“Uh-huh,” I said. I felt myself barely able to muster words. I feared what I might say. I thought of the dream from last night—the dream in which we grew old while Maynard remained young, and held us all chained.
She exhaled hard, as though frustrated with herself, and said, “Don’t mind me none.”
Now she looked up at me again and a look of realization crossed her. She said, “All right, I am here now. How are you, Hi?”
“I’m good,” I said. “About as good as can be expected. Rough night.”
“You want to talk?” she asked. “Sit a spell. Lord knows I am always talking to you, filling you with my stories and observations on the world.”
“No,” I said. “Gotta get to the young master. I’m all right.”
“You don’t look it,” she said.
“I look fine,” I said.
“And how would you know?” she asked and then laughed.
“Don’t worry bout how I know,” I said, returning her laugh. “How bout you worry bout your own looks.”
“And how do I look this morning?” she asked.
I just stepped back into the corridor, away from the door, and said, “Not so bad. Not so bad, if I do say.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Well, since you are not in a conversing mood, what I want to say to you is, you have yourself a pleasant Saturday. And don’t let the young master trouble you none.”
I nodded, and then I walked up that back staircase of awful secrets into that house of bondage. And as I mounted each step, I felt the terrible logic of the Task, my Task, snap into place. It was not just that I would never be heir to even one inch of Lockless. And it was more than knowing I would never be a subscriber to the fruit of my own labor. It was also that my own natural wants must forever be bottled up, that I must live in fear of those wants, so that more than I must live in fear of the Quality, I must necessarily live in fear of myself.
* * *
—
We left late that morning in the Millennium chaise, turning out the main road of the property, and past the orchards, the workshop, and the wheat fields, out of Lockless, and turning down the West Road and driving past what remained of the old estates—Altbrook, Lowridge, Belleview, names that then still rang out across Virginia but are now, in this electric era of telegraphy and elevators, just dust in the wind. Maynard talked the whole way, and there was nothing new in this—just the usual fare of who he would show up and how. I listened for a bit, and then just let him go on while I retreated into my private thoughts.
And then we were crossing the bridge and turning our way in to Starfall, and it was such a beautiful and crisp November day, so that you could look west and see the last turning of the trees, bits of orange and yellow exploding off the mountains. We hitched our horse and chaise, then walked toward Market Street and were met by a parade of Virginian splendor. They were all out there, the Quality, out there in their masks and garments, the ladies in powdered faces, white gloves, and silk scarves, their bosoms heaving and their parasols held up by colored girls to preserve the ivory sheen of their skin. The men all seemed in uniform—black coats, cinched at the waist, gray trousers, horsehair stocks, stove-pipe hats, walking sticks and calf-skin Wellingtons. As always, they left the captain’s share of glamour to their women, trussed in corset and bodice so that they walked slow, measuring all their movements. But there was still a dance in how they moved, with their swanning necks and their swaying hips. I knew they’d been learning to walk like this all their lives, under mistresses and mothers, because it was never the costume that made the Quality, but how the lady wore it. The Northerners from New Hampshire and the pioneers of Paducah and Natchez and the low whites of Elm, all walked with them, but seemed to watch more than walk as this parade of the beautiful and divine made its way down the main avenue of our Starfall, looking as though they would never die, as though Virginia would never die, and this empire of tobacco and bodies would shine like some old city on the hill, so that all the