A Hiss Before Dying

December 31, 1785 Saturday

A fragrant cherrywood log crackled and popped in the fireplace of the inviting parlor, John Schuyler, in a chair, opened his eyes.

“Four more minutes.” John Schuyler’s wife, Catherine, smiled at him.

He smiled back and looked at the large grandfather clock that had cost his father-in-law a fortune to import.

Fortunately, Ewing Garth possessed a fortune, which his two daughters, Catherine and Rachel, and their husbands would someday inherit.

Charles West, Garth’s other son-in-law, a former British captain in the late war, stood up, lifting his glass, as they’d been visiting in the library after dinner.

The others stood also.

Bettina, the head woman slave and cook, came in from the kitchen, as did Roger and Weymouth, Roger’s teenage son. Roger, as the butler, was the male slave with the most power, which he used judiciously. Bettina, also wise about these things, expressed herself more than Roger, but everyone thought that was because she was a woman.

Charles looked around the room at these people whom he had learned to love. “Happy New Year.”

All, Bettina, Roger, and Weymouth, too, lifted their glasses and toasted the New Year and one another.

“Did not the Romans understand this day better than ourselves?” Catherine, at twenty-two, was reaching the apogee of her beauty. “Janus, who can see the past and the future.”

Charles, tall, blond, impeccably educated, nodded. “A dubious gift.”

Ewing, late middle age, smiled indulgently. “Oh, now, Charles, if a man is speculating, Janus could certainly add to his fortune.”

“Well,” his son-in-law tilted his head, “yes.”

Bettina looked out the hand-blown glass windows. “Snowing heavier.”

The others followed her gaze.

“January.” Rachel, not a late-night person like her husband, Charles, was struggling to keep awake. “The dead of winter.”

“I try to remember that. The leaves are sleeping and will unfold in springtime,” Ewing remarked. “Old as I am, every year spring comes as a miracle.”

Roger walked over to the window, putting his hand on the glass, which was cold. “Might I suggest that Catherine and John, Charles and Rachel head home before this grows worse? No one wants to get lost in a snowstorm.”

Bettina scolded. “Roger, did you leave prints on that glass?”

“No.” Roger smiled at her. He knew her ways and she his.

“Didn’t one of Paul Axtell’s sons die in a blizzard?” Catherine asked.

“Terrible thing,” her father replied. “You and Rachel were just little things. No one was prepared for the ferocity of the storm. We knew it was going to snow. You can feel that in your bones—but this was as though Borealis was extracting his revenge.” Ewing cited the Greek god of the north wind. “Started in the late afternoon. Isabelle and I,” he recalled his late, much missed wife, “took you two outside to play in the large twirling snowflakes, but within an hour the sky grew dark, the wind picked up. In we came and within minutes the house felt as though someone was pummeling it. The noise of that wind! The snow was so thick I doubt people could see the hand in front of their face. Paul’s son, a big, strapping boy, Samuel, went out to bring in more firewood. They found him when the storm passed, almost twenty-four hours later; he lay between the woodshed and the house, not twenty yards from the back door.”

“Poor fellow, so close,” Rachel, always kindhearted, said.

“Mother Nature can be cruel.” Ewing rose from his chair. “Poor Paul never really recovered, and now, these many years later, his mind is completely gone. His daughters must watch him all the time. He wanders off. Forgets where he lives. A sad life, and once he had everything. I suppose there’s a lesson there, but I prefer to focus on a happier one for the New Year.”

“Mother used to pray for thankful increase, so let us hope that is what 1786 brings to us.” Rachel smiled as Charles took her hand and kissed it. “Happy New Year,” Charles said.

“Yes.” Rachel kissed his cheek.

“I’ll fetch your wraps,” Bettina offered, while Roger, not waiting for more direction from Bettina, who could be bossy, left for the back of the house.

Weymouth preceded his father down the long hall, heart pine shining, each man now carrying a lantern with a candle in it. They set their lanterns on the long, elegant hall table, which Ewing also had shipped in from England. Most of the furniture in the big house, as it was called, came from there. The Garths weren’t much for the French fashion, they found it too ornamental, too frilly.

The men helped the women on with their wraps. Roger opened the door and Ewing’s daughters kissed him good night.

The two couples walked together through the snow, then parted ways as Catherine and John headed toward a tidy two-story clapboard house toward the west and Rachel and Charles turned east toward its duplicate.

“Happy New Year,” they wished one another, glad to see the candles shining in their own windows.

When Charles opened the door for his wife, they were greeted by his Welsh corgi, Piglet, who had faced the war with him, and the aroma of a good fire. Their two daughters, one two years old, an adopted child, and one a year old, along with Catherine and John’s son, a year and a half old, were sound asleep down in Ruth’s cabin on the double row of slave quarters, the buildings facing one another.

Ruth loved children and they loved her. All the children, slave and free, played together as toddlers.

Charles, unwrapping his scarf, smiled at his wife. “We’re alone.”

She teased. “We have Piglet.”

Taking her in his arms, he held her, then kissed her. “That we do. Let’s make the most of this peace and quiet.”

Catherine and John came to the same conclusion.

Down at the weaving lodge with its huge shuttle loom, the peace and quiet was disturbed. Bumbee, a gifted weaver, slept near the enormous fireplace. A knock on the door awakened her. She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and hurried to the door, but she didn’t open it because her worthless husband, whom she had left in high drama, often tried to win back her affections, if only for a night.

“Who is it?”

“Mignon.”

“Good God.” Bumbee threw open the door to behold a tiny shivering young woman, half dead from the cold.

“Sit by the fire.” Bumbee led her to a rocking chair in front of the fire, picking up another heavy log and placing it on the flames. “How did you know to come to the lodge?” Bumbee asked, worried.

“I didn’t. I came up from the path by the creek. My lantern died, but I knew by the big rocks I was near Cloverfields, so I climbed the path upward and knocked on the first door I saw through the snow.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No, I can’t feel my feet. I just want to be warm and I’ll slip out in the morning.”

“Mignon, the snow will be deep. I can hide you here for a while, up in the loft. No one goes up there and there’s a back stairway that leads right into the woods. What happened?”

“That devil Sheba beat me with a cane. She didn’t hit me in the face because she didn’t want it to show. I ain’t never going back down there. She and Mrs. Selisse are the Devil’s own.”

“That they are.” Bumbee knew only too well of the violent temper of Maureen Selisse, now Holloway, the lady of a great estate, Big Rawly. Her lady’s maid, Sheba, proved even worse. Maureen’s temper would explode, then usually fade, but Sheba seemed to enjoy inflicting pain. Neither mistress nor slave ever forgot and forgave what they considered an affront to their person.

“I took a ribbon from Mrs. Selisse’s table. All I wanted to do was hold it up to my face to see if the color suited me, and that bitch Sheba walked in just as I did it. She screamed I was stealing the mistress’s pearls, how I was a slut always trying to entice the men, and then she picked up a lady’s cane from the big Chinese jar and beat me. The more she beat me the crazier she got. I ran away. She ran after me for a bit, but then grew tired. She’s crazy wild.”

“Mignon, strip off those clothes. Soaking wet. I’ll bring a blanket. You can wrap yourself up in that.” Bumbee headed for the stairs, where she kept blankets, a few pillows, odds and ends tucked under them.

The loom sat in the middle of the large downstairs room. Bumbee had the carpenters on the estate build her shelves that were made up of large and small squares. Into these she placed wool, cotton, and even some hemp, organized by color, material, and weight, a carefully variegated embodiment of her organized mind. She returned with blankets, which she wrapped around the still-shivering younger woman. Then she draped Mignon’s wet clothing over a bench sitting at a right angle to the fire. She wasn’t worried about anyone coming into the lodge; generally only those women she had trained to weave and now worked with her joined her in the lodge. They would shut up. No slave of Cloverfields would ever reveal a person fleeing a harsh master, or even a good master, for that matter.

Slowly Mignon warmed. “I’m heading for a city. Maybe Richmond, maybe Philadelphia. I can get lost there.”

“Cities can be rough. Don’t really know myself.”

“I don’t care.”

“Mignon, you’re tired, you’re probably hurt, and I hope you don’t have frostbite. Your nose looks all right. What about your fingers and toes?”

“I could keep my fingers warmer than my toes. I’ll worry about that in daylight.” Exhaustion began to wash over her.

“Come on. Let me get you upstairs. No one will know you’re here. You need sleep. The bed’s a pallet bed, but it’s warm. We can talk in the morning and I’ll make breakfast. I reckon not much is going to happen until some of this snow melts down.”

Nodding yes, Mignon allowed Bumbee to lead her upstairs. She climbed onto the pallet, Bumbee taking the blanket wrapped around her, placing it on top of the other blankets. Mignon fell asleep instantly.

Bumbee stared down at the fragile-looking woman. How was this tortured girl going to get out of the county? She’d leave tracks in the snow. Once people could move about, Maureen Selisse would quickly report a runaway slave. God forbid she lost any money. Whoever returned Mignon was sure of a reward and Mignon would be sure of tenfold more misery.

Bumbee toted another heavy log for the fire, blew out her candle, and crawled into bed. The wind whistled outside. Worried as she was about Mignon, she was glad the intruder hadn’t been her worthless husband.

“Sweet Jesus, give me strength,” she prayed, then she, too, fell asleep.