Chapter 37

In mid-March the grand jury of Queen Anne's County found "no true bill" in the matter of the death of one Macalister Sinclair, Esq., and Anne Conroy was given back her ivory-handled pistol. She, Philip and Mr. Maguire celebrated what he called an "ignoramus" with a roast-chicken and apple pie dinner that Bess prepared and a bottle of local claret the lawyer had saved for a special occasion. Despite repeated entreaties, a disappointed Philip went home with the attorney well before sunset, lust filled and very unhappy.

When she could not find a slave nearby to do the work, Anne hired a skilled Baltimore plowman that the factor recommended, paid for his passage aboard one of the regular trading craft and had him prepare two acres of long-fallow ground for her tobacco seedlings. She had long since removed the limbs of pine from the narrow bed, brushed away all the little beetles she could see, thinned the rows of tiny seedlings about a hand apart and covered the seedbed with light cloth the previous week.

She tried to estimate how many plants she had but gave up the effort and satisfied herself with "hundreds." After he turned over the reddish earth with her draft horse, he shoveled up knee-high mounds about two feet apart. In ten hours of hard work, he had her field ready while she prepared her kitchen garden. She had paid two shillings for his day, another for his trip back and forth and surreptitiously gave him one for himself. To her, the work was worth a crown, at least she hoped it was.

The small kitchen garden with its row of herbs did well that spring and in early May, after a good rain, she and Philippa transplanted the sturdy little tobacco plants from the seedbed to the hillocks prepared for them. It took most of the day for there were almost six thousand plants. By then Miranda had been sold to a family in town whose ambitious daughter thought she needed a maid and the young slave was, she assured Bess, much happier. Anne got fifty-five pounds in paper money for her, perhaps half of what she might have brought at auction.

Also by then, after weeks of pleading and delay, stomachache and worry, Anne had agreed to marry Philip as soon as he was admitted to the bar. He had howled and then danced her about the barnyard, holding both her hands. She was still not sure she loved him, but what she felt for him, she had decided late one night when her body needed some sort of fulfillment, some kind of comfort, was close enough. "Sufficient" was the word on which she settled wishing it were a stronger sentiment.

Perhaps, she decided, true love was unattainable, a goal always just out of reach, like the nirvana she had read of. Having made that decision, and having refused several times to spend another night with him, and she then crossed the Bay and went looking for Billy Fields to tell him of her intentions. A taller and older Continental soldier now manned the recruiting desk near the waterfront along with a new and loudly tattooing drummer, and neither knew where Billy was. His mother said she believed he had gone north to rejoin his Maryland company in the field.

Anne purchased two wide brimmed straw hats at the factor's store along with packets of seeds for her vegetable garden, and she and Philippa started one morning hoeing down the lines of tobacco plants, breaking the hard red earth and digging out weeds. By the time the sun was high Anne had finished one furrow but Philippa was far from done with hers. Anne helped her finish and then they both went in the house after deep drinks at the well.

"My arms are about to fall off," Anne told Bess as the old cook comforted her unhappy daughter. "And I'm sure they are thoroughly burned. Can't close my hands."

"Man's work, hoein'. Wimmens got enough to do." Bess looked disgusted. "Friend a'mine come by while y'all was getting cooked. She say there's a job for Philly over in 'Napolis, decent job in a good home."

"Folks you know?" Anne fanned herself with her hat. "If it's this hot in May, what's July going to be like?"

"Yes'm, Forthing's the folks' name, somethin' lak that. Their gal jus' got herself married and needs a maid, friends a'those Stewarts." Bess looked pleased by the idea. "Think she's only sixteen."

"And what do I get for this likely young slave?" Anne tried not to sound too serious, but she knew almost every slave had value.

"Don' know. Lady say they was sending somebody over. I knows their cook." Bess patted her daughter and she disappeared. "Let her go, Miss Anne. She's awful unhappy. I was afeared she'd run off."

"As you wish. Now I've got to go rent another fieldhand. It's just too hard, too hard for me anyhow. Philippa, I won't miss, least not out in the fields."

"Why don' you buy one?" Bess turned back to her stove.

"I'll think on it." Anne put on her straw hat and headed for her new stable, determined to find some help, feeling the skin on her arms throbbing.

By suppertime she had visited three nearby farms and had been turned down at each one, once by an abrupt landowner and twice by hired overseers. Nobody had a man to spare, not even a young one. She rode on into town and had lunch with Philip, who bragged about the will he had drawn that morning. She told him her problem and asked if he wanted to earn a couple of shillings with a hoe.

"Sounds to me that there's, maybe this word is too strong, but I don't think so, I think there's a conspiracy, my dear. They've decided not to help you, period."

"All of them? Really?"

"I don't know, perhaps. I can't think of anything you can do about it except hire somebody from the other side of the Bay like you did before, maybe for a couple of days every month. Would that be enough?"

"I don't know. I've never done this. Hardly paid any attention when I was growing up. Saw the people out there working, but they were just part of the landscape. There's an old tobacco barn on the land I sold. I remember them packing the hogsheads. And the slave quarters are over there too."

On her way back home she stopped by the factor's store and talked with the old slave who had given her advice. "You hear anything about me, tattle, stories?" She handed him a silver shilling.

"A whole hog," he said, flipping it in the air. "Yes'm, I heerd some, folks say you got troubles coming, lots a'trouble, pile a'woe, hogshead full, um hm. Folks do lak to talk 'bout sorrels you know. Nobody's gonna buy your 'bacca; nobody's gonna hep you grow it, nobody's gonna pick yer worms or hack your leaves, spear 'em neither. That's what I heered." He squinted out at the rippling water and licked his lips.

Anne took a deep breath.

"They din' lak you hiring that there Bal'mer plow boy neither."

"Mr. McMillan will buy it, won't he?" Anne asked, not surprised but unhappy.

"Ast him. I dunno."

"Is it important to hoe the rows regularly?"

He nodded. "Got to keep down them weeds, yes'm. Every week on mos' farms, fust month or so. And then there's them cutworms, you don' hoe regular, they'll eat y'up they will."

"Been pretty dry since I set the plants out. Should I water them?"

"Hard to say. Most folks don't. Depends. You see 'em wilting, falling over, you best get some water on 'em, yes'm."

"You want to come chop weeds, do some major hoeing now and then?"

He laughed and shuffled away, shaking his head, flipping his glittering coin.

She found the factor, Amos McMillan, in his office with his huge ledger open on his lap. He looked up, briefly smiled and closed his book. "Glad you come in. I got to stop running you an account, be cash on the barrelhead from now on. Sorry, miss."

"How come?" She was pretty sure what the answer would be.

"Some of them big planters, they said they'd take their business to Chestertown if I kept selling to you. That'd break me, ruin me."

"If I bring in a crop, will you buy my tobacco, staked but uncured?"

"Have to be through somebody else, an agent, transfer paper, you understand?" He looked ashamed, embarrassed. "Wait, fore you leave, a letter come across this morning, nearly forgot." He found it and handed to her.

Seeing that the letter was from Billy, she folded it into her pocket. "I understand," she said, swallowing her ire. She thanked him, found out what she owed and promised to pay in full on Saturday.

Anne was home by late afternoon and walked her rows of low hills. Her young plants looked pretty sad. She hurried back to the house, called Philippa and told her to put on her straw hat and fetch Bess's smallest pan. She found her old bucket, put it in the wheelbarrow, filled it from the well and pushed it out into the field.

"Now, Philly, I want you to give these little plants a drink. Dip in there, get a panfull of water and pour it on each plant, on the roots. Understand?"

The girl nodded, pouting.

Anne drew up another bucket of water, untied it from the rope and hauled it to the tobacco field, sloshing her legs in the process. She pushed the wheelbarrow farther down the row, filled the old, leaky bucket and went back for more water.

They worked until dark and watered every one of the tobacco plants. Anne thanked Philippa and praised her for a good job. The young slave smiled for the first time in months.

After she ate some biscuits and ham, she took a deep breath and thumbed open the letter from Billy. He was, he wrote, in good health and back with his friends, a member of the Maryland Line's headquarters company. "The big news," he wrote in his usual scrawl, "is that I married again. She's a fine little girl named Sue. Her mother's one of the washer women. She says she thinks she's sixteen, and she does have a baby, but has no idea who the father might be."

Anne could not finish the short letter. Her eyes filled with tears, and bone tired, she climbed the stairs, shed her shoes and fell face down on her bed, fully dressed, his short letter crumpled in her hand. After she cried and had beat on the lumpy mattress with her fists, she slept.

Early in the morning, Anne rose, stripped off her nightgown, put on one of her father's shirts which hung well down her thighs but most importantly covered her blistered arms and then donned an old, light dimity dress she had wore when she was five years younger. She laced on her short boots, rolled down her sleeves, saw that some patches of skin were already peeling off, found her straw hat and without any food, and not caring how peculiar she looked, went out and hoed one long furrow up and down, both sides and some of the middle where weeds sprouted. It took her almost two hours and when she got back to the house her hands were bleeding.