A More Perfect Union: A Novel (The Midwife Series Book 3)

by Jodi Daynard

  OTHER BOOKS BY JODI DAYNARD

  The Midwife’s Revolt

  Our Own Country

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Jodi Daynard

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477823798

  ISBN-10: 1477823794

  Cover design by Laura Klynstra

  For my father, in memory

  Contents

  Part I

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Part II

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  Part III

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  Part IV

  54

  55

  56

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Part I

  1

  July 1, 1794

  IF PURGATORY WERE A REAL PLACE, JOHNNY thought, it would be a ship sailing the Atlantic. And if their ship, the Castle Eden, were purgatory, then he and his mother, Eliza Boylston, were being well and truly purged. By day, the smell of rotten meat and bilgewater, of unwashed bodies and human waste, had more than once sent them running to the gunwale. Johnny rarely reached it in time, but his mother nearly always managed to wait until her bosom overhung the ship’s side.

  They had left Bridgetown, Barbados, at the end of May, and it was now July. God willing, they would reach Boston on or about July fifteenth. Twice, gales had raged, forcing crew and passengers onto their knees in supplication. But Johnny knew how boats were built, and he sensed that this one was likely to withstand the wind’s punishment.

  In their first week at sea, a young seaman working on the foretop mast fell into the ocean and drowned. Johnny and his mother heard other splashes, but whether these were man, beast, or garbage, they knew not; they had learned not to inquire too thoroughly.

  Johnny had been stashed like cargo in a room below the roundhouse, suspended in darkness in a hammock that swung from ceiling ropes. Mama had fared better: She was in the roundhouse above him, with the other ladies. Day and night she suffered the seamen’s heavy treads, but at least she had her own porthole, which gave fresh air and light. Some of the women, needing to dry their washing, hung their undergarments from these portholes. But Elizabeth Boylston, originally of Brattle Street, Cambridge, would sooner wear damp and moldy undergarments than display them in such a shameless manner. Now, four weeks into their voyage, Johnny suspected that she had dispensed with her undergarments altogether, for she no longer complained about them.

  They were sitting together in the messroom after endeavoring to eat a foul-smelling stew. Eliza suddenly put a hand up to her throat, a telltale sign that she would soon puke.

  “Let us go up, John,” she said. “Quickly.”

  They ran up the ladder to the deck; Johnny aided his mother as best he could. Afterward, wiping her mouth and placing a hand on her damp forehead, Eliza finally turned back to her son and cried, “Oh, Johnny!” On her face was a look he knew well.

  In purgatory, after the physical suffering came moral doubt. He himself felt as if he might soon fly and was weighed down only by the sadness of memory. But his mother’s soul was heavy with fear.

  Johnny observed her now. At thirty-seven, Eliza Boylston was still fair and tall, still the very portrait of a Cambridge lady, even without undergarments.

  “Do you really think we do the right thing?” she was asking. “Leaving Grand-mama and Cassie and Isaac and all our friends? You could return, work at the shipyard. Remain at the plantation.”

  Cassie had been his grandparents’ house slave, but she was now a freewoman and his mother’s close friend. Isaac was her adopted son, once a runaway slave.

  “We are doing the right thing,” Johnny replied, for the fourth time in as many weeks. There was no reason to turn back and every reason to keep going. “If you recall, it was Papa’s particular wish that I go. And mine, too.”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “Ever since your papa read to you your precious Constitution of the United States.” Eliza referred to the fact that, by the age of ten, her son was a patriot in love with an America he did not know at all.

  “Is it not yours, too, Mama?”

  “I don’t know anymore.” She shrugged. In the fresh air, some color returned to her face. Then she brightened. “I know I shall be happy to see my friends after all this time. But for you, my love, there shall be no turning back once we arrive. Are you ready?”

  “Of course I am. I shall try to be a good white boy.”

  Eliza looked with unabashed adoration at her child. Standing at near six feet, Johnny was very tall for his fifteen years. He had golden-brown hair that fell in curls to his shoulders. But in the sea dampness, his hair became a kinky halo about his round head, like a child’s drawing of the sun. His facial features were Caucasian in the main, but a slight broadness in the nose, a slight fullness of the lips, might imbue in certain Americans a dangerous doubt. In Barbados, everyone thought of him as black, as he himself did. His blouse and trousers were well cut, though stiff with salt, and only the African warri beads that adorned his limbs betrayed him as a foreigner. These were love tokens from the slaves and hucksters who sought to anchor him in place with their charms. His necklace was especially precious to him, composed as it was of talismans: painted nicker nuts, dogs’ teeth, fish vertebrae, and a magnificent red carnelian in the center.

  But all the charms in the world could not keep Johnny from going to America. He would take the Harvard entrance exams and attend Harvard University. He would become a great statesman like his heroes John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. He would further the most excellent cause of democracy.

  Johnny’s father had known his son’s wishes. John Watkins owned a lucrative shipyard, but he could feel his son’s dreams in his own bones. Had Johnny, whether from guilt or grief, chosen to remain in Bridgetown as proprietor of the yard, his father would have done what he could to dissuade him. But no persuasion was necessary.

  They had lost John Watkins six months previously to a putrid fever. He had always been so strong, so full of life, that even now it was hard for Johnny to believe he was rea
lly gone. But the fever took hold of him, locked its death jaws, and would not let him go.

  In that last week, Eliza would not leave her husband’s side. Toward the end, she called Johnny into their chamber. All week, he had sat just beyond the chamber door, waiting.

  “Johnny!”

  He started, and then rose from the chair and stood in the doorway.

  John Watkins endeavored to sit up to see his son. “Come, sit by me, child,” he said.

  Johnny sat in a chair by the side of the bed. His father looked up from his pillow. Though ill, he was yet a very handsome man, with taupy skin and clear sea-blue eyes. John Watkins’s father had been the governor of New Hampshire, his mother, a pretty house slave, not sixteen. Eliza always liked to say that she had fallen in love with his father’s outward beauty first and that it was mere luck his soul was not a disappointment. Johnny knew she spoke in jest. His father was uneducated, yet he was the best of men: the kindest, and the most honorable.

  John Watkins reached for his son’s hand. Johnny took it. His father’s hand was very rough, like sand-paper. This hand had once been crushed, but his father never told him how it had come to be so. He regained the use of it, but never the strength. The feeling of his father’s ruined hand in his own strong one made Johnny burst into tears.

  “You see, Eliza.” John Watkins smiled and patted his son on the head. “The very thought of shipyard work revolts him.”

  “No,” Johnny objected. “It’s not that, Papa.”

  “Are you certain, son? You’re very fair, Johnny. You might parlay my wealth into even greater wealth and comfort for yourself and your family.”

  His father referred to a fact they all knew: in Barbados, a free black man could rise far up the social ladder. Many free blacks even owned slaves.

  “Thank you, Papa. But I feel as if something calls me.” Johnny’s voice broke.

  “Well, I must leave it to someone.”

  “Leave it to Isaac. He has been your loyal apprentice these many years. I hardly know bow from stern.”

  “That’s not true.” His father frowned.

  “I worked at the yard to be close to you, no more. Oh, Papa, you well know I could never keep my mind on the task at hand. Isaac is far worthier.”

  His father looked up feverishly at Eliza. “It’s hopeless. Isaac shall have the business, and this high-minded pauper shall go to America to become its next president. God protect him.”

  John Watkins struggled to catch his breath. Then he looked up at his wife. “Shall ten pounds per annum suffice for his tuition?”

  She glanced fearfully at Johnny, but Watkins was shrewd. “What, more?” he asked.

  Eliza knew the sum to be far more but said only, “Leave what you can, my love. All shall be well.”

  “I pray ’tis true,” he replied. Then he sighed and shut his eyes.

  “Oh, Pa!” Johnny kissed his father and fled the room, blinded by his own tears of shame. His father knew him too well. He did have wild dreams!

  When next Johnny saw his father, John Watkins was lying in his best suit with his rough hands crossed over his chest. Someone, probably Cassie, had lovingly rubbed them with oil, smoothing out their roughness. His aqua-blue eyes, which Johnny’s mama had so loved, were closed forever.

  Having succeeded in calming his mother somewhat, Johnny took his leave and returned to his hammock, where he read by a reeking oil lamp. His mother played a game of whist with the other ladies and did not see her son again until morning.

  When Johnny met his mother at breakfast, her crisis seemed to have passed. She smiled affectionately at him.

  “Did you sleep well, Mama?” Johnny asked.

  “Oh, well enough. I’ve grown used to the stomping about above me. But I had strange dreams.”

  Johnny didn’t ask what they were. Instead, he wished to know more about where they would stay in America.

  “We shall stay first with the Lees in Cambridge. They live but a few steps from where I grew up. After your exams, we head to Quincy, to stay with the Millers. Lizzie Miller is the midwife who brought you into this world. But I suppose I should give you fair warning.” His mother paused. “The cottage is, well, it is—cozy. I fear you shall have to sleep in the parlor.”

  “It can’t be worse than the hammock on this ship,” Johnny replied.

  “God forbid! But in any case, you shan’t be there more than a few weeks. School starts in the middle of August.”

  “Will Mr. Adams be in Quincy when we are there?”

  “I should think so. He hates to be away and hies it home the moment he can escape his duties in Philadelphia. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Abby—Mrs. Adams—suggests we lodge with them. Peacefield is large and has many empty chambers.”

  “Lodge at Peacefield! Oh, Mama—can it truly be?”

  “I’m not certain we will, Johnny. But it is possible.”

  Johnny’s heart thumped at the very idea, and he wondered at his mother’s own calm demeanor. “But is he very impressive? Oh, I know his accomplishments. But the man himself, I mean?”

  Eliza bit her lips to keep from giggling. She would never speak an ill word about the man who had once risked a great deal to help her and John. “He is—unusual. I’ll leave you to judge.” A sudden bump beneath them knocked over a saltcellar that had stood in the middle of the table, and his mother jumped. Johnny had never known her to be particularly superstitious, but now she looked stricken once more by doubt. “But, oh, do you not miss Grand-mama, and Cassie? Is it not a great cruelty to tear their favorite child from them? I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .” She burst into tears.

  Johnny did miss them. When he thought that he might never see them again, he could hardly bear it. Grand-mama was a dour woman, who had been quite cruel to his mother when she found herself with child, out of wedlock. But she had been an affectionate grandmother and thereby atoned somewhat for her sins. He loved Cassie even more: she had raised him as much as his own parents had. But he could not be both there and in America. He had to choose.

  Back and forth they went, between terror and expectation, grief and joy, memories and visions, like the ship’s own constant rocking.

  Twelve days later, they saw their first sliver of land and put in at New York. Then, two days after that, Johnny was looking at the sunrise through a porthole when he heard someone shout, “Boston! Boston ahead!” Everyone raced like sheep up the ladders to the main deck. Several dozen passengers jostled each other for a good spot at the gunwales in order to watch their slow approach into the busy harbor.

  Eliza turned to her son anxiously. He knew what was coming.

  “Johnny, oh—is this not a terrible mistake?”

  Johnny’s heart was pounding so hard he could hardly breathe. He could no longer console his mother for her fears.

  “Oh, Mama, I really don’t know. But in any case, we’re here!”

  2

  July 14, 1794

  THE FIRST THING JOHNNY NOTICED, STEPPING ONTO Boston’s Long Wharf, was the whiteness. White faces, white bonnets, and a cool white light that made the ships in the harbor look cleaner than they actually were. The second thing was the wharf itself: a long, even row of new shops and warehouses, so unlike the rank warrens of Bridgetown, Barbados.

  He saw but three black men. They were readying a ship for departure. Great beads of sweat rolled down from their hairlines as if it were quite hot. But the sun on this day, his first day in America, was eclipsed by hazy clouds, and it was not really very hot, not by Barbadian standards.

  Disembarking alongside him, his mother wept. “Oh, Johnny, Johnny—regard Boston. It has been so long!” Johnny did not regard Boston but rather his mother. In the morning sunlight, in this new country, she appeared quite beautiful. Her sudden joy moved him, too. It was a welcome change from her attacks of anguish on the ship.

  Down the wharf, a coach awaited them. Before it stood a small dark-haired woman dressed in a high-waisted cotton gown that shivered in the breeze
. The woman was his mother’s age, perhaps slightly younger. Her dark eyes searched the wharf in a steady arc, like lighthouse beacons. Then they lit upon his mother.

  “Eliza!” she cried and came running—quite spryly, Johnny thought, for a woman of her years. After squeezing his mother tight for several long seconds, the woman gazed up into Johnny’s face and remarked, “Why, you’re nearly a man! My dear little Johnny!” Here, she burrowed a tearful cheek into his shirt.

  This must be Martha Miller, he thought. Martha Lee, now. This woman had helped to deliver him, had watched him take his first steps. But he could recall nothing of those days, and this fact irked him.

  Johnny remembered everything, a gift of which he was almost vainly proud. He first noticed it as a very young child, not four years old. He could stare at something, then shut his eyes, and the image would remain before him in its every minute particular before fading away. He learned to cheat his friends out of their money by betting he could describe something with his eyes closed. They might ask him to say the number of windows in a warehouse or the color of the carriages in the market square. With his eyes closed, it was easy to describe the things at his leisure before the image faded. He hoped to impress Mr. Adams with his skill when he met him.

  Johnny shut his eyes. How many white faces had he seen upon arriving at Long Wharf? Twenty-nine, among them seven ladies. How many buildings were there? Forty-three. What was for sale in the shops? Everything one could want: tobacco, sugar, linens, a haircut. There was even a tavern at the head of the wharf. One might have made a tidy sum wagering whether Johnny, eyes yet closed, could recall how many windows were visible along the wharf.

  Two hundred and sixteen.

  At last, trunks loaded onto the carriage, they set off for Cambridge. Eliza looked back once, wistfully. They had been obliged to sell the furniture they had brought along to use on the ship: a mahogany chest of drawers, two chairs, a bookcase, and one small writing desk. Although they had needed these items on the voyage, Eliza decided that it would be useful to procure the money. In the end, John had been able to leave them a fair sum, but to economize was essential. The rest of their things were now packed up in two heavy trunks.