The Book of Negroes

  "But the form, sir, and the payment," Sam said. "Sorry, but no square money. I only take silver."

  "She'll take care of it," Lindo said, handing me a pouch.

  While Sam Fraunces arranged for a porter to escort Lindo to his room, I wrote my name into the registration book: Aminata Diallo. I took it as a good sign that I was free to write my own name in New York City. The mere act of writing it, moving smoothly, unerringly with the quill in the calligraphy that Mrs. Lindo had so patiently taught me, sealed a private contract that I had made with myself. I had now written my name on a public document, and I was a person, with just as much right to life and liberty as the man who claimed to own me. I would not return to Charles Town. Never mind that April in New York felt as cold as December in Charles Town. Never mind the horse droppings and shouting porters and clamouring men pushing and shoving on the wharves. Never mind any of that. It was already clear to me that there were Negroes circulating freely in New York. I would somehow find my place among them. I would not submit again to ownership by any man.

  Solomon Lindo and the porter went upstairs.

  Sam retrieved the quill from me and placed it in its holder. "If you don't mind me saying, I have never seen a lady write so bold and pretty."

  I smiled and met his dark, curious, dancing eyes.

  Sam Fraunces folded his hands and glanced at the registration book again. "A most intriguing name," he said. "A-mee . . ."

  "Meena," I said. "You can just call me Meena."

  "That's easier than it looks," he said. "Is Mr. Lindo your . . ."

  "Owner," I said. I wanted him to know my situation. Something about this man's confidence suggested that he could help me. "But not for long," I added.

  The tall man busied himself with his stack of registration papers and mumbled in a low voice, "New York is a place of opportunities."

  I too lowered my voice. "Can you help?"

  The boy who had taken Lindo's bags upstairs had returned for mine. Sam cleared his throat. "Room 4," he said, pointing to my bag. When the boy left, Sam said, "Have you eaten lunch?"

  "No. We were four days at sea and I had no appetite."

  "And how is your appetite now?" Sam said, grinning again.

  "It has returned."

  "Then I'll bring you something of my own making," he said.

  Sam's porter showed me to my room. I opened the shutter and looked out the window at a sea of activity. A young Negro was playing a fiddle on the street. He spotted a well-to-do-looking white man, ran up to him and played the fiddle while walking alongside the gentleman, who finally parted with a coin. The fiddler glanced around, saw another white man in a waistcoat, and ran toward him.

  I stepped back from the window, lay down on the soft bed and, listening to the pealing of church bells and the clattering of horses' hooves, fell asleep.

  I HAD NEVER BEFORE HAD THE EXPERIENCE of watching a tall black man open my door, slip in with a tray of steaming food and set it down on a table near my bed.

  "Apologies," he said, "but you did say that you were hungry."

  I had fallen asleep dressed just the way I was, and felt a little awkward swinging my legs off the bed to stand and smooth the wrinkles from my clothing.

  "Would you prefer to eat in solitude?" he asked.

  "If you have the time, you may sit with me, for I have never cared to eat alone."

  He smiled. "Most civilized, and I accept." He slid onto a chair across the table from me. "Mr. Lindo departed while we were preparing your meal," he said. "What sort of business is he in?"

  "Indigo," I told him.

  "He said the two of you would be going to a concert this evening, and asked me to remind you to be ready for seven."

  I sat at the table to eat. He had made bean soup with a dose of pepper hot enough to take me back home. On a side plate was cornbread, sweetened with honey and coconut milk. He also brought me fresh crab cakes. He said the way to make a decent crab cake was to roll just a touch of bread crumbs, melted butter and cream into the crabmeat. It was so good that you wanted to treat it tenderly.

  "Crab is not something to overpower with energetic spicing," he said. "Crabmeat wants to melt quietly on the tongue."

  I was ravenous. Between mouthfuls, I asked him questions. Sam Fraunces had been born and raised in Jamaica. His father was a slave owner and his mother a slave who had been set free by the father. Sam himself had been sent on his way when he was fifteen, with enough money to travel to New York and invest in a business. He had kept his money well guarded and had managed restaurants for two years until he understood the business in and out, and had made all the connections he needed with suppliers. He then got a mortgage to buy the current building and opened a restaurant called The Queen Charlotte.

  "They say she's the Black Queen," I said.

  "Some say that, and others dispute it," he said. "But nobody gives a fig about it around here. The British—the whole lot of them, King and Queen included—aren't exactly the best-loved people in New York."

  Sam did not want his tavern and hotel to be associated with British royalty, so he renamed it the Fraunces Tavern.

  "Better for business," he said. "The Tories can dine here, and feel fine. The Americans can dine here too. I say—you obliterated those crab cakes. I'll take that as a compliment. And let me return one: you are a very handsome woman."

  I set my fork down gently. "I appreciate the meal and your company," I said, "and don't wish to be impolite, but . . ."

  He put up his palm. "Let me spare you the indelicacy," he said, shifting in his seat. "One sort of appetite doesn't automatically lead to another."

  "I'm sure a man in your position has many opportunities," I said.

  He grinned and did not deny it. I thought he might turn to leave immediately, but he folded his hands one over the over, let his lips settle into a more tranquil pose and said, "From the moons on your face, I suspect that your journey began long before Charles Town. I can't help every person who walks in my doors, but I will do what I can for you."

  "Is it possible to escape in New York?" I said.

  "Canvas Town is where most go," he said, "but white men sometimes send in raiding parties and grab whoever they can—their own slaves or free Negroes."

  Having found a sympathetic source of information, I brought out all my questions.

  Yes, Sam said, I could most probably find a way to sustain myself in New York. He might have some work for me.

  "What about a ship to Africa?" I asked.

  "Impossible," Sam said.

  "Are you sure?" I asked.

  "To even dream of it is madness," he said.

  "Why?"

  "Ships don't sail from New York to Africa. They go to England first, unload sugar and rum and tobacco and the indigo that your Lindo so fancies, and then they sail to Africa."

  "So from here it is possible for a person to get to Africa," I said.

  "A shipper, merchant or slave-trader, yes. Via London. You? No. Never. What Liverpool ship captain would waste his time taking you to Africa? He would just sell you into slavery again, and you'd probably end up in Barbados or Virginia. And if you did somehow make it back to Africa, the slave-traders would just pack you up and send you right back over here."

  I looked down at my hands.

  "Don't lose faith," he said. "This is the best city for you. New York has places to hide, and offers many kinds of work. I made out just fine when I came here."

  "But you came free."

  "And you are already free where it matters most, in your mind. This is the best place in the Thirteen Colonies. It's the best place in the world. Forget London. New York is what you want."

  I had a thousand more questions—where could I hide, how would I work and what would I do to feed myself?—but Sam Fraunces was out of time.

  "I expect a full tavern at dinner," he said.

  THAT NIGHT, SOLOMON LINDO TOOK ME to hear a cellist play a solo concerto by J.S. Bach in the Trinity Church—the one with
the highest steeple in town.

  "One hundred and seventy-five feet," Lindo said.

  Climbing the steps, we passed black men, women and children with palms outstretched. I felt uncomfortable about having nothing to give them, and hoped that bad luck didn't drive me to join them anytime soon. Lindo fished six pence from his pocket, dropped them into a woman's hand and took my arm. His token gesture angered me. If he thought that it would lead me to write his letters dutifully the next day, he would soon discover his error. Inside the church, I saw a handwritten notice posted on a wall: Volunteer needed, for teaching Negroes.

  We took seats in the first pew, and when the concert began, I sat close enough to the cellist to almost reach out and touch the hairs on his bow. He was a young black man with a neatly trimmed brown beard, and acorn-brown eyes that scoured my face as he played. He knew the music by heart, and instead of casting his eyes at the written sheets of music, this man, whose name was given on the program as Adonis Thomas, looked at me. As he leaned into his instrument, backed off, leaned into it again, dipped his head to punctuate a change in the music, I felt that he was speaking to me.

  I have always had difficulty listening to the frenzied sound of many instruments together. In Charles Town, on occasion, I had heard flutes, oboes, horns and violins all rise together, but they always seemed like voices at war. Here, though, I could befriend the cellist, fall into his music, heed the melodic urgency, and be touched by the way it dipped low like the voices of village elders and skimmed high like singing children. Adonis Thomas's cello whispered to my soul. Do not lose hope, it said. You too can make something beautiful, but first you must be free.

  LINDO HAD INSTRUCTED ME TO MEET HIM at eight o'clock the next morning in the hotel's breakfast room, but I arrived a few minutes early, to find Sam Fraunces.

  "How was the concert?" he asked.

  "Music to lift my spirits," I said.

  "Let's hope it lifts his spirits too," Sam said.

  "Whose spirits?"

  "Why, those of Adonis Thomas, the cellist."

  "What's wrong with him?"

  "Didn't Mr. Lindo tell you that he is the slave of a wealthy man in town?"

  My jaw fell open. "He played so beautifully," I said.

  "With real longing, I would expect," Sam said.

  Lindo came down the stairs and took me into the dining room. I had never eaten with a white man in a public place, and was surprised that they let me in. But it was a Negro who came to take our orders, and he simply gave me a little smile. Lindo ordered buns and eggs for both of us, and asked for coffee.

  I asked the waiter for tea with milk and sugar.

  "We have coffee and beer this morning," the waiter said.

  "Coffee with milk and sugar, then," I said.

  "The patriots are furious at the British, and are weaning themselves from tea," Lindo whispered to me. "Now they say it weakens the tone of the stomach, inducing tremors and spasmodic affections. Can't say I blame them. The British have united the patriots in anger over the Tea Act and soon enough, if we lose the indigo bounty, they'll stir up even more resentment in South Carolina."

  I wasn't hungry but felt that I should eat. I had to keep myself strong and healthy now, and sensed that soon I might spend a long time between meals.

  Lindo said that he had prepared a letter to William Tryon, the governor of New York, about why the British bounty on indigo should be protected. Perhaps the governor could convince the right people in London.

  "I have it in draft form, with corrections in the margins. I need you to write it properly so I can deliver it tomorrow," he said.

  I didn't want to agree, but it didn't seem wise to refuse.

  "Where is it?" I asked.

  "In my room. I'll leave you the key. There is a large desk in there, with all the writing materials that you should need."

  I nodded. "How long will you be out today?"

  "I have meetings until the evening," he said. "It will take hours of persuasion to get an appointment with the governor. The man dines and golfs all day with the Anglicans."

  I sipped my hot, sweet, milky coffee.

  "Did you know that Adonis Thomas is a slave?"

  "Who?"

  "The cellist from last night."

  "Of course. Do you think a Negro could learn to play like that without instruction? And where do you think he'd get such instruction? Living in Canvas Town?"

  "I would have thought—"

  "I don't have time for that right now," he said, getting up from the table. "Make sure that letter is ready by the end of the day. Somebody in London needs to know that indigo is rotting in barrels on the wharves of Charles Town."

  After breakfast I could not bring myself to enter Lindo's room. I rested on my bed until the sounds through my window beckoned me out. My feet felt light, as if they were already touching free ground. People rushed in every direction, and nobody took objection to me. When I rounded a corner and the sun splashed on my face, I felt impossibly optimistic. I could walk in any direction I chose, so I headed over to Wall Street. When I got there, I heard shouting and looked up toward Broadway. Outside a fine, two-storey wooden home, I saw an odd crowd of white men, all agitating with arms raised: ruffians, labourers and well-dressed men too.

  "We'll bust the door," someone shouted. The crowd hummed with nasty energy.

  The house was painted white, and had a neat stone path leading from the door to the street. A house like that in Charles Town might contain a man, a woman, their children, and one or two slaves. I wondered if slaves were in this house. I wondered if, for some reason, these angry men wanted to put their hands on Negroes.

  "Down with the British," someone shouted.

  A pack of men surged forward to kick and pound the door. Others began throwing rocks at the shuttered windows. The door opened. A white butler appeared. He was dragged out, struck in the face and knocked to the ground. The mob surged over him—bleeding nose and all—and into the house. I felt that I should run, in case they came for me next, but no other residents—white or Negro—emerged from the house. I saw only the rioting men, some still shoving in through the door and others struggling back out with vases, fine mahogany boxes, chairs and rugs. Inside, shutters were broken and silk curtains thrown out the windows. It was almost hypnotizing to witness their frenzied anger, but after a few minutes, when looters emerged with a cask of rum and sucked the liquor thirstily from their own palms, I couldn't help thinking about the horror that a person like Mrs. Lindo or Dolly might feel to be trapped in a house with such livid men.

  The butler managed to get up onto his feet. Rather than taking flight, he stood to the side with his fingers on his temples. More and more people surged up Wall Street, shouting news that I could not understand.

  A white boy no more than seventeen stood next to me and hollered for the whole world to hear, "Blood spilt at Lexington and Concord."

  In the excitement, I risked a question. "Whatever do you mean?"

  "Rebels fought the Tories in Massachusetts, and the rebels won."

  He was shouting so loud that I took a step back. He could see that I couldn't quite follow him, but all he really wanted was to be heard proclaiming himself in public.

  "Rebels, that's me," he said. "Tories, that's . . . are you a Tory?"

  "What precisely is that?"

  "You talk fancy, for a nigger," he said. "You better not be a Tory. It's war now and we shall have freedom."

  "Freedom? For the slaves?"

  "Niggers, nothing. I'm talking about us. Rebels. Patriots. We shall be free of the British and their taxes. Never again shall we be slaves. Are you with the rebels or the Tories?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "Pick the rebels if you know what's good for you," he said, and ran off with his friends.

  The streets were teeming with people who sang and shouted and shot muskets in the air. By the time I got back to the Fraunces Tavern, pandemonium had erupted inside. Men were drinking, falling down dead d
runk, cursing the British and vowing that they would one day see freedom. They were eating, too, and Sam and his crew were busy serving them.

  "What's happening, Sam?"

  "If you help me get this mob fed and out of here," he said to me, "I'll pay you back."

  I longed to get somewhere safe, away from the boiling anger, but the offer was too good to pass up.

  I worked in the kitchen, pouring beer from kegs into pitchers, making punch with rum and lemonade and bits of orange, arranging plates of meats and cheeses and fruit, and passing it to the men who were serving. Customers were shouting so loud that I wondered if they would riot. But as wild as they had been on the street, they loved Sam Fraunces and his tavern and seemed at home. Drunk and boisterous though they were, they didn't break a thing.

  Eventually the crowd thinned and the patriots headed back into the streets to celebrate. Sam took me by the arm.

  "Meena, make a run for it," he said.

  "Now?"

  "War is inevitable, and the Brits are in for the surprise of their life. They have no idea how angry people are. If you flee now, Lindo won't have time to hunt you down."

  "Why?"

  "I've just heard that the British are talking of closing the harbour. Your man will want to return to his own home or business, because people could be rioting there too. If he doesn't get out today, he may not get out at all."

  I never wanted to see Lindo again, but the idea of fleeing him terrified me.

  "Where am I to hide?" I said.

  "Go north for now. Go up Broadway and into the woods."

  "What about Canvas Town?"

  "No. Not yet. He may send an agent after you."

  I felt paralyzed. What was I to do alone in the woods? But Fraunces was tossing apples, bread, a strip of salted beef and a small blanket into a sack.

  "Take the bag. Go now. Do not return to your room, and do not wait any longer. North. Up Broadway. When you come to the end of town, keep walking deep into the woods." Out on Pearl Street, men were pouring more rum from another stolen cask into their palms. "Come see me in a few days," Fraunces whispered. "Come in the darkness. Tap three times at the door to the kitchen, in the alley out back."