Chesapeake Visions

Jewel LeCompte is raised to be a lady, her blindness notwithstanding, but the events of the Civil War introduce her to the harsh reality of the work that goes with running an Eastern Shore plantation.

After the war, Jewel marries Carroll Taylor, who takes her home to the plantation known as Baron's Hope. Happy and expecting her first child, Jewel is finally learning to read Braille through the help of a tutor from Baltimore. Unfortunately Carroll is swept away by a monster tide generated by one of the hurricanes that regularly scour the Atlantic coast.

Jewel finds she must run not one, but two plantaions.Overseers Daniel Merryweather and Michael Elliott learn just how strong this woman really is as she survives with courage and hope, eventually finding love to sustain her life in the Land of Pleasant Living.

ISBN 1-59431-824-1 Historical / Romance / US-Civil War

Chapter 1

My name is Jewel LeCompte and I live on an island off the Eastern Shore of Maryland on Fishing Bay. This is a kindly place with mild winters and endless summers. The land is moist most years, and much of it is wetland, although there are mile-wide stretches of rich sandy soil where farmers have tilled and harvested the fertile land for the past hundred years.

My home is the sifting of wind through the trees, the scent of the salt marsh on the air, and the perfume of the honeysuckle that blooms in the fencerows from late June until frost. My home is the faint scent of bread rising in the kitchen and the acrid bite of ammonia from the chicken house out by the barn. My home is the sound of geese gossiping as they skein overhead in spring in their flights north to rest on the cool Canadian lakes. My home is the skitter of mice in the walls and the chatter of squirrels as they dig in the yard for the sweet pecans they hid last autumn. My home is the sound of familiar voices over the breakfast table and the whine of mosquitoes on a summer night.

I can tell you all these things, but I could not tell you what my home looks like, for I have been blind from birth.

You may think that not being able to see is a handicap, but I have not found it to be so. My parents thought I was perfect at first, for the eyes of a newborn were not thought to focus on anything at all during those ignorant times when medicine held one's hand until death showed the way.

Later, when a normal child might have crept about, avoiding furniture, I bumped into footstools and chairs without turning aside. I understand I took some terrible tumbles when I gained my feet, falling down the stairs and into the fireplace screens, until Mother panicked and took me to every physician from here to Baltimore until their diagnosis of blindness could not be denied.

I suppose my blindness made rearing me difficult. Mother always said she was glad she did not have more children because she could not stand to raise another defective offspring. I believe she felt a great guilt over my imperfect state. I cannot say I knew her well, for my mother relegated my care to trusted slaves and kept me out of sight when I was small lest her guests notice my infirmity and turn the conversation from the appropriate trivialities to the serious subject of my handicap.

On the other hand, I was an inquisitive child who soon learned the dimensions of her world. I have always known the width and depth of each of my father's fields, and the length and width of each room of the house in which I live. I measured these spaces step by step and can remember them all without hesitation.

The darkness of my eyes did not stop me from listening to the rain as it dripped from the leaves of the magnolia tree outside my window at dawn, or from smelling the dank air of the cellars when Father emerged with a special vintage for our evening meal. I know my mother's favorite scent and the plaintive songs of the mockingbird, which vary from day to day. I cherish the sounds of the house at rest and the bustle of the kitchen before an evening meal with company present.

I believe I have always had a good life, although there are those people in my family who have treated me as though I was damaged in some fundamental way. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am as whole and as feeling as any other individual in this large and sometimes confusing world. I do not know what is normal, for the condition seems to be different for each of the individuals I have encountered in my life.

I only know what is true for me.

When I was a little child, my father assigned the slave girl Tansy to follow me about as I explored my world. Tansy was about seven years of age when we were put together as companions in an effort to preserve my safety. Tansy's task was to watch over me and to keep me from tripping over things that might do me harm. We got along very well.

I would never have known there was a difference in our race until my mother told me otherwise.

Mother always stressed that my companion was a colored girl, a slave! She said Tansy was to be treated as such, but my companion's race never made any difference to me. I know nothing of skin color. From my experience, I know Tansy and I must be the same hue. There is no difference at all in the texture of our skin or the depth of our understanding.

Tansy was made to sleep beside my bed at night when I was small, and we were not separated for all the period of our youth, thus freeing my elders to tend to the house and fields--the sort of things sighted people must do. Tansy was my friend, my eyes, and she alone held the keys to the world around me. I knew her better than any soul in this world, and I loved her as my own sister, for I had no siblings of my own.

Mother always said her lack of progeny was the cross she must bear in life. I do not know what that means. I was her daughter in every way I knew how to be.

We were inseparable when we were young, Tansy and I. Hand in hand we ranged the forests, paddled in the bay, and gathered nuts and berries for the kitchen. She had no fear, and so we played as if I were not blind at all. I will not say I was limited in my life, for we two girls could read each other without sight or words.

If I thought of a thing for us to do, Tansy would say it before I could tell her. If Tansy wanted to go wade up a basket of newly shed crabs, we would run to the shore together, and together we would lug the full basket back to the house to be cleaned and prepared for lunch.

Starving as only active children can be, Tansy and I always stayed in the kitchen until the soft shelled crabs we caught were fried in a crisp coating of flour and spices in a skillet full of hot lard. Daisy would give us each one of the delicious sandwiches and caution me not to tell my Mother, who worried if I did not eat every single crumb on my plate at mealtime. My mother feared my lack of appetite, saying it was the first sign of infirmity. Little did she know how many forbidden foods Tansy and I consumed when she was not around. I especially liked soft crabs, and the crunchy little feet that hung out from each slice of folded bread.

Tansy sat with me through the boring hours while my music teacher tried to teach me to play Mozart and Bach on Mother's ancient harpsichord, a skill I did not bother to learn at that time in my life. I hated the rickety instrument that wobbled under my hands and would not stay in tune, no matter how often my teacher fiddled with its strings. As a result, it was years before I came to love or understand music at all.

If you want to know the truth, Tansy probably learned more than I from all those lessons. I was not a scholar and never learned a thing until it was necessary for me to do so. No tutor improved my mind, although Father hired several young men to do just that. Not a one of them had the slightest idea of how to teach a child who could not see. None stayed for more than a week or so, and one actually slipped away in dead of night.