The Randolph Legacy (47 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
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Locked in the old man’s stare, Ethan resorted to the whole truth. “Aaron.”
“Aaron?”
“Yes. And his family.”
“Perhaps I should allow your brothers to lock you up in the attic. Do you understand what you’re asking?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I put it to you that you do not! You have no sense of family!”
“I know that Aaron is our family! I know I do not want to see his family split, scattered asunder because of my brothers’ greed!”
“Ethan, no one is going to—”
“Sell them off? Sell any off? What will you have to say about it when
you are gone, and my mother powerless in this world you’ve made?”
“Your brothers will be honor-bound.”
“My brothers breed people instead of crops. Do you think your servants will be any different than your sticks of furniture, your acres, to them?”
“That’s your wife speaking! Come out from her skirts.”
“My wife speaks more sense and has more courage than all the Randolph men who ever walked the earth, sir!”
“Damnation! You have no feelings, even for the women, who have mediated your every move since you turned up on our doorstep again, as unexpectedly as when first you arrived. I thought I had everything then, I thought you were your mother’s middle years’ indulgence. Now, you are all I have left. Insufferable boy, insufferable notions! Get out of my sight. I have had enough of you!”
Ethan did as he was bid, then leaned his back against the door. He wanted to go home to Richmond, to become the bastard son of Jordan Foster and a French whore, with a Quaker wife who gives away his shirts to the poor and can’t cook. Because the truth was too painful. He was chained to this man, by iron as cold as that of his cell in Pennsylvania and on the deck of the
Standard.
How could he keep his promise to Aaron while chained?
 
 
E
than pulled the sturgeon from the river, gutted it quickly, and wrapped it in the broad wet leaf before stacking it on the rock with the others. No time to think, they were coming so fast. And he had come here to think, more than to fish. He dropped the line in the creek’s flow, unbaited this time, and sat back against the willow’s trunk. He heard Aaron’s low chuckle behind him.
“Who you feeding? Jesus and all his Apostles besides?”
“I thought Martha might like them. For you and yours.”
“Well, then. We can have us an outside feast, once she finished feeding you and your brothers up at the big house tonight.”
Ethan groaned. “They’re coming again?”
“Along with the elder Harrisons and Ruffins. Best get used to plenty company. I think your daddy’s inviting most of the seaboard to the baptism, come summer!”
“Or maybe he’ll disown me and I can go home.”
“No hope of that. He laughing, conniving again. Just ordered me to seek you out. Seen him twice as peeved with your brothers, with much smaller cause. What you go talking about leaving again for?”
“I thought he’d be glad for my enterprise, my finding a place. I thought he might help us.”
“Only place your daddy knows is Windover, Ethan. And he sees it going down without an heir. You and your lady, you be his hope.”
“His hope will end yours.”
“How is that, sir?”
“The manumission laws. Free, you’d be banished from Virginia within a year.”
“The law say this?”
“Yes. So you see, while our father still lives, before my brothers tie up any inheritance in the courts for years, I need to get you all from him.” It felt good, unburdening his predicament, one not even the mind of Thomas Jefferson could solve for him. Jefferson had proclaimed, “All men are created equal,” but now the best advice he could offer was that it was up to Ethan’s generation to find a way to make it so.
“You wants to buy us from your daddy, child?” Aaron asked.
“Yes, exactly. Then we’ve got to get you west, into a new free state.”
“Ethan. We—Martha and me and ours—we be the reason you goin’ west?”
“Yes. Judith’s dreamed it, Aaron. Dreams are a gift of God, aren’t they? It seems the only course open to us, if you’re willing, if I can convince my father that he owes you something, after all the years you’ve been the best, most dutiful son of the sorry lot of us. Would you accept the hardships this law thrusts upon us, Aaron? Would you travel a thousand miles to be free?”
The big man knelt beside him on the rock. He stretched his muscled arm until Ethan felt the weight, the strength of him come to rest on his shoulder. “Brother,” he whispered their connection for the first time, “I want you to listen to me now, with your whole learned being. Take anything. No matter how good you treat it, it wants to be free. You can feed it good, and give it every blessed thing it seems to want, but if’n you open the cage, it flies. It’s happy.”
Ethan grinned. “Well, then. Let’s continue our joint pursuit of happiness, shall we?”
“This here’s Aubrey’s rock we talking these things on.”
“I figured as much when the fish wouldn’t stop sacrificing themselves, just as they used to under his spear.”
“His grandmam taught him that, spearing the sturgeon.”
Ethan saw Hagar again, with her proud eyes, her cardinal’s feather. The hanging branches of the old willow wafted in the breeze, reminding Ethan of the tree he’d courted Judith under in Pennsylvania. Sacred
places. He understood his father’s draw to this beauty. He would be sad to leave. He would trace Windover in his imperfect memory. But he needed to fly, too.
“Got another tug on your line, young one.”
They pulled out the largest of his catch together, laughing.
“Maybe we can even get Paris out from his duties tonight with this feast of fish!” Aaron declared. “Phoebe misses him sore when he gone.”
Paris. Winthrop’s coachman. Damnation. He should have bargained for the coachman before he’d done his brother harm. He’d need to buy Paris, too, or Phoebe’s heart would break on their way west.
Judith watched for the schooner’s billowed sails, hoping Captain
Atwater would recognize her from Windover’s old dock, now a deserted place of narrow inlet and a small, splintered, pontoon bridge. He’d described it to her on his last official stop, laden with Jordan’s letters and medicinals. They’d planned to continue delivery of her sewing undertakings from there.
In this quiet, deserted place, and at the height of the day, Judith felt most invisible at Windover. She wondered where Ethan was. Not cooped inside with Windover’s account books, she fervently hoped. On those days he visited her accompanied by the stale smell of old tobacco. On those nights his dreams were bedeviled with numbers and ruin. What would he think of her being here, waiting for Captain Atwater? Would he forgive her? Of course he would. Continuing this part of her life in Richmond was helping her chase her own blue devils of doubt and confusion.
And she was doing her part in their new life among his family, was she not? They dined with his parents and sister and visiting relatives at three each day. Together with Windover’s mistress, they called on the sick and new children in Windover’s slave community. Judith treasured seeing mother and son assist each other. The slaves even treated Mrs. Randolph a little less regally with Ethan beside her, teasing the children, and making the sick and their caregivers alike smile.
Deep night had become their time together again, as it had been on board the
Standard.
They refused to be separated then, and laughed about Winthrop Randolph’s thundering admonitions to his son not to visit his wife’s bed with such frequency. Mother Ballard had already rid them of any concerns about disturbing the health of their well-planted child with the joy they found in each other’s arms. Afterward, they would curl up and talk of their time apart.
Judith was grateful that her husband’s nocturnal visits gave her the excuse to retire from the family at the height of the day. Still, it had not been easy to carve time from this family’s obligations in order for her to follow her Light. Pregnancy had its uses, and she thanked the growing child inside her for providing this claim to solitude.
She’d been careful to establish her resting time from noon until the family’s three-o’clock dinner, so Judith felt safe as she worked. No one came near their room in the west wing of the Main House during those hours, not even Ethan. At first she’d longed for him to join her sewing the simple frocks, trousers, the capes, the warmer woolens—all to help the human cargo Captain Atwater brought deeper south before shipping up the coastal waterway to Philadelphia.
No one questioned her requests for Windover’s woven-goods supply, assuming she was sewing for herself and the baby. She sighed. Her poor baby had not a thread yet. Even her sisters-in-law had contributed fine silks toward making herself and her child more their equal in finery, though their generosity was more to impress Winthrop Randolph than to honor her and the Randolph heir she bore. No matter. She now had a lady’s traveling-clothes ensemble for Captain Atwater this time, a wonderful disguise for a brave soul, perhaps a mulatto woman light enough to pass for white on the journey north.
Her deception both from her husband and his family had been so easily accomplished that Judith felt twinges of guilt. She reasoned hers was but a small contribution after the thrilling night of the lanterns in the trees, of the rescue at Del and Ida’s lighthouse.
She’d partnered with Ethan before in her efforts. But that was in their wild time, when he was courting, when they had no names. In Richmond, her activities would jeopardize his apprenticeship with Dr. Foster. And here such business would be even more dangerous for him, Winthrop Randolph’s son.
He’d called her an abolitionist in the hidden house, without a hint of judgment in his voice. What would her doting husband think of her if he knew what she’d done in Jordan’s house, and here, in his father’s? Would he still be accepting? Would he be angry at her pursuit of her
Light’s precepts? Her blue devils were back, she realized. Were they the price of her deception of her guileless husband?
Banish them, Judith. Follow thy Light.
She saw the captain tuck his spyglass under his arm and wave. He’d seen her! God forgive her—Judith prayed, as the launch was lowered with its single occupant—for needing what this man gave her in an embarrassment of abundance, praise for even her small contribution to the
Opal
and its escape route north.
“Kindly stay where you are, Mrs. Blair,” the captain reprimanded her gently as she reached for the bow of the launch. “She’ll beach nicely, and I’ve boots to take the mud in stride.” Judith stood on the higher ground, impatient, beached herself, until the captain took her outstretched hands.
“It is good to see you again, friend.”
“I have yet more letters from Dr. Foster.”
Judith tucked them into her deep side pocket. “He is well?”
“Well, but pining for his missing family.”
“As we are for him in this time that cannot be helped. But tell me of your own needs now, Captain Atwater.”
“I hope your brave stance onshore indicates goods. We are in sore need of your services, having added two to our cargo of tender years, and barely clothed.”
“These might suffice,” Judith said, presenting her wrapped bundle.
Captain Atwater’s face dimpled in a grin as he hefted the package’s weight. “More than suffice, I’ll warrant. How I wish I could ship you to Philadelphia myself, to tell of your part in our work for one of our scribe’s pens.”
She smiled. “Your sometime cargo takes risks much greater than I, Captain.”
“For a chance at a much greater reward. What is your reward, friend of the Friends?”
“It is in this moment, sir. I suspect you know that to a much greater degree.”
“Do I?” he asked.
“Surely! At what other endeavor might we indulge a high moral purpose with the bedeviled high spirits of our vanished youths?”
He threw back his head of weather-bleached hair, reminding Judith suddenly of Fayette. “And you, Mrs. Blair, are forever young!” he proclaimed with a suitor’s abandon.
Judith bowed her head, scanned her hands. She must not encourage this, she realized suddenly. She made her voice tranquil again. “Are the
stories of the runaways really being written down in Philadelphia, Captain?” she asked.
“They are. And published. The pamphlets are dangerous to carry in Virginia, of course, but I will endeavor to bring you one next time. They’re whacking good tales!”
“I hope they inspire others to end this blight in our country.”
He frowned. “Sometimes I wonder. We all thought it ending of its own accord. But the peculiar institution thrives. What use even are heroic stories against the cotton gin, the growing, vast plantations of the Southern Frontier? The money to be made of the sweat of these people’s backs?”
“You sound like my husband at table, Captain.”
“And how does your husband’s time here progress, Mrs. Blair? Surely with the master of Windover’s health returned, you will be released from your duties soon? Dr. Foster complains that your garden likes him not at all and will not show a single shoot.”
“I shall be home within a fortnight, I think. My husband has promised to leave once the cotillion planned for us is over.”
“For you? But the word on the docks proclaims the cotillion is for the youngest son of Winthrop Randolph.”
“That is true.”
“Then you are—”
“Blair in Richmond. Randolph, here.”
The captain blinked as the comprehension of her words began to take root. “Ethan Blair, the doctor’s assistant, is Winthrop Randolph’s son?”
“Yes.”
“Natural or legal?”
“Legal.”
“An heir, then? This man who visits the sick of all colors in Richmond? Who has you for his wife? How came this to be?”
“He is the same good man here, Captain.”
A slight stiffness rode through his form. “Of this I could not testify. But you, ma’am, I find most courageous in both places.”
“No. Captain Atwater, think on it. My way is clear. It is my husband who is torn between our shared beliefs and his loyalty to his family.”
“What would he do if he discovered your part in our excursions?”
“I take great care that he does not. For the sake of harmony between us.” She smiled. “Have no fear for me. It’s you who have muddied your fine boots for a poor parcel of clothes.”
“A parcel beyond price, Mrs. Blair,” he corrected, squeezed her hand, and returned to his launch.
Judith stood in the shade of the scrub pine. She’d trusted the captain of the nimble schooner with the knowledge that the master of Windover’s doctor was also his son. It should not have grieved him. Captain Atwater knew Ethan’s reputation in Richmond. He knew her husband would become no lazy planter’s son in their time here.
 
 
“I
magine, Judith,” Hester declared between pursed lips less than a week later, “the very man who delivered your correspondences to and from Richmond—caught! It’s a disgrace!”
“Caught? Captain Atwater, caught?”
“Exactly so.”
“They’ve seized his ship,” Clara chimed in. “He’s ruined.”
“They speak of imprisonment. And worse.”
“Worse?” Judith whispered, her hand hovering over her expanding middle, feeling ill for the first time in weeks.
“They ought to treat him to the same punishments inflicted on the property he was stealing!” Hester declared watching Judith closely. “They ought to whip him to within an inch of his life!”
“He’ll be lucky if he survives long enough to go to trial,” Clara’s handkerchief signaled back, “from what I hear about the mobs of Norfolk.”
“Ladies …” Judith heard her mother-in-law’s steely voice. “That is enough of this venomous conjecturing about a man who never did us any harm, and performed a valuable service for Ethan and Judith.”
“Oh, yes. I suppose now you will have to wait for the post rider like the more humble of us who don’t have schooner captains at our beck and call, Judith,” Clara said in her sweet-sick voice.
Judith stood, speechless in her anger and misery. She wished Sally had not returned to Richmond with her little ones. She needed badly to cry into Ethan’s sister’s lap. Sally would be all comfort, no questions.
Anne Randolph answered the entreaty in her eyes. “Lie down a little while, Judith. I will finish entertaining our guests.”
Judith left the room’s confines—not for her own rooms, but for Martha’s kitchen. The cook was leaning into her baking oven. She turned. “Why, Miss Judith, where’s your hat, child?”
“I need my husband.”
“But I don’t rightly know where—”
“Who does, Martha? I need Ethan now.”
“You well?”
She nodded fitfully, trying to keep back her tears.
“Up to setting yourself on a saddle, miss?” she asked, pulling a cloth bonnet from its peg on the wall.
“Yes.”
“Well, then, come along. We find out where your man is. And we get you into his company right quick, don’t fret no more. But put this on, it’s cool yet.”
 
 
I
t was easy to spot him among the black men mending the roof of one of the older slave cabins on Blackberry Lane. He lifted his head from his hammering when one of the men touched his shoulder, pointed toward her with his chin.
Ethan climbed down a ladder as Judith dismounted. He took her hand, leading her under a tulip poplar. Like his sister, no questions.
“I would go to Norfolk, Ethan. I would speak for Captain Atwater,” she explained.
He listened in silence to the circumstances of the capture of the
Opal
and its runaways. Then she waited, startled by the change in his eyes. Eyes like his mother’s, not in color, but in their evasive veils.
“By water would be fastest, I think. Would a sail at first light suit you, Judith?” he asked.
 
 
H
e joined her in bed that night with the scent of bourbon on his breath and his brothers still reveling below. He kissed her cheek, then circled her waist and nuzzled like a child beneath her heart. She waited for him to speak. He did not.
“Ethan?” she called softly.
“Hmm?”
“First light?”
He groaned. “Already?”
“No. A few hours yet. Are we still leaving then?”
“Aye,
madame.”
Her blue devils were back, wanting her to shake him, ask him why he drank bourbon and caroused with his father and brothers deep into the night before their mission to save a good man’s life began. Or was it not his mission, but hers alone? She silenced her devils, and pulled her husband as close as their growing child would allow.

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