Sunday 10/4/1759
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| Catharina |
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| Gifford |
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| Nicolai |
“You remind me of Vladimir. You look just like him”, the forty-nine
year old Madam Auchinleck said in the Russian language and smiled, looking
intently into Nicolai’s thirty year old face.
Nicolai left his thoughts and smiled back at Madam Auchinleck
in the same manner, but a little less expressively.
Madam Auchinleck had been referring to her dead elder brother, Vladimir,
who also had been Nicolai’s uncle.
“You are the family I treasure most in the world.” Madam
Auchinleck said and reached out her right hand to Nicolai’s, who reached out
and held them firmly in his.
“Likewise you are to me, Aunt Catharina,” Nicolai replied.
A minute later, looking out the window of the coach, Nicolai
noticed about seven white men chase a Negro boy, who in Nicolai’s opinion could
not have been any more than thirteen years, in the adjacent direction while
hurling stones and threats and threatening to shoot him dead with their rifles
if he didn’t stop running.
“What’s that about?” he asked Catharina.
“Those are paddy rollers. They are the vigilante that keep an
eye open for suspicious slave activity in the area for us, and ensure that no
slave runs away from their masters.” She answered.
The stage coach they rode in moved on rough, bumpy ground
just then so that Catharina and Vladimir shook, a little more than slightly.
She called out to the Negro slave that was her coach driver in clear English,
though not in the least in an angry tone: “Drive carefully, Gifford.”
“Sorry my missus.” Gifford called back.
A few minutes later Nicolai was again lost in thought.
Nicolai had only arrived in the British American colony that
was Virginia a week ago from England. He had come because his mother’s sister,
Aunt Catharina had told him to come over so she could help him start a new life,
an offer he waited six months to accept. She had said that she had some land
she could give give him, and would help him start off the business.
She had said in her letters that she knew he would definitely
succeed at it, because of his personality.
Nicolai smiled. Though he knew he had a tough, go-getting
personality, he had learned to be respectful of people and that was probably
why he had been regarded as an excellent leader the men that worked for him
before his ship got destroyed at sea. He still wasn’t convinced becoming a
plantation master, owning and controlling slaves for his own profit, was
exactly right. He had only opted to nominally accepted Aunt Catharina’s offer,
when his economic situation while still in England steadily worsened as the
months went by.
Until eleven months ago, Nicolai had owned and managed a
cargo ship, The Caucasus, which plied northern Europe, from the Russian Kingdom
in the Far East, to the Portuguese Kingdom in the West. He had had it for three
years. Almost a year ago now, The Caucasus had unfortunately met with a storm
while in transit and had been sunk. Nicolai and his men had only been lucky to
have made it out with their lives intact.
However, since he had invested most of his money into the
venture, he had essentially lost his capital. He had tried to borrow from some
British banks, but they had turned him down. If they hadn’t, he would have been
back on the high seas by now.
As usual, as the last resort whenever he got into trouble,
because of his pride, he turned to his aunt, Catharina, who had funded the
initial purchase of The Caucasus in the first place, asking for a loan to
purchase another vessel of the like. Being herself the rather stubborn woman
that she could be when she had made up her mind about something, she had
refused, saying she wouldn’t risk him losing his life on the seas, and that she
would help him instead become a plantation farmer in Virginia where she lived.
He had not bothered trying to dissuade her.
Now, he was in Virginia, and she was setting him up in the
business.
Nicolai knew his mother’s family’s history, because his
mother had told him. Aunt Catharina, Nicolai’s dead mother, and his deceased
uncle Vladimir had become orphans in their childhood when their father and
mother had been murdered in Russia, because his father had been part of a plot
to assassinate the then emperor, Tsar Peter II Alexeyevich. The siblings would
have lost their lives too; had it not been that their father had had the
foresight to send them away to England to live with a distant relative just a
month before.
However, in England, once she had learned of the siblings’ parents’
death, this distant relative, their aunt, had abused them, prostituting
Catharina and his mother, and starving Vladimir sometimes and forcing him into
back-breaking factory labor while not letting him keep all of what he made. The
girls – twins, had been ten years old and Vladimir had been twelve.
When Vladimir was fourteen, he persuaded his sisters to leave
their aunt’s care, just like he was about to do as well, promising to take care
of them. They left, and, for about four months after, suffered, living in
alley’s with low-life, and begging and sometimes having to prostitute for food.
One day, four months later, suddenly things had begun to
change when Vladimir had taken them to a small but beautiful apartment he had
rented in the countryside. Nicolai’s mother had told him how happy they had
been and how they had rejoiced and felt protected around Vladimir.
The girls lived in the apartment for six years with Vladimir,
doing the odd jobs they could find, and becoming apprentices in tailoring
shops; until Vladimir was shot dead by a man whose house he had broken into a
few days short of his twentieth birthday.
All the while Vladimir had been a robber. But then the girls
had already known.
The hard life had begun again almost immediately after, because
what the girls earned wasn’t enough to feed clothe and house them at the same
time, but Nicolai’s mother soon after became the mistress of a rather
well-to-do slave merchant whose wife she had worked for as a maker of confectionaries.
Nicolai’s mother, Marie, then began taking care of Catharina. Somewhere along
the line Nicolai was born.
Fifteen years later, Marie’s benefactor went on a slaving
mission to Africa, and never returned. It was decided by his family that he had
perished at sea or at the hands of hostile Africans.
Hard times for the sisters and the baby Nicolai began again,
but didn’t last for long either because this time Catharina became mistress to a
man named Geoffrey Auchinleck, who was a rich plantation farmer in the New
World, and had holidayed in England that Christmas.
Perhaps learning from her sister’s experience (Nicolai
decided, looking at Catharina then), Catharina had managed to persuade the man
to divorce his wife and marry her. She always had been the more devious of the
twins. Their union produced a seventeen year old daughter together named
Meredith. She had also established herself in the fashion industry, sewing and
knitting beautiful dresses in the latest fashion trends and selling them in
parts of Western Europe and becoming quite rich, and respected in Virginia.
Mr. Auchinleck died five years ago of a heart attack.
Sadly, Marie, Nicolai’s mother, also died two years ago, of
breast cancer.
“We’ll soon be arriving.” Catharina said just then.
Nicolai nodded.
Presently, the coach was already on the Graydon property and
was headed for the Mansion where the party was to be held. Donald Graydon was
celebrating the birth of his fourth grandchild by his elder son, Jeffery, and
his son’s wife, Rebecca. Catharina had been invited, along with other important
guests. More importantly, Donald Graydon also owned the Graydon Bank, and
Catharina had made up her mind that before the day was over, she would secure a
small loan for Nicolai that would serve as his working capital. She fondled her
left fingers with her right hand, as was her habit.
She could already see the white mansion in the distance.
