Riding Shotgun

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Then what went wrong in 1622?”

  “No one knows.” Tom shrugged. “There was a great queen of the Appomatucks. While she lived all was well. Things soured after she died. I don’t suppose anyone will ever know the truth.”

  “Maybe one of us did something wrong.” Cig’s heart raced. Much as she wanted to relax around the Indians she was afraid of them.

  “I’ve thought of that myself,” Tom mumbled.

  Before Tom reined in Castor and Pollux, two wiry young men sprinted toward the wagon, reaching for the horses’ bridles. Another man, a bit fat, dressed in livery, emerged from the house.

  “Welcome, ladies.” He bowed, reaching up to assist them.

  “Good to see you, Samuel.” Tom smiled as the butler led them up the stairs.

  Lionel nearly knocked him over as he rushed through the door. “Pryor…”He bowed to Margaret then took Cig’s hand, glancing over his shoulder. “Didn’t mean to slight you, Tom.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t greet my wife that rapturously, Lionel.”

  “Only because you married her first, Thomas,” Lionel gallantly replied.

  “Lionel, you could charm the birds out of the trees.”

  “I’m singing only to this swan.” He smiled broadly at Cig as Samuel shut the door behind them.

  Before Cig could admire the center hall, the rows of ancestral paintings, the luster of the rich, patterned floors, a commanding alto voice rang out. “Lionel, who is here? I demand to see them this instant.”

  Samuel winked at Lionel, trotting ahead to pacify the lady of the manor.

  “We’re flying to you, Mother,” Lionel called, then under his breath said to Cig, “Amuse her and ignore half of what she says. You know Mother.”

  They entered a room with mahogany wainscoting in a squared design halfway up the wall. Pale yellow silk moiré covered the rest of the wall up to an ornately carved ceiling, also in mahogany. Cig, unprepared for such splendor, gaped.

  “What are you staring at, missy?” Kate demanded.

  “I—I had forgotten how beautiful this room is,” Cig stammered.

  “Ha! When it’s gilded then I’ll have something to brag about. Lionel, you don’t listen to me. I tell you to bring over a gilder from Paris. What does he do? He brings over more copper pots.”

  “Patience, Mother, patience.” Lionel smiled at his mother, a tall woman by the standards of the day, and she was stretched to her full height standing in the middle of the room to receive her guests.

  “Old women don’t have patience!” she snapped.

  “I don’t see any old women in this room,” Cig said, but not obsequiously. Cig had dealt with imperious dowagers all her life and knew the first rule is never let them bully you.

  “You always were the prettiest liar, Pryor Deyhle.” Kate grumbled but she was pleased despite herself. “Well, sit yourself down so I can hear more of your prattle. You, too, Tom and Margaret.”

  Samuel hovered at the doorway.

  “Don’t just stand there, Samuel, bring our guests refreshments. Hot.”

  “Would madam wish the spiced wine and some breads?”

  “Madam would and quickly.” She rapped the floor with her foot. Samuel disappeared.

  “We missed you at Edward Hill’s,” Margaret said.

  “Lionel spared me not a detail, to further accent my misery. My lumbago flared up and I languished here in a stupor of pain, I tell you, a veritable stupor. What does my fine son do but burst through the door to tell me that Mistress Deyhle rode like a centaur and nearly up on her horse’s neck. And where did you learn that, young lady?”

  “In London.”

  “Well, if it’s the fashion soon every Tom, Dick, and Harry will be doing it. I heard also that you were most peculiarly dressed.”

  “Again, the new fashion.”

  “Fashion is for imbeciles!”

  Cig fired back, “Then all is lost for you are the most fashionable lady in the colonies.”

  “Pshaw!” Kate frowned then smiled. “Oh, do tell that to Amelie Boothrod, how I would rejoice to see that painted face fall.” She cocked her head to focus on Cig.

  The motion made her look like a parrot. It was then that Cig realized the woman was blind in her left eye; a faint dot of white in the pupil gave evidence to that.

  “Perhaps she uses all that paint because she regards herself as a work of art.”

  Kate exclaimed, “Well said, Pryor!”

  Samuel arrived, flanked by two other livened servants, bearing trays of cakes, spiced hot wine and sweetmeats. Lace napkins, neatly folded, were also on the trays.

  “Lionel, don’t just stand there. Get your mother some wine.” She paused. “After our guests are served, of course.” That meant for Samuel to step on it which he did.

  Kate brought the cup to her lips but sniffed the enticing aroma before tasting the wine. “I’ve had better,” she barked.

  “Sorry, madam.”

  “You’re too modest. This is the most delicious mulled wine I’ve ever imbibed,” Cig responded.

  “A bit of orange rind ground fine, my dear, very fine. Naturally, there is more to the recipe, which I refuse to divulge until you marry my son. Mind you, I don’t relish the prospect of a useless daughter-in-law underfoot spoiling my routine, but he won’t be happy until you are his bride. He speaks of love. Oh, Lionel, really,” her voice dropped, “marriage has little to do with love and a great deal to do with stability.”

  “You loved my father.”

  “I learned to love him. I certainly didn’t start out loving him. You young people are putting the cart before the horse. All this blather about love. If you’re in love before you get married you surely won’t be in love afterwards. Love is a slow flower and flourishes best upon the soil of respect. Cart before the horse, I’m telling you.” She defiantly glanced around the room. The servants bowed their heads. Cig laughed outright. “Impudent! You always were impudent.”

  “Mistress deVries, perhaps love can be cultivated in many fashions,” Margaret suggested.

  “Are you now going to upset my digestion by informing me with soulful eyes that you cannot live without my son? That you love as no one has loved before?” She turned to Cig.

  “Mother—”

  “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.”

  “You never want to hear anyone’s opinion but your own.” Lionel laughed. His mother could drive him to distraction but he did love her.

  “Simply because my opinion has not been hatched in a broody box of untrammeled emotion.” She trained her one good eye on Margaret. Margaret, not comfortable under that searing gaze, nonetheless stood up for herself. “I confess, when I look at Tom I am, as you put it, all untrammeled emotion. My knees sometimes go weak.”

  “Ha, the beginning of rheumatism,” the old woman shouted as Samuel discreetly handed her another glass of spiced wine. She noticed Tom smiling at his wife. “Oh, don’t look at her with those cow eyes.”

  “She is my alpha and my omega,” he declared.

  “Lovesick puppies.” She knocked back her wine with one hand while the other reached for a sweetmeat. Samuel quickly placed the tray under her hand as the other servant relieved her of her cup, returning it refilled. She swept her eye over them. “What is love?”

  Cig replied, “Don’t ask me.”

  “Love is what you make of it. Like a humor, some are choleric, some sanguine—”

  She interrupted her son. “That’s a tepid explanation.”

  “Love is a mystery. If we knew the answer then where would be the pleasure? The joy of a mystery is precisely in not knowing.” Margaret’s long eyelashes lowered.

  Cig added, “Since love concerns the heart, how can the head comprehend it? You feel it—and that’s what frightens me.”

  “Ah yes.” The slender hand with one large diamond paused while bringing the glass to her lips. “Now that I do understand. Pryor, you’ve changed. London seasoned you. I’ve changed, too.
I’ve gotten even older. I didn’t think I would live this long. I’m bored. I’ve seen people marry. I’ve seen them have children. I’ve seen fortunes made and fortunes lost. The same old prattle wearies me: tobacco prices, land prices, the Crown plays chess with France—it’s all the same. Only the cut of one’s bodice changes.” She sipped her wine this time. “But you, Pryor, you have changed. I find women suffocatingly boring, you know. Make no secret of it.” She opened her mouth to say that for this instant she was not bored but decided that too great a compliment to bestow. Besides, the minute the remark escaped her lips she probably would be bored.

  “Mother, you must be tired—”

  “Not at all.” She smiled wickedly at Lionel, delighted in his discomfort for he wanted to be rid of her. “Tell me, Pryor, what did you learn in London?”

  “That we are not truly Englishmen, ma’am. They do not understand us. They cannot imagine life here in the New World. We are becoming a new people and in time we will be quite different—we will be Americans.”

  Shocked by this radical thought, Kate blinked then leaned forward, pointing at Cig. “How are we different? For I believe I am as good an Englishman as King William himself or the late Queen, God rest her soul.”

  “We have no limits. We will someday settle the Falls, Mrs. deVries.” She forgot that Mrs. wasn’t a form of address. It was mistress, madam, mademoiselle, or the title of nobility, as in your Grace. “We will march ever westward. What do we care for the wars of the Continent? We have enough here to keep us happy forever. And someday we will build theaters and libraries and hospitals. In London their thinking is circumscribed by the boundaries of that small island. We are so enormous a land mass we have no boundaries, and it will affect how we think.”

  “That’s extraordinary,” Kate gasped. “I don’t know what to think. I like being English.”

  “We have no choice, anyway.” Lionel laughed, but he was intrigued by what Pryor said, intrigued and a bit worried. That kind of talk could create difficulties. “You are still a loyal subject of the king, no matter—”

  Margaret quietly said, “We are all loyal subjects of the Crown, Lionel. Still, I can see how we will become different. What of those Indians we passed coming here? No one in London can imagine such men.”

  “Lionel, it seems you wish a bride with a brain.”

  “Well, Mother,” he smoothly replied, “I learned it from you.”

  The corner of Kate’s mouth turned upward. “Pryor, will you marry my son?”

  “Mother—” He was exasperated.

  “He is so handsome that a woman has to guard against him.” Cig’s voice was warm. “One is so dazzled by the cover one has not had time to read the book.”

  “What she’s saying is…” Tom cleared his throat, “is that she loves Lionel but needs some time and—”

  “I know perfectly well what she’s saying.” Kate cut him off.

  “A union of our families is highly desirable. We would all profit from it,” Cig said. “But I want more from my one little life than profit. I suppose I do want love. For me, that’s a partner, a man who will share his life with me not just his resources. I don’t want to be a broodmare or an ornament or a prize. I want to be a partner, a sister, a lover, a friend.”

  A smile played across Kate’s lips then faded. “Dear Pryor, a woman can never be a man’s partner. She must think for him and make him believe it was his idea. She must plan for the future whilst he is crowing and displaying his tail feathers to other shortsighted men. Men are children grown large, and I don’t mind saying it in front of them.” She waggled her forefinger at Lionel and Tom. “That is our destiny.”

  “And they take the credit for our labor.” Cig flared for a moment forgetting herself.

  The old woman shrugged. “What of it? What of the world? What matters is that we know what we have done.”

  Lionel studied his mother intently, surprised at this revelation. “Everyone in Virginia knows what you have done, Mother. Not even Father overshadowed you. You truly built Wessex.”

  She cocked her head staring at him. “Perhaps—not that I care a whit for the opinion of the rabble.”

  “Woman has her sphere, man has his.” Tom spoke the prevailing attitude.

  A pause redolent with the echoes of their conversation settled over them. Samuel returned with another tray, this one bearing hot tea along with cut-crystal decanters filled with rum and whiskey.

  “Madam?”

  As if pulled unwillingly from a reverie, Kate motioned for him to put the trays on a big sideboard. “You forgot the port.”

  “So I did.” He hurried to fetch it.

  Outside the snow swirled.

  Margaret glanced out the window. Kate turned her head to see.

  Samuel reappeared with the port, and Kate commanded, “Have Sybil and Dorcas ready rooms for our guests and bring out the whist table, will you?” She turned back to the Deyhles. “You’re my captives.”

  Staying overnight or even for a week at a friend’s house, common in these times of bad roads and bad weather, provided many a hostess with an excuse for an impromptu house party. Kate deVries set aside growling, deciding to have fun.

  “Let me see to the horses before we start playing.” Cig thanked her sorority sisters at William and Mary for teaching her both whist and bridge, a later variant.

  “Done.” Lionel smiled at her.

  “You all retire to your rooms. If anyone wishes a bath or fresh clothing, tell the girls upstairs. I’ll confer with the cook. Samuel will ring the bell when we’re ready. Pryor, you’ll start as my partner, of course.”

  “Delighted.”

  In about an hour Cig heard the small bell tinkling below. She’d fallen asleep on the featherbed, a fire roaring nearby in the fireplace. Margaret met her on the stairs. As they descended they observed the men coming in the front door.

  “It will play itself out, Tom.” Lionel handed Samuel his coat. When he saw the ladies his voice changed. “Mother never forgets a card.”

  “We know.” Margaret laughed.

  She didn’t. Kate, peering fiercely at her hand, remembered everything. Because there were five of them everyone rotated playing and keeping score except for Kate who never relinquished her position.

  She discussed everything—clocks, the needless expense of too many servants, the customs of the Indians, the foppishness of the House of Burgesses who ought to be shipped up to Massachusetts for punishment. “Let them live with the enemies of King Charles,” she boomed as she smacked down a trump card. She held forth on the rebel Nathaniel Bacon, whom she had known and thought strange because his eyes bulged like poached eggs although he seemed intelligent enough.

  She was winning and therefore happy. “Did I tell you? The last time I played whist, Amelie Boothrod had the effrontery to tell me why it’s called whist.” She imitated Amelie’s singsong voice. “‘Whist means be silent and in order to play a good game one must be silent.’ Ha, said she who never once held her tongue. I’d like to hold it. Indeed, I’d like to grasp it between my thumb and forefinger and yank it right out of her empty head. Oh, she sat there like a great rhubarb given the gift of speech.”

  Cig laughed until the tears came into her eyes, which only encouraged Kate to continue. Lionel, from time to time, would chide his mother to pay attention to her hand.

  She pointed to the scorecard. “I’m winning. You’re not.” She had her son for a partner on this game. “Margaret, when you have sons teach them whist, in both respects.”

  They laughed. A gust of wind rattled the panes.

  “Cohonk,” Cig mentioned, the Indian name for fall.

  “Their language is quite musical, I find.” Kate smacked down a jack of diamonds. “Lionel, has anyone heard from the forts?”

  She referred to the four English forts that had been built, after the massacre, on the Blackwater River, the Pamunkey River, the Rappahannock River and the Potomac. This feeble military presence gave the whites the il
lusion of security so the immigrants kept pouring in.

  “Whatever made you think of that?”

  “Cards. Remember that handsome lieutenant who played ‘honors’—he had Francis Eppes’s daughter swooning.”

  “All is well.” Lionel’s stomach grumbled. “Pardon.”

  “I’ve quite forgotten the time. I’ve won, so let’s retire to dinner. Samuel. Samuel, you sloth! Where are you?”

  “Here, madam.” He glided into the room.

  “Dinner must be ready by now.”

  He bowed. Tom helped Kate up from her chair as Lionel attended to Cig and Margaret.

  Dinner brought forth another torrent of chat from Kate. Cig listened mesmerized as she recounted her childhood in the colony. She had been born in 1645, which made her fifty-four, old in this era but not ancient. Not that some people didn’t reach eighty or ninety, a few did, but so many women died in childbirth and so many men in accidents or from diseases, that a vigorous older person was treasured.

  “—and while I applaud James Blair’s creation of his grammar school I ask what is taught and who is teaching it? When you see a schoolmaster counting on his fingers you must consider the consequences once he passes twenty.”

  Margaret laughed. “William and Mary will teach them their sums because all the pupils can add up everyone’s fingers and toes.”

  This made them laugh.

  “I prophesy that it will become a great school.” Cig smiled.

  “Well, I won’t be here to see it.” Kate’s lower lip jutted out. “Lionel, did you learn anything at those schools in France?” Before he could answer she announced, “Violently expensive.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I learned, I still can’t keep up with you.” He smiled, his mustache curling upwards ever so slightly.

  “Oh la.” She threw up her hands.

  Another blast of wind created a downdraft in the chimney, a puff of scarlet embers swirling upwards then falling back into the flames.

  “No more foxhunting for a time,” Tom said.

  “How I used to love to hunt.” Kate smiled as Samuel placed some candied yams on her plate, her second helping.