Now Face to Face (42 page)

She picked up the letter from her grandmother, loosed its wax seal, and spread it open, and scanned it quickly, but at the end she came to news so surprising that she could read no further. She looked up blankly, not seeing her guests here, the small chamber, the elaborate Iroquois cloak, but instead England, Tamworth, Saylor House. She’d thought of all of them at home remaining precisely as they were. The world had tipped to one side. When will it right itself again? I am not the same, she thought. Why would they be?

Colonel Perry reached across and took her hand in his. “Shall I stay the night?”

“No, you are not well. I saw you shivering.”

But she did not read another letter, or let loose of his hand, until they heard the bells on Captain Randolph’s sleigh.

“Tomorrow,” Perry said to her, as they tucked blankets around him; and across the light of a lantern, Barbara met Beth’s eyes.

“I think not,” said Barbara. “Tomorrow, I will come and see you.”

“You will need someone with you at the funeral.”

“I’ll be there,” said Captain Randolph. “You are not the only justice of this county, Edward, though you try to act it.”

Upstairs, Barbara spread the letters out before the fire and began to read. Her grandmother missed her, was sending her geese, a cheese press, other things. She wanted to send bees—there was a whole page on bees, on how her beemaster was quarrelsome and thick-headed, had no imagination. The Duchess quoted him: “‘How would one keep them gentle? How would one keep them from leaving the hive? How would they forage on the long journey over?’ How do I know?” wrote her grandmother. “He is the beemaster, not I.”

Barbara smiled and would have kissed the signature another time, if there hadn’t been a body in her barn. She was to keep careful account of the plantation. She was to think about making wine. Her grandmother was having old clothing sent from London for the slaves. She was to take care of herself and come back home to visit as soon as she could, sooner, for Tamworth was too quiet without her. And by the way, Tony was to marry Harriet Holles, a maid of honor in the Princess of Wales’s court.

Tony’s to marry, thought Barbara. It was proper. He must do so, as duke, just as she had done as the granddaughter of a duke, rectifying her mother’s mistakes by her marriage to Roger.

“Tony is to marry.” She gave the letter to Thérèse.

She opened another, from Jane, reading news about the children, about Ladybeth Farm, where Jane was staying. “I am in despair,” Jane wrote. “Gussy does not love me anymore.” Nonsense, thought Barbara. Silly Jane. When Barbara got home, she’d see it settled. It was all the strain of the last year, Jane’s losing Harry, losing Jeremy, birthing Harry Augustus.

There were two letters left, one from her mother, one from a writer unknown. From her mother, anything was possible, from kind words to cruel. She chose the other letter, reading it slowly once, then once again. Robert Walpole sacrificed Roger, the letter told her, allowed him to be scapegoat, so that other ministers of the King might survive.

She spread out the broadsheets enclosed, feeling ill as she looked at the pictures there—particularly an obscene drawing of Roger, buttocks exaggerated and plump as he raped a figure that represented Britannia. She read the letter once again, looked at the broadsheets. Was it true? Could it be so? She pushed the letter away. I am too upset for this tonight, she thought.

She opened her mother’s letter, which was short, to the point. Tony had fought a duel but was unhurt; however, his opponent had died. Tony was to be married—would be married by the time Barbara received this letter—thanks to the interference of the Duchess. Barbara was a fool and a coward to have run away to Virginia. She might have been Duchess of Tamworth, rather than letting Harriet Holles have that title. Quietly, Barbara folded the letter up. And greetings to you, too, Mother, she thought.

I cannot believe Robin would betray Roger, she thought. They were friends. I cannot believe that Tony, my sweet, grave Tony, has fought a duel and the man died. How Tony must be suffering over that.

The obscene picture of Roger was in her mind. What vileness. What cruelty. But cruelty was everywhere. Look at what lay in the barn. God is everywhere, said Colonel Perry. Let it be so. It must be so.

“You’re certain it isn’t Hyacinthe.”

“Yes,” said Thérèse.

In the corner was an altar Thérèse had made. There was a pillow for her to kneel upon, a homemade carved wooden cross of Blackstone’s. Like Thérèse, he was Catholic; he’d carved it the first year of his indenture. Thérèse prayed for Hyacinthe there. Sometimes for hours, she prayed. The times, she told Barbara, in which my mind goes around and around over him, I must pray or go mad.

She was there now, kneeling in her nightgown and the New Year’s crimson shawl, fingering the beads of her rosary. Barbara took a pillow from the bed and knelt beside her. Her girlhood had been one of prayers; every evening her grandmother read prayers, and there was church on Sunday, she and Harry laughing at Vicar Latchrod’s droning sermons, in a way they would have never dared to laugh at their grandmother. She’d let the habits drop once she married Roger. It was not fashionable to believe in God, and so, to please him, she had not. But now, like Thérèse, she must, or go mad. Bless me, God, in what I am about to do.

Did Robin betray Roger? Why?

S
HE RODE
early to see the vicar the next day, but at first, he would not perform the service.

“Unless it is your boy, I cannot,” he said. “The service is for baptized Christians only.”

“My servant was a baptized Christian,” Barbara said, the line of her jaw standing out.

The vicar looked her up and down. He’s heard already that we don’t believe it Hyacinthe, thought Barbara.

“He must be buried today. He was my dear servant. I swear it.” The lie didn’t trouble her at all.

Captain Randolph and Margaret Cox were waiting at First Curle when she returned with the vicar.

“Colonel Perry has a fever,” Captain Randolph said. “There is another letter for you. The ships are arriving, one after another, to gather up tobacco, so more may come for you over the next months.”

Barbara took it from him, recognizing Wart’s scrawl. “You didn’t have to come,” she said to them, “but I am so very glad you have.”

The afternoon was cold and dreary, threatening more snow. If she’d been in England, there would have been so much to do—funeral invitations to write and send; gloves, mourning rings, and black hatbands to give out; a white-velvet child’s pall to buy for the coffin, which should have lain in state in the house for a while. But she was not in England.

Blackstone and all the slaves were at the grave, dug this morning. The vicar, clearly disapproving, made the service short. Onto the coffin Barbara and Thérèse threw clods of dirt and some rosemary Thérèse had found frozen in the garden.

“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life,” said the vicar, and it was ended.

“There is going to be a fine freeze this night,” Blackstone said.

“How do you know?” Margaret Cox’s question was sharp. Tobacco seedlings had to survive this and other shifts of weather until April, when, as leggy plants, they were moved into hoed fields during the rains that came that month.

Blackstone pointed toward one of the slaves, the one from whose foot several toes had been severed. “He is never wrong.”

“I must be off,” said the vicar, looking toward the sky.

“I’ll have to be going, too,” Mrs. Cox said. “You’ll understand if I don’t stay with you this afternoon. William, are you coming with me?”

Captain Randolph nodded his head. Barbara understood. They would be seeing that their seedbeds were covered with an extra layer of hay, just as Barbara would do today.

“With your permission,” Blackstone said to Barbara, once Randolph and Mrs. Cox were gone, “the slaves would like to send him on his way properly before we cover the grave and then attend to your seedlings.”

“Yes. Let them do what they wish.”

It was wild and strange, and in Barbara’s eyes, wonderful, far better than the vicar’s thin, reedy voice reading the funeral service. One of the slaves put a homemade bow and three arrows into the grave. Another came forward and poured something over the coffin. Another broke bread and threw it into the grave. The yard slave put a knife beside the bow.

“Rum,” said Blackstone, explaining each gesture. “‘I give libation to the Earth because she receives the dead in her pocket,’ that is what he is saying. ‘Receive this food,’ the other is saying. ‘Forgive them that they did not offer it first to you, O Mother Earth, as should be. They are ignorant in their hearts, like children untaught.’ The slaves give him the bow and arrows, the knife, the food and rum, to sustain and protect his spirit on his long journey home.”

“Home?”

“They believe their souls return at death to the place from which they came.”

Now the slaves were throwing dirt upon the coffin. One after another they came and scooped up the cold, damp earth and threw it down. As some of them shoveled dirt onto the coffin, others began to sing; the sound of the words rose up lone and fierce to the low, gray clouds, alien, odd, somehow right. Someone began to beat a drum slowly. The three women Barbara owned—Mama Zou, the yard slave, the girl Belle—tore at their faces with their fingernails and added their cries—higher, piercing—to the men’s.

“They mourn. ‘It is your grandchild who has died,’ they are telling the Earth,” said Blackstone. “‘Bless him,’ they are saying, ‘upon his journey.’”

An impulse rose in Barbara. She felt suddenly as if pieces of herself were crying out for relief. She moved into the circle of slaves who were dancing in place, and pulled out the pins in her hair and shook it free, pulling at her face the way the women were doing. She stomped and shouted the way the men did.

“I weep,” she cried. “I mourn, I do not approve! Bless this child! Bless me! Bless all of us! Take this grief from me.
Take it.
”

Blackstone put his arms around Thérèse and rubbed his chin in her hair as he watched. She is not the least ashamed, he thought, his eyes following Barbara as she danced and cried and sang. She acts like no duke’s granddaughter now, no countess with her lace and patches, but some kind of wild woman. Free. Desperate, fierce, grieving, as much a part of the circle of slaves as if she were one of them.

He could see the slaves were startled, but they moved aside for her after a moment, accepting her and her feelings. Did she know she honored them by honoring their customs? She was saying, Yes, your gods are my gods. She would be blessed for that. They would bless her.

Her grandfather had been a famous general. Everyone had known of Richard Saylor, had heard some story of his bravery in battle, his kindness and steadfastness in life. The slaves would say her grandfather’s spirit walked in her. If she were a man—my commander—I believe I would follow her to hell, Blackstone thought. Just like this, with her hair down, her face wild, and her spirit free.

Chapter Twenty

T
HAT NIGHT,
B
LACKSTONE STOOD BEFORE
B
ARBARA IN THE PARLOR
. He had been summoned there.

“I am freeing the slaves,” she said to him, as cool as if she had announced the choice of a different field to hoe for spring. “There will be a prison ship in the river in the spring, and you are to go and choose men from it, buy up their time—”

“The tobacco seedlings, the fields, the marsh—” Blackstone stammered. He was so surprised.

“That work will all be done. You are in charge, to decide when each slave is to be freed. It can’t all be done at once, I understand that. As we add a man, we will free a slave. I have much land patented. We’ll send the slaves there, have them build the dwelling that I must build to keep the deed to what I’ve surveyed and patented. We’ll give them the wages we would give anyone else. Also some acres of land among the various tracts I’ve bought, so that they have something.”

“Your grandmother—”

“My grandmother placed me in charge of this plantation. She has every confidence in me—has always had confidence in me. And you’re free, too.” She held up a paper; it was the paper marking Blackstone as criminal, sealed by the keeper of the Tower of London, stating the amount of time he was to serve. She walked to the fire and threw the paper in. “You do not owe me any more time.”