A Certain Latitude (30 page)

Then he heard the rattle and creak of the door opening.

“Why, Mr. Blight, Mr. Pendale and I are most gratified that you have been able to join us.”

Clarissa sat with Celia in a shady spot in the garden. A footman waved a palm branch to create a breeze; another stood by with lemonade in case either of the ladies were thirsty. If Clarissa turned a little, away from the house and the manicured lawn, she saw sinuous vines and bright blooms, the island trying to take back its own. Every day a gardener had to cut new growth back.

Celia had fallen asleep, an open book in her lap, lulled by the heat.

Clarissa referred to her penciled notes, her writing slope, paper, and pen at the ready.

Lucy, kitchen slave. I cannot tell her age, and she does not know. She may be as young as twelve, at the most fifteen, born on the plantation. Bore a child which died. The father is one of the overseers, but she does not know which one. Blight gave her to them. Asked if King Wilberforce would make her free. Had heard of Wilberforce from the conversation of some naval officers who dined with March
.

A woman, a slave, marched purposefully toward them. Clarissa stiffened, wondering whether she came with bad news about March, and then relaxed as she realized the slave did not approach from the house. The woman stopped to talk with a gardener, and gave a low rich chuckle—Clarissa started. For a moment she was reminded vividly of Allen and found herself looking round for him, before acknowledging that worry and interrupted sleep made her imagine things. He might have sailed for England by now, and neither she nor March had mentioned his name since they had last seen him.

The footman with the palm branch now walked over to the slave woman, and after a brief conversation with her, he came back to Clarissa.

“Ceres, she want to talk to you, Miss Onslowe.”

“Who is she?”

“She de cook.”

Did the slaves know she was Mrs. Lemarchand and expect to take orders from her? She was certain Finch would not breathe a word of the marriage last night, as they had agreed. She nodded and waited for the woman to approach, which she did with a familiar, loose stride. Even more familiar was her stance, feet planted slightly apart, chin raised.

Clarissa really was sick from lack of sleep, seeing Allen everywhere.

“Miss Onslowe,” the woman said. “I come to you ’bout Allen Pendale.”

Clarissa glanced cautiously at Celia, whose book had tumbled to the ground, her breathing slow and deep. “What of him?”

“Where he gone?”

What trouble was Allen in now? “Why do you want to know?”

When Clarissa knocked at the door of the Blights’ house, a sullen-looking female slave answered.

“Dey not home, missus.”

“Not even Mrs. Blight?”

The girl shook her head.

Clarissa didn’t believe her. Where would Elizabeth Blight have gone, anyway? “I hear she has a new slave. A man, light-skinned, who is proving difficult.”

The words made Clarissa sick, although not as sick as the way Ceres had described Mrs. Blight’s activities.
She like to play wid de slaves, missus, like a cat play wid de mouse. De
men
slaves.
Just as Clarissa had suspected. What she hadn’t expected was to discover the secret of Allen’s parentage.

The girl hesitated.

Clarissa reached to unhook one of her earrings, a simple pearl bob. “I’ll give you these, if you’ll tell me where they are.”

The maid looked around, as though expecting one of the Blights to leap from out of nowhere. Now Clarissa saw, on the dark skin around one bloodshot eye, a purple swelling.

The girl grabbed the earring, and held out her hand for the other. “Round de back. In de yard.” The earrings clutched in her fist, she slammed the door shut in Clarissa’s face.

Clarissa made her way round to the yard, where Nerissa had been whipped, hoping she would not see Allen hung in the burning sun, his back bloodied. No one was there except for a cat, sunning itself on the cobbles. At Clarissa’s approach, it stood, stretched, and sauntered away.

Then Clarissa heard the crack of a whip and a grunt of pain. A door hung ajar—it looked like the door to a storeroom or some such—and she ran toward it, flinging it open.

Blight turned to her, whip in hand.

“Just in time for a bit of sport, Miss Onslowe. What do you think of your lover now?”

“What do you mean?” Clarissa demanded.

A slave stood against the wall, shackled upright by his wrists, blood oozing from stripes across his back. A fair-skinned man. Darker than her, of course. Had she not seen that skin against her own, many times? She knew that skin, that body. Knew it with every fiber and breath of her own.

“Not so proud now, is he?” Mrs. Blight, whom Clarissa had scarcely noticed, stepped forward. Her hair was disordered, her gown askew and rumpled. She held a rum bottle in one hand. With the other she took the whip from Blight. “Would you care for a turn?”

Clarissa’s fingers closed on the whip handle, smooth leather, darkened and slick with sweat. She whirled and swung the whip at Blight.

“Release him, damn you!”

“Have a care, Miss Onslowe.” Blight ducked, an amused smirk on his face. He held out his hand. “You’d best give that back to me. It’s on the master’s orders.”

She swung the whip again, heard the rush and crack as it flew through the air, and the smack as it landed. Blight dropped to his knees, cursing, one hand clutched to his face. Mrs. Blight gave a cry of dismay and rushed to his side.

“And I speak for the master. Unchain him.”

“You’ve no authority. You’re his whore.” Blight, blood streaming down his face, staggered to his feet. “Give me that whip, Miss Onslowe.”

“Address me correctly, if you please.” She tossed the whip away and reached into the pocket of her gown—a large, old-fashioned pocket that could hold, for instance, a loaded pistol. She raised the weapon and cocked it, an elegantly deadly thing of tooled silverwork and gleaming wood.

The room became very still.

“The question is,” Clarissa continued, “which of you I shall shoot. What do you think, Blight? You or Mrs. Blight?”

“Miss Onslowe, I beg of you, do nothing rash,” Mrs. Blight whimpered.

“That is no longer my name, ma’am, and I tire of your obtuseness. Release him, Blight.”

“You’re a madwoman,” Blight said in disgust. He moved toward her.

She shifted the pistol and aimed it at Elizabeth Blight. “Enough of your insolence, Blight. You’ll release Pendale now, otherwise, I fear you’ll be a widower sooner than you anticipated, instead of merely a cuckold.”

“I beg of you—” Blight swallowed. “Spare her.”

So love made a fool of even Blight. “Unlock his shackles.”

Clarissa kept the pistol trained on Mrs. Blight, who wept softly while taking consolatory swigs from the rum bottle.

Blight, cursing softly, unlocked the shackles. “Lemarchand won’t like this interference. You’ll lose your position for sure.”

Allen slumped to the floor, stood with some difficulty, and limped out of the room and into the courtyard.

“I am Mrs. Lemarchand, a position only God shall remove, Blight, and you’re a fool.” For good measure, and to distract them as much as anything, she lifted the pistol and fired it above the Blights’ heads, before running out into the yard.

She slammed the door and threw the bolt shut.

“My felicitations, Mrs. Lemarchand.” Allen’s voice was raspy and tight with pain. He sank to the cobbles, his shoulder propped against the wall. He looked at her with a coldness that made her feel as though she was the one who was naked. “Why did you marry him?”

“Because he’s dying and I—I love him.”

“He arranged—this.” He gestured at the bolted door. “He wanted me to die. I would have disappeared; just another light-skinned slave, no great loss. Are you sure you can love a man like that?”

She stared at him in horror. “I don’t believe you.”

“He owns me, Clarissa. He handed me over to Blight.”

“No.” She shook her head, raised a hand to her mouth. Tears ran down her face. “I don’t believe you,” she repeated. “He would never—”

“He did. I was imprisoned in his slave dungeon. I thought I’d die there. And you married him. I wish you joy, ma’am.”

Things happened fast after that, in a sort of blur. Allen could barely walk on his injured feet, but Clarissa fetched him some clothes from somewhere—Blight’s, Allen guessed—and he sat in the sunlight, chilled and aching, wondering why the warmth had so little effect on him. Clarissa, white-faced and holding herself very straight, sent a slave to his father’s house with a note. She handed Allen a mug of beer, guessing how thirsty he was, and he thanked her.

Certainly they were civil enough, but there was nothing more to say.

Allen set the beer mug down, closed his eyes, wondering when he would ever feel warm again, and fell into a restless doze, dreaming of uneasy dark places and people who wanted to do terrible things to him.

A clatter of hooves woke him—his father’s trap, pulling up so violently that sparks flew from the horse’s feet. His father dropped the reins and scrambled out, furious and undignified, and burst into tears.

Allen rose with some difficulty and was grasped in a painful hug, while his father ranted in between sobs. “That whoreson, Lemarchand—I’ll kill him, I swear. I’ll call him out. How dare he? My boy, my boy, what have they done to you? Death’s too good for him. I’ll make him pay. Can we sue him?”

“Calm yourself, Papa.” He hadn’t called him that in years. He extricated himself from his father’s embrace as the Earl’s angry words slowed to a halt. Better to let him rave like a madman here rather than at the actual negotiations. “I’m afraid, Papa, you will be paying Lemarchand.”

“The despicable bastard!”

Allen patted his father’s arm. “Forty pieces of silver, sir.”

“How the devil can you jest about it, Allen?”

He didn’t have the energy to explain to his father that jesting was preferable to dwelling on had happened—the hours in the slave dungeon, the scrape of manacles on his wrists and ankles, the awful despair.

“Sir, may I introduce Mrs. Lemarchand. It is thanks to her that we sent for you.”

“Ma’am,” his father said, bowing, the automatic reaction of a gentleman. He didn’t seem at all put out that, minutes before, he had been heartily cursing her husband.

And so now, the next day, they sat in March’s library, where other delicate business—a contract for a mistress, for instance—had been conducted. Allen realized it was up to him to run the proceedings—his father was too flustered, still liable to burst into angry tears.

March sat at one end of the table, looking gaunt and ill, his face set. Allen would not look at him, from his seat at the other end, his father to his right.

Allen asked Finch to send for Ceres.

She padded into the library barefoot, and Allen was the only man to stand, although after an awkward pause his father did, too, and offered her a chair on Allen’s left.

Ceres looked at Allen. “What dey do to you, boy?”

“I’m well enough,” he said.

She shook her head. “You not.” She looked at March and then at Allen. “I buy his freedom, sah. My son’s freedom.” She pushed a leather bag of coins across the table, the money she had saved all these years for her own freedom.

Allen turned to March. He could hardly bear to look at this man, who had first loved him and then betrayed him. “We should discuss terms, sir.”

They retreated to the end of the room to confer. March reached for Allen’s hand. “I should have been more vigilant. Forgive me.”

“Blight said it was on your orders.”

“I assure you it was not. You must believe me, Allen.”

Allen looked at his hand, dark and square, scabbed with rat bites and the marks of chains, cradled in March’s pale, gentleman’s hands.

“I don’t know whether I believe you or not. It matters little to me, sir. What happened to me is what happens to your property—your
other
property, I should say—every day. Spend a day and night in your own slave dungeon, sir, and you’ll emerge a changed man.”

March’s hands tightened on his. “You must believe me. Why should I turn against one I love?”

“Because I’m not what you thought I was. Did you not say I was yours? Yours to do with as you liked?” He broke his hand free. “I’m damned if you’ll take Ceres’s money, for I’m writing my own manumission and my family will pay you for both of us. I shall have to carry that paper every day of my life. This is what you’ve done to me.”

“Allen, my dear—”

“Dear indeed. How much am I worth, March? A well-nourished, light-skinned, strong, educated man? Good healthy breeding stock, I’d say, and you should know the truth of that. I trust you won’t insult me further by considering me as fit for the fields or your hell of a boiling house. Or would you estimate me as a catamite? Name your price, sir.”

March drew himself up. “How dare you—”

“Deny it if you dare!”

Tears rose in March’s eyes. “Do not think I was not tempted, Allen. That way I could have made you mine. I could not have had love, but I would have had possession.”

“Indeed. Nine tenths of the law, so they say.”

“But because I love you and because I am a man of honor and a gentleman, as you are, I would never do such a thing, however mad for love of you I might be.” March paused. “You would take Blight’s word against mine?”

“I don’t know. I beg your pardon, sir. My world is turned upside down. I no longer know who or what to believe. Forgive me.”

“Allen—”

Allen turned back to the table and waved away his father, who hovered just out of earshot and limped to the table, where pen and ink and paper lay.

“Sir,” he said to his father, “Mr. Lemarchand has agreed to waive the fee for my freedom, but our family will pay for Ceres. Yes, ma’am—” he turned to Ceres, meeting her grave gaze. He was afraid for a moment he might weep. “If you please, you may keep your money. And I thank you.” He bowed to her. His mother the freedwoman.