I’d reason to be sitting here, of course. I wouldn’t be permitted to squander the light of a candle without one. Mistress trusted me to be the one in her household who wouldn’t talk or carry tales about the visitor who came and went by the kitchen door in this darkness. She could have waited here for him near the kitchen door herself, but even at this hour a lady wanted a servant to open the door to her guests.
She had not spoken again of Lucas to me, nor had Mr. Hering returned. On the day I’d been brought to this house, Master had promised me I’d never be punished by force while I was his property. That promise had held until Mr. Hering had struck me. I was sure that if Master had been at home, Mr. Hering wouldn’t have dared touch me. But I also knew that Mistress couldn’t afford to make an enemy of any gentleman in the Hackensack Valley, especially one whose property adjoined hers. That was the price of my grief and my battered cheek.
In this kitchen and the attic, Chloe and Caesar and I spoke often of Lucas, and they mourned him with me. To Mistress, however, that day and the awful news that had come with it had been forcibly forgotten. She didn’t care for the sorrow I’d always now carry within me, or the heartache that would never ease. Lucas had been only one more Negro to her, and so, most likely, was I, for all that she claimed to trust me.
From the front of the house I heard the case clock in the parlor chime the hour eleven times. Mistress’s visitor was late tonight. The night was clear enough with a new moon, but he’d still have to cross the river with his horse and ride alone across open fields where every shadow could be a deserter, a spy, a thief.
I’m sure upstairs Mistress was trying to distract herself by reading, but I could also picture her having tossed her book aside to pace back and forth across the floor beside her bed, her silk slippers slapping gently against her heels and her dressing gown billowing about her. She was always restless, but tonight she’d be worrying that the visitor had taken one risk too many and been captured by the enemy, and that he could be carrying papers or letters that could incriminate her. She’d be fretting that he’d changed his mind, that he wouldn’t return.
Either way, they weren’t my worries. I’d enough of my own. Instead, I watched the wool twisting up and away from the twirling spindle, the never-ending miracle of a clump of sheep’s fleece transformed. The rhythm of it gave peace to my thoughts, and reminded me of being a child in Pondicherry, learning how to spin damp cotton fine enough to please Ammatti.
I pulled my shawl a little higher over my shoulders, and yawned. I couldn’t go to sleep until Mistress’s visitor arrived, and then left. Yet my fingers were slowing and my eyes were heavy, and against my best intentions, my head kept nodding forward.
The knock on the door woke me with a start, and I went to the window. He’d already dismounted, and was looping his horse’s reins to one of the porch’s supports. I unlocked the door and opened it to him.
“Colonel Burr, sir,” I said, my voice still thick with sleep. “Good evening, sir.”
“Mary Emmons,” he said as he entered. He always called me that, the only white person who did, and I appreciated it beyond measure. “I’m sorry to have wakened you.”
He must have seen me through the window, nodding over my spinning. I dipped my head, chagrined at having been caught sleeping.
“Forgive me for keeping you waiting, sir,” I said. “I didn’t intend to fall asleep.”
“Why not, when this is the hour when most of the world is doing exactly that?” He glanced up at the door as if he could see past it and up the stairs as he unhooked his cloak. His movements were brisk and efficient, the way they always were. “How does our Sister P. this evening?”
That was his playful name for Mistress, as if they were both part of the same family.
“Well enough, sir,” I said, folding his cloak over my arm. The light from the coals glanced off the row of polished buttons on his coat and on his silver spurs. Although this was a private call, he still wore his buff-and-blue uniform in case he was captured, so he’d be treated as an officer. By the complicated rules of war, if he’d been caught crossing enemy lines while wearing civilian dress he could have been charged as a spy, and hanged.
“Mistress had a wicked bout of the old affliction yesterday, sir,” I continued, “but the new physic from the doctor brought her relief.”
He frowned with concern. Perhaps more telling of their growing intimacy than any nickname was that she’d shared the litany of her ailments and disorders. Mistress’s “old affliction” was a mysterious pain that would on occasion grip her belly and confine her to her bed for the day. Because the doctors had discovered no cause, and since it passed as swiftly as it appeared, she endured it as best she could.
“She did not write of that to me,” he said, again glancing toward the stairs. “Perhaps I shouldn’t disturb her, but let her rest.”
“She desires to see you, sir,” I said quickly. “She would be very unhappy if she didn’t.”
He relaxed, and smiled again. Although he looked younger—or rather, his true age of twenty-two—when he smiled, there were circles of weariness beneath his eyes that weren’t entirely from riding late at night. I’d heard Mistress say that the fevers and weakness that had resulted from old battles plagued him still, and I could see the suffering in his face, despite the smile.
“It’s always an agreeable thing to have one’s company desired,” he said, turning my words into a kind of teasing jest. “What man—or woman—does not wish to be desired?”
The playfulness of it combined with his smile was close to flirtation, close enough to make me uneasy. With purpose I crossed the room to hang his cloak and hat on one of the pegs near the door, and to put some distance between us. He hadn’t touched me since that night last summer, but that might have been because I gave him as little opportunity as I could.
It didn’t matter that he was here to see Mistress. I knew how gentlemen could be. They could pledge the most fervent and eternal devotion to the white ladies who’d captured their hearts, yet still think nothing of hunting after any bondwoman who caught their notice. Because of the color of our skin and our circumstance, we didn’t count as an infidelity to them. We were simply theirs to take as they pleased.
When I turned back toward him, he was looking not at my face but lower, at my body: at my breasts beneath my rough wool bodice, at my waist with the apron strings tied around it, at the swell of my hips made fuller by my patched linen petticoat. Only with effort did he raise his gaze, though his smile—now more hungry than playful—remained.
“Shall I show you to Mistress, sir?” I asked. That was more than I’d usually dare to volunteer, but I didn’t wish to remain alone with him any longer here in the kitchen.
“In a moment, Mary,” he said easily. “I’ve something for you first.”
I kept my guard, and moved no closer. But all he did was reach inside his coat to draw something small and flat and wrapped in brown paper from the front of his waistcoat, and hold it out to me.
“Here,” he said, his hand outstretched. “Consider it a little beneficence in recognition of your loyalty.”
Still I hung back. I’d no notion of what a beneficence might be, but I wanted none of it from him.
“What I did on the sloop, sir, I didn’t do for a reward. I’ll tell you what I told Mistress. I’ll always do whatever I can for the American cause, sir, as a patriot should.”
“That is admirable,” he said. “God knows our country needs all the assistance that can be offered. But I meant your loyalty to Mrs. Prevost. You have given her every reason to place her trust in you.”
I would not have called it loyalty. I’d obeyed Mistress’s wishes to keep the secret of Colonel Burr’s visit as I did everything else, because obedience was demanded of me.
He took a step closer, his hand still extended toward me with his gift.
“Come, Mary,” he said, coaxing. “You’ve no reason to be frightened of me.”
I’d every re
ason in the world. Gifts from gentlemen spoke of obligations, not generosity.
“No, thank you, sir,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve no need of anything.”
“I think it’s something you will enjoy,” he said with a hint of impatience. “I’ll be most grievously disappointed if you don’t accept it.”
There it was: I’d no choice, even with a gift. Reluctantly I took the package from him, and he smiled with encouragement. A length of ribbon on a card, I guessed, something gaudy and bright.
As he watched, I untied the string and unwrapped the paper. To my surprise, it was a small book with a red patterned cover, perhaps a hundred pages stitched together with heavy thread. Carefully I opened it: the pages were all blank, and I looked up at him, questioning.
“It’s a commonplace book,” he said. “For you to fill with whatever you wish to remember and note for your personal interest. No one else need ever see what you write. Consider it a way to write letters to yourself, if you will. Not quite so formal as a diary, though you’re perfectly free to use it as such.”
Stunned into silence, I looked down and slowly flipped through the blank pages. Lucas had believed that I was clever enough to read and write, and had taught me to do so. But this was the first time any white person had judged my thoughts worth preserving, let alone given me a book of my own in which to do so.
He misread my silence as disappointment.
“Mrs. Prevost mentioned that you were attempting to improve yourself by writing,” he said gruffly, an awkward half apology and half explanation. “I thought this, ah, I thought you’d like this for practice.”
“Oh, sir, I do!” I exclaimed softly, barely keeping back my tears as I ran my fingertips lightly over the little book’s stitching. If he’d given me the more ordinary ribbon or buttons, I would have remained guarded, but there was something about the very thoughtfulness of his choice—a choice that most other women would have scorned—that made me forget my defensiveness. Truly, what gentleman would use a commonplace book as a step to seduction?
“I’ve never been given anything so fine, ever,” I said, “and I—I thank you for it, sir.”
His smile warmed, and he nodded with satisfaction, and perhaps relief.
“I am glad,” he said, and glanced toward the door. “Mrs. Prevost must be wondering where I am.”
“Yes, sir.” I tucked the commonplace book into my pocket, took the candlestick from the windowsill to light our way, and hurried forward to lead him upstairs.
Although Mistress often had guests at the Hermitage, she was at present the only one in the house (besides us house servants), yet she still insisted on the formality of having me knock on her bedchamber door to announce Colonel Burr’s arrival. When she replied and I opened the door for him, she was posed sitting beside the fire in her yellow silk dressing gown, the thick plait of her dark hair trailing over her shoulder and her ankles crossed. Feigning surprise with an open book held elegantly in one hand, she looked up and smiled, as if she hadn’t been waiting for hours for him to arrive.
He quickly stepped around me to join her, and all pretense fell away. Their eager expression when his gaze met hers, the wondering smiles that each had for the other, bespoke of affection and admiration, but more of passion.
“That is all, Mary,” she said breathlessly as she held her hand out to him. He grasped his fingers around hers, and kissed her hand with great fervor, as if he longed to devour it and the rest of her as well. “I’ll see the Colonel out myself. You may retire for the night.”
I curtseyed and left them together, but instead of going to the attic, I returned to the kitchen. From the top shelf of the cupboard, I took down the basket where I stored some of my own few belongings. Among these was the paper and ink that Mistress had given to me the day after we’d returned from the City of New York, and the day after Mr. Hering had struck me.
I’ll grant that Mistress had kept her word, but to the letter, not the spirit. Perhaps it was guilt that made her present these items to me at that time, or perhaps she’d intended to all along. Even as I’d thanked her, she’d been unable to look at me directly, refusing to see the angry, swollen bruise that Mr. Hering’s fist had left upon my temple.
More guilt, I’d thought grimly, more guilt for a woman who surely carried a bushel of it.
The dozen sheets of paper she’d given me were clearly castoffs of her own, with smudges of dirt, folds, and crumpled edges, as much to say that though this paper was unacceptable for her, it would do well enough for me. The bottle of ink, too, had been opened and was only half-full.
When I’d first asked for paper on board the sloop, I’d intended to write a letter to Lucas filled with my love. Now that he was gone, I’d wanted to turn that love letter into a tribute to all his qualities and virtues that I could share with others, like the tributes the white people made to their dead. Even if I was the only one who ever read it, the list would be a way that my Lucas would be remembered, and not forgotten.
But the power of what I now could do intimidated me into silence. That first night, I’d waited until the others had gone to bed before I’d sat at the kitchen table with the freshest of the sheets of paper before me. Carefully I’d dipped my pen into the ink, and held it ready over the page, yet I couldn’t think of a single word worthy of my husband’s memory. I’d wept with frustration and grief, until I’d finally put the paper aside for another day.
The weeks had passed, and that day had never come. I’d remained too much in awe, too overwhelmed, by that creamy paper with the faint lines running through it, and too aware of my own limitations, to do Lucas the justice he deserved.
But on this night, with Colonel Burr’s commonplace book, I had no such trouble. As soon as I began to write, the words flowed like a river from my pen. I’d no hesitation, because no one else would ever read what I wrote, exactly as the Colonel had told me. The blots and cross-outs and uncertain spelling didn’t matter.
Instead, I drew the words from deep inside me, and wrote of how the constant ache of my grief had yet to lessen. I wrote of the anger I felt that the war had claimed a fine man like Lucas while others far less worthy remained untouched.
I wrote of how the loneliness that had been my companion through so much of my life was cruelly once again beside me and within me, a constant, harrowing presence without respite or ease.
And I wrote of how much I hated being chattel to Mistress, obeying and obliging her even when I knew what she asked to be wrong. I wrote of her husband, the gentleman who’d rescued me from Belle Vallée, and how she was even now betraying him with another man that she’d invited to their bedchamber.
I wrote, and I wrote, until the candle threatened to gutter out on the table beside me. Only then did I carefully close the little book, and put it into my pocket before I slowly climbed the stairs to the attic.
Yet I felt strangely more at peace than I had since I’d learned of Lucas’s death. After I’d hidden my new book in a space between the rafters (for my words, now written and preserved, would be a considerable hazard to me if read by the wrong eyes), I lay down to sleep with a rare and welcome easiness.
Colonel Burr’s gift had been much greater than either he or I had realized. And if I was wise, I’d never let him know it.
* * *
Several weeks passed before Colonel Burr returned, being much occupied with his military responsibilities. On account of his familiarity with New Jersey and the City of New York, General Washington had sent him on several more missions for reconnaissance of the area and the movements of the British troops.
When at last he sent word to Mistress that he could be spared, the night was arranged, and I was set to watch for him alone in the kitchen, as I’d done before. Autumn was shifting into winter, and white frost glittered on the grass and ground around the house and iced the windows with star-patterned crystals. This would likely be the final time he’d be able to visit before the snows came and made his overnight rides impossible
.
When I opened the door to him, I was startled by his appearance. Clearly his own recurring illness coupled with his pressing duties had taken further toll upon him. He’d tried to look spruce, as any gallant would, with his dark beard shaved close and his hair neatly powdered and clubbed into a queue with a black silk bow. But although his face had been whipped to ruddiness by the wind, the circles beneath his eyes that I’d noticed before were deeper, and his face was thinner. He’d overall lost flesh, and when I took his cloak I could see how his uniform hung loose about his form.
Most of all, his demeanor was much changed. There was none of his old bravado, none of the briskness that I’d come to associate with him. Instead, he dropped heavily into the old wooden chair before the fire as if exhaustion had claimed him, his boots stretched toward the coals and his hands resting on the arms of the chair.
“Mary Emmons, Mary Emmons,” he said wearily, unwrapping the long woolen scarf he’d worn around his neck and chin against the cold. “Might I trouble you for something to warm me from within before I go upstairs. Coffee would be best, and I care more that it’s hot than that it’s fresh.”
“I’ve coffee that’s both, sir,” I said, stepping around him. I wrapped a corner of my apron around the handle of the pot to keep from burning myself, and lifted it from the crane where it hung over the coals. Mistress had requested that coffee and tea both be ready so that she could play the graceful hostess and pour for the Colonel. She would be sorry that he hadn’t waited so they might take their refreshment together, but that was not my affair. “I’ll fetch one of Mistress’s good cups, sir.”
“No, no, whatever you have here for your own use will be satisfactory for me,” he said. “You forget that I’m accustomed to the crudeness of a military camp. I’d rather have something I can wrap my hands about than a dainty bit of porcelain.”
“No porcelain, then, sir,” I said, thinking to my amusement of how Mistress would hate the thought of him or any of her guests drinking from a common kitchen cup. I stood on the stool to bring down one of the blue-and-white earthenware mugs from the cupboard as he’d requested, though I did take care to choose one without a chip or crack. “Would a splash of brandy in the bottom warm you further, sir?”
The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr Page 22
