The Charm School

by Susan Wiggs

  “What is it?” Isadora asked.

  “Albion.” He grabbed the spyglass from her and peered through it. “Something’s wrong.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The fields are fallow. They haven’t been planted.”

  “That’s customary, isn’t it? Leaving sections unplanted to restore richness to the soil?”

  “Not for all the fields. Not for more than a season.”

  “What do you suppose the trouble is?”

  “I don’t know, but I reckon I’ll find out.”

  Twenty-Two

  They have stabbed themselves for freedom—jumped into the waves for freedom—fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot—and their tyrants have been their historians!

  —Lydia Maria Child,

  An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of

  Americans Called Africans (1833)

  “I’m bankrupt, little brother.” Hunter Calhoun’s words slurred together, melded by the combined effects of too much whiskey and too little sleep. Slow as cold treacle, he rose from his winged armchair and went to the sideboard to slosh more sour mash into his tumbler.

  Ryan sat in the parlor of Albion, trying to hide his shock. It had been years since he’d been back, but he remembered the place well enough to note the drastic changes. The marble mantelpiece, once gleaming, now bore yellowish stains and thick streaks of soot. The Irish crystal vases and lamp chimneys were black with neglect. The French pianoforte was gone; three dimples in the wood floor marked the spot where the valuable instrument used to stand. No servants or maids bustled about with their dusters and brooms. No delicious smells emanated from the kitchen. No singing came from the compound or the tobacco fields.

  “What the hell happened?” Ryan asked, studying Hunter.

  His elder brother had always been a mythic figure to Ryan. Blond and handsome, an athlete who excelled at every gentlemanly pursuit from fox hunting to ballroom dancing, he’d been the man his father had raised him to be. A true son of the South.

  Now Hunter’s complexion was ashen, his eyes hopeless. He rolled an unlit cigar between his thumb and forefinger. “You could say it’s a legacy from our dear, departed father.” With an unsteady hand, Hunter lit the cigar, puffed on it once, then let it dangle forgotten from his hand draped over the threadbare arm of his chair.

  “I don’t understand. He left you everything—”

  “And you felt so put upon because he cut you out of his will.” Hunter hurled the cigar into the cold hearth. “You should count your blessings, Ryan. ’Cause you don’t want what he left me with.” Hunter made a vague gesture in the direction of the estate offices across the hall. “About twenty years’ worth of unpaid debts.”

  Ryan’s blood chilled when Hunter told him the amount. It was difficult even to conceive of that much money. He had grown up taking it for granted—the luxury, the freedom from want. Now he understood that it was all an illusion, an illusion built on a broken man’s dreams.

  “Why didn’t you know about this?” he asked his half brother. “Why didn’t my mother know?”

  “He never spoke of his failure to me. Why should he? You were always off with Journey, and then you were up in Cambridge playing Yankee radical. As for your mother, she paid no attention.” Hunter’s voice held no contempt. “Father always did deal with problems that way—shoving them aside. Sending them away.” He picked up his chipped mug and took a drink of his whiskey. “Selling them down the river.”

  Remembrance flickered in Ryan’s mind. “That was years ago. Do you still think about what happened?”

  Hunter gave a sarcastic snort and encompassed the room with a sharp gesture. “Do you see anything better to think about?”

  Ryan shrugged awkwardly. “It seems so long ago.”

  “Didn’t mean to bark at you.” Hunter swirled his drink. “I guess you were pretty young when it all happened. How old were you? Thirteen? Fourteen?”

  “Yes. All I remember is that the slave girl’s name was Seraphim, and she was a laundress.” He pictured a slender girl in a tattered apron, an ebony curl tumbling down her brow as she bent over her steaming laundry cauldrons. “I recollect a lot of shouting from Father, too. Journey and I were hiding under the stairs when he found out and went looking for you.” Ryan glanced at the twisted staircase, hung with cobwebs. “Now that I’m older, I’m surprised he took on so about you having a love affair with a slave woman.”

  It was one of the things Ryan hated the most about slavery. “So why did Father get so mad?”

  A bitter laugh escaped Hunter. “I broke the rules, little brother. I fell in love with her. And that, of course, was unforgivable. It violated the principle that keeps the slave system in place. It acknowledges that a slave is human, that she could be beautiful in the eyes of a man, that she’s worthy of love.”

  Ryan stared at his brother in shock. That was it, then. Now, drunk and broke, Hunter was revealing the defining event of his life. His failed love dwelt at the heart of the darkness in his eyes.

  “I suppose you remember how Father ended it between us, too,” Hunter said.

  “I do. The son of a bitch sent her to auction.” The memories washed over him. He heard her pitiful screams as the slave traders carried her off to the dock and put her on a ship bound for the market in Savannah. He remembered the sound of a gunshot, and people running frantically, expecting to find Hunter with his head blown off.

  He’d shot his father’s prize garden statue, a monument of Jared Calhoun on a horse. Then, without saying a word, Hunter had saddled a horse and taken off for the University of Virginia.

  Some years later he’d married Lacey Beaumont, the daughter of their neighbors to the north. They had two children, Belinda and Theodore.

  “Where’s your wife, Hunter?” Ryan asked quietly.

  “At Bonterre. With the children.” Hunter stared at his big hands. “Damn it, Ryan. God damn it to hell. I miss my kids.”

  And so does Journey, said a voice in Ryan’s mind. He had been counting on the goodwill of the Beaumonts. But what sort of goodwill would they extend to a Calhoun who had failed their daughter? Now what the hell was he going to do?

  At that moment, the door creaked eerily. Ryan twisted around in his chair, but saw no one. “Ghosts, big brother?”

  Hunter got up and looked behind the door. “Blue,” he said, his voice harsh. His face went ashen as he said, “How long have you been here, son?”

  “Don’t know, Daddy,” came a small voice.

  “Lord, but I’ve missed you.” He scooped up the small boy and hugged him close. Hunter squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled deeply. “I’ve missed you so much, Blue.”

  Ryan hurried over to them, hoping to distract the lad from the conversation he’d overheard. Most of it probably went over the tyke’s head, but it would do the already troubled kid no good at all to hear that his father had once loved a slave girl.

  The boy squirmed out of Hunter’s arms and regarded Ryan with big eyes. He had the sort of cherublike features that would make middle-aged ladies want to pinch his cheeks and kiss him on his freckled nose, poor kid.

  “Hey there, Theodore,” Ryan said.

  “My name’s Blue.”

  “Hey there, Blue. I bet you don’t know who I am.”

  “Sure I do. You’re my damnyankee Uncle Ryan.”

  “So I’m a damn Yankee, am I?”

  “’S what Pappy Beaumont says.”

  That didn’t bode well, Ryan thought. “So how come your daddy calls you Blue?”

  “Everybody calls me Blue. On account of the rhyme.” He peeked shyly at Hunter. “When I was real real small, Daddy told me I’d always be his little boy Blue.”

  Hunter pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to gain control of himself. “Does your mama know you’re here?”

  Blue stabbed the toe of his boot at the floor. “I sneaked out. I hate it there, Papa. Mammy Georgia boxes my ears, and they make me ea
t oatmeal without any syrup and they give me mustard greens for supper.” He made a wretched face. “And I have to stay inside all day.”

  “How would you like to come outside?” Ryan said, glancing at Hunter. “I’ll show you my old lookout tower and you can climb up and take a look at my ship.”

  “Let’s go!” Blue sped out the door.

  Wading through knee-high grass, the three of them crossed the lawn and walked down to the landing. Tall salt grass choked the area around the creaky dock, but the old loblolly pine, once a haven for Ryan and Journey, still stood tall and straight as the mast of a clipper ship.

  Ryan boosted the boy into the tree. “Take hold of those rungs there and climb on up to that platform. Journey and I spent a whole summer putting it together.” He smiled, remembering the soft night air and the dreams he’d once had.

  “I see her!” Blue called out, scrambling to the split hickory platform.

  “That’s the Silver Swan. My very own command.” From this distance, he couldn’t see anything but the silhouette of the ship. He’d come ashore alone, leaving Journey nervous and pacing the decks, Isadora sending him dubious, unreadable looks and the men showing their impatience to return to Boston and collect their pay. Everyone on that ship depended on him. He felt the pressure like a constant headache. And Hunter’s problems didn’t make his task any easier.

  “How are things between you and the Beaumonts?” he asked his brother.

  Hunter gave a humorless bark of laughter. “This is the South, little brother. There’s no greater shame than being poor.”

  “So everyone’s gone? The servants, the workers, the overseer?”

  “Everything. All our people. You’ll be pleased to know I freed them rather than handing them over to the slave trader to pay off Father’s debts. Joshua lives here still, because he and his wife were so old. I gave him and Willa the overseer’s house. Nancy still lives where she always did. She went blind a few years ago. Willa looks after her.”

  “So what’s going to happen with you and Lacey? To Albion?”

  “With luck, it’ll burn to the ground.”

  Ryan kept his eye on Blue, high on the viewing platform. “I’m serious, Hunter. You have a family to think of. Joshua and Willa and Nancy are your family, too. Are you going to let them starve?”

  “Of course I won’t let them starve, damn it.” With more speed than Ryan would have expected him capable of, Hunter picked up a rock and threw it. Even after two glasses of whiskey, he had perfect aim, hitting a tree trunk with the rock at fifty feet. He’d always been a crack shot, much to the detriment of that marble statue. “I have a meeting with the officers of Dominion Bank in Richmond next month. If I’m lucky, they’ll advance me a loan to start up again.”

  “But you have no laborers.”

  Hunter laughed again. He’d always had a marvelous laugh, and it was marvelous still, though edged with desperation now. He held out his big, pale hands to the light and splayed his fingers. “Little brother, these hands have held the reins of the finest horseflesh in Virginia. They’ve cradled bottles of wine worth more than some men earn in a lifetime. They’ve been dealt hands of cards that won or lost a small fortune. And they’ve loved more women than I’ll ever admit to. The one thing they’ve never done is a day of hard, honest labor.” He turned them palms up, studied them as if they belonged to someone else. “Right now, they’re the only thing I can truly claim as mine. So I suppose I’d better get used to the idea of doing the work myself.”

  “There’s too much to do.”

  “Your confidence warms my heart, brother.”

  “I’m being realistic.”

  “Since when do you care, Ryan?”

  “You’re my brother. You’re family.” He shaded his eyes and motioned for Blue to climb down.

  “Then you lend me the money to make a new start,” Hunter said. “I was thinking Irish racehorses—”

  “I don’t have that kind of money.” I have another use for my money. Ryan let the idea slide away on a morass of regret. “After I settle…some things here and discharge my cargo in Boston, I’ll come home for a while, help you get back on your feet.”

  Hunter stared out at the bay, nodded absently. Blue dropped to the ground beside him and loyally took his hand.

  “I’d best be going,” Ryan said, his heart leaden with the knowledge of what lay ahead. “I have to return to my ship to fetch…something before I visit the Beaumonts.”

  Hunter stiffened. “Why would you want to visit the Beaumonts?”

  Ryan had a strange urge to unburden himself to Hunter. He and his brother had never been close, yet for some reason Ryan wanted to tell him. He couldn’t, though. He and Hunter lived in different worlds. “Lacey’s my sister-in-law. And I’ve never met my niece.”

  Hunter gave a bitter snort of laughter. “Give my love to my darling wife.”

  A sharp oath broke the quiet of the anchored ship. Isadora, who had been listening to Timothy Datty read from Two Years Before the Mast, looked up from her deck chair. On the aft deck, Ryan and Journey stood face-to-face.

  “Never heard Mr. Journey cuss like that,” Timothy observed. “Guess the skipper’s business ashore didn’t go well.”

  She remembered the expression on Ryan’s face when he’d seen the fallow fields of Albion. “I imagine you’re right.”

  Journey turned sharply away from Ryan and stalked to the rail, holding himself with stiff dignity as he faced the shore. At his sides, his fists clenched and unclenched. Ryan said something with a note of impatience in his voice that quickly crescendoed to anger; then he disappeared into his quarters.

  Timothy set the book aside. Isadora’s first impulse was to go to Journey, but she hesitated, making her way instead to the captain’s cabin. She rapped on the door.

  “It’s Isadora.”

  A pause. Then Ryan said, “You might as well come in.”

  When she saw what lay on the table before him, she gasped. “That’s the specie from the ship’s till.”

  “Astute of you to notice,” he said.

  She refused to flinch at his sarcasm. “I thought only Mr. Easterbrook could open the safe.”

  “Well, you thought wrong, sugar.”

  She walked forward and pressed her palms on the table. This was not the Ryan Calhoun she had come to know. This man was driven and angry, uncommunicative and vaguely threatening. But Isadora had changed, too. She wasn’t afraid of him.

  “Tell me what’s troubling you.”

  “My brother’s broke. The farm’s a ruin.”

  She sat down on the curved bench next to the table. “You can’t give him this money.”

  “Christ, what do you take me for?”

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Why don’t you explain yourself?”

  He helped himself to a cup of port wine from the silver-clad decanter on the table. When he offered some to Isadora, she shook her head. “Tell me.”

  “I need to buy three slaves,” he said, his voice barely audible. “It’s a promise I made a long time ago.”

  Shock sucked the air from her lungs. She felt her eyes widen and then, in a rush of understanding, she relaxed against the back of the tufted bench. “You mean Journey’s wife, don’t you? His wife and children.”

  He didn’t speak; he didn’t have to. She could read the truth on his face, and it made her want to leap up and launch herself at him, smothering him with kisses. All along she had thought him selfishly ambitious. At last she understood why.

  She didn’t go to him, of course. She couldn’t, not now.

  “So you see the dilemma, don’t you? I’m compelled to steal from my employer—and therefore from my own men—in order to keep a promise I made to Journey.”

  “Isn’t there any other way? Couldn’t you make a promissory note to—what was the man’s name?”

  “Beaumont. And the answer’s no. Calhoun credit isn’t much good in these parts lately.” Ryan’s chest expanded in a deep breat
h.

  “And if you don’t take the money?”

  “We leave here without Journey’s wife and kids. I won’t do that.”

  She felt a tug at the conviction in his voice. It was rare indeed to find a man who was that committed, that loyal. It was a new and thrilling thing to her. And she said, meaning every word, “I know a way to accomplish this.”

  He looked up and his eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “Hand me the bo’sun’s whistle.”

  Frowning, he took the silver whistle from around his neck. “I don’t see—”

  “Of course you don’t,” she said in exasperation. “Wait here.”

  She went out on deck, sounding the whistle. Ryan followed, propping his hip on a spirit barrel and regarding her with unconcealed skepticism. The crew gathered, clearly intrigued when they saw who had summoned them. Men, she thought. Sometimes they had bilge for brains.

  She surveyed the circle of faces—harsh and bewhiskered, scoured by sun and wind, and realized with a lurch of her heart that in one voyage she had come to know these men better than she knew the members of her own family. Journey hung back, toying anxiously with the pendant around his neck. He had been solemn and thoughtful the past few days, and he was off his rations. Now she knew why. Terror and hope were consuming him.

  “I think,” she said, “you probably all know our purpose in making port here.”

  “We’re to fetch Journey’s wife and babies,” Timothy said steadily, “so they can be together as God and nature intended.”

  She wanted to hug him for his simple, straightforward wisdom. If people in the South held the lad’s view, the abomination of slavery would not exist.

  “’Tis only right we tolerate the delay,” Gerald stated with a firm nod in Journey’s direction.

  “We are all agreed, then?” she asked.

  Click rubbed his jaw speculatively. “Depends on what we’re agreed to.”