Jade (Sally Watson Family Tree Books)

by Sally Watson

  JADE

  Books By Sally Watson

  by year of original publication

  Highland Rebel 1954

  Mistress Malapert 1955

  To Build a Land 1957

  Poor Felicity 1961

  Witch of the Glens 1962

  Lark 1962

  Other Sandals 1966

  The Hornet’s Nest 1968

  The Mukhtar’s Children 1968

  Jade 1969

  Magic at Wyehwood 1970

  Linnet 1971

  ORIGINAL COPYRIGHT © 1969

  BY SALLY WATSON

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any

  form, except by a reviewer, without the permission of the publisher.

  MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES

  OF AMERICA

  A hardcover edition of this book was originally published by New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. It is here reprinted by arrangement with Ms. Sally Watson.

  First Image Cascade Publishing edition published 2002.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Watson, Sally, 1924-

  Jade.

  (Juvenile Girls)

  Reprint. Originally published: New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969.

  ISBN 978-1-930009-67-7

  for my cherished niece Karin Glinden,

  who is not altogether unlike Jade.

  Author’s Comments:

  I’m particularly glad to have Jade republished! For one thing, it’s the heroine most people like best; me, too—I think—for another, my niece, Karin (to whom I dedicated it) now teaches school and has been reading it aloud to classes, and demanding that I get it republished so that her pupils can read it for themselves.

  Well, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to! Karin isn’t the only one. Everyone asked for Jade! Gratifying but frustrating. How wonderful it will be not to have to answer letters from lovely people earnestly wanting copies, to say, disappointingly, “Sorry, but I can’t sell you a copy, I have only a single battered one left myself.”

  (By the way, every male who reviewed Jade back in the ’60’s simply hated it. Females were not supposed to behave like that; much less with the tacit approval of the author, who was clearly no better than she should be, and in danger of Corrupting the Young. What was more, two of them, despite the careful historical notes, simply refused to believe that Anne Bonney and Mary Read really existed—so there!)

  Acknowledgments

  For my long-time fan-friends: Carla Kozak, Darice McMurrey, Donna Trifilo, Joy Canfield, and Michele Blake, who all conspired beautifully to make this reprint possible; and Caryn Cameron, who put me on a website, among other supportive things.

  Contents

  1. The Lopsided Smile

  2. The Fencing Lesson

  3. Challenge

  4. The Pearl

  5. “Dear Little Melanie!”

  6. Domino

  7. The Stays

  8. “Lovely and Cool!”

  9. The Storm

  10. Escaped Cargo

  11. Nightmare

  12. Queen Royal

  13. Pirate Raid

  14. The Second Armada

  15. Mark

  16. The Duel

  17. Prison Ship

  18. Hurricane

  19. No Quarter

  20. The Prisoners

  21. The Trial

  22. “I Don’t Envy You”

  23. Mary’s Escape

  24. The Decision

  Acknowledgments

  and Historical Note

  JADE

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Lopsided Smile

  “Of course I did it!” said Jade at once. “You know I did it! Who else could have done it?” And her green eyes glittered defiance at her parents.

  Her name wasn’t Jade at all, of course: it was Melanie. She had been christened Melanie Lennox right there at Bruton Parish Church, her parents called her Melanie, the town of Williamsburg called her Melanie (when they weren’t calling her that shocking Lennox minx), her governess called her Miss Melanie, her brother and sister called her Lanie, and the slaves called her—lovingly—Missy Lanie. No one had ever called her Jade except her grandparents (who had been dead these five years) and old Monsieur Maupin. But these were the three people she loved the most, and so, with perfectly characteristic obstinacy, she went on thinking of herself as Jade. Her family would have been astounded had they known.

  Mistress Lennox sat down with a rustle of lilac silk panniers and agitated lace, and regarded her oldest daughter with the expression of a perfectly respectable duck who has unaccountably hatched out a sea gull. “Oh dear!” she sighed, fanning herself. “I don’t know why you’re so wicked, Melanie! You don’t get it from my side of the family, I’m sure.” And she looked with faint reproof at her husband, whose parents had always been eccentric to say the least of it, and whose worst tendencies seemed to have been inherited by Melanie.

  Mr. Lennox ignored the implied reproach. He was regarding his daughter with strained calm. “You simply walked into the Howes’ back gardens and turned young William’s fox loose?” he demanded. “But why? You must have had a reason. What has William ever done to you?” Jade’s head tilted and she smiled a little on one side of her mouth. William, as a matter of fact, had done many things to her, mostly of a sneaky nature calculated very successfully to get her into even more trouble than she managed for herself. But she was not a tell-tale, and anyway, past was past, and irrelevant.

  “William’s a bad taste on my tongue,” she said reflectively. “And a thief, besides. He stole that fox’s freedom. I just gave it back.” And at an impatient exclamation from her father, she puffed suddenly into anger. “No one has any right to take away someone else’s freedom, whether it’s animals in cages or human slaves!” she spat, glaring at her parents. “It’s wicked!”

  They looked at her with tightened lips and despairing eyes. Was she wrong in the head? She had been conducting this argument for years now, refusing to listen to any reason whatever. Nevertheless, her mother tried once more, though without much hope.

  “It isn’t wicked; it’s a perfectly natural and ordinary fact of life, as right and natural as keeping dogs and horses. Why do you keep on this way, Melanie? We treat them all kindly and fairly, don’t we?”

  “Dogs and slaves and females!” shouted Jade, twin flags of anger in her creamy cheeks. She turned to her father, challenging. “How would you like to be a slave?”

  Mr. Lennox began to show more strain and less calm, as he often did at about this stage of things. He regarded the tall slim firebrand he had somehow sired. Her full stiffened skirts of pale pink rose-sprigged chintz suited her about as well as it would her sturdy young brother Matthew—and yet it was hard to say why. She looked like such a sweet young girl, with soft honey-brown ringlets hanging thickly about a slender neck, with long lashes and furtive dimples and a soft round chin—which was now sticking out at him like the vanguard of an army. “How would you like it?”

  “You can’t possibly be serious, Melanie! It’s utterly idiotic to make such a comparison! They’re black. They have nothing whatever in common with us. They’re savages, animals, without human sensibilities. And they’re far better off here being cared for in a civilized country than they would be in the jungles of Africa.”

  He turned to leave the drawing room with an air of having settled that argument once and for all. He should have known better. Jade defied her mother’s warning look and went on arguing. “Who says so?” she demanded of his azure taffeta back. “Do they think so? Has anyone asked them?”

  “That will do, M
elanie!” He was exercising far more patience than would most fathers in this year of 1719. This was partly because he hated to whip his children and slaves, and partly because in Melanie’s case it never had any effect except to make her more defiant and usually flippant besides. He drew himself up, a towering figure of authority. “You are being both stupid and impudent. It is quite unnecessary to ask further than the Bible. God created Heaven and Earth, and placed all animals and inferior beings under the dominion of Man. Do you call the Bible a lie?” he finished, resorting unfairly to a question with only one possible answer.

  Jade gave him the impossible one. “Yes,” she said, and produced her small lopsided smile, a typically Jade smile that mocked at herself and taunted the world. In this case, it was a smile that recognized the exact point at which she’d earned herself a whipping—and didn’t care.

  Except that she did care, of course, searingly. Not so much because of the pain; that was the least of it. But in an age when whipping was common and an inescapable part of growing up, Jade resented the whole concept as instinctively as she did slavery, and for much the same reason. It was an outrage against human dignity. Intolerable that any person should have such rights over another! Abominable to have to stand and submit! . . . And unthinkable that she should try to avoid it, for that would be surrender.

  Being Jade, she quite naturally went to the other extreme, went out of her way to invite whippings, and then turned them into a kind of backdoor victory, to prove her own courage, perhaps. Already, now, she could see the baffled expression Father always wore on such occasions. Chin high, as befitted a heroine, she strolled nonchalantly toward Father’s study where her punishments always took place, walking with that mysterious controlled grace which puzzled all of Williamsburg except Monsieur Maupin and a slave named Joshua.

  “Hurry up, Father,” she said cheekily, her smile indicating clearly how little she cared. It was a very effective act. It should have been. She’d had lots of practice.

  Mistress Lennox sank limply back into the cushions of her chair, lips quivering. “I don’t know why you’re so naughty, Melanie! Lavinia’s never like this, thank goodness. And I can’t think why you go on and on about our slaves that way. We’re not at all harsh, and goodness knows you get far more beatings than they do.”

  Jade paused in the doorway to consider this. “Well, so I should,” she pointed out fairly. “I deserve them, don’t I? But you’d punish a slave worse for doing the same thing.” And with a side glance at her father to see how he took this (for Jade was seldom unaware of her effect on her audience) she marched on out of the drawing room and down the wide sunny hall to the study—whence she emerged a little later with dry eyes, a composed face, and a distinct air of insolence.

  It was her father, straightening his full-skirted taffeta coat, who looked upset and defeated, as well he might. He had been trying for the whole of her sixteen years to turn her into a Virginia lady, and the result was simply abysmal failure. She was no lady at all. She had no sense of propriety or shame or family dignity; her pride was entirely the wrong sort; even her virtues of courage and honesty were altogether willful and reckless. He couldn’t understand her at all.

  Jade stared at him for a moment with a straight back and cool dispassionate eyes; then turned to go up the shallow stairs to the schoolroom. Father stopped her with a hand on her smarting shoulder that almost—but not quite—made her wince. It was only a flicker of her eyelids, but Jade could have kicked herself for even such a weakness. She despised weakness! What if Father had noticed?

  “The Howes are coming over tomorrow for morning coffee. You’ll apologize then, and say you’re sorry you loosed William’s fox.”

  “Shan’t,” said Jade. “I’m not sorry; I’m glad.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Melanie!” cried her angry and harassed father. “What devil is in you? Do you like being punished?”

  Jade surprised herself. She had always pretended not to care. Now pride was demanding complete honesty. “No,” she said, but her chin went higher, just in case he should think she was conceding anything except sheer truth.

  “Then why do you make me go on doing it? Why can’t you be a well-behaved young lady instead of a little demon?”

  “I’m me!” she told him passionately, her jade-green eyes darkening. “I have to be me; I’m not a rabbit, and I won’t turn into a rabbit, whatever you say!”

  “I don’t want you to be a rabbit,” he told her wearily, for they had been over this a hundred times. “I want you to be a lady.”

  “It’s the same thing, to you.”

  “You know it isn’t.”

  “It is! You want a meek little blob of sweet jelly who’ll agree with everything you say! If I were a boy—”

  “But you’re not a boy. You’re a girl. And girls are meant to be docile and biddable.”

  “And obey men!” Jade sneered spectacularly, lifting one side of her small mouth in a quite splendid snarl.

  “Yes!” said her father, relentlessly reasonable. “Of course! What else? My dear child, you have got to accept the fact that you are of the inferior sex—”

  “I’m not! We aren’t!”

  “—and your inability to see the obvious simply proves your inferiority. Good heavens, girl, look at the silly, irrational notions you’ve just been spouting, for examples of female inanity! Next you’ll be saying that slaves should be free and women allowed to own property!”

  “Well, I do say it,” Jade retorted at once, and while he was still reeling from this, she let loose another shaft. “And it’s not fair to make up a rule that anyone who disagrees with you is silly, and then use it to prove itself. I just wish I were Queen of England! I’d—”

  “Well, you’re not!” Her father’s long suffering temper was rising again, and she was saved from another whipping on the spot only by the fact that he didn’t feel up to it again so soon. “You’re a willful and insolent girl in the Colony of Virginia, and English law says that you shall obey your father until you marry, and after that, your husband, God help him.”

  “He’ll be sorry,” threatened Jade, tight-smiled. They glared at each other for a moment with identical eyes, and his hand tightened painfully on her shoulder. Then he controlled himself with a visible effort and let go.

  “You’d take another whipping right now rather than give in, wouldn’t you?” he discovered, wonderingly.

  “Yes,” said Jade simply, and went upstairs, victorious. Matthew and Lavinia were waiting in the schoolroom, and Zelda—with superb timing—was just bringing in a tray of cakes and a pitcher of nice cold tea. She always produced treats when Jade had been punished. She adored Jade; all the slaves did; she was their champion.

  Their champion now paused in the doorway, partly for dramatic effect and partly to make perfectly sure she had herself well in hand, because Father had hurt her rather more than usual. Her brother and sister surveyed her with interest. They didn’t feel sorry for her, because she always brought it on herself; and they didn’t in the least understand her; but they both admired her stoicism, however misplaced.

  Jade presented them with her sideways grin, self-mocking. Lavinia, whose blue eyes missed very little, was regarding her searchingly and with disapproval. “I suppose it was about William’s fox?” she decided, interpreting the grin with ease.

  Jade nodded impenitently, sauntered across the room, and helped herself to a cake. Vinnie, tiny and erect, gave a small ladylike snort. Vinnie was twelve, and it was hard to imagine that sisters could be so alike and still so different. They were both slight, straight-backed, with slender hands, and honey-brown hair, and fine-boned oval faces, and strong wills. But Jade was tall and Lavinia small, Jade’s eyes green and Vinnie’s bright blue—and Lavinia was as conservative by nature as Jade was radical.

  As for nine-year-old Matt, he gave Jade the grin of someone who does like things stirred up a little—so long as it doesn’t get too serious. Matthew had a well-developed sense of self-preserv
ation.

  “I expect Mother’s having a megrim,” he announced equably. Mother always had a megrim when Jade was wicked. “You are awful, Lanie,” he added with admiration.

  Jade took another cake. “Born to be hanged,” she predicted flippantly.

  Matt looked alarmed. Lavinia, the realist, considered the remark and found it all too probable. “I dare say you will, too,” she agreed darkly. “And it’ll be all your own fault, you know.”

  “It always is.” Jade never deceived herself on that score, and loathed excuses as a particularly detestable form of weakness. She reached for a third cake. Lavinia snatched the plate away.

  “Pig!” she said. “That’s mine, and you needn’t think a sore back gives you any right to be greedy.”

  Jade shrugged and instantly regretted it. “Think how many of my share you’ll have after I’m hanged,” she suggested persuasively; but since her sister seemed disposed to settle for a cake in the hand rather than two in the future, Jade had a drink of tea instead. It was cool and refreshing in the thin handleless cup.

  “Well, Miss Melanie?” It was the acid voice of Miss Turner the governess, whose thin, whaleboned figure stood in the doorway wearing a severe expression. “Been beating your head against stone walls again, I hear?” Jade nodded, deliberately cheerful. “When will you learn, you silly girl, that you only bruise your head that way, and don’t bother the wall at all.” Jade stuck out a truculent chin. “And how often must I tell you that there are ways around and over walls?”

  Jade felt like Columbus being told that one could, after all, reach the Indies by sailing eastward. “I don’t want to go around or over! I want to knock the beastly wall down; it’s got no business being there; it’s bad and unfair!”

  “Which wall?” inquired Matthew, perfectly ready to help knock it down, but uncertain as to where it might be. No one paid any attention.