“No.”
“There’s your answer, then,” Drusilla said.
“What answer?”
“You’re leavin’. I’m stayin’,” Drusilla said. “You’re free. I’m a slave. I never had much time for girls who sleep with the master—like that Missy.”
“I’m not the master!” Caleb exclaimed.
“You workin’ on it,” Drusilla stated, picking up the last armload of her belongings.
“You want to keep learning to read and write?” Caleb asked.
“I’d like to,” Drusilla said, “but Marse Boyd won’t like it.”
“Mas—Mr. Jardine won’t know,” Caleb said.
“So you say.” Drusilla continued toward the door. “We’ll see about that.”
Caleb stood aside reluctantly. “You taking them beads?” he asked.
“And why not?” Drusilla asked. “You gave them to me, didn’t you?” And she was gone.
“I was just asking,” Caleb told the empty room.
Jardine, who was clearly enjoying the process, continued Caleb’s education as a free man the very next afternoon. He called Caleb into his study.
“Have a seat, Mr. Rivers.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jardine,” Caleb said, forcing himself to sit well back, not perched on the edge of the chair like, as Jardine said, “a goddamned bird.”
“Well, Mr. Rivers,” Jardine continued, “we better talk about your course of study. What do you think a free man has to know besides how to enter a room? By the way, you still do it like a man looking to steal somebody’s hat. We have to work on that. But what else do you have to learn?”
“I don’t know,” Caleb said.
“Let’s see,” Jardine said, ticking off his fingers. “There’s hunting, fishing, dancing, shooting, fencing—oh, lots of things. Let’s start at the beginning. Have you done much fox hunting?”
“No, Mas—Mr. Jardine,” Caleb confessed. “I used to ride in Boston, but a slave doesn’t have a whole lot of time for hunting.”
Jardine was amazed. “In this county,” he said, “people are born in the saddle and learn to jump before they can feed themselves. That’s where we’ll start. Tell Mose to have two of my hunters saddled and ready at nine tomorrow morning. You, Mr. Rivers, are going to start learning to be a free black huntsman.”
“Yes, Mr. Jardine.”
“By the way,” Jardine said, “do you have any idea what the T between your first name and last name stands for?”
“Three?” Caleb guessed.
“Right! What do you think of it?”
“It’s a name,” Caleb said.
The next morning, Mose was waiting in front of the stable with the hunters. Rumors had been flying in the quarter about the strange doings of Caleb and Marse Boyd, but up until then there hadn’t been any riding involved. When Caleb came out of the house dressed in one of old Mr. Jardine’s riding jackets, Mose could not believe his eyes.
“Stop gawking, Mose,” Jardine said, “and give Mr. Rivers a leg up on that horse. Haven’t you ever seen a free black before?”
Mose did as he was told and stood watching in wonder as the horses trotted through the gate and toward the woods.
After observing for a while to see whether Caleb could ride at all and then deciding that he was surprisingly adept for a city boy, Jardine led him on the route the local hunt usually took when it worked Three Rivers. “Of course,” Jardine told him, “we’re not likely to raise a fox today, and we have no dogs, but the principle of the thing is about the same. If you see something in your way, jump the hell out of it and try to stay in the saddle. For instance,” he said, pointing, “see where that fence meets that line of magnolia bushes?” Caleb said that he did. “Well,” Jardine continued, “last winter, when Millie Holborn’s big bay ran away with her, she cleared that. She’s been bragging on it ever since. Do you want to take your chances?” Without waiting for an answer, Jardine spurred his hunter and lit out in that direction. After a brief hesitation, Caleb followed.
As his horse pounded over the slight decline toward the fence, Jardine had no time to worry about how Caleb was doing. Since Nancy’s death, he’d had little taste for hunting and less practice, so he needed to concentrate on his own ride. Besides, a free black’s neck was his own responsibility. Nearing the fence and feeling the horse beneath him gathering for the jump, Jardine forgot about everything else. Then, man and horse were flying through the air and landing with a solid thump that jolted every bone in his body. Regaining control of the horse, Jardine glanced over his shoulder, but there was no sign of Caleb. He’d started to rein the hunter around when he looked to the right and saw Caleb sitting on his hunter calmly looking at him.
“How’d you get here?” Jardine demanded with astonishment.
“Same way you did, Mr. Jardine,” Caleb said, trying not to look too proud of himself.
“You lied to me,” Jardine accused. “You have hunted before.”
“No, sir,” said Caleb.
“Then, how?”
“Well, Brent and I did do some jumping, though we weren’t supposed to,” Caleb said. “Mr. Staunton didn’t approve. Said it was dangerous.”
“Some jumping,” Jardine repeated suspiciously. “Like how high?”
“Oh,” Caleb said, “five, six, sometimes seven feet. Of course, we came off a lot.”
“Seven feet!” Jardine scoffed. “Well, we’ll just see about that. Follow me.” Jardine kicked his horse into motion, and Caleb followed.
When Jardine and Caleb rode back into the stable yard in the early afternoon, they both looked as though they’d been dragged backward through a hawthorn bush. Jardine had lost one sleeve of his riding jacket, and the right side of his face was deeply scratched from jumping through a hedge rather than over it. Caleb looked even worse. He’d been in two rivers and Thorndike Ditch. His old riding clothes looked like something off a scarecrow.
“Well,” said Jardine as he threw his reins to Mose, “I think we can scratch hunting off the list. With the chances you take, much more of that and you won’t live long enough to get up north. I’d dearly love to see you ride with the Kershaw hunt, but somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Caleb was too exhausted from the morning’s activity to even answer, so Jardine continued, “Now, get me some lunch. I’m starving.”
Drusilla had lunch all laid out by the time Jardine had drenched his head under the pump in the yard and dried his hair. Jardine sat down at the long dining table, and Caleb, who had quickly changed into his own clothes, assumed his usual position behind and to the left of Jardine’s chair. He didn’t have much to do except to see that Drusilla didn’t make any mistakes.
Jardine started to dig in but then stopped and looked up at Drusilla. “Set another place, Dru,” he said and then added to Caleb, “You’re going to eat lunch with me today, Mr. Rivers. Let’s see if you are as good at eating like a free man as you are at jumping.” When Caleb hesitated, Jardine snapped, “You heard me. Sit down.”
When Drusilla, her face stony, had set another place to Jardine’s right, Caleb sat uneasily, his eyes flicking from Jardine to the serving dishes and back. He didn’t know what to do first.
“Didn’t you eat with the Stauntons,” Jardine asked him, “up in Boston?”
“Usually Brent and me ate in the kitchen,” said Caleb.
“Brent and I,” Jardine corrected. “Well,” he said, reaching for a dish of potatoes, “the main object of civilized dining is to get your belly full without neglecting table conversation.” He helped himself, saying, “That was a splendid run this morning, Mr. Rivers. I especially enjoyed seeing you go head over heels into Little Creek. Potatoes?” He offered Caleb the dish.
“Thank you, Mr. Jardine,” Caleb said, taking the potatoes and helping himself. He tried to think of something to say. Finall
y he said, “It was a very refreshing experience.”
“I’ll bet,” Jardine said. “If I may suggest, Mr. Rivers, that most free people prefer to eat potatoes with a fork?”
“So I’ve heard, but thank you, Mr. Jardine, for that reminder. I appreciate it.”
“No problem, Mr. Rivers,” Jardine said. “Do you think you could pass me the meat platter?”
For the next few months, Caleb—when he wasn’t working—attended the Boyd Jardine Academy for the Education of Free Blacks. One by one, Jardine tested his skills and, where he could, improved them. When it came to swordsmanship, Jardine, who’d received training at the Citadel, had the advantage with the foil, harrying Caleb from one end of the barn to the other crying, “Gotcha!”
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve killed you today, Mr. Rivers,” he told Caleb during a break, “but let me assure you, if this were the real thing, you’d be deader than chivalry.”
But when it came to the sabers, Caleb’s superior size and strength combined with his natural ferocity gave him the advantage. Forgetting, in the heat of the moment, that Jardine was his former master and present employer, Caleb pressed Jardine until his back was flat against a wall of hay bales.
“Yield!” he demanded, adding as an afterthought, “Sir.”
“I think I just might,” said Jardine, dropping his blade, “before you separate my head from my body. You know, it’s a good thing that Nat Turner didn’t have you on his side back in ’28.”
“More, Mr. Jardine?” Caleb asked.
“I don’t think so, Mr. Rivers,” Jardine said. “I’ve sort of got used to being in one piece. If you get any better with that pigsticker, the county will be up in arms claiming I’m raising a free-black insurrection here.”
Most of the county didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to what Jardine was doing at Three Rivers. But when Martha Bentley heard from Bart Conroy that not only had Jardine allowed Caleb to purchase his freedom, but that the black was still at Three Rivers, she took the first opportunity to pay a call. When she arrived unannounced, Jardine and Caleb were in the big dining room and the Persian carpet was rolled back. Little Boyd was sitting in his high chair to one side chewing on a rusk and watching intently.
“You’re just in time, Martha,” Jardine said, coming out onto the veranda to greet her. “I’m trying to teach Caleb how to waltz and damn me if I can remember how to do it myself.”
“You’re teaching him to what?” Martha asked.
“Waltz. But we’ve got no music. Jeff—the fiddler down in the quarter—doesn’t know a waltz from a fandango. I believe you’re a dab hand yourself at dancing that sort of thing, Martha. Maybe you can give us some pointers.” He turned toward the door to the house, calling, “Mr. Rivers! Get yourself out here.”
Caleb, who had been lurking in the hall, stepped out on the veranda reluctantly, greeting Mrs. Bentley awkwardly.
“Martha,” Jardine said, “I’d like you to meet Mr. Caleb T. Rivers, the newest free black in Kershaw County. Mr. Rivers—Mrs. Rafe Bentley.”
Caleb bowed low—but not too low—as Jardine had taught him and said, “Mrs. Bentley, my very great pleasure.”
Martha did not extend her hand. Caleb hadn’t expected her to. Instead, she looked at him as if he were a monkey in clothes and said with cool politeness, “Mr. Rivers, would you mind if I had a word with Mr. Jardine—alone?”
Caleb bowed again, saying “Mrs. Bentley,” and went back into the house.
When the door had closed behind him, Martha wheeled toward Jardine.
“Boyd Jardine, have you gone completely out of your mind?”
“Possibly, Martha,” Jardine said. “It’s long been rumored in these parts, but what did you have in mind particularly?”
“Can’t you guess? It’s what you’ve been doing with that baboon. Rafe told me about you taking him all over creation during the summer beating up on darkies—and a white man! That was bad enough. I reckoned I had to make some allowances what with Nancy dying like that and all.”
“Very kind of you, Martha,” Jardine said. “I appreciate it.”
“Even after you spurned my cousin,” Martha added.
“Lovely girl,” Jardine said.
“That’s beside the point,” she said angrily. “But now I find that you’ve not only freed this . . . this . . . but you are teaching him how to waltz, for pity’s sake. What else are you teaching him?” she demanded, not really expecting an answer.
“Oh,” said Jardine casually, “not much. Just hunting, table manners, etiquette—what did you think of that bow?—shooting, fencing. Say, Martha, you ought to see that boy with a saber. I’m lucky to be wearing all my limbs.”
“Saber!” Martha Bentley looked alarmed. “Shooting? What are you trying to do, Boyd, raise a slave revolt?”
“Slave revolt? Of course not, Martha,” Jardine said. “Caleb’s as free as I am.”
“Well, won’t either of you be free or even alive, Boyd, if it gets out what you are doing here at Three Rivers. With war just around the corner, people are not going to be too understanding about you arming and training regiments of free blacks.”
“I hadn’t considered that angle,” said Jardine.
“Well, you had better consider it, and in a hurry,” Martha Bentley said, “if you want that darkie of yours to live to enjoy his freedom. And you had better get him out if this county and out of this state.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” said Jardine. “But we were just going to sit down to lunch. Won’t you join us?”
“Us?” said Martha frostily. “Who are us? You and that trained monkey?”
“Well, yes,” Jardine confessed. “You see, after nearly five years eating with field hands and then here in the kitchen with the house slaves, Caleb’s table manners were a little rusty, so I—”
“If you think I am going to sit down anywhere within five miles of a nigger at a dining table, Boyd, you are as crazy as everyone thinks you are.”
“That’s possible,” said Jardine.
“I may be very hungry when I get home, but I’ll still be able to say that I never ate lunch with a nigger.” Mrs. Bentley turned toward her carriage, but at that moment a child’s cry came from inside. Spinning around, she rushed into the room and picked up little Boyd.
Following in her wake, Jardine said, “I forgot. You haven’t seen Boyd Junior for some time. What do you think?”
Examining the child as if he were a blue-ribbon winner at a livestock show, she said, “I’m shocked and amazed that you seem to have a healthy and normal boy here.”
“Thank you,” said Jardine modestly. “We do our best. The house girls all call him Birdie, but I won’t have it. I’m thinking ahead when he’s forty years old and a local magistrate. How would it look?”
At that moment, Rose, the child’s nurse, appeared in the doorway.
“I’m sorry, Martha,” Jardine said, “but Junior has to go eat his lunch.”
Mrs. Bentley reluctantly surrendered the child and turned back toward the veranda.
“I’ll give you credit, Boyd,” she said. “You may be losing your mind, but you’ve turned out to be a half-decent father.”
“You’re too kind, Martha.”
Without another word, Mrs. Bentley climbed back in her gig, ignoring Jardine’s efforts to assist her.
“I could at least have made her a sandwich,” Jardine said to himself as the gig disappeared up the drive.
43
That evening, Jardine called Caleb into his study. “Sit down,” he said. “We have to talk.”
When Caleb was settled, Jardine asked, “Any idea what about?”
“Mrs. Bentley’s visit,” Caleb said. “She didn’t look happy.”
“That’s putting it mildly. She thinks I’m crazy and that you’re a murderous black likely to a
ssassinate the quality folk of Kershaw and nearby counties in their beds. Are you?”
“No,” said Caleb without hesitation.
“Thank God for that. But I’ve been doing some thinking since she was here, and I think Martha is right about one thing. You have to get out of this county, this state, and this region. It’s time to go north. Are you ready?”
“I think so.”
“Even without knowing how to waltz?” Jardine asked. “You’ll never be able to travel in the best circles, Mr. Rivers.”
“I’ll make do, Mr. Jardine.”
“I hope so. How’s Caesar coming along training for the dining room?”
“Okay, but slow. The boy has the will to learn, but his energy rushes so far ahead of his abilities that he trips over himself. But with Drusilla managing him, he’ll be all right. She’s a good woman.”
Jardine looked at him with a slight smile. “How’s her reading and writing coming along?”
Caleb was startled, but he answered, “Pretty good, especially the reading. Drusilla reads almost as well as I do. She can write, but she’s slow.”
“And her arithmetic?”
“Very good. She’s been doing the accounts now for over a month.”
“I know,” said Jardine. “And you know that I told you not to go teaching any of my slaves to read and write.”
“You didn’t mean to include Drusilla,” Caleb assured him. “Who’s going to read your newspapers to you when I’m gone? Do you know how much it would cost you to buy another slave with her abilities?”
“More than five hundred and fifty dollars, that’s for sure,” Jardine said. “How soon can you be ready to leave here?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“That soon?” Jardine said with surprise.
“Yes.”
“Okay,” Jardine said. “Be ready right after breakfast. If we hurry, we can catch the noon boat to Great Falls.”
This took Caleb by surprise. “We?”
“Sure. I’m going with you. I’m your ticket to freedom. On your own, you wouldn’t even get out of sight of Three Rivers. But we’ll talk about that in the morning. On the way. In the meantime, I’ve thought of one more skill necessary to every free man—black or white. You play much poker, Mr. Rivers?”
Caleb Page 18