[Continuing chapter eight]
“We’re probably not going to endear ourselves to the Canadians,” Sherman said, “if we prove to them that their city watch has been compromised by an Irish gang.”
“We’re probably not going to endear ourselves to the Canadians,” Sherman said, “if we prove to them that their city watch has been compromised by an Irish gang.”
“Worse than that,” Grant said. “By a political Irish gang.” He glanced across the grog-shop, ensuring that Buidhe McConnell was still at his table. The man seemed to have an enormous capacity for alcohol; he’d been drinking steadily all evening, throwing back tankard after tankard of a vicious whiskey-based punch Grant couldn’t make himself swallow.
“Still,” he told Sherman, “if there’s corruption in the watch, it’s got to be better to know it than not to.”
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful,” Sherman said, “if that Captain Butler of yours would just walk in, announce to the world that he was in the pay of Macartey and his gang, and let us all go home for the night?”
“What’s the matter? Lost your taste for excitement?” For himself, Grant couldn’t recall when he’d felt more alive. Probably sometime in Florida, during the last decade. But he didn’t want to think about Florida, and he certainly didn’t want to think about Harper’s Ferry; he was feeling too good right now to let the dangerous past worm its way into him. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he added. “I appreciate your help so far, Sherman, but I know that this isn’t your fight.”
“I keep trying to tell myself that.” Sherman flinched as something—a piece of bread, perhaps—sailed overhead. “I don’t owe the country anything, do I? I offered my services, and they refused me.”
“And yet—”
“And yet I can’t just sit back and do nothing. Maybe I could have if you hadn’t showed up at my door with that amazing story of yours. But now you’ve got me hooked and hauled in, Grant. Damn you but I’m going to have to see it through, even though every inch of me says I should walk away.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re with me,” Grant said. “You’ve seen what I get up to on my own.”
“Your problem is that you never think about what the other fellow is going to do,” Sherman said. He stroked his beard. “Which, now that I come to think on it, may be your strength as well. Somehow I can’t see you lying awake at night in a cold sweat, worried about what Macartey is plotting.”
“It’s not so much that I don’t think as that I don’t worry. Never saw the point in it,” Grant said. He stretched, wishing that McConnell would do something besides drink. “It was the same in Florida. You’d be surprised, Sherman, how much easier it is to face battle when you aren’t worrying about the enemy.”
“I believe you,” Sherman said. “I just don’t think I can be like you.” He sipped his beer. “God’s teeth, but this stuff is foul. Why can’t we be following a better class of ruffian?” He turned to face Grant. “What about you? Do you still think you’re doing the right thing?”
“I don’t know. God’s truth, Sherman, I just don’t know. If it turns out that Major Brown has just been conducting normal espionage using the local Irish, then I’ve made a damned fool of myself—and insulted a superior officer as well.
“And if Brown is doing what I think he’s doing, and he’s got permission to do it, then what am I doing serving in such an army?” Grant gripped his glass tightly. The best thing about the battlefield was that he never felt this uncertainty. He thought about the letters in his desk; he’d been unable to bring himself to seriously consider serving any nation but the United States, but if the United States couldn’t give him fighting man’s work, and some other country could, perhaps it was time to make himself think about it.
Seeing the expression on Sherman’s face, Grant let go of the glass and smiled. “Mostly,” he said, “I think I’m doing this, whether it’s right or wrong, just because I have to do something. Another day of taking notes for Van Doncken and Bancroft and I’d have gone mad.”
“Well, don’t go mad just yet,” Sherman said. “Our boy is finally leaving.”
* * * *
Patton’s key was missing from its hook behind the front desk. That meant it was with him in his room, and that was good; Stewart hoped that his friend would do the smart thing tonight and stay in his room. Stewart proposed to do the same—once he’d finished this one small errand.
The man who’d been following him wasn’t in evidence tonight. Perhaps, thought Stewart, whoever it was knew about the reprimand he’d gotten from General Magruder—or the one from Colonel Walker. He tried to ignore the implications of the latter, and instead be content with the fact that for once he could move directly to his destination.
Thomas meant well, but the problem with using him to gather information was that he just didn’t think for himself. Servants had to be instructed in precise detail, because they never did a lick of work beyond their exact orders. In retrospect, he should have told Thomas to ask all around the neighborhood of Barber’s hotel, and not just amongst the servants inside. Just because nobody inside the hotel would talk about a guest didn’t mean that there wasn’t somebody nearby who would.
On his first visit to the hotel, Stewart had noticed a restaurant, a small chop-house, across the street from the hotel’s front door. There would be no objections, he guessed, if a man stopped for supper before retiring for the night.
“You’re another of those Confederates, ain’t you?” The proprietor wiped his hands on a filthy apron before he pulled back a chair for Stewart. “Recognized the uniform.”
“Thank you,” Stewart said as he sat. “Yes, I am with the treaty commission. I am enjoying my visit to your city,” he added, thinking that a small lie might help loosen the man’s tongue even further.
“Glad to hear it.” Then, to Stewart’s amazement, the man continued, “Such sad news about your Mr. Barber, weren’t it?”
“You knew him?” Stewart tried to keep his eyes from goggling at this stroke of luck.
“Served him, I did, about every other day,” the man said. “I can fry you up a real nice chop if you’d like, general. Even learned to make corn bread for your Mr. Barber, so I can give you some of that, too.”
“That would be fine, thanks. Tell me; why did Mr. Barber only eat here every other day? If he liked your cooking, I’d have thought he’d be here all the time.”
“Funny. That’s just what I ask him, once, after he’d been in town nearly a fortnight. You know what he told me?
“Said he’d enjoyed my food a lot more than what he got at Lord Byron’s table, but that a man had to eat what his hosts give him.”
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