CHAPTER 5.
“Blasted Washington,” Archibald Hamilton muttered as he received the salute of the sentry at the gate of the Navy Yard. “Mud in winter, dust in summer. Dust and malaria.” He grinned. “Be thankful you’re here at the best time of year. You’ll probably only get a mild flux.”
“I’ll bear it in mind,” Favian said. He urged his horse along the path, its hooves drawing themselves from the mud with unpleasant sucking sounds. The Naval Ball demanded even more formality than had the visit to the Navy Department; instead of his blue trousers Favian was wearing white breeches and silk stockings, and he hoped he wouldn’t enter the ballroom to discover his legs were splattered with mud from the three-mile ride from Blodget’s Hotel.
“You’ve seen the public buildings— the President’s House, the Capitol?” Hamilton said. “They look like mud huts in this weather. Particularly the Capitol, with that plain board gallery between the two wings. Washington’s so unimpressive, the European powers scarcely keep as much as a single embassy here, just consular offices, and often as not they sell those duties to Americans. At least the French have their own minister here.”
“I expect we’ll change that, don’t you think?” Favian said, riding to the door of the rambling building holding the ball. The faint sounds of the Marine Band came from inside. Favian dismounted into the muck, handed the horse to a groom, and stepped up onto the sheltered porch. He examined the package containing Macedonian’s flag and Decatur’s dispatch, which he’d kept from the wet under his cloak; he brushed sleet off his hat and cloak, and scraped the mud from his shoes. Hamilton followed suit, took off his hat, shook his fair hair. They stepped inside.
The Marine Band was playing a jig, and the foyer leapt to the tread of the dancers inside. Soft candlelight glowed through a wide interior door. Marines took their cloaks, and Favian saw, in the candlelight, men and women dancing; many of the men wore blue coats and epaulets, both Army and Navy.
“Shall I take your sword, sir?” asked a corporal, a man with ginger hair tied in a queue.
“No, I’ll keep it for the present. Has Captain Thomas Tingey arrived?”
“Oh, yes. First of all.”
“Will you give him this message?” Favian drew it from his cuff; neither the elegant cut of his swallowtail uniform coat nor the lines of his tight white breeches allowed for such things as exterior pockets.
Thomas Tingey came off the dance floor at the end of the jig. He was a New Jersey man who had been sacked in the Jefferson purges, but somehow had talked his way back to his former rank; and now, as head of the Washington Navy Yard, was the only non-seagoing captain in the Navy. He was a popular figure, loquacious, persuasive, honey-tongued. He had the ear of the politicians, was always ready to give advice, and convincing enough so that his advice was often taken.
It was a pity, thought Favian, that Tingey’s advice was so often bad.
“Favian Markham! Young Hamilton! Your parents are here, you know, Hamilton— have you seen ’em? They’ll be delighted!” Tingey, large framed, jolly, held out a hand, and Favian clasped it. His voice was a remarkably melodious baritone; Favian remembered he had been famous for his parties, at which he’d sung duets with his late wife.
“Your note spoke of important news. Let’s hear it.”
“Captain Decatur has captured a British thirty-eight. It’s probably in New York by now.”
“By God, that’s news! Hull is here— have y’told him?”
Favian, in a low voice, explained his plan. Hamilton listened with surprise, then admiration. At the end Tingey whistled appreciatively.
“By Jerusalem, that’s an idea! Board the President and Dolley!” He laughed. “We’re all going to enjoy reading tomorrow’s newspapers, young man. Leave it all to me. Wait for a drumroll, then enter.”
“Aye, sir,” Favian said, then hesitated. “How will I know Mrs. Madison, sir? I’ve never met her.”
Tingey laughed. “She’s the one standing by the flags, young man! They set off her complexion so well. Y’can’t miss her.”
“Yes, sir.”
The band was playing a stately country dance which allowed the older members of the throng to recover their breath after the brisk jig. Favian waited impatiently, fidgeting while he unwrapped the package, and handed Decatur’s report to Hamilton.
“Are you sure you’d prefer to carry the flag?” Hamilton asked insinuatingly. “I can do it, if you like.”
“Seniority hath its privileges, Mr. Hamilton. You are to carry the dispatch.”
Hamilton sighed. Favian fidgeted. What if he was confused, he wondered, and picked the wrong lady? Madison he knew from engravings, but his famous wife had unaccountably been left out of the pictures. Perhaps the illustrators had given up hope of ever depicting her properly.
A sustained chord announced the end of the country dance. The crowd gave scattered applause. Favian took a deep breath and hoped that when the time came he wouldn’t stumble over a spittoon.
There was a single trumpet call, bringing the murmuring, applauding crowd to attention. A nice touch— the band leader must have improvised. A long drumroll began. Favian tugged at his uniform and advanced into the room.
The guests’ faces glowed gold in the light of hundreds of candles. Hamilton’s marching steps echoed behind him. Faces turned toward him in surprise, in anticipation, in merriment. In one corner were bearded faces, turbaned heads, and Turkish costumes, and Favian was puzzled until he remembered that a Tunisian envoy had recently taken up residence. Somewhere there was a shriek, and movement among the crowd to his left. Favian risked a glance, saw the familiar figure of the Secretary of the Navy supporting a limp bundle. It appeared that Hamilton’s mother had fainted at the sight of the son she had supposed to be at sea.
British banners draped the walls, the ensigns of the corvette Alert, which had surrendered to the Essex after firing a single musket shot pour l’honneur du pavilion, and the great shot-torn flag of the Guerrière. Beneath the flags, surrounded by an invisible aura of power and respect— what in a monarchy would have been called Presence— was a short, lean, white-haired man in a plain black coat who Favian recognized as James Madison, principal author of the Constitution and of an unpopular war, former Federalist turned Democratic-Republican, President of the United States. Beside him was a plump, lively-seeming woman, dressed rather extravagantly in a pink, ermine-trimmed satin robe with gold chains and clasps, topped by a white satin turban with a jeweled crescent and ostrich plumes. Favian assumed she was the famous Dolley Madison— she had better be Dolley Madison, and not a dependent of the Tunisian delegation, Favian thought, or his career was as good as over. Her mouth was parted, her eyebrows raised in an amused anticipation, wondering what little surprise had been arranged by the Navy Department. Probably the Secretary of the Navy was wondering the same thing, if he wasn’t too distracted by his limp wife in his arms.
Favian cleared his throat as he approached, hoping his voice would not crack. He swept Macedonian’s flag out with a snap of his arm, the flag sailing out to its full twelve-foot length, the riddled White Ensign billowing at the feet of the President’s lady. Dolley Madison stared at the flag in dawning comprehension. Favian knelt.
“I beg the honor, madam, to lay at your feet the surrendered flag of the British frigate Macedonian, captured in battle by Captain Decatur two months ago.” Favian’s voice rang in the candle-lit stillness.
Sensation. Bedlam. Favian had intended Act Two to be Archibald Hamilton’s presentation of Decatur’s official report to the President, but whatever Hamilton said was drowned out by the pandemonium of men calling for three cheers, wild applause, shrieks of enthusiasm, and the Marine Band’s sudden fortissimo booming of the new anthem, “Hail, Columbia.” Dolley Madison said something unheard in the sudden turmoil, but she was clearly asking Favian to rise, and he did so. She took the ensign from his numbed hands, and with a graceful gesture threw it over her own shoulders, draping herself in it.
The audience went mad. Favian, awed, realized with admiring surprise that he was in the presence of someone who knew at least as well as Decatur how to stir a crowd by a simple, eloquent gesture. She kissed Favian’s cheek— to more cheers— and then the President, as thin as Favian but a good deal shorter, began to pump his hand. “Congratulations, young man. We’ll speak later,” the President almost shouted, and Favian nodded respectfully.
He glanced over the President’s head and saw a milling, stampeding crowd, among them Dolley Madison parading with the ensign draping her shoulders, her ostrich plumes nodding, and Archibald Hamilton engulfed in the arms of his mother, who had, it appeared, recovered thoroughly from her fainting fit. Secretary Paul Hamilton shouldered his way through the crowd, shook Favian’s hand, and bent to shout into Madison’s ear: “Never forget that it’s to Captains Bainbridge and Stewart that we owe these victories!”
Damned if it was! Favian almost raged. It was Decatur’s seamanship and my gunnery! But he bit it back, savage temper still filling him at the cheapening of his spectacle. What was the secretary driveling about? But then there were more handshakes and claps on the back as Favian was surrounded by a crowd of blue-coated naval officers.
“Congratulations, sir!” It was Isaac Hull, conqueror of the Guerrière, a plump man with a genial expression and one of the best technical sailors in the world, a man who had outrun a British squadron in a dead calm by towing Constitution with boats, then splicing together all the cordage in the ship to kedge her to safety. He’d returned to Boston to discover that his uncle, the man who had raised him, had surrendered Detroit to an army one third the size of his own— a disgrace Hull’s battle with the Guerrière had done much to erase. Favian had also heard that Hull had split the seat of his tight trousers when he’d given the order to fire, and, looking at the cloth that was trying gamely to protect Hull’s portly frame, he could well believe it.
“Thank you, sir,” Favian said, still seething inwardly, and was then engulfed by the arms of another officer and hugged until he gasped for breath— and until he found his brief flash of anger gone. Not even the discipline of the service had kept the Irish from Charles Stewart.
“It’s a timely victory you’ve brought us, Favian!” the redheaded captain shouted. “I’ll explain later.”
“What’s this about owing our victory to you and Bainbridge?” Favian demanded.
“Later, my son, later.”
Dolley Madison returned from her procession and gave up Macedonian’s shot-torn ensign to the officers, who draped it from the wall between the flags of Guerrière and Alert. Favian and Archibald Hamilton were crowded into the place of honor next to Stewart and Hull, the President and his lady standing next to them. A procession of citizens, some of whom Favian recognized as congressmen, senators, Cabinet secretaries and their wives, judges of the Supreme Court, appeared to shake hands and offer congratulations. Thomas Tingey appeared with a girl he introduced as his fiancée; she was strikingly beautiful, and at least thirty years younger than her husband-to-be, and Favian revised upward his opinion of Tingey’s celebrated eloquence.
Between handshakes and salutes Favian heard from Stewart the meaning of Secretary Hamilton’s strange remark. At the beginning of the war William Bainbridge— the competent, aggressive, but totally unlucky captain who had, through no real fault of his own, lost his first command to the French, and later the Philadelphia frigate to the Tripolitans— had been in Washington, haunting the doors of the Navy Department for a command; and Stewart, following a furlough of some years, during which he had been earning his bread as a merchant skipper, arrived on much the same errand. The news Paul Hamilton brought them was stunning: The Cabinet had decided to keep the entire Navy in harbor for the duration of the war, striking their yards to save cost of upkeep and using the big frigates as floating batteries. It was not thought possible for American ships to meet the British in open combat. Bainbridge and Stewart protested to the Secretary; Hamilton was convinced and went to the President; and Madison, after long wrangling, had overruled the skinflint Gallatin of the Treasury Department and the rest of the Cabinet, and sent the ships, among them Decatur’s United States, in search of enemies to conquer. Isaac Hull, in the meantime, had simply ignored the order to stay in port, and on his own initiative, and at the peril of court-martial, commenced the voyage that had resulted in the capture of the Guerrière. Stewart and Bainbridge, since Hull’s victory, had spoken before Congress, and had almost convinced the legislature to vote the money for four new ships of the line, seventy-fours, and six new Constitution-class frigates. The vote was expected any day.
Favian was stunned. It was the Navy for which every serving officer, had been praying for twenty years. “Well, sir, I thank you and Captain Bainbridge, wherever he may be, for your persuasiveness,” Favian said.
“Bainbridge has already been thanked by the secretary,” Hull said. “He’s been given my old command, the Constitution. I had to leave her. My brother died, and I must settle his affairs.”
And your stepfather is about to be court-martialed for treason, Favian thought, and that’s reason enough to keep off a ship for the time being.
“I’m sorry to hear it, sir,” he said.
“And they’ve given me Constellation,” Stewart added. “She’s here in Washington.”
“A lucky ship, sir. Congratulations.”
“We’ll need all the luck we can find to get her past the British blockade. Captain Hull and I are staying at The Indian Queen. Come for a consultation tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’ll be happy to, sir.”
The Naval Ball, its festivity increased to a near hysterical pitch by the news of the victory, careened onward into the early hours of the morning. The Madisons left at a respectable hour, as did Thomas Tingey, his bride-to-be, and his prospective in-laws. But for the most part the men present, especially the young officers, seemed inclined to toast the victory until they dropped from exhaustion; and the departure of the President and many of the older, more respectable citizens was not calculated to suppress their celebrations. The floor surrounding the many spittoons began to grow slimy from near misses; collars and neckcloths began to collect sweat stains; waistcoats were streaked with tobacco. Favian, fixed like a mannequin in the place of honor, found his hand sore with congratulatory handclasps, and his voice tiring from responding to toasts and speeches. It was not until two in the morning, when the Navy Yard claimed to have run clean out of rum punch, and the Marine Band packed its instruments and made its way out, that the party began to disperse.
Hamilton had long since vanished in the company of his parents. Favian collected his hat and cloak, shook a few more parting hands, and called for his horse. Standing next to him on the veranda as he waited was a smiling, well-dressed man, who introduced himself as the owner of the most resplendent, most discreet, best-appointed, and most absurdly expensive brothel in the city; and who offered Favian, apparently from motivations of patriotism, the use of his establishment free of charge. Favian smiled— it was a weary, cynical, and knowing smile— and then he accepted.