by John Jakes
“Charles, be careful.”
“You, too.”
She lifted his hand and pressed it to her lips, then stepped away. “You must come. I haven’t felt so happy in years.”
“Nor I,” he said, and gigged Sport into the road the wagons had rutted with their wheels.
He waved as he spurred away, gazing over his shoulder at the dwindling figure against the backdrop of the stone house and the two red oaks. Impossible to deny his feelings any longer.
You’d better try. In wartime no man could make a promise to a woman with any certainty of keeping it.
He remembered the warmth of her bosom, her mouth, her hair, that exquisite touch of tongues before Washington knocked.
He mustn’t become entangled.
He was entangled.
He wasn’t falling in love—
It had already happened.
What the hell was he supposed to do now?
52
ON THE FIRST SATURDAY in April, the mood in James Bulloch’s Liverpool office was light as the spring air. Captain Bulloch had lately returned from a swift but uneventful dash through the blockade; at Savannah he had conferred with some of Mallory’s men, though he had imparted no details to Cooper.
The office still basked in the success of its first project. On March 22 the screw steamer Oreto had slipped away from the Toxteth docks without crown interference; two of Consul Dudley’s detectives had watched and cursed from the dockside, but that was all.
Bulloch had invented the name Oreto to confuse the authorities. While she was under construction at William Miller’s, the yard had listed her as a Mediterranean merchantman, and when she cleared to sea her destination was shown as Palermo. In fact, it was Nassau. The British captain hired for the transatlantic run would there hand over command to Captain Maffitt of the Confederate Navy, for Oreto was far from a humble freighter. Her design and engineering followed standard plans for gunboats; two seven-inch rifles and half a dozen smoothbores were on their way to Nassau separately, on the bark Bahama. When Oreto was armed, she would be a formidable fighting ship.
How long this scheme to foil British law would work, no one could be sure. It must be long enough for their second vessel to be launched. Bulloch had said this when he and Cooper retired to their safest meeting place—Bulloch’s parlor—a few nights after the captain’s return.
A mail pouch just in from the Bahamas had brought an urgent message, he told Cooper. The second gunboat must be rushed to completion, because Lincoln’s plan to bottle up the South was rapidly changing from a contemptible paper blockade to a real and damaging one as more and more Yankee warships went on line. Florida—that would be Oreto’s name when she was commissioned—had a clearly defined mission: to capture or sink Northern merchant vessels, thus causing a steep rise in the cost of maritime insurance. Next, according to Confederate assumptions, Lincoln would hear howls from commercial shipowners and demands for increased protection. He would be forced to pull vessels from the blockade squadrons for this duty.
A second fast, armed raider could increase the pressure. They had such a ship nearing completion over at Laird’s. Though resembling Oreto, she was superior in several respects. Bulloch’s code name for her was Enrica. On the shipyard books she was Number 209—the two hundred and ninth keel laid down at Laird’s, whose founder, old John, had moved into politics while sons William and John Junior looked after the enormous business that had grown from a small ironworks making boilers.
Work on Enrica must be speeded; that was the message Cooper had to deliver this spring Saturday. It was not as easy as it sounded, because neither he nor Bulloch nor anyone from the office dared step onto Laird property. Dudley had spies everywhere. If they saw Southerners at the yard, or even meeting openly with one of its owners, the Yankee minister, Adams, would press for an investigation and the game would be up. That was the reason the contract for Enrica had been negotiated in clandestine meetings at Number 1 Hamilton Square, Birkenhead, the residence of John Laird, Junior.
Cooper rather enjoyed the intrigue. Judith called it dangerous and his zest for it foolhardy. Well, perhaps, but it lent his days a sense of purpose and put an edge of excitement on them. As the hour for departure neared, he could feel a not unpleasant tingling on his palms.
The office remained unusually cheerful this balmy afternoon. Yesterday’s pouch had brought several papers from home, including a Charleston Mercury for March 12. In it, Cooper read details
Of THE GREAT NAVAL BATTLE IN HAMPTON ROADS, as it was headlined. On March 9, a Confederate steamer plated with iron had exchanged fire with a strange-looking Union ship alternately referred to as an Ericsson Battery, after the inventor of her revolving turret, and Monitor.
Thrilled, Cooper read of the “sharp encounter” between Virginia and the Yankee ironclad; they had dueled with only thirty to forty yards of water separating them. The paper said Virginia had achieved a “signal victory.” The naïve writer failed to grasp the real significance of the meeting.
With a shiver up his spine, Cooper reread the piece, remembering Brunel, the great British engineer whose ship designs he had studied and attempted to duplicate in South Carolina. Brunel would have understood and seen what Cooper saw: the last rites of wood and sail; the accelerating ascendancy of steam-driven iron on the oceans and the continents as well. Brunel had predicted it years ago. It was an incredible time in which to live, a time of marvels amidst the perils.
He checked his pocket watch, collected his things, and started for the stair. Bulloch emerged from the partitioned space that formed his tiny office.
“Convey my regards to Judith.”
“And mine to Harriott.”
“I trust you’ll have a restful Sabbath.”
“I shall after I go to church.”
“You have our donation?”
“Yes.” Cooper tapped his tall hat. Looks and half-smiles during the exchange conveyed a second set of questions, responses, meanings. Two of the clerks in the office were new; one couldn’t be perfectly sure of loyalties.
Going downstairs, he tipped his hat to Prioleau, the manager of Fraser, Trenholm, who was just returning to the building. Cooper crossed the shadowed cobbles of the court and hurried through the short tunnel beneath the offices fronting Rumford Place. He turned left as the bells of the Church of St. Nicholas rang the quarter hour. He would be able to make the 4:00 P.M. ferry easily.
At the corner he checked to the left, to the right, then to the rear. He saw no one suspicious among those hurrying or idling in the spring sunshine. He turned right toward the Mersey. The sun was sinking over the Wirral, and the span of water between the city and Birkenhead dazzled him with thousands of moving splinters of light. A freighter passed, outbound. He heard the faint ring of the ship’s bell.
Cooper missed South Carolina now and then. But with Judith and the children and his job all here, he had concluded he was better off and probably happier in Liverpool. Except for Prioleau and two others at Fraser, Trenholm, no one in the city knew his history, hence no one remarked on the inconsistency of working for a cause in which he did not entirely believe. He himself couldn’t adequately explain this dualism, in which one Cooper Main continued to loathe slavery, while another loved and served the South with a new, war-born fervency.
He wasn’t even sure the Confederacy would survive. Recognition by the two most important European nations, Britain and France, was still a hope, nothing more, and little seemed to be happening militarily except for the stunning triumph at Hampton Roads. A prudent man, a man who wanted to retain his sanity, did as he was doing now: he concentrated on the task of the moment, not the dour issues beneath.
“England off’ring neutral sauce to goose as well as gander”—he softly sang the Southern doggerel put to the old tune as he proceeded across the landing stage from the ticket booth to the ferry—“was what made Yankee Doodle cross and did inflame his dander.” Relaxed by the warm sunshine, he found a spot at the rail and l
eaned there, thinking of his wife and other pleasant subjects. The ferry, packed with families, shoppers, and workers whose offices closed early on Saturday, left the city stage at a minute past four, bound for the Woodside stage across the Mersey.
Cooper had succumbed to Liverpool as he had long ago succumbed to the charms of Charleston, though the two cities could not have been more unlike. Charleston was a pale lady who napped away the hot afternoon, Liverpool a freckled girl who poured the beer at a public house. But he had come to love the second as much as the first.
He loved the bustle of the port. Into the Mersey poured the commerce of the empire, and out of it went old ships freshly loaded and new ones freshly launched. He loved the banter of the seafaring men who came and went like the tides. Whether they were Liverpudlians or lascars from the East Indies or even would-be shipbuilders from the Carolinas, they spoke a common tongue and belonged to the same restless, frequently lonely brotherhood.
Cooper loved Liverpool’s dark, square buildings, as solid as the good-humored people who inhabited them. He loved the comfortable town house he and Judith had found, directly across Abercromby Square from Prioleau’s. He had even learned to eat black pudding, a local specialty, though he would assuredly never love that.
He did love the people, a fascinating, cross-grained lot, from the magnates who sent men sailing around the storm capes with a pen stroke to lesser mortals such as Mr. Lumm, his greengrocer, who had abruptly been made a childless widower at thirty-seven and never remarried because he had discovered the world’s enormous population of willing women, a population unknown to him when he wed at fifteen.
Now seventy-four, Mr. Lumm continued to operate his shop a full six days each week and boasted to Cooper, man to man, of the enormous resources of his goolies. “Nuff ter popyoulate an ole country, assa fack.” While still in his fifties, he had discovered that the secret of keeping his nudger in trim was to exercise it often, with any quim but a House of Commons. Cooper loved the roguish old fellow as much as he loved the white-haired vicar of the parish, who bred bull terriors, led wildlife walks in the Wirral, and took pains to visit the Mains at least once a week because he knew strangers in a foreign land lacked friends. The vicar strongly opposed slavery and the South, but on a personal basis that made no difference.
Of an evening, Cooper liked to stroll the Toxteth docks and gaze at the stars above the Mersey and the Wirral hills, and tell himself it was a good time, a good place, even if he was far from home. “Dirty old town,” Mr. Lumm often said in a tone of great affection. Cooper understood perfectly.
His mind drifting and his eye on the panorama of docks and coaling floats on the Liverpool shore, he suddenly had a tight-drawn feeling. He turned, and saw the man for the first time.
About fifty, Cooper judged. Bulbous nose. A mustache of heroic proportions. Cheap suit, too heavy for the weather. Paper sack in one hand. The man stubbornly occupied one end of a bench overloaded with a thin woman and her five children. From the sack the man drew a leek. He bit the white bulb with great relish.
Chewing and chewing, the man gave Cooper a glance—not unfriendly, merely curious. But Cooper was by now experienced at spotting those who might be Dudley’s thugs. He checked the width of the man’s shoulders. Very possibly this was a new one.
He felt jittery as Birkenhead’s yards and old, soot-black buildings rose ahead. The ferry bumped in, and Cooper was one of the first to get off, moving quickly but not at a pace to suggest panic. He wove through the rank of lounging hackmen and climbed the cobbled street to a lane tucked behind Hamilton Square. He darted in and, halfway down, turned around. He watched the mouth of the lane, but there was no sign of the man who ate leeks.
Relieved, he entered the public house, the Pig and Whistle, where the lane dead-ended.
As usual, only a few sailors and dockworkers were in the place at this hour. Cooper took a seat at a small, round table, and the landlord’s gray-haired wife soon brought him a pint of ale without receiving an order. “Afternoon, Mr. Main. Evensong is delayed two hours.”
“That late?” He couldn’t suppress anxiety. “Why?”
“I know nothing about the reason, sir.”
“All right, Maggie, thank you.”
Damn. Two hours to kill. The man on the ferry and now this-—was there trouble? Had Charles Francis Adams somehow convinced the crown to seize the 209? A flock of alarming fantasies flew around in his head and robbed the ale of its savor. He jumped when the bell over the door jangled. A bulky figure filled the rectangle of light.
The man with the sack of leeks came straight to his table. “Mr. Cooper Main, I believe?” A smarmy smile; a pudgy hand extended. “Marcellus Dorking. Private inquiry agent.” He withdrew his hand. “Mind if I sit and have a word?”
What the devil was the game? Matt Maguire, Broderick—none of Dudley’s other detectives operated this boldly. Heart hammering, Cooper said, “I don’t know you.”
Dorking slid onto the long seat beneath the window of dirty bottle glass. He laid the much-handled sack on the table, called for a gin, took a leek from the sack, and began to toy with it, his huge smile unwavering.
“But we know you, sir. Bulloch’s chap—right, eh? No problem there. We admire a man of conscience.”
“Who is we?”
“Why, the parties who requested me to approach you, sir.” He bit the leek in half, masticating noisily. From the bar, a small man with coal-dusted hand complained about the stink. Dorking glared, then shone his smile on Cooper again. He ate as he spoke. “Parties discomforted by Captain Bulloch’s interpretation of the Foreign Enlistment Act.”
Cooper sensed he was in trouble, perhaps caught. Would he be searched? The message in his hat discovered? Unwise to put that sort of thing on paper, he realized belatedly, but no one in Bulloch’s office was a professional spy.
Would he be arrested? Jailed? How would he notify Judith?
Dorking reached for another leek. “You’re on the wrong side, sir. This nigger slavery stuff—m’ wife’s very strong against it. So ’m l.”
“Does your conviction spring from your conscience or your pocketbook, Dorking?”
The man scowled. “I wouldn’t joke, sir. You are a foreign national, involved in serious violations of the Enlistment Act. Oh, I know the dodge, sir—shipyards cannot arm and equip vessels of war for belligerents with whom Great Britain is at peace. But nothing in the act says it’s illegal to build a ship here”—he waved the green stem near Cooper’s nose—“and buy guns and powder and shells there”—the leek flew away as he extended his arm—“and bring ’em together three or more nautical miles from our coastline. Not illegal, but it is definitely a Jesuitical interpretation of our law, wouldn’t you say, sir?”
Cooper stayed silent. Dorking leaned in again, intimidating. “Very Jesuitical indeed. In your case, however, it could be overlooked—even a small stipend paid—if my clients received one or two brief reports as to the purpose and status of a certain vessel sometimes identified as the 209 and sometimes as Enrica—Still sailing the same course, aren’t we, sir?”
Pale with rage despite his fright, Cooper said, “You are offering me a bribe, is that it, Mr. Dorking?”
“No, no! Merely a little more financial security, sir. Just for a few helpful facts—such as an explanation of the odd behavior of some sailor boys lately seen on Canning Street. They were marching along with fife and drum, playing a tune called ‘Dixie’s Land.’ The same sailor boys had been spotted at John Laird’s not long before. Spotted inside the gate. Do I make myself clear? Now what does that say to you, Mr. Main?”
“It says they like the tune of ‘Dixie’s Land,’ Mr. Dorking. What does it say to you?”
“That Laird’s might be hiring a crew, sir. For the proving run of a new Confederate States war vessel, could it be?” The inquiry agent flung his half-eaten leek on the table, roaring at Maggie. “Where’s my damn gin, woman?”’ He then gave Cooper time to observe his narrowed eyes and clenched
teeth before he said, “I shall be candid with you, sir. There’s more than a fee if you help us. There’s assured safety for your wife and little ones.”
Maggie had reached the table. Cooper snatched the glass from her hand and dashed the gin in Dorking’s face. The man cursed, dripping and wiping. Cooper grabbed his throat with his left hand.
“If you touch my wife or my children, I’ll find you and personally kill you.”
“I’ll fetch Percy,” Maggie said, starting away. “Me husband. He weighs seventeen stone.”
Hearing that, Dorking bolted to the door, pausing long enough to shout back, “Slave-owning nigger-beating bastard. We’ll stop you.” He shook the paper sack. “Rely on it!” Jangle went the bell, vibrating long after the door slammed.
“You all right, sir?” Maggie asked.
“Yes.” Cooper swallowed; shock set in. He couldn’t believe he had seized Dudley’s man so violently. It was the threat against his family that had provoked him—without thought or hesitation. The Confederate banners could sink to oblivion, Jeff Davis and all the rest could die and go to glory—he wouldn’t care so long as nothing harmed the three human beings he held dear.
The incident left him shaken, and not solely because of the personal aspect. It showed him the hour was growing later, the stakes larger, the mood more desperate on both sides of the table. He finished his ale and drank a second, and still felt church-sober; no relief there.
Shadows heavied in the lane, and finally it was time to leave for the Church of St. Mary, Birkenhead. The church was situated near the Mersey, practically next door to Laird’s and the ship he had never seen. “Want Percy to tag after you for safety’s sake?” Maggie whispered before he went out. He did, desperately, but he shook his head.
The walk to the church was tense. The narrow streets of the Birkenhead waterfront struck him as peculiarly empty for a fine early evening. He kept glancing behind but reached the church, a cruciform structure of Gothic design built early in the century, without incident.