I bolted for the open window.
I almost made it.
Chapter XXII
Wednesday, July 10–Monday, July 15, 1776
BUT AS IT IS, WE HAVE THE WOLF BY THE EAR, AND WE CAN NEITHER HOLD HIM, NOR SAFELY LET HIM GO. JUSTICE IS IN ONE SCALE, AND SELF-PRESERVATION IN THE OTHER. –THOMAS JEFFERSON, WRITING ABOUT SLAVERY
When I woke, the barrel of a gun was stuck up underneath my chin.
Men-voices shouted. Boots stomped. A rain of hands grabbed at me, countless bodies, smelly breath, unwashed feet. My head felt cracked in three pieces.
A woman shrieked and shrieked; she was a crow shattering the air with her harsh calls. I moved, not by my own devices. My toes dragged in the dirt. They tried to pull my arms from my body, ripping the arms off a cloth doll. They dragged me from one place to a second place.
More shouts. More shrieks and whistles and calls, rumbling thundervoices.
They dragged me from the second place to the third place, every voice sowing the wind, all things summoning the whirlwind that would sweep us all away to drown in the deepest sea.
My thoughts would not line up like good soldiers. They swarmed afield and fled, chasing the blood that dripped from my head and stained my shift. My eyes were swold up and hard to see through. Someone had stolen a tooth or two.
They tied my hands together with prickly rope. They tied the rope to the back of a cart. They tied a horse to the front of the cart. The horse lifted one tired hoof after another and dragged the cart, and the cart dragged me up the broad street where people smiled and laughed and pointed. My eyes cast down. The cobblestones mocked too.
I tried to figure the whos and the whys of the matter, but my own name escaped me, and I knew only the pain in my head and the iron taste of lost teeth. My remembery broke into bits when they beat my head.
They took me to the dungeon under City Hall to await my trial. The jailer locked me in a cell with a toothless madwoman who huddled in the corner and spat at me. She pulled the hairs from her head and dropped them to the mud. She was near bald.
At sunset, the jailer came back with a cup of water and a piece of foul pork half the size of my hand. Dirty men in the other cells fought each other all night long.
On the second day we heard shouts and screams from the world above us, then came the boom and roar of cannons, followed by the crack of musket fire, and the sounds of hundreds of boots shaking the earth. Some prisoners hollered in panic and tried to pull their chains from the stone walls. The madwoman in my cell laughed and laughed, slapping her skirts.
At last the noise above ceased. The jailers threw buckets of cold water on the men who had lost their senses in fear. They said for us to shut our gobs. The British had sailed their war ships up the North River and had fired on the town, but now all danger was past. Anyone who continued to blubber would feel the lash.
I said not a word.
The second night was same as the first, filled with moans and muttering, scratching, and the sound of teeth and claw. It rained. Water pooled on the floor and soaked through my shoes. Rats wandered in and out of the cells, squeezing their fat bottoms through the bars. I dared not sleep for fear they would bite me. The madwoman and the rats stayed in the corner, red eyes waiting for me all night long.
On the third morning, the jailer unlocked my cell and motioned for me to follow him. The madwoman laughed again.
He took me up the stairs to the courtroom. It was as big as the inside of a church, with the same white walls and dark wood. The windows were of clear glass, grimy with neglect. They stood me behind a rail. Kept my hands tied. I shook with fever and hunger.
“Oyez, oyez, oyez,” called a man in the shadows. He said more, but his words slurred together.
A tall man wearing black robes and a long wig sat at a table that was raised on a platform. He was a judge. This was a court. My head was broke and my sister was stole and I was lost.
The woman with the crow voice, her that threw the picture at me, stood up. I raised my head to look at her. Someone poked a stick into my ribs, hard, and hissed at me. I lowered my eyes.
Voices buzzed and blurred into words I did not understand. Lockton, I finally remembered. Lockton, Madam Lockton, her that bought us, her that stole Ruth away. I kept my head down, but lifted my eyes, tho’ they pained me. The pain was good. It drew back the curtains of my mind and forced me to pay attention.
Madam was pretending to cry into her lace handkerchief. “… and I am but a poor woman, alone, my husband having fled for reasons I cannot comprehend. I plead with Your Honor to assist me in the correct punishment of this girl.”
The judge frowned and asked questions of two officers who stood near Madam. I wanted to ask about Ruth, and where the blood on my shift came from, and who broke my teeth, but I was the only person in the room whose hands were tied, so I kept silent. Questions were asked of the incident. Lies were given as answers.
Finally the judge said, “Where is the housekeeper who saw this crime, Missus Lockton?”
“Becky is indisposed, sir,” Madam answered. “She suffers the ague.”
“Are there no other witnesses to the events you describe?”
A stranger stood up in the back of the room. “I was passing in the street, Your Honor,” he said. “I heard the commotion, saw the girl fleeing, and observed the destruction myself.”
“There are several other people of standing willing to testify, Your Honor,” Madam added. Her tears had mysteriously vanished.
The judge used the end of his quill to scratch at an itch under his wig. “It is clear that this slave has violated the person of her master, destroyed valuable property, and attempted to run away, all contrary to the laws of our colony.”
“State, Your Honor,” reminded the lawyer. “We are a state, now. Independence and all that.”
The judge rolled his eyes. “Colony. State. Who knows what we will be next?” He sighed deeply. “No matter. This girl’s crimes of insolence, property destruction, and running away from her rightful owner are not devious enough to warrant a sentence of death. Do you have any wishes as to the punishment that I should consider, Missus Lockton?”
Madam sighed deeply, like my behavior caused her great sadness. “She is a willful girl, Your Honor, with numerous character defects. I believe a permanent reminder of this day might prove the appropriate remedy.”
Her words stuck in the air, like flies caught in a spider’s web. I could make no sense of them. I could make no sense of anything.
The judge scratched at his wig with fresh vigor. “You wanted her branded then? Twenty strokes of the lash would be more in keeping with her crimes.”
“We are now led by men from Virginia, I am told,” she said, “land of my birth. I assure Your Honor that in Virginia, we do not tolerate the rebellion of slaves.”
The judge nodded. “Once kindled, rebellion can spread like wildfire. Do you want your husband’s initials used?”
Madam shot a sideways glance at me. “I prefer the girl branded with the letter I for ‘Insolence.’ It will alert people to her tendencies and serve as a reminder of her weakness.”
The judge picked up his gavel. “So be it. Sal Lockton, it is the order of this court that you be branded on your right cheek with the letter of I in punishment for your crimes against your lady mistress.”
Crack! The gavel cracked on the block of wood. “Next case.”
Chapter XXIII
Monday, July 15, 1776
I ALSO HAVE BEEN WHIPPED MANY A TIME ON MY NAKED SKIN, AND SOMETIMES TILL THE BLOOD HAS RUN DOWN OVER MY WAISTBAND; BUT THE GREATEST GRIEF I THEN HAD WAS TO SEE THEM WHIP MY MOTHER, AND TO HEAR HER, ON HER KNEES, BEGGING FOR MERCY… –REV. DAVID GEORGE, ON HIS CHILDHOOD AS A SLAVE
A man pulled me by my rope outside to the courtyard. After two days in the dungeon, the noonday sun scalded my eyes. I stumbled but did not fall. The man led me to the stocks, then untied my hands and pointed. I laid my head and hands in the crescents carved
into the wood. He lowered the top board, pinning me in place, and secured the two pieces together with a large padlock.
A brazier filled with hot coals set on the ground a few lengths in front of me. A second man stuck two branding irons into the metal basket to heat them up.
My knees turned to water. I sagged against the wood.
“Stand up, girl, or you’ll choke yourself,” growled the man locked into the stocks to my left. I couldn’t turn my head enough to see him, but his voice was rough and scarred. “Whatever you do, don’t scream,” he continued. “That’s what they want to hear.”
I did not answer him but forced my knees to hold me up. The wood locked around my neck was rough and splintering. My hands were soon without sensation, my neck and arms pricked a hundredfold by pitchforks. Two men were housed in the iron cage next to City Hall. One lay on the ground, asleep or dead. The second, his skin burned by the sun and peeling and missing his left ear, stared back at me blankly.
A court official, his coat covered with yellow dust, arrived with a man who wore a leather apron. He set to work pumping a hand-bellows to increase the heat under the branding irons. The bellows wheezed in and out while the sun rose higher in the sky.
It had rained in the night. The mud puddles scattered around the yard gave off steam like cauldrons coming to boil.
Sweat rolled off my face and fell in great drops to the dirt below. The wind shifted and blew the smoke from the brazier into our faces. I held my breath. In betwixt me and the brazier, dandelions grew in the mud.
The man in the dusty coat pulled one of the branding irons out of the fire. He brought it close to his face and spit on it. The iron sizzled. My companion coughed and cursed the court officials and the judge who had sentenced him.
A crowd had gathered a few lengths on the other side of the brazier, mostly soldiers and tradesmen, with a few women, one carrying a babe in her arms. I thought I saw a boy in a red hat, but when I blinked, he was gone. Men at the front of the crowd called us names and jeered. The sunburned man in the cage yelled back, and soon the courtyard was filled with shouts and filthy language, the kinds of words my mother never wanted me to say or hear. I fought against tears and lost; they fell to the dust in big drops too. If I cried a river, maybe I could swim away, or slip under the water to freedom.
The man in the dusty coat said something to the man in the leather apron. I could not hear him because of the noise of the crowd and the crackling coals and the beat of my heart in my ears. The men walked toward me. The dandelions were lemon yellow with bright green leaves and thick stalks pointing at the sky.
At home in Rhode Island, the corn was tall as Ruth now. The spring lambs would be too heavy to pick up. The new goat, he’d be running headfirst into every fence post. This was a good day to bleach the wool.
The man with the leather apron pinned my head against the wood. He stank of charcoal. I tried to pull away, but my hands and head were locked fast. The splinters chewed on me. Dandelions grew in the mud.
The glowing iron streaked in front of my face like a comet.
The crowd roared.
The man pushed the hot metal against my cheek. It hissed and bubbled. Smoke curled under my nose.
They cooked me.
The man stepped back and pulled the iron away. The fire in my face burned on and on, deep through my flesh, searing my soul. Stars exploded out the top of my head and all of my words and all of my rememberies followed them up to the sun, burning to ash that floated back and settled in the mud.
A few people at the edge of the crowd had fallen silent. They walked away with their heads down.
My momma and poppa appeared from the shadows. They flew to me and wrapped their arms around me and cooled my face with their ghost tears.
Night crept into my soul.
Chapter XXIV
Monday, July 15–Sunday, July 21, 1776
THE TIME IS NOW NEAR AT HAND WHICH MUST PROBABLY DETERMINE, WHETHER AMERICANS ARE TO BE, FREEMEN, OR SLAVES; … THE FATE OF UNBORN MILLIONS WILL NOW DEPEND, UNDER GOD, ON THE COURAGE AND CONDUCT OF THIS ARMY…. WE HAVE THEREFORE TO RESOLVE TO CONQUER OR DIE. –MESSAGE ISSUED TO CONTINENTAL TROOPS FROM NEW YORK MILITARY HEADQUARTERS, JULY 1776
The spark kindled on my cheek flared and spread through my entire body. First my eyes, then hair, then down my limbs, until even my toes and fingers felt they were aflame.
Strange scenes swam before me, first in light, then darkness, then light again. I saw Poppa, but no, not truly him; another son of Africa, brow furrowed, his voice deep and strong as a church bell. Momma hovered over me, but her face faded into a woman I did not know, older than Momma, with strands of white in her hair. She talked Jamaica, more song than words, and brought bitter tea to my mouth and made the world smell of lemons and told me to sleep. I asked about Ruth over and over again and tried to apologize for letting her get stole, but the words were sawdust in my mouth.
Curzon’s face floated up in front of me. He told me to shake my lazy bones and get out of bed. He did not turn into a dead person from when I was little. This was a strange comfort.
I blinked and he was gone.
The room was dark again, with starlight in the windows and the sounds of a baby crying, and farther away, the barking of a lonely dog.
Strangest of all was the hive of bees that had taken up residence inside of me. They swarmed under my skin and gave off peculiar vibrations. The buzzing echoed in my brainpan and crowded out my thoughts.
The fire in me burned on and on.
I woke.
I did not know where I was.
This was not Rhode Island, or the hold of a ship, or the Locktons’ cellar or any other room in their house. It certainly was not the dungeon under City Hall.
Was this a dream? Had I passed over to the land of the dead? Did ghosts sleep on clean sheets that smelled of mint?
I sat up. The room was warm and quite small but entirely free of dirt, vermin, and mice. The walls were freshly whitewashed and the floor polished. Lace curtains fluttered in the window. Through it I saw the tops of trees. This was an attic room, then. The bed was softer than anything I had ever lain in, properly made up with linens, two pillows, and a coverlet of deep blue. A chair was positioned next to the bed, and a chamber pot, empty, rested under that.
I tried to stand, but the room spun around me and I plopped back down. I was wearing my shift, still stained with blood at the neckline, but my skirt, stockings, and bodice were not to be seen. Or my shoes. I closed my eyes tight, then opened them again. Same room. Still no shoes.
The door opened and in stepped the funny-talking Dutch maid of Lady Seymour. Her eyes flew open wide, then she slammed the door shut and ran away. A moment later, the door opened again and in walked the Lady herself.
“Ah,” she said with faint surprise. “You’ve come back to us.” She poured water from the jug into a mug, handed it to me, and sat on the chair.
I drank down a gulp. My lips were dried and cracked. When I swallowed, it caused my burned cheek to ache. My fingers flew up to check the wound. There was a cloth stuck to my face, with ointment oozing out from the edges.
Lady Seymour leaned forward and gently removed my hand. “Best not to touch it yet,” she said. “The healer woman put a comfrey salve on it to draw out the pestilence.”
“Beg pardon, ma’am,” I croaked. My voice was raspy with lack of use. “But where am I? And why?”
She glanced out the window before she spoke, her mouth set in a grim line. “How best to say this?” she began.
I waited, not sure how to answer.
“You have lain here, near insensible, for six days.”
“Six?”
“Do you remember what happened?”
The bees threatened to overtake my mind again, their wings beating quickly. I took another drink of water. “I remember some. The rest is a jumble, ma’am.”
“You tried to run away and were beaten in the attempt. You passed two days under City Hall and emerge
d gravely ill with fever and heaven knows what else. After your trial, you were branded. I was not aware of these events until after they occurred. Your friend with the red hat came to the door with the news that you were near-dead in the stocks. After consulting with Anne, I arranged to have you transported here.”
She looked directly at me. “I further questioned Anne and discovered her version of the events. I find the buying and selling of children most repugnant. Your reaction to the news of your sister, while unfortunate, was understandable, in my view.”
Ruth, Ruth, Ruth, buzzed the bees. I blinked back tears. “Do you know who bought my sister, ma’am?”
“I have so far failed to uncover that fact.” She stood up and walked to the window. “My nephew’s wife is stubborn as well as intemperate.”
I clutched at the bedcovers. I will find her.
She pulled the lace curtain aside and studied something passing in the street below.
I thought through what she said and found a slim thread of hope to grasp hold of. “Begging pardon again, ma’am, but do I work for you now?”
She let the curtain fall. “I am afraid not. Anne insists that you be returned to her household as soon as you are able. The law supports her position, I fear, and in these unsettled times, there is little remedy.”
A wave of weariness crashed over me at the thought of serving Madam again, of allowing her to see her mark upon my face every day.
“I expect you’d like to bathe,” Lady Seymour said. “Angelika is preparing the water for you as we speak. You’ll find the rest of your clothes in the kitchen.” She paused in the doorway. “You miss your parents terribly, don’t you?”
“Pardon, ma’am?”
“While you lay in the fever, you spoke of them with great affection, as if they were in the room with us.” She hesitated for a moment, then picked up her skirts. “No matter. I will escort you back to Anne’s once you’ve bathed and eaten.”