Shadowbrook (26 page)

Nicole was restless. The heat perhaps. And the fact that Quent had been gone four days. She wished she had gone with him, but that was impossible. While she remained a guest in the Hale household she couldn’t march off on a trek to Albany with a man to whom she was not related. But when the time came to go north, she would no longer feel constrained by such mannerly concerns. Some obligations were more urgent than the requirement to, as Maman would have said, comport herself always as a lady.

Had Maman always been a lady? Alone with Papa, doing whatever it was married ladies did with their husbands, was she as reserved and elegant as usual, or did she fling herself at him the way the squaws did when the savage drums pounded out their blood rhythms? That day when she was little, when she saw her parents kiss, were they—

“Ah, Nicole. There you are. Matilda Davidson’s time has come. She’s been huge these past few months. Twins, I’ll warrant And her first birth. I’m afraid it won’t be easy. I thought you might come with me to lend a hand down at the sawmill.”

“But of course, Madame Hale.” In this world, as in the one she had left behind, such an errand was a duty of the squire’s wife. Nicole knew that she was, for whatever reason, being treated as a daughter of the house. “I would be glad to be of any assistance.”

“Thank you, my dear. I’m getting some things together from Kitchen Hannah’s stores. You’ve seen the little room where we keep the linens? Good. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to go there and fill this basket with some clean cloths. We’ll be needing an ample supply.”

She found the Indian things in a small chest in the linen room. Nicole had already filled the basket with cloths; when she opened the chest she was clearly prying. She knew it was wrong, but she had no shame. The chest was made of wood painted a dark, blackish green, and put carefully aside under a table beside the window where pins and thread and other sewing things were kept. It drew her like a magnet. She dropped to her knees, pulled it forward, and flipped up the cover with an excited sense that some of the questions she had been harboring since she arrived were about to be answered.

In a manner of speaking, they were. The clothes were folded neatly and she shook them out with eager hands. A tunic, leggings, a few headbands. Everything made of snow-white bearhide, beautifully cured and remarkably soft. No moccasins; she already had those.

“Mademoiselle Nicole, are you in there? Are you ready?” She shoved the clothes back in the chest and, picking up the basket of cloths, ran out to the hallway. “I am ready, madame.”

They traveled in a wagon drawn by one horse. A stable boy called Little George helped them up to the high front bench and stowed their things behind them. When everything was ready, he handed the reins to his mistress and Lorene Hale expertly clucked the horse into motion. “No need to take any of the others away from their work just now,” she said. “Harvest is coming, and there’s much to do. And I can handle any wagon as well as a man. Does that shock you, my dear?”

Ah, a test. “Not at all, madame. Maman always said one of the marks of a true lady was to do whatever was required—but with as much grace and elegance as she could manage. You drive the wagon with great charm, Madame Hale. I hope you do not think me too forward for saying so.”

“Not at all. I am flattered. And your maman sounds very wise. I’m sure she was beautiful as well.”

“
Oui, madame.
Very, very beautiful.” She had at least passed the first part of the test. That emboldened her. They were out of sight of Shadowbrook now, moving along the wide road Quent had told her had been laid out by his grandfather before even the building of the big house began. “Please, Madame Hale, both Monsieur Quent and Monsieur Cormac have been so kind to me, protected me so well …”

“Yes? You have a question, might as well ask it.” Lorene held the reins effortlessly and the horse seemed to know his way with no guidance. She turned to the younger woman and her eyes smiled encouragement.

“Monsieur Cormac’s mother, I believe she was called Pohantis, when did she die?”

The eyes of Quent’s mother were the same pale blue as his own, but Nicole had never seen Quent’s eyes go cold in that way. Not when he looked at her. Madame Hale only turned the icy glance on her for a moment, then she looked away. “Who talked to you about Pohantis?”

“Monsieur Quent. But he said only that she died. And that she was buried here in the cemetery of Shadowbrook. I wondered why—”

“She’s been gone for almost twenty years, I think. C’mon, you old nag!” Lorene tightened her grip on the reins and became very busy urging the horse forward. “We do not wish to arrive at the sawmill too late to be of any use.”

Matilda Kip Davidson—wife of Hank Davidson, who was the son of the sawyer Ely Davidson—produced a son shortly before the following dawn, after a labor that involved much blood and pain, but enormous courage and very few screams. “A boy, Madame Davidson,” Nicole said, looking into the new mother’s worried eyes. “A very big strong boy, which is why you had so much labor to bring him into the world.”

“He is healthy? “He is perfect, wonderful. And so is his maman.” Nicole sponged the new mother’s face while Lorene swaddled the infant.

“And you,” Lorene murmured, smiling fondly at Nicole. “You too are wonderful.”

Eh bien,
she had passed another test. But what did it matter? She was going to Québec to hide herself in the monastery of one of the strictest and most penitential orders of the Church. She had made a vow to God; there could be no turning back. Still, after making the faux pas about Pohantis and discovering how icy cold those blue eyes could be, she was glad to be again smiled upon by Madame Hale.

They left the sawmill after Nicole had been formally presented to the three other slaves who worked there, hauling logs and feeding them into the numerous water-powered saws that terrified Nicole the moment she saw them. The three were brothers, little more than boys, named Sampson, Westerly, and Josiah, and they looked so much alike Nicole knew she would never be able to tell them apart. But she did not need to. She would be at Shadowbrook another few weeks, perhaps less. Just until poor Monsieur Hale recovered, or most likely died.

Sitting in the wagon thinking of the impending death of Quent’s father, Nicole made a furtive sign of the cross. She saw Madame Hale purposefully avert her eyes. Nicole being a Catholic—
merci á le bon Dieu—
was something the other woman chose to ignore. Since Nicole’s refusal of her first invitation there had been no further request that she appear at madame’s Sunday morning services.
Of course Nicole would never participate in heretic worship. Madame Hale had to know that, but if it bothered her she did not show it. That was another part of the strange dance they were dancing. A step forward, a step back, and always, Nicole knew, Madame Hale calling the tune. Like the leaders of the Virginia Reel she had seen in Alexandria. Everyone dipping and twisting and turning, and winding up exactly where they were when the dance began.

It was mid-morning and a copper-colored sun burned in a cloudless blue sky. “You are tired, madame—perhaps I could drive the wagon.”

“You have done it before?”

“Never, but—
Mon Dieu,
what is that?”

Lorene reined in the horse, clucking softly and murmuring approval when it stopped and patiently waited for her next command. There came the sound of a low singing in the windless air, a tune that rose and fell and rose again. “Sally Robin,” Lorene said. “I thought that’s what it had to be.”

It had been an exhausting night, and Lorene was tired in her very bones—more weary inside herself than this girl-child, on whom she pinned so much of her hope for the future and her chance to redeem the past, could ever know. But she mustn’t let that interfere with her grand scheme. All these years, so many mistakes, so much shame … If she could leave the Patent in good hands, in Quentin’s hands; if something of what they had been given charge of here could grow and go on and be protected, perhaps then it would not all have been for nothing. “You must meet Sally Robin, mademoiselle. She is one of the marvels of Shadowbrook.”

They left the wagon where it was and the horse untethered in the middle of the road. “They’re not going anywhere, and neither is anyone likely to be coming in the other direction,” Lorene said, clambering down and leading Nicole into the bordering woods.

The song was all around them now. It filled the air and quivered in the trees and trembled in the leaves. The ground under their feet soaked it up and gave it back. Nicole wanted to say that she had never heard such music, but what she saw in the clearing they soon came to silenced even her wonder.

Nicole at once recognized the domed woven straw beehives known as skeps. When she was a child she and Maman had spent summers with Grandmère, at her country house outside Paris. There were skeps there as well, and a beekeeper to tend them and gather the honey. But when he worked with the bees, Grandmère’s keeper wore heavy gloves and a wide-brimmed hat from which hung a long veil, and of necessity he destroyed the hive in the process. The black woman collecting honey from the skeps near the sawmill used her bare hands to reach inside the hive and detach the waxy combs laden with the golden treasure. She wore no protective clothing of any sort, and she didn’t seem in any kind of hurry.
She examined each comb to see if it was full of honey before putting it in her basket. Those not quite ready were returned to the hive. And all the while what seemed like thousands of bees surrounded her, circling lazily, buzzing softly in what seemed a counterpoint to her melody.

When Sally Robin was finished she picked up her basket and walked toward them, still surrounded by the cloud of bees. Nicole instinctively pulled back. The woman chuckled. “Don’t you mind yourself, missy. Don’t you never mind. These be my friends and they don’t be fussing you none long as I’m here.” She sang a few notes, different from the earlier tune, and the swarm veered off in the direction of the skeps.

“
Incroyable.
I have never seen such a thing.”

“Nor, I think, has anyone else,” Lorene murmured. “Sally Robin is unique.”

The beekeeper was taller than any of the Shadowbrook blacks Nicole had met so far. She was a thin woman with skin the color of milky coffee and an unusually long neck, and prominent cheekbones that defined her face. Her hair was cut short, a cap of black fuzz that barely covered her scalp. It was impossible to tell her age. “Mr. Hale bought her at the slave market in New York City the morning of our wedding,” Lorene said. “Sally Robin and I came to the Patent together, didn’t we, Sally?”

“That be entirely true, mistress. Long time now.”

“Nearly thirty-four years. And when he bought her, my husband had no idea of what she could do. We didn’t know what a treasure we were getting, only that she was a seasoned slave from the Islands. But Mr. Hale, he looked in her eyes and said he thought she might be useful.”

“Don’t know about treasure, mistress. I do what I can. Long as …”

Her words trailed off, and Nicole was conscious of a tension between the black woman and her mistress that neither seemed to want to address. It was almost as if Madame Hale were embarrassed and the slave were angry.

“How’s Solomon the Barrel Maker, Sally Robin?” Lorene asked finally. It seemed to Nicole that whatever had transpired between the two women, it was the mistress who had given in.

“He be bettering. I be looking after him.”

It occurred to Nicole that she had not seen Sally Robin that day in the Frolic Ground. She’d have been bound to notice a woman so tall and extraordinary looking. But she remembered clearly the name of the man being whipped. Solomon the Barrel Maker. And she had not seen him since, though nearly a month had gone by.

“Solomon be bettering quickly in his skin,” Sally Robin added. “It be his spirit that’s still poorly. He never told no lie to Master John. He—”

“I’ll send Master Quent to visit Solomon.” Lorene cut off the complaint as
soon as it got started. However much a fool John might be, she could not be put in the position of having to take sides between her son and a slave. “As soon as he gets back from Albany I’ll ask Master Quent to ride down here for a visit.”

“Solomon be liking that, mistress.” Sally Robin appeared to have thought better about her audacity. “And I be looking after Mistress Matilda now that the birthing be done. Don’t you worry your mind about her.”

“I shan’t, Sally Robin. Not for a moment.”

Lorene and Nicole returned to the wagon and began the long journey back to Shadowbrook, and not until they neared the big house did Lorene break the weary silence she’d maintained for two hours. “As I said, Sally Robin came from the Islands. A seasoned slave.”

“When you buy them, you know their history?” Like the pedigree of a horse or the breed of a cow, Nicole wanted to say, but thought better of it.

“Most folks try to find out something besides the auctioneer’s patter. It was easy for us. My papa owned a piece of the slave market on Wall Street in New York City, and a fleet of Guinea ships, the boats that sail to Africa and bring back the nigras. Will Devrey always knew everything about the merchandise going on the auction block. Sally Robin’s a skilled healer as well as a beekeeper, makes all our unguents and lotions here on the Patent. But she never attends a birthing. Won’t go near the new mother until it’s over. Clemency the Washerwoman tells me it’s because Sally Robin’s barren. She’s been with Solomon almost from the day she arrived at Shadowbrook, but she’s never had a child. Clemency advised against my insisting on Sally Robin’s attendance at childbirth. She’s a very wise old woman, is Clemency. The other slaves look to her for guidance in many things. You’d do well always to—”

Dear God, what was she thinking of? She must not speak as if Nicole were already her daughter-in-law. Ephraim hadn’t yet agreed, and as far as she knew, Quent and this young woman hadn’t made any plans. But the girl was considering it. Dreaming of it, perhaps. Oh yes. Just look at how pink your cheeks are right now. You are thinking much the same things that I am thinking, little Mademoiselle Nicole. Oh yes.