Fitzgerald turned at once toward Nolan but could not will him into silence.
“If I am a deserter, then why did I go to the Sabine?” Nolan barked. “Why did I travel in this uniform, and why did I report to the general officer commanding the Louisiana Territory?”
Someone hissed, “Treason!” Another bawled, “Hang him!”
Nolan shouted over them, “Did I skulk like His Excellency Colonel Burr?” Nolan’s fist plucked at the lapel of his uniform. “Or was my crime to remain in a clown’s costume while I rode?”
The crowd began to howl. In the gallery, Alden took Lorina’s hand. Colonel Morgan thundered the gavel onto the bench. “Order! Or I shall clear the courtroom!”
“Will you have no witnesses?” Nolan growled. “Caesar has walked free! And I am left to pay his reckoning!”
“Silence! Mister Fitzgerald, still that man or I will have him gagged!”
Nolan collapsed into his chair, sallow and panting. Trembling with fury, he went numb without and hollow within.
Colonel Morgan’s voice came sternly from the bench. “Lieutenant Nolan, you are convicted under the laws of your country and the service which you have had the honor to serve. Is there anything you wish to say in to this court to show that you have been faithful to the United States of America?”
Nolan choked out the most fateful words of his life: “The United States? Goddamn the United States, sir! I wish that I might never hear the name of the United States again as long as I live!”
The walls echoed his words, and not a soul drew breath.
Lorina sat in stunned, rigid anguish. From the bench, Colonel Morgan fixed Nolan with a baleful glare. Fitzgerald put his hand on Nolan’s shoulder and squeezed. The gesture was intended both to quiet his friend and to conduct away the thunderbolt he was certain would be hurled down from on high.
Morgan at last said quietly: “The prisoner will remain in the courtroom while this court determines sentence.” The judges retreated behind the flags, and everyone stood—all except Nolan.
When the judges closed the door to their chambers, Fitzgerald collapsed into his chair. “You are done now, friend,” he said quietly.
Nolan muttered, “I was done before I ever came here.” He pretended not to notice the crowd outside, but their words were ugly and threatening. “They could not have Burr, so they will catch whomever they can. Damn them for a pack of vexatious political bitches.”
Fitzgerald sat with his hands folded and Nolan took up a pen from the desk. He dipped it and wrote five words on a sheet of paper, folded it, and struggled to his feet. Thinking Nolan might bolt, one of the dragoons stepped forward, a wall of crimson and white. Nolan leaned past him and thrust the paper into Lorina’s hand. She looked at him, her eyes brimming. Her expression would be fixed in Nolan’s memory forever; a mask of shock, pity, and anguish. She took the paper but did not unfold it, and Nolan sat and turned his back to her.
Fifteen minutes passed, each second dragging on like an eternity, until from the front of the room the provost again said, “All rise.”
Nolan remained sprawled in his chair.
“Get up.” Fitzgerald said. “I will not help you tie your own noose.”
Nolan swayed to his feet. The judges had seemed all day to be ancient, somber, and grave; now they appeared to be made of iron. All had served in the Revolutionary War, and each had risked his fortune, as well as his neck, for the very thing Nolan had so wildly damned. The three old colonels projected attachment and shared outrage, sentiments so powerful they pulsed into the room.
Colonel Morgan’s voice could be heard by all. “Prisoner. Hear the sentence of this court. Subject to the approval of the commander in chief, you shall never hear of the United States again.”
Nolan laughed, but no one else did. Lorina lifted her hand to her mouth and stifled a sob.
“Provost Marshal. You will see that the prisoner is taken by armed boat to Norfolk and remanded to the naval commander there. See that no one speaks of the United States while he is in your custody. You will receive written orders before you depart.”
Colonel Morgan’s stern eyes fixed Nolan. “Mister Nolan, may God have mercy on your soul.” He banged the gavel, and the crowd outside exploded in a roar of curses and threats.
The judges retired slowly from the bench, and the haranguing of the crowd became louder. Outrage had accumulated and condensed since the acquittal of Aaron Burr—and now it found vent. Weeks of frustration and apprehension rolled forward as though a sluice had been opened. The mob had been denied Burr, but now they had a convicted accomplice.
Stones sailed through the windows, raining glass and wood shards onto the tables. First one man and then another came across the broken windowsills into the courtroom; a dozen more quickly tumbled after, and the doors in the rear of the chamber burst open. The crowd heaved through the barriers on the prosecutor’s side. There was a shout; the table was turned over and papers were flung into the air. A pair of guards snatched Nolan up and carried him bodily toward the door. There were cries again of “traitor,” and a brick smashed through a transom window.
Nolan saw Fitzgerald push toward Alden and Lorina; his big arms swept them together, his wife in tears and Lorina’s face wrenched with misery. Struggling free of the guard, Nolan reached out. Her fingers closed around his hand, but her expression was a mask of desolation. Her eyes did not meet his; she seemed to be looking past him.
A corporal shoved Nolan back, but when he did not let go of Lorina’s hand a rifle butt flashed up—a glimmer of wood and brass. A peal of darkness crackled between his ears, and Nolan found himself on the floor next to a broken chair. He struggled to his hands and knees, and the rioters surged over him. Shards of glass on the floor laid open his hands, and he was kicked a dozen times before the soldiers lowered their bayonets and the mob tumbled back, scrambling away from the jutting steel.
The blow to his head made him almost deaf. Time slowed and yawned open. Nolan could hear nothing but the grunts of the troopers who lifted him and the crack of broken glass under their boots. The room was filled with slanting shafts of darkness. Nolan caught a last glimpse of Lorina holding tight to Wendell as he hurried her away. He called to her, but she did not turn. Nolan had become a ghost.
The soldiers formed a ring around him, and beyond them was a jostling murk of hateful faces. The officer commanding the guards used the flat of his sword to hack a path to the door. Nolan was dragged toward it; his head lolled, and blood spattered the floor in thick, black drops. Darkness poured into his ears and eyes. He could not draw breath, and neither his arms nor his legs would do their duty. Nolan felt himself falling into a stupefying void, a whirlpool of grief so vast and wild that it drowned the world.
NOLAN WAS KEPT OVERNIGHT IN A CELLAR UNDER THE STATE PENITENTIARY. A gruff barber-surgeon pricked a dozen stitches into his scalp, bound the wounds on his hands, but declined to change the bandages stuck to his chest. The dragoons gathered Nolan’s things from the St. Charles. His saddle, sword, and scabbard were returned to the court, and he was ordered to take the epaulets and buttons from his uniform. His remaining possessions were picked through by the guards. His fob, dividers, and drafting tools went to the quickest; the other troopers cut cards for his leather belts, spoons, shoe buckles, and compass. The few things not taken were tied into a strip of woolen blanket.
At dawn, fife and drum played the Rogue’s March; Nolan was taken up from the cellar and made to walk at the cart’s end toward the river. Manacled hand and foot, carrying his possessions in the scrap of blanket, Nolan could barely stagger. The pain in his chest made it impossible to catch his breath,