Devil Water

by Anya Seton

  She twisted in the saddle to stare at him. “Is that the Bible, Rob? Since when do you quote Scriptures?”

  “Well,” he said a trifle embarrassed. “I’ve been reading them o’ nights at times, when you’re asleep. There’s meat in them to mull over when a man’s working.”

  She gave the soft little chuckle which he hadn’t heard in years. “Long as I’ve known you, you can still surprise me, Rob Wilson,” she said.

  They went up Westover driveway. The fields and the Quarters looked the same, but there was no house in the place it had been. Perplexed, they rode on, almost to the river, then pulled up their horses in astonishment. There was a new brick house at Westover. It was long and low and graceful, flanked on either side by brick dependencies. It nestled like a jewel beneath the towering poplars, and seemed as much part of its setting as the lawn and the new gardens and the bright river flowing nearby.

  “Wuns!” said Rob in awe. “What a beauty! Four chimneys -- and look at that doorway! Mr. Gibbs himself might have done it; I never could!”

  “You could” she said staunchly.

  He shook his head. “I’m a master-builder, not an artist. There’s art in this house -- and maybe a bit o’ luck too. Look at the fenestration. It’s perfect.”

  Jenny did not know what fenestration was, and as Rob seemed lost in professional admiration, she dismounted, and banged the handsome brass knocker. The door was opened by Eugene, who greeted her with beaming smiles and cries of welcome. “Lawd above, Miss Jenny -- yo’ shuah is a sight for sore eyes. Step in, step in! They’s all in the music room!”

  Evelyn drifted out into the hall to see whom Eugene was welcoming, and gave a joyful cry when she saw Jenny. They rushed into each other’s arms, then stood back, both tearful, to look at each other. “You’ve not changed,” said Evelyn, tilting her head in the old way. “The wilderness suits you.”

  Jenny tried to reply that Evelyn had not changed either, but the words stuck in her throat. Evelyn had altered woefully. Her great dark eyes, glowing like coals, were sunk back in her head. She had grown so thin that the cords stood out in her neck, and the bones of her face showed sharply through the tautened skin. On each cheekbone there was a patch of red, not the fresh color of her early years, but a hectic crimson. Even while she questioned Jenny eagerly, she coughed a little, a dry hacking of which she seemed unconscious, and Evelyn was possessed of a feverish gaiety, an excitement which Jenny did not understand.

  The Byrd family were all at tea in the music room, and they also greeted the Wilsons cordially. Wilhelmina was not there, she had gone off on a visit to her Ludwell cousins, but Maria Byrd’s quartet were clustered around the tea table -- three little girls, Anne, Maria, and Jane. One boy, William Byrd the Third, who was nine, and the obvious darling of his father’s heart.

  “Here is my son,” said Byrd presenting him proudly to the Wilsons. “He supports me against the gaggle of women at Westover! You have a son too, did not Evelyn tell me?”

  “Not any more,” said Jenny briefly. They all looked at her rusty black dress, and there was a moment’s sympathetic silence.

  “God’s Will be done!” said Byrd shaking his head. “I know what sorrow it is to lose them, and I feel deeply for you. ‘Tis best not to think about it.” He turned to Rob. “How do you like my house, eh? I don’t wish to offend you, but Ben Harrison doesn’t lord it over me about his house nowadays!”

  “Your house is magnificent, sir,” said Rob. “May I look about?”

  Byrd was delighted, and nodded complacently while Rob admired the stuccoed ceilings, the carved, pedimented doorways, the paneling, the huge embrasured windows. He minutely inspected the monumental black marble fireplace in the parlor saying that the only thing he’d ever seen to touch it was the one Gibbs made for Lord Lichfield at Ditchley. In the hall Rob ran his hands down the gleaming mahogany balustrade and its carved spindles. He turned to Byrd. “How did you get such work done here, sir?”

  “Oh, we didn’t, not most of it!” said Evelyn, who was also watching. She laughed in a rather strident way. “We sent to England for the doorways and the balustrade and mantels. We weren’t niggardly with money, were we, Father!”

  “We spent no more than suitable,” said Byrd stiffly who had gone further into debt over the house. “We built from drawings in Salmon’s Palladio and Gibbs’s book. Evelyn was invaluable, she directed the builders we got from Williamsburg, and selected those of my people here who had the most aptitude for this kind of work.”

  “I congratulate you, Miss Byrd,” said Rob heartily. “You make a splendid architect.”

  “Oh, it gave me an interest,” said Evelyn in her mocking tone. “What else could an old maid do!” She was seized by a spasm of coughing and her father frowned.

  “I can’t see why that summer cold of yours hangs on so long,” he said. “You should be purged again, and I’ll give you ginseng root -- a sovereign remedy.”

  “My cold is nothing!” said Evelyn with an angry fierceness Jenny did not understand. There seemed something here beyond the usual sparring with her father. Evelyn acted high-keyed, exhilarated, as though she had cause for secret elation. It was a little disturbing, and when Jenny later found out the reason she was not entirely relieved.

  Byrd took Rob off to show him all the new outbuildings, which included two sumptuous necessary houses, each with a fireplace and five holes of differing sizes, to accommodate all ages.

  Evelyn and Jenny drifted towards the garden. Byrd had planted it with box and imported shrubs of every kind, including mulberries and wisteria. They sat down in the summerhouse, beneath a mass of honeysuckle. Evelyn leaned forward and began to speak in a breathless, excited manner. “Jenny, I’ve so longed to see you, there’s nobody else I can tell. He’s coming! Wilfred’s coming here at last!”

  “Oh, Evie,” Jenny whispered. “Eve, darling, can it be true . . . You’ve heard from him?”

  “Yes. I’ve heard from him three times since you left. The last letter was a year ago, he always says he loves me, and in that letter he said he too felt it wouldn’t be long before we met again.”

  “Is his wife -- ”

  “I don’t know, he never mentions her. But he said he wasn’t happy, and if there’s a divorce it wouldn’t matter here, nobody’d know, or even if there’s not a divorce,” added Evelyn sternly.

  “Mr. Byrd,” Jenny said, floundering, and still much startled.

  Evelyn raised her chin, the flush deepened on her cheekbones.

  “Father cannot stop me this time. I’m thirty years old, and I have my own property -- ‘Evelynton,’ which he finally gave me. Besides, he’s tired of having a spinster daughter around. He’s absorbed in his new family, especially little Will.”

  This sounded reasonable, and Jenny said after a moment, “I’m so glad for you, Eve,” she put her hand over her friend’s dry, thin, hot one. “When did you hear that Sir Wilfred was on his way?”

  “In a dream,” said Evelyn, with a tender reminiscent smile, her burning gaze looking into space.

  “A dream -- ” Jenny repeated, trying not to show dismay. “You usen’t to believe in dreams.”

  “I believe this one,” said Evelyn. “It was on the night of July thirteenth. I wasn’t quite asleep when I saw Wilfred standing beside my bed looking down at me. I saw him clear as I do you. He had on a green suit, and a cream waistcoat brocaded in a leaf pattern. Under his chin, pinned to the stock was a small dark tie -- such as we’ve never seen over here. He wore a white bag-wig with two rolls on either side his face, and his eyes held the rueful beckoning smile he so often gave me. He spoke to me and called me Lilith -- it was a joke we had.” Evelyn paused for breath, she coughed twice, yet she was smiling as she went on. “He called me Lilith because she was Adam’s first wife, and he found her far more fascinating than humdrum Eve.”

  “I see,” said Jenny, and now in maturity she did see many pathetic aspects of Evelyn’s strange love, which she had never glimpsed befor
e. “What did he say in the dream?” she asked gently.

  Evelyn clasped her hands, still staring into space. “He said, ‘You’ve had a long vigil, my poor girl, haven’t you! You’ve been faithful a long time to this laggard lover. ‘Tis over now, I sail today. I’m coming for you!’ “

  Jenny was silent. She did not know whether she believed or not -- yet there was a night when she had dreamed of Rob, and seen him the next day. There was also the time here in the old house at West-over, when she had had a vision of Rob in the wilderness and seen the very stream now called Fluvanna, and the hill she had named Tosson.

  “So you see,” Evelyn went on quite matter-of-factly, “if he sailed July thirteenth, he will be here any day, indeed I’ve been looking for a ship on the river this past month.”

  Against Evelyn’s certainty and exaltation Jenny had nothing to offer. Three months was a long passage, but by no means unheard of, if the winds were contrary, if there were storms, or if the vessel encountered pirates. Evelyn had always had a secret and uncanny sureness. She was imbued with it now. Though again she was coughing, the short dry hackings which she covered with a handkerchief.

  “Evelyn,” said Jenny, “you cough a good deal, dear, and you don’t seem well.”

  Her friend turned on her, showing the same fierce anger she had shown her father. “It’s nothing!” she cried. “A stupid cold! Why do you all harp so!”

  “It’s only that you want to be strong and at your very best when Sir Wilfred comes. Take the ginseng Mr. Byrd recommends, and eat a lot, won’t you, Evie?”

  “Oh I do!” Evelyn said, her anger gone. “I choke down all the eggnogs they give me, and -- you haven’t commented on my gown. Wilfred likes green. Do you think it becoming?”

  Of course! Jenny thought. That’s why she looks so different. Evelyn was no longer wearing the grays and whites of half mourning, her gown was a leaf-green velvet, over a hooped brocade petticoat of bottle-green.

  “It’s most becoming!” said Jenny. “It vastly suits you. Only you need a flower in your hair.” She jumped up and picked two marigolds.

  “There,” she said fastening them high to the left in Evelyn’s soft dark waves. She pulled a curl over one shoulder. “Now!” she said. “You look very like the portrait of you -- and as you did when Sir Wilfred last saw you!”

  Evelyn smiled, then frowned. “I hate that portrait because of the cardinal above my shoulder. The horrid bloody thing. I made Father put the portrait in the attic.”

  “How very silly,” said Jenny briskly. “You know, I believe you need diversion. Come with us to Williamsburg!”

  Evelyn stared. There was a touch of her old impatient scorn as she said, “Didn’t you understand what I’ve been telling you? I must be here when the ship comes, which it will do very soon.”

  Jenny thought of using reasonable arguments, that the ship might dock at Yorktown, and that wherever it docked Sir Wilfred would have no trouble finding Evelyn, yet she did not speak, for her friend went on in a happy voice, “You know it’s just occurred to me, Father’s going down to the Assembly next week. That’s probably when Wilfred will arrive, so that we may be alone together here for a while. I’m not in the least afraid of Father. But he does fuss so!”

  Down Jenny’s back there went a quick shiver. Evelyn’s speech was perfectly lucid, granted that it was based on a premonition, her tone in speaking of William Byrd was quite as it used to be, and yet -- Then Jenny realized another change in Evelyn. For the first time in their long friendship Jenny felt herself much the older of the two. How strange and disturbing to feel maternal towards Evelyn.

  During the two-day visit at Westover, Rob and William Byrd were unexpectedly congenial. Rob was impressed by Byrd’s new library, which contained nearly 4000 books in several languages, and he was impressed also to find that Byrd actually had read most of the books. Byrd warmed to Rob’s admiration and finally rather shyly asked if he would like to hear excerpts from some “English writing” he had toyed with. This writing proved to be a humorous, rather bawdy, and very informative “History of the Dividing Line” -- the boundary which Byrd and a large party had run between Virginia and North Carolina in 1728.

  Rob was highly entertained by it, and said so. He asked why Byrd did not publish the account, and was surprised to have his question shrugged off with a smile. “I take a lesson from the mother bear,” Byrd said, “who never permits her cubs to be viewed by the world until they are quite licked into shape.”

  Rob was startled by this modesty. Jenny was also, when Rob told her of it as they rode away from Westover. “How little we really know our fellow beings,” Rob said, and Jenny, thinking of Evelyn, agreed with a sigh.

  The Wilsons arrived in Williamsburg just before the opening of the autumn Assembly and consequent “Publick Times.” Nor would they have found lodging in that crowded little town except that Byrd gave them a letter to Mrs. Sullivan, owner of Marot’s Ordinary. Jean Marot had been a servant of William Byrd the First’s; and his widow, the inn’s landlady, now Mrs. Sullivan, was much indebted to the Byrd family. She finally produced a tiny room, which at least was private, and clean.

  Jenny was delighted. She hung out of the one window, watching the colorful traffic on Gloucester Street, as the Burgesses and Councilors streamed into town. Chariots and chaises rolled by, here and there a coach. There were many horsemen, and a few carts laden with produce for the market square. Presently a sedan chair appeared on the cobble sidewalk opposite Jenny’s window. It was carried by two Negroes in scarlet and gold livery, and obviously contained the Governor’s lady, since the royal arms were painted on the door and passersby all curtsied or bowed. The sedan chair stopped at the apothecary shop and Jenny watched, fascinated, as Mrs. Gooch emerged.

  “Hoops are evidently smaller,” Jenny announced to Rob, who was shaving himself at a cracked mirror. “And she’s wearing a broad leghorn hat over her own hair. Lots of ruching, but no lace. That striped gown is pretty. Red and white.”

  Rob grunted amiably, scraping away at his stubborn beard. “We’ll get you something to wear, besides that black. Something blue, I hope. I’ve a fancy for blue!”

  Jenny drew her head in and smiled. “There’s a milliner just down the street. I see the sign. Rob, have we money enough for new outfits for both of us?”

  “Aye, love. If we don’t go hog-wild. We’re going to enjoy ourselves on this trip!”

  At the sudden radiance in her face, and the grateful seductive look she gave him, he threw his razor onto the stand. He took a quick step and grabbed her against him. “So, my lass --” he said half laughing. “And have you that in mind? I’m more than willing. ‘Tis the best way I know to start off our junket!”

  He lifted her in his arms and put her down on the bed. She made a token resistance, for the pleasure of being wooed. And Rob did woo her; he kissed the tip of her nose, and her ears, he whispered love words, as he undressed her; until the wish for teasing play left both of them, and they stared into each other’s eyes with the grim, intent look of passion. Their bodies had always responded to each other, but this time they achieved a depth of response and a height of joy neither had known before. While afterwards they lay quiet -- floating in a blissful contentment. “Happy,” whispered Jenny in wonder, turning on his shoulder to kiss his half-shaven chin. “Happy. What a silly little word to express this feeling.”

  “Aye,” said Rob, and rested his cheek against the soft golden hair.

  The happiness lasted, with one exception, throughout their stay in Williamsburg. Jenny found a blue muslin gown at the mantua-maker’s, it was secondhand and consequently cheap, even after alteration. She embellished it around the neck and at the elbows with white ruffles. She bought a flat straw hat which tied with ribbons under her chin like Mrs. Gooch’s. She bought a small hoop petticoat, and cream-colored gloves and a pair of fashionable black kid slippers. Thus attired and having been told how pretty she looked by Rob, she felt herself suitably dressed, though not as e
legant of course as the rich planters’ wives who rode by in silks and satins. Rob had the tailor make him a maroon broadcloth suit of a conservative style, then added a small brown tie-wig from the wigmaker’s, and a cocked hat discreetly edged with silver braid.

  No longer feeling like back-country yokels, the Wilsons took in all the sights. There were horse races outside town, and they often went to see them. Rob would not bet. Jenny was a bit disappointed and thought briefly of her father -- of the York races and the lucky bets which had resulted in the purchase of Coquet.

  The Wilsons twice watched the mustering of militia on the market square. And Rob, who had not touched his pipes in months, was moved by the fife and drum corps to wish he’d brought them along.

  They ate sometimes in their own inn, but often they sampled the other taverns -- Blue Bell, Red Lion, and Wetherburn’s. The latter’s real name was the “Raleigh,” but the landlord, Harry Wetherburn, was so genial and influential a man that his personality pervaded the Raleigh, which was always crowded with Assemblymen. It was too expensive for Rob and Jenny to do more than drink a glass of small beer there.

  One evening they went to the theater to see The Beggar’s Opera. Rob had great difficulty in securing seats for this most popular production which had opened in London nine years ago, and made Polly Peachum, Macheath, and their songs, famous even here in Williamsburg. Eventually Jenny and Rob found themselves squeezed into a narrow space on a bench in the pit.

  From the moment that the curtains parted Jenny was enchanted. Doubtless the actors in this touring company were not exceptional. They did not have to be. The comedy carried itself, so did the songs and their familiar tunes and fresh, apposite words. Polly was pretty and appealing, her husband, the highwayman Macheath, was a swaggering gallant. As did the rest of the audience, Jenny followed their turbulent love story with breathless interest. She laughed and applauded when the rival wives Polly and Lucy sang in duet, “I’m bubbled.” -- “I’m bubbled.” -- “Oh, how I’m troubled!” --”Bamboozled and bit!”