The fallon pride, p.38
The Fallon Pride, page 38
While Robert sat at his corner table, Kemal and Miller standing at the long bar where they could keep an eye on him, the sentry from the encampment came in and took a table. Seeing Robert, he started, then slowly settled into his chair. He sat nervously, though, with the awkward eye on Robert, as if afraid Robert would come over.
They had already learned the first lesson of survival, Robert thought. Their safety lay in not associating with anyone who might be associated with Burr. Burr’s grand adventure was most certainly over.
It was time to go to bed in his room upstairs. As Robert got up, a roughly dressed, unshaven man paused by the ex-sentry’s table. He took one good look, then walked on out of the tavern. No one else had taken any interest in the fellow at all. But Robert had a vague impression of having seen the unshaven man somewhere before. Somewhere important.
He had settled into the room’s lone bed when suddenly it hit him. He sat up in the dark. “Captain Vance,” he said half to himself. “That’s who he was.”
“What, Captain?” Miller asked from his pallet on the floor. Kemal got up and checked the wedges he had placed under the door.
Robert rolled out of bed and began dressing in the dark. “That fellow who was interested in the sentry—he’s an Army captain named Vance. I saw him at Wilkinson’s headquarters in New Orleans.”
“You think he’s come to arrest Mr. Burr, Captain?”
“In civilian clothes? Wilkinson was part of Burr’s plan, Miller. His pose as savior of New Orleans won’t last long if that leaks out. The best way to keep the secret is to keep Burr from coming to trial.”
“Mother of God,” Miller breathed. “We’d best find Mr. Burr, Captain, and warn him.” He began scrambling into his clothes. Kemal, who slept in his, disposed of various pistols and daggers about his person.
Where to begin the search? The fine gentlemen atop the bluff, who had received Burr with open arms on his first visit, were denying they knew him, now. He would not be there. He did not have the money for the best inns, but he was too smart to venture into Natchez-under-the-Hill, where men could be killed for their boots. That left the kind of tavern that Robert was staying at: cheap, with a bare respectability.
They hurried through the night, down dusty, packed-dirt streets. Slatternly blowzes hung on the street corners, blaring their raucous invitations. Men from the flatboats rubbed elbows with buckskinned men from the western mountains, and occasionally they rolled in the dirt, kneeing and gouging. The crowds always split around the fights, few even seeming to notice as they headed for whatever pleasure had caught their fancy.
There were dozens of bars, taverns, and inns that met his criteria, Robert discovered, and they visited all of them. Tyler’s. The Catfish Club. An endless stream of places filling with unruly laughter; the night was warming up. The Keelboat. The Golden Cock. At the American Eagle they found Burr, sitting alone in a corner, sipping whiskey and ignoring the merriment around him. He looked up in surprise when Robert dropped into the chair across from him.
“Again you surprised me, Mr. Fallon. The denials have already begun, you know. ‘Who is this Burr? I know him not.’” He laughed bitterly. “In a month they’ll be howling for my blood, just to prove they were never my friends.”
“Someone may be after your blood sooner than that,” Robert said. “I believe General Wilkinson has sent someone to Natchez to kill you.
“In New Orleans, before I knew what was happening, I went to Wilkinson’s headquarters. A man there was addressed as Captain Vance. I saw him last night, unshaven and in civilian clothes. He took an interest in one of your men at Corgan’s.”
Burr swallowed the rest of his whiskey and grimaced. “Probably sent to spy on me.”
“Sir, I think it’s more than that. Esteban Lopes was one of those arrested. And he says that Wilkinson was particularly interested in finding out whether anyone knew he was a party to the plot. It’s my advice that you leave Natchez. Go back East where you have friends, where it won’t be so easy for an ‘accident’ to be arranged.”
Burr made a disgusted noise. “I gave my bond to a magistrate today, Mr. Fallon. I swore I’d remain available for trial. I don’t break my word, certainly not to run from a chimera.” He scraped back his chair and got to his feet. “No, Mr. Fallon. I must seek lodging for the night. If you will excuse me.” He bowed and made his way unsteadily out of the bar.
Robert sat for only a moment before motioning to Miller and Kemal and hurrying after Burr. If the man wouldn’t believe, he would have to be protected. In the street he caught sight of the diminutive man weaving his way through the throng. He followed at a discreet distance, keeping an eye on Burr.
Slowly Burr made his way out of the crowds, toward the darkened main part of the city, where the boarding houses were. In the emptier streets Robert was forced to hang back still farther to avoid being seen. At his whispered command Miller and Kemal dropped back twenty more paces. The songs and laughter from the bars had been left behind. There was no sound except the padding of their feet.
Robert began to think Burr would reach his destination unharmed. They were no longer in the part of town where street violence was common. At that moment he realized Burr could no longer be seen. Ahead was only darkness. At the same instant boots pounded up ahead. There was a dull thud of wood striking flesh, a groan, then silence.
Robert raced forward. Dimly he could make out a shape sprawled on the dirt. Another shape, bending over the first, tossed aside a club; moonlight glinted on steel raised high.
Robert hit in a shallow dive; the assassin grunted. Robert grabbed the other’s knife hand with both of his, fight–ing to keep the gleaming blade away. They rolled to a halt in the only light on the street, from a window high on a boardinghouse wall. Robert stared into the contorted face of the man he knew as Vance, and he saw Vance sense his recognition. Arms knotted, the two men poured all their energies into the knife; slowly, inexorably, it began to move toward them, chest to chest in the street.
Robert could feel the sweat pouring down his face. There was sweat on Vance’s face, too, and now a certain desperation in the eyes. Vance convulsed in a furious attempt to gain control of the blade, and Robert added his own strength to Vance’s.
The would-be murderer screamed as the blade socketed home in his chest. He stared at their clasped hands, pressed tightly against his chest, then looked at Robert with fury. “Damn you!” he said hoarsely. “Warbeck will still get him. One of the others …” His eyes went wide. Blood spilled out of his mouth, and his head fell back, staring slightlessly into the night.
Robert pried Vance’s hands loose from his, rose, and walked back to Burr. Miller and Kemal had helped him to his feet and were supporting him.
“What happened?” Burr asked fuzzily. He was feeling gingerly at his skull. “Footpad?”
“Captain Vance,” Robert said simply. Burr stared at him. “He’s dead. With the knife he meant for you.”
“At least that threat’s done with,” Burr murmured. “I thank you, Mr. Fallon.”
“It’s not done. He said ‘Warbeck’ would still get you. And he mentioned ‘others.’”
Burr shook his head, and stopped with a wince. “Warbeck? Wilkinson’s aide is a Lieutenant Warbeck.”
“You see, then? God knows who these ‘others’ are, or how many they are. You must return East immediately, tonight, or your may not live to leave Natchez.”
“Yes, Mr. Fallon. I believe you’re right.” Burr shrugged off the support of Miller and Kemal. “To run out on my bond … but you are right.” He paused. “All the roads east from Natchez are probably already being watched.”
“Well, you certainly can’t go downriver to New Orleans.”
“Ah. But I will go south. To Mobile. Or better yet, to Pensacola. I can take ship from there for Washington City.”
“I’ll wish you good luck, then,” Robert said, offering his hand, “and, as you wished your men, Godspeed.”
Burr gripped his hand firmly. There was a trace of the old grin on his face. “Considering who I am, it seems more likely the devil will give me what winds I get. Fare–well, Mr. Fallon.” And he was gone, into the darkness.
35
Robert’s return to Charleston was uneventful, but there he found that the nation was agog with news of Burr. The Vice President was arrested on the road to Pensacola and carried to Richmond, Virginia, for trial. The charge was treason against the United States. John Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Court, was to sit the bench. Army officers were given the powers of U.S. Marshals to search out witnesses and Burr’s fellow conspirators. From secret sessions of Congress word leaked that the President had attempted to have the right of habeas corpus suspended. Jefferson, it was whispered, was ready to tear down the Constitution and erect a military dictatorship to get Burr. It was said he went into apoplectic fits at any “malicious insinuations” against Wilkinson. Burr was the culprit. Burr must be destroyed. There were open attempts to stack the jury.
Burr, however, was not defenseless. Edmund Randolph, who had been attorney general under Washington, and Charles Lee, brother to Light Horse Harry Lee and the attorney general under John Adams, led the team of lawyers who would defend him. John Adams himself, never a lover of Burr, proclaimed that the charges were suspicious, and the methods of the government “irregular.”
In the midst of preparations for the trial, the U.S. frigate Chesapeake, Captain James Barron commanding, sailed. All her guns but one were dismounted until she should be at sea. Inside U.S. territorial waters she was hailed by the British frigate Leopard, whose commanding officer demanded to search the Chesapeake for Royal Navy deserters. Barron refused; the British ship opened fire and pounded the defenseless Chesapeake into submission. Four sailors were taken off as deserters. America screamed for war.
Thomas Jefferson’s answer was to issue a proclamation ordering British warships out of American waters. He announced that America had first to “scotch the snakes in our midst.” Destroying Burr was to take precedence over war.
On the first of September, the jury found Aaron Burr not guilty of treason. Jefferson brought charges of mounting an invasion of Spanish territory from American soil. The public was beginning to tire of Jefferson’s pursuit of Burr. Burr was found not guilty again. The same charge was brought again, with the trial site changed to Ohio. Burr, finally realizing that Jefferson would indeed cut down the Constitution to destroy him, went into hiding.
With Burr disposed of, Jefferson turned his attention to the British problem. On December 14 America was forbidden to import British goods, or any goods in British ships. A week later he protected American ships from the British Navy by forbidding them to leave ports for any foreign country. America was successfully being isolated from the rest of the world.
February of 1808 had been mild, Robert thought as he crawled over the misshapen barge moored at Carver’s Bridge. He tried not to look at the idle ships tied up to the Bridge. The harbor was full of them.
“How’s the pressure?” he called to Miller.
Miller peered at a gauge in front of him. “Says a hundred and fifty, Captain,” he called back, then added in a lower tone, “if you can trust the damned things.” Kemal sat nearby, suspiciously watching the firebox that Miller bent to stoking.
“Cast loose!” Robert shouted.
Nervous men on the dock tossed the barge’s lines onto her deck and backed hurriedly away before it all exploded. Robert took a firm grip on the tiller. “Open the valve, Miller.”
With a quick glance at the heavens Miller twisted the lever that opened a valve below deck. There was a rushing hiss, and the great paddle wheels on either side of the barge began to revolve. Slowly the barge moved away from the Bridge, under the power of steam.
Robert guided the chuffing, fifty-foot barge out into the Cooper and pointed it upriver. The tide was running out, and on the last run against the tide the barge had made no headway at all, barely holding its own. He had pored over every word he could gather about steamboats and steam engines. Finally, he had made an adjustment that would allow the paddles to rotate faster. This was to be the test.
Near the middle of the channel, he swung the barge head-on into the outgoing current. The paddle wheels churned the water; the barge slowed, but it continued to move.
“Open the valve all the way!” Robert shouted. “And pile more wood in the firebox!”
Miller looked at the stack above him, pouring out gray-black smoke, then motioned for Kemal to feed the fire while he took care of the valve. The huge Turk shook his head vigorously and moved farther from the boiler. He had refused even to board the barge at first, until he realized Robert meant to leave without him. Miller sighed and pushed the valve lever all the way over, then bent back to throw wood into the firebox.
The paddles rotated faster, churning the water beneath them into white froth. And the boat began to move upstream, against the tide, a plume of smoke trailing behind it. From the banks came yells, some of greeting and some of derision, but Robert ignored them all. Others might have been first, but he had his steamboat, and that was all that mattered.
His practiced eye measured the speed at which the bank passed. Six or seven knots against the tide—nothing to sneer at, he thought. It might even be faster than Fulton had been, back in September.
“Stand by to come about!” he shouted, and the other two took a firm grip on the nearest thing to hand.
Robert pulled a lever in front of him straight to the back and simultaneously put the helm over. The starboard paddle ground to a halt, dragging in the water while the port wheel keep turning. That, and the helm sharply over, spun the fifty-foot barge in almost its own length. As the barge completed a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn to face downriver, he pushed the lever forward again. The starboard paddle wheel grated and lumbered to life again, and the boat sped back toward the city, hastened by the tide.
“What do you think, Miller?” Robert called over the chuffing boiler and the clunking gears below.
“It’s against nature, Captain!” Miller shouted back. “It ain’t no way for a man to travel!”
The balding bear of a man was glowering. Robert laughed. Miller would fight to keep his place aboard.
Back at the bridge, docking was simply a matter of shutting off the steam valve and throwing lines to the handlers on the wharf. The barge was drawn snugly into place, and Robert scrambled up the ladder to the dock.
“It hardly looks like the North River Steam Boat,” Langdon Cheves said. He leaned casually on his walking stick as he studied the barge.
“Hello, Langdon,” Robert said. “It’s not supposed to. Fulton is after river traffic. There’s none of that here. This is just a test. When I’m ready, I put this engine in a coaster. Then I’ll get a bigger one for the real prize. A steamship that can cross the Atlantic.”
Langdon whistled. “That’s a large dream, Robert. Your whole cargo would have to be fuel for the boiler. And I understand some people aren’t so eager to travel on Fulton’s steamboat, even with the river banks handy if something goes wrong. How are you going to convince them to sail out to sea in one of these contraptions? They’re dangerous, Robert.”
Robert gestured such problems away. “I’ll sail without passengers. And I’ll just build the ship big enough to carry fuel and cargo.” He pointed down the river. “That’s the problem.” From the Bridge they could see five hundred ships at anchor. “I’ll never get a steamship to sea if Jefferson has his way. Sometimes I think I should have done like the New Englanders. Sent everything I could load out before the embargo went into effect.”
“Let the Yankees be scofflaws, Robert. We’ll do our fighting within the system. There isn’t a planter south of Maryland—rice, cotton, or tobacco—who isn’t opposed to the embargo.”
“But you’ll all go along with it, you planters. Jefferson is a Virginian, and a planter. As soon as the Yankees oppose him you all leap to his defense. Us against them. North against South. And you never stop to consider that just because he’s a planter doesn’t mean he’s right.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you use that construction,” Langdon said slowly. “‘You planters.’ If you want to be particular, I’m a lawyer, not a planter. And you most certainly are a planter by birth.”
“It doesn’t work that way, and you know it.” He stepped to the edge of the dock. “Miller, bleed off the rest of the steam and douse the firebox. We’ll not be going out again today.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” Miller growled.
“Robert,” Langdon said. “I didn’t come down here to talk about politics. Catherine’s back.”
Robert didn’t turn from watching Miller on the barge. Finally he said, “I didn’t know.” It was a lie; her note had arrived yesterday. He had taken a house on Legare Street when he returned to find Catherine still gone. He hadn’t been near the East Bay house since. A year should have been enough time to make him free, but he had felt the familiar curlings of lust in his stomach. “The foundry,” he said, trying to take his thoughts off her. “That’s one thing the embargo will actually help. The orders for iron stock are up already, and I’ve begun the alterations necessary to make steel.”
“Did you understand what I said? Your sister’s back. She’s been back for two days. She adopted a baby up there in New England.”
“A baby?” Robert said. He leaned down to give Miller, and then Kemal, a hand up to the dock. “After gallivanting around New England for a whole year, I’d think she’d be eager to see her own daughter instead of bringing home a strange baby.”
“If you’ve any understanding of women, you’re one up on me, Robert. Look, now that you know she’s back, will you go to see her? She prevailed on me to come to you. I don’t usually interfere in personal matters, but this looks dashed odd, you know. After all, you were so close.”
Robert winced. “I’ll go see her, Langdon. I just … I’ll go see her.”
