[Continuing chapter two]
The second-floor gallery of the Cabildo
was crowded with uniformed men and be-gowned ladies. As if it hadn't already been warm enough, a
battalion of gas lamps had been lit in an attempt to cut the late-afternoon
gloom. Stewart surreptitiously raised a
hand to wipe sweat from his forehead; since the hand was already soaked, all
this did was shift the moisture so that it collected in his hair to join the
trickle running along the line of his jaw and down his neck.
"Do you think we're going to be
introduced to him?" Patton asked in a loud whisper.
"I doubt it," Stewart said. "Why would he want to meet
us?" Somewhere around the corner,
in what was still called the Sala Capitular though it
was now a glorified parlor for the governor-general, Lord Byron himself held
court for the senior officers and the Confederate commissioners. Stewart had caught but the briefest glimpse
of the great man, as the Confederate delegates had been escorted up the broad
staircase and into the gallery for the official reception.
"I'd still like to meet him,"
Patton said. "That'd be something
to tell the ladies, eh?"
Trust Patton to look on one of the
century's great liberators as little more than a tool for seduction, Stewart thought. At
least Patton knows what he wants of the man, though. For himself, Stewart couldn't make up his
mind how he felt about the governor-general.
Byron was a great man, most agreed.
Hadn't he fought against the Spanish crown in New Grenada, and suffered
imprisonment for his belief in freedom from kings? And it was his impassioned support of the
Canadian rebels of 1830 that had led to the first tentative steps toward
self-government in British North America.
Ah, but that was the problem, wasn't it? An independent Canada was still a kingdom and
still tied by blood to Great Britain.
More important, it wasn't American.
So celebrating Byron the liberator also meant celebrating the man who
had driven the final nail into the coffin begun a half-century before when
Jefferson had refused to fight for Louisiana.
What could I ask him? Stewart wondered. What could I say to a royal
representative in what should be American territory? "All things considered," he said,
"I'd rather be someplace cooler, drinking something stronger than fruit
punch."
"I wish I could help you," said a heavily
accented voice from over his shoulder.
"But Lady Lovelace, our hostess, doesn't want to give her father
the opportunity to indulge."
Stewart turned as quickly as he could, given
the crush of bodies. A tall,
broad-shouldered man—as big and well-formed as Patton—stood in front of one of
the windows overlooking Nelson Square—that patch of green the French apparently
insisted on continuing to call the Place d'Armes. The man, a classic grenadier type, wore the dark
green of the Canadian militia. His face
was narrow but soft, an impression enhanced by the thinning of the hair at his
temples. The man's eyes, though, were
anything but soft. So dark they were
almost black, in the gloom of the salon they seemed almost menacing.
"Please allow me," he said. "I am Captain Jean-Louis Menard, late of
the Twelfth Infantry regiment. I'm on
temporary assignment to General Howard's staff."
"A pleasure to meet you, sir. I'm Captain Charles Stewart, late of the
Second Virginia Infantry."
"The hero of Harper's Ferry,"
Patton added with an idiot grin. Stewart
glared at him and wondered if it would constitute a diplomatic breach if he
strangled the fool.
"I'm aware of Captain Stewart's
reputation," Captain Menard said.
"For obvious reasons, given our own militia's brief existence, we
were impressed at the conduct of your army in that battle. General Wool is a respected tactician, and
you beat him quite thoroughly. Some day,
if it's not an inconvenience, I'd like to discuss the battle with you."
"It would be my pleasure, Captain. I have to say, though, that my companion
exaggerates my role in the incident."
To himself, Stewart said, The last thing I want to talk about
is that battle. The last thing I want is
to be forced to remember what I’ve lost. It occasionally struck him as odd that he
should miss the regiment—be honest, he told
himself; that you miss the battlefield—as much as he
did. But it seemed now that his life
before that day last May hadn't really existed at all; memories that had once
been clear were now harder to fix on, as if they'd been wrapped in tissue paper
and gauze. He was convinced, though,
that he could remember every detail of every second of Harper's Ferry. The colors, the smells of growing things and
gunpowder and rich black earth—even the sharp, salty scent of blood—were still
fresh to him.
Most of all, he remembered how wonderfully
fulfilling it had felt to stand on that stone wall and see his men looking up
at him, looking to him for direction and leadership. He'd been so afraid, that morning, that he
would disappoint his family, his God, and most of all his men, by failing to
live up to their expectations of him.
Instead, he'd done everything exactly as he'd been trained to do it. He felt, even now, that his life had reached
some sort of peak that morning. It was a
peak that he'd been born to reach, he decided, and nothing would satisfy him
but to get back to that summit again.
Instead, he was here, talking about war
instead of waging it. As politely as he
could, Stewart introduced Patton, thinking that if it had been up to him Patton
could have stayed nameless and in the background.
"I know of Captain Patton as well,"
Menard said. Stewart raised his
eyebrows. "I've been assigned to be
your escort, gentlemen, while you're in New Orleans. I thought I would introduce myself this
evening, and invite you to come to Fort Brock tomorrow morning in order to
choose a horse—which will, of course, be at your disposal throughout the
duration of the negotiations."
"That's very kind of you, Captain,"
Patton said. "I admit that I hadn't
been looking forward to walking, or having to hire a carriage. Not on a captain's pay."
"I know the feeling, sir," Menard
said. "And it's our pleasure to
oblige. Enjoy your evening,
gentlemen."
"What, in this place?" Patton
hissed in Stewart's ear as Menard left.
"Strange as it sounds—and I guarantee it sounds more strange to me
than it ever could to you, Stewart—I'm actually looking forward to going to
bed. It can't possibly be any less
exciting than this, and it's bound to be more comfortable."
"I agree with you," Stewart
said. "In fact, I think I'm going
downstairs and outside for a breath of air.
It's beginning to be a bit thick in here." He thought for a moment, having spotted
Menard talking to a red-coated senior officer.
"Tell me, he said," how old do you think Captain Menard
is?"
"He looks pretty old," Patton
said. "At least thirty-five. We've got generals in our army who are
younger than this fellow. Why? Is it important? Is there something I should be seeing that I
don't?"
"I doubt it," Stewart said. "He just seemed a little old to be a
captain, and I couldn't think of any reason.
I mean, it's not as if his army is as small as the old Union's was,
before we declared independence."
"Perhaps he's done something
wrong," Patton said. "Like
being French, and Catholic."
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