- Yorktown and Williamsburg, Colony of Virginia, Friday, 28 March 1755
The Colony of Virginia first appeared to Julian Harcourt as a line drawn badly in charcoal. It lay beneath the morning sky, dark and irregular, with no church tower, tiled roof, or cultivated hill to distinguish it from the gray water. A wide river wound in to the trees.
Trees crowded the shore in such profusion that the land seemed less inhabited than concealed. Between their bare upper branches and the river’s dull surface hung a veil of mist that made distance uncertain.
Julian stood at the rail of H.M.S. Providence and watched the land approach.
For seven weeks he had imagined this moment. In some versions, Virginia emerged in sunlight, green and expansive, an empire awaiting the application of English order. In others, it was a pestilential wilderness inhabited principally by mosquitoes, bankrupt planters, and men who had fled their creditors.
He had not imagined that it would look so much like a secret.
Behind him, a sailor shouted for another man to ‘make fast a line’. Blocks creaked overhead. Wet canvas snapped once in the wind and then sagged. Lines darted everywhere across the sky and canvas. The vessel shifted beneath Julian’s boots as the current caught her stern.
He placed one gloved hand over the breast of his coat, feeling the stiffness of the sealed letter hidden inside it. The letter was addressed to Colonel Ambrose Rooke of Williamsburg. Julian had been instructed to deliver it unopened.
His father had repeated that condition three times before Julian departed Harcourt Hall, as though the wax seal might grow more fragile with distance.
“You are NOT going there to investigate Thomas,” Sir Reginald had told Julian sternly. “There is nothing to investigate.”
Julian had looked across the library at the portrait of their grandfather, whose painted expression suggested that every subsequent Harcourt had been a disappointment. “I had not realized I was going there to avoid an investigation.”
“You are going to settle an estate, nothing more,” Sir Reginald stated.
“So you have said,” replied Julian.
“You will dispose of the house, collect whatever money remains, surrender the colonial papers to the proper office, and return home,” Sir Reginald ordered.
“And deliver your letter to Colonel Rooke.” Julian had a slight smirk on his face.
His father’s eyes had hardened at that. “And deliver the letter unopened.”
It had been their last private conversation before Julian sailed for the New World.
Now, as Yorktown became visible through the mist, the sealed packet seemed heavier than it had in England.
Julian drew out his watch. The silver case was scratched around the edges and still felt warm from his body. The watch had belonged to his mother, though it had been altered for a gentleman’s use after her death. It gained four minutes each day regardless of adjustment. Julian had once carried it to three London watchmakers, each of whom corrected a different defect and returned the instrument no more truthful than before.
The hands showed twenty minutes past seven.
He subtracted twelve minutes for the three days since he had last corrected it and decided that the Colony of Virginia had appeared at eight minutes past seven in the morning.
There was no practical reason to record the fact. He recorded it anyway.
A young seaman passing behind him glanced at the open watch.
“You’ll find little use for that here, sir,” said the seaman.
“Do the colonies not recognize the hour?” asked Julian.
“They recognize it when it suits them,” replied the seaman. The seaman continued toward the bow before Julian could determine whether the remark had been insolent or merely colonial.
The H.M.S. Providence came alongside the landing after eight in the morning by Julian’s corrected calculation and nearer to nine by the sun in the sky. Yorktown rose from the riverbank in a series of muddy inclines, warehouses, wooden buildings, brick chimneys, and fenced lots. It was a very rustic looking town. The place had none of the architectural grandeur promised by London merchants who spoke of Virginia tobacco as if every leaf grew beneath a Corinthian column.
It possessed movement instead. Carts groaned toward the landing. Sailors rolled casks along planks. Merchants shouted quantities and destinations. Horses stamped in mud churned by wheels, boots, and hooves. Great tobacco hogsheads stood beneath warehouse sheds or moved along the ground on their curved sides, guided by men with handspikes.
Some of the laborers were white. Many were Black. Several wore coarse clothing darkened by work and river mist. An overseer stood near one warehouse with a switch beneath his arm, speaking to no one unless he wished to be obeyed.
Julian watched one enormous hogshead turn slowly down an incline while two men restrained it with ropes.
It occurred to him that nearly everything his father valued about Virginia had been compressed into those wooden staves: land, labor, credit, and a commodity that became more respectable the farther it traveled from the people who produced it.
“Mr. Harcourt?” The voice belonged to a short, broad man in a weathered coat who waited at the end of the landing. His hat had once been brown and was now the color of whatever dust or rain had most recently touched it.
Julian stepped ashore. The earth beneath his boots moved once, though the dock did not. He concealed the sensation by adjusting his cuff. “I am Harcourt.”
The man removed his hat without any corresponding increase in elegance. “Ephraim Pike. I’ve a chair and a horse to take you to Williamsburg.”
Julian looked beyond him.
There was one horse, a narrow two-wheeled chair, and no visible provision for the two trunks, dispatch box, writing case, sword case, and smaller portmanteau (a smaller version of a large, two-section traveling suitcase) being unloaded from the ship.
“That is a conveyance?” Julian almost laughed at the small cart chair.
Pike followed his gaze. “She goes easier than she looks.”
“That was not my concern,” snubbed Julian.
“Your trunks can go by wagon,” replied Pike realizing Julian was concerned about his baggage.
“When? I expected them to go with me,” rebuffed Julian.
Pike considered this as if the question introduced an unreasonable degree of precision. “Soon.”
Julian looked at the vehicle again. Its leather hood had been patched in two places. One wheel was newer than the other. A length of rope had been tied around the rear axle for a purpose Julian preferred not to discover. “Did my uncle arranged this?”
“No, sir,” stated Pike.
“My father?” asked Julian, disapprovingly.
“No.”
“Colonel Rooke?” asked Julian
At the name, Pike’s expression altered so slightly that another man might have missed it. Julian did not. “Colonel Rooke’s man sent word you were coming,” Pike said. “Your uncle arranged nothing.”
“Because, he is dead.” Julian felt a pang of injustice, but tried to hide it in his expression.
“Yes, sir,” replied Pike matter-of-factly.
“That generally puts a limit on a gentleman’s arrangements,” laughed Julian, shying away from showing emotions to this new acquaintance.
Pike shifted his hat from one hand to the other. “Some dead men leave more orders than living ones.”
Before Julian could pursue that remark, a porter appeared with his dispatch box. Julian tipped the man, supervised the loading of his essential luggage into the small space behind the chair, and reluctantly surrendered his travel trunks to a warehouse clerk who wrote their destination into a ledger.
The clerk spelled Harcourt without the second r. Julian corrected him. “It is spelled H-a-r-c-o-u-r-t, my good man.”
The clerk inserted the missing letter above the line and shook some pounce powder on the page to prevent smudging. Pounce was a drying powder made from finely crushed bone. It was a trivial error. The clerk shook the page to get rid of the extra powder. Julian watched the pounce powder shake away from the wet ink and thought of how easily a name might become another name when entered by a hurried hand.
Pike climbed into the driver’s position. Julian settled beside him, though “settled” suggested a degree of comfort the chair did not offer. His knees came close to the front board. The dispatch box pressed against his back. His sword knocked once against the side as the horse started. Being cramped would have been an improvement in Julian’s situation.
The two wheeled chair cart climbed from Yorktown at a pace governed chiefly by mud.
The road passed warehouses and houses before entering the open country. The river vanished behind the trees. The air smelled of damp leaves, horses, wood smoke, and the soil was newly disturbed by spring planting. The forest stood close on either side, broken by fields, pastures, cabins, and occasional plantations set farther back from the road.
The Colony of Virginia was not empty; it was differently arranged.
In England, even neglected land displayed the history of ownership. Hedges, stone walls, lanes, church spires, ditches, gates, and cottages divided the countryside into statements made by generations of men. Here, a property line might pass invisibly through trees and marshes, known only by a scar in bark, a buried stone, broken fences, or words copied into an office miles away.
Julian found the thought unsettling. He also found it interesting.
“How far to Williamsburg?” he asked.
Pike clicked his tongue at the horse. “Depends upon the road.”
“How far, if the road remains as it is?” asked Julian, trying to get to the root of his question.
Pike gave him a sideways look. “You are Thomas Harcourt’s nephew?”
“So I have been told since birth,” joked Julian.
“He spoke like that too,” said Pike.
“Then perhaps some part of the estate has already reached me.”
For the first few miles, Pike volunteered little. Julian did not press him. Silence, properly used, caused many men to fill it merely to prove that they could.
They passed a churchyard enclosed by a low fence, then a plantation where newly turned earth ran in reddish rows toward a distant stand of trees. At another property, enslaved workers repaired fencing while a mounted white man observed from the road. Farther west, two boys drove pigs from one ditch to another, accomplishing nothing except the transfer of confusion.
Pike finally spoke. “Your uncle came this way three weeks before he died.”
Julian kept his eyes on the road. “From Yorktown?”
“No, toward it,” explained Pike.
“Alone?” asked Julian.
“I did not see him.” Pike was not sure where Julian was going with his line of questioning.
“Then how do you know?” asked Julian.
“Everyone knows who passes on this road,” said Pike flatly.
“That must make privacy difficult,” suggested Julian.
“It makes secrecy expensive,” replied Pike.
Julian turned slightly in Pike’s direction. “What was my uncle doing?”
Pike shrugged. “Looking for something.”
“What?” asked Julian.
“A man might find it wiser not to ask,” suggested Pike.
“Yet you mention it,” explained Julian.
“I said he was looking. I didn’t say what he found,” Pike defended himself.
The horse’s ears moved forward, causing both men to look at the road ahead…