by Anya Seton
'Theo!' Natalie stared; then, with a laugh, 'You are impossible. What young man? Who introduced you? Tell me at once.'
Theo gave a little trill of mirth, a spontaneous and infectious gurgle peculiar to her. Before she answered, she adjusted the wide skirts of her gray silk habit and pulled her plumed felt hat to its most dashing angle.
'No one introduced us,' she said airily. 'We just met. And I'm not sure who he is, but I think he's that Doctor Peter Irving's young brother, Washington. You see, we don't know each other well enough yet to exchange names.'
With which piece of effrontery she made the thunderstruck Natalie a low curtsy, shutting her ears to the shattering explosion of outraged French which pursued her down the stairs.
She slipped out at a side door, noticing even in her haste the dear beauties of this place that she loved: the splendid oaks and cedars that shaded the house, the soft green lawns with their gentle slopes, even the silly sheep that cropped the grass. There was a pond, too, gracefully marged with ornamental shrubs, and teeming with swans and yellow-billed ducks. Aaron had recently enlarged it to a more respectable size, in keeping with one of the most impressive estates on Manhattan Island. But no amount of enlarging could give it much significance. It was forever dwarfed by the effortless magnificence of the river beyond it.
The Hudson. Theo greeted it now with an uprushing of the heart, as she always did. She adored it with a half-mystical fervor that she could have explained to no one—not even Aaron. She had been born within sound of it, in Albany. Her childhood had been spent near it. Many times it had comforted her with its mighty music.
The clouded May night six years ago when her mother died after months of torturing illness, she had stumbled wildly from the house that held that motionless, sheeted figure, alien now and horrible. Her father was away—the end had been unexpected—and she had no one.
She had flung herself headlong on the shaly shore, sobbing with desperate terror, until, at last, the river had brought peace: the peace of inexorable laws. Dimly she felt its message, translating it through her bewildered child's brain. 'No matter what happens to me, it goes on and on and on. It doesn't care, because it's too big to care. It just is. Like God.'—But God never seemed very real or helpful.
The servants had found her there hours later, asleep beside the river.
But today it was gay and gentle, gracefully balancing its scores of dipping boats. Even the awesome rise of black cliffs on the opposite Jersey shore looked merely picturesque.
Theo stopped at the dairy for a mug of milk, warm and foaming, fresh from the source; and at the stables she found Minerva ready saddled and whinnying her impatience to be off. The gray mare nuzzled her mistress affectionately, and Theo responded with a quick kiss on the satiny nose.
Dick, the Irish stable boy, laced his grimy hands for her to step on in mounting. 'Sure, and you look pretty as a peach, this morning, Miss Theo; your seventeenth birthday will be agreeing with you'. He spoke with the easy familiarity of all white servants in the first years of the Republic.
'Likely you'll be choosing yourself a fine young husband from the elegant throng that's coming to the mansion today'. His little eyes leered at her.
'Likely I won't,' she replied tartly, flicking Minerva, who darted gladly away down the sandy road that wound through the Lispenard Meadows to the East River.
Marrying and husbands! Everyone acted as though she were at least twenty-one and likely to be an old maid. Besides, there was only one person who had the right to bring up these subjects. And her father would never think of such things. They were too happy together, the two of them.
She loped Minerva easily across the island until she neared the other river, when color flushed suddenly over her cheeks and she raised a hand to tidy her blown hair. The rendezvous was near. Perhaps it was foolish and unladylike, meeting a strange man again like this. Her assent to his suggestion had been a mingling partly of bravado, partly of a sense of adventure, and mostly of a genuine attraction to this charmingly sensitive young man whose mind seemed so attuned to her own.
She had met him by chance three days ago. Minerva had caught a hoof in a rabbit hole and stumbled badly just as he appeared. He had been off his mount in a second, offering assistance. Together they anxiously examined the quivering marc, and were relieved to find no serious damage.
As she thanked him, Theo was conscious of his appraising stare. They looked at each other frankly.
He was young, she judged not more than twenty, and though he topped her by several inches, he was not tall: about the height of her father. That gave her obscure reassurance. His dress was careless : his brown pantaloons were wrinkled above mud-spattered Hessian boots; his neckcloth lay askew and seemed none too fresh. He wore no queue or hat, and his sandy hair, cut short to car length, was well tousled by the wind.
For all that, she knew he was a gentleman, and he attracted her. It might have been the magnetism of his hazel eyes—changeable, vital, and at the moment devouring her with pleased surprise; or the freshness of his skin which blushed as quickly as a girl's; or indeed his mellow young voice which now proclaimed with a flourish, 'Don Quixote is always at the service of the fair Dulcinea.'
'Oh!' she cried impulsively, 'I love that tale!' And they had drifted into talk of many books, both eager and flushed.
'Do you know this?' and 'Oh, yes, but have you read that?' She confessed to several works that no respectable young lady should have read, Molière, Sheridan, and Tristram Shandy but he did not seem shocked. They talked that morning almost as though they had been two young men—almost.
Then yesterday she had ridden that way again, and he had been there waiting at the turn of the road. It seemed natural to rest their horses and chat.
It was strange how well she felt she knew him, and yet they had touched on nothing personal. They had made a little game of the mystery. He called her 'Dulcinea,' and she called him nothing at all beyond the formal 'sir.'
He was now waiting for her, sitting easily on his big roan, and with his sandy head—much neater today—turned toward Deadman's Rock and the wooded prettiness of Blackwell's Island, which lay like a splinter of green in the East River.
At the sound of Minerva's trot, he jumped off his horse and rushed toward her. 'I was in a rare pother, worrying for fear you weren't coming,' he greeted her, tethering her mare to a pine stump. He held out his arms to help her down. Her skirt caught on the side pommels and he, perforce, caught her against him to save her from falling. The clasp of his arms, the momentary pressure of his hard young chest, stirred her. Tingling excitement crept over her body, followed by fear. She heard his quick indrawn breath, and was oppressed with a feeling of embarrassment.
There had been nothing like this before in her experience. Natalie's horror at her escapade, which had been so amusing, now seemed to her justified. She was cheapening herself—he must think her vulgar and ill-bred to meet him this way.
She jerked away from him with unnecessary violence, saying stiffly: 'Good day to you, sir. I came only because I had promised. I cannot stay a minute.'
'But why?' he protested. 'We have so much to talk about, and I—I have brought something to read to you. It would amuse you, I think,' he added.
Theo hesitated, her round cheeks stained bright with color.
'This is all most unconventional,' she said at last. 'We don't even know who we arc—I mean who the other is'. 'Heaven's mercy!' He gave a shout of laughter. 'Is that all? And soon remedied. I am Washington Irving, brother to Doctor Peter Irving. I live on William Street, and I am reading law, but I find it excruciatingly dull. I much prefer poetry and romances, and dreams of far countries'. He grinned at her. 'And I much prefer literary conversations with beautiful young ladies. Now it's your turn, Dulcinea.'
Theo dimpled, her poise returned. 'I am Theodosia Burr, daughter to Aaron Burr.'
He nodded. 'I thought as much. I've heard you described: "A paragon of loveliness and learning." Now, if the proprie
ties are satisfied, will you stay a little and let me read to you?' She smiled assent. After all, why not? Her silly panic had passed. And he was most respectable: Doctor Irving was well thought of in the city. Besides, she liked this young man; he was totally different from anyone she had met.
They seated themselves on a mound of pine needles. He spread his cloak over a lichen-covered boulder and their backs rested against it. It was deliciously cool. Sunlight filtered down through oak and poplar leaves. A small breeze sighed up the river, blowing away the mosquitoes which so often plagued the Manhattan countryside. The air was pungent with the fragrance of wild strawberries and pine. There was no sound except the rhythmic mouthings of the horses, as they edged placidly around their bridle-lengths, cropping the sweet wild grass.
Neither of them spoke for a while. He made no move to start his reading. A gentle peace held them both.
'This is my birthday,' she announced after a bit.
He drew his gaze back from the far horizon. 'Is it indeed?' He plucked a daisy from a patch beside him, thrust it into her hair. 'Here's a nosegay for you, then, and I salute this most auspicious and blessed day. Is it the sixteenth?'
She shook her head, half-annoyed. 'The seventeenth'. 'Then we are the same age,' he said lazily.
'Really?' She was startled. 'I had thought you older.'
He shrugged his slight shoulders. 'This conversation leads nowhere'. He pulled a blade of grass and chewed the succulent tip.
' I thought you were going to read to me?' She was puzzled by him; he seemed moody, distrait.
He gestured toward his pocket, but his hand fell back limply. 'I was: a silly little tale I wrote about the Dutch country up the Hudson. But it's no good. It wouldn't interest you.'
'But it would!' she protested. 'Please'. Unconsciously she put her hand out to him, pleading. He imprisoned it gently in his, and at her sharp recoil she saw sudden amusement in his hazel eyes.
He released her hand and went on as though there had been no interruption. 'I wish I had written a poem for you, Dulcinea, but I am not at home in verse. Dull prose suits me better. Still, I can try.'
He propped himself on his elbows, staring at her with a half-humorous, half-tender intensity that discomposed her.
A daisy twinkles from her hair, like star in beech wood forest,
She is the fairest of the fair, and I would fain—fain——
He chuckled. 'I can't find a rhyme for forest, but no matter.'
He sighed and drew himself up, then leaned forward with sudden violence, crying, 'Look! Do you sec that brig down there?'
She followed his gaze to the river and nodded, astonished by the emotion in his voice.
'That's the Infanta.' He uttered the name as though it held all wonder. 'She's been to Boston, and she's bound for Spain—Spain!' He turned to Theo and spoke passionately: 'More than anything in life I wish I were aboard her. You don't know what it is to hunger and thirst for distant places, do you?'
She shook her head.
'No. Why should you? You're sheltered and happy; you're a woman! But every night I dream of the Old World. It's like a fever. England, France, Spain. The very words make enchanted music for me. I shall see them some day—before I die. And I shall write about them, so that others may feel the enchantment as I do.—At least I hope to.'
His voice fell flat. But Theo's eyes dilated, her lips parted. 'I am sure you will.'
For in that one dazzled moment she had seen greatness in the boy beside her, had heard pulsing through his words a longing and a surge that carried her, too, up with him: up to the lonely starlit plateau of genius.
He shut his eyes an instant and turned to her blindly.
'You're sweet,' he whispered. 'I think you do understand'. With one quick motion he laid his head on her lap, and smiled up at her wickedly, as she froze. 'Don't look so shocked, my lovely little Theo—is that what they call you? My head is tired and this is such a soft place to rest. I think I could go to sleep.'
Her heart beat in thick, painful movements and the white fichu on her breast rose and fell. She tried to think and could not. She wanted to shove his head viciously away, and her muscles would not obey. A shiver shook her.
'What are you afraid of?' he asked softly. 'I won't harm you'. He gave a short laugh and sat up. Immediately relief flooded her, but with it a shamed disappointment.
He put gentle hands on her shoulders. 'You've never been kissed, have you, Theo? It's not such a terrible thing. I think you must have one for your birthday'. He drew her quickly toward him and pressed his fresh young mouth to hers. He let her go at once. 'See? It's not so dreadful a thing, is it?'
She gasped, laughing shakily. Not so dreadful a thing—no. Sweet, piercingly sweet, but unimportant. She had expected the blast of lightning and found a candle-flame, never disturbing the dark secret something that had lain, terrorstricken, deep in her soul. What had it been, what had she expected? She didn't know. Whatever it was, it had passed her by, leaving only a dimming memory of shame, repulsion, and disloyalty.
She smiled at him with calm affection. 'I must be getting back now. Father will be home soon. Thank you, good sir, for my birthday kiss.'
He surveyed her, frowning, puzzled. She was so pretty with her rose-and-white skin, soft black eyes, and eager smile. He had wanted to kiss her ever since she came this morning, and he had been sure that, barring maidenly modesty and all the rest, she wanted it too. He was not inexperienced in such matters. Now he had kissed her, briefly it was true, as a preliminary, and she had escaped into a bright and all too obviously genuine indifference. There was a strangeness about her, an untouchable quality.
'Theo,' he asked, with sudden inspiration, 'are you in love with someone?'
'Oh, no'. She faced him candidly. 'And I mean never to marry.'
'Stuff! Of course you'll marry'. The sense of humor, that never deserted him for long, returned. 'You're not in love with me, that's certain'. And he laughed.
She scarcely heard him. She had just noticed that the sun was now directly overhead. She was in a fever to be off. Her father would be astonished, perhaps hurt, if he came back from the city and she were not there to greet him, to thank him for his beautiful present.
When he had helped her to mount, Washington Irving looked up at her. 'Good-bye,' he said almost humbly. 'You do not wish us to meet again?'
'Of course,' she answered, with warm courtesy. 'Come to Richmond Hill at any time. We shall be so glad to see you'. But her small face was preoccupied, her eyes already straining ahead over the mare's ears down the flat sandy road that led toward home.
He stood quite still, watching her go, his hands deep in the pockets of his green riding-coat, his rumpled hair blown back by the freshening breeze. At the bend of the road, she waved once—quickly, and he waved back.
They did not meet again for seven years.
CHAPTER TWO
AARON was enjoying a productive morning with a small group of his henchmen at Martling's Tavern. He sat in his usual corner of the smoky, ale-soured room, sipping a thimbleful of port, and looking, in his immaculate blue satin suit, like a sleek greyhound in a kennel of mongrels.
Others of the group were drinking claret or guzzling blistering New England rum and paid their court to the chief, who sat erect with a military precision that was born of army training and long self-discipline. His eyes, glittering black, wandered slowly from one face to another, appraising the potentialities of each. Eyes like Theodosia's, but with an added hypnotic, almost reptilian quality that subdued or fascinated at will.
The miscellaneous band of satellites which surrounded him were known as the 'Little Band,' or the 'Myrmidons,' and Theo had also facetiously dubbed them the 'Tenth Legion'. They covered a wide range of personalities.
There were sachems and braves from Saint Tammany's Society—Matthew Davis, Van Ness, the Swartwout brothers; a sprinkling of artists and dilettantes; and some shady characters—wharf-rats, escaped slaves, and prostitutes. The latter ha
d, naturally, no official standing in the 'Little Band,' but they were useful—and Aaron was never one to boggle over fine ethical points.
Whatever their individual peculiarities, they were all united by one prime virtue—uncritical obedience to the wishes of Colonel Burr.
Burr's enemies described him as an octopus insinuating slimy tentacles into all the strata of a deluded society, spewing an inky barrage of lies and sophistry to confound the righteous. His friends saw him quite simply as a god, shining, beneficent, and infinitely seductive.
Both views amused Aaron. He knew very well what he was: a man with a brilliant brain, not unkind, not altogether unscrupulous, but with a genius for manipulating people and events to further his ends.
And the game, to him, was as exciting as the goal.
The goal this time was worthy of his best efforts. Last month he had snatched victory from what had seemed sure defeat, by swinging the all-important New York State to the Republicans. These were now joyfully engaged in thumbing their noses at the furious Federalists, who screamed to the heavens of cheating and foul play.
Now, however, a bigger battle loomed. He and Mr. Jefferson were Republican candidates for the Presidency, and one of them was certain to win. The wily and astute Mr. Hamilton had for once faltered, and the Federalist Party had bogged down into a welter of contending factions. Let them floun der, and a blessing on them! They would never pull themselves together in time to produce a candidate worth a pinch of snuff.
To be sure, the majority of Republicans seemed to take it for granted that Jefferson should be President and Aaron grateful for the small potatoes of the Vice-Presidency. But matters might far better be the other way around—far better.
