The Seekers (37 page)

When he sobered up and demanded his rake and hoe, a light touch of the cat convinced him to accept the tools of a carpenter’s mate instead.

Boston had an ambivalent attitude about
Constitution.
She would sail against the British if war came—and Bostonians detested that idea. Yet the locally built warship remained a source of intense civic pride.

Alas, there seemed little chance of serving aboard the city’s own vessel. In August,
Constitution
had cleared the Virginia Capes, bound for the dangerous waters along the French coast. She was carrying the new minister to France, Mr. Barlow and his family. The
Republican
had run an item about it.

But as Gilbert said, the Boston ship was only one of six frigates now in service. Perhaps Jared could find a place on another. The thought of it—of laying Aunt Harriet’s convictions to rest—put a glow in his eyes—

Abruptly, the glow faded. Gilbert noticed. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you really think they’d take me? I have no experience with ships.”

“Nor do half their recruits. You’ll learn, and quickly. The life’s hard. But most American captains aren’t the martinets their British cousins are—and there are fewer cruel and unreasonable punishments for breaches of discipline. There
is
a real reason why English seamen desert and wind up on our ships, you see.”

He scrutinized his nephew.

“Of course, in any service, one’s expected to obey orders. As I’ve said before, you’re much like your mother in some respects—”

“Aunt Harriet keeps reminding me of that.”

Gilbert frowned, then shrugged off the retort. “The fact must be faced, Jared. It would be folly to consider the navy if you feel you couldn’t do what’s expected of you.
Without
resentment.”

More moderately, Jared said, “I can follow orders, Uncle.” He hoped it was the truth.

Gilbert’s expression softened. “I’m heartened to hear you say it. Perhaps life in this house hasn’t been a fair test of that.”

All at once Jared felt as if fetters had dropped from him. He recalled all the times he’d lounged along the Boston piers, watching the tall ships running in through the island channels, homeward bound from faraway ports. He’d never imagined that sort of life for himself. He was astonished at his oversight.

With enthusiasm, he declared, “I think the whole idea’s wonderful. Please write the letter tomor—did I say something wrong? You’re smiling.”

“For no sensible reason. You said nothing wrong.”

Absently, Gilbert passed a pale hand across his brow. He walked to one of the windows overlooking the Common.

Jared sensed an abrupt and extreme tension in his uncle. Gilbert’s slow pivot from the window suggested physical labor. His eyes were sad, remote—as if he’d looked outside and gazed on something other than the Sunday evening darkness.

The boy waited, his hair glinting bright as metal in the radiance of the library lamps. He actually saw his uncle’s eyes return from whatever private vision had bemused him—return and focus on Jared’s face—and still with that sad air.

“I repeat, I had no reason to smile. I was struck by a thought, that’s all. How everything changes and nothing changes. Some”—his voice grew firmer as he composed himself—“some years ago, in this same library, I offered to write another letter for another”—he hesitated; Jared contained his surprise at the glitter of tears Gilbert quickly dashed away with the back of one slim hand—“another man, in the misguided hope I could redirect his life. I’ll tell you the whole story one day. But not this evening. The—the dinner was quite tiring.”

Jared accepted the falsehood in silence. Somehow he knew it was the recollection, not the argument about war, that had unsettled his uncle.

Gilbert went to his nephew. Put an arm around him. “I trust I’ll be more successful with the second attempt than I was with the first.”

He removed his hand, averted his head.

“Now—”

Again the broken voice.

“It’s best we retire, I think.”

The moment Amanda heard the news at the dinner table, she wept—and refused to stop when Harriet ordered it. Harriet marched the little girl from the room and whipped her long and hard.

Yet Jared soon noticed that once he and his uncle announced their joint intention, Harriet treated him with unexpected cordiality. She was attentive, cheerful and permitted him to take as many holidays from the academy as he pleased.

He knew why. She was delighted at the idea of getting him out of the house.

Ordinarily, he might have hated her all the more. But he didn’t because he was intoxicated by the winds of freedom he was scenting all at once. Strong, clean winds that blew frustration and unhappiness out of his life at last.

As the year 1812 opened, the inflammatory talk from Washington grew hotter still. Except in New England, the country seemed to be in a ferment of anticipation—

“Canada! Canada!”

“Free trade and sailors’ rights!”

“SHOW THE DAMN BRITISH ONCE AND FOR ALL!”

Jared fully appreciated that in a war, men died. Yet he was young enough to accept the possibility without worrying too much about it. In return, he would escape from Beacon Street. He was getting the better end of the bargain, he felt.

If he stayed under Harriet Kent’s thumb much longer, his spirit would wither and perish altogether—

Or erupt in some terrible act of rage and rebellion that could mar his life forever, as Gilbert said. By going to sea, he might escape all that.
And
answer some fundamental questions about himself.

Buoyed by a new sense of confidence, he found his fear lessening.

War was like that rotting mackerel in the moonlight, he decided. So long as you stood far enough away to miss the stench, it gleamed with considerable attraction.

I
T WAS MID-MAY BEFORE
Gilbert received a reply to his letter to Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton. The secretary apologized for his delay in answering, but as Mr. Kent could well appreciate, pressing matters occupied the department. Gilbert and Jared both understood the nature of the pressing matters.

Regrettably, Hamilton said, no appointments for midshipmen were available at the moment. Should Mr. Kent’s nephew still wish to serve, he would have to do so as a ship’s boy, receiving six dollars per month for an enlistment of one year. Mr. Kent would also understand that Mr. Hamilton could provide no information concerning the whereabouts of the larger United States vessels, but with luck, one of the frigates might soon put in at Boston or another New England port, and Mr. Kent’s nephew could then apply.

Jared was disappointed. But the setback didn’t change his plans.

On the eighteenth of June, President Madison declared war.

Boston’s bells tolled in mourning. New England’s Federalist press raged. The declaration had only been approved in the Senate by
six
votes!

Pastors took to their pulpits to decry the step. Toasts at conservative dinner tables condemned
The existing
w
ar—this child of prostitution—may no American acknowledge it as legitimate!

Although the American army had to depend on the militia for immediate manpower, Governor Strong of Massachusetts, as well as the governors of Rhode Island and Connecticut, refused to permit their militias to operate outside their respective states—or obey any order of the federal government.

New England’s fury mounted when packets slipped past the British vessels cruising off the coast and delivered news that seemed to confirm the declaration as a tragic mistake. On the twenty-third of June, Lord Castlereagh had suspended the Orders in Council—those hated edicts responsible for the harassment of American ships.

The news arrived too late. The army, such as it was, would soon be launching an attack on Upper Canada from its headquarters at Detroit. The commander was to be General William Hull, an outdated relic whose Revolutionary service hardly equipped him for modern frontier warfare. Few seemed worried. Hadn’t Jefferson himself written that conquest of Canada was “just a matter of marching?”

In July, Bostonians could sneer at Jefferson’s confidence with justification. The key United States garrison on Michilimackinac Island, gateway to the western fur country, surrendered to an enemy force.

But worse was in store.

Rumors spread that the Shawnee Tecumseh would definitely align his braves with General Isaac Brock. The Federalists shook their heads. Brock had twice the wits and ten times the courage of that old fool Hull.

A pattern of hideous blundering began to emerge. The British on the frontier had of course received word of the declaration by special couriers. But while Hull was plodding northward through Ohio to Detroit, some dunderhead in Washington chose to send him the same news
by ordinary mail.
The British commanders knew war was definite eight days before Hull did. Thus they seized an American ship on Lake Erie and captured an unexpected prize—secret orders for the American general.

When Gilbert learned the whole unbelievable story, he penned the
Republican
’s first editorial in favor of the war. He demanded the firing of the incompetents in Washington who had informed Hull too late, and insisted on replacement of the general with a younger, more competent man. But he also voiced support for President Madison’s decision, and the action of Congress.

The night the editorial was published, a dozen hooligans appeared on Beacon Street and hurled rocks at windows in the Kent house. Three were broken before Gilbert dashed outside, his father’s Kentucky rifle loaded and ready to fire. He had taught himself how to use the rifle several weeks earlier, anticipating just this sort of nocturnal visit.

The hooligans screamed obscene insults and lobbed a few more rocks. Gilbert raised the rifle. Instantly, the small mob disappeared in the darkness. An hour later, still white from the incident and suffering sharp pains in his chest, Gilbert was rushed up to bed.

Against the advice of Doctor Selkirk, he was up and working twenty-four hours later.

On the twenty-sixth of July, sails appeared in the President Roads below Boston harbor. The sails belonged to the city’s own frigate,
Constitution.

She anchored and poured her tars into the streets soon after. They spread a story of an incredible feat of seamanship. Jared heard the particulars on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh, when he went to the recruiting office newly opened in a rooming house operated by a Mrs. Broadhurst in Fore Street.

He ran most of the way.
Constitution
hadn’t filled out her crew roster before clearing Annapolis in early August.

A plank table had been set up in the first floor parlor of the rooming house. After a few preliminaries, the officer behind the table asked, “You’re familiar with the ship for which we’re recruiting, I take it?”

“I am.”

“I mean to say, our recent exploits?”

“The town’s talking of nothing else—though to be honest, nobody seems quite clear on all the details.”

“I don’t doubt there’s considerable exaggeration in the retelling,” the young officer commented. “Hardly necessary. The truth’s remarkable enough.” He helped himself to a drink from a jug of rum.

The young man was one of
Constitution
’s lieutenants, slender and tanned. Jared reckoned him to be twenty or twenty-one. And almost too handsome. His dark hair pinned up in a queue looked as glossy as a woman’s. His brown eyes had a languid quality—maybe from rum. He had profferred the jug the moment Jared walked into the airless, musty parlor, but Jared had declined. Now he almost wished he hadn’t. Somehow the officer made him self-conscious.

The young man put the jug down, his tongue creeping slowly along his pink upper lip. His eyes ranged over Jared’s face. The boy grew even more uncomfortable, tried to distract the lieutenant.

“How long were you actually chased—?”

“Three days,” the young man answered in a slightly slurred voice. “Three days and two nights. Almost sixty-seven hours.” He didn’t sound like a southerner, but neither did he speak with a New England accent. Jared decided he must be from one of the middle states.

“And you realize”—the officer punctuated the remark with a pointing finger—“not a man or boy aboard caught a wink of sleep during that entire time. You are not volunteering for a life of leisure.”

“I understand that.”

“Good—excellent.”

The young man rose, strolled to the front window, his black pumps clicking on the scarred floor. Jared fidgeted. The room was depressing, its appointments old and shabby, in sharp contrast to the lieutenant’s elegant white stockings and breeches and blue tailcoat. His huge half-moon hat lay on the table near a litter of forms. He gazed out the window a moment, then let the curtain fall.

“If you’re prepared to work hard, you’ll enjoy the privilege of serving under a damned fine sailor—”

“Captain Hull.”

“Quite right. He’s a fighter—but no fool. We came on the enemy three days out of Chesapeake Bay. Five of His Britannic Majesty’s best—”

“I heard it was six.”

“Exaggeration again. Five were sufficient to give Hull pause, I assure you. There were four men-o’-war and
Guerriere,
the frigate that’s caused so much trouble recently.” The lieutenant gestured in a languorous way. “Hull knew we stood no chance against those odds. Besides, the enemy had a slight breeze and we had none. But the captain vowed we wouldn’t be captured.” The lieutenant smiled. “Not quite the same attitude as you find in the army. There, it seems, they surrender the moment the enemy farts.”

Jared shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He supposed this praise of the navy was intended to generate eagerness in new recruits, but in his case it wasn’t necessary. “I had no desire to join the army. My father was a soldier, but—”

“Was he!” the lieutenant broke in. “So was mine. Where did he serve?”

“In Ohio—when it was still the Northwest. He fought with Wayne at Fallen Timbers—”