When Magnus saw how worried his nephew had become over his wife’s health, he decided to help relieve his burden by hiring a maid to help them. At first he thought to send Rebecca over to the other house, but Adelia told him medicine was specialized knowledge, and Rebecca would probably cause more harm than help. He then cast about among the other women on the place to see if any were knowledgeable about midwifery and general medicine. When he failed to find any on his own land, he put word out among his neighbors that he was in need of a nursemaid for his daughter-in-law.
Eventually a small brown woman with red-colored hair and the scars of pox on her skin turned up at the door, announcing herself as Claudia and saying she had come about the midwife job. She was the slave Julius’s older sister, and like her brother she was hired out at whatever tasks were available, to earn an income for her master as well as her own keep.
When Magnus interviewed her he was at first happy, thinking she would be perfect, as she was not too much older than Libbie and so could serve as a companion as well. When he thought about Caleum’s friendship with her brother, though, he was made wary she might take it as license to overstep her bounds. When he considered she was a slave on top of this, he was struck with further uncertainty, as there had never been anyone working at Stonehouses who was not free to command their own time and labor.
“It isn’t as if we would be holding her in bondage,” Adelia argued that night in bed, as they tried to decide whether they should hire Claudia or not. “We are giving her work and paying her a wage for it.”
“It’s not Claudia we are paying but her master,” Magnus countered. “She will have to give him whatever she earns.”
“Then we can pay her something just for her, perhaps,” Adelia said, wanting the matter settled quickly. “You’ll be doing well by both of them.”
Magnus’s mind was still undecided when he woke up the next morning, and sought out Caleum to see what the younger man thought about the idea, thinking to give him final say, as it was after all his roof and not Magnus’s she would be housed under.
Caleum, uncertain of the future and wanting whatever support he could have, was of the same opinion as his Aunt Adelia, telling Magnus that they would be doing Claudia a great favor. “Now she has to find work week to week with no guarantee of anything but that she will be hungry again,” he reasoned logically. “Here she will have steady employ and steady meals. She is after all the person most suited. Perhaps we might even try to acquire her outright from her master, and let her use her salary to repay us.”
Magnus was set against the last part of Caleum’s scheme, as it would violate all Jasper Merian stood for, even if it would benefit everyone concerned. He looked at the younger man a long time when he said it, thinking Caleum must eventually decide the affairs of his own house.
* * *
Magnus hired Claudia to the position that next afternoon, sending money to her owner in advance for the first six months of her services, so as not to have regular dealings with him.
It was a happy arrangement for all in the end, and Libbie’s pregnancy proceeded smoothly, until one day — when Claudia was at the original house with Adelia and Libbie, who was then in her seventh month of pregnancy — Jasper Merian asked who she was.
He was blind as an oracle by then and shriveled as a date in a jar at the bottom of the sea. According to the birthday he had given himself when he emerged from captivity, he was eighty years old, and Magnus had long since stopped consulting him in day-to-day decisions, he being no longer able to discern right from wrong, sense from nonsense — or so it seemed.
When Claudia answered, “I belong to Mr. Barrett and come from his place to help Libbie with her baby,” Merian grew so agitated he started to shake in his seat. Everyone watching was terrified for his health, thinking he was having a convulsive seizure. When it became clear, however, that it was anger that vibrated so through him, they grew even more afraid.
Alas, he could not voice what was in his heart to say. He ended up slurring the beginning of a single word, which was all he could manage, before losing completely the power of speech. Everyone present tried then to decipher what he had attempted to tell them.
He had little formal religion, aside from being once baptized, and he had done as much that was worldly as any man who ever lived, but what they all thought he said was shame, or else it was sin. It was hard for Magnus, who was sitting closest to him, to know which, but that it was one of them — perhaps even both — he had little doubt. He began to cast about then for some way to remedy the problem, for if he had heard correctly it was very serious business for them all.
“Do you want me to send her away?” Magnus Merian asked his old father in quiet tones, drawing nearer to hear what he would say. Merian shook, and sounded out no, and Magnus comprehended that the thing was done and sending her away would only compound it.
Jasper Merian sat up in his high-backed chair and pounded his fist weakly on the table, until his anger subsided. He had toiled there near half a century without resorting to either imprisoned or indentured hands to win a livelihood. He had given the same edict to each of his sons as he himself had lived by, hoping they would hold it as dear as he did. For the two, son and grandson, who walked on his dirt every morning and evening, it should have been obvious what free hands could do, and never miss anything for their lack of knowing chains. God had blessed them out there on that land, without ever showing too much the stronger force of His love. He saw doom now before himself.
Magnus tried to explain the logic that had brought the girl there. Seeing Merian still unsatisfied, he offered again to send her away. Merian only shook. And there could be no other word in the matter.
Jasper was exhausted from emotion and the effort required to communicate with his family. Where only a minute earlier he had seemed furious as an angel, he looked now again like a feeble old man and soon began to sleep where he sat, like a child too long awake. However, they could not dismiss his anger. On the contrary, everyone took it gravely and tried whatever they could to reverse its course and cause.
While they usually had a country preacher who came to the house every Sunday to give a sermon — as he did for all the estates with population enough — that week Adelia had everyone dress for church in town.
The four of them — Magnus, Adelia, Caleum, and Libbie — all shared a single cab and were silent on the way, none daring look at the others or mention what had happened out there. It was the middle of winter and the going was slow, but when they arrived they had been silent a long time and were happy to be in the fresh air again.
All their friends were glad to see them as well and congratulated Libbie and Caleum on their pending child. The family’s mood remained solemn. Magnus, in accordance with the plan Adelia had devised, paid the preacher to have the congregation pray for them at Stonehouses. In Adelia’s thinking it would wash away whatever ill any of their other decisions might have brought and bring forgiveness.
Too ashamed to tell the real need for absolution, what Magnus said, as Adelia had instructed him, was that his old father was very ill and he would like everyone to send prayers to heaven for him to recover and for his soul if he did not. The parishioners were all touched and only too eager to comply with this request, as Jasper Merian had lived so long and been there so long with them.
Nor was this ruse merely a deception: Jasper was mortally ill. He had lost as well, it seemed, the will to go on. While everyone around thought he might live to be a hundred, he had no desire in him to do so. Even before he lost the power of speech, he often claimed he had only stayed around as long as he had in order to gain back the years lost to servitude near the beginning of his life. So when Magnus and Adelia asked that everyone pray for their father, all understood they were seeking for him a final blessing.