The Randolph Legacy (9 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
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“I will consult with Burwell on him, sir,” the boy offered eagerly.
He was stayed by his grandfather’s hand, gnarled, Judith could see, with arthritis. “Rest by the fire, child. Burwell will report on Samson’s condition soon.”
The boy walked to the hard-backed bench by the hearth and sulked, avoiding his cousins’ attempts to draw him into their conversation.
Judith left the common room’s company long enough to fetch Washington’s large model of the brigantine ship. When she returned, the sisters chatted together across a table set with a hearty stew for four. The man everyone called “the Squire” was absorbed by her father’s botanical collection. His grandson still stared into the fire, his swollen lip adding to his brooding look. Judith approached the young man cautiously.
“Francis, may I show thee something?” she asked quietly.
He made room for her on the bench, turning toward her treasure. His eyes lit with interest. He soon gave up his sullen silence to join a conversation on the circumstances of Washington’s creation.
“May I look more closely at your gift?” the voice of the Squire soon intoned behind them.
Judith turned to him, tall and majestic and burnished gold by the hearth-fire light. She placed the ship in his hands. He studied Washington’s creation through the magnifying glass he’d been using to study her father’s plants.
“Extraordinary craftsmanship. But, my dear Miss Mercer,” he said, the astonishment giving his well-modulated voice even more timbre, “we must ponder together why the captain’s quarters of this vessel is the study of Windover, Winthrop Randolph’s plantation on the James River.”
Judith felt a catch in her throat. “It is? Thee knows this man?”
“My granddaughters Ellen and Cornelia are Randolphs, as was my own mother. Winthrop Randolph is a distant kinsman. Of the branch of the family which holds me beneath contempt, but not as vocal about it as others of the line. He’s even older than I. Windover is not far, perhaps a day’s ride from here.”
“Does Winthrop Randolph have a family?”
“His wife Anne. She’s a Blair. Yes, I believe so, a Blair. They had three sons and a charming daughter. Two of the sons remain; one was lost.”
“How?”
“In a shipwreck—”
“—off Bermuda, a merchant ship, the
Ida Lee,
in the year eighteen hundred and five,” Judith finished, breathless, for him. “Thy kinsman
Mr. Randolph’s son was impressed into the Royal Navy, before the wreck.”
A fire of indignation spread from the man’s eyes to his entire long frame. “Impressed, Judith Mercer?” he almost roared.
“Yes. I seek to free him of his long captivity aboard the HMF
Standard.
I have Dolley—I have Mrs. James Madison’s assistance in the matter.”
A smile warmed the old man’s fiery indignation. “You have Thomas Jefferson’s as well,” he promised.
 
 
W
ashington awoke to the coat being pulled away. His hand grabbed the sleeve at the last possible moment, and held. Through the weave, the clang of his wrist irons, he felt the captain’s white-hot anger.
“Who gave you this?”
Washington maintained his silence. He would not give up the midshipman’s name, even if he knew it. Though the sunlight hurt his eyes, Washington stared, trying to remember the hardened face before his. This was Captain Willis, the man who stole him away, who had him whipped to within the measure of his young life, long ago, Fayette said. The slumbering giant. He should remember, but he didn’t.
The captain released Fayette’s coat. Did that mean there was a spark of Judith’s Light in him? Washington wondered. The giant’s eyes were so sleep-starved that Washington felt sorry for him. Captain Willis motioned to the guard. “Who had the Midwatch?” he demanded.
“Collins, sir.”
“Have him flogged. Twelve lashes. On the gundeck.”
“But, Captain—”
“Now, Sergeant.”
“Will the nature of his transgression be made known to him, sir?”
“He knows his transgression. If he allows the prisoner free access of this ship again, I will have him keel-hauled, you may tell him that.”
“Free access? Sir, the man is crippled, chained, and caged!”
“And your prisoner will maintain his fast until trial,” the captain said as if the sergeant had not spoken.
The surgeon came forward. “Captain Willis, he needs water,” he proclaimed.
The captain looked at the cloudless sky. “Perhaps it will rain,” he said.
Judith’s hand grasped her father’s as they sat in the full-size version
of the captain’s quarters on Washington’s
Survivor.
It was not where guests were received at Windover, but where business was done, this room in the back of the house, away from the splendid great hall and receiving rooms that faced the river. This was where the overseer was instructed, the contracts signed. The heavy tapestries smelled faintly of tobacco. It was a male domain, and the silent woman sitting at the accounts desk couldn’t have looked more out of place in the hold of the
Standard.
Anne Blair Randolph was used to cocooning herself, Judith thought, of living in a place somewhere back behind her lustrous eyes. Light eyes. It was the shape of her face, her generous lower lip she shared with her last-born. Or was Judith grasping at resemblances?
She banished the hint of doubt and concentrated on the woman. The whiteness of her skin was made even more dramatic by the deep crimson of her gown. But the sad, beautiful mistress of Windover Plantation possessed a delicacy for which she herself was partially responsible, Judith sensed.
Her eldest sons flanked her. One was portly, and looked older than his mother, with jaundiced sags of dissipation, frown lines, and a set, pugnacious jaw that marred his handsomeness. Tall, almost towering, he dressed in well-made, bright brocades. The other son’s face was sharper, more intelligent, but it was cowed by his elder brother, to whom his eyes were continually referring. An Anglican clergyman with a century-old family church, but with neither tithes nor a congregation to fill it. That was how Thomas Jefferson had described the second Randolph son. The only trace of Clayton Randolph’s calling was his sober black suit of clothes. Tall, large-boned men, these Randolphs, with light eyes and hair. Not like her Washington at all.
Judith despaired of either man believing her. And they would not allow her to see their father, palsied with age and illness upstairs. Her hope lay with the woman.
“Miss Mercer, Mr. Mercer,” Clayton Randolph said in a practiced, almost toneless voice. “Perhaps you can understand our distress. The federal government is scouring the seas for this vessel, bent on the release of a man we have yet to be convinced is our kinsman. That is hardly fair to us, is it?”
Eli Mercer nodded graciously. “How we wish the constraints of time had made our visit less startling.”
The woman glanced at the letter in her elder son’s hands. She touched his arm. “Mr. Jefferson has recommended—”
“Mother, Mr. Jefferson would like to salvage heroic stories from this miserable war for his friend Madison.” Clayton Randolph looked pointedly at Judith. “We buried our brother ten years ago,” he said.
“Sally did not,” Anne Randolph spoke just above a whisper. “Sally would not even wear mourning.”
Winthrop Randolph the younger stretched his hand across his chin. Not long, or fine. “Ethan was a gregarious child, Miss Mercer. He very well might have described his home to this man. While at sea, among boys, the classes sometimes mix. My brother still sported as one with our servants at the time he went to sea. I’ll concede that your sailmender may have served with him. But Ethan Randolph was no powder monkey. He was an officer, a midshipman aboard my father’s flagship. And he went down with it.”
Anne Randolph’s gaze finally met Judith’s eyes. “He was only ten when he went away to his Norfolk training, then to sea at twelve. He did so love the sea. He did so want to please my husband.”
“Don’t think on it, Mother, you’ll only distress yourself.” Anne Randolph’s eldest son admonished her as if she were the child. She nodded, but turned the brigantine, and stared at Judith’s rendition of Washington’s silhouette as if she could breathe life into it.
“May we speak with thy daughter, Mrs. Randolph?” Judith tried.
A trace of a smile appeared on the woman’s face. “Our Sally is only yesterday delivered of a child. A fine new daughter.”
“There is no need to disturb Mrs. Gibson at this delicate time,” Clayton proclaimed. He had been put in charge of his sister, Judith surmised, just as his brother reined their mother.
A young house servant in starched linen knocked and entered the room, breathless. “Your pardon, mistress …” she began.
Clayton Randolph frowned deeply. “What is it, Phoebe?”
“I come from Miss Sally. She wants the Quaker lady and her daddy come up see her.”
“How has she learned of their presence here?”
“I don’t rightly know, sir.”
“Winthrop!” Judith heard the deep-throated shriek sailing down the elegant curved staircase. “You bring those people to me before I pull the rafters down!”
Phoebe smiled at Judith’s amazement. “Miss Sally, she be plenty mighty ’round her birthing times,” she explained.
 
 
T
he quartermasters sat Washington on the Peruvian chair. One left to summon the captain. The others stood guard, their long shadows protecting him from the sun’s direct heat. It was so warm there in the waist of the ship’s deck. Still, Washington needed Fayette’s coat for the remnants of the Frenchman’s courage it still possessed.
The men of the
Standard
assembled in benchrow sections, according to rank. So many faces. Some looked disgusted, some sympathetic, some wore unreadable masks.
It had rained. Yesterday, or perhaps the day before. Washington had raised his face to it, tried to catch it in his hands. After the rain came more of the relentless heat of the South Atlantic. Through it, sailors had risked flogging to slip him water.
Collins, his guard of the Midwatch, sat in the officers’ section. Washington tried to show him how to anchor his arms at his thighs and lean forward, taking the pressure off his welted back. Collins followed his example, releasing a slight smile.
All but Washington stood as the captain, in full-dress uniform, left his cabin. He approached the rail above them, motioned his officers and crew to their ease.
The trial began.
Captain Willis called his witnesses. Washington recognized none. They gave disjointed testimonies with haunted, ferretlike eyes. They spoke about Fayette and Washington as foreigners, whispering to each other in sedition, in French, even when Fayette was dying. The words, the vaulting space of the high blue sky, the heat of the sun left Washington’s head spinning. He anchored it between his hands.
“Chaplain,” Captain Willis called, “swear in the prisoner.”
Washington lifted his head. Judith did not believe in swearing. It was an insult, she’d said, to the truth that dwelt inside, to be sworn. A Child of the Light spoke the truth always, never swore. But he wasn’t a Child of Light. He was a Deist like Fayette, ruled by smatterings of Reason, the gift of a creator who had long since lost interest in individual creations. And he was ruled by his dreams—the ones in his sleep, and the waking ones that Judith called visions. But he would never be like Judith, who talked with God. So perhaps it did not matter if he swore.
The chaplain’s detached eyes warmed a little. “Don’t be afraid,” he said quietly, offering the black book. “Place your hand here.”
Washington followed his instruction.
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” he intoned.
Where was the chaplain’s god? Washington wondered. In that book? The chaplain’s eyes narrowed with impatience.
“Well?” he demanded.
“Yes,” Washington said. “I do!”
“Good, then. From both of us, the truth.”
Muffled laughter. Had he caused this? The captain waved the small man away, and approached the rail above the quarterdeck.
“Prisoner. What is your name?” he demanded.
“Washington.”
“And your Christian name?”
Washington’s eyes stayed focused on the intensity of the captain’s gaze as his mind searched. Nothing. He would have to name himself, he reasoned. “Henri—Henry,” he amended.
“You are French?”
“No. I am American.”
“From where?”
He must not lie. What had Judith told him? Judith never lied. “The South,” he said.
“The South? In which of the United States were you born?”
He hesitated. The captain laughed. It was a cruel sound. Washington did, from somewhere deep in his dreams, remember the sound of that laughter. “You are a rather empty-headed spy!”
Washington took in a steely breath. He was not stupid. There was no need for any of them to think him stupid, empty-headed, not anymore. He took a deep breath. “The United States of America are Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, the District of Columbia, Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio.” He listed the names by order of their admission into the Union.
“Louisiana,” the captain corrected quietly, as if to a dinner guest. “Louisiana is now a state.”
“Is it?” Washington asked, as if he was that guest.
“Since eighteen hundred and twelve.”
The new Henry Washington remembered the purchase of land. President Jefferson bought a vast territory, no one knew how vast, from the
French emperor Napoleon, for whom Fayette used to fight. Had all that land become a state? So much had happened. His flag had another star. And the war, the second war between his country and Britain, was over.
Hurry, Judith,
he thought—filled with the intensity of his need to go home, to embrace those places that were only stars and stripes and names to him.
Washington absorbed the strength that Fayette had left in his chair, in his coat. He lifted his head higher. “I know my country,” he told Captain Willis.
“Then you know your American ship.”
“No. I don’t remember it.”
“It was manned by a crew of British deserters, not Americans.”
“I was sick—”
“You were dead! They told me you were dead!”
“I don’t remember before I was sick.” Henry Washington’s quiet tone cut through the captain’s mounting hysteria.
“Then how are you so sure of your nationality, powder monkey?”
“Fayette told me—”
“The Frenchman? He was captured after I pulled you off that merchant ship. In the battle off Trafalgar we captured him, so how did he know anything of you?”
“He knew. I know.”
“He was your master, this man who called himself Lafayette?”
“No. My friend.”
“I see. Did he teach you to speak French?”
“Yes.”
“Did he fill your young mind with notions of a Franco-American alliance? Did he teach you to spy?”
“We did not spy.”
“‘We’? Can you speak for your friend, Henry Washington? Were you with him always? He left this ship. What did he do on shore leave? Where did he go? Who were his contacts, his sources of information? How did he do it? God damn you both to the fires of Hell! How did he keep this ship out of the conflicts of a decade?”
Washington thought of Fayette listening to the outlandish claims and smiling. He found himself doing the same.
“Something amuses you?”
Washington’s smile grew wider. He was infected now, somehow, by the chair, the coat. It was as if he were Fayette, already dead, and unafraid. “It is ridiculous, this notion of spying. Fayette gave up his country. He gave up his life on any land so that I would not die.”
Captain Willis left his place behind the brass rail and approached his
prisoner. Even then Washington did not feel any fear. “Do you know how long you have prowled His Majesty’s ship?” he demanded.
“I have not prowled. I am not able to prowl.”
He came closer. Washington smelled drink on him. Strong drink. “How has your face appeared outside my window?”
“Your window?”
“That look of ignorance is very well practiced, Mr. Washington. But we both know you are no cripple. Raise him from the chair,” he commanded two men. They obeyed.
“Now, stand away.”
The surgeon rose. “But, Captain—”
“Away from him, I said!”
When they released him, Washington stood on his healthy leg as long as he’d ever remembered. It was long enough even to feel the hot air sift though the weave of his worn duck trousers, and to turn his wish to dance into a need. Now, without Fayette’s arms supporting him, it was a need that pressed at his core, even as his good leg buckled.
The surgeon pulled Fayette’s coat from his back drenched in sweat. No coat, no chair. Washington shivered without his amulets.
“I’m so thirsty,” he whispered.
The surgeon nodded. “Captain,” he called out, “this man is incapable of being a threat to you, or to anyone. Look.”

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