Banners

by Diane Carey

  Mr. Adams snapped, “It always does when from the weaker side.”

  “We could suspend commerce or engage embargos with foreign nations, but—”

  “But we know that doesn’t work.” Mr. Adams flicked a ferocious glare at Mr. Jefferson, who simply made a nodding shrug with one hand. There was some kind of past in that gesture that the three seniors recognized.

  “I’m vacillating, aren’t I?” the president said unhappily. “Not the truest mark of a statesman.”

  “Your hesitation shows your strength of conscience,” Mr. Jefferson told him. “If nations go to war for every degree of injury, there will never be peace on earth.”

  Mr. Madison turned and suggested with sincere passion, “Thomas, why don’t you come to Washington and address Congress? Surely you could influence a more rational state of mind—”

  The pleasant man shook his head. “You know I am no public speaker.”

  “Do you still believe,” John charged, “that war is better for business than unresisted depravation?”

  “Things do change, John.”

  “But do you believe it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Et tu, Brute?” the president said with a little smile.

  “Yes, et moi.”

  Again, they laughed, but not with much mirth.

  “So some kind of action is supported by two men I admire, and one of them isn’t me,” the president contemplated. “We haven’t been able to protect our merchant shipping. The French raid our trade even more than the British. At this pace, we’ll have no trade at all. Should we now have a U.S.-Franco-Anglo war?”

  Mr. Adams snickered. “Yankee Frankie Limey. That won’t give us Canada.”

  The president accepted another cupful of lemonade from his servant. “Thank you, Paul. I need suggestions, gentlemen, if you have any.”

  “Grant letters of marque and reprisal to American merchant ship owners,” Mr. Jefferson suggested. “Let them go on the offensive. Turn dolphins into sharks.”

  “Turn honest businessmen into pirates, you mean,” the president said. He then quickly held up a hand when Mr. Jefferson inhaled to make some point. “No, no, I’ll do it, of course. All vats must be tapped.”

  The Marine quietly asked, “Your honors … may I speak?”

  He flinched, shocked to hear his own voice, right out like that.

  The eminent Mr. Adams clapped him on the back. “We had a revolution so that you might speak. Have at us.”

  The boy stammered at first, but then found himself. “Are we going to make a war? Right on our own soil?”

  Mr. Adams flicked the president and Mr. Jefferson a glance meant more for Madison, then looked out over the quietly moving ships and boats and canoes. “What do you say, Jemmy?” he asked. “Shall I give this fellow an honest answer?”

  “A United States Marine deserves nothing less.”

  Mr. Adams nodded. “Well, young man, we’re skating rapidly toward war, yes, on our own land, that we are not ready to wage. There are simply not enough of you.”

  The Marine found his legs and stood up. He found the steel inside himself to face the three presidents.

  Three presidents! Would anyone ever believe him?

  He licked his lips, but it didn’t help. “Should we swaller the Britishes pulling men off our ships and pressin’em into the Royal Navy?”

  “Or that we cease to defend immigrants as rightful citizens of the United States?” Mr. Madison added.

  Adams shook his head. “I don’t suggest those at all.”

  He looked out over the harbor at the small red-white-and-blue banner of the United States flicking over the stern of the Indians’ birchbark canoe. The flag rippled in the harbor breeze, its little white stars glittering in the eyes of this roof’s company.

  Former President Adams turned to current President Madison and spoke in a very balanced tone.

  “I suggest we put bees in our bloomers and get ready”

  Upper Marlboro

  PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MARYLAND

  JUNE

  “IT’S ELEVEN O’CLOCK.”

  “It is not eleven o’clock yet. If it were eleven o’clock, he would be here. Not one minute after, nor one before.”

  Dr. William Beanes closed one eye, pulled his spectacles down on his nose so he could see over them, and sighted a picketed fence line leading from his heavily gardened estate down Academy Hill toward the center of town. “Six of these properties have misaligned fences along the fronts. Make a note to instruct the mayor to have them straightened before there’s anymore talk of laying a boardwalk.”

  “Noted,” his wife responded, shielding her eyes to look down the street, but she was not looking at the fences.

  The street was luxuriously wide here, with enviable estates and elegant homes on both sides, an arrangement interrupted several houses down the long street by the saddlery and farrier, a boarding house, the lumber yard, a cobblery, a fabric mill, tea and cake shop, the courthouse, more shops, and lanes leading to the small port landing at the western branch of the Patuxent River, established long ago for tobacco boats, the grist mill owned by the Beanes family, and to the horse racing track south of the town. It was a pleasant and exclusive place to live, and the doctor prided himself on keeping the finest house, the finest garden, the finest wines, and the finest wife.

  He looked at her. She was ready with a wink and a grin, as if she knew what he was thinking, and, of course, she did. A little taller than he and just enough younger, with hair still mostly brown and hardly a wrinkle around her eyes, Sarah Beanes pushed back the lace of her cap and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Theirs was the unspoken affection of a long and quiet marriage.

  “Oh, I see him,” she said quickly and pointed down the fence line.

  There, Frank Key came toward them on a big bay mare at a polite canter, so as not to disrupt the pedestrians or carriages poking about. On his saddle were mounted huge bags, which usually carried books about the law, ethics, or theology, and probably some poetry by Keats, Burns, Donne, Shelley, Khayyam, or a slave named Jupiter Hammon. Frank Key always had a book of someone’s poetry tucked away for moments when he had to wait. No one ever had to wait for him. He had a clock in his head and was impeccably punctual. A scholar of no poet in particular, Key touched like a butterfly upon each, drank of the nectar, altered his own writing for a bit to test a new pattern of speech, but though he loved to read poetry and was prone to write it, he would never make much of a poet. Better to say he read poetry, but wrote rhymes. Very different.

  It was a quirk of nature that he was inclined to write at all, because he was a far better spontaneous orator than ever he could commit to paper. He could spin a sermon, a prayer, or a patriotic speech to swell the heart of any, and do it without preparation. He had it all in his soul, armed and ready. Erect of posture and introspective of mood, Key had a voice as sonorous as cello music, with the most precise of elocution, as if he were singing his thoughts, though he couldn’t sing a lick.

  The thought occurred to Beanes once again, as every time, of what a truepenny Frank Key really was, and the doctor could recall no one who disliked him. What an accomplishment was that in this earthly life? His face was often as expressionless as a painting, but the eyes set within it were warm and complex and bore the turbulence of the world. He did not like even hearing about controversy, yet he was always in a swarm of it because of his booming law practice and his family’s proximity to politics and all its concubines. His father a judge, his brother-in-law a prominent banker and litigator, his best friend a maverick congressman, his uncle and law-partner a circuit court justice and also a congressman; the list was heavy to bear for an upright fusspot who should have been a minister.

  Beanes watched as, down the street at the saddlery’s corral gate, Frank Key swirled out of the saddle like a dancer, gracefully considering his lanky frame, turned his frothing mare over to the stable hand with a brief discussion involving how long he would need his horse
minded, gathered a parcel from a saddle bag, then came striding toward the doctor’s house. The younger man had a bouncing gait when he walked, a springy affair that seemed to use too much energy. While he rode a horse like a bird on a branch, his style of walking was curious and looked uncomfortable, as if he were taking steps just a little too long even for his twenty-foot legs. They waved at him and watched as he strode toward the mansion. Just before their guest arrived, the doctor turned to his wife and pushed his spectacles back up. “It is now eleven o’clock. Just as his letter said.”

  Sarah Beanes nodded as the younger man approached. “And how is Maryland’s leading barrister this morning?”

  Frank Key smiled and paused at the gate to make a small polite bow, then responded to her familial hug in kind. His sky-blue eyes were bright, but not piercing as some could be. “I’m well, cousin, though I’m sure Uncle Philip still holds that title. I’ve brought each of you a gift. Moccasins made by Indians.”

  He handed her the parcel wrapped in paper, which fell open at her touch. “How thoughtful, Frank,” she said. The two of them had always liked each other despite the age difference, for they were second cousins and had always had some idea of what the other was doing in life.

  “I know how William’s feet are,” Key added. “I hope these are helpful.”

  William Beanes took the larger pair of dark brown footwear and rubbed the thick dimpled leather. “Is this deerskin?”

  “Buffalo.”

  “Where did you get these?”

  “I accepted five pair as payment for defending a mulatto who made them.”

  “Can I walk in the garden with them?”

  “I should think you can walk anywhere with them. The Indians do. I hope they fit. You see, there is a drawstring for adjustment.”

  “We shall wear them with joy and leave them to you in my will.”

  “Hardly necessary …”

  “I know how sentimental you are.”

  Mrs. Beanes sat on a carved marble garden bench to try on her slippers. “How is your school project in Georgetown?”

  “Thank you for asking,” Key said with another little bow. “And thanks again to both of you for your most generous donation.”

  “A school for the poor is a noble cause. We thank you for the opportunity.”

  “There are two hundred students now, in only one year. No white child is refused. They pay for nothing but notebooks. Those who are able pay only ten dollars a year.”

  “A wonder of benevolence,” Mrs. Beanes lauded as she tested her new slippers along the stone walk. “Some day you’ll be even more famous than you are now, and I’ll be waving a little flag and shouting, ‘I’m his second cousin!’”

  “I would never pretend to fame, but my soul is glad. As I secure financial support, I hope more schools like the Lancaster can be opened in other locations as acts of Christian charity.”

  “Are you the headmaster of the Georgetown school?”

  “No, no, the president of trustees. My time is dominated by our law practice.”

  “I could see you as a professor,” she added with a smile. “Perhaps you’ll retire from the law someday and have a whole second career. Have you visited the Wests yet?”

  “No, but I’ll stop by before I leave town. If only my life were consumed with nothing but visiting my relatives, I should be a contented man.”

  “You’re related to everybody,” Dr. Beanes commented while tugging one of the moccasins over his toes. “Richard was just here this morning. He and your sister-in-law are anticipating a visit to Terra Rubra in a week,” he mentioned. The doctor stood up and padded about in the buffalo moccasins. “I like these. They’re hardy. And there’s room for my little toes. Come in out of the sun and take a quench.”

  “May I wash my hands first?” Key asked with his usual perfect manners as they entered the impressive three-story mansion.

  “Sarah, will you have Pearl get a basin of fresh water and bring it to the smoking room, please?”

  “Please, be at home, Frank,” Sarah offered, and disappeared into the house to fetch the cook.

  Together the two men stepped in the front door, across the richly flagstoned foyer, and onto the only carpet in town. In a matter of minutes they were together in the smoking room, a masculine room lit charmingly by several well-placed whale-oil lamps, even in the daytime. Key dried his hands with one of Sarah’s embroidered French hand-towels.

  “You’ve wallpapered this room!” the lawyer exclaimed, making sure to sound happy about the new and shiny green-and-gold leaf-patterned walls.

  “It’s machine-printed,” Beanes said as he fetched a crystal carafe of red wine. “Ordered it from New York. Sarah liked the color on the sample. I’d have preferred something in the plum spectrum. Now, I have a sparky new Sangiovese here. Quite different from your father’s oily Madeira. If you like it, please sing its praises. If not, down it anyway, for your good health.”

  “The blood of Jupiter,” Key said, and smiled sheepishly, giving Beanes the impression that he knew he was showing off and that it embarrassed him. “It’s barely the end of morning.”

  “Wine isn’t drinking. I wouldn’t ply you with whiskey. I know you disapprove.” The doctor made a serious expression, knowing that even the prim Mr. Key would not turn down a nip from the world-famous Beanes wine cellar. Or was the world not quite wide enough to describe its glories?

  Beanes glanced through the doorways toward the kitchen to see whether his wife and the cook were within earshot, and confirming that they weren’t he turned quickly to Frank Key.

  “Well? Did he do it?” he asked. “Is it done? Has the president signed it?”

  “Yes,” the lawyer said. “He signed it. The House voted earlier, then the Senate on the seventeenth, and he signed it on the eighteenth.”

  “So, a declaration of war.”

  “Yes, war with Britain.”

  As the doctor filled two goblets halfway up, Frank Key paced to the front window, stood beside the pianoforte, and gazed out, plainly looking at nothing in particular. The afternoon sun lay upon his burgundy coat in such a way as to caress his spine and lay like honey on the curls of his hair around the collar.

  “For a third of my life, this has been portended. I can scarcely believe it’s finally here. God will chastise America for this wicked misstep. For all the multiple arguments for war, I’ve yet to hear a truly honorable one. Or to have my heart moved.”

  “What about an eye for an eye?”

  Key turned and looked at the elder man with a disapproving expression. “But that phrase does not mean revenge.”

  “What else?”

  “Justice, not vengeance. The punishment must not exceed the crime. Never take more than an eye for the loss of an eye.”

  The doctor raised his cottony brows, took a sip, and pondered his loss of a convenient excuse. “Hm. What a pity.”

  “Some say it’s for national honor that we do this.” The lawyer again turned to the outside, seeming to be relieved to have a pane of glass between himself and the world. “I don’t know what a war means for us. For me.”

  “You’re against it,” Beanes supplied. “So what? Half the nation is.”

  “How will our lives change, I wonder? I’ve never been through a war.”

  “You grew up during the Revolution.”

  “I was born when it started and was a boy when it ended. I have the privilege of living and practicing in Georgetown,” Key went on, “in the eye of events in the chambers of Washington, but I feel somehow as disengaged as I was as a child. Terra Rubra was like a garden oasis then, for Anne and me, almost a dream world. If our parents had not entertained so much, I think we might never have known the Revolution was happening at all.”

  “Yet General Washington bivouacked in the hills around you the whole time. Your father was an officer. Maryland Rifles, wasn’t it?”

  “And a cavalry captain later, but the war never came to our door. Even when Father came home and
we listened to his tales, I felt as if I were a student hearing the day’s history lesson. I feel that way again. Will I be always on the outskirts of events? But I don’t know what I can do.”

  “Join the military,” Beanes suggested.

  “Without conviction, what kind of soldier could I be?” The younger man asked this in such as way as to suggest that he didn’t want an answer, or at least not yet.

  Beanes watched him. “There’s more than soldiering. You could be a clerk, an adjutant, a quartermaster, a currier, a cook—”

  “A cook?” The lawyer smiled. “Pity the men! I suppose there might be some capacity in which I might serve. What do you think will happen now?”

  The doctor cocked his head casually. “Somebody will attack somebody.”

  “But where?”

  “I’m a doctor, not a dragoon,” he said.

  “While I was visiting President Madison,” Key told him, “Colonel Monroe came in with a plan to defend the Chesapeake. He said there were also plans to strike into the Great Lakes and Spanish Florida too.”

  “I suppose the war will be mostly on the sea,” Beanes said by way of agreeing with what he had just heard. “That’s where we’re the weak and they’re stronger. But strategy will be left to generals and lords. The rest of us will sweep up.”

  “Did you know there are almost seven-and-a-half millions of American citizens now, despite families getting smaller?” Frank Key asked, more of offering conversation than asking a question. “When President Washington fought the British before, there were only four million. We will soon be doubled in numbers.”

  “I have a feeling Mr. Washington would not be surprised,” Beanes responded. “He saw the future like a gypsy, they say.”

  “Despite doubling in population, we have only a tenth of the standing Army that was expected by this time.”

  “How many is that?”

  “Mr. Madison says about three thousands.” The younger man seemed briefly to go off into other thoughts, which now and then he did without announcement. Then he said, “I met him in person once. President Washington.”