The Indigo Girl

by Natasha Boyd

  There was a beat of silence. “Very well, I release the slave mulatto Quash into the care of Miss Lucas of Wappoo with the understanding that any further evidence as to his guilt coming to light will mean he will need to be returned here.”

  I released a pent-up breath.

  “Thank you,” I said with force to the court. “And thank you, Mr. Pinckney,” I added quietly to the stalwart and dependable man at my side.

  “Actually, I think it was all you, Eliza,” Charles said, his voice soft under the cover of voices that erupted around us. “How could one look at you in this courtroom, you tiny slip of a woman with those large expressive eyes and that fantastical story and not do as you ask? I think you have long underestimated your power.”

  He turned and strode toward the bailiff who stood with hastily drawn up papers for Quash’s release.

  I swung to Quash.

  He nodded at me solemnly.

  I nodded back.

  Quash was released into our care, and Charles insisted we return to the Pinckneys’ home in town so Quash could eat and rest before we headed back to Wappoo. Charles really was the most remarkable and thoughtful man.

  As we trundled along the bumpy cobbled streets in our open carriage, I brought a shaking hand up to adjust my bonnet against the cold wind whistling between the buildings. The iron sky bore down heavily.

  “What will you do now?” Charles asked.

  The heaviness sitting deep in my gut, underneath my crushing sadness, was guilt. A massive ballast stone of it, weighing me down.

  “Now,” I responded, watching the myriad buildings that comprised Charles Town roll by, “I am admitting defeat. South Carolina bested me. Her fertility and her promises sucked me in, and I drowned in her marshy swamps.” I warmed to my dramatic and fanciful poetry. “I’ve been strangled and choked by her ropes of dripping Spanish moss.” I glanced at Charles whose eyes held pity. I hated that.

  “I shall write to Father and let him know. He will mortgage our last property if he hasn’t already. Perhaps we could forfeit on one of them, Waccamaw, and Mr. Manigault can find a ready buyer for it. I saw Laurens chatting to Manigault at the King’s Birthday Ball, likely putting his ear to the ground for such a fortuitous event,” I muttered. “I’ll be pleased not to have to think about that ghastly Starrat anymore. Then, I imagine, we will wait for either my father or my brother George to fetch us back from here.”

  Mr. Pinckney and Quash both stared at me.

  “What is it?” I asked, alarmed at their twin expressions of dismay.

  I didn’t recognize this defeated version of myself either.

  The sky, with no clouds to keep us swaddled, was cold and blue. The sun danced artlessly across the indigo water.

  As we crossed the now calm Ashley River and entered the mouth of Wappoo Creek toward our land, it was as though I was a different person.

  I’d left with hope in my heart, and I returned without even a heart in my chest. I was filled instead with the weight of my failures. If I slipped overboard I knew the heaviness inside me would pull me down faster than the drag of my voluminous dress.

  I wrote to my father about the boat accident and the loss of the rice and the Negro man. I couldn’t even call him Ben. My father would know when he read it. It was a matter-of-fact missive, devoid of flowery prose or excess sentiment.

  Most things were now to be conducted in this manner. As though part of me had to be kept locked up tight, and any break in the seal would spring too many leaks for me to contain.

  In fact, as the letter to my father dried, I picked up my quill again and struck through the word “the” in front of Negro man, and wrote “a” Negro man.

  I closeted myself away at our plantation, only keeping in touch by occasional written word, and waited for time do its healing work. Time trudged by so slowly. I was a butterfly pinned by my wings to the canvas of my mistakes.

  Dear Miss Bartlett,

  After a pleasant passage of about an hour we arrived safe at home, as I hope you and Mrs. Pinckney did at Belmont. But this place appeared much less agreeable than when I left it, having lost the pleasant company that then enlivened it.

  I feel lost. What was once so clear has been obscured. I find myself turning more and more to faith. Perhaps this Christian scheme is but an illusion, but it is an illusion I readily subscribe to, and must cling to dearly. Perhaps if everyone believes, it will be so.

  Your most humble and obedient servant,

  E. Lucas

  Dear Mrs. Pinckney,

  To my great comfort I hear you are perfectly recovered of the indisposition you complained of when I was in town. I hope permanently.

  At my return hither everything appeared gloomy and lonesome. I began to consider what alteration there was in this place that used to so agreeably soothe my pensive humor, and made me indifferent to everything the gay world could boast; but found the change not in the place but in myself …

  My determination in hindsight was futile. What was a girl thinking becoming mad with such silliness? Your friendship through my folly is greatly appreciated.

  —Eliza Lucas

  To the Honorable Charles Pinckney, Esq.,

  I think my silence requires less apology than my writing … I have had a very great cold so that I could not hold up my head or see out of my eyes to write a line …

  Or perhaps Miss Bartlett will tell you the real cause of my affliction. I am a ship with no rudder.

  You justly observe a completion of happiness is not attainable in this life, to which truth I readily subscribe …

  Mama bids me tell you she is quite ashamed of the troubles our people gave you.

  Your humble servant,

  Eliza Lucas

  To Colonel Lucas,

  I hope that you will do me justice to believe your not hearing from me for some time past was purely the effect of accident.

  Your dutiful and obedient daughter,

  Eliza Lucas

  Sarah came to see me. She was thinner than I’d ever known her, her spirit dimmed.

  I closed my volume of John Locke essays and waited wearily. I’d been attempting the fruitless exercise of keeping my mind occupied.

  Sarah said nothing, her head bowed and her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides.

  “What is it?” I asked, and I couldn’t help remembering the last time she’d been in the study. How she’d stood in the same spot with her haughty demeanor and her unwillingness to help me. Even though she’d finally relented.

  For what good it had done. I still had no idea if she had true indigo knowledge and I no longer cared.

  “Speak!”

  “It were my charm.”

  I sighed. “What are you talking about?”

  “I cursed the thing you loved the most.”

  She looked up at me, her eyes wide, her hands still fidgeting.

  Swallowing. “I don’t believe in charms. I believe in God.”

  She shook her head. “It were me. It were my fault.”

  “Sarah,” I said with exasperation, “it wasn’t your fault the indigo was ruined. I already know what happened. And I know exactly who was to blame. The list is long. But you are not on it.”

  “I no talk of the indigo. I mean Ben.”

  The sound of his name from her lips ringing out into the silent room was a slap across the face. My head even turned involuntarily, my breath leaving me.

  “Get out,” I managed after several moments.

  With a soft sound she moved, her knees bending. She lowered herself to the floor.

  “What are you doing? Get up.”

  Her head stayed bowed.

  “This is ridiculous,” I snapped. “Sarah, get up.”

  When she didn’t respond, true to her stubborn nature, I slapped my book down on the desk.

>   What was this? Was she bowing to me? Apologizing? What? It was dramatic and uncomfortable. I stood and walked quickly to the door of the study. I needed air.

  Stalking out of the study intent on going outside, I quickly changed my mind and went instead to my room, leaving Sarah in supplication upon the floor.

  I startled Essie who was leaning under my bed with a stiff brush to get the dust up from the crevices.

  “Lord, chil’.” Her hand pressed to her chest and she rocked back on her bare, pink, and cracked heels.

  “Am I to see every one of you on the floor today?” I asked, swiping at my cheek, and told her about Sarah.

  Essie listened quietly but didn’t dispute nor support the claim. A short while later I was relieved to find Sarah gone from the study. I looked around to see everything as it was, then walked to the gun cabinet, the door of which had come loose again. Sealing it shut, I took a deep breath and resumed reading. My head hurt.

  Dear Miss Bartlett,

  Have I told you I saw a comet? Perhaps the comet Sir Isaac Newton foretold should appear in 1741, and which, in his opinion, will destroy the world. How long it may be traveling down to us, he does not say.

  Meditating on the shortness of life gives me no pain at present, and I hope I have not inspired you with an unpleasing gloom. There is a disgust at the separation of soul and body to human minds, but that is in great measure to be overcome by the beliefs in the Christian religion.

  —Eliza Lucas

  Dear Miss Bartlett,

  Per your inquiry of the comet: The comet had the appearance of a very large star with a tail; to my sight, about five or six feet long. It’s real magnitude then, must be prodigious. The tail was paler than the comet itself, and not unlike the Milky Way.

  The brightness of the comet was too dazzling for me to give you all the information you require, but I am inclined to think by its modest appearance so early in the morning it didn’t permit every idle gazer to behold its splendor; a favor it only granted to those few that take pains for it.

  How was it dressed? I conclude if I could have discovered any clothing it would have been the female garb. Besides, if it is any mortal transformed to this glorious luminary, why not a woman?

  The light of the comet to my unphilosophical eyes seems to be natural and all its own. How much it may really borrow from the sun, I am not astronomer enough to tell.

  Your most obedient servant,

  Eliza Lucas

  Dear Miss Bartlett,

  I assure you the sight of a comet is not the only pleasure you lose if you lie late abed in a morning; for this, like every other pernicious custom, gains upon us the more we indulge it. First, because by losing so much of our time, we lose so much of life. Secondly, because it is unhealthy. Thirdly and lastly, because we lose by far the pleasantest part of the day.

  An old lady in our neighborhood is often quarreling with me for rising so early as five o’clock in the morning and is in great pain for me lest it should spoil my marriage for she says it shall make me look old before I am so.

  I reason with her thus: If I should look older by this practice, I really am so; for the longer time we are awake, the longer we live. Sleep is so much the emblem of death that I think it may rather be called breathing than living.

  I send herewith Mr. Pinckney’s books, and shall be much obliged to him for Virgil’s works. Notwithstanding, this same old gentlewoman has a great spite at my books and had like to have thrown a volume of my Plutarch’s Lives into the fire the other day! She is sadly afraid, she says, I shall read myself mad.

  Your most obedient servant,

  Eliza Lucas

  By the end of winter, I’d had enough of looking at the forlorn fields where the indigo had grown. I interrupted Quash midway through his reading a section of the Bible aloud to me one morning in the study.

  “Quash, I need you and Togo to till up the indigo fields, pull the remaining plants, and get rid of the seeds we have. We’ll plant rice.”

  Quash looked up as I spoke but said nothing.

  “Maybe not rice.” I frowned, remembering the price of rice had dropped so much of late. “Maybe cotton.”

  Quash left my request unanswered and returned to reading. I should have been insulted. Instead I crawled back inside my own head again, wondering where my request had even come from.

  I’d been doing everything possible to avoid having to make a decision about the indigo. I didn’t want to till it all up like I’d just asked Quash, but we couldn’t grow it again. What would we do with it? I didn’t feel confident in what I’d learned, and I scolded myself for this weakness of character that must still be a hangover from grief. There was nothing wrong with making another attempt. Yet, I was paralyzed by the very idea.

  My dear Miss Bartlett,

  I have found a raison d’être. I am engaged in the rudiments of law to which I am yet but a stranger. I hope it will make me useful to any of my poor neighbors. We have some in this neighborhood who have a little land and few slaves and cattle to give their children and never think of making a will until they come upon a sick bed and find it too expensive to send to town for a lawyer. If you will not laugh too immoderately at me, I’ll trust you with a secret. I have made two wills already!

  I know I have done no harm for I learned perfectly and know how to convey by will estates real and personal, and never forget in its proper place, him and his heirs, nor that it is to be signed by three witnesses in the presence of another.

  After all what can I do if a poor creature lies a-dying and their family takes it into their head that I can serve them? I can’t refuse.

  A widow hereabouts with a pretty little fortune begged me to draw her a marriage settlement, but it was out of my depth and I absolutely refused it. So she got an abler hand to help her. But I couldn’t get off from agreeing to be one of her trustees to her settlement.

  We expect my brother George very shortly. His arrival will, I suppose, determine how long we shall continue here. I never expected to lose my heart in South Carolina. It will be heartbreak indeed to leave.

  Your most obedient servant,

  E. Lucas

  The indigo crop came back with all the vengeance of a hurricane roaring in from the Atlantic. It covered the fields from edge to edge, tangling and climbing over itself to fill every available space. I never knew if it came back from the seeds already nesting in the soil despite my asking Quash to clear the fields or if he’d deliberately ignored me and actually sown the seeds himself.

  I did not ask and Quash remained silent on the subject.

  Quash had begun rebuilding some of the dwellings with a new building substance we’d heard about named “tabby.” Similar to daub, it was combined with oyster shells to give it more heft and consistency. For a brief moment I wondered if we should rebuild the main house, and then I remembered with despondency that we probably wouldn’t be here much longer. Quash collected barrows of oyster shells from the shell midden on our bluff that had been there, according to Quash, since Indian days. He burned them white then bade me come and watch as he immersed the burnt shells in water and I saw them miraculously and instantaneously disintegrate into powder. He mixed the powder with sand and more oyster shells and packed it into wood casings he and Pompey had made where it dried into a hard foundation. Little by little they built the wall higher, moving the casing up a bit and pouring the new tabby onto the hardened level beneath. I was impressed with his experimentation and his skill, and so I let him continue learning. And perhaps part of me thought if he was busy elsewhere, he wouldn’t pester me about the indigo plants.

  For my part, I kept myself busy learning law, mastering the harpsichord my father had sent Polly and me for Christmas, and imagining anything else I could harvest that wasn’t indigo.

  I’d begun visiting the Woodwards again with Mama, looking forward to Tuesdays with a ferv
or that was almost unnatural.

  Miss Bartlett never did come to visit me at Wappoo, having to return instead to London. And suddenly I became so very aware of the fact that all my letters to her had really only ever been for Mr. Pinckney, knowing he would read them. Somehow, even though we’d started out with this being the case, I had convinced myself otherwise. And now that I no longer had the veil of corresponding with Miss Bartlett to hide behind, I found myself quite unable to write with as much vigor.

  When Mrs. Pinckney sent word for me to call upon her, my shame at the realization of how dependent I had become on writing to her husband kept me from responding right away.

  So it was no surprise one afternoon when Charles Pinckney showed up unannounced, dancing down the lane on Chickasaw, his coattails flying behind him. Lil’ Gulla was the one who came running up to the house to announce his approach, so we could all go outside and see.

  “My dear, Miss Lucas.” He smiled as he dismounted, and my words dried in my throat.

  I was desperately happy to see him, of course, but my recent concerns for how important he’d become to me prohibited me from showing my usual joy. He and Mrs. Pinckney, and of course dear Mrs. Cleland, were some of my closest friends and soon I would have to say goodbye to them too.

  “I’m sorry.” He was immediately downcast when he noticed my lack of response. “I should have sent word. I was just hearing a case up near St. Andrew’s church. And I have brought some letters for you from England.”

  So it was not my absence that brought Charles here. I swallowed a fleeting stab of egotistical disappointment and shook my head. “No, no. It’s fine. I was just overcome for a moment. It is so very wonderful to see you.”