Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase (13 page)

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Authors: David Nevin

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical

BOOK: Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase
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“Some of our people, perhaps. I’m not. And Hamilton is mounting a powerful campaign against him.” He noted Dolley’s surprise. “Surprised me too. He says Burr is a man of expediency, which I wouldn’t doubt, and Jefferson a man of character, which is a total mistake.”
Oh, Alex! On the wrong side of the great equation but honorable to the core! Arguing for a man he hated because he placed country ahead of all. He had been their friend and someday she would bring them together again.
“Mr. Hamilton is offering sound advice,” she said.
“Vote for Jefferson? No, never.”
No added argument could shake him. He agreed to present the danger as real to his fellow moderates, but that was as far as he would go. As for Delaware’s single vote, which he was free to cast as he liked, yes, that was key to the whole heartbreaking mess. But it was a key that he would not turn.
She walked away with a profound sense of failure. Jimmy
had been sure that the cold reality of the threat would bring moderates to their senses, and it had not.
For the first time, she felt her faith flagging. Perhaps this wonderful experiment in democracy, the passionate belief that free men could stand responsible for their own destiny, really was doomed. If men in the saddle were so headstrong, if their hatred and fear were so powerful, if they truly were blind to any reality but their own, the noble dream could collapse. There was, after all, an inherent fragility standing alongside democracy’s deep-rooted strength. If free men lacked the discipline to live by the rules they set for themselves, then freedom itself must vanish.
Dolley took the southbound stage and rode for unseeing miles, willing away tears.
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, JANUARY 1801
Andrew Jackson packed his saddlebag before dawn, before Rachel stirred. He was off again and his going would hurt her, it always did, but he could feel the nation calling. This mad Federalist plan to steal the country like so many highwaymen—it came to that, he would rally Tennessee men, they’d march six hundred miles, come up the Great Valley, and be there in a month to fall in beside Virginia and Pennsylvania men and the others who wouldn’t let the government be stolen.
Rachel stirred and murmured, and he stepped quickly from the bedroom and dropped the saddlebag on a chair by the front door. Fat old Hannah had the kitchen fire going and the wooden-handled coffeepot bubbling on the grate. He reached into the fireplace to pour himself a cup and stood by
the window of his handsome house, damn near the only frame house in Davidson County, watching dawn brighten his fields.
He heard Rachel moving about the bedroom, dressing, and remembered the first time he’d seen her. He’d been a young lawyer then; he had read the law with Spruce McCay back in Salisbury when the west end of North Carolina was the West and Tennessee was still wilderness. Studying law with Spruce McCay meant just about whatever Spruce said it did, from getting the fire going in the morning and the teapot simmering to sweeping out the office to running notes down Salisbury’s single street to the courthouse to interviewing witnesses to—once in a while—learning some law. Then, drifting west, he’d trained a little more under Col. John Stokes, who was much man and about the smartest lawyer in all the Carolinas. The colonel had lost a hand at Buford’s Defeat—it seemed Ma actually had nursed him, that was before she’d gone on the prison hulks the bastardly British kept in Charleston Harbor, gone to nurse our men captured and held there, and died herself of the ship fever. Dear old Ma. It still hurt that she’d left them to go serve her country. He had been still a boy and the others even younger, but he’d been so proud of her. Anyway, Colonel Stokes wore a silver knob in place of the hand, and to emphasize his points he banged the knob on the table and everyone from the bailiff to the judge bent their ears. Suited Jackson’s style.
So when he’d learned the law pretty good, he’d headed on west, packing a letter from a friend who said he’d been named judge for the Western District of Tennessee, and did Jackson want to be prosecutor? Did he! And now he was himself supreme court justice for the Western District of Tennessee, riding circuit through all the far-flung settlements.
So that was how he’d found his way to Nashville, and he remembered how much he’d liked it right from the start. Plenty of rough-handed men who looked the sort to make work for lawyers, two taverns—both natural business producers—a distillery that was sure to help, a couple of stores, a courthouse. It was the end of the line in those days. No
white settlements to the west, but that wouldn’t last long. People were surging westward, and Tennessee was talking already of separating from North Carolina. He’d been right at home.
In those days Indians raided at will, and you went out at night you’d better be well armed. He rented an extra cabin in the Widow Donelson’s stockade and took to the widow immediately, a round-faced woman with gray hair pulled back in a tight bun, the severity at odds with her gentle manner. Met her daughter that same day, a bright-eyed, laughing girl named Rachel, who spun out a good story about as well as anyone he’d ever heard. A mane of chestnut hair, a figure that a man could appreciate, a pretty face with a certain strength that grew quickly into beauty, a way about her …
“That is a fine-looking woman,” he’d said later to little Johnny Overton, who was about as good a friend as a man could want, then and now too.
“Yes,” Johnny had said, and then stopped. Jackson still remembered that pregnant moment of hesitation, and then Johnny had said, “But she’s married, you know.”
“Oh.” It had been a draught of cold water to his face. Surprised him how it had hit him, but maybe he’d known even then, at first glance.
“To a fellow named Robards,” Overton said.
“Robards?” Another dash of cold water, and Jackson had cried, “But I met him this afternoon in the tavern. Why, Johnny, he’s a sorry son of a bitch; you can tell that in the first five minutes talking to him.”
“That’s exactly right,” Overton had said, “but he’s still married to her.”
Yes, Jackson had thought, and she’s still fine looking. He’d walked out into the stockade yard. He was exactly where he wanted to be—in country where a man’s dreams could range without limits. The back door of the blockhouse opened and Rachel stepped out with a pan of soapy water that she splashed across the yard. Saw him and smiled, and he’d doffed his hat and bowed. Yes, then and now, a fine-looking woman … damned fine.
Rachel Jackson could feel the distress mounting, her breath getting wheezy the way it did, the trembling in her hands. Andrew would leave within the hour. She knew him so well. He wouldn’t put it that way, but he was going to rescue the nation. That could take him far, far away and into the gravest danger. Would the Lord follow and protect him all the way? She shivered.
“It’s the Sabbath,” she said, a quiver in her voice. “It would pleasure me if we went to service first, knelt down to Jesus …” The thing was, if he prostrated himself before the Lord, maybe the Lord would keep a closer eye.
Where was the laughing, dancing girl of long ago, back in those stockade days, trapped in a bad marriage, rescued by a Galahad with red hair and a lawyer’s license, who had saved her then as he stood ready now to save the nation? Buried by scandal? Destroyed? Perhaps … but no! No, she wouldn’t accept that, and she straightened and was strong again. It was what she had had to do to live through the disaster that nearly crushed her and that brought out all his mad, fighting instinct.
She shook herself, standing straighter, knowing he’d noted her tumult from the quick look he gave her. He was tall while she wasn’t, rail thin while she was growing heavy and short of breath, gray overtaking the red in his hair though he was only thirty-three; and he moved with a quick, decisive vigor that made it clear he knew his own mind on anything and everything and would brook no resistance.
Now he put his arms around her and she sighed and laid her head against his chest and let the comfort of his confidence flow into her like fresh blood in her veins.
“I called the meeting for noon, love,” he said. “It’s a two-hour ride and then some. Jack will be along any minute.”
Their home, Hunter’s Hill, he liked to call it, was near a dozen miles from Nashville. It was a lonely road, and while the Indians weren’t the threat they’d been and there hadn’t been a real war party through in some time, she was glad
Jack Coffee would be with him. He was gone so much. A superior court judge rode circuit, town to town on horseback, with law books on a pack horse, dealing with folks who’d bitten off someone’s nose or snuck away with title to some wilderness tract none of them had actually seen … .
“You’ll be back before nightfall, won’t you?”
“I don’t know, love.” She heard that patient note in his voice. “I may have to stay over. This is serious business.” For the first time she noticed the saddlebag on the chair by the door. He
expected
to be gone. But it wasn’t that he wanted to be away; he loved her and he loved the farm, the mares in foal, the new colts in the spring, the young wheat and corn and the new crop, cotton, when green shoots first broke the tilled ground. It was just that the world called, and he answered, which was his nature. It had been so from the beginning and she knew it always would be so, but there still was the anguish when he left … and the fear.
Jack Coffee came up the lane and swung off the massive gelding he rode. He was a huge man, younger than Andrew, their best friend, loyal, steady, taciturn, always there when called. He was courting her niece and she thought they would wed, though Mary had a contrary way about her that a steady man like Jack didn’t deserve.
“Aunt Rachel,” he said, when he came in, pulling off his hat. Andrew went out to see to his horse; she noticed he scooped up the saddlebag as he opened the door.
“Jack,” she said, “this meeting—”
“You know they’re trying to steal the government?”
She nodded impatiently. Andrew had talked half the night on how Democrats, which certainly included just about every breathing soul in West Tennessee, had won fair and square, and now the Federalists wanted to appoint their own president and keep the government. They would defy the will of the people, shatter the very soul of democracy! Andrew pacing the floor, beating fist into palm, pale with rage. By
God
, they weren’t going to get away with it, and she’d told him not to use the Lord’s name so, but her heart hadn’t been in the remonstrance, he’d looked so violent.
“But why you?” she’d whispered. “It’s not a court matter.” But she knew the answer. “I’m the leader.” He straightened. “I speak for West Tennessee. Everyone looks to me.”
It was true, too, had been since the beginning. Now, to Jack, she said, “This meeting, it’s the kind of thing that can make trouble.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll keep an eye out.”
Then Andrew was ready, that look of power sweeping his face, hair standing stiff as a brush as if it felt his intensity, his mind already far ahead, and she threw her arms around his neck and held him and then stepped back and watched them ride out. At the gate he turned and waved. He didn’t forget her, he never did, but he always left.
The hoofbeats faded, the stillness became acute, a distant birdsong clear and sweet proving no consolation. She turned back to the house to dress for church, wondering as she often did of her terrible loneliness when he was gone cast against her undoubted competence in everything else, in church affairs, in seeing to widows and orphans for miles around, for keeping the farm steady and ever more prosperous. Andrew didn’t run the farm; she did, while he was off judging and legislating and running the country, or at least wanting to. She made things work here. They had their people down to the slave quarters whom she must see to, and 640 acres to manage, horses and cattle, smokehouse and birthing barn and training paddock for the racing colts—it kept a body busy, and she did it, Andrew lavishing compliments on her. When you got right down to it, that this is what freed him to go was just plumb ironic.
Yet she knew the source of her distress, no question about it. The flames of scandal had seared her, the explosion had scarred them both, for life she understood now. The blue gown, she decided, the one with puffed sleeves and slender gray stripes. Blue was Andrew’s favorite color and the gray stripes suited her mood. She was lost in thought and Hannah, sensing this, laced her up without a word.
Seven years past now, and it still was like yesterday that little Johnny Overton had come to tell them they weren’t
married. Not really, not legally, after two years of living as man and wife. She remembered Andrew denying it, face red and then white, it couldn’t be, they’d been married proper, had the papers to prove it—and Johnny pounding it home, word coming down from the court, whole community knows, they’re talking of nothing else, calling it adultery.
Adultery!
Sam was waiting by the front door with the carriage. He’d loaded the three cakes, both cobblers, the tureen of succotash she’d made with her cheese dressing—church was more or less an all-day affair and the big covered dish dinner after the service and before vespers was the social event of the week.
The carriage ground down the long driveway. Adultery … Two days later, sick with humiliation, they’d—again! —taken license and sworn vows and become man and wife—again!
She had to be careful here. She clamped her hands on her umbrella; she could go to shaking as with the ague when she thought about Lewis Robards. Shaking with pure hatred, just what our Lord Jesus warned against, right there in Mark he said that after loving God, next was to love thy neighbor, and she calculated that meant folks everywhere and that must include Lewis Robards, but she had to be often on her knees praying for strength not to hate, sweat beading her forehead.
He’d been nice as pie, Robards, till she’d married him, at which moment his kindly good nature fled and he became jealous, domineering, abusive, unfaithful—out to the slave cabins every night; didn’t even try to hide it—and he’d have beaten her but for Andrew showing him that fighting knife he carried and telling Lewis he’d kill him if he saw a bruise on her face. They were all living in the big compound Pa had built around the main blockhouse, the Indians so bad no one dared spend a night outside.
Lewis going out to the slave cabins at night. What did those black women feel? She didn’t like to think of it, but it had a way of sneaking up on her, making her look at things
she didn’t want to look at. Did they welcome him? Why would they? Lewis wasn’t offering them love, he didn’t know how to love, he’d long since proved that. He just used their bodies and that sounded like the worst sin of all to her. Now she and Andrew kept slaves, which meant holding off some uncomfortable thoughts, but the good Lord knew that at least no white men went down to the slave quarters at night. Andrew saw to that. He worked their people and punished them when necessary, but he saw to it that no one abused them. They married, they had families, no one tampered with that … .

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