A Mercy Read Free Page B

our children are not born there.”
    “Portugal, then?”
    “No. Maryland.”
    “Ah. England.”
    As it turned out, D’Ortega was the third son of a cattleman, in line for nothing. He’d gone to Angola, Portugal’sslave pool, to manage shipments to Brazil, but found promises of wealth quicker and more generously met farther abroad. The kick up from one kind of herding to another was swift and immensely enriching. For a while, thought Jacob. D’Ortega did not seem to be making a go of his relatively new station, but he had no doubt he would prevail somehow, as this invitation to dinner was designed to prove.
    They had six children, two of whom were old enough to sit at table. Stone-quiet boys, thirteen and fourteen, wearing periwigs like their father as though they were at a ball or a court of law. His bitterness, Jacob understood, was unworthy, the result of having himself no survivors—male or otherwise. Now that his daughter Patrician had followed her dead brothers, there was no one yet to reap the modest but respectable inheritance he hoped to accumulate. Thus, tamping envy as taught in the poorhouse, Jacob entertained himself by conjuring up flaws in the couple’s marriage. They seemed well suited to each other: vain, voluptuous, prouder of their pewter and porcelain than of their sons. It was abundantly clear why D’Ortega was in serious debt. Turning profit into useless baubles, unembarrassed by sumptuary, silk stockings and an overdressed wife, wasting candles in midday, he would always be unable to ride out any setback, whether it be lost ship or ruined crop. Watching the couple, Jacob noticed that husband and wife never looked at each other, except for a stolen glance when the other looked elsewhere. He could not tell what was in those surreptitious peeks, but it amused him to divine the worst while he endured the foolish,incomprehensible talk and inedible dishes. They did not smile, they sneered; did not laugh, giggled. He imagined them vicious with servants and obsequious to priests. His initial embarrassment about the unavoidable consequences of his long journey—muddy boots, soiled hands, perspiration and its odor—was dimmed by Mistress D’Ortega’s loud perfume and heavily powdered face. The only, if minor, relief came from the clove-smelling woman who brought the food.
    His own Rebekka seemed ever more valuable to him the rare times he was in the company of these rich men’s wives, women who changed frocks every day and dressed their servants in sacking. From the moment he saw his bride-to-be struggling down the gangplank with bedding, two boxes and a heavy satchel, he knew his good fortune. He had been willing to accept a bag of bones or an ugly maiden—in fact expected one, since a pretty one would have had several local opportunities to wed. But the young woman who answered his shout in the crowd was plump, comely and capable. Worth every day of the long search made necessary because taking over the patroonship required a wife, and because he wanted a certain kind of mate: an unchurched woman of childbearing age, obedient but not groveling, literate but not proud, independent but nurturing. And he would accept no scold. Just as the first mate’s report described her, Rebekka was ideal. There was not a shrewish bone in her body. She never raised her voice in anger. Saw to his needs, made the tenderest dumplings, took to chores in a land completely strange to her with enthusiasm and invention, cheerful as a bluebird. Orused to be. Three dead infants in a row, followed by the accidental death of Patrician, their five-year-old, had unleavened her. A kind of invisible ash had settled over her which vigils at the small graves in the meadow did nothing to wipe away. Yet she neither complained nor shirked her duties. If anything, she threw herself more vigorously into the farmwork, and when he traveled, as now, on business, trading, collecting, lending, he had no doubts about how his home was being