Stand the Storm (20 page)

“A gal that calls herself Ellen has a babe that ain’t her own. I want to know where that gal is,” Katharine said to the colored man who’d asked her what help she needed.

Gabriel’s ears received such a shock at her words that his startled reaction was visible. He fought to regain control of his facial expressions.

“Missus, I do not understand,” he said most unctuously, surprising even himself.

Katharine caught his fleeting look and was indignant at the disrespect she read in Gabriel’s face. She continued sharply, “I know this gal is your sister. I have word that she is living here. Call her out. I want to talk to her about the babe.”

“I would ask you what business you have with Ellen. She’s hard at her work and cannot come forth, Missus,” Gabriel said.

“She is keeping a girl that belongs to me. She took her and I’m here to get her back. I will take it up with Mr. Jonathan Ridley himself. I have the midwife that knows the story. You tell Ellen that Katharine Logan says to give up the child!” She built up to her forceful conclusion, gaining courage and conviction as she spoke.

Gabriel’s reply was interrupted by Aaron Ridley’s entrance into the shop. Walking through the door briskly, he stopped short at the sight of Katharine. There was a brief moment when he was unsure what lady had graced their shop and thought to spruce up to meet the challenge. But Aaron Ridley, too, made a quick assessment of the badly dressed woman and drew his conclusions.

He said to Katharine, “We have no need of a char. We have our own people. Good day, madam.” Aaron Ridley then held open the door for Katharine to leave and the bell atop it jangled. Katharine was too flummoxed to do other than look at Gabriel briefly, curtsy with a jot of humility, and go back out into the street.

Gabriel bowed his head with a quick dip toward young Ridley and moved to the back workroom. He continued out the back door to the center of the yard after having signaled with an inclination of the head for Ellen to join him.

“The woman who bore your Delia and the midwife who witnessed intend bruiting about the child’s birth in order for the mother to lay a claim to her. They are going to testify to their story to Jonathan Ridley—to get him to turn her over.” Gabriel spoke plainly. Ellen stood still with her face locked in fearful grimace. The thing she had finally stopped being afraid to consider had happened. Nothing in her sphere of knowledge suggested that Katharine Logan would come to claim the child. Nine years! Nearly ten!

“Now she comes?” Ellen gasped. “After all of this time she would come to say this child is hers? Does she dare it?”

“I believe there is another behind the scenes in this. What will you do, Sister?” Gabriel’s manner was stern, but not unkind.

“I saw her born and they gave her to me—to cover up the shame. I was not allowed to refuse her. I ’tend to keep her with me,” Ellen declared.

Katharine, Meander, Mrs. Clover, and Mrs. Warren—all of them, with Ellen included—had come up and told a lie. All of them had been in it and they weren’t going to go back on it now. A feeling got trembling inside of Ellen that said to stand against all and hold on to Delia.

“Brother, I am on this rock and will not budge off it,” Ellen told Gabriel, and prepared herself to face his displeasure.

Gabriel only shook his head to say that he’d heard and understood. He turned back to the shop. Would that they could take advantage of this opportunity to be rid of her, he thought.

Neither Gabriel nor Aaron Ridley was impressed with the cut of Joe Bungate when he came to the tailoring shop with Katharine the next day. He had, at least, used a brush on his coat and trousers and had worked up some spit for his boots. He’d been attentive to the whiskers on his chin, too. Just after sunrise at the transient encampment west of town where the two were temporarily settled, Bungate had set up his mirror and lathered himself with no assistance from the slattern. She had been told with the back of his hand to keep her mouth closed and do as he instructed. She had cut him a wide berth and only looked at him slantwise.

Bungate waited with his foot hitched on a tree trunk, then entered the tailor shop when the window shades were raised.

“I call to see Mr. Jonathan Ridley!” he exclaimed with thumbs screwed in his lapels. Bungate’s dull brown hair was slicked to his head and shined like the surface of his boots.

“I act for my uncle, sir. May I help you with a suit of clothes?” Aaron answered, with a polite expression that nevertheless could turn off quickly.

“I come to speak to Mr. Jonathan Ridley. Is he about, young sir?” Bungate chose to say.

“As I have said, sir, I act for my uncle in this precinct. Will you tell me your business?” The young man’s manner deflated Joe Bungate a hair.

“I do not come about a suit of clothes, sir. So run your monkey off as ’tis a business for white men,” he said, eyeing Gabriel.

“State your business, sir, or take your leave,” Aaron Ridley answered, and gestured a nonchalant flourish with his hand. Gabriel held his tongue and the ground upon which he stood.

“ ’Tis a slave child you’re holding that is rightfully a babe belonging to a white woman name of Katharine Logan,” Bungate began uncertainly. “This girl is no slave of Mr. Jonathan Ridley. She is the product of unfortunate circumstance. We would relieve you and your people of the responsibility of her.” He bowed obsequiously, having sputtered out his tale.

“How is it that you know of these facts, sir?” Aaron Ridley inquired.

Bungate turned and spoke to the front windowpane as if actually he intended that passersby would read his lips. He did not look directly at either Ridley or Gabriel as he spoke.

“Aye, this Katharine yonder was but a helpless girl ravished by a beast of a slave on the Warren place. ’Twas used ill by the missus there and the head cook. These two gave the child to your Ellen,” Bungate continued. “The child is being held illegal and away from its best interests.” The rough-edged man turned from the window, though his eyes were trained on the floor at Aaron Ridley’s feet and his thumbs again pulled at his lapels. He fidgeted and insisted that Katharine’s claim was bolstered by evidence from the attending midwife, Meander. He finished his speech with a nervous demand: “Hand over the girl to her rightful circumstance.”

Not the least moved by Katharine’s travail as presented by Joe Bungate and having been accosted by Bungate on the way to his morning meal, Aaron Ridley was no longer polite.

“Sir, this is a questionable claim. However, I will inform my uncle of it.” He felt early-morning irritability and was impatient for his coffee and biscuits. He told Bungate to return in a week’s time to inquire.

“Return at the rear door, my good fellow. It is only gentlemen who enter at the front,” Aaron pronounced with a recently cultivated hauteur.

Aaron did write to his uncle. He described the situation as presented and the parties involved. He included his own opinion that Joe Bungate and Katharine should be horsewhipped for their audacity.

The unpleasant facts came as some relief to Jonathan Ridley because they confirmed his own suspicions. He’d doubted the story that Ellen had borne the child. Her body had had no swelling left from carrying the babe and no striations on her flesh. Her breasts had still been meager and adolescent and she had brought with her from Warren a goat for baby milk. And no woman he’d ever known who’d borne a child was still so tight and narrow between her legs. It was this blissful tightness that was Ellen’s only appeal, for she had been more sullen and unwilling when she had returned from Warren with the babe.

Ridley’s azure eyes gamboled when he confronted Katharine and Joe in his rooms at the Whilton Hotel. He was merry, for he knew he could win his cause. Both of the miscreants were too nervous of soiling the opulent furnishings in the Whilton to accept a seat even if Jonathan Ridley had offered one. And Ridley certainly did not. He would not show them a fig of courtesy.

“I care not at all to whom the child is connected by birth. It returned with Ellen and has been fed and clothed by me. I am given the story that the child is hers and that is firm and firmly known. When it comes to proof, a slave midwife’s word means nothing.” In answer to their sputterings and protestations, Ridley raised his hand and commanded their silence.

“Quiet! You will go to jail for your part in this fraud, good fellow.” He waved away Joe Bungate’s protest.

Then Jonathan Ridley upbraided Katharine Logan for daring to suggest congress between a white woman and a black slave.

“If this ignominy had befallen you as you claim then, if you were decent, you should surely have killed yourself before the child was born. You are making a false claim!” Jonathan Ridley said. He raised his hand to the side of Katharine’s head and struck her. The hard
thwack
landed on her temple as Ridley pronounced that she was lucky to be thought merely a liar. The blow was tepid in comparison with what she’d become accustomed to from Joe Bungate, but the vehemence of Ridley’s power frightened her.

“She will stay with us, but ’tis in Master’s pocket that she lives. ’Tis only we poor ones who feed her.” Gabriel angrily interpreted the proceedings, which had been reported to him by Aaron Ridley. He had held on to a tick of hope that Ridley would concede the girl to Katharine, her natural mother. Ellen would be pained to separate from the girl—but pained for a while only, Gabriel thought. They would have been free of the bright nuisance of her!

Ellen stood facing Gabriel. Never frightened of him, she was always a head shorter and looking up into his eyes in adoration. “Brother, I love this child. She is my child. I . . .”

“Yes, Sister, but you have taken a clod of dirt that is disputed between dung beetles.” Gabriel’s words sliced at Ellen with an unaccustomed sharpness. “Sister, you should take a husband and bring your own children. This girl is an impediment to you.”

“I will pay for her freedom. As agreed, I will save the money for her papers. Master Ridley has it that I will bring him the money. My heart obliges me, Gabriel,” Ellen insisted. “We can offer him a good price and buy her freedom.”

“Her looks are a premium upon her value. He will command a high price,” Gabriel said.

“Nanny, will you take Delia’s bond?” Ellen confronted her mother.

Annie sat quietly. For the first time she did not impede her children’s voices and she did not intervene. Ellen pulled her into it. “Nanny, does this child mean nothing to you?”

“We are feeding her, Ellen. And she remains in Master Ridley’s pocket. He is yet making plans upon her. You may depend on it. He will not sell her to you so cheaply as before.”

“She does not eat so much. I will halve my own portion and give it to her if it will matter. I will take what remains for me and halve that and give it to you, Brother, to make your belly bigger!”

“Be quiet!” Gabriel commanded her. “They have given you something rude and ill fitting for yourself and you have tried mightily to make a whole of it. But what starts out badly ends badly!”

“Let her loose now, Ellen.” Annie’s words startled, though she patted her daughter’s shoulders to make them seem kinder.

“Nanny, you wrong me. You bought a wife for Gabriel and you will not buy this daughter for me?” Pitiful tears poured down Ellen’s face, unrestrained.

“Take hold of yourself, girl!” Annie grabbed Ellen’s shoulders and shook her. “We bought Mary low. She was sick and broken and they sold her low. This child will sell high and Ridley smells it now. Mark me, it will not be long.”

“I will cut her face. None will want her and he will sell her to me cheaply.”

“Aye, that would bring her low. But it would not cancel her value to the ones who could use her. And perhaps you would ruin a chance for her,” Gabriel put in. “If she is to the taste of the rich gentlemen, then let her to it. It would be a soft life.” The women were silent in response. Neither guessed that Gabriel was so cruelly knowing.

Harsh as it was, though, Annie did feel the same as Gabriel. The girl didn’t belong to them and carried a mark on her nature. She could likely come to trouble. And the trouble would be for them. Why not let Ridley’s trading factors take her? And Gabriel had the point that Ellen might form up with a man and have babes of her own if this troublesome child were out of the way.

Annie had wishes for Ellen just as she had for Gabriel. They were more vague from the outset and had now become uncertain and filled with disappointment. But still she pictured a hardworking man and some natural children for her girl, as any mother would.

“Listen to Gabriel, girl,” Annie said. “He knows a man’s appetite better than you.”

Gabriel felt the bristle in his mother’s words, but he spoke coolly to finish the debate. “A man that wants a fancy with buttermilk skin and red hair might give Delia a life of some ease and rich belongings. This would be preferred to being taken up rudely and sold away. Consider the unpleasant possibilities, Sister. Even if you bought her you could not easily keep her free in this town. Do not be rash. With her clumsiness at fine work, we cannot use her. She’ll be hoisting buckets to make a living.” Gabriel pressed on to show Ellen the picture. “With a lovely face, perhaps she will appeal to a gentleman of taste who will treat her well. Let her stay pretty awhile,” Gabriel said. He grasped Ellen’s two hands between his, lacing her fingers with his own. “And let Master Ridley take her when he comes for her. He is the one who will decide, Sister.” He kissed Ellen’s fingers and sought to work her to his opinion with the appeals of his affection for her.

Twenty-one

S
EWING ANNIE COATS
was no child to go to bed when told. She let Gabriel have the crowing, for a rooster needs the exercise. She only gave him this leave because he was an infrequent storm—not usually one to fuss and argue at the top of his lungs.

“Nanny, please go on to bed,” Gabriel said. “Please take your leave and let me be. I have a sour stomach and I can’t bear company this evening. I must wrestle with this, Nanny.” He said “Nanny” in his way of customary childlike respect and affection and this adornment blunted the rudeness of his command. The others had left without word or questioning gesture. They accepted that he could command them.