Mood Indigo

by Parris Afton Bonds

  “What about the rest of her?” a faceless voice jeered.

  “That the buyer will have to ascertain for himself, gentlemen,” the auctioneer announced with a lascivious wink. “What do I hear for this country maid?”

  Humiliation flagged her cheeks. She ducked her head to hide angry tears.

  “Four years—fourteen pounds!” a voice called out.

  Her innate pride swept away the shame of her degradation. She was a lady. Lady Jane Lennox! Her head shot up and, after that, she glared scornfully at each man who bid—with the result that the bidding slowed, then stopped. “What?” cried the auctioneer. “A mere seventeen pounds/five shillings? Where’s your Englishman’s ga-lantry?”

  “Aye, where indeed, my fine gallant gentlemen?” Jane asked bitingly, her eyes sweeping over the faces of the men crowded on the green.

  A small man whose face was narrow and pointed like a fox’s called, “Four years—eighteen pounds.”

  Jane restrained a tremble. Something about him made her skin crawl. Please, she thought, let someone else bid.

  “Seven years and thirty pounds,” a voice drawled. Her head, like that of every man’s there, swiveled to the left of the marquee tent, where a solitary man lounged beneath the shade of a catalpa, waiting.

  “Wainwright?” the auctioneer asked the fox-faced man. “Do ye bid higher?”

  Jane held her breath. Wainwright’s lashless eyes ran over her length. “Thirty-one pounds,” he growled.

  “Seven years—fifty pounds,” countered the man under the heavily bean-podded catalpa.

  “Sold!” announced the auctioneer and immediately banged his gavel on the podium, as if he were afraid the man would regret his offer of such an unheard-of sum.

  Jane’s fingernails dug into her palms. Seven years!

  The man stepped out from the catalpa’s leafy shadows, and she gasped. The red hair! Only one such man—the marked man!

  CHAPTER SIX

  Before her eyes flashed the porcelain cup with its mysterious arrangement of tea leaves. The old Hindu had been right. In a strange way the knowledge gave her comfort, for she recalled, too, his other prophecy—Terence would be waiting for her at the end of a long road.

  She watched the giant Quaker stroll across the green toward her. Instead of the sober city clothes she had seen him wear in London, he sported an ordinary ozenbrig shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbows, and a cotton singlet and leather breeches above common wool stockings. His shoes lacked even the simple adornment of buckles. All her hopes were dashed. This was not the Tidewater gentleman on whom she had counted.

  When the Quaker stood before her, the auctioneer said, “If you’ll just sign Meg O’Reilly’s papers now, Mr. Gordon.”

  But Ethan Gordon reached out and pushed the mantle’s hood off her head to reveal her cropped, hennaed hair. Grunts of surprise rose from the crowd at his action. Uncertainty flickered in his eyes, then a dawning smile crimped his lips. He made a leg. “Meg O’Reilly—your ladyship.”

  Those nearest the podium laughed at his mockery. But Jane cringed. He had recognized her. Thee needs to be humbled, mistress, and I would take great delight in the task, had 1 the time.

  She wanted the earth to open up and swallow her. But instead she glared her scorn. Then for the first time in five long weeks she smiled, a grin that dimpled the emaciated hollows beneath her cheekbones. “Mr. Gordon, it would seem that you have bought a pig in the poke, for I know neither how to cook nor sew nor spin.”

  At the refined and precise speech, a low hum of wonder passed among the bidders, and she could have bitten her tongue at her lapse.

  The Quaker merely smiled, and trapped in the beauty of that smile, she quite forgot the fact that he was now her master . . . until he replied with a quiet certainty, “Thee will learn, never doubt that.”

  He paid for her with a bill of exchange, the currency used since paper money and coins were forbidden by British law, and hefted her metal trunk over his shoulder as easily as an axe. Taking her elbow, gently enough, he steered her past the press of gawking townsfolk. “You’re not going to put me in an iron collar and leg irons to keep me from running away?” she asked sarcastically, trying to keep up with his longer stride. Despite his mammoth size, he covered the ground with an almost preternatural grace.

  “No place to run,” he said laconically as he continued along the broad and dusty Duke of Gloucester Street. “Besides, Virginia’s penalty for running away is thirty-nine lashes with a hickory switch.” He flicked her a glance with black eyes that sparkled. “Thee wouldn’t wish for me to have to administer lashes, would thee?”

  She shot him a withering look before jerking her chin up and staring straight ahead. What would become of Polly and Liz and the other women she had come to know over the weeks of the voyage? Suddenly she felt very lonely— and terribly afraid. What if . . . what if this man decided not to honor her maiden’s status? But, no, he was a Quaker. She sighed with a bitter sense of relief. She could be much worse off.

  When he halted before a large, two-story house, she asked, “This is where you live?” Her eyes ran appreciatively over the fine blue-glazed brick, counted the six front entrances, noted the many chimneys. The Quaker was of more worth than she had judged.

  “Hardly,” Ethan said drily. “This is an ordinary—the Brick House Tavern. But a physic owns it, and it’s him I want thee to see.”

  Her head whipped around. “Me? I’m not sick.”

  She had never been sick, much less resorted to having herself bled, as some did in order to achieve the pale, wan complexion that was the fashion of the day. “Why am I to see a physic?” she demanded, shoving the Quaker’s hand away when he propelled her up the steps.

  “I want Dr. Gilmer to inoculate thee.”

  “You want wot! Wot for?”

  “Forget the Cockney accent, milady,” he sneered. His dark eyes brushed over her contemptuously. “Thy hair— thy dress—’tis different. But thy eyes—their inordinate color gave thee away. I’m afraid thy madcap prank will cost thee dearly, mistress.”

  She shivered at his tone. “I’m worthless to you. Take me back to the auction. I’m sure you can get someone else to purchase my papers.”

  “Oh, no. I think thee will prove quite entertaining to my more lonely moments.”

  He opened the door and ushered her in ahead of him. “Tell Dr. Gilmer, Ethan Gordon is here,” he told a boy of twelve or thirteen who was busy with a mop and bucket, scrubbing the dark, planked floor.

  She stamped her foot, impervious to the startled tavern boy. “I will not be inoculated! It’s dangerous, it’s unhealthy!”

  He ignored her and addressed the boy. “And send this trunk on to the quay, Peter.”

  “You can’t make me do this!” she said, after the boy dropped his mop and hastily disappeared on his errand.

  “Thy hair is a crow’s nest,” he said, and adjusted the mantle’s frayed hood over her head while she glared at him. “And as for the inoculation, I can make thee, mistress. But it is enough that thee should know one out of every four servants coming to the colonies doesn’t survive. Malaria, dry gripes, bloody flux takes them. The two I bought in London—for less than I paid for you alone. They didn’t make it, Lady Len—Mistress O’Reilly.”

  The title was said with a dry smile. That close, the burn on his cheek blotted out all other redeeming features. Or rather, the burn and her righteous anger did. “And so you came here today to purchase new slaves!”

  “Slaves, no. A servant—yes. Which, if 1 remember rightly, was what thee wished of me at the guildhall.”

  “But I did not wish to be inoculated, and I won’t—”

  “Dr. George Gilmer,” he said, breaking into her diatribe as a dapper little man came into the room with a quick step. Velvet ribbons anchored his breeches about his knees, and lace adorned his stock and cuffs. “I wish to inoculate my maidservant against the smallpox.”

  “No, I—” Jane began.

  �
��Most certainly, Mr. Gordon. Bring her to the back room. It won’t take but a moment.”

  “Please,” she said when Ethan caught her wrist and tugged her along with him. “I don’t want to go through with this—this farce. I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Has thee now?” he said. He did not bother to look at her as he followed the physic down a hallway lit only by the dust-filtered sunlight streaming through a window at the far end.

  “Yes,” she whispered, not wishing the physic to overhear her importuning. “And I shall repay you. You know my father is a wealthy man.”

  “But I haven’t changed my mind, mistress. Ah, here we are.”

  “If you’ll just have a seat, dear girl,” Dr. Gilmer said as he delved into a glass jar, rattling some small instruments that looked terrifying to Jane. The tiny office was filled with glass and ceramic apothecary jars labeled RED FIT DROPS, FRENCH POX OINTMENT, APOPLEXY PILLS.

  Jane thought she would have apoplexy when her gaze settled on the jar of crawling black leeches.

  “It’s a wise decision to do this,” the doctor continued in a reassuring manner. “The stepson of one of our Burgess members—Mr. Washington’s—was inoculated only last week with the cowpox. Too bad so many of the Scottish merchants refuse the inoculation. There’s little pain or scarring. Lower your bodice, please, mistress.”

  Jane clutched the mantle more tightly about her. “Sir!”

  “This is not a time for maidenly modesty,” Ethan said, and forcibly separated her crossed wrists, the strength in his large hands easily overpowering her resistance. With a free hand he shoved the mantle off her shoulders. “Now lower thy bodice—or shall I?”

  “Turn around!”

  He grinned but did as she ordered. “A meek and docile maidservant I have purchased, have I not, Dr. Gilmer?”

  “Merely fear goads her tongue, Mr. Gordon. I find the men swoon as often as the women. She’ll suffer a slight fever. Just don’t require too much work of her. Might give her a posset cup. And naturally, keep her abed for a few days.”

  “To be certain,” Ethan said.

  She heard the amusement in his voice. She bit her full bottom lip that tempered the sensual bow of her upper one. Would the Quaker—dare the Quaker—require that of her?

  So preoccupied was she with the trap she had sprung on herself, she failed to notice the physic’s approach or the lancet he held. Then the lancet pricked her flesh.

  At that point her dignity had suffered all it could sustain, and she burst into tears, burying her face in her hands. The good doctor raised startled brows, but the Quaker turned and, saying nothing, pulled aside her hands. Gently he drew her shabby bodice up over her shoulders, buttoned the myriad buttons with fingers that were deft for their size, and knotted her large black shawl beneath her bosom. “Let’s go home, mistress.”

  Ashamed of her weakness, she wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, refusing to look at the Quaker. Neither did she speak after that. He hired a carriage and in silence they journeyed to the quay, rattling over the long wooden bridges that spanned the unfordable tidal creeks and brackish backwater marshes where flourished ferns and cattails and marshmallow.

  Confined in the carriage’s small interior with its badly cracked leather, she found it difficult to ignore the darkly handsome Quaker next to her, if only because of his size. Her pride had been shattered, and she could not help but resent this man who had bought her.

  The brig was still anchored in the James River, and she knew the ungovernable urge to flee up the gangplank and return to the safety of England. But she would lose all hope of finding Terence. And there was the galling fact that she had no freedom, no rights. She could no longer react on a moment’s whim. That part of her impulsive, frivolous nature could not be indulged.

  And what of her maidenhood? Was she shortly to find an end to her innocence also? Oh, God, that she could have been so headstrong, so foolish!

  The Quaker whistled a sprightly air as he stationed her in the bow of the picturesque gundalow that already contained her trunk. “Mood Hill—my farm—is over forty miles by land from Williamsburg but only twenty-seven by water,” he explained cheerfully while he raised the lateen sail. “The journey will not take overly long, mistress.”

  She turned a deaf ear. Infinitely old red oaks and willows and black locusts arched a brilliant green canopy over clear blue waters that were pleasantly cool to her trailing fingers. A blue heron balanced on one spindly leg in the shallow waters near the shore where a mud turtle and muskrat sunbathed. A thousand birds, it seemed, screamed raucously, as if in a futile effort to harmonize with the Quaker’s soft whistling.

  Rather than risk a glance at the man, who expertly handled the gundalow’s sail, she kept her gaze trained on the occasional small farms that they sailed past. The plots of land were demarcated by the zigzag split-rail worm fences that required no expensive nails or laborious postholes.

  “Thee regrets leaving England, its befouled streets and water?” the Quaker asked with a quiet sarcasm.

  “I regret everything . . . but would change nothing,” she murmured, keeping her haughty profile turned to him. “The mother country is—”

  “It’s not the mother country,” he drawled. “At least not here in the colonies. More people come from the Continent—Germany, France, Sweden, Holland—than England.”

  She whirled on him. The leafy branches cast dappled shadows on the gundalow and obscured his marred visage. “England is still the mightiest nation in the world! And you still owe your allegiance—nay, more, your very protection in this savage world—to her!”

  “Ahhh, then you harbor deep Tory sentiments, mistress?” She shrugged her shoulders, repenting of her outburst. “I care not for the feud between the Crown and her colonies. My allegiance ... is elsewhere.”

  After that she saw none of the primitive beauty in the journey by water first up the immensely wide and slow moving James, then the arcadian Chickahominy. Though the trip was only a matter of an hour or so, it seemed to last forever as she felt a tightening in her chest with each league the gundalow carried her from the brig and England. The heavily leafed trees seemed to close in around her, obliterating the bright blue sky.

  At last the woods ceded to a clearing on her left. By the time the gundalow drew abreast of the private dock, she was feeling feverish—and keenly disappointed in the farm she viewed by the light of the setting sun. Raw was the only word that came to mind. The Quaker had pushed the forest back to the fields’ margins, but the untended edges still grew with the grapevines and wild raspberries that choked the woods. Only the fruit trees, plum and apple, and the smaller fields of corn, beans, and squash were fenced to keep out the roaming cows and other livestock.

  On a rise between the fields ringed by a scattering of crude, smaller outbuildings and tall beech and gum, a two-story split-log house shimmered before her eyes. The great stone and clay chimneys at either end and the cypress shingles saved it from being totally primitive.

  The Quaker was saying something about raising indigo on the four hundred acres that stretched in a purplish-blue haze beyond the farmhouse as far as the eye could see, but his voice seemed a great distance away. Yet when her knees buckled and the sandy earth wavered before her gaze, he was there, catching her, holding her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Terence . . .”

  The word was a litany through that night as Lady Jane Lennox’s mind wandered. Ethan smoothed back from the high forehead the lifeless hennaed tendrils that were damp with sweat. Who was Terence? Her fiance? But why then would she have run away from England? Perhaps her trip was not the prank he had thought. An enigma, this Lady Jane Lennox.

  He sat there at the edge of the rope-slung bed that was to be hers, holding her hand when she murmured distractedly. The mother and son he had purchased to see to the domestic chores had died within hours of each other the very day the vessel put into the James River. It happened often enough—from ship fever, if not other ma
ladies. Most people were unused to the hardship of the voyage, unused to the Virginia heat, unused to the sun’s brightness that seemed to burn the very eyes.

  He had lost other servants who had withstood the voyage but had been unable to survive in the colonial clime, so he had sworn to purchase only those hardy ones already living there. But somehow the spinning and mending and washing had mounted up before he found any to his liking, and he had resorted to purchasing the mother and son. They had seemed strong enough in body and spirit, and certainly eager to come to the New World. But they had not even survived the voyage to have their mettle tested on the virgin shores.

  Would he lose this woman also? That night he was indifferent to his own weariness and the various problems that had arisen in his absence—as indifferent as he should be of the tall, taut body who slept in restless delirium before him.

  But to be indifferent to Lady Jane Lennox was impossible, as he had known from that first meeting. Brilliant and without substance and most definitely spoiled, he had thought then. His opinion had not changed. But another dimension was added. Stubborn, persevering—and brave, despite the stark fear he had seen in those beguiling eyes. The sharp words that had readily played on her tongue were softened by the strange vulnerability he perceived in the set of her lips.

  He leaned forward with elbows braced on knees spread wide, his hands clasped lightly in between. With her deeply asleep now, there was no longer the need to hold back the fingers that unconsciously rubbed at the pasty skin. It would be a shame to mar her face with pox pits, though little was left of the loveliness he had glimpsed in London. Her skin was ravaged, her hair damaged by the henna. Only her refined bone structure saved her from looking truly haggard.

  Were Meg O’Reilly and Lady Jane Lennox indeed one and the same woman? And what was he to do with her?

  He was a fool to have made the purchase, and he did not doubt that he would rue the day he had done so.

  Toward morning her almost inaudible ravings stopped, and he felt it safe to leave for a few hours. Sleep he desperately needed, but the Indian runner, Mattaponi, had entered on silent feet with the message of the clandestine meeting for which he had been waiting. Only a few words were grunted in the Powhatan language—“Committee of Correspondence . . . in the morning . . . the Great Dismal Swamp.”