by Robin Lloyd
Lying there, eyes wide-open, he felt a sudden pang of sadness as he recalled Captain Ebenezer Evans. Once again he recognized the familiar bitter taste of guilt in his mouth. It was a night that had shaken him to his core, and he didn’t want to think about it. What could he have done? The block for the boom tackle on the foremast had broken under the strain of the heavy winds. As first mate, if only he’d given the order to install a replacement preventer on the boom, the tragedy might never have happened. If only. . . . Maybe he never should have trusted the sailor at the helm. If only Townsend had taken the wheel, the ship might never have veered off course. If only . . . but then, how could he have known the captain would walk out of the cabin house unannounced and then go up forward for no apparent reason? And how could he have known that a rogue wave was about to hit them broadside? He was left with the echo, if only . . . if only. It was all a blur, lost in a mixture of ocean spray, white foam, and darkness.
Surrounded by the blackness in the cell, Townsend cursed himself. They didn’t make men like Captain Evans anymore, more at home on the sea than on land. He didn’t know the man well. Evans had been a blue water seaman with the Black Ball Line sailing from New York to Liverpool for over thirty years. That much he knew. They’d had some conversations about the war. Mostly the old ship captain wanted to talk about the blockade and how foolish it was for the Federal government to think they could close off the entire coast of the Confederate states, three thousand miles of shoreline with scores of ports, harbors, bays, and inlets. They didn’t have the gunships, he had declared. It was a fool’s errand. Townsend could tell that Captain Evans liked him. Perhaps he even respected him because of the formal education Townsend had received which Evans never had.
“Might be I’d like to try runnin’ through the Union blockade from Havana. Care to join me, son? I could use a first mate like you. Don’t want to waste all that good learnin’ you got.”
Townsend had never given an answer. His own view about the Rebellion was that the Southern states were foolish to secede, but they did, and that was that. As a Marylander, he’d grown up with hot-headed firebrands who resented Northerners. He understood Southerners and their longing for a separate identity, but he couldn’t comprehend their call to arms. Once they’d fired the first shot, they forced Lincoln’s hand, and the war was on. As for slavery, he thought the sooner that evil institution was done away with, the better.
It was all too much. The war between the states, Evans’s death, his imprisonment. He tried to turn his troubled mind to more pleasant memories. He conjured up the vision of a formation of honking Canada geese flying over a small island of loblolly pines and wild asparagus. Suddenly he was on a Chesapeake Bay pungy. He was just a boy. He and his family were going to Smith Island to attend a wedding. It was a crisp, late October day, the breeze coming slow and easy out of the west. They sailed by a stately plantation home with a recently harvested cornfield sloping down to a hidden blackwater cove. It was a special occasion because his father rarely took time off. As a local merchant and ship owner on the upper Chesapeake Bay, he was forever preoccupied with affairs of business.
At the helm, his father had a carefree look as he glanced up at the sails. His mother, so lovely with her sharp features and deep brown eyes, had put a bonnet over her head as a shade from sun and wind. They were all laughing and enjoying the beauty of the day. Even his younger brother, William, who hated sailing because he got seasick, was beaming. His mother, normally tense and stern in her demeanor, had relaxed, and she teased her husband about the amount of gray in his beard.
Townsend gulped as he felt the pain, the realization she was gone. He had never been able to say goodbye. He was not overly religious, so he took little comfort in the Bible’s promise of the life hereafter. His only solace was the deep memory of his mother.
The last time he had seen her, he was about to set out to Annapolis to join the Naval Academy. They were in the parlor room. She had just finished playing a beautiful Schubert sonata on the piano. She rarely talked about her private thoughts, but she had turned to him that evening and said, “It’s important to know yourself, mi hijo, and be comfortable with who you are. Never lie to yourself, son. Promise me that. I am just reading some of Emerson’s latest essays. I think you might like them.” She handed him Emerson’s new book, The Conduct of Life, as a gift.
She had paused and looked at the flickering flames in the fireplace and said more softly almost in a whisper, “It’s important to find your own way, mi hijo. The world is constantly trying to make all of us into something other than what we are. Remember life is what you make it. Emerson writes some nice words in the book I gave you. ‘Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air’s salubrity.’ ”
Rank prison air entered his lungs like a poisonous cloud. His mouth felt dry and swollen. His head throbbed. Again he moved restlessly on the stone floor and tried in vain to find a comfortable position. He thought back to the year leading up to the war. He’d been thrilled to escape the small-town life in Havre de Grace. The first year at the Naval Academy, he was in Annapolis, but then, once the war had started, the students and the faculty were moved to the school’s temporary home in Newport, Rhode Island. They had all made the sea journey together on board the historic USS Constitution. The housing in the dank quarters at Fort Adams had been horrible. A typhoid outbreak in Newport caused much panic throughout the town, and he and his classmates were never happier than when they were moved to the Atlantic Hotel. In those early years, Townsend had been praised by his teachers for his quick mind, his aptitude for tackling navigation computations, and learning about steam engines and the new class of heavy, shell-firing naval cannon.
Perhaps his schooling there had been a blessing. He remembered the Naval Academy Band, and the charismatic German bandleader, Mr. Zimmermann, whose passion for music had inspired them all. The constant drilling in the early morning, the gunnery training and the rigorous classes that included mathematics, ethics, and Spanish had kept his mind fully occupied. To fill the desperate need to get officers to sea quickly, the Naval Academy had dramatically shortened the four-year program. That intensity and the summer sea trials prevented him from seeing much of his family. He was not sure what he would have done had he known that William intended to run off to volunteer with Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised him. His brother had always been drawn to a different crowd, angry and rebellious. When Townsend eventually found out his brother had enlisted in the Rebel forces, he had kept quiet about it. The mood at the Naval Academy at the outbreak of the war was tense. Fistfights among students broke out almost daily. Many of the upperclassmen had left to join the South, and these divisions were a source of constant friction.
Then word had come of his brother’s death at the battle of Antietam, and his mother’s surprise illness and death shortly afterward from pneumonia. A double tragedy. Instead of grieving, Townsend had grown morose and incommunicative. Word leaked out about his brother, and his fellow students whispered rumors that Everett Townsend was probably secretly a “secesh” just like his brother. That constant whispering rankled him. Still, he never should have let his anger take over. He remembered the last letter he’d gotten from his father. “Mark my words, son,” he’d written, “the Confederacy is on the wrong side of history. Your brother was a fool to be caught up in the fiery rhetoric of these zealous secessionists. His foolhardy thinking cost him, and he paid the ultimate price. I hope you won’t act as rashly.”
Those cautionary words still stuck in his throat like a sharp fish bone, threatening to choke him. What had he done? True, he’d been drinking. All the students had been drinking that Thanksgiving night. The regulations didn’t stop them from roaming the streets, drinking in the taverns, and staging noisy mock assaults and howling outside of windows. But what he had done had crossed the line. Even he knew that.
Townsend wiped the perspiration off his forehead
. His eyelids were wide open in the unseeing inky darkness. Outside the cell, he could hear the faint cry of a sereno calling out the hour. With no light in the cell, that distant voice was haunting. He tried to think of something else to distract his mind, but he kept coming back to his final weeks at the Naval Academy. In retrospect, it seemed like Angus Van Cortland had wanted to pick the fight. He was two classes ahead of him and had always disliked Townsend. Mostly he’d been bragging about being called into service early. He was on leave from serving on board a Union steamship on patrol along the coast of Texas and Louisiana, searching for Confederates running the blockade. His ship, the USS De Soto, was under repairs at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and Van Cortland had returned to the Naval Academy to see his own younger brother.
Van Cortland had strutted his own accomplishments. He kept provoking Townsend, questioning him about his own views. In front of his classmates, he accused Townsend directly of being a Rebel spy.
“You’re not only a spy for the Rebs, but I hear tell your mother was a Cuban whore.”
Townsend had responded in a spasm of anger and punched Van Cortland in the face. They’d gone at each other in what the superintendent wrote in his report was “a knock-down, drag-out fight.” Even worse than that, when he was called before the superintendent, Townsend had called the portly and aging head of the Academy a dunderhead to question his loyalty to the Union. That effrontery sealed his fate. As soon as the report from the Academy’s superintendent had reached the desk of the secretary of the Navy, Townsend was informed he would not be allowed to continue at the Academy. He was labeled a troublemaker, unfit to be an officer of the US Navy. Van Cortland’s barbed slur had found its mark. He should have walked away, but the simple truth for Townsend was any mention of his mother by a stranger triggered an explosive mix of emotions.
His dark thoughts now settled over him like a storm cloud. He had known there would be stern words or worse from his father if they had come face-to-face. So he had decided he would go his own way. After he was dismissed, he jumped on a small trading schooner bound for New York and had aimlessly wandered the South Street docks. He hadn’t intended to go to Cuba—at least not consciously. He just wanted a ship, any ship to take him to sea, away from his profound emptiness and his anger. He was also hardheaded, and determined to succeed, and if the Navy felt he wasn’t good enough, he would go elsewhere. If there was one thing he knew about himself—if he was knocked down, he would get back up. As soon as he had spotted the Laura Ann tied up at the New York docks near Peck’s Slip with her familiar Chesapeake Bay lines, her tall two-topmast rig with a slight rake and her sharp clipper bow, he wanted to be on that ship. It was like going home.
Still, when Captain Ebenezer Evans had told him he was leaving for Cuba the next day, he had hesitated. Even without the verbal assault by Van Cortland, he knew there were dark secrets about his mother’s past in Cuba. She had never spoken about her family or her childhood except for her rare but intense angry outbursts about her own mother. She’d mentioned a place located near a city called Matanzas. He thought she called it something like Mambi Joo, but he wasn’t sure because she would say it in passing or in whispers to his father. He had asked her about a family name he had heard her mention, Carbonell. His mother said it came from her grandfather, a Frenchman, who had fled to Cuba from Haiti at the time of the slave uprisings and massacres there. Sometimes Townsend had overheard his mother recalling some aspects of life in the Cuban countryside, but it was usually a memory about someone or some place that meant nothing to him, and his parents never bothered to explain.
Once at dinner, he and his brother had asked if they would ever meet their grandmother. He would never forget the heavy silence that fell over the table. His father looked like someone had hit him unexpectedly. His mother was suddenly combative. She glared at him. “That woman doesn’t exist for me,” she had cried out. “She is an evil woman. All she ever cared about was herself. She lied and manipulated the truth, all to satisfy her own greed. She will never be allowed to see my two sons. Never! ¡Nunca!” She had stormed away from the dining room table with a strangled cry and gone to her room, and their father had followed behind. He and his brother had heard them talking behind the closed door, the tearful whispering, the faint sobbing and his father’s quiet measured voice trying to console her.
Their father had given each of them a thrashing for upsetting their mother. After that outburst, they never dared mention or ask questions about their grandmother or anything about Cuba. He and his brother realized at a young age that something terrible had caused their mother to leave the island, but they had no idea what it was. Cuba was a closed door, a forbidden topic never to be discussed. They didn’t even know their grandmother’s full name. Their mother just called her la bruja, the witch.
By his estimation, it was late morning when he heard the rattling of the heavy prison keys being inserted into the lock on his prison door. He looked up at two silhouettes that now stood at the entrance to his cell. A guard entered with a lantern, and handed another man his own light. The two guards marched into his cell and yanked him up. He struggled, but it was useless. One of them put a hood over his face. He felt his hands being pulled together and then shackled to the iron belt around his waist. They told him to walk and he hobbled forward, barefoot with the shackles around his ankles.
Townsend felt a surge of panic. He started gasping. It was difficult for him to breathe. The hood was suffocating him.
The two men on either side of him tightened their grip on his shoulders.
“¡Cállate, perro! Que no tienes por que saber nada.”
He understood what they said. They had told him to shut up. They had called him a Yankee dog and said he didn’t need to know anything. He thought about pleading in Spanish, but he had second thoughts. These were not people who would show him any mercy. A crushing fear overwhelmed him as he realized he had no means of escape. He wondered if he was being taken to a firing squad or whether he would be garroted. He now understood why Abbott would lie next to dead bodies. He struggled again and this time they struck him with a stick. He heard people pass by on either side of him, soldiers drilling outside, and then the firing of a volley of guns.
5
After walking what seemed like a mile through damp tunnels, going through door after door, the guards stopped, as one of them unshackled Townsend’s arms, and then his legs. Townsend felt the circulation return to his limbs. He was no longer breathing the foul prison air. They didn’t say a word. He expected any moment to hear the roll of drums and the command in Spanish to prepare to fire. He told himself this was the end and he needed to face it like a man. He breathed in deeply and waited for the end of his life. But instead of a volley of rifle shots, he heard a voice say they could take the hood off now.
Townsend stood there blinking in the blinding glare of the light, disoriented, terrified. He couldn’t see.
“Don’t shoot,” he cried out. “I have done nothing wrong.”
There was silence and he braced himself again for the bullets he imagined would soon tear through his chest. But then his eyes adjusted to the light. Slowly he began to focus on his surroundings. The room had red Spanish décor tapestries on the wall and dark furniture. A well-dressed man stood in front of him, medium height and slight build. He wasn’t a policeman. He looked more like a businessman with his formal coat, light blue waistcoat, and black satin tie. The man took off his flat-brimmed hat, and asked one of the guards to bring in two chairs.
“Do sit down,” he said to Townsend.
Townsend stumbled to the chair. Before he sat down, he caught a glimpse of himself in a gilded frame mirror on the wall. He stood transfixed at what he saw—a shaggy-haired, dirty man in stained cotton prison rags. He brought his right hand up to his unshaven face. It was like looking at a stranger. He became aware of a stale, sharp odor, and he realized he was smelling his own urine and vomit-soaked clot
hes. He suddenly felt a deep shame. He tried to straighten up like a midshipman, but his shoulders slumped over when he was jolted by the pain in his spine.
“Buenos días, Capitán. Por favor, siéntese. Take a seat,” the man said as he pointed to the chair.
Townsend warily sat down. He looked more closely at the man across from him. He had a full head of hair, slicked back tight against his skull. His finely chiseled features were framed by a well-trimmed beard and moustache with a slight touch of silver-gray. He spoke with a clear and crisp Castilian accent, but when he sat down directly opposite Townsend, he addressed him in English—a flawless English with no detectable accent.
“Let me introduce you to something peculiar to Cuba, una cosa cubana,” the man said with a smile as he pulled out a large seven-inch cigar from his coat pocket. “In Cuba, smoking cigars is as fundamental as eating and drinking. Everyone here smokes cigars, even the ladies.”
He cut the tip of his cigar and handed it to Townsend. “Tome uno,” he said politely with a smile as he scrutinized Townsend’s face. Townsend shook his head.
“¿Habla español?” the man asked as he raised one bushy, black eyebrow. Townsend lied, and said he didn’t. He feared the worst. Maybe this man is the military judge who would soon sentence him? He looked back at the two guards. He felt his body tremble, an inner shudder running through him—he was utterly powerless. The Spaniard lit the cigar with a Lucifer match. Townsend noticed for the first time how pockmarked the man’s face was.
“This fine cigar is a Regalía Imperial of the Fígaro brand,” he said as he puffed on the cigar several times to see that it burned well. “I am Don Pedro Alvarado Cardona. I am a Havana merchant. And you are?”