Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase (55 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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WASHINGTON, JULY 1803
“Hold up, Miss Dolley! Mr. Madison!”
They reined up their horses. Again! They’d never get to the picnic on the river at this rate. But then she saw it was Meriwether Lewis, tall and lean, loping long-legged over the mansion lawn.
“I’m leaving,” he cried. “I’m off today!” His face was shining.
“On the great adventure?” she cried. “Oh, Merry, we didn’t know you’d go so soon. We’d have had a party, a farewell party, a bon voyage—” She moved her horse to a convenient step and slid down as Jimmy dismounted.
“That’s mighty nice, Miss Dolley,” Merry said, “But I’m on my way. High time too.” His mouth drew tight as string. Poor Merry, he would never relax. “It’s July and we’re just starting. Why, in three months snow will fly on the plains. I’m way behind—”
She cut him off. He was darkening before her very eyes. What a way to start! “Merry, dear,” she cried, “I envy you so. You’ll see wondrous things. Why, the president says he expects you’ll find a live mammoth waving those big, curved horns.”
“The president has very rich hopes,” he said, voice gone suddenly dry. She wondered if he’d seen through her concern.
“But there’s a core of instruction too?” Jimmy said.
“Exactly, Mr. Secretary. I’m to find the Northwest Passage. All else subordinates to that—examine terrain, identify flora and fauna, analyze the country’s receptivity to settlers.” He smiled. “And look for mammoth sign.”
Finding the Northwest Passage would be wondrous enough, the route to the spices and silks and tea of the Orient that men had been seeking for five hundred years. She said as much, nattering on a bit. Columbus sailing west to reach east and bumping into the Americas, the long, fruitless search for the strait that must split the Americas to let the ocean through, and now the conviction that rivers must be the avenue to the Orient. She ran down, wondering if her enthusiasm sounded girlish.
The captain’s smile was ironic but kindly. “We know the Missouri runs out of the mountains to the east. We know the Columbia runs westward to the sea. The president is quite convinced that they rise near each other with an easy portage between. I’m to learn whether conviction equals geography.”
Again she had that odd sense of strength or focus or command or some distinct change in the young man. That he was finally going had to mean a lot, but she thought there was more to it. He’d always been strong and rather rough, nothing new about that, but this was different. It was mysterious but quite real.
It also struck her as he talked that what really interested her was not mammoths or even the Northwest Passage, but how it would
feel
to step so boldly into the unknown. Would they be awed or frightened? Or would it be mile by mile just another wilderness trek? It seemed so vast an undertaking, leading a handful of men over two thousand miles of terrain unknown to white men. But she knew such thoughts would embarrass him, and she didn’t voice them.
“Oh, Merry,” she cried, “God speed to you, dear,” and she threw her arms around him and hugged him. When she stepped back, he caught her hand and held it a moment.
“Thank you, Miss Dolley,” he said. There was something
in his eyes and then he turned abruptly to shake hands with Jimmy.
As they remounted and turned their horses toward the river, she asked Jimmy if he had noticed that difference in Merry. “Yes,” he said, “subtle but there, all right. He seems a little different around Tom too. Respectful as always, of course, but—I don’t know—I have a feeling something happened when he was gone, in Harper’s Ferry or Philadelphia.”
Early the next morning Captain Lewis was on the stage for Fredericktown, Maryland, two heavy seabags with his gear lashed to the top of the coach, first leg of the run to Pittsburgh. In Fredericktown that evening, forty miles on and making good time, he slept with other passengers on the dirt floor of a tavern and was off to Harper’s Ferry the next day.
He rode in silence, answering fellow passengers in monosyllables, buried in thought. He’d seen the way Miss Dolley had cut across his worries as if to deny them; she thought he was a pessimist when he knew better. It was very late in the year, and everything had conspired to delay him—the boat in Harper’s Ferry, the extra training in Philadelphia, the supplies and the need for maps traced on oil paper reflecting the best rumors of the West—and then the incredible news from France.
The Louisiana Purchase changed everything. Suddenly the vast range of country wrapped in mystery from Saint Louis to the Stony Mountains was U.S. territory. He would march as the representative of the new nation, not as an intruder dodging enemy patrols. As a practical matter, yes, a Spanish patrol finding him would have been two needles mating in a haystack, but the assurance he now felt was surprising and made him realize how much enemy territory had weighed in his thinking. He had a new mission, too; tribe by tribe he must present himself and his country to the Indian inhabitants.
The water passage he sought through the far mountains would open the nation to direct China trade, not immediately,
of course, but in due time. Now the way from the East to the passage would be clear—and the chances of beating the British in the area beyond the passage had increased a hundredfold. He doubted the British would even contest seriously, for the Pacific Northwest—what some already were referring to as the Oregon country—had become a natural extension of the United States.
Which meant we were well along to being a continental nation, the Atlantic washing one shore, the Pacific the other. The purchase made all the difference. But hold up! This was thinking for Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison over fine porcelain teacups. It was drawing room thinking, with a nice comfort that really had little to do with the man who still must find his way across two thousand miles of territory unknown to any white man. And that man, truth be told, was cutting it very close. Too close. He thought he still could get on the Missouri this year, but how far could he go before winter trapped him? He had hoped to reach the Mandan villages eight hundred miles or so upriver. The Mandans were the trading tribe of the northern plains, dealt with Indians all around, and factored the results off to British and French traders who came down from Canada. Unlike most plains tribes their villages were permanent, with structures that protected against the cold, which commonly dipped as much as forty degrees below zero on the high plains, or so traders’ tales claimed. They needed to be moving. Get on down the Ohio and up the Mississippi to Saint Louis and the great juncture of the Missouri from the West … .
July already … now he must detour to Harper’s Ferry to be sure the teamster bringing his supplies from Philadelphia had paused there as ordered to load weapons, tools, and the iron boat. Everything should be in Pittsburgh now, ready to be loaded aboard the keelboat he had commissioned Samuel Hawkins, by reputation the master boat builder of the West, to have ready for him. Another week to reach Pittsburgh, then draw army boatmen from the cantonment and start down the Ohio before the river got too low, all with fall approaching. And Miss Dolley thought he was a worrier!
But thinking of her brought back forcefully the surge of feeling when he took her hand. He’d betrayed nothing, but suddenly she had seemed supremely desirable. Older than he and safely married and she’d always been pretty, but this was different. The way she’d looked at him, kind, sweet, generous, open, understanding—oh, all the things you’d want in a woman. Maybe that’s what he needed, an older woman. He wasn’t making much headway with the pretty girls who drew him.
June Landros in Philadelphia, she’d seemed head over heels in love with him. He’d visualized going off on his great adventure with a miniature of her face and a curl of her hair in a locket on a chain of gold. And then she’d gone off to New York without a word. He suspected her mother—maybe a soldier wasn’t good enough for her family—but you’d think June would have found a way to get a note to him if she’d really cared. He sighed. Maybe an older woman, maybe a widow …
Jimson and Bit greeted him as a comrade in arms at Harper’s Ferry. Mr. Perkins seemed pleased to tell him the Philadelphia teamster had judged the load too heavy for his team and had gone on to Pittsburgh without it. Another day to find a substitute. He reached Pittsburgh a week later at two in the afternoon, dashed off a letter to Mr. Jefferson for the five o’clock mail saying he would load and depart the next morning, and then went down to the river.
He came to Hawkins’s boatyard—and stopped in sheer horror. There was his keelboat still high on the ways, keel laid, ribs in place, and some planking on the port side of the hull but none on the starboard, no deck planking, no sign of special equipment he had designed. It looked weeks from completion. A half-dozen men were working in desultory fashion on a couple of punts.
“Where’s Mr. Hawkins?” he asked.
One of the men jerked a lazy thumb toward a shed with the door closed. He wore an ugly grin. Lewis knocked on the closed door, then opened it. A man was asleep, head flat on the desk, snoring loudly.
Lewis prodded him. “Mr. Hawkins? Mr. Hawkins?” After a while the fellow raised his head. His cheeks were veined, nose bulbous, eyes bloodshot. The smell of whiskey filled the shed. He held up a trembling hand.
“What—what d’ye want?”
“I want my boat, damn you. I’m Meriwether Lewis.”
“Oh, my God.” Hawkins stared at Lewis, mouth twitching, then slowly stood, wiping his lips. “We’ve had some problems, going slower’n I expected, but we’re getting there. And I been sick—”
“You’ve been drunk. You’re drunk now.”
“Now you’re right about that.” He gazed earnestly at Lewis. “I’m one hundred percent teetotally drunk, and I’ll tell you what, mister, I don’t sit down, I’m going to fall down.”
A workman put his head in the door. “Let him sleep it off. He’ll be all right in a couple of hours.” Lewis stepped out and looked at the river. A marker showed it had dropped an inch overnight. Soon commerce would stop moving until late fall.
It was too late to go to another builder, and anyway, a few questions in town told him that Hawkins was the best, though yes, he did like his glass and little work was done when he wasn’t in shape to push it. Anyway, starting over would be ruinous for this was a very special boat created to Lewis’s own design. It was oversized at fifty-five feet with an eight-foot beam, carried a mast jointed to fold that would support both square sail and foresail. Ten feet fore and aft was decked for quarters, eleven benches centered had space for twenty-two oarsmen and left space on each side to pole her forward. He had designed storage lockers that could be raised to form a barrier against Indian arrows, should any fly. It was a superb boat; it just wasn’t finished. Lewis set out to drive Hawkins and the workers by combining threats, pleas, and promises of rewards; and plank by plank the boat advanced as inch by inch the river lowered.
At last a ray of sunshine: a letter came from Will Clark far down the river at Clarksville in Indiana territory. The president
had immediately approved Lewis’s choice of Clark as co-commander; he knew George Rogers Clark, Will’s older brother, very well. The elder Clark, as a young warrior, had saved the Far West during the revolution, and Jefferson had called on him more than once. So Lewis had posted his invitation with instructions to answer to Pittsburgh.
Lewis’s hand trembled as he cut through the sealing wax and opened the letter. He had an alternative candidate if Clark refused, but for a trip that was shaping up as monumental indeed he wanted a man he trusted implicitly at his side.
And Clark agreed! With the same high enthusiasm that Lewis himself felt, he wrote, “I will cheerfully join you. My friend, I do assure you that no man lives with whom I would prefer to undertake such a trip as yourself. My friend, I join you with hand and heart.”
Almost a month passed before the boat was finished. The river fell steadily; old hands said it was no longer passable. Lewis said they would try it anyway. He bought a pirogue to carry some of the load and sent part of his supplies on by wagon to Wheeling, where the water deepened, further to lighten the keelboat. Then he set out with eleven oarsmen from the cantonment; they would get him downriver, where he would gather soldier-volunteers for the great adventure.
It was the last day in August in 1803; sassafras leaves were turning, he saw a gum tree with flashes of orange, the buckeyes showing color. Winter was coming and now he knew the great trek could not begin this year. He would push on to the Mississippi, hook up with Clark, and gather his men, add to his supplies, winter near Saint Louis, and start up the Missouri in the spring: 1804 instead of 1803. So be it.
Off McKee’s Rock he saw a ripple in the water and a moment later the boat grounded. He leaped into the water, the men after him. For twenty minutes of agony they dragged and lifted the heavy boat over the shoal. When she floated free, he was gasping and his legs trembled. He hauled himself
back aboard and helped others. At Little Horse Tail Riffle, she grounded again and he waved them over the side. He was on his way and going through, take whatever it took; the Pacific Ocean glimmered in the distance.
WASHINGTON, AUGUST 1803
The sale of Louisiana was a blessing for Danny Mobry. It solved all problems but those of the heart. Her shipping business would prosper, sugar exported freely, finished goods returned, the wine runs from the south of France. It was more than rescue; it gave her enormous advantage over shippers who hadn’t deigned to speak to her, a woman in a man’s business. The New Orleans trade set free would surely boom. American vessels would flock up the river, but she was already there.
The Frenchmen greeting these captains from Baltimore and Boston would be angry and suspicious, but they would feel good with Danny, no matter her sex. Men who had been reluctant to deal with a woman would be delighted to deal with a
French
woman who spoke their language, knew their customs, understood their worries, carried the family imprimatur of Daniel Clark, and had made herself a success in the land that now governed their future. She must go immediately to capitalize on her advantage.
Yet business issues were the least of her elation. She was an American, but the thought of her home country as enemy had been heartbreaking. She had understood as most New Orleanians could not that the United States would never have tolerated France on the Mississippi and that the resultant fighting would have left the graceful city on the river
crescent a smoking ruin and a people so bitter that she could never go home again. But in a stroke this smiling place of blossoms and flower odors filling the night and honeysuckle wherever you turned, of languorous air and color and laughter and song and wine and clattering dice, and the unparalleled gumbo that was New Orleans for Carl, was restored and awaiting her return.
The
Cumberland Queen
was just in from Louisiana via Boston, and Danny thought she would be in the owner’s cabin on its return. She studied the captain’s report with the ship’s manifest, an order for fresh supplies, minor repairs, and a new mainsails needed, two hands leaving, one by choice, the other by order. The vessel could sail in four days. The documents included two sealed letters, a single sheet from her uncle, a heavy one from Henri that was full of accounting for sugar purchased, prices paid, quality assessed. This also contained a small and elaborately sealed letter, many additional sheets folded in with the original envelope sheet. A love letter … her heartbeat quickened and she thrust it into her reticule. She would read it at home, alone, probably in bed, where she could lie and dream of Henri and the rough feel of his lips on hers.
Still at her desk later that day, she heard the creaking sound of a heavy step on the flimsy stairs to her loft from the pier shed below. Silence, then a tentative knock. The uncertainty of it irritated her, and she said with asperity, “Come in, come in!” The men who worked for her were respectful, didn’t last if they weren’t, but they knew she was approachable.
The door opened slowly and she was surprised to see Samuel on the landing, nervously rolling his hat brim in his big hands. “Come in, Samuel,” she said more gently. “What is it?”
He looked confused and very nervous. “What’s what, Miss Danny?”
“What brings you here? Today, now.” He gazed at her.
“Samuel, why did you come up the stairs and knock on the door?”
“Oh, that! Well, yes, ma’am, I wanted to ask you something.”
“So, ask!”
“Yes, ma’am. What with the news about Louisiana and all, you’re going back to New Orleans, ain’t you?”
What in the world? Rumors like this were dangerous and needed instant squelching. “We’re not leaving Washington,” she said, putting a knife edge in her voice.
But she saw immediately she had startled him as much as he had startled her. “I didn’t mean nothing like that, Miss Danny. But this big change; you’ll probably go down for a look see, won’t you? Figure out how things will be? Not to stay.”
She relaxed. Should have known better. “Yes. Within a week or two, I think—perhaps less.”
“But you’ll be coming back? Or the ship will anyway?”
“
I
will. What’s gotten into you, Samuel?”
“Millie and me, we’d like to go with you. And come back.”
“Well, my goodness, that’s easily enough arranged. Didn’t need all this special—”
“Yes, ma’am, but there’s more to it.”
“What?”
“You know my brother, Joshua?”
“I know he’s on the family plantation. Married Millie’s sister, didn’t he? Junie, I think. I asked my brother to give them a family pass to come see you when we were there before.”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s what you did, so what I wanted to ask this time—”
“Another pass? That should be easy enough—”
“No, ma’am, you see, he ain’t there no more. He ran off awhile back. Went to Santo Domingo.”
Danny stared at him, shaken. Santo Domingo where the slaves had rebelled, where they’d killed white plantation owners right and left and then broken the French army, black
standing against white and winning because they didn’t lose. And any fool could see that that had lots to do with Napoleon deciding to sell Louisiana. But slaves in rebellion?
Danny liked black people, sympathized with their plight, agreed that slavery should be abolished; she scarcely knew anyone who didn’t agree. Clinch was quite adamant on the subject, though of course he was from upstate New York where there weren’t many black people. Danny felt she was on the side of the angels, so to speak. But killing whites, swinging machetes, servants becoming masters, stories of heads stacked in triangles, white faces almost blue after the blood drained out … it was one thing when they were faceless savages shrieking out of the brush on some distant island and quite another when it was Samuel’s brother, married to the sister of gentle Millie who had cared for Danny since infancy. Very different indeed.
But she saw that these thoughts had communicated themselves instantly to Samuel. He was on the edge of his chair, starting to rise. Blacks in a slave society had to be perceptive, she understood that, but this was more than just keeping his eyes open. Samuel was a very intelligent man. But then, a step further, she realized he’d been waiting for just the reaction she’d shown him. He was already on his feet, hat clutched in both hands.
“I ’spect I shouldn’t have said nothing. I’ll just be going along—”
“Sit down, Samuel. Please, don’t go off.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He sat on the edge of the chair, looking ready to bolt.
“I was startled,” she said. She might as well go head on. “You know, slave revolt terrifies a lot of people. Frightens me, I have to admit it. If we ever had racial war, we’d have a lot of dead—on both sides—don’t you think?”
“I reckon. Yes, ma’am.”
“So it startled me that someone I know was in that fighting.”
“My brother and me, we’re not all that much alike.”
God, he was quick. He said it so simply, but he’d wrapped her real fear with a ribbon and handed it to her. Smarter than she’d realized, much smarter.
Well, they each had revealed themselves; no point in dwelling … “So,” she said, “Joshua is in Santo Domingo.”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh, the poor man. Went down and threw his life away—”
“No, ma’am! He was a natural leader. Men followed him. He was a general. He set up ambushes that drew the French in every time. He was a hero!”
He sat straight in his chair and gazed at her, all defiance. This was something he wouldn’t hesitate on, she saw; he’d tell anyone and everyone that his brother was a hero. And then she saw it was what he owed his brother.
“I guess he was a hero,” she said softly, “fighting for his people.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. After his first letters, the first reports, we didn’t hear nothing more.”
“Then how do you know?”
He smiled. “I just know.”
“Ah,” she said. “Then his family, Millie’s sister—”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s just it! What I owe my brother. He went off to fight; I owe him to look out for his family. I want to buy Junie’s freedom. And the three little childrens. That’s what I came to ask; we hoping you’ll help us on that.”
She hesitated. Her brother had claimed the family plantation when their father died and she was off in America married to Carl. Xavier seemed to live in angry terror that she would demand a share, though in fact primogeniture gave it to him. Perhaps that would give her some weight, and if she had to use it she would. He’d probably want to be compensated for the one who had run away, able-bodied man, but she could swing that. Three thousand, four thousand, a lot of money, but she could find it.
“So you want me to buy them and you work out payment—”
“No, ma’am! Wanted you to talk for us. Figure your brother ain’t going to want to talk no slave freedom with a black man and especially not a free black man he once owned. But for the money, I have the money. Four thousand in gold—be enough, don’t you think?”
Her jaw dropped. “Where did you get that kind of money, Samuel?”
“Been saving for years, Miss Danny. Had a goal.”
“To buy their freedom?”
He looked discomfited. “No, ma’am. See, this is a dangerous city. Slave city and there are folks here who look on a free black as a walking insult. You gotta go soft and careful. Women, too. Millie goes to the market; she never knows when someone’ll accuse her, grab her, constables beat her. Happens. White folks don’t hear much about it, but it happens.”
She felt pain growing in her breast. “So you were saving to move on?” He nodded and she said in a whisper, “You and Millie would leave me then?”
“Oh, no.” He had a startled expression. “We wasn’t fixing on leaving unless you married, and then we’d be dealing with we don’t know who. You can see that, can’t you, Miss Danny? We’d be on our own then. Even worse for us if you married Mr. Henri, ’cause he sure don’t cotton to black folks having any ideas of their own.” He hesitated, gazing earnestly at her. “I hope you don’t think I’m talking too much out of turn here, about maybe you getting married and all; but you know, we have to think of these things. But I promise you, we didn’t have no thought of leaving the way things are right now.”
“So this was a lifeline. In case.”
He smiled. “That’s exactly it. My Millie, she been caring for you since you couldn’t walk. She wouldn’t never leave unless everything changed. But I had to have the money in case it did.”
“So that was your dream—save yourselves if you had to?”
“Yes, ma’am. I suppose.”
“But now you’re giving up that dream.”
“My brother gave up his life. I reckon I can give up a dream. Duty … to him, to family.”
“Where would you have gone, Samuel?”
“Maine. We hear common white folks up there don’t hate blacks like they do here.”
She stood and stretched a hand to him and he took it in his big paw. “We’ll get Junie and the children out, whatever we have to do,” she said. And then, softly, “You’re a good man, Samuel; you’re a good man.”
Henri’s letter lay unopened on the dressing chest; she could see it there and in the mirror. She drew a washbowl full of water from the fireplace warmer and sponge bathed, donned a fresh nightgown, rubbed toilet water on her arms, moved the candle to the table by the bed, and slipped under the covers with the letter in hand. She lay there holding it, a little afraid to open it.
Henri stood glowing in her mind, tall, tanned, not just handsome but craggily, fiercely so, masculine to his core. She thought of the way his eyes crinkled when he was amused, his capacity for surprising wit, the way black hair curled against his knuckles and the strength in his hands when he swung her across a stream or picked her up and laid her gently on her bed and fell beside her. She was more than a little in love with Henri Broussard, and yet there was that anger that stood between them, his needs and his assertions of rights she would not yield, his Frenchness clashing with her deep American nature. “But you’re not an American!” he’d shouted one night. “You married an American; that’s different.”
“I became one, Henri,” she’d said, and he’d glowered.
And yet there were wonderful moments when he was sweet and gentle and tender and funny and warm—and then,
being around him stirred an excitement in her that she could not ignore.
She settled on her pillow and unfolded the letter. He had written it late at night, and it had a great many tender allusions that she hunted out and clung to, suggestive comments and hints that quickened her breathing, even a burst of wit; but as she read it a third and fourth time, the dominant impression turned out to be anger.
His rage seemed to be focused on America and Americans who had cheated him of what he had wanted all his life, to be a genuine Frenchman, a true subject under a ruler who gloried in the French nation. How dare the Americans insert themselves in what had been a perfect picture? The betrayal seemed to be, not that France had sold, but that America had bought.

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