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“Near and far in warrior’s grey, the final conflict will come our way. Sounds of battle draw ever near, ye gallant knights we need not fear.”
He’d listened to this crap all his life. As a young boy it had at first been enthralling, but it eventually played on his nerves. Nobody gave a damn about the Civil War anymore. But billions of dollars in lost gold and silver? That would interest anyone.
“The gold, you stupid idiot,” he spit out. “Can’t you tell me anything about the gold? Do we need the key?”
“The servant of faith, I shepherd to the north of the river. This path is dangerous. Go to 18 plac
es. Seek the map. Seek the heart.”
A hard knot of anger balled within him.
He popped a fist into the old man’s gut. Not hard enough to break anything, but sufficient to make his point. Breath rushed from his father’s lungs and he allowed the limp body to crumple to the floor. He should take the gun nestled inside his shoulder harness and shoot the moron, like a wounded horse no longer capable of doing much of anything but whining.
He had no more patience.
A massive treasure awaited.
Hidden for over a hundred years.
About the only thing of any value he’d ever acquired from his father was a knowledge of its existence. He was thirty-five years old and tired of failure lying as a foul taste on his tongue. School was not his thing. Neither was a nine-to-five job. Both bored him. He’d been married twice and thankfully fathered no children. He suspected he may be sterile, since he’d never really practiced any form of contraception. He was so tired of wanting. Finally, for the past two years he’d been actively involved in something that could possibly change his life. A fast track to the top. But that outcome hinged on the pathetic excuse for a human being that lay wheezing before him.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
His father remained on all fours, face toward the floor, choking.
“The South will rise again … once more, on honored fields … just like before. Heavenly Father we plead our case … our Southern nation before thy face.”
Puzzles were not his thing. Solving them never came easy. Thankfully, Diane had learned the secrets of the sentinels, which had proved fruitful. Hopefully, by the end of the night they would have what they needed, both here and in Arkansas. He’d hoped to obtain a little more clarity before heading into town. A way to make sure that the risks were worth it. But now he’d just have to hope they were. He was expected at the National Museum of Natural History in a little over an hour.
His father cowered on the floor.
He kicked the old man in the chest. Again, only hard enough to express his irritation. The great thing was that his father never remembered a thing. Not a single blow ever registered in the old man’s memory.
Each time he visited was like the first.
Thankfully, he knew enough to move forward. He’d spent the past few years combing through books, manuscripts, letters, and old documents. The people at the American Civil War Museum in Richmond knew him on sight. One thing he was good at was retrieving things.
Amazing how time leveled the playing field. Once there were tens of thousands of Knights of the Golden Circle. But all that remained were men like the old sentinel out in Arkansas and the man coughing on the floor before him. Who, for all intents and purposes, was dead, too. He’d hired men and sent them to Arkansas, paying them with Confederate gold he’d personally retrieved, following Diane’s instructions. And, yes, himself, Diane, and her brother all wore the cross and circle as a show of unity, but they were not knights. Especially Diane. Women would have never been allowed to take the oath. Nonetheless, like the knights, the three of them were bound together in a common purpose.
Of which he was a vital part.
His cell phone vibrated.
He checked the display. Diane.
He debated answering, but decided to let her wait.
No time.
The call he really wanted was the one from Arkansas.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Knights of the Golden Circle sprang from the Southern Rights Clubs of the 1830s that openly advocated a reestablishment of the African slave trade, which Congress had banned in 1807. More inspiration came courtesy of the Order of the Lone Star, which helped orchestrate Texas’ independence from Mexico in 1836. Some even have argued that the Order’s roots stretched all the way back to the Sons of Liberty during the American Revolution.
The Order was officially organized in Lexington, Kentucky, on July 4, 1854, by five men whose names have been lost to history. It was heavy on ritual, most borrowed from the Masons. Local chapters were called castles, and collectively the Knights of the Golden Circle became the largest, most dangerous subversive organization in American history. By 1860 it boasted 48,000 members across every state and territory. Its economic and political goals were to create a prosperous, slaveholding southern empire extending in the shape of a circle from their proposed capital at Havana, Cuba, through the southern United States, the Caribbean, and Central America. The plan also called for the acquisition of Mexico, which was to be divided into fifteen new slaveholding states, a move designed to shift the balance of power in Congress in favor of slavery. Facing the Gulf of Mexico, these new states would form a crescent, the entire expansion a golden circle, its planned robust economy fueled by cotton, sugar, tobacco, rice, coffee, indigo, and mining, all employing slave labor.
In early 1860 newspapers across the country reported that the Order was recruiting troops for a planned invasion of Mexico. It’s unclear what went wrong, but the invasion never happened. Some say it was because of inadequate manpower and supplies, but with civil war looming, the more logical conclusion was that the Order did not want to fight on two fronts. So they postponed their plans for Mexico and started preparing to fight the North.
In January 1861 the South began to secede. By February seven former states had ratified a new Constitution and named Jefferson Davis their provisional president. The Knights of the Golden Circle immediately abandoned their expansionist policies and became an ally of the newly created Confederate States of America.
And flourished.
Many Southern military groups were composed either totally or in large part by knights. They infiltrated Federal arsenals, mints, navy yards, army posts, and local governments, playing a major role in the Northwest Conspiracy, designed to foster revolution across Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. In rural areas they ran off horses, driving them away from any possible Union service. They took control of small towns and newspapers, collecting guns, ammunition, armaments, uniforms, and supplies. Burning, plundering, and terror were their main tools. They were essentially a clandestine paramilitary unit engaged in counterintelligence operations. Little is known of their specific activities since most of the records kept by the Confederate secretary of state dealing with the Order disappeared when Richmond fell in April 1865. But when Lee surrendered at Appomattox and the war officially ended, the Order did not disband. What had been a shadowy society became even more secretive, going fully underground, using aliases to hide its activities, which included preparations for a second civil war. Legend spoke of how it invested in mining, railroads, and shipping, amassing fortunes that were eventually converted into gold and silver, then systematically buried across the country.
Supposedly the Knights of the Golden Circle ceased all operations around 1916.
By then the United States was fighting World War I, and most of the fanatical rebels had died.
No new civil war was coming.
* * *
“The Order doesn’t exist,” Cotton said to Terry Morse.
“’Cause you say so?” the old man fired back. “That’s exactly what they want you to think. But they’re still out there.”
Cotton had heard the stories since he was a little boy. His great-great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Angus Adams—who’d fought in the Civil War as a spy for the Confederacy—had also been a knight of the Golden Circle. Letters and papers in his grandfather’s attic talked of a conference held in 1859 at the Greenbrier resort in what was then Virginia. Nearly 1200 came, including cabinet members, governors, and congressmen. They approved a sixty-page booklet—Rules, Regulations and Principles of the American Legion of the Knights of the Golden Circle—which expressed the organization’s intents and purposes. He’d read the copy that had been in the attic, and recalled its opening lines. Let their be no strife between mine and thine, for we be brethren. To maintain the Constitution as it is, and to restore the Union as it was. The oak, the tree of the acorn, became one of their many s
ymbols, representing strength, growth, and diversity. Most men of influence in the South, including his own ancestors, joined. They wanted not a simple confederacy, but a grandiose empire.
And Morse’s tattoo.
The circle and cross.
One of his mother’s family heirlooms had included a gold cross inside a gold circle.
“What is it?” he asked his mother.
“A remembrance of something long gone.”
He was now more curious than ever. “Of what?”
“A time when men believed in things we now find disgusting. When an entire race was enslaved. When women meant little to nothing, and the South thought itself invincible.”
“You mean the Civil War?”
He was in only the fifth grade, just beginning to learn about Abraham Lincoln and all that had happened between 1860 and 1865. But the medallion his mother held seemed fascinating. “Why do you keep it?”
“My grandfather gave it to me and told me to give it to my child one day. He wanted us to remember. But I think the tradition will stop with me.”
He didn’t like that. “Why?”
She dropped the locket back into the jewelry box and replaced the case on the top shelf in her closet. “Because it’s time those memories end.”
His mind snapped back to Morse. “The knights were definitely a force before, during, and shortly after the Civil War. But by World War I they’d faded away, their purpose gone.”
“All I know is that I got a duty and I gave my word to my pa that I’d do it until the day I died.”
Cassiopeia had sat quiet, watching Lea and her grandfather. Cotton caught her gaze and could see she had questions for him. A month ago they’d made a pact. No more bullshit between them. That also meant no more secrets. So he winked, signaling that later he’d offer more of an explanation.
