1812: The Rivers of War (33 page)

Houston was a superb speechifyer, too. Even a Cherokee like Ross, accustomed to the eloquence of chiefs’ councils, was impressed.

John had no idea if Houston was citing the quotations from the
Iliad
properly. He’d read the poem, once, but he certainly hadn’t impressed it to memory. On the other hand, it hardly mattered. John was quite sure that none of the soldiers manning the Capitol had memorized the poem, either, so who could argue the matter?

And if Sam’s rendition of the
Iliad
was his own half-remembered words instead of those of Pope, then the breezy youngster from Tennessee was something of a poet himself.

It sounded splendid in the House of Representatives, regardless of whose words they actually were. And it seemed to lift the spirits of the men.

When he said as much to Houston, as they hurried across to the Senate, Sam just grinned at him.

“Not too appropriate a citation, perhaps. They were disputing over a captured woman, you know, not a nation’s capital. But it seemed suitable to the occasion, so long as I kept it to a few lines.”

Suddenly the grin was replaced by a frown. “Speaking of women, where
is
Tiana now?”

It was John’s turn to grin. For all the martial speeches, the only actual
battle
Houston had fought so far had been his desperate struggle to keep Tiana Rogers from accompanying him everywhere he went. Partly because he was worried about her safety; partly because Tiana would inevitably distract the men; but mostly, he confided to Ross, because he was in enough trouble as it was. If Tiana remained at his side during the battle, the gossip would have it afterward that she was his concubine. So fornication would be added to the charges of treason and insubordination!

Americans were odd, John mused, when it came to sex. Cherokees were far more rational on the subject. Marriage was taken seriously among them, and adultery was frowned upon, of course. But it was also taken more or less for granted that energetic and curious youngsters would inevitably do what they would do, and where was the harm? Granted, such a relaxed attitude was easier for a matrilineal society than one that, like the American, granted ridiculous authority to fathers and husbands.

“Bastardy,” an obsession for the whites, was almost a meaningless term for Cherokees. A child’s place came from the mother’s position, not the father’s.

“She’s sulking in her tent, I imagine,” John replied.

Sam flashed another grin. But they were already striding into the Senate, and it was time for another speech.

“And will we be become one with the Trojans, boys?” Sam bellowed, gesturing to the soldiers.

“No, sir! No, sir!” came the responding roar.

“
Henry?”

The exclamation, coming unexpectedly out of the shadows, literally made Henry Crowell jump. Except for a few lamps here and there, there was no illumination in the cavernous foundry at night.

Not this night, anyway. On some other nights, in the past, work crews laboring on a rush order would have kept the foundry lit just by the nature of their work. In years past, Henry had put in a fair number of sixteen-hour days himself.

He peered into the darkness. That voice …

“Is that you, Mr. Kendall?”

A figure came from behind one of the furnaces, dressed in heavy work clothes, a musket in his hands. “Yes, it’s me all right. What are
you
doing here, Henry?”

Kendall’s voice wasn’t
quite
suspicious, and the musket wasn’t
quite
pointing directly at him. Still, Henry figured a quick explanation was in order.

“I was sent here by Captain Houston, Mr. Kendall. Me and”—he turned and gestured behind him—“these other men.”

Henry had been the first one through the door, and he was relieved to see Pendleton coming forward. Even in the poor lighting, the young volunteer’s uniform was flamboyantly visible.

“The captain’s in charge of the Capitol’s defense,” Henry elaborated. “He instructed me and these Baltimore dragoons to come to the foundry and see if we could find some ammunition and shot. Maybe some ordnance, too.”

He completed the introductions. “Corporal, this here is Mr. David Kendall. He used to be my foreman, when I worked at Foxall’s.”

By now, Kendall was relaxing. He even seemed pleased to see them. He leaned the musket against a pillar and slapped his hands together. “Defend the Capitol! Yes, you’ll need some shot and powder for that. Be right down magged without it!”

He turned and headed toward the interior of the foundry, waving for Henry to follow. “I’ve got better, too. There’s a couple of three-pounders just finished and ready. You can take them back with you.”

Even with his limp, Kendall soon outdistanced the men who were following him. It had been several years since Henry had worked in Foxall’s, and he’d half forgotten the complicated layout of the place. There were too many half-seen obstructions for him to want to risk getting bruised—or worse. The only soft thing in a foundry is human flesh.

“He seems to like you well enough,” Pendleton commented. “Lucky thing, eh?”

Henry shook his head. “Well, I suppose he ought to. He got that limp some years ago when a blank rolled onto his leg. Liked to have crushed it completely, ‘cept I picked up one end of it so’s he could get out from under.”

Pendleton looked puzzled. “Blank?”

“One of them.” Henry pointed at a solid bar of iron they were moving past. It was over six inches in diameter and several feet long.

Pendleton ogled the thing. “That must weigh …”

“Don’t know how much, exactly. A lot. Thought my back would break by the end.”

Now Pendleton was ogling him.

“I’m powerful strong,” Henry said, half apologetically.

He needed that strength, later. One of the three-pounders got stuck while the dragoons tried to haul it out through the dark foundry, after they fit it onto its carriage. Henry freed the wheel by the simple expedient of lifting it up.

“Remind me not to arm-wrestle you,” Pendleton murmured.

Kendall barked a laugh. “I can’t remember anybody being dumb enough to arm-wrestle him since the first week he started working here. How old was you then, Henry?”

“Sixteen, Mr. Kendall.”

“Well, you haven’t lost it, even living that easy new life of yours as a teamster.” He patted Henry’s heavy shoulder and
gave the dragoons a friendly nod. “Good luck, boys, and do the best you can.”

Before he’d gone more than two blocks, two well-dressed, middle-aged white civilians armed with muskets accosted Henry on the lead wagon. The only real trouble came after they left the foundry.

“What’re you doing, boy?” demanded one of them.

Henry didn’t need to answer. Pendleton trotted his horse forward, holding up his own musket and glowering as fiercely as a youngster can.

“You there! We’re on official military business!” he snapped. “Now move out of the way!”

Seeing other dragoons coming up behind him, as well as two more wagons, the civilians backed off. One of them, however, didn’t move quite fast enough to suit Pendleton.

“Keep dawdling like that,” he snarled, “and we’ll make you arm-wrestle Henry here.”

“You’ll look good,” another dragoon commented, “your arm in a sling. All busted up the way it’ll be.”

Tiana wasn’t sulking in her tent. In fact, she wasn’t sulking at all.

Not any longer, anyway.

She’d given in to Sam’s demands that she remain behind while he dashed to and fro rallying the soldiers. No sooner had he left, however, than her sullen resentment had turned impish.

Houston had told her and the other children—as if
she
were a “child”!—to remain in the Senate. So, naturally, as soon as he had left with John Ross in tow, she led them across to the House of Representatives. Even Sequoyah didn’t argue the matter. She thought he was a bit disgruntled himself, at being left out of the battle.

It had been a fortunate move, even if driven only by rebellious impulse. In the Senate, she and the Ridge children had just been underfoot. But, once in the House, she discovered Commodore Barney, lying wounded on his settee. The small mob of admirers who had earlier surrounded the commodore was gone, and he was looking a bit forlorn. He was obviously in considerable pain, too, now that the excitement of his arrival was past.

Tiana needed something to keep her mind off the coming battle. So she decided to tend to the commodore’s injuries.

The man seemed surprised—even a bit shocked—by the easy and casual manner in which she went about the business.
Why?
she wondered. Injuries, even injuries taken in battle, were messy and undignified by their very nature. The scars to come would be suitable objects for boasting, but the open wounds themselves were simply ugly.

“They did a good job,” she pronounced, after lacing and buttoning the commodore back up. “I don’t care for that poultice, but I suppose it’ll do.”

“You speak English?” he asked, still rather wide-eyed.

Tiana snorted, then muttered something in Cherokee.

“I’m sorry, lass. I didn’t understand that.”

Tiana decided the mutter was probably best left untranslated.

“Of course I speak English, Commodore. I can read it, too. My father’s a Scotsman, and he’s hardly the only one in my family tree. Many Cherokees speak English.”

She pointed to the Ridge children. “They can read and speak the language, too. They’ve been studying with the Moravians.”

Barney’s eyes moved to the youngsters. Nancy Ridge smiled shyly. John Ridge and Buck Watie just looked solemn.

“Indeed.” The commodore cleared his throat. “A day of many surprises for me, then—or perhaps I should say, considerable learning.”

He looked back at Tiana. “What are you doing here, if I might ask, in the company of Captain Houston?”

Tiana stood up, grinning. “Major Ridge—he’s one of our chiefs and the father of John and Nancy here—wanted his children to get a better American education. So he asked Sam to bring them to Washington with him and find them a proper school. I came because … Well, I felt like it.”

Like a small whirlwind, Sam Houston and John Ross came blowing into the chamber, followed by a gaggle of soldiers who seemed to be serving them as an escort. Sam’s eyebrows went up a bit, seeing Tiana and the children in the chamber, but—wisely—he just went on his way. Tiana could hear him start speechifying again as soon as he left. His booming voice penetrated back into the chamber from one of the adjoining rooms.

“Does that silly chatter really do any good?” Tiana wondered.

The commodore smiled. “Oh, yes, lass. A great deal, in fact. Not so much the words—never much liked Homer myself, the truth be told—but just the fact that he’s spouting them so surely. Terror is the great enemy, in a battle. The first duty of a commander is to slay the monster, which is what your fine young captain is about. And doing splendidly well at it.”

Tiana shook her head dubiously. “I’d think—”

She fell silent. Another officer had come into the chamber. This one, with a pace that could be better described as that of the tides.

She met his eyes across the room. Quite pale in color, those eyes had been earlier, when she’d seen them in the sunlight. Now, lit only by the lamps in the chamber, they seemed very dark.

The darkness was the truer color.
Asgá siti
, that man was. More so than even Major Ridge, she thought.

An American girl might have been repelled by that knowledge. Tiana, Cherokee, was not. In the end, nations lived and died by such men.

So she met his gaze calmly and levelly. It was he who looked away.

Ha!
He
was
attracted to her! That was …

Interesting.

Barney’s eyes had now moved to the new arrival, as well.

“Lieutenant Driscol,” he said. “What a great pleasure to see you here.”

Commodore Barney knew very little about Lieutenant Patrick Driscol, beyond the man’s name. But he was far too experienced a commander not to recognize what he was, just from watching the way the lieutenant had carried himself thus far.

A great pleasure, indeed. There wasn’t a single naval engagement Barney had won in the war of independence—he’d fought thirty-five, in all, and been defeated only five times—that hadn’t, in the end, been won because of men such as Driscol. If
captains like Houston could rally a broken army, it was only because lieutenants like Driscol provided it with a spine that had remained intact. The Driscols of the world could be beaten, surely. Broken, never.

Barney gestured toward the man, inviting him to approach. It was obvious that the lieutenant had entered the chamber for that very purpose, although—

Barney glanced up at Tiana, and suppressed a smile. Now that he was here, clearly enough, the good lieutenant had found another item of interest in the place. Even if he was doing his level best not to make it evident.

Driscol came forward, to stand beside the settee.

“May I be of any assistance, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir. It’s the rockets, Commodore. I was wondering about them.”

The lieutenant looked a bit embarrassed, for an instant, the way a master craftsman might when he is forced to confess that he lacks a certain bit of knowledge concerning his own trade.

“It’s simply that I’ve never faced them, sir. The Congreves are a newfangled device, and we never had to deal with them on the continent when I was in the French army. Nor did Riall have any at the Chippewa. But they started using them at Lundy’s Lane, and I’ve heard that Cockburn and Ross seem to have brought shiploads of the things.”