Furmidable Foes

11

November 29, 1787

Thursday

“I think of the mountains as feminine.” Ewing swung out his gold-topped cane as he and Catherine walked west on the east-west farm road, one of his favorite walks. “The curves, the hollows filled with ground clouds like froth. Your mother loved the mountains.”

“They certainly put things in perspective.” His beautiful older daughter, at twenty-four, agreed. “More snow. Look at the clouds backing up behind the spine.”

“Winter. Ah well, Mother Nature keeps her own calendar. You know, my dear, it started early this year. The fall color painted the trees in what, early October?” He walked more briskly. “I have not heard anything from our friends in France.”

“Perhaps no news is good news, Father.”

A long sigh met this common expression. “Not this time. Baron Necker usually writes me once a month and I him. And those to whom we send tobacco, always a much-awaited crop, but I haven’t heard from him.”

“Well, if Europe once again went to war, we would know.”

“Oh, I think this is the calm before the storm. Remember the line from Tom Paine’s Common Sense? Where he declared if God believed in absolute monarchy, would he have given people an ass for a lion?”

Catherine laughed. “True. You know, when you insisted that Rachel and I read pamphlets and such, Rachel was bored. I liked it as much as I could at twelve. Those readings made me think.”

“Your sister possesses your mother’s artistic impulses. But when I would ask her questions, she did answer with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.” He smiled.

“Let us say the French imitate us—not that they would admit it—but let’s say they, too, threw off a king’s yoke. I do not believe it will make one bit of difference. Feudalism runs in their blood, no matter how they dress it up.”

“Ah.” He thought about this, happy to be in his daughter’s presence. “So there must always be a king or a queen or some sort of solitary leader, like Cromwell perhaps?”

“Yes. Now, you have visited those countries. I have not. I defer to you, Father, but then I usually do. You are one of the wisest men I know.”

“Oh tosh.” He loved it. “When your grandfather packed me off on my Continental tour plus England, Scotland, and even Ireland, I was overwhelmed by the architecture, the art, the dress, the wealth. Then I realized this is wealth accrued for centuries and often on the back of serfs who became servants. That is the way of the world. There will always be people on the bottom.”

“Yes.”

“But my dear, I met such intelligent, educated people like Baron Necker, both of us young men. And yet”—he paused—“and yet I knew I was a new man, a different kind of man, a man from the New World. I was young, perhaps a bit full of myself.”

“Father, that’s not your way.”

“Well, you flatter me, but I was in their countries and I did it their way, but I thought it all rather suffocating, this essentially pulling one’s forelock when meeting one’s so-called betters. You know, I am glad your sister married an Englishman, a highborn Englishman. Who knows better than Charles what we have to offer?”

“He has often said had he remained in England, he would have been expected to marry, not for love, but to replenish the family’s fortunes as his older brother, Hugh, who inherited the title, had to do. I cannot imagine not marrying the man I love. John is not a reader; he’s a doer. Lafayette saw that.”

“Your husband is a brave man. I think too much bookwork is not always the answer.”

“Then why did you make Rachel and me endure those tutors?” She teased him.

He looked at the ground, then up at her. “Sometimes you can be sly as a fox.”

“Where do you think I learned?”

He laughed, wiping his nose with a kerchief. It had begun to run in the cold. “Catherine, you and your sister lighten my heart. I forget to tell you how much you mean to me and I fear sometimes I forgot to tell your mother. One of the reasons I accomplished what I have is due to her wisdom.”

“She loved you. She would always tell Rachel and me that she hoped we would find a man as good as you.”

“I worshipped the ground she walked upon. Isabelle could see things I could not. I once asked her if she felt overshadowed, pushed aside because when we men would talk about the troubles, about should we break with the King, of course, she would leave the room. She said something that stuck with me. ‘I can get more done when no one notices.’ And she did.”

“If the women, the wives and the daughters, had not supported the cause, I don’t think we would be free of the King. And yet, I wonder. You know, Father, how we women have been told we are citadels of virtue, the civilizing force.”

“I believe it. I believe men without women descend into brutality.”

“Then how do we explain the brutality of Maureen Selisse?”

A snowflake twirled down. Ewing peered at the western sky, darkening. “Let us turn for home, my dear. Maureen, I have no idea. Cruelty seems to be her byword.”

“She’s beating slaves again for the merest infraction. Bettina told me and DoRe told her. She pretends this is the overseer’s idea, but she’s determined to find Sheba and her magnificent necklace. Jeffrey put a stop to it but she continues behind his back.”

“Those two deserved each other, Sheba and Maureen.”

“I don’t doubt that, but it does appear that Sheba outwitted her. The necklace and earrings are worth a fortune.” Catherine slipped her arm through her father’s.

“She’s been gone for a year, since October last year. Given the jewelry, her command of French, I assumed she returned to the Caribbean or went to France or perhaps even Quebec. Sheba is cunning,” he said.

“You would think we would have heard something. She possessed something of such value, worth more money than most men make in a lifetime,” Catherine wondered.

“It’s possible she has taken up with a rich man. I often wondered if she didn’t dally with Francisco, but then I thought no, she had Maureen in her power. She wouldn’t risk it. He could be a brute, too, I fear.”

Catherine added, “I heard that Jeffrey built a fancy woodshed over the graves of Sheba’s mother and two brothers. Packed the earth down and even built a floor over it. No record of anything to do with Sheba or her people.”

He waved his hand. “The dead can’t hurt you.”

Catherine leaned on him slightly. “I don’t know about that.”