Dark Shadows

by Jana Petken

  “Go on.” Jacob kissed her forehead.

  “The man slapped me and tried to get his thing inside me. I couldn’t let him do it. God help me, but I couldn’t! I hit him with a candlestick. I wanted to get him off me. The candle set fire to the bed, and he was still on top of me, so I smashed his head with it again and again and again! I was so scared – I didn’t mean to kill him – and then the fire grew so quickly. My gown was on fire, so I ripped it off and threw it at the curtains. At first, I wanted to die in the fire, because I knew that if I was found, she would cut my throat. Then I remembered Julia. I left that man on the bed. I set fire to the hallway. Julia found me and dragged me to another room, and you found us. So now you know. I killed a man.”

  Her tears exploded once again. This time they were even more heart wrenching. She had determined to keep this to herself until the day she died. She had thought she could bury it, along with everything else that had happened. But the floodgates had opened, and she was drowning in pent-up sorrow and regret.

  Mercy expected Jacob to push her away. She’d thought she would see hatred. Instead, she lifted her tear-stained eyes and saw love – the same love that had been present before she’d admitted to murder.

  “Jacob. Say something,” she sobbed after a long silence.

  He wiped her tears and kissed both her eyes. “Hush, Mercy. Please don’t cry anymore. It’s all right – everything is going to be all right. You were a prisoner. You were being forced and threatened. You had every right to defend yourself. The man with you probably didn’t know he was forcing you – or maybe he did. Either way, he had no right to hit you or to force you to do what he wanted in the face of your objections. He should have left and taken his anger out on that wicked du Pont woman.”

  “But I took his life – I took a life.” Mercy still sobbed.

  “Yes, you did, and you will have to live the rest of your life knowing that. But I need you to promise me that you’ll forgive yourself. You’re not a murderess. You were a victim. You were protecting your body. I doubt you were even in your right mind after all you’d been through.” He kissed her again.

  “And as for the fire – it was an accident, to begin with. You made it spread, and though you might not believe this now, by doing that, you saved your life and the lives of other innocent girls held with you. They’re all free now. No one died, apart from the man who would have raped you and beaten you. Julia went home because of you … and all those other women did too.”

  “But I could have killed everyone—”

  “But you didn’t,” he reminded her.

  Mercy was still sobbing, and every now and again, she gulped for air. Her mind was digesting his words. He didn’t blame her or hate her, and he was still holding her. She felt as though a pressing weight had been alleviated. Guilt would remain with her. She would never shed it, but she could now learn to live with it and pray for the man she’d killed. She would say sorry to him every day for the rest of her life. And it was true that she had set the other women free. Madame du Pont would never be able to kill or hurt another girl. The madam was ruined.

  “Jacob, why did you go to such a place?” Mercy found herself asking without prior thought.

  Jacob played with her hair. Every now and then, he wiped one of her errant teardrops. He said candidly, “Whorehouses have been around since the beginning of time. Prostitution is probably the oldest employment that exists. Women have always followed armies into battle and were available to soldiers for money at the end of a day’s fighting. The greatest civilisations, the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, paid for sex, and women were not ashamed of what they were. But I swear to you, had I known the truth about Madame du Pont, I would have reported her to the highest authority. I would never, never take a woman without her consent. Mercy, in all the years I’ve been going there, not once did I see sadness in a woman’s eyes – until you. Why did you not speak out?”

  “I watched her slice a young girl’s throat open!” Mercy shouted now. “We were all so afraid – I was so scared.”

  Jacob crushed her to him. He felt her pain. Her tears were contagious, and he felt his own eyes well up. They would never speak of this again. He would help her forget. But if he ever crossed paths with du Pont, he would kill her.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Virginia, December 1860

  Mercy and Belle had been on the road for a little under three hours, travelling in a leather-seated carriage with copious amounts of blankets flung over them to keep the bulk of the freezing still air from penetrating their skin and bones. They were accompanied by four outriders: two crewmen from the ship and two of Jacob’s overseers from Stone Plantation.

  After leaving the Norfolk Port area, they drove down Main Street to a small harbour and dock. There, the party boarded a packet boat, which ferried them across the Elizabeth River, docking in Portsmouth’s North Landing.

  Afterwards, they had encountered a few shallow rivers, fords, and streams, but to the west of Portsmouth lay a drier landscape. The endless fields were mostly brown, layered with frost, yet every now and again large patches of green coloured the magnificent landscape that met Mercy’s eyes.

  She asked Belle about the dense forests, the likes of which she’d never seen. She tried to remember the strange names of the trees: dogwood, beech, and yellowwood. The trees were bare of leaves for the most part, but even so, to Mercy’s London eyes, they were magnificent and breathtakingly beautiful.

  Mercy’s mouth had been open almost the entire way. Belle had joked that had it been summer, she’d have caught and swallowed a hundred flies by now. But Mercy didn’t care how she looked. She was mesmerised with the naturally rugged land and endless sky.

  She listened to the menagerie of sounds around her, enhanced by the stillness. The calls of invisible wildlife and birds came from within the deep thickets and swamps. The small rises in the dirt track yielded yet more surprises when the carriage mounted their small peaks.

  At times, the landscape changed completely and was flat, organised, and bordered by white picket fences, which looked dull against the white sky. Open fields were behind the picket fences and were manned by black men and women, who were already beginning to furrow the land under the watchful eyes of white overseers.

  Mercy’s deep inhalations also amused Belle, but Mercy didn’t care about that either. For the first time in her life, she told Belle, she was breathing in sweet country air, filling her nostrils and lungs with an array of delicate, flowery perfumes that she had never before experienced. Belle laughed and told her there were no flowers in mid-December, but Mercy wasn’t convinced. She smelled the sweetest of aromas. These perfumes brought to mind her grandmother’s story about her father, Thomas, and his dream to live in rural England’s pure air. She was fulfilling that dream for him, and she didn’t care how stupid she seemed to, Belle.

  Mercy looked across at Belle now and saw that she was fast asleep. She took another blanket and covered her friend right up to the chin. Then Mercy continued to take in the breathtaking scenery.

  She shivered now, alone with her thoughts. She wasn’t particularly cold. The tremors spreading up and down her spine were mainly due to the shock and horror she’d tried to hide from Belle earlier. She’d seen unimaginable poverty on her own streets in South-East London. Young children and adults dying from hunger and disease was an everyday occurrence, and she’d learned to harden her heart and dim her sorrow. But she would never forget the cruelty that had met her eyes not five minutes after landing in this beautiful new world.

  Belle had seemingly chosen to completely ignore the ebony men and women who were paraded in lines down the Norfolk jetties and into the town. But Mercy had been traumatised and so deeply saddened at the sight of them that she wondered now if she would ever be able to accept this new culture where white people found it entirely normal to treat black-skinned persons like animals.

  She first noticed the shackles that imprisoned this race. They were bound at the a
nkles, wrists, waists, and necks. The irons on their half-dressed bodies dug into their skin, leaving bloodied streams. The shackles looked heavy and cumbersome, like thick bracelets, attached to inch-wide chains that jangled loudly with each step taken. Some of the wretched creatures with iron necklaces suffered deep dents around the neck, which were crusted and infected, making the dried blood pale pink in colour. The men and women were hunched over, weighted down, and more miserable looking than any stray cat or dog she’d ever seen on Southwark’s streets.

  She pitied the women who were without most of their clothing, leaving some of them bare-breasted and devoid of any dignity. They reminded her of her own humiliation on that first day in Liverpool, when Madame du Pont had displayed her insatiable need to humiliate and abuse naked young bodies. It had been days since Mercy had thought about that mad, evil woman. She refused to allow her into her thoughts now, so she imagined her dead.

  Mercy had kept her tongue still for the most part, knowing that this was Virginia’s culture and tradition. She hated the very idea of enslaving a man, woman, or child, but Jacob had forewarned her that she would have to accept it. Here in the New World, things were very, very different.

  Her obsession with slavery had begun one night when she’d listened to a conversation between Jacob and Hendry. They had decided that on arrival, Mercy and Belle would head straight to Stone Plantation, whilst the men would remain in Norfolk for four days, first to unload the ship, and then to purchase four new house slaves.

  Later that night, she lay in bed, wrapped in Jacob’s arms, and asked him why he needed to buy Negros. She remembered the conversation well, every single word, and was still appalled and sadly disappointed at Jacob’s reasoning and politics.

  “Slaves are an integral part of life in the South,” he told her. “Without them, there would be no cotton, peanuts, or tobacco grown. These are the wheels that turn the great Southern economy and ensure highly profitable export businesses.”

  Mercy had argued that it still didn’t give him or anyone else the right to buy and sell a person just like her and just like him, apart from skin colour, no matter what race or circumstances. She was met with a fierce and heated defence.

  “Mercy, niggers are not like us,” Jacob began, patient as always. “Their brains don’t function in the same way white folks’ do, and they have very little intelligence. They’re more than likely just one step up from apes on the evolutionary chain. They wouldn’t understand or appreciate what freedom is all about. Their minds wouldn’t be able to function without their masters’ direction. And to be fair, all we’ve done in the last two hundred years is take them from the African jungles, where, no doubt, they spent all day dangling from trees and eating each other over open fires. We freed them from that life. It’s as simple as that.”

  Mercy parried, “But maybe they are clever. If given the chance, maybe they could read and write better than I. How do you know what’s inside their brains if you don’t ask or test them?”

  “They know how to sing and dance. They can cook too, and very well, but it took our great-great-grandmothers to teach them. They make babies the same way we do, but that’s about it,” he said.

  Mercy grew angry at his attitude and refused to check herself. “Jacob, you look down your nose at them the way our vulgar rich look down their snotty bleedin’ noses at us commoners in England. I don’t like hearing you talk like this. You’re kind and gentle, not cruel and – and all uppity like a dandy.”

  Jacob laughed and then kissed her. “Look, I know this is all going to be new to you, but we’re not monsters. I don’t whip my slaves unless they run away, and then I have to make an example of them. I even allow them to marry, and that’s rare where I live. That’s very rare, Mercy. I’ve come to recognise that they do have feelings, just like us. But if they decide to marry, they have to be damn sure there’s not a whole bunch of piccaninnies running around their feet.”

  “Piccaninnies?”

  “Children, young ’uns. We can’t take care of large nigger families, so it’s up to them to control their urges.”

  “Well, that’s not fair, is it? No one tells you to control your urges! And what happens if they do have children?”

  “Why, I look after them, of course. Some are sold when they’re older. It’s evolution mostly. The old die, and younger generations take over. We don’t drown them at birth.” He laughed at her horrified expression. “Mercy, I own my slaves. I paid good money for them. But it doesn’t mean I’m a cruel monster. They are my labour force. They eat for free and sleep under a roof for free. Aren’t your workhouses just as bad?”

  Workhouses had been Mercy’s worst nightmare growing up. She’d been threatened repeatedly that she’d end up in one if she didn’t obey her grandfathers’ strict house rules. She frowned. What would her grandparents be thinking right now? she wondered.

  Jacob pulled her closer to him. She kissed his bare chest and listened to his breathing. Then he spoke again. “I’m worried about all the talk that’s going on, and you need to know why, seeing as how you’re going to be a Southern lady. Slavery may seem cruel in your eyes, but without slaves the South would be destroyed. I didn’t like what I was hearing before I left for England. The great industrial North believes in its wisdom that slavery should and will be killed off in the very near future, but that’s wrong.

  “We need to expand slavery into neighbouring states to keep our agricultural industries alive. If we don’t, we’ll lay waste to land that’s been overused. Lincoln and his Republicans in Washington believe we should be freezing out the slave trade entirely. We can’t allow that to happen.

  “We’ll fight to keep our ways, if we have to. The Northern politicians with their fine factories and machinery plants think they have the God-given right to tell us what to do. They insult our states’ rights and overtax us. They’re throwing mud in our faces because without our niggers, our lands would be nothing but dirt.”

  Mercy wanted to argue but unfortunately didn’t have a clue about what her argument should be, apart from her objection to the whole barbaric idea of slavery. She therefore decided to listen and keep her mouth shut.

  Jacob had gotten out of bed and had poured her some wine. Sadness had crossed his face, followed by anger. She had opened a wound. She’d offered an apology for bringing up a subject she knew nothing about. He’d kissed her and had then told her a story that would live with her forever.

  “Mercy, thirty years ago, there were about twenty thousand nigger slaves in Virginia. You’re calling them people, but back then a few of them terrified and massacred around sixty of our Virginia neighbours. They were like wild African animals, not people at all.

  “Nat Turner was the name of the slave who started the revolt. He came from a plantation near Jerusalem, in Southampton County, not too far from Stone Plantation. According to my father, there were around sixteen thousand people living in the county at that time, and only six thousand were white folks. We had to keep the niggers on a tight leash cos they heavily outnumbered us – you understand that, right?”

  Mercy nodded. “What happened?”

  “Nat Turner was the scourge of the earth, a murdering bastard. He was a carpenter. He learned to read and write, which was illegal to begin with. He wasn’t whipped and didn’t work in the fields. In fact, he had an easy life, yet his animalistic traits told him that he was supposed to be killing white folks, as many as he could, regardless of age and sex.

  “Through reading the Bible, Turner got it into his head that he’d received a calling from God, and that it was his duty to free the slaves. My father was always convinced that Turner had planned his attacks months before they took place. That was just conjecture at the time and has turned into nothing but myth now. What I do know is that he started his killing spree at a small farm near Cabin Pond. It belonged to the Travis family, who were hard-working and never did harm to a living soul.”

  “Why did he begin there? What made this Nat Turner want to
kill these people?” Mercy asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think he cared who he killed, as long as they were white. The only orders he gave to his followers were to kill as many white folk in the county as possible. I suppose Travis Farm was as good a place as any to start. Turner got there with his nigger friends, and he was the one to climb in the window on the second floor. It was in the dead of night, and the house was asleep. He and his men killed Mr and Mrs Travis with axes and bashed their newborn son’s tiny body against the fireplace.”

  Mercy covered her mouth and mumbled, “Oh my God, that’s terrible.”

  “It was. Then they moved on to killing another twenty or so whites in six other farms. Turner killed his nine-year-old owner who’d inherited him and who’d treated him decently. Mercy, treating them decently is what I try to do, but you have to know that the more you give them, the more they take advantage of your kindness.”

  “What happened to Turner? Did he get caught?” Mercy asked, imagining the horror.

  “He did, but not before he killed some more people and forced other slaves to join him. Those that didn’t want to kill their masters ran into the woods to hide from the violence.

  “After Travis Farm and a few others had been ransacked of horses and guns, Turner reached the home of Thomas Barrow. He was a good friend to my granddaddy Hendry. My father remembered seeing Barrow’s dead body and my granddaddy crying like a baby. Barrow was hacked to death, but he was a good soldier right to the end and managed to hold the niggers at bay until his wife escaped to safety.

  “During that same day, Turner marched his men on to Jerusalem, the county seat. They turned off onto Barrow’s road – Captain Barrow built that road with his bare hands for his neighbours’ benefit. Anyway, Turner’s men got to Levi Waller’s house. He ran a small school and Turner, that bastard nigger, killed eleven whites there, most of them children.

  “By the time the niggers had reached the intersection of Barrow Road, most of the white folks had gathered to stop him, my grandfather and father included. There were a few shots fired, but not many were injured.