Mood Indigo

by Parris Afton Bonds

  The opportunity to post the letter came more quickly than Jane could have hoped—that same afternoon—in the form of Susan Fairmont and her husband, Bram, a pleasantly handsome man dressed in nankeen knee breeches and a peagreen frock coat.

  Jane had returned to the spinning wheel, its hypnotic hum almost putting her to sleep, when the couple entered with Ethan between them, dwarfing them. His dark eyes were alight as Jane had never seen them. Her foot released the wheel’s pedal as she watched Ethan offer his guests seats on the leather-covered bench and take up the maple rocking chair opposite them.

  In the shadows of the ell she was able to catch the expressions of the three as they talked. Since none were aware of her presence, she quite clearly was eavesdropping. She was about to clear her throat audibly, when something in Ethan’s face stopped her—some undefinable expression. And then she knew. As Susan spoke in a singularly sweet voice, Ethan’s eyes held a tenderness that was—why, yes, Ethan was in love with the man’s wife!

  Jane turned her gaze on Susan, curious as to the type of woman Ethan would love. With eyes gray as a hoary morning mist and brown corkscrew curls that peaked demurely from beneath her calash bonnet, Susan reminded Jane of a lovely china doll with a face as sweet as a madonna’s.

  The young woman was petite in her flower-sprigged muslin gown and dainty slippers, and Jane thought how drab her scratchy woolen dress, gray and barren of ornamentation, must look in comparison. She recalled those first terrible weeks at St. James Court, when she had towered awkwardly over the other court ladies and desperately wished she could shrink to a delicately feminine stature such as Susan Fairmont’s.

  Susan, her voice soft, said, “We just returned from Williamsburg and learned that you have a new maidservant, Ethan. All of the women in the county will be anxious to meet her.”

  “Actually, that is not why we came a-calling, Ethan,” Bram interjected, his narrow face wearing an earnest expression. Like Ethan, he kept his long sandy hair unpowdered and tied in a queue. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “We just finished the second session of the General Assembly.”

  Ethan’s brow wrinkled thoughtfully. “And—?”

  “Don’t you know what’s in the air, Ethan? Parliament just passed the Quebec Act. The Canadians are not allowed to elect any part of their government. And General Gage has dissolved the Massachusetts Assembly. They no longer can meet as a legal body. Next self- government will be forbidden to all the colonies! It all but has been, since we no longer have the right to decide on local taxes and now are forbidden to settle west of the Alleghenies.”

  For protection against the Indians, Jane wanted to point out.

  “I hardly have time for political rumoring, Bram,” Ethan drawled. King George rubbed against his leg for attention, and he reached down to scratch the raccoon’s furry neck.

  “Ethan, some of Chesterfield’s Burgess members have been a-talking, and they want you to go as the county’s delegate to a congress of the colonial leaders in Philadelphia.”

  Ethan’s fingers toyed absently with the raccoon’s batting paw, indicating a lack of interest in the subject. But Bram persisted. “Something’s got to be done to help Massachusetts. Some solution has to be presented to Lord North and the Parliament.”

  Jane thought the colonials were erring if they attempted to compare their assemblies with the British Parliament. Susan gently waved her fan in a futile effort to conceal her own agitation. “It can only end in more crossfire with England, Bram,” she said softly. “It means trouble ahead.”

  “Thou knowest the Society of Friends are pacifist,” Ethan said soberly. “We don’t hold with armed conflict. I’m afraid I’ll have to decline the honor.”

  The insipid coward! Jane, recalling England’s dashing scarlet uniforms, the flashing silver of sabers and bayonets, the golden sparkle of metal epaulets and plumed helmets, almost snorted her contempt. Thank God the Quaker was on the other side or Great Britain would not be the Empire she was. It was men like Terence, who—

  “Ethan’s right,” Susan defended with mild reproof. “If we continue to provoke England, we’ll have redcoats quartered in our homes like Boston does now. It frightens me.”

  “What about the way they provoke us?” Bram demanded. “What about Governor Dunmore dissolving our assembly for voting a day of fasting in sympathy with beleaguered Boston? What about Parliament taxing us to pay for their armies posted here?”

  Jane bit back her words of argument. Could these upstart colonials not see that the British Army had been quartered there to protect them from the French and the Indians? Someone had to pay for it.

  “What about taxing the tea?” Bram continued in his harangue.

  “True, Bram,” his wife said, “I dearly miss drinking the tea. But the tax was a small thing compared to refusing to import the tea and drinking odious coffee the rest of our lives.”

  “What about – ”

  “What about your new maidservant, Ethan?” Susan diplomatically halted her husband. “The women in Williamsburg tell that you actually removed her hood at the auction for all to behold, and that she is not unpleasant to look upon.”

  Ethan shrugged his massive shoulders. “Meg O’Reilly’s fair enough as servant women go,” he said with his customary slow speech. “A little common . . .”

  Jane smothered an indignant gasp.

  “I would have her serve refreshments, but the lazy wench is no doubt off—”

  At that moment King George deserted Ethan’s caressing fingers. Scampering across the puncheon floor into the ell, the raccoon playfully entangled its furry body in Jane’s skirts. The rustling of the cotton petticoats, combined with her sudden fit of sneezing from the dust stirred up, betrayed her position. All three in the main room turned simultaneously. Guiltily Jane rose from the stool. The embarrassed flush that swept over her only heated her skin that much more.

  “This—she is your maidservant?” Susan asked, her bewildered gaze traveling up the long length of Jane’s frame.

  “I—” Jane remembered to drop a curtsey to Susan and Bram. “I had not meant to listen, but . . .” With a limp gesture her hand indicated the ell room behind her. “I—uh, found myself trapped by your entrance.”

  “Say no more,” Susan said graciously.

  Bram grinned. “Now I understand the reason for the gossip. Were your maidservant as old as Methuselah, Ethan, the subject of Meg O’Reilly living under the same roof would go unheralded.”

  Past Bram, Jane saw the glint in Ethan’s eye. He knew all the time she was in the ell! “I’ll fetch refreshments, master,” she added, delighted at the irritation that immediately darkened his eyes.

  To her surprise, Susan offered to help. “There are so few women for neighbors,” the young woman chatted amiably as she followed Jane into the kitchen. “I do hope that we will see more of each other.”

  Jane eyed her from beneath her fringe of weighty lashes as she withdrew the wooden tumblers from the cupboard and set them on the long trestle table. Never did a lady mix sociably with a servant. Yet Susan talked easily while Jane filled the tumblers from the crock of sassafras tea and passed her one.

  “My linen is the whitest in Chesterfield County. You’ll have to make Ethan let you come over so that I can show you the secret. It’s all in the bleaching the flax. I lay the flax on a high rock where the sunlight lingers longer . . .”

  She broke off, choking, and Jane sighed. “I’ve not much experience in making sassafras tea.”

  Susan managed a smile. “I’ll”—she cleared her throat—“be glad to show you how sometime. But, oh, for a cup of real East India tea.”

  When they joined the men, Susan pressed Jane to stay. Ethan’s stolid expression gave no clue as to his feelings on his maidservant’s inclusion with the company. At first the men dominated the conversation with their talk of the renewed threat of Indian warfare in the West and the Cherokees scalping and burning settlers’ cabins in South Carolina.


  When both women’s faces paled, Ethan turned the subject to crops. “Fortunately, England has put a bounty on indigo, so I’m not dependent on the pricing of the London market.”

  “But you’ll admit it’s unfair that we have to sell our crops and manufactured products only to English agents and have nothing to say about their prices,” Bram decried. “Many of our Tidewater planters are in debt up to their ears to these unscrupulous agents who do them no good!”

  “I’m afraid my husband is a rabid Whig at heart,” Susan laughingly apologized. “If he and Samuel Adams had their way, we would declare ourselves independent of England, as unthinkable as the idea is.”

  “It would seem you already have,” Jane murmured, catching from the corner of her eye the surprised glance Ethan sliced in her direction.

  “Why, yes, I suppose so. But I don’t understand politics, much less like to talk about the subject. And if— well, it would never happen, but if a state of war were ever to occur, why, I don’t think I could be brave if Bram went off to battle and left me alone, Meg.”

  Jane started at the mention of the unfamiliar name. She felt guilty about her deception in the face of Susan’s cordial friendship. It was understandable why Ethan was in love with Susan. The young woman was kindhearted and very attractive. Unintellectual and without guile, she was conspicuously devoted to her handsome husband. If she was aware of Ethan’s love, Jane sensed that never a word or look would the woman let pass that would divulge that knowledge.

  At one point, as the couple prepared to leave, Jane was able to draw Susan away from the two men. It was only a few minutes Jane had to retrieve the letter from her room and press it into Susan’s hand. “Please,” she quietly implored Susan, “will you deliver the letter to the post rider next time you journey to Williamsburg? ”

  “A billet doux?” Susan’s Cupid’s bow mouth curved in delight at the prospect of becoming involved in amorous intrigue, but then the comers of her lips dipped. “And all this time today I would have sworn there was something between you and Ethan.”

  “Ethan?” Jane echoed.

  “Half the females in Chesterfield County are waiting for him to make up his mind and marry,” Susan teased. “I was engaged to Bram when Ethan claimed his land here four years ago, or I would have married him myself.” Despite the teasing, Jane sensed that fidelity to Bram lay like a whalebone corset stay beneath the young woman’s gentle humor.

  Susan’s fan halted, and an uncertain smile settled on her lips. “Bram—I understand Bram exactly, but Ethan . . . I’m never quite sure about him.”

  Jane was very sure. Ethan Gordon was little more than a rustic yokel with whom she would soon work her way.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Thank ye, lass,” Icabod Knox said when Jane set the platter of stewed vegetables and brown bread before him and the other two field hands, One-eyed Peter and Josiah. Icabod winked broadly at her. “I bet Josiah two shillings you wouldn’t be a-burning the bread this time!”

  Icabod, who shared a cabin with Josiah, had been forced to leave a wife and four children in Scotland in order to find work of any kind. He was a little, balding man with a big nose and a big laugh, and his Falstaffian sense of humor usually lightened Jane’s loneliness.

  “And I,” said Peter, with a wink of his one good eye, “wagered my fife you would burn it.”

  “Your faith is reassuring,” she said lightly, though she was proud of the loaf she had turned out. True, the bread loaf had not risen, but at least this time it was not burned.

  Ethan had even set her to making soap. Sometimes she wondered if he was seeing just how far he could push her. She was determined not to show any signs of weakness, though many times that past month tears of weariness and frustration lurked just behind her lids.

  She was tired of constantly cooking, cleaning, and waiting on the men, despite the respect and admiration the field hands showed her. The trouble was Ethan Gordon. Her initial pleasure in the kitchen’s bright limestone walls, which she had finally found time to scour clean of their smoke smudge that morning, faded when he glanced at her accomplishment, and merely said, “There are the parlor walls, when thee finishes the kitchen.”

  She could stand it no longer. She was through with her deception. She made up her mind that she would ask him to release her from her bondage. That very day. But for once he did not come to dinner. Usually, he was punctual, washing up at the well with the rest of the men before appearing at three o’clock every day for the main meal. “Where’s Ethan?” she asked of the three field hands. Peter wolfed down the black-eyed peas in his mouth, and mumbled, “He’s in the vat house, mistress . . . steeping the indigo.”

  Like the other two field hands, Peter’s fingers were purple from harvesting the indigo leaves that week. She gathered from the little said during other meals that the steeping required precise timing. It would be best to wait until evening to approach Ethan with her request.

  That afternoon as she boiled the linen in the large cast-iron kettle she prepared her arguments. At last her work was finished. She rubbed her sweaty palms down the front of her soiled apron. Still her steps lagged. Instead of going directly to Ethan, she left the kitchen and its smothering heat by the side entrance, remembering to duck her head for the Dutch door’s low lintel. Outside, she unbuttoned the top three buttons of her dress, wiping away with her fingertips the perspiration that beaded her neck.

  A cool breeze chilled the wilted orange-tipped tendrils clinging damply to her temples. Her hair had grown almost a full inch to curl in unmanageable clusters below her nape. Now only the ends, terribly split by the dye, were that hideous shade of orange. She would soon have to find a way to henna her hair again.

  Facing Ethan’s unshakable calm was in a way worse than confronting her father’s cutting wrath. Postponing the encounter, she held her face up to the cooling evening wind that swept up off the dusky blue waters of the Chickahominy. And she thought of Terence’s eyes—sometimes that same smoky blue. At St. James’s Court she had seen the wavering eyes of the coward, the dull eyes of the jaded, and the watchful eyes of the politician. But always Terence’s eyes had stared back at her, except for the irises— a cool, impenetrable blue. She had been almost eleven before she ever realized that the eyes of her childhood idol had no expression at all. Whatever thoughts did go on behind them, nothing came through.

  Whatever his thoughts, she knew she was part of them. There was a bond uniting the two of them; a bond that could not be broken; a bond that she herself could not adequately explain.

  A cowbell jingled, startling her out of her reverie. The chill of nightfall crept over the land, and she took reluctant steps toward the front entrance. Already candlelight seeped from beneath the ivy-framed door to fan across the rounded cobblestones laid before it. All her valid reasoning vanished. She could match wits with the liveliest of minds at George Ill’s court; but how did one argue successfully with the simple, unyielding logic of a Quaker yeoman?

  She pushed the door ajar to find him sitting on the stool before the hearth, which was cold with a banked fire. He did not look from the long jaeger rifle he cleaned. Next to him the betty lamp suspended from the stand cast flickering shadows and eddied smoke upward to soot the ceiling.

  She closed the door behind her but moved no farther into the room. At last Ethan looked up, and the tallow’s light flared over the puckered burn on his cheek, lending a frightening appearance to his otherwise pleasing countenance. “You’ve been out walking?”

  “I—” Her hand tightened on the door’s hasp behind her. Better to broach her request in the light of day. Not here, alone in the semidark with a man whom she still did not know despite having worked for him a full month. “It was hot . . . and I’ve finished all my work.”

  She stepped past him, making for her cubicle. “Stay,” he said.

  She looked over her shoulder to find his dark eyes fastened on her.

  “Join me, mistress.” He flung out a hand, indicating the
rocker opposite the hearth from him. “I grow lonely of my company.”

  Warily she advanced further into the dimly lit room to take a seat in the proffered rush-bottomed chair. Sometimes she sensed that the man actually enjoyed baiting her. Too, she suspected the lout was not as slow-witted as he seemed.

  Sitting stiffly, her spine never touching the chair’s back, as she had been taught, she folded her roughened hands. Uneasily she searched for something to say.

  The Quaker bent his head over the firearm, and he did not seem so formidable now. In fact, that side of his profile was almost handsome. His legs were stretched out before the hearth, his jackboots nearly touching her skirts. She watched his hands deftly work the cleaning rod in and out of the flintlock’s grooved bore. “I thought you didn’t believe in the use of weapons?”

  He never lifted his head. “I don’t believe in violence. But there is the necessity of game for food, is there not? And the necessity of protection from the snake that slithers across yonder floor?”

  She twisted in the chair in time to see King George bound from a darkened corner to caper about the slender, serpentine form. Unheeding, the snake continued its slow, writhing progress across the plank flooring toward the small chink in the clay-mortared logs.

  “A harmless creature, the grass snake,” the big man commented and went back to his work.

  Her hands gripped the rocker’s arms, but she managed to say casually, “You would have me talk. I—”

  “I would have thy company.”

  “I want to buy back my indenture papers,” she said baldly.

  He looked up, then set the rifle and cleaning rod on the rock hearth. “With what, mistress?”

  “I will repay you—within the fortnight. You have my pledge.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it would be difficult to replace thee.”

  She leaned forward, her temper sparking. “A lie! The linen is badly washed, the food more often than not scorched, the spinning a shambles, the candles sputter and die!”