Lady of Perdition

by Barbara Hambly

  If he had to whisper the truth into the ear of God, January had to admit that he followed the advice of that dark cynical voice at the bottom of his soul. He hated himself for it, but he had seen white men sell their children – children that they said they genuinely loved (not the children of their legitimate white wives, of course) – because they really needed the money. Sometimes, because they really needed the money to pay gambling debts.

  He couldn’t imagine how anyone could do this. Even an illegitimate child, even a stranger’s child … As the horses trudged on through the flat heavy croplands under a monsoon sky, he saw the faces of his sons. Thin, grave, three-year-old Professor John, already sounding out the letters of the storybooks Rose read him. Golden Xander, who had just begun to stagger about the house, always underfoot and always trying to break into a joyful run …

  How could anyone sell a child?

  Men did it all the time. He knew that. His own father had come home from the fields one evening to the news that his wife and two children had been bought by a sugar-broker from New Orleans.

  How could anyone say to a sixteen-year-old girl: ‘I’m going to leave you here in slavery, with the man who has raped you every night for a week, because seven hundred and fifty dollars is all I can afford. Because I’m not willing to put my own interests in danger by borrowing more.’

  Where would her father draw the line, of what interests of his own to give up?

  He was again sorry Shaw had shot Seth Javel rather than letting him burn.

  But that didn’t solve the problem. Neither the one in his own heart, nor the one that awaited them in Austin.

  And as the day went on, through those thick unchanging bottomlands between Buffalo Bayou and the Brazos, it became clear to him that he probably wasn’t going to be able to confess his sin and hear Mass this side of New Orleans. Even had they been able to stay in Houston for more than the single night, he guessed there wasn’t a Catholic church in thirty miles. The missions that hadn’t been driven out by the Comanche had been shut down or abandoned during the revolution, their lands snabbled up into Mexican land grants or by Texas claimants who were still fighting over their provenance.

  ‘What do the Irish do?’ he asked Hannibal at one point during the day, and the fiddler’s eyebrows had quirked up to the brim of his old chimneypot hat.

  ‘You think any Irishman who’s come to Texas is pining to confess his sins?’

  The owner of the Brazos ferry – a tough, rosy woman whose husband ran the general store on its bank – confirmed this observation. ‘No, I shouldn’t think there’s a Romish church closer than San Antonio,’ she said, as she forked hay from a rack into the corral where the men led their horses. Nearly a dozen mounts were already penned there, and six mules. The ferry-woman’s one-armed husband was fully occupied in the little adobe store building, pouring what January guessed to be truly horrible liquor for other travelers who’d chosen to pass the night rather than pressing on another twenty miles to Columbus. (Shaw told him the following day that his guess about the whiskey was accurate.)

  ‘Back when the Mexicans ran this country we all had to be Catholics,’ said Brazos Annie, wiping sweat from her fair, stringy hair with the back of her sleeve. ‘They’d send a priest around every year or two – Father Gallagher, he was, and as good a man with a bottle as you’d care to see – to marry folks and baptize their children. I hear some of the Mexican ranchers will bring up a priest from San Antonio now and then, but there’s never the money to build a church or a chapel or anything. And most of the local ranchers have had so much trouble with land-titles that go back to the missions, they sort of spit when they hear talk of Popish priests.’

  Her scanty brows tugged together, and she helped the men hang the bridles they stripped from their mounts’ heads on the fence, where the tack of the other horses was already draped. January wondered for about two seconds about the incidence of theft, but movement at the far side of the corral caught his eye: a couple of cowhands were building up a little fire under a grove of pecan trees. None was farther than a step from the rifles leaned up against tree-trunks or the back railings of the corral fence.

  From what he’d heard of Comanche raids – and horse-thieves – in this part of the country, he knew he’d keep his own rifle close at hand, had he been permitted to carry one.

  ‘Not the priests’ fault,’ the woman went on, and shrugged. ‘But I never could see why a good Methodist preacher wouldn’t do as well. At least they stirs up your blood.’

  January guessed that a theological query about what stirred blood had to do with salvation would probably be considered ‘uppity’, and merely nodded. ‘I guess people just feel most comfortable with the faith they were raised in, m’am.’

  ‘Well, they shouldn’t,’ said Annie firmly. ‘Mr Sefton, Mr Shaw, I charge ten cents for stew and bread, five cents for beer, or cook your own if you’ve got it.’

  While Hannibal and Shaw played poker in the grocery with the other travelers – Hannibal managing to win back approximately half the cost of the horses and gear (‘I could have taken more,’ he said the next day, ‘but thought moderation was called for …’) – January sat by the campfire under the pecan trees and played penny blackjack with the cowhands, vaqueros, and drivers who hadn’t the price of indoor accommodation, or who had been told by employers (or masters) to keep an eye on the stock. He himself maintained a surreptitious watch on the road leading down to the river’s brim. There was no reason in particular to avoid further contact with Valentina Taggart and the gorgons, but the mere thought of calling attention to themselves made January uneasy. It would not help their cause with Gideon Pollack, to have Taggart say to him, ‘Say, you know there’s a couple men lookin’ for you …’

  But no band of outriders appeared, encircling the sort of heavy Mexican traveling-coach that January guessed must be in use to transport the formidable Mère Taggart and her sister, and he breathed a little easier as the night grew late and the gibbous white moon made a blurred shape behind thin clouds. The men talked politics, as men will who seek the comfort of talk but don’t know those who share their campfire: politics, January had found, or guns, or horses. A dark-haired young Irishman named Finn, in between frying dough over the fire, showed him how to most efficiently cock his ‘revolver’ and switch the chambers while running, dodging, or hiding behind a tree.

  ‘Bunch of damn cowards in Congress,’ groused a heavy-shouldered Mississippi man named Wayne. ‘Afraid of their own goddam shadows! America needs Texas, as much as Texas needs America! Hell, we’re all Americans anyway, aren’t we?’ (The three Tejano vaqueros sharing the fire had nothing to say on this subject.) ‘What the hell business is it of Bustamante or whoever the hell is president of Mexico these days, if we join the US?’

  Not wanting to be beaten to a pulp, January forbore to point out that it was very much President Bustamante’s business if the United States laid claim to a province that was, constitutionally, still Mexican and simply in rebellion against its rightful government.

  ‘Hell, America could lick the goddam Mexican Army in a goddam week! You know how long it took us to whip the Mexes at San Jacinto? Eighteen minutes! What the hell those pussies in Congress are thinkin’—’

  ‘What the hell do we need Congress for in the first place?’ retorted the driver of the mule-wagon, chucking the stub of his cigar into the fire. ‘With their goddam banks and their goddam abolitionists, tryin’ to take away a man’s property and keep him from earning a living? Screw ’em. Texas has the best cotton land on this continent, the best in the world. If true men, businessmen who see things as they really are, don’t want to be pushed around by a bunch of milktoast Yankee abolitionists, let ’em come here!’

  He folded his long legs to sit beside the fire, leaned across to stab a piece of flat-bread from the common skillet.

  Another man said, ‘Coop’s right,’ and wiped the grease from his mustache. ‘What the hell do we need the US for?’

&
nbsp; The young Irishman Finn pointed out mildly, ‘Maybe to pay for an army to keep the borderlands safe from the Comanche?’

  ‘Hell, Lamar took care of that last year!’ blustered Greasy Mustache. ‘Comanche an’ the goddam Cherokee, too, which is more than that drunk Injun-lover Houston ever did!’

  ‘Took care of it so well that Texas money is worthless these days,’ replied the Irishman. ‘You can’t get but thirty cents on the dollar for it—’

  ‘Just a bump in the road.’ The tall man Coop waved a lazy hand. ‘Soon as the country can get a trade-loan from England or France to get us on our feet, we’ll have states like Louisiana and Mississippi askin’ to join us.’

  ‘When pigs fly!’ Wayne was on his feet, knife in hand, enormous in the firelight. ‘Lamar’s a goddam crook, takin’ bribes to open Texas land to speculators—’

  ‘Like Houston never took a bribe—’

  ‘Sam Houston never took a bribe in his life!’

  ‘Only ’cause he was too drunk to count it!’

  Under cover of the shouting, January turned to Finn – who continued to drop fry-bread into the skillet while gauging the fracas from the corner of one blue eye. ‘Actually,’ he said quietly, ‘Texas redbacks are down to twelve cents on the dollar in New Orleans.’

  ‘Are they, now?’ The young man stirred at a pot of beans – to which all the men had contributed – bubbling gently on the coals. ‘A pity, too, since the bank crash in ’37, an’ a poor man can’t get credit to buy land no matter how much the stinkin’ English mills are screamin’ for cotton … but the British’ll never lend Texas a ha’penny so long as they’re workin’ slaves. An’ if that idiot Lamar thinks signin’ a treaty with the French is gonna get him anywhere, well, the more fool he. An’ nobody like to come settle in this part of Texas anyway, as long as the Comanche are there ready to cut out your lights an’ liver just for the sport of the thing, an’ be damned to your Texas Rangers. Though I will say,’ he added, with a grin in the orange firelight, ‘that the savages are a good sight tenderer o’ heart than our landlord’s agent back in Donaghpatrick.’

  ‘I’ve heard that,’ agreed January in a judicious tone.

  ‘T’would be a joke on Lamar,’ agreed the Irishman, ‘if I hadn’t seen the bodies the Comanche left last time they raided San Marcos, their guts spread over damn near three yards of ground. Children they were, not more’n what my daughter woulda been …’

  Deftly he scooped up his own plate and retreated, January at his heels, as the shouting-match escalated into a full-on fight. January set his bowl down beside the corral fence, then dived back to rescue the fry-bread and the bean-pot from the fire.

  ‘There’s a man that’s been to the wars,’ approved Finn, settling rocks around the pot to support it. ‘An’ that’s leavin’ aside all the hoopla about where’s the North gonna get a free state to balance Texas in Congress, if Texas does get in? Last time that happened they had to go choppin’ up Massachusetts, which is where me sister lives. Ouch,’ he added, as Wayne, inevitably, heaved his mustachioed opponent into the fire.

  ‘That’s got to hurt.’ January wrapped his bandana around his hand and passed the bean-pot to one of the vaqueros, who had joined him and Irish by the fence.

  ‘Not yet so bad,’ replied the vaquero, ‘as the fight last year in the Trinity Saloon. Remember that, Finn?’ He picked a blob of fry-bread from the pan. ‘When Wayne took on three of Vin Taggart’s vaqueros, about Lamar moving the capital to Austin?’

  ‘That he did,’ grinned the Irishman. ‘An’ small blame to the man, given what it did to the price of town-lots in Houston, which is where his ma has a boardin’ house.’ His blue eyes danced as he looked back at January. ‘Ain’t seen the like of such a migration since me Aunt Maggie shifted twelve kids, two husbands – that’s another story – a drunk brother-in-law an’ the local preacher from her rooms on Elizabeth Street clear up to Sixth Avenue wi’out the rent-collector bein’ the wiser. Archives, records, clerks, the very desks an’ chairs—’

  ‘Jalisco – that’s Taggart’s riding-boss – broke a barrel of beer over Wayne’s head,’ laughed the vaquero. ‘Smash, like a pumpkin, and beer everywhere like a fountain and Wayne rising up out of it like Aphrodite from the waves!’

  ‘Taggart of Rancho Perdition?’

  ‘Himself,’ agreed Finn. ‘And a dear good pal of President Lamar in them days he was, and all for Texas rulin’ the lands from the Sabine to the Pacific.’

  ‘That was back when he thought Lamar was gonna clear the Comanche off that Mexican-grant land he got from his wife,’ said the vaquero, dodging a thrown plate.

  ‘No,’ objected Irish, ‘he just went over to the Pollacks when Pollack got a cotton-press—’

  ‘Rance Pollack?’ January moved his dinner out of the way as Coop, having finished his stew, waded into the fight and hurled Wayne over the corral-rails in among the horses.

  ‘His brother. You know Gideon Pollack?’

  ‘Only heard his name,’ said January. ‘From a lady who didn’t think much of him,’ he added, recalling what Valentina had said of the man.

  ‘You would have to ride from sun-up to sun-down, señor,’ said the vaquero expansively, ‘to find a lady who did think much of Rance Pollack. It is the brother, Gideon, that has the brains – and the power. Rance …’ He shrugged. ‘A dog on a chain.’

  ‘And the less dangerous,’ said the Irishman quietly, ‘of the two. Rance’ll bark and bite. He’s hot and red, like a rocket, that will go off anywhere. Gideon is a cold bastard, for all he’s smooth as mother’s milk an’ has the ladies eatin’ from his hand. He’s the one you want to avoid.’

  And he rocked back a little, as Coop the driver – who’d launched himself into the corral in pursuit of the burly Wayne – clambered neatly over the fence-rails and returned to pick up his own plate beside the scattered fire. The men settled down, leaving Wayne sprawled unconscious in the middle of the corral among the horses, where he remained, as far as January could tell, peacefully asleep for the rest of the night.

  FIVE

  Hannibal Sefton located Gideon Pollack two nights later at the Empire of the West saloon on Congress Avenue in Austin – a town up until last year known as Waterloo. The doors were open in the sticky darkness, which was fortunate, as slaves were not permitted inside. It was also fortunate, January reflected, that at least three other owners had left their human property outside in the dim puddle of lantern-light beneath the saloon’s awning. Though he didn’t really think slave-stealers would try to make off with the two grooms and the cowhand who shared the benches with him on either side of the door, his encounters with Valentina and the little clerk Hookwire had left him nervous.

  He hated, these days, even being out of the French Town in New Orleans. People knew him there: specifically, white businessmen, white brokers, white planters who would cheerfully testify, Hell, yes, Ben’s a free man! One of the best! Known him for years …

  Freedom papers, January had learned long ago, were the easiest things in the world to tear up. He supposed that even if the French daguerreotype process were perfected to the point that such images could be made cheaply, any buyer would claim that the black man in the picture wasn’t the man he’d bought – and the courts would believe him.

  The courts in Texas, the self-proclaimed ‘Slaveholders’ Republic’, wouldn’t even check.

  Bitterly and powerlessly, he hated the fact that this was so.

  ‘My boss told me to watch his back,’ he said, when the grooms who’d accompanied Mr Moore the cotton-broker and Mr Slater from the land office suggested a game of dice on their bench. ‘I don’t see the men that followed him back in New Orleans in there, but they hired a fella to go after him in Galveston, took us clean by surprise.’

  ‘What’d he do?’ asked the cowhand, who was loose-jointed and wiry and rejoiced in the name of Marcus Mudsill.

  ‘Nuthin’!’ insisted January, extemporizing freely. ‘This Frenchman in New Orleans claims
Mr Sefton – that’s my boss – ran off with his wife, but it wasn’t any such thing. Lord, if I’d been that fella’s wife, I’d have run off, too!’

  It got a laugh, and explained why he positioned himself with his back to the hitching-rail opposite the door, where he could see most of the room. Mudsill joined him. ‘This town’s lousy with Nationalists,’ he groused. ‘There’s one or two that’d beat up any man that comes out for joinin’ with the USA. Mr Pollack doesn’t like to take chances.’

  ‘Mr Pollack your boss?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The twist of the man’s mouth as he spoke brought back to January’s mind what Valentina had said, about Pollack’s main source of income being cotton. The prospect of being put in the fields was enough to make any enslaved cowhand nervous.

  Within the dim gold lamplight of the room, Hannibal crossed from the bar to the table where three men sat. Two of them – by the similarity of their square-featured faces, the identical dust-brown of their hair and the shape of their outward-winging eyebrows – had to be brothers, and it was easy to guess which brothers they were. The third man – medium-sized and slim, with a handsome mane of prematurely silver hair and a dark, waxed mustache like the villain in a melodrama – glanced up as Hannibal approached, and for a moment January felt a lurch of dread accompanied by the desire to shake the fiddler in exasperation: Not somebody else who recognizes him …

  But the man gave no sign of recognition, only watched the newcomer – and the door, and every corner of the room – with the wary eye of one who is making sure where every exit lay. January wondered if this was because he, like Pollack, was a Houstonite in this largely Nationalist new town.

  Hannibal bowed, and gave Gideon Pollack – the slimmer of the brothers, smaller and more expensively dressed – his card. Pollack glanced at it, then up at Hannibal’s face, as if trying to determine whether this was a trap or not.