Chapter 5: INTO THE WOODS
Brandon had always reckoned that the most boring road trip ever was the car journey on the freeway between Savannah and Snipesville. But the same journey by horse and wagon along a dirt trail was even worse. At least the freeway takes you past the pine forests, marshes and swamps, he thought, not through them.
Now, in 1752, he gazed glumly at the woodlands as the wagon bumped its way at an agonizingly slow pace along the track.
Mr. Osborn noticed Brandon’s dismay, and assumed that he was pining for England. He tried to put a positive spin on things. “It is impressive that after a mere fifteen years of settlement in Georgia,” he said, “Englishmen should have already built roads into the wilderness.”
“ ’Tain’t our doing,” said the cart driver abruptly. He was an Englishman called Mr. Plummer, and he apparently took special pleasure in squashing any happiness among his passengers. “This were the Indians’ trail through the woods. We just follows it.” He spat a black stream of chewing tobacco onto the ground. Mr. Osborn visibly cringed.
“How do you know where you’re going, sir?” Brandon asked Mr. Plummer. The trail wasn’t always obvious.
Mr. Plummer pointed to a nearby tree. “See them hatchet chops?”
Brandon peered, and he saw three axe marks come into focus on the tree trunk.
“That there’s the sign I follow,” Mr. Plummer said, “and that is why it’s called Three Chop Road.”
Brandon thought for a moment, and then asked the driver if he knew a planter called Mr. Gordon. “I knows the gentleman planter Mr. Robert Gordon, sir,” Mr. Plummer said, and Brandon’s spirits soared. “He’s not been long in Georgia, just a year or so. He came down from South Carolina to get more land. Brought a few slaves with him, he did, and he lives on the farthest eastward part of your parish. Not sure he will stay. He’s found out that Georgia isn’t as prosperous as South Carolina. Sometimes think of going to Charleston myself.”
But Brandon was not listening to the cart-driver’s lament. He was thinking excitedly. Finding Hannah, it seemed, was going to be a piece of cake.
He snapped out of his daydream when Mrs. Osborn slapped loudly at a mosquito. She looked miserable, and Brandon wondered what it was like to be pregnant, especially in Georgia without air conditioning. At that moment, the rain started. It was a typical Georgia thunderstorm, so within seconds it turned from a few drops into a torrential downpour. Mr. Plummer pulled a blanket over his head, while all of his passengers hunkered down in the wagon as best they could. Brandon soon felt water soaking through his woolen clothes, and within less than a minute, he was drenched.
Shortly, the rain ended, but the excitement wasn’t over. Arriving at a narrow and shallow river, Mr. Plummer brought the horse to a halt at the edge and inspected the slow-moving brown water. “The ferry isn’t running,” he said glumly. “We can ford this river, sir, but you and your family must get out.”
One by one, as Mr. Plummer waited, the passengers climbed from the cart. Mr. Osborn helped Mrs. Osborn down, but Brandon was left to his own devices. Eventually, he managed to clamber onto the riverbank, lowering himself from the end of the cart. As soon as he was off, the driver coaxed the horse into the water, and drove to the other side.
“Okay,” Brandon said slowly, looking across the river at their transport. “Does anyone see a problem here?”
Mr. Osborn nodded unhappily. “We must make our way across. Do you know how to swim?” he asked.
“Yes, but I’m not that great at it,” Brandon said. “I don’t think it’s that deep, though.”
“My wife does not swim,” said Mr. Osborn with a sigh. “We must support her in case the wading becomes too difficult for her.”
Fortunately, the river was as shallow as it looked, and Brandon and Mr. Osborn were able to help Mrs. Osborn across without much difficulty. Now, however, they were all soaked from head to toe. Mr. Plummer waited patiently for them, smoking his clay pipe. As the bedraggled passengers wearily climbed aboard, he said, “The river marks the bounds to St. Swithin Parish. But still got a ways to go to your house, sir.”
This was the first time Brandon had heard that Mr. Osborn’s new parish had the same name as his last, in Balesworth. Another coincidence. Or not.
The storm clouds soon disappeared as though they had never been, and the sun shone brightly as the dark woods opened into grassy fields in which cattle grazed. Steam rose from the pastures, forming an eerie mist across the trail.
Mr. Osborn, soaked though he was, perked up noticeably. “Are we near to the end of our journey?” he asked eagerly. Mr. Plummer nodded, and gestured ahead of him with the whip. “The church be just yonder, sir,” he said.
On the dusty edge of a field sat a brown wooden hut, very small and plain. Brandon thought it looked fine, but Mr. Osborn blanched. “Are you sure?” he said to the driver. Mr. Plummer gave a taciturn nod.
Mr. Osborn’s eyebrows shot up. “Surely it ought to be built from stone?” he said desperately.
“Not in America, sir,” Mr. Plummer assured him. “None of our churches is built but from wood, not even them back in Savannah. It’s not home, sir.”
Mr. Osborn continued to lean forward and peer at the church as the cart rattled forward. “Where is my rectory?” he asked anxiously. There was no reply. As they passed the church, and rounded a bend, they saw a barn surrounded by fields carved from the pine forest. “There,” pointed Mr. Plummer.
“I spy a barn,” Mr. Osborn said falteringly, “but where, I say again, where is the house?”
“’Tis the house,” the driver said smugly. “’Twas once a barn, but the parish has made it fit for the use of you and your family, sir. Or so I heard.”
Mrs. Osborn burst into tears. Mr. Osborn was dumbfounded. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again, speechless.
Hannah understood that Mr. Gordon had paid money for her, but she had no idea why he had bought her, and that was very worrying. She wasn’t the only purchase he had made that day: The wagon was loaded down with wooden boxes, barrels of various sizes, and what looked like furniture wrapped in sacks and brown paper. As the cart trundled jerkily along the rutted track, Hannah examined her new master from the corner of her eye. He was very finely dressed, in a gentleman’s attire. His clothes looked brand new. Rough though his face was, he certainly didn’t look like a farmer.
Hannah began to feel optimistic that she would be living in a grand colonial mansion, like the ones she had seen in Colonial Williamsburg. She had gone there with Alex and their grandparents for an educational vacation two years earlier. Bored though she was there, she had enjoyed imagining herself living in colonial days, except with TV, a hairdryer, and other modern conveniences.
She wanted to know more about Mr. Gordon, scary though he looked. Even in her exhausted state, she had not missed the coincidence that he had the same name as people she and Brandon had known at other times in the past. Was he connected with the Gordons she had known in Scotland? With the Gordons of Balesworth? It seemed too much of a coincidence to be, well, a coincidence.
Finally, she plucked up the courage to ask him a question. “Where are you from, sir?”
“Scotland,” he said curtly, looking slightly surprised to be spoken to. He didn’t seem in the mood for conversation.
But Hannah persisted. “Where in Scotland?”
“You’re English, lass,” he snapped. “You willna know the place I belong.”
But Hannah was too curious to be put off so easily. “Try me,” she said.
Mr. Gordon sighed. “It’s ca’ed Dundee,” he said dismissively. Hannah’s ears perked up. She had lived in Dundee during another adventure, but she decided it was probably best not to mention that to her new master.
“And where do you belong?” Mr. Gordon asked Hannah, without enthusiasm.
“London,” she said, just to have something to say. But then she corrected herself. “Well, it’s near London. It’s
called Balesworth. My parents . . . My parents own an inn. It’s called the Balesworth Arms, and I helped my mother in the kitchen.”
“Did you now?” Mr. Gordon sounded intrigued. “Your mother and father must be sore grieved by your wickedness.”
Hannah at first wondered what he meant. “My wickedness? Oh, you mean the stealing? No. No, I never stole anything. The whole thing was totally unfair.”
“I see,” Mr. Gordon said evenly. He was clearly not ready to give Hannah the benefit of the doubt. “So you can cook? That is as well. My wife was not brought up to cook. She can only manage cornmeal mush.” He gave a short mirthless laugh, and then pointed ahead of them with his whip. “Here is my plantation,” he said. Among the trees appeared a small field in which a dozen cattle were grazing, and tucked in its nearest corner was a large wooden shed, with another hut next to it. Seeing Hannah stare at them, Mr. Gordon explained, “That is where my negroes live.”
Hannah stared. Negroes? He owns slaves? That’s so weird, she thought.
As if on cue, a young black boy dressed only in torn, dirty knee-breeches scrambled barefoot from the small hut. He suddenly stopped in his tracks, staring open-mouthed at Mr. Gordon and Hannah.
The cart kept on rolling, bumping along the trail. Hannah watched the kid, who was waving his arms and yelling. Mr. Gordon waved to him, and grunted. To Hannah, he said in an ominous tone, “You had best stay clear of the blacks. You will work in the house. From this time forth, we leave the field work to the negroes.”
Alex watched the cart roll past. He was too far away to see Mr. Gordon’s passenger clearly, but she looked a lot like Hannah from a distance. Was it too much to believe that his sister had actually found him? Yet here she was, apparently. He was too afraid to get any closer to be sure. But what a shame, he thought, that Hannah was white.
The cart rolled on, past woods, swamp, and more fields on which brown cattle were grazing, until Mr. Gordon pointed out his house. He had described himself as a planter and his farm as a plantation, and so Hannah had imagined that he owned a majestic two-story mansion, with white columns. She was not prepared for the reality of a backcountry Georgia property in 1752.
The Gordons’ house could most charitably be described as a cottage. Truthfully, it was a wooden hut with a brick chimney. Its tiny windows were unglazed and open to the outdoors: Only rough wooden storm shutters protected the interior against bad weather.
Nearby, two shanties, both wide open to the air, housed hay and farm tools. There was also a barn in which tobacco hung to dry. A scrawny dairy cow was tethered near the barn, while chickens pecked in the dirt yard, and a huge hog roamed freely. The smell of wood smoke that Hannah had noticed all through the countryside was even stronger close to the house.
As Mr. Gordon drew up, a thin woman shyly appeared in the house’s open doorway, her arms folded across her chest. Hannah wondered if she was another servant. She was very young, but very plain, with a nose and chin that almost met in the middle of her face, and large milky-blue eyes. Her dress looked old and worn, and so did she. “Sukey is sick again,” she said to Mr. Gordon. Her accent was sort of English, sort of American.
Mr. Gordon was climbing down from the wagon, but on hearing this news, he heaved himself back into the driver’s seat, while signaling to Hannah that she should climb off. “Sukey’s a lazy wench,” he said angrily. “I will tell her she had better get back to work before I take a whip to her. And you are a fool for believing her. These negroes will dodge any work they can.”
As an afterthought, he said, “This girl is called Hannah. She grew up in an inn near London. You can see she is the worse for her voyage. Have her bathe, and let her regain her health a day or two before you put her to work.”
With that, he turned the cart in the direction of the slave quarters. Hannah smiled at the woman, who gave her a slight smile back, and gestured her inside. “I am Mrs. Gordon,” she said, to Hannah’s surprise. She seemed young enough to be Mr. Gordon’s daughter.
“What do you know how to do, Hannah?” Mrs. Gordon asked, leading her into the house.
“I can cook some, I guess,” Hannah said. “I can do cleaning. I can read and write.”
Mrs. Gordon looked surprised. “You have an education? Then what brought you to Georgia?”
Hannah looked awkward. “I was convicted of stealing, but I was framed. I never did it.”
Mrs. Gordon regarded her skeptically. It was obvious she didn’t believe Hannah’s protest of innocence any more than her husband had.
“There’s precious little to steal here,” she said dryly. “I hope you will be of great help to me. My father was a planter in South Carolina and I was brought up a lady. We had slaves and servants to cook and clean for us, and I know little of domestic work.”
Hannah didn’t like the sound of that. She also wondered if it was true. The Gordons were so obviously poor, how could Mrs. Gordon have come from a rich family?
Alex was seized with apprehension as he saw the cart return toward the slave quarters. This time, Mr. Gordon came alone, without Hannah, if indeed it had been her. As he approached, Alex ducked back inside Sukey’s hut, hoping to stay well away from the master.
“What is the matter?” Sukey mumbled. She was lying on a deerskin-covered pallet, shivering. From what she told Alex, he reckoned she had malaria. He had always thought that slaves didn’t get malaria, because of the sickle-cell trait they inherited from their African ancestors, but apparently it wasn’t that simple, because Tony and Cuffee told him that they got it, too. “It afflicts us again and again,” Tony had said to him. “You mean to say you never had it?”
Alex again offered up a silent prayer of thanks for the Professor’s malaria pills, just as he heard the cart grind to a halt outside, and Mr. Gordon jump down from the driver’s seat. To Alex’s horror, the master appeared in the doorway, clutching his horsewhip, and looked right at him.
“Why aren’t you in the fields?” he growled.
“I came to check on Sukey,” Alex said, his voice quivering. Quickly, he added “sir.”
Mr. Gordon took a few paces toward the bed, where Sukey lay trembling and groaning. Frowning at her, he tapped her on the shoulder with his whip. “What ails you?” he demanded gruffly.
“Ague, Master,” she said weakly.
Mr. Gordon made a disparaging sound, as though he didn’t believe her, but he could not argue with the evidence before his eyes. Sukey was not a malingerer. She was sick.
Stiffly, he said, “Tomorrow, I expect to see you back at work. Luckily for you, I have purchased a white servant to work in the house. But you will carry on doing our laundry, as well as the domestic work for the men.”
He seemed suddenly to remember Alex. “And didn’t I tell you to get to work?” He raised the whip threateningly, and Alex ran from the hut, grateful to get away from him.
The moment he had arrived in 1752, Alex had realized that he was in trouble. He had stared aghast at his newly-acquired black skin as he stumbled through the swamp, too freaked out to wonder how he could have acquired a different body. And before he had time to think too deeply about his predicament, Mr. Gordon had spotted him from the trail, and taken him captive.
At first, he was held in a tiny jail, no more than a hut, while Mr. Gordon investigated his identity. The Scotsman was convinced that Alex was an escaped slave and, after all, what else would he have been? Predictably, however, no owner was found, and a relieved Alex was released from his cold prison. On the principle of “finders, keepers”, however, Mr. Gordon told Alex that he was now his property, and that his name was Cato, pronounced “cay-to”.
“Cato” was delivered into the care of Sukey, the only female slave. She was an older woman, in her fifties as near as Alex could tell, who did the laundry for both slaves and the Gordons, and cooked everyone’s meals. Sukey was kindly to Alex, but she complained constantly that she had too much to do, especially when the other slaves needed her to help in the fields at busy t
imes. Once, Alex overheard her telling Tony, her grown son, that she had deliberately dropped a dish of food at the Gordons’ house, claiming it as an accident, in hopes that the Gordons would find someone else to help her.
A few days after Alex’s arrival, Mr. Gordon had called together all the slaves to witness the flogging of a man called Quashee, who had slaughtered and cooked one of the chickens he tended, and which were only supposed to be eaten by the Gordons unless the slaves had permission to consume one. Mr. Gordon ordered the other slaves to strip off Quashee’s clothes and bind his wrists with a rope, and then hoist him into the air. As the slave struggled and cried out, Mr. Gordon had beaten him with a long whip until he had passed out. Alex, horrified and afraid, had sat on the ground with his knees up to his chest, his head in his hands. He was now absolutely terrified of Mr. Gordon, along with everyone else. He didn’t guess that this had been the whole point of the punishment of Quashee.
Within a few days of her own arrival at Kintyre Plantation, Hannah came to realize that her duties, while tiring at times, were not so hard as she had feared they would be. For one thing, she had very few people to look after: The Gordons had no children at home, they lived very simply, and Mr. Gordon was sometimes away. Hannah’s mornings began with fetching water from the well and milking the cow. In fact, milking the cow was at first the hardest thing she had to do, since she didn’t have a clue how to do it.
Mrs. Gordon had to teach her. Hannah was initially shocked by how awful the cow shed smelled, and she held her nose until her mistress told her to stop being so silly. Hannah watched as Mrs. Osborn lowered herself onto a milking stool and wrapped her hands lightly around the cow’s teats. Soon milk was squirting from the udders into the wooden pail. When it was Hannah’s turn, she jerked on a teat and the cow, mooing loudly, aimed a kick that hit her squarely in the thigh. With a yell, she fell from the milking stool, knocking the bucket sideways as she landed in the dirt. Mrs. Gordon made a jump for the bucket, but she didn’t reach it in time. The milk quickly soaked into the sandy soil.
Look Ahead, Look Back (The Snipesville Chronicles Book 3) Page 12
