The Price of Freedom (3 page)

“She’s just a slave.” He defended.

“I’ve had enough of your
behavior!  I’m sending you to England for a few years.  I hope that
you come back more civilized.  There is a boat leaving in a few days and
you can travel on that. Until then don’t let me hear of this happening again.
Do you understand me? I hope to God she’s not pregnant.”

“You’re sending me to
England? 
Over a slave?”

“This is about more than a slave.
I hadn’t been to Town in over three months and as soon as I arrived in town
more than one merchant were waiting to present me with IOUs for your gambling
and drinking. I didn’t build this plantation back up for you to gamble away.”

“You can spend a few years in
England getting some education so that you’ll have some use when you come back.
Go and break the news to your mother and start packing.”

William was speechless.  He
couldn’t believe that his father was serious but he had never seen that
particular implacable look on his face. He turned and walked out without
uttering another word.  This wasn’t the end of the story; he would write
the ending, not have it dictated to him.

Thomas had just finished the
letter to his uncle and he felt that he was doing the right thing for
William.  He admitted to himself that as a father he had not been a good
example so he really couldn’t expect any better of his son.  He was
hopeful that the years in England, away from colonial life, would mature him
and make him into a good man.   

He was just about to seal the
letter when the door was thrown open for the second time that day and this time
his wife stormed in.

“What is the meaning of this?” he
demanded.

“I should be asking you that!
William tells me you’re sending him to England in a few days.  You can’t
be serious!”

“Believe me I’m very serious and
unless you want to be on the boat with him, madam, I would suggest you adopt a
more respectful tone.”

Elizabeth bit back a reply and
asked in a more reasonable tone, “What’s brought this on so suddenly?”

“As if you don’t
know.
  What did you think would happen when you made Deborah take a
tray to his room last night?”

“What of it?  That’s what you
use them for isn’t it?  Is she more to you than your own son?”

Thomas fell silent. He had no
defense for that.  Elizabeth was right. His own behavior had taught his
son well.

“That’s only part of it. He’s been
drinking and gambling in town and piling up a lot of debts. If some disease
doesn’t kill him from sleeping about with whores in Town then one of the
merchants might. I think it’s best for him to spend a few years in
England.  I’m sure he’ll be the better for it.”

“And what of you?” she asked
bitterly, tears filling her eyes, “Is there anything that would make you the
better for it?” With that she ran out, heading blindly for her room.

Elizabeth was relieved to reach
her room without running into anyone. She tried to remember the last time
Thomas had shared it with her and could not.  His room was separated from
hers by a dressing room and although the walls were fairly thick she could hear
the muffled sounds coming from his room on the nights he sent for Sarah. 
It was beyond humiliating.

She had loved him as a young girl
and was delighted when her father had arranged for them to marry.  The
thought of coming out to Barbados with him and starting a new life in the
colonies was exciting.  It had not been easy at first, as he rebuilt the
plantation, but she hardly complained.

As sugar became like gold in
Barbados and they repaid their debts and began to prosper, Thomas was able to
take on overseers and to increase his slaveholding again and then he had bought
Sarah to help with the children.  She had taken one look at the beautiful mulatto
woman and knew the real reason Thomas had purchased her for the exorbitant sum
of £50, as she had discovered by looking through the books in his office.

She knew that Sarah wasn’t the
first Thomas had bedded but she couldn’t help but notice the way he looked at
her and it pained her to admit that he had never looked at her with the stark
desire that she saw in his eyes as they followed the slave woman when he was
unaware that she was watching him.

When she discovered that Sarah was
pregnant just a year after she came, it was almost more than she could bear.
The child had looked like Thomas from early and she felt as if she was the
laughing stock of the island when neighbors came to visit even though they
never openly remarked on the resemblance.

She was not the only one that had
to deal with this kind of humiliation; it was common for many of the planters’
wives in Barbados, but she had feelings and she was not going to let him
humiliate her this way anymore. She couldn’t believe that he would take the side
of those slave women over her son. She hoped that one day he would suffer for
this as she had suffered.

The tension in the house at dinner
permeated the kitchen where the house slaves gathered quietly to eat their
meal. Deborah reluctantly joined them at Sarah’s urging, only because she had
only eaten a little porridge that morning in their hut and she was starving.
She avoided the sympathetic gazes of the other slaves and kept her head down as
she ate.

Finally breaking the silence
Cassie said, "Deborah, you don't have nothing to be shame about. The shame
is William's not yours and we know how you feel because it
happen
to us too." Tears pricked Deborah's eyes at her words of sympathy and she
nodded silently, too overcome with emotion to speak, but the truth of Cassie's
words enabled her to lift her head. Sarah sent a silent look of thanks to
Cassie.

Jethro came in after closing up the
house. He had driven the master to Town the day before and had spent the night
but had heard the news when he came back. He was almost as distraught as Sarah
since he had deep feelings for her and looked on Deborah as a daughter but
since Sarah belonged to the master he knew he would never be able to marry her
as he desired.

He was a tall, well built,
handsome man with ebony skin. He had lived on the plantation all his life and
had been just a teenager when the master had come to Barbados. He was now forty
and once the master had discovered that he was a gifted carpenter he had taken
him from the fields.

He now pulled up a chair at the
table and looked around furtively before announcing to the women that he had
been to a secret Quaker meeting in town the night before.

"The Quakers used to live in
Barbados years ago and they would speak out about how bad the masters treated
their slaves. All of a sudden they stopped them from holding meetings and made
their lives so miserable that most of them left the island and went to America.
They only have a few left back but they don’t hold big meetings now. But every
now and then they would have a small one at a house," Jethro explained.

"They said God loved the
world so much that he sent Jesus to set us free," he told them. All the
slaves sat up attentively at that.

"Who is this Jesus?
He
goin
’
lead a revolt?"
Cassie asked. The last one had been four years earlier but it had failed.

"No," Jethro explained
patiently. "Jesus is God's son. They say that if we sin we are slaves to
sin so Jesus come to set us free from sin.
From doing wrong
things."

"It's the masters that doing
wrong things,” Cassie insisted. “Look what Master William
do
to Deborah last night."

"All of us is do wrong
things.”

"So if we keep doing wrong things
we will be slaves?" Hattie, one of the newer slaves, asked.

"Slaves to sin,"
repeated Jethro.

"So how is Jesus supposed to
set us free from sin?"
Asked Deborah joining in the
conversation.

"By dying
for our sins."

"So how that could help
us?" Cassie asked.

"By coming
back to life.
That is how he able to save us." The slaves could not
understand this and Jethro could not explain it so they were confused.

"All I know is that if you
believe he died for your sins you will be free."

“But we won’t be free from
slavery, so as Cassie said, how does that help us?” Deborah pointed out
bitterly. Jethro had no answer.

Deborah had
heard about God when the children's tutor had taught them but he never really
talked about Jesus or him dying for their sins. Anyway how important was being free
from sin when she was still a slave? If he could free her from slavery that was
one thing but if he couldn’t or wouldn’t, why would she need him? She would
just have to find a way to do it herself.

October 1695

Charles Town, Carolina

Richard Fairfax was going over the
manifest for their next shipment to England.  He noted that an increasing
percentage of the cargo was rice and his instincts told him that this was the
way of the future for Carolina and they needed to be a part of it. 
Convincing his father of that was another matter.

"Father, although our
business is doing fairly well, mainly through our exports, we can’t compete
with the goods that the pirates sell at a fraction of the price here in
Carolina. And we still have the French war ships to worry about in the
Caribbean Sea, so I think it is important for us to diversify.  We should
invest in a plantation and start to cultivate rice. That way, rather than
shipping other people’s rice we will be shipping our own as well. Some of the
other planters are already way ahead and have been paying their taxes with rice
for the last four years. It is clear that rice is the way of the future."

"What do we know about
growing rice? We know how to fill ships with cargo and get the best price for
it and we’ve done exceedingly well at that."

"I’m not disputing that but
rice will be to Carolina what sugar is to Barbados. That’s why we should invest
in it. We can get slaves from West Africa to work on the plantation. They are
being brought from there particularly because they know how to grow rice."

"Then we'll be relying
totally on them. How do we know they won’t try to deliberately ruin the
crops?"

“Why would they?” Richard asked in
exasperation as he ran a hand through his long, dark hair impatiently. At
twenty-four years old he had been involved in his father’s business for eight
years, except for the two that he had spent in England and even then he had
been learning different aspects of business.

James Fairfax, at fifty-two was
set in his ways and was resistant to change. He had said that he was ready to
turn the business over to Richard but he still seemed very reluctant to do so.
Their constant battles were a source of frustration to Richard and he wondered
why he had been sent to England to study if every suggestion he made was met
with resistance.

His younger brother Charles,
Richard noted, was at least using his training, as he had been taught how to
keep the books and deal with the paperwork. He preferred to spend his time
sourcing profitable cargo for their ships and often worked alongside the crew
helping to load the cargo, which was evidenced by his well muscled body and
work roughened hands.

"Look, Benjamin Carlisle and
I have been talking. Since his illness, he's not up to running his plantation
anymore and since he has no sons, we agreed that it would make sense for you
and Ann to marry. You could talk to him about converting his plantation into
rice production rather than starting fresh.”

Richard thought about that for a
moment. The
Carlisles
, who had come to Carolina from
England a few years after his father, owned a plantation in the Low country as
well as a house in town. Their only son had died in childhood and they had two
daughters, of which Ann was the elder.

He had no objection to Ann as
such. She was quite an attractive girl and he knew that she had been smitten
with him for years. If he married her he could run the plantation without
having to buy land and he could instead take the money and invest it in
clearing the property to plant rice and buy slaves. He knew that he could make
it successful and show his father that he was right about rice.

Richard smiled. "That would
be good," he agreed. “I could invest the money into converting the
plantation if he agrees. I’ll ask her father permission to court her right away
and I'm sure that we will be able to announce our engagement by
Christmas."

"Good man," his father
praised, slapping him on the shoulder.

Richard was anxious to talk to Ben
Carlisle as soon as possible. Since he was no longer able to run the plantation
himself he would probably allow him to implement whatever changes he wanted,
especially since he was willing to invest in it.

His juices began to flow in
anticipation. He needed to learn about using Africans for labor, and although
many planters used them in Carolina, including Ben, he preferred to go to where
they had been using slaves for decades: Barbados.

Richard’s father, his father’s
sister Elizabeth and her husband Thomas had travelled to Barbados together,
where Thomas took over the running of his father’s large sugar plantation which
had been mismanaged for years. However land was by then becoming very scarce
and his father, James, had been unable to secure a sizeable portion and had decided
to go on to Carolina with a group of Barbadian Adventurers to help with the
colonization.

Land was plentiful in Carolina but
was being distributed based on the number of family members and slaves or
servants owned or brought into the colony. Having no slaves of his own, and
seeing an opportunity to ship goods between England, Barbados and Carolina,
James had bought two sloops with his money, hired some able sea men and began
to trade.  He sent for his fiancée, Mary, from England and they had married
early in 1671 and had Richard later the same year.

The first Navigation Act which
legislated that produce from the colonies could only be shipped to England in
vessels owned by English or colonists boosted their revenue considerably in the
early days and they were able to expand to their current fleet of five ships
which traded not only with England but with several of the islands, primarily
Barbados which was like Carolina’s mother land.

They had an agent in Barbados
whose job was to ship sugar and rum to Carolina and handle the lumber, pipe
staves, pitch, tar, beef and corn that they exported to Barbados. However
Richard had been somewhat dissatisfied with the agent’s performance for several
months now and would use the opportunity to meet with him while he was in
Barbados.

It would probably be more
beneficial to go in the first months of the New Year. That would give him time
to begin courting Ann and get his future father-in-law to agree to his
suggestion before he left for Barbados. If he stayed there at least three
months he should be able to see the canes harvested and processed into sugar as
well.

For the first time in a long while
he began to feel excited. He would talk to Ben Carlisle that very day. He would
keep his plan to go to Barbados quiet until next year to avoid any opposition
to the plan. His aunt told his mother, who she corresponded with, that they
were welcome to visit any time and he would certainly take her up on the offer.
It was shameful that they had boats which sailed to and from Barbados
frequently and they had never taken the time to visit the island.

Richard replaced the quill in the
inkwell on his desk, glad that the chore had been completed. Letter writing and
record keeping were a bane to him so he preferred to leave them to his brother
Charles; however this was one that he had to deal with himself. He waited a
minute for the last of the ink to dry and then read back the letter.

February 7, 1696

Charles Town, Carolina

Dear Uncle Thomas

I hope that this letter finds
you in good health.  I was just remarking to myself that although our
ships frequently sail to Barbados, I have never accompanied one to visit you,
to my shame. However mother often speaks of you and my aunt, and shares news of
your life in Barbados from the letters that my aunt sends. She longs to see you
both and hopes to visit you someday soon. My sister Charlotte will be getting
married soon so perhaps my parents will visit you after the wedding.

My father has said that he
plans to hand the running of the business over to me. Currently I oversee the
operations while Charles is responsible for the administration. However I have
entered into an arrangement to marry a young lady whose father owns a
plantation in the Low country.  He is no longer able to run it and intends
to turn it over to me after the marriage. I am keen to convert it to rice
production and will need to import slaves, primarily from West Africa, for
labor.

Since you have used Africans on
your plantation for many years, I desire to seek your advice on their use and
to learn all that I can from you. I have given it much thought and I believe
that I would best be served by a visit to Barbados. I therefore seek to impose
upon your hospitality for about three months to observe your use of Africans in
the production of sugar, as well as your upkeep of them to maximize the return
on your investment, so that I can successfully implement the same upon my
return to Carolina. 

Mother has said that you and my
aunt have extended an open invitation to visit Barbados at any time, so I will
put my affairs in order here and set sail by the end of the month and should reach
Barbados by the middle of March, barring any unforeseen circumstances.

I am looking forward to meeting
you and my aunt and of course my cousins, Mary and Rachel. Mother tells me that
William is still in England so it will please me greatly to help you on the
plantation in his absence. Mother will no doubt be sending several gifts for
the family and I will bring you some of Carolina’s best tobacco.

Your faithful nephew

Richard Fairfax

Satisfied, he folded the letter,
sealed it with some wax and called a servant to arrange to have it taken down
to their next boat sailing for Barbados together with the one his mother had
written.

“I saw Jackson heading down to the
harbor with letters,” said Charles coming into the small office a short while
later.

“Yes, I’ve finally written to our
uncle to let him know that I’m coming to Barbados.  I couldn’t put it off
any longer.”

“So when are you planning to
sail?”

“At the end of
the month.
  Father will no doubt take over my job, so everything
will be fine.”

“I’m not worried,” assured
Charles. “How is Ann taking the news?”

“I haven’t had the opportunity to
mention it to Ann as yet.”

Charles sputtered, “Not had the
opportunity?  Richard you’ve been thinking about this for over a month!
Don’t you think you should have mentioned it to your fiancée by now?”

Richard shrugged.  “I didn’t
want to bring it up until I had actually sent the letter to our uncle.” Charles
snorted at the poor excuse.

The truth was that Richard didn’t
want to deal with his fiancée’s whining so he had delayed telling her as long
as possible. 

It hadn’t been that much of a
difficulty to convince Ann to marry him, since she had made no secret of the
fact that she had set her heart on him from the time she was a young girl of fourteen
to his eighteen and she always got what she set her heart on. They had
officially become engaged on Christmas Eve the year before, on her twentieth
birthday.

“I don’t know why you treat Ann so
abominably,” protested Charles, “She’s a beautiful girl, inside and out. She’s
too good for the likes of you.”

“Then why don’t you marry
her?”  Richard challenged. He knew that Charles admired Ann and if it
wasn’t for the plantation at stake, he would be the first to encourage a
marriage between them, but fortunately Ann was besotted with him. To be honest
he really didn’t know why; he offered her no encouragement.

Charles scowled at him in reply
and took out a ledger and started to work.

Ann was a pleasant girl, if
somewhat spoiled, but she certainly didn’t stir him to passion. Her glossy
reddish brown hair and turquoise eyes were attractive, but her inane
conversation was a source of aggravation for him.  She seemed to have no
interest in anything beyond the next new dress she would get from England or the
next party she was going to.

After being with her for any
length of time, Richard was sorely in need of the relief he got from visiting
his mistress, Anise, a French woman whose family had moved to Charles Town in
the late 80’s to escape the persecution of the Huguenots in France. She
obviously no longer followed their faith and apart from her other talents, she
could at least provide him with good conversation or quietude, depending on his
mood. 

It was a pity he couldn’t marry
her, but since her father did not own a plantation, what would be the point.
Just as well that he was ruled by his head and not his heart. That was not to
say that his heart was involved where Anise was concerned; no it was definitely
something else that made him seek her out regularly. Realizing that he’d been
so busy he hadn’t seen her for more than a week, he picked up his hat and
headed for the door, telling Charles that he was going out.