The Book of Duels Page 10

  I lower my golden visor and heft my lance and call, Alle anon, and we are off, galloping as if pulled by Dame Fortune herself, and my lance is level so that my shoulder burns and my captain’s weapon takes me in the head and I lose my mount and mind, my horse no longer between my thighs, the perfume gone forever, and I am in utter whiteness and the weight of my armor holds me supine to the earth and for a wretched second I think to cry for my queen and to cry for my mistress but I am once more bloodied and burning, alone—

  Michel de Nostredame, 55,

  Physician & Seer, Astrologer & Occultist

  Two months ago as I sat in the darkness of my room, well past midnight, a candle burned and the mandrake root burned and the call of an owl in the woods burned my ears—the folio was set before me on the hardwood table that a man made for me many years ago when I cured his child of plague, the same disease that, like a thief in the night, stole my wife and two babes—a strong wind blew through my open window and the candle bent and righted itself again and I dipped the old quill and waited for the vision to come, brief but fully realized before me—I witnessed that scene as surely as I see my good king now, grounded, and I wrote as I saw:

  The Lion shall overcome the old

  On the field of war in a single combat;

  He will pierce his eyes in a cage of gold

  This is the first of two lappings, then he dies a cruel death.

  I know His Majesty surely will die of these wounds and that ten days hence, his loyal subjects will come to my home with pitchforks and strong rope and demand my life, and I know too that my patron, Queen Catherine, will protect me, her special seer—just as I know that Gabriel will be fled from Paris to Normandy and there gather a rebel army that will fail and he will be captured and, just before the axe kisses his neck, the executioner will bend to his ear and whisper that his wife and children will be removed from their lands and made to be beggars—I will continue to pen these prophecies, envisioning even my own death, because all I ever see, cruel necromancer I am become, is darkness, death, and disease—where go the beauties and loves and lusts, the little graces and foibles by which to laugh? Still, I will see farther and farther into the future, five hundred years and more, and I know that in that far-off time, long after the ways of the Habsburgs and the Medicis and the House of Valois have passed into the ether, I will be remembered and studied and considered—perhaps that is all the beauty I need, and so I write of the twenty-first century:

  The Son of Nazareth is no more,

  The Son of the Sun is no more,

  Yet the seer is seen by those who see,

  And the sun will drown the land with sea.

  Old Hickory: Dickinson v. Jackson

  Stemming from a Welched Bet and a Challenge of Infidelity, near Harrison’s Mill on the Banks of the Red River, Logan County, Kentucky, a Full Day’s Ride from Nashville, Tennessee,

  May 30, 1806

  Charles Dickinson, 26,

  Attorney & Winner of Twenty-Six Previous Duels

  Governor Sevier has given me to understand I could no longer postpone this interview—I spent the last month on Mississippi riverboats practicing my pistol till I could bury four shots in a row through the king card’s eye—this last week I woke each dawn howling in bed, begging Charlotte to cool the burning in my throat, the fire in my heart—my stomach hollow as a chicken skull, my hands so bloody a-tremble I could not even pen apologies if I’d pleased—Sevier cajoled me to this purpose with a promise to appoint me chief magistrate and so surpass my father’s mere assessment of me—his sneer forever wrapped ’round that meerschaum pipe, the odor of his Cavendish tobacco lingering in my clothes and hair, the incessant clicking of his teeth on clay as he marked my legal opinions—where is he now, that man who sent me to this wilderness, gone broke on his own speculations, driven mad down to debtors’ prison—where too my father-in-law, whose horse came up lame and lost—my thoughts run about heedless as a headless pullet—because of my steady hand, I’ve been coaxed to wrangle this ruffian’s honor for months, yet now as I stand just twenty-four feet from him—his hair a red tornado, his lipless mouth like an axe mark hacked into rough-hewn wood, his wild gray eyes themselves the color of lead, which say clear that he will be king and not Sevier nor Jesus nor Satan himself can refute his course—I can’t steady the shake in my wrists, the pistol’s weight grown too great to handle—I can taste vomit on the back of my tongue and my cheeks blanch and my breath catches throatwise—I regret the black mark I’ve checked against his wife’s good name and not because theirs is a lawful marriage—God knows it is not—rather, because that besmirch may have me meet the Elect before the next election ever comes.

  On his man’s word, I raise my arm and release my bullet first and it passes through his oversized coat and he does not flinch—a miss, by God!—now I know I am doomed—I suck in my gut and turn completely sideways but I stagger-swoon backward, dumbstruck—I would beg forgiveness if I thought it would soothe this scoundrel’s soul—I hear his gun misfire, a mere tap like my father’s teeth clicking clay, but this sound is the sweetest, loudest one I’ve ever known.

  Witness: Rachel Jackson, 39,

  Wife & Bigamist

  Mister Jackson has lit out for Kentucky again, lit out on horseback with friends again, For business, he said, but I am no fool: I know where he goes and I know what he gains—off to Philadelphia twice to be among the men who shape the world because he, who has yet to put seed in my womb and I imagine never will, has designs to lead this nation—he, who cares more for the snort of a horse than that of a cognac—Lord, I love him and I would defend him against an army of detractors with either wit or whip—why then did I dream last night that I followed him through the hardwood forests that grow aside the Tennessee River, riding our prized Truxton in the dew of the morning and sun-dappled noon—the azalea bushes in full bloom with wisteria vines married through, their long purple streams twining amid the pink plump tangles and blaring white blossoms and little flutter-byes twittered by and doves cooed their coos and where he stopped to water his horse the river kept its course, straight and true, when from the water a beast arose and came streaming ashore to stand before him and unfasten its fur which fell from its body as if it were robes to pool in the earth like the black fur rug that lies on our parlor floor and there standing before my husband, a naked Cherokee squaw—her eyes like almonds and honey, her hair a brunette river run over the cliffs of her shoulders—his hands go to her and the sun drops like a seed cone and darkness attends them and I watch now from my vantage high in an old hickory as they couple on the floor of the woods crying each other’s secret names and I weep and watch by light of full moon, which shines on me, and they discover me there, weeping and swooning and naked, watching and watched.

  Now I pine away the morning, sitting on the stone steps looking over the planted estate where everything grows verdant and ripens. Our slaves go about picking fruits and hoeing earth, and one of them, Long Feather, is in the stable and his fine form, I think, comes from his mix of Creek and African blood. He will come to the out-kitchen soon for his lunch bucket of molasses and biscuit and ham, and Long Feather, whose hair is black as Truxton’s mane, will wear an odor of horse froth and oats, and he’ll lead Truxton to the back door and he’ll be saddled and Long Feather will lift me up and oh how I shall ride him.

  Andrew Jackson, 39,

  Ex-Senator, Judge, Major General, & Son of Scots Irish Immigrants

  I swear on my mother’s sweet soul I will blow him through, as certain as he has blown on my embers till the flames grew into an all-consuming fire that shall lay waste to any challenge before me, or any base fool like this poltroon here who uttered the vile calumny against my dear Rachel, a fierce bucking beauty herself—she can ride Truxton through town without even wearing her gloves, and if a man so much as speak her name I will tie him to the first tree, let alone one so base as to claim I’d made bigamy with her—I should have pistol-whipped this puppy when he first began hi
s rumor-seeding but I knew him to be but a lickspittle in some other man’s fight—still, he is of British birth and so a born bastard and this Dickinson shall receive no less than what I have promised Mother to visit upon every man Jack soldier of that son of a whore, England, whose brutes killed both my brothers—one by bullet and one by exposure in a Carolina prison camp where they cut my cheek and poisoned Robert with vile tack slathered in rat grease—they drove sweet Mother to her early grave too—what I’d not give to see that woman again, to have her ease my burning brow with her cool hands and gray eyes, those bottomless pools of affection so alike to Rachel’s—I’d even let this rascal live so he could admire the morning fog as it settles among the pine needles—but that cannot be—there is only this one life, this one chance to alter the shape of the world, before we enter the eternal damnation of silence and utter darkness and she died in my arms blessing the vengeance I swore on every lobsterback son of a bitch I could bury.

  The judge calls fire and before I can even aim, his ball cuts through my ribs and I hear the damn things break—I am dead, by God—I mash my mouth into a razor line, wheeze through my nose, and the sweat bursts in my eyes, near blinding me—I level the pistol and squeeze the trigger but the gun only half fires—my chin starts to tremble when the smell of Mother’s laundry lye overwhelms me and Rachel’s breath is on my neck and her hand comes over mine and steadies the gun and we re-cock the hammer together and pull the trigger and send our shot into his piss-proud belly and he shuffles back and flops to the ground, legs all aflail, and he has surely spent his last day on earth and my blood runs down my body but I am alive, and because I am, so too is Mother, and Rachel besides, and we shall so remain until we all enter oblivion together.

  Man above Challenge: Dauphin v. Culver

  A First-Blood Duel with Colichemardes, behind the St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans, Louisiana,

  April 3, 1834

  Speaker: Tim-tim!

  Audience: Bois sec.

  Speaker: Cassez-li . . .

  Speaker and Audience together: . . . dans tchu (bonda) macaque.

  Traditional Creole Call to Story, from Lafcadio Hearn’s Gombo Zhèbes: Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs

  Emile Dauphin, 19,

  French Creole

  He should not have crossed Canal and into our Quarter, nor entered the octoroon ball and defiled it with his odious taint, like too much choupique at the Bienville Market. These Kaintock keelboat rats have done much to damage our town—set fire to the Tchoupitoulas Street Fair where Papa kept his cattle and killed Monsieur Gaetano’s dancing bear in his Congo Square circus. He is indeed beneath my birth, yet I feel the need to lash and strike this boorish tramp who approached sweet Yvonne, whose sister I keep in a clean white cottage on Rue Rampart, and pulled her hand from Jean Philip’s and barked back the timid boy, affrighted I suppose by stories of Wild Bill Sedley and other riverboat bullies. He would not heed my call so I demanded his blood from my blow, or he could have mine in turn, and though his shoulders are thick as any field Negro’s, I possess the skills—two full seasons under the tutelage of Garland Croquere, my maitres d’armes, the swiftest mulatto you ever saw, but whom I have surely outgrown, and he will see so in my stance and in the grace with which I dispatch this ruffian—tomorrow mes amis in cafes will sing how deftly I did defeat our enemy.

  We cross on cypress boards laid in the pitch mud, two Negroes before us with lighted flambeaux to see our way to St. Anthony’s Park, hidden from sight by the bustling gowns of Spanish moss, and I recall when I was but fourteen and walking this very banquette, a Kaintock and I came to an impasse until our eyes met and I acquiesced and stepped down into the muck, and though I was loath to look back, when I did I saw that Papa had moved off as well—I wish he could see me now as I strike this oaf and his blood runs down his lips and onto his filthy fingertips, the ones he rubbed on sweet Yvonne’s thin wrists and she did not even flinch at his gaucherie, but now I have my honor and I will retrieve her as my own reward—Jean Philip be damned.

  Dale Culver, 23,

  Riverboat Kaintock

  I seen this purty half-breed gal, covered in cream-colored lace, dancing with some princey French fool and so stiffened my back paddleboard straight and said, Scuse me now, son, but I’m cutting on in, but I really wanted to knock hell out that sissy and flang that gal over my shoulder like a fifty-pound sack of sugar and skidaddle with her back to the keelboat and if I had to fight off the boys who’d try to make sport of her, well I’d holler em back with my fists and the trusty blade I keep in my boot, shouting, I’m a man made of anvil and alligator, been weaned on wolf milk and whiskey; got dynamite for a heart and snake spit for blood; any man what touch my gal will count himself lucky not to wake with his ears missing or an eye gouged out or his tongue torn from his flappy jaw, when this other little dandy here pokes me in the chest and says he’s her escort—he is, him—what goes the size of a bantam pullet I’ve lost money on, and me with red turkey feather in cap to show I’m the bully of my boat, been hauling on a cordelle and pulling the sweeps since I was twelve, so I laughed in his face but he just up and took my nose between his knuckles and twisted and ever last one of them Frenchies stepped back and even the musicians stopped they song, and buddy boy, I knew the score—but before I could call, Put up your dukes, he says to me, Sir, let us as gentlemen satisfy our honor, but I have absolute no use for this dumb show of dignity—what good is your honor, man, when you are dead and in the grave?

  Yet here I am, tightening my grip till my knuckles burn white ’round the handle of this wooden sword, blood pounding in my barking-mad mind, and I surge to strike and bash this boy’s head but the Nongela rye’s got me bandy-leg’d as the first time I ever took to a boat, so I rise and swing and stumble again, and he taps my noggin and splits my bottom lip clean in two like a pig’s hoof and he says, It is done; let us repair, and turns his back to me but I am not done: I slip out the sweet steel I’ve carried all the way from Louisville to fend off pirates and bushwhackers—you wanted some of my blood, boy, but I will take all of yours.

  Garland Croquere, 59,

  Maitres d’armes, Mulatto, FMC

  Standing in the mud of the street, I study the grease tracks from rats’ backs smeared along the foundations of this city’s homes, when Emile and his coterie pour out the Orleans Theatre, where I am barred because of the brown in my skin—though I am lighter than the proud mothers who auction their daughters in there—I knew a challenge had been made, knew in my heart it was Emile’s own doing because he is rash and he is foolish—why his mother has paid me to protect his life—it is too late for me to intercede, the weapons and site already agreed upon while I was out here, ankle-deep in the stinking sludge of the street that the blacks have named Croquere in my honor, the same dignity bestowed me by the whites in Paris, where I would escort every color of woman known in this world and we went anywhere we chose and I killed four whites in duels and an Algerian too and the people and papers begged me to stay but I came home to this city where no white will honor me even with barrel or blade—instead I must stand near wooden gutters that smell of garbage and night soil, yet if Emile loses this fight, as his teacher, I too am insulted but without means of redress.

  My pulse slows as Emile draws first blood from the brute, and heedless to our rules, the Kaintock presses his lip to his shoulder and curses and crouches and takes up a bowie knife, and though I am, as second, expected to aid my man, I hesitate and let him draw the blade across Emile’s thin neck and the tiniest wound smiles there, then yawns, and the blood breaks black down his shirtfront and Emile falls, gagging and dying, yet my heart springs full and my fingertips tingle as I draw my rapier and prepare to run this white man through and what true soul among us would dare question my rights now.

  Pistols at Twenty Paces: Lacroix v. Thigpen

  On the Last Recorded Duel in Hancock County, Mississippi,

  April 23, 1866

  Philip Lacroix, 51,

&nb
sp; Colonel, CSA

  He robbed me more grossly than Grant, more deeply than Lincoln, and these twenty paces pale compared to the one thousand miles and more I walked from that captured officers’ camp in Illinois where snow seeped through shoe soles so cold I cut felt from my hat to patch them warm and dry and back home the courthouse burned down—damn that Gen’ral Butler, I’d hang him were I the governor—and with it went all the county records—deeds and land titles and all—my slaves were freed and stole what all they could carry and after I’d taken such good care of them as God set forth for me in dominion, so this traitor and coward and former friend, who ate of my lunch Sundays after church, could take my lawful owned cattle and claim them for his own, after I branded their hides while my darkies held them still. The smell of torched flesh in my hair and nose, that odor so like a battlefield, while a persistent wind, like this one, blows brittle leaves and cools the sweat burning on my skin and the judge hollers, Fire.