Warren, sickly white, ran back into the stable. He sagged against the stall door.“My God, she did it.”
Fair came out of the stall and put his arm around Warren’s shoulder. “I’m gonna call the sheriff, Warren, for your own safety if nothing else.”
“No, no, please. I can handle her. I’ll take care of it and see she’s put in a good home. Please, please,” Warren pleaded.
“Poor sucker.” Mrs. Murphy brushed against Harry’s legs.
“It’s too late. Rick Shaw and Coop are at the end of the driveway,” Harry told him.
Just then they heard the roar of the Porsche’s engine, the peal of the siren and squealing tires. Ansley, a good driver, had easily eluded the sheriff and his deputy, who hadn’t set up a roadblock but instead were prepared to roar into Eagle’s Rest to assist Harry. They thought Harry could pull it off—and she did. The sirens faded away.
“She’ll give them a good run for their money.” Warren grinned even as the tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Yep.” Harry felt like crying too.
Warren rubbed his eyes, then turned to admire the new baby.
“Boss, he’s something special.” Warren’s stable manager hoped this foal would be something good for a man he had learned to like.
“Yes.” Warren put his forehead on his hands, resting on the lower dutch door of the foaling stall, and sobbed. “How did you know?”
Harry, choking up, said,“We didn’t—actually.”
“We had our wires crossed,” Mrs. Murphy meowed.
“Suspicion was that it was you.” Fair coughed. He was hugely embarrassed to admit this.
“Why?” Warren was dumbfounded. He turned and walked to the aisle doors. He stood looking out over the front fields.
“Uh, well,” Harry stammered, then got it out. “Your daddy and well, uh, all the Randolphs put such a store by blood, pedigree, well, you know, that I thought because—I can’t speak for anyone but me—I thought you’d be undone, just go ballistic about the African American blood. I mean about people knowing.”
“Did you always know?” Fair joined them in front of the barn and handed Warren his handkerchief.
“No. Not until last year. Before Poppa’s cancer went into remission he got scared he was going to die, so he told me. He insisted Ansley should never know—he’d never told Mother. I’m not making that mistake with my boys. All this secretiveness eats people alive.”
The sirens were heading back toward Eagle’s Rest.
“Damn. We’d better get someplace safe—just in case,” Tucker wisely noted.
“Come on, Mom. Let’s move it.” Mrs. Murphy, no time to be subtle, sank her claws into Harry’s leg, then ran away.
“Damn you, Murphy!” Harry cursed.
“Run!” Tucker barked.
Too late, the whine of the Porsche drowned out the animals’ worries.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Harry beheld the Porsche heading straight for them.
Warren started to wave his wife off, but Fair, much stronger, picked Warren up and threw him back so she couldn’t see him. Ansley swerved, nearly clipping the end of the barn, and headed down a farm road. Seconds behind her, Rick and Cooper, in their squad cars, threw gravel everywhere. In the distance more sirens could be heard.
“Can she get out that way?” Harry asked as she peered around the door.
“If she can corner the tight turn and take the tractor road around the lake, she can.” Warren was shaking.
Harry stared at the dust, the noise.“Warren, Warren.” She called his name louder. “How did she find out?”
“She read the diaries after Kimball did. She opened up the safe and gave him the papers to defy me, and then sat down and read them herself.”
“You didn’t hide them?”
“I kept them in the safe, but Ansley didn’t have much interest in the family tree. I knew she’d never read them, but I never figured on—”
He didn’t finish his sentence as the support cars drowned out his words.
Harry started to run down the farm road.
“Don’t, Mom, she might come back again,” the cat sensibly warned.
The sirens stopped. The cat and dog, much faster than their human counterparts, flew down the lane and rounded the curve.
“Oh—” Tucker’s voice trailed off.
Mrs. Murphy shuddered as she watched Ansley drowning in the Porsche which had skidded into the lake. Rick Shaw and Cooper had yanked off their bulletproof vests, their shoes, and dived in, but it was too late. By the time the others reached the lake, only the rear end of the expensive 911 was in view.
66
The grand library of Eagle’s Rest smelled like old fires and fresh tobacco. Harry, Mrs. Hogendobber, Mim, Fair, Deputy Cooper, and a composed but subdued Warren had gathered around the fireplace.
“I have already read this to my boys. I’ve tried to explain to them that their mother’s desire to protect them from this—news”—he blinked hard—“was a mistake. Times are different now, but no matter how wrong she was about race, no matter how wrong we all were and are, she acted out of love. It’s important for them to have their mother’s love.” He couldn’t continue, but slid the dark blue book over to Harry.
She opened the pages to where a ribbon, spotted and foxed with age, marked the place. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, curled up at her feet, were as still as the humans.
Warren waved her on and excused himself. At the doorway he stopped.“People talk. I know some folks will be glad to see the Randolphs humbled. Some will even call my boys niggers just to be hateful. I want you all to know the real story, especially since you’ve worked with Kimball. And—and I thank you for your help.” He put his hand over his eyes and walkeddown the hall.
A long, long moment of silence followed. Harry looked down at the bold, clear handwriting with the cursive flourishes of another age, an age when one’s handwriting was a skill to be cultivated and shared.
The diary and papers wedged into it, other people’s letters, belonged to Septimia Anne, the eleventh child of Patsy Jefferson and Thomas Randolph. Septimia’s letter to her mother was either lost or in someone else’s possession, but Patsy’s response, written in 1834, was interesting so Harry started there. In the letter she recalled a terrific scandal in 1793, three years after she married Thomas Mann Randolph, the same year in which they acquired Edgehill for $2,000. At the time the farm was 1500 acres. Slaves were also acquired in this lengthy transaction.
Thomas Mann Randolph’s sister, Nancy, embarked on an affair with yet another sister’s husband, who was also their cousin. This monkey in the middle was Richard Randolph. At Glynlyvar in Cumberland County, Nancy, visiting at the time, suffered a miscarriage. Richard removed the evidence. He was charged with infanticide. Patrick Henry and George Mason defended Richard and he was found not guilty. The law had spoken and so had everyone who lived in the thirteen colonies. This was gossip too good to be true.
Patsy counseled Septimia that scandals, misfortunes, and“commerce” with slave women were woven into the fabric of society. “People are no better than they ought to be.” She quoted her own mother, whom she vividly remembered, as she was three weeks short of her tenth birthday when her mother died.
She made a reference to James Madison Randolph, her eighth child and Septimia’s older brother by eight years.
“The more things change the more they stay the same,” Harry said out loud. She turned pages wrapped up in notations about the weather harvests, floods and droughts, births and deaths. The death of Medley Orion riveted them to their chairs.
Harry read aloud:
Dear Septimia—
Today in the year of our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and Thirty-Five, my faithful servant and longtime companion, Medley Orion, departed this life, surrendering her soul gladly to a Higher Power, for she had devoted her earthly days to good works, kind words, and laughter. The Graces fitted her with physical beauty of a remarkable degree and this proved a harder burden to bear than one might imagine. As a young woman, shooting up like a weed and resembling my beloved father, not necessarily a benefit for a daughter, I resented Medley, for it seemed cruel to me that a slave woman should have been given such beauty, whereas I was given only some small wit.