“What are you going to do now?” Jordan asked quietly.
He opened his eyes, lifted his head. “Travel overland, to Philadelphia. I know the way. Their people can figure what to do with my dead
man then, yes?” Ethan waited for a host of objections. He felt only a healing massage of his shoulder.
“This has cost you a great deal.”
Ethan turned his attention to a woodcock flying past.
“How much?” Jordan pressed.
“‘Much’?”
“How much money, Ethan?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“Five … ?”
“It is very expensive—bribing jailers, hiring this schooner and her crew, buying slaves.”
“Buying—?”
“Then sending those slave brothers north, clothed by Judith, free papers signed by her husband, whom she would never tolerate if he owned slaves for more than an hour’s turnaround.”
“Good God, Ethan, do you have anything left?”
“Thirty-seven dollars, fifty-eight and one-half cents. Can I hire a funeral coach for that? And get us to Philadelphia?”
“Where in hell did you get the money?”
“I borrowed it from my brother.”
“Winthrop?”
“Yes.”
“Against?”
“All future claim to inheritance.”
“Ethan, does your mother know of this?”
“Of course not.”
“Terms?”
“Thirty days. At thirty-percent interest. He made it easy for me to remember.”
“Nonsense.” Jordan sneered. “Winthrop was a terrible student of arithmetic. He made it easy for himself to remember. Do you need a hearse driver? I charge a very reasonable rate.”
Ethan raised his head. “Jordan—your patients.”
“All farmed out to other physicians. Even Mrs. Willard found me so pitiful she said she only wished us to be together, even if we were no longer peering down her throat.”
“Thank you. I did not expect … Jordan, I thought—”
“I’m glad I can still surprise you.” He tousled Ethan’s windswept hair like the sheet anchor men on the
Standard
used to. “Clever boy.”
Ethan turned away. His mother had been right. He did not even have to ask for help. How did he deserve this man as his friend, agreeing to share yet another burden?
“Stop that!” his master exploded.
Ethan wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. “Forgive me. I am taught better than this. So rude.”
“Not rude,” the doctor insisted. “You’re just exhausted even beyond your celebrated endurance. Where are your handkerchiefs?”
Ethan shrugged.
“Good,” Jordan decided, pulling one from his waistcoat. “I will have a subject to reprimand your peerless mother about upon our return. ‘You sent your son into the wilds of the north country again, Annie Randolph, without handkerchiefs?’”
“It wasn’t her fault.” Ethan defended his mother stoutly. “I left so abruptly. No one calls her Annie but you. Jordan—”
“I’ll keep the first watch. Rest now, son,” the doctor urged.
“I wish I was your son.”
“Ethan—”
“I’m sorry. I am as bad as my father, am I not, trying to arrange destinies? I have been at Windover too long, that’s all. It is good to be in your company again, sir.”
Ethan lifted Mrs. Atwater into the funeral coach. She turned,
touched his face. He could not see her features distinctly beyond her heavy veils. Her silence astonished him, even more than the tender gesture from this woman so parsimonious with her eggs.
“All will be well,
madame,”
he whispered.
“I know, sweet boy.”
“Sweet boy”?
She was frightened, perhaps. Jordan, her remaining black-clad sentinel, now waited for him in the driver’s seat of the coach. Ethan climbed up, joining him.
Rarely was a funeral procession disturbed, Ethan realized. It was a perfect place to hide stolen cargo, to travel without an excess of questioning. He must tell Judith.
Dieu-his
gentle wife’s intrigues had him thinking like a criminal.
“Stop grinning. You’re supposed to be in mourning.”
Ethan snorted softly. “For that slave stealer?”
Jordan shook his head. “You can be quite convincingly Virginian,” he admitted.
“I am Virginian.”
“When shall we let him out of that hot box beneath the seat?”
“Another mile of bouncing might do it. Make him think twice about approaching my wife again.”
“Ethan!”
“What is it?”
The physician grinned now. “This is spectacular, what we’re doing.”
Ethan shrugged. “An old sailor’s trick.”
“I wish Judith were here.”
“I’m glad she’s not. Jordan, once we secure Captain Atwater and his mother in Philadelphia, I need to … to finish business in Harmony Springs. I have to find that stake, the one Eli Mercer had in his hand as he died. Because my wife is not safe, now that our name is known. And … Jordan, I think she sometimes wonders if I killed her father.” He stared forward. “It has grown, this small seed of suspicion. Now she thinks I allowed her captain to die, too.”
“Atwater was never hers, Ethan. Judith is devoted to you.”
“And to her Light.”
“They are not incongruous devotions.”
“No,” he admitted.
“There. Do not nurture your own seeds.”
“I have already done that.”
“How?”
“In my time at Windover, my brothers have taunted me, in the same way they used to when I was a child. Small, dark, not a proper Randolph. Now about … about Judith not being faithful.”
“Ethan, you never truly doubted Judith?”
“No. But I was afraid, and she had Captain Atwater and her secrets. I used my fears. I gave them free reign to keep her there with Mother, so I could do this part alone. I did not lie, I never lie. But I let her think Atwater was dead. That was so much more difficult than I thought it would be. You know those eyes, that voice raised in her indignation! Jordan, I said terrible things to keep those eyes from routing out what I was about to do.”
“She will forgive you, when she understands.”
“Or go back to her people, feeling betrayed, out of patience with me. She must be safe, even if she throws me over and chooses that way. I need to pick up the scent, track the one who killed Eli.”
“Ethan, to most of Harmony Springs you are that murderer. Freed by way of your family’s influence, then audacious thief of their traveling minister besides.”
“Perhaps. But not all see me that way. Not the one who knows better.”
“Do you think Eli’s killer is among them?”
“Yes. Judith now suffers the company of my imperfect family until I can find him. My mother and Sally will keep her safe until my return.” He laughed softly, without mirth. “I wonder if she will be able to bear the sight of me by then?”
“What if Eli’s tree stake has been destroyed? What will you do?”
Ethan bowed his head. “I don’t know.”
“We should talk with all who will receive us at Harmony Springs. About that day. We should begin with the children, I think. You got on well with the children, didn’t you?”
“‘We’?”
“Of course,
we
! You’re my associate. We’re partners now, Dr. Blair. I need you. And you’ll need someone to watch your back. Now, Ethan, you have Captain Atwater’s letter of explanation. And you have your wife’s love. Please let the poor man out of his box and into his mother’s arms.”
J
udith sat in the vine-shrouded, one-room house, praying for a vision. None came. She began to doubt the meaning of the first ones. Were they angry about her doubt, the Blair women? Or were they all along telling her to go west without Ethan? Were they trying to rid their family of this slave stealer who was now stealing the only Randolph son who could give Windover an heir? Did they ponder putting her away, the same way Ethan did?
Clicks. Reprimanding clicks sounded at her ears, even after she pressed the heels of her hands against them. Another visitation by the slaves in the hold of the
Standard?
Or the descent of madness?
Judith fled the house and stumbled toward the river. She sat on the gentle bluff above the old, ruined pier, weeping. A nudge. Judith smiled, weaving her hand through her deep pocket to get closer to the tumbler in the secret sea inside her body. This child was the keeper of her sense, she felt, over these strange days. Her hand touched Ethan’s letter, folded and refolded, there, beside their child. She removed it, read again the bold, sweeping hand she knew so well:
Dearest Judith,
If it were within my power to undo the events of the past days, believe me, they would be undone. I regret any grief the course of my future may bring you as well. I am called upon a journey with Dr. Foster, one that does not allow for further missives. Kindly tender my regards to my family at Windover and my further regret in having to include them in this wilderness of correspondence. Will you strive to be content in the women’s care, Judith, and not place any of my faults at their feet?
My return will carry with it hope for your forgiveness. I will not return otherwise.
—E. Blair
“Not return”
shocked her less this time as the paper warmed between her hands. She ran her fingers over the ink. Dark, black, determined. But something else; tired, she realized now. Perhaps he did not mean to frighten or threaten her with that phrase. Perhaps it even pained him, too, this parting?
“Dearest Judith” …
Was it just his habit, from their previous letters, to address her so? And why had he signed it
“Blair,”
except that he wished to be returned into the grace of their lives together as the physician’s assistant and botanist’s daughter?
How Judith missed her father’s good counsel, his gentle reprimands of her pride. She’d slapped her husband because he’d wounded that, her pride. His brothers were eaten with envy. Of course they taunted him about the parentage of the child she carried. Ethan had endured their company, for the sake of family harmony. It was she who needed forgiveness. What were his transgressions beside hers? What were her fears that she would peel aside his veiled eyes and find a murderer? Her own madness, surely.
“I hope thee is in good health at this place, Friend Judith.”
She crushed Ethan’s letter between her fingers and turned.
Prescott Lyman stared down at her from the bluff.
Judith felt as if she were underwater. And heavy, rooted with the
burden of the child within her. Ethan’s letter turned to pulp under her fingers.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“Visiting. Upon the invitation of thy sister-in-law, Clara Randolph. Judith, did thee know nothing of it?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Oh, my dear. Here. Take my arm.”
She stumbled in the opposite direction, toward the river.
A lace-edged handkerchief appeared over the hill, attached to Hester’s hand. “Judith, stop! Where are you going? Have we not made you a fine surprise?”
Hester was quickly joined by stern Clara. “Mind the marsh, dear, or you’ll ruin yet another pair of slippers. Your husband will be circuit-doctoring for another month just to keep you shod! Now, I do hope you might be our guest long enough to see the prodigious changes in our brother Ethan, Mr. Lyman. He didn’t leave your church’s company on the best of terms, we understand.”
Judith barely heard the women. She could not stop the riot of clicks going off in her head as she surrendered herself to their company.
“Here’s our chance to make all right, were that wandering boy to return from his latest … adventure,” Clara continued.
“We thought our poor new sister was looking frail in Ethan’s absence. We sought to cheer her with an invitation to one of her own church.”
“Meeting,” Prescott Lyman corrected Hester softly.
“Yes, forgive us, Mr. Lyman, Meeting,” Clara said. “Oh, Hester, for shame. And you, a churchman’s wife?”
Hester pouted. “Judith used to be very good at correcting all of us about titles and lifted hats and such,” she insisted. “But that’s before Ethan … That is to say … when she was still a Quaker.”
Clara took Prescott Lyman’s arm as they walked up from the river. “Well, little did we know that our open invitation to Harmony Springs Meeting would bring the very man to whom we are indebted for taking on our little brother in his courting pursuits last year. This is God’s Providence, is it not, Hester?”
“Providential indeed,” Clayton’s wife agreed, absently sniffing the air. “Ah. I believe Martha is baking almond puddings.”
Clara smiled again, showing teeth so even, they looked filed. “Almond puddings? You are an honored dinner guest of our dear father-in-law, Mr. Lyman.”
Judith looked past the live oaks and tulip poplars to see Anne and Winthrop Randolph sitting in the spring afternoon’s sun, like the king and queen of the fairy tales their Scots-Irish neighbors in Pennsylvania used to tell when she and her mother would make sick-visits. Judith had tried not to listen, for they were frivolous. But the stories had healing properties, she remembered thinking even then, to the sick children. The sight of Ethan’s parents, waiting for her, concern on their faces, had the same effect on her now. She must learn those stories. To tell to her own child.
As they approached, Judith saw the elder Winthrop Randolph’s habitual scowl deepen. Though her father-in-law remained a duty-bound host in returning the hospitality Prescott Lyman had shown his son, Judith felt again that she had an ally in the master of Windover.
H
er mind scrambled in confusion when the old man asked for her company in his accounts room. He’d never done that before. Judith glanced up at Anne, who interrupted her own instructions to her servants to nod, smiling. Judith took her father-in-law’s arm.
“Sit,” he commanded, closing the door on Ethan’s memory chamber.
She did.
He began, as always, without preamble. “Did this man court you, there in Pennsylvania?”
“Yes.”
“What is he doing here?”
“Clara invited—”
“I know who invited him! And what those two insufferable women are after. I want to know what
he’s
after!”
Judith shook her head.
“Damnation! First the slave-stealing sea captain, now this mealy-mouthed Quaker! Have you been playing my son for a fool, woman?”
“I have not, sir.”
“That child you carry, who is the father?”
“My husband is.”
He paced to the window, looked out at Martha’s cookhouse, and farther, at the stables. She stared at the knot of hands behind his back. “Good, then. Established.” He turned. “God’s blood, Judith, I am too old to be put in charge of these affairs. Your husband should be dealing with you and these leftover suitors of yours! How long does it take to bury a man? Where is he?”
“I don’t know!” Judith stifled her sob with the back of her hand.
“There, there, don’t cry now. I promised her I would not make you cry.” The master of Windover rifled through his waistcoat pockets until he found a handkerchief, then pitched it into her lap. He approached, retrieved it, then fanned it out beneath her nose. “A good blow now, there’s the girl,” he urged quietly.
She obliged.
“Good, good. I am not such a beast anymore, am I?”
“You have never been. Not to me.”
“But you don’t discount the stories?”
“No,” she admitted.
“It’s well you should not. I have regrets I will carry to my grave, if that husband of yours will allow me to take my overdue leave of this world. But as for this present predicament—you have no love for this man, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“That is apparent, even to me. Well, don’t fret yourself, brave little Quakeress. You’re among your family, in my house. My capricious son left you in the right place, if he had to leave you anywhere. We’ll look after you here. Do you understand?”
She nodded, blowing her nose again.
“Good girl. Now, let us figure our strategy, shall we? Clara has filled this Quaker with stories of Ethan throwing you over, no doubt. But you’re growing with my son’s child. You’ve made your choice. Why does he still want you, this cold-fish farmer?”
“I didn’t know he wanted me the first time!”
“When?”
“In Pennsylvania … when my father was ill. At first I thought he was being kind, you see.”
“Good God, woman, did you know my son was courting you?”
“Oh, yes, once he … Ethan was much more direct.”
The old man’s grin turned mischievous. “That’s good. Learned something from that Frenchman, did he?”
Judith bowed her her head, feeling her cheeks flush at the thought of the willow’s trunk at her back, supporting Ethan’s deep kisses.
“Well, I don’t like something about the look this farmer has for you. And if a woman of your sense has never recognized it as ardor, perhaps it is not. Perhaps it is something else. To hell with my Virginian’s reputation for hospitality. Let’s feed him one dinner, then get him out. Let’s make him those damned interfering women’s problem, shall we?”
Judith smiled. “Yes.”
“Good, then. He’ll not be welcome here. He can pitch his tent between Winthrop and Clara and Clayton and Hester. You may refuse all their invitations to visit, too. I hope he stays the season and eats them out of both their houses!”
A bubble of laughter came up her throat. Startled, Judith reached up to suppress it.
Her father-in-law took her hand. “Laughter’s allowed here,” he told her, “encouraged, even. By my taskmaster, your husband.” He squeezed her hand gently. “The look about you now. It puts me in mind of his mother’s when she was carrying him. She was very dear to me then.”
“So I understand, sir.”
“She was so frightened when first I looked in the cradle. Why? Because he came early and was small, not as robust as the others? ‘Do not fret yourself. I am well pleased,’ I told her. The look she bestowed on me then … . Judith, I almost believed she was forgiving me for never loving her. Even for taking her too soon, when she was still a child. For all my transgressions. He accomplished that somehow, her dark, tiny, kicking boy, in that moment. Imagine. I envy the love between yourself and my son, Judith.”
She pressed their clasped hands to her cheek.
“Stop that. I have no more handkerchiefs. Women get so sentimental when in breeding. My wife was worst of all with him. I hope this means you are carrying a boy? Your Quaker visions have not foretold—?”
“No.”
“Ah, then. It doesn’t matter, this time, what you’ve planted together. Women are lovely adornments. And you are both young. Almost younger than I can remember being.” He walked back to his window, frowned at the dark-clad figure walking beside Hester. “That man is pure purpose. He won’t leave until he’s sure you’re lost to your husband.
Your increasing middle would deter most. It seems to fire him somehow. Damnation. I don’t like him,” he muttered.
J
udith was glad when the one dinner she was required to attend with Prescott Lyman was over. She was glad to be out of the stifling dining room, with too much color and talk. But Prescott Lyman had rid himself of her sisters-in-law, and followed her.
“Judith, please wait! Allow me to walk with thee.”
She turned. Aaron was at his shop, quietly making boot adjustments Winthrop had demanded. Micah was close, too, at his wheel. Their vigilant eyes tracked her movements. And she could hear Martha’s song rising from the kitchen. They were all watching out for her. She’d be safe, if she stayed in the yard. And perhaps she needed to purge herself, finally, of this man and his cold, angry eyes. She slowed, but did not look at him.
“It was kind of thee to sit with me at dinner,” he began.
“I was honoring my family.”
“Are they thy family now, Judith?”
“Yes.”
“The food was pleasing. I wish I could have eaten without discomfort.”
“Discomfort?”
“At being served by … them.”
“Them?”
“It doesn’t bother thee? Even at table, indeed everywhere we might go on Windover land, to be surrounded by all this blackness.”
“They are not black. Coal is black, jet is black. These are people. Fine people, of many shades of color.”
“That is because—”
“I know the reason. It does not make them lesser children of God. It does not make them less beautiful to me. They are my friends. And they are my husband’s family.”
“His family? Thee sounds like the other frivolous Randolph women. The drops of whiteness in their blood have been swallowed by the black! They are thy husband’s property.”
“He was born into this world. He does not choose it now. Go home, Prescott. See how many you can send to Africa so their presence does not disturb you so.”
He was silent for a long time. Judith walked, taking her refuge in the children’s laughter that flowed out of Martha’s kitchen, the soft chinks from Micah’s forge. She thought he would leave her side, when Prescott
Lyman spoke again. Softly. Contritely. “I understand thy dismay with me, Judith. I was severely reprimanded by our Meeting for my words at parting. But none has castigated me more for my behavior than I have myself. I have tried to find thee—”
“You have tracked us like runaways, Prescott Lyman,” she challenged him.
“Yes. For that I was sat upon at Meeting. Judith. I begged the Elders to allow me to accept thy sister-in-law’s invitation, now that thy presence here has been revealed to us. By one of your husband’s own family, seeking help for thee.”
“Help?”
“Clara Randolph says thee has suffered a great deal in thy marriage. She suspected his punishments. And she says there are great burdens on thy heart since thy husband abandoned thee.”
“My sister-in-law is mistaken. I have been neither abandoned nor punished. My husband is good and true and riding circuit with the physician who teaches him. He will come home soon.”
“I see. Windover is thy home?”
“No. We live upriver.”
“At thine own plantation? Surrounded by black slaves?”
“No! We live modestly.” No more, no more. What was the use? Clara or Hester would tell him everything they knew, and he would find them. She thought of the days of running, of relentless trackers who’d driven them to the shores of the Atlantic. She would never feel safe in their Richmond rooms again. Another home, lost.
“I see there is no mission here, except perhaps one that humbles me further.” He finally ceased his silent walk in her footsteps.
She stopped, felt the evening breeze in her skirts. “Prescott?” she called quietly.
He turned. “Yes?”
“How fare the children?”
Silence. Then, “Still suffering from the events of last spring, there at the farm.”
“That grieves me.”
“I have considered moving Ruth and Hugh away. Or even joining a migration west.”