Keturah Page 20

  Keturah stared at her a moment. She blew her nose again. “But … I do not intend to marry ever again.”

  Mitilda studied her, hands coming to her hips. “‘Ever again’ is a long time,” she mused. Keturah only stared back at her. With a sigh, she said, “Come with me.” And with that she turned and walked down the alley. The boy hung back, waiting for Ket to follow. She hesitated, and then after a moment decided, why not find out what the woman had in mind? After all, her only other option was to return to Tabletop in defeat.

  But when she reached the town road, she paused, mouth agape. The woman had had the audacity to climb into her very own carriage. Gideon clambered up into the driver’s seat and held the reins, glancing nervously between Mitilda and Ket, then back again. Sweat ran down his black cheeks, and Ket decided it was as likely from the heat between the women as from the heat of town. Primus was still behind her.

  Keturah willed herself to move forward and took Primus’s hand to climb into the carriage. Perhaps Mitilda truly did have some sort of solution for her. If the woman was right and the planters of Nevis had somehow conspired against her, then she might spend weeks in Charlestown, encountering men of the sort she had just met. Did she really wish to do that? She shoved back the anger that had set her hands to trembling, carefully interlacing them in her lap. Anger, after all, was not ladylike. And she was done being angry. At God. At anyone at all. Right?

  She cocked her head in Mitilda’s direction. “To where would you suggest we go?” she asked, every word carefully enunciated.

  Mitilda didn’t give her the courtesy of a reply. Instead, she leaned forward and said to Gideon, “Head south out of town. About a mile yon.”

  The servant looked back at Keturah, awaiting her approval, and Keturah pointed forward with two fingers, silently giving her assent. The boy climbed onto the back of the carriage, Primus onto the front bench, and then they were off. While Ket could feel the intense gaze of many as they passed, and could see in her peripheral vision several leaning close to gossip, she did not give them the satisfaction of meeting their gaze. After all, it was they who had proven to be of no aid to her. Clearly there was not a gentleman among them.

  Lower Round Road proceeded uphill at a fairly steep grade. Keturah glanced over the edge. She hadn’t had occasion to travel the road on this side of the island—always heading the other direction en route to Tabletop—and she looked with interest at the smaller plantations found here. The hillside, with fewer fruit and flower trees, spread wide and open with only windmills to break up the miles and miles of knee-high green cane. Slaves worked in groups, and it encouraged Ket’s heart to see they still planted cane on the outer edges of the fields, digging holes, sliding in a seedling, and surrounding it with manure and soil. Another slave followed right behind the first, carrying a skin heavy with water to douse it when they were done. If they can still be planting now, she thought, so can we.

  They passed grand estates, some with front gates in pristine order, others with stone pillars leaning or in some disrepair. And they passed tiny plots of land with no more than shacks for shelter. There were also no millworks on those pieces of property, and Keturah wondered if they took their cane to their neighbors to process. But at what cost? She thought about her own mill and the progress that had been made at fixing the blades. According to Bennabe, it was set to test on the morrow. If she could offer it, what might others pay? Might she undercut what others offered to mill cane in order to generate funds? After all, a penny earned was better than no pennies at all.

  She glanced toward Mitilda, considering asking the woman, but pride kept her silent. She chastised herself, that pride held her back. But Keturah stubbornly held on to it. Is it not progress enough, Lord, that I am willing to sit in this carriage with her?

  Ket glanced past the woman and out toward sea. There were three schooners closing in on Charlestown, all about an hour apart from the next. So it went on the isle, all day long. New arrivals—slaves from Africa, importers from the colonies, traders from all over the world. Here they laid hold of sugar, molasses and rum, but primarily sugar. The most valuable crop Nevis could produce. Every speck of wheat and corn were imported. Everything was imported, really. Livestock was kept from slaughter because the manure they produced was more valuable than the meat. Tiny crops of vegetables—sweet potatoes and cava, mostly—were planted by slaves, testimony to the planters’ grudging admission that they had to keep their field hands fed in order to produce more sugar.

  King Sugar still reigned here on Nevis, the Queen of the Caribbees.

  Queen of the Caribbees, she thought with an internal scoff, looking about with jaundiced eyes. The Queen had certainly entered her elder years; she was aged, weak, and in places clearly infirm. Was there room to bring her back to what she once was? Keturah thought it a possible farce, a dream that grew more and more distant each day. Especially if I cannot even find an overseer.

  Mitilda leaned forward as they rounded the bend and told Gideon to take the next right. The driver did as she asked, and they moved off the road at such a steep angle that it made Ket’s stomach turn a somersault. She reached out to grab hold of the edge of the carriage and braced her legs against the floorboards so as not be tossed to the side. Primus looked back, stricken, ready to grasp her hand. But through it all, Mitilda endured the jostling as if it were nothing but a stiff breeze off the water. It took everything in Ket not to turn around and see if little Abraham had been shaken off the back. It was only his mother’s lack of concern that kept her from doing so. Surely, the child was still there.

  Abraham. My father’s child. My half brother.

  The thought still galled more than moved her, and Ket found herself grateful for the distraction of the impossibly steep road. She was wondering if they would have to walk back up rather than ride when the cane on either side caught her attention. The cane. She blinked quickly as if she might be seeing some mad vision.

  Here, in a wide gaut—what the islanders called a ravine—with a creek running down the edge of the road, the cane was a foot taller than anything else she’d seen. At last the road eased in grade and the little valley widened just before it met the sea. To their right, three slaves worked in a tidy trio. Weeding, it appeared.

  Hearing the whinny of one of their horses, the man in the lead looked up, straightened, and rubbed his forehead of sweat. Mitilda lifted her arm, calling out, and told Gideon to pull up. As soon as he’d done so, she hurried out of the carriage and ran over to the man, her son right behind her, and threw herself into his arms. The man grinned and picked her up a moment, giving her such a freely loving hug that it made Keturah blush and look away.

  Honestly! Who might this be? Some other illicit lover?

  But a moment later, she knew she could do nothing but look back their way. The man had his arm around Mitilda’s shoulder, a broad grin still splitting across his brown cheeks. She was gesturing toward the carriage, and for the first time the man looked in Keturah’s direction. He leaned closer to Mitilda, listening to what she said, and his smile began to fade. Stalwartly, Keturah continued to look in his direction. Whatever was being said, she had nothing over which she might feel ashamed.

  The man shook his head and took a step away from Mitilda. Then he shook his head more vehemently and gestured about, from the road to the sea. They were talking about this cane. Was Mitilda trying to get him to introduce Keturah to his master? Or the overseer here?

  Mitilda gestured to Keturah and then tapped her finger on his chest, pointed to the sky and then out to sea. She lifted her hands, and the boy took a few steps away, as if he didn’t want to be anywhere near if his mother decided to redirect her anger to him. The man stood there for several long moments, hands on his hips, while the other two slaves looked on. Then he swung his head toward Keturah. And in that movement, Ket saw it at last. Mitilda and this man were related somehow. He was darker-skinned, broader of face, but there was the same elegance in their necks, similar movements
and nuances between them.

  Keturah shifted uneasily. “Primus,” she said quietly, “who is that?”

  “Forgive me, Lady Ket, but I do not know. I have not been to this side of the island, nor to this … estate. Rest assured if I had, I would never have assumed I could safely bring you down that road.”

  She sat back, waiting. Mitilda still stood with her hands on hips. The watching slaves and Abraham also waited quietly.

  After what seemed an eternity, the man heaved a sigh and turned toward the carriage. Mitilda hurried behind, looking as though she was trying to swallow a victorious smile.

  Keturah braced herself. What is this?

  The man approached the carriage and halted three steps away, a customary distance of respect. He took off his soiled hat and held it in his hands before him. “You are Lady Tomlinson, I hear,” he said.

  “I am,” she replied.

  “I am Matthew.” He gestured to his sweat-soaked, dirty shirt with his hat. “Mitilda told me you needin’ an overseer for Tabletop.”

  “Yes. Do you know of someone?”

  They locked eyes for a moment, and she could feel his assessment, his inclination to look her over—and then catching himself, knowing that was a punishable offense. Instead, he glanced to the ground, then to the tree to his right, then over to Primus and back again. “My sister here is thinkin’ that I might be the man for the job.”

  He dared to hold her gaze then, and it was her turn to fight the desire to look anywhere but into his dark eyes. She tried to swallow and failed, finding her mouth dry. “You …” she began. “But is … ?”

  And then it came to her. The man had to be a free man, with land of his own. Impossibly challenging land that another planter might have thrown away as unsuitable, but he was making it thrive.

  “This,” she said, her voice strengthening as she gestured about, “is yours? Those … people,” she said carefully, narrowly avoiding the term slaves, “are yours?”

  “Yes’m,” he said. He lifted his chin, prepared now for her dismissal. Even glanced over at his sister with a sly look as if to say he’d seen it coming, and she was a fool to even suggest it.

  Keturah considered that. Freed slaves owned slaves? “How long have you been working this land, Mr… . ?”

  “Mr. Rollins,” he said, a touch of bravado in his tone now that she hadn’t used his given name, offering him the respect due a free man. “And ’tis been two years, Lady Tomlinson.”

  “And how was your last harvest, Mr. Rollins?” she asked, her heart beginning to thud in excitement, even as her mind raced.

  “One of the best on Nevis,” he said, this time not bothering to try to disguise his pride.

  She nodded, looking around in admiration. “But it is a small property, is it not, Mr. Rollins?”

  “The smallest. Only a few acres.”

  She leaned slightly forward, hands on her knees, and paused a moment. “So, Mr. Rollins, if you had the acreage of Tabletop at your disposal, do you believe you would be able to replicate what you have done here?”

  He paused, took a breath, and looked at her. Sorrow filled his round eyes. “That not likely, ma’am.”

  “Lady Ket,” she corrected him. “Please call me Lady Ket.” But she liked him, liked that he dared to tell her the truth. “Why is it that you believe that you could not do on Tabletop what you are doing here?”

  He looked around, then back to her. “Because this land is virgin, Lady Ket. I’m workin’ land like the planters did backin’ a hundred years ago. Backin’ when Nevis was the Queen. And this side of the island … well, she gets different rainfall and sunshine thanna you do over at Tabletop. This ravine, for sure.”

  She thought about the planters talking, the thinly disguised jealousy and competition that sometimes rose between them. “How long ago were you freed, Mr. Rollins?”

  “Three years ago. Yes’m.” He said that with some pride.

  “And are your neighbors taking notice of your success, Mr. Rollins, here in your gully plantation?”

  He hesitated, and she sensed him falter for but a moment. “Here an’ there,” he said. “But most lettin’ me be.”

  “They prefer not to consider your success,” she surmised.

  “Could be.”

  “And where do you take your cane to be processed?”

  A muscle at his jaw tensed. “Over at Summer’s Ridge.”

  She recognized the plantation name, had met the owner, an unseemly man. A drunkard, she assumed, judging from his actions at Morning Star. “And does he charge you a fair amount to crush your cane?”

  He glanced down, then dared to look her in the eye again. “No, Lady Ket. No, he does not.”

  “What is a fair price?”

  “Ten percent of market value.”

  She nodded and sat back against the seat of the carriage, wondering if she truly had the courage to do what she was thinking. And yet what other option did she have? Would Mitilda have brought her here if she thought she had another? Ket’s eyes flicked over to the woman, thinking of how she’d said the other planters were conspiring against her.

  “Mr. Rollins, I am in need of an overseer. I am weeks behind in planting. I have no slaves of note to work the fields. If you come and assist me in my endeavors at Tabletop, you can process your cane in my millworks—which should be up and running again on the morrow—for five percent. In addition, I will pay you what any white overseer of a plantation of Tabletop’s size would earn. And above that,” she added, “if you help me bring in a crop that brings Tabletop back into the black on our ledgers, I shall reward you with five percent of those profits as well.”

  He stared at her, utterly still. Mitilda, beside him, had frozen too. Both looked dazed, as if they hadn’t heard her right.

  She nodded slowly, knowing she had made an offer that no man in his place could refuse. Ket expected that his own bit of land was but a twentieth in size compared to hers. Moreover, she knew she was proposing something that no white man would support. Why, when it got out that she had hired a black man, freed or not, to run her plantation, there would be no shortage of neighbors coming over to counsel her on her folly.

  “But I think, Mr. Rollins, that it would be wise if we kept the details of our arrangement quiet,” she said. “My neighbors already wonder if they would not be better served sending me to an asylum for coming here, a woman alone with her sisters, without aid of a man. Once they hear I have hired a Negro to run my plantation …”

  “Lady Ket,” he said, tucking his head to one side in warning, “if your neighbors hear I am your overseer, they might see fit to run me off, or worse.”

  “Not while I am there,” she pledged, lifting her chin. “I have my father’s pistols. I have clear ownership of the land. And I have my sisters to back me.”

  He looked at her, a wry smile quirking at the edges of his mouth.

  “And you are a freeman, with papers,” she added, assuming. “Do I have that correct?”

  “You do, Lady Ket.”

  “Then you have every right to accept my offer. What do you say?”

  Again, that tuck of his head, chin in hand for a moment. “I say you don’ know how things are done here.”

  She sobered, abandoning her playful stance. She’d heard stories, knew this was no game. “Mr. Rollins, I am in desperate need. And in desperate times, desperate gambles are made. At times those gambles pay off, and at times they do not.” She glanced at Mitilda. “But if your sister thought it a poor wager, would she have brought me here?”

  He paused, although a hint of his broad smile was tugging again at his lips. His eyes shifted back and forth across hers, as if trying to accept that this was really occurring and not a dream.

  “What say you, Mr. Rollins?” she asked. “May I count on your arrival come the morrow?”

  He slapped his hat against his thigh, openly smiling now and daring to envelop his sister and nephew with his grin too. “Before that,” he promised. “Because
, Lady Ket, best I understand it, we have quite a bit of work to do.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Gray was at the tavern in Charlestown taking his supper, as had been their tradition since they’d arrived. Each day he and Philip would work from sunup until midafternoon in the fields, bathe, change into a fresh shirt and breeches, reluctantly pull on jackets—a gentleman had to preserve certain traditions in spite of the heat—and went to town. To learn what they could, to form relationships with those in power—and those who weren’t—and begin to secure Teller’s Landing’s foothold again. He’d come alone this evening, however. Philip had twisted his ankle that afternoon and decided to stay back to rest it. “You go on without me,” he told Gray. “Unless you’d rather sit here tending me,” he teased.

  “Never have been much of a nurse,” Gray said. “But I will ask Martha to bring you some soup and a bit of feverfew.”

  “And you say you’re not much of a nurse,” Philip quipped with a half grin.

  Heaven knew Gray wasn’t fooling many about his being a gentleman, despite his upbringing. No other plantation owner he had met would have been caught in the mud and manure of the trenches. But Gray had no choice. Fifty acres was too much ground to cover for ten slaves, especially when time was of the essence. If he was to make a go of it, he had to get cane in the ground as soon as he could, even if he had to plant each stalk himself.

  He eagerly slathered a piece of bread with freshly churned butter, but then paused mid-bite when he heard the men behind him talking.

  “I hear tell Widow Tomlinson is still desperate for an overseer.”

  Gray glanced casually over his shoulder. Two merchants were drinking ale from pewter mugs and sharing a plate of cheese and bread. He turned back around and took a bite and then another as if he weren’t listening. But he leaned back in his chair and crossed one booted ankle over his knee in order to hear them better. The tavern was crowded this time of day, full of men from the harbor.

  “Won’t be long now until she learns that a woman can only make it on-island when she has a decent man by her side. The planters have seen to that. Drawn together to make certain she never finds an overseer.”