At suppertime, he sat down at his own table, heaping his plate full of pickled herring and bread. He ate slowly, thoughts full of another table, the fine feast they’d had at the Hopewells’ a sennight before. Tomorrow he’d return, not to dine but to buy. And he’d go early to avoid the usual bustle.
Supper done, he made a move to retire to his study and the quiet to be had beyond the clatter of his aunt cleaning up. Her question caught him at the door.
“Did I hear you say you were going to James Towne on the morrow, Alexander?”
He turned around. “Aye. Are you in need of something?”
A decisive bob of her capped head. “A Border ware jug, if you please. I tripped over Ruby and broke one. And any gossip that can be had about the tobacco brides and their courting.”
“Thankfully, the latter is as easily gotten,” he replied. “Consider it done.”
“Thank you, Nephew,” she said over her shoulder as they went their separate ways.
Once ensconced in his study, his greyhounds near the hearth, he pondered a pipe. Ruby looked up at him moodily as his gaze swept the planked floor where she lay in all her gangling splendor.
“You’re a beauty, girl. Don’t let Aunt Henrietta tell you differently.” He stooped to scratch her velvety head, her reddish coat agleam in the fading light. “As for you, Sir Jett, as noble a creature that ever lived, I believe you shall accompany me to visit Chief Opechancanough. His continued awe of you may serve me well.”
Ruby’s black companion gave a deep, resounding bark, eyes alive with the excitement of hearing his master’s voice. Only with difficulty did Jett finally lay his sleek head on an outstretched paw.
“And let us not forget Selah Hopewell’s kind regard of you both. Surely that speaks to your canine character.”
At once, Selah’s comely liveliness at their shared supper leapt to mind. ’Twas usually Mattachanna’s dusky face that stared back at him. Reaching for an elaborate brass tobacco tamper, Xander pressed last year’s leaf into the pipe’s bowl, tamping down the old, festering ache along with it. Once lit, he inhaled, wanting to banish the vision.
His latest leaf smoked pleasant, strong, and sweet. Consignment agents in England told him buyers were paying thrice what other crop masters made. Even the lowly outpost merchants were clamoring for more Rose-n-Vale hogsheads. ’Twas even rumored a thoroughfare in the town of his birth had been named after him. He shrugged off such ridiculousness as more fancy than fact.
He, a Scottish silversmith’s son.
While Shay removed the merchant scales from their box to begin the day’s business, Selah unpacked newly arrived crates from England holding coveted Chinese porcelain. These fragile goods she displayed in a front window to entice passersby. Such fine wares never lasted long. Obsessed with appearances, James Towne gentry were the first to storm in when a supply ship arrived. Since the tobacco brides’ coming, the brass bell at their door seemed to jingle sunup to sundown.
Glad she was her father as cape merchant took care of accounts while she and Shay handled anything from axes and adzes to linen thread and glass buttons. Goods were arriving regularly now, her favorites from the exotic Indies. With each passing year their inventory grew. Once, James Towne was clad in rags but now boasted the finest imported cloth. Nor were there shelves enough for the wealth of fragrant spices from far ports alongside sweetmeats and culinary delicacies. Though life continued uncertain, at least they faced the future with their bellies full.
Humming a song learned at sea, Shay passed through an adjoining door to a side room where transactions were once made with visiting tribes. A new trading post had been established north of them along the Chickahominy Path, but the latest treaty forbade any cloth, cotton, or other goods be supplied to the Naturals. Though the walls of old James Fort had come down—literally fallen into disrepair and used for firewood in years past—the invisible barriers between Naturals and English still stood stalwart and unsettling.
Some dared to bridge the distance. Those with the mettle of Xander Renick.
As she thought it, the front door’s bell sang out. Though it was early, with light barely peeping over the eastern horizon and illuminating their counter, he was their first customer. Beyond the open door stood his saddle horse, a handsome black. She wondered its name. She knew its reputation. Gotten from Massachusetts, this hardy breed was said to pace a mile in under two minutes, oft traveling upwards of eighty miles in a single day.
“Good day to you, Mistress Hopewell.” He removed his dark felt hat, his gaze canted toward her. Or was it the wares she’d recently shelved behind her?
For a second he hovered on the threshold, sunlight framing him. Though he’d come through their door countless times, he still managed to make a lasting impression. Blame it on his unusual mode of dress, she guessed. A long linen shirt absent of the ruffles so popular with more foppish men draped his upper body, his lower clad in buckskin breeches, his long legs encased in black leather boots. He’d discarded his doublet, a style of dress she’d never liked, in favor of a looser weskit. Not the common dress of field hands but hardly that of a gentleman. His beard was trimmed, shadowing his jaw in neat angles, a hint of Scots red within.
“Good morning, Master Renick.” She looked to the fragile item she held, nearly forgetting about it. “Are you in fine fettle this Wednesday morn?”
“Aye,” he returned brusquely. “I’ve need of a quantity of trade goods. The better sort.”
“I doubt you’ve come for these porcelain cups.” She returned the last to the shelf as he recited what was needed.
“A large quantity of Venetian glass and Cádiz beads, enough to fill two knapsacks. Nine dozen copper pendants. Small tools. As many brass thimbles as you have. An assortment of buttons. Sewing needles and linen thread. Some glass play-pretties.”
“For the children?” she asked, reaching for an assortment of tiny angels and animals. She began assembling the requested items, counting and miscounting, glad to have something to do other than stand mindlessly before him and fix him further in her thoughts.
He signed for the goods to be paid in tobacco, his signet ring glinting on his right hand. His signature was as striking as all the rest of him, the X boldest of all. She wondered that he never signed Alexander, his given name. Renick was an illegible blot of swirling ink save the R.
“So, Mistress Hopewell, how goes the courting in town?” He gave her that unsettling half smile as he was so wont to do.
A peculiar warmth drenched her as she continued gathering his goods beneath his scrutiny. “Wise you are to be in the country, sir. James Towne’s air positively throbs with the heartfelt palpitations of men and women hurtling toward matrimony.”
His robust laugh ended abruptly with the opening of the belled door. All levity vanished as Helion Laurent’s gaze landed on the goods atop the broad counter. Selah resisted the urge to sweep them all into the waiting knapsacks. If she’d been but a few seconds faster . . .
“Monsieur Renick, I have seen you little about James Towne of late.”
Laurent’s voice, as richly layered as a French patisserie, resounded in the still room. ’Twas the only thing Selah liked about him. That and his sonorous name, seemingly pulled from the pages of a French fairy tale. His attire, from his silver-threaded doublet to the large rosettes on his boots, bespoke his genteel standing in James Towne and his last journey to France.