WILL, PAUL THOUGHT, GAZING AT Janet Todd as they stood on the prow of a Baltimore and Ohio ferryboat, crossing the Hudson to New York. The sheer intensity of this woman’s determination was carrying them deeper into this conspiracy, in spite of the portents of failure. She simply refused to listen to anyone, from John Wilkes Booth to Robert E. Lee, who intimated that the South was losing the war and the western confederacy was a desperate gamble.
Love. That was the other reality in the equation. Did will negate it, producing zero? For some men, that sort of mathematics might be persuasive. They might fear their manhood was at risk with such a woman. But Paul had never seen Janet Todd as sweet-tempered or submissive. This formidable will only multiplied the risk of love somewhat beyond his original estimate.
There was now another factor in the equation that Major Stapleton was juggling in his aching head: The Crater. Before they left Richmond, Paul had accepted an invitation from their host, John Hayes, to visit it. They had ridden by back roads from Richmond to Petersburg. Hayes knew the Confederate commander, Pierre Beauregard, and he had allowed them to go into the fort adjacent to the site of the explosion. The scene beggared anything Paul had seen at Antietam or Fredericksburg. Thousands of dead Union soldiers, many of them African-Americans, were piled on top of one another in the huge hole. The sickening stench of decaying flesh
rose in the humid air. A swarthy Confederate major about Paul’s age said, “They’ve sent a flag of truce, asking permission to collect them. But we’re going make the bastards part of the foundation of a new fort.”
Stupidity, Paul thought. How long could a professional soldier remain loyal to an army that committed such colossal acts of stupidity? The word kept echoing in his head all the way to New York. He did not know how this idea functioned in the equation he was trying to construct. He only knew it was acquiring ominous power.
From the ferry they hurried onto cobblestoned West Street, where they hailed a hack to ride uptown. It was the first of August; the temperature was in the nineties, with a soggy humidity that almost matched Washington D.C. Gotham’s streets were a tangle of hacks, wagons, carts and carriages. Dense crowds surged along the sidewalks, the faces a mixture of white and black, Irish and German and English. Prosperity was visible everywhere, in the freshly painted buildings, the shops crammed with goods, the expensive clothes of the passersby. It was an almost cruel contrast to Richmond’s bleak poverty.
Janet was thinking different thoughts. “How nice to be in the most pro-Southern city in the North,” she said.
“It was until the draft riots last July,” Paul replied. “Now I fear they take a dim view of the Confederacy.”
In the summer of 1863, New York had erupted in violent protests against the draft. For almost three days the city was in the hands of a mob. Only the intervention of federal troops had restored order.
“Why do you constantly have something negative to say about our cause?” Janet asked.
For a moment Paul almost admitted he was trying to make her see the South’s cause was hopeless. “I’m only being negative about mob rule. Like General Lee, I
don’t think mobs accomplish much. Here in New York the Democrats murdered every Negro they could find. They hanged them from street lamps—it was ugly.”
Mentioning Lee only increased Janet’s irritation. They had quarreled about the general on the train from Washington, D.C. Janet had complained that he had not even tried to understand what they hoped to do in the western confederacy. Paul had insisted that Lee’s concern about the Sons of Liberty turning into a mob was a legitimate worry. He declined to abandon the argument now. “You can’t support an honorable cause with dishonorable acts,” he said.
Janet said nothing. She looked away from him at the crowded sidewalks.
“I thought we were going to be absolutely honest with each other. I assumed that meant I should say exactly what I think about everything, from Colonel Adam Jameson to General Lee.”
She clearly thought that clause of their contract should be either revised or revoked. Paul stubbornly continued, “The night before my roommate, Jeff Tyler, left the military academy, we agreed that the South’s only hope was to fight an honorable defensive war. They should portray themselves as people being invaded by fanatics who were trying to change the fundamental structure of their society. It was their best hope of winning the world’s sympathy.”
“What has that wonderful idea accomplished?” Janet said. “France, England, have toyed with us. Taken our money and sold us blockade runner trash. While we’ve neglected our natural allies—the Democrats of the North.”
At the Astor House, a huge granite pile on lower Broadway, they registered as brother and sister actors and obtained adjoining rooms without the slightest difficulty. Once more they were forced to pay in advance.
“I begin to feel sorry for theater people,” Paul said as they went up in the hydraulic elevator. “They seem universally distrusted.”
The elevator operator was a white-haired black man who stared straight ahead, paying no attention to them. “It’s almost as bad as being a southerner in the North,” Janet said.
“Or a northerner in the South, I suppose,” Paul replied.
“What do you mean?”
“I wonder where we’ll live, when all this is over.”
“My father is leaving me Hopemont. I’d be happy there, if you would be.”
“I’d be happy anywhere that you were happy.”
The elevator stopped at their floor, and the black operator opened the door to reveal a fat redfaced man and his equally fat wife. The woman stared at Janet’s hand and gave Paul a glare as she and her husband stepped back to let him and Janet off. The whine of the descending elevator seemed to underscore the woman’s disapproval.
“Did you notice her looking for a wedding ring?” Paul said. “I can imagine them telling friends over dinner about these two terrible young people on their way to an assignation. It’s an old New York custom.”
“Have you ever done it?”
“Not until today.”
He thought his tone was playful but Janet’s response was a frown.
In an hour, bathed and in fresh clothes, they were riding uptown in a horse-drawn trolley to a brownstone off Fifth Avenue on 36th Street. Paul handed an envelope to a short swarthy butler. He examined its contents and escorted them to a booklined study. A man with a distinctly Jewish-looking face and gray hair sat playing solitaire on a card table. He did not look up as they walked into the room.
“I’m told you need money,” he said with a brief
smile. “Something in the vicinity of two hundred thousand dollars?”
In Richmond, the morning after their meeting with Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, they had conferred with Judah Benjamin, the tall brilliant Jew who was serving as the Confederacy’s secretary of state. He had given them this address and told them they would get additional instructions here, along with the money.
“We’re buying thirty thousand rifles,” Paul said. “They could easily demand twenty dollars a gun.”
“If they want more money, we’ll pay the balance later. A lot will depend on the kinds of guns that are on the market at the moment.”
The man opened a wall safe and counted out the money in $500 bills. “I’m adding another twenty-five thousand to buy yourself some newspaper coverage,” he said. “If your western revolution gets going it wouldn’t hurt to have a New York paper backing you.”
Paul put the money in a belt around his waist. The mere act made him feel uneasy. He had sensed General Lee’s disapproval of his decision to join the Sons of Liberty’s conspiracy. Accepting this money as an agent of the Confederate government meant he had crossed the line from treasonous words to treasonous action. If the business ended in a court-martial, he would have only Henry Gentry’s testimony to exonerate him—and he might be strongly inclined to say he had begun to distrust Major Stapleton.
“Do you have a newspaper in mind?” Paul asked.
“The Daily News. Fernando Wood backs the Southern Confederacy, thanks to the annual stipend we pay him. He’ll be behind the western confederacy for the right price.”
There was more than a hint of sarcasm in the way he balanced the two confederacies. Paul suspected he believed in neither of them.
“Don’t Mr. Wood’s convictions have anything to do with it?” Janet asked.
“Fernando Wood has no convictions.”
The man resumed playing solitaire. The butler led them to the front door. “At least he could have wished us good luck,” Paul murmured.
As they boarded another horsecar, Paul bought a copy of the New York Daily News from a newsboy. MORE ABOUT THE CRATER FIASCO! was the headline over the lead story on the right-hand side of the page. The reporter described the disaster in grisly detail. He confirmed Lee’s estimate that the Union troops had exploded more than four tons of gunpowder under the Confederate forts. He told how General Ambrose Burnside had been ordered to cancel the attack shortly after the explosion, when it became evident that the crater was an obstacle, not an open sesame to victory. But he had sat in his bombproof shelter and done nothing for five hours while his men blundered into the slaughter pit. Two other Union generals cowered in similar bombproof shelters, drunk, while their men died.
Stupidity. The word gnawed at Paul’s brain.
He paged through the rest of the paper. Toward the back, he saw a smaller headline: Another Union Repulse. The writer described the Army of Kentucky’s attack on the Confederate saltworks near Saltville in western Virginia and its rout by the men of General Morgan’s division under the command of Colonel Adam Jameson. An editorial tied this minor disaster into the crater fiasco and ended with a call for Ulysses S. Grant’s dismissal as commander in chief of the Union Army: How much longer are the American people expected to tolerate such gross incompetence? How many more men must die to support this failed president and his ruined administration?
“Doesn’t that make delightful reading?” Janet asked.
“What?”
“The mess Grant is making,” Janet said.
Paul had almost forgotten she was sitting beside him, reading the same stories. He had instantly grasped the significance of the Union attack on Saltville. It was an attempt to destroy Adam Jameson’s division before he could march to support the Sons of Liberty uprising.
The last paragraph of the Saltville story included a list of Union casualties. Paul was startled to find Captain Simeon Otis among the dead. He pointed out the name to Janet. “Colonel Gentry must have been involved,” he said.
“That makes me feel even better,” she replied.
Henry Gentry’s intelligence network had obviously learned a great deal about Gabriel Todd’s conspiracy. It meant an incursion by Adam Jameson was unlikely to have the advantage of surprise. Should he point this out to Janet? No, it would only lead to another argument.
They left the horsecar at Washington Square and hurried across the green park to a side street shop with an innocent name: GREYSTONE’S RARE BOOKS. Inside, a muscular balding man with a brown handlebar mustache was behind the counter. He studied them warily.
“I’ve been told you’d have this order ready,” Paul said, handing him another envelope. This one had been given to them by a Confederate secret service official in Richmond’s Treasury Department, across the street from Thomas Jefferson’s capitol.
“I’ll be with you in two minutes,” the man said.
The message was in cipher. He undoubtedly had the codebook in the back of the store. He returned in a moment and held out his hand to Paul. “Miles McDonald’s my name,” he said. “We’ve been expecting you.”
Paul introduced him to Janet. “She’s the real commander of this expedition,” he said. “I’m only along as an ordnance expert.”
McDonald sent a clerk racing off to summon three
other members of the group. They soon joined them in the back room, where McDonald served everyone bitter coffee into which the men poured stiff shots of Irish whiskey from an open bottle on the table. Two of the new arrivals had Irish names and looked it; the third, a short, potbellied sidewhiskered Englishman named Bartholomew Mason, described himself as a Jeffersonian Democrat from the slums of London. But there was no trace of cockney in his accent.
When McDonald introduced Paul, the two Irishmen reacted with disbelief to his surname. “Are you related to the general?” one asked.
“He’s my brother.”
“Last summer he killed about a thousand good Democrats over on Second Avenue around Fourteenth Street,” the other Irishman said.
“Are you talking about the draft riots?” Janet asked.
Mason nodded. “We were within an inch of capturing the city when General Stapleton’s division arrived from Gettysburg, complete with cannons, which they didn’t hesitate to use. He smashed the secession out of this city in about ten minutes.”
“The poor fellows never had a chance,” Miles McDonald said. “It was clubs against rifle bullets and canister.”
Paul avoided Janet’s eyes. Was she wondering why he had not told her about his brother’s role in the draft riots? If so, she chose to conceal it. “Here’s another Stapleton,” she said, “ready to tell his murderous brother and everyone else it’s time to stop the slaughter.”
The Irishmen looked skeptical. But Mason said, “If you’ve convinced Jefferson Davis, that’s good enough for me. Here’s the deal. Tonight at eight o’clock, you’ll have dinner with Fernando Wood in the Astor House and find out how much he wants to put the Daily News behind you. Tomorrow we’ll show you the guns.”
“The News is goin’ broke, so don’t think you’re gettin’
a silk purse. It’s a lot closer to a sow’s ear,” Miles McDonald said.
“Pay no attention to him,” Mason said. “He’s an old Tammany Democrat. They all hate Fernando because he kept too much of the graft for himself when he was mayor.”
“I’m a man who believes in the Southern Confederacy,” McDonald said. “It’s our one hope of escaping the dictatorship of the Republicans. If they win they’ll run the country for the next hundred years and no Irish-Catholic will get a decent job anywhere. Our children’s children will be lugging bricks and digging ditches beside a bunch of niggers, probably for less money than they get.”
The other two Irishmen remained stony-faced before this impassioned speech. Paul read nothing in their faces that suggested they could think a hundred years ahead. They were mercenaries, working for Mason.
“Where are the guns?” Paul asked.
“On a railroad siding over in Jersey City. We’ll take you there tomorrow,” Mason said.
“Where did you get them?” Paul said.
“The less you or anyone else knows about that, the better,” Mason replied.
“We’ve got a line on something hotter than rifles,” Miles McDonald said. “Gatling guns.”
“What are they?” Janet asked.
“A rapid-fire gun that can shoot over a hundred rounds a minute,” Paul said. “I saw a demonstration of one in Washington in 1862. General John Reynolds and a dozen other top officers urged the government to buy it. But the idiots in the army ordnance department refused to approve it—”
Paul stopped, embarrassed by the anger in his voice. He was talking as if he wished the Union Army had bought the clumsy murderous weapon and won the war. Did he really wish that had happened? He would never
have received his Gettysburg wound—or met Janet Todd. Life was a very confusing equation, crammed with pluses and minuses.
“The inventor’s joined the Sons of Liberty,” McDonald said. “He gave us the plans. We’re having the guns made in Europe.”
“Will they be here in time for us to use them?” Janet asked.
“Maybe,” Mason said.
“With or without them, we’ll show the world that tens of thousands of Democrats are sick of Lincoln,” Janet said.
For a moment Paul almost rebuked her. He had begun to think Janet did not care whether the Sons of Liberty’s insurrection succeeded. She would be satisfied with an upheaval—days or weeks of turmoil that would prove Lincoln had no support in the American heartland. It was more than a little ironic to see the way she and Henry Gentry agreed that the mere fact of an insurrection would wreck Lincoln.
The trouble with that idea was the way it left the men with guns in their hands exposed to capture and possible execution for treason, as General Lee had pointed out. As a professional soldier, Paul’s instinctive loyalty was to these fighting men. He suddenly heard Henry Gentry saying, Janet Todd is a Confederate agent. Was his seduction, his enlistment in the Sons of Liberty, part of a coldhearted plan? No, he rejected that demoralizing idea.
They rode downtown to the Astor House through the terrific heat and humidity. Janet quizzed him about Fernando Wood. Paul knew little beyond his stormy tenure as mayor of New York—he had fought with the reigning Democratic bosses of Tammany Hall—and his 1861 proposal that New York should secede from the Union and became a free city, in which North and South would trade as equals.
At eight o’clock in the Astor House’s opulent Merchants Room restaurant, they met the owner of the Daily News. Fernando Wood had a face that seemed to narrow to a knife edge around his aristocratic nose. Beneath shrewd knowing dark eyes was the precisely curled black mustache of an English gentleman. Wood was wearing a creamy white summer suit with a large purple handkerchief in the upper pocket, matched by a purple tie. Beside him sat a handsome redheaded woman in a white lace dress that displayed a remarkable amount of her snowy breasts. Wood shook hands and introduced Gertrude McAfee.
“Gertrude’s from the South,” he said with a smile. “I thought she’d like to be in on our dastardly plot.”
“What part of the South?” Janet asked.
“New Orleans,” Miss McAfee said in a heavy drawl.
“Her father is an old friend. He sent her up here to protect her from Lincoln’s liberators. She wrote a wonderful series of articles for the News about the insults women have had to endure in New Orleans since the federals occupied it.”
Miss McAfee was a little too voluptuous and her smile too clever for Paul to swallow this. She reminded him of several women he had seen on the arms of Union generals in Washington. They listened while she described New Orleans women being dragged into doorways and violated by drunken Union soldiers, many of them Negroes.
Meanwhile they enjoyed New York’s favorite dish, oysters on cracked ice. Wood ordered champagne and suggested lobster in a poached cream sauce for the main course, followed by chocolate mousse for dessert. It was a feast and Paul began to wonder who was going to pay for it. He suspected it was not Fernando Wood.
“So,” the ex-mayor said as the coffee was served. “What do you want me to do for twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“Support the western confederacy,” Janet said. “Call it the noblest work of political genius you’ve ever seen. Print everything we send you about our declaration of independence, our constitutional convention.” She described the thousands of angry Democrats ready to revolt in Kentucky and Indiana, their plan to create a new country backed by the liberated Confederate prisoners outside Indianapolis and Chicago.
“I like it,” Wood said. “I’ll put every ounce of ink and every inch of type in the building behind it. The moment you succeed, I’ll call on Lincoln to resign.”
Paul took an envelope containing $25,000 from the inside pocket of his coat. “Why do you want all this money to do that, Mr. Wood?” Janet suddenly asked. “I’ve just come from Richmond. The South needs every cent it can find to buy uniforms, ammunition, food. They’re close to starvation.”
Wood stared at them in undisguised amazement. “I need it because the Daily News isn’t making a profit, Miss Todd,” he said. “And Miss McAfee needs a few new dresses. And I need several new suits. And a bargain’s a bargain. What’s going on here? You people are just supposed to deliver the money and fill me in on the details.”
“Here’s your money, Mr. Wood,” Paul said, handing him the envelope. “Although I agree with Miss Todd’s sentiments, I also understand your necessities.”
“Those insufferable Republicans at the New York Times have been trying to put Fernando out of business,” Gertrude McAfee said. “It would be a tragedy if they succeeded. The loss of one of our few courageous Democratic voices.”
Wood ordered another bottle of champagne to try to restore their good humor. The ex-mayor also ordered another chocolate mousse, which he shared with Miss McAfee. A gob of chocolate dropped onto her left breast. There was much giggling as Wood wiped it off.
Miss McAfee’s profession was becoming more and more apparent. Whether she practiced it in New Orleans or had assumed it in New York was an interesting if somewhat moot point.
Miss McAfee said she hoped Wood would let her write about the Sons of Liberty uprising. “These two should be the stars of the story,” she said. “I can even see a title: ‘For Love and Liberty,’”
“Not bad,” Wood said. He scribbled it on a pad he pulled out of his inner coat pocket.
“Once things get going, I hope you’ll tell us your story, Miss Todd,” Wood said. “We’ll make you famous—or infamous, depending on the reader’s political orientation. I hope you’ll include how you persuaded Major Stapleton to change sides and risk his reputation and his life for your cause.”
The edge of sarcasm in Wood’s voice made it clear that he was getting even for Janet’s suggestion that he support the western confederacy free of charge. He was practically saying she had made sure Paul was being well rewarded for his southern sympathies.
“I’ll consider it,” Janet said with a defiant toss of her dark hair.
The idea of making their love a story in a cheap newspaper like the Daily News horrified Paul. Wood and Miss McAfee departed wishing them success, and the waiter presented the check. Paul paid it and he and Janet took the elevator to the sixth floor of the Astor House.
“You’re not serious about letting him use our story in his rag of a newspaper, are you?” Paul asked as they walked down the red-carpeted corridor to their rooms.
“Why not?”
“Janet—what we have between us can never be shared with anyone.”
“Come now. Don’t you think everyone knows we’re lovers? John Wilkes Booth, the Hayeses, Jefferson Davis? Even your wonderful General Lee?”
“I don’t know about the others. But I’m quite certain General Lee thinks I’m conducting myself like a man of honor with you.”
“But you’re not. At least on his terms. On my terms—and I hope on your terms—you are. Why not tell the world about us? It might win us thousands of Democrats who remember your father’s name.”
“No!”
They stood there in the silent corridor, suddenly no longer lovers but antagonists. For a moment Janet seemed tempted to defy him. Instead, she pressed herself against him and said, “I’m sorry. You’re right, of course. It’s unthinkable.”
Paul kissed her with a violence that confessed how close he had been to repudiating love—and the western confederacy. “Can I come to you tonight?” he asked
“Of course.”
A half hour later, when he knocked on her door, she called, “It’s open!”
She was in bed beneath a sheet, wearing a pale blue nightgown. A faint breeze stirred the curtains but did little to alter the almost suffocating heat and humidity. In the yellow lamplight, there was a sheen of perspiration on Janet’s forehead. Her expression seemed welcoming, but Paul sensed something strange in her manner.
“Are there many women like Gertrude McAfee in New York?” Janet asked.
“A great many. They’re in Washington too. Some people call them adventuresses. But I’m afraid they soon sink to another level.”
“You called me an adventuress a while ago.”
“It had a different meaning,” Paul said.
“I hope so,” she said.
Paul sat down beside her on the bed. “Tomorrow morning, why don’t we go to city hall and get married? No matter what happens, we’ll know we love each other
for better or for worse. We’ll have testified to it in a public way.”
“I’d say yes in a moment if Adam Jameson wasn’t involved. I think he’d react badly to the news. So badly he might find reasons to stay in western Virginia.”
There it was, the southern cause, personified by Adam Jameson, standing between them as long as the war lasted. The only solution was a swift end to the war—something the western confederacy might accomplish.
Paul lay down beside Janet on the outside of the sheet and kissed her gently. “Let’s forget them all for a while,” he said.
He took off his night robe and slipped under the sheet. Untying the bow on her nightgown, he began undoing a half-dozen smaller bows that ran down the center of the lacy garment.
“I love you,” he said. “You love me. It’s the only thing that matters.”
“If only that were true,” Janet murmured.
“It is true,” Paul said.
For a moment he saw himself trying to extricate Janet from the clutching hands of Gabriel Todd, Rogers and Adam Jameson, Jefferson Davis, Fernando Wood. They had to get beyond argument, beyond interfering voices that inflicted doubts and wounds. “Come to me,” Paul whispered. “Don’t hold anything back.”
Within minutes, Paul saw this was exactly what Janet was doing. She was no longer the woman who had surrendered in his arms at high noon beside the gleaming Ohio River. Whether it was willed or unwilled, he sensed a determination to enjoy him without the gift of herself that he needed and wanted to reassure him that he was still in control of their lives.
Why wasn’t it happening? In this gigantic hotel, stripped even of their surnames, they were primary selves, simply Paul and Janet. Family and history should be vanishing in a gathering ritual of gift and acceptance,
wish and desire, hope and faith. But the Janet he was kissing and caressing remained Janet Todd. Was there something even more irreducible beyond that formidable family name: Confederate agent?
“Now Janet, now,” Paul whispered as he entered her. “Give yourself to me as I’m giving myself to you. Tell me how much you love me. Say it.”
She would not or could not say it. Instead she tried to give him her physical self, the inner flesh that accepted his manhood, the breasts and thighs and tongue and lips that created this terrific wanting in his body. You can have all of this, Paul, but not the other thing, not Janet without Todd.
The clatter and cries of Broadway’s voices and vehicles drifted into the room. They evoked memories of the Confederate moneyman’s dry amorality and Fernando Wood’s lecherous greed and Gertrude McAfee’s commercial sensuality. The August heat bathed Paul in sweat as he struggled to annihilate these enemies of love.
But he could not overcome Janet’s refusal to abandon Todd. Suddenly he was Blondin, falling from his wire into a cataract of wish and desire that was a sort of death. He refused to accept it and simultaneously in his deepest self accepted it as he had accepted that other death at Gettysburg. It was too real, too huge, to escape. It was his fate.
“I love you,” he whispered as he cradled her in his arms.
She answered him with a kiss. But the words he wanted to hear remained unspoken.
They slept.