For the most part, Harding had given up trying to make his wife more sensible and efficient. Occasionally he had erupted in a violent temper that only reduced Kitty to tears and put her into such a flutter that she had to retire to bed. More often than not he had contemptuously ignored her. It had been on one of the occasions when he had been upbraiding his wife that Regina had seized her chance. She had asked if she could be given the authority to organise the house slaves in future and take a more active part in the running of the house so that she could be of more help to Mistress Kitty. What she did not mention was that doing nothing all day but listen to Mistress Kitty’s silly talk had been nearly driving her mad.
Harding had agreed to her suggestion but in his usual abrupt manner.
‘Yes, it’s time you did something useful for your keep. From now on I hold you responsible for the running of this house.’
After that she had firmly discouraged idle gossiping. If she had entered a room and found Mistress Kitty chattering and laughing with a servant, she had said a polite ‘excuse me’ to Mistress Kitty, then dismissed the servant. Or if the servant was supposed to be doing some job in the room, she had given her a sharp command to get on with it before guiding Mistress Kitty firmly away.
She had made it clear to the slaves that if they disobeyed her commands, they would be severely punished. But, in fact, there had been less violence than before when Harding used to vent his rage at his wife’s futility by ordering the overseer to whip the slaves. Or he had whipped them himself. The fact that they now suffered less punishment, and that although she was strict she was fair, did nothing to make them like or appreciate Regina. They hated her far more intensely than they hated Harding, if they bothered to feel anything for him at all.
From what they had heard from other slaves, or from what they had previously experienced themselves, he was no worse than many other masters and better than many more. Whipping, even to death, was one of the less barbaric of the punishments commonly meted out.
Regina knew the slaves hated her because she had banished so many of them to the fields. Through a haze of auburn eyelashes she stole a glance across the table at Harding. What a coarse, ugly-looking brute he was. Her mouth acquired its hard twist as she stared at him. His hair was tied back from his big-boned face, its blackness accentuating the tan of his skin and his dark eyes. His nose was broken and twisted over a wide mouth, the upper lip of which could tighten back like that of a snarling animal.
Lowering her eyes to her plate again, she picked neatly at her food with a silver fork. She hated this man so much that even to look at him made her heart lurch wildly and her pulse career out of control. She could hardly believe that her life was now so ensnared with his. At one time she had dreamed of leaving and starting a small plantation with her brother, Gav. Gav had been due fifty acres of land when he had finished his indenture in one of Master Ramsay’s stores. Helped by looted gold coins she had stolen from the saddlebags of dragoons after the battle of Culloden, they could have bought some slaves and built up a good place of their own. For years she had dreamed and planned and lived for that day. But, like all men, Gav had proved worthless. He had suddenly announced that he was marrying a blacksmith’s daughter called Abigail, a plain-faced girl with a serious stare and hair pinned tightly up on top of her head.
She remembered returning from the settlement after Gav had broken the news to her. She had been at the store with Harding to collect supplies. Later, riding back, when the forest had begun to thin out and in the shadow of the trees that were left in ragged disarray, she had seen Forest Hall again and it had occurred to her that this was the kind of place she had been aiming for. A two-roomed cabin of the kind small planters usually began with would not have given her space to breathe or to have the kind of privacy she treasured. But she did not want simply to serve in a mansion like Forest Hall as companion-housekeeper. She wanted to be mistress of a place like this. There was a stillness, a bleakness about the building that matched some secret place within her. Yet there was dignity, too, with the double outside stairs and pillared doorway.
But she knew that far from being mistress of the house, she was in a dangerously insecure position. Now her future as well as her present was utterly dependent on Harding.
She resented being dependent on him. He obsessed her thoughts. Continuously aware of him, she saw his face in everything she did. When she was in the same room, her eyes kept stealing furtive glances in his direction. Though there had been times, at Gav’s wedding for instance, when she and Harding had whirled round and round together in a dance that went on most of the night and seemed to let loose a kind of madness in them both.
The night after the wedding when they had returned to Forest Hall she had undressed, put on a flimsy robe and stood watching the snoring Kitty Harding for a few minutes before going downstairs. What a useless creature Harding’s wife was, she remembered thinking. A mere wrinkle of skin and bone beneath the coverlet, her balding head with its few wisps of hair hardly denting the pillows. This was the mistress of Forest Hall, she remembered thinking. It was so unfair. This creature was no use to Forest Hall and she was certainly no use to her husband. Nor did she even understand him. Her loyalty to him, or to the imaginary picture she treasured of him, was pathetic. Robert Harding was an arrogant and ruthless man and he wanted only two things of a woman—a son to carry on his name and gratification of his animal passions.
His lust for a woman’s body; that was Harding’s weakness and she had decided to use it to advantage.
That night, in the drawing-room, she had shut the curtains and lit the candles. Then, trembling with fear, she had waited for Harding to come down for his usual nightcap of whisky. At first she had not been able to look round when he came into the room. All she’d wanted was to fly upstairs to Mistress Kitty’s room to seek comfort and protection from her just as long ago she’d sought comfort and protection from her mother. The whisky bottle clinked and splashed against his glass before she was able to force herself to turn and face him across the room.
He had been standing with his back to the fire, legs apart, a glass in one hand and the other hooked in the top of his breeches. He had discarded his coat, waistcoat and neckcloth, and wore only buff-coloured breeches and white shirt hanging open to the waist showing brown skin and black hair. Conflicting emotions fought for supremacy inside her. Memories of the time when the soldiers had raped her made her feel sick with terror. She never wanted another man to touch her as long as she lived. Yet, as she met Harding’s eyes, dark and tawny-streaked like those of a wild animal, she experienced a terrifying need for physical contact with him.
At last he said, ‘Come here.’
Conscious of her thin robe and the way it revealed the contours of her body, she had managed to carry her terror across the room and stand helplessly in front of him.
He had taken a mouthful of whisky, savoured it in his mouth without taking his eyes from her and then flicked the loosely tied belt at her waist, making her robe slither open.
He had raised an eyebrow.
‘No protests, Mistress Chisholm?’ She had not been able to move and had just stood staring up at him. He had finished his whisky and laid aside his glass. ‘No modest fumblings?’ One hand had slid round the back of her neck. ‘No struggles?’ His fingers had entwined in her hair, painfully twisting it, straining her head to one side. ‘No fighting to defend your honour?’
He had pulled her against him and at the touch of his body against hers, she had moaned at the feel of him and the passion even stronger than hatred that engulfed her. Then suddenly he had swung her into his arms and carried her out of the room and upstairs.
Since that night she had moved from where she normally slept in Mistress Kitty’s room to a bedroom of her own. At first it had been plainly furnished with bare floorboards and only one rug beside the undraped four-poster bed. Gradually she had persuaded Harding to supply her with a luxurious Turkey carpet, two Turkey worked chairs,
a Russian leather chair, a pier glass, a walnut chest with drawers, an elegant candle-holder, and rich brocade curtains and valance for the bed.
But she had not deigned to fawn or flatter or plead for what she wanted as his wife used to do. She informed him coolly and bluntly. At first he had told her with equal bluntness to go to hell. But afterwards when he had come to her bedroom he had found the door locked against him. She had lain stiffly in bed listening to his snarling commands.
‘Open this door, damn you. Open it, or I’ll kick the bloody thing down.’
She ignored him. She had seen herself in the pier glass in the corner, propped up on pillows in the large four-poster bed like a ruby-haired, milky-skinned doll, and had wondered at how cool and still she looked. There had been no sign of the panic beating its wings inside her like a caged bird. He had begun to kick the door and hurl his weight against it until the lock burst and the wood flew back and exploded against the wall.
She had stared at him with green icicles of eyes which did nothing to betray the shock she always experienced when she saw him. The black of his hair and brown of his skin made a startling contrast to the white of his shirt. His overhanging brows made pits of his eyes. His twisted nose and tight upper lip gave him a demonic look.
‘This is my house, mistress,’ he said, ‘and if you ever lock a door of it against me again, I will have you whipped.’
‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘Oh, wouldn’t I?’ he had said, coming slowly towards the bed. ‘But the whip is not the only way to beat you down, mistress.’
She had not struggled with him but she had not been able to control her little animal-like moans at his brutality. She had not realised that he could be so cruel. Plunged back to the time when she was a child and the soldiers had raped her, each one more shocking and monstrous than the last, she was overwhelmed with terror at Harding’s unexpected behaviour towards her.
But a few days later the luxurious Turkey carpet had been laid in her room. It had been a victory that had done nothing to reduce her fear and one that she viewed with wariness, not understanding the thought process behind it.
Since that night she had not dared to lock her door. Nor had he shown her the same brutality. When she struggled against him, beat her fists against his chest and tossed her head from side to side on the pillow moaning uncontrollably, it was not because he was causing her pain. Sometimes, in fact, when he fondled her breasts and his mouth opened over her nipples he was almost gentle.
She despised him for his weakness, if weakness it was. She could never be quite sure. She hated him for humiliating her, for making her a victim of his strong animal magnetism, for firing her blood over and over again until she felt drunk and didn’t know what she was doing or saying.
Yet there could be no doubt of the fact that she needed him now that she was carrying his child. She wondered if this was a good moment to tell him and almost blurted out her secret before remembering the slaves hovering in the background waiting to serve them at the dining-table. She dropped her eyes to her plate again. Tomorrow, immediately after breakfast, she and Harding were setting out for Williamsburg where Harding had business to attend to and more slaves to buy at the market. It would be better to wait until they returned and he hadn’t so many other things to occupy his attention. He hadn’t wanted to take her at first, but she had insisted. It was too soon after Mistress Kitty’s death for her to feel completely at ease in the house alone. She had longed for Mistress Kitty to die. Yet the strange thing was, now that she was dead, she missed her. She missed her morning visits to the older woman’s bedroom to make sure that she’d spent a comfortable night. She missed talking to her and organising all her comforts like a table by her bedside with her little bell that she could ring when she needed a fresh supply of reading materials, or fruit juice, or enough threads for her embroidery frame, or for attention if she didn’t feel well.
Regina often heard the bell in nightmares now, saw the feeble hand struggling to jerk it first one way, then the other, heard its hollow chime. She would wake suddenly and jerk trembling into a sitting position. Her palms would fly to cover her mouth to muffle moans of distress while perspiration coursed down her face and mingled with her tears. She tried to tell herself that the poor woman was better dead. Mistress Kitty had suffered so long with her breathless attacks. Then after her stroke she had been unable to walk, and even to talk or eat had been a torturous business.
She had done everything humanly possible to help Harding’s wife. After every nightmare she would keep repeating this to herself. She had nursed Mistress Kitty and seen to her every need with obsessive conscientiousness; no one knew that better or appreciated it more than Mistress Kitty herself. But Mistress Kitty had begun to suspect something was wrong, and from then on she had been in an impossible situation. She remembered the first frightening occasion when Mistress Kitty asked in her breathless, butterfly voice:
‘My dear child, something is causing you concern. Please tell me what it is, please do. You know that I love you like a daughter, like a daughter. I would do anything to help you. Anything.’
She had immediately retreated behind a stiff mask and replied coolly:
‘Nothing is amiss. Do you wish to come to the drawing-room for tea? Mr Harding still insists that you should not be coming downstairs because the effort makes you so breathless.’
‘Dear Robert, I appreciate his solicitude. But I get bored, so bored with my bedroom. It is so nice to have tea in the drawing-room with you both, with you both.’
She had called to Westminster to come and carry Mistress Kitty downstairs, then drawn back the bedcovers, swivelled out the two skin-covered bones that were Mistress Kitty’s legs and arranged her tidily into her robe as if she was a child. Then she hoisted her to her feet to await the slave’s arrival in the room. One side of Mistress Kitty’s face and body was still twisted and she felt as fragile as an autumn leaf.
Downstairs, propped opposite her husband at the drawing-room fire, she allowed Regina to hold a cup of tea to her lips and help her to drink it. In between sips she had breathlessly chattered.
‘Listen to the singing birds, the singing birds. Aren’t they lovely? There’s more of them now than when I was a girl, I am sure, yes, I am sure. Did I hear you go out last night, Robert? I hope there was nothing wrong, dear, nothing wrong.’
‘I went out hunting.’
‘But, dear Robert, it was so late, so very late.’
‘When it’s for raccoon and possum it’s best done on foot and by the light of the moon and stars.’
‘I do declare! I do declare! I’m quite fluttered at the thought of you alone in the forest, alone on foot.’
‘I had the dogs with me.’
‘I remember at my daddy’s place, at my daddy’s place. There was always hog killing after the first frost. All the neighbours gathered to render down the fat in great black kettles. And all the children chewed on the crackling, on the crackling.’
‘We have hog killing here,’ Harding said.
Mistress Kitty sighed again.
‘Ah, but it’s not the same as when I was a child. It’s not the same. I remember the smells of the smokehouse and all those hams and shoulders and sides of bacon.’
Mistress Kitty’s voice echoed on and on in Regina’s mind, with the woman’s twisted grey face and bulging eye. In spite of the fact that looking after her had become more and more of a torment and her death a release, she still clung to the routines and the memory of how hard she had worked.
At one time she had even dressed and undressed Mistress Kitty but eventually she had excused herself from this task by explaining that she was burdened by so many other duties in the house and had not enough time. There had been some truth in this, of course. It was not just a case of supervising the slaves and seeing that they cleaned the house and served the meals properly. One day she would have the kitchen slaves trained to cook properly but as it was she had to do much of the cooking herself as
Callie Mae, Flemintina, Minda and Infant were useless at anything more than the most basic of dishes and could not read the recipe books that she conscientiously studied. Then there were physics to make up, not only for Mistress Kitty but for the slaves as well. There were always slaves going down with some illness or other and Harding had told her that it was the duty of the mistress of any plantation to attend to sick slaves.
‘But because my wife cannot fulfil this duty, it must fall on you,’ he’d said.
The quarters were quite a distance beyond the other outbuildings and were separated and hidden from them and the big house by a thickly wooded area. But the stream that passed all the other buildings and kept the butter and cream in the spring-house cool and fresh also sparkled past the quarters. They consisted of rows of huts facing each other across a space of soil. At first she never ventured more than a step or two inside the doorway of any, her mouth twisting at the obnoxious smells, the untidiness, the droppings of fowl and ducks. Her hand twitched back her skirts from fleas and lice as she rapped orders at whoever in the family was well enough to look after the sick person.
Mistress Kitty, before her illness, had actually hurried along the path through the trees to the quarters as if she enjoyed the chore and the slaves crowded around her with equal eagerness to report the latest gossip about the progress or otherwise of her ‘poor patients’ as she called them.
When Regina went, silence cleared a path before her. The old man sitting in front of a hut scraping at a violin stopped playing. The barefooted children in short ragged shifts stopped dancing to the tune. Mothers in doorways dandling infants melted away into shadowy interiors.
She hated any contact with poverty. It was too painful a reminder of what she had suffered in Glasgow. But slaves cost a lot of money and, although it was Harding’s money and not hers, she was still reluctant to waste it. She made the medicinal potions to the best of her ability and began issuing orders for the quarters to be kept clean and tidy and any sick people to be properly cared for.
The Tobacco Lords Trilogy Page 62