Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

right?”
    Faye nodded her head silently, unwilling to talk about something so painful when she was on such an important mission. She opened the large tote bag clutched in her lap and emptied it, one item at a time, carefully unwrapping each piece from its protective packing.
    “Douglass, you’re going to like what I’ve brought you today. Look, I’ve got a lace bobbin. Two thimbles: one china, one brass. Twelve buttons: eight made of hand-hewn wood, three that are plain and white, and one made of multifaceted jet. Three pipestems, two pipe bowls. Five handwrought nails: three rose-head and two T-head. A silver dinner fork. An iron pocketknife. Ivory ribs of a lady’s fan. A horseshoe fragment. A chisel. A tiny porcelain horse. Two whetstones. A battling stick for beating laundry clean. A pothook for hanging food to cook over an open fire.”
    She sat back and waited for the long, amiable haggling session that was an inevitable part of doing business with Douglass.
    He fingered the corroded pocketknife. “Jesus, Faye. Where do you get all this stuff?”
    “You ask me that every time, and every time I tell you the same thing. It’s all mine. Do you want any of it?”
    “You bet. If it weren’t for you and your artifacts, wherever you find them, I wouldn’t have much of a museum.” He lifted each piece, gingerly separating her hard-won goods into piles of things he wanted and things he didn’t. The pothook, the brass thimble, the battling stick, the whetstone, the chisel, the nails, and the wooden buttons went into the “sold” pile so quickly that she knew they would bring a good price.
    The china thimble, the porcelain horse, the remains of the ivory fan, the silver fork, and the jet button went just as quickly into the pile of rejected goods.
    “I found every one of those things in the ruins of old slave quarters. Maybe they were gifts, maybe they were stolen, but they were there.” Faye pushed them toward his pile of acceptable goods.
    “I can’t display luxury goods in a museum of slavery unless I can prove a link to slavery. Can I reference your testimony about where you found these items?”
    “Of course not.”
    He pushed the luxury items back toward her. “Then I can’t use them. Where do you get this stuff, Faye?”
    “I keep telling you. It’s mine, every bit of it. I just prefer to remain anonymous.”
    “Fine. Then keep your fancy goods that you can’t prove a slave ever touched—”
    “Sure, they touched them. Somebody had to sew on the button. Somebody had to polish the silver and dust the little horse and clean the rouge off m’lady’s fan.”
    “Sorry, Faye. By that logic, I’d have to buy everything you bring me.”
    Faye smirked. “And would there be anything wrong with that?” Her expression changed quickly when she saw him shove the lace bobbin into the pile of rejected goods. “No, you have to take that!”
    Douglass’ smile said that he had heard a sales pitch before.
    “Really, Douglass,” Faye said, “that’s the most significant thing on the table. Slaves with lacemaking skills were rare and highly valued. It would have been quite unusual here on the frontier to invest in training someone in an art that was time consuming, yet put no food on the table.”
    Douglass raked the bobbin back into the pile of goods he wanted. “That’s why I like doing business with you, Faye. My other suppliers are just pothunters. They dig up the stuff and bring me what they find. And it’s all in execrable condition. Working with you is like having my own private archaeologist.”
    Having decided what he wanted, he turned each piece delicately in his hands, held it up to the light, ran his fingers over it looking for damage or clumsy repair. Douglass was a top-flight businessman. Beneath his poker face, Faye knew he was assessing the worth of each piece—not its worth on the open market and not the price an average antique dealer might put on it. Douglass would pay only what he felt the piece was worth to him and if that price were more or less than someone else might pay, it was a matter of no importance to him.
    But it was a matter of significant importance to Faye. Her taxes were coming due, her boats wouldn’t quit drinking fuel, her job was on indefinite hiatus, and she had a frenzied need for money. She had brought Douglass everything she had that might remotely interest him. Now came the true test of her sales skills. She had to sell him something truly