A Sinister Splendor Read online

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  For my grandchildren, London, Norah, and Ford

  TO THE READER

  Left to my own devices, I might never have sought to write a novel about a subject as broad and mysterious as the Mexican War. But my esteemed publisher, Tom Doherty, suggested through my indefatigable editor, Robert Gleason, that I might consider fictionalizing this long-ago clash between neighboring nations. At the time, I have to admit, I knew few details about the war. However, a modicum of research turned up scores of harrowing events and generated familiar names such as Ulysses S. Grant, Antonio López de Santa Anna, Zachary Taylor, and Jefferson Davis, to name a few.

  I could not turn down the project, though I knew it would involve an enormous amount of research. Luckily, I had traveled throughout Mexico for decades, so most of my geographical research had already been accomplished. Delving into scores of histories, diaries, memoirs, military reports, old newspaper accounts, and other sources, I decided that too much information existed for one novel. Accordingly, for this volume, I have focused on the first, or northern, phase of the war under the leadership of General Zachary Taylor.

  Militarily, the Mexican War served as a training ground for many future generals of the Civil War. Culturally, it grew from “Manifest Destiny”—a grassroots obsession among many American citizens in favor of expansion to the Pacific coast. Politically, it redrew the map of North America. Yet, for all of its sweeping historical significance, the war was fought and endured by individuals from both sides of the border—most of them average, some destined for greatness.

  To tell this story, I have chosen some of those real people to use as my characters. In fact, all of my point-of-view characters in this book are actual historical personages. I have done my best to fictionalize their thoughts, emotions, and words. I have created a few minor characters to move the story along as a work of fiction. I have also left out many real people for the sake of brevity. (For example, General Taylor had about forty officers and men on his staff who remained near him almost constantly. For the most part, I have condensed all of these staffers down to one man, Taylor’s adjutant, William Bliss.)

  Each chapter of this book represents a fictionalized account of historical events that actually happened. I have gone to great lengths to stay as close to the truth as possible. However, the chronicles of many historians differ. Even contemporary eyewitnesses disagreed on the details of many events. Men who stood shoulder to shoulder often remembered the same incident differently. My job as a novelist has been to choose the version that seemed most logical or to combine various recollections.

  Accordingly, this is not a history. It is a historical novel. My hope is that the reader will enjoy this book while learning about the war—not by memorizing names and dates and places but by experiencing the times through my fictionalized versions of the actual men and women who lived them. It was an era not so unlike our own—a period of controversy and partisan politics, of great promise and frightening uncertainty, of dangerous ambitions and delusions of glory. The results of the Mexican War still shape and haunt us to this very day.

  “The enemy … set fire to the grass … the fire began to spread. Its sinister splendor illuminated the camp.”

  Description of the battle of Palo Alto by Mexican officer Ramon Alcaraz.

  Part I

  BUGLE, FIFE, AND DRUMS

  The Strains of War

  Second Lieutenant

  SAM GRANT

  Gravois Creek, Missouri

  May 20, 1844

  The Gravois roared at Lieutenant Grant from a quarter mile away. He reined in his cavalry mount and listened to the din of the tributary over the patter of raindrops peppering his felt hat brim. He had not counted on this. Gravois Creek typically did not carry enough of a flow to run a coffee mill, as the old-timers would say. The rain must have fallen in a much heavier deluge upstream. No matter. There would be no turning back.

  He touched his spurs to the mare’s flanks and trotted onward toward the familiar creek crossing. The horse, excited by the approaching noise, pranced nervously yet gracefully under him. Grant reveled in the sensation of such power beneath him, barely gathered to the restraint of spurs and reins.

  He rode near enough to find the flooded stream spilling over its bank. The mare, catching sight of a dead tree floating down the Gravois, shied and wheeled back toward Jefferson Barracks, then returned to the creek bank at her rider’s insistence. Grant stared in awe at the raging stream. This little prairie rill, this brook, this trickle had gone as mad as a rabid pet turned man-killer.

  “Damn, Sam,” he said to himself, indulging in the mild profanity only because no one other than his mare would hear. Though it was not really his name, he had grown accustomed to calling himself Sam. Born Hiram Ulysses Grant, he had arrived at West Point only to find his name erroneously recorded as Ulysses Simpson Grant. It was an honest mistake made by the congressman who had arranged his appointment to the academy. The congressman, Thomas L. Hamer, knew that Grant’s family called him Ulysses, so he assumed that to be the young man’s first name. He further assumed that Grant’s middle name was probably Simpson, as it was common for a son to take his mother’s maiden name as his middle name.

  Ulysses Simpson Grant’s fellow West Point cadets would soon take note of his first two initials, U. S., and begin calling him both “United States” Grant and “Uncle Sam” Grant. Sam would stick. He didn’t mind. He rather liked the simplicity of it. And it was a relief to have won such an innocuous moniker. He had long harbored a dread that someone during the course of his life would realize that the initials of his actual name—Hiram Ulysses Grant—spelled hug. He much preferred answering to Sam rather than to “Hug” Grant.

  The Gravois crossing, well known to the young officer as a peaceful ford, had turned nightmarish—a slip-sliding descent into a crashing, growling, flotsam-choked torrent of muddy runoff. Often he had ridden from Jefferson Barracks—on the outskirts of Saint Louis—to White Haven, the plantation home of his former West Point roommate, Lieutenant Frederick Dent. It was a coincidental convenience that his former roommate should have been raised so near to the first duty station of both West Point graduates. Grant had often ridden with Dent the few miles from the barracks to the plantation to partake in the joys of family life, as his own kinfolk lived several days’ travel to the northeast, in Ohio.

  But this was not the Gravois which had so often beckoned his crossing on his visits. Usually ankle deep, it had now swollen beyond mathematical calculation. Yet Sam Grant felt his jaw tightening, for he knew he was going to swim it. He would not be denied this journey. He had realized, even as a boy, that he inexplicably possessed a pec
uliar superstition that now served to lure him into the raging death trap of Gravois Creek. The superstition was this: If ever he should start upon a road or a trail or a course of action, he could not and would not backtrack. Even should he accidentally take the wrong fork in a road, only to realize it a mile on, he would find some long way around to his destination rather than retreat even a single step.

  In this case, it was not the superstition alone that drove him. Ahead, at White Haven Plantation, he had business to attend to—fearsome business of a most personal and urgent nature. To this purpose, he had dressed in his best uniform and had even had his boots polished. He would not turn back now, or ever, from his destiny.

  Enough hesitation. He spurred a firm command to the mare to enter the swollen stream. She obeyed in spite of her fears, having absorbed the insistence of her rider. In fact, she plunged in, seeking the solace of the far bank. In a moment she was swimming, the muddy bottom having dropped beyond reach of her hooves.

  As the horse sank deeper, Grant slipped from the saddle, but he held firm to reins and mane. Cool water soaked through his uniform and he smelled the odor of rotten debris. He had chosen his moment well, as he saw no rafts of driftwood near enough to tangle in a cinch or stirrup and rake him under. As the mare stroked powerfully, her nostrils spraying great blasts of breath and raindrops, the current carried them downstream and around a bend that provided a beneficial eddy and a lucky gravel bank, gently sloped. He scrambled atop the saddle as the mount found her footing.

  The mare, winded, managed to climb the opposite bank to safety. Grant reined his mount to a stop to let her stand and breathe. He looked back at the thing he had traversed and shook his head. Now he turned his attention to himself. Silt and dead leaves covered his uniform. A number of twigs had tangled in the braids of his epaulets. Mud mocked the work of the bootblack back at the barracks.

  No matter. He would borrow a suit of clothes. He waited, somewhat impatiently, for his horse to catch her breath. Suddenly, a fit of coughing doubled him over, causing him to wheeze uncontrollably. Damn cough. It had come over him at West Point, three years ago, and he had been unable to completely shake it since earning his commission as a second lieutenant.

  Second Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant. It still stunned him to think about it at times. Grant had never intended to become a soldier. His father had surprised him with the appointment to West Point, which he had arranged through his acquaintanceship with Congressman Hamer. The very idea of reporting to the military academy had struck young Grant with an almost overwhelming dread. Having received schooling of only the most rudimentary stripe in a one-room schoolhouse, Grant had feared he would disgrace his family through utter academic failure on the banks of the Hudson. He had been stunned, in fact, when he passed the entry exam quite handily.

  It was as if by providence that his father’s decision had led him to this place where he now stood, sopping wet on the west bank of the Gravois, facing a challenge as daunting as any he had ever encountered in his twenty-two years. He forced one last cough from his chest, spat, and spurred his mare.

  * * *

  Outside of White Haven, he saw an elderly slave known as Old Bob trudging up the road toward him, carrying an ash bucket, his hat pulled low against the drizzle.

  “Hello, Bob!” he shouted from a distance, so as not to startle the old black man by riding up on him in a storm.

  Old Bob raised his eyes from the muddy ground. “Sir,” he answered. “My fire done burned down. I’m goin’ to the neighbor’s for a coal.” He seemed shocked to find Grant riding on such a day.

  This did not surprise Lieutenant Grant. Besides the weather, the slaves would be well aware that the Fourth Infantry had been ordered south to Louisiana some three weeks ago, en route to Texas to prepare for war with Mexico. Grant was a second lieutenant in the Fourth Infantry, and as such should have already departed. He had been left behind only because he had been away in Ohio on leave when the orders came down from Washington.

  “Very well,” Grant said. “Tell me, Bob, is Master John home?”

  Bob nodded. “Yes, sir. I seen him on his porch no more than a hour ago.”

  “Good. I’ll need to borrow a suit of his clothes.”

  Old Bob took in Grant’s mount and the condition of his uniform. “Sir, if you don’t mind me askin’…”

  “Not at all.”

  “Did you swim that crick?”

  “My mount did the swimming. I held fast to the pommel.”

  Bob chuckled, his eyes twinkling honestly. “You a brave man.”

  “Foolhardy is more the case. Oh, Bob … Is Miss Julia home, as well?”

  Old Bob smiled and nodded. “Yes, sir, she is sure enough to home, all right.”

  Grant rode to John Dent’s house, a small cabin located two miles from White Haven’s main plantation home and headquarters. He looped his reins around a hitching rail, stepped up on the porch, and used an iron knocker fixed on John’s door. He waited. Then Sam spotted a bootjack on the porch and decided to muscle the wet leather from his feet, not wanting to track in any mud. He knocked again. Finally the door opened to reveal young John Dent, who burst into laughter at Grant’s appearance.

  “Did you fall in?”

  “Plunged,” Grant said.

  John was about the same age as Sam Grant. Next to his former West Point roommate, Lieutenant Frederick Dent, John Dent was Grant’s closest confidant at White Haven Plantation. Frederick had already gone south with the Fourth, so Grant was relieved to find John present to help him with the ominous task at hand.

  “I’d ask what brings you here, but I think I know.”

  Grant nodded. “I need to borrow a shirt and a pair of tongs,” he said, using army slang for trousers.

  “Come on in,” John ordered. “You’re a bit taller than me, but my clothes will have to do.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Sam Grant, now escorted by John Dent, arrived at White Haven’s main plantation house. They tied their mounts outside the front gate and walked up to the large frame home, John Dent carrying Grant’s sodden uniform.

  Before John could reach the door, it opened to reveal the housemaid.

  “Hello, Kitty,” Grant said, removing his hat and tugging at his ill-fitting garments.

  “Mr. Grant? I declare!”

  “Kitty, take Sam’s uniform and clean it up. He went swimming in the Gravois.”

  The slave woman glared at Grant incredulously as she took the damp clothing.

  “Wait downstairs, Sam, and I’ll announce your arrival to Julia.”

  * * *

  Several minutes later, Grant found himself sitting uncomfortably in the dining room, his borrowed pant legs drawn halfway up his boot tops. The shirtsleeves, too short to secure at the cuffs, were instead rolled up to his elbows. His wet hair was pressed to his scalp and combed back in waves that danced above his collar, dampening the fabric. At least he was wearing his own boots, which he had cleaned back at John’s cabin. He held his hat in his lap.

  He was more nervous now than when he had plunged his horse into Gravois Creek. He tried to rehearse something to say. Julia would be here any moment. How would he greet her? Where would he begin?

  Back when Grant had first started coming to White Haven with Frederick, Julia had been away at a boarding school in Saint Louis. When she returned to her family home as an eighteen-year-old beauty, Sam’s visits had taken on a new purpose. He secretly sought any chance to walk or ride alone with Julia and had found her company quite agreeable. She, too, seemed always to enjoy his company and conversation.

  But, what if…, he thought. What if he had misinterpreted her feelings? Was he about to make a colossal fool of himself, sitting here in clothes too small for his frame, having risked his life in the Gravois for nothing? He put the thought aside. He would forge ahead. He would always forge ahead. Anyway, the timing was good. He would soon leave to catch up to his regiment. Should he find himself a brokenhearted soldier in the n
ear future, he would not have to endure the looks of pity from the folks around White Haven, Jefferson Barracks, or Saint Louis.

  “Sam?” she said, stepping into the room. Then she burst into laughter at the sight of him sitting in John’s clothes. Her ringlets of brunette hair danced behind her ears, and she placed her hand over her full lips as she chuckled at his expense.

  Sam rose to his feet, his face flushing. He smiled and shrugged. “I got soaked in the creek crossing. I borrowed a suit of clothes from your brother.”

  “I can see that.” Her bright eyes twinkled in the lantern light of the dining room. “Sam, what are you doing here? I thought you had gone south to join the regiment.”

  “I couldn’t go without … without saying … good-bye. Among other things.” His heart was pounding, his stomach twisted in a knot.

  She seemed to float toward him on a taffeta cloud. “Is there going to be war with Mexico?” she said, real worry kneading her brow. “The newspapers are full of all sorts of incongruous rumors.”

  “I don’t know,” Sam admitted. He could talk about this confidently, for he had thought it over. “It’s likely, I’d say, given the public attitude in favor of immediate annexation for Texas.”

  “Oh, but Sam, why does it all hinge on Texas? I’ve heard it’s covered with Indians and rattlesnakes, anyway.”

  “Mexico still claims Texas, or at least the part between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande del Norte. Mexico has long promised war if the Republic of Texas becomes a state.”

  Julia sighed. “There are so many politicians ranting over it this way and that. What is your opinion of what should be done?”

  Sam shrugged one shoulder, a bit surprised at what seemed like Julia’s sudden interest in politics. “I rather agree with Senator Benton. Texas should become a state someday, but only after the dispute over the border with Mexico is settled diplomatically rather than on the battlefield.”