by Parry, Owen
I beg your pardon for my frankness, but history must be recorded truly. I paused on the wretched trail and looked about me. Lazy vapors eased between great trees, caressing the moss. Black water steamed in the cold, its surface as unmoving as the earth. The swamp smelled of an undrained family bath and wet-rag air annoyed my exposed skin. Odd birds called, but hid. I saw no trace of other human beings, but had no confidence that I saw all. I do not like to think my modesty compromised.
An earnest survey found no trace of alligators, which I am told are prevalent in New Orleans.
I found a not unwelcoming spot a few steps from the trail and peeled off my greatcoat. Further actions do not require description. Although I will admit to scanning the foliage for reptilian intruders and such like.
At the very moment of my satisfaction, I felt that I had been bitten hard, indeed. Not by a creature of our American Nile, but by the realization of my stupidity.
I saw it all. The sense of things, I mean. I nearly leapt directly to my feet. Which would have been ill judged.
I fear that I used language to abuse myself that never can appear upon the page. My comments upon my unbelievable blindness were so strong that I shall have to answer for them on that day when the sternest questions are posed.
The kindest word I spent on myself was “idiot.”
I tidied myself as swiftly as I could, grateful for the broad and bountiful leaves the Lord provided even in mid-winter. And then I set off at a run, like a hobbled horse at the races, too impatient even to don my greatcoat, fair hurdling with the help of my cane and begging every power in Heaven to let Mr. Barnaby be there waiting, with a vehicle ready.
And waiting he was, the good fellow. With that sour Irish cab man still in thrall.
Mr. Barnaby waved and stepped toward me the instant he marked my approach. Even at a distance, I could read the bright relief upon his face. He cried out, “Tally-ho!” and danced a jig.
As I come up to him, he added, “Bless me, Major Jones, you’re still alive!”
Tears welled in his eyes, though he was jolly.
“I brought you a nice, soft bun,” he declared, “in the ’opes that you could chew it. You must be—”
“No time!” I snapped. “Get in the cab. You.” I called to the cab man, “fifty Union dollars if you drive the horses like they’re running at Epsom! Take us to the Customs House, to Union headquarters!”
I stormed the interior of the cab like a rush of fusiliers taking a redoubt. Mr. Barnaby followed me with all the alacrity his doughty girth allowed.
Despite my cajoling and the cab man’s greed, we could not go too swiftly on the trail. I leaned forward on the bench, as if my weight might lend us more momentum.
“What’s ’appened, sir, what’s ’appened?” Mr. Barnaby begged of me. “Did the one we ain’t to name tell you ’er secrets?”
I swung a dismissive paw at the great, wide world. “Later, later. Did you, or did you not, say that slavery is still in practice on the Spanish islands?”
“That it is, sir, that it is! As legal as ever it was hereabouts, and twice as mean or worse, the way they treats ’em. The high-seas trade ain’t legal, God bless the Royal Navy, but what slaves they ’as already got is bound to be slaves forever. Even in Brazil, among the Portugee, it ain’t been abolished, though we pretends to live in civilized times. Why, in Cuba they—”
“The bastards!” I shouted, including myself in the curse. Oh, Madame La Blanch had been right, indeed, that a man who embraced his blindness would never see. And right she was that I possessed the knowledge I needed, but had been too proud and cock-sure to make sense of it. “The low, wicked bastards!”
It took me another moment to force the rueful conclusion from my lips. Mr. Barnaby’s face absorbed the fervor of my tone and shifted from concern to expectation. He knew I was not given to strong language and my outburst promised a revelation to come.
“The bastards are selling negroes back into slavery,” I explained.
THE REGIMENT OF clues paraded past, laughing at me from their perfect ranks. I smashed down my fist on the battered seat. Hammering the bench I was, and groaning like a mad, tormented animal.
My pride, my pride! Vanity had closed my eyes more tightly than a blindfold. Now they were opened, to my terrible shame. The matter had become a magic puzzle, putting itself together on its own. One connection led to another, until it all seemed so obvious than even a fool should have seen the lie of the land.
What had Madame La Blanch said to me? As her parting admonition? “Play a fool to make a fool, then see who the fool is.” Well, there was no question as to the identity of the greatest fool in the matter. Twas me. Not least because I had let a dissembler play the fool with me.
Captain Bolt was no more a simpleton than Mr. Aristotle. He must have been the cleverest of men to play the ass so aptly, to pander to my pride and superiority.
All of it had been laid out before me, plain as a Methodist chapel. I should have got it the instant Madame La Blanch mentioned negroes carried off on ships.
No. That is too generous. I should have seen it days before, without the need of instruction from a heathen.
Consider what I had learned, only to ignore. Negroes disappeared without sensible cause. A white girl, then a colored man, both of whom championed negroes, were foully murdered. To terrorize any who might interfere. And if the negro had no value in our United States, where did he still hold monetary worth? How could he be gotten there? Who owned ships and suffered no embargo? Mrs. Aubrey, of course, who was so anxious to slander Susan Peabody. But who might connect her to the power of our Union authorities? If not the son of the man who controlled the riverboat shipping on the upper Mississippi, as General Banks himself had informed me? A young man who likely would have been known to the woman who owned the finest hulls on the river’s Southern reach?
Who had been given a generous writ to spy on me, to hound me? I did not suspect General Banks of any complicity, but sensed that he, too, had been fooled into giving Bolt license.
Of course, Bolt had known which tomb to seek me in. His co-conspirators had put me there. Oh, I remembered all too well how “clumsily” Bolt had behaved after freeing me. Firing from behind to pin me down to give the mock assassin time to escape. I had frustrated him that evening, but he had more than gotten his own back. He had known the numbers of my rooms, the hours of my baths, the purpose of my journeys, the subjects of my visits.
And he had known that I meant to question the paymaster. Whose murder passed with shameless speed thereafter. While I, the “great investigator,” had no least suspicion of the culprit.
I wondered if Bolt had done that deed himself. He could have lured the poor officer out in the small hours on any number of pretexts. Or Bolt might have ordered him to present himself, holding over him the power of his plunge into corruption.
Mr. Champlain had been right about the enduring power of money. But … why had he helped me, to the degree that he had, and what, if any, role did he himself play in these affairs?
There were so many dead, from a bath attendant to an educated negro, from the enigmatic Miss Peabody to a dirty-fingered colonel.
God knew how many others.
Supposed by my superiors to be a man well skilled in investigations, I had become the puppet of a scoundrel. Of a pack of scoundrels.
Were I a fellow from any one of Mr. Shakespeare’s plays, it would be Bottom, who was turned into a jackass. In that play with the fairies and disobedient girls.
Magic? Voodoo? Spirits? Not a bit of it. Marie Venin had been hired on by the conspirators to terrorize the simple, country negroes flocking to town. And many among the longtime residents, too. But it wasn’t the “Grand Zombi” who walked the streets to steal their souls. Twas a press-gang sanctioned by our own authorities that swept their bodies into outbound ships.
I did not remark on the matter to Mr. Barnaby, but it seemed to me a miracle that Magdalena had not been murdered long befor
e she reached us. Marie Venin had not come to the convent only to lure me out. I was a minor prize compared to Miss Peabody’s servant, who knew more than the conspirators could risk.
The lass almost spoiled everything for Bolt and his “Fishers of Men.” If nothing else, she knew enough to cast doubt on the stories blackening Miss Peabody. She did not know the sin, but knew the sinners.
Poor Mr. Barnaby, to whom I had been so ungenerous, sat in ponderous woe on the opposite bench. He did not attempt to banter or to satisfy his desperate curiosity, although he must have been yearning to ask if I had learned anything of the lass. He was a man whom life had taught to wait on the whims of others. He simply sat and watched me grimace and growl as I scorned myself like Lear upon the heath.
Not that I would compare myself to a king.
“It’s Bolt,” I said at last. “Captain Bolt. He’s in it up to his whiskers, the bleeding rotter. Bolt and that damnable Aubrey woman, the two of them.”
“Can’t say as I fancied either one,” Mr. Barnaby allowed.
I ground my teeth, reminding myself in an instant that my jaw remained convalescent.
“I can’t believe …” I said, “ … I cannot believe the wickedness of it.”
That observation did not impress my companion.
“I finds,” he said, “it don’t pay to put too much faith in others, begging your pardon. If you doesn’t expect too much, you’ll ’ave yourself a pleasant surprise now and then. But if you goes about expecting goodness, you’ll end your days a disappointed man.”
“But … but you have put faith in me, Mr. Barnaby. You trust me to keep my word about Lieutenant Raines.”
“Oh, you doesn’t count among the common sort,” he told me. “You’re too afraid of yourself to misbehave.”
I let the observation pass. Another sickening revelation had rippled through my belly, mind and soul.
“Dear God,” I said, dropping my face into my hands. My sword-cane clattered to the floor of the cab. I clenched my eyes shut in shame, hiding them with my palms.
“I didn’t mean it insulting, like,” Mr. Barnaby assured me. “What I said about—”
“The letter. The blasted letter. The letters. Two of them. I ignored them both.” I dropped my hands away from my eyes and looked at him across a slough of shame. “I’ve been … Good Lord … such a fool … a perfect ass …”
I might have found it friendly, had Mr. Barnaby seen fit to contest the latter description of myself. But he did not.
Doubtless chock with questions of his own, he sat before me full of concern but determined to be amiable.
“I had letters, see,” I explained. “From a Navy fellow. The first come the night I was rude to you. When I sent you off and told you not to trouble me until the next afternoon. I had a dozen letters, that is the thing of it. Most had arrived from the North, from home. But there was one from a naval officer.” The pain of the remembrance was almost physical. “I laid it aside. To read my personal mail over my breakfast.”
The carriage turned from the trail onto a back road. We gained a measure of speed.
“I’m afraid I doesn’t follow you, Major Jones.”
I wiped imagined sweat off of my forehead. “While I was dallying over my coffee, the letter disappeared from my room. Oh, damn my stupidity, man. I missed the theft entirely, although it should have been the first thing I noticed. It was gone, and I failed to even think of it. A message from the Navy did not fit with my opinions, see. I could not squeeze it into the scheme of things, a scheme I had already accepted. Then, last evening, the hotel clerk brought me a second letter. From the same Navy fellow. And I dismissed it out of hand. As I had the first. You were there. You heard me.”
The poor fellow must have had only a bit more sleep than me, but now he saw it. I watched the grace of knowledge cross his brow.
“If ships is sailing off loaded with negroes,” he proposed, “per’aps the Navy lads seen something queer?”
“Exactly! It might have been almost anything. A bill of lading that made no sense. Some subterfuge, suspicious behavior. Whatever it was, they connected it to me. The Lord only knows why. They tried to alert me. But I paid them no attention. None at all …”
Mr. Barnaby chewed upon the notion, then produced the promised bun from his pocket at last. “You must be deadly ’ungry,” he said in a kindly tone. “You ’as to eat for your strength, sir. And your swelling’s gone down most admirable. Do ’ave a try.”
I accepted the bun, for I was properly famished. I gnawed it, almost reveling in the jolts of pain that still surprised my jaw.
The truth is that I saw more clearly than Mr. Lincoln, who placed more faith in me than I deserved. I was not meant for grand investigations. Nor was I suited to remain a soldier. Time it was for me to return to my family and our new-found business concerns. I told myself, for the hundredth time, that I had done my bit for my new country. As soon as I could sort things out, I would resign and go back to my wife. To be a proper father to my son and to my ward. And, perhaps, to another son or daughter by now.
I wondered if the babe already lay in my darling’s arms.
The truth is that I wished to hide away. To bury myself in my family and honest work, hidden from every misery beyond the common sorrows of those I loved.
I know that a good man will not shirk his duty. But there must come a point when his duty is done. Nor was I entirely sure I was a good man.
“My grandfather, Lord bless ’im,” Mr. Barnaby said, “what fought under Pakenham and thought ’im a dreadful fool and daft besides, always told me to ’ave respect for sailors and to listen to ’em until they got round to the truth, which they would in time. Although ’e warned me to step clear of Portsmouth.” He canted his head, musing over his memories and my recent revelations. “I only ’ope that second letter’s still waiting at the ’otel.”
I LEANED OUT of the window and shouted to the cab man to take us first to the door of the St. Charles Hotel. He grumbled and whipped his horses, sorry that he had ever seen my face.
I fear I had allowed my hopes for the contents of the letter to exceed the bounds of reason. I longed for it to offer a clean solution to the filthy problem that still lay before me. I wanted the letter to do the last work for me, see, since fresh doubts had come to plague me as we drove.
First, what proof did I have of anything at all? Everything made sense as I had finally pieced it together. But sense is not evidence. How could I march up to General Banks and tell him to arrest the richest widow in New Orleans, a well-respected matron who might call on those more powerful than either of us? What could I even prove against Captain Bolt?
Mr. Aristotle favors logic. But logic never rules in human affairs.
The evidence convinced me. But I was man enough to see that, after my string of follies, I longed to be convinced. Was I to hurl some dozens into prison because a voodoo priestess communed with her spirits on my behalf? Even Mr. Lincoln’s sense of humor would not extend to a toleration of that.
After the recent fuss about freeing the negroes, Mr. Lincoln would not wish himself more trouble. He was a man who never could please all. Whatever he did, some high and mighty faction damned him as a simpleton or worse. They said he squandered lives and wrecked our laws.
I wonder if he ever felt as I did, wishing he could go home and be shut of his cares. What had his service brought him beyond sorrow and the mockery of those with ink for blood?
After reaching the main road, we gained a proper speed. But my worries increased as the miles fell behind. Certain I was that I was right, but I had no means to prove it.
For all the false moves I had made, mine enemies had made none. I knew who stood behind Susan Peabody’s murder and the subsequent deaths. But nothing could be proved in a court of law. Or even to a military tribunal. The thought of my ineptitude was not conducive to an even temper.
Although I had reason to be grateful to Mr. Barnaby, on many counts, he was the only person pres
ent against whom I could aim my loaded mood. Of course, I told myself at the time that my admonition would be for his own good.
“Mr. Barnaby,” I began, in a tone that should have warned him from the outset, “despite my respect for your good heart and your intentions, I cannot overlook your toleration of abhorrent practices. The orgy I witnessed last night would have shamed the Romans and—”
He moved to cup a hand over my mouth, as we do to children when their speech errs gravely. He just refrained from touching me, but whispered above the clatter of the wheels, “I shouldn’t say a word, sir, not about such matters. Nor mention names nor places, nor any least details of the goings-on.”
“Mr. Barnaby … I find all this secrecy preposterous. Suffice it to say that, speaking as a Christian, I cannot understand how you, who were raised, however irregularly, in the Christian religion, could approve of pagan rites and devil-worship.”
“Oh, I doesn’t approve and never did,” he told me with aplomb. “Church of England, I was raised, and if that ain’t Christian, it’s the next-best thing.”
“But your own dear wife—”
“She was a Christian, too, sir. As I been telling you. Regular to mass as a thirsty priest.” He looked at me almost pityingly, as if I were the one whose soul was endangered. “But my Marie always put it like this, sir: She said that every bed needs its own blanket. And on the coldest nights, it might need two.”
“We must have unswerving faith in a single God.”
“But, Major Jones, the priests and parsons also wants us to believe in Jesus Christ and the ’Oly Ghost, as well as the Lord ’Imself. Don’t that make three? And the Catholics ’as more saints than the ’eathen ’Indoos. All’s one, sir, all’s one! The voudou folk don’t no more agree with one another than Lutherans and Baptists. Some believes they’re worshipping the ’Oly Ghost, that ’E come out of the African bush, where ’E ’ad another name. Others ’as a fondness for Mother Mary, who wears more names than a red-headed riverboat gambler. And even if they worships an African god, who’s to say ’e’s not the old fellow we’re fond of? ’Ow can we know they ain’t all the same, only speaking different languages, just like men do?”