by Avi
I started to run—not that I knew where to go. I took the first turning to find that I had plunged into a blocked passageway. I spun about, only to have the two night watchmen come down upon me. In a desperate fury, I pitched myself at them, in hopes of breaking through. My reward was a great clout on the head. It was a dark night, but things went darker still.
When I regained my senses, I found myself being bodily hauled along the city streets by the two men. Mortified and infuriated at being apprehended yet again, I could barely breathe. How true the old adage: “A race is not fully run till you cross the final line.” Never mind that I had seen that line. The painful truth was that I had not reached it. The even more painful truth was that it was my own impatience that had done me over. What had Bara urged upon me? Patience. But patience goes for naught if, at the very last, the smallest moment, you toss that patience away. Patience is naught if it is not all the time.
“Where are you taking me?” I managed to ask.
“Jail.”
The Philadelphia jail was a stone building on the corner of Third and High Streets, in the middle of the city.
Straightaway, I was thrown into a gloomy hole. The brief light that accompanied my entry—before the door was shut tight behind me and loudly locked—revealed a number of people on the floor, asleep.
My head in pain, my heart equally so, I looked about and found a vacant bit of hard wall. There I slumped down to the equally hard floor, and in profound despondency, gave myself over to silent, chest-aching sobs. Oh, to have come to this. Never has close seemed so far.
That said, I was so worn out, in heart and soul, I soon cried myself asleep. My last thought that day was: What can possibly happen to me now?
Chapter Sixty-Six
In Which I Am Required to Go Before Another Judge and What Happened.
I woke next morning to find myself among a ragtag group of men and women, who were, or so they informed me, mostly debtors, runaway apprentices, and various other accused persons waiting to be tried. They paid no particular attention to me, so that I am not sure they knew—or cared—that I was among them. The talk amongst themselves was full of angry prattle about the unfairness of life and law, their own absolute innocence, and their sure knowledge about the new judge who was presiding over the court.
In that regard, some conveyed, with much evidence, his savage contempt for people and their crimes. He was, they said, “a hanging judge.” Yet others insisted he was a most kindly man, and would surely let everyone go free. Another claimed this judge had recently come from England and brought along all the cruelty of that nation’s laws. All of which to say, no one knew with any certainty as to what might be their fate—or mine.
If that was not worrying enough, I also learned by their talk that the local law in Philadelphia had, of late, much hardened. The pillory—into which heads, hands, and sometimes feet were locked for periods of painful time—along with a whipping post, had been newly installed. Contrary to what Mr. Lunbog had told me, the death penalty was now in full effect. I was informed that second offenders were the ones most likely to be executed. It appeared that mercy in the new world was as mute as it was in the old.
It took little imagination for me to predict the offences of which I would be found guilty. I was an unattached boy, a vagrant without money, friends, or home. Yes, I was, or so presumed, close to Charity. That only served to increase my agony. Hardly to be wondered that my mind was in such a state that I wished to have my life come to a speedy end one way or another.
As I waited, however, I concocted a plan: I would go before the judge and beg that my sister be sent for. Surely, she would protect me. Assert my character. Plead for me.
It was perhaps mid-morning when the turnkey arrived. With apparent randomness, he selected a few to go before the judge.
That is when I stood up. “Please, sir,” I called out. “Take me.”
The turnkey considered me curiously. “Why should I?” he demanded.
“I wish to come to the end of all this.”
“To hang?”
“If I must.”
The other prisoners looked upon me as if I were mad. No doubt, I was.
“If that’s what you want, come along. You’ll find our new judge happy to fulfill your request.”
He led the group of us out of the jail to the court building nearby. Unlike in England, we were not chained together, but we few prisoners were tightly walked by bailiffs and their size and whips were sufficient to overawe us. Not that I needed coaxing. I wished everything done, done. I would have run to trial.
As for the courthouse, compared to the other structures I had seen in that city, it was much finer. Made of brick, it was of two levels, with a large door facing out to a grand balcony on the second level.
Beneath that elegant balcony were a pillory and a whipping post. Realizing my plan to summon Charity was only my latest folly, and presuming I would receive a sentence of execution, I gazed mournfully upon these instruments of punishment.
Matching flights of stairs led up to the balcony and the wide entry door. Flanking the door were large windows with diamond-shaped glass panes, which curiously reminded me of the windows at the Swan Inn, the place that Mr. Sandys’s mother kept—and where I met Captain Hawkes. That my life was repeating itself made me ever more willing to embrace the extreme judgment sure to come. The law had not served me well. Like an octopus, it had many arms to clutch at me. I could not escape.
We went through the balcony door and into the court. You may recall that the court in London where I received my sentence of transportation was in the open air. This court was different. To begin, it was inside. At the far end of the room was a high and empty desk, where I presumed the judge presided. To the right was a jury box of two levels. A table and chairs stood before the judge’s place. There was also a large cage, which, as I was about to learn, was where the prisoner stood.
There were also benches for observers to sit. A few were present, a rather motley crew, there, I supposed, to enjoy the legal theater.
When I entered, a jury was already sitting in the box. These men were bewigged, all of them looking fairly prosperous by way of garb.
At the table were other men, equally well dressed.
You may be sure I was well aware that I was not only in rags, but filthy. I probably stank. There are some who claim that Justice is blind, but I never heard of any law that looked upon poverty as an advantage. Even if I could not be seen, I was sure I would be smelled out. Then too, I was thoroughly despondent, and no doubt that, too, was noticeable. There was nothing charming about me.
For whatever reason—perhaps because I appeared to be the youngest prisoner, or maybe because I had asked to be quickly judged—I was immediately sent to the accused’s cage, told to stand and wait.
A gentleman entered from a side door and called out, “All rise for the honorable judge.”
The people in the room did just that. The judge entered. Being in great terror, I only saw his emblems of power, the frightful blood-red robe edged with gold, his great wig, and puffy white sleeves. I had to force myself to look at the man’s face and only then did I truly grasp that the judge was my father.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
In Which My Life Has Even More Unexpected Events.
Since November 12, 1724, when I found myself alone in my home in Melcombe Regis, England, midst a savage storm, the progress of my life—if progress is the proper word—was continually unexpected. But nothing was so unexpected as to be reunited with my father, who had become a judge in the court of Philadelphia.
When he recognized me—which he did with a wonder equal to my own—he instantly recessed the court and bade me to join him in an adjacent room. He told me to sit before him and for some time we stared at each other, equally mazed that we should come together in such a place and situation.
As you
may recall, my father and I were not particularly emotional, one with the other. Speaking for myself I had not been pleased with his practice of fatherhood. Nor did I think was he. As I gazed upon him, I had to wonder: Would he deny his paternity, or embrace me? All I could do was wait and learn.
He began by saying, “I know from where I came. The last time I saw you, you were on the River Thames being taken to a prison ship. How did you come here?”
“Please, sir, I came looking for my sister, Charity.”
“Charity!”
“I believe she is here.”
He made no comment, but gazed at me more astonished than ever. Let it be said, it is not often that a son can maze a father. I felt a kind of pride.
“Where?” he demanded.
“Here in Philadelphia. The bakery of Master Isaac Bell, Black Horse Alley.”
He jumped to his feet and lifted a hand as if bestowing a blessing. “As judge of this court,” he pronounced, “I herewith pardon all of your offences. Now come along.”
What followed next is a scene that I would have liked to observe from a distance: a bewigged judge in his red robes, striding down Philadelphia’s High Street, hand in hand with a ragged, barefoot boy. A parade of high and low.
Black Horse Alley was easily found twixt First and Second Streets, near High Street. Lo and behold—as old stories would say—the bakery was right there, a modest brick structure, with a wooden sign that bore the crude image of a loaf of bread. The door was painted green.
My father would have rushed forward but I begged him to hold back while I went. Was I not deserving of the event?
I knocked on the door. No one came. I knocked again, louder. Was there ever a longer moment?
At last the door opened.
There was my beloved Charity altogether dusted over with flour. Of course, I knew her in an instant. But she did not recognize me. “Yes?” she said. “May I help you?”
“It’s me,” I cried out. “Oliver.”
“Oliver?” she said with some indignation. “My brother is small, fair-skinned, and clean, none of which you are.”
“Charity, it’s me,” I cried. “And here is Father.” I drew this bewigged and costumed judge, our father, in close.
For a moment, we all just looked at one another. As for who first shrieked with joy the loudest—Charity or me, or perhaps even Father—I cannot say. Suffice to say I flung my arms about my sister and thereby became equally covered by joy, tears, and flour.
Then and there, on those front bakery steps, came the endless questions asked by all of us: “Where did you come from? How did you ever come here? How did you find me?”
The simplest story came from Charity. She had been brought to Philadelphia, but on her convict ship had been wooed by a young, free immigrant who was going to set up a bakery in Pennsylvania colony. It was mid-voyage when he actually bought her and they were married, and thus she avoided most horrors of the ocean passage.
“I don’t know,” she said, “if I, in the eyes of the law, am his bonded servant or his wedded wife. But he is a good man, and I love him.”
Then my father related his travels:
“Surely you remember that I promised that I would follow you both to the Americas. Wishing to find you, I voyaged to Philadelphia because as I was informed, it was in the middle colonies. That seemed a place to start my search. But once I landed, my knowledge of the English law was such that once it became known, I was fairly well forced by the local government to become a judge. It seemed a new ruling party here desired to move away from what they considered the excessive softness of Quaker rule.
“Is there a better way to undermine authority,” he said in his old cantankerous way, “than by joining it?”
Then it was my time.
As fast as I could, I provided them with a summary of all that had happened to me since I had last seen them in London, which you, as reader, already know.
“An astonishing story,” my father said when I was done. Then he added something the likes of which he had never said before: “I can only admire you.”
To which Charity added, “Blessed be the day that we have all survived.”
Thus was my family reunited in this most unexpected and delighted fashion.
I need only add we met Charity’s husband, and he appeared a most decent fellow.
I do not pretend to have learned great writing skills while setting down the events of this part of my life. What I have discovered is that it is far easier to write about hardship and misery than happiness. Though contentment is the goal of most, I suspect that joyful state of being is difficult to set down in words because we do not quite know what happiness is. We merely feel it. Whereas misfortune can be measured in many words, joy is but passing brief.
Still, I can tell you true, I am wholly content, resolved that my life should have no more misery. As of this moment, I have not been drowned nor hanged. I can only hope that now that I am an American Colonial, my fate will be something else. But I am well advised that, as the saying goes, he who thinks he can foretell the future is future’s fool.
I thus put down my pen, blot the pages with sand, with the hopeful expectation that my life is done with the unexpected.
But I cannot end my story without adding this: Not a day passes when I don’t think of Bara—somewhere in that swamp, or wherever he might be. Yes, I had found my sister, but I can only pray, from my deepest heart, that my brother is still free.
I remain, therefore, your most humble and faithful servant,
Oliver Cromwell Pitts
A Note from the Author
In eighteenth-century England, London swelled in population and became more than ever a center of mass poverty and great wealth. Crime against property became commonplace. In reaction, the British government enacted harsh laws to punish both minor offenders and major criminals. This collection of laws was known as “the bloody codes.” One of the results of these laws was punishment by transportation, in which those convicted of minor and serious crimes were sent to the British American colonies, where the convicts were sold for forced labor. The transportation of these convicts—men, women, and children—became a business.
Historians believe that by the time of the American Revolution, the thirteen colonies had a population of about two million, of which some fifty thousand were felons who had been sent to America from Great Britain. These felons were mostly shipped to the colonies of Maryland and Virginia to work the tobacco fields, the primary source of economic strength in America. When the mostly white felons became relatively expensive to own, more enslaved black laborers were used. There was, however, a time, as depicted in this story, when white felons and enslaved black people worked side by side.
Maroon communities were mostly made up of once-enslaved black people who escaped and lived in independent communities. These communities existed throughout North and South America. In Jamaica, there was even a long-lasting “Maroon War,” in which enslaved people, joining with indigenous people, fought for their freedom.
In North America, maroon communities often lived in swamp regions. Their history is complex. But because they were by necessity secretive, knowledge of them has only recently come to light.
Felon slave labor is not widely known as part of American history. The story of the penal colony that became Australia is more familiar. But England transported felons to Australia only after the American Revolution, when the United States stopped accepting them. Perhaps the best-known novel about a transported felon is Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, which features a nineteenth-century convict—Magwitch—sent to Australia.
About the Author
Avi is the author of the Newbery Medal novel Crispin: The Cross of Lead and the Newbery Honor books Nothing But the Truth and The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, among many other books for young readers. Catch You Later, Traitor
was inspired by his own childhood in Brooklyn during the Red Scare. Avi now lives in Colorado. You can visit him online at www.avi-writer.com.
The Oliver Cromwell Pitts Novels
The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts
The End of the World and Beyond
Also by Avi
The Button War
Catch You Later, Traitor
City of Orphans
Crispin: The Cross of Lead
The Fighting Ground
Iron Thunder
Nothing But the Truth
The Player King
The Seer of Shadows
Sophia’s War
The Traitors’ Gate
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
Read on for a free preview of
CATCH YOU LATER, TRAITOR,
a tale of mystery and espionage by
Avi
1
The way I see it, I stopped being a kid on April 12, 1951.
We were playing our regular afternoon recess punchball game out in the schoolyard. I was about to smack the ball when Big Toby, who always played catcher, muttered, “Hey, Pete, that true about your parents?”
I looked over my shoulder. “What?”
“Is what Donavan said about your parents true?”
I stared at him as if he had walked off a flying saucer. Why would Mr. Donavan, our seventh-grade teacher, say anything about my parents? And how come I hadn’t heard?
“Come on, Collison,” Hank Sibley yelled at me. He was near second base, which was someone’s sweater. “Stop gabbing. Recess almost up.” He blew a huge bubble with his gum, which popped as I punched a shot inside third.
Kat, the only girl playing, raced home.
Our schoolyard was cement, which meant if you slid home, you’d peel off your skin. So no sliding allowed. Anyway, Kat stomped on her geography text, our home plate, and yelled “Dodgers win!” well before the ball was thrown home.