Devil Water (74 page)

Jenny toured her house, shutting windows and feeling as always a small glow of satisfaction. The windows were curtained in soft blues and reds which she had dyed and made herself. There was a Turkey rug in the dining parlor, Evelyn had left her that, and a mammoth silver punchbowl from London, and an elaborate walnut highboy which glorified the simpler pine pieces Rob had made.

We must give a party, Jenny thought, trying to lift her mood of apprehension. As the oldest settlers in these parts it was high time they asked the new neighbors. There was Dr. William Cabell, who had established himself across and up the James, not twenty miles away, and Peter Jefferson, whose wife had been a Randolph -- they lived farther off; yet, with trails so much improved and actually a few roads built, distances had shortened greatly. There was even a courthouse now, across the river, and their county, carved last year from Goochland, was christened “Albemarle.” Rob said it would probably have another new name someday, so fast was the western tide progressing, and she knew this did not altogether please him. He wanted more land, and the best was already taken up. Nor did Rob like to feel crowded.

However, they should give a party, and she would coax Rob to play his pipes. He was always so busy that he seldom found time for them; while at night, after doing accounts or worrying about the crops, Rob tumbled into bed and fell into a heavy sleep, often seeming to forget that she was there beside him and waiting for at least a goodnight kiss.

On impulse, in their bedroom Jenny changed from her workaday calico to the blue muslin dress they’d bought in Williamsburg. She combed the twisted-up plaits which kept her hair out of the way in hot weather. The hair was still very thick and fell to her waist, but wasn’t it of a duller gold than it used to be? She pinned it up in a more becoming style and peered into the wavy greenish mirror.

“I’m thirty-six, Spot,” she said to the dog. “Do you think I’m still pretty?”

Spot bounded towards her, wagging himself frantically.

“Thank you,” she said. “No one else ever tells me. Come, we’ll go find Willy. I want him to kill me a chicken for supper. ‘Tis too hot for ham.”

Jenny and the dog went outside, and she cast a practiced eye over the various departments of her realm. In the flower garden, some of the roses should be picked and the hollyhocks staked against the coming storm. In the vegetable garden the runner beans were ready. She looked beyond the paddock and tobacco sheds, and the cabins and the barnyard to the north tobacco field, where Nero and three of his sons were pinching suckers from the young tobacco plants. Black clouds hung heavy over the Green Mountains beyond, but perhaps the storm would not come here after all, the air seemed lighter.

She found Willy in the workshop, which housed all the skilled activities needed on the plantation -- blacksmithery, carpentry, hide-tannery. Willy was squatting on a cobbler’s bench sewing on the sole to one of Rob’s boots. He greeted Jenny with pleasure. “I’ve been wanting to ask ye something, ma’am, private-like.”

“Oh?” said Jenny. “By the way, how’s Peg? Is she taking the bark I gave her?”

He nodded. “She had a fit this morning, though she soon stopped shivering, and’ll be all right tomorrow, always is the third day.”

Peg never seemed to get “seasoned” as the others had, and developed fever every summer.

“Where’s Mr. Wilson, d’you know?” asked Jenny.

“Gone to the mill, where they’d broke the wheel; he’s mending it. Ma’ am -- ” Willy put down the heavy cobbler’s needle, and fixed his one bleary eye intently on Jenny, “have ye heard any more news about the Rising in Scotland? I keep a-thinking of it.”

Jenny took a quick breath and shook her head. She too kept thinking of the rumors brought three months ago by an Indian trader. The trader said that the Young Pretender, Prince Charles Stuart, had landed in Scotland last summer with a force of six thousand men, that he had been victorious everywhere, and when last heard of in November was marching into England. Jenny had listened to this with poignant emotions. There had been an unconsidered leap of joy for her father. Was his passionate dream to be realized at last? Was it possible that there would be another Stuart restoration, and the king to whom she had sworn allegiance sit on his rightful throne?

Not possible at all, said Rob angrily. The English had more sense, as they’d already proved, and anyway he didn’t believe the rumors.

There were always Jacobite rumors of one kind or another, and they invariably turned out to be as wispy as the feckless lot which caused them. “And moreover,” Rob added, frowning at Jenny, “what interest is all of this blather to you? I thought you’d forgot that Jack nonsense long ago.”

“It’s not surprising,” she replied coldly, “that I should be interested in what might so concern my father.”

“Whom you’ve not even heard from in twenty years,” said Rob with brutality that was a measure of his annoyance. They had not referred to the subject again, but there was a constraint.

“I wish it could be true,” said Willy sighing and picking up his needle. “I picture him in my head -- Mr. Radcliffe that is -- no, he’s the Earl now, to be sure -- I picture him riding next to the Prince, on a great white horse charging at the head o’ the army, so gallant an’ so bold like he was at Preston. He’s waited long enough for his revenge.”

Jenny too could picture this, and felt again the spurt of joy, followed by guilt, then anger, because of Rob’s unreason. “Willy,” she said, “do you understand why Mr. Wilson dislikes it so when the Jacobites are mentioned, or my father? It didn’t used to be that way, at least, he helped my father to escape from Newgate.”

Willy’s wise eye turned sympathetically to her brooding face. “That was a long time ago, ma’am, and afore he loved you. And can ye not see reasons why he might mislike your Stuart blood?”

“Aye,” she said looking away. Robin of course. There was that.

Willy had not been thinking of Robin. He was thinking of the strange jealousies which lurked in a man’s breast, and of how fair and winsome a lady Mrs. Wilson was.

“Then too,” said Willy puckering his monkey-face, “he might dread what King Jemmie’d do to these Virginia lands. And I needna tell you how hard Mr. Wilson’s worked to gain his lands.”

“I never thought of that!” she said, startled. “Do you think King James
could
take back the land that King George has granted?”

“I believe he
could,”
said Willy. “I do not think he
would.
Yet Mr. Wilson has prospered here under Hanover, and so he might reason like that.”

“I see,” said Jenny slowly, relieved and contrite. Willy was doubtless right, and she would put away the hurt resentment she sometimes felt. She would also put away any thought of what was happening in that far-distant England, she would forget once more the father who had certainly forgotten her, and think only of the pleasant enough duties she had here, and of her husband. She asked Willy to kill the chicken -- one task she abhorred -- and went back to her kitchen to make an arrowroot pudding, of which Rob was extremely fond.

As though Rob had shared her resolution to patch the tenuous rift between them he came home for supper in a very good mood. He brought her a trout he’d caught above the mill and cleaned it for her. He noticed her gown and said that blue became her, and it was about time for another jaunt to Williamsburg. He praised the arrowroot pudding and agreed that they might invite the neighbors for a party. He said he must practice the pipes and got them out from a cupboard, while she sat down with her knitting. There were always stockings to make. Spot curled up at her feet.

The rumbles of thunder began again, and Jenny said, “I wish the thing would break. I was on edge earlier, though I’m never afraid when you’re with me.”

“Wey -- hinny,” said Rob, smiling and drawing a few notes from his chanter. “That’s a canny speech. Will ye sing, love?”

He hadn’t spoken quite like that in ages, and she was delighted. No premonition stirred in her, no impulse to touch wood, none of the usual superstitious fear that when matters go well fate is waiting to pounce. Even when the dog barked and Rob turned quickly to listen, saying “I hear horses outside, we must have visitors,” she felt only pleasurable anticipation, put aside her knitting and rose as Rob went to open the front door. She held back a little as was proper, waiting for him to greet the callers whoever they were, and saw Rob clutching the knob of the open door in utter silence. She saw too that he had hardened into what she called his black look.

A voice outside spoke -- a Northumbrian voice. It said, “Rob Wilson? Is it indeed you? I’ve had a de’il o’ a time finding ye in this bloody wilderness where ye’ve buried yourself.”

“And why have you wished to find me?” said Rob scowling and unmoving.

Jenny walked forward, and peered at the man on the doorstep.

A middle-aged dapper man, dressed in a smart black grosgrain suit, a cocked hat, edged with a gold line, on top of a neat brown bag-wig. He had a sharp mottled face, which she did not recognize. But the eyes which looked beyond Rob to meet hers were cocky, humorous, deferential, and piercing. She knew those, and gave a cry of unbelief. “Alec! Alec Armstrong! It can’t be!”

“It
is,
m’lady,” said Alec, taking off his hat and bowing. “May I come in? And is there some place to stow the lad who’s guided me here?” He ignored Rob and asked his questions of Jenny.

“Yes,” she said. She put her hand against the wall to steady herself. “I don’t understand. I feel giddy.”

“Come into the parlor. You can sit down,” said Rob to her in a toneless voice. “You too, Alec. The lad may go to the kitchen. We’ll feed him presently. Here Jenny, drink!” He poured out some apple brandy and gave it to her. “Now, Alec, what means this! What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come for her ladyship,” said Alec. “Her father has sent for her.”

Jenny clenched her hands on a fold of the blue muslin. The brandy warmed her stomach but the giddiness continued.

“Why do you call my wife a ‘ladyship’?” said Rob in the same flat voice.

“Because her father is now the Earl of Derwentwater.”

“Is the Pretender, then, on England’s throne?”

Alec hesitated. He looked away from the grim hazel eyes beneath the formidable eyebrows. “Nay,” he said finally. “Not yet. There’s been a miscarriage of the plans.” There had in fact been the Battle of Culloden, a defeat so crushing that his lordship had not seemed to credit the news. Yet it was next day that he sent Alec off on the long search for Miss Jenny.

“Ah,” said Rob. “Then Charles Radcliffe is attainted for treason, as he ever was, and his title but a heap of straw, and I’ll thank you to address my wife as ‘Mrs. Wilson,’ which is all the title I am able to provide her with.”

“Fakins!” Alec cried jerking his head. “Don’t ye come the master over
me,
Robert Wilson, my Tyneside pit laddie! Ye may remember that I knew ye as a stable boy at Dilston, and I watched ye muck i’ the cow-byre at the Snawdon peel, no matter what a piddling position ye’ve made for yoursel’ i’ the wilds o’ nowhere!”

Rob’s eyes glinted, a white line showed around his mouth. “You can have supper, and a bed in the barn,” he said hoarsely. “Tomorrow you’ll go back as you came!”

“Not wi’out her ladyship,” said Alec. “I come to fetch her at her father’s wish -- and I will.” He was much shorter and ten years older than Rob, yet the men stood poised glaring at each other as though ready for equal combat. Jenny stood up and walked between them.

“Where is my father?” she said to Alec.

“In the Tower.”

“The Tower!
You mean he’s a prisoner?”

“We was captured,” said Alec flushing. “On a ship bound for Scotland to join the Prince -- last November. Eighty of us was captured, besides his lordship and his son, Lord Kinnaird.”

Rob exhaled his breath slowly, and sat down in his armchair.

“So -- ” he said, “Radcliffe’s not even seen the fighting, has he! I presume there
has
been some? And he’s been caught again, as he was t’other time. And he has the insolence to think my wife would mix herself into his degraded affairs.”

Jenny twisted her fingers together, yet she gave her husband a level cold look, and said, “Rob, I don’t like your tone, and I don’t like your words. Courtesy alone should make you hear a man out who’s traveled all these thousands of miles to find us, but -- ”

“Aye,” he said. “But I’m
not
courteous or gently bred! You knew that when you married me!”

She turned to Alec, whose face had gone impassive, as a well-trained servant’s should, and she said, “Since my husband so dislikes the news you bring, I think you’d better tell it to me elsewhere.”

She gestured towards the door and preceded Alec from the parlor. Rob poured himself a mugful of brandy and downed it in three gulps; then he sank back in his chair and sat scowling at the andirons.

Jenny led Alec around the gardens and outbuildings to Willy’s cabin, which had a trim wooden porch on which he sat smoking a clay pipe and watching a murky purple sunset over the distant hazy mountains. “Willy,” said Jenny, “I’ve brought you a most unexpected visitor. You will want to hear what he has to say as much as I do.”

Alec talked for some time, while Willy asked excited questions, which gradually subsided into discouraged grunts. Jenny was silent. Alec told them of the Jacobite rejoicings of the last summer when it was known that Prince Charlie had finally sailed for Scotland. That he had landed safely, that Scotland had risen to join him. Prince Charlie had been treated as a king in Edinburgh, at Holyrood Palace -- the home of his ancestors. There’d been an easy victory at Prestonpans, and no opposition to speak of, when the Prince’s army marched into England and took Carlisle. Then they marched down the Western Road as they had in the ‘15, through Cumberland, Westmoreland, Lancashire, and into Derby.

Here the Prince had been forced to heed shocking bad advice, Alec thought. All his councilors were for retreat. They were afraid of the Duke of Cumberland’s army only nine miles away and they were discouraged by the English lethargy. So few had risen to join them. They waited in vain for a French invasion to help them; besides that, the Highlanders were uneasy, as they always were on English soil. At length the Prince had turned and started the dreary march back to Scotland.