That’s mostly what I was thinking about when I rushed down to River Bend’s main gate before dawn the next day. But no plant or ribbon was in sight.
By the first rays of sunlight peeking through the pines, I was already pounding Master Edward’s washing on the scrubbing rocks at Christmas Creek. I was hoping that John would leave. I figured I didn’t owe him anything just because he’d been friends with my papa. He was only a boy then anyway. Maybe the man he was had nothing to do with the boy he’d been all those years ago.
A little later, Wiggie came to tell me that Rosa’s baby, Cullenn, was coughing and I was needed. I was worried it was the croup, so I went out to Papa’s garden and mixed up some chamomile and cassena for him to breathe in. The air in his cabin was stale as molded bread, so I took him out to Porter’s Woods myself and built a fire there, because Rosa was a field hand and couldn’t be spared from weeding the rice.
So that was where I next saw John — sitting at the edge of the woods. He asked if Cullenn was my baby, which made me laugh, since anyone could see that he didn’t look anything like me.
“Some babies take after the father,” he said, his face getting all long and sad. “Like you, for instance.”
I looked away, because his eyes were softening up my anger and I needed each and every bit of it if I was going to have the courage to pick up my pistol and march out of River Bend.
“Morri, I have to take you away from here,” he told me.
“I thank you for thinking of me,” I said coolly, “but it’s useless talking about these things. I can’t go.”
He took a couple of steps toward me. “Don’t you understand what I’m telling you?” he pleaded. “You don’t have to stay here any longer.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand. I’m likely to be punished if the overseer catches me talking to you. You’re just making life difficult for me. So let me be.” When he wouldn’t move back, I hollered, “I can’t be seen talking to you! Go away.”
I saw I’d hurt him bad, but I knew it was for his own good and didn’t say another word. Even so, I felt real guilty.
I didn’t catch another glimpse of him all the rest of that day, Saturday. Weaver said that he saw him a couple of times sitting on a rock by the Cooper River, looking all worried, drawing in his sketchbook like his life depended on it.
John had supper with the family in the Big House on Saturday evening. Mistress Anne had come up from Charleston, and Master Edward and Mistress Kitty had arrived from Cordesville. They’d all heard there was a Scottish artist staying here, so they just had to stop by to get a good look at him. Crow told me later that Mistress Anne flirted with John something shameful nearly the whole supper.
I stayed most of that night with Rosa in her cabin, since Cullenn was still coughing and needed my constant attention. His nose was awful stuffed, so I did one of my father’s tricks and covered it with my mouth to suck out all that muck.
Sunday was our day free, and Cullenn was better, so I told Rosa how to care for him, then went with Weaver over to Comingtee so he could meet his wife and children. We got bad news there right away. Martha and his two sons were having second thoughts about our running away. But Weaver said that it was too late to change our minds, that we had to go because too many folks knew about the plan and we already had the guns. Martha told us that a washing girl named Sarah was going to come with us, too. She and Weaver’s son Frederick wanted to get married.
I passed the day watching the cotton barges drift on by, embroidering the sleeves on my Sunday dress, and singing some with Weaver’s other son, Taylor, who had an old guitar. No one said another word about escaping. Weaver did a little fishing and caught us some carp, which tasted good for supper, though we all nibbled at the fixings as if we were going to be hanged in the morning. It’s funny how nightfall can make you think about death.
We returned home late on Sunday, near midnight. In the morning, while I was hugging a few last minutes of sleep to me, Wiggie drove John to a house near Stromboli where that fancy black woman lived who’d first come with him to River Bend. I thought he’d given up on helping me, and a whole lot of feelings about that mixed together in my mind. I guess I even felt hurt. But then Crow told me that John had spent a good part of Sunday putting nosy questions to him, Lily, and even Mr. Johnson. He wanted to know all about the murders of Big and Little Master Henry. He had them describe everything in detail, down to what their spells had been like. He even asked Lily for her lemonade recipe!
After hearing that, I was mighty relieved he’d left us. Having him off the plantation meant there was no chance of any of us having to harm him.
Cullenn was just about all better by Monday. No fever and no cough. I figured that at least one good thing had happened. One good thing a day is all I generally ask for, though someday I plan on working myself up to two.
*
I ain’t never ever going to forget Tuesday the Second of September, 1823. Because on that morning I found a red ribbon tied to the gate and a pot of pink carnations. I can’t say how I carried them back with me to the Big House, because I don’t remember a single thing.
I went to see Lily. I do remember that. She sat me down and fanned me, because I was burning up. “Baby, you’s scarin’ me somet’in’ fierce.”
“I’m scaring myself,” I told her.
*
We were planning on getting the muskets, pistols, powder, and swords out from under the piazza on Sunday at nightfall. We’d go out the front gate and make our way to Petrie’s Landing, where the boats were waiting for us. We’d row them downriver to Charleston Harbor and Captain Ott.
We were going to bind Master Edward and Mr. Johnson with rope and lock them in the First Barn. We’d tie up the two Negro foremen too, since we’d never been able to trust them. By the time someone came along to let them out of the barn, we’d be safe on the Landmark. Or dead.
*
That night, way past midnight, I crawled under the piazza to get one of the muskets. It was dark, and I was afraid of a rattlesnake clamping its jaws down on my hand. I was shaking like a little girl. But I got it. Its barrel fit into the palm of my hand like death itself.
I gave it to Weaver at his cabin door. He woke Saul, Sweet-Pea, and Drummond, the field hands who slept in the same room as him. Sweet-Pea and Drummond were twins, just twenty years old, and Saul was their uncle. Weaver told them what we were planning. Sweet-Pea would come. Drummond said no thank you, it was a fool plan, but he wouldn’t say nothing to the overseer or Master Edward. Saul said he wasn’t sure if he’d risk it. Weaver stayed up that night by the light of two candles and showed Sweet-Pea and Saul how to put in the powder and take a shot. By dawn, Saul was damned certain he could fire the gun, so he agreed to come as well.
At the same time, I told Lily what we were planning. She grabbed a hold of the brass cross she kept around her neck like it might fly away and said that she was powerful afraid for me. She didn’t seem to understand that I was telling her that she could come too. She just shook her head and said, “Not me, baby, I’s gonna die at River Bend, don’ ya know.”
Nothing I could do could make her come along.
“I’s gonna miss ya, baby,” she said, starting to cry, “but I’s gonna pray ya makes it up Nawth.” She took my shoulders. “Ya bettuh jes’ send me a lettuh when you gets there, ’cause I don’ wanna be worryin’ none ’bout ya. I’ll ask Massa Edwood to read it to me. He’s gonna be right relieved knowin’ you’s safe up Nawth.”
She winked at that, and we burst out laughing. Then she held me to her breast like she was my mamma.
So now there were four of us from River Bend agreed to escape — me, Weaver, Sweet-Pea, and Saul. Four more from Comingtee made eight.
*
Backbend and Hopper-Anne, Lily’s grandchildren, said on Wednesday that they’d come, along with Backbend’s wife, Lucy. They’d be taking their baby boy, Scooper, as well. Grandma Blue said she was too old to go traipsing about the
countryside with dogs hankering after her old African hide. But her son, Parker, and his wife, Christmas-Eve — who was born on December the Twenty-Fourth, of course — were coming, along with her grandson Randolph, and his children Lawrence and Mimi. Rosa and her husband, Langston, said it was too risky. We didn’t tell Wiggie yet, since we couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t pass on that information to Master Edward or the foremen.
Crow … We pleaded with the lean old buzzard, but he wouldn’t change his no to yes. When we said we were going to lock all the white folks and the black foremen in the First Barn, he grinned like he did when he was young and said, “Someone got to stay behin’ and make sure they don’t get away. That’ll be me.”
“Please, Crow, I’m begging you. Come with us. We can’t leave you.”
“You ’member when they whip me so bad my ribs showed like teeth? When they did that, girl” — he squeezed my hand real tight — “I says to myself, ‘Crow, you got to get back at ’em and make them bleed.’ This is a chance for me, baby girl. You leave me here and I’m gonna make sure they ain’t goin’ nowhere. Their eyes gonna bleed when they sees River Bend empty and you long gone. And I want to see that for myself!”
“But you can come! There’s freedom out there. Crow, you’ve got to come. I can’t leave you.”
“No, baby girl, my vengeance is here.”
*
So it was decided by Wednesday at suppertime that thirteen of us from River Bend — including one newborn baby — were going to close the gate to our plantation forever behind us. And then there was Weaver’s family from Comingtee: Martha, Taylor, Frederick, and Sarah.
Lord, I hoped that we could get seventeen persons on the three rowboats that Captain Ott was planning on leaving at Petrie’s Landing.
*
Late Wednesday night, Weaver snuck across the bridge to Comingtee, where he told his family to make their way to River Bend by six o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Martha was sure now she had no courage for the escape, but Weaver told her there’d be a feather bed waiting for her in New York. That was a little joke between the two of them, since Martha was always saying that just once in her life she wanted to sleep on a downy mattress with a pillow that wasn’t made out of old clothes. Weaver had always said the first thing he’d do with any money he ever made was buy her a proper bed.
*
Thursday morning, all of us except Weaver were as jittery as fish out of water about what was going to happen. We were all thinking the same thing: that if even one person said something stupid to Mr. Johnson or one the foremen, we’d all be neck-high in night soil. I was so close to fainting half the time that I had to keep dousing my head with water.
Then, around about noon, John walked in the front gate carrying a leather bag and his sketchbook. Weaver saw him before I did, because he was helping flood the rice fields about two hundred yards from the entrance. I only heard him when he reached the piazza, because he called for Crow. I’d been sweeping out a ragged troop of ants from the kitchen and ran to see who it was. He looked at me like he had some polished secret inside him that was going to change everything.
LI
One seemingly harmless remark from Mistress Anne at our supper on Saturday evening, along with one of my own observations, combined to give me suspicions about the origin of the spells suffered by both Big and Little Master Henry. If I had not discovered their cause, then I believe that Morri might never have grown to trust me.
I was close to despair when the meal began, as Morri had again refused to even consider coming away with me. I’d seen her caring for a sick baby that afternoon and spoken to her gently, but she shouted back that I was making her life even more difficult than it already was. I simply couldn’t seem to say anything right to her.
Mistress Anne spoke viciously at first about her dead father and brother, calling the former a brute and the latter a weakling. In the end she softened, however, and she improved my mood when she asked Lily to prepare fresh lemonade for us all, as in the days of her youth when Samuel had given a glass every night to her father and brother for health reasons.
“You know, Mr. Stewart,” Mistress Anne said, “my father and brother were subject to the most terrible spells of fever and dizziness. To be totally honest with you, I occasionally fear my children have inherited this propensity, but so far we have been most fortunate.”
To my subsequent questions, she replied that she had never asked Lily for her lemonade recipe but that it must have contained some of the herbs Samuel grew in his garden. “We all benefited considerably from his presence. Though he vanished into nothing three years ago. I tremble for the fate of the poor little man. I truly do. By now, dogs have probably eaten him down to the last bone.”
As Lily entered the room with drinking glasses and a jug of lemonade, Anne requested that she tell us her recipe. It consisted of lemon juice, water, honey, ground mint leaves, and a powder made from several other herbs. Which ones precisely, she could not say. She told us that only Samuel had known, though Morri had come up with a recipe nearly as good.
By now I understood that the herbs were irrelevant, however. This would not have occurred to me if, during my childhood, Midnight and I had not read together on dozens of occasions Strabo’s account of the victory of King Mithradates of Pontus over the Romans.
What was relevant was the honey.
I questioned Crow and Lily further the next day. Each was hesitant to speak to me, but through the accumulation of small details I was able to bring the dark treasure I sought to the surface.
Crow told me that Big Master Henry’s spells had started before Midnight’s arrival at River Bend, but he also dated that to 1809, which — from what Morri had told me — I knew to be a lie. He confirmed that only Mistress Holly and the Master had had keys to the bedroom in which his body had been found.
I questioned Crow at the door to his small room, just off the study. To change the subject, he showed me some of his knick-knacks, including two molds he had made by pressing scallop shells into riverbed clay. He said he’d once had many others, some of which had been fired in an oven by his recently deceased younger brother, who’d been a blacksmith over at Limerick Plantation. And not just shells — he’d made molds of coins and Samuel’s flowers as well.
Later, Lily told me that when Big Master Henry was under the power of the spells, it was as though he were soused to his eyeballs. Little Master Henry had been just the same, she said.
She also assured me that Samuel’s medical knowledge and care had always returned Big and Little Master Henry to health. She started when I asked if the particular lemonade she made during their spells was in any way different from her daily brew. She denied any difference.
I knew I would also hide the truth if I were in her position. To alleviate her fears, I said that I was quite certain she had never done anything wrong to either of her masters. Then it was my turn to lie. In a confessional voice, I said that one of my daughters back in England was subject to similar spells. I explained that I was merely hoping to learn the secret of her recipe so I might alleviate my child’s suffering.
Thinking of my girls in faraway London, it was all too easy to let my eyes fill with tears. Softening, Lily whispered that when the Master was feeling a bit under the weather Midnight would sometimes ask her to secretly use what she called the curing honey — a powerful and dark variety that he extracted from the combs of a particular hive in Porter’s Woods. Only he knew its location, though he had passed that secret on to Morri. Lily assured me that Morri would surely give me a jar of it for my daughter before I left River Bend.
I kissed her for this kindness, and glimpsed her rubbing her cheek as I stepped out the door.
*
So I learned how Midnight had brought on the spells. As to his motivation, it didn’t seem that a slave would need a particular reason to give mad honey to his master. Yet Morri had provided me with one earlier, when she told me that her father had earned her the right to read, as well
as gardens for himself and the other slaves, by curing Big Master Henry of the worst of his spells and then threatening never to help him again. Little Master Henry had likely granted further concessions for the same reason.
Lily always thought the spells got worse by themselves and that the curing honey was all that stood between her master and the grave. She had no reason to doubt Midnight, whose talents as a healer were renowned. He told her when to start using it and when to stop.
Of course, it might have been possible that the very first spell had been real and had given Midnight the idea for his gambit. In any case, once he had seen how easy it was to produce a grave illness and then effect a cure by withholding the cause, he understood the usefulness of this ruse. He had planted his rhododendrons to have access to the mad honey made from their pollen.
It was, in fact, a brilliant strategy. Likely he’d regarded it as unfortunate but necessary. And sanctioned by history through the victory of King Mithradates. It would have also been a reminder of the power that honey held in the Bushman culture.
*
During my very first talk with Morri, she told me that Big Master Henry had had his way with some of the slave girls for a month prior to his falling victim to a terrible spell. A sudden spark in her eyes — which she tried to hide from me by gazing down — led me to believe that she had been one of his victims. Even if she had kept this a secret from everyone, her father would likely have guessed from some subtle change in her bearing.
This was motivation enough for Midnight to commit murder, as I saw it, as was the cutting of his heel-strings. Yet I didn’t believe he had done either killing. For if he had sought to end either Big or Little Master Henry’s life, he merely would have had to increase the dosage of honey or add a more potent poison to Lily’s lemonade.
When I mentioned the possibility that Mistress Holly had committed the murders to Crow and Lily, they replied that it was impossible. They assured me that she’d cowered in front of her husband like a whipped dog. Lily also told me that the Mistress had been so fond of her ne’er-do-well son that she would have laid down her life for him without a moment’s hesitation.
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