“In short,” he concluded, “we are on the brink of war.”
Custer took advantage of the pause that followed that pronouncement. “Your thoughts, gentlemen?”
Temperance Fullerton, the Secretary of the Interior, a thin, overweening New Englander, was the first to offer an opinion. “I cannot disagree with a single point.”
“Things are bad,” the Postmaster General said, “but are they as bad as that? I mean, is it war?”
Fairchild grumped. “War or no,” the Secretary of the Navy said, “it’s sure that it’s Morton’s doing. The man is spoiling for a fight, and I can’t fathom the reason for it. He seems determined to antagonize the entire world, one nation at a time.”
“And that is precisely why Secretary Dickerson is up in New York,” Jacob said. “The French are furious over this new import tariff that Morton has imposed. It seems Spanish importers are using French ships to avoid the tariff he imposed on Spain.”
“The French, angry with us?” Fairchild said. “Hardly a new situation. They’ve barely forgiven us for not backing their own revolution.”
“But the last thing we need is a trade war with France on top of a shooting war with Spain,” Jacob said.
“True,” Fullerton said, and the others agreed.
Custer cleared his throat. “Can I take it, then, that I have your support to return to my duties as President and avoid this war?” His words were thick, but intelligible.
Fairchild was the first to speak. “Taking the tack that Hawkins would take, if he’d had the guts to show, I’d say that war isn’t always undesirable, Mr. President. It’s good for business: factories are busy, people pull together, and patriotism feeds domestic investment.”
“Perhaps,” Fullerton said, “but what if, despite this financial boon, we lost territory to the Spanish? We must defend the western territories from Spanish aggression and imperialism.”
“Hear, hear,” Jacob said. “After all, Fairchild, whose side are you on?”
“Who said there are sides, here?” Fairchild asked.
“Gentlemen,” Custer said, breaking in before the heat got too high. “It’s never a crime to disagree, and Secretary Fairchild raises defensible points. However, I believe he will agree that the overriding precept here is this: never get backed into a war.”
Nods went around the table.
“Absolutely,” Jacob said. “We must defuse this situation and defuse it now. If we’re to fight the Spanish, we should do it in a time and place of our choosing. As it is, we’re about to get caught with our trousers down around our ankles.”
Custer looked at them all. “And so I ask it again. Do you support my resuming my duties as President?”
Simpson Bayard, the Attorney General, had not spoken through the meeting. Now he coughed genteelly. A Southern diplomat from an old and established line that had spawned three senators and a president, he commanded and received the respect of his fellow cabinet members.
“Mr. President,” he said in his slow, Virginian drawl, “it is hardly up to us. This is strictly a matter of law, of Constitutional law. If you are pronounced fit to resume your duties, you may do so, sir, and without a by-your-leave from the Cabinet.”
“Correct,” Custer said, “as always. But I want—no; I need—more than the law.” He plopped his useless right hand on the table, and to illustrate his point, he banged it a few times. “This,” he said, raising the crippled limb, “and this,”—he thumped his hand against his right leg—”and this”—he motioned toward the slack side of his mouth. “They are what people see. For some, they are all that they will see. And they will wonder if my mind is likewise afflicted.” He raised his twisted hand and let it fall into his lap. “And so, the law is not enough for me. I am not asking for your permission, Mr. Bayard. I am asking for your support. Your public support. Do I have it?”
Jacob did not hesitate. “Of course, Mr. President.”
Fullerton chimed in next, followed by Fairchild and the others. Only Bayard remained.
“Simpson?” Custer asked, his tongue lisping over the sibilants in his name.
The Attorney General gave his President with a long, level stare. Custer did not flinch from it, but withstood his regard. The moment stretched out to the point of discomfort. Finally, Bayard nodded.
“Yes, Mr. President. I believe I can say with confidence that not only are you fit to resume your presidential duties, but that despite your infirmities, between you and the Vice President, you are the fitter of the two.”
It was what Custer wanted to hear, and it set his resolve in steel. He stood. The cabinet officers stood with him.
“Then if you will kindly follow me?”
Setting his cane, he walked to the kitchen door. Douglas set the door open and then went to the wheelchair, ready to help Custer.
“No,” Custer said, and smiled at the old chair with its squeaky right front wheel. “That is one horse I’ll not ride again.” And with the Cabinet at his back, he headed down the hallway.
They passed the waiting kitchen staff, all lined up along the wall where they had waited for the meeting to end. He winked to Cook as he passed, and Cook winked back. He walked down the back hall to the elevator. It was a tight squeeze, but they all got inside and, with the gate closed, the electric motor clunked into motion, lifting them slowly—too slowly for Custer’s whirling mind—to the second floor.
The gilded accordion gate banged open and Custer led the way—still too slowly—down and around to the wide cross hall, and thence to the left, toward the offices. Behind him, the men of his cabinet were silent, their tread measured like pall-bearers at a funeral. Custer rejected the image, filling his mind instead with the picture of a returning Caesar, and suddenly their slow progress took on the attitude of a procession of might.
Outside the door, he stopped to straighten his waistcoat and jacket. Samuel came forward to open the door, and Custer strode in like a conqueror. The aide who ran Morton’s outer office stood from behind his desk and watched without a word as Custer and the Cabinet walked in and opened the door to the inner office.
“Damn it, Blake,” Morton said as they entered. “I said I wasn’t to be—” He swallowed the rest of his sentence, seeing that not only was it Custer who disturbed him, but most of the Cabinet as well.
Morton stood behind his desk, looking all the shorter for its oversized width. Standing from their seats before the desk were Morton’s two advisors, Chaucer and Yancy. Yancy, Custer had been told, was the man responsible for pushing Morton toward this confrontation in Cuba. He brushed the thought aside.
Old news, he told himself, and concentrated on the man behind the desk.
Morton was fuming like a kettle on the fire. His knuckles whitened as he leaned forward onto the desk. Custer noted the flag on its stand behind him, and the trappings of high office: portraits of predecessors, maps with notations, and the glint of gold from pen, tray, and blotter. Small silver-framed photographs of his wife and family were lined up along the credenza like audience members at a recital. Custer inspected these items slowly, without hurry, giving the Vice President time to come to a full boil.
“Mr. President,” Morton finally said, his calm tone unable to mask the acid he most surely tasted. “What is the meaning of this intrusion?”
Custer turned around and looked at the men behind him. Samuel stood at parade rest, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. Fullerton, Fairchild, and the others were grave but at the same time buoyant, shoulders back and heads high. Jacob, stalwart old friend and supporter, looked Custer in the eye and winked.
He turned back to Morton. “I beg your pardon, Levi,” he said, “but I believe that you are sitting in my chair.”
Morton blanched, a feat that Custer would have thought impossible for the already pale New Yorker. His features wavered between indignation and sheer disbelief, but when Jacob sniggered, he decided on the former.
“This is outrageous!” he shouted, but his over-ex
citement made it sound more an adolescent whine than a condemnation.
“What is outrageous,” Attorney General Bayard said, “is the disgraceful situation in which you have embroiled this country.”
“But there are protocols,” Morton said, now in full complaint. “His doctors must pronounce him fit—”
“And they shall,” Custer said. “In due course, they shall. For now, however, I suggest”—he paused as the word gave him no small trouble—”that you go home and pack. That will give me some time to think of a place to send you, an emissary to some place where you can do us no further harm.”
Morton stood there, his eyes glancing from face to face for support but finding none, not even in the sycophants that he had gathered around him.
“Well?” Jacob said. “You heard the President, didn’t you?”
But Custer raised his withered hand. “Have a care, Jacob. He outranks you.” He turned and addressed the men who had accompanied him.
“Samuel, contact the ambassadors of Spain and France. I want to see them both tomorrow at the latest.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“And Temperance, would you get a wire to Dickerson in New York, please? His meeting with the French is not needed.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” the Interior Secretary said. “At once.”
“Jacob and Fairchild, I want all the latest on our deployments. And to the rest of you, I’ll be entertaining recommendations for a new Secretary of the Treasury.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” they said, and “Thank you, Mr. President.”
Custer followed them out of the room, leaving Morton and his cronies behind, engulfed in an uncomfortable silence that he was sure would last mere moments after his exit. He went through the outer office and had stepped into the hallway when the inner office door slammed with enough force to make the paintings dance on the walls. He smiled, but not without a twinge of melancholy. Morton had done a poor job, of that there was no question, and he roundly deserved censure. But more than that lay ahead for the former New York banker turned politician. Time and again, Custer had seen it played out: it had happened to his dear General McClellan in both the military and political arena. The public was fickle in its favor, and the press was merciless, eager to jump on any fault, perceived or real. It was the drama of everyday life that lay ahead for Morton, and Custer did not envy him his future. Not in the least.
“You all right, Mr. President?” Douglas asked, coming up from the station he’d taken outside Morton’s office.
He took a deep breath as the officers of his cabinet headed off on their assignments.
“Yes, Douglas. I am fine.”
Chapter 25
Saturday, July 26, A.D. 1890
Havana Harbor
Cuba
Palm fronds twitched in a slow breeze thick with the smell of rot as the Santa Luisa approached the harbor in Havana. Alejandro stood on deck with the rest of the passengers, waiting in the heavy heat, watching the somnolent streets slip past the rails. It was siesta, and Havana slept, torpid in the oppressive humidity and heat. No man worked, no child played in the streets. Not even a dog barked as the ship cruised up the channel. The city was as still as a graveyard populated with ghosts.
He stood to one side, away from the others in his party, unable—or unwilling—to stand too close to such raw emotion. Everyone, passenger and crew alike, had been disturbed in some measure by the overheaping volume of grief that had afflicted Speaks While Leaving. Even now she wept, as she had done without surcease since her child’s death. She cried in silence, her voice long having given out from wailing. Her hair, brutally shorn of its long braids in an expression of grief, hung forward, thick and lank as a mop, hiding her tearful features.
Standing next to the grieving mother was Mouse Road, alive but weak still from her bout with scarlet fever. The skin on her hands and arms was peeling from the fever, and she looked like some scabrous waif as she nestled, hollow-eyed, within the protective embrace of One Who Flies. One Who Flies had also been changed by the fever. He had become once more the man Alejandro had first met on the shores of the Gulf of Narváez: decisive, clear-headed, and in command. After kicking in the door of the cabin, he had been tireless in his protection of the women, overseeing their every need, even providing the knife with which Speaks While Leaving sawed through her thick braids and cut the skin of her forearms. But through the death of Blue Shell Woman, One Who Flies had been reborn. He stood now, his arm around Mouse Road’s shoulder, his blue-eyed gaze a sharp thing that he wielded like a rapier: quick, agile, and dangerous.
The other passengers milled about on the deck, politely ignoring the grief-stricken trio. The sun poured its light down upon the ship, the excess splashing back up from the green waters in sharp glints that blinded the eye. The women protected themselves with parasols of net and lace while the men could only fan themselves weakly with their hats. Some passengers would be continuing on toward Veracruz and La Cuidad México, while others would be changing ships and heading to La Puerta del Norte. Still others, like himself, would be staying in Havana, but all would be glad to depart, at least for a time, this ship of tragedy and savage, blatant mourning.
As the Santa Luisa chugged its way past the bulk of the Castillo La Cabaña that brooded like a troubled brow high up on its hill, the harbor came into view. Mutters and exclamations rose from the other passengers, and Alejandro looked to see what it was that evoked their interest. He saw it at once.
Deep inside the harbor, lined up like piglets at a sow’s belly, were four, six, no seven warships. They bristled with spars and guns, and while some flew the red and yellow of Spain, others had hung the red, white, and blue ensign of the United States draped from their rear gaff. What had happened while he had been away? American warships frequently made ports-of-call to Havana, as did Spanish ships, but three American ships at once, and four Spanish ships? Never had he heard of such a gathering, not since...
He frowned. Not since the Tejano conflict. Not since the end of that war. He imagined the messages that had passed beneath him, tapping their way along the transatlantic cable down in the ocean muck while he, deaf and dumb to the world, had sailed across on the waves above. He took a deep lungful of the sultry air and let it out slowly as the Santa Luisa maneuvered her way toward the wharf.
The ship’s horn blasted twice, bringing sluggish shoremen down the pier’s dark planks and crewmen to their posts on deck, hawsers ready. It also brought out a scurry of men in pale, rumpled suits and white, straw hats. Alejandro recognized their breed at once—newspapermen—and he looked over at Speaks While Leaving. He might be willing to visit war upon her people for Spain’s benefit, but the least he could do was spare her this battle with the press. He walked over to One Who Flies.
“The newspapers are here,” he said. He saw fire flare in the young man’s eyes and held up his hands to forestall any action. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I will take care of them. You stay behind with the women and come down last. I will go down first and draw them off. Capitan!”
The captain came over, and Alejandro drew him toward the rail. He withdrew several bills from his pocket and tucked them in the captain’s hand.
“I need a few of your men to protect my guests from those vultures,” he said, pointing to the reporters. “Will you take care of it?”
“It is done, Don Alejandro.”
“Thank you, Capitan. I knew I could count on you.” He said his final farewells to his fellow travelers as the ship was tied off and the gangway set in place, and then he returned to the rail and marshaled himself for the fray.
He disembarked first, gathering the reporters’ attention. “Yes, yes, this way, over here,” he said as he led them toward the end of the pier, away from the other departing passengers. A few crates were stacked nearby, and he stood on one of them, looking down on the reporters’ eagerness.
“You will excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, “but while I will gladly answer all your q
uestions, I must remind you that I have been aboard a ship for the past two weeks, and have little in the way of anything new.”
“Did you know that President Custer had resumed his duties?” asked an American reporter in English.
Alejandro kept the smile on his face. “Why, no,” he answered in Spanish. “I was not aware of that, though I am pleased to hear that President Custer has recovered sufficiently from the dastardly assassination attempt.” The passengers had disembarked and One Who Flies and the women were now descending, preceded by four crewmen and followed by four more.
“Will you be traveling immediately to meet with the Cheyenne?” a Cuban reporter asked.
“Not immediately, no,” he replied, keeping an eye on his guests as they made their way up the pier. “I will be staying in Havana for a few weeks, setting my affairs in order. A meeting with the Cheyenne leadership takes some logistical planning, as I’m sure you can appreciate.”
A few questions later, and One Who Flies was nearly at the wharf.
“One last question,” Alejandro said.
“How will your mission be affected, now that President Custer has reopened negotiations with the Cheyenne?”
Alejandro blinked and his smile grew stale on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Reopened negotiations?”
“Yes,” the reporter said. “He has called for new negotiations. How will this affect your mission to the Cheyenne?”
“Her Majesty the Queen Regent,” he said, trying to recover quickly from his shock, “in the name of her august son Don Alfonso the Thirteenth, has given to me the office of Special Ambassador to the Cheyenne people, for the purposes of aiding them in their conflict with the United States government. If President Custer has broken off hostilities in the region, and is willing to parley once more with the Cheyenne leadership, this can only make my mission easier. I am more than willing to once again act as liaison between the two nations.”
The Cry of the Wind Page 33