Marcia Talley - The Last Refuge

All the while we were playing, I kept one eye on Melody and Alex and the dancing lessons going on over in the corner. ‘One, two, three, curtsey… four, five, six… hand up, now turn, turn, turn…’ I recognized the minuet, and realized that the dancing lessons I’d taken prior to Ruth and Hutch’s wedding – where we learned the waltz, tango and foxtrot – were probably not going to be relevant to my new life in the past. It was a good thing that dancing lessons had been blocked in on my schedule, for two o’clock the following day.

A sudden movement caught my eye. A dark shape seemed to materialize from the shadows on the wall next to a highboy. I gasped, then relaxed as I realized it was only a cameraman, clad in black from head to toe, like a ninja, wearing a Steadicam strapped to his chest. As the cameraman passed behind me, I pounded my chest to jump start my heart and said, ‘Gosh, you scared me!’

‘That’s Derek,’ Amy said calmly, slapping a ten of clubs down on Jack’s nine. ‘Chad’s around somewhere, too. They don’t talk. You’ll get used to them eventually.’

‘I didn’t think they’d be filming us quite so soon,’ I commented before taking the trick with my queen to end the game. ‘Considering the contracts we signed, that was probably a naïve assumption.’

‘We call them Thing One and Thing Two,’ French said. ‘From Cat in the Hat ,’ she added, just in case I didn’t get the reference.

‘What role are you playing at Patriot House?’ I asked French as Amy began to deal the next hand.

‘I’m the housemaid,’ she said. ‘One of the indentured servants, supposedly from Scotland. I finished up early over at the Wythe House today. Sweeping, mopping, turning the mattresses – all good preparation. When I got back, Jud cornered me, saying they needed a fourth for whist. Not that I’ll be playing cards with any of you upstairs types, mind.’

Four hands later, Amy and I were ahead by two points and the beginner in me was feeling rather smug.

Jack was shuffling the deck, preparing to deal again, when a woman rushed in. She paused for a moment in the doorway, one hand clutching the door frame, the other pressed to the small of her back. She was dressed as a household slave in brown homespun, and her gray apron was dusted with flour. Her head was wrapped, turban-like, in a white scarf from which a few dark curls had managed to escape, bobbing like tiny springs over her forehead. Her mahogany skin glistened with sweat.

‘You better finish up in here if you’re gonna want time to freshen up before dinner,’ she drawled. ‘They said to let you know that they start serving in twenty minutes. Me? I’m for the shower.’ And she disappeared as quickly as she had come.

‘That’s Karen Gibbs,’ Amy told me before I even had time to ask. ‘She’s our cook. They’ve had her working over in the Raleigh Tavern Bakery for a couple of days. Her boy’s with her, too. Cute kid named Dexter. Dex. Nine or ten, I should think.’

‘What’s Dex going to do?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Chop wood? Pump water? Build fires?’

‘Whatever a little slave boy would do in 1774,’ Jack muttered without taking his eyes off his cards. ‘Empty the chamber pots, too, I imagine. Wouldn’t want my boy saddled with that. Don’t know what the woman can be thinking.’

Amy’s eyes blazed. ‘Karen’s got a PhD, Jack. She graduated from Oberlin College and has been teaching sociology there for ten years. That’s more than most of the rest of us can say.’

I had graduated from Oberlin College, too, but quite a few years before Karen, I suspected. When Oberlin opened its doors in 1833, it never occurred to the founders not to admit blacks or women. The college had a long association with progressive causes. It had been one of the breeding grounds of abolitionism and a key stop along the Underground Railroad. When I visited the campus in 1965, in fact, Martin Luther King had been the commencement speaker.

‘Oh, I’m not questioning the woman’s intelligence,’ Jack hastened to add. ‘I’m sure she has her reasons.’

‘As a black woman and a sociologist, this experiment must have seemed a unique opportunity for Karen to understand her own history by actually living it,’ I commented. ‘I’m not sure I would have involved my son, either, Jack. Dex seems a little young to really understand what slavery was all about.’

‘I don’t think she had a choice,’ French said as she slapped an ace of hearts on the table and took the trick. ‘She didn’t have anyone at home to leave him with.’

‘She’s not married?’

French shook her head. ‘Never has been.’

I knew about Jack’s marital situation, of course, but was curious about the others. ‘I’ve got a husband waiting for me at home, probably wondering where his next meal is coming from about now. How about you two?’

‘I’m engaged to an investment banker in Boston,’ French said. She glanced quickly at Amy who was studying her cards intently, silently. ‘Amy’s a widow.’

Amy, who I guessed to be in her mid to late twenties, looked too young to be a widow. A look of such sadness passed over her face that I could have kicked myself for bringing the subject up. ‘I’m so sorry, Amy.’

She glanced up, eyes glistening with unshed tears. ‘It’s OK, really. Drew was a Navy SEAL. We both knew the risks when I married him.’

I stared at her pale face and shuddered. During our long association with the Naval Academy, Paul and I knew a number of midshipmen who’d gone into Special Ops after graduation, but we’d not lost any of them… yet. ‘Was he an Academy grad?’ I asked.

‘No. UVA.’

I was about to comment on the high quality of naval officers coming out of the NROTC program at the University of Virginia when Jack took control of the conversation and made a U-turn. ‘I went by the bakery this afternoon. The apple pies looked fantastic. Seems like our Karen can actually cook.’

‘Speaking of Karen,’ I said, laying down my cards and rising to my feet, ‘I’m going to take her suggestion and go freshen up. See you at dinner?’

As I left the parlor, Derek disengaged himself from the dance lesson. He and his Steadicam shadowed me out of the room, down the hall and onto the elevator, a red light near the camera lens indicating that he was filming me the whole way. As I slotted the key card into my door, I turned and waggled my fingers at the camera before slipping inside and closing the door in his face.

‘Cameras already dogging my tail,’ I texted to Paul on my iPhone from the bathroom a few minutes later. ‘Apparently I’m today’s fresh meat.’

Dinner that night was a buffet affair – mixed green ‘salat,’ sliced roast of beef, and an oven-roasted potato and vegetable combo, all set out in very twenty-first-century chafing dishes on a dark oak sideboard in one of the hotel’s private dining rooms. Cast members, some already in costume, continued to arrive in dribs and drabs as they finished their training at various locations throughout the ‘plantation.’

My costume consisted of the same jeans and T-shirt I’d ridden down in, although I had washed my face, put on a bit of eyeliner and a smear of lipstick.

I loaded up my plate, snagged a brandy-spiked bread pudding from a side table and sat down opposite Jack Donovan, who was already tucking into his beef. His daughter, Melody, sat to his right, her plate heaped with vegetables, but she was having the bread pudding as an appetizer. At sixteen her baby fat was not likely to go away without a bit of push-back-from-the-table discipline, I thought. Fortunately, the mistress of Patriot House (me!) was not planning to serve quarter-pounders with cheese in 1774, so perhaps she’d make some headway when we got back to Annapolis.