by Karleen Koen
This was a slave custom. Barbara had seen the overseer, John Blackstone, do it when he hunted with the slaves on First Curle. As the one who had killed the stag, she was to mark herself with his blood. It made the stag’s might and cunning hers.
“You don’t have to do it—” began Colonel Perry, but Barbara was already taking off her glove. Blood warm on her fingers, she marked her forehead, then—obeying some impulse—her cheeks.
One by one, the slaves followed suit, dipping their fingers in blood, marking themselves; Colonel Perry and Cuffy did the same. Barbara could see that Beth was shocked at the blood drying on her face, as were Captain Randolph and Mrs. Cox’s grandsons; but they were too polite to say anything. They were careful of her; the story of her taking Bowler Cox’s horse from him was known everywhere.
When the morning’s hunting was done, she knelt by the fire to watch slaves hang her stag from a tree and begin to gut and skin it.
She and her neighbors were hunting. The men were provisioning for winter, now that the weather was cold enough to keep the meat, but also, she saw as she joined them, taking time away from plantation and duties, from wives and family, to perform a ritual of hunting—and something more, which she could not quite articulate: a kind of gathering, around hunting, that somehow strengthened their friendships.
They were kind about her joining them. Margaret Cox used to hunt with us, said Colonel Perry. And I loved it, said Mrs. Cox. I loved the quiet of an early morning in the woods. I loved the hunt. The challenge of aiming true.
It was interesting to listen to the talk, when hunting was done, as everyone stood around the fire to warm himself and drink a potent, hot rum punch made in an iron pot right over the fire. They knew who beat his wife and slaves, who put trash tobacco into hogsheads, who was on the verge of losing his plantation.
She had learned that they thought Klaus Von Rothbach had made an excellent choice in his widow because of the land and family connections she would bring to him if they married. She had learned that the Governor was greatly disliked, that the quarrels between him and his Council and members of the House of Burgesses had been so strident that letters had come from England, from the Secretary of State, reprimanding everyone. They wanted a different governor. Even now there were men in England—Virginians—doing what they could to see that another man was appointed in Spotswood’s place.
Since the men talked of everyone else, they must also talk of her, she realized. She thought about that at night, when she was home from the hunting. They had plenty to say. She smiled a little at the thought of what they must say. Much. She had not been still since Hyacinthe’s disappearance.
There was no word of Hyacinthe, despite the reward, despite the descriptions posted at every ferry on the river, despite the word spread at all county courts, at all churches, by special order of the Governor, who sent her letter after letter. “Come to Williamsburg,” he wrote, “until your servant is found.” She declined. He had traveled to First Curle to see her, but she, with John Blackstone as escort, had been on her way past the falls, a dangerous journey of several days, to talk with people settled there, to spread the word that there was a reward for Hyacinthe if he could be found. For weeks, she had ridden from one end of the county to another, the weather finally stopping her. Nothing else could have. I will not wait patiently at home, she’d said to Colonel Perry. You would not.
Many times at night, she did not sleep, but paced the floor, thinking of Hyacinthe, wondering if he was held captive by some savage tribe somewhere, their slave. There was an agreement between the Iroquois and the colonists that runaway slaves would be hunted down and returned, dead or alive. Be strong, be brave, she whispered to Hyacinthe in her thoughts. There was an ache in her throat that was his absence; unshed tears, her grandmother would have said. She missed her grandmother. It would have been good to have the Duchess’s strength and presence in this time. But since she did not, she imagined what her grandmother would have done, and acted accordingly. No wonder they talked of her. What was it Bolling had called her in their last quarrel? Shopkeeper and fool.
So you’re a shopkeeper now, are you? he’d said, hands on his hips, head cocked, glaring at her. Did he ever do anything but glare at her? You’ll ruin the only landing for goods this far upriver, as well as a fine plantation.
Only if the razor was dull: She remembered. They might have been partners in the storehouse, in the rolling house; instead, she’d told him to take his share of the goods and be gone.
Now which of us is the fool? she’d asked him, glaring back, mimicking him, hands on her hips, her head cocked to one side. Me with my place on the river, or you, with none? He had so swelled with anger that she’d thought he would burst right there on the spot where they quarreled.
Colonel Perry joined her at the fire and spread his hands to it; her thought of Bolling went away. Barbara smiled at his battered hat and scarf.
“There’s a juggler downriver,” he said, “I’ve bought his services for my Christmas supper. You’ll spend tonight with us. Beth is determined, and when my daughter becomes determined, nothing may change her mind.”
Sweet liar. He was the one determined. He knew that tomorrow, on Christmas Day, Roger would be dead one year. Every day, no matter the weather, he rode over to visit or had Cuffy row him upriver, so that the sight of him walking into her hall had become as much a part of her life as seeing the slaves assemble at the kitchen house for their food, as Blackstone’s walking to the house to greet her every morning and talk over the chores of the day, as the sound of the bagpipe jarring through the woods in the evening, a Jacobite military tune, their good night.
Klaus Von Rothbach was back. His sloop had been seen downriver, Margaret Cox told her. Barbara had walked in cold and rain to the second creek, but the sloop was not there. But then, it would not be. She had made Bolling take his goods from the storehouse. It was now hers alone.
There was in her heart a great yearning, a wildness like a fever. Hyacinthe’s loss, atop Roger’s and others: Too much. Too much loss. She kept going back to the kiss on the rooftop, to the passion there. When you come back from your voyage, Captain, she’d said to him, and his eyes had gleamed. And then, after Hyacinthe’s disappearance, the kiss, the desire seemed large to her, the reasons not to lie with him small. She might just take him—never mind his widow—take him with a smile and a kiss and a coupling and show no mercy, let out all the wildness and grief in passion and flesh.
“I’m going to go home now,” she said to Colonel Perry.
“What? No more hunting?”
“I’ve killed a stag.”
“But there are others in the woods.”
“I don’t need others. I have this one.”
“So you killed him to see if you could?”
“Yes, I think I did.”
“Will you hunt again?”
“I don’t know.”
“You still have blood on your face.”
She wanted to leave it on. She didn’t know why. He led her to a stump, so that she could mount her horse.
“Would you like an escort?” he said to her.
“I know the way.”
“Be careful, then.”
“I am always careful.”
“No, my dear, you are not.”
You are brave, heedless, extraordinary, he thought, watching her as she rode away. Watch over her, said the archangel, take care of her; show her the way. What way? Why did he dream this, the same dream coming to him once or twice a week, waking him, leaving him frightened? Even prayer did not quiet the fear. What was taking place inside him was too strange. Everything within him struggled and flailed at the thoughts that came.
“I think you, like Lady Devane, should go home,” he heard a voice say.
Perry turned; it was Beth, his daughter—his joy, as he always called her, except that she was not very joyful these days. She watched him with grave eyes, saying nothing as he went day after day to Lady Devane’s. She did no
t understand. She was bewildered by his devotion to Barbara, bewildered and jealous. My regard for Lady Devane does not lessen my love for you, he tried to tell her, but her heart was young. It did not understand.
“Do you think so, my joy?”
“Yes, I do. I think you ought not to hunt anymore this year. Cuffy can kill whatever else we might need. I think you ought to rest. You look so tired, Father. It frightens me. Do not go to Lady Devane’s tonight. Send Cuffy to escort her to our house. You had another dream, didn’t you?”
“I did. Yes, my dear.”
“Well, that frightens me, too.”
Perry put his arm around Beth, felt her solid flesh. Her robustness, her youth made him aware of how frail he was; she was only a year younger than Barbara.
A man kept appearing in Perry’s dreams, the handsomest man he had ever seen, like some archangel with blue stones for eyes, an angel who had fallen to earth. Take care of her. Show her, the angel commanded. He’d told Beth a little of the dream, for she knew him too well not to know that something disturbed him.
There was a roll and surge inside him. Everything was changing. He could feel it. Barbara had told him much of her grandmother, making him smile, making him almost see the Duchess, with her white cat Dulcinea, her cane, her footman; making him see Annie and Tamworth Hall and the large portrait of Barbara’s grandfather in the Duchess’s bedchamber. She always says, said Barbara, pursing her mouth and frowning in imitation, Everything changes, and nothing does. Some great test was coming to him, greater than any he’d known.
“I think you’re right, my joy. I will go home and rest, and I will not hunt, as you say, anymore this year.”
“Good.”
The dream included Beth, the joy of his life. She turned her back on him in the dream. Things were shifting between them. He saw that, and could not stop it because he did not understand. Why? He asked when he woke at night with the feeling, when foreboding moved through him, fear, a wishing to pull away, to hide himself. Why? I have been Your faithful servant. Why?
Because everything changes, and nothing does.
“SHE WILL return soon,” said Thérèse. “I must go. We spend the night at Colonel Perry’s tonight.”
But she didn’t move from Blackstone’s narrow bed, in the overseer’s cabin that had once been Odell Smith’s. She put her hand up and gently grabbed his beard, thinking to herself, I like your face, John Blackstone—those eyes of yours, so bright, so alive with life. She traced the line of his nose, wide, flaring, sensual, the lips inside the halo of beard. Lover and friend, cher, she thought, how glad I am to have found you.
He sighed, a great, heaving sound, coming up out of his body like a groan, and leaned his heavy head into her neck; she rubbed her bare foot against his back and thighs. He was so tall that he could not put all of his weight upon her. When he stood, his head came to the ceiling, so that he had to stoop. He towered above the slaves and most other men like some kind of merry giant come to them.
He was kissing her neck now, his mouth moving down to her breasts, to each tip.
“Why do you smile?”
“Because I am a man, and you are a beautiful Frenchwoman, and you are in my bed, and what we are about to do again, before you must go, makes me happy. Doesn’t it make you happy? Move here, Thérèse, and let me look at you.”
It was his laugh—booming, zestful—that she had first noticed. That, and his kindness to the slaves. The same as you and me, Thérèse, he’d said to her of the slaves, as much my friends as anyone I know. I am a slave, too, for the years George of Hanover’s judges have decreed I must serve, but unlike the slaves, I’ll be free someday.
He did everything hugely—laughed, ate, drank. Both she and Madame were amazed at the amount of rum he could consume without falling over. At the slaves’ ring shouts, which were dances slaves danced upon certain nights when the moon was a certain size, a dance in a circle around a fire, the music from their throats and from drums and rattles they’d made, from flutes of wood, he would sit and watch and drink, and finally, near the end, stand like a tree rooted to the spot and sway to the music, calling out words he knew in their language—moon, fire, feet, rum—calling out the slaves’ names—Jack Christmas, Moody, Mama Zou—while the slaves laughed and moved to dance around him, to celebrate him and his largeness. Friend, they called him, clapping and stomping and singing, Blackstone, they sang, brother.
I like that man, Madame had said, after her journey to the falls with him. He can be trusted. And after Odell Smith left them she’d said: Thérèse, I am going to make him overseer at First Curle.
Blackstone pulled Thérèse on top of him.
“Touch me,” he said, and the mouth inside the halo of beard was no longer smiling.
She was ready, like some woman of the streets, like some bitch in heat, because she knew the pleasure that was coming, his mouth on hers, his hands, gentle hands, moving her easily to his pleasure, to hers, as if she weighed nothing, the essence of them, the masculine, the feminine, equal, wanting the same thing. The ring suspended from a chain around her neck cut into her.
“Move it,” he said, his eyes slitted almost closed.
She had not taken off the chain since the day Madame Barbara had given her the ring. Thérèse held it in her hand tightly a moment before leaning forward to put it upon the sill of the window behind them. Blackstone grabbed her hips and sat her back down against him hard, and the movement brought such pleasure that she forgot the ring.
He kept the movement between them going, ground his teeth, arched back his head and said several words she did not understand. Were they some of his barbaric Scotch? Were they African? Finished, he opened eyes that were bright and clear, and moved her off him; he made a place for her against his belly, put his hand to the sill, took the chain, held it up, looked at the ring. It was a mourning ring, of the kind given at funerals to those who loved the dead one best.
“Tell me.”
Tell him? Lover, friend, companion, man, boy: Madame Barbara’s brother, Harry, Lord Alderley; her dear lover, gambling in the South Sea, gambling too hard, too far, dying.
Thérèse said nothing, took the chain and ring from Blackstone. How to describe that mad, wonderful time when everyone must dabble in stocks, when everyone knew a footman or actress who would never work again, because they had bought South Sea stock and sold it, for huge amounts. How to describe its fall: no one believing at first; then a doom spreading, like a crimson stain, everywhere. Harry had owed much money. The boy in him could not face the loss.
Blackstone pulled a blanket over them both, rolled a leg over her, a heavy leg, imprisoning her. A tear was rolling down her cheek. He reached out a finger and touched the tear and brought it to his mouth and tasted it. Ah, she liked that about him, his appetite, that he must taste all of life. And he made himself happy with what was. Look at that tree, Thérèse, look at that moon, look at the slaves dance. What beauty, he said. Large Brother, the slaves called him, Large Heart.
If not for this, she thought, moving from the bed, finding her gown to put it on again, stopping a moment to savor her exhaustion, I would go mad. Spring. They were going home to England in the spring, home to London, to narrow streets and lanes, too many buildings, people everywhere, the street vendors with their cries, walnuts to buy, old clothes, fish and oysters, to life, teeming, crowded, cruel, vital, alive. But that was three full months away. Winter, said Madame, we have only to get through the winter, Thérèse. Madame might return to Virginia—indeed, she said she would—but not Thérèse. She would never return to this colony of river and wood and slave, never, not even for the warm hands, long legs, and very loud laugh of John Blackstone, overseer, Jacobite traitor, taster of women’s tears, buried treasure, found by her here in the midst of a Virginia forest. Blackstone was not enough. Nothing was enough to make up for the life here, a life that caused the loss of Hyacinthe.
AT FIRST Curle, Harry was in the picket-fenced yard. He barked and jumped up to
smell Barbara’s skirt and hands.
“Mighty hunter,” Barbara said to him, kneeling down to scratch his head and back, “I now share your title. I killed a stag today. Did Thérèse banish you to the yard?”
Walking into the parlor, she saw that John Blackstone sat in a French chair. Thérèse stood behind him, cutting his hair with a pair of scissors. His beard had been trimmed, and for a moment Barbara almost did not recognize him. He might have been a Tudor nobleman, with his neat beard, except that in the portraits in the gallery at Tamworth, those noblemen wore pearls in their ears, like dashing pirates, and their beards were dyed blond or a brighter red than even Blackstone’s. They were peacocks, her grandmother had said, for the peahen who ruled them—Queen Elizabeth.
“I am made civilized for Christmas, Lady Devane,” Blackstone said, standing up. He took a long look at Barbara, at the blood of the kill still on her face, and then laughed. The sound filled the room, the way his size did, and warmed it, the way he did with his vigor and talk and interest in everything. He knew more about slaves than men who’d been here the whole of their lives. He knew about tobacco. He knew about secret paths through the forest and the best night for stars.
Be damned if you’ll give that criminal the job I ought to have, the second overseer across the river had told Barbara when she rode to tell him she was putting John Blackstone in charge of First Curle. And so, like Odell Smith, he had left her service. She could have hired another, but the words “Tobacco will sell low; pull in your horns and live small” had echoed in her mind.
I came as close to dying as a man can on the prison ship over, Blackstone had told her during their journey together. It took me a year to feel like a whole man again. I vowed from that moment on to live each day as if it were my last. This is my home until my indenture is ended. I will know it, and I will love it. I do know it, and I do love it. She had liked that, repeating the words as she sat out at night on the steps to see the stars or watch the slaves do a ring dance: I will know it, and I will love it.