Rebels of Babylon (35 page)

“We must have unswerving faith in a single God.”

“But, Major Jones, the priests and parsons also wants us to believe in Jesus Christ and the ’Oly Ghost, as well as the Lord ’Imself. Don’t that make three? And the Catholics ’as more saints than the ’eathen ’Indoos. All’s one, sir, all’s one! The
voudou
folk don’t no more agree with one another than Lutherans and Baptists. Some believes they’re worshipping the ’Oly Ghost, that ’E come out of the African bush, where ’E ’ad another name. Others ’as a fondness for Mother Mary, who wears more names than a red-headed riverboat gambler. And even if they worships an African god, who’s to say ’e’s not the old fellow we’re fond of? ’Ow can we know they ain’t all the same, only speaking different languages, just like men do?”

“The rites I saw last night were … there was nothing Christian about them, I assure you.”

“I didn’t say there was, sir, begging your pardon. Nor that there wasn’t. It’s only that I doesn’t feel fit to judge. I mean the
negroes, sir. Many’s the colored Christian, sir, who’s as devout as any of your Methodists. They goes about things regular, except sometimes they sings a little louder. But I ’ave to ask myself ’ow I would look at things, if I was in their shoes, sir. Speaking of the ones that ’as shoes of their own. They was raised up on plantations or in city houses where the master and the mistress told ’em about Jesus and the raising up of the meek, then beat ’em when they dropped a stitch or sold ’usband from wife to pay off a gentleman’s note.” He shook his doubting head. “It’s a wonder that a one of ’em believes in the ’Oly Gospels, sir. After ’ow they been treated by proper Christians. Turned away from churches, whipped and scourged.” He looked at me with formidable earnestness. “Who among us ’as suffered like Jesus Christ, sir, if not the African?” He glanced out at the raw, ungiving landscape and spoke his last words as if to himself. “Sometimes I thinks that we’re ’is cross to bear.”

“Suffering is our lot upon this earth. For every man. To prepare us for the joys of eternal salvation.”

“True enough, sir, true enough! And suffering’s one thing what ain’t in short supply! But there’s suffering, and there’s suffering. It always seems to Barnaby B. Barnaby that it’s easy enough for a fellow like you or me, all fancy free, to talk about our sufferings over a toddy. But I wonder ’ow we’d feel if we was negroes.”

“But you have suffered a great deal yourself. You lost your wife and children. Your business. And now you worry about Lieutenant Raines …”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but I sees it different. Marie and the children was taken away by the Yellow Jack. The ’And of God, you might say. But the negro suffers at the ’and of man. At Christian ’ands.” He leaned toward me, which always involved some effort on his part. “Major Jones, I ain’t as learned and clever as many another, but it seems to me that folks needs to believe. In one god or another. Otherwise, the bad times would be unbearable. We needs to believe that there’s some great sense to the mess of things. Assuming that the Good Lord made us that way, maybe it don’t matter exactly ’ow we believe in ’im,
or what we calls ’im. As long as we believes with all our ’earts. And behaves ourselves tidy.”

“I witnessed copulation. And animal sacrifice.”

“Well, I ain’t excusing any such goings-on as that, not entirely, and I doesn’t mean to imply it, sir. But if a body ’asn’t got the two bits or ten dollars for a visit to any of a ’undred fine establishments in the Quarter, and if that body lacks a roof over is ’ead, I suppose the body’ll do what we all do someplace where it ’appens to be convenient. We’re all the same in that way, if no other. If you’re asking Barnaby B. Barnaby. And as for animal sacrifice, ain’t there a terrible lot of it in the Bible? And wasn’t Abraham ’imself tempted to cut the life out of ’is poor son?”

“The Lord was testing Abraham.”

“And a nasty test it was. God ought to be ashamed of ’Imself for that one. And if it’s brutality you wants, you doesn’t ’ave to go far. Could anything be crueler than this war, sir? Or any war?” He reclined again, and sighed. “Oh, Major Jones,” he told me, unrepentant, “if only folks doesn’t do one another a damage, I’m inclined to let them go any way they wants.”

“Our only hope of salvation lies in Christ.”

He nodded. “Don’t that seem a bit selfish and vain on ’is part?”

He was hopeless. I only know that, without my faith, I could not endure another God-given day.

But let that bide.

Now you will say: “Abel Jones, you are too lax and tolerant.” But I will tell you: I believe in spreading the blessed message of Jesus Christ, but I do not think conversions come through nagging. And, truth be told, when I was young and green, there was a dear person in India, a Musselman, whom I never tried to convert. Of course, those were the days when I had strayed. I was little better than a heathen myself. But her heart was good, far better than mine own. Her tawny skin could not conceal her virtues. I cannot bear to think the sad lass damned.

I let the air between us rest a few minutes. Raw and squalid, ever more signs of settlement broke the countryside. Even
the finer houses looked neglected. Perhaps it was only the
effects of war and winter, but I did not find their Southron world appealing.

My papers passed us through a Union guardpost. The smell of cooking coffee made me want.

“Speaking of negroes,” I began anew, “I noted a curious thing about Madame La Blanch.”

“Oh, I’m glad to ’ear you call ’er that, for any other names should be forgotten.”

“You
knew!
You knew her identity all along!”

He squirmed a bit. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, sir, I wouldn’t say so much as that. I had my suspicions, I did. That I admits. But suspicions and no more. For it doesn’t pay to know what we’re not to know. Not even if we knows it.”

“Be that as it may, perhaps you can explain a curiosity.”

He looked at me warily.

“Yesterday, at her ‘
atelier,
’ as I believe you called it, Madame La Blanch seemed to give herself out as a white woman. Not that she made any specific claim, that I will grant you. But her speech during our interview was that of a Southron gentlewoman. If not one of the finer sort.” I rearranged my person on the cab bench. A certain attribute of my anatomy is not well padded and I had grown sore as the vehicle jounced along. “Yet, last night she seemed unmistakably a negress. Indeed, she gloried in the role. And her speech, when it was not indecipherable, had an accent not of this world. Or, perhaps, of old Africa. Then this morning … this morning, when she appeared in civilized dress again, her accent resembled that of a colored maid.” I tapped him on the platter of his knee, asking his thorough attention. Clear it was that the subject made him uneasy. “What am I to make of that? One thinks the woman unlikely to be honest. Who is she, really?”

I believe the pity that filled his eyes was for Madame La Blanch, not me.

“I ain’t sure as she knows the answer ’erself anymore,” he told me. “Not that I knows ’er all that terrible well, sir. But she always seemed unsure of where she fit.” He smiled sadly. “Like every other negro in America.”

AS WE RATTLED up to the St. Charles Hotel, with the tardy sun sweeping the streets, I ordered Mr. Barnaby to hold the cab man at bay while I fetched the letter. I was ashamed of my appearance, unshaven and stained by a night spent in the wild, but there are times when we must forego propriety.

I rushed up the stairs and into the lobby, aiming for the hotel desk as directly as a rifle ball. I meant, of course, to demand that the clerk on duty produce my letter.

I was forestalled.

A Navy captain, in full, braided regalia, appeared from behind a column and grabbed my sleeve. Discourteously. Gray-haired before his time he was, and handsome in a ruddy way. You would have thought him suitable for display at a royal court. But he did not look pleased.

“You Jones?” he barked, keeping a firm grip upon my arm.

“I am Major Abel Jones, United States Volun—”

“Then
you’re
the high-hat sonofabitch who’s been authorizing ships to sail without proper inspections.” Had he not been a gentleman, I think he would have spit upon the parquet. “Just like the goddamned Army. Isn’t it just? You a Butler man? Is that what I’m up against? The clerk said you wouldn’t even open my damned letters.”

There are times in life when apologies do not suffice.

“CAN WE CATCH THEM?” I ASKED THE CAPTAIN. HIS name was Senkrecht and he was a Farragut man, the sort who wishes the enemy had a proper fleet so he could steam out to fight it. “Can they be overtaken?”

Perhaps my avidity convinced him that I was telling the truth, that I had issued no letters authorizing ships to sail without review of their cargoes. That any papers bearing my name had been forgeries.

He muted his anger to the common gruffness sailors affect. “You won’t catch the
Barbara Villiers.
She’s as sleek a hull as I’ve seen upon this river and fully seaworthy. She’s two days gone and out on the open waters.”

“But the second ship you spoke of, the
Anne Bullen?”

“Well, if we weren’t standing here with our hands down our trousers … she’s fast by the looks of her, but not too fast for, say, the
Cormorant.
Not while she’s still on the river. She only left harbor this morning. A side-wheel gunboat
might
catch her. And outmaneuver her. With a shallower draft in the channels, we could—”

If he had been rude to grasp me by the forearm, I was twice as discourteous to tap him with my cane. I was already moving and only wanted the fellow to hurry himself along. I did not wish a lecture on naval affairs. I only wanted to know if we had a chance.

Look you. I was set to have a terrible load upon my conscience. If we could catch one of the slaver ships, it might be reduced by half.

But think on it. Because I had read my letters from home, instead of attending to duty, a ship full of kidnapped negroes had set off from the city’s wharves under our noses. Because of my inattention, men and women—perhaps children, too—who should have enjoyed freedom would live the rest of their lives under the whip.

It made me little better than a slave-trader myself, may God forgive me.

I wished to catch that second ship, the
Anne Bullen,
almost as much as I have desired anything in my life.

I dragged Captain Senkrecht behind me by force of will.

“So, we
can
catch her, then?” I repeated, as if I distrusted the confidence of his answer.

“Good chance. Very good chance. She won’t be running at maximum speed because she won’t want to draw attention to herself. She’s fast enough, but if we can get the
Cormorant
underway in, say, two hours, we’ll have us a horse race. She’s been patrolling the coast and has Marines aboard. I’ll double the complement while her skipper’s rounding up his strays and raising steam. In case your friends decide their contraband’s worth a fight. Which would be a damned fool choice for a merchant hull.”

That sounded wise. About the Marines, I mean. For well enough I knew my opponents were deadly.

I had first encountered American Marines the spring before, when I sailed to England on a mission that failed, leaving that pirate Semmes to prowl the seas. I do not think I ever saw a nastier lot. The Marines, that is. The barbarian guards hired on by the Roman emperors cannot have been more fearsome in their aspect. Indeed, with all respect to Mr. Gibbon, I suspect the barbarians were gentler. No sailor dreamed of mutiny with a squad of Marines aboard.

I am told they frightened the Barbary pirates.

Rushing back to the cab and Mr. Barnaby, who was trying his legs on the paving stones and, doubtless, indulging in thoughts of a proper breakfast, I waved my cane and called his name, as impatient to have a go at the world as was my naval companion.

I would have liked to explain what I was about, to let him know the import of those letters. But there was no time. I simply grabbed the fellow by the lapel of his well-worn coat.

“I must be off. And you must do as I say. Do all that you can to uncover any connection there is or ever was between Mr. Champlain and Mrs. Aubrey. Move heaven and earth. But find out.”