They turned from the rail; against the dark of the Suzette’s superstructure the open door of the tiny dining salon glowed faintly now in the gathering dusk. Most of the cargo was cotton. The whole ship seemed permeated with its faint, fusty smell, its dry haze of dust. Two days, January thought. Two days of eating at the tiny table in a corner of the salon reserved for servants – and the slaves of the Americans en route – and sleeping on a hammock in Hannibal’s closet-sized ‘stateroom’.
He thought of the dream he’d had – he didn’t even recall when – of Rose sitting with Selina in the parlor of the house on Rue Esplanade. The house that was her boarding-school, her life. How could I have left her alone? How could I have risked my life – her life, her livelihood, the wellbeing of our sons?
It is a hard country, Valentina had said, for a woman alone.
And that, he knew, was true of anywhere.
But in his dream, he’d seen the French doors open from the gallery on the street, and Roux Bellinger standing in the doorway. Standing for one instant, before he stumbled, weeping, to clasp his daughter in his arms.
It is a war, thought January. And that is victory.
And I couldn’t not go to fight.
‘Hannibal?’
‘Amicus meus?’
‘If this situation ever arises again, when I’m going to set out for Texas to help someone …’
Hannibal raised his brows.
‘Hit me. Hard.’
The fiddler bowed. ‘It shall be as you say.’
THE ARCHIVES WAR
The National Archives of the Republic of Texas were, in fact, hijacked in 1842 (two years after the date of this fictional story).
In the face of a Mexican invasion which took San Antonio, Texas President Sam Houston – who had been re-elected after the defeat of President Mirabeau Lamar – announced that Austin was no longer the capital of Texas, and ordered that the archives be re-located to Washington-on-the-Brazos. The citizens of Austin formed a Vigilance Committee to prevent this, and promised armed resistance to any attempt to do so. Houston sent a band of Texas Rangers, who successfully loaded up three wagonloads of state papers before boardinghouse-keeper Angelina Eberly, proprietress of Eberly’s Tavern, fired a cannon at them. The Rangers made good their escape, with the wagons, but the vigilantes seized another cannon from the arsenal and pursued them, catching up with them at Brushy Creek. Only a few shots were fired, and the archives were re-captured at gunpoint and hauled back to Austin, where they remained.
Austin again became capital of Texas two years later.
The history of the American West contains several other instances of similar activities in the so-called County Seat Wars, of violence between towns (including archive-stealing) in competition for rulership over the new counties of the West.
A statue of Mrs Eberly firing her cannon still stands in downtown Austin.
FOOTNOTES
EIGHT
1 See Days of the Dead
EIGHTEEN
2 See Drinking Gourd
Lady of Perdition Page 29