The next morning before daylight Teresa was taken on a litter down to the river galley and put in the small covered cabin in the stern, with a nurse to watch over her. Maria and Rita were brought down after sunrise with their baggage, looking pale and forlorn and red-eyed. But they brightened when they saw that Teresa’s trunk was on board also.
“Yes,” said the nurse. “Señorita Teresa is going, too. But she is sick now. Perhaps later you may talk with her.”
The lieutenant got aboard last, ashen-faced, spoke to the citizens and soldiers on the wharf, and then saluted.
The line was cast off and the boat that had carried the de Leyba family from New Orleans to the outpost of St. Louis two years earlier swung into the wide brown current of the Mississippi to bear its survivors back down to civilization.
PART THREE
1812–1818
37
LOCUST GROVE, KENTUCKY
1812
RICHMOND, FEBRUARY 21, 1812
Major Wm Croghan
Locust Grove Ky
Dear Sir:
The enclosed certified copy of a law which passed both branches of the Virginia legislature yesterday, I hasten to forward, thro you, to General Clark. I can truly declare that no event in my life has given me more pleasure than I derived from being the instrument of Justice and Honor, in preparing, presenting, and urging the passage of the inclosed act. Whether I may be permitted to congratulate you and General Clark upon the success which attended my efforts, I know not; but, of this, I am persuaded, that had you been present, you would have approved of the course which I pursued, which sustained the honor and dignity of General Clark, while it interested the tenderness, the generosity, and the magnanimity of the General Assembly of Virginia. Our house was dissolved in tears: my voice was almost drowned in my own emotion. I told them the Story of the Sword, and urged as a reason why they should present to the gallant veteran another, that he had, with a haughty sense of wounded pride and feeling, broken and cast away that which this state formerly gave him.
I hope the whole transaction of yesterday will afford to your illustrious friend the pleasure which it gave, not to me alone, but to more than two thirds of the Virginia legislature.
I write in great haste, that my letter may not be delaid and with it the enclosed bill. Be pleased to present my most respectful compliments to General Clark and to Mrs. Croghan, and your gallant son if he is with you, and permit me to subscribe myself with my best wishes for your happiness.
Your friend and very Humble Servt,
CHs FENTON MERCER
“Do you suppose he might do something hotheaded again this time?” Diana Gwathmey asked. She gazed out the window of the kitchen house at the old man in his wheelchair in the sun on the veranda. There was a yellow-fringed black shawl around his shoulders and his black hat lay on a table beside him. He had put aside his book and newspapers and letterbox and was gazing northward toward the Ohio valley as he seemed to do most of the time these days.
“I think not,” said Lucy Croghan, now pouring strong tea into two cups on a tray.
“I’m not sure it’s tea he’s a wanting,” said Diana, giggling, nodding toward her uncle. Lucy looked out the window in time to see the old man lift a small jug and tilt it to his lips. Then he put the jug back on the table and replaced the hat over it. The maneuver was awkward because he had little control of his right hand.
“Ah, the old fox,” Lucy breathed. “Now, what varmint smuggled that’n to ‘im, I’d like t’ know!”
“Not I,” said Diana. “But sometimes I fancy the orchard’s full of his old scouts—Mister Kenton, perhaps—and they creep out like Indians when we aren’t a-watchin’ and bring it to ’im.” She stirred honey into both cups of tea. “Maybe he had been sipping on the sly like this when he broke the first sword. D’you think maybe so, Auntie?”
Lucy frowned at the memory. “No, dear, I’m sure he was just as sober as you or me. He was insulted, I know that. And rightly so. Oh, he did embarrass those well-meaning dignitaries something awful! Embarrassed me, too, but I could understand how he felt. A fancy secondhand sword the state of Virginia bought for him, from some dandy gent who’d ‘hardly ever used it,’ as his reward for all he’d done! Well, I was embarrassed but, by Heaven, I was proud of him! That Colonel Hancock put that silly little token in his hands, and stood back, beamin’ like they’d just done him a great favor. But George he just looked down at it as if it was a toad, and he turned that hard eye ‘o his on that man and said, I remember it exactly, he said, ‘Young man, when Virginia needed a sword, I gave her one. Now she sends me a toy, when I need bread!’ And he took the sword, an’ he stuck it between two bricks in that veranda there, shoved it way into the ground, put his foot on it, and snapped it clean off, right at the hilt. Don’t know where he found the strength. Well, it was an awful minute, but like I said, I was proud. And he was sober, I’ll swear to that! Now you take ‘im this tea, an’ have a nice visit. He just dotes on you, an’ you do ‘im a world o’ good, dear.”
Diana sighed, looking out at him as she balanced the tray. “He’s such an adorable old bear. But you’re sure all my chitchat don’t bother him?”
“Honey, go on with you. He tells us y’re his sweetheart. And it keeps his mind alert, recollectin’ all those tales.”
“Hello, Uncle George,” Diana chirped as she set the tea tray on the table. “You look very handsome today, sir!” She curtseyed and extended her hand, and held it there while he gathered his attention from wherever it had been. He turned his head slowly and brought his dark eyes to bear on her face. His eyebrows had turned to white bristle since his stroke three years ago. The crown of his head was bald, mottled with great freckles and age spots, and his long white hair, with just a few strands of faded red in it, hung down to his shawl. His mouth, so finely shaped only a few years ago, was turned down bitterly at the corners and crumpled inward, and the cheeks were sunken under the cheekbones, all his teeth being gone now, and the flesh on the right side of his face—eyelid and mouth corners—drooped. Sometimes Diana imagined that all the flaccid, weathered, thin skin of his face might slide off were it not held up so tightly stretched over the narrow bridge of his patrician nose.
“Annhh, hn,” he gurgled phlegmatically and reached to her with his huge, gnarled, brown-flecked left hand. His cheek dimpled as he smiled and the sadness went out of his eyes. “Ah, it’s about time, Missy. You left me fer a long spell …”
“Nonsense, now, Uncle, you know I …”
“Eh?”
“I say you know very well I come every fortnight to see my sweetheart! I was here two weeks ago and here I am again …”
“Aye, aye, you do, eh? Heh!” His hand, trembling, held hers and drew it insistently toward his breast, and she stepped closer and with her other hand stroked his bald dome, as he liked.
“Well, sir, what’ve you been thinking of today, sitting here on this fine afternoon?” That was, she knew, the way to get him started. She was always amazed at what she found when she would dip into his stream of reveries that way.
“Oh, I was puzzling on a strange thing,” he began, going far into the distance. “You know, when William and Mr. Lewis were way out there in the West, where there had never been a white man before ’em, they found a squaw there, and d’you know, there was a tattoo on that woman’s arm. It said ’J. Bowman.’” He clucked his tongue. “’J. Bowman,’” he repeated. “Now, I’ve thought on that many and many a time, Missy, and if there’s an explanation for it, why, it must be wonderful indeed …” He fell back into his musings and was still for several minutes. Then he looked up at her as if she had just appeared there. “Ha, Diana! Well, sit down there, and tell me anything you know.” His voice was growing louder and more animated now, and she knew she was once again successfully pulling him out of that great, turbid river of long memories.
“Well, I know that some fine gentlemen of Virginia will be here today and they have a magnificent new sword to pres
ent to you, and you shall be a gracious, fine Virginian yourself as you accept it …”
“Ah, ha, Missy. I know what you’re trying to say, that I should be a good boy, rather than a spiteful one, and not break their toy, eh?”
“Well, I should hope! They’ve come a long way.”
“That they have. Well, we shall see, Missy. But you know,” he added with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “I don’t always have the control of my temper; no, I never have had.”
“But you will today, or I shall be very, very put out. I came today to have a nice day with you, and no tantrums. And they’re going to give you a nice pension, too, Auntie Lucy tells me.”
“About time, by God,” he rumbled. “D’you know, I never got a penny of my officer’s pay for all those battles, all those years? And d’you know, they ended up givin’ all my boys one hundred and eight acres of land for their valor, not the three hundred they were promised. And wouldn’t’ve give ’em any of it, if I hadn’t badgered ’em the way I did so many years …”
“Drink this nice hot tea, now, and don’t fret so.”
“Ah, thankee. Tea, eh? Hm.” He reached to his hat, put it on, and tipped the little jug over the teacup.
“Now what on earth!” Diana exclaimed, feigning surprise.
“Just a special sweetening, that’s all, that I prefer over honey …”
“Aha. Well, just don’t get yourself too sweetened up before those gentlemen come …”
“La, la, la; one’d think you was a wife, Missy!”
“And pray what d’you know about wives, Uncle!”
“All my friends’ve got ’em, that’s what … ah …” A frown gathered on his brow suddenly, and his vision seemed to recede inward again.
“What is it, Uncle?” Diana asked, leaning close. She always strove to keep him jolly during her visits, and felt personally responsible whenever he would have a slump in spirits or lapse into his reveries.
He picked up the cup and took a long drink from it, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Then he gave a deep sigh, and gazed off over her shoulder, his eyes watery. “Ah Missy! If the fates had treated me fair, you’d’ve had an elegant aunt you’d’ve loved very much, so fine and gentle was she, like you be fine and gentle.” He blinked rapidly, then raised a handkerchief up, dabbed his mouth with it, and returned it to the sleeve of his half-dead right arm. Diana patted the back of his hand. He took her hand and began stroking it, still seeming to look at a point miles beyond, and said, “Aye, fine and gentle.”
After a while, Diana said, “The Spanish lady, Uncle?”
“The very one. The Spanish lady.”
Diana did not ask any of the many questions she would have liked to ask. She had asked before, asked questions about the lady’s name and age and all sorts of inquiries, fishing for details of a story which she imagined must be unbearably romantic. Diana lately had become a reader of novels, and in her mind’s eye she had often seen her uncle as a dashing young cavalier, intermingling gusty sighs with a dark-eyed beauty in a voluminous satin gown of exotic design. But the old soldier could never be prevailed upon to confirm such details. He would only mention the Spanish lady on occasions when he was somewhat in his cups, and would give only mere fragments of allusion, as if his mind were fluttering around the margins of a memory too painful to look at directly. Once when Diana had pressed him for more details to make her heart race, he had admonished: “You ought to read history, girl. Novels will make you silly.”
But Diana was remembering something now. “Uncle George, you said something a few months back when you dictated that letter to Mister Vigo. D’you remember …”
“Vigo!” Again the old man’s face contorted with emotion.
“You said that about ’life’s tenderest string.’ D’you remember that? I suspect it was about your lady ….”
“Vigo,” the old man repeated. “Missy, pray would you read me his letter again? It’s there in the letterbox ….”
She found it near the top of his cherished correspondence. She unfolded it. She had had to read it to him every visit since it had come.
Vincennes, July 15, 1811
Sir:
Permit an old man who has witnessed your exertions in behalf of your country in its revolutionary struggles to address you at the present moment. When viewing the events which have succeeded those important times, I often thought that I had reasons to lament that the meritorious services of the best patriots of those days were too easily forgotten and almost taxed my adopted Country with ingratitude. But when I saw that on a late occasion, on the fourth of July last, the Citizens of Jefferson County from a spontaneous impulse of gratitude and esteem had paid an unfeigned tribute to the Veteran to whose skill and valor America and Kentucky owe so much, I then repelled the unwelcome idea of national ingratitude and my sentiments chimed in unison with those of the worthy Citizens of Kentucky towards the Savior of this once distressed Country. Deprived of the pleasure of personal attendance on that day, I took this method of manifesting to you, sir, that I participated in the general sentiments.
Please, sir, to accept this plain but genuine offering from a man whom you honored once with your friendship, and who will never cease to put up prayers to Heaven that the evening of your days may be serene and happy.
I have the honor to be, Sir, Your most obed. Servt.
VIGO
“Vigo,” the old man said again, shutting his eyes and shaking his head. Then he stared hard, seeming to be in another search through memory. “D’you know, that man cashed drafts upon Virginia for me for—what was it—twelve thousand dollars or thereabouts, that Virginia has never paid ’im?”
But Diana was more interested in romance than finance. She said, “And then you wrote to him that you’d not have that ‘serene and happy evening’ because Providence had ‘cut asunder life’s tenderest string.’ Uncle, I know you meant by that the Spanish Lady!” Diana exclaimed with a knot in her throat and a mist in her eyes, as it was the favorite one of all her reveries, and she yearned to have it confirmed from his own lips. “He knew the Spanish Lady, didn’t he?” If I ever meet Mister Vigo, she thought, I must ask him all about her.
“Vigo,” the General murmured. “De Leyba. And Cerré, and Gratiot, and Pollock. All of ’em ruined like me, due to some great meanness in the Capital.” He seemed to be gnawing mentally at the familiar old lament, which she had heard him speak of a dozen times. “Virginia wouldn’t honor my expenses of the Western campaign. They said I didn’t send ’em an accounting. Well, God knows what a task it was to keep records in the heat of that war … but I was meticulous in public matters, and by Heaven …” he banged his fist on the arm of his wheelchair, “I sent every account book and every voucher—twenty thousand bloody vouchers, so help me, writ on any shred o’ paper as we could scrounge! I sent Bill Shannon to the state auditor at Williamsburg in November of ’79 with all those packets, and he took receipt for ’em.” Diana marveled at his recall of such details thirty years later, though he might forget what he had done yesterday or last week. “Every blasted transaction! No matter how little. A bottle o’ rum or a washerwoman’s hire, I made a voucher. How many a candle did I burn up, sitting up at night over them pestilential accounts, when my mind ought to’ve been on strategy! Bill Shannon couldn’t even carry all that paper by himself. Seventy packets, it was. I remember exactly. Paper, and paper, and paper! How could anybody lose that much paper? I mean, unless they wanted to?”
He was thumping on the chair arm with his fist as he labored once again through his lament. “And then the auditor said those records didn’t exist! We showed the receipt for ’em, and then ’e says, ’Well, they must was destroyed when Benedict Arnold burned the Capital at Richmond.’ Well, maybe they was, an’ then again maybe they wasn’t. But they was never found and many a good patriot went broke to ’is grave since!” He kept thumping on the chair for a while, his eyes blazing into the distance, then he stopped and vented a huge sigh and se
emed to shrink with weariness. Diana never knew what to say when he was on this pet tirade. It seemed too absurd a story to her, and much as she liked to believe her uncle, she wondered sometimes if he had fabricated this explanation out of his disappointments and come to believe it was true.
It seemed more likely to her that he would not have been able to keep such precise records during those campaigns, or that Shannon had not delivered them to the Capital, or some other explanation stemming from the vicissitudes of those troubled times. At any rate, it was all too complex and remote and businesslike for her turn of mind, and she had to make herself patient as he repeated the woeful old litany, which she had heard so many times before. But today it was upsetting her. Here he sat, drinking more than a little and worrying the scabs of those old wounds of state injustice while at this moment, probably—she looked up at the shadows on the walls of the great four-chimneyed brick Croghan house—emissaries of that state were on their way here to present him with another token sword. Young and romantic-headed though she was, Diana Gwathmey could sense another mortifying storm of temper a-brewing.
If only he’d go to sleep for a while, she thought, so I could steal away that awful little jug. Though doubtless another would appear from somewhere if I did …
But the old general was not nodding. He was still brooding. “It all got worse when Virginia turned over its war debts to Congress,” he grumbled. “Congress was worse than the Virginia Assembly. One would think they’d never heard of the war in the West. We spent most of our time applying for reimbursement, did Jonathan and me. Years and years … Jonathan …”
His voice broke on the name. Jonathan, closest in age of the Clark brothers and George’s boyhood playmate, had died suddenly the previous year and it had been a crushing blow. “Old Jonathan,” he mused now. “It was hard, Missy, that he who wanted to live should die, while I, wanting to die, should live.”
Long Knife Page 58