Chesapeake (57 page)

It was only when Penny was stuffing herself on cheese that Rosalind discovered who she was. ‘Judge Broadnax! He beat you like this?’ She had barely established the facts of his brutality when Mrs. Broadnax stormed into the warehouse, demanding to know whether her runaway servant answering to the name of Penny had been seen …

‘There you are, ungrateful child!’

But as she reached to recover the little criminal Mrs. Steed interposed: ‘You’ll not touch this child.’

‘She belongs to me. She’s a disobedient hussy.’

‘Do not touch her.’

Mrs. Broadnax, not catching the ominous quiet in Rosalind’s voice, imprudently came at Penny, intending to twist and pinch her arm as she led her away. Instead she was confronted by the powerful form of Rosalind Steed, who with one substantial shove sent her sprawling backward among the barrels, over which she stumbled, landing flat on the floor.

‘Don’t touch her,’ Rosalind repeated in a voice of terrible power, ‘for if you try again, I shall kill you.’

It was a fearful statement, heard by several, and these witnesses could also testify that after having said this, Mrs. Steed gathered the child into her arms and carried her to the town wharf, where they went aboard the Steed sloop, despite the fact that Mrs. Broadnax warned her in a loud voice which she must have heard, ‘If you harbor that child, you’ll rot in jail.’

The warrants were sworn, and the constable’s boat sailed out to Devon with them. Satisfying himself that the child Penny was indeed on the island, he mournfully came back—‘It’s shameful to arrest a woman like Mrs. Steed. But she’s done wrong and I suppose she must pay.’

The trial was a sensation, long remembered in Maryland records. Judge Thomas Broadnax presided, seeing nothing wrong in acting as adjudicator in a controversy involving his wife, and he was properly grave in manner. He allowed the prosecutor to develop the contentious history of this difficult Steed woman—her outbursts against authority, her specific threat to kill the judge’s wife, and especially her disgraceful behavior in disrobing at the public whipping of the Turlock woman, a known whore. As each new bit of evidence unfolded, with the various Steeds in the audience crimson with embarrassment, the judge became more pontifical and serenely compassionate: ‘Do you mean to say that a gentlewoman like Mrs. Steed uttered such profanity?’ He shook his head in sad disbelief.

But he was miscalculating his adversary. During the first day Rosalind sat silent as the hurtful evidence piled against her. She realized that she was being tried not for kidnapping an indentured servant but for an accumulation of petty offenses against the male community: that she was a Protestant who more or less adhered to the Catholic faith; that she had defended the Turlock woman; that she had sometimes driven hard bargains in the purchase of land; that she had sent her sons to Bohemia and then to St. Omer’s; and most of all, that she had been an outspoken woman when she should have been silent. Curiously, not less than six witnesses testified to the fact that she was building an outrageous house; that seemed a real sin.

At the close of that first day it was apparent that Judge Broadnax would be justified in sentencing her to jail or at least to the ducking stool, but when the second day began, the climate changed. With remorseless
force Rosalind produced witnesses willing at last to testify against their infamous judge: he had beaten the child senseless during a dinner; he had forced her to work shoeless in the snow; he had provided one dress, and one only, which she had to wash on Saturday nights and wear still damp to church on Sunday. On and on the cruel testimony came, as if the community wanted to purge itself of secret connivance. On several occasions Judge Broadnax tried to halt the testimony, but his companion justices, tired of domination and seeing a chance to rid themselves of his obstinacy, overruled him.

One of the most telling witnesses was Amanda Paxmore Steed, who took the stand to describe in quiet detail the condition of the little girl when Mrs. Steed invited her to Devon to see for herself. Amanda, a small woman in demure gray, created such a powerful impression, and was so relentless in her description of the bruises and the scars, that women in the audience began to cry.

Judge Broadnax interrupted to point out that the Bible instructed masters to chastise their servants if they misbehaved, and he might have carried the day, for Maryland society in 1720 allowed little sympathy for runaway servants; by custom they were thrashed and returned to their masters with the duration of their indenture lengthened. Any who connived in their delinquency were sent to jail. ‘We are here to preserve the sanctity of contracts,’ Judge Broadnax reminded the jury. ‘What would your farms and businesses be worth if the servants you honestly acquired were allowed to roam free? Tell me that, if you please.’

At this critical moment, when the trial hung in the balance, as if justice were truly blind, Rosalind introduced three witnesses it had taken her much trouble to find. They had known Broadnax’s servant girl Betsy, mother of the bastard Penny, and on five separate occasions she had confided to them certain facts about Penny.

‘Judge Broadnax,’ Rosalind asked quietly, but with a menace and contempt she took no pains to hide, ‘do you really want these women to testify?’

‘You bring liars into the court,’ Broadnax thundered. ‘It’s to no purpose, but if they want to make fools of themselves … and of you, Mrs. Steed …’ He shrugged his shoulders, and the first woman, a servant of no repute, took the stand.

‘Betsy told me that it was the judge who came into her bed.’

The next woman, of no better reputation, testified, ‘Betsy told me the judge had his way with her.’

And the next woman said the same, and then Penny herself was put on the stand, to say in a weak, small voice, ‘Before my mother died she told me the judge was my father.’

When Rosalind’s turn came she admitted all charges against her: in anger she had said that the judge ought to be poisoned, and in greater
anger she had struck Mrs. Broadnax and threatened to kill her—‘But I did so because there was evil amongst us.’

‘How did you know that?’ one of the subsidiary justices asked.

‘I knew when I read the record. And you should have known when you allowed the record to be written.’

‘What record?’

‘Of this court.’ And she recited, as best she could, the hideous record of a judge who had testified against his own servant’s pregnancy, had caused her to be whipped, had taken her child into a lifetime of servitude and had then abused that child most cruelly. ‘In beating the child, Judge Broadnax was punishing himself for his own sin. In abusing this little girl, Mrs. Broadnax sought revenge against her husband. There is ugliness here and guilt, but not mine.’ The decision of the justices can be read in Patamoke records to this day:

The Choptank was cold that day. A wind blew in from the west, throwing small whitecaps and warning boats to stay ashore. The air was somewhat warmer at the inner harbor, where the long-beamed ducking stool was located, but the water was icy. A huge crowd gathered at the shore to watch the Steed woman receive her punishment, but there was no elation among the watchers. There was general agreement that the justices had acted properly: Penny had run away and had to be returned as an admonition to other servants; Mrs. Steed had harbored her and that was clearly a crime; and she had been an abusive woman, throwing her tongue into places it wasn’t needed. But her crime had been trivial in comparison with Judge Broadnax’s, and he was not only unpunished but he had the little girl back to abuse as he wished for the next twelve years. There was something badly askew in Patamoke, and the citizens knew it.

So Rosalind marched to the ducking stool in silence, chin high, still opposing Broadnax in all things. She remained arrogant as they strapped her into the chair, and refused to close her eyes at the final moment. Instead she took a deep breath and stared at Thomas Broadnax with a hatred that almost inflamed the November air. And then the chair ducked toward the dark water.

What happened next became the subject of endless repetition and delighted discussion. It was the custom when ducking a difficult woman who had irritated the men of town to hold her under water until her lungs nearly collapsed; it was a terrible punishment, accented by strangling and mocking voices. But on this day, by previous arrangement among the townspeople, the stool went in and out of the water so swiftly, and the act was repeated with such dispatch that, as one woman said approvingly, ‘She scarce got wet.’

When the men swung the stool inboard and unleashed their victim, the crowd cheered, and women ran forward to embrace her, and Judge Broadnax thundered, ‘That wasn’t a ducking! The order of the court said clearly—’

But the people had left him. They were with Rosalind, congratulating her and kissing her, while he stood by the harbor—alone.

It was the custom on the Eastern Shore to give the homes of leading citizens names, and some were of such wry charm that they would persist as long as the land endured: a contentious man finds peace at last in a remote farmhouse and christens it the Ending of Controversie; a parcel of land is conveyed under debatable circumstances and the home built on it is named Crooked Intention; not far from Devon Island a man builds his dream home and names it the Cross of Gold, but he does so in French, Croix d’Or, and before long it becomes Crosiadore; and along the Choptank three contiguous farms summarize the colonial experience: Bell’s Folly, Bell’s Persistence, Bell’s Triumph.

It was understandable, therefore, that the name given in derision to the brick mansion on Devon Island should become permanent:
Rosalind’s Revenge.
At night, in taverns, some would argue that it stemmed from the builder’s remorseless pursuit of the French pirate Bonfleur. Others remembered that the words were first uttered when Fitzhugh Steed quit the island to live openly with the Turlock girl. But most believed, or wanted to believe, that it represented Mrs. Steed’s triumph over the cruel judge, Thomas Broadnax: ‘He had the power to order her ducked, but she went in and out like a mallard and lived to see him flee the town in disgrace. We started to laugh at him and his bitch wife, and this they could not endure. Rosalind had her revenge.’

It was a strange house, totally wrong and out of balance. The Flemish bond, instead of producing a beautiful façade, looked heavy and lacking in grace. But perhaps the fault lay in the basic design, for which Rosalind was to blame. Various observers, including the Paxmore brothers, had pointed out that what she was building was nothing better than an unadorned cube: ‘Each of the four sides is a square of identical size. This is monotonous and adds no beauty.’ One of the brothers reminded her
of the traditional Choptank wisdom: ‘At first, a wee bit house for you and the wife. When babies start coming, a little larger. And when money comes, you add a real house. That way, each part lends beauty to the rest.’

She had ignored the criticisms and for nine years had obstinately pursued her plan of erecting a perfect cube on the foundations of the original Steed home. But when observers saw the mistake she was making with the two chimneys, they had to protest. One of her ship captains, who had seen the fine homes of England, pointed out, ‘To give balance, the chimneys must stand at the two ends of the house, not side-by-side along the rear.’ He took paper and drew a sketch of what he had in mind, and it was superior to what she was doing. ‘At least,’ he pleaded, ‘if you won’t put the chimneys in their proper place, put some windows in the side walls. Create a pleasing balance.’

She ignored his recommendations, and in 1721, ten years after she started, she had her cube completed. Only one aspect was satisfactory: the front façade did have a classical balance, with a central doorway of austere cleanliness, flanked on each side by a pair of well-proportioned windows. On the second floor appeared five windows, smaller than those below but centered exactly, the middle one positioned over the doorway. Somehow these ten nicely related openings, framed in white against the Flemish bond, gave the cube stability and quiet elegance—without them the house would have been a total disaster; with them it was merely a failure.

Ruth Brinton Paxmore gave her last testimony one cold First Day in November 1721. She was eighty-eight years old, but able to walk unaided from the town wharf to the meeting house and with firm step to ascend to the waiting chair on the facing bench. She wore gray as usual, and a small bonnet with the strings loose over her shoulders, a custom she had borrowed from her granddaughter Amanda.

Her appearance evoked mixed emotions among the Quakers of Patamoke: she was the leading voice on the Eastern Shore, a woman of demonstrated sanctity, but she was also a bore. In spite of admonitions and incessant defeats, she persisted in dragging slavery into almost every private conversation or public statement. The Patamoke Meeting had repeatedly rejected her suggestion that the ownership of slaves disqualify a Quaker from membership in the society. The Yearly Meeting of the Eastern Shore had done the same, as had the larger general meetings in Annapolis and Philadelphia. The Quakers were eager to point out that a slaveholder must treat his slaves well, as the Bible directed, and they developed a further doctrine which irritated many non-Quakers: the just ownership of slaves must see to their Christian salvation and to their
education. But for the radical reforms Ruth Brinton wanted to initiate, there was no support, and she was deemed a nuisance. ‘She’s our hair shirt,’ many said, and when she rose to speak, they squirmed: