The Randolph Legacy (25 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
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“This man isn’t Ethan Randolph,” the man said, as if saying it could make it true.
Judith’s eyes filled with tears.
Laugh, Judith,
Ethan thought.
Don’t cry, laugh. I’m well, I’m here.
She approached, lifting her hands gracefully from her sides, like the ladies who’d approached him to dance at his sister’s house. Beautiful hands. Strong; blue veins. Why hadn’t he remembered what beautiful hands Judith had? He wanted to sweep her up in his arms, but thought of his sister’s warnings. He kept his eyes on Judith Mercer’s hands, waiting for her lead.
“My,” she whispered.
His fingers twitched with the nearness of her. “I asked Sally if I should tell you how well I’ve mended over the winter.” That anxious, adolescent voice slipped out of him. Once out, he couldn’t stop it. “She thought bringing you my newly achieved ability to walk would be a fine surprise. That is, until she saw me herself. She changed her mind on it, there at the dock, in Richmond. But it was too late then, you see, for I rode here more quickly than a letter could be posted and—You’re not crying, are you, Judith?”
She shook her head. Then she finally completed her arc, took his hands in hers, and squeezed. Ethan felt drops dripping from his hair into his shirt and neckerchiefs. “I should have waited for thee here, by the creek,” she whispered. “Thee can never stray far from the water.”
Her voice faltered. Ethan held her hands tighter. He stroked her palms gently with his thumbs.
“It’s good we are blessed by a roaring flow this year, then,” her father said, rushing through the throng of men. “Welcome, our dear Washington, to Harmony Springs Meeting.”
The Africans from the hold of the
Standard
shook him awake, instead
of easing him to sleep. Ethan rose from his bed in the kitchen loft, careful not to disturb Hugh beside him. He pulled on his boots, then his trousers. He stuffed his long shirt into them. He did not bother with braces, but reached for his waistcoat; that would provide enough warmth against the early spring Pennsylvania night air, he decided. He wasn’t going to Meeting. He didn’t have to think about the impropriety of a woman seeing any trace of his underwear. A soft grunt escaped him. People on land wore entirely too many clothes.
He navigated his way around the cornmeal and buckwheat barrels, the wool and flax wheels. He climbed down the narrow stairs to the kitchen. Its hearth embers still glowed warm. It smelled like Martha’s kitchen: sweet and yeast combatting the spit-turn grease of various meats. This had been another woman’s kitchen, the children’s mother, a Quaker widow who’d left Prescott Lyman her children and her farm.
Ethan stepped into the bracing chill of the March air. His ears opened to the night songs of the sheep and fowl. He frowned at the silver buttons of his vest. The Quaker men’s buttons were wood or bone. He hadn’t thought of enough details when he sought to dress like them. He left the buttons undone. Tonight he needn’t think about his shortcomings.
Like bringing Martha’s molasses candy for the children. Prescott Lyman handed the sack back to him, grimly stating that he could not let the children indulge in sweets made by slave labor. When Ethan explained that Martha was his friend, the farmer only stared him down. What did these Northerners know of his life? Ethan thought, still angry at those cold eyes, at the disappointed obedience of the widow’s children.
The tattered, unearthly rags of the
Standard’s
people were impatient with his stick-assisted stride over the uneven ground. Had they been dead so long they forgot how difficult it was to navigate over land?
Ethan wondered. He felt their amusement as they floated toward the grove of fruit trees. Even ghosts laughed at him.
Ethan turned away from the farmhouse and Judith, sleeping somewhere in the confusing maze of a dwelling. Another time and place, he would have hunted her out, good guest be damned.
The stiff wall of propriety stood between them, invisible but as real as the partition that came up between the sexes once their silent Sunday Meeting broke up into men’s and women’s business. Their days were segregated, too, the men in the field fixing worm fences and plowing for corn, the women in the house and herb gardens.
Ethan missed Judith sitting beside his bed, their intimate meals, their time on the quilt under the warm Virginia sun. He’d kissed her there, and felt the strength of her passion. Why did they have to pretend none of this happened?
She was happy he’d come, wasn’t she? He wasn’t even sure of that anymore. Was he only a complication on this new life she was forging for herself and her father? Would things go the way of his worst fears?
That the big-boned farmer coveted Judith, of this he was certain. Jordan had seen it, had warned him. This thing that drove Prescott Lyman, it was not what Ethan felt for Judith—it was not love. But would Judith accept his land, his children, himself? Would Judith marry Prescott Lyman? Is that why he disliked his host so?
The ghostly Africans’ images disappeared in the farm’s most remote orchard. Ethan listened, but heard only the scurrying of a raccoon family, the bat wings sifting through the night. There. Above the trees, the
Standard’s
slaves left the earth itself. They drifted skyward, their rags sparkling. Ethan looked up. Bereft, landed.
Follow,
they told him.
Impossible.
Follow,
they insisted.
He found the tallest tree of the orchard, placed his walking stick at its base, and began his climb. From its height he would be guided by his friends as the heavens curved over him like a bowl. He would find Ursa Major’s dipper spilled empty, but still pointing toward Polaris on the tail of Ursa Minor. Perhaps there, in the stars, he would find what the people wanted of him.
 
 
“J
udith?” Ruth called from the bed beside her.
“Yes?”
“Thee was wonderful at Meeting.”
“Not I.”
“Thy Light, then. And the wisdom within. But Father says it will not keep the split within the Society of Friends from coming, the split between those who seek to remain a peculiar people, apart from a cruel and corrupt world, and those who would give public testimony, and so influence our country, and the earth.”
“Where my words lead is not my concern, Ruth. My concern is only to follow, to speak as I’m directed.”
“Thee needs to care for thy father now, here among us, my stepfather says. Does that make him a follower of Brother Hicks?”
“Even Brother Hicks charges us to follow our Inner Light, Ruth.”
“Thee feel drawn to lead a life with us?”
“I cannot yet speak on that subject.”
“When thee spoke at Meeting, I began to understand why thee is so treasured among us.”
Judith thought of her treasure—the first sight of Ethan Randolph, standing there at the creek, in his plain clothes, so like the Ethan of her vision at Windover. At Meeting she’d felt his discomfort give way to serenity, even from her place on the women’s side. His deep stillness, how Quaker-like it was. Her heart began again to leap with hope. She couldn’t contain it in that small place beneath her bosom. If Ethan could become a convinced Friend, what was impossible? Surely the Quakers who believed in helping the slaves escape to freedom in Canada and those who formed societies to send all the black people back to Africa could find some common ground?
She’d stood and spoken out, the words direct from her heart. It was her first testimony since she’d returned. She’d spoken of the past days of trials and persecution. Another such time was upon them. They must face outward, stand firm in an unjust world, without losing the quiet tone of their Inner Light. They must take the best parts of both philosophies, and live them.
“Judith? Will Friend Ethan remain among us?”
“I couldn’t say, Ruth.”
“I know he is worldly, and owns slaves. But he’s not like other visitors at Meeting from the outside, who suffer it or snicker behind their hands at us. Ethan dresses plain and visits with Hugh and me at school and helps thy father mix his remedies.”
“He is a good guest.”
“I think thee and Father are too hard on him!”
“Too hard?”
“I think there is great turmoil in his heart.”
“Has he spoken to thee of—?”
“No. These are my own musings.”
“Sleep now, Ruth.”
Judith breathed out. Why did Ruth, why did most of the Quakers, treat her as if she was a sage with answers to all their questions? Was she only noticing it now, twenty years since she first spoke out as a minister at Meeting? Now that she desperately wanted to be recognized not for her wisdom but for her humanity?
Judith couldn’t wait until the girl was soundly sleeping. Tonight she would add to the guide lights. Ethan was a good guest, she thought ruefully, but she herself was not. Prescott Lyman knew nothing of the planned exodus, because of his view on public testimony, and his opposition to breaking the laws of men. But she did. The Quakers who had planned it had come to her, as if she could give them permission to help the runaways. And she had given the permission, had agreed to add hers to the lights pointing north. She didn’t ask Prescott Lyman for his land as beacon site. She would confess her part if he found out. But she must follow her own Light. She rose from her bed.
“Where is thee going, Judith?”
“To the privy.”
“It’s cold. The chamberpot is here beside us.”
“It is not so cold.”
“Take thy shawl.”
“I will, little mother,” Judith said, kissing the girl’s cheek.
“I do wish to be a mother, Judith! Do you think it’s wrong?”
“No. It’s a desire I’ve had since I watched my own mother nurse the young ones.”
“Be our mother, Judith. I will share my babies with thee.”
 
 
J
udith left her shawl hanging on its peg beside the front door as she rushed outside. She ran along the flagstone walk. Was she too late? Would she fail to heed the slave people of the
Standard
’s directive to remember their descendants’ flight toward freedom?
Judith was breathing hard when she reached the orchard. Something gold shone, even in the quarter moon’s light, from its place propped against the trunk of the old apple tree. She brought her tin lantern closer. It was Ethan’s walking stick. A white-sleeved hand sprang down before her eyes.
“Come climbing, Judith.”
She looked up and saw Ethan’s face, like a dark angel’s among the budding leaves. She laughed. “I don’t know how, love.”
The endearment slipped out, like a Virginia memory.
“Of course you know,” Ethan said impatiently.
“I never climbed trees.”
“Why not? Sally did.”
“Thy sister is extraordinary.”
She felt his frown. “Kilt up your skirts, like when you feed the ducks. I’ll keep you steady, I promise.”
“Ethan—”
“No promises, of course. I’m sorry. Come up, Judith. The sight will be worth it.”
“Sight?”
“View of the stars! The county around!”
The lights, Judith realized. This was her chance to see the lights. To add her own. And to put Ethan into the same position of danger she’d chosen for herself. But what if he were sent here, tonight, by God? He’d been sent before. He’d had visions, had known the slaves in the
Standard
’s hold, too. Still, she hesitated.
“Judith,” he cajoled, “where is my brave shipboard companion?”
She tucked her nightgown’s hem into her high-waisted sash.
“There, good,” Ethan approved as he pulled her up into the tree. It smelled faintly of its coming apple blossoms. He was coatless. She’d seen him coatless many times, of course. But not here, and not since his outward appearance had changed so profoundly. Judith took hold of his rounded arm muscles as he helped her climb higher. She trusted those arms; they were still the strongest part of him.
They faced each other in the cleft of the tree’s trunk. She felt the bark’s texture through her slippers as she breathed Ethan’s scent—leather, iron, seed corn—through the fine, soft cotton of his shirt. Quaker men wore linen or linsey-woolsey shirts, not expensive slave-labor cotton. She would never tell him, he was trying so hard to honor them. None but Hugh would see his shirt, up in their kitchen-loft sleeping quarters. Hugh and herself, now.
“What have you brought?” he asked.
“My lantern.”
“Let me take it. We’ll add your light to those of the heavens.”
He thought the lantern was a thing of fancy. Good.
“Are you cold, Judith?”
“A little.”
At first she feared he’d send her down to the ground again. But he found another way to warm her. He yanked off his waistcoat and dressed her in it, down to the last silver button. It felt like an embrace, and her
arms were still free, unhampered by the constraints of a shawl. A most useful garment. Why didn’t women wear them?
Judith stared at the outline of Ethan’s chest through his shirt. It was not like his brothers’, or what his father’s broadness was in the dining-room portrait at Windover. It was lean and sleek, emanating sinewy strength. It belonged to a wildcat who dwelled in these Pennsylvania trees before the Quaker farmers came.
“Come higher,” he urged, suddenly disappearing among the branches with her lantern.
Judith looked down at her bare legs, exposed below her knees. The night air swept through her gown’s skirt. It felt delicious. She could do this. She could climb higher. Wiping her sweating palms against the vest, she followed his footfalls.
In the top branches, Ethan turned, smiled. “Here we are again, like on the spring night we met. Fellow night owls.”
“On the quarterdeck,” she finished, breathless, sitting back on a curving limb.
“Not so low as the quarterdeck now,” Ethan said. “Look at the stars—they’re all around, without horizon.”
She smiled. “Where does that place us?”
“Watch!”
His eyes were too bright, his imagination had flared too hot, had invaded too far into what was real, what was safe. Judith reached for him, but he scrambled farther out on the limb.
“Ethan, don’t—”
“Shhh.”
He stood slowly. He walked out on a branch not wide enough for both his feet. He had to place one behind the other, like an acrobat she’d chanced to see in a London street fair once. He kept his weaker right behind the left. The branch quivered under his weight. Judith sensed his surprise. He did not yet see himself as he was, a grown man, full of grace and power. Not small, but compacted in his sleek cat’s frame. Not crippled, but miraculously mended. Not ugly, but almost unbearably beautiful.

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