Shadowbrook

by Swerling, Beverly

  The nuns left the refectory in procession. When they were gone, Nicole downed every morsel that was in the bowl, tasting nothing, only grateful that the empty place inside her was a little less empty. Begging for her dinner meant that she did not get a slice of the rough brown bread, nor a glass of the thin, acrid wine that accompanied the meal for those who were not guilty of grave sins against the Holy Rule.

  There was a bucket of sand in one corner of the room. Nicole carried the bowl and the spoon there and rubbed them clean, then replaced them on the refectory table, the bowl at her own place, the spoon at that of the abbess. She undid the cuffs of her black dress and rolled them above her elbows. When she took the habit she would roll back wide gray sleeves and fasten them to her shoulders with a single pin the way she’d seen the nuns do. And when would that be? She had no idea. The date of the Clothing, as it was called, was at the discretion of the abbess. When it comes, mon Dieu, I will wear a white veil and truly be your bride.

  We will be married, Quent had said that day in Do Good, with the Quakers in the next room and the pain of betraying her sacred promise still burning in her heart. Wait until I return and you will be my wife. When he spoke those words, how clearly she had seen herself standing beside him in the Frolic Ground with flowers in her hair and her heart singing, then living as his wife in the beautiful house that was his birthright, and that she knew Madame Hale intended him to have, bearing his children … O Blessed Mother of God, surely you do not hold it as a sin that I wanted to say yes. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. It can be no sin merely to have imagined marrying the man I love, Blessed Mother. Loved, she corrected herself. You cannot love him now. You have given yourself to God.

  There was a thin film of ice covering the water in the leather bucket. Nicole resisted the urge to break it with the scrub brush and plunged both her chapped and reddened hands in first. Then she soaked the brush in the frigid water and knelt down and began to scrub the stones. “Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâce …” She whispered the prayer beneath her breath, it would help the task go more quickly. Never mind that her knuckles were bleeding. “Vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes, et Jésus, le fruit—”

  “—de vos entrailles, est béni. Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu …”

  Nicole had not realized that another pair of hands was also scrubbing the floor until she heard a second voice join in the prayer to the Holy Virgin. It was little Soeur Angelique, whose job this usually was. Next to Nicole, Angelique was youngest. She had been last in the line of nuns to welcome her new sister that day in the chapel, but Nicole was sure it had been Angelique on the other side of the turn when she first arrived. Now it was Angelique who in her charity had given up her hour of recreation—the time when the nuns sat together around a small fire in the common room and talked and laughed without restriction—and come to help the sinful young postulant scrub the refectory floor. “… Priez pour nous pauvres pécheurs, maintenant et àl’heure de notre mort. Amen.”

  Not just for us poor sinners, Holy Mother of God, Nicole added silently. I beg you to pray for Quent. Ask your Blessed Son that Quent may be safe and happy. Happy. She thought the word a second time as she continued to intone Aves with Marie Angelique. Then a third. Happy. So, was she asking the Holy Virgin to send Quent another love, another woman to stand beside him at the Frolic Ground with flowers in her hair? Yes, probably. The thought made tears prickle behind her eyelids, but her beloved needed someone and it could not be her, no matter how much her heart ached for him. “… Maintenant et àl’heure de notre mort. Amen.”

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1754

  THE SLAVE MARKET AT THE FOOT OF WALL STREET, NEW YORK CITY

  By God, and this New York was a city worth putting a pox on. Na like God-cursed Albany or Edinburgh. More like Glasgow, Hamish Stewart decided. A place where canny folk pursued business in every lane. God blight all cities, but this one was at least worth the spit o’ the curse.

  All the same, cities made him tired. And he wouldna be refreshed until he was laird o’ Shadowbrook. A pox on the blighted, devil-sent rain that had made that day further off then he’d hoped. They said in Albany that Shadowbrook was ruined. But for his purposes, not ruined enough.

  “Prime,” the black auctioneer called out. “All prime, gentleman. Particularly this fine young Ashanti buck here.” He pointed to one young man in the middle of the line, shackled to his neighbors with a short length of chain and, like them, restrained with leg and wrist irons. The auctioneer’s black assistant prodded the lad with the tip of his bullwhip. The youth stumbled a few steps forward. “Prime flesh if I’ve ever seen it,” the auctioneer repeated. “Look at those muscles. Plenty of labor in those arms. And look here.” This time it was the auctioneer himself who stepped from behind the podium and used a long stick to raise the youth’s loincloth, exposing his genitals “Plenty of labor here as well, if you’ve a mind to make use of it.” The crowd of bidders erupted in laughter. The lad stared straight ahead.

  Filthy business this, Hamish thought. Filthy. Maybe when the Patent’s mine I’ll—Na, I will not. Slaves and Shadowbrook They go together. Why else is John Hale standing in the front waiting for something he fancies to go on the block?

  One by one they went. The New York City slave market was the largest in the north, supplied by private slavers sailing their own ships through the Middle Passage, and famous throughout the colonies for giving buyers better value than they could get elsewhere.

  “Prime, gentlemen, all prime!” The auctioneer danced along the line of shackled bodies, indicating each in turn with a tap of his long stick “Look here, gentlemen! Look ye here! Ashanti! Ibo! Ibo! Fanti! What am I bid?” Back at his podium now, though not done with his huckstering; never mind that he too was owned by the owners of the slave market. “Here on Wall Street you see what you’re buying before you part with your money. All prime, gentlemen! Prime! Come and bid!”

  Hamish shivered. God’s truth, and it was a soul-destroying thing to buy and sell human flesh, but the brass it made, that was a mighty thing. Any man could tell as much by the splendor o’ these fine houses and grand ladies and gents o’ New York City.

  John Hale bid on an Ibo girl and got her for a hundred guineas. The lass was eight or nine, Hamish guessed. The auctioneer used his stick to push up the linen shift that was supplied by the owners o’ the market for modesty’s sake. Not a hair between her legs; wee breasts though, hard little ebony nuts just starting to form, the nipples not yet mature enough to stiffen with the cold. John nodded with approval, the shift dropped back into place, and she was his. Minutes later he was high bidder for two young lads, God blight his rotten soul, stepping up to make payment of four hundred guineas for his three purchases.

  The man whose job it was to take the money, the casher, sat at a plank spread across two trestles at the far end of the auction block Hamish edged a bit doser. Hale handed over a deerskin pouch and the casher took his time about untying it, then poured the contents onto the splintered wood.

  There was a set of scales at his elbow, but it would only be used if there was doubt about the value of the odd assemblage of coins that passed for legal tender in these colonies. Money from every realm under heaven was in use since the Sassenach fools wouldna permit the Americans a mint and deliberately stinted the circulation o’ their own guineas and sovereigns. That way anything the Americans wanted to buy had to come from Mother England, not some other country.

  The casher separated Hale’s coins with practiced fingers, using both hands, until there were short towers of French ducats and Dutch daalders and Portuguese cruzados, even a few Spanish pieces of eight. “To the value of four hundred guineas exactly,” he said at last. “Done, Mr. Hale.”

  “Done,” John Hale agreed. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a few more shillings. “Keep the three here for me a day or two. I’ll collect them when I’m ready to return to Albany. And whatever’s left over is for yourself and the auctioneer.”

  Regula
r buck o’ the stuffed purse, he was. Ruined? By Christ Jesus, how could Shadowbrook be ruined if the new laird, God curse his blighted soul, could be payin’ out four hundred guineas o’ cash money for black slaves not three months after better than half his wheat crop had gone up in smoke?

  John was vaguely aware of Stewart—as chance would have it, he’d seen the Scot earlier that morning, as he was leaving the Wall Street mansion belonging to his Devrey relations—but it was the three merchants standing to the side in the opposite direction that got most of his attention. James Alexander and Oliver De Lancey and the God-rotting Jew Hayman Levy. They had been there since the sale began, but had not placed a single bid this day. They had come to watch.

  Power of the purse you may have, you bastards, but don’t forget what you just saw. John Hale, master of the Hale Patent, stepped up to the auction block and paid top price for three new blacks. In cash money, mind. None of your paper rubbish. So don’t be telling me that Shadowbrook isn’t the collateral it once was, and that you won’t be putting up the money as will buy the cane land that will change everything.

  John turned his back on the casher’s table. His hands were sweating—he shoved them into his pockets so no one might see them tremble—and his heart was hammering in his chest. He’d just paid close to every farthing the Patent had earned from what could be salvaged of the summer crop. It was worth it. Cane land was worth whatever gamble it took. The Merchant’s Coffee House did grand business after the sale ended. The long tables were crowded with bowls and mugs and tankards of drink, and the stools and narrow benches were crowded with the hindquarters of gentleman of every size and description. The smells of tobacco and ale and freshly roasted coffee beans mingled with the musk of traders invigorated by the morning’s buying and selling. There was a steady hum of conversation as the patrons took each other’s measure by the cut of a wig, the swagger of a blue velvet coat, or the sheen of green satin breeches. Finery and the display of it was the order of the day. This was New York City, by God. Not your prissy-mouthed Boston or your righteous, do-good Philadelphia. Since the Dutch founded the place a hundred and thirty years before—and surrendered it to the English forty years after that—this had always been a city with one purpose, the creation of wealth. The aroma that overcame all others in the midday bustle of the Merchant’s Coffee House on Wall Street was the rich and seductive stink of money.

  Black men and boys in long leather aprons hurried among the tables, serving pewter bowls of the dark, steaming coffee for which the Merchant’s was famous, and offering other bowls piled high with Caribbean sugar. Each patron used long wooden tongs to take as many of the sticky, golden nuggets as he liked, sweetening the black brew to his taste and to the stretch of his purse. COFFEE THREE PENCE A BOWL, SUGAR TUPPENCE PER MORSEL, a sign on the wall proclaimed. A glass of punch or a tankard of ordinary ale could be had for a penny.

  Hamish raised his hand and finally managed to attract the attention of one of the waiters. “Bring me an ale, laddie, and be quick.” The black didn’t seem impressed with the one-eyed stranger in the homespun jerkin. Hamish waited and nursed his thirst, and used his single eye and his two good ears, but not to the advantage he’d have wished.

  John Hale was three tables to his left, deep in conversation with his maternal uncle, Bede Devrey. A short, stubby man with a head too big for his body, there was in Bede’s face some of the look of his sister Lorene, but none of her grace. And what did that matter, Hamish thought, when he was the one inherited the fleet o’ Devrey ships, and every one of ’em worth a fortune in the Triangle Trade ’twixt the colonies and Africa and England? Might well be it was Bede Devrey supplied the money his nephew spent this day to buy three slaves. But why? To impress the other merchants as watched every transaction. Make ’em lend more to John Hale, keep him afloat till next harvest. So Bede Devrey’s sister would na finish her days wi’out a pisspot to call her own.

  He dared na sit any doser, and it was impossible to hear what the uncle and nephew were saying at this distance. Everything he saw just deepened the mystery. Shadowbrook was not ruined enough. God’s truth that was.

  Time to leave this place. But not by blighted hell until he’d quenched his thirst. Then he’d stay out o’ sight until his night’s business was finished; after that he’d take the first packet to Albany as would give him a bit o’ deck space to stand on. Hamish’s glance restlessly roved the room, his one good eye doing the work of two. The minutes passed and there was still no sign of the nigra meant to be bringing him his ale, while the coffee house grew ever more crowded, a steady stream of customers wedging themselves in where it seemed no more could fit. The babble of conversation was a high-pitched and constant clatter. Mostly bawdy innuendo concerning the town’s infamous whoremistress, a veiled creature they called Squaw DaSilva. The rest was all to do wi’ business.

  The Merchant’s was the coffee house favored by those involved wi’ the shipping trade and auctions. It was to the Exchange on Broad Street men went to talk o’ the buying or selling o’ land. More his sort o’ transaction, that. A man could rely on land. It dinna disappear into the depths of the ocean, or reappear in bits and pieces along distant beaches a man never heard o’ before.

  The patrons of the Merchant’s Coffee House did not share that sentiment. In the space of a few breaths Hamish heard at least four different men commit themselves to share the risk of a new vessel being built for the Islands trade, and two who were anxious to purchase an interest in the profit of a slave ship called the Lauralee Haven. “Leaks like a sieve, the Lauralee does,” a third man called out. “You’re fixing to lose your stones, Jack But then, judging from the cut of your breeches, you’ve not very big ones to lose.” And underneath the talk of fucking and finances, another theme, one that interested Hamish Stewart still more.

  “The king said nothing when he opened parliament. Not a bloody word.”

  “You’re wrong. He as good as made a declaration of war. He’d protect trade, he said, and the source of the nation’s wealth. That’s us, for the love of the Almighty. We’re the source of England’s wealth, and George knows it as well as his father did. He’s sworn to protect us.”

  “Like he’s been protecting us all along,” a third man joined in. “Doesn’t amount to a fart in the wind. Nothing’s ever settled. Far as I can tell, the bloody French are true to their devious papist ways and get away with it. Keep taking a little more and a little more, and sometimes being made to give a small piece of it back, but at the end of the day they’ve got their hooks farther into us than they were before. Where’s the protection in that?”

  Hamish’s ale arrived. He flipped a wooden penny at the young black who brought it, and drank half the mug in a single draught. “Another, laddie!” he shouted at the boy’s departing back “And best I’d na be in my grave a wee time afore it gets here.”

  “… two regiments of five hundred each,” a man was saying, his voice low and urgent, “under the command of the best possible man for the job, Major General Edward Braddock. They leave from Cork in a few weeks, and once they arrive each regiment is—” He broke off when the Scot called out his order, turning to face the stranger.

  Hamish recognized the scrutiny and raised his half-empty mug. “Your health, sir.”

  “And yours.” The other man was drinking coffee and he made a polite motion with the bowl. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before.”

  “Aye, that’s the truth. I’ve na been here before.”

  “And what brings you here now?”

  Hamish swung his left leg over the bench on which he was sitting so he was in a better position to move quickly if he had to. “I do na mean to offend, you understand, but why would that be any concern o’ yours?”

  “We colonials are always interested in visitors from the mother country.”

  “Aye? Well, that’s a fine sentiment, I’m sure. But if by mother country yer speaking of England, you mistake me.”

  “I didn’t mean to
say I thought you were English.”

  “Ach, I’m glad o’ that. Since God’s truth, I’m not.”

  “You’re a Scot, of course. A Highlander, I’ll warrant.”

  “A man o’ discernment, sir. A Stewart o’ Appin, to be exact.” Hamish stood up and extended his hand. “Hamish Stewart’s my name.”

  The man who’d been talking about troop movements stood as well, but he ignored the proffered hand. He was a head shorter than Hamish, and probably two stone lighter, but he was the younger. If it came to a fight, speed and stamina would be on his side. Hamish felt a great weariness rising inside him. He dinna want to fight. He wanted a peaceful life as laird o’ the only place on earth he’d ever coveted.

  John Hale appeared. “Here, what’s happening? I know this man.” Hale’s black jacket and breeches—Albany style even if he hadn’t been in mourning—were a startling contrast to the bright-colored plumage of the New York City popinjays.

  “He was eavesdropping on a private conversation. And I believe he’s a Jacobite.”

  Bede Devrey had followed his nephew. Apparently he knew the man who’d been speaking of London’s plans. “For God’s sake, Peter, it’s nearly ten years since the rebellion. No one cares about Jacobites any longer.”

  The Merchant’s had gone quiet, every eye watching the two men who seemed prepared to entertain them with a brawl. “Take it outside,” someone called out. “No point in making trouble in here.”

  “No point in making any trouble at all,” Bede insisted. “My nephew here is John Hale of the Hale Patent up Albany way. If he vouches for this stranger, that should be good enough for all of us. Even you, Peter.”