Devil Water (64 page)

She turned to the Captain. “I fear I must go home to Major Custis’s. I’m unwell. Please escort me, then return and tell Evelyn.” She began to hurry towards the garden gate.

“My dear Miss Jenny,” protested the Captain, “there’s no need to run away, or feel shame. I’ll forget what you said. Nobody shall know. You’re so young, and can’t help what bad influences’ve shaped your early life, and the female mind is easily swayed.”

“You make excuses for me, Captain,” said Jenny. “ ‘Tis good of you. Yet you know nothing of my early life, nor have I the wish to tell it.” She hurried on along the Palace Green, so fast that Randolph had to exert himself to keep up with her, and had no breath for talking. As they entered the Custis gates he made a last despairing attempt. “Miss Jenny, oh Jenny, you’re not running from
me,
are you? I’ve told you I’ll condone your foolish words. I love you, so help me, and I fear would condone anything you did.”

She stopped then, and sighing looked up at him. “You’re a good man, Captain Randolph. Please don’t say anything more. I’m tired -- no, I’m bewildered and heartsick. And I must be alone. Forgive me.

She turned and ran into the Custis house, leaving him to stand desolate on the walk.

Evelyn returned from the Palace two hours later. She entered the room the girls shared, and found the candle guttering. Jenny, still fully dressed, was lying across the bed in an exhausted doze, her head buried in her arms. She was murmuring in her sleep.

Evelyn bent over her to push the tangle of hair back from the flushed face. Jenny stirred and said “Papa, Papa” in a childishly pathetic voice.

Evelyn gave Jenny’s shoulder a gentle nudge. “Wake up, dear,” she said. “Wake up!”

At last Jenny opened her eyes. “Is it morning?” she asked. “I was dreaming of my father -- I was with him -- there was a ship -- there must be a ship sailing soon -- ”

“Wake up!” said Evelyn again. She went to the washstand, poured water onto a towel, which she brought to Jenny. “Here, sit up and wash your face.”

Jenny slowly obeyed. She gave herself a little shake, and glanced at the mantel clock. “Oh heaven!” she said. “It’s only midnight. I didn’t want to wake up. Why did you wake me, Evie?”

“You could hardly spend the night in your ball dress,” said Evelyn lightly, but she tilted her head and examined her friend thoughtfully. “I woke you because there’s news I
think
you want to hear. I’m sure you do, though these last days I’ve not quite understood you, my dear.”

“I’ve not understood me, either,” said Jenny.

Evelyn sat down on the bed. “I was chatting with Mr. Nathaniel Harrison, after the dancing ended. One of his servants came in today from Wakefield and brought news too of Berkeley. To Mr. Nat Harrison there was one item of very slight importance, though he told me of it. Can you guess what it was?”

Jenny’s eyes widened; she made no sound. She waited.

“Well,” continued Evelyn, “Rob Wilson has returned to Berkeley. He limped in on foot two days ago. He gave himself up to Ben Harrison. Said he had come back to finish his bondage.”

Jenny sat quiet, her eyes dark and still as mountain tarns.

“Did you hear me, Jen?” said Evelyn, somewhat frightened. “Rob Wilson’s come back of his own accord. You can see him now at last. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“It was,” said Jenny. She moistened her lips and repeated, “It was -- oh, it
is
what I want. To see my Robbie . . . Yet I don’t know what
he
wants. Have they hurt him d’you think? That beastly overseer?”

“I hope not,” said Evelyn. “I fear they’ll not be very gentle.”

Jenny got off the bed and began to unhook the bodice of her taffeta gown. “Where’d they put my riding habit?” she said. “Major Custis must have a horse to lend me, or I’ll take Eugene’s.”

Evelyn jumped up and shook her head. “You can’t leave
now,
dear.” She spoke with authority. “We’ll go in the morning. I promise you. Be sensible, child!” she added more sharply, as Jenny stood uncertainly in her long white shift above a fallen ring of rose taffeta. “Come to bed!”

“Sensible!” said Jenny. “Waiting and wondering. Waiting and wondering. Is that the way to make a body sensible?”

“Maybe not,” said Evelyn. “But it is unfortunately the way life is.”

SEVENTEEN

Jenny and Evelyn did not reach Westover until dusk of the next day, because their precipitate return caused many difficulties. It had taken all Evelyn’s guile, stormings, and finally tears to persuade Byrd of the necessity, without giving him a convincing reason. He did not yet wish to leave Williamsburg himself. He still had much business to transact, including the finding of a new overseer, and even for Evelyn, Byrd would not relinquish his coach. So the girls ended up on hired horses with Eugene as escort.

When they at last turned off the highway onto the Westover Plantation road, Evelyn was casting anxious glances at the silent forest on either side of them and straining ahead to see the lights of the home-house. Dauntless as she was in many ways, she was afraid of the dark wilderness.

“You can’t see Rob tonight, dear,” she said to Jenny. “It’s so late.”

“But I must,” said Jenny. A flat statement of fact.

Evelyn peered at her friend’s face, which glimmered through the dusk; it was pale, set, and somehow looked much older than usual.

They did not speak again until they had passed the tobacco fields and the Quarters, from which came a medley of sounds -- singing, barking dogs, the whine of jew’s-harps, and the high wail of a baby.

Evelyn waited until they were near the house, then she checked her horse, and said, “Eugene!”

“Yessuh, mistiss,” answered the young Negro, coming up to them. “You know the way to Berkeley’s Quarters, I suppose?” “Sho do, mistiss. Is a yaller wench there, I goes to see -- Sundays only o’ course,” he added hastily, that being the one day the slaves were sometimes allowed off the plantation.

“Yes -- well --” said Evelyn. “How would you like a lace handkerchief for your wench, and chewing tobacco for you?” “I’d like it fine, mistiss.” Eugene smacked his lips. “Do you know where at Berkeley Robert Wilson used to live -- the convict who was building the manor house?”

“The one who run off?” asked Eugene.

“Yes, but he came back.”

Eugene gave an incredulous and pitying grunt. “He used to live this side the Quarters, a li’l way off in a cabin he made hisself.”

“I want you to guide Miss Jenny there tonight, whenever she’s ready. And, Eugene, you’ll say no word of this now or at any time to anyone. Is that clear?”

“Yus,
ma’am”
said Eugene heartily.

An hour after their return to Westover, Jenny set off on foot with Eugene. She had dressed herself in a plain brown wool dress which dated from her schooldays, and wore over it a hooded brown cloak. She carried an awkwardly shaped black plush bag, over two feet long, which was tied with a silken cord. Evelyn had protested when she saw the bag, and asked what it was. Jenny did not answer. In fact she scarcely heard Evelyn, though she drank a little wine when Evelyn gave it to her. She had passed into a kind of suspended animation, where will power alone sustained her.

Eugene led Jenny down the plantation drive for quarter of a mile, then turned left over the fields on a nearly invisible path which many secret feet had trod. He carried a dark lantern, and would have carried Jenny’s plush bag, but she would not let him. They splashed through the bottom of a little creek, clambered over a zigzag rail fence, then entered Berkeley’s fields, picking their way among the young, sweet-scented tobacco plants. The night grew brighter as the moon rose, and presently Eugene spotted in the distance the village of whitewashed cabins which were Berkeley’s slave quarters.

There was no sound from them; Matt Corby, the overseer, had long since made his Sunday night round to be sure each slave was in the proper cabin, and presumably asleep, so as to be ready for field work at dawn.

“Ovah there, mistiss,” said Eugene pointing with his lantern towards a small isolated hut near a giant hickory. “I see smoke from the chimbley -- must be cookin’ hisself supper. If it is Wilson sho’ miff.”

“I -- I’ll go and see,” said Jenny. “Wait here, Eugene.” She crossed the edge of a cornfield, skirted a bramble patch, and approached the cabin. Her heart was pounding in heavy thuds, her palms were wet as they gripped the plush bag, but she was unaware of this. Next to the closed door there was one small window, and behind it the flicker of firelight. She stole up to the window and looked in.

It
was
Rob who knelt inside by the flames, turning a corn pone in the ashes. His black hair was matted and grown far below his ears. He was naked except for a pair of rolled-up canvas pants. On one of his feet was a cracked and shapeless boot; the other was wrapped in a dirty cloth. She saw the ribs standing out sharply either side of his great hairy chest. He moved a little and she saw the old welts on his back, livid purple lumps and ridges, also three fresh stripes, black with caked blood. He got up from the fire, holding the cooled pone and limping, turned to face the window. Then she saw what his hair had concealed -- an iron collar around his neck and some writing scratched on it.

Jenny drew back from the window. She backed away as far as the brambles; she stood still, while her stomach heaved. She retched, and sour fluid came into her mouth. She swayed, and clutched at the brambles. Pain from a dozen sharp scratches revived her. Her sick giddiness ceased. “God -- dear God--” she whispered. The moon swam up from behind a passing cloud and shimmered on the cornfield, the hickory tree, and the little cabin beneath. Jenny loosed the bramble and lifted her head high. Strength flowed into her. Strength and a peculiar kind of almost gay assurance. She walked rapidly back to the cabin, and knocked on the door.

Inside Rob jumped, almost he cowered. Then he straightened himself and said “Who’s there?” in a hoarse angry voice. There were no locks on cabin doors in the Quarters, and nobody ever knocked.

Jenny lifted the latch and walked in. “It’s me, Rob,” she said smiling, and as casual as though she had seen him yesterday. “It’s Jenny.”

Rob recoiled. He flattened his mangled back against the log wall, staring at the slender figure, the yellow hair under a brown hood, at the long gray eyes which looked on him steadily and sweetly.

“I was afeard of this,” he muttered. He had seen her before -- her fetch, her phantom -- once when he had fever on the convict ship, and again many days ago when he had been camping in the far western wilderness by a little stream. Yet never had she seemed so real; and what could that mean but madness at last, the fantasies of a broken spirit and mind. “Gan awa’, woman,” he whispered. “Leave me be!”

“No, my hinny,” she said, putting her plush bag carefully on the dirt floor, since there was no furniture except a straw pallet. “I’ll not leave you again, or ever. What a way to receive me who has come so far to find you!” She threw her cloak off, walked up to him, and took one of his great calloused hands between hers. “It
is
Jenny,” she said, looking into his astounded face. “Kiss me -- and you’ll know. Nay -- R-Robbie,” she added, lapsing into the broadest of Northumbrian accents, “I canna kiss ye, laddie, if ye’ll not bow down your-r head a bit, for ye knaw weel ye’re a gr-reat tall gawk!”

She put her hands around his neck, perfectly concealing a wince as they touched the cold iron collar, and she pressed her body close against him. “D’ye knaw me now, laddie? D’ye feel that I’m war-rm and a live woman?”

He felt her breasts against his chest, and the beating of her heart; still he could not believe. He ran his hands slowly down her back, from the delicate shoulder blades over the narrow waist and the swelling of her hips. Suddenly he shuddered, and gave a low gasp like a sob. He caught her desperately in his arms and kissed her tremulous, bravely smiling mouth. They kissed without moving, both drenched by a wine-red rapture in which thought had no part. Then a log fell to pieces on the hearth, sending out a shower of sparks. His arms dropped, and though she still clung to him, he turned from her.

“They put the collar on me,” he said dully. “And d’you see what it says? ‘Property of Benj. Harrison -- Berkeley,’ that’s what it says. ‘Tis riveted on. I expected the flogging, but I’d not have come back if I’d known that swine Corby’d put the collar on me.”

“Why did you come back, Rob?” she asked after a moment.

“It was
not
because I couldn’t make my way,” he said sharply, thinking of the weeks of walking, following the river to the west, and eating far better than he had here, on fish and wild honey, and once a small bear he had trapped. “Fool that I am, I wanted to finish the house, no one could finish that cornice but me, and then I’ve never run off before from anything, and then too -- ”

“What?” she whispered. “Rob, did you hear me calling you?”

“Aye. Aye. I thought so once, yet I didn’t believe it. I don’t believe it now. Jenny, if it
is
you, I’m dazed. Can’t get my wits, together. What are you doing here?”

She stooped and picked up the plush bag. “I brought these to you, Robbie. These’ll best answer why I’m here.”

He took the black bag in continuing bewilderment. Fumbling a little, he undid the cord. The bag opened and he saw what was inside. “The pipes,” he whispered. “The Northumbrian pipes. You brought them to me . . .”

At the expression on his face her eyes filled, but she answered steadily. “They’re not as good as the ones you used to have. I; bought these in London. Will you play, Robbie?”

Still fumbling, still dazed, he buckled the strap around his waist and the bellows to his arm. The bag was of red velvet fringed with gold. He fingered the chanter and the drones tentatively.

“Play ‘The Oak and the Ash and the Bonny Ivy-tree,’ “ Jenny said quietly.

After a false start or two, he began the tune and she began to sing.

“ ‘Oh, a North Country lass, ‘cross the ocean did pass “

That’s not right,” Rob said with the ghost of a smile. “ ‘Tis not ‘cross the ocean’ in the real song.”