The Furies

by John Jakes

  Don Refugio wrinkled his nose at the smell of human waste left in a corner. Amanda surveyed the smashed counter, then a pile of scrapwood and horsehair—all that remained of the lobby furniture.

  Her dress was the only touch of color in the whole dreary scene. It was homespun, dyed yellow with root dyes. A sunbonnet kept her face in shadow as she studied the wreckage. She had been back in Bexar for several weeks, escorted by an amiable soldier in a wagon Houston commandeered for her. The journey had been difficult. She felt weak most of the time, and was troubled frequently by nausea.

  Shortly after she’d arrived, she’d been informed that Gura’s Hotel was no longer fit to be lived in. Don Refugio had advanced her a small sum to rent a room elsewhere in town. This was the first day she’d been able to summon the courage to visit Soledad Street and see the devastation for herself.

  “It’s a pity, but there’s not much left,” Don Refugio said as Amanda gazed at the whitewashed wall. Someone had used charcoal to scrawl a filthy remark about Texans. “There was a good deal of drinking and carousing while Santa Anna’s senior officers were quartered here. Also, they were not particularly respectful of property belonging to an Anglo.”

  Amanda sighed. “Is it the same upstairs?”

  “Worse.”

  “Then there’s not much point in going up. I suppose the land and the building will bring me a little money.”

  The priest’s gray eyebrows shot up. “You don’t intend to reopen the hotel? I know it would require a great deal of work, but I thought—”

  “I’m going to sell, Padre. As is. There’s bad feeling toward me in this town.”

  “Yes, I realize. Still—”

  “It’s even worse than before, when I had girls upstairs.”

  “You can admit the ill will is understandable, can you not?”

  “No. I was the one American woman who survived the battle at the mission and stood up to Santa Anna—in return for which, I was made a prisoner. To the Americans around here, that somehow makes me a traitor. Susannah Dickinson, on the other hand, took Santa Anna’s clemency—”

  “She saw her husband die, Amanda! She was utterly demoralized—”

  “I know. I’m not finding fault, just stating a fact. She did accept his offer—and spread the message he wanted her to spread. For that, she’s a heroine. I don’t imagine my name will ever appear on the list of the women who lived through the massacre. I’m confident hers will.”

  “Ah, but a name on a paper tells nothing! If your name is recorded, you will probably be listed as a Mexican—”

  “True. Anyway, that’s not the point. I wouldn’t accept Santa Anna’s so-called generosity—and look where it’s gotten me.”

  “But people wonder why you didn’t run away from the Mexicans.”

  “Because I gave my word to the officer who saved me from execution! Oh, what difference does it make? They hate me, and that’s that.”

  “It will pass, Amanda.”

  “Will it? I know what people are saying. That I should have refused to go with Cordoba. Broken my word. Fled. And if that wasn’t possible, I imagine they believe I should have done away with myself! Well—” Her mouth twisted. “I’ve always had a strong survival instinct. I gather that’s no longer permitted in Texas.”

  “Nonsense,” Don Refugio snorted. “Do you know how many, here and elsewhere, actively supported Santa Anna when it seemed the Texan cause was lost? I assure you the number is not small.”

  “People might even think differently if I’d lived with a different sort of man,” she went on, staring at three holes drilled in the wall by pistol balls. “But Major Cordoba was decent—and I’ve made no secret of that. Evidently decency on the part of the enemy is also unthinkable.”

  “That we are all God’s creatures, with an equal distribution of devils and saints among all nations, is seldom remembered in wartime.”

  “General Houston remembered,” she said. “He, at least, was kind to me.”

  The priest nodded. “He has grown to be a man of immense wisdom, I think. They say there’ll be an election in the next few months. Burnet will step aside. Houston is almost certain to be named president of the republic. He’s your friend, and I’m sure he’d see that you were treated fairly. For that reason, you might want to reconsider your decision. I assure you the hatreds will be forgotten. We are all Texans now. We may eventually become Americans, if the rumors are true.”

  “The rumors about annexation?”

  “Yes. Houston is in favor, is he not?”

  “Very much so. He told me before I came back that he may petition Congress—or at least ask the people to vote on whether a petition requesting annexation should be sent. But the newspapers say Jackson’s cooled on the idea. He doesn’t want a protracted war with Mexico, so he has to maintain neutrality. It’s all very muddled—especially since the Mexican legislature repudiated Santa Anna’s treaty recognizing the republic’s independence. Who knows how it will come out?”

  Her words trailed off with an empty sound. The priest pondered, then agreed, “Yes, in some ways Santa Anna’s defeat only compounded the confusion. The matter of chattel slavery will becloud annexation, no doubt—”

  Thinking of the dead in the mission, she made a derisive sound. “I trust you heard how Quincy Adams referred to the rebellion? Denounced it in Congress as nothing more than a scheme to restore slavery down here, and bring another slaveholding state into the nation? The fool!”

  “There are some who would hope for that,” Don Refugio told her. “Here and in the United States.”

  “Well, I won’t be present to see how the whole thing’s resolved, Padre. I’ve made up my mind. I have to start over somewhere else. With a new name. Or an old one, rather. The name I had before I was married. I need a fresh start at everything.”

  The little priest tried to read her face in the shadow cast by the bonnet’s brim. He couldn’t. But he heard the strain in her voice.

  “Whether I’ve done right or wrong is something someone else will have to decide. Maybe the woman who guards the vine—”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Amanda, I beg you to think carefully before—”

  “I can’t stay in Bexar any longer, Padre. There are—too many memories. My husband—my friends murdered in the chapel. The major—”

  Her voice broke. She shook her head as if angry with herself. Don Refugio laid his slim fingers on her arm, squeezing gently to comfort her.

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know. Further west, I suppose. I can travel with one of the pack trains. Perhaps to Santa Fe. Even on to California—I hear that’s beautiful country.”

  “Comfortable, certainly. But you would be a subject of Mexico again.”

  “I’m not trying to escape a government, just the past. Besides, more and more Americans are settling there all the time. Coming up from Santa Fe, or from the east by ship—”

  “And across the mountains one day, perhaps.”

  “The mountains? I doubt that.”

  “So did I, at first. But a number of the itinerant traders claim the fur companies have sent wagon shipments quite far west to equip their brigades. They believe it’s possible to traverse the mountains and reach the Pacific with a wheeled vehicle.” He looked amused. “America has a ravening hunger for land. Few obstacles will deter its satisfaction, least of all mountains. I expect your people won’t be content until they claim the continent from coast to coast. So I’d have a care about choosing California. You might find yourself embroiled in the same political turmoil you’ve just endured here.”

  “There’s always the Oregon Territory.”

  “One more area ripe for dispute and rebellion! Don’t the British and the United States occupy it jointly, by treaty—?”

  “It doesn’t make any difference where I go—so long as it’s away from here!”

  After a moment, Don Refugio sighed in a resigned way. “If your
mind is made up, I am at your disposal to help with arrangements.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled, but without much feeling. “I won’t be going immediately, much as I’d like to. I won’t be in any condition to travel for a while. You see, I—”

  She experienced a bursting sense of relief at finally admitting it to someone. “I’m fairly certain I’m going to have a child.”

  v

  “Push,” the fat old midwife said with a singular lack of compassion. She rested hard hands on Amanda’s huge, heaving belly.

  She tried. The pain was intense, and growing worse. The contractions seemed to torment her whole being.

  She lay on a table in a room Don Refugio had provided in a wing of the San Fernando church. Her knees were bent, her feet braced against blocks of wood the priest had nailed to one end of the table. Don Refugio, dimly visible at the edge of a circle of lantern light, was in attendance because he’d acquired certain medical skills over the years. But Serafina, the midwife brought in from the country, was in charge.

  There was a howling in Amanda’s ears. Was it the wind outside the church, carrying sleet and rain from the northwest this gloomy day in January 1837? Or was it only an imaginary echo of sounds from the past? The melody of the deguello? The shrieks of the dying in the mission? The pitiful cries of the routed soldiers at San Jacinto—?

  “Push, for the Virgin’s sake!” Serafina cried. “I can see the head!”

  The insides of Amanda’s thighs were wet. She lay naked, only her breasts covered by a scrap of rag. Her hands gripped the ends of a length of pine wood the midwife had given her to bite.

  She dug her teeth into the soft, fragrant stick and closed her eyes, writhing.

  “Hold her still!” Serafina exclaimed. Don Refugio’s hands pinned Amanda’s shoulders. The contractions were no longer distinct; they blended into a single consuming pain. She felt the thick thrust of something being expelled from within her body—

  “Push, woman. Push.”

  She lost her sense of time and of place, catching only fleeting visual and aural impressions as her mind blanked out, then reawoke—

  The thickness between her legs was gone. She saw Don Refugio, white rags draped over one arm of his robe. She heard water splash as Serafina bathed her red-stippled hands and forearms.

  She heard a muted gurgling, too, then the midwife’s grumbles as she manipulated twine, tying the cord once near the opening from which the child had emerged and a second time close to the belly of the unseen baby. The child must be resting on the mound of rags between her thighs, Amanda realized—

  The midwife stepped back.

  “Cut the cord, Padre.”

  The sudden glitter of a bowie knife almost made her scream aloud. Then she remembered she wasn’t in the mission, nor on the hill of San Jacinto, but in an adobe room with a winter rainstorm raging outside.

  Don Refugio’s hands dipped out of sight. Immediately after cleaving the cord, he whipped the rags off his arm and began to bundle the infant. Amanda glimpsed a tiny, plum-colored face puckered in a struggle for breath. The baby’s skin was wet and shimmering—

  “A very good child,” Serafina announced. “Now we must wait.”

  A second later, Don Refugio said, “I don’t believe she hears you.”

  “The Pope send me packing, but it’s a mystery to me how you celibates can presume to minister to women. Nothing personal, mind you—” A shrug. “You’re a lot better than some I know.” A pointing finger loomed before Amanda’s eyes. “She hears me. She just doesn’t feel like chattering.”

  “A thousand pardons!” Don Refugio said. “I forget this is your domain, not mine.”

  Amanda’s grimace gentled into a smile. She stopped biting the stick so hard, released her hands from the ends. The priest melted into the darkness as the baby began to squall. In the church tower, the wind struck wild clangs from the bells.

  Amanda let her heavy eyelids close. She opened them suddenly at the midwife’s cry.

  “Ah, Jesus have mercy! She’s gotten rid of everything but she’s still bleeding—”

  Don Refugio’s white-haired head bobbed above Amanda. He laid a dry hand on her sticky forehead. Suddenly her loins felt thick again—Serafina had thrust her right hand and forearm into her and was massaging vigorously to stop a warm flow she could feel on her legs.

  The midwife grunted anxiously as she worked. At last she withdrew her red hand, disappeared, and once more Amanda heard the sound of flesh being plunged into water.

  Presently Serafina returned. She stood immobile, her gaze focused between Amanda’s legs.

  After what seemed like hours, she nodded.

  “The bleeding has stopped.” For the first time, she allowed herself a smile. “You can sleep now, señora.”

  “I—I’d like to see the baby—”

  “All right, but only a moment.” She swung toward the darkness. “Step lively, Padre!”

  Amanda heard sandals scraping stone; Don Refugio obeyed the midwife just as any novice would have obeyed a superior.

  “You’ve had babies before,” Serafina declared, moving up beside Amanda’s torso and rearranging the cloth that had shifted away from her left nipple.

  “None—that lived. I want this child to live.”

  “Oh, I think he will. He’s a hefty one.”

  “He?” Amanda repeated. “A boy?”

  “From every observable sign,” the older woman said with a wry smile. “What will you call him?”

  Drowsily, Amanda answered, “Luis, I think. Luis Kent. Only spelled”—she labored for a breath—“American fashion—with an “o” in the first name.”

  Louis Kent. How good that sounded! Then she thought of something else. Now there’s someone to carry on the family. I can take him with me if I ever go back to Boston. I can show him where his grandfather and great-grandfather lived—and teach him to be proud he’s a Kent.

  “Louis, eh?” The midwife sniffed. Amanda barely heard.

  Now that I have him, I will go back. We’ll go back together—

  “Louis—well, I suppose that’s all right. Though everyone these days is naming their newborns after the men who fell at the mission. I’d have thought you might pick a hero’s name too.”

  “I—did. The baby’s father—was with the Mexican army—”

  “Ah yes, I heard they held you captive for a while.”

  “He—could have killed—a great many. But he didn’t—”

  “Well, the decision’s yours. Why the baby was named will soon be forgotten anyway. Your people and mine, we’re no longer much different, it seems. We’re all citizens of the republic. Living under the new republican flag with that one star. Judging by the way the voting went in October, I might even be an American presently. It’s a remarkable world—”

  She whirled to the shadows.

  “It’s about time, Pad—Mother of God, keep the feet covered! Covered!”

  “My profound apologies,” the priest murmured, surrendering the child to the midwife. “I’m a mere man—”

  “That’s quite apparent, I’m sorry to say.” Serafina in turn handed the small warm bundle to Amanda. Then the midwife and the priest stood gazing downward, their shoulders touching and their banter forgotten.

  Fighting sleepiness, Amanda lifted a corner of a rag aside and stared at the slitted eyes, the wrinkled pink flesh, the mouth that sucked air noisily. Suddenly she clutched the little boy tight against her breast.

  “In God’s name handle him gently!” Serafina said. “You’ll suffocate the poor thing.”

  But Amanda clutched her newborn fiercely, feeling him squirm, then hearing him squall.

  What a strange turn of events, she thought, remembering the tiny kernel Sam Houston had dropped into her hand beneath the oak at San Jacinto. He hadn’t known—nor had she—that an entirely different kind of seed would germinate from the war’s bloody ground. A seed that would yield this miracle of living flesh within her arms, give her a
purpose—a new reason for going on when it seemed that all the rest of her reasons had been destroyed—

  The future no longer terrified her because of its emptiness, its uncertainty. Let the wolf run; she wasn’t afraid.

  Louis Kent howled louder. She had never heard such a sweet, sweet sound—

  Serafina slapped her hips. “Merciful heaven, Padre, I give up. Now she’s crying too!”

  THE JOURNAL OF JEPHTHA KENT, 1844:

  Bishop Andrew’s Sin

  APRIL THE 30TH. ARRIVED in New York City after a wearying journey by coach, my annual stipend not being large enough to permit riding the rail roads. I have joined my brethren here for General Conference. Am stopping at a modest hotel where the appointments are few but clean, though of course the establishment cannot compare with other local hostelries. Adjoining one of its rooms, The New York Hotel has installed a separate, private facility for the purpose of bathing—or so I was told by my companion, the Reverend Hodding, with whom I took a brief walking tour late this afternoon.

  Hodding is a pleasant, if opinionated, fellow. He itinerates in the vicinity of Chester County, Pennsylvania. We compared our situations, which are not essentially different, except in one regard. Freedom for the enslaved Negro is a goal much sought by Hodding, as well as by many of those to whom he ministers.

  I in turn attempted to present Hodding with the views of those Christian men and women I have served the past two years from my location at Lexington, in Virginia’s valley of the Shenandoah. But I did not press a strong personal view upon him. I have none. Whenever I think on the subject, I end in a quandry.

  As evidence of the moral failure of our own Church, Hodding spoke scornfully of the treatment accorded men and women of color at Lovely Lane in Baltimore, where the “Afric” may sit nowhere but the balcony, and receives the sacrament only after it has been served to white persons. He also mentioned St. George’s in Philadelphia, where Negroes must hold their own services at an hour different from that at which the whites worship. Clearly my companion is one of those enraged by the failure of the Methodist Episcopal Church to declare a position on the slave issue; twice during our stroll, he repeated Mr. Wesley’s claim that the system of black bondage in this nation is “the vilest that ever saw the sun.”