

Medlicott nodded gravely. He was not sure just how expert a brigade needed to be in order to garrison the star forts and trenches that ringed Richmond, but anything that took a man away from the slaughterfields of open battle and closer to hot baths, decent food, and regular hours seemed pretty inviting. "Experts," Medlicott said, "indeed."

"And some of my friends in the capital are convinced it's a good idea," Faulconer said. "You think the men will like it?" He added the question disingenuously.

"I'm sure, I'm sure," Medlicott said.

Faulconer examined the glowing tip of his cigar. "Politically, of course, we mustn't look too eager. We can't have people saying we shirked the burden, which means I'll probably have to make a show of refusing the job, but it would help me if my regimental commanders pressed me to accept."

"Of course, of course," Medlicott said. The miller did not really understand the prevarication but was quite happy to agree to anything that might get the Brigade back to the comparative comforts of the Richmond defenses.

"And I was thinking that I might make Paul Hinton my second-in-command," Faulconer went on, "which means that the Legion will need a new commanding officer."

Medlicott's heart gave a leap of anticipation, but he had the sense to show neither surprise nor delight. "Surely your brother-in-law will be back soon?" he said instead.

"Pecker might not want to return," Faulconer said, meaning that he hoped he could persuade Bird not to return, "but even if he does it won't be for a long time and the Legion can't manage without a new commanding officer, can it?"

"Indeed not, sir," Medlicott said.

"Some people, of course, would say the job ought to go to a professional soldier," Faulconer said, teasing the eager Medlicott, "but I think this war needs fresh eyes and ideas."

"Very true, sir, very true."

"And you managed a fair number of men at the mill, didn't you?"

Medlicott's gristmill had never employed more than two free men at any one time, and one of those was usually a half-wit, but the miller now nodded sagely as though he was accustomed to giving orders to hundreds of employees. "A good few," he said cautiously, then frowned because Captain Moxey, muddied to his knees, was returning. Just a few seconds more, Medlicott thought, and he would have been the Legion's new commanding officer, but now an excited Moxey was demanding Faulconer's attention.

"Moxey?" Faulconer turned to greet his aide.

"Major Hinton's not here, sir. Not in the lines," Moxey said eagerly.

"What do you mean, not in the lines?"

Moxey was clearly enjoying making his revelations. "He's gone to McComb's Tavern, sir," he said. "It seems it's his fiftieth birthday, sir, and most of the Legion's officers went with him."

"God damn them!" Faulconer said. They were plotting. That was what they were doing, plotting! He did not believe the story about a birthday for one moment; they were conspiring behind his back! "Don't they know the tavern's off limits?"

"They know it's off limits," Captain Medlicott intervened. "Of course they know. It's downright disobedience, sir," he added to Faulconer, wondering whether he might not end up second-in-command to the whole Brigade after all.

"Fetch them, Captain," Faulconer ordered Moxey. Goddamn it, Faulconer thought, but Major Hinton would have to learn that there was a new tight discipline in the Faulconer Brigade. "Tell them to come here immediately," Faulconer said, then paused because Captain Medlicott had raised a warning hand, and the General turned to see a horseman approaching. The General recognized the rider as Captain Talliser, one of Stonewall Jackson's aides.