Good Man Friday (23 page)

She hesitated, seeking tactful words, and January gave a wry smile. ‘You mean he'd walk out in a pet if he thought someone had called in a black surgeon to look at his patient? M'am, compared to what went on at the ball game yesterday afternoon, that strikes me with about the force of a bread pellet.'

She ducked her head and made a tremulous sound almost like a laugh.

‘Thank you for understanding, Mr January.' In a gentler voice, she added, ‘I shall tell Luke you're here also, Mede. Though I warn you, he was … I have never seen him as he was, when Mr Stockard brought him home yesterday evening.'

‘I expect he's angry at me.'

‘I don't even know how to describe it.' She passed her hand over her brow, with a wince of dread. ‘That blackness of spirits, that look that haunts his eyes … I thought after yesterday's excursion he must sleep through the night like a … I would say like a baby – that's the expression, isn't it? Only babies never
do
sleep through the night! He was exhausted when Mr Stockard brought him in, but his sleep was tormented, all night, by nightmares. Please do come in—'

She shook her head, as if to clear away nightmares of her own, and led them toward the door at the other side of the kitchen. ‘Curses upon these Americans for not putting servants' halls in their houses – and I will
not
make you wait in the kitchen! Would you much mind sitting in my office? I shall have Dacey bring you coffee—'

The tiny office contained no more than a desk, a chair, and another straight-backed chair for the tradesmen for whose visits the chamber was designed. The household account-books ranged on a shelf: butcher, grocer, dealers in coal and wood and hay. Another green-bound book logged the daily running-expenses of the house; yet another concerned the expenses of the slaves. Folders held the receipts, tied up with tape: the meticulous track of every penny, into the household and out again. A clean-washed slate occupied a corner of the desk, chalks neatly set in a tray beside the ink pot, standish, and pens. Rose hated doing the bills almost as much as she hated sewing, but a lifetime of near poverty had trained her in the skill. She and January took turns at the chore, as they traded off washing the dishes, scouring the chamber pots, and sweeping the hearths.

January couldn't imagine trying to run a household that included a man who'd bet a thousand dollars on a hand of cards. Planters lived from crop to crop: Luke Bray must have grown up in the systole and diastole of debt and credit. And in fact Rowena Bray had been quite right when she'd repeated Luke's argument that a gentleman
must
bet. It was a way of demonstrating that one
was
a gentleman, generous and not clutch-fisted. The worst one gentleman could say about another was that he was stingy.

Newspapers lay on the desk: the
National Intelligencer
, the
New York
Times
. Beside them, a stack of small notes, crumpled and straightened again. Blotted, January saw, with the brown stains of blood.

As if someone bleeding from both wrists had pawed through them in drunken delirium, hoping the sums on them didn't really add up to all that much.

When the housemaid brought in the coffee, Mede followed her back into the kitchen to ask news of his friends, so January also rose, and looked at the top note of the pile:

Stockard. $50

The cost of food for a month, for himself, Rose, Baby John, Zizi-Marie and Gabriel.

The price of a lady's silk shawl. A laboring man's wage for a month and a half; the purchase of a horse, or that horse's upkeep for three months.

The cost of the body of a dead man, to a surgeon desperate to increase his skills.

He fingered Bill's note in his pocket.

Now, THERE'S a fit occupation for the feast of the Resurrection
.

Voices in the hall. January cursed the curiosity that made him pry like a nosy child into the affairs of a woman who treated him as a human being in this land of slavery and prejudice, and sat down again. ‘A most serious malady, Mrs Bray.' Through the door that led to the main hall, he saw a tall gray-haired man in a physician's frock coat and top hat descend the stair with Mrs Bray. ‘Assuredly, the Poet knew whereof he spoke when he penned the words,
Melancholy is the nurse of frenzy
. You did well to summon my aid.' A light voice and a mellow South Carolina accent. ‘With care and proper treatment – I am myself a strong proponent of the water-treatment for vexations of the mind – the tenor of your poor husband's thoughts can be restored. He must have complete care by responsible experts.'

‘Of course, Dr Gurry. But his position in the Navy Department—'

‘One must never permit the mere prejudices of one's neighbors to bar the golden road to mental health, Madame. Your husband is in a very serious case, very serious.' Dr Gurry pulled on his expensive kid gloves. ‘The violence of his discourse, and his oscillation from the agitation we observed to the depression which you have described, indicate to me a most grave condition. Moreover, even the brief examination of his skull which I was able to accomplish made it clear to me that his organs of melancholia, combatativeness, and destructiveness are dangerously overdeveloped, while the areas of hope and equanimity are so attenuated as to be almost non-existent.' He adjusted his pince-nez and regarded Mrs Bray with fatherly severity.

‘You do him no favor, by allowing your wifely concern for mere
reputation
to override all the signs of a condition which may well result in disaster. You – ah!' He paused as a knock on the front door was answered by the maid who slipped past them to open it. ‘Mr Spunge.' He bowed to the trim little gentleman in the flowered waistcoat who entered the hall.

Mrs Bray offered the newcomer two fingers in the English fashion. ‘Mr Spunge, I presume you are acquainted with Dr Gurry—'

There was a general murmuring among all present at how pleased they were to encounter one another in Mrs Bray's front hall. Mrs Bray saw Dr Gurry out the front door, then hastened to escort Mr Spunge – January recognized his name from the list of surgeons Henri and Chloë had visited – up the stairs.

Dacey had left the door open between the parlor and the kitchen, and through it he heard Mede's account of the town ball game, and the cook's tale of their master's determination to see that game despite his wife's orders to Jem not to take the phaeton out. ‘No, he's pretty much his old self,' said Dacey the maid. ‘That gruel your Mr January had us make for him yesterday, he took an' flung it, bowl an' all, at Peter's head … The cursin' he done when M'am brought up that Dr Gurry to see him this mornin' was mighty fine. I ain't heard such cursin' since I worked for Marse Stackpole in Charleston …'

‘He does try to keep up the appearance of good spirits before the servants,' said Mrs Bray, when she came into the office from seeing Spunge out the door. ‘It's one of the most unnerving things about this melancholia that comes over him. It's like watching him turn into another person, when he thinks no one can see him. This morning I passed his door and heard him weeping like a child—' She turned her head, as Mede came quietly in from the kitchen, and closed the door behind him.

‘I'm so sorry, Mede.' She took the valet's hand. ‘He said, “If freedom's what he wants, let him have it, then, and see what it is to be a free man.” He turned his face to the wall at the sound of your name.'

It was a kindly gesture, and January was interested to see that Mede endured her touch in stony silence.

She looked back at January, exhaustion darkening her eyes. ‘And he said he'd have nothing of a – a physician of your race,' she finished. ‘I suspected as much, when I sent for Mr Spunge, and for Dr Gurry, though it was exceedingly good of you to come back. And to tell you the truth—' She lowered her voice with a glance toward the empty hall behind her, as if Mr Spunge's ghost lingered, listening. ‘I trust your remedies – and your discretion – a great deal more than I trust theirs. Which is why I want to ask you – and you, too, Mede – if he said anything to you, or spoke of anything …'

She hesitated. ‘I know you and I haven't always gotten on, Mede,' she went on quietly. ‘And I know your loyalty to Mr Bray. But if there is anything …'

‘I don't know what you mean, m'am.'

Rowena Bray hesitated, as if forcing herself to leap into cold water. ‘I mean, for some time I've suspected that Mr Bray was being blackmailed.'

January's eyes went immediately to Mede's still face. The valet didn't gasp,
Blackmail!
Or,
That's ridiculous!
Didn't demand,
Who would do a thing like that?

Just waited, silent. January was reminded of how a cat, turned out of a box in an unfamiliar room, will crouch motionless, rapidly figuring out which way it can bolt.

‘I do the accounts in this household, Mr January,' she went on. ‘Sheer terror at the magnitude of my husband's gambling has made me something of a spymaster, estimating how much he tosses away each night. And the amounts don't add up. He seems to be losing an additional two to three hundred dollars every month that I can't account for.'

‘Have you spoken to him about this?'

Dark curls swung against her pale cheeks as she shook her head. ‘He claims it's all gambling money, and not as much as I seem to think. But the way he drinks—'

Mede's lips parted as if he would say something, but good slaves did not contradict whites – particularly white ladies – and no sound came out.

‘—I'm not sure he would remember how much he's lost. He has no recollection of cutting his wrists, you know. None. But he generally does gamble with the same people, at least so far as I know …'

‘It's one explanation,' said January carefully. Like Mede, he'd had it beaten into him at a young age what a black man could and couldn't say to a white woman, no matter how English she was or with what fairness she had regarded him. ‘Another one might be an irregular establishment.'

She averted her face for a moment, either in shock or in shame. ‘You mean, is he keeping a mistress?' Her voice trembled. ‘I think I'd have heard of it. Washington teems with women who love nothing better than to pass along gossip, only to bask in the reaction they provoke. And as an Englishwoman …'

Quickly and surreptitiously, she wiped her eyes. ‘It's one reason I'm trying to … to get to the bottom of what
is
going on. Of what drove him first to that degree of intoxication, to the point that he didn't know what he was doing, and from there to despair. Because I'm afraid of what I might find out. What others might find out. May I count on your help?'

‘At any hour of the day or night.' January bowed.

‘Mede—'

‘Of course, M'am. You know I would do anything for him – except remain a slave.'

‘Nor would he want you to,' she responded, and smiled warmly. ‘Not in his better moments. I will send word to Mrs Trigg's, if his condition changes.'

They walked in silence across the Paper Mill Bridge. Beneath the canopy of hickory and oak the air had a moist mildness that reminded January poignantly of New Orleans. January had had another letter from Rose and one from Olympe, and his heart ached at the memory of the indigo shade of the marketplace arches, the smell of the river and the long, melismatic wailing of the charcoal sellers in the streets. ‘Why didn't you and Mrs Bray get along?' he asked at length.

‘She's mean to him.' Mede's boots scuffed last year's brown leaves with a muffled swishing, like the scattering away of memories that might or might not be true. ‘She's sweet as wild strawberries, when anybody can see her,' he went on, after a long time. ‘All that time he was courting her, she was like a kitten, pretty and playful, hanging on his arm. When nobody's around she's got a mouth on her like a cat o' nine tails.'

January tried to imagine what his calmly matter-of-fact Rose, or his cheerily sensual Ayasha, would have said to him if he'd lost a thousand dollars over a hand of cards.

‘Thing is, Mr J, Marse Luke's never been happy here in Washington. He hadn't been here a year, workin' for Mr Pointsett, when he knew he'd had enough of livin' in this town. He was never made for copyin' some other man's words in his best handwriting, and riding to an office every day, when the wind's soft off the river and there's fat rabbits stirring around the woods. He said living here made him feel like he was all alone on a desert island. It's why he called me his Man Friday.'

He glanced across at January a little shyly, hoping he understood.

‘Friday was Crusoe's friend,' said January, ‘as well as his servant. The only man he could trust to guard his back.'

‘So he was, sir. Marse Luke couldn't wait to get back to Fayette County. But by then he'd met Mrs Bray.'

A born political hostess
, Mr Oldmixton had said. A woman who didn't want to go back to her father's house.

If that was almost three years ago – January counted back in his mind – Jackson would have been President. And Jackson, still aching from his own bereavement, was always susceptible to playful, kitten-pretty young ladies begging for a favor …

And always ready to give a valuable job to a bluegrass boy.

He could just imagine what a ‘born political hostess', bred in London and used to the amenities of daily newspapers and decent opera in season, would have to say to the suggestion that she retire to a modest tobacco-plantation a day's ride from the nearest village.

The stream purled in its rust-brown bed as they climbed up the road where January had almost been kidnapped, at his first meeting with this young man almost three weeks ago.

‘
Is
he being blackmailed?'