A Mercy (3 page)

His own Rebekka seemed ever more valuable to him the rare times he was in the company of these rich men’s wives, women who changed frocks every day and dressed their servants in sacking. From the moment he saw his bride-to-be struggling down the gangplank with bedding, two boxes and a heavy satchel, he knew his good fortune. He had been willing to accept a bag of bones or an ugly maiden—in fact expected one, since a pretty one would have had several local opportunities to wed. But the young woman who answered his shout in the crowd was plump, comely and capable. Worth every day of the long search made necessary because taking over the patroonship required a wife, and because he wanted a certain kind of mate: an unchurched woman of childbearing age, obedient but not groveling, literate but not proud, independent but nurturing. And he would accept no scold. Just as the first mate’s report described her, Rebekka was ideal. There was not a shrewish bone in her body. She never raised her voice in anger. Saw to his needs, made the tenderest dumplings, took to chores in a land completely strange to her with enthusiasm and invention, cheerful as a bluebird. Or
used to be. Three dead infants in a row, followed by the accidental death of Patrician, their five-year-old, had unleavened her. A kind of invisible ash had settled over her which vigils at the small graves in the meadow did nothing to wipe away. Yet she neither complained nor shirked her duties. If anything, she threw herself more vigorously into the farmwork, and when he traveled, as now, on business, trading, collecting, lending, he had no doubts about how his home was being managed. Rebekka and her two helpers were as reliable as sunrise and strong as posts. Besides, time and health were on their side. He was confident she would bear more children and at least one, a boy, would live to thrive.

Dessert, applesauce and pecans, was an improvement, and when he accompanied D’Ortega on the impossible-to-refuse tour of the place, his mood had lifted slightly, enough to admire the estate honestly. The mist had cleared and he was able to see in detail the workmanship and care of the tobacco sheds, wagons, row after row of barrels—orderly and nicely kept—the well-made meat house, milk house, laundry, cookhouse. All but the last, whitewashed plaster, a jot smaller than the slave quarters but, unlike them, in excellent repair. The subject, the purpose, of the meeting had not been approached. D’Ortega had described with attention to minute detail the accidents beyond his control that made him unable to pay what he owed. But how Jacob would be reimbursed had not been broached. Examining the spotted, bug-ridden leaves of tobacco, it became clear what D’Ortega had left to offer. Slaves.

Jacob refused. His farm was modest; his trade needed
only himself. Besides having no place to put them, there was nothing to occupy them.

“Ridiculous,” said D’Ortega. “You sell them. Do you know the prices they garner?”

Jacob winced. Flesh was not his commodity.

Still, at his host’s insistence, he trailed him to the little sheds where D’Ortega interrupted their half day’s rest and ordered some two dozen or more to assemble in a straight line, including the boy who had watered Regina. The two men walked the row, inspecting. D’Ortega identifying talents, weaknesses and possibilities, but silent about the scars, the wounds like misplaced veins tracing their skin. One even had the facial brand required by local law when a slave assaulted a white man a second time. The women’s eyes looked shockproof, gazing beyond place and time as though they were not actually there. The men looked at the ground. Except every now and then, when possible, when they thought they were not being evaluated, Jacob could see their quick glances, sideways, wary but, most of all, judging the men who judged them.

Suddenly Jacob felt his stomach seize. The tobacco odor, so welcoming when he arrived, now nauseated him. Or was it the sugared rice, the hog cuts fried and dripping with molasses, the cocoa Lady D’Ortega was giddy about? Whatever it was, he couldn’t stay there surrounded by a passel of slaves whose silence made him imagine an avalanche seen from a great distance. No sound, just the knowledge of a roar he could not hear. He begged off, saying the proposal was not acceptable—too much trouble to transport, manage, auction; his
solitary, unencumbered proficiency was what he liked about trade. Specie, bills of credit, quit claims, were portable. One satchel carried all he needed. They walked back toward the house and through the side gate in the ornate fence, D’Ortega pontificating all the while. He would do the selling. Pounds? Spanish sovereigns? He would arrange transportation, hire the handler.

Stomach turning, nostrils assailed, Jacob grew angry. This is a calamity, he thought. Unresolved, it would lead to years in a lawsuit in a province ruled by the king’s judges disinclined to favor a distant tradesman over a local Catholic gentleman. The loss, while not unmanageable, struck him as unforgivable. And to such a man. D’Ortega’s strut as they had walked the property disgusted him. Moreover, he believed the set of that jaw, the drooping lids, hid something soft, as if his hands, accustomed to reins, whips and lace, had never held a plow or axed a tree. There was something beyond Catholic in him, something sordid and overripe. But what could he do? Jacob felt the shame of his weakened position like a soiling of the blood. No wonder they had been excluded from Parliament back home and, although he did not believe they should be hunted down like vermin, other than on business he would never choose to mingle or socialize with the lowest or highest of them. Barely listening to D’Ortega’s patter, sly, indirect, instead of straight and manly, Jacob neared the cookhouse and saw a woman standing in the doorway with two children. One on her hip; one hiding behind her skirts. She looked healthy enough, better fed
than the others. On a whim, mostly to silence him and fairly sure D’Ortega would refuse, he said, “Her. That one. I’ll take her.”

D’Ortega stopped short, a startled look on his face. “Ah, no. Impossible. My wife won’t allow. She can’t live without her. She is our main cook, the best one.”

Jacob drew closer and, recognizing the clove-laced sweat, suspected there was more than cooking D’Ortega stood to lose.

“You said ‘any.’ I could choose any. If your word is worthless, there is only the law.”

D’Ortega lifted an eyebrow, just one, as though on its curve an empire rested. Jacob knew he was struggling with this impertinent threat from an inferior, but he must have thought better of returning the insult with another. He desperately wanted this business over quickly and he wanted his way.

“Well, yes,” said D’Ortega, “but there are other women here. More. You see them. Also this one is nursing.”

“Then the law it is,” said Jacob.

D’Ortega smiled. A lawsuit would certainly be decided in his favor and the time wasted in pursuing it would be to his advantage.

“You astound me,” he said.

Jacob refused to back down. “Perhaps another lender would be more to your liking,” he said and enjoyed seeing the nostril flare that meant he had struck home. D’Ortega was notorious for unpaid debts and had to search far outside Maryland for a broker since he had exhausted his friends and local lenders refused what they knew would be inevitable default. The air tightened.

“You don’t seem to comprehend my offer. I not forfeiting my debt. I honoring it. The value of a seasoned slave is beyond adequate.”

“Not if I can’t use her.”

“Use her? Sell her!”

“My trade is goods and gold, sir,” said Jacob Vaark, landowner. And he could not resist adding, “But I understand how hard it is for a Papist to accommodate certain kinds of restraint.”

Too subtle? wondered Jacob. Not at all, apparently, for D’Ortega’s hand moved to his hip. Jacob’s eyes followed the movement as the ringed fingers curled around a scabbard. Would he? Would this curdled, arrogant fop really assault his creditor, murder him and, claiming self-defense, prerogative, rid himself of both debt and social insult even though it would mean complete financial disaster, considering that his coffers were as empty as his scabbard? The soft fingers fumbled for the absent haft. Jacob raised his eyes to D’Ortega’s, noticing the cowardice of unarmed gentry confronted with a commoner. Out here in wilderness dependent on paid guards nowhere in sight this Sunday. He felt like laughing. Where else but in this disorganized world would such an encounter be possible? Where else could rank tremble before courage? Jacob turned away, letting his exposed, unarmed back convey his scorn. It was a curious moment. Along with his contempt, he felt a wave of exhilaration. Potent. Steady. An inside shift from careful negotiator to the raw boy that once prowled the lanes of town and country. He did not even try to mute his chuckling as he passed the cookhouse and glanced again at the woman standing in its door.

Just then the little girl stepped from behind the mother. On her feet was a pair of way-too-big woman’s shoes. Perhaps it was that feeling of license, a newly recovered recklessness along with the sight of those little legs rising like two bramble sticks from the bashed and broken shoes, that made him laugh. A loud, chest-heaving laugh at the comedy, the hopeless irritation, of the visit. His laughter had not subsided when the woman cradling the small boy on her hip came forward. Her voice was barely above a whisper but there was no mistaking its urgency.

“Please, Senhor. Not me. Take her. Take my daughter.”

Jacob looked up at her, away from the child’s feet, his mouth still open with laughter, and was struck by the terror in her eyes. His laugh creaking to a close, he shook his head, thinking, God help me if this is not the most wretched business.

“Why yes. Of course,” said D’Ortega, shaking off his earlier embarrassment and trying to re-establish his dignity. “I’ll send her to you. Immediately.” His eyes widened as did his condescending smile, though he still seemed highly agitated.

“My answer is firm,” said Jacob, thinking, I’ve got to get away from this substitute for a man. But thinking also, perhaps Rebekka would welcome a child around the place. This one here, swimming in horrible shoes, appeared to be about the same age as Patrician, and if she got kicked in the head by a mare, the loss would not rock Rebekka so.

“There is a priest here,” D’Ortega went on. “He can
bring her to you. I’ll have them board a sloop to any port on the coast you desire.…”

“No. I said, no.”

Suddenly the woman smelling of cloves knelt and closed her eyes.

They wrote new papers. Agreeing that the girl was worth twenty pieces of eight, considering the number of years ahead of her and reducing the balance by three hogsheads of tobacco or fifteen English pounds, the latter preferred. The tension lifted, visibly so on D’Ortega’s face. Eager to get away and re-nourish his good opinion of himself, Jacob said abrupt goodbyes to Mistress D’Ortega, the two boys and their father. On his way to the narrow track, he turned Regina around, waved at the couple and once again, in spite of himself, envied the house, the gate, the fence. For the first time he had not tricked, not flattered, not manipulated, but gone head to head with rich gentry. And realized, not for the first time, that only things, not bloodlines or character, separated them. So mighten it be nice to have such a fence to enclose the headstones in his own meadow? And one day, not too far away, to build a house that size on his own property? On that rise in back, with a better prospect of the hills and the valley between them? Not as ornate as D’Ortega’s. None of that pagan excess, of course, but fair. And pure, noble even, because it would not be compromised as Jublio was. Access to a fleet of free labor made D’Ortega’s leisurely life possible. Without a shipload of enslaved Angolans he would not be merely in debt; he would be eating from his palm instead of porcelain and sleeping in the bush of Africa
rather than a four-post bed. Jacob sneered at wealth dependent on a captured workforce that required more force to maintain. Thin as they were, the dregs of his kind of Protestantism recoiled at whips, chains and armed overseers. He was determined to prove that his own industry could amass the fortune, the station, D’Ortega claimed without trading his conscience for coin.

He tapped Regina to a faster pace. The sun was low; the air cooler. He was in a hurry to get back into Virginia, its shore, and to Pursey’s tavern before night, sleep in a bed if they weren’t all packed three or four abreast. Otherwise he would join the other patrons and curl on any surface. But first he would have one, perhaps two, drafts of ale, its bitter, clear taste critical to eliminating the sweetish rot of vice and ruined tobacco that seemed to coat his tongue. Jacob returned Regina to the hostler, paid him and strolled to the wharf and Pursey’s tavern. On the way he saw a man beating a horse to its knees. Before he could open his mouth to shout, rowdy sailors pulled the man away and let him feel his own knees in mud. Few things angered Jacob more than the brutal handling of domesticated animals. He did not know what the sailors were objecting to, but his own fury was not only because of the pain it inflicted on the horse, but because of the mute, unprotesting surrender glazing its eyes.

Pursey’s was closed on Sunday, as he should have known, so he went to the one always open. Rough, illegal and catering to hard boys, it nevertheless offered good, plentiful food and never strong meat. On his second
draft, a fiddler and a piper entered for their merriment and their money and, the piper having played less well than himself, raised Jacob’s spirits enough for him to join in the singing. When two women came in, the men called out their names with liquored glee. The bawds flounced a bit before choosing a lap to sit in. Jacob demurred when approached. He’d had enough, years ago, of brothels and the disorderly houses kept by wives of sailors at sea. The boyish recklessness that flooded him at Jublio did not extend to the sweet debauchery he had sought as a youth.

Seated at a table cluttered with the remains of earlier meals, he listened to the talk around him, which was mostly sugar, which was to say, rum. Its price and demand becoming greater than tobacco’s now that glut was ruining that market. The man who seemed to know most about kill-devil, the simple mechanics of its production, its outrageous prices and beneficial effects, was holding forth with the authority of a mayor.