Paxton's War (28 page)

“My dear,” she said, extending her hand, which Colleen took quickly as she rose from her chair. The two women sat on opposite sides of the table. “I believe I saw you once as a girl. Your father came here for a medical emergency, undoubtedly related to my husband. My husband's been sick since I've known him. You couldn't have been older than ten. I was struck by your beauty then, and am even more so now. I understand my son's burning obsession with you, though I warned him earlier today, as I will warn him throughout your visit, that he's behaving quite foolishly. You're undoubtedly a rebel at heart. If not, you would have married him months ago and had all this.” With dramatic flourish, she waved her hand around the extravagantly appointed dining room, pointing to the great tapestries, the gleaming silver urns. “My silly son laughs at the notion of women having political convictions and calls me half crazed. That's how he speaks to his mother. Well, he's not too old to be slapped across the face, which I was forced to do earlier today. His father exerted absolutely no discipline upon the lad, and the job was left to me. No son of mine will address me in that tone of voice. Half crazed? Perhaps I'm fully crazed, but I do understand the mind of women. I've heard stories of your mother and your aunt, and I expect you've inherited much of their wildness. Am I wrong?” Miranda didn't stop for a reply. “I am not wrong. I see it in your eyes. A wild woman, much like his mother, would naturally attract my son. We won't be eating meat tonight. To pick on the carcasses of dead animals is an unholy and barbarian act. Jesus himself fed fish to his followers, and so who am I to object to fish? I am sixty-three years old and have never been sick a day in my life. Fish, vegetables, and fruits are the keys to longevity. Do you consider that a half-crazed notion? My husband eats flesh every day and has been debilitated by one form of sickness or another for the past two decades—now he can barley lift his little finger, not to speak of other parts of his failing anatomy—yet they call him reasonable and sane. Is it insane to speak to the birds in the morning and the owls at night? Did Saint Francis of Assisi do any less? Are you familiar with your saints, Miss McClagan? Do you understand that snakes and turtles have much to teach us human beings? If I tell you that among my closest friends are two bumblebees named Cleopatra and Caesar, would you understand? They speak to me in a language far more succinct than our own.
Serve the flounder!
” she suddenly shouted to the servants in the kitchen. “And where in the name of our merciful Lord is my wine? I want my wine!”

During dinner, Miranda drank excessively. She didn't stop talking for a minute. Her voice was high-pitched and squeaky as she bounced from subject to subject with only the slightest thread of logical connection. In the midst of one of her discourses on her husband's poor eating habits, she called in a slave to cut from her wig the long ribbons that kept falling in her face. The slave did so only with great difficulty, since Miranda kept drinking, talking, and eating all the while.

“I suspect that if women ran things in this colony, we could have avoided the chaos that presently surrounds us. Don't you agree, my dear?” she asked Colleen without giving her time to answer. “Our greatest monarchs have been women. Is there an epoch any more splendid than the Elizabethan? Here the primitives are incapable of appreciating feminine genius. They are barbarians in this colony, and nothing more. My father, as you probably know, was an English lord, my mother of royal blood. He came here to satisfy a foolish wager. Had he listened to mother, I'd still be living in London. The notion of smart society in South Carolina is symbolized by my father-in-law's yearly costume ball, an event that reeks of vulgarity. For years, I've refused to attend. True nobility would never, under any circumstances, agree to mix with the sort of riffraff that worms its way into Somerset Hall. Do you observe nature, Miss McClagan? If so, you will see that cardinals are cardinals precisely because they will fly with no other birds. Their blood is pure, their red coloring as brilliant as the blazing afternoon sun. Now that August is nearly behind us, one hopes that the heat is passing. Will you join me in prayer? Dear Lord,” Miranda said, closing her eyes and folding her hands, “we pray for a cool September. And a quick end to the rebellious rascals who run amok.” She opened her eyes and stared into Colleen's. “Am I offending you, Miss McClagan? How is it that you're a rebel?”

“I'm merely your guest,” Colleen said tactfully, more astounded by this woman than angered by her politics. Who could take her seriously? Colleen rightly guessed that Mrs. Somerset's credibility was notoriously low. Never had she met a person of such volatile emotions and moods.

“Your eyes are full of rebellion,” Miranda went on. “I warned Buckley, but he thinks I'm mad. He's mad for you because you won't have him. I've spoiled the lad. He's inherited my breeding and my temperament. By nature, he grows bored with what he has and infatuated with what escapes him. Beauty is destructive. It feeds upon itself. If you were a man, Miss McClagan, you might be leading an army. I know, for I would be charging you with a force of my own. I would plot my own strategy and select my own generals, all of whom would be women. Think of Joan of Arc. We have much to learn from the bees, highly intelligent and organized insects. There is but one queen. Are you at all interested in bees, Miss McClagan?”

“I would rather doubt it,” Buckley answered for Colleen. He appeared in the doorway wearing a silver-colored cape and shiny black boots.

“The ladies are dining alone tonight,” Miranda informed him.

“You'll forgive my mother,” Buckley explained to Colleen, “but she has a tendency to rattle on a bit.”

“I resent that.”

“She's really quite a remarkable woman,” Buckley continued.

“You speak of me as if I were dead.”

“If you're through with your dinner, Mother, I'd like to …”

“I am
not
through. The flounder is far too salty and I'm demanding that fresh pieces be cooked. Miss McClagan has not eaten a bite, and rightly so.”

“Miss McClagan and I will be having coffee and cakes on the terrace. If you'll excuse us, Mother …”

“I demand that this woman be sent back to her aunt's sewing shop. She will lead to your ruination just as surely as hell burns beneath this earth.”

“That will be quite enough, Mother!” Buckley demanded sharply.

With that, Miranda arose from the table, took several steps toward her son, and held him with her commanding gray eyes. For the first time since she had known him, Colleen saw fear on Buckley's face. Clearly, he was afraid that the woman would strike him, and so he sheepishly backed away. “Please,” he begged with the uncertainty of a small boy, “let there be no further embarrassments. We have a guest.”

“A traitor whose beauty belies her treachery!”

“Hold your tongue!” Buckley found the courage to exclaim.

Swinging with furious velocity, the flat palm of Miranda's right hand caught Buckley on his prominent chin. The slap came too quickly to duck, and snapped back his head. His skin flushed red. For a second, Colleen thought that Buckley's eyes would fill with tears, but somehow—she had the feeling only because of her presence—he was able to maintain himself. He took Colleen's hand and quickly escorted her from the table to the terrace, while his mother, having made her point, stormed from the room, ranting about the weakness of the male species.

The terrace overlooked what must have been a huge expanse of land, but the warm, moonless night revealed little. A slight breeze blew from the west. Creaking crickets and croaking frogs blended with the harmonious strains of singing slaves heard faintly in the distance. Trying to pretend nothing had happened, Buckley promised Colleen that he would take her on a tour of the property in the morning. As a black woman served after-dinner refreshments, Colleen noticed him taking several deep breaths in an attempt to regain his composure.

Buckley couldn't deny it: Colleen had seen a side of him no female had witnessed before. At once, the thought repulsed and excited him. He had brought the bewitching doctor's daughter into the very bosom of his family. This was the intimacy he had sought for so long. It mattered not that she knew his mother was eccentric or that his father was an impotent invalid. What mattered was that she was here, and that she was his. He had her now, and he would never let her leave—ever.

“I want you to have anything you desire,” he said before escorting her back into the house. His plan was to demonstrate restraint by gently kissing her cheek before leaving her at her bedroom door. There would be time for longer, more ardent kisses tomorrow. It was enough for tonight to put her at ease and assuage her fears. And yet even a fleeting, innocent peck left Buckley hard with driving desire as he turned toward his mother's sitting room, where for the next thirty minutes he and Miranda debated and abused one another as they had done ever since he was a boy. Fascinated by it all, Colleen pushed her door slightly ajar so she could hear the vituperative argument. It was only with the sound of another violent slap that the crescendoing cries ceased. As he had done so many times before, Buckley raced from his mother's room, down the stairway, out into the open fields toward the slave quarters, where, unknown to Colleen, he demanded the submission of a robust female slave, pre-selected by Jack Windrow and Sam Simkins, the overseers who ran Marble Manor with iron fists.

The next morning, taking a carriage tour of the plantation, not nearly as large or extravagant as Somerset Hall, Colleen learned from Buckley that Windrow and Simkins had once worked for Ethan Paxton in Brandborough. “The fool fired them,” Somerset explained, “and I gave them work immediately.”

“Why were they fired?” Colleen asked.

“Their view of managing men differed from Paxton's. They understand the way to deal with darkies is through force and fear. The Africans are strong but lazy children and must be treated as such. Ethan Paxton looks down upon this slavery business, and consequently is on the verge of bankruptcy. He mistook these men's efficiency for cruelty,” Buckley said, pointing to his overseers, who, with whips in hand, were leading two black boys from a vast field of cotton.

Jack Windrow was in his forties, a wall-eyed albino of medium height who wore a large-brimmed hat to protect his pink-white skin. Because of the strange movement of his eyes, it was impossible to tell at whom or what he was looking. Sam Simkins was slightly older and shorter, with broad shoulders and thick forearms. He had enormous hands and a tiny forehead. His black bushy hair, dark complexion, and thick, angular eyebrows gave him a menacingly bearish appearance.

“Bastards were gossipin' out there 'stead of pickin',” Windrow reported in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. “They didn't see us comin' up behind 'em, so they kept chatterin' away. Got some news out of 'em that's pretty interestin'. Think you oughta hear it for yourself, Mr. Somerset.”

The black boys couldn't have been older than sixteen, Colleen observed as she and Buckley stepped out of the carriage. Their doe eyes conveyed a mixed sense of defiance and fear. Tall and wiry, they looked like brothers.

“We ain't done nuthin', suh,” said the older of the two, stepping forward and addressing Somerset.

“Speak when you're spoken to, boy,” Simkins barked while snapping his whip on the ground. The teen-ager jumped back.

“What is this news?” Buckley asked impatiently.

“They said they heard it last night,” Windrow said. “They were laughin' about Will-o'-the-Wisp and how he sprung the rebel prisoners from the Old Customs Exchange Saturday night.”

“What! Why, I haven't heard a thing about it,” Somerset said, upset not only by the information, but by the fact that he was learning it from his slaves.

“News spreads among the niggers like swampfire,” Sam Simkins drawled. “I think they sing messages across the fields like they must have done back in the jungle.”

Colleen's heart fluttered with joy. Again the Wisp had struck, only this time at the heart of the English command, liberating prisoners from under Embleton's very nose. Allan Coleridge was free! For the first time since Ephraim had been killed, she felt inspired to write a new broadside. Lyrics danced through her head. The Sandpiper lived again.

“Damnation!” Buckley shouted. “As Commander of the Continental Tory Militia, I should have been informed of this outrage by a personal envoy of the English command at Charles Town!”

Feeling happier by the minute, Colleen wanted to tell Buckley that in spite of his new post and pretentious title, he'd obviously been forgotten by Embleton. Wisely, though, she said nothing.

“What should we do with the niggers?” asked the albino, who seemed to be looking at Somerset and Colleen at the same time.

“Whip the bastards!” Buckley commanded angrily.

“That'll teach 'em to pick instead of talk,” Windrow concurred.

“No!” Colleen shouted suddenly, taking a few steps toward the overseers and the two boys.

“We'll take 'em to the barn,” Windrow suggested, “so's not to upset the little lady.”

“You'll whip them right here and now!” Somerset ordered with a gleam in his eye as he grabbed Colleen by the arm and brought her back to his side. “Ten strong lashes each.”

“They've done nothing,” Colleen protested. “They only spoke of what they heard, not what they did.”

“Quiet, woman! You'll quickly learn why the Somerset plantations are famous for maintaining absolute order and discipline.”

Held fast by Buckley, feeling as hopeless as the day Ephraim Kramer had been hanged, Colleen turned her back as the air whistled with the sound of the hissing whip. The first boy's agonized groan was met by Colleen's own cry for mercy. Still the lashes continued, as did the bloodcurdling screams, again and again and again. When it was finally over, out of the corner of her eye Colleen saw both boys flat on the ground, shivering, their backs marked by a pattern of jagged red lines. Windrow and Simkins, breathing heavily, stood over them, their leather whips dripping blood as Buckley, smiling with sinister satisfaction, led a weeping Colleen back to the carriage.