Now Face to Face (12 page)

In her mind was the supper she’d given for the slaves. She had worn a black gown of watered silk, and emeralds in her ears. There was ham and rum for the slaves; her coming here was to be the cause for celebration. She had stood on the house steps as Odell Smith introduced the slaves to her one by one. What a sight the scene would have made to anyone looking on; how she had wished that Jane, or her grandmother, or Tony, or even the Prince and Princess of Wales themselves might have seen it—the silent people, the dark night enveloping all: Lanterns and candles were nothing to the darkness. She in her finery, glittering and smiling, they in what could only be described as bits and pieces of clothing. They need little, said Odell. They are used to nothing.

She’d made them a speech, her heart pulsing high in her throat because everything—she, they, the forest clearly seen from the steps of this house that was scarcely larger than a cottage—seemed fantastic to her, out of time and place, as if she had been whirled into the dark night sky and placed upon the moon. One of the slaves had limped forward awkwardly as his name was called, and in the lantern light she saw that toes were missing from his right foot. For a moment, she had felt faint at seeing that which was real put to what had been only words before, the Governor’s, Klaus Von Rothbach’s words, explaining to her certain laws, necessary laws, they said, such as incorrigible runaways have their toes chopped off. And standing beside her in the night had been Hyacinthe, who would not hush, but repeated over and over in French, His foot, madame! Look, see his foot.

“My head aches. It ached when I was waiting for you,” Hyacinthe whispered.

He was trembling. Barbara put her cheek against his forehead. It was burning hot. He had a fever. The ague. Thérèse was only just over it.

“Put your head in my lap.”

She untied her hat and put it over his face as he laid his head on her knees.

“I’ll row us home. We’re nearly there. You’ll feel better once we’re out of this sun. Why did you not tell me? What? You did tell me? Well, I didn’t listen, and I am sorry for that.”

He was worse by the time she’d rowed the dinghy to First Curle.

“Can you walk, my sweet?”

Leaves touched with bronze and yellow floated down around her silently as she pulled the dinghy securely onto the bank. Hyacinthe lay slumped across the plank seat, not answering.

Of course he cannot walk, cannot even push himself up from the plank to stand, or he would have done so, thought Barbara, furious with herself. She picked him up, noticing that his legs dangled past her knees. Children grow so quickly, Jane always said. Hyacinthe had grown in the month they’d been here, she would swear it. She half ran, half walked with him down the path.

There was the house now. Good, for she was beginning to be out of breath. She felt Hyacinthe’s tears, hot with fever, on her neck. In her mind was what he had asked her after they had crossed the river to explore the other quarters of the plantation. Would you beat me? he had asked.

Have I ever beaten you? she had replied, astounded. It was because the overseer, not Odell, but the one who oversaw the quarter they went to see, had asked, in all innocence, if she wished her servant boy locked up for the night with the other slaves in the slave house.

“Thérèse!”

Barbara kicked at the gate of the picket fence with her boot.

The dogs came bounding out of the house, their paws scattering broken pieces of shell from the oyster shell paths, and then there was Thérèse, running down the house steps once she saw Barbara carrying Hyacinthe, the dogs yelping and leaping up, trying to lick his hands.

“What has happened? How is he hurt? Did he fall out of the dinghy? I knew he would.”

“He’s caught the fever. Help me carry him.”

Hyacinthe moaned as they shifted him between them. It was no help that the dogs wove themselves in and out at every footstep, licking at Hyacinthe’s hands whenever they could and barking too much. In the house, she and Thérèse put him in the bed in the downstairs chamber.

“The ague,” said Thérèse, her hand against Hyacinthe’s head. “Shoo, dogs, leave him be.” The dogs had jumped up into the bed to be with him, ignoring her. “What of Williamsburg?”

“I won’t…stay here,” Hyacinthe said.

“It hurts you to speak.” Barbara took his hand. “Hush.”

In two days, the three of them were to go to Williamsburg, where the Governor was holding a fête to introduce her to the gentry of the colony. They were coming in from counties close and far, she was told, as if they had been called for an assembly of their governing body, their House of Burgesses. Except that wives and daughters were coming in, too. It’s a rare thing for us to assemble together so, said Colonel Perry. It’s become the talk of the colony. Some of the women are angry because the Governor did not allow time enough for them to order gowns from England.

“Don’t…leave me, madame—they’ll…eat me. They…groaned, I heard…them…The birds fly too close…they peck my eyes….”

“He does not know what he’s saying,” said Thérèse. She compressed her lips, and Barbara saw how upset she was. Yes, Hyacinthe was child to them both.

Barbara ran up the stairs to fetch the Peruvian bark she had been given for her own fever. She, in turn, had dosed Thérèse with it. Holding the bottle, unevenly blown and colored brown, up to afternoon light, she saw there was only a little left. She stared a moment at a pile of gowns. There was no place to put them save folded back into her trunks, and so Thérèse had laid them out like bodies, one atop another, that they might air.

What fools she and her grandmother had been, to be packing gowns and French chairs, when what was needed here was clothing for the slaves, tools—and remedies, like her grandmother’s aqua mirabilis, a cooling fever water smelling of cloves and nutmeg, balm and red roses, smelling of home.

Barbara had already decided that she would return to England on the first ship of the spring; there was so much to discuss with Grandmama, far more than any letter could hold. If her grandmother wished to make First Curle all Barbara believed it could be, coins needed to be spent, and Barbara had none. Asking another for money, even a grandmother, was something that needed to be done face to face. Just where are you going to put those coins, her grandmother would say, and how is that to my advantage? Everything she thought and saw here went into the notebook.

It would be time to return, anyway, and see what was being done about her own estate. This had been in her mind more and more as she studied First Curle: that she, too, had an estate, even if it was only land and debt now. As she thought about tobacco and fields and overseers, about the foodstuffs, the wood that must be put away to see them all through the winter, she thought about Devane Square. Might it rise again under her hand, rather than Roger’s?

Halfway down the steps, she heard a voice and recognized it at once, that pleasant voice, speaking French.

“Make a large fire and put more blankets on him. The more he perspires with the fever, the better. I know. One or another of my crew always has it. You’ll have to bathe him often, every hour at least, so that the fever doesn’t go too high.”

Barbara put her hand to her hair, which still hung about her face, and sat down at once on a step to pin it into some kind of order. The movement of her arms was entirely graceful, like lilies bending in a garden. Her hands fluttered whitely against the thick red-gold of her hair. Her neck, too, was white, long and sleek, like a swan’s.

Beautiful, Klaus said each time she saw him, the man she’d not yet written of in any letters, the man who came to see her two, even three times a week now, the man whom she was a step away from bedding.

In the chamber, she saw that Klaus stood over the narrow bed, holding Hyacinthe down by the shoulders as Thérèse tried to cover him with blankets he had kicked off.

“Don’t fight the blankets, but lie still if you can. Let the fever take you—Ah, Lady Devane.” He smiled, a light coming into his face and eyes.

“Can you help me give him this Peruvian bark water, Captain?”

“Of course. But you know how bitter it is.”

She sent Thérèse for rum and sugar in the basement under the house, fetched the water herself at the well, pulling up the bucket by a rope.

As Thérèse mixed rum, water, and sugar to give Hyacinthe after he took the bark water, Klaus wrapped Hyacinthe tightly in a blanket, as if in swaddling cloth.

“He will take it better from you,” said Thérèse to Barbara. There were circles under Thérèse’s dark eyes, and she was too thin. She herself was still recovering from the ague—the fever—part of coming to this colony, it seemed, to catch the ague.

“Open your mouth,” said Klaus, “so your mistress may give you your medicine. It will make you well. It will taste bitter, but swallow it all, as bitter as it is…. That’s it, swallow. Good boy. Again. Now drink this, which Mademoiselle Fuseau has mixed for you. Good boy, you’re a brave boy. What do you say? Yes, I know. Your head hurts.”

He laid Hyacinthe down again, deftly pulling out his arms from under the blanket.

“We must cover him with the bearskin,” said Thérèse. “It made my fever break faster.”

“We put it back upstairs,” said Barbara, and Thérèse went off to fetch it.

Barbara found some cloths, wet them, ran them gently over Hyacinthe’s face. Klaus knelt at the fireplace, and put in some dry branches to start a fire.

“Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry, all the pretty little horses…When you wake, I will buy all the pretty little horses,” Barbara sang to Hyacinthe, her voice low and husky, like smoke.

Klaus closed his eyes a moment, to savor that voice. It made a man catch his breath, first hearing it. He was a sensual man whom pleasure did not frighten. Pleasure did not frighten her, either. They saw that in each other. It was like a promise between them.

He brought in more wood for the fire and placed it so that the logs would catch and burn. He stood, wiped his hands on his breeches, noticing, as he had not before, two miniatures upon the mantel. Their frames were exquisite, the gold work intricate, small amethysts and seed pearls set among the gold. Each man painted on the tiny canvas was more wig than man, though one bore some resemblance to Barbara, something about the eyes. One must be her husband. Klaus had heard that her husband had been much older than she. She seldom spoke of him. He realized now, standing here, looking at the miniatures, that though they spoke of sailing and of this colony, of himself, they seldom spoke of her.

Who was she? I’ve seen Saylor House, said Colonel Perry. Her grandfather built it. It is one of the sights of London. To live in one of the sights of London, and now to dwell in this small, plain house and yet not complain or cry or leave. Why did she stay? Had she past deeds to flee from? A man—he would imagine there was a man involved. With her sensuality and bold deliberateness, how could there not be? He watched her and her maidservant settle the bearskin about the boy, watched the dogs leap to the bed, turn themselves around and around to sleep by him.

“Good dogs,” said Thérèse.

“Clever dogs,” said Barbara. “You watch over our Hyacinthe.”

They’d made this house pleasant again, these women. Wildflowers and lilies were set into goblets; forest ivies in jars twined down mantels; cushions covered chairs, bright shawls were draped across tables and trunks, pictures hung upon the walls; the odor of beeswax and bay myrtle was everywhere. They had made it a home.

Odell was complaining. He was afraid of her. He said that she went everyplace, that she wanted the outbuildings painted before winter, that she’d ordered a chicken house built, the slave house repaired. The storehouse, said Odell. She’s been asking questions, wanting to make an accounting of its contents. She’s angry that Colonel Bolling hasn’t sent the key. The barrels are heavy on my mind, Klaus. I will be glad when they are gone.

I will be glad when they are gone, too, thought Klaus. I wish they were not between her and me. Suddenly he disliked himself, disliked this role of spy and admirer—which was not a role, either. “I’ll take my leave of you,” he said, abruptly, clicking his heels together, the slightest of smiles making his face slant upward.

“I’ll walk you to your horse,” Barbara said. Outside, she kicked at some oyster shells. He could see she was distracted, concentrated on the boy. “We haven’t enough bark water. Is there any in the storehouse? I haven’t a key, you know; your uncle has yet to give me one.”

She must at all costs be kept from there. In another few days, the barrels of contraband tobacco would be gone. While she was in Williamsburg, he would sail in his sloop and load them. Then the masquerade would be over. Why did I not insist my uncle move them? he thought. Why did I think we could play out this deception so long?

“Your neighbor Captain Randolph has some bark water, I know,” he heard himself saying smoothly, and he disliked the charm, the smoothness. “Let me escort you there. I know a forest path over which the trees tower like giants. It is dark and cool. We might stop and walk awhile; perhaps we can find some wild mint. Hyacinthe would like his face bathed with mint water. We can be back here again before an hour has passed, and you will have enough Peruvian bark water to mend your servant so that you may leave for Williamsburg and your fête without worry for him.”

“I don’t think I’m going.”

“Not go? Impossible. You will break half the hearts in the colony, and force the other half to weep from curiosity. Of course you must go. I have looked forward to nothing but dancing with you since I learned of it. All the Governor’s Council will be there, and most of the burgesses and their wives. Men are leaving their tobacco drying and casking for your sake. You have no idea what an honor that is.”