Treason, page 34
Six days later Bone Hand appeared on a lonely stretch of the river trail. The general passed on a letter and bag. The whole transaction took under a minute.
Madison listened in silence while his wife unfolded her encounter with young Adams. They had just come home from Dr. Thornton’s house, where three tables of whist had been followed by an elaborate cold supper well oiled with a good Spanish wine. A successful evening, for he’d been in an open mood and had told stories that had them roaring so hard the sperm oil lamps shook. For a few friends, at least, such an evening belied his reputation as a social stick, and he was glowing. He wished Dolley would comment on how good he’d been but couldn’t bring himself to ask her. So he hung up his black suit and donned his dressing gown and poured a late cognac for them both as she talked.
Well, the situation was tightening. The British were more aggressive even as American outrage over impressment soared. Yet nothing in Monroe’s dispatches suggested that he considered impressment crucial, let alone felt much could be done about it. Randolph’s activity on behalf of Monroe was more and more overt. Madison prided himself on a modest view of himself, but he certainly didn’t think Monroe would be better than he as president. Doubtless someone would be better but he couldn’t imagine who that person might be. And then, Monroe would listen to Randolph, another mark against him.
Randolph had been attacking from within since Tom was elected, labeling Madison the evil genius seducing the poor president into fatal error, and now the radical press was yelping the same tune like so many coyotes on the prowl. Abused Dolley, too, in terms too vile to believe they came from civilized men. No one could deny the waspish brilliance in Randolph but it was deeply corrupted by his venom and flamboyant hatreds and scabrous, flaying rhetoric that men more and more were coming to fear.
Madison sat with the cognac warming his belly, watching Dolley brush out her hair, a hundred strokes on this side, a hundred on that, and then again. She had rubbed some cream containing God only knew what into her cheeks and forehead, which she said aimed to preserve beauty. She worked at her looks as he worked at the State Department—seriously. He remembered how startled he’d been years before when she told him she used rouge and ointments. It was when he was trying to work up his nerve to propose marriage and he’d been pointing out their age differences to his own disadvantage, she so young and fresh and glowing, the color in her cheeks like a sunrise, and she had said yes, it is a work of art, isn’t it, or something like that, and he’d been dumbfounded. She’d laughed and said it never hurt to improve on a good thing, and at once her beauty as barrier fell away, and maybe it was then he asked and she accepted ....
He sighed. It was a good marriage; he was a profoundly happy man. Here were the British harassing us, Randolph undermining, Monroe maneuvering, Burr up to God knew what, all of them with the secretary of state in their sights, and here was the secretary mooning after his wife!
“Trouble in the West, too, I gather,” he said.
“Danny came to see you?” She was rubbing in the cream, wiping it off as she did so.
“I asked her if she’d seen Aaron in New Orleans—the papers are full of questions, you know, all centering around that trip of his—and I was so surprised. She turned forty colors of red. Acted as if I’d accused her—”
“She slept with him,” Dolley said.
“What? Why do you say—”
“And it’s been bothering her ever since and you uncorked—”
“How do you know?”
“Aaron can be very persuasive.”
He looked at her, not answering. Suddenly she went sharp red. “Well, he didn’t persuade me!”
He smiled. “Good,” he said.
He poured another inch in each glass. “She told a story uncomfortably close to what the papers are hinting. Rumor, conjecture, overheard bits and pieces—she thinks Aaron wants to steal the West, New Orleans at least and maybe everything, split it off into something new. Invade Mexico, steal its gold, create a new nation, and farewell the new democracy.”
“Good God,” Dolley said softly. He nodded and she added, “But Jimmy, stealing the West, it sounds too much doesn’t it?”
“Well, you know him—what do you think?”
“Would he, you mean, as opposed to could he?”
“Nicely put.”
Hesitation, then a half-smile. “Probably, if he thought he could get away with it. I hate to say that ....” She had moved to the chaise and she straightened. “What will you do?”
He shrugged. “Nothing now. If I did anything, said anything, it would slide out of sight in his instant denials.”
“I suppose ... Aaron must be frantic for there to be even a hint of such a thing.” Sadly, her gaze into the distance profoundly irritating her husband, she added, “Poor devil ...”
Something in her pensive expression infuriated him and all at once everything seemed to pile on him, the day, the pressure, the British, Burr, New Orleans’s never-ending whine, whether Wilkinson really could be a traitor, everything. “Yes,” he snapped, “he tried to steal the election from Tom, leaving democracy in shreds, he killed Alex, and now maybe the poor fellow wants to split the nation in two, steal the West, finish democracy in one clean shot. I’ll say it’s a pity!”
She set the glass down with a click. “You know very well what I meant! He’s his own worst enemy.”
He felt a yawn coming on and yielded to it, his mood softening, not wanting to quarrel. “I know,” he said, “a man of promise who defeats himself at every turn. But you are much too lenient in your views of Aaron Burr.”
She bristled, but this was a subject he did not want to pursue, now or later, and he stood abruptly, loosing another yawn, and said, “Lord, I’m tired. Let’s go to bed.”
But sleep held off and after a while, listening to her gentle breathing, he slid out of bed to sit by a window. The sky had cleared and a half-moon gleamed through bare branches outside. He pondered what Aaron Burr might do, and the more he pondered the more uneasy he became. Yes, New Orleans was volatile and perhaps Governor Claiborne was a mistake. But what was Aaron thinking? He was highly intelligent and had an instinct for power and its uses. Of course he had dug the pits into which he’d fallen—didn’t we all?—but he was not a man easily defeated. So what would he do now, tottering on the edge of ruin? Why had he gone west? Political office, senator from Kentucky? Not likely. Land speculation was a leading industry on the frontier but it took years to develop and Aaron would need something in a hurry.
Well, suppose Danny were right. Some insane scheme to steal the West, take New Orleans, seal the river, invade Mexico. It sounded incredible. Or did it? Suppose you raised money and arms in New York and headed downriver with small groups of men, maybe recruiting as you went. In New Orleans, from what everyone said, you’d find men willing for any desperate adventure and not constrained by any love of the new country.
But that didn’t work well either. What the devil did Aaron think the army would be doing while he stole half a continent? An image of General Wilkinson flashed into Madison’s mind, face round and puffy, stuffed into those ridiculous uniforms he designed, fawning to his betters, sly as a fox approaching a henhouse. What about those insistent rumors that he took gold from the Spanish? Every effort to catch him had failed, so maybe he was innocent. Maybe.
Still, Burr was no fool. It denied reason to suppose he would try to lead a rebellion of New Orleans men whom he scarcely knew. Yet Danny’s account had disturbed Madison more than he liked. Yes, it was overheard remarks, some boasting, and that scamp of an uncle of hers might have been playing with her, but Madison had heard the ring of truth.
Still, there had to be more to it, and maybe there was. Maybe Aaron had some weapon they hadn’t considered, some way to counteract the army. Or neutralize it. Or ... use ... it.
Oh, my God . . .
He sat rigid in his chair by the window. Suppose that in fact Wilkinson was a traitor, as so many people suspected. Suppose he were to declare a conspiracy in New Orleans, which he must put down with troops and thus engage the army. Suppose he could trigger a Spanish mobilization that then would make it seem natural to use the army to attack Mexico, supported by Aaron’s young adventurers. Suppose Aaron knew exactly what he was doing because he knew he was supported. He and Wilkinson were famously close. They had gathered maps of the West, which you would need in order to take bodies of men into the wilderness. Burr had been flirting with the hostile Mr. Merry, who would be valuable to a conspiracy. And Burr was touring the West and visiting New Orleans for no earthly reason. Strong hints with nothing proven.
For it did make sense. If Wilkinson turned the army to the conspiracy there would be nothing to stop it. The army’s officers and men were loyal, they never would agree to a coup, but soldiers are trained to obey and especially if a war with Spain were concocted, a coup could be complete and beyond their recall before they understood what had happened. And then it would be too late.
He had the breathtaking sense of a man who learns suddenly that he is bankrupt, that all his anchors and guarantees and assurances and promises have been swept away or never were, that he is naked to his enemies. The army was the bulwark, the peacekeeper, the protector, the law. Conspiracy, coup, stealing the West, shattering the nation’s hopes, destroying the young democracy, all were possible and even likely if you postulated General Wilkinson turning his coat and standing as traitor.
The moon had slipped out of sight, the dark was intense, and suddenly he was cold, whether physically or mentally he didn’t know. He slipped into bed and lay there shivering with his eyes wide open.
Now if this scenario was anything, if it even existed, it was still just an idea, a dream, at most a plan. Try to attack it now and it would go underground in a cloud of denials, and there continue to grow. They would have to wait and see, knowing that if it did exist, to wait too long would also be fatal.
Dawn was cracking before he slept.
TWENTY-ONE
New York City, spring 1806
It was late on a March day when the Mary Kramer out of Baltimore eased against Hanneman’s wharf and the lines flew out. Aaron Burr stood at the rail, drinking the sights and sounds and odors of old New York, Peck’s Slip where so many votes rode on a tide of beer, Tammany a little way up still smarting, he didn’t doubt, from a clean victory stolen away by Mr. Hamilton. Alex should have let well enough alone. Burr sighed. The New York indictment—inciting a duel or some such—had been quashed and his friends were working to wipe away the murder charge in Jersey. So for the moment no one hungered for his arrest.
On the other hand, no need to advertise his presence. He flipped a coin to the mob of boys on the dock and sent the one who caught it to Peter Van Ness and Matt Davis with a note. They appeared within the hour, still the unlikeliest pair, Matt big and rather raw, Peter slender and polished, an accountant at heart. Right behind them came Sammy Swartwout, his old friend John Swartwout’s little brother who’d been so much a part of Burr’s political legerdemain. Now Sammy had grown from eager boy to stalwart young man without losing that enthusiasm that seemed to find good—and opportunity—wherever he looked. Handshakes became embraces as Burr felt a rush of emotion for a city that had been his. But he dismissed it: his future was in the West.
At Indian Duke’s for a late supper he ordered Champagne. It was that kind of night. They listened eagerly as he laid out the immense success of his western exploration, New Orleans in his hand, Tennessee and Kentucky enthusiastic, Wilkinson cautious but solid, his new friend whose island in the Ohio would make a perfect rendezvous point.
He didn’t mention the long, steady look that Margaret Blennerhassett had given him when he paused to anchor that relationship, and he certainly didn’t mention Danny Mobry. God, she was a woman to stir a man to his core. It still bothered him that she’d hurried away. He had routed himself through Washington and had sent a note but it appeared that again she was away somewhere; someone named Johnson had answered for her.
But he had really stopped there to see Ambassador Merry, who was enthusiastic but was not yet authorized to advance him real money. No response on his request for frigates standing off the mouth of the Mississippi but it was perfectly obvious that Britain would never pass up the opportunity to regain a dominant position on the North American continent. He remembered Merry observing in his dull way that doubtless Burr would go ahead on his own. But men at this level did not talk carelessly. What had Merry really meant? Then it all came clear—the British wouldn’t commit until something real happened. When Burr had New Orleans in his hand and Mexico’s gold in his sights, he’d find Royal Navy frigates standing offshore with their guns run out. What he was offering was just too good to pass up.
He had made another visit, too, that he now regretted. He had called on Mr. Jefferson at the President’s House and been received with a grave courtesy that now made him writhe. It had been a profound mistake, a moment of weakness.
Mr. Jefferson had said in passing there would be no war with Spain; the U.S. had decided not to press its claim on Mobile Bay and nothing else was at contention. That did amuse Burr; it simply meant that General Wilkinson’s machinations had not yet taken effect. He would soldier on, as he always had done. And he’d been successful, too, in a life that had brought him honors galore and a plan that would put him on a level with Napoleon Bonaparte!
Look how well he’d survived the blow of his parents dying when he was only six, plague him as the pain of that loss might. But even as a child he had been a man. He would never forget the surge of confidence and, yes, pride, he’d felt at the age of ten prowling the New York waterfront and talking himself into a berth as cabin boy on a brig bound for Liverpool. Never mind that his stiff-necked uncle had snatched him off before they sailed, he still liked to review those accomplishments of his boy-self, the man prefigured. Rammed his way right into the college at Princeton that his father had started ... oh, yes, he took care of himself, liked himself, admired himself. He was happy, that’s why women warmed to him. He made them feel good, and more, he generated that little frisson that was full of promise of something more, something mysterious and perhaps thrilling.
Thus the sun was shining—New Orleans set, things solid from Pittsburgh to the Gulf, everyone on board, no one told more than he needed to know. His three friends, devoted acolytes, really, put down their dinner with scarcely a word, listening entranced. When a waiter cleared their plates they switched to grog and sat hunched forward, grasping pewter tankards, voices cast low, intensely aware when others came near.
First, the money, real money. Raising it was Burr’s role and he felt a nervous quiver in his stomach. Still, he knew where to find it and how to pry it loose; it would be all right. Then supplies in volume, barrels of beef and pork and flour, weapons, ammunition, boatloads packed in solid vessels, canvas covers lashed tight against prying eyes.
“All that gear, how many men do you plan on, Aaron?” Matt Davis whispered, his glance around a bit too furtive.
“Say a thousand.”
“Jesus Christ!” Matt cried and several men looked around.
“Shut up, Matt,” Burr said, voice tight. “How did you think we were going to take over Louisiana and invade Mexico—with a little campfire group?”
“But where we going to get ‘em?”
“Recruit them—give them a shot at the greatest adventure of their lives.” He needed a recruiter, someone who wouldn’t ask a lot of questions, who could talk to men and make them see the glory lying ahead, then handle them once they signed on and get them down the river in small groups to avoid attention. He had plenty for the three of them to do here; he needed someone who could go all the way to Mexico City.
“Comfort Tyler,” Peter and Matt said together.
Burr smiled. “Just whom I had in mind.”
“How much money we talking about, Aaron?”
Burr studied the two. William Smith and Samuel Ogden, factors, shippers, entrepreneurs, finaglers, arrangers, political dabblers, moneymen. Smith was tall, cadaverous, pale, a scrim of beard dark on sunken cheeks. His partner was a near opposite, broad, fleshy but strong bodied, hair gone gray. Ogden looked like a bulldog suspecting that you had designs on his bone. They were veterans in international intrigue. He knew they’d put money behind Miranda in Venezuela and the talk was they’d supported Nolan’s plans for his filibuster in Texas before the Spanish snuffed him out.
He was in their new office on Wall Street, one of the buildings just gone up, five full stories with a hand-powered elevator, a tower that gave them a panoramic view of the harbor, everything from the East River around to the Hudson, watching ships come and go hauling their money in one form or another. The building was a block or so from his old office and walking here he’d had a fit of nostalgia. Life was simpler in the old days, he a king of politics, a lawyer of superb skills, a man about town. Until it was all swept away—but forget that. The wheel turns, life changes, the wise man changes with it—and what magnificent prospects he had now!
He elaborated on these in detail, the wonderful vastness of the West with its countless square miles of rich virgin land untouched by ax or saw. He went on to New Orleans throbbing with fury and discontent, swept them into visions of the streams of gold pouring from the mountains of Mexico. He waxed downright lyrical, surprised even himself, as he sang of the power New Orleans’s position, at the mouth of the river that drained the continent, gave it in determining the future of the West.
