Back Bay (41 page)

“How did you get your freedom?” asked Abigail.

“Philip shot Cheverus. A fair fight. After that, no one dared to
say that Philip Pratt had no right to me. Men did not challenge such a marksman.”

Her nephew a gunfighter, a murderer. Abigail found no romance in the image.

“Were you married legally?” asked Artemus.

“There were few ministers, and most judges appointed themselves. Philip did not see the need.”

Artemus advanced on Samantha. “You have no proof of marriage, you don’t know who fathered this boy, and yet—”

The boy kicked Artemus squarely in the shin, then jumped back to his mother’s side.

Samantha grabbed the boy and shook him angrily by the shoulder. “Don’t you dare to kick at people. Say you’re sorry.”

“That won’t be necessary,” announced Artemus as he rubbed his shin. “Unless my aunt has any objection, I think we can show you the door.”

Abigail said nothing, much to Artemus’s relief. He did not relish the possibilities of a new Pratt dipping into his children’s inheritance.

The black girl looked at the two faces before her. She realized that they were going to reject her. “You cannot do this. Philip told us that you would care for us. I worked for nothing on a schooner to get to Boston. I cooked the captain’s meals and slept in the captain’s bed while my little boy sat for five months and listened to sailors’ dirty stories and stared at empty sea. You cannot put us out.”

“I will not allow a Negro prostitute to join my family simply because she says she had carnal relations with my nephew. You have no proof that you married him, and I—”

Samantha stood angrily. “Damn you, lady. I do not lie. I have proof.” She took a greasy, dog-eared enveloped from her purse. “My proof is written here. I cannot read, but Philip made me memorize the words. ‘… that fury stay’d,/Quencht in a Boggy Syrtis, neither Sea,/Nor good dry land: nigh founder’d on the fares,/Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,/Half flying… /As when a Gryphon through the Wilderness/With winged course o’er Hill or moory Dale,/Pursues the Arim…’ ” She stumbled. Her recall was perfect. Her pronunciation was not. “ ‘Arimaspian, who
by stealth/Had from his wakeful custody purloin’d/The guarded gold: So eagerly the fiend/O’er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,/With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,/And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.’ ”

Abigail was shocked. The proof was undeniable. She had given Philip the quotation from
Paradise Lost
ten years before. She looked at Artemus, who never blinked.

“Do you know what any of this means?” he asked.

“Philip said you would trust me after you heard those words. He said you would believe me and take care of us. He said you would give my boy his due.”

Artemus gave his aunt no chance to soften. “We don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“But Philip gave me these words. He told me they were the key to a treasure.”

“What kind of treasure?”

She hesitated. “I… I am not sure. He was dying when he told me. He kept talking about a golden bird and tea for the President. I don’t know what he meant.”

“It is entirely possible,” said Artemus, “that you took this envelope from my brother after he had been waylaid by your accomplices, and now you’re trying to take advantage of it.” Artemus knew that the girl had been his brother’s lover, but that did not entitle her bastard son to a piece of the Pratt empire. “Mr. Mannion.”

Sean stepped into the room. “Yes, sir.”

“Show this woman out.”

“No!” screamed Samantha. “I come to you for help. I have no place to go. No money. No job. You cannot treat me like garbage.” She thrust the boy at Abigail. She sensed that, in the long run, Abigail’s authority would be greater than the man’s. “This is your flesh and blood. One of your kin.”

Abigail felt no maternal impulses toward the half-breed boy, who resembled her nephew only in his dislike for Artemus. She felt no warmth for his Negro mother, a whore who had enticed Philip Pratt with the charms between her legs. And yet she pitied them. They looked so pathetic in the elegance of a Boston sitting room. “Can you cook, young lady?”

“My master on Martinique sent me to study with the best chef on the island.”

“Sean’s wife has been complaining lately of too much work. You have a week in the kitchen to prove your worth. As for the boy, we will help him with his education and see that he learns a trade.”

Samantha did not smile or thank Abigail. She had hoped for more. She did not expect them to treat her as an equal, but her son was an heir. He was entitled to more than a few years of education.

“Take this woman and her son downstairs, Sean, and show her the kitchen. You will have to fashion living quarters for them in the carriage house.”

“Yes, Mrs. Bentley.”

“And what do they call you, young woman?” asked Abigail.

“Samantha. Samantha Pratt.”

“They do not call you Samantha Pratt in Boston,” commanded Abigail.

“But that’s my name. And Philip’s.”

“Nor do you call the boy Philip.”

“I call him that after his father.”

“Young woman.” Abigail stood imperiously. “I am offering you a position out of the goodness of my heart. I do not look upon you as a niece or upon that boy as a grandnephew. You are not Pratts! Do you understand?”

“But we are,” said Samantha weakly.

Instinctively, the little boy wrapped his arm around his mother’s waist. She had always been strong, but these two people had worn her down in a single day. He sensed that she needed to hold onto him. His eyes shifted toward Artemus.

“Miss… what did they call you before you met my brother?” Artemus spoke softly now. His voice was soothing and gentle.

“Cawley… Samantha Cawley.”

“Miss Cawley,” he continued, “I do not approve of my aunt’s generosity. I believe that you should be charged with fraud, because I don’t for a moment believe the story you are telling us. But I will respect my aunt’s wishes if you do the same and refrain from calling yourself a Pratt.”

Samantha was beaten. She had no other choice. She took her son by the hand and followed Sean Mannion down to the kitchen.

Abigail returned to the high-backed chair by the window. The afternoon sun had arrived like an old friend. She sat in its glow, put her head back, and closed her eyes. Dust particles illuminated by the rays of the sun danced about her head like snowflakes in a crystal paperweight. She wanted to think of nothing but the warmth. She wanted to sleep, as she always did when the sun visited her room. But today, she couldn’t. Samantha’s face stayed in her head—that Negro and Abigail’s beautiful nephew, the two of them rutting away in some lice-filled cabin on the other side of the world.

Artemus sat in the shadows and waited for Abigail to open her eyes. Usually, the arrival of the sun was his signal to leave, but he knew that his aunt would not sleep this afternoon.

“She’s very beautiful,” he said. “And she has one of the keys to your treasure.”

“She has a phrase. As long as I keep her in my service and in my debt, I can guarantee that she will have nothing more.”

“Purloined gold in a boggy place that is neither sea nor good, dry land. Was my father right? Are we talking about the Golden Eagle Tea Set and the Back Bay?”

Abigail smiled. “We’re talking about a dream, dear, a dream of beauty, of riches, of Pratt greatness in every generation.”

Artemus smiled. He was always amused by his aunt’s vision. “It’s good to dream, Abigail. We all need dreams.”

“You’ve had plans, not dreams, and you’ve fulfilled every one as though you were a machine in your shoe factory cutting out a new pattern for next year’s fashion. You must have wild, exciting dreams. You must dream of things you can never achieve. You must imagine things you will never see, hope for things that can never come true.”

“Like family purity and superiority, now that Pratt blood runs in the veins of a Negro child?” Before he had finished speaking, Artemus knew the remark was ill-chosen.

Abigail stood in anger. “Do not say that! I have taken that child into our home because I am a Christian. Even if Philip Pratt fathered him, he isn’t a Pratt. Phillip Pratt left us in hatred. He left us to punish us for what he believes we did to your father. This
black child is an extension of that punishment, an attempt to blot our shield. Well, I am not chastised and I do not accept the child.”

She turned and gazed out toward the Back Bay, just visible through the trees on the far side of the Botanical Garden. It was high tide, and the sun was reflecting off the sheet of water. “My child is out there, the only part of me that will live after I’m gone.” The anger left her voice. “Just once would I like to see it. The box must be heavy iron, with great rivets and heavy chains and inner boxes of wood and copper. Sean could shoot off the chains, and we’d open the box, and there would be the red velvet lining, so smooth and soft. And then, we’d see it shining brilliantly in the sun, the most beautiful…” She stopped and looked at Artemus.

He smiled. “You can continue. I’ll never tell.”

“Then there would be no mystery for you and no secret for me, and I think you like the mystery in spite of yourself.”

He smiled. He assumed it was the tea set, and it did not interest him in the least.

“I would like to see it though, just once,” she said dreamily.

“Go out and dig it up, have your look, then bury it again.”

“I’m afraid I’d be disappointed, dear. I’d rather just imagine it.” She paused, and her voice filled with bitterness. “It’s better to dream of what your golden children may be than it is to see their black offspring.”

Artemus stood by her side and squinted into the sun. “Soon, the filling will begin. One day, there will be enough land on the other side of Arlington Street to build a whole row of houses. Then there’ll be another street and another until the flats are filled from the Public Garden to Gravelly Point. The Back Bay will slowly be drained, and, eventually, your golden child will sit under a foot or two of mud and gravel. The scavengers will pick through the area looking for junk in the landfill—”

“I know. I’ve seen them working through the mud along Arlington Street.”

“And one of them will stumble across the most valuable piece of junk since the Holy Grail.”

“We will protect it, Artemus. We will protect it from black
interlopers and Back Bay scavengers. When its security is threatened, we’ll find a way. But until they drain the bay, it is safe.”

In 1858, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts authorized the filling of the lands west of Arlington Street. One of the largest engineering operations of the nineteenth century was begun. By 1861, sixteen full blocks had been completed and building had already commenced in the Back Bay.

From her windows on Colonnade Row, Abigail had watched the operation closely. Twenty-five times a day, trains arrived at the Back Bay depot carrying gravel fill from the hills of Needham. Every day, less water was admitted through the Mill Dam gates, and the unfilled portions of the receiving basin formed a great open sewer. At the end of 1861, the tea set was still under water, but the landfill moved a few feet closer to it every day.

In April of that year, the Civil War had begun, and at Christmas, a melancholy Pratt family gathered for three days of feasting before the war took them away.

Artemus was bound for England. He had been summoned by Charles Francis Adams, Union ambassador to the Court of St. James. Artemus was to represent Northern business interests to English textile manufacturers, whose flow of Southern cotton had diminished and whose influence might bring England into the war on the side of the Confederacy. Artemus was taking his wife, his two youngest children, and Sarah, his eldest. He was leaving the operation of Pratt Shipping, Mining, and Manufacturing in the hands of his brother, Elihu. While he did not leave willingly, he went with the knowledge that the war would be profitable, since he and Elihu had secured government contracts for the production of arms, shoes, and uniforms.

Three young Pratts—Artemus Jr., twenty-two; Jason, twenty; and Elihu’s son Francis, also twenty—wore the uniform of the Union Army. All three had joined the Twenty-fifth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers. Artemus Jr. and Francis, considered by Abigail to be the brightest young men of the new Pratt generation, were lieutenants. Jason, after two years of medical studies, was bound for a field hospital. Five months later, at the Battle of Fair
Oaks, Jason would remove a shard of grapeshot from his brother’s shoulder and pronounce his cousin dead.

On Christmas Day, the men convened in the sitting room to discuss the unfortunate course of the war and the folly of electing Lincoln over Stephen A. Douglas. The wives and daughters gathered in the kitchen to help Mrs. Mannion prepare the Christmas feast. And Abigail retired to the study.

In front of the fire, she poured herself a glass of port and opened her diary. She was drinking port more often now. It was good for the circulation, and it kept her warm on cold winter nights. As Sean always told her, a woman as active as herself deserved an extra glass every now and then.

Abigail laughed softly. Sean had a little saying for everything. He had been her servant for almost forty years, and she often wondered if she could live without his companionship. Occasionally, on a lonely day, she wondered what her life might have been like had she spent it with Sean Mannion at her side, rather than in her service. She stared at the fire and remembered the feel of his strong arms around her waist. He was a fine man, and Abigail was grateful that he had married a good woman.

There was a knock.

“Come,” said Abigail.

Philip Cawley entered the study. He was now twelve years old. In his gait and physique, he resembled Philip Pratt more with every visit. He spent his holidays with the Pratts, and during the rest of the year, he boarded at a trade school in Worcester. Philip Cawley was an orphan. Within a few weeks of entering Abigail’s service, Philip’s mother had begun to cough blood. At Abigail’s urging and with Abigail’s support, she entered a home for consumptives, where she had died eight months later.