Lord Berrybender, in disbelief, sank back into his chair. He touched his cheek, then regarded his bloody finger with surprise.
“You will do well to let be, Father,” Tasmin said, still holding the fork. “I am with child, Vicky is with child. We shall each be needing a competent midwife in the not too distant future, and Cook is our best hope. You shan’t have her.”
Lord Berrybender stared at Tasmin in shock. The tines of the fork seemed to be pointed straight at his eyes.
“Signor Claricia is an accomplished Italian,” Tasmin said. “We have all profited from his lectures on garlic buds and olive oil. I’m sure he can cook your bears or your stags or whatever varmints you kill. Cook—I repeat for emphasis—will not be going.”
“Insolent Tasmin, so disloyal to our pater,” Mary cried, hurrying over to wipe Lord Berrybender’s bloody cheek with a napkin.
“Do smite her, Father—smite her hip and thigh,” she added.
“God damn you, miss,” Lord B. said, looking at Tasmin. “Take my cook, will you? Next I suppose you’ll be telling me I have to do my own laundry.”
“I am hardly a miss, Father,” Tasmin said. “You’ve heard the long and the short of it. Cook stays with us.”
“And so will my good Piet,” Mary said, giving the gloomy Dutchman a peck.
Lord Berrybender rose from the table, took his crutch, and stumped away. He said not another word. That his own daughter would threaten him with a turning fork was such an appalling thing that it put him off for the night. Of course, he meant to have Cook anyway—no child of his was going to tell him what to do with his own servants—it had merely seemed best to leave the field until all the cutlery had been gathered up. Napoleon, he recalled, had been reluctant to leave the field, when circumstances called for retreat.
When Millicent, in due course, presented herself for amorous service in Lord Berrybender’s room, she found the old lord deep in thought. Millicent’s way was to accept all duties placidly, whether that meant lying beneath Lord Berrybender while he groaned and grunted a bit, or else gathering up the soiled bedclothes. Duties were best done without fuss, but this evening, she had scarcely lifted her skirt when Lord B. waved her away.
“Go along with you, Milly—I’ve had enough of girls for one night,” Lord Berrybender said. “We’re off hunting tomorrow—you’ll pack for me, won’t you?”
“Yes, if you’d like me to, sir,” Milly said.
“That’s what I like, Milly … a good girl like you, no fuss, no airs,” Lord B. said. “We’ll have some fine tupping, we will, once we’re well out of this fetid hole. Prairie breezes, that’s what I need—I’ll stir up a bit, I assure you, once I’m out where the wind blows free.”
“I dare say you will, sir,” Millicent agreed.
19
… a few vagrant flakes of snow …
LADY Tasmin and Miss Vicky, they’ll be needing me once the little ones come,” Cook said firmly. The hunting party was set to depart the trading post.
Lord Berrybender was stunned—a servant of his had just refused a direct order. A brisk north wind was blowing, carrying a few vagrant flakes of snow.
Tasmin, also firm, stood on one side of Cook; Venetia Kennet stood on the other. Pierre Boisdeffre, who had developed warm feelings for Cook, lurked in the background.
A wagon piled high with guns and blankets and other kit stood near. A great keg of brandy, acquired at great cost from Monsieur Boisdeffre, was lashed securely in the wagon. Señor Yanez and Signor Claricia, neither of them happy men, waited in the buggy. Both were convinced that their deaths awaited them somewhere on the plains to the south.
Tim, the stable boy, utterly miserable, sat on the wagon seat, grasping the reins as best he could with his damaged hands. Beside Tim, entirely sheathed in an all-enveloping fur coat, sat Bobbety, a Russian cap pulled down so far that his features were scarcely visible. He had been forced from his warm quarters by Lord Berrybender, who was determined that his son and heir should give up foppish ways and test his manhood in pursuit of buffalo and bear. Bobbety’s protests and Father Geoffrin’s horrified remonstrances were ignored.
“You’ll come or I’ll disinherit you—doubt you’d like being penniless,” Lord Berrybender told his son.
“But, Father, I am accustomed to aiming with my right eye and now I don’t have a right eye,” Bobbety protested.
“No excuses now, we’re off,” Lord B. said. Millicent, like the good girl she was, had installed herself meekly in the wagon, next to the brandy keg. All was in readiness, until Cook, to Lord B.’s amazement, informed him that she wouldn’t come.
“I’ll just stay with Lady Tasmin,” Cook said again. “And besides that, sir, Mr. Boisdeffre has been kind enough to offer me a position here at the post.”
“A position?” Lord Berrybender said. “I don’t give a fig for positions. “You’re my cook, and so was your mother before you.”
“I’m sure Millicent will do well enough, sir,” Cook said. “Were it Eliza I might be worried, she’s such a tendency to drop the plates.”
“This is all your doing, Tasmin,” Lord Berrybender shouted. “Cook has always done what I told her to—or what your sainted mother told her to. She is our cook— quite irrelevant what you want or what Boisdeffre offers. No more of this nonsense—it’s time to be off. Cook, please get in this wagon now.”
“Do remember, Milly, just to turn the kidneys a time or two—that’s how His Lordship likes them,” Cook said, and then, to Lord Berrybender’s bafflement, she turned and walked back into the post.
“Here now, none of that!” Lord B. thundered. But Cook, a person of unusual firmness, merely kept walking.
“She can’t do that! I forbid it! I won’t have you stealing my cook,” Lord Berrybender repeated to Tasmin, but his voice lost conviction once the sturdy little figure disappeared into the trading post.
“You will just have to get used to the inconveniences, Papa,” Tasmin told him. “You’ve strayed into a democracy—a great mistake from your point of view, I’m sure. The citizens around here are rather determined to do as they please.”
Lord B. didn’t answer. He was remembering a great rich pudding, filled with plums and cherries that he had eaten once in his great house. Had it been a victory pudding? Trafalgar, perhaps—or Waterloo or something even earlier? His Lordship could not remember who had cooked this pudding—had it been Cook, or her mother, or, even, her grandmother? There had been some victory—or was it only a wedding … perhaps it had even been for his own marriage with … with … ? He could not, for the moment, recall the name of his fine wife. It was as if the brisk wind of the prairies were blowing away his memories, one by one. Constance it had been; he felt sure that that much was was right. About the victory… if it had been a victory … he was not now sure … only sure, in the end, that the pudding had been wonderful, filled with cherries and plums … sugary and juicy it had been … never had he had such a pudding… and now Cook had left, and Constance had died, and such puddings as that, with their plums and cherries, would not be for him to eat again.
“Look out! The old boy’s crying … now what?” Tasmin said. She was wondering what more they would have to endure before her father finally went on his hunt.
Lord B. stood by the buggy, indifferent to Señor Yanez and Signor Claricia. Tears streamed down his face—memories light as thistles seemed to be blowing ’round his head, memories of damsels blithe and jolly whores long dead, or puddings perfectly baked and kidneys correctly turned, of fine, velvety rich claret, of the duke … Some duke! … Which duke? Had it really been Trafalgar when Cook … some cook. … baked that great pudding, or was it merely a wedding, perhaps even his own?
The gunsmith and the carriage maker were horrified—were they fated to journey into the country of the great bears at the whim of this old man who couldn’t stop crying?
Tasmin was merely disgusted. It was hardly the first such maudlin display she had witnessed of late—once Lord B.
found some slight excuse to feel sorry for himself, buckets of tears were sure to flow.
Meek Millicent saw at once that it was her duty to put His Lordship in order.
“Here, sir … come on now, just sit by Milly,” she said encouragingly. “There’s plenty of room here on the blanket.”
Grateful for a kind voice, Lord Berrybender did as he was told. He crutched his way over to the wagon and sat on the blanket Milly offered.
“Stop crying now, don’t wet your shirt, please, sir,” the girl continued. “Might miss your target if you catch cold.”
“Let’s be going now, Tim … snap to!” Milly ordered. Like Cook, she believed in speaking with authority when it came to lax young men such as Timothy.
Tim was not quite so broken in spirit that he enjoyed taking orders from a laundress, even though it was clear that she was His Lordship’s new favorite. The old wild head was even then resting itself comfortably on Millicent’s substantial shoulder. Tim popped the reins on the horse’s rumps.
“Alas, I go! Au revoir, Geoff!” Bobbety cried.
Señor Yanez and Signor Claricia looked at each other and shrugged. It seemed that, for better or worse, the hunt was on; neither of them doubted that it would be for worse.
“Now, there’s a turn. Papa’s got a new bawd,” Tasmin said to her sisters, as the wagon bounced off into the prairies.
“That’s right, our wicked laundress,” Buffum agreed. “Now who do you suppose will fold our clothes?”
20
… quietness and calm were at last to be met with…
WITH the departure of the mountain men, and then of Drummond Stewart, and finally of Lord Berrybender and his attendants, quietness and calm were at last to be met with in the nearly empty rooms of Pierre Boisdeffre’s trading post; the calm would have been complete but for the fact that the early spring winds blew fiercely over the northern lands, sighing and roaring through the nights so violently that Tasmin was sometimes kept awake. Deep sleep, indeed, was not easily obtained; if it was not the winds that awakened her it was apt to be the baby, turning and stirring in her womb.
Venetia Kennet, almost as far along as Tasmin, experienced similar disquiet. Often the two of them found themselves in the kitchen in the early morning, letting Cook make them tea as dawn reddened the windows. Sometimes trader Boisdeffre, who had taken a great fancy to Cook, would play melancholy tunes on his Jew’s harp. Buffum might appear, pale in her gown, then Mary, then George Catlin; and last, invariably, would be Father Geoffrin, who would immediately announce that he hadn’t slept a wink due to his anxieties about Bobbety.
Often Tasmin would suggest cards. Buffum would usually drift off with Boisdeffre; she was helping him organize his stores—so far rather scrambled—in return for which Monsieur Boisdeffre taught her songs of the voyageurs who paddled the northern streams in search of furs. Frequently, once the cards were brought out, Tasmin teamed with Vicky Kennet against the painter and the priest. Vicky, freed of the necessity of losing endlessly to Lord Berrybender, proved a skilled and savage competitor. As Tasmin herself was no mean hand at whist, the two women generally routed the men. With many of the Indians now gone away to hunt, George had little to paint except the landscape. Sometimes the card play went on all morning and well into the afternoon, entailing much lively banter. Even when Mary sided with the men, as a kind of coach, the women usually won. Occasionally George would let Mary play his hand; then he took out his sketch pad and did the scene in a few strokes.
“There, how’s that?” he asked, handing the sketch around. “I shall call it Three Ladies and a Jesuit at Whist.”
“Don’t call it anything until you fix my chin,” Tasmin told him. “I’m sure my chin isn’t that sharp.”
“Nor is my bosom that heavy,” Vicky Kennet protested.
George smiled, but held his ground. “I am sketching now not only the present but also the future,” he told them. “I see you not only as you are but as you will be. That, after all, is the portraitist’s gift—even his duty, I’d say.”
“And you practically didn’t put me in at all,” Father Geoff complained. “You’ve made me so mere, you know … I’m only a wisp.”
“Your spirit is particularly elusive, Father,” George admitted. “Developments there will no doubt be in your life—they’re not likely to make you markedly heavier, though.”
Mary alone seemed happy with her likeness—so happy in fact that George Catlin gave her the little sketch, an act that annoyed all three of the other sitters, who would have liked to have it.
In the days round the card table, near the big fireplace, Tasmin found herself feeling more friendly toward her three companions, whom, previously, she had dealt with rather cavalierly. On the boat and in the trading post, crammed in with so many musky males, Tasmin had had little patience with Vicky, George, and Geoff; but with the musky males removed—the mountain men had been, of course, the muskiest—the talents and personalities of her companions could be better appreciated. Vicky Kennet, freed from amatory pressures long enough to get in some practice, was a more than decent cellist; and George Catlin, of course, though sometimes too hasty, was a more than decent painter. Father Geoffrin, though vain as the day was long, did have a subtle French mind, and had read many books. Though the little priest coveted Tasmin’s attention all the time, and was filled with malice and spite when she denied him, he was not, on the whole, a bad companion.
On occasions when conversation bogged down, Tasmin and Vicky had their rapidly advancing pregnancies to fall back on, the uncertainties of which provided much grist for talk.
“The absence of wet nurses is rather shocking,” Vicky observed one day. George Catlin’s hasty pencil had not much exaggerated her bosom, which every day grew heavier still as it filled with milk.
Tasmin was experiencing the same phenomenon.
“There aren’t any, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “I suppose we’ll just have to let the little brutes suckle.”
“Of course you should let them suckle,” George said. “Why else to you think you have bosoms?”
“It wouldn’t do in France—no lady would think of such a thing,” Father Geoffrin mentioned. “The better bosoms there are strictly reserved for amatory play.”
“As you may have observed, we ain’t in France, Father,” Tasmin replied. “Vicky and I will simply have to risk scandal and give suck ourselves.”
“It might even make a nice picture, George,” she suggested. “The two of us nursing our young.”
“Why, it might,” George said, brightening a little. The fact was, he was growing weary of painting Indians. Necessary as it was to secure a vivid record of these vanishing Americans, the daily anxiety, as he waited to see if his wild subjects would approve of their likenesses, had begun to wear on his nerves.
Of course, he had long wanted to paint Lady Tasmin, and would have no objection to having Vicky sit too—either or both would be a nice change from chiefs and warriors, many of whom were at least as vain as any English lady. Now that both ladies had become better disposed toward him, perhaps something could be achieved.
“I suppose we might call it Madonnas of the Missouri,” he suggested. “What would you think of having the parrot in it? People do like to look at birds.”
“Tush, why not?” Tasmin said. She had come, over the last weeks, rather to like George Catlin. At first his stiffness and pomposity had irritated her so frequently that she delivered some sharp rebuffs— rebuffs that annoyed George so much that he sometimes jumped up and left her company. But she hadn’t cowed him; the man defended his opinions, and his resistance earned her respect. With her husband gone and the company thin, having someone to argue with was not a thing to be despised.
“George, if you intend to do us as proper madonnas, you’ll have to wait till our brats appear,” Tasmin said. “Why not do us now—you could call it Pregnant Cows of the Missouri.”
At this Vicky burst out laughing, Tasmin giggled, and ev
en George could not resist a laugh.
“I demur, I demur,” Father Geoffrin said, with a look of delicate disdain. “No sane person could enjoy looking at those vast bellies. I believe I speak for the civilized public when I say that.”
Piet Van Wely, who had all but given up speech, suddenly perked up.
“It is nonsense this Jesuit speaks,” he said, a gleam of life in his eye—the first in weeks. “I would like to look at this picture you talk about.”
“Oh well, listen to our botanist,” Father Geoffrin said. “A Dutch botanist, I might add—hardly an opinion we need consider.”
Mary Berrybender, fierce in defense of her Piet, flew at the priest and tried to scratch his cheeks with her sharp nails, but Father Geoff, no stranger to Mary’s furies, fended her off with a large ladle.
“Hold your tongue, you sickly pederast, or it will be the worse for you,” Mary hissed.
“Well, what about it, George?” Tasmin asked. “I’ve seen a good many pictures, here and there in our country houses, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a picture of pregnant women. Why would that be?”
“Goodness, I think you’re right,” George said. “I’ve never seen one either—perhaps I have a chance to break new ground.”
“Looking at pregnant hussies like these would be rather like looking at a dugong or a manatee,” Father Geoff said, with a superior smile. “Who would want to hang a picture of a dugong on their walls?”
“I would—they are gentle creatures,” Piet assured him. He had not spoken in so long that the sound of his own voice came as a pleasant surprise.
Tasmin and Venetia, their lovers absent, had lately been experimenting with hairstyles. It was something to do. Tasmin had been trying to persuade Vicky to cut her long hair. In frontier circumstances, why keep such a mane?
“You’ll never have time to brush it properly, once the baby comes,” she pointed out. Vicky, who regarded her long auburn hair as one of the her chief glories, had resisted the notion so far, but seemed to Tasmin to be weakening.
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