by Karleen Koen
JANE, AFTER rummaging through the papers on Gussy’s desk, sat down and held out her feet to the fire. She ran her gloved hands over the beautiful gown she wore. She’d made her father stop in Petersham, where she and Gussy lived. There she’d knelt and pried up the loose floorboard in the parlor with her fingers, taking out the box there, opening it, looking at a pair of green leather gloves that smelled of cinnabar. They were the only gift she had ever accepted from Harry after she had married Gussy. She had always hidden the gloves, even though Harry was dead, even though Gussy, with his kind and remote wit, likely would not have minded, would rather have said, Oh yes, Janie, they are lovely. That Harry was a fine fellow.
Would you rather be right or be happy?
When Gussy opened the door, Jane was sitting in a chair, the green gloves upon her hands.
“Jane!” he said, not unfastening his cloak but crossing this small chamber to kiss her, not chastely, but fiercely. “Jane, my Jane.” Then, “The children—”
“Are at Ladybeth, still. I know, Gussy—every single thing. There is to be an invasion, and my father heads Tamworth and neighboring counties, and you, you are in it, too.”
He put his hand to her mouth, roughly for Gussy. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but this is no game, Janie, to prattle about—”
“No, it is true, and dangerous, and you, Gussy, are not going to do it without me.” She had always preferred King James over King George. After all, her first love had been a Jacobite, and he’d talked politics between kisses under the apple trees at Tamworth. She’d follow her heart, be Jacobite, too. Who would stop her? Her father? Her husband?
Harry gone, Jeremy gone; life was so short, so uncertain. She caressed Gussy’s face with soft green leather gloves. Whither thou goest, I will go. And where thou lodgest, I will lodge. These last months, she had been right, but not happy.
DIANA SAT down at a table, tapping her foot impatiently to the sound of March rain against her windows, paper, inkpot, pens, seal, wax, sand all laid neatly before her. She seldom bothered to write letters; in her girlhood, she hadn’t needed spelling and penmanship to get what she wanted. Swearing at her mistakes, she crossed through words and spilled ink here and there, but after a quarter of an hour’s struggle, she had down on paper what she wished to say:
Daughter,
Sir Hugh Drysdale will take Sir Alexander Spotswood’s place as deputy governor of the colony of Virginia. He will come to the colony aware of your family and your welfare, and you may put yourself under obligation to him. I desire nothing but your return to the home of your birth and the bosom of your family. Your second letter arrived in January. Everyone talks of your missing page boy. The Prince of Wales was filled with sympathy, asks of you and sends his regard.
Written by your loving mother this the tenth day of
March in the year of Our Lord, 1722.
She sprinkled sand over the paper and then blew it off, folded the paper into a square, melted wax, dribbled some of it onto the letter, and pressed her seal into the wax at the meeting of the folds. A footman came to tell her there was a visitor.
“I don’t want to see anyone.”
She frowned at a valentine, forgotten, left over from the month before. Today might have been a day in February. Rain beat against the windowpanes like the fingers of beggars’ children asking to be let inside. But there were far more robins in the trees in her garden than a month ago. Robin…the frown deepened.
Charles stood in the doorway of the parlor, Clemmie behind him. Clemmie gave Diana a long, blank glance before closing the door.
“Nephew, finally back from your journey, are you? I was writing to Barbara.”
Charles put his hat and cane upon a table, as if he had every intention of paying a long visit. “Were you?”
“Indeed, I was.”
“How are you?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“And Walpole?”
“We’ve quarreled. I wish the King would simply dismiss him outright and put us all out of our misery. It is all Robin talks of—when he will be dismissed, what he will do. The new rumor is that the King will make him an earl, to compensate, but Robin says he would rather remain a minister than become an earl. I’m quite tired of it. ‘You’ve been in disgrace before and survived it,’ I told him. ‘You can survive this.’ He can. He can survive anything, Charles. And, of course, he is making himself ill over the election. He and Sunderland fight for every seat in every town and borough they see an ally in. There have been betrayals Robin didn’t expect. I will be so glad when the votes are taken and things are more clear.”
“Sunderland and Wharton remain friends, I gather.”
“Friends? I never see one without the other. Have you heard about Hyacinthe?”
“One of the first pieces of news told me when I arrived in London. And I saw the broadsheet. I gather the woman weeping in the forest is Barbara, and the fat minister with his back turned to her distress, Walpole. What did it say, something about woe—”
“‘Woe is me, the South Sea hath taken all from me.’ The King and the Prince of Wales are both upset. Robin says the Prince told him that it was his fault Barbara traveled to Virginia. You know Tommy Carlyle says Robin didn’t do all he ought in the matter of Roger’s debts. He says it to anyone who will listen. Sometimes I listen, and I think, No, Robin would not lie to me. Then other times, I think he might. When it comes to survival…” Diana looked down at the small knife she used to sharpen the point of her quill. “If it is so, I swear I will cut out his heart and eat it before his eyes.”
“And what does Robin say?”
“That Carlyle is a vicious half-man who can’t be trusted, that Roger was his friend and he did everything possible, that the King’s personal letter about Hyacinthe is going to the Governor.” She touched the sealed letter on the table before her, mockingly. “You don’t seem distressed for Barbara.”
“I am. I want you to add a postscript to your letter.”
He walked toward her, and Diana closed her eyes a moment, almost as if she felt weak, or afraid.
“It is foolish of you to call here, Charles.”
But Charles was kissing her neck and shoulders and then her breasts through the material of her gown.
“Charles, we cannot be long. I play cards with the Princess at three—”
He kissed her mouth. She dug her fingers into the column of his neck. He pulled off his wig.
“Here is my postscript for Barbara. And see if the Princess smells me on you.” After that, there was no talk, there was only the desperate heat of the joining, and a kind of despair for them both.
Chapter Twenty-nine
LINNETS, REDSTARTS, AND HATTERS SETTLED IN THE TREES OF Tamworth to nest. Annie had Tim fetch periwinkle from the woods and wove it into a wreath to place on the Duchess’s legs for cramp. She had nothing for heartache. Now the Duchess fretted not only over Sir John and Barbara, but over Laurence Slane.
The Duchess wrote to Tony about Slane. “How does he know Barbara?” she asked. “He left Tamworth like a thief in the night. I don’t like it. Find him in London and demand an answer.”
The Gypsy woman rose from childbed, pumped water from the kitchen garden pump into a bucket, found a brush, went into the stillroom. Perryman, informed by Cook, sent for Annie. Annie stared for a long moment before speaking.
“Why do you scrub the floor, girl?”
No answer. Annie looked her over. Dark hair pulled back into a tight knot. Eyes kept downcast; occasionally one glimpsed their fern green. Hands red from the scrubbing water and years of work. Gypsies were said to be fugitives from Egypt. They spoke their own language, possessed secret, sinful signs, read fortunes, sowed ill will, stole livestock, picked pockets.
“I see you are up from your bed at last. The Duchess will give you a coin. We’ll find you a bit of food to tide you over, some clothing for the child. You’d best be on your way now. Spring is coming.”
Spring was easier to survive t
han winter. Perhaps the child would live through it.
The woman did not raise her head. Something about the way she knelt on all fours, continued scrubbing as if Annie had not spoken, not with pride in the action, but with a kind of stubbornness that was enduring in its insistence, made Annie remember the scene of birth in the kitchen. An abandoned, disgraced woman was among the most despised of all God’s creatures.
“Are you a Christian?”
No answer. Scrub went the brush. Water circled and crested near the toe of Annie’s shoe.
“It is cold out still. The baby might perish. For that, I will allow you to stay a month or two more. Only that, mind. Then you must go.”
There was the tiniest of quivers in the woman’s body, a movement that touched Annie to her soul.
“Mind, if one item is found missing, it will be on your head. I will have you dunked in the village pond and tried for a witch. Your name?”
“Bathsheba.”
Annie pursed her lips. She ought to have known.
“You’ve picked a Gypsy to mother, have you?” said Tim, later in the kitchen. “Might as well have picked a wild animal.”
Annie glared at him.
Tim held up a book. Annie made a grab for it, but he held it out of her reach easily.
“This book of sermons you’re reading,” said Tim, who could not read, but was still too clever for his own good, “I’d like to hear them, too.”
Chapter Thirty
BARBARA STOOD STARING DOWN AT THE SEEDLINGS, SLENDER, rich green, that had moved up out of the earth, the hay around each plant haloing it like a necklace. Kneeling, her skirts belling out around her, she touched the closest seedling, her fingertip gentle upon the stalk, searching for the small bumps that would be leaves. But it was too soon. First Curle’s pride and joy, she thought, Grandmama’s sort. Thrive while I’m gone.
“And what are you doing?”
It was Blackstone, tall, his heavy head cocked to one side, watching her from across the seedling bed. He knew these were their children; she and Blackstone had been going to see these plants each day, discussing the individual plants at night: Had they grown? Which were taller? Which looked stronger? When would be the best time to move them?
“I’m saying good-bye.”
“Not good-bye; never good-bye. Only ‘fare thee well for a time.’ They will fare well. They’re the handsomest seedlings I’ve seen in many a year.”
Yes, her grandmother’s sort stood an inch above the others.
“We should have planted only Digges seed,” he said.
She stood up, dusted off her hands. “See how these do over the summer—they still have to endure the summer, you know—”
Blackstone smiled at her tone, as if she’d been raising tobacco all her life.
“—and perhaps next year we will.”
She would not see them moved into the fields Blackstone was so carefully preparing. The business of spring in Virginia was to have the field dirt hoed as loose, as easy as river sand; once the rains of April and May began, the seedlings were moved to fields to finish their growth, growing under blue skies toward the sun—but not too tall. I’ll pinch them back, Kano and I will, said Blackstone, Kano has a feel for tobacco, as I have. Thus strength would move into their leaves, those precious leaves that when dry made tobacco.
“Walk with me back to the house,” said Barbara.
“Sinsin says the rain will come early this year. He says already the places where his toes were feel it. It’s hard when the rains come too early. The first spring I was here there was a storm of hail not two days after we got the last seedling planted. I don’t think half Jordan’s crop survived.”
Once the rains began, every man and his slave was out in them, moving seedlings to fields, each field dotted with row after row of small dirt hills, made by the slaves pulling soft dirt up around one leg, pulling out the leg, and tamping down the top of the hill made. Tobacco hills. Each would be crowned with a seedling planted in the rain, the better for it to thrive—unless, as Blackstone said, a storm of hail came, or a flood, or there might be a terrible, unimaginable storm, the kind called a hurricane. There had been one of those in 1713, said Colonel Perry, ruining the tobacco for that year and a year to come.
“In two springs, I predict we’ll have the marsh drained. Will you come and see the field we make for your grandmother’s sort?”
“Yes.”
Her mind was moving over the plantation, seeing the fields, the two creeks, the path through the woods to the slave house, seeing her plans for it all. She had worked hard this winter to plan First Curle’s destiny, talking with other planters, with the Governor, who was unhappy with her. You do me no service with this matter of the slaves, he’d said to her, as if she were a child who had been disobedient without him there to watch over her. That work was now ready to lay before her grandmother in rough maps, inked drawings, page after page of her thoughts and others’ conversations in an account book.
“Have you enough coins, do you think?” she asked Blackstone.
A prison ship roamed the York River, she’d heard. Blackstone and Colonel Perry were going to find it and begin the purchase of indentured men to take the place of slaves.
“There is credit if you need it in Williamsburg.” She said this though she knew he knew it. It had all been said before, planned out carefully. She couldn’t help herself. Time was so short now. “John Randolph holds notes I’ve signed, which will give you more funds if need be. Then, once I’m in England, I’ll arrange a proper line of credit for you.”
They walked by the kitchen to the house. In the yard sat her trunks and boxes. This afternoon, the slaves would bring them to the second creek.
“With your permission, Lady Devane, there are things I must do before tonight.”
“Yes, go on.”
She knew she’d done nothing these last days but quiz him on what he would do in her absence, as if he were a boy who could not follow instructions. First Curle would thrive under him. She knew it.
Two geese came rushing at Barbara from around the corner of the picket fence.
“Shoo!”
She stamped her feet, waved her skirts. The geese stopped, but stood as close to her as they dared, honking at her, their long necks thrusting out like snakes ready to strike. They were bad-tempered, awful, Tamworth’s fattest, gifts from her grandmother.
“Harry! Rescue me!”
From the house, the dog came bounding out. The hatred between him and the geese had been immediate. It had reminded Barbara of the rivalry between Annie and Perryman at Tamworth.
He began to chase them, and the geese, furious, hissing, wings flapping, disappeared around the corner of the fence again.
“My hero,” Barbara said to him. “Come, say good-bye with me.”
They walked through the field and woods toward the slave house, stepping up into it. Barbara moved from one narrow bed to another, her skirts shushing against the wood floors, in her mind the man who slept in each. Jack Christmas, Moody, Sinsin, Kano—in her account book were drawings of them. Some of the slaves would leave First Curle and go and settle the land she had patented. Cuffy’s gone, Colonel Perry had said. His personal servant, Cuffy, had been the first slave he’d freed. I offered him wages to continue to serve me, but he left without a good-bye. All these years he has served me, and I never knew what was in his heart, Barbara.
In the hall of the house, Blackstone stood watching Thérèse, who was kneeling before a trunk, frowning, as she packed. She looked up and saw him. They stared at each other, a long look, much in it.
“When?” he said, a muscle working in his jaw, which his beard hid. His heart was beating like a boy’s.
“In another hour.”
BARBARA WALKED through the woods. Upon the trees and shrubs, leaf and flower buds were fat, fecund, deliciously close to opening—or else open, daringly there, petals soft as velvet, leaves rich, lushly yellow-green, as if half the sun were in them. Birds s
ang and fluttered from tree to tree above. At night, the frogs were a chorus drowning out sleep. The river, to her right now, was fat and rolling with melted snow from the mountains far to the west. When you come back, Blackstone said, we’ll journey to the mountains. I hear they rise to the sky in shades of purple.
A fish jumped out of the river, The sun glimmered on its scales. Another fish leaped from the water, and another. It was their spring journey. All about her was birth, promise, striving.
She couldn’t sleep nights, instead slipped out and sailed her dinghy at all hours. Come home, Wart had written. There is an adventure happening. Avenge Roger, Carlyle had written. Tony is married, wrote her mother. I miss you, said her grandmother. This work she had done for First Curle seemed a preliminary for Devane Square. Devane Square was on her mind always now: what she might do with it.
There was the grave. Barbara stood under the trees that sheltered it, the oak limbs as thick as her waist. He is not dead, said Thérèse. She had such faith. Faith is all there is, said Colonel Perry. Clear faith belonged to Thérèse and Colonel Perry. Barbara couldn’t have it, wavered, faltered, felt anger, questioned.
If you come back, Hyacinthe, she said silently, every justice in every county knows of you. There are coins in Williamsburg to pay for your journey to England. Thérèse had refused to pack Hyacinthe’s clothes. She was leaving them here. He will need them, she said, when he returns.
Harry, farther on down the path at the river’s edge, barked. Yes, Barbara thought, walking away from the grave, time to move on, to leave this. But it was hard, like burying Roger, something she did not want to do; and when she did not want to do something, all the King’s men and all the King’s horses could not convince her otherwise. She was no wiser in that than when she’d left England.
God is with Hyacinthe, Colonel Perry had said. Believe that, know that. When the sun sets, and darkness comes, the light has not died; it only waits a time in the darkness for its new day to be born.