A Passionate Girl (36 page)

“Nothing,” I said. “I was only joking.”

“Hell of a joke,” he said.

He drank off another half glass of whiskey and put on his sooty coat and dirty shirt. “I'm gonna have to wear this when we go over. Others are wearin' their Union uniforms. Rebel gray wouldn't mix too good.”

“I wish I could go with you.”

“Margaret O'Neil's the only woman we're takin'. A nurse.”

“I'll go with her.”

“You? The sight of blood turns your legs to jelly.”

“I'll go with her. You'll see.”

“Now wait a minute. If the British grab you, they'll find out pretty quick you're wanted for murder.”

“The same applies to you.”

“They'll never take me alive.”

“Oh, God.”

I clung to him shaking, all my fear and dread and doubt beating in me.

“Who was it in Washington this time? Old Seward himself?”

I stepped back as if he had struck me. “No one,” I said. “I didn't let a man touch me.”

I didn't realize I was telling a lie until the words were spoken. Somehow my visits to Fernando Wood had no relation to my real life, our troubled love.

“Okay,” he said. “We've really got a date in Toronto.”

He kissed me and went to his men, leaving me alone with my tears.

The next morning, I had breakfast with Red Mike Hanrahan and John and Margaret O'Neil. Mrs. O'Neil greeted me with the coolest possible smile, while her husband leaped to his feet to give me a warm embrace. Margaret began talking down the expedition. She was sure it was going to fail and the result would be nothing but slaughter. O'Neil tried to make a jest of her pessimism, calling her “Mrs. General” and reminding her that she took the same gloomy view of Sherman's march to the sea in the Civil War.

“She was sure I was never going to come back from that alive,” O'Neil said. “She was all but sending packages to the Sisters of Mercy in Charleston to smuggle into the prison camp at Andersonville for me.”

“When will you attack, Colonel?” I asked.

“In two nights, if all goes well.”

A ragged lad came through the hotel dining room selling copies of the
Buffalo Express
. Red Mike Hanrahan bought one and growled when he took a look at the front page.

“The first play by our friends in Washington,” he said.

He pointed to an advertisement by the collector of customs for the port of Buffalo. It announced that no ship or boat would be permitted to clear the port without special inspection and prohibited the departure of all vessels from the harbor between 4:00
P.M.
and 9:00
A.M.

“How do you know it's from Washington?” asked John O'Neil. “It may be just some federal busybody here in Buffalo. We'll call a council of war and work out alternate plans.”

“Let's get to it,” said Mike, and the two men instantly left me at the table with Mrs. O'Neil.

“I understand you're going to go with the army as a nurse,” I said. “May I assist you?”

“Have you had any hospital experience?”

“None,” I said, “but I would be happy to serve as cook and bottlewasher. Whatever duties you assign me. I've given a year of my life to this great effort, and I'd like to be part of it now, whether we march to defeat or victory.”

She shook her head. “You'd probably faint or do something equally foolish.”

I left her nibbling smugly on a roll, wondering once more how a man as fine as John O'Neil had fallen into the clutches of such a woman. As I stormed through the lobby, I heard a voice calling my name. “Bess Fitzmaurice?” Rising from a leather armchair was my reporter friend George Pickens. He was as cocky and debonair as he was the day he stepped aboard the
Manhattan
.

“Is it Pickens of the
Herald?
” I asked sarcastically.

“Now of the
Tribune,
” he said.

“They don't lie as assiduously as the
Herald,
as far as I can judge. Won't that cause you problems?”

“What's your bark?” he said. “I made you famous. What's happening up here?”

“The Fenians are invading Canada,” I said.

He laughed heartily. “Come on, give me the corner. Everyone knows the Fenians would have trouble invading Staten Island.”

“I see you're well informed. Why bother to ask me anything?”

“I need the corner. Are you running low on money? Are the Republicans sending you up here to put the screws to the president?”

“Do you want the God's honest truth?”

“Sure.”

“We've come up here to fish in Lake Erie.”

I left him spluttering and went down to the docks, where Dan had told me the men were being quartered in warehouses and hiring halls. There were hundreds of them lounging about in the spring sunshine. I asked them if they knew Major McCaffrey. Several of them laughed. One red-haired lad said: “Everybody knows Major McCaffrey. There isn't a man here who wasn't cussed out by him at least once.”

“So you hate him cordially?”

“The devil you say. He's the best officer we've got. The men would follow him anywhere.”

A short, swarthy, scowling man in a business suit interrupted us. “Where are you fellows from?” he said.

“What business is it of yours, my friend?” asked the red-haired lad.

“My name is Dart. I'm the federal district attorney for northern New York. They tell me you crazy Irishmen are going to invade Canada. Is that true?”

“Some of us are thinking of going over the border to look for work. Isn't that right, lads?”

There were nods of assent from those around him. Dart sniffed skeptically. “There's a law against it, you know. The Neutrality Act. It's a crime to wage war against a friendly nation from the soil of the United States.”

“Since when is the British tyrant a friendly nation?” said the red-haired lad, getting to his feet. He towered over the federal district attorney. His companions rose, too, their Irish tempers rising with them.

“Mr. District Attorney,” I said, “it's a bit early in the season for a swim. If you don't want to take one, I think you'd be wise to go back to your office and shuffle your papers.”

“Who are you?”

“A close friend of President Johnson,” I said. “I saw him but three days ago in Washington. He told me there was nothing he wanted more than to see Canada conquered and the wrongs the British worked on this country during the war avenged.”

The district attorney's eyes bulged. I could see his mediocre brain sifting the possibility that this well-dressed young woman was telling the truth. Doubt and the threatening scowls of the red-haired lad and his friends persuaded him to retreat, muttering.

“Is that the truth?” asked the red-haired lad.

“Close to it,” I said.

His name was Hennessy. He was a Fenian captain. From Indiana, he had fought as a cavalry sergeant in the last two years of the Civil War, marching with Sherman to the sea. His father owned a tavern in Terre Haute. He had borrowed ten thousand dollars on it and put the money into Fenian bonds, so great was his enthusiasm for the cause. If we failed, the Hennessys, father and son, would be bankrupt. Captain Hennessy pointed to other men who had quit good jobs on street railways, in stores and mills, one who had sold his farm to join the expedition. All believed that the government of the United States was behind us.

John O'Neil, Dan, and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Bailey arrived in a carriage. They wore confident smiles, which did not diminish when Hennessy told them about the retreat of District Attorney Dart. “We've been to see the collector of the port. He told us to be easy, he's only trying to protect his skin,” Colonel Bailey said. “The same goes for Dart. He's a mean little weasel.”

Hennessy told them how my reference to President Johnson had discomfited Dart. The chunky, dark-haired Bailey nodded cheerfully. “That's all he needs to make him run for cover.”

Hoping he was right, I left the officers with their men and returned to the hotel. There I found Red Mike Hanrahan deep in conversation with George Pickens. “This fellow says you wouldn't even give him the pinky when he asked you a straight question.”

I was in no mood to struggle with American slang. I was feeling very Irish. (I later found out “giving the pinky” means making a promise to tell the truth.) “I gave him the back of my hand,” I snapped. “He said the Fenians couldn't invade Staten Island.”

“I was only kidding, sweetheart,” Pickens said. “Mike here's changed my tune. I'm going to burn up the wires. Thanks, Mike.”

He rushed away to the telegraph office. “You've got to control that temper of yours,” Mike said. “He's the kind of reporter we need on our side.”

“How much did you pay him?” I said.

“Not necessary,” Mike said. “His paper's behind us. He says they want us to teach the British a lesson about neutral rights.”

“Hurrah.”

“Still fearing the worst?”

I told him about District Attorney Dart. Mike nodded glumly. “He's been telegraphing Washington every hour,” he said.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“The telegraph office is staffed entirely by Irishmen. We get a copy of everything that goes out of Buffalo.”

At that moment, a boy of about fourteen came panting in the door. He handed Mike an envelope, which he promptly opened. “Holy Toledo,” he said as he read its contents.

He handed it to me. It was a copy of a telegram.

Ulysses Grant, commander-in-chief of the United States army, the man whom the Fenians had gone out of their way to fete and fuss over in New York and Washington, D.C. “What's he doing in Buffalo?” I asked.

I answered my own question. “Stanton sent him. It shows how serious they are. Who's General Barry?”

“He was commander of the artillery in the Army of the Potomac, one of Grant's right-hand men. A West Pointer.”

“What can they do? Do they have troops here?”

“Scarcely a company. That's why he wants New York state to call out the militia. We must wire Roberts. We have men in Albany who can deal with the governor, even if he is a Republican.”

“Will the governor refuse General Grant himself?”

“He won't hear from Grant,” Mike said. “The general's thinking of running for the presidency. He won't show his face in this thing and lose himself the Irish vote.” He thought for a moment, fingering Grant's telegram. “I'll give this to Pickens for a beat in tomorrow's paper. He'll find out where Grant's going. He'll go straight to Barry and ask him.”

“I thought Grant was all for us taking Canada.”

“No doubt he was until he talked to Stanton and Seward. The man's a political child. Spent his whole life in the army.”

We were playing a game of continental chess, with thousands of lives, the future of nations, in the balance. I rushed to the telegraph office to wire Roberts, ordered the hack to wait, and then raced to the docks to find John O'Neil and Dan. I told them what was happening. They were stunned.

“I thought they were with us,” O'Neil said. “The president promised me. You were there. Dan was there.”

“Obviously the president is not in control of his government,” I said.

“Can't we send him a telegram?” Dan asked. “Tell him what's happenin'?”

John O'Neil shook his head. “All the telegrams go through Stanton. The War Department. That's the way it was during the war. I doubt it's changed.”

“Stanton has made sure it hasn't changed,” I said. “You can depend on it.”

“There's only one thing to do,” O'Neil said. “We must cross the river with the men we've got here. Tonight.”

“That will barely make us equal to the Canadians. And none of our artillery has arrived,” Dan said.

“No matter,” O'Neil said. “If we begin the game and show them that we mean business, they won't dare stop us. The country will rise to cheer us on. You've seen how many people have come down here to wish us well. Not all Irish, by a long ways.”

Faith, I thought, the whole thing was being run on faith and love, and I had none, or very little of both. I thought of the young, smiling, believing faces I had seen this morning. I flinched at the sight of Dan's saturnine countenance. He did not have much of these two spiritual virtues either. Defeat and death had withered them in his soul. We were well matched, for once.

“What the hell,” Dan said. “We've come this far.”

That was the gambler speaking. The hard, empty voice made me shudder. I preferred John O'Neil's faith. “You may be right, John,” I said to him.

Back at the hotel, Mike was in the lobby, talking with Pickens again. They waved me over to them. “I told you this newshound would sniff out the truth. Grant stayed only long enough to send that telegram and give Barry his orders. He's already left for the West.”

“What's Barry doing?” I asked.

“He's trying to get two companies of New York militia to report for duty, but he's having a hell of a time,” Pickens said. “They're all with the Fenians. Or afraid to be against them.”

“We've arranged with our friends in Buffalo to send out a few warnings,” Mike said dourly.

I decided to reward Pickens for his help with Grant. I told the news of the decision to cross the river tonight.

“Where?” Pickens asked.

“I don't know. Someplace outside the port, no doubt.”

“We'll take you there,” Mike promised.

I spent the rest of the day setting up the press office in the hotel room next to mine. I unpacked printed copies of our proclamation and newspaper stories about the Fenians. I hung flattering portraits of President Roberts and heroic Irish leaders of earlier eras on the walls, hoping to suggest that our man was the equal of Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet.

About 6:00
P.M.
, I descended to the lobby to find reporters from a half dozen New York papers milling about comparing notes. Several recognized me and rushed to surround me, shouting questions. “The press office will be open for business tomorrow,” I said. “Until then I can tell you nothing.”

“Are you invading Canada with your boyos, Miss Fenian?”

I turned to confront William Colby's sneering face. “I only wish I could,” I said.

“I think you'll find your little popgun no match for British breech-loading cannon,” he said. “But if your conduct in Washington is any indication, maybe you plan to use other tactics to distract the British. There are only five thousand regulars in Canada. You should be able to exhaust them in a night.”

I saw smirks on several faces. They were eager to believe the whole affair was a joke, with a little smut thrown in to make it more entertaining. “There's only one thing you need to show your true colors, Mr. Colby,” I said. “A red coat with a yellow stripe down the back.”