I looked down at the floor and lied again. “James Smith,” I said, calling up the name Henry and I had decided upon.
“And your age?”
I glanced up, and his expression was so unexpectedly kind that I told the truth. “I was thirteen years this past February,” I said.
He nodded, then smiled. “Thirteen is a good age to begin.” He stepped forward and offered his hand. “My name is Mr. Burton. Welcome.”
Yet I hesitated. Where would I live? I had coins in my pocket, but I was reluctant to use them, as I hated the thought of selling more of Grandmother’s jewelry.
“What is it?” he asked, noting my uncertainty.
“Do you know of a place where I could sleep?” I asked.
“Ah! Well, it is common enough to offer a new apprentice room and board,” he said. “I can provide that for you in my home, where you will be downstairs with our household help. Your room will be small, but it will be warm and dry, and you will have enough to eat. Would that arrangement suit you?”
I was so relieved that I could only nod in reply.
CHAPTER TEN
1810–1811
James
UNSPEAKABLY GRATEFUL FOR the man’s generosity, I was silent in the carriage that first evening when Mr. Burton took me along to his home. I had spent the afternoon cleaning up the silver shop, but I had left Henry early that morning, and I was dazed from the long day.
It seemed a short ride before the horses turned down an alley that led to the back of a four-story brick dwelling. After Mr. Burton and I left the carriage, the driver went on to the stables, and my host led the way into the house through a back door that opened into a small square entry where a welcoming lamp was burning.
From there I followed Mr. Burton down a short stairwell and into a large basement kitchen, where we were met by the scent of freshly baked bread and a simmering meat stew. The warmth and comfort of this large room contrasted sharply with the cold outside, but it was all so unfamiliar that I happily would have exchanged it for Henry and his outdoor fire.
Mr. Burton went ahead to a long pine table in the center of the room. There he lifted a blue-and-white-checked cloth. “Ah, Delia!” he said, breathing in the scent of fresh bread.
A thin Negro woman turned from the vast fireplace. “Done not two hours ago,” she said without a smile, then went back to stirring the contents of the pot.
“Don’t tell me that’s my favorite stewed beef,” he said, sniffing the air.
“Made just the way you likes it, with the cloves and extra onions,” she said.
“Now, that’s a meal to look forward to, Delia!” he said.
The woman placed the iron lid back on the pot, then picked up a small bucket and brought it over to slide the onion peels from the table. As I watched her work, her dark eyes kept darting in my direction.
“How was Mrs. Burton today?” my new employer asked.
“Oh, she have a good day,” Delia said.
“She saw Malcolm?” he asked.
“Yessir, she go to his room. Like I say, she have a good day.”
“Fine, fine.” Mr. Burton looked back at me.
“We’re trying out a new apprentice for the shop. This is James,” he said, by way of introduction. He waved toward a dark hallway. “Can we get that back room cleared out enough to make room for a bed?”
“The one ’cross from the wine cellar?” she asked.
“That’s the one,” he said.
“I get Ed to take out some a those barrels what holds the apples and . . .”
“Fine, fine,” he answered, already on his way to the stairway. Before he began to climb the steps, he addressed me again. “Delia will get you straightened out. Be ready to leave in the morning at seven.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, so grateful for his kindness that tears threatened. I soon sobered when Delia and I were left alone to stare at one another. Her brown muslin head rag was tied low on her forehead, and her face appeared to be set in a frown, though it might have been her low-slung jaw and heavy bottom lip that made it look so. Hers was not a handsome face.
“No white boy been put down here with us before,” she said, clearly unhappy with my presence.
“And I’m not used to sleeping with servants,” I said sharply.
She gave me a quick hard look. While I found her stare intimidating, I would not allow a Negro woman to speak to me in that way.
She picked up one of the lamps and, while mumbling to herself, shuffled slowly across the zigzag pattern of the brick floor and into the dark hallway. When she sensed that I wasn’t behind her, she turned back. “You comin’?” she called.
I followed as she led the way to a small back room half filled with large barrels. In the lamplight, I saw there would be space enough to place a bed under the narrow window and away from the small fireplace.
“Set your bag down, and Ed see to get a pallet for tonight. Tomorrow we get a bed set up. What else you think you needin’ in here?” she asked.
I decided it best to present a full list. “I suppose I shall need a desk,” I said, “and a floor covering. Of course I will need a lamp and a washstand and a mirror—”
“I say what you needin’, not what you wantin’,” she said, then abruptly left the room. Since she had the light, I had no choice but to trail back after her into the kitchen. With nothing else to do, I sat on a stool and watched as she bustled around, preparing a supper tray for the Burtons. When she finished, she carried it to a corner in the room and there opened a small trapdoor to load the tray inside. After she gave a few yanks to a cord, which rang a bell on the floor above us, there was a low rumble as someone in the dining room above began to use a pulley to bring the meal up.
I couldn’t stop myself. “Who is up there?” I asked.
“Robert,” she said.
“Robert?” I asked.
“He the butler.”
“The butler?” It was an unfamiliar word, one I could not recall having heard before, but I would not show my ignorance.
“That what I say,” she said, then directed me to a corner of the table and set before me a large pewter spoon and a wooden bowl filled with the hot stew. Until now I had felt too drained from the day’s events to eat, but the aroma awakened my appetite.
I was relieved to see that she was not joining me. It was one thing to share my meal with Henry out in the woods, but to sit at the table with a Negro house servant was another thing.
“Would you have a napkin?” I asked.
She went to a sideboard and opened a long drawer from which she pulled a folded white cloth that I suspected was used for drying dishes.
“This suit you?” she asked, setting it down beside me.
“Thank you,” I said, shaking it out and folding it across my lap before digging in to the aromatic stew.
Delia spread freshly churned butter over a thick slice of bread and handed it to me. She was cutting another slice of bread when she gave me a sly look. “You know what a butler do?”
I dipped the bread into the sweet onion gravy, then took a bite and chewed it slowly before I replied. “I’m assuming he collects supper trays?”
“He don’ collect no nothin’,” she said.
“Well, then,” I said curiosity getting the better of me, “I suppose that you had best inform me.”
She glared at me. “After Mr. Burton, Robert the boss a this house, so you bes’ mind him.”
“Surely he doesn’t have charge over Mrs. Burton?” I asked.
“Mrs. Burton don’ do a thing without askin’ me first,” she said. “Ed and me was here before Robert.”
As I took the second piece of bread that she handed me, I remembered the carriage driver. “Is Ed your husband?” I asked, more to make conversation than out of a need to know.
“Ed my baby brother,” she said.
Her baby brother? How old was she? As though to answer my question, she said, “We both been here with Mr. and Mrs. Burton since they buy us, but we free now. We’s here a long time.”
I asked if the Burtons had children.