by Karleen Koen
“Blood becomes you, Lady Devane.”
The dried blood of her morning’s kill was dramatic, vivid, startling, upon her face.
“I killed a stag today. The musket hurt my shoulder when it fired.”
“They’ll say when you go home to England that Virginia has made you a savage. They’ll blame me and add another year to my indenture once they know.”
Blackstone flirted, making her want to laugh. Disrespectful, impudent, her grandmother would say of him, though he was not; she would like him, just as Barbara did, for the impudence and joy with which he faced life.
The afternoon outside was darkening. Winter here can be fierce, Colonel Perry had warned her. Have all tasks done—firewood cut, grain stored, meat salted, candles made—for there will be days when the horse paths are impassable, and you are alone with yourself and God and all your deeds, good and bad, to remember.
Thérèse was lighting the lantern they set in a window each night for Hyacinthe, so that he could see his way home to them.
“I think we should plant both Digges seed and the old seed,” she said, picking up a map from the table, as well as the quarrel in which she and Blackstone were engaged. He was excited about her idea of growing a special sort, and willing to go further even than she, willing to plant nothing but Digges seed. That was why she had chosen him as overseer when Odell Smith left: After the journey with him, she had a feeling he was a gambler, like her—maybe even more of one than she was, unafraid to risk.
“What if the Digges seed does not take? What if the seedlings don’t survive the spring? We know how the other tobacco grows, for you’ve grown it here spring after spring. What if we have little or no tobacco for next fall’s casking? My grandmother would not be pleased. And you will not be the one facing her, Blackstone. I will.”
You must plant more seed than you now think, said Colonel Perry. A seed for the blackbird, a seed for the worm, a seed to grow, is what we say as we plant.
Blackstone stayed where he was, towering over her, his words falling with force like stinging rain. She liked that about him, too, that he fought for what he believed.
“I will nurture those seedlings as if they were my own babies,” he said. “I will sleep out in the fields with them. I will have Mama Zou say special prayers for them.”
“I’ve decided. A mix,” said Barbara. “A mix of our old seed and the new. We have to learn this new tobacco, Blackstone, see how it does. You can’t know that, yet.”
“You’re a stubborn woman, Lady Devane.”
She made him a bow, the way one man would to another. “Thank you.”
He had found a marsh he thought they might drain. He was excited about that, too, making her tell over and over again Major Custis’s story about the tobacco grown in one.
Major Custis has a theory, said Colonel Perry, that a man, like the plants of the earth, endures death and rebirth inside himself over and over again, and unless he is willing to endure that, he will die inside. Major Custis would say—here Colonel Perry had pointed to the lilies in the garden—Look, look at those. Their long, pointed, green leaves are listless now, brown, dying back to nothing. They rest, they go within, back to the earth from which they come; they ask not why, but know that in the spring there will be green furl and buds: hope become visible, faith become visible. And then glorious bloom.
Are you saying there will be glorious bloom for me?
My dear, there can be nothing else. Endure your servant Hyacinthe’s absence with faith, I beg you; trust in the Lord—and Barbara had had one of those mad moments in which she imagined she saw Roger in his eyes. Except that Roger would not have told her to trust in the Lord, for he had not believed in God. He had been fashionable and disdainful in his disbelief. Yet she did not sleep well that night. She tossed and turned and dreamed confused dreams of Devane House, of running down long corridors at St. James’s Palace holding lilies in her arms.
“We are not finished, you and I. Sit,” Thérèse said, picking up the scissors. Obediently, Blackstone sat down again in the chair.
Barbara sat, too, and Harry leaped into her lap. She picked up a comb to comb the dog’s hair. The firelight played over her and the dog in her lap, and all was shadow and fire, light and the darkness of the dried blood against her pale skin.
“I’ve walked all around the marsh I would drain,” said Blackstone, “We would need to make a dam at one end and a canal at another.”
“How long do you think it would take?”
“Well, now, that depends upon how many men work upon it. With five men, I think we could be done within a year.”
“So that a year from spring, I might have it as a field?”
“You might.”
The beds were being made for tobacco seeds. The ash of burned cornstalks, as advised by Colonel Perry, was being tilled into the beds, and soon the precious seeds would be sown.
As soon as the last frost was gone in the spring, when she would be leaving for London, the slaves would begin to till the fields, breaking up the winter earth. All day they hoe, Blackstone said. It is hard work. Precious seedlings would be moved onto the small mounds of earth called tobacco hills.
There came into the parlor the far-off sound of a wolf’s howl. It was part of the winter here. Barbara touched the dried blood on her face, thinking that when she returned to London she would send Colonel Perry Roger’s book of drawings by the sixteenth-century Italian Palladio. Colonel Perry wished to build a large house for Beth, as part of her dowry; he would enjoy the delicate, intricate craftsmanship Palladio displayed. She could just see his fingers tracing the drawings. It would give her pleasure to send them. She could see his surprise, see him gently turning the pages, absorbed. He had an eye for beauty, as Roger had had.
“Grandmama,” she had written in a letter, “I know you would like him very much.” And to Colonel Perry she had said: Come to England. I want you to meet my family. There was an idea in her, to introduce the two of them, the Duchess and Colonel Perry. She had the oddest feeling, like a tickle, that they would like each other, and more. It made her want to laugh, the thought of her grandmother and Colonel Perry.
Her mind went to Devane House, roamed the vanished chambers and parlors Roger had created. Her mind was much on Devane Square these days, on salvage, repair, beginning again. The fire spat and flickered in the fireplace. Barbara smiled at the idea of bringing her grandmother a beau, and slowly combed Harry’s coat, amicably talking tobacco with Blackstone. She thought, now and again, about Klaus Von Rothbach and what she would say to him when she saw him again. Thérèse finished cutting Blackstone’s hair.
Barbara excused herself and went up the stairs, the dog following. She opened the wooden box and sorted through the land deeds there. “Buy more land,” she always wrote to Randolph in Williamsburg, “as much as you can.” The new-bought land lay beyond the falls of the four rivers, because all the land along the rivers themselves was sold, even if not settled. They own it, Mrs. Cox told her. Colonel Perry, and Captain Randolph and Robert Carter. They hold it in keeping for sons and grandsons.
And now, I, too, hold something in keeping, thought Barbara, something not Grandmama’s, but my very own.
DOWNSTAIRS, THÉRÈSE said, “You flirt with her.”
Blackstone laughed and pulled her into his lap, but she slapped at him and stood up. “Do you desire her?”
“I desire all women, Thérèse, old and young. She is beautiful, but far above the likes of me. You have my heart. I merely admire her.”
“Have you a heart? Does any man?”
“Don’t be angry, Frenchwoman, because I think a woman beautiful. Come and sit on my lap and give me a kiss.”
“No.”
He stood, walked out into the hall. She couldn’t help but admire the length of him, the way he walked and moved, the way his head sat upon his shoulders.
“There is always and only now, Thérèse. Do not spoil that.”
“Don’t you spoil it,�
� she snapped.
Fiercely, Thérèse swept up his locks of hair and beard, carried them to the fire, threw them in. She knelt, thinking of Harry, of his unfaithfulness, which she had ignored because it was easier to do so and also because one did not expect men of his station to be faithful, particularly not to women like her, servants. She had seen the admiration in Blackstone’s eyes, like snapping sparks of a fire. It had made her angry. What are we to them? she wondered. Nothing? Everything, Harry had said, but still he had loved others. It isn’t love, he’d said.
What was it, then?
Spring: In the spring she would be far and away. And in the meantime, she might give John Blackstone her body, but she would be quite careful about her heart.
THE AFTERNOON was darkening, and the housekeeper began to move from table to table, lighting candles. “I see her at church in the Perrys’ pew. Old Colonel Perry has taken a great fondness to her. He is always visiting.”
The housekeeper of the plantation that belonged to William Byrd, absent in London, gossiped the gossip of the county to Klaus, who was doing what he always did once in from a voyage, riding from plantation to plantation, catching up on news and seeing friends, orienting himself again to home. He had not gone to First Curle, though his mind circled around and around it, around her who lived on it.
“There is no word of her missing boy, Captain Von Rothbach. She rode all the way to World’s End looking for him, talked with those foreigners settled there—in their own tongue, I’ll have you know.”
The falls of the river were called World’s End. The foreigners she spoke of were Huguenots, Protestants the Catholic kingdom of France had exiled. William Byrd settled them above the falls, upon uncultivated land his father had laid claim to years earlier. Byrd had given ten thousand acres to the Huguenots, though they farmed only a hundred; ten thousand acres was nothing to men like Byrd and Perry, who held deeds to hundreds of thousands. I will have much land, thought Klaus, if I marry my widow. The thought was comforting, as if the land would erase the memory of Hyacinthe.
“She brought an Iroquois up from Williamsburg to see if he could find any trail the boy might have left, but the Iroquois found nothing. They say that’s when Odell Smith decided to quit her, at the sight of the Iroquois. She asked the Governor to send out the rangers to hunt for her boy, but the Governor said they must wait until spring, when the mountain passages were open and clear. He wanted none of his rangers caught on the other side by early snows.”
“Yes, I saw the boy’s description posted at the ferry crossing.”
The boy was not a slave. Klaus’s uncle told him she had granted Hyacinthe his freedom while she was in Williamsburg. How was your voyage, Klaus? Bolling asked. You don’t look yourself. She’s thrown me out of the storehouse, you know. Dumped my half of the goods as close to the river as she could and told me begone.
Why?
She said, Because the razor wasn’t dull. It killed my brother dead as dead can be.
“They are posted at every ferry on this river, Governor’s order. She has closed down the other two quarters of First Curle. When Odell Smith left, she offered his post to that wild man, that Scotsman, and since Ephraim Crawley had been second overseer all these years, and not a criminal either, as he put it, he left her service also. The word is she is not going to plant those quarters across the river; she is going to plant only at First Curle.”
“Only at First Curle,” Klaus echoed. Odell was working for his uncle now, at a quarter beyond the falls. It had been good to know he would not have to see Odell. Now I can forget it, he’d thought to himself. I wish I could forget her as easily.
The door to the library opened and Beth Perry entered, stopping at the sight of Klaus.
“Captain Von Rothbach. I had heard you were back. How good to see you.” She held out a book to the housekeeper, who took it from her.
“Finished it, did you? Well, take another. You know Colonel Byrd will not mind.”
“How was your voyage?” Beth asked Klaus.
He did not answer.
“Where did you go?” Beth persevered.
“Jamaica, Curaçao, Tobago, Martinique. Islands. Blue waters so clear you see the fish swimming near the bottom. Lagoons hidden like precious pearls. Mountains rising up like a backbone in the distance. An adventurer’s world, a pirate’s world.”
Beth went to the shelves that held Colonel Byrd’s many books, which he shared with neighbors. It was the custom here, those having more, to share. She touched the spine of one. “Lady Devane recommended a book called The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, but I do not see it here. You know, of course, that her boy is missing.”
“Yes, I’ve been told.” Klaus felt an impulse to bolt, to leave Beth Perry talking in the middle of a sentence.
“She told me he was like a child to her. I can’t imagine a slave as—Captain Von Rothbach, what is it?”
“It grows dark, and I have a long ride back home.”
“Don’t ride home. Come and stay the night with us. Lady Devane will be there.”
“No, it is impossible for me to spend the night.”
The thought of seeing her before he was ready made him abrupt.
“You’re coming tomorrow?” Her fine eyes—she had her father’s eyes—lingered on him.
“Tomorrow?”
“Christmas Day. Everyone is invited. Your uncle will be there. Father has hired a juggler.”
“Yes, I’ll be there.”
“Good.”
PERRY’S HOUSE was filled with people. In every room, tables were piled high with food: maid-of-honor cakes dripping with icing, turkeys, hams, bits of dried fruit made sticky with rum and sugar. The tables were lit by large silver candelabra, molded in a heavy pattern of leaves and flowers. They had belonged to Beth’s mother. Barbara had brought her silver trays and candlesticks from First Curle. Brown bottles of wine and rum were everywhere, the wine a clear Madeira Colonel Bolling brought. There was Colonel Perry’s peach brandy, made from the peaches in his orchard. There were platters of trout and roasted chicken, pewter bowls of pecans and walnuts.
Barbara had spent days walking through her woods to find vines with some green left on them, to pick pine branches and cones. Last night she and Beth and Thérèse had made vine-and-ivy wreaths, which hung now on the walls. This morning, early, she had scattered the pine sprigs and cones among the trays, and the smell of pine woods mingled with that of the food. She wore a pine sprig in her hair, the green needles vivid against the red-gold, against the heavy black velvet gown she wore, the lace on it as white as new snow. There was not enough room for everyone who had come, so she sat on a window ledge watching the juggler.
“I’ve something to tell you.” It was Valentine Bolling. All day she had managed to ignore him.
Barbara unfurled her fan with a snap, began to fan herself rapidly. “I am watching the juggler.”
“I’ll be bringing barrels of pork and hogsheads of tobacco into the rolling house.”
She turned her head abruptly, the pine needles a slight green caress against her cheek, to look him in the eyes.
“It is custom to greet each person this day with compliments of the season, or with ‘Christ be with you.’ Compliments of the season, Colonel Bolling. You most certainly will not.”
“It’s the law. You cannot stop me. You have to accept hogsheads if I pay the fee. He who has a rolling house at the river has to store any hogsheads brought him.”
“You cannot tell me there is no other rolling house to which you can take them.”
“There is no other rolling house close.”
Barbara snapped shut her fan. “Tell me the law again.”
“He who has a rolling house at the river must store the hogsheads of his neighbors in it.”
“Hogsheads. Of tobacco. Not barrels of pork. Bring your hogsheads, but nothing else. And you’d best put the fee into my hand that day, or something may happen.”
He g
lared at her, unrepentant and challenging. “What might happen?”
“They might fall in the river. I would be so sorry, of course, but there they would be.”
Once a day, she or Thérèse walked to the rolling house to count the hogsheads accumulating inside the long shed. Sometimes planters stopped by to tell her they’d left hogsheads. Sometimes they simply left them. Everyone was preparing for spring, for the first tobacco ship. Bolling had kept an indentured servant to live in the storehouse throughout the winter and early spring to keep an account of the hogsheads brought by neighbors, as well as to sell items from the storehouse.
Bolling had provided prizing, the packing of tobacco leaves into a hogshead. He bought raw tobacco from his neighbors, as did Colonel Perry. It was in Barbara’s mind that she must bring someone to live in the storehouse, to sell its goods, to keep accounts, and—why not?—to prize, as Bolling had done. All the things necessary—the ropes, the pulleys, the heavy stones used to weigh down and press the tobacco leaves tightly into the hogsheads—were there. Why should she not, like her neighbors, buy tobacco?
“Where is Captain Von Rothbach?” she asked him.
“He’ll be here.” Bolling looked Barbara up and down. “He will escort his lady.”
Barbara held the fan up so that only her eyes showed. “I promise not to flirt too dreadfully.”
She promised nothing. She was wild to see Klaus, and angry. She’d learned today that he’d been to see the Randolphs, the Farrars, the Eppeses. But not to see her. He ought to have called, if only to condole with her on the loss of Hyacinthe, which he would know about. Someone would have told him. Pride stirred up that part of her that knew how to be both ruthless and cold, the tease, the flirt, deadly, said Harry. Beware what you do.