Queen (52 page)

    did to Annie, and the promise that you broke to me."

    He left the room without being given leave. He left the house and walked

    to some quiet place under the trees. His hands were shivering, but it was

    not because of the fierce cold.

    He had won. After all these years, he had his vengeance. But it gave him

    no joy. He couldn't understand why the taste in his mouth was so foul.

    James was slumped at his desk, staring at nothing. The paper of

    manumission had fallen from his hand and fluttered to the floor.

    38

    c===~

in the spring, the stallion Glencoe arrived in New York. Glencoe stood

slightly over fifteen hands, his color a rich, warm chestnut, with an

elongated diamond star. His head was fine, his neck swanlike, and his muzzle

pointed. He was the most famous horse in England, the pride of Ascot, and

James had paid handsomely for him. When the ship that brought him across the

Atlantic docked, hundreds of onlookers gathered, applauding in admiration

as the magnificent animal was led down the gangplank, onto the pier and

American soil. The press was fulsome in its praise of James, calling him the

most successful importer of Thoroughbreds in American history. Glencoe, it

was believed, would eclipse even Leviathan's performance. It was hoped that

the arrival of the horse at his new home in Alabama would help speed his

owner to a recovery of his good health.

For James was not well, He'd caught a chill in the spring and had not been

able to shake it off. He had planned to be in New York to greet Glencoe,

but after only two days on the journey had turned back, and taken to his

bed. He had seemed to be recovering, when little Jamie, Tom and Elizabeth's

new boy, died at only eight months from diphtheria. They had all grieved

for the child, but the death of small children was a fact of their lives,

and already Elizabeth was pregnant again. But James had taken it especially

hard, and it had caused a physical relapse in him,

The fever got worse; the congestion moved to his lungs. Sally was worried,

but Dr. Hargreaves, who lived with the Simpson family in Florence, could

find no especial cause for alarm.

"It is the process of growing old," he told Sally as they walked to his gig

after a visit in July. "And he has never been hale.

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314 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    Sally didn't agree. When she had first known James, all those years ago

    in Nashville, he had been as healthy a man as you could wish to meet. His

    frequent chills and bouts of minor illness had started around the time

    they moved to Florence, and Sally blamed the climate here, languid even

    in winter after the spikier weather of the Cumberland River. But none of

    her husband's chills and minor ailments had lasted as long as this.

    Perhaps the doctor was right; perhaps they were simply growing old,

    although Sally did not feel it. Rheumatism bothered her in winter, and

    arthritis occasionally, but otherwise she was as fit as any woman in her

    forties could wish. James was eight years older. She felt a flash of

    resentment at the passing of time. He is not old, she wanted to shout at

    the doctor, but could not. James had already lived longer than,many of

    his contemporaries.

    "You should discourage him from strong drink," the doctor was saying, as

    he had said so many times, on so many visits, knowing James's fondness

    for port. "And make sure he gets plenty of rest and relaxation."

    He left laudanum, in case the cough that bothered James got too

    troublesome, and promised to maintain his weekly visits, for he was

    doctor to the whole family, and advised on the health of the slaves.

    Sally decided to take a stronger command of her husband's welfare. It

    wasn't just the chill that worried her. Sally had no immediate fear that

    he would die-he seemed to have a whole new zest for living since his

    return from Washington-but again, she had to face the prospect of his

    mortality, and she dreaded being left alone, without him. So many wives

    of her acquaintance had became widows, many much younger than she.

    She knew that trying to stop James from keeping his finger on the pulse

    of his many business affairs would be an unwinnable war, but at least she

    could limit the attention he gave these matters, for their practical

    world was functioning smoothly, she knew. Cooper, the overseer of the new

    plantation at Panola in Mississippi, was a splendid fellow, who ran the

    estate as if it was his own, and Mitchell, the overseer here at The

    Forks, was thoroughly reliable, maintaining a clockwork efficiency, and

    if not actually liked by the slaves, he was

    MERGING 315

not too bitterly resented by them, Sally thought. Tom Kirkman was managing

their business in land, and under James's direction was doing remarkably

well.

    So Sally decided that James could afford to be interrupted from the cares

    of the material world. Previously, she and the rest of the family had

    treated his study as a private world, to be entered only if invited, but

    now, after he had spent a couple of hours in there, she would sweep in

    unannounced, without even knocking, and demand that he spend a little

    time with her. What surprised her was that he didn't seem to mind, and

    would smile and put aside his papers, and join her on the veranda or in

    the garden or, on cooler evenings, in the warmth of the sitting room. On

    the hottest days, he would sit with her in the little sitting area of

    their bedroom upstairs, the windows open to catch a breeze.

    Actively, she discouraged strangers or acquaintances from making too many

    visits, for she knew that most were simply calling on James for letters

    of introduction, or advice on local matters that others could have easily

    provided, or for loans. As actively, she would ask close associates to

    be sensible of his physical condition, to limit their demands on his

    attention, and to spend as much time discussing frivolous news as affairs

    of the nation. And as actively, she encouraged relations to call,

    especially any who had young children, for James, she knew, loved those

    distractions. In particular he adored the company of young Sam Kirkman,

    Elizabeth's surviving son, a studious boy with an intriguing ability to

    alleviate his own gravity by laughing at the seriousness with which he

    regarded life. Elizabeth's new pregnancy also delighted James, and he

    fussed over her, petted her, and would look longingly at Jass, wanting

    a grandson by him, Sally knew, for Elizabeth was not of his blood, and

    Thomas, her husband, only his nephew.

    Still, it surprised her that James never seemed to mind these

    unprofitable claims on his attention, but welcomed them, whereas

    previously any intrusions into the hallowed world of his business

    dealings had been prohibited. What Sally could not know, for James never

    told her, was that he was weary of the empire he had created.

    There were no challenges left. He had done everything, even more than he

    had ever dreamed of-, he was everything he had ever wanted to be. And he

    fell empty.

316 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    He could buy more land easily, he had the resources to create more

    plantations, but where was the challenge in that? He had more land already

    than several princes in Europe, and the acquisition of more held no delight

    for him. He saw the fevered speculation of the land boom that was

    flourishing around him and wished them all joy of it, but he wanted no

    part, for he had done that when young, and there were no frontiers to be

    tamed now, no wilderness to be put to the plow, only farms to be run, and

    farming bored him. There were no great political battles to be fought: The

    business of his state and of the United States was functioning smoothly,

    apart from its dealings with the remaining holdout Cherokee in Georgia, and

    James had abdicated any involvement in that. Andrew had left the presidency

    and was an invalid at the Hermitage, in the care of Alfred, while Martin

    Van Buren was leading the country on the exact path Andrew had defined, but

    without the zeal. The Mexican massacre of whites at the Alamo hardly seemed

    to touch him, nor did Sam Houston's surprising victory over Santa Ana at

    San Jacinto.

    It was only a matter of time before the new Republic of Texas was admitted

    into the Union, for otherwise it would fall under the influence of Britain,

    and Washington would not allow that. With the inevitable shadow of

    civilization falling over Texas, the last great frontier of excitement was

    gone. Even the uncrossable Rockies had been conquered, and then there was

    only pastoral California, which James still dreamed of seeing but knew he

    never would.

    There was nothing to do anymore, he had decided, which was another way of

    saying that he had ceased to be of any real importance to anyone but

    himself and his family. Whatever influence he might once have had over the

    affairs of his state, if not his nation, was now limited to his prestige

    and his signature, and even they were not necessary to anyone else's

    dreams.

. There are no great battles left, he thought, or none that have any use or

need of me. I have become irrelevant.

    Perhaps he was even irrelevant to his family, although not his wife. His

    daughters were all gone now, married with families of their own, and even

    though they were sweet to him and dutiful, he exercised no real authority

    over their lives. The

    MERGING 317

Trio, he knew, were good sons, but even though they loved him and

obviously respected him, and though he loved them and could provide a

father's advice and guidance, the future pattern of their lives was

starting to emerge, and since The Forks would not be their future, they

were already talking of lives beyond it.

    Which left Jass. Jass the dutiful, Jass the caring, Jass the obedient

    second son who strove so valiantly to fill the empty shoes of the first,

    and who failed constantly, not because of any shortcomings on his own

    part but because his father's expectations of him were impossible to

    fulfill. Jass saw lightning as a wonder of nature, James thought, not as

    an immortal stallion to tame and fide.

    It was the mortal stallion, Glencoe, who thrilled James now, the horse

    who would outdistance Leviathan and secure James's place in the racing

    annals of his country, but it was a poor substitute, not even second best

    he knew, for the history books that might have recorded his achievements

    as they would Andrew's. And so he allowed himself to be distracted from

    the emptiness of his material world by the woman without whom he knew he

    could not, would not want to, live, and the darling grandson, the grave

    Sam, who seemed so determined to write his own future, and had some

    inkling, at least, of what lightning might be.

    But where is there left for him to play? James wondered in his darker

    moments. The plains of Olympus are gone, neatly furrowed by some giant

    plow, and all a boy can aspire to now is more of civilization.

    Now, more than ever, he came to rely on Cap'n Jack. When the congestive

    fever was at its worst, it was Cap'n Jack who held a little bowl to his

    Massa's mouth to receive the phlegm. It was Cap'n Jack who changed the

    sheets on his bed when, as happened once, James soiled them, and Cap'n

    Jack who washed his Massa clean. It was Cap'n Jack who wiped the sweat

    from his fevered Massa's brow, Cap'n Jack who fed him soup when he was

    too weak to feed himself. It was Cap'n Jack who carried his Massa

    downstairs and up to bed when he could not manage the staircase on his

    own. It was Cap'n Jack who sat with him, Alfred to his Andrew, for

    endless hours, always there to see an order carried out or a wish

    fulfilled.

318 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    With the awful abscess of vengeance lanced and healed, Cap'n Jack now

    felt only a total emptiness. The thing that had so obsessed him, that had

    given him the will to live, was replaced by the surprising realization

    he found in a tiny comer of his heart: James was Cap'n Jack's best

    friend.

    It was Cap'n Jack who took his Massa to the stables, when he was feeling

    better, to see the arrival of the new stallion. They sat with Murdoch and

    Monkey Simon, too old to race now, too valuable to sell, and dreamed of

    the winners Glencoe would sire, and of the old races they had won in the

    days of their youth. They would sit together on the veranda, the ol'

    Massa and the slave, and talk endlessly of the days in Nashville, and of