by Smith, Skye
Jon obviously didn't know what she was talking about. Lucy put her hand to her mouth to stop from laughing. No sense in crushing the boy's feelings. "I will leave him with you, Mandy. When you are finished with him, send him up to the house." She left Mandy's room and walked up to the house. On the front porch she noticed a young white girl sitting on the top step playing with Robby.
"You must be Britta, Jon's sister. I am Lucy. I pretty well run things around here." She looked Britta up and down. "In this valley, you may want to wear more than just a shift. This village punishes strumpets. They have a stocks in front of the church."
Britta held out her hand and Lucy took it and shook it. "Have you seen Jon? I want to show him the baby."
"No you don't," replied Lucy, "you just want to find out what his first time was like. Well so far there has been lots of laughter. By now he should be enjoying himself."
There was a long silence, where both women had many questions for each other that neither was brave enough to ask. Eventually Lucy began to explain the workings of the farm. "Almost everything that we eat, we grow ourselves, or milk, or butcher. The rest of the world could disappear and we would still go on. Well, almost. The women are partial to sugar, and things made with sugar. That we must buy."
"Is there a marsh around here?" asked Britta.
"Up the river a ways it widens into a bog. To the east a half mile there is a large pond with marshy edges. Why do you ask?"
"I need to gather herbs to make a salve for Jon's face. I know only marsh herbs, so I am hoping they are the same here as in England."
"Come with me to my room. I have a chest of herbs and unctures that we all share. There is bound to be something there that you recognize." They stood and Britta swung Robby onto her hip and they started walking.
Robert called to them from the front door, and they slowed until he could catch them up. "So, how is Jon doing?"
"Oh he is doing well enough," said Lucy. "At least as good as your first time with me."
"That good, then," Robert beamed. "Well, excellent. I was hoping he was up to it. Britta, I came to fetch Robby. Lydia's breasts are aching."
"We were just going to look through my herb chest," said Lucy.
Britta was amazed that Lucy never used words of respect when speaking to Robert. None of the 'sir' or 'master', and certainly none of the bowing and scraping that she expected. Her thoughts were interrupted by Robert picking Robby off her hip. "I will take him to her. You keep going."
When he was gone, Britta mentioned the lack of reverence to her master. Lucy laughed aloud. "He shagged me silly when I was young. He is now almost fifty. We've known and trusted each other for a long, long time." Lucy watched Robert dance up the front steps and she smiled warmly. "Did he just mount Lydia?"
"Yes."
"Oh, praise be to heaven. He has been walking about like a voodoo zombie for months. Maybe now he will get on with his life." Lucy looked up to the sky and said a short prayer. She stopped when she saw Britta staring at her. "Not that she is right for him, but she is his wife now, so we all must be more accepting of her."
"Oye," said Jon when he saw them walking towards him. He finished tucking his shirt in and beamed at them from ear to ear, though it pained him to do so. The two women swung him around and walked him back the way he had come. "One of us isn't a virgin any more, sis," he bragged. The women both groaned and then giggled and Britta tickled him until he cried out and pleaded his wound.
"I can't believe that I am expected to have sex with all these women," he said. "By the way, where are we going?"
"They get a cash bonus for every live birth. It is sugar money," replied Lucy.
Jon when silent for a few steps and then whispered, "You mean that they don't actually want me, just a child by me? But that isn't right."
"You really thought they wanted you?" laughed Britta.
"But what about my children? Who will take care of them?" A group of young boys raced by them. They were playing pirates and using sticks as cutlasses.
"Where do you think their fathers are?" asked Lucy. "There are no men on this farm 'ceptin' Master Robert, errr, and now you. Don't worry about your children. They will roar around with all the others."
"But it still doesn't seem right," said Jon. He had gone from feeling so cocky to feeling depressed in less than a minute. "How many?"
"Maybe a half dozen this year, and a half dozen next," replied Lucy.
"That many. That makes, ugh," he counted on his fingers. "twelve. No, it's not right," He was waiting for his bossy sister to take over the conversation as she usually did. She didn't. "Are you all right with it, Britta?"
"So long as I don't have to bear any, I don't care." She looked at Lucy's face and the two women broke into more laughter.
* * * * *
Dinner, as usual, was a formal affair in the dining room. It included any white folks and their guests, plus Lucy, and at least two of the older children. Lucy almost always ate the evening meal at this table so that she and Robert could discuss the day's happenings. The older children rotated in turns as part of their training in manners.
The cooking, serving and cleaning was done by the two women cooks and all the rest of the older children. Sitting at and serving at formal tables was an important part of the children's training.
Britta was very uncomfortable. She had never been served before. She had never heard a grace said before. She had never seen a place setting before. One of the older girls showed off by explaining all of the forks and spoons to her.
Once they began eating, she picked at her food and watched the difference between the way Jon gobbled his food with a spoon and the way Robert elegantly held his knife and fork. She tried to mimic Lydia in all things. She was sure that everyone noticed every mistake she made.
Lydia saw her discomfort and made an announcement. "Britta is wise but has never been to a school. It will be easier for her if we all show her how to do things."
Lucy spoke out, "Britta already knows much about herbs and healing, but I can teach her more. We need another healer on this farm. Oh, and Britta, don't believe anything that little Michael over there tells you. He is a devil."
Robert cleared his throat. "Britta, Jon, tomorrow at church I will introduce you to the village."
"Poor babies," muttered Lucy. "I wish them luck."
After dinner, Robert sat on the upstairs balcony above the sun porch and watched the sky and the lights of the valley. Britta put Robby to sleep, and then Lydia showed her how to fill Robert's pipe with the flower buds of Indian tea and the tiniest amount of opium. They took it to Robert and sat with him while he smoked it. The smoke from it was acrid, and Britta watched in wonder that Robert could inhale it without coughing.
Robert looked at them through his now softly focused eyes. He had a wide smile. "Next time, leave out the opium. Mix the buds with a bit of tobacco." Lydia wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. She looked at Britta over his shoulder and mouthed the word "yes" to her. It had take two years to get Robert to the point where he did not crave the poppy juice.
* * * * *
* * * * *
MAYA’S AURA - the Redemptioner by Skye Smith
Chapter 10 - At the Church
"Agghhh," Maya moaned in frustration and crumpled up another drawing. "I'm just not an artist. I have these photographic memories but I can't get them out of my head and onto paper. Why hasn't anyone invented something that can read pictures from your mind into your computer. You know, like a reverse eyeball projector gismo."
"So tell me," Nana soothed, "Just tell me what the farm was like."
"Well, like it was big. Like where do I start?"
"The house, start with the house."
"Well, like it was big. Okay, I know. What was weird, or maybe ingenious, was that all the chimneys were at one end of the house. It meant that one huge wall was all stonework. That meant that inside, all of the fireplaces were at one end. It meant that outsi
de, where all the cooking was done, there was a cooking shed leaning up against that stone wall."
Nana checked her notes. "But while dreaming you told me that it had an indoor kitchen with an indoor pump."
"Well yeh. The indoor kitchen was where you did all the food prep. If you wanted to cook something you went out to the cook shed. That was where the spits and pots and ovens were. The only thing burning in the indoor kitchen was a brazier that kept water hot. Think about it. If the cook shed burned down, it was separated from your house by a huge stone wall of chimneys."
"And all these slave women and kids," Nana checked her notes. "That must have been sordid, like the pictures of Somalia that charities run on TV."
"Actually, everyone seemed pretty happy. They were certainly strong and healthy and well fed. So much food, and such big helpings. And yet, come to think of it, only a couple of women were like, really fat. None of the children were. Teeth. They all had wonderful teeth."
"That would have been the dairy diet," Nana wrote down a note. "Never a shortage of milk for the children. Do you remember the dairy?"
"Well considering it was a dairy farm, the actual dairy like, was small. There was the milking shed, and behind it, dug into the ground, was the cheese shed. In grade five our class went on a tour of a dairy, and that was nothing like it. No refrigerators, no milking machines, no sterilizers, no stainless steel vats. The same smell though. I will always remember the smell of old milk and ripe cows."
"Back to the pictures of Somalia," Nana urged.
"Nothing like that so far. The rooms they lived in were small but that was probably so they were easier to keep warm in the winter. Everyone was a bit grubby, but like, it was a farm and everyone was busy with chores all the time, and farm chores are grubby chores.
The kitchen was going twelve hours a day. The kids all had chores to do, but it still left them a lot of time to play. They didn't have plastic toys, but I guess no one did in those days. Their play seemed to be a lot of chasing around and laughing."
"Was Britta happy? Did she feel happy inside? Or can you capture such feelings?"
"Mostly happy, except when Robert was around. He had a dark touch, remember, so she didn't trust him, ever, at all. Frankly I think she was just so relieved not to be working in a tavern anymore, and to be out in the country rather than in a city. Hmmm."
"What?" asked Nana.
"Well come to think of it, in Providence, working in the tavern, she was handling money all the time. In the city everything had a price and money changed hands endlessly. Since reaching the farm, I don't think that she has seen any money. I mean, like, no money at all."
* * * * *
* * * * *
Britta stared with interest around the small church that was very full of very white folks dressed head to foot in black. None of the Blacks had come with them, because, supposedly there just wasn't room for them. Robert told her that later in the day, the pastor would visit the farm and gave them a different, shorter service.
The four of them had arrived early, but were shown to seats left to those out of favor near to the back. Jon had made friends immediately with a large Dutch family, who were also out of favor. He had heard the two grandparents speaking to each other and had understood almost all of what they said. When he mentioned this to them while speaking in the Fen's Frisian that he had learned as a child it caused a stir with the elders. They all pushed closer to him to listen to his accent.
"I know it now," said the grandmother. "It is the dialect from Friesland. Am I right?"
Britta could also speak Fen's Frisian and changed places with Robert so that she could take part in the discussion. "The people of Friesland are related to the people of our home in England. Our home was near to the Wash, the big bay that faces Holland."
That was enough to send tongues wagging and stories flying. One of the Dutch grandfathers told his story to Jon and Lydia. "Everyone here calls us Dutch, but our forefathers actually came here from England. Many Dutch folk moved to England to escape the papists and to help Cromwell fight the papist King Charles. When a decade later, the kings were resurrected, many of us fled to New England.
Each time the armies of the Papist King worried the people, our folk again would charter ships and come here to escape them. That all stopped when the protestant Dutch invaded England and conquered it. That was in, in, in 1688 I think. In any case, the English people joined them in the Glorious Revolution, during which, William and Mary replaced the Papist King James and with nary a shot fired. With the Dutch in control of England there was no longer a need for our folk to migrate to New England."
"Yes, there were many Dutch that settled in the fens near where we lived," said Britta. "They were building canals and dykes to drain the wet lands so the great estates could grow corn."
The grandfather was pleased by this knowledge. "We Dutch are very industrious people. Very progressive. When they invaded England they took their modern world with them from Holland. Not just the canals that you saw, but all the modern Dutch ideas about mills and factories, republics and commonwealths, share markets and corporations, and of course insurance and banking. Everything that the young Puritan hotheads of Boston now hate about corporations and banks came from we Dutch. I sometimes fear that they will blame us for them, and we will have to move again."
"Oh grandfather," said the young girl sitting beside the old bearded man, "you are the only man who remembers that all these modern ideas came from Holland. If you would stop talking about them, then no one else would find out." She was about the same age as Britta, and she could have been her sister. Of course the somber clothes and the full bonnets made all of the women in the church look somewhat alike, but the faces, and the cheeks, and the hair of these two teen girls were the same.
The girl touched Britta and motioned her to come with her. The girl stood and shuffled to the aisle and then made for the door and outside. Britta followed her, as did a few other teen girls who saw them leave. In all there were five of them that went to stand and talk in the shade of the great maple outside the small church.
Her look alike's name was Hannah. The other girls giggled and dared each other to remove their bonnets in public. With the bonnets gone, they all exclaimed at how Britta could be Hannah's sister.
"I am seventeen."
"So am I."
"Have you developed yet."
"Yes, have you."
"Yes."
"Do you live with the Caldwells?"
"Yes."
"Are you a slave?"
The other girls stopped giggling and were quiet to hear the answer. Britta looked at them all and realized that she would have to be very careful in what she said, for anything she said would eventually be heard by every woman in this valley. "I am a bond servant. Mrs. Caldwell paid for my passage by ship from England. I will be her maid and her baby's nurse for two years to pay her back."
"So you traveled all that way alone and surrounded by seamen. Did they rape you?" Again they were silent, hoping for a scandalous answer.
"No, my brother traveled with me. He protected me." Britta suddenly realized that these girls were so sheltered that they knew nothing of the outside world. They were almost of age, and yet they were still little children.
"Is that what happened to his face? Was he protecting you from rape?"
"A bad man was aiming a gun at another man. He pulled the gun away to save the man, and was hit in the face for doing so." She was picking her words carefully and keeping them simple. She did not want to lie, but these children would get a complex story, the full story, all wrong.
"Does Mr. Caldwell do things to you?"
Britta refused to answer because she knew that anything she said would be twisted into gossip. "Why would you ask such a nasty question? He is a gentleman and a good husband."
"But doesn't he keep fifteen women slaves so he can bed a different one every day?"
The other girls all began talking at once.
"I
heard he covers two of them a day."
"I heard that all of those black children are his."
"My brother says that he has a penis the size of a horse's and only black women are big enough for it."
"I heard that he has covered so many black women that now all of his babies come out black."
"I know. That is what killed his other wife. Her baby came out black. White women can't have black babies. The baby poisons them to death."
"My mother says that all bond girls are sex slaves."
Britta could stay silent no longer. "Stop!" she yelled. "This is all silly nonsense. The black women run the dairy farm. Mr. Caldwell has a new baby, who is in the arms of his wife in the church right now, and Robby is not black." She took a deep breath to calm herself, and then smirked and said, "I am a virgin and I plan to remain so until I am married. Are you all still virgins, or are you sneaking into the barn after dark to be with your lovers?"
These last words turned the other teens into giggling fools, and they started mocking each other about each time another girl had been alone with a boy. It only stopped when a yell came from the church that it was time for prayer. They tied their bonnets on and walked over and joined the crowd of folk that were gathered at the door waiting to go in.
Britta smelled oniony breath, and felt hot air on the back of her neck. It was from a man who was standing too close behind her. He whispered into her ear, "How much will you charge me for an hour in the barn alone?" She pushed forward rudely around the woman in front of her to get away from the hateful breath.
Once inside she squeezed her way along the pew to her seat. She was relieved that there was so much time for prayer in the service, for it let her escape all the eyes that she felt were staring at her. Lydia kept whispering to her, "What is wrong?" and she kept shaking her head. She could not trust herself to speak without dissolving into tears.
One thought kept repeating in her head over and over. All the villagers thought she was a harlot.
