The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  George Catlin’s heart had leapt up when he saw Lady Tasmin come aboard with no young frontiersman in tow; he had rushed down and gushed out effusive welcomes, only to be greeted so coolly that he had spent the afternoon in a sulk.

  Venetia Kennet, who had hardly drawn a bow across the strings of her cello since Lord Berrybender shot his foot, had been required to dust off her Haydn and play a bit for the reunited company, which she did embarrassingly badly, with many a piercing shriek from the cello as she mangled her chords. Venetia had rather hoped that Tasmin would come back humbled—skinny, bruised, and starved, like Bess and Mademoiselle. But Tasmin wasn’t humbled—and even more annoying, she looked to be in vibrant health.

  “Father, do have Vicky leave off the Haydn just this once,” Tasmin said. “She’s all atremble with happiness at our safe return, I expect—she can hardly be expected to control her fingers at a time of such abounding joy.”

  “She’s just lazy, Vicky . . . ought to practice more,” Lord Berrybender replied.

  Tasmin saw Venetia Kennet flush at that remark—everyone on board knew what Vicky Kennet was required to do.

  “You should try a few weeks ashore, as I just have, Vicky,” Tasmin said. “The cool prairie air is such a balm to one’s complexion—brings the color right to one’s cheeks.”

  “Oh well, Tasmin, I have not got the milkmaid spirit quite to the degree that you have,” Vicky said. “I should need a very trustworthy escort—in fact I’ve already had a horror of stepping in a bog. One could be so quickly swallowed up.”

  Venetia cast a look of great helplessness at handsome young Monsieur Le Page when she said it—a rather daring look, considering that Lord B. was alert to the merest suggestion of a rival. Simon Le Page thought it best to ignore the look; he continued his attentions to Mademoiselle Pellenc.

  Lord Berrybender considered Monsieur Le Page—rescuer of his daughter and his femme de chambre—as something of a popinjay—but then, all French had a measure of the popinjay in them. Lord Berrybender had been assured by a local antiquary that, at some distant genealogical point, the Berry-benders themselves had been French, a suggestion he didn’t welcome.

  “Don’t care to look behind me—no interest in the Conqueror or any of that 1066 rot,” he said; he did, however, take pride in the fact that Berrybender seed had flowed only into the most dynastically appropriate wombs—bastards, of course, did not count in that reckoning. And yet there sat his daughter Tasmin—if she was his daughter; he was, of course, aware of certain rumors concerning Lord de Bury—so willful as to dare breach this long trickle of noble seed to noble womb. Lord B. had a bad feeling about Tasmin, and had had it from the minute she stepped on board, as casual after an absence of several weeks as if she had merely strolled down to the village to buy a ribbon or a sweet.

  Lord Berrybender rarely suppressed an inquiry for more than a few seconds—and damn the company!—and yet he found himself unaccustomedly cautious in the matter of Tasmin’s prairie marriage, a great calamity if true. Still, what evidence for it was there? Only Mary’s comments—and Mary was known to be inventive, with a sort of genius for planting seeds of disquiet. Such seeds were even then sprouting like spikes in Lord Berrybender’s vitals—he felt he might even be getting indigestion, though he had eaten very little of Cook’s great feast.

  Now, restless, drunk, troubled by a growing distemper, Lord B. reminded himself that he, not Tasmin, was lord of the manor. He looked directly at his daughter, hoping to catch her out, to learn the truth—but Tasmin, to his annoyance, merely stared straight back at him, bold as brass, with even a touch of defiance in her light smile. Spears of disquiet stirred even more sharply in Lord Berrybender’s bowels. In his annoyance he remembered how casual his late wife, Constance, had been when it came to discipline, never smacking Tasmin as she should have been smacked. And now Constance was dead, Tasmin was grown, the days grew short, the winds blew cold, it was too late. Tasmin was not some social-climbing wench like Vicky Kennet, who would allow him any number of liberties in hopes of marrying him. Tasmin had no need to climb; unless she married some prince, she could go no higher. But the horrid thought occurred to Lord B. that Tasmin, in her defiance, might have climbed in the wrong direction: down, into the embrace of some American.

  “Were you wanting to ask me something, Papa?” Tasmin asked. “It’s rare we see you so deep in thought when the table is spread with such an array of excellent vittles.”

  “Ah, Tasmin . . .,” Lord B. said, appalled to discover that he was rather quailing before his daughter—he who had fought seventeen duels without a tremor.

  “I expect Papa is fretting because you have not chosen to bring your gentleman home for inspection,” Mary said. “Of course, he isn’t a gentleman in our good English sense, though perhaps presentable in his own way.”

  Tasmin gave her sister’s ear a cruel pinch.

  “I would like to take you to a high place and drop you head-first on a rock,” she said. “Perhaps the Rocky Mountains will provide an opportunity—we’ll see.”

  “What’s this, Tasmin? A fellow of some sort? Not a bounder, I hope—shouldn’t want my fine girl compromised,” Lord Berrybender managed to mumble, well aware that Tasmin sometimes flew into prodigious rages when her behavior was questioned.

  “Oh, no . . . I’m not at all compromised, just rather blissfully married,” Tasmin said. “My husband, Mr. Jim Snow, is occupied at the moment with his many duties but I expect him in a few days. I do hope you’ll approve of him, Father.”

  Her comment silenced the table. George Catlin started as if pricked with a pin—he felt all hope slipping away.

  “And if I don’t approve?” Lord Berrybender growled—the audacity of the girl was not to be borne.

  “But Papa, why shouldn’t you approve?” Tasmin asked, not about to be cowed by a drunken parent. “You can’t have been planning to sacrifice me to our enfeebled nobility, once we get home, I hope—you know I can’t tolerate these pale, sickly English nobles.”

  Venetia Kennet’s heart gave a leap. Tasmin had ruined herself; that was clear. Venetia felt suddenly filled with new resolve; she would triumph, become Lady Berrybender after all. Lord B. would marry her yet!

  Lord Berrybender could not immediately decide what answer to make to the insolent girl across the table. Sometimes, when he carelessly mixed brandy with wine, the combination made his head rather whirl. At the moment, despite a strong inclination to thunder and rage at Tasmin, not only his head but the whole table seemed to whirl. He gripped his chair firmly, but the whirling continued.

  “Tasmin has been very bad, hasn’t she?” Mary said. “Do rise up, Papa! Do produce one of your purple rages. Smite her hip and thigh! Reduce her to silence and shame!”

  Father Geoffrin could not suppress a giggle.

  “The petite mademoiselle is very quick to turn a phrase—she would be much applauded in France,” he said.

  Mary received this compliment coldly—she had no intention of accepting any familiarities from the silly Jesuit that Tasmin had dragged home with her.

  Lord Berrybender stood up—stood up only to sway. The table was whirling, more or less like a carousel. Yet he knew that he must say something chastening to his upstart daughter. Rarely in a long life had his authority been so directly challenged.

  “Can’t allow it—not acceptable,” he managed to mumble. “Have to throw the bounder out.”

  “Your opinion is quite irrelevant,” Tasmin informed him. “The thing is done. I’m married.”

  “Then I’ll unmarry you, you insolent wench,” Lord B. managed to thunder. “You can’t just fob off the nobility of Europe like that. I’ll seek an annulment—consider yourself confined to your room.

  “Here’s a priest . . . he must know how to arrange annulments,” he added.

  Father Geoffrin merely chuckled.

  “Oh, not I, Your Lordship,” he said. “I should think you’d have to apply to the Holy Father directly, in a matter of tha
t significance.

  “The Holy See is unfortunately rather distant from the Missouri River,” he added, unnecessarily, Mary thought.

  “Wouldn’t work anyway—not only am I married, I’m with child,” Tasmin said. “Pregnant, to put it bluntly.”

  “What? You harlot, I’m ruined!” said Lord Berrybender. “Where is the fellow? I’ll kill him!”

  “You’re not ruined at all, you’re just drunk,” Tasmin informed him.

  Seconds later Lord B. began to sway, then to sway more, and finally to heave. The remains of his modest dinner, and a great deal of wine besides, came up in Simon Le Page’s lap, to the horror of Mademoiselle Pellenc, who at once took command of the young trader and led him away, meaning to clean him up.

  Tasmin found that she missed the clean, cool air of the prairies: no centuries of Europe, no squalid family scenes, no yelling. She took herself out on deck, followed by Mary and the hound, Tintamarre. It was snowing lightly, the breeze quite chill.

  “I wish you would let off goading Papa,” Tasmin said. “He knows well enough he can’t tell me who to marry.”

  “Are you missing your husband, Tassie? Tell me,” Mary said. She had become the meek Mary again.

  “Yes, quite sharply,” Tasmin admitted. “He can be a silly boy at times. I left him in a moment of pique.”

  “No doubt you were jealous of his other wives,” Mary commented. “Monsieur Charbonneau mentioned them to me.”

  “I was, but it’s hard to remain properly jealous of two brown women who may be a thousand miles away,” Tasmin said.

  “They can’t be as pretty as you, anyway,” Mary said. “Rather squat girls, I imagine.”

  Tasmin looked into the darkness. Snow was melting on her flushed cheeks, on her hair, on Tintamarre’s red coat.

  “This snow will make Captain Aitken very anxious,” Mary said. “He fears we will get stuck in the ice and be unable to make our fort, in which case many of us will perish.”

  “None of that’s happened yet,” Tasmin said.

  If she were with Jim, she reflected, they would be sitting close together, listening to the way the campfire spat as the heavy snowflakes fell into it.

  “I do hope my Jimmy is warm,” she said. “If I were with him I might at least keep him warm.”

  Mary went belowdecks, to seek the Hairy Horn. She never tired of conversing with the sly old chieftain.

  Tasmin, with Tintamarre beside her, stood by the rail a long time, watching the snowflakes disappear into the dark waters. In her breast was a sharp regret. How silly she had been to leave her Jim.

  43

  Captain Aitken had no patience . . .

  THE day Old Gorska killed himself—messily, by cutting his own throat with a razor in his filthy closet on the lower deck—was a day so rife with alarums and distempers that no one had time to mourn the drink-sodden old hunter except Cook, who had lost two sons herself and knew the grief it brought. The silent arrow that killed Gorska Minor fatally pierced his father too.

  What drew the company’s attention away from the suicide was the untimely discovery of the parlous state of the stores—a discovery made on the very morning of the day when the seven chiefs of the Mandans and a few from neighboring tribes would be lining up to receive what they were sure would be splendid presents from the rich whites on the Thunder Boat, the name given the steamer by the Bad Eye, who was still much distracted by the belchings of the boilers. The great bulk of trade goods they had laid in in Saint Louis had not been examined since the voyage began. Toussaint Charbonneau was horrified when he saw the state of the goods. Rats had been into the blankets—half of them were riddled with holes. An undetected leak had left the crates of muskets covered with water, leaving the great majority of the guns too rusty to use. There were plenty of beads, of course, but the native women had been receiving regular deposits of beads from many sources—unless the beads were spectacular, the natives were apt to yawn and carp—and the Berrybender beads were the cheapest variety, thanks to Lord Albany’s fine sense of economy; in his view a bead was a bead and a savage a savage. Instead of buying better beads he had bought himself a fine new rifle, made by a Pennsylvania gunsmith—even Gorska had conceded that it was a fine gun, though not, of course, as good as his own Belgian gun.

  The Belgian gun was the first thing Lord Berrybender mentioned, when informed of Gorska’s suicide.

  “Bad news, of course, alas and alack—set in his ways, Gorska was,” he said. “Preferred the Carpathian bear to the American bison—odd fellow. Doesn’t do to be set in one’s ways—life doesn’t always go smooth . . . adjustments frequently necessary. . .I lost my Constance, after all, and the boy Seven too. Meanwhile, since Gorska will no longer need it, I’ll just have that fine Belgian gun. Of course, it’s selfish of me to mention it immediately . . . but then, why wait? Besides, I am selfish . . . ask Vicky.”

  Venetia Kennet set her teeth—she was not going to be tempted into a rash remark. She had already put up with much and was prepared to put up with more: she meant in time to be Lady Berrybender, and that was that.

  Captain Aitken had no patience, either with the old lord or his aloof consort; but he held his temper. The company faced a serious threat—he determined to keep a cool head.

  “Sir, there’s trouble besides Gorska,” the captain said. “The stores are mainly ruined and today is present day. The chiefs are expecting rather a lot—and we haven’t got a lot.”

  “Why haven’t we? I laid out quite a sum for presents, I recall,” Lord B. said.

  “Rats and leaks,” Charbonneau said. “The blankets are chewed and the muskets rusted up. The chiefs are likely to be riled. All we’ve got that they like are axes and hatchets.”

  “What about grog—I suppose I could spare a few bottles of claret,” Lord B. offered.

  “No sir . . . if we give them grog they’ll use the axes and hatchets on us,” Charbonneau said. He was so appalled at the situation they were in that he had considered taking his two charges, the Hairy Horn and the Piegan, and leaving the boat. The Mandans knew him—they didn’t expect him to provide presents. It was known that he was a poor man who worked for Captain Clark. Leaving might be the safest thing. Nothing enraged powerful chiefs as quickly as inferior presents.

  “This is somebody’s fault, I’m sure,” Lord Berrybender said. “Gladwyn, what about it?”

  “Why, sir, Señor Yanez is the gunsmith—the muskets were his responsibility,” Gladwyn said, smiling a thin smile. “But I fear Señor Yanez rather scorns the muskets—he says they aren’t really guns, just clubs that shoot.”

  “Damn it all, get the whips—I’ll have the skin off everyone’s backs,” Lord B. said, but Captain Aitken shook his head.

  “We’ve no time for floggings,” he said. “We may all have the hair off our heads if we are not resourceful.”

  “There’s that Frenchman, Le Page . . .I rather ruined his trousers,” Lord B. said. “Perhaps he has baubles to spare.”

  “No sir, he’s a Hudson’s Bay man,” the captain said. “They keep a strict inventory. Besides, he’s already ransomed the women. I’m sure he’s already distributed his presents. I hear he got six thousand fine peltries for them. That young man will go far.”

  “Can’t we just go far ourselves?” Lord Berrybender inquired. “Charge past them and run for it—full steam ahead and all that!”

  Again, Captain Aitken shook his head. “I have to think of the boat, sir—can’t put her at risk,” he said. “There’s a thousand Indians in these villages. They’re the river keepers. They expect their toll.”

  “I’m damned if I have an answer, then,” Lord B. said, looking out his window. It was snowing still—the low ridges beyond the river had turned white. The sky whirled out snow and more snow.

  “I’ve a thought, sir . . . clothes,” Captain Aitken said. “The Indians do like finery. You and Lady Constance brought aboard substantial wardrobes, couldn’t help noticing that. Fine garments, I have no doubt.
Perhaps some of the jewelry is cheap enough that it could be spared.”

  Lord Berrybender was aghast and Venetia Kennet not pleased. She had already made a hasty selection of Lady Berry-bender’s jewelry—was the rest of it merely to be flung to painted savages?

  “Give them my clothes, and Constance’s gems?” Lord B. said, deeply shocked. So far as he could remember he had never parted with a single possession in his life, and here the captain was suggesting that he give his clothes to savages?

  “They want me to give them my clothes, Gladwyn . . . speak up, man, you’re my valet,” His Lordship said.

  “Though of course a grave loss, it may be the most sensible suggestion,” Gladwyn said, with as much restraint as he could muster. Year after year he had taken care of Lord Berrybender’s wardrobe. Though he didn’t show it, his spirit soared at the thought of garish red Indians wearing those same wretched clothes.

  Tasmin, once informed of the dilemma, stared down her father and managed the divestiture herself, assisted by Father Geoffrin, a man of unexpectedly strong opinions when it came to clothes.

  “Terrible, terrible, awful garment,” he said, casting aside one of Lady Constance’s embroidered ball dresses. “Send it away!”

  “Atroce! Atroce!” he shrieked, when Tasmin opened a drawer devoted entirely to Lady Constance’s pantaloons—they were all in vivid colors.

  “Atroce, maybe, but they might be our salvation,” Tasmin pointed out. “Perhaps the Mandans can be persuaded that Mama’s ugly pantaloons are garments of prodigious rarity and value.”

  Lord Berrybender, in a dark fury, wept, drank, and swore as the process of selection proceeded. Parting with the most insignificant garment went entirely against his grain.

  “Take plenty of Tasmin’s dresses . . . no, take all of them!” he raged. “Extravagant wench—always buying dresses. Now that she’s married a yokel she’ll have no need for respectable clothes.”