Long Knife (34 page)

But even the excitement of dancing with the Virginian had not dispelled her fear that there was something lethal, something dreadfully hard and keen-edged about him, and so long as she had felt that fear, she had imagined herself still free of him—still able to resist his magnetic pull.

Only when she had looked up from her serenade and seen his face softened, transformed, only then had her heart melted into his; only then had she realized that she was fatefully and inexorably
for
him. She had rushed up the stairs after the recital, her heart going wild. She had put the
guitarra
away in its velvet-lined case, had soaked a cloth in cool water and pressed it to
her burning neck, her cheeks, her brow, her shoulders. And then she had heard the voices below the window. And she had looked down on that scene which, once again, had seemed to confirm her fear of his killing edge.

Thus, now, she was doubly terrified. She was certain that there would be love, a binding, permanent love, between her and the American. And she knew, too, that she would always be in fear, somehow, of its consequences.

It’s not that he would hurt me, she thought, trying to explain to herself this baffling ambivalence of her emotions. But he will be killed. Or lost from me somehow. With a man like that, fate is in charge.

I need to rest, she thought, putting both hands on the windowsill to rise. All this is fantasy because I’m tired.

She had worn herself out for days, dreading his arrival. She had lost sleep. She had been in his presence for all these tense hours this evening; she had been enervated by his vibrant attention to her, as if he had been drawing off her energies by the power of his senses. And then the terror of that minute’s confrontation on the terrace below.

Francisco, she thought. Dear little Francisco. Such a fool you are.

“Ah, Colonel Clark! There you are! We’ve been looking for our honored guest. Eh, Vigo?” Teresa peered down over the windowsill. Her brother and Señor Vigo had strolled out onto the terrace, the American captain Bowman with them. They all carried full glasses. A servant followed them out, bearing a tray with clay pipes and a tobacco humidor, which he put on the table as they all drew chairs close to Colonel Clark.

“Getting some air,” said the colonel’s resonant voice. “This has been a night to remember. But thirty people do steam up a room.”

“You were, ahem, were you conversing with Tenente de Cartabona?” inquired de Leyba. “I, ah, saw him come in. Then he excused himself and left. A bit too much drink and excitement, I suspect.”

“We chatted. About little matters. Yes. A pleasant laddie.”

How lightly he can speak of it, thought Teresa. Why, he isn’t going to tell on Francisco!

“Well, my dear friend,” de Leyba went on. He was being his most expansive, his most cheerful and charming self. Despite the warning of her conscience, Teresa remained stooped by the
window, eavesdropping, rationalizing that she still felt too dizzy to get up.

“Señor Vigo tells me,” de Leyba continued, “such marvelous reports of your dealings with the Indians. I nearly wept at the tale of the two young braves you spared.”

“That!” the American laughed. “Aye! Oh, of course I had no intention of killing them. But they set the stage for a real dramatic show, didn’t they? Ha! There’s nothing like ’em for theatrics. And those two are strutting on the stage now, let me tell ye that! Pair o’ nabobs they are. One of ’em came to me just yesterday, clothed in all the dignity of some old sagamore. He told me he had changed his name to Two Lives, to commemorate the occasion when I gave him a second life to live. Such a people!”

Vigo laughed. A whiff of tobacco smoke came in the window to the kneeling Teresa.

“They got a habit,” came the slurring voice of Captain Bowman, “of naming themselves after occasions. Take that fellow Big Gate. Shot a soldier at the gate of Fort Detroit, and that’s been his monicker ever since. Big Gate. Ha, ha! I ain’t had so much fun since Logan’s gran’ma …”

“Ahem! Right you are, Joseph. So much for that, eh?”

There was a thoughtful pause, filled with contented
hms
, sighs, and the screeching of night creatures. More tobacco smoke wafted into the humid night air. “Been a-puffin’ a lot of this stuff lately, ain’t we, George?” said Bowman’s voice.

“Aye. And better get used to it, too. There’s still a mighty passel of Indians we haven’t parleyed with yet.”

“As I’ve heard it, you’ve accomplished all this,” said de Leyba, “without shedding a drop of blood!”

“Yes!” exclaimed Vigo’s voice. “Isn’t that the most remarkable thing!”

“It’s real good fortune,” said the American. “It makes me feel,” he added with a pause, “that God’s on our side.”

There was more stillness, then de Leyba asked a question that Teresa knew was much on his mind; she had heard him discuss it often with military men. “Have you ever killed a man, Colonel?”

There was a long pause. Teresa prayed that he would say “No.”

“I have. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be among you now.”

There was more silence. Teresa shuddered. She had danced
with a man who had killed men! Then her brother pursued it further:

“By bullet?”

“Aye.”

“By, um, ever by sword?”

“That, too, Governor. Once.” The Virginian’s voice was growing tight and unpleasant. De Leyba’s voice persisted now, in a rather breathy tone:

“That must be an experience. What is it like? I mean to say, how did you f—”

“I felt bloody awful! Now … Excellency, with due respect, sir,” his voice dropped, “… could we direct ourselves at more pleasant matters? I should hate to see the spell of the night smirched by morbid …”

“Yes, yes. Forgive me, my dear colonel. It’s just that as a commanding officer, I have never actually … you know …” He gave an embarrassed little laugh. “Even Father Gibault has killed an Indian, I hear. But I …”

“In these times, I’m afraid you’ll get your opportunity,” said the Virginian.

“I imagine so,” de Leyba said, his voice coming up to the window dispirited, as if he were now ashamed of his questions. Teresa, as she had never once been before, was embarrassed for her brother. There were several sighs in the darkness below, a throat was cleared, the clink of glasses. Finally the cheerful voice of Vigo broke the pause:

“Believe us, George, what we all admire most is the
humanity
of your conduct. Bloody victories may make better history, but in men’s hearts …”

“Eh, well! I’m only adhering to the language of my orders. Governor Henry wrote that it should all be performed ’under the direction of the humanity that has hitherly distinguished Americans.’ I quote the order. I take my orders to the heart, gentlemen. I’m here to stop the flow of blood, not to shed more.”

“And that’s just amazin’, George,” came Bowman’s voice, full of awe and drunkenness, “when you think that just ’bout every man in yer-whole wall-eyed army joined up t’ git bloody revenge …”

“Maybe so, but they’ll get it in my way. I don’t hear ’em clamoring for blood any, now.”

“No, I don’t either. They’re happy as pigs in sh—” Bowman
checked himself this time. “They feel pretty good,” he mumbled.

“Of course,” said de Leyba, “I’m sure most military orders advise humanity. It’s what happens once the blood-letting begins, as I understand it. I hope you can control them then, sir.”

“I do too, Excellency. Discipline will tell. I figure I’m not fit to lead ’em unless I can make them go, or make them stop, whichever the occasion demands.”

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Vigo in his oversize voice. “Most honorable!”

“Most honorable,” George reiterated, his own words now slurring some from the drink, “because I have this feeling about it, y’see, that th’ kind of a nation we raise out of this war will depend largely on how we do it. Gentlemen, if I may change the topic,” he said, abruptly rising, swaying. “D’you know what’s the inmost desire of my bosom?”

“Only ask,” said de Leyba, his voice cheerful again.

“To hear more of that music! God, I never heard anything like that music! Where could … she be?” His voice broke. And Teresa, huddled beside the window of her room above, heard it.

She crossed her closed fists over her breast, squeezed her eyelids shut, and shivered, and rejoiced at that small, piteous catch in that beloved voice. It meant that she had not been out of his thoughts even in all this talk about war and duty.

I will play for him again, she thought. I will, if he wants me to!

T
ERESA DID PLAY FOR ANOTHER HALF HOUR, FILLING THE ROOM
with beauty and magic. She was playing only for the American colonel now, and the melodies were lilting ballads and gentle nocturnes. It soon was obvious even to the dullest guests in the room that George Rogers Clark was her whole audience.

It was after two in the morning when de Leyba, mellow and affectionate, moderately drunk, and very pleased with his entertainment, began making arrangements for lodging the guests. Most, being soldiers, were satisfied to pile up three or four to a bedroom or stretch out on rows of pallets in the ballroom. Several of George’s men laid out their bedrolls in the corridor outside the upstairs guest room where he slept. Señora de Leyba agreed to give up the master bedroom to several of the lady guests, and stationed herself on a settee in the anteroom in Teresa’s bed-chamber, while the governor took to the daybed in his office downstairs.

George, coat off, sweat-soaked shirt cooling against his skin, talked briefly to his officers, staying at large in the house as long as possible, in hopes of encountering Teresa somewhere. But she was put away for the night.

He took a half-empty bottle of brandy to bed with him, drank it in an effort to stupefy his rioting fancies, blew out the lamp, and lay there tossing, imagining that Teresa’s bed must be exactly on the other side of the thick wall beside him. He held his palm against that wall; he listened; all he could hear was the cough of Señora de Leyba and the snores of sleeping men outside his door. At one point he contrived a daring plan for slipping into Teresa’s room and kneeling beside her bed to take her hand and hold it, and for some time he imagined that over and over.

But then in his mind’s eye he saw his own guards, sleeping lightly, virtually stacked like cordwood in the hallway outside his door, and he saw Señora de Leyba, kept wakeful surely by her own pitiful coughing, encamped in Teresa’s antechamber. No. Impossible, he thought. Only the worst sort of a fool would try it.

He chuckled at a thought. I can’t go to Detroit because I haven’t enough people. And I can’t go to Teresa because I have too many.

He went to sleep at last, his head full of her face and her music.

H
E AWAKENED TO A STREAM OF BRIGHT SUNLIGHT BLAZING ON THE
white bedding around him, and the sound of girls’ voices outside his window. He propped himself on an elbow, appalled that he had slept so late. Then Teresa’s plangent voice drifted in the window with the others, and, in a wave, the whole idea of Teresa—her face, her eyes, her hands, her music, the scent of her hair and her soap—invaded him.

He lay for a moment looking at the square of pearly blue morning sky, recalling the night of sheer enchantment, smiling at the foolish, drunken fantasy to which he had fallen asleep—it was all so vague, now; he could just remember lying with his hand pressed against the wall—and listened to the voices, which were like music, ranging from lilting to grave tones as the conversation went on. Often as a youth he had lain awake in the sleeping loft of the Clark home in Virginia, listening to his little sisters chattering downstairs. But this was different. The words being Spanish and unintelligible to him, he was listening not to
conversation but to the tones and timbres of voices, the inflections, and it was more like music than speech, rather, he thought, like the birdsongs of the morning.

In the distant blue a tiny dark speck cut diagonally across the rectangular opening of the window, slanting downward and away. It was a hawk. It vanished, leaving again only the unbroken blue.

He rose, naked, feeling rested and strong, stretched and loosened his arm and shoulder muscles washed his face quickly with cold water poured from a flowered pitcher into a porcelain bowl, dried on a small towel—which smelled like Teresa’s soap, he fancied, that subtle and indefinable blend of spice and flowers—then went closer to the window to look down on the green river valley, the rooftops of the village of St. Louis, some thatched, some of splitwood shakes, even a couple of red curved pantiles, and then into the garden and terrace where the young ladies of the de Leyba household were having what appeared to be their lessons. The little girls sat on a carved bench rather like a church pew, with an open book lying between them; Señora de Leyba, in a white, long-sleeved high-necked dress of white cotton, only those hollow eyes and phthisic hands hinting at her frail health, sat on a chair opposite them, now and then intercalating their recitations with her words, and Teresa, dressed likewise, sat slightly apart, her back to the squared yew hedge, concentrating on a square of white cloth stretched in a wooden frame she held in her lap, doing something to it with a needle. The sunlight shone on the cloth and bathed her face in a soft reflective glow, limning her throat and her long, delicate neck. As George watched her, watched her quiet absorption, he wondered whether he was in her thoughts. He preferred to believe that he was. It had seemed to him last night that his presence was as important to her as hers was to him.

Birds twittered everywhere, shot among the hedges, hopped forward on the still damp grass in the shady places, looking for late worms. From the other side of the house he heard the voice of one of his own lieutenants drilling the guard. At that moment one of the children apparently said something funny in her recitation; Teresa and the Señora broke into trilling laughter and the girls began squirming and giggling. Teresa looked up as she laughed, and her glance caught him staring at her; their eyes met for an instant, then bounced away from each other like billiard balls. When he returned his gaze to her she was bent further
over her needlework in elaborate concentration, and there seemed to be high color on her sun-washed neck.