The toy rooster had been a gift from the Governor’s wife, Doña Margareta, a bored young woman who spent as much time as possible with the Berry-benders. Margareta had been raised in a great ducal household in the City of Mexico—she found provincial society all but intolerable and was often at tea at the Berrybenders’, the only company available that she considered worthy of her. It had sometimes occurred to Tasmin that the reason they were still detained in Santa Fe was because Doña Margareta didn’t want to lose their entertaining company.
“Give your brother his rooster. It’s his, not yours,” Tasmin ordered. She did not turn to look at Petal.
Petal didn’t answer—in the face of such an absurd claim, silence was surely called for.
“I fear you are raising up a very defiant brat,” Mary said.
“Give your brother his rooster,” Tasmin repeated, in slightly sterner tones.
“I lost it,” Petal said. “It’s a bird. It flew away.”
“What bosh,” Kate Berrybender said. “Stuffed roosters don’t fly, as she well knows, the little thief.”
At the sound of Kate’s voice Petal instantly hid the rooster under her mother’s skirts. Kate Berry-bender could rarely be bluffed. She often gave Petal vigorous shakings, and was not averse to pulling her hair.
“The rooster left the room,” Petal amended.
No one cared to credit this remark, so Petal tried again.
“Mopsy ate it up,” she declared. Mopsy was a tiny short-haired mongrel the family had adopted. All the little boys adored Mopsy, but Petal dealt sternly with the dog, occasionally even hoisting Mopsy up by his tail, an effort that was likely to leave Petal red in the face.
Tasmin turned quickly and grabbed her daughter, who had reclaimed the rooster and was about to slip away with it.
“It’s my rooster!” she claimed boldly, when her mother looked her in the eye.
“What I’d say is that you have the devil in you— I wonder who could have put it there?” Tasmin inquired.
“You!” Petal cried—from the amused look in her mother’s eye she judged she was going to get to keep the rooster.
“You!” she repeated, more loudly.
No one in the room bothered to disagree. Vicky and Buffum, mothers of mere boys, both smiled. Queen bee of the nursery, Petal swept all before her. Little Onion was particularly susceptible to Petal’s manipulations, though often aghast at her daring.
“Wasn’t it you, Tasmin, who once said that only small children are sincere?” Vicky remembered.
“I did say that, but this child has taught me better,” Tasmin admitted.
Petal, confident now that none of the older boys—or her twin brother either—were going to challenge her possession of the stuffed rooster, strolled casually toward the five small males.
“I got the rooster. I like him because he’s blue,” she said. “He’ll always be my rooster.”
Petal liked to rub it in.
2
Above all, she didn’t want to think . . .
IN THE DARK MONTHS following Pomp Charbonneau’s death, Tasmin had wished she could be a bear or some other burrowing animal, capable of hibernation, of a cessation of thought. Above all, she didn’t want to think, because when she did think, it was only of Pomp, and every memory brought pain. When the wagon rolled into Santa Fe with the five dead men in it, the Governor of Nuevo México was the person most horrified. The last thing he would have wanted was to harm any of the English party—he had only meant to keep them under lucrative house arrest for several months before allowing them to go home. Captain Reyes’s job had been to escort them over the pass. No one should have been chained, much less executed. How was the Governor to know that Captain Reyes was vengeance-crazed, insane? At once profuse apologies were offered. The best house on the Plaza was made over to them. Servants were provided, every consideration shown. The fugitives, High Shoulders and Tom Fitzpatrick, were allowed to return without penalty. It had all been a mistake, a dreadful, tragic mistake. A very high official was sent off to make apologies to the Bents— after all, had the Bents not been most considerate of the Governor and his suite when they came to Bent’s Fort for the weddings?
Once settled into their handsome house, the Berrybenders were frequently invited to the Palace. Doña Margareta loved music—Vicky was often asked to play her cello, and she did play. Lord Berrybender was even provided with a guard when he went out shooting. The Indians were not to be trusted. The Governor wanted no more English dead.
All this had meant nothing to Tasmin, in her sad hibernation. She rarely left her room. From a large window she could see the cold sky, the mountains draped with snow. She stared for hours, as the children in her belly grew. The only visitors she welcomed were Kit and Geoff, the former because he had been there when Pomp was arrested; he had observed the mad Captain Reyes. With Kit she could go over the tragedy, try to understand it. She wanted Kit to talk her out of the notion that somehow Pomp Charbonneau had wanted to die. He had not fled; he had not fought; the firing squad had fired and missed him and still he had not moved. Tasmin feared it had something to do with her. Why had Pomp just stood there passively, as the mad captain advanced with his musket leveled? Why had she herself not attacked the captain? She could not stop her mind from reenacting the scene. Pomp had shown no fright—when she rushed out and spoke to him for the last time he seemed at ease, content. But why? It was a mystery that she feared would always haunt her. Talking to Kit, a true friend of Pomp’s and her true friend, helped a little.
Kit had been as shocked as anyone when he heard that the silly little captain with the plume in his hat had shot and killed Pomp Charbonneau. Of course, the captain had been mad. He shot his own officer—then he shot himself. It was madness, and madness could seldom be predicted. Pomp had no reason to expect execution. The arrest was a formality that had long been expected; Pomp’s mistake had been a failure to recognize how crazed the little captain really was.
“I’m sure Pomp thought it was a bluff, otherwise he would have fought,” Kit assured Tasmin. “Reyes was just a captain. He had no business ordering up firing squads.”
“I should have seized a gun,” Tasmin said. “I should have but I didn’t, and now it’s too late.”
Kit was almost as shocked by Tasmin’s appearance as he had been by the news of Pomp’s death. Tasmin’s cheeks were sunken, her eyes dull, her hair a tangle. She only wanted to talk of Pomp. When Kit told her that her husband was expected back at Bent’s Fort soon she showed little interest. Kit, happily married now to his Josie and living in a little house in Taos, soon exhausted his opinions. He had followed the wagon with the prisoners in it—Pomp, High Shoulders, Tom Fitzpatrick—expecting them to escape as soon as it was dark. The Mexican soldiers were just boys, too cold and scared to stop anyone who really wanted to escape. In the chill reaches of the night, with the snow blowing, they would have been unlikely to stop experienced men bent on flight. Kit, using the blizzard as a shield, had stayed close by, leading three horses; at midnight, just as he had expected, High Shoulders appeared, and then Tom Fitzpatrick. When Kit asked old Tom where Pomp was, he merely shrugged. “Wouldn’t come. Too fond of Jimmy’s wife, I expect,” Tom said. Kit thought it was a poor reason: when you were caught, the first order of business was to get away—then there would be plenty of time to be fond of Tasmin.
Facing Tasmin in the big cool room in Santa Fe, seeing her hollow cheeks and listless movements, he waited while she cried a little—but mostly Tasmin seemed beyond tears; blank, empty. The woman whose spirit had meant so much to Kit for so long had lost her spirit, and all because Pomp Charbonneau had been too big a fool to run away from a troop of Mexican soldiers whose captain was crazy as a bat.
“Pomp, he was always different,” Kit remarked— and yet, when Tasmin pressed him to expand on his statement, he was at a loss. Pomp could do all the things the other mountain men did—and he could do some things the mountain men couldn’t do, such as read a book or s
peak in foreign languages— and yet he wasn’t like the other men. He was friendly to a fault, and could read the country as well as Kit could, but in times of danger, when it was necessary to be quick, he often lingered, as if to inspect the danger and understand it. At the fort, the day of the arrest, he could have hidden himself in the woolshed, as Kit had. It might have worked, only Pomp didn’t try. He probably thought he could slide by the crazy captain and explain things to the Governor; he waited and watched when he should have hidden or run.
Tasmin was very large with child. Kit thought that might be one reason she looked so bad. But large or not, on a cold, snowy day, she made him walk with her to the graveyard near the church, where Pomp was buried. Kit felt awkward. Why visit the dead? Yet Tasmin insisted on standing there, cold and sad, for almost an hour.
Tasmin knew that Kit didn’t share her grief—no one did, nor could she expect them to. Eliza, the kitchen girl, to whom Pomp had often been kind, came closest to feeling what Tasmin felt; and yet Eliza had merely responded to Pomp’s kindness— she hadn’t been in love with him. Mary Berry-bender had an inkling as to how deeply attached Tasmin was to Pomp; she made no effort to reason with her. “There is no reasoning with grief,” Piet told Mary. “It wears away slowly, like the face on a coin.”
“Mine would never wear away, if you died,” Mary said. They went out often to chip at fossils in the pale, snowy hills; they were happy.
Jim Snow came, as he had promised, a few days before Tasmin was delivered of the twins. Buffum had had her Elf the week before; Vicky’s Randy arrived two weeks later. Tasmin wept when Jim appeared; the eager way Monty ran to his father touched her. And yet when Jim tried to kiss her she turned her mouth away.
“There’ll be a wait, Jimmy,” she told him flatly.
Jim, like Kit, was shocked by Tasmin’s appearance; but Monty was healthy, at least—he babbled about Mopsy, the little mongrel dog.
“We won’t eat Mopsy, not ever!” Monty insisted. He had not forgotten that Hugh Glass had eaten the bear cub Abby. He wanted to make sure nobody would ever eat Mopsy.
“I expect we can find better things to eat than a skinny pup,” Jim said, wary of absolute promises. Lord Berrybender was talking of going on to Texas—there were said to be fine plantation lands near the Gulf. But even Lord B. recognized the impracticality of setting off with so many infants and decided to wait in Santa Fe for some new guns he had ordered while in Bent’s Fort. The order had to go to England—he only trusted English guns—and come back, a wait of perhaps a year and a half, by which time the infants ought to be safely mobile.
Tasmin didn’t take her husband to Pomp’s grave—she had no wish to share it with him.
A week after the twins were born Jim asked Tasmin what she wanted him to do. Commerce on the prairies was rapidly increasing; the Bent brothers were fearful of losing ground to rivals. Jim Snow and Willy Bent had made a perfect haul to the east— now Charles Bent was pressing Jim to go again. There was no employment for him in Santa Fe, and there were three children to think of now.
“Go,” Tasmin said. “Perhaps when you come back I’ll like you again.”
At the moment she felt empty—what did she have to say to this man, her husband? They now had a brood of children, and yet she felt little connection to Jim. Better that he go.
Jim hesitated. He didn’t understand his wife, but he knew that the Mexican authorities had behaved capriciously once, as a result of which Pomp was dead. What if war broke out between Mexico and America? What would happen to his family? And yet Tasmin, indifferent to his presence at first, began to be hostile. She clearly didn’t want him around.
Cook, seeing that Mr. Snow was confused, took it upon herself to explain matters to him. Cook liked Mr. Snow. In her opinion it was only his abilities that had brought them safely thus far. She had studied maps. It was clear that Northamptonshire was still very far away. There might be more savages to contend with, more parching distances to cross—in her opinion doom would overtake them if they lost Mr. Snow.
“It’s only that Lady Tasmin was such a good friend of Mr. Pomp’s,” Cook explained, as Jim listened, grateful for any clue that might help explain Tasmin’s hostility.
Much as Cook liked Jim Snow, she had no intention of telling him all she knew about Lady Tasmin and Pomp Charbonneau. She was far from the opinion that delivering the whole truth was a good thing. Much harm could come with truth, in her opinion.
“When my husband died, God bless his soul, I hated any woman who still had a husband. If I couldn’t have my old John, who gave me eleven bairns, then I didn’t see why other women should get to have their men. That’s not Christian, I know, but that’s how womenfolk are. And maybe not just womenfolk.”
Jim looked surprised. Was Cook telling him that Tasmin disliked him at present just because he was alive and Pomp dead? Weren’t people always dying? He missed Pomp himself—they had enjoyed many fine scouts together—but it didn’t make him hate Kit Carson or the Broken Hand.
Jim felt reluctant to leave the kitchen, with its good smells. Cook said no more—in her view explanation was mostly wasted on men. Though her opinion of the scrawny Mexican chickens was low, she had managed to catch a fairly plump hen, just browning over the roasting pan. She had meant it as a small treat for her suitor, Mr. Fitzpatrick, who had left off suggesting indecencies and was on the whole behaving well. But seeing Jim Snow’s despondency, she changed her mind, slid the hen on a plate, and sat it in front of him. “You’ll be needing your strength, if you have to climb back over that pass,” Cook told him.
They had crossed the pass with five dead men in the wagon. Tasmin, inconsolable, had sat by Pomp’s body all the way. Cook remembered the sound of ice crackling under the wagon wheels as they rose higher into mist and cloud. The pass was so high it seemed they were rising to heaven, although, under the circumstances, with five men dead and all of them half frozen, it was more like entering a cold hell.
“I want some!” Monty cried, seeing the chicken. Talley crowded around too. Jim gave each boy a drumstick. Traveling as he did, eating whatever he shot, singeing it, sprinkling on a little salt if he had any, with only now and then the treat of a buffalo liver, he could not but wonder at Cook’s skill. She made the best meals he had ever eaten. The plump hen was delicious. He thought he might just have a slice or two, but before he knew it, the hen was eaten and he and the two little boys were licking the greasy bones.
3
Snowflakes swirled around him . . .
ALL THE WAY TO TAOS, Jim kept remembering how desperately Monty cried when he realized his father was leaving. Little Onion couldn’t shush him—he kept stretching out his plump arms to Jim, who had not expected such a display. He did his best to assure the little boy that he would be back, but Monty’s sobs increased until finally Tasmin stepped out of her room.
“Go,” she said. “You’re just making it worse. Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been an expert at leaving. One looks around to find you gone. Perhaps it’s the right way. Babies don’t cry for the vanished, just for those about to vanish.”
“I had no idea he’d carry on this way,” Jim said.
“Nor did he, but I assure you he’ll live,” she said. “Just go! Vamos! Scat!”
Jim went, but he couldn’t free his mind of the image of Monty’s distress. He had never supposed himself missed. Men had tasks that took them away, sometimes far away. From the heights of Taos the plains beyond looked as if they stretched on forever, yet Jim had just crossed them twice and was about to cross them again. Jim didn’t like the bustle and noise of Saint Louis—he was always glad to get back to the quiet spaces; and yet, when he considered the future, he wondered if Saint Louis might be the right place to lodge his family. Tasmin would have some society. Captain Clark admired her and would see to that. There’d be someone to see to the children’s lessons. The tiny twins were just mites yet, but Monty had been just a mite not long ago, and now he was a boy possessed of a good appe
tite.
Coming down toward the Kaw on his recent trip, he had seen a curve and a thicket of reeds that looked familiar, but he couldn’t think why until they were well past it and dusk had fallen. It was on that curve that he had first seen Tasmin, stripped off, preparing to bathe in the cool dawn. He had been stepping into the river for the same purpose; he too was naked. He could remember his startlement vividly. He had taken in nothing of Tasmin’s beauty, so profound was his own embarrassment. All he had wanted to do was hide. A little later he had killed a deer and fed her its liver.
That had not been very long ago, and yet, in that modest interval, the two of them had married, gone up the Missouri, crossed to the Yellowstone, and then gone all the way back south to Santa Fe. They had three children—it was Little Onion’s opinion that it had been the big meteor shower on the plains that had caused the twins. Whatever caused them, they were born, healthy, and in Cook’s opinion, likely to live. For the moment they were well provided for, but that might change. Jim had nothing to sell except his skill as a plains-man—he supposed there would always be a need for reliable guides, more and more need as the Americans filtered into the West; but guiding kept him far from his family, and his son’s outburst had shown him that absences didn’t suit everybody. They had once irked Tasmin as much as they now irked Monty. What the twins might want, as they got older, he couldn’t guess. As he approached the little house Kit Carson and Josie had taken he didn’t feel at ease in his spirit, as he usually did when he traveled alone.
The small house Kit and Josie lived in was little more than a hut—fortunately, both were short people. Jim thought he might stop in for a night as he headed east. Snowflakes swirled around him as he rode up. It was chilly weather. Kit was behind the house, chopping firewood, a fact that rather surprised Jim. Two walls of the house were already banked high with chopped firewood, and yet Kit was going at it as if he and Josie were down to their last stick. How much wood could they burn anyway, in one small fireplace?
The Berrybender Narratives Page 89