Nathan should not have been surprised that this refugee from Ireland knew all about his mission, but he was. Once again, Nathan accepted the fact that there were no secrets in Washington.
“Mr. Flynn, Attila is an interesting name. I don't know that much about the Roman church, but it strikes me that a good Irish boy is generally a Catholic and must be baptized with the name of a saint. Saint Attila? I hardly think so. I once heard the litany of Roman saints and he was sadly absent.”
Flynn smiled. “My true name is Patrick Louis Flynn. My mother began to call me Attila when I was small because she wished me to be the scourge of the English just as the first Attila was the scourge of ancient Rome.”
Nathan relaxed with the knife and gestured Flynn to sit down. “And are you?”
“No, not yet. But with the cooperation of the United States, I might be. I am a Fenian. Have you heard of us?”
The Fenians were a society of radical Irishmen dedicated to freeing Ireland from England. They had been founded a couple of years earlier. While they had a sympathetic following among the Irish community who had migrated by the hundreds of thousands from famine-ravaged Ireland, they were not a force to be reckoned with- yet.
“What can the Fenians do for the United States?” Nathan asked.
“Why, dear sir, with our help, you can raise an army to fight England and emasculate that of the Confederacy’s. Are you interested?”
Nathan was. He put his knife back in his boot. “Tell me.”
Hannibal Watson stood in the sun-baked field like a large and muscular black statue. Sweat ran down from his head and over his heavily muscled bare chest. Outwardly he was stoic and calm, but inside he was in ferment. He was a tormented but long-dormant volcano about ready to explode.
But not quite yet.
It took time for news to reach nearby Vicksburg, Mississippi, and longer still for it to get to what Mr. Farnum called his plantation and others called a dirt-poor shit farm. Farnum had five slaves, one of whom was Hannibal Watson.
Hannibal and the other slaves had been disbelieving spectators to the discussions other people had about freeing the slaves. They had been convinced that while some white people in the North might wish it, no one in the South was going to let it happen. Then, when Abraham Lincoln had been elected and the South had gone mad with anger, they had allowed their hopes to soar. Perhaps, Hannibal and the others reasoned, there might be freedom in their future after all.
But then had come the news that the Confederacy had not only beaten the North in a major battle, but that Lincoln had done nothing regarding the Negroes in the South. When news came that the South had a major new partner in their rebellion, some far-off place called England, Hannibal knew that any hopes that someone else was going to give him his freedom were foolish dreams.
So Hannibal stood in the field and thought. What did he have to lose? The answer was very little. He was almost forty years old, which meant that he had only a few useful years of work left. At some point he would be unable to satisfy the minimal needs of the Farnums and would be sold again and again, forced to perform tasks that were even more menial and degrading than field work. It was illegal to kill a useless slave, but he didn't put much faith in that particular law to protect him.
Hannibal had once been a stable hand to a family named McAllister in Tennessee. The McAllisters had lost all their money and had to sell off their property, and that included Hannibal Watson.
The sale included Hannibal's wife, Abigail, and their young son, Joshua. That they were breaking up a family was of no concern to the McAllisters or the man who ran the auction. Hannibal went as a horse handler to one family and Abigail a house slave to another. No one needed the two of them, although he overheard several men saying that young Joshua had good potential, and that Abigail was real good breeding stock. Hannibal had stayed in Tennessee while Abigail and Joshua were purchased by someone from Virginia.
For months, Hannibal had waited in torment and then could take it no longer. He ran away. His poorly thought out plan was to head north, where he thought he could be free and then come back to find Abigail and Joshua.
He had only been away for a couple of days before the slave catchers and their dogs had caught him. The catchers had let the dogs chew on him for a while, and then, just to make sure he got the point, hamstrung his right leg. Fortunately for him, they'd gotten falling down drunk by this time, and had only hacked at him with their knives and not crippled him like they'd intended. After that, they had flogged him until he screamed with pain and then passed out. He walked with a pronounced limp, but that was because he wished to. not because he needed to.
Hannibal had been sold again, and this time for very little money since he was a runaway and a cripple to boot. Drunken old son of a bitch Farnum had bought him and put him to work at the Farnum Plantation, a motley collection of poorly maintained buildings that Hannibal thought would embarrass a pig.
If Farnum had a virtue it was that both he and his whore of a wife were so drunk most of the time that little work was done on the farm. On the rare occasions when they were sober, they would take out their anger at being white trash on the slaves by beating them. Fortunately, this didn't happen very often. Mr. Farnum liked to couple with Bessie, the only female slave in the bunch. This neglect was why Hannibal felt safe standing in a field and thinking instead of pretending to hoe the weeds. Mr. Farnum wasn't particularly mean, just stupid. Mrs. Farnum, however, was shrill and cruel. She was particularly nasty to Bessie since she knew her husband was fucking the slave and not herself.
Hannibal made a decision. It was the most important one of his life. He would run away again. There was no hope in waiting for Lincoln and his soldiers to bring freedom. Lincoln and the North had failed. Hannibal knew that age would overtake him long before the North tried again. No, freedom would have to be taken.
Hannibal fully understood what had gone wrong the first time he'd run away. He had acted with his emotions and not with his brain. He knew he was intelligent and the leader of Farnurn's Negroes. This time he would plan.
His primary mistake was in letting his absence be discovered so quickly that the chase began before he had gotten very far. This would not happen again. He did not particularly wish to harm the Farnums or the other slaves, who he knew were scared to death of the thought of leaving, but it would have to be. Each hour his absence went undiscovered would mean a couple of miles between himself and continued slavery. He speculated that a couple of days' head start might even see him close to the Union army.
It had been ten years since he had been separated from Abigail and Joshua. He didn't even know if they were still alive. Perhaps Joshua had been sold to someone else. Why not; he'd be about fourteen now. He had to find them. It was eating him alive.
The Farnums and the weaker slaves would have to die. He hefted the hoe and wondered just how it would feel to drive the blade deep into old Farnum's bald red skull. He thought it would feel wonderful.
Attila Flynn explained himself clearly and carefully to Nathan Hunter and to a barely cordial General Scott. Flynn firmly believed in the old dictum that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Therefore, the United States, as well as being a haven for Irish immigrants, was firmly in the Irish camp whether it wanted to be or not. Nathan thought it was the other way around, but kept his counsel.
“People who are not Irish,” Flynn said, “have no idea of the depth of hatred that we feel for England. She has enslaved us over the centuries, deprived us of our right to worship in the true faith, denied us representation, and then starved us in an attempt to drive us out of Ireland.”
“Do you feel the famine was intentional?” Nathan asked incredulously.
“The blight that destroyed the potato crops for successive years was an act of God. The decision to withhold aid to the people of Ireland was an act of the British government. Are you aware that English landowners of Irish farms that did have successful crops actually exported foodstuffs to England and elsewhere?”
“No,” said Nathan. He caught General Scott watching Flynn carefully.
“Private charities tried to help us,” Flynn continued, “but they were overwhelmed. My mother died nursing my brother, who also died. My father just disappeared one day. I managed to lie and steal until I was old enough to enlist in the army. At least they fed me.”
“Then you served England,” Scott said.
“I would have served the Ottoman caliph and let him bugger me in the ass if he would have fed me. Yes, I
