Rebels of Babylon (25 page)

Fanny was much praised by my wife, which was a pleasant change. My darling had not taken to her at first. An orphan she was, as I myself had been. As lovely as an angel dressed for Sunday, she hardly seemed of this hard world to me. Her voice might have humbled the cherubim and seraphim, for she made a hymn sound gentle as a love song, without suggesting any lack of faith.

Fair she was, our Fanny, with her auburn hair a tumult. Swift to obey, she was also quick to learn. Privilege had not been her domain and the poor thing lived in fear of being cast out, no matter how often I told her that was nonsense. She worked in the kitchen and washed our clothes in the tub in the backyard, applied herself to her letters to make up for years of neglect, looked after John when Mary was out and studied the art of the seamstress in my darling’s shop. All vigor and glow our Fanny was. The life in her was pretty as May and heady as September.

But I must not be partial.

Other doings there were in plenty, with Mr. Gowen and his ilk still switching between offers to buy out the colliery holdings left us by Mr. Evans and clumsy threats of what might happen should we not agree to sell. Cowed they were now by Matthew Cawber’s backing of our company, for he was the terror of all Philadelphia.

Matt’s letter to me was confident. He wrote the lines himself, as the grammar and spelling attested. There was no word of Dolly Walker, whose partnership with us was best kept silent. Instead, he spoke of the boundless fortunes we were set to make, during the war and after, from the black gold of the anthracite fields.

I will admit that I do not object to owning earthly riches. I know the Bible warns us of wealth’s perils, but might it not be a sign of heavenly favor?

Reading the letters from my wife a second time, I paused over the interest Mahantango Street society took in us. There
had been plentiful invitations at Christmas, before I embarked upon my latest journey. Now Mary had been invited to join a number of clubs and circles. She was asked to tea by ladies for whom her shop provided dresses. I know that such behavior is hypocrisy, that only our wealth improved us in their eyes. But then I think of England and Wales, where not even money gives a man a chance. Oh, grab his funds the high and mighty will, selling off ruined estates at monstrous prices. They will let him make a fool of himself by aping a country gentleman and sponsoring undistinguished hunts for a bankrupt viscount’s convenience. But he will never be master of the hounds, nor will he be fully master of himself. If he sits at a baronet’s table, it will be on account of the nobleman’s debts or a favor badly wanted, and his dinner companions will be the dreariest squires, not a London set. He may, if he is fortunate, be permitted to marry off his loveliest daughter to a penniless, tided fop in broken health.

No, I will take America and hypocrisy, if it means my wife can sit at the finest tables. We have our snobs, but they do not have tides. And loathe to admit it though they may be, even their money comes from sweat and not a dead king’s favor. It is the fluid nature of our society that I like, as if it were a matter of hydraulics. A forceful man can rise and lift his loved ones. If Matt Cawber and I are not good enough for the highest families of Philadelphia society, our children will be. In Britain, the boy is doomed as his father’s son.

Suffice it to say that all were well at home. Oh, how I longed to be there with my darling! My resolve to resign my commission, to turn my back on the war and death, redoubled. I had done my part for my new country. And any love I ever had for soldiering had perished during the Mutiny, in India. I was nearing life’s meridian, like that Italian fellow lost in the forest, the one who was such a fibber. Twas time to devote my remaining years to my family and our business. To make a proper gentleman of myself, to read good books and take my darling out riding in our carriage.

I did not need more scars.

I needed to go home. As soon as I had done with Susan Peabody. I promised myself that even Mr. Lincoln would not win me over again. I would not ever purpose war, nor would I be its servant.

BUT WAR WOULD not release me quite so easily. My dear friend, Mick Tyrone, was near despair.

He began well enough, describing his observations about medical matters. The physiognomy of the brain had become his consuming interest and his work as a wartime surgeon allowed him to study the living organ revealed, to compare the matter’s conformity to the contours of the skull. His experiments led him to question the laws of phrenology, which I thought bold. Of course, much that Mick believed was hard to credit. He speculated that bodily chemicals rule our deepest emotions—what you and I term our “souls,” although Mick has no patience with the word. And he did not think our wills were all our own.

Twas when Mick got to the war itself that his temper scorched the page. Even after General Grant was restored to his command, the campaign lagged. Our troops advanced into Mississippi, only to withdraw again. The desultory affairs that trailed our autumn successes brought us no closer to victory. Vicksburg defied us proudly, interrupting strategy and commerce, with the results that Mick had witnessed just after Christmas.

General Sherman had taken up positions north of the city, where the Rebels had entrenched upon high bluffs. According to Mick, even a fool could have seen the formidable cost in lives that must be spent, likely for naught, in any assault upon the Confederate lines. But William Tecumseh Sherman was a fellow not shy of a fight. I had quite liked him, with his ginger hair and courage, as soon as I grew accustomed to his brusqueness. He was a lion on the field of Shiloh. But a general must not let his energies flank his judgement.

Leaving Mick aghast, Sherman ordered his men against the heights, hurling them forward over bad ground and expecting them to scale the bluffs in the face of Rebel volleys.

Our troops did not fare well.

Mick, who had to clean up after the butchery, was unforgiving. He cursed Sherman. Then he cursed General Grant for not keeping closer watch on his subordinate. Instead of bringing Vicksburg under siege, our soldiers had retired toward Memphis. Leaving a number of dead sufficient to raise the enemy’s spirits.

Had I been upon the field that day, I might have seen possibilities Mick’s eyes could not detect. He is not a soldier, after all. But as I read his lines I felt my heart sink. Along with my regard for General Sherman. The day would come when I would think well of Sherman again, when his fierce determination brought us victory. But on that morning in the St. Charles Hotel, I found myself so troubled that I had to fold away my letters and turn to the newspapers strewn about the room. Unlike a letter from a friend, a newspaper account need not alarm us. Journalism is like a minstrel show, with every feature exaggerated and morality relaxed for entertainment.

The newspaper of the day only worsened my humor. Hardly had I opened the pages of
The Daily Picayune
when I met an advertisement posted by Dr. Fielding, who had done his best to devastate my jaw. Thereafter, the contents worsened. The Rebel commerce raider, the
Alabama,
which I had failed to prevent from leaving the yards, had been active off Cuba. She had taken a number of Union ships as prizes and had sunk our gunboat, the
Hatteras.
Whenever I read of the triumphs of Captain Semmes, I blamed myself for failing to do my duty.

I scanned on past advertisements for a show at the opera house, which promised English, French and German airs, along with a comedy by Kotzebue and two vaudevilles. I took a bit of solace in discovering that the French consul had been dismissed by his own minister for “complicity with the Rebels.” The fellow must have been caught at something awful for the French to be embarrassed by his activities. I read that General Halleck had reversed an order of General Grant’s expelling the Israelites from his department. And our ironclad, the
Monitor,
had foundered in a storm.

Twas not a happy time for Mr. Lincoln.

The Daily Picayune
played up to both sides. While the columns described the Rebels as “our” troops, the scribblers did not gloat over Union losses and sought to please our occupation authorities. Whichever side won, the newspaper meant to be on it.

I read that incendiaries had been active, which I feared referred to my fuss of two days past. The port was busy as the world cried out for cotton. Ever more ships crowded into the wharves or waited along the levees. An Irishwoman had been arrested for drunkenness by the provost marshal’s men and patriotic citizens had staged a meeting in support of our Union.

There was not a word written about the murders of the past few days, nor was there a hint of negroes going missing.

A queer place New Orleans was. Everyone had his secret reasons for doing what seemed unreasonable.

The last of the coffee was cold in my cup. I rose up with a sigh. My splendid mood had been picked apart and I slogged back to my room.

The guard was no longer in front of my door, which did not help my temper.

He reappeared before I could enter my room, hurrying down the hallway and banging a lonesome chair with the butt of his musket. He knew he had been caught out.

Without waiting to close the distance between us, he cried, “I’m sorry, Major! I know I shouldn’ta gone off, I know it. But I if I hadn’ta gone, I woulda blown a hole right through my trousers.”

“Well, do not leave your post again, man. Unless you call for relief.”

“My whole insides was calling for relief, Major. I couldn’t wait a minute, or I woulda. I was loaded with double canister and lit.”

I did not require further details and went into my room.

Something was wrong. I sensed it, as an old soldier will do. There was no evident disruption, no sign of violence done. But certain I was that my traveling bag had been shifted, that the order of things was changed.

I dug into my baggage. Furiously.

My Colt was there. I saw no sign of tampering.

My letters of credit and authority to draw funds had not been stolen. Indeed, it seemed to me that my visitor had not found the item he sought. Whatever it might have been.

I should have sat me down and taken stock. Then I might have realized what had been taken. I should have possessed the presence of mind to count back through the letters I had left in the room. I might have seen that the note from the Navy captain had gone missing.

A pounding on the door robbed my attention.

It was Captain Bolt.

My demeanor was not welcoming.

“For God’s sake, man! I told you I was not to be disturbed. Until noon, at the earliest. Is the English language foreign to you?”

He shrugged, more baffled than concerned. “I didn’t think you meant
me.
”

I was about to lay into him like a cat-o’-nine-tails about the guard’s dereliction, when he announced, “I can’t say what it’s about, exactly, but it sounds like more’n one thing. Can’t say what, though. General Banks wants to see you down at the Customs House.”

“In good time, man. I have to—”

“I think the general means right now, Major. Judging by what he said. By the one thing he said, I mean. Although it sure sounded like there was more, I swear to God.”

I tell you, I was fuming. I had believed that the general and I had reached an understanding.

“And what, pray tell, was this ‘one thing’ he said, Captain Bolt?”

“Well, it was about that paymaster you were going on about. Seems he turned up dead this morning. Over in Jackson Square. With green-back dollars stuffed down his throat ’til he couldn’t breathe no more.”

“DAMN IT, JONES,” GENERAL BANKS WELCOMED ME, “you’re a menace to human life.” Standing in a lozenge of light fallen from a window, he locked his arms across his chest, flaring the skirts of his coat. The epaulettes on his shoulders arched like caterpillars. “It’s bad enough when you leave a trail of dead niggers behind you, but when you start killing my officers, that’s enough. That’s the end of it. No matter what that letter from Lincoln says.”

He burst into the artless motion of anger, fumbling with a box on his desk until he had retrieved a black cigar. Biting off its end, he spit the tip toward a cuspidor, missed, stabbed the roll of weeds into his mouth, plumbed his pockets in vain for a lucifer match, then hurled the cigar into a melee of documents.