Riding Shotgun (26 page)

“What she’s saying is…” Tom cleared his throat, “is that she loves Lionel but needs some time and—”

“I know perfectly well what she’s saying.” Kate cut him off.

“A union of our families is highly desirable. We would all profit from it,” Cig said. “But I want more from my one little life than profit. I suppose I do want love. For me, that’s a partner, a man who will share his life with me not just his resources. I don’t want to be a broodmare or an ornament or a prize. I want to be a partner, a sister, a lover, a friend.”

A smile played across Kate’s lips then faded. “Dear Pryor, a woman can never be a man’s partner. She must think for him and make him believe it was his idea. She must plan for the future whilst he is crowing and displaying his tail feathers to other shortsighted men. Men are children grown large, and I don’t mind saying it in front of them.” She waggled her forefinger at Lionel and Tom. “That is our destiny.”

“And they take the credit for our labor.” Cig flared for a moment forgetting herself.

The old woman shrugged. “What of it? What of the world? What matters is that we know what we have done.”

Lionel studied his mother intently, surprised at this revelation. “Everyone in Virginia knows what you have done, Mother. Not even Father overshadowed you. You truly built Wessex.”

She cocked her head staring at him. “Perhaps—not that I care a whit for the opinion of the rabble.”

“Woman has her sphere, man has his.” Tom spoke the prevailing attitude.

A pause redolent with the echoes of their conversation
settled over them. Samuel returned with another tray, this one bearing hot tea along with cut-crystal decanters filled with rum and whiskey.

“Madam?”

As if pulled unwillingly from a reverie, Kate motioned for him to put the trays on a big sideboard. “You forgot the port.”

“So I did.” He hurried to fetch it.

Outside the snow swirled.

Margaret glanced out the window. Kate turned her head to see.

Samuel reappeared with the port, and Kate commanded, “Have Sybil and Dorcas ready rooms for our guests and bring out the whist table, will you?” She turned back to the Deyhles. “You’re my captives.”

Staying overnight or even for a week at a friend’s house, common in these times of bad roads and bad weather, provided many a hostess with an excuse for an impromptu house party. Kate deVries set aside growling, deciding to have fun.

“Let me see to the horses before we start playing.” Cig thanked her sorority sisters at William and Mary for teaching her both whist and bridge, a later variant.

“Done.” Lionel smiled at her.

“You all retire to your rooms. If anyone wishes a bath or fresh clothing, tell the girls upstairs. I’ll confer with the cook. Samuel will ring the bell when we’re ready. Pryor, you’ll start as my partner, of course.”

“Delighted.”

In about an hour Cig heard the small bell tinkling below. She’d fallen asleep on the featherbed, a fire roaring nearby in the fireplace. Margaret met her on the stairs. As they descended they observed the men coming in the front door.

“It will play itself out, Tom.” Lionel handed Samuel his coat. When he saw the ladies his voice changed. “Mother never forgets a card.”

“We know.” Margaret laughed.

She didn’t. Kate, peering fiercely at her hand, remembered everything. Because there were five of them everyone rotated playing and keeping score except for Kate who never relinquished her position.

She discussed everything—clocks, the needless expense of too many servants, the customs of the Indians, the foppishness of the House of Burgesses who ought to be shipped up to Massachusetts for punishment. “Let them live with the enemies of King Charles,” she boomed as she smacked down a trump card. She held forth on the rebel Nathaniel Bacon, whom she had known and thought strange because his eyes bulged like poached eggs although he seemed intelligent enough.

She was winning and therefore happy. “Did I tell you? The last time I played whist, Amelie Boothrod had the effrontery to tell me why it’s called whist.” She imitated Amelie’s singsong voice. “‘Whist means be silent and in order to play a good game one must be silent.’ Ha, said she who never once held her tongue. I’d like to hold it. Indeed, I’d like to grasp it between my thumb and forefinger and yank it right out of her empty head. Oh, she sat there like a great rhubarb given the gift of speech.”

Cig laughed until the tears came into her eyes, which only encouraged Kate to continue. Lionel, from time to time, would chide his mother to pay attention to her hand.

She pointed to the scorecard. “I’m winning. You’re not.” She had her son for a partner on this game. “Margaret, when you have sons teach them whist, in both respects.”

They laughed. A gust of wind rattled the panes.

“Cohonk,” Cig mentioned, the Indian name for fall.

“Their language is quite musical, I find.” Kate smacked down a jack of diamonds. “Lionel, has anyone heard from the forts?”

She referred to the four English forts that had been built, after the massacre, on the Blackwater River, the Pamunkey River, the Rappahannock River and the Potomac. This feeble military presence gave the whites the illusion of security so the immigrants kept pouring in.

“Whatever made you think of that?”

“Cards. Remember that handsome lieutenant who played ‘honors’—he had Francis Eppes’s daughter swooning.”

“All is well.” Lionel’s stomach grumbled. “Pardon.”

“I’ve quite forgotten the time. I’ve won, so let’s retire to dinner. Samuel. Samuel, you sloth! Where are you?”

“Here, madam.” He glided into the room.

“Dinner must be ready by now.”

He bowed. Tom helped Kate up from her chair as Lionel attended to Cig and Margaret.

Dinner brought forth another torrent of chat from Kate. Cig listened mesmerized as she recounted her childhood in the colony. She had been born in 1645, which made her fifty-four, old in this era but not ancient. Not that some people didn’t reach eighty or ninety, a few did, but so many women died in childbirth and so many men in accidents or from diseases, that a vigorous older person was treasured.

“—and while I applaud James Blair’s creation of his grammar school I ask what is taught and who is teaching it? When you see a schoolmaster counting on his fingers you must consider the consequences once he passes twenty.”

Margaret laughed. “William and Mary will teach them their sums because all the pupils can add up everyone’s fingers and toes.”

This made them laugh.

“I prophesy that
it
will become a great school.” Cig smiled.

“Well, I won’t be here to see it.” Kate’s lower lip jutted out. “Lionel, did you learn anything at those schools in France?” Before he could answer she announced, “Violently expensive.”

“It doesn’t matter what I learned, I still can’t keep up with you.” He smiled, his mustache curling upwards ever so slightly.

“Oh la.” She threw up her hands.

Another blast of wind created a downdraft in the chimney, a puff of scarlet embers swirling upwards then falling back into the flames.

“No more foxhunting for a time,” Tom said.

“How I used to love to hunt.” Kate smiled as Samuel placed some candied yams on her plate, her second helping.

“I think the fox represents happiness: tricky, bright, and just out of reach,” Cig said.

This set them off on a lively discussion of happiness, which was finally ended with Margaret declaring, “I am happy right now.”

A light rap on the door prodded Cig, sitting in front of the fire. She’d stretched her feet before the blaze, hoping to drive the last of the Chill from her toes. Beautiful as Wessex was, she longed for twentieth-century insulation.

She opened the door.

Lionel, wrapped in a glossy bearskin, his nightshirt visible underneath, whispered, “May I come in? I thought I’d never get to see you alone.”

She hesitated. “Come on.” She quietly shut the door behind him.

He pulled up a chair next to hers. His feet were covered in beaded moccasins. “I don’t know when I’ve seen Mother so jovial.”

“She’s a remarkable woman.”

“As are you.”

“Thank you.”

His dark eyes reflected the fire. “She’s right, as she so often is, you have changed. You’re more philosophical.” He smiled. “I hope that’s the apt word.”

“Don’t you think time does that to each of us—makes us think about things we used to take for granted?”

“Yes and—”

She interrupted him before he could start getting romantic. “The Indians here—do you trust them?”

“With my life,” he said with a swagger.

She wanted to reply, “You might have to,” but remained silent. She must have seemed fragile enough to Lionel with her imperfect memory. Accusing a man of murder whom she’d only glimpsed would make her appear more unreliable, maybe even unbalanced. But she feared Lionel had bet too many lives on his faith in his trading companions.

“Do you think they’re planning to attack us again?”

“No.” He smiled, reaching for her hand.

His big hand wrapped around hers. “Lionel, you’re here in a fit of desire or whatever. I apologize for not being the most romantic woman on earth but I am vexed,” she recalled hearing that word, which carried more weight in this time, “by seeing the murdered man and by the Indians lurking about our place. We see them and then—they vanish.”

“It’s winter, Pryor, and a hard one. They’re hunting and if they can’t hunt they may be driven to steal. I know these people.”

“And you also know something you’re not telling me.”

He squeezed her hand. “If I thought you were in danger I would sound a clear warning.” He breathed in deeply. “The disaffection between the Algonquin people and the Sioux, especially the Monacans, is growing. What I hope to do is persuade the Assembly to form an alliance with the Algonquins.”

“And if an Indian war erupted we would fight with the Algonquins.” Cig instantly appreciated his thinking.

“Yes. The Assembly is so dazzled by ordnance they think we have little to fear. When I ask them how they intend to drag cannon into the wilderness I am met with stony silence. They believe we can fight European wars here. Impossible! We need allies among the natives. They counter with, ‘Why risk a white life for a red one?’ Now, my dear, you know what I’m thinking.” He smirked. “Frederick Janss
said well bring in more Africans and let them kill the Indians. When I mention that they would surely run away or turn and kill us he found me not a bit amusing.”

“Stupid man.”

“You’ve heard me say this before but it’s folly to bring in slaves from Africa. Far better to work with the Indians who know the New World than ship in captives who are as lost as if on the moon.”

“Who are those Africans I saw when we arrived?”

“Xavier and Petrus, you don’t remember them?”

“Well—no.”

“Freemen.”

“Oh.” She felt the warmth from his hand. “If I were dead, who would you marry?”

This shocked him. “Don’t say that, Pryor. It’s bad luck.”

“No, it isn’t. I know you like me well enough but if I were a poor woman I’d be your mistress, not your wife.”

He sighed, perturbed. “How would I know unless you were a poor woman? I only know you as you are and I love you. Why are you cruel to me?”

“Not cruel—careful.”

“It’s all a gamble, like whist. Better to sit at the table and take your chances with the cards than to stand aside and watch.” He rose from his chair and bent over her, his hands on the arms of her chair, his face inches away from her own. “I love you.”

The blood was pounding so hard in her temples Cig thought her head would burst. “You don’t
know
me.”

“I’ve known you all your life.”

“But”—she fought to breathe—“there are things about me you don’t know.”

“There are things about me
you
don’t know. I love you, that’s what matters.”

“I don’t think you can love someone if you don’t know her.”

“You’re wrong.” He leaned down and kissed her. As she didn’t resist he put his hands under her armpits, lifting her to her feet, then wrapped his arms around her.

He felt strong, smelling of tobacco smoke, leather, and
sweat. His kiss tasted familiar. Cig wasn’t swept off her feet although Lionel was trying. But she was lonely, adrift, and had lived without physical love for a long time. She kissed him in return, feeling that old heat name up in her belly.

She whispered as they moved toward the bed. “This doesn’t mean I’m going to marry you.”

He nodded, tossing off the bearskin robe, pulling his nightshirt over his head, hoping that tonight would put an end to her stalling.

Later, as the candles sputtered and Lionel slept, Cig propped up on one elbow to study him. She’d not known Blackie this young. She figured Lionel to be thirty to thirty-two. Blackie would have looked like Lionel, except his mustache was a military one whereas Lionel’s, a bit fuller, curved upward slightly and his hair was cut quite short—she wondered what he’d look like in a wig. She’d probably laugh.

It had felt good to make love with him, but she knew she would never surrender herself as she had done with her husband. Then she had been too young to know any different. Now she was old enough to take a man’s measure. And while there was much of Blackie in Lionel, he was still a separate person.