Devil Water (69 page)

There was a silence filled only by their rapid breathing. “Let us go outdoors then,” said Jenny.

“What!” he cried, staring at her incredulously. “What did you say?”

“Let us go outdoors,” she repeated. “I find this room as stifling as you do.”

She glided past him, and opened the door. “Come, my dear love,” she said quietly. “We’ll go down the river. There’s a bank of moss I know of underneath pine trees, and near a burn that ripples softly like the one in Whitton Dene.”

“Jenny --” he whispered, catching her by the shoulder, and turning her so that he might see her face. “Jenny, are you
sure?”

“Aye, Robbie,” she said.

Five days later in the early morning, Jenny and Evelyn stood upon the riverbank in front of Westover, watching Rob and Nero loading a capacious bateau with all the Wilsons’ worldly goods. The sun was shining after a night of gentle rain. A southerly breeze ruffled the river, and would combine with a flowing tide to help the adventurers on the first lap of their long journey to the far-off western lands.

The bateau was an amorphous sort of broad shallop with a slight keel, a tiller, and a large sail; it was also furnished with poles and oars. Evelyn had persuaded her father to give the young couple this useful craft as a wedding present. She herself had added a smoked ham, and delicacies such as wine, preserves, and spices. Also a bolt of homespun for when their clothes wore out.

Everything else Rob had bought himself, either from the plantation or from neighboring farms; the sacks of corn and tobacco seed, the hoes and shovels and plow, the axes, the saws and carpentry tools, two old but serviceable guns with extra flints and a keg of powder. And he had bought the animals -- a sturdy, docile farm horse, and a pregnant sow who it was to be hoped would not farrow until journey’s end.

He had also bought Nero. There had been none of the expected difficulties over this purchase. Ben Harrison had even knocked the price down to thirty pounds, partly from good nature, but mostly because Corby urged him to get rid of the Negro. “He’s a bad un, sir. Since that Wilson left here, Nero he won’t work. An’ the looks that devil gives me! Not to put too fine a p’int on it -- he makes me uneasy -- and he’s unsettling the other black bastards. Ye know we daren’t risk that.”

Ben did know very well the unmentionable and terrifying threat of revolt which hung over all the plantations.

So Rob got Nero, and freed him that same day at the courthouse.

“You’ll regret it,” said Byrd, most disapproving of this precedent. “You’ll get no use of him at all. He’ll never stay with you!”

“I think he will,” said Rob calmly. “We understand each other.”

And even Byrd had to admit that the huge Negro had been toiling prodigiously in the preparations for departure. The departure which was imminent. As the two girls watched, Rob and Nero were even now coaxing the sow into the bateau and tethering her tight in the center by means of ropes.

“Oh, Jenny,” said Evelyn trying to disguise by a laugh the wrench she was feeling, “I hope that pig doesn’t founder your Noah’s Ark!”

“It won’t with
Rob
in charge,” said Jenny proudly. “He thinks of everything. And how clever he was to think of his marvelous invention.”

Evelyn smiled. She knew all about the invention, since nothing else had been talked of at supper last night, and even Byrd was impressed by it. The horse had already started upriver by road. Rob had hired a farmer’s lad to ride it on the journey. When the bateau had progressed up the James as far as the falls, where it could go no farther, Rob proposed to haul the boat to the riverbank and fit it with wheels; then the horse, and men also, could haul it along until the river became navigable again.

“Your Rob is most ingenious,” said Evelyn, “and I can’t imagine how he’s accomplished all he has in so short a time.”

“Aye,” said Jenny with a pleased chuckle. “My Robbie’s a very canny lad, and ‘tis easy to work well when you’re happy.”

Evelyn sighed unconsciously. “Yes, he’s happy,” she stated, “and so, thank God, are you. Jenny, I had grave doubts on the wedding day.”

“So did I --” said Jenny, knitting her brows. “It’s odd I can’t remember them now. Oh, Evie, ‘tis so -- so wonderful to be part of a man and he of you.” She stopped, blushing a little. “I hope you’ll know this yourself, soon.” She spoke to Evelyn, but her eyes were on Rob, a brawny, confident young figure, who was laughing as he finished tethering the squealing sow. He turned and beckoned. “Come, hinny --” he called in the tender-teasing voice she adored. “Make your farewells! I’m ready to ship my most precious bit o’ livestock now!”

“ ‘Tis my summons!” said Jenny laughing. She turned and threw her arms around her friend’s neck. “I don’t know how to thank you, Evie -- and oh, how I shall miss you! We’ll write, won’t we! Rob says there’ll be Indian traders to carry letters someday.”

“To be sure,” said Evelyn as lightly as she could. “It’s not quite another world you’re going to. Only a matter of a fortnight’s journey, Rob says.” And then what? she thought -- the wilderness, and peril of bear, snakes, wolves, and Indians, not to speak of the hardships of actual existence when all was still to be wrested from the sinister wilds.

William Byrd, his wife, and Mina came hurrying up to say goodbye. They all went down to the rebuilt pier at the river’s edge, and Byrd, running his eye with approval over the laden bateau, called to Rob. “Well, you’re off, are you? Good luck, and pray send back one of my people from Falling Creek to tell me of conditions there.”

Rob nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll do that, and thank you again for your kindness.” Byrd had a small plantation thirty miles by water up the James. It was run by an overseer to whom Byrd had written a note for Rob to deliver so that the boatload might be cared for one night at the last outpost of civilization.

“Hop in, wife!” said Rob smiling at Jenny. “Your ship’s about to sail.”

Mrs. Byrd and Mina kissed Jenny goodbye. Evelyn kissed her once quickly. Jenny shook hands with Byrd, and dropped him a curtsey. Could it be the last curtsey she would ever make? she thought in wondering amusement. She had no qualms at all as she jumped down from the pier into Rob’s waiting arms. He stowed her on a sack of corn, well away from the pig in case it got restive. Rob cast off, he and Nero picked up the oars, and hoisted the sail. The bateau moved sluggishly away into midstream, where the south breeze and the incoming tide both propelled it fast. Jenny waved until the figures on the pier grew blurred. Then she settled contentedly upon her sack, turning a bit so that she might see Rob, the rhythmic power of his arm and shoulder muscles while he rowed, the assurance of his watchful eyes as they scanned the river.

At Westover the Byrds climbed the bank towards the house. Byrd was filled with satisfaction at a good deed well done, and calculating how soon a report would get back from Falling Creek, when he was struck with concern by a glimpse of Evelyn’s face. It had a white, shut look, her forehead glistened, and she seemed to be shivering. The ague! he thought. It was almost time for the fevers to start and none of his unacclimated family had had “the seasoning” yet.

“My dear!” he said. “You don’t look well. I must give you the bark instantly.

“Very well, Father,” she said in a muffled voice. “In a minute, I’ll come in. I wish to stay outside for a minute.”

She wandered away from him towards a little point of land where she could see up and down the river. She stood there gazing after the bateau, which had become a sliver on the distant water. Then she looked to the left -- downstream. Not even Jenny had known how often she stood here, waiting to see a ship from England sailing up the James. A ship bearing news. Someday there would be a letter, of that she was certain. He had promised it. And was it not also possible that someday there might be a passenger in quest of her?

Always as she stood there gazing at the empty river, one part of Evelyn jeered at herself for a fool; but stronger than that was the hope that miracles might happen, if one were staunch and could wait, and was it not a sort of miracle which had finally happened to Jenny?

EIGHTEEN

On Michaelmas, September 29 of 1737, Jenny sat in her little garden, on a rustic bench Rob had made for her the second year after they had come to the West. She sat dressed in a black homespun she had dyed herself, sadly pensive, holding an open letter on her lap. The letter was from Lady Betty in England, and had taken eight months to reach this frontier plantation in a Virginia county, which had as yet only the vaguest boundaries, and was now called Goochland after William Gooch, the Governor who had replaced poor old Drysdale.

Letters were extraordinary events for Jenny. Often she did not even hear from Evelyn in months. Mail delivery depended upon the kindness of a passing fur trader, or of one of the rangers whom the Governor had appointed to patrol the frontier.

A ranger had brought the letter this afternoon. He had picked it up some days ago from the Shocco tobacco storehouse at the Falls of the James, on William Byrd’s property. There was a new town called Richmond being planned there by Colonel Byrd, the ranger said. Otherwise he had no news of Westover.

Jenny was unused to sitting idle. These had been years of constant struggle, with everything to learn -- cooking, cleaning, mending, doctoring, gardening, and at this moment she should be in the kitchen to see that Peg was roasting the piglet properly, the Michaelmas treat which should of course have been a goose. They had no geese, but they had quantities of hogs. She could hear them grunting as they rooted for mash in the woods behind Nero’s cabin. And there was no really pressing task until Rob came home for supper.

He had gone to the south end of their property, where there was good iron ore; he hoped to build there someday an ironworks and forge. He would probably do so. One by one Rob had realized nearly all his dreams. Jenny leaned her blond head against the bench back and thought how much Rob had accomplished in these eleven years at Snowdon, though to be sure he had had help from the motley household gathered around them. No slaves, however, at Snowdon. Rob wouldn’t have them, and he scrupulously meted out a share of the profits to Nero and to Willy.

“Snowdon,” Jenny thought with a faint smile. That was the name of their plantation, and once again she could recapture the excitement of that sixteen-year-old bride on the June day when they tied their battered craft on the south riverbank and Rob, jumping out onto a pebbly shore, waved his hand exultantly and cried, “This is
ours,
hinny. This is our very own land!”

She exulted too, and was delighted when Rob told her that nothing yet was really named, not the river, which had been their highway, nor the little hills to the south, nor the mountains to the northwest, nor the creek near which they stood. He had been startled when she began to name the landmarks after fancied resemblances to that faraway North Country where she had first learned to love Rob. That hill up there should be Tosson, the bluff could be Ravensheugh. The river should be the Tyne, since it was too wide to be the Coquet. Here Rob laughingly protested. “I think this river
has
a name. Mr. Byrd believed it to be called Fluvanna, after Queen Anne. Yet now
I
think, having come up it, ‘tis but a continuation of the James. In any case, both good Stuart names, which should please you.”

“Aye, indeed,” said Jenny happy that they could laugh about a subject which had once been a sore one. “Then we’ll call this little burn for King George,” she gestured towards the creek. “ ‘Tis only fair. And, Rob, might we call our whole plantation ‘Snowdon’ in memory of my mother and the peel?”

“Why not?” said Rob, after a moment in which she knew that he was reluctant to live with any reminder of the past. Snawdon it is, and Geordie’s Creek, an’ ould Tosson an’ anything else ye like, m’lass, for ‘tis m’weesh ter gi’e ye pleasure!”

Jenny stirred on her bench as she thought of that day. Rob never now used their old vernacular, and except for “Snowdon” and “George’s Creek,” the other names she gave had lapsed. Like the traders and rangers, Rob spoke of the Green Mountains to the north, while the distant western ones were simply the “Ridge.” Rob had neither the time nor the nature for sentiment, though she never doubted his love. And she rejoiced in his success.

Snowdon was now a flourishing little plantation. It grew wheat, corn, and the coarse Orinoco tobacco. There was a mill on George’s Creek; there were fences, and tobacco sheds, and pastures; there were cabins -- widely separated -- for Nero’s family, and for the Turners. There was also the beautiful new house.

Jenny glanced behind her at the house, which had been finished only two months ago and was a source of wonder to everyone. The house was built of clapboard above a brick foundation and was shaped somewhat like a miniature Berkeley. The bricks had been made and fired at their own claypits. The roof was blue slate, quarried on their property. There was a chimney at each end of the house, and four large rooms inside: a kitchen and a dining parlor below, two commodious bedrooms upstairs. The house was glazed with crown glass from England. Rob had bought the glass on one of his spring trips to Williamsburg to pay the quit-rents.

Jenny had never accompanied him on these expeditions -- because of little Robin. She sighed deeply and looked down towards a glimpse of river, and to a small gray stone almost hidden in the shadows of a magnificent live-oak. Anguish stabbed up through the constant dull ache.

In this letter Lady Betty had asked about Robin:

Your little son must be ten now, and I am sure is a great joy to you in that wilderness home which I
cannot
picture try as I will. Your description of your household amazes us, Negroes, and Indians, and Papist gaolbirds -- what a bedlam it sounds! It quite makes me shiver, here in my placid Hertfordshire parsonage. My own small Frederick is well. It must seem odd to you to think of this ancient dame with a child of five, I thank God that we have him -- he is balm for the loss we suffered last October. It was my Betsy, newly married to Henry Temple, Lord Palmerston’s heir, she died at Lyons -- poor poor child. She was very fond of you.