The Maidenhead

by Parris Afton Bonds

  He felt it coming, that indescribable feeling he always experienced when making love with her. Colors would explode on the back of his lids. He would lose himself, if only for an instant, but in that time he would be given that elusive taste of eternal ecstasy.

  When clarity was restored, he lay flaccid between her damp thighs, his head on her clothed bosom. He realized that she was tenderly stroking his tumbled hair.

  “Yew were most fortunate yew did not strike me just then," she murmured idly. “Or else I should have returned at once to me fairyland."

  He mentally counted on his fingers. This was March. No, she wouldn’t be returning to fairyland. At least not before the year was out.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “ ‘Then said Boaz unto his servant that was set over the reapers, Whose damsel is this? And the servant that was set over the reapers answered and said, It is the Moabitess damsel that came back with Naomi. Then said Boaz unto Ruth, Go not to glean in another field but abide here fast by my handmaidens.’ ’’

  Patrick paused. Every one of the thirty-six upturned faces in the little church was enrapt with his reading of the biblical story. His gaze fell on her, and Clarissa shivered. He spoke with extraordinary power, with a charisma that during biblical times was said to have come from the Holy Spirit.

  Her husband returned his gaze to the printed page. “ ‘And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the people, Ruth the Moabitess, have I purchased to be my wife. So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife and he went in to her. And she gave birth to a son.’"

  Clarissa flushed and pricked her finger on the wild rose she held. Patrick’s blunt prose made her uncomfortable. Nigel’s flowery verse had never filled her with so much . .. unrest.

  That was it. Unrest. And spring fever.

  Spring! The year had gone so quickly!

  "So on this auspicious day,” her husband was saying, "we gather to rejoice in the birth of a son four months ago to Master Bannock and his wife.”

  Clarissa stared at the spot of blood on her fingertip. The rose had been Patrick’s idea. On their way to church that morning, he had seen it and picked it. He had an affinity for plants and animals. All living things, in fact.

  Was life like the rose? One couldn’t have the pleasure of its beauty without suffering the pain of its thorns? What would Nigel have to say about that? In less than a year, he would be free. And then what?

  “If the parents will bring the infant forward now for the christening.”

  In the pew to Clarissa’s left, the parents moved to stand in front of Patrick. In Clarissa’s mind, Rose Bannock was like her namesake, a wild rose thriving amidst the squalor of a barbarous land. Now that she was no longer round with child, she was almost waiflike. By her side, Walter stood inordinately tall and very proud of the sleeping infant in his wife’s arms.

  Patrick glanced at her, and Clarissa remembered the cue. With the wild rose in hand, she went to stand beside the couple as godmother. Her fingers touched Patrick’s as she passed the rose to him. At the tingly sensation, her breath fluttered in her throat.

  She peeked at him, but he seemed not to have been affected, as she had been. He was in such mastery of himself. And here she had always thought she had been the one in control of her emotions.

  Holding the rose by its stem, her husband dipped the bud in the small brass bowl of water, then lightly touched the baby’s downy head. "I christen thee Jack."

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Get your starboard tacks aboard and haul taut off your lee sheets,” Jack ordered a bandy-legged sailor.

  Jack turned his face to the stiff breeze sweeping in off the ship’s stem. Five months and both foul and fair weather had taken him places along the Virginia shoreline that not even the colony’s intrepid adventurer, Captain Smith, had mapped. Colonists still talked about the captain wherever Jack had stopped, although he now spent most of his time in England when not exploring faraway places.

  A couple of days was the usual amount of time Jack spent visiting each community. Sometimes he partook in their games of ninepins, billiards with the common farmer, or gambled either at horse racing or piquet with the more well-to-do planters. Often he was reduced to watching a demonstration of the community militia, as if he were some visiting dignitary.

  Some communities had names evocative of England, like Charles Cittie, Surrey, Warwick, Isle of Wight, Elizabeth Cittie. Others, plantations, were evocative of grandeur, such as Martin’s Hundred and Mount Radcliff, his last port-o’-call before returning to Ant Hill and then sailing for England. With the stack of orders from other planters whose trust he had gained, he was well positioned to dupe Radcliff.

  As the ship approached Mount Radcliff, Jack stood at the railing, impressed by the brick manor house which loomed ahead. Like a monarch on the throne, it sat on an emerald knoll with its horseshoe-shaped staircase serving as a footstool. Not shutters but glazed windows overlooked the lazy-flowing Chickahominy. Like loyal subjects, smaller, timbered outbuildings clustered in the background.

  Jack had learned as much as he could about Radcliff and the manor from the settlers without arousing suspicion, and they had told him that the bricks for the manor had been imported from England at the expense of the Virginia Company, and the stone for the staircase had been quarried in Ireland. Bricklayers and masons, initially hired to work on Jamestown’s municipal buildings, had been commandeered by Radcliff for his own private use, as had fifteen of the bondservants with whom Jack had been transported.

  Leaning on a stout cane and identifying himself as Radcliff s overseer, a man of short stature greeted him at the landing. Believing Jack to be of the gentry, the little man appeared anxious to please. “Oliver Munger.” He bobbed his head and doffed his felt hat.

  At that, Jack saw the man’s ferret eyes and knew he would have to tread carefully. Men like Radcliff’s minion were sly and, like bloodhounds, scented immediately activities of an illicit nature.

  Munger conducted him from the dock, up the grand staircase, into the manor and then to the library where Radcliff awaited him. With a thinly veiled air of condescension and a contemptuous curl of his lips, Radcliff extended a beringed hand, indicating an upholstered X chair. "I have heard word of your enterprise. You represent—"

  "Myself. John Holloway, Esquire.” Jack removed his plumed hat, gave a half bow, then sprawled in the chair with the insouciance of an aristocrat. "And I represent interested planters.

  Below the white crest of hair, unblinking bloodshot eyes inspected him. "By taking large orders for items, you can purchase them more cheaply—is that it?”

  He waved a languid hand. "And thereby add pounds to your coffers."

  Now the eyes flickered with interest. "Perhaps you would like a glass of Alicante while we discuss business.”

  "Tis a fine Spanish wine," Jack said. "But I prefer the Portuguese Madeira or Fayal.”

  The lashless lids slid half-closed, as if to conceal the thoughts behind the reddened eyes, but Jack knew his offhanded remark had not gone unnoticed. His unpleasant stint with a Spanish galley had served him in good stead.

  After that, Radcliff was most cordial, even to the extent of showing him around the estate. The clever man had a purpose in mind. That, Jack did not doubt.

  His practiced eye took in the storehouses filled with hogsheads of tobacco, as good as ready cash. He noted the elegant furnishings, and was reminded of comfort long denied. He observed the numerous indentured servants and five black slaves, all guarded by equally starved English mastiffs.

  "A ship that will deal in slaves can bring untold profits to its master," Radcliff told him.

  Jack calculated that the estate represented wealth beyond what his trade would ever bring him.

  Wealth. The word enticed him. As he knew Radcliff was doing. The word "wealth" warred with that other word, freedom. Freedom that went with the danger of the high seas. Go over to Radcliff’s side, and wealth could be his for life.

  He was almost tempted t
o divulge Mad Dog’s plan. It was a heady feeling to know that it was in his power to play off the two sides against each other. Modesty’s role in it however made him waver, as well as the fact that Radcliff had almost succeeded in having her burnt as a witch.

  Having finished the tour of the estate, Jack and Radcliff were beginning to climb the horseshoe staircase when a man in tattered clothing came running around the comer of the building. He had been badly beaten. Something, a whip most likely, had laid open one gaunt cheek and his left forearm.

  Panting, he addressed Jack. "Please, m’lord. I ask for your protection!"

  Obviously, the man, pitifully thin, did not recognize him. With horror, Jack realized that this indentured servant was one of the men with whom he had been transported the year before. Elias Johnson. Then Elias had been a strapping man.

  Radcliff glowered down at the servant. “You forget your place."

  At that moment, Munger showed up with his cane. "There you be. You’ll pay mightily for this." He tugged at his hat brim. "Me apologies for the disturbance, your worship.”

  Without thinking, Jack asked, “What has the fellow done?"

  "A laggard servant, he is!" Munger replied. "And disobedient, as well. He deserves more than a beating with the whip."

  “Sire," Elias implored. “My master is inhumanly cruel. As God is my witness!"

  Elias, Jack knew, was not one to whine. The fellow had won his spurs in 1603 battling the Turks in Hungary and certainly knew about hardship.

  "Another servant," Elias hurried on breathlessly, “Alice Abbot, died two months ago from beatings. By my troth, I counted five hundred lashes inflicted on her at one time! Her body was full of sores and holes—that were rankled and putrefied.”

  At that moment, Jack knew with which side he would align himself. “The fellow has arms that look like he once rowed in a galley. Fatten him up, and I could use him aboard my ship.”

  Radcliff’s mouth curled in anticipation. “'Twill cost you. The bondservant is a hard worker.”

  "Not according to Munger here,” Jack commented dryly. “A laggard, did he not term the bondservant?"

  He was thinking quickly. In the past five months, he had learned about the widespread practice of gambling among the Virginians. All ranks seemed to be desperately given to it, even to the point of putting up their servants as stakes.

  Gambling, whether over cards or horses or humans, brought together in a single focused act the planters’ competitiveness, independence, and materialism. All based on the element of chance.

  Wagering represented a social agreement in which each individual was free to determine how he would play, and the gentleman who accepted a challenge risked losing his material possessions as well as his personal honor.

  Not that either he or Radcliff had personal honor.

  Five months and a thousand miles had devoured all the pounds and notes Mad Dog had advanced him. Unless . . ..

  "Still and all, I shall wager with you at a game of whist for the old chap.”

  "Your stakes?”

  “This." Jack drew from his embroidered waistcoat the black silk hatband with its gold buckle, of which five months earlier he had relieved the right Reverend Patrick Dartmouth.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  "More than once, you know, it has crossed my mind to wager with you at a game of cards."

  Modesty grinned. "Yew’re only saying that because yew’re losing.” She discarded the queen of spades and drew from the stock the five of diamonds.

  "Or to sell you off to Arahathee,” Mad Dog mumbled and played the jack of spades and took a card from the pile.

  Outside, rain fell steadily. To Modesty, it seemed that enough had fallen during April to float Noah’s ark. With both her and Mad Dog confined to the cabin, boredom had driven her to suggest a game of piquet with an old deck that had been found aboard the Röter Lowe.

  She played her king of hearts and, spreading her remaining cards face up on the board table with a flourish, announced, "Carte blanche!”

  He scanned the cards, then narrowed his eyes on her. “You cheated.”

  She mustered an indignant look. "I did not! Tis a curmudgeon yew are. Now hand over another tanner."

  In the last three days, she had amassed enough sixpences to replenish her pens and brushes when she got back to London. She would set up a stall and charge the pudding-heads for letter writing and document deciphering. She might end up as poor as a church mouse, but she wasn’t about to play blind man’s bluff with bailiffs ever again.

  “Yes, you did cheat," Mad Dog said, each word distinct. He folded his arms and fixed her with his flint-eyed gaze. “Now you can either show me how you rooked me or you can clean the privy.”

  Just the thought brought a sour fluid to her mouth, but she managed an indifferent air. “So, build another privy."

  He lifted a brow, and she knew he wasn’t about to buy her bluff, that at the first sign of the rain letting up, he’d send her to the outhouse with a scrub brush and a bucketful of lime.

  She sighed. "All right." Never one to surrender without trying to strike a bargain, she added, "But in exchange, yew got to take me to the fair at Henrico come May Day."

  “So done.”

  “Watch.” She shuffled the cards. “Cut them."

  Eyeing her suspiciously, he did so.

  "I'll tell yew now that cutting a deck has naught to do with preventing yewrself from being swindled. Tis just a formality the card swindler allows yew. To distract yew.”

  With a flourish, she ribbon-spread the cards, face down, fan-wise across the table. "Now this one”—she tapped the card with her finger—“is the high card, the king of spades.”

  She flipped it over, and his brows yanked up at the sight of the king of spades.

  It took her the better part of an hour to show him how to watch for the designated high card while shuffling, and to drag his left thumb across it to palm it in the left hand, and then bring it back to the bottom of the deck. "See, yewr left hand crimps the card so that it lies bowed when all the other cards are flat."

  She indicated the concave card. "When yew perfect yewr rhythm, the other players will be watching the eye-catching way yew brandish the cards and will not look for the little things."

  She glanced at Mad Dog and could tell she had once again managed to impress him with her peculiar skills. "So what do yew think about advancing me passage fare back to England?"

  He rose from the table and stared at her as if she were one of those colonial insects never seen before. "I think you would swindle your own mother, wench."

  “Modesty. And remember. Yew promised to take me to May Day at Henrico."

  "I’d like to take back that promise and the one I gave when I pledged to take you for my wife."

  She watched him stride from the room. She sighed. Well, she had failed to get the passage fare from him.

  Now what?

  Chapter Fourteen

  During her brief residency at Jamestown, Modesty had learned that cargo ships sank, tobacco prices fell without warning, bondservants suddenly sickened and died, and storms and droughts ruined crops. Nothing could be counted on—except change. Modesty knew that Mad Dog relied on the remoteness of Ant Hill to prevent it. And yet here he was, committed to leave his sanctuary all because of her caprice, the wench he had taken for a wife.

  On this first day of May she rode pillion behind him. His bay mare trotted along the river road, bordered with jack-in-the-pulpits, anemones, dogwood, and violets. "Rose must have her baby by now. I wonder whether 'tis a boy or a girl. By me faith, 'tis even possible Clarissa is in the family way. I bargained with the good reverend for celibacy in his marriage to her, but me doubts that the two have kept the pledge.”

  "Egad, wench, you chatter like a magpie.” She latched onto a handful of his hair and tugged sharply. “And yew, me lordly lion, art a dullard. 'Tis May Day, a time for fun and frolic." She firmly believed that his problem was that he didn’t know how to unbend.
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  From the sounds of revelry drifting downriver, Modesty knew that the inhabitants of Henrico had started early with bending the elbow to raise a bumper of ale. Now at midday, they should be well in their cups.

  The top of a towering eighty-foot maypole, bedecked with hawthorn blossoms and streamers of colored ribbons, came into view before the river road opened onto the village green. It had been transformed into a maze of stalls, stages, and game areas. Settlers from outlying areas swelled the population that had turned out for the holiday.

  Youths wrestled, a man who looked like an old satyr played a German flute, a plump young woman displayed her handicrafts of quilts and rugs, and merchants hawked their wares. A steady stream of carousers poured in and out of the chicken coop known as the Bloody Bucket, where spirits like ale, beer, and wine lightened their own.

  Next to the tavern was a stable, its floor strewn with fresh straw for the holiday. With a less than optimistic expression, Mad Dog dismounted and held up his big hands to assist her down.

  She braced her hands on his shoulders. Her smile teasing, she said, “Careful, yew might betray yewr fear.”

  He glanced sharply at her. "What are you talking about?"

  She took her hands from his shoulders. "Yew’re afraid yew might have a good time with other people. Then yew would need them, wouldn’t yew?"

  “Ply your tawdry art trade, wench," he growled, "and leave thinking to the intellectuals.”

  His words cut deep. She whirled from him and stalked from the stable into the sunlight and the mass of people.

  Her name was called out, but not by Mad Dog. It was Rose who hailed her. The swarthy young woman cradled a baby in her arms. “Modesty! I 'ave missed ’oo so!”

  "Oh, let me see yewr baby, Rose. A boy or a girl? When did yew have—"

  "Before Christmas.” With a mother’s pride, she passed the baby to her. “Jack be 'is name.” Modesty gazed down at the cherubic face with unblinking eyes as large as Spanish doubloons. “Why, he’s a splendid lad.” She peered at Rose. "Yewr marriage—'tis a good one?”