As the weather warmed, we often sat outside. Sometimes the others joined us; sometimes we were alone. It was then that I shared my history and he shared his: how as a boy in Gambia he’d been captured by warriors from another tribe, sold to slave traders, and brought to New York. There he’d been bought first by a stable owner, where he’d learned to work with horses, and then by Captain Vervelde. He’d known pain and loss, as had I, but the greater bond between us rose not from the common experience of suffering, but because we’d both survived it.
* * *
Once winter became spring and then summer, Hetty spent most days and nights at the other house with Mrs. DeVisme, leaving Chloe and me together to keep Mistress’s house, launder and press the clothes, tend the kitchen gardens and fowl, and prepare and serve the meals for the family and refreshments for evening entertainments.
My day was ordered by the desires of others. I had no choice in what I did, who I saw, what I wore or ate, or where I went. I cooked and served food that I was permitted to taste, but forbidden to eat. I had neither friends of my own age, nor any family. I was paid no wages, and owned nothing, but was instead the property of another.
Mistress did not understand this. Like every other white person in my life, she truly believed that I had been improved by her ownership. Because my skin was a different color than hers and I’d been born in another country, in her eyes I would forever be childish and incapable of acting upon my own.
It was always the same among the English and the French, even for a woman as learned as Mistress. She wasn’t silly or selfish, as Madame had been. Instead, she read many books and wrote many letters, as if she were a gentleman instead of a lady. In company, she didn’t simper or demur like other ladies, but spoke her thoughts aloud, which made the gentlemen admire her all the more.
She hadn’t before kept a lady’s maid, but once she learned I’d helped attend Madame she’d begun to summon me to dress and powder her hair for special evenings. With little personal vanity, she was considered handsome rather than a beauty, and as I brushed and pinned her hair, she sat as docile as could be, without any suggestions or judgments. Most often she read from a book in her hand rather than gazing at her own reflection in the dressing-table looking glass, the way Madame had done.
“You are quite skilled at hairdressing, Mary,” she said as she sat before me one evening. “I marvel that your last lady would have parted with you.”
“She died, Mistress,” I said, carefully rolling a thick curl with my fingers to pin against her temple. She’d never spoken to me like this, as a friend might. It made me uneasy, and from instinct I fell back on the simplest of answers.
“I am sorry,” Mistress said gently, consoling me as if I’d felt any genuine loss or sorrow for Madame. “That must have been terrible for you.”
“Yes, Mistress.” What had been terrible had been my life at Belle Vallée. Given how Madame’s dislike of me had grown on the voyage from Pondicherry, I doubted she would have done much to protect me had she lived.
“I am so grateful that the Major was able to rescue you, and bring you here to us where you’re safe,” she said. “Especially after being sold from your parents as an infant.”
“I was eight years old when my uncle sold me, Mistress.” I don’t know why I told her that. I still don’t. Perhaps, in that moment, I spoke that truth for my mother, who could not. “My mother died when I was born.”
“Oh, poor little Mary!” she exclaimed, twisting around on the bench to face me. “What of your father? Did he not look after you?”
“My father was an English soldier, Mistress.” My voice hardened and grew flat, the way it always did when I spoke of the faceless man who’d sired me. “He did not know of my birth.”
“Ahh.” Mistress’s dark eyes softened with sympathy I did not want. “That explains so much.”
I flushed, and turned away to take more hairpins from the dish. I could guess that what was explained to her was the color of my skin and eyes.
“There are few things in this world more irresistible than a handsome man in a red coat,” she continued softly. “It’s only later, when the heart is less blind, that the true measure of the man appears behind the gold lace.”
I listened, mute, as she’d twisted the nightmare of my mother’s rape into a romantic tale of broken hearts and handsome officers.
Later, on Sunday, I told Lucas what she’d said.
“I was wrong to speak of my mother to her,” I lamented as we walked together in the shade beside one of the ponds. “I should never have told her. I don’t know why I did.”
“You weren’t wrong, Mary,” he said. “There’s no harm done.”
I shook my head, unconvinced. “But for Mistress to think my mother would have loved the man who—”
“She didn’t know,” he said. “I doubt she would have said that if she had. She is not a bad woman, like your first mistress. She showed you kindness, and you warmed in it. There is no harm, no sin, to that.”
I sighed, kicking restlessly at the tall grass beside the path. Even though I had no memory of my mother, I’d always defended her. It was all I had, and all I could do.
“Think instead of what she told you,” Lucas continued. “She as much as confessed that she’s unhappily wed.”
I glanced up at him quickly. “Why would she tell me that?”
“Who else can she tell?” he reasoned. “She told you, because you cannot judge her.”
I frowned, thinking. I accepted most of what Lucas said, but I wasn’t certain of this.
“But how do you know that Mistress is unhappy?”
“Women and love are not difficult to understand,” he continued. “When you are older, you will understand these matters for yourself.”
I didn’t like it when he reminded me of how young I was, and stopped walking. “You’re not married, Lucas.”
He stopped, too, looking away from me and up at the trees. Sunlight through the leaves dappled his face, and masked his true emotions.
“No, I am not,” he said evenly. “I won’t marry until I can support my wife and children by my own labors. That is what a man does.”
“Major Prevost has done that for Mistress and their boys,” I said. “Besides, she still writes letters to him. Long letters, too.”
He began to walk again. “Do you ever see those letters?”
“I?” I hurried to rejoin him. “No. I know when she writes to him because she takes care to guard her words against anyone else reading them.”
“As she should,” he said. “But the time is coming when being a British officer’s wife will not be a good thing for her.”
It wouldn’t be good for me, either. If the Major’s enemies came to attack his wife here, they likely wouldn’t pause to ask my name or beliefs. I’d only be considered another of her belongings, more plunder of war. I didn’t want to think of what would become of me then, and my trepidation must have shown on my face.
“If you ever see or overhear anything that hints that she—or you—might be in danger,” Lucas said slowly, carefully, “send word to me at Mount Joy, and I will tell Captain Vervelde. He has always considered Mrs. Prevost a friend, and will do what he can.”
I nodded, every bit as solemn as he. So long as I kept to the fields instead of the roads where I might be seen, I could find my way to Captain Vervelde’s house if I had to.
I hoped I never did. It was no secret that the Captain’s loyalties lay with those opposed to the king, and while he was still invited to the Hermitage, I’d noted that those invitations only came on nights when there were no British officers in attendance. Mistress was already keeping the two sides separate from each other, and though there was still plenty of laughter and music in the parlor, there was often a tension to the conversations that had not been there before.
Lucas had never revealed how deeply the Captain was involved with groups like the Sons of Liberty, or exactly what manner of business took him again and again t
o New York. This promise of protection, however, hinted at more connections and power than I’d ever have guessed, and also of more danger, too.
* * *
On a cold, clear day in January, Chloe and I were together piping white sugared icing over the sides of the Great Cake for Mistress’s Twelfth Night supper. The cake truly was aptly named, dark and heavy with rum-soaked fruit beneath the icing, and larger than any other I’d ever baked. Chloe had already made the twelve little sugar swans that had been set aside to harden before they were placed in a circle around the top of the cake.
Although it was afternoon, Mistress herself was lying abed with one of the fierce headaches that had begun to plague her, and trusting that an hour’s time with the shutters drawn and a cool cloth across her eyes would make it depart before it was time for her to dress. The boys had been sent to their grandmother across the field, and the house was quiet and still, as if it, too, were resting before the night.
Working in the back kitchen as we were, neither Chloe nor I heard the rider pull up outside the front porch, his horse’s hooves muffled by the packed snow, but we both jumped when the man thumped his fist loudly on the door.
“Bah, what a racket!” exclaimed Chloe. “Go to the door, Mary, and tell him that Mistress won’t receive company for another two hours.”
I wiped my hands on my apron and hurried through the house, glancing quickly into the parlor to make sure the fire there was still respectable. Chloe could bluster all she wanted about turning away whichever gentleman had arrived early, but I knew Mistress would want him welcomed regardless, and settled into the parlor with either tea or punch.
I unlatched the heavy door, leaning my weight into the lock to open it against the ice that often made it stick. But instead of the gentleman I expected, there was a young British soldier on the porch, his cheeks red from the cold and his cocked hat tied in place with a checkered scarf, with a letter for Mistress. As I closed the door, I turned the letter over in my hand. I recognized the signet pressed into the red wax seal, the insignia of Colonel Faulkner, the commander of the British troops in the area.
“Mary, who was that?” Mistress asked, her voice faint from the top of the stairs. She wore her silk dressing gown over her shift, the color as bright as a flame in the winter shadows.
“A British soldier, Mistress,” I said, climbing the stairs to her with the letter outstretched. But instead of accepting the letter, she returned to her bedchamber, clearly expecting me to follow. She climbed back into the bed without taking off her dressing gown, and with a deep sigh drew the coverlet high over her chest and squeezed her eyes shut. By the light of the fire, her face was pale and pinched, with the pain of her headache twisting her brows together.
“Faulkner and his infernal letters,” she muttered. “Few things are as tedious as a self-important colonel with more ink and paper than sense.”
I dipped the cloth in the bowl of lavender water on the table beside her bed, and wrung it out. Gently I placed it across her eyes, and then began to make tiny circles over her forehead with my fingertips, the way I’d learned to do long ago for Madame.
“You are a godsend, Mary,” Mistress said, sighing with relief. “That is better, much better. Perhaps I shall return to dwell among the living after all.”
Her breathing grew more measured, and I thought she’d fallen back asleep when abruptly she spoke again.
“Mary, that letter,” she said, still masked by the damp cloth. “I’m certain it will be of no importance whatsoever, but I suppose I should know its contents before tonight. Are you able to read it aloud to me?”
“Yes, mistress.” I carefully slipped my finger beneath the seal, unfolded the sheet, and went to crouch beside the fire to read aloud by its light.
Madame Prevost,
I trust you are well and in good health despite the cold weather. I have had fresh reports this day from Boston that will interest you and other citizens loyal to His Majesty. The city remains in a state of war-like confusion, with the lawless mob having destroyed significant property. Governor Hutchinson has requested Parliament to send a military force to the city at once to restore peace. Sorrowful tidings indeed, but it is hoped that this act will soon quell the unrest for the good of us all.
I remain, madame, your—
“My obedient servant, on and on and on,” Mistress finished for me, and sighed again. “The fellow can scarcely contain his glee, can he? All these foolish men long for a war, as if death and mayhem have ever solved anything. No matter. I shall write and praise him tomorrow as if he were Mars himself, clad in the shining armor of victory that still won’t hide his belly.”
“Yes, Mistress,” I said, refolding the letter, and resolving to share this news with Lucas as soon as I could.
“You read that letter very well, Mary,” Mistress said absently. “I didn’t realize old Mr. Satterthwaite was such an uncommon tutor.”
“Yes, Mistress, he was.” There was no purpose—and perhaps some harm—in revealing that old Mr. Satterthwaite had taught me only the barest of letters, and that it was instead Lucas Emmons who had made a reader of me. “Will that be all, Mistress, or shall you dress now?”
“Return to me in another quarter-hour and I shall dress then,” she said, drowsy.
I was already closing the door after her when she called back to me.
“And Mary,” she said in the same drowsy voice. “Pray recall that what you read in Colonel Faulkner’s letter is not to be repeated or discussed with anyone. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mistress,” I said, already understanding far more than she’d ever know. “I do.”
* * *
Mistress needn’t have pledged me to secrecy. By the time Lucas came the following week, Colonel Faulkner’s “fresh reports” were so widely known as to have been printed in the broadside that Lucas brought in his pocket.
“You see how in Boston the people are taking matters into their own hands,” he said, scarcely able to contain his excitement as he pointed to the broadside from the Boston Gazette. “Instead of being forced to pay the king’s tax on tea, our men disguised themselves as savages, intercepted the ship carrying the tea, and tossed it all into the harbor. Not a single man, patriot or Tory, was injured, and all was done as civilly as could be. Read it for yourself, and may His Majesty do the same.”
Caesar and I crowded together to read the broadsheet, while Chloe sniffed and ignored it, and Lucas, too.
“Three hundred and forty-two chests of tea tossed into the sea!” marveled Caesar. “That’s a poke in the eye to the old East India Company, isn’t it?”
“‘The people are almost universally congratulating each other on this happy event,’” I read aloud. “Do you believe that, Lucas? That this—this destruction was celebrated? So many crates of tea must have made for a considerable loss.”
“A loss that the East India Company is bound to miss from its pocket,” Lucas said blithely. “It’s all the fine work of the Sons of Liberty, true patriots all, and I only wish we’d acted first in New York. But we will. We will.”
“Colonel Faulkner wrote to Mistress that British troops were already on their way to Boston,” I said uneasily. “What if they come next to New York, or New Jersey?”
“If they do, then they’ll find they’ll have more than they reckoned for,” Lucas said. “If they want a fight, then we shall give them one. It’s for the sake of freedom, Mary, freedom for us all.”
His eyes were bright with fervor for his cause, his jaw set and determined. I desired my freedom as much as anyone, but not this way. Not like this.
I had been only a small child when the British army had fought the French over Pondicherry. None of us who’d been born there had cared which army of foreign soldiers claimed victory. But I remembered all too well the desolation that their fighting had caused, with once-fine buildings destroyed and torn and bloated corpses rotting in the sun and devoured by the hyenas that had come out of the brush. I remembered the fa
mine that had followed after fields of crops had been burned, and new widows wailing in the smoldering ruins of their homes.
And I remembered, too, what Mistress had said after I’d read her the Colonel’s letter: that all these foolish men longed for a war, as if death and mayhem have ever solved anything.
War had solved nothing in Pondicherry, and it wouldn’t here in the colonies, either, and as I listened to the excitement in the voices of Lucas and Caesar I could only fear where this all would lead.
* * *
I could always tell when Lucas had come from New York. In place of his livery, he’d be dressed like a common sailor or dockworker, in patched loose trousers, a shapeless jacket, and an old kerchief. To my eyes, it was not a good disguise: Lucas was too tall, his gait too distinctive, for clothing alone to change his appearance. He claimed it didn’t matter, that to the watch he was only one more Negro. Nor did they know or care that he was a free man. If stopped, he need only say that he was on his master’s business and he was permitted to pass.
When we walked together outside the house, out of the hearing of anyone else, he told me more, of how he and others like him took delight in intimidating New York Tories, shouting foul names, throwing stones at their carriages, and breaking the windows of their shops. To him, they were the enemy; they deserved no better. He explained to me how the Sons of Liberty were creating secret stockpiles of gunpowder and arms around the city in readiness.
“In readiness for what?” I asked uneasily.
“For the time when we must take action to set ourselves free,” he said, the words sounding glib and practiced.
“For war,” I said softly.
“If necessary,” he said. “Mary, consider what we can achieve. Imagine a country where we rule ourselves, without the interference of a king or parliament. Imagine a land where everyone is free, a land without slavery of any kind.”
I nodded, wishing I could believe these sweet and heady dreams as completely as he did.
“But at what cost, Lucas?” I said. “You’ve seen how Parliament has treated Boston. You’ve told me yourself of all the acts and laws they’ve passed to try to stop us. What will you do if they send warships to New York?”
The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr Page 11
