The Randolph Legacy (31 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
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The magistrate on the right, the most dangerous one, spoke in his condescending tone. “Why, Mr. Randolph, now that a certain lady is in our midst, your notions sound quite Quaker-like.”
“Do they? I believe the early Quakers were also considered lunatics by the local magistrates. You hanged three of them in Boston, did you not? One a woman?”
“That—that was over a century ago,” he sputtered. “And Pennsylvania is hardly Massachusetts!”
Ethan shrugged indifferently. “Please forgive me. I am not so well traveled on land. North of the Mason-and-Dixon line, the states and commonwealths run together for me.”
The magistrate stood in his anger. “Do you mock this Inquiry?”
Ethan sat taller. “Will you mock my parents by telling them they spawned a murderer?”
Jordan Foster winced. Ethan’s mother squeezed his hand. They were comforting each other, he realized. Sally’s face was glistening with tears. But Judith’s glassy eyes had not found him yet.
Damnation.
Teasing the pompous magistrates about Boston heretics. He should have a care with the grim set of his humor. He knew better. Fayette had taught him better. He had caused his family enough pain.
“Tell us what happened the day Eli Mercer was killed, Ethan Randolph.” The middle magistrate’s voice had turned hard, unyielding, as he stood. Seymour Hess was the tallest of the three, Ethan observed, trying to distract himself from the distinct possibility that he’d lost the only one who was even listening to him.
“I’d visited him, while he was planting the poplar tree.”
“The one from Virginia? Your gift?”
“Yes.”
“What was the purpose of this visit?”
“I told him I wished to marry Judith.”
“Judith Mercer, his daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Are you familiar with the consequences of a Quaker considering marriage outside the sect?”
“Yes.”
“And they are?”
“Disownment.”
“So you went to Judith Mercer’s father, to tell him you wished to become a convinced Quaker.”
“No, sir.”
“Then you went, knowing you would receive his refusal to allow this marriage?”
“No.”
“Explain yourself, sir.”
“I had hope that he could guide me on that part of it. If there were exceptions made. Eli is my friend.”
“Was,
Mr. Randolph.
Was
your friend. He’s dead.”
“I know he’s dead! I watched him die!”
“Yes. So you claim. An unfortunate discovery, of a deed done while you were fetching water in buckets never found. Moments sooner and you might have prevented it, isn’t that what you said?”
“Yes.”
Ethan felt unbearably burdened by the magistrate’s tone. But there was no escape. “And a tree stake containing a dying man’s last message has disappeared, too,” he continued. “We have all your statements on
record. Now we wish to explore your meeting with Eli Mercer. Your talk. What made you hope that he would give this proposed marriage his blessing? Your family’s wealth and position? Did you think you could buy his permission?”
“No.”
The left-flank magistrate cast a disgusted glance toward the federal men. “You planned to use your status in the city of Washington as a naval hero of the late war and a favorite of Mrs. Madison?”
“Of course not.”
“What, then, sir?” Hess asked. Quietly. Perhaps he’d not lost the man’s attention yet.
“My love for Judith,” Ethan said, looking at his hands, the crooked bend of one healing finger.
Right-flank now. “This love of yours, it wasn’t enough, was it? And so it turned to anger when that Quaker gentleman refused your suit, however kindly. Eli Mercer had always been good to you. He had saved your life. Why did you let your rage blind you?”
“What?”
“The rage, man! The rage you felt at his refusal!”
“I felt no rage.”
“Why not?”
“He didn’t refuse me.”
“Do you expect the men of this panel, do you expect these decent members of the Quaker Harmony Springs Community, to believe—”
Ethan stood. “I have no expectations, sir. Only an obligation. To speak the truth. I have spoken it. Now either charge me with this crime or allow me to go home. I am sick to death of this.”
Without being dismissed, he left the stand and returned to his place on the bench between Sally and his mother. Sally squeezed his arm and pressed her cheek into his shoulder. “The states run together, indeed! What a reflection on me, your geography teacher!” she said, her voice dancing between tears and laughter.
His mother slipped her hand over his shaking one. It was cool, steady. He closed his eyes. The middle magistrate spoke toward the Quaker section of the room—to Prescott Lyman.
“May we ask the identity and health of the lady who has seated herself at your side, sir?”
Judith stood. “I’m Judith Mercer. And I’m able to respond for myself,” she said in the familiar, clear voice.
She walked to the stand Ethan had stalked away from, and sat. So pale, Ethan thought again.
“Our sincere condolences, Miss Mercer, and appreciation for your appearance at this hearing. Have you understood Mr. Randolph’s answers to our questions?”
“I have,” she said.
The left magistrate stood. “Do you wish to press charges against the prisoner in the matter of the aftermath of your father’s—”
“No.”
“But the assault on your person following—”
“A mistaken impression. I am firm in the belief that Ethan attempted to spare me from viewing the condition of my father’s body.”
“Miss Mercer, several have stated that Mr. Randolph held you on the ground. By force.”
“He was … adamant, as was I.”
“Did he say, ‘There was nothing else I could do’?”
“Yes.”
“How did you take his meaning?”
“That he had attempted to help, to treat my father’s injuries.”
“Are you sure of this?”
“I’m sure, sir.”
Sir? Ethan thought, confused. Why was she calling the magistrate “sir”? And where were her
“thees”
and
“thys”?
The right-flank magistrate stood, circled her chair. “How long have you known Ethan Randolph, Miss Mercer?”
“Since the fifth of April, eighteen hundred and fifteen.”
“A year, then.”
“Yes.”
“Your reputation precedes you. Your good works on behalf of the unjustly persecuted are known within and without your community. Your word is honored and trusted here, Miss Mercer. Now, you and your father helped secure Ethan Randolph’s release from HMF
Standard,
did you not?”
“We did.”
“Further, you guided this young man’s reunion with his family, and his recovery of both body and memory in the year that’s followed. Is that a proper rendering of the facts?”
“Yes.”
“Now, Miss Mercer, were you aware of Ethan Randolph’s intentions on the day of your father’s death?”
“I was.”
Ethan sensed his surprise. “How did you know these intentions?” the magistrate questioned.
“Ethan had made them known to me first.”
“I … I see.” A disturbed reaction. Why? Ethan wondered. Did no one believe any part of his own testimony? Was Judith’s confirmation such a shock? The man coughed. “Then you sent him to your father?”
“No. He sought my father on his own.”
“Immediately?”
“I was given to understand that.”
“He was agitated?”
“Excited, perhaps.”
“By your refusal.”
“I did not refuse him.”
He pointed to Ethan. “You agreed to marry this man?”
“I agreed to consider his suit.”
“Agreed to consider. Of course. You were alone with him, knew the workings of his intemperate mind. That was wise.”
“Ethan is not—”
“Do you have any doubt as to what your father might have answered to Mr. Randolph’s request for your hand in marriage?”
“No,”
she mouthed, too silently to hear.
“Miss Mercer?” the magistrate prompted.
Ethan saw the pain enter Judith’s eyes. He began to comprehend what she was doing to her father’s memory as a forgiven Fighting Quaker, and to her own life among them as she spoke.
Wait, Judith, there must be some other way.
But there was not. She’d stepped across the threshold, as always, with her courage leading her. He felt the tears welling up behind his eyes.
I didn’t mean for this, Judith,
he tried to tell her.
“Miss Mercer?” left-flank persisted.
Her lower lip quivered. “I have no doubt,” she said, louder.
“Based on your father’s love, his protection, his devout Quaker standing in your Meeting, will you now assert your belief that Ethan Randolph’s version of that meeting’s outcome was a lie?”
She locked her eyes on Ethan’s for the first time since she’d entered the room. The open wound of her grief was not enough to induce him to look away. “Here, Judith,” his sister whispered, lending more strength to Ethan’s efforts. “The truth is here.”
The magistrate pointed at Ethan again. “Miss Mercer, will you confirm this man’s statement a ludicrous lie?” he pressed.
“I cannot,” Judith whispered.
“Why can you not?”
“Ethan does not lie.”
“His freedom, his very life is at stake, Miss Mercer. Consider that he has powerful motivation! Will you at least entertain the notion—”
“No. He does not lie.”
“He is no Quaker, without need of oaths,” the magistrate persisted. “Look at him closer. Let the scales fall from your eyes. He was steeped in your father’s blood, woman, and acting like a madman. Despite your hopes, your dreams for Ethan Randolph, you must know what he meant by ‘There was nothing else I could do’!”
Ethan bolted to his feet. “Leave her alone! God damn you all!” he shouted, lunging for the magistrate’s throat.
Ethan’s cell looked vastly different now. Before his family had exerted
its influence, he had been considerably less comfortable. The shackles were gone, though the iron rings in the brick wall remained. The gaunt space was eased by a roped featherbed, a desk. A washbasin and pitcher stood on its stand, the chamberpot tucked away within its cabinet. What cabinetmaker had fashioned it? Ethan wondered. The same one who’d built Eli’s coffin? He searched the darkening sky he could see through the high window. No stars. “Why couldn’t I have run faster, Eli?” he whispered.
—
What’s done cannot be undone. This line of thinking serves no purpose,
Fayette’s voice admonished inside his head.
What would happen to Judith? Would the Quakers drive her out, because she had brought her Light to the hearing? Her goodness was palpable. The magistrates had to consider her words before charging him with her father’s murder. She had cast the first shadings of doubt in their minds, not him playing the imperious Randolph, and certainly not his outburst of temper.
The proceedings had come to an end soon after his brothers pulled him back from the harassing magistrate. The Quakers had hustled Judith off in the opposite direction, cocooning her again. He would not allow that. It was dimming her Light. How soon before it would go out? He would die before he allowed that.
How could he think about allowing or not allowing anything, here in this cell?
Out.
He must steal Judith and escape them all. He scanned
the room. The bedsheet could serve another purpose. A fork from his next meal could become a weapon.
Stop.
A little more patience, his sister had urged. He was even losing faith in his women.
“Consider the possibility,”his
mother had said in her soothing tone,
“that these people will behave honorably.”
A hard thing to imagine. He wondered again if his years at sea had made him too wild to be landed.
Read. Escape that way, for now, into fine-tuned poetry, a galloping tale.
Ethan searched among the spines of the books his sister had provided. He opened the pages of Plutarch to see Betsy’s colorful chalk drawing of his first steps. The jubilant circle of women stood around a jelly-jointed scarecrow. He closed the book and sat on the edge of his bed, surrendering his head to his hands.
Sally had brought only her nursling to Pennsylvania with her, but never to the hearings, or his cell. Of course, she shouldn’t. Despite its rudimentary comforts, this was still a keep, with all the despair and poison of its former inhabitants. Not a place for Charlotte. But he missed his gull.
When the cell’s door opened and he saw the ashen paleness of Sally’s face, Ethan thought he’d never see any of her children again.
He stood, took his sister’s arm. She leaned on him heavily until he sat her down on the bed. Tears. Ethan knelt at her side.
“They’ve charged me, then?” he whispered.
“Worse,” she barely managed to say.
“Worse? What could be worse?”
“They …” was as far as she got before she fell to weeping again.
Ethan yanked out a handkerchief and blotted her tears.
“Sally, why did you come alone?”
“Mama and Jordan went for a walk. They charged me to wait. Out there.” She gestured at the cell’s door. “To wait, and compose myself. You, shut away, alone in this place, and me, just on the other side of the door—I couldn’t bear it, Ethan! I wanted to sit with you, until they returned. I thought I could be g-good, you know?”
He gave her his handkerchief and perched himself on the small stool at her feet. “You are good. You’re the best sister a worthless, no-account, can’t-keep-himself-out-of-trouble idiot could ask for! But you must stop crying, or my poor niece will miss her dinner.”
Sally looked down at her milk-soaked bodice, and began wailing anew. His attempts at humoring women were having the opposite effect lately.
“Sarah Ellen!” Anne Randolph summoned, behind them. “What are you doing to your brother?”
Ethan turned, astonished. “Mother, Sally’s not—”
“You!” she scoffed. “You have no sense! And she has less! How have I deserved such children?” She faced her daughter, her graceful hands fisted at her waist. “What have you told him?”
“N-nothing, Mama.”
“Good. Now stop this caterwauling, we have very little time!”
“Time for what?” Ethan asked Jordan Foster, swaddled in neckerchiefs and looking less astonished at his mother’s behavior.
“To get you out,” the doctor said quietly.
“Out? They’re not pressing charges?”
“No.”
“So I can go home?”
Her mother’s cautionary look strangled Sally’s sob in her throat.
“Not home, darling,” Anne Randolph said softly. “Not just now.” Ethan saw tears flooding her light eyes.
Sacre-bleu,
not both of them, he thought. He turned to the doctor again.
“What has happened, sir?”
“A bargain. Your brothers promised the good magistrates to keep you locked up at Windover for the rest of your life—in return for their judgment of insufficient evidence. They’re making clandestine arrangements now, to spirit you to Virginia under the cover of darkness and before word of the ruling gets out.”
Ethan stared straight ahead. His visitors went out of focus.
“Ethan?” Sally called him back.
“They’ll make me the mad brother in the attic.”
“Exactly,” Jordan Foster confirmed. “The ruling is accomplished, the dealing done. But your mother won what we needed—time.”
“Time?”
“From Winthrop and Clayton, time to explain all to you. They’re not imagining you’ll take it well. I’ve promised to drug you into submission for your transfer to the coach.”
Ethan looked up. “Why?”
“So it will be easier for us to pass.”
“Pass?”
“We are almost the same height and coloring.” He yanked off his hat, began unswaddling his scarfs. “We will exchange clothes here, now, and both keep our heads down, and hope they are their usual unobservant selves long enough to give you a start. Perhaps until the first carriage stop at the inn to get Charlotte and our baggage.”
Ethan stared at him. “You’ve shaved your beard,” he realized.
“Easier than you growing one. We’ve brought you blackening soot.”
Rude, to stare. Stop it.
“What’s the matter with you?” his friend demanded.
“N-nothing,” he stammered. Jordan Foster was a more handsome man, without his beard. That pleased his mother, he thought, from his quick glance at her lustrous eyes. He felt himself grinning at the doctor, despite his own predicament. “It’s—”
“It’s what? What?”
“Delightful to see you, Jordan.”
“Bloody hell. Off with your britches, pest.”
“You can’t have my boots. I need my—”
“No one wants your boots!” The doctor ran his hand through his dark hair and calmed down. “Come. It’s time for you to shed another skin, Ethan,” he said with a sudden, flashing smile. “You can do it again. My stout Morgan mare is outside. She’ll take you far, if you treat her well. Use your compass and the stars.”
Ethan nodded, though he was struggling to keep up with the surgeon’s tight, clipped speech.
“Go east, my darling,” Anne Randolph urged. “Somewhere remote. For a little while.”
“Toward the ocean,” Sally offered quietly.
Her mother nodded. “Yes, toward, but not one foot on any manner of ship, no sailing the open sea, do you hear me?”
“Yes.” Ethan touched the careworn beauty of Anne Randolph’s face. “Your brother’s name. May I have it?”
“Of course. You’ve had it always.”
Jordan Foster came between them, a knife in his hand. A fine knife, almost as fine as the one Micah had made for him. He leaned down and placed it in the pouch Aaron had fashioned in his boot. “Establish contact with Sally through the post in a fortnight. We will meet soon after, apprentice.”
“You’d still consider—”
“There is no ‘consider.’” The doctor reached into his vest, drew out a leather wallet, and emptied it of currency. He put it into Ethan’s hands. “We have an agreement, remember? Here is an advance on your first earnings. You have two weeks’ time to get your affairs in order and be ready to join me, Mr. Blair. I will do the same. The city of our practice must be big enough to support another doctor. What is Richmond’s current population, Sally?”
“Ten thousand,” she answered promptly, his student again.
“Richmond might suit us, I think.”
The women’s hands linked, squeezed. Ethan looked into beautiful, beaming faces. His chaotic world was coming together again by way of this impossibly generous man who had transformed himself into his twin. He must say something, be polite.
“At the hearing—I’m sorry about the remark against Boston, Dr. Foster,” he tried.
Jordan smiled. “Think nothing of it. We hanged witches, too, you know, besides the three Quakers.”
Ethan did not feel as strange in the doctor’s clothes as he’d imagined. The blue coat fitted larger across his shoulders, but his legs were longer than the dark-striped trousers’ cut by an inch or two. That astonished him. He’d never imagined himself taller than Jordan Foster, but here was proof. The women ripped the seams and pulled the fine worsted wool to hide the heels of his specially made boots. He kept the doctor’s loose white scarf high and his broad-brimmed hat low over his more abundant hair. His mother lowered the lamplight in the already dim cell.
When they came for their prisoner, Ethan looked at only parts of his brothers: Winthrop’s shoulder, Clayton’s hands, to keep track of where they were. His mother and sister kept pulling him into their circle to assist them with the stumbling figure in his clothes.
Winthrop let out a disgusted snort, pushing Ethan aside and hauling Jordan Foster over his shoulder. Ethan’s breath caught in his throat, but he had enough wits left to snatch up the fallen hat. Winthrop deposited his burden next to Sally in the shade-drawn coach.
Both women distracted Winthrop with slaps and protests as Ethan quickly covered Dr. Foster’s balding spot with his hat. Winthrop slipped backward out the coach door.
“We have him now,” Anne Randolph stated impatiently. “Go ride outside with the coachman, both of you,” she demanded of her elder sons. “Go with God, Dr. Foster,” she said more softly, squeezing Ethan’s shoulder, and giving it a slight, indiscernible push. His last view inside the coach was of his sister’s swollen, tear-stained face. She, too, was mouthing
“Go.”
“Well, I think our wild cub has gained a few pounds in captivity!” Ethan heard Winthrop tell Clayton. He turned away, his face burning from the note of triumph in his brother’s voice. He felt Clayton’s hand on his back as he reached for the reins of Dr. Foster’s Morgan mare. He froze.
“Listen, sir. I know you’ve grown fond of the boy. This was a terrible business. But the only way, believe me. He will not be mistreated. I give you my word on it, Doctor.”
Ethan bowed his head, burying his chin deep in Jordan Foster’s collar. He would never trust his brothers’ word again.
“Are you sure you won’t join us?”
Ethan nodded.
“Mother has the rest of your concoction? Just in case he should become fractious on the way home?”
Ethan gritted his teeth, nodded again.
“Good. He’s gotten very strong, working among our niggers and these damned Quaker farmers. You saw him go after the magistrate! This is best. We won’t forget your help, Doctor.”
Ethan counted his brother’s fading footfalls before he mounted. Behind him, the coach and six began its journey. He cast a quick glance east, but once sure his mother and sister could no longer see him, he pulled the reins north. Toward Harmony Springs.
 
 
J
udith felt jolted awake when her head hit Mary Waldman’s shoulder. The woman looked disgusted. Judith had embarrassed herself. This had never happened before. Why couldn’t she keep her mind focused? She was tired all the time. The tea would help, Prescott had told her, but though she drank and drank, it didn’t even quench her thirst.
She had slept so long after her appearance at Ethan’s hearing that it was becoming part of the dream that had been most of her life since her father’s death. Had Ethan reached the magistrate’s throat, as Prescott claimed? It was not proper to feel magnificent over his burning, protective anger, but Judith did, without remorse. She was feeling the pulse of his indignation now. It was helping her to wake up. That and the commotion at the doorway.
Shouts. Her people rarely shouted. Why was this happening? And why were they shouting at Dr. Foster, standing in the aisle? He removed his hat. Chestnut hair tumbled past his collar. Too long. No gray. A shadowy, smudged beard. Not Dr. Foster. It was Ethan.

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