Lady of Perdition

by Barbara Hambly

  He thought about what the Comanche did to whites they caught.

  About what the whites did to men who helped slaves escape.

  Virgin Mary, Mother of God, get us out of here safe …

  Gently, he said, ‘Your daddy said your mama and you had a house in Cloutierville.’

  Selina nodded. ‘He used to stay with mama and me, before he married Miss Claire. Even when he was married to M’am Marie. When he married Miss Claire he told us – told me and Mama – that he couldn’t come in as often, and I cried and fussed and acted like such a little bitch.’ She shook her head, as if trying to thrust the memory away. ‘Now I look back I think, how’d poor Miss Claire feel, knowing her husband had a … a lady-friend, and a daughter? I’d be mad, if a husband did that to me. I didn’t think about that, then. Or about what Daddy felt. And when Mama died last year, Daddy hired Lella – Mrs Jowett – to come live with me, and I … I want to cry, thinking about how I treated her, being so snippy and mean and her so patient. I was even mean to Daddy, when he’d come in to see me …’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said January softly. ‘A lot of girls act like mean little bitches when they’re unhappy, and they turn out all right.’

  She raised golden-hazel eyes to his, bruised with sleeplessness and tears. ‘I’ll bet Mrs January didn’t.’

  ‘Mrs January is perfect,’ replied January gravely. ‘And has never done wrong in her entire life.’ As he’d hoped, the girl was surprised into a giggle.

  ‘But my first wife – who was perfect also –’ and he smiled at the thought of Ayasha, spitting-mad at the iniquities of Madame Barronde who had lived on the ground floor of that tall old house they’d occupied on the Rue de l’Aube. Who had died of the cholera, the same day that Ayasha had died – ‘she told me she used to make spell-dolls of her father’s wives and stick pins in them and smear them with grease and leave them where rats would eat them. And I won’t even repeat some of the things my sister did when she was fifteen.’

  The girl clapped her hands over her mouth, to stifle another giggle, followed almost at once by tears again. After a time she said, ‘It would serve me right if he just left me—’

  ‘Nothing would serve you.’ January hushed her with an admonishing finger. ‘Nothing excuses – nothing justifies – what happened to you. If your father doesn’t come through with help, for whatever reason, you’ll stay at the school and help Mrs January and Zizi-Marie with the house, to pay your own way. Later we’ll figure out where you’re to go from there, when you’re ready. Until then,’ he finished, ‘you do what I tell you – the instant I tell you, without asking questions – and we’ll work on getting out of Texas alive.’

  She laid the cut-off hank of hair on the ground between them. Her shorn head looked awful, longer on one side than the other and sticking out in all directions. Still he made no move to touch her, to even it up. Her disguise included an old cap, which, he reflected, would help. But though she was visibly thinner than she’d been three weeks ago in New Orleans she did not make a convincing youth. He doubted anyone seeing her up close would be deceived, and men looking for two riders in this lonely country would descend on them no matter how she was dressed.

  ‘You could get killed, Mr J,’ she murmured. ‘And poor Mr Sefton, who I know isn’t well – and the man who grabbed me when the shooting started … Is he a friend of yours?’

  ‘That’s Mr Shaw,’ said January. ‘And yes – a very good friend. And we’ll manage,’ he concluded. ‘Stay quiet here while I have another look around, then we’ll move on.’

  He gathered up the cut locks, and buried them in the soft earth of the vegetable patch behind the ruined quarters, like the miniature grave of a child who was no more.

  When he’d discussed the ambush with Shaw, in the darkness beyond the Capital City Hotel’s corrals last night, the Kaintuck had vetoed the idea of travel by night. ‘They’s plenty moonlight, but you don’t know the territory. Head for Columbus an’ we’ll try an’ pick up your trail there, an’ from there we’ll sort out what we can do.’ Shaw didn’t know the country either, but January had little doubt that the lanky policeman would be able to find shelter – and additional food beyond the bare minimum they carried in their bulging saddlebags – a good deal more easily than he could himself.

  So they pushed on east-south-east through the dry, gently rolling hills, skirting the fields of cotton and corn in the bottomlands, and slept that night among the oak trees of a creek-bottom, January mildly surprised that they’d made it til sunset without sign of pursuit.

  Or sign of pursuit that he could see. Shaw had been right – the moon was too young, and set too early, to be of much help in escaping, but it was inconceivable that Pollack’s riders wouldn’t guess that an escapee would head for Galveston via Columbus – where else could you go to get out of Texas? – and that they wouldn’t know the ground between. So he sat awake for as long as he could, before gently waking Selina to take her turn at watch. And when he opened his eyes a few hours later, when first the birds began to sing, it was to see the girl, her shorn head bent on her shoulder, wrapped in the saddle-blankets, sleeping like an exhausted child.

  The creek ran eastward, towards the Colorado River (Shaw had told him there was another Colorado River west in Mexican territory – ‘They does that just to fool with you’), but they were coming out of the rolling lands and January’s instincts told him to follow the shelter of the trees as long as they could. They rode in the stream itself, to cover the horses’ tracks, but towards noon he began to think they might be followed. An hour later he was sure of it.

  ‘What do we do?’ Selina glanced in terror at the open country to the south beyond the trees.

  ‘We’ll never outrun them,’ said January quietly. ‘We don’t even know if it’s Pollack’s men, or if Pollack happened to tell Mudsill that he’d been approached by a great big nigger trying to snatch his wench away from him. They’ve seen Shaw, they haven’t seen me.’

  He tried to judge, from the few distant sounds he’d heard (or thought he’d heard) – the click of a hoof on the stream-bed rocks, the sharp rustle of foliage thrust aside – how far behind them pursuit (if there was pursuit) lay. An oak tree bent its branches over the stream a few yards ahead: it would have to do. He guided the horses into the stream again, brought them up close enough to the oak’s roots to dismount onto one, then held out his arms for the girl. She came down awkwardly into his grip, and he boosted her into the lowest branches – ‘You ever climb trees when you were little?’

  She shook her head. ‘Mama said ladies didn’t – and I didn’t like to get dirty.’

  ‘Think you can get around to that branch behind you and go up to where the leaves are thick?’

  She looked scared, but managed it – helped by the boy’s clothes she wore – with January glancing back up-stream all the while.

  What do I do? What do I say if it’s Mudsill?

  Did Pollack tell his slave – or his riding-boss – about the attempts to get Selina? He remembered Shaughnessy shooting the last chained slave of the line, and sweat crawled down his ribs. He had meant it, sincerely, last Monday night when he’d expressed his regret that Shaw hadn’t left Seth Javel to burn alive in that wood-shed, but the thought of keeping silent about Selina’s whereabouts were fire to be put to his own flesh made him sick. Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee … Help this poor girl stay free and for God’s sake help me keep her free by not getting caught myself …

  ‘Stay here,’ he whispered, when she was out of sight among the branches. ‘I’ll come back for you, I swear it.’ He walked back along the root, re-mounted and rode off down the stream, trying to think of some plausible reason to be leading a saddled horse: Gosh, this old nag? I found him in the woods …

  A mile downstream, where the bank was stony, he turned his horse’s head and went ashore, taking refuge in the thickets of hackberry and native holly. After ten minutes’ waiting in silence he heard them, the soft d
istinct click of a hoof on stone, then the creak of saddle-leather. A man said, ‘They came along here, I’m sure of it,’ in Spanish.

  Shit … January crouched back deeper into the thicket, and made sure his pistols were where he could get them.

  ‘The stream comes out onto Barnsell’s prairie in another two miles. We should see them, then, señora.’

  ‘When we do,’ said a woman’s voice, ‘you stay back, Ortega. Father Monastario himself told me this.’

  ‘The Comanche, madame—’ began the man protestingly, and as they came into sight, January stood up among the underbrush, hands raised to show them empty.

  EIGHT

  ‘Señora Taggart!’

  The man Ortega – three-quarters Indian, by the high bones of his face, despite the faded cottons and high boots of a white cowhand – whipped around to face him, his rifle trained.

  Valentina’s face blossomed with relieved joy. ‘Señor Enero, I thought we’d never find you in time!’ She dropped from her saddle and threw the rein to her bodyguard, who stayed, disapproving, beside the stream while his employer’s wife scrambled up the stony bank. Her fair hair was braided up under a wide-brimmed hat such as the vaqueros wore, and her boots and plain blue riding-skirt were dusty. The horses looked as spent as his own.

  Only when she got close to him did she ask in an undervoice, ‘The girl – they said you’d taken the girl Pollack had bought. She was the one you were seeking when we spoke in Houston?’

  ‘She’s well. I left her in an oak-tree upstream. I thought you were Pollack’s men—’

  ‘Good for you!’ She reached out and clasped his hands impulsively. January could see why men fell in love with this young woman at the drop of a hat. ‘Borrachio – one of my husband’s vaqueros – came to me yesterday saying Pollack’s men were insisting they must search our land. My husband has given orders that no one ride into our land, for any reason – an idiot command!’

  ‘I was there.’ January matched her whisper, with a glance toward Ortega, still sitting on his rat-tailed roan like a dilapidated Don Quixote beside the stream.

  Valentina shook her head, and sighed. ‘Back when my husband was still a nationalist he would often have his men shoot the Pollacks’ sheep and cattle, who came over onto our land, and also beat up Pollack’s riders. Father Monastario—’

  January glanced at Ortega again, and asked, ‘Who is Father Monastario?’

  ‘My confessor.’ She hesitated, as if considering what to say. ‘My … my anchor, in all of this. It is he, whom I was seeing, when we met in Houston. When Madrecita Taggart went out to look for me, as if I were a felon.’

  ‘Your husband permitted you to keep your religion, then?’

  ‘He did and he didn’t.’ She sighed. ‘It was understood between him and my Uncle Gael that I would “convert” to the Lutheran heresy for the sake of the marriage. But Father Monastario – he is a priest at Mission San José, in San Antonio, though he travels to other towns sometimes, Protestant towns – he said that this was done under duress. I would be forgiven for it, he said, and God would not consider me apostate. My uncle knew he was dying, you see, and having no son, he arranged for his land to go to me. But with norteamericanos pouring into Texas, every Tejano land grant – every grant given the nortes by the government before the rebellion – would be fought over, and questioned. Taken away if they could manage it. My uncle knew I had to marry a norte, a man who would be listened to in the Texas courts.’

  A lawyer’s holiday, the slave Jack Ray had called it, on board the Rosabel.

  ‘Father Monastario understood this. He rides up to Austin, twice a month, to hear confessions and say Mass,’ she went on. ‘It is he who sent Ortega –’ she nodded back toward the elderly ruffian – ‘to be my bodyguard, for these trips. But since Madrecita Taggart and Aunt Alicia – and my husband’s young brother Francis as well – have been at Perdition, they have pestered my husband that in doing this he is insulting God and endangering my soul – idiotas! So now the good father is kind enough to delay going back to San Antonio, and will meet me early Monday mornings, at an old jacal in one of the canyons, to hear my confession, and give me blessing. It is a great comfort to me.’

  Then she quickly shook her head, and made a gesture as if putting her own concerns aside. It was something she had never done when January had known her in Mexico.

  But then, he reflected, she had been a girl of sixteen. Spoiled, as Selina had been spoiled …

  ‘And are we still on your husband’s land?’ He glanced at the rising ground beyond the stream, calculating cover and distance. ‘How far—’

  ‘They rode north,’ said Valentina. ‘Pollack’s men. I rode out with Borrachio to speak with them, to keep there from being a war right there, and I told them that you had been killed by the Comanche, that Ortega had seen it done. The girl, I said, had escaped, and ridden north.’

  ‘Did I not fear violence at your bodyguard’s hands,’ said January, with a respectful bow, ‘I would take you in my arms and kiss you, Señora Taggart.’

  ‘Better you fear violence at the hands of your Señora Rose.’ The old teasing sparkle returned to her eyes.

  ‘That, too,’ he agreed. ‘How many riders were there? If we can make it to Galveston—’

  ‘You can’t. Not now.’

  He thought that if it had been four years ago in Mexico, she would have seized him by the sleeve.

  ‘I have said, this Pollack is the devil. With his angel voice and his pretty eyes, but he will not let go of what he considers his, nor be “made a fool of”, as he says, by a woman. His men fear him as they fear the devil. More, some of them – the ones that he owns as slaves. They will soon return, when they cannot find tracks. Listen. Follow this stream to the river. Cross it, and hide in the woods on the other side. I will send Ortega to the Swedes who have settled in the hills north of town. They are Lutherans, and abolitionists. Señor Ekholm has worked with Father Monastario on these matters. He will send someone to meet you, and I know they will shelter you and this poor girl, until the next trading caravan goes south to Galveston. You can trust Señor Ekholm – and even more so, his good wife – to make sure that none of you is recognized, and to get you on a safe boat back to New Orleans.’

  Trust. The word touched January’s mind as the young woman used it: trust. Safe. Trust Ortega. Trust Ekholm. Men about whom he knew nothing. Trust Valentina, for that matter …

  Everything hinged on those words, even as his thoughts fleeted to the danger of betrayal, the horrible consequences – to himself, to his friends, to the girl whose headstrong spirit and trust in a handsome man’s promises of love had gotten them all into this mess in the first place. To his family back in New Orleans: Rose a widow, Professor John and sunny-hearted Xander fatherless and poor.

  Trust.

  His friend Judas Bredon, the yellow-eyed ‘conductor’ of the New Orleans branch of the Underground Railroad, had been betrayed twice by people he’d trusted – people he’d helped. It had never stopped him from walking into danger again.

  And one of the names Bredon had given him, before he’d left for Texas, had been Torvald Ekholm.

  ‘Very well. Tell Señor Ekholm, whoever he sends to bring us north, when he comes to the river, to carry a red bandana in his right hand.’

  Selina wept, and clung to him, when he told her the plan, and she, too, used the word: ‘How can you trust them? How can you be sure they won’t go straight to Mr Pollack and tell him?’ She was exhausted, and shaking with terror after two hours sitting in her tree. Betrayed by the man she’d believed loved her, the man she’d loved enough to run away with, loved enough to marry, she was mentally and emotionally spent, physically exhausted. She had been rescued only to be told that there were more miles to flee, more days to spend waiting to be captured again.

  The terror in her eyes told him everything he needed to know about Gideon Pollack, and be damned to his look of grieved disappointment that he just wasn’t able to hel
p the men who’d saved his life.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he told her, and held her, letting her have her cry out. (The horses need rest anyhow …) ‘It’ll be all right.’

  And, when she was calmer: ‘There’s nothing we can trust right now. But Pollack will have men watching the wharf at Galveston, and his men will be watching the road between here and there. We stand a better chance with help than we do on our own.’

  She shook her head, shuddering as if with high fever, but consented to mount. She spoke little as they followed the widening creek down into the bottomlands of the Colorado, listening, as January listened, to the brief bird-songs, the intermittent hiss of the wind in the trees. They reached the river an hour before twilight, and though there was no ford there, the current wasn’t strong.

  January left Selina with the horses on the south-west bank and swam across, his knife and two of his pistols wrapped in a square of oilcloth on his head and praying (to Saint Barbara, the patron saint of firearms) that the powder wouldn’t get wet. On the far bank he checked the brush-choked gullies, scanned the wet pebbles along the water for tracks. Then he swam back, dressed, and fetched her and the horses across. The tortillas and jerky that Valentina had given them got soaked with river-water in spite of their oilcloth wrapping, but Selina devoured the evening’s ration as if it were boeuf marchand de vin and angel-cake. From where they hid among the trees of the largest gully January watched the river, and just as the last light was fading, a man rode out of the trees on the opposite bank, holding a red bandana in his right hand.

  It was Hannibal Sefton.

  Neither Hannibal nor Shaw – who’d been covering him from the trees – had seen pursuit all day, though they had been assiduous in avoiding anything resembling a track that led toward Houston. ‘It’s a big country,’ observed Shaw. They made a cold camp in the hackberry thickets of the gully, and January felt a great deal safer with the Kentuckian back in the party. Glancing across at January, the lawman added, ‘Most recent sign of Comanche I seen was a month old. When he hired me on, Rance Pollack said there was a Comanche raid back the beginnin’ of March, so that’d be it. I don’t wonder your Mrs Taggart kept her bodyguard by her, ridin’ back to Perdition. She the little lady what threatened to tell her brother you’d raped her?’ He turned inquiringly to Hannibal.