THIRTY
War news from the northern border provided the only glimmer of hope for accord with England, but among the manufacturers of New England there was nothing but gloom. Maddie saw reason to hope, but she continued to live frugally. Among her Low Country neighbors were many who lived life as if nothing had changed in the past ten years, and Heywood took advantage of the bankruptcies and depressed land values. Within months, he proudly announced that his acreage matched Ethan’s, a piece of news that Maddie greeted with relief. She saw her husband going back to his old self, a man with far more patience for his children.
Flares of temper and arguments over Maddie’s funds declined significantly, but she feared that her holdings had declined more than was safe. Despite a lingering concern, it was easy to fall into a familiar rut, the one she had been born into. Her world was centered on home and family, maintaining both with an eye on the weather and the condition of the rice beds. Experiences in England were transformed into a series of mental etchings, as if she had only perused an illustrated guide to London without leaving the Low Country. The onset of the sickly season was her social marker, not the Ascot races.
With Caroline on her lap, Maddie sat at her desk in the morning room she had designed to catch the light but not the heat. Johnny scratched away on a piece of slate, making letters as his mother had shown him, but he soon turned his chalk to the stone hearth. The day’s lesson was apparently over. “Shall we move back to town tomorrow?” she asked John, to distract him before he made the walls his canvas.
“Can I go play with Willie?” he asked. Leaving the plantation for the townhouse held little interest for the four-year-old. In his little world, one house was where he lived across the river from his cousin Willoughby, and the other house was the one with a gap in the wall where he could easily reach his cousin David’s garden. He would put up a fuss if he was in town and wanted to visit Willie, who resided on Church Street, and he stomped his feet when he wished to be with David but could not take the boat downriver by himself. Maddie relished every display of temper, every tantrum, because they represented tight family bonds that meant so much to her.
The ink pot had to be kept out of Caro’s reach, which made it difficult for Maddie to dip her pen. The baby squirmed and Maddie released her, to toddle off in search of other amusement. Before a single sentence could be composed, John was whining and Caro was crying. The quill went back into the stand as Maddie set about the task of isolating the warring parties.
“Who are you writing to?” Heywood asked. He swept Caro into his arms and leaned over the desk to examine the blank page.
“If it were possible to write in peace, I would be writing to my stepfather,” she said. She was in the habit of sending him a note for his birthday and another at Christmas, their connection grown thin over time. Maddie had not heard from the Admiral for over a year.
“Mr. Prioleau stopped on his way to town,” Heywood said. Maddie hoped that her husband did not see her cringe at the mention of the name. Whenever the sheriff had to sell off property for unpaid debt, Mr. Prioleau was called in to manage the transaction. “Fertile land, on the Black River. We can have it for a good price, with a small encomium to Mr. Prioleau for his trouble. I leave tomorrow.”
“You can’t go into the swamps at this time of year,” Maddie said. “Surely you can wait until September.”
“That is what everyone else is thinking,” he said. “I’ll get there first, while the other planters are waiting for the end of the sickly season. That time comes, and the rice lands are in my hands before they can shift off their seats.”
“Do we need another plantation so far away? It’s days to Georgetown.”
“Haven’t I done right by you and the children since the day we married?” Heywood pouted, to best express his displeasure at being contradicted. In front of the children, he would never raise his voice.
“It isn’t that at all, dearest,” she said. “I’d rather you here with me and a thousand acres poorer than to see you go.”
“A month at the most,” he said. “You’ll need to sign some contracts when I return. Just this parcel, love, and we’ll have enough for our needs. The Tafts second to none.”
“Then will you be satisfied? This will be enough?”
He put Caro down and took Maddie into his arms, ignoring his daughter’s protests and his son’s demand for equal attention. “Are you proud of me, of what I’ve accomplished?” he asked.
The tone of his voice sent a chill through Maddie. What she had thought was a return of old Heywood had been nothing more than a brief respite. He was still plagued by a mania to accumulate land and possessions, to compete with Ethan when he could not hope to outshine Stephen’s glory.
“Come home as quick as you can,” she said. “And then you’ll have to sign a contract with me. Promising to settle down and mind what you have without looking to see who else has something you don’t. You have me, two fine children, and many more to come. Now isn’t that enough?”
In spite of their children clinging to their legs, whining, and the lap dog yipping in chorus, husband and wife kissed as if they were alone. “One week,” Maddie said.
“Three,” Heywood replied.
“A fortnight.”
“Sixteen days.” He held her chin in his hand, as if he had to commit her features, flushed thought they might be, to memory. “I will not linger a minute longer than necessary.”
The Second War of Rebellion Page 50