“You carry the bags,” William ordered. He hefted a third satchel in his left hand so he could keep his grip on Grady’s arm with his right hand.
Grady bent to lift the heavy suitcases and strained to carry them. By the time they went ashore, hailed a carriage, and loaded everything on board, Grady’s arms ached from his burdens—and from William’s grip. He saw William whisper something to Coop, and Massa ordered the driver to go to the slave pen, first, instead of the hotel. William led Grady inside and locked him there for the night—in the same pen where his long imprisonment had begun. William went to the hotel with Massa.
Coop spent a month in Richmond, purchasing slaves, but Grady remained locked behind bars the entire time. Little by little, the cage filled with angry, bewildered, despairing people. Their stories matched his own—they’d been cruelly ripped from their homes and their families and left to wonder what would become of them, or if they’d ever see their loved ones again. Every time Coop locked a new slave inside the pen with Grady, it brought back his own pain and the memory of the terrible day he’d been torn away from his mama. Grady knew exactly what lay ahead for all of these people, and the knowledge made him sick at heart. William had brought the fiddle to him, but Grady wouldn’t allow himself the comfort of playing it. His rage slowly swelled and grew as if it were a living thing, planted inside him. The knowledge that he would have to bear a lifetime of watching his fellow slaves being bought and sold filled him with despair. He couldn’t live this way. But Grady was a slave, and there was no hope of ever being set free from this life until the day he died.
When Massa Coop finally sailed from Richmond with his load of human cargo, Grady couldn’t look back at the city that had once been his home.
* * *
That afternoon, Massa Coop stood in the center of the hold beside Grady and William, surveying his cargo. “It seems like it’s getting harder and harder to find first-rate slaves these days,” Coop said. “We’ll have to fix up this bunch, William. Get Joe to help you so he learns how to do it.”
“Yes, Massa.”
“What’s he making us do now?” Grady asked after Coop had left.
William gestured to a middle-aged, gray-bearded man slumped against the bulkhead. “See him? He’s looking too old. Massa can’t get a good price if folks think his working days is about over. Get a bucket of water and some soap. His whiskers are gonna have to come off.”
Grady spent the next few hours, while on route to their first port, helping William shave beards and mustaches off all the men whose whiskers had turned gray. Then they rounded up all the men and women with gray threads in their hair so William could give them short haircuts. He showed Grady how to brush boot blacking through their hair, afterwards, to dye it black. Few of these slaves knew their real age, so William instructed them how to answer if a buyer asked how old they were, always making them as young as he dared. Helping Coop get rich through this deception made Grady heartsick.
“Get your fiddle tuned up and ready, Joe,” Coop ordered when they reached their first port. “You’re going to do some playing for me.”
Grady obeyed, taking the fiddle out of the case and tuning the strings for the first time in weeks. He wondered if Coop planned to hire him out for parties the way he’d hired out Beau in New Orleans, or if Grady would have to perform in Coop’s hotel room while the planters drank bourbon. He hoped he’d be hired out. Better to fiddle for white folks than help Coop sell slaves, even if Coop would be keeping all the money Grady earned. But instead of taking Grady to the hotel, Coop led him down to the slave pen and locked him inside with all the others.
“All right, play something lively,” Massa Coop ordered. “William, get these Negroes on their feet. I want them singing and dancing and looking happier than this by the time my customers arrive or you’ll all feel my wrath. Every one of you.”
Grady stood frozen in shock as he watched Coop stride away, unable to believe what he’d been asked to do.
“You heard him. Start playing,” William told Grady.
“I don’t want—”
“Did anyone ask if you want to?” William said fiercely. “Massa knows you can play, and by heaven you’ll play! He ain’t whipped anyone in a good long while, and he’s just itching for a reason to. I’m making sure it ain’t me—and you better make sure it ain’t you. Now, play!” William turned to the other slaves, gesturing angrily. “Rest of you gonna start dancing and looking happy, if you don’t want a beating.”
Grady wanted to smash the instrument against the wall. It had been his sole source of joy and pleasure, but Coop had suddenly turned it into a means of torture. He felt duped—conned into learning to fiddle and blinded to the true reason why. But now that Coop knew he could play, Grady didn’t dare refuse, whether he felt like it or not.
He lifted the instrument with shaking hands and played one of the first tunes Beau had ever taught him, hating the sound of the bow as it grated against the strings, hating the feel of the fiddle beneath his chin, hating what Coop was forcing him to do. This was what the slave before him must have done. Grady finally understood the grim knowledge he had read on William’s face as he’d practiced all those months.
All that day, Grady had no choice but to play song after song, repeating his small repertoire of tunes over and over while the slaves danced, until all of Massa’s customers had come and gone. By the time Grady finished the afternoon’s work, his entire body was shaking with rage. But even then his work wasn’t finished. He was forced to swallow his anger and accompany William to Coop’s hotel where their massa spent a long evening playing poker with three other gentlemen. It was very late, the stars shining in a midnight sky, when the poker game ended and Grady walked back to the slave pen with William for the night.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” Grady demanded, finally giving voice to his rage. “You knew he was gonna make me play for them—you knew! Why’d you let me practice and learn how if—”
“Shut up!” William gave Grady a shove, knocking him off the sidewalk into the street. “If Massa ever find out I warned you not to learn that fiddle, he’d whip us both. Don’t you understand that yet? Don’t you understand that one wrong move and our life ain’t worth a nickel? Just shut up and do whatever he says! Don’t matter what you want, and it don’t matter what I want.”
“I hate this life,” Grady mumbled.
“Well, nobody’s asking your opinion.”
The slave pen was several blocks from the hotel, but William seemed to know the way by heart, weaving through the maze of back lanes and warehouses near the docks. No one guarded them, and although they passed a few carriages and pedestrians, no one seemed to notice the pair of slaves walking freely through the streets.
“Ever think about running away?” Grady asked quietly. “Be easy enough to do, with you knowing your way around all these cities like you do.”
William glared at him, then looked away. “Ain’t worth taking a chance.”
Grady saw the slave pen ahead and all his pent-up frustration swelled inside him again. “I hate Massa Coop! I hate working for him this way! You and me are helping them filthy white men when we ought to be helping our own. Must be something I can do to make Massa sell me along with the rest.”
“Don’t be a fool,” William spat. “This is a good life compared to field work on a plantation. We’re getting plenty of food, wearing decent clothes, the work ain’t that hard. As long as we’re careful and nobody try to escape, we’ll be fine.”
“But I can’t stand this anymore! And now, making me play the fiddle …” His throat choked with rage. “How can you live this way?”
“Being sold is worse. Why do you think these folks is always so upset about being sold South? Talk to the ones that come off the plantations, sometime. Ask them what that life is like. Then you’ll know how good you have it.”
“This ain’t a good life. I don’t want to be working for Massa Coop no more. I know he’ll whip me if I try and run, bu
t maybe if I make him mad enough he’ll sell me afterwards.”
William halted and spun Grady around to face him. Fear filled his eyes. “Don’t you do that! Don’t you ever be doing that! He won’t sell you, boy. He spent all this time training you, and he won’t ever forgive you if you betray his trust and try and run off. He’ll whip you until you die!”
A chill ran through Grady, but he pushed his fear aside. “I don’t believe it. He paid good money for me, and I know how much Massa hates losing his money.”
“No, sir! You came cheap because you’re so young. You had no skills before Massa’s teaching you. He ain’t selling you, boy, so get it out of your head.”
“There must be some way to get free …” Grady mumbled.
William gripped his shoulders, shaking him. “You want to know what happened to the slave Massa have before you? Massa killed him! He whipped him to death because he try and run off!”
Grady battled a surge of nausea. It was easy to imagine Coop being carried away in such an act of violence, a grin of triumph on his face. But as shocking as the truth was, Grady’s stomach rolled with hopelessness, not fear.
“That’s why I don’t try and run,” William said. “I seen what Massa done to him. He made me stand right there and watch him die.” William shoved Grady forward again, and they walked the last dozen yards to the pen in silence. A guard dozed on a chair near the gate. William woke him up and asked to be locked inside.
“What was his name?” Grady asked as they settled down to sleep in the inky darkness.
“Huh?” William asked gruffly. “Whose name?”
“The slave Massa Coop had before me. The one who played the fiddle.” The man Coop had killed.
“Joe,” William said hoarsely. “His name was Joe … same as you.”
Chapter Seven
Charleston, South Carolina 1857
“I never rode on a boat before,” Kitty said with a nervous laugh. She felt giddy with excitement and more than a little scared as the steamer chugged down the Edisto River toward Charleston. All the familiar sights of Great Oak Plantation—the only home Kitty had ever known—disappeared as the ship rounded a bend. “The floor sure is wobbly, ain’t it, Missy Claire?”
“It’s called a deck, not a floor,” Missy replied. She seemed bored with their journey to Charleston and impatient to arrive. But, then, Missy had been to the city before; Kitty hadn’t.
Kitty leaned over the rail as far as she dared and peered down. The gray water looked angry and bottomless. The boat bobbed up and down, rocking like a runaway wagon. The motion made her stomach feel queasy. She closed her eyes for a moment until the feeling passed.
“I think I like riding in a carriage a lot better,” she said.
Missy made a face. “Don’t be such a baby. A steamboat will get us there much faster.” She strode away from Kitty as if she was tired of her and joined a group of white people standing at the stern.
Kitty decided to watch the scenery drift past along the shore and ignore the churning river. They passed through thick, green woods, buzzing with insects. Then the woods gave way to marshes
and creeks, where alligators drifted like fallen logs and herons and other waterfowl waded near the bank. Every now and then they passed a plantation, the rice and cotton crops newly harvested. As Kitty gradually grew used to the motion of the ship and the churning water, she began to relax, enjoying the chance to rest and do nothing. It was the first rest she’d had after the week-long flurry of packing.
Missy Claire and her family made the trip to their town house in Charleston twice a year—during the hottest summer days to enjoy the city’s sea breezes, and again in the winter when the city’s social season was in full swing. Kitty and the other house slaves had to pack everything the family would need into hatboxes, satchels, steamer trunks, and bureaus with handles that could be easily transported. Massa Goodman even had a clever traveling desk that folded all up with his important papers still inside, so he could carry it back and forth between Charleston and the plantation. Twice a year, Kitty had helped the other servants get ready, but she had always stayed behind at the plantation. This year, Kitty had finally been promoted from mammy’s helper to chambermaid, and she’d been allowed to make the journey for the first time.
“Your mama, Lucindy, was a chambermaid, too,” Mammy Bertha told Kitty. “Missus Goodman only wants pretty gals up in the Big House where white folks might see them. It’s lucky you’re real pretty, like your mama.”
“Yours is a very important job,” Missy’s mother had warned when Kitty’s training had begun, “so no more of your silliness. We’ll see if you can learn to behave properly and wait on a lady.”
That’s what Claire was, now—a lady. She’d had five birthday parties since Kitty had lived with her in the Big House, and at fifteen, Claire was old enough to dress like a grown-up in longsleeved dresses and hoop skirts, old enough to wear her pale brown hair pinned up on her head. Her figure had changed, too—to that of a woman. Kitty envied her, but Missy had pointed to Kitty’s tiny bosom one morning and said, “You’ll have a woman’s figure, too, in a year or two.”
One of Missus Goodman’s maids was teaching Kitty how to dress Missy’s hair. She had to be careful and not pull too hard when combing out the snarls or Missy would slap her. But Kitty loved colorful things, and she loved choosing the perfect hair ribbon or jeweled comb to make Missy look pretty.
She had been brushing Missy’s hair last night before bed when Missus Goodman came into the room to talk to Claire. “This is your first winter season as a young lady,” she’d said, “so it will be a very important one for you. You’re old enough to begin courting a husband, and that’s what you must think about during all the parties and dinners and balls and receptions you’ll attend. These are golden opportunities to be seen by the right sort of people and to make a favorable impression. Your future depends on it.”
Kitty had wanted to ask Missy Claire how she felt about being paraded all around Charleston like an item for sale, and how she felt about getting married and going off to live with a husband. They used to talk and giggle about all sorts of things back when Missy would let Kitty climb on her bed and sleep down by her feet. But Claire behaved very differently now that she was all grown up. It was as if she and Kitty had never laughed and played together at all or pretended that Kitty was a cat. She was Claire’s slave, not her friend. If she dawdled or made a mistake or did something to displease Missy, she would earn a smack and a reprimand, just like any other slave.
Missy Claire had grown too old for dolls and games, too sophisticated to have a slave play with her and entertain her. Kitty dusted and cleaned Missy’s room, emptied her slops, made her bed, mended and brushed and cared for her clothes. Meanwhile, Missy Claire studied lessons with a governess every day, reading and writing and studying history, arithmetic, and French. She was also learning the womanly arts of needlework and watercolors. Kitty loved to gaze at the beautiful strands of wool in Missy’s sewing basket, a rainbow of soft colors that Missy would stitch into pretty designs. But Kitty was never happier than on those days when she hauled Missy’s easel and watercolors outside for her and stood beside her to fan away the bugs while Missy tried to paint the Great Oak Tree or a river scene.
Missy Claire was not a very good artist. She couldn’t seem to judge shapes and sizes and colors the way that Kitty could, and she lacked the patience to practice until she got better. The first time Claire had tossed her paintbrush onto the ground in frustration, Kitty had scooped it right up.
“It ain’t so bad, Missy Claire. All you need to do is add a little more color here … and here… .” She had dabbed paint on to the picture as if it was the most natural thing in the world to clean up Missy’s pictures the way she cleaned up everything else for her. And from that very first time, Kitty had fallen in love with the feel of the paintbrush as it slid across the page, leaving a trail of color.
Missy let Kitty fix all her pictures, after th
at. And the tutor praised Missy’s work, never guessing that an ignorant slave had painted most of it. Kitty didn’t care. When she found a half-used folio of paper that Claire had thrown into the trash, she felt as though she’d discovered gold. “Can I have this old paper, Missy Claire?” she begged. “Please … please?”
“I don’t care,” she said with a shrug. Then, in a rare moment of kindness, she added, “Here … you may as well have a pencil, too.” Kitty carried the treasures all around with her, sketching late at night when her work was all done. She longed to sketch the scenes she was seeing from the riverboat, but her satchel of belongings had been stowed below with the rest of the luggage. She had to be content to soak it all in, hoping that she could remember and recapture the scenes someday.
A few hours later, dozens of fishing boats and heavier river traffic told Kitty that they were approaching the city. By the time they finally docked in Charleston, her heart pounded so wildly with excitement she was afraid it might burst. She wished she had a hundred eyes so she could look at a hundred things in a hundred directions at once. Everything seemed to move faster in Charleston, as if the days and nights had speeded up. Everything was louder, too, and there was more of everything—more ships, more houses, more people, and certainly more horses and carriages than Kitty had ever seen in her life. She followed Missy off the ship and down the pier, gazing all around, trying to take it all in.
“Stop dawdling,” Claire ordered, “or we’ll leave you behind.”
“Sorry, Missy Claire.” But she couldn’t help gawking. There was so much to see in Charleston.
A carriage arrived to meet them, and Missy Claire and her family climbed onboard. Massa Goodman had hired a wagon to transport their luggage, and Kitty watched as slave porters unloaded all their goods from the ship, hauling the cargo down the pier on their backs. She and the dozen other servants who had come from the plantation rode on the wagon with the luggage, sitting on top of it as they bumped down the lumpy cobblestones. So many carriages and horses jammed the streets that Kitty wondered how they would ever make any progress. She savored her first impressions of Charleston, inhaling the scent of tobacco and horses and a bakery.