Another small kingdom, p.10
Another Small Kingdom, page 10
Macleod watched him as he limped across the room to a chair and sat down.
Macleod crossed to the fire and stood before it taking all the benefit of the warmth.
‘Well, sir, you’ve had your food and you’ve had your wine and all at my expense. Now do I get something?’
But the young man seemed in no hurry to get down to the purpose of the meeting. His voice, when he spoke, was casual and conversational.
‘You know they say that Jefferson was mightily pleased that our new Federal Capital was to be in the South.’ He waited, but Macleod stayed silent. ‘They say that he felt that the North was so commercially minded that it degraded any man of honour. Well, now he’s President he can move in when Adams moves out and breathe clean Southern air to his heart’s content.’ He looked up at Macleod with a half-smile on his lips. Then he made a gesture with his stick as if impatient of idle chatter. ‘But enough of that, Mr Macleod, we’re not here to discuss the relative merits of the air, North or South, are we? We’re here to attend to business.’
Macleod knew he was being mocked but again he let it pass.
‘Yes, sir, and the business is, why was I summoned here?’
‘Ordered is a better word I think. Yes, ordered would be the right word. You recognised the name on the letter, so I think we can both agree that you may now consider yourself a man under orders. I hope you agree, Mr Macleod, otherwise I see no way of proceeding further in the matter.’
‘Ordered if you will, but as I have no knowledge of what the matter is, ordered or summoned are much the same to me.’
‘Ordered it is then. Now for your next orders. I was told you speak fluent French. Is that so?’
‘It is.’
‘Could you pass for French?’
‘No.’
‘Colonial French, perhaps from north of the border, Quebec, somewhere like that?’
‘Perhaps I could get by as far as the language is concerned but as I know nothing of the country it would be easy for anyone to find out I was playing a part.’
‘Then you will have to be as you are, an American who speaks French. You are to go to New Orleans. Once there you are to tell people that you are a wealthy lawyer from Boston who has decided to go into business. You are not decided yet between tobacco or cotton or whether to get into sugar-cane planting.’
‘What rubbish. What would I know of any of that? What do I know? I’ll be made to look a fool at once.’
Jones smiled.
‘That will make you all the more welcome. A fool with money who’s looking to invest in something he knows nothing about? Why they’ll fall over themselves to befriend and advise you.’
Macleod was enough of a man of business to see the soundness of Jones’s reasoning.
‘And while I’m in New Orleans?’
‘You will enter into society. You must change your way of life to become a man of fashion and manners.’
But this time Jones had gone too far to carry Macleod with him. Macleod snorted a derisive laugh.
‘That’s too much of a change for me. I know nothing of fashion and don’t want to, and my only manner is plain-speaking.’
The young man’s voice took on a hard edge.
‘Then you must learn, Macleod, you must study how to be fashionable and put a restraint on the directness of your speech. There is trouble brewing in New Orleans, French trouble, and it is aimed at America. You are to find out what it is and who is involved. That means you will have to go where society goes, talk as society talks and do as society does. In short, you will do whatever is necessary to find out what we want.’ The young man looked Macleod up and down. ‘I will help you do as well as can be done in the way of clothes here in Georgetown. It won’t be much, but anything will be an improvement on what you look like now. You will have to fit yourself out more properly once you’re in New Orleans.’
‘Assuming I can play the dandy, which I doubt, and assuming I can get invited into society, which I also doubt, what sort of thing am I looking for?’
‘It will be political, well-financed and in some way in contact with Paris. The person or persons you will be looking for will be highly placed and influential and there won’t be many of them, four at most. They probably won’t travel much but they will have contact with others who travel both in America and abroad. Whoever they are they will spend a lot of time in each other’s company, they will be close and exclusive.’
‘In which case how will mixing with society help me?’
‘New Orleans isn’t such a big place yet, though growing fast of late. For the most part it’s like any other port and garrison town, something of a rough house. Most of the best society is made up of old-established families, what I believe they call Creoles. Stiff-necked and exclusive so I’m told. That should make your task easier.’
‘How easier?’
‘The people you’ll be looking for will be comparative newcomers, certainly not born or even brought up there but come over from France and come over not so very long ago. They’ll be rich and influential and for that sort to stay too much out of society would cause comment and raise questions, and that would be the last thing they’d want, so they’ll be found where society meets. It’s not a large number of people you’ll be watching and not spread over too wide an area. When the city first got built they laid it out as if was a chess board, all straight streets criss-crossing each other, and although it’s growing at a pace these days it’ll be in the older part of the city you’ll find what you’re looking for. So sharp eyes and ears should be able to narrow the field pretty quickly. But take care, Macleod, one sniff that you’re looking for them and you’ll be dead. They don’t take chances and they don’t play games. Never doubt the importance of what you are doing and don’t be fooled by appearances. Your quarry may look a fop in public or even a fool, but underneath they will be hard and sharp.’
‘And if I find anything?’
‘Then you report it to me.’
‘And where will you be?’
‘I will arrive in New Orleans three weeks after you. I will be on government business, to negotiate certain concessions on warehousing and harbour facilities. The negotiations will be difficult and therefore prolonged. I will be asking for too much but not so much as to provoke an immediate rebuttal. If you find out anything you come directly to me. Otherwise you don’t know me and I don’t know you.’
‘And what name will you use if I have to ask for you?’
‘Jones, Jeremiah Jones. And, as for names, we shall need one for you.’
‘If I’m to be a Boston lawyer what’s wrong with Macleod?’
‘We’ll keep Boston and we’ll keep you a lawyer but the name must be changed. If anyone takes the time and trouble to check they must find what we want them to find. How about Darcy?’
‘Darcy!’
‘He’s a Boston lawyer, a man about town and well-off. Any enquiry that doesn’t go too deep would be satisfied. What do you say to Darcy?’
‘I say damn Darcy and damn …’
‘Good, that’s settled then. Darcy it will be.’
Having swallowed so much Macleod found himself gagging on this final humiliation. The young man took his stick in his hand and pushed himself into a standing position.
But Macleod’s contract-lawyer brain came gloriously to his aid.
‘And who will arrange to replace the name on the letters of credit that I carry?’
‘What?’
‘I have letters of credit good at any bank in New Orleans or anywhere else, but all in the name of Macleod. If I am to be a man of fashion it will take money, plenty of it, and if I’m to be Darcy as you say then it can’t be money in the name of Macleod.’
For the first time since their meeting the young man looked a little less than certain of himself.
‘How much do you have?’
Macleod named a sum, a very considerable sum.
‘I see. You realise of course that going to New Orleans in your own name increases the risk you take, the risk to you personally and to the task you have been given?’
‘And you realise I cannot operate as you ask without adequate funds?’
The young man stood silent for a moment, then realised he had been bested.
‘Very well, be Macleod. But play your part damn well, well enough so no one will want to ask in Boston what sort of man is Lawyer Macleod. Now, on to other things,’ and he looked at Macleod from head to foot. ‘I’ll call for you tomorrow morning. Be ready at nine and make sure your wallet is full. I’ll do the best that dollars and Georgetown tailors can manage but I doubt it will do more than dent the surface. If I’m to transform you from a fashion bumpkin into a thing of beauty we will have a heavy day ahead of us,’ he shook his head slowly, ‘a very heavy day indeed.’
Chapter Nineteen
New Orleans greeted Macleod as it greeted all who came to it from the sea, with clamour, noise and bustle.Under a clear blue sky and an already hot sun Macleod stood looking at the waterfront where ships were tied to massive piles driven into the river bed at the edge of an expanse of heavy wooden decking which stood barely a few feet above the river, and under which the dark waters lapped and gurgled. The dark, heavy timbers of the decking were covered with bales and barrels, sacks and chests, boxes and bags, constantly on the move, carried and dragged, loaded and thrown, manhandled somehow, anyhow, by an army of toiling, sweating workers. Here sea-going ships exchanged cargoes with the Mississippi boats which moored further upriver. The bounty of the interior, once so small but now grown prodigious, the cotton and the tobacco, the hides and the furs, all that the world wanted, was piled up ready to begin its journey. And the manufactured goods from the great world were piled up waiting to be taken up the Mississippi to make the life of those who lived alongside that great river highway, and relied on it, almost civilised.
What could not be laden, or was not ready, was carted off to be stored in the great, new, stone-built warehouses which stood behind the docks and hid the city from its new arrivals.
Beyond the warehouses the streets began. As Jones had said, they were straight and at right angles to one another, and those nearest to the docks were no more than a jostle of people, carts, horses and mules, all blurring into one another in the smog of dust thrown up from the dry dirt of the roads which lay between the buildings lining either side. At first these buildings were not so different from the warehouses, drab, functional places of business. But as Macleod walked on holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nose against the dust, the furious activity of a city learning how to get and gain gave way to a more relaxed atmosphere. Small houses stood on either side of the streets and the pavements were clear of caked mud. For the most part they were single-storey terraces with pitched roofs and comfortable verandas behind whitewashed fencing.
Jeremiah Jones had been right, that part of New Orleans which serviced the docks was indeed much of a rough-house. But beyond the warehousing, the taverns, the whorehouses, above the river on a gentle hill there was another New Orleans, a place of refinement and beauty, of elegant houses with bright stucco frontages with upper-storey French windows which opened on to elaborate wrought-iron balconies and verandas. Here the aristocracy of the city, plantation money, slave money and most honoured of all, old money, maintained a luxurious and cultured idleness. And it was among these lordly ones that Macleod was ordered to introduce himself, to become accepted by them and mix with them on terms of easy intimacy, the better to learn their secrets.
Macleod, when he had first walked through their streets, didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. His new Georgetown wardrobe might be a vast improvement on his severe, practical Boston attire but, in contrast to what he saw in New Orleans, he felt like a country clod and knew that here he looked like one. His overwhelming impression was that he might stay in New Orleans till hell froze over before finding any acquaintance who might introduce him into the houses where he needed access. But he had been sent to this city on duty, so he spent his days in reconnoitre, and by the end of his first week felt he had made progress. Strangely enough it was his lack of fashionable attire that gave him his idea for breaching the defences of the formidable fortress to which he secretly laid siege.
He found the most suitable bank, one favoured with much business from the best of society. Here he deposited letters of credit, opened an account and announced his business intentions. The manager was impressed not only by the size of the deposit and the promise of more funds but also by the spaciousness of Macleod’s plans. The way Macleod described them it seemed either he was going into tobacco by buying up Virginia or going into cotton by buying up one or other of the Carolinas and, if the market was favourable, perhaps both.
Through the good offices of his new bank manager he found and rented some rooms on the Faubourg Ste Marie side of Rampart Street, not actually within the French citadel but close enough to serve his purposes. He found where he could eat, where he could drink and where he could idle part of the day and, in doing all three, achieve the most publicity and be noticed. He knew he was not sufficiently practised to play the easy socialite so he had decided his part would be something to which he was, for the moment, better suited – a man of mystery. Someone who bought himself the best, didn’t count the cost and kept himself very much to himself. Most importantly of all he finally spied out on Bourbon Street his first point of engagement, the best tailor the city had to offer.
He had been in New Orleans about three weeks before he made his way to this tailor. The shop contained only two dandies who gave him a look and turned away, their expressions eloquent commentary on what they thought of his manner of dress. An elderly man came out of a back room, saw Macleod and came across to him.
‘Good day, sir. Can I be of service?’
His accent told Macleod the man was French so it was in French that he responded.
‘M’sieur, if you can be of service it will be in one of two ways.’
The elderly man raised his eyebrows questioningly.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Either you can dress me so that I’m fit to be seen, sir, or you can put a pistol ball in my head and put me out of my misery.’
For a second the tailor paused looking at Macleod’s serious face. Then he laughed and Macleod smiled.
‘Eh bien, M’sieur, as I would rather not kill a new client I must see what I can do for you in the other way.’
Macleod stood back and opened his arms wide.
‘I urge you to look well, mon ami, before you commit yourself and see what you’re up against.’ He turned round once and dropped his arms. ‘If you admit defeat I shall attach no blame. London or Paris might take on such a challenge but I doubt, sir, yes I very much doubt that anywhere but London or Paris can effect a cure for such an extreme case as mine.’
The tailor continued to laugh, but more from good manners than anything else. He was somewhat stung by Macleod’s assessment of what he could do.
‘Well, if M’sieur cannot go to Paris …’
‘No, alas, I cannot. Business prevents it, more’s the pity.’
‘Then you are fortunate that Paris has come to you.’
Now it was Macleod’s turn to affect emotion. He registered surprise.
‘Paris come to me? In what way come to me, sir?’
‘In me, sir. I trained in Paris and was, some were kind enough to say, perhaps the foremost tailor in that fair city. Fair, I say, until the arrival of that infamous lady, Madame La Guillotine. Too many of my clients died under that lady’s blade, so I decided that the safest thing for me would be to put the deep Atlantic between myself and their revolution.’
‘Sensible fellow. No sense in losing your head over something as paltry as politics, eh?’
‘C’est vrai, M’sieur. My thoughts entirely.’
‘Yes, but are you in touch, that’s the question? I don’t want to look like something on its way to the court of the late King Louis. I want to wear what Paris and London are wearing today, not what they were wearing ten years ago.’
The shop wasn’t a large one and Macleod had been speaking loudly enough to ensure that the two exquisites busy examining handkerchiefs by the window couldn’t fail to hear his every word. One of them crossed to Macleod and the tailor.
‘M’sieur, I can assure you that if Philippe dresses you,’ and here he paused to take in the full horror of Macleod’s garments, ‘you will be, in the deepest sense of the word, dressed.’
Macleod made a slight bow of acknowledgement.
‘If you and your friend are examples of his handiwork then I take you at your word, sir.’
The man smirked at the compliment, then addressed the tailor.
‘Look after him, Philippe, I see he needs all your skill. Do not spare yourself.’
‘I will do my best, Your Excellency.’
His Excellency was about to turn back to his friend when Macleod spoke.
‘Thank you. Perhaps when I’m fit to be seen in public I can return your kindness by inviting you to take some refreshment with me.’ His Excellency paused. He did not know the man. He was not at all sure he wanted to know him. Macleod read the doubt in his face. ‘If you will permit me to say so, even dressed by Philippe I doubt I would believe I was fit for company until I had achieved your complete endorsement.’
This raised a self-satisfied smile. Macleod had guessed he would be an easy man to flatter. He also guessed that it would not be the same way with the man still by the window who stood scowling at Macleod with unconcealed dislike.
‘Well, let me know when Philippe has finished with you and I might cast an eye upon you. I make no promises you understand. You may, as you say, be beyond even Philippe’s help, but I may cast an eye over you.’
Macleod gave a bow and pulled out a small rectangle of thick pasteboard and held it out.
‘My card.’
His Excellency looked down at it with disdain.
‘I’m sure it is,’ and turned away, ‘come, St Clair, there’s nothing here for us today.’
StClair dropped the handkerchiefs he had been holding on to a small table.
