Could Starbuck handle correspondence? Nathaniel Starbuck would have done all Washington Faulconer’s correspondence from that moment until the seas ran dry. Nathaniel Starbuck would do whatever this marvelous, kind, decent and carelessly generous man wanted him to do. ‘Of course I can help, sir. It would be a privilege.’
‘But, sir!’ Ethan Ridley tried one last patriotic protest. ‘You can’t trust military affairs to a Northerner.’
‘Nonsense, Ethan! Nate’s stateless! He’s an outlaw! He can’t go home, not unless he goes to jail, so he’ll just have to stay here. I’m making him an honorary Virginian.’ Faulconer bestowed a bow on Starbuck in recognition of this elevated status. ‘So welcome to the southland, Nate.’
Ethan Ridley looked astonished at his future father-in-law’s quixotic kindness, but Nathaniel Starbuck did not care. He had fallen on his feet, his luck had turned clean round, and he was safe in the land of his father’s enemies. Starbuck had come South.
STARBUCK’S FIRST DAYS in Richmond were spent accompanying Ethan Ridley to warehouses that held the stores and supplies that would equip the Faulconer Legion. Ridley had arranged for the purchase of the equipment and now, before he left to begin the major recruiting effort in Faulconer County, he made certain Starbuck was able to take over his responsibilities. ‘Not that you need bother with the finances, Reverend,’ Ridley told Starbuck, using the half-mocking and half-teasing nickname he had adopted for the Northerner, ‘I’ll just let you arrange the transport.’ Starbuck would then be left to kick his heels in big echoing warehouses or in dusty counting houses while Ridley talked business in the private inner office before emerging to toss another instruction Starbuck’s way. ‘Mister Williams will have six crates ready for collection next week. By Thursday, Johnny?’
‘Ready by Thursday, Mister Ridley.’ The Williams warehouse was selling the Faulconer Legion a thousand pairs of boots, while other merchants were selling the regiment rifles, uniforms, percussion caps, buttons, bayonets, powder, cartridges, revolvers, tents, skillets, haversacks, canteens, tin mugs, hemp line, webbing belts: all the mundane necessities of military paraphernalia, and all of it coming from private warehouses because Washington Faulconer refused to deal with the Virginian government. ‘You have to understand. Reverend,’ Ridley told Starbuck, ‘that Faulconer ain’t fond of the new governor, and the new governor ain’t fond of Faulconer. Faulconer thinks the governor will let him pay for the Legion, then steal it away from him, so we ain’t allowed to have anything to do with the state government. We’re not to encourage them, see? So we can’t buy goods out of the state armories, which makes life kind of difficult.’ Though plainly Ethan Ridley had overcome many of the difficulties, for Starbuck’s notebook was filling impressively with lists of crates, boxes, barrels and sacks that needed to be collected and delivered to the town of Faulconer Court House. ‘Money,’ Ridley told him, ‘that’s the key, Reverend. There’s a thousand fellows trying to buy equipment, and there’s a shortage of everything, so you need deep pockets. Let’s go get a drink.’
Ethan Ridley took a perverse delight in introducing Starbuck to the city’s taverns, especially the dark, rancid drinking houses that were hidden among the mills and lodging houses on the northern bank of the James River. ‘This ain’t like your father’s church, is it, Reverend?’ Ridley would ask of some rat-infested, rotting hovel, and Starbuck would agree that the liquor den was indeed a far cry from his ordered, Boston upbringing where cleanliness had been a mark of God’s favor and abstinence a surety of his salvation.
Ridley evidently wanted to savor the pleasure of shocking the Reverend Elial Starbuck’s son, yet even the filthiest of Richmond’s taverns held a romance for Starbuck solely because it was such a long way from his father’s Calvinist joylessness. It was not that Boston lacked drinking houses as poverty stricken and hopeless as any in Richmond, but Starbuck had never been inside Boston’s drinking dens and thus he took a strange satisfaction out of Ridley’s midday excursions into Richmond’s malodorous alleyways. The adventures seemed proof that he really had escaped his family’s cold, disapproving grasp, but Starbuck’s evident enjoyment of the expeditions only made Ridley try yet harder to shock him. ‘If I abandoned you in this place, Reverend,’ Ridley threatened Starbuck in one seamen’s tavern that stank from the sewage dripping into the river from a rusting pipe not ten feet from the stillroom, ‘you’d have your throat cut inside five minutes.’
‘Because I’m a Northerner?’
‘Because you’re wearing shoes.’
‘I’d be all right,’ Starbuck boasted. He had no weapons, and the dozen men in the tavern looked capable of slitting a congregation of respectable throats with scarce a twinge of conscience, but Starbuck would not let himself show any fear in front of Ethan Ridley. ‘Leave me here if you want.’
‘You wouldn’t dare stay here on your own,’ Ridley said.
‘Go on. See if I mind.’ Starbuck turned to the serving hatch and snapped his fingers. ‘One more glass here. Just one!’ That was pure bravado, for Starbuck hardly drank any alcohol. He would sip at a whiskey, but Ridley always finished the glass. The terror of sin haunted Starbuck, indeed it was that terror which gave the tavern excursions their piquancy, and liquor was one of the greater sins whose temptations Starbuck half-flirted with and half-resisted.
Ridley laughed at Starbuck’s defiance. ‘You’ve got balls, Starbuck, I’ll say that.’
‘So leave me here.’
‘Faulconer won’t forgive me if I get you killed. You’re his new pet puppy, Reverend.’
‘Pet puppy?’ Starbuck bridled at the words.
‘Don’t take offense, Reverend.’ Ridley stamped on the butt of a smoked cigar and immediately lit another. He was a man of impatient appetites. ‘Faulconer’s a lonely man, and lonely men like having pet puppies. That’s why he’s so keen on secession.’
‘Because he’s lonely?’ Starbuck did not understand.
Ridley shook his head. He was lounging with his back against the counter, staring through a cracked dirty window to where a two-masted ship creaked against a crumbling river quay. ‘Faulconer supports the rebellion because he thinks it’ll make him popular with his father’s old friends. He’ll prove himself a more fervent Southerner than any of them, because in a way he ain’t a Southerner at all, you know what I mean?’
‘No.’
Ridley grimaced, as though unwilling to explain himself, but then tried anyway. ‘He owns land, Reverend, but he don’t use it. He doesn’t farm it, he doesn’t plant it, he doesn’t even graze it. He just owns it and stares at it. He doesn’t have niggers, at least not as slaves. His money comes out of railroads and paper, and the paper comes out of New York or London. He’s probably more at home in Europe than here in Richmond, but that don’t stop wanting him to belong here. He wants to be a Southerner, but he ain’t.’ Ridley blew a plume of cigar smoke across the room, then turned his dark, sardonic gaze on Starbuck. ‘I’ll give you a piece of advice.’
‘Please.’
‘Keep agreeing with him,’ Ridley said very seriously. ‘Family can disagree with Washington, which is why he don’t spend too much time with family, but private secretaries like you and me ain’t allowed any disagreements. Our job is to admire him. You understand me?’
‘He’s admirable anyway,’ Starbuck said loyally.
‘I guess we’re all admirable,’ Ridley said with amusement, ‘so long as we can