CHAPTER TWENTY
It was the last, Favian hoped, of many funerals. The little Presbyterian churchyard in Mobile, overgrown with vines and Spanish moss. Maria-Anna, hugely pregnant, standing in her black dress, looking blankly at the flag-draped coffin while Campaspe held her arm. Finch Martin, red-faced, with the tears falling down his cheeks— he, too, Favian knew, was done with war; he’d buried too many Markhams, and his spirit was gone. Macedonian’s officers, Hourigan on his feet again, Chapelle standing with his cane, Ford with his sleeve pinned up, bright-eyed and sweating with the fever he hadn’t yet shed, Swink and Blake somehow unharmed... Stanhope and Solomon and Potter and all the rest— all with mourning bands on their arms, standing in full rig while the frigate’s trumpeter played taps. It should, Favian thought, have been me. I took the mad risks; it was Gideon who played carefully, and only to help me.
He owed Gideon a debt of service; and he knew he could never pay it back.
It had been those few shots Forte had fired at the Revenge just before the end that had killed Gideon. He’d been standing on the quarterdeck, watching the fight with his cunning brown eyes,, his mouth charged with tobacco, when he’d been clipped by a twenty-four-pound shot and died in an instant. All acknowledged that Martin had gone crazy then, bringing Revenge in absurdly, recklessly close, bow-raking the enemy four times in revenge for the captain he’d so strangely loved.
It took a long time to get Macedonian and its prize in order, and it wasn’t until near dawn that Favian was able to go below and see the surgeon. The cockpit had overflowed with wounded; men lay in rows up on the berth deck, waiting their turn beneath the saw. Campaspe, who had been working all night as Truscott’s assistant, held Favian hand and tried to smile bravely as the Macedonian’s physician and surgeon cut the ball from his arm and probed the wound to remove any stray pieces of cloth that might cause infection.
It took five days to get the prize to Mobile. Forte’s lower masts, as Favian had suspected, were badly wounded; Favian sent Macedonian’s carpenter and a gang of workmen to strengthen them while he took the enemy frigate under tow and worked his way northward, anxious to get out of the area while it was still dark. Two days later they’d reached Fort Bowyer, guarding Mobile Bay, and anchored under its guns for two more days of hasty repairs. On the fifth day Favian got his ships into Mobile and found all seven of his and Gideon’s prizes floating at anchor in the bay.
By that time there’d been half a dozen funerals. The first was massive: Macedonian had suffered thirty-seven men killed and over fifty wounded, the most horrible victory Favian could imagine. Forte’s casualties had been worse, over forty percent. There had been massive structural damage inflicted on both ships; they’d both need a haul-out in a dockyard before any more fighting was done.
Favian could think of nothing to say at the first funeral; he’d delegated the task to Midshipman Dr. Solomon, who read the service for the dead in a cheerful voice, unable to summon the proper solemnity after surviving his first battle. Lazarus, a victim of his last act of loyalty, was buried at the same time, quietly, head-downwards as he’d wanted, over the other side of the ship, sewn up in canvas along with his fiddle. Solomon had objected to the man going without rites, but Favian had been firm; Lazarus had renounced his earlier faith and died true to his new one, and Favian would keep his promise.
“Thank you,” Favian said in a hoarse voice, after thirty-seven men were tipped over the side. “Thank you for trusting me.”.
Another Markham triumph, another set of congratulations from Congress and the President; another medal struck for the survivors. Favian would get three-twentieths of Macedonian’s share of the prize money, which would make a wealthy man a good deal wealthier. A lifetime of banquets, speeches, testimonial dinners. More requests by portrait painters, biographers, politicians. Nothing for those thirty-seven dead but the dark sea bottom and oblivion, no reward for trust.
There were more funerals as the wounded took ill and died; Macedonian left behind a trail of corpses and satisfied sharks. Captain Corbett, strangely, survived— even Dr. Truscott, who hadn’t been able to think of anything to do with the man but sew up his wounds and hope he wouldn’t linger too long, could think of no rational explanation. Both lungs shot through, Corbett hung on the edge of death for a week, then suddenly woke up lucid and asked for pea soup and a cup of tea. Apparently he thought he’d won the battle; it was several days before Truscott dared to disillusion him..
It was clear, afterward, that he wished he’d been killed, but he perversely continued to thrive, and in another week was walking. Favian visited him daily, but they seemed to find little to say to one another.
Corbett’s first lieutenant had been killed early in the fighting by an American marksman, and his second, wounded lightly, had cleverly gone below to the surgeon at the last minute and left the actual surrender to the third officer. It would make an interesting court-martial, Favian thought; the Royal Navy would be looking for a scapegoat somewhere. Would it find it in Corbett or in the third lieutenant?.
It was clear where Corbett felt the blame to lay; he simply refused to talk to his third officer when the man came to visit him in the Mobile hospital. Favian was certain the second lieutenant would escape censure; he hadn’t actually hauled the flag down.
And so it came to the last funeral, the closed casket in the Presbyterian churchyard. There was the flag lying on the coffin, with Gideon’s diamond-hilted presentation sword, the sword he’d taken from an enemy last year, lying on the flag; the trumpet played taps, and Macedonian’s marines fired their rifles in the air. The rifles were echoed by slow mourning gunfire from Malachi’s Revenge and the two frigates lying off the town. Then the guard took the sword from the coffin, folded the flag, and handed both items to Maria-Anna, who watched expressionlessly as the box was lowered into the earth.
Favian looked at her standing across the grave and wondered if it could have turned out otherwise. Maria-Anna was free now, and if Favian hadn’t married Campaspe, he would have been free as well. And then he looked at Campaspe, standing in her own black gown, and knew he wouldn’t change things if he could.
Favian took Maria-Anna’s other arm and walked home with her. Her second widowhood, he thought; unfair for someone so young, but not unusual, he supposed, in this climate where the yellow fever thrived. At Maria-Anna’s home they drank brandy and set the diamond-hilted sword over the mantel. One of Forte’s Red Ensigns— Favian would send another to his father— already stood on a pole in the corner of the parlor. Maria-Anna looked at Favian for a moment of silence, then spoke.
“Would you mind terribly,” she asked, “if we played a few rounds of poque? I think it might do me good.”
So they played poque for the rest of the afternoon, the new version Favian and Maria-Anna had invented in long-ago New Orleans. Favian lost several hundred dollars. When tears began to spatter the baize tablecloth, he pretended not to notice.
“She told me,” Campaspe said, early the next morning, “that she wants to name the baby after you, if it’s a boy.”
“She should give it Gideon’s name,” Favian said. He and Campaspe had been given a bed in Maria-Anna’s house. Favian was happy to sleep away from the frigate, away from the reminders of duty and war.
Campaspe shook her head. “She wants to thank you,” she said, “for what you’ve done.”
What have I done? Favian wondered. What have I done but get her husband killed?
Maria-Anna went into labor on the day the news came from New Orleans— the boy, delivered on the birthing stool, came quickly and easily to the sound of celebrations, gunfire, and bell ringing from the town. Young Favian seemed a thriving youngster.
Favian the Elder found himself uninterested in the news, as if it concerned a long-ago matter in a far-off land. It was, of course, all he had worked for during his time in New Orleans— he knew he should be pleased— but somehow he couldn’t celebrate it.
The story was told over and over. How General Keane and the British advance guard had come out of the swamp on the twenty-third of December, one week after Favian’s raid on their fleet and eight days after General Jackson had finally declared martial law in New Orleans. Keane had brought sixteen hundred men to within eight miles of New Orleans via Bayous Bienvenue and Mazant, but the work hadn’t been accomplished secretly, and Jackson, with the Louisiana troops, the regulars, and General Coffee’s Tennessee men who had just arrived that afternoon, determined to strike them that night..
Commodore Patterson opened the battle with the Carolina, dropped silently down the river under cover of darkness and opened a bombardment that had the British hugging the safety of the levee. Then Jackson’s men came charging in, guided by Pierre Laffite; the melee continued for hours before Jackson withdrew. Keane, astonished by the fury of the attack, decided to wait for reinforcements and Pakenham before he made any further moves.
Carolina was burned by hot shot fired by a British masked battery, but by then Louisiana had been crewed fully by martial law decree and was ready to take the smaller vessel’s place. The British made three assaults on Jackson’s lines behind the Rodriguez Canal, the first on the twenty-eighth of December, a bombardment on the eighth of the new year, the third on the fifteenth. In each case the British marched across the plains of Chalmette, the narrow gap between the levee and swamp that had been Favian’s first glimpse of New Orleans from the Beaux Jours. Each attack was a failure, none more so than the grand assault of the fifteenth, where Pakenham himself died before the American bulwarks. The defending guns, manned chiefly by Laffite’s pirates and Patterson’s naval crews, did massive execution: many of the defending infantry never even got to fire their muskets, because the enemy had been wiped from their front before they got a chance to shoot..
If he were vain enough, Favian thought, he could take credit for convincing Jackson of the worth of artillery on that trip downriver.
The campaign cost the British over three thousand casualties, a third of their army. Jackson lost a few dozen. The British withdrew secretly on the eighteenth; the Americans did not contest their departure.
In the meantime Fort St. Philip, on the lower Mississippi, had been under bombardment from British vessels since the ninth. The British attempted to advance on the eighteenth but failed under the concentrated fire of the fort’s batteries..
There hadn’t been a single battle for New Orleans, there had been five— and the British lost them all.
Many laurels for Favian, should he choose to claim them.
In time, he thought, he would feel the proper elation, but for the moment he wanted only to hold Campaspe in his arms, watch young Favian II in his cradle, and play poque with Maria-Anna. His life seemed full enough without the Navy. It was most unfair, he thought, when the war came again to Mobile, and he realized his retirement had been premature.
News came on the eighth of February. The British fleet appeared off Fort Bowyer, at the entrance to Mobile Bay, and were putting troops ashore. Major William Lawrence, the fort’s commander who had driven off the British assault in September, requested immediate aid. General James Winchester, Jackson’s deputy in Mobile, requested urgent consultation. The end result was that Macedonian was hastily got ready the next morning to go to the fort’s relief. Malachi’s Revenge, under Finch Martin— blazing with eagerness to avenge his captain— was volunteered for the expedition by Maria-Anna, the schooner’s new owner..
Favian was fairly certain the case was hopeless. Macedonian was too weakened to stand up for long to any cannonade, let alone the vast number of guns the British fleet could mount, and his crew losses had not been replaced. He was inclined to think the British could sail their fleet into Mobile Bay anytime they wished. But perhaps they weren’t interested in such conquests anymore; perhaps they simply wanted to take Fort Bowyer in order to have a victory to flaunt in the face of their loss on the plains of Chalmette..
In that case, Favian supposed, he was ready to do his part. He kissed Campaspe farewell and hoped this silly historical postscript would not cost too many lives.
On the morning of the tenth he was off Mobile Point with the frigate and the tern schooner. The British had envisioned a conventional assault on the fort, with batteries of siege guns, parallels, trenches, and saps, all with the intent of producing a bloodless conquest. Favian positioned himself off the flank of the British approaches and blew into ruins every entrenchment he could find. The British spent the rest of the day reconsidering their position, then the next morning decided to go ahead with their saps and approaches on the other side of the point, under cover of the guns of their own fleet where Macedonian couldn’t reach them.
Major Lawrence knew the end had been reached. “They’ve got heavy siege guns out there, Captain Markham,” he said. “They can knock my parapets down in two hours.” Favian had gone ashore to survey the fort and was inclined to agree with him.
“How long before the British will complete their preparations, d’you think?” Favian asked.
“Another twenty-four hours.”
“Hold on for today and tomorrow, then,” Favian said. “Then I’ll evacuate your garrison, and you can blow up the fort. We can fall back to Mobile.” To Mobile, he thought, where I’ll try to hold off the whole British fleet with a schooner and two battered frigates, one of which doesn’t even have crew.
But the British completed their preparations sooner than Lawrence had anticipated. By noon the next day their guns were emplaced where Macedonian couldn’t reach them. Lawrence sent his noncombatants and dependents to the British under a flag of truce and grimly prepared to defend his ramparts to the end.
It was then that the flag of truce came out from the British lines. Word had just arrived: a treaty of peace, it seemed, had been signed in Ghent on Christmas Eve..
Hostilities were over. A British band marched out from their lines and began to play “Yankee Doodle“ and “God Save the King.” The fort’s garrison climbed out of its trenches to meet the British and swap tobacco for coffee.
Favian, the next day, met Admiral Cochrane. Favian found him a vigorous, active man of fifty-six, a courtly old-fashioned gentleman, gracious and soft-spoken. Favian rather liked him..
“To tell you the truth,” said the man who had burned Washington, “I have hated this war from the beginning.”
The British brought other news. Stephen Decatur, the young meteor who was regarded, with a great deal of truth, as Favian’s patron, had in January surrendered the USS President to an enemy squadron off New York, the Majestic, Endymion, Pomone, and Tenedos, the same squadron Macedonian had escaped in a running fight back in October. President was the fastest frigate in the American list, and Favian was amazed that any Briton had managed to catch her.
“That part was bad luck for Decatur,” Cochrane confided. “He ran aground on Sandy Hook during a storm and was beaten on the bar for hours. Couldn’t get away from our ships. Of course Captain Hope’s conduct in, the battle itself was quite brilliant— can’t take that away from him.”
The very thought of Decatur surrendering to any enemy was astonishing. His career had been nothing but a resounding string of successes, marked by gallantry and high style. Favian knew him well and wondered how Decatur’s high-strung, reckless temperament would take the idea of defeat. Not well, he thought: Decatur would be half-mad to accomplish some feat of daring to erase the blot on his record. And with the war over, feats of daring might be difficult to come across.
“So it was all for nothing, then,” Mafia-Anna said later. “All the battles were fought after peace was signed. It was all pointless.”
“No,” Favian said firmly. “Peace was signed in Ghent, but the treaty has to be ratified by the Senate and by the prince regent in England. Do you think that idle drunkard will ever sign the document until he’s heard from the New Orleans expedition?.
“If the British had seized Louisiana, there would be no peace. The battles for New Orleans not only saved Louisiana, but saved the peace as well.”
One peace, perhaps. When Favian’s orders finally came from the Secretary of the Navy, later in February, he was astonished to discover that while he and Patterson, Cochrane and Jackson and Pakenham had been grappling over the fate of New Orleans, Algiers had declared war on the United States. An American squadron was being prepared to go to the Mediterranean, and Favian was ordered to sail Macedonian to Boston to return her to her original captain, Jacob Jones, and then proceed to New London to resume command of the sloop of war Shark, his original command, now ready for its trials. The language of the orders were terse, formal: the Secretary was reserving his judgment on Favian’s abduction of the frigate until apprised of the results.
“It won’t be much of a war, I expect,” he told Campaspe. “It won’t be like the war with Tripoli; we have a real Navy now. And we can have a honeymoon, at least until we get to Boston.” Secretary of the Navy be damned; he was going to have his wife on shipboard as long as he could.
The British abandoned their entrenchments when word came of the ratification of the treaty, and took with them Captain Corbett and his survivors, and Favian split his crew between Macedonian and Forte. The British frigate, he thought, would make a fine sight sailing into Boston Bay, an unexpected addition to the fleet making ready to surprise the Dey of Algiers.
Maria-Anna, though offered a space on the Macedonian, declined. She would stay in the South with her property, with her own and Gideon’s money. “I don’t know those kin of yours in New Hampshire, Favian,” she said. “Here I know people and can make a go of things. Maybe get married again.” She smiled. “Though if any man tries to take Gideon’s sword down from my mantel, he’s going to get an unpleasant surprise.”
Just before he left, Favian received two unexpected volunteers: Long Tom Tate, Gideon’s gunner, and Wallace Grimes, Gideon’s former steward and perhaps his cousin. Favian was glad to have them, particularly since Grimes, who could cook, could replace Crane, who couldn’t, but he wondered at the reason. “We liked Gideon, sah,” Tate said. “A fine captain and a Christian gentleman. But we don’t want to work for Miz Markham. Africans are not in her favor.”
There was one last piece of news from New Orleans. The state legislature, led by Bernard de Marigny, had voted to deny Andrew Jackson a silver sword in thanks for his victory of January 15. Favian smiled when he heard. Louisiana politics had returned to normal.
Favian stepped on deck one morning in March, ready to order the anchor hove short prior to launching, and found to his surprise the ship’s company mustered formally before the quarterdeck, his officers in full dress drawn up in a reception line. Hourigan stepped forward to read a proclamation..
The men of the United States Navy in Mobile begged Commodore Favian Markham to accept this scroll of honor, this set of silver goblets with decanter, and this pair of silver commodore’s stars, in appreciation for his kind treatment of them, and in thanks for his brilliant successes in the defense of New Orleans.
Favian looked at the men assembled, at the officers, and at Campaspe, who was watching him with glowing eyes. He couldn’t turn it down, of course.
He took the scroll and stars, and then the commodore’s forked pendant went up the main truck while Forte’s guns boomed out a slow salute. It seemed he was a damned commodore after all.
*
The war with Algiers lasted scarcely more than a day once the American fleet appeared in Algerine waters. Favian found the Shark to be as fast and powerful as he’d expected— it was a brilliant piece of design— and only regretted that the Secretary of the Navy had declined permission to take Campaspe along.
His sense that Stephen Decatur’s loss of the President might turn him reckless was proved true. Decatur had, through ruthless exercise of service politics, obtained command of the advance frigate squadron sent to the Mediterranean, when command of the entire expedition ought rightfully to have gone to William Bainbridge..
Later, in the war’s only battle, with the Algerian flagship the forty-four-gun Mashouda surrounded by the entire American squadron, Favian watched from Shark’s quarter-deck as Decatur ran his flagship Guerriere between Constellation and the enemy, determined to have the glory for himself. Even though his officers were babbling their praises for Decatur’s dash, Favian found himself saddened by the sight.
It didn’t surprise him, a few years later, to hear that Decatur had died in a duel with a brother officer over an old quarrel that should have been settled years before. Favian was living in New York by then: Campaspe had shocked so many of the New Hampshire ladies by her scandalous conduct that she and Favian spent most of their time in genteel, happy exile, while Favian gradually crept up the seniority list and waited for a squadron to command..
“I’ll go to the funeral, of course,” Favian said. “The poor man. I was afraid he wouldn’t survive the peace.”
“Poor man indeed,” said Campaspe. “And his poor wife— she didn’t know until he was carried bleeding into the house.” She and Susan Decatur had met, and got along quite well; it was unusual for service wives to like Campaspe. “Poor Susan,” she said again. “I like her, but she’s such a thoroughbred. Stephen should have married someone unsuitable, you know. Like me. I’d have given him something to live for.”.
And that, truly, seemed to sum it up.