“Who is it?”
“Mignon.”
“Good God.” Bumbee threw open the door to behold a tiny shivering young woman, half dead from the cold.
“Sit by the fire.” Bumbee led her to a rocking chair in front of the fire, picking up another heavy log and placing it on the flames. “How did you know to come to the lodge?” Bumbee asked, worried.
“I didn’t. I came up from the path by the creek. My lantern died, but I knew by the big rocks I was near Cloverfields, so I climbed the path upward and knocked on the first door I saw through the snow.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No, I can’t feel my feet. I just want to be warm and I’ll slip out in the morning.”
“Mignon, the snow will be deep. I can hide you here for a while, up in the loft. No one goes up there and there’s a back stairway that leads right into the woods. What happened?”
“That devil Sheba beat me with a cane. She didn’t hit me in the face because she didn’t want it to show. I ain’t never going back down there. She and Mrs. Selisse are the Devil’s own.”
“That they are.” Bumbee knew only too well of the violent temper of Maureen Selisse, now Holloway, the lady of a great estate, Big Rawly. Her lady’s maid, Sheba, proved even worse. Maureen’s temper would explode, then usually fade, but Sheba seemed to enjoy inflicting pain. Neither mistress nor slave ever forgot and forgave what they considered an affront to their person.
“I took a ribbon from Mrs. Selisse’s table. All I wanted to do was hold it up to my face to see if the color suited me, and that bitch Sheba walked in just as I did it. She screamed I was stealing the mistress’s pearls, how I was a slut always trying to entice the men, and then she picked up a lady’s cane from the big Chinese jar and beat me. The more she beat me the crazier she got. I ran away. She ran after me for a bit, but then grew tired. She’s crazy wild.”
“Mignon, strip off those clothes. Soaking wet. I’ll bring a blanket. You can wrap yourself up in that.” Bumbee headed for the stairs, where she kept blankets, a few pillows, odds and ends tucked under them.
The loom sat in the middle of the large downstairs room. Bumbee had the carpenters on the estate build her shelves that were made up of large and small squares. Into these she placed wool, cotton, and even some hemp, organized by color, material, and weight, a carefully variegated embodiment of her organized mind. She returned with blankets, which she wrapped around the still-shivering younger woman. Then she draped Mignon’s wet clothing over a bench sitting at a right angle to the fire. She wasn’t worried about anyone coming into the lodge; generally only those women she had trained to weave and now worked with her joined her in the lodge. They would shut up. No slave of Cloverfields would ever reveal a person fleeing a harsh master, or even a good master, for that matter.
Slowly Mignon warmed. “I’m heading for a city. Maybe Richmond, maybe Philadelphia. I can get lost there.”
“Cities can be rough. Don’t really know myself.”
“I don’t care.”
“Mignon, you’re tired, you’re probably hurt, and I hope you don’t have frostbite. Your nose looks all right. What about your fingers and toes?”
“I could keep my fingers warmer than my toes. I’ll worry about that in daylight.” Exhaustion began to wash over her.
“Come on. Let me get you upstairs. No one will know you’re here. You need sleep. The bed’s a pallet bed, but it’s warm. We can talk in the morning and I’ll make breakfast. I reckon not much is going to happen until some of this snow melts down.”
Nodding yes, Mignon allowed Bumbee to lead her upstairs. She climbed onto the pallet, Bumbee taking the blanket wrapped around her, placing it on top of the other blankets. Mignon fell asleep instantly.
Bumbee stared down at the fragile-looking woman. How was this tortured girl going to get out of the county? She’d leave tracks in the snow. Once people could move about, Maureen Selisse would quickly report a runaway slave. God forbid she lost any money. Whoever returned Mignon was sure of a reward and Mignon would be sure of tenfold more misery.
Bumbee toted another heavy log for the fire, blew out her candle, and crawled into bed. The wind whistled outside. Worried as she was about Mignon, she was glad the intruder hadn’t been her worthless husband.
“Sweet Jesus, give me strength,” she prayed, then she, too, fell asleep.
January 1, 1786 Sunday
Blue, the world shone soft blue. Snow continued to fall, tiny little flakes. Even though the walkways among all the buildings had been cleared, two inches already rested on those paths. Another hour and the men would be back at it.
Catherine, like most well-born women of her generation, rarely used the word slave. One tried to circumvent what may be unpleasant. A cheating husband was rarely called that. Behind their fans, women might murmur that the husband suffered from the usual malady. Catherine avoided talking with the ladies if she could. Bored her to tears. Like her father, she adored business, growth, new ideas, and, of course, profit.
It would never do to be direct; being direct in Virginia betrayed a common mind, hence vulgarity. This rule did not apply sometimes—with one’s own family.
The back door opened. “Sister.”
Catherine hurried to the door and took her sister’s hand to help her over the threshold. Footing was slippery.
“Rachel, what are you doing out in this weather?”
Throwing off her heavy coat and unwrapping her scarf, Rachel shook her feet. “Charles and the two girls are making more noise than a cannonade. I thought two girls would be easy. I must have been out of my mind. Add in my beloved and handsome husband and I have three children. He was so lonesome for them when we woke up this morning he pushed through the snow to fetch them home. I would have been happy without them for a bit longer.” She looked around as she followed Catherine into the kitchen, the huge walk-in fireplace warming the room wonderfully well. “Where is John?”
“Out clearing paths.”
Both sisters had children close in age. Rachel’s true daughter, Isabelle, was named for her mother. Marcia, an orphan under cover of belonging to a distant relative, was also raised as her own. Marcia would never know her true parentage, although the sisters and their husbands, plus Bettina, knew, but then Bettina knew everything, as did most of the slaves.
“Sit down. I was just boiling a pot of tea so I could go over Father’s logging plan for his land along the James River. But I’m sleepy.”
“Snow. Rain. Makes me fight to keep my eyes open unless I’m in the house with those hellions. Catherine, I don’t think we were that bad.”
Catherine laughed as she picked up the boiling tea kettle. “No one ever does. I’m sure we gave Mother fits.”
“Mmm.” Rachel remained unconvinced.
“Cream?”
“Sit down. I’ll get it.” Rachel rose to retrieve the pitcher sitting in a small sink, cold water keeping the cream at a good temperature.
“I’ll go half blind from all this reading of maps, number, harvest years. We’ve three hundred acres about Scottsville. The demand for lumber is rising sharply. Father wants to cut it all, then replant. I want partial cutting. Let the rest stand and get even fatter. I don’t think the demand is going to falter.”
“Why not?”
“People are pouring in.” Catherine sipped her tea, grateful for the small jolt.
“That they are. Charles has already had to enlarge his plans for St. Luke’s. The cornerstone, as you know, was laid in the fall, but the weather, so strange, halted most of the work. Now he’s doubled the size of the church itself. Spring can’t arrive soon enough.” She looked out the window. “No time soon.”