Chesapeake (87 page)

But there was nothing she could do. She was Steed property, for life, and if he was displeased with her, society allowed him to thrash her until she collapsed in a heap.

Her plight was intensified by the fact that she knew what her mistress was doing, and approved. When Paul struck her, she could take inner consolation from the fact that his wife was cuckolding him, and that the other slaves knew it. When he fell into a fury and lashed her with extra harshness, she could grit her teeth and think: He knows why he does this. And she abetted her mistress in the connivances, and came to look upon Captain Matt as a hero for bringing excitement and love into Rosalind’s Revenge.

Ultimately Susan had to find out what was happening to her maid; one day she saw Eden wincing as she lifted a portmanteau filled with clothes for a week-long stay in Patamoke, and she asked, ‘What is it, Eden?’ and when the girl said nothing, Susan lowered her smock and saw the welts. ‘My God! What’s happened?’ And the disgraceful story unfolded. Then she became bitterly angry at her husband and upbraided him instantly: ‘Whatever got into you, to strike my girl?’

He offered no sensible reply, but said something about her insolence, and neither of them elected to state the actual cause, although each knew clearly what it was.

But Susan was a woman of spirit; she took Eden to Patamoke and sold her to a planter who would treat her decently, but as soon as Paul heard of this he caught up with them, shouting at the new owner that he had no right to buy his slave, that she belonged to Devon, and he demanded her back. When the man stuttered, ‘But I paid four hundred …’ Paul slapped the money into his hand—and Eden became his property.

On the sail back to Devon he kept telling Eden that he had never meant to harm her, that he actually liked her and considered her one of his best servants. He promised not to pester her again about Mrs. Steed’s whereabouts, and he made other resolves, all tending to prove that he would henceforth be a considerate master. But she had been at Devon only a few days before he came raging into the big room upstairs, again demanding to know where Susan was, and when Eden remained silent, he began whipping her with a strap, and she would not cry out, until the strap fell from his hand and he whimpered, ‘Eden, I do not mean to hurt you. But where is my wife?’ And when she looked at him, without sneering, without contempt, only with sadness, he tried to make amends, but she winced as blood trickled down the middle of her back, and he saw this and took her in his arms and whispered, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean …’ And he fell with her onto the bed, and tore away
her clothes and wiped her bruised back and consoled her and stayed with her there, day after day.

Now it was summer. Cardinals flashed among the trees and blue herons tiptoed sedately where the geese had once congregated so noisily. Slaves trapped soft-shell crabs with gratifying frequency, and insects droned in the afternoon sun. Mosquitoes became a major problem, but Paul had devised a canvas sack into which men and women alike could thrust their feet, shoes on, and then draw it tight about the waist. With this protection, only the hands and face needed personal attention, and two slaves were stationed in rooms where people met, waving fans to keep the fierce insects away.

Susan enjoyed the fanciful stories about mosquitoes. Mr. Landis from the Miles River told of overhearing two that had carried off one of his calves and were about to eat it. The first said, ‘Let’s drag it down to the Choptank and eat it on the beach,’ but the second said, ‘No! Down there the big ones would take it away from us.’

In July the weather became brutally hot. Whole days would elapse without a breeze and ships would sit becalmed in the bay, their captains cursing for a zephyr. When the ships did move, they left wakes that remained visible for miles as waves moved out from the bow. Over the river settled a shimmering haze, and few birds were willing to brave the intense heat that reflected from it. Sometimes, just before sunset, osprey could be seen patrolling the glassy river, searching for fish.

The loblollies stood motionless, hours passing without a needle dipping, and human life appeared to be in suspension too. Tiberius, keeping watch at the door, dozed in his chair, not wishing to speculate on where his mistress might be this time; he liked Susan and had known the generous manner in which she treated the slaves. He had watched her being kind to Eden and attentive to the black children when they fell ill. As for Eden herself, he had always considered her a choice human being, better fitted than most of the slaves to protect herself, and if she had chosen her present course to escape the beatings that were being inflicted upon her, he was not going to protest. Sometimes, when she stayed for protracted periods in the big bedroom with the master, he wished that she had remained in the fields, living a more normal life of husband and children, but in no way could he blame her.

‘Girl got only so many chances,’ he told her once when he carried food to the big room and found her alone. ‘Best she take ’em.’ When their paths crossed, as they did more infrequently now, he treated her with respect.

Matt and Susan spent the long summer in a dream world of content.
They were most often in his small house in Patamoke, and on her first night there Susan asked, ‘Captain Gatch really did bombard this house, didn’t he? Is it true that one of the cannonballs killed your wife?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Eden.’

‘Five struck. You can still see where they ripped away the wall.’

‘You didn’t feel it necessary to keep them plastered in place? To demonstrate how brave you were?’

‘Forget him, Susan.’

During the hottest days of August they reveled in a passion which seemed inexhaustible; after their wild wrestling matches, and their sleep, Susan would pester him by drawing one thumbnail across his forehead, onto his nose and down upon his upper lip. ‘Waken up, Matthew. Day’s awasting.’

One afternoon he looked at her in drowsy disbelief. ‘Did your mother ever tell you … This sounds ridiculous, but I proposed marriage to her.’

Susan squealed with delight and belabored his chest with her fists. ‘You horrible old man! You went to bed with my mother?’

‘God, no! You can’t imagine how proper we were.’

‘Did she ever come here? Like this?’

‘You’re a naughty girl. I wanted to marry your mother. She was quite handsome, you know.’ He began to chuckle. ‘Did anyone tell you that I tended her when she was a baby?’ Then the wonder of having Penny Steed’s daughter in bed with him became overwhelming, and he had no more to say.

Susan guessed what thoughts were going through his mind. ‘You were saved for me. My mother did the scouting, like an Indian. Dear God, I wish we were both just beginning—with a whole life ahead of us.’

If they were unrestrained in their love-making, they endeavored to preserve at least a show of decency in the community. They behaved circumspectly, never flaunted their affair in public, and gave the townspeople an opportunity to ignore it if they wished. Indeed, Susan looked more like a devout housewife than a mistress, and after five or six days of self-indulgence in the Patamoke house, she would discreetly slip back to Devon, where she resumed her role of dutiful mother.

Paul’s public spectacle when buying Eden back was the only incident so far which had created anything close to a public scandal, and it had been quickly superseded by Matt’s dignified deportment. It was a curious affair, and for the present it remained within manageable limits. As one knowing Patamoke housewife predicted, ‘Summer will end, and the
Ariel
will return, and Captain Matt will sail, and that’ll be the end of it.’

The burden of the two misalliances fell most heavily on Paul. Never a man of outstanding character, he now revealed himself as exceedingly
weak. There were rumors that he was conducting an extended affair with his wife’s black maid, and people were mildly amused. But the business health of the plantation began to decline, and what small attention he paid to Devon consisted of storming into the office, ranting at the help and making silly decisions. The young Steeds from the Refuge who were doing most of the work had begun whispering among themselves as to the possibility that he might have to be replaced. ‘He’s not only tearing his plantation apart. He’s beginning to affect ours, too.’

His most difficult problem, of course, was with Eden. In bed she could be wildly exciting; out of bed she was an aggravating enigma, and he often felt that as she moved about the room, tidying up the wardrobe in which Susan’s dresses were kept, she was laughing at him. Once when Susan had been absent for five days, an immense gloom settled over him, and he began to shout at Eden, ‘My wife belongs here—not you,’ and he raised his hand to strike her. But this time she insolently grasped his wrist and said, ‘No more, Master,’ and she stared him down, and slowly his arm dropped to his side. In other ways, too, she asserted herself, demanding prerogatives, but in her physical relations with him she was impeccable. ‘You want to stay longer, honey? All right, we stay, and pretty soon you sleep again.’

When he wakened she would be sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap. He noticed that never did she presume to wear any of Susan’s clothes, even though he invited her to do so. ‘That dress comes from Paris. Try it on, Eden.’

‘No, that’s Missy’s.’

‘It would fit you, almost.’

‘Go back to sleep.’ He spent much of this hot spell sleeping, but occasionally he would engage in a burst of reading: John Locke and Alexander Pope and David Hume. Then he would talk of great plans for a new theory of plantation management, but soon he would be asleep again. He admired Pope and tried reading passages to Eden, choosing those isolated lines which compressed so much of English commonplace morality:

Eden would listen attentively, but whether she caught any of the poet’s intended meaning Paul could not say; she was a good audience, and if Tiberius came to the door with a pitcher of lemonade, she cautioned him to leave it quickly, without interrupting.

But one afternoon in August, when the heat was almost unbearable,
Paul was reading aloud from Pope when he came upon a quatrain which he started boldly, stumbled over, and finished in confusion:

He dropped the book, looked at Eden as if he were seeing her for the first time, and suffered a visible revulsion. ‘Get out of here! Damn you, leave this room!’ And he grabbed the strap, intending to belabor her about the back and face, but again she resisted. Slowly, showing fierce contempt, she retreated toward the door, opened it quietly and withdrew into the hall, while all the slaves working in the house could hear the master’s cries of rage: ‘Don’t you ever come back here, you whore!’ He pursued her down the hall, lashing at her with the strap in such a way as to be sure to miss. When she reached the main stairs used by the white folk she descended slowly, and Tiberius cried loud enough for the master to hear, ‘Don’t you come down them stairs, Sassy.’ And he pretended to slap her, pushing her into the back part of the house.

That night she was back in the big room, smiling at the cannonballs as her master wept and begged forgiveness.

As happened so often in Patamoke, it was the Quakers who brought a touch of common sense to the ridiculous goings-on along the river. One morning, at the close of summer, George Paxmore knocked on the door of Captain Turlock’s home and said, ‘Matthew, my wife and I want to talk with thee.’

‘Talk ahead,’ Turlock snapped, holding the door so that his visitor could not peer inside.

‘At our house. Elizabeth’s waiting.’

‘I don’t believe I care to speak with Elizabeth. She talks and never listens.’

‘As a friend, I beseech thee to come with me,’ and he took Turlock by the arm and led him away.

The walk to the Paxmore house near the boatyard was an awkward one. Neither man wished to say anything substantial where full attention could not be paid, so Paxmore contented himself with observing that the ships heading for Baltimore seemed far more numerous than previously, and he gave it as his opinion that this new port had driven Annapolis out of business. ‘And Patamoke, too. We won’t see ships like yours coming here much in the future.’

‘As long as I sail her you will.’

When they passed the
Ariel,
home from Africa, Paxmore asked, ‘Why did thee allow Mr. Goodbarn …’ But this was coming too close to the agenda and he did not finish his sentence.

When they reached Paxmore’s town house, a small white affair near the harbor, George deferred to the older man; after all, Captain Turlock was fifteen years his senior. ‘Please enter. We’re happy to have you as our guest.’

Elizabeth Paxmore, all in gray, still had the fair complexion of her youth, unsullied by powders or rouges; she was an attractive woman of thirty-nine, and Turlock found himself thinking: Damn, if I wasn’t mixed up with the other one, she’d be most acceptable. He bowed and took the chair she offered, noticing that their home was austere yet relaxing, with just enough chairs carved by the master, just enough decorations embroidered by the mistress.

GEORGE:
We want to beg thee once more, Matthew, to quit thy abominable trade.

MATT
: What trade?

GEORGE:
Slavery. Thy ship trades nothing else.

MATT
: I’ve just been plaguing Paul Steed to give me a shipment of wheat.

GEORGE:
We know how thee trades a little wheat for a great many slaves. We know of thy stops in Africa and Brazil.

MATT
: What business—