The Blue and the Grey

by M. J. Trow

  The great guns boomed, each one taking up the echo until they stuttered into silence and the grim procession moved forward. Ahead of the tall hearse with its black drapes and huge, spindle-spoked wheels, a platoon of coloured soldiers marched proudly, the Stars and Stripes floating wide in the sun. Behind the hearse, Lincoln’s horse caracoled and strutted, held fast by a White House groom. The flags and the strange silence of the crowd clearly unnerved the animal, as it tossed its head and snorted. The President’s goatskin boots were reversed in the stirrups, and men wept as they remembered old Abe in the saddle, riding in that curious lanky way of his, with his top hat tilted back.

  Then came Robert Lincoln and Tad, his little brother, trying not to cry, in an open carriage. Men’s hats came off as they passed, and women felt their own motherhood and sobbed into their handkerchiefs, for the sorrow of all fatherless children everywhere. They were otherwise silent, like the forty-abreast Negroes, stretching from curb to curb across the Avenue. Old men who had been born slaves and had lived to see the year of Jubilee. Old women, bowed down with toil in the fields. Children, large-eyed and white toothed. And free. All were dressed in their Sunday best, although it was Wednesday.

  The muffled drums of the infantry kept the pace, agonizingly slow, achingly final as they saw Abe Lincoln home. As the hearse reached Grand’s position, he drew his sword, saluted the six white horses and their sad load with a flourish. The others around him followed suit, and there was the flash of the sun on their blades. Later, they would all swear that a new star, never before seen, rose above the gleaming white of the newly finished Senate building. And they would all say that no thrushes sang for a full year after they buried Lincoln.

  After he had passed, the crowd stayed, silent and still. They had seen it, they had heard it, but they didn’t want to believe it. That he was dead and laid in the grave and had left them alone to face a future that didn’t seem so rosy any more. Then slowly, one by one, heads low, tears still drying on their cheeks, they made their way from that sad place, until all that was left was a flurry of fallen magnolia and the echo of a distant drum.

  EIGHT

  Matthew Grand stood on the top step of the McKintyre house in Eighth Street, automatically polishing each boot on the calf of the opposite leg, flattening his hair into place and tugging his jacket into line. He hitched his shoulders and placed the bouquet of flowers front and central. This wasn’t going to be the easiest conversation he had ever had with Arlette, but whatever else she would have to complain about, it wasn’t going to be his appearance. He rang the bell and took a step back. The McKintyre household did sport some staff who knew how to open the door, but if it was Bella, Arlette’s old nurse, who got there first, he knew he would be dragged in, hugged and generally mussed about before he ever got within a spit of his fiancée so he took precautions.

  ‘Sir?’

  Grand expelled a breath. It was the butler. Still prone to the odd cuss when he dripped soup on the cloth, he nevertheless didn’t go in for too much hugging. The man stepped aside and let Grand in, closing the door silently behind him.

  ‘Miss Arlette,’ Grand said, when no one seemed to be going anywhere fast.

  ‘I will see if Miss Arlette is at home, sir,’ the butler intoned. ‘The household is in mourning.’

  ‘Aren’t we all,’ Grand muttered, but raised his head with a stoic half smile and looked at the man. Louder, he said, ‘I do understand. But this is important; if you could ask her to see me, please?’

  The butler walked away without a backward glance. He did like Captain Grand – so polite always. Not like that spoiled little madam he was planning to marry. On soft feet he paced along the hallway and opened a door. ‘Captain Grand, madam. Are you at home?’

  He was answered by a flurry of female voices, some seemingly at odds with the others, but eventually, getting the gist of the comments, he withdrew, closing the door behind him; but the oak, stout as it was, was no match for the shrillness reaching fever pitch beyond it.

  Grand watched the flannel-footed butler step carefully back down the hall. He wondered idly if the man ever hurried, if his expression ever changed.

  ‘Miss Arlette is not at home, Captain Grand,’ he said, bowing slightly from the hips. ‘If you would like to leave your card …?’ He held out his hand and waited.

  Grand was a little disconcerted. He had not expected this response, and there was no time to plan another visit before he would have to be away. But before he could answer or give the butler a note, the door down the hall swung open and then slammed shut, with Arlette on Grand’s side of it. The twitters from the room reached a crescendo and then died away. Arlette turned and, with a wriggle to rearrange herself and a toss of her curls, she launched herself at Grand, nearly bowling the butler over. He turned away, deadpan. ‘Call me a liar,’ he muttered as he went through the green baize door to where sanity ruled.

  Grand staggered a little as Arlette clasped him round the waist and buried her head against his chest. ‘Matthew,’ she whispered. ‘Where have you been? I was so worried.’

  ‘No need to worry,’ he said, grasping her shoulders and pulling her away from his best uniform jacket. ‘I wasn’t sure whether you’d see me.’

  ‘We’re in mourning,’ she said, sulkily.

  ‘Well, of course,’ Grand agreed. ‘But … I wasn’t sure how things were between us, after …’

  ‘I was upset.’ She stamped her foot and shook her curls. Grand couldn’t help thinking that perhaps she was getting a little old for that. He pushed the unworthy thought to the back of his mind. ‘Then … well, Aunt and Mama have been fretting. They weren’t sure what was happening, you running off like that, anything could have happened.’ She clasped her hands under her chin and looked up at him. ‘Matt, I do love you. Let’s get married now, this week. There’s no need to wait.’

  Grand cleared his throat. ‘I’ve got to go away, Arlette,’ he said. He couldn’t wrap it up, it wouldn’t be fair.

  She stepped back and put her hands to her hips. Her voice dropped low and threatening. ‘You’ve got to do what?’ she snarled. You could criticize Arlette McKintyre for a lot of things, but you could never say she was boring. The girl was as changeable as a pennant in a hurricane.

  ‘I have to go away,’ he repeated. ‘It’s on urgent business, and I’m not sure where I’m going or when I’ll be back. If I get back,’ he said, hoping to raise some sympathy. ‘It might be dangerous work.’

  ‘Dangerous?’ she said, tossing her head. ‘You’ve just been in a war, Matthew. You never made too much of that being dangerous. What can be so dangerous now?’

  ‘I can’t say,’ Grand said, miserably. He had hoped things would go smoother than this, that he could get away without a scene, that he could sail away to do God knew what and write a few letters to the girl back home and then come back and marry her or not, as the cards fell. But it looked as if Arlette had other plans.

  ‘So,’ she said, closing her mouth with a snap. ‘You can’t say what you’re doing, or where? Can you tell me when?’

  ‘Later today,’ he said, quietly.

  ‘Oh, later today. Well,’ she said, tugging at the ring, which didn’t seem to want to leave her finger. ‘In that case, Mr Grand, you must excuse me. With all the shops shut, I only have one thing on hand to give you as a present to wish you bon voyage.’ Her ring came free, and she threw it at him. It missed by a mile and pinged off a piece of her grandmother’s silver, displayed on the hall table to collect visiting cards. ‘It went over there.’ She pointed to a dark corner. ‘You’d better fish for it; you’ll need it for the next poor gullible fool who you manage to convince you want to marry. Now—’ and she spun on her heel – ‘good day to you, Mr Grand.’ And she stamped along the hall and slammed back in through the drawing room door, to be greeted with cries and wails from the women inside.

  Grand stood there, perplexed. He had expected a few tears, perhaps the exchange of a little memento to remind them of e
ach other. This storm had come as a bit of a surprise, though he knew Arlette to be possessed of a temper worthy of the worst shrew in the state. He was still standing there when the butler reappeared and walked past him to open the front door. The butler stood there silently, holding it open, and Grand eventually got the message and left the house. As the butler closed the door, he muttered something to Grand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Grand said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t think I quite …’

  ‘I said,’ the butler repeated, slightly louder, ‘congratulations, sir.’ He smiled his wintry smile.

  ‘Oh, no …’ Then Grand saw the butler’s eyelid close in a slow and conspiratorial wink. ‘Oh, I see. Yes.’ He smiled a beaming smile to thaw the butler’s own. ‘Thank you. Congratulations indeed.’ And with a lighter heart, Matthew Grand turned and almost trotted down the street, giving his by now somewhat battered bouquet to a puzzled lady waiting to cross the road.

  The City of Manchester was the pride of Inman’s Line. An iron-hulled steamer with four masts and a single smoke stack, her monstrous boilers powered engines of 400 horsepower that shuddered and growled as the ship left harbour on the Friday.

  Matthew Grand looked up at the spars overhead and the scudding clouds above them. The sails were furled, and hopefully, if the engines behaved, there would be no need of canvas on this journey. The tug Fury had signalled its farewell, and the Manchester cut through the water past Castle Clinton, the little stone fort that was the immigrant station for Manhattan Island. God alone knew how many huddled masses had passed through those gates in the past four years; Irishmen fleeing the poverty of their wretched country, Germans looking for a brave new world, everybody in search of El Dorado. Many of the men had ended up in Yankee blue uniforms, lured by the promise of the $1,000 reward. Others had drifted South, to put on Confederate Grey. Some of them had not lived out their first week.

  Manhattan grew small until it was a grey ghost floating on the edge of an April ocean. There was no hint of spring in the wind, much less of the first summer of peace. The slaves were free and the war was over. But could anyone just start again, as if the whole thing had never happened? Grand watched his native land fade to nothing on the horizon.

  ‘I know you.’

  The voice made him turn. On the deck ahead stood a plump man with a large nose and heavy moustache. ‘Do you?’ Grand asked. He knew the man too but had no wish to renew their acquaintanceship.

  ‘I’m George Sala.’ The man held out a hand. ‘Telegraph.’

  Grand looked at him.

  ‘It’s a London newspaper,’ Sala explained. ‘I’ve been covering the war.’

  Grand shook the still-extended hand. ‘So have I,’ he said, straight faced.

  ‘You’re Miss Keene’s … friend,’ Sala said. ‘When we last met you were in uniform.’

  ‘Third Cavalry of the Potomac,’ Grand said.

  ‘Ah, the Red Tie Boys,’ Sala said, beaming. ‘It is an honour, sir. May I know your name?’

  ‘Grand,’ he told him. ‘Matthew Grand.’

  ‘Ah, a captain, if memory serves?’

  ‘That was then,’ Grand said. ‘I’ve resigned my commission. It’s just plain Mr now.’

  ‘Hm.’ Sala fished out an expensive cigar case from his pocket. ‘Havana? They were giving them away like confetti at Delmonico’s last night – I couldn’t resist.’

  Grand knew he had fourteen days in this man’s company whether he liked it or not. They’d be sharing meal tables, walking the same deck. He might as well make the best of it, so he took a cigar.

  ‘Capital ship, this, isn’t it?’ Sala struck a lucifer for them both. ‘I came out on some clipper full of Irish. My editor said I needed to rough it, find the real America.’

  ‘And did you?’ Grand blew smoke to the rigging.

  ‘Shiloh. Antietam. Vicksburg.’ Sala reeled off the battles he had seen. Battles where men advanced shoulder to shoulder in open country, ripped down by the staccato rhythm of the Gatlings and the roar of the twelve pounders. ‘You tell me.’

  Grand nodded solemnly. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘That’s the real America all right.’

  ‘Do you know England?’ Sala asked. ‘Been before?’

  ‘No,’ Grand said, glad that the subject had changed. ‘No, I’m looking forward to it.’ He caught an odd look on George Sala’s face. ‘Can it be that different from the States?’

  For a moment, Sala looked at him. Then he burst out laughing. ‘My dear boy,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘You have absolutely no idea.’

  In the nights, Matthew Grand saw him again, the tall man in the wideawake and the duster coat, the skulker in the alley, the smiler with the knife. As the City of Manchester lurched and rolled in the Atlantic breakers and the engines thudded their monotonous rhythm, John Wilkes Booth held up his knife, the blade dripping with Henry Rathbone’s blood. ‘Sic semper tyrannis’ boomed around the cabin, glancing off the hatches and the creaking lifeboats before dying away over the darkening waves. Over it all, Grand heard his elusive quarry laughing, although he had never heard him laugh, and repeat, over and over again, ‘The Devil is with him. The Devil. The Devil.’

  And when he woke, it took him several minutes to prove to himself that he was alone.

  The offices of Messrs Inman stood in a square near the docks that seemed to stretch for miles, and as soon as Matthew Grand had booked into the American Hotel and had his luggage stashed there, he was standing at a counter looking at a jovial clerk who was only too happy to help his American cousin. Jovial clerks, however, had learned to be circumspect over the last four years. Who knew what colours a visitor might wear? Was he blue or was he grey? Lancashire itself had declared for the blue long ago, but cotton, its lifeblood, came from the grey, from the blockaded ports of the South, and times were hard. A third of Liverpool’s trade was with America, and people were starving in Manchester.

  ‘Welcome to Liverpool, sir,’ the clerk said, beaming. Keep it light. Keep it general.

  ‘I’d like to see the manifest,’ Grand said, barely acknowledging the greeting, ‘of the Orient.’

  ‘The Orient, sir?’ The clerk frowned.

  ‘Your ship,’ Grand said. ‘The one that arrived two days ago. It’s in the harbour now.’

  ‘Indeed it is, sir,’ the clerk agreed, taking off his pince-nez and wiping the lenses. He didn’t need to look out of the grimy windows to recognize the ship’s double smoke-stack beyond the cotton warehouses. ‘But I’m afraid the manifest is confidential.’

  Grand took a different tack. Perhaps he’d been too brusque, too determined to find the man he was looking for. ‘A friend of mine,’ he said, ‘may have been travelling on the Orient. I promised to look him up when I got to Liverpool.’

  ‘I’d like to help, sir,’ the clerk said, his voice trailing away, ‘but …’

  Grand rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a roll of notes. ‘I only have dollars,’ he said.

  The clerk’s face broadened into a grin. ‘That’s perfectly all right, sir. Four of those, I understand, make up an English pound. And—’ he became confidential, leaning forward over the counter – ‘if I may say so, I’m glad they’re not those confounded Confederate dollars. Worthless as of last week.’

  ‘So.’ Grand smiled, humouring the idiot. ‘The manifest?’

  ‘Oh, I can’t give you that, sir.’ The clerk frowned, suddenly a model of rectitude. ‘It’s against company policy.’

  ‘But, I …’ Grand spluttered, watching his dollars disappear into the man’s inside pocket.

  ‘I can’t give you the passenger list,’ the clerk said, ‘but I can tell you where to find it. Inman and Co’s headquarters, Leadenhall Street, in the City of London.’

  Grand took a brief breath, fighting down the urge to knock this man through the wall. ‘And will I have to go through this ritual all over again?’ he asked. ‘Parting with yet more money?’

  ‘As I said, sir.’ The clerk beamed again. ‘Welcome to Liv
erpool.’

  One of them swayed in the shadows, drunk. She was … what? Eighteen? Nineteen? The age was right. And the colour of the hair. Almost the colour of corn. But suddenly, there was a clatter of boots on the cobbles and a flash of scarlet. He vaguely knew the uniform – the fusiliers from the Tower. Three stripes on his arm. Perhaps the interloper could afford her. Anyway, the moment had gone.

  He turned the corner into the Haymarket, watching. Always watching. It was the small hours now, and the theatre crowds had gone home. He ducked into the darkness. A peeler, in that ridiculous Roman helmet they all had to wear nowadays. He checked his half-hunter. Quarter past one. He knew their routines, Peel’s raw lobsters, the clueless boys in blue. The copper would saunter down this side of the street, relying on the gaslight to see by. He would check the locks and the window sashes, rattle the gates on the railings, move on the sleeping drunks. Then he would cross the road, walking north at that steady two and a half miles an hour. How bloody predictable. You could set your watch by them. And how lucky for him.

  There was another girl, younger, prettier than the first. He felt his heart pounding in his chest, his lips brick dry. And he was still watching her when a face filled his vision.

  ‘’Ello, ducks,’ the face said. ‘Looking for company?’

  He took this one in immediately. She was probably only in her mid-twenties but could have been any age. Her lips were bright crimson in the gaslight, and her cheeks were rouge-red. She was a park woman, at the bottom of the heap of ladies of her calling, the most unfortunate of unfortunates. This was not her usual stamping ground, he knew that.

  ‘No,’ he growled at her. ‘Go away.’

  The woman was not used to that kind of response, not at the dead of night. Not from a well-set-up young man. It was a Music Hall joke that men only wanted one thing, but in her line of work, she knew it was true.