Eagle's Cry

by David Nevin

  Mr. Johnson didn’t say a word.

  Was she with them so far? Her lips tightened as she nodded. Mr. Clark said there was a schooner nearly completed in Annapolis, right size and speed. Clinch would provide capital for her to buy it, against her note, payable half in two years, half in four, appropriate interest. Two-year haulage contract.

  “Really?” She looked at Johnson closely for the first time. “You’d do that?”

  “Mr. Clark will endorse the notes.”

  She remembered now how she’d laughed, flattered that her uncle would go so far in trust. But in the end, it was she who’d gone far. She’d bought the vessel, ordered it outfitted, she was committed beyond recall—

  He was fumbling with an inner pocket. “I brought payment for the vessel—draft on the Bank of the United States. I hope that’s satisfactory.”

  She took it, examined it, turned it over. In full. She laughed, feeling a bit the fool; maybe she was on a narrower edge than she’d realized. “Yes—yes, Mr. Johnson, quite satisfactory.” Still, he wasn’t hangdog because he’d brought the money; he wanted something. But she touched his arm. “Sorry,” she said. “Perhaps I’m tense today.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, with a knowing expression. Women troubles, he was thinking. She could have kicked him.”

  She asked him to sit and he did, hunched forward on the chair. “Over to where I live,” he said, “the French legation is next door. Mr. Pichon. You know him?”

  She nodded. Some new hitch in French export licenses?

  “Sometimes I talk over the fence to Mrs. Pichon. She’s a sweet little lady, nigh onto dropping a—” He stopped himself.

  What in the world? “She’s very pregnant, Mr. Johnson.”

  “Now, that’s exactly it, yes, ma’am, and sick, too, what with the baby and all, and the doctor won’t let her go out.”

  She watched him and in a moment he added, “So she’d like you—she asked me—would you come to tea?”

  What a strange roundabout invitation! Helpfully, he added, “Seems like she cries most all the time. Does when I see her. Shakes her head when I ask why.”

  Danny scarcely knew Pirette Pichon. Language drew them together, she supposed, two Frenchwomen in a sea of English, and they’d chatted at social occasions. Nothing more. Still, this was very odd and something was afoot. And Pirette was likeable, gentle, and even more vulnerable with this difficult pregnancy. Which stirred in Danny that familiar sense of loss; she could expect no children now. Her hand on the draft, she told Mr. Johnson she would visit Mrs. Pichon that afternoon.

  “Thank you, ma’am.” He squared his hat and left. She watched him walk down the street. So that was it, a favor to a neighbor. An odd man, indeed. Still, there was a dignity in him and, she thought, strength. He was very successful, and she knew many men prized his opinion. She had no idea if he liked her or not, but they were partners and, her hand on the bank draft, she was content. Odd, yes … but he would do.

  Pirette Pichon herself opened the door when Danny twisted the bell at the legation’s family entrance. She looked ready to give birth within the hour, her face white as her blouse, eyes puffy with weeping. She chattered away as she poured tea; and after a bit, Danny said, “Pirette, what’s this all about?”

  A convulsive sob shook her slender frame. “Forgive me, I know we’re not close, but you visit Mrs. Madison often, don’t you? You know, you’re French; I’ve always felt I could trust you—” She stopped, peering at Danny, then said, “I have to trust you. You see, we’re in terrible trouble. They’re trying to destroy Louis.”

  “Who is?”

  There was hysteria in her sudden wail. “Oh, I’m so frightened, and the baby’s coming, and I don’t know—”

  “Pirette! What are you talking about?”

  “General Leclerc. This awful business in Louisiana. He’s trying to blame Louis for everything.”

  Slowly, midst sobs and tumbling words, the story emerged: Louis Pichon had perceived immediately that French hopes for Louisiana wouldn’t work, as Danny herself had known in an instinctive flash. Pichon could see that Americans, coupled with Britain, would be an implacable enemy. He understood Americans, their soaring growth, their strength and determination. He’d warned Monsieur Talleyrand to expect unending resistance. Every week Mr. Madison called him in to make points that Louis had been telling Paris all along.

  But now General Leclerc in Santo Domingo was sending furious letters telling poor Louis to order the Americans to force their merchants to ship supplies—procure ten thousand livres of this, ten thousand of that, ship within seven days …

  And Louis protesting to Leclerc that there was no ordering Americans and warning that the general was making things worse, his ugly threats, ridiculing American democracy, threatening rough force in Louisiana, jailing ship captains for their language or the name given a ship. He told Leclerc the United States was a nation founded in law, not whims. Just now he’d written Leclerc ordering him to send no more of the likes of some general, who seemed to have made an ass of himself.

  Yes, Danny thought, that would irk the general, all right.

  Now, said Pirette, balled handkerchief clutched to her cheek, the monster is demanding Louis’s recall. Brands him a thief, liar, says he takes bribes, is beholden to Americans, in love with them, forgets he’s French, is unfit to serve, sends insulting letters to generals—and, of course, nothing infuriates the first consul more than criticism of soldiers.

  Staring at Danny, she whispered, “You know, General Leclerc is his favorite. He’s young, handsome, elegant, dashing; he won great victories. No wonder Bonaparte’s sister is mad for him, and Louis says she can wheedle anything out of her brother. If we’re recalled … the first consul already furious, Leclerc certain to hound Louis from any post they give him, what will we do? And the baby’s coming and I’m ill, and the doctor says the baby will be delicate, a sea voyage might kill him. And the way things are in France just now, why, they could drag Louis to Dr. Guillotin’s dreadful machine … .”

  What could Danny say? She thought Pirette’s fears well justified. Unlimited power leads to unlimited evil.

  “Louis must never know of this, but please, please, tell Mrs. Madison that Louis is a friend. See if she won’t speak to her husband; see if they won’t let us stay here if we must. Grant us asylum. Louis would be furious, but now there are three of us, I have to think of my baby. Don’t you think I’m right? Tell me you’ll speak to Mrs. Madison, please … .”

  Dolley called Jimmy in. “Of course,” he said, after listening to Danny, “we’ll protect him.”

  Dolley thought this was exceedingly good news and said so after Danny left.

  Jimmy had the expression of a man who hopes but knows better than to assume. “Yes … it’s a relief that he does understand. But it appears he fears losing his head for saying it.”

  “Or his wife does.”

  “Same thing, I expect.”

  “Still,” Dolley said, “at least he conveys the facts. Maybe they’ll penetrate …”

  Jimmy looked exhausted. “Maybe …”

  “Mon Dieu, Thomas! You can’t mean this!” Pierre Du Pont looked up from the letter. “Tom—that is, Mr. Jeff—Mr. President—this is terrible. It insults the first consul, it challenges the French government, it denigrates French honor, it will make everything worse. Why, it could force war!”

  Well, well, well. Madison could see that the letter was having the desired effect. They were in the oval sitting room, Madison, the president and Du Pont, whose long delayed return to France was at hand. He would sail within the fortnight, leaving his son to nurture the chemical company at Wilmington, and he had come to say good-bye. It was a golden opportunity, given Pierre’s connections in French ruling circles.

  “Ah, Pierre,” Tom said, in his blandest tone, “it’s hardly an attack. We seek only peace with France. Why, if anything, the shoe is on the other foot. This General Leclerc is saying the most awful things abou
t us. But we tumeth the other cheek, as men of peace must always do—until, I suppose, they are given no alternative but to slap back.” He was smiling. “Even Jesus, you know, in the midst of turning the cheek was willing to lay about him with mighty arm when his cause was right.”

  “Yes, but still …” Du Pont shook his head, not at all convinced. In short, exactly as planned. They needed something pungent enough to get past that touch of arrogance in Du Pont, forceful enough to focus what he would say of the United States and revealing enough to persuade him that he stood at the center of national affairs, there and here. Nothing like giving a man a chance to preen to turn him into an ardent messenger.

  Madison and the president had laid it out, working in their usual easy tandem. It should be on paper for clarity and to avoid misunderstanding, but should not be written to Pierre. Don’t leave it in his hands to return someday to haunt you. Address it to Mr. Livingston, let Pierre see it, then seal it and ask Pierre to carry it to Livingston. Make the letter personal, informal, friend to friend, and only incidentally president to ambassador, and hence no part of the record unless one chose to place it there. The result would be to allow Pierre to speak powerfully but unofficially on the American mind, with nothing that others could turn to their own manipulating ends.

  They’d worked it out together in the president’s big corner office, Tom on his feet and pacing, Madison bunched motionless in a chair, his mind churning. Tom paced and talked, trying and discarding words, scrawling now and again on foolscap at his tall reading desk. His capacity for words was just one of his marks of genius, but he needed Madison’s level, steady, analytical mind as rudder while his more untethered mind rode the wind of ideas. Madison never doubted his own crucial value in the shared partnership of ideas that held them together.

  The letter must say clearly that France, until now a natural friend, would reposition itself as enemy when it stood astride the Mississippi. “Yes,” Tom said, “exactly.” Then, pencil scrawling swiftly as he said the words, “There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce and contain more than half of our inhabitants … .”

  Then, a few minutes later, murmuring the coalescing words as he wrote, “The day that France takes possession of New Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her low-water mark.”

  He threw down the pencil. “There! Say it square, by the good Lord, no hesitation!”

  “And what we’ll do,” Madison said, “explicitly.”

  “Yes, you’re right—” Writing swiftly, “It seals the union of two nations who, in conjunction, can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we must join—no, wait, we must marry ourselves—that’s it, marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”

  Madison felt like applauding. “Marry” the British fleet. The perfect term—there was the genius of words and the way they impacted on the mind. Madison would have said “ally with” or any of a half-dozen pedestrian phrases. Tom chose the single word that slapped the reader’s face with its meaning.

  And now, in the quiet oval room with its pale walls and blue furniture, the tall windows open to the lowering sun, Madison watched those words impact on Du Pont. As their impromptu emissary raised his voice in angry protest, Madison saw that his sense of French patriotism had been affronted. Good; exactly what they wanted. He said the first consul was no man to be intimidated by threats; that they would only make things worse.

  “Oh, Pierre, my friend,” Tom now said, “nothing in the least unfriendly is intended.” Madison wondered if the Frenchman would swallow that, but it passed unchallenged as Tom added, “It is as if I foresaw a storm tomorrow and advised my friend not to embark on the ocean today. My foreseeing it does not make me the cause of it, nor can my admonition be a threat. It is, in truth, our friendship for France which renders us so uneasy at seeing her take a position which must bring us into collision.”

  Oh, well done!

  “Still,” Du Pont said, “it alarms me that you would seem to coerce a man so powerful and so proud as the first consul. Much better, I think, to offer to buy the island of New Orleans.”

  River, lakes, bayous, swamps surrounded the city; it was literally an island and it did control the river.

  “We have raised that thought,” Madison said. “Authorized a million—”

  “Faugh! A million. What is a million dollars when you talk of empire! Offer five, six, ten! They may listen to that.”

  Jefferson closed the letter with binding of red ribbon held in place with gobs of red wax deeply impressed with the seal of the United States. He stressed to Du Pont the importance of putting this directly and only into Robert Livingston’s hand. The emissary must instruct his wife to carry out this duty should anything happen to him. The solemn tone, the envelope festooned in red, the knowledge that he was privy to the president’s most closely held thinking had the desired effect. Monsieur Du Pont assured them that he would carry his new understanding of the American position to the highest quarters.

  After he left they sat down to another glass of Madeira, and at last Madison said, “Five million, ten million—it would bankrupt us. Break Albert Gallatin’s thrifty heart. But you know, it’s an interesting idea.”

  34

  NASHVILLE, FALL 1802

  Andrew Jackson was attending a flogging on the square at Nashville when Ed Duggan rode in from the south, blew a great blast on the ferry horn to summon the craft, crossed the river, and led an exhausted horse ashore. The day was bright and fresh, the heat gone, real cold not yet come, brisk and lively; doubtless you could hear birds if this miscreant weren’t screaming so loudly. Jackson took no pleasure in seeing a flogging, though a good number of people always gathered to watch, fewer than you’d find at a hanging, but still a good crowd. He was here because he was a judge and he ordered floggings, including this one, and a man who ordered them ought to witness one occasionally.

  So here was this burly scoundrel who’d sliced off his wife’s ear in a drunken rage lashed to the flogging post, which was next to the pillory in front of the little log jail that itself was tucked around behind the one-room courthouse, which also was of logs but much grander. Back east they had prisons, but here on the frontier, well, you couldn’t keep a man for a year or two in that little jail, the sheriff’s wife having to cook his meals. Hang him or flog him or brand a big T for thief in his cheek, or maybe give him a couple of hours to get out before the tar and feather crowd got hold of him … . The sheriff was swinging the cat right fiercely, each blow now bringing blood, making a solid thwack that the crowd echoed with a sort of collective grunt, the fellow screaming and blubbering and calling his wife’s name.

  Imagine … he’d accused her of infidelity, she not yet thirty and the mother of seven, poor woman barely able to keep her children fed what with her husband mostly drunk and rarely working, said he’d slice her up so no man would look at her again. She’d come to the courtroom holding a cloth to the wound, likely it would run serum and pus for the rest of her life. Well, Jackson would have hung him if he could, this was a gallows bird for sure, but mutilation wasn’t a hanging offense. Too bad, too—would’ve rid the world of someone the world didn’t need. And here he was blubbering and howling, typical coward, what you’d expect, a man beat his wife—

  “General, this here’s important, I believe you’ll want to attend to this—”

  Jackson spun about. Colonel Hays was there with a chunky little fellow whom it took Jackson a moment to recognize as Ed Duggan, looking trail whipped to a fare-thee-well. Ed was a riverman—flatboats running downstream all season. On his last run he’d had twenty bales of Jackson’s cotton.

  “They’ve closed the river, General. Say we can’t trade out of New Orleans no more.”

  “Who has? What a
re you talking about?”

  “French, I reckon. Spanish’d never have the nerve to do it on their own. There were fifty flatboats moored to the bank when I left and more coming. Spanish say they ain’t going to let us land a single pound. Taking their orders from the Frenchies, don’t you see. So anyway, I figured I’d better get on up the Trace and see what we’re going to do about it.”

  Do? Jackson’s mind was churning. Somehow, he’d expected this—known in some way that sooner or later it all would boil over, the Spanish overstepping, French moving in—why, it was certain. And he realized he welcomed it. This meant war and it was high time Americans went down and made New Orleans their own. He didn’t know a lot about international doings, but he knew there was a time in any set of affairs, man’s life, his courtship, the deals he strikes, the growth of his state—well, the moment comes when you’re on the flood and it’s time to storm ahead, time to act, seize the high ground, win your woman or your plan or your state. He reckoned it couldn’t be so different when nations tangled.

  War … and overdue at that, way overdue. The damned dons had been lording it over us for years, stifling our trade, claiming the river because they controlled its mouth when everyone knew it was ours! And the French would be a hundred times worse, and this was just the action to prove it. Spanish knew better than to go too far. This was a French trick, them pushing the dirty work off on the Spanish. Close the river, then when we take over we can claim we’re just holding the status quo. Well, by God, we’ll see about that!

  “Bob,” he said to Colonel Hays, “better start getting your regiment ready. Get hold of Brigadier Scorsby—he should be alerting all the regiments. Send word to the eastern regiments too. We need to be moving. We’ll need Kentucky and Ohio in on this. I’ll see the governor in the morning, then head right on up north, start lining it all up. Tell everyone you talk to, we ain’t going to stand for this.”