Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl (26 page)

“Afebwa was with the other first-gang group: they went into the fields, assessing all the damage, digging ditches, on their knees in cold mud, pressing drainage stones then frail seedling roots back into rows whene’er they could. But I and the other first-gang crew, plus the second-gang youth, were divided up in squads. Some lads crawled up upon the roofbeams of the big house, others nailed canvas tightly over windows to keep the cold and vermin out. Others headed off to pasture, crying, ‘Suui, Bossy,’ for the swine and kine and other stock that may have huddled in the bushes, escaping death. The smith was in his smithy, scratching his head and wondering at all the metal that had blown away. The group that I was in were piling stones left from the walls of the slave huts, and hacking sturdy branches for temporary beams to hold up palm-leaf roofs. Betty had caught cold.

“At this time I had been at the Glebe for almost eighteen years, and many had been there even longer. Yet all of us—new bondspeople or old—found ourselves starting over. Yes, once again we were put out upon the ground.

“What a melee,” exclaims the prisoner, squinting down the hallway as if she sees it there. “People were running by with barrows, with loads upon their shoulders, with a cauldron of corn grits for the field-workers. They were boiling river water; hauling sacks of feed, racing against the coming of the dark. By afternoon the sun shone blankly once again. Yet the air had cooled. The wind was very brisk, and we were soaked and resoaked in the ooze. At eventide a barrel of dried mackerel was passed out by the drivers, plus a drop of rum. I had found an iron pot rolled into a ditch which looked enough like Quashey’s to claim it. That was all of home we had, except the clothing on our backs, the rusted old tin whistle in my pocket, and Mama Chiva—well she had her well-kept secret.

“By nightfall, as we took our food upon the same spot where five cabins had stood yesterday, close by the grave where our Ben’s bones lay sleeping in the mould, shelter was already growing up around us. I had stuck four sapling poles into the ground and laid palm fronds across them. We sat on palm fronds too to stay out of the mud, and wondered how we’d keep the baby warm all night. But our questions were soon answered:

“Jack Vaughton came riding up to us with a lantern. ‘Finish your victuals, then we must continue building if it takes all night.’ He meant to see the warehouse and the storehouses, but most especially the big house, roofed temporary-like that night. More than anything he wanted to report ‘no damage’ inside the polished mansion halls to Cleypole’s man. My Betty coughed and coughed as he was speaking. He told us he had sent the cart to Bridgetown to get blankets for ourselves from our master’s merchants there. Raising his voice, his arms in anti-Christly benediction over us, he cried, ‘They’ll be bringing food and clothing, pots and medicines, in two short days! Hold on, people! The Glebe will go on! Hold on! The Glebe will prosper once again!’ He seemed to be confused: as if we, too, cared passionately that the rich furnishings, the tapestries and curtains and carved mahogany presses in the big house, should be perfectly preserved.

“As the overseers and drivers met, and milled, and planned, then came to round us up for all-night tasks, my Quashey slipped past on his way to another family of the
umma.
His leaf of fish unfinished in his hand, he talked in undertones to Chiva, then Afebwa. Then feeling Betty’s forehead he spoke to me three of his rare English words. ‘Tonight,’ he said. ‘We mus’, tonight.’

“Vaughton was waiting for him. He unlocked the toolshed and parceled out spades, so that Quashey and some laborers might un-ground the sloop. First thing on the morrow Vaughton wanted the upriver holding inspected.”

Cot Quashey’s tale sets the scene. Bondspeople, exhausted, rushing pell-mell this way and that as the dusky chill goes black. Pounding and hammering to the light of pine-pitch torches. Wild calls from confused directions. Wilder silences. The baby Betty crying: kicking to get down, stumbling on her one-year legs. Crying to be picked up again. Crashes. A round song, sung in African, intersected by the close-by squeal of a stepped-on rat.

“I was sorting through the grain: barrowing out corn that the rain had soaked, before it mildewed and infected the whole storehouse. Up above me two Ibo were plaiting a thick roof of fronds. Mama Chiva came into the corn shed with my husband at her side. The sloop was in the river again, moored to a sturdy tree. She was carrying a trowel in one hand, a caved-in wooden box in the other. Quashey spoke to her, taking the box hastily, and she translated to me. At this time Betty was sleeping on some sacks. In a low voice after Quashey spoke, she said, ‘Sister, he needs your help.’ From Quashey’s waistband he withdrew three sheets of creased vellum, a stolen quill, and a tiny vial of ink. He held these out to me and waited. Chiva said, ‘The time has come to make our Holy War.’ I swear, I thought my bowels would let loose right then from the fearfulness of it. How many Coromantee? How many masters, overseers, redshanked militiamen? I must have shook my head.

“ ‘Listen to me, Cot Quashey,’ Mama Chiva whispered while the palm trash and pollen fell upon our heads from the roofers hammering up above. ‘This is his plan. I have dug up my pieces of eight from my time with the Dutchman. Quashey needs them now for pistols, all over the island. Contacts have been made: we know where to buy them in St. Lucy, and over in Bridgetown. The thing is, we must strike at once. We don’t know how things stand at the other houses, but here we are tonight, half of our overseers off the place, the horses and the cart away in Bridgetown. Who’s to send for help?’

“Our husband, she explained—it was a term I did not mind from her—his sister and her husband, the other wife, the entire
umma,
had cast their sticks: they had agreed. All the way from Bridgetown, up the east coast of the island to the northern tip, we would mutiny. The overseers would die. Militiamen would die. In the big town, in their beds with fine Irish linen sheets and lacey coverlets, merchants and senators would die.

“Meanwhile Quashey would make ready the plantation sloop to go to sea. I was terrified. Mary Dove! Arlington! Sold away, away, away! I looked at my one child and could not see how we could win this fight. Saw only many costs of losing it …”

“At least you’d sense in that,” Coote states firmly, dipping his hasty quill and smearing damp script as he does so. A new dark streak on his cuff, he scatters sand over the paper like seed to birds, then rushes on.

“My husband pushed the writing implements toward me. His shapely eyes burned in the night. He asked myself, his wife, who could read and write the English tongue, to write three passes. One for Cudjoe to run through the forest with, so that he might buy the pistols to give to the warriors of St. Lucy before the new day dawned. They’d often snuck on Sundays or late at night into the woods near Glebe for meetings without incident: but Cudjoe would have to pass two large plantations, and strange barking dogs. In case he was halted, the pass would help ensure that he, and the waiting pistols, would arrive. ‘Sign the passes with Jack Vaughton’s name,’ Mama Chiva instructed me.

“The other two passes were to send Afebwa and the English pistols to a man from Brighton House, who’d then run all the way to Bridgetown with those guns and Chiva’s money for more artillery. The last was for a man from St. Lucy’s to hightail it far inland, and to meet a third arms trader. Commandants were waiting to attack plantations, once their warriors were given weapons.

“I have stated I was horrified. My face felt numb. I sat upon a feed sack and picked up my child, but she was Ben, no she was Moya, no it was myself; it was 1651, it was 1681—the year I was to go free. But gaunt and starved and beaten, my term renewed, I would never now be free to go. I saw the Spirits of the Night batting me around like a wolf bats a rabbit; but no, that was my Betty they were batting, my Betty who I vaguely hoped to buy into freedom after myself. ‘No,’ I told my husband. ‘Betty … Betty has a cold …’ I undid my bodice and swirled her sweaty hair with my palm, pressing her to the safety of my pounding chest.

“He had no time for my carry-on with a rebellion to bring off that night. But for a moment he squatted before us on the loose grain of the shed which shone like gold in the lantern light. ‘Mother of my children, I will bring the sloop before morning,’ Mama Chiva recited. ‘We are going to the Maroon man, to the isle of Montserrat. Sister Jiba and I met with him last fortnight, and he gave me a star map. By tomorrow the sea will calm. There are caves to hide in. Others of our
umma
must fight to take the capital. But we will go to a clean, kind, pious land where they will welcome us, the Maroons and a band of people like yourself, led by a man named Bat Fish …’

“Then I began to scream. Chiva had to slap me hard. Quashey lowered his eyes, pulled Betty’s rags around her shoulders tightly, and said, ‘Who knows if your fears are founded? For as the Prophet says, Heaven is found under a mother’s feet,’ then strode off into the night to carry on Jihad. Mama Chiva pulled me to the river. Black it was, ice cold, strong-currented. She held my Betty as she pushed me in. She let me float until the cold circles flowing round me calmed me. While I was carrying on this way, then putting on my one change of garments with Mama Chiva’s help, my husband sent Afebwa toward Brighton House and Cudjoe speeding toward St. Lucy’s. You know that Cudjoe was found face down in the slough, with not a penny on him. But Afebwa was picked up outside Brighton, cornered by a pack of hunting hounds, no pass upon her. She did not spill. Ah no, the one I did not know was my own courageous sister till it was too late—she said not a word. It was someone there who recognized her, stripped her down, and found two cold bright pistols in her loin covering, that sounded the militia cry. If she’d been carrying a pass, who knows? Who knows … ?

“It took the militia a longer time than usual to arrive from Bridgetown. The road had been successfully blocked by the sideways cart and murdered horses of our overseer Rigley. Meanwhile, back at Glebe, they ran with pitch torches streaking the black night to the houses of the overseers. And as you know, sir, Jack Vaughton never lived to see the dawn.”

The smells of crisping fish compete with the prisoner’s odor. The noon sun is thin and white. In the garden the fruit trees hunch, wilted and pale. But Coote hears the slaves scraping chairs into position. There will be a luncheon on the verandah for the Governor.

Suddenly, with a grunt of pure disgust, the masked dignitary stands up from his chair. He says no word, but flicks his hand impatiently at the prisoner. Holding the protective mask a bit away from his face with a liver-spotted hand, he murmurs to Coote in passing, “What a tiresome morning! Too little, too late. Dispose of this,
de main.
” Lucy, who stands grilling fish as he enters the swept garden, sees a haggard ghoul slumped inside the clothing of a bonny pink-cheeked prince. She flips a brown-crusted fillet with a long fork.

H
e lies pressed face first into the pillow, aware of spittle pooled beneath the corner of his mouth as Lucy wakes him. “Suh,” she says as neutrally as if she spoke the words “floor” or “dish,” then waits, hands cupping each elbow folded across her waist as he settles his focus on her. How many times has she spoken before he woke? How many minutes stood there in the darkened doorway looking at the thin balding hair without its powdered demi-wig, his nightshirt rutched and twisted over thin thighs bitten red by the mosquitoes whining all around? In his cups he has forgotten to lower the fine netting over his couch. He can smell himself. “Suh,” she speaks again, “suh,” as flat and regular as the ticking of the clock on the mantle in his mother’s small reception room on rainy afternoons when …

“What it it?” he asks, growling the phlegm away and clutching at the oversheet.

“The pris’nuh in her chair.”

“What? I did not call her …”

“Cot Quashey waitin’.”

“The damnable cheek … !”

But he enters the interrogation room dressed to the surcoat. The silver buttons on his waistcoat gleam as in a painting of Dutch burghers. The old slavewoman polished them most carefully before his dinner with the Governor. He will have them cut off and transferred to a new waistcoat, perhaps a ruby brocade lined with silver sateen. His mood brinks between peevish and mildly harassed. What does the old cow want with him? There is no point to further questioning. Colonel Stede has spoken: “Dispose of her” upon the morrow. During their excellent luncheon in the garden it was as if she never had existed; or had been a low mist pierced and burned entirely away by the ruling of the sun. Nothing. She is nothing. Not even worth discussing.

The Governor had been delightful, chatting about this episode from his past, that ball, a fine tailor about to come out from England, an opportunity to invest in an import operation shipping barreled herring from the northern colonies. When Peter expressed a tentative enthusiasm on behalf of his merchant group in Bristol, the Governor, who was dabbing at his lip with a fine lawn lace-edged handkerchief, moved the handkerchief to Peter’s frowsy cuff. Continuing the daubing motion, he smiled. “Well yes, but you’re here and they’re there, and what they do not know …” A warm glow had suffused Peter Coote’s chest at this camaraderie.

There had been a fine torte made with island oranges, and the Governor’s gift of butter kegged in Ulster had still been sweet as the grass the Irish cows munched up with blunt patient teeth. The old slave Daniel had come forward time and time again with a pitcher of punch made of cool well water, fresh mint leaves crushed to paste with sugar, and the finest amber rum. But now … now his tongue lies thick, his feet squeeze swollen into cracked black leather pumps …

“What do you want with me?” he demands.

Before him sits the perspiring prisoner, Cot Daley, Cot Quashey, the disposable one, the waste/the wasted. The shutters are closed as they were left when the morning interrogation was dismissed. Only a thin lip of light plays from the ceiling to the windowsill, for they have not been latched. In the dark, then, the shape of the Irishwoman. Behind him he can feel Lucy standing. He himself stands impatiently beside his desk.
“What?”