“Such a ruckus down theah, they don’ know who’s in the place an’ who ain’t!” says she. “So lean to an’ hit that fry, Mistuh Popplewell! Got to keep that fine frame o’yours fed, I reckon – come heah, honey, ’n let me nuzzle yuh!” She engulfed me lingeringly. “Say, tho’, yo’ man Smith, or Brown, whatsisname, got hisself treed, but good, they sayin’. Militia comin’ f’m Charles Town, an’ sojers, an’ ev’yone scared to pieces that the nigguhs’ll cut loose an’ massacree the white folks, an’ raise cain all aroun’! Heah, try this corn bread, dahlin’, ’tis succulent … an’ they talkin’ real wild – say they goin’ burn this Brown feller alive when they cotch him!” She shuddered between gargantuan mouthfuls. “Ah declare he mus’ be crazy! Freein’ the nigguhs, whoevah heard the like! Anyway, jus’ so long’s they don’t burn you up, big boy … mo’ coffee?”
She poured, and no Belgravia mama ever did it more elegantly, tipping in the precise amount of cream without a drip, and as I considered her, noting the delicacy with which those enormous fingers handled cups and spoons, the erect posture on the edge of her chair, the assured tilt of the splendid Zulu figurehead with the flaming red curls spilling over her shoulders, I found myself thinking back to my conversation with Joe on the Night Flyer.
“You don’t approve of abolitionists, then?”
“Dam’ right Ah don’t! Runnin’ off black trash fieldhan’s an’ low-life nigguhs – to freedom? Think that makes ’em free? They goin’ to be slaves a long time yet, whether they got ’mancipation papers or not.” She tossed her head. “Yo’ Men’ Smith – oh, sho’, Brown – mus’ be a fool to think he can free ’em. No white man can … on’y us nigguhs … in heah.” She tapped her brow. “Like Ah did, long time ago.”
“How was that, Hannah?”
“Why, you know how!” She slapped my hand, chuckling. “Soon’s Ah saw a white man look at me, ten yeahs back, when Ah’s jes’ sixteen – not as big’s Ah is now, but well-fleshed, y’know, an’ when they saw me shakin’ as Ah went by …” She stood up and took a few steps, swaying with ponderous grace and rolling her eyes. “… Ah sez to maself, ‘Hannah gal, you totin’ yo’ fortune aroun’ right heah, an’ don’ make no matter whether you black or white or sky-blue pink, you jes’ shake that meat an’ you nevah go hungry’.” More soberly, she added: “Sho’, Ah’s a gal – but ev’y nigguh – ev’ybody – got sumpn to take to market, if they got the spunk an’ gumption to make the most o’ theyselves. You is whut you think you is – an’ that’s why Ah’m a lady.”
She had determined to catch a wealthy husband, “but Ah went mad for this coloured gamblin’ man in ’Frisco, an’ wuz wed an’ widowed inside a month. Yeah, Billy shot two fellers in a faro school – one wuz a Chink, so didn’t signify, but t’other wuz white an’ a blacksmith, mighty valuable man, so Billy got hung, lef me nothin’ but his watch and twen’y-two dollahs. Then Ah married Homer, lot older’n me, mulatter gen’leman he wuz, lent money to the coloured folks, nice l’il business, but he up an’ died on me in bed.” Happy Homer, thinks I, but no wonder. “He lef me a tol’able sum, but li’l Hannah see the on’y real money is white money, so Ah set me to cotch some.”
She sipped at her cup complacently. “Tuk time, an’ a heap o’ patience, till Ah snagged Popplewell, owns shares in half the canals in Illinois, bachelor gen’leman, ’gaged me as housekeeper. I see right away he was crazy fo’ black meat, wanted me to be his fancy woman, but no suh, Ah sez, you wan’ to bed, you got to wed. ‘Ah cain’t marry a nigra!’ he hollers. ‘Then you can go without,’ Ah says.” She whooped with mirth, dealing me a playful slap that almost broke my leg.
“My lan’, how he went on, a-pleadin’ an’ entreatin’ – an’ Ah jes’ kept a-shakin’ till he wuz fit to boil ovah! ‘You mus’ be mine!’ cries he, nigh weepin’. So Ah says, ‘Why, whenevah you please, Mistuh Popplewell, suh – but you got to bid fo’ my han’ afore you gits the rest o’ me.’ So he did, las’ week, an’ we wuz wed in Pittsbu’gh, reg’lar Piskypalian … an’ he still ain’t had the rest o’ me.” She giggled, admiring her ring with deep content.
“And the little juggins ran away, on the train last night?”
“Greased lightnin’ off a shovel,” says she cheerfully. “‘Ah cain’t ’bide violence!’ says he, all tremblish. ‘We mus’ fly, my own, ’fore wuss befalls!’ Ah sez, ‘You kin fly, Popplewell, but Ah’s comf’table right heah.’ An’ he flew. ‘Meet me in Washin’ton, deah creecher, an’ heah’s a hundred dollahs – do not fail me!’ They wuz his partin’ words. So Ah’ll meet him, in ma own sweet time … meet his canal shares, too. But right now …” She rose with a fine billowing of her peignoir, put her arms about my neck, and slid her splendid bulk on to my knee “… Ah’s real comf’table.”
The unworthy thought crossed my mind that her present misbehaviour rendered her eminently blackmailable where Popplewell was concerned – but it was a purely Pickwickian reflection, you understand. I’d not have dreamed (I’d not have dared) even given the chance, for I’d taken a liking to this hearty black trollop; a true kindred spirit, pleasuring her rump off at a moment’s notice – aye, and drumming up breakfast from a kitchen in bedlam, gathering the news, and preparing the way for my departure as “Mr Popplewell” into the bargain. You don’t find many like her – and I told her so. “Well, now, s’pose you jes’ show me,” says she, squirming on my lap and licking my lips. So I did, for the third and last time.
For even as we buckled to, the curtain was rising on the final gruesome act at Harper’s Ferry. Twelve hours had passed since we’d crossed the Potomac bridge, and all unknown to us the alarm had been spreading since dawn, from village to town to city, clicking along the wire even to the White House. Already militia companies were tramping through the leafy Virginia lanes from Charles Town, and mustering in Frederick and Winchester and Martinsburg, and even eventually in Baltimore. That young beau sabreur, Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, who was in Washington trying to hawk his patent swordfrog to the War Department, found himself ordered to ride for Arlington to summon Colonel Robert E. Lee of the 2nd Cavalry (didn’t old J.B. attract the big guns, eh?), and within hours the two of ’em were bound for the Ferry in the wake of the U.S. Marines.51 The steel trap that Douglass had prophesied was closing, while J.B. mooned away his time (waiting for the slaves to rally to him, waiting for the arms to arrive from Owen, waiting because the poor old peasant didn’t know what else to do), and Kagi kept sending frantic messages from the rifle works, beseeching him to move, and the citizens of Harper’s Ferry lost patience, and began to gather in earnest, and I – well, you know what I was doing, and not a man in Virginia was better employed, and you may tell Mrs Popplewell I said so.
It came as sudden as a thunderclap – a deafening burst of shooting, and I was springing to the window, and all hell was breaking loose between the town houses and the armoury railings with both sides blazing away, and the far bank of the Potomac was alive with armed men in civilian duds, the Charles Town militia, led by a man who knew his business, for he was cutting off J.B.’s line of retreat. From the side window I saw them streaming down towards the Potomac bridge, which was out of sight from where I was, behind the hotel, so I didn’t see them storming over the bridge shouting and huzzahing, chasing Watson Brown and Taylor, who fied to the armoury – I saw them run across from the tracks, firing back, and then the militia came into view below the hotel, scores of men who looked like farmers on a rabbit hunt. They spread out along the track beneath my window, and on the open ground, pouring fire at the armoury gates, and I thought, you’re done, J.B., for I expected them to rush the railings, but an officer bawled to them to take cover in the Wager House, and I heard him ordering parties to Gait’s saloon and the Shenandoah bridge, where Oliver was stationed.
Now it was pandemonium below stairs, and the building shook as about fifty clodhoppers surged in, hollering and crashing among the furniture and firing from the windows. Female shrieks arose, and a stentorian voice ordered all lad
ies to take refuge on the upper floor: there was a great pattering and squealing on the stairs, and I was in terror that we’d be invaded, but Mrs P. put paid to that by showing herself in our doorway, bold, black, and bedizened – no respectable Southern female was going to share a room with a nigger, why, ’tis a scandal, allowing such a creature in civilised lodgings, what is the world coming to …
Suddenly there was uproar outside, a fusillade of shots, and from the front window I saw young Oliver racing across before the hotel, letting fly with his Colt at pursuing militiamen. He’d been driven from the Shenandoah bridge, and was going like a stag for the armoury gates, with Bill Thompson at his heels, and hard behind them came the old black, Dangerous Newby. Oliver and Thompson won clear, with shots kicking up the puddles around them, but Newby suddenly staggered, his head thrown back, and I saw that a shot had torn his neck horribly open; he stumbled sideways and sprawled on his back in the mud – and that was the first of John Brown’s “pet lambs” gone, and as I stared down at the twitching body and the blood welling across the ground, I suddenly remembered him sobbing in a corner at Kennedy Farm, over a letter from his wife, who was still in slavery, hoping that he’d be able to buy her and their children soon, and J.B. setting a hand on his shoulder, saying “They shall be free, Newby, depend upon it,” and old Dangerous saying “Ah know it, cap’n; Ah know it.”
They didn’t let him be. Now that the militia were on hand, and the raiders’ number was patently up, all sorts of ragged town heroes came to join in the fun, and in no time they were at the liquor in the Wager House and Gait’s place; there was a fine drunken commotion beneath our feet, singing and cheering and guffawing, and great rage being voiced against J.B. and his gang. They were full of bile because Oliver and Thompson had escaped, and soon, when J.B. sent out a hostage with a white flag to hold some parley or other with the militia, half a dozen of the town vermin emerged from the hotel to take out their spite on Newby’s corpse, kicking it and dragging it about with cries of there, ye damned nigger, rot in hell an’ serve ye right. One barefoot rascal dragged off the dead man’s boots, and then Mrs Popplewell, who was with me at the window, cried: “Oh, sweet Jesus!” and turned away, for the rest of them were hurrahing round the corpse, egging on one who knelt and sawed at its head and presently came running to the hotel, bellowing who wanted a couple o’ abolitionist souvenirs, hey – and I saw he was flourishing Newby’s bloody ears aloft. His mates cheered and clapped him on the back.
That was when the nightmare began. Shooting had broken out again, heavier than ever from the houses and the heights behind the town, and J.B.’s beleaguered party had to abandon the railings and take cover among the armoury sheds. They had no way out now; more militia were arriving, over both bridges, and soon the ground about the hotel and tracks was thick with them, clamouring to git at them dam’ nigger-lovers, but ’twas all shouts and no action; either their leaders were concerned for the hostages, or, more likely, had a healthy respect for J.B.’s marksmen, who were holding their fire now except when their tormentors came too close – one idiot on horseback, waving a shotgun, was picked off like a squirrel from a branch, and another, venturing too far down the railroad tracks, was dropped with a single shot.
As I learned later, he was the Mayor of Harper’s Ferry, and when the news of his death spread among the people, their rage knew no bounds. What with that and militiamen enflamed with drink, I could see J.B. and Co. being torn limb from limb when the mob finally worked up the nerve to storm the armoury, but in the meantime they were content to plaster the sheds with shot and roar blood-curdling threats.
And then J.B. sent out another white flag. There was a great howl of fury when it appeared in the armoury gateway, but a militia officer bawled to them to hold their fire, for it was borne by one of the hostages, who came marching towards the hotel with young Bill Thompson by his side. The crowd surged out and surrounded them, drowning the hostage’s plea to be heard, the flag was torn from him, and Bill Thompson was dragged into the Wager House, battered and kicked, with yells of “Lynch the bastard! No, no, hangin’s too good for him – burn the son-of-a-bitch!” The drunken din from beneath was now so deafening that there wasn’t a word to be made out, but since they didn’t haul Thompson out for execution I guessed he was still alive – for the time being.
You’d have thought J.B. would have learned from that incident, but not he – not long after, another white rag was seen waving in the armoury, the order to cease fire was shouted again, and this time it was Aaron Stevens and Watson Brown who came out, side by side. You bloody fools, thinks I, you’re done for, but on they came towards the hotel, Watson stiff as a ramrod, with his head carried high, and big Aaron ploughing along with one hand raised like an Indian in greeting. For a moment it was so still I could hear their boots squelching through the puddles – and then a rifle cracked, and Watson stumbled forward and fell on his hands and knees. A great cheer went up, a volley of shots followed, Stevens seemed to hesitate, and then he came for the Wager House like a bull at a gate, hurling the flag away, and was cut down within twenty paces of the hotel – I absolutely saw his body jerk as the slugs hit him, and then the hostage who had been with Bill Thompson came running out, arms spread wide, turning to put himself between the two shot men and the mob. Another hostage who must have been following Stevens and Watson from the armoury ran forward to join him, and together they dragged Stevens to the Wager House, one of them yelling: “You cowardly scum! Stop it, damn you – cain’t ye see the flag?” For a moment the firing stopped, and then it was seen that Watson was crawling on all fours back towards the armoury, and the mob set up a great yell and let fly again. He scrambled up and ran, clutching his stomach, with the bullets churning the dirt around his feet, and went down again, but he still kept crawling and managed to roll to cover behind one of the gate-posts. That sent them wild, and they poured in fire harder than ever.
But what, you ask, was Flashy doing while the tide of battle rolled o’er Harper’s Ferry? Crouched shivering at the curtains, that’s what, sweating pints at the thought of what those booze-sodden villains would do if they chanced to seek sport abovestairs and discovered that the trembling occupant of the Popplewell chamber was none other than the raider who’d come demanding breakfast … I only had to look out at the bloody shreds that had once been Newby, and listen to the hell’s chorus from below, to be almost physically sick.
The same thought must have occurred to Mrs Popplewell, for after an age in which we’d barely exchanged a word, I felt her hand on my shoulder, and the jolly black face was grim and set. “Bes’ git yo’ clo’es on, dearie,” says she, and I saw that while I’d been glued to the window and the horrors outside, she’d been attiring herself in a vast gown of dazzling green silk with yellow bows, an enormous hat with a yellow plume, and matching ribbons in her hennaed hair – you can’t imagine what she looked like, luckily for you. She even had a rolled umbrella.
“Sumpn’s up down yonder,” says she. “Ah’s goin’ to len’ an ear.” And she tiptoed with elephantine delicacy to the door, a finger raised and an ear to the panels.
“Don’t open it!” I yelped. “Christ, if those brutes see you, God knows what they’ll do! If they find me here –”
“Git them pants on an’ hold yo’ noise! They ain’t goin’ to see nobody!”
She opened the door a crack, and suddenly above the clamour from below we could hear voices – and they didn’t soothe me one little bit, for the first words I heard were:
“… so string the bastards up, I say! Damn it to hell, there’s Mayor Beckham layin’ dead, an’ you want we should be tender o’ these dam’ Kansas butchers? You an abolitionist yo’self, or whut?”
“I’m a soldier!” snaps another, one of your cold-steel voices. “And these men are prisoners, to be treated as such –”
“Oh, sure, you’re a soldier! Goddam Frederick militia, ain’t you, comin’ in at the tail-end! Well, Captain, we tuk these yere prisoners, as you call
’em, an’ I reckon it’s for us to say how they tret, ain’t that so, boys?”
There was a roar of agreement, and the hairs rose on my neck as I heard Thompson’s voice, crying out, but not in appeal – he was shouting something about dying gladly in liberty’s cause, but it was drowned in yells of execration.
“Why, you vile white nigger, you! Have him out, boys, I cain’t stand to listen to him! Why, gimme that pistol, Jem, I’ll finish him myself! Now – you see this gun, you Kansas hawg, you feel it ‘gainst yo’ head –”
“Put that down!” To my amazement, it was a woman, shrill with anger. “You won’t sully this house with murder while I’m here! Put it down, I say! The law will take its course –”
“Law, by thunder – an’ who asked you to stick in yore pert nose, missie! This heah’s men’s work, I reckon, hey, boys?”
“You pull that trigger, my son, and I’ll give you men’s work!” shouts the captain. “Good for you, Miss Foulkes!52 They’ll commit no outrage under this roof, I promise you!”
“Won’t we, though? Oh, well, now, we wouldn’t want t’offend the good lady’s feelin’s! Would we, men? No, sir, I reckon not! So with yo’ kind permission, ma’am, we’ll just take the lousy abolitionist outside, an’ ’tend to him there! Heave him up, boys – an’ that other wounded son-of-a-bitch, too!”
“No, no, let him be – he’s dyin’ nice an’ slow as ’tis, with good ole Georgie Chambers’s slugs in his guts! Let him suffer, I say –”
“Why, you drunken cur!” cries the captain. “If that man could stand up with a gun in his hand, you’d all jump out the window!”
A storm of yells and curses greeted this, and then I heard Thompson again, wild and high: “God bless you, Aaron Stevens! They may take our lives, but eighty million will rise up to avenge us –” and then Mrs Popplewell closed the door and leaned her back against it, looking solemn.
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