Snowbound and Eclipse
Page 30
My mother, small and thin and discerning, with eyes that probed me, drew me to her and examined me, somewhat to my discomfort, for it was as if I could have no secrets from her. She was not a physician, but was much called upon for her medical knowledge, and put stock in a number of simples that were famous in the county, herbs and barks and roots she gathered in the fields each year which she decocted into teas. They said she was better than any doctor in Virginia.
“Are you well, Meriwether?” she asked velvetly, her fragile hands resting in mine.
“See for yourself,” I replied. “I endured everything that harsh nature could devise for us, and yet we all got home, except for Sergeant Floyd.”
I was in the very bloom of health, having benefited from the efficacy of Doctor Saugrain’s courses, and I was certain that lues venerea was a thing of the past, and gave it no more thought.
She touched my cheek, stubbled from the neglect wrought by travel, and I was grateful that I was unshaven, for the skin eruptions of 1805 had left the faintest brand on my cheeks, small circles of obscure scar I fervently hoped she would not discover. Doctor Saugrain told me that the disease scarcely yields scar tissue, and that the healing of the skin is complete, but in my case a sharp eye might see the track of my tribulations. Under her scrutiny I had to nerve myself into the appearance of calm.
“I hope that it is so,” she said softly, and I felt a great uneasiness. I did not wish for my mother to learn the nature of the vile disease that had afflicted me, and that I now had conquered; the plague of scoundrels, vagabonds, and loose women.
How swiftly our house filled. Here were laced and perfumed cousins and aunts and uncles: Lewises and Meriwethers, including my uncle Nicholas Meriwether, who had been my guardian after my father died.
And they had questions. What was it like out there? A desert worse than the Gobi? What lies beyond the Mississippi? An aching void? Did you see no white men at all for three years? Is it all barren and naked, unfit for any but savages?
For me there was no longer a mystery in it, but for them I had undertaken a journey as exotic as an exploration of darkest Africa. I may as well have been describing a probe up the Amazon, or a marooning at Juan Fernández Island.
“Louisiana,” I said, “is a land so great, so rich, so filled with natural treasures, so fertile, that when it is finally settled we shall be the largest and most populous and most powerful nation on earth.”
“But what of the tribes?”
“They will become our friends; I made great progress with them, except for those fiends, the Sioux, which know no fear of anything but force.”
Even as I spoke, I was watching Big White and his squaw, Yellow Corn, who were wandering in sheer bewilderment through our home, marveling especially at the mounds of food hastily brought by our slaves to the dining table, along with our splendid sterling silver and Wedgwood china. Civilized life was beyond their fathoming and I was glad they were being introduced to it, because once they returned to the Mandans with their stories, the power of the American eagle would be understood within the minds of all the Missouri River savages.
Using the good offices of my translator, René Jessaume, whose own Mandan squaw was quite as dumfounded as the chief, I urged my family and neighbors to converse with this wild specimen of Louisiana mankind, which they did with great relish, along with much finger-wiggling, evoking solemn responses from the chief.
Ah, that was fun. Chouteau was on his way to Washington with the Osages, and the purpose was the same: we would overawe them all, they would return to their huts and tell the others what they had witnessed, and that would establish permanent peace and prosperity in the unsettled country.
“Well, Meriwether,” said my uncle Nicholas, “you have done a grand thing. Your fame has spread far beyond the county, and I have no doubt that your name will be celebrated even in Vermont, and Georgia.”
I relished the compliment and am not shy about taking credit for the successful expedition, which I knew to be the greatest in history.
But I was keenly aware that others had contributed to our success, and was fervent in my wish to give credit where it was due. “Will Clark was my equal in all respects, sir. And we had doughty men who, after certain disciplinary troubles at the start, welded themselves into an unmatchable corps, so devoted to duty and mutual protection that it was scarcely necessary for me to drill or order them about, or even instruct by the time we began our second year. But Will Clark, with his boating and mapping skills, sir, that is what made us a match and a team.”
“You share the glory generously, Meriwether.”
“That is my exact purpose.”
After an interval I looked after my aide, Private Frazier. He had never been in so fine a house, and he gaped his way through our white-enameled parlors, studying the oil portraits, the Hepplewhite and Sheraton pieces, and ended at last at our lengthy dining table, where cold pink beef and a succulent sugar-cured Virginia ham rested, with orange yams, brown breads, creamy sauces, and sundry other items, including an ample stock of whiskey and porter. I ate my fill, and urged him to do so also.
“This man,” I explained, “has been to the Pacific Ocean with me; has seen its dashing waves and tasted its salt. We have eaten the white blubber of a whale beached there. We have subsisted on elk and buffalo, ducks, beaver, dog, salmon and bear fat. And now we go to Washington to tell Mr. Jefferson what we have seen.”
I was very proud, the cynosure of much attention that hour, and I saw no reason not to enjoy it. I had done what no other mortal had done. I told them of the great humped grizzly, larger and more terrible than other bears, so great that sometimes half a dozen balls did not stop them. I told them of bearded buffalo beyond number, of the rivers we named for Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Madison, and Mr. Jefferson; of the streams Will and I named for Maria Wood and Judy Hancock; of Charbonneau’s little girlsquaw, who led us toward our fateful meeting with the Shoshones and their horses.
Of many things did I speak, wonders all to these Virginia gentry for whom the great continent rolling westward was a deep mystery full of deserts and terrors. And from the bright gaze in some women’s eyes, I knew myself to be an unexplored continent also.
And then I paused, addressing my mother. “And where is our cousin Maria?” I asked.
“Maria Wood? She married some while ago, Meriwether, a most blessed match, and we are pleased.”
“Ah,” I said, “ah … I named a river for her, you know. I should like to tell her. I was looking forward to it.”
“I’m sure you’ll soon have a chance,” my mother said.
It had been fanciful of me to think she might still be available these three years. I had admired her from afar, but never had encouraged her interest before the expedition. And yet the vision of her had always sustained me. Now she was taken. I breathed deeply, eyed the clamorous horde, and knew there would be others.
Two days later they banqueted us at the Stone Tavern in Charlottesville, and there we were feted with toast after toast, and there I took pains to tell these Virginians that I had indeed succeeded: “I have discharged my duty to my country,” I said. And I dwelled at length upon what Will and I had achieved on behalf of botany and zoology, for I wanted them to know that we recorded innumerable new species of plants, birds such as the magpie, and animals such as the dog of the prairie, dutifully described, sketched, pressed between pages, skinned, boned, and in some cases even returned live to Monticello.
I drank too much. Saugrain had warned me, in the severest language he could summon, against all spirits. But that was quite impossible given the hospitality I was experiencing and the fetes prepared in my honor. Should I refuse a toast? In any case, I was in fine fettle, my health was splendid, save for the endless pain wrought by the wound in my buttocks done by Cruzatte’s ball high up the Missouri. And for that I had a comforting remedy: a few drops of laudanum always sufficed to ease my pain, and balm the aches of all my muscles.
They were even penn
ing odes about us, and proposing that rivers and territories be named after me. I would not oppose the idea, for I had done what Columbus had done; what Amerigo Vespucci had done, and he had gotten his name on two continents out of it. But I count myself a seemly man, and later was relieved when Congress did not take up those suggestions.
I relished the adulation but was eager to go to Washington, and on to the nation’s true capital, Philadelphia, for the acclaim I thirsted the most for would come from my president, and then from those erudite periwigged savants in the Quaker City, who had formed themselves into the premier New World organization devoted to the advancement of all branches of learning, and especially science.
The American Philosophical Society had elected me a member—I who lacked a formal education! I planned to repay them the honor, by offering them the sum total of my hard-won knowledge of the continent, including the incomparable map that Will had fashioned day by day, out of our ceaseless measurements of latitude and longitude as we ascended the great Missouri. I give him the credit for it; my own cartographic skills are no match for his.
And so, with Christmas looming, and the most remarkable Yuletide of my young life awaiting, I set off from Albemarle County for the capital, and the President’s House, half-unfurnished still, to report to Mr. Jefferson, and to arrange as best I could to give Congress reason to reward all of my bold men with all the generosity a grateful nation could afford.
What better Christmas than to report my success to the governors of our new republic? And to show them my successes at diplomacy in the form of my Mandan guests? I had received word that Mr. Jefferson pined to meet Big White, even as he had rejoiced when Chouteau brought him the Osages, and the president had greeted them warmly, given them gifts and medals, and cemented relations with the savages who barred our way west.
Sometimes, in my rare moments of solitude, I was disquieted.
I was playing a new part, but I ill understood the role.
6. CLARK
I beheld the altar of my dreams, Fincastle, from a considerable distance because it lay below my vantage from the trace over Brush Mountain. Fincastle had been much on my mind, not only recently but all the way to the Pacific and back, and now my heart quickened at the knowledge that it rested in the broad valley down the long slope ahead, lost in the familiar haze of the blue ridges of Virginia. I had come a long way, and Fincastle was my lodestar.
It was the address of George Hancock’s plantation, and the home of Julia, or Judy to me, his daughter and the woman of my fancies. Courting her was foremost on my mind. Let Meriwether reap the acclaim of Washington and all the leading men; all I needed was the promise I would seek from those soft lips. She would be fifteen now; the age my mother was married to my father. If Congress did its duty and ratified the promises given me, I would be eligible and with means.
We had miles to go, York and I. York walked through the December chill and led our two packhorses, while I rode along the trace we had been following across Kentucky and western Virginia, pausing at inns along the way as was the custom.
I was no longer a lieutenant, having made haste to resign my commission as soon as I reached St. Louis, desiring not to keep the subaltern commission a day longer than necessary. I wrote Secretary Dearborn a resignation letter that made it clear what I thought of the rank. I do not trust the promises of government; my brother George Rogers Clark did, and was ruined by that trust. I would not succumb to such sentiment.
“Almost there, York,” I said. “Hurry now.”
He nodded. York had been lost in deep silence ever since we had returned from the expedition, and I hadn’t liked it.
“I will freshen up at the next stand,” I said. “You will cut my hair.”
“Yassuh.”
“Are you sick, York?”
“Nosuh.”
“Well, then answer me with respect.”
I had not been barbered since St. Louis, and I would have York do it, as he often did. I had kept my auburn hair short in accordance with our republican principles. So did Meriwether. Mr. Jefferson had decreed that all army officers must abandon their queues and wear short hair, because the officer’s queue was a mark of aristocracy, improper in a republican government and a citizen army. Most had. A few officers had refused and were finally pressured into cutting off their hair or resigning. Since the army’s officers were largely Federalists, the change came slowly, reluctantly, and with smoldering rage. One was finally court-martialed.
But I certainly didn’t mind. My queue, when I wore it, was an annoyance, needing my attention, easily dirtied. But I had known plenty of commissioned officers who wore their queues as a lordly prerogative; their mark of rank, as plain as epaulets and gold braid.
I fumed my way down the long slope, with York trailing barefoot behind me. He had been silent for weeks, a virtual stranger in my house. It had been a mistake to tender him a certain measure of liberty on the expedition; even worse a mistake to equip him with a rifle and teach him some marksmanship. But Meriwether and I knew that every man counted, and if we could conjure a rifleman and hunter out of York, we would be that much more secure.
But now I could see that it went to his woolly head. My thoughts turned severe: he would come around or be whipped. And if he didn’t, I would lend him to a master who used slaves hard, and then he would learn his lesson.
We stopped that last night at a public house at New Castle, though I was tempted to push on the last fifteen miles and awaken Judy and her family in the small hours. But I checked my impulse. At the public house I would order some hot water brought to me, freshen my suit of clothes, and make myself presentable. We would be at Fincastle by noon, a good time to discover the shine in the eyes of my beloved.
The suit the tailor had stitched up in St. Louis was ordinary black broadcloth, there being no other fabric in town. That distressed Meriwether, but I am indifferent to clothing. So long as it comforts me I care little about it.
I got an entire room at that public house but could not preserve my privacy because I was instantly recognized. Post and express riders had proclaimed my progress in every hamlet along my route.
“Captain Clark, sir, we are honored to welcome so illustrious a figure to our inn,” announced the rotund proprietor, one Barteau.
“It’s Mr. Clark. I’m out of the army, sir, and want no part of it.”
“Captain you are, though, and a captain’s billet we’ll give you.”
“That’s fine; put me up, put my slave in your hayloft if that’s suitable, and fetch me plenty of hot water. What’s the tariff for three horses, myself, and the darkie?”
“For you, my esteemed sir, nothing; for the horses and the black man, a shilling apiece, including hay and feed.”
“Feed them all well. I can’t afford to let them sicken.”
He nodded.
I had little cash; only a small purse that Meriwether had gotten from St. Louis merchants against my back pay. But it had sufficed.
We were the only guests, but I little doubted that in minutes we would not be. That was how it had been: the whole neighborhood had to poke and prod Captain Clark, wherever we stayed.
York hauled my chest and saddlebags into my upstairs room, and stared at me questioningly.
“Hay the nags, eat, and then come back and cut my hair,” I said.
“Us beasts o’ burden gets fed,” he said insolently.
I laughed, even though I had resolved to deal sternly with him. We were old friends, York and I.
The missus arrived with a leaky oaken bucket of hot water, not much but I didn’t need much. I poured it into a porcelain basin on a commode and began to scrub myself, wanting to unskunk myself sufficient not to scare off young ladies. I started with my hair, which was begrimed from days on the trail, and the application of a little lye soap restored the coppery shine to it soon enough.
By the time York was done outdoors, I was ready for him, sitting bare-chested on a homemade bench next to the candle.
“Make it good this time,” I growled. “It’s going to get looked at by female eyes.”
York didn’t reply.
“What’s bothering you, dammit?”
York sawed off some more coppery hair. I could feel his heat. You don’t live with a slave from childhood without sensing everything that passes through his mind.
“You gonna let me see my woman?”
There it was. He wanted time off to see his wife, who was owned by a tobacco man outside of Louisville.
“No, I can’t spare you,” I said.
“Sometime, mastuh?”
“You just mind your business and let me decide. Maybe. In a few years.”
“Rest of them, on the big trip, they got pay and go fetch them a woman and catch the crabs.”
“You catch yourself any crabs, and I’ll put the lash to you.”
He irritated me, wanting his liberty like that. I probably shouldn’t have taken him west. He spent those years as free as any of the soldiers, and now I had a surly servant. Half the squaws on the Missouri had sampled his black pecker, and I didn’t doubt that many a lodge contained a dusky little papoose.
No sooner had I completed my toilet than the local burghers arrived, wanting to toast me and hear the stories about grizzlies, mountains with snow on them year around, wild Indians, little prairie wolves, unknown birds, and the buffalo. I obliged them; didn’t mind a bit. They raised their cups of porter, just as others had done along the route, and I accepted their homage. Why not? I would have my day in the sun, and then retreat to Kentucky with my bride, lay waste to some hardwood forest, and put in some tobacco.
The next day, Sunday the fourteenth of December, was a blustery one reminding me of how narrowly I had avoided winter travel. I dressed up in my black suit, stock, capote, and set off with York for the last lap. I hoped it would suffice. If it had been Meriwether, he would have gotten himself up in a new blue uniform with a good black tricorne hat, gold braid dripping from the shoulders, new-blacked boots, and a clanking dress sword. But I had nothing to turn the eye except maybe some land warrants and some back pay, and a reputation.