by Edith Layton
“Father, no!” Thomas shouted. He ran to his father’s side and tugged at his knotted fist.
“All right, I won’t hit him. But he must go; you can have no pity,” Alfred snarled, never taking his eyes from the bond-boy. “I’ll have him out in a trice. You’ll never have to see him again.” He looked down at his son at last. “Oh my God, what did he do to you?” Alfred cried, seeing Thomas’s grief and fearing the worst.
“Nothing, nothing.” Thomas wept. “Oh Father, he’s bleeding. Oh, he didn’t do anything. Oh, look, he’s bleeding.”
Nurse came bustling into the little room. She held the bond-boy’s face up to the light to get a closer look at the damage. “’Tis only his lip, master,” she said. But the look in the boy’s eyes was beyond mere pain.
Alfred straightened his coat, shook out his sleeves, and took a deep breath. Now that the fear was gone, he could see clearly again. The commotion had drawn many curious servants, aside from Nurse. They hovered in the doorway. And Della stood barefoot, in her nightclothes, clutching her doll and gazing at the bond-boy wide-eyed, her own lips trembling.
“He didn’t do anything,” Thomas kept sobbing. Alfred became afraid, because when Thomas flew into a passion, he often grew feverish. Alfred dropped to his knees in front of his son.
“Then why did you cry out?” he asked him. “I thought—ah, well never mind what I thought. I believed he had harmed you, and I came to stop him.…” He glanced up at the bond-boy and saw, in that moment, that the boy knew it was a lie. He had come to kill him. But the boy said nothing. His face was still, though his lean chest shook with the short, shallow breaths he took in reaction to the sudden, violent onslaught.
“He didn’t do anything.” Thomas wept, his eyes wild. “I cried out because—because he was getting dressed and I walked into his room and he didn’t see me, but I saw—I saw…” He began sobbing again.
But now Alfred grew very still, relief giving way to a new dread. Maybe the lad hadn’t done anything to his son, but what vile thing had Thomas seen him do?
“What did you see?” Alfred asked fearfully. He had taken a strange boy into his home, a mad boy, and what he might have caused by so doing squeezed at his heart.
“I saw…I saw…” Thomas began to say, but then was overcome with emotion again and subsided into sobs.
Alfred looked up at the boy, who, for the first time, flinched, and shook his head in denial.
“I will know,” Alfred told the boy grimly as he rose and advanced on him. “If you don’t tell me of your own free will what my son saw, I’ll have it from you, one way or the other. You will not leave here until I know.”
Now the boy’s eyes lit with a fury so brilliant that Alfred took a step back without realizing it. Then he saw pain in them, before the light was quenched and they became deadened. Without a word, the boy turned his back on his new master. While Alfred sputtered in growing outrage, the boy unbuttoned his hastily done up shirt and, without warning, let it drop from his shoulders. When Alfred saw what his son had, he himself had to bring his fist to his mouth to stifle his own outcry. But his servants gasped and murmured in shock.
The bond-boy was young, but the scars on his back were not. They crisscrossed that lean back: some were white welts, some pink, some thin, white delicate tracings, as of frost or cracked glass across the otherwise smooth clear skin of that newly broadening back, disfiguring it. He’d been beaten, savagely and often. Alfred had once seen an old cart horse with similar marks on his hide and had refused to deal with the farmer who had owned him. He’d never seen a man with such scarring. He wished he had never seen a boy with such, and remembering how he himself had almost beaten the lad made his stomach feel hollow and cold.
“You may put your shirt on again,” Alfred said dully. The boy didn’t turn until he had done up his shirt, and when he did, the look on his face made Alfred order his servants out and about their duties. Nurse stayed to cluck over the lad’s torn mouth, giving him a wet rag to hold over it. She would have stayed to fuss longer if Alfred hadn’t commanded her to go, too.
When she left in a huff at how rude he sounded, the room was silent except for the harsh sound of Thomas trying to get his tears under control. Alfred paced the room a few times before he spoke. “Useless to say I’m sorry. You must know that,” he said, with a quick look at Jared. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“I’d like to leave, sir,” Jared said quietly. “Thank you for saying it was a mistake. Thank you for all you’ve done. But I have my freedom now and I’d like to take it, if I may.”
“I wish you would not!” Alfred said, this time without bothering to so much as glance at his son. “The fault was mine. I acted without thinking—or rather, I suppose, from thinking too much. It will not happen again.”
“But it will,” Jared said wearily. “It always does. That’s how I earned my stripes,” he said with a smile too old for his face. “I’m a good servant. At least I try to be, but there are some things I won’t do—or can’t say. That’s not good when you’re a bondsman. Old Higgins hated me because he said I was always looking down on him. I guess I was. He beat me some, but not as badly as my first master, who got tired of my insisting I was an earl and not just an orphan. My second master beat me harder because by then I was older and I kept trying to run away. Then I learned that even if I did get away, if I was caught, it would add more years to my contract. Whoever caught me would be rewarded, and I’d have to work off that reward price, too. So I waited and learned to be quiet, although I couldn’t help the way I…but I’m not a bond-servant anymore—or so you said?” he asked again, his face suddenly looking younger and vulnerable. “This…this didn’t change that?”
“No, no, I told you so. You’re free,” Alfred said quickly. “But I would ask that you stay on with us. We’ll try to make a new beginning.”
“How can I?” Jared asked, old pain making him look more like Thomas than Alfred could bear. “It will only happen again. You think there’s something wrong with me because I keep saying I’m an earl. I don’t blame you; it does sound crazy. But it’s true.”
Jared let out a long, shaky breath, and when he spoke again, he addressed Alfred directly, looking in his eyes as though they were both men of the world. “After my parents died,” he said, “my brother and I went to bed one night and woke to find strangers in our room. We fought, but there were three of them and they were grown men. They put us into sacks and took us from our house in a farm cart. And then…” He paused, then went on, stony-faced but with his eyes wild with light, “we were driven a long way, and then they tossed us into a river—like kittens they were going to drown. I’d been working at my bonds since I woke up, so when we hit the water, I managed to get free. I freed my brother, too. But he—he couldn’t swim as well. I saw him go under the water. I tried to reach him, but the current carried me to shore, where they caught me again. This time, they took me to London and sold me to a soul driver—that’s what they call men who buy bondservants without asking questions, to sell in the Colonies. I’ve been here ever since. I guess I was lucky. Luckier than my brother, at least.”
He shook his head as though to clear it of the memory. “It happened,” he told Alfred imploringly, his expression hopeless and yet still insistent. “Beat me as you will, but I won’t deny it. I can’t. If I deny who I was, then I’ll be what they wanted me to be—nobody. Someday, when I’m older, I’ll put things right. It’s what I’m waiting for. So now I try to be a good servant so that someday I can return to England.”
“There was such a case,” Alfred said, musing. “Aye. I remember reading about it—a young bond-servant in the Pennsylvania colony. He claimed the same thing. Yes, now I remember—it was an evil uncle, he said. He claimed he was an Irish earl, and many believed him; in fact, he won one case—and lost another. His uncle was a powerful man; with that title and the estate in his hands, the lad didn’t have a chance. Why, he fought it for years and years. I remember seeing a letter in th
e Times about it. Why, now that I recall, it was almost exactly the same story!”
“Yes,” Jared said softly, “James Annersley, earl of Anglesey. Everyone knows about it here. He tried to prove who he was for twenty years. He never could. He died two years ago, still trying. That’s another reason everyone thinks I’m lying; they think I’m copying him. I think that’s what my uncle counted on. But James Annersley didn’t have a brother. And he never won back his title. I will. I vow I will—someday. And I’m not mad,” he said with the first hint of defiance he’d shown. Although he’d always been set on his story, he’d never been anything but polite and deferential.
In fact, Alfred realized, with a feeling of disquiet, his manners were always refined. Of course, he was only a bond-boy, whatever he claimed. It was impossible to believe he was really a kidnapped earl; that was the stuff of fairy tales, a once-in-a-lifetime thing that had already happened once, as the boy himself knew very well. But still, Alfred thought uneasily, the boy is always a gentleman, even when there is no reason for him to be. It was almost as if he too knew that a man had to act a gentleman whatever the circumstances, whoever was there to see him, or else he’d sink to being a savage. Whatever his beginnings, he behaved just as an aristocrat should.
“I’m not saying I believe you, lad,” Alfred finally said, “but I’m not saying I don’t. One thing I will say: whatever you are, you’re not mad—at least not in the way I think of madmen. Nor do I believe you’ll hurt my son. Stay on with us. It may be we can do you some good. It may be you can do us some.”
“Yes, will you?” Thomas asked eagerly.
“Will you, Jared?” Della echoed in a frightened little voice, which made her father realize she’d been standing still in the shadows the whole while. He went to her side and took her small hand in his, hoping she’d remember that, and not the way he’d punished the bond-boy.
Jared grimaced when he saw her, reminding Alfred of how boys hated to let girls see their pain. But then the boy’s thin shoulders finally slumped, letting them all see how tightly he’d been holding himself.
“Yes,” Jared said. “I’ll stay, if you want me to.”
“If I want you to?” Thomas cried, “Of course. Oh, this is fine. You won’t have to work all the time, either. Not with us, right, Father? We’ll fish and fly kites—oh, we’ll have a grand time!”
“Aye, until the autumn. Then it’s schooling for you, lad,” Alfred said. “But for now, aye. Jared can teach you the way of summer in this land.”
Alfred and Thomas grinned. But Della looked troubled. She let go of her father’s hand and walked toward Jared. Then she stopped and reached out a chubby hand toward his mouth. “Aren’t you going to fix that?” she asked shyly.
“Oh, this?” Jared said, wincing as he touched his torn lip. “Yes. Don’t worry. I suppose it looks bad, but it’s nothing. I’ve had worse.”
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Not much,” he said, trying to smile. “Your nurse helped. It will be better soon, you’ll see.”
“No,” she said worriedly, biting her own pink lip, “I mean your back. Does it hurt? Can we fix it, too?”
This time, Alfred winced. The boy’s back was so hideously scarred, and with his enormous pride, it was easy to see why it was his secret and surely a humiliating subject for him. But in the way of all small children, Della had gone straight to the point. Alfred wondered how the boy would take it. Jared sat back on his heels before he answered.
“No, not anymore,” Jared finally said. “It doesn’t hurt now.”
“Oh,” Della said. She nodded and clutched her doll tighter. “I’m sorry it ever did,” she said solemnly.
Jared cocked his head, and then he smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “That helps.”
And although Jared had smiled at them several times since they’d met, Alfred suddenly realized he’d never seen him really smile before.
*
That summer was blazingly hot. At least it was to Alfred and the servants he’d brought from England.
“All the summers we prayed for a clear sky and sun all day, and look at this,” Alfred remarked to Nurse one shining July day. “The sun’s so relentless, I believe I could do with a nice damp mist.”
“But Master Thomas couldn’t,” she snapped. “Look at the boy, sir. Tan and stout, laughing all the time and breathing free. ’Tis the moistness in the air as well as the pure, sweet warmth of it. Not a cough or a fever this month,” she said, knocking her gnarled knuckles on the sill of the window they were looking out. “He’s just like a regular boy now, thank the Lord.”
“Aye,” he said, smiling, watching how Thomas capered alongside Jared as they headed down to the stream to fish. He smiled wider as he saw Della skipping to keep up behind them.
“And the baby,” Nurse said, her eyes misted. “It’s a treat how Jared looks out for Miss Della, sir; why he even has Master Thomas doing it these days. I don’t mind telling you I wouldn’t let her stir from this house if I had any worries about her. I’d be out there catching her every time she followed them, which is every time they set foot outside. But between the outside servants and Jared, who watches her like the apple of his eye, she’s safer with them than with me, for I can’t wade into streams after her, that I can tell you. Unless you want me to sir,” she added hurriedly, “and think I ought.”
“No, no,” he said, laughing, watching his daughter catch up and take Jared’s hand as they swung down the lane. “No need. You’re right; it couldn’t be better. That boy’s the best investment I’ve made so far.” Except for the house and the land, he thought smugly, thinking of his young tobacco plants flourishing in the fields.
But the sight of the young trio pleased him even more: tall, young Jared, dark and newly robust Thomas, and their little shadow with great blue eyes and ebony curls. Alfred chuckled. What a change three months had made—in his fortunes and his son. In the spring, Thomas had been pale and listless, only his eyes showing the energy a boy his age should have. But now he was growing flesh and gaining confidence in every way. With no more night fevers and days of coughing, he flourished, mind and body. It was the climate, of course—and the influence of his new servant, Alfred admitted. That lad was growing, too, on a steady diet of good food. He was becoming positively handsome. In these few months, Jared had put on weight and height, his lanky body becoming smoothly muscled. A head taller and twice as composed as Thomas, he looked years older than Alfred’s son now, and acted it, too. But that was because Thomas was learning to be a boy at last, while Jared finally had the opportunity to grow more like the man he tried to be.
Alfred nodded to himself. Things were finally in hand. He’d even sent some inquiries to London. The boy’s story deserved that, at least. But what with ocean travel and the way men a continent away reacted to inquiries made by an employer across a wide ocean, information traveled even slower than the post. And so, Alfred thought, he might be ready to return to England richer than a king by the time he found out if the lad really was an earl. It didn’t matter. Now, they all had time.
Or so he thought that sparkling July morning.
* * *
August came damp and surly that year, with the heat less a blessing than a presence now that the novelty of it had worn off for the newly arrived Englishmen at Alfred’s plantation. They discovered a New World August had bugs in its teeth and sweat in its armpits and was so hot and humid the only things that wanted to move were the crops in the field as they strained toward the sun that tried to bake them into the earth.
But Jared showed Thomas how to cool his ankles in the creek as he fished and showed Della how to sip the nectar from the tip of the honeysuckle horn instead of gathering flowers in the sweltering heat, and let them both lie in deep grass and watch clouds when it got too hot to do anything but dream aloud.
“Father’s hired a schoolmaster for me,” Thomas said drowsily one afternoon as they watched clouds gather to thunderheads.
�
�Ah,” Jared said, “so you won’t be going to the schoolhouse in September?”
“I am to be a gentleman,” Thomas reproved him. “I shall have separate lessons. You can take them with me.”
There was a silence. Jared ran a blade of grass through his fingers. “I don’t think so,” he said gently. “I’m a servant, Tom. I’m here to work, not take lessons.”
“Nonsense,” Thomas said, sounding very like his father. “It will be good for both of us.”
“No,” Jared said quietly, lying back with his arm behind his head, “I don’t think so.”
“Jared,” Thomas said with a hint of humor, “I’m your employer and I say yes and so there’s an end to it. If it makes you feel better, we’ll tell Father you’re helping me with my lessons, and that’s how you’ll be working.”
Jared was quiet so long Thomas thought he had fallen asleep. But Della was watching, as she always was, and she saw the pain in Jared’s wide-open eyes. “No,” Jared finally said, “because it wouldn’t be true. I wouldn’t be learning the same things you were. I couldn’t. I’m probably leagues behind you, Master Thomas.” Thomas sat up. These days, Jared only called him that when he was angry with him. “Truth is,” Jared went on, “I did well with my lessons until I stopped having them—that was five years ago, when I was only seven. I know my letters, Tom, and my numerals, and I can write my name and read some of Della’s books. But that’s about all. Bond-boys aren’t tutored in anything but how to use their backs, you see.”
“But you know everything,” Della said passionately.
Both boys laughed. “So I do,” Jared said sadly. “But not how to read and write and calculate.”
“You will,” Thomas said with determination.
“Hooray!” Della cried.
*
Lessons started in September, and by October, when the crops were coming in, Jared could calculate how rich his new master was going to be and write up an account of it for his own diary. Della lost a tooth and was horrified by how she looked, until Thomas gave her a shilling for it and Jared told her the tooth fairy would give her another. The next morning Della awoke to find that she had indeed received another coin, and then jiggled all her other teeth so much hoping for another that both boys couldn’t stop laughing. Thomas grew another inch and gained more weight, and everyone saw that he’d likely be the image of his father one day.