The Summer Country

by Lauren Willig

  His entire being recoiled at the prospect. He wasn’t being fair to her, he knew. There was nothing so repugnant about her. He even rather liked her, at times. But to like someone, at times—how could one make vows before God on the strength of so little?

  Men had died and worms had eaten them, but not for love. So the poet said. But that same poet had decreed that to the marriage of minds there should be no impediment, and Charles knew, knew down to the depths of his soul, that their minds were of a very different mettle, that there were corners of Miss Beckles’s mind that were anathema to him. She was an enigma to him, and one he had no desire to puzzle out. He could like her well enough, enjoy her blunt tongue, her forthright nature, so long as he didn’t have to dwell too deeply on the opinions she expressed: her implacable contempt for Jonathan, based on nothing more than the circumstances of his birth; her acceptance—no, not just acceptance, her championing of a system that Charles found morally bankrupt at best and criminal at worst.

  He wouldn’t think of it now. This wasn’t the place.

  Jonathan was standing by the table, and Charles went to him instead, seizing on the excuse.

  Charles had insisted he come, although Jonathan had balked at it, saying he wouldn’t be welcome. Don’t be absurd, Charles had told him.

  But Jonathan had been right and he had been wrong. No one had done anything so obvious as snub him, but he hadn’t been precisely welcomed either.

  “Jonathan.” They had progressed to first-name terms. Or, rather, Charles called Jonathan by his first name. Jonathan called him “sir.” “How do you like the party?”

  “They’ve a fine cook, to be sure.” His plate was laden with food, but most of it was untouched. Gluttony, Charles had noticed, was not among Jonathan’s weaknesses. The food was an excuse, a reason to stay by the table. He looked pointedly at Charles. “A man could get used to this.”

  Even his bookkeeper was asking his intentions. “Do you think I should marry her?”

  Jonathan started to say something, then thought better of it. He shrugged. “Your books would balance.”

  That wasn’t really an answer. Or perhaps it was, and Charles was just being naive. “Come with me. Let’s make our bows.” With Jonathan as shield, he might do the pretty without feeling as though he was making promises he didn’t intend to keep. Miss Beckles would be too busy glowering at his bookkeeper to make eyes at Charles. “Who’s that with them?”

  “That’s Mr. and Mrs. Boland.” When Charles looked blank, Jonathan added, “The shipowner. Irish. He operates out of Cork and owns property in Antigua, but he’s looking to start trading in Barbados sugar. Sir.”

  Charles didn’t ask how Jonathan knew these things. He just did, the way he knew the best place to sell jewels on the quiet or arrange a loan. He was staggeringly competent in a way that made Charles, for all his learning, feel deeply inadequate.

  “Shall we?” he said. “You can convince Mr. Boland of the superiority of Peverills sugar.”

  “What there is of it,” murmured Jonathan.

  “We’ll do better next year,” said Charles firmly.

  Jonathan didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. It was, thought Charles, ironic that Miss Beckles and his bookkeeper disliked each other so much, when their opinions on how he ought to manage his land were so remarkably similar.

  “Miss Beckles,” he said, steeling himself against the hope in her eyes. “Thank you, as always, for your hospitality.”

  “Not at all,” said Miss Beckles, her voice pitched higher than usual—with nerves, Charles thought, and cursed himself for causing it. “You know we regard you as family. Peverills and Beckleses have always been near relations.”

  “Yes, the sort that spar,” said Robert, lazily popping a grape into his mouth. “Who was it again? Cain and Abel. Brother, may I make you known to Mr. and Mrs. Boland? They’ve come from Antigua to see the harvest.”

  “Ma’am. Sir. And may I make known to you our bookkeeper at Peverills, Mr. Fenty?” Charles made sure to accord Jonathan that “mister,” which divided gentleman from servant. He could sense Jonathan’s gratitude and Miss Beckles’s disapproval. “He’ll be able to tell you more than I about our harvest. His memory for numbers is nothing short of miraculous.”

  “If you ever find yourself seeking other employment . . .” said Mr. Boland with a grin. “I’ve no head for numbers myself, but I muddle along. I understand you’ve had a time of it this year?”

  The transition was so smoothly done that Charles found himself nodding, and caught Jonathan’s quick, sharp look of warning.

  “I don’t know what you’ve heard,” said Miss Beckles quickly, “but we’ve never had a better harvest.”

  Mr. Boland’s jowls wagged understandingly, but there was something in those shrewd blue eyes that belied his easygoing charm. “The dust didn’t give you any trouble, then? It was something to be seen, I gather.”

  “It was,” said Charles, with a rueful smile. He looked at Mrs. Boland, a decade younger than her husband, at least, but slight and quiet where her husband was expansive in both girth and character. “When I woke and saw the darkness and the ash falling, I thought it was a judgment on us, like Pharaoh and the Israelites. First ash and then drought. Sometimes I wonder—I wonder if we aren’t being punished for enslaving our fellow man. I expect frogs next or boils.”

  “Nonsense,” said Robert, making little effort to disguise his displeasure.

  “‘And the Lord said . . . I will send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people. . . .’” Mrs. Boland spoke for the first time, the words rising up and down with a strong Welsh lilt. “‘For now I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence, and thou shalt be cut off from the earth.’ Exodus, chapter nine,” she added prosaically.

  “Yes,” said Charles hoarsely. Her words burned like a brand on his flesh. Thou shalt be cut off from the earth. “Yes, that’s it exactly.”

  Mr. Boland chuckled, a husky, whisky-infused sound, reducing prophecy to so much chatter. “Yes, that’s all grand, my dear, but these are hardly the people of Israel. You know what the Bible says about the sons of Ham. Servant of my servant, was it? So you’ve no need to trouble your conscience. Not until you see the frogs falling.”

  “Two plagues weren’t enough to convince you?” said Charles drily.

  Mr. Boland grinned at him. “Sure, and it took Pharaoh ten.”

  “In that case,” said Robert, looking narrowly at Charles, “we’ve the slaying of the firstborn to look forward to. What do you think of that, brother mine?”

  Charles could see Jenny standing behind Miss Beckles, listening, impassive. She might have been a piece of furniture for all the attention the others paid her. It was incredible to him still how many people moved among them daily, unnoted and unnoticed, the boys pulling the fans, the liveried servants removing empty glasses and refilling the great bowls of punch. So many to serve so few.

  “I think that such retribution would be well deserved,” said Charles quietly. “Malo nodo malus quaerendus cuneus.”

  The wrinkles on Mr. Boland’s forehead drew together. “Desperate diseases require desperate remedies, is it? I knew I remembered some Latin yet.”

  “Well, I think it’s absurd,” interjected Miss Beckles, who had time for neither plagues nor Latin. “It wasn’t ash from heaven. It was ash from La Soufrière.”

  “And there you are,” said Mr. Boland, his lips twitching with amusement. “You can’t say fairer than that.”

  There was a great deal he could say, but it was, Charles saw, no use arguing. “Are you in Barbados long, Mr. Boland?”

  “That depends on what I find.” He yanked a handkerchief from his sleeve and pressed it to his mouth as a coughing fit overtook him, bending him double. Dabbing his lips, he said hoarsely, “I beg your pardon. We’ll be here a month, at least. And if we find such hospitality, who’s to say we’ll ever want to go?”

  �
�The doctors said to stay until the cough goes away,” said his wife, frowning at him.

  “Yes, yes. I’m meant to be here for my health,” said Mr. Boland, stuffing the handkerchief into his waistcoat pocket. “But if all tables are set like this, it’s gout I’ll be after needing a cure for, not my chest!”

  “You already have gout,” said his wife pointedly.

  “You see how she pecks at me? I’m not allowed the least pleasure.”

  “Only the pleasure of staying alive,” said his wife sternly.

  “We can do better than that,” said Colonel Lyons, joining the group. “If you’ll join us in the mill yard I can promise you a spectacle you won’t soon forget. The Negroes have their party—and then we have ours. With ratafia and cakes for the ladies,” he added with a bow to Mrs. Boland. “The ladies generally retire early. The harvest festival can become a bit . . . indelicate.”

  “Only to those raised on milk and water,” retorted his niece. “I have the favors ready.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll distribute them.” Colonel Lyons placed a heavy hand on his niece’s shoulder and squeezed.

  Jenny took a half step forward, closer to her mistress, then stopped.

  “Thank you, Uncle,” said Miss Beckles in a strained voice. Charles could see the imprint of her uncle’s signet in the bare flesh of her shoulder. “These are my people. It’s my duty.”

  “And these are your guests. Besides, I wouldn’t want you to overtax yourself. Not with your delicate constitution.” As far as Charles could see, Miss Beckles was about as delicate as a mule. Colonel Lyons was smiling, smiling, his voice raised so that the room could hear. “Let me take on the burden for you. That’s what I’m here for, after all.”

  “I am most grateful for your service.” Miss Beckles’s chin went up, and Charles saw Jenny tense, the look of alarm in her eyes, as the heiress said, very clearly, “I am sure you will miss Beckles when you return to your own home.”

  Colonel Lyons was smiling again, but beneath it was something raw and ugly. “After all these years, I feel Beckles is my home. If you’d do me the honor, Mrs. Boland? Allow me to escort you.”

  Balked of a response, Miss Beckles took the arm Mr. Boland offered her, falling into step behind her uncle and Mrs. Boland, staring at her uncle’s back with such undisguised hatred that Charles could feel the heat of it like a sunburn.

  Jenny fell into place behind her, gently touching her arm. “Don’t forget your sunshade, Miss Mary Anne. You don’t want to be too much in the sun.”

  Miss Beckles glared at her maid. Jenny met her gaze calmly.

  “All right,” said Miss Beckles grumpily, taking the proffered parasol. “I’ll stay out of the sun.”

  Charles couldn’t help but suspect they weren’t talking about the weather.

  “Well?” said Robert. “Are you going to dawdle there all day?”

  Charles gave up and joined the procession through the garden, past the hedge, and down into the mill yard, the gray stone tower improbably decked with ribbons and branches of flowering shrubs for the occasion.

  Colonel Lyons had arranged for a curtained gallery a little way back from the yard for the ladies, with small cakes and pitchers of ratafia and chairs lest they feel faint from heat.

  The gentlemen congregated farther down, closer to the mill and the press of bodies as everyone came from the quarters to celebrate the end of the harvest, all dressed in their best, with flowers tucked into the folds of kerchiefs and the brims of hats, or braided into the little girls’ hair.

  “I’ll stay with the ladies,” Mr. Boland declared when Colonel Lyons invited him to join the party. “Sure, and where shall I find such loveliness otherwise? And such cakes!”

  Jonathan stayed behind with him. Charles would have liked to do the same, but he knew how his choice would be interpreted, by Miss Beckles and others. So, reluctantly, he found himself part of the circle around Colonel Lyons, who had tapped a barrel of rum and was handing around cups of the raw beverage.

  “Made here at Beckles,” he said proudly. “You won’t find finer.”

  The liquor burned down Charles’s throat, making him cough. “Too strong for you, Mr. Davenant?”

  “I think I prefer mine in punch,” said Charles, setting his glass down on the top of the barrel.

  “With sugar and lemon like the ladies?” The colonel laughed. “You’ll have more, won’t you, Robert, my lad?”

  “Of course,” said Robert, and knocked back the dram with a defiant look at his brother, who didn’t know whether to shake him or march him home.

  Not that he could do anything of the kind. It was too late, for one. And for another, Robert wouldn’t be the first who tried to prove his manhood by drinking too deep. Charles had done the same his first year at Oxford and been fortunate to discover rather quickly that it wasn’t worth the aching head in the morning. And, too, he had found other friends, better friends, who cared more for ideas than for who could piss the farthest.

  Charles found himself missing them, and those days, with a painful yearning. All dispersed now. Carruthers, returned to Northumberland to set the family estates in order; Farleigh, a newly ordained clergyman; St. Aubyn, who had the sharpest mind of their generation, gone to the Peninsula as a soldier to please his father, trading his books for a sword.

  And Charles, here in Barbados, confronted with everything he had so long denied.

  A cry went up as the first of the carts was sighted, rumbling from the fields toward the mill yard.

  The cart was led by a young woman garbed in white, a single red flower burning in the white folds of her kerchief, holding the long skirt of her gown carefully in one hand, the reins in the other.

  “Last year’s was prettier,” commented Robert, regarding her critically through a lorgnette provided by the colonel.

  “They’re all the same in the dark,” replied Colonel Lyons equably. He clapped Charles on the shoulder. “Eh, my boy?”

  “Eh,” said Charles.

  He was spared further conversation by the appearance of the carts, gaily decorated with strips of cloth and bright branches of oleander and hibiscus. The rattle of the wheels and the cries of spectators drowned out any reply Colonel Lyons might have made.

  Charles seized the opportunity to drift away, distancing himself from the cluster of young bucks around the colonel. They were, he noticed, all considerably younger than their host. The colonel’s entourage consisted of boys like Robert, young bloods still keen to prove themselves men. The older men, the respectable married men, had formed their own cluster, farther away, beneath the canopy with the women.

  The carts circled the mill, one, two, three times. Children ran along behind the carts, cheering and waving handkerchiefs or switches made from cane. Women in bright kerchiefs and men in knotted cloth hats with long streamers rode astride the loads of cane, waving to the spectators, who roared in response, hooting and shouting. There was a great deal of banter between the riders of the carts and the crowd in the mill yard; these were, Charles gathered, the best and strongest of the cane cutters, given this one moment of fame for all their labor.

  But even their festival attire couldn’t hide the scars on arms and legs from billhooks that had slipped while cutting the cane, the raised flesh that came of being seared with drops of boiling sugar, men with arms lost to the crush of the cane press, women with stripes on their backs from the lash of the whip.

  Robert accounted himself a lenient master because he denied the drivers the use of the thonged whip. Only a small cat was used, he had told Charles, of five strands, and no more than three lashes applied for any offense. If a driver exceeded his authority, and overapplied the lash, he would be punished. Accidents did happen, of course, it was unavoidable, and toiling in the cane took its toll, but he made sure the members of the first and second gang were given two dressed meals a day, and salt fish and molasses besides, to keep their strength up, and there was no needless violence at Peverills, only what
was required to keep the workers in line. Really, did Charles think he was so careless of their stock?

  Robert was nodding and smiling now as the carts rolled forward, waving to the workers on the wagons, joking with his friends about the stamina of the women of the first gang, struggling all day to fell the long, long cane.

  Colonel Lyons stepped forward as the carts rumbled to a stop, saying a word in turn to each of the riders, handing each a bright coin—he made sure, Charles saw, to display them, the copper winking in the light—a kerchief for the women, and a necktie for the men.

  In defiance of her uncle, Miss Beckles came forward, following the colonel, making sure to add her own words of congratulations.

  An elderly man stepped forward and began a speech of thanks, looking uneasily from Miss Beckles to the colonel as though unsure to whom he was meant to be speaking.

  “Thank you all,” said the colonel, stepping in front of his niece and pitching his voice to carry, “for your good work this harvest. Come and enjoy the fruits of your labor! There’s rum aplenty for every man—and woman too! And I’ve a gift of sugar for you all.”

  Miss Beckles’s lips pressed together at that “I.” “We have a gift of sugar for you all,” she corrected, but Colonel Lyons didn’t heed her.

  He raised his glass, calling out, “Strike the fiddle, pour the rum, and let’s say farewell to hard times and hello to plenty!”

  Like Prospero conjuring spirits, fiddles and drums began to play as if by magic. Cups circulated around the crowd. Two men dragged from the last cart an effigy of a man dressed in a rusty black top hat and frock coat.

  Bending, Colonel Lyons murmured something to his niece, who looked at him from under her brows, but complied, trudging back to the tent where the women had gathered, directing them toward the house, away from the music and revelry.

  “Who’s a flame for me?” demanded Colonel Lyons, and the girl in white, blushing, was nudged forward, a flaming brand in her hand.

  Colonel Lyons caught her around the waist, giving her a squeeze as he lifted the torch in the air. A cheer went up from the crowd as he touched it to the effigy, which blazed up with alacrity, making the people nearest jump back in delighted horror.