Davis smiled at his choice of words. “In three days’ time. I’ve arranged for them to stay at the Powhatan House and for an armed guard to ensure nothing unfortunate befalls Mr. Butler: the forms must be observed, after all. Your discussions themselves will take place in the Cabinet room, which, being but one floor below my own offices, will enable me to quickly form a judgment as to any disputed points.”
“Very good, Mr. President,” Lee said, nodding. Davis was a man to keep a close eye on everything that was done in his administration. Lee went on, “Mr. Benjamin must be pleased to have more activity in his sphere these days than was formerly the case.”
“Oh, indeed,” Davis said. “Along with the European powers, the Emperor Maximilian has sent a minister from the city of Mexico, and Dom Pedro of Brazil has also extended to us his nation’s recognition. As our social institutions are so like those of Brazil, I find that last recognition long overdue, but I shall take no public notice of the delay.”
“Have you specific instructions for the adjustments we are to seek from the United States?” Lee asked.
“I did not object to the armistice terms you proposed to Lincoln—as a starting point for our discussions. As to how much more than that starting point the Federals prove willing to yield, well, General, on that we shall have to await events. The. Rivington men, who have always been uncommonly well informed, seem to be under the impression that they may well surrender both Kentucky and Missouri, as well as specie payments to serve as an indemnity for what they worked upon our country, which, after all, bore the brunt of the recent fighting.”
“Kentucky and Missouri? That was not the impression Mr.
Lincoln created in me. Quite the opposite, in fact.” Lee frowned. He wondered how much—he wondered just what—the Rivington men had told Jefferson Davis. Though dealing with his own President, he felt the need to be circumspect in finding out. He said, “The Rivington men know a great many things, Mr. President, but they do not know everything there is to know.”
“I sometimes wonder.” Davis fell silent. He cocked his head slightly to one side, as if studying Lee. Then he murmured four words: “Two oh one four.”
Lee grinned in genuine admiration; it was all he could do to keep from clapping his hands. Had he not learned the secret of America Will Break, the numbers would have been meaningless to him. As it was…”So, Mr. President, they have also told you they’re from a time yet to come and given proofs you find convincing?”
“They have.” Jefferson Davis’s features were too stern, too disciplined, to be very expressive, but a tiny widening of his eyes, an easing of the tension that pulled, as if with purse strings, at the corners of his mouth, showed his relief. “I wondered if I was the only one to whom they’d entrusted their secret.”
“So did I,” Lee admitted. “I am glad to learn otherwise. But did they not tell you, sir, that while they came from the future, it was a future wherein the Federals overcame us, a future they traveled back here to prevent?”
Davis nodded; his wide, thin mouth narrowed again. “Yes, and of many evils that would arise there. Thaddeus Stevens.” He spoke the abolitionist’s name as if it were a curse. “If nothing else, they have kept that evil from overfalling us, for which alone we should be in their debt.”
“All true, Mr. President. They helped me greatly by their foreknowledge of the course Grant’s thrust into the Wilderness would take. But once I and others began to act upon that foreknowledge and change what would have been, the world grew apart from what they knew. Andries Rhoodie said as much to me; they now see through a glass, darkly, even as other men. They cannot know, then, it seems to me, upon what terms Mr. Lincoln’s commissioners will settle with us.”
Davis reached up to stroke the graying tuft of hair under his chin. “I see the point you are making, General. It is well taken. Nevertheless, they remain astute men, and their considered judgments worthy of our closest attention.”
“Certainly, sir.” Again choosing his words carefully, Lee added,” Any group within our confederation which found itself possessed of such power as the Rivington men enjoy would be worthy of our closest attention.”
“Lest they seek to dominate it, you mean?” Davis said. Lee nodded. So did the President, rather grimly. “That thought has crossed my mind, often in the small hours when I would be better off asleep. When the North remained our chiefest foe, it was a little worry. Now it is a larger one. I am glad to find that a man of your quality shares it. I gain confidence that, at need, I shall be able to pass on the burden to someone already familiar with it.”
“Sir?” Lee said, not quite catching the President’s drift.
Davis’s eyes bored into his. “You know that under the terms of the Constitution of the Confederate States, I am limited to a single six-year term. After the 1867 elections, our nation must have at its head someone able to rise above faction and lead us all. I can think of no one more likely than you to meet that requirement and, additionally, to meet whatever challenge the Rivington men may present. I chose you as a commissioner not only for your undoubted and unmatched abilities, but also to help keep you in the public eye between now and our election day. One thing I have learned is that the people forget too soon.”
“You are serious,” Lee said slowly. He had not been so startled since the day when General McClellan, relying on a captured set of Confederate orders, abandoned his usual indolence and broke through the South Mountain gap to force the battle of Sharpsburg. This surprise was almost as disagreeable as the other had been. “I have never taken an interest in politics, Mr. President, nor ever cared to.”
“I was trained as a soldier myself, as you know perfectly well. I would ten—a hundred—times rather have commanded troops in the field than spent my days wrangling with a recalcitrant Congress over the minutiae of legislation whose urgency in the situation in which we found ourselves should have been apparent to anyone this side of raving idiocy, a state to which I frequently thought Congress was striving to reduce me. But I remained where fate and duty placed me, and I entertain no doubt that, come the time, you will do the same.”
“May that cup pass from me,” Lee said.
“You know what passed with Him who first made that prayer, and how, when the hour came, He drank the cup to the dregs.” The President smiled his thin, wintry smile. “We’ve known each other better than half our lives, since the West Point days when we were youths learning to be soldiers—and to be men. Now that we are become what once we aspired to be, how may we fail to recognize that which is required of us?”
“Give me battle, any day,” Lee said.
“Battle you shall have, even if it be battle without flags or cannon. That, if nothing else, this office holds.”
Lee still shook his head. Davis did not press him further. The President was not always an adroit politician; his own passionately clear view of affairs made him have trouble compromising with those who held differing opinions. But Lee knew Davis had hooked him as neatly as if he were a crappie in a gravel-bottomed stream. Just as a crappie would go for a worm, so Lee leaped high when his duty was invoked. Oh, but the hook was barbed, barbed. “I think I should sooner face the frying pan than the Presidency,” he muttered.
“Of course,” Davis said, taking the privilege of the last word, “for the Presidency is the fire.”
With a screech of iron against iron, a deep-throated bellow from the steam whistle, and a series of jerks as cars came together as closely as their couplings would allow, the southbound train pulled to a halt. Nate Caudell wiped his face with his sleeve. With the windows shut, the passenger car was a stinking sweatbox. With them open, so much smoke poured in that all the soldiers would have taken on the look of a traveling blackface minstrel show.