Snowbound and Eclipse (40 page)

I tormented myself clear to the portals of that imposing home erected on fertile tobacco cropland. Behind it stood several whitewashed outbuildings, a squat barn, slave quarters, summer kitchen, and sheds. One look at George Hancock's rambling house nearly did me in: my distant relative
had prospered. He was a country squire, one of the first citizens of Fincastle, and here I was, an adventurer.

I gathered whatever wits I had left to me, dismounted, left my horses to York, and stiffly assaulted the front door.

She opened, and I stared at a vision of white silk, and the world stood still.

Mr. Jefferson himself welcomed me at the door of the President's House late in the evening of December 28, having heard of my arrival in Washington, and never was a mortal so gladdened as I to see my friend and mentor and commander in chief.

I had paused long enough to find lodging for my royal Mandan guests, She-He-Ke, his wife, and our interpreters. And then I hurried to that unfinished white manse to find the lanterns lit, every window lighted with tapers, and the president at the door in his slippers, gotten into a faded blue robe, his yawning stewards standing about behind him.

We shook hands heartily, Mr. Jefferson not being the sort to embrace, while the stewards saw to my chattel, especially those trunks that bore the journals and the few botanical specimens I had not earlier sent east.

“At long last!” he exclaimed, and I nodded ruefully, knowing I had been negligent about keeping him apprised of my progress and safety.

“Are you well? Hungry? Shall we talk?”

“Mr. Jefferson, let's talk if you're up to it.”

“I'm certainly up to it, but are you?”

I assured him I was in the very bloom of health, and that settled the matter. I was in fact weary, but who could surrender to Morpheus at such a momentous time? I fairly seethed with delight. I was bursting with news and observations, and at the same time aware that my arrival had caused great jubilation in Washington City; they were calling me the great explorer, celebrating our safe return, writing treatises about me.

It took but a little time for the excellent stewards to settle me upstairs in a capacious four-poster room next to one occupied by Mr. Jefferson's son-in-law, Thomas Randolph, and then escort me to the president's private chambers, where he, still in his robe and slippers, his gray-shot red hair in disarray, received me with heartfelt delight, and beckoned me to a feast of cold beef, creamy rice pudding, chocolates, and ample amounts of fine French wines, which delighted my palate.

I poured some ruby Bordeaux and plunged in, aware that my auditor was acutely absorbed, hanging on to my every word, and processing everything I had to say in that phenomenal brain of his. Mr. Jefferson was more than my president; he was a sentry patrolling the lusty frontiers of botany, zoology, commerce, art, literature, philosophy, mechanics, astronomy, architecture, ethnology, cartography, and a dozen other fields.

He did not take notes, though he was an avid note-maker, but listened so intently that I was sure he could repeat back to me, word for word, everything I told him about the course of the great Missouri, the fierce tribes along it, the falls, the headwaters, the passage across those terrible white peaks, and the descent of the Columbia to the brine of the western sea.

We talked until two, when I began to nod, and he urged me to rest myself in the bosom of the nation's gratitude, and we would pursue other matters in the morning. He stood,
began extinguishing the beeswax candles with a silver snuffer until a yawning servant rushed in to complete the task, and I retreated at once.

I did meet him for breakfast, having as usual slept on my bearskin, finding beds too soft after my years of sleeping on hard ground. That grand day we examined everything in my trunks; plants he had never seen, such as the wild flax I had discovered near the great falls of the Missouri; birds, such as the sage grouse I had spotted near Maria's River and the black-billed magpies I had recorded; skins of animals new to him, such as the prairie dog; and he paused long at Will's superb map of the Missouri River, which I knew to be a masterpiece of the cartographer's art, anchored by the innumerable soundings of latitude and longitude I had taken.

When at last we had examined my specimens, he straightened up, placed a hand on my shoulder, and searched a moment for words. “Meriwether,” he said at last, “you are the very embodiment of the best in this new nation. You have proven yourself in the most trying conditions, found courage when you needed it, advanced science and knowledge, acted with humane and affectionate regard for our Indian neighbors, and have shown yourself to be more than worthy of the trust I vested in you. I am proud of you; I am more proud of what you've achieved than anything else I've accomplished. You, my son, are worthy of the esteem of every citizen, and I will say so to the world.”

He said it so gently and firmly and kindly that I stood transfixed. The president of the republic was saying these things of me.

“Thank you, sir,” I said, fumbling for something more suited to this occasion. “I will always try to live up to your expectations for me, and give myself to a life unsullied and honorable and fruitful.”

And therein had I sealed my fate.

He smiled, breaking the solemnity of the moment.

“Now, Meriwether, you must see to the publication of your journals. In fact, they belong to the government; you recorded them in pursuit of your duty. But they shall be yours. My son, they will be profitable to you, and the true reward for your courage and perseverance and fortitude. Prepare them, and swiftly, for half the naturalists in Europe, and all of them in this country, are crying to me for word of the publication, and until now I've had little to tell them.”

“I will directly, sir,” I replied fervently, for I would crawl a hundred miles on my knees to please this man. “I will set upon that task at once, saving only the business of looking after my men. I hope that Congress will be generous, and that my men will receive what was promised; back pay, a grant of three hundred twenty acres, and if the War Department is willing, improvements in their rank according to my commendations.”

“Consider me your ally in all that,” said Mr. Jefferson. “Congress meets in a few days, and we shall commence our assault upon their purse.”

Ah, it was grand to be at the President's House, three and a half years after I had last seen him, my mission fulfilled and successful in every respect, for I had succeeded in every part of my instructions, save perhaps my pacification of the Sioux, which was deeply disappointing to me because they controlled that mighty river of the plains. I had not failed him.

“I fear I am keeping you all too much to myself,” the president said at last. “Let your Mandan chief know that we will have a reception here for him tomorrow, along with the Osages Chouteau brought us. You know, there's a play tonight. I imagine the red men might marvel at our theater, and get the drift of the show even if your translator—Jessaume is it?—has to interpret.”

That sounded like a grand idea, and I told the president I would make the arrangements.

“Stay here as long as you wish, of course, Meriwether. We're having the usual New Year's Day open house, with many a fair lady in attendance, and I imagine half of Washington, eager to hear your stories. Have you seen the
National Intelligencer
? You will discover you are somewhere between canonization and sainthood.”

I laughed, though I preferred not to.

That fine evening we loaded our savage king and queen into a carriage and made for the theater, and there before much of Washington and the diplomatic corps, we entertained the Mandans and Chouteau's Osages, who gaped and stared and giggled at the thespians, and then returned the favor by performing a frenzied pipe dance on stage, with ululating howls and horrifying screams, much to the shivering delight of the leading lights of Washington.

I sat there benignly: let them all be aware of the savage wilderness that I had penetrated, I thought. Let the howling savages, almost naked in their breechclouts, remind the civilized world where the Corps of Discovery had truly been. We had brought the menacing wilderness to Washington.

I spent the next hours preparing material to give to Benjamin Smith Barton and the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, my next port of call, where a banquet awaited me, and my work would be received and reviewed. That would be the crowning glory, and it would be mine alone, for I alone in the Corps of Discovery had been adequately prepared to reap the botanical and zoological harvest. I looked forward to it as keenly as I looked forward to counseling the president about Louisiana and all our western dominions.

New Year's Day, 1807, turned out to be my chance to meet the cream of Washington, who flocked in great numbers to
the annual open house given by Mr. Jefferson. They came to examine my Mandans, to examine me, to discover what gaudy stories about grizzlies and savages and strange animals they could memorize to decorate their own conversations. I did not disappoint them. Most of Congress had already arrived, and I wanted to make myself available to answer their questions and at least implicitly, though it was a social occasion, to speak in behalf of my men and the awards they so richly deserved.

Ah, the women! Mr. Jefferson had mentioned them. I yearned for them. And here they all were, flocking about me with eyes aflutter. My dear cousin Maria Wood had not waited for her wandering admirer, but married. And so I had no one, but I supposed that a young man as favored by fortune as I would not find it difficult to pluck the sweetest fruit.

So it was that I found myself in the company of a fabulously eligible Miss Cecelia, daughter of a New England senator, enjoying those glowing brown eyes, alabaster cheeks, so lovely after my long years among dusky savages, and chestnut hair in ringlets.

I smiled, but not too openly, for fear of revealing the blue-tinted gums that Dr. Saugrain's courses of mercury had given me, gums that would tell all too much to the knowing eye. That was the sole remaining evidence of my former disposition, and I hoped that the blue gums would soon vanish, just as the illness had.

“Would you favor me with an account of your trip?” she asked, over a crystal glass of Mr. Jefferson's silky red Burgundy.

“I would be honored,” I replied, fending off a dozen others who wished also to glean whatever pearls of wisdom dropped from the lips of the explorer. There was but little privacy, but I steered her to a corner of that familiar manse, where I had been the president's aide for so many months,
and there told her of my adventures, the great white bears, as we first called the grizzlies, the savages, the treacherous river, the dizzying mountains, now a litany so well rehearsed that it spilled easily from my tongue.

“And now I have it all in the journals and must prepare them for publication,” I said. “The advancement of science and the fate of nations depends on it.”

“Do you like my frock? I got it just for the occasion.”

“Your gown?” I gazed at a lemon yellow silk affair, with ruffles of white lace, which sheathed a perfect young form.

“Yes, for Mr. Jefferson's open house. Father didn't approve, you know. He's a Federalist, and saw no reason to spend so many shillings on a dress to wear for an odd republican president who wanders about in his bedroom slippers.”

“I see. A nice dress.”

I spotted Mr. Dearborn, the secretary of war, and thought I might profitably spend a while with him. I had numerous accounts to settle, and meeting him in these auspicious beginnings of a new year might prove useful, not only to me but to my corps.

“Forgive me, Miss Cecelia, but I must say a word to Secretary Dearborn,” I said.

She curtsied and turned to explore the party for other amusements, and I retreated, a little melancholic, for as usual, I had my troubles with women. I am a serious man, and have no stomach for twitter. Still, she had enchanted me with a form that had been turned on the lathe by a master, and I reflected bitterly on my endless bachelorhood, and my frustrated plans to warm my domestic hearth.

But there would be others. I, of all men on earth, had my pick.

I suppose I should thank the harsh weather for my betrothal. It kept us bound to the hearth. Give me a better clime, and I would be outside, as is my wont. I would have gotten us a picnic lunch in a hamper from the mammy and some saddle horses from the grooms and headed for the nearest green bower where I might woo that bundle of joy while slapping mosquitoes and fending off red ants.

But Julia is distracted by insects, and my ardor might well have been defeated by crawling bugs on her limbs, wasps, hornets, black horseflies, green-bellied flies, bumblebees, inchworms, caterpillars, and the whine of bloodthirsty mosquitoes for whom flesh is food and blood is drink.

So I ascribe the weather to my successful assault upon the citadel of my desire. The Hancocks left us to our own devices in a stove-warmed parlor, but there were servants hovering about, not always out of earshot, and plainly at hand to protect Julia's virtue. I take some pleasure in the discovery that she didn't entirely relish being protected, or being virtuous, for that matter. For her gaze began to swim when she surveyed me, and I saw the blush rise to her smooth cheeks, and I knew the train of her innermost thoughts.

We were not entirely decorous, for the mistletoe hung from the chandelier, a dangling invitation perhaps the sly work of old George Hancock himself, who was scarce a decade older than I and knew well the ferment of the loins. I steered Julia under it whenever the occasion permitted, and thus discovered that she was as enthused by its magical powers as I, and for a few moments, at any rate, I wrapped
that bundle in my arms and blunderbussed her, or that is the word I chose for it, being an inept man with women.

The colonel accepted my assault upon his daughter well enough; he even set aside his ardent Federalist passions to be hospitable to me. And trouble him as it might, he found the means to praise Mr. Jefferson for sending me out into the unknown.