Chapter 16: The Clerk's Instructions

Scene 1

The map of Mexico had acquired new wounds since March. Four red pins marked Scott's advance through the cordillera — Veracruz, Cerro Gordo, Jalapa, Puebla — each one driven in with a force that had split the cork backing and left a small dark crater around the shaft. Buchanan had placed the last pin himself, pressing it home with his thumb until the point met resistance, and that slight give had been, in some obscure fashion, satisfying. The satisfaction had lasted perhaps an hour. Now the pins merely documented how far the war had travelled beyond his reach.

He stood at the window rather than the desk, because his lower back had begun its familiar complaint after two hours in the chair — a grinding pull across the lumbar that wanted motion, not rest. He gave it motion, pacing the narrow corridor between desk and window, and converted the pacing into an attitude of deliberation, which was the kind of economy this city required.

The dispatch pouch sat on the desk where Derrick had placed it twenty minutes ago. Derrick himself stood near the door, hat in hand, waiting with the patience of a young man who had not yet learned that patience was itself a form of pressure.

Buchanan turned from the window.

"You say it arrived this morning."

"Yes, sir. By the nine o'clock post from the War Department relay."

He crossed to the desk and lifted the pouch by its strap, feeling the weight of it — three, perhaps four items. He set it down and sorted through the contents without urgency, as a man reviews correspondence he expects to find unremarkable.

The third envelope stopped him.

He did not permit his expression to change. The seal was Trist's — he knew that device, the small sunburst Trist used on his personal correspondence rather than the State Department wafer — but the wax had a quality he recognised from long experience of documents that had been handled and restored: a slight irregularity at the edge, a faint ridge where heat had been applied unevenly, the impression just a fraction too sharp for a seal pressed only once. He ran his thumb along the underside of the fold, feeling the place where the wax had cooled in two stages rather than one.

He set it down and lifted a second, apparently comparing seals.

"Nine o'clock," he said.

"Yes, sir."

Buchanan opened the middle drawer and removed a slip of paper he had placed there the previous evening. The doorkeeper at the building's rear entrance kept a log — a practice Buchanan had instituted himself, two years ago, for reasons that had seemed administrative at the time and now seemed prescient. The entry for yesterday read: Dispatch pouch, War Dept. relay, recd. 6:47 p.m., signed for by D. Harmon, clerk. He smoothed it flat with one deliberate pass of his palm and left it where Derrick could not fail to see it.

"The doorkeeper's log records the pouch arriving yesterday evening at a quarter to seven." He did not look up. "That is not nine o'clock this morning."

The room went quiet. Outside, Pennsylvania Avenue offered the sound of a wagon crossing the intersection at Fifteenth Street, iron wheels on stone, then nothing.

"I may have — there was some question of whether to deliver it yesterday evening, sir, given the hour."

"And who resolved that question?"

Derrick's hat turned once in his hands. "I was told the Secretary had already departed for the day."

"By whom?"

"I received a note, sir. From — it was a note from Mr. Walker's office, suggesting that dispatches of a certain character might be held until morning when the Secretary could review them in proper sequence."

Knox Walker. The President's private secretary.

Buchanan folded the doorkeeper's log with the unhurry of a man who has obtained precisely what he required and slid it back into the drawer.

"You will oblige me," he said, "by informing Mr. Walker's office that dispatch pouches addressed to the Secretary of State are to be delivered to the Secretary of State upon receipt. Without exception. Without consultation. And without delay."

"Yes, sir."

"You will do this today."

"Yes, sir."

"That will be all, Derrick."

When the door had closed, Buchanan picked up Trist's envelope and ran his thumb once more along the ridge of the reheated seal — feeling the faint corrugation where another man's curiosity had left its invisible record — before he broke it open and began to read.

The contents were dated a fortnight past. Trist's hand was small and precise, each letter formed with the deliberateness of a man who had once been told his penmanship was poor and had never forgotten the reproach. The salutation was formal — My dear Mr. Secretary — but the substance that followed was anything but. Three pages. The Mexican commissioners had indicated a willingness to treat. General Scott concurred that the moment was propitious. The terms Trist outlined bore the mark of long residence — a man who had learned, through hard negotiation and harder disappointment, the precise boundary between what could be obtained and what could not — and the distinction was rendered with a clarity that Buchanan found, against his better inclination, admirable.

He set the pages on the desk. His right forefinger had begun its quiet percussion against the wood — a rhythm he did not notice until he caught himself mid-tap and stilled it.

The war, it appeared, was proceeding without him.

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Scene 2

The fire had been burning since six o'clock and the parlour still held its chill in the upper corners, where the plaster showed grey through the whitewash. Buchanan had drawn his chair close enough to feel the heat against his shins, but the room above his shoulders remained indifferent to the season. The Madeira sat untouched at his elbow. He had poured it an hour ago and had not once remembered it was there.

The communication from Lancaster occupied the centre of his writing desk, face-down, its edges aligned with the desk's margin, as though the geometry of objects could impose order on the disorder of his circumstances.

He had read it twice and did not require a third occasion.

The lawyer who had written it — whose name Buchanan did not set down even in his private correspondence, a cautious habit of long standing — had not been unkind. He had not needed to be. His sentences belonged to someone reporting a state of affairs rather than issuing a demand, which made them considerably more difficult to answer. The gentlemen of the Pennsylvania delegation, he had written, are of one mind that the Secretary's long silence on the question of territorial restriction will be read, in the absence of other indication, as alignment with those who would carry the peculiar institution into whatever lands are wrested from the Mexican Republic. Senator Cameron has expressed this view to the undersigned on two separate occasions. The state convention assembles in three weeks. I write in the hope that a public statement, however measured, may yet forestall the consequences of continued silence.

Consequences. The word occupied the room like a creditor who has exhausted his patience and arrived without warning.

From somewhere below came the sound of a dispute — two voices, a dray horse, the clatter of iron on stone — and then nothing, the avenue resuming its indifference. A coal dropped through the grate with a sound like a muffled cough.

He drew the pen toward him and set its nib to the page.

He had drafted the Oregon circular in this same chair, in this same light, with the same sensation of composing a document that would eventually be turned against him, though by whom and in what manner he could not yet calculate. The circular had served its purpose. This correspondence would serve its purpose as well, provided he chose the purpose with sufficient care.

He commenced.

My dear friend — I am sensible of the honour you do me in communicating the views of those gentlemen whose confidence I have long endeavoured to merit, and whose approbation I regard as among the more substantial rewards of public service.

He paused. The fire popped and sent an ember onto the hearthrug — a bright, brief thing — and he pushed back his chair and stamped it out with the heel of his boot. The smell of singed wool rose and dispersed, hanging in the warm air between the desk and the mantel. He returned to the page.

On the question itself, I confess that my sentiments have never been other than those of a man who believes the free territories of this republic ought to remain free, and who regards the principle embodied in the Honourable Mr. Wilmot's amendment as consistent with the highest traditions of our constitutional inheritance.

He read this back. It said what it said. He continued.

It must be acknowledged, however, that the moment for public declaration admits of careful consideration. The armies of this republic are engaged in operations whose conclusion remains uncertain, and it is my settled conviction that any statement from the present administration touching the disposition of territories not yet obtained, not yet surveyed, and not yet brought within the compass of any instrument of law, would be received — both in the halls of Congress and in the foreign ministries whose neutrality we require — as prejudging questions that the peace itself must resolve. To speak prematurely is not to speak boldly. It is to surrender the ground before the engagement is concluded.

He set the pen against the inkwell's rim. Outside, the dray had moved on. The avenue offered nothing further.

I ask your patience, and that of those gentlemen whose views you have conveyed, for a period I trust will be brief. When the military operations permit, I shall not be found wanting.

He read the completed draft from the beginning, testing each phrase with the patient attention of an engineer examining a bridge for the weight it would bear. It praised the Proviso's principle. It declined to support it publicly. It offered the war as sufficient reason for the delay, and the war, at least, was real. Cameron's men would not be satisfied. They would not, however, be entirely without hope.

He placed the draft face-down beside the first, aligning both to the desk's border.

Two documents. Two evasions, each dressed in the language of prudent statecraft. The Pennsylvania convention in three weeks; the Veracruz packet departing in two days; and somewhere in the interval, the question of what Trist's private communication actually required of him — a question he had not yet permitted himself to examine with the directness it deserved.

He reached for the Madeira. It had gone cold.

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Scene 3

The room at Gadsby's smelled of pipe tobacco worked into the plaster over years, and beneath that something sweetly corrupt — tallow that had burned too long, or the residue of meals taken in close quarters by men who did not open windows. A single candle stood on the round table between them, its flame leaning faintly in the draught from the ill-fitted door, and the shutters were latched against Pennsylvania Avenue's evening commerce. Buchanan had arrived first and had been waiting twelve minutes when Hargrove knocked.

The man who entered was broad through the shoulders, sun-darkened, with the ease of someone accustomed to rooms where he held no natural authority and had learned to compensate with affability. He set his hat on the windowsill, drew out the opposite chair without being invited, and produced from his coat an oilskin packet sealed with plain wax — no device, no initials.

"Mr. Secretary." He laid the packet on the table and kept his hand near it, though not upon it. "A long way from Veracruz."

Buchanan did not reach for it. "Your health, Mr. Hargrove."

"Considerable, thank you. The passage from New Orleans was unremarkable." A pause. "I had hoped to find you in better spirits."

"You find me as I am."

He drew the packet toward him and examined the seal. The wax was undisturbed — or had been applied with sufficient care to appear so. He broke it and unfolded the pages.

Trist's hand again: small, precise, each letter formed with that same deliberate care. The date was late March. The salutation was formal. Buchanan read.

The candle guttered — a draft from beneath the door — and he cupped his left hand around the flame while his right held the pages, the wax dripping onto his fingers in slow, irregular pulses that he did not attend to. He was on the second page, the passage that named the Mexican government's condition: California as the limit of the cession, the Gila River as the southern boundary of the transferred territory, nothing further. Trist's reasoning followed in subordinate clauses that accumulated with the patient weight of a man who had turned the matter over through long evenings in a camp he had not been expected to remain in.

The General concurs that these terms represent the utmost that any Mexican government capable of ratifying a treaty may be induced to accept.

The General. Scott's name, written plainly.

Buchanan placed the pages face-down on the table and withdrew his hand from the candle. A small red mark had formed on two of his fingers where the wax had cooled. He did not look at it.

"Mr. Hargrove." His tone was that of a man raising a point of minor procedure. "How was your passage through Veracruz?"

"Smoothly managed. The occupation authorities are thorough but not unreasonable."

"And the correspondence reached you through what channel, precisely?"

Hargrove smiled — the smile of a man who had anticipated the question and found its arrival reassuring. "A factor of my acquaintance in Jalapa. He had it from a courier attached to the envoy's party."

"And between Jalapa and this table, how many hands?"

"My own. My factor's. The courier's." A fractional hesitation. "The matter of the Gila boundary, of course, made the contents rather self-evident to a man of commercial interest in the region."

Buchanan looked at him steadily. The candle was small, and Hargrove's face sat half in shadow, and what was visible of it wore the expression of someone who had just placed something on a table and was watching to see whether it would be taken up or struck aside.

"You have read this," Buchanan said.

"I have a considerable trade in cotton futures along the Sonora road." Hargrove's voice was pleasant. "A man in my position attends to geography."

Buchanan folded Trist's pages into precise thirds and slid them into his inner coat pocket. The motion was unhurried. Hargrove watched it go without expression.

"I will ask you," Buchanan said, "to enumerate for me every person who has seen or heard the contents of that correspondence. Every person, Mr. Hargrove. I raise the question because the occupation authority at Veracruz administers trading licences under military jurisdiction, and I have some acquaintance with General Scott's headquarters." He paused. "I would not wish any misunderstanding to complicate your spring shipments."

The room held the smell of old tobacco and guttering wax. Somewhere beyond the shuttered window, a horse was being walked across cobblestones, the iron shoes striking an uneven beat that slowed and ceased. The candle flame steadied itself and threw their shadows up the wall behind them in long, wavering columns.

Hargrove set both hands flat on the table. He began to enumerate.

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The lamp had burned low enough that its light no longer reached the corners of the room. Buchanan had not noticed until his hand, moving to dip the pen, passed through the edge of shadow and returned pale and strange-looking, as though it belonged to someone else entirely.

He dipped and wrote. He crossed out. He wrote again.

The reply to Trist occupied three sheets, of which the first two had been discarded — one for a false start that committed too plainly to the moderate position, one for an overcorrection that read, even to his own eye, as a man constructing his defence against a verdict not yet rendered. The third sheet lay before him now, the ink of its final paragraph still wet where he had paused.

I am persuaded that you possess both the intelligence and the discretion necessary to assess, upon the ground, the precise degree to which the administration's stated requirements may admit of practical accommodation, and that in any negotiation conducted under such circumstances, the judgment of the man present must necessarily inform, and may in certain particulars supplement, the instructions of those at a remove.

He read it through once without moving. Then he set the pen against the inkwell's rim — careful, the nib pointing away from the paper — and sat back.

A man who writes a letter designed to mean nothing is a man who stands for nothing.

The thought arrived without ceremony. The pen did not move.

Outside, Pennsylvania Avenue offered the intermittent sound of a late carriage, its iron wheels finding the gaps between the paving stones with a regularity that suggested an unhurried destination. He listened until it faded. His hand cramped around the pen's barrel, the tendons seizing between the third and fourth fingers in a hard, pulling contraction that forced him to set the instrument down entirely and open his palm flat against the desk's surface, pressing, waiting, until the fingers extended by slow degrees and the grip released.

He flexed them once, twice. Then he took up the pages and read them aloud.

Not loudly — barely above breath, his lips shaping each clause the way a man tests a floorboard before committing his weight. The administration's stated requirements. Deniable: he had stated them, they were Polk's, the phrasing acknowledged their existence without endorsing their immovability. May admit of practical accommodation. A construction that Trist could read as permission and Polk could read as conditional — the subjunctive doing its customary labour, the passive voice distributing responsibility until it dissolved. The judgment of the man present must necessarily inform. This was the hinge. Must necessarily — strong language, but the object of that necessity was only inform, not govern, not supersede. Inform. A word that meant almost nothing, and therefore almost everything, depending on who held the pages and what he required them to say.

He set them down.

It was, he recognised, a document of genuine craft. Trist would read it as he needed to — as permission wrapped in the language of procedural deference — and if the treaty succeeded, Buchanan could point to inform and supplement as evidence of his guidance. If it failed, or if Polk demanded an accounting, the same phrase would demonstrate that he had never authorised deviation from the President's position, merely acknowledged the physical realities of field diplomacy. The letter was a door that opened in either direction. He had built it that way.

He took up the pen. At the foot of the page, below the closing salutation, he added a single sentence in a slightly smaller hand, as though appended as an afterthought:

I retain, as I have always retained, entire confidence in your capacity to serve the interests of this republic with the fidelity and judgment that your office requires.

Capacity. Fidelity. Judgment. Three words that could be read as warmth between colleagues or as the formal language of official authorisation, depending on the reader and the occasion. He had chosen them for that quality of double service, and he was not proud of the choosing, and he did not permit himself to dwell upon the fact that he was not proud.

He pressed the seal into the wax with more force than was necessary, the brass cutting deep into the red puddle, and held it there a moment before lifting it clean.

The sealed document came to rest at the near edge of the desk, precisely beside the Cameron correspondence, still face-down where he had placed it two evenings past, its edge aligned with nothing, its contents still unanswered.

Three weeks to the Pennsylvania convention. Two days to the Veracruz packet. And somewhere in the interval between those two fixed points — somewhere in the space his ambiguity had purchased — Nicholas Trist would read a sentence that meant almost nothing and act upon it as though it meant everything, and whatever followed from that action would arrive at this desk in due course, bearing Buchanan's seal, demanding an accounting he had already arranged not to give.

He left both documents where they lay and went to bed.