“I heard about a widow whose husband died in a hunting accident,” Ham replied. “She was selling these, and I thought, why break them up? They’re already trained to obedience, but they’re young, and can still be taught a few other things.”
“Do you mean to take up hunting?” Maeve asked.
“No, no, I was thinking about tracking, and rescue, for some reason,” Ham looked at Maeve sideways. “You were gone a long time this time.”
Maeve didn’t even return his gaze. She bent down and fondled the dogs. “Hello. Yes, hello, there. So pretty. So handsome. How sweet you both are. Yes. What are their names?”
“Um ... Herman and Hetty,” Ham grimaced. “I was hoping for something more poetic, though it’s best if the names sound close to what they’re used to being called. I thought I’d call the male Hermes, for the messenger god. Would you like to name the female?”
“Hecate, goddess of the night,” Maeve said softly, caressing the silky ears. “She’s so shiny black. But Ham, they’re not going to sleep out here in this chilly old carriage house, are they?”
December, 1845
Ham lounged in the doorway of his suite and looked across at Angelita, the new lady’s maid Maeve had just brought home the day before. She was a delicate, pretty thing of uncertain age; skin the color of cinnamon, eyes deep black. Maeve had said she was a deaf-mute. Maeve was out at a charity function and since it was Saturday Ham had not gone in to the office. Hermes, whose bed was now the foot of Ham’s bed, frisked around under his hand. Hecate, however, had become a mother two weeks earlier, and Angelita was delightedly tumbling the five puppies about in their basket in Maeve’s bedroom. Hermes knocked the walking stick out of Ham’s hand and it clattered to the floor. Angelita threw her head up and stared at Ham in dismay. Hurriedly she began tidying things in her mistress’s room, glancing at Ham with frightened eyes. Ham reached across to support himself on Maeve’s doorway and stepped over to the entrance of the room. The male dog brought him his stick in his mouth.
“Thanks, old man,” Ham murmured. “A deaf-mute who isn’t deaf? And who seems terrified of me? Do I look like an ogre? I don’t feel like an ogre. Maybe just because she got caught not working.” He twiddled his stick and swung it, making Hermes jump to catch it in his teeth again. Hermes flourished it in triumph. Angelita flinched and shielded her head. Ham let go of the stick hastily.
“I say, you don’t have to be afraid,” Ham exclaimed. “I’m not going to beat you.”
The girl fled to the far side of the room, watching him. “You don’t speak English?” Ham groaned. “Well, possibly don’t speak at all. That part might be true. But if you hear, odds are you understand something. Español? If so I’m lost. You’re nodding. But, you know, I’m not seeing so much Spanish in your looks. You remind me of those adorable little French Creole children in New Orleans. Parlez-vous Francais?” The girl nodded vigorously.
“Ah, bon! Oh, so very bon! A language I actually know more than two words in. Tu aimez le petit chien?”
The girl’s eyes lit up. She nodded vigorously and crept back toward the basket. Ham knelt beside the basket, fondled Hecate and lifted up a puppy, holding it out to the girl. “Pour tu?” He asked. Shining eyes devoured the puppy, but the girl hesitated, looking at the squirming lot still in the basket.
“Ah, tu dois choisier,” Ham exclaimed, putting down the dog he had picked up and spreading out his hands. The girl looked uncertainly at Ham.
“She’s been told by somebody that I’m a mean old man and she should steer clear of me,” Ham said to himself as the girl bent her head to look the puppies over. “Offering to let her pick a puppy all her own is the best way I can think of to dispel that nonsense. But who would tell her a thing like that? Maeve? She might despise me, but I can’t imagine she’d make this child afraid of me.” The girl had apparently settled on a puppy, and was holding it close.
“Joyeaux Noel, Mon Petit,” Ham said softly. The girl came close to him.
“Monsieur est tres triste,” she said in a soft, weak voice. “Sur Madame.”
“And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak,” Ham murmured. “You see, Dan, all your preaching hasn’t been wasted. You came here to our house for a reason, didn’t you, Mon Petit? And it wasn’t just to hand Madame her hairbrush. Are you to tell someone what Madame is doing?”
The girl looked extremely distressed at the change in Ham’s demeanor but clearly didn’t know what he had said. He translated into French and words flooded out of her, ending in tears.
“Tut, tut, Ma Cher,” Ham protested, giving her a handkerchief and a pat. She buried herself against his chest as if no one had befriended her in a very long time. Ham held her close and let her remain, though it was very uncomfortable. “Non larmes. It’s going to be all right. You’re not going to lose your place. You’re just going to work for a different boss.” He spoke to her in French, gently, and she eventually calmed down and withdrew to play with her new puppy.
“Quelle appeler pour le petit chien?” Ham asked.
“Esperance,” Angelita responded softly.
“Hope,” Ham murmured. “That’s what we need, all right, Mon Petit.”
“Oh, Ham!” Maeve entered the room a few minutes later and almost tripped over him. “I didn’t see you.”
“Maeve.” Ham pulled himself erect and scooted out to the doorway. “Just getting acquainted with Angelita here. Hope you don’t mind that I let her choose a puppy?”
“Of course not,” Maeve smiled. “The poor thing. Nathaniel Grover arranged for me to get her. She’s an orphan from New Orleans. She almost died from the same illness that killed her parents. Imagine being left deaf and mute.”
“Imagine,” Ham murmured. “Might be a little awkward getting her to know what you want her to do, no?”
“She reads lips, apparently, and she understands Spanish,” Maeve replied.
“Lucky thing,” Ham grunted. “Grover dug her up, eh? Interesting.”
“I’m going away again,” Maeve said casually. “It might be a little longer this time than usual.”
“Oh?” Ham’s response also sounded casual. “Avecita again?”
“Who told you I was going to Avecita?” Maeve demanded sharply, whirling to face him. Angelita had begun to help her unpin her hair, and it fell in glorious blue-black waves around her pale face. Ham swallowed and retreated another step out of the sanctum. Maeve straightened her face into a mask again. “Actually, I’m going to Chollo. That’s where my mother was born. My mother lived there until she died, just recently. I’ve been taking care of her belongings, trying to sell her house.”
“So that’s the big mystery?” Ham asked in disbelief. “You were estranged from your mother, and now she’s dead and you couldn’t tell me you’re clearing out her stuff and selling her house?”
Maeve stood up and advanced toward Ham. “My mother was from a good family in Coahuila,” she said. “She was raised to be a woman of culture and refinement, a lady. Meanwhile, a man named Sean Collinswood blew into this country like an Irish hurricane. He was an immigrant who sang and acted on the stage in New York and supported himself doing carpentry work when he couldn’t get stage roles. He was beautiful, small and slim with coal black hair and these amazing eyes like emeralds. Then he heard about the land and the people in Coahuila y Tejas and he came here. He found an old, broken-down Spanish hacienda and rebuilt it piece by piece while serving with the Tejas militia. He invited his comrades to make it a base and they helped him restore it. He made most of the furniture in the den and in our bedrooms himself, and those men worked here, played here, trained here, planned here, and made it a place vibrating with singing and laughter and courage and sweat and glorious history.
“When it was all finished Sean Collinswood brought Maria del Pilar Ruiz home to Palacio Del Oro, and they were married. They had a daughter, and Sean named her Maeve. She idolized he
r father, because he laughed and sang and acted out the most amazing stories, and he also fought for Tejas and wasn’t ashamed of his Tejano wife and daughter. We felt like we were already Americans, my father and I. I loved him so much.
“When I was seventeen my father died fighting Comanches to protect our home,” Maeve said softly. “They mutilated his body and his comrades couldn’t stop my mother from seeing it when they brought him home. My mother lost her mind. She was like a Mestizo, like a peasant, making tortillas all day long, never speaking English again, crying that she wanted to go back to Chollo. I finally had to take her there. My father had saved money from when he was an actor in New York. I used it to hire people to take care of my mother and let her live the way she wanted in Chollo.
“Then I went to New York myself, and I was able to make money singing. No one knew I was Tejano there, I was Maeve Collinswood, the Irish Lark, and I almost forgot about Texas. But I had to go back and see my mother, even though she didn’t even know who I was. Each time I came back I remembered how much my father had loved this place, how he had died for it, and eventually I had to come back to Palacio Del Oro.
Maeve drew a shuddering breath. “Sometimes I feel like you’re not worthy to be in this house,” she said. “But then I think, maybe I have no right to be angry with you about your drinking, and your making jokes about everything, and your silly job that has you littering up the den with papers. I brought you to my house to act the part of my husband exactly because I thought you’d keep your nose out of my business, that you’d be too drunk or to absorbed in whatever job you do to care. Maybe it’s hypocritical of me to wish you were something different, to imagine sometimes that you are something different, when you try to interfere with my plans, when you talked about Goliad, when I peek into the study and you’re trying to solve one of your problems from work and you look so earnest and so intelligent and so fine.
“If I haven’t told you all this before, and if I still haven’t told you everything about who I am or why I do what I do, it’s because I don’t really know who you are, Hamilton Jessup, and I have no reason to trust you with what I am and what I do.”
“If there’s anything you want to know about me, ask,” Ham replied.
“Tell me about your family, your life,” Maeve invited.
“I was born in the Indiana territory, now Illinois,” Ham replied. “My parents were pioneers. My father fought Indians, same as your father, Sauk and Fox mostly, but some of the Indians there were friendly, and I learned sign language from them, and a lot of wilderness survival skills, how to hide, how to move without being detected, how to deceive an enemy. I didn’t feel like we were deprived, though I guess there was a lot of work. I know it was the end of the world when our parents died of Typhus when I was ten and my sister Sarah was twelve. My aunt and uncle took us in and we lived with them in Ohio, very civilized, so that I could acquire my distaste for dirt and my fondness for looking like a peacock, until my sister got married and I went to college in Virginia.
I studied Texas history as much as I could. It was a place that fascinated me, though I’d never been there, because it was another wilderness, a new place for pioneers, so much bigger than Illinois. I went straight into the army as soon as I graduated, did a little stint in New Orleans, and I came out to Texas just before the battle at the Alamo. My glorious active military career in Texas ended at San Jacinto. I was retrained for my present position, lost my last link to other human beings when my sister died, except for one brave soul who was my friend and didn’t cut me off until I pretended to marry you, and here I am.”
“You – you lost the only friend you had because of this marriage arrangement?” Maeve faltered.
“‘He writes, but I can’t make myself answer his letters. What would I say? ‘Sham wife is well, except for these odd disappearances I’m not allowed to ask about. She disapproves of mostly everything I do but still pays me to stay around.’“
“You’ve actually told him about our arrangement?” Maeve exclaimed.
“Dan would never tell anyone about this,” Ham grunted. “Believe me, if there’s an utterly trustworthy man on this earth he’s it. He knows what’s proper conversation fodder and what isn’t. I tell him everything, and that’s never going to change.”
Maeve didn’t seem wholly satisfied, but she changed the subject. “Why do you drink?” Maeve asked. “Are you in pain from your leg?”
“Why do I drink?” Ham sighed. “I am in pain from my leg, sometimes. It’s not so much physical pain, ma’am. I have been called a cripple, day in, day out, for almost ten years. I find that people laugh at a drunk and sneer at a cripple, and being laughed at is a little easier to take. I have been cut off from most of the jobs most men can do. I have been stared at because I walk oddly. I’ve been laughed at because I fall down sometimes. People don’t consider my job important. What people consider to be important is to pick up a gun and go fight the Mexicans and make Texas safe and free. And no one will let me do that.”
“What is your job?” Maeve asked. “There are people who help Texas who don’t fight with guns. They fight with words. Is that what you do?”
Ham sighed again. “I solve puzzles.”
“I don’t understand,” Maeve said frankly. “Hamilton, I feel as if there’s a wall between us that neither of us entirely wants to break down, and yet it seems like if we did, we’d be better for it. We started out our relationship in such a terrible way. I regret so much having forced you into this. I almost wish I could tell you everything that’s going on, but then you say something like, ‘I solve puzzles,’ and you get drunk, and I can’t trust you.”
“And you run off, and come back frightened and guilty-looking and I can’t trust you,” Ham shrugged.
Maeve looked at Ham for a long time. Then she returned to her dressing table. “Angelita, traeme esas peines,” Maeve directed, pointing across the vanity at her silver combs. “Excuse me, Ham, but I need to get ready to go,” she said.
“Of course you do,” Ham replied, retreating to his own room.
April, 1846
“Maeve, there are bruises all up and down your arms,” Ham hissed as Maeve rested a hand on his arm. They descended the staircase of Palacio Del Oro in almost proper stately fashion. Ham couldn’t help stumbling just a little. He had been very much unbalanced by the sight of his supposed wife emerging hurriedly from her boudoir. She had slipped on long satin gloves as Angelita arranged a fringed silver shawl over her shoulders. Ham had come home late from work and been sharply chastised by his wife, though she also seemed to have arrived home rather late herself to dress for their dinner party.
Maeve glared up at him. “I suppose my drunken husband must beat me,” she whispered savagely. “Shut up, can’t you? We have guests.”
Ham froze into place beside the frozen creature resting her fingers delicately on his forearm. She left him at the bottom of the stairs while he caught the railing and breathed without getting any relief for the roaring in his head. He watched her circulate among the brilliant crowd, chatting, laughing, swirling her silver skirts. His eyes narrowed and he began to follow her through the various rooms. She winced once when she turned her head quickly, set her teeth as she caught the hand of a dance partner, closed her eyes completely and put a dainty lace handkerchief to her nose when someone grabbed her arm for a cozy chat. Ham saw the glint of the little vial of smelling salts concealed in the lacy nothing. Ham strode forward.
“Ah-ha!” he said, just a little too loudly. “Lady Lupine, you’ve worn my little wife out with following your recital of the week’s gossip. Come, darling, your knight flies to your rescue and sweeps you away.” He very gently touched a place where he was sure he hadn’t seen any bruises and steered Maeve away from the matron who had pinned her arm. Maeve sagged and seemed grateful to be half-carried into a pretty little alcove southern houses often had for faint ladies to rest in.
“Maeve, what the devil happened to you?” Ham demanded sotto vo
ce. “Do I need to call Doctor Evans in here? Do you have broken bones?”
Maeve stared up at Ham in confusion. “What ... ?”
“You almost made a headfirst dive into Lady Lupine’s bodice.” Ham took hold of Maeve’s chin and lifted her face. “Your eyes – look here, I believe you’ve got a concussion. I’m getting you to bed.”
“The party ...” Maeve’s voice was just a breath. “Haven’t even had ... dinner ... It’s your ... your birthday party ...”
“Yes, well, too bad about that,” Ham growled. He arranged Maeve as securely as he could on the elegant little chair and stepped out of the little room.
“Er – excuse me, all,” he called out, walking quickly but unsteadily through the rooms and clapping his hands as he went, his cane tucked under his arm. “Attention, please. So extremely sorry, but Mrs. Jessup is a little under the weather this evening. She was so looking forward to dinner with you all, but I’m afraid there’s no choice. Accept our humblest regrets. Good evening to you all. The servants will show you out. Good night. Good night. Yes, yes, good night.”
The bright and beautiful flowed around him and Ham couldn’t help overhearing comments as he passed. “Woman’s gone for two weeks and he can’t even manage to be sober for one night to welcome her back,” a man’s harsh whisper said.
“No wonder she stays away so much,” someone else said, not very quietly.
“The brute,” a woman’s voice snapped. Ham returned to the alcove where Titus, a huge black servant, was already lifting Maeve from the little seat.
“I’ll just get her upstairs, sir,” he said, face impassive. “You needn’t trouble yourself.”
“Has the doctor been called?” Ham asked.
“Mrs. Jessup has asked that we not do so,” Titus answered. “Cassius will look in on her. Good evening, sir.”
Ham stared after him as he bore the silvery bundle up the stairs. He looked around in bewilderment as servants began to tidy the rooms as if a perfectly normal evening had passed.
Chasing the Texas Wind Page 5