West Point to Mexico

by Bob Mayer

  “I got here didn’t I?” she replied, a laugh taking the edge off the reply.

  Rosalie pulled her parasol out of the ground. She looped her arm in his and strolled toward a different break in the hedges. They walked in silence, twisting and turning through the greenery. When they reached the edge of the maze, Rosalie withdrew her arm and stopped.

  “Tell me something, Lieutenant Cord.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “It’s Rosalie. I don’t feel like I run a brothel when you call me ma’am, but I would like to be your friend. Lucius always picks his associates carefully even though you don’t call yourself his friend.”

  “Yes, Rosalie.”

  “Lidia. Was she a good woman?”

  Cord felt a pang in his chest. “She was a very good woman.”

  “Did Lucius truly love her?”

  Cord surprised himself by answering without having to think about it. “Yes.”

  “And did you?”

  Now he had to think for a second, then trusted the pain he felt. “I did.”

  “She must have been a good woman then,” Rosalie said. “Despite all.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  September, 1843, Vicinity Natchez, Mississippi

  Ensign George King observed the paddlewheel battle its way against the Mississippi’s current, en route to Natchez. He’d seen six steamers pass in the last hour and not one sailing vessel. It was a fact he filed away and planned to ponder on the journey back east.

  “Without the river, none of this would exist,” came a voice from behind him.

  King looked over his shoulder as Seneca Rumble strolled up. Seneca was dressed in a finely tailored suit, a gold chain stretching from one pocket on his vest to the other. He carried a black cane with a lion’s head knob.

  King stood on a bluff, fifty feet above the muddy water. To his left, a rutted road switch-backed twice down to a wooden dock. “Do you ship your cotton directly from here?” he asked.

  “We used to,” Seneca said. “But now, everything is done through brokers who control the price. So we send our produce to Natchez and sell it there.”

  “Seems like you’d make more shipping it yourself,” King observed.

  “I suppose,” Seneca said, “but that’s the way it is.”

  “Still, it appears heavy wagons use that road,” King said.

  Seneca shrugged. “Supplies, I’m sure.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a pair of cigars. He snipped the tips off with a cutter hidden inside the open mouth of the lion.

  “Very useful,” King observed.

  Seneca laughed. “People think me ostentatious to carry it, but it has several uses beyond the obvious.” He offered one of the cigars to King who accepted it with gratitude.

  King pulled a wooden match out of his pocket and flicked it on the rope-burned calluses in the web of his hand between thumb and forefinger. It burst into flame and he lit his cigar, and then offered the flame to Seneca, who took a deep puff, igniting his cigar.

  King snuffed out the match with his fingers, then rubbed the end until it was nothing but dust.

  “Pretty neat trick there yourself with lighting the match,” Seneca said. “Why so thorough with the end though?”

  “Wood burns,” King said. “Ships are made of wood.”

  “Good point,” Seneca said. “I guess I never thought of that. Watch—” he held up the cane, gripping the shaft and pulling on the lion head/cigar cutter handle. A narrow, sharp blade was exposed. “I had it specially made in Vicksburg.”

  “Intriguing and deceptive,” King said.

  Seneca frowned, but didn’t get a chance to say anything as King continued.

  “Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials.”

  “Thank you,” Seneca said. “Might I ask you something?”

  King nodded.

  “Why did Lucius do it?” Seneca asked. “I understand you were there the morning the events transpired.”

  “Do what exactly?” King was observing another paddlewheel coming up-river.

  “Get married to that tavern girl when he could have had Rosalie tomorrow? You’ve seen her. You can’t tell me a serving girl can match Rosalie in any way.”

  “I believe,” King said, “he married her because of the child.”

  “She can’t possibly have compared to Rosalie.”

  “She was not ordinary, but her blood certainly can’t compare to Miss Rosalie’s.”

  “Do you know if my brother has any plans to come back here permanently?” Seneca asked.

  King turned and faced Seneca. “Perhaps you should ask your brother. That would be a more direct and honest approach.”

  Seneca sighed. “I meant no disrespect. We don’t speak like that in my family.”

  “Like what?” King asked.

  “We don’t speak of personal matters.” Seneca shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Father will never let him back.”

  “Fathers don’t live forever,” King observed.

  “True,” Seneca allowed. “But father might let young Ben stay here.”

  “Are you concerned about Ben?” King asked.

  “Right now, after me, he is heir to Palatine.”

  “Gentlemen.” Grant walked up. He wore his plain army blues, looking rather unimpressive next to King’s naval dress uniform and Seneca’s suit.

  “A cigar?” Seneca offered.

  “I prefer a pipe,” Grant said. He pulled a large bowl-shaped instrument out of his pocket and went through his own packing and lighting ceremony until all three men were contentedly smoking, looking out at the water.

  “Is there always this much traffic on the river?” Grant coughed after taking a puff on his pipe and his face was still pale. Overall, though, he seemed healthier than the previous day. A night of rest had done him well.

  Seneca nodded. “During harvest season, yes. It’s the lifeline of the country.”

  Grant scanned up and down the Mississippi. “To think, this extends all the way up to my Ohio River and on down to New Orleans. It’s the Hudson River of the west.”

  “The Mississippi is much greater than the Hudson,” Seneca said.

  “So he who controls the Mississippi,” Grant said, “controls the west.”

  King took a puff on his cigar and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Are you concerned the country will be invaded, Lieutenant Grant?”

  “Not at all, Ensign King,” Grant said. “Just before we arrived here,” he said to Seneca, “a slave told us there was another Agrippa. Born twenty years ago?”

  “Why was a slave speaking to you?” Seneca demanded.

  “My brother had met him before,” King said. “A man named Samual? He said someone named Agrippa was his son and he was killed.”

  Seneca almost spit out the cigar. “Samual’s a damn liar. Yes, he had a son named Agrippa. And my brother was thick as thieves with him. Totally inappropriate behavior. But Agrippa, that Agrippa, tried to run away and was killed in the process. We lost a nice piece of capital that day.”

  “’Capital’?” Grant repeated.

  “That’s what they are,” Seneca said. “We have over four billion, do you hear me, four billion dollars worth of slaves. We could no more afford to give that up than the North destroy all its factories.”

  “So it’s all about economics?” Grant asked.

  “Are you an abolitionist?” Seneca demanded, cigar clenched between his teeth.

  “No, sir,” Grant said mildly. “I think the abolitionists tend to be extremists and I am not a fan of extremists. I just wonder if perhaps the Negroes are not also people? You said your brother befriended one. Would that not indicate some level of humanity?”

  “My brother’s a fool. He was a fool then with Agrippa, he was a fool to get involved with some serving girl and give up Rosalie and West Point, and he’s a fool thinking he can ride back here with that brat of his and try to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong. He deliberately insulted all of us by giving his son t
he middle name Agrippa.”

  “That ‘brat’, sir, is my god-son.” Grant’s voice had lost its mildness.

  Seneca stared at him for a second, then removed the cigar from his mouth with a wide flourish and half-bowed. “My apologies, Lieutenant Grant. My emotions got the better of me. Mentioning Agrippa—the slave—around here is a very sensitive issue.”

  “Apology accepted,” Grant said.

  “You do need to understand, sir, that things are different in the South,” Seneca continued. He poked his cigar toward King. “How do you feel about the annexation of Texas, cousin?

  “It’s inevitable,” King said. “I’m stationed not far from Washington. President Tyler is pushing hard to accomplish it.”

  “As a slave state, correct?” Seneca asked.

  “Of course.”

  Grant shook his head sadly, but said nothing.

  “You have an opinion on the matter, Lieutenant Grant?”

  “I believe I have expressed myself enough for one day.” Grant emptied the bowl on his pipe. “Is it not time to head back to the house for dinner? And for you, lucky sir, to prepare for your last evening as a single man.”

  Rumble adjusted the dark blue tunic and checked himself in the full-length mirror. The dress uniform would have cost a month’s pay, but he had been surprised, and secretly pleased, when Benny and Letitia gave it to him as a gift before he departed West Point with their grandchildren.

  His sergeant’s chevrons were made of some fine material, a bit ostentatious in Rumble’s opinion, but he would never say anything to the Havens, for a gift was always to be appreciated. Grant had told him of his greeting in Cincinnati and Rumble felt empathy for his friend. Some people could put on a good show with a fancy uniform and others just didn’t have the constitution or capability for it. Rumble felt his uniform and the rank found a middling ground.

  He heard the door creak open behind him and glanced in the mirror. He spun about as he recognized the intruder. “You should not be here.”

  Rosalie shut the door behind her, pressing her back against it. “You look quite dashing.”

  “I’m just a sergeant.”

  Rosalie smiled. “A sergeant. ‘Doubtless it stood; as two spent swimmers, that do cling together.’ That was the sergeant in Macbeth and that was you and Agrippa so many years ago, wasn’t it?”

  Rumble strode across the room to her. “Hush. We shouldn’t speak of that here.”

  “But you named your son Ben Agrippa. You had to know the effect that would have.”

  “It is done,” Rumble said.

  “Lucius, Lucius. Always so dramatic. I do like your uniform.” Rosalie sighed. “Tomorrow I marry. I’ve known the date I would be getting married for five years. The man has changed, but not the date. I have changed, but not the date. You do know, of course, that my father told your father he was willing to annul the promised marriage after my ‘sickness’ and its result?”

  “I did not know,” Rumble said. “But I could have told your father back then, that when Tiberius is set on something, he never changes his mind.”

  “You carry a bit of that trait,” Rosalie said. “I wish you had carried it regarding me.”

  Rumble shifted uneasily. “I am sorry about your ‘sickness and its result’.”

  Rosalie shrugged. “I cannot change the damage to my body.” She looked up at him. She reached out her hand and lightly ran it across the scar above his right eye and then down his cheek. “The only thing I wish I could change would be to have you stand across from me tomorrow.”

  Rumble looked away. “I cannot. I have a family and I had a wife who will always be in my heart. There is not room for another nor will there ever be.”

  “I suspected as much from you, Lucius,” Rosalie said, withdrawing her hand. “I respect that and I will do the honorable thing tomorrow.” She was about to say something else, but paused.

  “Yes?” Rumble prompted.

  “Your brother.”

  “What about Seneca?”

  “He’s a fine person,” Rosalie said. “Full of honor. Dashing.” She stumbled out of words, not reaching her destination.

  “But?”

  “As a man to be a husband, I fear he lacks as much in his own way, as I do to be a mother.”

  “He’s my brother,” Rumble said. “I stand by him no matter what.”

  “As I will stand by my husband.” She stared at Rumble and he shifted, uncomfortable. “I must ask. Did you marry your Lidia out of love for her or for the child?”

  “Why could it not be both?” Rumble said.

  “It could.” Rosalie turned and placed her hand on the doorknob. “I want you to know, I will always love you. And I will always love your son. But you did not answer my question.” She closed the door behind her as she left.

  St. George tossed the bottle to Sally Skull. “Tequila.”

  Skull chuckled. “So you’ve acquired a taste?”

  They were seated on the dock below Palatine. Two of Skull’s men had rowed her across the river from Vidalia, where a steamer waited to take her down-river with another load of black market cotton from Palatine.

  “It got a good kick,” St. George allowed.

  “Like a mule,” Skull agreed as she sat down on the smooth top of a dock support, took a deep swig and handed the bottle back. “The load is secure.” She reached into her bosom and extracted a leather pouch. “Gold as agreed. Getting a bit nervous about the dollar?”

  St. George took the sack and hefted it in his meaty hand. “No. Just got some dealings coming that involves gold.”

  “What kind of dealins?” Skull asked.

  “You a bit nosey,” St. George said.

  “We’re in too deep to be lying to each other,” Skull said.

  St. George shrugged. “Traders heading west. They deal in gold. I got a couple fella’s on the leash to buy goods for me off the Brits out of Yerba Buena and sell to the Injuns.”

  “Guns? Whiskey?”

  “And other stuff.” St. George was uncomfortable with the topic.

  The sound of a band playing a waltz floated above them from the pavilion in front of Palatine House.

  “Big party?” Skull asked, changing the subject.

  “Young master Seneca getting married tomorrow.”

  “To the heir of Rosalie in Natchez,” Skull said. She smiled at St. George’s surprise. “You hear many things on the river, St. George, if you know how to listen. And I listen. So how will your young master be when he takes over the plantation?”

  St. George snorted. “He be a weak man, weaker than his father. It was a lucky day when the eldest boy got that wench with child in New York.”

  “But he; Lucius isn’t it? He has a son now, doesn’t he?”

  “You hear much on the river,” St. George acknowledged. “Yeah. But I don’ think it be his son.”

  “What?” Skull leaned forward. “Tell me.”

  “There be another man here. A friend of the elder Rumble boy. A West Pointer named Cord. I think it be his son. But no way I can prove it. And Mistress Violet, she got her eyes on the boy. She hard as nails, that old woman. She pretend different, but she hard.”

  “Intrigue at Palatine,” Skull said, almost to herself.

  St. George took a deep swallow of tequila. “I going kill both of them.”

  Skull’s hand was reaching out for the bottle, but it froze at that last statement. “Kill who?”

  “That Cord fellow. He smarted at me. And when his time come, the young Ben Agrippa. And I might kill the elder Rumble boy too, just to make it all straight.”

  Skull took the bottle and held it up, checking the contents against the moonlight. It was almost bone dry. “You been drinking too much and talking foolish now. You got your money. Go on home and get some sleep. I’ll see you next year.”

  Skull left the bottle with him and got into her boat. Her two men began rowing for the far shore, angling hard against the current. Looking back at the east bank, she c
ould see that the bluff was glowing from the lights in the pavilion and the sound of the waltz still carried across the water. Below the bluff she noted St. George’s form still on the dark, a blacker shadow in the darkness.

  Chapter Fourteen

  May 1845, White Haven, Missouri

  Ulysses S. Grant barked the order in the command voice he’d developed at West Point: “Funeral detail, attention!”

  Eight officers of the 4th Infantry Regiment, four on each side of the processional path, snapped their sabers up in a smart salute, pommels in front of their faces, then slowly lowered the swords downward to a forty-five degree angle.

  “Present and hold arms!” Grant ordered and the sabers were lifted to form a steel arch over the path.

  The officers were outfitted in their dress blues. The thin dirt path led to a pleasant clearing overlooking a stream. A peaceful place. Grant had dug the grave alone that morning. And he carried the casket alone.

  As he walked under the sabers, Grant was solemn, his eyes locked straight ahead. His fellow officers, though, couldn’t maintain it. Smiles broke out here and there, but they held their sabers steady. Among the saber bearers were Elijah Cord, Richard Ewell, Charley Hoskins, and James ‘Pete’ Longstreet.

  Watching the ceremony from the far side of the clearing were Julia Dent, sister of Fred Dent, Grant’s classmate, along with two of her sisters and her mother. The Dent’s were also fourth cousins to Longstreet, making the world a small place indeed. They were all at White Haven, the Dent plantation consisting of over 900 acres of bountiful Missouri bottomland, five miles from Jefferson Barracks and just south of St. Louis.

  Grant knelt next to the grave, cupping the tiny yellow coffin in his gloved hands. He placed it in the hole and looked up at Julia. She was of average height, with long brown hair and, essentially plain looking. To look closely at her was disconcerting because her eyes were not quite aimed in tandem. Julia nodded.

  With one hand, Grant scooped dirt over the grave of her canary. Grant stood. About-faced. “Detail, dismissed.”