1812: The Rivers of War (53 page)

“How many muskets can we get?” he asked. To anyone but Sam, Ridge’s half whisper was covered by the shrill sound of Jackson’s voice, as he continued his peroration.

“—fellow citizens of every description—”

Sam restrained the urge to scratch. It was an unseasonably bright and sunny day in New Orleans, and the heat was making him sweat under the heavy dress uniform. But colonels, he suspected, weren’t supposed to scratch in public.

“—country blessed with every gift of nature—for property, for life—”

“Don’t know,” he murmured in return. “There’s a shortage of good firearms. Jackson’s been screeching at just about everybody over the problem for weeks now, from what I heard. Promises come in from everywhere—but still precious few guns make it into town.”

There might have been a trace of a smile on Ridge’s lips. “You mean we’re not the only ones who find that the white man’s promises are usually empty?”

Sam made no attempt to suppress his own smile.

“Oh, not hardly. You know how it is—and don’t try to tell me the same thing doesn’t happen among your folk. Every chief
makes his brag in the council—and then goes home and starts thinking about how he really needs to keep this and that for himself, instead of throwing it to the winds.”

“—opulent and commercial town—”

Major Ridge grunted. “True. But I need at least fifty guns to start with. We can get the rest from the enemy, I think, now that I’ve seen the land we’ll be fighting on.”

“You didn’t bring any guns?” Sam asked, already pretty sure he knew the answer.

There was no question that Major Ridge was smiling now, even if it was a thin sort of business. “Of course not. Needed to keep them for ourselves, back home. In case the Georgians showed up again.”

Sam chuckled. “Has there ever been such a ragtag army in the history of the world?”

But Jackson didn’t seem to share his doubts—not publicly, at least, on that square on that day. The general’s shrill penetrating voice kept spouting sure and confident proclamations throughout Sam’s little exchange with Ridge.

“—and for liberty, dearer than all!”

A goodly part of Jackson’s speech, needless to say, dwelt on the despicable nature of the foe.

“—who vows a war of vengeance and desolation—”

Actually, the British had done no such thing. Indeed, they’d assured the citizens of their safety, and claimed simply to be defending international law from American thievery. They had a point, too, since Napoleon had promised the Spanish he wouldn’t sell any of their land in the New World.

“—marked by cruelty, lust, and horrors unknown to civilized nations—”

Sam thought that was a nice touch. Absurd, true. Not even Driscol would claim that the Sassenach were worse than the ancient Greeks and Romans, who had thought nothing of sacking a city by way of a summer’s pastime. But, Sam wasn’t inclined to argue the matter. Demon-spawned or not, there was no doubt that if the British succeeded in taking New Orleans, they’d refuse to give it up again, regardless of the terms outlined in any subsequent peace treaty.

And with the outlet of the Mississippi under British control—formally Spanish, of course, but that meant nothing—they’d
have their hands on the throat of all commerce to the western states of America.

The Federalists could prattle all they wanted about the glories of state-built roads and canals, but every settler and merchant west of the Appalachians knew that there was no genuine substitute for the Mississippi River.

Jackson was winding down his speech, showering the thousands of citizens who were assembled in the square with praise for their courage and strength. Another nice touch, Sam mused, given that the population of New Orleans was famous across the Western Hemisphere for many things. Decadence, lewd-ness, moral laxity—the list went on and on. “Courage and strength” were conspicuously absent from most accounts.

But skeptical men never led armies to victory, and Jackson could and would.

“—the prize of valor and the rewards of fame!”

Major Ridge grunted approvingly, after Sam had translated that final Jacksonian promise. “He’ll forget it all by next year,” the Cherokee chief murmured. “But most won’t remember any of the promises, other than victory.”

No skeptic there, either. But Major Ridge had also led men to victory, and would again.

Sam looked toward John Ross, who was standing not far away. “Have you come to any decision?” he asked Ridge.

The Cherokee chief shook his head. Anyone who didn’t know him would have missed the gesture entirely. “No.” He glanced at Ross himself. “Neither has he, really, although you’ve got him talking persuasively.”

Sam was neither surprised nor discouraged. He hadn’t expected Major Ridge—much less most of the Cherokee chiefs—to make their decision quickly. And he knew full well that Ross was still riddled with doubts concerning the proposal that had been sketched out in Washington between Sam, Driscol, Ross, and Monroe.

Nor could he blame Ridge, really. Easy enough for someone like the secretary of state to issue philosophical pronouncements regarding the course of a nation’s destiny. Especially when it was someone else’s nation. It was something else again for that nation to agree to give up its material land in the here-and-now, all for the sake of an abstract future.

True, the offer was more sweeping than any the United States
had made before, to any Indian tribe. The Cherokees would be given somewhere over one hundred thousand square miles, an area larger than the territory they currently occupied. The exact boundaries would be determined in later negotiations. Furthermore, the United States would provide the Cherokees with the weapons and tools they needed to secure and develop that land, along with other material assistance to the amount of several million dollars. And Monroe had promised that the government would bear the financial burden of the relocation itself.

Promises, promises. Coming from a United States which had—being honest—a wretched track record for keeping its promises. And which, as this looming battle illustrated once again, had just as wretched a reputation for interpreting promises without much regard for the facts. After all—being honest—Napoleon hadn’t had the right to sell Spain’s Louisiana territory.

“We’ll still keep it,” Sam growled to himself. Because, right or wrong, millions of people whom Europe had despised would create a life for themselves on that land. And what was so great about Europe, anyway, riddled as it was with kings and noblemen? If the world’s only republic swelled into power as much by swindling and theft as by glorious feats of arms, so be it. The same could be said for every dynasty of Europe, down to the tiniest German robber baron who’d been put back in power by the Congress of Versailles, after Napoleon’s defeat.

Driscol didn’t participate in the gala affair at the Place d’Armes that Sunday, because he was still recovering from a different sort of gala affair that had taken place the previous night.

More precisely, because his newly forming unit was still recovering. Driscol had the sort of iron constitution that would have allowed him to march even after a full night’s carousing, but Charles Ball and his artillerymen didn’t.

So they claimed, anyway. Driscol wasn’t inclined to argue the point. First, because he’d already warned the general not to expect the new “Freedmen Iron Battalion” to be parading past the reviewing stand, not that Jackson had really cared.

“Just as well,” the general had grunted. “I’d have to listen to more squawking from the plantation owners—and the free men of color would probably whine at me, too.”

Secondly, because while Driscol could have marched that morning, he certainly didn’t want to.

Patrick Driscol rarely drank liquor. But when he did, he tended to drink a lot.

“My head hurts,” he complained to Ball after he woke the gunner up. That feat had been relatively simple. It had required no more than stumbling to his feet, taking three steps, and giving the artillery sergeant’s shoulder a vigorous shake.

Driscol, with a lack of sensibility that would have shocked any proper citizen of the United States, had fallen asleep—become comatose, rather—on the floor of the same dilapidated house in the freedmen’s quarter of the city as the chief noncommissioned officer of his unit. And done so, moreover, with no regard for other delicate aspects of the business.

True, the floor was covered with a carpet of sorts. But those same respectable citizens would have been aghast to note that it was Sergeant Ball, not Major Driscol, who occupied the only bed in the house. They would have been scandalized further by the fact that the sergeant’s head was well cushioned on the bosom of a lady who, in addition to suffering from the shame of Ham’s lineage, did not seem any too virtuous. Judging, at least, from her clothing, which was both flamboyant and—for the most part—flamboyantly absent.

Bad enough that Driscol would get drunk with darkies; worse yet, that in his drunkenness, he would fall asleep on a darkie’s floor. Positively insane that he wasn’t the one sleeping in the bed with the voluptuous darkie who owned the house.

Driscol essayed an erect posture. Giving that up as hopeless, he resumed his crouch and gave Ball’s shoulder another shake.

Ball uttered some sort of incoherent protest.

“It’s for your own good, Sergeant,” Driscol insisted. “If you don’t pry yourself loose from Marie, your leprosy will get worse.”

Ball chuckled, but his eyes remained closed. The eyes of the lady in question, however, popped wide open.

“Who you calling a leper, Patrick Driscol?” she demanded. “You watch yourself, or I’ll curse you. See if I don’t!”

That was no idle threat, either. Though only in her twenties, Marie Laveau was already a well-known voudou queen in New Orleans’s colored quarters. Everywhere in the city, in fact, because quite a few white people followed at least some of the voudou rituals. That was especially true of the women who employed Marie as their hairdresser.

Driscol probably didn’t believe in voudou. On the other hand, it was a faith he knew little about, and he saw no reason to take unnecessary chances. Besides, whether she could hex him or not, he’d seen enough of Mademoiselle Laveau to realize that smiting a man with a blunt instrument was well within her capabilities. His lily-white skin be damned. This was the black side of Ramparts Street, not a plantation in Georgia.

“It’s not my opinion,” Driscol added hastily. “I’m just passing on the advice of a famous doctor.”

“Doctors!” Marie pried Ball loose and sat up in the bed, seemingly oblivious to her half-bare chest—quite an impressive chest, too—and Driscol’s presence.

“Doctors!” she repeated. “The priests ought to ban the lot of them, seein’ as how suicide is a sin.”

Driscol smiled at her. “You’ll get no argument from me.”

After a moment, Laveau returned the smile. Then she gave Ball’s shoulder a shake that was a lot more vigorous than either of Driscol’s. “Get up, Charles! Before the major has you shot for insubordination.”

“’E wouldn’t do that,” mumbled Ball, struggling to rise. “Not a fellow sergeant! ’Sides, I’m a friend of his.”

Which…

Was true enough. Driscol didn’t make friends easily. But when he did, it was usually with another sergeant—and, in the months since the battle at the Capitol, he and Charles Ball had become quite close, as these things went.

So much for established wisdom. That commodity, never valued too highly by Driscol, had suffered still a further decline over the past period. Weeks—no, months now—in close proximity with Indians and Negroes had demonstrated to Driscol that the official certitudes of white American society were as shaky as a badly made roof.

As was always the case, those certitudes and their results were written down by literate men of the upper classes. Granted, taken as a whole, the certitudes described social affairs well enough. But social affairs are never taken as a whole. The very notion was an abstraction. In the real world, in the literary shadows where people of the lower classes met and mingled, the truth could be quite different.

Not everyone saw it the way he did, of course. Often enough, not even members of the lower classes were involved. That had been made pretty clear the previous evening.

“Oh, that’s just silly!” Marie Laveau had snorted at one point in the drunken conversation that had taken place around her kitchen table. “Patrick Driscol, every lynch mob I ever seen or heard about was mostly made up of the poorest white trash around. You won’t see hardly any rich men around.”

“Sure,” Driscol replied. “So what?”

He took the time, politely, to pour Charles Ball another drink. That took quite a bit of time, because by now his hand was very far from steady.

“Same was true in Ireland. The Sassenach could always get plenty of dirt-poor Irishmen to do their dirty work for them. But they were the ones who called the tune, not the slobs—and they could have stopped it in a minute if they’d wanted to.”

“’E’s right,” Charles burped. “You know it well’s I do, Marie. Mos’ o’ the time, anyhow. There’s a lynching, there’s rich men gave the signal for it. And they sure always the ones see to it nobody gets punished afterward.”