"What in tarnation are the limeys up to?" Clemens demanded. "I thought they'd do some shooting and burning for show, but if they're on your heels"—and the ever-swelling racket of gunfire made that obviously true—"they must be after something bigger. But what?"
"Damned if I know," the reporter said. "Whatever it is, who's going to stop 'em?"
"City Hall?" Sam mused. He shook his head. "No, too much to hope for—and if they shoot Mayor Sutro, the city gets stronger." And then, almost with the force of divine relation, he knew, or thought he did: "My God! The U.S. Mint!"
"I don't know." Herndon took another slug of whiskey. "You can't imagine what it's like out there. All fire and smoke and chaos and people shooting and people running and people screaming and horses screaming and the only ones who have any notion of what they're doing or where they're going are the Marines."
"You sound like a man talking about the devils in hell," Clemens said.
"You aren't far wrong," Herndon said. "Listen, if they are after the Mint, it's not far from here—down on Mission, by Fifth." He swayed where he stood. Shock? Whiskey? Some of both? Probably the last, Sam guessed. The reporter gathered himself. "They'll be here soon. That's not good."
"Have to get the story," Sam said, and pushed outside past Herndon. People were still dashing every which way, some with weapons, some without. And then, almost without warning, they weren't running every which way. They were all running east, with rifle fire lashing them on. Every so often, someone with a rifle or pistol would pause to send back a shot or two. After that, he'd run some more.
Except one of them didn't run any more. Instead, he fell, clutching his chest. A moment later, a skinny little man in an unfamiliar uniform not far from Confederate butternut dashed up and bayoneted him to make sure he didn't get up again. Then he yanked the long, bloody bayonet free and aimed his rifle at Sam Clemens.
Time stretched endlessly. As if in a dream, Sam raised his hands to show he was unarmed. The Royal Marine's face was sweaty and smoke-stained. His scowl showed very bad teeth. He couldn't have stood more than fifty feet from Sam: point-blank range. After a hundred years in which Sam's heart beat once, the Englishman turned the rifle aside and ran on.
All the starch went out of Clemens' knees. Even though the Marine had not shot him, he sagged to the pavement. Now, instead of once in a hundred years, his heart thudded a thousand times a second. More and more Royal Marines dashed past him. None of them gave him a second glance; no one could have imagined him a danger at that moment.
More gunfire rang out, not far to the east: the Mint, sure enough. He remained too dazed to feel proud of being right. Some of the British fighting men must have brought dynamite, for loud explosions smote the ear. "Move against them!" shouted a fellow in a captain's uniform: surely a volunteer. No one moved against them, no matter how he bellowed and carried on.
And then, quite suddenly, or so it seemed to Sam, the Royal Marines were running west where they had been running east. He went back into the Morning Call offices. "You know what this is?" he said to Clay Herndon. "It's the biggest goddamn bank holdup in the history of the world."
"How much silver and gold do you think however many British Marines there are could carry away?" Herndon asked in an awed voice.
"Don't know the answer to that one, but I'll tell you this: people are going to fight over the bodies of any who got killed the way lions fought over the Christians in the Coliseum," Sam said.
As the sounds of gunfire had once advanced through San Francisco, so now they retreated toward the Pacific. Half an hour after the Royal Marines departed from whatever was left of the U.S. Mint (by the smoke billowing up from it, not much), two natty companies of Regular Army infantry marched past the Morning Call offices in neat formation, sun gleaming from their fixed bayonets. Sam didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He took that bottle out of his desk and got drunk instead.
****
Brigadier General Orlando Willcox beamed at Frederick Douglass. "How good to have you restored to my table here once more," the commander of the Army of the Ohio said, raising his coffee cup in salute as if it were a goblet of wine. "A pleasure to see you returned to freedom, and a pleasure to enjoy your company again. Your very good health." He drank the unspirituous toast.
So did all the officers at his table, even Captain Richardson. "Thank you very much, General," Douglass said. "Believe me, I feel myself delivered, as were the Israelites from Pharaoh's bondage in the land of Egypt."
"You are a pious man, Mr. Douglass," Colonel Alfred von Schlieffen said. "This is in my judgment good. It will take you through hard times in your life more surely than will anything else."
Douglass eyed the German military attaché. What did he know of hard times? In his life, Prussia had gone from triumph to triumph, and now headed a German Empire that was surely the strongest power on the European continent. He had not seen his nation split in two, nor ninety percent of his own people, his own kind, trapped in bondage— like the Israelites indeed, Douglass thought.
But then he recalled having heard that Schlieffen had lost his wife in childbed. That was an anguish Douglass had never had to bear. He nodded judiciously. Schlieffen could know whereof he spoke.
"They brought you before Stonewall himself, didn't they?" someone asked. "What was that like?"
What had that been like? Stonewall was a name with which mothers in the United States, and especially Negro mothers in the United States, had been frightening naughty children for a generation. "When the Rebel soldiers took me into his tent, I told him I thought I had come before the Antichrist."
"As well you might," General Willcox said, and then, "Oh, thank you, Grady." The cook set on a table a large tray piled high with squab.
The succulently roasted birds went from tray to plates in next to nothing flat. Douglass snagged a couple for himself. Baked potatoes followed shortly. He went on, "The very strange thing was that Jackson's artillery commander—"
"General Alexander," Oliver Richardson put in.
"General Alexander, yes," Douglass agreed. "Shortly before my arrival there, he had likened me to the Antichrist."
Richardson nodded, as if he not only believed Alexander would say such a thing but agreed with it himself. Orlando Willcox asked, "And do you and the Confederate generals still hold this view of each other?"
Cutting up a potato and grinding pepper over it, Douglass paused before answering. Then, slowly, reluctantly, he said, "I, at any rate, do not. General Jackson is a man convinced of his Tightness and of his righteousness, but not the horrific figure of evil I had made of him in my mind."
Captain Richardson looked mischievous. "You'll notice, friends, Douglass says nothing of whether the Rebs changed their minds about him." He spoke lightly, so the words would be taken for a joke, but Douglass did not think he was joking. By the snide laughs that rose around the table, neither did a good many members of Willcox's staff.
"In fact, I believe they did," Douglass answered. "We shall never love one another. We may now know a certain respect previously lacking." He laughed a laugh of his own. "I cannot deny that General Jackson treated me far more respectfully than the Rebel soldiers who first took hold of me." He chuckled again. That rib didn't seem to be broken after all. He didn't know why not.
Down at the far end of the table, someone said, "They didn't worry about the Antichrist, I'll bet. They likely thought they'd nabbed Old Scratch himself." That got another laugh, this time one in which Douglass felt he could join. That major down there wasn't far wrong.
Colonel Schlieffen changed the subject, saying, "These"—he groped for the English word—"these doves are very good eating. And we have them often, so they must common be. Very good." He sucked the meat off a leg bone.
"Not doves, Colonel." Oliver Richardson enjoyed showing off how much he knew, though this was something any American schoolboy could have told the German military attache. "They're passenger pigeons, and yes, they are very common in this part o
f the country."
"Not so common as they used to be," General Willcox said. "When I was a lad in Michigan, the flocks would darken the sky, as the Persians' arrows are said to have done at Thermopylae against the Greeks. Swarms of that size are no longer seen: fewer forests here in the Midwest where the birds can rear their young than in the old days, 1 suppose. But, as Captain Richardson says, they do remain common."
"And, as Colonel Schlieffen says, they do remain very good eating." Douglass had reduced the two he'd taken to a pile of bones. He hooked another bird off the tray and devoured it, too.
Schlieffen said, "I am glad, Mr. Douglass, you here again to see, and to know that you are safe after being captured. I will not much longer with the Army of the Ohio stay, I think. I have learned much here, and am sorry to have to go, but I think it is for the best."
"I'll miss you, Colonel," Douglass said, and meant it. Like most Europeans he'd met, Schlieffen was far more prepared to accept him simply as a man, and not as a black man, than the common run of Americans. "But, if you're still learning things here, why go?"
"I believe," Schlieffen replied after a perceptible pause for thought, "that what new things I may learn by staying will be small next to the knowledge I have already gained."
Douglass needed a moment to figure out why the German had taken such pains with his answer. Then he saw: Schlieffen was saying he didn't expect the Army of the Ohio to accomplish much more than it had already done. He didn't expect U.S. soldiers to break through the Confederate entrenchments ringing them and to rampage across Kentucky. Had he thought they could manage something like that, he might have stayed to watch them do it.
And, in saying the Army of the Ohio was unlikely to accomplish anything more, he was also saying that army had failed. It still did not hold all of Louisville; its flanking manoeuvre had been costly but had not dislodged the Rebels. Even if it did eventually dislodge the Rebels from Louisville, it surely could not launch any triumphal progress through Kentucky thereafter. Since triumph was what Blaine and Willcox had purposed, anything less meant defeat.
No wonder Schlieffen was so careful not to offend. His departure passed judgment on the campaign and on those who ran it.
Richardson said, "Whether he reckons you're the Antichrist or not, Mr. Douglass"—he was smooth when he wanted to be, smooth enough to use a title in public, no matter how hypocritically—"I'm surprised old Stonewall up and let you go instead of keeping you to trade for a Reb or something."
Douglass shrugged. "Had the decision been his, I do not know what he would have done with me—or to me. Had the decision been his, I gather he did not know what he would have done. He referred it to President Longstreet, however, who ordered my release. Having received the order, Jackson not only obeyed but treated me quite handsomely."
Better than you deserved, Richardson's face said.
Orlando Willcox sighed. "Longstreet was more astute than I had thought he would be. By releasing you so promptly and with such good treatment, he enabled the Confederate States to escape the odium that would have fallen on them had they sought to punish you for your views and actions over the years."
"Yes," Douglass said, and let it go at that. Martyrdom was easier to contemplate in the abstract than to embrace in the flesh.
From across the Ohio, artillery rumbled. "Confederate guns," Captain Richardson said, and grimaced. "We've done everything we could, but we never have been able to beat them down."
"The long range of modern guns makes this hard," Schlieffen said. "So we learned when we fought the French. When the guns you are shooting at are behind a hill or otherwise hidden out of sight, finding accurately the range is not easy."
"True, true," General Willcox said sadly. "During the War of Secession, you could see what you were shooting at, and what you could see, you could hit. Only twenty years ago, but how much has changed since."
"We do use up a lot of ammunition feeling around for where the other fellow is, and that's a fact," Richardson said. "A good thing he's doing the same with us, or we'd be in the soup."
"Who learns first how to find the range to the enemy's guns will a large advantage have in the war where this happens," Schlieffen said.
Nods went up and down the table. Oliver Richardson said, "When they're in sight, a rangefinder like the ones the Navy uses would do some good. But land isn't flat, the way water is. Guns can hide almost anywhere, and shoot from behind hills, as you say, Colonel. I'd like to see the boys in the ironclads cope with that."
The discussion grew technical. As far as Frederick Douglass was concerned, the discussion grew boring. Changing only the subject of the conversation and not its tone, the soldiers, hashing over the best ways to blow up their foes at enormous distances, might as readily have been steamboat engineers hashing over the best ways to wring a few extra horsepower out of a high-pressure engine.
Stifling a yawn, Douglass shifted in his seat. But before he could rise, General Willcox held up a forefinger. "Something I was meaning to ask you, sir," the commander of the Army of the Ohio said. "What was it, now? Oh, yes, I have it: during your captivity, did you have any occasion to speak with men of your race held in servitude in the Confederate States?"
Douglass settled himself firmly once more. "No, General, I did not. I wish I had had such an occasion, but it was denied me. My captors went to such lengths to prevent me from having any intercourse with my own people that, until I was returned to this side of the fighting line, I had all my meals from the hands of white soldiers detailed for the task. Appreciating the irony of having white servants at my beck and call perhaps more than the Confederate authorities would have done, I refrained from pointing it out to them, although I have every intention of prominently mentioning it in one of my future pieces on the experience."
"They were so afraid you'd corrupt their niggers, eh?" Richardson said. He found himself in a predicament that must have been awkward for him: Douglass had seen how he despised Negroes, but he also despised the Confederate States of America. Juggling those two loathings had to keep him on his toes.
"If, Captain, by corrupting you mean instilling the desire for freedom into the heart of any Negro"—Douglass stressed the proper word—"upon whom I might have chanced, then I should say you are correct. Should you desire to construe the word in any other sense, I must respectfully ask that you choose another instead."
"That is what I meant, close enough," Richardson said. Douglass sighed a small sigh. No point to taking it further. None of the officers at the table, not even General Willcox, had noticed that Richardson had called Douglass' brothers in bondage niggers—had, in effect, called him a nigger, too.
No. Colonel Schlieffen had noticed. The mournful eyes in that nondescript face held sympathy for Douglass. Schlieffen, of course, was a foreigner. None of the U.S. officers at the table had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Frederick Douglass wished that surprised him more. Had he really escaped from captivity after all, or only from the name of it and not from the thing itself?
****
Brakes squealed, iron grinding against iron. Sparks flew up from the rails, putting General Thomas Jackson in mind of distant muzzle flashes seen by night. The train was a special, laid on by order of President Longstreet. No conductor came down the aisle shouting, "Richmond! All out for Richmond!" Jackson's was the only Pullman behind the engine and tender.
Gaslights turned the Richmond and Danville Railroad depot bright as day. Under that yellowish light, a captain stood waiting. He sprang to attention when Jackson emerged from his car. "Sir, I have a carriage waiting for you right over yonder. You're in less than half an hour later than you were scheduled to get here; President Longstreet will be waiting up for you."
"Very well—take me to him," Jackson said. Part of him—the frivolous part he'd been fighting all his life—wished the train had been hours late, so Longstreet would have gone to bed and he would have been able to spend the night in the bosom of his family and to see the president in th
e morning. But duty came first. "The president would not have summoned me had he not reckoned the matter urgent. Let us go without delay."
The captain saluted. "Yes, sir. If you'll just follow me—" As he'd promised, the carriage waited just beyond the glow of the gaslights. He stood aside to let Jackson precede him up into it, then spoke to the old Negro holding the reins: "The president's residence."
"Yes, suh." The driver tipped his top hat, clucked to the horses, and nicked the leather straps. The carriage began to roll. Every so often, Jackson saw men in uniform on the streets of Richmond. But he might well have done that in peacetime, too, here in the capital of his nation. From the spectacle that met his eyes, he could not have proved the Confederate States were at war.
"Did you have a good trip, sir?" the captain escorting him asked.
"Middling," he replied. "As travel goes, it went well enough. I should be lying, however, if I said I was eager to leave Louisville with the fight unsettled." He glared at the young officer as if it were his fault. As he'd hoped, that glare suppressed further questions until the carriage had rattled up Shockoe Hill to the presidential mansion.
"Good to see you, General," G. Moxley Sorrel said, as if Jackson had come round from the War Department rather than from Louisville. "Go right in, sir. The president is waiting for you." That was out of the ordinary. Jackson couldn't remember the last time he hadn't had to cool his heels in the anteroom while Longstreet finished dealing with whoever was in his office ahead of the general-in-chief.
This time, Longstreet was going through papers when Jackson came in. "You made good time," he said, rising to shake Jackson's hand. "Sit down, sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Can I shout for coffee?"
"Thank you, Your Excellency. Coffee would be most welcome." As usual, Jackson sat rigidly erect, taking no notice of the chair's soft, almost teasing efforts to seduce him into a more relaxed posture. Longstreet didn't shout for coffee; he rang a bell. The steaming brew appeared with commendable promptness. Jackson spooned sugar into his cup, sipped, nodded, and said, "And now, sir, may I inquire what was so urgent as to require removing me from the sight of my command without the battle's end in sight?"
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