Rain fell ’til dawn, but it didn’t stop the market at the Plaza in St. Augustine from being in full operation by mid-morning. A big sale was underway and the narrow streets were crowded with wagons, horses, and pedestrians.
One pony cart was being driven by Captain Burrell, his wife beside him with a lacy parasol in soft shades of rose shielding her from the sun drying the puddles to steam. The captain stopped to joke and exchange greetings with some of the Americans in attendance, his tobacco-colored coat and a broad brimmed planter’s hat illustrating, as much as his pretty wife, his status as a successful and shrewd businessman.
“Will you be traveling up to Savannah after this?” a planter from St. Marys asked.
“Not just yet, I don’t believe,” Burrell said with an easy grin. “I’m here today to shop for Mrs. Burrell, and we’ll need to get things settled before I can go home.”
The auctioneer ascended the platform, his stock arranged behind him and in a holding area off to the side, and he started with a few quick sales of no special note, just to get the crowd warmed up. He built up to the top merchandise he was saving for the end of the auction.
“Now, who’ll bid me five hundred dollars American for this prime young buck,” the auctioneer called, gesturing to the young man standing beside him. “Jeremiah’s sixteen years and promises to grow strong as an ox. He’ll work all day for you picking your cotton and is fresh from Havana, healthy and bright eyed.”
The bidding rose to seven hundred dollars before the sale was concluded, and the black teen walked away, the property of a planter from Cowford.
The slave auction continued past noon, and Captain and Mrs. Burrell watched the proceedings with interest but made no move to bid until the auctioneer came to his final batch of slaves.
“This wench is Betsy, twenty years and house-trained as a lady’s maid. She’ll make a fine and valuable addition to your property, gentlemen, tractable and docile. Now, who’ll give me an opening bid of one hundred fifty dollars? Come, come, gentlemen, gals like this are going for five hundred dollars in Georgia!”
The woman, Betsy, stood in her indigo dress, her head covered by a faded piece of red cloth twisted into a turban. She towered over the auctioneer and stared over his head, her eyes focused on something far away, her expression blank. Her cinnabar skin bespoke her Indian heritage, and one of the bidders called out he wasn’t interested in a Seminole maroon who’d run off at the first opportunity.
“Naw, this gal won’t run. She’s been taught better,” the auctioneer said with a grin.
“One hundred fifty dollars.”
“Captain Burrell bids one hundred fifty dollars American, gentleman. Who’ll give me one hundred sixty dollars?”
The auction continued with the captain bidding against a portly banker who kept wiping his red face with his handkerchief. He scowled when Burrell put in a bid of two hundred fifty dollars. The entire time the slave stared unseeing over the crowd, swaying slightly on her feet, and Captain Burrell’s new wife sat in the cart, twirling her parasol and dabbing at the perspiration on her upper lip. She put her gloved hand on her husband’s arm and whispered something in his ear.
“Just a moment, Mr. Crosby,” Burrell called to the auctioneer, “I’ll take a closer look at what I’m bidding on.”
He climbed down from the wagon and headed up on the stage. The slave ignored him. Crosby, the auctioneer, was reluctant to let Jack have a closer look, but he had no choice, not if he wanted to continue to sell in the city.
Captain Burrell put his fingers under Betsy’s chin and lifted it to the right and left, studying her face. He said something to her the crowd couldn’t hear, but she opened her mouth so he could look inside at her teeth.
He put his hand on her upper right arm and turned her around, then took hold of the fabric of her cotton dress in both hands and ripped it down the back.
The crowd gasped. Betsy’s back was a cross-hatching of red welts down to her waist, some of them still oozing blood.
“‘Tractable and docile?’ Gal doesn’t get whipped like this for being ‘tractable,’ Mr. Crosby,” Burrell said. “More likely she’ll scalp my wife while she’s sleeping!”
The crowd was muttering now, not over the whipping, but over Crosby’s attempt to hoodwink them with mislabeled merchandise.
“Oh, Captain Burrell, do not buy that savage!” his wife called out in her English accent. “I would fear for my very life with her nearby!”
“This gal just needs a firm hand.” Crosby scowled. “She was sassing her mistress and not doing what the master told her.”
“I think you have a great deal of nerve trying to pass this wench off as an appropriate servant for my wife. She’ll make a decent field hand for two hundred fifty dollars, but I’m not going to get any work out of her in this condition, not right away. That’s a generous offer, Crosby, and you know it.”
“Any other bids, gentlemen?” the auctioneer asked weakly. When there were no other bids forthcoming, he said, “Sold, to Captain Burrell, for two hundred fifty dollars.”
Burrell pulled out a roll of banknotes and completed the transaction. Betsy bent over slowly to pick up the cloth bundle at her feet, then clutched the rags of her dress to herself and shuffled across the stage, ignored now by Crosby and the other bidders as the auction continued. The gentlemen wanted to get the business transacted before the afternoon heat became oppressive, and they were anxious to retire to the cool interiors of the local taverns to eat a hearty meal and congratulate themselves over their shrewd bargaining.
Captain Burrell waited next to his wife at the pony cart, but didn’t offer his new property any help when she jerkily climbed into the back of the cart. He took the horse’s head and walked the cart the few blocks to his residence in St. Augustine, exchanging quips and greetings along the way with neighbors he passed on the street.
* * *
When they entered the courtyard of Captain Roberts’s house, Sophia jumped off the cart and hurried inside while Jack carefully lifted Betsy Factor from the back of the cart.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured when she couldn’t hold back a cry as his arm brushed across the open stripes on her back. He staggered slightly under the weight of the tall slave woman, but got her inside to the cot Luisa had prepared in the room off the kitchen. There was a window there and a slight breeze ruffled Sophia’s curls as she tossed her bonnet and gloves onto the kitchen table and washed her hands in the water sitting nearby.
“Lay her on the cot, Jack,” Sophia said unnecessarily, but she was feeling useless and needed to say something. She’d felt worse at the market, twirling her parasol and simpering like a fool while they bided their time and waited for Reuben’s wife to be sold on the block like a piece of livestock.
She shuddered at the memory. Anti-slavery tracts were sold at the bookstore in Portsmouth, but she had not thought about the reality of slavery until she saw the men and women in the market, heard the haggling over infants priced under one hundred dollars as families wept at being torn from one another.
“Sophia! I need your help here,” Jack snapped at her.
She shook herself out of her reverie and hurried over to Jack’s side. Betsy lay on her front on the cot, her eyes closed.
“Let me, Jack,” Sophia said, rolling up her sleeves. She took the vinegar and water and crouched down next to the nearly unconscious woman.
“Betsy, I need to clean your back. It will hurt, but then I will put salve on it and I can give you laudanum for the pain.”
Betsy licked cracked lips and whispered, “Yes’m.”
Jack squatted down next to Sophia. “Betsy, Reuben sent us. We’re going to take you to him when you can travel.”
The cracked lips moved slightly. “Reuben?”
“Yes, Betsy. I’m Reuben’s ‘Captain Jack.’ Nothing bad is going to happen to you now.”
The woman didn’t say anything more, but silent tears rolled off her face, soaking the ticking of the mattress beneath her. Jack muttered something and left the room to allow Sophia and her patient privacy.
Sophia felt tears rolling down her own face as she dabbed as gently as she could at the wounds. Betsy’s fingers dug into the cot and she moaned at the vinegar burning its way across her flesh, but Jack had insisted, saying it was necessary to take whatever steps one could to prevent infection in the tropical climate.
Afterward Sophia smoothed salve onto the shredded skin, covering it with a clean cloth she lightly bound around the woman’s ribs. Betsy remained conscious long enough to raise herself on her arms so Sophia could get the bindings around her, then she dropped off into sleep, a grayish cast to her skin.
Figuring rest was what Betsy needed most, Sophia left her and cleaned her hands before joining Jack in the parlor. He had a glass of rum in his hand and was staring out the window into the walled garden. His shoulders were stiff, and without stopping to think why, she went to him and put her arms around his middle. Jack turned from the window and setting down his glass, hugged her fiercely.
“Oh, Jack, that was horrible,” she said, unmindful of the tears still rolling down her cheeks. “How could anyone do that to her?”
Jack hugged her again before reaching into his jacket for a handkerchief. He wiped it across her cheeks and then handed it to her. She blew her nose, but when she went to hand it back a shadow of a smile crossed his face.
“You keep it for now.”
He released her and reached for his drink, staring into it.
“It is horrific. And if I go back to Georgia, I will have to live with it every day.” He looked at her, his face bleak. “Some of my family’s money is in shipping, but the rest is in crops. Cotton, mostly. My mother wants me to come home and take over because I’m the oldest, but I cannot do it.”
“Can’t you—can’t you just free your slaves and hire workers?”
“No. The law doesn’t allow private manumission. Only the state legislature can act on that, and they’re not inclined to do so.” He sighed. “Even if I had the right, it would bankrupt my family and I cannot do that to my mother and brother.”
“You may not be able to help all the Negroes, Jack, but you helped one today,” Sophia said stoutly. “Two, counting what you did for Reuben.”
“Two hundred fifty dollars isn’t much to pay for Reuben saving my life.”
“Maybe not, but the value of Betsy to Reuben is priceless.” She turned to walk back to check on her patient, but paused in the doorway.
“And let me just add, Captain Burrell, you may not believe money can buy happiness, but today I saw evidence your money has purchased a great deal of happiness for Reuben and Betsy.”
Satisfied she had the last word, this time, Sophia walked to the back room and smiled as she heard her husband’s soft laugh.
* * *
Betsy awoke long after Jack and Sophia had eaten their dinner, but Sophia kept a hearty soup of ham and peas warm for her. The slave woman sat up and ate two bowls of soup before Sophia checked her bandages and re-applied the salve.
“It looks to me like the best thing for you now, Betsy, is food and rest,” she said when she retied the covering over the lacerated back.
“When will I see Reuben?” She already looked better than she had hours ago. Rest, medicine, proper food, but most of all, the prospect of being reunited with her husband put the shine into her eyes.
“Soon as you are ready to journey, but that won’t be for another week, if you continue to mend,” Jack said, coming into the kitchen and carving himself a slice of watermelon. Sophia was addicted to the sweet treat, and Luisa made sure there were always some on hand now. Jack joined Sophia at the table.
“Reuben wants you to join him as soon as possible, but he does not want your health to become worse than it is already.”
“How did you become separated from your husband, Betsy?” Sophia knew she should let her rest, but her curiosity was eating at her.
“We camped over near Alligator, months back,” Betsy said, her face looking haggard again. She spoke with a lilting accent new to Sophia’s ear, an accent that hinted at her Indian upbringing. “I was fetching persimmons and a raiding party down from Georgia caught us. They couldn’t keep the Seminoles, but they took all of us who were maroon, or black, say we was runaways.”
“So you are not a ladies’ maid?”
She smiled weakly. “No, ma’am, I’m a Indian. I can skin a deer and make leggings from its hide, but I don’t know nothing ’bout working for white ladies. That Crosby, he lies like the day is long. He put shoe blacking in the hair of some of those men he was selling today, make ’em look younger so he could get more money for ’em.”
“Who beat you, Betsy?” Jack asked softly.
Betsy looked at him, anger flushing color into her high cheekbones. “I got sold over the border into Georgia. Reuben couldn’t come for me, or they catch him, too. Planter buy me, say I work for him, and he leave me alone at first. But then he comes sniffin’ round the quarters. I tell him I’m a married woman, but he say now I belong to him, got to do as he say. He try to make me put my mouth where I don’t want it to go. So I bite him.”
Jack flinched and shifted in his seat, and Sophia clapped her hand over her own mouth to hide her smile. But Betsy’s next words took away the impulse to smile.
“Next morning they drag me out to the whipping post and start in on me, and that man, his overseer kill me if the missus hadn’t stopped him. She said I too valuable to kill, better to sell me instead.”
“I’m surprised Crosby brought you back to Florida,” Jack said.
“He had Africans to pick up in Fernandina. Figured he’d sell some of us here, whoever’s left, he take up to Virginia.”
She grimaced when she shifted too quickly, and Sophia encouraged her to lie down again.
“I be ready to travel in two, three days, ma’am,”
“You will take as long as you need to heal, Betsy!”
But the woman just shook her head. She’d taken off her kerchief, and her hair fell around her face in long curled strands falling down to her shoulders.
“No, ma’am. You been good to me, but I got to get back to my man and my family.”
“Reuben said your clan is moving south, Betsy. Going farther into the woods.”
“We got to, Cap’n. Settlers, army, they won’t leave us be. Long as we within a ride of Georgia, we never going to be able to live without raiders. That’s why I got to get back. We need to find land and get our corn in before summer storms come.”
“You rest now,” Sophia said, patting Betsy’s hand. “Mrs. Alvarez will be by in the morning to start the fires and cook, but she knows you are here and will not bother you.”
When Sophia joined Jack after getting Betsy settled, he’d taken his banjo and was sitting on the balcony off the bedroom, feet propped on the railing, playing some soft tunes as the moon rose over the city. Sophia took a lamp out and did some mending until the moths attracted by the light became too bothersome. Then she blew out the lamp and sat with Jack, enjoying the night with its sounds of his music, some revelers at a tavern a few streets over, and the sounds of the alcade’s guards patrolling the town.
“Where will you live if you do not return to Georgia?”
Jack’s fingers slowed down to a melody that was simple, but compelling. “Georgia will still be my home, long as my family’s in Savannah. If I have my ships, though, I can sail where I want and see new places. I’ve always wanted to make the China run.”
“Ships? Is that what you intend to do with your share of the gold, buy more ships?”
He looked sideways at her and the music stopped. “Are we still talking about ‘my share’ and ‘your share,’ Sophia? I’d rather hoped we’d now moved beyond that point, to talking about our gold.”
Sophia pulled her shawl closer around her. She was trying to think of an answer that would disarm Lucky Jack, but he beat her to it.
“Do not try to answer that,” he said with a grim smile. “I don’t want you to tax your conscience too much, trying to figure out what words you can offer me that will be close enough to the truth that I would blithely accept them.”
He stood up and looked down at her. “Coming to bed?”
Sophia looked out over the balcony and swallowed. There was a thickness in her throat, and a stinging in her eyes, and she didn’t look at him. “I will be in shortly, Captain. I would like to sit out here a while longer.”
He looked at her for a few moments more, and she stared out over the street. When she joined him in bed, he was asleep, or pretending to be.
Next morning Sophia tended to Betsy while Luisa took care of the cooking and house. Betsy already looked far better than she had the day before, and seemed to be fulfilling her promise to heal quickly so she could join Reuben.
“You may be right. I think if you continue to mend as you are now we could be on the road in three days. I’ll let Captain Burrell know.”
Jack was out in the morning doing business with his shipping contacts in Florida. When he returned to the house for dinner, he listened to Sophia’s account of Betsy’s health.
“I’ll go ahead and make plans to head back inland, and if we have to change them if Betsy takes a turn for the worse, we will.”
He looked preoccupied and Sophia asked him if the morning’s business had gone well.
“Not as well as I expected,” Jack said, his usual smile missing from his lean face. “Purchasing Betsy was an unanticipated expense. I hope you’re right and this treasure exists, Mrs. Burrell, because right now I could use an infusion of money.”
He left again after dinner and Sophia sat out on the patio with her needlework, but she wasn’t sewing. Instead she looked at her lap, and wondered what would happen if she didn’t betray Jack and run off with Lord Whitfield. Did she want a life as Mrs. Burrell, or did she want to be free—and rich—not answerable to anyone for her actions?
It was a life that had a great deal of appeal to her, even now. Funny how the person who kept coming to mind was Lady Rileston. The wealthy widow was a frequent guest at the Deford’s house parties, arriving with a revolving entourage of young men in tow, her gallants who accompanied her on her travels, catering to her, sleeping with her, letting her spend her money on them.
When Sophia was younger she’d been dazzled by the sophisticated gambler, but now she could look back and see that none of Lady R’s companions were companions of her heart, but were more in the way of hired help, entertaining her for a fee.
Already past her youth when Sophia first met her, Lady R’s nights of drinking, opium use, and gambling aged her quickly and it was no surprise that one morning she failed to rise from her bed in one of the guest rooms at the Deford house. Her companion of the moment took off before the body was cold, Lady Rileston’s jewels in his pockets. Only Sophia could be bothered to send for the women from town who would lay out the body, and only Sophia cared to make arrangements with the vicar for burial since the dead woman had no family who would claim her.
Funny, she hadn’t thought about poor Lady R in years.
A noise from the doorway made her look up. Betsy was standing there, holding onto the doorframe, but standing.
“Betsy, you should still be abed!”
“Don’t go scolding me, missus. Can’t stand being cooped up all day, and some air and sun might do me good.”
She maneuvered her way slowly to a bench against the garden wall, dappled with sunlight and shadow. She eased herself down, and then carefully leaned her back against the sun-warmed garden wall.
“Ahhh…” she said with a sigh. “That do feel good.”
“Have you always been so stubborn?”
“Yes’m.” Betsy smiled without opening her eyes, her face turned toward the sun. “Got me plenty of trouble growing up. But ‘stubborn’ also got me that man of mine, ’cause Lord knows he don’t know his own mind!
“He came to where we camped, and he was worn out, hungry, and wearing rags. He’d been on the run since leavin’ Cap’n Jack. Some of the clan wanted to take and sell Reuben back to the whites, but we’d lost some men in a raid, and he was big ’n’ strong, so he stay.
“I was a girl when he came, but as I grew I saw him watchin’ me but not watchin’, and I was watchin’ him right back. And he’d get all stammery when he try to talk to me. Well, I wasn’t having none of that, so I told my mama I was going to marry him, and she said I could, and I just walk up to him and say, ‘Reuben Factor, you need a wife,’ and that was that.”
Betsy smiled to herself at the memory, and Sophia thought about it.
“Is it so simple, Betsy? You see the man you want and you get him?”
“Was that simple for me and Reuben.” She chuckled. “You white folks always make everything so hard—who owns the land, who owns the people, who owns the creeks and animals. If you live like the Indians, you be happier.”
“Captain Burrell tells me the Indians own people, too,” Sophia said tartly. “Not quite the perfect paradise you make it seem.”
“Nothing’s perfect, missus. Crops burn, people get sick and die, whites come and take the land. But it’s still better. Ask Reuben Factor if you don’t believe me.”
Sophia took up her sewing again and the two women enjoyed the sunshine until Jack returned and they sat down to dinner. Betsy ate in the kitchen since Luisa Alvarez was in the house and they wanted to maintain the appearance of the master and slave relationship.
“I believe Betsy is correct when she says she will be ready to travel tomorrow, Jack.”
Jack looked up from where he appeared to be debating with himself whether he could eat another of Luisa’s pecan tarts, decided he could, and popped one into his mouth. He chewed for a moment, then nodded.
“We’ll try it. It won’t take us too long to get to the Reavers’ store and we’ll know then if Betsy’s up to continuing the trip on the river. And pack some of these tarts to take with us. You know, Mrs. Burrell,” he said offhandedly, “it might not be a bad thing to learn how to do some cooking and baking while you’re here.”
Sophia put down her coffee cup and gave Jack a smile that made him twitch.
“Captain Burrell, when we find Garvey’s Gold I intend to hire the finest French chef I can find. Barring that, I will hire the finest cook available, no matter what his or her background. But I assure you, taking over in the kitchen is not in my plans for my future.”
Having settled that issue, Sophia went back to her coffee, adding a drop more cream. If she was going to be away from civilization, she intended to enjoy as many comforts as she could before traveling through the piney woods again.