Unholy Fire

by Robert J. Mrazek

“All right,” he answered, after a moment’s pause. “Now, let’s discuss your qualifications. Are you honest?”

  “In most things.”

  “Do you have common sense?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Are you able to write a declarative sentence?”

  “Yes,” I said, suppressing a grin.

  “You have all the qualifications I’m looking for. Now I have no more time to waste. Are you coming with me?”

  I found myself nodding at him.

  “What do they call you?”

  “Kit,” I said.

  “You can call me Val,” he said, as I began gathering up my few belongings in a paper sack. I thought about the pint of laudanum that I had hidden the night before behind the ward privy and immediately regretted my decision. My mind started racing to figure out some reason to explain why I couldn’t leave after all.

  “You have everything you need in here,” he said, picking up my sack and waiting for me to move past him. As I walked out of the chicken roost for the last time, I saw Walter Clapp preparing his mice troupe for its matinee performance.

  “Good luck, Kit,” he called out.

  “Good luck to you, too, Walter,” I said.

  Outside, Colonel Burdette motioned to two soldiers who were sitting on the driver’s box of a small hansom carriage that was waiting near the door. A moment later we were seated in the back of it.

  “To the asylum!” shouted Burdette.

  I assumed he was making a joke.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Carriage came out of dense woods and emerged onto the Maryland heights above Washington City. Below us, military encampments covered the landscape to the east as far as the eye could see. There were a dozen fortified redoubts, each sprouting scores of cannons. An intricate network of trenches and elevated rifle pits connected all the forts together. To the south, a great stone bridge spanned the Potomac River.

  After spending the entire winter in hospital, it was exciting to see that spring had actually arrived. On both sides of the road, wild dogwoods were alive with white blossoms, and the bright pink redbuds dazzled the eye.

  In the distance, there were several massive buildings. I recognized the highest one as the Capitol Building, its dome still only half complete. Then the carriage descended from the heights, coming out on a road that ran alongside a shallow, marshy canal. The canal meandered eastward, and we followed it into the city.

  The first thing that struck me about our capital was the smell. One source of the stink became evident when we rode by the carcasses of several horribly bloated horses floating on the surface of the canal. They looked like they had been there for some time and were covered by a horde of flies and insects.

  “Behold, our Athens along the Potomac,” said Valentine Burdette.

  The smell got worse as we went along. At times the color of the canal was actually yellow, like a gigantic flow of infected mucous. It was as wide as a small river, maybe sixty yards across. Along the opposite bank, we began to pass makeshift tent camps interspersed with roadhouses, saloons, sawmills, warehouses, and towering mounds of coal and firewood.

  A monstrous mechanical contraption on wheels came groaning toward us from one of the wooden bridges that spanned the canal. Pulled along by a tired, sway-backed mule, its cargo was another dead horse. The animal was riding on its back with its legs extended upward in the air, suspended by a block and tackle from the timber framework above the cart.

  “Twenty dollars says I know exactly where that horse is going,” said Colonel Burdette, and I had no doubt he was right.

  We rode past the president’s mansion, where a dozen sentries lounged at their posts. The grounds of the mansion seemed more befitting a prison yard than the home of the president. Unlike the carefully trimmed parks in Cambridge, the grass was as high as my ankle, and the flowerbeds were choked with weeds. The mansion itself was badly in need of a coat of paint.

  Then we turned onto a broad avenue, and suddenly the Capitol Building loomed up ahead of us, high on the far hill, completely dominating the landscape. Traffic now came toward us in a constant stream of drays, farm carts, hansom cabs, and military traffic. An artillery battery roared past along the cobbled section of the roadway, creating a formidable din. Behind it came a horse-drawn omnibus. In addition to the passengers inside, there were another dozen people lying or sitting on the roof, most of them clinging to a low railing that ran around the edge. They were all black.

  “So much for the equality of the races,” said Colonel Burdette, caustically.

  The north side of the avenue was filled with important brick buildings, including hotels, restaurants, and fine shops. The other side boasted an unbroken vista of dingy saloons, weed-filled open lots, and decrepit rooming houses. Street peddlers shouted their wares on every corner. A large sow lay sprawled in one of the doorways.

  The carriage turned into one of the side streets, and we rode north for another mile or so, passing wood-framed row houses, small shops, and livery stables, until the buildings thinned out and gave way to patches of open land where cattle stood munching at hayracks.

  Just when I was beginning to wonder if the whole strange journey wasn’t part of an opium-inspired dream, I spied another massive building ahead of us. It was located in a tree park and surrounded by an eight-foot-high brick wall. Armed sentries stood guard at the iron-gated entrance.

  We came to a stop long enough for one of the sentries to glance inside the coach. Upon seeing Colonel Burdette, he saluted and waved us forward. As we rolled past the iron gates, I noticed a sign engraved in the high brick wall that read: WASHINGTON ASYLUM FOR THE MENTALLY AFFLICTED.

  “So this is where you’re taking me,” I said, downcast at the thought that I was to be finally committed because of my addiction. I looked up to see Colonel Burdette grinning at me.

  “Space in the nation’s capital is at a premium, Lieutenant McKittredge,” he said, as we arrived at a brick-sided entrance portico. “This is the headquarters of the provost marshal general of the Army of the Potomac.”

  It was a forbidding fortress of a place with iron bars covering all the windows on the first and second floors. There were three separate wings to the main building. One wing still served its intended purpose as a hospital for the insane. The others had been converted into office space for the Provost Marshal General Department. Part of our wing also contained several convalescent suites for wounded, high-ranking officers.

  The dark, cavernous halls were filled with soldiers rushing in all directions, their boot heels clattering on the polished oak floors. Hand-lettered signs were tacked onto the door of each office identifying the activities being conducted inside. Colonel Burdette escorted me to a small room in the middle of a long corridor on the second floor. The barred windows let in very little natural light. The principal illumination came from a gas lamp mounted below the ceiling.

  There were two desks in the room. A lawyer assigned to the Judge Advocate General’s Office occupied the first one. His name turned out to be named Harold Tubshawe, and he was very stout, with a ruddy cherubic face. Perhaps to compensate for the fact that he was prematurely bald, he had cultivated a luxuriant beard.

  It then being Saturday, Colonel Burdette informed me that on Monday morning, I would begin conducting background investigations into pending court-martial cases to determine which ones warranted prosecution by the judge advocate general. Only the most serious cases required trained lawyers, he said. The rest were dealt with in trials presided over by regular officers who served on rotating adjudication boards.

  “I’m assigning you five cases to start with,” said Colonel Burdette, handing me a batch of file folders. I scanned the cover sheets. Four of them involved enlisted men who had left their military units without proper authorization. In the fifth case, a federal paymaster was suspected of embezzling two hundred dollars. None of them seemed remotely important.

  “Take the files home with you,” he said, after provid
ing me with a set of keys for the doors and file cupboards. “Be prepared to act on them as I direct you on Monday.”

  I remembered then that I did not have a home.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of securing a room for you at Mrs. Warden’s,” he said, as if again divining my thoughts. “It is a pestilential hole by official Washington standards, but a definite step up from your chicken shed in Glen Echo.”

  Mrs. Warden’s turned out to be an old, sagging frame house in a small mew near Lafayette Square. Colonel Burdette accompanied me there in his carriage, alighting just long enough to escort me inside and introduce me to Mrs. Warden, the proprietor. It was obvious from his greeting that they were well acquainted, but neither made mention of how or why. She was about sixty years old, with mocking eyes and a sturdy frame.

  “Well, I’m glad to see a young officer who doesn’t favor mutton chops and chin whiskers,” were her first words. “Give me a clean-shaven man every time to see if he has character in his face.”

  “I believe he will benefit from your ministering soul, as black as it is, Ella,” said Colonel Burdette, turning to leave, “that and your prowess with butter and chocolate.”

  His parting words to me were, “She was born in the garret, but to the kitchen bred.”

  I understood his import after sitting down to supper an hour later. First, however, she showed me to my room, which was on the top floor of the house and looked out onto the roof of a small livery stable. It was very close in the room, and when I raised the window to let in some fresh air, I could hear voices coming from the room directly below mine. A man and woman were arguing, their words indistinct. Mrs. Warden heard them as well.

  “The Masseys,” she said. “Mrs. Massey is twenty-three; her husband is fifty-one. She is in love with Captain Spellman, who lives on the first floor. She doesn’t think anyone else knows. Of course, everyone in the house knows, with the exception of Mr. Massey.”

  I agreed to pay her four dollars per week for the room and an additional fifty cents per day for my morning and evening meals. That proved to be a sound investment. Mrs. Warden and a hired girl served the meals family-style around a large dining table in the front parlor. That first night the main course consisted of an Irish stew served from an enormous tureen. She had eight boarders aside from me, including two aging civil servants, an Italian vegetable grocer, and a blind man with shoulder-length silver hair. I sat between Mr. Bliss, a linguistics expert at the Library of Congress, and a lovely young woman with a French accent who turned out to be the notorious Mrs. Massey.

  Certainly, she did not look the part of a wayward wife. There was innocence in her smile, and she seemed completely unspoiled. Her husband, a priggish-looking man with poached eyes and a receding chin, was sitting on the other side of her. Next to him was the only other man in uniform. He introduced himself as William Spellman.

  Mr. Bliss asked me where I had gone to college, and I told him.

  “Have you knowledge of syntactics?” he asked hopefully, after I had shaken his clammy palm.

  I had no idea what he was talking about

  “The signs and symbols in both natural and artificially constructed languages,” he said tartly. “And semiotics?”

  When I shook my head in confusion, his lips curled downward, and he didn’t say another word.

  Mrs. Warden removed the lid of the tureen, and a fragrance rose toward me that smelled almost spiritually rewarding. Soft chunks of lamb and beef were submerged in a good, brown gravy and surrounded with mushrooms caps, carrots, turnips, onions, and potatoes. Platters of hot sour cream biscuits and bowls of creamed spinach rounded out the simple fare, and I found myself falling to the meal with genuine relish.

  The discussion at dinner centered on several of the new generals who were now making their mark on the war, including Philip Kearny and John Reynolds. Captain Spellman was particularly excited about the rise of General Joseph Hooker.

  “There was an account in the Journal today that recounted how he won the sobriquet of ‘Fighting Joe’ at the Battle of Williamsburg,” he said, his voice marked by the Beacon Hill cadence of the Boston aristocracy. “Basically, he attacked their whole army with just his one division and might have won the day, too, if General McClellan had supported him. Instead, he lost 20 percent of his division in the attack.”

  “I happen to believe that General McClellan is the greatest soldier of the age,” said Mr. Massey.

  “Then why don’t you tell us why the greatest soldier of the age chose to put his headquarters fourteen miles behind the battle line?” said the silver-haired blind man at the far end of the table. “McClellan had no idea what was even happening.”

  The man’s chin and mouth bore terrible marks of disfigurement, although a full beard covered much of it. In spite of his infirmities, he ate his meal without difficulty in precise, economical movements.

  “From what I have read about General Hooker,” continued Mr. Massey, “he seems to reserve all of his fighting ability for drunken brawls in this city’s worst dens of iniquity. You should be reading the Sentinel.”

  “I wouldn’t wrap a fish in that newspaper,” said Captain Spellman.

  Mr. Massey was undeterred.

  “The man was a hellion at West Point,” he went on in a superior tone, “and in the Mexican War he apparently spent most of his time in houses of ill-repute.”

  “Lies,” said the silver-haired man, harshly. “He is the finest fighting general we have. Loyal to his men, personally brave, and he never asks them to go where he won’t lead. If McClellan had supported him at Williamsburg, we would be celebrating the end of the war in Richmond right now.”

  “And how would you know?” retorted Mr. Massey, with sarcasm.

  The blind man carefully folded his napkin and put it down in front of him.

  “Because I was with him in the class of ‘37 at the Point.… And because I was with the army in Mexico when he led the attack of Hamer’s Brigade through the Mexican artillery fire at Monterey,” he said without pause, “and because I was with him when the Voltigeurs went over the barricades at Chapultepec and ended the war.”

  He stood up from the table, and replaced his chair in its proper place.

  “Joe Hooker was the only first lieutenant in the whole army to be brevettted three grades up to lieutenant colonel for his gallantry in the three major battles of that war,” he said, staring fiercely through his sightless eyes at Mr. Massey. “Since I am leaving on the morrow, let me say it now. You, sir, are an ass.”

  As he slowly made his way out of the dining room, Mrs. Warden’s servant girl passed him on her way in bearing the dessert, which consisted of an apple crisp, warm from the oven, and topped with clotted cream.

  As I stared down at my portion, I thought of what it might have been like to serve under a fighting general like Joe Hooker, a man who led from up front and knew how to fight a battle, instead of under a vainglorious fool like Edward Baker.

  Although I tried to do justice to my dessert, the craving for laudanum began to take possession of me before the rest of the dishes were even cleared. I realized it was the first full day since I had entered the hospital more than six months earlier that I had not consumed my regular dosings.

  The temperature of my skin seemed to be rising by the minute. Perspiration began to form at the roots of my hair. A few moments later, it was soaking the scalp and dripping down the back of my neck. Looking up from my plate, I realized that Mrs. Massey was trying to gain my attention.

  “Your color is quite alarming, Lieutenant. Have you been ill?” she asked, with genuine concern in her eyes.

  “Yes. I just came from the hospital,” I said.

  She nodded knowingly. By then there were thousands of us wandering the city.

  “Is there an apothecary nearby?” I whispered to her.

  “Yes, but I doubt it would be open at this hour. What do you need? Perhaps, I can lend you something,” she said. “Is it for pain?”

  Ev
en as I nodded, I regretted it. If everyone in the house already knew she was in love with another boarder, how could she be counted on to keep my secret? Farther down the table, I heard raised voices. Her husband was now in a heated discussion with Captain Spellman.

  “I believe in the cause of freedom for the colored as much as the next man,” said Mr. Massey, his adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Nevertheless, the Greeks cherished slavery. In fact, Plato and Aristotle believed it was vital to an ordered society.”

  “But we have made two thousand years of human progress since then,” asserted Captain Spellman.

  “Perhaps,” responded Mr. Massey, “but in their infinite wisdom, our own Founding Fathers decided to guarantee slavery in the Constitution. I refer you to Article one, sections two and nine. The Southern states are only demanding their rights under the Constitution.”

  I felt my nerves beginning to give way, and it was all I could do not to bolt from the table. Mrs. Warden was eyeing me closely from the kitchen door.

  “I don’t think an issue like slavery can ever be compromised when one side views the Negro as a human being and the other sees him as a good head of livestock,” said Captain Spellman, his cheeks turning red with anger.

  “You see the colored man as a human being, then,” Mr. Massey replied.

  My head felt as if it was going to explode, and I knew that if I didn’t leave the table at that moment, I would break down in front of everyone.

  “Please excuse me,” I mumbled, almost reeling as I headed for the back staircase. I barely made it to the door of my room, fumbling for the key and then staggering inside. Something behind me momentarily blocked out the lamplight from the hall, and then I heard her lilting voice behind me. She must have come up the front staircase right after I left the dining room.

  “It will be all right, Lieutenant,” said Mrs. Massey. “Lie down now. I will bring you something for the pain.”

  As soon as I was on the bed, my body began to shudder, just as it had during those first long nights in the hospital. The tremors started in my hands, rapidly moving up my arms to the rest of my body, coming in short, staccato bursts until I thought I would split apart.