Sunday 10/4/1759

Sunday  10/4/1759

Catharina

Gifford

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.