by Karleen Koen
“And what do they do then?”
“They throw the tobacco out, but you’ve still paid freight for it to cross to England. And a duty when it arrived in London.”
“Thank you, Mr. Smith. I’m going to ride on, explore a little.”
Every day, she tried to ride out farther and farther, learn the boundaries of the plantation. When she knew every horse path, every tree, every field, then she would know First Curle and be its mistress in the truest sense of the word.
“If you’ll wait a bit, Lady Devane, I’ll saddle a horse and come with you. I don’t like you to be out alone.”
“No, thank you. What you do here is far more important to me.”
“Suit yourself.”
For some reason, his words made her temper flare. He was rough, unlettered, a man who knew nothing but these woods and creeks—so Colonel Perry had explained. “So I shall suit myself, Mr. Smith, at every opportunity.”
He’s a good tobacco man, Colonel Perry had said. She could feel Odell’s eyes on her as she rode away. She didn’t like him, good tobacco man or not. Neither did Hyacinthe. Once they were out of the overseer’s sight, she stopped.
“I have no idea where we are, Hyacinthe. Give me the map.”
Behind her, he reached into his jacket and pulled it out. She opened up the crude map and looked at it, tracing her route from the house today. She was at some kind of spring. It ran out of the ground and through grass, which became high reeds.
“Do you see a spring on this map?” she asked Hyacinthe, irritated at being so at the mercy of her ignorance.
He shook his head.
She followed along the outermost edge of the reeds, careful not to let her horse stumble in the marshy ground. Eventually the ground cut away to water.
“Is this the first creek or the second?”
“I don’t know, madame. Look, madame, there is a path there, through the trees.”
It was little more than a footpath; with the limbs of trees on each side brushing her shoulders, she followed it until it gave onto a clearing in which stood two crude houses, one large, one small, nothing to them—weathered, unpainted boards, a roof, no porch, no grace or amenity of any kind. The ground around was clear of grass. Looking at the map, she saw that a slave quarter was marked on the other side of the first creek. The two tiny inked rectangles on the map might be these houses. If it’s so, thought Barbara, I must remember to mark the spring on it when I am back at the house.
She trotted around the smaller house. A garden. A wooden chair propped against the house. Hyacinthe pointed, and she urged the horse toward a whipping post. There was a crude pillory near—two boards fastened to posts, the boards cut to make holes to imprison a person’s head and arms.
Breaknecks, these were called in England, for if the person inside fainted, his neck might snap against the wood. It was one of the sights of London: someone carted to a pillory, the condemned following a cart to which he was tied, while inside the cart stood a man who whipped him; if he survived the carting, he was then imprisoned in the pillory. She had seen such a thing when she’d first gone to London. She and Jane had seen it, and Jane had cried. How cruel, she had said, weeping.
“Look, madame,” said Hyacinthe. “What is that?”
There was a narrow box lying on the ground, the size of a man, hardly larger than a coffin. Crude breathing holes punctured its top.
Barbara dismounted, went to the box, put her hand to the closed lid, opened it. The hinges clanged in the silence all around them. No birds are singing, thought Barbara. She let the lid bang shut. Thank God there was no one inside. What would she have done if someone had been inside?
“What is it for?” asked Hyacinthe.
“I don’t know.” But she did. Odell must lock unruly slaves inside that box, until they were unruly no more.
There was a collection of harnesses and shackles hanging on the outside of the house.
Were those for rebellious slaves also? wondered Barbara.
One of them looked as if it locked over a head. New ones have to be tamed, Odell had said the other morning. It is up to them how easy the taming is. Sometimes old ones have to be punished.
You’ll need to buy slaves, Colonel Perry had told her. There is a ship due in our part of the river in another few weeks that will have slaves on it. Buy them now, and by spring, they’ll be tamed to work your fields. If tobacco sells low, you need more plants to harvest, more tobacco to dry and sell to stay even with yourself. Thus you need more slaves.
She stood before the slave house, one long, crude rectangle. Barbara peered into the doorway, Hyacinthe off the horse, right beside her, her partner in this. The house was built up off the ground, and the floorboards did not all join.
They stepped into the silence. There was little here to mark a life: bed boxes or woven mats for sleeping, a blanket folded neatly, a homemade broom, shirts hanging from a peg, a broken clay jar holding a leafy arm of forest ivy, an iron pot or two at the fireplace, some baskets.
On one wall were drawings, some kind of wild deer with two long horns spraying upward, and figures of men hunting, the men shaded dark, drawn too long for real men, but their length somehow made the sense of the hunt, of motion and death, come alive. Was this their world, before?
Outside, she shivered and rubbed her arms. What a dark feeling this clearing gave her.
“They stare at me, madame.”
“Who does?”
“The slaves. At night, when I go to sleep, in my dreams, they stare still, as they did in Williamsburg. When you were ill, madame, and lay in the bed, they came up to me, and they talked to me in their language. I could not understand what they said, but I saw what was in their eyes. The same that is in the eyes here.”
“And what was that?”
“Hatred, madame, for you, for all like you, masters.”
“Hush, Hyacinthe. Give me the map. Let us see how to leave this place.”
At the creek, she let the filly drink, leaning over to pat her neck, thinking of Hyacinthe’s words. What would those at home think of what she had just seen? Dark, that was how she felt inside, dark and suddenly despairing.
It would be hot soon. The afternoons here were unbearable, but that would be changed in another few weeks, said Colonel Perry. Then you will see the beauty of our autumn. Tomorrow, or the day following, she would go across the river to the two quarters there, to meet the two overseers, see the fields, the slaves.
The filly had finished her drink. Barbara urged her along the bank through the thick trees growing there, until she saw a plank wharf jutting out from the opposite bank.
This was where they’d landed day before yesterday. I know where I am, she thought. First Curle, I begin to know you.
“Look, madame, Captain Von Rothbach,” Hyacinthe said.
He was walking onto the plank wharf. In the water was the dinghy Hyacinthe had found yesterday in the barn.
“Come across, Lady Devane,” Klaus Von Rothbach called, waving to her. “Come for a sail.”
Barbara splashed the filly across the creek; for a moment, as the water rose past her waist, before the filly began to swim, she thought, This creek is deeper than I thought. Hyacinthe made a frightened sound.
“Hold tight to my waist,” she said. “Don’t be afraid. The filly will swim us across, you’ll see.”
That was the treasure of the second creek, that it was deep and wide enough for a small sloop to sail into. It had given the Bollings their own small port, Colonel Perry had said last night, tapping the unfurled map with his finger. The river was too shallow and dangerous farther up. Tobacco ships couldn’t sail it. She had the last safe place to anchor and load tobacco. Planters farther inland would come to her landing and leave their tobacco to be loaded, and she was allowed to charge them a small fee for it.
“I didn’t think to see you again so soon,” said Barbara. I’m glad to see you, she thought, a little more glad than I thought I’d be.
�
�But I said I would call. Where did you find that filly?”
“Colonel Perry loaned her to me.”
“You haven’t been here three days, and Colonel Perry loans you one of his famous horses? You’ve charmed him—but then, I would imagine you charm anyone you set your mind to.”
He’s Swiss, said Mrs. Cox. From Hanover, I think, said Colonel Perry. A bastard, whispered Mrs. Cox, a Swiss nobleman’s son who came over with Swiss miners to hunt gold on some land the Governor owns. He ended up sailing for Bolling, ended up captaining his sloop, ended up marrying Bolling’s niece.
“Ride the horse to the house,” Barbara said to Hyacinthe irritably, the dark from the slave quarter still in her. Why not spend the afternoon sailing? Why not?
“I want to sail with you, madame.”
Good. The mood she was in, she needed a chaperone. There was no telling what she might do. She hadn’t felt this way in a long time, this dark, this headstrong and ripe for trouble. What’s happened, she thought, to make me feel this way again?
As Klaus rowed the dinghy out into the river, Barbara unpinned her hat and raised her face to the sun. The warmth of it was like having her face cupped in a lover’s hands. A lover’s hands. It has been a long time since I’ve had a lover, she thought. Not since Charles.
“So,” he said, speaking now in French, “how have these first days been?”
“Interesting.”
She’d begun a letter to her grandmother, the Duchess.
“Dearest Grandmama,” she’d written, “you possess a small house and an orchard and three overseers, two of whom I have yet to meet, but will, and fourteen slaves, not all of whom I have seen, for a few of them are upon other sections of the plantation, where the two other overseers are. The slaves’ names are Kano and Sinsin and Belle. The men have marks on their faces, Grandmama, scars across their face and chest. It is frightening to see, but I am told it is their way; it is a mark of their tribe. Their hair is braided, and carved twigs are twisted into the braids. They have holes in their ears or in their noses, where once they wore jewelry.
“The slaves toil half naked in the fields or at the tobacco barn, like engravings of savages in books. The women, an old slave and a girl, wear a simple blouse, a short skirt. The men wear a cloth wound over and around their thighs and buttocks or ragged breeches. They have names like Green, Grandmama, and Mama Zou, Cuffy, Jack Christmas, Moody, Quash. Tomorrow night, I give a supper for them. The overseer says I must wait until tomorrow, because it will be expected that I give them rum, and they will dance all night in my honor; Sunday they do not have to work, anyway, so I save him a day of having to force them to work when they’ve danced all the night before. Colonel Perry says I must buy more slaves if I mean to plant more tobacco next spring.”
“Have you any idea how beautiful you are?”
Klaus wasn’t rowing anymore, but leaning at his ease against the rudder, watching her, not the least bothered that her servant was with her. There was open admiration in his eyes.
“The day before we met,” he said, “I was at the Harrisons’ seeing about my sloop, which has a hole in her keel, and Philip Ludwell came to visit. He’d seen you in Williamsburg, and all he could talk about was how beautiful you were. I thought he exaggerated, the way men will, but he didn’t. He did not describe you vividly enough. Your hair glows like gold. Your skin is like fresh cream. Put your hat back on so that you don’t burn. I should hate to see you burned.”
She could feel something rise up inside herself. Lazily, provocatively, meeting his eyes directly, her stare bold, challenging, Barbara tied the hat back upon her head, before turning away, trailing her hand in the water. Those in England would have said, at this moment, that she resembled her notorious mother.
Yes, I know how beautiful I am, she thought. I know how to make men think they love me, how to make them crow and dance and fight over me. It was one of the reasons she’d left England, not to begin an affair again with Charles.
Moody, restless, brooding, she leaned over the edge of the dinghy. They wouldn’t love you, you know, her brother Harry had said once, if they knew what was behind your face.
Yes, they would, she’d answered back, and Harry had kissed her, surprising her with that sweet, swift brother’s gesture. You’re right, he said, they would, they’d be wildly in love.
Well, now, Grandmama, do I write to you of the spark that just leaped from this man to me and back again? Do I write of the despair in my heart at this moment, as if life has no meaning, no purpose, and therefore, what can dallying hurt? I want to forget the dark of the slave quarter. I want to forget the dark of Roger’s dying. What better place than in a man’s arms? There is no forgetting like that forgetting. A Virginia flirtation? Why not?
The woman reflected in the river stared back up at her with a girl’s eyes. No, the girl said. Barbara knew this girl, her fifteen-year-old self, another self, strong in what she wanted, strong in what life meant, believing in virtue and truth and honor.
It was love, said Philippe.
She put her hand in the water and made her image disappear. I shall do what I shall do what I shall do, she thought.
The dark was back inside her, that dark of a year ago, a dark she’d fought to put behind her. It was back, and it was deeper.
Those in England would have shaken their heads.
Chapter Five
STAY HERE,” BARBARA TOLD HYACINTHE, AND HE, REMAINING in the dinghy, watched her climb up the rope ladder of a large ship. It was October. They’d been here in Virginia a little over a month.
I hate it here, thought Hyacinthe. The dinghy in which he sat lurched against the hull of the large ship beside which it was anchored.
There was a sound; Hyacinthe, who was sitting on the plank that served as the dinghy’s seat, made a startled movement and immediately stood to look in every direction, but there was nothing to see except the ship and the river and the wild, untamed, distant shore.
He leaned out dangerously over the water that separated the dinghy from the tall slaver. “Slaver” was what the colonials called these ships that appeared in the river; their cargo, their trade, was slaves from Africa. He tried to put his ear against the hull, but the dinghy moved as he leaned, and he nearly fell into the river. Still, he held his breath, listening.
Through the gentle lapping of the water, he heard a groan. The sound again; the inside of the hull was its source. Moving back as far as he could, as fast as he could, to the stern of the dinghy, Hyacinthe fell. The sun beat down strongly and made the ache in his head worse, but he didn’t care. Around his neck was a silver collar, the crest of the Earl Devane engraved in it, and under that was a necklace with a saint’s medal at the end of it. Clutching the medal in one hand, he closed his eyes and prayed the prayers Thérèse had taught him.
“Hurry, madame,” he said between prayers, “hurry. This is not a good thing.”
Barbara was aboard the slaver, on the middle deck. Some ten slaves stood apart from her on deck, naked, their skin shining. They would likely be rubbed with oil, Colonel Perry had warned, a slaver’s trick to make them look their best. Chains looped around the slaves’ legs from one to the next, so that if one fell, all must fall. On other portions of the deck, behind the mizzenmast, near the bowsprit, were more slaves, in smaller groupings, similarly chained, watched by sailors. There were no children among them, and few women.
“Only look here, Lady Devane,” the captain was saying, “here are some fine samples for you, in their prime, young and strong. They will work well for what you desire.” The slaves drew back as the captain and Barbara approached. Their ankle chains scraped the wood of the deck.
“Here, now, this one”—the captain touched his finger to the round arm of a woman—“she’ll make a fine breeder. She had two little ones hanging on her legs in the slave market at El Mina, so I can swear to her fecundity.”
Where are her children now? Barbara thought.
Her mind went to Hyacinthe. He
came from the slave market in Paris, was one of the offspring of the market’s stable of French slaves who bore children to be sold. I was reared to be sold, he’d told her once. I always knew it. I always knew I would leave my mother. Other than pity for him, she’d never thought what that had meant to the woman who bore him. She’d never really thought what such, in turn, must mean to him.
“Lady Devane is interested in field slaves,” said Colonel Perry. He had insisted upon accompanying her. He and two other planters had taken an interest in this ship, which meant that besides sharing in the gains or losses, they had sent word to select planters, ones who could be counted upon to be able to pay, that the ship was in the river and might be boarded. Coins were little used here, there being no mint to make them and not enough of them anyway, so the slaver’s captain would be paid in bills of exchange, made good by tobacco merchants in London, or in tobacco itself, or in the promise of tobacco. Colonel Perry had personally vouched for Barbara, who now watched as the captain opened the mouth of a slave by pulling back hard on the man’s hair and wedging the slim end of a wooden club into the man’s mouth.
“I’m an honest man who does not try to sell old slaves for young. Be still, black devil, let the lady look you over,” the captain was saying. “They ought to thank me for not taking them to the West Indies. There we dispose of them by what is called a scramble. We agree on a common price beforehand with the planters, land the slaves, place them in a large yard, and throw open the gates of the yard to those who wish to take them. You’ve never seen such a sight, Lady Devane, as planters seizing anyone they can, the confusion, the shouting. The poor devils are astonished and terrified. No, indeed, you don’t realize my kindness, do you?” he said to the slave in whose mouth the club rested.
There was an interminable moment in which Barbara found herself looking into the slave’s eyes. Then she turned around and walked away. She went to the side of the ship, close to the opening of the hole, which was covered with a crisscross hatch of wood. The crisscrossings made air openings. A smell came from the hole. She took a step or two closer and peered down. It was too dark to see anything, but the smell was too strong to be ignored. It was not a mere smell, but a stench, of death and disease. This was where the slaves were kept when they were not on deck—in the hull, a slaver’s hull, especially built to hold as many as possible, she’d been told.