"You mean poteen?" Murphy asked. "Christ, and I haven't tasted poteen in seven years."

"You'll find it will have been worth the wait, Captain," McComb said, and when the supper was finished and the shirtsleeved officers were sharing a bottle of fine French brandy taken at Cedar Mountain, the tavern keeper brought a gallon stone jug downstairs. "A few sips of that, Captain," he told Murphy, "and you'll swear you're back in Ballinalea."

"If only I was," Murphy said wistfully. "The wife made it," McComb said as he placed the stone jug on the table, "before she was taken bad." "Not fatally, I trust?" Hinton asked politely.

"God bless you, no, Major. She's lying upstairs with a fever, so she is. It's the heat that does it to her. They're not natural, these summers, not natural at all."

"We'll pay for the poteen, sure we will," Murphy said, sounding more Irish than he had for many a long year.

"You'll not pay me a ha'penny, Captain," McComb said. "Roisin and I have two boys serving in the 6th Virginia, and they'd want you to be having a taste of it for nothing. So enjoy it now! But not too much now, not if you want to enjoy the upstairs pleasures later!" A cheer greeted this remark, for part of the night's entertainment would doubtless be afforded by the two rooms upstairs.

"But not me!" Hinton said when McComb had gone. "I'm a married man. I can't afford the pox."

"Starbuck hasn't got the pox," Murphy said, "and he must have sneaked down here at least a dozen times." "He never did!" Hinton said, shocked at the news. "Starbuck and women?" Murphy asked. "My God, Major, it's like whiskey and priests, you couldn't keep the two apart with a pry bar. God knows what they fed him up in Boston to give him the energy, but I wouldn't mind a bottle or two of it myself. Now try the poteen."

The poteen was passed around the table. Every captain from the Legion was there except for Daniel Medlicott, who had been summoned to Faulconer's headquarters, and Starbuck, who was under guard in Colonel Swynyard's tent. No one, not even Major Hinton, was entirely sure what fate the General planned for Starbuck, but Lieutenant Davies was certain Faulconer wanted a court-martial. Hinton averred that a court-martial was impossible. "Maybe Swynyard disobeyed Faulconer, but Nate only did what Swynyard ordered him to do." Hinton lifted the poteen jug to his nose and smelt it suspiciously. "It'll all blow over," he said, speaking of Starbucks predicament rather than the liquor. "Faulconer will sleep on it, then forget all about it. He's not a man for confrontation, not like his father was. Do I drink this stuff or use it as a liniment?"

"Drink that," Murphy said, "and you'll feel fifteen instead of fifty."

"What in God's name is it?" Hinton asked as he poured a few drops of the spirit into a tin mug.

"Potato whiskey," Murphy told him, "from Ireland. If you get the recipe right, Major, it's a drink from heaven, but get it wrong and it'll blind you for life and tear your guts into tatters for good measure."

Hinton shrugged, hesitated, then decided that at fifty years old he had nothing to lose and so downed the colorless liquor in one gulp. He took a deep breath, shook his head, then let out a hoarse sound that seemed to indicate approval. He poured himself some more.

"What was that?" Captain Pirie, the Legion's quartermaster, was seated beside a window.

"That was amazing," Hinton said. "It takes your breath clean away!"

"Gunfire," Pirie said and pulled aside the gauze curtain that kept the insects away from the candlelight.

The sound of an explosion thumped across the damp landscape, followed by the splintering noise of rifles firing. A great red suffusion of light blossomed to the north, silhouetting the trees that lay between the crossroads and the Brigade's lines. "Jesus," Murphy said softly, then pulled his revolver from the holster that he had hung from a nail on the wall and went through into the tavern's main room, which, in turn, opened onto a rickety porch. The other officers followed him, joining McComb and three of his customers under the porch's wooden roof from which hung two lanterns. A second explosion spread its sheet of light across the northern sky, and this time the great flame outlined a group of cloaked horsemen on the road. "Who's there?" Hinton called.

"Fourth Louisiana Horse!" a Southern voice called back. The skyline was red with flame, and more rifle shots cracked in the camp.

"It's a raid!" Hinton called as he ran down the porch steps, revolver in hand.

"Fire!" the Southern voice shouted, and a volley of rifles slammed at the tavern from the reddened dark. Hinton was thrown to the ground by a monstrous blow to his shoulder. He rolled in the mud toward the shadows under the porch as a bullet shattered one of the lanterns and rained glass fragments down onto the startled officers. Captain Murphy fired his revolver twice, but the sheer volume of return fire made him duck into the tavern for cover. Lieutenant Davies had followed Hinton down the steps and somehow made it safe across the road to the protection of the small church, but none of the other officers succeeded in leaving the tavern's veranda. Pirie was draped over the railings, blood dripping from his dangling hands. More blood was seeping between the planks onto Major Hinton, who was gasping with pain. Liam McComb had a shotgun that he fired up the road; then a bullet smacked into the tavern keeper's great belly, and he folded onto the porch with an astonished look on his face. His breath came in huge shuddering gasps as blood spread across his shirt and pants.

Murphy ran to a side window, but a second before he reached his objective a bullet slapped the gauze curtain aside, then a second bullet ripped clean through the wall to strike a splinter out of the tavern's counter. The slaves were wailing in the kitchen, while McComb's bedridden wife was calling pathetically for her husband. The other women upstairs were screaming in terror. Murphy cupped his hands. "There are women in here! Stop your firing! Stop firing!"

Another voice took up the cry from the porch. "Cease fire! Cease fire! There are women here!"

"Keep firing!" a man shouted from the fire-rent dark. "Bastards are lying! Keep firing!"

Murphy ducked as more bullets riddled the wall. The heaviness of the rifle fire suggested there had to be scores of enemy outside. John Torrance, C Company's Captain, was lying in the porch doorway, apparently dead. One of the Legion's lieutenants was crawling across the floor, his beard dripping with blood; then he collapsed onto a full spittoon and spilt its rancid contents across the floor. A fire had started in the kitchen, and its flames roared hungrily as they fed on the old building's dry wood. Two of McComb's customers ran upstairs to try and take the women to safety as Murphy hurried into the back room, where the remains of the celebratory supper lay on the table. He snatched his coat from the nail, grabbed his cartridge pouch, and leaped straight through a gauze curtain into the night. The curtain wrapped itself round him, tripping him so that he rolled helplessly in the mud for a few seconds. He had an idea he might be able to drive the horsemen away from the front of the tavern if he could just fire at them from the darkness at the building's rear, but as he struggled to extricate himself from the muslin curtain, he heard the click of a gun being cocked and looked up to see the dark shape of a horseman. Murphy tried to raise his revolver, but the horseman fired first, then fired again. Murphy felt something hit him with a blow like the kick of a horse; then a terrible pain whipped up from his thigh. He heard himself scream, then lost consciousness as the rider fired again.

The fire spread from the kitchen. Mrs. McComb screamed as the flames licked up the stairs and the bedrooms filled with a thick smoke. The two men who had tried to rescue the women abandoned their attempt, instead stepping out of a bedroom window onto the porch roof in an effort to save themselves from the flames. "Shoot them down!" Billy Blythe ordered excitedly. "Shoot the bastards down!" A half-dozen bullets struck the two men, who collapsed, rolled twitching down the shingled roof, then dropped to the ground. Blythe whooped with victory while his men kept pouring their withering fire into the burning building.