He ignored me as if I hadn’t spoken.
“She’ll need a name, then,” he said. “What shall we call her?”
“She’s already been named and baptized, sir,” I said. “Reverend Sampson obliged me, directly before you came. Mrs. Conger served as the godmother and witness.”
“That was hastily done, Mary,” he said, not hiding his disappointment with my decision. “Something more seemly could have been arranged.”
“Waiting has never benefited me, sir, nor would it have done so for my daughter,” I said firmly, refusing to let him try to persuade me otherwise. “Her name is Louisa Charlotte Emmons.”
He looked up sharply, not merely surprised, but shocked.
“Louisa Charlotte, sir,” I repeated proudly. No doubt he thought it too grand for her, or for me, but I didn’t care. It was what I wanted for my daughter.
“You are certain?” That first shock I’d glimpsed had disappeared, or leastways been hidden away. He was good at that.
“I am, sir,” I said, as determined as I could be in the circumstances. “Besides, the name cannot be changed now.”
“Everything can be changed in court, Mary,” he said, too thoughtful by half for my liking. “Nothing is permanent. You should know that.”
But even as I grew uneasy, the moment seemed to pass for him. He looked back to the baby, and smiled.
“Louisa Charlotte,” he said softly, gently. “It’s a fine name for her. You did well, Mary.”
I smiled, too, even as I fought my foolish tears. Mrs. Conger had warned me I might feel unsettled and weepy, and that it was all part of childbirth. But I was glad that the Colonel left soon after that, and because he’d court cases in other counties I didn’t see him again for the next two weeks.
Within three days, I was back at my usual responsibilities. Mistress considered herself generous to allow me that much time to myself. I suppose she believed as most white people did, that my body would heal much more quickly than hers on account of having darker skin; she’d taken at least a month to recover after each of her confinements. Still, I’d heard of other bondwomen who’d been expected to return to their toil the following day, and that included those who worked in open fields, too, so I was more fortunate than that.
As it was, I crept up and down the stairs like a bent old woman. I bled, and my breasts were heavy and ached with the unfamiliar weight of mother’s milk. Worst of all, however, was having to leave my sweet babe alone as I went about the rest of the house.
Louisa slept in a basket, on a mattress I’d made for her of old flannel stuffed with rushes, and I put the basket atop my bedstead so she’d be raised from the chill and drafts of the bare floor. Peg, Mina (whom Mistress had bought earlier in the year), and even Carlos had promised to listen and go to Louisa if she cried, but if they, too, were not in the kitchen my poor little mite was left to wail, piteous and alone. As her mother, I fretted for her, but I also worried that Mistress would be irritated by her cries. Although the Colonel had prevailed on Mistress to let me keep Louisa, I didn’t wish to give her any reason to change her mind.
I would sooner end my own life than have my daughter taken from me. Each day I grew more in love with her, with every tiny feature of her face and form becoming more dear to me. I never tired of holding her or rocking her gently in my arms as I sang to her, sometimes in French, sometimes in English, and sometimes even in Tamil. All she cared for was my voice, my touch, and the nurture of my breast. To give my daughter what I’d never received from my own mother was the sweetest joy imaginable, and every moment I was apart from her I thought of nothing beyond how soon we could be reunited.
Mistress did not come downstairs to congratulate me, though to be fair, I could not recall her ever coming down to the kitchen in that house. But she did ask me how the baby and I did the first time I saw her after the birth. It was a formality, no more, that I answered in as few words as possible, and I believe we both were relieved to have it done.
Thus I was doubly surprised when several days later she and Miss Burr came downstairs together with the express purpose of viewing my daughter. I had just finished suckling Louisa, so while I was daubed with spit-up milk, Louisa was full and content and sleepy, which is the most agreeable way to present a new infant.
“We’ve brought you some of my old baby clothes, Mary,” Miss Burr said importantly, setting the bundle she carried on the table. “Mama said you could use them now.”
“Thank you, Mistress,” I said. I recognized the clothes as things that had been worn first by Miss Burr, and then by Miss Sally. I’d stitched many of them myself, so it pleased me that my daughter should wear them, too.
“Your baby is very pretty, Mary,” Miss Burr said, wide-eyed with interest as I placed Louisa into her basket. “Her fingers are so tiny.”
“Thank you, Miss,” I said as I swiftly put my bodice to rights. “She’s a good baby, and scarcely cries at all.”
“Might I hold her, Mary?” asked Mistress. Her expression was both doting and inexpressibly sad.
I couldn’t refuse her. I nodded, and gently lifted my daughter from her basket to place her within Mistress’s arms. My daughter was still so young that she was content in most any embrace, but Mistress held her with the well-practiced confidence of a mother many times over, swaying gently from side to side in a rhythm that soon lulled the baby to sleep.
“I’ve missed this,” she said softly. “There is nothing on earth more precious than a new baby.”
“No, Mistress.” For once we agreed completely. “There isn’t.”
“Have you named her yet?” she asked. “To me she is as sweet as a spring blossom. You could call her Rose, or Tulip, perhaps, or Daisy.”
No, I thought: no. Flower names were slave names, given to girls who’d never have more value to their masters than a wildflower to be admired for their beauty, and then trod under foot.
“I’ve named her Louisa, Mistress,” I said instead. “Louisa Charlotte Emmons.”
Mistress stopped swaying, stricken. It wasn’t so very different from how the Colonel had reacted when I’d told him.
“Louisa,” she repeated, gazing down at the baby in her arms.
“I like that name,” Miss Burr said. “It’s the same as the French king’s name, only for a woman. May I please hold Louisa Charlotte, too?”
“Of course. You must be very careful, Theo,” Mistress continued, “and you may hold her only for a moment. Here, sit in this chair, so I might place her into your arms and lap.”
While I hovered and held my breath, ready to rush in and preserve my child if necessary, Mistress did as she’d said. Once Miss Burr had climbed into the old armchair and carefully arranged her petticoats to form a welcoming lap, her mother set Louisa across Miss Burr’s legs. At once the little girl circled her arms around my daughter and smiled happily down upon her, and I was reminded of how she, too, had lost a sister and brothers just as Mistress had lost a daughter and two sons.
Yet when I saw Miss Burr and my Louisa together, I also thought of how they were half sisters. Did they sense that bond, I wondered, even if they were both too young to recognize it? Would there ever be a sympathy between them from the common blood of their father, or would the gap between their stations be too great ever to be bridged?
When the Colonel returned home several days later, he, too, brought me gifts, but of a different nature: a pale blue coverlet of the softest wool I’d ever touched for Louisa, and for me small gold hoop earrings with tiny coral drops.
“These are too fine for me, sir,” I said as I held the earrings in my palm. “Mistress would take notice at once, and ask how I’d come by them.”
“Oh, I doubt she will,” he said. He’d come to my room early, before Mistress was awake, to see both me and Louisa. He was already dressed for work in his customary black suit and with his dark hair clubbed and powdered.
“Besides,” he continued, “the earrings will be hidden by your cap, where only you wi
ll know they’re there.”
“And you,” I said, still disturbed by the lavishness of his gift. The only ornament I’d owned was the small heart-shaped token that Lucas had wrought for me long ago, and even that I’d ceased to wear. These earrings from the Colonel seemed a very different kind of gift, both in their value, and in their intent.
Not that the Colonel cared. “Come, Mary, let me see how they look on you.”
Reluctantly I slipped them into my ears, into the old piercings that Ammatti had made when I’d been a baby. I hadn’t worn earrings of any kind since I’d been brought to New Jersey, and I’d forgotten how they felt, dancing lightly against the sides of my neck as I turned my head from side to side.
He nodded with approval. “They suit you,” he said. “Wear them always, and think of me.”
I kissed him in thanks as he expected, and gathered Louisa up from her basket to put her to my breast. I didn’t need gold earrings to be reminded of him, not when I’d his daughter.
“Theodosia is very taken with Louisa,” he said, smiling fondly at his daughter. “I’d wanted to hear what she’d been studying in her lessons, but Louisa was the sum of her conversation with me last night. She’s lonely for company her own age, poor child.”
I thought again of how the two girls were half sisters, and how sad it was that they’d likely never know it.
“She liked Louisa’s name, too, sir,” I said. “But Mrs. Burr thought I should have called her Rose or Tulip.”
“‘Tulip’?” he repeated with dismay. “I’m glad you didn’t. What she really wishes is that you hadn’t chosen the name that you did. You didn’t know any better, of course. You couldn’t have.”
“Known what, sir?” I asked uneasily.
“Oh, it’s old, sad history now.” He shook his head. “Long ago, before the war, she bore two daughters to Prevost. Neither of them were strong, and both died, much to my wife’s considerable sorrow. Their names were Anne Louisa, and Mary Louisa.”
I gasped, horrified that I’d accidentally given Mistress one more reason to dislike me.
“Why didn’t you tell me, sir?” I exclaimed, holding my daughter—my Louisa—more tightly. “Oh, if she thinks I chose the name from spite, or to be cruel, or—”
“She doesn’t,” he said, unconcerned, even callous. “She hasn’t mentioned it at all to me. But her thoughts were clear enough when Theodosia prattled on about your child’s name. I said nothing to you because you were already determined upon the name. As I said, it’s old history.”
But this wasn’t old history to Mistress, and all the more poignant to me now that I’d become a mother myself. I didn’t doubt for an instant that she could recall those little girls as clearly as if they’d been lost to her last week, not twenty years before, and I remembered her wistful expression as she’d held my daughter.
The Colonel drew his watch from his pocket to check the hour and sighed.
“I must go,” he said, clicking the watch shut. “I predict a veritable mountain of rubbish waiting on my desk for my attention. Having the Constitution settled with a president soon to be elected is necessary, but the courtrooms have become as clamorous as Bedlam itself with everyone racing about to file this or that before the new government has its way. If it were up to me, I’d toss it all into the river and begin again, instead of piling old laws and decisions atop one another.”
“That is true, sir,” I agreed. As fine as this new constitution was in many ways, as a woman and a slave I’d no rights under it at all. I, too, wished the congressmen had begun fresh, with more freedoms for more people, as had been promised at the beginning of the war. “Perhaps more changes will come in time.”
He made a harrumph of disdain. “Not until they choose a president who isn’t a stolid donkey from Virginia.”
“Oh, sir, you shouldn’t speak so of General Washington,” I said, chiding mildly. I’d always enjoyed how he’d speak of politics to me and it was a relief to hear it again now, even if I didn’t agree. It interested me, yes, but it also made me feel as if he considered me worthy of such conversation. The best compliment he ever paid me was calling me clever, and I’d preferred that first gift of the little notebook for writing that he’d given me a hundred times more than the earrings he’d insisted I have today. “Especially since the Federalists will see that he is the first president.”
“The Federalists aren’t obligated to see to anything,” he said as he rose from the single chair, preparing to take his leave. “No sane gentleman would run against the almighty Washington, though I’ve heard of a few who might throw themselves upon their swords like that simply for sport, and to be contrary.”
Sated, Louisa began to shift and fuss in my arms and I quickly put her to my shoulder, rubbing her back to calm her. For once, I didn’t want her to distract him.
“But the General is the only natural leader who can bring the states together, sir,” I reasoned. “No other gentleman is as respected, nor as capable of uniting men.”
He smiled, and wagged his finger at me.
“Oh, Mary, sweet Mary,” he said. “You’ve been reading Hamilton’s ramblings in the papers again, haven’t you?”
I flushed, but in truth I liked when he teased me for reading.
“I have, sir,” I said, “and I’ll continue to read them so long as they make sense to me. Colonel Hamilton can be powerfully persuasive.”
“Like a little Scots terrier,” he agreed. “But then, you’ve that kind of determination, too. No wonder you agree with him.”
“I agree with his sentiments regarding General Washington, sir,” I said. “That is not the same as agreeing with him in everything.”
He laughed. “One day I should bring you to court with me as my counsel, Mary, and let you parse words with him before a jury and judge.”
I laughed softly with him, trying to imagine so preposterous a scene.
“If I’d the chance, I would, sir,” I said wistfully. “You know I would.”
“I do indeed.” His smile faded, but his eyes were filled with affectionate regard as he reached out to cradle my cheek in the palm of his hand.
“You’re a treasure to me, Mary Emmons,” he said. “Have you any notion of how much I value our friendship?”
“Oh, sir,” I said, my eagerness instantly deflated, and replaced by guarded disappointment at his mention of friendship, a word that would for me now always have another meaning. “It is too soon after Louisa for an assignation. I am not well yet, and I—I would not please you.”
He frowned. “I didn’t intend to lie with you, Mary,” he said bluntly. “I’d hurt you, and there’d be no pleasure in that for either of us. I’m not that kind of brute. I pray you don’t believe I am.”
I looked down, avoiding his gaze. He was playing the pad of his thumb over my lower lip, a seductive little gesture that contradicted everything he was saying.
“No,” he said, answering himself when I didn’t reply. “What I meant, Mary, is that these last months—this entire year—has been a difficult one for me, and yet through it your peace has been a constant comfort to me. And now this child, our daughter. What a gift you have given me amidst so much sorrow!”
From the kitchen on the other side of the door came the sounds of voices—Peg, Mina, Tom, and Carlos—and clatter of pots and pans for breakfast. They all knew of the Colonel’s attentions to me, but still it shamed me when he so blatantly left my room in their presence.
“You must go, sir,” I said softly. “You’ll be late to your office.”
He nodded, and bent to press his lips upon our daughter’s forehead, gently, sweetly, as a father should. There was no sweetness when he kissed me next, but instead such sufficient possessiveness that he grunted with satisfaction when he finally broke away. It hadn’t mattered to him that I’d held our daughter between us, or perhaps it had.
After he left me, I continued to stand there, my eyes squeezed shut as I struggled to compose myself before I joined the
others. I thought of all he’d said and what he’d done, and I thought of Mistress, and I thought most of all of Louisa.
He could promise me again and again that in time (how I’d come to hate those two meaningless words!) he’d see that Louisa and I were freed. Now I was sure he wouldn’t do it, not so long as he could keep both his unknowing wife and me beneath a single roof. More risk, more daring, a dangerous spark to his male passions, and the excitement he craved to counter the daily tedium of his legal work.
It was all the same for the Colonel. Not so long ago, I’d hoped to turn his games around to my own advantage. Now I knew better, and with my daughter’s birth the stakes had become too high. I unhooked the gold earrings from my ears and stuffed them into my pocket. This life he’d created was far too precarious for me and now for my daughter, too, and I could see no good nor happiness coming from any of it.
CHAPTER 20
City of New York
State of New York
September 1789
The long line of carriages crept along Cherry Street, along the East River shimmering in the early-evening sun. To pass the time, the idle passengers in those carriages could calculate their progress in several ways. The easiest was to count each cross street as it was passed: Roosevelt, James, Oliver, Catherine, George. Another was to spot the various wharves that jutted into the river, much like water-bound streets themselves: Beekman’s, Rutger’s, Bedloe’s, Ackerley’s, with each shipowner’s distinctive pennant fluttering from the masts of his vessels. For those who had no patience with such man-made markers, however, the setting sun offered the truest measure, slipping slowly downward toward the green hills to the west as the day’s end approached, and with it the single goal for every one of the carriages.
Lady Washington’s Friday night levee began promptly at seven o’clock. Only ladies were invited to these levees, the acquaintances, friends, and would-be friends of the new president’s wife, and no lady wished to be early, and made to dawdle and wait in her carriage until the appointed hour. Nor did any wish to be caught so far toward the end of the line of carriages that they arrived late, and were perceived as uncaring, or even disrespectful.
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