Read Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase Online

Authors: David Nevin

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical

Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase (15 page)

BOOK: Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase
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Horsby flushed redder. “No! Governor Sevier will decide
when we go and how we go, and then—and not before—he’ll call on you. They haven’t stolen nothing yet, don’t forget, and last thing we want to do is run off half-cocked.”
Half-cocked! With Andrew Jackson at their head? He felt like booting Horsby in the ass.
Now, the truth was that just the mention of John Sevier’s name got Jackson’s hackles to rising. Yes, the man was a great hero and all that; but, Lord ha’ mercy, he’d been trading on it for twenty years. Led the Tennessee mountain boys who whipped the British at King’s Mountain and saved the West. No small matter either. Jackson had had his own taste of the British as a boy in South Carolina and there was a scar on his head to prove it. As for Sevier, he hated Jackson, which showed you right there what a pig-headed old bastard he was, for he had no earthly call to hate, whereas Jackson had plenty of reason to hate him, the damned scoundrel … .
Pete Olive was on the front row listening to this twaddlemerchant from Knoxville. Had a bottle in his hand and from his face Jackson judged he’d not missed any opportunities to drink. “Well, how about that?” Pete yelled. “Ol’ Sevier wants us to lay back, do he? Sounds like you boys in East Tennessee have gone just a leetle soft. Hell, man, you’re in
West
Tennessée now. Out here we talk with the bark still on; out here stealing the government from good democratic yeoman just ain’t done!”
Over a roar of laughter, he shouted, “Let’s hear what the judge has to say.”
Jackson stepped forward, arms raised to quiet them. “Well, boys, don’t matter much what the governor says—”
“Now, see here—” It was Horsby.
Jackson spun on him. “That’s enough out of you, sir! Hold your tongue while I speak.” Horsby stared but didn’t answer.
Jackson’s voice went shrill when he was excited, but one thing for sure, no one had trouble hearing him. “Now, boys,” he shouted, “what matters is how you feel about them Federalists running our lives! These are the fellers who gave us
the Alien and Sedition Acts, throwing folks in jail for their words or their ideas. Aliens, now, they’re the enemy? Is there a man here older than ten who didn’t come from Carolina or Virginia or someplace? We’re all aliens.
“So who are these men back East trying to steal the election we won fair and square? Why, they’re the same folks who fought like dogs trying to deny Tennessee statehood. Remember?”
There was a roar. He was warming them, and my Lord, out here in Tennessee, the Federalists were easy targets.
“Same folks who denounced us when we had to fight Indians: Same folks talking about sticking with the original thirteen and cutting the rest of us loose! And those Dons down in New Orleans, Don Diego and Don Felipe and Don Fat-ass, strangling our trade, seizing our produce if we dare go down and ask, please,
seen-yor,
can we ship out a little wheat to starving Europe and hope to make a couple little pieces of gold—now, boys, you tell me, you hear anything from these Federalists about how they’ll stop such outrages? Go down the river, maybe, and clean the Dons out, drive ’em into the sea, let ’em swim to Cuba? Hear anything like that? These are the folks trying to steal our government.”
When he got going in a red meat speech, he could fire the boys right up. They were laughing and yelling, and he saw several bottles moving hand to hand.
“Tell you what else too. These are the same folks rolled out the red carpet for Mr. Gardoqui. You remember Mr. Gardoqui, don’t you,
Seen-yor
Gardoqui, Don Something-or-Other Gardoqui, come to offer a deal the Federalists in the East just couldn’t pass up, all the rich trade they could handle, stacks of gold in their countinghouses you couldn’t see over, and all they wanted was the right to close the Mississippi to our trade for twenty-five years—twenty-five years! Button it up and destroy the West, let it wither away to nothing, die on its feet, ripe for Spain to pick it off and make it her own.
“And what did they say back east? Remember? Why, they said, this is better’n a hot toddy in a snowstorm: And it went to the old Continental Congress, bless ’em, and seven
states—
seven states!
—voted in favor; and thank God it took nine to carry anything in that august body or we’d have had to fight Spain ourselves years ago. And that’s the attitude of New England and the Federalists and the same men who want to use a simple tie between two good Democrats as an excuse for denying the prize to either and keeping it for themselves; and, boys, what I’m here to say is that I don’t intend to stand for this. They try it, and I want to know right now if you’re with me or agin me!”
They were whooping and yelling and shouting, “Amen,” and “That’s right,” and “Let’s go stick a bayonet up their ass,” and “We ain’t going to leave it all on Virginia and Pennsylvania to clean up the mess. When do we march?”
Then Horsby bounced forward, almost pushed Jackson out of the way. He was waving his arms and shouting. “You men, listen to me, listen! They haven’t stolen anything. Talked about it but haven’t done it. They do it and believe you me, Governor Sevier will be more than ready to take action, and he’ll call on you, too, but it’ll be done in an orderly way.”
“You hear that, boys?” Jackson shouted. “Now
we’re
the disorderly ones, not the damned Federalists. And let me ask you something. You don’t suppose our good governor is being so cautious ’cause he’s got Federalist money backing all his land deals, do you?”
“Oh,” Horsby cried, “that is outrageous. Obscene. I’ll have to report that.” He pointed at Jackson. “You are a master of wild irregularity, sir, you’re famous for it, you—” He broke off, staring, as Jackson slowly turned to him.
Turned, his head sinking into his shoulders, filled with horror and amazement—
Irregularity—
Did he mean, could he
presume
—
Did he raise the terrible issue?
Did he
dare
?
Slow steps toward the scoundrel, head down and thrust forward, hands curling into fists, the pistol in his belt suddenly heavy against his belly … .
“Judge! Judge! Hold on.” It was Jack Coffee.
“Eh?” he asked, his throat swollen, felt as if he were strangling … .
“I don’t think he meant nothing personal.” Horsby was stepping backward. “You didn’t mean nothing personal, did you?” Coffee said to him. “Talking about this meeting, weren’t you?”
“Of course. The meeting is most irregular. It’s the governor’s prerogative to call out troops. Nothing to do with the courts.”
“See, Judge.” It was Pete Olive, suddenly sober. “He didn’t mean nothing.”
Horsby looked one to the other. “What are you talking about, personal? I didn’t say—” He broke off, suddenly pale. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.”
He put out his hand. “I give you my word, the reference was to a meeting I consider irregular if not extralegal.”
Jackson stared at him, the thrumming in his ears dying down, the taste of metal in his mouth bitter as gunpowder. He nodded, took the proffered hand, cleared his throat, and said rusty-voiced, “Extralegality is in my province, and I judge it does not apply to this meeting, nor is it irregular for free men to determine to defend their freedom. West Tennessee will march when it chooses. Kindly pay our respects to the governor and convey that message. Now, begone, sir.”
“Boys,” he said, the fire gone out of his voice, steady and collected, the voice of leadership, “we’ll march the minute we hear the Federalists actually try to appoint their own president. Soon as Monroe moves his troops. I want a solid one hundred men ready to march on twenty-four hours’ notice, rifle, sixty rounds, blanket, three day’s rations. Wagons to carry supplies. Two doctors and a chaplain. We’ll strike the Cumberland Gap, then north into the Great Valley—six hundred, maybe seven hundred miles all told, four to five weeks.
“And we’ll take back our government.”
WASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 9, 1801
Danny Mobry, alone in her drawing room with the view of the Capitol, studied and restudied the letter that quivered in her hands. She needed Carl for this and he was away, gone to Annapolis to test a new vessel with a new captain. The letter was terrifying, for it would shift her from spectator to participant in an insane national drama.
It seemed a mad dream that now, after all the storm and bombast, the vote in Congress that would choose the next president was only two days away and nothing had changed. Jefferson still had just eight states, one short of election. Six were for Burr. Two were divided, their votes canceled. Of course the six didn’t really want Burr; they wanted to hold fire till President Adams’s term ran out and then appoint their own president. Steal what they’d lost at the ballot box. One of the six was Delaware, controlled by the vote of its single congressman, James Bayard.
The letter quivering in Danny’s fingers surely came from Dolley, though it was not in her hand and was unsigned. But who else would write so, speaking for men bound to silence? Mr. Madison was pinned in Virginia at his father’s deathbed. Mr. Jefferson was here at Conrad’s boardinghouse, talking freely of government policy but silent on election issues, determined not to win office by making deals.
She reread the letter for the fifth time. It instructed her to see Mr. Bayard as the key figure. So great was his reputation for good sense that Federalists in both the undecided states, Vermont and Maryland, had agreed to act in concert with
him. Combined with his own state, this put three votes in his hand.
The sheets of paper seemed charged. Make him see the consequences, citizen bayonets ringing the Capitol. Ask him, it added, the following questions. Every time she read them her heart began to thunder. She, an anonymous young woman, should seize Mr. Bayard by the lapels and shake sense into him? It was terrifying, and yet she realized it made perfect sense. There are things that must be communicated unofficially, without records. Perhaps it was fitting that she, a nobody, should be the hinge point on which great events would turn. Carl had done enough business with Mr. Bayard to assure that he would meet them—and, perhaps there always was such a person as she who carried the message or made the point or applied the pressure in the midst of crisis and then disappeared unheralded.
She studied the letter for an hour and then, as instructed, touched a corner to a candle’s flame and watched it burn.
She was calm again. Anonymous she might be, but she had been appointed and she had a mission of high trust. And it struck her how far she’d come in the ten years since Carl had plucked her off the plantation. She’d been the princess of Bayou La Fouche then and confident she knew everything; and since had found she’d known almost nothing, as Carl brought her along step by step.
There was a power in her massive husband, authority of manner, wisdom, and judgment without which you didn’t succeed in the shipping business. He’d had his own brig on the Atlantic run when he was eighteen; now he had a dozen ships. Someone had sketched him then and she’d been surprised to see a slender boy grasping a ship’s wheel. Now he stood at three hundredweight and puffed when he walked, though he still moved and talked and thought with the quick urgency of the boy he had been.
So she was ruminating when she heard the front door crash open and his loud voice calling on Millie for beef and beer and a loaf of her fresh bread with a crock of butter and
hustle it on up to the family parlor, lickety-split. But when he burst into the room she felt a sudden fear. He stood with a slump, his face looked gray and exhausted, his hair floated in wispy strands like an old man’s; his fist was pressed to his chest.
“It’s nothing!” he roared. “Nothing that a pound of beef and three or four tankards of ale won’t cure, my dear. You know me, hearty as a damned goat; they’ll never kill me off.” He laughed that big laugh of his. “Why, what a waste to fold my tent and leave a wife like you behind. Give me a kiss, milady, and after a meal I’ll take you to bed and you’ll see”—he winked—“
feel
my enthusiasm.”
“Oh, hush, Carl,” she said as Millie came into the room with a tray. “You look awful. Here, sit down, tell me—”
“Nothing much,” he said, tucking a napkin in at his collar and taking a draught of ale. “The new brig’s a sound vessel, but she wasn’t fully outfitted. It was just a trial and then we hit one of those freak Chesapeake storms and had to run all night on a staysail till it blew itself out.”
“I hope you were under shelter.”
“Well, actually, the new skipper won’t do. Lost his nerve. God, I thought he was going to
weep
when it got bad. It was infecting the crew, mostly new boys, you know. We’d already lost some rigging, we got the staysail set, and here comes some fool in a sloop running wing and wing before the wind and damn near rams us. When he’s alongside, his mast goes, sounds like a cannon, his rigging’s overboard, and then he’s gone in the gloom. I look around and my captain is all white in the face and shaking: Can you believe it? So I backhanded the silly bastard into the scuppers and took the wheel myself and ran through the night. Eased off around dawn and we brought her on in.”
“For God’s sake, Carl, you had the wheel all night?”
“It was fun—like the old days. A little cold though, taking green water over the bow, spray riding a winter wind. Yes, it was cold, all right. Ice forming on the wheel, that sort of thing. But not really bad—”
He coughed heavily, hand pressed to his chest. “Touch of pleurisy, I’m afraid, bit of ague, what have you. Nothing to it. C’mon upstairs. I’ll prove I’m in top form.”
“Oh, Carl,” she said, but she had to laugh. Still, he was so big and now, wolfing his slab of beef, smearing butter on Millie’s soft bread, washing it down with ale and calling for more, he’d gain a few more pounds. Where would it end?
When she told him of the letter his face took on the firm, rather calculating look he had when dealing with their ships. “Bay Bayard will meet, I’m sure. He’s too smart to pass up any overture. But he won’t give you much satisfaction; listen but keep his own counsel. Plays ’em very close to his vest.”
“If he listens, will he act?”
“Well, he’s not at all a fool. I guess it depends on how hard Federalist fears and ideology grip him.”
“When you and Dolley talked to him—”
“He was courteous, not cordial. Didn’t like having a woman lecture him. But that was a month ago; there was still plenty of room for maneuver then. Now …”
In a flurry of notes hustled about by messengers on foot, Maggie Smith offered her living room as neutral ground once more, and Mr. Bayard said he would make time to come. Carl still had that gray look and she wanted to take the carriage the four blocks to Maggie’s house, but he insisted on walking.
Sam Smith emerged from Conrad’s boardinghouse as they passed. He was cleaning his teeth with a gold pick that he hastily slipped into a waistcoat pocket when he saw them. Sam had been a commercial power in Baltimore before Maryland sent him to Congress, and they did even more business with him than with Mr. Bayard. Danny liked him. He always bowed over her hand and clicked his heels, which reminded her of those elegant Frenchmen at home in New Orleans but amused her because he so clearly wasn’t an elegant Frenchman. A hearty, solid man with pale hair and pale blue eyes, he radiated power. Now his full hatred was turned
on Burr for repudiating that first letter after Sam published it. He willingly joined their visit to Mr. Bayard.
Danny had met the Delawarian but wondered if she would have recognized him on the street; now, sitting around the polished whist table in Maggie’s drawing room, a plate of cakes and glasses with a sherry decanter in place, she saw why. He was nondescript, remote, somehow inconsequential.
“Bay,” Sam said, “do you remember Andrew Jackson?” Bayard shook his head and Sam said, “Served a term as a Tennessee congressmen, I believe, and sat in the Senate for a while. No great shakes as a legislator, but a fiery young devil and a born leader of men, I’d say.”
“Yes, by George, I do remember him! Tall, skinny youngster? Wild-eyed frontier Democrat, I recall. Seems to me he even voted against a resolution of thanks to General Washington. Said it was too royalist. Imagine that!”
“Well, Enoch Bass of Tennessee tells me Jackson has pulled a small army together in real military style and has ’em on standby and ready to march. If election theft goes forward.”
Bayard frowned. “Yes … that could be very dangerous.”
It was time to assert her own role here. Without much thought, Danny said, “That’s just why I asked you—”
He wheeled on her. “I
understand
, madam. That’s why I’m here.” He looked at her with a force quite unlike his remote manner so far, and with a jolt she realized she had seriously underestimated him. This man was a major personality; at once she understood why Vermont and Maryland had chosen to place themselves in his hands.
“So, madam, just what did you have in mind?” His voice was harsh as if pressing an advantage in debate, and at this her tremors passed and she was very angry. She stared at him till his eyes fell; then she described the letter.
“Anonymous?” Bayard said.
“Unsigned.”
“So you don’t really know …”
“Don’t be silly, Bay,” Sam said. “I can tell you it describes
democratic sentiment perfectly. You’re sitting on a powder keg, my friend, and I hope you can persuade your colleagues to smoke their pipes elsewhere.”
Bayard sighed. “You know,” he said, “some of us aren’t so radical. Jefferson could yield a little, give us a few guarantees, and maybe he could swing it.”
Sam shook his head. “He won’t bargain for the office. That’s Mr. Burr’s style.”
“Burr isn’t so stiff-necked, you mean.”
“I mean the man is a mountebank:”
“Oddly enough,” Bayard said, “that’s what Hamilton says.”
Alexander Hamilton’s face, with its fine features, flashed into Danny’s mind. She’d danced with him one night. He was secretary of the treasury, and Carl had just fetched her from New Orleans. She was seventeen, perhaps, or eighteen, green still but not so green she didn’t recognize the way he’d looked at her. He was striking and danced with a muscular power, and she’d felt herself being swept toward him. Shaken, she’d sought out Carl and stayed close to him through the evening, and when she’d seen Mr. Hamilton a week later he’d merely bowed and passed on. But she hadn’t forgotten that vivid force.
“He’s a New Yorker,” Bayard said. “Ought to know Burr if anyone does. Says Burr has no character and Jefferson has too much. He may be right about Burr, but he’s wrong on Jefferson. It would tear my heart out to vote for that man. It’s not that he doesn’t love his country—he does—but he’s a zealot entranced with the dreams of France and its revolution, unable to see the disasters that would follow when he imposed it here, blinded by arcane philosophy.”
Danny snorted. “Democracy is hardly some arcane philosophy. Seems to me Alex knows both men a bit better than you do.”
Bayard stiffened. “I know Mr. Jefferson well enough. Don’t waste advice on me; advise Mr. Jefferson it’s time he showed some Burr-like pragmatism.”
It wasn’t Danny’s place to argue such a point, but Sam said, “He won’t do it. And he shouldn’t. He must enter office with a clean slate; no bargains, no deals. If your people are willing to destroy the Constitution over this, so be it.”
Danny hesitated, feeling in very deep water. A tremor in her voice, she said, “I was sent here to ask—”
He whirled on her. “With all respect to Carl, I doubt you have any real authority.”
Oh, is that so! Immediately her trepidation vanished. “I speak for very highly placed persons, sir! Informally, yes, but informal communication is common when great issues are at stake.”
“Pshaw!”
She felt calmer and stronger every minute. “I’m only a messenger,” she said, “but wise men listen to messengers.”
That jolted him. He was silent as she sketched the dismal facts. Armies forming to restore democracy! Didn’t he already know this? At last, mouth twisting, he nodded.
“Then, sir,” she said, “let me ask what I was charged to ask. When the soldiers of democracy come, who will fight for you? Will Federalist supporters come out to die so you can steal the presidency?” Her raised hand stopped his protest. “Will the army fight for you? How big is it now—three, four thousand men, mostly on the frontier? They’ll be anxious to fight armed citizens who are only trying to preserve democracy? Will they follow General Wilkinson? Can you trust him? Do you doubt he’ll make an arrangement to his own advantage?”
She drew a deep breath. “If you take it by guile, you must keep it by force. Oh, sir, do you have that force at your command?”
Bayard’s eyes glittered with anger. “Carl,” he said, “I see you have married an orator.”
Carl had been coughing into a handkerchief. He looked up and said, “Well, sir, the truth gives her power.”
There was a long silence. Then Bayard stood, bowed, and left without another word.
Danny was crushed. “I made a mess of it, didn’t I?”
BOOK: Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase
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