[Continuing chapter fourteen]
“It was my job to see that Colonel Walker got his rifles,” he said as he entered the room. “I take it that your job was to see that the Canadians didn’t interfere with his departure for Texas.”
“Hello, Stewart,” Patton said, getting to his feet. He wore a nondescript shirt and trousers, the shirt damp and sticking to his chest. A vest and jacket were draped over the back of a chair. “That Pauline down there, screaming bloody murder? I should have guessed.”
“I hope she has the sense to run,” Stewart said. “She did what I asked her to. Her part in this is done now.” He certainly doesn’t look like he’s had a hard time, Stewart thought. Not like Menard.
“How did you find me?” Patton asked, walking to a crude washstand in one corner of the room. “Oh, and you were wrong about my job. Colonel Walker is quite capable of handling the Canadians.”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me,” Stewart said. “What was your true job, then?”
“To help Walker destroy the Lovejoy plot,” Patton said.
“The what?”
“I know. A scheme to deliver us to the English and the abolitionists. Menard told me.”
“Apparently the plan’s named for some abolitionist preacher who got himself killed when we were in short pants.”
“The Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy. I remember my father talking about him once.”
Patton turned from the wash-stand, holding a glass out to Stewart. “The whiskey’s not bad,” he said. “I’m sorry about the trick I played on Captain Menard, you know. I hope he doesn’t bear any grudges.”
“He’s past any grudges now,” Stewart said. “The men who kidnapped him killed him earlier tonight.”
Patton sloshed some whiskey from his glass. “No!”
“They also tried to burn me to death.”
“Damn! That could have been me.”
“I got trapped because I thought Menard was you.”
Patton took a big gulp of whiskey, then sucked in an even bigger gulp of air and began coughing. It took him an age to get his breath back. “I wouldn’t have done this—” His voice squeaked and he had to pause again.
“Why?” Stewart looked at the glass, decided that he didn’t want—or trust—the drink, and looked back again at Patton. “Why did you feel you had to deceive me? I would have helped you.”
“Colonel Walker didn’t think you could be trusted,” Patton said. “Your boy, Thomas, was working for Menard and the Lovejoy conspirators.”
“So I learned from Menard tonight, as he was dying,” Stewart said. “How could you possibly think I’d be in league with those people?”
“It was all Walker’s idea,” Patton said. “He thought that I should hide here until he was ready to leave. Until we were ready to leave.” After a moment’s pause he looked away and added, “We’re going tomorrow. I guess it’s today, now.”
“I know. He came to me this—yesterday—afternoon. Said I could come along. Now I’m wondering how serious an invitation that was. I’m also wondering how much Colonel Walker had to do with my being surprised in that cotton warehouse tonight, and with Captain Menard’s murder.” He thought for a moment. “Was blowing up the Comet Walker’s idea, too? Or did you come up with that on your own?”
“Stewart!” Patton spun to face him, the look on his face suggesting a schoolboy accused of cheating on the playground. “I would never do something like that!”
“So it was Colonel Walker? You’ll swear to that?”
“God, Stewart, you can’t be serious.” Patton backed away.
“Dozens of innocent people died in that explosion,” Stewart said. “Barber may have been a traitor. He may even have deserved to die. But to kill dozens, randomly, to get at one man—that is so uncivilized it makes me sick to even speak of it!”
“I can’t let you just turn Walker over to the Canadians! What about Texas?”
“Yes, let’s talk about that. What about Texas? When I was persuaded to—to do what I did here, I was told that I couldn’t go on the expedition. I was told it was absolutely essential that there be no connection between Walker and the government of the Confederacy.” Pain was shooting up his arms: Stewart realized he’d been clenching his fists, driving his fingernails into his palms. This was my dream—why are you living it? “Why is it suddenly all right for a Confederate officer to take part in a filibuster that everyone says is supposed to be a secret?”
Patton paused a moment, then straightened himself to attention. “I’m doing the honorable thing, Stewart. There’ll be no connection to Richmond.”
“Good God, Patton.” He’s resigned his commission. “What in heaven were you thinking?”
“Oh, it’s easy for you!” Patton flung out an arm, smacking his whiskey-glass across the room. The heavy glass hit the wall with a loud thump, then fell, intact, to the floor. “You’re the hero. You’ve been in battle. You’re going to get a regiment when you get home—maybe even a brigade. It’s all I’ve heard about since we started on this trip!”
“Why do you think you’re here, Patton? To get you out of the way? You’re here to make you a better soldier!” I’m talking just like Uncle James, he thought. “You’d be first in line for a regiment yourself, once we got back. And what you’ve learned here will make you a good colonel, too.”
“I haven’t learned what I need to learn,” Patton said. “I have to fight. I want to be in a battle. I have to know that I can do this. The way you did.” Patton finished on a nasal note, like a sulky child.
“Have you really thought about what you’ve signed on to, Patton? Something about this just doesn’t feel right anymore. Maybe we’re not supposed to have Texas,” Stewart said, “if the only way we can get it is through the likes of William Walker.”
“You’re wrong about that,” a new voice said. Stewart had only begun to register the fact of it when a blow to the head put him on the floor.
* * * *
When his ears stopped buzzing, he heard Patton’s protest cut short by a rough voice saying, “You ain’t got time for that. Get your stuff and get going. You’ll meet the Colonel tonight.”
Then a huge hand grabbed his shoulder, squeezed until he felt real pain, and pulled him to his feet. “Go out the front door,” the man said. “We done drove off that stupid woman and her friend.” Stewart struggled; he could see his pistol and knife on the floor just a few feet away. But the man’s grip was incredibly strong, and the more Stewart struggled the more the man crushed his shoulder.
“Promise me, Wilson,” Patton said, “you’ll let Captain Stewart go once I’m safely away.” When the huge man—whose breath smelled like the inside of a latrine—said nothing, Patton turned on him. “Promise, or I’m taking Captain Stewart with me!”
“Hell, son, I won’t do nothing to him,” Wilson said.
Patton nodded, satisfied. Throwing on his vest and jacket, he pulled a leather satchel over his shoulder. You idiot, Stewart thought. You can’t think this man is telling the truth.
“Good luck, Stewart,” he said as he stepped through the door. “I’ll write you from Texas.” He fled with such haste that Stewart, heart sinking, knew that Patton was fully aware of what was intended for him, and was too afraid to do anything to stop it.
When he struggled to get out of the man’s massive grip, Wilson cuffed him on the side of the head again and growled, “Just set, son. We’re not going anywhere for a while.”
“Until Patton’s far enough away that he won’t hear your gun-shot,” Stewart said bitterly. Why did I tell Pauline and Cleburne to get away when they were finished?
“You’re a smart boy,” Wilson said. Then he laughed, a coarse and grating sound. “Course, if you’re so smart, what are you doing in here?”
“Not what I thought I’d be doing,” Stewart said. He ought to be frightened. The odds were he’d be dead in a few minutes. After all that had happened tonight, though, he seemed to be all scared out. Right now he mostly felt tired.
And bitter. The idea that Patton had made himself disappear, at Walker’s suggestion, was galling.
Why be so upset? Stewart was surprised when this thought first occurred to him, but the more he thought about it—and since Wilson maintained an iron grip on him and seemed disinterested in further conversation, all he could do was think—the more he realized there wasn’t anything to be gained by being miserable.
It was true that if you looked at it a certain way, this was going to be a shattering end to a disappointing experience. Everyone he’d met in New Orleans had pretended to one thing while working toward another—even Pauline, if there was a shred of truth to Cleburne’s allusions. It would be easy to argue that everyone and everything in the world was deception, and this simply the last betrayal in a long series.
In a way he’d betrayed himself, right from the start. He’d let himself be persuaded that Vice-President Crockett had approved Walker’s filibuster, when Senator Brooks and his friends had taken exceptional care to skirt around the issue. He’d continued deluding himself once he’d got here. He’d told himself he was doing his duty, and if that had meant lying, he’d lied. If it had meant killing people, he’d killed. Hated it at the time, and would probably never fall asleep again without seeing the eyes of those dying men, but he’d done it.
Had he really betrayed himself? Betrayal implied choice, and he hadn’t perceived any. Maybe everyone is like that. We tell ourselves what we think we need to hear, but in the end we’re doing what we have to.
He was beginning to understand the unnatural calm that Captain Grant had displayed earlier. The man was completely nerveless. Stewart prayed that, should he survive the next few minutes, he would never again meet Captain Grant on a field of battle.
So what now? Stewart looked about Patton’s room for something, anything, he could use to prevent Wilson from killing him. He thought he heard footsteps coming softly toward the closed door, and when the man grunted, said, “Well, I suppose we might as well get this over with” Stewart let himself go limp.
“Hey, Stewart!” That was Patton’s voice; Stewart felt Wilson go off-balance as he tried to pull Stewart back upright.
“God damn it,” Wilson began. Then Stewart kicked, hard, into Wilson’s bent right knee.
Wilson howled, buckled, and released his grip on Stewart’s shoulder. Stewart pulled away, threw himself to the floor and grabbed for his pistol.
Wilson, staggering, drew an enormous revolver from his coat pocket. The gun wavered: in a quick kindling of understanding, Stewart saw that Wilson hesitated between Stewart and the opening door. Stewart pulled back the hammer of his pistol.
By the time the sound of the hammer cocking had registered with Wilson, Stewart had pulled the trigger, the flint had sparked in the pan, and a half-inch lead ball had smashed into Wilson’s chest. Wilson was on the floor before he could make a sound, his heavy revolver flying onto the wash-stand. Stewart grabbed the pistol as Patton rushed into the room.
“Stewart! Are you hurt?” Patton lowered his pistol, staring at Wilson. Screams rose from downstairs.
“I’m all right.” But he wasn’t. Shaking uncontrollably, tears stinging the corners of his eyes, he felt a shout building in his lungs and demanding to burst free.
“Damn you, Patton.” Wilson struggled into a sitting position; Stewart was amazed that the man could talk, much less get up, with the ball in his chest. “You were supposed to be on your way to Cartier.”
“And you were supposed to leave Captain Stewart unharmed,” Patton said. “Sorry, Stewart, if I made you worry. I had to leave, if only so I could think about how I could help you.”
“He’s not your friend, Patton,” Wilson said. “Him and that damned nigger bitch he’s been riding are out to wreck us.”
“What did you say?” The words came out in a shout.
“What, about your nigger bitch? Didn’t she tell you? Your precious Pauline is—”
A roaring filled Stewart’s ears. For a moment the landscape of the room seemed overlaid with a bright red wash. Then he couldn’t see anything at all.
There was a hand on his shoulder. At first he thought Wilson had got him again, and he struggled to break free. Then he heard Patton’s voice. Something sounded odd. His voice was muffled, as if far away. But there was something else odd, too. Fear, he realized. Patton was afraid of something.
Then he could see again, and sound was no longer muffled. A sharp scent of powder and mercury filled his nostrils. Everything in the room seemed indistinct, as though hidden behind gauze.
He was, he realized, thumbing back the hammer and pulling the trigger on an empty revolver. What he’d perceived as gauze was the smoke from a half-dozen gunshots, unable to disperse.
Wilson was sprawled, irreversibly broken, against the far wall. The amount of blood already pooled on the floor was astonishing, and more was coming every second, oozing in repulsive fashion from wounds that bloomed everywhere on him and made Wilson’s body look like a field of poppies.
“Why did you do that?” Patton asked. He sounded like a frightened little boy.
Stewart shook his head. I don’t remember doing it at all, he thought. How could I know why?
Pauline. He had to get to Pauline. “I’m going now, Patton,” he said. His voice sounded very far-away to him. “You should probably go too.”
“You could come with me,” Patton said. “You wanted to come to Texas, remember?”
“No, I don’t. Not anymore,” Stewart said. “I have to get back home.” He stared at the empty revolver, then in a fury began stuffing powder and ball into each chamber. “I have to get back home.” He tried to think of what that meant, where home was, but couldn’t seem to make his thoughts cohere.
* * * *
Downstairs was in an uproar. Stewart was glad he’d reloaded Wilson’s revolver, if only because having a loaded gun made him feel more confident that he wouldn’t have to use it.
Mrs. Beacon, fear making her if anything more hideous, stood in the center of her parlor with two large men on either side of her, while younger women in varying stages of dress screamed theatrically and men—clients, presumably—made shows of bravado that to Stewart looked mostly pathetic. The large men—bodyguards, presumably, or enforcers of what passed here for peace—held large Bowie knives in a way that suggested they knew how to use them.
“How dare you come in here like this,” Mrs. Beacon began.
“Shut up,” Stewart said. He didn’t feel especially angry. He didn’t feel much of anything anymore, and he wanted the numbness to go away. “You two,” he said, gesturing with the revolver to Mrs. Beacon’s guards, “should go and sit in the corner there. I won’t be staying.”
“Best do as he says, boys,” Patton said, uncertainty in his voice. “I’ve never seen him like this, and I don’t know what he’ll do.” Recognizing that they could do nothing to Stewart without incurring at least as much damage themselves, the men lowered their knives and walked away from Mrs. Beacon, who glowered after them.
“You lied to me,” Stewart said to her. “I can think of at least six people who’d still be alive right now if you’d told me the truth when I came here looking for my friend.”
“Weren’t my idea,” she said. “And what do I care about those people? Were they friends? I don’t think so.”
“You should learn to care,” Stewart said. “How do you suppose I could go about teaching you?”
“Stewart,” Patton said. “You don’t want to get started down that path.”
Mrs. Beacon looked afraid now. “You’re just like him,” she said. “Please get out of my place. I won’t tell the watch about you. But get out, and leave me alone. I promise I won’t do nothing against you ever again.”
“Come on, Stewart,” Patton said. He put a hand on Stewart’s shoulder; Stewart winced, both at the tenderness in his shoulder and at the memory of what had nearly happened to him, and Patton quickly moved the hand to the small of his back. Gently, he pushed Stewart forward. No one made any move to stop them, or even get in their way.
Outside, Patton kept up the gentle pressure on Stewart’s back until they were in the street. Stewart suffered himself to be led. He had tried to think about what he ought to do next, but couldn’t make his mind focus on anything but what Wilson had said about Pauline. Briefly, he wondered if she and Cleburne had got safely back to her rooms. What would he say to her? How could he ask if what Wilson had said was true?
What would it matter if it was?
That thought gradually forced the others out of his mind.
Equally gradually his eyes became accustomed to the dark; he noted that the street was empty. No watchman had arrived, no curiosity-seeker had emerged from any of the other buildings. A few windows glowed yellow with candle- or lamp-light, but that was the full extent to which anyone seemed to care about the violence.
“Are you going to be all right now?” Patton asked.
“I really don’t know, Patton. I hope so.” He couldn’t stop trembling. He recalled something Mrs. Beacon had said. “Who is him, do you suppose? Mrs. Beacon said I was just like somebody.”
“I know,” Patton said. “It’s Colonel Walker she’s comparing you with.” When Stewart tried to protest, Patton interrupted—and shut him up completely. “Walker gave almost the same speech you did,” Patton said, “when he threatened to cut up Mrs. Beacon and all of her whores if she so much as breathed a word to anyone that I was hiding in her place. So don’t be so quick to judge her, Stewart. She was only doing what she thought she had to.”
Somewhere in the distance, a cat screamed defiance.
“You sure you won’t come with us?” Patton asked as Stewart walked him to the stable where Patton had said his horse was waiting for him.
“I can’t,” Stewart said. “Even if I wanted to. And I was telling you the truth back there: I’ve lost all taste for it.” Patton’s remark about his similarity to Walker had been the equivalent of a splash of cold water to the face. He found he could think again, rather than simply brood about Pauline and feel sorry for himself. Rather than continue to berate Patton about the wrongness of what Walker was doing, Stewart told the younger man about the Federal invasion that was coming. “I can’t telegraph General Davis, so I’m going to have to take the message to him myself.”
“I don’t see why you have to become a courier. Couldn’t you write a letter? Wouldn’t it be more fun to be a liberator?”
“Resign my commission? I’ve already got a country to liberate, Patton,” Stewart said. “One that wants to be liberated. I’ve been thinking about this so-called Lovejoy conspiracy. What does it amount to, Patton, but an attempt to impose a policy on us that we did not vote for and do not agree with?”
“That’s why Senator Brooks assigned me to work against it,” Patton said. “I’m sorry that Barber and Menard died, but I’m not sorry about what I did to keep the Confederacy safe.”
“As you say,” said Stewart. “Now, tell me: what’s the difference between the Lovejoy conspiracy and Walker’s filibuster of Texas?”
“What? There’s no comparison, Stewart! Barber and his friends were trying to impose abolition against our will. Walker’s been invited in by the people of Texas.”
“So he says,” Stewart said. He felt very tired, now, almost dizzy with it. “I’m sure that Mr. Barber said something very similar to Lord Byron. Just as I’m sure that there are probably people in the Confederacy who asked Barber and his friends to plot with the English. For myself, I can’t help but wonder exactly which people in Texas invited the Colonel to invade them.” He turned to look at Patton. “Tell you what—I don’t say that you’re necessarily wrong. Why don’t you ask the people of Texas how they feel, once you get there? I wonder what sort of answer you’ll get?”
“What’s happened to you, Stewart?” When Stewart turned to look at Patton, something in his expression must have impressed itself on the man, because Patton took a step back. “Never mind,” he muttered. “You go and do what you have to. I’ll be sure to ask your question, and I’ll let you know what the answer is.” After a moment Stewart became aware of the silence; looking down he realized that Patton had offered his hand.
“Sorry,” he said, seizing and shaking it. “I think I need to sleep for a week.” He looked at Patton. Whatever had happened to Stewart, Patton had also been changed by his trip to New Orleans. “Good luck,” he said, and tried to smile.
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