Rebel. Bernard Cornwell
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BERNARD CORNWELL
The Starbuck Chronicles
Rebel
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1993
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 1993
Map © John Gilkes 2013
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007497966
Ebook Edition © September 2013 ISBN: 9780007339471
Version: 2017-05-08
REBEL
is for Alex and Kathy de Jonge,
who introduced me to the Old Dominion
CONTENTS
THE YOUNG MAN was trapped at the top end of Shockoe Slip where a crowd had gathered in Cary Street. The young man had smelt the trouble in the air and had tried to avoid it by ducking into an alleyway behind Kerr’s Tobacco Warehouse, but a chained guard dog had lunged at him and so driven him back to the steep cobbled slip where the crowd had engulfed him.
‘You going somewhere, mister?’ a man accosted him.
The young man nodded, but said nothing. He was young, tall and lean, with long black hair and a clean-shaven face of flat planes and harsh angles, though at present his handsome looks were soured by sleeplessness. His skin was sallow, accentuating his eyes, which were the same gray as the fog-wrapped sea around Nantucket, where his ancestors had lived. In one hand he was carrying a stack of books tied with hemp rope, while in his other was a carpetbag with a broken handle. His clothes were of good quality, but frayed and dirty like those of a man well down on his luck. He betrayed no apprehension of the crowd, but instead seemed resigned to their hostility as just another cross he had to bear.
‘You heard the news, mister?’ The crowd’s spokesman was a bald man in a filthy apron that stank of a tannery.
Again the young man nodded. He had no need to ask what news, for there was only one event that could have sparked this excitement in Richmond’s streets. Fort Sumter had fallen, and the news, hopes and fears of civil war were whipping across the American states.
‘So where are you from?’ the bald man demanded, seizing the young man’s sleeve as though to force an answer.
‘Take your hands off me!’ The tall young man had a temper.
‘I asked you civil,’ the bald man said, but nevertheless