by John Jakes
The large striped tent belonging to their host was ablaze with candles and filled with music—Ambrose performing some Mozart on the better of his two flutes. He played well. One side of the tent was raised and netted to bar night insects but allow entry of an occasional breeze. Bathed and outfitted in clean clothes, Charles felt better. The trouble with Cramm had put him in a bad mood, but discovery of a parcel from Mont Royal had helped to relieve it. The sight of the inscription on the light cavalry saber touched him. The gilt-banded scabbard rested against his left leg now. Though the sword lacked the practicality of Hampton’s Columbia-made issue, Charles would treasure it far more.
With a tiny silver fork, he broke the lightly spiced breading on the oyster. He ate a morsel, then swallowed some of the good whiskey from the Waterford goblet provided by their host and new friend, Pierre Serbakovsky. He and Ambrose had met the stocky, urbane young man during a tour of Richmond’s better saloons.
Serbakovsky had the rank of captain but preferred to be addressed as prince. He was one of a number of European officers who had joined the Confederacy. The prince was aide-de-camp to Major Rob Wheat, commander of a regiment of Louisiana Zouaves nicknamed the Tigers. The regiment contained the dregs of the streets of New Orleans; there wasn’t a unit in Virginia more notorious for robbery and violence.
“I believe this will be enough whiskey,” the prince declared to Toby. “Ask Jules whether the Mumm’s is chilled, and if so, serve it at once.”
Serbakovsky liked to be in charge, but his manner was too lofty even for a slave. Charles watched Toby swallow twice and compress his lips as he walked out.
He took more whiskey to relieve feelings of guilt. He and Ambrose shouldn’t be lolling at supper, but conducting school for their noncoms, which they did almost every night so that the noncoms could attempt to re-teach the lessons on the drill field. The devil with guilt for one evening, he thought. He’d drink it away now and let it return tomorrow.
Abruptly, Ambrose jerked the flute from his lips and scratched furiously under his right arm. “Damn it, I’ve got ’em again.” His face grew as red as his curls. He was a fastidious person; this was humiliation.
Serbakovsky leaned back in his upholstered chair, amused. “Permit me a word of advice, mon frère,” he said in heavily accented English. “Bathe. As frequently as you can, no matter how vile and strong the soap, how cold the stream, or how repugnant the notion of standing naked before one’s inferiors.”
“I do bathe, Princey. But the damned graybacks keep coming.”
“The truth is, they never leave,” Charles said as Toby and the younger Belgian entered with a tray of fluted glasses and a dark bottle in a silver bucket of flaked ice, a commodity so scarce in the South it might well have cost more than ten times the champagne. “They’re in your uniform. You have to give the vermin a complete discharge.”
“What, throw this coat away?”
“And everything else you wear.”
“Replacing ’em at my own expense? Damned if I will, Charlie. Uniforms are the responsibility of the commandant, not gentlemen who serve with him.”
Charles shrugged. “Spend or scratch. Up to you.”
The prince laughed, then snapped his fingers. The young Belgian stepped forward at once, Toby more slowly. Was Charles the only one who noticed the slave’s resentment?
“Delicious,” he said after his first drink of champagne. “Do all European officers entertain this handsomely?”
“Only if their ancestors accumulated wealth by means better left unmentioned.”
Charles liked Serbakovsky, whose history fascinated him. The prince’s paternal grandfather, a Frenchman, had held a colonelcy in the army Bonaparte led to Russia. Along the invasion route, he met a young woman of the Russian aristocracy; physical attraction temporarily overcame political enmity, and she conceived a child, born while the colonel was perishing on the infamous winter retreat. Serbakovsky’s grandmother had given her illegitimate son her last name as a symbol of family and national pride, and never married. Serbakovsky had been a soldier since his eighteenth birthday, first in his mother country, then abroad.
While Ambrose vainly tried to drink and scratch at the same time, in came the first course—local shad, baked. This was to be followed by a specialty of the older Belgian, three chickens stewed with garlic cloves in the style of Provence.
“Wish we’d get out of this damn camp and see the elephant,” Ambrose said as he prepared to attack the shad.
“Do not ask for that which you know nothing about, my good friend,” the prince said, somber suddenly; he had been blooded in the Crimea and had told Charles of some of the horrors witnessed there. “It’s an idle wish anyway, I believe. This Confederacy of yours—she is in the same happy position as my homeland in 1812.”
“Explain that, Prince,” Charles said.
“Simple enough. The land itself will win the war for you. It is so vast—so spread from here to there—the enemy will soon despair of conquering it and abandon the effort. Little or no fighting will be necessary for a victory. That is my professional prediction.”
“Hope it’s wrong,” Charles said. “I’d like one chance to wear this to accept the surrender of some Yanks.” He touched the scabbard. The various drinks had combined to banish what he knew about the nature of war and create a pleasant sense of invulnerability.
“The sword is a gift from your cousin, you said. May I examine it?”
Charles drew the saber; reflections of the candles ran like lightning along the blade as he passed the weapon to Serbakovsky. He inspected it closely. “Solingen. Very fine.” He returned it. “Beautiful. I would keep a sharp eye on it. Serving with these Louisiana guttersnipes, I have discovered that soldiers in America are like soldiers everywhere. Whatever can be stolen, they will steal.”
Drunk, Charles managed to forget the warning right away. Nor did he hear the sound of one man, perhaps more, moving on again after stopping in the dark beyond the netting.
21
FROM THE VALISE ON the dirty floor, Stanley took the samples and set them on the desk, which was clean and bare of so much as a single piece of paper. The factory had no business; it was shut down. A property broker had directed the Hazards there shortly after they arrived in the town of Lynn.
The man at the desk was temporarily acting as a sort of caretaker for the factory. He was a husky, ruddy fellow, white-haired and broad about the middle. Stanley put his age at fifty-five. The man picked up the samples, one per hand, with a quickness suggesting he hated his idle state.
“The Jefferson style,” he said, tapping a free finger on the moderately high quarter of the shoe. “Issued to the cavalry as well as the infantry.”
“You know your business, Mr. Pennyford,” Stanley said with a smarmy smile. He distrusted New Englanders—people who spoke with such a queer accent couldn’t be normal—but he needed this man on his side. “A contract for bootees of this type would find a broad and lucrative market.”
“In heaven’s name, Stanley, call them by their right name. They’re shoes,” Isabel said from near the window. The light of a dark day through a filthy pane didn’t flatter her; outside, a late June storm pounded the roofs of Lynn.
Stanley took pleasure in retorting, “The government doesn’t use the term.”
Pennyford backed him up. “In military circles, Mrs. Hazard, the word shoe signifies footwear for a lady. Mighty odd, if you ask me. Strikes me there’s plenty that’s odd in Washington.”
“To the point, Mr. Pennyford,” Stanley broke in. “Could that rusty machinery downstairs manufacture large quantities of this item and do it quickly and cheaply?”
“Quickly? Ayah—once I effect some repairs the present owners couldn’t afford. Cheaply?” He flicked one of the samples with a finger. “Nothing could be cheaper than these. Two eyelets—only pegs twixt the sole and upper—” One wrench of his strong hands separated the two parts of the right shoe. “These are a disgrace to the cordwainer�
��s trade. I’d hate to be a poor soldier boy wearing them in mud or snow. If Washington sees fit to issue such trash to our brave lads, Washington is more than odd; Washington’s contemptible.”
“Spare me your moralizing, please,” Stanley said, seeming to inflate as he did so. “Can the Lashbrook Footwear Company turn out this kind of bootee?”
Reluctantly: “Ayah.” He leaned forward, startling Stanley. “But we can do much better. There’s this fellow Lyman Blake who has invented the greatest advance in factory equipment I’ve ever seen, and I have been in the trade since I apprenticed at age nine. Blake’s machine sews the uppers and sole together swiftly—cleanly—securely. Another man will soon be manufacturing the machine—Blake lacked capital and sold his design—but I’ll wager that within a year his invention will bring this industry and the entire state back to life.”
“Not quite, Mr. Pennyford,” Isabel countered with a smile meant to put him in his place. “What will bring prosperity back to Massachusetts and the shoe industry is a long war and contracts that can be obtained by well-connected men like my husband.”
Pennyford’s cheeks grew dark as ripe apples. Alarmed, Stanley said, “Mr. Pennyford was only trying to be helpful, Isabel. You will stay on, won’t you, Dick? Manage the factory as you did before it closed?”
Pennyford stayed silent quite a while. “I would not like to do this kind of work, Mr. Hazard. But, candidly, I have nine children to house, feed, and clothe, and there are many factories shuttered in Lynn, and few jobs. I will stay—on one condition. You must permit me to run things my own way, without interference, so long as I produce the agreed-upon product, in the agreed-upon quantity, by the agreed-upon date.”
Stanley whacked the desk. “Done!”
“I think the whole place can be had for about two hundred thousand,” Pennyford added. “Lashbrook’s widow is desperate for cash.”
“We will locate the representatives of the estate and call on them immediately.”
Purchase was arranged by noon the next day, with virtually no haggling. Stanley felt euphoric as he helped Isabel board a southbound train at the grimy depot. Seated in the overheated dining car enjoying eggs and bacon—Isabel loathed his plebeian taste in food—he couldn’t contain his enthusiasm.
“We found a treasure in that Dick Pennyford. Now what about buying some of those new machines he described?”
“We ought to weigh that carefully.” She meant she would do the weighing. “We needn’t worry whether our shoes are durable, only that we deliver enough of them to make money. If the new machines will speed up production—well, then, perhaps.”
“We’ll make money,” Stanley exclaimed as the train swayed around a bend. The whistle howled. The summer storm continued to dash rain against the glass beside their table. “I’m confident of it. Why, do you realize”—he forked eggs into his mouth, speaking while chewing—“you and I will soon be perfect examples of the boss’s definition of a patriot?”
“What’s that?”
“Someone infused with love of the old flag and an appropriation.”
He continued to eat and chew vigorously. Isabel was pensive. She left her broiled fish untouched and sat with gloved hands under her chin, her eyes fixed on the dreary landscape streaming by. “We mustn’t confine our thinking to narrow limits, Stanley.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard some fascinating gossip before we left Washington. Certain industrialists are said to be hunting ways and means to trade with the Confederacy in the event of a long war.”
Stanley clacked his fork to his plate. His lower jaw had dropped down in front of the napkin stuffed into his collar. “You aren’t suggesting—”
“Imagine an arrangement,” she went on, low-voiced, “by which military shoes were privately exchanged for cotton. How many shoe factories are there down South? Few or none, I’ll bet. Imagine the need—and the price you could get for a bale of cotton if you resold it up here. Multiply the price several thousand times and think of the profit. Enormous.”
“But that kind of trade would be—” He sensed someone hovering and glanced up. “We’re not finished, boy.” He supplemented the remark with a glare at the black waiter, who left again. The table cut into Stanley’s paunch as he whispered: “It would be dangerous, Isabel. Worse than that, it would be treason.”
“It could also be the way to make not merely a profit but a fortune.” Like a mother with a slow child, she patted his pudgy hand. “Don’t rule it out, my sweet.”
He didn’t.
“Finish your eggs before they get cold.”
He did.
22
FAINT SOUNDS. FROM FAR away, he thought in the first seconds of waking in the dark. Across the tent, Ambrose emitted one of his characteristic snores, a malignant mix of whistles and buzzing.
Charles lay on his right side. His linen underdrawers were soaked with sweat. The humidity was fierce. As he thought about reaching over to poke Ambrose and silence him, the sound separated into recognizable elements: night insects and something else. Charles held his breath and didn’t move.
Even with his cheek pressed to the camp bed, he could see the tent entrance. Open. A silhouette momentarily blocked the glow of a guardpost lantern. He heard the intruder breathing.
He’s after the sword.
It lay in its oiled-paper wrapping on top of the small trunk at the foot of the bed. Should have found a safer place. He prepared himself as best he could, fear edging into him. It was a hard position from which to rise suddenly, but he did it, bolting up from the waist. As he gained his feet he let out a growl he hoped would confuse and frighten the thief.
Instead, it woke Ambrose. He uttered a wild yell as Charles lunged at the shadow-man who was picking up the sword. “Give me that, damn you.”
The thief drove an elbow into Charles’s face. Blood spurted from his left nostril. He staggered, and the thief dove into the street of neatly spaced tents and raced left, away from the picket post where the lantern shone. Bleeding and swearing, Charles went after him.
He could pick out a few details of the thief’s appearance. He was heavy and wore white gaiters. One of Rob Wheat’s Tigers, by God. Serbakovsky’s warning came to mind. That evening he dined with the prince, Charles had been feeling too good to detect or even worry about the presence of someone outside, someone who must have spied on the party through the netting, seen the saber—
His arms and legs pumped. Blood trickled down his upper lip; he spat it away. Stones and burrs hurt his bare feet, but he kept gaining. The thief looked back, his face a round blur. Charles heard Ambrose hollering just as he hurled himself forward, his feet leaving the ground a second before his hands caught the waist of the thief’s blue-and-white sultan’s bloomers.
The man screamed an obscenity; both fell. Charles landed on the back of the man’s legs, badly jarred. The thief dropped the sword and struggled to turn beneath Charles and get free, kicking all the while. A gaitered boot knocked Charles’s head back. The Tiger jumped up.
Dazed, Charles grabbed the man’s left leg and pulled him down again—along with the huge bowie knife he had yanked from a belt sheath. Charles whipped his head aside to avoid a cut that would have sliced away most of one cheek.
The Tiger pushed Charles over. His head hit a rock. “Corporal of the guard! Corporal of the guard!” Ambrose was bellowing. Charles could well be dead before help arrived; he had gotten a look at the thief, so it would be safer for the man to leave a corpse.
He dropped on Charles’s chest with both knees. He had a round face, pug nose, curly mustachios. He smelled of onions and dirt. “Fuckin’ Carolina fop,” he grunted, holding the bowie with both hands and forcing the point down toward Charles’s throat.
Frantic, Charles locked his hands under the thief’s wrist and pushed up—pushed. God, the bastard was strong. He shifted a knee into Charles’s groin and put weight on it. Blinded by sweat and the pain, Charles almost couldn’t see the knife blade
as it dipped to within three inches of his chin.
Two inches.
One—
“Jesus,” Charles moaned, tears in his eyes because of the knee crushing his balls. One more moment and his throat would be slashed. He gambled he could hold the thief’s wrist with one hand, thrust the other upward—
His left hand moved. The knife edged down. Charles found the thief’s hair and pulled. The man shrieked, his attack thrown off. Slippery fingers released the bowie. Falling, it raked Charles’s left ribs lightly. As the thief tried to stand, Charles grabbed the knife and buried three inches of it in a thigh.
The Tiger screamed louder. He toppled over and crashed in the weeds some yards beyond the last tent, the knife sticking from his fine striped pantaloons.
“You all right, Captain Main?”
Rising, Charles nodded to the noncom, first to reach him; other men poured down the dark tent street and surrounded him. The thief moaned and thrashed in the weeds.
“Take him to the surgeons to have that leg tended. Make sure someone fastens a ball and chain on his other ankle so he’s around when his regiment court-martials him.”
The noncom asked, “What did he do, sir?”
Charles wiped blood from his nose with his bare wrist. “Tried to steal my dress sword.” No honor code among these recruits, he thought with bitterness. Maybe I’m a fool, hoping for a rule-book war. He picked up the scabbarded blade from where it had fallen and trudged away.
Wide awake and excited, Ambrose wanted to discuss the incident. Charles held a scrap of rag to his nose until the bleeding stopped, then insisted they turn in. He was spent. Barely asleep, he bolted up again.