Somerset

by Leila Meacham

  “That’s right. I want them to have a taste of what it’s like to be paid for their labor rather than see all the profits go to the landlord. It will be good groundwork for the time they’re offered the opportunity to rent the land they worked as slaves.”

  “So when do you intend to put your plan in place?”

  “Right now, today,” Silas said. He unfurled a rolled drawing and showed it to Thomas. It was a map of Somerset divided into tracts on which names had been inscribed. “Look this over and tell me if you agree with the division of plots and the families I’ve selected as the best choice for the plan.”

  Thomas studied the drawing and nodded approvingly. “They’re the ones I would have picked. I see you’ve allotted Jasper’s sons an acre apiece.”

  “We’ll need to keep them with us when the time comes, and I know Jasper will prefer his boys to stay at home. We’ll go by his place first and tell him the good news. So what do you say to the plan, son?”

  “That it’s brilliant and the only chance for Somerset’s survival if what you predict happens.” Thomas rerolled the map and handed it to Silas. “I have just one question, Papa. Would the tenants ever be allowed to buy the land they rent?”

  “Not in my lifetime,” Silas said, “and I hope not in yours. At contract signing, I will make clear in writing that the agreement does not offer that option. When he can afford them, the tenant will have the right to buy his own animals and equipment and any other item he needs to run his place, rather than lease them from me, but not the land he’s renting. Not as long as I live will anyone but a Toliver ever own a single acre of Somerset.”

  “Not as long as I live either, Papa,” Thomas declared. “You have my word on that.”

  Silas’s stomach clenched at the phrase coming from his son’s lips. “Let’s go make our rounds, then.”

  Jasper was thrilled when Silas asked him if he’d like a few more acres to call his own to put under cotton.

  “To call my own?”

  “By that I mean, to cultivate as your own for more money in your pocket,” Silas explained.

  Jasper broke into a wide smile. By his own calculation, he was approximately forty-two years old, the father of two boys and one girl. Petunia was the oldest of his children and a continued favorite of Jessica. At seventeen, Petunia had given birth to a daughter named Amy, who was now four years old. Her husband had drowned when his boat had overturned in a nearby lake as he was fishing.

  “Why, Mister Silas, what could I say but yes,” Jasper said. “Other than that, I be at a loss what else to say ’cept thank you, suh. You be the most generous master there ever wuz.”

  “And one other thing,” Silas said. “Talk it over with your wife, but if you all agree and Petunia is willing, Miss Jessica and I would like for her and her daughter to come live with us. As you know, Maddie recently died, and Miss Jessica believes Petunia would make a fine housekeeper, and we’d all enjoy her little one in the house.”

  “She goin’ be thrilled when I tell her, Mister Silas. I declare, you is so good to us.”

  Silas and Thomas mounted their horses to ride to the other “top hands” to relay the news of their increased acreages. From the saddle, Silas looked down at Jasper. How many years since Jessica, his stout-hearted little wife, had stood up to her father and rescued Jasper from the fate he would surely have known. He had repaid her bravery with loyalty, devotion, and steadfastness of duty to her family. Jasper would have died for her. He had been a caring friend to Joshua, a guide to Thomas, a wise mediator between Silas and his slaves. He was a good man who deserved his freedom, but under the new plan, Jasper would live out his life with hardly a noticeable change in his station but for one glaring difference Silas hoped the man would never see. Unlike before, slave and master would be shackled together, equal partners in the preservation of Somerset.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  From her high seat in the gazebo, Jessica gazed beyond the rear wrought-iron fence across the service road to the pasture where the inhabitants of Houston Avenue grazed their horses. The lone horse in the field this late January afternoon in 1861 was Flight O’ Fancy, a sight Jessica never beheld without a swell of bereavement over the death of Nanette DuMont. Like clockwork at this hour of dusk, Robert Warwick appeared to collect the filly-turned-mare, halter in hand, his affectionate greeting carrying to Jessica on her swing in the gazebo. The mare perked her ears at the sound of Robert’s voice and sauntered toward him to nuzzle his neck in her usual fashion. Her caretaker slipped the halter over her head, and the mare followed him docilely to the DuMont stable.

  Jessica swallowed at a prick of tears. She was so weepy these days. The “mid-life plague” was upon her, and moisture could spring to her eyes over just about anything, but Robert’s dogged faithfulness to Flight O’ Fancy these five years after Nanette’s death was enough to set most anybody’s tear ducts flowing. Robert had asked to become the Thoroughbred’s keeper upon his childhood playmate’s loss, and now, even though he had turned twenty, Robert looked after the horse as his connection to the girl he’d vowed to marry when they were grown.

  Jessica wiped her eyes with the edge of her shawl. She should not be ashamed of her emotion. There was much to be emotional about these days, and there was nothing on the horizon to relieve the steady stream of heartbreaking news begun just before Christmas when South Carolina seceded from the Union. Ten days later, its troops seized the United States arsenal at Charleston, and in early January, that incendiary action was followed by Governor Francis Pickens, a frequent visitor to Willowshire, giving the order to fire on an unarmed federal supply ship dispatched to reinforce the Union garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

  “It has begun,” Silas had said, his voice hoarse with disappointment as he read aloud to Jessica and Thomas his brother’s telegraphed message of the assault. The same day the ship was fired upon, the state of Mississippi seceded. A day later, Florida dropped out of the Union and changed “the United States” to “Confederate States” in its constitution. Alabama promptly followed suit. Louisiana was expected to join the pack in a matter of days, and in Texas the political process was under way to take the issue of separation from the United States to the polls. The wind was blowing overwhelmingly in favor of a vote for secession.

  “Who is going to defend Texas if all our able-bodied men leave to fight for the South?” Thomas worried aloud to family and friends. “Who will protect their wives and children and property from the Comanche and Kiowa and the Mexicans who are only waiting for Texas to be unprotected before they invade our borders? You know good and well the Federals will try to blockade our rivers and the coast to prevent us from getting food supplies. They’ll try to starve us out. I’m for forming a brigade to stay and fight right here in the homeland.”

  His parents listened in agreement with his rational concerns but could only shrug their shoulders helplessly. Thomas’s push to form a home force to guard the rivers and coast and protect the community from Indian attacks struck many of their slave-owner friends, whose sons were already spoiling to take the fight into the Southland, as cowardly. It was just another example of the differences that set the Tolivers apart from the rest of their kind, they said. First, Silas Toliver marries an abolitionist, then he sets a precedent insulting to their culture by coddling his slaves like no other planter would dare run a plantation and expect a profit. Silas’s was the lone planter’s voice in the county opposed to secession, and he had even carried it to the state legislature in support of Governor Houston’s pleas for Texas to remain in the Union. Was it any wonder, then, that his son would prefer to stay home than to join his Texas brothers to protect the folks and property of the lower South against the Northern invaders?

  Jessica sighed. The feeling of being an outcast was nothing new to her, but it added to her sadness, making her inclined to cry at the fall of a leaf. Tippy had left Howbutker. One morning last October, on Jessica’s birthday, a man dressed like the prime minister o
f England had wandered into the DuMont Department Store and presented his calling card to Henri. He had come to see Tippy. He was owner of a ladies’ clothing design and manufacturing firm in New York and had seen examples of Henri’s assistant’s amazing artistry in gowns worn by his customers visiting the city.

  “I knew it was coming,” Henri told their weekly supper group, composed of the Tolivers, the Warwicks, and the DuMonts. “In good conscience I had to encourage Tippy to go. The opportunity the man offered her, the salary…” He shrugged in his Gallic way, but there was tear shine in his eyes. “How could I not?”

  “I will escort her to New York City,” Jeremy offered. “I have business to attend there.”

  And so they had parted, Jessica and her lifelong friend, now addressed by her proper name, Isabel, so her new employer insisted. Tippy had balked strenuously and tearfully at going, but Jessica saw something at the back of her eyes—the imagined chance of a dream come true—that would not permit her to listen to her friend’s arguments against the opportunity to come into her own.

  “You must go, Tippy.”

  “How can I leave you, Jessica?”

  “By the front door, my dearest friend. That’s what this opportunity will mean for you.”

  “I have ruined your birthday.”

  “There will be others.”

  Tippy stuck up her thumb in the old way, and Jessica hooked hers around it. “What are we promising to?” she asked.

  “The promise to reunite on our fiftieth birthdays,” Tippy answered.

  Jessica studied the first yellow crocuses and hyacinths showing their heads in the iron planters arranged around the gazebo. The bulbs never broke ground but that Jessica was not reminded of Tippy and the vases of crocuses and hyacinths intertwined with streamers of white satin ribbons she had arranged in honor of an event many Januaries ago. This morning, as Silas had kissed her good-bye, she’d not called his attention to the memory. His face was gray with worry and the effect of many sleepless nights.

  “Don’t look for Thomas and me this evening until you see us coming,” he’d said. “We’re needed to help our manager and overseers settle unrest among the slaves and keep them at their tasks.”

  Jessica had understood. Rumors of the political situation were beginning to reach slave compounds and cotton fields, and planters were on the alert for the slightest sign of rebellion. She’d seen her husband off without reminding him that today was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

  “Miss Jessica,” Petunia called, appearing waving a letter Jeremiah had collected from the post office. “Somethin’ for you that looks important. I wouldn’a bothered you otherwise.”

  Jessica pulled her shawl closer and took the folded sheet of heavy cream-colored paper fastened with an authoritative wax seal. The return address listed the sender as a law firm in Boston. “Thank you, Petunia.”

  “Will you be in shortly, Miss Jessica?” Petunia asked worriedly. “It gettin’ cold out here.”

  “I’m enjoying the temperature. It’s such a welcome break from the heat of last summer,” Jessica said absently, studying the face of the letter.

  “It supper time,” Petunia reminded her. “Don’t you want to come in for a bite? Mister Silas and Master Thomas won’t be in for only the Lord knows how long. They is used to cold suppers, but don’t you want somethin’ while it hot?”

  “No, just a pot of tea will do,” Jessica said. “Bring it out, if you please, while I see what this letter is all about.”

  “It ought to be champagne and cake, Miss Jessica. You be forgettin’ today is your weddin’ anniversary.”

  Jessica regarded her young housekeeper in surprise. “How in the world do you know that?”

  “How could I ever in this world forget? In January 1856, I fell sick with pneumonia and you insisted I be brought to your house in town so a doctor be close to look after me. I remember you leavin’ your party downstairs and comin’ into my room in your pretty party gown to feel my head for fever. When I asked you why you so dressed up, you say it be your weddin’ anniversary. That was January fifteenth. I remember ’cause you say the date.”

  “That’s right, January fifteenth,” Jessica said, remembering the party. A milestone, Silas had called their twentieth anniversary. We must host one every five years to celebrate our married bliss.

  “But let’s keep it our secret, Petunia,” Jessica said. “Mister Silas will feel bad that he forgot. He’s had so much on his mind lately. Tell little Amy when you go in that I’ll read to her before her bedtime.”

  “I sure will, Miss Jessica. She’ll love that. I’ll get that tea now.”

  Jessica broke the seal of the letter. Its message shattered her resolve to keep her tears at bay. Aunt Elfie had died. Her tender-hearted widowed aunt she’d not seen since her disgrace on the eve of Christmas in her native state had passed away on the day of South Carolina’s secession. The letter from her lawyer expressed condolences, details of her aunt’s death, and the startling notification that Elfie Summerfield had left her entire estate to her niece, Jessica Wyndham Toliver. The lawyer implored Jessica to travel to Boston to sign papers and deal with the residence “of substantial standing” bequeathed to her in her aunt’s will.

  Jessica remembered the stately mansion well. During her years in boarding school, she had spent many happy times visiting her aunt in its Victorian parlor, taking meals with her in her sunny morning room, sleeping weekends in a bedroom wallpapered in flowers and designated “Jessica’s room.” The house and its opulent furnishings now belonged to her.

  What was she to do with them? How could she travel north by herself—enemy territory now—to deal with the terms of the will?

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Silas did not arrive home until Jessica had gone to bed, for once to sleep like the dead, and was gone the next morning when she awoke. Lying on his pillow beside hers was a bedraggled red rose with a note. Forgive me, my love. I am sorry that I did not remember our anniversary, but somehow I will make it up to you, the one who has become my heart. Ever yours, Silas.

  Jessica touched the blossom to her nose to inhale its fragrance. Silas must have brought it from the plantation where several of the original transplants of Lancasters carted from South Carolina still managed to bloom season after season. Jasper’s wife saw to their care, the reason there were still a few remaining in Jessica’s old rose garden this time of year.

  Jessica felt a touch of chagrin. Now she would not be able to tell Silas of Aunt Elfie’s death or show him the letter from her lawyer until late in the evening. They must decide quickly if she, a Southerner, a planter’s wife, should risk a trip to Boston, that boiling cauldron of abolitionist activity and war fever.

  Jeremy offered a possible solution to her quandary when he stopped by the house to deliver the Warwicks’ copy of the Atlantic Monthly in accord with the agreement among the three families to share subscribed publications to defray the exorbitant cost of postage. Founded in Boston in 1857, the magazine featured articles written almost exclusively from a Northern abolitionist point of view and gave their neighbors further reason to question the families’ loyalty to the Southern cause. Jeremy waved aside their criticisms as ridiculous. His opinion was that to know the enemy, read its publications.

  He found Jessica pruning her rose bushes as Amy, the housekeeper’s five-year-old daughter, played alongside her, happily making mud pies.

  “Mornin’, Jess. How do your roses grow?” he called.

  “Not so good, Jeremy. There’s been a loss in the family. Do you have time for a cup of coffee?”

  “Always.”

  “I’ll tell Petunia. Let’s sit in the gazebo so I can keep an eye on the little one.”

  Over coffee, Jessica related the news of her aunt’s death. “I remember her well,” Jeremy said. “A sweet little bird of a woman, and you could tell she loved you dearly.”

  “She must have. In her will, Aunt Elfie left me all her worldly goods.” Jessi
ca told him of the contents of the lawyer’s letter and explained her dilemma. “Her lawyer makes it clear that he prefers I dispose of her house and belongings in person rather than make them the responsibility of his firm, but I’m sure Silas would strongly disapprove of my venturing into enemy territory with war so near, and frankly, I’m not sure I have the courage to brave it. If war were declared while I was there, I might not be able to get home.”

  “I’m going to New York in a few days on business with hope to get in and out before the cannons are lit. Would you trust me to settle your aunt’s affairs for you? It would be no problem to pop over to Boston. I’m sure a letter to her attorney giving me authority to act on your behalf would suffice.”

  Jessica felt her spirits lift. “Oh, Jeremy, would you? Of course I trust you to act for me, but I’m afraid the process of selling the house, disposing of its goods, the paperwork, all the sundry things involved, will delay you from getting home. You could be stuck up North and no telling what could befall you—”

  Jeremy flashed her the charm of his boyish grin. He had aged little since he’d stood with Silas at their wedding, whereas Silas’s raven-black hair was now almost entirely silver gray.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Jeremy said. “I’ll make it back. My northern business associates and friends will see to that.” He finished his coffee and rose to go. “Talk it over with Silas and let me know. I’m leaving day after tomorrow. And Jess—” He hesitated, the space between his eyebrows creasing doubtfully.

  “Yes, Jeremy?”

  “Remember that in Texas, inherited property that a woman acquires during her marriage is hers, not her husband’s.”

  Perplexed, Jessica said, “And you’re reminding me of that for…what reason?”

  “I would advise you to leave the money from your aunt’s estate in a Boston bank. I believe we’re all in agreement that if war comes, the South will get the shorter end of it. Our banks will be hard hit, our currency worthless. Only those who’ve had the foresight to take their money out of Texas and place it where it will be safe will be able to ride out the aftermath.”