Devil Water (62 page)

“My daughter has an excellent disposition,” said Byrd stiffly. “This is her young gentlewoman, Miss Radcliffe.”

Jenny curtsied, while her host gave her a sour stare. “Didn’t know you were bringing another
female,”
he said. “Pshaw!”

Jenny was so accustomed to a kindling in masculine eyes when they beheld her that she was dismayed and blushed scarlet. “I’m sorry, sir--” she faltered. “Perhaps I can find lodgings somewhere . . .”

“Nonsense!” said Evelyn, sinking into a chair and adjusting her skirts carefully. “We’re here, Uncle Custis, and you’ll have to put up with both Jenny and me, though I
assure
you we’ll prefer to keep out of your way!”

“Hoity-toity!” said Custis with a snort of laughter. “You’re a Parke sure enough! Brother Byrd, I commiserate you. Come take a look at the garden. I want to keep an eye on those black rascals. As for you, Evelyn, direct my servants as you please, for I’m quite sure you will anyhow.”

The men went off into the passage towards the garden.

“Ha!” said Evelyn, shrugging. “The old goat, he made my aunt miserable, but he’ll not gammon me!”

“I’m sure he won’t,” said Jenny sighing. Evelyn enjoyed these sparring matches. Jenny did not. And her own cool reception by Major Custis had awakened an unhappy question. Where on earth did she really belong? Had there ever been a home to which she had a clear right? Certainly not at the Vincennes chateau, nor at Westover, where she knew that Mr. Byrd thought her superfluous. Even at Lady Betty’s she had not been on quite the same footing as the Lee children. Always and everywhere she went there was an element of being there on sufferance, because somebody had championed her. Forlorn, she thought, that’s what I am.

Forlorn-- a deathknell word. Had her mother not used it so once, long ago in Northumberland? Suddenly, between one instant and the next, Jenny lost her conviction that she would soon see Rob, or that their hearts had somehow communicated. She saw that conviction as childish folly. Virginia was as big, they said, as a hundred Englands, it stretched far beyond the knowledge of white men, west and west to another sea. Rob might be anywhere in all those myriad miles. She was glad that he had freed himself, as glad as she had been at the Harrisons’. She knew that there was no way he could have known of her coming, and waited for her, and yet she was suffused with bleakness, and a sense of betrayal.

Evelyn did not notice that Jenny stood stiffly near the door, her hands twisting on each other, and her face gone pale. Evelyn was thinking of the practical matters needed to make their stay in Williamsburg agreeable.

“I’m going to find the servants,” she said. “See what they’re doing with our luggage. I’m sure they’re a shiftless lot with no mistress over them.” She swept out, leaving Jenny to the chill and comfortless parlor, where any feminine touch was notably lacking. There was a closed harpsichord in a corner near the window. Jenny walked to it, hesitated, then, wiping off a layer of dust with her handkerchief, raised the lid and touched the yellowed keys. She sat down on the bench and began to play a succession of minor chords, formless snatches of tunes, which gradually resolved themselves into a song Lady Betty had taught her three years ago. Lady Betty had laughed very much as she taught her the song, saying, “If it weren’t for this ditty, my dear, I dare say you’d not exist at all!”

Yet there was nothing to laugh at in the words or music. Jenny now sang the song slowly, her eyes fixed on the bare wall above the harpsichord.

“My lodging it is on the cold ground,
And oh! very hard is my fare,
But that which grieves me more, love,
Is the coldness of my dear.
Yet still I cry; O turn, love,
I prithee, love, turn to me
For thou art the man that I long for,
And alack, what remedy!”

She sang all the verses in the same quiet way, while tears began slipping down her cheeks.

She did not hear footsteps behind her, nor was conscious of anyone in the room, until she was interrupted by a kind of strangled gasp. She jumped and saw Edward Randolph standing in the middle of the floor, his hat crushed in his hands, his blue eyes staring at her in adoration. “Miss Radcliffe,” he whispered. “Oh, Miss Radcliffe -- don’t stop -- oh damme, you’re weeping! Don’t weep!” He stumbled across the floor, and flung himself down on his knees. He grabbed her hand and held it violently against his chest. “Miss Jenny --oh my angel,” he gasped.
“Why
are you sad?”

Jenny repressed an impulse to snatch away her hand and shove him off with it. She knew it was unjust to feel a leap of fury because the intruder was the wrong man. She was angry nevertheless, and she said crisply, “Indeed, Captain Randolph, how should I be sad, when it is with this song that my great-grandmother captured the fancy of King Charles?”

“What?” stammered the Captain. “My sweet angel, I don’t understand you.”

“Why,” said Jenny, “ ‘Tis simple. Moll Davis sang this song one night at the Duke’s Playhouse, and thereby exchanged her hard lodging on the cold ground for the soft heat of the royal bed.”

Randolph bit his lips and recoiled a trifle, while loosing her hand. His blue eyes were confused. “You -- you speak very coarse,” he said. “You are joking.”

“Not at all,” said Jenny. “I
am
coarse. Oh, Captain,
do
get up! Suppose someone saw you.”

Randolph flushed, and rose to his feet. He stood looking down at her. Sunlight through the window shed a nimbus on her yellow hair, it glistened off the tears on the rose and white of her cheeks. Her head was averted from him, the line of her profile was so pure and he found her so beautiful that he instantly forgot his dismay; in fact he ascribed her remarks to some form of girlish mystery, and he cried, “Miss Radcliffe, I’m never alone with you, you seem to avoid me. But can you doubt my feelings? I love you. I wish you for my wife. I know I’ve not much to offer, but I should try to make you happy!”

Jenny turned and looked at him more kindly. A stocky young man was Ned Randolph. His sandy eyebrows twisted now in pleading above the vivid blue gaze. It was a pleasant face despite the roughened skin -- and the missing teeth were not visible unless he smiled. “Ah, Captain,” said Jenny. “ ‘Tis a great compliment you pay me, and would you indeed try to make me happy?” She sighed and touching one key softly let her hand fall on her lap.

“Aye,” he cried. “Aye. I’m quite well off, there’s my share in the family ships, and there’s my plantation, ‘Bremo’ --it’s not in order for a woman, but I can make it so. The house is trim, and you’d have plenty of servants, and if my -- my person is -- is not entirely pleasing to you -- well you’ll not be overtroubled with me, since my voyages are long--” She made a faint pitying gesture, and he went on quickly, “Yet -- oh, Miss Jenny -- if you come to love me, if you should wish it -- then I’d find some other Master for my ship. I’d stay at home with you.”

Jenny swallowed, and shook her head. “Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t talk like that. For I could never make
you
happy. You don’t know me, Captain, you don’t know my people or beliefs or what I’m like inside. You don’t even know why I came to Virginia!”

“It doesn’t matter!” cried Randolph. “Nothing matters except that you give me leave to hope! You aren’t pledged to another, are you?” he added in sudden fear. “You’re not affianced?”

Jenny lifted her chin and stared past the imploring Captain. “No,” she said flatly. “I’m neither pledged nor affianced.”

He did not hear the bitterness in her voice, he heard only the context, and he cried, “Then sweet, sweet Jenny, I may hope?”

“Why not?” she said with a half smile. “Everyone may hope. Hope and fear -- see, ‘tis the motto on my ring.” She held it out to him, but the Captain was not interested in mottoes, nor could have read the Latin.

“Miss Jenny, may I kiss you?” he asked in a reverent whisper. This time Jenny smiled outright. No man whom she had ever known had been tentative or reverent in love-making, no man had acted as though she were a chalice made of fragile glass. She stood up and gracefully extended her cheek to him. She heard his indrawn breath, and saw him tremble as he kissed it, and to her the kiss was no more moving than had been those of the Lee children. Could I learn to love him enough? she thought. He deserves it, poor soul. And she thought too of what he had offered her -- a home of her own, position, security -- and all that without exacting on her part any return but the gift of her body. They were romantic, these Virginians, they treated women like flowers. No Englishman did.

“And now, Captain,” said Jenny, seating herself at the harpsichord with a finality which precluded more kisses, “shall I sing you something cheerful? How about ‘Begone dull care, I prithee, begone from me’ -- ‘twill suit us both.” And she began at once on the rippling melody.

William Byrd, on his way to his chamber preparatory to dressing for a call on the Governor, was attracted by the music. He peered through the door and was pleased to see the enamored Captain draped over the harpsichord, and clearly on good terms with the fair singer. Byrd went on his way, feeling benevolent. John Custis had grudgingly admitted that the Council was eager for Byrd’s return, that poor ailing Governor Drysdale himself had expressed a desire to see him at once, and be guided by his reports from England. The slanders and suspicions about Byrd’s accountings as Receiver General some years ago -- these were forgotten. They had all sprung from Spotswood’s hostility, anyway, and Spotswood no longer had a shred of power in Virginia, or much in England, where he had returned to sulk, stabilize his Virginia land grants on the frontiers in Spotsylvania, and incidentally get himself a wife.

For the first time since his landing, Byrd was lighthearted. He caught a glimpse of a pretty mulatto chambermaid in the passage, and felt instant resurgence of the old temptation, so often yielded to, so often repented of. Perhaps tonight, he thought, then quickly read a page of Greek in Lucian as antidote. He was jovial and forebearing with Eugene, even when the youth buttoned the brocaded vest awry and couldn’t find the gold-banded Malacca stick which Byrd always carried on dress occasions. It was as though Jenny’s determined song “Begone Dull Care” had permeated the whole dismal house.

Evelyn heard the singing and was glad for Jenny, though puzzled. John Custis heard it as he returned from the garden, and listening a moment in the hall to the fresh, young, and yet wistful voice, checked the angry comment he had been about to make on female frivolity in his parlor.

The next day continued to be pleasant for the visitors. The girls strolled around Williamsburg, escorted by Captain Randolph and young Daniel Parke Custis, Evelyn’s cousin. He was a handsome tall lad of fifteen; he had flashing eyes like Evelyn’s and wavy hair, lightly powdered and queued. He skipped his classes at the College that day, though his father, still immersed in the garden, did not know that. The young people amused themselves by eating syllabubs and drinking beer at Marot’s Ordinary, and they bowled on the green behind Stagg’s little theater near the Palace. Jenny flirted airily with Ned Randolph, allowing him to hold her hand when they walked, and even to snatch another kiss in the dusk, when they parted.

As for William Byrd, he had gone to the Capitol at ten, mounted to the Council Chamber -- which was vastly more elegant than when he saw it last -- and been cordially reinstated in his proper place at the great oval table with its Turkey rug covering. Senior to him there were only the doddering Edmund Jenings, “King” Carter, and the Commissary, James Blair. All older men who might be expected to die off soon, thereby making Byrd President of the Council -- or even, Byrd thought (glancing at the Governor, who was so obviously ill), by the renewed exertion of influence in London – why not the
head of the table
in the great chair with the Royal Arms carved on it? Yes, I’ll be Governor yet, he thought.

The Council business was routine: the appointment of excise officers, repairs to the Governor’s Palace roof, examination of the currency and bills of exchange, and talk about westward expansion with a view to curbing the encroachments of the French along the Ohio. The latter interested Byrd, who wanted more western lands; he was also interested in the need for surveying the dividing line between Virginia and Carolina. It was flattering that the Governor and fiery old Blair seemed to think Byrd fitted to be one of the Commissioners on what would certainly be an adventurous expedition. All in all, so agreeable was Byrd’s reception that, on leaving the Capitol at two, he reflected that there were compensations for being a big frog in a little pond, and decided to put aside any further regrets for the hurly-burly of London.

The following day, on Saturday, April 29, the Governor and his lady entertained at the Palace. All morning liveried servants had been running up and down the Williamsburg streets, delivering invitations to members of the Assembly and the very few resident elite of the town.

John Custis refused to accept, but the rest of his household set off with enthusiasm. Though the distance was only three blocks, Byrd and the two girls were driven in the coach, as his importance required. Beside the coach, under the catalpa trees through the fine spring evening, walked Captain Randolph and young Daniel Custis.

In the coach the girls’ best dresses, with their panoply of hoops and stiffened petticoats, took up so much room that Byrd had good-naturedly seated himself opposite on the other seat. They were a pair to be proud of, he thought. Jenny was exquisite in her Parisian rose taffeta gown, her wealth of golden hair falling in curls down her back and on her shoulders. Byrd reflected with satisfaction that she would soon be off his hands, judging from Randolph’s ecstatic behavior. Then Byrd’s eyes lingered on Evelyn -- Amasia, the beloved one that she was and had always been, despite the anger she often roused in him. She looked very much as her mother had twenty years ago on their wedding day, the same huge dark eyes, the same lift of the head, even the same length of black curl falling on her right shoulder. Evelyn’s gown was of rich gray brocade -- he still remembered the exorbitant bill for it -- and he wondered again why she insisted on dressing herself always in the hues of semimourning. He had remonstrated with her time and again to no avail. Then he noted that she was carrying the ivory and lace fan he had given her, and he said, “Ah, my dear, what a tale that little fan could tell! I remember how you dropped it when you curtsied to King George . . . and His Majesty himself retrieved it for you!”