by Edward Cline
The crowd watched Dilch now, waiting to see what she would do or say next. And it gasped again when, after taking a short moment to consider Hugh’s words, she nodded once to him and stepped back in among them. Ockhyser glanced up at Hugh with almost superstitious awe, then remembered where he was and shifted the fowling piece from one hand to another. The slaves looked repeatedly from Hugh to Dilch, unable to decide which was the greater marvel: Dilch, or the new master.
Hugh continued. “Beginning tomorrow, Mr. Beecroft will keep a record of what each of you is paid, and for what. For the time being, women and field hands will be paid a shilling a month, artisans such as smiths and carpenters and the like, two shillings. One of you men will be selected to be an apprentice overseer, and work with Mr. Ockhyser here. This man will be paid three shillings, and assume equal responsibility and authority.”
Ockhyser’s face contorted first into a flash of disbelief, then, when he knew that Hugh meant it, a mask of pure hatred. He spat on the ground.
Hugh heard rather than saw the action, and turned to look down at the overseer. The crowd of slaves became quiet. Hugh said, turning back to the slaves, “That is all. Enjoy your day of rest.” He stepped down from the rock and strode out of the yard. “Mr. Ockhyser, unless you prefer to remain with your charges, you will accompany me.”
The overseer rushed to obey, more from anger than from fear. He did not wait for his employer to speak. “You’re courtin’ trouble, sir! And you’d no right to burn my whip, not in front of them! I won’t be able to run them now! Nobody will! And I don’t need no damned apprentice!”
Hugh did not turn to face the man, but walked on. “I’ve never met a tradesman who needed an overseer, Mr. Ockhyser. Apprentices, perhaps, need an iron hand to keep them on a profitable course, but a man who is free to hire out his services or skills, is his own overseer.”
“That’s just fancy talk!” scoffed Ockhyser. “You give them money, you’ll spoil them! They won’t work any harder!”
“I’m not a gambling man, sir, but would you care to make a wager on that likelihood?”
“They’re not like us! They got a different attitude! God made them different. The only thing that makes them behave is fear!”
Hugh chuckled. “You are either a disciple of Mr. Hobbes — or his inspiration,” he remarked. Then he shrugged. “Can you blame them for their ‘attitude,’ sir? And, please, Mr. Ockhyser, do not be so presumptuous as to include me in your society.”
Ockhyser spat on the ground.
Hugh stopped and turned so suddenly that the overseer nearly collided with him. Ockhyser jerked to a stop and stepped back awkwardly. There was a look on his employer’s face that the overseer had seen only in waterfront taverns before fights occurred.
Hugh said, “If you wish to stay on here, Mr. Ockhyser, you will cease watering my property with your education. You will neither contradict me nor question the wisdom of my decisions. You will oversee the work of these people through an intermediary, and merely observe and report. Those are my conditions. If you cannot accept them, then I cannot retain you.”
“I won’t,” growled Ockhyser. “You can’t make a man work like that! It ain’t heard of! I’ll tell the others in the mansion-house what you’re up to!”
“They already know, sir. You came with Mr. Swart, and they will be happy to see you follow him.” Hugh turned and walked on. “You must be off this property today, Mr. Ockhyser. If you have not left by sunset, I shall send someone for Sheriff Tippet. You may collect your final wages from Mr. Beecroft.”
Ockhyser shouted after him, “You won’t turn your back on them so fancy like you do me!”
Hugh stopped again, faced Ockhyser, and waited. The overseer tried to stare down the man who was fifteen years his junior, but his insolence withered under Hugh’s imperious and unmoving glance. Quite against his intention, but wholly consistent with his character, the young man’s glance made him feel small, mean, and merely nasty. Ockhyser grunted once, then turned and strode in the direction of his quarters.
The incident did not go unnoticed by two groups of interested spectators: the slaves in the yard, and the household staff, who watched from the windows of the great house.
Three hours later, Mr. Beecroft entered the library and asked Hugh for a moment of his time.
Hugh put aside a book he was reading. “Yes, Mr. Beecroft?”
“Mr. Ockhyser has been paid his last wages, sir. Six pounds and expenses. He has vacated the staff house, and left on his own horse.”
“Did he trouble you?”
“No, sir. Mr. Settle and Mr. Spears were present whilst I paid him, and they saw him to the gate.”
“Very well. Ask Mr. Settle to post a few men at the tobacco barns and corn barns. Mr. Ockhyser may feel inclined to return and bid us farewell with his matches.”
“Yes, sir.” Beecroft hesitated, then went on. “He was the devil gone to seed, sir, and we are all glad to be rid of him, but….”
“Go on, Mr. Beecroft. Speak your mind.”
“Well, sir, are you certain it’s wise to treat the Negroes so…well…charitably?” The business agent paused. “We are all wondering about it, sir.”
“It is not charity that moves me, Mr. Beecroft,” Hugh said. “It is an alliance of practical wisdom and unspoiled revulsion for the custom that constrains Mr. Ockhyser’s former charges.”
Mr. Beecroft mulled over this reply for a moment, but did not comment in answer to it. Instead, he asked, “Will you replace him, sir?”
“Mr. Ockhyser? Yes, with one of them. Have you a recommendation?”
“Pompey, sir. He is the senior of the field hands, and the others listen to him. If you ask him, Mr. Settle will be of that opinion, too.”
“Good. I shall interview him myself tomorrow.” Hugh frowned. “Who is the minister that comes to preach to them?”
“Reverend Acland, sir. He visits all the quarters hereabouts, after regular services. Some of the Negroes even attend his services in the church. He has baptized and instructed nearly all those who wish it.” Beecroft smiled. “A most vigorous parson, sir. Not like most clergymen one observes, who are content to collect their salaries and compose slumberous sermons.”
“I see.” Hugh gestured to a chair near his desk. Beecroft parted the tails of his coat and sat down. “How well do you know our people, Beecroft? Their domestic situations, their characters, and so forth?”
“Sir?” The business agent looked genuinely perplexed.
Hugh chuckled. “Come now, Beecroft. They are not mere silhouettes of us,” he explained. “They have minds, and emotions, and desires, and inner turmoils, as much as any king or commoner.”
“Oh,” said Beecroft. Then he dutifully answered all of Hugh’s questions, and imparted to his employer a more intimate knowledge of the affairs and personal lives of the slaves than he realized he had. An hour later, he concluded, “And Bristol, a smith, has a wife and daughter over at Mr. Otway’s. And Pompey is squiring a girl over at Mr. Vishonn’s.”
“And Dilch?”
Beecroft shook his head. “Never married, and has no suitors that I know of.” He paused, and added in a lower voice, “It’s been said that she refuses to risk bringing any children into, well, her condition.”
Hugh looked thoughtful. “Do you see, Beecroft? They are not so different from ourselves, except that their lives are submerged in a netherworld.”
The next morning, after interviewing the astounded Pompey and telling him to report to Mr. Settle for assignments, Hugh rode into town with a list he had obtained from the overlooker of all the slaves’ names. He called on Wendel Barret and placed an order for forty safe conduct passes, one for each of the slaves, each pass to bear the slave’s printed name, specifying no particular purpose, and carrying no date. Ten passes were to leave the name space blank. A week later the passes were ready. Hugh signed them, then visited the slave quarter again, this time alone, after most of the men had returned from their labors in
the fields. He called out to each person and handed him a pass, and advised everyone that a pass was not to be abused, or it would be taken back.
When he entered the stark, almost bare wooden hut that Dilch shared with her mother, Jemma, and other women, and gave them their passes, he involuntarily paused to bestow on Dilch a smile of respect.
Dilch mumbled some words of thanks. She was in her midforties, short, wiry, of studied movement, with a face hardened into a permanent, almost noble frown by years of care, travail, and obstinate certitude. As she accepted the pass from Hugh, her eyes as much as asked him: What trick are you playing on us? They as much as said to him: You can buy and sell our lives, but you can’t buy our souls or affections, not with a shilling or a piece of printed paper.
Hugh might have been stung by the ingratitude he saw in the woman’s eyes, had he not understood her proud, unyielding suspicions. But he was neither hurt nor offended, and Dilch saw no trace of guilt or atonement in his face or manner. She regarded herself as a good judge of men, white and black. She was secretly in wonder of Hugh, though she would admit it to neither herself nor to anyone else. Hugh defied all her past criteria of assessment. She could not decide whether to praise him or despise him; praise meant acknowledgment of his actions, actions she despised for his having the power to take. Hugh was the first man in many years who troubled the quietude and dignity of Dilch’s soul.
* * *
A month passed, and Hugh established his authority at Meum Hall. He entered the lives of everyone who lived on the decaying enterprise, and breathed new life into them as well as into the property. He was on the minds of many men and women in Caxton; his actions were the subject of speculation and appraisal in the town’s shops, on the waterfront, in the supper rooms of the planters. Word had spread like lightning of his intention to free his slaves. No one could say how he could ever accomplish it. Most of the other planters casually assured themselves and each other that he could not.
Hugh would sit in the evenings, in his library, reading, thinking, or planning, unaware of the fact that he was being observed and appraised. Often he would pick up his brass top and anchor his thoughts to the whirling dervish that spun atop a pile of papers. His hands were now large and strong enough that he could launch it with his thumb and forefinger without the aid of the cord. And he would smile contentedly in the knowledge that the boy who had once played with that top would recognize himself as a man, and approve of him, just as he recognized and approved of his memory of that boy.
Chapter 10: The Host
Late one Saturday morning in mid-December, Jack Frake rode to Meum Hall, and was told by Mrs. Vere that her employer was somewhere in the fields. He rode out again and espied his neighbor on the western-most edge, near the worm fence that divided the property from Henry Otway’s plantation.
Hugh was sitting on a log studying a spread of brown weeds. He heard the jingle of reins and turned. He smiled in recognition of Jack Frake, then gestured to the weeds. “The soil here is so scurvied that even wild weeds take on the color of dead bark.” He reached out and snapped one of the weed stalks in two, then tossed it away. “I’ve not seen its like anywhere else.”
“It will take years for this soil to recover,” remarked Jack. “Let it lie fallow for a few seasons, then plough and manure it for a few more. With care, it will come back to life.”
“Yes,” Hugh said. “But first I’ll plant some turnips in a part of it, and clover and sainfoin in another, just to see which works faster. Red clover, I have heard, is best for that purpose.”
Jack stood in his stirrups to better survey the weeds. “Five hundred hills of tobacco,” he said. “Or a thousand of corn, never to be grown for a while. Swart reduced this soil to little better than sand.”
Hugh rose and faced his visitor. “To what do I owe your presence, Mr. Frake?”
Jack smiled. “Friendly curiosity, Mr. Kenrick.” He paused. “You’ve got the planters and the town talking about your intentions.”
“Concerning the slaves? Yes, it’s true.” Hugh was dressed in a shirt, a short wool jacket, trousers, and a straw hat. He reached down, picked up a field bottle, and took a drink from it.
“How?” asked Jack.
Hugh shrugged. “When I have coined the means, I shall make no secret of it,” he said. He stooped again to drop the bottle into a cloth bag, then slung the bag over his shoulder. “Come, walk me back to the house. I’ve finished assessing the fields today. Been out here since dawn, and I’m famished. You will join me for dinner.”
Jack grinned and looked away. “Yes, milord Danvers,” he remarked half-humorously.
Hugh glanced up at his neighbor. “No more of that, Mr. Frake. Not even in jest.”
“Not that it’s a custom I would fall into, sir, but — why not?”
“Because I shall get enough of that when I return home someday,” Hugh said. “But, for a few years, at least, I shall be a whole man. Here.”
Jack turned his mount around and started back again. Hugh walked beside him. “When do you expect to return to England?”
Hugh sighed. “When my uncle has died, and my father assumes the title and claims the seat in Lords. The patent allows it. Then it will be my turn to manage the estate. It is many times larger than Meum Hall. What I learn here will greatly ease that responsibility.”
Jack studied his companion for a moment. “Will you want to return?”
“Very likely not.”
They walked together in silence for a while. Then Jack said, “Ockhyser has signed on with a slaver that called on Yorktown last week. The Dorothea.”
“Good riddance,” remarked Hugh. “And, please, Mr. Frake, no more queries about the slaves or Mr. Ockhyser. Mr. Vishonn and some of the others practically invited themselves over for a visit after dinner today. They, too, are curious. Stay and listen to how I plan to enlighten them.”
“Thank you, sir. I will.” Jack paused. “Your property looks improved, and your people, free and unfree, even seem to step livelier. Mr. Vishonn and the others will notice that, but will probably ascribe the difference to the fair weather.”
* * *
“You are right, sir,” said Hugh. “The correct form could have been either mea or meus. However, I wished to make a statement, and not merely append an inert name to a stationary object. Thus meum — ‘It is my hall, my place.’ Do you see? It is quite as correct as your instances, but has the virtue of being assertive and memorable.”
Thomas Reisdale grinned and dismissed the subject with a movement of his hand. “I cannot argue with that explanation, sir. You have a penchant for nonpareil reasoning.”
Seven men sat around the supper table, which was bare except for glasses, several bottles of claret, and a silver epergne whose branching bowls were piled with dry sweetmeats. Reisdale had arrived in the company of Reece Vishonn, Ralph Cullis, and Ira Granby. Arthur Stannard came shortly afterward, uncertain of his reception. Hugh had welcomed him, too.
Until now, the conversation had flitted around mundane subjects: the shortage of skilled labor and the exorbitant rates being charged by itinerant and usually careless artisans; the expected surge in trade once the war was concluded, especially in tobacco, shingles, and lumber; the unimaginable possibilities of western settlement and exploitation, now that France’s influence on the continent had been all but eradicated; and bills and matters being debated in the House of Burgesses.
Then Reece Vishonn too casually broached the subject that was on the visitors’ minds. “Do you think it was wise to dismiss your overseer, sir?”
Hugh had changed into a clean silk shirt and breeches, but had not bothered to don a coat or waistcoat. His visitors were slightly scandalized by this mode of receiving guests, but assumed that this was a new style in England. Hugh frowned and said, “Yes, I do, sir. He accomplished but a nullity, and was costly in that regard. Retaining him in that capacity was as silly as paying a man to watch cattle graze. He had no other arts to offer me.”
>
Mr. Cullis asked, “But…suppose there is discontent among your people, sir. Who would dispel it, or oppose it?”
Hugh scoffed. “If Mr. Ockhyser and his ilk were meant to be the sole check on the fire and brimstone of revolt, Mr. Cullis, you would have had a taste of hell long ago. You misconstrue the farrago. Most of the slaves I’ve encountered here and in the north are inured to the numb palsy of their servitude, just as their owners are resigned to their being sentient engines of toil and obedience.” He shook his head, and added, “Just as their owners are inured to liberal servitude under the Crown.” He shook his head again. “It is a mutual bondage that both parties find themselves in, sir, and one that someday will be severed only with great difficulty.”
Jack Frake, who sat in a corner of the long table and took little part in the talk, looked up from lighting his pipe and studied his host with new interest.
Vishonn queried, “Do you refer to the Crown, or the slaves, sir?”
“Both, in truth,” Hugh said.
After a moment of silence, Ira Granby remarked, “What a novel construction.”
Arthur Stannard ventured, “I have not heard the problem put in such terms before. Not even in Williamsburg. About the slaves, I mean.”
Reece Vishonn looked thoughtful, then said, “Indeed, it is a bondage, Mr. Kenrick, for us as well as the poor souls, as you say. But, there is no correcting it. There is no other economical means of raising our crops but with slaves, especially tobacco.”
