JoAnn Wendt (14 page)

“One!” the crowd shouted.

At the blow, Mary Wooster reeled into the post, her feet going out from under her. She uttered an agonized cry. She found her feet just as the crowd roared, “Two!”

She went reeling under the blow. As the third and fourth struck her, she shrieked, “Help me, sir! Please help me!”

The whip snaked out a fifth and sixth time. The girl screamed in hysteria and yanked her wrists raw where ropes bound her. By the tenth, her eyes rolled in her head. By the fifteenth, she’d fainted away. She hung senseless from the ropes, the joints of shoulders distended like some plucked and dressed fowl hanging in a butcher’s window.

Sick with tension and revulsion, Flavia leaned against the rough trunk of the oak. She held her stomach. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to blot out the sound of whip on flesh, the cries of the crowd.

When it was done, the jailer loosed the ropes and the girl melted to the ground. A bucket of water was dashed upon her, and then the crowd lost interest. The hanging was next. With an excited surge, the spectators flowed past the whipping post, poured into Water Street and headed out of town to the public field where the gallows waited.

Revolted, sick at heart, Flavia struggled to compose herself. On wobbly legs she made her way to the post, sank to her knees and began tending the girl. With Neddy’s help she moved the girl into the cool shade of the trees and gave her water. Slowly, Mary Wooster came to her senses, opened her eyes and took in her surroundings. Gulping the water Flavia held to her lips, she whispered, “It hurts, Jane. Lud, how it hurts.” The girl hugged the ground, afraid to move.

“Mary? I’m going to clean your wounds with water, then butter them. The butter will help you heal. But there’s salt in it. It will sting.”

The girl nodded. Her eyes were dark bruises.

Flavia worked gently. Still the girl writhed under her gentlest ministration, biting back moans of pain.

“There, Mary. It’s done. It’s over with.”

The girl said nothing. Tears collected in the dark eyes. She didn’t move.

“‘Tisn’t done, Jane,” she whispered. “‘Twill be done me again in a year.”

Flavia stared at her, not understanding.

“I’m with child again.”

Flavia caught her breath. Stroking the child’s sweat-dampened hair from her forehead, she whispered, “Oh, Mary! You must report the man. He must be punished. Tell your master. You are an Englishwoman. Under English law your master is obligated to protect you—”

She was silenced by Mary’s bitter laugh.

“Tell my
master?”
she said in a voice venomous with sarcasm. She laughed harshly. “Ay, Jane, I shall certainly tell my
master!”

Flavia sank back on her haunches, appalled at the girl’s inference. That a child should be treated so! And by her own master! The injustice of it made her seethe. She was helpless to help.

Choking back anger, she whispered, “Come, Mary. Neddy and I shall help you home.”

That night, in her bed, she wept bitter tears. Tears for Mary and for herself. What would the future bring? What would become of her?

Chapter 9

Time dragged itself forward, advancing with the discouraging hesitation of a broken clock. Flavia felt its lethargy deep in her soul and saw it reflected in the weather.

May in Maryland proved to be hot. June, hotter. In July, breezes from Chesapeake Bay ceased, and Maryland became an oven. By August, Flavia gladly would’ve died for just one breath of cool English air.

While plantation owners and bondslave masters retreated to their shady verandas and sipped cooling drinks, slaves and servants found their work doubled. In addition to Flavia’s regular chores, there were corn rows to hoe and vegetables to pick and preserve. Untaught in such things, Flavia was slow, clumsy and a vexation to her mistress. The work was endless. Water had to be drawn from the well and hauled, bucketful by bucketful, to the parched garden. The chickens, made ill-tempered by the heat, had to be caught and dipped into sulfur water to cure summer nit. Cooking had to be done in a kitchen so hot that it rivaled the cookfire itself.

All of this Mistress Byng oversaw from her chair on the veranda, and she was satisfied with nothing that met her eye. “Jane” was lazy; Neddy, stupid and bungling. Even in the evening Flavia was expected to account for her time. As she rested on the porch, she had the previous fall’s hickory nuts to crack and pick out.

Occasionally a chore was a pleasant one. Fond of terrapin steak, the Reverend Byng often sent Neddy to the creek to spear terrapin with a lance. But the boy could not go alone. Alone, he would forget his mission and simply play in the water. So Flavia was ordered to help Neddy. Quick to realize Mistress Byng would deprive her of any chore she took pleasure in, Flavia pretended indifference to the outings.

But she gleaned a bit of happiness from the peaceful afternoons of wading in the creek. The mud bottom was cool to her feet, the water clean. Green leafy branches arched over the creek, and sunlight filtered through thick leaves, dappling the water as she waded.

While Neddy was powerful enough to thrust the lance through the fifty-pound tough-shelled terrapins and hoist them out of the sucking mud, he wasn’t alert enough to find their hiding places in the mud bottom. Flavia did this for him and helped him clean what he caught. Everything must be salvaged, even the shell. Mrs. Byng sold the terrapin shells to a comb-and-button maker.

When the terrapin work was done, Neddy would play in the water until he grew tired. Then he’d nap on the creek bank, and Flavia would steal upstream to bathe and wash her hair. She reveled in the private moments. Sitting on the bank in her wet shift, she’d brush her hair dry to the slow, peaceful gurgle of the stream. She would treat herself to daydreams. She would think of everyone she’d ever loved, saving her two best-beloveds for last. Was Mother well? Papa and the girls? Uncle Simon? At first she’d feared the duke would harm them. She no longer feared that. She guessed the duke had made it appear that she’d died. He would only attract suspicion if he abused his “dead” wife’s family.

She would think of her baby and Garth. She would think how she must preserve their safety by never attempting to see them again, and her tears would gather.

Besides terrapin hunting there was one other chore Flavia didn’t despise although it put her in close proximity to Mistress Byng. That was reading. Mrs. Byng couldn’t read long without eye pain. Flavia had to read aloud to her.

The chore was a welcome one. Exhausted from hoeing alongside Neddy in the hot, airless garden, she cherished an hour on the veranda when she might do nothing more strenuous than read. And if she hadn’t hated Mrs. Byng so intensely, she might even have found humor in the woman’s choice of reading material.

If Mr. Byng were home, Mrs. Byng called for readings from the Bible or from Jonathan Edward’s A
Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God.
If Mr. Byng were gone, Mrs. Byng pounced on penny tracts describing women’s ravishments by frontier Indians. Or Mrs. Byng would order her to read the gazettes, which Dennis Finny, the indentured schoolmaster, brought over from the Tate plantation where he worked tutoring the Tate children.

The gazettes were old by the time they came to the Byngs, but the gazettes were Flavia’s only contact with the world beyond Chestertown. They contained news of the colonies and news of London.

Sometimes there was news that made her heart jump. News of the
Caroline!
Slowly she would read aloud the
Caroline’s
sailing dates, her ports of call, her tonnage of barrel staves picked up in Annapolis for shipment to molasses-producing plantations in the Caribbean. On
Caroline
news days, Flavia floated through her chores in a daze, too happy to notice her bondage. But there were other gazette days that threw her headlong into despair as she read aloud to Mrs. Byng.

“Speak up, Jane. Louder. Your pudding-mouth will be the ruination of my ears.”

Flavia swallowed. It was a sultry August afternoon and she was sitting on the veranda steps, a new but well-thumbed
Virginia Gazette
in her lap. She tried to see the words of the article she’d just begun to read, but her churning emotions sent black dots whirling over the paper. Her hands shook as she smoothed the page and read on.

“Escorted by Cap—Captain Garth McNeil to the Governor’s Royal Birthday Ball on the twelfth of this Instant, was the Baroness Annette Vachon. The bereaved widow—widow—”

Her voice broke and she ceased reading. Widow? Annette a widow and living in Williamsburg. Free to set her cap for Garth? She was stunned.

“Really, Jane! Read on. Have you a mouth full of mush today? Then chew it up or spit it out, girl.”

In misery, Flavia found her place and read on. The article said nothing more about Garth but described Annette’s fashionable black gown, her black ostrich headdress. The remainder of the piece focused on the ball itself. Festivities had lasted three days. The sweetmeat table held seventeen different desserts. Roasted grouse, cracked crab and oysters highlighted the feasting. The governor presented a silver salver as door prize on each of the three days, and, finally, it was the opinion of the journalist that the portraits of King William and Queen Mary, which hung in the main ballroom, were badly in need of cleaning.

Finished reading, Flavia let her hands fall disconsolately to her lap. The gazette slid to the ground, and Flavia stared at it, not seeing it, not hearing Mrs. Byng’s chatter.

Would Garth marry Annette Vachon?

Despair welled up, despair at the thought of Garth marrying Annette or marrying anyone. She dropped her head to her hands. She felt weary. Defeated. Even old. When Mistress Byng sent her to the kitchen to start supper, she went obediently, went on numb, wooden legs.

Once, the arrival of Dennis Finny with a new gazette had brightened her day because the paper might hold news of Garth or his ship. But now the arrival of a gazette cast a shadow. She would stiffen and tense at the first sight of the gentle Quaker schoolmaster, Dennis Finny, bounding across the fields from the Tate plantation.

Would
this
gazette be the gazette announcing Garth and Annette’s marriage? If so, how could she bear to read it?

She grew curt with Dennis Finny. Although she knew he brought the papers to please
her
and not the Byngs, she ceased to thank him for the courtesy. She accepted his offering with an indifferent nod.

Dismayed, the gentle young man tried his best.

“Mistress Jane Brown?” he said as she gave him her back and made to enter a house. “Wilt thee sit upon the porch step and converse a moment?”

“No,” she snapped. Then, softening at the dashed look on his face, she added, “I’m extremely busy, Mr. Finny. My duties will not wait.”

“Of course thee art busy. I understand.”

But the hurt look in his quiet gray eyes told her he did
not
understand. He gave her a puzzled, apologetic smile. He bowed. Clapping his hat upon a head of pale, thinning hair, he walked out of the dooryard with touching dignity. At the gate in the low stone fence he paused. Hesitantly, he came back.

“It may be, Mistress Brown, that I have unknowingly offended thee in some way?”

“You’ve not offended me,” she said quickly, fearfully scanning the gazette for news of Garth. There was none. She felt giddy with relief. Relief brought a smile to her lips, and at her smile, Dennis Finny brightened.

“I am glad that I have not offended thee, Mistress Brown. I would sooner die than offend thee.”

Flavia’s eyes widened in surprise.

He blushed. Reddening like a beet, he ducked his head in an awkward bow, clapped hat to head and scurried off.

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Laugh at the thought of a Quaker schoolmaster courting the duchess of Tewksbury, or cry at the sudden, paralyzing realization that her future was unlikely to hold anything
better
than this likeable gentle man.

Leaning against the porch rail, she blinked back hot tears. But more gathered. Tears of resignation.

A shrill cry came from within the house.

“Was that Dennis Finny again?” Mrs. Byng called. “I shall speak to the magistrate, Jane. Mr. Finny is
not
to waste your time, nattering with you. Lollygagging about in the shank of the day, indeed! I shall report him to his master, to Mr. Tate.”

Flavia wiped away her tears with a corner of her muslin apron.

“He brought a gazette,” she called unwillingly.

“Ah? Did he, indeed?”

Mrs. Byng’s voice sweetened.

“A fine lad, Dennis Finny! D’ye suppose he intends to hunt grouse this coming autumn? Mr. Byng and I shouldn’t be averse to receiving a brace of fine, fat grouse. Tell him, Jane,” she ordered. Her voice warbled up to its usual high pitch. “Still, he is not to waste your time. You may tell Mr. Finny for me, missy, that if he intends to wear out the floorboards of my veranda, he is expected to turn his hand to a task. If he’s of a mind to sit on my steps, he can well put his idle hands to cracking nuts or shucking dried corn.”

When Flavia made no reply, Mrs. Byng raised her voice.

“Jane! Stubborn, uppity chit! Did you hear me?”

Flavia descended the veranda steps and strode toward the garden without answering.

Next to penny tracts and the gazettes’ social news, Mrs. Byng doted on gazette subscriptions offering bounties on runaway bondservants. In this
Mrs. Byng took perverse pleasure. She knew it cut Flavia to the quick to read aloud about her fellow bondslaves’ suffering.

“Runaway on the twenty-first of this Instant, after a whipping, from This Subscriber in Kent County, an Irish Servant Man, Valentine Flaherty. He is about nineteen years of age, a great lusty Fellow, somewhat pock-broken, wore his own hair but may cut it off, has a sour pinched looking Countenance. Having on when he went away snuff-colored Breeches, Ditto shirt, a homemade brown cloth coat and a green silk Handkerchief. Whoever takes up said Servant and Secures him in any Jail so that his Master can have him again, shall have Forty Shillings and Reasonable charges paid by,