Faded Coat of Blue

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  “Dreadful,” McClellan repeated. “We shall have nothing like that here. This will be a civilized war, fought on the fair field of battle, and on that field alone.” He sat back, his big chest filling the chair. It was his legs alone that were little, and I saw now why he loved to sit on a horse. “And yet, Jones… there are occurrences… in such times… that require tact in their disposition.”

  He had done me a bad turn, with his talk of the Mutiny business. I saw them again, the little brown men strapped to the mouths of our cannon and blown to a thousand pieces. And our bayonets with such an appetite for human flesh. What they did to us was beyond all crime. But the Hindoo and the Musselman are barbarians, and we were got up to be civilized Christians. We hung them by the hundreds from gallows and trees and city walls, and there was no thought of a trial. At night we closed the town gates and set our fires and listened to them scream. We did not choose between the guilty and the guiltless.

  “Do you understand me, Jones? Do you get me, man?”

  “I am listening, sir.”

  “This unpleasant… this tragic matter of Captain Fowler,” he said. The name woke me like a bell. “I need you to take it on, Jones. The inquiry. The official report. All of it.” He looked at me with eyes I could not figure. “I need a man I can trust.”

  “Army regulations,” General McClellan said. “There must be an inquiry.” He rose from his chair and spoke with his back to me. “Of course, there should be an inquiry, Jones. We must always seek the truth. Yet… this may prove a delicate matter.”

  “Sir… I am not a policeman, and do not know—”

  “A policeman’s the last thing we want. This is an Army affair.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He turned to me and folded his arms over that grand chest a second time. “Jones… the matter would have been simple enough had young Fowler got himself killed in battle. Or on a raid, perhaps. But this… assassination business in the press. I don’t like it.”

  “A painful matter, sir.”

  “Jones… there are those who believe I am softhearted toward the South.” He took the fabric of his tunic between two fingers. “There are rumblings. From the comfort of their hearths in Boston or New York… men question my loyalty, my fitness for command. Though they do not take up arms themselves, you will note.”

  He moved away again and warmed his front parts by the fireplace. “The thing is… this is a tragic and unnecessary war. I shall fight. With all the skills imparted to me. I will bring my country victory on the field of battle. Yet… the necessity of it… is repugnant.” He raised his head, an orator addressing the map on the wall. “People like Fowler made this war, Jones. With their passion for the nigger. Oh, I’m certain the boy had the best intentions. Pure of heart and all that. He was young. But slavery is a dying institution. We needed only to be patient with the South, to exhibit forbearance. The matter would have resolved itself in time.”

  He joined his hands behind his back and the fingers searched in and out of one another. “Now we have war. And there are those who still are not content, who would make it a holy war. Cynics who would exploit Fowler’s death to create a martyr, to introduce a savagery to this war that would prevent any compromise. They do not want to defeat the South, Jones. They want to destroy it. To obliterate Southron civilization as the Romans did Carthage. They would sow the earth with salt, from Virginia to Texas. They would make of this war a cruel and bitter thing.”

  I nearly said to him that slavery seemed a cruel and bitter thing, for I am not free of a disputatious nature and hold prejudices of my own. But it was not my place to speak.

  He turned and strode to his desk, lingered over a stack of dispatches, then suddenly sat down again. “I know the Southrons, Jones. Served with ‘em. West Point, Mexico, the West. Now… I do not approve of the institution of slavery… but it was hardly our affair. In any case, they are gentlemen and not assassins.”

  His eyes calculated and judged me. “I do not say a Southron… perhaps a deranged fellow… could not have murdered Fowler. We can reach no conclusions without facts. Facts, Jones. I want you to keep an open mind. Examine all the possibilities. Ask yourself who might have profited most from Fowler’s death.” He canted his head and narrowed his eyes. “There is evil in the North as well as in the South. Young Fowler cries out for justice, not for a spectacle.” A twist of a smile crossed his lips. “Why, for all we know Fowler may have been shot by one of our own sentries, by a mere boy with the jitters. Look into all the possibilities, Jones. Come to a wise conclusion.”

  “Sir, I have no qualifications for such—”

  “Honor shall be your qualification. And discretion. Talent. Mr. Gowen assures me you have a fine understanding of people. And a rational mind.” He leaned toward me. “I’m counting on you, Captain Jones.”

  “Sir… I would not know how to begin.”

  He snorted. “I have a mission for you. You’ll go to Philadelphia. You will personally convey my condolences to the boy’s mother. The funeral train leaves in the morning. There will be a to-do at every stop. Speeches and the like. Abolitionists in their full fury. The body won’t reach Philadelphia until Tuesday at the earliest. You’ll have a day’s start. I’ve held the afternoon train for you.” He drew out a handsome gold watch. “In fact, you should be on your way.”

  “Sir, I am not accustomed to the affairs of high society…”

  He. snapped his watch shut and buried it again. “Nonsense. This is America, not Britain. A pleasant manner and an honest heart will carry a man far.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And listen, Jones. The mother… can be a difficult woman.”

  “Difficult, sir?”

  “She has… notions. And, of course, she shares her son’s most extravagant beliefs. Be patient with her. I need you to extract a piece of vital information.” He thrust his hand back into his tunic. Oh, he was a grand-looking man. “Find out if young Fowler had enemies. Among our own people. Jealous sorts, perhaps. Put it to her straight. Her crowd’s wild with rage, ready to burn down Richmond and lynch every man, woman, and child in the South. Let her know that we will look to all points of the compass for her son’s killers. We will get at the truth. In the meantime… restraint would become all concerned. Convey that to the woman. Gently, of course.”

  He stood up at a half right to me, back erect and chest thrust boldly forward. Twas a fine, soldierly posture. “I will not see this country destroyed by lies, Jones. This war is about Constitutional issues, not the emancipation of the Negro. I am at pains to make Mr. Lincoln understand that, and I will spare nothing to make Mrs. Fowler and her zealots understand it, as well.” He raised his chin. “We will fight to end our disagreements, if fight we must. But I will have no savagery.”

  He stepped toward me in a manner that told me to rise. He thrust out his hand again. “And Jones. You will report directly to me. You understand? You will discuss this matter with no one else. You’re my confidential agent.”

  I had the grip of his hand and could feel the callouses where he held the reins and the smoothness of the skin elsewhere. He was a man who rode but did not work.

  I did not let go of him immediately.

  “Would the general permit an observation?”

  “What is it, man?”

  I freed his hand. “I’m in confusion, sir, and have been since I read the newspaper the evening last. Young Fowler was a staff man, was he not?”

  The general nodded, impatient now.

  “I saw him coming and going,” I went on. “He worked there in the War Department building. Third floor, just down the hall from General Ripley.”

  “The train, Jones.”

  “Yes, sir. Only I was wondering, sir. What was young Fowler doing on the outpost line in the black hours of the night? In a terrible rain? And him a fine staff officer with no business that side of the river?”

  McClellan’s eyes shifted to the side. “Oh, I suspect Fowler may have been visiting friends i
n one of the regiments.” His forehead creased. “And I’m told the fellow had something of a Byronic streak. Perhaps he was indulging it. ‘Roaming through the mists in the face of danger.’ Or… a spy might have lured him to the spot. Who can say at this point?” He settled a hand upon my shoulder. “Accident, assassination… that’s all for you to sort out.”

  He steered me toward a side door with that art great men learn. “Jones, we must honor young Fowler’s nobility of conviction. That goes without saying. But we must not be taken hostage by his death.” His eyes cut deep. “The Union needs heroes, not martyrs. I fear for our country, Jones. I fear the madness of the times.”

  Chapter 3

  They held the train for me, but they did not hold a place of any comfort. Now a man should not complain when he can travel from Washington to Philadelphia overnight, but I found it a miserable journey. We were routed the long way around, and the company was not of the best, most of them political fellows disappointed in their requests by Mr. Lincoln. My appearance inspired vulgarities directed at the privileges of the military. I settled onto a bench before the two most honorable-looking passengers, a pair of card cheats departing under the supervision of the provost marshal’s guards.

  Twas cold dark when we arrived in Harrisburg, where we halted with the stove out in the car and no fuel to be had. In the small hours, those of us bound for Philadelphia were given notice to transfer to the Pennsylvania Railroad. I had not eaten since Sunday morning, for the prices demanded in the station houses for a meat pie or a jar of milk were such that no sane man would pay them, and now all was shut. I slept as best I could on a wooden bench, in a cloud of tobacco smoke. When I was a young man, I could sleep on a bed of rocks, but our bodies weaken with the years, and our expectations rise.

  We pulled for Philadelphia at dawn. The traveling merchandisers were already at their drink, and, as we progressed through Little Germany, farm women climbed aboard at the lesser stops and unfolded meals wrapped in cheesecloth. I finally bought two boiled eggs and the butt of a loaf from a matron who spoke not a word of English but communicated expertly by coin. We did not reach our destination till noon.

  No city looks good from the railway, but Philadelphia looked better than most. It was a great sprawling place, with smallholder plots abounding. As we come up on the depot, the buildings rose tall and dense, many of them fine, and the streets grew brisk with Monday business. The place had the feel of a true city, not of a poor, struggling town like Washington.

  The moment I climbed from the car, a fellow stepped up to me. He was dressed all dark and sober, with a high hat in his hand. His bearing was very fine, he was groomed like a racing baronet, and his gaze was steady. He might have been a grand example of an American trading gentleman, but for his Oriental face.

  “Captain Jones?”

  “That I am, sir.”

  He met my eyes with none of that shyness customary in your man of the East. He was fair proportioned, just of my height, and seemed a ready sort. But when I gave him a thorough look, there was something funny about him. His features were not entirely of the yellow race, if you understand me.

  “I am Mr. Lee. I am to transport you to Havisham House,” he said. He sounded like a missionary schoolmaster speaking carefully to the native children.

  “And that would be Mrs. Fowlers establishment, Mr. Lee?”

  “Yes, sir.” He glanced down at my hands. “You are without baggage, sir?”

  “A hasty departure,” I said. “We might stop by a barber’s, for a shave would do me no damage. None of your fancy society barbers, mind you.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  He was ready to lead me away, but my curiosity had been gathering during the journey.

  “I expect Mrs. Fowler is terrible in her grief?” I asked.

  He looked at me without a change of expression.

  “There has long been grief in Havisham House,” he told me. “Mrs. Fowler is not a companion to frivolity.”

  He was so fine of manner it surprised me to find that Mr. Lee was Mrs. Fowler’s coachman, and not a private secretary or the like. He put me inside the carriage, then tossed a penny to the boy minding the horses, who promptly ran off shouting, “Chinky, chinky, yella stinky.”

  Mr. Lee snapped his whip in the air and told the horses to walk on. I was glad to be enclosed, without the need to look upon the beasts, for they were a great, huge pair of blacks, with the sleekness of a good stable on them but enough bulk to draw heavy artillery. Eighteen hands sure, they were the devil’s own horses, and their eyes should have been red as flame.

  The carriage was a lesson that taught all the difference between Philadelphia and Washington. In our capital, every society lady required a trap boiling over with luxury and brassed-up like a battery on parade. You could spot a Washington carriage a cannon shot away, exploding with the importance of its occupants. Mrs. Fowler’s rig was black and of merely a useful size, and you had to come up close before you saw the expense in it.

  Now I did not know Philadelphia in those days, though I got to know it later, and never had I seen such a wealth of streetcars, all drawn by dependable horses, not nags, and the rails crossing madly. Yet the streets themselves were rutted like market lanes in wet weather, potted and gouged, and Mrs. Fowler’s carriage bounced hard. There was prosperity in the city, and I marked one building of eight stories, but the greatest surprise to me come from the number of Negroes shuffling about the streets with an aimlessness that said, “No work.” It was an odd business, for this was the North and a free place for all, yet here the African seemed a superfluous man. In Washington, he was a busy fellow, though hardly free.

  But let that bide.

  Another great difference was the absence of military men. Washington crawled with them like maggots on Army beef. I saw but a dozen blue coats in the streets of Philadelphia, and those worn by men with a look of little belonging and less welcome. The patriotic bunting on the civic buildings and music hall facades drooped, worn by the weather.

  Mr. Lee found me a barber hard by Chestnut Street, a tidy shop run by a Scotsman, from whom there would be no extravagant nonsense. Now your barber is a mountain of local knowledge, and you can get it from him if you go about it cleverly. I opened a chat as he stropped his razor and lathered me up.

  Beyond the window, Mr. Lee wiped a splatter of mud from the carriage’s lacquer.

  “Mrs. Fowler’s coachman seems regular enough,” I said. “He might be a fine Christian gentleman.”

  “Aye.” The barber tilted my head back and went to work. Between strokes, I mined his deposit of opinion.

  “Young Mr. Fowler’s death was a terrible thing, though.”

  “Aye,” he said.

  “A great shock to the family, it must have been.”

  “Aye.”

  “And to the fair city of Philadelphia.”

  “Aye.”

  “Anthony Fowler was one of her golden sons, was he not?”

  “Aye.” He scraped under my nose, for I am a cleanshaven man who finds the mustache and an excess of whiskers to be vanities. The fellow wore a look of powerful concentration, as if barbering required all the strategy in the world and every jot of his attention. The Scots are a stalwart, but singleminded folk.

  “Young Fowler,” I said, “must have been greatly loved.”

  “Aye,” the barber told me. He guided his blade along my jaw. “By those who did not hate him.”

  The Fowler mansion resembled the Fowler carriage, slight in its external decoration but confident in its wealth. It sat on Walnut Street, a rush of leaves from Rittenhouse Square, although I did not know those names then. In a city of red brick rows, its brown stone stood apart. Small it was not.

  Black crepe hung from the portico, and the windows had been shrouded within.

  Mr. Lee escorted me from the carriage to the door, which opened without the need of a knock. Another Oriental fellow beckoned me in, bowing slightly and repeatedly. This gentleman was of
high age, with a bit of dandelion fluff for a beard on his chin. There was nothing at all of the West in his manner or dress, nor did he share Mr. Lee’s diluted complexion. He was the hoary Chinee out of a picture book, with his little brimless cap and a blouse of black satin without a proper collar. His pants fell just to the top of his ankles like those of a farmer boy, but his slippers looked the sort English colonels wore in the privacy of their campaign tents.

  “Missa Fowluh wait you, suh,” he told me. He smiled with ancient teeth.

  The servant stood in the light of the opened door, but all beyond seemed black as the devil’s own midnight. As he withdrew, motioning for me to follow, I could not see to make my way at first.

  A boy—or perhaps it was a girl—I had not noticed closed the front door behind me. I might have been in a tomb.

  The old man was a shadow with a pigtail. Hands like claws waved me on.

  “Tis way, suh.”

  As my eyes learned the darkness, a fabulous world emerged. From the outside, I would have judged the house a severe place, but within it was crammed with trophies and brocades till it looked like the harem of the Emperor of the Manchus, if such folk keep those immoral establishments. I marched between a pair of guardian vases taller than myself, following the old fellow into the depths of a great hallway. It seemed to me that the floor slanted downward, but twas only a trick of the place. Creat scrolls hung along the walls, some of them bearing heathen letters and others painted queer as the landscape of a dream. Incense stung the air, putting me in mind of places I had tried to forget. There was nothing familiar to a Western temperament but a series of family portraits up the staircase. It was an establishment where a man might have shivered in high summer.

  I went knee first into a chair, knocking it cock onto the floor. The servant rushed to right it again, smiling up at me.

  “Good, good,” he assured me. He opened a door.