Part 15 (1/2)

”Quent is the man to take on the Patent. I know.”

”Yes, and that this Mademoiselle Nicole Crane will make a perfect wife for him. She's good for the place, Ephraim. Even Sally Robin looked at her with approval.”

”Sally Robin, eh?” The slaves said Sally had the gift of sight. He'd never been sure about that, but these days ma.s.sage with one of her creams gave him what little ease he could find. He'd be grateful for that right now. His joints were aching something fierce. He was too tired to go on talking. ”I need to go to bed, Lorene. Send Runsabout to help me. She gives my poor legs more comfort than any of the men. Better hands for it.”

”I will, Ephraim. In a moment. But if you'd just consider how much better Quent would-”

”Lorene.” He was gentle with her, his voice steady and soft. The time for teasing was past, probably forever. ”I told you. I know.”

”But I thought you meant to ...”

He nodded toward the small wooden chest with the inclined top that he used to facilitate writing when he was in bed. The cover lifted and there was a place to store those few papers that these days he considered important. Not many now. Life, he'd learned, was stripped to bare essentials at its end. ”In there. I wrote it all out. My instructions for after I'm gone. Quent is to have Shadowbrook.”

”Oh, Ephraim! Thank heaven! I can't tell you-”

He held up a forestalling hand. ”It's Quent who shouldn't be told. Not just yet.” He had to stop for a moment because a surge of pain took his breath away. ”Lorene, I truly need to-”

”Go to bed. Yes, my dear.” Lorene half stood. ”I could help you, Ephraim, if you'd permit me.” He weighed so little these days. She could easily put him to bed herself.

Ephraim's face got hard and he shook his head. He would never allow her to do for him as if he were a child. Not Lorene. Not after all the times she'd been soft and pliant beneath him and he'd been the master of her body as well as of all else. ”Send Runsabout.” He had never expected the slaves to spread their legs for him. d.a.m.n fool thing to do, he'd always thought. Gave them entirely too much of a hold over their master, to have gazed up at a face contorted with pa.s.sion. As for the children that might come from such trifling ... A d.a.m.n fool thing. No telling John that, though. No telling his oldest boy anything. He'd even considered naming Cormac, back when he thought Quent beyond his reach. But that would have been a hundred times worse. ”Lorene, I perish with fatigue.”

”Yes, of course.” She stood and gathered her embroidery hoop and the little spools of many colored cottons that had been spread in her lap. ”I'll send Runsabout, and Jeremiah to help her.” Jeremiah was the stable master. He had long experience of rubbing unguent into sore limbs.

”Don't say anything to Quent. Not yet,” Ephraim repeated. He wanted to add that whatever was going to be between his younger son and the small but he thought very independent women who had stumbled into their lives, it should develop naturally, with no false pressure put on by notions of inheritance. He hadn't the strength to explain. ”Not yet,” he repeated.

”As you wish, Ephraim. You have my word on it.” Lorene glanced out the window once more as she left the room. The wagon was gone. Quent and Nicole were on their way to the sawmill to see Solomon the Barrel Maker. As she'd promised. It had been her suggestion that Nicole go along-she'd given her some things for the newborn to take to Matilda-but it was obvious that Quent would have invited the girl even without his mother's manipulations. Lorene thought of the long journey to the sawmill and back. Just the pair of them. She smiled.

If he'd taken a horse, Quent could have covered the distance in an hour; with a wagon it took two. His original excuse had been that he was taking some kegs of ale to the Davidsons, their quarterly supply according to the tenancy terms. Might as well come along, he'd planned to say to her. Since I'm taking the wagon.

She rode, he knew. They'd talked about it once. But Lorene never had, and Jeremiah had informed them there were no sidesaddles in the Shadowbrook stables. ”Pohantis and Mistress Shoshanaya, they be the only womans ever rode a horse on this place, Master Quent.”

Both Pohantis and Shoshanaya had ridden bareback and astride, like all squaws. Next time he was in Albany, Quent promised himself, he'd order a sidesaddle made for Nicole. Should have thought of it this last visit, except he'd been too fixed on Corm's story and finding out what he could. Less than nothing, as it turned out.

”What are you thinking?” Nicole asked.

”Nothing much.”

”But we have been traveling for some time and you haven't said a word.”

He glanced around and realized they were almost at the sugarhouse. ”Sorry. Lost in my thoughts, I guess.” He had no intention of mentioning Cormac to Nicole. Even after what she'd told him, he couldn't bear to remember the two of them together. ”We could stop at the sugarhouse. It's on the way. If we do, we can bring some jugs of rum to the Davidsons. Maybe one for Solomon while we're at it.”

”Are the slaves permitted rum in this place?”

”Far as I'm concerned, the slaves can do as they like, long as the work's done.”

”Your brother doesn't seem to share that opinion.”

”My brother is a fool, and cruel with it.” He pulled gently on the reins and the horse obediently made the turn onto the spur road that led to the sugarhouse.

”I've three pies here.” Nicole looked into the basket that had been packed for her by Kitchen Hannah. ”We could give one to Mistress Frankel if you've a mind.”

”Women's business,” he said. ”Do as you think best.”

”One for Sarah Frankel, then,” she said, lifting out the top pie. ”From your maman.”

It was just the sort of thing his mother would have done. And like her, Nicole did it instinctively.

The sugarhouse was idle. ”All the sugar from last year's used up,” Moses Frankel told him.

”More soon,” Quent said. He nodded toward the gristmill down the hill, idle too. ”Everything ready?”

”Ready as ever it can be.”

Frankel was the miller, as well as in charge of the distilling. When the wheat harvest started coming in he would open the dams that allowed the race that powered the gristmill to fill and roar down the sluices. The great wheel would turn and set the huge stones to grinding, and the wheat would become flour to fill the bellies of the poor black b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who were enslaved to the cane. Maybe not fill their bellies, exactly. Ward off starvation, more like. All the same, the Carribean plantations required every bushel of flour Shadowbrook could produce above what they needed for themselves. Last time Quent heard the count there were better than sixty thousand African slaves in the Leewards alone. And that didn't include Jamaica or Barbados.

The boats that ran the trade, were each owned by a consortium of merchants dependent on the captain to make them a profit by finding the best deals. They were even now headed for Albany. He'd heard talk of little else when he was in the town. The two-masted brigs would arrive and cast anchor in the deep middle of the river, riding low, heavy with sugar. Smaller craft-a couple of sleek sloops spreading yards of canvas, and countless little boats propelled by a determined tar and a single sail run up a st.u.r.dy pole-would leave their moorings at the town wharves and hurry to take aboard the rich, dark product of the cane, the single greatest cash crop the world had ever seen. Much would go to the sugarhouses where rum was made to supply the grog shops and taverns of Albany. Still more would head downriver to settlements at the Manor of Livingston, the Great Hardenburgh Patent, and the Patent of the Nine Partners. A goodly share would come upriver to Shadowbrook, and the boats that brought it would ferry the produce of the Hale Patent back to the brigs. There was no better flour to be had anywhere in the valley. The big s.h.i.+ps would remain moored in Albany-square sails furled, most of the crew riotously ash.o.r.e, filling the town's coffers-until the Hale harvest ended and they'd laded all they could carry.

The harvest was almost upon them. At Shadowbrook they would begin bringing in the wheat in a couple of weeks' time. They were already making hay. And Quent had seen small farmers closer to the town gathering corn and potherbs in plenty. ”Looks to be a good year.”

”G.o.d willing,” Frankel added piously. Then for good measure spat to the north, into the devil's face, as the old saying had it.

The women were coming out of the house, heading for where the men stood by the wagon. They sounded like a flock of small birds. Ellie Bleecker kissed Nicole farewell, and Sarah shook her hand warmly. Even Deliciousness May beamed at her.

”The Frankels like you,” he said when they were once more on the way to the sawmill.

”I like them. I was sorry not to see the little ones again. Lilac and Willie.”

”Where were they?”

”Helping with the haying, according to Deliciousness May. Seems they're gone until late at night.”

He heard the distress in her tone. ”It's not always like that. There's much of pleasure for young folks on the Patent.”

”You think it a good place for children, then?”

He glanced at her. There seemed to be no special meaning behind her words. ”It can be.” When the harvest began in earnest Lilac and Sugar Willie would work twenty-two hours out of twenty-four for weeks on end. To be fair, Ellie's children would work almost as hard, but in the winter when there was less to be done they'd be sent to the big house to learn to read and write. Anyone who tried to teach those skills to Runsabout's twins would suffer mightily. Particularly if John had anything to say about it. Quent had always been fairly certain it was his brother who had fathered those babes on Runsabout, but that didn't change his brother's feelings toward the youngest slaves.

”The slaves, what is to prevent there being a small wage paid them?” Nicole did not realize she was going to ask until the question was out of her mouth.

”Far as I can see, only money.” Quent's tone gave away nothing of the fact that lately he had been thinking on that same equation. Could the Patent be made to show a profit and at the same time pay the slaves something for their efforts? So they wouldn't, strictly speaking, be slaves. The workman is worthy of his hire, said the Rhode Island Quaker he'd met at Do Good all those years ago.

”We are almost there, are we not?” Nicole's voice interrupted his reverie. ”That little path between the two rowans, I remember it from last week when I came with Madame Hale.”

”Rowans,” Quent said, repeating the name she'd used. ”In these parts we call them mountain ash.” The two small trees were heavy with bright orange berries. Shoshanaya had said they were talking trees, because when the berries were thick on the branch the way they were now, you knew it would be a hard winter, with much snow. ”Did my mother take you down that path?”

”No. We drove right past it.” Nicole noted something odd about the set of his jaw, a kind of hardness that she did not remember seeing before.