The next two ragged veterans to return to Blackthorn Hall are riflemen, men who learned during the war that patience, good ground and a steady hand could often achieve more than enthusiasm and noise. Both had served with the 27th Virginia Cavalry, both had survived the collapse of the Confederacy, and both had spent the years since trying with varying degrees of success to build lives outside the regiment. The summons of Lucien Beauregard Saint Clair has now drawn them back into the orbit of the old command, where familiar faces, old loyalties and increasingly unfamiliar events are beginning to gather together again.
William Fitzhugh Carter
William Fitzhugh Carter had been the son of a modest Virginia landowner and entered the 27th with enough education to keep company accounts but considerably more enthusiasm for soldiering than bookkeeping. During the war he developed into an excellent skirmisher and became known for taking deliberate shots from cover while the more excitable members of the regiment galloped about attracting attention. Carter survived the final campaigns largely because he had learned that bravery and standing in the open were not necessarily the same thing.
After the war he returned home to find the family property burnt to the ground. He sold the land leaving him to drift between work as a surveyor, hunting guide and occasional guard for merchants willing to overlook his Confederate past. He retained the long rifle he had carried during the war, patched and repaired many times but always carefully maintained, and often remarked that a good rifle possessed considerably fewer bad habits than most men.
Carter came to Blackthorn Hall after receiving a short letter bearing the Saint Clair seal, although he has never revealed precisely what Lucien wrote. Whatever the message contained, it was enough to persuade him to put aside the life he had built and answer the call of his old connections once again, bringing with him his rifle, a small collection of belongings and very few questions about what exactly Lucien intended.
Richard Dabney Page
Richard Dabney Page was already an accomplished hunter when he joined the regiment, having grown up among the wooded ridges and valleys of Virginia where accurate shooting was regarded as a practical skill rather than a military speciality. His ability with a rifle soon made him useful for scouting, picket duty and dealing with enemy officers or skirmishers who believed themselves safely beyond pistol range.
Page was badly wounded late in the war and spent much of the final campaigning recovering while the Confederacy collapsed around him, an absence he has always regarded as a personal failure despite having had very little choice in the matter. When he finally returned home there was no regiment waiting for him and very little of the old life left to recover, so he spent the following years hunting for food, guiding travellers through country he knew better than most maps and keeping largely to himself.
The rumours that the 27th was gathering again at Blackthorn Hall therefore stirred something Page had thought long buried, and he arrived carrying the same rifle he had once used in Confederate service. Unlike Carter, he is openly suspicious of Lucien’s interest in the occult and has seen enough strange things around Blackthorn Hall to know that some threats are not easily explained, although he has wisely decided that asking Lucien too many questions is likely to produce answers he would rather not hear.
William Fitzhugh Carter and Richard Dabney Page bring something different to Lucien’s growing force, since neither is interested in close range heroics when a rifle and a good position will do the work more efficiently. Their return gives the remnants of the 27th Virginia Cavalry two experienced marksmen who know how to wait, watch and choose their moment, while their familiarity with the Virginia countryside makes them particularly useful whenever Lucien requires eyes beyond the boundaries of Blackthorn Hall.
Both men remain loyal to the memory of the regiment, although neither is entirely certain what that loyalty now requires of them. Strange riders have been seen moving through the trees after dark, familiar names have begun appearing where they should not, and Page in particular has started checking the faces around the campfire rather more carefully than he once did, while Carter simply cleans his rifle and waits to see what Blackthorn Hall produces next.