Devil Water (57 page)

Jenny quitted the salon, but she did not go upstairs to her bedroom, where Marie would interrupt her with tisanes and cluckings. She took a candle from one of the gilded sconces and made her way through the passages to the Tapestry Room. A dying fire flickered on the hearth. She threw a log on, lit another candle, and sat down in the chair she had occupied when Charles had scolded her on the morning she had sworn allegiance to King James.

Jenny looked at the letter for several moments before she opened it. She skimmed through it fast once. Her heart ceased pounding. The veiling mists and the giddiness vanished. “Thank you,” she said out loud to the empty air.
“Thank you!”
She smoothed the letter carefully on her lap, and reread it with calm deliberation, pausing on each word.

London, January 15, 1725/6
Dear Jenny --

Lady Betty and I have had a chat which is how I know your reale name and address, and all about you, though my Father does not. He thinks you in France to visit a kin of Lady B’s -- true in a way I suppose! Jenny, we are going back to Virginia. My father has to for necessities to see his affairs there. We will sayle about March the first. Will you come with me as companion gentlewoman? My father is agreeable to this. Perhaps your happy where you are, then never mind. But you should know, Lady B. thinks so too, that Rob Wilson was bought by Mr. Harrison, who owns Berkeley the plantation next ours. I don’t know more, yet I think you may be interested. If you can come with us, you must hasten. Believe me Jenny, ever your devoted freind

EVELYN BYRD.

Jenny folded up the letter and sat with it in her hand. Dimly from far away she heard the music, also she heard the hiss of rain against the old leaded windows. The tapestries bellied out, the room grew very cold, and still she sat on. Until Charles burst in and shouted in the furious voice of one who has been needlessly alarmed, “My God! What are you doing here? I’ve searched all over. You naughty girl, I thought something had happened to you!”

“It has, dearest Papa,” said Jenny. She stood up and gave him a look compounded of a mature gentleness and quiet inflexibility so unlike her that he was shocked.

“What do you mean?” he said. “I don’t understand you -- what’s that letter, is it from a man? Give it to me!”

“Of course,” she said. “You will have to read it. It’s from Evelyn Byrd.”

“That little Colonial school friend of yours? What can
she
say of any moment!”

Jenny silently handed him the letter, he held it near the candle and read it contemptuously. “What nonsense!” he said, throwing the letter on a table. “As though you’d go off to the wilderness, as a kind of upper servant! The woman must be mad!”

Jenny lifted her chin, and gave her father the same maternal composed look. “I am going, Papa,” she said. “I regret very much to give you pain, but I am going to Virginia.”

“You can’t!” he cried. “I won’t permit it! Holy Mother, what’s got into you? It can’t be that you’re following that Wilson -- a transported convict -- it can’t be that!” Charles suddenly collapsed upon the other chair, staring at her with something like fright.

“He’s a transported convict because of me, Papa,” said Jenny. “You don’t know the story. I didn’t really remember it until tonight. Hush,” she added as Charles made a violent movement. “I’ll tell you what happened.” She put her hand on his shoulder, and in clear dispassionate sentences she told him of her abduction on last May 29, and of what Rob had rescued her from.

He sat for some moments silenced and appalled, then he said, “Aye, it’s horrible, horrible. And I see we’ve cause to be grateful to the fellow. I’ll send him a gift -- write to his master recommending leniency. I’ll even let you write to him, if you want.”

Jenny shook her head. “It’s no use, Papa. Nothing that you say can sway me. I am going to Virginia. And after a while you won’t mind it. You have your wife, your child, and another one coming. There’s no place for me here, you know that in your heart. I’ve been drifting, aimless, in the shadows -- now I am awake. Look at me and you’ll see that’s true!”

He raised his head and looked at her swiftly. What he saw exploded his baffled dismay into anger. He jumped up from the chair and shouted, “I won’t let you go! I won’t! You cannot disobey me! I’m your father! Come with me, you wretched ungrateful child, come to Father Brown. He’ll tell you what your duty is!” He grabbed her by the wrist, and pulled her after him. She made no protest. Her expression of pitying inflexibility did not alter.

Charles suffered much through the next day of bustle and hurried plans, during which Lord Winton departed on his nag after remarking that he would greatly enjoy an adventure to Virginia himself. There was nobody on Charles’s side at all. Father Brown said sadly, “I believe you should let the child go, my son. It is better for everyone, and I have seen that for you both there’s danger in your feelings for the girl. Each soul must choose its own path, and she has obviously chosen hers. I think that if you tried to keep her here by force you might kill her.”

Lady Newburgh did not try to hide her relief. Her pleasure at Jenny’s departure was so great that she furnished all the traveling expenses and offered McDermott as escort to London, also one of the undermaids as a chaperon. She even presented Jenny with a draft on her London agent for three hundred pounds, so that no one might think her niggardly or lacking in duty towards her stepdaughter.

On the next morning but one after the receipt of Evelyn’s letter, Jenny set out with Charles in Lady Newburgh’s coach, bound for the
auberge
in Paris where a post chaise could be hired for the journey to Calais.

Lady Newburgh had not begrudged Charles this last half hour alone with Jenny, she had been so much relieved that he had not insisted on going all the way to Calais with his daughter -- a plan Jenny herself had vetoed as too painful for both of them. Jenny had consistently shown herself logical, calm, and efficient, yet as the coach drew away from the chateau steps -- where the Countess, the young Earl of Derwentwater, the three little girls, and Father Brown all stood waving goodbye -- she turned to her father, put her head on his shoulder, and began to cry.

Her traveling hood had fallen back and he stroked her soft bright hair. “Ah, darling, don’t go,” he said brokenly. “You see you don’t want to leave me. And I’ve need of you. Great need.”

“No, Papa,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You have not. You’ll be happier without me, because my lady will be, and you have many distractions.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said reluctantly. “ ‘Tis too much to say I
need
you -- but if there ever came a time when I did --” He put his hand under her chin and raised her face, looking deep into her eyes. “Jenny, promise that you’d come to me!”

“I don’t know --” she faltered. “I don’t know what the future’ll hold for me, Papa -- ”

“I’d not summon you on a whim. I scarcely know what I mean, Jenny. I’d not insist upon your coming to me, even if -- when -- King James and all of us are re-established in England, but if I ever summon you in the name of my martyred brother -- then will you promise to come?”

His gray eyes, so like her own, were brilliant with tears, and she felt a shiver of fear. Her arms raised to throw themselves around his neck, her tongue ached to promise whatever he wanted -- yet she could not.

“I -- I will promise to -- to try,” she whispered.

He turned away from her with a long sigh of disappointment. “There is a vow you have already taken,” he said coldly. “Your oath of allegiance to King James, I trust you mean to respect
that!”

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “I’ll respect my oath. In all the ways that I can, I wish to please you, dearest Papa.”

“Then do not see that fellow, Wilson!” he burst out. “Don’t let foolish stubborn fancy lead you into shame and disaster. For this I’ll pray night and day. Since you’ve rendered me powerless, otherwise.”

“I’ll not let foolish fancy lead me,” she said quietly. “Trust me, Papa -- I’m no longer a child.”

“No,” he said with a kind of groan. “You’re not. Jenny, you don’t wear the Radcliffe ring I gave you in the cellar, the night of my flight from England. What’s become of it?”

“Lady Betty has it, in safekeeping. She was afraid the crest would be recognized. I will wear it from now on, I promise.”

“Good,” he said, taking her hand. “I trust your word, darling. The ring will remind you of your pride of birth and lineage, it’ll keep you from demeaning yourself, and you must retain the name of Radcliffe -- that’s
one
advantage of going to Virginia,” he added bitterly.

“I’ll do as you say, Papa. Oh, the coach is stopping--” They looked at each other in startled anguish.

McDermott threw open the coach door, and stiffened to dour silence as he saw the two locked in a close embrace like lovers, and both weeping. He waited beside the coach until Jenny stepped out. She turned once and waved, her tear-stained face as white as tallow. Then she walked with slow, resolute steps into the
auberge
to wait for the post chaise to be ready.

FIFTEEN

On April 20 the stout ship
Randolph
sailed swiftly up the James River, borne by the tide and a brisk southeasterly wind. It was warm and -- except for the creaks of the rigging -- very quiet. The newly risen sun already glared white off the broad waters.

The Byrd party were strung along the rail of the poopdeck watching the flat wooded shores flow by. Mr. and Mrs. Byrd stood close together, Byrd’s ten-year-old Wilhelmina beside them. Evelyn and Jenny were across the deck, both silent with their thoughts.

William Byrd was as elegantly dressed in a powdered wig, brocaded waistcoat, and silver-gilt buckles as he had been in London. One must be careful not to let down standards upon return to the Colonies. He had impressed this on his family. Maria Byrd, his plump, docile young wife wore her wedding dress of green-sprigged buff taffeta, and her best lace cap on her mousy hair; she stood pressed against her husband, staring with affrighted eyes at the flat sandy banks fringed by the distant darkness of virgin forest. She watched in vain for roofs, for a church tower, a smoking chimney, any sign of a village. “Doesn’t anyone
live
here, Will?” she whispered.

“Very few right here,” he said smiling. “The back country to the south is largely unexplored, but upriver there are dwellings, and see ahead, there is Jamestown!”

“Where?” cried little Wilhelmina eagerly. Byrd had whiled away the eight-week voyage by improving his daughter’s knowledge of Virginia. Wilhelmina knew the history of Jamestown, and was disappointed to see nothing except trees and the stump of a church among half-burned ruins. “Is that all?” she asked.

“I
told
you the town was abandoned long ago,” said Byrd. “And that the capital is inland at Williamsburg, which you won’t see today.” He looked north towards Burwell’s Landing, where a brig and a sloop were unloading cargo for Williamsburg. “We’ll proceed up the river to Westover,” he added.

“Oh dear,” said the child. “How
long?
I’m so weary of this old ship, I feel as if I’d been on her a year. I can’t even seem to remember what England was like -- it’s
so
far away.”

This remark affected her hearers painfully. Maria gave a stifled moan and gazed at the empty ruins of Jamestown. Byrd set his lips and gave way to gloom. A multitude of problems awaited him here.

The probable state of his long unseen plantation was one problem, and the condition of the precious tobacco, so precious that it was used for currency. Moreover, he had doubts as to the honesty of John Fell, his head overseer. The security of his absentee seat on the Council and its reception of himself were other problems. He knew that he had enemies among the Councilors -- enemies who called him anglophiliac snob, and who thought that while enjoying the pleasures of London he had skimped his duties to his native Virginia. And in London not one of his early hopes had been realized, though he so dearly loved the city that he had put off from year to year this inevitable moment of return. He had never got his appointment as Governor of either Virginia or Maryland, neither had he settled all his debts nor found the highborn heiress whom he had wanted. Though Maria was a good wife, restful -- after the turbulent Lucy, and then the debauched years of widowerhood.

He glanced fondly at Maria, saw that she was weeping, and knew that she was thinking of their baby girl, Anne, who had been left behind in the care of Maria’s sister.

The ship neared Green Spring Plantation, where Byrd had so often visited the Ludwells. Byrd saw it through lackluster eyes, the entertainment he had once enjoyed there seemed sparse, dreary, provincial. It would not be so at Westover, he thought, trying to comfort himself. In the ship’s hold there were amenities. He had brought over a thousand books packed in black walnut presses; also there was furniture, silver, damask -- and the portraits. If he could no longer rejoice in the company of the great men he had known he could at least have visual reminders of them. There was Kneller’s portrait of Sir Robert Southwell -- dear old Sir Robert, who had first launched him in London, who had proposed him to the Royal Society. Then there was the portrait of Charles Boyle, the Earl of Orrery; a warm and merry man was Orrery, godfather to little Anne, and the friend Byrd knew that he would miss the most. There were also portraits of Lord Oxford, Lord Halifax, and the Duke of Argyle -- these were not exactly friends, but they
were
acquaintances, and their elegant representations would grace Westover.