else she would sell more of us, her stock. Those were the words she used.
“How, wherever we each are scattered now, will we forget that sundown—the heavens pearly blue and gentle pink—which made all future sunsets haunted by a disappearing baby’s shrieks and its mother’s answering wail?”
“It took a week for Jenks to find the disbelieving master, coax him to come home, and for them to return. In that time Salome’s daughter and her child were also sent to block with the suboverseer of a neighbor, whom the mistress called in to maintain order while her own men were away. Mary said the mistress imagined Salome’s babe exceeding light for Africans. It was like hell, a view of hell down in the yard, the black girl’s man rolling his eyes and sweating as they loaded up his kin, Ardiss shrieking in tongues to condemn the farmhand who drove the cart away. But the mistress was not satiated. That very evening, she had me whipped.
“ ‘Come here you sully slut,’ she said to me, as she watched the yard with one eye from her window. The morning before had been like someone else’s life, her ladyship offering me a jellied bonbon, and as I combed her, holding a silk riband to my cheek and murmuring, ‘Look how well this suits your eyes.’
“I will not lie. I wanted that blue riband, it was true it suited my blue eyes and ginger hair better than it did her own.” Coote frowns up fiercely from his scribbling.
“But I did not take it. And the next afternoon, after she had cloven the young African family apart, she called me to her whilst Mary stood by looking at the wall. ‘Look,’ screeched Mistress, ‘Mary you are my witness, this girl is a thief! Thus she does repay my kindness!’
“My poor poor Mary. Grimly she stood there as the lady lifted the blue silk riband from beneath the gray surcoat-pillow on my pallet.
“How swiftly, how completely, the course of my life changed in that one moment. In the next, despite my croakings, the neighbor’s suboverseer had me by the wrists, dragging me through the yard to the horse stable. My hands were tied to a spike high in the wall, and I received ten of his sound-muscled stripes. Before full measure had been given, I fainted.
“I came to in the straw, my blue bodice folded neat beside me, the grain sticking in my flesh like needles. I was sobbing in the dark when I heard a noise. The door swung inward. The master had arrived with his roan mare. When he perceived me, Master asked me what had happened. Only a child as young as I would have opened her gob and spilled out everything. I told him what the mistress had accused me of, and that she herself had planted the lovely riband in my bed. Wiping down his horse by the silver light that crept through the narrow window in the stall, he laughed out loud at this. But in the end, when the horse was quietly chuffing feed, he came toward me through the bales. He lay his ringed hand on my forehead. ‘You are too warm,’ he murmured.
“ ‘No Master, I am very cold,’ I shuddered. And he commanded me to make myself a nest in the hay, he would send Mary to bring a blanket and tend my wounds. ‘You are a worthy lass,’ he told me. ‘I will not see you spoiled, you can rest certain of that.’
“Poor Mary came to wash and heal me in moments stolen from the mistress. Ah, how she begged my pardon for the part that she was forced to play, in witnessing a theft that never happened! Though in the shed he’d laughed when I told him of his lady’s plot against me, when his wife accused me to him he was most serious, Mary said, of mein. ‘My dear,’ he told her, ‘you must not be vexed by such inconsequentials. The maid must be returned to fieldwork; trouble no more about her, but rest so that your health returns.’ ”
Coote has a notion. He indulges it. “Did you report Mary Dove’s plot because she had borne false witness against you?”
“Did I take vengeance? No! None of us owned the right to tell the
“How, wherever we each are scattered now, will we forget that sundown—the heavens pearly blue and gentle pink—which made all future sunsets haunted by a disappearing baby’s shrieks and its mother’s answering wail?”
“It took a week for Jenks to find the disbelieving master, coax him to come home, and for them to return. In that time Salome’s daughter and her child were also sent to block with the suboverseer of a neighbor, whom the mistress called in to maintain order while her own men were away. Mary said the mistress imagined Salome’s babe exceeding light for Africans. It was like hell, a view of hell down in the yard, the black girl’s man rolling his eyes and sweating as they loaded up his kin, Ardiss shrieking in tongues to condemn the farmhand who drove the cart away. But the mistress was not satiated. That very evening, she had me whipped.
“ ‘Come here you sully slut,’ she said to me, as she watched the yard with one eye from her window. The morning before had been like someone else’s life, her ladyship offering me a jellied bonbon, and as I combed her, holding a silk riband to my cheek and murmuring, ‘Look how well this suits your eyes.’
“I will not lie. I wanted that blue riband, it was true it suited my blue eyes and ginger hair better than it did her own.” Coote frowns up fiercely from his scribbling.
“But I did not take it. And the next afternoon, after she had cloven the young African family apart, she called me to her whilst Mary stood by looking at the wall. ‘Look,’ screeched Mistress, ‘Mary you are my witness, this girl is a thief! Thus she does repay my kindness!’
“My poor poor Mary. Grimly she stood there as the lady lifted the blue silk riband from beneath the gray surcoat-pillow on my pallet.
“How swiftly, how completely, the course of my life changed in that one moment. In the next, despite my croakings, the neighbor’s suboverseer had me by the wrists, dragging me through the yard to the horse stable. My hands were tied to a spike high in the wall, and I received ten of his sound-muscled stripes. Before full measure had been given, I fainted.
“I came to in the straw, my blue bodice folded neat beside me, the grain sticking in my flesh like needles. I was sobbing in the dark when I heard a noise. The door swung inward. The master had arrived with his roan mare. When he perceived me, Master asked me what had happened. Only a child as young as I would have opened her gob and spilled out everything. I told him what the mistress had accused me of, and that she herself had planted the lovely riband in my bed. Wiping down his horse by the silver light that crept through the narrow window in the stall, he laughed out loud at this. But in the end, when the horse was quietly chuffing feed, he came toward me through the bales. He lay his ringed hand on my forehead. ‘You are too warm,’ he murmured.
“ ‘No Master, I am very cold,’ I shuddered. And he commanded me to make myself a nest in the hay, he would send Mary to bring a blanket and tend my wounds. ‘You are a worthy lass,’ he told me. ‘I will not see you spoiled, you can rest certain of that.’
“Poor Mary came to wash and heal me in moments stolen from the mistress. Ah, how she begged my pardon for the part that she was forced to play, in witnessing a theft that never happened! Though in the shed he’d laughed when I told him of his lady’s plot against me, when his wife accused me to him he was most serious, Mary said, of mein. ‘My dear,’ he told her, ‘you must not be vexed by such inconsequentials. The maid must be returned to fieldwork; trouble no more about her, but rest so that your health returns.’ ”
Coote has a notion. He indulges it. “Did you report Mary Dove’s plot because she had borne false witness against you?”
“Did I take vengeance? No! None of us owned the right to tell the
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