The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  Now, in the bright morning, a grave was being dug and a line of mourners was filing up to it, led by the old lord, who was still smoking his long pipe. Someone was dead, but Jim could not determine who it might be. Tasmin strolled behind her father, followed by her brothers and sisters, several servants, Char-bonneau, the chieftains, and George Aitken, the captain of the boat. Behind them came a tall girl carrying what appeared to be a giant fiddle.

  Jim kept low—he knew that if one of the Indians saw him there would be a great uproar. He worried that the parrot, who fluttered boldly about the plum bushes, would give him away, but none of the mourners noticed. Soon there was hymn singing—then low, sad-sounding notes from the big fiddle. The burying didn’t take long. The mourners, in scattered groups, were soon filing down the long slope to the boat. Charbonneau had been entrusted with the big fiddle. The young woman who played it was strolling arm in arm with the old lord.

  “You best go back—they’ll be leaving you,” Jim said, giving the parrot a nudge.

  “Schweig, du blöder Trottel!” Prince Talleyrand replied.

  17

  “Merely fornication—wouldn’t interest you, Bob.”

  “LET us declare war immediately, savage war!” Tasmin said, addressing herself to Bobbety, Buffum, and Mary. George Catlin came around the corner just at that moment and heard the shocking comment.

  “War?” he asked. “War with whom?”

  George had a jumpy look—having a war hatchet raised over his head had been an irregularity from which his nerves had not recovered.

  “That comment was not meant for your ears, George,” Tasmin said. “Do go along.”

  “Why must he twitter so?” Bess asked, when the painter had taken himself away.

  “Oh, the artistic temperament, I suppose,” Tasmin said. “Artists ain’t rough, like us aristocrats.”

  She had summoned her closest siblings for a council of war. Lady Berrybender had been in her grave less than half a day, and yet Venetia Kennet had already moved herself and her cello into Lord B.’s stateroom, with the plain intent of becoming the next Lady Berrybender. Lord Berrybender, their father, was, as they all knew, no sentimentalist. His true feeling for his deceased wife, whose loins had yielded him fourteen children, had been summed up at breakfast, which Lord B. had tucked into with his usual appetite just before the funeral.

  “Constance, your dear mother, had no head for cards,” Lord B. remarked, as Cook served him his kidney. “An even weaker head if she happened to be drunk, which was often the case. I could always beat her at whist—don’t recall dropping a single hand these past twenty years. Very comforting to have a wife one can invariably beat at whist—so relaxing.”

  Tasmin doubted that the import of that remark was lost on Venetia Kennet, who possessed an excellent head for cards.

  “The point of this savage war is to prevent Vicky from marrying Papa,” Tasmin told them. “Should that dreadful event come to pass I fear we should all be put to work in the scullery—Vicky has many insults to avenge.”

  “Your insults, Tasmin,” Buffum said. “I am always most polite to Vicky myself.”

  “Oh, slap her, Bobbety,” Tasmin said, and Bobbety did slap her, though not hard.

  “Why can’t we just kill her?” he said. “Any of the engagés would be glad to do it.”

  “No, let’s sell her into slavery, perhaps to the violent Comanches,” Mary suggested. “She would be sure to suffer gross indignities—ravishment among them.”

  “Do shut up about ravishment, you don’t even know what it means,” Tasmin said.

  “I do—it’s what Buffum suffers at the hands of Tim, down in the horse stalls,” Mary said. “It makes her whimper and squeal.”

  “What is she talking about?” Bobbety asked. He spent his days cataloguing his growing collection of snails and spiders, a pursuit that left him little time for shipboard intrigue.

  “Merely fornication—wouldn’t interest you, Bob,” Tasmin said. She was beginning to regret having called the council. Help from her siblings was apt to be sporadic at best. If they meant to compromise Venetia Kennet it would be best to do it soon, before the conniving cellist managed to get with child. And Mademoiselle Pellenc had assured her that the statuesque Vicky was quite expert at the seductive arts.

  “I wish Mr. Snow would come and take me off this dull boat,” Tasmin said. “The parched prairies would make a nice change.”

  “They ain’t parched, it just rained yesterday,” Buffum reported. “You are so bossy, Tasmin, and that’s the very reason men don’t like you.”

  “The fact that I don’t fornicate with stable boys doesn’t mean that men don’t like me,” Tasmin replied cooly.

  Just then George Catlin came round the corner again, looking distressed.

  “There’s been rather an uproar,” he said. “Mademoiselle flew at Fräulein and scratched her cheeks quite badly—then Fräulein snatched up a club belonging to one of the chieftains and smashed Master Thaw with it. Master Thaw lies unconscious, bleeding from both ears. Fräulein vows to leave the boat at once, and Mademoiselle declares that she will not travel another mile until Prince Talleyrand is found.”

  “If Master Thaw is injured, that means no progress with Horace,” Bobbety said.

  “I’ve a fine suggestion,” Tasmin said. “The Missouri River has two banks—deposit Mademoiselle on one and Fräulein on the other. Then we’ll never have to listen to their wild harpings again.”

  George Catlin gave a start. A tall man had appeared on the western bank. He thought it might be the frontiersman who had brought Tasmin back, but before he could comment the steamer struck a sandbar so violently that they were all thrown off balance. When George recovered his footing and looked at the western shore again, the tall man was no longer visible.

  “I say, Tasmin, I thought I saw that fellow who brought you back,” George said.

  “What? Where?” Tasmin said, rushing to the rail.

  “I saw him just as we hit the riffle,” George said. “Can’t seem to spot him now. He can’t have gotten far.”

  Tasmin wasted no words and no time. In a flash she was in her stateroom, rummaging up a kit. She grabbed a laundry sack and stuffed a few articles of clothing in it. If she could just get ashore quickly, perhaps she could catch Jim Snow.

  She went racing down to the boat’s ladder, trailed closely by Mary and Tintamarre, only to discover to her vast irritation that two engagés had taken the pirogue some distance off, in order to probe the sandbar with long poles.

  “Bring back my boat this minute!” Tasmin shouted, with such outrage in her voice that the engagés immediately obeyed. One man was so abashed that he jumped out of the boat and was soon mired in mud up to his thighs.

  “I’m going along, you’ll need me to find the tubers,” Mary said. The second engagé was about to relinquish the pirogue when Captain Aitken, looking rather at his wit’s end, came rushing down to stop them.

  “You mustn’t go now, miss—there’s weather coming,” the captain said.

  “Look, Tassie—what a violent cloud,” Mary said.

  Tasmin saw that a great black cloud, with lightning dancing in it, and thunder rumbling, had stretched itself across the whole of the northern horizon. The sight vexed her extremely—why would such a storm come just when she had a chance to rejoin the Raven Brave?

  For a moment she was of half a mind to go anyway—what could a storm do but get her wet? It was true that the wind, merely a breeze with the breath of summer yet in it, had increased in force and become as chill as November, but what was a bit of a blow compared to the loss of this miraculous opportunity?

  Sensing the drift of her thoughts, Captain Aitken went so far as to grasp her arm.

  “You mustn’t try it, miss—there’s apt to be terrible hail!” he said. “We’ve all got to batten down and stay inside.”

  Just then there was a thunderclap so loud it seemed it might split the earth. The rain was advancing rapidly across
the river, a wall of gray water hiding the brown Missouri. The engagé who had foolishly jumped out of the boat was struggling desperately to get aboard. Captain Aitken rushed over and threw him a rope, shouting for the other men to pull. Even Old Gorska took a hand—the poor muddy fellow was reeled in just before the torrent struck. Tasmin, though bitter, realized she had to give way. She and Mary and the dog raced for the cover of the lower deck. After a brief violent deluge the wall of water passed them—tiny hailstones the size of peas began to pepper the steamer, striking the water like a million pebbles. Mademoiselle Pellenc was wild with fright, the Hairy Horn hid under the stairway, the engagés cried out to their God for mercy, and the size of the hailstones increased, first to the size of pigeons’ eggs, then to the size of ducks’ eggs; at the climax of the storm the hail was as large as turkey eggs.

  “We shall be battered to bits! We have come to the end of days!” Mary whispered in mad glee—there was a light in her eyes that Tasmin couldn’t regard as entirely sane.

  The roar of the hail became so great that no speech would carry. Big White and the Piegan drew their blankets over their heads, and Charlie Hodges, snug under the stairs with the Hairy Horn, was heartily glad he had resisted the Fräulein’s demand that they leave the boat summarily. On the open prairie, hail was what all animals feared—even elk and buffalo fled such storms.

  Then the hail slowed, became intermittent: soon the hailstones were merely peas again, and the cloud, still black, now darkened the plain south of them—the plains were as white as if there had been a snowfall. On the lower deck some of the engagés crunched the smaller hailstones when they walked.

  So intense had been the storm that when it passed no one moved at once. They sat as though numbed, at first scarcely able to credit that they were still alive and the boat not smashed. Tasmin, who had resolved to put out for shore the moment the storm passed, found that she had lost some of her resolve. The impulse that seized her so strongly had diminished as the storm battered its way past them. Her hastily assembled kit sat at her feet, but she made no move to rush to the pirogue.

  “Ain’t we going, Tasmin?” Mary asked.

  “In a bit, perhaps,” Tasmin said, feeling decidedly glum. Where would Jim Snow have got to, in such a storm? Were there not other men on the Western plains besides her Raven Brave? Trappers were always passing them, headed downriver with peltries piled high in their small boats. Probably it hadn’t even been Mr. Snow that George Catlin saw. The thought, logical and sensible as it was, made Tasmin want to cry.

  “I wonder what Papa is doing,” Bobbety said, wandering up. “Do you suppose he misses the mater?”

  18

  Another half minute and the thing would have been achieved . . .

  LORD Berrybender, in fact, had been indulging in a leisurely act of fornication with Venetia Kennet when the violent clatter of the storm struck their roof. In Lord Berrybender’s case it was a particularly ill-timed clatter—surrounded by such a roar, he lost his stroke; the fires so regularly induced by Venetia’s white languor were damped by the pounding of hail just at the moment when Lord B. himself should have been pounding.

  Another half minute and the thing would have been achieved; and yet, though Vicky Kennet turned quite rosy, the thing had not been achieved; her sly attempt to lock him in with her legs did not deceive Lord Berrybender, an amorite of vast experience. Noise of such a level was, at such a moment, unwelcome. He seemed to recall that a cannonade—where had it been? Egypt, perhaps, or was it the Peninsula?—had once had the same effect. In that case there had been no remedy, Lady Berrybender, with the help of her laudanum, having dropped into a deep unconsciousness, leaving Lord B. alone with his disappointment.

  In the present instance, though, there was still hope. His ingenious Vicky had invented a little variation which sometimes stimulated His Lordship to second or even third efforts.

  “Venetia, that damn storm undid me,” Lord Berrybender said. “Do be a good thing and get your bow. I believe success is still within my grasp if you’ll just help us a bit with those ticklish horsehairs.”

  Oh rot! Venetia thought but she obediently slipped from the bed. Tired as she was of the old fool’s sluggish embraces, she had no intention—with Lady Berrybender miraculously removed from her path—of allowing the richest man in England to escape her. She took up her cellist’s bow and returned to the bed.

  “Mustn’t get it sticky now, Your Lordship,” she said. “I fear my Haydn would suffer.”

  She drew the bow just lightly a few times across Lord Berry-bender’s floppy member. Reaction was not immediate, but Venetia—employing just the lightest of touches—persisted. Though other methods of resuscitation were available, she put her trust in her bow, deftly devoting a stroke or two to His Lordship’s hairy balls.

  “That’s it, that’s a good girl,” Lord Berrybender said. “I believe I feel life returning.”

  “Now just lie still, this is merely the overture,” Venetia said. “Soon we’ll get along to the first movement.”

  “First movement be damned, we had that before the thunder,” Lord B. said. “It’s the crescendo or whatever you call it that’s wanted now.”

  A few more strokes and the laggardly organ gained at least a rather knobby strength; when Venetia Kennet judged that it was as high as it was likely to rise she carefully put down her bow—not, of course, the bow she actually played Haydn with—and flung herself astride His Lordship before he could go floppy again. If there was seed in the old brute she meant to have it; and very soon, the thing was, after all, achieved.

  “Damn useful that you’re a fiddler, Vicky,” His Lordship said, before dropping off to sleep.

  19

  She would not trade her Pope . . . her Akenside or Shenstone . . .

  MADEMOISELLE Pellenc could not be calmed. Buffum, who could usually mollify the high-strung femme de chambre, was helpless before her abject despair. The loss of Lady Berrybender, coupled with the departure of Prince Talleyrand, had quite undone the poor woman—the violent hailstorm seemed to have been the last straw. She raced around the boat in hysterics, scaring the engagés and demanding to be put ashore to search for the lost bird. Big White wanted to strike the noisy woman with his big club, the very club that, in the hands of Fräulein, had deprived Master Jeremy Thaw of his powers of speech. Charbonneau pleaded with the irritated Mandan, a warrior not easily restrained.

  “She’ll run down soon, I expect,” Charbonneau said. “Women do, you know . . . like clocks. They run down.”

  “She grieves for our dear mama,” Bess said. “Such anguish is most affecting. Since we’re stuck on a sandbar anyway, couldn’t we mount at least a small expedition and go in search of Prince Talleyrand?”

  Tasmin found, to her considerable vexation, that she herself could think of little besides the Raven Brave. Never before in her life had a man occupied her thoughts for any length of time. Master Stiles, at best, seldom lasted half an hour. Various balladeers, poetasters, Portuguese, Frenchmen, or the male nobility of England could rarely tempt her from her studies for more than an hour. She would not trade her Pope, her Erasmus Darwin, her Akenside or Shenstone, her Scott or her Byron for all such male attentions. Yet now, in America, through the caprice of travel, she had stumbled onto a man she could not get off her mind.

  But where was he? The American plain was vast, her own experience slight. The terrible hailstorm had reminded her of how vulnerable one was on the naked American plain.

  “I suppose I could just ask Captain Aitken how long he thinks we might be stuck,” she said. “If it will make Mademoiselle feel any better I suppose we could go tramp around a bit.”

  She found Captain Aitken sitting on the bridge, smoking a pipe so short it almost seemed an extension of his chin. The poor man looked exhausted, and no wonder, with such a bunch to supervise. Below them, in water as brown as burlap, a number of engagés were pulling with great ropes and pushing with long poles—but to no avail. The steamer Rocky M
ount was firmly stuck.

  Tasmin could not but like Captain Aitken. By dissuading her from her impulsive dash he had probably saved her life—but that was not why she liked him. What she liked was his evenhandedness, a rare quality in men of her acquaintance. He neither ranted nor fawned; the excitable, even hysterical behavior of the Europeans neither impressed him nor offended him, as far as Tasmin could tell.

  George Catlin had set up his easel some ways down the deck—he wanted to capture the summer plains covered with white hailstones. Piet Van Wely stood behind him—he liked to study the painter’s effects as he worked. If George Catlin minded the plum botanist’s scrutiny, he didn’t show it.

  “I have to thank you, Captain—what a fearsome pounding we had,” Tasmin said. “If I had pulled for shore I fear the consequences would have been dire.”