“No, sir,” I said meekly. I’d told him before what I’d intended to say, of course, but this was exactly why I hadn’t left it to him to devise my story. He would have made it too long, too complicated, just as he was doing now. The name of the vessel’s owner! I knew he didn’t like me lying to his wife, but he’d like confessing to her even less, and so my lie now must serve for us both. It didn’t need more details.
Yet still it was my heart that raced, my mouth that was dry. Not from the lie, but from fear that I’d been wrong to trust him.
“It doesn’t matter, Aaron,” Mistress said. “The rogue has clearly fled, with no intention of returning. It’s left for us to determine what’s to be done with Mary and her—her issue. Of course as she is, she cannot be permitted to remain in this house.”
“I do not see why not,” the Colonel said evenly. “Mary is the most efficient woman at her position in the entire city. You know you would be lost without her. We all would.”
Bright pink patches showed on Mistress’s pale cheeks.
“Be serious, Aaron,” she said curtly. “After Mary has demonstrated this laxity in her morals, you would wish her about our daughters?”
“The girls will model themselves after you, Theo, not a servant,” he said. “You know that. You’re the very best model a daughter could possibly have. Come now, calm yourself. It’s not good for you to become this distraught.”
But Mistress only shook her head, quick little shakes that made the ruffles on her cap twitch. “If you wish me to be calm, Aaron, then I would prefer you not take her side against me.”
“I am taking the side of reason, expediency, and Christian compassion,” he said. “Upon reflection, I’m certain you will do the same.”
She continued to shake her head, refusing his arguments and his attempts to soothe her as well. More ominously, she withdrew her hand from his knee.
He glanced up at me, his eyes for once impossible for me to read.
“Mary, go to the library,” he said, “and wait for me there. I wish to speak to my wife alone.”
“Yes, sir,” I murmured as I curtseyed. “Mistress.”
I held my head high as I left the room, reminding myself that in all of this I’d done nothing wrong. Yet as soon as I was alone in the library, my show of confidence shattered, and I pressed my hand over my mouth to keep from sobbing aloud. All around me in this room were reminders of the first time the Colonel had taken me, there against that wall and beneath the print of the view of the harbor, and I remembered how demanding he had been and how I’d been helpless to refuse him. I told myself yet again that I wasn’t the one at fault and never had been, yet still I couldn’t help from thinking that if only I’d somehow been more adept at avoiding him, or been able to say something that would have made him stop, then I wouldn’t be here now.
I closed my eyes, fighting both my fear and panic as I tried not to imagine what fate was being decided for me in the other room. Ah, they’d so many genteel ways to describe what had befallen me, didn’t they? Because the Colonel had wanted a friendship with me, a friendship filled with assignations, I’d now found myself with what Mistress called a situation.
My poor child kicked and twisted within me, doubtless sensing my fears, and for his or her sake I took a deep breath and another, striving to calm myself. Weeping would achieve nothing; it never did. I went to stand at the window, and with my hand on my belly I forced myself to focus upon what I saw, not what I feared. I counted the paving stones on the curb, and the panes of glass in the windows of the house across the street. Then I looked up, and began to count the shingles on the roof as well.
I turned about quickly when the door behind me opened. I’d expected Carlos or Peg to have come to summon me back to the parlor. Instead, it was the Colonel himself.
“Sit, Mary,” he said as he closed the door. He wasn’t smiling, and my heart plummeted. “Please. I won’t have you standing before me like some woeful penitent.”
I sat on the very edge of the chair he’d indicated, one of a pair of straight-backed chairs that stood before his desk for visitors. To my surprise, he took the other, sitting near to me instead of in the armchair behind the desk.
“Mary Emmons,” he said gently, so gently that I wanted to weep again. “I regret that you suffered through that. I’m sure it was difficult for both you and my wife.”
“It was difficult, sir,” I said, biting back my bitterness. “But necessary.”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat, never good. “Once you left the room, Mrs. Burr grew calmer, and was able to see matters in a more rational light. I believe you will be pleased with her final decision. It will be best for you, and I know it’s what you’ve always wanted. First of all, you will be permitted to keep your child. I’ve persuaded her of that.”
“Our child, sir,” I said, insisting he remember. “Ours.”
“Yes,” he said, another of his answers that wasn’t an answer. “The small pantry off the kitchen will become your room, for you and your child, as soon as I can have the men clear it out. Tell me what you’d like to furnish it, and I’ll see that you get it. A comfortable bed, of course, a washstand, a chair, a small table. Whatever you wish.”
“The pantry, sir?”
“Yes, I thought that would suit you,” he said, clearly pleased with himself. “After all the years you’ve served Mrs. Burr, and the responsibilities you have, it seemed that it was time you should be rewarded. What do you make of that?”
“What do I make of it, sir?” I looked down at my clasped hands, resting on my belly. “That I will be permitted to sleep in the cellar rather than the attic?”
“The room will be your own, with privacy to go with it, and a latch to the door if you wish it,” he said, striving to make me understand his notion of generosity. “A little gratitude would not be amiss, Mary, considering.”
It wasn’t difficult to understand that the privacy and the latch would benefit him as well, and that the only reason I would be given a comfortable bed instead of my customary pallet would be so that he could visit me there. That privacy was for him, not me.
Abruptly I rose and went to stand at the window again, heedless of how my back was turned toward him.
“Then I thank you, sir,” I said to the window, but loudly enough that I was sure he’d hear my bitterness.
I heard the scrape of the chair as he rose to join me. I stiffened as he slipped his hands around my thickened waist, and then higher, to cup my heavy breasts. My pregnancy hadn’t deterred him at all. He relished the ripeness of my body, and took cocksure pleasure in knowing it was his doing. Mistress must have gone upstairs for him to be so free with me.
“Mary, my Mary,” he whispered against the side of my throat. “I’d never deny that you have dreams.”
“No, sir?” I twisted around to face him, pointedly pressing my belly between us. “You know what I wanted. I wanted—I want—for this child to be born free. You always promise me in time, in time, in time. That time is almost done, sir. I’ve only three months left. Three months, sir, else your son or daughter will be only one more piece of your wife’s property.”
I was glad to see him flinch. “This was not the time to raise the issue with Mrs. Burr,” he said. “You saw today how she remains low and unwell.”
“What I saw, sir, is that she was ready to give away our child like the last whelp in a mongrel’s litter,” I said bitterly. “If any ill came to you, then I would be left upon her mercy, a place I never wish to be.”
“That won’t happen, Mary,” he said firmly. “I swear to you it won’t.”
I gave a small cry of frustration, and shoved my hands hard against his chest. “I’ve lived too long in your house not to know the power of the law. I know that without a paper that’s been sworn and signed and witnessed, your oath will mean nothing beyond this room.”
“Then you must trust me, Mary, that it will be done at the proper time.” Gently he lifted one of my hands from his chest
and turned it in his, kissing my palm. “That’s all I ask. Trust me.”
If I was good at lies, then he was every bit my match. He was a lawyer, and accustomed to telling tales that swayed the truth as easily as wind blows through a field of corn. I searched his face, hunting for some reason to believe that he’d keep this promise where he’d failed before.
I did not find it.
* * *
If Miss Burr was her father in miniature, then Miss Sally was twin to her mother. With tilting dark eyes, glossy ringlets, and a dainty little chin that mirrored Mistress’s, she was as fair and delicate as a doll made of French porcelain.
Because of that same delicacy, Miss Sally had been spared most of the rigorous education and long hours of study that her older sister had endured. While at the same age Miss Burr had been able to read any passage presented to her and to write a pretty hand as well, Miss Sally still preferred books with pictures, and printed her letters rather than wrote them. The Colonel might be concerned that his younger daughter was being spoiled, but little Sally was well content to spend most of her days in her mother’s company, the two of them telling stories with dolls and other toys to play the roles. In turn Mistress had come to rely upon the little girl to help ease her own sorrows after the recent deaths of her two infant sons, and she’d found much comfort in Miss Sally’s innocent charm and laughter.
It had become the custom in the last months of summer for Mistress and her daughters to leave the city for a country retreat, and avoid the fevers that often rose with the season. This year, however, it was determined that neither Mistress nor Sally could withstand the rigorous journey, and the Colonel also wished them near to the care of their physician.
He and Mistress both were concerned for Sally, and with good reason, too. Since the beginning of the summer, she had suffered from some form of wasting that no doctor could diagnose, let alone cure. She had grown so thin that her breastbone showed through her skin above the neckline of her gown, and her eyes were ringed with bluish shadows. By the end of September, she had become so enervated and weak that she was content to spend much of the day lying within her mother’s arms and venturing no farther.
If ever a mother’s determined love should have saved a child, then Mistress should have had that power with Miss Sally, and not even the cruelest Fate should have chosen her to suffer further.
Yet Fate has never been known to be fair, and one morning as little Sally lay curled beside her mother she closed her eyes as if to sleep, and slipped away. It was for her a painless death, as easy as if an angel had come from Heaven itself to carry her off in his arms, but the anguish and suffering this death left within the family cannot be imagined. Three children lost in less than two years was a fearsome blow by anyone’s standards, but there was no doubt to anyone who knew Mistress that this death was easily the most painful to her, and the most difficult for her to bear.
It also made for a peculiarly melancholy atmosphere for me. As can be imagined, there was no further talk of my freedom, not when Mistress was shattered with grief. Nor could I accuse the Colonel of breaking his promise to me yet again, for he, too, mourned deeply for Miss Sally. As was the custom, Mistress and Miss Burr did not attend the funeral, leaving it to the Colonel, Mr. Prevost, and Master Bartow to follow the little white-painted coffin on its final journey, and freely water the grave with their tears.
I was in the final weeks of my pregnancy, and like most women approaching motherhood, I thought often of my own mortality. It was at this time that I began to more thoroughly consider myself a Christian and a true child of God, and I found comfort in a small congregation of local servants and tradespeople, some free, some not, who gathered together on the Sabbath to read the Scriptures. This wasn’t the chilly, vengeful faith of Mistress and the Colonel, but one that gave me hope and peace when I was most in need. Childbirth was a perilous time for mothers and babes alike, and death was always a possibility for one, the other, or both. Not only had I witnessed Mistress’s sorrows, but my own mother’s death remained a constant warning, as it had been ever since I was old enough to learn of it.
My child was lively in my womb, yet still I worried endlessly. What would become of my little one if I were to die? Would he or she have a haven in this house, or be cast off to perish?
I’d another worry, too, one that I’d little choice but to keep locked tight within me. In New York I was carelessly considered a mulatto, for most people here hadn’t heard of Pondicherry, let alone of Tamils. Because of my English father, I was myself fair enough to be called yellow, or bright, in America. My child would only be a quarter Tamil, and might in time prove to be so light skinned as to be mistaken for white by strangers.
But what if this child strongly favored the Colonel, or even Miss Burr? What if my well-told lie of the lonely English sailor was proved false in the most obvious way possible? If Mistress were to see her husband’s face in my child, she’d realize at once the deception that had occurred, and continued still, beneath her roof. There wouldn’t be anything that the Colonel could say that would change it, either.
My pains began in the afternoon of the last Tuesday in November. The Colonel and Mistress were having a small supper for close friends that same evening. My midwife, Mrs. Conger, had warned me that since this was my first labor, I could expect it to be lengthy, and that the best way to make it progress was to continue as usual for as long as I could.
This I did, preparing the meal and overseeing service, though I kept to the kitchen and didn’t show myself, bent over and groaning, at the dining table. None of the company upstairs knew that my travail had begun. I was proud of my brave persistence, yes, but also grateful that I’d something to keep my thoughts busy as my pains progressed. I waited until the table had been cleared and the last dishes brought downstairs for washing before I finally sent for Mrs. Conger.
By the time she arrived, my pains were sharp and close together, and soon after midnight in my room near the kitchen I was delivered of a beautiful girl. I wept when I first held her, still covered with the blood that we shared: tears of joy and wonder, as every new mother sheds, but also of melancholy regret, that I had brought this poor child into the same captive condition as I suffered myself. She was my daughter, my most precious love, but she was also Mistress’s property, and it fair broke my heart to think it.
For many months, I’d thought long over my daughter’s name, an important decision that I was determined to make before Mistress did. I’d been forced to give up my birth name when I’d been sold into bondage, and the two I’d been called by since then had been chosen for the simple convenience of others. I couldn’t give my daughter much, but I could give her this: Louisa Charlotte, an elegant New York name that was as perfect as she was herself, and worthy of the free woman I was determined that she’d become.
Being all too aware of the power of legal records, I had her baptized quickly, the morning she was born, to make certain her name was recorded. Mrs. Conger’s brother, who led our little congregation, came to me and saw to it that my daughter was welcomed as another lamb into his fold.
I didn’t send word to the Colonel, preferring to keep my daughter to myself a little longer. But Carlos never could keep a secret, and let the news slip when he took the morning coffee to his master. The Colonel hurried to my room with flattering haste, his jaw unshaven, a red silk dressing gown tossed over his nightshirt, and his bare feet in slippers.
“I came as soon as I heard,” he said as he closed the door. “You should have called me last night, Mary. How do you fare?”
“Well enough, sir,” I said with a weary smile. His surprising solicitude touched me.
“I’m thankful you are.” He bent and kissed me gently. “Carlos said the child is a girl.”
I nodded. I was exhausted and my entire body seemed stretched and torn, yet in that moment I felt nothing but contented pride as I unfolded the corner of the blanket so he could see our daughter’s face.
His smile
was true and full of wonder, enough to make fresh tears well up in my eyes. After he had seen his last two sons stillborn, this baby must truly seem a miracle.
“What a pretty child,” he marveled softly. She was pretty, with full cheeks, a rosebud of a pout, and thick, feathery lashes. “She is healthy?”
“She is, sir,” I said, with more pride. “The midwife swore she was as strong and fine as any babe could be.”
“So she is,” he said. “Like you, Mary.”
I smiled, choosing to take that as a compliment. I’d never been a delicate lady, not like Mistress. True, I was not tall, and could be overlooked among a crowd, but I was sturdy and strong and stubborn. I’d survived where others twice my size had not, through wars and disease and perils at sea, and now childbirth, too. I prayed my daughter would, too.
Lightly he touched a finger to her velvety cheek, and instinctively she turned toward it, her tiny lips rooting even in her sleep. He chuckled with delight, and so did I.
“She suckled from the first,” I said. “The midwife said that being hungry like that’s a sure sign she’ll prosper.”
“Oh, it is, it is,” he said softly. “Isn’t that so, little girl?”
That was what he’d called both Miss Burr and Miss Sally, and once again tears stung my eyes. I wept whenever he showered fond endearments upon me, too. But by now I understood that no matter how sweet his words might be, the affection behind them was always destined to be empty and false. I didn’t want my daughter to learn that same bittersweet disappointment, or the pain that came with it, either.
“You can’t call her that, sir,” I said, drawing her more closely into the crook of my arm. “If you do, people will know the truth.”
“No, they won’t,” he said, his gaze still intent on the sleeping baby. “People only see what they expect to see.”
“You shouldn’t be here now at all, sir,” I said. I glanced up at the single small window in one corner of the room, judging the hour by the first weak November sunlight. “Mr. Prevost and Master Bartow will be awake soon, if they’re not already.”
The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr Page 39
