“Did more’n sample ’em,” Charles said smugly—but, this time, too softly to be overheard by her. The quadroon in the kitchen was a fearsome woman in her own right, and now she was armed with kitchen implements, to boot.
Before he could continue, there was a knocking at the door.
“Answer that!” Marie hollered. “Tell whoever it is I don’t have enough for his breakfast, too.” Something in a skillet made a sizzling sound that was way too loud for any respectable foodstuff Driscol was familiar with. But, again, he didn’t inquire, simply went to the door and opened it.
Outside, standing on the open-air stairs that led up to Marie’s second-floor apartment, was Henry Crowell.
Grinning. Below him, the street seemed to be jampacked with young black men. Most of them dark-skinned, but with a sprinkling of that “high-yeller” color that usually denoted a black Creole in New Orleans.
“Oh, no,” Driscol croaked.
“Good morning to you, master and commander!” Crowell boomed. “The Freedmen Iron Battalion is present and accounted for, sir!”
“We are not matching in any parade today,” Driscol croaked.
“Course not, sir! These are fighting men. They’re here today to begin their training.”
Crowell’s grin was wide enough to scare a shark.
Charles Ball staggered over to stand next to Driscol, and gaze dumbfounded at the mob below.
“Where they come from?” he groaned.
“You recruited them last night, Sergeant! You and the major!”
Driscol had a vague memory of some speech making at the Place des Nègres. The memory was so vague he’d passed it off as drunken fantasy.
“I did what?” protested Ball. He waved a feeble hand toward the kitchen. “Couldna. I was busy sweet-talking a voudou queen.”
“Yes, sir! Your valor impressed the men deeply, sir!”
“Will you stop shouting, Henry?” Driscol’s croak was beginning to resemble a respectable growl. “Listen, just keep them there. We’ll be down in a minute. Or ten.”
“Sir!” Crowell ripped off a salute that came from no army known to Driscol. Perhaps the teamster had learned it in another life, if the Hindoos had it right. The Fantastical Moola Scimitars of the High Panjandrum of Somewherestan. Who could say?
Driscol closed the door and gave Ball another glare.
“So. Speech making, when you were supposed to be sweet-talking a voudou queen. Who knows what else you were babbling about last night?”
Marie came out of the kitchen bearing plates full of . . . something. Driscol decided he could eat without looking, even with only one hand.
“You didn’t answer my question, Patrick,” she scolded. “When you goin’ propose to that Indian girl of yours? She’s waiting for you at the Trémoulet House. Her daddy must be rich, putting up there. Most expensive hotel in New Orleans. Didn’t know any Indians were rich.”
“Her father’s not an Indian,” Driscol grumbled. “Captain John Rogers is a thieving, swindling, conniving Scotsman—and a blackguard to boot. He got the rank of captain fighting for the Tories in the Revolution.”
“Oh.” She set the plates down on the table. Now that he had a better view of the contents, Driscol really didn’t want to look. If that was meat, it had way too many legs for a proper Scots-Irishman.
“She’s got one of you Scots-Irish for a daddy and wants to marry another? Somebody put a grigri on that poor girl. You send her to me and I’ll lift the curse.”
CHAPTER 36
DECEMBER 21, 1814
Lake Bourgne, Louisiana
“Are you sure this Duclos fellow is telling the truth?” Admiral Cochrane’s tone was skeptical.
The young British army officer who’d brought the report started to shrug. Then, remembering the august company he was facing, Lieutenant Peddie caught himself and turned the gesture into a straightening of the shoulders. “The interrogation was most rigorous, sir. Unless the Frenchman’s a lot better liar than I think he is—”
General Ross interrupted him. “He’s not lying. But he’s not telling the truth, either.”
Cochrane swiveled his head to peer at Ross. The movement was done carefully. Cochrane was normally a vigorous man, and had he been in his own expansive quarters on his flagship, the admiral would have swung about dramatically. But in the very cramped quarters aboard the schooner he was using to supervise the landing of his troops at Bayou Bienvenu, his movements had become downright cautious. He still had a bruise on his forehead from the time he’d banged his head, having forgotten that a schooner’s dimensions were not those of a ship of the line. The first of three occasions.
“Explain, Robert, if you would.”
Ross had no need to watch his own movements. The general was still so weak that even sitting up in a chair was difficult.
“What I mean is that the man undoubtedly thinks he’s telling the truth. But he’s wrong.” Ross looked at the lieutenant, swiveling his eyes only. “Duclos is a civilian, you said?”
Peddie nodded. “Yes, sir, for all practical purposes. All the men we captured were part of the Louisiana militia, under the command of a certain Major Villeré—who is also a civilian in all but name. The son of a wealthy local planter, from what we could determine. Apparently, Jackson ordered Villeré to send a detachment to guard the outlet of the bayou, and—”
Ross interrupted him again. “I’d think Jackson would have ordered the bayou obstructed, as well.”
“Well, sir, he may well have done so. Duclos was vague on the matter. I suspect his commander Villeré made it clear he was not too happy at the notion of interfering with the waterways.” Lieutenant Peddie smiled thinly. “The Villeré plantation is located along the bayou, and he may have been concerned that damage would result to his own property.”
Admiral Cochrane chuckled. “I almost feel sorry for Jackson. Imagine having to command such a pack of vagabonds calling themselves an ‘army.’ ”
For perhaps the hundredth time since he’d returned from his captivity, Ross had to suppress a remark. Like the pack of vagabonds who broke our charge at the Capitol? No matter how hard he tried, Ross had simply found it impossible to get Cochrane to take the enemy seriously.
Seriously enough, at least. Of course, Cochrane didn’t have a crippled shoulder to remind him constantly of the folly of doing otherwise.
But this wasn’t a good time for another argument with the admiral. Ross was still in no condition to resume active command of the army. He was accompanying the New Orleans expedition solely as an adviser to Cochrane and General John Keane, who’d replaced Ross until Major General Pakenham could arrive from England. At that, Ross had had to use all his powers of persuasion to get Cochrane to agree to let him come along, instead of returning him to Britain for a long convalescence.
Ross didn’t really know himself why he’d insisted so vigorously. Partly out of concern for his soldiers, of course. Partly, because he was a stubborn man by nature, and hated to leave any business unfinished. But some of it, he suspected, was simply curiosity. He just wanted to see how it would end, this war with a peculiar—and peculiarly resilient—young republic.
“I’ve never known a civilian who could estimate the true size of an army,” Ross continued. “It’s in the nature of things. How many civilians ever see thousands of men, assembled in one place? Precious few, whereas soldiers witness the phenomenon regularly. Put five hundred men in a town square and they look like the hosts of Egypt to an inexperienced civilian eye.”
“True enough,” Cochrane allowed. “So what’s your estimate, Robert? I take it you think Duclos’s numbers are off a bit.”
“More than a bit. He claims there are fifteen thousand men in New Orleans under Jackson’s direct command—and another three thousand at the English Turn. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir,” Peddie said. The lieutenant cleared his throat. “That does match some of the other accounts Captain Spencer and I heard when we scouted the area.”
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Ross was tempted to make a sarcastic remark, but restrained himself again. With greater ease, this time. First, because he was never as impatient with junior officers as he could be with senior ones. But also, because he admired young Peddie’s boldness, if nothing else.
Several days earlier, Peddie—normally a quartermaster officer—had accompanied the naval captain Spencer on a reconnaissance up Bayou Bienvenu. The two British officers had disguised themselves as civilians and questioned some of the Portuguese and Spanish fishermen who lived on a tongue of land just a short distance inland from the bayou’s mouth. “Fishermen’s Village,” they called it—insofar as a dozen rude cabins could be called a village at all.
Spencer and Peddie had even managed to hire a pirogue in the village, along with two fishermen who’d rowed them up the Bienvenu to the branch called Bayou Mazant. They’d made it all the way to the Mississippi and walked along the east bank of the great river.
“The accounts of fishermen,” Ross specified, “who are even less experienced at gauging the size of armies than most civilians.”
“True enough, sir. And it’s also true that the estimates of the fishermen themselves varied wildly. Some claimed Jackson had no more than a few thousand men under his command.”
“That’ll be off, as well,” Ross said, “but closer to the truth.” He looked back at Cochrane. “Consider the matter, Admiral. The Americans probably never managed to amass fifteen thousand troops, even at their own capital. How would they have done it here? Especially when Jackson expected us to attack through Mobile or Pensacola, and march overland to New Orleans, rather than go at the city directly.”
Cochrane scowled. “We were planning to attack via that route.”
Ross suspected the admiral’s scowl was directed more at him than at the distant figure of an enemy general. Indeed, Ross was gently reminding him not to underestimate Jackson, and Cochrane knew it. The British had been forced to relinquish their plan to invade the gulf through Mobile because Jackson had moved quickly and forcefully to block them—and hadn’t cared at all that he was violating Spanish territory in the process.
So here they were. Forced to find a route into New Orleans through cypress swamps and truly horrible weather. The gulf in late December was nothing like the balmy Caribbean paradise so many of the troops had expected. When the British army had landed on Pea Island in Lake Bourgne, they’d been greeted not only by a torrential rainfall but with temperatures much lower than anyone had imagined. There’d even been frost the next morning.
The terrain was bad enough. What worried Ross still more was that the conditions for disease were worse than any he’d ever encountered in Europe. By now, just from the rigors of ferrying from the fleet’s anchorage at Cat Island, a large number of the soldiers were coming down with a variety of illnesses.
“How many does he have then, Robert?” asked the admiral.
Ross’s shrug was a weak thing. He was sick himself, and had been for days. “At a guess . . . Jackson won’t have more than seven thousand men, in all. Not all of whom will be with him at New Orleans, either. He’ll need, at the very least, to keep detachments at Fort St. Leon to guard the English Turn, at Fort St. Philip to guard the river farther south, and at Fort St. John in case we manage to get into Lake Pontchartrain.”
“Seven thousand,” Cochrane murmured.
“Probably closer to five, actually. And most of them will be militia units.”
Cochrane sat up straight, after a quick glance to assure himself there was nothing to crack his head against. “We can manage that. Easily, I should think.”
Manage it, yes.
Easily, no.
Something of Ross’s skepticism must have shown. The admiral eyed him for a moment, his face expressionless, and then said abruptly: “That’ll be all, Lieutenant Peddie.”
As soon as the lieutenant was gone, the admiral’s earlier scowl returned. “Do we need to argue this again, Robert? I have no choice, and you know it. We can’t attack from the north because we’re lacking shallow-draft boats, and we can’t come up the river because of the forts. That leaves no alternative but Bayou Bienvenu or its equivalent—and Spencer and Peddie report that the equivalents are all worse.”
Ross’s headshake was as weak as his shrug. “That’s not the point, sir. The route, we can manage—if the thing is led properly.”
“You can’t possibly—”
Ross shook his head again. “I realize full well I’m in no condition to lead it myself.” With a wry smile: “I’m struggling as it is just to keep from sliding off this chair. What bothers me is that . . .”
He’d come to the edge of the issue that he’d thus far skirted, out of politeness for fellow officers.
Cochrane grunted. “You’ve no confidence in Keane.”
“That’s putting it much too strongly, Admiral. John Keane is a fine officer. But as a commanding general, which he is now for the first time, I fear he’d be too cautious.”
“Too cautious?” Cochrane threw up his hands with exasperation—banging the knuckles of the left on a bulkhead. Muttering under his breath, he pulled out a kerchief and dabbed the blood. “Robert,” he growled, “as I recall you have been the one all along urging caution on this expedition. Now you choose to complain of its excess?”
“My cautions, sir—and I believe I made this clear—all had to do with the strategic aspects of the problem. What I am now referring to is the likelihood that General Keane will be excessively cautious when presented with a tactical situation.”
“Surely you’re not suggesting that Keane is a coward?”
“Oh, for the sake of God!” The moment he blurted it out, Ross cursed himself. Whatever chance he’d had to persuade Cochrane had just been diminished again by that angry outburst.
No help for it but to plow on, however.
“My point was certainly not to question Keane’s courage, Admiral. But a man can be personally brave and still not have the wherewithal to push forward a charge at the right moment. Were that not true, any good corporal would make another Alexander the Great.”
“Damn you, Robert! On the one hand, you tell me Keane will be too cautious. On the other, you think Pakenham will be prone to recklessness. Yes, I know you’ve been veiled about it, but I am not stupid. What do you want? For me to wait until I have the perfect army assembled?”
Cochrane was glaring, and it was all Ross could do not to scowl just as ferociously in response. The admiral certainly wasn’t stupid, but he had a habit of playing the innocent, which Ross sometimes found immensely aggravating.
“I have told you already—several times, Admiral—that I simply think we’d be wise to postpone the assault. For a few weeks, at least, although I’d prefer two or three months.”
He fought off the weakness and sat straighter, leaning forward. “I never said I thought Pakenham was reckless. But you know as well as I do that he has the reputation for being . . . ah . . .”
Cochrane’s scowl faded. He even chuckled, albeit drily.
“Yes, I know. ‘Bold,’ I believe, is the term most commonly used.” More seriously: “On the other hand, he is considered a superb general by most of the officer staff, Robert. He didn’t become a major general in his mid-thirties simply because he’s Wellington’s brother-in-law, you know.”
How to explain? Ross did not, in fact, doubt that Pakenham was a very talented general. But he was also young, and talent wasn’t the same thing as experience. Add to that a certain reputation for rashness, and . . .
“Admiral, Pakenham won’t arrive to take command until the very last moment. What I fear is this: Keane is an excellent subordinate officer, but he’s never been in command before. His initial approach will therefore almost certainly be too cautious, too tentative. No fault of his own, really; simply lack of experience. But that will give Jackson enough time to prepare himself—and that’s what Pakenham will face when he arrives. If you then push Pakenham to move immediately, he’ll almost certain
ly err on the side of being too aggressive.”
“Robert, I hardly think it’s necessary for our generals to maneuver perfectly in order to defeat an amateur like Jackson.”
Fiercely, Ross controlled his temper. It would do no good at all to start shouting.
“Admiral Cochrane, you must stop underestimating Andrew Jackson. He is a genuinely dangerous opponent, not simply a jumped-up militia general. An amateur he might be, by the professional standards of a British or continental army. But history is full of battles won by gifted amateurs against professionals.
“Amateur or not,” he continued harshly, “Jackson has consistently outmaneuvered us in the months leading up to this attack on New Orleans.”
Ross paused, giving Cochrane a level gaze. Cochrane was obviously angry at those last words. But, just as obviously, he wasn’t prepared to dispute them.
He couldn’t. Robert Ross had been privy to all the plans, and he knew.
Just to drive home the point, Ross decided to make it specific.
“Admiral Warren’s initial plan relied upon a powerful force of Creeks to be allied with us. But Jackson broke the Creek Nation at the Horseshoe Bend, before the alliance could be carried out.”
Sourly, Cochrane nodded.
“And what happened then, Admiral? After you replaced Warren in command in the gulf, you decided on an initial landing in Mobile. Which I fully agree was the right thing to do. That would have circumvented all the horrid terrain south and east of New Orleans. Again, however, Jackson reacted quickly. He ignored Spanish sovereignty and moved into Mobile in force—and so our initial thrust was broken at Fort Bowyer.”
Cochrane sighed. And nodded again.
Ross shrugged. “For a short while, there, I hoped that Jackson had outsmarted himself. The American general seemed so certain that we’d attack Mobile that he remained there, even while our expedition moved on to Lake Bourgne. But . . .”
He left the rest unspoken, since it was obvious. But Jackson corrected the error in time. And he’s in New Orleans now.