Dante smiled. "We all know of Equiano," he said. "Any one of us who succeeds among the Englishmen lives on the lips of every black in London."
"Do you think I could meet him?"
"He died a few years ago."
I felt deflated. Equiano was one man I would have liked to meet. I felt I already knew him after reading his story, and had hoped to ask how he had gone about writing the account of his life.
I MET THE SAME WEEK with the abolitionists' committee. Stanley Hastings began with a long preamble about how pleased he was to see that I had regained my health.
"Hear hear," the men called out.
I told them that I would sooner expire in the streets of London than be told whom I could and could not see, or where I could go, or what I could do. I believe they must have worried that my heart would give out on me, because all twelve abolitionists leapt from their chairs.
"I am feeling fine now, so you may all sit down."
Hesitatingly, they took their seats.
"I have made a decision," I said.
"Please, continue," said Hastings.
"I have decided to write the story of my life."
"Certainly," Hastings said, "but you will require our guidance to ensure—"
"Without guidance, thank you very much," I said. "My life. My words. My pen. I am capable of writing."
A slender, well-dressed man stood and introduced himself as William Wilberforce, member of Parliament. He asked if he might clarify the matter.
"Please do," I said.
"This is not a question of your literacy," Wilberforce said. "It is rather an issue of ensuring its authenticity."
"That is precisely why nobody will tell my story but me."
"It must cover your childhood," Thomas Clarkson jumped in, "and how you were marched to the sea. It must explicate your enslavement in the ship, and your time in South Carolina. It must . . ."
John Clarkson rested a palm on his brother's shoulder. "She is aware of what her own story should say."
I said I would begin immediately, provided that nobody interfered with my right to speak to any person, John Clarkson's butler included.
"Meena, I want you to know that it was not my plan to prevent you from getting to know Dante," John Clarkson said.
Wilberforce leaned toward me. "Blame it on me, if you like. But please understand. There can't be a whiff of suggestion that your story has been influenced by the blacks of London. This would do our cause great damage, as they are not well regarded here."
"If I give my account, you will have all of it. But it will be on my terms and my terms only, coloured neither by you nor the blacks of London."
"If we proceed in this way," Hastings said, "will you promise to share your account with us, allow us to introduce it as evidence in the parliamentary hearings, and not speak in public about it until that is done?"
I nodded in consent.
"Fine," Wilberforce said. "Wonderful. We do need to proceed, so how soon can it be done?"
"We will have to see," I said.
"Just let us handle the newspapers, all right?" he said.
"What do you mean?"
"It will be your story, through and through, but for God's sake let us manage how and when it gets out."
I saw no reason to disagree.
THE NEXT DAY, DANTE TOLD me his salary had been increased. "What did you do to those abolitionists?" he asked.
"African witchcraft," I said, with a smile.
That evening, when he had finished working, Dante took me to the back of the house, to the servants' quarters. I was greeted by Betty Ann, who had helped me through my illness, and I thus discovered that the two were a couple. Betty Ann was a young woman born in Jamaica who had been transported to London as a domestic slave to a rich planter, and had liberated herself by running away.
"They didn't try to take you back?" I asked.
"They dare not. The courts won't let them. These days in London, if a black walks out the door of his master, he will be free."
I knew it was a big city and an even bigger world, but I had to ask if they had heard of a wealthy white family named Witherspoon. They hadn't. I felt a little foolish, and told myself not to drain my limited energies by dreaming of the impossible. London had a million people. And if my daughter was still alive, she could be in any number of villages, towns or cities on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Dante and Betty Ann offered to take me to a part of London where other black people lived, but I had little strength for excursions and chose to devote my remaining energies to writing the report for the parliamentary committee.
Supplied with food, and quills and ink and paper, kept warm about the legs by blankets, sitting at a comfortable table with candles burning, I began to relate the story of my life. Once I began writing, I could not stop. My childhood erupted on the page, and then my young womanhood, and then my experiences in catching children and bringing my own into the world. On and on I wrote, with no end in sight.
The abolitionists fussed.
"It is wonderful that you have so much to communicate, Miss Dee," Thomas Clarkson said during another meeting with the abolitionists. "But it will be worth nothing if the parliamentary committee does not hear it."
"He has a point," Wilberforce said. "The slavers made excellent presentations to the committee. Every newspaper is reporting their justifications for continuing the trade."
The men around the table rustled nervously in their chairs. I had read the accounts. The pro-slavery men had claimed that slavery was a humane institution that rescued Africans from barbarity in their homelands. Africans would simply kill each other in tribal wars if they were not liberated in the Americas, where they enjoyed the civilizing influence of Christianity. The papers reported that shipping was clean and as safe as possible, and that Africans succumbed to the voyage in no greater proportion than English seamen on the same vessels.
But Hastings spoke calmly. "Gentlemen, Miss Dee will tell her story and when she does, all of England will be listening."
Wilberforce arranged to delay my appearance before the parliamentary committee. In the meantime, he urged the press to play close attention to the testimony of the slavers. Soon, he said, he would offer evidence to refute their testimony. And then he persuaded me to give him fifty pages he could use for my report.
THE MORNING THAT I WAS TO SPEAK to the parliamentary committee, the front page of the Times told readers about Hector Smithers, the botanist who had mounted an exhibition of dead but well-preserved African rodents, bats, butterflies, termites, leopards and alligators. The exhibition had drawn so many people on its opening day that it had been obliged to shut its doors to prevent overcrowding. The Times called it "a spectacular showing of the frightful, lush, colourful barbarity of the animal kingdom in darkest Africa," and noted that entrance cost six pence. A small article inside the newspaper noted that the parliamentary committee would soon receive a report from a woman "fresh from Africa" who had survived slavery.
I stood outside the doors of the parliamentary committee room, waiting with Hastings. I had no idea what to expect, or how I would be treated. I could feel my pulse pounding in my throat, and tried to calm myself by thinking of my father and how—even when making tea or jewellery—his hands moved with confidence. I imagined his voice, deep and musical, reaching out across the ocean to soothe me now: Just be who you are, and speak of the life you have lived.
The door opened and I was summoned. Along the walls of the rectangular room, ten chairs had been set up for newspaper men, and another thirty chairs for visitors. Every chair was taken. I sat alone on one side of a long table, facing all the committee members seated across from me. There were ten committee members, and William Wilberforce was one of them. He smiled and began his official explanation of what I already knew: he would ask me questions and I was to answer them.
Wilberforce asked me to state my name, date of birth and place of birth. I did so.
"Could you p
lease give the committee an indication of the conditions of your childhood, Miss Dee?"
He asked how I came to be stolen, at the age of eleven, and marched three months overland to the sea. I gave as many details as possible. I explained that men had been yoked about the neck in the slave coffles. I said the dead, the near-dead and the rebellious were thrown overboard to the sharks. Whispers rose in the room when I told the committee that seamen made free with the African women on the ship, and that even I, as a child, had been required to stay in the ship surgeon's bed.
"And what do you say to earlier testimony that men and women are not branded in the slave factories on the coast of Africa?" Wilberforce asked.
"It's not true," I said.
"And how would you know that?"
"Because I was held in one of those factories, and I was branded."
"Which factory, and when?"
"It was around 1756, and I was branded on Bance Island off the coast of Sierra Leone."
I heard murmurings in the room. Wilberforce asked me to repeat those details for the record, and I did so.
"And how do you know the name of this island, because surely you did not speak English at the time?"
"I returned a few years ago, with the assistance of an official with the Sierra Leone Company."
"If it is not too indelicate, may the committee hear how you were branded?"
"A hot iron was pressed into my flesh."
A woman left the committee room.
"Shall I show you the mark?" I asked, for the abolitionists had instructed me earlier to make this offer.
"Where is it located?" Wilberforce asked.
"Above my right breast, sir."
A collective gasp went up in the room. I heard the sounds of quills scratching paper.
"Am I required to show it, sir?"
"That will not be necessary, as she is under oath," the clerk said.
I described how I had come to be sold in Charles Town, and how my son had been taken from me. I spoke of the birth of May in 1784, and how, in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, she had been abducted.
I gave testimony for two hours. When asked if I had prepared anything for the committee to consult at its leisure, I tabled a copy of my life story.
The meeting over, the abolitionists led me into a private room where I was asked to reveal my branding scar to the newspaper reporters. Ten men stepped up, one after the other, to examine the proof on my flesh. They wanted to ask questions, but Wilberforce insisted that I had had enough for the day and directed them to consult their notes of my testimony.
When it was all over, and Wilberforce and Hastings had climbed into a carriage with me, I felt suddenly exhausted. Just a few years ago, when I had told my stories night after night in the village far in the interior of Sierra Leone, the people had made me feel admired. With their laughter and interjections, and with the drinks and the food that they urged me to take, they had made me feel as if I were surrounded by family. Here, it was different, for when I spoke to the committee, apart from the occasional groans and the sound of quills, it felt like I was speaking to a wall. I had no idea what the parliamentarians thought of me or my words, because they sat as still as owls and offered nothing but questions.
The next day, John Clarkson brought me the Times, the Morning Chronicle, the Gazette, the Morning Post and Lloyd's List. Every single newspaper carried the story of my presentation, and each one began with the scar. Over the next weeks, the papers continued to run new reports about what I had told the committee. Every day, people asked to speak to me. When the reporters had had their fill, I began to receive requests to speak to school children and to literary and historical societies. I accepted a number of such requests, and found that people in these groups had much more to say to me.
One evening, John Clarkson tapped on my bedroom door.
"A letter for you," he said. "And let me say that insofar as public recognition, you have just eclipsed every member of the abolition committee, with perhaps the sole exception of William Wilberforce."
He smiled as I took the envelope, and asked if he could watch me open it.
"Yes, Lieutenant," I said.
"John," he said. I nodded and studied the envelope. It bore the seal of King George III. Inside, I found a card requesting the pleasure of my company for tea.
"Stupendous," Clarkson kept saying. "The King would never meet Olaudah Equiano. This is better than any of us had hoped for."
When the abolitionists spread the word that the King and Queen were prepared to receive an African for the first time, the newspapers carried another round of stories. For the Morning Post, the artist James Gillray had drawn a caricature of me plucking a cube of sugar from the fingers of King George III. In the caricature, the King is skeletally thin and I am obese and the words I'll take that appear in a bubble at my lips.
William Wilberforce, being the sole parliamentarian in the abolitionist committee, was chosen to escort me to tea with the King. A line of people waited outside the committee offices, hoping to meet me. For weeks, they had been queuing up daily. It seemed that half of London wanted to have words with me. I saw Hector Smithers in line and waved, but could not stop. And then I looked again.
I noticed a black face in a sea of white people. It belonged to a beautiful young African woman of about eighteen years. Amid all those people she kept her dignity and an upright bearing. Our eyes met, and I wondered if I had seen her before. Her lips moved, but I could not hear the words above the din of the crowd.
"Who are you?" I tried to call back, but she could not hear me either.
Silly me. After all these years, I sometimes still caught myself scanning faces in crowds, hoping for the impossible.
I had lost many loved ones in my life, and none had ever come back to me. Still, I couldn't prevent myself from wondering why this young woman had stood with the others in the rain, only to catch a glimpse of me. But I could give it no more thought, because I was put in a carriage and whisked away toward Buckingham Palace.
I HAD ANTICIPATED A PRIVATE MEETING with the royal couple, but as Wilberforce and I were led into a parlour the size of a house, I saw a dozen servants and just as many men and women in wigs and gowns. One wigged parliamentarian after another strode up and seized my hand and asked if it was true that I had just arrived "fresh from Africa." To ward off the interviews, Wilberforce took my arm and steered me to a table where a maid served biscuits and tea.
"Notice the absence of sugar, out of deference to you," Wilberforce whispered.
He was right. On the table, I saw three pots of honey. The maid spooned the thick fluid into my tea. It was an odd feeling to be served by a white person, and I struggled to keep the teacup from rattling on its saucer.
A man introduced himself as an aide to the Royal Family, and asked me to sign a guest book. As he peered intently, I wrote: For a woman who has journeyed from freedom to slavery and back, it is a true honour to meet the King and Queen, and it is my hope that liberty will prevail for all.
The aide stared with his mouth fully open, as if he had just witnessed a zebra reading a book.
Wilberforce received the signal he had been anticipating, so he excused us from the aide, set my tea down on a table and led me through some doors into another room.
The King and Queen were seated in broad red chairs. Their ample robes spilled onto the floor, but I caught sight of polished camwood on one arm of the King's chair. I wondered if he knew his armrest was made of the red wood from my homeland.
"Slowly, surely," Wilberforce whispered. "Curtsy but do not offer your hand."
We moved first toward Queen Charlotte Sophia.
She was the one I most wished to meet, for I wanted to see for myself if she appeared to be a daughter of Africa. The portraits I had seen had drawn her delicately, giving her face a porcelain composure. But seated before me was a woman with a broad nose and full lips, and skin much richer than in any painter's rendition.
Queen Charlotte held out a gl
oved hand, and I shook it.
"Welcome, Aminata," said the Queen. "Welcome to England."
"Your Highness," I said.
I was touched that she had taken the trouble to learn my real name, and I believed that she was the first white person to use it on first greeting. But then again, perhaps she wasn't white after all. I resolved then and there that since the Queen of England could pronounce my name, so could the rest of the country.
"I am honoured, as I have been hearing about you for so many years," I said.
"That's quite a statement, considering the breadth of your travels."
The Queen gave a crisp smile, and I could see in her eyes the desire to end the conversation.
"I have arranged for you to receive a little gift from my library," she said.
"Thank you," I said. I wanted to tell the Queen of England how profoundly I wished for her country's leadership in ending the traffic of men, women and children. But an aide took my arm and guided me gently but unerringly a step or two away, allowing the Queen to address Wilberforce.
I now stood facing King George III. I curtsied. He nodded. I waited, as instructed, for the King of England to reach out his hand or to speak, but he did neither.
He nodded several times, and opened his mouth to speak. But then he turned his head slightly and his eyes opened wider. He did not appear to know what he had meant to say, or who I was, or where we were.
I gazed calmly at the large, round, reddish face and the glassy eyes of the man who presided over the greatest slaving nation in the world, and I understood that there would be no conversation between us. I was led away, but I was not troubled. For all I knew, the King could have been on the verge of one of his fits. I had read all about them. The Bank of England had even issued a coin, years earlier, to celebrate the King's return to sanity. I wondered what the people of my homeland would ask if they knew that I had met with the toubabu faama—the grand chief of England. Never in a million years would they believe that he suffered from an illness in his head and had chosen an African queen.
As I was leaving Buckingham Palace, the same aide who had shown me the guest book now pressed into my hand a leather-bound volume. The Queen of England had given me On Poetry: A Rhapsody by Jonathan Swift.