Lady of Perdition

by Barbara Hambly

  They bowed deeply in their saddles, took her hands as if they never wanted to let them go. Whatever else she’d been through, reflected January with an inner smile, even in shock and confusion and exhaustion, Valentina was still Valentina, and couldn’t keep the warmth of genuine pleasure from her eyes.

  It wasn’t until they were on their way west – the two Swedes and their little string of horses disappearing into the oak-gullies among the hills – that Valentina returned to the subject of the lost silver mine.

  ‘My husband’s brother is an imbecile,’ she informed them matter-of-factly. ‘He has never been to school – la Madrecita thought him too delicate for such things, and had him schooled entirely by tutors – and he has lived most of his life among books, and hidden in his room. And indeed,’ she added, with the air of one doing justice to a foe, ‘he was probably safer in his room. Aunt Alicia, who worships the ground on which he treads, says that his father and Brother Jack would beat him, when they were drunk. But she … sometimes what she says cannot be counted on, on account of the laudanum she takes for her headaches. My husband told me that she will mix up that which actually happened, from that which she dreamed.’

  ‘Weave a circle round him thrice/ and close your eyes with holy dread,’ murmured Hannibal. ‘I know the feeling well. Upon a time I dreamed that I had a wife and a child, and woke to find that it was nothing of the sort … Not to speak of the many times I have dreamed I was in love.’

  ‘Well,’ said Valentina, ‘at least she has the excuse of laudanum to be crazy. Francis is the only one of the family who doesn’t drink, and he will ply you with medical tracts as to why this is unhealthy—’

  ‘I don’t wonder his father and Brother Jack beat him,’ Hannibal remarked.

  ‘He will give anyone information about anything. He is very learned, my husband’s brother – but an imbecile all the same. But when he came to Perdition last October, he heard the stories of the lost San Diablo Mine, and became utterly convinced that it lay somewhere near. He has a study attached to his room and he has collected dozens of old maps and old land grants. Half of them he cannot read, because he doesn’t understand Spanish, but he spends all his time with his door locked anyway, studying them or poring over his Spanish dictionaries and grammars. Yet I cannot believe he would … would instruct Jalisco and the men to keep Señor Quigley away, only for fear that he would discover it—’

  ‘Possibly,’ said January, ‘he’s ordered it in the hopes of giving you time to flee the country, so as not to contest his claims.’

  At this, the young widow’s eyes flashed blue fire.

  January leaned a little to Hannibal, and instructed, in Latin, ‘Ask her if she’s certain, that her husband left no will.’ It would not do, even here in these empty hills, for the one white cowhand of Jalisco’s party to hear a black ‘valet’ asking questions of a white woman. The men who rode the ranges, Tejano and Norte alike, were men to whom observation of what went on around them was not only second nature, but a matter of life and death. They missed little, and his ride from Houston to Austin had taught January that they gossiped among themselves worse than the girls in Rose’s school.

  Obediently, Hannibal inquired, ‘Did your husband leave a will, madame? And, would your uncle’s land also go to your husband’s family in the event of – er …’

  Valentina shook her head firmly. ‘My husband left no will. Uncle Gael deeded his land to me on my marriage, as my own, not my husband’s. But since my uncle held it through a land grant from the Church rather than from the King of Spain, I am not certain of its transmission, should I myself …’ Her voice trembled a little, and she raised her chin, as if in contempt of the word, hang. ‘Should anything happen to me. And as a married woman, I was not able to make my own arrangements for its disposal, and my uncle’s nearest relations are now in Spain, I believe. My husband made no will.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘He was young, señor, only thirty-two. No man in Texas, I think, truly believes he will be killed by the Comanche or by anyone else. But as a lawyer himself, he hated the thought of wills. He hated the thought of giving over to others the property that he had fought and sweated to achieve. He said there was plenty of time for that, when his mother would pester him about it.’

  ‘And did she pester?’

  Her lips tightened.

  ‘It was almost the first thing she asked him,’ said Valentina, ‘upon coming here in the Fall. Had he made a will? This is a dangerous land, what will happen to us when you die? I think she wanted to make sure that her beloved son, her precious Francis, would not be cut out a second time.’

  ‘I can understand her feelings,’ January could not help himself from murmuring – but in French, not English, so that only Hannibal understood.

  As indeed, he thought, he could understand those of the pretty young woman riding beside them. With her mother’s nearest relatives in Spain – if they were alive at all – Valentina, too, was very much a stranger in a strange land. She had spoken truly when she’d cried, I am nothing! I will have nothing!

  Without the resources that land could provide, she would have no one to turn to.

  ‘Quod si vivere in aeternum vive tibi destinatis.’ Hannibal agreed. And then, continuing in Latin, ‘Should we perhaps make a detour to look at this hut-and-gully arrangement first, where someone took pot-shots at the fair Valentina?’

  ‘Better we start at the house,’ returned January in the same tongue. ‘Whatever sign might have been at the gully, it may or may not have survived the past thirty-six hours. A wiser course would be to first establish where we stand.’

  ‘You speak truly, my lord.’ Hannibal just stopped himself from bowing in the saddle. ‘Vera decam tibi, domine mi.’

  In the event, it was just as well that they chose to ride first to the Taggart hacienda. In the course of the last six miles, January and Hannibal acquainted themselves, so far as they were able, with the events of Monday: none of the little band of Jalisco’s vaqueros had been at the hacienda, to observe who had been present at the time of Taggart’s death.

  ‘Mr Enoch tell me Noah an’ Davy – the housemen – had took the wagon down to the bottomlands to pick up the wood the men’d cut Saturday,’ provided Missouri, one of the black cowhands, in English. ‘Malojo – the yardman – woulda been in the tack-shed that time, fixin’ saddles or polishin’ the rust off bits. Mr Enoch’s wife Juana woulda been in the laundry, an’ the housemaid – Clytie – with her.’

  ‘Who else in the house?’

  The cowhand shook his head. ‘Melly – Old M’am Taggart’s maid – takes her mendin’ out to the kitchen, to chat with TA – that’s the cook – while she’s doin’ it. The house is an adobe, with the kitchen sort of stuck on the back like a tail. Old M’am Taggart was all over Mr Taggart to have bells put in, like she had back in Virginia, ’stead of havin’ to yell or ring a hand-bell out the window, but Mr Taggart, he had other things to think about.’

  ‘Time enough to be puttin’ in bells,’ agreed Twenty-One, the younger of the two slave vaqueros, ‘when we could be sure the whole place wasn’t gonna be burned down by the Comanche next week.’

  ‘That ever happened?’ asked January. ‘Not burned down, but attacked …?’

  ‘Not in twenty-seven years, it ain’t,’ added Missouri, whose wiry blackness contrasted sharply with his youthful friend’s walnut complexion and European features. January guessed his parent or parents had been smuggled into Louisiana straight from Africa, in defiance of American law and the British navy. ‘The house used to be M’am Valentina’s uncle’s hacienda. The Comanche’d raid the horse-herds an’ the mules, old Malojo says, but they never attacked the house. It’s got walls on it like a fort. When Mr Taggart come out from Virginia in ’thirty-four, and got bottomland along the Pedernales, he set to growin’ cotton. He had fifty acres in cotton, an’ thirty in corn, an’ built him a cottage near the river, where the overseer lives now, near the quarters. First t
hing he did, when he married M’am Valentina in ’thirty-seven, was move up to the adobe, where the mosquitoes don’t come. Down in the bottomlands where the cotton fields is, they ’bout eat you alive.’

  After trading a few observations about New Orleans mosquitoes, and horror stories concerning the Texas varieties of the pest, January led the conversation back to the events of Monday morning. ‘How close is the orchard to the house? Who reached Mr Taggart’s body first, after they heard the shot? Was he dead when people got to him?’

  ‘Well, sir …’ Missouri pushed his wide-brimmed hat forward, to scratch his close-cropped head. ‘That’s the thing. By what Enoch told me, him an’ Melly an’ TA was all in the kitchen together when they heard the shot. They froze up, an’ listened for more. Like I said, we never had the Comanche raid the house, but there’s always a first time. Then again, with Mr Taggart’s orders that nobody was allowed onto the place, it coulda been a warnin’ shot—’

  ‘Were any of the men posted that close to the house?’

  Missouri shook his head. ‘Mostly we was down by the San Antonio road. Enoch said, he an’ Melly walked round to the front of the house to see if there was anybody ridin’ off, but didn’t see nobody. The orchard’s a big one – three acres – with one edge about eighty feet from the back of the house an’ the back edge maybe a half-mile beyond that. Enoch an’ Melly walked clear around the house an’ didn’t see nuthin’. Juana an’ Clytie just stepped outta the laundry to make sure it wasn’t Comanche an’ then went back to work – Juana don’t take no account of Comanche an’ Clytie’s a darn sight more scared of Juana than she is of any Indian ever born. Musta been near two hours later, that Malojo saw M’am Valentina’s mare standin’ outside the corral, saddled, with her reins tangled around a piece of branch, like she’d broke free after bein’ tied.’

  January nodded. He remembered the walled quadrangle of Mictlán – the hacienda of Valentina’s father – and also the isolated plantation on which he himself had spent his earliest years. A shot in the countryside, even fairly near the house, wasn’t like a shot heard among the crowded houses of a city.

  ‘Did Malojo know Mrs Taggart had taken her mare out?’

  ‘He says he didn’t.’ The vaquero shrugged. ‘It ain’t like back east, where the horses is kept in a stable, see. If Malojo’s doin’ somethin’ inside the tack-shed, or checkin’ on the pigs, you can lead a horse outta the corral an’ saddle him behind the sheds, easy enough. An’ I will say for M’am Valentina, she don’t need no help tackin’ up a horse.’

  Recalling some of the girl’s exploits back on Mictlán, January nodded. And if the young woman had been slipping away to rendezvous with Father Monastario, it was a safe bet the other Catholics on the place kept their mouths shut, whatever they saw or guessed.

  ‘Anyways,’ Missouri continued, ‘Malojo says the mare wasn’t sweated-up or dusty like she’d been wanderin’ in from the hills. He put her in the corral an’ looked out toward the woods an’ the orchard, rememberin’ the shot he’d heard, an’ saw the hawks an’ buzzards above the orchard.’

  ‘So no one missed Mr Taggart in – what – three hours?’

  ‘All of that.’ The vaquero looked surprised at the question. ‘He’d rode down to the bottomlands that mornin’ like he usually does, to talk to Mr Vabsley. The folks down there grubbin’ the crop, an’ Mr T liked to keep a eye on things.’ By the flex of Missouri’s non-committal voice he might have been discussing a construction project in China. January had encountered this before among the librés of New Orleans, this careful distance between the light-complected gens du couleur librés and the slaves cutting cane in the fields. Nothing to do with us. Free colored owned slaves, and never seemed to want to see how easily, these days, they could become slaves themselves.

  Like Selina …

  There seemed to exist the same division between slave cow-herders and the mere grubbers in the soil.

  ‘Nobody was expectin’ Mr Taggart back til evenin’,’ put in Twenty-One. ‘His horse was there, tied up in the orchard, saddled, maybe a quarter-mile from the house. He was layin’ in a sort of clearin’, where two trees died a long time ago, an’ the grass is deep. Malojo said he looked to been dead three hours, by the way his eyes set back in his head. He’d been shot in the chest, an’ the gun – one of M’am Valentina’s pistols – was layin’ near the body, with one of M’am Valentina’s shawls.’

  ELEVEN

  Sheriff Quigley – last seen biting the ear off one of Gideon Pollack’s supporters in the lobby of the Capital City Hotel in Austin – stood on the shallow steps of the Rancho Perdition adobe as Valentina Taggart and her supporters rode up to the house.

  The house itself was, as the cowhand Missouri had indicated, a fortress-like adobe structure, its main section two storeys high plus (January judged) an attic which could double as a blockhouse at need. The white plaster of its walls looked well maintained – vital in such constructions. The windows of its ground floor were stoutly barred with wood. Built on high ground a few miles from the rise of the surrounding hills, it faced south, toward the oak groves and tall-grass meadows along the Pedernales River. On its west side a wing extended – probably kitchens, January guessed – and walls enclosed a courtyard, glimpsed through an open gate that reminded him strongly of the portals of a medieval castle.

  Quigley, in his town frock coat and low-crowned beaver hat, was dust-covered, mud-splattered, and, as Valentina and her riders approached and he turned toward them, looked exhausted and vexed. He was a short man, stocky-built so that he reminded January of an oak bollard, graying brown hair thin over a high forehead and gray eyes piercing under a pale shelf of brow. A fading black eye remained from the hotel fracas of the preceding week.

  In the doorway before him were grouped the gorgons – both clothed in black – and a tallish, slight, rather twisted figure whom January identified immediately as the young Francis Taggart, not quite boy and not quite man. An ephebe, the ancient Greeks would have called him – that most charming age, as Homer said, when the beard first begins to grow, though January guessed that few Athenian erastes would have had much to do with this particular specimen. He moved clumsily – severe scoliosis, January diagnosed as he dismounted. Lateral pelvic tilt and dysplasia, complicated by kyphosis. Pale-blue eyes, disconcertingly like Aunt Alicia’s, blinked from behind thick spectacles and his thin, straight line of a mouth was already bracketed with lines of disapproval.

  These lines deepened sharply as he recognized his sister-in-law, and beside him, Madrecita Taggart exclaimed, ‘The nerve of the girl!’

  ‘How much nerve do you think I need, madame?’ Valentina drew herself up like a soldier in her saddle. ‘This house is my house – this land, my land. Fearing that I would be accused falsely, I sought a man who could be trusted to put my interests before his own – or those of anyone who might offer him reward.’ She turned her scornful gaze for one moment in Quigley’s direction, then looked back at her mother-in-law. ‘Madame, Aunt Alicia, surely you remember my father’s friend Mr Sefton, of New Orleans?’

  Waxen and haggard with fatigue, Hannibal dismounted, and made a profound bow over the hands of each lady in turn.

  Quigley said, ‘Your boy was the one helped Doc Meredith fix up Pollack.’

  Hannibal bowed again. ‘It was my privilege and honor to be on the spot with the means to assist.’ January, as befit a slave, continued to unfasten saddlebags from their horses and made no acknowledgement of the remark, since it wasn’t directed at him but at his ‘master’.

  The sheriff sniffed. ‘Asked for what he got, if you ask me. An’ lucky not to get as much as he deserved.’ Both Aunt Alicia and the elder Mrs Taggart, January noticed, bridled fiercely at that remark.

  ‘Mrs Taggart …’ The sheriff turned to Valentina, whom the fiddler was now assisting from her mount. ‘I’m afraid it’s my duty to place you under arrest, on suspicion of the murder of—’

  ‘Have you a warrant?’ inquired Han
nibal politely.

  Spots of color darkened under the lawman’s heavy tan.

  When he didn’t reply, the fiddler continued, ‘As Mrs Taggart’s representative, I feel impelled to ask what constitutes “suspicion” in her case that does not equally apply to everyone else in the house at the operative time. Has the operative time been determined, by the way? I presume that any arrest will include both these ladies, and this gentleman—’

  The gorgons looked horrified and Francis blenched.

  ‘We were together,’ announced Madrecita Taggart, her chin coming forward.

  Francis opened his mouth to protest and then shut it. Aunt Alicia, blue eyes seeming even bluer because their pupils were contracted to pin-points, exclaimed hazily, ‘You’re always telling me not to tell lies, Amelia! You were … Oh!’

  Her elder sister silenced her with a glare.

  ‘Yes,’ Alicia gasped, turning back to the sheriff and nodding. ‘Yes we were all together. All together all morning—’ Then she slapped her lace-mitted hand over her mouth, burst into tears, and ran back into the house.

  ‘We were together,’ reiterated Madrecita Taggart firmly. ‘In the parlor. All morning.’

  ‘I was in the study,’ added Francis. ‘Newspaper accounts had just come in regarding Captain Wilkes’s interesting voyage to the Antarctic … I mean,’ he corrected himself hastily at his mother’s glare, ‘I’d been in the study and had just come into the parlor.’

  ‘And I was in the Arroyo Sauceito being shot at by Comanche,’ Valentina retorted. ‘Though I neglected to ask their names, so cannot bring them as witnesses.’

  ‘We saw you,’ claimed her mother-in-law. ‘We all saw you walking in the orchard. You were wearing your red-flowered shawl.’ She looked furious, and a little disconcerted.