by John Jakes
Orry walked to the overseer’s house with the ledgers clutched under his arm and an old cloak belling behind him. Rain collected in his hair and beard. He took long, swift strides and was so intent on his errand that he didn’t notice Cousin Charles lounging on the dark porch of one of the slave cabins.
Jones was asleep. Orry roused him with shouts, then confronted him in the kitchen of his immaculate house. The surprise visit had upset the overseer. Sweat shone on his bald head, and there were dark patches of it on his nightshirt. He had brought his quirt and hickory truncheon from the bedroom. Evidently he slept with them.
“It was a simple scheme, wasn’t it?” Orry said. He hurled the ledgers onto the kitchen table. A look of panic spread on Jones’s face. “In the permanent record of each shipment you put a short total. As many as a dozen barrels less than the number actually loaded on the boat. But our factors pay us for the number of barrels received. Since you kept the books on those transactions too, all you had to do was record a sum that matched the short total in the shipping ledger and pocket the excess. Last time I was in Charleston, I examined the factor’s records. They prove that, over and over, the factors paid us more than you showed us receiving.”
Jones gulped and pressed his truncheon against his pot belly, as if seized by pain. “You can’t prove I’m responsible for the discrepancy.”
“Maybe not in a court, though I think I could make a strong case. Until I came home from Mexico, no one handled those records except you and my father, who regrettably grew weak, and a little too trusting. I hardly suppose my father would cheat himself.”
“No matter what you say, you still won’t be able to prove—”
“Stop prattling about proof. I don’t need the verdict of a jury in order to discharge you. It’s my decision, and I’ve made it.”
“It’s unfair,” Jones exclaimed. “I’ve given everything to this plantation.”
Orry’s face looked ugly in the lamplight. Points of fire showed in his eyes. “You’ve taken a lot as well.”
“I’m not a young man, Mr. Main. I beg you to give me another chan—”
“No.”
“It will take me”—Jones laid the quirt down—“at least a week to gather my belongings.”
“You’ll vacate this house by daylight. I’ll order the drivers to burn anything that’s still here in the morning.”
“Goddamn you,” Jones cried, the shadow of his upraised hickory truncheon flying across the wall and then the ceiling. As he started to hit Orry’s forehead, Orry turned sideways, the better to use his right hand. He seized Jones’s wrist and held the truncheon above them.
“I’m not one of the slaves, Mr. Jones. If you raise your voice or your hand to me once more, I’ll see that you travel downriver on a stretcher.”
Shaking, he tore the truncheon from Jones’s hand and jammed it under his arm. With a swift, scooping motion he picked up the ledgers and strode toward the door. He barely saw Cousin Charles, who was leaning against one of the foundation’s tabby pillars, an excited, almost worshipful expression on his face.
“What’s going on?” Charles asked. “Did Jones do something wrong?”
The rain had turned to light mist. Orry walked down from the porch, the thud of his boots muffling his brusque answer. Cousin Charles thought Orry hadn’t bothered to reply. The excited look on his face was replaced by one of resentment.
Cousin Charles lay naked beside Semiramis. Her smooth, warm skin radiated the faintly sweaty odor of their recent lovemaking.
In the darkness the girl heard an ominous sound begin. Thunk, thunk. Each blow was preceded by a violent movement of Cousin Charles’s body. With his bowie knife he was repeatedly stabbing the plank wall to the right of the pallet.
He always fooled with that big knife when he was angry. Surely he wasn’t angry with her. They had blended together just fine, as they always did—though, come to think of it, his thrusts had been unusually deep and rough.
Semiramis stretched her arms above her head but experienced no feeling of sleepiness. Charles continued to whack the wall with the knife. It was nearly an hour since he had crept in to tell her he had met Mr. Orry. Now the slave community was buzzing with news that Salem Jones had been ordered to leave. Lamps burned throughout the overseer’s fancy house. He was packing right now. From out of the misty dark, Semiramis heard laughter and little snatches of happy conversation. Folks were awake and joyous. For weeks to come the whole place would have a feeling of jubilee.
The news about Jones had had that effect on Semiramis, too. She had been in a splendid, receptive mood by the time the strapping fourteen-year-old mounted her. Charles never failed to satisfy her, but tonight her pleasure had been heightened because of Jones, and because the boy had come back to her again. She had been the first to show him what men and women did together, and no matter how many white girls he fooled with, he always came back. Lately, so she had heard, he had been sniffing around one of the Smith girls. Sue Marie Smith, that was her name. A pretty little thing, but too polite for a cub as lusty as this one.
Thunk. The wall vibrated. She took his free hand and pulled it over on top of her bristly mound. He jerked it back.
“Lord,” she said with a small, forced laugh. “Who you so mad at?”
“Orry. He looks through me like I was a window. He doesn’t know I’m alive. Or care.”
Thunk.
“Mmm. You must hate him ’bout as much as I hate his poppa for showing off my brother like a chicken thief. I guess I was wrong about Mr. Orry.”
“What do you mean?”
“I kind of had the idea you liked him.”
Cousin Charles snickered. “Would you like somebody who thought you were worthless? Just dirt?”
So many white faces shunted through her mind she couldn’t keep track of all of them. “No, sweet boy, I surely wouldn’t.”
“Then don’t expect me to, either.”
Thunk. That time he struck so hard the blade hummed.
“I think you were glad to discharge Jones,” Madeline said the next time she met Orry at the chapel.
“The devil! I didn’t engineer it, you know.”
“Don’t bristle so, darling. Of course you didn’t. But my point stands.”
She laid a cool palm against his cheek. “I know you by now. You already have too much work, yet you keep taking on more. Jones could have been let go in a week, or a month. But you were eager to add his work to your own immediately.” She kissed him gently. “You look worn out. You’re not indestructible, you know.”
He felt as if she had shone a great light down into a pit within him, a pit where he hid thoughts and feelings of which he was ashamed. Her perception angered him. But, as always, he could never be angry with her for long. Perhaps—the insight came suddenly—perhaps love existed in its truest, deepest form when one partner saw into the soul of the other and never shrank from what was discovered there.
He managed a weary laugh. “I reckon you’ve found my secret. Hard work and these visits are the only things that keep me sane.”
She looked beyond the smile to the pain in his eyes. She heard the desperate truth of his statement. She held him close, saying nothing.
20
ON JANUARY 29, 1850, Senator Clay introduced his eight resolutions in Congress.
They had already been hotly argued at Resolute. Two of Justin’s uncles, both prosperous tradesmen in Columbia, had been ostracized by the low-country LaMottes because the two had sat at Justin’s table and said the South should never be too hidebound to compromise. Especially since the national balance of power continued to swing away from the region; in the House only 90 of 234 members represented slave states.
For days Justin ranted about the heresy his uncles had propounded. Madeline’s husband couldn’t tolerate opinions that ran counter to traditional thinking, his thinking. It was one of the reasons she often dreamed about running away.
Several things deterred her. She continued to
believe that such a course would be dishonorable. More practically, if she fled, she would have to go alone; she couldn’t ask Orry to share her disgrace. But that meant she’d never see him again. This way at least she saw him every week or so.
Another reason, nearly as compelling, had emerged gradually over the past couple of years. When Madeline had first arrived at Resolute, she had been a city girl. The intricacies of plantation life were foreign to her. But she was determined to master them. And even though she quickly became disillusioned with her marriage, her determination was undiminished. If anything it increased, for she soon saw that Resolute needed a moderating influence. Someone to work quietly to protect the interests of the blacks wherever possible and to make their unconscionable bondage a bit less harsh.
She conspired with the kitchen help to funnel extra food to the slave community. She took small sums of money from her household accounts and saved them until she had enough to buy better clothing or additional medicines for the sick house. She learned to diagnose common ailments and to treat them with simple traditional remedies, all of which was part of her duty as Justin’s wife, and tried to mitigate unusually severe punishments her husband meted out, which was not.
After his quarrels with his uncles, for example, he was itching to find someone to kick—and not just figuratively. He picked on Tom, a fourteen-year-old house boy. The boy had neglected to polish some of the hallway brasswork to Justin’s satisfaction.
In response to Justin’s questions, the terrified boy offered only mumbled answers. This led Justin to accuse Tom of being uppity. He issued orders that the boy be given twenty blows of the whip. Madeline protested; she always protested his cruelties. As usual, Justin ignored her. He walked away, passing off a snide remark about feminine sensibilities. A few minutes later, Madeline hurried to the slave community to locate the black driver responsible for carrying out the sentence.
It was a delicate business. If she countermanded Justin’s order, she would place the driver in jeopardy. All she could do was ask the driver, a huge ebony man named Samuel, to lighten the strokes as much as he could without incurring punishment himself.
“I will, but they’s worse I’m to do to the boy,” Samuel said. “Mist’ Justin told me to pour a bucket on his wounds.”
“A bucket of what?”
The humiliated driver looked away.
“Did you hear me, Samuel? What is the bucket to contain?”
“Turp’tine.”
“Oh, my God.” She pressed her mouth. “That’s liable to kill him.”
A sorrowing shrug. “Mist’ Justin, he was mighty mad. I got to do it.”
She laced her hands together at her breast, thinking. “If someone hands you that bucket, Samuel, you’re not responsible for what it contains.”
He peered at her, starting to understand. “You right, Miz Madeline.” He wanted to smile but didn’t dare.
“I’ll fetch the bucket of turpentine myself. I’ll give it to you, and you can then do with it as you must. Just make certain we don’t have a crowd of witnesses who might tell my husband what they did or did not smell in that bucket.”
“No, ma’am, won’t be nobody watchin’. Mist’ Justin don’t require that.”
So Tom was whipped, rather than being whipped and tortured. It wasn’t much of a victory for Madeline or the boy. But she knew that if she ran away from Resolute, there would be no victories at all.
Much of what Madeline knew about plantation life and a responsible woman’s place in it she learned from half a dozen neighbors, the most important being Clarissa Main. Although from different backgrounds, the two women were temperamentally similar. And perhaps Clarissa sensed something of her son’s feeling for Justin’s wife. At any rate, Clarissa spent hours with Madeline at Mont Royal, patiently teaching.
Among the things Madeline learned was midwifery. Early in February, around ten o’clock on a moonlit night, she was called to the slave community to attend a field wench named Jane. It was Jane’s first baby and Madeline’s tenth.
Several black women were gathered in Jane’s cabin. Madeline knelt and let the pregnant girl clutch her hands as the spasms shook her. Another woman had knelt there first, but Jane had refused her help. Madeline was the trusted one, the mistress. Whatever healing power that conferred, she was glad to share it.
She helped tie Jane’s ankles in position, then watched the ancient midwife, Aunt Belle Nin, manipulate her wood forceps. At less complicated deliveries, Madeline was in charge. This time, because of difficulties, she deferred to Aunt Belle, who had been specially summoned. The baby was badly positioned. But Aunt Belle turned it smartly with the forceps and soon brought it popping into the nippy air.
Aunt Belle Nin was a stringy octoroon of sixty-five, perhaps seventy. She lived far back in the marshes, alone, and rode out to help with difficult confinements when she was needed. She took her pay in food, bolts of cloth, and snuff for her cheek. Now she fondled the damp, cocoa-colored newborn as if it were her own.
“He’ll do just fine,” she said. “I should know. I’ve survived hell, hurricanes, and husbands. If I can do that, think of what this youngster can do.”
Madeline glanced around the mean cabin. It had been years since a coat of whitewash was applied to the walls. She wondered why any woman would bring a child into the world if that child could only spend its life in enforced poverty and servitude. Of late she had begun to have a fuller understanding of what the abolitionists were after and why.
Jane wanted Madeline to hold the baby, which she did, thinking how much she would like Orry to see the child. Later, as she was about to leave, a bent, wrinkled woman with sorrowful eyes made an imploring gesture. Madeline stopped.
“I be the mother of little Tom. The one whipped for being uppity.”
“Oh, yes. I hope he’s all right.”
“He be better. He never be all right. He be marked on his back all his life. Samuel—” She pressed her lips together, briefly fearful. “Samuel tole me what you done. I thank you, Miz Madeline. You a good Christian woman.”
Madeline was startled to hear murmurs of agreement. Among those who were behind her, listening, was Aunt Belle Nin. After firing up her clay pipe, Aunt Belle spoke.
“They all say that of you, mistress. I watched you tonight. I think they’re right. If ever you have a problem I could help with, you can find me.”
“Thank you, Aunt Belle.”
Gratified, she hurried back to the great house, where she found Justin examining a book of lithographs of race horses. The slaves might respect her, but he didn’t. That was again evident as soon as she told him where she’d been.
“Well,” he said, “how charmingly domestic you’re becoming. You can deliver nigger babies. What a pity you can’t manage to deliver one of your own.”
She turned away, appalled and hurt. He sensed that and went on to compound the hurt.
“Perhaps you need special assistance. Should I select one of the bucks and put him at stud? You seem to have an affinity for darkies. You certainly have none for me.”
Fury replaced the pain. “Justin, I have made a conscientious effort to be a good wife to you in every respect. You mustn’t keep blaming me because I don’t get pregnant.” Maybe you should blame yourself.
He flung one leg over the fragile arm of the Sheraton chair. “Why not? You’re never very lively on those occasions when we try to perpetuate this branch of the family. The occasions are getting less and less frequent, although I suppose I bear some responsibility for that. You see, I avoid you by choice. Your fondness for niggers is beginning to bore me. Good night, my love.”
He returned to his book.
It had been only a week since she was at Salvation Chapel, but the next morning, desperately unhappy, she paid a visit to Mont Royal so that Nancy could deliver a message to Orry.
“Do you think he knows about us?” Orry asked when they met at the chapel the following afternoon. It was a bright, balmy day, not unusual for F
ebruary in the low country. Orry had discarded his coat and cravat.
Madeline shook her head. “If he did, we wouldn’t be wondering. Justin isn’t the kind to suffer in silence.”
Orry absently tapped a finger against the book he had brought. “Then why is he going out of his way to make you miserable?”
“Because there are no children. That’s the current reason, anyway. Justin’s one of those poor, wretched people who are always unhappy. But instead of examining his own mind to learn why, he blames some person or cause outside himself—and lashes out. Sometimes I wish he did know about us. Then I could be honest about my feelings. For him and for you.”
She had been pacing, but now she stopped. Orry was seated on the tabby foundation, his muddy boots dangling into the brown grass. Madeline crooked her arm around his neck and kissed him.
“I do thank you for coming today. I couldn’t stand Resolute one moment longer.”
The second kiss was more intense. Then she smoothed her skirt and walked toward the edge of the marsh. As she always did during their meetings, she began to describe incidents of the past few days. The birth of Jane’s son. The whipping of Tom. That brought her feelings about slavery to the surface. She usually avoided the topic, knowing how he felt. Today she couldn’t.
“I think Southerners would somehow view the system differently if they could see through the slaves’ eyes, so to speak.” She turned from the sunlit marsh and gazed at him with an earnest expression. “How would you feel watching a man put handcuffs and ankle chains on your mother and turn her over to someone who was going to tell her what to do until the day she died?”
Orry’s frown hinted at irritation. “My mother is a white woman. The boy you helped is an African.”
“Does that justify the crime? Does it even explain it satisfactorily? Tom may be an African, but can you deny he’s also a human being?”
“And I am now a criminal in your eyes?”
For a moment he sounded like Justin, implying she had no right to discuss the subject. She controlled a flare of temper and hurried back to him, trying to answer calmly and without animosity:
