Of Noble Family (25 page)

She had sent Zeus to see if Nkiruka was willing to come to the great house today. He had been so eager and thankful for being asked that Jane had nearly wept. She did not want him to feel guilt for whom he served or what he had been made to do and was glad for evidence that he did not. Still, such an embarrassing display would have confused him, so she was grateful that she had been able to contain the outburst.

She listened to the voices. They were too indistinct for Jane to be certain who had arrived, but she had hopes. She turned to Louisa. “Would you see who that is?”

Louisa curtsied. “Yes, madam.”

Jane straightened her papers, trying to put them into some order in case it was Nkiruka. After a few moments, Louisa returned to stand at the door, letting her annoyance show clearly as she said, “Mrs. Nkiruka Chinwe of Greycroft and her daughter, Mrs. Avril.”

With great ceremony, Nkiruka stepped into the doorway, wearing the new calico dress Jane had given her. Her gaze wandered over the room, taking in the furniture, the rugs, the gilt frames, and the crystal decanter of lime juice that sat, sweating, on the side table. She finished with a little smile at Jane, and gave an excessively formal curtsy. She could not quite mask her laughter as she declared, “I am delighted to call upon you, Mrs. Hamilton.” Then the laughter broke forth in earnest. “Eh! Who'da thought I would be here? Come, girl.”

To Jane's very great surprise, Amey walked into the parlour. The new calico dress had been made large enough to accommodate her stomach, but she was still clearly heavy with child.

“Amey! What a delightful surprise.”

“Mammy thought I might help with translation. Mr. Pridmore said I could do this instead of my other work.”

“Your other…” Jane faltered, staring at Amey's stomach. In England, Amey would already be in confinement, awaiting her lying-in. “Well, then I have more than one reason to be pleased.” Jane started to push herself to her feet, keeping one hand firmly on the table in the event that her dizziness returned.

Nkiruka waved her hand and bustled across the room. “No, no. We heard 'bout what happen with you. Sit, sit. Don't stand for us.” She winked. “Besides. People laugh, you stand for slaves.”

“Oh—I…” Jane kept thinking of Nkiruka and Amey as she would her father's tenants. People who, while not her equal in social station, were free and deserved her respect with all the correct social forms. That the field labourers with whom she now spoke were enslaved … Jane had difficulty not only reconciling herself to their status but even knowing the correct manner in which to interact with them. It was one thing to speak of abolition in England, where the talk was abstract. In some regards, the etiquette of speaking to the house slaves was easier for Jane to understand because it differed so little from the way one spoke to servants in England. At least, it differed little on the surface. She sighed. “Well, I have invited you here as a fellow glamourist. Please, have a seat. May I offer you some lime juice?”

Nkiruka drew out a chair, dropping into it without hesitation. “Thank you.”

Amey looked past Jane's head. Her gaze narrowed before she lifted her chin and lowered her gravid form onto the cane seat.

Jane glanced back at Louisa, who was glaring at the other woman. Jane cleared her throat. Louisa's gaze dropped as though she had been burnt and she poured glasses of cool juice for each of the women.

Small talk seemed quite out of the question, so Jane pulled the papers forward. In all likelihood, the surest way to set Amey at ease would be the same trick which she used with Vincent: a discussion of glamour. “I thought that we might talk today about how one begins training in glamour in England, and you could tell me about how the training occurs in Africa.”

Nkiruka shrugged further into her seat. “Only Igbo way. Dolly, she do glamour different from me. You interested? Give you list of people to talk with. Bring them here. They show all different ways.”

Jane nearly shivered with delight at the thought of so many different variations to explore. If only she could see what they were doing directly. For now, she would write the rudiments down. Then, after her confinement, when she could actually practise glamour again, she could discuss more advanced techniques. “That would be lovely, thank you. Meanwhile, with your help, we might settle upon a common vocabulary. Amey, may I ask you to tell me about how you learned glamour?”

“Mammy teach me, early enough I don' remember no knowing. Then I was sent to the coldmonger's factory for a time.”

“Coldmongering? Truly?” Jane was all astonishment. “In England, only young men or boys learn to coldmonger. It is widely accounted too dangerous for young women. Or will you assert that it is as harmless as working glamour while with child?”

Amey cocked her head with a grimace. “No. It hard on the body. Mostly it was boys with a twisted body, or man that get damage in the field. Some girls got send too, so they could do coldmongering as lady's maids.”

Jane lifted her head in surprise and turned to Louisa. “Is that where you learned glamour?”

“No, madam! I learned from Miss Sarah. Greycroft is a large estate, so there are coldmongers enough that Mr. Frank can even hire them out.” Louisa gave no hint that Frank was her father or Miss Sarah her grandmother. “The coldmongers are part of the great house staff, and his management of them has made the coldmongers a significant income for the estate.”

“Yeah, until Mr. Pridmore—” Amey cut off abruptly with a brief glance at Louisa. “It was an interesting education. My nephew, Winter, just come back and might have some more information for you.”

Jane's interest in coldmonger training faded. Vincent had been concerned that Mr. Pridmore was misusing estate funds, though at this point only a sense of responsibility to Frank impelled him to take any action for the estate. This sounded like something he would be very much interested in. She frowned and wiped the excess ink from her pen. “Louisa, might I ask you to go to the counting house and ask Mr. Hamilton to come here?”

Though clearly knowing exactly what Jane was about, Louisa curtsied promptly. “Of course, madam.”

As Louisa left the room, Nkiruka's hands dipped into the ether. Jane watched them fixedly. She could just look. Surely it would take no energy to look. Yet she could not walk from the bedroom to the blue room without being a little out of breath. Jane ground her teeth in frustration as the weave took shape around her. Sounds outside their immediate sphere became indistinct. It must be different from Vincent's technique, as it did not cut out all sound but merely made it garbled.

Jane cleared her throat and turned her attention to Amey. “Now. We have a few moments, so allow me to say that if you are holding your tongue because of fear that I will report your words to Mr. Pridmore … I am no admirer of his.”

Gnawing on her lower lip, Amey turned to her mother. Nkiruka spoke in that unfathomable language, and Amey answered, although her speech was awkward. She made a face and asked a question. Nkiruka patted her on the hand. Amey repeated whatever the question had been.

Nkiruka gave a sharp nod, then finished in English. “Talk.”

She sighed. “Mr. Pridmore used to turn out the slaves that get damage. Field accidents. People born ben' up. That sorta thing. Mr. Frank take them, and somehow talk his lordship into sending them for training instead. Sort of. He get permission to send them, but had to use his own money.”

“And now, if I am to understand you correctly, Mr. Pridmore wants to take the income from trained coldmongers without having put forth the expense of training them?”

Amey nodded, and Jane drummed her fingers on the table in thought. Given the signs of neglect on the estate that Vincent reported, she had to wonder where the money was going. And then she recalled Mrs. Pridmore's tea—“imported from China at great expense”—her harp, and the printing of her book of poetry. This would be something to discuss with Vincent at the first opportunity.

“Thank you for your candour. I shall speak to my husband about this, but not where I learned of it. If there is anything similar, please let me know at once.”

“Just…” Amey turned her glass in the circle of condensation it had left on the table. “Just, Mr. Frank, he let the coldmonger an' dem keep some of the money they get for being hired out. An inducement, he call it. For working extra. Mr. Pridmore, he said that's wan waste ah estate resources.” She did not actually ask if that practise could remain in place, but the question was clear enough.

Jane had heard that masters sometimes let their slaves earn some money by hiring themselves out or making handicrafts, but she had not realised that Verbury's estate did so as well. “That seems like a sound practise to me. I have always favoured the carrot rather than the stick.” Jane sighed again, more fatigued than she should have been from such a short visit.

“You tired?”

Not from exertion, but tired nonetheless. Still, she straightened her shoulders and returned the smile to her face. “I have not asked half the questions I had about glamour.” The conversation then turned to one of craft, which saw some of the tension ease out of Amey's figure. They were encumbered somewhat by vocabulary, since even though Amey spoke Igbo, she did not have sufficient foundation to be able to translate some of her mother's terms into European terms. They wound up returning to Jane's original plan of discussing the rudiments of technique.

At one point, Jane found herself using a cat's cradle made of ribbon to try to show a
tordre le fil
hook. They passed the ribbon back and forth with the learning verse that went with it.

Chasing a rat

Came a little cat

Over the table

Underneath the cradle,

Around, around

Upside and down

There goes the rat

Running from the cat.

Nkiruka picked it up quickly, but Amey kept missing the “over the table” pass as she twisted the string the wrong way.

Laughing from deep in her belly, Amey held up the square of ribbon they had once again created. “Is a box useful for anything? Because that seems to be all I can make.”

“Can hold your brain, mebbe.” Nkiruka reached through the square and tugged her daughter's kerchief.

“Mammy!” Amey laughed and squirmed away.

Amidst the laughter, Jane's fatigue was quite forgotten. Even unable to actually perform glamour, she was still able to find satisfaction in discussing the craft.

“See. Is why reeds better.” Nkiruka tossed the string on the table. “Me go mek wan model.”

“Reeds?”

“Like for basket? Make shape. It dry. Then…” She broke off and said something to her daughter.

She nodded. “You can trace the form, because it keep the shape even without somebody holding one.”

“Can't mek square from circle.” Nkiruka winked at her daughter. “Except mebbe you.” She broke into laughter again.

“Well, that will make an interesting addition to my book.”

“Book?” Nkiruka tilted her head and then looked at the paper on the table. “You ah write wan book?”

“Oh … yes. It was at first only a way to amuse myself while…” She passed a hand down her front. “While I could not work glamour. But I think it has some merit, so I might see about having it published when we are back in London. It is a comparison of African and European schools of glamour.”

Nkiruka slid out one of drawings she had done for Jane of an Igbo training exercise. “You go use this?”

“Indeed. If I were able to see glamour right now, I could take notes myself, but since I cannot, this was very useful.”

“If you were able—” Nkiruka broke off and scowled at the paper.

“I know you say that it is safe, but I would rather you think me silly for not looking than take the chance. It is not so long, and—”

The older woman made a sudden rude noise and pushed her chair back from the table. “We gone.”

Jane turned from her to Amey, who was also rising, to see if she could explain what had just occurred to make Nkiruka angry. Neither of them met her gaze. Jane stood. “Forgive me. I have done something to offend you, but know not what. Will you tell me?”

“You take…” Nkiruka growled and turned to Amey, speaking rapidly with phrases accented by gestures at the paper then at Jane.

The young woman shook her head as she replied. Jane could only watch the conversation with an increasing want of comprehension, until finally Amey turned to her. “She upset that you writing a book and taking credit for her drawings and ideas.”

“Teach each other. That ah one thing. Book? No. Done tek enough, done profit enough.”

“Oh, but…” But … that was precisely what Jane had been prepared to do. It had not been her intention to steal Nkiruka's ideas or to take credit for them, but nowhere in the structure of her book had she allotted space to acknowledge that half the ideas were not hers. Jane recalled when a pamphleteer had referred to the first glamural she and Vincent had made together as “created entire by Mr. Vincent” and how troubled she had been by it. Vincent himself had always acknowledged her work, but if he had not?

Jane's face heated with embarrassment. “I am so very sorry. You are quite correct to be angry.”

Nkiruka stood with her arms crossed over her chest and stared at her as though she had grown snakes for hair.

“Would you … that is, if it would not be an imposition, would you like to author the work with me? I think the topic is of interest, and I cannot possibly undertake such a project without your experience.” Jane's heart was beating too quickly, as it often had since she had been bled. She put her hand on the back of the chair to steady herself. “If we did publish it, you would be entitled to a share of the proceeds, of course.”