[Continuing chapter four]
"I've looked over your paper on
denying the Yankees access to the Mississippi," General Magruder
said. "I'm a bit concerned about
its effect on our own traffic. How do
you propose to allow us full access to the river while denying it to the
Federals? That could cause you a world
of trouble. As could your insistence
that their blockade not apply to the mouth of the river." There was a murmur of agreement from a mixed
group of Confederate and Canadian officers, which surprised Stewart almost as
much as the fact that an equal number of men from both sides of the table
seemed to disagree. Fellow-feeling
between his comrades and their hosts was not something he wanted to see. He had made no effort to accommodate himself
to the views of people he considered to be English, rather than
British and Canadian, and couldn't understand why his companions bothered.
"We're still thinking this
through." The British naval
officer's smile was smug and condescending.
"But as for our denial of the blockade, the United States were
quite vehement about maintaining their right to trade with France during the
wars of the French Revolution. We
propose to inform the Americans that those rights also apply here. Since the Mississippi River enters the sea in
Canadian territory, the United States has no right to enforce a blockade at the
river's mouth, or to deny access to any portion of the river south of its
confluence with the Ohio. They can't
very well decry our attempts at blockading France, then turn around and expect
us to ignore their similar actions against the Confederacy."
The man spread his hands in a gesture of mock
generosity. "Of course, we might
not be quite so blunt in our phraseology.
No doubt we'll remind the Americans that it is our intent to allow free
access to the Mississippi to all who wish to use it. We will only forbid them access if they make
any effort whatever to thwart you gentlemen from using the river."
Stewart wished he were back on the verandah
with Mr. Benjamin. It galled him to hear
the English and the Canadians so confidently discuss the ways in which they
would use their hegemony in the western half of the continent to the benefit of
their new Confederate friends. This
is a bad bargain, he told himself.
The English simply could not be trusted.
Why did no one else recognize that?
"Of course, you must understand that in
order for this proposal to work, neither side in the conflict must be allowed
to use the river as a means of attacking the other side." The naval officer maintained a stern
expression as he said this, but Stewart could detect the smug satisfaction in
the man's voice.
"I beg your pardon?" General
Magruder said, and Stewart thought, Bad bargain indeed.
"It is likely that demilitarization of
the river will have to be a component of our agreement," a Canadian
general said. His name was Howard or
something; Stewart had made a point of not memorizing any of their names. "Our intent is to assist you in
obtaining international recognition of your independence. Beyond that we cannot now go. To allow Confederate military forces to use
the river in attacks on the North would be to ally ourselves with the South. Since we do not intend to do so—indeed, you
have made it clear that you do not wish such an alliance—then the only workable
solution is to prevent either side in the conflict from using the Mississippi
for anything beyond the needs of commerce."
"What about trade in military
goods?" Patton asked. Stewart
silently cursed him for an idiot.
"My understanding is that the treaty
commissioners are agreed that there will be no restrictions on trade," the
general said. "The port of New
Orleans will be open to ocean-going vessels of both sides. Or," he said with a hint of a smile,
"you may continue to trans-ship goods at Natchez, as I believe some of
your people are currently doing."
Trading in violation of our laws, Stewart thought. No
doubt Mr. Benjamin would consider it expediency. I call it smuggling at best, if not
treason.
"I will of course have to consult with
my government before I can agree to such a restriction," Magruder
said. "Captain Stewart, I'd like
you to review the minutes of this meeting to ensure that they're accurate. Then please write me a brief summary that I
can post to Richmond. I will try to have
an answer for you," he said to his Canadian and British counterparts,
"within a couple of weeks."
* * * *
"There's another ball tonight,"
Patton said as the train left the lakeside station. "Attendance is optional, though. You planning to go?
"If I thought that Magruder would give
us leave to entertain ourselves tonight, of course not." Stewart sighed. "But that's not going to happen. You know, I think I saw more of the world at
Harpers Ferry than I have since we came here."
"I can't imagine why Prince John is
being so schoolmarm-ish," Patton said.
"You'd think he'd heard unfortunate stories about us."
"About you, you mean. I've never done anything disreputable in my
life. In fact, I've never done anything,
period." He hadn’t told Patton
about being chastised by Magruder. For
one thing, it was embarrassing. For
another, he wasn’t entirely sure that Patton himself hadn’t been sneaking out
in the evenings. The men who had
recruited Stewart into the Texas plan had hinted that there would be at least
one other agent on the commission staff, and Stewart was convinced now that
Patton was that agent. To hear him
describe it, Patton had got his captaincy through family connections, not
merit, and there was no logical reason for his being on the treaty commission's
military staff. That alone would have
been enough to engage Stewart's curiosity.
But Patton's elder brother lived in Texas, and that had clinched it in
Stewart’s mind.
"Oh, stop moping, Stewart,” Patton
said. “You never see me complaining
about our enforced chastity, do you?"
After a brief pause for effect, Patton threw his head down into his
hands and sobbed loudly, to the apparent shock or bemusement of their
fellow-passengers. In spite of himself,
Stewart had to laugh, and for the remainder of the brief journey back to New
Orleans he and Patton made crude jokes and he was able to forget for a while
how much he hated just about everything about being here.
The new railway station, a brick and stone
structure much more imposing than Richmond's, was right on the edge of the
levee just downstream from the Vieux Carré. The easiest route back to the hotel, once
they'd retrieved their horses from the livery stable, was to follow the levee
around the curve of the river until they reached Canal Street.
They had just turned onto the levee, and
Stewart had shifted in the saddle to tell Patton not to be so slow, when a
bright flash caused Stewart to spin around again to look riverward. As he did so, the sound of the explosion
reached him.
"Good God in heaven," Patton
said. He pointed, though there was no
need. The huge cloud billowed upward
even as the shattered form of the riverboat fell back into the water and
against the wharf. No one in the city,
it seemed, could fail to see it.
As Stewart watched, a body—or a significant
part of one—cartwheeled lazily through the air and splashed into the
river. "Her boilers burst," he
said to Patton, spurring his horse forward.
"Come on—we'll be able to help."
The crowds on the levee melted away at their
approach, no doubt persuaded to let them pass by a combination of fear of their
horses and respect for what their uniforms implied. Stewart and Patton reached the scene of the
explosion in minutes, and had arranged care for their nervous mounts and waded
into the crowd of injured and frightened civilians well before the first of the
volunteer fire companies arrived to fight the fires that had sprung up in the
neighboring buildings.
There wasn't much to be done for many of the
injured. Stewart had read plenty about
steamboat explosions—there seemed to be one or two a week some months—but he
had never before seen the results of such a catastrophe. Men with angry-looking red faces stared past
him through blinded eyes, rasping breaths hissing from scalded lungs. Stewart found it easier to treat some of
those who'd been standing or walking nearby when the boat exploded: crushed or
shattered limbs he at least had some experience with.
As more and more physicians arrived, he was
able to step back and leave the medical aid to them. His knee, which had behaved itself for the
previous several days, was beginning to ache and he relished the opportunity to
straighten his leg. Having lost track of
Patton, he walked back onto the wharf to assist the mix of stevedores, police,
soldiers, and sailors who were shifting the more manageable pieces of debris
from atop bodies and still-living victims.
The boat, he guessed from the debris on the wharf and floating downstream,
had been fully loaded with cargo in preparation for departure when the boilers
had burst. Her name, he learned, was Comet,
and she'd been bound for St. Louis.
"Mon dieu, mon dieu,"
a familiar voice said. Stewart let go of
the board he'd been wrestling with and stood upright. Captain Menard was standing beside him, his
face streaked with black and grey and looking much older than it should
have. "Why would someone do
something like this?"
"Over-pressure the boilers?"
Stewart said. "I don't
know." He wiped his own face with
the back of his sleeve.
"Vanity? Riverboat captains
are always bragging about how fast they can make the trip upstream to St.
Louis."
"It wasn't the boilers failing,"
Menard said.
"I don't understand. They burst.
Steam-boats are always bursting."
"This was a deliberate explosion,"
Menard said. He looked as if he couldn't
decide whether to cry or hit someone.
"You must be mistaken," Stewart
said. How does someone rig a boiler to
explode when the crew is all around it?
"It's not me who says this
thing." Menard took Stewart by the
elbow and led him to where a group of bodies lay in neat rows. Some of them were still moving.
Menard crouched beside a black-haired man who
was awkwardly propped on one side; the back of the man's shirt had been
shredded and the skin thus revealed was the same angry red Stewart had seen too
much in the last few minutes. "This
man was a stoker in the engine-room.
Tell him," Menard said to the poor wreck, pointing at Stewart. "Tell him what you saw." Stewart crouched, ignoring the protests his
leg made, in order to place his ear as near as possible to the scalded stoker.
"Man came into the engine room,"
the man muttered. His accent was Irish;
Stewart was reminded of the druggist Cleburne.
"Told me to run. Threw
something down. Beside the
boiler." The man took a ragged
breath. "Saw a fuse. Iron ball—like… artillery shell." He was silent for a time. When he spoke again, he shifted his head to
look directly at Stewart. "Tried to
tell the others to run. Wasn't fast
enough." He let his head drop back
down onto the sack that served as a pillow, his story evidently finished.
"Why did you insist I hear that?"
Stewart asked when Menard drew him away from the bodies. Now I have to do something about
it. And I don't know what I can do.
"You're a soldier and an officer,"
Menard said. "It's important that
men like you bear witness if that poor fellow doesn't live to speak to a
policeman or magistrate."
Stewart tried without success to make sense
of what the stoker had said. Who would
do such a thing, and why?
"Lord," he said.
"Bad enough that it happened at all. But done deliberately? It's inhuman, Menard. For what purpose?"
"I do not know," Menard said. "I only hope the city watch do, or can
find it out. Thank you, though, captain,
for helping. I will ensure that my
superiors learn of it."
"Anyone would have helped," Stewart
said. "Speaking of which, have you
seen Captain Patton? He was with me, but
I seem to have lost him."
"No," Menard said. "I've not seen him. But I'm sure you'll find him soon
enough. He does rather stand out in a
crowd, in that white uniform of his. And
on the subject of uniforms, please send the cleaning bill for yours to the Cabildo."
Stewart looked at the front of his jacket: it
was smeared with a mixture of soot, ash, blood, and other things he didn't want
to be able to identify. He'd have to
wear his fatigue jacket to tomorrow's session.
"Thank you," he said.
"That's kind of you."
He had just shaken Menard’s hand good-bye
when an older man approached him.
"M'sieu?" the man said.
"Could you come with me? I
believe there is a man who wishes to—who wants you."
Stewart felt a chill, suddenly convinced that
Patton had been hurt. But when he
followed the man, it was to a middle-aged fellow propped on a makeshift bed of
flour-sacks. The man's clothes had been
of a superior cut, once. His face and
hands were red, blistered and weeping.
He shivered as if cold.
The man raised an arm, pointing it shakily
past Stewart at midriff level.
"What can I do for you, sir?" Stewart asked, uncertain of what
the gesture meant. A quick look behind
him showed that there was nobody there but Menard, who was walking in the
opposite direction and talking with a man in the blue uniform of the city
watch.
When Stewart turned back around, the man was
shaking his head, his breathing rapid and shallow and sounding like the rasp of
a sword against the sharpening stone.
"I don't understand," Stewart said, looking down at his filthy
uniform. Then he realized what the man
had been pointing at, and understood.
"You're a fellow-citizen, sir,"
Stewart said, touching the belt buckle and running a finger over the raised
letters in its center: CSA. The man made
no sign, but sank back against his rude pillow.
"I will try to find someone from the legation to help you,"
Stewart said.
The man opened his mouth as if to speak, but
no sound emerged. His eyes closed, he
fumbled with his coat, trying apparently to get a hand inside. When the man opened his eyes to discharge a
flood of tears, Stewart realized that his pupils were so tiny they were almost
invisible. "Let me help
you." As gently as he could, he
opened the man's coat. This close, he
could hear a high-pitched whine coming from the man's chest, underneath the
rasping of his attempts to breathe.
"Is this it?" Stewart showed the man the billfold he'd
taken from an inside pocket. The man
gestured feebly with his hands. Assuming
that this was what the man had wanted, Stewart opened the billfold. A small packet of visiting cards identified
the man as Mr. Rupert Barber, of Jefferson, Mississippi.
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