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by Diane Carey

  The night was ebony, glossed by rain. Heavy clouds, invisible under normal conditions, tonight glowed an angry vivid red, the same red as the coats of the enemy who held the torches. Before him the president’s mansion was no longer a silent symbol. Tonight, it roared.

  Flames licked from every window. The ceilings had collapsed and enormous hellfire snarled where there had once been a roof. The building looked like a giant toy set afire by a mischievous giant child.

  As the heat from the flames cooked sweat and rain off his face, Key wondered dizzily about the federal governments papers. Had they been saved? Had the president and his wife escaped? The nightmare of not knowing roiled in his empty stomach.

  To one side burned the Capitol building, a monument designed by Key’s friend and frequent guest, William Thornton. Watching the elegant building roiling with orange flame—a pain rose in his chest for the loss of something personal.

  Over there the Treasury, the Senate Chambers, the House of Representatives, and a further roster of national insults around the curves and behind trees, all burned. In some places he saw the buildings themselves, in others he could see only surreal columns of flame. Against the black horizon over there, the Navy yard glowed. Were they burning private homes, or keeping the destruction to government buildings? Was his home a target? Washington was not a good military target and no one had expected it to become one, but this was not a military attack. It was an attack of punishment and revenge, pure resentment for American audacity, which the British were doing just because they could. War had been declared by the unready, a gesture of defiance and a tactic of conquest, and this was the pathetic, humiliating result—the landmarks of the United States drenched in oil and set alight, to be baptized in ash. This was the supper of the unprepared.

  A voice caused him a painful flinch.

  “There they are.”

  It was a boy, a teenaged boy, standing close by, whom he thought he recognized as the son of someone he knew. That was a good bet, since he knew almost everybody.

  Key looked in the direction the boy was pointing.

  Officers. British officers. Some in Army uniforms, some Royal Navy. They stood well away from the Americans, flanked by a laughing, mocking phalanx of regulars and flotilla men drinking from crystal glasses and merrily refilling them from bottles of Jemmy Madison’s wine and throwing papers from the humiliated administration into the smolder.

  “Who are they?” he asked.

  “Ross and Cockburn, with their marauders,” the boy said, pushing the impolite part of the admiral’s name. “Ross had his horse shot dead right from under him. Just made him mad. Cockburn’s going around saying we can blame Jemmy for this. Madison. The president.”

  “I know,” Key uttered miserably.

  There they were, just over there—the architects of the British assault campaign, one by land, one by water, personally supervising the spectacle of England’s grudge. These were the men who had only this morning charged a larger force of Americans and scattered them like insects, including Key himself.

  What a moment this must be for the two of them, he thought. Revenge for Americans’ burning of Canadian towns and installations on the Erie frontier.

  His body, exhausted, felt as if it were made of strings, still as death, as he witnessed the insult of the British conflagration here in the capitol named for that greatest of men, a man he would never and could never forget. The reserved gentleman of Virginia, that exemplar of noble behavior to a misty-eyed boy who believed in heroes, tonight stood just behind Francis Key’s right shoulder, watching the American catastrophe from the veils of eternity.

  Aroma of Destruction

  ALBEMARLE STREET

  BALTIMORE

  THOUSANDS OF CITIZENS CLIMBED onto their rooftops or opened their third-story windows, or ran to Federal Hill, there to be joined by neighbors who did not have such vantages. Mary Pickersgill herself had a prime vantage, knowing as well as she did the structure of Brown’s Malt House. She stood on the roof of the now-familiar building, in a pall of helplessness with Caroline, her nieces, and Grace Wisher. Other neighbors stood here too, as well as the owners of the brewery. No one spoke.

  Usually the forty miles between Baltimore and the Capitol was the same forty as any other. It took a certain amount of time by land and another amount of time by water to get there.

  Forty miles—a distance shrunken tonight by a fire so historic that the two cities were joined by it. Showing in all directions, the display of enemy rage illuminated the black horizon in a manner so arcane and otherworldly that mere human hands could not have created it, but they had.

  Mary thought of Major Armistead. At Fort McHenry, from the tops of the walls, he could surely see the burning of Washington far to the southwest. That glow was a message to him, to her, to everyone here. Baltimore would be next. The major would think of the burlap bag with eighty pounds of English bunting folded inside, tied closed with string and tucked in a corner of his office for more than a year. Warned by the orange paint on the southwest night sky, he would go to his office and cut that string. She could almost see him doing it.

  She drew a breath and was startled by the scent on the air that had just arrived. It was the aroma of destruction. The smell of smoke on the wind.

  More effective at communication over a distance than any flag, pennant or banner, the firebox of Washington carried a message from the Crown to the Americans, drawing their eyes in the same hypnotism with which fire had mesmerized humans since the first cook fires glowed in the first caves. The wordless message read that this rebellious fledgling nation was finished, the experiment turning to cinders, finished before it had really even begun to find its place on the stage of the world.

  Rivers of Soap and Whiskers

  THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

  “SQUALL! SQUALL, BOYS! SOUND the bell! Get your gear!”

  Chasseur was as wild as her name. She was insane. She was a menace. She was possessed. And Tom Boyle was in love with the black witch.

  Now wearing two stripes of bright yellow along the length of her hull, to commemorate the Comet, the muscular schooner crashed along under all lowers and the foretop at a dizzying fourteen knots with her starboard rail buried as if she liked it, doing that dolphin movement schooner-men both loved and feared. There was no comparison, no other ride on earth that could replicate that stomach-pulling sensation of going up twenty-five feet, hovering for the briefest of moments, then dropping suddenly into a bowl of white foam, only to be propelled up again, always hanging on for dear life to the half-tipped-over devil beast as she laughed her demented way along.

  The wall of rain approached as straight and sharp as a razor scraping the ocean’s surface.

  “Hurry or you’ll miss it! Get your gear quickly! Tommy, blow the tops’l sheets!”

  With one hundred men left aboard and a hold choked with prisoners after—what was it now?—thirty-three days into the cruise, Boyle held on to the larboard shrouds and smiled, watching the crew boil from the hatches with their gear as the sudden squall dropped upon them out of the gray sky. This one had come fast, before they could see or even smell it, closing rapidly from the port bow.

  “Turn into it,” he cast over his shoulder to the four men manning the huge tiller. Only in the slimmest of definitions were they able to control the schooner. She had her own mind and was doing what she was built to do. No sailing ship was moving with true efficiency until she was heeled over.

  The squall combed the water’s jumping surface in a boiling line, while before it the water danced in as clear a demarcation as he had ever seen.

  “God’s combing the water, boys! Hit the deck!” he called. Then leaned over the main hatch and requested, “John, pass me my kit, will you?”

  Dieter was already up before Boyle’s voice was completely snatched away by the wind, carrying two canvas ditty bags.

  The squall rattled over the port side as if someone were shattering dishes. In less than fifteen seconds, it
hit them. The temperature suddenly dropped by ten degrees. Above, the foretops’l flopped like laundry, its sheets cast off and belayed in lazy fashion, just enough to keep the ends of the lines from going wild and fouling in the other rigging. Chasseur made a groan of strain and went violently over on her starboard side, as steep a heel as she could take without rolling over and dumping them all off. Every man aboard hung on desperately, some to the rigging, some to each other. There was not a man aboard whose mind could banish thoughts of sudden turnover in just this manner, a violent arm of wind pushing her over and farther over till she failed to recover. She would right herself, of course, but she’d be under water.

  Boyle glanced at the open main hatch, then shook off the dismal pondering and, knowing the men would take their cue from him, casually opened his ditty bag.

  He spoke to the helm team. “Francisco, break this heel, would you?”

  Lead helmsman Francisco Pedre and three helpers eased the tackles and gradually relieved the tiller until the ship righted herself at least enough to let them actually walk on the deck, although it was that crab-like side-to-side amble on a slanted deck. Boyle moved over the tiller tackles and out of their way, to the larboard rail and to the main shrouds where he could get a better grip.

  Like romping children, soaked by sheets of rain, the crew stripped off their clothing down to the waist, pulled out cubes of soap and shaving tools and went about joyously dancing and soaping up in the torrent of fresh water from the sky. They hadn’t had a good squall in four weeks. Shaving by salt water was a sticky, skin-drying business, and there was no way to wash their bodies at all, unless they took a swim. Boyle pulled out his shaving gear, hooked his little mirror from its frame on a ratline, still holding on with one hand so he didn’t go tumbling onto the deckhouse and probably right off the ship, and soaped up his hair and face. Beside him, Dieter untied his long hair and worked up a healthy sudsing from the molded bar of soap, and they both laughed at their clumsy attempts to get a stable-enough foothold that they dared take straight razors to their faces.

  Five of the ship’s boys bubbled out of the hatches with empty buckets and put them on the high side of the tilted deck next to the deckhouses, to collect as much fresh water as nature would provide. All around the weather deck the men held mirrors for each other and some dared let shipmates shave them, then pulled out the toothbrushes provided by that oily-tongued rascal known only as Yambrick, and went about scrubbing their teeth as if they’d just rediscovered that they had any. Then the boys joined the men and things became a circus.

  “This is good,” Boyle commented. He had one arm looped tightly into the shrouds and a leg up against a deadeye. The ship rolled severely under him. If he’s had the desire, he was sure he could wait until the right moment and dive from here on the larboard side straight into the water over the starboard rail and touch absolutely nothing. “We’ll be sparkly and sweet-smelling for our audience with the king.”

  He pulled off his soaked shirt and scrubbed his upper body with his own somewhat shrunken bar of soap.

  “You were right, so far anyway,” Dieter chatted.

  “’Bout what?”

  “The Royals have put so many ships to the blockade and the Indies that they haven’t guarded their merchants this far over the Atlantic. We’ve had easier pickin’s with the ships that think they’re safe going from Canada to Spain or the Canaries to Scotland, while the king’s favorites are back on our coast, looking for us.”

  “Cargos have been meager, though.”

  “You didn’t paint any pretty pictures about that. We didn’t come for prizes. We all knew that.”

  “No grumblings below?”

  “None I’ve heard,” Dieter said, “but then, they’re all terrified of me.”

  “Yes, you’re very scary.”

  The ship’s company reveled in their toilette, lathering their bodies and fingering their heads into crowns of suds, going after their armpits and even dropping their trousers and continuing the process. They laughed and assaulted each other with handfuls of lather like snowballs, and scrubbing each other’s backs in that shipmate way that always works. The squall’s great freshwater faucet was a sailor’s joy for sure.

  Merry as a Christmas mouse, Boyle shaved his muttonchops down to nothing, glad to be free of the insulation that had felt so good in the winter. As quickly as that, he caught a glimpse of the horizon line as the sky lightened and the rain thinned.

  “Hurry, boys! She’s waning!”

  The crew threw up their arms to rinse themselves while they had the chance. Rivers of soap and whiskers and hair ran to the starboard scuppers and wept into the ocean. The hard rain decreased to a drizzle. Refreshed, the crew inhaled the crisp air and let out great sighs of happiness, except Dieter, who now ran about the ship sticking his head into the last drips from the booms.

  “I’m not rinsed!” he cried.

  The crew was, of course, sympathetic. Boyle laughed with them and said, “At least we’ll have a good deck brush! Up-end him and we’ll clean the scuppers!”

  “I don’t want to be a deck brush!” Dieter wailed and ran to catch drips from the stays’l leech.

  “Sad, soapy John. Have a good thought that we’ll get another weather cell this week! I’m taking wagers on the quarterdeck! Date and time!”

  He caught Steven Sigsby by an arm as they boy tried to step past.

  “Take some of those buckets below and let the prisoners wash and shave.”

  “Aye, Tom,” the skinny black-haired boy responded.

  Boyle watched him collect other boys with a commanding manner but not being a tyrant, and start a bucket brigade. There wasn’t much fresh water, but enough. Steven was a good young man, and had matured into a very good topman. A couple of years and he’d be a captain. The most telling characteristic was that the boy was happy with his position, whatever that may be at any given time, as the crew complement shifted and men came and went with prize ships. Steven had both gained and lost authority as things changed, and always accepted each new position amicably. If he was a topman, he did that without complaint. If he was in charge of the younger boys, he did that with a stern but not unkind hand, and did not look back at whomever might have taken the job he just had. Once he was an emergency cook. The food was questionable, but Steven kept a good spirit, so everyone pretended to like the fare, and of course like any ship’s meal they ate it anyway. For Tom Boyle, tall and lanky Steven was in the “solves problems” list. The other list was “causes problems,” something with which every captain dealt on any ship. Often many of the “causes problems” people were involved with dock work and provisioning, and he always enjoyed that moment of leaving them behind, but there was always the odd personality who had to be handled by Dieter or one of watch officers, who were the layer of protection between Boyle and the common daily troubles.

  They had been prowling the mouth of the English Channel, getting familiar with the winds and currents. Two days ago they had run down a convoy of ten merchant vessels, then discovered a brig and a frigate guarding them. Knowing when the bite was too big to chew, Chasseur had turned close to the wind and handily escaped, leaving the square-riggers floundering while trying to chase the chaser upwind.

  He had also primed his reputation by putting English prisoners off on a small sloop of little prize value and sending them back to England, relieving the Chasseur of added men to guard and feed, a logistical problem of privateering. Yesterday Boyle had seized a topsail schooner and a brig, just a few miles apart, but they too were too small to be prized. They got a shipment of wine for their trouble, then put a torch to the schooner, and later the brig experienced the same fate. Privateering off the enemy coast required a rethinking of tactics, now to include leaving burning hulks sending smoke signals high into English skies.

  “Sail ho!” called Henry Bettys, now on lookout.

  At Bettys’s alert, Boyle and Dieter—well, pretty much everybody—scanned the slowly lightening horizon un
til they spotted sails in the lingering mist, moving on an easterly course.

  “Glass,” Boyle requested. One of the helmsmen reached into the main hatch to the protected little shelf where navigation equipment was kept out of the weather, and provided the officers’ spyglass.

  Training the scope on the new sighting, Boyle said, “Brig … another small one. Riding high. Let’s run’r down, John.”

  “If she’s riding high, somebody else probably already stopped her.”

  “Let’s irritate them anyway. Give them a story to tell.”

  “Clear the decks!” Dieter called. “Sheet home the foretop! Hoist the main tops’l! Ready about!”

  For a ship of her size, Chasseur was swift to answer, then stabilized without much bobbling back and forth at the bow. The intelligent fit of her rigging to her hull design was paying off, and the good helmsmanship, anticipating the swing of the bow and correcting early. The combination made movement efficient as water flowed smoothly under the hull.

  The square foretops’l turned stiff in the wind again, while the crew hoisted the triangular gaff-topsail over the main. Chasseur rolled firmly on her side and gained speed. At this inopportune moment, four crewmen crawled carefully along the high side to the aft deck. It was Elijah Badger and his helm team.

  “Change of watch,” Badger reported.

  Boyle did not even glance at them. “No change right now.”

  “No change, aye.” And they about-faced.

  Boyle leaned his legs on the decktop to keep balanced and watched Pedre and his helm assistants for a moment. He wished sometimes to take the helm, to let his mind go numb to anything but the compass points, and orders given by somebody else. To feel the ship rise and fall beneath, sense the coming of a new swell--helm was the most satisfying duty in the world.