***
INDIANS CONTINUED TO TRAIL INTO CAHOKIA, FROM PLACES AS FAR as five hundred miles distant, and the treaty-making wore on through late August and well into the cooling days of September. In the shade of the yellowing leaves on the huge elms, or in the main room of his headquarters on bad days, George recounted again and again, several times each week, his figurative account of the British-American conflict, so often that he felt that he could have recited it in his sleep. In five weeks at Cahokia, he signed treaties of peace with the Chippewas, the Ottawas, Potawatomis, Missisaugas, Winnebagoes, Sauk, Fox, Osages, Iowas, and Miamis, as well as various wandering sects and bands of those tribes. Each conference was almost an exact reenactment of all that had gone before, and each was concluded in the same satisfactory manner. George lay exhausted from talking almost every night, thinking or dreaming of Teresa and hoping for a pause in the ceremonies which would allow him to go back across the river and try to restore himself in her favor. Evening after evening he would lie in his bed and remember that awful moment when he had shot the rabbit and turned to find her recoiling in horror. In his imagination he saw her dancing on the arm of Lieutenant de Cartabona or heard her talking to her sister-in-law about the barbarity of “that American colonel.” Even if I had shot and killed an innocent man, he thought, I doubt I could more deeply regret squeezing a trigger.
But those fantasies were for the nights only. There was too much business to be conducted during the days. Hours not spent in council with the Indians slipped by in attention to the details of administration and supply and the enforcement of discipline. George realized that his only hope for hanging on in the Illinois, until such time as orders, money, or reinforcements might come from Virginia, lay in the strict subordination of his ragged little army. Thus he was, when not waxing eloquent for Indians, haranguing his soldiers on parade. With the greatest pleasure he would lecture to them on his resolutions, on the necessity of strict duty for their own preservation, on the importance of making a perpetually good appearance for the Indians, French, and Spaniards who kept them under such minute scrutiny.
The men, to his satisfaction, appeared to be sensible of the extreme delicacy of their situation, and seemed to derive from it a sense of special importance which inspirited them more every day. They answered him that they were zealous for their country and determined not to disgrace her through any sort of cowardice or misconduct, that they well understood their dangerous situation, that only good order would be conducive to their happiness and safety. The men improved daily, and George began to sense before long that probably no garrison anywhere could boast of better order or a more valuable contingent of men.
There would be moments, however, moments of insight which would come in the midst of that satisfaction, when he would feel that he was holding up a whole shaky empire with nothing but the sound of his voice, nothing but the breath of his speeches.
20
ST. LOUIS, UPPER LOUISIANA TERRITORY
September 1778
AS YOUNG PEOPLE DO WHEN CONFUSED BY THEIR HEARTS, TERESA de Leyba was beginning to feel personally responsible for the long absence of her beloved.
The young Virginian was beyond doubt her beloved. She had come to understand that after a fortnight of thinking about him by day and dreaming about him by night. She would lapse into reveries while lace-making, while reading, while practicing on her guitarra, while entertaining her two nieces, while dining with her brother and his guests, even while dancing or riding with Lieutenant de Cartabona, and in those reveries she would see that red hair, that straight back, those broad shoulders, those keen, dark blue eyes. She deliberately, time after time, envisioned his face as it had looked that night when he was transported by her music, or that morning when he had stood in his window looking down at her in the garden; when the face came unbidden it would be shiny with sweat and smudged with dirt, as it had looked when he appeared in the ballroom at Kaskaskia, or it would be sunlit and full of astonishment as it had been the day of the shooting match when he had heard her scream and turned to look at her.
The shooting of the rabbit did not matter any more; it is man’s nature, she realized, to kill game. What she now regretted was her reaction to it; she felt that her demonstration of horror and disapproval had driven him away and would make him stay away. She went over the scene every day in her thoughts, remembering his truly remarkable feat of marksmanship, recalling her foolish outburst, seeing the look of astonishment in his face, and the look of hurt in his eyes when she had pulled her hand back from his.
And now she felt that she would never see him again. Although Francisco Vigo and others came to the mansion almost every day with cheerful accounts of the Virginian’s success with the Indians just across the river, they never brought news that he planned a visit. Obviously he was very busy with the Indians. But Cahokia was not more than five miles away and still he had not come back to St. LOUIS. If he loved her, as she had presumed he did, surely he would have found the time to come across the river and pay a visit. She had heard her brother express the same dismay two or three times. “I am surprised,” he had said to Maria at the table, “that Don Jorge has not come back to see his good friends here! Ah, well,” he had sighed. “The requisites of duty …”
The nights were growing cool in the valley. Leaves of certain trees around the mansion were sere, and there was a dry haze that made the eastern bank of the river look light blue on sunny days. At night the campfires and council fires of the Indians would glimmer like warm stars on the horizon. Teresa would blow out her lamp, sit on the edge of her bed, look across at those points of light, and concentrate on the name of George Rogers Clark, as if by doing so she could cause him to awaken in his bed and think kindly, even yearningly, of her. Once she even heard herself saying aloud: “It is not really important, my dear, about the rabbit.”
“Our American friend,” Vigo told de Leyba one day while stopping by on departure to his Vincennes trading post, “plans to go back down to Kaskaskia soon. Much of his business with the Indians seems complete, and he grows anxious about having been away from the main body of his men for so many weeks.” Teresa, even though she had virtually given up hope of seeing him again, was stunned by this news. She dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a large napkin to hide her expression of alarm from the others at the table.
“What? Leaving?” de Leyba exclaimed. “Then, Francisco, there is nothing for it but to give him an express invitation to come see us before he departs. When you go across …”
“Oh, but never mind that,” Vigo said, raising his hand and smiling. “He gave me this message for you.” He drew a letter out of his blouse.
De Leyba broke the wax seal and read silently for a moment, a smile dawning on his face. “Good! He plans to come here the day after tomorrow, before sailing for Kaskaskia. Look, Teresa, he sends you his affectionate regards, and you, Maria, and the children …” He passed the letter around the table, winking at Vigo and indicating Teresa’s sudden high color by a tilt of his head. She held the letter a moment as if touching its writer, and looked hungrily at the handsome, cursive script with its sure flourishes and that bold, flaring horizontal stokes at the end of each sentence. She noted with a self-conscious, foolish rush of pleasure the very large and ornate initial with which he had written her name.
“Oh, my,” she laughed, reluctantly passing the letter along to Maria, “I had feared he was displeased with me.”
“Child!” Vigo exclaimed. “How could he be? Why, on the contrary, whenever we speak of you, his eyes grow haunted and veer in this direction! Ha, ha! Fernando, what think you of the silly doubts of young lovers? Ha, ha! Teresa, my dear, he thinks it’s you who are displeased!”
She put her hand on her bosom. “Has he said that?”
“Not in words,” Vigo replied. “But with a face full of fretfulness.”
Her laughter trilled, then ended abruptly. “But no. Now you’re being fanciful. You’re only teasing me. And how can
you say … ‘lovers’?” She was blushing mightily now.
“Pardon, my pretty,” he said with a mocking bow. “A slip of my tongue perhaps. But now, my dearest friends, I must say adiós. I wish I could be here for your reunion with the Virginian, but I shan’t return from Vincennes, I expect, until winter.”
“Farewell,” de Leyba said, rising, then added, with a laugh, “… Don Cupid.”
A BLOOD-RED LEAF TUMBLED DOWN TO MEET ITS UPTUMBLING REFLECTION on the pond’s surface, and the reflection broke apart in tiny ripples. “Sweet gum,” George said. “They always color before anything else. But to be falling so soon! I expect we’re in for a hard and early winter.”
“But a peaceful one, I hope,” said de Leyba.
“I pray,” said Teresa. She watched the leaf move slowly like a red sail toward the other side of the pond.
“As do I,” George agreed. “And I’ve done everything in my power to assure that, God knows.”
The trio turned away and strolled back to their horses. The sunlight was warm, the air cool. Long fine grass, bowed like waves of fading green, rustled under their feet. George walked slowly, looking down, watching with dumb wonderment as the toes of Teresa’s tiny shoes poked forward alternately from under the hem of her riding skirt. He had never seen such small feet except attached to children, and a strange pang of tenderness made tears start to his eyes.
They took up the reins. The horses each ripped one last bit of grass from the ground as they raised their heads, and chewed. George’s horse nuzzled the breast of his blue uniform coat and whickered softly. George stroked its powerful neck, smelled its sweet moist breath, and gazed at Teresa, who held her animal’s rein in one small hand and drew a glove onto the other. At the sight of her hands, he felt the pang again. She looked at him and saw it in his eyes and felt the same. Don Fernando bent and cupped his hands to give her a step up into her saddle, but she was looking at George and didn’t notice.
“My good friend,” George said suddenly to him, “I’m sure you have pressing business, and you needn’t spend your time wandering about with us. Why don’t you go on, and we’ll ride in shortly …”
“Why, I wouldn’t hear of it!” the Spaniard exclaimed cheerfully. “How often do we see you? I have nothing more important to do, Jorge, I swear. Come, Teresa. Step up.”
She put her foot in his hands and swung nimbly up onto the sidesaddle, where she sat smoothing her skirts and looking down with bemused resignation at George.
George sighed. He had been dropping hints and suggestions all afternoon, but de Leyba seemed oblivious to such cues, and blandly, innocently, continued to bless them with his cheerful presence.
It’s their custom, George reminded himself for the tenth time, stepping into the stirrup and swinging up onto his saddle. He looked at Teresa, at the wry little smile that was beginning to pucker her lips and dimple the corners of her mouth. And she, he thought, of course understands it better than I.
They followed a path up the face of the bluff and emerged on the field where the shooting match had taken place. The splintered willow wands still stood about, and scraps of cloth, their colors now faded by August sun and September rains, could be seen in the grass. De Leyba reminisced excitedly about the shooting as they rode over the spot where the rabbit had fallen, and George looked from the corner of his eye at Teresa, to see if there would be any vestige of her displeasure. She only smiled at him and lowered her lashes, rocking gently back and forth with the horse’s stride. Saddle leather creaked. De Leyba’s horse dropped a trail of pungent dung. The sun was going down now and the sky beyond Teresa was a gauzy backdrop of en-flamed cirrus clouds. A meadowlark reiterated its three silvery syllables. On the horizon, three other mounted figures rode in silhouette, rifles across their saddles. They were George’s ubiquitous bodyguard, staying as usual just far enough away not to be obtrusive, but always watching and alert.
By Heaven, he thought, if I am ever to be alone with this dear person, it will have to be by stealth in the night.
THEY DINED ON FISH THAT EVENING AT TEN. THE LITTLE GIRLS stayed close about George for a half hour before bedtime, crowding close to hear him tell about his little sisters in Virginia, and about his smallest brother William. They made him promise to bring William to St. Louis someday. Now and then Rita, the six-year-old, would reach up and touch George’s coppery hair, which was a source of constant wonderment to her. Maria Josefa, at nine already seeming to acquire the reserve of Spanish femininity, did not touch him but stood as close to his knee as she could without doing so. After they had been taken upstairs, he turned to Teresa, finding her regarding him in total absorption, apparently wrapped in a veritable cocoon of pleasure. She raised her eyebrows and sat up straighter when she realized he was looking at her.
“Teresa,” he said, his voice almost quaking with emotion, “for weeks I’ve been hearing your music in my memory, but I’m beginning to forget how the melodies went. Would it be an imposition if I asked you to play them for me again? Would you play for me as your only audience?”
“You were my only audience then,” she said, then flushed at her own audacity. De Leyba laughed.
“I knew that!” he exclaimed. “Yes, my dear. Please do.”
AT THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, GEORGE ROSE FROM HIS BED. A rhombus of moonlight lay on the floor. He had lain awake for an hour after retiring, running the music of the guitarra through his heart, and finally had dozed. Now the house was absolutely still. De Leyba and his wife had closed themselves into their bedroom at the far end of the house, and this night all the men of the guard were bedded downstairs. The notion that nothing but empty darkness lay between his door and Teresa’s now lodged itself in his mind like a seed in a furrow and inexorably began to grow to occupy him entirely. Naked, he prowled the room with the cool wooden floor under his bare feet, and warned himself that he could bring disaster upon himself and disgrace upon Teresa if he were to steal into her room and somehow be discovered. I would never be admitted to this house again, he told himself. This wonderful new ally of mine who guards his sister so diligently would no doubt become the most inveterate of my enemies.
Still, he found himself gazing at the dark rectangle of the oaken door and listening like a wild animal to the silence of the house.
Besides, he thought, her door might be locked.
You wouldn’t know that unless you tried it.
What if I should enter, and she woke up alarmed—as she certainly would—and cried out? he wondered.
But maybe she’s awake now, as I am, he argued. He felt that she was. Instinct told him that she was awake beyond that wall. He imagined he could hear her mind repeating his name. I could not be this desperately awake without my wakefulness awakening her, he thought. He was as certain of that now as he was certain his heart was beating.
It would ruin everything if we were discovered, his reason insisted.
But I’ll never have a minute alone with her any other way, his heart argued.
He rubbed his palms down over his face and stared at the dark shape of the door. He shuddered. He turned away and padded to the window, to get away from that relentlessly beckoning door. A floorboard creaked as he stepped on it.
He stood by the window and stared over the darkened town while a whippoorwill uttered its throaty whistle a dozen times in the moonlight.
At last the idea became too strong to resist any longer, and the decision turned somewhere deep inside his head, turned silently but palpably like a well-oiled hinge of fate.
You just have to, he understood. There’s no such thing as not going to her.
He crossed the room again, avoiding the loose plank in the floor, took his cotton breeches off the chair and pulled them on. He went to the door, took the cold brass knob in his hand, and turned it slowly, reminding himself that his guards could be awakened virtually by the fall of a snowflake.
The door swung open silently; the musty air of the hallway came in with it. He stepped into the blac
k corridor and moved noiselessly the six steps to her door. His elbow bumped the wall softly as he groped for her door handle and he stood stock-still and waited. The silence prevailed. As he turned the handle, all the dire arguments of his reason whispered at him again to turn back. He continued to turn the handle, until the door moved. He pushed it open and the familiar scent of her soap eddied around his face. And the breath of camphor, the whiff of lavender.
He was inside now, and strained silently to ease the door shut. Cool air on the sweat-bedewed skin of his torso made him shiver again. The rectangle of her window stood gray opposite where he paused. He could hear her breathing now, and saw the dim shape of the white bedding, the high, square canopy, the open bed-curtains.
Now you’re dead center in your own trap, he told himself. You’re utterly daft to be doing this!
His body responded by going toward the bedside; fingers and toes felt for invisible obstacles, for things that might fall over; his heart walloped high in his breast and his nerves felt the night inches beyond the limits of his skin.
He knelt beside the bed; his knee cracked. Teresa moved in her bed, inches from him, bedclothes whispering, and her breath touched his face.
Now, he thought. You’re this far, you fool. What now? Do you just look, just kneel here like a praying man, or try to wake her without waking the whole house?
Could just stay like this, he thought. You’re alone with her now, and isn’t that all you wanted?
No, that’s not enough.
Wake her and she’ll screech the whole house up, he thought.
Or else die of fright. What if she wakes up and thinks I’m an Indian? he thought.
Her name, he thought. Whisper her name.
Better, yet, just think it. Think it hard.
He thought it hard, and sweat bathed his forehead and she began to stir. A soft waking moan came from the dark shape of her head on the pillow. Now whisper, he thought.
Long Knife Page 29