The General's Cook

by Ramin Ganeshram

  Reaching into his basket, he drew out a small cone of fine sugar wrapped in its indigo paper and then quickly unlatched the door. He stepped in and crossed to where Sally’s cloak was hooked on the wall, her own market basket sitting on the bench beneath. He placed the sugar in the basket, then entered the narrow stair—payment for her silence and her lookout.

  As low as the stairwell ceiling was, Hercules still barely had to bend his head. Through the wall he could hear Mrs. Witcher at the front speaking to some ladies of the “better sort.”

  The hour of the day meant that most of the lodgers would be about their afternoon business, taking advantage of the waning light before hurrying to be indoors for the night. Supper would not be served until at least eight or nine, if it ever was in such a place. Most of the guests would probably go out to one of the middling taverns to take the light evening meal.

  When he reached the landing, the hallway was blessedly empty. He walked quickly to the small door under the gambrel eave of the house and tapped on it with the pads of his fingers.

  He opened the door a slight crack, eased himself inside, and strode over to where Thelma stood by the small shuttered window, a piece of artist’s charcoal loosely held between her fingers. The room was small enough to cross in five or six steps, less if a man had a long stride. He looked down at the paper on the table, where she had drawn the heads and shoulders of a variety of people—wealthy, poor, dusky, and pale. There were even some Indians, their faces slashed with their tribal marks, and some whose faces had been maimed, perhaps by plague.

  “You are making yourself as dark as I with this black coal,” he said, picking up the delicate hand and kissing where the stick had stained her pale skin.

  Thelma only smiled and drew her hand away.

  Hercules set down the basket on a small square of free space on the table.

  Thelma was one of the hundreds of refugees who were flooding the federal city from France and its blood-soaked revolution and from Saint-Domingue after the slave uprising. Her skin was only a bit darker than ivory and her reddish-brown hair held in tight long curls. She, like her mother, was the property of her slaver father, who had been killed in L’Ouverture’s rebellion back in ’91. While he had lived, he’d allowed his pretty half-breed daughter more finery and attention than any of the other slaves, and she received the hand-me-downs of his legitimate white children. She’d been allowed to linger in the schoolroom up at the big house, and had learned to read and draw and even speak English with her half siblings’ private tutors.

  After the slaves had taken over the island, her mother, fearing for Thelma’s life given her near-white looks, gathered the coins she had saved over decades and bought the girl passage on a ship to Philadelphia. And so she came to be at Witcher’s, which was both respectable and affordable, with a proprietress who could tell a fine gown and a quality upbringing when she saw it. Luckily for Thelma, Mrs. Witcher wasn’t one of those worldly Philadelphians who was able to pick out those telltale signs that marked Thelma as a mulatto rather than a white woman.

  Thelma tutored the lady’s two daughters in French and classics, and even managed to obtain a few students among social-climbing white merchants who chose not to examine her too closely. She also earned a secret living among the tiny, elite class of free Negroes in town, including the children of the exceedingly rich confectioner Charles Sang, at whose home Hercules had met her last June.

  Hercules had been to Sang’s to order three of the beautiful swan centerpieces the candy maker carved from sugarloaf. They were to decorate the dessert table at the season’s last levee before the Washingtons returned to Virginia for the summer.

  Upon taking his leave, he noticed the girl coming from the front door of the house next to the shop. She had a look not unlike his friend James, slave to Jefferson, whose wavy black hair had a hard curl and his fine straight nose a delicate flair. His skin, while fair, browned like a nicely done roast chicken in the summer sun, making his green eyes appear all the paler. Like James, the young lady’s shiny curls fell tightly on her shoulder and the gentle, pretty swell of her lips belied her heritage. Hercules knew she was not white.

  “A fine day, is it not?” he said, falling into step beside her.

  Instead of walking along faster or admonishing him for being so brazen, the girl had surprisingly stopped and turned to face him, her eyes sweeping from the top of his head to his boots. She looked for what seemed a longer time than was strictly appropriate before she said in her heavy French accent, “Who are you?”

  Hercules smiled slowly then and made a deep bow since he had no hat to doff, his hair wrapped tightly in the scarf he wore while cooking.

  “Mademoiselle, I am General Washington’s cook,” he said, straightening up and returning her gaze.

  She put out her hand. “I am Thelma …” She paused for a moment as if uncertain. “Blondelle.”

  “Honored to make your acquaintance, Miss Blondelle,” he had replied. “May I walk with you a little?”

  Thelma had inclined her head to indicate her assent and the two set off in the direction of her boardinghouse, many blocks in the opposite direction from the presidential mansion. After that, he made it his business to meet her at Sang’s whenever he could contrive to do so until she finally took him to her bed. When the General left Philadelphia for Germantown at the height of yellow fever in August, he was obliged to leave quickly with Mrs. Washington’s retinue without stopping to tell Thelma where he was going; being unable to write, he could not send her word.

  He was not in love with her, but it did sicken his heart to think that she might have been back in Philadelphia overcome with the foul fever—perhaps even turned out in the street, as so many had been, to die of their ague and thirst. The Reverend Allen had told Hercules that a terror had come over the city and it had torn at all bounds of human decency like a wild animal gnawing its prey. The healthy showed inhuman cruelty to the sick as they became crazed with desperation to distance themselves from disease.

  It was a stroke of luck that Thelma had been spared—she had been fortunate enough to travel out of the city into the cleaner air of the countryside with the family of one of her white pupils. Hercules happened upon her in the market just a week after his return. From that moment on the nature of their acquaintance became more intense, each aware of how the only moment they possessed was the moment they were in. If Thelma was upset about Hercules’s lack of word when he departed the capital, she did not show it. He had been too ashamed to tell her that he could not read or write.

  Now, in the deeply shadowed little room, he kissed her upturned hand, then placed his arm around her waist, solidly encased in its corset. His wife, Lame Alice, had never worn one—what would a slave need with such restrictive finery? Alice had spent most of her life at sitting tasks since her crushed leg didn’t allow much more. He remembered her slight little form, no bigger than that of the children she minded while their parents worked in the fields until they were big enough to do small chores and show their worth. Before then, Lame Alice kept them from being underfoot, delighting in their silly games, or teaching them skills like shelling peas or plaiting each other’s hair while she sewed patiently, hour in and hour out, the large basket of cloth at her feet never seeming to diminish even while the shirts, nightdresses, napkins, and petticoats for the big house piled neatly in rows on the long wooden table.

  Hercules pushed the thoughts of his dead wife from his mind. Alice was gone some six years now and Thelma was here. He pulled her close and buried his nose in her swelling bosom. Her skin smelled sweetly of the French lavender toilet water she used.

  Thelma sighed and pushed into him. He nuzzled there for a time before she gently pushed him back and untied the bodice of her gown, letting it fall to the floor in a pool around her feet. Reaching into her corset, she popped out one pale beige breast, its fullness overflowing the hand in which it was cupped, inviting. Hercules leaned in and put the reddish-brown nipple in his mouth, s
uckling steadily until the sigh became a soft moan. After a moment, she pulled the breast from his mouth and leaned into him, her hand feeling the front of his britches. Then she led him to the bed, the small feast he had brought in his basket to wait until later.

  That evening he walked into the yard of the president’s mansion to find the cellar door propped open and the faintest flicker of light coming from within. As he passed he could hear the murmurs of Margaret’s voice and Nate’s occasional answer. The girl chattered endlessly when she was nervous, which, as far as Hercules could tell, was nearly always. They must be sorting the potatoes. The coolness of the root cellar, so welcome on the hot summer days, would be like the grave on this early winter evening. Hercules imagined the pair huddled close as they sorted potatoes in the weak column of light thrown off by the candlestick between them. He had begun to tease the boy about his “pale shadow,” hoping to shame him into keeping his distance from her.

  Scowling now, he paused to listen. He could hear the rhythmic plunk of the spoiled potatoes being tossed into a bucket punctuated by the gentle scrape as the good ones were rolled into wicker baskets to be covered over with dry hay and stored.

  It took a moment for Hercules to identify the other sound that bounced off the fieldstone cellar walls as coming from Margaret. The low steady singsong echoed eerily up the cellar stairs like a creeping fog.

  “A was an Archer who shot at a frog …”

  From where he stood, Hercules could just make out the words, but even knowing what she was saying, it seemed like gibberish.

  “B was a butcher who had a great dog …”

  The words sounded like a desperate chant to Hercules and he wondered what Nate could be thinking, beside her.

  “C was a captain all covered with lace, D was a drunkard and had a red face …”

  Hercules imagined her, pale lips in her even paler face, almost feverishly spilling out the words. The shadows cast from the flickering light would make the dark circles under her eyes appear darker and the hollows in her cheeks more pronounced. Margaret looked quite young, but Hercules wondered whether Nate had noticed the rise of the breasts beneath her bodice as he had. They were probably near the same age, he reckoned, remembering back to the year the boy had been born back at Mount Vernon—the same year as his own boy Richmond. Nate’s mother had been a laundress, working eighteen hours a day in the tiny washhouse, winter and summer, wet down with water and lye that chapped and split her skin. She had been a friend to his own Lame Alice, and they had died less than a year apart.

  “What’s that you’re saying, Margaret?” he heard Nate say.

  The girl paused for a few beats.

  “I …”

  A longish time passed before Margaret continued,

  “It’s an alphabet rhyme. My mother taught it to me so I could learn my letters.”

  Nate said nothing.

  “Don’t you know it?” she ventured shyly, then she exclaimed, “Oh!” as if realizing what she was asking. Hercules supposed that if he could see her, she’d be blushing as she often did, the pink flush starting around the edges of her hairline that peeked from under her mobcap, then washing over her face like scalding water.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and Hercules could hear in her voice that the tears might burst through.

  They were silent a few moments as they worked on sorting the potatoes.

  “Would …” Margaret ventured, drawing her breath again before continuing in a stronger voice. “Would you like me to teach you?”

  Hercules started, alarmed. Now this was truly dangerous territory.

  “Shhhh!” the boy hissed and nothing more was said for a few minutes.

  Finally, he heard their footsteps and the scrape of the bucket. Hercules heard nothing again for too long. He began to move toward the stairs to see what mischief they were up to when he heard the boy whisper,

  “Yes—I would.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Early 1794

  THE BOOTH IN FRONT OF THE State House rattled with the loud snores of the watchman inside. Seven o’clock had only just gone. Hercules tapped lightly on the booth with his cane as he passed and the snoring abruptly stopped.

  “Morning, Mr. Brooke,” he said loudly enough for the watchman inside to hear and poke his head out, bleary-eyed. He was a thin and ragged Negro, only recently out of the almshouse, but Hercules knew him as a decent type, always ready with the tales of who came and went from the back garden of the president’s mansion. More than once Brooke had given him fair warning to dally in order to avoid Mr. Lear or Fraunces.

  If Brooke were caught asleep at his duties, calling out the time and keeping an eye out for fire and petty crime, he’d lose the job that he desperately needed—and that Hercules desperately needed him in.

  “Ah, Mr. Hercules,” said Brooke, squinting in the sunlight. He raised his hand to his hat.

  “Seven has just passed, sir,” said Hercules amiably. He pulled out his pocket watch.

  “Just a minute past, Mr. Brooke,” he said again, pointedly, when the man continued to look at him dully.

  “Ah, er—yes,” said the wiry man. He stepped out of the box and straightened his coat. He held a watch lamp in one hand. “Thank you, sir.”

  Hercules inclined his head before he headed off toward Dock Street and the watchman walked in the opposite direction toward Sixth Street, calling the hour loudly.

  As Hercules hurried on, his stomach grumbled when he passed the food stalls that lined the edge of the road opposite the State House. He had only gulped some beer before he left this morning, eager to get down to the docks to inspect the oysterman’s first catch. The free Negro women who sold pasties and small cranberry tarts called out to him by name, but he paused in front a small, dark-skinned girl who was selling meat pies. The pies were not the best looking and the child sitting on an old crate was no more than eleven, wide-eyed, with plaits in her hair. Her dress was old and too short and her toes stuck out from her broken-down shoes. His heart tugged—she reminded him of his own Evey back home. Evey would already be working in the fields or, if she was lucky, in the house at Mount Vernon. There was no childhood for those such as them.

  Tossing her a coin for a pasty, he walked on and ate as he went. The pie was more grease and gristle than meat. Pausing a block from the wharfs, he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his hands and mouth. In the doorway of a small narrow house, a filthy skirted woman with stringy blond hair looked at him with interest. Hercules inclined his head politely, earning a black scowl before she retreated into the darkness of her hovel. Her outrage amused him.

  To the unknowing observer, the docks appeared like nothing short of bedlam. It was impossible to tell what was what as the press of men with carts, carriages, and the frenzy of travelers mixed with mariners loading boats, cleaning the decks, or generally prowling the taverns along the shore.

  Hercules could make out where each mast stood apart from the other, no longer seeing it as the great mash of timber as he had when he first arrived, bewildered, in the city. Now, he could discern the finer ships from the lesser and the professional seamen who treated their ships like a beloved wife versus the scoundrels who turned to the ocean to escape a wretched life on land.

  A plainly but cleanly dressed Negro woman stood near one of the wharf buildings, clutching a mulatto boy in front of her, her arm clamped protectively across his chest. She looked fearfully around, jumping visibly every time a barrel crashed onto the dock or someone yelled across the wharf. Passersby—mostly burly men—deliberately stepped in her path, laughing when she shrank back. Some bumped her hard as they passed, guffawing—the presence of the clearly half-white boy like an unspoken abomination they wanted to rub out whether they be black or white.

  Hercules shook his head and walked on, tipping his hat to her as he passed, her eyes widening in surprise. She looked as though she might speak, but he pressed on, unwilling to get wrapped up in her particular sad drama. There was naught he could do
for her or her boy, so better not to be troubled by them, sympathetic though he might be.

  As Hercules approached Atwood’s wharf, he scanned the crowd for Ben Johnson, the oysterman he favored, and squeezed through to place his order before heading off in the direction of the Man Full O’ Trouble tavern, which was situated on the thin stream of filthy water that marked what was once Dock Creek.

  Hercules paused in the doorway and let his eyes fall upon the crowd. Those who earned their keep working the seafront crowded the benches around the bar cage, but here and there, low-level clerks shared a table and one of the neighborhood merchants dined alone. Their presence testified to Widow Smallwood’s attempts to raise the standards of her newly acquired establishment.

  From across the room the proprietress saw him and squeezed between the chairs, her ample form bedecked in blue satin and an elaborately high wig in the fashion of twenty years past.

  “Welcome! Welcome!” she said when she reached Hercules. He could see that she was clearly aware of who he was and knew that she’d figure his presence at Man Full could only publicize the place as a more genteel establishment instead of just another watering hole for the lower sort that swarmed the docks. No doubt that was true, but she’d be mad to think that he, Hercules, would be frequenting her tavern. He glanced disdainfully around at the moneylenders and junior clerks sipping cheap beer and cider. The fact that there were no wine or spirits on offer meant there was little chance of one’s pockets being pilfered or of being dragged into a drunken brawl. He supposed that was one point in Man Full’s favor, but it was a small point to be sure.

  Now, Hercules turned his attention to Mrs. Smallwood, looking her up and down. Clearly, she was a lady who was striving to be more than she was. He couldn’t fault her for that—they were all trying to better themselves in some way, but it was hard to take her seriously in her outrageous outfit.

  “Mistress Smallwood,” he said, inclining his head slightly—enough to be polite but not deferential—a trick he had seen the General use.