Banners

by Diane Carey

  Pretty, she thought. The fort must be lovely from the air, if she could be a bird and cavort above. Architecture attracted her. Structure and form. Artifice and effort. To make a plan, then take a brick—or a thread—and turn out a vision … only mankind could build like that.

  All at once, as if she had been slapped, the loveliness of the day drained away. The curtain walls of the fort exploded into pebbles. Men were blown into the sky, limbs severed from their bodies, their freedoms in tatters. She was surrounded by British warships all headed toward the inner harbor, each firing broadsides into the fort on one rail and toward Fell’s Point on the other. Homes and businesses were demolished in a gasp, years and generations of effort, struggle, and hope, flattened. Screams of horrified people and confused animals crawled over the trees to her ears. The sun crept behind ugly clouds from horizon to horizon.

  And the soft gray water lapped upon the birchbark hull of her twenty-foot canoe. With its little gulping sound, it called her back.

  Again the sun shined, but with less meaning. The trees were calm and the fort walls had reconstructed themselves. But the false peace of the morning had been thoroughly ruined.

  She would know no peace, she realized. At the age of thirty-eight, Mary had never known herself to be anything but an American. She knew many people who had been British once, and had married one of them and born his children, lost him and rebuilt her life here in this nation where prosperity had a chance and ingenuity was rewarded, in the only system in history that had ever actually raised the poor out of poverty.

  Not now, she understood. Now there was a dangerous chance of being forced to once again become British, subject to the whims of a king and an unknowable authority far away. This moment of floating gently upon the water outside of Baltimore, city of great promise, hinge-point for exploration and commerce, had already been wrecked. The British blockade choked the American coast, driving down trade, driving up insurance rates and costs of doing business, causing shipbuilding to suffer and agriculture to stumble, and cutting America off from Europe and all roads to the world. Her friends, the many sea captains of the merchant fleet, were either land-locked or out risking their lives as privateers, like Victor Tarkio running the very real risk of being captured and fated to a life of squalid naval service or in some British prison. She still had her little soirees for neighbors and friends, clients and city officials, but there was always a pall over the party these days. The happy chatter had given way to a dimmer muttering of tactics, skirmishes, rumors, and anger, always anger.

  This peace, this moment, was a lie, a woman’s fantasy. Up there at the fort, those men weren’t engaged in the secure lifestyle of peacetime soldiers, but were touchy and preparatory and knew their moment would come to face fire. Baltimore had so far gone unadulterated, though there was always talk of threats and strategies of attacks from land or sea. The constant tension was worse than a real battle.

  And the British knew that, clearly. For them, this was an effective tactic of war. They had cannily made feints toward this attack or that attack, then made no attack, or had twisted at the last minute and gone somewhere else. They were magicians, causing panic and preparation, teasing militiamen into sleepless nights and drawn-out days, only to have nothing happen and the preparers slump into their beds, clutching rifles and worn-down faith in their chains of information. Or the attack would happen somewhere else, which in many ways was even more frightening, because it was really happening somewhere. America was a sleepless nation, exhausted and afraid.

  There were enough battles that the air was full of their bloody details, of ransacked settlements in the west, of conflict on the Great Lakes, and in dozens of places she had hardly heard of and others that she knew. Just enough to keep her and everyone worried, anticipating. The war was no rumor, but it was moving on rumors like a snake.

  “Mrs. Pickersgill!”

  Mary flinched out of her ruminations. She pushed the fear down deep inside, as she had learned to do, and dealt with the matters at hand. The delivery of this bundle to Major Armistead marked a moment both dark and thrilling, the beginning and end of something important—her part in the war. Had she been a man, she would have enlisted already.

  “Come this way, please,” one of the men requested, and motioned her to a grassy bump on the shore.

  With two good strokes, she was there. One of the men caught the point of her canoe and two others drew her alongside the land. The fourth man reached for her hands and pulled her up and out of the canoe, always a bit of a clumsy affair given the obstacle of her petticoat and skirt. But she was used to it and easily popped onto the land.

  “Welcome, Mrs. Pickersgill,” the officer began. He was an attractive man with brown-sugar curls and an infectious smile. “I’m Captain Joseph Nicholson, second in command.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of you, Judge Nicholson. I’m pleased finally to meet.”

  “Actually, I’ve been to one of your parties.”

  “You have? Oh, yes, you have! I remember now.” She flushed. “I’m embarrassed!”

  “Not at all. It was a crowded party, spilled all the way out into the street. You were flitting around like a happy butterfly. I’m not surprised you didn’t commit every face to memory.”

  “Yes, but a sitting judge … I should have paid better attention. I read about you now and then in the newspapers. I’ve seen your advertisement for volunteers. You’re still on the bench, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. I split my devotions between the courtroom and this garrison. We’re determined that Baltimore will be defended when the British come, and they will.”

  “I wonder when,” she mused.

  A moment later she was treading eagerly up the path toward the entrance to the fort, flanked by soldiers on either side, with Nicholson carrying the smaller of her two bundles, two others carrying the eighty-pound burlap bundle.

  She was glad the day was sunny. She needed sun.

  Major Armistead and more officers were waiting inside the fort’s parade grounds, the bright center of the circular formation of barracks and fortifications. They were uniformed and proper, yet had the expressions of little boys at a picnic, waiting for the watermelon.

  “I was surprised to receive your note yesterday, ma’am,” he said immediately. “Six weeks and you’re delivering the flags! Allow me to voice my amazement that you’ve finished all that work with such dispatch!”

  “The project was inspiring,” she said simply. “This is my fort too, Major.”

  “Of course.” He seemed to truly value her sentiment. “Let’s have a look. Nicholson, your knife.”

  Armistead stood over the eighty-pound parcel as the judge sliced the strings and laid open the burlap. Then Nicholson stepped back and Armistead stepped forward.

  There on the grass of the fort’s center grounds lay the thousand and more yards of English bunting, folded into a square, with the blue field and two of the stars showing on top, two feet across each.

  “My, my, my goodness …” Armistead took a step, then another, and actually circled the folded flag. Next to those stars, his boots looked like little doll boots. “It is big, isn’t it?”

  Mary smiled.

  “You see just there,” he said, pointing off to one side of the parade grounds, “there is the flagstaff for it.”

  The ninety-foot pole, painted white, stood ready, with a small United States flag flipping at its top. Well, the flag probably wasn’t all that little, but just seemed that way, flying so far up.

  “That pole is stabilized with two seven-foot cross-braces sunken into the earth,” Joseph Nicholson explained. “I supervised the hewing of the timbers myself. Very strong. Oak.”

  “Most gratifying, Judge,” Mary said. “Wouldn’t be sporting if it fell down, would it?”

  “No, no. Ma’am, it is my determination that this war has changed complexion. We no longer fight for free trade or to absorb Canada, but for the very existence of the United States. We’ll show the
enemy that we embrace that change.”

  His commandant nodded in complete agreement.

  “Let’s get some men out here, captain.” Armistead nodded to Nicholson, who turned and made a motion to someone else, and in moments a phalanx of United States Army soldiers trotted into the center of the grounds, out of formation.

  “Let’s unfold it,” the major ordered.

  Mary stepped back and let the soldiers do their work. The first motion was to gather around the parcel and lift it off the ground, freeing it from the burlap wrapping.

  “Be careful now, men,” Armistead told them. “Don’t let it touch the ground. More hands, please, Captain.”

  Again the judge motioned and this time shouted for more help. Another squad of soldiers came boiling out of one of the barrack buildings, then still more as word spread that the new garrison flag had arrived, to be their signature before the forces of the enemy.

  Fold by fold, man by man, the flag was opened. Yard by yard it expanded across the parade ground, the blue field coming first. Until now, Mary had seen it only in the dim expanse of the malt house loft. In the sun, today, the flag seemed almost alive.

  Now the stripes. She remembered every stitch. Her intimacy with the construction of the flag filled her mind now and made her fingers hurt as they had night after night, stitching in a pattern that seemed never to end. Six weeks? Was that all that had passed, truly?

  She felt as if her body had been beaten with a cane. Weeks, hunched over in that loft, doing a significant portion of the work herself, much by lamplight, to be sure it was done exactly right. She trusted the girls, but she trusted herself more, and there hadn’t been time to make a classroom of the important project. They had done what they could do well, and she had done the rest. Then she had, every night, checked their work, every stitch, every meeting of each strip of fabric through the process of piecing them into these long stripes, until she could see no colors but red and white anymore.

  Longer and longer the fifteen stripes were unfolded. More soldiers came to support the edges of the flag, until it covered almost half of the entire parade grounds. Like an ocean it sprawled out before her, waving in the middle as if it knew what it wanted to do up there in the sky. Several times Major Armistead warned the men not to let the flag touch the ground. Finally he ordered four men to climb under it and support the middle of the huge field of colors.

  Mary almost spoke up, to warn them to be careful with the edges, for if the flag were to unravel itself, that would happen where it was handled the most, and that would be the edges, but she didn’t speak. They would have to learn, for theirs would be the hands that would open it and raise it from now on. But it was like a child, wasn’t it? Her child, and she couldn’t help but want to bat away unkind hands and protect it around the edges.

  At Mary’s side, in a rare expression of pure delight, George Armistead clapped his hands and laughed. “Magnificent!”

  He surveyed the superb expression before him, surrounded, as it always would be—if he had anything to say about things—with the soldiers of the United States of America.

  The men were not at attention, and let their expressions say what they were thinking. No one but Armistead spoke, but some moments didn’t require words. The enormous flag waved and pulled at the men’s grips so that they were obliged to constantly adjust their hands to keep hold of it.

  Had the sentiment of the United States ever been demonstrated in any banner so large before? If it had, she would have known.

  “What a miracle,” Armistead gasped. “A few hundred dollars, a hocus-pocus of colors, and here it is! So much more than the sum of its parts.”

  Judge Nicholson leaned over the flag and examined the hem closely. “How many stitches did it take, I wonder?”

  “Over three-hundred-fifty thousand.”

  The judge stood straight and gaped at her. “I didn’t expect you to actually know!”

  Mary stretched her shoulders as if every stitch still rested upon them. “We didn’t count them, but we did the mathematics.”

  Armistead laughed and shook his head in appreciation. “Do you have an invoice for me?”

  “I’ll have one sent over.”

  “Very well. Of course, it will have to make its way through the bureaucracy, but I’ll do my best to hurry it along.”

  “Fine,” Mary said. “I’ve never encountered a problem with the Deputy Commissary.”

  “I’ll give you a note confirming that you made the delivery of both flags today.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Shall we hoist it, sir?” Nicholson asked.

  Armistead blinked. “No! No, not yet. This is not its moment. This banner is for the British to see. It has a mission. We’ll wait.”

  Mary sensed disappointment from the men, and felt some herself. Yet, the major was wise and knew his mission too. He had a picture of it in his mind, of that moment yet to come, when the statement of this giant would be made to the enemy and to the world.

  The major took a steadying breath and made his decision.

  “All right, men,” he spoke out. “Now for the tricky part … let’s see if we can fold it up again.”

  Word had leaked out across the New York docks that the big privateer schooner with her famous captain was warping out today. Boyle had kept the date of his leaving the harbor as quiet as possible, but when recruiting a hundred fifty sailing men and boys, Marines and prize captains, the news took on a life of excitement. A crowd had gathered at the shoreline, families of the men aboard, dockworkers and every stripe of attendant to the needs of ships and commerce. Here in New England the sentiments in favor of the war were sparse, but Tom Boyle saw nothing but encouragement along the shore today. Even those Americans who remained against the war were today proud of the record of their privateers.

  All the spectators regarded the spirit-stirring beauty of Chasseur as she was moved out of her dock space by heavy cables drawn by a four-mule team on the shore. The sail ties were off, sails ready to be hoisted, depending upon which Boyle decided would best get the ship out of the harbor. The mules would take her to the first bend, where another team waited to take over if necessary, unless the winds were favorable. Boyle had held up three extra days, waiting for the wind to change direction in his favor. It was nearly six o’clock.

  The crowd cheered and waved American flags as the schooner was drawn slowly forward. Boyle stood on the aft deck next to Paul Moran and two of the new boys, who worked the tackle system on the enormous tiller and kept the ship from pointed inward at the land where the mules worked.

  Inwardly, Boyle’s stomach was quaking. Never before had his confidence in himself as a sailor been so challenged, his concerns wrapped up in doubts and uncertainties. Doubts in this ship—was she too big to be handy? Sluggish? How did the shape of her hull work with the sail plan? How would she handle with so many men aboard, and how as they were gradually put off in prizes, lightening the vessel’s burden by the weight of several men? He wished he had had the chance to speak to Wade.

  Now the ship would have to teach him. He was setting sail with a giant mystery beneath him. The sensation was unnerving.

  He glanced around at the two dozen or so other vessels escorting them. Canoes, sloops, rowboats, all manner of small craft had surrounded the schooner whose legend hadn’t even begun. There was only the sense of it so far, what they thought of as the legend of Boyle himself, a legend that had not yet completely fulfilled itself. What did they really expect of him?

  Being legendary carried a burden, a weight upon his chest every moment, the unresting concern that he might never be able to satisfy them completely, that the war would overtake him and shrink the effect of the privateers to insignificance. His fame was an anchor he might never be able to raise.

  He looked up at the weather gauges and noted the wind—almost following, but coming more over the port quarter. The wind over the trees, no longer blocked so much by the buildings, was aligned to the axis of the har
bor’s shape. If he wanted the bow to go downwind, then the stays’l and jibs would be the working sails.

  “Haul away on the stay and lower jib. Signal the second warping station that we will bypass their assistance.”

  Thomas Coward went amidships and called out those orders. The signal flags were run up to communicate with the mule drivers as the stays’l and inner jib crawled up the stays on their iron rings, evolving from taffy-folds of furled canvas into flapping triangles, finally to be hauled up snug to where their pointed tops met the foremast. The sails fluttered along their inboard edges, signaling to Boyle what they needed.

  “Give me five points to larboard, Paul,” Boyle requested. “Let’s see if there’s enough wind to take her.”

  “Five points to larboard, aye.”

  The men on the tackles hauled the tiller over, then had to correct for going too far. On the decktops and lining the rails, keeping out of the way of the assigned sail handlers, the entire ship’s company of one hundred fifty men watched.

  Boyle held his breath. This would be the ship’s first movement for him under her own power.

  The bright canvas heads’ls shivered like the triangular wings of a gull sitting on the water, then made great flaps as if trying to break the sheets that held them to the pins.

  “Release the warping team.”

  The warping cables were unmade and tossed into the water, from which the mule driver would reel them in.

  “Paul, let’s have another two points.”

  The tiller tackle blocks creaked. Far forward as Boyle and everyone watched, the bow turned with surprising agility. The huge triangular heads’ls made an abrupt crack in unison and snapped full with air, harnessing the wind as it increased over more open water.

  Chasseur shot forward suddenly, her black shoulder dipping into the water as her keel took a good bite sixteen feet below. A half dozen men were pitched sideways right off the decktops. Others laughed as they grabbed for handholds to keep from stumbling. Boyle had to replant his feet as the speed abruptly increased. The ship charged forward, leaving her escort fleet behind to cheer their goodbyes in her wake, for she was clearly and very decidedly leaving them.