[Concluding chapter twelve]
“We’re not going to be safe up here for too long,” Sherman said. “I can feel the heat through my boots and socks.”
“We don’t have to be here long,” Grant told him. “Just long enough to work out a way to cross to the roof of that building there.” He pointed to the building he’d chosen as the likeliest refuge. It was a bit short to be ideal; getting the wounded Canadian across to safety was going to be a problem. But at least up here they could breathe while he thought. So my getting caught breaking in here paid off. If he hadn’t followed Macartey that evening, he’d have never known about the stairs to the roof.
“How far do you reckon we’ll have to jump?” the Irishman Cleburne asked. “I make it about eight feet across, and a good three or four feet down.” Cleburne, Grant had learned, had served in a British infantry regiment, which explained the man’s bearing and his coolness in this crisis.
“I think you’ve about got it,” Grant said. “Maybe not so big a jump across, but definitely a bit of a drop. I’m not sure your friend Stewart will be able to handle it.”
“He’s got a bad leg from a battle wound,” Cleburne said. “But he’s a pretty tough boy. I’m not worried about him. It’s Captain Menard I’m stumped about.”
“We could always try to wait it out,” Sherman said, smiling now. “Hear that?” The bells of New Orleans had begun ringing.
“Do you feel like waiting, Cump?” Grant asked him. “I don’t.”
“Menard’s not going to last much longer without a surgeon.” Stewart had joined them, leaving his Canadian friend wrapped in a filthy blanket by the edge of the roof closest to the neighboring building. “Whatever we do, we have to do it now.”
Grant didn’t think that Menard would have survived if he’d been shot on the front doorstep of a surgery, but there wasn’t much point in saying that to Stewart. The young captain was looking a bit wild-eyed, and Grant guessed that worrying about Menard was all that was keeping him from flying apart.
“How tall do you think that door is?” Stewart pointed to the wooden door at the top of the stairs. “Could we tear it off its hinges, use it as a sort of stretcher?”
“It might be seven feet,” Grant said. “But I think it’s too short even at that length.”
The idea burst on him like a signal rocket exploding. “Wait a minute,” he said. “We aren’t all trapped here on this roof.” You idiot, he added to himself. Stop worrying about things you can’t affect, and think about what you have to do.
“No, we aren’t,” Cleburne said. “But we can’t just leave Menard here.”
“Why not?” Grant asked. “For a minute or two, at least. We can’t find anything on this roof that we can use to help us get him to safety. So why don’t we expand our search?”
Sherman laughed, a bit hysterically it seemed to Grant, and ran over to the edge of the roof. “Let’s take down the door anyway,” he said when he came back. “We can use it as a ramp up to the lip of the roof. That way there’s less chance of one of us tripping up when we make a running jump across.”
It took them only a couple of minutes to pry the old door from its rusted hinges. Sherman went across first, and landed sprawling in the dirt on the next-door roof. He was laughing by the time he got to his feet, though, and waved Grant to follow.
Grant sent Cleburne next. As the Irishman prepared to make the jump, Grant turned to Stewart. “Why don’t you stay with the captain?” he asked. “He might rest a bit easier if there was someone with him.”
Stewart nodded. “I think I might have trouble making that jump anyway,” he said, rubbing his knee with one hand. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”
Grant laughed. Stewart was a good man; he’d proved himself resourceful and even clever, both in tracking down Brown and Connell and then in helping to get them out of Macartey’s trap. His reputation, it seemed, was justified. It was a damned shame they’d been enemies at Harpers Ferry, and would have to treat each other as enemies again as soon as they were down from this roof.
Do we? The thought came unbidden, and again Grant saw the letters waiting in his desk at the legation.
Think later. Act now. “I won’t be long,” Grant said. “I promise you.”
* * * *
“Something you should know,” Menard hissed. In the weird mix of moonlight and reflected orange glow from the fire, the Canadian’s face looked like a melting honeycomb. Stewart guessed that in better light Menard would have the bleached, parchment look Stewart had seen on President Calhoun’s face last winter.
“You should rest, Captain,” Stewart said. “You need your strength.”
“None left,” Menard said. “Owe you this. Yankees plan to invade Kentucky this spring.”
That was what the spies had been talking about when he and Cleburne had surprised them. “I heard Brown and Connell talking about that,” Stewart said. “Something about it sounded strange to me.”
“Talked about it a lot,” Menard said. “They thought I was still under. Drugged. There are going to be two columns. One is a feint.”
Stewart felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. If Menard really had overheard talk of enemy plans, this was extremely important. “Did they say which was the feint?”
“Kearny,” Menard said. “Going to Paducah. Supposed to make you worry about Columbus.”
Columbus was the main Confederate fortress in western Kentucky. They called it the Gibraltar of the West because the fortress was built atop a sheer bluff, hundreds of feet straight up from the Mississippi. It was the highest ground near the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio, and dominated the river south of the Federal base at Cairo, Illinois. Nobody could freely sail that part of the river who didn’t possess Columbus.
“And the real objective is—?”
“Louisville. Then Nashville. Worth is commander.”
“You’re sure of this.” Stewart felt puzzled.
“Yes,” Menard said. “Heard them say it—more than once.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Stewart said, more to himself than to Menard. “I can understand someone letting information slip once. But more than that?”
“Heard them,” Menard said. “Sure of it.” His voice was thin, nearly inaudible, but Stewart could still hear a mixture of anger and anxiety in it.
“Please,” Stewart said, “calm yourself, Captain. You have to stay alive.”
Menard didn’t respond.
Stewart watched Menard for a few moments. “Damn,” he said. “God damn.” He died angry with me, he thought. It didn’t have to be that way. I shouldn’t have contradicted him.
He got to his feet, miserable at the thought of Menard having died so hard, and unhappy at the amount of effort and pain it required just to stand. He looked down at Menard. He didn’t even die wearing his own uniform, he thought.
And understood why Menard’s story hadn’t made sense.
Do you think he overheard us, the Federal had said. I can’t tell if he’s awake. The Federals hadn’t let their story slip. They’d intended Menard to hear it—or, rather, Patton. They’d thought their prisoner a Confederate officer, after all. That explained Brown’s eagerness to let them go, and his horror when Macartey had shot Menard. He wanted us to think that the drive on Columbus was a feint, Stewart thought. He was planting false information. That meant the attack on Louisville was the feint, and the real Federal objective was Columbus.
He was going to have to get this information to General Davis, commanding the Department of the Mississippi.
In order to do that, though, he had to get off this roof. And he wasn’t going to leave Menard’s body behind. The man had been brave, even if his behavior had been inexplicable and in opposition to everything the Confederacy stood for. He deserved at least a proper funeral.
A new sound reached him now. He’d been hearing the deep, reverberating peal of the city’s church-bells for long minutes now, so long that he’d ceased really to notice the sound. This new ringing, though, was pitched higher, and was much closer. And listening closely, Stewart could hear shouts coming from the street below. Captain Grant’s brought help, he thought.
He walked to the front of the building and looked down. There, indeed, was a fire company. They’d brought a steam fire-engine with them.
It wasn’t Grant who’d summoned them, though.
At the front of the crowd, gesturing wildly and seemingly in charge of the attempt to fight the fire, was an elderly woman. Stewart was reminded of the angry French-woman he’d met, Mrs. Beacon’s unhappy neighbor.
He had just realized, with a shock, where Patton had to be, when it came to him that the old woman in the street below was, in fact, Pauline Martin, costumed and made up for her role as the old aunt.
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