by Ann Turnbull
Shore’s wife is excited; the monkey-chatter bursts from her again. She goes up on the stand and examines the girl and calls down to her menfolk that she’s pleased. The bidding begins. This girl is cheaper than the grown women, I suppose, and therefore many people want her. Voices rise. Isaac Shore continues to shout and raises his hand; his wife squawks.
But they lose. The girl goes to someone else, and I’m glad. I hope she will be with a kind woman.
My master and mistress try for another girl later, but again they are outbid. We go home without having bought a slave. Husband and wife quarrel all the way about whose fault it was.
We carry on working next day. Some of this plot was not cleared last year, so we are cutting down trees, chopping firewood, building a bonfire to burn the scrub and bushes. Isaac Shore lights the bonfire and smoke billows up. The woman comes out and shouts and bad words fly between the two of them. I know she is still angry about the girl.
Isaac Shore turns on me and flicks at me with the switch and tells me to work faster. The bonfire burns all afternoon as we feed it with small branches and tangles of knotted roots and weed. As evening falls it crackles and throws up showers of sparks into the darkening sky.
I think of Miata and our child. I think of the captives I saw yesterday, of their fear and humiliation. I think of the young girl who looked like Musu. I look at the fire, feel the heat of the flames, and remember my mother and Musu and the little ones running screaming from their burning hut.
“Get on! Move!”
Stinging pain strikes my neck: Isaac Shore with the switch.
A red bloom of anger rises in me.
He raises the switch again. I whirl round, snatch it and throw it into the fire. I seize a burning branch from the flames and thrust it towards him, forcing him to leap back. I rejoice to see the fear in his eyes.
“Enoch!” he shouts – and his son comes running. “Quick! Grab him! Shackle him!”
I brandish the branch at both of them. I shout curses. The woman comes out and shrieks.
The brand is burning down towards my hand. They see that and run to tackle me.
“Get him into the shed!”
I will never be shackled there again.
I hurl the branch onto the roof of the shed. The thatch ignites with a roar like a beast’s. Flames leap up. Soon the whole building is alight. Before they can move I pull out another brand from the fire and run with it to the house and toss it up onto the roof, which explodes in flame. The woman runs screaming across the yard.
“Fetch neighbours!” her husband shouts. “Fetch the sheriff!”
The two men overpower me, knock me to my knees, tie my hands behind my back. They pull me upright and force me into the burning shed; but it’s too hot, they can’t fasten the door, and I stumble out, sparks of fire burning in my hair and on my clothes. I roll on the ground to smother the flames, and see father and son scurrying with pails of water, trying to save their house. But it is already lost; the hungry fire will devour it.
Sparks burn my face and hands and smoke scorches my throat. Neighbours come, and – later – the sheriff and his men. Still with my hands tied behind my back I am taken away, in a cart lit with a lantern, along dark woodland tracks. When we reach the town they take me into a big house and put me in a cell and untie me. There is water to drink and a pallet on the floor. My jailer goes out, and a key turns in the lock.
What will they do with me? Surely they will kill me now.
Thirty
“In jail? Why? What has he done?”
“Burned down his master’s house and outbuildings, it seems.” The grocer enjoyed being the bearer of early morning news on the waterfront. The shop was already filling with customers, and I was busy weighing out dried peas for a servant girl.
“He’ll hang for that, won’t he?” she said, her eyes widening.
My breathing slowed. I felt cold. Surely not? This was not England, where you could be hanged for stealing a loaf of bread. And yet – what rights did slaves have?
At noon, before I went home for dinner, I hurried along the waterfront to the lock-up where unruly troublemakers were kept overnight, and where I guessed Antony was being held.
The guard led me downstairs. He was a young fellow, not much older than I. I asked, “They won’t hang him, will they?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I know he thinks they will. Sits there all turned in on himself. Won’t eat or drink.”
“When will he be tried?”
He shrugged. “No one tells me anything.”
He opened the door of the cell.
Antony was squatting on a pallet, hunched and miserable, as the guard had said. He looked up, dull-eyed – but at sight of me a spark returned and he rose to his feet.
“Jos!”
“Oh, Tokpa! How did’st thou come to be here?”
We hugged each other. I noticed that hanging around his neck was a little bag made of bark pinned with thorns. Some good-luck charm, I supposed.
He told me briefly what had happened. It seemed it was the slave auction that had finally driven him to fury. That, and the switch; I saw its small scars all over his neck and arms, some of them festering.
“They will kill me,” he said.
“No!” Please God I was right. “Thou’ll be tried, and probably found guilty, but thou must not fear Pennsylvanian justice.”
I looked around. The cell was clean, with fresh rushes on the floor, blankets, and a necessary bucket with a lid.
In my childhood, in London, I had visited my parents in prison – at Newgate, New Prison, and other places – and had seen people lying on stinking straw, plagued by lice and rats, and with the smell of excrement and a raucous clamour of voices all around. This place was bare, but decent. More than anything, its decency gave me hope.
“This country – this colony – is a refuge,” I said. “People have come here from all over Europe, fleeing persecution…” I saw that I had lost him; he knew nothing of our history. “Thou’ll have a fair trial. Thou may be found guilty – but the jury will know Isaac Shore provoked thee. And thou hast friends, Tokpa. We’ll speak up for thee, and hold thee in the light.”
There was no time to say more, except to urge him to eat and not to despair. I left him, and hurried home, feeling far less certain about the justice he would receive than I’d tried to sound.
I saw from their faces that my family had already heard the news.
“Dad,” I said – and my voice cracked – “they won’t hang Antony for this, will they?”
The girls looked up, startled, and my mother put her arms around me and said, “Oh, Jos – no! Be sure they won’t. This is what we came across the sea for. We have true justice here in Pennsylvania.”
“William Penn’s Great Law for the colony allows the death penalty only for murder and treason,” my father said.
“Even for a slave?”
“The law must be the same for everyone.”
“Then what punishment will he suffer?”
“That’s for the judge to decide.” He frowned. “The usual punishment would be a fine – in goods, if necessary. But Antony can’t pay a fine. I don’t know what they could take away from him that he has not lost already.”
“Isaac Shore is a brute!” I said. “He should be the one to suffer.”
“Well … he is now without shelter – and winter is coming on,” my mother remarked – to which Betty retorted, “Good!”
“And George Bainbrigg, who sold him to Isaac Shore,” I said. “He is to blame, too.”
“George Bainbrigg didn’t know what Isaac Shore was like,” my mother said.
“He didn’t care!” I retorted. “He sold him for profit – reckless of what harm might come of it.”
And I shared that blame, I knew. I had helped separate and sell Antony and Patience.
“Sit down and eat,” my mother urged us. “Jos, eat thy dinner or thou’ll be late getting back to work.”
We sat in silence for a moment before turning to the food.
After we had eaten – and I could manage little, thinking of Antony, isolated and afraid – my father said, “It’s first-day tomorrow. This should be a time for reflection, not blame.”
“I won’t go to Meeting,” I said. I was so angry about the auction, the great influx of slaves into the colony and the thought of Antony’s suffering that I felt I would never go again, never have anything more to do with Friends.
“Come, Jos, and bring thine anger with thee,” my mother urged. “Bring it into the light.”
“I don’t want to listen to a lot of old men speaking platitudes.”
But in the end I did go – not from any noble ideal, but because I had not been able to see Kate for several days. I was desperate to talk to her about all this, and to take up again our plan to confront her father; and I knew she would be at Meeting.
As Friends came into the meeting room there was, as usual, almost no conversation; people were already in a quiet frame of mind, their thoughts turned inwards towards God. No doubt most of them had been reading their Bibles. I too had done so, seeking vindication for my feelings about the slave auction. I found little there about slavery, but much about compassion, and about our duty of care to one another. With these words of Christ in my mind I went to Meeting.
Kate was there, but her father kept her close to him and we could not speak before they went to their seats. I looked around, and saw many people I knew: the Kites, Tom Appleyard, David, Zachary, Florian Marshall, our neighbours the Parkes.
The meeting began to centre down. I withdrew my attention from others, let my thoughts go and felt myself drawn into the silence. Usually I would daydream and find it hard to become one with the meeting, but that day all my being was absorbed by its power. I thought of what I had read in the Bible that morning, of the significance of every soul, of forgiveness, of love. I thought of Tokpa, torn from his home and family, separated from Miata, and now in prison awaiting trial. And I relived the scenes I had witnessed at the slave auction and the horror they had aroused in me.
These thoughts and feelings filled my mind, and I became aware at the same time of the deep stillness and silence around me. I sank into it; became part of the gathered meeting. After a while I began to feel light-headed. My hands shook. An intense agitation overwhelmed me. I thought, I am about to speak. And then, I cannot speak; I have never spoken before. I looked at my mother, who sat next to me, but she seemed unaware of the force that moved me. The shaking spread to my whole body. I could not resist it. The spirit took hold of me and I rose to my feet.
People noticed then; their slight movements stirred the room.
My voice broke from me in a rush. “We think ourselves Christians,” I said. “We have been persecuted and cruelly treated. We come here to Pennsylvania because others who call themselves Christians oppress us. Here we have liberty of conscience, a better life, a new society. Freedom. Yet we deny freedom to others. Here, in this colony, are people who have been stolen from their farms and villages and sold as slaves – brought across the sea in a manner so cruel that when I heard of it I could not imagine how they survived – and then sold again and again; everything taken from them: their friends, their families, their dignity, their clothes, their very names taken from them, their lives of no account. I know because I have taken part in it myself, to my shame as a Christian. I have locked up a man and helped to sell his woman and unborn child away from him…” I kept my gaze on the back of the room; I could not look at George Bainbrigg. “And I’ll regret that to the end of my days.”
I paused; then, in the hush I felt around me, plunged on: “Imagine what it must be like, to have your village burnt, to be taken captive and forced to march, day after day, until you reach the sea; and then to be sold into a strange country – your wife, your children, your friends gone. Who would do this to any of their own people? We may say, ‘These people are here through no fault of ours, so why not buy them, and have the use of them, and bring them into the light of Christianity?’ But if we do this we are no better than those who capture and buy them in Africa. I cannot do it. I cannot be part of it. I will stand against this traffic, here, in Pennsylvania. We came here seeking Eden. But this – this is not Eden, where men have liberty of conscience but use their freedom to keep others in slavery.”
I sat down, my heart hammering. The silence was profound. And yet I knew silence was to be expected; Friends do not engage in argument or direct response at Meeting. They would be meditating on what I had said. Even so, I trembled. I had been moved by the spirit, but they might not like what I had said. They might think me too young, and my ministry presumptuous, argumentative, not sufficiently reflective.
My mother took my hand and held it.
Later, Friends began to speak: some on other matters, some on the moral dangers of the marketplace, some on the necessity to attend to the souls of people bought as slaves and to ensure that families were not parted and Christian marriage was encouraged between them. George Bainbrigg remained silent. I glanced at my former master, wondering how he would respond now to my request to court his daughter. And yet, whatever the outcome, it was a relief to have spoken.
When Meeting was over and people stood up and began to mingle, I caught Kate’s eye. Her look told me that she was in complete accord with what I had said, but we had no chance to talk.
The next time I saw her was at Antony’s trial.
Thirty-one
The trial took place two days later, before the deputy Governor (since William Penn was in England) and a jury of Council members, all Friends. There was limited space in the room, but a large number of concerned Friends crowded in. My parents and the Kites were there, and George Bainbrigg and Kate, several members of the women’s meeting, and some people I guessed were neighbours of Isaac Shore. I had persuaded the grocer to give me time off work so that I could go; I think he hoped that in return he would receive prompt news of what took place.
Even though I knew it would happen, it still distressed me to see Antony led into the dock. I could sense his fear. And because he was afraid, he looked wild-eyed and dangerous, gripping the rail and staring out at all the faces. I worried that his appearance might count against him. When his gaze alighted on a man who sat to one side of the dock I knew at once from the look of hatred that crossed his face that this was Isaac Shore – and was surprised to see that this cruel master was a small, nondescript man with nothing about him to show his true nature.
Isaac Shore gave his testimony first, describing how Antony had seemed to go insane. “He was like a wild animal – threatened me with a firebrand, and then, when we tried to restrain him, he burned down my house and farm buildings.”
His tone was that of an aggrieved but reasonable man. Antony, under questioning, admitted to deliberately setting light to the thatch. He glowered at Isaac Shore and his answers sounded aggressive. I began to think it would not go well for him and was seized with anxiety.
But almost at once the mood began to change. The court was told that Antony had attempted to run away several times. The sheriff was called, and he described the injuries he had seen on Antony after his whippings by Isaac Shore.
“They’ll leave him scarred for life,” he said.
Then came a neighbouring farmer who told how his family had taken in and protected the Shores’ bondservant when she too ran away complaining of harsh treatment.
Next, to my surprise, George Bainbrigg spoke. He told the court of Antony’s previous good character throughout his time in Barbados, and admitted his own feelings of guilt at having separated Antony from the girl he regarded as his wife. He said he was willing to buy back Antony from Isaac Shore and find him a new master, if Isaac Shore would agree. And he added that if Antony could be joined in Christian marriage with Patience and a way found for them to live together as husband and wife he believed there might be no more trouble from him.
The judge then summed up, and the jur
y retired to consider a charge of arson. They quickly came back with a guilty verdict. I clenched my hands. What now? Everything in my life so far had made me afraid of courts and prisons. Would today be different?
“Antony has committed a crime and must be punished,” the judge said, “but the plaintiff, Isaac Shore, must take much of the blame for his harsh treatment of this young man who, until now, has shown good behaviour. I also bear in mind that although Isaac Shore has suffered considerable loss and expense it is not possible for a slave to repay him for the damage done. There is only one way Antony can make recompense, and that is to work on the speedy rebuilding of the plaintiff’s house and outbuildings. I therefore sentence Antony to work under the supervision of those neighbouring colonists who have offered to help with the rebuilding – and, to this end, he is to be released immediately.”
I let out a breath of relief.
“I hope,” the judge continued, “that the remedies others have spoken of – that Antony and Patience should be married, and that George Bainbrigg should buy back Antony and find him a new master – may be brought about. But these matters must be left to the discretion of those involved.”
And so the trial was over. I felt enormous satisfaction at this outcome. It restored my faith in Friends’ justice. And I knew I had misjudged George Bainbrigg; clearly he wanted to make amends for his hasty sale of Antony and Patience.
Antony was taken away, and I saw George Bainbrigg already in discussion with Isaac Shore. Kate and I found each other in the throng as people were leaving.
“This is good,” she said, “good for Antony.”
“I think well of thy father for what he said – and what he’s trying to do.”
“He does care, Jos. I always knew it.”
“We must speak to him soon – about that other matter. There will never be a better time.”
She agreed. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Come after work. I’ll let thee in.”
