“You got enough to do—don’t be worrying about Onion,” Jim said. “She can take care of herself.”
“I fear meddling is just what families do—particularly families crammed together in a foreign place,” Tasmin countered. “In England we’d have drifted apart by now, most of us.”
Then Buffum came in, looking tearful. High Shoulders had been gone on one of his hunts. He had not been seen in ten days—Buffum was overcome with worry, as she always was if her husband was absent more than a week.
“I need to know he’s safe,” she told them. “Be glad you aren’t married to this one,” Tasmin said. “He thinks nothing of absences of six months or more.”
Jim quietly left. He didn’t want to quarrel about his absences. Only yesterday he had quarreled so violently with Tasmin that he struck her. She had suddenly informed him that she and the children were going to accompany him on all future trips, no matter how arduous they promised to be—yet she knew perfectly well he couldn’t do the jobs he was assigned with a wife and three babies in tow. It was absurd—and yet Tasmin flared and he flared— Jim felt cornered, as he always did if he was inside a house.
As he walked past the nursery his daughter spotted him. Petal was still feeling her way with her father. He was a difficult conquest; he could not simply be bossed, like other people. Flirting and cajoling didn’t work either, though they worked on Juppy, the brown giant her father had brought back with him.
Nonetheless she pointed a finger at Jim, in a commanding way.
“Come see me, I’m a spider,” Petal commanded. Jim did as ordered. “Spiders sting,” he said. “What if I don’t want to be stung?”
“Then behave good,” Petal advised. “Behave good, Mr. Sin Killer.”
Jim was startled. “Auntie Mary says that’s your other name,” Petal explained. “Only I don’t know what sin is.”
“It’s stealing your brothers’ toys,” Jim informed her. She was holding a small leather burro that he had brought specially for Monty. Petal sat the burro on the floor.
“It followed me,” she explained.
“Telling lies is also a sin,” her father informed her.
“Fibbing—only fibbing,” Petal insisted. “But I was good in the kitchen. I didn’t turn over the pudding.”
“If I was you I’d give Monty back his donkey,” Jim advised.
Petal made no move to comply. “You isn’t me,” she pointed out.
24
Even as he and Kit stood whispering . . .
UNABLE TO SLEEP inside the house, Jim usually spread his blankets behind it, near two Dutch ovens Cook sometimes used for baking. Tasmin sometimes joined him there, but not often, since the whole nursery was likely to follow her, trailing along like so many little ducks. All six of the children would soon be shivering in the cold, spoiling Tasmin’s hope of spending a quiet hour with Jim. Usually she gave up and led the brigade back inside, leaving Jim in peace. The Plaza seldom quieted down early; horsemen, cavalrymen mostly, would clatter across it at all hours.
Kit Carson could move with stealth if he wanted to, and on this occasion he particularly wanted to avoid sentries and soldiers. He materialized at Jim’s side, pressing a finger to his lips, indicating that Jim should follow him. Jim took his gun and did as Kit suggested, wondering what brought Kit to Santa Fe at that hour of the night.
They were on the far side of the sheep pens before Kit felt it was safe to talk. He came right to the point.
“They’re arresting the bunch of you tomorrow in the morning,” Kit told Jim bluntly. “Josie heard it from someone in the Palace.”
Jim didn’t question the information. Josie was usually reliable where matters in Santa Fe were concerned. She had lived in the Palace herself at some point. If she said the Berrybenders were being arrested, it was probably true. What it meant could be debated, but that the Mexicans meant to rid themselves of Americans and English alike he didn’t doubt and had never doubted. From the Mexican viewpoint, it was get rid of the Americans before the Americans got rid of them.
Even as he and Kit stood whispering, the first hint of dawn showed in the east. Jim would have liked to slip in and warn Tasmin, but knew it might be a fatal mistake. Pomp had let himself be taken; Jim didn’t intend to make the same mistake.
“They were already under house arrest,” Jim pointed out. “I suppose arrest means they aim to ship ’em out.”
“That’s it—that’s Josie’s view,” Kit agreed. “Charlie Bent thinks there’s going to be a war for Texas anytime. I suppose the Berrybenders would make good hostages—the Mexicans might trade ’em for a general or two.”
Day was breaking—Kit grew nervous. “We better go if we’re going,” he said. “I’ve no time to warn the family but I have to get my mare,” Jim said. He crept through the sheep and soon was back with the mare. The tip of the sun just broke the horizon.
“High Shoulders is out hunting,” Jim said. “I better go find him or he’ll come back and get arrested himself.”
In the distance Kit could already see a few soldiers, just waking up.
“I’m going,” he said. “If you come to my house, come in the night.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Jim said. “Thank Josie too—don’t let her whup you too bad.”
Kit, suddenly nervous, was on his way to Taos— he felt he could not spare the time for gratitude.
25
Lord Berrybender, apoplectic . . .
I’M SO GLAD High Shoulders is hunting,” Buffum said, as the whole Berrybender household, considerably disheveled, were being urged into wagons. Lord Berrybender, apoplectic at being disturbed so early, was allowed to use his buggy, with Signor Claricia to drive; but that was the only favor the English were allowed.
“I would have liked a word with the Governor—he’s a friend, after all,” Lord Berrybender said to the head of their escort, a graying major named Leon, a careful man, not brutal, not young, and not especially familiar with the English gentry and their ways. He had been allowed a skimpy escort of only eighteen young soldiers and was well aware that it might not be enough. Their destination, the port of Vera Cruz, was very distant; the country they had to cross was hard country. The essential thing was to get started.
“I will do my best to make you comfortable,” Major Leon assured them—the English had been two hours assembling themselves, and one or another of the women was still darting into the house to search for some important article that had been forgotten in the haste and gloom of the dusty morning. The dog Mopsy was only remembered at the last minute.
“In fact, Major, you’ve only made us uncomfortable,” Lord Berrybender grumbled. “Wouldn’t have minded a bit more sleep.”
“It’s better to travel while the day is cool,” Major Leon replied. He felt uneasy. With such talkative, grumbly people it was not easy to choose correct remarks, as Lady Tasmin at once reminded him.
“It’s the fall, Major—that’s not a summer breeze that’s blowing,” Tasmin pointed out. They were all swaddled in blankets, the children big-eyed and solemn at the prospect of departure.
Lord Berrybender, very annoyed, had not given up on protocol.
“I still think I ought to be allowed to say goodbye to the Governor—he’s been most generous with us,” he asserted. “Besides, he’s a friend.”
“There is a problem,” the Major admitted. “He may still be your friend, but he is no longer the governor.”
He did not elaborate, but signaled to the drivers to get the wagons going. Soon a buggy, three wagons, and eighteen supply mules, and the escort, eighteen strong, filed out of the Plaza. Joaquin, the blacksmith, just stirring his forge, yawned as they went by.
“But where’s Julietta? Stop!” Lord Berrybender exclaimed. It had just dawned on him that his mistress was not in the wagons.
The Major didn’t stop. “We seem to have forgotten Señorita Julietta Olivaries,” Lord Berrybender insisted. “We must fetch her. I’m sure she’d want to come.”
“Unfortunately that is not the case,” Major Leon replied. “The señorita is in Santa Fe for her health. She is staying with her aunt.”
The Major’s eyes hardened. Who was this old English fool, to think that he could summon a lady of the Spanish nobility at will? It was intolerable. Hauling this old lecher away from Señorita Julietta was a pleasant part of his task.
Signor Claricia had not been feeling well— Juppy was driving the buggy. The reins looked like threads in his big hands.
“I think you better let that one go, Papa,” he advised. “The Major wants to be making time.”
“Thank you, señor,” the Major said. “We cannot go back for anyone. The time for good-byes is past.”
Then he trotted to the head of the column and led the party south, into the desert, along the Camino Real—the road that, if they could survive it, would take them to the City of Mexico and beyond.
26
Except for the biting, blowing dust . . .
TRAVEL IS NEVER as neat as one imagines it will be,” Major Leon admitted. “Even military travel is rarely neat. One must heed these calls of nature.”
“Indeed, and right now she’s calling rather too often,” Father Geoff allowed. “I’ve been twenty times. The water, I suppose.”
Except for the biting, blowing dust which swirled around them constantly, chapping lips and irritating eyelids, reducing the children particularly to life beneath a kind of tent of blankets, the journey south had not yet been too harsh. Major Leon kept his word about trying to make them comfortable. He exhibited no compulsion to hurry, a relief to the mothers and to Cook, all still trying to organize their resources and equipment for what would surely be a long trip.
“One cannot hurry an ox,” the Major pointed out. “We must remember the fine fable of the tortoise and the hare.”
Stimulated by this reference, Piet Van Wely roused himself and gave an impromptu lecture on the differences between the tortoise, the turtle, and the terrapin. He too was suffering from bowel complaints—they all were. The precise, well-regulated columns that Major Leon liked to maintain ceased to exist, as the complaint attacked cavalrymen and hostages alike. The English were jumping out of wagons and hurrying desperately through the sparse vegetation, in hopes of finding a bush behind which to answer the frequent calls in private.
“It’s quite clear that this is amoebic,” Piet informed them, so weak by this time that he could scarcely sit up. “These waters contain bad amoebas.”
“That’s not very cheering news,” Tasmin pointed out. “These are the only waters there are.”
“Piet is merely speaking as a scientist,” Mary replied—she was always quick to defend her Piet.
“Fine, I’m speaking as a sufferer,” Tasmin told her.
Petal popped out of her tent community from time to time, surveying the weakened company. She herself had not been afflicted.
“But I don’t see my Jim,” she said. “Where is my Jim?” She had grown to like her Jim. But where was he?
“This wagon is too bumpy,” she added, a complaint everyone could sympathize with. Her grand-father’s buggy was better, but her grandfather seemed to be angry at the moment; he could tolerate no one but Juppy, who muttered soothingly while her grandfather grumbled.
“I’m surprised Albany didn’t shoot somebody,” Vicky said, to Tasmin. “Now he’s without his pretty little mistress—and he’s not a man who likes to have his pleasures snatched away.”
“It means you’ll be seeing more of him one of these cold nights,” Tasmin remarked. “He’ll be wanting a little coziness, pretty soon.”
The fall weather continued cold. Tasmin’s main worry was Petey—all six of the children were continually popping out of their blankets, despite the cold wind. Little Onion did her best to control them, but six small people with wills of their own stretched the attention of even the most competent nurse.
Buffum had hardly stopped sobbing since their departure. Though well aware that it was all to the good that High Shoulders had not been taken—undoubtedly he would have been chained again—she didn’t like being without her husband.
“I miss him exceedingly—I can’t help it,” she sobbed. “I need him—it’s been that way since the day we met. I should have let him take me to the Ute country—there’d be nothing to separate us there.”
“Mortality might,” Tasmin reminded her. “You’re lucky you didn’t mate with a rambler like Jimmy—he’s been gone more than he’s been present, in the years of our marriage.”
“I don’t suppose you’re easy to live with, Tassie,” Kate Berrybender remarked crisply. “If you were easier, Mr. James Snow would probably abide with us more often.”
“Don’t you miss him terribly?” Mary asked. “I would miss Piet bitterly, if we were ever to part.”
“What a bunch of rampant sentimentalists,” Tasmin replied. “Did you ever see the like, Geoff?”
The disorder in his bowels had left the priest exhausted, sallow, withdrawn. He managed only the smallest shrug.
“Major Leon says it’s a thousand miles to Vera Cruz,” he remarked. “It seems rather a long way to go.”
“My question wasn’t geographical,” Tasmin complained. “Certain couples may not be well suited to constant proximity. What do you think?”
“All I know is that I’ve been twenty times,” the priest said. “The person I miss is myself—the self I enjoyed before we entered this region of bad water.”
Tasmin found that she could contemplate the long journey ahead of them with a certain degree of composure precisely because Jim Snow had been quick enough to avoid being taken, a fact that at first vexed the officials considerably. Jim had done what Pomp Charbonneau should have done—skipped away. Tasmin had no doubt that he was following them—he would appear and reclaim his family at a time he deemed best. She was confident of it. They would just have to deal as best they could with the vicissitudes of the day, whether bowel trouble or feverish babies, bad weather or a bumpy oxcart, until Jim came and got them. Talk of the great distance between Santa Fe and Vera Cruz did not dismay her, because she didn’t expect to be going anything like that far. Indeed, on the whole, she was glad to be out of Santa Fe—it had served its purpose, which was to be a safe nursery.
Major Leon had not taken long to abandon his ideal of a parade-ground military appearance. Many of the young soldiers were so affected by the water that they could scarcely sit on their horses. Major Leon had ridden ramrod straight for the first week, but he gradually let go his formality and spent much of his time riding beside the oxcarts, chatting with one or another of the Berrybender sisters. Lord Berrybender he avoided, though he did sometimes chat with the large and amiable Juppy and the one-eared boy, Amboise d’Avigdor. Amboise and Juppy had become friends.
“I don’t think we have anything to fear from this major,” Tasmin told her sisters.
“Why do you say it, Tassie?” Mary asked. “Because he likes women,” Tasmin replied. “And we’re women if we’re anything.”
It seemed to her that beneath Major Leon’s amiability there lurked a deep strain of melancholy— of sadness even. It was unusual to find a military man who was so eager to have his captives like him. Sometimes, in the midst of conversation about something inconsequential—his bugler’s inept bugle calls, or military medals, of which he had quite a few—Major Leon would suddenly pause and look vacant, almost as if he had received a punch that deprived him of breath. At these moments he would turn his horse and ride some distance from the company, alone with whatever memory he needed to be alone with. He seemed a lonely figure, struggling with a sorrow he could not share.
At such moments Tasmin found him touching, but she could not quite bring herself to ask the Major what his trouble was.
Kate too had become fond of Major Leon. “Why do you think he looks that way, Tassie?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but I find I like the Major,” Tasmin said.
“I like him
too,” Kate replied.
27
To his astonishment she even bared a breast.
THE DAY THE BERRYBENDERS had been rounded up and sent away, Julietta found that she had been locked in her room. Worse still, her shutters had been nailed shut. When she discovered this treachery on the part of her aunt she didn’t waste energy in tantrums. Eleanora was not impressed by tantrums, and neither was her husband. The Governor, it turned out, had been replaced, and the new governor, a wizened old soldier, was not someone Julietta could appeal to.
Later, when the door was unlocked and the shutters opened again, Julietta learned from her sister that she was to be sent back to Spain. She had become yet again a bargaining chip on the gaming table of Europe—a pregnancy by the old English nobleman would have definitely upset the game.
Julietta was concerned with none of that, because she intended to leave Santa Fe at once, and she meant to leave with Joaquin, her blacksmith. As soon as her shutters were open she went to the window and emitted a keen whistle, the sort a hunter might use to call back his dog.
Amazed, Joaquin looked up—there was Julietta again, smiling at him. She blew him a kiss. To his astonishment she even bared a breast. Joaquin was transfixed. That evening at dusk Julietta came to him, back to the heat, the sweat, the bed of rags. Her acceptance was tepid, but Joaquin was too excited to notice. He was swept away. He told Julietta that he loved her. He promised to do anything she asked. If it was necessary to risk his life he would do it gladly.
Julietta visited Joaquin three times, slowly tightening her grip.
Very often the horses Joaquin was to shoe were stabled at the smithy overnight. A blacksmith could not afford to be lazy. The horses of the cavalrymen had to be properly shoed.
Julietta was no mean horsewoman. On the third visit she made her selection, went briefly back to her quarters, and returned when it was fully dark with a bundle of warm clothes. She then reminded Joaquin of his promise.
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