‘I got wee Geordie out as quick as I could.’
‘Indeed you did,’ Annabella assured him. ‘No one’s blaming you. It’s just a misfortune and we’re all mightily distressed. But there’s no use wasting time in fruitless lamentations. Away you go and do as you’re told.’
She returned to her bedroom to find Griselle had disappeared.
‘She wants to lay the bairn out herself,’ Ramsay said. ‘She’s through with him now.’
Annabella went over to gaze out the window. The rain had long since stopped and the water had calmed and appeared to be shrinking towards the river. In a few days it would have completely subsided. The streets would be filthy quagmires littered with the flotsam from houses and warerooms. Carcasses of cows and sheep would hump up like black hillocks. Thousands of drowned rats would clutter the markets.
The Tolbooth bells cheerily chimed in a new day.
6
KNEELING beside Mistress Kitty’s grave, Regina absently changed the flowers. She felt sick with apprehension. Now that his wife was dead, what was to stop Harding deciding there was no place for her any more and putting her out of the house. She had nowhere to go. She kept telling herself that it was a ridiculous idea. Why should he do such a thing? He liked sleeping with her, didn’t he? This knowledge brought scant reassurance. He could get other women to share his bed. Even the fact that she was carrying his child might not make any difference if he wanted to get rid of her. How many masters before him had got servants pregnant and then disowned them?
Anyway, she daren’t continue putting off telling him about the child.
It had been warm earlier but now the cool evening air ruffled the long grass and made her shiver. Rising, she carefully arranged her gown and petticoat. She wanted to go indoors for a cloak and wait until later when Harding would come into the house before speaking to him. But she couldn’t stand her secret torment a moment longer.
She walked stiffly round the back of the house and along past the storehouse to the office. He was sitting at a desk surrounded by ledgers and was dipping his quill into an inkpot when she entered. His eyes flashed up in surprise. Then he waited, without saying anything.
‘I’m with child,’ Regina announced abruptly.
Suddenly he flung back his head in a burst of laughter.
‘You pig,’ she said. ‘I might have known you would act like this. You coarse, unfeeling, brutish pig. I loathe and detest you.’
And before he could say anything, she had swept away again, her skirts swishing, spurting up dust from the path.
Later, in the dining-room as they sat at opposite ends of the long table, she could feel his eyes glimmering across at her with amusement. Ignoring him, she kept forcing herself to eat. Eventually he said,
‘It was your manner of telling me that made me laugh. It was so like you.’
He said no more and they finished the meal in silence. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he poured a glass of whisky for them both. She sat sipping hers on the embroidered chair. He stood with his back to the fire, glass in hand. Every now and again he savoured a mouthful of whisky. She could have killed him. She raised her eyes to meet his and saw his mouth twist into a smile that had no softness about it.
‘You are still amused?’ she inquired.
‘No, I am pleased.’
She kept her face stiff and expressionless.
He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to my son.’
‘My son.’
After a pause he said, ‘What is going on in that icebox of a brain now, I wonder?’
‘You have no claim on me.’
‘Ah!’
‘I am not even indentured to you.’
He put down his empty glass. ‘You are tied to me by stronger bonds than that.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said coldly. The smile pulled at his mouth again.
‘What a goddam liar you are. You even lie to yourself.’
‘I could walk out of here tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Could you?’
‘And you could get another woman to accommodate you.’
‘True.’
‘And another bastard child.’
‘My son must have my name. We must be married.’
‘What makes you so sure I will marry you?’
He turned away to pour himself another drink.
‘Send one of the slaves with a note telling the preacher to come,’ he said, ignoring her question.
It took her a minute or two to swallow down her anger and inquire in a smooth, polite tone:
‘Do you wish any guests to be invited for the ceremony?’
‘Invite all your friends.’
His eyes glimmered across at her again, making her flush, but she managed to keep her voice cool.
‘You know I have no friends.’
‘There’s Nancy, Morgan West’s wife.’
‘I only see her occasionally in Williamsburg. I was referring to the people you do business with and carouse with in Williamsburg and elsewhere.’
‘I have no need or wish for them. At least not on my wedding day. Invite your brother and sister-in-law. They can stay for a few days.’
‘Very well.’
And so Joseph was sent with a note to the preacher and a letter to Gav.
Gav was worried about Mr Speckles, the store manager. The old man wasn’t keeping at all well. He never served in the store now because standing behind the counter was too tiring. Also the smells of the pelts, the tobacco and the spices never failed to trigger off his cough. It was terrible to see Mr Speckles in one of his coughing spasms. The poor man could hardly hold his bundle of bones together. The coughing was such a strain, in fact, he often retched up blood. The doctor was seldom in the settlement. He spent most of his time travelling around, visiting and living for long periods with one or other of the wealthy planters. But when he did come, he gave Mr Speckles a dreadful concoction that only made him retch all the more. The doctor also advised that the already exhausted man should take vigorous exercise, particularly horseback riding because horse smell was good for weak lungs. It didn’t seem to do Mr Speckles any good.
The Indian medicine man’s potions hadn’t been of much use either. Even old Mrs Adamson’s herbs had not effected a cure. It was she who treated most of the settlement’s ills. She could boast of considerable success with ‘the chills’ or ‘the shakes’ as some folks called the disease that plagued so many of the settlers. Children seemed especially vulnerable to it. Some child or other was always taking chills at school. Gav had seen boys swimming down by the creek and one of them taking a chill and the others sitting round him on the bank until he’d had his chill out. Then they all went off together as if it had never happened.
Mrs Adamson had made a big difference with her sassafras tea and her quinine. But no matter what she tried with Mr Speckles, it never made one bit of difference.
Now he was barely able to hunch over his desk in the counting house and push a quill across a ledger.
Gav had to supervise the store, the two young indentured lads and the two Negro slaves who worked in it. His duties were many and varied. It wasn’t just a matter of serving in the store or seeing that the place was well stocked with goods. More and more he was having to keep the ledgers as well. There was the long tobacco book in particular in which he had to record the movement of individual hogsheads, as the casks of tobacco were called. Every hogshead was identified by a particular mark and number. The mark was a special design chosen by the planter. It could be a combination of letters interwoven, or a crow’s foot, or whatever the planter’s whimsy suggested.
Another important account book that now fell to him to keep was a small ledger called the ‘pocket book’. In it he carefully recorded sums due to the store. Storekeepers were supposed to carry this book on their persons at all times but especially at any public occasions where planters were likely to be gathered. There the storekeeper would have the opportunity to inform hi
s customers tactfully as to their standing.
But Mr Speckles was no longer fit to attend public occasions. Accounts had not been made up for the Public Time in Williamsburg, for instance. And even planters who had made the journey specially to the store for the purpose could not be furnished with a proper statement of what they owed. Poor Mr Speckles was getting extremely confused and tried to escape to the tavern as often as possible. When he was not able to shuffle that far, he imbibed freely from a bottle he kept in the back pocket of his coat. Often as he crouched over his desk, his shaky hand would drop the quill, fumble for the bottle, then take quick furtive swigs from it. Sometimes it made him cough and he all but choked.
The planters had started to complain about the state of Mr Speckles, and the state of the account books. They threatened to write to Glasgow and complain to Mr Ramsay. Eventually, in desperation, Gav had taken the initiative and organised everything himself. Night and day he had been working on the books until he had them up to date. Then he had gone to the Public Time in Williamsburg and seen many of the planters there. He had been sorry, however, on one occasion, to miss Mr Harding who was a very good customer. He had met Nancy who used to be maid to Mistress Annabella Ramsay. Nancy was now married to a farmer called Morgan West who was also a customer at the store. She and Morgan quite often visited the settlement and he enjoyed chatting to her about old times in Glasgow, but on the occasion when they’d met in Williamsburg she had told him that he had just missed not only Mr Harding but Regina as well.
Nancy had bumped into Regina in a Williamsburg shop where Regina had been buying household goods. Gav was glad that his sister had found such a comfortable home, and he was secretly relieved to be free of any worry or responsibility for her. Mr Speckles was enough to cope with. Regina would have been too much. Much as he loved her, he realised that his sister could be a very strange creature at times. He had never really understood her. Sometimes she seemed so cold and unfeeling, it was blood-curdling. There were times he didn’t dare think about. Times like the one on the voyage over to Virginia when he was being forced to climb up the shrouds by the bullying first mate. Mr Gudgeon had been standing balanced on the slippery bulwarks and suddenly Regina had attacked his legs with a belaying-pin, making him lose his balance and fall overboard.
Mr Gudgeon had drowned. Gav had been sick with fear in case the captain would find out that Regina was to blame and have her hanged for murder. She betrayed not the slightest emotion. She only said,
‘You would have fallen from the shrouds. He would have caused you to drown. It was him or you.’ Then with a shrug, ‘Murder’s only a word.’
He remembered too how, after the battle of Culloden, she had betrayed Mistress Annabella’s French lover. Then she had taken looted gold from the saddlebags of English dragoons. Not content even with that, on her journey back to Glasgow she had also stolen clothes and valuables from the dead. He had been especially horrified at this but she had only shrugged again and said,
‘They had no use for it.’
Yet she could be affectionate too. And extremely kind. She had always been good to him and now she was most generous to his children. He wished she would bring Abigail a little gift sometimes, though. She was very cool with Abigail; polite but cool. It was as if she had never forgiven Abigail for marrying him. More than once he had tried to tell her how ridiculous it was still to hanker after their old childish dreams of working a plantation between them. Long before he’d ever thought of Abigail, he’d realised that for him it would be more of a nightmare than anything else. To live alone with Regina in the wilderness had never held any attraction for him. It would never have worked and it had nothing to do with Abigail. He told Regina this in no uncertain terms but it was like talking to a brick wall. When that closed look came over Regina’s face, there was just no getting through to her. Still, he was sorry he’d missed her in Williamsburg. He couldn’t help worrying about her and he was glad when eventually a note came from Regina inviting him and Abigail and the children to come and spend a few days at Forest Hall.
Abigail wasn’t so happy about the visit.
‘You’ve no need to worry about her, Gav. That woman is more than able to take very good care of herself.’
Gav sighed. Abigail obviously didn’t like Regina any more than Regina liked her. Although, to be fair to Regina, she had never once said a word against his wife. He wouldn’t allow her to, of course.
‘Abby, you don’t know Regina as I do. Anyway I’ve business with Mr Harding.’
‘Pooh, that could wait. He’ll be here in a few months.’
‘He might. Then again he might not. My business with him can’t wait that long. I must get all the books balanced. Everything’s got into a terrible muddle since Mr Speckle’s health has broken down.’
‘There’s something about that woman … I’m sorry, Gav, I know you’re fond of her but I can’t help the way I feel. The less we have to do with Mistress Regina, the happier I’ll be.’
But she didn’t say any more and he made the necessary arrangements to travel to Forest Hall. Booster, one of the slaves, helped him load the wagon with their trunk, and after Abigail and the children had clambered on, Booster climbed alongside Gav and, long guns on their laps, they set off along the tobacco road. Soon Booster was singing lustily, more to cover up his fear of the forest than from good cheer, Gav suspected.
‘No more auction block for me,
No more, no more,
Many thousand gone.
No more driver’s lash for me,
No more, no more,
Many thousand gone.
No hundred lash for me,
No more, no more …’
The wagon rocked and creaked and jarred over bumps on the rutted earth and Gav didn’t enjoy the journey any more than Booster or Abigail did. He puffed at his pipe and gave every appearance of calm, but the deeper they travelled into the wilderness and the more the wall of trees closed in on him, the more nervous he felt. But the prickles of unease were nothing to the spiritual depression the forest imposed on him. It was so gloomy and oppressive, like a giant echoing tunnel with no end. He had never made the journey to Forest Hall before, and now it amazed him that not only Regina but even Mistress Kitty had managed it in the past. Regina, like Abigail, had a toughness about her, but Harding’s wife should surely never have been subjected to such a long and arduous expedition.
It seemed eventually as if he had been journeying for a lifetime, and the settlement and his cosy cabin had disappeared into another world. He was beginning to feel he would never see it again or ever reach Forest Hall, when suddenly he caught a glimpse of it between the trees. It could have been a ghost. The hair prickled up the back of his neck. He saw it again, grey-white and evanescent against the rugged brown tree trunks. It had a spectral look that did not change as they came nearer and saw its pillared facade and the double stairs fronting its tall doors.
Neither he nor Booster nor Abigail spoke. Then eventually he cleared his throat and managed to cry out:
‘Hallo-o-o, the house!’
Why had Regina invited him and his family? he suddenly thought. She had never shown any need for company before, although of course her letter had been cool and brief enough.
‘Isn’t that so like her?’ Abigail had said. ‘That’s not a warm family invitation. It’s not an invitation at all, it’s a command.’
He felt uneasy, but he called again as the wagon rattled a path between the trees and stumps:
‘Hallo-o-o, the house!’
Regina sent for the young slaves, Lunesta and Little Sam. ‘I want you to look after Bette and Jethro while they are staying at Forest Hall,’ she told them. ‘See that they are well cared for and amused.’
Lunesta was a skinny child with her frizzy hair parted down the back of her head and tied tightly with two scarlet ribbons given to her by Regina. Delighted at being allocated such a responsible job, she immediately pounced on plump little Bette and managed, after
a breathless struggle, to lift the child in her arms.
‘I’m goin’ to show you the squirrels, Miss Bette.’ She puffed towards the door. ‘One of them’s so tame he eats out of my hand. Little Sam, you bring Jethro.’
As they went out, Callie Mae entered carrying the tea-tray. ‘Go after them and give them a biscuit each,’ Regina told her, then began pouring tea and handing cups around. She noticed Abigail looking a little worriedly after the children, and added,
‘Don’t worry. I’ve told Callie Mae to keep a firm eye on them.’
Gav smiled ruefully over at Abigail.
‘Our whole house could fit into this one room.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with our house,’ Abigail said firmly. ‘It’s a nice, cheerful, cosy place.’
Gav laughed.
‘Well, as long as you’re happy with it.’
‘We can always build on another room if we want one.’
‘Yes, I know.’ He turned to his sister. ‘But fancy you going to be mistress of such a grand house, Regina. You could never have imagined such a thing happening when you were in Glasgow, could you?’
‘I don’t like to think about Glasgow,’ she murmured, averting her face as if the mention of the place pained her.
‘Oh, I do. Not that I pine for it, you understand. Virginia is home for me now. But I often think of dear old Quin and hope he’s all right. And you know, Glasgow wasn’t such a bad place.’
‘Huh!’ Regina rolled her eyes. ‘Dear old Quin! How you can talk of him with affection I just cannot understand.’
Abigail said, ‘I can.’
Regina fixed her with a disdainful look.
‘You never met him. He was a beggar, a thief and a liar. He was also as ugly as sin.’
‘He was ugly, that’s true,’ Gav admitted, ‘but all the same …’
‘It’s also true that he was a beggar, a thief and a liar.’
‘He was kind to us,’ her brother insisted stubbornly. ‘Without him we would have starved or worse.’
Regina’s mouth twisted.
The Tobacco Lords Trilogy Page 68
