Across the Endless River

by Thad Carhart

  APRIL 28, 1825

  PARIS

  Dear Baptiste,

  How strange to return here and know that you are elsewhere. I have been in the Gironde with my family at their house outside of Bordeaux. The life there is certainly quiet when compared to the city, but the climate is far milder than in the north and the light is almost like that in Italy. Paris seems like a beehive in contrast.

  What a traveler you have become! I still savor your descriptions from our visit in February, since they make places I have visited seem fresh, and places I have not sound enticing. I had never dreamed of Stockholm or Saint Petersburg, but your accounts continue to fill my head with wonder.

  The way you described Venice makes me want to return there. I agree that it is unlike anywhere else. Who could have imagined it but the Italians? Each time I am there, I feel as if they have rearranged all the buildings at night, so that when I wake, everything looks new. And since I love boats, I am happy merely going from one place to another. I think I would most readily take to one of your canoes.

  The Venetians suffered much under Napoleon, and now the Habsburgs are established once again. It is hard to imagine a people less like the Austrians, and yet their rulers sit in Vienna. For how much longer, I wonder.

  You will be amused to know that I nearly took flight recently. No, I have not grown wings. Rather, an acquaintance of my father is fascinated with craft held up by great balloons. He spends much of his time—and a great deal of money—building these novelties, like huge market baskets suspended from an enormous silk bubble with netting and ship’s rigging. He offered me an “ascent,” as he calls it, and I was wild with anticipation. Alas, his craft struck a chimney pot two days before our appointment and he is now encased in plaster from head to toe. But I hope to go up one day. Can you imagine anything more splendid than to survey the world from the height of the clouds? Even as a girl, whenever I looked at paintings of the Virgin rising to heaven, I wondered what she saw when she looked down.

  I think often of our discussions when you were here. Believe me when I tell you that your thoughts on so many subjects are of interest to me. You are unlike any of my other cousins. I shall think of you as a Venice compared to their predictable array of cities.

  I imagine you in Ludwigsburg. Your work with Duke Paul can now begin. I trust that it will hold for you the same fascination you evoke when you describe the places you knew as a boy. Your account of the prairie is still vivid in my mind—I long to see with my own eyes a grassland that resembles the sea.

  Last week I accompanied a friend to the Jardin des Plantes. After he inspected the plant specimens he was seeking, we visited the parc zoologique. What a melancholy experience. We saw wolves, bears, elephants, even a bison from Poland. But their circumstances are so piteous that I took no pleasure in observing them. Caged in tiny patches of earth, they look horrid, cut off from their birthright. Can it be right to lock up creatures like this in the name of science? Monsieur Meunier advanced all the arguments one can imagine, but my whole being objected in a way that goes deeper than words. I had to leave, so great was my distress at witnessing something so wrongheaded.

  Accounts of Mr. Bolívar’s most recent exploits in South America have recently reached Paris and caused a stir. They call him “the Liberator,” with equal love or hatred, depending on who is talking. Truly, the New World is full of surprises from which we can all learn.

  Know, dear cousin, that I wish you well in your endeavors now that your travels have brought you to Württemberg. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see you again in Paris and share your news in person. Until that day, I hope to read your letters full of impressions of this terra incognita that is Europe.

  I send you my most affectionate greetings.

  Maura

  THIRTY-ONE

  DUKE PAUL, FROM HIS PRIVATE JOURNAL

  MAY 1825

  LUDWIGSBURG

  I find myself in the bosom of my family once again. If this is home, then truly I am a nomad at heart. The icy reception accorded me by Wilhelm and his court would have been suitable for a criminal, perhaps, or for an enemy under truce, but never for a family member. How little Wilhelm really knows of the world—despite all his highminded rhetoric about the responsibilities of the sovereign toward his people. Yesterday we had a most disagreeable meeting in his chambers, during which he scolded me for what he calls my “profligate expenditures” on my expedition to America. I was made to understand that the bills, which will be paid from the treasury, are to be deducted from future revenues from my properties in Stuttgart. I bit my lip, knowing that there was nothing to be gained by arguing, particularly since Wilhelm saw fit to dress me down with two of his courtiers present. It would have been an unimaginable public airing of family matters in my uncle’s day. But Wilhelm no longer feels sufficiently royal, it appears, without a pair of his lackeys at hand, and the results are poisonous.

  Afterward, we shared a glass of wine. I thought to make a gesture that would mollify his resentment and help him to understand the true nobility of my efforts to study Indian tribes. From a black velvet bag I produced a splendid Blackfoot ceremonial headpiece that I had collected at Robidoux’s Post. It is a rounded skullcap covered with ermine and feathers, surmounted by erect horns on either side, each carved to a fine point and trailing a streamer of red-dyed fur. A wide band of red-and-white beading crosses the forehead, and from both temples a tie of six ermine tails falls straight to the wearer’s shoulders.

  I explained its ceremonial function as a part of the chief ’s formal regalia, and Wilhelm’s interest was aroused. He examined it with care, delicately smoothing the ermine tails and feeling the sharp point of each horn with his index finger. “It is the equivalent of a king’s crown,” I told him, encouraging him to place it on his head. This he did, allowing me to center it properly so that the horns were symmetrical, just as a Mandan chief would do on an important occasion. I stepped back and beheld the effect, nodding approvingly. Wilhelm had just come from a morning audience, so he wore his court uniform. Grace prevailed in his bearing, and the headpiece perfectly complemented the splendor of his medals, gold braid, and striped trousers. For the first time I saw Wilhelm as truly regal, a king who might have been Wotan’s descendant, so powerful was the spell cast by the buffalo headdress. Then one of his accursed bootlickers snickered behind me, attempting in vain to disguise his contemptible mirth as a cough, and the moment passed.

  Wilhelm faced the mirror over the hearth. His features changed from surprise to fury, and he wore the same look he had as a young boy when things did not go his way. His eyes caught mine in the mirror and for a few moments the childhood resentments and furtive doubts that separated us when we were young were revived. I read in his look, My father always preferred you. He wished that you had been his heir. I was never as clever or as strong as you. You are trying to make me look ridiculous once again! His face was full of controlled anger. Breaking our gaze, he removed the headpiece and placed it on the table. “Your pieces of native costume are most intriguing, my dear cousin,” he said coldly as he smoothed his hair and turned away. “But this is a trinket whose price is far too dear. Do you not agree?” I swallowed my bile and declined the provocation, though from his puerile reaction, one would have thought me guilty of lèse-majesté rather than a good-faith effort to mend fences.

  The truth is that I cannot afford to be at odds with Wilhelm. It is clear that if I am to continue my work in natural history, I must marry. The best hope of making a good match—titled, powerful, and covered in gold—is to exploit fully the rank and prestige of being the king’s cousin. The new Paul will have to be affable and cooperative, an intimate in the big happy family that rules Württemberg. So I have returned to Ludwigsburg to conduct my search, with a bit of the Prodigal Son in my demeanor to show that I am accommodating myself to the sovereign’s wishes. If need be, I shall put my pride in my pocket and play the acquiescent cousin until my campaign is successful.
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br />   Theresa thinks that I shall never be able to endure the months it will require for the negotiations to be undertaken and concluded. “You are not a good-enough actor!” she warns me. Yet who has not made a compromise with his ideals in order to secure a desired end? It surprises me somewhat that Theresa seems not to know that when I truly want something, I can walk on fiery coals if that is what is required.

  Baptiste is relieved to be in Ludwigsburg, though perhaps it is more accurate to say that he is relieved to be out of the coach. “Always going,” as he says, “and never getting there.” On a number of occasions he insisted on riding alongside the carriage, not, I think, to be free of my company, but to be out in the open. He is still uncomfortable having matters taken care of for him, and his conversations among my relatives and friends throughout Europe often lack nuance. But he is a son of the New World, a true American, whose signal feature seems to be the propensity to address any subject at all with direct questions, even to perfect strangers, in order to learn from what he presumes to be their equally direct responses. In this respect he is still made up of rough edges.

  For example, he did not appreciate the hunting party in Fontainebleau. He wanted to know if the chasse à courre was common in Europe. When I assured him that it was, he said, “I don’t see the point of going after a deer that has been driven to exhaustion by forty riders in a closed park.” I responded that it was one of the differences between savagery and civilization, and he laughed. I admitted that where procuring food is the principal concern, stalking an animal in the wild requires wiliness, courage, and luck peculiar to life on the frontier. Here, I explained, food is not the point. The hunt is a ceremonial, with a single animal serving as a representative for all the others. “It is what we call a tradition,” I told him, but Baptiste was unsatisfied with my explanation.

  His uncomplicated directness is well tolerated by most of my acquaintances, though, partly because they regard him as an exotic who does not know better, partly because of his youth, and partly because he has a charm that sets him apart. To be sure, the wonder is not that he has so many rough edges, but that he has so few. He has fit in almost everywhere we have traveled together, and has never made a spectacle of himself.

  His facility with languages is impressive. He is able to turn an attentive ear to any new language and then faithfully reproduce its sounds and inflections—if not its sense—soon after. Professor Lebert tells me he has a faculty similar to some rare individuals for reproducing music they have heard. How jealous I am! My English, never more than approximate, has deserted me, as his German improves. He shows a robust confidence in French that, though lacking in polish and form, is ever practical and adaptable to the street. Last month in Paris, I found him trading jokes with Uncle Franz’s groomsman in a vernacular I had trouble following.

  His relations with the ladies have met with no great success, which I attribute to plain ignorance and naïveté. He has had his face slapped more than once for what he regarded as perfectly acceptable advances. I despair of his understanding the ways of the salon as concerns the fairer sex. This is one language he does not yet master. The pleasures of the bordello are always available to him, but the one time we talked about his experiences—I had given him an address in Paris—he told me, “It was more like dessert than a real meal.” Nothing is said between us about our personal assignations, but he knows I keep a mistress in Stuttgart. His liaison with Theresa is a mystery to me. I worry that she sees him as a plaything, though they seem to be good friends. His origins are a useful cover for her interest, and both of them are masterfully discreet. In this, Baptiste shows himself to be a patient hunter who is used to covering his tracks.

  Yesterday he referred to himself as my “employee” and asked how long this arrangement would continue. When I protested and pointed out that he was my guest, he said, “I learned from Captain Clark that when someone pays you money, you work for him.” He is anxious to start work on the book about my travels, and I share his impatience and frustration. How can I begin, though, before I have found a suitable place to examine all my specimens in peace?

  THIRTY-TWO

  OCTOBER 1825

  PALACE OF LUDWIGSBURG

  Baptiste didn’t slow until he reached the top of the rise. As he watched Paul approach, breathing heavily, he was struck by how much less fit Paul was since they had arrived in Europe almost two years before. Finally Paul joined him on the brow of the hill, a full game bag slung over his shoulder, his rifle alongside. They had been out since dawn, hunting the pheasant that were plentifully stocked in the clearings beyond the forest surrounding La Favorite. Though they had seen numerous other animals, they had taken only the birds.

  Paul’s breath returned to normal and he motioned to a clearing where the towers of La Favorite were visible above the trees. “Before we return, I want to share with you a little entertainment that used to amuse us cousins when we were younger,” he said. “Schlape has made the necessary arrangements.”

  Paul led him to a solitary oak tree at the edge of the clearing. On it hung a clock. On a small table beside the tree sat an identical one. Baptiste recognized them as the type they called a “cuckoo clock”: a painted panel on the front covering the mechanism, two stone weights hanging below, and, above the clock face, a door from which the tiny cuckoo appeared to sound the hours. Paul stopped the pendulum of the clock hanging on the tree, moved the clock’s hands to five minutes before three, then gently set the clock in motion again. He walked to the other side of the clearing.

  “This is the Ludwigsburg version of that stunt your drunken rivermen in St. Louis delighted in. With the difference, of course,” he added laconically over his shoulder, “that no one risks getting killed.”

  Two voyageurs had taken bets on whether one could shoot a glass of whiskey balanced on the head of the other at fifty paces. He and Paul had gone down to the river’s edge with half the town, it seemed, to see the shot made. One of the rivermen got his hair doused in whiskey and the two of them were forty dollars richer.

  The cuckoo was only one inch tall, and it would be projected out about two inches, three times in rapid succession. Baptiste figured the distance at more than seventy-five paces. He was well acquainted with Paul’s extraordinary marksmanship, and he knew how perfectly crafted his rifle was, but, even so, this was a difficult shot. Baptiste stood to one side and watched as Paul raised his rifle and sighted down the barrel.

  “Once to get your bearings, twice to aim, three times for the little bird,” Paul murmured as he stood poised to shoot. Ten seconds later the cuckoo sounded and the bird appeared, then again, then Paul fired. As the explosion faded in receding echoes, the clock was intact, its profile etched in the spare light of morning. They walked to it together. Paul opened the door and pulled the birdless spring outward. A few splinters lay on the ground, but otherwise nothing remained of the cuckoo. Paul said gleefully, “Now it is your turn.”

  He replaced the clock with the one from the table, resetting the time as before; then they retraced their steps to the far side of the clearing. When the cuckoo sounded, Baptiste fired. The second syllable of the bird’s call was cut off and the clock was blasted from the tree, landing noisily ten yards distant. Baptiste lowered the rifle and turned to Paul.

  “I missed.”

  “Yes, I suppose you did,” Paul said. “Anyone can hit the clock, my friend.”

  But not everyone wants to, Baptiste responded inwardly, handing Paul the rifle.

  As they walked back to La Favorite, Paul talked about his plans for the coming week: a short trip to Stuttgart and a round of visits to nearby friends. “Uncle Franz will be here for a few days when I return. He’ll see Wilhelm in Stuttgart, then come up here to get away from the court. Monsieur Hennesy will be traveling with him. I gather he’ll be bringing his beautiful daughter. They’ll continue on to Sicily and Greece when Uncle Franz returns to Paris.”

  Baptiste’s heart leapt at this news. Maura’s last letter ha
d come in August, when she had cautioned that travels with her father would likely interrupt their correspondence for a time. Her adventurous image had grown in his mind, and his affection was reinforced by the few letters he had received from his “cousin.” Baptiste was encouraged by her curiosity about the frontier, and he mused about showing her all the places that would surprise her. He was very much looking forward to seeing her.

  He thought, too, of Theresa. He wondered what she would make of his feelings for Maura. Their physical intimacy had grown since his return to Ludwigsburg, but Theresa let him see that she had other interests. She had recently made a trip to Saint Petersburg, and while she never talked about them, Baptiste understood that Theresa had lovers elsewhere. For her, their meetings were pleasurable way stations rather than a destination, times when she and Baptiste stood apart from life’s usual rhythms. So far, their arrangement had seemed to have nothing to do with Maura, but now he asked himself if that would change.

  While Paul was away, Baptiste often walked around the town. He had a circuit of taverns and shops and market stalls. Though he was recognized as the duke’s friend and protégé, he had fashioned his own identity among the townspeople, one that was distinct from Paul and the world behind the gold-tipped fence. In some ways, Baptiste was less exotic to the residents of Ludwigsburg than Paul, once they got used to seeing him regularly and came to accept his efforts at German.

  On a clear and cold afternoon the day before Paul was due to return, Baptiste and Theresa met in a salon that looked out on the forest.

  “The chambermaids are the least predictable,” he told Theresa. “They always twitter like birds, though, so there is plenty of time to lie low. Now that it is growing cold, the wood haulers show up, too, to feed the stoves. But they make more noise than anyone with their sacks of logs, so there is no danger. The only one who can’t always be heard is old Suber.” Theresa nodded. The ancient major-domo had a kindly face for his masters, but was a tyrant when out of their sight. “He walks with the paws of a cougar and is always ready to strike. If he could move faster, he would be dangerous.” Baptiste was by now accepted as a guest of the royal household, but he remained ever watchful when he made his way at night through the servants’ corridors to her rooms.