WE BEACHED OUR BOATS ON A THIN ISLAND AT THE JUNCTION OF THE two rivers, where the blue waters of the Cumberland met the grey-brown torrent of the Ohio. For a few hundred yards the two currents flowed side by side, the divide obvious on the surface of the water. Then, abruptly, the Cumberland disappeared.
There was no grand estate on this island – no sign of habitation at all, save an abandoned fisherman’s shack built on exposed tree roots by the water’s edge – but it was not entirely deserted. Two flatboats had been drawn up on the sandy embankment, and a freshly trampled path led into the interior. We followed it, pushing past low-hanging branches and foliage until it opened into a broad clearing in the middle of the island. A dozen men slouched around its margins, whittling at pieces of wood or carving their initials on the tree-trunks, but I barely looked at them. Directly opposite where the path emerged, seated on a grey mare which he must have brought ashore for that express purpose, was Colonel Burr.
He had been a shadowy presence for so long in my thoughts, my fears and even my dreams that the reality was, inevitably, an anticlimax. Far from being the hulking warrior of my imagination, he was in fact about five and a half feet small with a delicate complexion and dainty hands. Instead of bestriding his horse he perched atop it, and in place of a colonel’s uniform he was dressed, almost to the point of fastidiousness, in a neatly tailored black suit. He held his head with a classical poise: a broad nose, a proud chin, and long sideburns, with a touch of severity in the high-domed forehead rising above. The receding, greying hair was pulled straight back behind his collar, dropping almost to the shoulder. He watched as our men entered the clearing one by one and assembled in a rough circle. As the last man filed in, and it became apparent there would be no more, I saw him bend down and whisper something to Tyler.
Tyler blushed, and murmured something I did not catch.
‘No matter.’ The colonel straightened in the saddle and turned to face his army. ‘Gentlemen, I welcome you to our expedition. Many of you, of course, know me personally, or by sight; others among you may know me better by reputation. I hope you do not hold that against me.’
An appreciative chuckle went around the assembly.
‘For you others, I am Colonel Aaron Burr, the notorious outlaw –wanted for duelling in New York, for murder in New Jersey, and now for treason in Ohio. I was also, until last year, Vice-President of the United States. God willing, I will be known by better titles before this war is done.’
If the rest of the men found this statement as absurd as I did, they did not show it. Instead, they thumped the butts of their muskets on the frozen ground and murmured approval.
Burr spread his arms wide. ‘I know that you have risked hardship, reputation, even violence to stand here. Be assured, your courage and sacrifices have not gone unnoticed. Down the Mississippi, a thousand acres of prime land awaits every one of you. When all this is done, you will live as kings, your wives and children like queens and princes. What do you say to that?’
A voice from the back spoke up. ‘Is it true we’re going to Mexico?’
Burr smiled. ‘You’ll understand, I’m sure, that I cannot tell you our precise destination at the present. That’ll have to wait for a more convenient moment. It’s enough to say that I’ve got my eye on a silver mine down south.’
The same voice came back again. ‘Is it true we’ll all be hanged?’
Burr did not blink. ‘Funnily enough, I’ve just argued that very question with a Kentucky jury. They didn’t see fit to convict me. You may take it from me that you’ve nothing to fear. There’s a war coming, everyone knows it, and once it starts there’s no state in the Union that won’t appreciate a well-armed band of filibusterers ready to teach our enemies a lesson. Until then, we’re just harmless settlers heading down river to take up some lands I happen to own in Louisiana.’
‘How’s a hundred men s’posed to whop anyone?’ asked another man, voicing the question uppermost in my own thoughts.
Colonel Burr smiled again. ‘From what I heard of your exploits, you could do it more or less single-handed.’ That drew laughter, and some good-natured cheers for the man who had spoken. ‘Even so, I’m figuring we’ll have some help. I can’t say too much, mind, but I’ve some friends in the garrison at New Orleans who’ll see that if it comes to battle, we won’t go in alone. There’s five hundred more men coming down from Pittsburgh even as we speak, and more gathering in Tennessee and the territories. We’re just the vanguard of this expedition. It don’t take but a spark to start a fire, and once we’ve got it lit it’ll burn like a haystack. I’ve supporters waiting in every capital west of the Alleghenies. Soon as they hear word of our success, they’ll cause such an agitation we’ll have regiments from every state marching to join us. But they’ll have to wait their turn when it comes to sharing out the spoils. You men who stand with me today will have the choicest picks.’
That cheered the men no end, though I was struck again that the colonel’s army seemed forever just off the horizon, its numbers swelling more in fantasy than in likelihood. I did not voice the thought. His speech over, he had dismounted his horse and was making his way around the circle, shaking hands with each of the men in turn. Tyler followed behind, making introductions where he could, though Burr seemed to possess a prodigious memory for names and faces. When they reached me, Tyler tapped Burr’s shoulder.
‘Lieutenant Jerrold,’ he said, investing my name with a significance I did not entirely like. ‘From England.’
Burr’s gaze fastened onto me. Watching him from across the clearing I had not noticed his eyes particularly, but now he was so close it was hard to imagine any other part of him. All the rest of his features seemed to recede, to be nothing more than a setting for eyes which possessed a life and character all their own. They were brown as polished walnut, with a brightness which almost compelled one to look at them. Even more than that, there was something in their gaze which prompted confidence and intimacy, which made me feel they somehow saw more of me than others did.
‘I am delighted to meet you,’ said Burr, pumping my hand up and down. ‘Without you, this adventure of ours could never have succeeded.’ He leaned closer and murmured in my ear. ‘We must speak more of it presently.’
I nodded, but before I could open my mouth to answer he had moved on and was listening as Tyler announced, ‘Miss Catherine Lyell, Mr Jerrold’s companion.’
Burr bowed low as an Ottoman courtier, then lifted her hand and pressed his lips against it. As he straightened himself, a curl at the edge of his mouth acknowledged the over-theatricality, even as his eyes invited her complicity.
‘Enchanted,’ he said. ‘With such beauty in our ranks, who will dare stand against us? You will be our talisman, Miss Lyell, our goddess of victory.’
Catherine’s cheeks flushed, and she curtsied. In four months of travel, even when she faced abduction by Harris, I do not think I had ever seen her so much at a loss for words.
Burr turned back to face the rest of the men. ‘“True hope is swift, and flies with swallows’ wings”, as Mr Shakespeare says. We’ll not make kings of ourselves by standing around this island until the meltwater comes. Get back to the boats. Mr Tyler will divide you into crews and we’ll be away presently. We should make Fort Massac in two days and the Mississippi by the New Year. After that …’ He grinned. ‘Who knows where we’ll get to.’
The men filed out of the clearing, and a negro boy led away the redundant horse. I was set to follow, when I heard Burr’s voice in my ear murmuring, ‘A word, if you please, Lieutenant Jerrold.’
He led me out of the clearing, away from the boats. A trickle of fear began to run down my spine – had he guessed my duplicity and resolved to end it? He walked briskly, pushing through the undergrowth with ease, until we came out overlooking the river. Gnarled tree-roots thrust forth from the muddy embankment like the arms of buried corpses, and a crust of ice had begun to form at the water’s edge.
‘I know what you must think,’ said Burr.
There was an uneasy, restless energy about him, like a small animal caught on open ground. He seated himself on a fallen tree-trunk, immediately sprang to his feet and paced across to the shore, then spun about as if he had heard a noise. Merely to watch him was exhausting.
‘You have come all this way from England. You have been sold promises of a great expedition, an army of conquest to sweep the Spanish out of the North Americas as Popham is sweeping them out of the South. Your friends have invested many ten thousands of pounds.’ His head flicked about. ‘Miss Lyell – she is Mr Lyell’s daughter? The banker?’
I nodded.
‘Is she married?’ He shook his head. ‘No, of course, not Miss Lyell. No matter. You are here, and you wish to know how a lapsed vice-president and a hundred territorial hayseeds will conquer the greatest empire on the continent. I confess, Mr Jerrold, I ask myself the same question. How many ships have you brought?’
I tried to remember the ciphered letter, still snug against my chest in my coat lining. ‘Two frigates, I believe.’
Burr frowned. ‘Is that all? I told them six. No matter. It is still twice America’s strength, after Jefferson’s cheese-paring.’
‘I thought our enemies were the Spanish,’ I ventured.
The brown eyes fixed on me. ‘So they are. But it pays to be vigilant. One does not know …’ The eyes darted away to some imagined movement in the forest. ‘What do you say, Lieutenant? Will our little wager repay itself?’
His movements ceased, and for a moment the entire sum of his energy seemed fixed on me, willing the answer from my lips. My mouth went dry and I struggled to compose any answer at all. Of course I knew what I ought to do, what Nevell would have had me say: that the scheme was unworkable and should be abandoned immediately. Yet staring into those deep brown eyes, it was somehow impossible.
‘It will be a difficult task,’ I mumbled.
He almost snatched the words out of the air. ‘But possible, you think? You are right, I am sure of it. After all, how many men did Cortés have with him? A hundred, a hundred and fifty? They made themselves lords of Mexico. Why should we not do the same?’
I fear my dismay was all too evident. Fortunately, he misunderstood it.
‘Don’t worry, Mr Jerrold. We won’t be burning your ships when we get there. You will be admiral of the fleet. Wilkinson will be Generalissimo, and we will all be rich as kings. Surely such rewards are worth the gamble?’
‘What of more local dangers?’ I asked, thinking back to our desperate flight from Blennerhassett Island, the troops we had slipped past in the fog. ‘We have had militia chasing us all the way down the river. What if they catch us?’
Burr waved away my objection. ‘Nothing but a misunderstanding, credulous magistrates paying too much heed to rumour. I hope you will not let a few nervous provincials unseat this enterprise.’
In my mind I scrabbled for some other ploy, some reason that would persuade him to let the conspiracy die quietly. I could think of nothing.
He slapped me on the back. ‘You will not regret this, Lieutenant, I promise you. Indeed, I venture, it will be the making of you. Now, let us be back to the boats. We still have many miles to travel to Vera Cruz.’