by Paul Butler
He moved slightly, his head turning towards the hut and back again. “When I stand by the entranceway of the Assembly Rooms, Nurse Rooke, receiving canes and cloaks, I am nothing, less than an ebony statue. Do you suppose that with so much time to listen and watch unobserved I could be mistaken about the secret yearnings of a heart?”
I moved through the leaves and pushed the coin into his open palm.
He regarded me for a moment. “Oh, Nurse Rooke!” he laughed, “you could have saved your mistress half this cost if you had framed the question correctly to begin with.”
***
So, it was Captain Wentworth. I felt bad that we might have known sooner, that my Mrs. Smith might have been spared the awkwardness of tonight. But she would be happy now, preening her feathers and spreading her wings in vainglorious splendour. As I descended once more to Westgate Buildings, the very stones seemed to tingle in anticipation of my pleasure in telling her, the stars to shimmer more brightly. I had seen Captain Wentworth from a distance. He was a dignified looking officer, tall and rather proud of bearing. His name had been whispered within my hearing. “Twenty-five thousand pounds,” was the phrase that had followed him behind fluttering fans in the Pump Rooms and gardens. The sum was his prize for having captured a Spanish galleon. He had arrived in Bath only recently and this, perhaps, was why his name and reputation were so fresh in my mind. It was obvious now he had arrived to secure a second prize in addition to his galleon. He was here for Anne Elliot.
Entering Westgate Buildings, I lit a candle from the lantern inside the doorway. The flame sent a golden carpet up the whitewashed stairs churning up a nostalgic euphoria for my Miss Adeline as she had once been — the young chick who used to come into my bed whenever there was a thunderstorm, nestling under my wing, needing my warmth and protection; an imp who had tricked me into stealing three pounds from her father.
I know many would think me weak and malleable, but those who have known the love of a woman past her prime for all the promise and freshness of youth will forgive me. I could never have refused such a combination of vulnerability and precocious charm. The tenderness she drew from me was without limitation. Even though her plot had caused my downfall, I could never cease to love her. So clever, yes ever so clever, I thought then, and what plumes of courage and resourcefulness she would grow in time. How proud I would be! How happy to help at every twist and turn of her career!
The wavering candlelight scooped up the darkness with each step and I remembered the opening of a heavy door many years later, the appearance of a tall, pale-faced woman, short curls like bubbles in a sink, almond eyes I faintly recognized from a past so distant it seemed like another person’s lifetime. I’d been forking away the straw in the far side of the ward when I’d noticed those eyes on me, watching; a slight smile had turned up the corners of her mouth. She’d come expressly to rescue me, she told me later. She’d not forgotten her faithful companion and nurse. So the live-in warden of a communal cell at Bedlam became once again companion to a beautiful pale flower, Miss Adeline Hamilton, now the newly widowed Mrs. Smith. I’d been recalled from the pit and I would never cease to repay Miss Adeline’s generosity.
4. PLATO
IT MUST HAVE SEEMED TROUBLING ENOUGH, gentle reader, for a mere nurse to carry a section of this story; I can hardly conceive of the dismay you must feel to see the torch passed to me. But so it must be. Bear with me then a while, patient soul, while the poor woman shuffles off into the darkness like a dowdy Harlequin, scattering the leaves and giggling to herself. I can take you to places to which you are quite unaccustomed.
It didn’t take much to make Nurse Rooke happy and I had to wonder at it — the curious loyalties that made free people turn their backs to the open range of possibilities, the tug of bondage that made them want to follow the will of another. I knew Mrs. Smith well enough. I knew of the hold she had over Nurse Rooke and so many others besides. But none of these people were alone. England was a country of bondage.
“How dare he speak thus,” you think. “What extraordinary presumption the former slave has to criticize those who have, through the grace in their hearts, chosen to set him free. Clearly, this state of liberty has gone to his head.” But hold your waiting shackles a moment longer if you will. Have I not already confounded your expectations? Were you not thinking I would talk to you in some musical but primitive patois that might artlessly combine consonant and vowel into a poetry of sound while leaving behind all thought of grammatical structure?
The trouble, dear friend, is that history comes to us all through a many-layered gauze of prejudice. I speak like my former master — why should I not? He taught me — and he was a well read and learned man, but more of that later. Let me tell you of my occupation in those days and the point of view it affords me. In the Assembly Rooms, whether under the lofty ceilings of the Ballroom or Octagon Room, or in the corridors or entrance, I had learned to stand like a figurehead, expressionless and unchanging between small tasks required by my employers. Every time a free-born English man or woman walked by me, I could hear the clanking of their chains. There was always a dowager with a fine high feather, a young heiress with gold thread through her cuffs, or a lord with a lofty imperious gait to whom others must defer with a low bow or curtsy. Dowagers, heiresses, and lords in their turn deferred to dukes and princes, and no doubt everyone, of every rank, deferred in secret to Mrs. Smith. Each of them dragged around a dungeon of their own choosing. They said that slavery was going out of fashion but it only applied to the kind of slavery recognized by law, the kind that could lead to beatings and manacles. Slavery of the mind and soul was alive and well and would remain so in this country for many generations to come. “Rule Britannia,” they sang, “Britannia rules the waves. Britons never, never, never, shall be slaves.” In reality they will never be anything else. Nurse Rooke might call her ancestors victors because somewhere in the rubble one barbarian wrested a crown from another to call himself King Edgar. But the people who inhabit this land are merely maggots on a corpse. They are the corruption that fills the void when civilization retreats.
I’d given Nurse Rooke the name she needed. She’d disappeared with it into the night twitching like a carrion bird with a carcass. I knew what would happen now. The name would be whispered around the corridors of the rooming houses and taverns in Bath and Lyme, in the servants’ quarters of the grand houses everywhere in between. It would reach the dock in Bristol and the cabins and wardrooms around England’s coasts. “Wentworth” would be passed like a tobacco pouch from bunk to bunk. We would soon see what mischief it could conjure.
And who would set into motion this mill of communication? Well, dear reader, he is talking to you. If Nurse Rooke had been thinking clearly she would have asked me to act on it straight away. But loyalty is such a strange and stifling emotion; she had to wait for that nod from Mrs. Smith before she would act on anything. As usual, I would be ahead of the game. They always wondered at my speed, Mrs. Smith and Nurse Rooke. But it was merely anticipation. I greased the wheels ahead of time just as my brother Socrates and I used to grease the carriage wheels of our master when we were boys. Socrates — thoughts of my brother always come upon me hard and you must bear with me if I appear bitter.
In early 1812, our master died and freed us through his will. We were to work no longer for food and keep, but for money. It took several months for me to properly understand the difference. There were differences, of course, and not all of them were good, especially for Socrates. On a dark winter evening very soon after the burial, fire burning high behind the study grate, our master’s lawyer explained it to us. You might have guessed already that our master was a whimsical man. He had named us after his own passion for the ancients. And out of his own amusement, and perhaps out of a kind of love — who knows — he had taught us as he might have taught his own children. Socrates and I had read many of those books that crammed the shelves of the study. We had r
ead The Symposium; we knew Homer and Herodotus. But this learning was set apart from every other aspect of life. We knew very little about the plain day to day workings of the time and place in which we dwelt. Details of rents or lodgings, employment, or the laws, and how they might affect us as free subjects of the crown, quite eluded us.
This did not seem to occur to our master’s mild mannered lawyer. Eyes smiling from behind thick glasses, he told us that our lives had changed forever and clearly he had expected us to be delighted. The fire had crackled approval and the flames had danced a jig from behind the grate, but Socrates and I had remained unmoved. Had we disappointed expectations, I wondered, by not leaping for joy and hugging each other?
The amiable man of law had been right, of course. Life had changed. Now we had to find our work month by month, week by week, and in hard times day by day. Now we couldn’t be sure we would eat from one sunrise to the next. Worst of all we had to separate. Our master had been able to keep two of us because we were his. We were a third generation of slaves born into his household. Our mother and grandfather, also his slaves, had initiated us early into the art of becoming invaluable, so we were always worth our meals and board. But with wages involved, as well as keep, nobody had the luxury of employing two of us together. So Socrates, after a very meagre few months, was sent to work as a servant for a family in Lyme and I, after a similar period of irregular employment, stayed to become a favourite with Mr. Dawkins, a friend of my late master and manager of the Upper Assembly Rooms.
Freedom is a word for those who have never been captive. It is a fiction. When people use the term, I soon discovered, what they really mean is capital. Money is what frees us. It took some time before I learned to follow its scent. Mr. Dawkins soon began to place opportunities before me in the form of special errands that would each earn small commissions. Some ladies, it seemed, had been arrested by the sight of me in livery. It became a common request for gentleman admirers to send me with gifts and messages, a practice which, though much resented by other Assembly Rooms employees, saw my savings gradually increase.
While Mr. Dawkins set me on a path of modest prosperity, it was the widow in Westgate Buildings who helped me master money’s mysteries and possibilities. I had met Mrs. Smith on one of my many errands. A gentleman, a Lord Asham, had sent me with some trifle for her. She had seemed then exactly as she now seemed to others: a rather dowdy, cheerful and good-natured woman with a hint of perceptiveness about her eye.
I remembered the smile that had played about her lips as she asked about the manner of he who had commissioned me for the task. As I gave what answers I could — in truth I had paid little attention to the man as it had been the second such errand that day — I noticed she paid no attention to the parcel in my hands and it became heavier by the moment with my desire to be back at work. Still, the fire had continued lapping around the logs like a playful dog licking a bone, and the questions turned from the sender to me. Her smile had become more open and somehow I got the impression she was sharing a joke, though not with me; besides the two of us the room was empty. Soon, with intimations that she herself may have commissions for me to run and would send word when to come, she had gestured for me to lay the gift upon a side-table. “Tell Lord Asham,” she had said, “that it was a nice thought. Could you repeat the words to me exactly?”
“It was a nice thought,” I had repeated.
“Thank you, Plato,” she had replied softly.
In those days, of course, I had no idea of how Mrs. Smith lived, nor what kind of commissions she had in mind for me. But I soon learned from her that money could be conjured from fear. She did indeed send for me and while I continued to work in the Assembly Rooms, running errands for Mr. Dawkins, and his clients, Mrs. Smith became a growing part of my business.
Socrates had not been so lucky. The Harvilles, the family in Lyme for whom he worked — by coincidence friends of Captain Wentworth — were neither wealthy nor particularly liberal with their favours. Socrates became, once more, like a slave cutting wood, stoking fires, greasing wheels. I saw him occasionally in Bath as it was a favourite location of his employers and we would steal time together to catch up on each other’s news. Then one day, through the whisperings of some of my Assembly Rooms colleagues, I heard that my brother had been put on trial in Lyme, accused of stealing from his employer, Captain Harville.
The following day, after grooming and saddling Mr. Dawkins’ horse, I put on my livery for the Assembly Rooms. Standing motionless at a morning function in this borrowed finery, I realized that everything had changed. The buttons and tassels of my livery, its cords and braids, felt like a betrayal of Socrates. I saw the amused, admiring gazes of guests and felt for the first time that I was a humorous work of art — a savage at court, a warrior in a library, a cannibal with a tray. I had escaped my brother’s fate because I had made myself into a white man’s joke. The cockpit, the errands for Mr. Dawkins and his clients, and most of all, the work for Mrs. Smith might in time set me free. I might in time have the liberty to rip the tassels and pull free the buttons of this uniform and throw it on the bonfire. I might earn the freedom to at last say “no.” It was a thought that stayed with me.
Tonight, after I watched Nurse Rooke disappear, I realized I had picked up the scent of money very strongly. Even as I settled into the straw by my niece Lucy’s crib, the dry crinkling under my back reminded me of banknotes thin and rustling. I knew I could not rest for long. Prying up the planks with my fingernails, I dropped the sovereign into the company of its many peers. Lucy spluttered in her sleep, the alchemic lantern spreading a golden sheen over her dark skin, dark curls like onyx ringlets around her forehead and temple. What kind of place has she been born into, I thought, this child of the sun, this first in a long line to be born out of slavery? How will she fit in with the damp and the drizzle, the cold limestone buildings and the ever-increasing circles of umbrellas, stately bows, and low curtsies? I know the stories penned by gentlemen and ladies, the way our kind fade into walls and sink beyond the recesses, not meriting a mention. But I do not blame you, poor reader. To the likes of your Miss Elliot and your Captain Wentworth we are invisible, so how could we be recorded in the pages of their lives?
You will forgive me, perhaps, when you find I experience the world quite differently. You have seen how a gentleman acts before his betters. You have heard how a fine young lady speaks in the company of her peers. But such things tell us nothing of what lies inside. To see within a man you need to know how he treats those who will carry no report of him to those he needs to impress. To know the true character of a woman you must know how she speaks to the lowliest of servants. Imagine then, as you read my part in this tale, that the walls and recesses have come to life, that these inanimate things can now reveal all that has hitherto remained unseen.
When your imagination enters a concert hall in Bath, you are greeted no doubt by the pleasant fluttering of fans, the gentle murmur of polite conversation. It must all seem very charming. What I see from my post at the doorway is something quite different. I behold a seething mass of vermin, their top hats and frills and fluttering fans the most vulgar of mockeries. I see the degenerate life that springs from decay. These are the kinds of people, I think, who fed on my honest brother’s misfortunes. How repulsed the old Romans would feel were they to return to see the squirming, obsequious creatures that inhabit the ruins of their civilization.
You think me harsh? Well think on this. My grandfather told me of his village before he was taken captive. The villagers had a way of dealing with miscreants, from those who injured to those who stole from a neighbour. They would set him in a circle and tell him warmly about all the good he had done in his life, about all the reasons he was appreciated and loved. The one in the circle was usually overcome, brought into tears with a true and deep remorse. He was born again from the inside out, and he re-entered the full life of the village with purpose, vigour, and love.<
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Do you know what these finely dressed and well-mannered people do when someone is found stealing? What did they do to Socrates? You have guessed it. They hanged him. I have since been given the strongest of reasons to think that theft, real or otherwise, was not my brother’s real crime. Either way, death is a common enough punishment for the pettiest of misdemeanours. So you will understand me if I seem to lack respect. To me, these people have the trappings and the manners of civilization but none of the accomplishments and none of the understanding. They admire the Greek style, they say, and so they fashion high waist gowns that flow like Diana’s; they envy the Roman Gods, their vitality and presence in day-to-day life, so they turn them into art; they approve of how the ancients pay tribute to nature, so they build a crescent facade to mimic the power of the moon. But what, apart from fashion, do these borrowings really signify? Nothing. And in what, dear reader, do they believe? In a god so dead he is restricted to Sundays, not talked about in polite company, and locked up safely within the confines of a church building.
How am I better than they? Indeed the question is justified. I am merely a spy at the bidding of a blackmailer. Would it suffice, I wonder, if I claimed to have a sacred mission, a task that justifies sinking lower than those I most despise? You see neither I, nor my salvation, is important in this story. I mean to be a road for the feet of someone dear to me. You must judge me then, not by the standards one uses to judge a human being, but rather by those you would use to judge some non-human construction for a specific purpose. I am a bridge that overhangs rapids. My virtue is proved if I do not break. Only then can you mete out to me judgement, true and fair.
Socrates’s daughter opened her eyes. They stared into the light, glistening surfaces catching the candle gold. Then, sighing, she scratched her nose with the back of her hand, and closed her eyes again. What does a black child dream of, I wondered, in this place of cold and slow decay? Does she carry in her soul the heat of the sun, the memory of broad leaves and wise elders? It was a shame to disturb her and bring her into the cold night, but I could hardly leave her behind.