Prologue

Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, June 16, 1842

We buried him this morning, but the shock of his death pulls me back through the decades where I wander unbidden through every moment of the years we spent together on the banks of the Mississippi river. I see the prairie swept purple with coneflower, I find myself upon the soft grass of the peninsula, and it is difficult to pull myself back to my duties, to my son and to this place. The house is dark, but for the taper light, and the quiet is broken by the dispirited groan of his spaniel, who looks to me for reassurance I cannot offer. How is it possible that my love is not sleeping in the next room? I rise to search for him but find only a cold silence over our bed.

After the funeral service, the widow James pressed a speckled hand against my cheek and whispered to me, "Now he is gone, you must pacify yourself with living as though your footsteps have never marked the earth." Her words have wisped around in my mind since she said them, slighting words, and if this is Mrs. James's way of comforting the grieving, she can keep her comfort. My sorrow is born of my wound, for with his death, my soul has been halved.

On spring evenings such as this, we would walk together through the hickory grove and talk for hours of the people and the times we had known together. He would take me in his arms, but look wistfully past me at the river, toward the north, and he would say to me, "I believe the work of the living is the retelling of memory. A thread not to be broken." And knowing what he said to be true, I awoke this morning, having slept beside him one last time. I looked down upon his silent countenance and dreaded the task before me.

I would have to begin the work of remembering.

But when I try to impose order on my memories, I cannot find sequence, nor am I able to prompt a beginning. Even now, I begin to drift back, but only to the evening before this one, when I undressed him and bathed him. He lay so quietly, his lips parted and his head tossed back. His coat smelled of bran, there were marks where the dust had been beaten from the seams. I forced the brass buttons through their grommets, and the wool placket felt thick in my hands. When I peeled it back, the sight of his broadcloth shirt bearing the marks of the iron made me believe he would wake to me. A dead man would not worry whether his shirt was neatly ironed.

"Wake up, Henry. You always were a promiscuous napper. Wake up, now."

Something crisped when I opened his coat. I was watchful of him as I slipped my fingers into the pocket and removed the piece of foolscap, creased into fours. I pressed my nose to his dark hair as I unfolded the paper. The letter was penned in his hand -- cruel slashes over the t's, bold down strokes, neat spacing. It was dated June 11, 1842. There was no salutation.

I received your message and was both shocked and perplexed by it. As for myself, that memory haunts me -- indeed it has shaped my years in aspects I have yet to comprehend. But this explains why I was never asked questions that I would have welcomed and perceived as natural, yet I too am guilty of reticence, for I never volunteered a single word. I am glad you have told me. How could you question whether I would come to you? Ever I shall come to you, know that I shall always honor a request from you. In youth and dotage we have shared that which no

And there the letter ended. I let it flutter onto my lap and opened the buttons of his shirt. I sat beside him on our bed with my hand to his breast, regarding those written words once again and then the broad bones of his face. My stomach soured and churned. Though I sat awhile, and tried to trick the knot of his letter apart, the skeins remained tangled. This was the way of him, to leave me mired in place under the burden of his deceptions, committed with honorable intentions, of course.

I picked the letter from my lap and placed it under his hand in the hope a revelatory dream would come to me. It would be a dream wherein I would forgive him his trespasses, and the General, finding comfort in death, would finally speak the truth to me. Wouldn't I be foolish to wait for such a thing? I've always known that it was my charge to venture forth as a self-possessed woman and seek the truth for myself. Until I did, years ago, I had become adept at subsisting on his assurances.

Ever I shall come to you...who had inspired my husband to pen words resonating of such urgency and discretion? It could be a letter to anyone. Anyone at all. But not to me. In all the years of our marriage, he never spoke so floridly to me. I snatched the letter out from under his hand, crumpled it, then tossed it upon the chest of drawers.

The General's limbs were corded from a hard life, and few would have guessed him to be fifty-nine. I cupped the arches of his bare feet in my hands and watched the water sparkle as it dripped from his heels.

I took great care not to touch his toes.

My servants touched the toes of the dead to keep them from turning ghostly. I wanted the General to come back and haunt me. I cradled the hope of it. I lay beside him after he died, not feeling a bit of peculiarity in it for he was my husband, gone a little bit chilly is all. In the night, I kissed his face, and his skin felt like cooled paraffin against my lips.

"It is safe now to talk of it, Henry, you can tell me now. There is no one here but the two of us. You can tell me everything, and I shall not reproach you."

The hair of his chest was dark and curly with a few gray strands. I squeezed the rag into the basin, soaped the rag with my own lavender soap, not the laundry soap made of lye and ashes. The water left a silty line in the hollow of his ribs. My breath caused the brown air to dance about me as I pulled the brush through his hair. Then I scraped the flesh from under his fingernails. With small, even steps, I crossed to the bed stand and burned the tiny mound of it in the taper flare.

With a fresh cloth and salt water, I cleaned blood having the texture of coffee grounds from the General's teeth, patting his lips to let him know I had finished. And when he was free of his clothing, I let him lie there a while, as if he were napping on a heavy July afternoon, sleeping with no hope of a cool breeze. Innocent and naked. I saved the Spanish milled coins until the moment the soldiers put him into the box, and that was the worst of it; placing death weights on his beautiful eyes. But, I would not let the camp surgeon knot a winding sheet about his limbs. My husband lived freely on this vast Western landscape. How then, could I allow them to restrain him for all eternity?

The General has been gone two days from me. I held him as he passed, rather selfishly, I suppose, I wanted him to speak of our recent reconciliation, I wanted him to tell me that I had always been vital to him. But that was not his way. He stared off as his breath became shallow, and he thought instead of his place in the next world. "Beyond forgiveness," he murmured, and then...he slipped off so quietly, I asked after him..."Husband?"

Late last evening, the Sauk, Winnebago and Maha Peoples settled in the center of the barracks esplanade to set up their tipis. The wind blew the sound of clattering lodge poles through my open window, I could hear the Indians speaking to one another as they prepared to make their last visit to the General. And this morning, citizens of St. Louis chartered the steamer Lebanon, then disembarked at the landing, a grim cloud lofting and rippling up the hillside. There were politicians and matrons, shopkeepers and a volunteer force of militia from outlying counties, half drunk at midmorning from their breakfast of crackers and whiskey, all filled up with false sentiment for a general they did not know.

Those militiamen did not know my husband, nor would he have cared to make their acquaintance. The General learned during the wars of the thirties that having the militia along on campaign would surely doom the effort. They were dirty and unkempt. I know he would have despised the look of them. But the regular troops had been ordered to Florida to fight the Seminole, so the barracks were deserted, and my husband deserved an honor guard, even a pitiable one. In his last year, my husband was a general without troops.

As the Reverend Hedges read the service, my veil formed a shield around me, dropping to my toes so I appeared as a sniffling black bell jar to the other mourners. It wasn't that I wanted the privacy to cry, such a thing hasn't been possible since he left me. Crying seemed too small a grace to the worst event of my life. Now and then, the crowd would shift under the long winds blowing up from the river and right themselves when a scuddering cloud crossed the sun.

The regimental band played "Roslin Castle," a dirge the General disliked, then the militiamen shrieked, causing everyone to jump, shouted a lament and poured bottles of mash in the dirt mounded round the grave. They sang a ragged a cappella version of "Mo Ghile Mear," "Our Hero," then fell to weeping upon one another. I know my husband would have been bemused by the exertion of this false grief on his account.

I closed my eyes and imagined him near me, sheltering me with his arm, and I wondered what was left for me beyond his memory. I was discouraged by what I conjured, for the years to come were entirely too dark to be seen through. I felt vanquished, I believed I could tolerate no more of this ceremony. But then I was distracted from my reverie by the sight of the General's bay.

Now, as I simply couldn't fathom the General flourishing in the afterlife without his horse, I had asked a Maha warrior to perform a ritual common to his people at the burial ceremony. Billy, our groom, led the General's horse around to stand before the assembly. The warrior stepped forward, said something none of us understood, then wrapped a hemp loop around the animal's neck and strangled it with grace and ease.

A horrified gasp went up from the crowd, and the militia aimed their Harper's Ferry rifles at the Indians standing opposite me. I jumped before their guns, explaining that this honor had been performed at my request. While the crowd settled, I overheard ugly mention of the red men who had come to pay their respects.

The grave looked a slack mouth under the toe of my boot, asking questions none of us dared answer. I leaned forward, pinioned by Senator Benton on my left and Colonel Stephen Kearny on my right. They held tight to me as if I were a bedlamite contemplating escape. My veiled glance sent the mourners to panicked searching of the horizon. When I leveled my gaze upon them, they hurriedly looked away from me. I knew what they thought; they feared my reason had once again slipped under a cloud. Have you seen the Mad Widow Atkinson? they would ask one another. Avoir le diable au corps. A pity. The senator and the colonel tensed, silently willing me to forgo grievous outpouring. They had borne witness at the last burial. Ten years had elapsed, and I hoped they had forgotten what was past, but apparently, they had not.

Senator Benton offered his arm, and we led the cortege to the regimental dining hall for a breakfast, but I do not remember most of what transpired this morning. It was a blur of half-wept condolences and somber greetings. Numbly, I watched the crowd mill about like so many black beetles, emitting a low humming sound. In the corner, watchful and silent, were the Indians, all of them dressed in their best ceremonial wear.

And that is when I saw Bright Sun, rising gracefully with a nod to her companions. My hand flew reflexively to my bodice in a protective gesture, and I peered sidelong at her, under my lashes.

Bright Sun was dressed after the manner of Indian women who live along the rivers, in a red skirt, a calico blouse and, despite the heat, a Hudson Bay three-point blanket over her left shoulder. But she was distinguished by the red star upon her forehead, the "mark of honor" denoting her status as daughter of a war chief. Throughout the morning, we caught the glance of one another, and each of us intuited an unspoken curiosity about the other. It has always been this way between us, scrutinizing, but pretending disinterest. Of course, I knew who she was. Bright Sun was a translator for the Sauk and Fox tribes. But I have never, in sixteen years of sightings, chance meetings and surprising arrivals, been able to discern what she was to my husband.

In late afternoon, the crowd thinned and I took my leave with Colonel Kearny. The silence was thick after the noise of the hall. I was glad for his company but eager to rest, for I was deeply wearied by my sorrow. When I stepped onto the sagging porch of our log house, I glanced over my shoulder and saw a tribal contingent coming toward us. Bright Sun followed a respectful distance behind the warriors, clasping her hands to her waist. Her head was slightly bowed, and her skirts blew elliptically over the grass as she strode along with that vexingly confident posture of hers.

Colonel Kearny opened the door and motioned me across the threshold. I looked back once again at the approaching group.

"The Sauk men go first."

"What?" Kearny asked with a worried look at me.

"I once told the General that I disliked their practice of making the women walk behind the men until he explained that the warriors clear the path of danger for their women."

"Uh-huh. Now, Mary, don't allow company to wear you out. You're not in a form to entertain, so I'll tell Nicholas to urge them along after they've made their condolences."

"Thank you, Colonel, that's very kind of you."

"I'll be leaving now, but you let me know if there is anything you need. May I write to your ma or to your brothers and sisters? They're all in Europe, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"A shame they're so far away at a time like this."

"I'll get along."

"You ask my wife or myself for anything you might need. Don't be proud."

"I'll be fine. You'd best head back to the landing before it gets any darker. I wouldn't want you to miss the steamer. Give my regards to Mrs. Kearny." He placed a chaste kiss on my forehead, then took his leave.

It was much too hot for a fire this afternoon, but Nicholas built one of pine, which I object to mightily, for nothing pops more violently than pine, and I feared the plank floors would catch fire once again. And it would be terribly inconsiderate of me to burn the commanding officer's house just when I am required to turn it over to Colonel Stephen Kearny and his wife.

The Kearnys had not hurried me to vacate, but I sensed their eagerness to "ascend to the throne" and did not begrudge them their happiness. Oh, well, perhaps I did just a bit. It was painful to see my husband's heir apparent, a man very much like the General, preparing to assume command of the Ninth District. This was the cruel truth of military life; a fortnight previous my husband controlled all of the American West. Now that he had died, my son and I were to be tossed out of the only home we have known these past sixteen years.

I walked through our bedroom and opened the wardrobe. The General's uniforms and breeches hung from hooks, his boots were lined up neatly on the bottom shelf as if awaiting marching orders. But I was not prepared for the clean scent of him wafting from his clothing. I turned quickly, expecting to see him quietly about some task in the room with me, expecting him to grin and shrug and assure me that the past few days had been a terrible misunderstanding.

"Henry?" I said aloud, then bent in pain at my folly. When my eyes began to sting, I drew a breath and straightened my back. Though I had been an old bride of twenty-two, I was now a young widow of thirty-seven. A wiser woman, perhaps, would see balance in such a thing. The mirror over the chest of drawers showed me my decay. Well, I must be honest; I was widely considered a beauteous woman and vainly pleased by the popular opinion. I owned a thick mass of dark brown hair and had an oval shape to my face and, when I was nineteen, Thomas Sully of Philadelphia painted my portrait, sipping his Frontignan whilst paraphrasing Herrick. The artist flitted and dabbled, saying, "Mary, oh Mary, I'll kiss the threshold of thy door."

When he went so far as quoting "Upon Julia's Breasts," and rather brashly substituting my name for Julia's, I harrumphed him and marched out of the drawing room. But now, my mourning weeds were a drain to color, my blue eyes were mostly red and my dark hair had been flattened by the weight of my bonnet. "You brazen out the day, Mary Bullitt Atkinson," I said to my reflection.

Having chastised myself, I removed a dimity bag from the top drawer and took my journal into the library. I intended to scribble every bit of spurious gossip I'd heard over the past year to distract myself and thereby waste the hours until dawn. But when I took my seat, I saw the General's letter neatly arranged on the desk blotter. Doubtless, Nicholas had saved it. I crumpled it again and made to toss it into the fire but did not. I dropped it, and chin in hand, puzzled at it. Ever I shall come to you...

I hunched over the journal the General had given me so many years ago, a palm-sized book, bound in calfskin, edged in gold leaf. The nib of my quill made scritching noises as I wrote.

Nicholas, a graying and cranky servant who had come West with me years ago from Kentucky, entered the library with a worried glance and stood silently, waiting for me to acknowledge him.

"They here," he said, finally.

"Please direct them in."

I rose and smoothed my black skirt, pulled the floor-length black veil over my head so that I presented a ghoulish figure. My mind spiraled with anxiety and odd fixations on inconsequential things, an attempt, I know, to control some aspect of my life, any little thing at all. I despaired at the nettles that snaked hairy stalks up through the floor. Those weeds were defiantly rooted, as if telling me I was an intruder on the tallgrass prairie. For sixteen years I suffered every hardship a woman could know, and now I had discovered weeds in my library floor.

I bent to pick the artemisia, and the room was filled with an odor like that of juniper. This is what happened when a house was built of green cottonwood. It warped and withered, and there was not enough lime in the whole of the river country to point the gaps. Over the years, Mama had crusaded the cause of the mercantile class from a distance, had shipped me seventeenth-century French antiques, paintings of Huguenot ancestors, then paid a local seamstress to drape the windows in crimson damask, but still, artemisia grew up wild through my floor.

"Ma'am, the -- " Nicholas patted the air with a worried look and searched for something to call the group, then said, "The chiefs is here. And Miss Me'um'bane the Bright Sun, ma'am."

I glanced up to see a dozen plainsmen enter quietly, then stand in a line while Bright Sun, a small-boned woman, hid behind them. She stepped cautiously away from the hearth. I tossed my veil over my head to get a better look at her. I knew her to be about thirty-three years old.

"Yes, I'd stay away from the fire too, if I were you. Strouding easily catches a spark and you'd torch right up and there wouldn't be a thing I could do to save you."

Bright Sun did not respond but cast her gaze upon my feet. What she found so fascinating there, I did not know, nor did I care. She looked away, not because she was shy or retiring, nor was she intimidated by me. Bright Sun believed avoiding my eyes was the polite thing, under the circumstances. I was not so polite. I feigned a smile to study her. She looked away from my scrutiny, muttering "wado 'becnede," words that I had heard many times these years passing. It meant one who stares, but I could not help myself.

Bright Sun had black hair, broad cheekbones underlayed by a nervous pink bloom and hazel eyes, uptilted and large. The many winters she had quartered within the smoky haze of wickiups and wind lodges had weathered her beyond her years. Her face bore the mysterious impress of several races. She adjusted her blanket and surveyed the room. Despite the crowd of humanity, none of us said a word. They were waiting for me to speak. And so I did. "Thank you for attending today, it would have made the General so happy to know you have come one last time," I said.

Blank stares and blinking.

"Miss Bright Sun, will you translate for us, please?"

I waved her through, and she looked over her shoulder to where she had just been. One of the warriors said something. Bright Sun cleared her throat and spoke, "An'geda said he is happy to meet the General's woman and he knew General Atkinson was going to die because he dreamt of him with snakes creeping into his nose and ears."

I was not quite sure how to respond to this, so I smiled and bowed a little and said thank you. The chief spoke again, and Bright Sun began, "And you may sleep at the hu'thuga with the Burnt Leg People whenever you come north once again on the river."

"How nice. Thank you, An'geda. I shall certainly consider your invitation the next time I come to the territories."

And they turned and filed out as silently as they had entered.

Nicholas and I exchanged baffled shrugs.

I watched my visitors drift away over the grass. When they reached the twilit shade of the oak trees, Bright Sun said good-bye to the chiefs and warriors. She paused uncertainly, glancing up the hill at our family burial ground, then down across the green lawn to the river.

She lifted her skirts and dashed up the hill toward the General's grave.

I felt a jealous catch in my breast and decided to follow her. I stepped out from under the black locust trees the General had planted after I had given birth to our third child. I strode over the grassy hill flowering with copper mallow. The twilight was green, the air was cool, and I held my breath when I saw Bright Sun stop before my husband's new bed. Her visit seemed an affront to the intimacy of the setting. I considered setting up a shout to order her away, but I was curious so instead I waited in the shadow of the tree.

Bright Sun knelt, fumbled at her waist pouch, removed a pair of scissors and cut a hank of her blue-black hair. After lofting it to the wind like a small flag, she plunged the whole handful into the dirt and anchored it there with a little mound. Then she removed a few slender, sharp twigs from her waist pouch and thrust them into her forearms. Blood rilled down her hands into the soil.

Who did she think she was, to mourn the General as if he were her husband? I balled my fists and clenched my jaw. I turned away for an instant to gather my wits, then coerced myself into a false calm by reminding myself that once, long ago, Bright Sun tendered a generous favor to me at a time when she knew great suffering. Besides, in the days to come, many strangers were going to knock on my door as I packed up my belongings and prepared to return home to Louisville. They too would ask to visit my husband's grave. Should I excoriate every mourner who dared appear at my door? Talk would ripple through the camp and the city entire that Mary Bullitt Atkinson's reason had once again taken flight. And I did not want to travel that road again.

"Miss Bright Sun?" I ventured, stepping out from under the tree.

She turned a peppery look upon me, as if I were the interloper upon my own family burial ground. When I said nothing further, she plucked a willow needle from above her wrist and tossed it into the dirt, then offered without meeting my eyes, "I promised Black Hawk and the others I would come."

Black Hawk.

Even now, I see Black Hawk's apparition, and familiar resentments roil out of my heart. I hear the trade bells jingling along Black Hawk's snakeskin armbands as he stands in the willow thicket behind my house, his eyes boring at me through the darkness. From the day I first met my husband, Black Hawk's specter hovered over us.

"How could you possibly have promised Black Hawk...?"

But Bright Sun continued as if I had not spoken at all, "My people -- the Sauk, the Yellow Earth People -- asked me to burn a fire for four nights to light his way. The General is uncertain, he waits here. He is reluctant to go on. And I wanted to come, after what he did for me...and my daughter. In a way, he was ours too. The General belonged to us in the seasons of war."

Her smug, proprietary tone infuriated me. So I asked, "The willow sprigs. Do they hurt?"

She shrugged and touched a curling spray of leaves splattered with her blood. "Willow is only for warriors who are greatly respected."

"I'm not leaving the General here, you know. You may pretend he was yours for as long as you wish, but I'm taking my husband -- and my other loved ones -- home with me, back to Louisville, as soon as I can arrange passage. I won't leave them in this wretched place."

With a nod, I folded my arms about me and left Bright Sun at the grave. As I walked away, I wanted to create an impression of dignity, but my toe caught a compass-plant root and I stumbled, then blushed at my clumsiness. The cottonwood trees whispered above my head, and the weeds released their musky summer odors underfoot. Henry, I thought, how could you have allowed a visit from her, of all people...and at a time like this.

I entered through the back ell, let the door slam, poured myself a bumper of brandy, then slumped in the General's chair in our library. Dust swirled up from the floor on a column of bronze light, yellowing about me like muddy rivers in the springtime. I brought the glass to my lips and regarded the General's portrait, filling the wall opposite.

He returned my scrutiny with cunning disdain. The portrait was commissioned by his men, the Sixth Infantry, after the Black Hawk War. The General cut an imposing figure. He had dark wavy hair and sideburns that fringed around his jaw. His chin was cleft, his nose perfectly straight, his Scottish complexion ruddy. His shoulders were broad, and he was above medium height, but not so tall as Uncle William or the other Clark men. He presented the traditional stance of handsome men, confident he would obtain whatever he pursued. His white trousers were tucked into his boots. He never wore the plumed chapeau that was part of a General's uniform in the army of this new republic. The General could do as he wished. For twenty-three years he commanded all of the Western Frontier, from Canada to the Red River.

His eyes were portrayed as suspicious under heavy lids. In life, his eyes were intensely blue, vivid with thought and speculation; his were the eyes of a man born of the Enlightenment. The first time ever we locked eyes, I curled my toes, my face colored like a majolica poppy; neither modesty nor false delicacy could compel me to look away from him. He captured my reasoning and my heart in that moment; I felt myself being studied for distinct purposes by his scientific eye. By his pagan eye.

When I was eight years old, my Calvinist governess pinned a drawing of a solitary eye over the nursery hearth. Black tangs radiated from a jet circle at its center; this was the eye of a goat or a reptile. The governess wagged her finger at me, "I know your type, Miss Mary. You are a voluptuary. When you are tempted to give way to your true nature, look up into the eye of God and remember he hates your kind. You must submit humbly until the hour of your death and hope against reason for redemption."

That night, I crept into the dark nursery as the moon haze drifted through the windows, illuminating the eye of God. I removed my nightdress and danced naked before Him, thinking that if I was lost to heaven, I may as well entertain the Lord as I descended the circles of hell, one by one.

I have always been enraptured by the forbidden and unknowable.

From the moment the General took my hand in his, I was captivated by what I could neither discern nor fathom in him. At our wedding, I heard murmuring about the difference of twenty-two years in our ages, about the fineness and surety of an accomplished man being ruler of his domain with a rich and comely young wife at his side. They could not guess at the hours when I ruled, the days when I was sovereign, the months when I governed.

I drained my glass and poured myself another, turning slowly to find him watching me. His father's scabbard was slung low over his left hip, gloves covered the broad spans of his hands. I let the liquor swirl over my tongue as the slanting light glinted around us. He was trapped in the room with me, he was a hant locked into a temple of memory where I was the sole congregant.

Sixteen years ago, when I followed the General away, I had known him for only three days. I reconciled myself then to sleeping with a gentlemanly stranger. How could I have known that years later a stranger would die in my arms?

Perhaps in death I shall know thee.

Excerpted from The Good Journey © Copyright 2002 by Micaela Gilchrist. Reprinted with permission by Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved.