Prologue: Cornered

Fulton, Missouri 1855

 

 

August heat cooked the dusty streets of Fulton, Missouri so that Circuit Court Judge William Augustus Hall was not only disgruntled but already disheveled by the time he alighted from his horse.  He flung open the delicate gate, stomped along the path through the brilliant flower garden, and hammered the brass knocker on Captain John Jameson’s front door. 

Jameson watched from his wingchair as the scowling figure flipped the horse’s reins about the hitching post and hunched its way through his garden.  He decided to pretend he had earlier closed the library’s drapes against the late morning sun.  Then he never would have seen the judge’s arrival. 

Judge Hall, more ambitious than the captain, was notoriously impatient.  It would be no matter at all for Jameson to simply wait the younger man out.  For Jameson already knew the purpose of Judge Hall’s visit and was determined to have none of it.

But when Captain Jameson rose from his wingchair to draw the library windows’ drapes, he lurched and slammed painfully against the edge of his mahogany writing desk. 

Jameson whirled like a man under attack and looked in confusion about him. 

What had caught his foot?  He could detect nothing in the faded antique carpet that might have snagged him.  Surely, he could not be drunk already. 

Captain Jameson stumbled into his upholstered leather desk chair and grappled at the heavy mahogany quill drawer.  Where was his silk scarf? 

He was just knotting the fine cloth above his knee when the young housemaid scratched at the heavy library door even as she opened it.

Jameson could not look into her anxious wide eyes and chastise her.  For it was perfectly obvious that it was the huffy judge behind her who was responsible for this rude intrusion.

“Ah, Judge Hall.  Yes, thank you, Bess.”  Captain Jameson waved a hand in a gesture of resignation that the judge might have read as “Come in,” or “Get out,” or, perhaps most accurately, “What else should I have expected of you?” 

Jameson returned to fumbling at the recalcitrant knots at his knee and in his mind.  How could a man of his years, his experience, his stature in the Black Hawk War, his three terms in Congress, a former speaker of Missouri’s state legislature, be brought to hide from callers in his own home?

“Ah, yes.  Good morning, Captain Jameson.  Is it still morning, sir?  I heartily hope I haven’t invited myself to your home at dinner time,” Judge Hall said. 

Jameson did not look up from his task, but it occurred to him that his obvious difficulties in tying the silk scarf were to his advantage.  His back, at his desk, was to the lovely leaded glass library window.  Clearly, the judge would have to believe that the captain had been so absorbed in the challenge of getting the swollen joints of his fingers around the fine silk that he had not noticed the arrival of his uninvited guest.

Hall need never know I was hiding, he realized and immediately began to consider how to turn his retreat into attack.  Like a cornered animal.  Like that slave girl he wants me to defend. 

Jameson’s opportunity came when he heard the judge say, “May I join you, sir, in a seat and in that fine whiskey?”

Before he could think, Jameson had pulled himself to his unsteady feet and pronounced, “That would be rude of me, Judge.  It would be best if I join you in standing before you depart.”  His returning volley was only partially marred by the stagger and clutch at the desk’s edge that saved him from tumbling to the floor. 

“Let me help you, John.”  Immediately, humiliatingly, the judge was by his side and eased him past the desk chair, back to the encasing arms of his wingchair and little deal table, laden with its crystal decanter and shot glass. 

The judge himself bent to raise Jameson’s flimsily tied leg to the needlepoint ottoman before the fireplace, murmuring, “Is it the rheumatism or that old war wound acting up again, Captain?”

Before he could stop himself, Jameson’s mouth had produced the habitual, “It is immaterial.”  

He could have bitten off his tongue.  The judge was not five minutes in Jameson’s own home, and already Captain Jameson was plunged back into the deceptions, the lies, the intimidations, feints and counter-feints of that long, illustrious, loathed career as a man of the law and the legislature, rushing to hide his shame behind the flag of his honor as a would-be Indian fighter. 

He must not surrender to the old weaknesses.

“I will have none of it, Judge Hall.”  Jameson’s voice was, at last, strong.  His gaze clear.  He stared at Hall.

But now it was the other man who would not look at him.

Hall straightened from his ministrations.  Bent to the deal table to pour out another shot of whiskey neat for his opponent in this contest of wills. 

Then he moved swiftly, smoothly, without a stumble to the sideboard.  There the judge selected a large crystal glass, unstoppered a decanter of water, watched the clear liquid pool at the glass’s faceted bottom as he poured it, refracting the blaze of sunlight through the leaded window panes. 

A loud splash of whiskey followed.  Hall must have found another decanter ready for Jameson at the sideboard.  Jameson watched as Hall threw back his head and downed the drink, reset the glass, and turned to face him again.  “Thank you, Captain Jameson, for your unfailing hospitality.”

The sarcasm meant nothing to Jameson.  He must keep his mind fixed on his purpose.  He must say no and keep saying it until this brutal man bringing these unwelcome memories of an inglorious past was finally quit of his home.

Jameson made a mental note to himself.  He would instruct all the enslaved members of his household, as well as his wife and daughters, to never again open the door to this judge but leave it to him to deposit his calling card in the mail slot, if he chose to, and depart. 

Jameson repeated, “I will not defend that girl, Judge Hall.  Find her other counsel.”

Judge Hall approached the fireplace and seated himself in Mrs. Jameson’s favorite upholstered velvet chair.  He did not ask permission again to be seated but toyed with the tassels of a Kashmiri shawl she’d draped there, letting the strands waterfall between his fingers.  “You will be pleased to learn that I have found the suspect other counsel, Captain, as you’ve requested.  I have retained your own apprentice, young Nathan Chapman Kouns, a member of one of Fulton’s finest families.”

“Eldest son of Dr. Kouns?  But he is no scholar, Judge!  And he has no trial experience, whatsoever.  He cannot handle a case of this magnitude.”

“Nor will he have to.  I did not say that I have released you from the case, Captain.  Though your aversion and your shock and outrage at the heinousness of this slavegirl’s crime have my sympathy.  But the law must be allowed to run its course, Captain Jameson.  Even the likes of Celia have rights in the fine state of Missouri.”

“You misunderstand me, Judge.  Deliberately, I suspect.”

“Not at all, Captain Jameson.  It is you who misunderstand.  And you are unfair to your young apprentice.  For he has earned a degree from St. Charles College, has he not?”

“Neither he nor I are scholars of the law, Judge.  You know that.”

“I know you believe that, which is why I have gone so far as to appoint you yet a second assistant in this case, Captain Jameson.  Young Isaac Boulware.  There.  I thought that would get your attention.”

For Jameson had reached for his glass in his anger but, upon hearing Boulware’s name, left it untouched.  His hand faltered before he withdrew it to stare open-mouthed at the judge.  “Not Reverend Theodorick Boulware’s son?”

“The same.  Youngest sons have such a fire in the belly to prove themselves, don’t you think?”  Smiling now, Hall elaborated.  “Not only is young Boulware from one of the most well-respected families in all of Callaway County, in all of Missouri, as far as I am concerned, but his scholarly excellence is uncontestable.  He has earned not only his bachelor’s degree from Transylvania College, one of the finest in all of the South, but his law degree, as well.  Did you know that, sir?  He has passed the bar as a scholar, John, not as an apprentice, as we all have done.  Young Boulware is probably the sharpest legal researcher in all of Missouri.  I look forward to hearing the case he shall help you and young Kouns prepare.”  Hall rose. 

His smile was smug.  “So there, sir.  Your concerns are addressed, Captain.  I will brief the three of you tomorrow morning in my chambers.  I am not an early man.”  He chuckled.  “If memory serves, neither are you, for that matter, John.  But I suspect a fire-eater such as our young Boulware might be.  We shall have to rise to his standard and present ourselves at my chambers at nine sharp.  Ten, at the latest.”  Hall made as if to depart, saying, “Will your girl have my hat ready for me at the door, do you suppose, Captain?  She seems none too accustomed to handling your visitors for you.”

Jameson stopped him with, “I shall not be there, Judge.”

Hall, arrested with his face to the closed library door and his back to Jameson, stood still.  When his voice came, it was grave.  “Yes, you shall, John.  I suggest you push me no further on this matter.  You shall come to my chambers of your own free will and be briefed on this case, or you shall come to my chambers in chains and be briefed in a jail cell shortly thereafter.  Perhaps we can accommodate you with a cell near to that of your client.  You will not defy me in this, John.” 

Jameson’s answering silence was absolute.  His mind reeled over each word the judge had just said.  He pictured himself led by the deputy into the judge’s chambers with his wrists and ankles shackled, ridicule attending his every step as clerks, attorneys, criminals jeered his progress down the court hallway, his wife and daughters wailing as neighbors rushed to comfort them, rushed from them to spread ugly rumors about the town.  

Finally, as if having thought better of his threat, Judge Hall turned back to the incredulous captain. 

And against his every resolution, Jameson was reduced to pleading.  “Judge, listen to me.  I am an aging man.  I have put the law and war and their rigors and their defeats and their injustices behind me.  I am not the same man who camped on the banks of the Des Moines River at Fort Pike and waited futilely for my regiment to be deployed.  Nor am I the man who once railed on the House floor against that young Whig Illinois upstart, Lincoln, the man who so brashly called him out as a coward for opposing the war with Mexico.”  Jameson stopped himself and muttered in confusion, “That damnable speech destroyed my good name in Congress,” his mind wandering, his train of thought utterly lost to him.

“Captain.”  Hall’s voice rang like a pistol shot, pitiless. 

Jameson looked up at him as if he’d just realized the other man was still there. 

Hall said, “This is not about the Mexican War, nor about Abraham Lincoln and your Congressional defeats at the hands of Benson.  I am now the one who must deal not only with Benson’s proslavery contingents and the isolation of Missouri as a Western slaveholding state but with the backlash from the events of this passing summer.  Which, I may add, seems remarkably reluctant to pass and get itself over with.”

“Judge—”

“Enough!” 

It seemed to Jameson that Hall was suddenly across the room, leaning down in his face.  The slender young judge loomed, blocking out the brilliant sunlight as he became the only thing Jameson’s bleary eyes could see. 

“Make no mistake, John.”  As drunk as he had thought himself only a few moments ago, suddenly the reek of the fresh whiskey on Judge Hall’s breath nauseated Jameson.  He withdrew as far as the comforting shelter of his wingback chair would allow.  “I was born in Maine, as you may know, John, but I was raised in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.  And I take slave rebellion to heart.”  Jameson registered the judge’s gritted teeth, the spittle as he spoke.  Again Hall seemed to make an effort to speak reasonably.  “But my concerns go beyond Benson’s factions.  He may have driven you from the House and from the bar, but he will not drive me from my bench.  Because I believe in the law as it stands, and this case, as savage and shocking as it is, is neither complex nor to be protracted.  That girl has confessed.  She had no accomplices.  The case is clear.  She killed her owner, and there is no defense for such an act in the state of Missouri.”  By now, the judge had recovered himself.  He stood straight again, smoothed down his rumpled suit jacket, smoothed back his hair. 

Light and air struck the dazed Jameson.  He returned to his senses.  What had Hall just said to him?  Was this to be a sham trial, is that what he had just been instructed? 

Hall said almost gently, “You have thirty years before the bar, John, three terms in Congress, as distinguished a family name as your two apprentices, and an impeccable reputation as a trial lawyer.”

Jameson said, “I have tarnished all of those.”  He shook his head as if to clear it.  “And what is more to the point, I have put them all behind me, William.  I am ordained now as a minister of the Disciples of Christ.  I have moved on to matters of the soul.  This girl needs a practicing attorney, man.”

Hall’s next words were precise.  “A practicing attorney cannot afford to jeopardize his record with a case that cannot be won, John.  Have some humanity.  Will we spark a war at the borders between Missouri and Kansas over this chit?  Kill our finest young white men, like Kouns and Boulware, in their prime, over these cursed blacks?  We’re lucky the papers have taken little interest in this bloody business.  May we lay it to rest before they take notice of the uproar.”  The word seemed to recall to Hall that he himself verged on roaring. 

And once again he lowered his voice, as if concerned that servants or Jameson’s womenfolk might come to check on them.  “As you point out, Captain Jameson, you have withdrawn from the practice of law and built yourself a new career.  A final lost case cannot hurt your record.  Nor can it hurt those of your two young apprentices, for they are only assisting you with research, and this need never count against their records.  Bear up, man.  None of the three of you have anything to lose.” 

Jameson was incredulous as the contents of their conversation rushed in upon him.  Now he remembered what they had been discussing.  “Nothing to lose but that girl’s life, William!  And moral decency.  You know how she lived with Newsom.  Is this what slaveholding has become?  Not a matter of work and care as compensation, but brute misusage?  That girl deserves real counsel.  Surely, given the circumstances—”

“The only circumstance is that she has confessed.  I ask you what is one miserable slavegirl’s life when weighed against the peace and stability that all of Missouri stands to gain, when this distressing incident is finally laid to rest?”  Hall’s voice rose at the last, despite his best efforts.  He broke off, clearly forcing himself to remember civility. 

Perhaps it was beyond him.  For Hall shoved his way through the clutter of heavy Victorian furniture all the way to the door before he paused again. 

“Peace at the cost of justice, William?  Think how that girl lived.”  Jameson detested the whine, the feebleness in his voice.  

“She will have justice.  For you will be at my chambers tomorrow morning, Captain Jameson.  How you get there is the only choice I leave you.  Don’t test me further.  I swear to you that I am a man of my word.”  He pulled the door open and gave a start.  “Ah, Mrs. Jameson.  Perhaps you will be so kind as to help me recover my hat from your girl at the door?” 

Jameson heard his wife’s gentle murmur in the hallway before the judge turned again to him with a courteous, vacuous smile.  “Thank you for the refreshing whiskey, Captain,” he said, too heartily.  “I’m afraid our conversation about all these recent political events, as much as this unseasonable heat, certainly required it.”  Another chuckle of camaraderie between gentlemen.  “But we’ll get through all this, as you say, sir.  Please don’t trouble yourself.  Mrs. Jameson has offered to see me out.  Your leg, you know.  Good of you to take the case, notwithstanding.  Good day, sir.”

And he was gone, sliding the heavy door shut behind him with a whispered click.

Mouth still agape, Jameson could not say how long it took him to turn from the door closed in his face to his pathetic leg and its useless disguise.

The ridiculous kerchief and his pitiful hope that the rumor of his old war wound could mean anything to young Hall disgusted Jameson now.  He gouged at the slippery silk bandage until it untangled, snatched it savagely from about his leg, and flung it toward the cold fireplace.  It fluttered in the air like a butterfly hesitant to land.  Remembering how he’d confessed his history of frauds and failures to Hall, desperate to get out of appointment to the murder case, sickened him.

Jameson registered the musical tinkle and faint slosh of the whiskey he’d forgotten on the table at his side.  Had he backhanded his untouched drink to the floor when he threw the scarf, without realizing it?

Dazed, Jameson looked around and spotted the shot glass and the crystal decanter rolling on the hardwood between the carpet and the fireplace.  He bent forward as if to rise and fetch them from the floor. 

He wobbled, lightheaded, and fell back, helpless. 

Not helpless.

Jameson clutched the table and swung again, deliberately this time.  He sent the finely carved deal table splintering against the fireplace bricks.  

It was this sound of shattering wood that Jameson thought of three months later when Hall’s gavel pounded down his carefully constructed closing arguments. 

“Counselor, you will not instruct the jury to consider an enslaved woman as a woman in the state of Missouri with the right to protect herself from rape!”

“But the law states, Your Honor—”

“The law states a woman may defend herself against rape, counselor.  But if an enslaved man is not a real man and subject to the protections of the law, then neither is an enslaved woman a real woman and subject to such rights and protections.  Modern science tells us that these Africans are talking beasts of burden, counselor, the half step a gracious God took between animals and humans.  Ask your young assistant there.  Mr. Kouns?”

“Your Honor?”

“I’m sure your father, the learned Dr. Kouns, has read extensively on the talking animal status of the African.  Inform your senior colleague, if you please.  And Mr. Bartley?”

“Your Honor?”

“Strike all the above from the record.”

And so it went, the judge’s gavel hammering down each aspect of the brilliant defense Boulware and Kouns had labored at breakneck speed to help Jameson assemble in the month and a half they had to prepare a case for the stone-still, honey-soft teen who sat silently in court with them.

Doggedly, Jameson turned again to the jury, farmers all, slaveholders, most of them.  Judge Hall had just snatched from Jameson his assistant, Boulware’s, finest argument, sure to appeal to all the fathers of teens who sat on the jury. 

Kouns had spent the month of the trial reminding Jameson that he could read a jury like an open book, better than any attorney alive in the United States today. 

Jameson knew it was true.  But he also knew that with the loss of the rape defense, Judge Hall had just dealt Celia’s case a mortal blow. 

Still, Boulware’s argument for defense of life itself remained.  Jameson scrambled to shore up his image before the men of the jury, to re-assemble his thoughts and instruct them.

The case had forced him to give up his whiskey.  He still suffered shakes and unwelcome voices when the stress of the trial overwhelmed him.  He wished he could call young Kouns to the floor, or even the brilliant, belligerent, unpredictable Boulware, in his place.  The jury would admire Boulware, even if it feared him a little.  Boulware was of the grand old school and would go down in defeat as proudly as if he had triumphed. 

But Jameson reminded himself that, if Hall meant to doom the case, it was up to him, Jameson, to protect these young men from ruined legal reputations. 

But he had to look away from Celia to gather his thoughts.  He could not afford to remember all he had learned about this awful case, what she had been through, what she would not say.

Jameson began to instruct the jury again.  “Gentlemen of the jury, you must remember that the state of Missouri allows an enslaved girl, such as Celia, to defend herself against threat to her life.  And when Newsom came at her, in her cabin, on the night in question, when he reached for her after she had begged him to leave her alone, she had no way of knowing how far her life was threatened.”

The judge’s gavel rang out like rapid fire from a squad of rifles.  At the same time that prosecution shouted, “Objection,” the judge was already shouting, “Sustained!  Prosecution has already instructed the jury that self-defense is not under consideration in this case.”

Jameson whirled and faced the judge’s bench.  “Then Your Honor,” he shouted, “you have utterly destroyed my defense of my client!”

“Then I suppose you are prepared at last to rest your case.”  Judge Hall turned to Bartley.  “Strike the counsel for the defense’s last comment, too, from the record.”

Jameson surged toward the bench just as Boulware and Kouns leapt from Celia’s side to restrain him. 

“It’s all right,” Kouns urged him. 

“We’ve got another plan,” Boulware whispered.

“I know, I know.  Appeal,” Jameson wailed.  He noticed that, even in the young men’s firm grip, his hands trembled from the wrist down. 

Soon his body would be shaking.  If the young girl ever looked at him, ever took notice of him, this shaking and trembling would do her faith in him no good.  If she had any faith left in him.

He found himself praying, for once, that the honey-gold, spun-sugar-soft-voiced Celia would continue to sit in her catatonic silence, as if he didn’t exist.

The three men took their seats together.  The young men each put a hand on the older man’s broad, bent back.  “Just put in the appeal,” Boulware hissed.  “Hall can’t get away with denying us defense against rape and even simple self-defense against mortal assault.  Get the appeal underway.  Ignore the verdict, for the moment.  We can handle this.  Hall will not make fools of us and a mockery of the law.  We are better men than that, Captain Jameson.”

“She can’t sit in prison in this town now, Isaac.  Have you seen the attitude of the mob?  They’re growing violent.  Hall’s rumors and machinations have whipped them up to this.” 

“The outrage at Harper’s Ferry has whipped them up to this.”

Jameson was on the point of breaking into sobs.  His jaw shook, perhaps with rage, frustration, or withdrawal from the alcohol he’d given up to prepare himself for this trial.  “You don’t understand.  We’re out of time.  Celia’s lost that baby, boys.  She’s not pregnant anymore, and Judge Hall is in a hurry to hang her and put this incident behind the town of Fulton and the state of Missouri.”

Boulware said firmly, “We’re aware of that, Captain Jameson.”

“But if Judge Hall can’t execute her fast enough, the townsfolk will lynch her, now that he’s forced a guilty verdict, Isaac.  She won’t live long enough for us to appeal.”

Kouns insisted, his whisper loud enough to carry throughout half the courtroom, “We’re taking care of that too, Captain.”

And then Kouns silenced under Boulware’s warning look.

Isaac Boulware didn’t let Nathan Kouns say anything else about their plans to save Celia from Judge Hall until after they’d seen Captain Jameson safely home.  “You discuss it with your father, and I’ll discuss it with mine, Nathan,” Isaac said as they closed the delicate wrought iron gate on Jameson’s dying flower garden.  “We can’t afford to wait any longer.  Judge Hall will be perfectly content if a mob breaks into the prison and lynches Celia, following today’s verdict.”

“What is it, do you think, Isaac, that’s driving the judge to persecute Celia?”

“Don’t be naïve, man.  Hall grew up in Harper’s Ferry.  He knows the chaos that all our lies about slavery and the talking animal theories have engendered.  We’re always walking the tightrope over our own destruction, lying to ourselves about what lies at the bottom of the pit below us.”

Nathan Kouns held open the carriage door for his colleague.  “You’re always talking like a college man.”

“Excuse me, Kouns.  I’d heard you graduated from St. Charles, yourself.”

Nathan Kouns held up his free hand in a gesture of surrender.  “I can’t out-parry you, Isaac.  Just let me know when you’re ready to answer my question.  All I want to know is why Hall has it in for Celia.  She’s so little.  And she was pregnant and sick the whole time, Isaac.  God help us, but I know Judge Hall is fully aware that Celia couldn’t have done what she’s confessed to.”

Isaac sighed and took the carriage door handle from his friend.  “Look, you go on home, Nathan.  I’ll walk.  I need to clear my mind.” 

Nathan paused before entering the carriage.  “Why don’t you get in with me?  Come on over to my father’s.  We’ll have some dinner and some of his fine brandy and talk with him.  He’s a physician, as the judge keeps pointing out.  I still think we should have called the judge out on that challenge and had my father testify that, even if Celia could have knocked the old man out, she couldn’t have done the rest of it.”

Now it was Isaac who held up his hands in surrender.  “Nathan, thank you.  And give my greetings to Dr. Kouns when you ask him about what we can do with Celia.  I have to figure out how to approach my own father about this.  I need—”  But Isaac broke off and began to walk briskly away.  He tossed an offhand wave over his shoulder at Nathan Kouns as if driving him back from any further pursuit.

In truth, it was difficult for Isaac to go home with Nathan because of Nathan’s lovechild.  The young woman who’d been bought for Nathan’s pleasure and learning experience seemed well taken care of, as far as such women’s circumstances went.  And the toddler seemed as healthy and as happy as any small child, loved by his very own mother and too little to be broken into his enslaved status. 

The Kouns’ father and son’s mistresses masqueraded openly in daylight as housemaids, just as Celia had been disguised in the daytime on the Newsom farm as a cook.  Like Celia, the Kouns’ mistresses had been allowed to keep their youngest children with them, tumbling about the place.  The toddler picked up kindling from the trees in the gardens and fetched and carried knickknacks for household members, and the seven-year-old ran errands about the house and close by in town. 

Isaac thought that the Kouns’ tableau of wife, sisters, and mistresses all in the same household probably upheld the peculiar institutions’ fondest fictions about its level of civilization.  And wasn’t Nathan getting engaged soon?  Isaac Boulware was sure that the potential fiancées and their parents were all served at table by Nathan’s mistress and her toddler dressed in a clean little white shirt that reached to his knees.  As in every wealthy household, the guests and the Kounses most likely smiled and ignored Nathan’s first family—and the doctor’s most recent one—in unison.

But the death threat always hanging over Celia’s neck had finally dropped like a guillotine today.  One more visit to the outwardly genteel, profoundly duplicitous Kouns house seemed impossible to Isaac tonight, disturbed as he was even without the scrutiny into the secret structures of his own life forced by every visit to the Kounses.

Isaac was convinced that he could bring justice to Celia if he focused on that goal alone and shut out the nagging, yapping dogs of his painfully sensitized conscience. 

He let himself into his father’s house with his own large key and shouldered his way through the rosewood-paneled hallways to his father’s study.  He knocked and shoved the door open, unannounced.  “May I speak with you, sir?”

As Reverend Boulware looked up, his spectacles glinted in the lamplight. 

Reverend Boulware had established the Baptist church in Fulton.  Isaac saw the familiarly scratched reams of curling paper, the stilled quill pen poised above one of the many sheets that signaled that his father was, eternally, composing another sermon.  “Yes, Isaac?” Reverend Boulware prompted.

“The judge condemned her.  He sustained objections to all our closing arguments.  It was unconscionable, sir.  May I do as we discussed, father?”  Isaac’s habitual eloquence, learned from and shared in common with his father, had deserted him.  He wanted an answer, and he wanted to get out of his father’s presence so badly that he felt allergic to the man who had given him life, education, opportunity.

Reverend Boulware was a rapidly aging man who had done well by each of his eight children.  His gaze upon his youngest was wary, tired.  Patient as is only the man who has already glimpsed his own infinity. 

Reverend Boulware said carefully, “There is no law higher than the law of God, though obedience to man’s laws implies truthfulness and the shouldering of responsibility for our brethren, which reflect our obedience to God’s laws.”

Isaac waited.  He had said all he could to his father.  It was as much as he could do now to stand quietly in the doorway and listen.

Reverend Boulware sighed, much as his son had done earlier.  I’ve got to become more aware of the ways in which I imitate my father if I’m going to learn to live with myself, Isaac thought. 

“Very well,” Reverend Boulware said.  “Protection of any society’s weakest members is a sacred trust from God to man.  Perhaps you rise now to your highest calling, Isaac.  May God guide you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Isaac murmured, already backing from the threshold.

Reverend Boulware’s voice hardened.  “Only until the appeal has run its course, Isaac.  Whatever the final verdict.”

“You have my word, sir.”

Reverend Boulware held his youngest child’s gaze but could think of nothing further to add to this precaution except, “Good luck, son.  And may God bless your efforts with justice for this girl.  But remember that—”

Isaac forced himself to wait as his father intoned that hated phrase that had shaped and haunted his growing years, “God’s ways are mysterious to the mind of even the most intelligent man.”

“Yes, sir,” Isaac said a shade too soon for courtesy.  He added, “I will remember that, sir,” as if he had heard the phrase tonight for the first time, to make up for his discourtesy to the old man who had made his own life possible and powerful. 

His father sighed again and rebuked his beloved youngest son with no more than, “Your sisters have supped, and your mother is waiting to sup with me, but I am still working.  Why don’t you excuse us and sup alone, so that you may go to bed and get the rest you so obviously need?  Old men sleep but little, I’m afraid.  I work best when the household is at rest and there is no noise, as you know.”

“Good night then, sir.  I do thank you for this.”

“Good night, Isaac.” 

Isaac made his way through the fragrant hallways, both relieved and uncomfortable that his father no longer even tried to ask him what it was that had triggered his distaste, his impatience, his desire to flee the very people who had made him all that he was.

A woman as sultry in shade as the shadows from which she materialized brought Isaac’s supper to the dining hall.  The slices of venison and piles of potatoes, peppers, and onions were warm from the oven. 

As the savory steam rose about him, the woman bent to light the candelabra on the table.  Isaac seized her wrist as she curved above him to blow out the taper. 

He could not look at her.  “Madeleine, I need to ask you something.”

Madeleine looked at him with only the mildest curiosity and, as he hesitated, growing pique.  Soon, if he didn’t ask his questions, she would remind him that she’d had a long day, and perhaps he could search for his tongue and his courage on the morrow. 

His other mother.  Like most men of his class and race, Isaac had always taken it for granted that every true gentleman had, in effect, two mothers.  The acknowledged mother was the European one who sat in parlors decked in the family’s finest spoils.  She represented the family’s gentility to the outside world and translated the world’s expectations and demands to her family. 

But the other mother, the unacknowledged African one, fed that gentleman’s family her milk-spouting nipple, the food she’d saved for her own children at the end of the day, the fine cuisine she’d labored over in a smoke-filled kitchen.  This African mother sat on floors and walked barefoot and stood laboring for hours in heat and cold, endlessly soothing, scolding, and spanking in equal measure until she had produced another scion of society.  

For Isaac, this was Madeleine.  And yet there was one thing more that Isaac had long expected of her.

As if on cue, the swinging door from the direction of the indoor and outdoor kitchens flung in at the man and woman caught in their face-off at the table. 

“Mister Isaac!”  A teenager threw herself across the room and wrapped her slender copper arms about his neck, dislodging his hold on Madeleine.

Before Isaac could respond with more than a bemused smile at the girl’s wild show of affection, Madeleine snapped, “Now, Lise, you know better.  Master Isaac, honey.  And keep your hands to yourself.”

The lithe Lise slid away from Isaac and stood straight, pouting.  “But, ma’am.  I haven’t seen him in two or three days.”  She threw her delicate oak-colored fists against her hips and faced him, tapping one bare foot.  “All right, you.  Out with it.  Where you been keeping yourself, and why don’t you come say something to me when you get in at night?”

“Lise,” Madeleine warned.

Lise plowed on.  “You don’t want me to know what time you get in, that’s why.  I know you, Isaac.  Out there tomcatting around the town, I bet.”

“Lise, I’m going for my strap,” Madeleine said and made as if to execute the threat.

But, “No, Madeleine,” Isaac interrupted, forced to indulgent laughter even as he snatched to catch Madeleine by the wrist again and keep her in the dining room.  “Lisette is right.  I’ve been working late, Lisette.  And it’s made me forget my manners.”

“I’ll say.  Don’t think you’re fooling me, young man.  I’m watching you.”

“Lise, now that’s enough,” Madeleine insisted, even from her position of helplessness in Isaac’s grasp.  “Master Isaac may be inclined to tolerate your sass on occasion, but that occasion will never arrive for his father.  And therefore you better learn to talk to young master like you got some sense and some upbringing, girl.  And that quick.”  Madeleine threw an uneasy glance at the door that led out to the main hallway, as though expecting the Reverend Boulware at any moment. 

Isaac reached for Lise with a freed hand, so he could pull both women at once into an embrace.  “No, Madeleine, don’t scold.  Or rather, if you must scold, I am the culprit.  Scold me.  Lise is quite right, you know she is.  Lise, accept my sincerest apologies.  I have been neglectful of my old friend.  How are you, dear?”

“That’s better,” Lisette said, mollified enough to fold her arms with a satisfied smile.  Then she frowned.  “I’m lonely, Isaac, and I’m mad as hornets.  Home alone with nobody but my ma’ammy to talk to and nothing but work to do all day.  Ma’ammy’s no fun, and you know it.”

“Lise!  Really, Master Isaac, let me get her out of here.  She’ll land herself in terrible trouble if your father hears any of this.”  And Madeleine broke away at last, pried Lise from Isaac, and began to shoo the vivacious Lise out of the room.

As she departed amid a tangle of giggles, blown kisses, and threats of fury if further scorned and neglected, Isaac called after Lise, “I’ll make it up to you soon, I promise.”

“You’d better.  How, Isaac?”

“Master Isaac!  Lise!”

“How do you want me to make it up, Lisette?”  Isaac laughed as he asked the question, but his heart was choking his throat. 

Lise whirled out of Madeleine’s grasp to call back, “Cherry taffy.  Or lavender bath salts.  Yes, lavender bath salts.  Or perfume of violets.  Yes, perfume of violets to put behind my ears.  Oh, Isaac!  Have you seen my hair when I take off my headkerchief and take down my braids, lately?  It’s very long and needs pomade.”  And Lise reached up to begin unbraiding her hair.

“Cherry taffy, lavender bath salts, perfume of violets, and pomade,” Isaac repeated dutifully as Madeleine gave a final shove and pronounced, “Oh, for shame.”

Madeleine latched shut the swinging door against any more intrusions.  “Master Isaac, I know she’s your childhood friend, but really you shouldn’t tolerate Lise’s talking to you like that, sir.  You have to help me keep her in line.  Just think if your father hears any of this.”

But this was just the point, Isaac thought.  Lise was the only person in the world who knew him well enough and loved him in just the right way to talk to him like that.  He would shrivel inside and die of creeping loneliness again, as he had done daily throughout that last grinding stint away at college, without hearing Lise talk to him like that.

Isaac quipped lustily, to hide his torment, “On the contrary, I’d better make a lot of money on this case if I mean to buy Lisette’s good temper back, at the end of it.  And she’s not my childhood friend, Madeleine.  You know that very well.  I’m hers.  I myself was well nigh past childhood when little Lisette was born to you.”

And here it was again.  His question.  Always there.  It would have to be asked someday.  He must know.

Or maybe not.  Was it possible to return to the bliss of mindlessness once a man had been awakened to his society’s barbarity?

For if Isaac had always assumed, until this case with Celia, that the well-born European-American gentleman had two mothers, he had also assumed without examining that thought that the well-born European-American gentleman had what amounted to two wives. 

Just as with his two mothers, he had an African wife and a European one.

“Madeleiene, how would you feel if I were to buy Lisette from Reverend Boulware?” Isaac blurted.

The woman was silent.  At first Isaac thought that she had not fully understood his question.  But as her silence became her answer, gradually, horribly, he understood. 

She might as well have cried out, “Isaac, how could you?”

And he would have loved to ask the same of her.