‘Would you believe, I thought he was going to object. It was in his face that he did not like Aeneas MacRoy, that he did not want to be taught by him. Well, I thought, I will not have that nonsense. “Joseph,” I said, “Maister MacRoy will teach you to read and write, or nobody will.” He saw that I was very angry, and he bowed his head and said he was grateful. But I should have realised that he was not. That he was using me. I should have put a stop to it then and there.’
‘You should never have started it,’ James said. ‘Once you have opened that door to them there is no locking them out.’
‘Well, it was too late. He was already receiving instruction from the minister at Inchture. And for a while, indeed, he behaved himself. He made progress at his lessons, and he seemed less sullen. But then someone came between him and Aeneas.’
‘Let me guess. A woman.’
‘A woman, aye. Ann Thomson. She was a housemaid here. She took a fancy to Joseph, and Aeneas took a fancy to her. And she encouraged him, I’ve no doubt – played him off against Knight, and enjoyed being the prize of two rivals. Not that I knew any of this at the time, you understand.’
‘Well, you would be occupied with your own romance. You were just married, after all.’
The book flew from John’s hand and skidded across the floor. James bent to retrieve it, glanced at the title page, and handed it back, giving an amused look which his brother did not return.
‘James, I could take offence at that. The two instances have absolutely nothing in common. Ann Thomson was no better than a harlot.’
‘No better or no worse? What did she do?’
‘What all harlots do. She lured an upright man into making himself foolish, then fell pregnant by a knave. She broke Aeneas’s heart.’
‘Does he have one?’
‘Why do you not take me seriously?’ John’s voice was almost a shout.
‘I am sorry.’ James held up an appeasing hand. ‘Really, I am very sorry. I just find it hard to believe that you are in such a state about a neger and a whore.’
‘They were in my house,’ John hissed. ‘She toyed with the feelings of an old, a trusted comrade, and all the time she was fornicating with Joseph. He, meanwhile, was becoming a Christian. Ann Thomson had his child not three months after he was baptised.’
‘Does the child live?’
‘No, it died at once. That should have been the end of the matter. I allowed the mother to lie in childbed here, and paid for the physician and the funeral, but once it was all over I dismissed her. She was clearly a bad influence on Joseph, and Margaret said that the housekeeper found her to be of a disruptive and rebellious nature. Had she stayed, half the maids would have expected me to pay for them to have bastards. She went back to Dundee, where she came from.’
‘But obviously that wasn’t – the end of the matter?’
John paced round the room. He had put the book down again, and was now punching the palm of one hand with the fist of the other. ‘She had her claws well into Joseph. Even thus parted, they somehow contrived to keep up their liaisons. Aeneas came to see me, most anguished, and said he could not be in the same room as Joseph any more, so the lessons would have to end. I agreed with him – I thought it was a fitting punishment for the way Joseph had behaved, although, as it turned out, he had already learned enough to cause more trouble. But then I was left with what to do with him again. This is something I never thought of before. At Glen Isla he would have been sent to the fields. But it is not so simple here. When you have only one slave, you cannot dispose of him as you could in Jamaica.’
James nodded thoughtfully. ‘I see what you mean. And he knew that too, which is why he grew so recalcitrant?’
‘Yes, I think so. When the lessons stopped he pestered me to let him improve his skills at dressing hair, and I sent him to a barber in Dundee. He must have met with Ann Thomson there, and she worked her charms on him again. The outcome was, they ran off to Edinburgh and were married. Or at least, they say they were married, by some secessionist.’
‘Perhaps they love each other,’ James said dryly.
John snorted, a sound somewhere between derision and rage. ‘Call it love if you wish. I would not grace their relations with that word. Have you read this?’ He picked up the book again, opened it at a marked page, passed it over. ‘It is Edward Long’s commentary on the Somerset case at Westminster last year.’
‘Deplorable decision. As you can imagine, it was much discussed in Savanna. But you are not worried about its implications for Joseph, surely?’
‘No. This is Scotland, not England, and if the Union did nothing else it at least preserved us our own laws. But have you read this?’
‘No, I’ve not. Long is very thorough, I hear. I’m keen to read his book on Jamaica when it’s finished. What about it?’
‘Read that passage there. I might have written it myself.’
James glanced over the page, then read aloud: ‘“The lower class of women in England are remarkably fond of blacks, for reasons too brutal to mention; they would connect themselves with horses and asses, if the laws permitted them.” Ah, that old favourite. “By these ladies they generally have a numerous brood. Thus, in the course of a few generations more, the English blood will become so contaminated with this mixture, and from the chances, the ups and downs of life, this alloy may spread so extensively, as even to reach the middle, and then the higher orders of the people, till the whole nation resembles the Portuguese and Moriscos in complexion of skin and baseness of mind.” Well, John, I presume you find Mr Long’s argument persuasive?’
‘You do not?’
‘I find it exaggerated. It would require a very large number of Joseph Knights to have the effect he suggests. On the other hand, he is of course absolutely right. Why even risk it? Common white women are fascinated by negers, because they have heard they are all hung like stallions, and negers lust after genteel white women because of their refinement. Both are grounds for not bringing the blacks over here, which I have always been against – I would not have brought Joseph Knight, had he been mine.’
John took the book back somewhat abruptly, put it back on the shelf, and began pacing again.
‘If it puts your mind at ease,’ James added, ‘I won’t be continuing here the habits I had in Jamaica. That was another time and place.’
‘Well, we always differed on that particular subject,’ John said, ‘so we’ll not pursue it. And we’ll judge Mr Long by his History next year. The point is, Joseph came home and announced he was married, and within a very short while he used his newly acquired skills to read all about the Somerset case in this.’ He picked up the Edinburgh Advertiser and flung it back down again. ‘I have no doubt that the Thomson woman pushed him on down the road he has now taken. She was bitter against me and Margaret although we were as fair to her as we could be. But she was not alone in encouraging him.’
‘Who else?’
‘Others. I do not know.’
‘And what road has he taken?’
‘First he got it into his head that Lord Mansfield had set him free. Then, when I disabused him of that notion, by patiently explaining the details of the case, and that England is not Scotland, and when I had also made it clear that his best interests lay in behaving himself with a master who treated him well and imposed no arduous service on him – after all that, he demanded that I take back his wife – his supposed wife – who is pregnant again – and set them up in a cottage on the estate!’ John came to a halt, heaving like a bull, and waited for a response.
‘Well, there’s a spirit in him,’ James said. ‘I’ll say that. I hope you gave him a good whipping to break it.’
‘I have never raised my hand against him.’
‘You’d not have this trouble if you had.’
‘Well, I did not. I told him his request was impertinent and out of the question, that if he really had married her it was without my consent and so he must bear the consequences, and that if he did not q
uickly learn to control himself I would ship him back to Jamaica.’
‘And he said …’
‘He said in that case he would have to leave my service.’
‘He cannot.’
‘Of course he cannot.’
‘He is an impudent rascal. There is only one thing for it and that is to have him flogged.’
‘It is not so simple as that, James. We are in Scotland now.’
‘Well, what difference? He is yours to do with as you wish. You would beat such tricks out of a dog, and you would certainly do the same with a neger at Glen Isla. What about … what was his name? Charlie. You thrashed him to an inch of his life. Why so timid now you have come home?’
‘Because, even if we were not in Scotland, flogging would not work. Did it work with Charlie? He still ran off. He still killed himself. That’s why I wanted to try another way with Joseph.’
‘Clearly that hasn’t worked either. And if you do not deal with him he will run off too.’
‘That is what I anticipate.’
‘Well, deal with him. Or let me deal with him.’
‘No.’
‘I’ll have him out of his bed and pleading for mercy in ten minutes.’
‘No. I’ll not have that here.’
‘Then he’ll run. Maybe he’ll run for the hills as they do in Jamaica. Maybe he’ll become a sooty Rob Roy.’
‘James, you exasperate me. There is a serious principle at stake here – the principle of property, of ownership.’
‘I know there is. That’s what I’m saying. A slave is a slave. To pretend otherwise is to delude everybody, including yourself and him.’
‘Well, we’ll see who is the more deluded. I’ve thought this through. He won’t go to the hills. He will go to the Thomson woman in Dundee. I will have been deprived of my property. I will not have treated him ill. I will have provided him with far more than he could reasonably have expected. He will be in the wrong, and I the one who has been wronged. The law will – must – be on my side. That is why I don’t want to beat him. I don’t want to give the law any reason to think of him as the injured party.’
James shrugged. ‘Well, it’s not how I would do it but perhaps you’re right. Do everything by the book, John, but for God’s sake make sure he does not slip your grasp, or you will have every servant with a petty grudge following his example.’
‘No. He is different. Other servants can give notice to leave and I cannot stop them. But I can stop Joseph. That is why I have got Aeneas MacRoy to watch his movements – something Aeneas is more than willing to do. Joseph is forbidden to go to Dundee, forbidden, in fact, to leave Ballindean unless with me. If Aeneas gets a hint that he is about to go – if he sees him folding away his clothes or begging some extra food from the kitchen – he is to tell me at once. I’ll know the minute he passes the gates, or before he is halfway to town at any rate.’
‘You’ll stop him? By force?’
‘If necessary. But not by the force of my hand. As you said, I’ll do it by the book, with a warrant. Our good friend Mr Kinloch is a Justice. So is Mr James Smyth of Balhary – he also has interests in the plantations. So is Sir John Ogilvy of Inverarity – a cousin of Margaret’s. I can depend on all of these gentlemen to have either my family’s welfare or their own at heart, should it come to it. I foresee no difficulties over securing a signed warrant for Joseph Knight’s apprehension.’
James was relieved to see a look of determination in his brother’s eyes. ‘That’s more like it,’ he said. That’s the Wedderburn in you. Perhaps I’ve been over hasty, John – not been home long enough. I forget how great the law is in Scotland. The law of Scotland. You have the law on your side. You cannot fail to keep him.’
Dundee, 16 November 1773
Ann Thomson’s sister Peggy was away home, and Ann was alone with her daughter at last. She felt the silence cover her like the shawl that was across her shoulders. She was sitting in one of two old chairs drawn up opposite each other at the ingle. Outside the one-roomed cottage – nothing; nobody going by the gable end on the muddy road, no voices filtering through from the neighbouring buildings. Inside – just the steady clicking of the fire. The spinning-wheels were pushed away for the night. Her mother had gone to the box-bed set in the recess at the far end of the room, closing the doors against draughts. Even the bairn was quiet, giving out none of the tiny murmurs and squeaks that sometimes punctuated her sleep; so quiet, in fact, that it made Ann nervous. She had brought the crib in beside her, close to the fire where she knew never to leave it unattended in case of spitting coals. It was good when the bairn slept so well, but at least when she cried she demonstrated that she was without question, alive. Ann had lost one child already, and could not bear the thought of losing this one.
The cottage was in the Hilltown – a poor part of Dundee north and east of the High Street – a seemingly indiscriminate scattering of narrow, one- and two-roomed houses among a confusion of gardens and kailyards. All but a very few of the roofs were thatched with straw or laid with turf divots, and the stone lums poked through the thatch like ancient markers in a kirkyard. On a windless night such as this, the reek of peat and coal which they puffed out hung in the air like a shroud.
In the cottage lived in by Ann, her mother and her child, tiny thick-glassed windows admitted a minimum of light during the brief winter days, and at night gave out only the faintest flickering indications of life within. The floor was of trodden clay, damp and cold at this time of year. The hearth, built of stone flags, was where their waking life was centred. When the fire faded, Ann would bank it up with dross, then creep into the box-bed with her mother, taking the bairn as well. On the two nights Joseph had been here, Ann and he had made up another rough bed in front of the fire, of plaids and blankets and all the clothes they could fling on top, and had wrapped themselves together against the cold.
But Joseph was not here tonight. They had taken him away yesterday, back to Ballindean. He had gone quietly enough, and Ann herself was calm now, although her calmness surprised her. Yesterday she had been a raging harridan, fighting to keep Joseph when the town constable, Sandy Pullar, came with the warrant. In the Hilltown, officers of the law did not stand on ceremony. Sandy Pullar had been squeezing his enormous bulk past the door even as his knuckles rapped on it. The space behind him had been filled by another two men.
‘Noo, lass,’ Pullar said, ‘let’s no hae ony bather. I’m here for your man. It’s his name wrote here clear as ye can see, and if there’s anither runawa Negro in Scotland cried Joseph Knight I’d like tae see ye produce him.’
She leapt from her spinning-wheel at the other end of the room and planted herself in front of Pullar, hands on hips, her head no higher than the middle of his chest. ‘And I’d like tae see ye produce the piece o paper that says ye can tak him awa,’ she said. ‘Shame on ye, Sandy, tae sinder a man frae his wife and bairn! Shame on ye when he’s done naething wrang. All he wants is tae be let alane. What has he done tae ye, that ye come tae tak him awa like this?’
‘I am jist daein my duty,’ said Pullar, but she could see he did not like it, and would have preferred a case of robbery or assault, where the miscreants he came for tried to fight their way out and he could set his men on them. But here there was no hint of a battle to come: only Ann’s mother, hardly pausing at the wheel, as if, half blind and hard of hearing as she was, she did not understand the gravity of what was happening; and Joseph standing behind her with the weak light of the window at his back, cradling the bairn in his arms, saying to Ann he would go with them, there was no sense in bones being broken since he would have to go willing or unwilling. Ann saw Pullar fumbling in his tunic for the document, and she waited till it was in his hand and then snatched it from him, while still barring the way to him and his two brutes.
‘Noo, lass –’ Pullar said again, but she cut him off with a scream.
‘Dinna you noo lass me, Sandy Pullar. Ye’ve kent me since we were bairns. Ye’ll jist n
eed tae bide whaur ye are till I read this oot – this warrant, as it cries itsel. Hae ye read it yoursel? Dae ye ken the filth ye’ve been cairryin in yer pooch? Weel, I’m a guid reader, Sandy, sae I’ll make it plain tae ye. “Sir John Wedderburn of Ballindean” – a fine title for a man that sends ithers tae dae his dirty work – “claims that Joseph Knight, whom he has hitherto entertained in the same manner as he does his other servants” – aye, that’ll be the anes he pays – “and means to continue to do so” – ha! – “and humbly presumes that the law will not disappoint him of his service during life, and the said Joseph Knight having within these two days past packed up his clothes and threatened to absent himself from his service, although the petitioner never gave him manumission or promised to release him from his slavery, the petitioner prays that the Justices of Peace of Perthshire grant warrant to apprehend the person of the said Joseph Knight and bring him before them for examination upon the facts as set forth” – God save us, whit facts, Sandy? There’s nae facts here, it’s aw clash and claivers. It’s a pack o lees.’
Sandy moved to the right to get past her. She blocked his way.
‘My man has as muckle right as ony man tae leave his maister’s service,’ she said. ‘Mair right, since he was forced intae it.’
‘Annie …’ Pullar and Joseph both said it simultaneously. She ignored them both.
‘Whit kind o country is this that ye can come and tak a man back intae bondage, awa frae his family, even awa frae Scotland if Sir John Wedderburn wants tae send him back tae Jamaica?’
‘That’s no for me tae say, lass,’ Sandy said, stepping to the left. She blocked him again, turned to the signatures at the foot of the warrant.
‘Weel, I’ll tell ye,’ she said. ‘It’s a country whaur big glaikit chiels like you dae whit they’re tellt by the justices, and the justices that sign warrants are nane but Sir John Wedderburn’s cronies and fellow slave-drivers. Justices! Their notion o justice is jist whitever will keep them fat and rich on the sweat and blood o ithers. Here, ye can tak back your trash.’
Joseph Knight Page 22
