1812: The Rivers of War (61 page)

The ship carrying the peace treaty had left those docks two days earlier. Two days—and it would require weeks for it to cross the ocean, even if the ship encountered decent weather. Fortunately, it wasn’t hurricane season. But the Atlantic in winter was still no sailor’s paradise.

The American ambassador had come down to those docks the morning it sailed, and both mornings since, moved by an impulse that he fully recognized was pure superstition but could not resist. A ship was driven by winds and currents created by the will of God, not the heartfelt desires and wishes of a mortal human diplomat.

“Weeks,” he sighed. “Six weeks at best, before the news can reach the Gulf of Mexico. If Jackson can hold New Orleans and the Mississippi until then …”

Pure superstition. So, as he had for three mornings, Adams scolded himself for his lapse into savagery, turned away from the ocean, and began walking toward his lodgings. He decided he’d spend the rest of the day—as he had the three previous ones—reading the Bible.

Robert Ross listened to men discussing his fate.

“Is it yellow fever?” asked one.
Pakenham
, he thought.

A voice he recognized as the doctor assigned to handle his illness replied: “I don’t believe … no jaundice evident…”

Ross could sense the doctor shrugging, if not see it. His eyes were closed, and the effort of opening them seemed too much at the moment. The fever made it hard to think, especially with the sound of cannon and musket fire drowning half the sentences.

“Who knows … is, General?” continued the doctor, his tone one of helpless exasperation. “This whole land … festering ground … diseases of all sorts.”

A cannon salvo obliterated the next sentence or two. Then: “… never have remained here … should have … back to the ships.”

Ross heard a chuckle. That came from yet another man.
Gibbs
, he thought.

“Fine for you to say so, Doctor.” Yes, that was Gibbs. His voice penetrated clearly. “Have you ever tried to get Robert Ross to do anything against his will?”

Pakenham spoke again. His voice carried well also, much better than the doctor’s.

That was the habit of officers who needed to call commands across the cacophony of a battlefield—of which it sounded like a small one was raging. Mostly a cannon duel, Ross judged, from the sound.

“Robert’s a general who cares about his men,” Pakenham
said. “He refused to leave until this business was over, and I wasn’t about to deny him the privilege. He knew the risk.”

Ross felt a powerful hand close on his shoulder, and give it a gentle squeeze. “Besides,” Pakenham’s voice continued softly, “I found his presence a comfort. And his advice, invariably helpful. He’s a soldier, and a splendid one.”

The hand withdrew. “What are his chances, Doctor?”

“… here?” There came a snort of disgust, which seemed to blend with the distant musket fire. “… may as well haul out… rum. You’ll be shipping him home in a cask … two days. At most. He should … to the ships.”

That was madness. The advice of an overworked doctor just trying to remove a hopeless case from his docket. The festering conditions aboard the ships anchored in Lake Bourgne would be even more deadly for Ross than the conditions in the army camp.

It was time to open his eyes, difficult as the task was.

“No,” he croaked. “I can’t do anything further here, anyway. Send me across to the Americans.”

He could see Pakenham now. The young general was staring down at him.

“The Americans?”

Ross tried to nod, but found the gesture impossible. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open and speak.

“They’ll give me better care in New Orleans than you can possibly do here—or Cochrane on his ships.”

“Perhaps—”

For some reason, shaking his head was within Ross’s capacity, where nodding had not been.

“No, Edward. Admiral Cochrane is in no position to detach one of his vessels simply to carry a stubborn general back to England. I would refuse the offer anyway, even if he made it. You need every ship you have.”

Pakenham looked away, his attention momentarily distracted by a particularly loud salvo. The artillery exchange that had gone on alongside the Mississippi for days had settled into the routine of siegework, but it still had its occasional peaks.

“You’re certain of this, Robert?”

“Oh, yes. It’s not as if I haven’t been in American captivity before, you know. I can assure you that it is not a fate worse than death.” He managed a half smile. “I rather like Cousin
Jonathan, as a matter of fact. Quite a bit, in the case of some of those obstreperous fellows.”

Five minutes after Driscol arrived at the fieldworks on the Rodriguez Canal, he was shaking his head. Not so much in disbelief as in pure wonder. Whatever God there was, He was clearly a whimsical one.

“Ross?
Here?”
Driscol raised his head and peered over the fortifications at the British lines hundreds of yards away. He did so cautiously, with the habit of a veteran, even though a ceasefire was in place.

There was nothing to see, really. The ground between the American and British positions had once been the fields of a plantation. But the first thing Jackson had done was cut down all the crops, to remove any cover for the oncoming enemy. All that was left between the cypress swamps and the river was barren soil and stubble.

The only reason Driscol had looked at all was simply because he’d been so surprised by the news.

He crouched back down. “What in the world is Ross doing here? I thought he’d be back in England by now.”

General Jackson shook his head. “I’ve got no idea, Major. But I sent Colonel Houston across in response to their request for a parlay, and he assured me that it is, indeed, General Ross.”

Driscol glanced around.

“Houston’s not here now, Major,” said Jackson. “I sent him back across to arrange the transfer.”

“You’re agreeing to the British request, sir?”

“Of course I am!” Jackson scowled. “I despise the bastards. But for that very reason, I’ll not have them claiming after their defeat that I was ungallant.”

Driscol kept a straight face, although he felt like grinning. That was … a very Jacksonian response. Odd, how a man who could be so practical and ruthless one moment could be moved to quixotic acts the next, if he thought the matter touched on his personal honor or his sense of chivalry.

“Yes, sir. And what do you want
me
to do? Forgive my presumption, but I assume that you summoned me for some purpose.”

Now, Jackson grinned.

“Ha! You’re to be the good British general’s nursemaid, it
seems. Ross put in a specific request to be handed over into your custody—assuming that wouldn’t interfere with your military duties.”

Driscol stared at him.

The general’s grin widened.

“It would, of course. But Houston tells me that Ross added the qualification that if your—I believe he used the word ‘intended’—was present on the scene, that she would do even better.”

Driscol transferred the stare back to the distant British lines. “That stinking rotten bastard.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about it, Major. From Houston’s description of his condition, I doubt very much if General Ross is in any shape to be competing with you for the lady’s affections. By the way, when will I be introduced to this mysterious fiancée of yours?”

Realizing his mouth was open, Driscol snapped it shut.

“She’s not my ‘fiancée,’” he growled. “It doesn’t work like that, with Cherokees. And that’s not what I meant.”

Belatedly, he added, “Sir.”

“A Cherokee lass, is it? You and that blasted Injun-lover Houston!” Jackson cocked his head. “In that case, I shall have to
insist
on an introduction. I won’t have one of my officers consorting with common squaws.”

But he was still grinning when he said it.

Driscol had come to know Jackson well enough by now to realize that he was a much more complicated man than most people assumed. In this, as in all things, Andrew Jackson was a living contradiction. At one moment, he could speak of Indians and black people as if they were beasts—and, often enough, treat them the same way. The next moment, speak of them—and treat them—far better than most white men would.

The same Jackson who thought nothing of referring to black freedmen as “niggers” had also championed their right to bear arms, overriding the vehement protests of slave owners. He’d furthermore insisted that the men of the black battalions would receive the same pay as white soldiers.

A bully, a bigot—sometimes a brute—but still one who could suspend all that at times because he could see the men beneath their skins. In short, Driscol had concluded, exactly the sort of man the very contradictory American republic would hoist up
as a leader. Sooner or later, the United States would have to resolve its own contradictions. But, for the moment, Andrew Jackson was the best they had.

“I should be honored to introduce you, General. Her name is Tiana Rogers, by the way. She’s the daughter of Captain John Rogers.”

“Hell-Fire Jack’s girl? You’re a bold man, Major!” The grin faded a bit. “Sometimes I don’t think I approve of half-breeds. Then again, other times …” He shook his head, an unusually pensive expression coming to his harsh, gaunt face. “Ah, who’s to say? Maybe, in the end, that’s what God has in mind for this great republican experiment of ours. I’m told that’s what Colonel Richard Johnson thinks, anyway.”

Pensiveness wasn’t a mood Andrew Jackson would remain in for more than a moment. Now, he was scowling. “Of course, Johnson’s a race-mixing, amalgamating rascal. Hero of the battle of the Thames or not.”

Driscol’s nod was a noncommittal thing. He’d never met the famous—and notorious—Colonel Johnson, so he reserved his own judgment. One moment the colonel was hailed as the killer of Tecumseh, a hero for all frontiersmen—then denounced in the next for his openly conducted affair with a black woman named Julia Chinn. No acceptably discreet master-slave affair, either. Johnson considered the relationship a marriage, even though such a marriage was prohibited under Kentucky law.

If rumors were true, people who visited Johnson on his Kentucky plantation either had to accept the presence of a black woman sitting at the dining table as the mistress of the house—or Johnson would make clear to them that they were not invited at all. He’d even been reported to have said that he was only doing openly and honestly what Thomas Jefferson hadn’t had the courage to do.

Yet… that same Johnson was a plantation owner. If a black woman sat at his dinner table in the place reserved for a wife, other black people labored as slaves in his fields.

“Yes, sir,” however, was all he said. “I’ll send one of my men back to the city, and inform Tiana and her people that they’ll be entertaining a new lodger.”

“Do they have the room?”

“They’ll manage. Cherokees are very good at that, I’ve learned.”

Sam Houston had taken advantage of the time he spent in the British camp to discover what he could about the enemy’s dispositions. He was somewhat disturbed by what he saw.

“They’re up to something, General,” he reported to Jackson, after he returned.

Jackson shot him a sharp look. “What, do you think? An advance up the Chef Menteur Road?”

Privately, Sam thought Jackson had become somewhat obsessed with his fears regarding the Chef Menteur Road—an obsession that prevented him from considering other possible dangers. To be sure, a British advance up that road would—in theory, at least—provide them with a way to outflank the Jackson Line, and reach the much drier ground north of the city. But in practice, it would be a roundabout slog through cypress swamps, with Governor Claiborne’s troops in position to slow the British down long enough for Jackson to shift the American defenses. That done, it would be just as easy to turn Marigny’s Canal into the same sort of fieldworks that he’d contracted on the Rodriguez Canal, with the added advantage of having Fort St. John directly threatening the British flank.

But Sam was careful to keep his skepticism from showing on his face. Jackson would listen to arguments, but he was thin-skinned. He’d simply get stubborn if he thought someone was being derisive.

“That’s possible, sir, but I don’t think so. They kept me as far north as they could, so I couldn’t see very much. But I saw enough to get the feeling they’re working their men like dogs to widen the canals south of their lines. Why would they do that, if their intentions were to advance up the Chef Menteur?”

Jackson gazed toward the British lines, frowning. “Why would they do it at all? They can’t possibly widen those canals enough to bring warships through from the lake. Small gunboats, maybe, but those would be no match for the
Louisiana
.”

The general swiveled his head, gazing across the river.

“Are you sure about what you saw, Colonel? The only purpose I can see would be to bring through enough small boats to land an offensive force across the river. But what’s the point of that? They can only attack the city from
this
side of the Mississippi.”