He found excuses for her, but all the same he was disappointed. In a moment of panic she had made him promise to search for her; but she had forgotten him as soon as she got the chance of an easy life.

It was strange: he had had two lovers, Annie and Cora, and both had married someone else. Cora went to bed every night with a fat tobacco broker twice her age, and Annie was pregnant with Jimmy Lee’s child. He wondered if he would ever have a normal family life with a wife and children.

He gave himself a shake. He could have had that if he had really wanted it. But he had refused to settle down and accept what the world offered him. He wanted more.

He wanted to be free.

30

JAY WENT TO WILLIAMSBURG WITH HIGH HOPES.

He had been dismayed to learn of the sympathies of his neighbors—they were all liberal Whigs, not a conservative Tory among them—but he felt sure that in the colonial capital he would find men loyal to the king, men who would welcome him as a valuable ally and promote his political career.

Wilhamsburg was small but grand. The main street, Duke of Gloucester Street, was a mile long and a hundred feet broad. The Capitol was at one end and the College of William and Mary at the other—two stately brick buildings whose English-style architecture gave Jay a reassuring feeling of the might of the monarchy. There was a theater and several shops, with craftsmen making silver candlesticks and mahogany dining tables. In Purdie & Dixon’s printing office Jay bought the Virginia Gazette, a newspaper full of advertisements for runaway slaves.

The wealthy planters who made up the colony’s ruling elite resided on their estates, but they crowded into Williamsburg when the legislature was in session in the Capitol building, and consequently the town was full of inns with rooms to let. Jay moved into the Raleigh Tavern, a low white clapboard building with bedrooms in the attic.

He left his card and a note at the palace, but he had to wait three days for an appointment with the new governor, the baron de Botetourt. When finally he got his invitation it was not for a personal audience, as he had expected, but for a reception with fifty other guests. Clearly the governor had yet to realize that Jay was an important ally in a hostile environment.

The palace was at the end of a long drive that ran north from the midpoint of Duke of Gloucester Street. It was another English-looking brick building, with tall chimneys and dormer windows in the roof, like a country house. The imposing entrance hall was decorated with knives, pistols and muskets arranged in elaborate patterns, as if to emphasize the military might of the king.

Unfortunately Botetourt was the very opposite of what Jay had hoped for. Virginia needed a tough, austere governor who would strike fear into the hearts of mutinous colonists, but Botetourt turned out to be a fat, friendly man with the air of a prosperous wine merchant welcoming his customers to a tasting.

Jay watched him greeting his guests in the long ballroom. The man had no idea what subversive plots might be hatching in the minds of the planters.

Bill Delahaye was there and shook hands with Jay. “What do you think of our new governor?”

“I’m not sure he realizes what he’s taken on,” Jay said.

Delahaye said: “He may be cleverer than he looks.”

“I hope so.”

“There’s a big card game tomorrow night, Jamisson—would you like me to introduce you?”

Jay had not spent an evening gambling since he had left London. “Certainly.”

In the supper room beyond the ballroom, wine and cakes were served. Delahaye introduced Jay to several other men. A stout, prosperous-looking man of about fifty said: “Jamisson? Of the Edinburgh Jamissons?” His tone was a little hostile.

The face had a vaguely familiar cast, although Jay was sure he had never met the man before. “The family seat is Castle Jamisson in Fife,” Jay replied.

“The castle that used to belong to William McClyde?”

“Indeed.” Jay realized the man reminded him of Robert: he had the same light eyes and determined mouth. “I’m afraid I didn’t hear your name.…”

“I’m Hamish Drome. That castle should have been mine.”

Jay was startled. Drome was the family name of Robert’s mother, Olive. “So you’re the long-lost relative who went to Virginia!”

“And you must be the son of George and Olive.”

“No, that’s my half-brother, Robert. Olive died and my father remarried. I’m the younger son.”

“Ah. And Robert has pushed you out of the nest, just as his mother did me.”

There was an insolent undertone to Drome’s remarks, but Jay was intrigued by what the man was implying. He recalled the drunken revelations made by Peter McKay at the wedding. “I’ve heard it said that Olive forged the will.”

“Aye—and she murdered Uncle William, too.”

“What?”

“No question. William wasn’t sick. He was a hypochondriac, he just loved to think he was ill. He should have lived to a ripe old age. But six weeks after Olive arrived he had changed his will and died. Evil woman.”

“Ha.” Jay felt a strange kind of satisfaction. The sacrosanct Olive, whose portrait hung in the place of honor in the hall of Jamisson Castle, was a murderess who should have been hanged. Jay had always resented the way she was spoken of in reverent tones, and now he welcomed gleefully the news that she had been a blackhearted villain. “Didn’t you get anything?” he asked Drome.

“Not an acre. I came out here with six dozen pairs of Shetland wool stockings, and now I’m the biggest haberdasher in Virginia. But I never wrote home. I was afraid Olive would somehow take this from me too.”

“But how could she?”

“I don’t know. Just superstition, perhaps. I’m glad to hear she’s dead. But it seems the son is like her.”

“I always thought of him as being like my father. He’s insatiably greedy, whoever he takes after.”

“If I were you I wouldn’t let him know my address.”

“He’s going to inherit all of my father’s business enterprises—I can’t imagine he’ll want my little plantation too.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Drome said; but Jay thought he was being overdramatic.

Jay did not get Governor Botetourt to himself until the end of the party, when the guests were leaving by the garden entrance. He took the governor’s sleeve and said in a low voice: “I want you to know that I’m completely loyal to you and to the Crown.”

“Splendid, splendid,” Botetourt said loudly. “So good of you to say so.”

“I’ve rccently arrived here, and I’ve been scandalized by the attitudes of the most prominent men in the colony—scandalized. Whenever you’re ready to stamp out treachery and crush disloyal opposition, I’m on your side.”

Botetourt looked hard at him, taking him seriously at last, and Jay perceived that there was a shrewd politician behind the affable exterior. “How kind—but let’s hope that not too much stamping and crushing will be required. I find that persuasion and negotiation are so much better—the effects last longer, don’t you know. Major Wilkinson—good-bye! Mrs. Wilkinson—so good of you to come.”

Persuasion and negotiation, Jay thought as he passed out into the garden. Botetourt had fallen into a nest of vipers and he wanted to negotiate with them. Jay said to Delahaye: “I wonder how long it will take him to grasp the realities out here.”

“I think he understands already,” Delahaye said. “He just doesn’t believe in baring his teeth before he’s ready to bite.”

Sure enough, next day the amiable new governor dissolved the general assembly.

Matthew Murchman lived in a green-painted clapboard house next to the bookshop on Duke of Gloucester Street. He did business in the front parlor, surrounded by law books and papers. He was a small, nervous gray squirrel of a man, darting about the room to retrieve a paper from one pile and hide it in another.