East of Appomattox
Lee Allred
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 Rookhouse Inc.
Cover Photo by peterspiro/istockphoto
Cover Photo by Flaz81/istockphoto
Even a marble man has his limits. Perhaps they might not think so back home in the Confederacy, but London was not Richmond. London was too damp and chill and Robert E. Lee too old to pretend otherwise.
He cleared his throat and called to the young office clerk on the other side of the wooden railing. "Young man," he asked, "might I have some hot tea while I wait?"
The clerk's only response was to duck his head and hunch himself over his paperwork.
Lee had expected as much.
The small wall clock struck the quarter hour. Big Ben, on nearby Westminster's clock tower, echoed a muffled reply through the thick walls of the squat Foreign Office building. For several minutes the only other sound in the room was the scratching of the clerk's pen nib. It was a small office, just big enough for the bench Lee sat on, the clerk's desk, and the wooden railing separating the two. A swinging gate in the railing allowed the clerk passage into the hallway, a side door near his desk to what Lee assumed was the office of whatever official the clerk served. From the looks of the rusted hinges, the door saw little use.
The clerk set down his pen and blew on his hands to warm them. Lee allowed himself a slight smile. This cramped, drafty excuse for an office was just as cold for a Londoner as it was for a son of gentle Virginia. Lee's smile vanished as a new current of cold air blew down the back of his neck. He drew the collar of his military cloak tighter.
A military cloak, thought Lee. He shook his head.
Ambassadors do not wear military uniforms. At least, not ambassadors from America—either of them—but Longstreet had insisted Lee do so. General Lee, after all, was still well thought of in London even five years after the war. The President had hoped Ambassador Lee would be just was well regarded.
Well, that only proved Longstreet was no more infallible than Lee was, regardless what any of the new history books said about Gettysburg. Lee and his uniform had fared no better in London than his predecessors. The British had shuffled Lee from one government office to another until he had at last been led to this forgotten hallway where now they studiously avoided recognizing his existence, let alone that of his nation's.
He had sat here unattended to for hours. Now it was nearly the end of the working day. He wondered if they would simply shut up the building for the night with him still sitting on this hard, cold, splintery bench.
Enough.
He took hold of his cane with his good arm and heaved himself up off the bench. He stepped over to the wooden rail and, leaning over, tapped the cane on the desk of the startled clerk.
"Young man, I do not fault you for doing what you clearly have been ordered to do. Your obedience is commendable in one so young. But as I am a guest—however an unwanted one—in your establishment, propriety, sir—common decency—requires that you as host see to it that an old man with a bad heart does not die on the premises. Surely Her Majesty's government has at least the manners of a third-rate hotel. In short, sir, I am freezing to death!"
The rusty latch of the side door clacked open.
The boy's head slowly turned in its direction. Lee, however, pretended not to notice. He rapped his cane again. "I repeat myself, young man, in case my Virginian tongue falls hard upon your English ears. Might," he said slowly, pausing on each word," I have some hot tea while I wait?"
The side door opened an inch or two at this, just enough to show Lee a glimpse of a portly red-haired gentleman. The man humphed in a deep voice and said gruffly, "Smedley, fetch some tea."
"B-but-sir! You said—!"
"Fetch some tea, Smedley. The British Empire isn't about to fall merely because you bring an old man some tea. See to it boy!" A pause. "And see you do nothing more."
Smedley gulped and nodded. He scurried through the gate in the railing, past Lee, and down the hall out of sight.
Lee turned to speak to the man, but the door quickly shut and the door latch clacked into place. Lee returned to his bench.
Smedley returned shortly. He carried a wooden tray with a battered tea service. He placed the tray on Lee's bench without a word and fled back to his desk.
Lee shrugged and poured himself some tea. He squeezed a slice of lemon into his cup. The juicy spray carried in the room's draft, filling the cramped office with the smell of lemon.
Lemons.
Lee thought yet again of poor Jackson and as he did so Lee's arm twinged. The dull pain in his arm had started that horrible night at Chancellorsville. The pain sometimes turned his arm numb, leaving it hanging there useless. Doctors told him it was caused by a failing heart, but late at night Lee wondered. What did doctors know of the workings of Providence? Of restitution and of vengeance? Had Lee not uttered the words himself? You have lost your left arm, but I have lost my right…
Lee shook his head to clear it of the memory. Steam curled lazily up from his tea. He drank. The tea's warmth quickly spread through his tired frame. Once the cup was drained, he pushed the tray aside and began his wait again.
My last campaign: Lee's siege of London. The siege of Baltimore had gone easier, but then an army fought beside him then. Now he had only himself.
Only himself and a God who had turned His back on Lee. A God who now spoke to him only through the dead words of one who would never speak again.
Strange, Lee could never remember any of the glorious speeches of Southern politicians, but Lincoln's words? Lincoln's words, even those from discarded texts never uttered, texts now unread, unwanted—those words were chiseled upon Lee's heart.
Whether that nation—or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated—can long endure.
The North had lost Mr. Lincoln's War. But had the South truly won Mr. Davis's? Had it done so, would Lee be in London today? The prayer of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.
He turned his face away from the young clerk and wept the tears of an old man.
***
The clock chimed the end of day in the City. Neither Smedley nor Lee moved from their respective post. He could hear the bustle of the rest of the Foreign Office locking up for the night. No one came back to check on him. Soon the entire building was quiet, save for the ticking of the clock.
I imagine it is dark outside already, Lee thought. The sun sets early in mid-October this far north. London was farther north, even, than the tip of Maine.
Virginia, Lee forcefully corrected himself. Old habits died hard. The proper frame of reference was the northern tip of his nation. Maine had no more meaning for him now than had Nova Scotia or Newfoundland.
Yes, and keep telling yourself that, old man. Perhaps you—and the British—will one day believe it.
A new hour chimed. Smedley set down his pen and began to clear things away for the night. He trimmed the gaslights one by one. Before extinguishing the last one, he paused, then called out without looking back at Lee: "If there is anyone left in the building—and I'm not saying there is, mind you!—but if there is they might be wanting to leave before I trim all the lights. This old building's a right rabbit's warren with the lights out, all right."
Lee grunted as he pulled himself up by his cane. "Speaking to men who don't exist, are we, young Smedley? A slippery slope, indeed. You might soon fail to remember that non-existence of the person to whom, of course, you aren't addressing."
Smedley blanched. Lee smiled as he stepped towards the hallway. "In the future young Smedley," he called over his shoulder, "perhaps a better approach might be, oh, to quote into the empty air The Gospel According the Saint John, chapter nine, verse four."
"S-sir—?" Smedley asked, trying to swallow the word almost as soon as he'd blurted it out.
"Slipping already are we?" Lee smiled. He turned completely around. "The verse—or at least the latter portion—reads: 'the night cometh, when no man can work.'" He nodded towards the lamps. "Applicable, wouldn't you say?" He turned, took a step, halted, then turned around again. "As applicable to you as the verse's first part is to me: 'I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day.' "
Lee's face hardened. The work of him that sent me. "I shall return again tomorrow," he added, not daring to show even a junior clerk his own doubts about the Cause. "And the next day and the next if needs must." Lee's doubts were his own; his duty belonged to his countrymen.
The side door latch clacked. The door opened a few inches, and again Lee could see the shadowy form of the red-haired man behind it. The man crooked a finger at Smedley. Smedley gulped and went as white as the foolscap paper he'd been writing on.
"Do not, I pray you sir, blame this boy for his slight misstep in speaking to me," Lee said. "Given his youth, he discharged his duty admirably."
The man only beckoned again at Smedley. Smedley quickly darted into the door, only to return a few minutes later, even more pale, if possible. He carried a large iron ring with a single rusted key. "Y-you are to follow me, sir," he said. "Mind you watch your step."
The Foreign Office after dark proved itself indeed to be a right rabbits' warren. Smedley led Lee through one twisting hallway after another. Eventually they came to a great door latched and locked. It was obvious Smedley's key fit the ancient lock, but the boy made no move to unlock it.
"We are to wait here, sir," was all he'd say.
They waited.
Eventually Big Ben struck the half-hour. "Right, then," Smedley said. He fit the key into the lock and turned. The latch proved harder, but eventually he heaved it back. The great door swung open to the night air and London's impenetrable fog. "Please to step outside, sir."
Lee did so.
Smedley immediately swung the door closed behind him. "Sorry, sir," Smedley whispered just before the door slammed shut. "I was just doing what I was told."
Lee heard the lock click and the latch slid back into place, leaving him alone in the fog.
***
Even in the fog, Lee knew where he was. Downing Street. Across the narrow cul-de-sac sat the numbered doors that housed the British cabinet. Had he represented any other nation on the face of the earth, he could but walk up and knock on the doors and present his credentials. But since he did not, he made no move to cross the street.
Instead he waited. Whatever games the British were playing, Lee had no choice but to wait.
The wait was not long. A sulfur match sizzled and burned, lighting a hooded lantern. The soft light through the fog revealed a waiting hansom cab that stood hidden in the fog and shadows. The door of the cab opened. Inside sat the red-headed man from Smedley's office. Lee had expected as much.
Lee crossed the street. He stepped carefully over the cobblestones slick with fog damp. The cab's driver jumped down to help Lee into the cab. Lee sat himself across from the red-haired man.
Aside from being younger than Lee had first thought, the red-haired man looked nothing out of the ordinary. Heavy wool coat lined with fur at the collar, smart trousers, leather ankle boots, silk top hat, gloves—the man dressed like any of a thousand captains of industry in the City. Lee knew better. He had spent his life in the Army where he'd learnt to look past identical uniforms to judge the abilities of the men beneath.
"I believe you've taken rooms at Moreley's?" the man said to Lee. A statement rather than a question. Before Lee could answer, the man tapped the roof of the cab with his gold-handled cane. The cab started at once. It turned around in the cul-de-sac and pulled slowly past the numbered doors.
The man watched Lee's eyes as they passed the doorways and smiled. A diffident smile at best, Lee thought. As meaningful as a smile on a dog. No. A dog's smile at least had energy. This man, his voice, his whole bearing was one of…he searched for the word. Languor? Torpidity? No. Perhaps only simple boredom.
Do we bore you, sir? Is the Confederacy but a tedious, disagreeable chore, best done as quickly as possible, thence forgotten? Lee closed his eyes and saw again the dead of Sharpsburg. He forced his eyes open before worse memories came. You've no idea what our Cause has cost me, or what sums I'll pay for it still.
On reaching the mouth of Downing Street, the cab turned right on Whitehall instead of left towards Trafalgar Square and Moreley's—hardly a mistake even a tourist would make in a fog. The man quickly smiled at Lee's puzzled look. "Quite correct, General," he nodded. "We've turned the wrong way. I thought a prolonged chat might be agreeable to you."
"A meeting in your office, sir—one several hours if not days earlier—would have been far more 'agreeable.' Far more convenient, too."
Still smiling, the man shook his head. "Ah, but not for me, I'm afraid. Those weren't my offices; I have none, you see."
A corner of Lee's mouth turned up. "I suppose this is the part in your little drama where I ask who you are."
"Will you?"
Lee shook his head. He'd played these games during the War. "No, sir. I see no point to it." The man underestimated Lee, but then he was used that; being underestimated had served him well in the past. "I suspect your answer would be…suspect at best."
The man nodded with obvious satisfaction. "Quite so. In fact, had you asked, I should have been very much disappointed in you."
The man slumped forward. He rested his ample chins on the gold handle of his cane as he seemed to think over his next words. "But in as much as you have not asked my identity, I believe that I shall answer your unasked question as fully as it is in my power to do so."
He pursed his lips. "I am not connected in any way to Her Majesty's Government, you understand. I do not represent the Crown, I hold no office, no portfolio. In short, sir, I do not exist."
"I hardly think so, sir. After spending a few days in your charming city as a man who doesn't exist, you can be sure I know the difference."
"Well played." The man smiled. "Your president was quite right, you know, in sending you. I cannot think of another of your countrymen with whom I'd even bother. Most diplomats, frankly, are hardly worth the effort. Crashing bores." The man's face brightened. "But you, sir? 'The Napoleon of our age,' the soldier who won his county's independence through sheer force of will? No, you interest me, dear general."
"My interest, sir, is in the successful discharge of my duties."
"Something you find difficult to do speaking to a man without a name, I imagine." The man leaned back. "I cannot give you my surname, of course. Nor my Christian name—too singular by half. And, 'Michael,' a more common form for my poor name, strikes me too much of Milton's fallen orator. 'Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell.'" He smiled. "No, while the snake may have the best lines, I do not think, given what we must talk about this evening, that using that particular name would prove the best course."
He thought for a moment. "Ah. Perhaps a more agreeable compromise might be Croft." He smiled. "Yes. What a pleasant solution. Yes, you may call me Croft." Somehow he actually found the energy to chuckle. "'A small portable filing cabinet' is just the name for me."