Somerset (14 page)

A
pall fell over the three leading manor houses of Plantation Alley. In each household, owners and servants moved quieter, talked in soberer voices as the final days approached for the departure of the wagon train. The youngest member of each family, nurtured and thought of as “the baby” from infancy, was about to set forth into unknown territory rife with danger and hardship. God only knew when, or if, they were likely to be seen again. At Meadowlands, Jeremy's favorite foods began to appear on the table, picked at by his father and brothers, energetic, talkative men grown uncharacteristically taciturn and short-tempered.

Jessica released Tippy to be with her mother in her quarters at night. In the bed they shared, Willie May lay on her side next to Tippy's back and stroked her daughter's hair. It puffed around her head as fine as gossamer and thin as cobwebs. An ear stuck out like a conch shell washed up on the shore, and sometimes Willie May pressed hers to it, as if expecting to hear the sound of the sea. Most nights she lay awake until early dawn listening to her daughter's breathing, storing its rhythm in memory, worrying about the defect of her child's missing lung as tears trickled into the neck of her night shift.

At Queenscrown, Elizabeth's cold manner toward her younger son thawed. She knocked on his room door one evening when he and Jeremy were visiting. Before Silas could open it, she bustled in to interrupt the men, who, as she'd expected, were discussing the forthcoming journey. “Oh, good. I've caught you in time, Jeremy,” she said as they hastily rose. “May I sit? I have a proposal.”

“Oh, Mother, not again,” Silas moaned as he and Jeremy retook their seats.

“I've not come riding that old horse, Silas,” Elizabeth said. She sat down and folded her hands before her in the manner of a schoolmarm about to deliver a lecture. She had not seen Jeremy to speak to in some time. Elizabeth noticed that he did not ask how her roses grew. He knew very well her garden contained nothing but thorns. It was about that subject that she had come to speak.

“I wish to propose that each of you carry the roses of your ancestors to your new land as your forebears carefully brought them from England to be replanted in South Carolina. They are a symbol of your heritage, and I…” Tears welled; Elizabeth's voice trembled. “I could not bear to think you will have nothing tangible by which to remember your family. You boys will have your memories, but your children…Joshua and the children I will never see…will have nothing.” She whipped a handkerchief from the pocket of her dress and dabbed at her eyes while the two men looked on in helpless embarrassment. “Your mother would advise you the same, Jeremy, God rest her sweet soul. She so prized her Yorkist roses as I do my Lancasters.”

Elizabeth had expected an objection from Silas—space was scarce in the wagons—but to her surprise, he nodded agreement. “A splendid idea, Mother. I should have thought of the roses myself. I was planning on asking for the portrait of the Duke of Somerset to take with me.”

“We'll have to ask Morris, but I'm sure he'll agree,” Elizabeth said. “He doesn't place the stock in his forebears as you do.”

Jeremy had risen to his feet again. He took Elizabeth's hand and bowed over the network of blue veins. “I agree with Silas,” he said. “A wonderful thought. I'll have our gardener see to it. He's a master at tending the roses now that my mother has gone.”

“I'll come over and personally oversee the digging up. The roots must be wrapped carefully in burlap and kept moist,” Elizabeth said.

“I'd be most grateful,” Jeremy said. “Good night, Silas. I'll see my way out.”

Alone together for the first time since Silas had declared his intention to marry Jessica, mother and son regarded each other, the merrily crackling fire mocking their awkward silence. After a moment, Elizabeth said, “I'm not going to see you and Joshua off, Silas. I simply can't. You understand?”

“I do, Mother.”

“You go without my blessing, you know that, but you will always have my love.”

“I know, Mother.”

“But you go with your father's blessing. I couldn't let you leave without telling you that.”

Silas's gaze flickered skeptically. His mouth arched in derision. “You've had some communication with Papa from the grave?” But at the flare of pain he saw in his mother's expression, he added more gently, “Or is this some new knowledge from your mother's heart?”

“From neither,” Elizabeth said. “By leaving you out of his will, your father all but pushed you on your way to pursue the dream you've had since you were a boy. He knew you'd never stay here to obey your brother's commands, and that's why he left you with no choice but to leave. What he didn't know was the lengths to which you'd go to do so.”

Elizabeth got up while Silas, his brow drawn, reflected on this new information. “It is hard for you to believe your father loved you, Silas, but he did. I can only hope his machinations will not result in fate taking an unkind view of yours. Ill-begotten gains always have a way of costing more than they're worth.”

Elizabeth turned with a sway of dark wool toward the door. “Good night, my son. Oh, and by the way…you may have wondered where Morris has gotten himself off to.”

Silas, disconcerted, said, “I've been too busy with last-minute preparations to concern myself with Morris's whereabouts.”

Elizabeth's lips twitched. “It seems he, too, cannot bear to say good-bye. He loves Joshua as his own, you know. He's with the only person who can comfort him in his coming loss. They share a mutual pain. Morris has gone to Savannah…to be with Lettie.”

“Tippy, do you think it's possible to love a man you don't respect or like?”

“How would I know about such things, Miss Jessie? I'se had no experience lovin' nobody but you and my mama.”

“Because you were born a celestial being that ended up in your mama's womb, and you know everything.”

They had almost reached the Yard, a half-mile from the Main House, on this the next-to-the-last day before they might never see Willowshire again. The sun was warm, the air balmy for this date in February, perfect for a final stroll over the grounds and through the plantation compound to bid farewell to the only home they'd ever known.

“Well, then, seems to me it's possible, like a wildflower growin' out of rock. Can't make no sense of it. Nothin' there to feed it.” Tippy eyed Jessica quizzically. “Youse speaking of Mistah Silas?”

“I'm speaking of Mister Silas,” Jessica admitted, blushing. “And there most certainly isn't anything there to feed it. I have no idea where this…
ridiculous
feeling has sprung from. My…​
husband
traded the most wonderful and lovely woman in the world—my beloved friend—for a piece of land, Tippy. How could I not hate him for that alone?”

“I'se don't know, Miss Jessie, but some wildflowers, they impossible to kill. Youse might think you pull 'em up by de roots, but they be back next year.”

Jessica hated it when her friend spoke in the dialect of the field Negro, but they were within earshot of the open doors of the slave cabins, and Tippy was determined to give her mistress's father no further cause to find disfavor with his daughter. When they left here, though, Tippy would never have to talk beneath the level of her literacy again, no matter what Mr. Silas Toliver dictated. Before Jessica could deliver this assurance, her attention was diverted by a restless gathering in the Yard. Something had drawn the slaves to a point of interest in its center.

“What do you suppose the commotion is all about?” Jessica wondered aloud, and then, as the group parted at her approach, she saw.

“You cannot let her go, Carson. You simply can't. She's our daughter, our
only
daughter.” Eunice's emphasis was clear. Jessica would have had a sister, but she had died minutes after birth.

She had hit her husband on his weak flank. As the date had drawn nearer for the wagon train to pull out, coupled with the harrowing news from Texas, Carson had grown more and more morose. Eunice, recognizing he was having second thoughts about their daughter's safety, made her move. “It's not too late to stop her,” she said. “We can have the marriage annulled. Jessica and Silas have never…well, you know.”

“And then what, Eunice?” Carson said, his face red with agitation. “We're back to where we started with her. You would prefer we send our daughter to a convent?”

“I believe Jessica has learned her lesson. You've scared her sufficiently for her to realize what will happen if she engages in speech or action that would put her in peril and embarrass this family again.” Eunice's words had the convincing ring of a mother who knows her child.

“If we back down now, Jessie will think she can get away with her outrageous sentiments and behavior next time,” Carson disagreed, but he delivered his argument in a tone of halfhearted conviction.

Eunice moved closer to hold her husband's eye. “If there is a next time, Carson,” she said softly, “I promise I won't interfere with what you must do. I'll make sure Jessie understands that.”

Carson inhaled loudly and stepped away from the lure of his wife's wiles. “I made a deal with Silas. I can't back down now. There's been scandal enough without my being perceived as a blackguard who'd set up the boy to believe he was headed to Texas on my money, destroyed his engagement to the woman he loved, then yanked the rug out from under him two days before his departure.” He shook his head firmly. “I can't do that to Silas.”

Eunice grasped her husband's chin and compelled him to look at her. “Abide by your agreement with Silas. Let him go, but without Jessica. All he wants is the money. He'll be happy to be rid of her because he'll still have the chance of marrying Lettie. You can afford it, Carson.” Her tone turned pleading, her look amorous as she took his face in her hands. “Isn't our daughter worth it, my love?”

Carson folded his hands around her forearms, the nearest to an invitation to hold her since the whole blasted mess began. “She's worth it,” he said huskily and drew her closer.

His lips did not quite make it to hers. The door of the library burst open, and Lulu ran in, panting. “Pardon me, Master, but you better come see. It's Miss Jessica. She's done gone and done it again.”

“Done what?” Eunice cried.

“She done taken the side of a black man.”

“What?” Carson threw off his wife's arms. “Who? Where?”

“A lazy piece of colored trash, that who. He be at the whupping post. The overseer, Mr. Wilson, was 'bout to lash him, and Miss Jessica, she step in, say he has to whup her first.” Lulu paused for breath. “It all goin' on right now.”

“Run and send somebody to tell Wilson to hold off. I'll be right there.” Carson turned to his wife, his jaw rigid, his gaze implacable. “Proceed with our daughter's packing, Mrs. Wyndham. She is going to Texas.”

I
n the hour before dawn, March first, 1836, the vehicles bound for the eastern part of Texas began to assemble in a field behind the town of Willow Grove, South Carolina. Groups of family and friends had gathered to wave the wagon train off, and some stores and shops were open for last-minute purchases or for their owners to bid farewell to longtime customers they were not likely to see again. There was a festive air about the occasion, mixed with melancholia and concern. On February twenty-third, the Mexican general Santa Anna and his troops had laid siege against a garrison of 187 Texians bivouacked in a mission called the Alamo on the San Antonio River. Their commander was one of their own, a South Carolina boy born in Saluda County named William Barrett Travis. Alongside him was his cousin, also of South Carolina, James B. Bonham. The Alamo had been under siege seven days, and the
Charleston Courier
held out little hope that the brave defenders—the South's Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie among them—could hold out until reinforcements arrived.

Among the most solemn groups waiting to say their good-byes were the Wyndham and Warwick families and beloved members of their household staffs. Missing were Elizabeth and Morris Toliver, but standing in their stead were Cassandra and Lazarus, holding a still-sleeping Joshua. In a last-minute decision, Silas had freed the elderly couple to stay behind with his mother and brother, and they watched on with eyes still swollen from tears of relief and gratitude. Willie May and Jonah stood with Carson, Eunice, and Michael, and Jeremy's two brothers and father had brought along the Negro nanny who'd cared for all Warwick sons as infants.

A cub reporter from the
Charleston Courier
, pen and notepad in hand, moved amidst the din and activity and, by the light of the moon and stars and campfires, attempted to put on paper his thoughts and impressions of the scene he described as “a sight to behold and a memory to hold.” His first pages recorded the awesome cost of pulling up stakes for the uncertain promise and dubious success of driving the same stakes into soil in hostile territory thousands of miles away.

“Six to eight hundred dollars to assemble a basic outfit of wagon and oxen, goods and equipment—a fortune,” he informed the reader. He went on to apprise his reading audience that the Willow Grove wagon train would consist of approximately two hundred people, counting the slaves, and an undetermined number of conveyances because the tally changed weekly. They were of all sorts, sizes, and value, ranging from expensive Conestogas and prairie schooners (a lesser version of the desert camel) to market wagons, buggies, carriages, traps, carts, and pack mules. Many would walk, sleeping under wagons or under the stars, and take their food from the land. It was estimated the train could make ten to fifteen miles a day.

Managing this conglomerate group, the reporter wrote, were the wagon masters he described as sitting their horses like princes commanding minions whose trust in them was as clear as the day breaking over the remarkable sight. “Silas Toliver and Jeremy Warwick wield the whip of leadership like men born to authority with the knowledge and skill, if not the experience, to enforce it,” his notes read. “Upon their shoulders rests the responsibility to get the travelers where they are going as safely as possible.” He quoted Jeremy as declaring, “We have studied every map and chart of the terrain, perused every article and guidebook, read every letter shared with us from correspondents in Texas, and interviewed dozens of people who have been there. We are as informed as we can be to guide the train successfully to our destination. The rest is up to God.”

Silas declined to be interviewed, but the reporter followed on his heels and furiously jotted down the wagon master's orders, calmly but firmly delivered. The leader would give his group two hours to settle down their families and animals, attend to last-minute details, say their good-byes, and take their designated place in line. Those who were late in doing so would be left behind. He would tolerate no dawdlers or laggards. A personal item of interest crept into the reporter's notes when the wagon leader went to collect his son to place in the care of the driver of his Conestoga, one of Queenscrown's most trusted slaves. The reporter quoted Joshua as saying, “Please, Papa. Can't I ride with Jessica and Tippy?”

Silas Toliver obliged the tearful plea and, carrying his son, strode to Jessica Wyndham's—Mrs. Silas Toliver's!—matching Conestoga, where she sat, dressed like a peacock among sparrows, on the wagon seat with her strange-looking pixie of a maid and a young colored boy named Jasper. The wagon master repeated his son's request to his wife, who said happily, “Of course,” and, almost too slight for the boy's weight, took him into her arms. “Don't worry, Silas, we'll look after him,” she said, and smiled into Joshua Toliver's droopy eyes. “It's nap time for you, young man,” she said further, and without another word to her husband, spirited the boy away under the spanking white canvas.

The reporter noted that Silas Toliver's stern features relaxed a little as he walked away, and the writer for the
Courier
admitted to himself he would have given a month's salary to know the thoughts of a man who had yet to consummate his marriage to his wife, so gossip had it, but tittle-tattle had no place in serious journalistic reporting. Instead, the young man fixed his courage on getting Carson Wyndham to answer from a father's perspective the question of how he felt about his daughter going to Texas.

“How do you think I feel?” the formidable cotton baron and business tycoon snapped, and, with a glare, stalked off with his wife and son before the reporter could position his pen to record his reply.

At the fixed moment for departure, a bugle sounded. The wagon masters were already in position at the head of the two motley lines of conveyances, farm animals, slaves, and those who would walk in the dust of churning wheels. As the last notes struck the cold morning air, both Silas Toliver and Jeremy Warwick raised a leather-jacketed arm and signaled forward. The wagon train was off.

The cub reporter, along with those remaining behind, watched the cavalcade pull away to the cacophony of creaking wheels, suspended pots and pans banging from the sides of wagons, babies crying, dogs barking, and livestock mooing, bawling, clucking, and bleating—“the sound of the westward movement,” he would ascribe to the spectacle in his article. The young man wished them well. In a week he would report on the fall of the Alamo in Texas and then later the revenge of the Texians at San Jacinto where, under the leadership of Sam Houston, they would defeat Santa Anna and his army and pronounce the territory independent from Mexico. The Willow Grove wagon train was headed toward the newly declared Republic of Texas.