Queen (16 page)

    again, and suddenly all the distress and bitterness he had accumulated

    over the years came pouring out of him.

    He was treated as an animal, or livestock, but he was not an animal; he

    could read and write, he could think, and he could feel.

90 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    "I think, therefore I am," James agreed. He poured more whiskey, and

    asked if Cap'n Jack's previous Massa had not treated him well.

    "He was good to me," Cap'n Jack was forced to admit. "Like his pet dog,

    or his best stallion. But he never treated me human."

"I try to do that," James said. "But you resent me."

    "Course I do," Cap'n Jack said. "Coz I ain't free. All yo' niggers resent

    you. Coz you got the power over them."

    It had never occurred to James, nor did he believe it. His people loved

    him. Even the troublesome few on the plantation were angry because of

    their work and their lowly conditions, he had thought, but not at him.

    He was sure, not at him. But he would investigate what Cap'n Jack told

    him.

    Cap'n Jack fought for words to make him understand, but what words were

    there? What words could explain to someone who was free, and whose

    freedom was never in doubt, how precious freedom was? How could he

    explain what it felt like to be bom in bondage, and know you would never

    be free of it?

    Never be free to choose your own name, and your own life. Never be free

    to make decisions for yourself-, never be free to travel where vou

    wanted, to do what you wanted. Never be free of being sold. Never be free

    of the fear that your wife might be sold away from you, and your

    children. Never be free to create something of your own, to farm some

    small few acres, and give it to your son, saying I made this, yo' pappy

    made this. Never free to fight for yourself and yours, never free of the

    fear of unfair punishment, never free from the potential pain of the

    lash.

Never free to be a man.

    "It don't matter if'n you don't never whump us," he said. "It is enough

    that you have the power to do it."

    His mind exploded at the simple unfairness of it, the Linbelievable

    injustice that had been done to him and his people, all because they were

    black. He fought back tears.

    "You think we's proud to be slaves?" Cap'n Jack asked him, his anger

    nearly spent, and other emotions unsettling him.

James listened to the litany of grief, the sad song in praise

    BLOODLINES 91

of freedom, and thought of Fortan, the black sailmaker in Philadelphia,

who made over a hundred thousand dollars a year, and could look on his

life with pride.

    He thought of his peasant friends in Ireland, who toiled all their lives

    for some other man's benefit, and were prepared to die for a chance of

    freedom.

    He thought of Sean, effectively slave to soil he did not own, and who did

    lay down his life to be free, and went triumphantly to his grave.

    He remembered the shame he felt on the day he bought Ephraim, and did not

    even think of the boy's enforced separation from his family. He felt

    ashamed now, and when he saw that there were tears in his new slave's

    eyes, he was distressed.

"What can I do?" James asked.

"Make me free," Cap'n lack said.

    "Why should I do that?" James wondered. "I have paid a great deal of

    money for you, and you have given me no indication that you deserve your

    freedom."

    "Did you earn yours?" Cap'n Jack responded. "Or was you bom to it?"

    He had gone too far, he was sure. He'd be sent to the block tomorrow,

    after a hundred lashes at least, but it was almost worth it.

    "Yes, I was," James agreed. "You were not, for that is not the way of it

    here. But you could earn it."

    Cap'n Jack brushed away the tear from his eye, and looked at him. Was

    this the bait they always dangled? His ol' Massa had said it to him so

    often.

"Work hard for me, Jack, and you could be free."

    It had never been a promise, only a carrot, and in the end it had been

    a lie. A white man's lie, to keep the black man complaisant.

    "If you work hard for me, willingly and well, then, when the time is

    right, I will give you your freedom."

Cap'n Jack didn't believe him. "When?" he asked.

    "When you have earned it," James said, and believed it when it was said.

Cap'n Jack turned away. It was the old lie.

92 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    "I give you my word," James said quietly, for he had seen the disbelief

    in Cap'n Jack's eyes.

"I swear it."

    What could Cap'n Jack do but believe him? It was his only hope.

The problem of finding a wife was not so easily solved.

    There had been several women in James's life, for he cut a dashing

    figure, and was considered quite a catch, but he had never felt more than

    passing affection for any of them.

It made Eleanor cross.

    "For heaven's sake, Jamie," she chided him. She would never call him

    James. "You've had quite long enough to sow your wild oats."

James smiled ruefully. He had sown very few wild oats.

    "You are a man of substance," Eleanor continued. "You must have sons. If

    anything should happen to you, God forbid, what would become of all

    this?"

    James thought it was a cold-blooded reason for getting married and having

    a family, but he took her point. He looked at his estate. What would

    become of it all if something happened to him? He resolved to make a new

    will, in favor of Eleanor's boys, and Sara's.

    "What are you waiting for?" Eleanor demanded, concerned for her brother.

"I don't know," Jaynes shrugged. "Love, I suppose."

Eleanor gave a small sigh of exasperation.

"Jamie," she cried. "Be your age."

    James was tired of it. He knew what was expected of him. He wanted to

    marry; he wanted to raise a family. He loved having all his nieces and

    nephews around, and wanted his own sons and daughters. But he wanted to

    fall in love. He wanted to know what it was about love that moved people

    to do ex-

    BLOODLINES 93

traordinary things. He wanted to know what it was that the poets wrote

about. He wanted to know what it was like to have a heart so full that the

loss of the loved one might cause it to break.

    "You found love," he said testily, to Eleanor. "You had Oliver."

    "Yes, I did," Eleanor agreed. "And what a wild and wonderful time it

    was."

    She lapsed into pretty memory for a moment, but then shook herself from

    the past and told James a tiny secret.

"But Thomas is the better husband," she said softly.

    James was shocked. He had always imagined Eleanor and Oliver to be soul

    mates, a passionate couple whose lives intertwined in events of great

    moment. He could not imagine how the kind, balding, bespectacled Thomas

    Kirkman could be a better husband than the dashing, fiery Oliver. But he

    was grateful for the confidence Eleanor's confession gave him. He longed

    to be more like Oliver, Sean, or Washington, or especially Andrew, but

    doubted that he had that much bravado.

    He wondered if he was scared of marriage because of his father. He could

    not countenance the idea that his children would not love him.

    Mostly, he envied Andrew Jackson, who had found in his Rachel a marriage

    that James longed to emulate, and a woman that he adored.

Rachel Jackson was the most extraordinary woman he had ever met, and

sometimes when he thought of his dead mother, whom he had never known,

James thought of Rachel. She was dark-haired, pious and demure, dedicated

to God and Andrew, although not necessarily in that order, and to her

sons, who were not her sons.

    The tenth of eleven children bom to John Donelson, who had founded

    Nashville, Rachel had been her father's darling, a vivacious minx of a

    girl, forever getting into scrapes. When she was thirteen, she had

    accompanied her parents, her family, and others on an epic river journey

    from Virginia to Nashville. They traveled a thousand miles, mostly

    through hostile country. Several of their party were killed by Indians,

    and some others drowned. Rachel, brown as a berry, fleet as a deer,

94 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

survived all the privations with unquenchable good spirits and a tomboy

appetite for the adventure. She flourished on the frontier and grew into

a stunning beauty, all dimples and laughter, cherry lips and lustrous

eyes. She had her pick of suitors, married the handsome Lewis Robards when

she was eighteen, and went to live with her new husband on his parents'

estate in Kentucky.

    The marriage was a disaster. Lewis was irrationally jealous, and violent

    toward Rachel when other men paid her attention. He ordered his wife out

    of the house. She returned to her family in Nashville, lived with her

    mother, and retired from the world. But not far enough. She took the eye

    of a dashing young attorney who had come to the district, Andrew Jackson.

    A settlement was negotiated with the contrite Lewis Robards, and Rachel

    returned to her husband. He promptly forgot his contrition, and returned

    to his earlier, jealous violence. Rachel fled her husband a second time,

    and her family thought she would be safe from Robards in Natchez. Since

    she could not undertake the perilous journey through Indian country on

    her own, Andrew Jackson volunteered to accompany her.

    In Natchez they heard that Robards had sued for divorce. They returned

    to Nashville and were married.

    That was the story as they told it. From others, James heard a slightly

    different version. It was rumored that Andrew had seduced Rachel to elope

    with him, which James thought possible. That he had offered to fight a

    duel with Robards, which James thought likely, because Andrew fought more

    duels than any other man in the country. That Andrew and Rachel had

    married bigamously in Natchez, before the divorce was final, which James

    thought unlikely, Andrew was too smart a lawyer for that. Neither Andrew

    nor Rachel could ever be shaken from their simpler, more innocent version

    of the tale, but the rumor of bigamous marriage haunted them all their

    lives. Andrew challenged several men because of it, in defense of his

    wife's honor, and killed at least some of them.

    The rumors had their strongest effect on Rachel. Because of them, and

    perhaps to counteract them, she withdrew from public life, and settled

    for simple happiness with the man she loved. It was hard to see any of

    the passionate creature she must once have been in the somberly clothed,

    deep'ly religious

    BLOODLINES 95

woman who was Rachel now, but sometimes when she talked with James about the

early days in Nashville, she allowed a little of her old self to show. Her

cheeks dimpled, and her eyes sparkled and flashed, and there was a hint of

gentle mockery in her voice, as she teased him with hints as to her romantic

past.

    She adored Andrew, and he her, and their sadness was that they had no

    children of their own. Sons they had aplenty, orphaned boys of dead

    relatives, and later Andrew adopted a Creek boy, Lincoyen, and they brought

    him up as his own. But their darling was Andrew junior, who was the only

    son they had from infancy.

    Rachel's brother Severn and his wife, Elizabeth, had many children, and,

    after so many, when Elizabeth delivered twin boys, Sevem sent for Rachel

    and Andrew. Elizabeth told her sister-in-law that they had been amply

    blessed, while she had not, and she gave Rachel the pick of the

    four-day-old twins. Rachel chose the littler of the two, and she and Andrew

    raised the boy with love and tenderness, and called him Andrew, in honor of

    the man who was his most doting father.

    In the early days of their marriage they had lived on Andrew's farm at

    Hunter's Hill, but with prosperity he bought a new estate, somewhat closer

    to Nashville, and built a lovely home for them, with landscaped gardens,

    that he called the Hermitage.

    "Soon I shall retire from public life," he told James, "and live here, like

    a simple hermit, and contemplate the world."

    James laughed out loud. Andrew was only fifteen years older than he, and

    James could not imagine that he would ever retire.

James was a constant and welcome visitor to the Hermitage, and when Andrew

was away, as frequently happened, on military expeditions or,affairs in

Washington, James would pay particular attention to Rachel, to make sure she

was not lonely.

    They would sit together for hours in the lovely garden, and Rachel, who

    cared for James dearly, would talk to him of the past, and instruct him in