by John Jakes
“I’m worried,” Ashton said, the same night Orry mailed his letter.
“About what?” Powell said. Naked except for drawers, he sat examining the deed to a small farm he and his associates had purchased. The place was situated on the bank of the James, below the city near Wilton’s Bluff. Powell hadn’t explained why owning it was advantageous, though Ashton knew it had something to do with the scheme to eliminate Davis.
Powell’s perfunctory question made Ashton snap, “My husband.” He heard the pique in her voice and laid the deed aside. “Every morning he questions me about my plans for the day. When I was shopping downtown yesterday, I had the queerest feeling I was being watched—and then, from the vestibule of Meyers and Janke, I spied James on the other side of the street, lurking behind a water wagon and trying to look inconspicuous.”
A hot breeze blew from the garden, riffling pages of the deed. Far away, heat lightning shimmered. Powell’s four-barrel Sharps lay near the document. He placed the gun on the deed like a paperweight and lightly drummed his fingers on the stock.
“Did he question you this evening?”
She shook her head. “He was still at work when I left.”
“But you think he knows.”
“Suspects. I don’t want to say this, Lamar, but I feel I must. It might be better if we stopped these meetings for a while.”
His eyes grew glacial. “Do I take that to mean I’ve become a bore, my dear?”
She ran to him, reached down from behind his chair and pressed her palms to his hard chest. “Oh, my God, no, sweetheart. No! But things are going badly for James. He’s—disturbed. No matter how careful you are, he might take you by surprise some night. Harm you.” She began to rub slowly, near his waist, her bodice pressing the back of his head as she bent toward the chair. “It would kill me if I were responsible for something like that.”
Powell guided her hand lower, murmuring, “Well—perhaps you’re right.”
He allowed her to continue a moment or so, then abruptly took her hand away and nodded at another chair. She sat obediently as he spoke. “My personal safety’s the least of my concerns. Momentous work is under way. I wouldn’t want it interrupted by some witless and preventable act of violence. To tell you the truth, I have been a bit worried about your husband.” He brought his fingertips together and peered over the arch. “Last week I hit on a way to make sure he doesn’t threaten us. I’ve pondered it since then, and I’m convinced it’s sound.”
“What are you going to do, get him dismissed and sent home?”
Powell ignored the sarcasm. “I propose to recruit him for our group.”
“Recruit him?” She jumped up. “That is the most ridiculous, not to say dangerous—”
“Be quiet and let me finish.”
His cold voice stilled her. Cowed, she moved back to the chair as he continued. “Of course that is precisely how it sounds—at first. But think a moment. You can find logical and compelling arguments in favor of it.”
“I’m sorry, I fail to see them,” she countered, though not loudly.
“In any enterprise of this kind, one always needs a certain number of—call them soldiers. Men to carry out the most dangerous phases of the plan. In our case, the men must be more than trustworthy; they must be foursquare against the black vomit of nigger freedom, because only that kind of fervor will beget absolute loyalty. Our soldiers must hate Davis and his coterie of West Point bunglers and Jew bureaucrats, and endorse the formation of our new Confederacy. Except for the last aspect, which he as yet knows nothing about, I submit that your husband meets the specifications in every particular.”
“Well, put that way, perhaps he does.”
Powell’s sly smile broadened. “Finally, would it not be far better to have him close by, where he can be watched, than to have him running about on his own, as he’s doing now?” The low-trimmed gas cast his shadow across her as he padded around the table and fingered a lock of her hair. “With your husband actively involved, it would be far easier for you and me to see each other. I don’t think he’s clever enough to suspect the ruse.”
“I agree about that—especially now that he’s in such a state about the failures of the President.”
“You see? It isn’t such a crazy notion after all.”
He curled the strand of dark hair around his index finger, then moved the finger gently back and forth. “But suppose, despite every precaution against it, he did find us out. Became unbalanced, therefore untrustworthy—” He let the hair fall and laid his hand on the four-barrel Sharps. “That, too, can be dealt with.”
Ashton’s eyes leaped from his face to the shining gun and back again. Frightened, joyous—aroused suddenly—she flung her arms around his neck, kissed it, and whispered, “Oh, my dearest Lamar. How clever you are.”
“Then you don’t object to my plan?”
“No.”
“Not to any part of it?”
Over his shoulder, she saw the Sharps shining on top of the deed. “No—no. Anything you want is fine, as long as I can stay with you always.”
Against her skirt she felt him, large and potent. She felt she was touching more than something physical. She was touching his strength; his ambition; the power they would ultimately share.
“Always,” Powell repeated, picking her up as if she weighed no more than a child. “To ensure it, however, we must agree that James Huntoon, Esquire, is expendable.”
Her open-mouthed kiss gave him the answer.
Late on Wednesday, July 1, Stanley stepped from the first-class car of the train from Baltimore. Even cushioned by swigs from a bourbon bottle, he could hardly accept all that had happened to him in the past twenty-four hours.
Rumors of an impending battle had reached Lehigh Station. He and Isabel had been packing to retreat to the family’s summer home, Fairlawn, in Newport, when Stanton’s angry telegram arrived. Stanley had traveled most of last night and all of today, buffeted by crowds talking of nothing but the battle about to begin, if it hadn’t already, in the vicinity of the market town of Chambersburg. Exhausted and half drunk, Stanley entered the secretary’s sanctum at half past six. He endured ten minutes of Stanton’s wrath, then took a hack to the north side of Capitol Square.
Squalid shops and barracks had grown up around the old brick building at First and A. By turns, the building had been a temporary national capitol after the British burned the official one in August 1814, a rooming house for senators and representatives—Calhoun had died there—and, since ’61, a prison for a wide variety of inmates. These last included female spies working for the Confederacy; sharps and prostitutes; newsmen; fight-prone officers such as Judson Kilpatrick and George Custer.
Stanley had sent messages ahead. Baker’s bay, Slasher, was tethered to the ring post at the First Street entrance. The colonel was waiting outside, truculent but clearly nervous. With him was the prison superintendent, Wood.
“Where is he?” Stanley demanded of Wood.
“Room 16. Same place we put all the editors and reporters.”
“Did you clear out the others in the room? It’s imperative that no one recognize me. Newsmen certainly would.” He was assured it had been done. “You’ve bungled this, Baker—you know that.”
“Not my fault,” Baker complained as Stanley started upstairs through the shadows, the stenches, the flicker and play of gaslights spaced wide apart.
“The secretary thinks otherwise. If we can’t straighten this out, you may lose your precious toy—those four troops of cavalry you persuaded Mr. Lincoln to give you.”
Up they went, past rooms holding inmates, and others where interrogations were conducted, sometimes lasting hours. Room 16 was a long, desolate chamber with a single gas fixture and one filthy window at the end. Spider webs festooned the ceiling corners. Strange stains discolored those portions of the wall that could be seen; bunks piled with dirty blankets and luggage hid the rest.
Packing boxes, empty bottles, items of men’s
clothing littered the floor. The furniture consisted of two dirty pine tables with benches. The quality of the prison’s food could be judged from what was scrawled on the wall in charcoal:
MULE SERVED HERE
“Lower bunk, on the left,” Wood whispered.
The floor creaked as they tiptoed toward the small, almost dwarf-like man snoring with his back to the room. The visible side of his face was heavily bruised, his eye a puffy slit yellow with matter. “Good Christ,” Stanley said.
Randolph stirred but didn’t waken. Stanley shoved Baker aside and walked out. Downstairs, in Wood’s office, he slammed the door and said, “Here’s the long and short of it. A black whore escaped when Randolph was taken at Mrs. Devore’s. The whore telegraphed Cincinnati. The owners of Randolph’s paper are Democrats, but they have sufficient influence in Ohio to elicit a response from a Republican administration—I speak particularly of Mr. Stanton. Habeas corpus or no habeas corpus, Randolph goes free first thing in the morning.”
Baker sighed. “That clears it up, then.”
“The devil it does. Who beat him so badly?”
“That man you sent me. Dayton.”
“Get rid of him.”
Baker stroked his beard, shrugged. “Easy enough.”
“And the witnesses.”
“Not so easy.”
“Why not? One’s in custody—”
“The white prostitute,” Wood said. “She’s with the other women.”
“Get the nigger’s name from Mrs. Devore,” Stanley ordered Baker. “Find her and get both women out of Washington. Threaten them, bribe them, but I want them five hundred or a thousand miles from here. Tell them to use assumed names if they value their skins.” Baker started to raise some objection, but Stanley blustered, “Do it, Colonel, or you’ll no longer command the First District of Columbia Cavalry, or any other organization.”
With an unintelligible mutter, Baker turned away. Wood scratched his chin. “There’s still Randolph to be reckoned with. Nobody cut his tongue out, y’know.”
Stanley’s glance lashed the warden for joking at such a time. “Randolph is Mr. Stanton’s responsibility. The secretary is calling on Senator Wade right now, and it’s expected that some well-respected congressmen will soon counsel with Randolph’s publishers. The message will be quite simple. It will be to their advantage to keep quiet but infinitely troublesome for them if they don’t. I suspect they’ll choose the former. Then, if Randolph talks, who’ll corroborate his wild statements? Not his paper. Certainly no one here—” Baleful, he eyed the warden and the chief of the Detective Bureau.
“The women won’t,” he continued. “They’ll be gone. Dayton, too. Many unsubstantiated tales of government excess are circulating these days. One more will hardly cause a ripple.”
“I’ll speak to Dayton tomorrow,” Baker promised.
“Tonight,” Stanley said and went down and out to the square, where Union officers, evidently rounded up for disciplinary reasons, stumbled from a newly arrived van while raffish men and women leaned from the prison windows, crying, “Fresh fish! Fresh fish!”
“I regret this,” Lafayette Baker said to a still-sleepy Elkanah Bent. It was half past eleven. Bent had been wakened and dragged to the office by Detective O’Dell, who professed to know nothing about the reason for the urgent summons.
Baker cleared his throat. “But facts are facts, Dayton. You injured Randolph by repeatedly hitting him.”
Bent clutched the arms of his chair, straining forward. “He resisted arrest!”
“Even so, it’s evident that you employed more force than was necessary.”
Bent struck the desk. “And what do you and Wood employ when you question someone? I’ve been at the prison. I’ve heard the screams—”
“That’s enough,” Baker said, his tone ominous.
“You want a scapegoat—”
“I don’t want a thing, Dayton. You’re an able agent, and if I could keep you, I would, believe me.” Bent spat an oath. Baker colored but kept his voice level. “I am under orders from the War Department. The secretary himself. Some satisfaction must be offered for what happened to Randolph, and I regret—”
“That I’m the bone to be tossed to the wolves,” Bent cried, very nearly shrieking. Someone tapped on the door, asked a question.
“Everything’s fine, Fatty,” Baker called back. Then, more quietly, “I understand your feelings. But it will be to your advantage to take this in good grace.”
“The hell I will. I refuse to be thrown on the trash heap by you, by Stanton, or by any other—”
“Shut your mouth!” Baker was on his feet, pointing at the other man. “You have twenty-four hours to remove yourself from Washington. There is no appeal.”
Like a sounding whale, Bent came up from his chair. “Is this how the government treats loyal employees? How it repays faithful service—?”
Abruptly, Baker sat again. His hands began to move through dossier folders like busy white spiders. Without raising his eyes; he said, “Twenty-four hours, Mr. Dayton. Or you will be placed under arrest.”
“At whose instigation? By whose order?”
Livid, Baker said, “Lower your voice. Eamon Randolph was severely beaten. Much worse will happen to you if you make trouble. You’ll disappear into Old Capitol, and you’ll be a gray-beard before you see daylight again. Now get out of here and out of Washington by this time tomorrow. O’Dell!”
The door flew open. The detective shot in, right hand under his left lapel.
“Show him out. Lock the door after he leaves.”
Blinking, panting, Bent was in an instant reduced to helplessness. His shoulders sagged, then his body. He uttered a single, faint, “But—”
“Dayton,” Fatty O’Dell said, and stepped aside, leaving the doorway unblocked. Bent lumbered out.
A few hours earlier, an elegant gig open to the night air clipped along the perimeter road of Hollywood Cemetery, west of Richmond. Lights gleamed in distant houses. Shadows of leafy branches flitted over the faces of James Huntoon and the gig’s driver, Lamar Powell.
“I can’t believe what you’ve told me, Powell.”
“That’s precisely why I called for you and brought you out here,” Powell replied. “I’d like to recruit you for our group, but I couldn’t risk issuing the invitation where we might be overheard.”
Huntoon pulled out his pocket kerchief to remove a sudden film of steam from his spectacles. “I certainly understand.”
Powell shook the reins to pick up the pace on the straight stretch of road. Monuments, obelisks, great crosses, and anguished stone angels glided by, half seen in the foliage to their right. “I know we didn’t begin our, ah, business relationship on the best footing, Huntoon. But, ultimately, Water Witch earned you a fine profit.”
“That’s true. Unfortunately, to obtain it, my wife deceived me.”
“I’m sorry about that. Your wife strikes me as a charming person, but I know little about her, so it would be rash as well as rude if I commented on your domestic situation.”
He kept his eyes fixed on the starlit road beyond the ears of the horse. He felt Huntoon’s suspicious stare for a moment. Then a whistling sigh told him the lawyer’s thoughts had jumped back to the plan Powell had described. He probed for a reaction.
“Are you appalled by what I told you a few minutes ago?”
“Yes.” More firmly: “Yes—why not? Assassination is—well—not only a crime; it’s an act of desperation.”
“For some. Not my group. We are taking a carefully planned and absolutely necessary step to reach a desirable end—establishment of the new Confederacy of the Southwest. Properly organized, properly controlled—free and independent of the bungling that has doomed this one. There will be a government, of course. You could play a role. A significant one. You most certainly have the talent. I’ve inquired about your work at the Treasury Department.”
Like a pleased boy, Huntoon said, “Have you really?�
�
“Do you think I’d be speaking now if I hadn’t? You’re one of a number of highly competent men King Jeff has misused—wasted in menial posts. It’s deliberate, naturally. He downgrades those of us from the cotton states in order to please the damned Virginians. For you, I could envision an important post in our Treasury Department, if that appeals to you. If it doesn’t, we can certainly satisfy you with some other high office. Very likely at cabinet level.”
Under the wind-rustled branches, Huntoon wondered if he could believe what he was hearing. It was the call of opportunity—the kind of opportunity to which he had aspired in the early days, but which Davis had denied him.
Cabinet level. Wouldn’t Ashton be pleased? She might not consider him so inadequate, publicly or—his tongue moved over his damp lip—privately.
But it was dangerous. And Powell spoke of murder so lightly. Hesitating, he said, “Before I decide, I would need more details.”
“Details without a commitment on your part? I’m afraid that’s impossible, James.”
“Some time to consider, then. The risks—”
“They’re enormous, no denying it,” Powell cut in. “But brave men with vision can meet and master them. You uttered an appropriate word a few moments ago—desperation. But it applies to them far more than it does to us. The Confederacy of Davis and his crowd is already lost, and they know it. The people are beginning to know it, too. The only government that can succeed is new government. Ours. So the question’s quite simple. Will you join it or no?”
Huntoon’s mind brimmed with memories: Ashton’s adoring eyes at the moment she accepted his proposal; the cheering, clapping crowds to whom he had argued the case for secession from lecture platforms—even tree stumps—throughout his home state. He had starved for both kinds of approval since coming to this wretched city.