Stand the Storm (11 page)

Ellen looked at the copper-colored corkscrews on the babe’s head. The child’s hair color was similar to its mother’s hair, though it was not slick and straight. Her skin was butter-colored—a color often seen among colored folks. She’d never pass for white, and Katharine would never be allowed to stay a white woman and be her mama.

Ellen held a washbasin and pitcher for the old attendant and the woman scrubbed away Katharine’s bloody particulars from her hands and arms. The foul pail was given to Ellen to pitch. She was reluctant to turn her back on the old woman. It would be easy enough to smother the babe and be rid of the trouble. She sloshed the refuse out back of the cabin.

Ellen didn’t know what to say to the midwife so she said nothing—only looked at the woman and squinted a bit, as if fending off a foul breeze of questions. She didn’t have to do much talking. Mrs. Clover soon swooped in the cabin and took over the situation.

The first task she fell to was to upbraid the midwife for opening her mouth to croak at all. Mrs. Clover threatened to throttle the woman if she talked to anyone. She put her arms akimbo and convinced the other woman she was well up to the task of beating her senseless. The midwife took low. She stood back from the pallet where Katharine lay and calculated the value of her silence. She recognized Mrs. Clover as a white woman, but one who was surely scared. Only a dullard could miss that the cook held herself culpable in this pregnancy. And Meander was no dullard. Siobhan Clover’s fears were palpable. Mistress considered Mrs. Clover, because of her longevity on the place, to be the de facto supervisor of the white women who worked under her. She was to train them and keep her eyes on them for trouble. It was her responsibility to ensure that Katharine did not fall into just such a hole as she was peering out from. Mistress would see it that Mrs. Clover had shirked her duty. And the blame might splash upwards to soil the mistress’s skirts if the master got wind of what had really gone on beneath his nose.

Katharine Logan returned to the kitchen within a day of her delivery of the babe. Mrs. Clover instructed Katharine in wrapping her milk-swollen breasts and gave her a clean dress.

For the first two or three days after the birth, Katharine sniffled and wept. The cook berated her. She harangued that a worthless slacker like Katharine should be relieved that she’d been saved the trouble of raising a bastard child. Mrs. Clover said plainly that Katharine’s tears were unseemly, worthless, and tiresome and would not be tolerated.

The twisting, serpentine plot that Siobhan Clover concocted unfolded beautifully for her purposes. The disgusting lout Jonas Kelly was further accused in absentia of fathering a baby on the Ridley slave gal, Ellen. That explanation would silence all talk about color. Kelly’s reputation for drinking insulated the accuser from the bother of substantiating her claims. He was getting his payment for his profligate eyes.

Mrs. Clover reasoned that though a series of lies such as these could not be easily excused, they did prevent the more extreme necessity of infanticide.

Ellen was told to take the babe and to tell no one of the child’s true origins. Mrs. Clover threatened to knock her head off her shoulders if she raised an objection. And though Ellen did not object to taking the baby, Siobhan Clover did cuff her at the ears for standing stock-still with her mouth open in disbelief. Ellen was too shocked to utter a peep. She put her arms out and took the child.

Ellen squeezed goat’s milk into the baby’s mouth from a pouch, for there was no suckling woman to feed the child. When judged sturdy enough to travel, Ellen and the babe were sent back to Ridley with the attitude that the Warrens were washing their hands of the trouble of them.

On the morning she was to be packed off, Ellen narrowed her eyes, then lowered them beseechingly at Mrs. Clover and begged to be allowed to take the goat with her and the child.

On the road back to Ridley Plantation, the goat was more trouble than the baby girl. The child did not cry. She accepted her milk rag and slept. The goat balked at trailing behind the wagon, so Ellen pulled it in the wagon and held it tightly with a rope to keep it from bolting.

Master Ridley was told that Ellen was given a child by a former overseer. The Warrens as much as said that any idea that Ellen had been ruined during her time at the Warren place was compensated by the boon of the baby. Ridley was thought to be coming out ahead in the deal. The queer circumstances, however, made Ridley suspicious.

Suspicious he was, but nervous, too. He toted up the time that Ellen had been at the Warren place and wondered if she were bringing back something that had begun with him. But the cap of copper rings on the babe’s head convinced all that this babe was not a Ridley. As well, the timing did not suit. Ridley chuckled to himself at sight of the young woman returning.

“Aye, this Ellen is a cold bargain. I credit the man who would tup her and give her a prize.”

When Ellen returned to Ridley she resumed spinning, knitting, sewing, and soap-making. But there was a look from people that said she had been made a mule and was brought low. Ellen appeared to them a much different girl from the one who had left. People thought she’d been done to badly by the Warren overseer, Kelly. They blamed her lack of milk on hexing or some unspeakable horror. And people knew the regrettable involuntary of it, but nevertheless they thought differently of Ellen.

The news had gone all around the barn and back and had come to Annie and Gabriel in Georgetown from the lips of Dice, a bowlegged girl who traveled a circuit with a horse doctor. This horse doctor treated animals far and wide and Dice was the doctor’s cook, bedmate, and assistant with the animals. She took considerable satisfaction in her abilities at carrying talk about the circuit. She was good at remembering and was well respected. She would tell a tale without getting partial.

What Dice told them was that Ellen had been brought back to Ridley Plantation with her head down, carrying a girl babe and pulling a nanny goat whose tits were more swollen than Ellen’s own. She had slipped into her mother’s former duties and was clinging to the child and the goat for dear life.

Ten

I
N THE FIRST
days after Ellen’s arrival, the occupants of the house moved around each other warily. Gabriel had never been uneasy with his sister, but she brought a baby and altered the balance of his workroom and hearth. Having Ellen in Georgetown completed a circle, but the child confused things. Nanny had embarrassed him with the facts that were known and he felt a change in his relation to Ellen. The girl sister had gone and a woman whose heart was claimed by a strange child had taken her place.

Gabriel changed his sleeping place to the back room on the second floor as his mother requested. He gave her and Ellen and the baby the attic room. Considering the propriety of one sleeping arrangement over another embarrassed him and he let his mother make the decisions in this regard.

Ellen’s arrival in Georgetown left little time for rumination. She arrived and had to get settled quickly. There was work for her to do. She began at once to cut into the backlog of knitted work caused by Annie helping with the uniforms at night.

During daylight hours, Ellen kept up the work on the knitted goods that were so highly sought at the store. As many pair of socks as could be knitted were sold to the government figures and vagabonds who now came in great numbers to the capital.

The young woman brought an inclination toward fancy patterns to the socks, scarves, and shawls. Gabriel cautioned her to maintain a plainer pattern for most. “Plain and simple, Sister. The plain and useful socks are the ones needed. There is much call for them.” Ellen preferred to embellish with intricate decoration, but she held back at Gabriel’s direction. “Produce volume rather than frippery and finery, Sister,” he said teasingly. Ellen’s skills had not diminished with doing fieldwork, but she was not as fast as she had once been. Her fingers were distracted by the demands of her babe.

Annie mused on her children and then upon Delia and the thought that this babe would follow them. They would soon press her to a baby’s tasks—holding a spool of thread or knitting. Did she belong with them? Or would some claimant come after her? Annie’s eyes dropped on the child’s head below her on the floor and she bent to shove two ringlets under the babe’s head rag.

A girl babe is yours if and until he wants her.
The tough words sounded in Annie’s ears again. “You will gauge her fortune and your own by how long he keeps her and how well or ill he treats her. When the master’s done with your girl, her troubles and what’s left of your girl are yours to keep,” the Ridley midwife had said flatly. She was only telling Sewing Annie what she already knew. This was a well-worn path at Ridley Plantation.

The quartermaster drew a magnifying eyepiece from his pocket and ceremoniously examined the seams of the uniforms. He looked them over carefully—pulling an odd uniform here and there from the stacks of garments. On one coat he pulled on a loose button. Gabriel took the coat from him quickly and repaired it so swiftly that it was tight again before he’d finished saying it was loose. After his examination, Sergeant Miller looked pleased with his purchase. Gabriel was told where to deliver the uniforms and the sergeant gave him a signed paper with instructions to the paymaster for his fee. A nervous moment came between them as Gabriel’s eyes grazed the paper. He was eager to read the words, but did not want for the quartermaster to know he could decipher letters. Gabriel had a prick of nervousness about his fee. He would not be fooled or robbed! But he should be cautious. The quartermaster and the tailor exchanged glances over their deal. Gabriel thought the sergeant’s eyes were even and clear and that the man could be trusted. Sergeant Miller trusted in what he saw as well.

“Make fifty more. Drop these off and pick up more cloth and make more uniforms. Make fifty more in thirty days.”

Once again Gabriel made a pact with Daniel Joshua to transport the bolts of cloth across town. This time they felt a need to be wary. Who might know the value of the cloth? Daniel Joshua’s broad body was the sort that would discourage an opportunistic highwayman. If there were a planned attack, their wariness and craftiness might be their best defense. Thinking to discourage any kind of curious authority from uncovering the precious cargo and questioning the appropriateness of two colored men having possession of it, Annie gave up a mess of rags through which she had larded some chitterlings gone past eating and smelling high.

“Lay this upon a layer of straw and salt the cloth underneath it for to throw off the patrollers,” she said. Daniel accepted this advice as sound and followed it, layering the foul garbage above dry grass in his wagon.

“Your ma is a clever one,” he said to Gabriel. The son snorted assent and thought to himself that Daniel Joshua had yet seen little of her.

The men left the army supply office cautiously and well before dark. They regretted the wind at their back, for upon it the smelly rotten air blowing off the load went up into their noses. The odor would keep trouble back though.

Under cover of dusk, after sharing their supper, Gabriel and Daniel brought the bolts of cloth into the workroom. When all were seated around the table, Gabriel looked long at them. He pulled the bills of payment from a pouch tied under his right armpit. The money was brought forth and counted under the candlelight.

Gabriel spread the bills and offered them to his mother. She was made nervous by the gesture. She rose from her seat and fiddled at the stove for a few minutes before returning.

Gabriel gathered the money to himself and pushed several dollar bills across the table to his friend Daniel. Daniel grunted, and without looking or counting or answering, he pushed the dollars back toward Gabriel. There was no question of the outcome—that Daniel Joshua would accept the bills from Gabriel to pay for his transport. Nevertheless, the money was pushed and shoved across the table between the coffee cups and sugar bowl a few more turns until Daniel Joshua grunted again and put the bills in his pocket.

Gabriel gave the remaining money to Annie. “ ’Tis our freedom, Nanny. Keep it hid. ’Tis our freedom.”

Annie folded the money and swept it into a sack and put that inside of her bodice. As the money was off the table, the three chuckled and shook their heads from side to side. Freedom money was too serious a thing for them not to chuckle. It was all Gabriel could do not to holler. He did pound his heel on the floorboards for a number of whacks. Daniel Joshua sat quiet out of respect for his careful friends. It was all he could do not to jump up and dance a jig, for he shared their profound happiness.

Annie salted the bills next to her heart. It wasn’t yet enough to buy their freedom, but added to what was already salted the sum was well on the way toward what was needed.

Eleven

T
HE BRISTOLS, PROMINENT
Virginia landholders, were experimenting. Rich in landholding and cash poor in the short term, they happened on the idea of raising sheep for wool on their vast acreage of languid grasses.

Through judicious maneuvering Aaron Ridley managed to be invited to dinner on auspicious occasions at the home of the soft and lovely Violet Anne Marie Bristol. Aaron Ridley had a straightforward, healthy appearance. He had no pustules to mar his good face and his breath was fragrant, as his teeth were also good. Dressed in fashions tailored at the shop, he presented a figure of dash and charm. Though his uncle was cagey about plans for inheritance, it was generally thought that Aaron Ridley was scion of some wealth. He did warrant the consideration of Miss Bristol and family.

The elder Ridley recognized the wisdom of his nephew dining in the homes of Washington’s elite families. Jonathan Ridley’s hope was that his young nephew’s social whirl would show him to advantage and bring him to the attention of a wealthy family with a marriageable daughter. This point was a place of agreement for the two Ridley men.

Sharing brandy in his uncle’s hotel suite on a visit, Aaron ventured a bold and increasingly popular opinion expressed by his new social circle. “Sell the slaves to themselves! I advise you to take the money and get some profit from them. You run a risk that they will take a runner and you’ll end with nothing. For you will have to pay to have them recaptured. These slave catchers don’t engage cheaply. Let the slaves buy themselves and save you their trouble,” Aaron cajoled his uncle. He was energetic with his elaborate plan and he promenaded about the room making flourishes with his hands.