Banners

by Diane Carey

  “Did you? During the war?”

  “After. He came through Frederick.”

  “Was he as magnetic as they say?”

  “He was a force of gravity.”

  “Was he tall?”

  “He seemed very tall to me.”

  “And here you are, yourself a willow.”

  “Unless I’m still growing, God forbid, he was a good two or three inches taller than I am now.”

  The doctor brushed a dead fly from one of the imported teakwood tables beside his wife’s favorite wing chair. “And did he say anything memorable?”

  His demeanor as usual very gathered, Key answered, “My father and he spoke of myriad topics … crops, fishing, tariffs, slaves …”

  “Slavery?”

  “Slaves. Negro lifestyles at Terra Rubra and Mount Vernon. Management, obligations, that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t deal with it,” Beanes said. “I only have the two in the house. I think there are a few at the farms, but we pay them, so I suppose they’re not strictly slaves in the old sense. Then again … eh.” He shrugged and took a sip.

  Key parted his lips to speak, then did not speak. Fluidly he came back to the center of the room and he and the doctor took seats opposite each other across a foreign rug so expensive that only certain guests were even allowed to step upon it.

  Though seated, Key’s posture remained upright and proper. His tender eyes scanned the room’s flocked wallpaper. Seconds passed. His glass of wine remained untouched where the doctor had put it on the side table. “I hoped he might offer some insight … I was just beginning to think about slavery, as an issue, at that age. I thought he might explain why they didn’t end it when they had the chance.”

  “They had their arms full just bucking that king off our backs.”

  “Every new venture has embedded flaws, of course,” Key went on, contemplating as he spoke. “As long as slavery is tied to commerce, we shall have to deal with it.”

  “What’s to be dealt with?”

  “As long as slave-holding is the law of the land, I must defend it.”

  “But you defend Negroes before the bench.”

  “They have rights too,” Key said firmly.

  “Slavery is part of human life, Francis. Always has been, since Noah and the Egyptians.”

  “Moses, of course.”

  “Moses, Noah, Jonah …” Beanes paused to burp. “Some say that slavery is the hidden reason for this war.”

  Key looked at him. “How could it be?”

  “By giving us a reason to conquer Canada. That’s where escapees run. If we seize Canada, we can take back our Negroes harboring there.”

  The lawyer frowned. “That’s stretching the hat out of shape, isn’t it? l will not fight the unoffending Canadians. A true patriot should never invoke his country to imperialism. We should find another place for freed Negroes.”

  “Where else would they go but Ontario?”

  Key shrugged, for him almost a cannon shot of expression. “I suppose … Africa.”

  “They’re not Africans,” the doctor pointed out. “Haven’t been for generations. Send them to Ireland! At least they’ll speak the language.” He took another sip, noticing that Key had not participated in the joke. “Mayhap someday we’ll let go some of them, then later some more, and like that.”

  “Freeing some without freeing all only contributes to the advantage of owning them. Those who own them will profit while those without them will go out of business, leaving slaveholders to dominate their industry. The only mechanism to end slavery is to free them all at once, by Constitutional law.”

  “A high-minded stump speech for a Supreme Court justice! I shall whip every vote in the county your way.”

  “Justices are appointed.” The lawyer tucked his chin rather like a shy girl might do. “And I’m not that sure of myself,” he demurred. “Where’s the humanity in freeing them without helping them establish themselves? They’re incapable of taking care of themselves. It would be like sending children into wilderness.”

  “Helping them? Crippling them! I know no slave who wants to trade one set of chains for another.”

  “The Bible gives us no divine instruction, neither permitting nor prohibiting slavery. For thousands of years servitude has been the natural order. It will end on its own, I suppose, collapse of its own weight. Slavery is contrary to America as a theme.”

  Beanes grunted a wordless response.

  “I have emancipated some of my slaves,” the lawyer went on, almost speaking to himself. “I find myself haunted while lying in comfort in my own bed. How will they fare on their own? Once again enslaved in some Northern factory? In time they will be infirm, cast away to starve in a slum without advocacy. What does an old Negro do without a master to care for him? What good is freedom if it defines itself in squalor?”

  “You’re indulgent, my boy.”

  Key looked up. “Do you think so?”

  “I do.”

  “My mother has always read to them, taught them hymns, letters, numbers. I teach my slaves to read, right beside my children. Is that indulgence? Why would we be teaching them to read and calculate if not to one day direct their own destinies?” He paused to ruminate again, since he never spoke before thinking, and his gaze fixed on some knot in the floorboards. “Perhaps we could make a country for them. Somewhere they can go … a nation populated by—”

  “Heaven behold us, stop it! If you want to direct the nation, cease chattering in the parlors of stuffy physicians and get thee to Congress. You could be there in a matter of months!”

  Crystal goblets in the French corner cabinet vibrated and jingled, a small but piercing sound, like the laughter of children in the distance. Off in the kitchen, somebody dropped a pan that rang briefly on the tiled floor.

  Frank Key sat utterly still, his hands folded upon one knee. “I haven’t the mettle.”

  The aromas of johnnycake and roasted chicken from the Beanes farms drifted in from the kitchen, where lunch was warming on the German cast-iron stove, new just last month. The doctor’s practiced ears, though his eyes were weakening, still heard every footfall in every part of the house, and he knew the cook and the maid were setting the dining table and laying out lunch.

  “Does it have a name yet?’ he asked, almost surprising himself with the sudden change of subject.

  Key blinked. “Pardon?”

  “Wars have names. The Hundred Years’ War, the War of the Roses … You’re a poet. Come up with something.”

  “In Washington some are calling it the Second War of Independence. Or the Second Half of the War of Independence. Rather lumpish.”

  The two men fell quiet again for a few moments, each trying to see in his own mind what would come, but neither was good at predicting—nor could either imagine—what might be going on in the minds of military strategists who saw coastlines and rivers much differently than a gentleman lawyer and a crusty doctor might.

  Beanes didn’t have to think about his role. He was a physician and in his sixties. No one would expect him to be anything else. He would do what he could as humanitarian ethics and his bones allowed. He would treat the wounds that came before him and let the politicians and generals deal with the dirty complexities beyond blood and bone.

  For the lawyer, though, as Beanes gazed at the younger man, there were the troubles of a pacifist in a time of war, of a loyal patriot when his country went against his morals, a man of extraordinary Christian devotion, with five children and a wife for whom he was responsible, an adored son and husband—such a man could not simply think of himself. Here he was, considering how freed slaves would live out their destinies, yet he hardly knew how he would live out his own.

  Just as Beanes heard his wife and their cook clacking about with the lunch dishes, heading from the kitchen to the dining table, their immaculate guest sighed heavily and asked the kind of question that doesn’t want an answer too soon.

  “I wonder how I will fit
into this war.”

  The Royal Navy Blockade

  THE COAST OF GEORGIA

  AUGUST 30

  “SO THE UNITED STATES has declared war on Britain. Amusing. And insulting at the same.”

  Lieutenant Gordon paced the command deck of the Helen, which moved along at only two knots in a slacked breeze, probably moving only with the current. Very hot, sticky, but clouded over, so there was no scorching sun as was common here.

  The ship was quiet. Two watches were asleep below decks; those on watch were involved in all the little tasks that could be done when there was no appreciable wind. Mending sails, making mats, splicing, carpentry. The rectangular sails hung nearly limp, only now and then stirring in a weak puff.

  As usual he was alone except for Victor Tarkio, who sat on the deck, polishing Gordon’s shoes. Gordon padded the afterdeck in his stockings, reading a newspaper he had just acquired from a passing Royal Navy cartel full of piratical American prisoners.

  “The war is barely begun and already Fort Mitchee-lee-mackinack has fallen …”

  “Mackinaw,” Tarkio corrected. “Fort Michilimackinaw.”

  Gordon pointed at the article. “But it ends in a c … like Cadillac.”

  “Still.”

  “Is that French or Indian, or what?”

  “French.”

  “Well, it’s British now, isn’t it? Without a drop of bloodshed in defense of it! We captured several American ships on that island—two schooners, two cartels. The governor of Mitchigan heard about it and abandoned his invasion of Canada and retreated back to Detroit. The coward! He had superior supplies and more troops, but he blew like paper before a flame. So, your Great Lakes and Canada are proving better at defending themselves than you Americans predicted. Oh! Listen to this—the governor then surrendered Fort Detroit too! You’re having a grim summer, Tarkio, grim, grim, grim. It seems America is being chastised back to her rightful station.”

  Tarkio looked up at him and shrugged, as if trying to remain unmoved. After all, what could he say? The war was out of his hands.

  “A terrible massacre at Fort Dearborn,” Gordon read on. “The fort has fallen to the Pot—poe-ta-wa—”

  “Potawatomi.”

  “How do you know all these names?”

  “I read newspapers to my uncle when I’m in port. He was blinded in the Revolution.”

  “Their chief cut out the heart of an Indian agent and ate it raw.” Gordon continued reading, but then glanced at Tarkio and held back the description of the massacre. Torment was not his purpose here. These details were nothing short of cruel. “Savages …”

  “They’re your allies,” Tarkio commented.

  “Seems you’re losing this ill-conceived war even as it has barely begun.”

  This time Tarkio smiled and shook his head.

  Gordon glared. “Is something funny to you?”

  The other man nodded, bemused. “You gloat like a school boy.”

  Humiliated, Gordon’s air of confidence shattered. “And you carry the smell of insubordination.”

  “You’re not concerned with me.”

  “Really!” Gordon put the newspaper down on the chart table and tried to figure a way to annoy the unflappable American. “You keep thinking about your future, even though you know you don’t have one. I can see you doing it. Thinking like that. If you survive our encounters with enemies, you’ll spend years uncounted right where you are. But you still think of other things, don’t you?”

  “Think like a free man? Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am one.” Tarkio put one buffed shoe down and picked up its mate. “I know my future. I mean to have a dozen children at least. I might found an entire town. A city, maybe.”

  “Hah! Tarkio Town? Victorville? Sounds like a lot of mucking about for no reason. Why would you do all that?”

  “Same reason any Englishman wants to be a master of land and treasure. To surround myself with stability.”

  “A dozen children doesn’t sound stable to me. Why would a man want so many needy dependents clinging upon him?”

  “To have a family. Never had much. Just my uncle left now.”

  “So you will build an edifice of Tarkio.” Gordon paced to the taffrail and gazed out at the quietly rolling ocean. “Do all of you think this way? You Americans?”

  “Oh, I’d say most.”

  “Where would a humble-born wretch get such elevated ideas?”

  “We get that from being American. We’re born with it. Grow up with it. Freedom means something, y’know, it’s not just a word. Means being free from the power of others. Mr. Madison says freedom means being free from government. The whole idea is new to the world. Had fate dropped me anywhere else on the face of the earth, my fate wouldn’t be mine, but a king’s or a master’s or a lord’s.”

  “Or an earl’s?”

  Tarkio smiled at him and chuckled amiably. “Or an earl’s.”

  Self-conscious, Gordon let a brief silence fall between them. A weak breeze stirred over the taffrail, pulling the sweat from his face.

  For weeks now, many weeks, only Tarkio had been allowed in the captain’s cabin, to tend his clothing or bring his food. The rest of the crew noticed, but they didn’t seem to care. Gordon thought at first there would be jealousy, but when it hadn’t materialized he assumed it was because they disliked him as much as he disliked them, and they thought Tarkio’s position was some kind of punishment. Still, he couldn’t read them.

  The only person he talked to, other than to give orders, was Tarkio. Gordon was curious about the American character, why they would wish to live as they did, with no single purpose, no guidance or rules. How could they trust each other when no one knew his place?

  “Why would someone want to go live in a wilderness like Fort Dearborn?” he asked. “Some mad field with ravenous Indians and people clomping around in animal hides? What’s the attraction of uncivilized places?”

  “Men like me can build their own places,” Tarkio explained. “So we go out to the wilds and stake a claim. Born with nothing, you build something.”

  “Seems that poor men would not be so attracted to places where they have even less.”

  Tarkio stood up to stretch his legs, and looked out over the empty expanse of ocean. “Look where you are.”

  “What? Where am I?”

  “Is there any place more desolate?”

  The two stood together, looking at the steel-gray ocean, rolling before them in every direction, as if they and the crew of this frigate were the only human beings on the planet.

  “Yet,” Tarkio added, “here you are.”

  Gordon fought the desire to agree. Here he was, locked on a relatively small ship, with relatively little reputation, eating dried elephant meat, drinking water growing daily more fetid, in the company of men he didn’t trust.

  “I have a duty to perform,” he attempted. “Service in the Royal Navy is a time-tried honor for the greatest men of England throughout our history. There is nothing desolate about it.”

  “Except your daily life.”

  “Are you trying to tempt me to defect? Sir, that is an insult.”

  “Did you choose to be in the Royal Navy?” Tarkio asked. “Or was it a family tradition?”

  The young lieutenant shifted his feet and felt a sudden desire to be candid. “My mother decided. I am privileged.” He looked at Tarkio, suddenly with more confidence. “But don’t take that as if I’ve been forced. I am here willingly. I’m as much a patriot as you. I am devoted to my country and I have a duty. I am compelled.”

  “What you really are is desperate,” Tarkio told him bluntly. “Britain is so short on sailors that you have to steal them.”

  Not waiting for an answer, he sat again on the deck and continued his work on Gordon’s shoe, which had thrown its heel. Tarkio fitted the shoe awkwardly over a belaying pin and began tacking the heel back on.

  Gordon watched him. The other man seemed to be cont
ent in his menial labor, a contentment that was entirely mysterious and somehow attractive.

  “You Americans are ingrates,” he complained. “The only reason you won independence is that we were not willing to be brutal and burn you out during your revolution, which we could easily have done. You didn’t win independence. We let you go. America has never appreciated that, ungrateful children of the Crown as you are. This time we should burn you out.”

  He watched Tarkio for a reaction. He got one—absolutely nothing. No smile, no shrug, none of the American’s typical versions of a silent response. This time there was only the silence.

  Uneasy, Gordon paced along the taffrail and felt the warm wood beneath his hand. “We English must remain stalwart against Bonaparte. No other motivations matter. Who we are, what we want … the nobility, the gentry … it’s nothing now. He has conquered every power in Europe from the Balkans to the Arctic to the Atlantic. Once Valencia fell, Bonaparte became superior in Europe—”

  “Except for England.”

  “Except for England. Europe under a single power and now America has turned hostile again. Once again, Britain stands alone. All British citizens must rally against this Corsican menace.”

  “He’s busy in Russia.”

  “He won’t stay there,” Gordon said bluntly. “Russia’s too big. No one lives there. All the people are west of the Urals. You will have the same troubles in your country. America is too big, too. It’s doomed to become another Europe, fractured into regions that barely speak each other’s language. You’ll collapse of your own weight. Pioneers rush west, never to return. Eventually they’ll become so different that neither will recognize the other. You’ll be at each other’s necks. If you know what’s good for you, for your America, you will help us defeat Bonaparte.”

  “I do help you,” Tarkio said. “I take your orders and work your ship.”

  “No, really help me.” Gordon squatted to get eye to eye with the other man and grasped Tarkio’s wrist to keep him from starting work again.

  Tarkio stopped working, surprised.