Across the Endless River

by Thad Carhart

  Baptiste made his goodbyes. When the door closed behind him, he put his hand into his coat pocket and stroked the handkerchief until his fingertips found the raised thread that silently said the name that filled his thoughts.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  FEBRUARY 1825

  “We have been invited to join the hunt with Monsieur le Comte de Chêneville, a friend of my uncle,” Paul told Baptiste. “You will see how Europeans hunt.”

  They set out for Fontainebleau, a day’s ride south of Paris, the next morning. Prince Franz left after breakfast with his new lady friend, an elegant young woman from Milan, in a sparkling green-and-black landau with the roof lowered, pulled by a perfectly matched pair of bay geldings. Paul and Baptiste decided to ride horseback since the weather was clear and not unduly cold for February. The servants brought around a fine chestnut gelding for Baptiste and a tall black stallion for Paul.

  They started out at a trot through the streets of Paris, breaking into a gallop only after they had left the old city walls behind. Baptiste was delighted to be in the clear country air and astride a horse again. And what an extraordinary horse! He had narrow withers and his legs were not long (Baptiste guessed he didn’t stand above fifteen hands), but what he lacked in stature, he made up for in power, endurance, and an equable disposition. His mouth was responsive without being too sensitive, and it seemed that all Baptiste had to do was point him in the right direction and let him find an effortless gallop. Paul’s mount was everything a purebred stallion could be: tall, perfectly formed, temperamental, and fast as an antelope. He demanded far more attention of his rider, but now Baptiste confirmed what he had only sensed on the few occasions when he had seen Paul on horseback in America: he was a superb horseman. Paul could be ungainly and awkward at times, but astride this horse he had a physical grace that was impressive.

  That afternoon, they trotted down a long, gentle descent out of the forest and into the placid streets of Fontainebleau. The horses pranced and strained against their bridles, their hooves clattering against the cobblestones and echoing between the high walls that lined the streets in the dying rays of the late-afternoon sun. Paul led them to the house, hidden behind a side gate in the walls of a tiny street. They crossed a gravel expanse that led between flower beds to a fine stone staircase at the rear of the large house. Servants took their horses. They saw the landau on the other side of the garden, its top now raised.

  “My uncle is here with his new friend,” Paul whispered. “She’s singing at the Opéra next week.”

  Mounted heads of animals jutted from the walls of the main hall: a boar brandished his tusks from on high, several deer and elk gazed from beneath impressive racks of antlers, various goats and antelope displayed their spiral-shaped horns, and a black bear showed its fangs. Guns, swords, daggers, and all kinds of hunting paraphernalia hung beneath the trophies. The polished metal gleamed.

  “Come in, come in and make yourselves known!”

  Prince Franz had seen them through the door that led to a brightly lighted salon. He drew them into the room and the din immediately subsided. Two dozen guests stood in the grand salon, which was comfortably furnished with plush chairs and couches upholstered in wine red velvet or dark green leather. Heavy swags of curtain adorned the windows, and a fire blazed in the black-and-white-veined marble hearth.

  “My friends, this is my esteemed nephew, Paul Wilhelm, Duke of Württemberg. Some of you have already had the pleasure of making his acquaintance.”

  Paul acknowledged the nods and smiles as he and Baptiste accepted glasses of wine.

  “His young friend is Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau of St. Louis in the Mississippi River Valley of North America.” Baptiste inclined his head. Prince Franz continued: “He is also known as Pompy, son of a princess of the Snake Tribe.” A gasp escaped the lips of one of the women standing nearby, and a general murmur filtered through the group at this announcement.

  Baptiste was fearful that he would be taken for a fraud. Prince Franz’s words had nothing to do with how Sacagawea had lived her life, away from the tribe of her birth, and still less with how he had been raised. In all their travels, Paul had rarely mentioned his mother’s being an Indian, and never referred to his ancestry as if it were royal. He simply introduced Baptiste as a fur trader from St. Louis.

  Paul clinked glasses and said quietly, “To Pompy, Prince of the Shoshone.” Then he winked and downed his wine. Baptiste felt the blood rise to his cheeks. Paul said, “No one in this room besides you and me has ever been near the Mississippi or the Missouri, or is likely to go there.” A group began to gather around Baptiste.

  “How is it that you speak fluent French?” the tall young woman who was Prince Franz’s companion asked. She wore a low-cut dress and perfume wafted around her.

  “My father is from the region near Montréal,” Baptiste responded. “Very many of the traders along the river are French-speaking.”

  “I see,” said the woman, as if such a thing were a wonder. Her voice was rich and her French had a slight accent that Baptiste did not recognize. “What does an Indian prince wear among his people?”

  Baptiste smiled, but he forced himself to answer. “There are many kinds of tribal dress, Mademoiselle, depending upon the tribe. Mine is quite simple: a shirt and leggings made from the hide of an elk or an antelope, with some quillwork for decoration. In cold weather, I also wear beaded moccasins and a tanned buffalo hide around my shoulders.”

  An older man with a huge moustache asked, “Is it true that young men have to scalp their enemies in order to be accepted as adults? Have you scalped anyone?”

  Baptiste noticed the singer’s hand involuntarily rise to her hair as she listened. “Scalping is practiced by a number of tribes, but only in times of war,” he replied. “It is not required for full membership in the tribe.”

  Everyone, it seemed, men and women alike, wanted to hear about some aspect of Indian life that would shock their sensibilities. Baptiste was polite, listening patiently to their inquiries and trying to provide interesting responses that would please his questioners. It was clear that they had ideas about Indians, and the surest way to satisfy them was to confirm their wild and wrongheaded notions.

  Paul’s uncle broke through the circle surrounding Baptiste, accompanied by a tall man whose face bore a dramatic wine-colored scar that ran from his right temple to his mouth. “Baptiste, I want you to meet an old friend, Count Arnaud de Ganay. He is an admirer of the Indian.”

  The man extended his hand and shook Baptiste’s with a firm grip. His hazel eyes combined curiosity and humor as they exchanged pleasantries. He and the prince had fought together under Bonaparte at Wagram, he said, and he retained an abiding interest in all forms of battle on horseback.

  “One of my cousins contends that the Indians of the North American plains are the greatest light cavalry in the world. Paul tells me that he witnessed prodigious displays of horsemanship when he ascended the Missouri River and visited the tribes in that region.” He looked expectantly at Baptiste, waiting for him to elaborate on these propositions.

  “For the tribes that follow the herds, Monsieur, the horse is an invaluable ally in hunting.”

  “And what of warfare?” the count asked. “That is the real proof of the horse’s worth, is it not?”

  “The assaults among tribes usually take the form of quick raids by a group of warriors, where surprise, speed, and cunning are the most important elements. The ability to ride well and to shoot from horseback are highly prized.”

  “On the gallop? That I should dearly love to see for myself!” The count told him about massed cavalry charges through cannon fire, things far more organized and constrained than the free-ranging methods of tribal warriors.

  The prince joined them. “Has Arnaud been telling you about Bonaparte?”

  “No, we hadn’t gotten to that, I’m afraid,” the count said, as if he had shirked a duty.

  “Baptiste, you’ll never meet anyone w
ith a more direct knowledge of the emperor than the man you’re talking to right now.” The prince’s tone was reverential. He leaned in close to them both and continued. “Louis the Eighteenth and Charles the Tenth have been propped up in gouty splendor these many years, but Napoleon had absolutely nothing in common with the Bourbons and their dropsical cousins who cling to the thrones of Europe. No, no, divine right is no longer an adequate pretext for the monarch!” He took a drink of wine and continued. “Say what you will—a Corsican dwarf, a vain and tyrannical man, an arriviste with no lands or fortune to justify his name—the one thing the ancien régime can never take from him is the quality they all so sorely lack. Napoleon was that rarest of creatures among kings and emperors: an absolute military genius, an unrivaled master of the art of war.”

  Their adulation and excitement was fervent, immediate, and very personal. In St. Louis, Bonaparte was usually referred to as “a European adventurer” who had come to grief because of his demonic need for absolute power. In Captain Clark’s house, this judgment was tempered by the fact that his sale of the Louisiana Territory had made possible the opening of the West to American settlement and had put the Corps of Discovery on the trail. His legacy was mixed for those on the American frontier, yet the distant undertakings and shadowy dispositions had ended favorably for America and badly for France.

  The battles these men described and the lands conquered were enormous in scale: twenty, fifty, one hundred thousand men-at-arms, whole countries invaded and conquered, cannon by the hundreds pulled from one end of Europe to the other and deployed with devastating effect. The tension and the excitement were still alive in their stories and reminiscences.

  “Friedrich gave his solemn oath! Then he switched sides like a common tradesman when it seemed he could profit. Now the damned English will call the tune in Europe for generations to come!” the count said forcefully.

  The prince shook his head sadly. The two men had clearly been over this tale of betrayal many times before, and it grieved them still. They told Baptiste that soon after Napoleon’s inglorious retreat from Russia, Württemberg had transferred its allegiance to the coalition that finally prevailed at Waterloo. The specifics hardly mattered, though. The prince’s features wore the disappointment that old age made irremediable. Whatever wrong they were talking about could never be made right.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Dawn was far behind by the time the first group assembled in the courtyard to set out for the forest. Leafless branches stood out starkly against a rapidly brightening sky, and the breath of men and horses streamed into the frigid air in plumes of white vapor. The horses were brought out from the stables, freshly groomed and saddled, and their riders emerged from the house in small groups, descending the wide stone staircase as they laughed and talked in the chill morning air. The other participants in the day’s hunt would join them later. The bustle of activity behind the house seemed extraordinary to Baptiste; every hunt he had ever been on had started in near silence, which was maintained throughout the day.

  The riders wore special coats of black, brown, or deep blue cloth, with their riding breeches tucked into tall boots. Silk neck scarves and flashy stickpins, low-crowned hats worn at rakish angles, silver-topped riding crops, and supple leather gloves all added to the sense of occasion that prevailed. They looked more like a group of people setting off for a wedding in St. Louis than on a hunt. Nothing suggested that the preparations here had to do with stalking and killing animals. A servant came out from the house with a large tray held high, bearing silver cups, and offered them to those astride their horses. An easy camaraderie prevailed among them, as if a drinking party floated above the gravel expanse.

  Baptiste straightened his black coat as he walked to his horse. Though not as well turned out as many of the other riders, he was presentable. The purchase of clothes Paul had urged upon him in Paris was in part for this eventuality. Baptiste resolved to keep a keen eye out for what would be expected of him this morning. He wanted to avoid standing out as a naïf. Captain Clark’s words came to him: Lie low and watch those around you.

  A groom held the reins of the gelding he had ridden the day before, its freshly curried coat silken beneath the gleaming oiled tack. Baptiste stroked the horse’s mane, then took the reins and mounted. No sooner had he lifted the reins lightly in his right hand than the horse began to balk, fighting the bit and backing up nervously, then rearing and neighing loudly. Baptiste stood in his stirrups and struggled to control the animal, whose front legs flailed the air. He managed to bring him down, and with a deft jump from the saddle, Baptiste descended to the ground, bringing the reins forward over the horse’s head. The gelding continued to fight, and Baptiste held him firmly as he reassured him with the low, confident tones he always used with horses. “Hey yo, easy. Hey, hey.”

  The horse’s outburst had cleared a circle among the group, and the other horses and riders still held back, watching. The bridle was far too tight, Baptiste saw, the bit drawn back against the horse’s mouth. He loosened it as he cradled the bottom of the horse’s head, and noticed a strap passing under the horse’s lower jaw. He turned to the groom standing nearby.

  “Why has my horse been given a curb bit?” Baptiste asked heatedly.

  “Monsieur, most of the gentlemen prefer it for hunting. They find that the mount is more responsive to the rider’s lead.”

  Baptiste handed the reins to the groom. “Please change the harness at once.”

  “Yes, Monsieur.”

  Baptiste wiped the sweat from his forehead with a kerchief he kept in his hip pocket. Paul approached on the stallion and smiled down at him.

  “Well done, Baptiste! You gave us a show.”

  “Glad to oblige,” he responded testily.

  Paul nodded a greeting to those who had begun to fill in the cleared space where the drama had just been acted out. “Everyone is impressed with your horsemanship, I can assure you.” He leaned down slightly and, smiling benignly, lowered his voice. “Just one detail. Never say ‘please’ to a servant.”

  For the next half hour the group rode through the edge of the forest toward the village where they were to meet the others. They traversed a broad, sloping expanse of open land flanked by trees growing in perfectly straight rows; several large stone basins lay in lower ground nearby, at the center of what had once been a huge garden, now abandoned and covered with the drooping brown stalks of weeds. As they skirted the pattern of overgrown paths and fountains and climbed a gradual rise, they reached a long body of water that was encased in gray stone embedded into the flat ground of a plateau as neatly as a gemstone set into the earth. Baptiste could see the steep roofs and towering chimneys of a majestic stone structure not far off, visible above the long allées of bare chestnut trees shaped into a formal hedge. Another hunter drew his horse up alongside.

  “Good day to you, Monsieur. I give you the Château of Fontainebleau, and its reflecting pool. Or, as Napoleon preferred to call it, the palace.”

  Baptiste looked at the rippled surface and saw a wavy approximation of the distant château shimmer slightly and then align itself with the building in the distance as the breeze subsided.

  “How ingenious.”

  They urged their horses into an easy gallop and soon caught up with the others. From the rear, Baptiste could see the rigid bearing of the others in the saddle, their backs straight and legs tensed in the stirrups. He had seen formations of soldiers in Paris riding with the same kind of formality, but never had he seen it on a hunt. He imitated the others, head held high and elbows close against his sides, but he found the posture uncomfortable. He relaxed as they fell in with the group.

  Baptiste wondered where the hunting ground was. He saw no indication of game. In fact, the forest looked like an extension of the gardens around the château: not as groomed, but tamed nevertheless. The lower branches of all the trees had been trimmed and the underbrush cleared, as at Ludwigsburg, giving the leaf-covered ground a feeling of great o
penness and calm.

  They reached a clearing where six roads converged, each of them branching into the forest in a straight line. The riders headed down one of these leaf-covered tracks and soon arrived at a small village. A large greensward lay between a stone manor house and a small church. Another twenty-five or thirty riders waited there, already dismounted and talking among themselves while servants held their horses and hurried back and forth to the manor house.

  They greeted the newcomers with shouts of recognition, handshakes, and pats on the back. Baptiste quickly understood that many in this assemblage were linked by family and marriage. The introductions began: “I’d like you to meet my cousin.” “Christian is my wife’s brother.” “Prince Franz is our grandfather’s nephew. We call him ‘Uncle.’ ”

  The day’s outing was governed by the knowledge that everything appropriate would be ready when any of these men needed it: their boots and tack were polished in the night, their breakfasts brought to them in their rooms on gleaming trays at the pull of a bell, their horses curried and brushed and led out fully saddled when they strode from the house. The human apparatus that made this possible—the cooks and grooms and butlers and maids—was made to disappear by the simple expedient of acting as if it were invisible.

  Baptiste thought of the slaves he had seen in the richly appointed houses where he and Paul had been received in New Orleans. The same nonchalance came across the features of those being waited upon when they turned to one of their servants. The lines were clearer in New Orleans—any person with black skin in a white household was bound to be a servant—but the attitude was the same.

  “Baptiste! Baptiste, over here!”

  Paul was hailing him from the far side of the lawn. Baptiste approached the small group of men and Paul stepped back, inviting him into the circle.

  “Gentlemen, this is Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, one of the most redoubtable hunters of the Missouri River Basin in America.”