Long Knife (55 page)

T
HEY CAME BACK TO THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON
. Each looked as adamant to the other as before. But each in his own way had been changed by the spectacle of the executions.

Governor Hamilton spoke first. “Would you be so kind, Mister Clark, as to give me your real reason for refusing to accept my surrender as I offered it?”

“I have no objection to giving you my reasons once again,” said George. “It is simply that I know the greatest part of the Indian partisans of Detroit are with you. I want an excuse to put them to death or otherwise treat them as I find proper.” His eyes were red-rimmed and ferocious and unblinking as he spoke on, his voice rising, with a forefinger pointed at Hamilton’s face:

“The cries of the widows and the fatherless on our frontiers now require their blood from my hands. I look on their commands as next to divine, and I do not choose to disobey them. General, I would rather lose fifty men and my own life than not to empower myself to execute this piece of business. It’s that plain, sir, and if you choose to risk the massacre of your garrison for the sake of these few murderers, then that’s at your own pleasure. I might perhaps take it into my head to send for some of those widows to see it executed. Can I make it any more clear? I think not.”

“You dare call
us
murderers, after this slaughter just past?”

“You be murderers,” George said. “I was an executioner.”

Major Hay had stood listening to this with a raised eyebrow. “Pray, sir,” he said, “who is it you call Indian partisans?”

George stepped quickly toward him, leaned close to him, stared into the small lashless eyes, and replied:

“Sir, I take Major Hay to be one of the principals.”

Hay blanched and began to tremble; a sheen of sweat wet his brow and he looked as if he might faint. He clutched at his collar and looked scarcely able to stand. Never had George seen a man so struck with terror as Hay now seemed to be.

Glancing at Hamilton, George saw that the general was sneering and blushing, obviously much ashamed at Hay’s cowardice. Looking then to Bowman, he saw Joseph’s countenance seeming to alternate between expressions of disdain for Hay and sympathy for Hamilton’s embarrassment. Somehow, without another
word being spoken, George felt that Hamilton was, for all his arrogance and misdirection, a brave and proud man, that he was being crushed by circumstances out of his control, and that he was simply holding out for a vestige of his honor. I can’t execute more people simply to deny him that scrap, he thought.

“Governor,” he said, “let’s return to our respective posts now. I’ll reconsider the matter of terms, and let you know the result.”

Hamilton turned to him, a flicker of hope in his eyes, a barely perceptible sigh escaping him.

“If I make further proposals, you’ll know it by the flag,” George said. “If not, be on your guard; our drum will mean we’ve chosen to storm you. Good day, Mister Hamilton, and please leave Captain Helm with me as a go-between.”

Within a half hour, George had modified Hamilton’s surrender proposal slightly, and sent Helm into the fort bearing these articles:

  George walked away from his officers and men. He wandered into the vestibule of the church to be alone. He stood inside, his back braced against the wall, head back, eyes closed, feeling the swells of weariness, the greatest weariness he had ever felt, surge down through him from his head to his feet. Pinpoints and clouds of light sparkled and billowed behind his eyelids. Somewhere between dream and thought, he saw a tomahawk split a skull, and a rabbit lying gut-shot, twitching. He heard a scream. Teresa’s voice, he thought. He opened his eyes and the voice was that of Leonard Helm yelling his name. He
shook his head and went out the church door. Helm had returned with the articles of surrender. Under them on the same sheet, Hamilton had written:

  Thank God, George thought. Thank God.
I
don’t think
I
could’ve performed another minute!

T
HE MOON SLID DOWN THE SKY OVER A QUIET FORT AND TOWN
. I
TS
reflection danced on the moving water of the flooded Wabash, and men on both sides of the conflict had the leisure to look at it and think. The Americans and their allies were posted in strong houses from which they could view the fort; guards were set, and the rest plummeted off into the first comfortable sleep they had had in weeks.

Henry Hamilton sat up by the hearth in his quarters most of the night, sorting papers and preparing the countless details for the next morning’s disagreeable ceremony. He drank a little, now and then growing so misty-eyed with misery and self-reproach that he could not see what he was doing. Late at night, he called in his orderly. “Tell the guard,” he said, “not to raise the colors in the morning, that we might be spared the mortification of hauling them down.” The orderly gulped and blinked.

“Aye, sir.”

G
EORGE
R
OGERS
C
LARK AWOKE FROM A HEAVY SLUMBER NEAR
midnight. Moonlight shone in a rectangle on the wall of the church near the head of his pallet, and when he rose on his elbow he could see the low moon through the transom above the door. All was still after the eighteen hours of battle, whose aftershocks still seemed to pulsate in the back of his head. He stood up, every muscle and joint aching, and threaded among the sleeping officers and bodyguards on the floor. He looked down at the dark shapes of them, heard their low, slow sleep-breathing, recalled their long fatigue and bravery, and felt swollen with love and admiration for them, with gratitude for their
safety. Only one man under his command had been even slightly wounded, just enough to teach him not to saunter carelessly down a street during a gun battle. And now they were all sleeping, and the thought of their rest gave him the deepest sense of serenity.

He eased the church door open and whispered to the sentries, who nodded at him; then, with the icy air raising gooseflesh under his linen shirt, he strolled out to the place where he had negotiated with Hamilton for the surrender. He stood there for a moment watching the moon set over the river alongside the huge black silhouette of the fort. He could see sentries on the palisades where they had been afraid to show themselves before. Far off somewhere an owl’s call repeated itself like the low note of a flute.

He had worried a little about letting the British remain in the fort overnight, but had decided that it would be impossible to guard them otherwise, as the victory was putting into his hands as many prisoners of war as he had men of his own—far too many prisoners to guard in any customary manner, and sure to become a problem.

George walked to a nearby tree, urinated steamily on its roots, then came back toward the door of the church. He looked into the northeastern quadrant of the sky, where the stars were cold and brilliant, and thought of Detroit lying under them, a mere six hundred miles away, that fort now weak and undermanned and its commander here a prisoner. This recapture of Vincennes and the imprisonment of Hamilton should by all rights open the door for the easy conquest of Detroit, he thought. If Congress or Virginia sends me even a mere two hundred men—never mind five hundred—I think I could go and reduce Detroit as quickly as we have this place.

But at least we have for the moment wrested this whole territory out of British hands. And though we’ll still have to defend it, it’s ours now. The most immediate value of this triumph, he realized, was that Hamilton’s great spring offensive against the American frontier was ended before it could begin. Who, he thought, can even estimate the number of lives we’ve saved by this day’s work?

The cold on his skin made him shiver, but it braced him and he felt strong as he had not felt strong since the start of their sufferings in the flooded valleys. It was still difficult to comprehend that this venture, which he had started as a forlorn and
desperate hope, had ended in success of this degree. He couldn’t yet rejoice because he couldn’t yet believe.

He turned then for a last look at the setting moon. It was on the horizon now, its lower edge brushed by the bare tops of trees beyond the swollen Wabash. And the thought came to him then—it was as much a feeling as a thought—that somewhere in a direct line between him and that moon lay St. Louis. Somewhere, two hundred miles in that same straight line, in a spot marked for his eyes now by moonset, lay the village where Teresa would be sleeping. Under this very sky, he thought in wonderment; lighted by this same westering moon. Teresa, he thought. This deed is done. I can return to you soon.

Two tiny replicas of the moon glittered in his dark eyes for a few moments more, then were gone.

A
T TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
, C
OLONEL
G
EORGE
R
OGERS
Clark went through the barricade and strode up the road toward the fort. Behind him came the ragged Dickie Lovell, covered with gooseflesh, solemnly rapping t-tlt-t-t-t, t-tlt-t-t-t, t-tlt-t, t-tlt-t, t-tlt-t-t-t. Captain Bowman’s company tramped across the meadow and turned off to halt and stand in ranks on one side of the gate road. Captain McCarty’s company flanked left and took up its stand on the other side of the road. Then the companies of Captains Williams and Worthington marched up behind Colonel Clark, halted, and stood at parade rest. When the officers’ commands trailed off, the drum stopped rattling. A soldier stood behind Colonel Clark with an American flag folded over his right arm and the red-and-green colors of Virginia over his left.

While the Americans stood waiting for gate to open, the inhabitants of Vincennes swarmed up the slope and gathered all around to watch: burghers in faded velvet coats, tradesmen in loose smocks, young women heavy with child, old women in bonnets or soiled wimples,
coureurs de bois
in their fur caps and Indian garb, small children with runny noses leading smaller children with runnier noses.

The ground was frozen hard; the tracked mud of the road had hardened to a yellow, ankle-twisting stucco. The shadows were blue, dusted with frost. The leafless trees were silvery and tan, but gilded with the weak sunlight. The great muddy Wabash, carrying limbs and forest debris and grinding slabs of ice, rushed and burbled beyond the corner of the fort.

Colonel Clark stood tall and straight before the gate of Fort
Sackville, looking up at the bare flagstaff above the fort. Yellow-edged clouds crawled over and floated eastward.

Soldiers, civilians, and Indians kept stealing looks at the American commander, at his broad back, his sharp profile, his monumental stillness as he stood waiting for the gate to open. Despite the condition of his buckskins, which were so torn, soiled, and stained that they looked like something lifted from the forest floor, he appeared grand and clean. He had shaved the campaign stubble off his jaw, and wore a fresh white shirt and stock. The brim of his black hat shaded his deep-set eyes. The drab earthy color of his garb was set off by blue and red quill designs. The mud-clotted, fringed leather gaiters around his muscular calves were held up by blue garters fastened with silver knee buckles. His crisp linen, ruddy, clean skin, and the incongruous little silver buckles somehow imparted an edge of genteel civility to his otherwise savage aspect as he stood there waiting, and the bystanders were conscious of it even though they could not have said why.

Drums rattled within the fort now; drill commands came filtering through the palisade; a wooden bolt rumbled and the great twelve-foot gates groaned open to reveal the ranks of regulars at attention inside on the parade, in scarlet coats and white breeches, their Brown Bess muskets at shoulder arms.

Now a British drummer began rapping his instrument slowly, and Governor Hamilton appeared in the gateway, followed by two other British officers, and marched down the grade toward Colonel Clark.

Hamilton was resplendent. His coat was scarlet, breeches white as snow, black knee-boots gleaming with polish. Gold piping gleamed at his coat cuffs and lapels and his epaulets were of golden board and braid. He wore a soft red velvet sash around his waist, and from it depended his sword scabbard. But Governor Hamilton’s crowning glory this morning was a silvery powdered wig, which glowed in the sunlight and framed his autocratic features like a halo. He held his tricorn at his left thigh, and strode, squinting against the sun, followed by his drummer and officers, the few yards down the road to where Clark stood waiting. The voices of sergeants rang out; the regulars marched forward just far enough that their file leaders stood at the trodden timber threshold of the gate, then halted and stamped at attention.

Hamilton stopped a yard in front of Colonel Clark. They saluted. Hamilton looked up at the young giant, then drew his
sword from its scabbard; with a flick of his wrist he tucked the blade under his right arm, so that the hilt projected within reach of the victor.

Colonel Clark, not taking his eyes off Hamilton’s, reached for the sword and took it from him.