The Randolph Legacy (39 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
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Judith finished crushing the black walnuts. Now she had only to
sweep the big room before her reward to herself: an hour working in the garden, pulling the last of the summer’s weeds and putting the soil to bed for the winter, as her father used to call it. Today she would ease the jonquil and tulip bulbs in along the brick walkway Ethan had repaired, too. It meandered a little, like he did if he didn’t use his stick after sunset, but even that made it more dear to her. Come spring, when Jordan saw the bright colors along the walk, she was sure he would not be angry that flowers had joined her medicinals and herbs.
At the sound of the furtive knock, Judith laid her sewing on the chair and went to the door. She hoped it wasn’t a patient; she hadn’t yet swept the floor.
A girl of about fifteen stood in the doorway. Her clothing was poor but neat, except for a streak of mud. Her hands had disappeared in the folds of her ragged shawl.
“Good afternoon,” Judith greeted her. “Are you in need?”
“I am, missus,” the girl said.
“Would you come in?”
The girl took a swift glance at the corner of Charles and Court Streets and ducked under Judith’s arm through the doorway. Judith closed the door and turned, smiling. “My husband and Dr. Foster are visiting patients this afternoon. Might I—”
“Ain’t sick, missus.”
“No?”
“Maybe I could do a chore for you? Haul water, sweep?”
“Ah, I see. Mrs. Atwater sent you over to help me?”
“That’s it, missus!” she exclaimed. “And I’m plenty strong, and neat when nobody’s knocking me into ditches!”
“What is your name?” Judith asked her gently.
“Odette.”
“Odette, I appreciate my neighbor’s concern, but I’m afraid we don’t hire out help here. You’re the third she has sent over.”
“Please let me stay a little while! The captain and Miss Atwater says you be kind and good, and they are both gone away and I must get off the street!” Odette exclaimed suddenly.
Judith waited until the girl’s breathing eased before she smiled. “Would you have a slice of Mrs. Atwater’s blueberry cake with me, Odette? She sent over so much this morning that she must have known you were coming.”
“Did you hear me Missus Doctor?” The girl pulled her chained hands out of her ragged shawl’s folds. “I be a runaway!”
“Not from me, I hope. I’m Judith.”
Three hard raps at the front door sent the girl to her feet. Judith held out her hand. After only a second’s hesitation, Odette took hold. Judith led her into Dr. Foster’s room and quickly lifted his bedding. “As still as you can manage, Odette,” she whispered. The girl climbed in and Judith laid the bed over her form, then repositioned the pillows.
She left the room as the front door opened. Two men—one with shoulders hunched up to his ears, the other portly and brandishing a whip—stood in the doorway. As fearsome as they looked, the line of eight chained human beings beyond them was what made Judith’s knees feel weak. It was not the first slave coffle she had seen in the city of Richmond, but it was the most miserable.
The hunched man touched the rim of his wide hat. “We’re traveling through to load at the docks, when we lost us a runaway. Ragged mulatto gal slave, muddied up some. Real crafty bitch, she is.”
Judith said the first words that entered her mind. “There are no slaves here.”
The man cocked his head as far as he could, considering the shortness of his neck. “You sure? She might of broke in on you, missus, ready to do you harm. Best let us—”
“I’m sure.”
“Still, my man better see to your safety. Daniels!” He called the portly man forward. Daniels headed straight for Jordan’s bedroom.
“That’s most kind of you, sir, to put yourself and your valuable charges at risk on my behalf, especially since Dr. Foster has put the house under quarantine.”
“Quarantine? Bloody hell! Against what?”
She lowered her voice and tapped her lip. “Have you heard of the black vomit?”
“Yellow fever? Here? Daniels, get out of that doorway! Let’s get these niggers we got left toward the dock!”
Once they left, Judith barred the front door before rushing to the
doctor’s bedroom. She lifted the bedding from a breathless Odette, who looked around the spare, tidy room, speechless.
“Yellow fever done visited this house, Miss Judith?”
Judith smiled. “No, dear. I merely asked if he’d heard of it, did I not? I was going to tell him we were under quarantine only to foul-mouthed slave catchers at present.”
 
 
B
y the time Ethan had completed his rounds, the pie had made room for two pints of fennel vinegar, a half dozen turnips, and a bottle of the barrelmaker’s best cherry brandy. He’d found all three patients, and they had welcomed him, even without Jordan.
Home was less than a half-hour’s walk away when the liveryman’s stable boy Tim grabbed his sleeve. There was a tall, barrel-chested man beside him.
“This be him?” the man asked the boy gruffly.
“Aye, sir, Ethan Blair, the physician’s assistant.”
Ethan tensed, but the rough-looking man took off his hat. “Suppose you could bring him home, Mr. Blair?” he asked quietly.
“Who, sir?”
“Your master. Mine thinks he’ll come to no good end if he swallows another pint of ale.”
“Ale?”
“Atop all that corn whiskey.”
“Where?”
“The Duchess of Gloucester.”
“Who?”
“The Duchess ain’t a ‘who,’ sir. She’s a ‘where.’ A tavern. My master keeps her. I’m Curry. Curry Post, the rabble rouster there.”
Ethan offered the doctor’s bag to the boy. “Would you carry this to Judith, Tim? Tell her Dr. Foster and I will be home directly?”
“I will, sir.”
Ethan searched through his vest for a coin, but found none. He’d left the house without money again, something Jordan chided him for often. “There’s a piece of pie at the bottom for you,” he offered.
“No need, Mr. Blair. Your lady poulticed my burn with her sassafras Monday week, and didn’t ask a thing for it. I’ll deliver your bag and message.”
Tim disappeared beyond the lamppost. Ethan was already falling behind the tavernkeeper’s servant.
The big man looked back, puzzled. “You ailing?”
“Just slow.”
“An injury?”
“Yes.”
His eyes found Ethan’s elevated right boot. “War?”
How he hated questions. “Yes.”
“Army, was it? I had a nephew with Andy Jackson at New Orleans.”
“I was at sea.”
“The sea? Good Lord, it’s lucky you are to be back at all!”
“How far is it to the tavern, Mr. Post?”
The rouster grinned. “New to town, are you, lowlander?”
“Yes.”
“Must be, not knowing the Duchess. Just around this bend. Your master can hold neither strong drink nor his crafty Boston tongue in an argument. He’s playing the Devil, and has both the Federalists and all manner of Democratic Republicans at his throat.”
Throat
—Jordan had had enough damage done to his throat. Ethan quickened his step, though it caused pain to ride up his hip. Jordan Foster, drunk and brawling. This man, with his questions, besides picking up the Tidewater Virginian in his speech. What part of any test was this?
The tavern’s sign was a Renaissance heraldry design of crosses and jewel-toned squares and circles. Ethan followed Curry Post into a backroom stale from lack of air and too much arguing. Behind the shelved Dutch door that led to the supply of spirits, a man Ethan judged to be the tavern master kept a careful watch. Jordan Foster was presiding over a discussion whose combined venom, he seemed blissfully unaware, was directed at him. Curry Post plowed through to its midst.
“Now, gentlemen,” he announced, spinning around to catch Ethan’s shoulders in a gruffembrace. “Do you know the doctor’s assistant? This here’s Ethan Blair, young veteran of that late conflict which kept us free to argue as Americans! Mr. Blair fought on the high seas so your miserable hides are safe for himself and the doctor to poke at in peacetime.”
Jordan turned slowly, his red-rimmed eyes fired hostile.
“Dr. Foster,” Ethan addressed him formally, as he was instructed to do in public, “my wife is waiting supper.”
“A hero indeed,” Jordan Foster proclaimed, as if Ethan had not spoken. “Battles, scars! Tell them about it, Mr. Blair.”
Ethan stared at him.
“Look how silent, how modest! You will never find him in here, telling lies about his exploits, not this one!”
“That’s not good for my business, Mr. Blair,” the tavernkeeper
chided affably, wiping a glass while maintaining his vigilant eyes on the room.
“Come here, Ethan,” the doctor invited. He poured two glasses from a quarter-full bottle. “You like bourbon, don’t you?”
“No.”
“What, a Virginian, without a taste for bourbon?” He thrust the glass into Ethan’s hand. “I forget … you aren’t wholly Virginian, are you? But we must drink! To what, hero? To whom? Your mother? That French beauty plying her trade? On the streets of Paris, Marseille? La Rochelle, perhaps? Come, come, you know! You’ve played it all out in that head. Where was I the hapless victim of her wiles?”
Ethan dropped the glass. It shattered. The scent of bourbon reminded him of his brothers’ houses, of slave breeding, of corn gone bad, rotten. “Stop this,” he warned.
“Why? Isn’t it what you seek? To be rechristened yet again, bastard son of a French whore, made doctor by my grace?” Jordan Foster picked up his own glass and flung its contents in Ethan’s face.
“There,” he pronounced. “You are he.”
Ethan felt the splash of bourbon with a shock. His eyes stung,
clouding his vision. He thought of Harry Burnett as he lay writhing in pain on the deck of the
Ida Lee
. This was what it felt like, burning a face off, to become another. He was dimly aware of someone offering him a pair of gloves. What for? A duel. Jordan Foster had insulted his mother. Here in a tavern, a public place. He was Ethan Randolph, a Tidewater Virginian, was he not? Had he no honor?
“Don’t,” his new friend, the one who had waited for him when he was out of step, counseled from his other side. “He’s blind, mean drunk, your master is,” Curry Post said. “Listen to me. He don’t have no sense about him just now, Mr. Blair.”
Ethan walked out of reach of the gloves. Slowly, he offered the doctor his hand. “Let’s go home,” he said quietly.
The physician staggered, then rose to his full height. “You can’t find your way around this city until your stars come out,” he said.
“They’re out.”
The belligerence was fading fast from the doctor’s face, replaced by something sad and lost that Ethan didn’t understand.
“It’s dark?”
“Yes.”
“She’ll be waiting, won’t she, our Judith?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We must go, then.”
He grabbed his bottle of bourbon, took a step, then stumbled. Ethan took hold of his forearms. Jordan looked around.
“Caught me, ’fore I hit the boards. Did you see, gentlemen? Could I ask for a better apprentice?”
Curry Post walked them to the back door and into the stable yard. “I’ll ask if I can get away—” he began.
“It’s not far. I can manage,” Ethan said with more confidence than he felt. “Thank you for all your help.”
“Mr. Blair?” He looked behind them. Ethan saw a curtain waft at a window. Curry came closer. “If you would, sir, some advisement?”
“Yes?”
“My Ellen. She’s in the first three months yet and feels poorly.”
“Tired?”
“Aye, and sick.”
“What does the midwife say?”
“Won’t go to her this time. On account of we lost two already in the first three month. No midwifes, no doctors, she says. But she’s sick, Mr. Blair.”
“Is she keeping down her food?”
“Naught but bread, a little porridge, tea.”
“Judith flavors a blood tonic with wild sarsaparilla. I’ll send over a bottle in the morning. Where?”
“Here, sir. Out back.”
Ethan scanned the noisy tavern. “Take her for daily walks, Mr. Post. By the water.”
“I’m only just Curry, sir.”
“If I’m Ethan. Thank you for your help. And your own advice.”
“You had a mighty pull toward pistols at dawn, did you not, lowlander? You’d best promise me you’ll not pitch that Yankee firebrand down a well if’n he becomes too burdensome.”
Ethan grinned at the thought. “We’re both rousters for our masters tonight, are we not?”
Curry Post looked over Jordan Foster’s crumpled form, frowning. “Mine works me hard, but he don’t scorn my family.”
Ethan smiled sadly. “Well, mine doesn’t work me all that hard. Take good care of your wife, Curry.”
“Aye, sir. I will.”
“Small meals,” the doctor murmured, slipping down Ethan’s side. “Tell him.”
Ethan bolstered his burden higher. “She should eat small meals, too,” he called to Curry Post.
“Small meals. Aye. Thank you, doctors.”
They had only reached the first corner before Jordan Foster’s knees buckled and he slid into the gutter.
Ethan knelt beside him.
“Don’t throw me down the well,” the doctor beseeched quietly.
Ethan snorted. “River’s closer. How well do you tread water, Jordan Foster?”
“Can’t swim a stroke.”
“Now, that’s a shame.”
He brought the man to his feet, tucked his bottle into his trousers, then bent the lifeless form over his shoulder. It was easier for a while not to struggle with the drag on his side, but soon Ethan regretted his words of assurance to Curry Post. His leg shouldn’t feel this badly, even after the long day, and this extra weight. His boot must need a new heel. How much would that cost? Could he shave it down as neatly, as carefully as Aaron had, to fit his walking gait? Ethan felt a deep longing for Windover’s trees, its sea breezes. He heard a rustling, saw muddied slippers. He looked up.
Judith stood before him, her head and shoulders wrapped in his mother’s bride gift, the cashmere shawl, her face glowing—with what, her Inner Light?
“Almost home,” she assured him. Together, they eased the doctor onto his feet and brought him over the remaining streets.
In the physician’s small bedroom, they worked silently to get him undressed. It was a comfortable silence, even as Jordan Foster growled as they placed him between the sheets. He would feel much worse tomorrow. Ethan found pleasure in the thought. He would never be as good a person as his wife was, he thought ruefilly.
He pulled up the light blanket, then glanced at the portraits of the dulcimer woman, the two children.
What are we to do with this man?
he asked the woman silently, before leaving the room behind his wife.
Soon Judith had the hearth table candlelit. The meat pie was covered
with cloth, Judith’s greens and fresh peas sprinkled with the fennel vinegar.
“Tim said most of this bounty you earned yourself today, husband,” she said brightly, as if he’d not brought a debauched man home, and didn’t reek of a distillery himself.
Ethan shrugged. “My hungry look,” he replied.
What had the old woman called his look? Rakish. He wouldn’t know the first thing about looking rakish. She was seeing Fayette, not him. He was small and crippled, was he not? Not handsome, not a man women loved on sight. Ethan stared at Judith’s linens spread over the doctor’s table, at her useful crockery. Did the doctor hate him now? Would they lose their home?
“Will you sit, eat?” Judith asked, gently slipping his damp coat from his shoulders.
“I cannot.”
“Ethan?”
“My leg,” he finally admitted. It was now a red, ugly pain, high, where it attached to his hip.
“Oh, Ethan. Lie by the hearth, love,” she urged, taking his hand, leading him to the doctor’s sofa, then lifting his leg so gently it didn’t hurt any worse. He took her hand.
“Too much walking, that’s all.”
“And weight.”
“It wasn’t far, the tavern. The Duchess of somewhere—somewhere English—it’s called. A servant there, Curry Post, his wife needs some of your sarsaparilla tonic, Judith. Tomorrow. Will you remind me?”
“Of course,” she said, leaning over, kissing his throbbing temple. What was the use trying to hide anything from her? He rested his head in his hand, breathing through the pain. “Ethan?” she called softly. “Shall I bring your supper?”
“No. Sit here beside me. That’s what I need.”
She stepped out of her muddied slippers—very muddy—where had she been before she’d met them, the docks? Why? The puzzlement made his head swim until she cosseted close, warming him. “What happened?” she finally asked.
“Jordan went to the tavern late this afternoon, drank to excess. I brought him home.”
“I know that much from Tim,” she chided him gently. “Ethan, what happened between you this time?”
He told her. Everything. Calmly. With barely any of the catches of anger, grief, frustration he felt. She listened, her serene face bathed in the
room’s deep shadows. When he finished, she rose to her knees, facing him. Her thumbs coursed an arching massage along his cheekbones, his tight jaw, his tense brow. Her touch turned gentle as she swept around the scar from his fall, and the old, white ones, from the cannon-fire burns. He breathed deeply.
“Walnuts,” he said. “Black walnuts.”
“I’ve been chopping them. For the headache tonic. Better?”
“Infinitely.”
“And now I’m going to make us a tea.”
She rose, walked to the hearth. Only a few feet away. Still, it came, unbidden:
Don’t leave me
. The aching need of a child abandoned. Ridiculous. It angered him. But with her warmth gone, Ethan felt bereft.
“Judith?” he finally called.
She turned. “Yes, love?”
“Why was it so painful to be taken for his son?”
She left her preparations and rushed to his side, taking his head beneath her heart. She held him there, the way Sally had held him his first day at Windover. Judith’s arms went from warm to glowing. He was within the circle of Light of this woman who talked with God, he realized. He wanted to stay there forever. “That wasn’t the cause of his pain,” she whispered into his hair. “He loves us.”
“You, perhaps. Who could not love you? It that what it is? Jealousy? Because he desires you and you are my wife?”
“He does not love me in that way, Ethan.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. You and I are becoming his family. Your Mrs. Willard saw. I think he’s afraid of that. Perhaps because he’s lost one family—his little ones, a boy and a girl, along with his wife, remember?”
“The children. The dulcimer woman he didn’t know enough to love.”
“Yes.”
“He tries to drive us away with this public insult to my mother?”
“Perhaps.”
“Judith, for a moment, a moment only, I …”
“What, love?”
“I wanted to kill him.”
She swept his hair back nervously. “You have a right to your anger. But you did not act on it.”
He felt her lips form a smile, there against his cheek. “We are this difficult man’s orphans now, yes?” She swept his mane back from his brow again, playfully. “Though you come more encumbered than I.”
“Encumbered?”
“With an entourage of doting women and families both slave and free also claiming your heart,” she explained.
A groan rose from the doctor’s bedroom.
“He’d best hope his orphans don’t abandon him before this night is out.”
“Oh, Ethan, what can we do? I know nothing about remedies for what ails him.”
“How is our honey supply?”
“We have plenty.”
“We’ll need it.” He rose, limped for the cupboard. “And eggs, soft-boiled,” he continued, as he drew out a small pot, “but not until tomorrow. I suppose we’ll have to beg a couple from Mrs. Atwater.” He rummaged her gracefully set table for a teaspoon. “Oh, and a few ounces of that damned bourbon. I wish we could wring it out of my coat.”
“We don’t have any bourbon!”
“Jordan’s bottle,” he remembered. “It must have dropped when you came upon us.”
“I’ll find it.” Judith lifted her shawl from its peg, and wrapped it around her, turning. “Ethan, how do you know this treatment?”
“I grew up holding Fayette’s head after shore leaves. It’s made your husband a sober man, Mrs. Blair.”
She frowned. “Something else I owe that scoundrel?”
He caught her waist at the door. “I fear as much,
ma chère,”
he whispered, bending over her white neck, nuzzling her scarf aside so he could plant soft kisses along her collarbone. He reveled in the smoothness of her skin, the catches in her breathing. Salt air. Tar. Yes, she’d been to the riverfront. Why? He pulled the drawstring of her chemise and nuzzled lower.
“You are feeling better, I think, husband.” she purred.
His hands stroked down her side and cupped her bottom. “You have my complete cure within your power,
madame.
”
She giggled deliciously and he felt the hot rise in his loins. They were so close she felt it too, he knew from the way her eyes widened. He closed in on her ripe mouth.
Another groan erupted from the bedroom.
“The bourbon,” she whispered, dancing her fingers along his pouting lower lip.
He sighed, releasing her, swinging open the door.
“Sacre-bleu!”
The woman in the threshold held up the missing bottle. “Ethan Blair.” Anne Randolph arched one fine brow. “Since when does the sight of your mother promote one of your colorful blasphemies?”

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