Our Own Country: A Novel (The Midwife Series) (12 page)

15

I REFRAINED FROM INTERROGATING POOR CASSIE THEN
and there about the shipwright.
Surely he rented the chamber from us,
I thought. But I lay awake much of the night, nonetheless, in anticipation of speaking with her about him. At the crack of dawn, I set out to do so.

Cassie had cleared away her bedding, and there was no sign of her in the hallway. I descended the stairs to seek her out. It was yet early, even for her, but I could not fault her for wishing to remove the traces of her degradation before the family rose for the day.

I found her in the kitchen, alone. She was peeling carrots—such menial service as Cook Jenny would allow. My heart filled with pity for her. After all, what had Cassie to call her own, save the small dignity of her kitchen domain?

Cassie did not look at me, though she knew my presence. She placed the kettle upon the coals. I edged closer to her.

“I am very sorry for you, Cassie. It is unacceptable, what Mama does. With Papa gone, she has become slightly unhinged.”

“Tank you, Miss Eliza,” she said. I saw a silent tear run down her cheek.

“By the way,” I began casually, “who was that fellow on the stairs last night? I’ve not seen him about before, though I have come across him on my walks.”

“Watkins, you mean?”

“Oh, is that his name?” I asked with feigned nonchalance. “The servant. Tanned, very blue eyes.”

Cassie nodded. “Dat Watkins. But he not a servant, miss. He Master Robert’s slave.”

“Slave? But he’s white.” Cassie must have misunderstood.

“Not white, miss, ’alf-breed. Don’ make no difference, though.”

“But he’s a shipwright. I’ve seen him on the ferry from Badger’s Island. He must be very well skilled.”

“Oh, ’ee well skilled, all right. Light skin, well skilled.” She shrugged.

Cassie’s tight-lipped responses irritated me. I would know more, and so I turned squarely to face her and endeavored to meet her shifty eyes.

“Cassie, what do you
know
about Watkins? About his past, I mean?”

“Why you want to know?” she challenged.

“I’m, well—curious. He seems—if he is indeed a slave, as yet I doubt, he is unlike any slave I’ve ever known.”

“Well, you right about dat, Miss Eliza. He not like us. No, miss.”

Cassie told me that Watkins’s mother had been a light-skinned Negro from Jamaica. Purchased by a former royal governor of New Hampshire, she bore a son and a daughter. The governor’s wife, enraged to discover that her husband had fathered two children with this Jamaican, sold the girl “downriver.” The boy was later sold to a Mr. Watkins, from whom Uncle purchased him several years earlier.

“He tink dat make ’eem white,” Cassie concluded. “I don’ mean de
out
side of ’eem, Miss Eliza. I mean, he tinks he a white man, and dat your uncle will set him
free
.”

“Well, maybe Uncle Robert will,” I said.

Cassie smirked. “Master Chase? Nevah. ’Ee know a good ting when ’ee got it. Master make plenty of money off ’eem.”

But before my curiosity regarding some last point could be satisfied, Watkins himself emerged from the back stairs and entered the kitchen. He glanced at me, and by our sudden muteness he must have gleaned we were speaking about him.

Cassie handed Watkins a gunnysack filled with provisions for the day. “Thank you,” he nodded to Cassie. His voice was deep, and of a fine, clear timbre. He glanced back at us and then fled through the back door.

Now that I knew who this Watkins was, there seemed little danger in meeting him on my walks. Our relation to one another was suddenly quite clear and unambiguous. He was my uncle’s slave. It was thus with a clear conscience and a light step that I set about to take my walks down to the river once more.

I now saw this Watkins several times a day, just as if my knowledge of who he was made him visible. He was in the kitchen to fetch his sack, racing down the front stairs or slipping down the back. Those mornings I woke as dawn broke, I saw him emerge directly into our hallway and stride down the front steps, pausing to look out the Palladian window, perhaps to assess the weather. I thought this behavior presumptuous—had he been one of ours, and Papa noticed such a thing, he would have received a severe scolding.

Watkins passed through the kitchen to get his gunnysack each morning, and I sometimes saw him there, if only very briefly. He seemed ill at ease among the house slaves. He never joined in their easy banter, never stopped a moment to hear Jupiter and Cuffee kick up a lively tune. I would occasionally come upon him at some house chore—fixing a latch or hauling wood—but in these moments he let nothing distract him. I might have watched him unperceived for an hour or more, so focused was he on his single task.

Now that we knew who the other was, Watkins began to acknowledge my existence. At first, I thought his glance insolently direct, but perhaps that was because of the color of his eyes. They would linger a moment—not rapaciously, as Mr. Inman’s had, but curiously—as if there were something about me he did not quite comprehend.

Meanwhile, Mama simply refused to relinquish her grip upon poor Cassie, and for weeks I cast about for a solution. In the kitchen, “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am” was Cassie’s lot all summer long as she obeyed Cook Jenny. At night, she was made to lie her tired body down on the floor in the hall, without so much as a blanket beneath her. She slept there all through the extreme heat of August, with no relief from even the smallest breeze through a window.

September approached when I finally put my foot down. We were at dinner, and Mama had begun to speak about a letter she had just received when I interrupted her.

“Mama, I’m sorry, but I can hold my peace no longer. It shall not do to have poor Cassie sleep in the hallway after she has been used to her own bed. It is cruel, and I don’t see that it is necessary.”

Mama replied, “Cassie is no longer needed in the kitchen, Eliza, and as I’ve had no maidservant for ages, I don’t see why I shouldn’t use her.”

“Well, at least let her sleep in her own bed.”

“Then she won’t hear me if I call. Besides,” she insisted, “I am very comforted by her proximity.”

“I shall find a way to make her a feather bed, at least.”

Mama shrugged. “You may do as you like in that regard, so long as you don’t remove the feathers from
our
beds. But, oh, I have failed to mention what I planned to say . . . there has been a letter from Papa.”

“What does he report?” I inquired, pleasantly surprised.

She shook her head. “All is not well. Papa is ill; he still
coughs . . .” Here, Mama perused the letter once more to get to the part intended for me. “Oh, yes, here it is. He says someone must go to retrieve Star in Braintree. He says he has you in mind to do this.”

“Me? Go where?”

She sighed. “Papa wishes you to bring Star back to Portsmouth.” This news was most unwelcome.

“Why me? And why retrieve Star? Is it not unseemly to take back a gift, once given?”

But instead of replying Mama handed me Papa’s letter so that I could see the request for myself:

My darling Eliza. Circumstances make it necessary for me to ask a great favor of you. I must beg you to go to Braintree as soon as you receive this letter, to retrieve Star. I trust you above any servant to do me this service. What’s more, I think it shall be a kindness for you to visit with Lizzie, as we have not seen her in many months. The situation weighs greatly on my conscience . . .

I set the letter down on the hall table without having finished it. “So, I am to rob the grieving woman’s horse but do her the kindness of visiting her? Has Papa lost his senses?”

“I’m sorry, Eliza, but there simply is no one else.”

“Well, at least let me take Cassie for company.”

“You shall not. I need her.”

By this point, I was near tears of frustration. “You would send me upon the roads alone, where every day we hear of confrontations and fighting?”

“I need her,” Mama repeated. “You may take Phoebe, if you like. Juno shall be with you as well, and what’s his name—the old one.”

“Jupiter! His name is Jupiter, for goodness’ sake. Why can you not remember it?” I stormed off to my chamber.

The following morning, we were up early; Jupiter had already placed my trunk in the carriage. The horses awaited, shifting and snorting. We were just about to set off when a messenger arrived with a letter for Mama. She opened it, but I paid scant attention and signaled for Jupiter to be off. Mama raised a forestalling hand.

“A moment!” she cried, approaching me. “Thank goodness. This came just in time. It is an odd request, but then your father’s family
is
odd . . .”

“Who’s it from?” I inquired impatiently.

“Colonel Quincy.” She drew her upper lip to her nose as if smelling a bad odor. “It seems Lizzie has been ill, and he has procured a servant in Boston.”

“Not very ill, I hope?”

Mama equivocated. “Well . . . no. She was, but she is recovering slowly. Her strength has not yet returned. The colonel has located someone, but he does not wish to act out of turn. He feels that Lizzie will accept this servant if it comes from us, though apparently he is quite willing to pay.”

“Very well. But what does this have to do with me, or my leave-taking? I am anxious to be off, Mama.”

“You shall fetch her on the way. Her name is Martha Miller. The colonel says she is from good, loyal parents recently deceased. Poor girl.” Mama shook her head. “Anyway, she stays at a friend of the colonel’s on Marlborough Street. It is very convenient, as you shall go directly past the house.”

“Ugh,” I groaned. “This grows worse and worse.”

“Nonsense. There is nothing to it.”

I wanted to say that if there was nothing to it, why didn’t she go? But I bit my tongue. Mama pursed her lips and proffered a cheek, which I dutifully kissed before muttering a terse good-bye.

Juno wished to stop briefly at Stavers’s tavern before leaving town.

“If you
must
, Juno,” I sighed. Would we never get clear of Portsmouth? As I waited impatiently for him to emerge from the tavern, I overheard two elderly dames speaking to each other. They were waiting for the Flying Stage Coach to take them to Boston. Stavers’s had placed a peeling wooden settle upon the stone pavers that served as a sidewalk, and the ladies sat upon its edge, not wishing to dirty their capes.

“I simply must have a new cook,” one of them was saying. “Our Minnie has grown quite infirm.”

“What an inconvenience,” said the other.

“It is indeed. But Sarah, not a day goes by that the poor thing does not drop a dish or burn herself.” Sarah made sympathetic clucking noises. “But where is one to get a new cook in these times?”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “I could not help but overhear your conversation. As it happens, I may know of an able cook in need of a position.”

The women looked at each other, and I continued. “Jenny, my uncle’s cook, has long been seeking another situation. Since we arrived from Cambridge with our own cook, Cassie, Jenny is, well—we don’t need
two
cooks, you see. Assuming you can pay her reasonably,” I added, for that was the key to the whole enterprise. I had in fact heard Jenny complain that my uncle had not paid her in many weeks.