Rebels of Babylon (36 page)

“I thought—”

“
Find out.
Then meet me here.” I looked to the captain. “How long shall we be out?”

“Depends on how long you stand there dawdling, Major. Two days. Three, if we get the slows or things turn unpleasant. If we can’t overtake her before she leaves the river, we’d waste our time out on the open seas.”

“And I want to know where I can find Marie Venin,” I added to Mr. Barnaby. “To arrest her. She will never frighten another negro again.”

“What will you—”

Already leaping toward the cab, despite my bothered leg, I told him, “Just do as I say, man! And pray for our success. If she’s still alive, I’m going to bring that servant girl back with me.”

“Magdalena?” he cried.

There was such hope in the poor man’s voice and on his face that it would have broken the heart of Herod Antipas.

The Irish cab man was not pleased to find himself charged to embark on a further journey. But I believe that, had he not obeyed the captain’s instructions to drive to the wharves, I would have knocked him off his seat and taken the reins myself. Which, given my dislike of the horse, was a mark of my resolve.

We clattered off at a speed that made a spectacle. The team must have been weary, but the whip kept them in play. All Poydras
Street fled from our reckless path. We nearly slew a workman rolling a barrel.

“Have you pencil and paper?” I asked Captain Senkrecht, although I thought it unlikely.

“What do I look like?” he asked, glancing down at the splendor of his own uniform. “A damned clerk?”

I never quite fathom the disregard in which otherwise sensible men hold honest clerks. I have been a clerk myself and a good one. I never saw the shame in it.

I let the matter drop. The curious thing is that, once we had decided on a course of action, Captain Senkrecht asked no further questions. He did not ask about the cargo of the
Anne Bullen
or even about my greater purpose. He seemed to accept completely my explanation that my name had been forged on any documents that had been shown to him. Navy fellows are like that, see. Give them a chance at action and they will not waste their energies on thinking.

Regarding my instructions to Mr. Barnaby to peer into the relations of Mr. Champlain, twas not mere curiosity. Nor was it, to be honest, an inspiration. Bits and pieces of the puzzle continued to fall into place, in an order all their own, and I had seen yet another thing that should have been clear as day some time before. The note put in the medicine pot to steer me to Queen Manuela had been put there by Mr. Champlain, not one of his negroes. The servant had only played his role in a piece of homely theater.

No colored fellow would have dared to write Queen Manuela’s name. I saw that now. They would not even speak it, let alone put it to paper. If they could write. But Mr. Champlain had suffered no such qualms. Or at least he had judged the risk worth the reward.

And that was queer. I did not think him likely to be involved in the slaving scheme, not in the least. In his sly and playful way, he had done much to help me uncover the plot. But that meant he already knew that the plot existed. And wanted it brought to an end for his own reasons.

Forgive me if I am uncharitable, but I did not believe he acted out of justice. That is not the pattern in New Orleans. All feuds are personal. Justice is a mask, sometimes convenient.

Given their social positions and Mr. Champlain’s remarks, I thought the likeliest tie would be found between him and Mrs. Aubrey. Although I could not say what that tie might be.

I did not foresee the sorrow I would find.

But I must not go too swiftly.

The wharves were a great bustle, with deep-keeled ships crowding in to load cotton for the hungry mills of Manchester and the looms of Massachusetts. You would have thought catastrophe inevitable, but the great hulls moved with the grace of a Hindoo dancing girl, their side wheels thrashing the water as they turned, assisted by small boats flirting with danger. The riverboats, in need of a scrub, were reduced to the lot of stepchildren, lined up along the levee farther on. The Rebels still had a choke-hold on the river to our north and the flat hulls dreamed idly of Memphis and St. Louis. But the ocean-going ships were in their glory, their holds devouring cargoes for all the world. Hard it was to believe the city had been reduced to beggary, for the docks were paved with silver, if not gold.

Why traffic in slaves when wealth could be made from shipping wartime cotton? Was it simply that greed is mankind’s bane?

The one time Jesus got into a fit was with those money-changers in the Temple. Knowing what I know of men and looking back on the cruel end of Our Savior, I do suspect the Hebrews have been maligned. Were I the sort who wagers, I would bet it was those Jerusalem bankers, not the common people, who bided their time until they could take their revenge. For Christ’s mistake of spoiling their accounts.

And do not say the moneychangers were Jews and there is an end to it. That makes too simple a tale. Christian bankers are no models of charity. I do not pretend to be a learned man, but I cannot believe that the simple folk of Jerusalem desired the death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who did no harm and must
have seemed a good fellow. That is not the way that these things go. No doubt those Temple bankers packed the assembly with troublemakers and staged a nasty scene to worry Pilate, who only wished to keep the peace and be done with it. Public officials, after all, value order above all other moralities.

And I served in Washington long enough to know how men of finance rule politicians.

If anyone grinned at the foot of the cross, it was those moneychangers getting their own back. I doubt that many bankers go to Heaven, whether they are Christians, Jews or Hindoos.

The captain had the cab pull up at the wharves reserved for our fighting ships. The yard stank of tar and burning hemp, of canvas set to dry and tamped-down boilers. Bluejackets swarmed about the dock, bossing negro stevedores and inspecting stores delivered by white chandlers. Some fussed with ropes or slathered hulls, while their idler comrades swaggered in wide-bottomed trousers.

At once, Captain Senkrecht was off and barking, leaving me to follow in good time. I noted how the sailors fled his path, how junior officers cracked their heels and saluted. I should explain that a naval captaincy is a higher rank than a captaincy in the Army. Do not look for the sense of it, but think of a seagoing captain as a colonel.

Those naval fellows always do things differently.

I wished to hasten after the captain, but first I had a matter to resolve, an issue of some delicacy. I had but little money upon my person. I needed to draw funds, but lacked the time.

Approaching the cab man and keeping an eye on his whip, I told him, “You shall have to wait for your pay until I return.”

Now, when you anger an Irishman you are lucky if he does not resort to fisticuffs. Fortunately, the fellow was sober and weary.

Still, his language turned the sailors’ heads.

“You shall have your pay and … and even something extra,” I said to placate him.

Between his imaginative, even lyrical, obscenities, he managed to say, “Ye promised me fifty dollars, ye low, dirty taffy, ye skulking, low Welshman, ye bummer. Fifty dollars it was to be, and that atop me wages for last night, for taking ye out to yer filthy doings with those Cajun lasses in the swamps …”

His voice was raised to stir half of the city and my embarrassment was undeserved. Fumbling, which was unlike me, I drew out my pocket watch and offered it to him in pawn until my return.

He did not even deign to take it up. “Tisn’t worth five dollars, that piece o’ tin. Ye dirty—”

Now, I am ever a just and temperate man, but I will admit that, in the past, I have not always thought generously of anyone who chose a life at sea. For I have always been a proper soldier, who kept his two feet nicely in the mud. But on that day my thoughts embraced amendment.

A lieutenant of Marines appeared at my elbow, along with two fellows in uniform who looked like white-skinned cannibals afflicted with indigestion and bad tempers.

“You,” the lieutenant told the cab man. “Shut your mouth. And get out of here. Or I’ll arrest you for interfering with military operations. After I shoot your horses.”

His tone did not encourage indecision.

At once, the officer turned to me and snapped his hand to his cap in a perfect salute. “Lieutenant Gray, sir,” he reported. “Captain Senkrecht invites you to come aboard.”

That was the day I began to like Marines.

TWAS ALSO THE day my luck began to turn. If I may speak of luck and not God’s mercy.

I was scribbling out a note to General Banks and trying to keep out of the way of the sailors, who had a great deal to do before we could sail. In truth, I understand no part of the bluejacket’s life, but it seems an awfully complicated thing. There are ropes enough aboard a ship to hang a century’s murderers, and not a few members of the crew on any deck look fearful of
the noose. They scramble about as if pursued by Death, while their officers keep an eye on things and preen.

The ships with which we fought the war were queer things. I do not speak of the ironclads in the illustrated weeklies or of the turtle gunboats on the rivers, all of which were strange enough in their ways, but of the warships that patrolled our coasts and the oceans. They were, like all of us, caught between two ages, one of wood and wind, the other of metal and steam. The smokestack of the
Cormorant
rose straight between her masts, a confident brat between two hapless elders. The humps of her twin wheels gave the vessel a muscular look, as if her strength were clenched to spring on her prey. You could not doubt her. And yet, for all her polished brass and the shining bronze of her guns, the
Cormorant
lacked the grace of the older vessels creaking and sighing along the commercial wharves. The gunboat was a creature of our times, which value power and do not pause for beauty.

Of course, I stand for progress and only mean to offer you a picture. Nor could I much dislike those leviathan boilers, since many were powered by our Pottsville coal. But we were all in the middle then, caught in the very war that made us modern. None of us could see what was to come, but all sensed that the past could not return.

My note to General Banks was nearly finished, counseling him to apprehend Captain Bolt and confine him on the charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy against our government. I had all but signed my name when the bulk and churn of a vessel lifted my eyes. Twas just coming up on our stern, alive with uniformed men and flying our nation’s flag, with a big Dahlgren gun on her deck. She seemed so near I feared we must collide.

Captain Senkrecht hailed the vessel through a speaking trumpet as bright as the helms of Mr. Homer’s Greeks.

“Ahoy,
Hermes!
”

“Ahoy,
Cormorant!
”

“Did you pass the
Anne Bullen?
”

“Aye. The
Anne Bullen.
Fifteen miles downriver.”

I saw a look of surprise cross the captain’s face. The
Hermes
plunged along, roiling the waters. Our own deck rose and fell as cold gulls swooped. After a lapse, the captain called out again.

“Was she under steam?”

“No steam up. Under sail.”

Captain Senkrecht did not even bother to end with a salutation, but turned to me at once and said, “We’ve got her! The damn fools must be mad not to be under steam. They’ve barely got enough wind to let them steer.” He smashed his fist into his palm and looked as pleased as Lord Nelson at the Nile.

But now that my intelligence had finally cast off its slumbers, another possibility occurred to me. I wondered if we were being given a chance. If some of the better, or braver, souls among the New Orleans negroes had interfered with the
Anne Bullen
’s machinery. To give their dusky brethren a last chance at freedom.

I did not voice my suspicions to the captain. All that could wait. I descended to the wharf to dispatch my message and nearly toppled into the river before I reached solid ground. A shudder had wracked the ship. But when I looked back, I could not complain of endangerment. For the tremor that had nearly spilled me over had come from the first great belch of the fired boiler.

A black cloud rose between the masts, as if the vessel itself had been angered and yearned to get into a fight.

It had taken but an hour and not two to trim the ship for the chase. Say what you like about Navy men and all their suspect habits, they rush to a scrap as other men rush to sweethearts.

I barely had time to impress my note on a guard, with the warning of frightful penalties if General Banks did not receive it as quickly as the poor fellow’s legs could run.

THE DAY WOULD not decide to be fond or foul. Bright sun struck brown water, promising warmth. But each time I thought to remove my greatcoat, a contrary breeze swept up the river
to stop me, shifting clouds whose shadows harbored winter. The air on the river was wet as a mine that has not been pumped out, even when the sunlight warmed my face. Twas a sickly climate.

Along the banks, beyond the useless forts and unkempt levees, the few plantation houses looked bereft. Some had burned, in all or part, casualties of war. Lean children failed to wave. Elsewhere shanties perched at the edge of swamps, as if their occupants meant to reverse the theories of Mr. Darwin. Unbothered by the modern life on the river, their freedom seemed the liberty of the poor, to breed, quarrel and fail. That is the queer thing, see. Setting aside the high and mighty landowners, I never understood what the Southrons were fighting for.

When I explained to Captain Senkrecht that the
Anne Bullen
’s cargo consisted of kidnapped negroes, he looked crestfallen. As if he would have thought it more in keeping with his station to apprehend an illicit load of cotton.

The Southrons fought to keep the negro enslaved. Reluctantly at first, we fought to free him. He began as a cause and became an inconvenience.

The captain convened a council of war in a cabin below the wheelhouse. Included were the commander of the
Cormorant
—a younger officer with a fine moustache—as well as a river pilot and Lieutenant Gray, who had charge of the detachment of Marines. Charts I could not read covered a table, overlaid with instruments fit for astrologers. The cabin smelled of tobacco, oil and paraffin.