Dominion (32 page)

As she relaxed, Caleum's thoughts and actions juggled between giving attention to her, his own nervousness, and the sheer excitement he felt at being upon his marriage bed. Under his touch her anxiousness began to pass and her senses awaken. They kissed passionately after that for a great long time, and began to explore each other as they had not before. Try as they might, though, neither of them could quite get used to the fact that their actions were not illicit. Because of this there was not any great freedom their first night together, but general awkwardness, and they were both happy to keep the covers pulled up as they explored and found their way beneath them. Their lovemaking then was clumsy and awkward as birds taking flight for the first time.

When it was over, their early embarrassment returned to them and they could only hope that, in time, it would do so less and less.

Nor was Libbie so afraid of her new husband anymore, or so fearful of the idea of babies, and in the days that followed they stayed near each other until they began to grow quite comfortable around each other's nakedness.

The new surroundings were another matter. When Caleum left during the day to go work on the land, Libbie felt utterly deserted out there on the far side of the lake. She would busy herself with cleaning in the morning, but, the place lacking furniture, she was soon done. She would then plan the meals for midday and evening, but as there were only the two of them it was no great affair. Afternoons were spent in the chores of the farm and those did not vary, so she was soon bored by the ones in her own house as she had been in her parents'.

Her only respite from this tedium would come when she thought of some excuse to walk the half mile to the main house for a visit. Sensing how alone she felt on these occasions, Adelia would also come over and visit out there when she could. The main topic of their discussion then was how the rooms should best be finished. As the weather worsened, though, neither of them could make the trip as easily or as frequently. When winter fastened its grip, Adelia encouraged Libbie to throw herself into this work, as the only way she would ever feel at home in her new place. “You have to make it your own,” she admonished, with a mixture of sympathy and firmness. “It is your only home now.”

Libbie took this advice perhaps too much to heart that first winter. The wallpaper she decorated the living room with was an almost exact
match from her mother's house, the only difference being a graduation of color from straw yellow to gold. The furniture she ordered was the same as well, so much so that when the cabinetmaker was uncertain of something she had described he would go by the Darson house to reexamine the original. The only thing she made exception for was the fabric she used to decorate the windows, bedclothes, and cushions. “Each of these has its own character,” she claimed, examining the material.“It's own thing it needs to be to bring the house lively.”

It was as she set about trying to create the house dressings and furniture that she began to find the character of her new rooms. A blue that was originally intended to upholster the sofa might instead become curtains for the windows. The eggshell-colored material meant to be used for the curtains then become the bed sham, and the burgundy she had intended to use as a simple design for pillows turned into a foot-stool for Caleum.

Her husband was happy she had found something to apply her attention to, and he was not in the least bothered by some of the bolder choices she had made, finding the house both more comfortable and more an expression of his wife's personality instead of merely a miniature version of the place where she had grown up. As her work progressed the bare rooms became a welcome retreat for them when that cold winter stretched on longer than usual.

In the morning Caleum would leave before daybreak to attend to the winter work of the farm. During the morning hours, if she had no other substantial chores, Libbie would sit by the window, doing her sewing or embroidering, staring out at the white blanket of snow spread over the hill country. She was by herself all day and all those long hours, surrounded by the still whiteness of the landscape and her own work inside.

She began slowly to grow used to it and, though she had not forgotten her childhood home, was even able to imagine a future for herself there. When the holiday season arrived, though, she began to grow terribly sick after Caleum had gone. She wanted nothing more then than to return to her father's house, where she knew she would be well cared for. Instead, she took to her bed.

When Caleum returned in late afternoon and she finally stood again, she was still light-headed as nausea gripped her entire body. Alarmed
by this, Caleum did the only thing he could think of, which was to go to the main house for help.

When she heard Libbie was sick Adelia took immediate charge, telling Rebecca, her maid, to pack a basket with salts, medicinal roots, and certain herbs that she pointed out in one of the cupboards in the kitchen. When the parcel was prepared, they set out for the other house.

They found Libbie lying in bed, shaking and terrified, as she was so often that first year. Adelia began by asking her when it all started and the exact nature of her symptoms, as Caleum sat helpless and very still at her side.

As Adelia slowly began to hone in on the exact nature of her complaint, she asked Rebecca and Caleum to leave the room so she might have privacy with Libbie. The two of them then spent about twenty minutes talking alone together. Adelia, when she had finished her interview, left the bedroom and mixed a potion of ginger and wild yam root, which she said would make the nausea go away, and told Rebecca to take it to Libbie in her room. She then gave instructions for Caleum to go out and dig up a pound of choice clay.

“What is the clay for?” he asked.

“Just go, dear,” Adelia answered. “I will tell you everything when you return.”

Caleum went off, annoyed that he was being treated like a child again. Nevertheless he took a shovel from the barn and walked half a mile out to the hillside, where they always dug the best clay for firing bricks. After throwing off the snow that had accumulated on top of the ground he attacked the frozen earth with an edge of the shovel, until he had carved the outline of a square. He then stood on top of the shovel with all his weight trying to break this portion free of the ground around it.

The clay, which was beige in summer, was dark with frost and coldness, and it took him the better part of an hour to remove enough to satisfy Adelia's demand. Once he had, he hastened back across the frozen fields to the house, so Libbie's pain might be eased and to learn what was the matter with his wife that she needed dirt.

When he reentered the warm house, he found Libbie sitting up without discomfort for the first time that day, for which he was already thankful to his aunt. Adelia was not done with her cure, however, but took a small piece of the clay he had brought back and fed it to Libbie.
“Take the same amount every morning,” Adelia instructed, after Libbie had swallowed the medicine. “You'll see you feel better directly.”

“What is the matter with her?” Caleum asked, no longer able to remain patient and beginning to fear he had married a sickly woman.

“Why, she is pregnant,” Adelia replied.

Libbie looked at him and smiled weakly. He smiled back at her. She did not seem as afraid as she had been when he first brought her there to Stonehouses. The same, though, could not be said of Caleum himself.

“What do you suppose of that?” he asked, of no one in particular.

“I suppose it means you're going to have a child,” Adelia answered, with a tone that struck him as slightly mocking.

“Thank you,” Caleum retorted. “Whatever would I do without such sound advice?”

Seeing that he was not happy as would be expected but nervous about Libbie's new state, Adelia was softer with him. “You should be thankful,” she said. “It has been a long time since Stonehouses was blessed with the sound of a baby's crying and laughter.”

“Of course, Aunt Adelia,” Caleum said, “I am very glad for it. It is just that I am anxious to do everything properly.”

“You will, husband,” Libbie said to him, knowing how important that was to him. “It isn't, after all, like I am first ever to have a child.”

In the days that followed, though, both Caleum and Libbie were nervous about even the smallest things, so that instead of simply taking a pinch of clay with her fingers to eat each morning, Caleum and Libbie took a balance and weighed the exact amount so it should never fluctuate from what Adelia prescribed.

When Magnus saw how worried his nephew had become over his wife's health, he decided to help relieve his burden by hiring a maid to help them. At first he thought to send Rebecca over to the other house, but Adelia told him medicine was specialized knowledge, and Rebecca would probably cause more harm than help. He then cast about among the other women on the place to see if any were knowledgeable about midwifery and general medicine. When he failed to find any on his own land, he put word out among his neighbors that he was in need of a nursemaid for his daughter-in-law.

Eventually a small brown woman with red-colored hair and the scars of pox on her skin turned up at the door, announcing herself as Claudia
and saying she had come about the midwife job. She was the slave Julius's older sister, and like her brother she was hired out at whatever tasks were available, to earn an income for her master as well as her own keep.

When Magnus interviewed her he was at first happy, thinking she would be perfect, as she was not too much older than Libbie and so could serve as a companion as well. When he thought about Caleum's friendship with her brother, though, he was made wary she might take it as license to overstep her bounds. When he considered she was a slave on top of this, he was struck with further uncertainty, as there had never been anyone working at Stonehouses who was not free to command their own time and labor.

“It isn't as if we would be holding her in bondage,” Adelia argued that night in bed, as they tried to decide whether they should hire Claudia or not. “We are giving her work and paying her a wage for it.”

“It's not Claudia we are paying but her master,” Magnus countered. “She will have to give him whatever she earns.”

“Then we can pay her something just for her, perhaps,” Adelia said, wanting the matter settled quickly. “You'll be doing well by both of them.”

Magnus's mind was still undecided when he woke up the next morning, and sought out Caleum to see what the younger man thought about the idea, thinking to give him final say, as it was after all his roof and not Magnus's she would be housed under.

Caleum, uncertain of the future and wanting whatever support he could have, was of the same opinion as his Aunt Adelia, telling Magnus that they would be doing Claudia a great favor. “Now she has to find work week to week with no guarantee of anything but that she will be hungry again,” he reasoned logically. “Here she will have steady employ and steady meals. She is after all the person most suited. Perhaps we might even try to acquire her outright from her master, and let her use her salary to repay us.”

Magnus was set against the last part of Caleum's scheme, as it would violate all Jasper Merian stood for, even if it would benefit everyone concerned. He looked at the younger man a long time when he said it, thinking Caleum must eventually decide the affairs of his own house.

* * *

Magnus hired Claudia to the position that next afternoon, sending money to her owner in advance for the first six months of her services, so as not to have regular dealings with him.

It was a happy arrangement for all in the end, and Libbie's pregnancy proceeded smoothly, until one day—when Claudia was at the original house with Adelia and Libbie, who was then in her seventh month of pregnancy—Jasper Merian asked who she was.

He was blind as an oracle by then and shriveled as a date in a jar at the bottom of the sea. According to the birthday he had given himself when he emerged from captivity, he was eighty years old, and Magnus had long since stopped consulting him in day-to-day decisions, he being no longer able to discern right from wrong, sense from nonsense—or so it seemed.

When Claudia answered, “I belong to Mr. Barrett and come from his place to help Libbie with her baby,” Merian grew so agitated he started to shake in his seat. Everyone watching was terrified for his health, thinking he was having a convulsive seizure. When it became clear, however, that it was anger that vibrated so through him, they grew even more afraid.

Alas, he could not voice what was in his heart to say. He ended up slurring the beginning of a single word, which was all he could manage, before losing completely the power of speech. Everyone present tried then to decipher what he had attempted to tell them.

He had little formal religion, aside from being once baptized, and he had done as much that was worldly as any man who ever lived, but what they all thought he said was
shame,
or else it was
sin.
It was hard for Magnus, who was sitting closest to him, to know which, but that it was one of them—perhaps even both—he had little doubt. He began to cast about then for some way to remedy the problem, for if he had heard correctly it was very serious business for them all.

“Do you want me to send her away?” Magnus Merian asked his old father in quiet tones, drawing nearer to hear what he would say. Merian shook, and sounded out no, and Magnus comprehended that the thing was done and sending her away would only compound it.

Jasper Merian sat up in his high-backed chair and pounded his fist weakly on the table, until his anger subsided. He had toiled there near half a century without resorting to either imprisoned or indentured
hands to win a livelihood. He had given the same edict to each of his sons as he himself had lived by, hoping they would hold it as dear as he did. For the two, son and grandson, who walked on his dirt every morning and evening, it should have been obvious what free hands could do, and never miss anything for their lack of knowing chains. God had blessed them out there on that land, without ever showing too much the stronger force of His love. He saw doom now before himself.