The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr

by Susan Holloway Scott

  I was the one left with the scars.

  * * *

  Two days later, the Major, his manservant Allen, and I boarded a small merchant vessel bound for the British colonies to the north, and a port city called New York.

  After the voyage that I had endured from Pondicherry, this one seemed easy indeed. The Major had begun to address me in English, the most commonly spoken language of the colonies, so that I might learn it. Being young, I was an apt pupil, and soon could understand both his orders, and the conversations of others around me.

  I learned one word in particular on this voyage. I had grown accustomed to being called a Negress, since the white French saw only the darker color of my skin, and no other difference between me and a woman who had been born in Ghana or Benin. The English sailors, however, called me a mulatto. It was not a compliment, but a judgment upon my mixed blood, and one I’d heard all too often. In Pondicherry I had been despised by my uncle and others for being too white, yet these Englishmen considered me too black, an inferior creature fit only for enslavement and low labor.

  Little wonder, then, that I felt no eagerness to arrive in yet another country that was new to me. As we sailed into port, I could see that New York was unlike any place I had been. At the very tip of the city there was a large, spreading fortress for defense, but behind that lay a scattering of peaked-roof houses painted various colors, as well as warehouses and other buildings made of reddish-pink brick. Most notable were the pointed towers, or spires, that rose up along the sky from the numerous churches. The harbor was filled with vessels with flags from various countries, and among them were English warships.

  Even as we docked beside a long wharf, the air of the city was a confusion of new scents to me: of fires from chimneys, of cooking food I didn’t recognize, of the horses and oxen that drew the many carts and carriages, of low tide and tar. Fearful of becoming lost, I stayed close beside Major Prevost once we’d disembarked. The streets weren’t dirt or mud, but paved with rounded stones that made walking perilous beneath my bare feet, and it was difficult for me to keep pace with him. The shops and houses on either side of us were small but neat, of brick or stone or painted boards. Instead of being left open to the weather, the windows in these houses here were covered by sheets of divided glass that shone in the sunlight.

  The streets were crowded with people, and these New Yorkers seemed to rush about in a great hurry, as if they’d important business that must be addressed immediately. Although I kept near to Major Prevost, several times I was forced to dart from the path of a carriage that was going too fast and from men who were so engaged in their conversations that they’d nearly walked over me. They all spoke quickly, too, their speech so loud and fast that it sounded like clattering nonsense to me.

  That same day, Major Prevost took me to a shop that sold used clothing, and had me dressed like an English bondservant: a linen shift that stank of its last owner, a rough gray jacket of linsey woolsey that laced up the front, a coarse osnaburg petticoat, shoes, woolen stockings, a plain cap, and a faded printed kerchief. The shopkeeper’s assistant laced me into the stays, the first I’d ever worn. She told me I must be grateful to the Major for buying me these clothes and for making me decent. I did not agree. Before this my body had always been lithe and free, but now I was encased in rigid boning and stiff linen that constricted my every movement and chaffed my sides. The heavy shoes made me clumsy and awkward, and dragged at my feet with each step. Even my long braid had been twisted and pinned so tightly into a knot beneath the cap that my head ached.

  Nor was Major Prevost entirely done with my transformation. He didn’t tell me then, but waited until the following evening, after we had left New York by way of Cortlandt Street. We’d taken the Paulus Hook ferry and crossed the North River to New Jersey, and driven in a stage across what seemed to me to be endless farms and fields and hills, and then in a hired chaise.

  “There,” he said at last, proudly pointing toward a small cluster of roofs and brick chimneys over the treetops. “That’s the Hermitage. That’s my home.”

  Dutifully I looked, while he cleared his throat in that momentous way that all men do before they say things they wished they didn’t have to.

  “I do not know how much, if any, of what Beauharnais said of your past was true,” he said. “I’m willing to forget those tales if you serve me and my wife well, and with loyalty. Nor will I mention any of it to my wife. This shall be a fresh beginning for you, if you are wise enough to see it as such.”

  I wasn’t surprised that he’d keep my past from his wife. I was most likely thirteen now, a grown woman. What mistress would wish a new slave to arrive into her house with a reputation for wantonness and violence, however ill founded?

  “Yes, sir,” I said: the only two words that masters wanted to hear.

  “Good,” he said. “Good. There is one other thing. Since my wife and her family are English, as are these colonies, it would be best if you were called by a sensible English name rather than a French one. Mary. That’s easy enough, isn’t it, Mary?”

  Veeya, my true name, would have been easy, too.

  “Yes, sir,” I said softly.

  And Mary I became.

  Mary

  CHAPTER 5

  The Hermitage

  Hopperstown, Province of New Jersey

  1773

  Dusk had fallen by the time we drew up before the house, and lanterns had been lit in anticipation of our arrival. Even in this half-light, the house was unlike any I’d yet known: wide and squat and built of a reddish stone, with a long, sloping roof that extended over a deep porch running the width of the house’s front.

  On this porch to greet us stood Major Prevost’s wife. With her were two young boys darting back and forth between two other ladies, as well as servants busy at their tasks, but she alone stood still and unmoving amidst all this swirling confusion. She was simply but elegantly dressed in a dark blue gown with a red shawl over her shoulders against the evening’s chill, and she stood beside one of the lanterns so that her face was dramatically half in light and half in shadow.

  The Major unceremoniously clambered down from the chaise before the horses had even stopped, the scabbard of his sword slapping awkwardly against his thigh as he went striding toward the porch. The boys bounded toward him, hanging on his legs and arms, and he warmly embraced each one in turn, calling them silly names of endearment to make them laugh.

  Finally the Major went to his wife. Smiling, she held one hand out to him to kiss. He did so with great ardor, and then drew her slowly forward and into his arms, where at last she let him hold her close and kiss her as a husband should.

  While all of this was transpiring, a groom had come to hold the horses and the Major’s manservant had begun to take his trunk and other belongings into the house. With no responsibilities of my own, I climbed down and stood unnoticed and uncertain beside the chaise.

  It was over the Major’s shoulder that Mrs. Prevost’s gaze first met mine, the surprise in her expression unmistakable. She eased back away from her husband, deftly turning them both to face me while keeping his arm around her waist.

  “Tell me, James,” she said. “Who is this?”

  “This is Mary,” he said, a bit too heartily. “I found her in Saint-Domingue for you. I remembered how you’d told me Chloe could use more help about the house and kitchen.”

  I was acutely aware of every eye on that porch studying me. From respect I bowed low from the waist to Mrs. Prevost, as I always had to Madame.

  Someone laughed, a small laugh quickly smothered.

  “You brought her all the way from Saint-Domingue?” Mrs. Prevost asked wryly.

  “She came much farther than that,” Major Prevost said. “She’s from Calcutta, in the East Indies.”

  “Cal-cut-ta?” repeated Mrs. Prevost, placing an additional incredulous accent in the middle of the word. “Truly, Marcus. Wouldn’t it have been much easier to purchase a Negress in New York, and p
erhaps obtain a larger one at that?”

  “I believe Mary will prove her worth,” the Major said firmly. “Chloe? Chloe, here. Take Mary with you to the kitchen, and show her about.”

  An older servingwoman in an apron appeared from one side of the porch, and beckoned to me to follow her to the back. There the kitchen door was open, and lingering aromas from the evening meal drifted from it into the yard.

  I followed Chloe inside, and blinked to hurry my eyes to accustom to the half-light in the kitchen. Another woman was scrubbing the plates and pans from dinner in a large tub near the fire, and a man in a worn blue coat sat on a low stool mending the woven bottom of an overturned wooden chair.

  All three paused to look up at me. Not to smile in welcome, but to look, and make their first judgment of me. I could hardly fault them for it, for I was doing the same. In my time at Belle Vallée, I’d come to think of the kitchen as a grim battlefield, a place where I could learn, but where I must always be on my guard. Already this kitchen seemed different, but I wasn’t about to let down that protective guard.

  “That’s Hetty with the red kerchief,” my guide announced, her hands settling at her waist over her apron strings, “and that’s Caesar. I’m Chloe, Mrs. Prevost’s cook.”

  Her face was as round as the full moon in the sky, and when she sighed her full cheeks puffed and her lips blew out that sigh with weary resignation.

  “And you. You are Mary,” she said. “What are you good for, a little thing like you?”

  I raised my chin, determined not to be cowed even as I took care with my English words. “I will do what I be told.”

  She heard that foreignness, and her expression softened. “You’re new arrived, then?”

  I flushed. “Forgive me if I say wrong.”

  “You said it just right.” She patted my arm. “I’ll show you where you’re to sleep. Hetty, go see if the Major’ll be wanting anything to eat.”

  With a rush lamp in her hand, she led me up a back staircase with precarious wedge-shaped steps to the attic tucked beneath the house’s slanting roof. Stuffed pallets were arranged on the floor along the walls, with a pitcher, a washbowl, and a chamber pot in one corner. Several small boxes and worn baskets held additional clothes and belongings. The only light came from the rush lamp, and from a narrow window at one end of the eaves.

  “These are our quarters,” Chloe said. “Those pallets, there, those are extras from when Mrs. Prevost has guests who bring their own people. Take whichever one you want and make it yours.”

  I nodded. I’d never lived in a place with a separate, private space set aside for servants to sleep.

  “At planting and harvest, there’ll be hired men sleeping over the stable,” Chloe continued, speaking so quickly that I’d trouble following her. “Hetty stays here, too, when Mrs. DeVisme at the Hermitage doesn’t have as much need of her as does Mistress. Mistress will call this house the Little Hermitage, on account of it being newer, though most people call both houses the same. So there’s just the four of us here. Five, counting you.”

  Thoroughly confused, I nodded anyway. “I can help you now,” I said turning back toward the stairs. “I can wash.”

  “You rest yourself here tonight while you can, Mary,” Chloe said. “Tomorrow you’ll be set to work about the house. This’ll likely be the last night ever that Mrs. Prevost will let you be idle.”

  “Mrs. Prevost,” I said carefully. “What kind of mistress is she?”

  “Mrs. Prevost?” Chloe sighed again, and lowered her voice, even though we were alone. “She’d say herself that she’s the best of mistresses. They all say that, don’t they? But if Mrs. Prevost weren’t hearing me, I’d say she’s not the worst, and no more than that. You sleep now, Mary. We’ll all be up soon enough.”

  She left me, the light of her little lamp flickering after her on the stairs. I was tired, and after the voyage and the traveling I was eager for a night’s rest anywhere that didn’t move beneath me. I was also glad to shed my clothes for the night. I’d welts beneath my arms from where the stays had rubbed my unfamiliar flesh, and blisters on my toes from the shoes, but once I wore nothing more than my shift, I realized that my thoughts were still too agitated for sleep.

  I pushed the little window open to gaze up at the quarter moon, and the stars around it. I always marveled that no matter where I’d been taken, from Pondicherry to the limitless oceans to the West Indies and now here, the night sky never changed. Nothing else in my life was so constant as that silvery moon, and the mere sight of it calmed me.

  But as I sat curled beside the window, I heard voices from below. At first I thought it was Chloe and the others cleaning the kitchen for the night, but then I realized the window was at the other end of the house. The voices I was hearing belonged to Major and Mrs. Prevost, and I was directly over their bedchamber.

  “I thought you’d be pleased with my little gift, Theo,” the Major was saying. “You’ve been writing to me that you wanted another woman to help Chloe, and now you have her.”

  “But that’s exactly it, James,” his wife answered. “I said I required another woman, not this little waif.”

  “Because she is young, you can train her as you please,” he said. “She’ll have no unfortunate habits for you to undo. Besides, if you had seen the situation in which the poor creature was forced to live, flogged like a common seaman for every imagined slight, when—”

  “I am not without a heart, James,” she said more gently. “You know that of me. Mary’s lot as you describe it must indeed have been unspeakably cruel. But she’s a young woman, not a stray puppy. We cannot give her a home simply because she has none of her own.”

  “I’d never call you heartless, my love, not you,” he said, and the way he said it, followed by a long silence, made me suspect he’d chosen to reinforce his argument by kissing or otherwise dawdling with her.

  I curled my arms tightly around my knees as I sat on the floor beside the window, wishing the conversation had concluded in a way that was more satisfying to me. How could she want to be rid of me before I’d done anything, good or bad, in her house?

  “Consider it a trial,” he said finally. “See how Mary does among the others for the next fortnight. If she cannot be of use to you, then I’ll take her back with me to New York, and have some trader put her back on the block. Does that seem agreeable?”

  I hugged my knees more tightly. It didn’t seem agreeable at all, being bought and sold and traded like one more bag of sugar or flour if I failed to please after two weeks.

  “So long as you will abide by my decision, my dear husband,” Mrs. Prevost said. “I vow that you are the most tender of gentlemen, for all that you’re a brave, blustery soldier in His Majesty’s service. And I could not love you more for it.”

  That was the end to their conversation. I suspect that they retreated to their bed, and took comfort in each other as husband and wife who’d been long parted.

  As Chloe and the others came upstairs, I lay on my side against the wall and feigned sleep, not wishing to speak further. Soon they, too, were asleep around me, snuffling and sighing and snoring, and yet still I was too unsettled to join them.

  I finally rose and dressed while the moon was still in the sky, and crept downstairs to the kitchen with my shoes in my hand. I was determined to try my best so that Mrs. Prevost would not send me away to be sold. I raked the coals and brought the banked fire back to life with fresh wood. The well wasn’t far from the back door, and I drew a bucket so I could fill the heavy kettle over the fire to heat for tea, and whatever else Chloe would require for the family’s breakfast.

  Next I took the broom from behind the door and swept the back steps clean, and began to do the same with the broad porch across the front of the house. By then the sun had become a warm glow upon the horizon, and I could see all that I’d missed last night when we’d arrived. The house sat on a slight rise, and on the other side of the drive was a green lawn that sloped down to a shinin
g millpond, as smooth as a mirror. Beyond that lay fields nodding with grain that was close to harvest.

  Everything was lush and still, with only the first birds chattering in the trees overhead and a soft mist hanging low over the grass. I’d never in my short, crowded, noisy life experienced anything as serene, or as peaceful. As I stood there with the broom in my hand, I tried to imagine what it was to be Mrs. Prevost. Each morning I’d awake to this comfort, this beauty, this peace. I’d be secure in the knowledge that all I saw belonged to my husband, and that our children would never want because of it.

  I was so lost in reflection that I failed to realize that I was no longer alone.

  “A beautiful morning, Mary, is it not?” said Mrs. Prevost beside me. “This is my favorite time of the day, when the dew is still upon the grass and the children are still abed.”

  “Good day, mistress,” I said, bowing awkwardly with the broom in my hand. To have her find me standing idle and dreaming was not the best beginning.

  “It is a good day,” she said, looking past me toward the pond and trees. “Indeed, a thoroughly splendid day.”

  She smiled at the morning, not at me, and stretched her arms before her as if to embrace it. She was wearing a loose dressing gown of flower-patterned silk that floated around her slender form, her feet bare in flat red mules and her dark hair still plaited for the night. Standing beside her, I was surprised by how she wasn’t much taller than I was myself; she’d seemed far more imposing last night.