“No small number, Mr. Harris, a veritable tribe of us, all true cock’s eggs, born within the sound of Bow bells.”
“Hah! Soused gournards then!” said the cook. “That proves we ought all to stop our ears then whenever ‘your cousin’ holds forth.”
More laughter all around. Fraulein Reimer, who understood the gist even when she missed some of the details in a language not her own, put down her needlepoint. “Perhaps we shall sing together now a song, yes?” she said. “I do not like this talk of ghosts and bones.”
So the company sang “The Merry Christ Church Bells,” the cook beating time on the pot and Mr. Harris stamping his boots. Sally, holding Isaak in her lap, joined the refrain:
Let none despise the merry, merry wives
Of famous London town.
Upstairs in the library Sanford put down a book to listen. Barnabas was tapping time, and murmuring the refrain. Sanford did not entirely approve of chat and singing in the kitchen, but allowed that Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Harris had accommodated themselves well to the household. Everyone’s morale was improved since their arrival. Most of all, there had been no further attacks. No one had seen any evidence of the Cretched Man or any other minatory being. Sally said that her dreams were quiet. Sanford did not imagine the enemy had retreated far but for now all seemed well.
Interlude: Frozen Algebra on Fire
Maggie thought her mother might die from the cold. The winter had been the coldest anyone could remember and this night — January 22, 1812 — was the coldest yet. Maggie was wearing all the clothes she owned, swaddled within the worn-out sailor’s jacket that reached to her knees, and still she shivered. Her ears were cold under her red kerchief: she wished she had kept the crownless hat she had found two weeks ago instead of selling it to the rag-and-bone man. She lay on the pallet on the floor, holding her coughing mother.
They lived in a cellar, like thousands of others throughout London. Actually, they shared a cellar, with an Irish family, separated by a thin, hastily erected wall. (The man who collected the weekly rent smirked every time he came, calling the basement flats his “salt-and-pepper cellar.”) Maggie heard muffled crying through the wall, the ache of one of the little Irish children overcome by cold and hunger. Sometimes on a Sunday in the summer, Maggie would join in their games in the alley: hopscotch, unkitty-dunkitty-donkey, tumble-sticks. They seemed to view her as a good luck charm, a strange “blue” older sister. They never disturbed her when she carved numbers on the walls of the alley with an old nail or drew circles and lines with a pencil stub she’d found in the street. The children’s mother seemed a bit scared of Maggie but since the Irish woman did not speak much English, she limited her exchanges with Maggie to “good morning” and “good night.” As the little girl cried, Maggie felt sorry for her Irish neighbours, as sorry as she felt for herself and her mother. And she was angry that you could not warm two blocks of ice by rubbing them together.
The cold had stunned the wall-lice and bedbugs into temporary submission, but the rat which lived behind the far wall was active. He was drawn to the meagre heat of the fire Maggie kept alive in the fireplace. As long as the rat stayed hidden, Maggie kept it out of mind. Feeding the fire might bring the rat out, but Maggie had no choice. She put another slip of scavenged newspaper on the fire, revelled in the small gust of heat, held her mother close. They had spent their last shillings on coal two days ago. Maggie calculated that the pile of scrap paper, dried horse dung, and wood slivers would not last the night. At least she’d have the pleasure of knowing the rat would freeze as well once the remaining fuel was exhausted. What really pained Maggie, besides knowing that the cold was eating her mother’s lungs, was that every scrap of newspaper burned was a story she could no longer read. She made sure to read every fragment before consigning it to the flames, reading them out loud to entertain her mother.
“For young Gentlewomen,” Maggie read. “Lessons given in waxwork, filigree, japanning, quill-work, painting upon glass, embroidery with gold and silver threads, and other diversions not here enumerated. Enquire at Mrs. Neeseden’s in Derby Close by St. Blandina Priory.” Maggie and her mother had never heard of Derby Close or St. Blandina Priory: wherever these places were, they weren’t anywhere near by. The advertisement might just as easily have referred to a location on the moon.
The fire dwindled again.
“Reward offered by the Constabulary,” she read. “For any knowledge leading to the capture of the person or persons responsible for the murders December last in Ratcliffe Highway.” Maggie and her mother shuddered even as they shivered. Everyone knew about the murders in the Ratcliffe Highway, everyone had a theory about their cause, and everyone claimed to know someone who knew or was related to one of the victims.
The flames died down. Viscous smoke hung in the air. “For sale,” she read. “At Mr. Brewster’s shop in Carnaby Street, fine laced whisky-yellow gloves, white bird’s eye bone lace, gimp lace, and other fine possaments for Ladies of refined taste.” Maggie and her mother sighed, picturing these glories. They’d seen once or twice from afar the Ladies for whom such articles were made.
The fire smoked and sputtered.
“Newly arrived on the Gazelle,” Maggie read. “Best Chinese smilax root, also mastic gum, Gujaratee sandalwood, tragacanth, mace from Amboina, pepper from Ternate, divers other spices and apothecary wares.” Besides the pepper, Maggie had no idea what these things were or what their use might be, but her mind soared in the imagining.
In between readings from the doomed shreds of newspaper, Maggie told her mother stories to keep the cold at bay. The stories were the ones that her mother had told her over and over as a child, stories from far away, some of them stories from places where everyone looked like Maggie and her mother. “Well,” the story always started, “once upon a time in the summer time, turtle chew tobacco and spit white lime,” and then Maggie would tell how Woodpecker got the red patch on his head from pecking on the hull of the Ark, and how greedy Tortoise got his patchwork shell.
Her mother shut her eyes and sighed, her breath wisping from her mouth. She coughed, overrode her daughter’s request that she not overexert herself and said, “Maggie, agamega, leopard-woman, I tell you now about Ala the Mother and Ezebelamiri, the Queen who lives in the Water, and Ikoro the Drum-Spirit. Listen.” Maggie knew the stories by heart but listened intently, blocking from her mind the wind and snow outside and the cold inside. Her mother told stories that had been passed down in secrecy about Tacky’s Rebellion in Jamaica and Kongo-Jemmy’s Revolt in Carolina, about the King of the Eboes flying across the ocean with an army to free his people. Her mother barely had strength to speak but insisted on continuing.
“Maggie, baby eagle, nwugo,” she whispered. “Remember your story. You were born to me in a place called Maryland, near the Choptank River, on the Baird plantation. . . .”
“I know, Mama,” said Maggie, smiling. “I know. My father was as strong and handsome as Quaco Sam. . . .”
“Yes, yes, nwugo,” said her mother, smiling back. “Oh yes, and as smart as John who beat the Devil at the crossroads.”
“What happened to my father, Mama?” Always the question, down through the years, always the same answer.
“He was from Africa, he had been a prince there, and he was smarter than the buckra,” said her mother, smile fading. “When first quail calls, he took you and me, and we slipped away, following the drinking gourd in the sky. Oh, the buckra masters, they set dogs after us and men with guns on horses, but your father was too smart and we got away clean. From Bee-luther-hatchee we got.”
“But not to Ginny-gal, Mama? Not like we hoped?”
“No, we came to New York, a big city like London. You were so small, so small, you could only walk a few steps, you were so young. But New York is not safe either. The Baird masters have spies in New York, obala obala, blood of blood, wicked men.”
Maggie’s mother stopped there. The wind howled. The Irish children moaned in the
ir half-sleep on the other side of the wall. Maggie saw sweat on her mother’s brow.
“Mama, no more now.”
“No, we go on, ndem mbu enyi, women are as strong as elephants,” said Maggie’s mother. She coughed for almost a minute after that but continued. “After some by and by, we lived with another family of colour, only they were always free. The Weatherbys took us in, like Abraham and Sarah they took us in as strangers. Remember that, Maggie, like Abraham and Sarah.”
Maggie held her mother tight, the old sailor’s jacket scrunched up between them.
“One night some buckra beat on the Weatherby door,” whispered Maggie’s mother. “‘Who there?’ says Mr. Weatherby. ‘Got a law paper says we can take the Baird family. Are they there?’ comes back a voice on the other side of the door. We changed our name when we came to New York, but still they find us! He was easy to find, I guess, your father, ’cause of his country marks. On his face. I told you he was a prince in Africa. So the takers are at the Weatherby door. ‘Quick,’ says your father. ‘Hide in the attic.’ You and me, little eagle, we run upstairs and hide in the attic. ‘You too,’ I say, but your father shakes his head. He going to deal with this so they cannot take his family. Last time I see your father, he is looking up at me from the foot of the stairs. ‘Hide,’ he says. So we do. I tell you not to make a sound or the buckra will take us. You are so scared you bite your hand until you bleed.”
Maggie looks at the scar between thumb and forefinger on her left hand.
“Mr. Weatherby tried to keep those men out, but they smashed a window. They came in. From the attic I heard fighting and yelling. Almost I ran back down.”
The cold is so intense in the cellar that even the rat in the far wall is quiet.
“Well, you know what happens. They took your father. He kept you and me safe. But he never came back from Maryland; now he’s in Bee-luther-hatchee.”
Maggie rocked her mother in her arms, hummed an old song about Elisha feeding the Shunammite widow and bringing back the dead. Maggie knew the rest of the story: how Maggie’s mother had determined to leave the United States of America altogether, how the Weatherbys and others in the free black community had collected funds for Maggie and her mother to sail to London, where Maggie’s mother had found work as a seamstress making simple waistcoats and ticken breeches. When they’d registered at the local parish in Wapping, they’d called themselves Collins, the name of the captain of the ship that had landed them in London. For a while they more than made ends meet. Maggie was able to attend the parish charity school, where she learned to read and do her first sums. People talked about that, a poor black girl who could read and add, but Maggie did not care, though she learned to play dumb when she needed to (which was often). For a year or two they lived above ground and shared a real bed, not just a pallet on the floor, and had meat three times a week. One Easter, Maggie’s mother had bought them both bonnets and they had walked all the way to St. Pammachius Underhill for the noon service, and had tea after at a public garden. But then the war with Napoleon and the French got worse, and harsh winters followed poor harvests, so working folks got squeezed between unemployment and high prices. Maggie had joined her mother at the seamstress’s establishment but still they found themselves back in the cellar without enough money for a full week’s coal.
Maggie’s mother was slipping into fever. “Ol’ Heeg from under cottonwood roots is snatchin’ my breath,” she wheezed. “Ol’ Heeg the witch-owl has a-got hold of my breath, Maggie.” Maggie thought of the owl atop the pillar on the border of the spirit-land, the owl that was looking for her.
“Hush, Mama, no owl has you.”
“Squinch owl, white as buckra men,” husked her mother. “No Ginny-gal for us, just a dry-bone valley. But the King will fly back. Take force by force, he sings, with his fiery army. Uche chukwu ga-eme, God’s will be done.”
Maggie nodded. The fire had almost gone out. The pile of newspaper scraps and other rubbish was gone. Morning was still far off. The wind roared as loudly as ever. Maggie looked at her delirious mother, and knew what she had to do. Easing her mother full-length onto the pallet, Maggie went to the wall nearest the bed (and farthest from the rat-infested wall). She pried away several bricks and felt for her most precious treasures: three books purchased for pennies from the peddlers who went street to street, in the years when she and her mother could afford bonnets at Easter. The books were old, ragged, missing pages; they were the sort sold by the pound at estate auctions, books that often ended up as filler for walls in the terrace houses being built in London’s growing suburbs. To Maggie they were more valuable than diamonds.
Even in the dark she knew each book by its shape and state of disrepair. She had memorized each one. The first one she retrieved was The Elements of Algebra by Nathaniel Hammond. “‘In a New and Easy Method,’” Maggie chanted to herself. “‘With their Use and Application, in the Solution of a great Variety of Arithmetical and Geometrical Questions, by General and Universal Rules. Published in 1752.’” Page by page she fed the book into the fire, which blazed for a while, reflected in her mother’s half-shut eyes. When the fire had died down, and her mother began coughing again, Maggie took out the second book: The Compleat Compting-house by John Vernon, published in 1719. Slowly she stripped out the pages, crumpling them before placing them carefully onto the embers. She watched as the flames jumped up to devour “the young Lad’s first Understanding of plain Arithmetick” and “Tables for Calculation of Interest.”
Her mother would need medicine, though Maggie had no idea how they would afford that. She would ask for extra piecework to take home, and perhaps the parish would provide some relief. Until the fever broke, Maggie would have to tend to her mother. She prayed for the cold to diminish. She saw two eyes flash in the far corner, a naked tail whisk into the shadows cast by the fire. The heat had also revived the bedbugs, several of which crawled over the blankets covering Maggie’s mother.
“Women are as strong as elephants,” said Maggie into the dawning light. The wind was dying down a little but so was the fire. Her mother coughed up thin greenish spittle, which Maggie wiped off with a bit of rag from the pallet. Summoning her strength, Maggie pulled out the third book. She could just read it in the half-darkness, but she did not need to, knowing it by heart.
“Cocker’s Arithmetick,” she breathed as an incantation. “‘Being a plain and familiar Method for the full Understanding of that incomparable Art. Being the fifty-first edition, printed in 1745 by R. Ware, at the Bible and Sun, Amen Corner.’”
Rip, rip, went the pages. Maggie half-sang Cocker’s preface: “‘. . . by studiously conferring with the Notes, Names, Orders, Progress, Species, Properties, Proportions, Powers, Affections, and Applications of Numbers delivered herein, become such Artists indeed . . .’”
Maggie kept the fire going until mid-morning when the cold weakened its grip, and her mother’s fever abated slightly. The rat retreated into his wall. Just before she collapsed into sleep next to her mother, Maggie looked at the ashes of her books and cried. She had their knowledge in her head but they had been her only real friends, and now they were gone. Just before she fell asleep, Maggie thought of the white woman, the one about her own age with the nice clothes in the big house, whom she had seen in her far-dreaming.
“That fancy white girl, whoever she is,” thought Maggie. “She did not have to burn books this night just to stay warm.”
Chapter 5: Theft from the Garden
The McDoon household resumed its usual rhythm as the winter of 1812 ebbed. Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Harris became fixtures at the house on Mincing Lane. Lady Day and then Easter week came in late March, followed by the feast of St. Alphege in April, and of course May Day. The events of the winter seemed a dream, or a vision seen through grimed, frosty windows. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had happened since the night of the break-in. Sanford brought this up to Barnabas one day in early May as they prepared to go to the coffeehouse.
&n
bsp; “That man in the coat and his dog,” said Sanford. “They’ve only gone into hiding, lurking concealed while we lower our guard.”
Barnabas whirled about. “Lower our guard?! Not on your life!” He brought his walking stick up in a posture of attack, catching the edge of the Rodney picture and almost knocking it from the wall.
“Nevertheless,” said Sanford, righting the picture so Rodney could beat the French on the level, “that’s what our enemy hopes for. To lull us while they lie close and wait to strike like a viper.”
They discussed their defences on the way, with Harris strolling a few feet behind them as if he had nothing whatsoever to do with them. Still, other matters pressed in on them again, matters of business and politics that swirled through the coffeehouse. Barnabas and Sanford felt the urgency of Yount slipping from their minds.
Sally too struggled to keep Yount in her mind. She read and reread passages from Journies and Travells to Yount and the Realms Within, cross-examined her dreams for signs and symptoms of Yount. Yet there seemed to be a narcotic force at work in her mind, smothering the urgency, stilling her wish to go. She often found herself in the partners’ office, gazing listlessly at the sandalwood box, the book of Yount open but unread on her lap. From Mincing Lane came the cries of London:
“Buy my brooms!”
“Holloway Cheese Cakes!”
“Coal man, coal man here!”
“Ripe sparagas!”
“Pens and ink, who will buy my pens?”
With these cries as a lullaby, Sally would nod off, Yount a muddle in her mind.
Until one afternoon in early May, when Sally dreamed of — or was visited by, she could not tell which — the Cretched Man while she dozed in the partners’ office. She awoke suddenly, but may have dreamed she was waking. Either way, she turned around in her chair, like a recalcitrant cork being pulled from a bottle.
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