I was lurching along the wall before the words were well out of his mouth, clinging to the brickwork like a stricken lizard and praying that my leg wouldn’t betray me, for the news he’d shouted could mean only one thing – another parley before the storm, and I was going to be in on it, if I had to crawl every inch of the way. Pain stabbed through my knee, and I’d have fallen if I hadn’t wrenched Jerry’s carbine from his hand and thrust it into the ground as a crutch. It was too short by half, and I tottered there like Long John Silver in drink, roaring for assistance, until Emperor, who’d emerged from under the engine where he’d been weeping, gave me a shoulder. J.B. was already at the doorway, cocking his rifle, motioning Joe to stand aside, when I arrived at a stumbling run, grabbing at the closed side of the door. J.B. shot me a startled look, so I gave him a glaring grin, a hand on the Colt in my waistband, to let him see I was at his side, ready to sell my life dearly; he said nothing, and we both turned our eyes to the crack of the door.
Two men were walking towards us, a tall, black-avised fellow striding like a guardsman, and a smaller chap in the dark-and-light blue of the U.S. Marines. But what took my eye was the dense throng of people watching, hardly more than a long stone’s throw away – there were hundreds of ’em, among the armoury sheds and outside the gates on the open ground towards the railroad tracks, militia mostly, but many townsmen, and women and children, too, all spellbound in a strange silence broken only by the steady tread of the two approaching officers.
They stopped about twenty yards off, conferring, then the Marine turned and marched back, and the big fellow came on alone, more slowly. He wore what looked like a cavalry cloak and uniform cap, an erect soldierly figure, and I was wondering where I’d seen him before when it dawned: he was devilish like me. Not a double, perhaps, and lacking a couple of inches of my height, but like enough, what with his handsome head, broad shoulders, and damn-you-m’lad carriage. He walked up to the door, and J.B. shoved out his carbine and demanded his business.
“James Stuart, lieutenant, First Cavalry,” says he, in a pleasant Southern voice. “Am I addressing Mr Smith?”
J.B. pushed the door wider, and Stuart surveyed him a moment with keen blue eyes (mine are brown, by the way) before glancing briefly at me, propped panting against the timber and looking like the last survivor of Fort Despair, I don’t doubt. He pulled a paper from his breast and offered it to J.B.
“I have a communication from my superiors, Colonel Lee, commanding the troops … and Mr Messervy of the Treasury Department,” he added, his eyes averted from me – and as I caught his slight emphasis on the second name, and realised what it meant, I almost cried out – he knew who I was, and was letting me know it! Of course, he must have had my description from Messervy himself, and had recognised me under all the blood and filth, the alert resourceful subaltern – I was to form a good opinion of Jeb Stuart in later years, but I never held him in higher esteem than at that moment. For whatever happened now, even if J.B. refused to chuck in the towel and it came to a final storming party, the attackers would be looking out for me, and I’d be immune, and safe, at last … Even as Stuart, at J.B.’s request, began to read the letter aloud, I was warily scanning the distant spectators – the militia, the Marines, a group of officers apart, a regimental-looking buffer in civilian duds astride a horse by the trees (Lee himself, as it turned out), and, sure enough, a tall, graceful figure pacing leisurely to and fro by his stirrup: Messervy, all careless elegance at six in the morning.
People were crowding behind us to hear the message – Washington, a couple of other hostages, Jerry, and Joe absolutely breathing down my neck. It was a plain demand for surrender, promising that we’d be held pending orders from President Buchanan, but that if we resisted, Lee couldn’t answer for our safety. J.B. listened in grim silence, and if you’d been there, and seen that huge crowd hemming us in, and the militia standing to their arms, and out before them the navy frocks and sky-blue pants and white belts of the Marines drawn up at attention … well, you’d have known he must give in at last. But damme if he didn’t come straight back at Stuart with his own impudent demand that we be allowed to march out unmolested, and given time to get clear away. Stuart said politely that there could be no terms but Lee’s – and still the stubborn jackass went at him, sounding ever so calm and reasonable, never raising his voice, but keeping his carbine trained on Stuart’s midriff and refusing to budge: let us go, or we’d fight to the end.
How long these futile exchanges lasted, I don’t know – Jeb said later that it was a long parley – but they became quite heated, with Washington and his friends joining in, begging Stuart to bring Lee in person, Stuart shaking his head, Jerry protesting that he hadn’t known it was treason, Joe grunting most alarmingly in my ear, and J.B. prosing away blandly as though he were passing the time of day with a fellow-idler on a street corner. At one point he asked if he and the lieutenant hadn’t met before, and Jeb smiled and said, yes, when his cavalry had dispersed J.B.’s riders after some scrimmage on the Santa Fe Trail three years before. “You were Ossawatomie Brown in those days,” says he, and J.B. said solemnly that he was glad to see that Jeb was well and prospering in the service.
“You behaved with great good sense on that occasion,” says Stuart. “Will you not do the same now, and spare many lives?”
“My life is a small thing,” says J.B. “I am not afraid to lose it.”
“I dare say not,” says Stuart. “It may be forfeit sooner than you think.”
“That is all one to me,” says J.B.
“Well, I’m sorry,” says Stuart. “But if you are determined, and there is no more to be said …”
There he paused, and all of a sudden there was that electric feeling in the air that comes in moments of crisis. J.B. sensed it, his hand tightened on his carbine stock, and imperceptibly Stuart shifted his weight from his heels to his toes. He hadn’t looked at me since that first glance, but now he did, without any expression at all, and then his eyes travelled to the Colt at my waist and back to my face again before returning to J.B., all in a couple of seconds, while J.B. waited for him to finish his sentence, and Stuart waited … for me? I could hear Messervy’s voice in that Washington office, clear as a bell: “John Brown must die somewhere along the road … for the sake of this country, and tens of thousands of American lives, he must not survive for martyrdom …”
Stuart glanced at me again – and I’ve no wish to impute anything to a chivalrous Southern gentleman, but if his look wasn’t saying: “Mr Messervy’s compliments, and if you’ll be good enough to shoot the old bastard on the spot, and roll out of harm’s way, he’ll be much obliged to you”, then I’ve never seen an unspoken invitation in my life.
He didn’t have a hope. Not my style at all – especially not in the immediate presence of a highly unpredictable coloured gentleman who was one of the fastest guns I’d ever seen and had been itching to give me lead poisoning for months. I’ve often wondered how Joe, in his excited condition, would have reacted to the assassination of his erstwhile hero, but I’d no intention of finding out; I let my right hand fall loose at my side – and what happened next is history.
Stuart’s version57 is a masterpiece of nonchalance: “So soon as I could tear myself away, I left the door and waved my cap.” I’d say he tore himself away at the speed of light, sideways like a leaping salmon, but I didn’t see him wave because even as he sprang the Marines were charging forward from fifty yards away, bayonets fixed, with the little officer brandishing his sword, and J.B. was letting fly a shot and slamming the door to all in one movement; unfortunately he closed it on my injured leg, and for several seconds I took no further interest, being blind with agony, and rolling on the floor, in which time he and Joe had jammed the bar into place, Coppoc and young Thompson were blazing away through gaps in the door timbers at the advancing Marines, and Emperor Green burst into tears and tried to hide behind an engine.
It had happened in split seconds, one moment peaceful parley, the next carbines and revolvers booming in the confined space, the hostages diving for cover, Jerry yelling: “No, no, we surrender!”, the doors shuddering to the blows of sledge-hammers wielded by the leading Marines, a great roaring and cheering without and shouts of defiance within mingling with the crash of shots and splintering of timbers, black powder smoke filling the engine-house in a stifling cloud – and Flashy scrambling away as fast as his game leg would take him, intent on rounding the engines to take cover among the hostages. I didn’t get even halfway.
There was a rending crash behind me, and as I clung to the nearer engine for support I saw that a bottom section of the battered door was caving in: the planks were starting asunder, and through the narrow gaps could be seen glimpses of the attackers. J.B. had stepped away to reload his carbine, Joe had his back to the door, stretching sideways to shoot through a ragged hole in the wood, and suddenly he screamed like a wounded horse and staggered away from the door, clutching his left arm: behind him a bloody bayonet point was jutting through the planks.
“Stand firm, men!” bawls J.B. “Sell your lives dearly!”
He ran to the shattered section of the door, stooping to shove his Sharps through the opening, and firing: either side of him the two boys, Coppoc and Thompson, were shooting through the gaps point-blank at the Marines heaving at the outside of the door. Joe had half-fallen a couple of yards behind J.B.: he came up on one knee, his black face demonically contorted with rage and pain, mouthing curses that were lost in the uproar. J.B. turned and shouted, gesturing to him to come on.
“Courage, Joe! Don’t give in now!”
I can’t explain what followed, though I’ve had more than half a century to think about it. I can only tell you that Joe let out a terrible anguished cry and levelled his pistol at J.B. The old man was turned away, revolver in one hand and carbine in t’other, shooting through the half-wrecked door, when Joe squeezed the trigger – and his piece misfired. He screamed wordlessly, and I can only think that all the fury he felt at J.B.’s failure – betrayal, I’d heard him call it – had welled up at the last when death was staring him in the face, and he was venting it on the old fellow in a fit of blind anger, as a passionate child will strike out at a parent. That I can accept – what I cannot explain is what happened in the next second, when Joe thumbed back the hammer for a second shot, and I put two bullets in his back.
I can’t pretend I was consciously trying to save J.B. Why should I, when I’d no thought for any life but my own, and God knows I owed him nothing? I drew, and fired, as instinctively as you throw up a hand to ward an unexpected blow. Dick Burton, who fancies himself a psychologist, says I gave way to a primitive impulse of race-survival, and killed Joe because he was black and J.B. was white – would I have shot Kagi or Stevens if they’d been in Joe’s place, grins clever Dick. Likely not … but snooks to you, Burton, I’d not have shot Mrs Popplewell or Ketshwayo, either, because I quite liked them, you see, and Kagi and Stevens, while I detested Joe. So perhaps it comes to this, that deep down, for all the harm and horror he did me, I must have quite liked old J.B. – well enough, at any rate, not to have him shot by that black son-of-a-bitch if I could help it.
Anyway, I settled Joe, and he went down like a riven oak, his pistol exploding into the floor as he fell, and at that moment the bottom of the door gave way with a tremendous rending of timber, and through it like a ferret from its hole came the little Marine officer, flourishing his sword. He plunged straight past J.B., I threw myself aside, and he darted round the engines, yelling to the hostages to stand clear. Washington sang out: “There’s old Ossawatomie!” pointing over the engine to J.B., who was standing erect before the doorway, throwing lead for all he was worth as the Marines came bursting and yelling through the shattered wreckage of the door, their bayonets at the present.
I believe he downed two of them, for I saw one reel away clutching his face, with blood running through his fingers, and another pitched headlong at his feet, and then the little officer was on him like a wild-cat, thrusting at his body. J.B. tumbled forward, and as the officer hacked at his head I saw that the blade was bent at right-angles; he hammered away at the old fellow’s skull, and all around was screaming, struggling confusion as the Leathernecks came surging in, bayonetting everything in sight. Jerry Anderson was skewered to the floor, shrieking horribly, as he tried to dive beneath an engine, young Thompson was flung bodily against the back wall and pinned, kicking like a beetle, by several blades, someone was bellowing “Quarter, quarter, we surrender!”, everywhere were snarling faces, glittering steel, swirling smoke – but never a shot now, for the last of our people was down or overpowered, and the Marines had been ordered not to fire; one of them, a red-faced corporal, glaring like a madman and roaring inarticulately, came lunging out of the press of struggling men, his bayonet driving at me, and as I threw myself back the little officer thrust him aside shouting “Not him! Prisoner!”, and I echoed him, bellowing “Not me! I’m a hostage!” The corporal fairly howled with disappointment, but kept his point to my breast as I struggled into the corner, my hands raised, and as I sat there trembling there was a long, bubbling scream from above, and Thompson’s body, streaming blood, slid down the wall beside me and collapsed across my legs. He was still alive, for I felt him give a convulsive shudder; then he was still, and as he died, so did the shouting and confusion. The Harper’s Ferry raid was over.
I reckon about two minutes had passed since Stuart jumped aside at the doorway, and in that brief terrible scrimmage four men had died, which was fewer than I’d have guessed as I gazed in horror at the shambles. There was blood everywhere, spattering the walls and soaking the straw, and more bodies strewn on the floor than there were men standing up, or so it seemed. A Marine was slumped against the post of the now-open door ahead of me, clasping a hand to his wounded face; another lay still across the threshold. J.B. was lying face down, his white head horribly dabbled, and beside him Joe was on his back, his pistol in his hand. The bodies of Oliver, Watson, and Taylor lay close by, Jerry Anderson was twitching in death beneath the engine, and Thompson, his girl’s face slack and ugly under the blond curls, lay lifeless on my legs until the Marine corporal rolled him clear.
The only unwounded raiders seemed to be Emperor Green, who was crouched wailing against the wall (he was the one who’d told Douglass he’d “go wid de ole man”, more fool he), and young Ed Coppoc, who was looking pretty cool, considering that four Leathernecks were standing over them with bayonets poised. The officer was shepherding the hostages out through the other door, which had been unbarred, and an almighty cheer went up from the crowds outside as they passed into the open air.
There was a time when I’d have lain shivering from shock after such an ordeal: I might even have wept (from reaction, not grief, you understand) at the carnage around me. But as I sprawled exhausted in that engine-house, watching the Marines making short work of heaving the bodies and wounded away, I felt nothing but a huge blissful weariness and a growing exultation – the nightmare that had begun at the Cape, when I heard Spring’s tread on the deck overhead, was surely past and done with now; the frantic days and nights when Crixus and Atropos and the damned Yankee bogies had plunged me into this mad business, the long months of weariness while J.B. mismanaged his preparations, the terror of the raid and this final horror in the engine-house – I was here, safe and whole, with nothing but two paltry scratches that did no more than ache, coated with blood and filth to be sure, but who minds that when you see before your eyes what might have been … young, handsome Oliver of the merry laugh; brash, eager Jerry Anderson; poor daft Taylor gone to explore his spirit world; Dauphin Thompson, who had blushed like a maiden if you so much as asked him the time – all being dragged out by the heels to lie in the mud under blankets. Bad luck, lads, but sooner you than me.
J.B. and Watson were still alive, so they carried them away on stretchers; the old man’s hair was stiff with dried blood, and one hand dangled from the stretcher like a skinny brown claw. Then they marched out the two prisoners, which left me and the corporal and the late Joe Simmons. I made shift to rise, but the Leatherneck growled to me to stay put, those were his orders. I didn’t mind lying there, holding my private little thanksgiving service and listening to the distant murmur of the mob outside, and after a while Marines came at the double, placing lanterns on the engines, shrouding the broken windows and loopholes, heaving the wrecked door into place, and closing it behind the little officer and a tall civilian in a tile hat and frock: Messervy, surveying the ruin impassively, prodding at Joe’s corpse with his walking stick, and then picking his way carefully through the bloody straw to where I lay.
He looked down at me, stroking his moustache with a gloved finger, the long-jawed Yankee Corinthian as ever was, and just the sight of him, looking so cool and civilised, cheered me up even further.
“Well, well,” says he. “How are you?”
I couldn’t be bothered to think of a smart answer, so I said pretty fair. He asked if I was wounded, and when I told him, he sighed, removed his hat and gloves, looked for a place to put them, declined the corporal’s offer to hold them, and finally set them down on the engine. Then he stooped to examine my neck and knee.
“Nothing that soap and water won’t cure,” says he. “Mr Green, would you be good enough to bring them yourself, with bandages, a towel, some spirits, and a Marine cloak and cap.” He rose, smoothing his coat, and resumed his hat and gloves.
“Now, I want a Marine guard round this building. No one to be allowed closer than twenty yards. That,” he indicated Joe’s body, “is to be removed after dark, and buried away from the town, and the burial party are then to forget all about it. This gentleman,” he turned to me, “never existed. You’ll not mention him, and if questions are asked by anyone, you never heard of him. Is that clear?” Green nodded, looking keen. “Corporal, you understand?”
“What gen’leman are you referrin’ to, sir?” asks the Leatherneck, staring to his front. Messervy gave a faint smile.
“I beg your pardon. I should have said sergeant … shouldn’t I, Mr Green?”
“Yes, sir!” beams Green. “I’ll see to it.”
“Capital. Now, I’ll be leaving here presently with someone in a Marine coat and cap. We are to be ignored, and I trust by that time you will have dispersed any gaping sight-seers. The soap and water now, if you please.”
They were all I needed to complete my restoration, and when Green had brought them and left us alone, I sluiced away the filth with a will; I felt as though I was cleansing myself of Harper’s Ferry, and John Brown, and the whole disgusting business. The wounds looked clean enough, and when I’d clapped on the dressings Messervy helped me with the bandages, talking to the point, as usual.
“Brown is not only alive, but surprisingly well, and damned talkative – which, as you know, is the last thing we wanted. The old brute must be made of leather. Run through the kidneys, the doctor tells me, and has lost any amount of blood, though you’d not know it to hear him. Conversing like a politician, which I suspect he is.” He knotted my neck bandage and stepped back. “Pity you didn’t shoot him. ’Twould have saved a few lives today … and who knows how many hereafter?”
“Well, mine wouldn’t have been one of ’em,” says I. “Not with Joe crowding me in that doorway.”
“Ah, yes, Joe.” He glanced at the body. “Your work, I take it … the Marines had orders not to shoot. Settling a score, were you?”
“Accident. He got in the way when I was sighting on Brown.” Why shouldn’t I get credit by pretending I’d tried to do Messervy’s dirty work for him? “Since you were so all-fired eager to have Brown dead, why didn’t you get the Marines to do it when they stormed this place? Or have someone shoot him yesterday – hang it, he was walking around town large as life? Why don’t you slip something in his dinner now? And don’t tell me it ain’t your style!”
“Unofficial death warrants have a habit of recoiling,” says he coolly. “My countrymen have one great failing – they talk too much.”
“Aye – so you shanghai some poor bloody foreigner to do the job! Well, I didn’t have the ghost of a chance, until today … and I’ll tell you, Messervy, I ain’t apologising! I served your turn because that damned little squirt Seward put a pistol to my head … but why the hell should I murder for you? Tell me that!”
He shrugged, leaning against the engine and stirring the straw with his cane. “It would have been convenient. Now … the law must take its course, and God only knows where that will lead. Still, that’s not your affair. I guess you did what you could to keep Brown out of Virginia –”
“You’re damned right! A pity your own people didn’t do as much! I still can’t fathom it – you knew what he intended, where he was, who his backers were, what men and money he had – confound it, you knew the very bloody place – here! Why in God’s name didn’t you stop him?”
“You and I tried,” says he. “But we ain’t politicians. What did you call us – government ruffians?” He wrinkled his fine nose, and became business-like. “That’s neither here nor there. The sooner you’re out of this, the better –”
“Hurrah for that! Lord Lyons –”
“He don’t want to see you. Yes, there’s been a word in his ear, from the very highest quarter – and warm in your praise it has been, too. But he agrees with us that there’s no useful purpose to be served by prolonging your presence in this country a moment longer than need be –”
“Sensible chap! When do I leave?”
“You catch the Baltimore train tonight, from the station over the way. It’s a train you’re probably familiar with,” says he drily, “since your friend Brown held it up two nights ago. It is now running normally. At Baltimore, there’s a berth already reserved for you on a packet sailing for Liverpool tomorrow. It’s paid for, and this –” he handed me an envelope “– is three hundred dollars to cover expenses en route … for which I’d like a signed receipt, in the name of Comber, I suggest.”
I’ll say this for the Americans, they waste no time. Why, by tomorrow night I’d be at sea, with all this horror behind me – a couple of weeks, and I’d be in England! Home, with Elspeth, and my Indian honours thick upon me, and “warm praise” conveyed by diplomatic channels … it was too good to be true, and standing there in that beastly blood-stained shed, with the reek of powder smoke and the stench of death, I felt the tears start to my eyes and absolutely had to turn away. Messervy brought me back to earth.
“I’ve arranged quarters here where you can wait unobserved until the train comes in tonight. Go straight aboard, keep to your cabin until you reach Baltimore, then take a cab directly to the dock and the ship – all your tickets and directions are in the envelope with the money. In the meantime you can shave off your beard, and I’ll furnish you with some decent clothes. Keep your collar up and your hat down. No sense in taking risks.”
That’s a word that always makes me raise an eyebrow; what risk, I asked, and received one of his ironic looks.
“Well, now, I don’t suppose you’d want to run into anyone from the Underground Railroad or the Kuklos on the street, would you? Not that you haven’t served their turn admirably – John Brown has run his raid, which is what they both wanted, and while Crixus will go into deep mourning when he learns the result, I’d say Atropos will be drinking your health with three times three. Still, better not to renew their acquaintance, don’t you think?”
At the mention of their names I’d started like the dear gazelle. I hadn’t given them a thought since the raid began, but now …
“I’ll telegraph to have someone keep an eye open in Baltimore, anyway,” he reassured me. “Those Kuklos operators are still in the Tombs, by the way, and if Atropos set other men to watch you … what of it?” He shrugged. “He certainly has no reason to wish you harm, after this splendid debacle. He doesn’t know about that …” he pointed his cane at Joe’s body “… and he never will. No, right now he’ll be congratulating himself on five thousand dollars well spent –”
“He can keep it for me!” says I, and meant it. “You’re right, though … why, he’ll think I’ve done him proud!”
“Which you have,” says he drily. “Prouder than you did Crixus, or the U.S. Government. Not that your efforts aren’t appreciated.” He was peering through a crack in the makeshift door. “I think we might venture out now … the citizens seem to have lost interest in the sight of Marines guarding a dilapidated fire-house, though I dare say the souvenir seekers will be stripping it bare shortly. What, you don’t care to take a brick as a memento …?”58
There were still a number of folk idling beyond the armoury gates, staring hopefully through the railings, but our way led into the armoury proper, where Messervy had commandeered an office, guarded by two beefy civilians in hard hats. One of them brought me an enormous fry from the Wager House, with a jug of coffee – and I smiled to think what the little waiter would have said if he’d known who the customer was. From that I turned inevitably to fond memories of the generous Mrs Popplewell – gad, she’d been an unexpected windfall, splendidly equipped, if you like abundance, which I must say I do after a long abstinence. Resourceful lass, too, finding me a bolt-hole – and loyal, the way she’d answered back those ruffians who’d been threatening her. Aye, she’d served her turn, in more ways than one, bless her black bounties.
There was a cot in the office, but I was too excited to sleep, so I followed Messervy’s advice and removed my face furniture, all but the moustache and whiskers, of course. It’s a great delight to see your chin again after a hard slog in the field; reminds you that there are finer things in life, like England, and home, and sleeping sound, and strolling down Piccadilly with your hat on three hairs, and women, and drink … and Elspeth.
I was grinning at myself in the mirror when Messervy bowled in and told me to put on my cap and coat, double quick, and to muffle up well: he had something to show me. I followed him, wondering, along an alley between the armoury buildings; he stopped at a door and told me to pull my cap well down over my brows.
“Stay close behind me,” says he softly, and led the way. There was an open inner door ahead, with men’s backs turned to us. Messervy went right up behind them, and I followed, peering over his shoulder. The little room was crowded with people, standing and sitting, all intent on a man lying propped up on a palette against the far wall, and I bit back a gasp: it was J.B.
He’d never been a happy sight, but now he looked like the proceeds of a grave robbery. They’d washed the blood out of his hair and beard, and given him a clean shirt, but his face was gaunt and pallid, tight over the bones, and there were dark stains under the sunken eyes – but they were burning still, with that same grim fire, and his voice was harsh and strong as ever. For he was croaking away on the old line, about how he’d come to free the slaves, and for no other purpose; no one had sent him here but God and J.B. – or the Devil, if that was how they chose to view it – and he could have got clear away, but had been concerned for his hostages (and the fears of their wives and daughters in tears, if you please), and had wanted to reassure anyone who thought he was only there to burn and kill.
Someone cried out that he had killed people going quietly about the streets; J.B. replied that he didn’t know about that, and had done his best to save lives; he’d been fired on repeatedly without shooting back.
“That’s not so!” cries another. “Why, you killed an unarmed man by the tracks – yes, and another one!”
J.B. turned his head with an effort and pointed a talon at the speaker. “See here, my friend, it’s useless to contradict your own people who were my prisoners. They will tell you otherwise.”
There was a babble of protests and questions, and I saw that two fellows sitting close to him had pencils and notebooks – newspaper reporters, if you’ll credit it. The rest of them were sober citizens; Lee was there, and a dignified cove who I believe was the Governor, and Jeb Stuart with a face like thunder – and all crying out and badgering away at the old beggar, and him with a hole clear through to his kidneys, and his head cut to bits.
My first thought was, why, you bloody vandals. I don’t shock easy, and have no more of the milk of human kindness than you’d put in a cup of tea; I’ll taunt and gloat over a fallen foe any day, and put a boot in his ribs if he sasses back – but I’m a brute and a bully. These were your upstanding pillars of society, bursting with Christian piety and love thy neighbour, and here they were, shaking their sanctimonious heads as they harassed and goaded a seemingly dying man – aye, and feasted their eyes on him as though he were a beast in a circus, when you’d have thought that decency (on which I’m an authority, as you know) demanded that he be let alone. They even had the effrontery to argue and hector him, now that he was beat and helpless – I’d have liked to see ’em argue with him eight hours back, when he was standing up with his guns on.
Why, Flashy, you ask, this ain’t pity or sentiment, surely? Not a bit of it: don’t mistake disgust and contempt for the tormentor with compassion for the victim. I didn’t pity J.B. one jot, but I was enraged, at first sight, by those worthy ghouls enjoying the sensation (“Say, don’t talk to me about John Brown – why, I sat as close to him as I am to you this minute! Spoke to him, too – an’ told him, yes, sir!”), and as I watched him, old and stricken and frail, answering so calm and courteous … well, I couldn’t help thinking: good for you, J.B., that’s your sort.
And then it dawned on me that the old bugger was fairly revelling in it. He’d got his audience at last, hadn’t he just, the first of that world-wide congregation who would revere his name and sing his song and enshrine him in history forever. I’ll swear he knew it – Lee had asked him if he’d like the mob excluded, but J.B. wouldn’t hear of it; come one, come all, was his style, so that he could preach to as many as possible. That they were enemies, who’d come to vent their abomination of him and his notions, or to gloat, or just to indulge their curiosity, made it all the better for him; he could answer their harrying and abuse with urbanity and resolution – and that’s where the legend was born, believe me, in that shabby little paymaster’s office, for in whatever spirit they came, they left in something like awe … and admiration. “The gamest man I ever saw,” the Governor said, and Jeb Stuart (who was bloody rude to him at the time, I may say) remarked to me years later that without men like J.B. there wouldn’t be an America.
You see, like so many legends, it was true. He deserved their respect – and didn’t he know how to make the most of it, the vain old show-off? Here were his enemies, the ungodly oppressors of the enslaved, against whom he’d struggled for years, who’d cursed him for a border cutthroat and nothing more – and now they were hanging on his words, recognising him in dead earnest, with wonder and no little fear. Ironic, ain’t it? He’d failed … and found his triumph. Wounded and doomed, he was a man uplifted, and he laid it off to them with his matchless mixture of deep sincerity and sheer damned humbug.
You can read all three hours of it in the New York papers of the time, and it’s an education. I heard only some of the words, but they should be enough to give you the tune, which was truly extraordinary. There he was, wounded in half a dozen places, too weak to stand, fagged out and facing certain death, and talking as easily and pleasantly as though he were in a drawing-room, answering their questions like a kindly old professor dealing with backward students. When a young militia greenhorn scoffed that he couldn’t have hoped to achieve anything with just a handful of men, J.B. looked him over, smiled, and said patiently: “Well, perhaps your ideas and mine on military matters would differ materially,” and when another demanded that he justify his acts, he sighed, as though explaining something to a dunce for the umpteenth time:
“I don’t wish to be offensive, but I think, my friend, that you of the South are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity. I believe it is perfectly right for anyone to … ah, interfere with you so far as to free those you wickedly and wilfully hold in bondage. Please understand, I don’t say this insultingly.”
He went on to lecture them on the Golden Rule of doing unto others as they would have others do unto them, which for some reason put Jeb Stuart in a bait, for he accused J.B. of not believing in the Bible, and got a pained look and a gentle “Certainly I do”, in reproof. Jeb, the ass, came back at him: when someone asked how much he’d paid his followers, and J.B. said, no wages whatever, Jeb cried out piously: “The wages of sin is death!”, to which J.B. replied gently:
“I would not have made such a remark to you, if you had been a prisoner and wounded in my hands.” He rubbed salt in it by observing that he could have killed Jeb “just as easy as a mosquito”.
They tried to make him tell who his Northern backers were, and got nowhere. “Any questions that I can honourably answer, I will,” says he, and when they quoted a letter in the papers from a prominent Yankee abolitionist predicting a slave uprising, he even raised a laugh by saying drily that he hadn’t had the opportunity of reading the New York Herald for the past day or two. More soberly he went on:
“I wish to say that all you people of the South should prepare yourselves for a settlement of the slave question, and the sooner you are prepared, the better. You may dispose of me very easily; I am almost disposed of now, but the question is still to be settled.”
Once or twice, I regret to say, he lied. He claimed that he’d been wounded “after I had consented to surrender, for the benefit of others, not for my own”. He didn’t surrender, ever, not that I heard. He also claimed that he had not impressed any slave against his will – and to my astonishment someone called out, “I know of one negro who wanted to go back”, and who should it be but Aaron Stevens, lying on a palette farther along the wall; I had to crane my neck to see him, mighty pale, with a bloody bandage on his chest. Who that negro was I don’t know. But J.B.’s biggest stretcher was that he’d done his damnedest not to kill anyone … I dare say he meant it, but you’ve read my account and can judge for yourselves.
When someone called him a fanatic, he bristled up and said they were the fanatics, not he, at which the Governor weighed into him, telling him his silver head was red with crime, and he’d do well to start thinking of eternity. J.B. put him down in his best style.
“Governor,” says he cheerfully, “judging by appearances, I have about fifteen or twenty years start on you in the journey to that eternity of which you so kindly warn me. Fifteen years or fifteen hours – I’m ready to go. The difference between your tenure of life and mine is only a trifle, and I tell you to be prepared. All you who hold slaves have more need to be prepared than I.”59
“It’s going to be worse than I feared,” says Messervy, when we were back in my quarters. “Far worse. If only he didn’t sound so almighty reasonable … and … and saintly, damn it!” He was more upset than I’d seen him; absolutely tweaked his moustache instead of stroking it. “What did you think of him … from an English point of view, I mean?”
What I was thinking was that I was damned glad I’d shot Joe when I did. I’m as sentimental as the next man, you see.
“From an English point of view? Well, they’d not take him in Whites … not sure about the Reform, though. Oh, very well, seriously, then – they mayn’t put him up in Trafalgar Square in place of Nelson, but it’ll be a close-run thing. If you hang him, that is. Put him in a madhouse, and nobody’ll notice.”
“He’s not mad,” says Messervy. “I’m not sure he wasn’t the sanest man in that room. No, he’ll hang. Before the next election, fortunately, or he’d be liable to beat Seward for the Republican nomination. Join me in a drink? My sorrows are in need of submersion.” He poured them out. “I ask myself … if he talks like that when he’s shot full of holes, what will he be like when he’s better and standing up in court, with every paper in the country reporting him? We’ll be lucky,” says he thoughtfully, “if this doesn’t lead to war. Well, we must just hope for the best.”
I thought he was talking through his hat – one crazy farmer being topped for murder and treason didn’t strike me as a reasonable casus belli. Which shows how much I knew. But it didn’t matter to me, anyway, so I devoted myself to the brandy and contemplation of home while he sat meditating. Finally he gave a little rueful smile, and said reflectively:
“D’ye know, Flashman, sometimes I wish I had Presidential power … and the whole U.S. Treasury to draw on, secretly.”
I said I’d fancy it rather above half myself, and what had he in mind?
“At this moment? I’ll tell you. I’d consider very seriously paying you and Pinkerton a fortune to rescue John Brown from the clutches of the law and spirit him to Canada. ’Twould be an international scandal, I dare say, and a great rattling of sabres, but I’ve no doubt Buchanan and Palmerston could settle it without too much fuss … possibly with the assistance of Prince Albert and our Northern Liberals. Interesting idea, don’t you think?”
“Highly diverting. What good would that do?”
“Apart from sparing us a martyr, it would unite North and South as nothing else could. Perfidious Albion meddling in our most sacred private quarrel – even the diehard abolitionists would be up in arms against you.”
“You could have him shot trying to escape,” says cynical Flashy.
“Too late now,” says he, and closed his eyes. “If only he could have stopped a bullet in that engine-house … if only that ass Green had been carrying a sabre instead of his toy sword.60 What we might have been spared … well, we can only leave it to the lawyers and politicians and the great American public, now.”