John Laurens, his son Henry, myself, and Polly made a slow procession around the property. Polly was sitting sidesaddle on her small, fat mount being led by Pompey, one of our younger slaves, who had recently started shadowing Quash whenever he could.
Pompey had shown an aptitude for carpentry and it seemed Quash was quite enjoying having someone to teach. Quash drove our wagon while Mr. Laurens, Henry, and I sat enjoying the breeze of the sunny morning.
“It’s remarkable how much cooler it is out here than in town,” Henry commented.
I adjusted my bonnet to keep the low-riding sun from my face. “I imagine all the buildings in town buffet the breeze from the Cooper River.”
“With more going up all the time,” Henry agreed. “It shall be nice to have space in the countryside to get away to in the height of the summer.” He cleared his throat. “One day.”
Not Lucas land, I chided in my head, though my mind still couldn’t leave Ben alone. Had I upset him? Surely he knew I’d had no idea he was coming.
“It is rather more stifling at some of the up-country plantations, however,” Henry bungled on. “You have a fortuitous spot here on the bluff.”
“I was interested to discover last evening at dinner that you had planter ambitions.” I glanced at John Laurens who studied the surrounding landscape, but whose ear I knew missed nothing, certainly not my seizing upon his son’s misstep. His son had played their hand.
“I seem to remember you like your books, Miss Lucas,” John Laurens interrupted us. “Ever read any Aristotle?”
On alert for a trap, I hesitated in my answer. It was unseemly for a lady to read like I did, as much as I did, as well as the texts I chose to read. Yet, he knew my propensity, having met me while staying at the Pinckneys’ in town and he’d witnessed me fairly raiding Charles’ library.
“I confess I have borrowed a volume from Mr. Pinckney.”
“So you’ll have pieced together how Carolina sits on a veritable climatic Golden Mean. In the most temperate part of the globe. It would be a sin not to partake of God’s bounty, would it not? God helps those who help themselves.”
I nodded. “I had the same thoughts about Carolina myself after reading Aristotle’s cosmography. It is little wonder Charles Town was settled.”
“Indeed.” John Laurens’ shrewd eyes assessed me, then roamed briefly upon my person, making my skin burn. It was over before it began, and I barely controlled a small shudder.
I glanced to see if Henry had noticed.
He was frowning up ahead to see Pompey turning Polly’s horse. “Are we at the boundary already?”
“I’m afraid so.” I quite enjoyed his disappointment. “The Wappoo land is only six hundred acres.” Therefore not worth your time, I wanted to add. And hoped it also meant I was not worth their time.
My eyes stayed firmly ahead as we passed the woods and Ben’s cabin. His strange behavior this morning had been relegated behind an iron dungeon door in my mind, lest I drove myself mad.
By the time we got back to the house, after enduring many more comments from John Laurens on how we could best use this plantation and questions about the other Lucas holdings, I was barely keeping my composure together. I felt like I’d spent a morning at the market, only this time the prime auction items were me and the land upon which I was paraded about.
“Thank you for the delightful turn about the property, gentlemen,” I managed stiffly. “I fear I must ready Polly and Mama for our weekly outing to the Woodwards. I shall ask Mary Ann to prepare you a meal to take on the drive back to Charles Town.”
“Oh, your dear mama kindly invited us to stay a few days.” John Laurens smiled. Henry looked uncomfortable. My legs wanted to give out. I didn’t know how much longer I could continue the farce of politeness. “But, please,” he continued, “we shall not impede your plans. You go on ahead. Henry and I will enjoy your mild country air and catch up on correspondence. Your mother said I could use the study, would that be all right?”
“Of course,” I responded enthusiastically, giving him a smile. I bet Charles Pinckney would be impressed at how much I’d learned to school my expressions in the last day. “Well, I must hurry. Come along, Polly. Oh, gentlemen, do look at our wonderful walled kitchen garden. I quite forgot to add that to our tour.” I pointed in the general direction, hoping they would go now and give me the time I needed to hide Father’s ledgers from prying eyes. Correspondence, indeed. I was almost offended that he’d underestimated me so.
“John Laurens is absolutely despicable, Mary,” I confided in my friend the moment Mama went upstairs to tête-à-tête with Mrs. Woodward in her private sitting area.
I want a private sitting area, I mused, as Mary and I made ourselves comfortable. I debated pulling out my volume of Plutarch but instead fished out another needlework sampler. If my indigo plan ever did grow to success, I vowed I’d have my own sitting area filled with books ladies weren’t supposed to read. Oh, and I’d build a greenhouse like Mr. Deveaux’s. And a wonderful planned garden like the Middletons’. Now I am getting greedy, I admonished myself. I’d settle for a sitting area.
“He can’t be that bad, surely.”
“Oh, he is. He and Henry quite think they have me outwitted.”
I filled Mary in on the arrival of Cromwell, the discovery that she’d been right in her harebrained thought after all. Of course, I left out any mention of Ben beyond the fact Cromwell had brought a Negro with him.
At that, Mary frowned. “You’d best consult with Charles Pinckney, but I do believe part of the Negro Act prohibits importing slaves for one’s personal use.”
I glanced up, surprised. “Truly? Goodness, I clear forgot that Negro Act. Perhaps because it didn’t apply to me at the time. Anyway, this Negro is Cromwell’s apprentice, not owned by me, so perhaps that’s a special case. It’s a curious law though.” I jabbed my needle through the fabric. “I suppose newer slaves are more apt to rise to rebellion than those born here into the system. Can’t say I blame them. Poor things.”
Mary gasped. “Eliza.”
“Sorry, but it’s true. You can’t say you think it’s right that we enslave human beings.”
Mary sucked the end of a red thread and held a needle up to see the eye. “Yet, you own slaves and so do I.”
“Actually, you don’t and I don’t. Our fathers do. What I can do is be fair and just while they are in my care.”
“Well, Father says some folk in town have counseled that it’s not the same as enslaving normal human beings. They are of inferior intellect and without our structure pressed upon them, they would still be savages in Africa, no better than animals killing each other. So in my view we are doing them a favor.”
I felt as if my eyes bulged, they opened so wide. “Truly, Mary, how dense do you think we’d seem if no one had ever taught us lettering, or basic numbers, or French, for that matter? That doesn’t make us less than human.”
I thought of Essie with her keen intelligent eyes that saw so much. A mother to me more than my own. Quash and his skills with carpentry that could grow into who knew what if he was educated. Ben. Ben who was smart and knowledgeable and would one day be free. The thought was still exhilarating to me. If it were ever in my own power to free him, I wouldn’t hesitate.
“Oh, I suppose you are correct in your way.” Mary sighed, busy with her embroidering and oblivious to how feverish my thoughts were. “But it is a moot point, for we are not to teach them to write either, else they may be able to send messages and organize another rebellion.”
I sat nonplussed at our exchange, feeling at once confused, small, and powerless. And I was equally surprised yet unsurprised by my friend’s words.
She was only a planter’s daughter, what other opinions could she have?
Then again, so was I. And I had so many.
I had, obviously, read the Negro Act. Had even had Charles explain the finer points of law. But it never fully hit home to me in a personal way until just that moment.
On the way to Wappoo, we prolonged our day and stopped in at Mrs. Hill’s. An aging widow, she had married off two daughters and the last was almost out the door. She had a small home, without much land, and was our closest neighbor. We dropped off apples and salted pork from the Woodwards, and I politely stood by while she expounded on the dangers that my reading too much would make me old before my time. To which my mother nodded all too enthusiastically. I was becoming infamous in the area, it seemed.
Then we were on our way back home. “Mother, I do wish you hadn’t offered Mr. Laurens and his son to stay on. It is such a burden on Essie and Mary Ann. Especially now that we have the permanence of Mr. Cromwell to deal with.”
“Mr. Laurens quite put me in a difficult spot where I couldn’t say no, I’m afraid. It was hardly my idea. I find the man quite tedious. Polly, do not repeat that,” she added to my sister.
My sister grinned.
“I am relieved you think so,” I replied. “I find him insufferable.”
Before Mama, Polly, and I could enter the house, a commotion at the sheds drew my attention.
I hurried over to where Sarah, Cromwell, and Togo stood over the indigo vat, leaving Mama and Polly to go inside the house alone.
“What happened?” I asked as I approached.
Cromwell shrugged. “This batch is useless, I told her to throw it away.”
Sarah stood, her eyes blazing, then picked up a tranche of wet, bundled indigo that had obviously been fished out of the vat and threw it angrily so it scattered all over the ground.
“Well, she’s a feisty one,” said Cromwell grimly. “You’d better keep her in line. Or I will.” Then he shook his head, striding off in the direction of Ben’s cabin without a backward glance.
Ignoring him, and not wanting to dismiss Sarah’s offer of teaching me the process, an offer that had been so hard won, I refused to react to her ire. “Keep it if you want to, Sarah,” I offered.
I needed to get supper ready and see off an unwanted suitor as soon as possible. I didn’t have time for an argument. If she wanted to continue with the batch so be it. But I too was concerned with the quality, sure in my gut it had been left too long before harvest.
She marched past me, brushing aggressively against my shoulder as she did so.
“What is the meaning of this insolence?” boomed John Laurens who was nearly upon us as Sarah stalked past him.
Before I could comprehend what he was doing, he’d pulled his cane out to the side of his body and brought it hissing through the air to crack hard upon the backs of Sarah’s knees.
The sound of wood hitting flesh and Sarah’s sharp cry as she pitched forward, sprawling onto her front, pierced the late afternoon and hung in a stunned silence.