Read The Voyage of Promise Online
Authors: Kay Marshall Strom
The Voyage of Promise (24 page)
42
M
y point is that a barn is not an acceptable place to receive and entertain members of Parliament,” Sir Thomas McClennon insisted.
“It seems to me a most appropriate place,” remarked Jesse. “We are still talking about slavery, are we not? And not an English garden party?”
“Appropriate or not, a barn is what we have,” said Ethan Preston. “And a most comfortable barn it is too, I dare say.” Here he nodded to Rebekah and Heath Patterson. “Thank you, Mister Patterson, for your kindness, and you, gentle madam, for making it a comfortable meeting place.”
“Where is Miss Grace?” Sir Thomas asked.
“She has gone,” Ena said sadly. “She moved out of her rooming house. Gave all her lovely dresses to Mrs. Peete, she did.”
“Did she provide any indication of where she planned to go?” Lady Susanna asked.
“To America,” Ena said. “That’s all she talked about.”
Everything had changed. The friendly, comfortably passionate atmosphere of the upstairs room of the coffeehouse
was gone. Although no one said as much, everyone was afraid to speak openly. For they all understood that one among them most assuredly was a traitor. And although Grace was not the only suspect, she was certainly the one who roused the most suspicions.
“Perhaps she already found someone who would make a deal to get her onto a ship,” suggested Oliver Meredith. “If that were so, well… it might be an explanation for what happened.”
“No!” said Ena. “I saw Grace right after that fire. I can tell you, it was a horrible thing for her!”
“I’m certain it was,” Oliver Meredith said with a hint of sarcasm.
“Come, come! We shall not set about accusing Miss Grace,” Mister Preston said. “She is not even here to speak up for herself.”
“No, let us not accuse Miss Grace,” said Mister Meredith. “Too many others among us also need to give an accounting for ourselves.”
“Such as you, Ena,” said Rebekah Patterson. “It’s true that you have done us a great service by relaying messages through the coffeehouse, your job being conducive to that effort. It is also true that you alerted us to matters as they came to your attention at the Larkspur Estate. Yet rumor has it that you were exceedingly friendly with the master of the estate— the self-same Lord Reginald Witherham who heads the movement that seems dedicated to eliminating us in any way possible. That accomplished, it would conveniently leave the slave trade wide open, would it not?”
Lady Susanna fixed her eyes on Ena. “And you are the one who brought Grace to us,” she pointed out. “Everything we know about her, we know through you.”
Fire flashed in Ena’s eyes. “Although my experience is not as painful as Grace’s horror, I too know what it is to be born a slave, the daughter of slaves. Again and again, I risked my back for this group. Did any of you do as much?”
“We shall not continue this—” But Ethan Preston’s attempt at protestations was useless. The accusations had taken on a life of their own.
“What of you, Jesse?” demanded Heath Patterson. “Kill and destroy—it is what you longed to do from the start.”
“Did you hear nothing I said?” Jesse shot back with contempt. “Harm the
enemy
. Those were my words. Make
the enemy
feel the grip of pain and death. Not destroy ourselves.”
“And how, pray tell, are we to know who the enemy truly is?” Mister Patterson pressed.
Jesse jumped from his seat. Seething with anger, he demanded, “Are you making an accusation against me?”
“Stop it! Stop it now!” Ethan Preston demanded. “Ena was not a traitor, nor was Jesse. Miss Grace was not either. The traitor was all of us.”
In the pandemonium of “No!” and “Not I!” and “Ridiculous!” that followed, Mister Preston pleaded for calm. “If you will all listen, I will tell you the truth of our folly.”
The group had begun meeting in the coffeehouse after Sir Thomas McClennon and Ethan Preston—already regular coffeehouse patrons—gravitated to each other during a few open discussions on the issue of slavery. In one another, they quickly recognized kindred spirits, each dedicated to more than mere banter over a one-penny glass of coffee.
It was through Heath Patterson that the offer came to use the hidden upper room in the coffeehouse, for the owner was a fellow member of the Society of Friends—a Quaker like the Pattersons. Mister Patterson brought along his wife, Rebekah, who in turn recommended the wealthy Lady Susanna. Oliver
Meredith was invited to join the group after his passionate arguments for the abolition of the slave trade were duly noted on several occasions. Somewhat later, Jesse Mallow made the acquaintance of Mister Preston, and, despite the ex-slave’s simmering emotions and volatile ideas, he added a great deal to the group’s understanding of the drawbacks of the greatly touted Sierra Leone solution to the problem of England’s leftover slave population.
“Build a utopia?” Jesse had challenged. “You can gather up the black people and ship them back to Africa, but you can never pretend nothing happened to them. We are still black, but we no longer speak the tongues of the land, and we can’t remember the old ways. You may call your plans for a new country a ‘province of freedom,’ but in truth it will be nothing more than a way to rid your land and your consciences of people who no longer serve your purpose.”
As for Ena, she was a maid of mixed African-Irish heritage with a slave background who worked in the coffeehouse. It was a turn of fortune that her passions burned hot and lay with the cause of abolition. Ethan Preston and Sir Thomas recruited her to act as messenger for the group. She never gave anyone reason to question her loyalty, despite the pressure she suffered from Lord Reginald Witherham.
“When I went to get coffee on our last day before the fire, I heard you and your wife talking in the coffeehouse, Mister Patterson,” Ethan began.
“It is a crime for a man to talk to his wife, then, is it?” Heath Patterson challenged.
“You asked her how one properly acts when in the presence of members of Parliament, and your wife allowed as how if you didn’t know by now you had no time to learn.”
“Well, that hardly gives away a country’s secrets, now,” Mister Patterson bristled.
“Except that not ten minutes later Oliver Meredith stood beside the coffee booth and offered to buy coffee for Lady Susanna,” Mister Preston continued.
“And now you would have that be a crime as well?” asked Mister Meredith.
“Certainly not. You are indeed a gentleman, sir. And Lady Susanna responded most graciously by offering to have her carriage collect you for the ‘special occasion,’ as she called it. You thanked her kindly and requested that she come around one o’clock in the afternoon. All would be in place by two, you said.”
As everyone eyed everyone else, Mister Preston continued: “And you, my dear Sir Thomas. One can always trust you to keep yourself to yourself. Yet this one time you stopped at the tables in the coffeehouse to urge all the men in attendance to make their voices known on the abolition matter.”
“A general suggestion, I assure you,” said Sir Thomas.
“But to one listening carefully, neither the timing of your prodding nor the urgency with which it was delivered would be considered general,” Mister Preston replied. “Certainly not to a coffee maid sitting all day in her booth—a woman placed in that position with specific instructions to listen for anything the least bit informative, perhaps? She, of course, heard everything, being well aware of our existence since she alone heard our footfalls coming and going behind her booth. She also overheard our passionate intent when we were careless on the stairs, or when we let our voices rise too loud in the room. So it was not difficult for her to pass along pieces of conversation to others who could fit them together into a whole.”
Ethan Preston looked at Jesse. “You heard all that I heard at the coffee booth, did you not? For all your talk about making the MPs pay, you rode out to warn those representatives from Parliament of possible danger. Unfortunately, your
warning was intercepted, and you, Ena, when Lord Reginald Witherham asked for your help in preparing for a party at his house, gave him the entire schedule of when you would be occupied. You told me as much yourself.”
“Hmph!” growled Heath Patterson. “It sounds as though you are implying that every one of us was at fault except you, Mister Preston.”
“Not at all. I am more at fault than anyone. For I heard the rest of you speak, yet instead of having the wits to grasp the risks we were all taking and the damage being done, I, like you, accepted it all as normal. We are all equally to blame.”
Silence filled the barn.
“My wife and I,” said Heath Patterson, “will not quit the fight!”
“Hear, hear!” said Sir Thomas. “Nor will I!”
“Nor I!” agreed both Lady Susanna and Ethan Preston.
“I shall stand with the rest of you,” said Oliver Meredith.
Jesse said, “And I. I will fight to the end.”
“Me also,” said Ena softly. “I just wish Grace was here.”
“She is,” Ethan Preston said. “She left us her story, did she not? And the passion that burns within her. Of us all, Grace best understood that silence is the most dangerous course. She left us her resolve to speak out loud.”
“And her determination to act,” said Jesse.
43
I
t be for me to teach you,” Job said to Cabeto. Only, Cabeto wasn’t Cabeto anymore. His new master, Silas Leyland, had renamed him Caleb. “You do good, we both gets our food and our rest. You do bad, we both gets whupped and we goes hungry.”
Cabeto-now-Caleb said nothing.
Job chopped at the hard-packed ground alongside Cabeto, hacking with a rusty hoe at the root of an ancient, gnarled oak tree.
“When a white man comes, keep your eyes down. Always keep your eyes down. Learn to talk their talk and obey their rules. You’ll never again walk free. You’ll never again see your home in Africa. That’s how it be.”
“Then I will die,” said Cabeto.
Job shrugged. “Don’t matter to me if’n you die. Don’t matter to me if’n I die. My heart already be ripped away when my woman was sold away from me.”
“They sold your wife?”
“Soon as our baby come, that’s when they put my woman on the auction block. Don’t know what become of the little one. Gone to heaven, I hopes.”
Cabeto jammed the hoe into the ground. Ever since that awful day, he’d done his best to block all thoughts of little Kwate out of his mind. He could not bear the horror of that day. Yet he could not escape it, either. When he closed his eyes at night, Grace’s shrieks pierced his dreams, and the sight of his child, broken and limp in Mama Muco’s arms, haunted him and left him gasping for breath.
“They got yours too.”
Job knew.
Months had passed since Cabeto had wept for his son, months since he had fanned the faint flame of hope that he might one day see Grace again. His arms moved in rhythm with Job’s arms as they chopped together at the baked-hard ground, but inside, Cabeto was dead. All that remained was the shell called Caleb.
“Death be natural,” Job said. “Not this. This not be natural even for dogs or for sick cows. It surely not be natural for human menfolks and womenfolks.”
“None of this is natural,” Caleb said.
“A body can lay aside his hunger,” Job said in cadence to his chop, chop, chopping. “He can lay aside the forced work, so hard it breaks his back. He can lay aside the lash of the whip. But he can’t never lay aside the tearin’ away of the ones he loves.”
Caleb slammed the hoe into the ground with such vengeance it startled Job into silence.
The day had started with the first splinters of morning light, even though no sun was yet visible in the windowless slave cabin packed with twenty or so men, women, and children. Only a few were fortunate enough to have wooden shelves on which to sleep. Caleb and Sunba—his name now was Samson—lay on the rough wood floor. Master Silas came in
with the dawn, his fancy black overseer, Albo, in tow. Master Silas held up a lantern and pointed to the new slaves.
“Caleb is to dig out the old trees, and Samson is to drain the swamp,” he told Albo.
With nothing all day but bread to eat and water to drink, Caleb worked until evening stars blinked in the sky.
Back at the cabin, Caleb took the bowl of stew and crust of bread the old slave woman handed him, then he slumped down in front of the cabin. Only then, in the fading light, did he see his brother sprawled on the ground over to one side, raw and bleeding. Dropping the stew, Caleb started toward him.
“Sunba!” Caleb cried. “Sunba, what happened to you!”
Immediately, what felt like fire-hot knives sliced into his back and laid Caleb flat. Albo stood over him, his lash poised for another strike. “No African names! He is
Samson
.”
Caleb pulled himself up and crawled on his hands and knees to his brother. He ran his hand over his brother’s raw back, but he did not speak, for he refused to call the one he knew to be Sunba by the name of Samson.
When Albo moved on, Caleb went back and picked up his half-spilled bowl of stew and brought it to his brother. Carefully he fed him a few spoonfuls. Only when Sunba shook his head that he could eat no more did Caleb sit beside him and finish the rest.
“The light will come early,” a woman urged in a husky voice. “You best move on in and git yersef some sleep.”
Caleb stood up and did his best to lift his brother. “Come, Sunba,” he risked in a whisper.
“Sunba could keep up the work and not be lashed as a lazy man,” Cabeto’s brother said. “Sunba could walk by himself and help others. But I could do none of that. Do not call me his name. Sunba is no more. I am the white man’s Samson.”
“We will find a way to get out of here,” Caleb whispered. “You and me together.”
“I do not know, my brother,” said Samson. “Two men in the swamp with me did not come back tonight. A snake bit one man, and he died screaming. The other sank into the mud and disappeared. I work hard, but I can only lift with one shoulder.”
“When I finish digging out the old trees, I will help you,” Caleb said.
“How many trees did you dig today?”
Caleb didn’t answer, so Samson repeated his question: “How many trees did you dig today, my brother?”
“Not even one,” Caleb admitted.
Almost before they got to sleep, morning light splintered the blackness of the night sky.
“Up! Up!” Albo called.
Caleb struggled to his feet to face another day. When he saw how Samson struggled, he helped his brother up. But Albo pushed Samson aside. “Not you,” he said. “You stay in the cabin.” When Caleb hesitated, Albo raised his whip. “Go!” he ordered. “You work with Job. Get that tree out before the sun sets, or you will get no supper tonight!”
When the slaves had all gone to their appointed jobs, Samson stood uncertainly in the slave cabin, alone. He could hear Master Silas outside calling to Albo, “Where is the useless one?”
“In the cabin, Master.”
“Take him to the field and shoot him,” Silas Leland said. “Then dig a hole and bury him.”
When Albo came into the cabin, Samson tried to fight him, but Albo had the whip. “You can go easy or you can go hard,” Albo said. “You looks smart to me. Go easy.”
Samson struggled, but it did him no good. Albo tied his hands behind him and led him out and down the road. As they walked along—Samson bound and the gun barrel jammed into his back, and Albo, holding the gun, forcing him along— slaves paused over the cotton bolls, over the fence building, over the swamp clearing, over the garden tending, each one shedding a tear and breathing a prayer. Caleb, on the other side of the plantation, was spared the sight.
A dashing young white man riding from the other direction saw the two and pulled his horse to a stop. He brushed back the black locks of hair that fell over his forehead and called out in a tongue even stranger to Samson’s ear than Master Leland’s, “
Arrêt!
Where are you going with that
slav
?”
“Takin’ him to the field to shoot him for my master, Master Dulcet,” said Albo, taking care to keep his eyes averted from the white man.
“
Ne presser pas
,” said Monsieur Dulcet. Albo looked at the ground and shook his head uncomprehendingly. Dulcet repeated with a touch of impatience, “Do not hurry, I say.” He climbed down off his horse and walked over to inspect the bound man. “
Nom?
”
“Samson, sir,” Albo answered.
“Does he talk?” the Frenchman asked.
“Only just a little,” Albo said. “He be fresh from the ship.”
Monsieur Dulcet took in Samson’s wretched condition. “
Mon Dieu!
” he exclaimed. “He is not much, is he?”
“No, Master,” Albo said. He shifted uncomfortably. “My master said to shoot him and bury him in the field.”
“I propose to save you the effort, and to reward you for your trouble as well,” said Monsieur Dulcet. He reached up to his saddle, unbuckled a small bottle of homemade whiskey and handed it to Albo. “You take this and give me the slave. No word to your master.”
Albo’s face brightened. “Yes, Master Dulcet.”
“Off with you, now!” said the Frenchman.
Albo took the whiskey and was off at a run.
Monsieur Pierre Dulcet looped a rope over the back of his saddle, strung it down, and tied it tightly around Samson’s bound wrists. Then he mounted his horse and headed back up the road in the direction he had come. Because he prided himself in his kindness to all creatures, Pierre Dulcet kept the horse at a steady trot and would not allow it to gallop.
When the stars lit the sky, Caleb waited for his brother to return from the swamp, but he did not come. As the moon rose, Caleb waited, but still Samson did not come. Only when Albo ordered Caleb inside the cabin did he find his place on the rough floor, alone.
“Sunba!” he whispered.
But this time there was not one person left to answer. Caleb wept long into the night—for his brother, for his son, and for his Grace. Perhaps, if the ancestors could find him so far from home, he would see them all in the next life.