Now Face to Face (6 page)

Roger, she called. I have to speak with you. The man standing with him turned to face her. It was Philippe.

Barbara woke, her heart beating, Philippe still vivid in her mind, standing before her in all his solid hauteur; that dueling scar across one cheek. Dangerous Philippe, her enemy, her foe, a snake. She hated him. It was hard to wake to hatred.

She sat up, taking in her surroundings. She was in the attic of the house on First Curle, a room that spread across the two chambers below. She touched her left breast. Her heart was aching, a literal ache. Philippe hurt her, even here.

She stepped over Hyacinthe, who slept bundled in a blanket on the floor beside the bed. The dogs had abandoned her in the night and slept with him. Harry raised his head. She shook her head and put her finger to her lips.

She found a shawl, wrapped it around her shoulders, opened the door, and slipped down the stairs. Trunks and barrels crowded the hall. She could hear the Governor snoring. His bed was in one of the two chambers that made up the downstairs of this house, a simple house, sturdy, solid, like a cottage on one of her grandmother’s farms.

Lifting the latch to the door, she stepped out into cool dawn, as a dog went running past her. Harry. As impetuous as her own dear brother, thus his name. Charlotte was the lazy dog, who would sleep as long as Hyacinthe did. Barbara stood on the steps of the house.

Four huge pine trees, so large she could not have encircled their trunks with her arms, were before her in the house yard. Beyond, a road ran through a meadow that became woods. To her left, behind a fence of rails, was an orchard. A chicken landed in the yard from nowhere. Then she saw that there were chickens in the trees. There they had roosted for the night; with the sun’s light, they were waking.

Back in the house, she walked down the hall to the door at the other end and stepped out into this yard. This side of the house faced a creek, but the creek could not be seen, nor could the river up which they’d traveled. That made the house seem like a secret, like an afterthought set in woods and fields. There was a picket fence here, with tobacco fields on its other side. A garden here took the whole yard, a garden cut into rectangles outlined with oyster shell. In one corner of the yard was the privy house. Barbara went to it and opened the door, the smell a familiar, privy smell. So. The kitchen and well, smokehouse and woodpile were to her right.

She knelt at a rectangle of neglected garden, moving leaves and debris to see what there was. Some herbs: straggling marigold and lavender and marjoram, a cabbage head, lamb’s lettuce, and a vine. A wave of homesickness spread over her, so strong she thought she might die from it.

Grandmama, she thought, it is not as we imagined. There is forest all around. There is neither lawn nor landscape pool nor fountain. In her mind was Tamworth Hall, the home of her girlhood, its twisted chimney stacks, the grape arbor, the terrace, the fish ponds, the deer park, the woods she walked through to reach Jane’s house, the lane to church. She could see Devane House in its splendor—the marble from Italy, the paintings by Verrio, a green silk bedchamber. The dog Harry appeared to sniff among the herbs, and she shooed him away, stood, wearily, feeling far older than her one-and-twenty years.

Who’d planted the daffodils and lilies whose dark green leaves grew along the fence? she wondered. Jordan Bolling was the name on the deed to this plantation, but the sight of the lilies, the daffodils, made her wonder if this Jordan had had a wife. And what had happened to her when she learned her husband had died? No wife, but rather this Valentine Bolling, had written to her grandmother asking to buy back the plantation.

The Governor would row away today to return to his duties and Williamsburg. He wanted her to return with him. For the first time, standing here in what was farm cut out of forest, Barbara seriously considered it.

She tilted her head to listen to the morning silence, which was not silence, but, like Tamworth’s, a country quiet in which one heard birds calling one another, small creatures rustling, the wind in the tops of the trees, and finally, if one was attentive, oneself.

I hate weak, whining women, Bab; I have no patience for them, said her grandmother in her mind.

Neither, Grandmama, do I.

Years, my Bab, it takes years—not days, not months, but years—to recover if the grief is deep enough.

How many years, Grandmama?

Don’t look at me with that impatient expression upon your face. Two, perhaps three, more.

Bah.

Bah, yourself, Bab. You’ve lost everything—husband, brother, home, fortune, dreams, all you thought to have. Give yourself the time to heal from those losings. There will be other dreams.

Other dreams? Other loves? Here? Barbara looked around, taking in the small, sturdy house, its clearing, the barn in the distance, the fields all around, the thick woods.

On her fingers was the soil of the garden, rich and crumbling. Tobacco tires land, she remembered a Major Custis saying in Williamsburg, so that more land is always necessary. She turned in a circle, slowly, trying to decide what she’d do.

B
ARBARA STOOD
with the Governor at the first creek that cut through her plantation. His slaves were in the galley, waiting to pole it out into the river.

“I only leave because I have no other choice. I have a meeting with my council that I may not miss. But I don’t like this,” said Spotswood. “It is settled then; you will come to Williamsburg a month from now, in October, during our village fair, and I will give a fête for you, to introduce you to the colony as you should be introduced. I will send this galley from Williamsburg for you, and you can ride back down the river in style.”

Can you last until October? he was thinking, remembering the expression upon her face as she’d walked up from the creek yesterday, toward an empty house engulfed by woods and fields. You’ve pride, he thought, perhaps too much. He’d stop by Perry’s Grove, tell Edward Perry to see to her. That thought made him feel better. The Lionheart would have approved of Edward Perry. There wasn’t a better man in all Virginia. She is quite courageous, he’d tell Perry, wishing to do her duty to her grandmother, to learn the plantation, but I wouldn’t leave my daughter alone in such a forsaken place; no, I would not.

Barbara held out her hand.

“Thank you for seeing me to my journey’s end. I will write to my grandmother and my cousin, the Duke of Tamworth, of your many kindnesses to me—and they were kindnesses. Safe journey, sir.”

“Remember, Lady Devane, if you need anything, Colonel Perry is at Perry’s Grove, and you can reach your closest neighbors by foot within an hour.”

“Yes.” Her grandmother’s solicitor in Williamsburg had drawn a map. It was in the house.

“Remember if you ride out alone to take a blanket and knife with you, and something to start a fire.”

“Yes, yes, I remember. Good-bye.”

Spotswood stepped into the galley and gestured for the slaves to begin poling out of the creek and into the river. “Mind you make sure there is plenty of firewood cut. The weather here can change abruptly once autumn comes.”

He called various other reminders as she followed along the bank of the creek, stepping through clumps of small bushes and around saplings, her boots sinking into leaves and mud. The galley slipped into the river. She and Hyacinthe ran to the riverbank.

Spotswood cupped his hands around his mouth to shout. “You are not as alone as you think. The Randolphs are down the river—”

Waving, the chant the slaves rowed to floating across the water to her, she shaded her eyes to watch until the galley rounded a bend in the river, a curl. Well, she thought, I am on my own. She looked around herself, at trees, river, fields. Not as alone as you think, the Governor had said, but at this moment, the strangeness of her surroundings felt overwhelming. You are leaving everything you know, leaving people who love you, leaving position and court, her mother had shouted. Once you arrive there, it won’t be as you imagine. Nothing ever is.

Never run away from the truth, because it sits upon your shoulder. When you least expect it to, it will put its ugly face into yours and say boo. A saying of her grandmother’s. What have I taken on? thought Barbara. What do I know of running a plantation? Why did I not simply return with the Governor? Boo.

Barbara glanced down at Hyacinthe’s face. He looked forlorn. What have I brought my beloved servants to? she thought. She squeezed Hyacinthe’s hand, and they began to walk back through the fields to the house.

We ought not to plant this field again, she thought, but let it grow to grass so that the house has a wide lawn running to the river.

Upstairs, in the house, a clothing trunk had been opened; out of it spilled a welter of ribbons, laces and feathers, shoes, stockings, gloves, stays, garters, chemises, the accoutrements of a woman of birth and name. Shawls, cloaks, lace caps, scarves, muffs, fans. They looked odd here, out of place. Thérèse knelt on the floor, sorting through satin ribbons, cherry, silver tissue, cinnamon, sky, colors Barbara had worn before mourning. There, among a pile of stark black widow’s gowns, were others peeping out: dove, daffodil, primrose. For use when her mourning was over. At Christmas, Roger would have been dead a year. Would they last here that long? What was she to do? How did she begin?

She sat down, thinking that Jordan Bolling must have sent to London for this big bed, with its high, carved bedposts; across the room stood a matching chest on tall legs.

How to begin? said her grandmother in her mind. By beginning. Order out of chaos.

“We must make bed curtains, Thérèse, before winter comes, so that we can close them around the bed against cold. Hyacinthe, I must begin to sort myself out. Find paper and pen. They might be in the parlor—”

“Parlor? Where in this tiny cottage is a parlor?” Thérèse was scornful.

Better than weeping, thought Barbara. “The chamber with my chairs and table is now the parlor. See if there is paper and pen and ink there, Hyacinthe.”

“There are those narrow beds downstairs, Thérèse. If we were to put one up here in that corner, and pull the big chest before it, Hyacinthe would have his own place.”

What must I do? thought Barbara. Explore the whole plantation, ride across the river to see the other quarters, meet the two other overseers, introduce myself to neighbors. Neighbors were important here, the Governor had said. People depended upon one another here, he said. This house needed scrubbing and polishing. They must see what stores, what food was in the basement. She needed a counting of cattle and hogs and household goods. She needed an accounting of the tobacco being harvested.

There was a storehouse on the second creek. The tobacco ships took on the tobacco there. She would need to look it over. At Tamworth Hall, in autumn, fruit was picked from the orchards for the making of wines and cordials and for cooking; hogs were killed, and sausages and puddings made; wood was cut and stored; nuts were picked from under the trees; candles were poured, seeds and herbs preserved, meat salted. Wasn’t it the same everywhere, the provisioning for winter? They’d provision for winter, then.

Suddenly she saw the small wooden box among her ribbons and scarves. Thérèse tried to cover it with a scarf, but too late. Barbara knelt among the ribbons and opened it. Inside were plans and drawings, all that was left of the great house Roger had built in London, Devane House. And there was a pair of leather gloves—hers, kept by Roger in this box. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life, her grandmother had read to her from the Bible. Roger, thought Barbara, you were my heart. How do I forget you?

The attic door swung open. It was Hyacinthe, and from the expression upon his face, it was clear that excitement had come to First Curle.

“Monsieur Bolling is here.”

Bolling? The infamous Valentine Bolling?

“A visitor, Thérèse,” Barbara said, suddenly as excited as Hyacinthe. “Our first visitor.” She put her hands to her hair. “Hyacinthe, you go and tell him that I will be with him soon. Beg his forgiveness and give him something to drink. What, Thérèse? What will we give him to drink, other than water from the well? Well, you go to the old kitchen slave and ask her where things are, Hyacinthe. Do what you can until I appear. Quickly, Thérèse, I don’t want to be rude to my first guest.”

Even as the door was closing, Barbara was untying ties on her gown; in a moment she was in another—black, of course—and as Thérèse tied and buttoned it, she repinned her hair. In another moment, Thérèse had opened a jar of rouge and was patting it into Barbara’s cheeks. Another moment, and patches were found, those tiny, soft, dark shapes of silk, glued to the face with mastic, that were so fashionable in London.

“By my brow and my mouth, only,” Barbara commanded. “Give me the rouge, and that piece of mirror. Hurry, hurry, Thérèse.”

Deftly, too impatient to wait for Thérèse, she put rouge on her lips, combed her lashes and brows with lead combs, and went down the stairs to meet her first guest.

How kind of him to call, she was thinking, and there was a sudden pang as Roger came into her mind, his manners so polished there was no imperfection to them. He would have called upon a new neighbor, would have welcomed her in every way. In the hall, she moved swiftly into the parlor, expecting to see a man sitting in one of her French chairs. There was no one, not even Hyacinthe. She could hear the dogs barking from behind a closed door, but when she opened the door to the other chamber across the hall, only the dogs looked back at her. She went to the window and looked out. No one there either.