A Place Called Freedom (33 page)

30

J
AY WENT TO
W
ILLIAMSBURG WITH HIGH HOPES
.

He had been dismayed to learn of the sympathies of his neighbors—they were all liberal Whigs, not a conservative Tory among them—but he felt sure that in the colonial capital he would find men loyal to the king, men who would welcome him as a valuable ally and promote his political career.

Wilhamsburg was small but grand. The main street, Duke of Gloucester Street, was a mile long and a hundred feet broad. The Capitol was at one end and the College of William and Mary at the other—two stately brick buildings whose English-style architecture gave Jay a reassuring feeling of the might of the monarchy. There was a theater and several shops, with craftsmen making silver candlesticks and mahogany dining tables. In Purdie & Dixon’s printing office Jay bought the
Virginia Gazette
, a newspaper full of advertisements for runaway slaves.

The wealthy planters who made up the colony’s ruling elite resided on their estates, but they crowded into Williamsburg when the legislature was in session in the Capitol building, and consequently the town was full of inns with rooms to let. Jay moved into the Raleigh Tavern, a low white clapboard building with bedrooms in the attic.

He left his card and a note at the palace, but he had to wait three days for an appointment with the new governor, the baron de Botetourt. When finally he got his invitation it was not for a personal audience, as he had expected, but for a reception with fifty other guests. Clearly the governor had yet to realize that Jay was an important ally in a hostile environment.

The palace was at the end of a long drive that ran north from the midpoint of Duke of Gloucester Street. It was another English-looking brick building, with tall chimneys and dormer windows in the roof, like a country house. The imposing entrance hall was decorated with knives, pistols and muskets arranged in elaborate patterns, as if to emphasize the military might of the king.

Unfortunately Botetourt was the very opposite of what Jay had hoped for. Virginia needed a tough, austere governor who would strike fear into the hearts of mutinous colonists, but Botetourt turned out to be a fat, friendly man with the air of a prosperous wine merchant welcoming his customers to a tasting.

Jay watched him greeting his guests in the long ballroom. The man had no idea what subversive plots might be hatching in the minds of the planters.

Bill Delahaye was there and shook hands with Jay. “What do you think of our new governor?”

“I’m not sure he realizes what he’s taken on,” Jay said.

Delahaye said: “He may be cleverer than he looks.”

“I hope so.”

“There’s a big card game tomorrow night, Jamisson—would you like me to introduce you?”

Jay had not spent an evening gambling since he had left London. “Certainly.”

In the supper room beyond the ballroom, wine and cakes were served. Delahaye introduced Jay to several other men. A stout, prosperous-looking man of about fifty said: “Jamisson? Of the Edinburgh Jamissons?” His tone was a little hostile.

The face had a vaguely familiar cast, although Jay was sure he had never met the man before. “The family seat is Castle Jamisson in Fife,” Jay replied.

“The castle that used to belong to William McClyde?”

“Indeed.” Jay realized the man reminded him of Robert: he had the same light eyes and determined mouth. “I’m afraid I didn’t hear your name.…”

“I’m Hamish Drome. That castle should have been mine.”

Jay was startled. Drome was the family name of Robert’s mother, Olive. “So you’re the long-lost relative who went to Virginia!”

“And you must be the son of George and Olive.”

“No, that’s my half-brother, Robert. Olive died and my father remarried. I’m the younger son.”

“Ah. And Robert has pushed you out of the nest, just as his mother did me.”

There was an insolent undertone to Drome’s remarks, but Jay was intrigued by what the man was implying. He recalled the drunken revelations made by Peter McKay at the wedding. “I’ve heard it said that Olive forged the will.”

“Aye—and she murdered Uncle William, too.”

“What?”

“No question. William wasn’t sick. He was a hypochondriac, he just loved to think he was ill. He should have lived to a ripe old age. But six weeks after Olive arrived he had changed his will and died. Evil woman.”

“Ha.” Jay felt a strange kind of satisfaction. The sacrosanct Olive, whose portrait hung in the place of honor in the hall of Jamisson Castle, was a murderess who should have been hanged. Jay had always resented the way she was spoken of in reverent tones, and now he welcomed gleefully the news that she had been a blackhearted villain. “Didn’t you get anything?” he asked Drome.

“Not an acre. I came out here with six dozen pairs of Shetland wool stockings, and now I’m the biggest haberdasher in Virginia. But I never wrote home. I was afraid Olive would somehow take this from me too.”

“But how could she?”

“I don’t know. Just superstition, perhaps. I’m glad to hear she’s dead. But it seems the son is like her.”

“I always thought of him as being like my father. He’s insatiably greedy, whoever he takes after.”

“If I were you I wouldn’t let him know my address.”

“He’s going to inherit all of my father’s business enterprises—I can’t imagine he’ll want my little plantation too.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Drome said; but Jay thought he was being overdramatic.

Jay did not get Governor Botetourt to himself until the end of the party, when the guests were leaving by the garden entrance. He took the governor’s sleeve and said in a low voice: “I want you to know that I’m completely loyal to you and to the Crown.”

“Splendid, splendid,” Botetourt said loudly. “So good of you to say so.”

“I’ve rccently arrived here, and I’ve been scandalized by the attitudes of the most prominent men in the colony—scandalized. Whenever you’re ready to stamp out treachery and crush disloyal opposition, I’m on your side.”

Botetourt looked hard at him, taking him seriously at last, and Jay perceived that there was a shrewd politician behind the affable exterior. “How kind—but let’s hope that not too much stamping and crushing will be required. I find that persuasion and negotiation are so much better—the effects last longer, don’t you know. Major Wilkinson—good-bye! Mrs. Wilkinson—so good of you to come.”

Persuasion and negotiation, Jay thought as he passed out into the garden. Botetourt had fallen into a nest of vipers and he wanted to negotiate with them. Jay said to Delahaye: “I wonder how long it will take him to grasp the realities out here.”

“I think he understands already,” Delahaye said. “He just doesn’t believe in baring his teeth before he’s ready to bite.”

Sure enough, next day the amiable new governor dissolved the general assembly.

Matthew Murchman lived in a green-painted clapboard house next to the bookshop on Duke of Gloucester Street. He did business in the front parlor, surrounded by law books and papers. He was a small, nervous gray squirrel of a man, darting about the room to retrieve a paper from one pile and hide it in another.

Jay signed the papers mortgaging the plantation. He was disappointed at the amount of the loan: only four hundred pounds sterling. “I was lucky to get so much,” Murchman twittered. “With tobacco doing so badly I’m not sure the place could be sold for that.”

“Who is the lender?” Jay asked.

“A syndicate, Captain Jamisson. That’s how these things work nowadays. Are there any liabilities you would like me to settle immediately?”

Jay had brought with him a sheaf of bills, all the debts he had run up since he had arrived in Virginia almost three months ago. He handed them over to Murchman, who glanced through them quickly and said: “About a hundred pounds here. I’ll give you notes for all these before you leave town. And let me know if you buy anything while you’re here.”

“I probably will,” Jay said. “A Mr. Smythe is selling a carriage with a beautiful pair of gray horses. And I need two or three slaves.”

“I’ll let it be known that you’re in funds with me.”

Jay did not quite like the idea of borrowing so much money and leaving it all in the lawyer’s hands. “Let me have a hundred pounds in gold,” he said. “There’s a card game at the Raleigh tonight.”

“Certainly, Captain Jamisson. It’s your money!”

There was not much left of the four hundred pounds when Jay arrived back at the plantation in his new equipage. He had lost at cards, he had bought four slave girls, and he had failed to beat down Mr. Smythe’s price for the carriage and horses.

However, he had cleared all his debts. He would simply get credit from local merchants as he had before. His first tobacco crop would be ready for sale soon after Christmas, and he would pay his bills from the proceeds.

He was apprehensive of what Lizzie might say about the carriage, but to his relief she hardly mentioned it. She obviously had something else on her mind that she was bursting to tell him.

As always, she was most attractive when animated: her dark eyes flashed and her skin glowed pink. However, he no longer felt a surge of desire every time he saw her. Since she had become pregnant he had felt diffident. He imagined it was bad for the baby if the mother had sexual intercourse during pregnancy. But that was not his real reason. Lizzie’s being a mother somehow put him off. He did not like the thought of mothers having sexual lusts. Anyway, it was rapidly becoming impracticable: the bulge she carried in front of her was getting too big.

As soon as he had kissed her she said: “Bill Sowerby has left.”

“Really?” Jay was surprised. The man had gone without his wages. “Good thing we’ve got Lennox to take over.”

“I think Lennox drove him away. Apparently Sowerby had lost a lot of money to him at cards.”

That made sense. “Lennox is a good card player.”

“Lennox wants to be overseer here.”

They were standing on the front portico, and at that moment Lennox came around the side of the house. With his usual lack of grace he did not welcome Jay back. Instead he said: “There’s a consignment of salt cod in barrels just arrived.”

“I ordered it,” Lizzie said. “It’s for the field hands.”

Jay was annoyed. “Why do you want to feed them fish?”

“Colonel Thumson says they work better. He gives his slaves salt fish every day and meat once a week.”

“Colonel Thumson is richer than I am. Send the stuff back, Lennox.”

“They’re going to have to work hard this winter, Jay,” Lizzie protested. “We have to clear all the woodland in Pond Copse ready for planting with tobacco next spring.”

Lennox said quickly: “That isn’t necessary. There’s plenty of life left in the fields, with good manuring.”

“You can’t manure forever,” Lizzie rejoined. “Colonel Thumson clears land every winter.”

Jay realized this was an argument the two of them had been through before.

Lennox said: “We don’t have enough hands. Even with the men from the
Rosebud
, we can only just manage to plant the fields we have. Colonel Thumson has more slaves than us.”

“That’s because he makes more money—due to better methods,” Lizzie said triumphantly.

Lennox sneered: “Women just don’t understand these things.”

Lizzie snapped: “Leave us, please, Mr. Lennox—immediately.”

Lennox looked angry but he went away.

“You must get rid of him, Jay,” she said.

“I don’t see why—”

“It’s not just that he’s brutal. Frightening people is the only thing he’s good at. He can’t understand farming and he doesn’t know anything about tobacco—and the worst of it is he’s not interested in learning.”

“He knows how to get the hands working hard.”

“There’s no point in driving them hard if they’re doing the wrong work!”

“You’ve suddenly become an expert on tobacco.”

“Jay, I grew up on a big estate and I saw it go bankrupt—not through the laziness of peasants, but because my father died and my mother couldn’t cope with managing land. Now I see you making all the familiar errors—staying away too long, mistaking harshness for discipline, letting someone else make strategic decisions. You wouldn’t run a regiment this way!”

“You don’t know anything about running a regiment.”

“And you don’t know anything about running a farm!”

Jay was getting angry but he held it in. “So what are you asking me to do?”

“Dismiss Lennox.”

“But who would take over?”

“We could do it together.”

“I don’t want to be a farmer!”

“Then let me do it.”

Jay nodded. “I thought as much.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“All this is just so that you can be in charge, isn’t it?”

He was afraid she would explode, but instead she went quiet. “Is that what you really think?”

“As a matter of fact, it is.”

“I’m trying to save you. You’re headed for disaster, I’m fighting to prevent it, and you think I just want to order people around. If that’s what you think of me, why the devil did you marry me?”

He did not like her to use strong language: it was too masculine. “In those days you used to be pretty,” he said.

Her eyes flashed fire, but she did not speak. Instead she turned around and walked into the house.

Jay breathed a sigh of relief. It was not often he got the better of her.

After a moment he followed her in. He was surprised to see McAsh in the hall, dressed in a waistcoat and indoor shoes, putting a new pane of glass in a window. What the devil was he doing in the house?

“Lizzie!” Jay called. He went into the drawing room and found her there. “Lizzie, I just saw McAsh in the hall.”

“I’ve put him in charge of maintenance. He’s been painting the nursery.”

“I don’t want that man in my house.”

Her reaction took him by surprise. “Then you’ll just have to suffer it!” she blazed.

“Well—”

“I will not be alone here while Lennox is on the estate. I absolutely refuse, do you understand?”

“All right—”

“If McAsh goes, I go too!” She stormed out of the room.