Death and glory, p.1
Death and Glory, page 1
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PROLOGUE
Jubal Slidell finished the last of his kippers, enjoying the metallic taste of herring in the back of his throat. It was a taste he had acquired since coming to England. He pushed the plate of his false teeth against the roof of his mouth with his tongue and wiped his lips with a serviette. Then he pushed back his chair and began the process of standing. It took a while, but he had nothing pressing. Ninety was just a memory to him and a dull one at that. The week before, he’d stumbled a little in the dining room of his pension hotel and even now the waiters eyed him carefully. Once standing, he puffed out his chest and raised his head in line with his spine. He took posture seriously. No one could say he wasn’t ramrod straight. Nor that he needed a cane at ninety-two.
Slowly, he crossed the lobby to the doors and turned to the concierge.
“What’s the weather, Ainsby?” he asked.
“A bit warm, sir,” came the reply.
Slidell nodded. “Excellent. I’m going to take my morning constitutional.”
“Good day, Senator.”
He tottered out the door. The London sun was warm, but the April air still had a breath of winter. He felt it in his bones, but then he seemed like nothing but bones these days.
He felt at home here in Grosvenor Street, having been exiled here for the last twenty years. After the war, he had escaped into Canada and then finally reached the English shore. It hurt that he had to sell his plantation. His wife was buried there, but the sale had afforded him all that he needed in his later years. When one is on the losing side, there is no pension.
When he reached Park Lane, he walked into Hyde Park and sat on his customary bench. He’d saved the crusts from his breakfast in his coat pocket and the pigeons cooed around his ankles. Tearing the bread into pieces, he dropped them in front of his private flock. Finished, he wiped the crumbs from his tweed coat. He looked like a retired British colonel now with the requisite mustache. There was nothing to suggest he was American, Confederate American at that. Of all its colonies around the world, only the Confederacy genuinely understood and appreciated Great Britain. He should know. He had been a U.S. senator and later a Confederate envoy to England. Such a good people, the English, he thought, no matter what the colonies say.
His pockets empty, he pushed himself to his feet again, and the pigeons flapped away. He took a deep breath of the crisp air and only coughed a little. Slowly he left the park and stepped around the corner into the bustle of the West End. Traffic was heavier here, much heavier. It wasn’t like this when he first came to London. It had been a quiet street then and he still had Jacques, his terrier. Dear old Jock. One never had to leash him because the passing carriages were few.
By now his bad leg was aching. It always did as his walk ended. He’d been slashed by a sword when the Union navy had boarded and attacked a Royal Mail vessel to arrest the South’s new diplomats, and one of their young officers had become agitated. It had become an international incident known as the Trent Affair. The Yankees never apologized, but Slidell and his fellow envoy Mason were released. Now practically no one could recall the incident. Everyone involved was dead. Almost everyone, that is.
Slidell’s walk was three-quarters finished now and he was slightly winded. He wouldn’t admit to himself that he was shuffling along at a snail’s pace. If pressed, he’d say he was taking the air.
A whip cracked nearby, then he heard the pounding of hooves. The cabmen these days drove too fast, too carelessly.
There was a scrape behind him, a shudder of metal wheel as it jumped the curb. The vehicle landed on the pavement just as Slidell turned. The front wheel struck him, knocking him against the wall of a stationer’s shop. The horses and carriage righted themselves and dropped into the street again. Slidell looked up. The driver glanced back at him, a neckerchief over his mouth and nose as he cracked the whip again.
The senator’s bones shattered like glass. He felt his heart beginning to fail. He knew it because it was his third attack. Decompensatio cordis. That’s what his physician had called it. Here it was again, like a wave coming at him.
Slidell cried out as pain washed over him. He felt the familiar burn in his chest. He was dying, he knew, but it didn’t hurt as much as he expected. He was leaning against the base of a balustrade, but he let go, rolled himself off, and lay on the pavement, as strangers ran up to help.
“Ramrod straight,” he murmured to himself.
He passed quickly. No one could help or revive him. They wouldn’t know how. What they also couldn’t know was that the final witness to the Trent Affair was gone.
CHAPTER 1
“Did you see it?” I asked my partner as we entered our offices in Craig’s Court, Whitehall, that morning.
“Aye,” my partner, Cyrus Barker, rumbled.
“A closed brougham at the curb in front of the Silver Cross at eight o’clock in the morning,” I said. “The Cross won’t open for hours. It must be someone here to see us.”
It was the second day of April 1894. Barker had removed his bowler hat and hung it on a hook. He put his stick in the stand, then continued into our chambers. There he went ’round his desk and settled into his green leather chair, the center of his universe.
“They have a right to do as they wish, do they not?” he asked. “This is a place of business. Are we to chase off everyone who stops near our door?”
“No,” I argued. “Only the ones who arrive in broughams. What have they got in there? A Gatling gun? Rifles or pistols, at the very least.”
The Guv stood, moved to his smoking cabinet, and selected a white meerschaum pipe with a yellow stem from among its brethren. He stuffed it with his custom tobacco while speaking over his shoulder.
“You’re in a mischievous mood this morning,” he remarked. “If they brought guns, they would have been wiser to have shot us on our doorstep. We have all manner of weapons here ourselves.”
“Still,” I cautioned.
“Why should you be concerned about a closed brougham?” he asked. “People ride in closed broughams every day. We’ll see if they come to our offices before we make a judgment.”
“I’ll have my hand on the pistol in my drawer all the same,” I warned him.
“If it makes you feel better, Thomas.”
The door to our waiting room opened just then and I heard more than one person enter. I clutched my pistol, but no one shot our clerk, not yet anyway.
“May I be of service to you, gentlemen?” our clerk, Jeremy Jenkins, asked in his East End accent.
“We’d like to see Mr. Cyrus Barker, please,” one of the visitors said. “Here is my card.”
From my desk I cannot see much of the waiting room. I saw a sleeve put something in front of Jenkins and he looked pleased. I glanced at Barker. He showed more interest in his pipe than in our guests. Our clerk entered with the silver salver he uses to bring calling cards to the Guv. There were no fewer than four in it now. He prized the delivery of such a treasure, four cards at once.
“Jeremy, would you bring two chairs from the outer office?” my partner asked.
Four men entered the room, as I helped Jenkins bring in two chairs in addition to the pair of yellow visitor’s chairs in our chambers. One of the visitors reached over the desk to shake Barker’s hand. I recognized a secret Masonic handshake. I took out my notebook and began to write.
“Mr. Barker, I presume?” the man said.
He was an impressive fellow in his late forties, well-built, with dark hair and a short beard. His eyes were a piercing blue. Something about him, his deportment and assurance, made me think he was a military man.
“You are General Woodson, I presume?” Barker asked, studying the man’s card.
“I am, sir.”
“Your card gives an address in Havana. Are you a member of the Cuban army?”
“No, sir,” Woodson replied. “I was a proud member of the Confederate States of America. I am now living in Havana as a tobacco planter and cigar maker.”
“You are a Mason?” the Guv asked.
“We are members of the Knights of the Golden Circle.”
“I thought your organization had dissolved,” my partner remarked.
“Far from it, sir,” the man replied. “We have never been more active.”
“Sit, gentlemen,” Barker said. “I can offer cigars, but I cannot promise they will be as fresh as the general’s.”
“Allow me to introduce my colleagues,” Woodson said. “This is Brigadier David St. Ives of Rio de Janeiro, Colonel Zebedee Beaufort of Juarez, Mexico, and Captain Manuel Cortes of Bogota, Colombia.”
“Are you all expatriates?” I asked.
“Forgive me, gentlemen,” Bar ker said. “This is my partner, Thomas Llewelyn.”
“Not expatriates,” Woodson replied. “Merely patriots. We could not abide the Union crowing over the graves of our beloved comrades, so we moved further south for a time. We Confederates have colonies across Central and South America. Some of us have married into the native populations. There are many thousands of us who are exiled.”
“I see,” Barker rumbled. “How can a pair of London enquiry agents be of service to you?”
“You likely can’t, but the head of the Knights Templar can.”
My partner was the current leader of a secret society with hundreds of members, many of whom were wealthy and powerful. This was known to practically no one. That someone who had recently come from the Americas knew this fact was astounding.
The general reached into his pocket and retrieved an unsealed envelope, sliding it across the desk toward my partner. The Guv took it and removed a letter, which he opened and read. I watched as Barker’s brows rose above the black-lensed spectacles he wore, and his dark mustache bowed into a smile.
“Albert Pike?” he asked. “I never expected to hold a letter of his in my hand.”
“He was the leader of our order and a fine general of the Southern cause,” Woodson explained. “He passed away not long after writing this.”
Barker put the letter back into the envelope and moved it to the edge of the desk where I could reach it. I opened it and read:
To Whom It May Concern,
It is my wish that you will treat General Woodson with respect and favor as the new leader of the Knights of the Golden Circle and will aid him and his followers in their endeavors.
Yr. obdn’t servant,
General Albert Pike
March 20, 1891
Carefully, I put the letter back into the envelope and laid it on the desk. I had no idea who Albert Pike was, or how Barker had been aware of his name.
“Very well, gentlemen,” my partner said. “I am inclined to help you with your mission, whatever it is. How may we be of service?”
Woodson cleared his throat. “We wish to speak to the prime minister.”
“You do not need my help to do so,” Barker said.
“Ah, but we do,” Woodson answered. “We have already been denied entry to Downing Street.”
“For what reason?”
“The prime minister does not believe the Confederacy exists any longer as an entity, and if it does, he does not believe we represent it.”
“Those are valid points, both of them,” the Guv said. “What was your response?”
Woodson gave an assured smile and pulled a second envelope from his pocket, placing it again in front of Barker. My partner opened it and read.
“Thomas,” he asked. “Who is Jefferson Davis?”
“He was the president of the Confederacy,” I answered, looking at Woodson. “I am correct, am I not?”
The men nodded as one. I took the second letter from my employer. It read:
Let it be known that I pass on the title of President of the Confederate States of America to General James Woodson on this date, March 18, 1889.
Jefferson Davis
“Jeremy!” Barker called.
Our clerk entered the room with a question in his eyes. “Sir?”
“We need your expertise,” he said. “I have two papers for you to examine.”
“Yes, sir,” Jenkins replied. “I’ll get my loupe.”
I heard him rummaging around in his desk before he returned. I vacated my swiveling chair and pushed it over to the side of the desk. Our visitors were puzzled.
“Our clerk was the son of a famous forger, both of documents and paintings,” Barker explained. He gestured to a painting on the wall. “Mr. Jenkins has inherited his father’s gifts. That painting is his. It’s the Battle of Culloden.”
Jeremy lifted the first note.
“Vellum, octavo sized,” he pronounced. “The watermark is from the Lucas Brothers Paper Company of Baltimore. The writing was done by an older man, with what we call a spidery hand, which means it shook as he wrote. It stutters here as it starts, you see. The ink h’aint expensive. Of course, I haven’t an original to compare the signature to, but there are no breaks in the writing and no obvious attempts at forgery. It’s dreadful hard for a younger man to duplicate an older man’s weaknesses. Who was this gentleman?”
“Mr. Pike was a famous general of the South during our Civil War,” Woodson supplied. “He was also the most famous member of the Masons and author of Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. Lastly, he was Grand Master of the Knights of the Golden Circle. He passed three years ago. It had been his intent to come here himself, but Death finally took him, as it will us all.”
“And the other?” Barker asked our clerk, sitting back in his chair. He pressed his fingers together and swayed his green leather swiveling chair from side to side.
“Again, it’s vellum and not an old document,” Jenkins said. “It was done within the last four years. The watermark is from Crane Stationery. The ink is much blacker, of a higher quality. The signee was near death. It’s a scrawl and he did not finish the line. See here? It fades out. The last few letters are just a blot of ink. The first name appears to be Jefferson, and the last name begins with a ‘D,’ but I can’t decipher it. The letter was written by one man and signed by another. I suppose the first was a secretary. It has an assured hand, and the lettering was taught in America.”
“I wrote it myself,” St. Ives said. He was a colorful-looking fellow with a mustache and gray in his dark curling hair. A green silk tie was wound about his throat. He reminded me of another American, Edgar Allan Poe.
“I cannot take that at face value,” Jeremy said. “I’ll need a specimen.”
I took a sheet of foolscap from my desk and a pen and inkwell. The fellow changed places with the general and copied the letter. When it was finished, Jenkins examined it.
“It is similar, but not exact,” our clerk said. “Have you been ill as well?”
“No, sir,” St. Ives answered. “I am currently drunk.”
Jenkins nodded. “That would explain it. Yes, I’d say both of these letters are genuine, Mr. B.”
“Thank you, Jeremy,” the Guv said, nodding.
“It is interesting,” St. Ives said, raising a brow, “that you should keep a forgery expert about like a dog.”
“I have the dog as well, but he is guarding my home,” the Guv said. “Tell me, General, why do you think I have the ability to snap my fingers and let you speak to Lord Rosebery? That is quite an assumption.”
“I infer it, I confess,” Woodson answered. “A man does not reach your position without accumulating powerful friends. I assume they are either members of the Masonic or Templar organizations. Possibly both. You are the head of the latter organization.”
“How did you come by that information?”
“General Pike confided it to us before he died.”
Barker was making abstract shapes on his glass-topped desk with the tip of his finger. He said nothing. Woodson watched him with those sky-blue eyes of his. He did not appear nervous in any way.
“I had hoped to meet the author of Morals and Dogma someday, but alas…” the Guv said.
“We are leaders of the Knights of the Golden Circle in our respective countries,” Woodson stated. “We are also prominent businessmen. I own a tobacco plantation. St. Ives here grows rubber, Beaufort is a military advisor to the Mexican government, and Captain Cortes’s family grows coffee.”
“You are all to be commended for your industry since you left the United States,” Barker stated.
“We would not characterize it in that manner,” General Woodson said. “No matter where we live, we are sons of the South.”
“What is your purpose in speaking to Rosebery, gentlemen?” the Guv asked.
“Alas, sir,” Woodson continued. “We would speak with the prime minister only. It is a private matter.”
“Is it?” Barker purred. “How intriguing. I will consider the introduction on the condition that I attend the meeting and Mr. Llewelyn with me.”
“Is he a Mason or Templar?” Woodson asked, looking at me.
“I fear not,” I said. “I promised my mother, who has no respect for secret societies. She’s a good Methodist.”
