Free Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase by David Nevin Page A

And that’s your precious Mr. Hamilton’s view. And what
does that mean? Why it means perpetuating an establishment class, and what does that mean but a hereditary aristocracy, lords and ladies handing down their titles to their rotten offspring, and what’s the natural outcropping of such aristocracy but monarchy?” There was an angry shout from the other room.
    “Jimmy,” she said.
    “That’s enough, Rob,” Jimmy said. “Not another word.”
    The old Mustard smile reappeared. “I do like to bait ’em a bit. Didn’t mean to embarrass you, Miss Dolley.”
    “Never mind that,” Jimmy said. “Now listen. You’re going to Charleston; you’ll connect with Peter Freneau?”
    “Promised me a berth on his paper—going daily, he is.”
    “All right. Suppose I pay you a hundred dollars in gold and send you straight through on the express stage, and you carry a message to Mr. Freneau.”
    “Sounds good to me.”
    “South Carolina electors will be gathering to vote. You tell him to make sure they hold back one vote for Burr. Eight Jefferson, seven Burr. Understand?”
    Dolley sagged in her chair. After all her fears, Jimmy had chosen the danger of the North-South split over the immediate danger of a tie and hoped to patch it in Carolina.
    “Can Mr. Freneau assure that?” she asked. She heard the anger in her voice.
    “Doubtless,” Mr. Mustard said. “They listen to him.”
    “Of course,” Jimmy said. “Danger is, if they’re not paying attention they’ll vote two for two all the way.”
    “As I gather we will do here.”
    He gave her a very sharp look. “I don’t know what we’ll do here, Dolley. Whatever we do, won’t hurt to drop one in South Carolina.”
    “But you’ve decided. I can tell.”
    “I have not decided—and I’ll thank you not to try to read my mind!”
    She glared, outraged.
    Rob Mustard cleared his throat. “You want me to do that, I’d better get after it.” He didn’t look at her.

    They went upstairs, Jimmy gave him the gold pieces and in five minutes he was gone. She sat on the sofa and opened her novel, her lips drawn tight as string.
    Watching those lips, Madison was irked. She’d made up her mind on the course she favored and that was all very well, but he was the one who must decide. Anyone who’d sat through the writing of the Constitution knew of the raging passions dividing North and South even then—the endless fight over slavery, southern delegates threatening to walk out, more extreme northern delegates shouting at them to go and be damned. Even General Washington’s great weight couldn’t swing them. Abolishing slavery had been his proposal—count on a great man to turn to a great question—and it almost broke the convention. When Madison realized there would be neither Constitution nor country if this kept on, he eased them away from the brutal subject.
    It had been deadly real then, to use Gelston’s phrase, and it still was. He felt a stillness come over him; decision was fixing, not yet set but coming. Dolley sighed. She hadn’t turned a page, and he realized she wasn’t reading.
    He put a glass of Madeira in her hand and sat beside her. “I’ve seen what the North-South split means up close. It can tear us to pieces.” She nodded, but no smile.
    He kissed her cheek. “Suppose you were deciding. What would you choose?”
    “Why, the immediate, of cour——” She stopped in midword, eyes wide. Then, “I—don’t know … .”
    “Then we’re in it together,” he said. “Now give me a smile.” And she did, that brilliant smile that exploded like a ray of light across her face, and then she set down the glass and turned on the couch and kissed him on the lips.
    He decided as she had feared—Aaron would get Virginia’s full twenty-one electoral votes. Jimmy said he relied in part
on Gelston’s promise of votes to be shorted in the North, in part on South Carolina, in part on the dangers of the split.
    Her hands were shaking in her