by Ann Turnbull
The sheriff sighed. And yet I thought he looked relieved. “A day you have, then. I see that the man is badly hurt. But I hold thee responsible for him, Daniel Kite.”
“Thou hast my word,” said Daniel.
The officers left, and my mother and Judith embraced each other and wept. I knew we had avoided a violent and frightening arrest and prevented Antony from being handed straight back to his cruel master. It showed me the power that had sustained my parents and their friends through much harsher times in England, and I felt ashamed of the way I had once mocked their courage and thought it weakness.
The next day my mother and Judith went to Isaac Shore’s holding and remonstrated with him about his treatment of Antony. The sheriff went with them – for protection, he insisted; but he stayed at a discreet distance and let them do the talking.
My mother told us about it when she returned.
“We struggled to reach the light in Isaac Shore,” she said, easing off her dusty shoes as she sat down with my father and me in the parlour. There was a weariness in her manner, and I guessed it had as much to do with a sense of failure as with feet tired from walking. “He’s an angry, ill-tempered fellow – said Antony was lazy, no good and a persistent runaway, and that he’d been misled about the Negro’s character by George Bainbrigg. His wife is a hard-faced woman; you should have seen the look she gave us when we dared to reproach them! A young man, their son, lives there – and no love lost between any of them, by the look of it. There used to be a maid, too – an indentured servant – but she ran away.” She sighed.
I was shocked – and surprised, for I’d never known my mother so unable to see the light in anyone. It sounded worse, in some ways, than working on a plantation – the fate John Crosbie had hoped to avoid for Antony. At least plantation slaves had one another and a network of communication through their markets. Antony was alone and at the mercy of these people.
“How could George Bainbrigg have sold him to such a man?” I exclaimed. All my anger against my former master was reignited.
“He cannot have known,” my father said.
My mother agreed. “George Bainbrigg would have seen nothing amiss. Isaac Shore presents himself as a plain, hard-working farmer, and no doubt George approved of that.”
“But thou and Judith made no headway with him?” my father asked.
“He didn’t like being rebuked by us, though we told him we came in friendship.”
“Well, no one likes being rebuked.”
“But what can we do?” I demanded. “Must Antony go back to this man?”
“He must. He belongs to him,” my mother said.
I remembered Antony’s back with its furrows of torn flesh. “He’s not fit to work yet!”
“I know. But the sheriff will warn Isaac Shore. He’ll acknowledge that Antony was in the wrong to have run away, but he’ll make it clear that no servant should be punished unmercifully. And Judith and I have shown the Shores that Antony has friends who care about him. We should have hope,” she added. “People are often aggressive when told of their wrong-doing, but come round to the right course soon after. And it wouldn’t be in Isaac Shore’s interest to injure him too badly.”
“When will he be taken back there?”
“This afternoon. He may be on his way already.”
“I’ll go and see!” I sprang up.
“No, Jos.” My mother put out a hand. “Don’t cause trouble for Antony.”
“But—”
“The authorities have their eye on Isaac Shore. He knows that. It’s better not to harass him any more for now.”
So Antony returned to the man who had beaten him. Isaac Shore’s holding was in the woods to the north of the city, along rough tracks; only a few miles out, but not a direction I could find any excuse to be walking in. If I went out there I’d be noticed, possibly challenged, and might make things worse. Instead, I wrote to Kate about my fears for him. We were all anxious, too, about Patience. My mother made enquiries through the women’s meeting, but heard only that there was nothing bad known of the Outrams.
My father kept me busy; and before long, to great excitement, the press arrived, and Daniel Kite came over to help set it up. The machine – the frame, the screw, the lever – was in working order, and Daniel had undertaken to create the flat plate needed for a printing press. The days were long, for it was early July, with light evenings, and by the middle of the month the print shop was up and running. Although in London I had never wanted to be part of my father’s work, now I became caught up in the enthusiasm of the new venture. The day we printed our notice advertising the opening of Philadelphia’s first print works I was as excited as any of us.
A week later the typesetter Florian Marshall arrived from London. Florian came recommended by Nat Lacon. He was young, not yet twenty-two, and until last winter had been apprenticed to one of the Quaker printers in the City. We had a day of talk and reminiscence when he arrived, for he brought news of London Friends and reminders of life in England that stirred us up and cheered us and sometimes moved my parents to sadness. He brought letters, too, from Nat and Rachel Lacon, and other London Friends, and some for Betty from her former schoolfriends. We learned that Tabitha Lacon had married in the spring, and that Stepney and Ratcliff Friends continued to be harassed and fined by the authorities.
The work increased steadily. We started off printing notices of sales, and of Friends’ matters. Florian set these up ready to print, and my mother began training Betty. She taught her how to daub the type with ink, lay the paper on the tympan and fix the frisket in place. My father and I took turns at the press, for it was tiring work and neither of us was used to it. Soon my parents began to talk of hiring more people: they needed a strong man to work the press, and a maidservant to help in the house so that my mother could take charge of the print shop while my father spent more time selling books.
Kate stayed on in Maryland, and we wrote long letters to each other. Her father had little contact with me and my family, though he was polite when we met on first-days. However, I ran into Zachary on the waterfront and heard that George Bainbrigg had engaged a new man – a clerk, not an apprentice.
This news gave me a pang. Zachary and I were watching a great ship being laden, the boats plying to and fro with goods; and I thought of the voyages I might have made in a year or so, to New England or Maryland or the Caribbean, as what the merchants called supercargo: in charge of all goods on the ship and empowered to buy and sell on my master’s account.
But to Zachary I said, “I don’t care. They’re looking for men here, on the waterfront, building the new wharf. I might try for that – earn some money.”
He grinned. “Well, they say the pay is good.” And then he asked, “The Negro – Antony – any word of him?”
“No.” He had touched on the unease I felt about Antony.
“Maybe he’s settled down?”
“Maybe.”
But in that isolated holding, out in the forest, who knew what brutality might be hidden?
Tokpa
Isaac Shore glares at me. “You think the Friends are your friends? Think they can protect you? You cross me again, boy, and I’ll beat you till you can’t stand up. Then you won’t go running to the Friends for help. You won’t go anywhere.”
I believe him. He is a man who has terrible rages. I have seen him punching and beating his son, and sometimes his wife goes about with dark bruises on her face and arms. He could kill me if he loses his temper, so I work hard and keep out of his way.
I feel crushed, even though I know I have friends. I fear I will never escape this place, never see Miata again.
Isaac Shore does not trust me. At night he locks me in a shed. He puts a shackle on my right ankle and chains it to the wall. When the door is locked I sit in darkness, and evil spirits gather around me. I sleep at last, and wake to see light shining through the cracks in the walls. I remember how we sat and waited on the Light in Barbados. Sometimes I clo
se my eyes and let my spirit go where it will. I see my village, whole, unburnt; I see my brothers and sisters and hear our squeals as we run and play; I hear my mother laughing; I see my friend Manhtee; I see a bright-winged bird I once caught and tried to keep. And then I weep because I understand now that I can never go home again.
Each week there is a market day in Philadelphia and people come to town from farms all around. My master’s wife takes me with her to the market to carry goods for her. I don’t try to escape when we go to town; I know I would be caught. The mistress chooses meat, fish, plums, apples, vegetables. I carry everything in a pannier on my back. One day, as I wait for her to choose, I look around and see a girl – it is Miata! She walks with a sway of her hips, balancing a basket of fruit on her head. Her belly is only a little rounded, but her breasts are large and full and her face is plumper than it was; her hair is braided and gleams with oil. She is beautiful. I leave the mistress paying for plums and step into Miata’s path.
“Tokpa!” Her eyes tell me she loves me still. How she outshines the pale, beak-nosed women! Now that I see her, all my hope comes rushing back.
“Miata, are they kind to you – the Outrams? They don’t beat you?”
“No,” she says. “They treat me well. But you…?”
I tell her quickly how much I hate my master, how the blacksmith’s wife cared for me after I was whipped and ran away. “Oh, but it gives me hope to see you—”
“Antony!” My mistress’s voice is angry. “Get over here!”
I touch hands with Miata and leave her.
My mistress stares after Miata and frowns. “Don’t you go sniffing around every black girl you set eyes on. Get back on the road. I’m finished now.”
Twenty-eight
I was working as a labourer on the new wharf the day Kate returned to Philadelphia.
I had told my father, “They are calling for skilled men – carpenters, bricklayers – but also for men to load carts, lift and carry. The money is good. It will help the family.”
He was resistant at first, but soon saw the sense of it. He had wages to pay to three people now: Florian; Abel Lawton, the burly ex-seaman he’d hired to operate the press; and Phoebe, my mother’s maidservant.
“It will do for now – for a short while,” he said. “But I intend before long to get thee settled somewhere more suitable.”
So, in August, in the heat of summer, I began a very different kind of work: lifting, loading, laying paving stones, shovelling gravel. At first the work nearly broke me: every muscle in my body ached and it was hard to get started each day. But after a week or two I realized I was much stronger.
“Thou hast muscles, Jos!” said Betty, squeezing my arm.
“What’s more,” I said, jingling a handful of coins, “I’ve got money!”
We laughed. I felt glad to be earning again. Perhaps, I thought, I could go on like this, never bothering with an apprenticeship.
George Bainbrigg came by the new wharf one day and, seeing me, was obliged, out of courtesy, to stop and speak. He expressed some surprise at my choice of work.
“It’s honest toil,” I said. “Good for my strength and health, and no shame in doing it.”
If he felt the barbs in this speech he did not respond to them. “Well said,” he agreed, “and certainly there is no shame in it. But thou hast other abilities, Josiah, that not everyone possesses. I hope thou will use them again.”
He nodded to me and left.
Afterwards I thought: When is Kate coming home? When may I visit her? How long is this separation to go on? I should have asked when I could see Kate, instead of getting on my high horse and prating about honest work.
As it was, I was obliged to wait.
I knew from Kate’s letters that she’d hoped to return soon, but I’d had no news for nearly two weeks. In late August, on one of the hottest days of the year, I was working in a team laying paving stones on the new wharf as it grew steadily closer to the riverbank. I wore a straw hat, my shirt was untied at the neck, and I was sunburnt, slick with sweat and covered in a film of dust.
I saw a ship anchor in the river and, as always, I watched the boats lowered and passengers being helped down into them and rowed to shore.
Perhaps Kate would not have recognized me, but I knew her at once, and before I could stop myself I hollered across the water, “Kate!”
My workmates whistled and laughed, and the two dark-clad Friends who accompanied Kate looked startled, especially when she waved back.
I left my work on the instant and ran along the wharf, leapt the last yard to the bank, and was waiting for her when the boat was tied up.
She came towards me with the Friends, her face alight with happiness. “Josiah, here are Jerome and Margaret Richmond. I have been staying with them in Herring Creek.”
“I have heard much of thee, Josiah,” said Margaret Richmond, and I knew her eyes – and probably her nose, too – were taking in my dirt and sweat and dishevelled clothing. It was not the introduction I would have chosen.
Kate, however, was looking at me with undisguised admiration, a faint blush rising on her cheeks.
I knew I had begun blushing, too. I pulled the neck of my shirt together and tied it, and said, looking at the two of them, “I am sorry to greet you like this.”
“Thou look appropriate to the work in hand,” said Jerome.
“Indeed.” I seized my advantage. “And we are building a wharf. You will not have to come ashore in a boat in the future.”
“Well, thou had best return to it,” said Margaret, glancing back at the place I had come from, where the foreman stood frowning.
And Kate added, “I hope to see thee again soon.”
I wished them all good-day and ran back to the wharf. I had a lot of chaffing from my workmates, and the foreman docked my pay for leaving the team, but I didn’t care.
My work on the wharf began at sun-up and finished early, before our printer’s and bookshop closed. The day after Kate returned, I came home and went up to my room to wash and change my shirt. I was drying myself when Betty tapped on the door.
“Jos! Kate is here.”
“Where?” I flung down the towel and seized my shirt.
“In the bookshop. May I come in?”
“No! Yes!” She entered. “Is my hair dusty?”
“A little.” She brushed at it with her hand. “Give me thy comb.”
“Here. Ouch! That’s enough.”
I peered at myself in the mirror. I did not look too dirty now, but my face and neck were brown from the sun.
“Come on!” said Betty. “She’ll think thee fine, however thou look.”
“And what about thee? Still ogling Lars Andersson?” I teased, as we went downstairs.
“Oh, him!” Betty rolled her eyes dismissively, and I laughed.
To my disappointment, Kate was not alone in the bookshop. She was browsing among the history books while my father was in animated discussion with a group of Germans – pulling out one book after another and answering their questions. These men all spoke good English, though I heard them talking in their own language among themselves. They seemed to me rather old-fashioned and formal in their manners. They nodded to Betty and me as we came in, but did not doff their hats, so I knew they were either Friends or members of some similar group.
Kate turned, and we looked at each other. Betty moved discreetly away.
“Kate,” I said. I stepped forward and briefly took her hands. In a low voice I asked, “Does thy father…?”
“No. But” – I heard the impatience in her voice – “he must guess that I will not stay away from thee, otherwise why did he send me to Maryland?”
“Have the Richmonds had enough of thee?” I asked, and we both smiled.
“Probably. And my father agreed it was time I returned home. Margaret was much taken with thee.”
“She was? I thought—”
“Oh, she is not as stiff as she looks. She is on our side
, and will try to persuade my father to relent towards thee.”
“He can’t forbid us to meet – can he?”
“He can make it difficult. We are not yet of age, after all. Jos, what news of Antony and Patience?”
At once our mood sobered.
“My mother says the Outrams are Friends and are known to some members of the women’s meeting. They have seen Patience and know she is well. But Antony… There has been no more trouble reported since my mother and Judith visited him, but I wish I could talk to him! I wish I knew how he is faring.”
“We can’t go there?”
“I walked out there once – don’t say anything to my father; he doesn’t know. Someone pointed out Isaac Shore’s holding to me. I saw it from a distance and caught a glimpse of Antony in the yard with another man. So I know he’s still there. But I didn’t dare approach the place for fear of causing trouble for Antony.”
We had been talking softly, and now we became aware that the Germans had gone. Kate turned to my father: “Friend William, I hope thou don’t mind us meeting here?”
He said diplomatically, “I assumed on this occasion that it was by chance. But I cannot go against thy father’s wishes, Kate.” His look included me. “Perhaps Jos and Betty might accompany thee when thou walk home? There can be no harm in that.”
“Those Germans…” said Kate, as we walked along Third Street. “I have been studying the German language all this year, and yet I could not understand anything they were saying. It’s very disappointing.”
“They come from near the Dutch border, that’s why,” said Betty. “Dad told me. They speak a dialect called Hollandisch. It’s quite different.”
“Oh! So I am not so stupid?”
“Not at all!”
“That’s good.” She gave a little skip. “Because I’ve been thinking about my future, what I should do – for I want to do something useful. Margaret Richmond used to teach in a girls’ school in Herring Creek – a Friends’ school – and I thought I should like to do the same here. There must be a need for more teachers, with new colonists arriving all the time. What do you think?”