When This Cruel War Is Over (26 page)

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Authors: Thomas Fleming

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Mason nodded. “We were within an inch of capturing the city when General Stapleton's division arrived from Gettysburg, complete with cannons, which they didn't hesitate to use. He smashed the secession out of this city in about ten minutes.”
“The poor fellows never had a chance,” Miles McDonald said. “It was clubs against rifle bullets and canister.”
Paul avoided Janet's eyes. Was she wondering why he had not told her about his brother's role in the draft riots? If so, she chose to conceal it. “Here's another Stapleton,” she said, “ready to tell his murderous brother and everyone else it's time to stop the slaughter.”
The Irishmen looked skeptical. But Mason said, “If you've convinced Jefferson Davis, that's good enough for me. Here's the deal. Tonight at eight o'clock, you'll have dinner with Fernando Wood in the Astor House and find out how much he wants to put the
Daily News
behind you. Tomorrow we'll show you the guns.”
“The
News
is goin' broke, so don't think you're gettin'
a silk purse. It's a lot closer to a sow's ear,” Miles McDonald said.
“Pay no attention to him,” Mason said. “He's an old Tammany Democrat. They all hate Fernando because he kept too much of the graft for himself when he was mayor.”
“I'm a man who believes in the Southern Confederacy,” McDonald said. “It's our one hope of escaping the dictatorship of the Republicans. If they win they'll run the country for the next hundred years and no Irish-Catholic will get a decent job anywhere. Our children's children will be lugging bricks and digging ditches beside a bunch of niggers, probably for less money than they get.”
The other two Irishmen remained stony-faced before this impassioned speech. Paul read nothing in their faces that suggested they could think a hundred years ahead. They were mercenaries, working for Mason.
“Where are the guns?” Paul asked.
“On a railroad siding over in Jersey City. We'll take you there tomorrow,” Mason said.
“Where did you get them?” Paul said.
“The less you or anyone else knows about that, the better,” Mason replied.
“We've got a line on something hotter than rifles,” Miles McDonald said. “Gatling guns.”
“What are they?” Janet asked.
“A rapid-fire gun that can shoot over a hundred rounds a minute,” Paul said. “I saw a demonstration of one in Washington in 1862. General John Reynolds and a dozen other top officers urged the government to buy it. But the idiots in the army ordnance department refused to approve it—”
Paul stopped, embarrassed by the anger in his voice. He was talking as if he wished the Union Army had bought the clumsy murderous weapon and won the war. Did he really wish that had happened? He would never
have received his Gettysburg wound—or met Janet Todd. Life was a very confusing equation, crammed with pluses and minuses.
“The inventor's joined the Sons of Liberty,” McDonald said. “He gave us the plans. We're having the guns made in Europe.”
“Will they be here in time for us to use them?” Janet asked.
“Maybe,” Mason said.
“With or without them, we'll show the world that tens of thousands of Democrats are sick of Lincoln,” Janet said.
For a moment Paul almost rebuked her. He had begun to think Janet did not care whether the Sons of Liberty's insurrection succeeded. She would be satisfied with an upheaval—days or weeks of turmoil that would prove Lincoln had no support in the American heartland. It was more than a little ironic to see the way she and Henry Gentry agreed that the mere fact of an insurrection would wreck Lincoln.
The trouble with that idea was the way it left the men with guns in their hands exposed to capture and possible execution for treason, as General Lee had pointed out. As a professional soldier, Paul's instinctive loyalty was to these fighting men. He suddenly heard Henry Gentry saying,
Janet Todd is a Confederate agent.
Was his seduction, his enlistment in the Sons of Liberty, part of a coldhearted plan? No, he rejected that demoralizing idea.
They rode downtown to the Astor House through the terrific heat and humidity. Janet quizzed him about Fernando Wood. Paul knew little beyond his stormy tenure as mayor of New York—he had fought with the reigning Democratic bosses of Tammany Hall—and his 1861 proposal that New York should secede from the Union and became a free city, in which North and South would trade as equals.
At eight o'clock in the Astor House's opulent Merchants Room restaurant, they met the owner of the
Daily
News.
Fernando Wood had a face that seemed to narrow to a knife edge around his aristocratic nose. Beneath shrewd knowing dark eyes was the precisely curled black mustache of an English gentleman. Wood was wearing a creamy white summer suit with a large purple handkerchief in the upper pocket, matched by a purple tie. Beside him sat a handsome redheaded woman in a white lace dress that displayed a remarkable amount of her snowy breasts. Wood shook hands and introduced Gertrude McAfee.
“Gertrude's from the South,” he said with a smile. “I thought she'd like to be in on our dastardly plot.”
“What part of the South?” Janet asked.
“New Orleans,” Miss McAfee said in a heavy drawl.
“Her father is an old friend. He sent her up here to protect her from Lincoln's liberators. She wrote a wonderful series of articles for the News about the insults women have had to endure in New Orleans since the federals occupied it.”
Miss McAfee was a little too voluptuous and her smile too clever for Paul to swallow this. She reminded him of several women he had seen on the arms of Union generals in Washington. They listened while she described New Orleans women being dragged into doorways and violated by drunken Union soldiers, many of them Negroes.
Meanwhile they enjoyed New York's favorite dish, oysters on cracked ice. Wood ordered champagne and suggested lobster in a poached cream sauce for the main course, followed by chocolate mousse for dessert. It was a feast and Paul began to wonder who was going to pay for it. He suspected it was not Fernando Wood.
“So,” the ex-mayor said as the coffee was served. “What do you want me to do for twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“Support the western confederacy,” Janet said. “Call it the noblest work of political genius you've ever seen. Print everything we send you about our declaration of independence, our constitutional convention.” She described the thousands of angry Democrats ready to revolt in Kentucky and Indiana, their plan to create a new country backed by the liberated Confederate prisoners outside Indianapolis and Chicago.
“I like it,” Wood said. “I'll put every ounce of ink and every inch of type in the building behind it. The moment you succeed, I'll call on Lincoln to resign.”
Paul took an envelope containing $25,000 from the inside pocket of his coat. “Why do you want all this money to do that, Mr. Wood?” Janet suddenly asked. “I've just come from Richmond. The South needs every cent it can find to buy uniforms, ammunition, food. They're close to starvation.”
Wood stared at them in undisguised amazement. “
I
need it because the
Daily News
isn't making a profit, Miss Todd,” he said. “And Miss McAfee needs a few new dresses. And I need several new suits. And a bargain's a bargain. What's going on here? You people are just supposed to deliver the money and fill me in on the details.”
“Here's your money, Mr. Wood,” Paul said, handing him the envelope. “Although I agree with Miss Todd's sentiments, I also understand your necessities.”
“Those insufferable Republicans at the
New York Times
have been trying to put Fernando out of business,” Gertrude McAfee said. “It would be a tragedy if they succeeded. The loss of one of our few courageous Democratic voices.”
Wood ordered another bottle of champagne to try to restore their good humor. The ex-mayor also ordered another chocolate mousse, which he shared with Miss McAfee. A gob of chocolate dropped onto her left breast. There was much giggling as Wood wiped it off.
Miss McAfee's profession was becoming more and more apparent. Whether she practiced it in New Orleans or had assumed it in New York was an interesting if somewhat moot point.
Miss McAfee said she hoped Wood would let her write about the Sons of Liberty uprising. “These two should be the stars of the story,” she said. “I can even see a title: ‘For Love and Liberty,'”
“Not bad,” Wood said. He scribbled it on a pad he pulled out of his inner coat pocket.
“Once things get going, I hope you'll tell us your story, Miss Todd,” Wood said. “We'll make you famous—or infamous, depending on the reader's political orientation. I hope you'll include how you persuaded Major Stapleton to change sides and risk his reputation and his life for your cause.”
The edge of sarcasm in Wood's voice made it clear that he was getting even for Janet's suggestion that he support the western confederacy free of charge. He was practically saying she had made sure Paul was being well rewarded for his southern sympathies.
“I'll consider it,” Janet said with a defiant toss of her dark hair.
The idea of making their love a story in a cheap newspaper like the
Daily News
horrified Paul. Wood and Miss McAfee departed wishing them success, and the waiter presented the check. Paul paid it and he and Janet took the elevator to the sixth floor of the Astor House.
“You're not serious about letting him use our story in his rag of a newspaper, are you?” Paul asked as they walked down the red-carpeted corridor to their rooms.
“Why not?”
“Janet—what we have between us can never be shared with anyone.”
“Come now. Don't you think everyone knows we're lovers? John Wilkes Booth, the Hayeses, Jefferson Davis? Even your wonderful General Lee?”
“I don't know about the others. But I'm quite certain General Lee thinks I'm conducting myself like a man of honor with you.”
“But you're not. At least on his terms. On my terms—and I hope on your terms—you are. Why not tell the world about us? It might win us thousands of Democrats who remember your father's name.”
“No!”
They stood there in the silent corridor, suddenly no longer lovers but antagonists. For a moment Janet seemed tempted to defy him. Instead, she pressed herself against him and said, “I'm sorry. You're right, of course. It's unthinkable.”
Paul kissed her with a violence that confessed how close he had been to repudiating love—and the western confederacy. “Can I come to you tonight?” he asked
“Of course.”
A half hour later, when he knocked on her door, she called, “It's open!”
She was in bed beneath a sheet, wearing a pale blue nightgown. A faint breeze stirred the curtains but did little to alter the almost suffocating heat and humidity. In the yellow lamplight, there was a sheen of perspiration on Janet's forehead. Her expression seemed welcoming, but Paul sensed something strange in her manner.
“Are there many women like Gertrude McAfee in New York?” Janet asked.
“A great many. They're in Washington too. Some people call them adventuresses. But I'm afraid they soon sink to another level.”
“You called me an adventuress a while ago.”
“It had a different meaning,” Paul said.
“I hope so,” she said.
Paul sat down beside her on the bed. “Tomorrow morning, why don't we go to city hall and get married? No matter what happens, we'll know we love each other
for better or for worse. We'll have testified to it in a public way.”
“I'd say yes in a moment if Adam Jameson wasn't involved. I think he'd react badly to the news. So badly he might find reasons to stay in western Virginia.”
There it was, the southern cause, personified by Adam Jameson, standing between them as long as the war lasted. The only solution was a swift end to the war—something the western confederacy might accomplish.
Paul lay down beside Janet on the outside of the sheet and kissed her gently. “Let's forget them all for a while,” he said.
He took off his night robe and slipped under the sheet. Untying the bow on her nightgown, he began undoing a half-dozen smaller bows that ran down the center of the lacy garment.
“I love you,” he said. “You love me. It's the only thing that matters.”
“If only that were true,” Janet murmured.
“It is true,” Paul said.
For a moment he saw himself trying to extricate Janet from the clutching hands of Gabriel Todd, Rogers and Adam Jameson, Jefferson Davis, Fernando Wood. They had to get beyond argument, beyond interfering voices that inflicted doubts and wounds. “Come to me,” Paul whispered. “Don't hold anything back.”

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