A Certain Latitude

by Janet Mullany

  “Why … I am, for God’s sake.” Frensham jerked at the reins, face reddening, and kicked his mare around. “We should return to the house for dinner.”

  Allen urged his own horse forward to draw level with his father and grasped the mare’s bridle. The two horses danced and sidled together. “I mean no disrespect to you or my mother, but I must know, purely for my own peace of mind. It takes little to discern that you and my brothers and sisters are of a different breed.”

  “A different breed!” His father gave a harsh laugh. “I suggest you drop the subject.”

  “I cannot.” He released his grip on the mare’s bridle, but anger and apprehension made him tighten his grip on the reins of his own horse. “I know there is more to the matter than you wish to tell me. I found some troubling evidence—what it means I am not sure, but I must hear your side of it.”

  “What evidence?”

  “A letter from my mother’s sister, written when I was two years of age.”

  His father clicked his tongue and the mare moved forward. He clicked his tongue and the mare moved forward. “We should walk the horses to cool them off. There is one thing only, Allen. If I speak of this, I must have your word that you will return to England as soon as possible.”

  “I thought you had already arranged that, sir.”

  “So I did.” His father flushed. “I assure you it was for your well-being. But you must agree to leave as I ask.”

  They rode back to the house in silence and retired to Frensham’s office. Allen had never seen his father so ill at ease.

  “Sit,” his father commanded.

  “Only if you will, sir.” Allen used the calm voice that was so effective in putting a client at ease.

  The earl glared at him and paced up and down.

  “Very well, sir.” Allen handed him the letter he had found among his mother’s effects and watched carefully as his father read. He knew the section by heart, damning words slipped in between accounts of domestic activities and news of acquaintances long forgotten.

  I am glad to hear the child settles in well, but am surprised, indeed, that Frensham acknowledges him as of his blood and, further, that you choose to name him after our dear papa. If, as you say, he is not too dark, then all will be well and we shall certainly never speak of his origins.

  His father folded the letter and shook his head. “I wish to God …”

  “In addition,” Allen said, “my sister told me that she did not remember my birth, but only that I appeared suddenly at the age of two or thereabouts, and created much trouble, breaking her dolls and babbling in a language none understood.”

  “Some things are best left undisturbed,” his father said. He slumped into the chair behind the desk looking older and somehow defeated.

  “It is too late,” Allen said as gently as he could. “You must tell me, sir.”

  “Some twenty-five years ago,” his father said, “your mother—Lady Frensham, that is—lost a child. She was much cast down, as I was when I received the news in a letter from England. Her physician had told her she must bear no more children and although she loved her surviving children, she suffered greatly. I made plans to return to England when I received the news, and took with me one of my natural children. I thought—”

  “A moment, sir. What does this have to do with me?” What was his father saying?

  “You were that child, Allen.”

  His mind struggled to make sense of his father’s words. “You brought me from here—from the island?”

  “Yes. This is why you must return—”

  “Wait.” Allen sat facing his father. “You are saying that I am—I am the child of—”

  His father met his gaze. “Yes. Your mother was a slave.” He added, in a shamed rush, “She was the daughter of one of my overseers, and her own mother had a fair amount of English blood. I assure you there was very little of Africa in her, or in you, for that matter, but you do see now why I—”

  “Why you lied to me?” Despite the stuffy warmth of the office, Allen was chilled with disgust and rage. He remembered black slaves owned by wealthy women in England—tiny black boys decked out in jeweled, feathered turbans and silk livery. “So you took me to your wife as some sort of plaything—you thought she should have a Negro lapdog to console her?”

  “I assure you, she came to love you as her own child—”

  “And my own mother? What of her? Does she live still?” He doubted it. Slaves did not live long here. She—the woman who had given birth to him—must be long dead.

  “Her name was Jenny. She gave birth to you when she was fifteen.” His father stared straight ahead. “I trust you will do nothing foolish. I believe my overseer sold her shortly after our departure.”

  “You realize, sir, my position here is somewhat precarious. Presumably I am now someone else’s property—yours, at any rate. No wonder you are so eager to get me off the island, to spare yourself embarrassment. And to whom did you sell my mother?”

  “I’m not sure.” His father cleared his throat and stared at his folded hands. “A number of transactions took place then. I—”

  “No matter,” Allen said. “I’m familiar enough with your accounts that I can find the truth out for myself. And I shall do so.” He stood, shaking with rage. “Do you not realize what you did? That there is a part of me that is a terrified two-year-old child who seeks his mother still? I have dreamed of that voyage to England all my life, not understanding why until now.”

  Allen pulled down ancient ledgers from the shelves. They landed on the desk in a shower of dust, knocking papers onto the floor.

  “Allen, I beg you—”

  “Leave me.”

  It took less than an hour to find the record of Allen’s mother’s sale, leafing through the pages of the account book from twenty-six years ago. An insect of some sort had attacked the book, drilling a neat hole through the pages and leather cover, so that when Allen opened it a cloud of fine dust arose.

  Allen stared at the entry in shock.

  Amos, Jenny, Hiram, Peter, Grace, and their children.

  You didn’t have to be a lawyer to acknowledge the vagueness of that description. No other details, nothing of the children’s age or gender, not even a specification of who the mothers might be. It didn’t matter. Children were not expected to live, but if they did … Was this some act of clemency on his father’s part, to keep the children with their parents, except when it pleased him to take a child from his mother? And now his father’s selfishness was about to rebound on his youngest child.

  And their children. Among whom was a man who had grown up to be Allen Pendale, Esquire, lawyer and would-be country gentleman.

  The second shock was the name of their new owner.

  Lemarchand.

  Allen was black, a slave—now he could see it in the tint of his skin, his dark eyes. No longer an English gentleman. Not here. On the island he was a slave, a chattel, a possession. No wonder his father was nervous on his son’s account; it was no surprise that Allen, alone among his brothers, had never been invited to the island estate.

  The full enormity, the shame of his discovery washed over him in a great tide of pain and loneliness. Everything he had ever believed in, everything he had thought to be the truth, everything he knew of himself, all was false or altered beyond repair.

  He dropped his face into his hands and wept.

  When he stopped weeping, the light had changed—the study was in darkness, which meant it was now evening. He wiped his face with his shirtsleeves, stood, and unbolted the study door. He pushed it open to find Reuben, his father’s major-domo, standing there.

  This man is my equal.

  “His lordship, ’im want to know if you need anything, sah.”

  Reuben thought I was a Negro when I arrived unexpectedly at dusk that day.

  “Some beer, if you please.” His voice still sounded the same, if a trifle hoarse. The voice of an educated English gentleman.

 
“Yes, sah.”

  “Wait. Reuben, did you know Jenny—a slave who was sold some twenty-six years ago?”

  Reuben looked away. “Dat a long time, sah. Lots of girls sold.”

  He knew. Surely he knew. Allen reached into his pocket. He pulled out a shilling and showed it to Reuben. “Does this refresh your memory?”

  “No, sah. I fetch de beer, sah.” Reuben backed away, and Allen wondered if his father had told him not to answer any questions.

  Allen rode out again the next day and watched the slaves toiling in the fields. A veil had been lifted from his eyes; he noted the variations of skin color, from deep ebony to the color of creamy coffee. So much was clear now; the anomaly of a dark child amongst slender, fair-haired siblings; his surprise, when he’d traveled in Italy, at how he was taken for a native of that country where dark hair and bronzed skin were the norm. He considered that his father might have other bastards, and his natural mother, too. How many of these men and women he looked down on from the horse’s back, and who would not meet his white man’s gaze, was he related to?

  The anger and shame of his origins burned, a wound as permanent as any slave’s brand.

  For three days he rode up and down Lemarchand’s lands, asking, always asking. Did you know a woman named Jenny? Do you know if she lives still? His questions were met with sullen silence or cowed shakes of the head. He saw Blight occasionally from a distance; the fellow touched his hat as was proper, but now Allen saw a sinister mockery in the gesture.

  He returned each evening to his father’s house where they dined together, stiffly formal. Allen tried to ignore the pleading expression he occasionally saw on his father’s face.

  The ugly words ran through his mind again and again: mulatto, quadroon, octaroon.

  Finally it occurred to Allen that his mother might well be named something else now, and his questioning was in vain. He knew word must have reached March that Allen Pendale rode his fields, questioning his slaves. Sooner or later he should call at the house and explain.

  The most extraordinary thing, March. I need to buy one of your slaves. Seems she’s my mother. And, oh, by the way, I’m your property.

  Allen was weary, the sun beginning its precipitous drop to the horizon while color flamed in the sky, and he decided to call on March there and then. Under normal circumstances, of course, he would have called sooner, to visit a dying friend. He thought March was his friend, at any rate. Whether March would be his friend in the future was another matter. But there could be no doubt—hadn’t March expressed his love for Allen?

  He approached the house from the fields, winding through the scattered outbuildings and houses that made up March’s enterprise. Ahead was the kitchen, attached to the house by a covered wooden walkway, the air thick with the scents of cooking and wood-smoke. He was weary, thirsty, and sweaty after being in the saddle all day. Surely the kitchen could provide him with some beer and a basin of water to wash his face and hands. He pulled his horse to a halt, dismounted, and tethered the animal to a small tree.

  From the inside of the kitchen came voices, mainly female, and laughter. He knew as soon as they saw him the laughter and intimacy would cease, and he would be regarded as an intruder come to spoil what little amusement they had in their lives.

  He stepped onto the wooden walkway and pushed open the kitchen door.

  As he expected, silence fell, followed by some scuffles as people who probably shouldn’t be there headed for the far door.

  Others became busy with chopping, mincing, sieving, doing various tasks, apparently absorbed in their work. All except for one woman, who stood staring at him, a pottery bowl in the crook of one elbow, a whisk in her other hand. The whisk fell to the floor with a clatter, rolled, and was still. The pottery bowl slid against the woman’s apron; she made a half-hearted attempt to grasp it, but that too slid down, spilling a froth of something pale and fluffy—eggs, it must be eggs—onto the floor.

  The bowl rolled to his feet, miraculously unbroken.

  “I t’ought my pappy walk again.” Her voice was deep and rich—his voice, in female form—or it would have been, if she’d spoken in anything greater than a whisper.

  “I—” He stepped forward.

  She shrank away. “Who you, sah?”

  “Who are you?” He countered, but he knew.

  Behind her the other slaves had gathered into a knot, whispering and rustling together, their work abandoned.

  “Leave us,” Allen said to them. They didn’t move. “Go!” He shouted at them—something he regretted, he sounded like an overseer—and they rushed for the far door.

  The woman still stared at Allen—a handsome woman, with high cheekbones like his own beneath a turban of white linen, skin the color his would be if he stayed out in the sun all day—he’d been that dark in Italy—but now with a grayish cast from shock.

  He took a step forward.

  Eyes wide, she held up her hands, in supplication or to stop him, he wasn’t sure which.

  He spread his own hands, broad, long-fingered like hers. Look, we are alike.

  She gripped her linen apron with both hands.

  “I’m Allen.” He stepped further into the kitchen, not wanting to alarm her more, and pushed a three-legged stool toward her. “You’d best sit down.”

  She looked at him now as if he were mad. A white man offering a slave a seat?

  “Sit,” he said. It came out like an order. He winced. “If you please,” he added.

  She sat.

  Something hissed at the fire, a pot boiling over, and she jumped to her feet, moved pothooks to adjust heat, stirred a couple of things with a large spoon, and, wiping her hands on her apron, faced him. She looked him over without shyness or fear, as though attending to familiar tasks had restored her, and gave a quick, approving nod.

  Fifteen when she gave birth to him—so that made her three and forty or thereabouts, a handsome woman, quick on her feet. Not young, but tough and strong. His mother.

  “I don’t remember you,” he said. He’d hoped that seeing her might force some memory to the surface.

  She shrugged. “You too little when ’im take you ’way. It don’ matter. I ’member.” She stepped forward and touched his coat. “’Im made you a gentleman.”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m a lawyer.”

  She nodded, pleased, although he wasn’t sure she knew what a lawyer was. “You a clever baby,” she said. “That’s why ’im favor you so.”

  She meant his father, he supposed. “I’ll buy your freedom.”

  She raised her chin with a flash of defiance. “I save for dat.”

  “Then I’ll add to what you have.”

  “And den what?”

  “Whatever you like. You could come to England. I have a farm—much smaller than this, quite different. There are no slaves. I need a housekeeper, someone to look after the place.”

  “Why you no got a wife?” She touched his wrist very lightly. “You handsome enough.”

  “The last woman I asked refused me.”

  “Ah. Dat Miss Onslowe.”

  “How did you know?”

  She smiled. “We know everyt’in’.”

  He hoped not. “I’ll talk to Lemarchand about your freedom. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  She looked uneasy for a moment, then touched his hand again. “I glad ’im took you ’way, even though I cry and cry. Better’n stayin’ here.” She darted back to the hearth again and raked fresh coals under a pot on a trivet. She padded over to a cask and drew him a mug of beer, as though sensing his thirst, but whether it was from maternal instinct or merely the act of a well-trained servant he couldn’t tell. “You seen me. Now you go.”

  “But—”

  “Go. I got work to do and I need dem other slaves back or dinner be late and de master get angry.”

  “When may I see you again?”

  She looked at him, dark eyes somber. “Tomorrow. I got to t’ink what to do. I don’ know… You gone too
long, you a man now.” She repeated, “You go and come back tomorrow.”

  His throat tightened. “What should I call you?”

  She took the empty mug from his hand and smiled. “Dey call me Ceres.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “My dear fellow!” March gestured in typical lordly fashion, from a chaise-longue set in his study. Papers cascaded from his lap to the floor. “Come in, do. You are a welcome distraction from tedious business affairs. Forgive me if I do not rise.”

  He looked, Allen thought, more like a pasha or some sort of oriental king than usual, draped in a silk banyan, black silk embroidered with red and gold dragons, and a loose shirt and trousers.

  “How are you, sir?” As usual, Allen found himself responding to March’s warm affection. He clasped the other man’s hand in his.

  March grimaced. “I find the nights somewhat difficult—no, not for the reason you imagine, sir—merely that sometimes I have trouble breathing. I fear I wear Clarissa out. I wish that I wore her out in the way we like best. But how are you? Is there something that troubles you?”

  “Yes, sir, there is.” Allen delayed the unpleasant task by pouring them both wine—watered wine, rather, for March could only drink it that way—and sat on one of the chairs. March didn’t look well, his slenderness turning to gauntness, eyes shadowed.

  Allen took a sip of his wine. “I’m come on business, sir.”

  “Ah, it’s good of you to help Frensham. Of course—what may I do for you?”

  “I wish to buy the freedom of one of your slaves.”

  March’s eyebrows rose. “Not Nerissa? My dear sir, you can have her any time you want, with my blessing. I assure you there is no need to go to the trouble of buying her.”

  “No. Not Nerissa.” Had March offered Allen’s mother to his guests in such a casual fashion?

  “Which one, then?”

  “Ceres.”

  “My cook?” March grinned. “Oh, good heavens, man, I couldn’t stand to lose my cook. But why? Is she not a little long in the tooth for you? I would have thought—” his voice died away.