2. Killing the King
1279 Words
2
KILLING THE KING
Before leaving the secluded cabin the following day, Pike allowed for my return to Indian Territory after completing the mission in New Orleans, a move allowing me to see the war through with my Indian comrades, a condition on which I insisted. He also gave me additional names and addresses of key contacts in New Orleans necessary to my mission.
At the time, I wondered why Pike, so soon after the scalping affair at Pea Ridge, still owned enough influence to secure my military leave with the Confederate brass overseeing the war effort in Indian Territory. And obviously, I pondered what connections he might have within the Yankee government in Washington City that he had knowledge of an upcoming Federal invasion of New Orleans.
Eventually, those answers came to me.
I faced a daunting mission in New Orleans. Pike allowed that Yankee warships had been ordered there forthwith and that I take the necessary steps to prevent the treasure hidden within the mint building from falling into Yankee hands when the boats arrived. Interestingly, he seemed to fear the seizure of coin and bars from the mint on Esplanade Avenue far more than he feared the capture of New Orleans itself.
Pike directed me to visit Loreta Janeta Velazquez, one of the top K.G.C. contacts in New Orleans, as soon as I arrived.
In choosing instead to go pay a visit immediately to my father, I disobeyed my first order as an agent of the Knights of the Golden Circle. I longed to see my last remaining parent.
Once home, Marguerite, Father’s quadroon mistress, one of the most beautiful ladies in New Orleans, met me at the door. The plaçage system in New Orleans allowed white men and free women of color to form liaisons whereby the man provided for the woman, or placée, and her children for life, even if he had an established white family. Father had loved and idolized Marguerite for as long as I could remember, and, in my eyes, she seemed ever the queen, and that is precisely the rank with which Father treated her. As always, I stood in awe of her appearance and presence, and this meeting was no different. I beheld her raven-black hair, her yellow-tinted, yet somehow cream-colored, skin, and her black-as-night eyes now emanating worry.
Marguerite and I exchanged a few words, and I paid my respects before she motioned me into the next room to Father.
I had been away from home for nearly two years, but Father’s face appeared to have aged at least ten. Indeed, his very spirit seemed older. He also appeared afraid, and my father owned a countenance on which I had never before detected a shred of fear.
In the course of our conversation, I informed Father of my newfound membership in the K.G.C. That Father found this news disappointing showed clearly upon his face.
“Are you not happy with this, Father?”
“Did Pike enlist you?”
“Yes. But what is the matter? Is Pike not your friend? He has been many times in this home. He recruited me into the war from the beginning. Right or wrong, I’ve looked up to him.”
“I joined the Circle at the very beginning, over five years ago, and I wish I hadn’t.”
“Are you not on the best of terms with the most influential of its leaders?”
“I thought I was.”
“Something is wrong, Father. What is it?”
“The Circle is not what I thought it was.”
“Does it not stand for Southern independence, for the rights of we Southrons to determine our own affairs?”
“I once believed that. There’s more to it, Drouet.”
I stood silent and confused in front of Father, trying as best I could to make sense of his words—and of his fear.
“You know, neither you nor I possess the qualifications for membership in the Circle, Drouet.”
“You entertained its top men in this home on many occasions. Surely what you say is incorrect.”
“Have I ever owned slaves?”
“No, Father, you have not. But what does that have to do with anything? You are a businessman, not a man of the plantation. You’ve never had need of slaves.”
“But ownership of slaves is a prerequisite for membership, Drouet.”
“Then how were you allowed to join?”
“They allowed me to join under the highest suspicions, and they have never trusted me completely since I took the oath.”
“I do not understand. Enlighten me. What does owning slaves have to do with it?”
“It has everything to do with the K.G.C. The original purpose of the Circle was to work toward a ‘Golden Circle’ of slave-holding territories throughout the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, and the present-day states of the Confederate States of America, including the Indian Territory, where you have been lately engaged, with all of this led by Maximilian of Mexico.”
“This is unbelievable! The K.G.C. purports to defend the Confederacy at all costs, but you say the grand design is that we bow to Maximilian?”
“Pike, Slidell, Benjamin, and the rest, all under the leadership of Bickley, are the grandest of conspirators, and I was too slow in realizing their true objectives.”
“Do they also resent you having Marguerite?”
“Of that, I am not sure. Maybe.”
Father’s words explained why Pike had been so willing to organize the Five Civilized Tribes of eastern Indian Territory on behalf of the Confederacy. Many within those tribes owned slaves and how better to bring the region into the great Circle than to first engage its people into the fight for Southern secession, a move that, if successful, would count as an important first step in establishing the Circle’s ultimate goal—the ‘Golden Circle’ of slave-holding territories as Father explained.
“Father, Pike somehow knows that New Orleans will be attacked any day now. How does he know this?”
“He knows because he receives secret coded dispatches from K.G.C. members in the Yankee Government.”
“From whom?”
“Does the name Andrew Johnson mean anything to you, son?”
“Lincoln’s vice president?”
“Yes, but if you value your life, then pretend you are unaware of these facts. Let me lay the facts before you, Drouet. If Pike knows New Orleans will be attacked soon, it is because his Yankee K.G.C. puppets have told him so. And Pike also knows that if New Orleans is successfully taken—which it most surely will be at the hands of a vastly superior Yankee navy—then the life of our beloved Confederacy comes to an end soon.”
“Then the life of the K.G.C. also comes to an end, right? Lincoln and the Abolitionists will free the South’s slaves, and how does that further the Golden Circle of slave-holding territories?”
“To Pike, Slidell, and Benjamin, the fall of the Confederacy is a mere roadblock. They have plans in place for when our Confederacy crumbles. They have plans in place that were formulated in this very house with my knowledge.”
“What plans?”
“They will work to cause as much disruption in the Yankee government as possible toward the end. They will attempt to take the war to Texas and to your Indian Nations with whatever is left of our Confederate forces.”
Father’s face seemed to have taken on age in the telling of all this. We heard the distant sound of a steamboat horn from the river and Father gazed introspectively through a window.
“Son, I want you to forget about all the K.G.C. men you saw in this house so many years ago. From those men came the ‘Kill the King’ directive to be carried out at the end, and you should be as far away from civilization as possible when that happens. I wish I could flee too, but alas, I am an old man and shall likely face the consequences.”
“Kill the King?”
Father’s answer explained the sound of fear in his words and the look of it upon his face.
“Yes, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.”
- Writer
