Bold Sons of Erin

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  “I have trusted you,” she repeated, in a tone that suggested our interview had neared its close, “not only because my old Kameradin trusts you, but because I wish to see the Russians exposed for what they are. They cannot be trusted, not ever. They devour what they can, and destroy the rest. My own kind have been fools to serve them. German and Russian blood is not compatible. Even the revolution will not change that. They must be mastered.”

  “Yes, mum,” I said absently.

  She sighed from the heart. “And this is my life. You see? A prisoner by choice, in an American asylum. I do not think the Russians or anyone else will find me here, don’t you agree?”

  “Yes, mum. I suppose that is true.”

  She turned to Mrs. Schutzengel with a smile that mixed true warmth with clever falsity. “I have not been as careful, nor as wise, as my old friend, Major Jones. After all, she was the one who threw the bomb. I only helped with the plan.”

  My face must have recorded my bewilderment. Mrs. Schutzengel got up an awkward grin.

  “It was only a little bomb,” my landlady said meekly.

  “But it struck its target, did it not?” our hostess continued. “It only cost the Prussian minister an arm, but it did manage to kill his wife.”

  I fear I saw Mrs. Schutzengel in a new and confounding light.

  “Am I to believe she hasn’t told you of her moment of triumph?” the baroness asked me. “Ah, but dear Hilda always was the best of us at keeping secrets. Had it not been for her, I would have been arrested in Dresden, you know. Or in Mainz. But she hasn’t told you that, either, Major Jones? Really, I do believe she’d be an even better addition to the Union cause than poor Carl. She’s quite the most lethal of us all.” A fresh thought paid her a visit. “I shall need to write to his sister. I believe she’s in Venice just now.”

  And that was it, or nearly so. Mrs. Schutzengel rose, and I followed her example. But in the very process of leaving, I saw I could not be content with one question unasked.

  “Begging your pardon, mum,” I said to the baroness, who already had returned to her paper and ink, “but if you were a woman high up in the Russian court . . . how did you come to be a revolutionary yourself? If you will excuse the asking?”

  She adorned her face with her bitterest smile of the evening. “Oh, I have Carl to thank for that. Although I suppose a certain wildness—a tendency to stray—runs in the blood. After . . . the incident . . . well, I was his cousin, after all. I prayed I might escape any serious penalty. I believed myself a favorite of the tsarevna, you understand. But she was a capricious woman, too stupid to be intelligently cruel, but with a savage’s canny instincts for devising the perfect torment. She was sly enough to wait until the first grand ball of the season. Then, in the midst of all those glittering dignitaries and ambassadors, surrounded by all the princes of Russia, its ministers and all the jewel-smothered wives of St. Petersburg society, she turned to me and cried out, ‘What is this filthy Jacobin slut doing in my presence?’”

  She closed her mouth firmly and stared at me.

  “And . . . and that was all? An insult made you into a revolutionary?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Not quite all,” she said, in a lowered, luring voice. Her eyes gleamed with hatred. “The very next night, a fair-sized party of officers burst into my father’s house off the Prospekt. We called it our palace, but everyone does that sort of thing. It was certainly nothing worthy of the Stroganoffs. Not nearly grand enough to be forbidding, once the daughter of the house had been called a ‘filthy Jacobin slut’ at a court ball, and by the tsarevna herself.” She assumed a matter-of-fact expression. “I do not know how many there were, in truth, but they seemed an endless number to me. To this day, I cannot abide alcohol on a man’s breath.”

  She looked down at the floor, but only briefly, before her searing eyes returned to mine. “Perhaps I belong here, with these women. It’s a miracle I’m not like them, you see. They insulted me until the morning light came in the window, then stumbled off. They were singing as they walked along the canal, I remember that clearly, a song about soldierly comradeship. My father could not bear the disgrace and shot himself. He was a weak man.” The ghost of a smile, of something horrid and deformed that pretended to be a smile, twisted her lips. “Did I mention that the captain to whom I was affianced was one of the party? He wanted them to shoot me when they had finished, but I wasn’t a seamstress, after all. I was a baroness-in-waiting. And that counted for something.”

  MRS. SCHUTZENGEL HAD ORDERED the cabman to wait for us and I was relieved to spy the silhouette of his vehicle. When the asylum’s gates clanged shut behind us, I felt as though I had escaped from a world of which I wished no part. What had we to do with Russians and revolutionaries, even if they took to settling old scores? We had worried about the Russian bear in India, of course, alert to his fussing about in the Afghan hills. But Russia was far away from our precious America. I wondered if their tsar—and all the nasty sorts he kept about him—were not better banished from our policies and thoughts.

  I smelled the rancid stink of Europe’s squabbles. Twas worse by far than the odors of a madhouse.

  We rode in silence, except for the dull thump of hooves and the creaking of wheels. I wondered how much might be believed and which things truly bore on the matter at hand. I had heard that General Meagher of the Irish Brigade had, indeed, been a revolutionary in his time, as Carl Stone had been. Both seemed to have been converted to the American cause, although Meagher still preached of liberating Ireland, about which a fellow could read in most any newspaper.

  Twas queer. I now knew far more about the murdered fellow, but somehow had even less sense of the man. Had he been the sort to make decisions coolly? It did not much sound like it, although men change with the years. Had he been the type who takes on a passion without the ability to reason through to the end? The kind who makes each pursuit into a love affair, all headiness and fire, with no sound grip? Had he gone to Pennsylvania after deliberating carefully and deciding that he best could serve our Union in that manner? Or had his flight from the battlefield to become a glorified recruiting sergeant been but another whim in a life of fancies? Had he . . . behaved untowardly toward women? Toward Mrs. Boland, perhaps? Or others among the Irish? Their men would kill for honor, that I knew.

  I wished that I might have seen him alive, if only a single time.

  And would that woman lie about the Russians, to have her revenge upon them? Was it her interest to make them out the villains, whether they were guilty of murder or not? I felt a deep-down weariness, to see how Europe’s ghosts crept to America. Europe seemed the serpent in our Garden.

  It was only after we recrossed the bridge into the city proper that Mrs. Schutzengel spoke to me.

  “What gives me sadness, Major Jones, is that she sometimes is mad. Only sometimes, wissen Sie? She is speaking all the truth to you, I think. About the important things, die wichtigen Sachen. But there is a secret inside of her secret, if my English words can explain it. We have said to her how wise it is to hide in the asylum, where no one finds her. So she is believing everything is her plan and her choice, die eigene Wahl. But sometimes we think . . . sometimes we are glad she is there, for another reason. She is very sick, you see. Sick like those men and women, in the head and the body. But only sometimes in the head. But that is bad for the revolution, verstehen Sie? She wishes only to do the killing now. More and more killing. But America is not the place for the killing. And I think the killing becomes more important to her than the revolution. The revolution is not to kill, you see. It is to make the world the better place. No tsars, no kings, no emperors . . .”

  Of a sudden, Mrs. Schutzengel began to sob. Her great bulk quivered in the shadows of the cab. “When they have killed my Josef, when they have shot him down like the dog in the street, I, too, have only a great anger. But anger is the enemy of the revolution, I see now. Oooch, a little anger, yes. But not the anger that blinds the peoples.” She
sought to master herself, but her sniffles would not quit. So she blew her great cabbage of a nose with a roar the Rebels must have heard in Richmond. “Some of the times, I am telling myself, ‘Hilda Schutzengel, lass es, lass es mal! You are in America now, and you have the goodness of life given to you. Europa ist weit weg, nichts mehr als ein Alptraum aus der Kindheit. Leave the old things behind you. Leave them behind.’ And then I think that is the sensible way to be . . .”

  She leaned toward me in the shadows of the cab and her emotions filled the air like a powerful scent. “Then I think again, ‘No! As long as there is no justice, you must fight!’ I think of my Josef then, of my old happiness that was as big as the ocean, and I know that I must fight. Until all of the tsars and kings have gone away. ‘America is not the end, Hilda Schutzengel! America is the beginning! The future must be freedom for all the peoples . . .’” She sat back. “Ooooch, Major Jones. I think maybe I am only the silly old woman now, who can do nothing . . .”

  That drew a question to the front of my mind.

  “Mrs. Schutzengel . . . would you happen to know the age of that woman, the baroness? She looks as old as Methusaleh’s wife, although I don’t mean to be—”

  “Thirty-seven years,” she said. “I have seen the papers.”

  “Good Lord. She looks sixty! At least. Oh, I realize she could not be more than—”

  “Thirty-seven years,” Mrs. Schutzengel repeated. “She is very sick. In many ways. Sie hat sehr gelitten. There is much suffering.”

  “And you . . . you and your friends . . . you really won’t allow her release. Will you?”

  She made a sound that was near akin to a groan. “No. It is for the good of everyone this way.”

  I thought of the ghastly moment that must come when that woman, the fallen baroness, would learn that her place of refuge had been no more than her prison all along.

  “She is dangerous to all,” Mrs. Schutzengel explained. “To us. To herself. She is sick in a terrible way, ganz ohne Hoffnung.”

  I understood that tone of voice, for I have used it myself. It is the timbre that seeks to convince itself.

  “Last year,” she continued, “in Baltimore, Maria has made an attack upon a little girl, a pretty, little girl. She has made bad scratches all over the face of das Kindlein, the deep ones that make the scars. Then she is choking her. Und all the time Maria is screaming to the people that the little girl is an aristocrat, that she must be killed, that all like her must be killed. But the little girl is the daughter of a dustman only. That is when we must convince her that the asylum is a hiding place. We do not wish her harm, verstehen Sie? But we are not safe with her upon the street, none of us.”

  “And you . . . you really have killed? With a bomb? For your revolution?”

  “And you, Major Jones? When you are serving the Queen of England, weit weg in Indien? What are you killing for then? Not even for a revolution, I think.”

  This world is never quite as we would have it. Not as I would have it, certainly. My wife is right about that much. I long for a better world. Where everything is as clear as a ledger book.

  As we passed below the outline of the Capitol again, I realized that Mrs. Schutzengel had withdrawn into the corner of the cab, to the extent her girth allowed her to withdraw. She whimpered, as a distraught child will do.

  “No tsars,” she sobbed to the night beyond, “no kings.”

  TWELVE

  “GODDAMN IT, ABEL,” MR. SEWARD SAID, “YOU’RE harder to find than an honest Congressman. Where the devil have you been, man?” He stabbed his cigar back into his mouth, then tore it away again. “Well, get the hell in and let’s have a talk.”

  I did as I was bidden by our secretary of state and climbed into his carriage, which was so thick with smoke you might have thought it a battlefield at the height of a cannonade. Fit to choke a Methodist it was.

  Taking a seat opposite Mr. Seward, I arranged myself and my cane to leave a goodly space. Young Fred Seward, who had intercepted me upon Mrs. Schutzengel’s porch, come climbing in behind me. He was a man more decorous than his father, but not half so alive.

  “Damn me all the way to Hell and call me three-quarters sorry,” Mr. Seward declared, examining me as he stoked his mighty cigar, “I thought we were friends, the two of us. And here you come creeping down to Washington from that Irish bog up there in Pennsylvania and don’t even stop by to tip your hat and have a spit.”

  Now, when a great man tells a fellow like me he “thought we were friends,” he wants a thing he fears you are loathe to give. And I did not “come creeping down to Washington,” but took the train and did not hide from any man.

  The carriage, perfumed with the burning flowers of Cuba, did not abandon its station along the street.

  “Now, you just tell me what that little Dutch sneak Nicolay’s been telling you,” Mr. Seward said. “Sticking his damned whiffer into my business, is he? That what Nicolay’s doing, Abel? Worried about our German voters, is he? As if those sausage-eaters had anyplace else to go!” He cleared his throat, with a sound approximating the Falls of the Niagara. “And getting all high and mighty about the Russians, is that what he’s up to?”

  I was dismayed by his queries, for I had grown quite fond of Mr. Seward, despite the moral violence of his vocabulary. I did not wish a breach between us, and certainly did not want him for my enemy, but could not break my trust with Mr. Nicolay. Or Mr. Lincoln. There appeared to be discord between men I admired. And I found myself between their lines of battle.

  I began to stammer out an apology, although I was not certain one was in order. But Mr. Seward proved deaf to interruption.

  “You just listen to me, Abel, and I’ll tell you what’s what. Goddamn it.” He drew on his great cigar as if to swallow it. The tip flared up and sparked like a gunner’s fuse. A moment later, our secretary of state belched smoke like a twenty-pounder. “Tsar’s about the only friend we’ve got. And I wouldn’t trust the man with a bag of rotten apples. But we need him, damned if we don’t.”

  He straightened his back like a rooster primed for a match, although it made the good man little taller. Two “banty birds” we were, as he once put it. But small of body does not mean small of heart.

  “Listen here,” he said, yanking the cigar from his lips again, “if the Russians are up to some sort of trouble, you just leave it to me. You tell me first. Anything you find out up there. You don’t need to go running to Lincoln’s little lapdog with everything. I’ll handle de Stoekl.” He grimaced. “Pompous son-of a bitch. German blood himself, you know. Russian minister, or not. ‘Baron’ this, ‘baron’ that. Hell of a combination, Germans and Russians, when you put ’em together. A body’d expect the combination to turn out smart and sturdy. Instead, you get the dreariest drunks on earth. And de Stoekl’s dull even before he gets to his liquor. I’ll take an Irishman, anyday.” He snorted. “Though I can’t say I’d want to take him very far—any chance we’ll ever persuade those micks to vote right, Abel? What do you think? Have the Copperheads got ’em so spooked they can’t see past the next swig of liquor? My people are worried sick about New York City, and to Hell with some two-bit coal mines.”

  Again, he did not pause to let me answer. He hammered my knee, leaning in with that big-nosed, little face that put me in mind of a hawk. “I’ll handle the Russians. Those beer-pot Germans, too. Anything you learn, come straight to me. Nicolay’s got other things to worry about. Plenty of ’em, besides his sauerkraut and pig’s knuckles. And the president’s got enough on his mind. More than enough. No need to worry him with the minor dilemmas of foreign relations.”

  He drained the smoke from his shrunken cigar, gurgled, and puffed out a cloud. “I’ve got plans for the Russians, damn it all. When this war is over. When we’ve won. They’ve got something I want, and I’m going to get it from them, if I have to take a cane to Thad Stevens myself along the way.”

  “Father!” Fred Seward exclaimed. He always sought to tame his parent’s sp
eech, but I fear Mr. Seward relished the lad’s discomfiture. They were not unlike the Adamses, ‘pairy-fill,’ as those Frenchmen say. “You know that Congressman Stevens is one of the finest—”

  “Oh, turn off the tap, Fred,” our secretary told his son. “Abel and me, we’re old friends, the two of us. We’re pals.” He offered me a “between us” sort of glance. “I trust him. And he trusts me. As for old Thad Stevens, Lucifer himself couldn’t stand that self-righteous bastard.”

  The son gave the father a doleful glance, but kept himself quiet thereafter.

  “Thing is, Jones,” Mr. Seward started up again, “the Russians are broke. Flat busted. Haven’t got a penny. Still haven’t recovered from that mess in the Crimea. Trying to build up their army and navy. And they haven’t got a pot to piss in.” He grunted. “Oh, this war has our government plenty tight, too. I can count a damned sight better than Chase, when it comes to that. But the war won’t last forever. And, by God, the world’s going to see us come out the other end as the richest people on earth. Mark my words. And, before I die, I’m going to see these United States even bigger.” He puffed what little was left of his stogie and threw himself back against the plush of the carriage. “They’ll call me a fool. Let ‘em. I’ll have the last laugh.”

  He dropped his cigar on the floor, where other stubs had preceded it. Father and son evidently had waited much of the evening for my return. “Right now, I don’t want trouble where trouble doesn’t need to be. This General Stone of ours is dead. Stone, or Stein, or Bierstein, or whatever his name was. Can’t bring him back by making a diplomatic row, can we? Just to please a pack of four-eyed Germans who couldn’t fight their way out of a beer hall.”

  He punched my knee again. Twas my bothered leg, but no matter. “You find the Russians had a hand in this business, you let me know. And, by God, I’ll tear into ‘em! But I know how to do it, Abel. Without spoiling anything we don’t need spoiled. Understand me?”