Banners

by Diane Carey

  The British fleet closed to within one and a half miles, and what a sight that had been. The process of moving several large vessels with any precision was on its own a spectacle, but one mankind had practiced for thousands of years and perfected. No one, of course, had practiced it to the extent of the Royal Navy. Select sails were set to use the little bit of wind, anchors were rowed out in boats, dropped, and then men lay onto the capstan bars and turned and sweated, chanting to coordinate their efforts, inexorably drawing the heavy vessels closer to the anchors. Then the anchors were raised—a grudging process in itself—and rowed out again. Kedging, they called it, a laborious project, which the British sailors seized with demonic energy.

  All this way they towed the single-masted truce vessel with them until they thought the distance was right to demolish the fort. Anchors were dropped into the Patapsco mud, and immediately the bombardment began again. Deafening heavy weapons fired again and again, lobbing those powder-packed shells and shrieking skyrockets in such quick succession that a half dozen were in the air at the same time. The efficiency of the British volleys was humbling. After years of engagement with Napoleon, they knew what they were doing. Firing bombs was as ingrained in their reflexes as lobbing snowballs. The boom of one shot blended into the whine of the next, until there was no pause between them. Some shells exploded in the air, their fuses cut too short, while others reached the fort and disappeared, sometimes with terrible explosions on the horizon.

  From this nearby, the masts of the USS Java, a new frigate lying nearly finished at Fell’s Point, could be seen over the trees. Almost finished—not yet seaworthy—the new frigate was Oliver Hazard Perry’s, the hero of Lake Erie, and he was there somewhere, with the ship. If only there had been time to complete it—such power, sitting there, useless. The British smacked their lips at the chance to capture her.

  Frank Key watched every shot. His head whistled from the noise. His body was wracked by the vibrations that thrummed through the deck under his feet, and was never calm even for a moment. That city, that fort, had come to represent the whole nation, if only in symbol, and the British very well understood the powerful weapon of symbolism. If they could burn Baltimore, they would have accomplished a martial trifecta on the Chesapeake—Bladensburg, Washington, Baltimore. American morale would be smothered.

  His whole body quaked. Those people were his friends, his associates, his family. Joseph, at the fort, right there, captain of the Fencibles. All at once he feared that he might never see his brother-in-law again, a true brother to whom he had grown close. To lose a vibrant, cherished relative like Joseph . . .his body shook so hard that he had to fold his arms around his chest to hold his heart in.

  “Look!” he cried when Fort McHenry suddenly quickened and funnels of flame showed themselves along the shore. “They’re shooting back!”

  Holding a spyglass he had acquired from the captain of the truce sloop, Skinner came out of the tarped area where he had been huddling in desolation with Beanes. They had been drummed under what little cover they could find without actually going below, where somehow the reverberations and sounds were even worse. Together he and Key watched as cannon fire erupted along the parapets of Fort McHenry.

  Balls soared, not with the same arch as the mortar shells, but on a flatter trajectory. Several struck the water, then after adjustment of the aim three balls smashed into British ships, including the ship towing the sloop. An explosion of wood and bits of everything a ship was made of came throttling at the sloop.

  He and Skinner took a clumsy dive. A shower of wreckage struck the sloop’s deck, sounding like a box of nails spilling across the deck.

  They peeked up in time to see two more balls smash into one of the bomb ships.

  The American crewmen cheered, and Key found himself caught up in the thrill. That joy was dashed immediately as the British ships returned fire with those giant mortars.

  His anxiety piled onto itself until he could barely breathe. The British shells screamed through the air and easily reached the fort. Each time one fired, he waited with his pulse stopped and listened for the explosion.

  “Abominable,” he uttered.

  “Sorry?” Skinner called over the booms of more shells and the whine of rockets.

  “What’s happening?” Beanes called from under the tarp. “Can you see the fort?”

  Key forced himself to answer. “Yes, I can see it.”

  “Can you see the flag?”

  “What?”

  “Our flag! Can you still see the flag?”

  “Oh. Yes, I see it.”

  Incendiary rockets from the ship Erebus made smoky trails across the blanketing clouds, wriggling wildly, landing who knew where. Those heavy mortar shells, packed with black powder, roared every few seconds from the bomb ships.

  At Lazaretto Point across from the fort, cannons began to fire, taking their cue from Fort McHenry. The two batteries blazed away feverishly.

  In the late afternoon rain began to fall, almost immediately changing from a sprinkle to a shower. Skinner went under the tarp, but Key refused. Skinner handed him his traveling cloak, which Key pulled over his shoulders, and a hat to banish the rain from his eyes. After an hour, the torrential showers cooled the air and pulled the sweat from his face. In ten minutes, it was downright cold.

  The terror continued in the skies. On the sloop, the American crew and the Royal Marines fell into forebidding silence. Some disappeared below to hide from the rain and the hot sparks, hoping each in his heart that a cannon ball did not crash through the sloop’s hull and take his head off. No one was chortling or cheering anymore. Everyone was half deaf by now anyway. The fort was under a jarring hail from the bombardment fleet, and responded with their own cannon fire that pummeled the British ships. When word came that the bomb fleet would be retreating, Key’s mind was heartened to think that they might be giving up.

  But no. The British were not so easily cowed. The ships hoisted their anchors and drifted back, but only about a half mile. There they dropped their anchors again, and continued shooting.

  Still close enough to see the fort, even to see the flag with the spyglass. The flag now hung like a limp hanky in the rain. In the twilight, the red and blue colors were barely a mark against the white flagpole and gray sky. But at least it was still there. In fright’s clutch, Key paced up and down the deck in the waist of the small ship.

  Then, the cannon shots from the fort fell away. Two or three minutes later, the cannons at Lazaretto also went dark. The British kept firing, but the Americans had stopped.

  He didn’t say anything. Finally William Beanes’ thready voice came from under the tarp.

  “Frank, what do you see? Why has the sound changed?”

  “The fort has stopped returning fire. I don’t know why.”

  “We’re out of range,” Skinner supplied. “Their guns can’t reach us. They’re saving ammunition.”

  “But the bomb ships are still firing.”

  “Their range is longer.”

  “A one-sided battle,” Key mourned. He felt suddenly feverish inside his warm brown cloak. “Barbarism.”

  “Frank.”

  Beanes, from under the canopy.

  “Come down here, Frank.”

  Under the canopy the deck was mostly dry, except for a trickle of water running from the exposed bow along the bulwark to the first scupper hole, and a mist being blown in. Beanes huddled in a dry spot, sitting on a folded blanket and wrapped in another, looking very worn and old.

  Except for his eyes. Strange, his eyes were young today.

  Key folded his lanky form into a crouch. “Something I can do for you, William?”

  “No,” the doctor said. “There’s nothing you can do. Nothing at all. You’re here. There is nothing you can do to affect anything.”

  Feeling a skittish tremble run across his shoulders, Key parted his lips to speak, but nothing came out.

  Beanes lowered his chin and glowered from under his br
ows. “I know you want to influence events. You cannot. You are completely powerless. There is nothing you can do to change the fate of those men holding that fort or the women standing behind them to tie up their wounds. The people holding the line at Hampstead Hill. They dug the trenches. They set the battery guns. They will live or die in the mud and blood. Everything is up to them now. You are barren in all things today.”

  Stunned, the lawyer whispered, “Why are you saying this?”

  “It is time for you to accept your own nature. You have set your own place in the world. The presidency has been offered to you. You declined. The Supreme Court has been dangled before you. You demurred. You took up the sword, but dropped it from your hand. Events moved forward while you remained bashful. You will have no validation in this war. You orbit the courageous. You are not one of them. Your only contribution will be to rescue a crippled old doctor who didn’t know his own place. Know your place, Frank. Torture your tender heart no more. This is not the day of Francis Scott Key.”

  Cold rain rattled on the water just over the side. The mortars’ boom hummed in one unending drone behind the doctor’s cheerless words, but the words would not fade.

  All through the night’s malevolence, with rain slashing his body, thunder roaring in cadence with the hiss of rockets and the bedlam of mortars by the hundreds exploding in the air or slamming to earth, engulfed in suspense, Frank Key stood and watched. Time did not pass eternally here tonight, but halted its durable march. His feet were wet inside his boots and his body was wracked every few seconds with the wet night’s chill. Impotent, appalled, consumed by dread, he watched the infernal fight between hellfire and the battle-born. This was his purgatory.

  Even the skies were angry. Thunder, exploding shells, lightning illuminated the trails of red rockets and flares. Explosions in the sky whistled, flashed, and were snuffed under the storm clouds. All through the night, slapped by sheets of rain, deafened by mortar fire and thunder, watching bursts of lightning give otherworldly glimpses of the fort and the rain-drenched flag sticking to its mast, he waited in his personal hell.

  There was no divine intervention. His terror went uneased. For eleven days he had been trapped here, given a platform from which he could stand in relative safety and do nothing more than observe history unfold before him. His reddened eyes watered. There was no way to know what was happening at the fort as it was pummeled. Now and then a defiant gun was fired from there, showing at least that they had not surrendered yet. There were sounds of guns, too, from Hampstead Hill and the land where the enemy had marched from North Point. Baltimore was making its scrappy stand.

  His heart cried for those people and his arms ached to embrace them. His mind began to wander, to imagine what he might be doing if he were not here. Would he go to Hampstead Hill and finally put to use some of the training he had taken last summer in the artillery? Would he kneel in the mud beside a gun or take up a rifle from a fallen defender? Leap upon a confused warhorse whose rider had been blown in half and make a charge against the enemy?

  Would he?

  At the stern of the sloop, a small group of Royal Marines stood in the rain, huddled with their weapons tucked against their bodies, guarding the world against the specters of a country lawyer, a prisoner negotiator, and an old doctor.

  He prayed, but his prayers bumped against the clouds and fell into the river. Those people, those restless Americans, nimble-minded and living allegro lives, did what they did knowing they might die, actually die. Whether they agreed with the war or not, they were right over there fighting it, putting their shoulders against an invasion from a foreign power for the second time in a blink of years. It was they who deserved testimonial, honors, and song. Now that he was no longer thinking of himself, he thought of them, and he suddenly understood. They were fighting for their homes, their families, and even more, for their identities. Their right to be Americans.

  A macabre quiet came over his mind. He let himself go into it. The boom of mortar fire drifted away until there was nothing left but the grim thump of his heart. Even that was slowing.

  Sounds and movement drew his eyes. Rowboats were approaching, boats full of muddy and exhausted British soldiers, cradling many wounded comrades, unspeaking as they came twenty and thirty at a time and climbed onto the frigates and ships-of-the-line from whence they had debarked hours ago. Returning in triumph? Their job done?

  John Skinner appeared at his side, but did not speak.

  British Marines and American sailors crawled up from the sloop’s hatches onto the soaked deck, looking at the sky. The rain was stopping. Clouds above grew pale and thin. Dawn.

  Frank Key blinked as if he were coming out of a trance. After twenty-five hours of unremitting gunfire, the silence was terrifying.

  “Why has the shooting stopped?” William Beanes asked from his hiding place. “Has the fort fallen?”

  No one answered. They could not see. The fort was engulfed in mist clinging to the water. Slowly the mist began to rise and burn away. A sliver of sunlight broke as the clouds cracked open.

  Key climbed to the top of the steps that would meet a gangway if they hadn’t been anchored out here. He clutched one of the cables supporting the mast, and squinted into the dawn’s early light.

  “Can you see?” Beanes pleaded. “Is the flag still there?”

  “Something’s happening,” Skinner murmured.

  Key asked, “Do you still have the spyglass?”

  Skinner handed it to him. Key put it to his eye and trained it on the fort.

  The mist sparkled in its last throes before giving way to the morning sun. In the distance, the star-shaped brown ramparts of Fort McHenry were very still. The needle of the flag mast still stood, with some flicker of movement. Was the flag being lowered? Had it been torn away?

  A sound, thin and small. Fife music. Snare drums. Whose?

  More movement at the flagstaff; bits of color crawled up the white pole. The king’s flag?

  Then the fabric stirred in a soft morning breeze. No longer the cruel wind of the storm, this breeze was fresh and dry, carrying the scent of honeysuckle from the land. What a gracious morning this would be on any other day.

  As the wing of an angel unfolds, so unfolded a sight of a lifetime. Key gasped as triumph burst through his melancholy. “Yes! I see it! It’s still there!”

  But he no longer needed the spyglass.

  A flag, a huge American flag, a third as tall as the pole from which it flew, unbound itself and opened before the world. Upon the indigo field, fifteen giant stars flickered with light from behind. Enormous red and white stripes whipped happily as they stretched out on the breeze. After a day and night of noise, the ensign’s mute proclamation reminded him of George Washington, standing on the portico with the diligence of a mute guardian. But more—the flag waved as a passive beacon, not to repel, but to invite. You, too, come here.

  The fife and drum corps from the fort began to play “Yankee Doodle.” The sound was small and distant, but the lilt of it carried over the water.

  A few steps away from him, one of the British soldiers overcame the demoralization so evident in the faces of his fellows.

  Right out in front of everybody, the Englishman exclaimed, “Splendid!”

  A single cannon shot fired from Fort McHenry. Poom—a signal to salute the flag. What bravado!

  The American crew of the sloop cheered. Even the British guards indulged in polite applause. Such a moment.

  In the left pocket of his cloak, Key’s hand closed into a fist as if in a small attempt to be big. It closed on stiff paper—one of the letters he had shown to General Ross.

  As elation poured through his body, he drew the folded paper out. From his other pocket he drew the architect’s pencil he always kept there. Doing what writers are compelled to do, he flattened the paper on his knee and scribbled a few words to remind him later of what he felt now.

  O, say, can you see … by the dawn’s early light …

>   Mary’s Banner

  FEDERAL HILL, BALTIMORE

  9:00 A.M., SEPTEMBER 14

  As the last hints of rain evaporated in warm morning sunlight, Mary Pickersgill stood on the heights with her daughter, her nieces, and Grace Wisher. They had listened through the long day and night until morning again, counting fruitlessly the hundreds of explosions and rocket whistles, feeling the awful vibrations through the very earth beneath their feet. If anyone could sleep, it was only some accident of exhaustion.

  Now the bombing had stopped. Never one to wait, Mary had struck out immediately to discover why the silence had fallen. She and many neighbors hurried to the rooftops and high ground, as word spread that the enemy was drawing back from both Hampstead Hill and the harbor. That might mean everything or nothing, for the British might always return, but messengers claimed the enemy army was getting in boats and rowing back to their fleet. They were not encamping or entrenching. They were leaving.

  At her sides, Caroline and Grace took her hands, then the hands of the other girls. Together the women watched the raising of Mary’s giant banner over the star fort. The flag was so big that it could not flap quickly, but instead waved this way and that way like the mane of a horse out of Viking mythology.

  Her neighbors flocked around her, patting her shoulders and kissing her cheeks. More and more people crept up the hill to stand in the sunshine with the ladies of the flag.

  For this morning at least, everybody knew the name of Mary Pickersgill.

  Scribbles

  BALTIMORE

  SEPTEMBER 17

  “JOSEPH! JOSEPH!”

  The front door hung open as Joseph Nicholson rushed down the stairs and into the arms of his brother-in-law. “Frank! Thank God!”

  Key clung to him, for neither had known the other’s fate at a time when stinking, bloated corpses were being picked up in wagons and laid out for loved ones to identify.

  “No one has heard from you in two weeks!” Nicholson exclaimed. “Polly contacted me, but I had no idea where you were!”