Chesapeake by James A. Michener
While everyone waited for news from Carolina, she instructed her sons regarding the plantation: “Don’t ever make our garden pretty. And when you marry, promise me you’ll never allow your wives to plant these lovely paths with box. It smells and is the mark of those who have never really loved gardens. They make a game of box, mazes with it, and waste their gardeners’ time keeping it trimmed.”
Pierre asked what plants she did respect, and without hesitation she replied, “Pyracantha. It’s gangling and sturdy and most handsomely colored.” Sam said, “You’re describing yourself,” and she confessed to the similarity.
They were together when the geese prepared for their long flight north, and although she was moved by their departure, the boys were not, and this frightened her. “You must live close to nature. Books and priests are not life. The coming and going of the crabs down there in the river ... that’s life.”
She led them to all parts of the plantation, pointing out the characteristics of the soil, the life history of the various plants she was endeavoring to grow, and always she managed to pass the marsh which stood at the head of the creek, reaching messily inland with its incredible burden of complicated life. She was there one day when herons came, their long awkward legs projected in front as they landed on the shallow water. “Those are the birds I love ... so patient ... so permanent.” Her sons began to see their patrimony through her eyes, and to appreciate the heavy responsibility they must assume on their return from St. Omer’s.
“And while you’re looking at the plants and birds,” she told them, “keep an eye free for the girls. Which ones would fit in with an island? Which would be solid companions? And good mothers like Amanda? Try them all but pick the winner.”
And then, when it seemed that the May convoy would not dare to sail, the Fair Rosalind rushed north from Carolina with news that caused citizens to drop to their knees in the middle of the road and give thanks: “Blackbeard is dead!” Rosalind Steed’s ships, supported by others from the colonial navy, had pocketed the pirate in a cove where Lieutenant Robert Maynard had engaged him in hand-to-hand combat and slain him with a cutlass. The pirate’s severed head, which had uttered so many threats against the Bitch of Devon, took its last ride stuck to the end of a Steed bowsprit.
When the news reached Patamoke, guns were fired and Rosalind ordered all members of the Steed family to attend the public prayers held on the wharf, and there she stood, solemnly holding the hands of her sons, as the minister cried in exultation, “The long siege has ended! Tonight we sleep in peace! No town on the Chesapeake has done more to vanquish pirates than ours, and standing amongst us is a woman who never faltered in that fight.”
On the peaceful sail back to Devon, Rosalind told her sons, “If you ever engage in a notable enterprise, and you will, see it to the finish.” Sam asked, “Is that why the Refuge Steeds call you Rosalind Revenge?” But before she could respond, Pierre said, “I shall think of you as Rosalind Steadfast,” and she replied, “That I like better,” and she thought: I do not want my sons to think of me as always fighting against men—their father, Bonfleur, Blackbeard, Judge Broadnax. I could have been friends or partners with any of them. If they had let me. If they had been decent human beings.
In May, when the great convoy finally assembled—two hundred and thirty ships this year—she had no hesitation in placing her sons aboard, for she was satisfied that when their studies were completed they would return to assume their responsibilities as the new Steeds of Devon.
With her sons gone, she was totally alone. There was the house to complete, but that scarcely engaged all her energies. What she needed was life, the growing of children as well as the prospering of trees, so in humbleness of spirit she asked her slaves to ready the small shallop, and when a calm day arrived she got into it by herself and sailed across to Peace Cliff, where she walked unannounced up the low hill to the telescope house. There she sought Amanda and made peace—“I need you at Devon. And I think Beth needs the island.”
Her granddaughter was a lively child of eight, with amber braids peeking out from beneath her Quaker bonnet. When she curtsied and shook hands, Rosalind thought: This one’s bound to be a notable woman. She’s just the age to profit from the relaxation of a Catholic home after all this Quaker severity. But Amanda was thinking: Rosalind’s the most honest and courageous woman I know, but she is dominating. We’d not be on Devon a week before she’d want us both to become Catholics.
So she said no. “I respect thy intentions, but I sense that things will be much safer if Beth stays here. This is her destined life, and Devon could only be a distraction.” She would permit no extended discussion, and in the end Rosalind had to go back down the hill, get into her shallop and sail home alone.
As she crossed the Choptank, with the gentlest of winds pushing her along, she reflected on the irony of recent events: Stooby wanted to give me Fitzhugh’s three children, but I refused them on the proper grounds that they could never fit into Devon patterns, and I was right. Now I seek my husband’s granddaughter, and Amanda refuses on grounds which I suspect are equally right, that she wouldn’t fit into the Devon pattern. Well, I have my sons, and they’re the best of the lot ... bred true ... offspring of Cavaliers.
It was possible that her preoccupation with children sprang not from love, for which she had always possessed an enormous capacity, but from a necessity to feel herself involved in the ongoing processes of life, and it was a happy accident that just as her family existence became most empty, an event occurred which propelled her into the heart of Choptank affairs.
At the home of Judge Thomas Broadnax, husband and wife combined to terrorize the little bastard girl consigned to their permanent care. They had given her the name of Penelope, shortened to Penny, and had made of her the most abused and menial kind of serf. They provided barely enough clothes to keep her warm and only such food as she required to stay alive. Together they believed that their harshness was ordained by God as punishment for the child’s having been born out of wedlock, and that when they chastised her, they were doing His work.
For any infraction of the intricate laws they laid down, she was beaten. If she dared to protest, she was chained to the wall of a dark closet, and beaten afresh when released. Her arms bore permanent scars, and if any older person made an unexpected move toward her, she cringed. Judge Broadnax always explained to her, in heavy legal terms, why it was proper for him to beat her until the blood flowed and why it grieved him to do so, but it was Mrs. Broadnax who terrified her. The judge’s wife could be a demon, striking and scratching and screaming until the child trembled whenever she had to approach her with a heavy tray of food, which Mrs. Broadnax gorged while the hungry child stood attentive at her elbow.
One day, when the persecutions became unbearable, the little girl ran away from the Broadnax home, fleeing aimlessly to any refuge that might preserve her from the judge’s fury. By accident she stumbled into the Paxmores’ boatyard, but when the older brother saw her, and realized that she had run away from the Broadnax home, he became quite frightened, for the harboring of a runaway indentured servant was a principal crime, and he would have none of it. Brusquely he shoved the child away, knowing that if he kept her, he would be subjected to the judge’s wrath.
Bewildered, the little girl wandered down the road until she came to the Steed warehouse, and there Rosalind happened to be inspecting some fearnought in which to clothe her slaves, and when she saw the battered child, and the scars along her arms, she impulsively caught her up and kissed her and told her, “You’ve nothing to fear. Cardo, give this child something to eat.”
It was only when Penny was stuffing herself on cheese that Rosalind discovered who she was. “Judge Broadnax! He beat you like this?” She had barely established the facts of his brutality when Mrs. Broadnax stormed into the warehouse, demanding to know whether her runaway servant answering to the name of Penny had been seen ...
“There you are, ungrateful child!”
But as she reached to recover the little criminal Mrs. Steed interposed: “You’ll not touch this child.”
“She belongs to me. She’s a disobedient hussy.”
“Do not touch her.”
Mrs. Broadnax, not catching the ominous quiet in Rosalind’s voice, imprudently came at Penny, intending to twist and pinch her arm as she led her away. Instead she was confronted by the powerful form of Rosalind Steed, who with one substantial shove sent her sprawling backward among the barrels, over which she stumbled, landing flat on the floor.
“Don’t touch her,” Rosalind repeated in a voice of terrible power, “for if you try again, I shall kill you.”
It was a fearful statement, heard by several, and these witnesses could also testify that after having said this, Mrs. Steed gathered the child into her arms and carried her to the town wharf, where they went aboard the Steed sloop, despite the fact that Mrs. Broadnax warned her in a loud voice, which she must have heard, “If you harbor that child, you’ll rot in jail.”
The warrants were sworn, and the constable’s boat sailed out to Devon with them. Satisfying himself that the child Penny was indeed on the island, he mournfully came back—“It’s shameful to arrest a woman like Mrs. Steed. But she’s done wrong and I suppose she must pay.”
The trial was a sensation, long remembered in Maryland records. Judge Thomas Broadnax presided, seeing nothing wrong in acting as adjudicator in a controversy involving his wife, and he was properly grave in manner. He allowed the prosecutor to develop the contentious history of this difficult Steed woman—her outbursts against authority, her specific threat to kill the judge’s wife, and especially her disgraceful behavior in disrobing at the public whipping of the Turlock woman, a known whore. As each new bit of evidence unfolded, with the various Steeds in the audience crimson with embarrassment, the judge became more pontifical and serenely compassionate: “Do you mean to say that a gentlewoman like Mrs. Steed uttered such profanity?” He shook his head in sad disbelief.
But he was miscalculating his adversary. During the first day Rosalind sat silent as the hurtful evidence piled against her. She realized that she was being tried not for kidnapping an indentured servant but for an accumulation of petty offenses against the male community: that she was a Protestant who more or less adhered to the Catholic faith; that she had defended the Turlock woman; that she had sometimes driven hard bargains in the purchase of land; that she had sent her sons to Bohemia and then to St. Omer’s; and most of all, that she had been an outspoken woman when she should have been silent. Curiously, not less than six witnesses testified to the fact that she was building an outrageous house; that seemed a real sin.
At the close of that first day it was apparent that Judge Broadnax would be justified in sentencing her to jail or at least to the ducking stool, but when the second day began, the climate changed. With remorseless force Rosalind produced witnesses willing at last to testify against their infamous judge: he had beaten the child senseless during a dinner; he had forced her to work shoeless in the snow; he had provided one dress, and one only, which she had to wash on Saturday nights and wear still damp to church on Sunday. On and on the cruel testimony came, as if the community wanted to purge itself of secret connivance. On several occasions Judge Broadnax tried to halt the testimony, but his companion justices, tired of domination and seeing a chance to rid themselves of his obstinacy, overruled him.
One of the most telling witnesses was Amanda Paxmore Steed, who took the stand to describe in quiet detail the condition of the little girl when Mrs. Steed invited her to Devon to see for herself. Amanda, a small woman in demure gray, created such a powerful impression, and was so relentless in her description of the bruises and the scars, that women in the audience began to cry.
Judge Broadnax interrupted to point out that the Bible instructed masters to chastise their servants if they misbehaved, and he might have carried the day, for Maryland society in 1720 allowed little sympathy for runaway servants; by custom they were thrashed and returned to their masters with the duration of their indenture lengthened. Any who connived in their delinquency were sent to jail. “We are here to preserve the sanctity of contracts,” Judge Broadnax reminded the jury. “What would your farms and businesses be worth if the servants you honestly acquired were allowed to roam free? Tell me that, if you please.”
At this critical moment, when the trial hung in the balance, as if justice were truly blind, Rosalind introduced three witnesses it had taken her much trouble to find. They had known Broadnax’s servant girl Betsy, mother of the bastard Penny, and on five separate occasions she had confided to them certain facts about Penny.
“Judge Broadnax,” Rosalind asked quietly, but with a. menace and contempt she took no pains to hide, “do you really want these women to testify?”
“You bring liars into the court,” Broadnax thundered. “It’s to no purpose, but if they want to make fools of themselves ... and of you, Mrs. Steed ...” He shrugged his shoulders, and the first woman, a servant of no repute, took the stand.
“Betsy told me that it was the judge who came into her bed.”
The next woman, of no better reputation, testified, “Betsy told me the judge had his way with her.”
And the next woman said the same, and then Penny herself was put on the stand, to say in a weak, small voice, “Before my mother died she told me the judge was my father.”
When Rosalind’s turn came she admitted all charges against her: in anger she had said that the judge ought to be poisoned, and in greater anger she had struck Mrs. Broadnax and threatened to kill her—“But I did so because there was evil amongst us.”
“How did you know that?” one of the subsidiary justices asked.
“I knew when I read the record. And you should have known when you allowed the record to be written.”
“What record?”
“Of this court.” And she recited, as best she could, the hideous record of a judge who had testified against his own servant’s pregnancy, had caused her to be whipped, had taken her child into a lifetime of servitude and had then abused that child most cruelly. “In beating the child, Judge Broadnax was punishing himself for his own sin. In abusing this little girl, Mrs. Broadnax sought revenge against her husband. There is ugliness here and guilt, but not mine.” The decision of the justices can be read in Patamoke records to this day:
11 November 1720. In that Rosalind Steed of Devon has been found guilty of making violent threats against Thomas Broadnax of this town and his wife Julia, and because of her constant haranguing, she is sentenced to three submersions on the ducking stool.
Thomas Broadnax, Presiding
Alloway Dickinson, Justice Quorum
Samuel Lever, Justice
The Choptank was cold that day. A wind blew in from the west, throwing small whitecaps and warning boats to stay ashore. The air was somewhat warmer at the inner harbor, where the long-beamed ducking stool was located, but the water was icy. A huge crowd gathered at the shore to watch the Steed woman receive her punishment, but there was no elation among the watchers. There was general agreement that the justices had acted properly: Penny had run away and had to be returned as an admonition to other servants; Mrs. Steed had harbored her and that was clearly a crime; and she had been an abusive woman, throwing her tongue into places it wasn’t needed. But her crime had been trivial in comparison with Judge Broadnax’s, and he was not only unpunished but he had the little girl back to abuse as he wished for the next twelve years. There was something badly askew in Patamoke, and the citizens knew it.
So Rosalind marched to the ducking stool in silence, chin high, still opposing Broadnax in all things. She remained arrogant as they strapped her into the chair, and refused to close her eyes at the final moment. Instead she took a deep breath and stared at Thomas Broadnax with a hatred that almost inflamed the November air. „And then the chair ducked toward the dark water.
What happened next became the subject of endless rep
When the men swung the stool inboard and unleashed their victim, the crowd cheered, and women ran forward to embrace her, and Judge Broadnax thundered, “That wasn’t a ducking! The order of the court said clearly—”
But the people had left him. They were with Rosalind, congratulating her and kissing her, while he stood by the harbor—alone.
It was the custom on the Eastern Shore to give the homes of leading citizens names, and some were of such wry charm that they would persist as long as the land endured: a contentious man finds peace at last in a remote farmhouse and christens it the Ending of Controversie; a parcel of land is conveyed under debatable circumstances and the home built on it is named Crooked Intention; not far from Devon Island a man builds his dream home and names it the Cross of Gold, but he does so in French, Croix d’Or, and before long it becomes Crosiadore; and along the Choptank three contiguous farms summarize the colonial experience: Bell’s Folly, Bell’s Persistence, Bell’s Triumph.
It was understandable, therefore, that the name given in derision to the brick mansion on Devon Island should become permanent: Rosalind’s Revenge. At night, in taverns, some would argue that it stemmed from the builder’s remorseless pursuit of the French pirate Bonfleur. Others remembered that the words were first uttered when Fitzhugh Steed quit the island to live openly with the Turlock girl. But most believed, or wanted to believe, that it represented Mrs. Steed’s triumph over the cruel judge, Thomas Broadnax: “He had the power to order her ducked, but she went in and out like a mallard and lived to see him flee the town in disgrace. We started to laugh at him and his bitch wife, and this they could not endure. Rosalind had her revenge.”