Lady of Perdition

by Barbara Hambly

  The man blew a line of smoke from his corn-husk cigaretto. ‘Tough as prairie sod.’

  ‘Dr Meredith with him?’

  ‘Just got in.’

  They passed the kitchen quarters, and the short passageway to the lobby, where the carpets had been stripped and two house-slaves were holystoning the puncheon floor in the vain hope of getting the bloodstains out.

  Meredith had clearly changed the dressing on Pollack’s chest, and was in the process of tidying up when Hannibal edged around Rance Pollack’s heavy bulk in the doorway. January followed him, stepped aside with the physician and asked quietly, ‘There anything further I can help you do, sir? Does he look to be getting better?’

  ‘You Americans never cease to amaze me.’ Meredith glanced across at his patient. An oil-lamp had been lighted next to the bed, for the daylight in the room had begun to dim. The sulfur stink of the Lucifer-match still hung in the air.

  Pollack looked up from his pillows at Hannibal, then across to January, dark eyes drooping with laudanum but still holding the echo of their sharpness. ‘What the doc tells me, Sefton, I owe you my life. If that boy of yours hadn’t been on hand here at the hotel, that idiot Parralee woulda killed me. I do owe you for that.’

  ‘Then might you reconsider,’ said Hannibal, ‘the matter we spoke of Saturday night? I’m delighted that Ben was able to help a fellow human being—’

  The lamp was just bright enough, that January could see the way Pollack’s eyes shifted. That slight contraction of the brows was perfect: genuinely sad to disappoint a benefactor.

  ‘I wish I could oblige you, Sefton.’ The deep voice, even, seemed to slur a little more, mimicking a more profound intoxication than was actually the case. ‘But I was telling the truth the other night, when I said I bought no wench in Galveston.’ He frowned as if struggling against the drug. ‘My guess is, Neumann gave you my name because he’d sold your gal to somebody else, and wanted to put you off his trail. He knew I was leaving town and figured you’d chase me half across Texas. I wish you all the luck in the world, findin’ her.’

  He turned his head, as Rance – who had stepped into the hall to speak to Mudsill – re-entered the room. ‘The men set to leave in the mornin’, Rance?’

  ‘They are, Gideon.’ The hulking man gestured back toward the hall. ‘Shaughnessy an’ Mudsill’s in charge, an’ everythin’s set here for—’

  Pollack raised an impatient hand, his face creasing briefly, as much with annoyance as with pain. ‘Good,’ he said, cutting off his words.

  But his glance flickered past his mountainous brother, towards the doorway into the hall, and January had a brief impression, in the shadows, of a shock of silver hair, an extravagantly waxed mustache … The man from the saloon?

  The one the Pollacks had been talking to, at the beginning of the fracas Saturday night.

  Set for what?

  ‘I should be on my feet by Friday,’ whispered Pollack. ‘No matter what this Tory sawbones says.’

  And Meredith retorted, with only half a grin, ‘You’ll be on your feet Saturday and in your coffin Monday, at that rate.’

  But Gideon Pollack’s glance crossed the rather porcine gaze of his brother, and Rance gave a nod.

  Set for something, reflected January, as he followed Hannibal from the hotel. Revenge on Stanway and the Nationalists?

  Something to do with the reason Pollack had had Marcus Mudsill following him around Austin, guarding his back?

  A gaggle of Pollack riders were gathered outside the Capital City, waiting for Rance. January recognized most of them as men who’d been stationed in the hotel yard last night.

  Two men stood a little apart from this group, though clearly watching the door for Rance’s re-appearance. One of them was the young Irishman Finn, last seen on the banks of the Brazos, friendly and lazy and chatting up one of the local señoritas in execrable Spanish.

  The other, unobtrusively watching the street around him, with two Kentucky long-rifles on his back and a couple of wheel-guns in his belt, was Abishag Shaw.

  As they passed him, January dug into his trouser pocket and brought out a bandana, which he fumbled and dropped to the splintery planks of the hotel porch. He bent to pick it up, using his left hand.

  Shaw spit, but made no acknowledgement of the signal.

  Right hand meant, He said yes.

  Left hand meant, We’ll have to do this the hard way.

  SEVEN

  From Onion Creek the trail south of Austin lay through the bottomlands of the Guadalupe River, toward Plum Creek to eventually swing east to reach the ranger station at Seguin. In the open grasslands between the trees, January glimpsed more long-horned Mexican cattle, and several times, near town, he’d see the smoke of a farmhouse, or the darker green of cotton fields. This was farming country, the good cotton land that both Nationalists and Houstonites were counting on to bring in American planters, their money, and their slaves.

  But as they rode west the farms and plantations grew more sparse. Unlike the Cherokee and Tonkawa, whom President Lamar had simply ordered exterminated, the Comanche still raided these lands that had once been theirs, stealing horses and killing by torture any invaders they encountered.

  Riding in the chill of the morning, January strained his ears, listening behind and around him, and remembering every tale of horror he’d heard since coming into this disputed land.

  Born in the flat green bayou country near New Orleans, he had spent his early manhood in Paris. The countryside he knew in those years was the tame sweet realm of the Ile de France: orchards, meadows, hedgerows and cropland. He was reminded, as they rode south-west, of Mexico, in the winter before the Texas Revolution; rugged hills of pale-gray rock, lush bottomlands thick with cedar and juniper, dry savannahs now blue with wildflowers. But even in the green monotony of the Louisiana bayous, as a slave-child (and the brother of one of the most troublesome runaways in the quarters) January had acquired a sharp sense of camouflage and cover. He set his ambush in a cedar brake beside the southward trail, amid an area of plentiful creeks and even more plentiful trees, near a stretch where the creek ran through high gray rocks which (had said Marcus Mudsill back in Austin) boasted a number of caves.

  It was an hour’s ride from the town itself. With luck, Pollack’s supply-train would reach it before there was much traffic on the trail. ‘And if the Fates truly smile upon us,’ added Hannibal, as they walked a few paces from the brake to make sure their horses couldn’t be glimpsed from up the trail, ‘Mr Mudsill won’t think it worth his while to risk being shot to keep a slave-girl from escaping.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it,’ said January quietly. ‘As one of Pollack’s cowhands Mudsill has a lot of freedom, but he knows damn well he can be bought and sold. Or that his wife can, or his child.’

  Hannibal was silent at that.

  ‘Men get funny about women they think they own – black men as well as white,’ January added. ‘And a white man’ll see red at the thought of anyone taking any slave away from him, let alone a woman he’s paid upwards of two thousand dollars for – which is what I guess Pollack paid for a fancy like Selina. Pollack knows someone is interested in getting Selina away from him and he may suspect you didn’t believe his story. I’m guessing Mudsill’s been told it’s his hide, if the girl gets away.’

  He led the way back to the brush-festooned rock he’d picked out that overlooked the trail, checking the ‘revolver’ in his belt as he went. Hannibal followed, carrying both rifles and two pistols of his own. Ravens cawed at them from the thicker trees along the creek.

  ‘I did wonder,’ remarked Hannibal, ‘about the black cowhands I saw in town. It seemed to me that escape would be easier here on the frontier.’

  ‘Then he’d be a hunted man. As a cowhand, a slave is in a privileged position. It’s hard work, and dangerous work, but it’s not soul-killing, like picking cotton. Mudsill is wed to one of Pollack’s housemaids, he told me. They have a child, a son. He runs, he loses th
em, the same as if Pollack sells him, or them. Either way, if Selina gets away, Mudsill’s life is going to be hell.

  ‘He’ll come after us,’ he finished, and stretched himself out on the rock behind the thick tangle of rabbitbush.

  Hannibal said, ‘Hmn,’ and crouched beside him. ‘He’s also smarter than Rance. The same could be said of my horse, of course. Damn Stanway,’ he added. ‘Manus, caput, pedes vermes interet … And damn—’

  He turned his head sharply.

  Hooves up the trail.

  January cast one quick glance behind them, in the direction of the horses. The purchase of another two, with tack, had reduced their working capital to barely more than would cover passage out of Galveston, provided they could find a boat bound for the United States before Pollack put two and two together and gave Hannibal’s description to the port authorities. Yesterday afternoon he’d noted Mudsill’s horse, which was of that golden hue that the Mexicans called palomino (and which most Frenchmen likened to the color of an old cheese). Flickers of sunlight caught the golden coat through the dust. January counted the riders as they came into view around the bend in the trail, though he knew their number already from Mudsill: five cowhands, two drivers for the wagon, and a ginger-mustached riding-boss – presumably Shaughnessy – to look after the five slaves Pollack had purchased in Galveston.

  Four of these slaves – men – walked alongside the wagon, collared with iron rings joined by a chain. Their wrists were likewise shackled. January reflected that if Marcus Mudsill should need a reminder of what would happen to him if his master’s chosen concubine got away, those dark faces, gray with the dust of the horses before and around them, would be it.

  Selina rode a mule among the men, and January could see, by the way she held her hands, that they were tied to the horn of the stock-saddle on the mule. Her print cotton dress, blue and white, didn’t quite fit her. He’d seen similar frocks on the other women at Neumann’s. Her headscarf was simple, not the defiant fantasias the free women of New Orleans concocted in scorn of the custom that said that women of color must keep their heads covered. Back in New Orleans, he had seen her roll her eyes in contempt at just such a covering on Rose.

  Her face, a symphony of delicate ovals, bore bruises on cheekbone and the point of her jaw. She kept looking around her at the trees, and January hoped to hell that Mudsill thought this was just fright, or curiosity about her new life, or anything but hope of rescue. She’s sixteen, he told himself, and scared out of her mind. Of course she’s on tenterhooks …

  Mudsill was up at the front of the line, his back to her.

  The man closest to her, riding with a lazy slouch in the saddle, rifle across his arm, was Abishag Shaw.

  January hated to do it – as he hated any act which harmed the innocent, human or beast – but this was a situation that admitted no leeway. He took aim and shot Mudsill’s palomino through the head. The beast went down and Hannibal fired – and missed, because with that first shot the train erupted into a chaos of confusion – and January shot again, taking down the near leader of the wagon team. In that same instant Shaw grabbed the bridle of Selina’s mule, spurred his own horse into the trees south of the road, and as the men broke and scattered in all directions January managed to shoot two more horses. The four chained slaves headed for the trees and Shaughnessy deliberately took aim and shot the last man of the line, bringing the third man down with his weight and pulling the other two up short.

  January fired at the riding-boss – whose horse he’d already shot – but the man had ducked behind the wagon. Hampered by the dead weight of their comrade, the three surviving slaves dragged the body towards the trees. Praying the Colt wouldn’t blow up in his hand, January fired over the heads of the two cowhands, making them duck flat behind a dead horse. He could hear Hannibal moving off among the trees in an effort to make it less obvious that there were only two men attacking. Come on, Shaw …

  His next shot was also at Shaughnessy but he missed that time, too. Pollack’s riders were keeping under cover. A sharp whistle told him Shaw was at the horses (That was quick …), and he fired once more, then dashed back to the brake where the Kaintuck was helping Selina into the saddle. Presumably the mule and Shaw’s own horse were making tracks away on the other side of the road. The girl was ashen with shock and struggling not to weep; when she saw January and Hannibal crash through the trees she burst into tears, and would have called out to them had not Shaw clamped a hand over her mouth. ‘Silence or we’s dead, Miss.’ He practically threw her onto the horse’s back, swung onto that of the one beside it.

  January, mounted already, spurred to her, caught the bridle, and zig-zagged away at a hand-gallop among the trees, the other two men riding off fast, together, in another direction. Men’s voices clamored behind him: not a second to be lost. He spared a glance back at Selina, who clung to the saddle-horn and seemed to be gasping for breath. He whispered, ‘Don’t you faint,’ and she shook her head, though she still wept.

  She’d never seen Abishag Shaw in her life, he realized. Until the moment he, her schoolmistress’ husband, had appeared she hadn’t known for certain whether she’d been rescued or just stolen by somebody else.

  He took the horses down through the brush to a creek, walked them through the water, pushing downstream, away from the hills and the caves. His heart was in his throat when they crossed the road – he could still distantly hear the men’s voices in the tangles of the bottomlands – and he dismounted, found a deadfall branch to sweep out the hoof-tracks in the road’s dust, and led the way on south of the road where the ground was stonier and there was less obvious cover. It was two days’ ride to Columbus and two beyond that to Galveston – bypassing Houston – always supposing the map was correct – and January had only the name of a woman connected to the Underground Railroad. She might be dead by this time, or moved on …

  Let’s deal with that, he reflected, when we have to.

  He checked the silver compass he wore around his neck on a ribbon. Stopped once, long enough to load his pistol and all six chambers of the revolver, and his rifle. Listened, to the great silence of the deep-grass prairie, the scrubby woodlands.

  Not even smoke smudged the blue of the sky.

  Good.

  Virgin Mary, Mother of God, protector of women, please keep the Comanche on their own side of the hills today …

  After another couple of miles they came on the ruin of an adobe plantation-house – a fresh ruin, walls black with the charring of fire – and the burnt-out snaggle of out-buildings. What had been cotton fields, and corn-fields, lay along the creek. Skeletons, and the bones of dogs, lay among what had clearly been the quarters of three slave families, now half-choked in elephant-ear and scuppernong. Selina whispered, sickened, ‘What happened?’

  ‘Comanche, probably.’ January led the way towards a clump of pecan trees a hundred feet from the quarters, where the brush was thick enough to conceal the horses. ‘Somebody came along and fetched the whites’ bodies soon after it happened. You all right?’

  She nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you – I was so stupid …’

  ‘Don’t thank me yet,’ he replied quietly. ‘We’ve got a long way to go.’

  They rested the horses among the trees for two hours, January slipping as cautiously as he could to the ruined house, to draw up water from the well. But it smelled foul, and he guessed the Comanche had thrown corpses into it, to thwart any whites who tried to return to this place. He found the overgrown trace of a path behind what had been the quarters, which led him to a spring. After he’d shared the pones and jerky he’d brought from Mrs Eberly at the tavern with Selina, and watched and listened in every direction (No birds flying up startled from the trees, no sign of riders … He tried to think of other telltale signs people had told him about one time or another and couldn’t.) he took his courage in his hands and led the horses down to drink.

  When he got back, he found Selina had changed her blue-a
nd-white cotton dress for the boy’s clothes they’d bought for her in Austin. She offered him back the little bag of silver he’d given her. ‘Hold onto it,’ he said, ‘in case we get separated. We’re going to need every cent of it, to get out of Texas alive.’

  He took his knife from his boot, asked, ‘You want me to cut off your hair, or would you rather do it? Watch out,’ he added, as she extended her hand, ‘this is sharp.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Her voice was barely a whisper, and he noticed how her fingers avoided contact with his as she took the blade.

  ‘You think my daddy’s going to be very angry with me?’ Her eyes told him that she already guessed the answer to that one.

  And how would he not?

  January said, ‘You know your daddy better than I do, Miss Bellinger. If you were my daughter I’d be sick with terror, and ready to strangle you. But I saw him with you, when he came to the school to leave you off, and it looked to me like he loves you very much.’

  ‘Miss Claire …’ Her voice stumbled a little on the name. ‘Daddy’s wife might make him … might not let him come for me. That’s … I think she’s the reason Daddy sent me to go to school in New Orleans. He married her two years ago when M’am Marie died, but she only just found out about me last Christmas.’

  She spoke without raising her eyes to his, carefully intent on cutting through those beautiful bronze-gold curls of which she had been so vain. Outside the dense little green world of the thicket’s shade, January watched and listened, watched and listened: the dry scrub of the overgrown fields, the black jumble of adobe and torn-up boards that had been a man’s dwelling-place. In the ruins as he’d passed them, January had seen the broken bisque head of a doll, and a woman’s shoe. He wondered if the man who’d been father and husband had whipped his cottonhands, or raped the girls who did the wash and the sewing. If the woman who’d worn that shoe had urged her husband to sell off the children as soon as they could do a little work, because the family needed the money.