Long Knife

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Well, Virginia and the American Congress will not let us down, de Leyba thought. It’s a matter of time. He turned back to his desk and, for reassurance, read the letter George had brought him from Governor Henry.

  The Honorable

  Spanish Commandant near the Illinois

  Favored by Col. Clark

  Wilhamsburg in Virginia

  December 12, 1778

  Sir:

  Colonel Clark who commands the Forces of this Commonwealth at the Illinois will have the Honor to deliver this letter to you and at the same time to bear my high Regards to you. I beg leave to recommend that Gentleman to your friendly Notice and Regards which I also have to request towards all the Subjects of this State. At the same time, I tend to you sir and to all the Subjects of his Catholic Majesty, every Assistance, and friendly Interchange of good offices, which the mutual Happiness and prosperity of both People shall make necessary.

  I shall be happy to embrace every opportunity of shewing my high regards to his Catholic Majesty’s Interests, and that I am with great Truth Sir

  Your most obedient Servant

  P. HENRY

  I trust you, your Excellency Señor Henry, de Leyba thought, as my governor Galvez and your Colonel Clark recommend you so. But pray attend to the needs of your commandant out here. He is having to conduct a very ambitious war from a very impoverished position. Indeed the only real currency he has to spend is his great soul.

  De Leyba looked out the window again at the two lovers, who were talking and laughing as if there were no cares at all. Then he poured a small glass of Madeira, sat down at his desk, and began a reply to Governor Henry:

  To his Excellency, Señor Don Patrick Henry

  San Luis de Ylinueses, April 23, 1779

  Your Excellency:

  Colonel Jorge Clark has delivered to me your Excellency’s esteem’d letter of the 12th of December just past. Its contents gave me the greatest pleasure; first, because it is very much in accord with the instructions which I have from my General; and second, because your Excellency has deigned to honor me with your letter.

  From the time that my friend Colonel Clark arrived in this place, fraternal harmony has reigned between the people from the United States and the vassals of his Catholic Majesty.

  The said Colonel Clark’s wisdom and affability have made him generally loved by all who know him, and I give your Excellency a thousand thanks for having given me a neighbor who by his friendly manners has made me his debtor for the greatest courtesies, your Excellency’s esteemed recommendation being under the circumstances not the one of least consideration. I beg that your Excellency will not regard me as negligent, if there is anything in which I can be of service, since I offer your Excellency my most sincere regards, and pray that God may keep you many years.

  He stopped writing and looked back over the letter. It seemed terribly obsequious to him, but he had wanted to make the most agreeable impression before bringing up the matter of Colonel Clark’s debts. It was going to be so difficult to write of that business without seeming to complain about Virginia; it might even seem that he had complaints against Don Jorge, an impression he did not want to give under any circumstances. He drained off another glass of wine while musing upon this wording. But now the wine was making his thoughts more fuzzy.

  And what if a letter lamenting such private matters should fall into the wrong hands, he thought. If the express should be caught by a British party, revealing to them that I have committed myself that far to the rebel Americans, it could only embarrass Governor Galvez the more.

  And what, he thought, if my dear friend Jorge should by some chance read it and feel that I am expressing strain between him and myself? Not that he would open it … He is totally honorable, I know …

  Yet, much as he hated to think of it, there was the matter of that broken seal on Patrick Henry’s letter.

  I’m sure that was, an accident, as he explained, de Leyba thought.

  Nonetheless, he decided to say nothing, in this initial letter to Governor Henry, anyway, about the finances. Surely Jorge’s own correspondence to Governor Henry would convey well enough the desperate problems of the currency.

  And so he simply concluded the letter:

  Your Excellency’s most obedient servant,

  FERNDo DE LEYBA

  Teresa held her shawl tight; the day was cool though sunny. The color was high in her cheeks and she was looking directly into his face as she talked. “All my life I am told, it is too forward for the woman to tell her beloved of her feelings; it is his duty to profess his love, hers to listen. But, my beloved, while you were gone to the battle I was full of remorse every day … because I had not told you …”

  “I knew of it. You’ve said to me that you’ll be my wife. Those are enough words of love.”

  “No, listen. I dreamed that you were in danger. That you might be … that something would happen to you, and you would never have known!” She sighed; her eyes faltered and fell, then returned to his face. “Jorge, please hear this and try to understand: Jorge, I am afraid for you, but just as much I am afraid of you. No! Let me say this, for I have rehearsed these words the way I rehearse the playing of a song … Just let me say them, and help me have the courage to say them, because I have never been bold, never.

  “My dear Jorge, from the beginning, I have seen signs that you will bring trouble upon us …”

  “Teresa! I would no …”

  “No, listen, please! I know you would not, as you are good. But you are a force, my Jorge, and where you go, consequences must follow. We all understand this, my brother, Maria, Vigo, Francisco de Cartabona … We all sense this, though we all love you more than any person …”

  “Not Cartabona, I wager,” he said, remembering the lieutenant’s pathetic effort to challenge him the summer before.

  “… but I can say these things, things such as I’ve never dared say before to anyone, because, my cherished one, I have thought only of you for months. Jorge, you are like a … a weapon. And where a weapon is, danger is.”

  He searched her face, stunned by these revelations but understanding them somehow. Aye, he was a weapon; he understood that; he felt that he was a long weapon of Virginia. “But listen, Teresa,” he said intently, “A weapon does not hurt the one who holds it. I am directed away from you, I am for your protection …” He put a palm on each side of her face and made her look straight at him. How strange and unexpected this was. He had come to talk to her of love and peace, expecting her to be like music, like flowers, like rest; now he found himself having to talk to her, as to the Indians, in figures of speech, to assure her and convince her.

  “I told you I have seen signs,” she murmured. “The first were nightmares in which you appeared. Jorge, I am afraid of knives and swords. In my nightmares I see flesh cut and bleeding …” She shuddered violently. “I … In my dreams for so long you appeared with knives and swords. I was terrified of you …”

  “Forgive me for your nightmares,” he said.

  “But then you came and became our friend and I saw you were good, and those nightmares ceased. But then, dear Jorge, there was another thing; the night I saw your guard hold a knife to our friend Cartabona …”

  “You saw that, did you? Teresa, I would not have let them hurt him. He had thought to challenge me …”

  “I know, I know. But do you know what my nightmare is now, Jorge? Another sign. I see you shoot a frightened rabbit, just a rabbit that got unknowing into your way …”

  He remembered that, remembered her scream, remembered his confusion and remorse. His eyes fell.

  “In my nightmare sometimes now,” she went on, “I am that rabbit.”

  “Teresa!”

  “Shhh! It’s well enough! I know you would not have shot it, had you thought first of me!”

  “No!”

  “But, Jorge, you come here to do what you have to do, and you find us here in your way. Compared to you we are as weak as rabbits here
…”

  “I do not think of the Spaniards as weak like rabbits,” he contended.

  “No. But Fernando. He is brave, but he is delicate and could be swept away so easily …” Her eyes dropped again, and were wet as if with a sudden pity. “I am afraid for him,” she said. “For Maria, for us all …”

  He stood up suddenly, breathing deeply, turning this way and that, peering out through the still leafless vines of the arbor toward the horizons. “This unsettles me. I had hoped to bring you happiness and confidence, not fear.”

  She grabbed his hand, and pressed her lips to it. “But you do! My dear, oh, my fine one! You bring happiness such as we have never had. Dear one, this family of mine has never been blessed with good fortune; we hardly know how to expect it. But you have brought a brave new kind of cheer into our hearts! Fernando, I believe, would be pleased to die for you. I would! But happiness, you see, has the seeds of sadness in it, because it cannot last.”

  He considered this and was surprised. Every young woman he had ever known had presumed that permanent happiness would be assured once she had gotten her way. Now here was this Teresa, a girl rather than a woman, always having been cloistered against the hardness of the world, who seemed to have a more realistic notion of the nature of happiness than any he had heard. It was not his own notion of happiness, or had not been, but in coming from her lips it came to seem most likely. She smiled at his perplexity, and continued: “There was a wise storyteller in my country who wrote this about happiness: ‘It is seldom that there is a happiness so pure as not to be tempered by sorrow.’ That is how my people see happiness, I think.”

  “Does that not make life harder to live?” he asked. Here, it seemed, was his only glimpse inside the Spanish character except for Fernando’s preoccupation with the act of killing. It seemed to give him a clue to how Teresa might be made happy. Perhaps she could not.

  “It might make life harder to live,” she said. “Harder than what? How can I compare it with anything I have not known? But it makes the happiness of now—ahora!—brighter. This is why I am happy now, now that I am with you.”

  He dropped to one-knee before now, his hand still held in both of hers. “I have never given thought to happiness,” he said. “I’ve only felt it … many times. I have felt it when crops I planted grew well. I feel it in the wilderness, and when I am with my family. I feel it greatly when I plan, and still more greatly when my plans succeed.” He stopped and thought. “My greatest happiness ever is now, with you here. Before this, it was the moment when my men lifted me on their shoulders and carried me into the fort at Vincennes. I had not failed them, and they had not failed me. Teresa, I had a teacher in Virginia, a gentleman named George Mason, one of the best of the Virginians. He taught me from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius that a man’s happiness is in doing the things proper to a man. I am a happy man, Teresa, because I have always tried to do those things.” He turned her palms upward and kissed the soft pads of her palms. He was in a dreamlike condition now; to be happy with her and talking of the nature of happiness was like a new world, a rapturous contrast to the hardships and hazards of the past year.

  “I rejoice in your happiness,” she said, smiling down on him with radiant tenderness.

  “Beloved, listen: I think … I think it is impossible to be happy all by oneself. One can bear suffering alone, but not joy. I’ve felt more and more isolated with every success. I understand what has been happening to me. Listen, because discretion forbids me to say these things to anyone else:

  “Because of my good fortune here, the destinies of everybody in this territory depend on what I do. I can say only certain things to people who look to me for their fates. I have held the power of life or death in my hands—I told you this in my letter …”

  “And thus played God, you said.”

  “Aye. And am therefore alone. And I’ve also told you this, long ago: When peace comes and I settle down to prosper on the lands I’ve gained, I see you sitting beside me.” He smiled. “Unlike you, my child, I don’t foresee tragedy at the end of our joy.” He shut his eyes and fell to kissing her hands, her wrists, her arms, now enveloped in a blissful blind world of birdsongs, drone of bees, sun’s heat, tickling soft touchings, and the scents of moist earth, blossoms, her clothing, and the familiar but still exotic odor of her body.

  “But I still do,” her words came like a thunderclap. “I still see it.”

  He felt a chill at the certainty in her voice. “But how? What is it you imagine?”

  “I don’t know. It isn’t clear, of course. But I have never seen us married in the eyes of my church. I have never seen us growing old together as you have. I see us split apart. By distance, by disappointment, by death—I have no words for it! I do not know what. I am heavy with it! But, Jorge: ahora! Now is all the more happiness, and all is well for us!”

  He shook his head, frightened, but forced a chuckle and tried to reassure. “Then I shall simply have to change our fate. Teresa, I always do what I attempt. You will sit beside me when I’m old. We shall see which prevails, your premonitions or my acts.”

  She smiled sadly, indulgently, down at his upturned face. “I pray for thee,” she said. “But for now, in any event, we must have what we can have. In our eyes, just in our eyes, I swear that I am your wife and you are not alone.”

  The subtle trill of a redwing filled the pause. “You say, my wife?”

  “I am, Jorge. In our eyes I am. I have prayed for guidance and the answer was made clear.”

  “And I agree. Teresa, you are my wife, and I am not alone.”

  SHE PLAYED SONGS ON THE GUITARRA FOR HIM AGAIN AFTER DINNER, the songs that he had carried in his head all the way to Vincennes and back, and some more vigorous and sensual flamencos that he had not heard before. There was a change in her demeanor in the recital now; instead of the furtive shy glances that she had raised to his eyes before, she now looked up from the instrument and met his gaze directly with eyes wide, black, and flashing. Her brother and Maria could not help noticing it, and knew that something important had transpired between the pair. Fernando was curious and wary. He was her guardian, and it was he who had so strongly advocated the Virginian to his family; now he was uneasy that his timid and cautious Teresa might have determined a course that would move her into harm’s way.

  It was after midnight when the family at last retired. George had stationed his guards downstairs, and lay in his bed waiting for the house to grow still, knowing that he could not sleep with Teresa’s words still echoing in his soul: “I swear that I am your wife and you are not alone.”

  In her room, Teresa undressed and washed herself all over, and dried on a scented towel. She let down her hair and brushed it, and left it down. Naked save for her small crucifix, she studied her body in the mirror and was not now ashamed. She then drew on a crisp, white, loose nightdress on which she had embroidered a collar of silken flowers. And now in the candlelight she knelt at the icon beneath the crucifix on the wall, her knees on the hard bare wood of the floor, murmured the Lord’s Prayer, crossed herself, and remained there for several minutes gazing at the crucifix. A great calm settled through her. She felt as she had always imagined a bride should feel. She had arranged this in prayer and was sure that this marriage was sanctified. She seemed purified and was not frightened. Now she rose from her knees and blew out the candles on the wall, leaving only the tiny candle flickering in a porcelain bowl under the crucifix. She climbed onto the bed and lay on her back on the covers, listened to the spring frogs and whippoorwills outside, and watched the small yellow smudge of light move on the white ceiling and on the wall, making the shadow above the crucifix bob and shift. The air in the room was cool and fresh on her brow and hands and bare feet. She lay and looked at the small gleaming bronze figure of the Christ on the crucifix, at its gaunt and graceful muscularity, the hard, stretched pectoral muscles and the long, ropelike muscles in the thighs; and once again in her mind’s eye that lean muscularity merg
ed with the image of George as she had first seen him. It had become a strange habit, this transposition; the first few times it had happened she had felt shame. But in the long lonely nights of his absence, she had grown more at ease with it. Once she had even stroked the bronze figure, running her fingertips down the hard flanks and thighs while in her imagination were the torso and limbs of her love. But only once had she done that. It had seemed that such a thing must be profane.

  Now she did not know whether George would come to her room; she knew the hazards of it and would not have been surprised if he did not. But she had professed to be his bride and he seemed to have understood her and it was his right to come to her bed now if he chose to do it. If he did, she was ready to be his bride.

  The seconds whispered by into minutes, and she did not seem to be drowsy, but when a draft of air from her closing bedroom door breathed over her body it woke her from a shallow sleep. The candle flame under the crucifix was leaping from that motion of air, and silhouetted against its leaping reflection on the wall he stood, looking down at her.

  George stood for minutes looking at the white-clad form lying supine on the great bed, at the austere simplicity of her room, this room where she lived, where she lay alone when he was away, where she slept and dreamed and prayed; he was touched and pleased by its lack of clutter. The two dominant aspects of the room were the icon, with its candle and the crucifix above it, and the bed. Secondary in the room were the dark wardrobe, the guitarra case in a corner, a Bible, a sewing basket and a small shelf of books. It was as if the lonely gentility of this beautiful girl’s life were depicted in symbols which made that life easy to understand. To have a home! he thought. And then a rush of warmth bathed his soul and he thought: More than anyplace else, this room is my home, because she is here.

  He hesitated, his body poised like a great question mark, his world upon his shoulders, the cool night air on his sweat-bedewed skin. He had come to the room inflamed with the desire his imagination had built around her words, but now had paused to revere.