by David Liss
Indeed, I saw no one but Negroes. Reynolds seemed to read my thoughts, for he said, “He ain’t got a wife; he lives only with the niggers. But he takes to company.”
If the outer countenance of the mansion was surprising, the interior made us gasp. I don’t know when it happened, when we decided that we had passed from one world to another, but I now recognized that I expected never to see again such signs of civilization. From the inside of the house, one would hardly know that this was not some elegant New York mansion. The walls were lined with fine paintings and tapestries, the floors with excellent coverings that produced the most faithful imitation of tile. While Pittsburgh smelled like a necessary pot, this home gave off the fragrance of baking bread and cut flowers.
A pretty young Negro girl, light in color, met us at the door. She would not look directly at us, and so I did not notice at once the severe bruise upon her eye. Perhaps she wished to hide this from us, or perhaps she feared Reynolds, who studied her with naked desire while fingering his scar. With a torpid gait, as though unwilling herself to approach, the girl took us to a massive sitting room. This chamber boasted not only a fine rug—for here only guests without mud on their feet would be admitted—but, beyond all the handsome chairs and two sofas, a large pianoforte was propped against the far wall, where it was bathed in the light of the morning sun. It was now nine, for the tall case clock rang cheerily, echoed by chimes throughout the house and the church bell from the distant town.
At the far end of the room, before the fireplace, sitting upon an isolated high-backed armchair—looking much from its form and placement like a throne—was a stout and rugged man in his sixties. His white hair was long and tangled in the back, though he balded considerably, and he had wild gray eyes and a rough stubble upon his cheek—features that clashed with his tailored breeches, ruffled shirt, and embroidered waistcoat. All of these things contributed to give him the look of a deranged surveyor who has spent too much time alone in the wilderness. If his countenance had not given that impression, I suspect it would have been provided by the fowling piece he clutched in one hand, its butt resting against the floor, like a brutal frontier scepter. Above him hung a string of hairy things attached to bits of leather. It took me a moment to recognize them as Indian scalps.
The servant had not admitted Reynolds with us, and we were alone with this old man, who bore himself with the silent dignity of a savage chief. He opened his mouth to show us two rows of dark teeth, which he clamped together in something like a grin.
“I am Colonel Holt Tindall of Empire Hall, and I am Duer’s partner on this side of the Alleghenies.” As he spoke, I felt the heat of his gaze as it settled upon my body. He looked at me as no man should look at a woman not his wife. “Reynolds said I’d want to meet you, and he knows my business, I’ll say as much as that.” He spoke with the heavy accent of a Virginian, but it had an additional drawl, a kind of laziness I had already begun to associate with Westerners.
“Care to sit?” he asked.
“Thank you,” said Andrew.
Tindall banged the butt of his fowling piece upon the wooden floor. “Not you. A man stands in the presence of his betters. I address the lady.”
I could not endure that Andrew should be again debased for the sake of something so trivial as my appearance. I gazed upon this Colonel Tindall with hatred and contempt, lest he think I mistook his rudeness for authority, and remained standing.
“You must suit yourself,” he said, in response to my silence. “Stand, sit, don’t matter.”
He might have been a Virginian once, but evidently he had forgotten the culture of extreme politeness cultivated in those climes. All at once I knew precisely what he was—a hybrid creature composed of a Southerner’s sense of privilege and a Westerner’s brutality. There is a name for a creature that is part one thing and part another: monster.
My pulse quickened and my breathing deepened. I was afraid. I had been living for weeks in perpetual fear—fear for what would become of us, fear for our safety—but this was something much more urgent, something sharper. I looked at Andrew, and his lips curled in a reassuring smile. If he too was afraid, he would not show it.
Andrew stepped forward, inclining just enough toward a bow to be polite without actually offering obeisance. “I am Andrew Maycott, and this is my wife, Joan. We are anxious to see our land, so please state your business.”
The colonel’s old face darkened at Andrew’s words. He sneered, again revealing his tobacco-stained teeth. As if to demonstrate the origins of this discoloration, he pulled from inside his coat a twist of tobacco and bit off a considerable piece.
Just then the doors to the chamber opened and a Negro woman of great girth and indeterminate age—but surely neither young nor very old—entered the chamber. “I see you got company, Colonel. You want tea, or maybe that cake I done baked this morning?”
The colonel banged his fowling piece upon the floor. “Did I call for you?” he demanded. “Do not come unless I call. Now get you gone, Lactilla.”
I was later to learn, as a point of gossip, that this Negress had been the colonel’s property for near twenty years. When first making her way into Tindall’s household, her breasts had been large with milk, for she had been separated from a child not yet two years old, owing to the death of her previous owner. The colonel found this condition amusing and had taken to calling her Lactilla.
Now the woman stared brazenly at this beast of a man. “Don’t you use that tone with me when I ain’t done nothing wrong but only my duty, which is to serve tea and cake.”
Tindall raised his fowling piece. “You’ll go back to your damned kitchen, nigger. The only question is if you do it whole or filled with shot.”
She waved a hand and let out a guffaw. “Look at him. Old man with a gun.” She turned to me. “You come by the kitchen when you done, honey. I give you some cake, you and that handsome husband of yours.” She shrugged her massive shoulders and heaved herself from the room.
Tindall set the gun back down with a thud, but he kept his hand upon it still. “Damn that old bitch.” He looked at Andrew. “As for you, don’t hope I’ve forgotten your impertinence. You don’t much care to mind your place, but you’ll come to understand your error. You ask around, Maycott, and you’ll hear the same thing from everyone. I am generous to the town and its poor. I am free with my money, and I believe those with means ought to help those who have none. I do not, however, suffer insolence gladly.”
“And how is it not insolence on your part when you ask us to stand while you remain seated?” Andrew asked.
“Because this is my house and my town, and the land you are to settle upon is my own.”
“I believe,” said Andrew, “it is mine. I bought it.”
“There’ll be time for you to examine that belief. For now, it would be well for you to listen to what I say and to think no more of the sort of leveling foolishness that comes from misunderstanding the late war. I am familiar with the principles of the Revolution, for I fought in it.”
“As did I,” said Andrew.
“What of it? One cannot empty a workhouse, a jail, or a brothel without uncovering a passel of veterans. You would do better to attend to more immediate concerns. Such as your land, for example.” He held up two scrolls of foolscap, both clutched in his left hand, clearly unwilling to let go of the fowling piece. “One of these is the deed to your land, the contract that you signed, cleverly written by our friend Duer, who is quite adept at these things. It is, I am afraid, not a favorable piece of property.”
I took a step forward. “Mr. Duer assured us that it was very fertile.”
“Duer lied, pretty thing. The land might be fertile to corn for all I know, but you will have to clear it of trees and rocks and then see what it yields. If you had a team of mules and a pack of niggers, you might do it in as little as two years.”
“You wait a moment,” Andrew said.
Tindall showed us his teeth again. “I ain’t go
t to wait. Duer deceived you. You know that by now. He spoke to you of the glories of Libertytown, but you’ve seen Pittsburgh, and you wonder how the settlement can be a paradise if Pittsburgh is so wretched. Your allotment is not farmland but wild forest, and taming it will likely be your death.”
Neither of us spoke because, terrible though these revelations might be, they were not shocking. As Tindall had suggested, we had long since understood Duer’s deception, though we were not yet aware of its extent. We did not speak because of our of pure, sharp, numbing surprise. It was one thing to trick a person but quite another to glory in being a cheat.
“Now,” he continued, “the other deed I hold in my hand is more like the sort of thing Duer suggested. Not quite, you understand. It won’t be what you were told, but this one is very much nearer. ’Tis cleared land, already a cabin on it, such as it is, and the land’s been farmed somewhat in the haphazard ways of western rabble. It is a better piece of land—much more workable. Perhaps you would like to consider trading what you have now for something more agreeable. ’Tis equal acreage, so you need not concern yourself on that score.”
Andrew said nothing. What was there to say? We were hundreds of miles from our home, abused and deceived, in the hands now of a deranged border despot whose greatest pleasure seemed to be abusing those in his power. Tindall had every advantage over us, and the only power we had came from withholding our acknowledgment of that power.
“I have come to these terms with other settlers, who have always found them advantageous,” Tindall said. “Would you care to come to terms with me, Mr. Maycott?”
“That would depend upon the terms, would it not?” His voice remained steady. I knew he was frightened, for me and for our future, but he would not show it.
“It is not what I asked you.” Tindall’s voice shifted from syrupy to hard. “I did not ask about the terms, I only asked if you would like advantageous terms. Answer me yes or no.”
“I shall listen to your offer,” Andrew said, “and if I think it sound I shall consider it. I am not going to agree to any theoretical proposal. To do so would be foolish.”
Tindall pounded the butt of his fowling piece against the floor several times, like a judge banging his gavel. “Enough of your insolence. I ain’t got the time for it. Here is what I offer you, though you’re fortunate I still give you the chance to take it. I wish that Mrs. Maycott may attend me here once a week, and maybe stay the night. ’Tis no great thing; it’s an insubstantial thing, if you know that word. In exchange, a substantial thing may be yours.”
Andrew remained silent a moment longer. I could not imagine that anyone faced with this blunt and diabolical demand would surrender to it, that there were men and women so low in the world, and in their sense of their own worth, that they would agree to these terms as though they had agreed to the price of a pound of flour. Images of the blunted and weathered inhabitants of Pittsburgh came to my mind, and I wondered if these people were capable of agreeing to anything at all. It seemed to me that, once so defeated by life, they would do nothing more than submit the way a lamb submits to be shorn.
Andrew stepped toward the colonel, and so bold was his determination that the old man set down both deeds and tightened his grip upon his fowling piece. “The proposal you make concerns my wife. Why, then, do you present it to me?”
Tindall at first did not stir and then he cleared his throat. With his free hand, the one not clutching the gun, he stroked the stubble on his chin.
He let out a little bark of air, something like a laugh, I suppose, in the same way that a drab brown moth is something like a resplendent butterfly. “How modern of your husband. What say you, Mrs. Maycott?”
Andrew looked at me, but I did not meet his gaze. Instead, I smiled at Tindall as though he were a peddler who had not yet shown us his best wares. “I am sure the plot of land for which we have contracted will prove sufficient.”
“You and Duer may have cheated us,” Andrew said, “and you may relish that fact, but that does not make us your slaves nor you our master. We shall turn dross into gold and never depend upon the favors of men like you.”
Andrew walked back to me, took my arm, and led me toward the door.
“You may not later change your mind,” Tindall said. “I won’t have my tenants switching their plots. It would cause”—he waved his hand about in the air—“discontent.”
“I am not your tenant,” Andrew said, turning to him. “I have purchased this land, inferior though it may be, outright. You and I are both landholders and so equals.”
“And perhaps we would be if you owned the land. I do find it sad, so very sad, when low people who know not their way around a contract sign one without first inquiring of a lawyer. You are, I am told, a carpenter by trade, yes? You would despise someone, I think, who attempted to construct an armoire out of his own imaginings of how it must be made without seeking experienced advice. You have not purchased the land. You have purchased the right to occupy the land and pay me ground rent.”
I looked at Andrew. Could it be true? Ground rents were generally inexpensive, and held for very long periods of time. Ours, I would later discover, as was typical of the sort, was for ninety-nine years. Each quarter for that period we were to pay our landlord ten dollars, rather expensive for a ground lease, let alone one in so remote a location. So long as we paid, we retained possession and could sublease or even sell the right to occupy, though at the end of the ninety-nine years, ownership would revert to the landlord.
I now saw the extent to which we had been deceived. We had given up all we had, not to own land but to occupy and pay rent upon a worthless plot of forest. To make it yield value, and so be able to raise the money needed to pay our rent and not lose our property, we would have to clear the land and increase its worth. Tindall and Duer had discovered a way to profit while turning worthless holdings into a valuable estate. And surely we were not the first. Others had been cheated thus, for there was a whole community of victims under Tindall’s command. None who had been cheated had found redress, for Tindall and Duer continued their scheme, and that could only mean one thing: that the law, the principles of the republic for which Andrew had fought, had already been abandoned. The men back east could not or would not protect us.
“You’ll be taken to your plot,” Tindall said. “You may have occasion to wish you had accepted my offer. As I said, it will not come again. There is, however, the matter of quarterly rent, and if you find that you cannot pay, and you risk losing your land, we may then talk again.”
It was as though he were a candle that had been blown out. He remained in his chair, his weapon in his hand, but his eyes went cold and empty, and I had the strange feeling that Andrew and I were now alone. We opened the door and departed without escort.
Ethan Saunders
Wearing tolerably clean clothes, washed in my basin and then dried by the fire, I slipped quietly down the stairs early the next morning. The sun had just come up, and if I could avoid the serving woman, I had no doubt I could escape the house without enduring awkward conversation with its inmates. The memory of my encounter with Mrs. Lavien still felt as raw and vulnerable as a new wound. It was not simply the shame of having been exposed, of having treated so shabbily my hosts’ kindness, it was the notion that these antics were somehow alien to me now. Something had changed. My new proximity to Cynthia Pearson’s life made my behavior unseemly even to myself, and Mrs. Lavien’s cruel words still rang in my ears.
My plan was a simple one: I would obtain a few coins from a careless gentleman on the street, take my breakfast in a tavern, and meet Leonidas as planned. When at drink, I can be clumsy, but that morning I moved as quietly as a cat on the hunt. No floorboards creaked under my weight, no stairs groaned at my descent. Even so, when I reached the ground floor, Mr. Lavien leaned forward in his chair in the sitting room. He saw my position—hands out for better balance, feet at sharp angles to test the stairs for weaknesses that would betray me—and met
it with one of his thin, vaguely predatory smiles. I had accepted his hospitality, allowed him to feed me, serve me drink, introduce me to his family. I sent him out into the cold night to hunt down my slave. In return I had attempted to seduce his wife, and now he sat grinning at me, looking like a serpent before it lashes out at a cornered and frozen mouse.
“Shall we go take some breakfast?” he asked.
In a nearby tavern, crowded with laboring men in early morning silence, I sat next to Lavien at a poor table—too close to the door, too far from the fire. He ate buttered bread and pickled eggs. I made an attempt at some bread as well, but concentrated more upon the beer.
I took a deep drink. “I suppose you want to speak about the incident last night.”
“What, the one with my wife? What have you to say?”
I let out a sigh. “Look, I apologize for attempting to take liberties.”
He shrugged. “It is no more than I expected. Your reputation in such matters precedes you, and there was never any danger of your doing anything but becoming embarrassed, which I see has occurred.”
“You don’t care that I might have seduced your wife?”
“Oh, I would have cared about that. It is not what happened. You thought you might seduce my wife, and that is another matter, for in reality you could have achieved nothing.”
“You know that, do you?”
“I know my wife,” he said. “And I think I begin to know you well enough too. The sting of your disgrace years ago still hangs over you, so you look for new disgraces. But we can put a stop to that. When I prove to the world that your reputation was so unjustly injured, you will have a chance to begin your life anew.”
