Chesapeake

  Therefore, while Rosalind undressed behind a screen he quickly slipped out of his marriage suit and jumped into bed, where he awaited her. When she carried her candle to the nightstand, her dark hair flowing over her shoulders, she looked almost presentable, and from his pillow he cried, “Roz! You’re downright beautiful!” And he reached out his hand. She would never forget that gesture; she often wondered what force of character had been required for him to make it, but she was grateful that he had done so.

  “I want to be a good wife,” she said as she blew out the flickering light.

  “You’re going to be the best,” he assured her, pulling her into the bed.

  On the wintry afternoon of New Year’s Day, March 25, 1702, Rosalind informed her apathetic husband that she was pregnant, and in the following September she gave birth to a son, Samuel. Often, in later years, she would wonder what miracle had allowed her to have children by her strange and diffident husband; actually, she would have three, two boys and a girl, and each pregnancy would seem an accident, the result of a performance which had no meaning and certainly no spiritual significance. She once summarized her position: If Fitzhugh owned a valuable cow, he would feel responsible for getting her bred to a good bull. He feels the same about me. But then she frowned: “I’m worthy of better than this”—and she vowed that she would always manifest that worthiness.

  After the birth of her first child, Rosalind annoyed her husband by insisting that she be allowed to inspect all the Steed holdings. At first Fitzhugh supposed that this meant the barns and fields on Devon Island, and he was annoyed when she told him one morning, “Today I should like to see the warehouse at the landing.” When she surveyed the settlement now known in official documents as Ye Create Towne of Patamoke she was impressed, for although it was little more than a village, it had a bustling quality. The tavern at the waterfront was commodious; the Steed warehouse was imposing; the Paxmore Boatyard quite filled the eastern end; and a bright new courthouse complete with whipping post, stocks, pillory and ducking stool was being built. The town contained only one street running parallel to the harbor, and it was broken by a large square left open but surrounded by posts set in earth.

  “That’s our slave mart,” Fitzhugh said proudly. “We do an honest business there.” But Rosalind thought: Compared with the way we managed our plantation on the Rappahannock, you do no business at all. But that will change.

  Her energies were directed to Devon Island, and the more she saw of the slipshod way in which the various Steeds discharged their responsibilities, the more astonished she became that it survived. There was little orderliness and less logic; the six thousand acres were planted helter-skelter, and the eighteen white servants and thirty-five slaves were assigned arbitrarily to tasks which might or might not prove productive. The two ocean ships rarely left either Devon or Bristol with full cargoes, and no one assumed responsibility for their thrifty utilization. It was rule by hazard, and the fact that Devon continued to exist was due more to its magnitude than to its husbandry.

  Rosalind proposed to change this. She started first with the house itself, a rambling affair which had grown to unmanageable dimensions. Summoning the Paxmore brothers from their boatyard in Patamoke, she asked their advice as to what might reasonably be done to bring coherence to the place, and she kept close to them as they studied the situation. They warned her that they were reluctant to take on new assignments for the building of large ships and small boats occupied their whole attention. The older brother, who did all the talking, said, “But we’re indebted to the Steeds for our business and we feel obligated. Let’s see what can be done.”

  They were not excited by the possibilities; too many of the accidental excrescences would have to be torn down, but at one point she heard the older brother say, “It’s a shame there isn’t a strong central structure. Then we could telescope.” She asked what this meant, and he said, “Come with us to the cliff, and we’ll explain.”

  So for the first time she sailed across the river to Peace Cliff and walked up the oyster-shell path to the unpretentious, restful house that stood on the headland, and as soon as she saw it she understood what the brothers meant when they said telescope. The humble house built by Edward Paxmore in 1664 was still sturdy, but after his death the growing families of his four children merited additional space, so a larger block of four rooms had been added, with a higher roof line. And when the boatyard prospered, a real house had been added, with an even higher roof line.

  The result was a house tall and solid to the left as one approached it, joined by a lesser middle section, which was joined by a noticeably smaller third. The three buildings resembled a collapsible telescope. “A giant could shove them all together,” Rosalind said approvingly as she studied the design. “It’s neat, efficient, pleasing to the eye, and perfect for this cliff.”

  She was even more impressed by the simple manner in which the three parts functioned, and when she finished examining the last tidy room she asked, “Could you do the same for me?”

  “No,” Paxmore replied. “Thee can build this way only if the first house is solid and uncluttered.”

  “Is ours quite hopeless?”

  “Not at all! Thee has a superb location ...”

  “I know the location’s good. What about the house?”

  “It can never enjoy this simple line,” he said. “But it can acquire its own charm.”

  “How?”

  “Tear down the ugly parts.”

  It was as simple as that. To achieve a fine house it was essential that the ugly parts not be amended, but torn down completely. This Rosalind was willing to do, but always as she worked with the slaves as they ripped away excrescences, she kept in mind that solemn purity of the Quaker house, and when the time came to start rebuilding she asked the Paxmore brothers if she might return to the cliff to refresh her memory of what she was after.

  It was on this second visit that she met Ruth Brinton Paxmore, now a woman of sixty-nine. “This is our mother,” the younger Paxmore son said, and from the first moment Rosalind liked this prim old lady dressed in the austere gray of the Quakers.

  They had talked for less than ten minutes when Ruth Brinton interrupted the pleasantries. “Has thee any plans at Devon for the manumission of thy slaves?”

  “The what?”

  “When does thee plan to give thy slaves freedom?”

  The question was so startling, covering as it did a subject which had never been discussed in Rosalind’s hearing, that she was unable to respond, but her confusion was alleviated by the older son, who explained, in obvious embarrassment, “Mother’s always asking people about slavery. Thee mustn’t mind.”

  “But thee must mind,” the old woman retorted. “This is a question we must all face.” She spoke with such sincerity, with such obvious fire of conscience, that Rosalind said abruptly to the brothers, “Go about your business. Your mother and I wish to talk.”

  They spoke for two hours, discussing first the trivialities of the kitchen and next the profundities of the church. “I had the blessed fortune of knowing thy husband’s great-uncle, Father Ralph. We often talked of Catholicism and he almost persuaded me that if I were not a Quaker, I ought to be a Catholic. I think thee would be wise to rear thy children as Catholics. It’s the Steed tradition. My children have married Quakers, fortunately, but I’d not be distraught if it had been otherwise.”

  “How many children did you have?” Rosalind corrected herself: “Do you have?”

  “Two boys, who run the boatyard. A daughter, and then very late in life another daughter. Their husbands work in the yard, too.”

  “How fortunate!”

  In these two hours Rosalind learned more about the Steeds than she ever had in conversation with her own husband; the rare quality of Father Ralph; the fastidiousness of Henry, who had built the family fortunes; and the curious behavior of his son, Captain Earl, who had fought pirates, and established the shipping contacts, and lived as much
in England as in Maryland. “He loved the sea and should not have been required to supervise a plantation. It began its downhill course under Captain Earl.”

  “He must have died young.”

  “As a plantation manager he died young. Almost at the start. But as a sea captain he must have reached fifty.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “The scourge of our seas. Pirates. Two of them crept into this river.”

  “Yes. Evelyn told me of them. She said they were Quakers.”

  The old lady laughed, and Rosalind was surprised at the vigor of her responses. “Quakers, indeed! They were fraudulent in all things and stole from everyone. Captain Earl pursued them and killed the Englishman Griscom. The Frenchman Bonfleur escaped and went on to be the intolerable fiend he still is. Year after year he sought revenge, and then one day he caught thy father’s ship off Barbados ... What I mean, Captain Earl was thy husband’s father. He captured it, the ship, that is, killed three of the passengers and sent three back to inform Maryland that Earl Steed had been tortured for two days, then thrown to the sharks.”

  “My God!” Rosalind sought for a handkerchief, which she held to her mouth. “My husband never told me ...”

  “Thee would be well advised, Rosalind, not to use the name of the Lord in vain. This is not Virginia, and thee could find thyself in trouble.”

  “Was there no reprisal?”

  “Four vessels built by my. sons have been taken by pirates. They ravage at will.”

  “You speak as if they should be punished ... even hanged. I thought that Quakers ...”

  “We seek peace. But we also protect ourselves against mad dogs. I’ve always felt that when thy father killed that monster Griscom, he could well have slain Bonfleur too.”

  “Isn’t this a remarkable confession, Mrs. Paxmore?”

  “It’s extremely difficult, Rosalind, to reconcile belief with human passion.” She hesitated, frowned, and fell silent.

  “What example were you about to give?”

  “Is thee competent to hear?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m sixty-nine ...”

  “And that excuses your frankness?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then tell me the unpleasantness.”

  “It’s not unpleasant, Rosalind. It’s the kind of problem by which God tests us.”

  “For example.”

  “I think thee must assume responsibility for thy husband’s other children.”

  Without altering the even tone of her voice, Rosalind asked, “Where are they now?”

  “In the marsh,” Ruth Brinton replied. “In the swamps of human despair.”

  “What marsh?”

  “The Turlock marsh—the one around the bend of the Choptank.”

  And she proceeded to instruct Rosalind in a subject which had never been alluded to at Devon. “A prisoner named Turlock escaped to the marsh many years ago, before Edward and I reached here.”

  “What did he do here?”

  “He bred. With any woman he could lay hands on he bred an assembly of infamous children—halfwits, criminals, devious young people ... and some worthy of salvation.”

  “Why should I become involved with these children?”

  “Because ...” She hesitated, then said quickly on a new tack, “Old Turlock found a Swedish woman somewhere, and she had a slattern daughter named Flora, and Flora had a slattern named Nelly, and it’s this Nelly ...”

  “Where did my husband meet her?” Rosalind asked quietly.

  “In the marsh.” The old woman spoke with no condemnation. “He’s not to blame, Rosalind. As thee undoubtedly knows, his wife was a poor thing, able to perform only one job, the production of two handsome children. Evelyn’s fine, as thee knows, but Mark is a champion. So their father drifted to the marsh, and that’s where his three children are.”

  “Was this long ago?”

  “It’s now. One’s a mere babe.”

  For some inexplicable reason, Ruth Brinton was able to divulge a fact like this without appearing to be scandal-mongering; perhaps it was because she offered witness with such unfaltering integrity. At any rate, she informed Rosalind of the prolonged liaison and of the children that had resulted. It was these children and not the behavior of the parents which concerned the old moralist.

  “Nelly Turlock’s not qualified to rear them. With her they’ll become marsh deer.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Beautiful, of course.”

  “Did she ever live at Devon?”

  “Heavens, no! Fitzhugh would no more think of allowing her on the place ... It’s as if she were one of his slaves. He might lie with her, but he certainly would never ...”

  “You’ve given me much to think of,” Rosalind said.

  “Thee will live a long time on this river,” the old woman said, “and encounter many obligations. Thy husband. His children. Thy own. Life consists of sending everything forward. Everything.”

  “I came to see your house,” Rosalind said as she bade the old Quaker goodbye, “but what I saw was my own.”

  On the sail back to Devon she tried to evaluate what she had learned, seeking to formulate some kind of rational response: Evelyn Steed was an admirable child worthy of deepest love, and Mark, whom she still had not met, promised to be her equal; Fitzhugh was revealing himself to be exactly as represented, a self-indulgent, moderately capable man content to simulate the management of either a plantation or a marriage; her own child gave promise of being intelligent, and on him, plus the others that might follow, she would have to rely. She could see nothing to be gained by confronting Fitzhugh with her knowledge of his conduct, nor was she distraught by this uncovering of his behavior. On plantations in Virginia owners often became embroiled with pretty, nubile slaves, and prudent wives had learned that ignoring the problem was the sanest way to handle it, and the most efficacious; the infatuation rarely lasted long enough to become publicly embarrassing, and if children did result, they could either be masked in the general plantation population or quietly sold off farther south.

  She would survive Nelly Turlock, except for one ugly word used by Mrs. Paxmore. Rosalind had asked whether Fitzhugh’s relationship with the Turlock girl had occurred long ago, and Ruth Brinton had replied, “It’s now.” She thought: If it’s continuing, with me in the house as his wife ... And she began to construct an edifice of moral outrage, augmented by her sudden recollection that Mrs. Paxmore had said that one of the marsh children was a mere baby: It must have been conceived while I was living with him! Her fury started to mount, but soon she burst into robust laughter. Damn my stupidity! I argue myself into believing it’s nothing more serious than bedding down with a slave ... what happened in the past was no responsibility of mine. But because it’s happening in the present, I’m outraged. I shall ignore it equally.

  And it was with these thoughts that she began her long retreat from Fitzhugh Steed. If he preferred to frolic in the marsh rather than live seriously at the plantation, and if he needed the transient beauty of this wild creature rather than the stately assurance of an educated wife, so much the worse for him. She began building those sturdy defenses with which women protect themselves from the debacles of the bedroom. Henceforth her focus would be on gardens.

  The launching of her famous garden was delayed, for as she began to stake out its paths she chanced to look up, and there stood her daughter Evelyn, now seventeen and blooming like the lovely flowers of autumn. “How awful!” Rosalind cried impulsively, rising to embrace her daughter. “I’m worrying about a garden and ignoring the most precious blossom of them all.” She kissed Evelyn, and at table that night told Fitzhugh, “Tomorrow we start to find a husband for this girl.” And he replied, “No worry. I’ve sent across the bay to fetch the Claxton boy.”

  But when the Steed slaves reached Annapolis with the invitation, the young man told them, “I’d not like to cross the Chesapeake till the weather settles,” and they return
ed without the Claxtons.

  When this heroic response was repeated at table, Evelyn blushed; she had sailed the Choptank in all weathers. Rosalind said angrily, “Good heavens! If I were a young man about to meet my love for the first time ...” She paused to calculate what she might do, then added slowly, “I do believe I’d head into the heart of a hurricane.”

  “I think you would,” Fitzhugh agreed. “But Regis will arrive in good time, and our chick will be married.” Two weeks later, when the bay was calm, a boat arrived from Annapolis bringing not Claxton but Father Darnley, who informed the Steeds that “young Regis and his mother will be crossing any day now.”

  “A sorry situation,” Rosalind grumbled. “The priest appearing before the prospective bridegroom.” But Fitzhugh reminded her, “The Claxtons are an important family and must be treated with respect.”

  “Why in damnation does a boy have to be brought to his wedding by his mother?” No one responded, for Evelyn was mortified and Fitzhugh was irritated by his wife’s outspokenness, and Father Darnley, who served the Claxtons as their priest, deemed it prudent to convey nothing of his thoughts on the matter.

  “Very good soup,” he said, and when Rosalind tried to catch his eye, hoping to enroll him in her cause, he stared at his plate. But when the meal ended he could not escape, for as he headed for his evening prayers in the inglenook, she grasped him by the hand and muttered, “Father, this wedding must not take place.” Still he said nothing.

  So when the bay was calm, like a pond protected by woods, the Claxtons came over, but their meeting with the Steeds was not congenial. Mrs. Claxton, from an upstart family with ample lands, led her chinless son Regis up the path from the Devon wharf and shoved him in position to be greeted by his intended bride. He simpered in embarrassment and mistook Rosalind, his future mother-in-law, for Evelyn; the vast discrepancies in their beauty seemed not to register, and when his mother corrected him he simpered again.