1824: The Arkansas War (12 page)

They were spilled out of the bunks by the sergeants somewhere around four o’clock of the morning. Felt like it, anyway. It was sure and certain still dark outside.

“This is ‘morning’?” complained one of the soldiers. Softly, though, almost under his breath. The sergeants were definitely not in a joking mood.

Sheff shared the sentiment, but…

He reminded himself of the Book of Judges and—most of all—of a mob beating his father to death, and he kept his mouth shut.

By ten o’clock that morning, miles into the most godawful set of hills and hollows Sheff had ever seen, he was on his knees puking up what little food he’d had in his stomach. Cal McParland was kneeling right next to him, doing the same.

His feet ached, his legs felt as if they were burning from coals within, and the heavy pack on his back seemed like the Rock of Ages. They’d been marching since dawn, with the captain and the sergeants setting a murderous pace. At the start of the march, Sheff had been disgruntled that they hadn’t been provided with muskets—or, indeed, any sort of weapon beyond the knives they all carried in scabbards at their belts, which were really more in the way of tools than fighting gear. Now he was deeply thankful for it.

“Funny thing is,” McParland finally managed to half whisper, “I don’t actually got nothing ’gainst white men. Being’s I’m one myself.”

Sheff had wondered about that. “Why’d you enlist, then?” he asked, in the same strained half whisper. “Your family bean’t poor, like mine.”

Somehow, McParland managed a shrug under that huge pack. “Something of a family tradition, now. And…well, we like Arkansas. Got nothing against the United States, really. But if they come here, not being polite about it, we decided we’ll send them back.”

There was something about that answer that seemed awfully fuzzy to Sheff. But…

There was also something about it that would probably look real good, clarified up some. He thought he was finally coming to understand—really understand—what Abraham’s people felt when God led them into the Promised Land.

“On your feet!”
bellowed Sergeant Williams, trotting down the line of exhausted men. “Break’s over!”

Williams didn’t look any more tired than if he’d just come back from an evening stroll. Sheff envied him that ease, but mostly it just filled him with determination. If Williams could learn to do it, so could he.

He heaved himself to his feet, giving Callender McParland a helping hand as he did so. The white boy was a lot more slender than he was. That pack had to be just about killing him.

“Thanks,” McParland murmured. He managed something of a chuckle, once he was erect. “And will you look at these uniforms? Good thing they made ’em out of whatever this awful cloth is. Dirty as they are, least they bean’t torn.”

Sheff looked down at his own uniform, which was just about as dirty and scuffed up as his companion’s. There wasn’t much left of the new look it had had when he got it the day before.

“I don’t mind,” he said softly. “It’s still green, and it’s still a uniform.”

Williams came trotting back, whacking a few slow-movers with one of the fancy-looking sticks the officers and sergeants carried. A baton, Sheff had heard them called.

“Move it, move it, move it!”
he bellowed. “March is just starting, you lazy curries!”

He pointed with the stick to some mountains whose crest could just be seen from the hollow where the captain had ordered a brief rest for the company. “Before this march is done, you gotta be up there in the Bostons! And you will be, by God—or we’ll leave you dead on the road!”

Sheff took a deep breath, staring up at those mountains. Next to him, McParland did the same.

Blasphemy in the army, Sheff had already discovered, was pretty contagious. “Sweet Jesus,” McParland muttered.

“Just think of it as Mount Sinai,” Sheff murmured back.

“You’re crazy.”

“Maybe. But what I am for sure and certain is a nigger. And that looks like Sinai to me.”

The march lurched into motion again. For a few minutes, neither of them said anything.

Then McParland said: “People call me Cal. Can I call you Sheff?”

As exhausted as he was, Sheff thought that might be the most triumphant moment he’d ever had in his life so far. Not that he’d had many, of course, and this one wasn’t really that big. But he could already see a road of triumphs shaping ahead of him. If he just kept marching forward, no matter how tired he was.

“Yes,” he replied.

CHAPTER 8

County Down, Ireland

J
UNE 3, 1824

“You owe these people nothing, Robert,” said Eliza Ross. “That man, in particular.”

She lifted her teacup from the side table next to her divan and used it to point to his shoulder. “Except for half crippling you.”

The words weren’t spoken angrily, or even in a condemnatory tone. They were stated matter-of-factly, as someone might present another piece of evidence to be weighed when a conclusion is being drawn.

Her husband was standing at the window of the Ross family seat in Rostrevor that gave him the best view of the Irish countryside. The hand he’d been using to hold back the curtains belonged to the same arm his wife had indicated with the cup. For a moment, half smiling, he studied that arm. Then, took away the hand, letting the curtains swing back into place.

“Hardly that,” he murmured. “A quarter crippling, at worst. I can still use the arm, after all, and the hand’s fine. I just can’t lift much with it.”

He didn’t add, as he could have, that the arm ached frequently, especially in bad weather. His wife knew that already, and besides, that wasn’t really what was at issue anyway. Eliza was no more given to nursing old enmities than he was.

Still at the window, he turned to face her squarely. And, from old habit, clasped his hands behind his back, ignoring the twinge of pain the gesture brought with it.

“What did you think of the letter itself?” he asked.

She finished draining the cup, set it on the side table, and looked down at the paper in her lap. Two sheets, it was, both covered with script written in some sort of particularly heavy ink.

“His handwriting’s getting better,” she said, a corner of her mouth quirking a little. “Mind you, that’s not saying much.”

Her husband’s mouth matched the quirk with one of its own. “Amazing he does as well as he does, if you ask me. There’s only four misspelled words in the whole letter—and three of them can be debated. I’ve seen worse dispatches from English noblemen, much less an Irish emigrant with no more than a village education. Even in English, much less French.”

Eliza Ross picked up the sheets and held them closer to her eyes. She was a bit nearsighted. “And there’s that, too, Robert. Why does he write in French instead of English?”

It was a rhetorical question, of course. So she moved right on to provide the answer herself. “Because Patrick Driscol, born in Ireland, learned most of his letters while serving in Napoleon’s army. Because he’s a man who has been England’s enemy his entire adult life. For years, long before”—this time, she used the sheets to point to Robert Ross’s left shoulder—“he ruined your arm.”

Again, her tone was level, not accusatory. Just another fact, to be presented.

“True,” he agreed. “All true.”

She lowered the sheets back onto her lap. “Robert, I feel I must remind you that your standing within English society has become somewhat frayed, of late. If you accept this invitation…”

Firmly, her husband shook his head. “Don’t mince words, love. ‘Somewhat frayed’ hardly captures the thing. ‘Tattered as a beggar’s coat’ would do better.”

Eliza took a slow deep breath and then let it out in a sigh. “Well, yes. Among Tory circles, at least.”

She did not bother to add, as she could have, that for Anglo-Irish of their class, after the rebellion of 1798, “Tory circles” amounted to the only circles in existence. In Ireland, at least, if not always in England.

She didn’t add it, partly because it was unnecessary. But mostly for the simple reason that she didn’t care much. A bit, perhaps, where her husband no longer cared at all. But not much.

Abruptly, Robert Ross released the handclasp and strode—marched, almost—to the wall opposite the window. Hanging there, in a heavy and ornate frame next to the door, was an illustration.

A very odd one, to be so prominently displayed in such a house. The Ross family was an old and much-respected one among the Anglo-Irish gentry. Robert’s father, Major David Ross, had served with distinction in the Seven Years’ War. A still earlier ancestor, Colonel Charles Ross, had been killed at Fontenoy in 1745, during the War of the Austrian succession.

Their portraits, along with those of other distinguished ancestors, hung on many of the walls in the family seat. Along with, on another wall in the very room they occupied, all the distinctions accumulated by the current and most renowned member of the line.

Robert Ross himself, who had retired from the British army with the rank of major general. On that wall—Ross could have pointed to it with his left hand, were he willing to ignore the pain raising the arm would have caused him—were the sort of trophies that precious few officers had ever accumulated in the long history of British arms.

There was the gold medal he’d received after the Battle of Maida in 1805, the British victory in the Peninsular War that most reports ascribed to the decisive leadership of Colonel Ross, as he then was. Hanging next to it was the sword his fellow officers had presented him four years later, in 1809. Officially, it was another honor for Maida. But really, everyone knew, in appreciation for Ross’s actions and leadership during the terrible retreat to Corunna. His 20th Foot had more often than not been the rear guard in that retreat, holding off Soult and the French pursuers long enough to enable Sir John Moore’s army to reach the port and embarkation to England.

Next to it hung the gold medal he’d received for the Battle of Vittoria, and the Peninsular Gold Cross. And next to those, the Sword of Honor.

Other mementos were there, too, some of them personally meaningful if not as officially prestigious. Had he been so inclined, Ross could have covered the wall with his mentions in Wellington’s dispatches from the war. Quite easily. From his return to Iberia in 1812 until Ross was placed in command of the British expedition to North America in 1814, he’d led troops in every major battle in the Peninsular War except Toulouse. From 1813 on, following his promotion to major general, as a brigade commander. He was largely credited with having saved the British army from disaster at Roncesvalles and with having played a key role in the British victory at Sorauren.

A brilliant career, until the expedition to America and the repulse of the British at the Capitol. But, even there, Ross’s personal gallantry had excited British admiration. And since Pakenham had been in command, not Ross, when the British army was beaten again at the Battle of the Mississippi, no opprobrium attached to him for that defeat.

It might have, had he been forced to defend Pakenham from public censure upon his return to England, as he’d fully intended to do. But Pakenham’s valiant death at Lille in the final campaign against Napoleon had put paid to that. Another defeat, true, but Pakenham’s impetuous assault had delayed Napoleon long enough for Wellington and Blucher to trap the French army at Tournai and force the French emperor to surrender.

There were other honors on other walls, won by his predecessors, and portraits aplenty of the predecessors themselves. All of which made the illustration hanging by the door seem out of place.

Grossly so, in the opinion of many of the Anglo-Irish gentry who had, in the years since the wars, visited Ross at Rostrevor. Wellington himself had come once, some three years earlier. The moment he spotted the illustration he’d exclaimed, “Oh, dear God, Robert! Why do you have
that
hanging on the wall?”

Wellington had recognized it immediately, of course. Detested though it might be by most of England’s leading figures, the illustration was probably better known to the British populace by now than the portraits of any but kings and queens. First introduced to public attention in 1789 by Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, the founders of the British antislavery movement, it was a diagram of the slave-trading ship
Brookes.

It was a horrid thing, really. Which was, of course, its whole purpose: neatly and meticulously displaying, in the form of a top-down diagram, exactly how slaves were carried across the Atlantic. Lying side by side, like so many spoons nestled in a silverware drawer—or so much meat in one of the new tin-lined cans.

Of all the methods used by the antislavery movement to advance its cause, this single diagram had always been the most effective. Against it, the claims of slave traders that their business was a reasonably humane one were simply froth against a cliff. Its copy, though not often so finely drawn, hung in taverns and workingmens’ homes and lawyers’ offices all over Britain. Not to mention, by now, perhaps a third of its churches. Well over half of them, if one counted only the Dissenting churches.

After staring at the diagram for perhaps a minute, Robert said softly: “I owe Patrick Driscol nothing, Eliza. True enough. But I shall never forget what I saw in America. One memory, in particular, haunts me to this day. A man—black as he might be—with a collar around his neck. Like a watchdog’s collar, except the spikes faced inward, pricking the skin. The contraption is a common form of punishment for slaves, at least in Louisiana. The man cannot sleep without injuring himself—possibly even dying.”

“Yes, I know, Robert. You’ve described it to me.”

Ross smiled, a bit crookedly. “An obsession, perhaps. But I find as I age—I’m nearing sixty, you know, now much closer to my death than my birth—I find myself obsessing over the afterlife. And I wonder, almost every day now, what God will have to say about my life when my judgment comes.”

He was back to that soldierly handclasping. His head swiveled, to bring the wall of honors and trophies under scrutiny. “Will he really be impressed by all that? You can find the same sort of wall, I can assure you, in the houses and mansions of many generals in many nations. For many centuries now. Each of us claiming, as we meet gallantly on the field, that the Lord favors our cause.”

He looked away, back to the diagram. “Or will He present this to me? And ask me what I did in battle against
this
monstrosity? How much will the defeat of Napoleon weigh, against this?”

He heard his wife’s little laugh. “That damned Irishman! He’s corrupted your thinking, Robert.”

The retired general’s smile grew more crooked still. “Perhaps. But what do you think, dearest?”

She said nothing for a time. Then, in the same level and matter-of-fact tone: “I think that I am your wife. The same wife who rode a mule across more of Spain than I wish to remember, after you were wounded at Orthes.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “I remember. The weather was frightful.”

“Not as frightful as the sunny day you set sail for America. I was sure I’d never see you again, Robert. And I almost didn’t.”

He left off his examination of the diagram to look at Eliza. Her face was tight, perhaps, but quite composed.

“I am your wife, Robert. And you shall not leave me behind this time. If you are bound and determined to return to America, in response to”—she clutched the sheets in her right hand and held them up—“the damned Irishman’s request, I shall not stand in your way. But you will not leave me behind. Not again.”

“Surely you don’t fear—”

For the first time, some anger came into her face. Not fury, simply exasperation. “Oh, stop it, Robert! You know perfectly well why Driscol is asking you to visit him. After—what has it been, now? Nine years? Nine years of the most peculiar correspondence in the world, but none of it was accompanied by any suggestion that you might actually come to America yourself instead of simply giving him some advice from a distance.”

She brought her left hand to the sheets. Looking, for a moment, as if she might crumple them altogether. But, after a slight pause, she used the hand instead to flatten the sheets back out.

Then, smiling very crookedly herself: “And spare me the pious pose. I don’t doubt you mean it well enough. But I know you better than anyone. You’re like an old racehorse, looking at what might be your last starting gate.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous? Patrick Driscol is expecting a
war,
Robert. That’s why he’s asking you to come. No other reason. And…so are you.”

He unclasped his hands and waved the left. “I say again, ridiculous. It’s far too soon to predict any such thing, Eliza.”

“Predict? Of course not. But generals are not in the business of predicting outcomes. You’ve said that to me a hundred times if you’ve said it once. Generals are in the business of
gauging
outcomes. And you are gauging, Robert. Don’t deny it. Not to me.”

He didn’t. For the simple reason that he couldn’t. Major General Robert Ross was indeed gauging what might be the last war of his life. And the one that might—just might—be the one that saved his soul.

After so many decades, he was tired of duty to king and country. He’d paid that duty, paid it in full—and had the wounds as well as the honors to prove it. Wounds that ached everywhere he went, whereas the wall of honor was there only on the occasions he entered this room.

“Besides, there’s Ireland,” he murmured.

“What was that?”

“Ah…never mind.”