Chapter 9: Andrew's Homecoming

"Ah Nevers, hah, you are surprised to see me. I'm glad. Please don't get up."

"Master Andrew! Well, I must say you are certainly correct," said the overseer. "Thought you were in England." He set aside his spectacles and quill and then donned his wig and patted his crown to settle it.

"Right, as usual, as always. Indeed I was, at school in fact. Miserable place, cold and unfriendly. Terrible food, awful, not fit for a field hand." Andrew M'Kenna flipped out the tails of his plum-colored coat and sat on Nevers' straight-backed chair. "But now I'm safely home and content to be down here rusticating, especially since there's to be no racing this year, damn their eyes." He tossed his hat on the desk, crossed his silk-clad legs and adjusted the folds of his gray breeches to show off the pairs of silver buckles at his knees.

"Yes, I see. But your mother and the Conroys are over on the Eastern Shore, probably until things settle down. They may not come back to Annapolis at all this winter. Suppose you know that." Nevers looked carefully at the thin, sallow boy. He certainly was what they called a "macaroni," thought the governor of M'Kenna's Disappointment. A nameless worry knotted his belly and lined his forehead. He tapped his fingers on his desk.

"Indeed, so here I am to take charge my birthplace. Gives me something useful to do, eh. And since I am my late father's only son and this land is entailed for me, that's proper is it not?"

"Of course, quite right," said Nevers, feeling uneasy, even bilious. "However, young sir, since you are not yet twenty-one, and your mother has dower rights, of course, I hardly think you can make contracts or do some of the other necessary tasks. Have you dealt with the factor at all or talked to your mother's solicitor?"

"Isn't that why you're here, eh, with all those wonderful papers and seals, contracts and so forth." Andrew M'Kenna gestured broadly to the ledger books and fat folders crowding the shelves behind the overseer and tried to make his face look pleasant and hopeful, impatient to find a young black to satisfy his cock.

"Just so, and I'm sure your friends will be happy to see you again," Nevers said, hoping the young man intended to spend most of his time in the men's clubs, fancy bordellos and coffee houses of Annapolis and Georgetown rather than peering over his shoulder or harassing his workers.

"Well now, I'll want to have a bit of a look around today. Let the people see I'm here. Everything in order?"

"Certainly, sir, certainly," Nevers said. "Tobacco crop's staked and barned, good crop, first quality. Last year's is down in the Bladensburg inspection warehouse. Not as fine, quality or quantity, but the factor's hoping for a much better price than last year, especially with all this trouble. Cow barn's been repaired, as I'm sure you saw. We're going to get on the whitewashing next week if it's dry and start the corn harvest soon."

"Ah, but what of the people, Nevers? The ignorant lackey that took my horse was certainly slow and sullen, ill-dressed as well. Those two white men I saw working on hogsheads did not look very diligent to me. Barely made a decent bow. Weren't they here a year ago? Are they swiving that high-yellow bitch I saw in the back of their shed? Perhaps you've not been keeping their toes to the line, eh?" Young M'Kenna produced a small, enameled snuff box and tapped it. His fleshy lips seemed to be in a perpetual sneer. He sucked a bit of meat from between his teeth before performing the snuff routine he had long practiced before a looking-glass.

Nevers remembered the last time this boy had spent a summer on the place, lashing out with his riding crop, kicking women and children about with his polished boots, mounting every young black girl he caught alone in the quarters, drinking himself sick regularly and puking behind the smoke house. It had been more than a year ago. How old was he then, fifteen, sixteen perhaps. It had taken months to settle the slaves down and even then he had two runaways that were never found, a good fieldhand and his woman. Andrew's homecoming was both unexpected and unwelcome as far as the harried superintendent was concerned.

"Going up to the house for a bite, a check of the cellar, eh, and then I'd appreciate it if you'd walk the place with me this evening, answer a few questions, name the new people, that sort of thing." M'Kenna stood, put his snuff box away, pulled down his tight-fitting waistcoat, adjusted his stylish tie-wig, picked up his tri-cornered hat and waited, tapping his foot and looking about a foot over his overseer's head, one hip just a bit higher than the other but at ease.

Nevers suffered a moment of confusion and then stood to hold the door for Andrew. "Of course," he said with a slight bow, "be a pleasure, sir." The "sir" came hard for him, but he got it out sans inflection.

Andrew M'Kenna nodded, obviously pleased that he had made the older man servile. I'll get things back in order quickly, he thought, fluttering his silken neckcloth, and have some fine, brown tail and a bit of fun while I'm at it. They'll learn to fear their betters if they won't respect them. He cracked his whip against his high, hard, London-made boot and adjusted his ornate and stocking-stuffed codpiece.

Elizabeth bent to the work of clearing more dead plants from the neat rectangles of her kitchen garden with its hard-trod paths. No frost had touched the plantation yet, but now even her second plantings had almost stopped producing in the shorter days and cooler nights. The root crops and leafy greens looked healthy enough and, she assumed, would continue to do so for another month at least, and there were still herbs to be harvested and dried.

But she remembered her first winter in Maryland and knew that by Christmas and the handing-out, the long, narrow garden would be as desolate and barren as she found it. She hoed out a few late-developing weeds as she went along and then raked up piles of stems and leaves on the side of her bare rows and grayish hillocks.

It had been a good year for growing almost everything with timely, soaking rains, and the kitchen had "put up," as the cooks called it, much of her produce for the winter. Baskets of apples, turnips, carrots and potatoes were stored in the dirt-floored cellar. The slaves and other workers had enjoyed the variety of things she grew, and so had she. She had learned to cultivate, prepare and eat a number of vegetables new to her, mostly greens and squash of various kinds as well as small ears of Indian corn.

Elizabeth felt whole and healthy despite having suffered through the dankest and coldest winter and the longest and hottest summer of her life. She had learned to always wear a hat while working outside after a painful sunburn in early June blistered her nose and forehead. Now the nightmares filled with gleaming animal eyes and foul rotting odors seldom disturbed her sleep. She had gained weight, perhaps would go a full eight stone now, and she was tan and strong, the damage to her ribs and face all but forgotten. An occasional fantasy bothered her, especially after hearing slave couples moaning together in the cabins nearby.

She was still something of an outsider in the vibrant, deeply superstitious and often secretive community that was the "Quarters," but she had made friends and had learned to trust some slaves and to avoid others. Jenny now let her look after her baby from time to time, especially on the Sunday mornings when she went to the raucous Bible meeting down near the river. When the wind was from the right direction, she could hear the songs they sang and thought of her own church with its raft of Cornish saints, now so far away.

Becky was cutting more teeth, but she was generally a quiet and placid child, observing the world with curiosity through her bright, blue eyes. Her hair was coming in soft and brown, and she had developed into a very determined crawler who tended to put almost everything in her mouth including bugs when she could catch them. Jenny never volunteered the name of the baby's father, and the indentured woman never asked. Curiosity, Elizabeth had discovered, was not a virtue in the Quarters whereas acting busy, pleading ignorance and kowtowing to Mr. Nevers were.

"Elizabeth!" cried a preemptory voice. She stood, pulled off her straw hat, wiped her face with her forearm, dusted off her hands and squinted back toward the setting sun. She could tell it was two men standing at the back of the garden near the row of yarrow plants, and from the heavy voice, she was sure one of them was Mr. Nevers although he had never called to her like that before.

Elizabeth had learned that he was a man of his word just as old Rufe was a prime story teller more interested in the sound and effect of what he said than the truth of it. She liked and trusted both of them in different ways. The lithe woman stepped over two hillocky rows and walked across the sere grass and past the fading hollyhocks to the place where the men stood in the sun's glare.

She wondered if one of the coopers wanted to see her. Both of them, separately, had suggested that they would like to visit her from time to time, late at night, or have her come and sleep with them in place of the series of young slave wenches they regularly kept. She had been tempted but decided not to lie with either of them, fearing pregnancy more than intimacy.

From time to time, she had thought of her gentle husband and their love making, and of other men, including broad-shouldered and nearly-forgotten Matthew. She occasionally enjoyed daydreams of romantic relationships. Her kneading hands had relieved some of the loneliness, part of the ache, but that transitory relief was hardly sufficient. She attempted to substitute hard work for her other needs and still prayed her thanks for each new day.

When she reached the men and was looking more south than west, she saw that, indeed, one was Mr. Nevers and the other was a slighter, younger man wearing fancy clothes, a fussy wig, tall tricorn with a beribboned medallion and shiny boots. He was carrying a leather crop that was seldom still. "Sir," she said to the overseer, making what passed for a polite nod on this plantation. It's like a cat's tail, she thought glancing at the short whip in the young man nervous hand; flick, flick, flick.

"Elizabeth," said Mr. Nevers, "this is Master Andrew M'Kenna, son of the owner of this farm. He is just back from school in London and has come down to look over his plantation."

The young woman nodded to younger M'Kenna, recognizing him now from his preemptory bow on the "Lune," while her memory quickly told her who he was and made her insides leap, her throat ache. She recalled Mr. Conroy's muffled anger during that carriage ride. She said nothing and worked to keep her shaded face calm and unreadable but felt chilled as an unwanted memory crawled from its darkened cave. She was glad that her wide-brimmed straw hat shaded most of her face and pulled the brim a bit lower.

"My honored step-father bought your bond, I'm told," Andrew said, admiring the woman's slim body and long, brown hair and recalling the large, vulgar sailor's colorful description of what he had done to her. He also remembered the deep gouges on that man's face.

"That 'e did," she said, swallowing down the bile in her throat. "I've a five-year indenture." She paused, not noticing Mr. Never's frigid look.

"I see," Andrew said, wondering if he should demand the honorific that the slaves automatically added. The two coopers had properly called him "sir" without a thought, but this woman was looking right at him instead of down toward her feet. He smacked the side of his boot with a sharp crack that made her flinch.

"Tell Master Andrew what your duties are, Elizabeth," Mr. Nevers said impatiently as worry lines creased his forehead and his fingers fidgeted at his breeches' seam.

"Your mother sent me 'ere t'take care a'the kitchen garden, and I look after the seedbeds, the cistern, the smoke'ouse, oh, an' some 'erbs. And I do a few other jobs as Mr. Nevers or Miranda orders, time t'time, in the big house." She examined the young man carefully, noting both his spotless clothing and his bored look. His riding crop flicked tirelessly. His soft britches were so tight that she could see the outline of his hip bones and the long muscles of his thighs.

"Oh, did you meet my mother?" Andrew asked, wondering if he could demand favors from her as he did of the black slaves.

"Once," said Elizabeth, lifting her chin and ignoring the young man's appraising gaze, "in the dining room, near Christmastime."

"At old Conroy's showy town house, I assume, in Annapolis?" Andrew asked, lifting an eyebrow.

Elizabeth nodded. She remembered how some of the men on the ship had looked at her in the first week of sailing, and here was the same avaricious stare, the same evaluating look as if she were to be sold by the pound. She noted the bulge at his groin.

"I see." Andrew paused and licked his lips. "I believe you are the young lady who crossed on the "Lune" with my fussy step-sisters, eh." He hesitated again and took out his snuff box; he tapped it and went about the business of taking a pinch, turning his head to the side. "And I believe I owe you an apology."

"Sir?" said Elizabeth quietly, knowing exactly what he meant but wondering how he was going to deal with it. She removed her hat, wiped her face on her sleeve and tossed back her hair with an accustomed gesture that gathered Andrew's full attention.

By damn, I will have her, he thought.

"Yes, indeed. Nevers, this bondwoman was attacked by one of the brig's sailors because I did not immediately do what my step-father asked. Councilor Conroy, you know. I was delayed until it was too late." He turned and looked at her directly. "I am sorry, and I do ask your forgiveness. Elizabeth, is it?" He made a slight leg, lifted his cocked hat and showed his teeth, his small, even teeth.

He looks like a fox, Elizabeth decided. She replaced her battered straw hat, nodded and dropped an even slighter curtsey. She did not smile but shifted her gaze to Mr. Nevers who was sweating and looked perplexed. The two men went on with their tour, and the young woman returned to her gardening, surprised by the apology and both pleased and bothered. I'm older than he is and he acts like my father, she thought. And he makes Mr. Nevers uneasy, that's surely true and it's very odd.

She reached the end of a furrow in her spotty hoeing and paused, resting on the worn handle, chin atop her clasped hands. I wonder if he could find out about Matthew or the "Lune." She took a deep breath, almost a sigh. Andrew's greedy, offhand look had jarred out memories of the vile, rapacious men in the warehouse, and the woman hacked at the ground as she stuffed her ogres back into their buried cache.

The sun had dropped below the distant Virginia hills by the time Elizabeth reached her cabin and leaned her hoe against the corner of the small building. She hung some comfrey plants up to dry in the rafters of her home and checked on the camomile flowers that would soon be ready to store away. She took three carrots from her pocket and walked over to the crude well everyone in the Quarters shared. She drew up a bucket of chill water and drank deeply using the tin dipper that hung there on a string. Then she rinsed the dirt from her carrots and scrubbed them against each other. She dried her hands on her worn skirt and ate a carrot as she walked back toward her tiny home.

A brief squeal made her stop. She could not figure out exactly where the undulating cry came from in the gloom of twilight, but she knew it was somewhere in the slave quarters, and it was a woman in pain or fear not an injured child or a trapped animal, certainly not a man. The small world became very quiet; even the crows seemed to be listening. When she looked up the lane, all the doors were closed. No one was in the weedy path, not even any bare-bottomed children. Elizabeth took another bite of carrot and wondered what was going on. She walked to Jenny's door and knocked.

"Go 'way," came a gruff, male voice from within.

"Jenny," called Elizabeth, putting her ear near the door and hearing scuffling sounds.

"I'm all right, girl, go 'way," Jenny said loudly, her voice shaking. Elizabeth knew that her friend had entertained young men from time to time, and she did not want to interfere in what might have been a lovers' spat. But that yell had been so cruelly sharp that she wondered and worried.

Elizabeth went back to her cabin, propped open the door with her stool and stirred up her small fire. Although there was still some light in the sky, she lit a smoky, kitchen-fat taper and got down her slate. She sat in the doorway with the candle sputtering on one of the log ends. First she wrote out the whole alphabet, Ay to Zed, all in large, blocky, capital letters without ornamentation, saying the letters as she did. Then she rubbed that out with the heel of her hand and wrote her name, and then "Clemence," "Benjamin," "Jenny, "Becky" and, finally, "Matthew." She read those to herself several times and paused to wonder about Matt. Where was the big, friendly lout? What was he doing? She rubbed his name away very slowly with the heel of her hand.

She had asked Mr. Nevers to spell out the names for her, and he had written all three out plus "Maryland," "Annapolis," "Baltimore," and the words "town" and "tobacco." She had quickly learned to say the colony's name as something like "Mer'lan" rather than as two, separate words. She rubbed out the other peoples' names and wrote the place names. She looked at the words. If that was "Baltimore," she decided, then B-A-L was ball, T-I was tea, and M-O-R-E was more. She planned to ask Mr. Nevers tomorrow. She saw "Mary" and "Ann" and "nap" and "pole" and "land" and perhaps "tow" and circled each on the slate to ask about.

Then she thought about Matthew some more. She smiled. He wasn't really a 'lout.' Just big and strong like the shire horses and the oxen that worked on the farms, but there was something about him men seemed to recognize, something in his character she did not understand. It was not just his size or his fists that made him a well-liked leader.

As she was putting her things away, the sound of someone weeping sifted through her open door, and Elizabeth went out to investigate. The Quarters still appeared to be abandoned except for a many-colored dog. She could see a man walking quickly away toward the big house, shaded by the trees. The sobs seemed to be coming from Jenny's cabin. Elizabeth knocked and waited.

Jenny's door opened a few inches. Elizabeth could barely make out her friend's dark face in the gloom of sunset, just her wet eyes. A few high clouds still held some light. "Go 'way, girl," Jenny said.

"You cryin'?" Elizabeth asked.

"Some, just sad, tha's all." She sniffed. "Sad day."

"Is Becky all right?" Elizabeth asked, pushing on the door and seeing the tear stains on Jenny's face. "Did he 'it you?"

"No, no. Talk to you t'morrow. Got to nurse the baby." She tried to push the door closed.

"Here's a carrot Becky c'n chew on." Elizabeth held it in the crack still open, and Jenny took it wordlessly and closed the door. Elizabeth went back to her cabin and found Rufe standing by her doorway, looking sourly at her guttering candle and shaking his head.

"You gonna hab troubles for yo'sef, you go poken that skinny nose inna folk's bid'ness," Rufe said, accepting the carrot Elizabeth offered him.

"Somebody's bothering Jenny," Elizabeth said.

"Um hm, and you don' know who, do you?"

"Bet you do, don't you, Rufe?" Elizabeth smiled at him, and he nodded, gnawing on the carrot deep in his mouth where he had both upper and lower teeth.

"Yep, but I'se smart 'nuf to keep my ole mouf shut up," he said, rotating to sit on Elizabeth's stool and tucking his shriveled leg out of sight. "Git tired leanin' on dem damn crutches," he explained.

"You goin' t'tell me. Only one new face on the farm t'day that I know 'bout," Elizabeth said.

"An' he a mean sum'bitch. Don' you hab nuffin' to do wif him, yo' hear. Never. Nuffin'."

The next day, while Elizabeth worked in the kitchen garden, where neat rows of chives and meadow saffron marked out various rectangles, Andrew M'Kenna again visited the Quarters. All the male slaves and most of the women who were not nursing were at their jobs in the fields or near the house. He pushed open Jenny's door with his whip. "Bring her out here," he said to the cowering young woman. He popped the riding crop against his shiny boot.

"You won't hurt her none?" Jenny demanded, knees shaking, heart pounding.

"Bring her out where I can see, girl. It's dark in this damned, smelly hole."

Jenny carried her baby out into the sunlight, where Andrew examined her carefully, gently rubbing the child's large head. "Od's blood," he said, "she does have blue eyes."

"Tole you," Jenny said quietly, protectively cuddling her baby. "Ain't nobody but you done played the stud wif me back then. This here's yore chile. Ever'body knows."

"Yes," Andrew said, needlessly loud. "All these people are mine. You, that damn, lazy Rufe and all those hiding back of their blasted doors. I own them all, bloody right I do." He dropped his voice down several notches. "As for this wee one here, this piccaninny, well, it's a good thing it's a girl."

"She 'most a year ole. Figure it out. You know when you done it to me back'a the barn an' then 'hind these here cabins," Jenny said, holding her baby tightly as if she feared Andrew would snatch her away. "You know nobody'd had me 'fore you."

"Jenny, if I didn't like you, I would sell you, your loud mouth and your fat baby right down the river tomorrow, to Charleston or Savannah, eh. So you just be a good girl and get back in there." He pushed her toward the cabin door, stepped in behind her, hooked the worn loop and pulled the cradle in front of the door.

"Put that baby down," he said quietly. She did and gave the child what was left of the carrot to chew on.

"Now kneel down there," Andrew said as their eyes became accustomed to the light seeping around the door and through the badly chinked places between the logs. "You have such a fine, soft mouth. No yelling now, like you did yesterday. I'm not goin' to hurt you, an' I don't want to hit you again."

Jenny knelt where he pointed with his whip and watched as Andrew unbuttoned the front flap of his soft, tan britches and held back the sides of his mustard-colored coat, the whip hanging from his wrist. "Here, now," he said, jerking out his flabby member. "This got me tossed out of Eton because my miserable fag had to go crying to the master. You're much better anyhow."

"Please," Jenny said, trying not to look at the pale, flaccid thing that made her think of maggots. "I don' like it. Makes me gag."

Andrew touched her face with his riding crop. "You did jus' fine last evening, Jenny. Now do it again, gently, and I'll give you some sugar for the baby."

Elizabeth felt someone watching her, but she could not find the eyes no matter where she searched. She finished her day's work and headed for the overseer's office, which, she had learned from old Rufe, was the original M'Kenna home, built on this big plantation more than fifty years before. She knocked and entered at Mr. Nevers' answer.

"Elizabeth?" he said as she stood before his desk patiently.

"I'm worried about m'friend Jenny," she said.

"Who?" Nevers looked up but did not put down his turkey-quill pen.

"She's a young slave, sir, lives near me in the Quarters. Her momma died some time back. She's got this pretty little, blue-eyed child. I think that young M'Kenna boy was doing somethin' to her late yesterday, hurtin' her. I heard her cry out." It had been on her mind all day, and Elizabeth now felt much relieved to have spit it out.

"Please, sit down," said Mr. Nevers. He took off his eyeglasses and rubbed the reddened bridge of his nose. "You are a widow, as I recall." He tapped his teeth with the quill.

Elizabeth nodded, removing her hat, using it as a fan and wondering what that almost-forgotten fact had to do with anything. She had not thought about her Clemence for some time.

"You must understand that people who own slaves can do whatever they want with them, even kill them I suppose, though few do. Some care for their horses and pigs much better than they do their slaves. Hm, yes, or their bond servants for that matter, but let's just talk about black slaves; chattels is what they are. The people here are, in general, treated well. We seldom use the whip or the branding iron. But, but." He stopped and closed his eyes.

"But white men lie with black women," Elizabeth suggested, seeing a tangle of pale and dark limbs in her mind.

"Yes, whenever it pleases them," Nevers said. "Andrew's father did it. His uncles do it. Likely his grandfather did it."

"When it pleases the men?" asked Elizabeth. "For sport?"

"Yes, exactly." Nevers nodded and closed his eyes again. "And you are a white slave, young woman, little different, very little. If your master demands that you lie with him, you can complain to me about your treatment, but there is really nothing I can do. Servants have surely been punished for refusing such an order, any order, whipped. I doubt that a magistrate in this county would listen to a charge of rape, but then again, he might under some conditions, if you could show enough injuries, bring enough witnesses, the right sort of witnesses, although I do not know of a single case. Never from a slave, of course. Slaves can't even give evidence."

"Is that justice?" she asked, hoping the idea of rape would not revive buried images.

"I don't know," Nevers said. "I do know that a local man called McAtee beat a slave to death, hung him up in the rafters and beat him with a cane and a whip, and the Port Tobacco jury acquitted him."

"Terrible," Elizabeth said, pushing away her memory of the torn backs of the Irishmen aboard the "Lune."

"That was just two or three years ago. I heard that a while back a man beat one of his bondservants to death. They didn't even try him. He said, he told the court he had not intended to kill the man, just punish him."

"But what of these children, sir, like Jenny's baby?"

"Slaves, they're just slaves. Some are sold off, many are given away when they're weaned, usually to family members." He stopped and looked down at his fingers. "You should also know that a white woman who has a mulatto child gets seven years of servitude, and the child is considered a slave until full grown, age thirty I think it is." He exhaled and closed his eyes briefly. "Odd law, that."

"So if that M'Kenna boy's 'orsing your slave women down in the Quarters, whether they likes it or not, or beatin' them or whatever, gettin' babies on 'em, there's nothing you c'n do?"

"Nothing," said Nevers, shaking his head. "Not a blessed thing."

That Sunday morning Elizabeth sat in front of her cabin bouncing Becky on her knees and enjoying the child's giggles. She had given the baby a bath as Jenny asked and washed her own face and hands as best she could in water warmed by the sun. Becky grabbed at the young woman's long hair, and Elizabeth tossed back her head wondering how long it had been since she had really washed her hair. She recalled standing out in a rain storm and doing it once this summer with lye soap from the kitchen. It was also the last time she had washed her only dress.

A shadow fell across her lap. It gave her a start and a sudden flash of unwanted memory. "Elizabeth," said Andrew M'Kenna, smacking his boot top so loudly that the child jumped, "is that your baby?"

She squinted up into the morning sun. "No, she's Jenny's child."

"This your cabin?" he asked, kicking the bottom log with his boot, poking the door open with his ever-present whip.

Elizabeth nodded, wondering why this young man was here.

"Where is Jenny? I brought some sugar for Becky."

"Down at the river with that old preacher," Elizabeth said, noticing that Andrew knew the baby's name.

"I don't like you living down here with the nigras. I didn't know that you were, didn't even think about it. Nevers made a mistake, a foolish mistake, not his first. Would you like to move up to the house?" He smiled. "I'm sure we can find room."

"I'm 'appy here," she said, knowing he could order her to move if he wanted to. Perhaps he could rape her or sell her and no one would care. She pushed that thought away, back with the drooling fangs and gleaming eyes that his shadow had suddenly beckoned forth.

"Well, think about it. I'll talk to that fool Nevers. It's a mistake to mix people like this. You should be up with the house servants, at least. I'm sure you don't want to live with those smelly coopers, eh." He chuckled and then sniffed when the woman did not smile. "I'll find out what they do on other farms." He turned to leave and then quickly came back. "Here's a few pieces of sugar." He handed Elizabeth folded paper. "I'll be back after dinner. I'm riding this morning, or I'd settle this now."