Somerset

by Leila Meacham

  When the Methodist minister declared them man and wife (timidly, looking as if he feared being struck) and gave the groom permission to kiss his bride, Silas barely touched his lips to her impassive cheek. Jeremy gave the moment some semblance of traditional merriness when he put his hands on Jessica’s shoulders and said with a smile, “Now it’s the best man’s turn,” and kissed her other cheek.

  “Well, that’s that,” Carson announced with a relieved sigh when it was done and patted his stomach. “Let’s have some punch and cake, shall we?”

  “I’d like to invite Tippy in to have some,” Jessica said, turning from Silas as if his act in the play was over and she was ready for the next performer.

  Eunice gave her a look of annoyance. “Oh, Jessie—”

  “I’d like to meet this Tippy I’ve heard so much about,” Silas intervened, thankful for a diversion to fill the space before he and Jeremy could civilly leave.

  Jessica cut him a sharp look. “As you know, she’ll be going with me to Texas,” she said, “but as my friend, not my maid, and certainly not as a slave. Is that understood?”

  For a moment, Silas did not. Then he realized that this…Tippy of whom Jessica was obviously so fond was his property now. Everything that belonged to Jessica now belonged to him. Marriage made it so. Jessica could speak with the growl of a tiger, but she lacked the teeth to enforce her commands. But he would be gracious. He bowed his head a trifle. “As you wish.”

  Eunice addressed a servant in attendance at the tea table. “Send Tippy to the drawing room.”

  Afterwards, cantering away together from the scene of the disaster, Jeremy threw Silas a measured glance. “Want to get drunk?”

  “It wouldn’t help.”

  “She’s a fine girl, Silas.”

  “I haven’t noticed.”

  “Time will take care of that,” Jeremy said.

  Arriving at Queenscrown, Silas instructed Lazarus to round up Joshua. He had allowed the boy the comfort of his grandmother and uncle to assuage his loss of Lettie, but now Silas wanted the company of his son.

  “He’s with Mister Morris, sir.”

  “That’s as may be, Lazarus, but now I wish my son to be with me. I’ll be in my room.”

  “Very good, Mister Silas.”

  Waiting for Joshua, sunk in gloom before the fire, Silas reflected on the events of the afternoon. The only bright spot had been the odd little creature of a maid servant called Tippy. There was something about her not of this world. She had the widest smile and brightest eyes he’d ever seen on a human face. The girl radiated a light that even he could see would be a shame to extinguish. It was plain that she and Jessica were closer than the grip on a pistol, and he didn’t know what to think of such a friendship between a white girl and a Negro slave, but he would do nothing to interfere with it. He was grateful that Jessica would have companionship on the trip to Texas. Small and delicate-looking creature that the maid was, she looked like she could weather anything, and Jessica would need a sustaining friend to endure the hardships of the trail. Used to the finest comforts, Jessica had no idea what she was in for, and he should make an appointment to educate her.

  Silas studied the circle of gold on his finger. Make an appointment. He felt no more married to Jessica Wyndham than if he’d said I do to an empty sheet. He felt like an empty sheet. Lettie had told him that in many places in the world, the bride and groom did not meet until their wedding day, pawns of an arranged marriage. He had thought the idea bizarre and barbarous. Never in a million years could he have imagined himself marrying not only a stranger but a woman who thought of him as an enemy—an advocate for all she was against. Was she really sincere in supporting the abolition of a system that had provided her a life of privilege, or had she chosen her path to rebel against her father? Jeremy was of the opinion that daughter and father loved each other but—like roses and thorns on the same stem—were born to abide in conflict.

  Silas could handle Jessica Wyndham’s toothless bidding, but how would the girl take to his son? What would be Joshua’s reaction to her?

  Slight footsteps approached his door. A small hand pushed it open. “Papa?”

  Silas held out his arms, his chest swelling with love and need. “Come here, Joshua, and crawl into your papa’s lap. It’s been a while since I’ve held my son.”

  “You’re sad, too, Papa?” Joshua said, climbing up on Silas’s knees.

  “Yes, Joshua, I am very sad,” Silas said, tucking his young son’s head beneath his chin. He had already caused his child a great deal of pain. Was he selfish to inflict more by uprooting him from those he loved and the only home he knew to take him to a foreign land in the company of a stepmother neither of them knew? But if he left his son at Queenscrown until the time was safe to bring him to Texas, Silas might never reclaim him. Joshua was in the most sensitive, impressionable stage of a boy’s life. What would be between father and son must be established now or forever be lost. Silas well remembered the period when he was Joshua’s age. Between his fourth and eighth years, he had felt himself a mere shadow out of the corner of his father’s eye. Their chance to know each other slipped away. He would not make that mistake with Joshua. Besides, he must think of Jessica. How could the boy ever accept her as a mother figure if he were not weaned from Lettie now?

  But all questions regarding Joshua narrowed down to the one most important: Was Silas wrong to ensure for his son the birthright and future his own father had denied him, no matter what the cost might be?

  Only time held the answer.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Something was bothering Jeremy. Silas could read his friend like a well-thumbed book. Jeremy was the only one of his clan to inherit its patriarch’s Greek-god features (Lettie had called him Helios), and his friend’s face, for all its golden, sculpted handsomeness, was as open as a clear day rarely disturbed by clouds. Today, something had caused the clouds to gather.

  “What’s got ahold of you, Jeremy?” Silas asked as his friend followed him up to his room at Queenscrown. It was past the supper and reading hour, and his family and servants had retired for the night.

  Silas prayed it had nothing to do with Jeremy deciding to go off and help the Texians fight their revolution. His comrade-in-purpose had hinted at the desire some time back. “Caleb Martin is as capable of helping you organize and lead the wagon train as I am,” Jeremy had said, and I’ll meet up with you at the point where you cross the Red River.”

  Jeremy’s grandfather had fought in the American Revolution sixty years before and while he lived, never let his offspring and their children forget the reasons the war with England was fought. The concept of a citizen having certain innate rights in his own country had been inbred in them, more so than in the Tolivers’ line, who in their heart of hearts still felt some fealty to their Royalist pasts. Jeremy seethed at the gall of the Mexican government to levy taxes on the Texas colonists without representation and to pass sudden and arbitrary civil policy and laws it enforced by the use of military power. “I have no one but myself to see after,” he’d said to Silas. “I ought to go help the Texians. It’s our war, too.”

  Silas had used all his powers of persuasion to convince Jeremy that the Texians could do without his proficient gun arm for now. Many of those who had signed up to join the wagon train in his group had done so because of Jeremy’s known courage, cool head, and keen intelligence. For the same reason, Silas’s flock had signed on and stuck with him. The scandal of his marriage may have tarnished his image but not his leadership abilities. The feeling was that if anybody could get them to Texas, Jeremy Warwick and Silas Toliver could. Not so if one-half of the team was turned over to Caleb Martin, a strong, tough man but of untested abilities without knowledge of the pertinent information Silas and Jeremy had collected and studied over a year. And what would happen if Silas were rendered incapable of leading the train along the way?

  Jeremy had granted that he’d been thinking only of himself eve
n to consider turning his charges over to Caleb, but today, so close to departure time, Silas wondered if his friend’s old yearnings had come back to possess him.

  “I apologize for the late hour, but Tomahawk rode in an hour ago and brought the worst news yet,” Jeremy said.

  Tomahawk Lacy, a Creek whose tribe lived in Georgia, was one of two scouts Jeremy had hired and trusted to bring back reports from Texas. As one returned, the other rode out, so that the leaders of the wagon train were kept abreast as much as possible of the current perils they would meet. “Let’s hear it,” Silas said, ushering him into his sitting room where he had a new map spread out on his desk, the first topographical map of Texas prepared by a man named Gail Borden, a surveyor for the Stephen F. Austin colony.

  “Santa Anna’s brigades have fanned out along the Rio Grande,” Jeremy said, placing his finger on the drawing of the river that served as a border between Texas and Mexico. “Tomahawk estimates the number of troops at several thousand, probably more, along with hundreds of wagons, carts, mules, horses. It must be a heart-freezing sight. He says they’ll cross at various points and times in the next week and gather on the Texas side of the Rio Grande. Santa Anna himself is leading the army and will cross with his battalion from a place called Laredo in the south. His intent is to retake Texas and put down the rebellion like he did in the separatist states in Mexico.”

  Silas felt a chill creep over his skin. He understood Jeremy’s meaning and reference to the “separatist states.” Santa Anna meant to show no mercy to the upstart Anglo colonists as he had shown none to the rebels in the Mexican states who had opposed his taking over the government and declaring himself dictator of the country. On the long march toward Texas, he and his armies had blazed a path of terror through the provinces that had separated themselves from his rule, systematically burning villages, killing livestock, raping women, and massacring the rebels and their families and communities without quarter. A handful of survivors had carried news of the atrocities into Texas to warn the Texians of the kind of wholesale slaughter and brutality that awaited them when General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and his Mexican Army crossed the Rio Grande.

  Silas thought instantly of Joshua and Jessica. “So he’ll take no prisoners, women and children included?”

  “That’s the report. Everyone in arms and their families will be treated as pirates, unworthy of mercy.”

  “The son of a cur! I’d like to string the bastard up by his gonads and stake him over a slow fire,” Silas said, realizing how ineffectual he sounded. In Toliver fashion, he swept his hand through his hair. “So what do we do—take the tide while it is upon us or decline? We’re on a full sea, Jeremy. The wagons are packed. If we delay, even for a month, we may lose the current.”

  Jeremy offered the flicker of a grin. “You and your Shakespeare. As bad as Morris and his Bible.” His tone sobered. “No matter the full sea. You would risk Joshua and…your wife?”

  “This news gives me reason to suggest another route I’ve been considering,” Silas said, and turned the map toward Jeremy. Once upon a time, they favored a specific table at the Wild Goose in Willowshire to study maps and discuss their plans over flagons of ale, but that was before Silas’s disgraceful conduct became the topic of tavern talk. These days they met in the Warwick library or in Silas’s rooms at Queenscrown, not the most cordial venue since Elizabeth and Morris were aware of the reason they had gathered.

  “What if we drop down to New Orleans and cross the Sabine River into Texas?” Silas said. “It will be out of our way, but the advantage is that the Mississippi will be easier to navigate there, and we’ll have cheaper and more convenient access to water transport than we’re likely to have at Shreve Town farther north. Ferries are in place in New Orleans, and flatboat construction is a flourishing and competitive business.”

  Silas pointed to the river’s mouth on the map. “We can cross the Sabine here at its estuary and make our way up through the bayou country through the pine forests north, then cut west to our land grants. If we cross where we’d intended”—he indicated a place farther up on the map—“we might run directly into Santa Anna’s army. He’s bound to be headed toward the eastern part of the territory where the largest settlements are located.”

  “And by entering Texas from the south, should that madman have taken the territory, we’d have the biggest chance of retreat,” Jeremy said.

  “That’s right.”

  “I like it. The Comanche will be less of a threat as well.”

  “We’ll need to call a meeting for tomorrow night to inform everyone of the change of route and to assure them we’re still going,” Silas said.

  Jeremy turned away to pour himself a glass of brandy.

  “What’s the matter?” Silas asked, rolling up the map as Jeremy took a seat before the fire. “You still seem…daunted by the news.”

  “Not for myself, Silas, you know that, or even for those who have entrusted their destiny to our care. We’ve kept them apprised of the risks they’re taking, the price they may have to pay for the rewards they seek, but there are those innocent of the dangers…who are totally unprepared to deal with them.”

  Silas joined him with his own brandy glass. “You’re speaking of Jessica, of course.”

  “I am. Far be it from me to tell a man how to deal with his wife, but it seems to me Jessica ought to be given some training in how to defend herself if need be. She doesn’t even know how to load or fire a gun.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I ran into her while she was out riding last week. By the way, she should leave her filly at home. That silly little horse is too dainty for the trek to Texas, tethered to the back of a wagon.”

  To his surprise, Silas felt a pang of some unidentifiable emotion at Jeremy’s interest in Jessica’s welfare. Not jealousy, surely, but he found the feeling unfamiliar and unpleasant. “I’ll send word to her father that she should be instructed in shooting a gun and to include a firearm in her belongings. I’ll also advise that Jingle Bell be left behind. Let Carson deal with her tantrum when she’s told.”

  Silas had intentionally and familiarly dropped the name of Jessica’s horse in rebuttal to his friend’s implication—accurate and unintended, though it was—that he had neglected his wife. “What else did you and she discuss?”

  “Only that she wishes she could be privy to more information about what to expect. She says she reads the newspapers and knows what’s going on in Texas but not to the extent we do and share with the others. Jessica is aware of our meetings and that wives are invited. She feels…excluded.”

  “She’d only be the object of gawking if she attends. The girl ought to be grateful to have been spared the embarrassment, and she needn’t be concerned for her well-being, nor should you. Believe me, Carson will see to her every comfort, and”—Silas took a sip of the brandy—“I plan to drop Jessica and Joshua off at a hotel in New Orleans—the Winthorp—until it’s safe to send for them.”

  Jeremy raised a sandy brow. “Ah. Another reason to change the route.” After another taste of his drink, he asked casually, “What if Jessica refuses to stay in New Orleans? She’s proven a girl who doesn’t mind being in harm’s way.”

  “It’s not harm’s way she’ll wish to remove herself from, Jeremy, but me,” Silas said.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Jessie, do you think this is a good idea?” Eunice asked, the question carrying a note of reproach as she watched her daughter pack a number of small, brightly colored, hand-carved blocks into a sack. “Your husband should be the one arranging this first visit with his son.”

  “If I depended upon my husband to introduce me to the boy, I might have to wait until we’re in Texas. Cowardliness is not fast overcome.”

  “In that opinion I believe you’ve wronged Silas, Jessie. He’s probably thinking of his son, who is still pining for Lettie, and Elizabeth, who had hoped she would become his stepmother. Perhaps he’s waiting for the app
ropriate time to introduce you to Joshua.”

  “And just when would be the appropriate time, Mama? In one week when we leave for Texas? How awkward would that be for the boy?”

  Jessica slipped the last colored block into the sack. The blocks made up a set of twenty-six with letters of the alphabet drawn on one side, numbers on the other, and farm animals, fences, pastures, sheds, and equipment on the others, all exquisitely painted by Tippy. Jessica had gotten the idea of them as an introduction gift to her stepson one night when she was lying awake wondering how she could manage, not to replace Lettie in Joshua’s affections, but at least to make friends with him. She knew nothing about child rearing and had never experienced a second’s maternal longing to produce a child. She’d gone to Tippy with the idea.

  “I want something to be a learning tool as well as a toy,” she’d said, and Tippy’s imagination had immediately taken off in collaboration with Willowshire’s talented carpenter to produce the result Jessica would be transporting to Queenscrown today. Along with it was a stick horse whose head had been carved and painted as a facsimile of her beloved Jingle Bell whom she’d been told she must leave behind.

  “Besides,” Jessica added, “my husband has forgotten about me.” She’d seen Silas only once after they’d said “I do.” Two weeks later, the first of February, the day he was to have married Lettie, he’d sent word by one of the servants to expect him that afternoon, and she’d stood on the upstairs gallery to watch for his approach up the lane. She’d expected to view him with disdain, but her heart had flown to her throat when he came into sight on his high-prancing gelding, the handsomest man she’d ever seen—her husband—and among the oldest, too, Jessica reminded herself, and an advocate of slavery to boot, she must remember.