The Long Song

by Andrea Levy

  But Ezra said Kitty was felled, like someone chopped the back of her knees. That she landed her backside upon the ground so hard that every chicken around them took to flight. While Tilly—whose furious running from hut to hut saw that the words ‘massa dead’ were spread so far and away that slaves in London Town were soon chatting it—said Kitty started to fret, ‘Me pickney, me pickney,’ as soon as she heard that a quarrel was raging within the mill yard over whether to hide these ‘badwind’ strangers or tell bakkra of them.

  But upon one thing these three did agree; when Kitty—smelling renk as a dung hill in the sun—left them to find July that day, she walked out with such singular purpose and so little care that she trod her bare foot upon the fire, yet was insensible to the burn of it.

  Cornet Jump’s house was along the route Kitty strode that evening and he was convinced that it was Kitty’s passing footfall that had shaken his house to trembling. But his wife, Peggy, swore that the rumbling of the earth that had so rocked their feeble dwelling that night was started as the militia began advancing upon them. It was those white men upon horseback charging upon the negro village—ten, twenty, thirty—how many, she did not know. But the throb of those galloping horses tipped her jug of milk from off the table to shatter the pot upon the dirt floor.

  It was then that Bessy burst in upon them screaming, ‘Run, run, Miss Peggy. White man come. Bakkra gon’ mash us!’

  Peggy insisted that Bessy flew through the door of their hut with such force that it broke it back to sticks. She said the useless door was under her foot when Bessy had told her that the militia were seeking those two blow-in strangers, for they had killed the massa. Peggy remembers then rushing over the ruins of that door to grab Kitty from going to the mill yard—to turn her and get her to flee to the cane pieces with her. But Miss Kitty did shake her off so she might carry on her march to the mill.

  Yet Cornet declared that his hut door was ruined when the driver, Mason Jackson, kicked it down while blowing the conch for everyone to gather in the yard; for that driver had wanted to bust down his door from first Cornet had dared to put a lock upon it.

  Like a boy swirling a birch within a red ant’s nest, the negro village soon erupted into furious motion. According to Giles Millar, the militia rode in amongst them with great speed. That tempest of white men galloping in upon horses besieged the dirt lanes. Flailing with whips, branches, cutlasses, they slashed from side to side, striking at anyone—man, woman, child or beast—caught fleeing within their sweep. The hooves of their rampaging horses collapsed the mud-and-stick walls of homes easy as a bite taken from a dry biscuit.

  After a rattle and a crash, Mary Ellis found herself no longer hiding under the corner shelf in her hut, but helplessly choking upon debris and staring upon the moon. Everyone, Mary said, caught with no shelter to shield them, screamed on to the lanes for escape. They all ran frantic alongside the squealing hogs, flapping chickens and crazed dogs.

  A fire with a large pot of scalding water was overturned by a bucking goat on to two naked children. Crying out for their mama, they slipped within the boiling liquid and were danced upon by the harried goat. And an old woman, cowering with her arms over her head, was slashed with a sword; her severed hand flew off to land, open palmed, before her.

  The fires were started, so said James Richards, by a young, hatless, white man, who rode in holding a blazing, tar-tipped torch high-high. He hurled this firestick on to the thatch of James’s kitchen. Whoosh! The kitchen and house were gone. Those flames then jumped to raze all the huts that lay within their greedy lick.

  Dublin Hilton agreed that the rider was white and hatless, but he insisted that this bakkra used the flame from the torch to burn several houses in one galloping sweep—like this white man was lighting a row of stubble upon a cane piece.

  Miss Kitty? Dublin Hilton could not remember seeing Kitty, but James Richards could. He recalls her pulling a white man from his horse; the bakkra had raised his whip to strike her, but she grabbed the thrashing hide, wheeled him in by it, then toppled him on to the ground. Not so, said Elizabeth Millar, for all was heat and smoke and black as the houses burned. Who could know Miss Kitty in that confusion? And a white man flung from his horse by a nigger? What a tall-tall telling—all would have been hanged for it.

  Wilfred Park said he found Miss Kitty walking at the edge of the village, toward the mill yard, within a river of creatures; lizards, bullfrogs, beetles, spiders, cicadas, cockroaches, scorpions, snakes, snails, all seethed around her feet. Wilfred, seeing this exodus of bug-a-bugs free to creep from their hide-holes to scurry, run, hop, slide and slither away with her, asked Kitty if they were all free now—like Mr Bushell the missionary had told? But then a big stick hit him so hard upon his head that everything went black before Miss Kitty did answer him.

  But Wilfred was of simple mind. According to Wilfred’s neighbour, Fanny, it was not a stick that hit him, he was struck by a galloping horse. Fanny had to drag the stunned Wilfred into the shit hole to hide there while two other horses did trample over the top of them. The itch-itching of the wriggly life within the stinking pit soon had Wilfred awake. But Fanny had seen Kitty running to the mill yard in amongst the bug-a-bugs that were fleeing from the singe of flames and the burn of smoke, just as Wilfred had said. Kitty was running with her dampened skirt held up about her mouth, coughing and choking and spitting and gulping at the air, but determined upon her course.

  Who sighted Kitty next? Samuel Lewis. He saw Kitty creeping amongst the legs of the white men’s horses that were tethered in the works yard. Samuel had been seized while carrying a lighted torch (which he swore he was using to catch crayfish upon the river), and accused of setting light to the trash house. The young militia man who had tied him up, had warned him not to move or his head would be cut off. So Samuel was sitting with his back against the works wall very still indeed when he saw Kitty.

  At that time not many negroes were penned there (unlike the confusion that was to follow within that yard), according to Anne Roberts and Betsy, who were roped together for throwing stones. The stocks were not even open, for the doctor had the key. And the militia-men, afraid at being alone with flimsy-tied niggers, were yelling, ‘Someone find the fucking doctor. Where is the fucking doctor?’ when the blast of gunshot went off.

  And that is when they first saw Kitty—for suddenly she stood up from within the legs of the horses, bold as Nanny Maroon. Those two jumpy militia pointed their shaking pistols at her fleeing back, but so intent was Kitty to get to the mill yard that she was not feared.

  ‘Miss Kitty? She fly, oh she fly. Her feet no longer upon God’s earth; me see her soar t’rough the air. Give me the book so me can place me hand upon it. Me tell you, she fly!’ so said Miss Sarah.

  Sarah was creeping from the mill to the works with the purpose of untying Anne and Betsy. But then she saw Tam Dewar, the overseer, riding in upon the mill yard. The strangers, ‘deh nasty girl and deh fenky-fenky man’, were being held there by the driver, who ran off as soon as he saw Dewar approach.

  The driver, Mason Jackson, later swore that he did not run away. He knew Dewar’s horse, he declared, for it had a white patch upon its nose that glowed within moonlight. He watched as Tam Dewar, using his horse to coop them, backed those two strangers up against the stone wall of the mill. The girl, still holding up the limp man, could not move beyond the beast’s tramping hooves. She was caught. Then, the driver declared, he saw no more as he walked away.

  But Miss Nancy, who was secreted within a nearby bush, said the girl was pleading, pleading, pleading with Tam Dewar, ‘Him no kill massa, him no kill massa!’ over and over she said it. At once imploring, then crying, then shouting, then jumping this way, then skipping that way, before falling once more to begging.

  Benjamin Brown—a cattle-man watching this torment from within the mill—knew that the young girl’s pleas would be no more troubling to that dog-driver overseer than the screech of a bat. Once Tam Dewar had them ens
nared, he dismounted, and seized the man from her in one move. And then the overseer, holding the negro-man up before him like some stinking rag, started to shake him fierce, as if all the dirt of the world resided within this black-man’s bones. And he shouted upon him, ‘Don’t look at me, nigger. Don’t look at me!’

  The stranger-man put up no fight, according to Sarah, except to continue to fix his eyes upon Dewar. But the girl—oh, she did spit and claw and thump her fists upon the overseer. Until, with one blow from a hammer fist, Dewar whacked her so hard within the face that she fell to the ground. Then the overseer pointed his pistol at the man’s head and . . . boom! Sarah said that the negro’s face simply exploded—that it burst in fragments on to the air and soon, like a bloody rain, started to gently pitter-patter down.

  Benjamin was sick. Nancy just ran and ran and ran.

  The overseer tossed the limp remains of this negro aside, like he was a piece of spent cane just stripped through the mill. The girl, bloodstained as a butchered hog, grabbed Dewar around his ankles to plead for her salvation. He seized her by a fistful of her hair to hold her steady as he rearmed his pistol. ‘No, massa, no, massa, mercy, massa, mercy,’ she struggled savagely. Some defiant spirit within her fought to keep her life. The overseer could hardly hold her. ‘Shut up, you dead fucking nigger, shut up.’ It was as the overseer raised his hand to strike her with his pistol that Kitty flew.

  ‘She was ’pon deh overseer like breath of wind!’ Sarah said. But Sarah was ignorant as to why Kitty did imperil herself for this young girl. For she believed this girl to be just some lordly house slave who had never once felt the sun brand her back or the earth callous her hands hard as pig’s foot. She did not know that she was Kitty’s taken daughter.

  But Benjamin did. And what he also knew was . . . ‘July was overseer Dewar’s pickney. Many times him bent Miss Kitty over—many, many times when him first come upon Amity.’ Benjamin had worked with Kitty when the baby July was strapped to her. On the second gang he had cleared the spent canes with Kitty, and sucked his teeth at the pickney-howl that came ceaseless from Kitty’s back. He knew July from her scream—he swore it. ‘If me know it, then her mama, Miss Kitty, mus’ hear it in her pickney too. So her did run to her—her did run!’

  What happened next has been told in so many ways by so many people—some who were not even in the parish at the time, some who were not even born into the world yet—that it is hard for your storyteller to know which version to recount. That Kitty grabbed Tam Dewar before he could strike July once more, is one thing that is certain. That she was upon him with such force that he, startled, dropped July from his grasp, is also true. That Kitty, with anxious urgency, commanded July to run—to the cane piece, to the woods, anywhere—but run! And that July, upon seeing her lost mama again, stood so aghast that, apart from her mouth slowly gaping, all her movement ceased. Kitty had to stamp her foot to wake her daughter to start her flight, she had to shoo her—once, twice and yell out, ‘Run, July, run now!’ All this is certain truth.

  But did Kitty, in the fierce struggle that commenced with Tam Dewar, hack her machete upon his ankles like he was a piece of cane to be cut? Did she grab his neck, swing him in the air, then land him back down upon the ground with a thump? Did she bash his head upon a stone until it split like a ripe coconut? Did she twist his arms up his back until she felt them snap? Did she kick him? Did she jump upon him? Reader, we will never know, for none saw. Where once all could see, despite the confusion of the moonlight and the smoke, suddenly no one did have recall. Not one soul saw Kitty assail Tam Dewar. Not one.

  All that is known is that Tam Dewar was found, not yet dead, but spread upon the ground of the mill yard with a broken collarbone, a fracture in his skull, two broken ankles, two broken arms and his ribs mash up. Wounds he would die from two days later—fitting, spewing and boiling hotter than bubbling cane liquor.

  And the militia-man who captured Kitty—bound, gagged and secured her that day—said the slave was sitting motionless within the yard, a little way from the lifeless corpse of a freeman negro, but next to the mangled body of the overseer of Amity. And that when she was seized, that devil nigger had a grin upon her face.

  CHAPTER 15

  KITTY WAS BEARING A broad halter of blackest iron about her neck the next time July saw her mama. The chains that ran down from that collar bound her mama’s wrists so strained that her hands were forced into a devout pose. Her mama’s wounded face was bulged to the size of breadfruit—her blackened eyes swollen and closed, her cheeks puffed up with bruising, her bottom lip split and her tongue so bloated that her mouth could not close about it. The leg irons that chained her ankles hobbled her to limp and shuffle as she was compelled toward the gibbet erected within the market square.

  Although favouring more beast than woman, Kitty’s beaten face still managed to carry a look of puzzlement. For she did not realise that the trial for her crime against Tam Dewar had already been heard and judged. She believed that she had merely walked through the courtroom. That the brief glimpse of white people she saw—sitting in rows, fanning themselves in the courthouse heat and yelling, ‘Devil, devil!’ upon her—was just the beginning of the ordeal. Yet her chains were tugged to leave the room before any solemn pronouncements demanded that she struggle to lift her head.

  So when she was once more outside the courthouse building she asked of the jailer who was driving her along, ‘What you do with me?’

  The white man pulled on her hair to wrench up her head so she could see the three stiffened corpses swinging upon the gibbet before her. ‘You want freedom, don’t you?’ he said. ‘This is the sort of freedom we’ll give you, every last devil of you. Sabbie dat, murdering nigger?’

  Bacchaus, the dull-eyed negro hangman, leaned a ladder up against the gallows, then wearily climbed its wooden struts to cut down those who had finished their turn. The three dangling human fruits of that gibbet fell on to the heap of rotting bodies left below. So many had been hanged that day that the pile was interfering with the drop. But it would be evening before the workhouse negroes were shuffled in to remove the corpses of those once hopeful ‘fight-for-free’ negroes that now festered in a pile of bared teeth and broken limbs beneath those fatal beams.

  The hangman tested the flap upon the scaffold—opening the lumbering gate to knock aside any lying below that hindered its workings—before beckoning the jailor to bring Kitty along. As the iron collar about Kitty’s neck was removed she swung her head around in a blessed freedom, before the rope noose that replaced it once more pinned her firm. And then she stood waiting. For this gibbet would accommodate three and could not be dropped until its full complement was trussed there.

  Once all in town had gathered with eagerness to witness the punishments of the slaves who had troubled not only white people with their fire and fuss, but also the King of England in that Baptist War. Now those house slaves and those field negroes and those mongers that laboured within the market, could not be bothered to cease their haggling to worry for the souls of those that were led from the courtroom. Nor could white people be persuaded to stand in the heat to watch niggers being lashed five hundred times or hung by the neck from the gallows. For these punishments had gone on for so long—day upon day, one after the other, after the other—that all in the town, black, coloured and white, had grown weary of them.

  ‘You have been found guilty of the worst crimes that can be perpetrated, and must be hanged by the neck until dead.’ The two men who had just heard those words spoken to them in the courtroom were placed either side of Kitty upon the gibbet. One was being hanged for burning down his overseer’s house to a pail-full of ashes. While the other was, alas, losing his life for merely staring open-mouthed, upon the flames.

  When the flap finally dropped on that straining scaffold July, hidden within a corner of the square, watched as Kitty, kicking and convulsing at the end of her rope, elbowed and banged into the two men that dangled lifeless as butchered meat beside h
er. Her mama struggled. Her mama choked. Until, at last stilled, her mama hung small and black as a ripened pod upon a tree.

  PART 3

  CHAPTER 16

  THE COFFIN WAS BORNE through Falmouth, high upon the shoulders of six men. July and Molly walked within this procession in the company of black negroes and fair-faced coloureds—the ragged, the coarsened, the garish, the dressy, the gaudy, the haggard, the tattered and the careworn of the parish. This motley crowd were led in muffled solemnity by a white Baptist minister and his family. At the chapel yard all came to a stop as the minister raised his pointed finger to the moon, then let out a grave and strident cry of, ‘The hour is at hand. The monster is dying.’

  Some in this congregation fell upon their knees, others mumbled prayers on halting breath, or rocked within the rhythm of a softly sung hymn. Until suddenly, the minister raising both arms heavenward shouted, ‘The monster is dead. The negro is free!’

  Although the hour was midnight, the elation that rose from all glowed like a sunrise to light this splendid occasion. As the coffin with the words, ‘Colonial slavery died July 31, 1838, aged 276 years’, was lowered into the ground, a joyous breeze blew. It was whipped up from the gasps of cheering that erupted unbounded. When the handcuffs, chains and iron collars were thrown into that long-awaited grave to clatter on top of slavery’s ruin, the earth did tremor. For at that moment every slave upon this island did shake off the burden of their bondage as one.

  As the minister bid that the thanks to almighty God for this deliverance be raised louder than the trumpets of Jericho, and that the ‘hoorah’ for the new Queen of England who had freed them, should shake the buildings in London Town, Molly did do the strangest thing; she threw her arms about July and hugged her fiercely. And then . . .