Now Face to Face (20 page)

He closed his eyes to the night, which inked all the woods, the fields, the creeks, like so many small fingers of the river, inked marshes and swamps. The river was narrower here at First Curle, curling back on itself, but broader farther south, so broad near the village of Williamsburg that it stretched several miles across. It was friend, enemy, provider, deep enough that ships sailed far up its waters, in search of what had defined this colony, its settlements, its laws, its increase, its cruelty to others: tobacco.

Chapter Nine

S
HE IS WEARING PEARLS TONIGHT
. T
HEY ARE IN HER HAIR, IN
her ears, everywhere.”

“I wish her slave boy and the dogs had come with her. They say the slave speaks French. They say he has a suit finer than the Governor’s. I wanted so to see the dogs….”

The large hall of the Governor’s house was crowded, and the two parlors on the east side of the house were already so filled that it was becoming impossible for people to find a place to stand comfortably. Every woman was in her best gown, every man in his finest coat and wig, for this occasion, the finale in the Governor’s introduction of their famous visitor from England. The village of Williamsburg was at bursting point; people crowded in with any cousin or friend who lived or kept a house here; the rest parceled out at the few taverns or among those who lived on nearby plantations. Tonight was the final extravagance, a fête with an orchestra—two violins, an hautboy, three flutes, and a harp especially shipped in from the colony of Maryland.

Outside, on the grassy terraces stepping down to the landscape canel, Colonel Bolling and Klaus Von Rothbach had begun to quarrel.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Bolling said. “I expected you to be gone.”

“I would not miss this. I’ve come to dance,” Klaus said. Bolling swiveled and saw that Klaus’s eyes went to Lady Devane, to Barbara, who was walking with the Governor and Colonel Perry. She rustled and shimmered like a slight young tree moved by wind. She wore a gown of shining black tabby—a watered silk—with heavier sleeves, stitched in a diamond pattern with silver thread. At one shoulder was a knot of silver and black ribbons, also at her bodice, where the gown made a V to show the swell of her breasts. There was a long necklace of pearls wound round her neck. Her hair was powdered, her cheeks rouged; there were patches at her mouth and brows, brows darkened with lead combs, as were her lashes. She smiled right and left at the people who greeted her. There were heavy pearl drops in her ears. Her pearl-headed hairpins held trailing black and gray feathers in place. She wore white stockings, black brocade shoes with ivory heels and ivory buckles, a pearl bracelet over long gloves, a heavy pearl ring. Bolling’s eyes narrowed.

“You’ve a voyage to make, as I remember,” Bolling said. “One hundred barrels of tobacco, as much tobacco as possible pressed into them this last month, the word ‘pork’ burned into every barrel. It puts me on edge that you are still here.”

“And make the voyage I will. The sloop is ready. I sailed her up from the Harrisons’ yesterday. She sits even now in the creek. The Countess’s creek.”

“And the barrels?”

“In the storehouse. I return tonight, and we will load the barrels and be off by afternoon tomorrow. No one will ever be the wiser.”

“It would be better to be sailing tonight. It’s what I pay you for, to be better. You came to see her.” Bolling, squat, solid, unrestrained, jabbed his finger in Barbara’s direction. “Don’t be a fool, Klaus. She is a duke’s granddaughter. She does nothing more than toy with the likes of you. You’ve got a widow in your pocket with a fine plantation, land, relatives on half the council. Don’t ruin that over her.”

“You told me to keep her occupied. If it weren’t for my visits to First Curle, she might not be here tonight. It was in her mind not to come to Williamsburg at all, because her boy’s sick. Go away, Uncle. Leave me alone.” I am the one who will be at sea for weeks on end, thought Klaus. I am the one who will be hanged for smuggling.

“You go away—go back to the creek, load those barrels, go. I don’t like it that you’re here. I don’t like it at all.”

Klaus didn’t answer, and after staring at him a moment, Bolling walked angrily away.

Barbara, sitting under the garden’s trees, watched the moths that fluttered all about the lanterns. Every now and again, she could not keep herself from rising to try and wave a moth away, but the gesture was useless. The candles flaming inside lanterns lured them irresistibly, and on the ground under each lantern were tens of dead or dying moths.

“A man from the convict ships is overseer of one of my quarters across the river,” Barbara was saying to the Governor and Colonel Perry. “His name is John Blackstone and his indenture is for ten years. How often do these convict ships land?”

“One can expect them several times a year.”

“His Majesty dumps the undesirables—thieves and murderers—from his prisons among us, as if we were a closestool,” said Colonel. Perry. “I do not like it.”

“There is room enough here for all,” said Governor Spotswood.

Barbara had crossed the river, ridden over to the quarter clearing there, a crude cabin in a field of tobacco stubble, to meet the third of the overseers, John Blackstone, who dressed in rags, with a wild, unkempt beard, his hair long and tied back with a rag. He said he soothed the Africans by playing his bagpipes to them at night: They are Jacobites like me now, he said. A cousin of his was a factor, or agent, of a tobacco firm in Glasgow and lived somewhere on the river so that he might more easily buy tobacco for the firm. The cousin had had the bagpipes sent to Blackstone, who piped Barbara a farewell as she rode off, Hyacinthe behind her on the horse. She thought, as the odd, harsh sounds of the bagpipe filled all the woods; I must tell them at home of this, of this half-wild Scot living among my grandmother’s slaves, who dance to the wail of bagpipe. Blackstone’s quarter produced much tobacco.

“Blackstone is neither a thief nor a murderer,” said Barbara. “He came to us compliments of the battle of Sheriffmuir.” At Sheriffmuir, James III had vied with George of Hanover for the English crown after Queen Anne died. But James had gotten no farther than Scotland, had ended sailing away again, leaving Scots clansmen to fight English, Hanoverian, and Dutch troops.

“Yes,” answered the Governor. “In 1716 His Majesty sent a ship of captured traitors to us here.”

“You’ve a Jacobite, have you?” said Perry. “I’d forgotten Blackstone was Jacobite.”

“Jacobite, from the Latin
Jacobus,
for James,” said Spotswood.

“We call a man Pretender,” said Perry, “who is the son of James II, the nephew of Charles II, the grandson of Charles I, and the great-grandson of James I—and James I was Queen Elizabeth’s chosen heir.”

“We do it because to do otherwise is now treason,” said Spotswood, heavily.

God bless the Church; God bless the King, the Church’s defender; God bless, there is no harm in blessing, the Pretender. But who is that Pretender, and who that King, God bless us all, is quite another thing.

What would Governor Spotswood do now if I should recite that to him? Barbara wondered. Farewell Old Year, for thou with Broomstick Hard had drove poor Tory from St. James’s Yard. Farewell Old Year, Old Monarch, and old Tory; farewell Old England, thou hast lost thy Glory—so they were saying up and down England in 1715 and 1716, as one after another of the great, noble Tories left, afraid of threatened treason trials, as elections for the House of Commons were held, and the Tories were beaten by Whigs as never before. It had been an ugly, perilous time. By law, the throne went to a cousin, George of Hanover, because he was Protestant and Jamie was Catholic. Yet many felt James was the rightful king. It was said that in the last year of her life, when she was so ill, even Queen Anne wished the throne to go to her half brother, whom she had betrayed years before. Certain Tories had gambled she’d see it happen. The broomstick had reached Barbara’s family. Without saying good-bye or even sending a note, her father had vanished, leaving her mother, like a scalded cat, to survive his branding as a Jacobite.

John Blackstone had fallen to his knees in disbelief, and then mock worship, when she’d repeated those verses to him. Treason, Hyacinthe had hissed at her, wedged as he was into the saddle behind her.

And what would Governor Spotswood say, Barbara wondered, if I told him my father was a Jacobite and had to flee England to save his head, that he died in service of the Pretender? No, in fact, by the time my father died, he had no loyalty left, not even to himself. He’d wasted it away.

She looked to the moths and their dangerous desire for light, thinking of her father, whom she and Harry had seen buried in Italy. Your father’s a fool, her grandmother had once said, in a terrible temper because the Hanovers had come to the throne more easily than anyone had predicted and her father’s disloyalty now threatened the entire family and all they had attained. I curse the day your mother married him, her grandmother had said, though marriage to your mother is curse enough.

Music drifted out of the Governor’s house. People strolled the walks, their conversations a soft murmur. Thinking of my father has made me sad, thought Barbara, that we pursue so passionately the wrong things.

“You owe me a dance, I believe. I’ve come down the river to dance with every pretty woman in sight, and I must begin with you.”

Barbara unfurled her fan and looked over its edge at Klaus. Was he the wrong thing to be pursuing?

“I’m in mourning, Captain Von Rothbach. I won’t be dancing tonight.”

“Not even once?”

“Not even once.”

“That is my great misfortune. And when does your mourning end?”

“Christmas Day.”

“I’ll call the day after. Governor, Colonel Perry.” He bowed and smiled and strode away.

“The dancing will be beginning,” said Spotswood. “Come and see it. There is not an ill dancer in my colony, and Captain Von Rothbach is among the best.” From the Governor’s house came a joyous whoop, then shouts, as if some performance was stirring up the crowd.

“Go on with the Governor,” Perry said. “I wish to stay outside awhile, but I will come and sit by you later, if I may.”

In the hall, a circle had formed, in the midst of which Klaus danced. No one else—and they were all good dancers—displayed his vigor and zest. His partner, a plump, dark-haired woman, was shrieking as he lifted her high in the air, a movement from a dance that went back to the time of King Henry VIII. People stood against the wall clapping and calling out Klaus’s name every time he performed an intricate step. His face shone with perspiration; he’d taken off his wig and thrown it to one side. Barbara watched. Is that his widow? she wondered. From across the room she saw Bolling standing in a doorway, watching also, a frown on his face.

She walked over to him and said, “Let there be peace between us. My brother cut his throat with a razor. There’s been one death given for another, my precious brother’s for your Jordan’s. An eye for an eye. The score between us is even.”

He stared at her, then said, “Only, madam, if the razor was dull.”

She would have struck him then with her fan, but he caught her arm, held it low. “You play with my nephew. He has a fine plump widow dancing with him right now, a widow who would walk away from him if she knew how he flirted with you. You’ve taken my plantation, and now you meddle in what is none of your affair. There is nothing a woman like you can give a man like my nephew but heartache. You know it, and I know it. And of the two of us, Lady Devane, I, at least, am honest enough to say it.”

Barbara stepped back, turned, and walked away from the hall, down a narrow corridor, going quickly up the stairs, not to the bedchamber given her, but rather up the narrow steps to the third story of the house. Around a dark corner was the circular stair leading up into the roof’s cupola, a narrow space, windowed all around. Barbara pushed up a window and stepped out onto the roof—it was flat here, with a railing on all four sides—and took a deep breath.

The night was soft around her and chill. The sky blazed with stars. Words filled her head. Klaus saying, “You owe me a dance, I believe.” Owe? What did she owe anyone? Words Roger had written in his love letters, stealing the words of his favorite poet, John Donne, for his own ends, filled her mind, her clever Roger—but not clever enough for his ambitions; too clever, and then he had died: Come live with me, and be my love, / And we will some new pleasures prove.