"I hope you'll be happy here at Majpoor, Nimshi. You must ride my Papa's horses to win."
"I always mean to ride winners, Miss Grace." And then he gave me a timid smile.
"That'll suit Papa down to the ground," I said, and then I decided it was time I got back to the house. Mama didn't like me lingering in the stableyard, even if that was the best part of Majpoor in my estimation and especially when new slaves were brought in. She always worried about the diseases they might have on them until they'd all had a lye bath, had their hides scrubbed with good yellow soap, and been flea-powdered.
So I had a very clear recollection of the day Zulei and Nimshi came to Majpoor. Mama wasn't as easily reconciled to Zulei's arrival ("That female's going to cause trouble, Captain, you mark my words" - which Papa did not), but somehow there never was any trouble with Zulei. Nimshi proved to be every bit as good a rider as he'd been touted. He truly loved horses and they responded to him as if they knew they could trust him. My brothers, Kenneth, David, Lachlan, Evelyn, and Robert, might complain that Papa said Nimshi this and Nimshi that, but they didn't object when Nimshi won race after race, and they collected sizable wagers from everyone in the county.
Mama reluctantly admitted that Zulei was more use than trouble, for the quadroon (that's what Mama said she was with her light skin, straight brown hair, and gray eyes) had a knowledge of herbs and remedies that was nothing short of miraculous - Mama's phrase. There were some murmurs about voodoo and obeah and conjure, superstitious twaddle like that which Mama wouldn't abide, not mutters that Zulei was different. My mammy said that Zulei wasn't one of them, not no way no how, but as Zulei was a slave, I didn't know what mammy meant. A slave was a slave. I asked Mama and she thought I was worried about all the superstitious talk. She made it quite clear to me that Zulei's understanding of simple remedies was quite unexceptional, nothing to do with black magic; only common sense.
Any resistance from the other slaves ended soon after Zulei concocted a potion that cleared up Daisy's rash and a poultice that eased old Remy's arthritis. She had a salve that made burns disappear, even those from splashings of boiling lye soap. She was a dab hand at lying-ins, though I wasn't supposed to know such things. I also heard - from Lachlan - about how Zulei's clever hands had turned the foal inside Joyra, Papa's expensive new thoroughbred mare, when it wasn't lying right to be born. Bennie had given up, but she'd brought the colt live into the world.
Zulei also made creams, which the other county ladies begged of Mama for they reduced freckles like nothing else could. She had all sorts of other female potions that Mama loved to dispense to her friends who didn't have anyone half so clever as Zulei. I do remember that Mrs. Fairclough wondered how Mama could stand to have such a frowsy slave attending her. Even Mama was surprised by that comment. Dulcie's feeding had put weight on Zulei's bones and Mama had given her one or two of her old gowns to wear, so Zulei couldn't be called "frowsy." Mama privately thought that Zulei was a shade too fastidious.
Zulei had a knack of refurbishing Mama's dresses or pinching in a bodice, altering a sleeve so that somehow the gown looked twice as elegant as it had new. She was deft at dressing Mama's lovely blond hair into the most intricate and fetching styles.
And when I was old enough to put my hair up, it was Zulei who curled it so fashionably and flatteringly.
In fact, that was one of the few times she had occasion to dress me for a ball. The year I was sixteen, the Confederacy declared war on the North. All the young men in the county, and some of those old enough to know better - like Papa - decided to teach the damnyankees - a thing or two and rode off to war.
I thought it was all very exciting, with six Langhorn men stomping about in their fine gray-and-gold uniforms: Papa had had so much experience in the British army, even if that had all been in India, that he was immediately made a colonel in the county regiment. Kenneth and David became captains and Lachlan, Evelyn, and Robert were lieutenants. And most of our beautiful horses became war steeds.
Our men rode off, handsome in their broad-brimmed hats, gold sashes around their waists and sabers and pistols on their hips. Everyone was on the front steps to wave them to victory. For it wouldn't take long for Southern gentlemen to teach those damnyankees what for.
Mr. James was left in charge of Majpoor, but no one minded that, for he was a fair man: even Zulei said so. Josie supervised the field hands, and Bennie, with Nimshi as his right hand, took care of Brass Sultan, Majpoor's stallion, and his mares and foals. I had let Lachlan, my favorite brother, have my very own Cotton as his remount so I was reduced to Dido again. That is, until Nimshi had backed a promising three-year-old flea-specked gray that Papa had promised me to replace Cotton.
Mama fretted from the moment she lost sight of Papa and the boys until the day she died of typhus three years later, despite all Zulei tried to do to break the fever. We all knew Mama wanted to die anyway once she heard that Papa had been killed in one of Jeb Stuart's cavalry charges against that damnyankee Mead, so it wasn't Zulei's fault. Though, by then, we all knew why she had had no character from the Bainbridges at Haw River.
"I know my medications, Miss Euphemia," Zulei had told Mama one time in my hearing, "I know how to reduce fevers, set broken bones, and help a woman in labor, but there was nothing I could do with snake venom. When they finally got Mr. Bainbridge home, the poison was all through him. What could I do then?" She had a very elegant way of shrugging her shoulders.
There was another reason why the Bainbridge overseer had chained Zulei up, but Nimshi told me that later, when I was much older and understood such matters better. It had had nothing to do with her nursing skills but a lot to do with why Zulei looked frowsy to some people.
When Zulei had confided in Mama, we all trusted her, having seen the near miracles she could work. But there are no miracles, near or true, to mend a heart broken by the deaths of her husband and three of her sons, and weakened by the privations that the war visited on all southern families. Zulei and I nursed Mama together and made her as comfortable as we could with what limited medicines we could find or Zulei could concoct.
We were luckier than most, I suppose, due to Majpoor's location. We suffered from the lack of supplies and things we had previously taken for granted. While battles raged in Virginia and up and down the coast of both North and South Carolina, we were not in the path of the combat nor near enough to benefit from blockade-run goods. We had trouble enough with deserters or, worse still, the cavalries of both armies that came hunting horses from Majpoor's acres.
It was Nimshi who devised the means to hide what few good horses we had reared, including my flea-specked gray gelding, Jupiter. And especially our precious stallion, Brass Sultan. He was old, twenty-five years now, brought from England by Papa to be Majpoor's foundation stud. He neither looked nor acted his age and, with the Confederacy three years into the war, any horse that could walk and trot went into the cavalry. Loyal though we were to the Confederate cause, Brass Sultan was far too valuable to be wasted as a remount.
Mind you, Sultan, a fine seventeen hands high, was not an easy horse to manage. Nimshi had an understanding with Sultan that was almost magical, and the stallion would follow Nimshi wherever he led. This became tremendously important when we had to hide Sultan.
Mr. James had piccaninnies stationed on every road and track to Majpoor, to watch for "visitors" and warn us, particularly of mounted men. When their whistle alarm was relayed across the fields to the big house, Nimshi would take Sultan and Jupiter down into the now empty wine cellar and swing a door covered by old trunks to cover the entrance.