Devil Water (70 page)

Jenny put down her letter again. She had already read it twice, and would reread it many times, though the news Lady Betty gave her about the people she had known in that other life seemed remote and mournful. There had been so many deaths, so many changes. And it was still difficult to realize that Lady Betty was married to Dr. Edward Young, the poetic parson, and living at Welwyn in Hertfordshire. Welwyn, of all places! Jenny thought of another Michaelmas, so many years ago, when she and her father had stopped at Welwyn after their Northumbrian trip. The fair, the music, and the smell of roasting geese. So Lady Betty’s husband, Dr. Young, was now the vicar there, while then he had been living with his patron, the Duke of Wharton.

Lady Betty had married Young a year after Colonel Lee’s death. Wharton was dead too; he died at thirty-three in Spain of drink and debauchery. Jenny thought how extraordinary it was to realize the chain of circumstances Wharton’s debauchery had caused in her own life. Had it not been for the vile rites of the Hell-Fire Club, Rob would not have been transported, nor would she then have come to Virginia. I suppose I might have stayed with my father, she thought. She picked up the letter and searched for another paragraph Lady Betty had written.

Your father is living in a Roman palazzo, very near to the Pretender. I suppose you know your father is now the “Earl of Derwentwater.” Poor young John died from a cutting for the stone. Dr. Young doesn’t like me to write to C.R., and I
obey
better than I did with Colonel Lee! But I believe your father and Lady N. have several children now, though I know he’ll never love them as he does you, Jenny. He was in London two years ago, on Jack business I fear, disguised as Mr. Jones again.

I saw him briefly. He was terribly upset at the news of your marriage, I never saw him so moved. He said he had never heard from you since the day you left him in Paris. I said perhaps it was better that way. He is still a most handsome man.

Jenny let the letter fall to her lap. Her sad gaze went again to the little tombstone under the live-oak. Her father thought she had forgotten him, and she had tried to do so. It had not been possible because of Robin. Jenny got up slowly, and walked down the hill to the slate tombstone. It was carved by Rob, and it memorialized so short and so blighted a life. Three months ago Robin had caught a fever from one of Nero’s children. In two days he was gone, despite her anguished nursing. And in their hearts, they knew -- she and Rob -- that for his own sake the little boy’s death was a mercy. Jenny slid down on the grass beside the tombstone, she put her arms around it, and rested her cheek on the cold hard edge.

The agony of Robin’s actual birth she had forgotten. It had happened in the little log cabin they first built here. Nero’s squaw, Shena, had helped. Rob too had helped, she could just remember his frightened face. The shock which came later when he silently brought her the baby -- that could never be hazed. The baby was a pretty infant with a fuzz of silvery hair. She held him proudly against her breast, wondering that Rob did not rejoice, since he had longed for a son. And then she saw the baby’s right hand. There were six tiny fingers on it, and one of his feet was webbed between the toes like a little hoof. She knew that she screamed, and cried out again and again that it was her fault, that this came of her Stuart blood. Rob had been very gentle; he held her and soothed her, but he also questioned as to what she meant.

She told him of the deformity on the hand of her half brother, Lord Kinnaird, and that one of the Pretender’s sons had also such a thing. Rob said nothing more, and they never but once mentioned the Stuart blood again.

Robin grew slowly. He was a delicate serious child, subject to colds and fevers, yet he never seemed unhappy. He played with Nero’s sons, and with Peg and Willy Turner’s little girl, Bridey, nor ever seemed to notice that his hand looked different from theirs, or that his limp was a handicap. Rob carried his son a great deal, off on trips to the woods, and early taught him to ride a horse. And always Jenny dreaded the day when Robin would meet strangers, and the cruelty of strange children. For there were a few other settlers now, not so very far away. Year by year the good lands along the rivers were being taken up. One heard that there were even settlers in the wild Indian valley, the other side of the high mountains.

But Robin had not had to face strangers. He lay here in peace, his gray eyes shut, his pale golden curls falling back against the sweet-smelling pine pillow he had always loved.

Jenny turned and pressed her lips against the tombstone. She rose slowly to her feet as Peg came skittering towards her down the hill.

Peg was a tiny mouselike thing, a slatternly mouse, with her stringy brown hair always falling about her ears, and her apron ripped and stained. But she had been good to Robin. “Now, now, mum,” she said, in the unmistakable tongue of Ireland. “Don’t ye be a-brooding here -- and Oi’ve come to tell ye that the applesass is burnt.”

“Oh, Peg!” said Jenny. “Not again! You know Mr. Wilson always wants it with his pork!”

“Faith, he’ll not be getting it,” said Peg putting on the look of mournful penitence which had stood her well in Bridewell prison. “ ’Twas the end o’ the sugar.”

“I’ll have to open the last jar of blueberry jam then,” said Jenny, beginning to walk towards the house.

“I wonder will ye be finding it, mum,” said Peg in a small voice.

Jenny stopped and stared at the elfin ugly face. “Do you mean to say you
took
it?
Really,
Peg. You might have asked me!”

“It looked so good, mum. And Bridey, she wanted some too. The jam kinda got et.”

“No doubt,” said Jenny, exasperated. Peg was sometimes a help, more often a trial. Particularly in the childish impulses which made her lax with other people’s property. It was this trait seven years ago which had landed her in Bridewell, and led to transportation. I’ll have to speak to Willy again about her, Jenny thought. Willy Turner had his own methods of disciplining his wife. At least one called Peg his wife, though since there was no Catholic priest nearer than Maryland there had never been any ceremony.

It must be five years since Willy Turner and Peg knocked on the Wilson door one day -- a small, weary, footsore pair; the sacks slung over their backs contained their sole possessions.

At first Jenny had not recognized Willy despite the black patch on one eye, so far behind her had she put all her life before her marriage. And when she did remember this little Jacobite who adored her father she was not best pleased to find Rob inviting the couple to stay, which was what Willy had hoped.

Peg had skipped her bond to a planter on the northern shore. In plain words, she was a runaway, and it was wise to take her to the wilderness where no questions would be asked. Willy was tired of working for Dr. Blair anyway, and he bethought him of Miss Radcliffe-- his hero’s daughter. Inquiry at Westover (during which visit he hid Peg) disclosed that Miss Radcliffe had become Mrs. Wilson and gone to the wilds past the frontier. Miss Byrd had told Willy to follow the James, and they had, trudging through the forests for weeks.

At first after his arrival at Snowdon, Willy had wanted to talk about Charles Radcliffe and the Battle of Preston. He soon learned better, since Rob went into one of his black frowning moods when this happened. Willy was clever, and he wanted to stay at Snowdon, so nothing disquieting had been mentioned in years.

On the whole Jenny thought the acquisition of the Turners had worked well -- or rather Willy had, and Peg was at least an extra pair of hands, and a woman to talk to. You couldn’t talk to Shena. Her English consisted of about four words. How she ever communicated with Nero nobody knew; nor probably did he care if she didn’t communicate.

One day shortly after they came to Snowdon, Nero disappeared and was gone for a week. When he returned he brought with him a stout, beady-eyed young squaw, wearing three necklaces of roanoke shell beads and very little else. Her mahogany skin was oiled with bear grease, she gave forth a pungent smell.

“My woman,” Nero announced to Rob. He seldom spoke to Jenny. He shoved Shena towards the Wilsons and gave the only grin Jenny had ever seen. “I buyed her in the valley over yonder past the Ridge! She’ll wuk hard foh us.”

Shena giggled and stared in amazement at Jenny’s yellow hair.

That was practically all they ever knew about Shena, except that Nero had found a tribe of Catawbas hunting buffalo in the valley the Indians called Shenandoah, and had bought Shena with his old gun and a round of powder. Nero didn’t understand her name and called her Shena after “Shenandoah.” The squaw turned out to be as prodigious a worker as her enormous mate. She planted corn, and tended crops; she hauled wood and water from the spring, and punctually every two years she bore Nero another boy.

There were five little reddish-brown “mustees” now tumbling around Nero’s cabin, or working in the fields, and Shena was hugely pregnant with the sixth. A good breeder, Jenny thought, while suffering a bitter pang of jealousy. How desperately she and Rob hoped for another child -- hoped and feared, in case the Stuart taint should appear again. But Rob thought not, the once he had mentioned it. He knew much of cattle breeding, and did not believe a hereditary defect would be constant. At any rate they’d chance it. Yet in all these years her womb had not quickened again.

Jenny’s eyes stung, and she hastily basted the pig to conceal her face from Peg. She turned quickly as she heard Rob outside calling her.

“Here I am!” she cried running to him in some surprise, for his voice had an edge of excitement.

He was standing near the spring washing something in a bucket. Her heart gave its usual leap of gladness when she saw him safe-returned of an evening. Twice he had not come back on time. Once when he had been mauled by a bear he had shot, and the horrible day when he had been bitten by a rattlesnake in the mountains. Nero had been with him, and saved his life by cutting deep into the wound and sucking out the poison.

“You’re early, Robbie,” said Jenny, coming up to him. “I’m so glad, I’ve been a bit dreary. What
are
you washing?”

“I wish I knew,” he said, smiling at her. “Look!” He held out his hand and disclosed a lump of dark stone in which were tiny yellow specks.

“Is it iron ore?” she asked, puzzled.

“It’s ore -- but not iron. I know that, and I know coal when I see it -- of
that
you may be sure! And I’ve a curiosity about this bit o’ stone.”

“Rob!” she said wide-eyed. “You don’t think it might be gold, do you? Where did you find it?”

“By the north branch of the Slate River, just beyond my boundary line. I’m not sure what the mineral is, though I’ve a fancy anyway to take up another five hundred acres to the west, whatever this stone may mean.”

“Aye,” she said softly. “You’ve not yet had your fill of the land, have you?”

“No,” said Rob. “And when I think of the miserable days on Tyneside when to own twenty acres free and clear seemed to me the top o’ glory!” His voice trailed off, as he glanced involuntarily towards the little tombstone. Land he had now in plenty, but there was no one to leave it to, no one to carry on.

Jenny read his thoughts and took a sharp breath. He looked at her. At twenty-seven she was as fair as she had been when he wed her, her hair as thick and golden, her body as slender and firm; yet her sparkle was dimmed and the hot Virginia summers had paled the English rosiness of her cheeks, while the beautiful eyes were somber.

“Hinny --” he said suddenly, “we’re going to take a trip to Williamsburg! You and I.”

“Oh!” she said startled. “I think I’d like that! Though you went in the spring before -- before Robin -- ”

“I know,” he interrupted quickly, “but I can take the tobacco down instead of Nero, and I want to get the new land grant. Besides you need a change.”

She considered this, and found that she was eager to go, eager to see new people and new styles, eager to be in a bustle -- even of so tame a little place as Williamsburg. At least it had seemed very dull when she was fresh from London; now it was a gay metropolis to her.

Her face lit up, she smiled her sudden lovely smile. “And I could see Evelyn, couldn’t I? We’ll call at Westover?”

“To be sure,” said Rob heartily. “I wish to consult with Colonel Byrd too.” He stooped and gave her a kiss. “Wey, hinny! We’ll spend a whole month or so and have ourselves some gaudy-days! I warrant we’ve both earned them.”

Their preparations for departure took time, and the journey down the river lasted a week, so that it was October 12 before Jenny and Rob quitted their bateau at the Falls. Then they waited until their hogsheads of tobacco had been inspected at the Shocco warehouse. Rob was jubilant. The tobacco price was high this year, nine pence a pound, and he received far more than he had dared hope in tobacco notes, which were legal currency. He had also brought gold in his purse, part-remainder of the original three hundred and sixty pounds which had bought his freedom and Nero’s. Rob had been very saving of the gold, after the initial expenses, and only in the first years had he been forced to use some of it for his annual quit-rent of a pound.

Since then the plantation paid for itself.

“We’ll do some shopping in Williamsburg, Jenny!” he said happily as they left the wharf. “You’ll want some gewgaws, and I could do with a decent suit myself.”

“You certainly could,” she said laughing. Rob was still wearing the deerskin jacket and coarse Osnaburg pants which he wore at home and in which he’d poled down the river. His only “good” suit was the brown velveteen he had worn when they married. It fitted no worse than it did then. Rob had not gained an ounce in his years of outdoor toil, but it certainly was not appropriate to a successful planter.

They hired saddlehorses at the village which William Byrd had christened Richmond and referred to as his “city in the air.” It was located on the property where Byrd had been born, and seemed an agreeable site with its little hills, and its position by the Falls at the head of navigation from the sea. Yet Jenny was sceptical. “I shouldn’t think this could ever be a city,” she said looking at the three ramshackle wooden buildings -- livery stable, general store, and a cabin someone had built on a small plot outlined by stakes.