So after I’d knocked on his door and been ordered in, I put his glass down on his table — not looking at him because I didn’t want him to notice me ever again. I could hear him wheezing though. Then I slipped out of his room. An hour later, when his wife came to wish him sweet dreams, she found his door locked. She called to him, but there was no answer. He had one of the two keys to the room in his possession. The only other one was in her night-table drawer.
Frantic, she rushed off to get the key. She was powerful afraid to use it though. She didn’t want to find him dead, with his ghost lingering over the body. Mistress Holly was mighty afraid of the dark — because her mother had seen a ghost once rise from her crib and float right out the window — so she shouted to my papa to come up from the larder and open the door. By that time, Mr. Johnson the overseer had been told by Lily the cook that something was wrong in the Big House.
Papa took a long time getting to Mistress Holly, because he couldn’t walk so well. Not since after both his heel-strings were cut by Big Master Henry in the year before I was born. But she wasn’t about to trust anyone else.
Just as he opened the Master’s bedroom door, Mr. Johnson barged into the Big House and came bounding up the stairs. “Get your skinny nigger hands away from there, Samuel!” he shouted, and grabbed the key from Papa’s hand.
My papa said thank you to him, because he was always thanking folks at the strangest times.
The house slaves, me included, were all standing at the bottom of the stairs listening to the hellish caterwauling of Mistress Holly. Lily and her grandson Backbend, who used to help serve supper, were praying that nothing had happened. But don’t be fooled — if they prayed for the Master’s heart to still be beating, it was only because they were worried they were going to be sold to someone even more mud-minded if he died.
As for me, I was hoping real hard that he was as dead as a headless catfish, and I was squeezing my eyelids so tight I might have drawn blood.
Whether my wishes had anything to do with it or not, Big Master Henry was gone as gone can be. Since his drinking glass was empty and had fallen on the floor from out of his big cold hand, I might have been suspected of poisoning him and would likely have been hanged that very night, but there was also a wood-handled knife buried in the side of his neck. That blade saved me from swinging from a tree, I’m happy to say. And Lily too, since she mixed the lemonade. Not that we poisoned him. Lily believed in God’s retribution and wouldn’t have risked His vengeance. As for me, I confess I wanted to. I’d thought of it every time he stuck his broken glass up inside me.
*
How the killer had stabbed Big Master Henry and escaped through a locked door was the mystery everybody wanted to get to the bottom of. It was a twenty-four-foot drop to the ground from Big Master Henry’s window, so nobody could climb up or jump down without using a ladder.
As for the two keys to the room, one was found by Mr. Johnson in a pocket of Big Master Henry’s dress coat, which was folded on a chair in his bedroom. The other had been in Mistress Holly’s night-table drawer. She’d been playing solitaire on her bed for two hours previous to finding her husband’s body. If the killer had taken the key earlier, then how did he — or she — return it to the night table where Mistress Holly had found it?
The ladder was found safely locked away in the First Barn. There was no blood on it. And none of the field slaves had seen anyone climbing up the side of the house. So Mr. Johnson had the foremen tie Crow over the whipping barrel. Then he raised his cat and let it fall, because “that damn careless nigger” had been the Master’s personal slave and ought to have protected him.
Crow wept like a baby under his ten lashes, since the skin that had been flayed from his back years earlier had grown over the bones with thick scars that were sensitive as burns. Mr. Johnson kept spitting out tobacco juice onto the black man’s legs to humiliate him.
The next day Crow told me, “Ya know, Morri, I was so ashamed to let go like that, but it was like I was bein’ cut open with a rusty saw.”
I hugged him and said we were all proud of him. I promised myself I’d see them all pay one day. I just didn’t know how yet.
We all kept our mouths shut during the whipping except to count the strokes and pray for Crow. The overseer then picked out Lily’s grandson Backbend from our line. He was only eleven and his mamma was dead. He had big dark eyes and the softest lips of anyone at River Bend.
“I’m gonna whip this boy ten good strokes too,” Mr. Johnson said, “unless you niggers tell me what happened last night. And I’m gonna keep pickin’ out your children till one of you speaks the truth.”
Lily shrieked and fell to her knees and begged him to be kind to her boy.
Most likely any one of us would have stopped his suffering by calling out the name of the culprit if we had truly seen him.
“Shame, shame, shame!” I yelled. “You is payin’ yer toll to hell right here, right now, Mr. Johnson.”
“You next, Morri!” he hollered back. “I ain’t gonna suffer your big mouth. And you’re getting twenty strokes!”
I was too angry to be scared. And too lightheaded with the truth of the Master being dead. I figured that the worst had happened to me already.
My papa then said he would not let anyone hurt me, but Mr. Johnson said, “Shut up, nigger, or I’ll give her thirty!”
“Thank you, Mr. Johnson, sir,” Papa replied real nice. “But if you whip my daughter, I can promise you some very, very serious consequences that you are not going to find agreeable,” he added, smiling.
“You can, can you?”
“Indeed, I can. Mistress Holly will need me should either of her children take ill. And I shall need Morri with me. And healthy. Just as I need Backbend in one piece as well.”
“Shut that big mouth of yours, nigger!”
Mr. Johnson turned to Backbend and raised the lash above his head.
After the third stripe across the boy’s back, when his tears were rolling down his cheeks and he’d already filthied himself, Papa limped forward and said, “I did it. I killed Big Master Henry.”
“Done it how?” Mr. Johnson demanded.
“I took the ladder and I climbed up quietry-quietly. Big Master Henry was asleep and I stabbed him.”
“You, with that gimp of yours? Climbin’ up the ladder would be near impossible.”
“Yet that is just what I did, sir.”
“Why would you?” said Mr. Johnson, squinting.
“He cut my heel-strings, sir.”
“That was more than ten years ago.”
“Still, that is the reason.”
“So how d’you kill him without getting blood on you?”
“I wore gloves.”
Mr. Johnson spit. “Where are the gloves now?”
“Christmas Creek.”
“And how did you get the damned ladder out of the barn?”
Papa couldn’t answer that, since everyone knew only Mr. Johnson had the key.
“Not another word from you, Samuel!” he warned.
He was about to start whipping Backbend again, and then it would be my turn, but Weaver stepped forward and said that he had done it.
“And how did you get the ladder out of the barn?” Johnson asked. He spit twice real quick, which meant he was at the end of his patience.
“Wid da key, Mistuh Johnson.”
“My key?”
“Yessuh.”
“But I had my key with me all evenin’. I’m sure of it.”
“I duhn used mah root bayag,” Weaver confessed.
“What bag was that, nigger?”
“De condrin’ bayag.”
“What in God’s name are you talkin’ ’bout now?”
“His conjuring bag,” Papa repeated, because Mr. Johnson sometimes pretended that he was plain unable to understand Weaver and some of the other slaves.
“Weaver,” the overseer spat, “get your ragged black hide back in line now!”
&n
bsp; Papa stepped forward again and said, “Nobody knows who killed Big Master Henry, Mr. Johnson. So take me instead of my Morri or I promise I’ll put an arrow in your heart.”
His words made me shake. Papa was just over five feet tall, with tight peppercorns of gray hair growing a bit thin on top, but he was more than Mr. Johnson’s equal, and we all knew it. Now that my papa had threatened him, the overseer was finally getting the idea that he was losing this wrestling match with us. Because if my father was willing to risk being lynched for speaking the way he did, then he could be pretty damned sure that we weren’t lying and that no one knew the identity of the killer.
“You niggers get back to work. I’ve had enough of your lies for one day,” he shouted.
After that, he cut Backbend free, and the boy ran off.
*
The crime was never solved, though I was pretty sure I knew who’d done it — Little Master Henry. He’d been out at a party, but he could have walked the last few hundred yards of his way home and snuck back into the house without being seen. Or maybe he had been seen. And heard too. Likely no slave would have admitted to that, even if Backbend had been flayed down to his skeleton. Accusing the heir to the throne of River Bend would have been a death sentence.
Little Master Henry had everything to gain from his papa’s death. With the blade of one small knife, he inherited half the plantation. The other half went to Mistress Holly, of course.
In any event, we were about to have ourselves a new Master.
*
Two weeks after Big Master Henry’s death, on a bright Sunday afternoon, Papa asked me to sit on a stool with him inside a circle of fuchsia bushes he’d planted. Dozens of pink, purple, and red bell-shaped flowers were dangling all around us. Papa always said that fuchsias liked people knowing how pretty they were and grew offended if you looked away too quickly. I knew what he wanted me to tell him, but my heart was thundering. He said, “I’ll not make you say a thing. You can tell me when you’re ready.” I leaned my head upon his shoulder. “Sleep,” he said. “Sleep against me, Morri. I shall not let you fall.”
XXXI
After learning of my father’s betrayal from Benjamin, I immediately posted a letter to Mother and Aunt Fiona asking that they be ready to receive us in their home in about two weeks.
Grandmother Rosa clearly wished for me to invite her too, if only so that she might be allowed the dignity of a refusal, but Mama would have had my head on a platter if she joined us.
Grandmother’s last words to me were “John, you were always a clever child, but never kind. Much like your mother in that regard.”
“I am genuinely sorry, Grandmother. I’d have preferred being a better grandson. I assure you that if I could stay in Portugal, I would. Cruelty is not my intention.”
“It is never our intention, John.”
*
Luna Olive Tree had no living relatives, so I went to her home on St. John’s Eve to ask her if she might consider joining us in England once we were settled in; Portugal’s precarious political situation was making me think we’d all be better off there, at least for the foreseeable future.
“Oh, John, it’s too late for an old goat like me to go anywhere,” she sighed.
I argued with her, but she kept telling me that it was impossible. I thanked her for all that she and her sister had ever done for me, which was a great-great deal. “You saved my life by finding Senhor Gilberto to train me,” I told her.
To make me cry, she said, “We never had children, but we had you, John, and both Graça and I were eternally grateful.”
*
Aboard our ship, a sense of death lodged itself in my gut. The mad thought that Papa might still be alive somewhere, hiding from us out of shame, kept me bound to silence. I knew it could not be true, but I could not fully accept his death, even after all these years. When my daughters came to my side, we held hands and watched our home disappear.
*
We arrived in London on the afternoon of July the Third. We found Mother and Aunt Fiona in hearty spirits, so thrilled by our arrival that they hopped around like schoolgirls and asked endless questions without waiting for replies.
Our initial conversation set the slightly hysterical and comic tone for our first days with them, which pleased me greatly as it served to camouflage my worry.
Fiona’s blue eyes were radiant. “I canna believe it!” she kept exclaiming. “They are bonnie burdies indeed. Why, their doony feathers are all gone!”
“What’s doony?” Esther asked.
“Downy,” replied Mother.
“And burdies?”
“Lassies.”
“Let me get a good look at you all!” Fiona said, moving back to take us in as we sat on the sofa.
“You’re frightening the children, staring like that,” Mama joked.
Fiona patted her bun of gray hair. Her eyes filled with tears as she whispered bonnie burdies to herself. Then she said what Mother and I had been hoping she would not: “If only James were here to see you all.”
*
Mother looked wonderful and had allowed her hair to shine with its natural silver. That first day she wore amethyst earrings and a pearl necklace I remembered from my childhood. She attributed her overall confidence to London, where she felt perfectly at home and could live openly as a Jewish woman.
Fiona agreed that the city’s astonishing diversity had certainly helped my mother, but she ascribed more importance to her piano lessons. Highly regarded as a teacher, her fame had spread, and she currently had students from as far away as Camden Town. One of her former pupils, a twenty-two-year-old Londoner by the name of Ian Pitt, had accompanied the well-known tenor Renato Vecchia on his recent tour of France and Italy.
As for me, I attributed much of her change to Aunt Fiona herself, who was very little put out by what others — particularly men — thought of her. She dressed the way she wanted, spoke her mind, and anyone who didn’t like it be damned!
One last reason for Mother’s sense of peace may have been that, in moving to England, she had placed herself a thousand miles from her own mother’s criticisms. She and I did speak of Grandmother Rosa upon my arrival, of course. When I suggested that she might consider inviting her for an extended stay, she retorted, “John, my mother only wanted your sympathy. She and my brothers have always been at war with me, so now let them delight in each other’s company.”
Mama finally told me what had caused the rift between them and how her deep affection for Violeta — and even Daniel — was connected to her own past.
When she was just fourteen, her piano teacher had touched her in inappropriate ways. “I was left scared and confused,” she said. “I’d looked up to him like a god — he played so beautifully. And I’d always trusted him. To have him betray me like that … in that terrible way, it took away my faith in so many things.”
“What did you do?”
“I thought it best to keep quiet, but during our next lesson, he did it again. So after he was gone, I told my mother, but she only accused me of being too flirtatious with adults. She said that if he had touched me inappropriately — which she wasn’t willing to believe just because I said so — then it must have been because I’d been leading him on. To punish me, she forbade me from taking further piano lessons with anyone else ever again. John, you know how I adore playing the piano. I was brokenhearted — completely lost.
“As if that wasn’t enough,” Mama continued, placing a hand to her chest to steady her breathing, “my former teacher spread vicious gossip about me, claiming that I was a wicked Marrana girl and that I’d tried to seduce him.”
She shuddered when she said that adults from her neighborhood had referred to her for years as “that lying Jewish whore.”
“So you never took another lesson?”
Mama grinned slyly. “You know me better than that, John. I found a teacher on my own and for more than two years studied with him in secret. His name was João Vicente, Go
d bless his memory. He didn’t ask for any payment at all. He told me that when I was a rich and famous concert pianist I would pay him back. But then one of my dear elder brothers followed me in secret across the city and told my mother what I’d been up to. You know what your Grandmother Rosa did? She beat me on the palms with a paddle, shouting with each strike that I’d never play music or humiliate the family again. It took weeks before I could even sew a few stitches. I felt like an outcast for years after that. The worst part was that I was prevented from doing what I most loved. I only started to feel like myself again when I left home and could play anytime I wanted.”
It was Father who saved her life in a sense, since he’d cared not a fig for the rumors about her character and believed only in the love they’d found together. “His first present to me after our marriage was a pianoforte he ordered from London — the one I still have.” Mama’s eyes radiated love for him.
“Then, when I gave birth to you, John,” she said, tapping my nose playfully, “I knew that I had overcome all the evil done to me. You were my proof that all would be well in my new life.”
To me, of course, this fierce and intuitive solidarity between my parents made the destruction of their marriage even more terrible.
We then discussed my life since Francisca’s death, and she listened intently. I had been unaware of how strongly — and for how long — I yearned for this simple act of listening. She in turn spoke to me of her desire to open a music school, where, with Fiona’s help, she might begin to accept scholarship students.
She burst into tears upon hearing that I’d received a letter from Violeta, for whom she had prayed every night for many years. I refrained from telling her about my plans to see her in New York. I could not yet bring myself to speak of the troubling matters that concerned Mother directly.
*
Over the next days, Esther and Graça enjoyed visits to St. Paul’s and Kensington Gardens and were much taken with the perfumeries in Shire Lane and a Fantoccini performance on Oxford Street. Secretly, I posted a letter to Violeta saying that I would be arriving in New York as quickly as a ship might carry me. I added that I’d very much like to make a tile panel for her home, but that it might have to wait for a month or two while I attended to other business that I would explain to her upon my arrival.
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