The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles (6 page)

“‘—the children of God,’” Judson finished wearily. Of all his father’s annoying personal characteristics, the old man’s fondness for scripture offended Judson the most. Angus was especially partial to St. Matthew. So taken was he with the message and language of the Sermon on the Mount, he had re-named his own father’s plantation on its low hill above the Rappahannock in honor of it.

“Shall we move to another text?” Judson asked. “‘Blessed are the merciful—’”

“I want to hear what in damnation angered Shaw!”

Judson stared at his father. Despite his age—he was nearly sixty—Angus Fletcher’s slight frame suggested great strength. He worked diligently at the business affairs of Sermon Hill every day of the week except Sunday, when he attended church in the morning, prayed in the privacy of his bedchamber all afternoon, and forbade anything that smacked of light amusement on his property throughout the entire Sabbath. The old man did have a certain biblical majesty, Judson reflected as he studied the seated figure outlined against the river and the rolling, heat-hazed hills beyond.

But he could never remember a time when there had been tenderness or even kindness between father and son. Even in Judson’s earliest recollections, it seemed that his father had treated him sternly; as a full-grown man. Wanting—demanding—more than a boy could give. Judson had resigned in defeat by the time he was ten. He could never be as clever, as strong, as pious as Angus expected him to be. Perhaps that was part of the trouble.

Of course, being the second son was another part. He could not inherit, hence was less important than Donald. Even so, the same kind of relationship existed between the old man and Donald, ten years Judson’s senior.

Donald was gout-ridden at thirty-five. He downed great quantities of port and claret when Angus wasn’t watching. Further, he never shrank from proclaiming how proud he was to be a member of the Burgesses chosen to represent Virginia at the Congress.

Of their mother Judson could remember next to nothing. She had died when he was four. Donald recalled her as a kindly, religious woman who slipped silently through the house attending to her duties, totally in awe of her husband.

Resentful of Angus’ outburst about Shaw, Judson said, “The text I had in mind will bring us to that subject. Remember, Father—the merciful ‘shall obtain mercy.’ Shaw’s doing his best to see you get just the opposite.”

Angus made a face, rang a handbell. In a moment, one of the liveried house blacks—they were a caste above the field hands—glided to the old man’s elbow with a goblet of cold spring water. Angus Fletcher extended his hand. The goblet was placed into it. He did not look around. He expected the drink to be where it was supposed to be, and it was.

He sipped, then said, “Be more explicit, I have work to do.”

“Shaw was whipping Dicey. I stopped him.”

“You
stopped
him? You don’t run Sermon Hill! And unless you change your whoring ways and your politics to boot, you won’t even receive so much as one shilling when I pass on.”

“I’ve heard that threat before,” Judson returned. He was cool, but it took effort. “I think you’re facing a more immediate one—”

Briefly, he described his conversation with Seth McLean, as well as the stabbed figure and slate he’d found by the roadside. The description seemed to unnerve Angus Fletcher slightly. At least, the wrinkled hand and the water goblet shook for a moment.

Solely to antagonize the old man, Judson crossed his boots, stretched and yawned. It worked:

“Go on, go on!” Angus exclaimed.

Judson still took his time before resuming:

“Seth heard a rumor that our buck Larned may be responsible for stirring up some of the discontent. Since Dicey is Larned’s woman, I stopped Shaw in the hope of preventing real trouble. I also stopped him because what he was doing was wrong.”

“Spare me your false piety, please!”

“Why, Father, I thought you thrived on piety.”

Angus colored.

“All right,” Judson shrugged, “we needn’t debate on moral grounds. I thought I was doing you a good service. Isn’t a little restraint preferable to an outbreak? To seeing Sermon Hill set afire, for instance? Rebellions have happened before.”

“Never here. And they won’t. I’ll chain up every one of those unwashed sons of Ham before—” He blinked twice as Judson raised a languid hand. “What, what?” he roared.

“Your biblical scholarship is faulty, I’m afraid,” Judson informed him. “The name Ham means swarthy, not black. If Noah’s son had any real descendants—other than fairy-story ones, that is—” Again Angus’ cheeks darkened. “—they were doubtless the Egyptians, or those people called Berbers, not the poor bastards the blackbirders bring from the West Africas to do your hard work.”

“When did you become a biblical expert, may I ask?” Angus sneered.

Judson smiled with great charm. “Why, at college. You paid for the lessons.”

“You’re not only disloyal to His Majesty, you’re a disgrace to the very flesh that bore you! To think I wasted hard money so your head could be filled with godless rot—”

“Any rot, as you call it, was probably acquired at Sermon Hill.”

Angus Fletcher flung the cold water in his son’s face.

Judson jumped up. He almost went for the old man’s throat. But he checked, big veins standing out in his strong hands as he sat down again and gripped the arms of his chair.

Angus Fletcher set the glass on a wicker stand, rose and walked toward his son. Despite his small stature he looked commanding, looming there in the shadows of the veranda. His voice shook:

“Month after month, I’ve prayed to God to make you realize what you have been born to, Judson Fletcher. On my knees I have begged God to help you understand how much struggle and toil has gone into building this estate—”

“Black struggle and black toil, you mean. And black blood.”

“Your grandfather labored and died to—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop it.”

“Blasphemer! You take the Lord’s name in—”

“Yes! Because I’ve heard that whitewashing till I’m sick of it!” Judson thundered. “I’ve known the real story for a long time—others in this district are more accurate reporters. Your father was a catchpenny redemptioner from Glasgow—a criminal, most likely, since he never signed his real name to his indenture papers—and didn’t even honor his contract. Two days after they landed him in Philadelphia, he ran away from the soul-driver trying to unload him for transportation plus profit! Years later, he bragged about it! He turned up here in Virginia and got a farmer’s girl pregnant and had to marry her, and then the farmer died suddenly of a fall from a horse while just he and my grandfather were riding in the woods. Believe me, I know all about how the first land for this whited sepulcher was acquired! It’s going to come down unless you stop thinking you’re the anointed of God, ruling the impious. Those black bucks and wenches are human beings! Dumb, dirty—but people nonetheless. Seth McLean understands that.”

“Seth McLean is a’ weakling and a fool. He owns a tenth of the land I do because he’s a tenth as canny.”

“A tenth as brutal!” Judson shouted. “A tenth as immoral!”

Angus Fletcher tried to strike his son. Judson caught the thin wrist, easily pushed it down. The old man was breathing heavily. For a moment Judson was worried. But he quickly recognized the raspy breathing as a sign of rage, not seizure:

“I’ve raised a liar, a drunkard, a lecher—”

“Who wishes to Christ—”

“You will not blaspheme in my presence!”

“—he’d never set eyes on this place.”

“Twenty-five years old and look at you! Dissolute—idle—your head full of sin and poisonous idolatries! Well, go chase after your painted whores in Richmond. Go follow your crazy friend George Clark who’s probably dead in the wilderness by now.
Or go join your damned brother and the traitors in Philadelphia!”

Judson Fletcher was so full of fury, he was afraid he might hit his father and injure him. And the father would not be able to stay the son’s hand. To protect himself from launching an attack which he knew he’d ultimately regret, Judson fought for control, tried the Bible again, with a forced smile:

“‘Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge—’”

“Hold your filthy tongue! You have no right to quote our Savior!”

“If you understood your Savior, old man, you’d do something about Reuven Shaw.”

“I will. I’ll order him to enforce even stricter discipline. To search the cabins for a drum—and to give a hundred strokes to any nigger hiding one.”

Red-faced, Judson started away. “I’ll inform Seth McLean of your decision.”

“I’m sure you will,” the old man jeered. “So as to get another opportunity for lewd concourse with his wife.”

Judson stopped as if he’d been bludgeoned. For the first time, Angus Fletcher looked amused; master of the situation. He actually laughed as he resumed his seat:

“If I have secrets which are public, so do you. Do you think I don’t remember how you felt about the McLean woman? How you still ride by her house night after night? One more reason I brand your friend McLean a fool. If you came on my property feeling about my wife as you feel about his I’d put a ball in your head.”

With grudging admiration, Judson said, “You old bastard. Sometimes I forget how foxy you are. Figured me out, have you?”

“Aye, long ago. But I constantly find new examples of your sinfulness—to my everlasting disgust. It came as no surprise to me when the Ashfords finally refused to permit their daughter to see you.”

“Your faith in me is constantly overwhelming—!”

Angus ignored that; pointed a wrathful finger:

“What decent folk would want you as a son-in-law? For any woman you’d marry, there’d be naught to look forward to save anguish over your debauchery. And if she bore you a child, she’d go to her grave in despair because of the taint you’d lay on the babe—”

Thunderstruck, Judson gaped at the old man. “What taint?
Your
taint—if any!”

Angus Fletcher shook his head in dogmatic denial. “Something in yourself has ruined you, Judson. Better to shoot any child you’d father than let him live his life with your devil’s blood poisoning him and all his generations after hi—”

“Be damned to you, you sanctimonious hypocrite!” Judson fairly screamed. “If I’ve devil’s blood, you’ve only to look in a glass to see who’s the source!”

If the words affected Angus, he concealed it. His features hardened into that expression of smug piety Judson hated with such passion.

“You’re carrying on like a raving fool,” Angus declared, “because you know this for a fact—Peggy McLean should thank heaven she was prevented from marrying you.”

“It—” Judson could barely speak. “—it must give you great pride and satisfaction to say that about your own flesh.”

“It gives me great sadness.”

“You vile, lying old
—”

Unable to continue, he wheeled and rushed away down the veranda. Angus shouted after him:

“At least you can have the decency to keep yourself from her presence. She knows your wicked purpose for calling at McLean’s! ‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery—’”

Scarlet again, Judson stalked straight ahead, fearful that if he turned back, there would be blows struck—or worse. It required an act of total will for him to continue toward the main door of the house as Angus’ voice grew more and more shrill:

“‘But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart—’”

Judson slammed the door, stormed past the startled house blacks who saw his thunderous look and glanced away.

He raced up to his room, tore off his sweated shirt in exchange for a new one. He hated his father. Yet surely some of the guilt for these dreadful confrontations was his. He took pleasure in tormenting the old man, in revenge for the old man tormenting him.
What in the name of God was wrong with him?

Even Donald’s faults were mild in comparison. In their father’s eyes, Donald’s chief sin was his conviction that the oppressive taxes and restrictive policies of Britain could no longer be borne. To that iniquity Judson added a score more, from adulterer to defender of slaves—

Ten minutes later, he was galloping one of the dirt lanes that crisscrossed the plantation. His saddlebags bulged with two unopened jugs of rum.

Judson saw black heads turn in the fields. One slate-blue face burned bright: the buck Larned, bare-shouldered, risen like some demonic figure from his weeding among the ear-shaped leaves of the tobacco plants.

Larned watched him ride on, and it seemed to Judson that his back was afire from the slave’s venomous glare. Judson was a white man, and Angus Fletcher’s son. No matter what he’d done for the wench Dicey, Larned would surely twist it so that it acquired a practical—a despicable—motivation: to preserve the wench for further work, perhaps. Or sex with Judson himself. What the hell was the use of trying to intervene if it generated so much hate from all of them?

That Judson understood how the whole slave problem had gotten so thoroughly out of hand in a hundred and fifty years didn’t mitigate his sense of outrage—or his sad conviction that the system would produce continuing friction and violence unless it was abolished.

The agricultural economy in which he’d grown up was based on grueling physical labor. So he really couldn’t fault the people of the southern colonies for buying black workers in preference to white ones when the latter were far less desirable.

Men such as his grandfather, for example, could be counted on to work for their buyers only until the expiration of their indenture contracts. Of course his grandfather hadn’t been willing to wait even that long!

The problem of finding a stable work force had grown still more difficult early in the century, when some combination of geniuses in the mother country had conceived the idea of clearing Britain of many of its undesirables—thieves, pickpockets, whores—whose crimes weren’t quite serious enough to earn them hang-ropes. The answer was to transport them across the ocean at three to five pounds a head, to be purchased on arrival for negotiated periods of servitude. But just exactly like the man who voluntarily indentured himself, transportees eventually were eligible for freedom—earned legally or, sooner, by flight