Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl (27 page)

There comes no spoken reply. Lucy, who sometimes sings and hums, is silent as well. He feels wrapped, smothered, caught inside their silence.

“Biddy,” he coaxes. “You are not well. You have been given the afternoon to rest, rest is often the only cure for an infection once washes and tinctures have failed.”

From the sepia lump that is the prisoner a wavery voice begins to speak. “I am Cot Quashey, born Cot Daley in the city of Galway in the nation of Eirean around the year 16 and 40; and my tale must be full told.”

“What is the point …”

“It was in ’75 when my husband, Quaco Quashey, led, with his brother and sister Coromantees of the island
umma,
plus many stragglers from nations like mine and your own, sir, a great uprising.”

“A failed uprising!”

“… Failed,” she seems to echo. At the end of her completed testimony he fills in the words he misses now, before he concedes and sits, in weary desperation, curiosity, pique, ambition, to record her tale one final time.

“They failed only at the moment. But first the sun had to fail to rise another day. An imposter, that is what mounted in the sky. I stayed there in the corn shed with my child, the workmen calling and thumping in their thatching work above. I hid inside their noise, then when they too ran with torches to the overseers’ houses I hid behind the piled sacks with Betty to my heart. I came out only when the militia galloped into the yard, swords slashing. When, at the end, they had rounded those of us remaining into the drive that circled the portico of the big house and reviewed us, they counted us the loyal ones. The ones not to be punished, but to be rewarded like pet dogs with a dry corner, no kick, a bone. But oh, the torment in my head. For Quashey, Jiba, Cudjoe, Mama Chiva, many others … they were gone. Before us the militia dragged, in chains, a dozen beaten men whom they would march to Bridgetown. And the pale ratty Lieutenant, wielding his musket like a scourge, shouted how Afebwa and others they had passed down the line were waiting to be tied onto Glebe’s criminal coffle.

“I knew him to be dead. But it was as if my dear son Ben were there, running ghostly up and down crying out ‘Abu! Pappy!’ and I grew faint with guilt and shame that I had not protected his father, or at least stuck with him and the others who had finally accepted me, me and Betty. At that time I was certain that they all were dead. But as you know, as I myself learned later, Quashey had taken those I named upon the sloop, and like Noah was sailing through deep waters, with the plan to pick up members of the
umma
who had revolted in the northern parishes, that they might head across the channel to that island. That place which they call Montserrat, under Our Lady’s protection; peopled by Muslims and rebels from Eirean and Brazil and who knows where? All marooned together. With powdered lords like ye, sir, to try to hold them all in check.”

“My records show that Quashey was picked up with these others at Cuckhold’s Bay, while taking on more traitors,” sighs Peter Coote as he flips the split tail of his surcoat up, scrapes his chair back, and finally sits down.

“Yes. That is as far to freedom as they got in mortal life. Never did I see his face again, or Chiva smiling at me with her ivory man o’ war grin. Jiba they never took, for she dived overboard to Guinea; and for years I, drowning in remorse, felt that is what I best had done in ’51, from the deck of the
Falconer.
But I have come to feel different, and I will tell you why, sir.”

Coote keeps dunking his plume, then scraping and blotting it as he stares toward her shape. The entire front of her is in shadow. The direction of her eyes cannot be seen, though the bright filament of afternoon which leaks through the unlatched shutters casts a ruddy nimbus over the graduated mound of her shawled head and slumping shoulders.

“He was not executed until ’76, after that great folderol of fear meant to bring all bondsfolk to their knees forever in Barbados, and to clear the conscience of Christian folk of any doubts about the need for harshest cruelty on the plantations. They dragged him here and there as an example, before … But I felt my Quashey’s death that morning, when the militia stood us on the steps of the Glebe and shouted in our faces with threats and questions. I tell you, the land itself expressed some great and solemn shift. For there was a hollow silence under everything. In spite of threats and weaponry, the clanking of the slaves’ chains as they began to shuffle down the road, the barked orders of the soldiers left in charge to restore order until fresh overseers could be appointed, Rigley scrambling in panic from the jungle where he’d run when his cart was overtaken … in spite of all this commotion, a finished silence underlay all. A pallor one could hear, a very … abandonment … of life from its center; a center which is the focused and unnoticed core that holds together that which is still pulsing. Why can I still not say this? It was as if the stones and grasses, the buildings and the waving trees; as if everything under the sun lay in an empty vault, calm only because life itself had been extinguished. The last breath of something burning with life’s orange flame had been exhaled. Further … further … losing shape, then visibility … spreading out smaller than dust motes toward the cold cold stars.”

The prisoner relates that she’d not been compelled to attend the final executions in Bridgetown; nor had she been to town during the months when the heads of Chiva, Quashey, Afebwa, Cudjoe, and their band hung along the town wall on iron spikes. Yes, she knew that six were beheaded, eleven hanged, many others burned at stake. She had remained at the Glebe raising her daughter Betty until New Year’s, 1680, when her indenture had at last been up. But at the end, because the child was chattel of Lord Cleypole for life (the father having been an African), the Irishwoman had not wished to leave. Had pleaded to stay, a paid servant on the place, to remain with her daughter.

Permission had been refused. Her own record, as well as the record of the Irish as troublemakers in general, had gone against her, in spite of the fact that she knew sewing and harness making as well as sugarhouse and fieldwork. She was ejected twice from hiding places in the woods nearby. Flogged the second time she was captured, though only eight stripes, then driven from the parish by two redshanked militia with gleaming bayonets.

She became a huckster in the parish of St. George. “And,” she tells Coote defiantly, “I began my trade with three clay pots of rum, stolen by the slaves of Glebe, for which I smuggled them a wild piglet. The piglet was for a ceremony of Bantu bondsfolk from a land where I hear tell there are elephants and tigers; these folk eat bacon, while Quashey and the
umma
sort of folk do not. Perhaps you know that wild pig runs as freely through the hills here as it does on Ben Bulben. The Portuguese it was who brought the hogs, before the British came. But something that they saw here, felt here, when the last people of the middens were still packing their canoes and rowing off, made them sail away, never to return. The Portuguese were in a hurry. They did not collect their swine. At any rate, I kept one pot of poteen for myself. I drank it for the pain, you see, at night when the market was over and the hell of loneliness tormented me.”

“Which slaves would those be, biddy? The Bantu thieves? Name them!” Coote commands, pulling a new page toward himself.

“Ah, gone and buried now. So soon gone and buried. Disremem bered. I made mats too, and once I got some coin to clink together in my pocket, I began to be the middle-wench. Cheating everybody, you might say. Or helping everybody, from the other point of view.”

“Where was your domicile?”

“I who had been put out upon the ground was familiar with the ground, sir. I could post some poles and spread mat walls and a brush floor in a few hours, wherever I needed to be for the trade. I made my food, I took my drink, I early got hold of a dagger which I strapped to my waist, as those who tried to rob a drunken harpy in her stupor soon found out. I shifted here and there …”

Coote rubs his head, impatient, then demands cool water from Lucy, who stands behind him still. “What I want to know is how came you from St. John’s to St. George’s, then from there to St. Lucy’s Parish, where you were apprehended by the troops.”

“I wandered everywhere,” she tells. “Awake, I crossed this island with my feet. But in a sort of dreaming, I also rambled back to Ireland. Or Montserrat. Then it might be Guinea, and I was in the place where he had come from. Quashey. Except that darling Mama Chiva was there with him. And little Ben. Afebwa too. I would come upon them in a pleasant village, going about their chores, my son walking at his father’s heel or tugging at his elbow to show him aught. There were many huts, like up on Slave Hill, and the people spoke a foreign tongue; but when I came among them I was welcome. Not like at a reunion, mind, but like a person who has never been away and whose welcome is taken for granted. I mean that no one made a fuss of me, nor did my husband speak my name or greet me: but the friendliness that sparked within his eyes when he gazed in peace on me before returning to his task! I was loath to leave this family: to spread a mat, unroll my wares, begin the oily bartering of goods.

“Yes, I lived everywhere. In this world, and in a better world, and in the world where their second souls have gone. Happy. Happy were they, including that brave and humble queen Afebwa, who now indeed must watch my darling Ben until I join him once again. If only I can find the canoe they left for me …

“And in the marketplace, where I earned what kept me crawling around in this flesh, I heard many things. We are a great gaggle of races at the market, sir. All those who’d signed on from the European islands for seven years, with promise of free land at the end of it—there has been no land for them. But you’d know that. Though some say there’s still land being passed to and fro among the wily: enough to make hearts quicken and keep false hopes, like paper notes, in circulation … And so the voluntary indentured, freed, found themselves homeless: selling fish, selling stolen forks and blue ribands and filched medicaments to keep their bellies full.

“Then there were others, like myself here, who had not enlisted, but were stolen away, to be put out into destitution. Refused paid service, left to shift or starve in our mock freedom. Many other market folk, however, were the children of those lonely-hearted planters and merchants of Bridgetown: those who had made by-blow increase with African girls—girls of beauty, girls of grace, girls you can feel a kind of royalty rising from, sir, like our Lucy there. These—the largest clan at market—were freed mixed-blooded blacks, or mixed-blooded whites. Many of these see themselves the true heirs of this island. And everyone knew who I was—that I belonged to Quashey’s clan here in Barbados. So they reckoned there was a place for me too at that inheritance. So they said.”

“Who? Give me names,” he almost entreats.

“Arra, how would I know, an old sot like myself, wandering from marketplace to marketplace and sleeping under bushes? It was the story, not the teller, that concerned me. Then, about two years ago, among this polyglot of races, I began to hear tales of the rising of ’75. They were talking about things I had not seen: things I’d cowered in a shed with my girl Betty to keep from crediting. They spoke of fires, spread by the after-winds of a hurricane; of angry spirits rising up; of cattle and horses let loose from barns, eyes rolling yellow in the glint of flame as they ran free. They spoke about a slave girl, Phoebe, who ran through the forest with an arsenal tucked beneath her petticoat, and how her panting can still be heard in the woods between the capital and Brighton plantation, as she runs, runs, runs, relaying us to freedom. These murmured rumors stirred my soul to put down the rum jar and take out for the crossroads, looking—well, they spoke, sir, of places up the country by the coast where even in broad daylight there appeared the leader …

“Some said they saw him, tattooed bracelets on his arms as he plunged from forest into water, or from strand to bush. But others saw nothing. The thing was, they all heard, sir. They heard a sort of hum or buzzing, but in patches like, so no tune could be discerned. It was not a clear song, not even notes to cobble together. But it was Quashey’s, of that I am certain. His eyes and thoughts are loose still, or loose again, still on the Jihad for freedom. His body’s bones were thrown in a zigzag heap after they stuck his head upon a spike. But his spirit—can you imagine it, how one morning with the sun it lifted like humble steam from the deserted corpus, ascending, rising up for freedom?”

Coote speaks, his tone inflexible as metal: “Woman. Will you tell me once and for all how and why you came to transport weapons for the traitors we have hanged?”

“I will,” says she, simply. Coote finds his writing hand begin to shake.

“A year ago I received word at the market that wee Betty had been sold away to a ship’s captain, trading in tobacco. Like my Moya, Betty was taken to be reared for some officer’s concubine. Things are heating up, sir, is what I hear. All throughout the colonies, they say, there are objections on the part of bondspeople of every sort. The more objections, the more officers required, is what they say. The more officers away from their powdered wives and pampered children, the more of our own lively young they look for to wind in satin and lay on beds under damask canopies, where spiders nest all winter long, and birds fly through the open casements to eat them up come summer. My husband’s last words to me told me how to do my part. ‘Heaven lies under a mother’s feet,’ he said.

“Aye, I know ’twill be long after my own Betty’s teeth have fallen from growing her own young—for that’s the fate of women, sir—before enough objections will rise up to make a wall of sound. Still. The more I sat at the market among those whisperings and whimpers, jokes and taunts, complaints and blame, hatred and scandal, apparitions and histories and plans, the more I weaned myself off of the rum. Because I began to hear patterns—no, a patchwork—not of meaning so much as surges of feelings, callings, desires, that make up our lives. Patchwork patterns of a freedom I, and perhaps you, have never known.”