Call Upon the Water

by Stella Tillyard

  I have had much to transact in this city. My affairs have dragged on for weeks without result. The seamstress I visited today tells me that the English seek to take over this whole colony of New Netherland, though that may be just rumor running round. Whatever the case I find merchants flighty and unwilling to settle to business. Crowds gather at the street corners to talk things over, to no end. Nothing happens, and meanwhile business is lost to useless speculation.

  Not wishing to hold too much coin I have sought to discharge it in acquiring goods such as are not made in Virginia, the first an elegant set of chairs in rosewood with ivory inlaid and damask covers for the seats. The maker is skittish and demands a premium in case of war between this colony and the English. He whines that there will then be a shutdown of shipping between the two places. Such nonsense is intolerable and absurd, there being no more powerful force than trade to keep open all pathways and oceans. Upon my saying I would take my custom elsewhere he has of course relented, but at the cost of inaction and difficulty in this wretched place.

  The commissions for myself I have completed with a fine Dutch chronometer, an article impossible to find in Norfolk County, where goods of necessity come from London, and several gowns that are now being sewn for me. The seamstress presses upon me the latest styles, and except for one gown made to my own preference, I have kept to the fashion. In that one, I have refused a long skirt, and instead ordered a simple fine skirt that falls short of my ankles, the better to walk in.

  In these small tasks I pass the hours; otherwise in the cool of the morning sometimes I have walked unobserved to the shore and there stood in the shallows, as I like to do. The days drag, but two more weighty matters still detain me. The first is the need for more secure labor than that of indentured servants, and that better suited to the heat of summer. The second I have held close, it being a delicate transaction: the purchase of the woods above my estate. This opportunity I heard of sometime since, and have quietly taken.

  I have kept my counsel about woods. Had others heard that Mr. Smallbone’s son was selling, they would have wanted them also, all land being now scarce in the environs of the James River. I should have had them in the end, but the interest of my neighbors, Mr. Lee especially, would have raised the price, and I am unwilling to pay a premium for another’s desire. The fact is, the streams that rise in those woods run through my estate to the river and now all these watercourses belong to me. This pleases me, and will preserve them. I know well that though water may get on without land, the contrary is not the case. The planters here lust for land, but to my mind their desire is a paltry thing and incomplete. Without water, land is lifeless and barren. Wish then for the two together. A few woods may not seem to have great value beyond the timber, and little if the trees remain. Yet the water that falls upon the wooded hills satisfies the needs of the land, and this is the value of the woods I have bought.

  The business I have undertaken in the name of water brings to mind a man I knew in another place. Even on a paper for myself I shall not write his name. I learned some years ago that this man came from Amsterdam and lives here in a house built by himself that looks over the canal. He makes his living in his old profession. I enquired about him when I first arrived some weeks ago and thought to go in search of him immediately.

  He is well known here, it seems, as a man of unusual character, yet one much trusted by his acquaintance and preferred to all others in the practice of his profession. It is reported that he is apt to fall silent in company, yet has several friends in the city. He shuns gatherings of more than a few, preferring to meet acquaintances singly in his house, where he keeps a large collection of objects never before seen in these parts. He is not married, but has a housekeeper who attends to him daily.

  This man, I am further told, seldom goes to church and is suspected of a laxity of belief, even in this city famed for its indulgence in matters of observance. Upon my saying—by way of explanation—that I might have known him in the land I came from, all here roundly deny that possibility. Many declare they have heard him say that he never was in England, so much as to make me doubt for a moment that this is indeed the man. His name is common enough.

  But I know it to be him. Reports of his person leave no doubt and catch at my throat, so that even as I write this, my breath sticks there. His tall stooping manner; the habit he has of standing a little way off from the door when it is opened to him, as if he might at any moment flee; his dark hair thrown back from his forehead and now streaked with white.

  Long ago I left him behind. I pushed my memories away until I had thought they were dissolved. I lived well without the thought of him, and it is only being in this city of Dutchmen, and knowing him to have come here, that I faltered. I allowed the past to push open the door that I had closed. Now these reports and the thought of his person weaken me. That is why I cannot write his name. When I write my own name I feel that its letters form me; but the writing of his might make for my dissolution.

  I long now to touch his sleeve and pass a finger down his cheek; or to come quietly upon him and surprise him into desire. Oh, how I wish for that. That was my power; and may be still. With him it was my pleasure, too. All this I want, and also to hear his voice, dense and low, with layers in it like the rills of a stream; to have him turn to me with surprise in his curious eyes. I want to run my hands to where his back curves in and out, and rest there for a moment before I pull him towards me and feel his body heavy against mine, his arms round me, and know the rest, quick or slow. And then to laugh and tease him and hear him reply with his slow wit—to lie with him, limbs under and over.

  These thoughts come with the sense of him as strong as if we were together, and take the ground from beneath my feet. Thinking of his person I am become conscious of my own self. I feel suddenly alone here, with too much air around me; I who am at ease with my own solitariness and can do without another person by my side.

  Yet though he may be close, I will not go to him. I cannot meet him, though I long to. I am not ready. I had closed and sealed myself tight, like a casket. My heart, once shut up, I counted as deaf to that sort of call. But now I find that that is not so. Hearing of him, my heart stirs. Under the skin it is still alive, ready to quicken. Wakened by itself it began to beat loud when I heard these accounts of him, and a great wave passed through me, a longing that came unbidden. I was ready to go to him, to give up everything and go to him. Writing these words, seeing him again, feeling his hands upon me, I am ready now.

  Ah, that heart. It still remembers, long after the rest of me has forgotten, or has decided to forget. Memories drag us back like thorns. The heart is subtle; it does not deal with us evenhandedly. Give yourself to it and you will give your wit and reason too. In this New World I have built myself to survive. To see him, to touch him: with that I should risk losing all I have got. Nothing is worth that; certainly not a man I loved once, who once loved me.

  My own wits tell me that two people who have loved, and love each other still, may long always, and feel their hearts stretching towards one another. They may even meet again and still it come to nothing, fate having set them different paths. One may have gone one way, one another, so that though love remains, they cannot reach it. Too much sits between them.

  I do remember. I remember him each day in the things that I do. Memory for me is an action, full to the brim with purpose. I do not turn back. I have taken the love that lies there unused and I have made it into something else.

  Eleven years ago, in the summer of the year 1653, the Master first took notice of me. A blazing day enclosed us in its heat, and the Mistress sat in the shade of the trees with her fine hands wound round a cup of sassafras. This drink, which the natives call winauk, the Mistress declared to have healthful properties. She took it very often, only changing it for wild mint leaves boiled in water when she needed variety.

  The Mistress was losing ground even then, though perhaps she did not feel it, giving the climate of the place as t
he cause of her weakness. Still, she was beautiful, pale as the moon when it rises in twilight. Her long dark hair fell across her neck and throat, her thin arms hidden in blue silk. I was with her when I saw the figure of Captain Maybrick appear up on the meadow from the landing stage. He crossed the grass and in two bounds came up to the seat and sat down beside her, throwing off his hat and stretching out his legs.

  At the Master’s arrival I withdrew into the shade a little way off, never having been in his company or being made known to him.

  “What is this stuff, Damaris?” Captain Maybrick said, picking up the silver drinking cup and glancing at his wife.

  “You know, James, my dear, I take it for my health.”

  Captain Maybrick lifted the cup to his nose and put it back on the table.

  “It will make you ill, Damaris. Stick to wine and water.” He looked about with impatience and added, “Where is your bonnet, besides, in this heat?”

  I saw the Mistress close up a little and become agitated.

  “I will run and get it, my lady,” I said from the shadow.

  When I came back I walked to the bench and at my mistress’s nod I tied the bonnet under her chin, lifting her hair to pass the strings under it. As I straightened up I felt the Master’s eyes upon me. His look was alive and greedy and I saw he was a man accustomed to take what he wanted.

  My mistress noticing nothing, I withdrew again, near enough to hear but far enough for them to feel alone. The making myself unseen is a skill I learned a long time ago.

  “Very good, Damaris,” the Captain said. “I shall leave you. What is the name of that girl?”

  “Eliza.”

  “When did she arrive?”

  “Last year, I believe. She was put to fieldwork but somehow I came upon her and found that she can read. I took her into the house to work upstairs. She is a comfort to me, James.”

  I watched Captain Maybrick shift in his chair, lean towards his wife and put his hand upon her arm. He let it rest there a moment, light enough to take up again. I saw in that gesture that he had decided already to go, to get on with his business.

  “Good; then let her be about you often.”

  With that the captain stood, smoothed out the lines of his fine shirt and left. It was then I understood, when I looked at the Mistress again, that she was no more than thirty years old.

  I saw nothing more of the captain that summer, and tended to the Mistress as well as I could. Fever hung about her, especially in the evenings. Sometimes she was simply weak and stayed resting upstairs while I read to her. I sat on a stool by her bed, watched her sleep and cooled her with a fan of palmetto leaves. Sometimes I slipped my hand into hers as she slept, feeling the bones in her fingers and the faint beat of her heart.

  It must have been the captain who summoned Dr. McBride from Norfolk one hot evening. I watched the sweat run off the doctor when he arrived panting up from the landing stage. An outside servant brought him up the steps to where I waited at the door and then I followed him up to the Mistress, behind his thighs that rubbed together under the heavy cloth of his breeches.

  The doctor bowed to the Mistress, came up to her chair and looked at her. Sweat glistened on his bald head as he bent over.

  “Bring Dr. McBride wine and water, Eliza,” the Mistress said to me, and I went to fetch it, walking back with the bottles and glasses on the finest silver tray. The doctor was looking into the chamber pot when I returned, wiping his hands on his muslin handkerchief.

  “I see nothing dangerous here, Mrs. Maybrick. No black bile or blood. You must rest and sleep. Let fever do its work of casting out the bad humors brought on by this poor climate. You will be well in a few months.”

  The doctor leaned over and whispered loud in the Mistress’s ear, “A child would bring you fast to health. The captain needs an heir.”

  I knew better than the doctor and I fancy the Mistress did too, though she never said a word. When Dr. McBride had left the room she pulled herself up in the bed and smiled.

  “A child, Eliza? What was Dr. McBride thinking of?”

  “I do not know, my lady. Of your happiness, perhaps.”

  “Ah, Eliza, that’s the strangest thing. I have found a contentment in my illness that I have never had since arriving in this place. The captain is kindness itself.”

  Being ill in her body made my mistress well in her heart. Who was I to say a thing against it? I helped her out of the high bed and she gave me her arm to come down the stairs. At the front door we watched the doctor walk away with his guinea. The Mistress never called for him again. We managed alone, with the herbs of the country. Mrs. Lyle, the housekeeper, who had been with my mistress from her childhood, helped me. I stood in the kitchen by the open door to catch a breath of air with Dorcas the cook as Mrs. Lyle herself boiled water for the Mistress’s sassafras and mint. I praised the kitchen and asked Dorcas to tell me about the bunches of herbs she hung to dry in the sun outside.

  “You are quick to take the meaning of things, Eliza,” Mrs. Lyle said.

  “I wish to learn,” I replied, and that was no more than the truth.

  I wanted to know everything about Bellevue and the land it sat on; the times of rain and flood, the places upriver, the crops that might grow, the character of the country. Standing there in the doorway, looking out to the yard and up at the trees in the woods on the hill, I felt the future, all the time that was to come, and wished to open my arms to it, no matter that my mistress was ill and the days uncertain.

  In the summer storms that bring floods and destruction, Damaris Maybrick and I stayed upstairs. I held her arm and walked her from the bed or settle to a chair by the windows where we might see the great oaks as they bent in the wind and hear the whole wood groan on the slope above the house. That is another reason I have to buy those woods now, to have them for myself.

  After such a storm the cypresses in the swamps stand heavy and silent. But when the clouds part they lift their branches to the light and the sun comes down to the water. Then everything sparkles and even in the house I could catch the sound of the trees dancing. Once, when a storm passed over, I said to my mistress, “Can I go, my lady?” and ran across the meadow to the swamp. I stood there between the trees, knee deep in water.

  Just out of the swamp, I saw a snake curled on the stump of a fallen tree, white stripes down its body. It looked lazy, or half asleep. I kept a good distance away and watched when it raised its head off its body as if it knew that at that moment its skin would break near its mouth, neatly as a bean breaks when it is ripe. Did the snake help its old skin off, rubbing against the stump, or did the skin perform that action for itself, with the knowledge that it was no use anymore, and only impeded the new life underneath? The old translucent scales peeled themselves back as I watched, and the snake drew itself out from the opening, bright in its young skin. For a second it darted its head in my direction and I saw its eyes; then it slid into the green water and swam away in brisk undulations. The old skin lay on the stump, gray and lifeless. I pushed it off with my hand and waited for its papery length to fill with water. In a few moments it had sunk out of sight onto the muddy swamp floor.

  I turned away then and walked into the lightest part of the swamp where the sun was shining. Then I began to sing, the first time I had filled my voice and sung since I arrived in the New World. First I sang old songs that I knew. My voice grew in strength with each one that I sang, and the words I sent out came back to me from the folded trunks of the cypresses, softened and changed. I sang those old songs to bring myself alive, and when I tired of them I made a new song, light and strong. It mixed with the bright voice of the river, and belonged to the place.

  When I returned to Bellevue, Damaris Maybrick looked me over. Sand and swamp mud stuck to my clothes.

  “Where have you been, Eliza?”

  “Just a step away, my lady, to look upon the water and the trees.”

  As the days shortened the captain began to visit the Mistress whe
n he returned from his business, which pleased her as attentive to her state. As he straightened from brushing her cheek with his lips I saw something in his movements that the Mistress, so soft and uncomplaining, never did. The captain was greedy, to be sure; but he was also anxious, a man hiding worry inside his air of command. I watched him more closely, met his eyes as he came in the door of her upstairs parlor. He soon came every day, which made my mistress more content and less like to stir herself to get better.

  “Eliza,” he said to me one evening, “go down to the hall and pick up the papers I have left there. Bring them to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I looked at those papers on the way back up. Of course I did. I saw at a glance that they held accounts and that the sums were not in the captain’s favor. Beside one set of figures he had scribbled another and some hasty writing. I peered at his notes as I walked slowly up the stairs, taking my time. One read, Bellevue near 1200 acres, with a figure next to it. Down the page the captain had written, Monies in, and underneath that, Years of indenture. The figures were large, large enough for me to see that though Captain Maybrick might be in debt, he was also a rich man.

  I walked quietly back into the parlor and handed him the papers. He set them down on the table as if they were heavy as lead, and every now and then he glanced at them. When the Mistress fell asleep he opened them, and then rolled them up quickly.

  One evening, meeting me outside the door to the Mistress’s parlor, his eyes roved over me and he said, “Eliza, why are you here?”

  “I attend the Mistress, sir.”