Lone Star Rising: T.S. Wasp and the Heart of Texas

by Jason Vail

  “No you don’t,” Crockett said.

  “I do,” I lied.

  “Well, they do stink less than any ship I’ve ever been on.”

  “You’ve not been on many ships.”

  “I’ve been on enough.”

  “Can you both be quiet?” Willie said. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “We’re not talking,” Crockett said. “We’re snoring.”

  “Snore quietly then,” Willie said.

  When Crockett and I awoke to the sounds of two boys singing below, Willie was not there.

  We descended, thinking that perhaps he had just gone to the privy. But his horse was gone as well.

  The singers were a pair of stable boys, one white and the other black, who were mucking out stalls.

  “What happened to the black fellow who was with us?” I asked them.

  “You mean the half breed?” the white boy asked.

  “That would be the one,” Crockett said.

  “He’s gone.”

  “We see that,” I said. “Where did he go?”

  “Off.”

  “Did he say where?”

  “No.”

  Crockett thought that the little fellow might be angling for a bribe, and he produced several pennies from his purse. But the boy just shrugged at the sight of them and went back to mucking.

  Crockett put the pennies away. “What do you know, an honest fellow. He won’t lie for money. What now?”

  “We wait until he comes back, I suppose. Let’s go have breakfast.”

  The Eagle Upon the Waves: The Life of William Harper

  Based on his hitherto unpublished memoirs

  by Samuel Ambrose

  William Harper rode into the Cricklade Plantation as if it was the most natural thing for him to do. He had been five years old when he had last seen the place and so had some memory of the mansion. He recalled it merely as a large house with a porch around two sides, but the building that confronted him was a porticoed mansion with a domed roof. He wondered how much else had changed.

  A house slave in a coat with tails and a ruffled shirt answered his knock and asked his business.

  “I would like to see the master,” Harper said, “and if he is not available, the business manager.”

  “Why should the master see you?” the butler asked.

  “I am the agent for Monsieur le Baron de Crequy,” Harper replied. “He has lands in Louisiana and has tasked me to acquire slaves to work them. I am on my way to Columbia for that purpose, but I heard at a tavern not far from here that you may have some for sale.”

  “Your name?”

  “Guillaume Montpellier.”

  “One moment.”

  The butler retired to an interior room. He came out ten minutes later and said, “I have been instructed to send for the overseer. He will escort you so that you may inspect what we have.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “My pleasure. Would you care for lemonade? I am afraid it is too early for wine.”

  “Lemonade would be satisfactory. Thank you.”

  Harper was halfway through his lemonade when the overseer arrived. He was a tall thin man wearing a broad-brimmed hat, an open collared shirt and riding boots.

  “Mister Harper sent for me, Michael?” the overseer asked in a thick Scottish accent. He glanced curiously at William Harper, who was taken aback for a moment until he remembered that the Harper family owned Cricklade.

  The butler, Michael, answered, “Yes, sir. Mister Ridley, this is Montpellier, from Louisiana. He is in the market and the master asked that you show him the boys we wish to dispose of.”

  “Well, then,” Ridley said, “this way.”

  As they were leaving, a tall young man with curly brown hair about Harper’s age, a sheaf of papers in his hand, came out a room and paused in the hall. Ridley touched the brim of his hat at the sight of him. The young man did not acknowledge the courtesy. He turned and went down the hall.

  On the steps, Harper asked off-handedly, “Was that the master?”

  “Aye.”

  “He seemed distracted.” Harper remembered playing with a boy with curly brown hair. This must be the same person.

  “Nothing wrong with him. Just worrying about bills.”

  Ridley had come up by horse, and by horse the two men proceeded to the slave quarters a quarter mile to the north. The quarters were two parallel sets of one-room shacks made of unpainted gray boards separated by a broad path, with a well at the west end. Ridley dismounted in front of one of the shacks. Harper got down beside him. Somewhere not far from here was a certain distinctive oak tree. He had not seen it on the ride down, and could not spot it now. He experienced a moment of near panic. Had it been cut down? He might never find what he had come for if that were the case.

  The shack was padlocked. Ridley unlocked it and pulled open the door. The only light within came through that open door. The smell of urine and feces struck Harper so hard that he nearly gagged. There was enough light to see four young men shackled to the walls.

  “Runaways,” Harper said.

  “’Fraid so. But that means you can have them cheap.”

  Harper had no appetite for this part of the charade, but he had to go on. “Let’s see what kind of shape they’re in.”

  Ridley prodded the men to their feet and Harper made a show of examining their limbs and their teeth. Ridley apparently did not like the smell any more than Harper, for he stepped outside as Harper looked at the men.

  Harper leaned close to one and whispered in his ear. “There’s an oak tree not far from here. It has two branches that spread out like a man’s arms and where they meet is a broad hollow, where children often hide. Where is it?”

  The man looked astonished at the question, but he pointed in the direction of what Harper remembered was swampy ground to the northeast. “Thanks,” he said.

  “You buying us?” the man asked.

  “No.”

  “What you here for then?”

  “Paying my respects.”

  “To who?”

  “Someone who lived here once.”

  Harper joined Ridley on the path. He said, “They seem healthy and strong.”

  “They ought to be. They eat enough, even when they’re not working.”

  “Do you mind if I have a look about, now that we’re down here? Perhaps you have ways of doing business that will benefit the baron. This looks like a profitable operation.”

  “We are a profitable operation,” Ridley said with some pride.

  Harper recalled that a cotton field lay to the northeast, so turning in that direction did not seem odd enough to ignite Ridley’s curiosity. The field had been planted that year, and harvested, and occasional bits of cotton lay in the furrows and caught in the brush.

  Just beyond the field, in a small oak grove, he saw the tree. He ambled the horse down the lane beside the field until at last, they reached it. It was not as big a tree as he remembered. In his memory it had been a towering colossus with that hollow far above his head which he had only been able to reach with much effort. Now it seemed the tree had shrunk, for from the back of the horse he could look directly into it. Although he longed to do so, he did not dismount, as he feared it would provoke questions. He remembered that when his mother had been buried here, they had put up a wooden cross to mark the spot. Twenty-five years had passed since then, and there was no cross, nor any indication of a grave.

  He bowed his head and closed his eyes.

  “You all right?” Ridley asked.

  Harper nodded. “Just a bit of stomach pain. Give me a moment.”

  Ridley took advantage of the pause to dismount and urinate against the oak.

  Harper suppressed the impulse to be angry, and dismounted as well.

  “Stretching the legs, eh?” Ridley asked.

  “It is a pleasant place.”

  “The darkies often take their dinner here. Good shade.”

  Harper remembered more n
ow. They had dug the grave between two large roots that spread out from the trunk like a man’s splayed legs. He saw those roots as he rounded the tree. Grass grew on the spot. Among the forest of grass was a large ant hill, the workers busy enlarging it. He knelt down and brushed the grass with his fingers, said a prayer, and went back to his horse.

  They rode down to the swampy ground where the field ended and along the road that separated the field from the swamp until they reached the end, and came up the other side. The road made a circle, concluding just below the slave quarters.

  “I could use a drink,” Ripley said.

  It was not an especially hot day, so Harper thought he meant beer or rum, but Ripley stopped at the well standing at the far end of the footpath. He dropped a bucket into the well and began pulling it up.

  An old woman sat on a stool in front of the closest shack. She was bent with age. Her thin, spidery fingers worked on a hand loom. A woman lacking a hand sat beside her.

  “What’re you making, Nana?” Ridley asked as he drank from the ladle in the bucket.

  “My shroud,” the old woman said.

  “What’re you talking about?” Ridley asked.

  “I’m going to die soon. I want to be buried in something nice. Not in the rags most folk usually got.”

  “Get on,” Ridley said, a little alarmed. “You’ve years left.”

  “No, don’t think so. I dreamed it. It be soon.” She fixed her eyes on Harper. “Who that?”

  “Montpellier’s his name,” Ridley said. “He’s thinking about buying our runaways.”

  “It be a good thing if somebody takes them,” the younger woman said. “They always been trouble. Can’t get enough drink or pussy, all the time getting in fights or getting girls with child and having nothing to do with them.”

  Nana sniffed. “I won’t miss ’em either, nor will anyone else. But I don’t think he really wants ’em.” She squinted at Harper. “Montpellier’s not your name.”

  “I am afraid that it is my curse,” Harper replied.

  “I’ve been expecting you. I dreamed it.”

  “His name’s not Montpellier?” Ridley asked, suddenly suspicious.

  “No, he was born right over there,” Nana pointed toward the mansion. “His momma was one of the house girls. I couldn’t see what he calls himself now, but it ain’t Montpellier.”

  “Nana’s never wrong,” Ridley said, his voice hard.

  “I’m from Louisiana,” Harper said.

  “He is now,” Nana said. “But he came from right here.”

  Harper pulled on the reins to turn, but Ridley grasped the bridle. Harper drew one of the pistols hanging in holsters on either side of his saddle, but the jostling of the horses brought the men together. Ridley grabbed his wrist and the pistol discharged into the air. They grappled and fell heavily to the ground. Ridley called for help, and several male slaves ran to aid him, pinning Harper beneath them.

  They jerked Harper to his feet. Ridley went through his pockets and found the passport.

  “Says here,” Ridley said, “that your name’s Harper, William Harper. Not Montpellier. What have you got to say about this?”

  “I am a free man from Louisiana,” Harper said.

  “We’ll see. Boys, put him in Packie’s house for now. There’s a set of shackles there. Packie and his brood can move in with Burly until we get this sorted out.”

  The shack where they put Harper was no different in size than the one where the runaways were imprisoned, but it was lived in: sparsely furnished with a bed, table and benches, and smelled instead of must, old clothes and sweat. The blacks chained his wrists together and fixed the chain to a bolt in the wall.

  Close to nightfall, the old woman shuffled in, deposited a bowl of grits before him and took a seat on a bench.

  “What you doing here, Will Harper?” Nana asked.

  Harper did not answer.

  “You Sarah’s boy,” Nana said.

  Harper shrugged.

  “The little house girl. Pretty thing, she was. She thought being pretty, she could get things. What a little schemer she was. But all she got was used. And you and your sisters came of it. You fool, coming back here.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You free in Louisiana and you throw it away.”

  “Why did you give me away?”

  Nana laughed. “There’s a reward on you, boy, you and your sisters.”

  “What do you care? You’ll die soon.”

  “True enough. But I got grandkids, a whole tribe of grandkids. The master, he pay the reward, even to us. Least ways, to me. Be nice to leave something behind, you know.”

  “What makes you so special?”

  “I heal the sick. Saved the master’s wife once, after her second, when everyone thought she’d die. He treats me good.”

  “If anybody put up a reward, it was a long time ago. Why would it still be good?”

  “Don’t know, but we’ll see, won’t we?” She chuckled softly. She gestured at the bowl in his lap. “Eat up there. Be nice and tomorrow I get you bacon.” She chuckled again. “So you call yourself Harper. Bet you think the old master’s your daddy. Did your momma ever tell you who your daddy was?”

  “She never said, that I can remember. But everybody acted as though he was.”

  “’Course they did, ’cause most of them didn’t know the secret. Well, it weren’t the old master, that’s for sure, not that he didn’t take his chances with Sarah. Your sisters, now, they from the old master.”

  “Who was he, then?”

  “An English fella. Tiny little man, but a big fella just the same. Such a to-do when he paid a visit! You’d a thought God himself had dropped in. Stayed here a few nights. The old master sent your momma in to warm his bed. He rode her good.” She chuckled once more.

  “If it was a secret, how do you know he was my father?”

  “’Cause your mamma came to me to be rid of you when her woman’s time didn’t come. She didn’t like that little man one bit.”

  “And you didn’t help her.”

  “’Course I helped her. Or tried, anyway. Didn’t work, tis all. She couldn’t keep the medicine down. Threw it up all over the place. Whew! Such a mess! Then, when she knew she was stuck with you, she put out that she’d got you from the old master. That foolish man believed that lie. He didn’t have no son then, see, so he doted on any one that he could get, even a darky’s child.”

  “You don’t happen to remember his name.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I want to know.”

  “It don’t matter. It don’t matter where any of us came from. We here, that’s what counts.”

  “You remember.”

  “Oh, I remember. That little man, he hard to forget.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because you know I won’t like it. You hated my mother and you think that you can get back at her through me.”

  “Boy, you got some brains after all.” Nana rubbed her spindly thighs. “His name Tarleton, Bloody Tarleton.”

  Chapter 10

  The tavern at Monck’s Corner Crossroads

  October 1820

  When Willie didn’t return by supper, it was clear even to thickheaded swine like us that something had gone wrong with his visit.

  “I expect his relatives were not as glad to see him as he thought,” Crockett reflected as he used his crust of black bread to play with the mustard sauce of his fried ham. “I knew this was a mistake.”

  “Are you going to finish that?” I asked, admiring the remains of his ham. Who would expect that the cook could produce something as fine as that ham and its sauce in the wilds of the Carolinas?

  “Hands off,” Crockett said. “I’m just thinking.”

  The innkeeper looked in on us, obviously glad to see that our brown friend had not returned. “What happened to that other fellow?”

  “Gone off on business,” I said.

 
“You thinking of staying another night?” he asked, since it was too late for us to ride anywhere nearby that mattered.

  “Yes,” I said, “and this time we won’t be sleeping in the stables.”

  He grinned. “Cost you more.”

  “I hope the quality of the mattress is worth it,” Crockett said, digging into his pocket for his purse.

  “Featherbeds,” the innkeeper said proudly. “I’ve got featherbeds.”

  “Fancy that,” Crockett said. He counted out the amount the innkeeper had specified. “For this much, I expect to get my own bed.”

  “All right,” the innkeeper said. “I can manage that.”

  As he retreated to the kitchen, Crockett glanced around the empty front room and muttered, “Given the demand, he had me worried.”

  “At least you’ll sleep better and won’t be so grumpy.”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to sleep in a bed that’s not moving.”

  We awoke early the following morning and were on the road shortly after breakfast. The ride to Cricklade took about an hour, and it was only eight by the time we walked our horses up the drive to the big house. It was small, compared to the mansions you see in England, but still impressive with its fresh red brick, white columns and little dome with a black iron weather vane on top. A black slave was cutting the grass in the yard with a scythe using slow, metronomic strokes. He paused to watch us dismount and tie our horses to the post by the stairs. He touched his forelock when we looked at him and went slowly back to work as we climbed to the front door. This brief encounter struck with a sense of déjà vu; it was exactly like one would be greeted on an English manor by one of the peasantry.

  An elderly black man answered our knock and looked us over with exaggerated dignity. “Whom shall I say is calling?”

  “My name is Paul Jones,” I said, “of the merchant ship Delft. This is one of my officers, David Crockett.”

  “Thank you, sir. May I say what this is regarding?”

  “I am looking for one of my men.”

  “One moment.” The butler, for that is what he must be, retreated into the rear of the house, his footsteps echoing in the large hall that opened beneath the dome.