Chapter Twenty-Three
Keturah awakened before sunrise to the smell of baking bread and fire in the kitchen, which they all knew by now tended to smoke a great deal. It was something else on her endless list of things needing done—she must either find a chimney sweep or a mason to address the hundred-year-old stone structure’s ailments. From what she had been told, the grand old volcanic chimney stood in what was now the third house built around her.
“They always said it be a good luck charm,” said Sansa, currently serving as a kitchen maid, running her hand over the black rock when Keturah entered the room, candle in hand. “I thought she jus’ needed to be warmed up again, Lady Ket, since there been no cook fire in here for months.” She waved her hand through the smoke and pinched her nose, squinting her eyes.
“Yes, well, I think we might need to tear down this good luck charm and begin anew,” Ket said, picking up a wooden paddle to encourage the smoke to waft out the window.
“Oh, Lady Ket, we cannot do that,” Grace said. “Surviving three houses over a hundred years? ’Tis a bit of your family’s history, it is.”
“But look at it,” Ket said, gesturing in frustration toward the fireplace. “’Tis liable to ignite and bring down the third with it!”
“Just a sweep is what she needs,” Grace said, peering up and into the chimney, as if she could see through the billowing smoke. “Surely they have chimney sweeps, even here on Nevis.”
“I would not be so certain,” Keturah said with a weary sigh. “They have porcelain from the Orient and cattle from the colonies, but they might not have a body dedicated to preserving something like a chimney. No,” she said with a second sigh, hand on hip surveying the stone structure, “this island seems more bent on treating all as they might a new harvest.”
Would that I had the funds to begin anew. Again it haunted her thoughts. There was much in the house that would be more costly to repair than she liked to think about. The stairs had begun to separate a bit from the wall and seemed to shift with each step one took on them. Selah refused to take to the stairs at the same time as either of her sisters or Grace. The rugs were threadbare, and they needed to peel the rest of the wallpaper. In fact, there was not a room in the house that didn’t need considerable work.
Truth be told, Keturah had spent hours daydreaming about razing the house and beginning again. But running her hand over the fireplace mantel, thinking of her father before her, her grandfather before him, and other planters too . . . well, it gave her a sense of permanence, hope in its longevity. She knew that if she had to take down this house and rebuild, she too would do so with this fireplace as the cornerstone, just as her ancestors had before her.
Yet I would give it a thorough cleaning, she thought.
“What did my father do?” she asked Bennabe, who had wandered into the kitchen in search of something to break his fast. The two new slaves—named by the others as Hope and Tolmus—timidly peeked in the door behind him. She was glad he had taken them under his wing. Day by day they seemed a bit more settled, a bit more brave in meeting her welcoming smile with one of their own. “Surely Father did not live with such smoke, billowing out each day.”
“No, mum. They cooked outside,” Bennabe said, “to avoid the smoke and heat. They built up a fire every day in that pit in the far corner. Mitilda could show you. She outside even now, settin’ to fire more pots.”
Keturah took that in. Mitilda made pots? Perhaps pottery was part of what she used for income, on top of the annual stipend her father had promised her. Ket had seen slaves on Sunday at the market in Charlestown, selling their wares, from pottery to parrot fish to yams. Few of the slaves were Christian, she’d learned, but the plantation owners felt it gave them time to rest and work their own ground, which in turn helped feed them and their families.
It was through the billowing smoke of the kitchen that Matthew Rollins arrived, coughing into a fist. “Good morning, Lady Ket,” he said, making her and Bennabe jump in surprise. It was as if he’d arrived down the chimney itself!
She put a hand to her chest. “Ahh, Mr. Rollins. When you said before sunrise, you clearly meant it.”
He cocked his head to one side. “One thing you may count on, Lady Ket, is me telling you like it is. If I say it so, it so.”
She nodded. She liked that. She wished everyone was more apt to do so.
Mr. Rollins reached out to shake Bennabe’s hand. Gideon, Absalom, and Edwin arrived, introductions made. “Where are the rest?” he asked. “Mimba and Sansa? The old slaves are still about, are they not?”
“I’m here,” Sansa said, emerging again from the smoke, this time armed with a rattan fan.
“Well, yes,” Ket said, “but I am not quite sure what earthly good they will do us, Mr. Rollins. Mimba has had a cough that seems to stick with him, day and night. Sansa is just regaining her strength—she was terribly thin when we arrived. The others, well, I’d thought we could head to Charlestown today and see about purchasing some new help for Tabletop rather than try to rally the rest. They are in rather poor condition. Perhaps in time . . .”
He considered her a moment, twisting his hat in a slow circle between his hands. “That your right, Lady Ket,” he drawled in his relaxed Creole accent, much more pronounced than Mitilda’s, “to do what you think wise. But you see, I brought my own slaves with me today. I can hire them out to you by the day, and since time is of the essence, why don’ we see what we can do with your remaining slaves, plus mine, in the fields? After a day’s work, then we can decide if a trip to Charlestown is the wisest road.”
It was her turn to consider him. She’d never had a Negro dare to attempt to change her mind. But then this was a man with his manumission papers, a planter in his own right. My new overseer, she reminded herself.
He was not only demanding her respect, he deserved it. Just as she sought the same as a planter, did she not?
“Very well, Mr. Rollins,” she said. “Raise the old slaves from their beds if you can, but please, do not resort to cruelty in order to do so.” It seemed strange to have to warn a former slave of being a harsh master, but she wanted no doubts as to her wishes. “After a bit of a meal,” she rushed on, “I shall join you in the upper field. I presume that is where you wish to begin?”
He frowned at that, clearly surprised that she knew it was tradition to begin high and work their way down. Or was it that he did not think a white woman’s place was anywhere near the fields?
As much as she had to learn about Mr. Rollins and his ways, she knew he had an equal amount to learn of her. She remained where she stood, not looking away.
“Very well, Lady Ket. This is your plantation,” he said.
“That it is, Mr. Rollins,” she said steadily, willing him to remember that. “I shall follow you all in an hour’s time.”
———
Verity and Selah rose and insisted they accompany her to the upper field. They passed by the trail to the waterfall—which they had yet to explore—and on to the top of the plantation, the butte that had given the place her name.
Mr. Rollins had roused three of the six other slaves, men named Antony, July, and Meriday, and did indeed have his own already hard at work as well. Keturah drew up on her horse’s reins when she caught sight of Mitilda and the boy Abraham working alongside them. “Well, why would they be here?” she muttered, watching as the line of workers hoed a steady line in the dark soil, the second neat, tidy furrow in the field.
Following her gaze, Selah said, “Perhaps they merely wish to help,” she tried. “After all, Tabletop is their home too.”
On the edge, in the far corner, her new overseer was shirtless, his broad black chest already glistening with sweat as he used a machete to chop into an old stand of cane. He bent over to cut each eight-foot stalk into two-foot sections, tossing them in a pile. His nephew, also shirtless, gathered the fragments and carried them over to the furrow, placing them lengthwise in the shallow gulley. It was the child who glimpsed the ladies first. He looked dolefully over at them even as they returned his long look.
“Honestly, the way that child looks at us! ’Tis as if we were not English ladies but Guinevere and her maids, emerging from the fog,” Verity said.
“And perhaps we are,” Keturah murmured. “For to his young mind, if Father ever spoke of us, we were but folklore, really. A made-up story of young ladies across the great sea. And now . . . here we are.” His half sisters. Did the child understand such things? Had his mother even told him who his father was?
Both of her sisters were silent a moment. Keturah moved her horse across the field, aware that her sisters followed behind and Matthew waited her arrival. “How does it appear?” she asked when he was within earshot.
“It appears well, Lady Ket,” he said, looking approvingly over the level plain of her father’s field. “If you can send us a meal and water come noontime, I think we can plant a good ten to twelve rows in this field today.”
She nodded and scanned the field, finding heart in his words. It was perhaps fifteen acres in dimension. If they planted even twelve rows, that’d leave another two hundred to go. A month then to plant the whole thing, to say nothing of the two terraces below. “So,” she said, leaning over to stroke her mare’s neck, “we shall go to Charlestown tomorrow to purchase more slaves?”
“We shall see, Lady Ket. We shall see. Slaves cost their owner a pretty penny, you see. The old ones—”
“The old ones are our family’s responsibility,” Selah interrupted, pulling up alongside Keturah.
“Yes, yes,” he said slowly, thoughtfully. “That’s right, Miss . . . ?”
“Miss Selah,” Keturah supplied.
“Miss Selah,” he said. “But new slaves add to the cost. I’m urging your sister here to be careful of the cost. We want to be wise in what we spend on labor in order to bring Tabletop the biggest profits.”
“And your sister? Your nephew?” Ket asked tightly. “What do they cost us per day? And what of your own slaves?”
“Less than labor you own, tha’s for certain, Lady Ket,” he replied. “Labor you own has its own expenses.” His dark eyes moved over to the three people he’d brought with him. “There are days that they pay for themselves; others when you must care for them, and they do not earn a ha’penny for their owner.”
Keturah decided she liked his forthright manner, his gentle authority. “All right then, Mr. Rollins, let us see how things progress over the next few days.”
“Very good, Lady Ket. Very good.” He put a hand to his lower back to stretch a mite. “And on the morrow, Sansa, Primus, Grace, and Cuffee could join us?”
She stilled, shocked at his insinuation. “I think not, Mr. Rollins. We need a few to attend us. And Primus has been a house slave since he was little. He’d be of no use out here.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, Lady Ket, but I can make use of most anyone out here. And given that time is short and the need for a profitable crop is great, would it not be wise to put everyone with two hands to work?”
Ket’s eyes moved to Mitilda, who had paused, wrists crossed over the end of her hoe, and stared her way. How much did she know of her father’s financial woes? Had her father shared everything with the woman? And had she shared it with her brother? Or did he simply assume correctly about her needs?
“Is there a soul on Tabletop land who isn’t counting on this crop?” Mr. Rollins asked gently.
She bit her cheek and glanced at her sisters. “Very well, Mr. Rollins. I will speak to the remaining servants tonight. Given our circumstances, perhaps even we ladies must take regular turns in our fields.”
That made his eyes go wide, and he hooted a laugh. “Oh, I did not mean you, Lady Ket. Or your sisters,” he said with a respectful nod to each. “But wouldn’ that set your neighbors’ tongues to waggin’? Hoo, boy!”
But even as his laughter faded, Keturah began to ponder. Why should she not join them in the fields? Her fingers itched to do something useful, to dig into the soil, to compare it to England’s. She would not make her sisters do so, but would it not set a good example for Primus and Grace, who might feel themselves above such work? Was it not as Matthew said—vital for them all to be working for their common good, their future?
Memories of the dismal ledgers back home in London, as well as the few gloomy journal entries from her father here that she’d forced herself to read, cascaded through her mind. Mr. Rollins had promised to tell her things as they truly were; he’d once been a slave and now owned slaves to work his own land. She had no choice but to trust him to give her wise counsel on that front. She’d been planning to spend a fair amount of her fortune on slaves, as an investment of Tabletop and her future profits. But might there be a wiser route? She’d seen enough to know that most other planters on the island with an estate her size—more than fifty acres—had two slaves per acre. Conventional wisdom told her she’d need a hundred.
But was there a wiser way? Her father had nearly lost Tabletop over the two decades he ran this land. Yes, his endeavors to level out the two other fields had nearly bankrupted him. It had meant three years of but a portion of their normal harvest. But was there more to his financial woes than that? She’d seen the ramshackle buildings in Charlestown. The once-fine plantations, here and there, now falling into disrepair. Had those planters also made poor decisions—such as purchasing too many slaves—which would contribute to their own demise?
———
That evening, as Grace and Sansa cooked and packed baskets for the field crew’s lunch the next day, Keturah found the courage to again enter her father’s study—so redolent with echoes of him all about her—and go to the leather-bound journal on his desk. She sat down and went back ten years, to before he had the madcap idea to terrace the fields. She wanted to know what he’d experienced then. His trials. His triumphs.
There were long pages full of line items unique to the plantation but foreign to her English upbringing. Yet as her eyes ran over the numbers—captured in the meticulous double-entry method of bookkeeping—she slowly came to terms with the exorbitant expense of working this land. Her stomach clenched. She’d spent three years presiding over the household ledgers of Clymore Castle, but even running that old estate paled in comparison to running one here on Nevis. Importing almost every chicken, cow, hog, as well as every cask of flour, sugar, and salt from America added up to a staggering expense.
She understood the pressures that prevailed. Sugar reigned. It was a far more valuable crop than corn or wheat. The returns on each sugar shipment were handsome indeed. But because they had to import all provisions in from the colonies, the Nevisians spent twenty times the amount that Londoners did for the same supplies. And what would happen if something kept Nevis from the imports of America? What would happen if they could not regularly receive livestock, flour, salt, and more?
Worse, what if we could not receive tea from the Orient?
She smiled at her own internal jest. But at last she understood it, staring at the ledgers that so clearly showed both profits and expenses. The draw that had kept her father here. It was a mad gamble, this island life. The idea that she could pay these sorts of expenses and yet make this land pay for itself in spades . . . Or be utterly decimated by the forces of either nature or market. But if she could somehow reduce expenses and bring in a new sugar crop—the best ever—would that not have made her father proud? It made her heart quicken as she strode to the window, the same window her father had stood near, and looked out.
Keturah wondered what he had thought and felt while standing here. She ran her fingers over the sill, knowing his hands had rested there too once. She longed for the opportunity to sit and talk with him. Indeed, the last time she’d seen him, she’d been all of nineteen, her mother dead and buried a good year by then. Father had spoken of love, of duty, and she’d absorbed that fully. “And your mother always thought Lord Tomlinson a charming man,” he’d said. “She’d be proud of you, becoming a lady. As am I, Ket.”
It was those words she focused on most as she walked down the aisle at St. John’s that fateful morn and moved from her father’s arm to Edward’s.
Passed along like chattel. Controlled as if she had not a mind nor will of her own. Until now, she thought, looking out over Tabletop. Now it is all up to me.
And in that moment she did not know if that was the worst or greatest thing to ever occur to her.
Gray’s words came back to her. “All God asks of us is to do our best, from morning until night. He doesn’t expect us to do things that only He can accomplish—only what we’ve been given to do and to trust Him with the rest.”
It’d been enough, this day. She’d done what God asked of her. And now she would rest.
By the time her sisters found her the next morning, Keturah had emptied half of her father’s chests of clothes on the floor.
“What,” Verity said, moving between the piles, “are you doing?”
“Finding proper clothing,” Keturah said, straightening and tightening the sash around her breeches to hold them up. It was fortunate that her father had been a slender man, but they still were big on her.
Verity’s eyebrows rose as she looked her over. “Are you completely mad?”
Ket smiled. “I do not think so. But I can well imagine that you think it true.” She stepped forward, lifted a pile of shirts from yet another trunk, and sifted through them. Finding a good option, she pulled it from the stack and set the others aside. “We need to offer these to the house servants or field slaves. They’re not doing Father any good.”
Both of her sisters gaped at her. “Ket,” Selah began quietly, “are you aware that you are in nothing but breeches and stays?”
“And stockings,” Ket said, turning this way and that before the tall mirror she’d brought with her on the Restoration, never imagining she’d see herself dressed in this manner. “I believe I need a shirt, do you not agree?” She turned left and right to examine her imperfect wavy image. “Although the stays alone would be ever so much cooler.”
Her sisters continued to gape, only pausing to glance at each other. Keturah edged past Verity and dug through another trunk of Father’s that appeared to hold older shirts. She lifted one up and hesitated, wondering if she remembered it on him when she was but a child. She pulled it close, inhaling deeply, hoping she could still smell him somewhere within the folds, but it was no use. All that remained was dust and mold. Blinking rapidly, before her sisters could detect her tears, she pulled it around her body, laced up the front, then rummaged around for a belt. Finding one, she wound it around her waist and fastened it. Hands on hips, she faced her sisters.
“And . . . you are dressing for a costume ball?” Verity asked, arms crossed.
“I am going to work,” Keturah said.
Both of them stared at her, not comprehending.
“I want this plantation to succeed,” she went on. “A vital part of it succeeding is getting cane in the ground as soon as possible. I have wasted precious days waiting for an overseer, waiting for help. Now we have him.” She shrugged. “And I can be a part of the solution by digging in that soil myself. Cutting cane. Fertilizing, watering it. Do you not see?”
She moved to her sisters, her excitement brimming over, making her hands tremble. “I am done waiting on others. Becoming a victim of another’s choice. This is mine.”
Verity continued to stare, her mossy-green gaze hard and concerned.
Selah only looked wan and frightened, rubbing her small hands together in agitation.
“Do you not see?” Keturah repeated with a grin. “I am finished waiting. For the right man. For the right help. I want to do what I can with the two hands God gave me,” she said, furiously rolling up one of her father’s sleeves and then the other. “I want to dig in the soil we call ours by making it ours. By working it, planting it, growing our crop. I do not wish for this to be Mr. Rollins’s crop. I wish for it to be ours.”
She looked from one to the other, desperate for them to make the leap that she had. To understand the import of this. But with each passing breath, she knew she wanted more of them than they were capable of giving her. She knew what she did because of what she had experienced, because of what Edward had been, and what he had not.
“It is all right, dear ones. Do not be alarmed. Stay here and continue with your efforts with the house. I shall return come sunset.”
She practically fled the room and hurried down the stairs. Primus and Grace, obedient as ever, had changed into their least fine and stood in the front hall, looking upon her just as her sisters had.
As if she were three steps shy of the madhouse.
Or—and this shook her to the core—as if she were herself, truly who she was meant to be . . . as Keturah Elizabeth Banning Tomlinson, for the first time in her entire life.
Not posturing for society.
Or her husband.
Only Keturah . . . all she was and could be in the moment. Utterly herself.
For a moment, she hovered there, halfway down the rickety stairwell, and she was glad for every bit of it. No matter if she succeeded or failed at Tabletop, she would praise the Almighty for bringing her here to this place. To remember—or discover at last—just who she was, deep within. To think for the first time, I am enough. Just as I am. Because God has made me so.