Keturah

by Lisa T. Bergren

  Shoving thoughts of Mitilda aside, Ket pushed through the swinging wooden door to the kitchen just as Absalom and the two new slaves disappeared out the back door. The kitchen was equipped with a cast-iron stove in the corner and wide marble counters. There were kettles and pans of all sizes, as well as barrels labeled FLOUR, SUGAR, and, atop the counter, a much smaller one labeled SALT. A quick peek in each told her they were empty—even the one marked SUGAR—and she sighed with disappointment. She glanced back at the stove, and her mouth began watering at the thought of bread baking or bacon frying. Silently, she prayed that the men would find some food in the storehouse, something to supplement what they had purchased in town so they might make it through until tomorrow.

  Tomorrow they might find new troubles. Her only task was to find her way through today’s.

  They moved on to a passageway that led to her father’s office—I shall need to return here and read everything I can find, Keturah thought—then on to a bedroom that the boy had clearly been inhabiting beside the stairs. There were toy soldiers on the floor arranged in neat lines and a leather ball in the corner. It was only then that Ket realized she’d sent the woman and child running, not even giving them time to collect their things. Where had they gone? The aforementioned cottage? She’d have to find the strength to reach out to the woman and invite her back to gather her meager belongings.

  But not yet. Not yet.

  Tentatively, they climbed the squeaky stairs. At the top, they found six rooms, the four in the middle small and sparse, and those on each end of grand size. “This should be yours,” Verity said to Ket. “My, look at the view from here,” she went on, moving closer to one of the windows.

  But Keturah was shaking her head. Because as much as this had been her father’s room, it was also the one he’d most likely shared with her. Mitilda. Bile rose in her throat. “No,” she said. “Come. Let us find other quarters.”

  Once her sisters were out in the hallway again, she firmly shut the door to his room, as if she could shut out the very thought of her father’s mistress. They each decided to take one of the smaller rooms that ushered in the leeward breezes from broad windows. Given the heat of high summer, Keturah knew it would be particularly vital to have the breeze.

  “We’ll get our things settled inside and soon it will feel utterly cozy,” she said, thinking of their feather beds, pillows, and linens. Such finery in the midst of such a dilapidated mess! She shook her head wearily. It mattered not. She decided she could sleep just about anywhere right now, once she had a little food in her stomach. The only other items in each room were a small table, a washbasin and pitcher. There was no artwork or paper on the plaster walls. At the ceiling, there was evidence of a roof leak, the dark streaks of mold creeping their way down the plaster like a serpentine monster.

  They found a larger room at the end of the hall with a receiving closet to one side. This too was empty, showing no trace of her father’s mistress, and Keturah followed her sisters inside.

  “Oh, Ket, then this should be yours,” Verity said, turning in delight. “With a bit of work it shall be a quite proper room and receiving room.”

  “Look at all this shellwork!” Selah said, walking to one window as Keturah went to another. Each of the three windows in the room had hundreds upon hundreds of seashells in neat and tidy rows inlaid in the plaster. She’d known her father had dabbled with shell art years ago, making mirror frames for their mother and jewelry boxes for the girls after he’d visited the West Indies. As she toured it, she could not help but wonder, had he created this for Mother? Hoping that someday his wife might come here to join him?

  Her mother had never displayed his mirrors. Instead, she had them moved to the attic as soon as he set sail again, considering the mirrors passé in style. But her father loved the mirrors, and Ket had spent hours in the attic, wondering over them. It was as if he had been trying to bring the Indies to her mother if she wouldn’t come to see its wonders herself.

  Ket had once overheard the two of them talking, on the eve of one of his departures. Ket hovered in the shadows, and the thought of her shameless spying embarrassed her even now. She recalled how she’d so wished for her father not to leave again. Even after being sent to bed, she clamored for any spare moment with him she could obtain, even if it had to be gained in secrecy. Or so she consoled herself as she stood hidden in the shadows.

  “Come with me, dearest,” he’d begged her mother. “We can leave the girls in the care of their governess. Simply come. See what draws me to the island, my love. Come to know what pulls me there.”

  “Oh, Mr. Banning,” her mother had said—Mother had never called Father by his first name—“you know as well as I that a mother’s place is with her children. Would you remove me from my proper place?”

  “For a chance to walk with you by the sea, your pretty little toes covered in sand? To see how your golden hair curls in the heat of the tropics? To glimpse more of your beautiful skin, bared beneath the sun’s rays?” He lifted her hand to his lips, and her mother ducked her head and covered her mouth with her other hand as if scandalized by the suggestion. He’d pulled her closer. “Come, dearest. I have need of you. The months there … they stretch on endlessly. A man … well, a man needs his wife by his side.”

  Ket’s mother had pulled her hand from his. “Return to us, Mr. Banning,” she insisted. “If you have need of your wife, then you may always find her here at Hartwick Manor, might you not?”

  A flash of disappointment had frozen his face a moment, and then it sagged. He nodded. “I suppose you are right, dearest. This is the best place for you, as well as for the girls. But I confess I shall sorely miss you.”

  Ket turned away, the memory so vivid in her mind that it felt as though she were twelve years old again and witnessing the exchange for the first time.

  Father had missed Mother so much that he’d taken a mistress, Keturah thought darkly.

  How could he be so weak? How could he betray Mother so? And … Had Mitilda been the only one? Were there others before her?

  Keturah’s own husband, Edward, had certainly felt it his right to lie with any of the chambermaids. Had her father been the same way?

  “Ket,” Verity said, and judging by her tone, she’d been waiting on Ket again. How often had her sisters found her lost in reverie—both good and bad—of late?

  Ket turned from the seashell-lined window.

  “Will you take this room as your own?” Ver asked, a hundred other questions behind her concerned gaze.

  “I shall,” Ket said. “And we shall make one of the smaller rooms a shared closet for you both. After all,” she said, lifting her chin and forcing a grin. “We are now proper ladies of the Indies. It’s time we bring what we wish of England here to Nevis.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Despite what she’d hoped they would find, there was little to eat for their supper—especially considering that Edwin and Absalom had rounded up six hungry slaves. The other fifty had reportedly either died of the fever that took her father’s life or been taken by creditors claiming Banning debts. A few, some said, had run away to the mountain jungles above them.

  Dazed, Keturah looked upward as if to see Nevis Peak beyond her ceiling. “Runaways can find a way to live up there?” Most of the mountain had been cleared for cane, but the utmost portion appeared to remain dense jungle.

  “Yes, Lady Ket,” Edwin said, nodding eagerly. “They say there’s a whole colony, a mix of freed men and escaped slaves. It makes the white gentlemen and ladies uneasy, them being up there, but they keep to themselves mostly, other than to steal a chicken or pig to feed themselves. On occasion the militia tries to bring them to ground, but they haven’t had a great deal of luck.”

  Keturah looked about the group again. The slaves who were left appeared old and infirm, the reasons obvious as to why they remained. They were in poor shape to escape to the jungles, and they’d be the last to be chosen by creditors seeking to settle a debt
. As abhorrent as she found the slave market that afternoon, she could see no way other than to return to it. A plantation this size … well, there was a reason her father had once owned more than a hundred slaves. There was simply no other way to plant, fertilize, water, weed, and harvest an estate like this without significant numbers of people.

  Keturah tried to hide how the thought made her feel physically ill. She had no desire for her sisters to sense her rising panic. “Edwin, introduce me to these people, please,” she said, gesturing to the remaining slaves. He did so, and Keturah, Verity, and Selah learned the names of each. Only Mimba and Bennabe, the two men, and a woman named Sansa looked like they had anything left to give her and Tabletop. Long-faced Mimba had a scar down his left cheek and was thinner than the stooped-shouldered Sansa, who was frightfully gaunt. Bennabe was middle-aged and missing an arm. But while the others stared at her blankly and uncaring—as if their very souls had been beaten to dust—these three had a spark of interest behind their eyes, as if curious about these newcomers and what it might mean for them all.

  “Bennabe,” she said, focusing her attention on him, “why did you not run away?”

  He shrugged, and her eyes trailed down to the stump of his right arm. “This been my home for most of my life, mum,” he said. “Couldn’t see myself in another.”

  His words stirred hope in her heart. If he’d been here most of his life, he was as close to an overseer as she might find at the moment. “Would you mind showing us about the plantation tomorrow? Telling us about how the crops are faring and …” Her words trailed off as he slowly shook his head. Her heart thudded to a stop, then began pounding. She forced herself to ask. “The crops? Please tell me there are crops planted.”

  Again, Bennabe shook his head as fear replaced that spark she’d glimpsed earlier.

  Keturah’s mind raced. Every plantation they’d passed had young cane in the ground. From what she’d learned in reading Gray’s book, it was critical to have cane planted as soon as the harvest was complete. With a fifteen-to-eighteen-month growing cycle, every week counted. Gray himself had fretted about what he might find on his plantation—had everything come to a standstill for him too?

  She’d hoped that her father, or the last overseer, had replanted following the harvest, but with funds so tight and the overseer dying, then her father … was it any wonder the only cane on the land might be the remnants of the harvest below the house? It had been a foolish hope to think they’d arrive to new cane in the fields.

  Keturah took a long, deep breath. “Very well. We shall revisit that fact tomorrow. But might you take us about and show us the millworks and all so that I might know where we stand? What is in good working order and what needs to be repaired? How many more people we’ll need to work this land?”

  “Yes’m, I can do that,” Bennabe said. Again, she glimpsed the spark rising behind his old eyes, and she wondered if it had been her words or her kind treatment of him that told her that spark might, in time, become flame.

  “For now, Bennabe, we are clearly in need of food and water. All of us. The cupboards and pantry are bare in the house. How long has it been since you and the others ate?”

  The older man averted his eyes as if not wanting to upset her with the answer. “Well now, mum …”

  “Lady Ket,” she corrected gently. “Everyone calls me Lady Ket.”

  “Lady Ket,” he repeated. “Your father was a kind master. He let us plant gardens. Those sweet potatoes and yams are what has been keeping our bellies full these past weeks. Plus the mangoes we pick.”

  “I see.”

  “Miss Mitilda, she sometimes shares some corn or a bit of bread. But she and the boy haven’t had much more than we for quite some time.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, toward a tidy-looking cottage on the far edge of the clearing.

  Keturah’s eyes went to the structure the woman had mentioned. So that is where they went. She wondered if the tall, thin woman was hovering inside at that moment, watching them from the shadows. Wouldn’t she be doing the same, curious to know more about the newcomers? Begrudgingly she admitted to herself that Mitilda could be a tremendous resource to her, helping her learn how to run a household on-island, if not the entire plantation. Between Bennabe and Mitilda, they could help her a great deal.

  But that was as far as she would consider it. The thought of seeing that woman and that child … well, it was preposterous. It was only her Christian upbringing that kept her from driving the harlot from her land. From this very island! That, she admitted, and the caveat in Father’s will that Mitilda claimed left her the cottage, a spot of land to work, and a yearly stipend. A yearly stipend …

  The words made her scalp tingle with rage. And yet … the child. The child. Her own half brother. He was not culpable in this. How could she even think of driving him out?

  “Lady Ket?” Primus was speaking, edging into her line of vision. “Others are inquiring if they should go about picking some fruit.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said hurriedly. “Do so, please. And some of you fetch a bucket of fresh water from the well. I assume we have drinkable water here, correct?” She thought she remembered Father extolling the sweet water that came from a spring, fed by the mountain nearby.

  Bennabe nodded eagerly and she breathed a sigh of relief. At least there was clean water available, some fruit, and later a good night’s rest. It was enough for now.

  Tomorrow they would take on the future.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Verity, get up! Selah!” Keturah hissed, peeking out her window again as she hurriedly tried to run her fingers through her knotted hair.

  It was the creaking of saddles and clicking of horseshoes on stone that had awakened her out of a dead sleep. Below, she glimpsed men in tricorn hats, a wagon, a flash of pink gown, and mixed voices speaking in undertones. Judging from the sun’s position in the sky, it was scandalously late to still be found sleeping.

  After seeing the wagons unloaded and the servants settled in their quarters, the three of them had gotten as far as making up Keturah’s bed before they collapsed together atop it as they might have when they were but wee girls. Ket awoke with Verity’s arm wrapped across her waist and Selah nestled against her side.

  Keturah threw open her trunk and pulled a clean gown down over her shift. “Make haste!” she groused at her sisters. “I do not wish to face our guests alone.” She grimaced at the folds in her skirts, so clearly just out of the trunk.

  “Oh, Ket,” Verity said, sitting up and shaking her head sleepily. “Your hair …”

  “I am aware! Yours, I fear, is little better.” But what was she to do? Her father’s room. Much as she lamented the idea of entering that oddly intimate and yet curiously foreign space, she saw no way around it. Mitilda had kept the contents intact. And somewhere in there had to be a brush, a comb, something. “I’ll return in a moment. Please be dressed when I do.”

  “Lady Ket!” said Grace, knocking on her door. “You have guests.”

  Keturah yanked open the door and paused, trying for what seemed the thousandth time since arriving on-island to gather herself. “Good morning,” she said while accepting a pitcher of water and basin from the girl. “Please tell our guests we will be down to greet them shortly.”

  The girl’s eyes widened at the sight of her, but then she nodded and turned to leave. Her sisters took hold of pitcher and basin, as eager for a morning bath as she.

  “Wait,” Keturah whispered. “Who are they, Grace?”

  “Your neighbors, Lady Ket. From Morning Star Plantation, they said. They have come to welcome you.”

  Keturah rubbed her temples as she watched the girl rush down the stairs to relay the message to their guests. How was it, she wondered, that the servant could look as if she’d already had a morning bath and put on a fresh dress? Had she washed her gown the night before and hung it to dry as she slept? For Ket and her sisters, it was all they could do to climb into bed before succumbing to unco
nsciousness.

  She tiptoed down the hall across ancient rugs that showed the abuse of either insects or rodents—or both—well aware that her guests would hear the squeaking floorboards. Pushing open the heavy door of her father’s quarters, she hurried to a dressing table and lifted a horsehair brush, looking glass, and comb. She was about to depart when she paused. Was it only her imagination or did this room still smell of Father? Tentatively, she stepped over to the bed, lifted a pillow, and inhaled.

  But all she smelled was lavender. Her scent, she knew, never Father’s. With some distaste, she tossed the pillow back on the bed and rushed out of the room. She tore down the hall, went to the dressing table, raked the brush through her matted hair, then quickly stuffed the majority of it underneath her filthy cap. She looked herself up and down, aware that her sisters were just a minute behind her in their preparations. But she could not keep their guests waiting any longer. What would they think of them, asleep at this hour? What might it be, eleven o’clock? She’d spied a clock in her father’s room, but it had likely not been wound in months. And the clock they’d brought with them was not yet unpacked.

  She smoothed down her skirts and then scoffed at herself for the effort. There was no disguising that Keturah and her sisters had just stepped off the boat. There was little doubt in her mind that her neighbors already had a good idea of the dilapidated state of Tabletop. Her only hope was to throw herself at their mercy and see what measure she could take of them.

  She strode down the stairs and into the large parlor, where two gentlemen in fine jackets and pristine white neckcloths and shirts rose at once. A young lady and older woman stood as well.

  “Lady Tomlinson, I presume,” said the first, a man of about thirty. He paused to draw the barest of breaths before giving her a most charming smile, taking her hand, and bowing over it.