“You knew Mr. Ramírez was her father.”
“Not at first,” he told her. “Phyllis never would say who the father was, you understand, but for my part I reckoned it was one of Reuben’s Spanish Negroes. He had four, at one time, on his farm at Newtown. Bought off prize ships at New York, with the misfortune to first fall into my brother’s hands, and then be taken up in the conspiracy.”
She’d been a baby in the year that madness gripped New York, but growing up she’d heard the tale in pieces—how a fire at Fort George had led to claims the black men in that city meant to start a riot, setting off a chain of baseless accusations, mass arrests and trials that were mockeries of justice. She had heard about the hangings, and the burnings at the stake.
Her father did not tell those details now, but only called the memory of it to her mind.
“It got so terrible,” he told her, “that the governor of Massachusetts wrote our own, and told him he must stop it, for he saw that it was taking on the tone of their own witch trials.”
“But they didn’t stop it.”
“No. Like many fires, it choked to death on its own ashes. But it was an evil time, and good men died unnecessary deaths because of it.”
He shaved another careful curl of wood from one end of the coffin. “I had hoped,” he said, “that Violet’s father might be one of those who had survived. Two of my brother’s Spanish Negroes were not killed. One was deported. And the other disappeared. Took passage on a ship, most likely, for there were then sympathetic captains in the harbour, privateers, who for a price would take a Spanish Negro to a port at Hispaniola, where he might in time meet with the son of someone he’d once sailed with.” He was speaking in an offhand way, his focus on his work. “And later, if he chanced to trade with Daniel, he might learn the woman he’d once loved had come to live with us, here at the cove. And he might learn he had a daughter.”
Lydia was quiet for a moment. “Did he know you knew?”
“It was not something we discussed. But clearly it had been arranged with Benjamin, and he will see they get to El Montero.”
He said nothing of what other things had been arranged with Benjamin. He did not mention William or his trade to the West Indies, or the flag of truce that Benjamin now carried on the Bellewether, and Lydia could not help wondering whether her father had long known the truth about her brothers’ business, also.
Standing there, she only said, “I hope it will go well for Violet. I hope she’ll be free.” A darker thought intruded. “But,” she asked him, “what of Uncle Reuben?”
“I have money. I can pay him.”
But she knew, as he did, that it had never been about the money, with her uncle. “Will he hunt her?”
“Even Reuben,” he informed her, “will not hunt a corpse.” He finished with the coffin lid and set it in its place, and then she understood.
“You mean to tell him she is dead?”
“I mean to tell all who will listen that she drowned early this morning, and I found her. If they want a pretty story, I will say that when Ramírez left, she lost the will to carry on. It is not so implausible, considering her mother threatened once to do the same.”
She thought of this, and with a nod conceded it might work.
“I’ll go and do the milking, then. Just let me put the tea on first, for you and Mr. de Sabran.”
He straightened. “Lydia.”
She had begun to turn away but now she stopped, and looked at him.
He told her, “Violet’s not the only one who’s left us.”
? ? ?
She’d learned the way to deal with loss. She knew that, like a clinging vine, if given space it would wind over everything, blot out the colour and the light and leave her there in darkness. So she did not give it space. She filled each moment of her waking day with work—an easy thing, with Violet gone. And in the night she fell into a sleep too deep for dreams.
The dreams still tried to come. They crept in quietly and pressed for entry, promising the quick flash of a smile, and warm oblivion. But she withstood them, and kept hold of her emotions.
Till the day that Silas came.
He came at midday, on the mare. The morning had been warm and he had used the mare so harshly she was foaming sweat, her eyes rolled partly white in indignation.
Lydia came forward, took hold of the reins, and lost her temper. “What’s the matter with you? Off. Get off her now.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And good day to you, too, cousin.” Dropping indolently from the saddle he watched Lydia begin to tend the mare. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you angry since our childhood. It becomes you.”
She could tell that he was hoping for a heated answer, and she did not give him satisfaction. “I’ll fetch Father.”
He’d been clearing out the well. His clothes were streaked with dirt and dust. He nodded. “Silas.” Not a greeting of affection.
“Uncle Zeb.” He looked around expectantly. “Where’s Joseph? Is he well? We heard a most distressing story, although I was certain it could not be true. As I told everyone, my cousin could not kill a man.” He made it sound a failing, rather than a virtue.
Lydia had walked the mare to soothe her and had taken off the saddle and now with a rag began to rub and raise the hair along the horse’s legs, where blood cooled faster.
“Joseph’s fine,” her father said. “You’ve come for payment.”
“Yes. My father has your letter and accepts the sum you’ve offered. With a penalty of course, for such an early and untimely loss of property.”
She watched her father bite his tongue. He said, “I’ll get your money.”
He was gone for a few minutes, in the house, and Silas broke the brittle silence. “I hear Benjamin’s made captain of the Bellewether.”
It was a probing comment, not a question, and she did not choose to rise to it. “You seem to hear a lot of things.”
“I do. I hear that a French officer came lately from this cove to take up lodgings at the house of the de Joncourt family.” He smiled faintly, seeing the effect of that remark. “But only one, though. So I wonder, since we sent you two French officers, what happened to the other?”
She said nothing. She was grateful when her father reappeared, a calfskin purse of money in his hand.
“Here. You don’t want to waste the daylight.”
“You would send me back to Millbank now, on foot, and without dinner?” Silas raised his eyebrows higher. “This is hardly hospitality. Or do you worry I might learn the secret of whose body you have truly buried up there on the hill?”
A weighted silence hung between them.
“Fine.” Her father shattered it, decisively. “You wish to see who’s buried there? Come and see. I’ll get my shovel.”
As he stormed towards the shed, he said, “Let’s hope you have the stomach for it, though, because a body drowned is not a pretty sight, and being buried rarely does improve it.”
Silas made no move to follow, and her father stopped.
“Well? Are you coming?”
Silas, caught within the web of his own cowardice, said, “No.”
Her father calmed, and walked back down to stand in front of Silas. “No.” He did not say it mockingly, but in full understanding of the limitations of her cousin’s nature. “Go home, boy. Tell my brother our account is settled. It is done. Go home.”
She was not sure it was a wise thing, sending Silas off this way, but it felt good to watch him trudging down the road to Millbank, through the darkness of the trees.
Her father seemed to stand a little straighter, having shaken off the yoke he’d carried on his shoulders for so many years. She asked him, “What would you have done, if he had gone to see the coffin opened?”
“I’d have laid him in it,” said her father.
And with that, he went to finish clearing out the well.
? ? ?
August was a month of storms. And Henry brought bad news.