But now, with a broad smile, Thornton drew himself up to answer. “With all due respect, Mr. President, Britain controlling the Northwest Passage would not distress His Majesty’s government.”
Jefferson laughed. “Doubtless. But you see, it wouldn’t be fitting, for after all, the United States is the dominant nation, the one, if I may say so, destined to control the continent.”
“But, Mr. President,” Yrujo cried, “most respectfully, you may
not
say so! Spain is the dominant nation and will remain
so. All that territory you’ve been discussing, the Missouri country, is Spanish territory.”
Lewis’s dislike for the man was growing rapidly. He glanced around the table. Thornton was watching, eyes glinting and lips slightly parted. It took Lewis a moment to recognize his expression: It was that of a man watching a fight and thinking about taking a hand in it.
But with an easy smile, Mr. Jefferson said to the Spaniard, “Courtesy, if I recall, of the French. I’m sure Mr. Pichon will tell you in detail that it was the French who explored it, Jolliet and Marquette who gave us the Missouri.”
“In their day, of course,” Yrujo said, “but that is long past. And we have been actively exploring. We have had
Señores
Mackay and Evans through that whole country.”
Lewis sat forward in his chair, for now he was close to home. Mackay and Evans were wandering Britons versed in the northern fur country, whom Spain had hired to traverse the West. “But what good are they, Mr. Yrujo,” the president asked, “when Spain is so unwilling to share their findings? We understand they concluded the Missouri rises near Santa Fe and runs north for a thousand miles before it turns eastward and becomes the river of Joliet and Marquette. But when will we be told more?”
“My government feels no obligation to share information on its own territory, Mr. President. If the river rises near our most important northern outpost, we fear interest in it masks aims on Santa Fe itself.”
“I met Mackay once,” Lewis said. He surprised himself, for he’d had no intention of speaking. But his own western passions, coupled with his reaction to the Spaniard’s glib rebuff of the president, brought the meeting with Mackay back with special force, and the memory always angered him. Voice tightening, he said, “It was in Saint Louis. He and Evans were just in, and he was explaining his reasoning on the Missouri’s course, and he certainly said nothing about a threat to Santa Fe.”
Yrujo stared across the table. “Mr. Mackay was a Briton, Captain Lewis. With all respect to Mr. Thornton here, the
Spanish government needs no advice from Britons, or from anyone else, in deciding matters of its own security. If you had talked a bit longer, Mr. Mackay probably would have told you that.”
“I would have talked to him much longer, but a popinjay of a Spanish captain came upon us having a quiet drink together and gave such a tongue-lashing as to leave poor Mackay quivering with fear and me—”
“In Saint Louis, you say? Spanish territory. You’re lucky he didn’t arrest you and send you to Cuba in irons.”
This did infuriate Lewis. “
He
was lucky I didn’t knock his damned head off!”
There was an appalled silence. He looked around the table, seeing from their faces that he had gone much too far. Only the president looked not unduly shocked but seemed to be waiting.
God … would he have to apologize? He couldn’t bear the thought.
Yrujo smiled. “Ah, well, frontier officers sometimes are precipitate.”
Lewis heard the president’s chuckle. His face flamed and the thought of meeting Yrujo on the street outside flashed in his mind. Too precipitate! But then, as the president resumed his monologue, he realized that Yrujo had used officers in the plural, meaning both men. He was blaming them equally for an encounter, and all at once, the table having returned to normal, Lewis realized the Spaniard had given him a lesson in diplomacy and had rescued him from his own excess.
Presently he caught Yrujo’s eye and raised his hand to his forehead in casual but unmistakable salute. Yrujo’s eyes widened and then he smiled and bowed slightly. Both gestures, Lewis saw, had gone quite undetected.
Mr. Jefferson, apparently unperturbed, was saying that he doubted the Missouri rose near Santa Fe; but irrespective of that, he thought it inappropriate to ascribe geographic interest to international hostility, for the United States certainly had no aims on Santa Fe even if its streets were paved with gold.
“But I will make a prediction,” he added. “I believe we
will find the Missouri’s source well north of Santa Fe and well south of Mackenzie’s position. I believe we will find our Northwest Passage. We will see that we can ascend the Missouri, find a portage sufficiently gentle to be traversed, and descend the Columbia to the sea.”
He smiled, looking around the table. “Now, that is based on evidence suggestive but not conclusive, so I cannot deny that it contains a dollop of desire along with logic.” Then, without missing a beat, neatly cutting off further argument, which Mr. Yrujo was poised to give, he said, “And now, my deepest apologies to our hostess who, for the last half hour, has been wanting to let me know that my rambling has delayed our dessert quite unconscionably. Is it all spoiled, dear Dolley?”
Oh, Dolley thought, he’s so smooth. He had quite disarmed her, and she laughed and put her hand on his and said, “It fell and it’s cold, so I promise only that it will be sweet.” It was sweet but also watery and flat, nothing like what poor Julien had planned, and the guests quickly laid spoons aside and seemed pleased to have their glasses refilled. Still, this wasn’t much of a tragedy. Jimmy looked contented. The president had laid out a strong and determined national position to men who might someday be enemies, and he’d managed it without a hint of confrontation. Which she supposed was why you had such dinners.
She saw that Mr. Yrujo was disturbed, as if he felt challenged; his wife watched him anxiously, and Dolley wondered if he turned ugly when crossed. Anna was looking restless, responding to comments with a smile but initiating none of her own. Ned Thornton was chatting easily, holding the attention of the women to his right and his left, his manner very relaxed. Mrs. Pichon, holding her spoon and frowning, rattled something in French to Albert. Doubtless she knew exactly how the dessert should taste. He responded, his expression ironic, which seemed to go over her head.
It was late, tapers in the girandoles burning steadily, darkness gathering outside the high windows. And finally, thank
God, it was over, the women separating briefly, the men soon joining them, and then they were going. And she knew from Jimmy’s broad smile, from the president’s pleasure, that her first diplomatic dinner had been a success.
Anna gave Lewis her ravishing smile and moved off without a word. He followed and nearly collided with Mr. Jefferson, who had drawn Mr. Yrujo aside. The president suggested a ride the next day if the weather were fine, and then Lewis heard him say in the same casual tone, “Tell me, sir, how would your government react to our sending a small expedition up the Missouri to test these matters we’ve been describing in theory?”
“With great umbrage, Mr. President,” Yrujo said. “It would be an invasion of Spanish territory.” But Lewis scarcely registered the answer, for of course the Spanish would object, and who gave a damn, they were popinjays to a man. What mattered was the question! The expedition of which he’d dreamed for a decade had been broached. It was in the president’s mind; it was real! Or could be, which was almost as good. And here was Meriwether Lewis to make it real!
Yrujo and the president moved off. Had Anna gone? No, there she was, by the door. He hurried after her, wanting—he didn’t know what, for nothing in her manner now suggested her earlier charm. She seemed a stranger. What could he say that might restore the marvelous intimacy—
“Mr. Lewis?” It was the guard from the front door. “Mr. Wagner, Mr. Madison’s clerk, he’s downstairs with someone from London; and he says he must see you immediately.”
Lewis sighed. Anna was talking to Miss Dolley and seemed not to notice as he followed the guard down the marble stairs.
“Did you do something to that young man?” Dolley asked.
“What?” All injured ignorance. “Me?”
Dolley let her sister go as Jimmy drew her aside. “We’re having hot chocolate in the study; the president wants you to join us.”
A servant was pouring when she came in. She settled into an armchair with her cup. Mr. Jefferson sprawled on a Chippendale sofa covered in a blue brocade, one leg up on the cushions. He loosened his cravat and gave a long, shuddering sigh, rubbing his eyes with the heels of both hands.
“Oh, my!” he said. “That was exhausting! But it went well, Dolley, thanks to you. I congratulated Mr. Lemaire too. Even the spoiled dessert. I didn’t plan it that way, but it was very useful to demonstrate this wasn’t idle talk.”
“No one missed that,” Jimmy said. It occurred to Dolley that sophisticated though she was, she had more to learn.
Mr. Jefferson chuckled. “I thought Merry was going to get in trouble for a minute there.”
She liked Merry and said so, adding, “But there’s a roughness in him too.”
“Well, he’s just what Yrujo said—a frontier officer. Gentility is too much the luxury on the frontier.”
“Yrujo handled it well,” Jimmy said. “I expect he’ll be a formidable opponent.”
“Still,” Mr. Jefferson said, “Merry turned it well too. That little salute, most gracious. For a moment I feared he didn’t understand what had happened.”
Dolley nodded. “And Yrujo’s little bow—all quite nice.”
“Diplomacy at work, eh?” Jimmy looked at the president. “What did you think of their answers to the real question?”
“I had a feeling they were taking very careful positions. Not that it isn’t so, not even that they know nothing of it, but that they, at least, have had no definitive word.”
“That makes sense,” Jimmy said. “But it simply means that if France does plan to take Louisiana, it’s doing so quietly. Which is what you would expect.”
“Intend to present us with a fait accompli, I expect,” the president said, “when it’s too late to counter.”
“Yes … an awful lot of smoke for no fire.”
The door opened and Merry came in, followed by a
stranger. He was a slender man about thirty. His clothes were rumpled, and she thought he looked tired.
“Mr. President,” Merry said, “this is Sanford Erskine, legation secretary under Ambassador King in London.”
Erskine bowed. “Mr. President.” He extended a packet sealed with red wax. “Mr. King said you’ll recognize this.”
“You may hand that to Secretary Madison. Tell me, son, how did you make the trip?”
“By British frigate, sir. Mr. King said it was urgent. A warship leaving on the flood for the American station was by far the fastest. It delivered me to Annapolis.”
The president thanked the young man and Merry led him out. She watched Jimmy break the seals and extract a long document festooned in red. “Yes,” he said slowly, scanning the first page and flipping to the second and third, “it’s a true copy of the actual treaty between Spain and France so long rumored in London, as Rufus has been telling us. Let’s see … for various considerations, none onerous, Spain agrees to retrocede the province of Louisiana in its entirety, New Orleans, of course, and all to the north and west up the Mississippi, out the Missouri to some indefinite point that matches all that France ever claimed and any claims that Spain may have added. In short, France takes everything beyond the Mississippi.”
“So it’s true,” Mr. Jefferson said in a low voice, “Ah, God, think of that. Napoleon astride the Mississippi. I prayed it wouldn’t be so.”
“But believed it would be.”
“Yes, but believing and knowing are very different.”
She had a leaden feeling, the weight of very bad news pressing her chest. This meant trouble on a gargantuan scale. She glanced at Jimmy; his face was smooth and hard.
“We can’t allow this to stand,” he said.
The president sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I can already hear our western friends caterwauling, can’t you?”
“Mr. President,” Jimmy said, in that same hard way.
She saw Tom’s eyes pop open. “Of course you’re right, Jimmy,” he said. “We cannot allow it to stand.”
WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 1801
She awakened suddenly, alone in the big bed. There was a moon, and by its reflected light she saw the clock he had ordered from Paris, gold hands on a ceramic face. Two in the morning. The streets of Washington were silent. The fireplace had burned down and the room was cold. He was in a chair drawn to a window, motionless, staring out into the bare branches of the oak that had been there years before their house was raised. His hands were locked together.
“Come to bed, Jimmy,” she said.
He turned. She saw his smile in the faint light. “Soon,” he said.
She got up and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. He touched her hand. She lay awake a long time thinking of the French and all it might mean. Eventually she dozed; it was much later when she felt the feathers sag beside her. She sighed and put her hand on his shoulder. At first light she opened her eyes; he was dressed, sitting in the chair.
“Oh, Jimmy,” she said, “didn’t you sleep at all?”
“A little,” he said.
She went downstairs. Sukey was stirring a fire under a kettle and presently there was tea and a hastily warmed plate of muffins made with honey and raisins. Teapot and bread in their cozies, she started up with the tray; but on the landing above the first floor she paused, rested it on the windowsill, and looked out on the bare oak’s heavy trunk.
A tremor ticked in her temple. She was frightened and, she realized with faint surprise, very angry. She’d always liked the French. They’d been with us in the revolution when
it mattered so desperately. She would never forget the raw emotion in the voices of her girlhood as Tarleton’s Raiders in their red coats swept ever closer, and it was the French who’d stood with us when we stood alone. And their glorious revolution had sprung right out of our own, the same desperate yearning of plain people for freedom, democracy aborning, and you had to love them.
She was stunned when their revolution imploded into chaos to the guillotine’s clatter, when the fat little general’s coup made him a dictator. But their language still was threaded with music, and their music was threaded with joy.
And then this … even as the meaning of the treaty had dawned on her the night before, she had seen that smooth, hard quality on her husband’s face, the look that told her instantly he was not to be trifled with just now. She’d glanced quickly at Tom and seen mirrored there the same look that cried crisis more clearly than words.
But she could see it all herself. Like her husband, she hadn’t been abroad or even over the Appalachians, but she knew Americans well. A French invasion of the western regions would stir them to frenzy, east and west alike. And that was the other side of the French too, wasn’t it, the thread of arrogance, the conviction of superiority, the inability even to see, let alone care, how Americans would react?
Jimmy had poked the fire into life, and the bedroom was warming when she returned with the tray. He took the cup gratefully, waving away a muffin, drank the tea in silence, held out the cup to be refilled.
“It’s going to be dangerous, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes … ,” he said. He gazed at her over the rim of the cup with concern but with appreciation too, so she thought; and she was glad she’d decided not to press him for details.
“I thought as much,” she said. “So you’d better eat the muffin. You’ll need your strength.”
He walked rapidly along F Street toward the mansion, dodging puddles, mud spattering his white hose above the line of
his boots. Shoes with silver buckles were in the case of state papers slung over a shoulder. Tom would be waiting for him, and Albert Gallatin would be along shortly—a message had gone to the Treasury secretary the night before.
The more he considered it, the more appalling it became. Look at the sheer contempt in the French manner. Not a word to the nation most affected, all in secret, rumors denied, Pichon sitting there last night blandly saying his government had not instructed him, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. It was disgusting.
And if he’d spoken accurately, if his government really had excluded him, that was worse. Didn’t tell their own man or their man lied—either was reprehensible. The only reason we knew it now was that the British had sources in Paris and gladly dug it out and threw it in our faces. And when would the French have told us? When their police seized our boatmen on the river?
He stepped around a puddle and into a pile of fresh horse manure, paused to clean his boot, and hurried on. The irony of it seemed overwhelming. They were just over a constitutional crisis, that rotten scoundrel Burr willing to shatter the new democracy for his own selfish dreams. Oh, how the Federalists had crowed over that, the crisis they had predicted all along coming before we’d even taken office! And we’d settled that, things holding steady on a middle course, confounding Federalists who’d expected us to tear things apart, confounding our own radicals who’d demanded the same, smooth sailing at last, whereupon our erstwhile friends raised a danger ten times as great—for this could be fatal.
He felt a sudden boiling in his stomach, a nauseous wash of fluid in his mouth, and he stopped short. In a moment he recognized it as fear taking him by surprise, and he didn’t like it. He straightened and calmed himself before he went on. Panic was the unforgivable indulgence.
In control again, he hurried along, reviewing his analysis. What was the aim, the purpose? What did the little dictator who’d seized power out of the agony of self-destructing
democracy really intend? Not just to correct an old loss. Men of power did things for real reasons. Why bother to return to Louisiana just now when, after years of war, he had a moment of peace? He had fought his neighbors to a standstill, seized much of their territory to give France what he called its “natural frontiers,” and even the British seemed ready to strike an armistice. So now he decides to invade Louisiana? Why?
Not just to continue Spain’s weak, hesitant control. Sitting through the dark hours of the night, the oak branches’ fantastic shapes against the moon, Madison had found it beginning to make sense. Taking New Orleans, ruling the Mississippi, seizing the great wilderness to the west of the river would be just a start for a man of Napoleon’s scale. Next he would move north to attack Canada, transferring the war of Europe to North America. But even that was only a start. Once he had gone so far, why would he turn back?
Slowly, sitting in the silent dark, Dolley’s even breathing a rhythm to his thinking, Madison had grown convinced that the Frenchman’s ultimate aim was to seize the western United States, Tennessee and Kentucky and Ohio soon to be a state, the Indiana and Illinois country, the forests of Mississippi, and the lands watered by the winding Alabama River, proud American westerners made into reluctant Frenchmen. It made perfect strategic sense. He would convert the great heart of the continent into a French breadbasket, a food empire that would feed his armies as he went on to conquer the world. And the United States would be reduced to a vassal state hugging the Atlantic, forced to serve French needs at whatever price France set … .
But we would die before we let that happen, which had to mean—but now he was at the mansion gate and he knew what they would have to do, and the terrible question growing in his mind was this: Would the president see it so clearly?
He nodded to the guard at the north entrance, ducked inside, sat on a marble bench with a crimson cushion, and wiped the mud from his hose. He replaced his boots with the
buckled shoes he’d packed in the case, left boots and case by the bench, and climbed the stairs. In the president’s corner office a fire was crackling and the room was warming. Leather-covered books with paper strips marking places were stacked higgledy-piggledy on every surface, and even in the midst of crisis it struck him that this was a gentlehearted room.
Gallatin had already arrived. The president sat in his deep Queen Anne chair cradling a teacup in both hands. His face was sagging and pouchy, as haggard as Madison felt. Gallatin was at a table pouring tea, and he set out a cup for Madison.
“Welcome, Jimmy,” the president said, his voice tired but light and relaxed. “I’ve just been acquainting Albert with the terms of Napoleon’s deal with Spain; for returning Louisiana, he swaps them a hunk of Italy that he stole.”
“That does put it harshly, Mr. President,” Albert said.
Jefferson had a lazy, amused look that Madison didn’t like. That damned whimsicality of his, popping up at the unlikeliest moments!
“It’s a harsh situation, Albert,” Jefferson said. “I know you’ve admired Napoleon—”
“Well, he is a man of extraordinary power, a genius on the battlefield, an executive of exceptional talents—”
“And a seducer and destroyer of democracy,” Jefferson said, still with that easy manner. “Let’s not forget that he stole the French democracy with a military coup and has been reveling in power ever since.”
“Well, I suppose,” Albert said, and sat down with a thump.
Madison felt anger stirring. “He’s drunk with power if he thinks he can handle us so cavalierly,” he snapped. Let’s get down to what matters! Would he have to bring them to order himself and show them the dangers ahead?
“Unfortunately,” Gallatin said, “most Europeans haven’t the least sense for this vast continent. What is it—four hundred miles across France? Five? Here that just takes you down to Carolina. Napoleon has no idea what he’s trying to bite off.”
“More than he can swallow,” Madison said.
But then the atmosphere changed, as suddenly as a spring sky can clear. The president stood, tall and lean, towering over them both. “All right, gentlemen,” he said, “to business.” With sharp relief, Madison saw that his face had hardened and the easy-going manner was gone. He walked to a window, walked back, clearly in command. Madison waited. This was the Jefferson he wanted to see, the basic man, strong, stern, very tough, who he always knew was there when you cut through the idle talk, the spray of ideas, the erratic focus on anything and everything, the extraordinary capacity to deceive himself and to believe whatever he wanted to believe, the wild stories he told, the encyclopedic interests and knowledge, all these the reasons men and women who didn’t know him well gushed and called him a genius. But Madison knew none of this would matter tuppence if at bedrock there wasn’t a man of power, hard as stone.
Madison had spent his adult life as junior partner to Jefferson, who was nine years his senior. Dolley resented it, but Madison saw it as the natural order. They’d done well together—junior didn’t mean inferior—and Madison had been content to follow. Only on the Constitution, written while Tom was in Paris as ambassador, had he broken with Tom and gone his own way. He’d seen what must be done, and while the document’s writing was a group effort done in convention, he knew he had had more to do with the key points than anyone. And then he’d beaten Tom into support too. For he knew the Constitution was the most important thing that had happened in America, more than Tom’s own great Declaration of Independence, more than General Washington as the first president holding the nation together when it wanted so much to fly apart. This was the document that told the core value of the American people. And Tom had seen that in time and come along … .
So Madison waited, confident on the one hand, terrified on the other, for what the leader would say.
The president leaned against his desk. “Now, let’s start with the basic fact. Ipso facto, who occupies New Orleans
and controls the Mississippi becomes our enemy. To control the river is to strangle, or threaten to strangle, half of our country. That is the single point that must guide our every move. We cannot tolerate—we
will
not tolerate—any nation taking that position.” A wintry smile flashed and disappeared. “Spain, of course, has held it only at our pleasure. France on the Mississippi we will not accept. Is that understood?”
“But—” Gallatin said, and stopped before the president’s raised hand.
“And you gentlemen are quite right. We
are
too big a bite for Napoleon to swallow, let alone digest. The problem is that he doesn’t know that. Not yet. Our task is to educate an ignoramus. We must show him his plans are unworkable.”
No one spoke. Jefferson walked the length of his office and back. He folded his arms.
“Now, gentlemen, Napoleon, conqueror of all he has seen, doesn’t strike me as very susceptible to reasoning. Power is his mode, and I doubt he respects anything else. So he must be made to understand that we will fight, and that in the end we will win. When that recognition penetrates, he will be open to reason.”
“But, Mr. President,” Gallatin bleated, “how can we fight? We’re broke, we’re reducing the army, we’re laying up ships—”
Again a raised hand stopped the Treasury secretary. “First things first, Albert,” the president said. “First, we must make the tyrant understand the danger in which he places himself.”
He glanced at Madison. “Mr. Secretary, I will count on you to find ways to do so.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Madison said. “Starting with the premise that we will fight.”
“Exactly.”
“We can raise a hundred thousand militia in the West.”
“More. Two hundred, I would say. I know westerners. Every man from twelve to ninety will pull down his rifle.”