Juana came down from the house as Noah and January were filling, with billets of wood, the two iron cressets that had been set in the little burying-ground. January had noted the roughly-fenced little plot between the orchard and the corrals earlier in the day, and had meant to investigate it after thoroughly looking over the scene of the murder itself. At that time – mid-morning – riding out to Arroyo Sauceito and back would leave him an hour or so of full daylight before the servants’ dinner.
As it was, the handsome laundress bore a basket of tortillas and a pot of beans and beef left over from that meal, better rations than most Louisiana field-hands got.
During this makeshift supper, by the light of the flames, and afterwards for most of the remainder of the night, January had little trouble learning from his fellow gravedigger everything he cared to know about the household at Perdition.
‘Ran all the way from Virginia to get away from ’em,’ said the houseman Noah, unwrapping the loose bundle of picks and shovels. Malojo, his back to the cressets’ glare, checked the loads on the two rifles he’d propped against the fence at his side. January had heard Jalisco giving orders, for Lope and Brawny to stay close to the house, and had caught the word, Comanche.
We probably couldn’t have slipped away to search the canyon anyway, he thought, not altogether displeased. Though he had wanted to avoid anyone on the rancho learning how much he guessed about Hookwire’s death, he had also had doubts about conducting such a search by torch-light.
Is Quigley riding down to San Antonio tonight to get his warrant, or will he wait til sun-up, like we’ll have to do?
Damn it. Damn it.
‘I thought he was gonna choke, when they came drivin’ up from town with all their trunks an’ plunder.’ Noah shook his head, and shucked off his shirt. Though barely five-foot-five, he was muscled like a fighting-dog. ‘It’d be funny, if they hadn’t moved in. Elysium, their place was called back in Virginia. Enoch tell me it’s a fancy word for “Heaven”, an’ you’d never see a place less like Heaven if you walked til your toenails bled.’
‘You were there, then?’
‘Born there. Worked in the stables when I was a pup, an’ then in the house when Ole Marse gambled away the boys’ valet, like the idiot he was. Best day of my life, when Marse Vincent took me an’ Enoch, in exchange for not goin’ to court over that stupid will. An’ given how Marse Vincent got when he was drunk,’ he added grimly, ‘best day of my life ain’t sayin’ much.’
‘I heard,’ said January tactfully, ‘as how Old Michie Taggart drank.’
‘I wouldn’t mind a man drinkin’, if he didn’t take it out of his niggers when he was jaggered.’ The small man drove his shovel into the soft earth. ‘But he was mean as poison an’ stupid to boot, an’ Marse Jack was just like him. An’ myself, I personally wouldn’t give Mama Taggart a litter of rats to raise. When Ole Marse was in Richmond, she’d thrash whatever of the housemaids he was bullin’ that week – I remember when she pulled the earbobs right outta one gal’s ears, left the meat hangin’ bleedin’, drippin’ blood down on her shoulders. Texas was about as far away as Marse Vincent could run, for all the good it did him.’
‘Still,’ said January, ‘a man can’t turn away his kin.’
‘Oh, can’t he?’ Noah sniffed. The flickering light threw the shadows of the two diggers against the other crosses in that handkerchief of consecrated ground; names and death-dates already faded to nothing. ‘First thing M’am Amelia did, when they came, was tell Marse Vincent to fire all the Mexicans, ’cause they’s Catholic an’ takes orders from the Pope. Like the Pope got nuthin’ better to do than send Jalisco letters tellin’ him to murder us in our beds.’
‘I got letters from the Pope,’ put in Malojo, not taking his eyes from the darkness. ‘I got a whole stack of ’em. But I can’t read, so I don’t know what they says.’
‘They’re probably written in Latin anyway,’ pointed out January, and the older man chuckled. ‘I take it Mr Taggart gave his mother some good reason why he couldn’t fire three-quarters of his cowhands on short notice?’
‘He coulda told her God hisself sent him engraved instructions not to, an’ she’d still pester him about them bein’ Catholic. She hates Catholics like poison. Freemasons, too. She was on after him to have us dig up Sancho an’ Chapo here –’ he nodded toward the crosses nearby – ‘an’ plant ’em over by the tack shed, rather’n leave ’em lay in the same dirt with a good Protestant like Jayce over yonder … who’d ride into town, get drunk, an’ bugger the boys who worked at the livery-stable. White people …’ Noah shook his head.
‘But they wore on him, on Marse Vincent. M’am Amelia, an’ Miss Alicia. From the start of comin’ here, back when he was livin’ down by the river ’fore he married M’am Valentina an’ got this land, Marse Vin was for President Lamar an’ Texas takin’ its place among the nations of the world – A shinin’ single star in the West, he’d say. An’ Gideon Pollack been courtin’ him for months, when they wasn’t stealin’ each others’ cattle an’ beatin’ each others’ men in town.’
‘Over Texas nationhood?’
‘Hell, no! Over land. In Texas, it’s always about land.’
January looked around him in the darkness. ‘Like there’s a shortage?’
‘Good land,’ amended Noah. ‘Meanin’, land you can raise cotton on. Pollack’s got three labor of bottomland by Onion Creek – that’s not quite six hundred acres – an’ the rest of his land lies too close to the Comanchería for it to be much good to him. He was maneuverin’ to get Don Gael Valenzuela’s share of the old San Domingo land grant – that was originally part of the San Saba Mission lands – but Don Gael deeded the whole caboodle over to M’am Valentina. Pollack kept tryin’ to make up to Marse Vin, to get him to let Pollack sheep run on Perdition ranges, so Pollack could then put all his land into cotton.’
And if he got it, that explains what he was doing buying slaves in Galveston, thought January. ‘So Michie Taggart blockin’ him out of his lands was a real blow.’
‘He’d have talked his way around it in a couple of weeks.’ The slave gestured the problem aside with a wave. ‘Gideon Pollack can talk anybody into pretty much anythin’, if he gets the chance. He’d got M’am Amelia eatin’ out of his hand. Let me tell you, that’s a wonder to see! Her brother’s a Congressman, see, though I didn’t notice him offerin’ her an’ Auntie a room in his house when Jack the Idiot managed to lose the plantation. But she’ll go along with any Texan who’ll support Houston an’ join the United States, so’s the slave states in Congress won’t get pushed around by the factory-owners an’ abolitionists up North. He – Pollack – even got Aunt Alicia all in a flutter.’
‘I think,’ said Malojo, ‘he is the only man of whom poor Doña Alicia is not afraid – with his voice like a caress, and his tender eyes.’
Did he think she’d inherit part of her nephew’s lands? Or that she’d convince Francis to sell cheap?
He couldn’t imagine a man that smart being that deluded.
‘Taggart was Pollack’s second, when some banker in Austin called him out last week.’
‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ said Noah. ‘M’am Amelia made eyes at him like a spoony schoolgirl.’
‘There’s a picture I can live without …’
‘You an’ me both, brother. Pollack would come here – without that wife of his – bringin’ copies of the Southern Patriot, an’ him an’ M’am Amelia an’ Aunt Alicia would sit out on the gallery, slangin’ Daniel Webster an’ John Quincy Adams, an’ goin’ on about the abolitionists an’ how the United States needs Texas. For Pollack, politics, an’ all their bullshit arguments about slavery, are more important to him than livin’ every day. An’ I swear Pollack was the feller behind the State Archives bein’ stolen—’
‘The State Archives was stolen?’
‘Oh, hell, yes. Just this last week. Where you been?’
Hiding with an escaped slave of Pollack’s … January saw ag
ain Quigley and his men, arguing with Torvald Ekholm before the doors of that rambling wooden house.
There is politics in town … Nationalists say, Houstons have done some frightful thing, and now the sheriff is seeking them all over the county.
‘Why the hell …?’
‘First thing President Lamar did when he took office,’ provided Noah, ‘– well, other’n slaughterin’ every Cherokee he could lay hands on – was move the capital from Houston to Austin, lock, stock, an’ barrel. Mostly barrel: Houston – the town, not the general – has been hurtin’ for the loss of trade an’ business ever since the move. An’ ever since, Houston’s supporters – the general, not the town – all been sayin’ how the capital ought to be moved back, so’s they can be close to New Orleans an’ the US trade. So just a week ago, somebody up an’ broke into President Lamar’s brand-new Records Office in Austin an’ stole three wagonloads of archives, tax-records, property records, government accounts goin’ back to the King of Spain, an’ fuck-all else, an’ everybody in town’s sayin’ as how it was Gideon Pollack that was behind it, an’ how they’ll show up any day now in Houston.’
‘So what’s General Houston going to do with them when they arrive?’ asked January reasonably. ‘I mean, he can’t pretend they’re not there. Certainly President Lamar is going to have something to say about it.’
‘Beats hell outta me. Who knows what white folks can talk theirselves into believin’? But M’am Amelia been goin’ around callin’ it “a blow struck for true democracy”, an’ Miss Alicia’s been hoppin’ up an’ down, she’s so pleased with it. I’m thinkin’ that kind of finished the job of openin’ Marse Vincent’s eyes, as to what kind of people the Houstonites are callin’ to ’em. You want some of this?’ He reached up out of the grave for the gourd of ginger water that Juana had brought down from the house, and January accepted it gratefully. Though the night was deeply chilly, he was sweating.
Torch-light gleamed in the direction of the house. A moment later, a wave of stink told January that someone – it turned out to be Davy and Missouri – was carrying the remains of Mr Hookwire down to his final resting-place: evidently nobody wanted him in the courtyard anymore, and no wonder.
‘Man,’ gasped Noah, ‘we gotta get that poor bastard put away …’
Gold eyes gleamed from the orchard trees, where every carrion-beast in Travis County seemed to be lingering beyond the light of the cressets, disappointed but hopeful.
‘Best dig that hole deep,’ said Malojo.
‘He’s all yours,’ said Missouri.
Noah sighed. ‘Gonna be a long night.’
FOURTEEN
For the next several hours, until the iron tongue of midnight tolled twelve (as Shakespeare – or Hannibal – would have put it), January encouraged his fellow gravedigger in his gossip about the folks at the Big House: their histories, their personalities, and where they’d been and what they’d been doing Monday morning.
It wasn’t difficult. White people said slaves gossiped about what wasn’t any of their business, but January knew from bitter experience, that whatever was going on in the Big House was the business of people who could be sold off like horses, if Daddy lost too much money at poker, or Miss Susie wanted to be sent to school in Paris. Nothing, he had learned, could be kept from the servants, to whom even small decisions made upon a whim could become matters of life and death.
So he heard how M’am Amelia, while berating Old Marse George about his drinking, always made sure there was plenty of liquor about the house. ‘It kept him out of her way, see, so’s she could run the place.’ How Jack Taggart, from the age of fifteen, would force himself on the girls in the quarters and would dare and bully his younger brother Vin into joining him in these expeditions. ‘You couldn’t keep him off the girls. Abby – headwoman on the place – told me, he even bulled poor Miss Alicia when she was young. He was the same age as her, see. Had her, not once but a dozen times, an’ pushed Marse Vincent into joinin’ him.
‘Alicia always was queer,’ he added. ‘I don’t know whether it started with that, or if she was queer before it. She used to sneak out early in the mornings, saddle her own horse and ride down to the cotton fields, to stare at the men while they worked. When Old Marse’d have one of the men stripped an’ whipped in the yard, you could see Alicia, peekin’ around the curtains of her room, watchin’ like she couldn’t look away. Yet she’d run a mile, any man spoke to her. Still will, though that was a long time ago.’
A long time ago, January well knew, had nothing to do with rape. He recalled that disconcerting stare, fixed on him in the lantern-light of the street in Austin. That combination of fascination and dread. ‘I take it Ole Marse George wasn’t about to put up a dowry for her big enough to interest anybody in the county?’
‘Marse George?’ Noah’s short laugh held no mirth. ‘I’d have paid to see that. By the time that poor gal was fifteen, Marse George couldn’t have come up with the money to give to his own daughters, let alone his wife’s sister. His own daughters at least got out into society, an’ did make marriages, eventually. But M’am Amelia kept a grip on her sister –’ he paused, demonstrating with the hard dark knob of his fist – ‘so she never did learn how men and women talk to each other. Just what she read in novels. No wonder she’s ’fraid of men, an’ makes up stories about ’em in her head.’
Noah’s account of Monday morning was substantially the same as Missouri’s had been, earlier that day (though it felt like weeks before).
‘Now that story ’bout how the three of ’em – M’am Amelia, Aunt Alicia, an’ Francis – was together in the parlor an’ seen M’am Valentina down in the orchard through some window or other … That’s just nonsense. You seen yourself the parlor don’t look out onto the orchard nor anywheres near it. And yeah, there’s times when the three of ’em will be playin’ cards in the parlor an’ slangin’ everybody they know, but not this past week, they weren’t. M’am Amelia an’ Aunt Alicia weren’t speakin’, on account of M’am Amelia chewin’ into her sister that Aunt Alicia had a lover …’
And he laughed, as January’s eyebrows shot up.
‘Yeah, just what I said myself when Davy told me ’bout it. He’d got it from Melly—’
‘Could a woman meet a lover in secret around here?’ asked January.
‘Oh, hell, yeah.’ Noah drove his shovel into the earth, and paused to stretch his back. It was late in the night by that time, the lamps in the Big House darkened except for a glow at the northeast corner of the upper floor, where Mr Francis – Noah said – had his ‘study’. ‘Most days, M’am Valentina would ride out – cause she couldn’t stand bein’ stuck under the same roof with M’am Amelia – or else do sewin’ in that little boudoir of hers, an’ that suited M’am Amelia just fine. She’d sit in the parlor, goin’ over the plantation accounts or readin’ the newspapers an’ drinkin’. Sometimes Aunt Alicia’d be with her, readin’ newspapers or novels or whatever, an’ sneakin’ into the library where she had her laudanum hidden behind the books. But often as not, she’d be in the library, or wanderin’ around the house searchin’ it like she does, or walkin’ in the orchard … She coulda been anyplace, really.’
And Francis, reflected January – perennially in his ‘study’ with the door locked against his aunt’s befogged good intentions – could in fact have been anywhere as well.
‘Damn!’ Noah reached up to the edge of the grave for a rock – the surface of the ground was slightly higher than his armpits by this time – and flung the missile in the direction of the still form, covered with saddle-blankets, that lay in the corner of the burying-ground farthest from the side of his prospective resting-place.
There was a frantic scurrying and two or three somethings – rats or weasels, by their size – bolted out from beneath the coarse coverings and vanished into the dark.
‘Hate those goddam things. Missouri, you gotta be keepin’ a better eye on our friend over there—’
‘You want m
e to watch him, or watch for Comanche?’ retorted the cowhand.
The big adobe house, pale in the moonlight, had gone dark.
And what would become of them now, January wondered. Noah, and Davy, and the cowhands Missouri and Twenty-One? What would become of the cottonhands in their tiny hamlet in the bottomlands near the river, where Vabsley the overseer locked them into their cabins every night? (‘He’s a Yankee from Providence, Rhode Island,’ Noah had said. ‘A teetotaler, an’ mean as a rattlesnake. He steals the food from the plantation stores an’ sells it in town.’) Did Francis intend to keep Perdition, once he forged a will leaving it to himself? Or did he plan to sell the land, and the people on it, for what they’d fetch?
When Noah spoke of the cottonhands down in the quarters, something in his voice had made January wonder if he, and Enoch, and Davy, and the two cowhand slaves who had access to horses, were making plans of their own. On the frontier, as Hannibal had remarked, would it be less difficult for a black man to escape bondage? Though the risk of running into the Comanche made January’s blood run cold.
It was slightly less than two hundred miles to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished in 1824 – not that the slave-owners in Mexican Texas had cared. A long way to run, and anybody’s guess what would happen to you, if you were caught.
‘Do you think she did it?’ asked January after a time. ‘M’am Valentina?’
‘Not my place to think anythin’.’ Noah’s dark eyes glinted as he bent again to his work.
‘They’d fought.’
‘Wasn’t the first time. Like I said, Marse Vincent drank. Hell, with M’am Amelia an’ her kin there, I’d drink, too. Even before they came, he’d get morose. Shut himself up for days. It was him takin’ up with that woman in Austin again, after turnin’ Ortega off, that made M’am Valentina go after him the way she done Easter night. He came in late, an’ dead-tired, it looked like, an’ covered with dust. You think that’s deep enough?’
He measured the level of the ground, which was now almost to the top of his head.
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