Lady of Perdition

by Barbara Hambly

  ‘She was trying to get herself out of a very bad situation,’ put in January.1

  Hannibal sniffed. ‘Easy for you to say, amicus meus. But I think Benjamin is right,’ he added, looking back to Shaw and Selina. ‘I think the lovely Valentina can be trusted – and I will say for her she’s a damned clever girl. I am sorry to hear of her current situation – a sentiment I never thought I’d hear myself express. Did Benjamin tell you about Miss Valentina’s lunatic father, Miss Bellinger? A man whose habits make her own conduct almost understandable …’

  In an undervoice, as darkness settled on the river, he entertained Selina with his account of his imprisonment by Don Prospero de Castellón at that gentleman’s isolated hacienda – leaving out the certainty that the mad old hacendado had murdered Valentina’s mother and at least two other women – and though the drawing-room lightness of his conversation was incongruous in the extreme, January saw Selina relax, for the first time. Once she even laughed. When she slept, it was without tears and very clearly without dreams.

  They kept to the camp in the gully all the following day. Shaw went out to scout, and reported seeing two parties of riders – both of which included men he recognized as Pollack’s – across the river to the south. If they’d gone north hunting for Selina, they’d evidently drawn a blank in that direction. January reflected that Valentina seemed to have been right in her estimate of Pollack as a man who would not tolerate being made a fool of by any woman, least of all by a slave.

  On the following morning, with the threat of rain blowing gray over the green hills, two riders appeared from the wooded gullies northeast of the river, and as they drew nearer, January – crouched in the thin stand of black-oak at the top of the stream-bank – saw that they were tall fair men, each carrying a red bandana in his right hand. Shaw, scouting again, would almost certainly have picked up sight of the newcomers; January slid quickly down to the camp, and had Hannibal move two of the horses out to another thicket of willow a dozen yards up-river, and conceal himself with a rifle in the trees. (Not that Hannibal could hit the broad side of a barn.)

  But the men, when January went out to meet them, identified themselves as Torvald and Lucien Ekholm, and produced – rather to January’s surprise – a sort of wax theatrical blacking which quickly transformed Selina from a not-very-convincing ‘high yeller’ boy to a much darker lad at whom, from a distance, searchers probably wouldn’t look twice. They then rode north for most of the day – Shaw and Hannibal joining them – and at twilight reached the solid, wood-walled farmstead inhabited by the Ekholm brothers, their wives, and an assortment of small children and tow-headed cousins who’d come to Texas to avoid military service in Sweden.

  They stayed there four days, while the moon waxed full, and the Pollack riders combed the countryside to the south.

  Torvald Ekholm had a small saw-mill by San Marcos Creek, and Shaw and January contributed their labor to their hosts’ timber business, rifles at hand, and listening always for signs of a Comanche raid. Two other families inhabited that part of the hills – Gabriel Olendorff of Hesse, and Jeremias Mueller and his brother Karl, of Holstein – who worked also felling trees, and at the end of the week Karl was scheduled to take a little caravan to Galveston to trade. ‘They should have give up watching the wharves, by then,’ said Torvald. The little colony, isolated from the Americans in Austin and the Mexicans down in the flat-lands, were, as Valentina had said, Lutherans, and firm opponents of slavery in any form. Torvald knew the woman in Galveston whose name Bredon had given January, and assured him that yes, Fru Holland was still in business there and would have no hesitation at arranging passage for them back to New Orleans. Fru Ekholm taught Selina to milk cows and make potato dumplings, and clipped her hair evenly with her dressmaking scissors. In the evenings, Hannibal played Herr Olendorff’s fiddle and the three households gathered at Ekholm’s, to listen and to dance.

  When a message was sent to the ‘conductor’ – as the Underground Railway called its operatives – in Galveston, January sent a note with it, to Rose. So far, all is well. The bird that I thought I had lost, we have found again, injured by her misadventures, but whole and learning to sing again a little. On Friday, when Sheriff Quigley and a party of men rode up to the compound, January and his companions took refuge in the saw-mill loft. Peering around the edge of the loft door, January could see the gray-haired lawman gesturing as he questioned Torvald, but when the posse rode away, the Swede said no, they were not seeking the runaway. ‘There is politics in town,’ explained Torvald. ‘Nationalists say, Houstons have done some frightful thing, and now the sheriff is seeking them all over the county.’

  January wondered how much of that had to do with Gideon Pollack’s meeting with the silver-haired, mustachioed gentleman who’d been so concerned not to linger in the Empire of the West saloon. Or with why Rance Pollack had not ridden to Los Lobos with the plantation’s supplies.

  He wondered also if Mr Stanway the banker was still alive.

  Sunday – Easter – a German pastor rode up from Austin, and January reassured Selina that the God who’d forgiven the misdeeds of Mary Magdalene and had told Simon Peter that both clean and unclean animals were alike appropriate fare was certainly going to hear their own prayers no matter who was leading the worship. In the big western room of the ‘dog-trot’ timber house, January whispered thanks to God and Christ and the Blessed Mother Ever-Virgin, protector of women, for watching over them so far.

  They were still a long way from Galveston, and a longer way yet, from New Orleans.

  And meanwhile, the stockpile of trade-goods grew at the other end of that big western room: the skins of deer and otter, fox and beaver and raccoon, trapped in the woods by the Olendorff boys or traded from the Tonkawa; tobacco grown in the small field east of the house; cider from the orchard. Boxes, packs, and pack-saddles were lined up across one side of the walled yard. Sven, one of the Ekholm cousins, came back early Tuesday evening from a little discreet scouting along the trail that led to Houston and Galveston with the news that he’d seen none of Pollack’s riders.

  ‘And the Comanche?’ inquired Ekholm, and the youth shook his head.

  ‘None in sight, nor sign of them.’

  Outside in the yard dusk was just beginning to gather, the fresh smell of the rain which had fallen that morning breathed through the open windows like a promise: Everything will be all right. The children – Ekholm’s three, and a ten-year-old girl cousin whose parents had died on the voyage to Texas – were setting the table. Another cousin brought in the lighted lamps.

  Someone shouted something from the yard, and the household’s three deer-hounds scrambled leggily to their feet and raced out into the yard to see what was going on. January heard a woman’s voice speaking German, and the jingle of stirrups and bits.

  Then, ‘Oh, thank God!’ in Spanish, and the light clunk of swift boots on the step. ‘Señor Enero, I have prayed all the way here, that you had not gone!’

  It was Valentina Taggart.

  She held out her hands to him, caught his fingers in a grip like a drowning woman’s when she clutches at a floating branch.

  ‘My husband has been killed,’ she said. ‘Murdered, shot in the orchard near the hacienda yesterday morning.’ Her words choked momentarily, and she turned her face aside. Then, ‘His mother, and his aunt, and his brother all swear that I did this thing. Please.’ She tugged at his hands, like a child. ‘Ortega was not with me – my husband sent him away on Wednesday, when he came back from taking my message to Ekholm … I went to meet Father Monastario yesterday but he did not come! No one was with me! I was shot at – someone tried to kill me …’

  Again she struggled to keep her voice even. ‘And now, no one believes that I did not kill him.’

  January had always believed that God did not hold a person responsible for their first thought in any given situation – only for what they did after it.

  This was a good thing, because his first thought was,
Shit.

  NINE

  ‘He was a good husband.’ Valentina’s hands were shaking so badly, as January guided her to one of the bent-willow chairs beside the hearth, that she had to clasp them together to keep them still. ‘A good man, until his mother and his sister came from Virginia.’

  Outside, Cousin Sven was putting up shutters over the unglazed windows. Fru Ekholm entered, bearing the first of the supper bowls from the kitchen behind the house – January had heard all about her opinion of the American idiocy of putting the kitchen in a separate building and had explained to her that not all Americans did this. Torvald went to meet her, glancing tactfully at January and the young woman beside the hearth.

  ‘Pooh,’ said the matriarch. ‘Dumheter.’ Nonsense. She beckoned behind her, to Selina and Cousin Elsa, similarly laden. Shaw, entering with Lucien and one of the hired men, hands and faces damp from washing, paused on the threshold, but Signe Ekholm gestured them all briskly to take their places on the benches, and gave her husband instructions in no uncertain terms.

  Torvald came over to the fire, and explained in German – which was better than his English – ‘My wife says, madame, that you are to join us for supper before you give long explanation to Herr Januar.’

  Haltingly, Valentina returned, ‘Please, it is not—’

  The Swede shook his head. ‘I am not permitted to take no for answer,’ he said. ‘My wife says, she sees your horse has been ridden long and hard, all the way from Perdition today, and there are no saddlebags, and there is no place between where you could eat. Please,’ he added. ‘She will do violence to me if you do not come and join us, and you will feel very much better afterwards.’

  Valentina laughed, and disappeared into the curtained lean-to that Cousin Elsa showed her, to wash her hands and face – and tidy her hair, it turned out, for when she emerged it had been taken from its braids and twisted into a fetching chignon. Even facing hanging for the murder of her husband, Valentina was still Valentina. She allowed January to take her hand and lead her to the long table, where she sat between Hannibal and January and devoured dumplings and ham, greens and pickles, like a starving woman. She smiled, and chatted with Selina in her halting French, but January saw the apprehension in the younger girl’s eyes as she watched her. When Valentina turned her head, to praise her hostess for her cooking, he caught Selina’s glance and made an open-palmed gesture: Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.

  While thinking, Shit, shit, shit …

  Because he already knew he’d have to go.

  Without Valentina’s help he, and Hannibal, would almost certainly have been hanged days ago (Shaw would almost as certainly have managed to get away). Selina would have been in a far worse case than she’d been before his arrival. Whether Valentina had shot her husband or not, he couldn’t desert her.

  At the end of the meal he took the girl, Shaw, and Hannibal aside, as the Ekholm men, instead of retreating to the fireside with their pipes, gathered around a lantern at the far end of the table, and Fru Ekholm signed to the girl cousins to help her clear away.

  ‘Can you get Miss Bellinger back to New Orleans without me?’ he asked softly. ‘Whatever is happening here, I can’t—’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Benjamin,’ broke in Hannibal. ‘I’m not going to leave my valet –’ he looked significantly at January – ‘to wander around Texas by himself.’

  ‘We’ll do fine,’ said Shaw. ‘If’fn Miz Bellinger’s agreeable. Ain’t like we’ll be ridin’ alone.’

  ‘Finer without the necessity of looking after me, I daresay.’ Hannibal bent, and kissed Selina’s hand. ‘Per aliam viam reversi sunt, like the three Wise Kings … And someone needs to protect Benjamin from Madame Taggart, if nothing else.’

  ‘And who’s going to protect you from her?’ retorted January with a grin at his friend. Then he caught Valentina’s eye, and the five of them gathered again around the hearth. Selina looked a little uncertain at being included, but January said in a low voice, ‘You should know what’s happening, in case there’s trouble or questions later. And also, you may have heard something about Vin Taggart that will help us.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said the girl, but looked gratified at not being told to run along. She still retained her boy’s clothing, but the dark stain was fading from her skin – Fru Ekholm had declared she would renew it in the morning. The Swedish matron’s matter-of-fact welcome, and the unobtrusive gentleness with which January, Shaw, and Hannibal had treated her, had done a good deal, January was glad to observe, to restore some of Selina’s shattered self-confidence.

  Which she’d need, he reflected, when she returned to a city and a society that would regard her as ‘fallen’. He prayed that Rose would be able to further counteract the horrors that had been done to the girl.

  Valentina, he had noticed during dinner, had never once asked for an account of Selina’s experiences, but had treated her woman-to-woman, with tact and acceptance. For that alone, reflected January, she deserves my help …

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said.

  Valentina sighed. For a time she stared into the fire, gathering her thoughts and putting them in order, like a bookkeeper, he thought, sorting through a mass of some dead relative’s letters and bills.

  Then she said, ‘I don’t … I don’t really know what happened. Only what happened to me.

  ‘Before all else,’ she said, after a time, ‘please believe that my husband is – was – a good man at heart.’ She spoke as if she expected to be contradicted. As if she were waiting for January to point out the fresh bruise on her left cheekbone, the small, swollen cut on her lip.

  But in her silence, January read also the puzzled wonder he himself had felt, along with the savage grief of his own bereavement: Really? Gone? Never – not EVER – again?

  ‘I never loved him,’ she went on after a time, her voice barely audible. ‘But he – was – a reasonable man. At least …’

  She stopped herself, and shook her head, dismissing a thought.

  What thought?

  ‘He came to Texas because there was good land here, where cotton will grow well, and he did not want to stay in the United States. The Yankees in the north, he said, will eventually get enough strength in the Congress to forbid slavery, and that, he said, he would not endure. This was in 1834, before the Texas Rebellion, when he arrived. He was granted a labor – about two hundred acres – of lowland, to grow crops and cotton, and a league of range-land for cattle in the hills. Later he bought another two leagues from the ranchero who had been deeded them from the old San Saba mission grant, that goes back to the King of Spain. All this he called Perdition.’

  Outside, the night was deepening. The men went out, to look after the milk-cows and the mules for tomorrow’s caravan. Moonlight shone in the dooryard; January heard the hoot of an owl. At the end of the table, around the candles, the women talked softly in Swedish, like the distant cluck of a stream.

  ‘My husband’s father had a plantation in Virginia,’ Valentina went on, her voice steadier, as if she were delivering a report about someone else’s family. ‘His father was a drunkard, and a quarreler – my husband would not speak much of the household he had left. He was in a quarrel with his father when his father died, and he was not much surprised to learn that he – and his younger brother Francis, whom their father despised because he is a cripple – had been left nothing in their father’s will. All of it went to the oldest brother, Jack. Jack was a brute and a drunkard also, and my husband, who had left the plantation – Elysium, it was called – years before, did not contest the will. The soil was worn out, and his father had sold off most of the slaves to pay his gambling debts. My husband was a lawyer by that time, in Richmond, and he knew that had he gone to law, all the rest of the patrimony would have been eaten up.’

  ‘Your husband was a wise man,’ remarked Hannibal. ‘There are property cases in England that started in the last century and are still being fought over.’

 
‘My husband was a … a clever man,’ agreed Valentina, with a catch of hesitation in her voice. ‘Wise …’ Her brows pulled together into a frown. ‘That I do not know. He told me once – when he was drunk – that there were memories there that he did not wish to see again.

  ‘Like his father and his brother, he drank, and he would keep away from me at such times. But his drinking worsened when last Fall his brother died also, and the plantation went all to debts. Then his mother, and Aunt Alicia whom she had raised from the age of five, and his brother Francis came to Texas to live with us, because they had nowhere else to go.’

  ‘Ah,’ sighed the fiddler. ‘The bold intrusion of the suitor-train/ Who crowd his palace, and with lawless power/ His herds and flocks in feastful rites devour … And believe me, drinking would certainly have been my reaction, had any of my family turned up on my doorstep – always supposing I possessed a doorstep – with luggage in hand.’ And he rose and bowed as Fru Ekholm appeared beside them, with a small tray bearing cups of thick Mexican coffee.

  ‘For my part,’ continued Valentina, as she dropped sugar into the tarry liquid, ‘I knew Señor Taggart for … for over a year before we wed. His lands bordered ours, and my uncle Gael often used the wharf that he built. I knew he drank, but not to excess … not then. When Texas became free – when my year of mourning was finished – he spoke to my uncle, asking for my hand.’

  She fell silent again, and January saw in his mind that tall, flat-shouldered man in the lobby of the Capital City Hotel: the broken nose, the wide mouth both sensual and strong, and the eyes that seemed so blue.