by David Nevin
The steps came closer. Secretary of state of the United States of America wending homeward in the dark, alone, a damned blackguard footpad creeping up on him. He reversed his stick, the heavy knob out, and turned with the stick springy in his hand, raised, ready—
The steps stopped.
Silence. Madison could hear his own breathing.
“Got something for you.” A man, much closer than he’d expected. There was a faint odor—rum. The voice was a rasp, ruined by drink and smoke, low, a little threatening, utterly confident—and familiar. He knew he’d heard it before.
“This here is information you can use. But it’ll cost ye.”
“Well, I don’t know about that.” Madison’s breathing slowed.
“I say it’s worth a twenty-dollar gold piece. You agree, you wrap the piece and have it delivered to the Broken Goat Tavern for General Sudsbury. It don’t come, I’ll see you don’t value information none and I won’t trouble you no more.”
“Sudsbury?”
A rasping laugh. “It’ll do good as any.”
There! Madison had him now. The hunchback. He peered through the dark and made out a bulky figure. His heartbeat was back to near normal; he’d been frightened and now he was angry.
“Are you peculiar looking in daylight?”
“I’m a Goddamned hunchback—that what you mean?”
“That’ll do. So what is this information that brings you skulking after me like a miserable footpad?”
Sudden raw fury in the voice. “You like it better I come to your office and put my feet on your desk? You’re mighty damned particular for a man who don’t know what the hell’s going on! I’ve a mind to walk off—”
“But you won’t because you want that gold piece. Now what is it; then I’ll decide if I’ll pay.”
A low chuckle, fury gone. “Thought I’d see if you push easy.” The sound of a man spitting. “You know how them niggers done revolted and took over the island of Santo Domingo down in the Caribbean?”
“Of course.” He waited, still on edge. The French were worried about Santo Domingo. Pichon had raised United States acceptance of the slave revolt as a continuing point of contention, though nothing concrete had happened. In fact, the success of the revolt raised serious fears in the slave states for reasons that Madison understood only too well. There had been an abortive slave rising in Virginia only two years ago. It had been nipped in the bud, but it could have been bad. He still thought a revolt unlikely, but if the blacks on his own Montpelier were to rise he shuddered to think of the carnage. All the same, he didn’t intend to let that fear dominate American foreign policy. Trade with the island continued.
“Now,” the voice said from the dark, “you know how when he declared for ’em the Frenchies said that boss nigger was one of them? Made him captain-general, told him to get him some plumes and dress up like a French general? Well, now they’re sending an army to crush him. I mean, a big army—twenty-five thousand. Under a general name of Leclerc. You heard of Leclerc? Seems he’s the fair lad since he married Napoleon’s sister.”
Standing in the dark, Madison had a curious sense that a bright light was shining on new problems. He’d understood that Paris wasn’t entirely happy with its Caribbean colony, but serious French military action in the Americas raised a whole new specter. Again he was slapped with the sense of moving from the abstract to the concrete. Every day the French threat became more real. Still …
“How do you know?” His voice was low and taut.
Again that chuckle. “Thing about information, Mister, it stands alone. You don’t get no proof with it. Still, I’ll tell you I know a lot of folks, and one of ’em come out of France, landed this week, and I’ve never known him to be wrong. Now, you and me, we’ve had dealings. You decide if likely I know what I’m talking about.
“Anyway, that ain’t the news. French cutting up niggers on some island, I ain’t going to hang around in the dark to tell you that. The news is that when they’re done there they go on to Louisiana. Orders to occupy it and bring its people under control. That’s the news …”
Madison heard his footsteps receding. From a distance, the raspy voice, “General Sudsbury, Broken Goat Tavern. Barkeep’ll hold it for me.”
Madison detested big parties and here he was in the drawing room of the new British legation surrounded by a hundred guests, feeling a fish far from water, hearing his voice grow more leaden with every response to every clever sally. There was Dolley on the other side of the room, bright as a pin, laughing and admiring the faintly beige offsets in the white wainscoting, Ned Thornton eagerly pointing out this and that. She was even more beautiful than usual—Madison just liked to look at his wife—her black hair wrapped in a dark green turban that she said was perfect with her sea green gown. Doubtless the colors did fit together, not something he would know in his plain black suit, white hose, shoes not unduly scuffed if not superbly brushed, gentleman’s garb. Dolley supplied the family’s fashion … .
The place smelled of paint. Thornton had miscalculated, planning this opening reception on the naive hope that the building would be done when promised. He was a precipitate young man. The party could just as well have waited until the paint was dry and Madison could be back in his office, and his champagne wouldn’t taste of paint. He switched to whiskey punch, an indulgence he rarely made, and looked around.
Well, well, there was Mr. Pichon, alone by a window, looking the fish out of water that Madison felt. Of course he’d come as a protocol matter, Britain and France now being officially if uneasily at peace, which condition no one expected to last more than a year. He strolled up to the Frenchman.
“Ah, Louis,” he said, “paint does give champagne a certain aura, don’t you think?”
Pichon smiled. “A piquancy of flavor, Mr. Secretary.” He lowered his voice. “Dare I say in these hallowed precincts that it has a certain British quality?”
Madison chuckled. He put a hand on Pichon’s arm. “Louis, I hear that France is putting troops into Santo Domingo.”
Pichon’s head snapped around. “Where did you hear that?”
“An army, really. Huge, twenty-five thousand—and under the famous General Leclerc. They do mean business, don’t they?”
Pichon appeared to be having an attack of nausea.
Madison said, “I see from your face it’s true.”
“I was told in utmost secrecy—no one to know.”
“Ah, Louis, haven’t you learned by now there are no secrets? I understand they go on to impose military rule on Louisiana.”
“No, sir! I don’t know that.”
“But it makes such sense it can hardly be denied.”
Pichon didn’t answer.
“Can it, Louis?”
“No, sir, I suppose not.”
“It’s really quite vile to bring an army into our sphere of influence in secrecy. Do you wonder we resent it? That we question your aims? Your motives? When you are instructed not to present it to the government most concerned and attest to its innocence, but instead you are to hold it in—how did you put it?—yes, ‘utmost secrecy’?”
Pichon didn’t answer.
“These are thoughts you would do well to convey to your government.”
Back in the blessed sanctuary of his office, Madison heard a spattering of cold rain lash against his window. Thunder rolled in the distance, the interval between flash and sound shortening. He threw another log on the fire and stood looking out. The mansion was blurred through wet glass.
So why did France bother with Santo Domingo? The question produced the answer. The importance of the Caribbean island lay in the fact that they were coming to Louisiana in force, as his own instinct had told him. An army of size demands massive supply—in his mind’s eye he could see a chain of square-rigged ships, sails gleaming, rolling on brilliant blue swells across the Atlantic, through the straits between Florida and Cuba, into the last long reach across the Gulf of Mexico to the mouth of the Miss
issippi. But at the hinge point, the Florida Straits, the chain was vulnerable to British frigates based at the Royal Navy station at Jamaica that could readily sail up the slot between Cuba and Santo Domingo and fall on French vessels bound for New Orleans. A French naval base at Santo Domingo, scarcely a hundred miles from Jamaica, would neutralize that threat. France didn’t care about Toussaint or his island. It cared about the Royal Navy. The island hadn’t mattered till plans for Louisiana as part of a French empire matured. So the whole point of Santo Domingo was Louisiana.
But despots are never satisfied. Let him anchor Louisiana and Santo Domingo as his hinge points and he almost certainly would take Cuba from the Spanish, give them a mite of face saving by swapping another duchy stolen from the Italians as he’d done for Louisiana. With Cuba in hand, the Caribbean his, the next step would be Mexico with its limitless silver and gold mines. It already was on the edge of revolt and would fall like a ripe fruit. Powered by Mexican gold, what would keep the French despot from driving up the Mississippi and making most of North America his own? What but the tattered militia of Tennessee and Kentucky and the tiny Regular Army and submitting ourselves to the tender mercies of the Royal Navy?
After a while he called in Johnny Graham and handed him a package. “I want you to deliver this to a tavern called—um, the Broken Goat, I believe it is.”
Johnny’s eyes widened.
“You know the place?” Madison asked.
“Yes, sir! I … ah … it’s just not the sort of place I supposed you frequented.”
Madison smiled. “I’m glad to surprise you,” he said.
26
WASHINGTON, EARLY 1802
It was still dark when Meriwether Lewis stepped out of the mansion from his canvas-partitioned chamber in what Miss Dolley insisted would someday be the beautifully appointed and highly ceremonial East Room, though you sure couldn’t tell it now. The habits of the early riser, alert and ready before first light, the time that attacks would come boiling out of the woods if they were going to come, went straight back to the frontier. The cold was bracing this morning, and he pulled his coat tighter.
“Mornin’, Captain.” The guard’s voice sounded sleepy; he was wedged into a corner behind a pillar, shivering.
“Wake up, Sam,” Lewis said. “Tea kettle’ll be on shortly.”
The night was starlit and he walked swiftly, boots loud on frozen ground. At the stables his big buckskin gelding nickered softly as he lifted the bar on the stall door. As he dropped the saddle on its back, the horse turned to nip at his arm. He rapped it sharply on the nose.
“Where the hell did you get that mean streak, Buck? Not on the plantation.” He’d brought Buck from home; Ma said the horse was all stamina and temper. “You nip me good and one of these days I’ll beat you bloody. Understand?” He swung into the saddle. Puffing, snorting, the horse wheeled in a tight little circle, but he didn’t buck; he’d tried that once and now he knew a whole lot better. They started down the dirt street and soon the horse settled into a steady trot.
The president wanted to see him at ten; didn’t say for what. Every time Mr. J. called him, he imagined, hoped— dreamed, it was beginning to look like—that they would discuss the expedition or at least mention it. But doubtless this French business had knocked it all to hell anyway. No one would plan things with war looming. He felt the familiar darkness crowding around him as he contemplated this blasting of his dreams. Bastards. They would never get away with seizing the West and the river; that would never pass with westerners. Could anyone imagine Tennessee men kissing the French ass?
A horseman turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue and waved—Johnny Graham. They often rode together, though more by chance than by design. He liked Johnny, who was one of those men you knew right away could take care of himself. Johnny lived with a number of congressmen and clerks in a boardinghouse on G Street and kept a horse in the stables next door. He too liked to shake out in the dawnlight, and soon they were trotting up the trail along Rock Creek.
Lewis had met Johnny soon after he arrived, on the day, in fact, that he had clashed with Mr. Randolph’s pale clerk. He’d come boiling out of the chairman’s office and bumped into Johnny, who had a clutch of papers in his left hand.
“Stand clear there!” Lewis was still furious.
“Well, hold on, friend,” Johnny had said, quite mildly considering the provocation. “You bumped into me.” Lewis noted he had both hands up, the right a fist, ready to drop the papers and move.
“Humph,” Lewis said. “Guess I did. Sorry.”
Johnny glanced at the chairman’s door. “Simon Pink giving you trouble?”
“A little skinny whey-faced bastard—”
“That’s Simon Pink. C’mon, I’ll buy you a cup of chocolate and tell you about the first time I met Simon.”
They’d spent an hour together and become friends. Johnny had what Lewis thought of as rather a joyous turn of mind as compared to his own darkening moods, but they were comfortable together. Lewis was usually easier in the company of westerners after life on the frontier as boy and soldier. They seemed more open, less formal, more direct, said what was on their mind, you didn’t like it, make something of it. You were a sight more likely in Cincinnati than in Baltimore to see a couple of bravos go for each other with ten-inch blades, left hands crooked for gouging an eye.
He liked the trail up Rock Creek, winding among rocks and small boulders, coming up above to a marshy meadow where impromptu races often arose. But the trail was hard packed and beaten, and it was a long, long way from the kind of trails, faint and little trod, he’d known in the West. All his dreams were of open country. There was still land available in Kentucky and in Indiana territory, and he aimed to have some of it someday. That and the great trek to the Pacific.
He was a soldier but he wasn’t a warrior. Not afraid of combat, mind, he reckoned he’d give as good account of himself as anyone; but open country was his real interest, not the army. He knew the wilderness, and now, tired and disgusted with waiting, doubting himself and Mr. Jefferson as well, he thought about those days when he was just a lad and yet had made himself a self-taught botanist of unusual skills, roaming alone and living off the land, new camp every night, tracking game or going hungry, bathing weekly in a stream with a sliver of soap.
The far beyond, the uncivilized, the unexplored always drew him. His appeal to Mr. Jefferson as a boy—let me lead the expedition—had seemed totally reasonable to him and still did. He remembered Mary Beth Slaney’s doubts, but he’d known then that he could do it; and if he’d been allowed, if the plan to trek to the Pacific hadn’t been dropped, how different the world would be today. Now—now he was more than competent. He was trained in command, practiced in the military march, used to thinking in terms of a small body of men traveling light on foot or horseback or out for weeks with pack animals or wagons, day by day finding campsites on water, dealing with food, setting up a latrine away from camp even for one night, doctoring sick men and lame horses, monitoring supplies, all the myriad little management details an officer learned. The very idea of taking a body of men across a whole continent thrilled him—all the details magnified, all the problems and stresses and unforeseen needs and sudden crises coming up like storms, the men looking to him for answers … .
“Say, Merry,” Johnny said, reining close, “cheer up! You look like you’ve lost your last friend and plan to break someone’s head over it.”
Lewis forced a smile but it wasn’t all that easy. His face felt stiff.
“Tell you what,” Johnny said. “Way back, we’ll stop at Absalom’s, get one of his big breakfasts.”
Absalom Jones ran the Red Fox Tavern and had a bountiful table, but not for the likes of young clerks.
“Dollar breakfast?” Lewis cried. “Rich for our blood, boy.”
Johnny laughed. “Stop for a cup of coffee anyway. We can smell the food and dream of being rich.” And he loped off with a bright exuberance that Lewis knew he
never could master, not that he’d want to, understand.
It was just that Washington galled him so and yet, he would never learn—hell, he couldn’t even beat down the hope that today’s summons would be different. Though he knew it wouldn’t. He’d sit down in Mr. Jefferson’s big of fice and get some instructions to take to Mr. Dearborn at the War Department, something designed to foil this latest French move, maybe, stop ’em at Santo Domingo. They want to reclaim their island, fine, let ’em do it and drink coconut milk for the rest of their lives, but stay out of Louisiana. And let Captain Lewis get on with his real mission.
It was like a prize dangled before his nose but never given. Why bring him here if not for the expedition? He was the last sort of man to make a natural presidential secretary. It took a Simon Pink to revel in clerkhood. Meriwether Lewis didn’t care all that much for awaiting the great man’s beckoning finger, even when the man was Thomas Jefferson. Oh, it had been an interesting year, all right, he knew infinitely more now than he had at the start, not just about how things worked at high levels, but about himself too. Learned, for example—
The trail bent and up ahead he saw Johnny had reached the meadow and was talking to a rider. Drawing close he saw it was Jim Ross, the senator from Pennsylvania. Jim was a good fellow, albeit a Federalist. He was from Pittsburgh, which put him nicely out to the west, where Lewis had had frequent dealings with him in connection with his old paymaster duties—back when life was still simple! Indeed, Ross was the westernmost member of Senate or House who clung misguidedly to the wrong party.
“Mornin’, Senator,” he said. It looked as if Ross and Johnny had been arguing about something.
“Merry!” Ross said. “Nice to see you, son. You better pound some sense in your pal’s head, here. Johnny’s been telling me he thinks that plug of his can beat my Sally Mae.”