The Randolph Legacy (14 page)

Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy

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“It seems I have become one of your chicks, Sally.”

Her eyes danced at his voice trying on her given name. “You were my first chick. Mama gave me a practice baby when I was thirteen.” He looked away, then felt Sally’s touch on his arm. “Ethan. You will remember,” she promised.

Who will I be then?
he wanted to ask her. She seemed so sure of
everything, this tall, kind woman. Could she tell him that? Could she tell him if Judith would love that man, her brother?

After filling his plate, Betsy led her younger sister back to their play. “You make fine children,
madame,”
Ethan told their mother.

Her smile made both cheeks dimple. “Well, Barton did play his part.” She laughed, then stopped abruptly, touching her face. “I mean—Ethan, you do know how babies … ?”

“Oh, he knows,” Judith told her with a sly smile. “He had a very fine French teacher in Monsieur Fayette.”

Ethan felt the color rise to the roots of his hair as the women laughed. From her snug place in Judith’s arms, the seabird baby belched like a sailor.

Aaron set Ethan down gently on the chair beside the old man’s
bed. The face buried in white damask showed all of his eighty-five years. Winthrop Randolph was a wizened stranger to Ethan, Judith knew that immediately.

“Get me my spectacles!” the old man shouted to no one in particular. “Let me have a look at him.”

Judith watched his wife, sons, and servants scurry about—all but Ethan himself, who reached up to the spectacles perched on his father’s bald forehead. He gently drew them down to his eyes. The man gave him a long, sour, disapproving stare.

“So, you’ve come back,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“You look terrible. Didn’t they feed you?”

“I—”

“Didn’t speak up! Didn’t I always tell you to speak up, or the wolves of the world would devour you? Never mind, you’re back. Tell your mother to stop looking at me with those wounded eyes, won’t you?”

Ethan turned. Anne Randolph, who was standing beside the door, bit her lip and slipped outside the room.

“Leave her.” His father called him back. “Come closer, you young scoundrel. Couldn’t get enough of the sea, could you?”

“I believe I’ve had enough of it for now, sir.”

A rasping sound erupted from the old man’s throat. Then his eyes found Judith. “Who’s this woman you’re holding on to like she can keep you from the gates of Hell?” he demanded.

Sally Gibson touched Judith’s back like a comforting sister. Aaron adjusted the old man’s bedcovers. “She be Miss Judith, sir, the fine lady who got the child home to us.”

“Is she yours, then, Ethan?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, who does she belong to?”

“To no one but herself.”

“Nonsense. You’ve been to France, I hear it in your voice and idiotic notions both! I told that captain to keep a tight rein on you and your fanciful head. She’s your mistress, this Frenchwoman?”

“She’s—”

“Why didn’t you feed my son, woman?” He railed at Judith suddenly. “Can’t you cook?”

“Not at all well, I fear.”

“Well,” he sniffed, “Your English is fair.”

“I thank thee,” Judith said with a smile.

“It’s of little consequence, your cooking skill. We don’t eat snails and frogs here anyway. We have our Martha, who is the best
chef de cuisine
on either side of the river, make no mistake. I’ll give her to you as a wedding present.”

Judith’s smile disappeared.

The old man’s eyes narrowed further. “Crafty French,” he grumbled. “All right. You may have the whole family, if you live close, and deliver Martha back for special occasions. Like christenings. How would that be?”

His eyes swept across Judith’s form before they returned to his son’s flushed face. “You’re in America now, young rogue, not some French port of call. Marry her. I approve. Good teeth, wide hips, and direct, with a saucy look about the eyes besides. Your brothers and their silly, twittering wives have been no use at all. I can’t wait forever to see this estate securely based in the next generation!”

“You don’t understand …” Ethan began.

“What do you want now? Aren’t your woman’s well-placed silences enough?” Annoyance made his father’s voice rise in pitch. “Well? Shall I kill the fatted calf, Prodigal Son? A week of dancing to make your brothers even more envious of the ways I’ve indulged you, wild child of
my old age? Go, plan it. Dance your little bride’s legs off, then plant me a grandson!” His light eyes waited for a response. The room was silent. “Come home in ill humor, have you? Ethan”—he warned now—“do not you get into one of your mother’s moods!”

The room stayed in its hushed silence until Aaron spoke. “Master Ethan’s not up to any dancing. He come home crippled, sir.”

“Crippled? Nonsense. No son of mine is crippled!”

Ethan leaned into the cool palm of Judith’s hand.

“See here, woman.” His father appealed to her, his voice tempered quiet. “I’m all blow. A spray, no substance. Tell him that, will you? What else is left to me at my age, eh? I only mean—Listen, child,” he summoned Ethan gruffly, “you remember how to ride?”

“Ride?”

“Horses, ride horses! What in blazes is the matter with you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know? Don’t know?” The old man looked around in confusion at his sons and daughter. “What doesn’t he know?” he demanded.

“I don’t know anything, any of you!” Ethan shouted. His darting eyes found no anchor. “I know only Judith.” His eyes finally steadied on the old man’s. “She is a Quaker, a holy woman, and you have insulted her in assuming her my paramour. Then you barter me, with human beings as bounty, which she thinks of as an abomination.”

Silence. Finally his father spoke. “A French Quaker?”

“She is from Pennsylvania, not France!”

“There’s no need to shout, boy. I can hear you.”

Sally giggled softly. Judith’s mouth turned up. Their laughter drenched the room like a summer rain.

The master of Windover raised his hand. “If this family of pileated woodpeckers will indulge me!” he stormed them silent.

He cast his piercing eyes on Judith. “Though forgiveness is a commendable trait of your people, Miss—What’s her name, Sally?”

“Mercer,” his daughter answered. “Judith Mercer.”

“Miss Mercer. I would not be surprised if you think my youngest child is no candidate for your affections, given this exhibition. Let me assure you upon the subject of his heredity. In accordance with my recollection, he always favored his mother in looks and gentle temperament both.

“As you have seen demonstrated, he has also a streak of choleric anger when the subject is your honor. For this I hope you will forgive him, and that some of that forgiveness he might deem to share with his much more grievously sinning father.”

Judith bowed her head to mask her smile. “I accept thy apology, Winthrop Randolph,” she said.

He grinned broadly. “No spendthrift chatter out of this one. Good choice, son!”

“Father …” Ethan warned.

“Look at how straight he sits!” the old man proclaimed with sudden ferocity. “‘Crippled,’ nonsense! We’ll get him back up on a horse, won’t we, Aaron? That will be the start of his cure.”

Aaron sighed. “After my Martha gets the boy a little cushioning for his bones, you think, master?”

“Yes. Exactly! Blasted British starved him! First things first, of course. Proper food, up on a horse, then down on your feet. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, son?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“No qualifiers! Weakens speech! Didn’t that damned Boston tutor cram that into you?”

Aaron leaned over his master again. “Mr. Foster crammed the first three, sir,” he reminded the old man good-naturedly. “Before you sent him off to Scotland, to learn his doctorin’?”

“Foster, yes. The one who didn’t leave, when the sickness came.”

“That’s right, sir. Now, Master Ethan was borned after the sickness, had his sister Miss Sally schoolin’ him, then went to Norfolk, to learn your business from the counting men, then—”

“I know who it is, you great fool!” Winthrop Randolph thundered.

When he turned to his youngest son, his expression softened. He almost smiled. “Don’t fret about your imperfect memory of your imperfect family. Even I don’t remember everything.” He cast his eyes over Judith’s form again. “And I haven’t been to France.”

Against her own judgment, Judith Mercer smiled at the old man. Perhaps he had been a terror to a family who still feared him, but now she felt Ethan had an ally in this most unlikely of fathers.

E
than loved the quiet of the library, the smell of the book bindings. He pulled the book his sister had set out for him from the shelf. Its pages had been turned many times. By them, together, she’d said, back when she was his teacher. Of course, he remembered the contents. He and Fayette had read all of Shakespeare. He closed the book. He’d reward himself with sonnets after he finished the first few letters. He began the task his niece had set out for him.

Soon he heard echoed snoring. “Aaron?” Ethan called.

The servant jumped up from the empty hearth. “You needs something, Master Ethan?”

“I thought you left with Judith. Why don’t you go home?”

“Home, sir?”

“To Martha, your family? You have children?”

“We do, sir. Five. Three girls. Two boys.”

“I should like to meet them.”

“You done grew up with them, young master.”

“Then you must help me. Tell me their names, so I don’t appear as rude as I am. Tomorrow, not tonight. It’s very late. Go home now.”

“But I be your personal servant, sir. So long as you awake, I be awake.” The big man stifled a yawn. “Standing by.”

“There’s no need to subject you to my habits. You must go home. To your wife, your own bed.”

“I’ll sleep outside the door, if’n you’s sure you don’t need me—”

“Listen, I don’t understand any of this, except it’s wrong.”

“Wrong, sir? Has Aaron done wrong by you?”

Ethan ran his hand through his hair. “I am not helpless.”

“Never said that, did I, sir?”

“The man who took care of me aboard the ship, he was my friend. I’ve never had a servant.”

“’Cepting back in the days here, what you disremember,” the bondsman said.

“That’s right.”

“And you didn’t understand so good then, either, Master Ethan, if you pardon my sayin’ so.”

“I didn’t? I was troublesome to you, Aaron?”

“Oh, a tender sort of trouble, sir. You was too fond of us. Martha would have to shoo you toward your own folk. Weren’t your fault, sir, you was just a child, born in the middle of our young. You left us before it all could be hammered in, you see?”

“Hammered in?”

“The difference ‘twixt us, sir. White and black, masters and slaves. It was going to take some mighty hammerin’ with you, my Martha always said. You was one stubborn child. She weren’t happy about you being turned to your brothers’ ways with us, either. She see’d you off at that
Ida Lee
ship proud, happy, not like your mama, all fretful. You would come back, my Martha said, on account of you was born in the sack, a water baby—she had to pierce it open herself, so’s you can take your first breaths of life.”

“She was midwife?”

“Yes, sir, for you all. Now, your mama, Miss Anne, she rolled up her pretty sleeves for each of ours as well, and the two grandbabies come of late, I’m proud to say.”

Ethan couldn’t imagine his elegant mother rolling up her sleeves in a slave cabin. Holding people in bondage was more complicated than Eli and Judith knew, he thought. “What did that mean, being born that way?” he asked.

“In the sack? That you would never die drowneded, is what! Watching that fine ship
Ida Lee
, my woman, she speaks. She say maybe one of her African grandfathers take care of you there on the water, and you never learn to beat us down. Right then you went and hugged her, in front of them white folk! My Martha, she took it hard, your passing, almost as hard as—Well, hard.”

“Almost as hard as what?”

“As you was a one of our own, I reckon, sir,” Aaron said, not looking up. “You still ain’t learned, Master Ethan. We be feared for you.”

Ethan touched the man’s mighty shoulder, to assure himself he’d heard the whispered words.

“This difference, you mean? How to treat you all like property? I’m not interested in such lessons,” he said, looking through the wavy panes of glass at the crescent moon.

The man, for all his physical power, smiled shyly. Then he leaned in closer. “You got to hide this before your brothers, sir. They’ll be trying some late hammering. And you, sir,” he glanced along Ethan’s leg, “you borne enough already.”

“I don’t know how to hide it.”

“You too polite with me, with all of us niggers. Got to forget them French manners ’mongst us. Learn to look as if we ain’t there.”

“What?”

“Watch Master Winthrop the younger, sir. He’s the best at it.”

Ethan frowned. “I see too much of him already.”

Aaron shook his head. “My Martha says there weren’t never any dissemble in you.”

“Will you go home to her, man!”

“I cannot, sir.”

“Cannot?”

“Not without a pass. I dare not travels away from my duties without a pass with say-so.”

“Who must write you one?”

“Why, you could, master.”