“It’s a very good answer,” Sarah said. “It not only trumps them, it raises them right out of the game.”
“Americans like a bold approach,” Caroline said.
“It would also be a perfect way of satisfying the Oregon ultras,” Sarah said. “Instead of giving them a thousand miles of frozen wilderness, you’d be offering them a country that’s enormously prosperous—if it was properly governed.”
“I can’t dismiss Trist until he makes a serious blunder,” the president said. “As long as he’s in Mexico with my instructions—”
“Your instructions can be overtaken by events,” Sarah said. “Especially since the whole country knows them and has been debating them. Half the Democrats say they’re too generous, the Whigs say they’re mendacious. What better way to resolve the argument than with a new negotiator, a new departure?”
“Who’s the new negotiator?” Polk said.
“George Stapleton,” Sarah said. “He’s devoted to you personally. From the letters Caroline has shown me, I think he’d support a much stronger approach.”
“But I’ve got obligations to all the volunteer generals. Gideon Pillow, Butler; they’ll be infuriated if I give George the privilege of ending the war.”
“James, I hate to sound critical,” Sarah said, “but isn’t it time to admit you can’t please people with patronage? How many dozens of hours have you wasted trying to decide who should get a job—and when you decided, what did you accomplish? You made one dubious friend—and twenty offended enemies.”
“I must abstain from this argument,” Caroline said. “But let me say this much. Whether you appoint George or Senator Benton or some other prominent Democrat, you’d be asserting your leadership of the war, and the country. That’s all I care about, Mr. President. Seeing you win the recognition you deserve.”
A hall clock bonged 4 P.M. “I’m giving a reception tonight. I must go.” Caroline hurried downstairs and along the cavernous central corridor of the White House, thinking, A good day’s work. And the night is yet to come. She would make Senator Hannegan her guest of honor tonight. It was a device that years of experience as a hostess enabled her to use subtly, so that no one’s ego was irritated. Very important in Washington, where so many egos were large and sensitive. The senator would hold forth on All Mexico in surroundings that added luster to his rustic appearance. Reporters would challenge him, John Quincy Adams would denounce him, and Daniel Webster, who loathed Old Man Eloquent, would confide to her that All Mexico was not a bad idea in his private opinion. His son was fighting in Mexico with a volunteer regiment, and his letters reflected the iron that was growing in the army’s soul.
At home she found Senator John Sladen of Louisiana waiting for her. She told him what she had just seen and heard at the White House. “You’re marvelous,” he said.
“I’m beginning to think you’re right. But you deserve as much credit for Senator Hannegan’s speech.”
“I thought it was better for him to give it. I wrote it for him.”
“All we need now is a blunder by Trist.”
“He’ll make it. He’s a perfect idiot. That’s why Buchanan picked him for the job. He wants to make the president look like a fool. Then he’ll go to Mexico and negotiate a peace of reconciliation. He’ll renounce either New Mexico or California—maybe both—and run for president as Saint James the Good, picking up Whig votes in all directions. Poor Polk will be reduced to a spectator.”
“Thank God we’re a step ahead of him.”
“Don’t thank God. Thank me.”
He was telling her that they alone in this oratorical city, where everyone competed to strike the right note of sanctimony and righteousness, were liberated from such mundane morality. He was also displaying the new sense of power he had acquired since rising to the Senate. Newspapers were calling him the Emperor of Louisiana. He had put together a political machine in New Orleans that more than equaled the power and corruption of New York’s Tammany Hall.
She gazed calmly at him, understanding all this, and said, “Thank you.” It was mockery. He did not like it.
“Has it occurred to you that there might come a time when grateful words are inadequate?”
“John, I thought we understood each other.”
“When are you going to admit that the head has very little influence on the heart, that ultimately the intellect has no control over what’s beating in the blood?”
“It beats in my blood sometimes too, but we both have obligations, obligations to history—”
“Damn history.”
“You don’t mean that, John.”
“I do. I mean it absolutely. But I also know you’re right. We do have obligations. But when they’re fulfilled …”
“Then let us see what understanding tells us.”
It was cruel, it was devious. She was lying to him, pretending that it was loyalty to George that lay behind her refusal. When it was love—the undefiled love that pulsed between her and Sarah Childress Polk.
SIX
“YOU MARCH TOMORROW?” MARIA DE Vega said. She already knew the answer.
“Yes,” Major General Stapleton said. For his distinguished services at Cerro Gordo, he had been promoted by President Polk with the enthusiastic approval of General Scott.
“You must come to me tonight.”
“I can’t take advantage—”
She walked toward him with that sinuous, swinging stride, her dark eyes full of anger. “Don’t you have ears, General? If you’re killed without ever holding me in your arms, I’ll be left without the slightest consolation. I’ll have no choice but to join you in the shadows.” She kissed him softly on the mouth. “You’re too good. It’s your great flaw.”
Never had George known such desire. Had he wanted Caroline this way, twenty years ago? No, that had been a compound of awe and the raw hunger of youth. He could not remember anything that approached the sweet searing exaltation of these weeks of longing for this woman.
“Is it my honor you fear to blemish?” she said. “You read what my father said about me. He had no daughter named Maria. He said you had me confused with a slut who had run off with a mestizo named Vega.” She pressed her head against his chest. He breathed the flowery perfume of her hair. “Is it your reputation that worries you? Didn’t you tell me last week the whole army assumes we’re lovers?”
“We are. But I’m still a married man.”
“That man is Senator Stapleton, the politician Caroline Kemble Stapleton created. The man I love is General Stapleton, who loves me—and Mexico.”
In a great aching void, George heard himself say, “All that is true, but …”
They were on the shaded rear terrace of the house George had rented for Maria de Vega in Puebla. It was in the hilly outskirts of this beautiful city of seventy-five thousand people. In the near distance loomed the mountains that rimmed the Valley of Mexico. Tomorrow they would march through their passes and descend into the fabled heart of this afflicted nation, in the footsteps of Cortés. George and many other officers had already ridden up there to ponder the maze of causeways and lakes, with Montezuma’s great city in the distance.
Winfield Scott had finally received the reinforcements he needed to resume his advance on the capital. For two months the Americans had occupied Puebla with their tiny army of five thousand men. Not a single Mexican had attacked them. Everyone from Lieutenant Sam Grant to General Scott had expressed amazement. Only General Stapleton understood what was happening. Thanks to this extraordinary woman, George knew more about this tormented country than anyone else in the army.
For twenty-five years, since Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, she had experienced nothing but anarchy and revolution. The nation was split into irreconcilable factions, some longing for rapprochement with Spain, others for a king who would create a local version of the ancien regime, others for a radical break with the past that would shatter the grip of the Catholic Church on the hearts and minds of
the nation. As a young girl Maria had become a passionate member of this faction, called the Puros. They admired the United States, its secular constitution, its federal system.
But the real arbiter of Mexico’s destiny was the army. Without the generals’ backing, no one could rule Mexico. That was one of the reasons why she had fallen in love with Arturo de Vega, a man she described as the only general in the Mexican army who was capable of having two consecutive thoughts. Her conservative father had disowned her. She had turned her back on him, on her family, their wealth, and had lived and plotted with Vega to place the Puros in power.
It was all too clear why his death left her bereft. George had struggled to restore hope, even reconciliation, to her life. He had written to her father, explaining her situation, and had received a crushing reply. Such severity was beyond his understanding. What else could he do but offer his companionship, his readiness to learn more about Mexico, as a temporary substitute for hope? He had rented this house, hired a cook, assured her of his devotion. Soon they were taking long horseback rides into the countryside. In the evening on the rear terrace, she sang the haunting melodies of Spain to him and one or two other guests, accompanying herself on a guitar. Alone, she taught him to read Calderón de la Barca and other Spanish poets—above all, Mexico’s favorite, Sor Juana.
This extraordinary woman was a Mary Wollstonecraft two hundred years ahead of her time. Beautiful, immensely talented, she had violently resented the low opinion of women that prevailed in Old and New Spain. Rather than marry, she retreated to a convent, where she spent her life composing some of the angriest most erotic love poetry ever written.
Hombres necios que acusais
a la mujer sin razón
sin ver que sois la ocasión
de lo mismo que culpas.
Ah, stupid men, unreasonable
In blaming woman’s nature
Oblivious that your acts incite
The very faults you censure.
Cual mayor culpa ha tenido
en una pasión errada.
Who has the greater sin
When burned by the same lawless fever?
There were days when General Stapleton thought he would go insane if he did not take this woman in his arms. But wouldn’t this convince her all over again that there was no hope? Only when Gideon Pillow started making wry remarks, and George saw the knowing smiles in all the other eyes at General Scott’s table, did he realize that everyone assumed he had acquired a mistress as well as a Spanish teacher.
No one disapproved. Scott said he wished he were twenty-five years younger. White-bearded General Twiggs heartily seconded that motion. Wisecracks about several colonels made it clear that General Stapleton was not alone in appreciating the senoritas of Puebla. When he tried to protest his innocence, General Pillow laughed in his face and called him a lousy actor.
Now this—the realization that she had been waiting for him to speak. She loved him and was telling him that his death—a very real possibility in the Valley of Mexico—would be the absolute end of hope.
“If you don’t come, I’ll consider you devoid of courage! A real man never hesitates to sin for love!”
“What if you have a child?”
“When I was in Yucatán the medicine men of the Mayas gave me herbs that prevent conception. I’ve vowed never to bear a child until Mexico is truly free. Vega and I made love almost every night for five years.”
“Can you believe I love you so much—I can’t touch you? I want your reputation to be spotless when we get to Mexico City. So you can speak out for Mexico, in your husband’s name.”
She shoved him away with a cry of despair. “Don’t you listen to anything I say, General? No Mexican will listen to a woman without a man at her side. Didn’t I tell you Vega was part Indian? I disgraced my Spanish blood the moment I let a mestizo into my bed.”
Why not now? whispered a voice in George’s head. Why not take her in the bedroom just off this terrace, with flowered curtains rustling, in the warm summer wind. Why wait until tonight? But some nameless force in his head or his heart paralyzed him. “I’ll come tonight. We’ll have dinner.”
“Come alone. Without a friend to guard you.”
Outside his house on the central plaza of Puebla, George encountered President Polk’s diplomatic representative, Nicholas Trist. Unkempt as always—he looked as if he slept in his clothes—with a cheroot in his languid hand, Trist greeted George with considerable fervor. Part of the reason was probably General Stapleton’s friendship with the president; but Trist also seemed to feel that George’s benevolence toward Maria de Vega suggested he shared with Trist a sympathy for Mexico—something few officers in the army felt.
“General, I hear you’re marching tomorrow. I urged General Scott to give me another week of negotiations. The British consul in Mexico City, my intermediary, as you know, swears we are making progress, even if it is at a tortoise pace. I fear another harvest of death will exasperate both sides and turn this war into a permanent state of hostilities. If we destroy the government’s reputation, Mexico will collapse into utter anarchy, giving ultras on both sides an excuse to reject any and all accommodations. We could be fighting here for another fifty years. How is your delightful wife? Have you heard from her lately? I’m sure her letters brim with social news. There isn’t a scandal in Washington that doesn’t dilate through her parlor. My wife says she’s the equal of Dolley Madison in her prime.”
Trist was a verbal spigot. Once he turned himself on, it was almost impossible to turn him off. “I haven’t had much news from Washington lately,” George said. “Caroline’s spending the summer in New Jersey.”
“Ah, mending a few political fences, no doubt. If only I could have persuaded my wife to take an interest in politics, I might be something more than the secretary of state’s house slave. But her education at Monticello had amounted to imbibing an absolute detestation for the business. She made me swear I would never run for public office, before she consented to marry me. I thought I could talk her out of it but soon found otherwise.”
Trist’s wife was a granddaughter of. Thomas Jefferson’s. Trist had served as the great man’s secretary in the closing years of his life. He seldom missed a chance to remind listeners of that fact. It explained to some extent the sudden grandiosity into which he could puff himself—presuming to tell Scott when he should and shouldn’t advance, for instance.
“Only time will tell which of us is luckier. Mrs. Stapleton would divorce me in ten seconds if I quit politics.”
“I agree with her wholeheartedly, General. You must never even consider it. The Democratic Party needs men like you—with links to the founders. Everywhere I look in my native state, I see a cheapening of our old values. The further south I go, the more I’m appalled by the savagery with which they espouse a permanent state of slavery for the Africans. They don’t seem to see how they’re playing into the hands of the abolitionists. Don’t you agree?”
“I hope President Polk’s tariff may temper the wrath of many Southern gentlemen.”
“I wish I could believe it. But the slave question is acquiring a momentum of its own, infinitely uglier than the blusterings over the tariff. That quarrel only aroused the upper classes. The slave involves everyone, high and low.”
“All this is very fascinating, Mr. Trist. But I must pack. We’re marching at dawn.”
Trist wandered off across the square in his languid way. Inside the house, George found Hannibal packing his clothes in a small leather trunk. His Colt pistol, oiled and gleaming, hung in a holster on a nearby chair. Hannibal’s brow was creased with concern. “Don’t much like this march tomorrow, General. We sit here for two months, givin’ the Mexicans time to build all sorts of damn forts and barricades.”
“I know.”
“Lot more men goin’ to die before we get to that Mexico City.”
“I know.”
“All we can do is ask the Lord to keep watchin’ over us.”
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“That’s your job, Hannibal.”
He studied George for a long moment. “That woman’s drivin’ you crazy, ain’t she, General.”
“Pretty close to it.”
“Been prayin’ for you there too, General. She’s got Jezebel and Delilah written all over her. She aims to take you prisoner, General.”
“Maybe she does, for her country’s sake. She loves her country, Hannibal. Just as much as we love ours.”
Hannibal said nothing. It occurred to George that the big black had no reason to love the United States of America. His loyalty was to George Stapleton, the man who had freed him. He could not love a country that kept so many of his people in bondage.
Was there some truth in what Hannibal said about Maria? Maybe she wanted him to be her spokesman when they defeated Santa Anna and entered Mexico City. She wanted him to project her influence in the political vacuum that was almost certain to ensue after Santa Anna fled or finally kept his repeatedly broken promise to die in the ranks with his men.
“Some mail from home, General.”
Hannibal handed George two letters. One was from Caroline. The other was from Senator Jeremy Biddle. George and Jeremy had had very little to say to each other since Polk took office and the war began. Under his wife’s influence, Jeremy was veering more and more toward abolitionism. It saddened George to think that politics could sour a friendship as close as theirs had once been.
George opened Caroline’s letter first. It was thick with newspaper clippings.
Dear George,
The political news is all bad. The President is being treated with contempt by everyone, Democrats and Whigs. The war is execrated in New England. It isn’t much more popular in New York or New Jersey. Everything depends on your capturing Mexico City soon and dictating a Draconian peace. What do I mean by that? The enclosed clippings will explain it. More and more, the movement to conquer and absorb all of Mexico is gaining momentum in the Democratic Party. It is the only thing that will rescue the President and the party from political oblivion. John Sladen is conducting. a masterful campaign in the Senate to make this acceptable to the Democratic majority. Although Calhoun opposes it, John is ready to displace his idol and take charge of the Southern delegation. They’re ready to rally around him to a man—because they see it’s the South’s salvation.
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