The Voyage of Promise (15 page)

C
ome, now, Lord Witherham, how many more times do you intend to rouse us from the comfort of our homes and insist that we come together in your sitting room only to listen to you rant?” Augustus Jamison demanded. “This really is too much to ask us to endure!”

“He is right,” agreed Sir Geoffrey Philips, who seldom raised a voice of objection to anything. “We are entirely acquainted with your point of view on the growing movement to abolish the slave trade. And most assuredly, you know every man in the room is in full agreement with you. But I ask you, to what end must we listen to a repetition of the same arguments?”

“I have not called you here to listen to the same arguments repeated,” Lord Witherham stated. “I have called you here to invite you to move with me from rhetoric to action.”

Upstairs in her chamber, Lady Charlotte Witherham tied satin ribbons across the bodice of her new blue mantua dress so that the decorated stays would be displayed in a most alluring fashion. Then she adjusted the open blue skirt to properly show off her lacy white underskirt. As a perfect finishing touch, she fit a frilled cap on her head and gave it a jaunty
tilt. If Lord Reginald thought for one moment that he could successfully command her to sit quietly in her private chambers while he stirred up trouble in the sitting room downstairs, he knew her even less well than she suspected.

“New ideas, they say?” Lord Reginald was expounding to the men downstairs. “The voice of the populace must be heard, they insist? Well, if that be so, then
let
that voice be heard! But let us make certain that the people’s voice speaks
our
message and that any new ideas expressed do not stray too far from the tried and true ideas that have served us so well.”

Simon Johnson sighed. “Please, Lord Reginald, do have mercy on us!” he implored. “All this talk, talk, talk! Will you not simply say what it is you have to say and be done with it?”

“I have but one word, Mister Johnson,” Lord Reginald replied. He paused to fully capture the drama of the moment. “That one word, my dear sirs, is
riot
.”

“Riot?” each of the three asked incredulously at the very same moment.

“Whatever do you mean?” demanded Simon Johnson.

“Six June of 1780,” Lord Reginald replied.

“Yes, yes, a date we know well,” said Augustus Jamison, his patience running short. “The Gordon Riots. But that was about Roman Catholics, not slavery.”

“No, sir, it was not,” Sir Reginald argued. “It was about the power of the people. The people attacked the aristocratic society. They attacked
us
. They demolished our houses and went so far as to attack our persons. They freed
criminals
from Newgate Prison, as you no doubt recall. Then the people joined together to burn and plunder our fair city.”

“I cannot see what that has to do with—” Augustus Jamison began.

“What I am suggesting is that the same anger can be stirred up again. The difference is that this time it can be harnessed and the blame can be laid at the feet of the abolitionists. We will let the people do our job for us!”

At that moment the sitting room doors swung open and Lady Charlotte swept into the room. She smiled at each gentleman in turn, then sat down in the Queen Anne chair by the door. She carefully arranged her skirts in order to display the lacy white underskirt in all its costly beauty. Then she folded her creamy white hands in her lap, fixed her blue eyes on her husband, and waited with just the trace of a smile on her tender lips.

“Lady Charlotte, my dear,” Lord Reginald said with anything but a tone of dearness emanating through his tightly clenched jaw.

It gave Charlotte special pleasure to see the fiery anger blush across her husband’s delicate face. It pleased her no end to see him helpless to do anything about it.

“Please, do continue with what you were saying, Reginald dear,” Lady Charlotte said in her sweetest voice. “I shan’t wish to interrupt you.”

“I was of the understanding that you would be occupied in your chambers this evening,” Lord Reginald all but hissed.

“No,” Lady Charlotte replied.

“Get on with it, Witherham!” insisted Simon Johnson. “What is it you are proposing?”

Lord Reginald looked at his wife and struggled to control his fury. “The men in this room have matters of politics and business to discuss,” he said in a brittle voice. “I really must insist that you allow us to get on with it.”

“By all means, do,” Lady Charlotte urged. “Such things are of grave concern to both men and women. Please, do continue.”

Lord Reginald, thoroughly befuddled by Lady Charlotte’s passive refusal to leave them, stammered through a statement of the unrest and turmoil brought on by the new ideas of the times. Immediately, irritation and boredom crossed the faces of the men as they shifted impatiently in their seats.

Changing tactics, Lord Reginald raised his voice in a heated warning of the danger posed by the coffeehouses, but the men’s eyebrows shot up. The gentlemen exchanged knowing glances, and now and then sneaked a glance at Lady Charlotte.

Again Lord Reginald altered his course, this time launching into a dramatic retelling of the devastation wrought by the Gordon Riots. Even he was bored by this performance. So in the end, he simply gave it all up, thanked the men for coming, and said he would be in contact.

“Unless something momentous transpires, I beg of you, do not bother,” Simon Johnson groused. And although the others didn’t say so, Lord Reginald was well aware of their hearty agreement.

After the last of the men had collected their hats and gloves, and their carriages had clattered down the driveway heading toward the street, Lady Charlotte smiled sweetly and said to Lord Reginald, “I think your meeting went quite well, dear.” Then she headed up to bed.

M
y name is Ena,” said the girl with the bronze-brown skin and the auburn hair—but only after Grace had poured out her own story. At first the girl had listened with a flash of insolence in her eyes, her lips pursed tight. It was when Grace spoke of Cabeto, sailing for the slave markets in America, that Ena’s fierce veneer finally cracked.

“I am not like you,” Ena said. “I am not from Africa.”

“You look like me.”

“The black in me is from my
da
. His people were stolen from Africa and taken to the West Indies in slave ships, the same as your Cabeto. The white in me is from my mother’s people. Irish, they be. My ma brought me here from the West Indies when I was very small.”

“Your mother came back home!” Grace exclaimed with great excitement. “So it
is
possible!”

“No, not home,” Ena replied, her voice slashed through with bitterness. “Only to England. For my ma, home is Ireland.”

Ireland meant nothing to Grace, but she recognized the flash of fire in Ena’s green eyes.

“Was your mother stolen from her land too?” Grace asked.

“She was, and so were many of her people. They were also forced onto ships to go to the islands of the West Indies,” Ena said.

“To be slaves?”

“To breed with the Africans to make more slaves,” Ena said.

Ena’s simmering passion stirred up a strange new hope in Grace. Irish or English, African or West Indian, the important thing was that
someone
carried away from
somewhere
as a slave had come back alive and free. If Ena’s mother could do it, so could Cabeto!

Grace grabbed Ena’s arm and begged, “Your mother… Where is she? Will she help me?”

Ena pulled away from Grace’s grasp. “My ma is dead and gone. Scarlet fever took her five years past.” Before Grace could ask any more questions, Ena turned away and started back toward the coffeehouse. “I have paid employment here,” she called over her shoulder. “I must attend to my work.”

“Wait!” Grace cried. “Can I see you again?”

As Ena opened the coffeehouse door, she shrugged and said, “I am here every day.”

Grace got back to Mrs. Peete’s house to find the washerwoman boiling mad. “You run off and leave me to do all the work alone!” she scolded. “Not a word to where you be. Not a word if you be comin’ back again. Could be kidnapped and layin’ dead in the street for all I knew!”

With a mumbled apology, Grace hurried to ladle steaming water into the bucket for the washtub so she could start to work washing the large things that waited on the floor.

“Won’t be time fer them to dry now,” Mrs. Peete grumbled as she poured the last of the water from the cauldron into Grace’s wash tub.

Bucket in hand, Mrs. Peete stomped out the door and headed down the road. She didn’t return for a very long time. Perhaps many other women decided to go to the pump for water at the very same time. Or it could be that Mrs. Peete went first to the takeaway for a meat pie. If that was so, she didn’t ask Grace to accompany her, and she brought nothing back for Grace to eat. Nor did she offer Grace any bread and cheese for lunch that day.

The old woman was right about the large things. As darkness fell and the damp fog closed in, Grace had to take them, still wet, off the drying line and lay them out over the table and chairs. Mrs. Peete stood behind her the entire time, mumbling and harrumphing.

“They best be dry by mornin’,” Mrs. Peete grumbled.

“I will be away again tomorrow,” Grace said.

“Away again!” Mrs. Peete exploded.

“Please, Mrs. Peete—”

“You be a good worker, Grace, and I be pleased to have you here,” Mrs. Peete said. “But I needs you when I needs you. If you don’t mean to work with me, jist tell me now so’s I kin find other hands to lighten me load—and another body to sleep in your bed.”

Grace got down on her knees and mopped the sloshed water from the floor. She wrung out the rags and spread them on the hearth to dry, just as Mrs. Peete had instructed her, then she carried the washtub outside and emptied it over the fence.

When she came back inside, she said, “Today I saw someone who looked like me, Mrs. Peete. She was both black and white, and yet not either. I followed her to a coffeehouse where she works.”

“A coffeehouse, is it?” said Mrs. Peete. Her wrinkled face twisted into a frown. “Only ones go there be blokes with
money to throw away and time to waste talking ’bout things no one kin change anyhow.”

“I could pay you something for the room,” Grace offered. She pulled the purse Captain Ross gave her out from its hiding place in the bosom of her dress. “I don’t know the coins, and I must keep enough to get me back to the docks.”

Grace untied the purse strings and poured fifteen silver shillings out onto the damp sheet lapped across the table.

“Whooeeee!” Mrs. Peete whistled. “ ’Tis your good luck I’m not of a mind to cheat you, dearie. But there be plenty about happy to take your money from you. That new girl… the Irish one… she likely be lookin’ to cheat you.”

“If I pay you something, could I work just until the noon church bells ring each day?” Grace asked.

Mrs. Peete plucked a shilling from the pile on the table. She turned it over and over in her hand, examining it carefully and running her calloused fingers around the edge. “Not even clipped,” she said with a smile. “This will do me for now. I’ll tell you when to give me more.”

The next morning, by the time the sun did its best to cast a ray through the gritty windows, Grace had already folded the dry sheets, ladled steaming water to fill her washtub, and had begun rubbing spots from the small linens. By mid-morning, the small linens were all hanging on the line. Grace was ready for a fresh tub of water so she could start on the large things.

Because Grace had never seen the sun since she arrived in London, she couldn’t tell time the way she always had before. But she could not miss the noon hour, because all the bells in all the steeples of all the churches on all the streets in the city of London rang out as the hour approached, then all chimed twelve in a cacophony. At the first sound of the church chimes, Grace dried her hands on her skirt, then she hurried to her room to change into a dry dress. A slice of bread
and cheese, then she was off, up the street, around the corner, then on and around another.

With great anticipation, Grace stepped into the coffeehouse looking for Ena. But Ena was nowhere in sight. The only other female in the room was an older woman who sat high on a seat in a large wooden booth at the front end of the coffeehouse. She wore an elaborately pleated frock and a matching pleated hat, and she sat perched on a high stool. It was she who sold glasses of coffee to the patrons, as well as fresh candles for their candleholders. A stately man with a three-cornered hat over his coiffed natural brown hair was making a purchase. He stooped down and pulled a long clay pipe from a wooden chest, then plunked coins on the booth desk.

“Thank you, Sir Thomas,” the woman in the booth said with a slight bow. “We are always pleased when you grace us with your company. Do enjoy your time with us this day.”

Sir Thomas McClennon went back to his group of three other well-dressed men, all with white hair, all lost in deep discussion over some matter or other.

Everyone in the room, it seemed, was lost in deep discussion. Newspapers and pamphlets lay scattered across the tables. The man who had just bought coffee snatched up a newspaper and, to make a point Grace couldn’t understand, waved the newspaper in the air.

But Ena was not in the room.

Nor was the black man Grace had seen the day before, the one wearing the suit of a rich white man. Two plump Englishmen, both with the same white curly hair, sat in his place at the back table.

Several men turned to stare at Grace. She wasn’t certain what to do. Surely she would not be welcome at the tables. Anyway, if she were to sit down, what would she say? Maybe she could ask the woman in the booth about Ena…

And then there was Ena, coming toward her. Out of nowhere, it seemed.

“You attract far too much attention,” Ena hissed. “Leave this place at once.”

“But I want to talk to you,” Grace pleaded.

“Then follow me!”

Grace followed Ena out the side door. Once out, Ena ran toward a field with a barn on it.

“Ena!” Grace called as she ran after her.

But Ena neither slowed her pace nor acknowledged Grace. She ran on to the barn. When she reached it, she pushed the door open, then threw herself down on a pile of hay.

“What did I do wrong?” Grace asked.

“I told you. You attract far too much attention! If I hadn’t come down when I did, none of us would be safe.”

Grace stared at her.

“You could get us all killed!”