Given his faithfulness, he stayed on the good side of Maureen, if she had a good side. The slaves at Big Rawly, called together to witness the punishment, hung their heads. Who would be next, for the Missus seethed in a fury?
Maureen, herself, wouldn’t be seen during any beatings. Not that she was squeamish—she wasn’t.
Better to let her people wonder where she was, was she viewing, and, even better, wonder what she was thinking.
What she was thinking was she would beat the truth out of all of them. She had come back from Europe with stops at Guadeloupe, a tiny Spanish colony, and Santiago, on Santo Domingo, which held some of her father’s fortune.
Satisfied that the funds were growing, she handsomely rewarded some of her father’s old employees, now hers, and sailed back to the United States, disembarking at Charleston, where she also lingered to attend to banking matters. Jeffrey languidly strolled the streets, soaking up the perfect architecture, listening to the women sing in Gullah outside the churches as they sold baskets, brightly woven scarves, all manner of delights. The sun would set, Maureen would be freed from her meetings, the black folks would sail back to the islands off the tip of Charleston.
Finally home, she allowed herself a day or two of rest. Jeffrey made a beeline for his coachworks, far happier to be working than to be the adopted brother of a baron, the Baron West.
Needing pin money, Maureen went to the drawer, pulled it out—no money, no inexpensive but pretty topaz earrings. Furious, she checked all her little hiding places. Gone. Not a penny. Granted, it wasn’t much, but the Mistress of Big Rawly couldn’t abide a thief. Then Elizabetta told her that Sulli had escaped.
Naturally, Maureen had to blame someone, and her lady’s maid, ostensibly in charge of the house in her absence, fit the bill—hence the lashing.
Fincastle picked up the full wooden bucket, sloshed the water on the poor woman’s flayed back. That brought her back to consciousness. He then reached up, cutting her down, where she slumped in a sodden pile.
No one would touch her. Jeffrey, unaware of the punishment, hurried up to the site once one of the men in the huge workshop informed him. It was he who knelt down, picking up the swooning, in-shock woman.
“For the love of God, someone help me.”
DoRe stepped forward. He picked up Elizabetta’s feet while Jeffrey held his hands under her arms, careful not to touch her around to her back.
“Can you carry her to the last cabin, Master?” DoRe asked.
“Yes.”
The two men carried the woman, not terribly heavy, to the herb cabin wherein a young woman had been grinding herbs in a bowl. She managed to avoid the beating spectacle. Looking up, she stopped.
“Kintzie, help.” DoRe moved toward the pallet in the corner.
“Lay her on her side.” Kintzie walked over, kneeling down. “He cut through to the ribs here.” She pointed. “DoRe, fetch me one of the clean rags by the lavender.” He hesitated, so she pointed up. “Under the hanging lavender.”
“What can I do?” Jeffrey asked, but Kintzie feared giving the Master an order. “I think, sir, given your wife’s temper, you had best leave us.”
His face reddened. “Of course.” Then he looked at DoRe. “I’ll do what I can.”
DoRe simply tilted his head in response as he also carried a bucket of clean water. As Kintzie dabbed the deep wounds, Elizabetta refused to scream—she held one hand over her mouth.
Tears saturated Elizabetta’s cheeks. Kintzie reached out with her left hand, picked up another rag, handed it to the suffering woman.
“Hold my hand.” DoRe knelt before her, taking her hand. “The pain will be fierce. You’ll live.”
Elizabetta, tears running, nodded.
Kintzie wrung out a rag, dipping it again. “Near as I can tell, no bones broken. Sugar, I need to get you as clean as I can. This will hurt. I will rub some salve on you. It’s a lot of beeswax but it will help you heal. I’ll wrap a bit of gauze over your back. Can’t have anything sticking on these wounds. DoRe is right, you’ll live and you’ll heal. You’re strong. You’ll heal.” She asked DoRe, “What did she do?”
“Nothing. It’s what she didn’t do.”
“I never knew.” Elizabetta choked that out.
DoRe said, “Missus found money missing, what she calls her pin money, then she found some earrings missing. She came down to the stable, asking me had I seen anyone? Well, I hadn’t, but by her questions I knew jewelry again. She’s got the big stuff locked up but if she owns it, it matters. She’ll never get over Sheba stealing those pearls. I didn’t think too much of it, figured we were all safe at the stables.”
“Yes.” Kintzie placed a soft, dry cloth over Elizabetta’s back.
“It was Sulli,” the wounded woman gasped. “She ran off. I never knew.”
“DoRe, did you see her?”
“No, Kintzie, but I felt William was back. Saw someone moving toward the woods. Moved like him. I doubled the watch at the stable. Figured he’d steal a horse, but why would he be so damned stupid as to come back?”
“Sulli.” Kintzie supplied the answer. “I caught sight of her carrying a basket in the dark, tiptoeing down to the firewood sheds. Never thought it would be William. Maybe they had taken up with each other before he ran but he or someone was here and she was feeding him.”
“Ralston ran off from Cloverfields,” DoRe told her.
“H-m-m.” Kintzie fanned the thin cloth with another cloth to cool down Elizabetta’s back.
“Stupid little bitch. I never watched her. I trusted her,” Elizabetta said.
“You’ve paid for it.” A long, long pause followed this. “We’ll all pay for Sulli, the slut.” Kintzie couldn’t help herself. “And wherever she is, she’ll have a swollen belly before Easter.”
“How long before I heal?”
“Months. You’ll be walking about in days but you won’t be able to sit and lean back. And you will be scarred for life,” the kind young woman told her.
“At least she didn’t tear half your face off like she did to Ailee.” DoRe’s voice fell. “Blinded one eye. Smashed half her face.”
“We didn’t know. We never saw Ailee again.” Elizabetta, working at the house at the time, did not see any of this.
Ailee and Moses ran. But DoRe had seen them and both Kintzie and Elizabetta were prudent enough not to ask.
“I’d better go back to the horses.” DoRe released Elizabetta’s hand.
“Thank you.” She meant it. “And I will thank the Master someday.”
“He knows.” DoRe smiled, then left.
As DoRe reached the stables, the odor of cleaned leather, sweet hay, and oats filled his nostrils. Out of force of habit, he walked into the large, well-organized tack room. Counting bridles and saddles and running his fingers over the steel bits to search for little pits calmed him.
Seeing the beating, Elizabetta’s wounds, infuriated him. The night Francisco was killed came back and he heard Maureen’s screams enhanced by Sheba’s wails. He had run to the house as he could just make out two figures in the distance running for all they were worth. One moved like Moses, his son. Later he found out Moses and Ailee had fled, Moses being accused of killing Francisco.
Even in the midst of the blood, blood on both Maureen and Sheba as they tried to stanch Francisco’s wounds, even then he knew they were the murderers. Maureen’s revenge for years of infidelity must have been sweet. As for Sheba, she would do anything to intensify her power over Maureen.
DoRe never knew if Sheba had killed Francisco and Maureen had then smashed in Ailee’s face or the reverse. No matter, they were both guilty as sin. Moses and Ailee’s disappearance was considered proof of their guilt. It was enough proof that if they hadn’t run, Maureen would see them hanged. What chance did two slaves have against one of the richest women in Virginia, if not the new nation?
The burden of those memories weighed on DoRe. He sat heavily on a tack-room chair. Back then, when the opportunity had presented itself last October, he had snapped Sheba’s neck. She’d paraded around Big Rawly in Maureen’s celebrated pearls. The Mistress was off the estate. Darkness shrouded DoRe as he tossed Sheba in a cart, covered the body, and drove to St. Luke’s, where the Taylors had just been buried.