The Voyage of Promise (8 page)

Grace, perplexed at such a response, stared at him.

“Come now! Are you serious?” Captain Ross asked. “Surely you do not expect me to believe that you are actually able to read!”

Grace assured him she most certainly could.

“You must excuse me, my dear, but if that be true, then I do believe that other than the four of us who take tea in this room, you are probably the only person on this ship who can do as much.” Captain Ross clicked his tongue and shook his head in astonishment. “Imagine, an African who can read!”

“My mother was African,” Grace reminded him. “My father was as English as you are.”

“In that case, he was not English at all,” Captain Ross said. “For I am a proud Scotsman.”

The captain went to the shelf and lifted the book from its place and handed it to Grace. “For you to read until we reach London. And to handle with utmost care.”

The book did not tell about London. It did not tell of any distant ports at all. But Grace was not in the least disappointed. It was a book like the one Mama Muco got from the missionary—the Holy Bible. When she returned to her own quarters, Grace brought her candle to the small desk in her cabin and immediately set about reading it,

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Grace could almost hear Mama Muco’s strong voice pronouncing each word. She had to rub her eyes and shake her head to be certain Mama was not there in the room with her.

Long into the night, Grace read the book. Then she read all the next day, and the day after that. Day after day, Grace sat in her room reading the book. Only occasionally did she join the others in the captain’s office for afternoon tea, and even on those instances she was the first to excuse herself so she could get back to reading the book.

One night Grace’s eyes ached so badly from long hours of reading by candlelight that she hesitantly set the book aside and moved out onto the quarter deck to clear her head.

“Nyame,” Grace breathed as she looked up at the stars. “Did you send the trickster to me?”

“You spend your days reading the Bible, yet you appeal to the sky god,” observed Captain Ross, who had come up behind her. “You are indeed a complex woman.”

“I beg your pardon, Captain,” Grace said. “I did not hear you coming.” When Captain Ross didn’t answer, Grace asked, “How do you know Nyame?”

“I know many things. I know that Nyame is the African name of the sky god. But what of this trickster?”

Grace chuckled. “I see there is much of Africa you do
not
know. Nyame is said to send the Eshu, the wandering trickster spirit, to us. It is he who brings change and quarrels to our lives. I think perhaps that I saw the trickster tonight.”

“Did you now? And what did he look like, pray tell?”

“Like a cockroach,” Grace said. “I saw the men race him with other cockroaches, but of course he could always win for he was the largest and the fastest of all. Unless he wanted to trick them. Then he might lose.”

Captain Ross let out a hearty laugh. “You, my wee one, truly are filled with surprises!”

But Grace was not laughing.

“Who taught you to read?” Captain Ross asked.

“My father hired a tutor. My father couldn’t read, although he pretended he could. He really wanted me to be an English lady. I’m afraid I was a great disappointment to him.”

“Grace, when you get to England, it would be in your best interest to keep this ability to yourself. Do not let anyone know you know how to read.”

“Why should I pretend? If I—”

“And if you ever have the misfortune to find yourself in the United States of America, you must absolutely never let your ability to read be known. Slaves… Africans… they can be killed for the crime of reading.”

“Why, I cannot believe such a thing!” Grace exclaimed. “How can it be wrong to learn?”

“Believe it or not, it still is so,” Captain Ross warned. “Please, promise me you will be very, very careful. Not everyone acts out of malice or greed, Grace, but far too many people do. You have already met some of them, and you are sure to meet many more.”

W
ith a deep sigh, Lady Charlotte Witherham settled herself in the comfortable reclining seat of a traveling sedan chair, a sort of hand-carried coach. A coachman slipped the hinged roof shut and clicked it into place. Perfect! Then he and three other chair-men lifted the contraption up by the long poles slid through side handles and ran along the footpaths toward Larkspur Estate. Their pace was faster than a horse-drawn coach could ever have clip-clopped on that congested street.

“Carried on a cloud,” Charlotte’s mother used to say of the sedan chair mode of transportation, and Lady Charlotte had to agree. She detested the noisy clatter of horse hooves. And the knocking about one must endure as a carriage rumbled over the rough cobblestones of the poorer streets—well, it was simply intolerable!

Of course, were Reginald to see her, he would fuss and fume something terrible. He always insisted she use one of the fine carriages that bore the prominent and distinctive Witherham Larkspur monogram. But that certainly would not do to fetch her home from an abolitionist rally! Anyway, Reginald would not be at home for another day, so she was free to do as she
pleased, which was fortunate indeed, for should he ever discover the true purpose of her trip to her mother’s bedside,
fuss and fume
would take on a terrifying new meaning.

It wasn’t that Charlotte wanted to actually
be
an abolitionist. It was that she knew for certain she did
not
want to be identified with her husband’s rabid anti-abolitionist circle— grown men prancing about expounding on the wretched state of the souls of Africans, spouting platitudes that proclaimed their own righteous intentions, when all the while the issue came down to nothing but money.

Simon Johnson and his vast sugar cane plantations in the West Indies; Sir Geoffrey Philips with his powerful hold over the indigo market; Augustus Jamison, whose enormous interests lay in molasses and rum production in Jamaica. Every one of them had a hand in the slavery money pot. Her own husband was over his head in it. It was his shipping fortune that provided the funds to rebuild the burned-out Zulina slave trading fortress on Africa’s Slave Coast. Even now, Reginald eagerly awaited a firsthand report from his recently appointed overseer, one Jasper Hathaway. Charlotte was acquainted with the man. He was a veteran trader she had been unable to avoid in Africa, and to whom she had forever after referred as “that lump of soggy dough.”

“Really, Charlotte, for a girl with so excellent an upbringing, you can play such a fool!” her mother had said earlier in the day during Charlotte’s visit with her in the country. In a moment of carelessness, Charlotte had let slip a word of her intention to listen in on the public abolition meeting. In Henrietta Stevens’s delicate condition, it was not easy for the woman to rouse the strength to make such a show of emotion. Immediately after her pronouncement, her face flushed a most unhealthy dusky hue. Even so, her admonition was not over.
“After all I sacrificed to make certain you had a perfect life! Now you go and put it all in jeopardy by—by—”

Here Henrietta Stevens was seized by an uncontrollable coughing fit.

“Mother,
please
,” Charlotte pleaded. She rushed to get a cup of water. When she returned, she said, “I’m sorry I mentioned that silly old meeting. I shall reconsider. Now, please put it out of your mind and let us talk of more pleasant things.”

“Daughter,” Henrietta gasped, “you will yet be the death of me!”

Even when Charlotte left her mother’s side, she was not certain whether she would head for the shops around Larkspur or listen in on the abolitionist rally. She had seen too much in Africa to rest comfortably at night. And yet, the slavery situation was not her affair. Wiser heads than hers were already debating every possible thought for and against the slave trade. Why should she involve herself in the dispute and cause still more problems for Reginald?

In the end, Lady Charlotte headed for the wrong side of London, to the square where someone always seemed ready to rant about something. She edged in among the assortment of people crowded close to hear the speakers. First the Quakers said their piece, then one Dissenter after another added his— Methodist or Baptist or some other such a one as took exception to the teachings of the Church of England. Each one issued a passionate call for an end to the African slave trade.
An end!
That they would actually dare express such a radical idea in the open amazed Lady Charlotte. But what was most shocking of all was the reaction of the people. Why, they actually cheered the speakers! But when the cheers turned to wild calls for action, Lady Charlotte quailed and edged away.

“Here, madame,” a nicely dressed man called out to her. He handed her a crudely printed booklet. “You look to be a lady
of intelligence. Learn the horrors of the trade from one who knows them well enough. Just two sixpence, and you take this booklet with you.”

Impulsively, Charlotte loosened the strings of her purse and took out two small coins. She accepted the booklet and tucked it inside her cloak.

It had been Lord Reginald’s arrangement to have his carriage go to the country and fetch Charlotte home on the following day. But Charlotte wasn’t worried about that. With her husband away on business for two days, she would simply concoct some story about a friend of her mother’s heading back to London and inviting Charlotte to ride along with her.

Why must everything always be done to please Reginald, anyway?

The hired chair moved swiftly and smoothly through the huddled communities of shabby houses on the city’s North End. Nothing but shoddy construction, according to Reginald, who seemed to be well-versed in the matter. Cheap houses had actually been known to collapse and crush entire families asleep in their beds, he told Charlotte in an eerily chipper tone. His dainty hands acted out the grisly scenes of crushing and smothering. Charlotte shuddered at the thought.

Since she was alone in the sedan chair, Lady Charlotte pulled the abolitionist’s booklet from the folds of her cloak and held it close to her face. In the hazy light, she struggled to read the first page:

The nature and effects of that unhappy and disgraceful branch of commerce, which has long been maintained on the Coast of Africa, with the sole, and professed design of purchasing our fellow-creatures, in order to supply our West-India island and the American colonies, when they were ours, with Slaves; is now generally understood. So much
light has been thrown upon the subject, by many able pens; and so many respectable persons have already engaged to use utmost influence, for the suppression of a traffic, which contradicts the feelings of humanity; that it is hoped, this stain of our National character will soon be wiped out.

Lady Charlotte closed the booklet.
Stain of our National character!
What a thing to say! Why, her own father worked with slaves, and a kinder and better man she had never met. She closed her eyes and saw again the long lines of African captives straggling into his slave compound, bound together with ropes around their necks, limping and crying from their long forced march across the sun-baked savanna. She saw, too, the captives her father bought from the African traders. Those captives had screamed and cried and begged so piteously as they clung to one another. Still her kind, gentle father had torn them away from each other and sold them to the waiting slave ships.

Yes, Lady Charlotte decided, she would read the booklet. But not here in this wretched light. No, she would hide it under her mattress and read it in the privacy of her chambers, in the company of the cheery black folks painted across her silk damask wall coverings.

The sedan chair runners turned onto the smoothly paved streets of London’s West End. Here were the grand shops with which she was so familiar. Here, too, the formal squares that stood against the aristocracy’s city palaces—including the imposing Witherham Larkspur Estate. The coachmen ran her up to the front steps of the house, then they hurried to lift back the hinged roof.

Rustin, the butler, stepped outside to meet the sedan chair. “His Lordship is in his study, my lady,” he said almost as though he had been waiting for Charlotte.

“Lord Reginald is at home?” Charlotte asked with a start.

“Yes, my lady,” Rustin replied. “He has been asking after you. He eagerly awaits your return.”

But Reginald was not due to return for another day! It was not like him to change his plans.

“Send the sedan chair away,” Lady Charlotte ordered hurriedly. But before the butler could obey, she quickly added, “And, Rustin, there is no reason to speak of my arrival to anyone. Not to
anyone
!”

She hurried inside. Without even pausing for the maid to take her cloak, Lady Charlotte rushed for the stairs and her private chambers.

“Charlotte!” It was Reginald, and he was on his way down the stairs. “Is that you, my dear?”

Without answering, Charlotte darted across to the parlor. She pulled the booklet out from the folds of her cloak and slid it under the cushion of the closest Queen Anne chair.

“Charlotte!” This time the call was a sharp demand, and it came from right behind her.

Lady Charlotte jumped, and her hand instinctively flew to her throat. She stumbled backward.

“Whatever is the matter with you?” Lord Reginald asked, his voice etched with more irritation than usual. He caught his wife by the arm. “Why, you haven’t yet taken off your cloak!” He called out to the maid, “Owens! Come and tend to your mistress! And I do believe she is in need of tea.”

Lord Reginald led Charlotte across the room and to the sofa. “My dear, you seem to be terribly unsettled. I have never known an excursion to the country to produce such an effect on you. Did you have a difficult day with your mother?”

“My—? Oh, yes. Mother is not doing well. Not well at all.”

“As you are well aware, it was my intention to send one of our carriages to collect you tomorrow. I told you as much. But even as I gave the order for the carriage driver to depart, word came to me that you were already on your way home. Of course, I was at a total loss of what to think—as I am certain you can understand.”

“Oh, well, I… That is, a friend of Mother’s…” Lady Charlotte stammered. To her relief, the maid came in bearing the tea setting. “Ah, exactly what I need! Thank you, Owens. Thank you!”

The maid collected Lady Charlotte’s cloak and gloves and disappeared. She quickly returned to lay out the tea. All the while Lady Charlotte struggled to regain her composure. But in spite of herself, her glance continued to return to the Queen Anne chair. To her alarm, she could see a corner of the pamphlet protruding from under the cushion.

“… and although I do not wish to seem insensitive, I do think we must talk of a more permanent situation for your mother,” Lord Reginald was saying. “As you will recall, it is my expressed opinion that you would both be better off without the visits. Just see how it upsets you!”

But Lord Reginald was not fooled. With the swift precision of a lion that has caught wind of weakened prey, he fixed his attention on Charlotte’s nervous glance toward the chair. His hunting instinct sprung into high gear. With deliberate steps, he strode over, grabbed hold of the exposed booklet corner between his forefinger and thumb, and slowly pulled it from its hiding place. He may as well have inserted a razor-sharp claw into Charlotte’s throat.

Too terrified to move, Charlotte watched helplessly as her husband read the first page of the booklet. His face twitched, then paled—his fingers clutched the pages ever more tightly until his knuckles turned white.

Slowly Lord Reginald lowered the book and glared over it at his wife.

“What is that you found… dear?” Charlotte asked in a ridiculous attempt at innocence.

“Your voice quakes…
dear
!” Reginald replied in a low rumble. “And I have no doubt but that you know perfectly well what I found.”

Charlotte gulped and willed her voice not to quail. “Why, no,” she said with fake lightness. “You know how dreadfully reading bores me. I much prefer to call on my friends, or to visit the shops that—”

Lord Reginald, his face burning hot and the veins throbbing at his aristocratic temples, turned fiery eyes on his wife. “Stop!” he ordered.

Charlotte ceased her babble mid-sentence.

“Idiocy from some abolitionist fool makes up the sum total of this booklet!” Lord Reginald pronounced. “Although its content must most assuredly be well-known to you, for no one other than you would be brainless and impertinent enough to bring such poisonous nonsense into this fine house.” His voice seething with his fury, Reginald wagged a finger in Charlotte’s face. “Really, I should not be surprised at this alarming turn of events. The time you spent in Africa has doubtless befouled your mind beyond reason. I warned that you were never to let anyone know of your father’s degrading involvement in that heathen land, but apparently you paid me not the least mind, because you—”

Charlotte jumped to her feet. “And what of your involvement, husband?” she charged.

“What?”

“What of your involvement in Africa, Reginald? Your ships, your slave-trading factories, your hired trade managers?
What of Mister Hathaway, of whom you have been speaking nonstop for the past year?”

“Now, see here, I—”

“No, you see here. Night after night, you meet with your colleagues for endless hours, talking over countless ways to protect your business investments in Africa. You may know business, Lord Reginald Witherham, but you do not know everything. The times are changing. And so are the sensibilities of God-fearing Englishmen and women.”

“You do not know of what you speak,” Lord Reginald said with a dismissive wave of his hand. The blinding rage had faded from him, and in its place Charlotte recognized the smallest seed of concern.

“Perhaps, then, my husband, I would do well to learn more.”

In an effort to refocus a conversation that had taken a most distressing turn, Lord Reginald charged, “Nevertheless, you purposely deceived me. You collected from an undisclosed person or persons a pamphlet designed to rouse the rabble of this city; you hid said pamphlet from me; and when I discovered it, you persisted in your claim that it had not come from you. You lied to me, Charlotte!”