Chapter 7
Fortune’s Gift Plantation
Maryland’s Eastern Shore
The clock on the hall landing had just struck midnight when Caroline slipped quietly out of the house and hurried toward Laborers’ Row, the cluster of cabins beyond the orchard where her workers and their families lived.
Two awkward days had passed since her wedding to Garrett Faulkner. When they’d returned to Fortune’s Gift the morning after the ceremony, Major Whitehead had found a letter from Lord Cornwallis assuring him of the loyalty of his cousin. Garrett had been released from house arrest and had left immediately to settle affairs on his own land.
Caroline had wanted to seek out Amanda before tonight, but even with Bruce still in custody, she had been unable to leave the house without alarming the sentries.
This evening, the guard at the kitchen door was sound asleep. Caroline’s special spiced wine had assured that. She had delivered the drugged spirits to the young dragoon with her own hands, so that if something went wrong none of her servants would be blamed.
The night was icy cold. She shivered and pulled her cloak more tightly around her. Clouds scudded across the sky, hanging low over the plantation, and Caroline smelled a threat of snow on the raw, salt breeze that blew from the Chesapeake. There were no sounds but the dry crackle of frozen grass under her feet and the rattle of branches as she left the path and moved into the total blackness of the orchard. She had never been afraid of darkness, not even as a small child, but tonight she felt a strange uneasiness and wished she had brought a weapon with her.
An owl hooted and she started, then chuckled when she recognized the familiar sound. “Kutii?” she whispered. “Is that you?” When she was young, he would sometimes tease her by imitating birds. Owls were his favorites. “Kutii?”
Nothing.
She waited, holding her breath, straining to hear. Again, all she heard was the wind’s eerie song through the leafless branches. A lump formed in her throat as she exhaled softly and began to walk on.
And heard the loud snap of a twig behind her.
“Who is it?” she demanded. “Who’s there?”
It could be a deer, or an opossum, or even a family of raccoons, she told herself. Food was scarce in winter. Wild creatures did come near the house when they were hungry. She swallowed; her mouth was dry. Frosty fingers of dread brushed the back of her neck.
Something is there.
Not something, her instincts shouted. Someone.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she called out boldly. It was a bald-faced lie. She was terrified.
Caroline took a step backward, then another, and heard the unmistakable crunch of a human footstep on the frozen soil.
She wanted to run back to the manor house, but even her courage wasn’t enough for that, so she whirled and dashed toward Laborers’ Row. Her heart thudded wildly as she fled the lonely orchard, but she heard no pursuit. She kept running until she’d left the apple trees far behind her.
Breathless and feeling somewhat foolish for panicking at noises in the darkness, Caroline slowed her pace to a jog. She could smell wood smoke and barely make out a lighted window in one of the cabins.
A dog barked inside. She heard a man’s gruff voice order, “Quiet down!” Firelight illuminated a patch of interior in the small, neat dwelling. She saw a man, naked from the waist up, cross in front of the glowing hearth. Something thumped against the door, the dog yipped, and there was silence.
Not here, Caroline decided. That hut was being used by two brothers who worked with the lumbering crew. Neither of them was married. Amanda wouldn’t seek shelter with them. The next cabin was occupied by Willy Jenkins and his wife. Amanda didn’t like Willy; she and Jeremy wouldn’t be there either. She would hide with one of the black families.
Caroline crossed the rutted dirt road and sought out one of the larger cabins. Mazie Adamma and her two daughters, Ruth and Jane, lived here. Mazie was a skilled weaver. She’d been born on Fortune’s Gift, married here, and buried two husband in the family graveyard. Mazie was respected among the bondmen and women, and the free workers. If Amanda and Jeremy weren’t here, Mazie would know where they were. Caroline rapped on the low wooden door.
“Who is it?”
Caroline recognized Mazie’s voice. “It’s Caroline. Let me in.”
Caroline heard a rustling, and then the door opened a crack. Outlined in the light from the hearth was a kerchief-covered head and the business end of an ancient wheel-lock musket.
“Miss Caroline? That you?”
“Yes, Mazie. It’s me. Put the gun down, and let me in.” The door opened wider, and Caroline stepped inside. Immediately, she heard a baby fussing. “Amanda?” she called.
“Caroline?” Her sister’s sleepy voice came from the loft. “Is it safe?”
“You think I would have let her in if it wasn’t?” Mazie protested. The tall, broad-shouldered black woman dropped a thick wooden bar across the door. “What you doin’ here in the middle of the night, Miss Caroline? You got trouble with your new man? Manda told us you was gettin’ married over to Oxford with that boy from Faulkner’s Folly.”
Caroline smiled. “No, Mazie. I don’t have trouble with my husband.” Not yet, she thought. It was warm and cozy inside, and the cabin smelled of sage and drying tobacco. Sheaths of cured leaves hung from the rafters, along with smoked hams, gourds, and bundles of herbs. In one corner stood a waist-high corn mortar carved from the trunk of a tree. Over the door was a horseshoe with the open end up for luck, and a painted African mask that Mazie swore kept away witches.
“That Cap’n Bruce slinkin’ around outside?” Mazie lowered her musket and peered out her single glass-paned window into the cold darkness.
Caroline almost wished it were he. The last man who had tried to force his way into this house had been dropped in his tracks by one ball from Mazie’s musket.
“Should I bring Jeremy down?” Amanda asked.
“No, let him sleep.” Caroline went to the hearth and held her hands to the fire. Mazie’s older daughter got up and lit a candle. The younger, Jane, crawled out of her trundle bed, pulled on a shift and moccasins, and began to heat a kettle of water for tea.
Amanda came down the ladder and hugged Caroline. “I’ve been so worried about you,” she said. She’d braided her black hair in two long plaits down her back, and in the shadowy cabin she looked to Caroline like an Indian. Amanda’s eyes were red. She looked sad . . . but then Caroline hadn’t seen Amanda smile since Bruce had forced himself on her sexually.
“Is Jeremy all right?” Caroline asked, squeezing her sister’s hand. “I’ve been worried sick about the two of you.”
Amanda nodded. “He’s fine. He wants his toys, but Mazie’s been helping me with him.”
The joy is gone out of her voice, Caroline thought. She doesn’t sound like Amanda anymore. She sounds old and beaten—like Ida Wright. Damn her cousin. All his life he’d hurt people without ever paying the consequences. Why couldn’t it be Bruce who was dead and buried in the graveyard instead of a decent man like Wesley?
“Jeremy ain’t no trouble,” the older woman put in. “Good to have a man-child crawlin’ around underfoot. I raised six boys, and a body don’t forget how to look after them.”
“He’s cutting teeth,” Amanda said.
“I need to talk to you—alone,” Caroline confided. “I don’t want to put Mazie in any more danger than she already is.”
“Go on with you, girl,” Mazie said, shaking sassafras tea makings into a thick earthen pot. “You young ones don’t know what danger is. Jane, Ruth, you two go on up and see to that baby. No sense in fillin’ your heads with stuff you don’t need to hear.” The young women obeyed without question.
Caroline smiled. Mazie Adamma kept a strict house. Her sons were grown and scattered, two with their own wives here on Fortune’s Gift. Her four oldest girls had married well and were all living with freemen in their own homes. It was plain that Mazie would keep a tight rein on these last two as long as they lived under her roof. “It’s well you hear what I have to tell Amanda,” Caroline said. “We’re going away, and I’ll need your help to keep the other women at their tasks while I’m gone. My new husband is going to take Amanda, Jeremy, and me south to the islands.”
“You goin’ treasure huntin’, ain’t you, Miss Caroline? Goin’ to Arawak Island and huntin’ up that lost Injun gold,” Mazie said. “No need to fib to me, I know that’s what you’re up to.”
“What makes you think so?” Caroline asked.
“Ain’t you bragged about doin’ just that from the time you was knee high to a duck? All I heard one winter was ’Going for the ghost treasure, Mazie. Goin’ to buy you a horse and wagon, Mazie.’ You think I forgot that?”
“I was a romantic child then. This is real. I need the money to ransom Reed from the British,” Caroline explained.
Amanda shook her head. “But that’s just a legend, Caroline. You don’t know that the treasure actually exists. We can’t go all the way down there chasing a ghost tale.”
“We can and we will,” Caroline answered. She gripped Amanda’s hand more tightly. “Garrett married me for money I can’t get to. The Incan gold will buy him the ship he wants and free Reed. I know it’s real. And I know I can find it if I go there.”
“Mother Mary,” Mazie intoned. “You tell that new husband of yours that you chasing a ghost story? Caves full of gold and pagan idols! That’s stuff for babes still on the teat.”
“The gold is there. I know it,” Caroline insisted.
“You know it. You don’t know anything,” Amanda chided.
“Kutii told me,” Caroline said. “He wouldn’t lie to me.”
Mazie crossed herself. “You quit that crazy talk, Miss Caroline. ”No wonder ignorant people go callin’ you funny. All this talk about ghosts and Injun gold. What happened to my grandmother when she got stole away from her family back in Africky is real. This war ’tween General Washington and the Brits is real. And what some ghost—what ain’t—told you don’t make no sense. And if you done told your new husband you got gold on Arawak Island, he in for one big surprise.”
An hour later, Caroline left the cabin. She hadn’t been able to convince Amanda that they were doing the right thing, but Amanda would come with her and she would bring Jeremy. Her sister had no other choice. If they remained on Fortune’s Gift, they knew that somehow Bruce would find a way to get to her again. And if she left the plantation, she’d be in the same kind of danger that all dark-skinned women knew.
It was all so unfair, Caroline thought. Amanda had listened to bedtime stories on their father’s knee, been hugged and spanked by their mother. Amanda was only two years younger than she was, the same age as Reed. There never was a time Caroline could remember that her sister wasn’t part of the family.
People might stare on the streets of Annapolis when Caroline and Amanda rode by in a carriage wearing the latest gowns from London. Neighbors might gossip about the Talbots of Fortune’s Gift who’d taken a black child to raise as one of their own. But it had never really mattered what other people thought or said. Her parents’ wealth and position had always protected them from social ostracism. At Caroline’s eighteenth birthday party, even the royal governor had danced with Amanda. And after that, who could pretend that she didn’t exist?
In many ways, Amanda had always been the daughter her father wanted. Amanda was kind and gentle, a natural peacemaker. When Caroline and Reed were blackening each other’s eyes and pushing each other out the barn loft window, Amanda was learning French, embroidery, and painting. Caroline preferred to spend her days on horseback following Father over the plantation; Amanda wrote poetry and read Latin histories. It was Amanda, not Caroline, who could whip up a heavenly light almond pastry or plan a cold supper for forty guests. If their father had said it once, he had said it a hundred times. “Caroline, you are such a wild Indian. Why can’t you be more like your sister?”
In those golden times, it seemed that they all forgot the hue of Amanda’s skin, forgot that she was a daughter of Africa, not England. And no one had posed the question, “What will become of Amanda?” until both girls were almost grown.
“Who will I marry?” Amanda had asked that night of Caroline’s wonderful birthday celebration. “No white man will ask for my hand, and I’ll not go down to live on Laborers’ row to get a husband.”
Caroline had laughed at the picture that would make—Amanda with her silks and brocades, her dainty slippers and flowered hats, tripping among the log cabins on stylish pattens. “A Moorish prince will come,” Caroline had teased. “He’ll hear of your exotic beauty—of your hair like black silk and—”
“More like black wool,” Amanda had protested between giggles. Her hair was a thick riot of curls that no amount of pins would hold in place. Her nose was wide, her lips full, her eyes as large and shining brown as the new-plowed earth. And her skin . . . her skin was the color of dark, sweet chocolate.
“Anyway,” Caroline had continued, “this Moorish prince—”
“I don’t care for any Moorish husband,” her sister had replied haughtily. “They have their own heathen religion. I could never marry anyone but a good Christian.”
Caroline had sighed. Amanda had always been religious-minded as well. “Mama says that no religion is heathen,” she’d reminded Amanda. “There is only one God over us all.”
“No Moors. If you want to be locked in some sultan’s harem, you marry a Moor.”
“Well then,” she had said, “an Indian chief—a handsome Christian warrior with millions of acres of land and hair as black as yours. You can insist that he build you a wonderful brick house and a rose garden before the wedding. I’ll come and visit you in the wilderness.”
“Why don’t you marry the Indian?” Amanda had suggested wryly. “You’d have so much more in common. Then you can live in the woods and I’ll come and visit you.”
“If I marry an Indian, he’ll have to live on Fortune’s Gift. After all . . .” Caroline had raised both hands and tilted her head in what she hoped was a regal manner. “I am,” she said solemnly, “the heiress.”
Amanda had thrown a pillow at her. Caroline had returned the favor, and both had dissolved into laughter. So long ago . . . Caroline mused. It almost seemed as though it had been another lifetime. Before they’d lost Mama and Father. Before the war . . .
Caroline shivered in the night air. Mazie had offered a lantern, but she didn’t want to be seen. She’d convinced herself she’d been frightened earlier by a rabbit, or perhaps just the wind. She’d been jumping at shadows. No one had followed her. No one was there in the orchard now.
She left the road and walked across the open field toward the rows of apple trees. She was still terribly worried about Amanda. This rape had shattered her sister. In some ways, she had taken it harder than whatever had happened the night Jeremy was conceived.
Caroline couldn’t help but wonder why . . .
Jeremy was a child of mixed race. Even at eight months, no one could look at him and deny his white blood. His skin was a light café-au-lait, his black hair straight, his baby nose and lips much thinner than Amanda’s.
Amanda had never spoken of her assault. She had never given the slightest hint who Jeremy’s father was. And no pleading from Caroline could get her to tell what had happened. It was Amanda’s way to keep her privacy. Caroline had no doubt that someone had forced her sister; Amanda’s morals were without question. But Amanda had gone through her pregnancy and childbirth without revealing her tragic secret. And she had loved Jeremy with all her heart and soul since the moment he was born. How many women, Caroline wondered, could have forgotten the pain and shame the baby’s father had caused her? It just proved how sweet and good Amanda was.
Bruce’s rape had been violent. Amanda had fought him tooth and nail. He’d blackened her eyes and bloodied her face. Bruce had admitted the attack and shown no remorse for what he’d done. And although her sister’s physical injuries had faded, she’d not been the same since. Caroline was afraid that Amanda would never be again.
There would be no child of this assault. Enough time had passed to be certain of that. But even that grace hadn’t brushed the shadows from Amanda’s eyes.
The orchard loomed ahead of her. She stopped and listened, then entered the shadows. This was the quickest way; if she went around the orchard, it would take her much longer to get back to the house, and she was cold enough already.
She had gone about halfway when she heard a cough—not a human noise, but something more like a horse blowing air through its lips. Caroline froze. “Is someone there?” she asked with more bravado than she felt. “Kutii? Is that you?”
She took another step and collided with a cloaked figure. “Oh!” she cried.
“Caroline. It’s me, Garrett. Don’t scream.”
Her mouth tasted of the metallic bite of terror. She went completely numb.
“It’s Garrett,” he repeated.
She couldn’t hide the sigh of relief that escaped her lips. “Damn you,” she said. “You scared me half to death.”
“Who’s Ty?”
“Why are you following me? It was you before too, wasn’t it? You were here in the orchard when I—”
“Yes.”
Her Talbot temper flared. “Why didn’t you make yourself known to me? Is this what you do for fun—frighten helpless women?”
He chuckled. “You’re hardly helpless, Caroline. I wanted to see what you were up to, sneaking around in the middle of the night. Who’s this Ty?” “Not Ty, you idiot, Kutii. He’s a family friend.”
“One who lurks about in orchards in the night?”
“You’ve nerve to talk about lurking around!” She gave him a shove backward. “What are you doing here? What do you want of me?”
Garrett’s humor took a definite turn for the worse. “I am your husband. Have you forgotten that so soon?”
“Husband or not, it doesn’t give you the right to scare me half to death,” she retorted. The more she thought about how frightened she was, the angrier she became. “You’re lucky I didn’t have a pistol. I’d have shot you.”
“Heaven help wandering livestock if you blast away at every shadow that moves.” He laid a hand on her arm. “You said you wanted me to take you south to the islands. I’ve found us a boat, but we have to go now. I was coming to the house to tell you when I saw you come out of the kitchen courtyard.”
“Wrapped in this hooded cloak, how could you tell it was me?” she demanded.
“You have a way of walking, but that’s beside the point. Do you want to go to the Caribbean or not? And what were you doing out here? It’s not safe to wander around. Not for a woman. There are too many—”
“The night I can’t walk Fortune’s Gift without an escort is the day I want to die,” she retorted. “This is my home—these are my people. No one here would hurt me.”
“No? Like they wouldn’t hurt your Amanda?” He took hold of her other arm and pulled her so close that she could feel his warm breath on her face. “There’s a war on, Caroline. Your home is occupied by British soldiers, and the woods are crawling with Tory and rebel raiders alike. There’s no safety here for a woman, no matter her age or position.”
“I won’t argue with you over that,” Caroline said. “I went to see Amanda tonight. She’s been hidden with one of the—”
“I saw where you went. How long did you suppose you could keep her away from Bruce?”
“It worked.”
“I doubt he wanted to find her very badly. He was more concerned with you.”
He let go of her, and she found she was still shivering, although not from cold. She wanted to hit him. She wanted him to kiss her again as he had the night of their wedding. Whenever Garrett Faulkner came near her, she lost all rational powers of reason. “What do you mean ‘go now’?” she asked breathlessly. “This week? Tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow, girl. Now.”
“I’ll have to have things from the house. Jewelry. A little money. Some clothing and—”
“One bag, Caroline. A small one. If we intend to slip out from under the British eye, we’ll not do it in a man-of-war. My friend is waiting with a sloop. We’ll cross the bay and meet a larger vessel—”
“Tonight?”
“Can I make it clearer?” Garrett’s patience was clearly worn thin. “Come back with me to the cabin and tell the woman to go with me. I’ll escort her and the child down to the river. Dress warmly.”
“Garrett?”
“What is it?”
“I can trust you, can’t I? Amanda’s not strong. She—”
“She’ll have to be strong to make this voyage. Do you think we can reach the Caribbean in—”
“No, you don’t understand. Amanda’s not sickly. She’ll cause you no trouble. It’s just that she’s been hurt. She’s very fragile. If I tell her to trust you and—”
“You think I’d treat her like your cousin did—”
“No. If I believed that, I’d never have taken vows with you. Just be gentle with her. Don’t look at the color of her skin. She’s a lady, Garrett, a real lady.”
“And you, wife? What are you?”
The words a witch came to her lips, but she didn’t utter them. “I’m not weak,” she answered softly. “I can give as good as I get.”
“You’d better. For if I risk everything to take you to this island, you’d best—”
“No more threats,” she said firmly. “How can we get along if you continually threaten me? If you say we’re going tonight, then let’s get on with it. If we stand here much longer, my feet will turn to solid ice.”
“Do you want me to come into the house with you?”
She shook her head. “No. The dogs would rouse. Wait for me at the river. I’ll fetch my things and meet you there.”
“Not at the landing,” he warned. “Farther down, around the bend. Come to the sandy beach and I’ll carry you out to the sloop.”
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“I don’t promise to answer.”
“Did you blow up the powder store that first night?”
“Are you mad?” He sounded insulted. “How can you ask that of me, girl? Aren’t you a loyal Englishwoman?”
“I just wondered,” she said meekly. And it wasn’t until she was nearly to the house before she realized that Garrett hadn’t answered her question at all.
“You did it,” she whispered. “Loyalist, hell. You’re a Continental, Garrett Faulkner. And you just don’t trust me enough yet to admit the truth.”