Gulls swirled above us. Across the river, the mansion on the ridge held up a gray sky.
“This is idiocy,” Tyrone said yet again. “Watch where you step now,” I told him. Molloy was humming, happy as if he had a pocketful of gold. He wanted for companionship, I think, and this was a fine boy’s excursion.
“You there,” Tyrone said to him. “If you’ve known him all these years, you tell him. He’s out to get himself killed, and no sense to it.”
“Oh, now,” Molloy told him, “Sergeant Jones is become a fine officer, and they have taken all the sense from him. A very pukka sahib he is, sir. Sure, and there never was talking to the man, anyways.”
“Madness,” Tyrone said, shoving his medical bag against the flank of a bovine obstruction.
They were waiting for us. And pistols it was to be. I had expected Bates to be Trenchard’s second, but Bates introduced us to a French fellow with a name that sounded like the Duke of Sharters. Twas the fellow with whom McClellan most liked to ride. And weren’t they all just fine friends?
Trenchard stood there straight and still, in all his terrible handsomeness. He had stripped off his greatcoat and tunic, and the ends of his black cravat fluttered over the perfect whiteness of his shirt. I took off my frock coat as well, since it seemed to be the proper thing to do. I wished I had a lovely shirt such as the major’s. Greatcoat had I none to bother with, for it was not yet cold enough to justify such a purchase for myself, though I had a good India rubber for the rains.
I felt small. The rich have a thousand ways of making us feel their lessers, even in America.
The Frenchy duke made a display of Trenchard’s pistols, silver and sleek in their case. “They have been loaded,” he said. “Captain Jones has now the choice.” Tyrone craned his neck to every side, and I knew he was wanting the provost marshal’s men to come by, but such are rarely where they are needed. There were only the gulls and, across the brown river, a choring about of small figures in blue with no interest in us.
I hefted one of the pistols. Old-fashioned they were. Single shot. But fine, with long barrels that would send the bullet straight.
Of course, my Mary Myfanwy crossed my mind. And the boy. And I knew there was only foolishness in this business, looked at sensibly. But there are times in life when good sense is not enough, if a man is to live with himself.
A cow come up curious. Molloy made a to-do of chasing him. Livingston, I noted, was not to be seen, although Trenchard had a doctor fellow of his own along.
Trenchard tossed a look toward Molloy, then toward Tyrone and myself, and said something to the duke. The two of them laughed while Bates strode out the measure of the killing ground.
“Now you will shake the hands,” the Frenchman said.
I was loath to do it, but I took the devil’s cold paw in my own. Trenchard was steady, with no sweating or shaking about him. He just looked down at me with the scorch of those eyes and said, “This should make a neat end to it.”
There was sorry to think that the last breath I might take was the bad air of those mud flats. I laid my cane where it was dry and clean, and Bates led us to our places. We set our bodies in profile, pistols back against our shoulders. The Frenchman stood between us for a moment, making things formal, then he retreated to the side.
“Jones, for the love of God, man,” Tyrone called. “Tell him you’re sorry. Just make an end to it.”
“I am not sorry,” I said. “And he may go to Hell.”
I saw the flash of Trenchard’s teeth.
“The count,” the Frenchman told us, “is to the number of three. Then both parties have the freedom of the fire.” He looked at me. “Captain Jones? You will have the satisfaction, no?”
“I will have satisfaction.”
A gull squealed and banked away from us.
“Major Trenchard,” he said, pronouncing the name long, without the last letter on the end of it, “you will give the satisfaction?”
Trenchard nodded. Just once.
“Gentlemen… please to cock your pistols.”
We did so.
Oh, the thoughts that come to a man, and that must be kept down.
“One.”
Behind Trenchard, a cow rose to its feet to see better.
Two.“
Trenchard looked ten feet tall to me, I will tell you. With those dark eyes burning like lamps and every muscle in him tightened.
“Three.”
Trenchard was quick. Quicker than me, and steady of arm. But there are miracles on this earth, see. With all the fickleness of November, the last sun broke through behind my back. It struck Trenchard’s eyes.
Something stung me on the side of the neck and I heard the crack of his shot. But I have stood at attention under the assault of mosquitoes the size of winged horses. I did not break my aim.
Trenchard’s pistol smoked like a cigar as he lowered it. There was a startled expression on his face. A long time I looked at him. Killing he needed. And deserved. Had I known how much damage that man would yet do in his lifetime, I would have shot him down like a foaming dog. Yet I will credit him—he was a low swine and a human beast, but not a coward.
He stood his ground like a man and waited for my shot. When I could not bring myself to it, he even said: “Do it, Jones.”
And he said it without a ghost of emotion. I pointed my pistol downward and fired into a cow-flop. Then I wheeled on my good leg and hurled his fine pistol as far out into the mud as I could send it.
I took up my cane again, and turned my back on the lot of them.
“Captain Jones?” the Frenchy hollered. “Have you had the satisfaction?”
But all the Frenchies and the fine gentlemen in the world could go to black blazes.
Molloy come up on me first, waving my frock coat and calling, “Oh, Sergeant Jones, ye could have kilt the dirty heathen, and done it honest! Fair ye could’ve laid him out, and a fine wake there might’ve been in the town. What got into ye, man? And bleeding like a Punjab pig at a sticking, ye are…”
But Tyrone, when he stepped up by my side, just walked close for a bit, letting the cattle settle themselves again after the noise of the discharges. Finally, he said:
“If you had half as much sense as heart, man, we could change the world before breakfast. Now stop, damn you, and let me see to that neck.”
“You, Molloy,” I said, stopping in front of Mrs. Schutzengel’s. For even after my thankful goodbye to Tyrone, that black son of Erin had kept on my heels like a mongrel pup. “You are to go to Mother Flaherty’s and bring out Miss Annie Fitzgerald for the lady of this house to see. Bring her safe. And take her back, if need be. And we’ll have none of your hooligan nonsense. You are not to set foot in this good door yourself, nor to bother any that goes in or out of it. Do you understand me?”
“Employment is it I’m having, sir?”
“There will be a gratuity for a job done properly.”
“Carry the girl, I will, sir. Like I carried ye down to Attock Fort, all sweating and bleeding and groaning meself.”
“Just mind your manners. The young lady is decent, and not of your ilk, Irish though she may be. And, Molloy?” He looked at me with the skulk and shrewdness of the eternal private. “There is other work, if you will do it honestly.”
I thought of how we had finally caught him in the bazaar, dirty as the Devil’s secret thoughts and kitted up like a wandering Hindoo holy man. Had he not been drunk as a sailor with an inheritance, we might have missed him. Nor had he lost his skills at masquerading, since he had made a most convincing cripple before I startled him back to health the night before.
“You were ever as quick to change your shape as your story,” I said. “The good Lord bestows talent even upon the wicked. Now I would have you keep an eye, day and night, on the fellow who was party to the… little altercation this afternoon. I will give you his particulars. But you are not to be detected in your watching. And no free talk or drunkenness, see. Nor foolishnes
s of any kind.”
“A dollar a day it must be worth, for such a labor o‘ Hercules.”
“You will have fifty cents.”
The man was fit for the stage, such a disconsolate mug he put on. That was the blarney in him, of course. He made his face long, and then he set it all crooked besides. His eyes sorrowed as if his mother had just gone down in a shipwreck, and with the family fortune, too. The silence wailed around him. You might have thought he was suffering in the depths of pestilence and famine, and that all the seven plagues of Egypt were upon him.
“Oh, sir… an honest man cannot feed his missus and babes on fifty cent. Sure, seventy-five cent would be but the faint beginnings o‘ decency?”
“You have a family, Molloy?” Anything is possible in life, see.
He was not completely dishonest, I will say that for him. Only no-good, scheming, and given to blasphemy.
“Well, then, sir,” he said, twisting his face into another portrait of agony, “Not exactly a family… tis more like dependencies, ye might call ‘em… like poor India is dependent on the grace o’ Victoria…”
“Molloy, it is repulsive and unsuitable for you to speak of yourself in the same breath as the Queen. Nor will I finance any disreputable web of gamblers, confidence men, and… women… in which you may find yourself entrapped. It is fifty cents a day, and not a penny more.”
Never did a beaten hound take on a look of greater affliction.
“Ever a terrible man, ye were, Sergeant Jones, and never accursed with the quality o‘ mercy.”
“I am Captain Jones, Molloy, and will not remind you again.”
“And twenty-five cent, in advance, say, Captain, sir? For the ferrying of your sweet colleen from the distant black depths o‘ Swampoodle?”
“She is not my ‘sweet colleen.’ And you just had two dollars of me last night, man. That should be a small fortune to you.”
He twisted up his face again. “But investing that I’ve been, sir. A man must think on his future. And there is a lovely great cockfight to be held Thursday next, and a share o‘ the finest cruel rooster I’ve purchased meself…”
Now you have heard the great Lyceum speakers talk of the incalculable worth of justice, of its sanctity and the like, and how no price may be put upon it. But Abel Jones can tell you exactly what justice cost in November of 1861, and that was fifty cents a day to the likes of Jimmy Molloy.
The summons arrived. I had known it would. I was seated at the table that was my bedroom desk, reading over my farewell letter. I had taken it back from Mick Tyrone, thankful that I was in condition to do so. Tyrone was frustrated by my unwillingness to hurry things along—for he was as set on justice as I was—but I saw the lay of the land now. Twas time for Welsh reserve, not Irish temper. So after I washed the scratch on my neck and took some soap to my collar, I just sat down with my foolish letter and waited for Mrs. Schutzengel’s call to dinner, or for the other call that I knew would come soon.
Once the body’s juices have stopped rushing about, the nearness of death casts things in a cold, clear light. I saw now how inadequate, how useless, my scribbling would have been to my wife and son. High-flown nonsense, and an insult to them. They deserved better. What man is not a fool?
Mrs. Schutzengel called up the stairs to tell me I led a visitor. Twas McClellan’s murky cavalryman, as I knew it would be. I let him lead me to the carriage, then on through the wintering streets.
Again, we used the back door, the one for servants and the like, which was fitting. This time, Little Mac received me in a half-furnished parlor. He did not look well, and he was not alone.
Neither man stood up when I come in.
“Jones? Good to see you again. I don’t believe you know Allan Pinkerton? Greatest detective in the country. Allan, this is Captain Abel Jones, the man I’ve told you about.”
Twas the fellow I had seen that first evening in the general’s office. And he looked as unsavory to me now as he had then. The Welsh rule, see, and it is a good one, is that a man should never own a suit he would not wear to chapel. Pinkerton wore a big brown check, with a fancy-man’s rag about his neck, and glass rubies in his cuffs. He looked like a man who could not afford what he wanted and who did not want what he could afford. Only his shoes had a sensible look, and far away they were from his ape’s face. I could not have fashioned a more fitting get-up for one whose profit lay in the miseries of others, and in lies, and who would hang good men for money. All that was to come later, of course, when the business with the Mollies exploded under Pinkerton and Gowen and all the rest of us. But let that bide.
“Jones,” McClellan said, “I owe you an apology.” There was a fine veil of wetness on his forehead, and his color was poor. His words seemed to come at an effort, though Little Mac was never short of them. “Now… you will appreciate… that I am not in the habit of… apologizing to captains. But you’ve fairly earned it. I’m afraid I allowed my enthusiasms and my prejudices—that’s right, my prejudices—to carry me away. You’re a very persuasive speaker, Jones. Had me convinced. No, it’s a great embarrassment, those accusations against a respected citizen like Matt Cawber. Never should have let you go to Philadelphia that last time. But consider, Jones, how great a burden these shoulders must carry. The weight of the Union is upon me, and I must save it single-handedly.” He sat back, and Pinkerton set a bootlicker’s gaze of admiration upon him. “I can do it all, Jones. But mistakes will be made. Even by me. And I’m afraid it was a great mistake dragging you into all this. After all, as you said yourself, you had no qualifications…”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, Jones… see here… I can’t very well turn you out into the street. What I mean is, I can’t just send you back to your old job without an explanation. Wouldn’t be fair. And I’m a fair man. Wouldn’t you say so, Allan?”
Pinkerton nodded, crushing his beard down into his chest. “More than fair,” he said, and I heard the grump of a Scottish burr.
“Well, Jones, I must confess… you will forgive me… I had doubts all along. So I had Mr. Pinkerton look into these matters, as well. In parallel, you might say.” He sat up straighter for a moment, stuffing his hand into his coat just below his heart. But he slumped back almost immediately. “Is it cold in here? It seems freezing.”
It was not cold.
“Anyway, Jones… Allan has uncovered everything. I just want you to know how it all came out. To put your mind at rest. And to thank you for your efforts, your good intentions.” He forced a smile. “Although I will not have an old warhorse such as yourself potshotting at my young officers down by the riverside, as it were. We are civilized here, Jones. This isn’t India, after all. And we old soldiers must be cautious not to prey on the follies of hotheaded youth.” He shivered and called for an aide to bring his greatcoat. “Odd, how cold it seems,” he said. “Time of year, I suppose. Ian, would you clarify matters for Captain Jones?”
Pinkerton ructioned about in his chair as if he felt I mouse in his trousers, then he leaned forward and set his elbows on his knees. He had those lifeless eyes you see in men who do not love.
“Well,” he began, “it’s simple, really. Case of good intentions gone awry.” He emulated the speech of the native-born American, but his voice rang odd and forced, with Scotland clinging to its edges. He sounded as if he would never be at home anywhere. “Fact is, Anthony Fowler was shot down by an unknown assailant. Who he was, we’ll likely never know. Some low criminal of the city. Certainly fled by now, given all the commotion.” He sat back and placed his palms on his knees, just where his elbows had been. “Motive? Robbery. Clear-cut case. Trouble is, it happened while the lad was out on a rip with his pals. In a part of town,” he smirked, “where the better sort pretend not to go. And drunk, all of them. When these friends of his run out to the sound of the shot, the poor boy’s already dead. Now what to do? Well, they don’t want to shame his poor, old mother by having him found dead at the steps of a bordello, do they? No, they
don’t. So young fools that they are, they lug his carcass right over the river in a commandeered wagon, pulling rank on the sentries, then drag him up toward the lines. And lay him down again. Where it just might appear he’d died a hero’s death. Or at least not a shameful one. There it is.”
His eyes were stones.
“Yes. There it is,” McClellan repeated. He pulled his coat more tightly around him, with his color gone nearly green. “You see, Jones? There we were, you and I, playing amateur policemen… when there was really a simple explanation for all this. You see?”
“I see,” I told him.
“Now here’s what we must do,” McClellan said. “As much as I despise—despise—these excesses of the press regarding Fowler… our best course of action at this point—given Mr. Pinkerton’s discoveries—is to let them fade away on their own. Certainly, this abolitionist fervor is as dangerous as it is despicable… but we shall weather it. Determination is what’s wanted here. Fortitude. Indeed, Jones, I was touched by your sympathy for Mrs. Fowler. It quickened an old soldier’s heart. No, we must not bring shame to her door. We will let her son rest a hero. For if he was often misguided, his intentions were of the best. And there is no need to drag his name through the mud over a single youthful foray into this city’s more questionable districts. No, let him die a hero, if the public will have it so. There are more important matters at hand…”
“Far more important,” Pinkerton agreed.
“As for those friends of his,” McClellan continued, “we’ll pack them off for a time and see if they won’t learn better judgement. Split them up and keep them out of trouble. They’re good boys, only a little wild.” He wiped a flush of sweat from his forehead. “Ah, the fine intentions of the young, and the follies that cometh thereof…”
Faded Coat of Blue Page 24
