Now Face to Face (58 page)

“Is it true you are the only one those geese like, Edward?” asked Captain Randolph. “Do you know they chased me all the way back to my home the other day when I walked over to call.”

“Geese like saints,” said Custis.

I smell jasmine, thought Barbara, and dogwood, night and river. Harry ran ahead of her as she walked away from them. The full moon lit their way. At the first creek, she stepped out of her shoes, ran lithely along a plank, and stepped into the dinghy, Harry following. The moon above was like a coin. In the river, its reflection smiled upward. She began to row, taking pleasure in her skill, her strength, much increased with time.

Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.

In the river, she undid the sail, tied the ropes fast, pulled in the oar, put her hand on the tiller. The wind on the river was just right. It was like sitting upon the back of a bird.

She sailed by the party upon the bank. They waved and whistled to her, and daringly, she stood and bowed to them, the dinghy skimming along.

Around a bend, when she felt safe and secluded, she dropped the anchor, lay back to stare up at the moon, bits of conversation echoing in her mind. Land: The Governor had talked of land in two new counties when he’d come to call, telling her she ought to patent it, that he would personally see her deeds approved. So now she’d patented land in those counties.

She undid the lacings of her gown and the pins of her undergown, pulled her chemise from her body, and dropped, like a stone, into the water. It was cold, too cold. In her mind was the image of Blackstone, the expression upon his face as he kissed crumbs from Thérèse’s fingers. She began to swim.

Harry barked. He would bark until she was aboard, but she swam until she was tired and numb with cold. Shivering, she pulled herself into the dinghy and dried herself with the chemise, looking down at her pale body, chaste now. She breathed in the moon and the river.

Charles would never believe there had been no lovers for her, but then, the truth be told, she’d never been as wild as people thought. The wildness had been for Roger. See me, it said. Love me, it said. Others do. Why not you? Roger. She breathed in the moon and river.

What will I do with all this passion inside me, she wondered, all the fire and grief and tenderness mixed within me? I could be like Aunt Shrew and collect men like jewelry. Do I want to do that? No.

Make the bones which thou hast broken rejoice. Hyacinthe’s loss has broken me, and I am not the same. Will there ever be rejoicing again? What have I learned in Virginia? What do I take back with me? The ability to build a fire, to sail a dinghy. She looked up at the moon. The ability to survive, to run a plantation for months, to make decision after decision about it. I am not frightened now to go back to England and look at the debris of my estate.

The girl in me is clear-eyed, absolutely determined—worse, in some ways, than ever. She laughed softly, and the laughter was like a spring gurgling, beguiling and charming. If Roger knew me now, she thought, he would be mine. But if I knew him now, would I be his?

It saddened her, that into her love for Roger had come questions and disillusionment, as if in her maturing, she looked at him and saw his flaws. What a burden he had left her—the debt, the fine. She had no illusions about what she faced. Yet she loved him. He was the love of her girlhood, and that she would always honor.

If you hurt Roger, Robin, I will avenge him, she thought, and the bones of her face set in a look those at home knew only too well. She was going to make an entry when she returned. Her arrival was not going to go unnoticed. She was going to bring the finest, the most remarkable gifts she could find to His Majesty, to the Prince and Princess. They were not going to be able to ignore her or dismiss her.

Lacing herself back into her clothes as well as she could, she thought: The flirtatious, talking, jangling Barbara of my failed marriage is gone. Loss has burned her up, chastened her, tempered her, so that, like wood hollowed out to make a music pipe, I am something else now. What? Who? What is it now that I want to do with my life? What is it I desire? What is it I need? Truth: I want to live a life of truth and not lies. That, at least, has come out of this winter of grief.

She wiggled her toes in the water, staring down at them. She was going to begin the fight, the campaign, the dance, to return Devane Square to that which was thriving and vital again. She was excited by that, proud of her labors here.

She was going to seek a position at court. It would give her a place of safety—those she owed would be hesitant to force anything—from which to maneuver. There was other land Roger had bought. If land was important here, was it not important at home? Roger had had a gift for knowing what would be desired later, what would or could develop into something special. There was a warehouseful of furnishings, treasures Roger had accumulated, not touched by the South Sea fine. They might be sold, carefully, piece by piece. They’d sell even higher if she seemed reluctant to let them go.

Tommy Carlyle. He knew all. He was an arbiter of taste. She was going to befriend him, use him to guide her. People followed his lead. He’d help make her tobacco fashionable.

Adventure, said Wart.

No, no more adventure for a time. She would proceed in an orderly fashion, a quiet fashion—Tony would be so pleased—to salvage herself and her estate. She would be placid and quiet in all her affairs, obedient, good, kind, meek. She smiled. She had never been able to be any of those for long—and likely her time here in Virginia had just made her worse. Never mind it, her grandmother would say, at least you are not dull. You’re fine as you are, my Bab.

Grandmama.

Barbara closed her eyes. You are so dear to me. I love you so. It will be so good to see you again, and Tony, and Jane.

I will make friends with Tony’s wife so that she allows me a little of his company. Oh, Tony, you were so kind when Roger died, and I was too distraught to see it. But I see it clearly now. How can I repay you? What if I don’t like your wife? What if she is mean-spirited or cruel to you? What shall I do? I won’t behave, I know it. Oh, well.

Rowing back around the bend, she saw her fire smoldering. Everyone was gone. She rowed as close as she could, stepped into the water, pulled the dinghy up, and poked at the coals with a stick; the fire burned brighter. She dragged some large limbs across it, and it flickered up at them. There was a blanket; Thérèse must have brought it. She wrapped it around herself and lay down in the sand, her cheek against it, moving her fingers in the soft sand.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. Within you is all you need, said Colonel Perry. That is what you bring back with you from Virginia.

Harry moved to lie against her stomach. The Governor would likely wish her to take letters, begging letters, pleading for his position.

Robert Walpole lies with my mother. She’d not told the Governor that, but she smiled at the expression she could imagine upon his face if he knew. Walpole is your enemy, Carlyle had said.

She turned on her side and slept for a time, waking with the feeblest light of dawn. There was Colonel Perry, against the bank, wrapped in a blanket, asleep himself; upon her, another blanket. She stood, shivering, stretching, saw the barrel Major Custis had fished out of the river. “Pork,” read the stamp on its side. Someone had broken it open. Walking over to it, she stared down.

Colonel Perry opened his eyes to see her squatting, rifling through wet tobacco leaves.

“Many smuggle, Barbara,” he said. “I’ve done so myself. By law, all the tobacco must go to England, and we must take the price we can, besides pay import duties, so that in hard times, we make less than nothing for our tobacco, pile up a loss to send it over. Tobacco is selling low, lower than anyone imagined last year at this time. I’m not the only one who knows it now. It may be years before we look at profits. You cannot blame a man if he finds a better market elsewhere, particularly when his plantation is mortgaged. Men make laws, Barbara, men like myself, like you, men with faults, with greed in them, with malice. There are bad laws, as well as good ones.”

“I could take Bolling to court.”

“For what?”

“On a charge of smuggling. With this as evidence.”

“You could. But half the men who tried him would have done the same, and would be reluctant to convict him for a crime they all commit and see little harm in.”

“I could tell the Governor.”

“You could do that. Remember, however, he is governor only for a time. He will have other things upon his mind, such as salvaging what he can; adding more enemies to his list of those already there will not be wise.”

“Why not, if he is no longer governor?”

“I don’t think he intends to return to England. I think he intends to live on his plantation in the mountains. He won’t want more enemies.”

“I feel as if something significant, something large, has just brushed its wings against me, and for the life of me I do not understand. It has to do with this barrel.”

“The sun is rising. Here’s the new day. Come and sit by me. How I will miss you. Do you know the psalm of David that begins, ‘He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty’? You must, if your grandmother reads prayers every night. I thought so. Say it now with me, as we watch the sun rise.”

She lay back against him. He took her hand in his and brought it to his mouth and kissed the fingers one by one.

“I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.”

“I know no more,” said Barbara.

He continued alone:

“Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.”

He hugged Barbara, skipping several verses.

“‘For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.’ Remember that, Barbara.”

The sun was up. A new day had begun.

Chapter Thirty-one

J
UST DON’T STAND THERE
. P
UT THEM ALL ABOUT THE ALTAR
,” said Annie.

They’d heard the first cuckoo. It was April. Bluebells and lady’s-smocks were blooming.

In Tamworth Church, Annie watched Bathsheba begin to arrange boughs from the plum and apple trees, the cherry and almonds, blossoms shut tight yet, but lovely, like lacy, airy fairies landed, wings held in. “Laurence Slane is not in London,” wrote the Duke of Tamworth. Annie gathered a handful of willow branches to begin hanging them about the church walls, but then walked instead to the window and looked out. Her view was the graveyard, in which leaned gravestones and cracked table tombs, a scene defined by the lead crisscrossings in the window out of which she looked.

The election was just over. The men who were allowed to vote in Tamworth had elected Tommy Carlyle, as the Duke of Tamworth had requested them to do.

Clouds were gathering above yew trees, whose tops had begun to sway a bit as the wind grew rougher. There would be rain tonight, thought Annie, trying to still the sensation of foreboding within her. They’d have to walk to church in the rain on the morrow. It was Palm Sunday.

The coming celebrations of April spread themselves out in Annie’s mind. On Maundy Thursday, the Duchess and all the servants would wash the feet of vagabonds and beggars, giving them food and coins. On Good Friday, Cook would make his hot cross buns, the cross of sugar sticky and sweet atop the bun, and then would come Easter.

Festivals and rituals, marking their year.

Christ our passover is sacrificed for us, Vicar Latchrod would say, therefore let us keep the feast; Not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness: but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

“Tell me the rest of the last lines of your duty toward your neighbor.” She was teaching the Gypsy the catechism. She didn’t know why.