The General's Cook

by Ramin Ganeshram

  “No!” yelled Margaret, pulling down his arm as Nate stumbled, panting up to the cart. A bruise was rising on the side of his cheek.

  “Nate! What happened?”

  “Nothing,” he said quickly and climbed into the back of the cart, where he picked up the burlap sacking and burrowed under it as planned. He had to trust in this man, because he was an agent of Mrs. Harris and Hercules trusted her. It was all they had to hold onto.

  “Hold tight,” said Seamus, after he saw that Nate had flattened himself well. “I mean to go fast this night but I will bring you safely to your destination.”

  Margaret cast a worried glance back to where Nate had disappeared under the cloth and cargo. She nodded tightly.

  “Of that, sir, I have no doubt,” she said, just as he clucked at the horse and the cart moved forward with a jolt onto the road.

  The first day had been the hardest. He’d walked steadily through the night and he wasn’t even tired when the sun started to break over the horizon. His blood was pumping like it hadn’t for months and even the cold, wet cloth of his britches and hose, sodden from wading through the creeks and ponds in his path, hadn’t bothered him. The stiff cloth was freezing into place, scraping at his skin, but it had been necessary to walk through the water to throw Allistone’s dogs off the scent.

  He’d found a bramble that was large and thick enough to hide him when he’d crawled inside, the burrs pulling and tearing at his skin. He sat there too afraid to start a fire, not only because the smoke could be seen but that it would have stifled him dead in that closed space.

  Reaching into his bag, he pulled out the crusts of bread he’d put aside from every one of his meals for the last week. The pieces were hard and most had green mold but he ate them anyway. He needed the strength. They weren’t much better when they were fresh anyway. He’d already had enough to drink—scooping up snow as he walked and eating it, picking small twigs and leaves out as it melted in his hand. Still, he considered these sorry victuals a banquet—the first meal he’d eaten as a free man.

  Hercules closed his eyes and tried to rest. His mind wasn’t tired but he knew he had to keep up his strength. His thoughts raced crazily—to his girls and then to them in Philadelphia. Nate and Margaret.

  He must have dozed for a moment because he was startled awake by the sound of barking dogs. He lay still, his heart banging hard in this throat.

  “This way!” a voice called and Hercules crawled on his stomach to a space in the bramble and peered outside.

  Three white men with muskets and dogs were splashing across the creek some few hundred yards away. Hercules closed his eyes and willed himself not to thrash out of the bramble in a panic. Maybe the dogs wouldn’t pick up his scent.

  The barking got closer; one of the hounds sniffed around the edge of the bramble. Hercules wondered if he could reach out fast enough to grab the animal by his neck and slit his throat with the knife he had in his boot.

  “Buster! Here, boy!” The call came from farther away now. The dog lifted his head from sniffing and bounded toward the sound.

  Hercules held his breath, not moving while the sounds of the men and their dogs faded into the distance. Bird hunters. Not slave catchers.

  Hercules breathed out slowly and lay back down on the ground. He’d wait a little longer and find a new place to hide.

  He bent down and untied the branches from his ankles and surveyed the town. It had taken him two days to make the walk through the woods to his rendezvous with James Brown in Alexandria. Two days of hiding in the daylight, sleeping a few hours at a time.

  On the second day he’d found a small rock crevice that he crawled into and made a small fire that wouldn’t be noticed. He’d scurried to hide from poachers on the General’s land more than once, trying not to breathe lest they see his cold breath and take him for a deer—or worse.

  He had been holding his piss for hours at a time, not wanting to leave its strong scent behind for the dogs that the overseer would surely send after him. He finally relieved himself over the side of a hill, watching the droplets freeze as they flew through the air.

  For two nights he’d trudged on, the branches he tied to his boots in order to hide his footprints dragging his gait.

  Now he squatted, panting, and stared at the warehouse by the dock. The night was cold enough to have driven even the watchmen indoors. Still, he waited a good quarter of an hour before he made his way toward the brick building and looked for the door with the small chalk mark above the handle, which James Brown had left open for him. Fortunately, the moon was high enough for him to see.

  The warehouse was crowded with barrels and crates that mostly blocked the windows. Inside it was too dark to make anything out clearly. He stood still, trying to get his bearings. Brown had said to walk to the back wall near the loading doors and wait there. He squatted, lest his form be made out by anyone peering into the window at the gaps and spaces that the crates did not cover. Slowly he edged along the wall behind him to a stand of large barrels. He sat down to wait.

  “Ready?” said James Brown, holding the barrel lid open.

  “Yes,” said Hercules, looking doubtfully at the large barrel that he was meant to climb into. The mariner had shown him where he drilled air holes for him to breathe but still he did not relish the idea.

  “It only fuh a short while,” said Brown. “Until I can roll you onto the ship. I have a place fuh you to hide in the hold and then we gone to Philadelphia.”

  Hercules tucked the roll of old clothing under his arm. He ran his hand over his scalp, which Brown had made smooth with a straight razor. The newly shaven head was a precaution to prevent him from being recognized, as were the new clothes he wore.

  “You go have to leave this,” said the seaman, holding up the stick.

  Hercules nodded and Brown broke the stick over his leg. He pocketed the gold handle. “We go sell it when we make New York.” Hercules took a deep breath and hoisted his leg to climb into the barrel with the sailor’s help.

  “Don’t worry, master cook, I go bring you to safety this night,” Brown said seriously as Hercules crouched down, waiting for the lid to be placed over his head.

  “Of that, sir,” Hercules said in a soft voice, “I have no doubt.”

  EPILOGUE

  Maine, Summer 1797

  MARGARET GRABBED THE BEDPOST AND PANTED.

  “Come now, come on,” said Mrs. Jacks, reaching under her arm and hoisting the girl from where she squatted.

  Margaret lumbered up and gasped as the pain shot through her.

  The two looked enough alike with their blond hair and blue eyes to be mother and daughter, or aunt and niece, which is what they’d tell folks when Margaret was ready to come out of hiding. The baby, should it live, would go to the black family at the edge of town if it looked Negro. It would be taken for just another of their brood and they’d earn good coin for its keep. And if it looked white, Mrs. Jacks would claim it and Margaret as the children of her sister in Georgia who had died in childbirth.

  Outside the door, Nate paced the room until Mr. Jacks, who had been calmly filling his pipe, called him outside to have a look at an apple tree that was sickened by some rot.

  Nate didn’t give a jot about the tree but he reluctantly followed, starting back for the door when Margaret’s scream ripped the air.

  “Come along, son,” said Jacks, grabbing his arm.

  As the two walked toward the orchard on the ridge behind the house, Jacks made small talk about this and that.

  “Many a woman’s had a baby before your missus,” said Jacks amiably. “My Molly has her well in hand. Not to worry.”

  Nate still couldn’t believe how easily these people in Mrs. Harris’s network referred to Margaret as his “missus” and he as her “husband.” He hadn’t known, before, how much of a miracle a small word could be.

  “How are you finding the tavern?” Jacks was saying.

  “It’s all right, I guess,” said Nate, pulli
ng at a tall stand of grass as he passed. “Pretty easygoing.”

  In truth, cooking at the tavern was so boring a simpleton could do it, but it was work and he was grateful for it.

  “I can well imagine, given the victuals you’ve turned your hand to,” said Jacks, puffing at the pipe.

  They reached the ridge and stood looking down at the house where Margaret struggled to bring their child into the world.

  “Have you given thought to what you’ll do when the child is old enough?” Jacks asked.

  Nate shoved his hands into his pockets. He had thought of nothing else this whole while, for despite the Jackses’ kindness, every day here was still a day on tenterhooks.

  “You know he won’t leave off hunting you down,” said Jacks, giving voice to Nate’s thoughts. “There’s many a man eager to earn the president’s bounty by dragging you back—especially now that another has gone off.”

  Nate stopped walking. “Another?” he said, his mind running through those left at the President’s House. Moll was too old to run and Joe too witless. Perhaps someone at the plantation—His thoughts raced to the only one who mattered and he impulsively grabbed Jacks’s arm.

  “Who? Do you recall who?” he asked urgently.

  “His cook, I believe,” said the other man. “Yes, that’s right. I read the notice in the paper. It was the cook. They say the old man’s even more angry than when that girl ran off—has scores of men trying to hunt him down.” He paused to puff at his pipe while Nate stared dumbly into the distance. “Why, you knew him, of course,” Jacks said as if the thought had just occurred to him.

  Nate swallowed. “Yes, I knew him.”

  Hercules had escaped. He was free. Nate felt strangely light-headed.

  Jacks was moving forward up the hill and talking about the baby again. “… and when the child is old enough you’ll be able to travel north into Canada; there are some free black settlements there. That would be the best thing,” said Jacks thoughtfully. “As long as both you and the missus can work and put aside your coin, perhaps you’d get there in a year’s time.” A year’s time. Until then they’d live in separate houses, with Margaret posing as the Jackses’ niece and them seeing each other on the sly. If the child were sent to the other family, there’d only be occasional visits with it. Margaret was already taking it hard, but there was nothing to be done. It was their only chance. He found himself wishing, not for the first time, that the child would look white—for all of their sakes.

  “I thank you, sir, for all you and Mrs. Jacks have done,” said Nate, looking at the older man who Nate now realized must be at least as old as the president.

  “Nothing to thank me for, son,” he said, puffing thoughtfully and staring off into the distance where the sun began to dip. “Them that’s able must turn their hands to setting things to rights.”

  Nate lifted his eyes to the reddening sky. He thought of how the sunsets made the brick walks and buildings of Philadelphia glow as if they were fresh from baking-fire and how Hercules would walk those streets as if they were laid out just for him no matter what color he be.

  Hercules was free. Nate closed his eyes and prayed for his child to be a boy, for he already knew the name with which to bestow him.

  Thelma Grayson put the stopper back in the bottle of French perfume after lightly dabbing it behind her ears and in her décolletage. The peach-colored satin suited her nicely, although the day had not cooled when the sun had dropped behind the horizon. She would have to wear the white gauze tonight instead.

  “Thelma, are you in here?” Grayson tapped gently on her bedroom door and poked his head around. She arranged her face into the kind of pretty smile she knew he expected as he crossed over to her.

  “I have something for you,” he said, bending to kiss not her cheek but her bosom, deeply inhaling the scent she had applied. “Very nice,” he said, “Verbena?”

  “Yes.”

  He held out a small box. “Go ahead, open it.”

  Thelma hesitated a fraction of a second. If Charles was giving her a present, that meant he wanted something. In the year they had been in New Orleans he had managed to find every house of debauchery there was, and it did not seem he meant to leave any time soon.

  Once Thelma asked him if he did not long for America.

  “I prefer it here,” he had said of the French territory. “I can sail just as easily—easier—from this port, and with you as my emissary—what more could I want?”

  She had smiled, as expected, and inclined her head. Thelma had proved an able translator with her refined French that the colonials could not easily pick apart.

  She knew she should be happy. They had taken a lovely house. Grayson had bestowed her with all she wanted. And if he had cottoned to what she really was, here in this city full of octoroons and quadroons like herself, he hadn’t revealed it to her. Except, of course, in the ways he had demanded she satisfy his hungers—ways that she was sure he would never degrade a real white woman into doing. But they did not speak of such things.

  “Thelma, you’re dreaming again.” His voice broke into her thoughts. She looked up at his glittering eyes and swallowed before easing the hinged box open.

  Two large teardrop diamond earrings lay there. Involuntarily, she gasped.

  “Mon Dieu,” she whispered.

  “They are beautiful, are they not?” he said, smiling. “I want you to wear them tonight. I have found a singularly special place for us.”

  Thelma felt her stomach turn. What would the special place be this time? Like the salon where a woman wearing a false member penetrated her while Charles and another man watched, sipping wine and having their dinner before they had a go at each other? Or the place where he had forced her to kneel like a dog while man after man had placed himself inside her mouth?

  “I should be delighted, of course, husband,” she said, smiling up at him.

  “Of course you will. Have Emily make your corset tighter before we leave,” he said, moving toward the door. “I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

  Thelma let out a slow breath and looked at the earrings. She would cast her mind elsewhere, as she always did during Charles’s entertainments. She found herself thinking about the General’s cook more and more these days. What would her life have been like if she had never met Harriet Chew and, through her, Charles Grayson? She had been stupid to give up her simple room and her pupils. She had been stupid to give up those afternoons and evenings with the General’s cook. Had she not been so greedy, they could have gone on as they were forever.

  She closed her eyes. Another thing that was best not to think about. All she could do now was continue to pray that Charles would be run through by a well-placed knife in the hands of the rough trade that he picked up by the docks. She would imagine them gutting him like a fish as they had done to her father and watching him drown in his own blood.

  It was what got her through. That and the knowledge that each expensive bauble he gave her added to a treasure trove that would, one day, buy her freedom to walk onto a ship leaving New Orleans harbor, the New World fading rapidly behind her.

  Louis Philippe d’Orleans walked down the piazza from Mount Vernon with his notebook in hand. Washington always proved himself a most gracious host, but he seemed preoccupied today.

  “I beg your pardon, Monsieur Orleans,” he had said, standing abruptly during the luncheon. “I have some business to attend.” The General had hurried out somewhere to the recesses of his house.

  D’Orleans welcomed the president’s departure so that he would not have to finish the barely edible food upon his plate. The victuals at Mount Vernon had not proven true to the stories of elegant meals prepared there. At least the wines were fine, he thought, draining his glass.

  His secretary had said the reason was because the cook had run away—a scullion and a kitchen maid too. D’Orleans could not pretend sympathy. When would these Americans give up the idea of holding other humans in bondage? It was rumored that
the president felt himself forced to perhaps purchase another slave to attend his kitchens, having not found a suitable cook for hire.

  Now d’Orleans meandered toward the river and stood awhile looking at it. There was the group of black children that seemed to rove in gangs about the place. They played at skipping stones across the river.

  “Look! I’m the General!” said one little boy, heaving a great stone into the water, where it fell with a great splash.

  “Aww, you ain’t throw’d that two feet,” said another little boy, picking up his own rock and heaving it not much farther. It fell into the river with a plop.

  “At what are they playing?” d’Orleans asked his secretary, who had come up to his side.

  “The Americans have a legend—they say that the General threw a stone clear across the river when he was a lad,” the other man said with a smile. “I imagine they are playing at that.”

  D’Orleans watched a few minutes more before moving toward the house.

  “Let us go see the place where the slaves live,” he said to his secretary, who raised his eyebrows slightly but obligingly followed.

  They came upon the long building adjacent to the greenhouse and stood there looking at it. There was one door at either end and the windows were rudely cut holes in the wall with wooden shutters to seal out the rain.

  D’Orleans walked around to the back of the building where several more children played while the older ones tended some cook fires, it being too hot to cook inside. As meager as it was, it was far better than some he’d seen in this godforsaken land.

  A little girl wandered out of the quarters clutching a rag bundle that she cooed to as if it were a doll.

  “I believe that is a child of the General’s cook who recently ran away,” said the secretary, as if she were a point of interest on a scenic tour.

  “Is she?” said d’Orleans thoughtfully. He squatted down and gestured for the little girl to come closer, reaching into his pocket for a coin.