Rebels of Babylon (10 page)

“I thought per’aps, if I was a genuine ’elp to you, you might ’elp Master Francis in return. With all your ’igh connections up in Washington, of which you told us when we was riding together. I doesn’t want ’im to die up in Elmira, sir. Nor anyplace else. I’d sooner die myself, than see ’im buried.”

He was in tears. “I’ll do anything you asks me to, if you’ll only do what you can for Master Francis. You’ll never figure New Orleans out on your own, sir, upon my father’s honor, and that of ’is father before ’im, rest ’em both. It’s like peeling a onion what’s growing layers faster than you can strip ’em. You needs a fellow like me to be your guide, sir. And all I ask is that you ’elp Master Francis, once you’re finished with all your murdering business.”

SORRY I WAS TO HEAR OF THE YOUNG FELLOW’S capture. Even though he had worn the enemy’s gray. Lieutenant Raines, whom I had met in the course of a foul affair in Mississippi, was a splendid lad confounded by the times. Educated at Harvard College he was, and unlucky in love. A softly handsome boy, his charm was the sort that wins the girl, but loses the woman. Francis Drake Raines was an innocent—although he had killed other men in battle—and, truth be told, the ladies like a leavening of danger in their sweethearts. Although we think them made up of spun sugar, women have less fear in their hearts than men. Anyway, the boy was brave and silly. He fought because his fighting was expected, not least by his father, but the lad was not the sort who finds a taste for it. Perhaps his capture held a hidden blessing. He was the sort of lad that war devours, a student of theology who strayed.

“It must be ’orrible up there in the snows,” Mr. Barnaby told me. “With ’ardly a blanket betwixt the sorry lot of them. And think of the terrible lonesomeness of their victuals …” At this, he patted his belly as if it were wounded. “I doesn’t think I’d last a week myself.”

“Mr. Barnaby … I would like to help young Raines, but—”

“Oh, would you, sir?” he cried with delight. “I calls that the act of a gentleman!”

“—I must tell you a thing. And you must listen, see. I have it in mind to resign my commission upon my return to Washington.
And that will not endear me to the powerful. I can but promise to put in an honest word. It may not—”

“Oh, would you, sir? That’s all I asks. That’s all a gent could ask, sir, nothing more. I’ll take it as a bargain at the price, a capital bargain!”

He shot his hand through the darkness and found mine.

We rolled up to the St. Charles Hotel, where gas lamps burned through the bitter morning hours. The establishment quartered a number of our officers and a scattering of soldiers affected to guard it. But the lads only wanted relief from the sullen cold. They sheltered in doorways, clutching themselves, and would not have scared off a child with a wooden sword.

I said goodnight and took me up the steps to the hotel, which looked a Roman temple in its glory. Great columns it had, and a face of solid granite. Its size might have housed a regiment, with room left over for a troop of horse. Only the Customs House, where our headquarters had been posted, outshone the place in grandeur of scale and pride.

Still, times were hard in the city of New Orleans. It did not take experience to see it. In the pre-dawn hours the lobby looked forlorn as a looted village. It smelled of old cigars and wretched feet. Two guards drowsed in high-backed chairs, their rifles tipped to the wall, while the night clerk snored to fright Beelzebub.

I was sour. My toothache had returned, like Banquo’s ghost.

I do not like a toothache and would sooner consult a cobra than a dentist. The least thing makes me scold when a tooth annoys me.

I gave those sleeping guards what for, warning that better men had been shot for less. Nor when I gathered my key from the clerk did I pretend to admire his lack of diligence.

He passed me a letter from the provost marshal, expressing dismay at the trouble I had caused, along with a note from General Banks reminding me of our appointment.

I owed our officials a proper explanation. But little there was I could do at four in the morning.

I limped upstairs, with a hand on my jaw and no cane to aid my progress. Unarmed, I inspected every shadow and hang of drapery with an eye alert to assassins. I hesitated to enter my own room.

But mine enemies had paused to rest themselves. No sign of danger hampered me in my approach to the bed I had been allotted. At a reasonable rate, I should add, with the prices watched by our military government.

My Colt was still in its own bed, deep in my bag. I inspected the chambers, then set it near my pillow. After hurrying through my ablutions, I did not forget my prayers, although I will admit they were perfunctory. Except when I asked the Lord to stop my toothache, at which point I copied the bluntness of St. Paul.

Given the hour, I did not pursue my nightly habit of writing to my darling, but only laid me down for a bit of a nap. Even my toothache could not keep me awake. Nor did I dream of devils or snakes, of violent struggles or even, God help me, of India. Morpheus swallowed all life’s fears and miseries.

I
slept.

Now, I am an old bayonet and a veteran of John Company’s fusses. Schooled by creeping enemies, I rise before the dawn. I am as punctual as the Great Western Railway, as dependable as the Bank of England, and did not fear missing my appointment with General Banks, who commanded all of our forces in New Orleans. Twas fixed for eight o’clock, in the Customs House, but I rise well before that hour. Even after marching half the night.

I did not rise with the lark that day. Nor with the sun or even with the city, which is Frenchified and slow to leave its bed.

I woke to a pounding on my door that might have been a barrage from a dozen batteries. Leaping up, I reached for a ghostly musket, thinking myself in India again.

Ripe, the light recalled me to the present. My spirit shriveled. I rushed to the door and undid the lock, with no regard for my rude state of undress.

General Nathaniel P. Banks stood at my door. His glare might have slain the Basilisk and stopped Medusa cold.

Now, General Banks is a fine-looking fellow, with blade-point eyes, a full mustache and a little goaty beard. Gallant of aspect he is, and pleasing to ladies. But he did not offer me a winning countenance.

“You sorry, little bastard.” He pushed halfway into the room. “You sleeping one off? What the devil do you think you’re—”

He stopped. Staring past my shoulder.

“Who’s
she
?” he demanded.

That was a question to which I had no answer. Even after I wheeled about and forced my eyes open wide enough to take in the brown lass cowering in the corner. All balled up she was, like a beaten child.

Still, you saw at once that she was a woman.

“You no-good bastard,” General Banks said in a quiet growl far harsher than a shout. “You were supposed to report an hour ago. And I find you bedded down with a high-yellow whore.”

I was not “bedded down” with any creature. Nor did I believe the general had sufficient evidence to slander the young woman, who was fully, if simply, dressed.

Nonetheless, I wondered what the lass was about myself. My face must have gone as red as a grenadier’s sleeves.

“I’ve had enough of your tomfoolery, Jones,” General Banks informed me. “You had half the damned city in an uproar yesterday. More than half. Place looked like a damned battlefield. Undid half the good I’ve done since I got here.”

His eyebrows rippled like two ranks in the attack. “I don’t care
whose
authority you have behind you, I won’t tolerate this. I won’t have it. I’m writing to Stanton today.
And
Seward. To Abe Lincoln himself, damn you. I’ll have you court-martialed, before I’m done with you.”

He slapped a pair of gloves from one hand into the other, glanced at the lass again, grunted unpleasantly and stalked off down the hall.

“Have that gimp-leg bastard in my office in thirty minutes,” he told his subordinates, one of whom was Captain Bolt from the boneyard.

Bolt was the one who stepped forward to put a point on things.

“I was you, Major,” he said. “I’d get dressed about now.”

GET DRESSED I DID. In a hurry that would have suited a camp over-run by Pushtoons. And as I dressed, with the door shut on the soldiers, I turned to my uninvited, unwelcome guest.

“Who are
you
, then?” I demanded. “What are you up to, Missy?”

Along with a certain urgency in the kidneys, my toothache robbed my manners of civility.

In response to my tone, the woman began to weep. Which I found unhelpful.

I could not say who the creature was, or how she entered my room, or what she sought. And she, apparently, could not say it, either.

She wept and made noises and cowered.

I picked up the Colt to return it to its holster. The sight of the revolver made her shriek.

God knows what the lads in the hall imagined. I have a gentle manner with the ladies, and keep my doings proper in every regard. But the soldiers beyond the door must have thought me nasty.

Only one good thing come of her howl. Her jabber began to resemble human speech. Although the words had a worrisome, Frenchy sound.

Yet, French is light, like a rapier. It sneaks and stabs. The young woman’s tone had a weight to suit a cutlass. Twas French and not French. I could not grasp a word.

“I do not understand you,” I told her, with a hand on my sore cheek.
“Nix verstehen,”
I added, although that is German and did not help us much.

Of a sudden, the young woman rose from her crouch. Just long enough to hurl herself at my feet. A gold cross on a chain slipped from her bodice, brushing my toes. She clutched at my ankles, then at my calves, and finally at my knees. Staring up with a tear-swept face no man would accuse of beauty.

She looked to have colored blood, but was no African. Her face put me in mind of India’s servant girls, the sort a wise mother chooses to avoid tempting her sons. But for the tawny color of her skin, she might have been a mill-girl in the North, hoping to marry him that would have her soonest. Young she was, but without the bloom of youth. Her eyes were green and she smelled of worn clothes.

As a Methodist I must admit that I am a man no better than the others. Had she been a beauty, I might have conducted myself with greater kindness, toothache or no. The handsome face asks handsome manners, while plain meets a plain response. It is not fair, this world of ours. We see the golden hair and miss the golden heart.

She raved in opaque words, her terror impenetrable.

A fist addressed the door. Captain Bolt’s voice, dull even when excited, called, “Major Jones? You coming along now?”

He shouted to be heard through the wood, drawing the world’s attention to my predicament.

I could not employ the chamberpot in the presence of a woman, no matter her color or plainness. My loins seemed about to burst with the past night’s coffee. My tooth raged. And General Banks was furious. All the while, yesterday’s troubles perched upon my shoulders.

I fear that calm reflection was beyond me.

“I do not understand you,” I repeated to the lass. “I do not know what you are saying.”

Clearly, there was a service the young woman wished of me. She seemed to have made no mistake in her choice of rooms. Although she never hinted at my name.

I could only assume the lass wanted protection. But why, then, come to me? I had barely managed to keep myself alive.

How did she intend to share her story?

My curiosity had to be shelved. General Banks was waiting. I did not even have time to scrape my whiskers.

“Wait here,” I told her, which was silly of me. I could not think of another thing to say. Not that she would have understood me, anyway. “Wait here. I will come back.”

I freed myself, not easily, from her grip.

The best for which I might hope would be the appearance of Mr. Barnaby, who seemed to have an ear for the local dialects. Perhaps he could translate the woman’s pleas and make some sense of her presence.

I left the lass with dread upon her face.

“IF I HAD the authority,” General Banks said, “I’d rip those boards off your shoulders, Jones. You’re the kind of officer who disgusts me.”