Clockwork Souls

by Phyllis Irene Radford

  “I’ll be there, Mr. Benjamin. And I’ll let folks know when they come by here.”

  “Good girl.”

  Jasmine had left girlhood behind her some time ago but Benjamin was old enough to be her grandfather. She’d always be a girl to him.

  She turned the torch off again when Calvert himself dropped by. “I just wanted to see how much progress you have made.”

  “You’ll have twenty-five more metalmen for spring planting, sir.” Jasmine showed him the ten finished housings. “The inner workings take longer to make than the shells, but I got a good start on them before Christmas.”

  “Excellent, excellent,” he said. “You do a damn site better work than that Scotsman ever did. Beats me how you were able to pick up so much from him that you could outshine him, but you’ve more than proved yourself.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Jasmine wondered what he wanted. Charles Calvert never threw compliments around.

  “Jasmine, I’ve got a proposition for you. If you can make me a hundred more of these metalmen by September, I’ll give you your freedom papers.”

  Freedom papers. She forced herself to stay calm, the better to negotiate with him. “That’s a powerful lot of metalmen, Mr. Charles. I might need some help to get it all done.”

  He frowned. “Could the metalmen help out?”

  “I’d have to make ones more flexible than the ones for planting and harvesting. It takes more coordination to do what I do.”

  “Do that, then. A machine making a machine. A fine idea. While you’re at it, make some that can serve tea and other house chores.”

  Jasmine bristled at the term “machine.” She spent too much time with the metal creatures to think of them as something like a plow. But she kept her disapproval out of her voice. “And I’m gonna need more gold, sir. We don’t have near enough to make the inner workings of that many metalmen. I’ll need more steel and wire, too.”

  “Gold is expensive. I don’t want to get any more than you need.”

  “No, sir.” Jasmine already had a stash of gold she’d set aside from each set of metalmen she’d made, but she’d been careful not to take too much.

  “Make me up a list.” He had lost his temper years back when he found out she was learning to read and write––yelled at his wife, threatened Olivia with being sold down south, and banished Jasmine from the house and her position as a playmate to his legitimate daughters. But now he acted as if it had been his idea all along.

  “Yes, sir. And sir, you will free my daughter along with me, won’t you?”

  “She’s still a baby, right? Not working age?”

  “Oh, no sir. She’s barely three years old.” Little Alexandra was almost five, but younger was better. If he thought she was old enough to work, he’d keep her.

  He nodded.

  “And we’ll need a bit of money, just ’til we can get settled.”

  “I swear I don’t know why I put up with you. But, yes, I’ll give you a few dollars. There’s just one other thing, though. I don’t want any of these metalmen ensouled. Not the ones you’re making now, not the other hundred. You get me.”

  Now that was odd. As far as she knew, the metalmen she had made for the Calverts’ use had never been ensouled. The Calverts were Catholic and the pope had banned ensoulment. The man she’d learned the trade from hadn’t been Catholic—hadn’t been much of anything—but he’d never cared whether the metalmen had souls. To him they were just machines. To him Jasmine had been little better than a machine, albeit one he could use for pleasure as well as work.

  She wondered why Calvert would mention ensoulment, but she wasn’t foolish enough to ask. It didn’t matter. He was offering her freedom. “Whatever you want, sir.”

  The meeting was held out in the field where the Calvert slaves had their gardens. It was a safe place for a meeting; anyone seeing the fires they’d made would assume the slaves were working their plots. There was never enough time during the day. You could grow greens in the winter in Maryland, if you put your mind to it, and most people did.

  Olivia and the cook were the last ones to arrive. “I didn’t think that woman would ever go to bed,” Olivia whispered to Jasmine. “It’s like she knew she was keeping me from something.”

  Benjamin cleared his throat. “Davy’s gonna read us the proclamation.”

  Davy was a few years younger than Jasmine, and her half-brother. She’d taught him to read and write to solace him after his mother—another house slave—had been sold south because she’d made Charles Calvert mad one too many times. It was an open secret on the place that both Davy and Jasmine were Calvert’s children, though he never acknowledged it. Perhaps the freedom deal was his way of recognizing it, Jasmine thought. But that didn’t make a lot of sense, given the kind of man he was.

  “This is what President Lincoln said. ‘That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves, including both human beings and ensouled automatons, within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free’.”

  There were some loud shouts of approval, followed by a round of hushing. No one wanted to wake up the white folks.

  “Wait a minute,” someone said. “That part about ‘in rebellion against the United States.’ What does that mean?”

  “It means it doesn’t apply to us,” Davy said. “It only frees people in the states still fighting. Maryland’s always been in the Union.”

  No one spoke for a moment, and then another man said, “What we doing out here then?”

  “Because they’re going to have to free us, sooner or later. It’ll take time, but if they’re going to get rid of slavery in the states that rebelled, they’re going to have to get rid of it in the ones that stayed in the union. We need to plan for it.”

  That drew a lot of discussion, pro and con, but Jasmine wasn’t listening. That proclamation, it freed ensouled automatons, but not the other kind. That’s why Calvert wanted to be sure she didn’t make the new ones ensouled. And why he was so willing to offer her freedom if she worked her butt off. He figured the slaves were going to be freed in Maryland sooner or later—her included—and he was building up a workforce to replace the humans. No wonder he’d liked the idea of a “machine” that could make other machines. He was a man who thought ahead.

  She wasn’t just making him slaves to buy her own freedom. She was ensuring he’d have slaves forever, even if they weren’t people.

  Jasmine was surprised by how much that bothered her.

  “What was that about the metalmen?” someone asked.

  “The proclamation treats ensouled metalmen the same as other slaves.”

  “But they ain’t human. They’re just machines.”

  “No, they’re not,” Jasmine said. “They may not be the same as us, but they’re a lot more than machines.”

  “Nothing personal, Jas. I know you make ’em and you do good work. But why should something that’s made be treated the same as people who are born?”

  It was a good question and she didn’t have a good answer. The metalmen thought and reasoned, certainly, but did they feel the same way people did? She thought so, and she didn’t even know any ensouled metalmen, just ordinary ones. But it was a gut feeling on her part, nothing she could explain to anyone else.

  Davy answered him. “The ensoulment process puts souls from people who recently died into the metalmen. That’s why. It changes them from just machines.”

  Jasmine wanted to argue with that, too. The ones without souls were still more than machines. But it was clear that didn’t make any difference. The ordinary kind would take the place of human slaves, and the slaveholders would continue to prosper. Calvert would continue to prosper. She would make it possible, by making him a large number of mechanical slaves.

  After the meeting, Jasmine sought out Benjamin. “You know anything abo
ut ensouling metalmen?”

  “I know old man Calvert don’t hold with it. If you’re thinking of doing something with the ones you’re making, you’re just gonna make him mad.”

  “I just want to know more. I don’t even know how it works.”

  “Well, the priest probably knows something, but if you ask him you might as well tell Calvert, because he will for sure.”

  Everyone knew of slaves who had gone to confession and ended up in trouble with their owners, because the priest didn’t treat their confessions with the same privacy accorded to the free. “Can you think of anyone else?”

  “They say some of the other churches believe in ensoulment, but there ain’t any of them around here. I think your best chance might be Bess, over on that place across the Patuxent.”

  Bess was said to practice some kind of African religion. Jasmine didn’t know what. She didn’t know much about Africa, except that she had ancestors from somewhere there. What she knew about religion came from white people, and given how different they acted from the way the priest talked, their ideas about God didn’t impress her much. But they did leave her afraid of what everyone condemned as pagan and primitive.

  “Would meeting up with her be safe?”

  “Safer than thinking about ensouling Calvert’s metalmen. You’re already stepping over the line, child. Might as well go farther.”

  “Don’t tell anyone I’m asking,” she said.

  “I’m not a priest. I keep everybody’s secrets. Probably go to my grave with a whole lot of ’em.”

  The blacksmith on the place where Bess lived was considered the best in Southern Maryland. Jasmine “discovered” a problem with her drill—she had blunted it on purpose—and got permission to go visit him to get a new one.

  “You could probably fix it,” Calvert had said.

  “Yes, sir, but it might fail again. And with all this work to do. . . .”

  The blacksmith said it would take him a couple of hours. That gave Jasmine time to do some visiting. She’d brought some hair ribbons her mother had made from sewing scraps to give to their cousins. Since it was cold out, most folks were working indoors and could take some time to chat. By visiting with first one cousin and then another friend, she gradually made her way to Bess, whose main job was gentling horses.

  Jasmine had brought a little homebrew with her. She’d been told Bess liked her nip in the evenings. But she couldn’t keep her stomach from fluttering and the first sight of Bess didn’t reassure her.

  Bess was big—a head taller than Jasmine, who was considered tall herself, and twice as wide. Her hair was close-cropped and silver, contrasting with the blackness of her skin. Despite her obvious age, she had few wrinkles, which made the scars on her face more prominent. Jasmine couldn’t tell if they were marks made on purpose or from injuries.

  The old woman looked amused when Jasmine presented the homebrew. She opened the jar, sniffed it. “What you really after, girl?” Her accent had a foreign sound to it.

  Jasmine took a deep breath. “Someone said you might know something about ensouling automatons.”

  “That’s right. You that girl that makes the metalmen for the Calverts. Is old Charles Calvert gonna defy the pope and ensoul his machines?” Bess laughed, as if she knew that was ridiculous.

  “I just heard about the proclamation, the one that frees slaves, and it included ensouled metalmen. I know a lot about metalmen, but I never met any with souls.”

  “Frees those folks in the rebel states, but not us,” Bess said.

  “My brother thinks it means they’ll have to free everybody sooner or later.”

  “He may be right, but there’ll be a lot of suffering to come before it happens. And maybe after. So you want to ensoul these metalmen you’re making for Calvert, so that maybe he won’t be able to keep them if things change?”

  “No, no. I just want to know.” It wasn’t quite a lie. She hadn’t made up her mind yet. Had she?

  Bess laughed. She looked at Jasmine in a way that made her feel like Bess’s eyes had cut open her skull and were peering down into the basic workings of her brain.

  “I haven’t decided to do anything,” Jasmine said, trying to sound firm even though she was shaking. “I’m not even sure what difference ensoulment makes.”

  “Makes ’em something more than a machine.”

  “But they’re something more than that now. The first ones I made, they could only do the tasks I made them for—planting or harvesting or cleaning. But the ones I’m making now can do many different things, even change from what they were originally meant for. Right now I’m making one that will be able to build metalmen on its own.”

  “They’re still machines.”

  “Do machines think? Because my metalmen can think.” She hadn’t meant to say this, hadn’t even been sure she wanted to acknowledge it to herself, much less anyone else. But she couldn’t help herself. The old woman was doing something to her, she was sure of it.

  “You some kind of god, child? Making creatures that can think?”

  “I just hook them up and give them the jolt that makes them work. They make themselves into something more.” Jasmine hadn’t ever thought of that idea before, but when she said it, it sounded true. Whatever Bess was doing to her seemed to be helping her figure out why the idea automatons might be kept as slaves bothered her so much.

  “Hmm. You something unusual, child. Someone who can see more than what everybody else does. I see it, too. The metalmen are more than machines, ensouled or not. But most people, they ain’t gonna accept that without a little woo-woo.”

  “If I wanted to get some of mine ensouled, could you do it?” There. She’d said the words.

  “Not me, child. I speak to souls; I don’t move ’em around. And since your metalmen actually belong to old Calvert, you’re treading on the thin ice trying to do this.”

  “But—”

  “But you’re a young woman and you still think right and wrong matter. And keeping something that can think as a slave is wrong—as both you and I have reason to know. I can’t help you, but I know someone who can, over on Somervelt’s Island.”

  “Is this person some kind of magician or priest?”

  “It ain’t even a person. Why would a person handle the spirit side of things for metalmen?”

  “Oh.” A metalman. It made sense, in a weird sort of way. “Is it on some big place over there?”

  “Nah. It don’t belong to nobody. Lives out in the woods, with a few others of its kind. I hear they call it Preacher. It’s kinda crazy. Dangerous, too, probably. Maybe more than me.” Bess laughed.

  Jasmine felt a shiver run up her spine. She’d been comfortable with this old woman for a few minutes, and now she was scared again. She wanted to just leave, forget they’d had the conversation, but she took a deep breath and willed herself to stay where she was. “So how do I find this Preacher?”

  “I like your guts, child. You don’t need to find it; it’ll find you once it hears about all the metalmen you making. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Jasmine could tell she was being dismissed. “I thank you for your help.”

  “You take care, child. You’re playing in murky waters here. Freedom sounds like a wonderful thing, but it’s gonna be a long time before it means for you and me what it means for white folks.”

  Jasmine nodded and took her leave. It was only after she picked up her drill and started for home across the river that she realized she hadn’t mentioned Calvert’s promise of her freedom. Maybe Bess had just been referring to the likely emancipation to come, but somehow she didn’t think so.

  Jasmine had modified two harvesting metalmen to take over cutting and shaping the metal for the housings. She focused her own work on making a creature who could handle the design and building tasks she herself performed. Could she really make something that could do things as well as she could? Was that even a good thing? Did it make her less important, if a mechanical creature could do her work?
Had the man who had taught her the craft felt that way about a colored slave who could do his work?

  And would this Preacher metalman show up? And if it did, would it be able to talk? She’d never made a metalman who could speak, wasn’t sure she could figure out a way to give one vocal chords.

  Benjamin dropped by to give her the latest news. Calvert was going up to Washington City for a couple of weeks to do some business and taking his sons and foreman with him.

  “Wonder why he’d do that?” Jasmine asked.

  The old man shrugged. “Probably trying to make sure he doesn’t lose everything once this war ends. Anyway, things’ll be a bit more relaxed around here for a while.”

  “Not for me. I got too much work to do.”

  “Easier to do the work when the boss man ain’t dropping by every few hours to make sure you doing it.”

  That was so true it made Jasmine wonder if Bess had somehow engineered this, even though she couldn’t imagine how. If the woman had that kind of power, how come she was still a slave?

  Preacher showed up the day after Calvert left.

  It was past sunset, but Jasmine was still in her workshop, fastening hands with fingers on them onto her new metalman. This one was not yet activated, but thunderstorms were common this time of year. Jasmine wanted to finish hooking up the fingers before she took it to the tower to give it the jolt of electricity that gave metalmen life. The tower—a narrow stone silo—housed a length of iron attached to a lightning rod that reached higher than nearby trees. Lightning almost always struck it during a storm.

  Something opened the door, letting in a blast of cold air. Jasmine jumped up and grabbed a stout staff.

  The something was large, but it moved softly, with just the barest click of metal. A raspy voice said, “You’re giving that one fingers.”

  She held onto the staff. “It needs to do fine work.”

  The creature came farther into the shop, reaching a point where she could see it by the light of her oil lamp. “It is not yet alive.”

  The being was tall, bigger than most humans, never mind most metalmen. Jasmine fought an urge to back away. “I want the fingers in place first, so I can see how they work. I’ve never done them before.”