by John Smolens
Twenty
IN THE EARLY EVENING, SAMUEL CAME TO MIRANDA’S ROOM.
“I’ve got just the thing for Father.” He took a small brown vial from his pocket.
“What is it?”
“I don’t remember the name, but I understand it’ll do the trick—a few drops at a time,” he said as he tucked the vial back in his pocket. “A little in his wine. A little on his haddock. A little in his rum.”
“Where did you get such a thing?”
He stretched out on her bed, kicking off his shoes before she could protest. “You remember Winslow Manes?”
“That boy you went to school with, the one that was completely addled.”
“Hm, yes. Well, he’s a constable now. An uncle got him on the force.” Samuel folded his hands behind his head. “Ran into him last night and he said he could help me out, for a price, of course.”
“And where did he get it?”
“Who knows?”
Samuel gazed up at the ceiling. He was keeping something from her—Miranda could always tell.
“Look at me,” she said. When he turned his head and stared at her, his eyes blank, a little startled, she said, “Samuel.”
He sat up on the bed suddenly. “Well, I’ll tell you, I don’t know exactly, but Manes and some other fellows in the constabulary, they’ve been involved in something. I know this because he asked me about the meeting here yesterday. He knew all these High Street gents were coming to our house, and he was very curious about the outcome. He knew there was a question of raising money.” Samuel paused a moment, baffled. “Don’t you see, Grandmother? If Winslow knew they were here because the doctors needed money to buy these medicines that had gone stolen, then it only makes sense that he knew something about the stealing.”
“Of course, dear.” Miranda picked up her needlepoint. “So, he sold you this—whatever it is in that little bottle.”
Samuel slipped his feet back into his shoes, went to the window, and looked down into the courtyard. “You sent Marie away.”
“I threw her out, yes.”
“I wish you hadn’t done that.”
“I couldn’t tolerate her presence anymore.”
“You might have asked me first.”
She looked up from her needlepoint. “Why would I ask permission?”
“Well, just that—”
“I spoiled your designs.” She laughed until he turned from the window, hurt and angry. “Oh, my dear, you don’t think you would have—well, she … she’s not your.…”
“My what?”
“Darling, your dalliances with the cooks and maids, don’t they keep you busy enough? Goodness, they are plentiful.”
“And dull as cows.”
“Oh, I see,” Miranda said. “Intellectual stimulation is what you desire.” She picked up her needlepoint again. “Really, Samuel, it’s just because she speaks that bloody awful French.”
“Around here one doesn’t get much opportunity to speak French.”
“No. A pity, I suppose. I don’t know, I thought her a bit … thin.”
“Grandmother, you couldn’t recognize real beauty if it fell in your plentiful lap.”
He went to the door but stopped when she put her needlepoint down.
“Listen to me,” she said quietly. “When this is over with your father, you can go back to Paris, if you like. Speak French all you want. Buy lots of dainty shoes.”
“Indeed, that’s just what I’ll do,” he said. “And what will you do?”
She looked up, startled.
“What? Continue to sit here in this room, issuing orders to Fields?”
Miranda got to her feet and went to the window. “Go,” she said.
“The money won’t mean much, if you don’t know how to live.”
“Careful, Samuel.” She heard him raise the door latch. “Tell me,” she said, forcing him to hesitate. “There was a commotion out there today, out behind the stable. I could hear the men.”
“Some fight. The usual thing—Horseshoe testing the mettle of the new boy.”
“Really?”
Samuel opened the door. “Evidentially, the new boy acquitted himself quite well.”
“Did he?”
“He’ll be sorry, of course.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
She didn’t turn but listened to the door latch close behind him.
The daughter of one of the cooks came and found Leander lying on his cot. Silently taking him by the hand, the girl led him into the house and down cellar to the laundry, where the air was warm and steamy and the voices of women echoed off the stone walls. She brought him to a small room lined with shelves neatly stacked with folded linen and towels.
Cedella was ironing a table cloth. She took a piece of licorice from her apron and handed it to the girl. “Thank you, Aurora.” The girl looked once more at Leander, then left the room, pulling the door closed behind her.
“Sit,” Cedella said, gesturing toward a stool.
Leander sat down.
“Aurora’s father told us about it.” She got a pail of water from the corner of the room and placed it on the floor. “That shirt, you’ll have to remove it if I’m to do something about this bite. Didn’t anyone warn you about Horseshoe?”
“Benjamin Penrose did,” Leander said as he unbuttoned his shirt.
She squeezed the water out of a sponge and stood before him, looking at his shoulder, her eyes growing large with wonder. “My God,” she whispered.
“It’s nothing,” he said. She placed the sponge on his shoulder, and the pain nearly caused him to jump up off the stool. He took a deep breath and settled back on his seat.
“I wonder if Horseshoe isn’t rabid,” she said. He watched those eyes, their deep concentration, as she tenderly worked the sponge around the tooth marks, loosening the dried blood. “Like a wild animal.” She turned and leaned over to rinse out the sponge. Leander gazed at the curve of her back, the flare of her hips, but as she straightened up he quickly turned his head away. When she resumed daubing at his wound, she said, “It was very foolish of you. You should not have won.”
“Thank you very much. Did you bet on Horseshoe?”
“Stupid boy. You don’t understand, do you?” She glared at him as she dropped the bloody sponge in the pail of water. “Every new boy gets into it with Horseshoe, eventually. He always wins, and after that everything is fine. It’s like a horse, you get broken in.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
She reached up and took a towel down off the top shelf, and briefly Leander’s eye wandered again, this time to an exposed ankle, until she turned back to him. “It’s not a question of disappointment. It’s—” She didn’t want to continue, and carefully she began to dry his shoulder. He looked down and saw the neat circle of bite marks, and the skin a deep rose color. “This will all turn black and blue,” she said. “And you’ll probably be very stiff for several days.”
He looked up at her. “You were saying, about what I don’t understand.”
“Horseshoe, he’s embarrassed, defeated now.”
“He asked for it.”
“That is not the point. It’s not over.”
“I see.”
“No, Leander Hatch, I don’t think you do.”
He was surprised by the vehemence in her voice, and by the fact that it was the first time she had called him by his name, his full name. It meant that she had made inquiries about him. He wasn’t just the new boy to her. “Tell me something,” he said.
“What?”
“The licorice, where do you get it?”
“There’s a woman goes door to door, selling candies and the sort to the staff along High Street—so seldom do we get away from these houses, don’t you know.”
“Can I tell you something?” She nodded. “I love licorice.”
“You do, do you?” Smiling, she slipped her hand down into her apron pocket. “And you’d like me to give you some?”
H
e nodded.
She removed her hand from her pocket and held it out, the palm empty. “Sorry, Aurora got my last piece.”
“Well, perhaps you could give me something else.”
She wasn’t smiling now and her eyes had turned cautious. “And what would that be?”
“I was wondering.” He reached across and gently massaged the skin around Horseshoe’s bite, which was very tender. “I was wondering what your name was. Round here, everyone just calls you Cedella.”
Her eyes couldn’t conceal her surprise. “It’s Evora,” she said.
“Cedella Evora,” he said as though he were trying to taste the words in his mouth. “Yes, well, thank you for looking after my shoulder, Cedella Evora.”
She leaned forward and studied his bite marks once more. “It’s clean now, and I think it would be better without a bandage. Let the air at it.”
He looked at her forehead. “And how’s that? It looks quite swollen.”
She touched the linen turban above her right eyebrow. “It’ll be fine.”
He stood up from the stool and took a step closer. “Let me see?”
“Lately I seem to be taking a great many knocks on the head.” She backed away from him, until she was against the shelves.
“I can see that it’s swollen,” he said. “But that should go down soon.” He reached up to touch her forehead, but she drew her head back.
“I won’t hurt you.”
“No, I know,” she said, though her eyes were large with fear. “Not in the way you mean. Tell me—” Then she took his hand in hers and held his fingertips against her cheek. “Tell me what you think about this.”
“It’s smooth.”
“But what color is it?”
“Difficult to say, really. Depends on the light. Brown and yellow here. And—”
“Black,” she said. “You do not see that this is black?”
“No. It isn’t black.”
“But it is. If it is not white, it is black.”
“Not to me. It’s you. It’s your face.”
She leaned into him then, letting go of his wrist and both arms encircling his back. He buried his face in her turban, which smelled of soap. She tilted her head back and kissed him, her mouth open and warm, and her fingers dug into his skin.
They worked throughout the night, washing patients, wrapping them in boiled linens, applying hot stones and bricks. Marie was particularly effective in calming children who tended to become hysterical, and she sang French lullabies with the West Indian women. At dawn Giles found her in a tent, sitting by a child’s cot, nearly asleep.
“You must rest,” he said.
“This wax-coat, it is most hot. What I would like is a change of the clothes.” She continued to wipe the perspiration from the girl’s face. “All I have is what I am wearing. I am the no longer blessed by your mother’s fine wardrobe.”
“We should get out of here for a while. After you take a vinegar bath, they will give you something fresh to wear,” he said. “After I make some entries in the ledger, I’ll bathe and meet you outside the gate.”
He went to Dr. Bradshaw’s tent and recorded that there had been five new patients admitted and that there had been two more deaths. It was first light when he scrubbed himself down with hot vinegar. He found Marie waiting outside the pest-house, wearing a plain gray dress that was too large. She offered him a formal, mock curtsy. They started across the Mall, listening to the first song birds. It had been a hot, humid night, but now the air was fresh and cool.
“Hungry?” he asked when they reached State Street.
“No,” she said. “This vinegar smell—it does nothing for the appetite, and it itches.”
“I’ve scrubbed in it so many days now, I have little sense of smell left.”
“You know what I would like?” she asked. “To go swimming.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I have spent the last few years in the Caribbean and every morning I would bathe in the ocean. It is what I have missed most since coming here. Is the swim possible?”
“Indeed it is.”
Marie took his arm as they walked down State Street, which was empty except for a few stray animals, cats perched on stoops, dogs sniffing at the ground, and a small pig that was gnawing on a head of cabbage.
“You appeared familiar with the work at the pest-house.”
“Too much familiar,” she said. “The first winter after I arrive from France, I nearly die from the fever.” She turned her head away from him. After a moment, she said, “I had a daughter, she was not yet three.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Was there a husband?”
She still did not look at him. “There was a father, of course, but I would never call him a husband.” Then, turning back to him, her eyes searched his face until she seemed to have come to some decision. “I must to tell you the truth. This dress I am wearing—it is more the appropriate.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My English,” she said, frustrated. “Giles. Now I want to tell you something. Your brother’s son, Samuel, when I met him in St. Barts he believe I am of the royal family, trying to escape the revolution. He offer to me to sail with him to America. For this reason I … I do not know how to say this.”
“You let him continue to believe that you were royalty.”
“Is this to be the liar?”
“Not exactly.”
“I must to tell you the truth now. I am not … my mother, she scrubbed the floors in a fine houz. My father, he was the master of this houz.…”
“I understand, Marie.”
“It is a lie and I feel shame for it.”
“Don’t. This is America, and for most of us titles and royal lineage and all that, they don’t hold much water.”
“Hold much water?”
“It’s an expression, meaning we don’t find it very important here.”
“But your brother, he is—”
“Enoch is a fool. But there are fools, and there are rich fools. He is a rich fool. He didn’t use to be this way, but it came with the money.”
“And your mother? I find this feeling from her immediately, and I did not believe it will be long that I am to remain in that houz. She can—how do you say—add the insult to injury?”
“Close enough.”
In Market Square vendors were busy sweeping out their stalls or setting up tables to display their wares. A flock of seagulls fought over scraps left by a fishmonger. Below the square Giles and Marie walked along the Merrimack. Downriver the sun was rising, casting the spars and masts overhead in shades of rose. When they reached The Golden Hand, they found Emanuel and his wife Sameeka on deck, watching their two children who were in the river, clinging to a rope that ran on the swift current out from the rail. They shrieked with joy, splashing each other.
The little girl looked up at Giles and Marie, and shouted, “Bon jour!”
“Bon jour!” Marie said, and she began conversing with Sameeka in French. The two women walked together toward the bow of the ship, arm in arm. They whispered and laughed as though they were conspiring together—as though they had known each other for a long time.
Twenty-One
WHEN ENOCH APPEARED IN THE DINING ROOM FOR BREAKFAST, Miranda dismissed Cedella, saying she would serve her son herself. The master of the house was clearly in a foul mood, hacking and coughing as he slumped into a chair at one end of the table. Samuel did not look up from his breakfast.
“Tea, darling?” Miranda said.
Enoch blew his nose. “What did you do to Marie?” he said through his handkerchief.
“She’s been sent away.” Miranda sighed as she poured his tea. “Her morals were in question, and I was afraid they would have a detrimental effect upon this household.”
“Her morals?” Enoch laughed as he balled up his handkerchief and dropped it on the table. “How can you question her morals? In this house?” Casting a sidelong glance and Samuel, he leaned ove
r and spat in the handkerchief. “Besides, she’s royalty.”
“Sugar?” Miranda asked. Without waiting for an answer, she added two teaspoons of sugar to his tea. Rather than returning to her seat at the far end of the table, she sat in the chair directly across from Samuel, who kept his head down as he carved up a thick slab of ham, which was coated with egg yoke. “That girl is no more royalty than you are.”
Her son was not completely awake, and he was, of course, still feeling the effects of last night’s libations. He looked at her suspiciously, as though he were hard of hearing. “What do you mean?”
“Really, Enoch. Since the French started lopping off the heads, it seems America has been invaded by royalty. Isn’t that right, Samuel?”
“Hm,” he said, chewing.
“Come now, drink up, it’ll do you good.” Miranda nudged the cup and saucer toward her son. “My guess is that the only time she was even in the presence of royalty was when she was on her back beneath some minor viscount.”
Enoch picked up his tea cup and took a sip and appeared dissatisfied. “She was a guest in this house, my house,” he said as he placed the cup in its saucer, though not quite squarely, so that some of the tea spilled.
“You must be more careful.” Miranda took his napkin, picked up the cup, and blotted the tea in the saucer; she refilled the cup and added another teaspoon of sugar. “You may bring your entourage through here, and you may frequent certain establishments down on the waterfront, but when a woman like that lives under your own roof it changes everything. I have my reputation to think of, you know.”
Enoch drank some tea. He looked miserable. “What exactly did she do while she was under this roof?” He shot a look at Samuel. “She didn’t do you any favors, on her back, or on her knees?”
Samuel shook his head as he swallowed. “M-mn.”
“I should say not,” Enoch said. “That girl’s not stupid. Nor is she blind.”
Miranda turned toward the pantry and nearly shouted, “Cedella.”
Immediately, the maid pushed through the swinging pantry door. “Ma’am?”
“Tell Master Sumner what you observed in the stable yesterday afternoon.”
The girl seemed frozen with fear.