A Hiss Before Dying

January 1, 1786 Sunday

Blue, the world shone soft blue. Snow continued to fall, tiny little flakes. Even though the walkways among all the buildings had been cleared, two inches already rested on those paths. Another hour and the men would be back at it.

Catherine, like most well-born women of her generation, rarely used the word slave. One tried to circumvent what may be unpleasant. A cheating husband was rarely called that. Behind their fans, women might murmur that the husband suffered from the usual malady. Catherine avoided talking with the ladies if she could. Bored her to tears. Like her father, she adored business, growth, new ideas, and, of course, profit.

It would never do to be direct; being direct in Virginia betrayed a common mind, hence vulgarity. This rule did not apply sometimes—with one’s own family.

The back door opened. “Sister.”

Catherine hurried to the door and took her sister’s hand to help her over the threshold. Footing was slippery.

“Rachel, what are you doing out in this weather?”

Throwing off her heavy coat and unwrapping her scarf, Rachel shook her feet. “Charles and the two girls are making more noise than a cannonade. I thought two girls would be easy. I must have been out of my mind. Add in my beloved and handsome husband and I have three children. He was so lonesome for them when we woke up this morning he pushed through the snow to fetch them home. I would have been happy without them for a bit longer.” She looked around as she followed Catherine into the kitchen, the huge walk-in fireplace warming the room wonderfully well. “Where is John?”

“Out clearing paths.”

Both sisters had children close in age. Rachel’s true daughter, Isabelle, was named for her mother. Marcia, an orphan under cover of belonging to a distant relative, was also raised as her own. Marcia would never know her true parentage, although the sisters and their husbands, plus Bettina, knew, but then Bettina knew everything, as did most of the slaves.

“Sit down. I was just boiling a pot of tea so I could go over Father’s logging plan for his land along the James River. But I’m sleepy.”

“Snow. Rain. Makes me fight to keep my eyes open unless I’m in the house with those hellions. Catherine, I don’t think we were that bad.”

Catherine laughed as she picked up the boiling tea kettle. “No one ever does. I’m sure we gave Mother fits.”

“Mmm.” Rachel remained unconvinced.

“Cream?”

“Sit down. I’ll get it.” Rachel rose to retrieve the pitcher sitting in a small sink, cold water keeping the cream at a good temperature.

“I’ll go half blind from all this reading of maps, number, harvest years. We’ve three hundred acres about Scottsville. The demand for lumber is rising sharply. Father wants to cut it all, then replant. I want partial cutting. Let the rest stand and get even fatter. I don’t think the demand is going to falter.”

“Why not?”

“People are pouring in.” Catherine sipped her tea, grateful for the small jolt.

“That they are. Charles has already had to enlarge his plans for St. Luke’s. The cornerstone, as you know, was laid in the fall, but the weather, so strange, halted most of the work. Now he’s doubled the size of the church itself. Spring can’t arrive soon enough.” She looked out the window. “No time soon.”

Charles was designing a Lutheran church sited at Wayland’s Corner.

“I think not. It will arrive. It always does. Remember how Mother and Bettina would have a robin party when they saw the first robin?”

Rachel leaned back. “I find myself looking back more now, especially since the children came. I wish Mother were here to see them.”

“I wish Mother were here to help!” Catherine laughed.

“Which reminds me, where is JohnJohn?”

“With his father. My husband is like your husband. He rose, dressed, ate breakfast, then hurried to pick up JohnJohn, his little shadow. That boy wants to do everything that John does. Poor little fellow gets in the way, but eventually he falls asleep and John carries him back down to Ruth. If it breathes, Ruth loves it. I think she’d mother frogs if she could. If it’s warm, she puts him under a tree or in a wagon.”

The two smiled for Ruth, in her early thirties, who loved young things and showed a real gift for children. They took to her and she knew when and what they were ready to learn, whether it was how to build a box or their ABCs. If a woman, slave or free, couldn’t handle or understand a child, usually that woman found her way to Ruth, including powerful mistresses from other estates.

“He’s going to be the spitting image of John.” Rachel again looked out the window, and it was snowing harder. “I’ve discovered I like working with Charles, like the drawings, like the walking over building sites. I could never understand how you could sit and go over business plans with Father. Now I do. When something fills your mind, best to learn and do.”

“We’d both die fiddling with needlepoint. Which reminds me. Father told me that Maureen Selisse is having great success with the foundry, but here’s the odd part, she is allowing Sheba to advertise and sell fabrics and needlepoint.”

“What? Since when did that holy horror ever evidence any flair for texture, color, much less needlepoint design? All Sheba can do is make other people’s lives miserable,” Rachel remarked with feeling.

Catherine shrugged. “The real story is Maureen is keeping her lady-in-waiting happy.”

“Curious.” Rachel tapped her fingers on the smooth wooden tabletop.

“Indeed. Sheba knows what really happened when Francisco was stabbed to death. I don’t believe their story about Moses killing him. Never did.”

Francisco was Maureen’s husband, who bedeviled and violated regularly a gorgeous slave woman, Ailee. The story told by mistress and lady-in-waiting was that Moses, Ailee’s true love, killed Francisco. The two slaves fled, never to be found by the authorities.

Rachel, usually quiet in groups, easily chatted with her sister and all the people on Cloverfields. “But why fabrics?”

“Maureen imports all those expensive silks and brocades. Maybe there’s money in it?” Catherine wondered.

“I think Sheba and Maureen will use this to gather information. Who is losing money? Who is making money? Who is having an illicit affair with whom? Women will come and a bit of sherry here and there, tongues will loosen.”

“Rachel, I would never have thought of that,” Catherine honestly replied.

“No good will come of this.”

“Not to us, but probably to them.” Catherine sighed.