1862 (9 page)

For months, Hannibal had waited in torment and then could take it no longer. He ran away. His poorly thought out plan was to head north, where he thought he could be free and then come back to find Abigail and Joshua.

He had only been away for a couple of days before the slave catchers and their dogs had caught him. The catchers had let the dogs chew on him for a while, and then, just to make sure he got the point, hamstrung his right leg. Fortunately for him, they’d gotten falling down drunk by this time, and had only hacked at him with their knives and not crippled him like they’d intended. After that, they had flogged him until he screamed with pain and then passed out. He walked with a pronounced limp, but that was because he wished to. not because he needed to.

Hannibal had been sold again, and this time for very little money since he was a runaway and a cripple to boot. Drunken old son of a bitch Farnum had bought him and put him to work at the Farnum Plantation, a motley collection of poorly maintained buildings that Hannibal thought would embarrass a pig.

If Farnum had a virtue it was that both he and his whore of a wife were so drunk most of the time that little work was done on the farm. On the rare occasions when they were sober, they would take out their anger at being white trash on the slaves by beating them. Fortunately, this didn’t happen very often. Mr. Farnum liked to couple with Bessie, the only female slave in the bunch. This neglect was why Hannibal felt safe standing in a field and thinking instead of pretending to hoe the weeds. Mr. Farnum wasn’t particularly mean, just stupid. Mrs. Farnum, however, was shrill and cruel. She was particularly nasty to Bessie since she knew her husband was fucking the slave and not herself.

Hannibal made a decision. It was the most important one of his life. He would run away again. There was no hope in waiting for Lincoln and his soldiers to bring freedom. Lincoln and the North had failed. Hannibal knew that age would overtake him long before the North tried again. No, freedom would have to be taken.

Hannibal fully understood what had gone wrong the first time he’d run away. He had acted with his emotions and not with his brain. He knew he was intelligent and the leader of Farnurn’s Negroes. This time he would plan.

His primary mistake was in letting his absence be discovered so quickly that the chase began before he had gotten very far. This would not happen again. He did not particularly wish to harm the Farnums or the other slaves, who he knew were scared to death of the thought of leaving, but it would have to be. Each hour his absence went undiscovered would mean a couple of miles between himself and continued slavery. He speculated that a couple of days’ head start might even see him close to the Union army.

It had been ten years since he had been separated from Abigail and Joshua. He didn’t even know if they were still alive. Perhaps Joshua had been sold to someone else. Why not; he’d be about fourteen now. He had to find them. It was eating him alive.

The Farnums and the weaker slaves would have to die. He hefted the hoe and wondered just how it would feel to drive the blade deep into old Farnum’s bald red skull. He thought it would feel wonderful.

Attila Flynn explained himself clearly and carefully to Nathan Hunter and to a barely cordial General Scott. Flynn firmly believed in the old dictum that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Therefore, the United States, as well as being a haven for Irish immigrants, was firmly in the Irish camp whether it wanted to be or not. Nathan thought it was the other way around, but kept his counsel.

“People who are not Irish,” Flynn said, “have no idea of the depth of hatred that we feel for England. She has enslaved us over the centuries, deprived us of our right to worship in the true faith, denied us representation, and then starved us in an attempt to drive us out of Ireland.”

“Do you feel the famine was intentional?” Nathan asked incredulously.

“The blight that destroyed the potato crops for successive years was an act of God. The decision to withhold aid to the people of Ireland was an act of the British government. Are you aware that English landowners of Irish farms that did have successful crops actually exported foodstuffs to England and elsewhere?”

“No,” said Nathan. He caught General Scott watching Flynn carefully.

“Private charities tried to help us,” Flynn continued, “but they were overwhelmed. My mother died nursing my brother, who also died. My father just disappeared one day. I managed to lie and steal until I was old enough to enlist in the army. At least they fed me.”

“Then you served England,” Scott said.

“I would have served the Ottoman caliph and let him bugger me in the ass if he would have fed me. Yes, I served in the British army and wore their damned red coat.” He stood and whipped off his jacket and shirt. “Look at my back. See the stripes and scars? Sometimes I got flogged because I deserved it, but most of the time it was because I spoke funny, and the sergeants and officers didn’t like that. There were a number of us Irish in Victoria’s fucking army, and there are a lot of us veterans who’ve finally made it here to the States.”

“And that brings us to your point, doesn’t it?” General Scott said quietly. His animosity towards anything Irish had diminished on hearing Flynn’s story.

“Indeed it does, sir. I wish for America to raise an Irish army to fight the British.”

“But we do have an Irish Brigade,” said Nathan, referring to a number of Irish regiments from New York City. “And there are a number of Irish officers, perhaps even a general or two.”

Attila Flynn smiled. “Yes, just as there are Irishmen serving the Confederacy, although not in so many numbers as those who serve the Union. Fortunate you are that both Boston and New York are in the North. If more Irish had settled in New Orleans, like the rebel colonel Patrick Cieburne did before moving to Arkansas, then you’d have lost the war already. Don’t you wonder what a good Irishman like Cieburne is thinking of now that he finds himself an ally of England? He may not be a general today, but he will be tomorrow.”

“Let’s get back to your original statement,” Scott injected. “What specifically are you proposing?”

“Dear General Scott,” Flynn said, “while the Irish have joined on both sides to fight for their adopted countries, there are countless tens of thousands who have not. I wish Mr. Lincoln to do two things. One, I wish him to form an Irish army, not a mere brigade, for the sole and entire purpose of fighting England. They would not serve against the South. I believe you would have droves of volunteers.”

“And the second?” Nathan asked.

“I wish the North to actively subvert those Irishmen who are serving the South. Promise them amnesty, promise them farms, promise them anything, but get them out of the rebel ranks and, if not into ours, then out of the fight. I promise you that men like Patrick Cieburne are not sleeping well at night.”

“You know this Cieburne?” Nathan asked. Until this conversation he had never heard of Patrick Cieburne and he was reasonably certain General Scott hadn’t either.

“I served with him. We were both privates in fucking Victoria’s fucking army. Pardon my French, General. Right now he’s a colonel among a lot of colonels, but Patrick is both smart and a fighter. One more battle and he’ll come out a general. That is, if he lives, of course.”

“Have you discussed this with anyone else?” Scott asked.

“I tried to get in to see Lincoln and got nowhere, and I was almost thrown out on my ass when I tried to see McClellan. Hell, that’s the main reason I broke into Mr. Hunter’s room. The front door isn’t open to Irishmen all the time, but that just makes it a little more difficult.”

Nathan wondered if their cook and housekeeper, Bridget Conlin, had provided Flynn with access and information as to their aspirations. It seemed probable. He decided he really didn’t want to know, but he would be careful about what he said and did in Bridget’s hearing.

Scott looked at the clock on the wall. “Nathan, aren’t you supposed to be at the French embassy?”

“It can wait, sir.” It was New Year’s Day and a small reception was being held at the French embassy. Madame D’Estaing had personally invited Nathan.

“No,” Scott said with a satisfied look on his face. “I will continue to talk and exchange thoughts with Mr. Flynn. You go to the embassy and mingle.”

The New Year’s Eve that brought in 1862 had been celebrated fairly sedately in Washington, D.C. A few people got drunk, but most went to quiet parties if they went anywhere at all. The capital was in what some described as either a state of shock or premature mourning over the fact that it was faced with two enemies. One was only a couple of miles away and the other bound to appear on the Atlantic horizon at any moment, and that realization was sobering.

A few receptions were held on New Year’s Day, but they, too, were very decorous and proper. The Lincolns received a small group of well-wishers in the White House and then retired to their privacy.

Nathan Hunter had not been invited to the White House, but he had been invited to a buffet at the French embassy. On entering he was greeted warmly by Valerie D’Estaing, who made him feel like a lost but beloved relative. The ever-present Rebecca Devon was beside her, and Nathan wondered if they were attached, perhaps at the hip. He was wrong. As he got a glass of champagne and some small sandwiches, he found Rebecca filling her plate as well. They nodded and walked off together.

Nathan and Rebecca spoke of general things, beginning with the small and moving towards the complex. He was surprised and impressed to know that she understood the theories of Darwin and Marx, and had strong feelings regarding both of them. Most women he knew understood next to nothing about either man’s theories. Darwin’s book,
On the Origin of Species,
had come out in 1853, and had caused a stir. Traditional churchmen condemned it as being contrary to God’s word, while the more liberal were at least willing to think it over.

“Do you believe in it?” Nathan asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It just makes too much sense. When Darwin’s conclusions are compared with Owens’s findings regarding those creatures he called dinosauria, we must conclude that species change over time, even becoming extinct. As to the traditional view that they all disappeared in Noah’s flood, it seems improbable that so many great creatures could have roamed the earth at the same time as man without anyone noting either their presence or their passing.”

“And Marx?”

“He is both right and wrong. There is a struggle between the rich and the poor, the oppressors and the oppressed. But I do not agree with both him and Engels that capitalism will be overthrown. I agree wholeheartedly with Adam Smith’s laws of supply and demand. I only wish he wasn’t dead so I could write to him as I did with Marx. Of course, I had to sign myself as a man. I don’t know how he feels about women having brains.”

Nathan smiled. Rebecca Devon was indeed quite different. “And he responded?”

“Several times. But then I got argumentative about the slaves and he stopped answering. I believe that Negro slaves are the most persecuted people in this nation and must be uplifted. They must be freed.”

Now they began to differ. Nathan still felt that Lincoln’s election had caused the secession and the war, and that he had blundered by sending an unarmed ship to Fort Sumter. “An armed sloop would have been better. Perhaps it would have cowed the rebels into not seceding, but it would not have freed the slaves. That must come gradually, so they can be incorporated into our society.”

Rebecca shook her head vehemently. The tip of her scar that appeared above her collar had turned red. “It must come now and without hesitation. A man only has one life to live and it should not be as a man in shackles for any of it. No, I disagree with Lincoln because he isn’t firm enough. He must emancipate the Negro everywhere and let the chips fall where they may.”

“The Negro isn’t ready for freedom,” Nathan insisted. His discussion with Rebecca reminded him of similar talks with Amy. He found he was enjoying himself. “And besides, how would he free those in the rebel states? He cannot free what he does not control.”

“Then we must actively prepare the black man for his freedom. We prepared him for generations of a life of slavery, now we must work to change it. As to the other part of it, the fact that we haven’t conquered the South, well, that should be an even greater reason for winning the war.”

“But what if an emancipation proclamation costs us the border states?” It was an irony that slavery existed legally in states like Maryland, which was still in the Union.

“Mr. Hunter, there is no such thing as a man being half free. Yes, even if the border states do try to go their own way, the slaves must be freed.”

Nathan nodded. He thought he understood her passion for the cause. It had claimed her husband’s life, and now his sacrifice must be seen as worthy, otherwise his life had meant nothing.

While disagreeing with her on the slavery issue, he found her intellect both fascinating and charming. He also decided that she was nowhere near as plain as he’d first thought. She had large, intelligent eyes, clear skin, a trim figure, and the darkest, blackest hair he’d ever seen. She had a wide mouth that looked like it wanted to smile, but wasn’t ready to yet.

Nathan wondered if he’d see her again, or if their plain talking and his contrary responses had alienated her. He laughed. Perhaps he could find her a dinosauria bone and present it as a peace offering.

Neither Nathan nor Rebecca saw Madame D’Estaing watching their discussion. If she’d been a cat, Valerie would have purred.

   A disbelieving lookout on the two-masted bark
Maryann
was the first to see the forest of trees as it emerged over the Atlantic horizon. The
Maryann
was out of Portland, Maine, and on her way to Bangor. She was just on the inside of Penobscot Bay: and sailing towards the Penobscot River leading to Bangor.

The lookout’s first thought was that it was some kind of optical illusion. But then the blurred shapes that were flowing over the horizon and out of the mist took on substance. They were ships, scores of ships: and they were all headed towards the
Maryann
as they swept by Vinaihaven Island in the entrance to Penobscot Bay.