The Starbuck Chronicles: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Bernard Cornwell

      ‘Like hell I escaped! I was never a slave, never!’ Dominique told Starbuck next day when they were riding the cars for Hartford, where the show would play for six nights in the Touro Hall. ‘I ain’t got nigger blood, not one drop. But the notion sells tickets, so it does, and tickets is money, and that’s why Trabell tells the newspapers I’m part nigger.’

      ‘You mean it’s a lie?’ Starbuck was horrified.

      ‘Of course it’s a lie!’ Dominique was indignant. ‘I told you, it just sells tickets, and tickets is money.’ She said the only truths in the fable were that she was nineteen and had been raised in New Orleans, but in a white family that she claimed was of irreproachable French ancestry. Her father possessed money, though she was vague about the exact process whereby the daughter of a wealthy Louisiana merchant came to be performing the part of Eliza in Major Ferdinand Trabell’s touring Tom company. ‘Not that Trabell’s a real major,’ Dominique confided to Starbuck, ‘but he pretends to have fought in Mexico. He says he got his limp there off a bayonet, but I reckon he more likely got stabbed by a whore in Philadelphia.’ She laughed. She was two years younger than Starbuck but seemed immeasurably older and far more experienced. She also seemed to like Starbuck, who returned her liking with a blind adoration and did not care that she was not an escaped slave. ‘How much is he paying you?’ Dominique asked Starbuck.

      ‘Four dollars a week.’

      She laughed scornfully. ‘Robbing you!’

      For the next two months Starbuck happily learned the acting trade as he worshiped at the shrine of Miss Demarest’s virtue. He enjoyed being on stage, and the fact that he was the son of the Reverend Elial Starbuck, the famous abolitionist, served to swell both Trabell’s audiences and receipts. It also brought Nathaniel’s new profession to the attention of his father who, in a terrifying fury, sent Starbuck’s elder brother, James, to bring the sinner to repentance.

      James’s mission had failed miserably, and two weeks later Dominique, who had so far not permitted Starbuck any liberty beyond the holding of her hand, at last promised him the reward of his heart’s whole desire if he would just help her steal that week’s takings from Major Trabell. ‘He owes me money,’ Dominique said, and she explained that her father had written to say he was waiting for her in Richmond, Virginia, and she knew Major Trabell would not pay her any of the six months’ wages he owed and so she needed Starbuck’s help in purloining what was, by rights, already hers. For the reward she was offering, Starbuck would have helped Dominique steal the moon, but he settled for the eight hundred and sixty-four dollars he found in Major Trabell’s portmanteau, which he stole while, in the next-door room, the major took a hip bath with a young lady who was hoping for a career upon the stage and had therefore offered herself to the major’s professional inspection and judgment.

      Starbuck and Dominique fled that same night, reaching Richmond just two days later. Dominique’s father was supposed to have been waiting at the Spotswood House Hotel on Main Street, but instead it was a tall young man, scarce a year older than Starbuck himself, who waited in the hotel’s parlor and who laughed with joy when Dominique appeared. The young man was Major Trabell’s son, Jefferson, who was estranged from his father, and who now dismissed Starbuck with a patronizing ten dollars. ‘Make yourself scarce, boy,’ he had said, ‘before you’re strung up for crow bait. Northerners ain’t popular in these parts right now.’ Jefferson Trabell wore buckskin breeches, top boots, a satin vest and a scarlet coat. He had dark knowing eyes and narrow side-whiskers which, like his long black hair, were oiled smooth as jet. His tie was secured with a large pearl pin and his holstered revolver had a polished silver handgrip. It was that revolver rather than the tall young man’s dandyish air that persuaded Starbuck there was little point in trying to claim his promised reward from Mademoiselle Dominique Demarest.

      ‘You mean she just dropped you?’ Washington Faulconer asked in disbelief.

      ‘Yes, sir.’ The shameful memory convulsed Starbuck with misery.

      ‘Without even giving you a ride?’ Ethan Ridley laid down the empty revolver as he asked the question and, though the query earned him a reproving glance from Washington Faulconer, it was also clear the older man wanted to know the answer. Starbuck offered no reply, but he had no need to. Dominique had made him into a fool, and his foolishness was obvious.

      ‘Poor Nate!’ Washington Faulconer was amused. ‘What are you going to do now? Go home? Your father won’t be too happy! And what of Major Trabell? He’ll be wanting to nail your gizzards to his barn door, won’t he? That and get his money back! Is he a Southerner?’

      ‘A Pennsylvanian, sir. But his son pretends to be a Southerner.’

      ‘So where is the son? Still at the Spotswood?’

      ‘No, sir.’ Starbuck had spent the night in a boarding house in Canal Street and, in the morning, still seething with indignation, he had gone to the Spotswood House Hotel to confront Dominique and her lover, but instead a clerk had told him that Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson Trabell had just left for the Richmond and Danville Railroad Depot. Starbuck had followed them, only to discover that the birds were flown and that their train was already steaming south out of the depot, its locomotive pumping a bitter smoke into the spring air that was so briskly filled with the news of Fort Sumter’s capitulation.

      ‘Oh, it’s a rare tale, Nate! A rare tale!’ Washington Faulconer laughed. ‘But you shouldn’t feel so bad. You ain’t the first young fellow to be fooled by a petticoat, and you won’t be the last, and I’ve no doubt Major Trabell’s a scoundrel as deep as they come.’ He lit a cigar, then tossed the spent match into a spittoon. ‘So what are we going to do with you?’ The lightness with which he asked the question seemed to imply that whatever answer Starbuck desired could be easily supplied. ‘Do you want to go back to Yale?’

      ‘No, sir.’ Starbuck spoke miserably.

      ‘No?’

      Starbuck spread his hands. ‘I’m not sure I should be at the seminary, sir. I’m not even sure I should have been there in the first place.’ He stared down at his scarred, grazed knuckles, and bit his lip as he considered his answer. ‘I can’t become a minister now, sir, not now that I’m a thief.’ And worse than a thief, Starbuck thought. He was remembering the fourth chapter of first Timothy where St. Paul had prophesied how in the latter times some men would depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, and Starbuck knew he had fulfilled that prophecy, and the realization imbued his voice with a terrible anguish. ‘I’m simply not worthy of the ministry, sir.’

      ‘Worthy?’ Washington Faulconer exclaimed. ‘Worthy! My God, Nate, if you could see the plug-uglies who shove themselves into our pulpits you wouldn’t say that! My God, we’ve got a fellow in Rosskill Church who preaches blind drunk most Sunday mornings. Ain’t that so, Ethan?’

      ‘Poor old fool toppled into a grave last year,’ Ridley added with amusement. ‘He was supposed to be burying someone and damn near buried himself instead.’

      ‘So I wouldn’t worry about being worthy,’ Faulconer said scornfully. ‘But I suppose Yale won’t be too happy to have you back, Nate, not if you walked out on them for some chickabiddy trollop? And I suppose you’re a wanted man too, eh? A thief no less!’ Faulconer evidently found this notion hugely entertaining. ‘Go back North and they’ll clap you in jail, is that it?’

      ‘I fear so, sir.’

      Washington Faulconer hooted with amusement. ‘By God, Nate, but you are stuck in the tar patch. Both feet, both hands, ass, crop and privates! And what will your sacred father do if you go home? Give you a whipping before he turns you over to the constables?’

      ‘Like as not, sir, yes.’

      ‘So the Reverend Elial’s a whipper, is he? Likes to thrash?’

      ‘Yes, sir, he does.’

      ‘I can’t allow that.’ Washington Faulconer stood and walked to a window overlooking the street. A magnolia was in bloom in his narrow front garden, filling