Quiet, brown-skinned Elizabeth smoothed the pale blue silk of her sleeves. More modestly dressed than the others, she wore her gloves pulled up so as not to show her elbows. I had silver ribbon woven under her bodice and the round neckline. The fullness of the dress had hints of embroidered pink and blue roses. She was a fresh garden right after the rainy season, the best time for flowers to grow.
The fabrics for Crissy and Henny I’d chosen to add warmth to their fair skin. My Crissy looked stunning in a gold-colored dress that floated to her ankles, exposing matching satin slippers. Henny wrapped herself in light orange silk with box pleats down her back forming a train. She’d gained some hips. If she danced, I hoped the shapeliness added to her poise.
Dorothea wore blush pink, which drew out the red tones of her olive skin. Her short sleeves were puffed and stiffened with muslin. The delicate embroidery that took a week to complete displayed like a coat of arms down her bodice. I hoped the vines and blooms meant strength.
It gave my heart joy watching them be fitted and measured and treated like princesses. The milliners and haberdashers and mantua-makers coming to and from my leased residence had only seen such a sight back in eighty-nine. My girls, my colored girls, were able to witness money trumping race in a flourish of ribbons and bows.
Mr. Thomas King took my hand and his wife’s, then led us down the polished wood floor to the drawing room. The old man was dapper in his black tailcoat and pantaloons. In a way, the old dress had returned with the length of men’s jacket fronts again cutting across the hips.
His wife in blue and Mechlin lace dressed her silver hair more naturally with pinned curls and tea roses, no powder. I was glad to see those flakes lose favor.
A man in a cranberry red mantle stepped forward. “Mr. and Mrs. King and Mrs. Thomas.”
All the important S’s said aloud.
We entered the ballroom.
Silence swept through the crowd.
The drumming of my heart, the fluttering of our slippers, and the swaying fans pricked my ear.
People pointed, but we moved about the floor with our shoulders level, our heads high.
I warned the girls to expect such stares, even leers. Though fashions changed—the cut of a coat, the drape of a dress, the style and length of curled hair—the heart of most was the same, stuck in the old ways.
Seeing colored girls led by me, a woman with beautiful jet skin invited to the prince’s ballroom, must be shocking, causing such stirs.
Music and conversation started again.
“Ladies, let me go see who else has arrived.” The Kings left us at the rear of the room.
I took my fan out and waved it, but I looked through the lace at my young women, free, intelligent, with their lives ahead of them. May they forever be enriched by this moment.
This visit across the sea, this dinner with royalty should let them know nothing could stop their rise.
The smell of sweet sage wafted. My breath caught at the sight of the large glittering chandelier. Cut glass, broken and shaped into long straight calabashes hung on the wrought-iron fixture below a ring of candles. The light shone on us, on colored girls readying to greet a prince.
London, England 1810: The Temple
I saw him, my old love, enter Bushy House’s ballroom. The man in cranberry announced Prince William as His Royal Highness, the Duke of Clarence.
His swagger had aged. His hair was full white, but he still held command as if he stood at the helm of a frigate.
“This way, ladies.” Mr. King walked us to the center of the room, right under the sparkle of the chandelier.
“Miss Kirwan,” the prince said.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
I pushed at my skirt, a white silk that made waves about my ankles, and took a deep bow, then I rose.
“It’s Mrs. Thomas now. A lot of changes have happened since we last met.”
Prince William’s gaze fell on me and perhaps the twinkle of gold braiding stitched to my bodice, a special reminder of his military uniform and our time together.
The man needed to remember that season or he’d never listen, never change.
“This is Mr. King and his wife,” I said.
They curtsied and bowed.
William acknowledged them and then half turned to the woman who joined us. “And this is Mrs. Dorothea Bland.”
His Dorothea. His other Dorothy.
I looked at the woman who might’ve been me. She was a pretty woman with dark hair and eyes. Her smile was small, almost happy. I wondered if I’d stayed in London, would William and I be together? Would I have guided him to the right side of things, like the support of abolition?
Mr. King didn’t bow to Miss Bland. His chin barely dipped. He explained earlier that Miss Bland was not William’s duchess.
Still, I nodded, good and deep. As one concubine wife to another—I must give my due. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
Her mouth opened and pressed into a deep circle. “The duke talks of the dames de couleur he met through his travels.” Miss Bland offered me a sly wink then hid behind her lacy fan. “Such fun talk.”
The prince’s cheeks darkened. For a moment I sensed tension growing in his face, the slight flaring of the nostrils we shared. “Mrs. Thomas,” he said, “introduce me to your fine daughters.”
It was sweet he thought me young enough to have borne all these girls. “This is my daughter Dorothy Christina, my grandniece Elizabeth, and my granddaughters Henrietta and Dorothea.”
I waved them forward, and as we’d practiced, they dipped like hummingbirds nipping nectar, graceful and precise.
Miss Bland motioned to a young lady. “The duke and I have ten children, the FitzClarences. Augusta is one of our daughters. Augusta FitzClarence, these are the Thomas girls.”
The young woman lowered her chin. She was the image of her mother with William’s dark eyes.
With pleasantries exchanged, I caught the prince’s gaze roaming about the room.
It saddened me that he was still searching.
He glanced toward an exit. The outside glowed with torches. “Are you fond of the weather, Mrs. Thomas? I remember you thinking it cold in London.”
“I like the cold now. It offers brisk conversations.”
He placed my hand on his arm.
Our steps left a wake of open mouths and hot whispers, but we took a turn about the crowded ballroom together.
We kept going and slipped out the doors to his lawn.
Like we had long ago in the gardens of Kensington we walked. Silent and steady with my hand clutching his forearm, we moved away from Bushy House.
“Dorothy,” he said in a voice a little louder than the breeze, “I’m informed that you’ve made quite a success of yourself. I hear that you’re one of the wealthiest women in all the colonies. Your choice to go back to your life was the correct one.”
His compliment teased my nervous smile. “Thank you. I heard your father is ill again. I’m sorry.”
“The king won’t recover this time.” He patted my arm. “Let’s stroll a little more. I’m partial to the exercise. I remember that you liked to walk too.”
“With the right partner.” I went with him, stride for stride. We headed to a structure with a dome-shaped roof. Massive stone columns supported it.
“Dorothy,” he said, pointing, “this is a temple I set up to honor my late friend Lord Nelson. I once had the foremast from his ship the Victory set here.”
“A temple? You worship God in the outdoors? Don’t Anglicans demand buildings?”
He chuckled. “The other wing of Bushy House, opposite the ballroom, holds my chapel. This structure, these columns are special, a memorial to a just man.” William’s blue-black eyes seemed far away, but then they drifted to me, wrapping about me like my embroidered shift.
The strains of a banjo or violin touched my ear. Before I knew it, William had laced his fingers with mine. We danced, danced like we had during our secret walks
at Kensington.
But I wasn’t here to remember that love. I broke from him and let my palm flutter to my hip, to my fine lace and silver threads. “I must tell you something.”
His smile disappeared. His breaths, heavy and long, eased. “Mr. King said that you needed to speak to me.”
“I had to ask for forgiveness.”
“Dorothy, I hated that you left me, but that was hundreds of years ago.”
“Leaving was right, but you asked about my life again and again. William, I refused to tell you of my past. I was wrong.”
He put his hands behind his back and stepped into the temple. “I grow peach trees here. I farm a little. My children play and run past my windows with fruit in baskets. It is good to see. I don’t look back to what was.”
Josephy loved to work the soil. My boy must’ve inherited this from Mamaí and the prince. Into the temple, I moved to William’s side. I had to tell him. I had to try. “I showed you a mask of how I wanted to be seen. It wasn’t true.”
“Women always get worked up over little things. What you said or didn’t say is of no consequence now—”
“I never said a word of my enslavement and its evil, how I nearly died or the deaths I witnessed. I hid the truth deeply within me. It only leaked in nightmares.”
With his pinkie, he wiped a tear from my cheek. “Was it that bad? Look at you. Successful, still beautiful, still with eyes of fire and sunshine.”
“By not saying or sharing my story, I let you think enslavement was tolerable. It’s not. It’s murderous. I fought every day hoping to be freed.”
He touched my shoulders. “Your situation is different. I spent time in the West Indies. I saw slaves singing and dancing in the field. It couldn’t all be horrible. You’re the exception—”
“Broken glass still sparkles when the light hits it. It might even look like diamonds or chandeliers’ jewels. It’s still ruined and in need of repair. Time will fix it, if you live free.”
I took the copy of his speech from my reticule and pushed it into his hand. “Your words to Parliament. You said the Negroes were happy with enslavement. Chattel doesn’t sing of joy. Sorrow is their song.”
He fingered the papers. “The slaves I saw were happy and cared for.”
“Did they have shoes?”
“What? Some. Maybe.”
“Do you leave the Bushy House barefoot, without a shirt, waistcoat, cravat, knits, or jacket?”
He squinted at me. “No.”
“You know the harsh conditions of the islands, the bugs. Massas hate spending on shoes for stolen people. Why must you whip and lash their flesh if they are full of joy? If enslavement creates love, why are women raped who say no to sexual congress?”
“You saw horrors, I’m sorry for that. Mr. King says you own slaves too. Are you bad?”
“Yes, I am. I own people. I needed labor. The planters bankrupt anyone who doesn’t conform. I’m not proud of this, but I figured if I own them, I’d make sure they were safe, had shoes, and paths to freedom.”
“So you have benefited from enslavement?”
“Until you men in power make it illegal, I’ll do what I can to keep as many away from the planters who have no heart.”
He folded his speech. “This was said in 1799. It’s old. The transport of slaves that I supported is now illegal.”
“The whole system must be made illegal. You have ten children? Would you give any to enslavement if a planter said they’d make them happy?”
William pivoted and stepped from his temple. “No. Of course not.”
I stepped into his path as if we again danced the minuet. “If we had a son, a beautiful boy who looked like you and me, who loved the earth and growing things, whose dark eyes shone with the miracle of the harvest . . . you’d want me to give our babe to one of the happy planters you met on your walks?”
His gaze pierced my heart. I’d given him this truth, just didn’t say Josephy’s name.
The silence between us grew. It danced me back to the Andromeda when William was my distraction, and I was his. My heart wanted to paint a different sunset for us if I’d stayed with him. We would’ve had more evenings with those gorgeous orange and cherry skies that slipped into the sea.
But I left and built dreams. William stayed and grew older, more a man of his times.
The shake of his head was slow. He bit his lip. “I spoke out against the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, but it passed in 1807. Transport is no more. What I said no longer matters.”
“If I’d told you how I clawed my way out of enslavement, the nightmares I’d seen and survived, then you surely would’ve understood and tempered your endorsement. Ten years of fewer slave boats. So many would never have known enslavement.”
“You flatter yourself, madame, but I was confident in my positions and those of my friends.”
My soul whimpered. I lost the hope that I might’ve countered the planters’ lies, but I was always good at seeing what I wanted.
“Dorothy, you rose above whatever happened.” He raked his hand through his thinning hair. “You look no worse for wear. I suspect you’re of different stock. I’ve never met a woman like you. Let’s not quarrel.”
“I survived, William. That only means I was lucky.”
He glanced over my head toward Bushy House. “Dinner will start soon. Plenty of champagne. Tell me how to make amends? You helped me at a difficult time.”
“Your planter friends keep finding ways to inflict new harms. You have influence, William. Your brother will be king. Others in Parliament can be swayed by you. Tell my truth. Support abolition of any kind.”
He offered a quick nod, too quick. I wasn’t an equal anymore or even an amusement.
I’d failed. I was another of his damned dames of couleur. Not telling my truth when it might’ve mattered will haunt me. It was another death mask for my collection.
A gentleman came from Bushy House. “Your Grace, there you are. You are needed to lead us to dinner.”
“I must go, Mrs. Thomas. I’m glad we chatted. I’ll think on this.”
He and his friend left and headed to the ballroom.
Moving to his temple, I sent up prayers. I needed strength to keep my chin up, to collect my girls. Slow walking, off tempo to the tinkles of the pianoforte, I held my breath and went inside. Crissy and Henny danced—perfect rhythm, perfect steps with partners, one in uniform, one in black and white. Dorothea and Elizabeth chatted near the door with the prince’s daughter.
My heart beamed looking at my girls, so pretty in the flicker of the candles’ light. In the eyes of everyone, I hoped they noticed how their warm skin and mine glittered in the sparkle of the chandelier.
Broken glass can be fused and reshaped. Heat can make jagged edges smoother, stronger, ready for service or whatever the artisan wished.
Tonight, I’ll tell these young women my story. They’ll hear me, take my words, and work them into their souls. They’ll know all my truth, that we weren’t just lucky, but beauties and dreamers and survivors, most of all.
Demerara 1813: Trouble
“Mama,” Charlotte said, holding me, “Frances says that Crissy is safe with them.”
My heart started beating again. “She was supposed to come straight here.”
“The blockades. The Americans and the British are fighting again. The British have frigates patrolling. They want to make sure the war that began in 1812 doesn’t spread to the colonies.”
“Grama, I love your hats.” Little Anna ran back into my big closet. My new house on Robb Street provided infinite places to hide.
I sat on the edge of my four-poster bed draped in ivory linen and fine lace curtains almost as smooth as mossie netting.
I picked up Frances’s letter. Her squiggles were always neat. I made out words like love. Mama. Crissy. I scrunched it up and pulled it to my chest. “Why do the Americans have to pick a fight now? They already won their freedom in seventy-six.”
“Papa Ce
lls says it’s a bunch of nothing about restricting trade. My Mr. Fullarton, however, says the Americans are tired of their soldiers being impressed into the Royal Navy. It’s almost the same as enslavement. The British soldiers abduct the Americans and force them to labor on frigates.”
“Oh? They stop the transport of Africans and now they enslave Americans.”
“Mama, you own slaves. Papa Cells owns slaves. How is it different? Is it different? You told me what you lived through, but you own scores of people who aren’t free.”
“I can’t stop enslavement. I can rail against it and protest it, but it doesn’t stop these cruel planters from buying slaves. Between me and the Entertainment Society, we women have more than enough money to buy every enslaved person in Demerara to keep them from abuse. Any time I can buy a woman or a girl, I do. I know I’ve saved her.”
“Wish the world would change, Mama.”
I patted my mattress for her to sit. I put an arm about her.
Anna ran out with one of my poufs, one Thomas had bought me in the first few weeks of my being free. I took it from her and fingered the white satin.
“I wish it would, too. Miss Rebecca and I buy the enslaved when a plantation goes under. It’s all we can do until men change laws.”
Anna popped out and modeled another hat; this one was black with a white banding. Her little gown of blue twirled when she spun. I think the hat helped her keep her balance.
I thought of my youngest. “Crissy hated being away. Miss Smith, the headmistress, said she was doing well.”
“It’s far, Mama. Across the sea is far.”
“Well, now she’ll be in Grenada. I worried about your sister, Ann, marrying Garraway, but they seem to be doing well. Maybe between her, Mamaí, and Frances, the three of them can speak some sense into Crissy. Then when the blockades are done, she’ll come here and stay in that bedroom I made for her. Elizabeth loves hers. The war prevented her from enrolling at Kensington House.”
Charlotte nodded her head. “She has tutors like I did. I didn’t turn out badly.”
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