Chapter 5
5
I have given up the Article of Tea, but some are not quite so tractable; however if wee can convince the good folks on your side the Water of their Error, wee may hope to see happier times.
A Virginia woman in a letter to friends in England, 1769
R OYAL V ALE P LANTATION
“I’ve crafted a balm and sage tea that would make even Aunt Damarus proud.” Smiling so widely she dimpled, Loveday held up a glass jar as if it contained the elixir of immortality. “You really do take after her, you know, though at the moment you’ve lost all the bloom off your face from overseeing Father’s affairs.”
Bloom aside, Juliet took after her mother’s Quaker sister not only in looks but in leanings. Though Aunt Damarus was in faraway Philadelphia, her convictions loomed large, of late her boycott of slave-grown sugar. She even refused to take sugar in her tea.
“No more hyson for us!” Loveday exclaimed with relish. “I’ve just discovered another alternative—fennel seed and spicewood, a powerful remedy against agues and hysteric colics.”
“Of which I have neither.”
“Praise be for that.”
“A tax should never have been levied against us tea drinkers,” Juliet said as she examined the stillroom’s tidy, well-stocked shelves. The very air seemed a salve, the mingling of dried herbs and simples astonishingly fragrant. “The British keep inventing new ways to control how America conducts business, right down to our very appetites.”
“You’re looking quite wan.” Loveday’s concern suffused her animated features. “’Tis that infernal pain in your head, I suppose.”
Juliet didn’t deny it. Headaches had become an almost daily occurrence.
“Nothing I’ve concocted has helped. I’m quite at a loss.” Loveday’s eyes turned teary. “If you would just put aside all your ledgers and correspondence, even briefly...”
“You know Father depends on me and I cannot.”
“Well, let’s plan a liberty tea party this afternoon, just us two. Or if you’d rather, we’ll serve coffee or hot chocolate. I’ll ask Mahala to make your favorite little cakes with currants and muscovado sugar.”
“You’re trying to puff me up when you well know I literally burst my stays last week.”
“Losh! You simply need new stays as yours are so worn.”
“What we need are new gowns for the coming holiday season.”
Loveday returned the tea to the shelf. “We’ll make do in remade ones, I suppose.”
Juliet hated to disappoint her. “Remember Mama’s trunk in the attic? I found some saffron silk from our silkworms that would work well for you, including some exquisite lace, though I’m happy to wear my green lustring.”
“Green, not your usual blue? We shall walk about looking like lemons and limes, then.” Sitting down on a stool, Loveday rolled her eyes. “I had in mind something softer like rose or even orchid, similar to the silk I saw at the mantua-maker’s in Williamsburg.”
“Last I heard, the mantua-maker was turning all away except those who can pay in advance in currency, not tobacco credit.”
“So ’tis that bad, is it?” When Juliet paused, Loveday continued in quiet tones as if not wanting Father to overhear, as he’d just returned from town. “Are our dowries at risk?”
Juliet weighed her answer to the question she’d dreaded. “Yours is still intact.”
A frown marred Loveday’s face. “But not yours.”
“Mine went to pay taxes, but given there’s no suitor in sight, I’m not concerned. All that matters to me are your prospects.”
“Prospects? Spoiled planters’ sons, all, shirking work and giving themselves airs. Frightfully unattractive.” Loveday surveyed a tray of drying marigolds and chrysanthemums. “Give me a virile man with callused hands, not an entitled pansy whose skin is fairer than mine.”
“Perhaps your prospects would be brighter in Philadelphia. We could write Aunt Damarus about a social season there.”
“I daresay she’s too busy boycotting tea and sugar and the like to play matchmaker to her nieces.”
“ Niece .”
“We are in this together.” Loveday pinned Juliet with her sternest look. “I’ll not be the only one who walks down the aisle. It’s long been a dream of mine for us both to wed and have families. My children playing with yours like we did with our cousins growing up. ’Tis no secret you adore children.”
“And I shall dearly love yours when the time comes.”
They paused as a door banged shut. Father’s whistling could be heard as he left the house and skirted the kitchen garden on his way to the dependencies.
“My, he’s in a mood.” Loveday looked to the door, her voice a whisper. “Have you any further word about the Williamsburg widow?”
“Only a name—Zipporah Payne.”
“Ah, rather lovely. How besotted is he, do you think?”
“Enough to spend nearly every waking hour in Williamsburg and whistle afterward.” Juliet rubbed her thundering brow. “As for second courtships, they are usually of short duration, especially at midlife.”
“You don’t think he’d elope.” Loveday looked perplexed. “I’m still trying to come to terms with his being in the arms of a woman other than Mama.”
Juliet tried not to think of that. “Perhaps the widow Payne is the one Providence is providing for him at this stage in life.”
“Why don’t we plan a trip to Williamsburg on the morrow and drive by the lady’s residence, at least.”
“Under what pretense?”
“Fripperies at the millinery or mantua-maker. Ink and pounce at the store. A headache powder from the apothecary.”
Pondering it, Juliet left her stool and walked to the stillroom’s open door. “I must first go see about the indigo.”
If the stench was any indication, this season’s next harvest would be unmatched. Hope took hold as Juliet dismounted from her mare and held a handkerchief to her nose. The first harvest was well underway, the indigo flowers no longer showy, their stalks cut and fermenting in the costly yet critical vats. The exquisitely hued dye was eventually bound for textile mills in Britain.
“Miss Catesby.” Nash pulled off his worn, blue-stained hat. He batted at a swarm of flies before leading her on the age-old ritual of inspecting the tubs.
A frenzy of motion was on all sides of them as fifty or so hands used wooden paddles to stir and beat the fermenting liquid. A few enslaved and indentured nodded to her, but most stayed intent on their work. Pushing her handkerchief into her pocket, she took the paddle Nash held out and all but attacked a vat, bespattering her oldest riding habit. She remained intent on the blue flecks that sank to the bottom and became coveted indigo mud. Next the mud was hung to dry. Packing it into barrels and shipping it across the Atlantic was weeks away.
“Matters look promising here,” she told him, surrendering the stained paddle. “I’ll check on the fields next to harvest tomorrow. Keep me apprised of any developments here.”
Though this year’s indigo seemed a success, neither fields nor field hands ever rested, forever preparing the soil for the next cycle. They fanned out for what seemed like miles, their bent backs a familiar sight as they worked beneath a merciless sun.
Again atop her mare, Juliet moved on to her next concern. Though beautiful, the carefully tended mulberry grove sent her spirits plummeting. Silk production was not a success in Virginia. After a decade of trying, she saw that they would never equal the perfection of Italian silk, a long-held dream. The white mulberry eggs they’d procured from Va lencia hadn’t survived shipboard conditions, and that debt made their pockets more threadbare. Mulberries were striking trees, at least, brightening in autumn and dropping leaves like gold coins onto the sunburned ground.
As the silk overseer walked toward her in a heat shimmer, she took out her handkerchief to dab her upper lip and brow. “I’ve news,” she told him, remembering verbatim the latest letter in Father’s study. “Our trunks of silk have arrived in London but were detained at the customhouse awaiting valuers and silk inspectors. We should have more details by the next ship.”
“Fit for royalty, your factor said.” His heavily accented words, so confident, boosted her. “Have you any word on the silk engravings from Italy?”
“They’ve arrived and are being translated in Williamsburg.” She eyed her mare, as impatient to move on as she. “I’m also awaiting word from the managers of the Philadelphia Silk Filature on whether large-scale silk production is viable for us.”
Next she went to the rice in the lower fields nearer the James River, their least profitable venture. She listened as the overseer droned on about manuring with mud and how much more favorable the Carolina marshlands were for rice, then she returned to the house.
In need of a bath and fresh garments, Juliet felt she was melting as fast as the remaining ice in the icehouse. Surely Loveday didn’t expect her for tea. A hot beverage was not what she wanted, nor was the irritated voice coming from Father’s study off the foyer. She paused at the bottom of the staircase.
“Colonel Catesby.” The voice stopped her cold. The tobacco overseer, Riggs. “You need know that last night around ten o’ the clock, Billy, Peter, Tom, Jacob, and Armistead ran away, taking one of my guns and a bag of bullets and powder.”
“The youngest tobacco hands?” Father’s voice was infuriatingly calm compared to Riggs’s usual vehemence. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
“The accursed thieves left in a scow on your very landing.”
“I’m sure you’ve sent minutemen after them,” Father continued calmly, though this was ever a concern. Runaway advertisements were thick in Virginia’s newspapers. Would he now listen to Juliet’s argument about employing only indentures instead?
“Indeed I have. There’s some nonsense abroad that these runaways want to join the ranks of jacks crewing for privateers like Captain Sharp and other deluded fools.”
I hardly blame them. She would certainly pray their brave getaway was a complete success.
Juliet came to stand in the doorway, ending their meeting. Seeing her, Riggs looked quite aggravated before withdrawing. Would Father comment on the runaways? Limping a bit, he began to search for the brandy decanter.
“I sent it to the kitchen for cleaning,” Juliet told him apologetically. “Wouldn’t a glass of cold lemonade do?”
“Nay, I need something to dull the pain. The gout has come upon me again, but perhaps a smoke will do as well.” He gestured to a handsome, unfamiliar box. Cigars? “A gift from Glasgow. Buchanan.”
Juliet regarded it with loathing. “The tobacco lord?”
“None other.” He called for Hosea to bring a light and the missing decanter. His manservant, never far, soon appeared with both.
Juliet settled into the nearest chair. “Given I no longer have to roll tobacco into cigars for you like Mama did, I suppose I should thank him.”
“I hope you do.” Father sat with a wince, favoring his left leg. “The head of the firm, Leith Buchanan, will soon land in Virginia, or has promised to.”
Leith. She swallowed, throat parched, lemonade now the farthest thing from her mind. “So this Buchanan would hazard a journey rife with risk to come here?” Her impression of a doddering old man as gouty as Father began to crumble.
“These Scottish merchants are all about risk, understand.”
Tobacco smoke purled from the cigar’s burnt end, its leathery, woodsy scent heightened in the heated room. Though Juliet preferred Father smoke a pipe, she favored cigars to snuff with its inelegant sneezing, spitting, and coughing. And at the moment she felt like spitting herself, trying to come to terms with this unwelcome news.
“Surely Mr. Buchanan shan’t stay here,” she said.
“Nay, Nathaniel Ravenal laid first claim to him. Buchanan’s been invited to Forrest Bend.”
“But Mr. Ravenal no longer deals in tobacco.” Juliet felt slightly betrayed. Why would a man who shunned slave labor and its products entertain a man who dealt in both?
“Ravenal has a long-standing correspondence with the Buchanans, dating to the late father and founder of their firm. And you well know his reputation for being hospitable reaches far beyond Virginia.”
This she couldn’t deny. “Frances, Lucy, and Judith can keep him company, then,” Juliet said of Ravenal’s sociable daughters, excusing herself from any responsibility.
Father’s smile was thin. “You’ll be in charge of planning a ball in his honor, of course, here at Royal Vale.”
“A ball?” For the man who has us so wed to debt we are near collapse? “You know there’s no funds for it, Father.” And no heart for it either.
“Tobacco credit should do.”
She nearly ground her teeth at his quiet insistence. Did he not know the humiliation of going from store to store on credit? Of clerks and factors looking askance at them because they were so in arrears? She’d gladly eat hoecake and greens the rest of her life if it would help alleviate their humbling difficulty.
“Perhaps this would be a good time to tell Mr. Buchanan we’re considering abandoning tobacco in favor of wheat and investing in indentures,” she said firmly. “He needs to hear that we intend to begin repaying our debts once the indigo is shipped and settled.”
“Oh? We’re no longer in the position to tell Buchanan what we’re going to do, Daughter.” He leaned back in his chair till it groaned, cigar poised between thumb and forefinger. “He tells us.”