Chesapeake (88 page)

ELIZABETH
: We’re neighbors, Matthew. What thee does affects us, too.

MATT:
It shouldn’t.

ELIZABETH
: It’s inescapable. Thee is my brother. Thee sails my ship. Thee brings thy slaves into my shadow.

MATT
: I’d say you were sticking your nose into my affairs.

ELIZABETH
: I am indeed. If thee won’t care for thy immortal soul, I must.

MATT
: And I suppose God directs you to do this?

ELIZABETH
: He does, Matthew. He directs thee, too, but thee doesn’t listen.

MATT
: How can you be so goddamned certain—

GEORGE:
If thee has a poor argument, Matthew, thee doesn’t strengthen it with profanity.

MATT
: Excuse me, ma’am.

ELIZABETH
: Would thee like some tea?

MATT
: That I would.

GEORGE:
Slavery is a terrible wrong. It does hideous things to people, maladjusts them. (At this, Matt Turlock looked down at his hands, thinking of what Susan had told him about her husband’s strange behavior.)

ELIZABETH
: We cannot speak with thee logically, Matthew, unless thee acknowledges that slavery is this great evil. Thee sees that, doesn’t thee?’

MATT
: I see that fields need people to work them, and the best hands ever invented for that task are the niggers of Africa. God would not have allowed—

ELIZABETH
: He works mysteriously. I sometimes think He has allowed this present generation to exist so as to prepare us.

GEORGE:
Thy trade is corrupting thee, Matthew. Thee isn’t the man for whom I built the
Ariel.
Time has corroded—

MATT
: It corrodes all of us. You as well as Mrs. Paxmore.

GEORGE:
We have striven to adhere to the principles of humanity.

MATT
: As you define them. Tell me this, do you really believe that you will live to see the day when slavery is outlawed in Maryland?

GEORGE:
It’s been outlawed on the high seas. Sooner or later the British patrol will capture thee, and hang thee.

MATT
: They’ll never. And you’ll never see the end of slavery.

ELIZABETH
(adjusting in her chair to signal that she was changing the subject): When George says that thy profession corrodes, he refers to thy regrettable behavior with the Steeds.

MATT
: That has no relationship—

ELIZABETH
: It does. A human life is all of a part. What thee does in Africa determines what thee will do in Patamoke.

MATT
: I think you’re being damned fools.

GEORGE:
We see a human soul destroying itself. Our anguish is no less than thine.

MATT
: I feel no anguish, not in Africa nor in Patamoke.

GEORGE:
Thee does, Matthew, because I feel the agitation, and I am thy brother. Elizabeth and I love thee. We love thy strength and willingness. We ask thee as friends and associates to quit this evil. Be done with it all. Get back to the sea. Burn the
Ariel
for its contamination. I’ll build thee a new ship, a better. Matthew …

ELIZABETH
: Will thee pray with us?

MATT
: Pray when I’m gone.

ELIZABETH
: When will thee be gone?

MATT
: In about one minute.

ELIZABETH
: I mean from Patamoke.

MATT
: That’s my affair.

ELIZABETH
: It’s not at all. Can’t thee see what thee’s doing to the Steeds?

MATT
: I did not ask—

ELIZABETH
: But thee can’t consciously goad two human beings into destroying themselves. Matthew, we’re talking about two immortal souls.

MATT
: You take care of your soul, Mrs. Paxmore. I’ll take care of mine.

ELIZABETH
: I shall pray that God sends thee light. I shall pray.

MATT
: You know what I think, Mrs. Paxmore? I think you’re a goddamned busybody. You pray for yourself, and let me alone.

He stomped from the trim house, disgusted with its occupants, but on his way to his home, where Susan waited, he reflected on his family’s long acquaintance with the Paxmores, and on the stories he had heard about the Quakers, and it occurred to him that Quaker men were cursed with some of the sharpest-tongued busybodies God ever put on earth. From rumors about town, he understood that they even got up in church and spoke their minds, but as far as he was concerned, these women represented only austerity, preaching and sanctimoniousness. But it was strange—generation after generation these quiet women with their demure bearing and fearless intelligence seemed to make the lasting wives. Their husbands appeared to love them as much at seventy as they had at seventeen: I wonder if there’s something to the way they’re brought up? Always speaking their minds and taking part in things? Compared to the Steed women, or the Turlocks, these Quaker wives seemed to function at full capacity till God struck them dead.

Any incipient compassion Turlock may have held for the Quakers vanished that afternoon when a deplorable scene took place at the harbor. While he was away from town visiting the widow of a Turlock who had died at sea, George Paxmore chanced to meet Mrs. Steed coming from a shop, and the evangelical mood possessed him so strongly that he accosted her. ‘Susan, would thee do me the honor of a brief visit?’

‘I do not care to go to your house,’ she said sharply, ‘in view of what you’ve said about Captain Turlock.’

‘I did not invite thee to my house. To my clipper.’

This so surprised her that she half assented, but when she reached the harbor and from the rowboat saw that he was headed for the
Ariel,
she refused to get in. ‘That’s not yours. It’s Captain Turlock’s.’

‘I built it,’ Paxmore said, and he took her arm and persuaded her to join him. On the short trip to the
Ariel
he said nothing, but when the sailor on duty asked his mission, he said, ‘To inspect my clipper,’ and he handed Susan up the ladder.

He allowed her only a brief moment on deck, during which she admired the neatness of the vessel; then he led her to the hatch and asked for a ladder. When the sailor brought it, he adjusted it so that Susan could climb down, and when she stood on the ’tween deck he joined her.

It took her some moments to adjust to the darkness; then, as her eyes began to pierce the gloom, she heard Paxmore say, ‘In this compartment
forward of the mast, where you can’t even stand up, one hundred and sixty slaves.’

‘No!’ Vaguely she had known that Matt was a slaver, just as she knew vaguely that during the Revolution he had seen great battles, but one fact was as nebulous as the other. To her he was merely Matt Turlock who sailed the oceans; slavery at sea was no more a reality than slavery at Devon Island. She could not have told Paxmore, at this moment, how the Steed slaves lived; they existed and formed no part of her consciousness.

‘And aft of the mainmast, eighty more.’

‘My God!’

‘Yes, only by calling on the mercy of God can we comprehend what this ship means.’ And he forced her to lie on her stomach and peer down into the lower hold. ‘Forward, a hundred and twenty men. Aft, another hundred.’ She started to rise, but he held her down. ‘Look at the headroom in which a woman with child must try to stand.’

She was about to respond when she heard a roaring voice from aloft: ‘What in hell are you doing down there?’

Calmly George Paxmore replied, ‘I am showing your lady how you earn your livelihood.’

With a towering oath Matt Turlock leaped into the hold, grabbed Paxmore by the neck and rushed him toward the ladder. ‘Out! You preachifying rogue!’ And after he had shoved the unresisting Quaker onto the deck he sped up after him and pushed him toward the gangway. ‘Off this ship forever.’

‘It’s mine too, Matthew.’

This was said with such self-righteousness that Turlock quite lost his head and launched a violent kick at the departing boatbuilder. He missed, and Paxmore said, ‘God condemns thee and thy slave ship.’ And he rowed ashore.

Two sailors helped Susan climb out of the hold, and Turlock expected her to be shaken by what she had seen, but instead she was obviously flushed with erotic excitement.

‘I’ve always wanted to visit the
Ariel,
’ she said. ‘It’s a powerful experience.’ And she allowed him to lead her to his cabin, and she could not feast enough on the charts, the carved ivory, the gimbaled bed. This was the essence of Matt Turlock.

‘Paxmore did me a favor, showing me belowdecks.’ She sat on his bed and studied him as if for the first time.

‘He said this morning I was destroying you.’

‘No! You’re creating me. Matt, it was seven years ago that you lifted me up to see the cannonballs. Every day since then I could feel the pressure of your arms because you held me longer then necessary. You held me because you wanted me … and I’ve always wanted you.’

On that first afternoon in the big bed at Rosalind’s Revenge he had
asked her, ‘Shall I untie the thongs and take off the fist?’ and she had protested, ‘No! I want to feel it across my body … everywhere.’ Since then, whenever they began to make love she kissed the silver eagle as a kind of salute; it became the symbol of their passion.

Now she kissed it again and whispered, ‘Poor Paxmore, he must have thought that showing me the slave quarters would kill my love for you. I love you even more for your dangerous life. Now I know why you require a silver fist.’

Later, when they were resting in the gimbaled bed, there came a loud clattering on deck, and before she could slip into her clothes the door to Matt’s cabin burst open, revealing her husband, finally enraged to the point of madness. He had an ax and was screaming threats of murder.

There was a wild scramble, and shouting that could be heard onshore. She would never be able to sort out precisely what happened; she did remember Matt’s throwing himself across the bed and knocking away the weapon Paul carried. In the end, Matt, with only a towel about him, grabbed Paul and tossed him into the harbor, and most of the townspeople were on the wharf by the time he swam ashore. A woman who had watched the scene from a rowboat summarized it: ‘Both of ’em was naked.’ The scandal was now public property.

When the young Steeds working in the Devon office heard of this disgraceful exhibition—even slaves were joking about it—they knew that they must act. Instructing one of the blacks to inform Paul of their departure, they marched soberly down to the wharf, climbed aboard a sloop and set out for the Refuge. As they sailed past Peace Cliff they rehearsed what they must say, and by the time they reached the marsh and entered Dividing Creek they were prepared.

Gravely they stopped at each of the Refuge plantations, advising one senior or another that he must come immediately to Herbert Steed’s big house, and there they unfolded the shameful story.

‘Before I tell you what happened yesterday in Patamoke, I suppose you know that Paul’s flown apart … as if struck by a bomb.’

‘I don’t know,’ Herbert Steed replied somewhat stuffily. He was a rotund, pompous man who sniffed before each sentence.

‘He’s taken to beating Eden, that’s his wife’s maid, with a heavy strap.’

‘Striking a slave!’

‘And after he beats her, he lies with her.’

‘You haven’t told the women?’ Herbert gasped.

‘Everyone knows. You must be aware that Aunt Susan is practically living with Captain Turlock.’

This rumor had reached the Refuge, and Herbert Steed already knew what he thought about that: ‘Swamp trash.’

‘Yesterday things reached a climax. After practically condoning the
affair for these months, Paul storms into Patamoke, tries to murder Turlock, and ends being thrown into the harbor.’

To everyone’s surprise, Herbert broke into laughter. ‘Paul Steed thinking he could commit a murder. He couldn’t swat a fly. I’m surprised the maid—what’s her name?—allows him to beat her.’

‘She doesn’t any longer. One of the slaves told me she grabbed his wrist and said, “No more,” and he was afraid to continue.’

Now the young men resumed the serious discussion. ‘The scandal we could absorb. But Paul’s destroying the Devon plantations. And before long his pathetic decisions will begin to affect yours, too.’

‘How do you mean?’ Herbert asked sharply; where money was involved, he was involved.

‘Take the stores. No one’s really supervising them. Clerks wander in at nine o’clock. Last month I visited all four—fly-ridden, filthy, didn’t look like Steed property at all.’

The other nephew broke in: ‘Are you aware that the field-clearing gang hasn’t burned an acre this year? No one’s hammering at them.’

‘Enough!’ Herbert said. And he underwent a remarkable transformation: his shoulders squared; his eyes focused sharply; and his mouth set grimly. He was fifty-three years old and for some time had believed that he had retired from daily responsibilities, but the possibility that the Steed plantations might collapse galvanized him. Briskly he rose from his chair and announced, ‘I’m taking charge of the Devon plantations—now.’

He had allowed no discussion from his cousins. Packing a few things in a canvas bag, he went to the sloop and was about to depart with his nephews when a prudent thought occurred: ‘Timothy, run back and fetch us three good guns.’ And when these arrived they set sail for Devon.