Devil Water

by Anya Seton

  Jenny refused to be distracted by the shad. “Evie,” she said, “are you sure that Mr. Harrison actually did b-buy Rob, and not some other planter?”

  Evelyn shook her head. “We’ve been through this a dozen times, my pet. You know that I wrote as strong a letter as I could about your Rob’s virtues, and of the value he would have for any planter. And you know that Madam Harrison replied that her son, Ben, had sent an overseer to Yorktown to await the arrival of the convict ship, and had duly secured Rob when he landed. What more do you want?”

  “Oh, I know --” said Jenny. “Eve, you’ve been so kind, but I’m fair distraught, and Mr. Byrd knows none of this?”

  “Certainly not,” said Evelyn. “I’ll handle Father when there’s need, nor have you reason to fear him. You are not bound, Jenny, even to me. You paid your own passage money.”

  “Aye --” said the younger girl on a long breath. She thought of the little strongbox which was hidden under her clothes at the bottom of her chest in their cabin. It held money: 360 golden guineas. There had been more, but she had paid 20 of them for her passage. It was Charles who had supplemented the £300 of dowry Lady Newburgh had given Jenny, by slipping a purseful of louis d’ors into her hand before they parted in Paris. Jenny had felt herself very rich. In London she had tried to buy presents for Lady Betty and the children, and been gently refused. “ ‘Tis little enough you have, my dear,” had said Lady Betty. “No settlement at all for a girl of your birth, and you must spend it wisely -- young as you are, again you must keep an old head on your shoulders. Ah -- ” she had added with vehemence, “that woman could easily have doubled your portion -- and should have!”

  Jenny did not think Lady Newburgh ungenerous; she tried not to think of her at all; or of the past which she had cut herself away from. Particularly in this moment, when she had begun to dread what was in store for her in Virginia. Jenny glanced down at the middle finger of her right hand, which bore the Radcliffe ring. It was of gold, with a tiny edging of chip diamonds around the bull’s head crest and the motto Sperare est timere. The motto had never before seemed baleful, yet now it did. There was indeed fear in hoping.

  Oh, why did I want to come, Jenny thought, leaning her head against the painted cabin wall. Why was I so sure? Suddenly she could not even remember Rob’s face, except for a heavy frowning bar of black eyebrows above grim eyes as they were when she had parted from him after their day on the moors. All that had happened later seemed unreal, the kisses in the Lee garden were a fantasy, and the sacrifice he had made in rescuing her from the Duke of Wharton was no proof of love. Decency alone might have moved Rob -- or even revenge. Jenny slumped down on a stool and stared at the ship’s ruffled spreading wake.

  In the saloon William Byrd, having finished a gay informative letter to Lord Orrery, made cipher entries in his secret diary to cover yesterday’s activities. He noted that he had arisen at six, having slept ill, that he had said a prayer, and read Greek and Hebrew. That he had “danced his dance” as best he could on shipboard. This was a form of skipping exercise he had begun years ago in his London youth, at the suggestion of a physician. It prevented the gout. So did the one-dish meals he stubbornly adhered to. Lucy used to jeer at him for his eating habits, but Maria did not. Before they left England he had even converted her to his boiled-milk breakfasts. He added a few ciphered scribbles to indicate that he had lain with his wife yestereven and thereafter not neglected his prayers, when Captain Randolph entered the saloon and said heartily, “Well, Colonel! You’ll be home now in a cat’s wink! It’s not been a bad voyage, has it?”

  “A most pleasant one,” said Byrd. It was agreeable to be called Colonel again, a title he had acquired here by mustering the Charles City County Militia. “I’ll never sail with any captain but a Randolph. You’re as able as your brother Isham.” He smiled at Edward Randolph, who was the eighth-born of the Randolph brood from Turkey Island Plantation up the James. Byrd knew all the Randolphs well and had been an intimate friend of the Captain’s father.

  “It’s been a memorable voyage for me, sir,” said Randolph while the ruddiness deepened beneath his weather-tanned skin. “I’ve never before had the honor to carry two beautiful young ladies in my ship!”

  “Oho!” said Byrd merrily. “I’ve noted a kindling in that sea-blue orb of yours. Towards which of the young ladies does Cupid aim his dart?”

  Edward Randolph hesitated, and Byrd, who had scant doubt of the choice, thought that the Captain would make a satisfactory son-in-law. He was personable, despite some missing front teeth, and a rolling gait; both defects attributable to the seafaring life. Ned was of excellent family, and followed a profession of tremendous use to a planter; without the good-will and services of ship captains, the planters could not subsist. Moreover, thought Byrd, a husband who spent half his time at sea or abroad would probably leave his wife in her father’s home. A gratifying arrangement.

  Randolph, with some embarrassment, dashed this dream. “Miss Byrd is very handsome, sir, but -- ” He hesitated, being naturally unable to say that he found Evelyn too tall, also too cynical, almost masculine in her bluntness and self-command. “It is Miss Radcliffe,” he said reddening further. “She is so -- well -- in a word, sir -- I’ve come to love her immoderately. She -- she troubles my sleep. I must have her.”

  “Indeed,” said Byrd, raising his eyebrows, and recovering rapidly from what was, after all, no great disappointment. Evelyn would find a better match than this, and there was no hurry. “Have you acquainted Miss Radcliffe with your passion?” he added.

  “No, sir -- at least I’ve tried but she’s so modest and delicate, I believe she doesn’t understand me, and I admire her for it. Besides, isn’t it true that you’re in a way her guardian? I thought it best to speak to you first.”

  “I am not officially her guardian,” said Byrd. “She seems to be a singularly rootless young woman, though well born, and is virtually penniless, I believe. You must remember that!”

  “ ‘Tis of no consequence,” cried Randolph rashly, knowing that his eldest brother would not agree. “I want her. And shall woo her lustily in the months before I sail again!” His blue eyes snapped with fervor.

  “Well then,” said Byrd, laughing, “you have my blessing.” Randolph bowed and glanced through the porthole. “You’d best get on deck, sir,” he said. “We’re drawing nigh.” William Byrd stepped out on the poopdeck just as the lookout in the bow blew a shrill horn and the gunner fired off a cannon. Byrd went up to Evelyn and put his arm around her. “There is Westover, my dear,” he said. “There is your birthplace.”

  Jenny roused herself and went to the starboard rail. They all looked towards the north bank and saw a dingy wooden clapboarded house of one story, and an attic which had dormer windows. Nearby clustered some small boxy brick huts. The home-house was set back from the river on a ragged lawn, beneath huge poplars. The house was in need of paint, and a pane of glass had been broken in one of its lower windows; someone had stuffed a blue shirt in the hole.

  “I remember the house as much larger,” said Evelyn without inflection.

  She was thinking that this Westover, for which she had felt though never admitted homesickness, would hardly make a decent lodgekeeper’s cottage on any of the great English estates she had visited with her father. Byrd’s thoughts were much the same. He noted the broken window, the lawn full of dandelions, and that, alerted by the ship’s horn and cannon, two Negroes in open shirts and rolled-up pants had come drifting out from behind the house. They waved languidly and pointed west up the river. Otherwise there was no sign of welcome. Byrd next perceived that his wharf had collapsed, and most of the planks had fallen into the water.

  “Where’s John Fell!” cried Byrd in a shaking voice. “Where are my overseers? What have the damned villains been doing?”

  The Captain also stepped out on deck. “We shall have to go on to Harrison’s Landing,” he said shrugging. “I can’t unload here.”

  “So I see,�
�� said Byrd furiously.

  Evelyn gave Jenny an ironic smile, not devoid of sympathy. “You’ll know what you came to find out sooner than we thought,” she whispered, “since we are going directly to Berkeley.”

  The Captain shouted his orders, the ship proceeded the mile and a half upriver to Harrison’s Landing, which was as bustling as West-over’s had been deserted. A huge warehouse stood by the long wharf. It was filled with hogsheads of pickled beef, naval stores, and last year’s leftover tobacco crop ready-packed for loading. Nearby there was a half-built sloop in its cradle; the Negroes swarmed over it hammering away under the direction of a white indentured shipwright. In the several little shops behind the warehouse, Negro coopers and blacksmiths plied their trade, while a burly overseer in a cocked hat and a silver-buttoned coat walked to and fro across the landing. He had a pistol stuck in his belt and he brandished a stout cane while bawling out oaths, admonitions, and threats. The overseer’s bellowings grew louder after he hailed the Randolph and hurried all the available slaves to catch the towline and help maneuver the ship alongside the wharf.

  The sailors put out a gangplank and the overseer came aboard, his purplish moon face glistening, his jaws working on a quid of tobacco. “Welcome, Cap’n Randolph, welcome!” he said officiously. “We wasn’t expecting you, though Mr. Harrison’ll be mighty glad to see you! What’ve ye brought us?”

  “A flock of Byrds,” said the Captain, with a chuckle. “Bound for Westover, but we couldn’t land.” He turned to William Byrd, who had been standing by in annoyed silence.

  “I doubt that you know Matt Corby, sir? Mr. Harrison’s chief overseer -- has come here since you were last home.”

  “How d’e do, sir,” said Corby, squinting at the elegant Mr. Byrd without must interest. A folderol English coxcomb, this long absent owner of Westover seemed to be, and’d have plenty of trouble getting his plantation in order, by what that shiftless John Fell said.

  Matthew Corby had contempt for badly run plantations. Twenty years ago he had been ‘prenticed to his father, a London butcher in Smithfield. But there were many other sons, and Matt hadn’t cared for the butchering trade. So he bound himself for five years to go out to Virginia, and had long ago worked off his indenture. Gradually he had developed a talent for overseeing. By constant vigilance, the frequent use of the lash and other necessary punishments such as the branks and the salt rub, he got more work out of the Berkeley slaves and bond servants than any other overseer on the James. Or maybe in the whole of Tidewater. Corby was inclined to think so. He knew his worth, and Mr. Harrison greatly relied on him too, not being himself a gentleman for vigorous measures.

  “Things seem lively at Berkeley,” said the Captain, eying the busy landing. “I see you’ve another sloop a-building.”

  “Aye,” said Corby, squirting a long stream of tobacco juice over the rail. “Can’t complain. Good season so far. I keep the black buggers sweating away, and we’ve a fine stand o’ ‘bacca plants already. The manor house is finished since ye was last here, Cap’n.”

  “Indeed,” said Byrd interrupting with a frown. He was not accustomed to being ignored, while it was impossible not to feel envy at all this evidence of his neighbor’s prosperity. “So there is a new ‘manor house’? Are we to be permitted to visit it, or shall we stand here in the sun indefinitely?”

  “Oh, to be sure. To be sure,” said Corby airily. “Just step up the hill to the manor, Mr. Harrison’s always glad of company.” He turned his back on Byrd to ask Captain Randolph whether he had any nails for sale in the cargo.

  “Insolent dog,” said Byrd beneath his breath, glaring at Corby, who was completely insensitive, and had never concerned himself with the fine points of Virginia hospitality.

  Byrd collected his womenfolk -- Evelyn, Maria, Wilhelmina, and Jenny. They silently stepped across the gangplank, traversed the landing, and trailed up the dusty road away from the river.

  “My head feels so queer,” said Wilhelmina, clinging to Mrs. Byrd’s hand. “Wobbly, and the road goes up and down like the ship.”

  “Yes, dear,” Maria murmured. She had a headache, and the sun had grown fiercely hot. She was, moreover, almost certain that she was with child.

  Evelyn said, smiling at her little sister, “You had to find your sea-legs on the ship, Mina -- remember? Now you must lose them again!”

  William Byrd and Jenny said nothing.

  They came to a low wooden house much like Westover; here the Harrisons had been living when Byrd was last home so briefly, five years ago. Beyond it, and set farther back from the river there was now a new mansion, an imposing three-story structure entirely made of rosy bricks. Above and on either side the central doorway there were nine tall windows across the front, with twenty-four glittering panes in each. Beneath a classical pedimented roof there ran an elaborately carved cornice, painted white. The cornice was unfinished on the east side, some fifty of the bracket-like modillions were missing. As the Byrd party drew nearer, Byrd saw that the great brick walls were laid in Flemish bond, each header glazed dark and sparkling like a sapphire.

  “ ‘Tis vastly handsome,” said Evelyn astonished, staring at the mansion.

  “And how did Ben Harrison get it done!” muttered her father. “ ‘Tis a bit like the work of Gibbs himself. How’d that lad find such building here? That is what I want to know!”

  “You’ll soon find out,” Evelyn answered. “Isn’t that Mr. Harrison in the doorway?”

  From then on there was no lack of hospitality. Jenny and Maria particularly, being unused to it, were overwhelmed by their welcome; by the Harrisons’ eager cries of astonishment and delight, by the flood of questions, and the tumultuous scurryings of house-slaves bearing punch, tea, rolls, cake, dark red slices of ham, syllabubs; and dishes of thick yellow ice cream, as soon as the kitchen boy had finished churning the freezer.

  Jenny had no appetite, yet she could not resist the ice cream, which was flavored with coffee and rum. She nibbled at it and sat quietly at the big polished mahogany table watching the Harrisons, whose speech she found rather hard to understand. It was not quite like any English she had heard. It was slower, thicker, and the ends of words trailed off. And the Negroes talked much the same way.

  Benjamin Harrison the Fourth was a tall, heavy young man of twenty-six. He wore his own chestnut hair clubbed back, and a simple snuff-brown suit with a plain ruffled shirt. He also wore riding boots, since he was in and out of the saddle all day long, and detested walking. He was in fact languid by nature, though horse racing and cockfights could excite him. Otherwise he liked nothing better than to sprawl in the coolness of his beautiful new rooms playing cards and drinking punch with whatever company turned up at Berkeley. Yet he had many responsibilities as a planter, which he did not evade, and he was thoroughly aware of his position as owner of one of the largest plantations in Virginia -- and of his position as husband to Anne Carter.

  This young woman was short and would have been pretty except that her body was swollen, her face puffed by pregnancy, though she carried herself proudly with the elegant condescension of a princess, because she, and all of Virginia, so regarded her. She was the daughter of the redoubtable “King” Robert Carter of Corotoman on the Rappahannock; he who was President of the Council, owner of nearly a half-million acres of land and a thousand slaves, a potentate feared and respected by the entire Colony.

  The third member of the Harrison family was Ben Harrison’s mother. Betsy Harrison was cousin by marriage to William Byrd and they had known each other all their lives. She was tall, stout, and her hair was as white as her widow’s cap, though she was only forty-nine. She had been widowed for sixteen years, and had made shift herself to run the plantation, send Ben, her only son, to the College of William and Mary, and at his majority turn over his inheritance undiminished. She had been gratified by his marriage to the heiress Anne Carter, but had refused to be awed by it. She herself had been a Burwell, a more aristocratic name than plain Carter. She
adored her son, and found it galling to play second fiddle both in his affections and in the management of the household which had once been all her own.

  The friction between mother and daughter-in-law was obvious to Evelyn, who was amused by it. Evelyn had relinquished for herself any further active emotional roles in life, but she had no intention of moping, and she remembered enough of Virginia to know that one must amuse one’s self with the smallest of dramas. There was however a drama of considerable moment which concerned Jenny. It would be better not to broach the subject in front of her father, and Evelyn intended to wait until she could get Mrs. Harrison alone, though her plan failed.

  When they had finished eating Mrs. Byrd craved permission to lie down. Wilhelmina trotted out to the kitchen-house, where the servants received her warmly. The others crossed the spacious hall to the Great South Parlor. This room was handsomely paneled, it had a marble fireplace, it had cornices and archways to the other parlor. The Turkey rug and walnut furniture had recently come from England on one of Harrison’s own ships.

  The company all sat down, and William Byrd said to Ben, whom he had known since his birth, “I fear I haven’t properly congratulated you on this very fine house you’ve built yourself. Has it been finished long?”

  “It’s not finished yet,” Ben drawled, stretching his legs and unbuttoning his vest. “Oh, we moved in last month, but the capstones aren’t on the chimneys -- nor all the what-you-call’ems carved un-dah the outside cornice. By the way, sir -- ‘twas that damned fellow you made me buy, that jailbird -- he built a lot of the house. It was his idea to make a pedimented roof, and the carved cornice -- seems he’d been a mastah-buildah once.”

  “My dear Ben!” cried Byrd, half laughing. “I haven’t a notion what you’re talking about. I vow, Cousin Betsy,” he added with a ponderous wink at the elder lady, “your young sprig here has had a drop too much! Me make you buy a jailbird, indeed! Why, I wouldn’t wish one of those convicts to my worst enemy.”