CHAPTER 3
The next day Favian thankfully dressed as a civilian, a plain pair of gray cloth riding breeches with a leather seat, a pea-green clawhammer coat, a round hat, and boots. Because of the heat he’d go without a waistcoat and without the bulky neckcloth and cravat, leaving his collar open in the fashion set by Lord Byron. Frau Fux’s other guests were beginning their breakfast as Favian came down; they were not, as Favian had thought, travelers heading into the city, but inhabitants of the city itself, a graying surveyor and his apprentice. They’d been hired by the city to help plan a hypothetical expansion northwards; they were working long days and preferred to spend the night in the Village rather than returning to lower Manhattan each night. They were pleased to meet the celebrated Captain Markham, congratulated him on Markham’s Raid and the outcome of his court-martial, and wished him all success with the Shark. They had been drinking Frau Fux’s beer with their breakfast and were inclined to be merry.
“D’you think the city will really extend beyond Greenwich Village?” Favian asked, by way of politeness.
“Oh, aye,” the surveyor replied, offhandedly. “There’s less than half a mile separating New York from the Village as it is. The city would have already reached this area if it weren’t for the epidemic back in the Year One, and for this damn— begging your pardon, Captain— for this damned war. Even with the war cutting off commerce the city is still growing. And there’s only one way it can grow, and that’s northward.”
His apprentice, a gawky seventeen and not yet used to beer in the morning, broke into spluttering laughter. “Whether Henry Brevoort like it or no!” he said, and both he and his master broke into bawling laughter. As Favian looked at them questioningly, the man, between eruptions of laughter, explained the joke.
“Henry Brevoort keeps a tavern at Tenth Street and Broadway,” he said. “And this tavern has a tree by it with a bench— haha! — and Brevoort likes to sit under the tree and gossip with his friends. When we tried to extend Broadway north of Tenth Street back in the Year Seven, Brevoort objected because”— he interrupted himself with a fit of red-faced laughter—” because we would have to cut down his tree!”
“His tree!” the apprentice echoed, banging on the table with his fist. Beer slopped foaming from the mugs.
“And damn if he didn’t do it!” the surveyor laughed. “That’s the joke of it! He went to City Hall to complain over a tree being cut down, and he won! That’s why, when the city is built north, Broadway will be bent to the west at Tenth Street. Th’ planners almost had apoplexy, an’ the surveyors went mad. Some fine night I will sneak over to Brevoort’s and cut that tree down. Or, as you Navy men say— haha!— cut it out!”
The apprentice almost went into convulsions at this witticism. Favian laughed politely, and when Frau Fux brought him his breakfast of steak, fried potatoes, and eggs, Favian asked her for coffee.
“Dere ain’t no coffee, my captain,” the lady replied. “You had de last yesterday. Dis damn blockade is cuttin’ off de supplies. I could give you Scotch coffee but I don’t t’ink you gonna like it. No tea left eider, except herb tea.”
“Cut it out!” giggled the apprentice, tears running down his face.
“Thank you anyway, Mrs. Fux,” Favian said, making a mental note to buy coffee in the city later.
“I’m glad you ain’t goin’ in no uniform today, my captain,” Frau Fux continued. “Dem Tories is meetin’ in town and dere ain’t no man in uniform gonna be safe.”
“Really?” Favian was astounded. “Tories meeting here?”
The surveyor scowled. “Confound ’em!” he said. “I’m not an admirer of our Mr. Madison, but I’d rather have twenty Madisons than any one of those Tories. They fought against our country in the Rebellion, and now they parade in the city preachin’ against the war. Before the blockade they wouldn’t have dared, but now there are those who will listen.”
“Let us hope there are not,” Favian said, but he knew the surveyor was right. The antiwar Federalists would listen well to the Tories, he knew; to oppose Madison many would make an alliance with a faction that was opposed not only to Federalism, with its insistence on a strong, centralized American government, but to the very idea of American independence itself. Compared with some Federalists’ outright hatred of Jefferson and Madison, their mild distaste of the British and their allies was of little account.
Following breakfast Favian rode to his cousin Micah’s mansion at nearby Richmond Hill. Micah, the son of Favian’s pious, fierce old privateer uncle Josiah, had married a New York heiress and become a banker. Because he’d forsaken his father’s Congregational religion for his wife’s Episcopalianism, his father and brothers had turned cool to him.
Favian himself had not spent a great deal of time at Richmond Hill, but it was not for religious reasons. The courts-martial had occupied a great deal of his time and energy, which supplied the excuse, but there was another reason entirely: Micah’s household was so obviously an unhappy one. Micah seemed harassed and nervous in the company of his wife, and even though their manners in company were polished enough Favian had seen Angelica’s glances at her husband when Micah was holding forth at table or speaking to any of their children, and he thought he’d detected in Angelica’s eyes ungovernable resentment, hatred, and despite. What their private life must be like, Favian thought, did not bear thinking about.
Angelica, alone in the house save for the servants, received Favian cordially. Favian bowed, made his apologies for not enjoying their hospitality more frequently, and then was invited to supper the following evening. He accepted, exchanged civilities, and made an exit, pleading business at the Navy yard.
On his way to the Brooklyn ferry Favian saw the Tories marching. There were only about a hundred of them, mostly elderly men with a few younger ones beside them— sons, probably, rather than converts— a pitifully shrunken remnant of the thousands of Tories who had thronged New York during the war, when the British were in occupation and the city a haven for loyalists. They were hardly a threat to anyone in uniform, Favian thought. They were led by a sixtyish man on horseback dressed in rather old-fashioned knee breeches and an even more old-fashioned powdered wig; Favian, as he maneuvered his horse out of the way of the demonstration, heard the muttering of the crowd. There was no sympathy there for these old men; the Revolutionary scars had by no means healed over.
“Monarchy-loving bastards,” he heard one man mutter. “I wonder that they’d dare show their faces.”
“Aye,” another answered. “They’re brazen enough with an English squadron just off Sandy Hook. Look at that old St. John Delancey leadin’ ’em, who fought with Howe and Arnold and butchered our men at Fort Griswold!”
“He’s no less brazen with that Mrs. Markham on Richmond Hill,” the first man said. “And at his age!” He spat. “They should all be hung.”
Oho, Favian thought in surprise. Poor Micah. Left his family, changed his religion, and all to marry a woman who preferred the affections of an elderly Tory. If, he thought loyally, the slander was true. But it certainly had the ring of truth, and would serve to explain a few things.
The parade passed and Favian rode on. Before he’d ridden two blocks he came upon another parade. This was a martial one, the President’s marines marching under Lieutenant Twiggs, the man scowling and red-faced as usual, followed by two hundred of President’s shellbacks under Decatur himself. Decatur waved as he saw Favian’s tall figure by the road, and Favian trotted over to him.
“Hello, Stephen,” Favian said, saluting him with his short, coiled crop.
“Hello, Favian,” Decatur said gaily. “We’re marching to Fort Clinton and back. Will you join us?”
“I have an appointment with Jacob at Brown’s shipyard.”
“Ah, yes. I forgot. I’m sorry you cannot join us in confounding the Tories. They’re marching today, you know.”
“I saw them. Only about a hundred, and mostly old.”
Decatur frowned, fanning himself with his round hat. “Those hundred are the ones who are foolish enough to declare themselves. There are a good many sympathizers who prefer to do their work indoors.” He returned his hat to. his head and grinned. “But it’s a fine day for marching, and I thought it best to show the Navy in force on the streets today lest the Tories grow too bold and think they can get away with breaking the peace.”
“Was this your idea, Stephen?” Favian asked.
“Stewart’s, actually,” Decatur said. “I think the mayor and the local authorities will be thankful, though, don’t you?”
“I should imagine they would be,” Favian said. He’d thought he’d seen Charles Stewart’s hand in this gesture; the idea hadn’t seemed like one of Decatur’s. “Good luck to you.”
“Thankee,” Decatur said, waving to someone on the street. Favian said his farewells and rode for the ferry.
It was a clear day and a hot one, but the sea breeze cooled him as Fulton’s clattering steam ferry crossed the East River. The river was crowded with ships lying at their anchors, or two-deep along the wharves. Some had been there since the declaration of war, lying with only an anchor watch aboard, their running rigging taken down, the standing rigging slowly wearing away, their masts marked at night by an anchor light that swung with the tide and wind... For any seaman, a sad sight.
Just to the south, off Sandy Hook, was the British squadron. He had watched them from the round house of the United States, and by now knew them all by sight. The big Majestic, Captain Hayes, a frigate the British claimed was the equal of any of the American forty-fours. It was a claim Favian doubted— Majestic might be equal in broadside armament, but President, a smart ship, could certainly outsail her. Accompanying Majestic would be a smaller frigate, either Pomona or Tenedos. Another British squadron patrolled to the north, in Long Island Sound— there Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, the officer who had kissed Nelson farewell at Trafalgar, commanded Ramillies off New London, threatening at any moment to launch a force up the Thames to burn the United States, Jacob Jones’s Macedonian, or the half-completed Shark. The Federalist government of Connecticut had refused to adequately man the Thames batteries to prevent this, and so the American ships had been hauled for miles up the river to relative safety; it was only recently that Jones had established his own batteries, with Navy gunners, that permitted United States and Macedonian to return to New London.
Favian knew all the names of all the British captains: Hope of the Endymion, Henderson of the Tigris, Pearce of the Rifleman, Byron of the Belvidera, Townsend of the Aeolus, Bastard of the Africa, Burdett of the Maidstone. Farther north, off Boston, were Collier of the Leander, Stuart of the Newcastle, Kerr of the Acasta. The British had been there for months, the ships and the personalities of their captains growing familiar as the blockade wore on, as familiar as the dismal sight of all that shipping rotting slowly by the East River piers.
A year before Favian had seen what years of a British blockade had done to Norway: the useless shipping, the graying, once-gay city of Bergen, the half-starved inhabitants, the well-fed nobility and profiteers... If the war went on a great deal longer, New York could go the way of Bergen, cut off from trade, from news of foreign lands, from the normal to-and-fro of populations, from all that a great city required. Manhattan would be inhabited by apathetic ghosts and dogged by those distant, ever-present topsails. And it would happen not only to New York, but also Boston, Providence, Portsmouth, Charleston, Savannah, Washington, Norfolk, and New Orleans.
The war was being lost.
Yet the British could still be hurt. England had been at war almost continually for twenty years. How much longer could she stand those taxes, those incessant drafts on her population and resources? Markham’s Raid had destroyed millions in commerce, had driven insurance rates skyrocketing. Porter in the Pacific had done as well, wiping out the British whaling fleet, possibly the most damaging attack on any naval power in all history. If the United States could somehow hang on, wearing Britain away by its simple refusal to lie down and die, while its Navy and privateers struck into the Channel, the Pacific, and perhaps even the Indian Ocean, then the war might yet be brought to a satisfactory conclusion.
But the likelihood of a good end to the war was waning. The Tories marching on the streets of New York made that clear enough, as did the unreasoning sedition of the antiwar Federalists.
The United States was under stress, and disunited. In another month Favian would turn thirty, which would allow him to vote in New Hampshire, the state where he owned property. He wondered if he would ever have the chance to vote for a President of the United States— if the talk of secession continued, he might find himself voting for the puppet president of a British protectorate.
Favian turned from his thoughts to his horse, made nervous by the clanking engine and gushing smokestack. The ferry thudded against its pier, and Favian mounted and rode to the shipyard. Captain Jacob Jones waited at the gate, dressed like Favian in civilian clothes. “We’ll have an opportunity to view the steam battery in a few minutes, when the workers have their luncheon,” Jones said, looking at his watch. “Demologos is being completed as quickly as possible, and I do not wish to impede the workers.”
They spoke of the Macedonian as Favian stabled his horse; Jones was her captain, but had scarcely ever sailed in her, only the brief voyage north from New York in company with Decatur in the United States, before being forced into New London when United States was struck by lightning in a freak storm. He had then been promptly blockaded by the British and had never had another chance to take her to sea. Favian, as Decatur’s first lieutenant, had commanded Macedonian after her capture, had rerigged her in mid-Atlantic to sail her to Rhode Island. Even though he had never been Macedonian’s captain he’d sailed her many more days than Jones ever had, and Jones was properly curious about her.
“Very fast off the wind,” Favian said, “but close-hauled she’s sluggish. I think with proper trimming you might get her five and a half points from the wind, but no closer.”
Jones nodded sagely, a man who knew his craft; they went on to discuss the technical aspects of trimming Macedonian, and then Jones inquired about Markham’s Recording Log.
Favian responded warmly; the recording log was one of his obsessions. When he’d captured Macedonian one of Massey’s automatic recording logs had been captured with it. The device was a practical machine for measuring the speed of a ship, more efficient than the taffrail logs with their clumsy knotted lines that had been used since the days before Columbus, and Favian had written memoranda to the Navy Department recommending the adoption of a mechanical log In the press of wartime affairs he had been ignored. At first he’d accepted the department’s judgment, but as he’d felt the boredom of the months ashore weighing on him he’d begun to occupy himself with the design of a recording log of his own.
It seemed to him that Massey’s device could be improved. Massey’s Recording Log was in two parts, an arrow-shaped head containing the actual recording device, which was connected to a finned “rotator” that turned as it passed through the water. It had seemed to Favian that the two elements could be combined, resulting in a simpler, more practical mechanism. His prototype designs, tested on the Thames at New London, had shown that the idea would work, but there had been no deep-sea tests, and there was a problem with the metallurgy.
“We can’t use iron or steel, because it will rust,” Favian explained. “Copper is too soft, and bronze too brittle. We’ll be using an alloy of copper and zinc to produce brass, but we have to have the percentages right. Too much copper will make it too soft; too much zinc will make it too brittle. I’ve been working with a clockmaker, and he’s carrying out experiments while I’m gone. I hope he may have the answer by the time I return.”
“I hope you may,” Jones said. There was the sound of a clattering noontime bell, and the distant bustle and clatter of the yard died away. Favian and Jones began their walk to the giant shed that housed the steam battery while it was building. Jones received the salute of the marine guard and threw open the door.
“Good God!” Favian murmured. He had never pictured the thing as quite this big. “She’s a monster, Jacob!”
Jones smiled. “In the water she’s going to look like an entire city block that has detached itself from Manhattan and swum out to fight the British.”
“Two hulls, a what-d’ye-call it, a catamaran. I hadn’t heard that.”
The entered the shed and walked the length of the great hull, in the dim light sensed as much as seen, a thing like a slumbering giant, possessed of a latent, awesome power.
“The battery has a beam of fifty-six feet and a length of a hundred forty,” Jones said. “With those proportions on a sailing vessel, she’d have the handling of a floating brick. But with two hulls she rides higher, there is less water resistance, and the paddlewheel amidships will be protected.”
“Protected by walls of wood,” Favian said as he walked up a gangplank to peer into the starboard hull. The hulls were massive, enormous timbers providing cross-bracing that would absorb the shock of recoiling guns; there was a bulwark of a thickness greater than any Favian had seen.
“Fifty-eight inches of oak planking on the sides,” Jones said proudly. “Even the largest men-of-war have only thirty. Over five feet of planking! That’ll stop any cannon shot the British can throw at her, and in case a shot comes through one of the embrasures we’ll have thirty inches protecting the paddlewheel.
“She’ll have a battery of thirty heavy guns, with red-hot shot heated in boxes next to the boiler. Thirty guns ain’t much, not compared to a British seventy-four, but when each of those thirty guns can fire a thirty-two pound shot hot enough to set a target alight, that’s enough to make a holocaust of any blockading squadron.”
Fire, Favian thought. Any sailor’s greatest terror, greater than storms or sharks, greater than fear of decapitation in battle. Ships were made of wood, payed with tar, rigged with tarred lines, propelled by canvas sails— all of it flammable. Red-hot shot was a terror: even the British, bold as anyone, were careful to keep their blockading squadrons well outside the ranges of Forts Clinton, Totten, and Schuyler, the New York batteries that could incinerate their entire fleet if given the chance. Within a few short months Demologos would be launched, and later, on some calm day when the British could not maneuver or escape, the steam battery would set forth, a mobile fort that would bring the terror of red-hot shot out to sea. What could the British do to prevent it? All those celebrated names— Byron of the Belvidera, Hope of the Endymion— helpless. Jones had been right to use the word holocaust, a flaming sacrifice to the gods. Even the old gods of war, Belial or Thor or Mars, might hesitate to accept a sacrifice of this dimension, all those frigates and liners going up like so many torches, flames licking up the tall pine masts, thousands of crewmen running in panicked frenzy over the decks, hot tar and ash dripping down on them as they tried to cast off the boats…
“Demologos. Voice of the people,” Favian whispered, translating, a little freely, the Greek. The American republic might be saved by such machines: Demologos might drive off the blockading squadrons and allow those hundreds of useless merchant ships access to the seas, preventing the despair and economic stagnation caused by the blockade.
But it was still horrible. Balanced on his plank, looking down into Demologos’s twin hulls, Favian knew he was seeing a new, double-edged creation, at once a thing of scarcely imaginable terror and the possible salvation of the United States of America, the first harbinger of a more deadly, more scientific, more destructive mode of warfare, and also the instrument by which the voice of the American people might continue to be heard abroad... Favian wondered if this duality had been considered in choosing the name: the Greek logos had many meanings, “voice” and “word” being only two. Others were “argument,” “reason,” or “debate.” The steam battery was certainly an almighty argument— but was the argument, Favian wondered, also the voice of reason? It was doubtless in the service of reason that the American republic had been founded; but was the launching of this terrible mechanism a reasonable act? Was it the “reason of the people” that had declared this war, and now sent forth this machine to incinerate enemies by the hundreds? It was an unsettling question. Favian had heard that many were in favor of changing the name to Fulton; perhaps, he thought, they wanted to avoid all the unsettling questions raised by her name.
Of course no one could picture Demologos venturing more than a few miles from shore. Sailing vessels would still rule the high seas for at least another few generations, until advances in steam engines made further miracles possible.
And while Favian stood wrapped in his thoughts, Jones prattled on about the steam battery, all the facts contained within his agile memory: the paddles would be fourteen feet wide, dipping four feet; the engine would be supported by one hull, the boiler by the other; there would be two short masts, used only for signaling, although there would be a bowsprit on each end to set jibs on, to aid in docking. There were twin rudders at each end; if one rudder was shot off, Demologos could reverse course and steam away; Fulton was promising six knots of speed. There would be pumps and hoses to discharge hot water and steam against any boarders; she would carry a crew of over two hundred.
“When will she be operational?” Favian asked.
“Fulton is building the engine and boiler at his own shipyard on the Hudson,” Jones said. “After the hull’s finished she’ll be towed over to Fulton’s to get her engine, and then she’ll be ready for trials in the harbor, but she can’t venture out of protected waters without her guns, and they’re waiting in Philadelphia. They’ve got to be trucked overland, and each weighs two and a half tons— it’ll take weeks.”
“Aye. Shark’s guns aren’t with her, either, and aren’t likely to be,” Favian said. Naval guns were scarce in the United States; guns for the first frigates were imported from Great Britain. Favian remembered well the royal monogram, GR, on the gun barrels of the Constitution and the United States. With the blockade all the guns were being moved overland rather than by sea, and the delays were enormous.
“We expect to be ready for trials in November,” Jones said. “But there’s no telling when she’ll be ready to fight.”
“Who’s to command her?” Favian asked.
“Ah, the secretary has yet to decide,” Jones said. “It might go to Lewis or Decatur, but Lewis has been against the project from the beginning, and Decatur probably has ambitions elsewhere.”
“Finding a captain might delay her more than the guns,” Favian said.
“Yes. Do you wish to volunteer?” Jones was grinning. Favian looked down at the massive timbers of the half-completed machine and shook his head.
“I’ll stay with the Shark,” he said. “It will be completed earlier, probably, and I want to get to sea, not spend my time paddling up and down New York harbor.”
Jones nodded. “I understand,” he said. “For me, the temptation is greater. Macedonian may never sail— certainly she won’t if the secretary keeps sending her crews to the Lakes. I’d take this steamboat rather than rot on the banks of the Thames for the rest of the war. And just think, Favian— Demologos would probably carry with it a commodore’s pendant!”
A commodore’s pendant! Jones was no more immune than most to the allure of that ridiculous honorary rank. The precedence and perquisites of a commodore, and who were rightfully entitled to them, were the cause of so much disgraceful wrangling and maneuvering within the service that Favian wished the whole business dispensed with, either by creating the rank of rear admiral to regularize flag rank or by dispensing with the notion of “commodores” altogether.
“That would probably depend a great deal on who else is in harbor at the time,” Favian said, diplomatic. “How many commodores will New York need? We have Decatur and Lewis here already.”
“Stephen will probably try to run the blockade before long,” Jones said. His tone was hopeful. “That’ll mean one less commodore, at least. Would you like to meet Fulton? He’s back from Philadelphia; I saw him going into this office this morning.”
Favian had expected a burly, long-armed mechanic, a man at home amid the world of grease, coal, and iron represented by Demologos and Fulton’s other designs, but instead Favian faced a large-framed, pale, long-fingered man, dressed in dramatic black and white, carrying a springy fruitwood cane like an English gentleman, a man more cut out to be a poet or painter than an engineer, the picture of a dandy and aesthete. His speech, like Favian’s, echoed the accent of Britain; they had both been raised, perhaps, in the same genteel school.
Fulton bowed formally, declining to shake hands, and as Favian returned the bow he perceived the flushed spots on the pale cheeks, the unnaturally red lips, the slight effort Fulton was making to breathe normally. Consumptive, Favian thought.
“Sirs!” Fulton said. “I was about to have some coffee. Would you gentlemen join me?”
“Gladly, sir,” Favian said. Fulton’s movements, despite his illness, were vigorous and swift; he opened the door to an inner room where a coffee pot sat on a small iron stove. The walls of the room were covered with designs executed in a neat, clear hand: Favian recognized Demologos, but there were other plans for steamships, drafts for buildings, a few small oils, including a portrait of Fulton himself executed with a precise hand.
“Did you paint these, Mr. Fulton?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” Fulton said, looking up from pouring coffee into three battered tin cups. “Painting is my first love, of course, but there’s no money to be made there. Would you like some, ah, nerve restorer with your coffee?” He opened a drawer in his desk and offered a bottle of whiskey.
“Thank you, no,” Favian said. He took the coffee and sipped: the real thing, rare and costly in this blockaded city, and much appreciated.
“The trip to Philadelphia was a success!” Fulton told Jones delightedly. “The Defense Committee quite saw the point in my designs. They wanted another Demologos, but I’ll give ’em something better!” He waved his hands as he spoke, sketching promiscuously in the air. “I’ve learned a great deal from Demologos, and I’ll be able to apply it for the Philadelphia battery. Iron plating, that’s the key! A few inches of iron will give the protection of several feet of oak—of course Philadelphia will have to establish an ironworks to make the plates, but I think I’ve convinced ’em the expenses will be justified by the results.” He laughed. “Iron, sirs, iron! That’s the key!
“And I’ll prove it to ’em! In a few days my turtle boat will be completed. Twelve sailors peddling an armored paddle wheel, protected by an iron-plated pitched roof— don’t need much iron there, y’see, because the shot cannot strike it head-on but will strike at an angle: glance off. She’ll tow a mine— the blockade might be broke by July!”
Fulton paused, gasping for breath. The consumption seemed well advanced, and Favian wondered if phthisis had evolved. Apparently not; there was no coughing.
Jones asked a few polite questions about the turtle boat; it was apparent he was not an enthusiast. Favian could understand why: no boat, no matter how well armored, propelled by men cranking a paddle wheel would be able to catch a British vessel even in a light wind. It was steam power that could defeat the enemy frigates, not a dozen tars in a toy boat.
The conversation veered to the Philadelphia steam battery, and Favian asked whether the weight of the iron would not be a burden to the engine. Fulton replied that it would not, since weight would be saved by the subtraction of several feet of wood planking. Favian pictured to himself a rust-red iron battery the size of Demologos, belching smoke, steam, and hot shot. The thought was appalling. Favian had spent years with the Philadelphia gunboat squadron, the pathetic little cockleshells charged with the defense of the Delaware; he knew that the gunboats had spent the war trying, with no success at all, to discover some way to end the Delaware blockade. Fulton’s iron battery could do the work in an afternoon. This pale aesthete would create a revolution in warfare, if only the Philadelphia Defense Committee could raise the money. And if the consumption didn’t destroy him first.
Favian emerged from his musings to see Fulton staring at him intently. “I wonder, Captain Markham,” he said, “if you would do me the favor of sitting for me, for a portrait. At no cost to yourself, of course,” he added hastily. “I am interested, sir, in your physiognomy— may I handle your face?— you carry yourself in an interesting fashion, and you dress in style. I hope you will not wear a uniform; I like that open collar.” His eyes clouded, he seemed now to speak more to himself than to anyone else in the room. “Such a deal of repressed power, strength, in the carriage of the shoulders. Truly a man of action, I should think, but a man firmly in control of himself the while. A fine contrast, but to bring it out? A challenge, truly.”
Favian, taken aback entirely by Fulton’s abrupt change of course, allowed the painter to touch his jaw, turning his head into the light. His portrait had been painted several times since the Teaser fight; he had commissioned a large portrait, full uniform and epaulets and a commanding expression, in the background Teaser heeling over with torn-open bulwarks while Experiment lay with fore topsail aback in the distance, flags flying. He had given the portrait to his father; it hung in the study next to the arranged trophies of the Revolution, all the swords captured in battle and tattered British ensigns. There had been a number of popular engravings, and of course Favian’s profile was on the gold Teaser medal issued by Congress. Fulton seemed to have no interest in the martial side; that was a relief. Favian was heartily sick of his own celebrity, the constant insistence by the public that he should relive over and over his moments of triumph, as if there had not been months since the Teaser had slid beneath the waves.
“No one, Mr. Fulton,” he said, “has ever complimented my appearance in such terms. I’m flattered, but I have no plans to stay in New York for very long ...”
“How long?” Fulton asked, peering at him owlishly.
“I— I can’t say for certain, sir. My plans are rather, all—”
“Captain Stewart and I are leaving a week from tomorrow,” Jones said. “We had hoped that Captain Markham would join us.”
“Thank you, sir,” Favian said. “That would fit in splendidly with my, ah, as-yet-unformed plans. But, Mr. Fulton, I can hardly expect you to rearrange your schedule to accommodate a series of portrait sittings in the next week. I’m much obliged to you, and I’m flattered, but—”
“Stuff!” Fulton said. “Can you come tomorrow? Perhaps in the evening— we can meet in my studio at home. You can meet my wife— perhaps you can come for supper, sir?” Favian grimaced inwardly; this conversation was rapidly turning into a series of apologies.
“Mr. Fulton, I regret to say that I am engaged for tomorrow evening. With my cousin and his family, whom I have been neglecting unforgivably.”
“The night following?”
Favian saw Jones watching him with an amused smile. Favian bowed, at once to the inevitable, to his own mounting curiosity, and to Fulton. Perhaps the man would have some helpful suggestions for Markham’s Recording Log: he seemed an expert on things mechanical.
“What, sir,” he asked, turning to Fulton with a polite, acquiescent smile, “shall I wear?”