The Voyage of Promise (16 page)

C
ome,” Ena said to Grace. “Follow me. And stay quiet!”

Ena ran back toward the coffeehouse, Grace right behind her. She didn’t go to the front door, though, nor did she head for the side door. Instead she hurried around to the back side. Ena glanced quickly to her left, then to her right. Seeing no one, she ran her hand down along a rough strip of wood on the back of the building. Evidently that tripped a hidden latch, because a narrow door opened a crack. Ena pushed the door wide enough to slip through, Grace followed, then Ena pulled it closed behind them.

They were behind the booth where the woman in the pleated dress sat. Grace could hear her cajoling a testy customer who was demanding that he be given a fresh pipe at no charge. Ena quickly opened another door at the corner of the coffee booth. Inside was a narrow, enclosed stairway, totally invisible to the patrons of the coffeehouse. It was so dark that it would have been impossible to see the stairs had it not been for a small opening cut high up in the coffee seller’s booth that let a single small shaft of light into the passageway.

“Come, come!” Ena whispered.

Grace lifted her skirt and stepped carefully up each step. How grateful she was that Mister Hathaway had not purchased a metal skirt hoop for her! Even a broad man would have trouble on that tight staircase.

At the top of the stairs, Grace was amazed to see an entire room furnished with a long table from the coffeehouse and chairs set up all around it. Six people bunched together around the table, all engaged in urgent conversation. Like the groups downstairs, most of the men were well-dressed, with the same flowing curls affected by many of the coffeehouse’s patrons. But unlike downstairs, two of the six were women—and one was the black man Grace had first seen sitting alone in the coffee shop at the back table.

The conversation stopped when Grace and Ena entered. All eyes turned to stare at them.

“So you are Miss Grace from Africa,” said a man with a rolling voice and brown hair tied back in a blue ribbon.

“Grace Winslow, daughter of an English sea captain and an African princess,” Grace said. “Mother of Kwate, an innocent baby killed by slavers. Wife to Cabeto, kidnapped and now in chains, on his way to the slave market in the United States of America.”

“Ah, yes,” the man said. “What can I say to you of the tragic injustice of the slave trade?”

“This is Mister Ethan Preston,” Ena told Grace.

“My pleasure, Miss Grace,” said Mister Preston. He took Grace’s hand and, sliding one leg forward, performed an elegant and graceful bow. How he kept from tangling his legs together and falling on his face, Grace could not imagine. For the first time in her life, she truly did feel like an English lady.

“Mister Preston leads this group that—”

“—that spends far too much time on talk and far too little on action,” interrupted the black man.

“We all agree on our goal of seeing an end brought to the African slave trade,” Mister Preston said to Grace. “We do not, however, agree on the means to bringing that goal to fruition.”

“Talk does nothing but waste time,” the black man said. “Let those who insist that Africans are better off because of slavery be the ones to feel the weight of the chains and the burn of the lash. Let them be the ones strung up and tortured into madness. Only then will they listen to our words.”

“They will say the treatment is proof that they must deal with barbarians, Jesse,” a plainly dressed older woman said to the black man. To Grace she said, “My name is Mrs. Patterson. Rebekah Patterson. And this is my husband. Our hearts ache for your husband, my dear, and they also ache for you. Yet we cannot condone Jesse’s idea of torturing members of parliament. Violence only begets more violence. Surely we should have learned that lesson by now.”

“Do not lecture me on the subject of violence and suffering, or on the price of freedom,” Jesse said bitterly.

Grace looked deep into the man’s smoldering eyes and she recognized a kindred pain.

Jesse was a man born into slavery. For twenty of his thirty-two years, he had lived under his master’s lash, slaving in the cotton fields of the American colonies. But Grace knew nothing of this. All she knew was that he touched a common nerve of hurt that could not be explained.

“Did you come on a slave ship?” Grace ventured with hushed caution.

“I did not! I came to England as a free man.”

When rumors of war began to spread among the slaves in the American colonies, so did speculation about what independence
from England could mean for them. Jesse was young and filled with hope and possibility. If the British had come to fight his masters, surely, then, they would be his liberators. So when the call came for slaves to desert their masters and fight alongside the British troops—with the promise of full protection, freedom, and land of their own when the war ended—Jesse, along with many thousands of other slaves, threw down their plows and grabbed up swords.

But the British did not win. So Jesse and the other slaves who deserted the plantations found themselves stranded on the losing side. At the signing of the Treaty of Paris, all British forces, as well as all their supporters, were ordered out of the new United States of America. Some of the slave fighters—black loyalists, they were called—fled to Canada. But remembering the British promise of land, Jesse crowded into New York with the English patriots to await a ship that would take them all to England.

It was in New York that Jesse’s master found him. “He is my property and I demand he be returned to me!” Jesse’s furious owner demanded.

Nor was Jesse’s master alone in this claim. General George Washington himself insisted that every slave who had joined the British be returned to their owners. But Sir Guy Carleton, the new British commander-in-chief, stood face-to-face with General Washington and refused to turn them over. “We gave our promise and we intend to stand behind it,” he insisted.

In the end, the Americans agreed to accept payment from the British for the slaves. Jesse Mallow was issued a Certificate of Freedom, paid for by the British government. Along with over three thousand other freed slaves, his name was duly recorded in the
Book of Negros
, and he boarded a ship for England.

“No,” Jesse said again. “You do not have the right to lecture me about the price of freedom.”

It was Sir Thomas McClennon who broke through the awkward moment. “We are a small group,” he said, addressing himself to Grace, “but one that seeks to bring about positive change in this good land of England.”

Grace recognized Sir Thomas as the same aristocratic gentleman she saw buying coffee and a clay pipe downstairs in the coffeehouse.

“Not as an excuse but as an explanation of reality, I must point out that men are being asked to consider changes to everything they were raised to believe to be true,” he continued. “Furthermore, to embrace such changes puts at stake their own fortunes—yea, their very
futures
.”

“Not men alone, dear sir,” corrected the other woman of the group, the well-bred Lady Susanna. “The changes are no less difficult for women.”

Sir Thomas bowed to Lady Susanna and corrected himself. “Men
and
women, dear lady.”

Grace looked around the group, blinking from one face to another to another.

“Why are you up here?” she asked. “Why hide away in a secret room at the top of a hidden stairway? Why not sit at a table downstairs and discuss your ideas with everyone?”

“Ah, my dear, coffeehouses are wonderful places,” said Ethan Preston with a deep and gracious bow. “Each one is specific to a particular interest. This one is known for its attraction to ship owners and their insurers—a group who, as you may guess, has close ties to the slave trade. Although the proprietor is sympathetic to our cause, many men who sip coffee here, smoke pipes, and bandy about their opinions, would not be so generously inclined. A goal such as ours is unexpected in this place, yet in the accepting nature of the
coffeehouse, should anyone see us about, our presence would raise few questions.”

“But I still don’t see why you cannot discuss your ideas in the open.”

“Because too many people want to see us dead is why.” This was from an intense young man by the name of Oliver Meredith, who sat next to Jesse.

“Not dead, perhaps,” said Mister Preston, “but they most assuredly would like to see us cease our encouragement toward the growing passions of the populace.”

A sneer crossed Jesse’s face. “You say no violence, but even as you speak such words, you hide up here from the violence that stalks us all down the stairs.”

“Please, please… Can any of you help me find my husband?” Grace begged.

“Your husband is but one of many who suffer at the hands of slavers,” answered Mrs. Patterson. “Our battle is to see the entire African slave trade brought to an end so that no more babies die, and no more men or women are forced onto those wretched slave ships.”

“But what of my Cabeto?” Grace demanded. “His time is almost gone! At this very moment, he is on his way to the slavers’ auction block!”

Lady Susanna shook her head sympathetically. “It is stories like yours that move the hearts of people,” she said. “You show us the dreadfulness of what happened to your little son, and the horrors of slaving come alive to us. You show us the truth of Cabeto’s wretched plight, and we understand the truth of the trade in which every one of us in some way shares complicity. You show us the toll this ordeal has taken on you, and we begin to understand the enormity of the human toll exacted by the slave trade.”

“
But what of my Cabeto?
” Grace cried in exasperation. She struggled to hold back her tears. “Please! I must do something
now
! If you could get me on a ship to the United States—”

“What kind of black fool are you to talk of going there?” Jesse snapped. “You cannot save Cabeto. Your husband is a slave. All his life he will be a slave. And when he dies, he will die a slave.”

“Who are you to say so, Jesse?” Ena challenged. “My mother was a slave, but she did not die a slave. I was born a slave, but I am a slave no more. And you… you were a slave, but you sit here a free man. Grace too. She is no longer a slave. So how can you speak with such certainty about Cabeto’s life? It is in the hands of God alone.”

In the silence that followed, tears ran down Grace’s face.

“
Fiat justicia, ruat coelum
,” said Ethan Preston in his rolling voice. “In the words of Lord Mansfield, ‘Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.’ ”

I
tell you the truth, my brother, we can treat the white man as our enemy, or we can form an alliance with him and work together as friends and allies,” Princess Lingongo said to King Obei.

Princess Lingongo did not respect her brother, but she did know how to control him. He wanted wealth and power, and she knew how to get both.

“As our enemy, the white man will destroy us,” Princess Lingongo said. “As our friend and ally, he will make us once again the most powerful chiefdom on the coast. Our father was great and powerful, feared by African and white man alike. That is because he had the wisdom to choose which words to hear and which words to toss aside.”

“I toss aside all words spoken by a white man,” King Obei insisted.

“Joseph Winslow was a fool,” said Lingongo. She knew perfectly well that Obei detested the white man to whom her father had given her in marriage. “Yet it was Joseph Winslow’s guns and gunpowder that made our father stronger and richer
than any other African chief or king. Our power and wealth came from Joseph Winslow’s guns.”

“Joseph Winslow is gone,” King Obei said.

“Yes, but Jasper Hathaway will be more help to us than ten Joseph Winslows. Joseph Winslow knew that he was a fool. But Jasper Hathaway thinks himself to be a man of great wisdom and insight. He believes he can cheat us, yet he understands nothing of our people and our land. We can make good advantage of such an arrogant fool.”

“I do not like him, and I do not trust him,” declared King Obei.

“Nor do I,” said Lingongo. “But what does that matter? Disliked and distrusted, he is no less useful to our people. Nor to us.” She paused, then added with a bow, “That is, to you, my brother.”

Five years had passed since the slave rebellion left Zulina slave fortress in ruins. Five years since Lingongo walked back to the royal palace, alone with her head held high, and—despite all—declaring victory. Five years since the elders of the kingdom pronounced the shoulders of the Great and Mighty King no longer adequate to bear the weight of ruling a kingdom of such power. Over the aging king’s objection, but with Lingongo’s enthusiastic encouragement, the elders passed the
sika’gua
stool on to his first son, Prince Obei.

No sooner was the new King Obei installed in the royal hut than Lingongo ordered a second golden chair to be positioned next to his. Since that day, she had sat beside him and had never failed to make her voice heard.

“When Mister Hathaway returns from England, we will increase our demands of the slave traders,” Lingongo said. “We will double the price we ask for prize slaves. And we will no longer accept cloth or lead bars as payment—only guns and ammunition and gunpowder.”

“He will never consent to such terms,” the king said. “Jasper Hathaway will hold us to the terms of our old agreement.”

“It will not be his choice,” Grace assured her brother. “In no other way can he secure our cooperation. Right now he is strutting about England, making wild promises to everyone. He is showing off Grace, his personal slave, and he is bragging about how well he can handle the company’s affairs in Africa. He cannot afford to see us throw our support to another.”

Lingongo knew Jasper Hathaway perfectly. Bragging and strutting and showing off was precisely what he would have been doing had he been able. As it was, however, he had been carried off the ship and rushed straight to Saint Thomas Hospital for the Sick and Poor at the south end of London Bridge. Unlike most of the ill and infected who shared his ward, Mister Hathaway’s illness was well known to the doctors— not only its nature but also its treatment. Mister Hathaway needed the juice of limes and lemons, and he needed it in plentiful supply whether he wanted it or not. It was not a matter for discussion.

With the proper medical remedy applied, and control completely removed from his hands, his condition improved with amazing speed. But as the bedbugs discovered the tender softness of his flabby body (the hospital was famous for them), Mister Hathaway begged the doctor assigned to his ward to take pity on him and sign his release. He would prefer to die in peace from scurvy, he insisted, than to itch and blister to death. Nor did Mister Hathaway’s demands stop there. Indeed, they grew more numerous by the day. He was especially adamant in his insistence that his slave be brought in immediately to personally care for his needs.

The hospital staff ignored everything he said.

Lingongo knew Jasper Hathaway, but she knew nothing of his plight.