CHAPTER 2
One coward was dismissed from the service; the other, the evidence conflicting, was given the benefit of the doubt. Two of the cases of theft were found justified, with the third producing a few surprises and a new indictment; the card cheat, who was being court-martialed at his own request in order to clear his name— a duel would have been the usual procedure, but the young man appeared to hold strong convictions against the practice— was found not guilty, there being no evidence against him other than the fact that he had been winning heavily and the biggest loser had been sodden with whiskey punch. The poor sodomite, an unhappy ship’s corporal, had his charge reduced to gross indecency and was dismissed the service; his catamite, a powder monkey, had already fled, and if caught would be punished for desertion rather than what the indictment bluntly called “buggery.” The heat increased through the series of courts-martial, and the tempers of the court had grown similarly frayed: even the usually cheerful Decatur was reduced to grunting monosyllables, and Commodore Lewis turned positively savage. How much of Lewis’s behavior was feigned, and how much the result of a naturally malicious temperament, was an interesting question; Favian had concluded, after a few days of watching the man work, that at least part of Lewis’s personality was an affectation, but that his genuine disposition complemented the artificial one to such a great degree that the two were, for the most part, indistinguishable.
Lewis seemed to have taken it upon himself to ask all the awkward questions, to drag up any dirt or service gossip that might conceivably affect the outcome of the trial, and to twist any of the witness’s words into the least favorable interpretation. He seemed to do it impartially, however; his acid comments were bestowed on any witness without discrimination between prosecution and defense. There was method in it, Favian concluded; the man seemed determined to get at the truth by means of terror.
The others were more moderate. Decatur proved as efficient as Rodgers at keeping the trial moving briskly and at— somewhat more tactfully— restraining the flowery prose of the deputy judge advocate. Favian generally confined himself to clarifying already-stated positions and pointing out possible contradictions, and Jones did much the same, and also— as a former attorney— assisting with matters of legal procedure. But it was Charles Stewart who provided the only surprise of the session.
It was during the third of the trials for violation of Article XXIV, or “wasting, embezzling, or fraudulently buying, selling, or receiving any ammunitions, provisions, or other public stores,” to use the language of the indictment. A master’s mate had been accused of selling the United States’s spare cordage, canvas, and the boat’s emergency supplies. The unscrupulous men ashore he’d dealt with seemed to have vanished, but the evidence seemed clear-cut enough, and Decatur, under whom the man had served for years, had reluctantly signed the order to bring about the court-martial. As both accuser and president of the court, he tried to maintain neutrality, keeping out of the examination altogether and announcing that, although he hoped the court’s decision would be unanimous for guilt or acquittal, in the event of a tie between the other four he would vote for acquittal— a typically chivalrous remark, at which even the accused man’s eyes shone with tears of gratitude. Stephen Decatur, Favian knew, was adept at producing such evidence of loyalty among his men; though Favian was more aware than the master’s mate of Decatur’s ruthless, ambitious side, and knew he would never have brought this to trial unless he had a certainty of obtaining a conviction, and a knowledge that his tie-breaking vote would never be necessary.
The master’s mate did not help himself with his testimony; he was so confused and incoherent, and so obviously at a loss to offer an explanation for the missing stores, that he would have tried the patience of a court of saints, let alone five overdressed men sweating in the heat of a summer afternoon. Lewis’s sarcasm alone almost reduced the man to tears. But Captain Charles Stewart took over the questioning, and slowly and with great effort, backtracking when necessary, produced a coherent narrative that seemed rather insubstantially to be pointing in a certain direction; and then with a flash of intuition Favian and Jacob Jones saw where Stewart was aiming and leaped into the questioning, almost stumbling over one another with eagerness. In the end the master’s mate was acquitted and the finger of guilt seemed conclusively pointed toward United States’s bosun, who was shown not only to have taken money for the stores but cunningly arranged that, when the crime was discovered, the evidence should point to someone else entirely. Eyes blazing, Decatur signed an order for the man’s arrest, and stood up to shake the acquitted man’s hand and apologize personally for ordering his arrest. The poor man, overwhelmed, fainted dead away.
Afterwards Favian looked at Captain Stewart with greater respect. He had always known the man was talented, but to somehow penetrate the incomprehensible testimony of the poor, confused master’s mate, to see the thread of truth interwoven with the rest, and to dexterously pluck it forth unaided— it had been an incredible performance, showing a mind far keener for this kind of work than was usually demonstrated by any board of captains.
Favian also became better acquainted with Jacob Jones, and during the supper that followed the last court-martial found himself invited by Jones for a tour, next day, of the new steam battery being built in Brown’s shipyard on the East River, the steam battery designed by the celebrated Mr. Fulton and built at Jones’s recommendation. Favian, who had heard a great deal about the battery, was happy to accept.
The last supper of the court’s session was restrained; the mood was more of relief than of celebration. Favian and Stewart left early, taking a Navy launch to Manhattan, where their ways parted. Stewart’s lodgings were nearby, but Favian’s were out of the city to the north; he’d wanted to avoid the recognition and celebrity that would inevitably have come with finding a place near the waterfront. He lodged north of the actual city limits in Greenwich Village, the Bossen Bouwerie that was, at a small farmhouse near the Minetta Water.
The actual farmland was in disuse now, but Favian’s hostess still kept a few cattle and entertained lodgers. She was the widow of a Revolutionary deserter from Anhalt-Zerbst by the name of Fux, apparently a distant relation of the composer, and she bore this misfortune with a militant pugnacity that dared the world to offer comment, and which silenced in advance a helpful Favian, who would otherwise have suggested altering the spelling to Fuchs.
It was late by the time Favian crossed the stone bridge over the canal, had ridden north the length of the Greenwich Road, stopping to admire the sunset over the Hudson, and had stabled his roan mare— on loan from his father— a beautiful animal. There were several strange horses in the stable; evidently Frau Fux had other guests, presumably travelers heading south on the Greenwich Road who had decided to break their journey here rather than continuing the long ride to lower Manhattan in the dark.
The new guests had gone to bed, as had the widow, but there was half a peach pie, a jug of cream, and a bucket of beer waiting for him in the kitchen. Grateful— it had been a long ride since supper— Favian threw off the heavy, braided coat, happy to be rid of the weight of the bullion epaulets and all they represented, and filled a mug with the beer. Until he returned to New London and the Shark— and there was no obligation to hurry— he was free of the official Navy, free to wear civilian rig, to go swordless, and to enjoy the world as a free man for a little space. He had prize money now, prize money for the Teaser, for his share of the Macedonian, money awarded by Congress for the British ships he’d burned in the Narrow Seas of England. There were other benefits as well: money and five hundred acres awarded by the state of New Hampshire, money and a house (now leased) granted by the citizens of Portland in gratitude for the destruction of the Loyalist.
Favian had now made the adjustment from an insolvent young officer, constantly on the brink of being thrown ashore on half pay, to affluent man of property. His money imposed new burdens that he had never anticipated. Most of it was in dollars that were losing their value with wartime inflation; the property in New Hampshire was uncleared and unsurveyed, but taxes still had to be paid on it; his only income was the seventy-five dollars per month Navy salary, the (very low) interest being paid on his money by the banks, and the rent from the building in Portland.
Clearly something had to be done with the dollars, but what? His career had been a Navy one; investments were not his line. And the traditional investments, commerce and merchant shipping, had first been crippled during the embargoes and then almost eliminated by the British blockade. In his home town of Portsmouth ships were moored three-deep alongside the wharves, awaiting times of peace.
These problems aside, he still had enough to call himself affluent, even if he weren’t wealthy. Enough, he thought wryly, to be considered a serious prospect for son-in-law even by someone as conservative as Nicholas Greenhow. But the money had come too late, at least as far as Greenhow was concerned.
For years, the lean years for Favian and the Navy following the war with Tripoli and before the declaration of war with Britain— the years in which Favian’s service had been ashore or in leaky, dangerous gunboats, useless for defending the nation against its foreign enemies but used instead to enforce Jefferson’s embargoes that had wrecked American commerce and kept almost every American sailor out of work for years— during those bleak years, Favian and Emma, old Greenhow’s daughter, had an understanding. There was nothing formal, nothing spoken, but Favian and Emma had both been raised genteel and knew the genteel code and its unstated rules, and also how to manipulate them.
Greenhow had objected to Emma’s attachment, chiefly on the grounds of Favian’s profession—Favian was a naval lieutenant who belonged to a service that was being deliberately starved by President Jefferson, a service not likely to be at war and thus not likely to reward its heroes with prize money and promotion, but rather to cast them ashore on half pay or dismiss them from the service altogether at the least political change in Washington. No, not suitable for Emma at all. Nicholas Greenhow had paraded endless numbers of suitors before his daughter, but even though she would not marry without her father’s permission— that too was a part of the genteel code— neither would she marry against her inclinations. Her inclinations had disposed her favorably toward Favian, and there they remained.
Yet her father’s persistence had taken its toll; the years of Favian’s absence had not helped. Favian’s return to Portsmouth in the summer of 1813 with the success of Markham’s Raid behind him and the Teaser gloriously sent to the bottom of the Atlantic, promotion assured and prize money on the way, would, Favian thought, be crowned by the announcement of an engagement.
Instead something had gone awry. There were misunderstandings, cross purposes, all complicated by the fact that the courtship was being conducted in semisecrecy, hidden from the Greenhow family. Emma Greenhow had been baffling, her behavior and attitude totally unexpected. She had instead engaged herself to Benjamin Stanhope, a talented shipbuilder and a pillar of the Federalist establishment; he was twenty-odd years her senior and a widower, the father of the Midshipman Stanhope who had testified at Favian’s court-martial. The marriage had taken place the following February; Favian, for once quite happy to be out of Portsmouth on Navy business, had written to his father asking that an appropriate gift be sent in his name. The latest news had Emma with child, her marriage an apparent success.
Her success was becoming a social one as well, not unmixed with politics. Her father and husband were antiwar Federalists, and that breed of politician, always strong in New England, had grown increasingly vocal since the British had extended their blockade north of New York in 1813. New Hampshire and Massachusetts had refused to place their militia under federal control; Connecticut and Rhode Island were growling ominously; the summer campaigns against Canada had once again gone nowhere; the Navy was being forced to contend with a larger and more efficient blockade, and had almost given up the policy of deep-sea cruises in favor of defensive warfare on the Great Lakes.
For the war in Europe was over. Napoleon had abdicated in April— Favian remembered the celebrations, hundreds of Federalists dancing around bonfires to celebrate the exile of the Corsican Tyrant they had hated. Favian himself had joined the celebrations, delighted that France, a country he admired, was finally out from under the heel of the most ruthless dictator Europe had ever known, but even as he danced he had known the grim consequence. The hundreds of British warships that had been kept busy blockading France and her allies were free to cross the Atlantic, carrying with them the battle-hardened veterans of Wellington’s undefeated peninsular army. The first such reinforcements, under General Sir George Gordon Drummond, had already reached the Niagara frontier, altering the balance of power.
The only disorder in Europe was created by the situation in Norway, where Favian’s old acquaintance Prince Christian Frederick was trying to form an independent state, a republic based on the American model. But the victorious European powers had decreed that Norway was to be a Swedish province, and free Norway was being blockaded by the European powers while Swedish armies prepared to invade. Favian and the Experiment had been in Norway in 1813, and from what Favian had seen there Christian Frederick had no chance at all: Norway was too poor, too divided, and too isolated to stand against the united might of all Europe. It was a pity: Favian had liked the prince royal and wished him success with his noble plans, but was morally certain the prince’s effort was doomed.
So the sideshow in Norway would soon be over, Favian thought— perhaps it was already over— and that would release what little British strength had been diverted to the Skagerrak. The United States should be bracing for the assault and looking to its defenses; instead talk of New England secession was in the air, along with bluster of states’ rights and a new constitutional convention.
And most of the talk was coming from Federalists of the stamp of Nicholas Greenhow and Benjamin Stanhope. Merchants with ties to the sea, they had been driven to hate and desperation by Jefferson’s embargoes, and their hatred obscured their view of the war. They seemed to think the fighting no worse than the kind of bloodless newspaper skirmishing waged between the Columbian Sentinel and the National Intelligencer; the incredible absurdity of calling a constitutional convention in the middle of a war was not apparent to them. Favian, with friends to mourn, bitterly aware of how real the battles had seemed with roundshot crashing into his bulwarks and cutting men in half on his decks, saw the war in a different way. He had fought the Tripolitans, who were bankrolled by British gold; he had served with men, born Americans, who had been pressed into the British service to have their backs torn open by the British cat. Yet all these radical Federalists could see were abstract political and constitutional questions— no wonder the nation was in such trouble.
The antiwar Federalists were being opposed, Favian knew. He was in regular correspondence with his brothers and his father, active men of affairs who had divided themselves from their Federalist friends by their support of the war. His father, who had announced that the new century required new public men, and retired from public life on New Year’s Day, 1800, had even been moved to leave his estate and make speeches among his old Revolutionary comrades.
Favian’s brother Lafayette had been even more active. Although he had almost left public life, disgusted, in 1813, he had lately been persuaded to return. He was not, Favian knew, a good politician; he was a cold man, perhaps even a repellent one, and he was not liked— but even his enemies admitted his brilliance, and his rhetorical broadsides were so weighty, so well delivered, and so cutting that few dared to oppose him on a public platform. Aware that he was not well liked even by those who agreed with him— this would not necessarily have been a handicap in a populous, more urbane place like Boston, where no one had much liked John Adams either, but it was fatal in a little world like Portsmouth— Lafayette had placed his considerable talents at the disposal of another, more popular figure, the young congressman Daniel Webster.
Favian was not acquainted personally with Webster; although a New Hampshireman, Webster had been raised on a farm inland and educated in Massachusetts: their paths had never crossed. He was apparently a true New England man and a Federalist; his opposition to the Madison administration and to Democratic-Republican policies in general was eloquently stated; but he was also a servant of the Constitution and opposed to New England secession.
The two men, Lafayette Markham and Daniel Webster, had formed an alliance against the faction represented by Benjamin Stanhope and Nicholas Greenhow. Lafayette had talent, money, an important name, and social position; Webster had his forum in Congress, considerable popularity, and great talents of his own. Lafayette’s letters to Favian were full of acid musings on his enemies and unstinting praise for Webster— and praise by Lafayette of anyone at all was a rare thing. It was clear that Webster was the dominant partner in this alliance, and Favian had concluded that for Lafayette, who was older, more established in the community, and certainly wealthier, to cede precedence in this way spoke well of Mr. Webster’s oratorical and political abilities.
It seemed, from Lafayette’s letters, that Emma Greenhow Stanhope had entered the lists on the side of her father and husband; Lafayette’s letters spoke bitterly of the political gatherings at which Emma had been hostess. Favian remembered Emma’s curiosity on political questions, her resentment of old Greenhow’s ranting, entirely self-centered political philosophies... She had surrendered, it seemed, to parental and conjugal authority. Surrendered to what, considering her marriage, was probably inevitable.
Favian finished his third mug of beer and contemplated the peach pie. He cut himself a generous slice, doused it with cream, ate it. He watched the candlelight glitter on the gaudy hilt of his presentation sword, on the American eagle, the thirteen stars, the date of the Experiment-Teaser fight graven on the burnished guard.
The sword had been returned to him. He was once again a member in full standing of the small society of American captains, the very few men that formed the cutting edge of United States power abroad. Theirs was a complex association, bound by its own rigid rules of conduct, and not to be understood by any outsider. Favian had fought three duels in his life, two of them to uphold the Navy’s idea of honor, and in the second he had killed his man. He knew that as long as he continued to wear the uniform he would have to be ready to draw that gaudy, keen-edged sword, not simply in defense of his life or honor, but in defense of those abstract ideals which the Navy held dear, and that he should not be prepared merely to kill, but to die.
Favian’s life had been at hazard many times, usually as the service required— only once had he been at risk for reasons of his own. That had been his third duel, the one fought in Norway. Certainly the Navy and its requirements had played a part in that fight, for within the dueling ritual, the insult given and resented, the challenge given and accepted, there was a display of public courage, and Favian had used that for the Navy’s purposes. His crew had been unhappy and resentful, thinking him a coward for declining a British invitation to combat in the North Sea; Favian’s duel had won them back from their disaffection, making possible the victory over Teaser that had happened later. The duel had, in that sense, been a tactic to win the hands’ affection, and as a strategy it had succeeded.
But it was more complicated than that— a woman had been involved, for one thing, and Norwegian politics. Favian’s opponent, a brutal man, had died; the fact that Favian had personally disliked him had made the killing easier. There was, however, a more disturbing element. The duel had been accepted easily, fought easily and without trepidation. The danger had not disturbed him; he had slept well the night before. Favian had wondered then, and wondered at greater length since, just how much he had desired the mortal danger for its own sake. Had he deliberately sought his own death in Norway, he wondered; was he a coward, not in the physical sense as his crew had supposed then, but in the sense that he was more afraid to face life— plife in the Navy, with its burdens of isolation and command— than death?
He had known for years that he was not entirely suited for the Navy. Decatur was more the sort that the service required, or Charles Stewart: the laughing cavalier, a romantic hero out of Walter Scott combined with the pragmatic man of science. Decatur was a dashing figure out of legend, inspiring devotion among his crew; but he was also a capable sailor, competent to make a myriad of practical and technical decisions when necessary. His victory over the Macedonian had been won with science and carefully studied tactics, not dash.
Yet dashing he certainly was, and thought himself to be; there was no greater a believer in Decatur’s star than Decatur himself. The greatest weight on that board of captains that had just completed its work aboard President, greater even than the weight of the epaulets, greater than the weight of the collective power over life, death, and punishment, was the weight of vanity. Every man, the romantic Decatur, the vain and petulant Rodgers, the charmingly Irish Stewart, believed awesomely in himself, in his own talent and luck.
Favian was talented, as he himself knew; following the death of William Burrows, he was probably the best technical sailor in the service. He was a capable enough leader, he supposed; years of apprenticeship to Decatur had shown him tricks enough for inspiring allegiance among the ordinary sailors. But that resounding, trumpeting belief in one’s own star, the belief so powerfully on display in that board of captains, was absent; he, like his friend Burrows, had been an outsider within the Navy, feigning a submission to the code in which he did not truly believe, but which he was able to understand was a necessity.
His feigning was certainly good enough. If he could not be a character from Walter Scott, he could at least imitate one. The decision had been made years ago: Favian was a Navy man and a Navy man he would stay. But the burdens of command did not sit comfortably with him; the epaulets weighed more heavily on his shoulders than they ever would on Decatur’s.
As he picked up his sword, uniform coat, and candle and headed upstairs to his room, Favian found his mind turning again to Emma. She had submitted to the inevitable; she had joined politically as well as matrimonially to her husband, accepting his judgment and guidance as her genteel code demanded. Was it any different from what he, Favian, had accepted? A life dictated not by his own inclinations, but by a code imposed from outside? And was it ever possible to do otherwise?
Favian pulled off his boots, peeled his tight trousers from his long, thin legs, and carefully hung his dress uniform in a closet. The questions, unanswerable really, flitted through his head. The closet doors were closed on his uniform; the captain had been put away. It was Favian Markham alone, whoever that was, who would turn into the bed, until the captain was roused again with the morning.