“In Santa Fe you might have been an enemy, but here you are an ally, Señor Snow,” the Major told him. “We have a long way to go—we might need every fighter we can get—besides which it’s my duty to tell you that I’ve fallen in love with your wife.”
With that the Major smiled, made Jim a little half bow, and rode off.
Jim was so startled by the Major’s last remark that he would have been hard put to reply. Probably it was meant as a joke, just a rather flowery way of saying that the Major liked Tasmin a lot. And yet Major Leon did not have the aspect of a joker. He had looked, on the whole, rather melancholy when he mentioned to Jim that he was in love with his wife. Jim could not believe that such an absurd statement was to be taken literally, and yet the Major had sounded rather matter-of-fact about it.
With Petal, Monty, and Petey all competing for his attention, Jim had little opportunity to think much more about the Major’s startling declaration. It seemed that Major Leon was on good terms with the children too, even taking them one by one on short horseback rides. Petal particularly seemed to enjoy these rides, insisting that she could hold the reins herself and pushing the Major’s hands away when he briefly attempted a correction of some sort.
“Take your hands off!” Petal insisted, and usually the Major complied.
It was late in the day before Jim finally had a chance to speak privately with Tasmin.
“That’s a funny kind of a major,” Jim remarked. “The first thing he said to me was that he was in love with you.”
Tasmin blushed a little, nervously. She made a little what-can-I-do gesture; she shrugged.
“It doesn’t surprise me that he told you,” she said, with a heavy sigh. “He’s incapable of concealing anything from anyone—it’s part of his problem.”
Jim still didn’t understand. “Does he just mean that he likes you a bunch?” he asked.
Tasmin chuckled. “No, he doesn’t mean that he likes me a bunch, as you put it,” she told him. “Geoff, after all, likes me a bunch.”
She sighed again. “It’s different with Major Leon,” she told him. “Major Leon is in love with me.”
For a moment Tasmin teared up, at the thought of the absurdity of the situation. Here she was in the middle of nowhere; her captor was in love with her; she had three bouncy children, and a husband who was honestly puzzled.
“I hope you’ll just excuse it,” she said to Jim. “Nothing improper has happened—nothing improper ever will. But the Major is in love with me and it’s best to just let it wear off. I can’t seem to make him give it up.
“At least it’s a benefit for the children,” she said. “They get little horse rides.”
Jim didn’t know what to think. He didn’t doubt Tasmin’s fidelity—it had not occurred to him that anything sinful could have happened—surely not. Major Leon seemed sad and perhaps a little silly, but he hardly seemed like much of a ladies’ man.
“I don’t understand it,” Jim admitted. “No, you don’t,” Tasmin said mildly, irritated by the position she found herself in.
“You’ve never been in love with me, you see, Jimmy,” she said, taking his hand. “I believe you do care for me—and then there’s this that we have.”
She moved his hand between her legs and at once felt an old quickening.
“There’s this, and I’m glad we have it.” She didn’t move his hand, but she held it to her. Her boldness stirred Jim a good deal.
“Maybe it’s more important than being in love— the poets aren’t clear on that point,” Tasmin continued. “But it isn’t the same. Major Leon is in love with me, as Kit once was—you remember that, don’t you?
Jim nodded. “What’s the Major get out of it?” he asked, not angry, just puzzled.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tasmin admitted. “A chance to do me small kindnesses, or pay me small attentions,” she said. “You remember how Kit was—he was always at his happiest when I gave him a chore to do—the harder the chore, the more it pleased him to do it.”
Jim did remember Kit’s infatuation. He had not been jealous of Kit’s attentions to his wife; but he had thought Kit rather a fool, for doing so much of what was rightly Tasmin’s work. Jim had supposed that Pomp was also sweet on Tasmin, though Pomp was far less likely to do her endless favors or hang on her conversation. At first, when he heard Tasmin and Pomp talking about some book or play, he had supposed it was only educated people who fell in love; but then along came Kit, who couldn’t read or write a lick, and he was worse sweet on Tasmin than Pomp had been. If further proof was needed that all sorts of people fell in love, there was High Shoulders, a Ute who at first couldn’t speak a word of English, and yet had been in a fever to be with Buffum from the minute they laid eyes on one another.
“Major Leon is a curious case,” Tasmin went on. “He confessed to me that he has only been able to be in love with married women—and yet he doesn’t attempt to make love to them, in the common way. Instead he fetches me extra blankets for the children. Once he brought me a pretty rock. Or he might offer me a tidbit from the stores. He’s not read me poetry, though—Geoff is still my only literary man.”
Jim looked over at the Major. He always sat alone, apart from his men.
“There’s plenty of things I don’t understand,” Jim admitted.
“And being in love is one of them,” Tasmin said. She still held his hand and began to rub it against her.
“It’s not dark enough,” Jim protested.
“It’s dark enough for something,” Tasmin chided. “Leave me that hand.”
Later, in the deep night, Tasmin woke from a doze and saw Jim sitting up—he still wore a look of confusion.
“Jimmy, don’t worry about it—being in love isn’t everything,” she told him. “It can be a terribly painful condition. The poets are clear on that point.”
“Kit can do it and Major Leon can do it and High Shoulders can do it—how come I can’t?” he asked. “It just don’t seem necessary.”
“Correct—it isn’t,” Tasmin agreed. “We’ve done a bunch without it—though of course I was as much in love with you as you’d tolerate,” she told him.
“Though I wouldn’t be surprised if you fall in love yet,” she added.
“Why would I?”
“You might be given no choice—it might just sweep over you one day. You mustn’t underestimate Petal—if any woman can get you, I expect it’s her.”
“She’s a baby,” Jim replied—though he did like Petal. She didn’t readily allow anyone not to like her, once she took an interest in them, and lately she had taken a strong interest in him.
But being in love with your own child surely wasn’t what they had been talking about.
“Best not to think of it too simply, as just being a thing that happens to people who want to rut,” Tasmin told him. “It just might be that your own daughter is the only woman capable of sweeping you off your feet.
“Time will tell,” she added. “Time will tell.”
35
“This makes me feel rather dry and coldhearted . . .”
DON’T YOU BE SULKING, GEOFF,” Tasmin warned. “I have enough to do keeping this unruly lot in marching order. If there’s one thing I don’t need in my life right now it’s a rude friend.”
“I can’t help it,” Father Geoffrin replied. “I’m filled with dark forebodings anyway, and now this ridiculous little major has turned your head.”
“Not a bit of it . . . my head’s not turned,” Tasmin argued. “My husband is here, remember. Nothing untoward has happened. Major Leon is just a bit smitten, that’s all.”
“I could be smitten myself with a little encouragement,” Father Geoff told her. Then he shrugged and apologized.
“I’m sorry—it just irritates,” he admitted. “I’m used to being the one you talk to—I’m jealous that you’re talking to someone else.”
“Incorrect—I’m mostly listening to someone else,” Tasmin said. “Yesterday the Major finally told
me his sad tale.”
“And was it sad?” “As tales of thwarted love go, yes,” Tasmin told him. “He confessed to being very shy, a quality I had already detected in him.”
“Prissy, I’d call it,” Geoff complained. “He’s always stroking his mustache—I notice these things, you see.”
Tasmin gave him a stern look. “You notice—and then you misinterpret,” Tasmin scolded. “Major Leon is at ease with me because he doesn’t expect to succeed. The impossibility of success is what it takes for some men to relax with a woman. That’s common enough.”
“Out with the sad tale—I won’t interrupt.” “Major Leon was once in love with a girl of good family in Santa Fe,” Tasmin began. “But because of his shyness he could not quite work up to proposing. The girl, of good family, who was not unreceptive to his suit, grew tired of waiting and accepted another. But the man she accepted quite abruptly died. There was a period of mourning, and then Major Leon tried again. This time he was just able to mumble out a proposal, which was immediately accepted. A wedding date was set—at last his love had been answered.”
Tasmin stopped. “Why don’t you finish the story for me, Geoff?” she teased. “It’s suitable for a tragedy. Your beloved Racine would have found it interesting.”
“More likely Molière, if that prissy little man is the hero,” Geoff said. “There he is stroking his mustache again.
“I suppose the girl died,” he added, after thinking for a moment.
Tasmin nodded. “The girl died. Rather sad, don’t you agree? He’s a decent man, if limited. He finally wins the consent of a woman he could have—and then she dies, after which he has taken no chances in that particular line. He only falls in love with women he can’t have, like my humble self.”
“And yet you do like him, so it’s not so sad,” Geoff remarked. “He gets affection, at least. What does Jim think about the Major and his affections?”
Tasmin laughed. “The Major told Jimmy right off that he was in love with me—startling news to my Jimmy, who’s continually puzzled by the odd twistings and turnings of human emotion. Now and then he attempts to puzzle out what romance might be, but it’s so foreign to his nature that he can’t quite grasp it.”
“I can’t see that this bothers you much,” the priest said.
“That’s because you don’t see me when it’s bothering me,” Tasmin told him. “You may have noticed that I’ve started caring about my looks again, in the small way that’s possible under present circumstances.”
“So?” “It’s the result of Major Leon’s attentions,” Tasmin told him. “It’s always nice to have a man who looks at you closely enough to notice small improvements.
“Very small improvements,” she added. “But still it’s nice.”
“This makes me feel rather dry and coldhearted, and I don’t like the feeling,” Father Geoff said. “I’m sure that’s why the Major annoys me. His attentions may be shallow but they please you, and my attentions don’t.”
“Nonsense, your attentions have always pleased me,” Tasmin assured him. “You’re the one man I can talk to. At one point I could talk to Pomp, but then I fell in love with him and that spoiled that.”
“I wish the man would quit stroking his silly mustache,” Geoff said, looking at the Major.
36
Juppy, their giant . . .
JUPPY, THEIR GIANT, who sometimes pretended to be a great fish, rising from the water with all six shrieking children clinging to his back, died first, followed by Eliza—she would break no more plates—and Amboise d’Avigdor, ten of the skinny soldiers, and the shy, sad Major Leon. Signore Aldo Claricia died, even as Little Onion sought frantically for herbs to cure him. Cook was very ill but lived; Piet Van Wely was also at the point of death but survived. High Shoulders died an hour after Juppy; Buffum raged, cried, clung to him, prayed, but nothing helped: the cholera took him, though it spared his son, Elphinstone, spared Vicky’s Talley but killed her Randy, spared the twins but took Monty. Jim held his dying son in his arms to the end, but Tasmin could not bear the look on her son’s shocked, silent face—she grabbed her twins and ran far out into the desert, convinced that they would all die unless they fled the place of infection, a small, filthy village where Major Leon assured them travelers on the Camino Real often stopped to rest their animals. Jim had not much liked the look of the place—a burial had been in progress as he rode in—but they were short of fodder for the oxen, there were goats that could be bought, and perhaps even a horse or two to replace some of theirs that had gone lame.
“I regret that I left him so often,” Jim said to Father Geoffrin, when Monty died.
“None of us are free of regret,” Father Geoff told him.
Jim had not tried to stop Tasmin’s mad dash into the desert, but now he was worried.
“I wish you’d go find her,” Jim asked the priest. “There’s Indians around—I wouldn’t want them to catch her.”
As he sat with his son’s body, he remembered what had been done to the Spanish girl.
Lord Berrybender was weeping, stomping, occasionally crying out.
“Oh, my poor Juppy—come all the way from Northamptonshire, only to die like this,” he exclaimed.
Vicky stared at him with hatred. “I regret Juppy, but you might remember that your son Randy died too—a child you scarcely noticed.”
Lord Berrybender merely shrugged. “I loathe you—you will never touch me again,” Vicky said. She picked up Talley and ran into the desert, in the direction that Tasmin had gone.
It was near sunset. Father Geoffrin hurried on his errand. He didn’t like it. Cold sun shone on the stark mountains to the east. The landscape offered no welcome—it offered its sere implacability. Where was consolation to be found in such terrible country?
Tasmin clutched her two babies tight. She supposed Monty would have died; she wanted to know but dreaded to ask. She looked at Geoff, who nodded, sadly.
“What about Jim?” she asked. “He’s not dead. He wanted to stay with Monty. He thinks the village well is tainted.”
He spoke mainly to fill the terrible silence. “Is Monty gone’d?” Petal asked, nervously. “I don’t see Randy—is he gone’d?”
She knew something had gone terribly wrong, but none of the adults would talk to her.
“You remember that tosh about love we were talking only last week?” Tasmin asked. “That talk about love. I will never forgive myself for being so frivolous.”
Father Geoff had no wisdom to offer. The tragedy that had befallen them was beyond any words to correct. What were words, set against the deaths of young and old? And yet silence before the facts was terrible too.
“In casual times there’s no harm in talk about love,” he said.
“It will never amuse me again,” Tasmin avowed. Father Geoff didn’t try to speak against her despair, or Vicky’s.
“Children so often die,” he said. “All three of my brothers died within a year. I suspect that’s why I became so odd.”
It was true, of course—Tasmin knew. Many children died in the Berrybender nurseries. Cousins died—the children of the servants died. Master Stiles, her first lover, lost a beloved young daughter. Her own aunt Clarissa had lost no less than six children. What Tasmin, in the freshness of her grief, could not fathom was how Aunt Clarissa regained enough interest to keep making more babies. Tasmin certainly did not expect to regain it.
“Please, can we go back to the camp—Jim is afraid there might be Indians,” Geoff asked.
“They’re no worse than cholera, if they are around,” Tasmin said. She felt a deep reluctance to take her two living children back to the place of death. Vicky seemed to feel the same way.
“Look where we are—nowhere!” she said. “That whole wretched village is dying. It seems impossible to go on.”
“But we must! For the sake of the living,” Geoff pleaded.
The surviving soldiers and one or two men from the village dug the graves. There was no woo
d for coffins—they sacrificed blankets to make shrouds. Finally everyone but Juppy was shrouded, not up to Cook’s standards, of course. Crosses were made and fixed rather unstably in rocks. Tasmin sobbed until she was dry. So did Buffum and Vicky. It seemed terrible to have to leave a dear child, a dear mate, in such a bleak place.
“I hope to come back someday and get him,” Tasmin said to Jim. “I want him to be in a proper graveyard.”
Petal could not understand it. She thought that Monty and Randy must only be playing hide-and-seek. They were playing too long; she wanted them to come out, be found. She refused to believe that they were, as she put it, gone’d. For the next few days she kept poking her head under blankets, looking for them. “I don’t think they’re really gone’d,” she repeated. The adults made no answer.
The morning after the burial two more soldiers died.
37
The soldiers supposed they were all doomed . . .
CHOLERA’S ON THE RIVER—we have to get off the river,” Jim told the company. Lord Berrybender had found a bottle of whiskey in Major Leon’s baggage and was very drunk—he was shunned by all. Tasmin and Vicky were prepared to smash his fine new guns—they both held Lord B. responsible for the deaths of their boys and they meant to take revenge, but Jim stopped them.
“Best not spoil the guns—we might need ’em,” Jim pointed out.
“Then I’ll smash him!” Vicky said, overcome by a terrible bitterness. She rushed at Lord Berrybender and began to punch him as hard as she could. Soon he was all bloodied. Vicky kicked and punched at him until she exhausted herself. Buffum merely stumbled along, rigid with grief—though she did help Little Onion get the babies fed.
Jim determined to take the party east, over the low mountain range east of the river. He didn’t know the desert, didn’t trust himself in it. He wanted to get back to the plains—there should be buffalo. One thing that worried him was their lack of fighting men. High Shoulders, the best fighter after himself, was dead. Juppy was dead, and Am-boise; it left himself, Lord Berrybender, and Father Geoff. As things stood any sizable band of hostile Indians could finish them. With that problem in mind he decided to ask the six remaining soldiers to come with them. They had weapons—maybe they could shoot. The soldiers, exhausted by the grave digging, sat listlessly on their saddles.
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