Half the dinner Sue sent was scraped from the platter by the jailer’s wife before she brought it in, but that didn’t matter to Georgiana. She wasn’t hungry anyway, and at least the jailer’s wife had given her a supply of candles. She sat on the one wooden stool her cell afforded, hating the thought of sleeping on that filthy-looking pallet that served for a mattress. She almost wept when just before dark Sue arrived with two servants carrying a wooden bench long enough to lie on and a clean mattress.
“Thank you. Sue,” she whispered. “I couldn’t imagine sleeping on that!”
“Nobody could,” muttered Sue. “Although I did have to tip the jailer’s wife to let me bring it in. She’s out there grumbling now that the culprits they bring in think themselves too good for jail food and jail lodgings. Be careful what you say to her, Anna—she could take both your food and your mattress away and I couldn’t do a thing to stop her.”
Georgiana grimaced. It seemed to her that she had been a great fool indeed. By returning to Bermuda she had delivered herself not only into Bernice’s hands but into the hands of this slattern who ran the jail!
“I’ll be careful,” she promised, and then to cheer Sue up: “How is Mattie holding up?”
“Oh, she’s impossible,” laughed Sue. “Mamma does not know what to do with her. Mattie refuses to wear mourning and keeps referring to herself as a ‘rich widow’ and whispers behind her hand that she had taken a lover! She wanted to come with me, but she’s such a rattlebrain I wouldn’t let her.”
They both laughed. Then Sue gave her friend a compassionate little hug. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
But she wasn’t. Georgiana sat and worried about that. Had Sue been taken ill? It wasn’t like her not to keep her promise. She supposed Mattie was being held back by her mother, and as for Sue’s other sisters, Alma had always been indifferent to her and Chloe distinctly hostile—but surely Lance could have brought some word from Sue! She remembered bitterly how many times Lance had urged her to marry him!
The day wore on. Food arrived but the servant who brought it could tell her nothing. He looked blank when she asked him where Sue was.
Not till the next afternoon did Sue arrive. She was dressed in her best, the handsome blue dress Georgiana had given her, and she looked ill.
“Sue,” she asked sharply. “What is the matter?”
“Sit down,” said Sue tersely. “I have some bad news for you.”
Georgiana remained ramrod erect; her whole body stiffened. “What is it?” she cried. “For heaven’s sake, don’t keep it from me!”
Sue moistened her lips. “The governor himself is going to try your case,” she said.
“In heaven’s name, why?"
“Bernice has set a very great value on the candlesticks. She has been wooing the governor and his wife ever since she came here— indeed, we hear that she is hoping to arrange a marriage between his son and one of her repulsive daughters when he comes back from Cambridge. She has spoken to the governor about you and has his agreement that he will personally preside at your trial.” Sue swallowed. “She is charging you with major theft, Anna, and asking that you be hanged.”
Hanged? Georgiana took a dizzy step backward. She had never expected so ferocious a vengeance from grasping Bernice; she had always been morally certain that avaricious Bernice would prefer money to blood.
“You must reach the governor somehow,” she said hoarsely. “You must explain!”
Sue shook her head sorrowfully. “I have tried, but none of us could get in to see him, his gout was so bad. I sat on his veranda all day yesterday until darkness fell, and his wife came out and told me there was no chance that he would see me.” Georgiana knew that the governor had been a semi-invalid from gout for almost two years now. “It seems the governor and his wife are scheduled to go to England next week for his nephew’s wedding, which will take place in Nottingham, and he spends all his time cursing his doctor, and his wife can hardly pack for all the excitement. She is frantic and not too much interested in our problems.”
“Then we can expect no help there?”
“I am afraid not—although I do promise to keep trying,” said Sue hastily. “I have just come from there. That is why I am dressed up like this. I thought you would prefer me to stay and keep trying to see him rather than coming over here to report what had happened and I—I couldn’t let anyone else tell you, Anna.”
“No, I can see that you couldn’t.” Georgiana’s mind was in turmoil. Her hands were clenched into her skirt, twisting the coarse gray material. For this she had returned to Bermuda! “Is there a chance Bernice might withdraw the charge?” she wondered. “If I were indentured to her, she could resell my Articles for a great price to some slaver on his way to Algiers.” She gave a jarring laugh.
“Oh, Anna, you are not to think of it!” Sue blanched. “Life must be unimaginable in the harems of Algiers!”
“I would never reach there. I would either escape—or go overboard. Either would be better than hanging.” Instinctively her fingers caressed her slender neck and she felt her flesh crawl, felt herself choking, gasping, dying. She dropped her hand. Sue was upset enough. “See what you can do,” she told Sue in a firmer voice. “Appeal to her sense of avarice.”
“I—I will.” Sue gave her a pitying look and fled.
The next afternoon Sue was back with a sober face.
“You saw her? You saw Bernice?” Georgiana prodded.
“Yes. Mother and I both went to see her. Separately. I thought we would have a better chance that way.” Sue sank down wearily on the bed she had provided for Georgiana. “Mother urged her to relent, insisting the punishment did not fit the crime, but Bernice was adamant. She sneered at Mother and Mother told her she was a vengeful woman and Bernice began shouting at her and ordered her off the property, saying we were all in league with you! I thought Mother would have apoplexy. She came home swearing that Bernice would never darken our door again—and that we should not go to Mirabelle either or have Bernice’s daughters to any of our parties, not even if one of them marries the governor’s son!”
Just now the social life of Bermuda was remote from Georgiana’s mind. She wished Sue would stick to the subject.
“And then you went to see her yourself?”
“Yes. Right after Mother came back in a rage, I rode over and found Bernice outside and confronted her. I told her there was no point in her seeking revenge on you by such a direct method, that she could have your Articles of Indenture herself—that you would be glad to give her that—and she could sell them to some sea captain on a ship bound for Barbary for more than the price of the candlesticks and a few dresses!”
“And what did she say to that?” asked Georgiana tensely. If she knew Bernice, the chance to bring an enemy down and profit at the same time would prove irresistible.
Sue looked bewildered and shook her taffy head in perplexity. ‘ At first I thought she was going to agree, and then she lifted her head and balled her fists and swore at me and told me I was no better than my mother and that we would probably all end up on the gibbet but that you were going there first!” Sue gulped. Her china blue eyes begged Georgiana to forgive her, but she felt Georgiana deserved the truth.
Shock spread through Georgiana’s slender frame. Bernice... wasn’t going to take the bait after all....
“Then—then you must raise the thousand pounds, Sue!” she cried.
“Of course. We are going to try. And we will get you on to a ship—any ship. You can pay us back later.”
Georgiana felt weak with relief. “Do you think your father will be able to do it?” she asked fearfully.
“I don’t know,” Sue told her honestly. “But he has promised to try.”
They exchanged anxious glances. The trial was only three days hence.
The next day Sue came back to report defeat. “Father’s assets are too heavily mortgaged,” she sighed, looking as if she might burst into tears at any moment. “He could not raise th
e money.”
So her chance for escape was gone. Instinctively Georgiana looked up at the tiny barred window set high up in the wall, at the massive door guarded by the jailer and his sturdy wife. No chance that way. If only they could have raised the thousand pounds, Lance would have helped her stow away on some ship if nothing else offered, but now that chance too was gone.
“Then we must seek a continuance,” said Georgiana slowly. “I had not bargained on this when I came back to Bermuda. Tell the governor that you intend to contact my husband—” perhaps she could manage to do it so the Hudson River folk would never know about it; and whatever Brett now thought of her, Georgiana was confident that he would not see her hang!—“and he will gladly pay Bernice the value of the candlesticks, yes, and more. Once restitution is made, she will no doubt withdraw the charges and the governor will not be bothered with a trial when he is so ill—he will certainly see the advantages of that.”
“Yes,” muttered Sue. “A continuance. I do not know why I did not think of it before.”
“Because I wouldn’t let you think of it,” Georgiana told her gently. “I told you Brett was not to know!”
Sue scuttled away. Georgiana thought Sue had lost weight. Her own kirtle, which had been a tight fit, now hung around her waist. It was strange what worry would do to one. The fear of hanging... she put the thought away from her and told herself that of course Sue would win the continuance.
Sue came back on Wednesday. It was the day before the trial. Georgiana did not have to ask Sue how things had gone. Two big tears spilled over Sue’s lashes and rolled down her cheeks.
“He refused to grant it,” she whispered to Georgiana. “He refused even to see me. His wife looked as if she wanted to sweep me off her porch—she was very snippy and said that the governor was in great pain and not to be disturbed, that she had asked him about it and he had said no, he refused to leave the island in a mess, with prisoners awaiting trial in the jail. He said they must be”—her voice quavered—“disposed of, brought to justice in some way or he would not rest easy during his voyage. He said—”
“I think I have heard enough to get the drift,” said Georgiana quietly, “Sue, you have done all you could. No one could have done more.”
“Oh, but it is not enough!” wailed Sue. “Oh, if only we could have contacted Brett, if only we had more time!”
But time was what they lacked. Georgiana sat, wooden-faced. How Erica Hulft would be laughing if she knew she thought suddenly.
“Bernice is a monster!” Sue burst out. “Hasn’t she taken enough from you?”
“Apparently not,” sighed Georgiana. “I shall have to throw myself on the mercy of the court.”
“There may not be any mercy,” wailed Sue. “The governor will sit up there with his leg propped on a pillow in terrible pain from his gout. I could hear his groans from the porch and was told all his servants are afraid to go near him.”
“Let us hope he is better tomorrow—before he hears my case.”
“I want you to know”—Sue stood up as the jailer came to peer in at them, implying it was time to go “—that we will all of us—Mamma and Papa and Lance and Mattie—do all we can to help you. We will be your character witnesses.”
“After the stories Bernice has spread about me, I may need character witnesses,” said Georgiana ruefully.
“Yes,” said Sue with her usual honesty. “You will need them.” She threw her arms around Georgiana impulsively. “If the trial goes against you and you are condemned, Lance and I will somehow manage to break you out of jail,” she whispered.
But they both knew that if she were found guilty, the judge was like as not to say, “The prisoner will be taken from this place directly to a place of execution and there hanged by the neck until dead.”
Sue could run away and refuse to think about that possibility. But Georgiana, sitting on that rude bench in her jail cell, staring at the pitiless white beam of sunlight that slanted down from the single high window to penetrate the gloom, was left with the grim truth facing her that tomorrow she would go on trial for her life.
And suddenly the laughing face of that golden woman in the portrait in Windgate’s long dining room came back to her, as real as if Imogene herself were standing there gazing at her.
“Mother," whispered Georgiana. “Oh, Mother, what has happened to me? Where did I go wrong?”
Book VIII
The Landgrave’s Lady
The dreams we clung to fiercely
That broke our hearts at last,
They all are gone, forget them—
You cannot change the past.
Longview Plantation,
The Carolinas,
1673
Chapter 38
On the Carolina coast, Imogene walked the floor of her bedroom restlessly. Old ghosts haunted her tonight, brought by a little French sea captain they had entertained for dinner. He was a shrewd cheerful little fellow with a waxed black mustache he was fond of tweaking and bright black eyes like buttons. He spoke a dozen languages—and claimed a dozen nationalities at his various ports of call—but to the landgrave of Longview Plantation, a man he both liked and respected, he had admitted that he had been born French. Delighted with the food and wine served graciously in their handsome dining room that looked out over the Cooper River, he had waxed expansive. He had been but recently up and down the coast, calling at various cities, and he was full of gossip.
“So you have been in New Orange as well?” His tall host, who had once been known far and wide as the buccaneer van Ryker, fixed him with a steady gray gaze. “What is the word there? Are the Dutch, now that they have taken New York and turned it into New Orange, planning to pour down the coast upon us? Should we prepare for an invasion?”
“No, no,” shrugged the little Frenchman, whose name at the moment was Valois, but who changed it from port to port as a man might change his hat. “All is quiet there.” He contemplated with pleasure the handsome blue delftware plate before him piled high with venison and other game, then looked up with a wicked laugh. “Except for one thing: There is to be a trial in New Netherland over the ownership of one of the great patroonships. It will be held in New Orange sometime in the spring. One of your countrymen bought it while the colony was English, but now that it is Dutch again, a Dutchman claims it.”
“Oh?” In a tone polite but bored, for van Ryker had not seen Dutch waters in years and had put behind him all that had to do with his buccaneering past. Politics and the House of Burgesses interested him more now. “And which patroonship is that? Rensselaerwyck? I heard it might be for sale.”
No.” Captain Valois shook his head energetically and held out his glass to be refilled. He had been paying for his dinner with gossip at great houses all the way down the North American coast. He paused to reflect. “A place called—Windgate?”
“Wey Gat?” whispered the beautiful woman across the table from him. Above the deep décolletage of her elegant gold satin gown her face had gone suddenly very pale. “Who—claims it?” she asked with an effort.
The French captain shrugged. “A long-lost cousin of Verhulst van Rappard's, I hear.”
His hostess and her tall husband exchanged glances.
“A cousin—oh, I see.” Imogene looked down suddenly at her plate. For a moment her world had been swimming before her.
“But to make it more interesting,” chuckled the captain, displaying a full set of snuff-yellowed teeth once he had downed his wine at a swallow, “the Englishman who bought the patroonship has—as a countermove—married van Rappard’s long-lost daughter.”
Imogene’s head came up so fast that her gleaming golden curls rippled like the golden satin of her big slashed puffed sleeves. “Verhulst’s daughter?” she whispered.
The Frenchman, intent on his venison, chewed a moment before giving her an offhand answer. “Yes, some wench he found in Bermuda claims to be the lost Georgiana van Rappard and heiress to all that fortune. Her claim’s dis
puted by Nicolas van Rappard, Verhulst’s cousin, who’s spent his life wandering about the world and—gossip has it—is toying with the affections of Huygens ten Haer’s daughter, while trying at the same time to win the wife of Windgate’s patroon away from him!” He chuckled and cut into the venison again. “They’re talking of nothing else in New Orange, I can tell you.”
Huygens ten Haer’s daughter—that would be Rychie’s daughter! And Verhulst had mentioned a cousin—indeed, in his mad jealousy he had threatened to send little Georgiana away to Holland to live with that cousin! And if she had allowed him to do that, if she had not been so determined to keep the child by her side, perhaps Georgiana would be alive today!
“Imogene!” Her husband had risen in alarm at the sight of her white face, fearing she would faint.
“I’m fine.” Reeling a little, Imogene made it to her feet. She looked very beautiful standing there in her golden gown, very fragile. Van Ryker’s heart ached for her. Why had this fool of a Frenchman had to bring it all back? He watched as she made a little motion as if to brush cobwebs from her eyes.
“If you will excuse me, gentlemen? I just need—a little air. No, please finish your supper. I’ll be back presently.”
Van Ryker would have gone with her, but she shook her head to dissuade him. Regretfully his long form in his dove gray velvet suit sank back into his chair, for he knew she must face her ghosts alone. She had been through so much, this lovely lady of his, and this loss of her child was the one thing from which he had never been able to shield her. All the gold he had wrested from the Spanish treasure fleet in the Antilles could not make up to her the loss of little Georgiana. Now it would all wash over her again, all the heartache, all the pain. Silently he cursed himself for having asked the Frenchman here, while at the same time, like the good host he was, he urged on his guest more wine.
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