“George, no! In Heaven’s name, man, stay put! Forget the Spaniards! We got more’n we can handle right here!”
George buckled on his sword. “Mister McCarty, I won’t have you arguing with me.”
McCarty’s eyes blazed. “George, hear me, there’s too much at stake f’r you t’be dashin’ off t’ dally in th’ arms o’ yer sweetie!”
There followed a shocked stillness in the room and a few murmurs of agreement, and George barely constrained his fist as a curtain of red fury rippled through his brain. “I’m going to forget you made that remark,” he said in a low voice. “Do I have to remind you that without Governor de Leyba you’d have been starved out of this place long months ago? Now he’s sent for me and, by my honor, I go. You know how to fight Indians, all of you. De Leyba doesn’t. I’ll simply advise him, and be back here before anything falls on you. Take my word for it.” He winked then, and squeezed McCarty’s right shoulder with his right hand, and McCarty nodded in resignation.
“Get on with you then. I know we’re much beholden to ’im. Damn you, don’t get reckless. This whole territory’d cave in in a day if you was lost.”
“Then I shan’t be lost! Come, brother o’ mine, there’s some very kindly folk across the river I want you to meet.”
“So I have heard, George,” said Richard Clark, adjusting his sword and moving with a sureness that looked like a copy of his brother’s. “So I have heard, and I’d be delighted.”
31
ST. LOUIS, UPPER LOUISIANA TERRITORY
May 25, 1780
THE SIGHT OF THE DE LEYBA ESTATE WRENCHED GEORGE’S HEART, not because it looked so familiar, but because it looked so different: It had been turned into a fortress. The high stone walls in whose shadow he had courted Teresa a year ago bristled with the muskets of militiamen. Outside the walls were entrenchments, their raw red earth marring the emerald grasses, and these diggings also were occupied by a mixture of Spanish soldiers and armed villagers. George surveyed the arrangements as he and Dickie galloped up, and he was pleasantly surprised. The primary weakness he saw was that no part of the barracks wall could be covered by fire from any other part, and, once through the trenches and reaching the wall, an enemy could begin breaking through it with impunity.
Inside the house of his tenderest memories George found an even more poignant scene. The place was swarming with Spanish and half-breed soldiers, short in stature, swarthy, their skin shiny with sweat and oil, their gaudy uniforms dingy and faded. They chattered in their incomprehensible tongue and made an effort to prevent him from entering the house until he and Dickie grasped their muskets and shoved them aside to enter the great oaken front door. There in the foyer George was confronted with a familiar face, a handsome goateed face whose expression flickered for a moment between gladness and disdain.
“Ah! Richard, may I present Lieutenant Francisco de Cartabona,” said George. “Señor, my brother, Lieutenant Richard Clark of the Virginia militia.” The two nodded, de Cartabona taking his intense eyes off George’s face only long enough to make a momentary appraisal of the young man. He’s still hostile, George noted.
From the interior of the house, which had glowed gracious and enchanted in his memory for the last year, came dense, unfresh smells and a cacophony of distressful sounds: the squalling of infants, lamentations of women, groans, and an undercurrent of sobbing and praying. All the fine pictures and sconces and tapestries were gone from the walls and mud was tracked all over the board floors. Stepping into the ballroom, where he had so long ago danced amid the glitter of chandeliers and silver and listened to Teresa’s exquisite recitals, George was stunned to see it had been transformed into a refugee camp of women, children, old people, shabby baggage, and even goats and chickens. The people lay about on filthy litters, sat with their backs against the walls, strolled about, nursed the infants, prayed, or held each other and gazed about disconsolately. He glanced over this abject scene, sensed the terror of these people, remembering the awful, fetid crowding of people and animals in the little Kentucky forts during the incessant Indian raids of 1776 and 1777, and his old fury against the British policy of waging war with Indian mercenaries was greater than it had been since his defeat of Hamilton. “It is my honor,” de Cartabona said, “to protect these helpless ones if the enemy penetrates the walls.”
“A task to break your heart, I know,” said George, and de Cartabona’s haughty face softened for an instant at these words of compassion from the man he so hated and feared.
George was searching the room and the hallways. “You are looking for his Excellency,” de Cartabona ventured, with a bitter half smile and no mention of Teresa.
“I am. And the señorita …”
“This way.”
In the study they found Fernando de Leyba sitting behind his desk, alone, his face in his hands. Their entrance startled him. When he looked up, bewildered and disoriented, not at first recognizing him, George was appalled at his wretched appearance. It was incredible that one year, even such a grievous one as de Leyba had endured, could have wrought such change in a man. His eyes were red-rimmed and sunken, their sockets deep and gray-brown like bruises; his face was blotchy and pasty, his cheeks sunken and unshaven; he looked as cadaverous as some of George’s men had looked after their arrival at Vincennes. His lower lip hung slack like an idiot’s as his mind reached to recognize these intruders.
Suddenly he lurched to his feet, his eyes filling with tears, and stood swaying. “Don Jorge, dear friend!” he cried, and George saw with a shock that this once-elegant wretch was not only very sick but quite drunk. De Cartabona had quietly backed out of the room and closed the door as if to avoid looking at him. Don Fernando staggered out from behind his desk and threw himself into George’s arms, sniveling and moaning.
“Nombre de Dios!” he strangled. “Forgive, amigo, that you should see me brought so low! I think I am at the end of my string …”
“Nonsense!” George snapped, grabbing de Leyba’s shoulders and shoving him back to arm’s length, hoping to shock him out of this miserable condition. “No man is low until he’s disgraced himself, and you’ve not done that!” De Leyba blinked, and as the statement penetrated his despair he began to draw his bony frame up taller, a vestige of his old pride beginning to flicker in his eyes. “You have my deepest sympathies for your losses,” George went on, “but it was Heaven took your lady and my government that ruined your fortune … there’s no disgrace on you, man! Stand up and collect yourself, and tell me what you’ve done to defend this place. And I must see Teresa. Quick, man, get yourself together. I have an hour at the most to stay here.”
“You … you haven’t come to help us …?”
“Aye, friend, to help and advise, but my command is the other side of the river. The only business I have here is love and friendship. Excellency, this fine lad with me is my brother, Lieutenant Richard Clark, Virginia militia …”
De Leyba drew his sleeve across his eyes and smiled, standing straighter now, and with a bow said: “I am most honored and surprised! Ah, Lieutenant, how proud you must be of this … of this …” And he burst into blubbering again, turning and stumbling back to his desk. There he wiped his face with a kerchief. “I am so ashamed! I am weak, Don Jorge; it exhausts me to stand … Yes, Teresa, you must see Teresa … Comrade, just let me gather my wits …. I’m afraid that drink and sleeplessness …”
The door swung open and Teresa, in black but with a soiled peasant smock over her dress, stood in the entry, her black eyes wide and wild, almost a bit mad-looking, one hand on her throat, staring at George.
“They said you were here. I did not dare hope ….” And then she was across the room, and into his embrace, sobbing and snuffling at his bosom, one arm around his waist and the other stroking his neck, while he held her there and smoothed the thick black hair and felt under his palm the bone-shape of her beloved head within, an enormous wave of emotion swelling in his chest and the ghastly realization in the back
of his mind that this timid, delicate person, so full of piety and music, but strangely also of passion and resolve, was in mortal danger. In his memory there rose unbidden the vision of a pioneer woman in Kentucky, found dead in the bloody mud of a wilderness road, clothes ripped away and buttocks striped with knife slashes, a patch of bloody skullbone peeking through her glossy black hair, glossy like this, where the crown of her scalp had been …
God, he thought, dismissing the awful image, anything but that such a horror should befall her …
He introduced her to Richard, then turned to de Leyba. “Don Fernando, it is your sacred duty to keep the British and their savages out of this fortification. By Heaven, I swear that your honor lies in that. If any harm comes to your sister through your cowardice or ineptitude, I shall call thee a disgrace!”
The threat electrified de Leyba. His eyes bugged and he grew three inches in stature. “I have sworn to Governor Galvez,” he shot back, “that the honor of Spanish arms shall never be tarnished on my account! Now I swear the same to you!”
“Good, then. Now let us hear what you’ve done.”
Now looking like a soldier, de Leyba led George to the desk and showed him a plan of the village with defenses drawn in. “You saw the entrenchments. They will be manned by twenty-nine regulars and two hundred eighty-one villagers under the command of Lieutenant de Cartabona. I have scouts abroad, and a troop of cavalry stationed here and here as pickets. The rest of the regulars, under my command, as well as twenty militiamen borrowed from Ste. Genevieve, will man the walls here—and the men from the entrenchments will fall back and join us if necessary. The cannon will be trained on the gate at the end of this street. And, as you see, the women and children are here in my house, which is our last redoubt. If,” he sighed, “things go so badly for us, de Cartabona and his survivors will fall back and make their stand here. A lamentable duty which they have vowed to fulfill to their last breath.” He straightened up, not ashamed of his plan.
“Fair. Nay, better than fair. But you have five cannon, and you plan to use ‘em only if the enemy reach the gate? That’s a waste.”
“Unfortunately the terrain within the walls does not permit us to fire down over them.”
“Then you must build a platform along the inside of the wall and set them up higher so they can rake the slope here. Like this.” Quickly he sketched the works. “Your artillerymen can survey to tell you how high to mount them.”
De Leyba looked at the sketch with admiration, while Teresa stood clinging to her lover’s arm. “I had felt so helpless about that,” de Leyba said. “But, yes! This would do it!”
“The Indians fear cannon. A four-pounder well placed is worth a company of muskets. But as you know, hired savages won’t expend themselves against a strong defense. They’ll range the countryside rather and pick off the helpless. So get as much of your population inside as you can. And quickly. I believe they’ll fall upon us by tomorrow if not tonight.” He felt Teresa shudder at his side.
De Leyba looked up, imploring with his reddened eyes. “My friend … I … I wish you could be induced to take command of our defense as well as across the river. I … have no experience, little confidence …”
George looked at him, a little ashamed for him, then at Teresa, and weighed the offer. But no. He knew very well that his first duty lay on Virginia’s territory on the eastern banks.
“I have no choice. And I’m sure beyond a doubt that they’ll land on that side first. If they do, we’ll take a great deal of hide off ’em and then they may not feel up to attacking this height o’ yours. Listen, my friend: I may not see you again for a long while. If we’re successful at Cahokia, I have to leave at once for Kentucky. The British have Shawnees headed there, and Shawnees are a more formidable lot than the mongrel mob coming here. Faith in yourself, man.” He turned to look down into Teresa’s eyes again. She was trembling in waves, and looking at her brother in pity. George again stroked her hair, and traced her ear with a fingertip. “Listen,” he added, “if they strike here I cannot come to your aid, though my heart will cry for it. I’ve only a handful of men, and not enough boats to bring but a part o’ those. And against their numbers, that would be in vain. Just remember this: once that motley band finds you’re not weak, they surely won’t storm you. I don’t expect ’em to get even to your walls. But …” He paused, squinting, musing, “if they by chance should overrun your trenches, signal us with a slow cannon salvo … and maybe we can come and do something. God knows what …” His voice fell off after this hopeless amendment, which he knew he’d had no official right to make, even if he did have a moral one. Into the pause came the bleating of goats and some shouts and a hubbub of talking from the ballroom beyond. A timorous smile broke on de Leyba’s face.
“Theresa,” he said, looking her up and down, “I should take thee for a nun.” Turning to George, he said, “She cares for the sick and feeble in there. Whatever she has done … she is pure in her soul, I swear I know it. Ah, don’t look so baffled; I know. Maria told me, on her deathbed …” His eyes filled up again, but he blinked back the tears and strained at a smile. “There is no dishonor, my friend. Not for a moment—no, perhaps for half of a moment—my grandee pride told me to demand satisfaction from you. Ha. But you were a hundred leagues away. And like Teresa, I ached instead for your companionship. So you see, amigo, we two love you, and we are as always in your hands.”
Bewildered by this abject declaration, George looked from one to the other for a moment, into their eyes, then reached for Fernando’s shoulder and pulled the pair close to his bosom. He stood there speechless for a minute, his head bent, eyes closed, his mouth pressed to the white line of scalp revealed by the part in Teresa’s ebony hair. She began shaking with sobs.
George stepped back, releasing them. He took the athletic medal from his pouch and held it before her eyes. He took in his fingers her thin gold neck chain and lifted it until the crucifix and the other medal appeared from the edge of her collar. Then he touched the medals to each other. “Look,” he said. “And soon we’ll match them together once again. I promise.” She nodded, still sobbing, looking down at the two pieces of silver. The floor creaked; the door whispered open and shut, and they found themselves alone. Fernando and Richard had left the room.
George put away his medallion and stood stroking the sides of Teresa’s face gently. She turned her face and kissed the heel of each hand, then sagged against him. He grew dizzy with an overwhelming, bittersweet agony, torn between a protective tenderness and a turgid desire to feel her long-remembered nakedness. Lifting her from the floor then with an easy sweep, he carried her to the divan and stooped, lowering her upon it. He began stroking her forehead, and she lay with eyes closed for a moment, tears squeezing out between her lashes, breathing through parted lips. But then the noise of people and animals beyond the door intruded and she began rolling her head to and fro, and opened her eyes for an apprehensive glance at the door. “Querido mío, I’m afraid,” she whispered. “To find us now would break his heart.”
“Aye.” He knew she was right, and so resigned his desire and let her sit up. And when Fernando reentered the room five minutes later with de Cartabona, George was kneeling at Teresa’s side with his lips pressed to her hand while with her other she stroked his sun-bleached hair.
De Cartabona looked away and followed de Leyba to the desk, where he was shown a sketch for the gun platforms. George rose, held Teresa close for an instant, then bowed to the two Spanish officers. “My affectionate regards to the two little misses,” he said. “I should like to see them, but it’s growing late. As it is, it may require stealth as well as haste for me to get back to my boys.”
The three men shook hands. “Remember,” George said, “the signal if they seem to be overrunning you …”
“A slow cannon salvo,” said de Leyba, forcing a wistful smile. His face was again chalky with fear, making his sunken and inflamed eyes look even more terrible, but at least he was stand
ing now like a man with a backbone.
“You may be obliged to kill at last,” George said softly, below Teresa’s hearing, then grinned and added: “but I pray you’ll be careful of yourself.”
Teresa went with him to the door, clinging to his arm as they walked through the narrow aisles among the refugees encamped in the ballroom. They stood facing each other at the door, their hands knotted tightly between them. Richard stood outside the door with the horses, “You’ll play music for me next time we’re together,” George said. She nodded. She did not tell him that her guitarra had been crushed under the foot of a burly muleteer unloading provisions in the parlor. George gathered her close in his arms and kissed her with a bruising pressure on the mouth. Then she stood in the doorway with Fernando at her side as the broad backs of the Clark brothers vanished in the dust of their horses’ hooves, down through the wall gate, through the late-slanting sunbeams, while Spanish soldiers and militiamen lounged at ease about their stacked muskets in the yard and curiously watched them go.
IN THE STILL DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN OF THE NEXT DAY, A LINE OF silent riflemen waiting on the parapet of the fort at Cahokia began hearing the soft rustling and knocking sounds of large numbers of Indians infiltrating the unseen fields beyond. George was summoned from his quarters, mounted the parapet, and stood listening. Down by the river, the hollow bumping of boats and groan of oarlocks could be heard. By this evidence he deduced that the savages were concealing themselves in the weeds and grasses and behind fences and hedgerows as close to the fort as they could steal, probably for a rush about daybreak.
“This little amusement ought not last long,” he whispered confidently to his officers. “They won’t be expecting the kind of fire we’ve got awaiting.”
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