Across the Endless River (31 page)

The buck staggered once, then its head shook convulsively in Paul's embrace, and the two stood motionless. For a long moment, man and beast were suspended in a breathless arc that connected the hunters to the stag before them. Paul leaned his right arm against the furry coat, the dagger plunged deep within, his back straining mightily. Baptiste wondered whether the wound had been fatal. Then the animal rolled its head to the left, as if listening for a sound it alone could hear. Paul withdrew the dagger and stepped back quickly, and the buck collapsed. A splash rose noisily in the air and a wave broke on the bank. Men and dogs found their voices at the same time: a cheer arose spontaneously and the pack barked with a new frenzy. The water was quickly stained with blood, reddening the dun-brown reeds that covered the shore.

The members of the hunt assembled back at the village. The grooms appeared again and took the horses, and a servant passed among them, offering brandy. The front door of the manor house stood open, and the riders strolled across the grass and into the building, laughing and talking loudly among themselves. Inside the arched door was a large timbered hall, its paneled walls covered with the mounted heads of animals up to the open beams in a more rustic version of Prince Franz's entrance hall. Long tables, draped in dazzling white cloths and laden with platters of food and bottles of wine, were spread around the room. A fire crackled in a mammoth stone hearth. Baptiste blinked to adjust to the dimness, then joined a group that included Paul.

“Monsieur le Duc,
my congratulations,” one of the hunters said with conviction. He turned to the others and extended his glass. “Gentlemen, I give you the health of Paul of Württemberg. He has done honor to our hunt.”

They raised their glasses and drank while Paul nodded his thanks with an air of modesty. Baptiste thought he looked like a schoolboy who had done his sums properly. A servant entered the room and announced,
“Messieurs, la curée!”

The men finished their drinks and filed out boisterously. As they stepped into the wan sunlight, the laughter and conversation died down and the men arrayed themselves along the greensward. The door of the church opposite was closed and locked, its windows shuttered.
What now?
Baptiste wondered.

The horn players stood together as before. At the other end of the lawn, the pack of hounds jostled one another, but none dared cross the invisible line demarcated by the long cracking whip wielded by the master of the hounds. In the middle of the green, the hide of the stag was draped over the bones and flesh that had been its body. The intact head remained attached to it.

The horn players began another unmelodious fanfare and the dogs quieted. As the notes faded in the crisp air, an identical fanfare arose behind Baptiste. Four of the hunters had taken up horns and repeated the phrases that issued from the group on the grass. This call and response continued through four or five iterations, conferring the dignity of ceremony on the proceedings.

Two of the uniformed helpers took up positions on either side of the animal's skin and grasped the top of the rack of antlers. Monsieur de Chêneville strode across the green to this temple of death, followed by Prince Franz, Paul, Baptiste, and the other members of the hunt. The servants gave them each a small sprig of evergreen. One by one, the men stooped before the deer's butchered body and each dipped his twig of pine in the shallow pool of blood that had formed beneath the animal's remains. A few of the hunters touched the bloody bit of evergreen lightly to their lips before fastening it on the lapel of their coats. Prince Franz and Paul placed theirs in the ribbon of their lowbrimmed hats, the wet crimson needles glistening among the feathers and tufts of badger fur that already decorated the sides of their headgear. Baptiste bent low before the stag, as if genuflecting in church, then took his place with the others. Monsieur de Chêneville said, “The dogs have deserved their reward today. You may proceed.”

The two men holding the deer's antlers picked up the head and swayed it back and forth. Then they pulled the hide back to reveal a glistening mass of pure white bones and violet flesh, laced with pearlescent swathes of ligament and muscle. The dogs unleashed their frustration in a convulsion of howls and barks. The master of the hounds held them back for a few seconds more with savage cracks of the whip and threatening cries, as if to fuel their blood lust. Then he yelled,
“Allez!”
and lowered his whip. The pack exploded, covering the intervening twenty-five yards in an instant and setting upon the remains of their prey. Decorum and reserve had been replaced by the chaos of animals scrambling, jumping, and straining, all fighting to gain access to meat. Paul indicated the deer's head and antlers.

“When next you are here, that head will be on the wall inside. A noble trophy for a noble hunt.” He clapped Baptiste on the shoulder and sang out, “Let's eat! I'm famished, and Monsieur de Chêneville's hunt is known for its table.”

T
HIRTY

A
PRIL 28, 1825
P
ARIS

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

T
HIRTY-ONE

D
UKE
P
AUL, FROM HIS PRIVATE JOURNAL
M
AY 1825
L
UDWIGSBURG

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.

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.