Devil Water (60 page)

The two Harrison ladies exchanged an unamiable look, and Byrd said hastily, “I’m sorry, Ben, for any discomfort you’ve been put to, because of my daughter’s recommendation, which I don’t yet understand. I suppose the villain’s made for Carolina or the northern neck -- they all do. What did he steal to take with him?”

“Nothin’,” said Ben grumpily. He was tired of the subject. “Only his clothes an’ a knife. I reckon he’ll starve.”

“Oh no, he won’t!” cried Jenny, tossing her head. “He can take care of himself, and I’m glad he got away from here.
Glad! Glad! Glad!”

“Hush!” said Evelyn at last taking part. She put her hand over Jenny’s mouth. “Miss Radcliffe’s not quite herself. ‘Tis the long voyage, change of climate, and perhaps a touch of fever. I think we should go home, Father. Mr. Harrison, would you be so kind as to order your coach? I fear some of us are not fit for walking.”

The Byrd ladies all went by coach, around by the highway, and up and down the plantation drives. Byrd instantly forgot Jenny while he walked along the shorter river path, as he had done so often in the past. He passed the boundary oak between Berkeley and Westover, and entered his own estate, then presently came to the church, which served the entire parish. It was of brick, with a peaked roof, and no tower or spire. The little building was like all the dependencies on Byrd’s own plantation, singularly plain and boxlike. It had no elegance. Byrd sighed deeply.

He wandered into the cemetery to the Byrd plot. It was shin-deep in grasses and weeds. He stood looking at the tombs of his father and mother. They had been dead a long time -- and deserted here a long time, he thought with a prick of remorse. Well, he was back now, and would attend to the place they had left him. Beautify, enhance it. They would both have resented the magnificence achieved by young Harrison, who had no more notion of true culture than one of his own hound-dogs. I’ll build
me
a manor house, Byrd thought, it’ll be the finest one on the James. And a new library -- Ben Harrison would never do that! It was unlikely that he’d opened a book since he was forced to at the College.
Plebians,
that’s what they were, these planters, Byrd thought contemptuously. Yet this was the society in which he must live, and take his place as leader -- eminently suited for leadership.

The westering sun was still very hot, it glared off the shining river below, there was no air stirring. Under the gold-laced tricorne and the curled wig, Byrd’s head was sweating, but he scarcely noted this as he thought of his accomplishments. Who else in the Colony read Hebrew and Greek as easily as Latin? Who else had been sponsored by a Sir Robert Southwell, and become a Fellow of the Royal Society? Who else had read law at the Middle Temple? Who else could write pungent, sophisticated “Characters” and satire quite in the manner of Addison? Who else had been accepted in Court circles, conversed with the King, and numbered peers amongst his closest friends?

Byrd glanced down at his father’s tombstone, and the glow of superiority was dimmed. A forceful, shrewd, and energetic man had been William Byrd the First. It was he who had secured the Virginia lands and made them prosper, he who had attained the seat on the Council which his son had inherited -- and that first William Byrd came of tradesman stock!
His
father had been a London goldsmith. This unpalatable fact Byrd had never mentioned in England, where he had vaguely let it be known that he sprang from the Cheshire Byrds, while taking every opportunity to emphasize his mother’s Cavalier descent from Sir Warham St. Leger of Ulcombe.

In a rare moment of evaluation, as he stood by his parents’ tombs, Byrd faced other uneasy truths. What had he ever done to justify his fellowship in the Royal Society, except read them one brief juvenile paper about a dappled Negro? And of what use had all the intimacies with noblemen actually been? Not one lucrative office had come his way, since he had been Agent for the Colony. The Earl of Orkney, titular Governor of Virginia, had concerned himself as little with Byrd’s worthiness to be appointed Lieutenant-Governor as he had with Colony affairs. Orkney’s only duty was to draw a fat salary, which was yet only a drop in the bucket of that Earl’s enormous revenues.

Byrd stirred and laid his hand solemnly on his father’s tomb, as though some strengthening, blunt voice had spoken from it. Forget England and its disappointments, for it was
here
that power lay! Here in this new land, where ambition had no limits, and where a member of the ruling class -- a member of the Council -- might still acquire land grants so vast that they would beggar by contrast any Duke’s estate in England.

“A-hey, there!” called a man’s voice from the river path, and Byrd turned to see Captain Randolph, newly shaven and dressed in his best shore clothes. Randolph glanced towards the tombstones and stopped. “Do I intrude, Colonel? Forgive me.”

Byrd shook his head. “I’ve communed long enough with the dead. May God Almighty give them rest! Have you business with me?”

“Why, no, sir, but I left my ship in order, the crew’s started to unload her, and I thought, perhaps -- if ‘tis not too soon -- I might wait upon the ladies.”

“Oh, you did, did you!” said Byrd, chuckling. “Sea-dogs are ever impetuous lovers. Still, I must warn you that the young damsel who’s captured your affections has an astonishing side to her character!”

“What do you mean?” asked the Captain frowning. “I’ve observed her closely for better’n eight weeks. Shipboard brings out the worst in passengers, yet Miss Radcliffe never failed to show angelic patience, good humor, gentleness.”

“Enough!” cried Byrd. “Save your rhapsodies for
her
ear! But, Ned, Ned, remember a man’s heart can be well diddled by a pretty face! Miss Radcliffe seemed sadly lacking in the traits you mention a while ago at the Harrisons’. The girl has a temper, and if I mistake not, she has a vulgar taste in men, not, alas, uncommon to her sex.”

“I don’t believe it!” cried Randolph hotly. “How dare you speak of her so!”

Byrd checked an angry reply, for he now greatly favored the Captain’s suit. If Jenny Radcliffe was beginning to show eccentricities, the sooner she was married off and away from Evelyn the better. So he contented himself by saying, “Tut! Tut! Spare me the quarterdeck voice -- and it may be the girl has a touch of fever. I’ll give her a purge.”

The men proceeded across a little bridge and into the house-grounds of Westover. The Berkeley coach at the same time drew up at the north front door and debouched the ladies before a silent, neglected house.

By sundown the entire plantation was in an uproar. News spread from the house to the shops, to the stables, and finally to the Quarters that Master had come home and was in a fury at what he found. He had begun by discovering Johnny Fell, the overseer, fast asleep in the Master’s own bed, with Annie, the white bond servant, snoring naked beside him, and both of them drunk on wine pilfered from the Master’s cellars. Colonel Byrd had caned them at once just as they lay. In the Quarters nobody minded that -- the overseer and his whore were a no-good pair -- but the Master’s rage had not stopped there. He had whipped all the Negro house-servants -- Eugene, Joe, Tom, Hampton, Dora, and Moll, even old Anaka, the cook, who practiced witchcraft and would doubtless work a conjure in revenge.

In the Quarters the hundred slaves drew together fearfully, murmuring or weeping, for they knew that punishment would soon come their way too. The tobacco seedlings had not been transplanted or thinned as they should be, the seed beds were run wild. The entire crop was threatened. Nor had they sewn the hemp that the Master had written from England he wanted done. Jacko, the mulatto overseer of the field hands, he hadn’t troubled himself much what they did. He liked to loll in the shade of his cabin and shoot the knucklebones, did Jacko, and he didn’t fret himself if the hands lazed away with him. Now Jacko was as scared as any of them; he flung himself on his pallet and took to groaning so the Master’d think he was sick.

That was a smart notion of Jacko’s, and the rest of the hands thought they’d try it too, though Cato, who’d been a king in Guinea thirty years ago, he said it wouldn’t do any good. The Master wasn’t easy-fooled. First thing he’d do is give them all a vomit which’d tear up their guts, then gag them with the iron branks.

So they waited, and some of them prayed to their own gods, like the Black Snake, Ibo Leli, while a few said prayers that Mr. Fontaine, the Westover minister, had taught them.

Retribution did not come that day. In the forms pictured by their terrified imaginations, it did not come at all. Byrd’s rage exhausted itself on the overseer and house-servants, with whose punishment Captain Randolph had helped energetically.

In time, Anaka sullenly produced a meal of boiled bacon and corn pone, which the men washed down with a surviving bottle of madeira. The ladies did not join them, having pleaded extreme fatigue, so that Randolph had no chance to pay court to Jenny that evening.

Jenny and Evelyn waited silently until Moll, the sniffling cinnamon-hued chambermaid had righted Evelyn’s bedroom, aired the sheets, and made the bed. Then Evelyn sent her to the kitchen for some gruel, and dropping into a chair said, “Mercy on us! Lord, what a day! Jenny, I’m so very grieved, dear. I’ve dragged you to Virginia for nothing.”

Jenny walked slowly to the window. She pulled back the shutter and looked out at the broad glimmering river, and at the black ribbon of forest on the other bank. “ ‘Tis so silent out there,” she said. “A vast and silent land. There’s mystery in it. It holds itself away in secret -- and yet I think I understand it.”

Evelyn stared at the girl curiously. This was not the reaction she had expected. She decided that Jenny was dazed by disappointment, and had not realized the impossibility of finding Rob Wilson now.

Jenny, as she so often did, surprised her. “I can see him,” she said in the same musing tone. “I can see Rob. He’s far off. There are mountains. He kneels by a campfire near a stream, and a big river. There’s a little hill behind him. It is something like Tosson, and the stream is like our burn. He is thinking of me. I
know
it, Evie! Nay,” she said smiling as she saw her friend’s expression, “I’m neither mad nor feverish. ‘Tis just a certainty. He has heard me calling him. I’ve only to wait.”

“But Jenny,” Evelyn began, then stopped. She would not ruin the girl’s quiet exaltation by scepticism, or by reminding her of the fearful plight Rob would be in if he did return. A runaway convict might even be executed. Tears sprang to Evelyn’s eyes, her proud mocking mouth quivered. “I’ve known love,” she murmured, “I know it now -- yet yours, Jenny, is touched with something that I have never known.” And to herself she added, Please God the something is not tragedy.

SIXTEEN

On April 27, a week after landing in Virginia, William Byrd rode out from Westover at five o’clock in dawn light, bound for Williamsburg. With him went Evelyn and Jenny. Also Eugene, a sleek young Negro born on the plantation, whose rearing had been personally supervised by Byrd with a view to his present status as body-servant. Not one of Eugene’s peccadilloes had ever escaped instant punishment. He had been whipped routinely for any negligence. For wetting his bed in his early years, Byrd had made him -- as he noted in his diary of 1709 -- “drink a pint of piss.” The boy had run away once, and when brought back and beaten, had been muzzled for two days with the iron branks. Byrd considered that his methods had been successful; though Eugene, like the other servants, had backslid woefully in his master’s absence, he was re-learning his duties, and was obviously proud of his livery -- a neat cocked hat, a suit with brass buttons, and a small black cape.

Byrd rode ahead down the old Indian road, which was sufficiently inland from the James to facilitate the crossing of many little creeks.

The Reverend Peter Fontaine, Westover parish’s Huguenot minister, rode beside him. Mr. Fontaine would accompany the party as far as the Chickahominy Ferry, for he and Byrd had much to talk about -- not only parish affairs but the state of the Colony.

Evelyn followed the two gentlemen, and Jenny lagged behind because she had naturally been given the worst of the family mounts, a barrel-shaped gelding who shuffled along at his own weary pace.

It was “Publick Times” again at Williamsburg. Twice a year, in fall and spring, the General Assembly gathered from all the counties to do the Colony’s business. The Assembly, which sat in the handsome brick Capitol building, was as much like Parliament as the Virginians could make it. The Council, though it had only twelve members and those twelve all related in some way to each other, nonetheless represented the House of Lords. The Burgesses, two elected from each county, were equivalent to the Commons. Over all, as surrogate for King George, was the acting Governor. At present this was Hugh Drysdale, but Byrd, who had been extremely busy gathering information during this first week of his return, had discovered that Drysdale was ill, had -- by report -- some sort of distemper gnawing at his vitals, and was unlikely to survive. It was therefore imperative that Byrd should get to the Capitol and secure his absentee seat on the Council before the Assembly dispersed for the summer. It was imperative to find out which way the political wind was blowing.

Maria Byrd had not cared to make the trip. She was oppressed by the unaccustomed heat, and queasy in the stomach. Since the cause of this was pregnancy and Byrd passionately wanted a son, he had spared her the physics and purges with which he dosed himself and any of his dependents upon hearing of the smallest symptom. Byrd wanted to show Evelyn off to Williamsburg, and had wanted to leave Jenny home, where she would be further exposed to Captain Randolph’s wooing. Randolph had appeared at Westover daily this week. But Evelyn would not go to Williamsburg without Jenny. So that was that.

The quintet jogged along the narrow monotonous winding road. On either side them was the forest -- towering stands of virgin timber mile after mile. At length the sun came up, and the morning was filled with bird song. Eugene rode several respectful paces behind the others and crooned to himself a cheery sort of chant that sounded like “Ho-de-dow-dow, ro-de-dow-dow” to Jenny, whose quick ear was caught by the rhythm and melody. “What are you singing, Eugene?” she asked, turning in the saddle.