Saving Grace

by H D Coulter

  She had been at Drayton Hall for just over a year, sold to the estate as a cotton-picker and, at twenty-four, young enough to restock with another man. But there would never be another man; no one could replace Hercules. She might be a widow, but in Jessie’s heart, no one could replace him, nor her son Sebastian.

  HERCULES HAD BEEN STRONG, like his name, working the fields, readying the ground for plantation, organising the men and protecting the weak. For years he had dreamt of running away, even before their son had arrived, and in the dead of night, when only the crickets were awake, he would talk about a path that others had used, where known people would hide and guide escapees until they reached the free states, where no man could own another. The promised land. A myth, a legend. He had said someone who told him, talked of ‘station’, and ‘conductors’ and ‘the underground movement’. But those entities were merely rumours the coloured peoples clung onto for hope. Jessie herself saw it as a quick way of a slave getting themselves shot or hung, the sound of the dogs in pursuit, with the taste of a dead man in their mouths. She had experienced the cat-o’-nine-tails before, when she hadn’t met the day’s picking number, which was higher than the last plantation. None of it sounded appealing to her, not in exchange for a mere fantasy of escape. Men and women alike continuously dreamt of crossing the county lines and following the north star to a different life, but only a lucky few out of thousands made it. They punished the rest depending on how far they had fled, and the value of the stock. A few hours, and a simple retrieval. Then it was the cat-o’-nine-tails, followed by the hot-box for a month. If it was close on a day, and they had to use the dogs, then it would be the cat and the hanging tree, strung up by the hands for a further day, an example for all to see. But if the runaway lasted a few days out in the open, then the hunters became involved. Then the punishment varied from the ‘R’ brand on the face to a slow execution. Jessie could still smell it now, the acrid, sweaty tang of burning flesh. It would linger in the air for days afterwards, filling the nostrils until it embedded itself into clothes, food, skin and minds.

  The last time Hercules mentioned escape was the day Jessie told him she was pregnant.

  “Mine?”

  “Of course.”

  “Not Jamieson?”

  “I know to clean out after him.” A rule the master introduced with any couple, to take the marriage bed first so every woman knew who they really belonged to.

  Jessie had met Hercules when she was twelve and he was fifteen, sold away from her mother to the Middleton Plantation, with never a mention of her father. There was some speculation to his identity at the colour of her paler, honeyed skin, but it went no further than the slave huts. Alone and isolated in a new plantation, Hercules had showed her the way. She had shared a hut with another girl, Reed; two years older than Jessie; kind, but a slow picker. Jessie was quick, especially after the first slashes on her back. Her Mama had shown her the best ways when she had turned five and became a full-time picker. How to cover her neck from the beating sun, to keep the cloth wet, to sing out loud the workers’ songs, tapping her foot to the rhythm when her hands split and cramped, to keep the girls’ spirits up and to use the oil-based cream when the cracked skin leaked blood onto the cotton. At night, she heard her Mama cry out when the white man came to visit, and knew what life had in store for her. This was her life, and she had accepted that. The thought of running away was a fool’s errand.

  Two years passed since her farewell to her Mama and her old life. Now, at seventeen, Hercules declared his love for her, and offered his hands, his heart and his protection. They made plans to marry, sought approval from the big house and in the spring, out in the woodland church, declared their unity to the lord. Nothing would break them apart. That was the first night he had whispered words of escape, cradling Jessie in his arms after her first visit from the tall white stranger who had inducted her into the darker side of womanhood. He had found a mythical creature called a conductor who owned a station. He told her, stroking the tears from her cheeks, that if they could get to him, he might help them cross the county lines to the next station, and then onward in the same way to the nearest free state. Over the years Hercules had gathered the information gradually, gaining more and more trust from the master in order to run errands to the store, and eventually stealing a map. Tucked in between the sheets of their bed, he would talk of stories and trickle his fingers across the vast map until they reached Boston. There he said they could start afresh, as free people who could choose where they worked, how they lived, and be the masters of their own home. Jessie would listen, allowing him to dream, but knowing nothing would come of it as his fingers pointed lovingly at the different states. They were now in North Carolina, which meant crossing into Virginia, on to the Capital, and then into Philadelphia and on through another four states until they reached Boston, all without getting caught and sent back.

  But stories stopped the moment he heard she had a babe in her belly. He couldn’t risk the cat or worse, on her when his child was growing inside her. When their son finally arrived into the world, they both realised they couldn’t run with a child. It was slow to begin with, but after time, Jessie saw the fire going out of him. He had lost hope of freedom, but gained a son.

  Sebastian was strong, like his papa. There was no question of that when he was born. The mirror image of Hercules lay staring back at them, with the rich dark colour of his skin, his soulful eyes and full lips. He was clever and fast to learn, watching his mother picking the cotton as she strapped him to her front just days after giving birth. Jessie never let him out of her sight. He spent the days strapped tightly to her until he could walk, and at night tucked up next to her in bed. They were a team, with an unbreakable bond, and no one, not even Hercules, could come between them. With his untutored eyes, he saw everything. Before he could walk, he already knew the truth of his future. Jessie tried to protect him, to keep a form of childhood for him like her mother had for her. Jessie would watch him dance as the old General played the spoons and Hank drummed an old pot to the ‘Miss Julie’ song. He loved to sing and dance when the sun went down, shaking his hips and tapping his toes. He had the spirit of his father, a warm flame inside, burning bright - until a fever hit the plantation. One by one, the older, weaker slaves died, while the rest drank herbal teas and prayed for salvation. The main house was no exception. The white servant, Miss Teal, was the first to fall ill and die, and the Mistress was bedridden for weeks. They watched as the doctor came and went from the main house. She heard him remark, “They have a robust constitution, an African constitution, the strongest will fight off this disease.” Other visitors blamed it on “the wrath of God, cleansing out the sinners: no doctor could heal that, why waste your money?”

  The fever passed through every living thing, but it wasn’t until they buried the first child that the fear took over. Jessie wept with her friend over the tiny grave as she clung on tight to her little boy, threatening the lord with wrath of her own if he dared take her son. And yet, he did not listen.

  She saw the first beads of sweat forming on his brow as she forced the herbal tea down his throat, ignoring his cries. Two more children had died since that day, but they had been young, too small to fight off the sickness. But Sebastian had turned five last winter. He was big for his age, and strong like his father.

  All night long Jessie lay by his side, placing cold damp cloths to his head, watching him fight against the fever dreams. For a while it worked, thinking they had broken the fever until the second wave hit.

  She laid her head on his chest, her arms wrapped around his body, and sang lullabies from her faraway country as his last breath escaped from his lungs. Hercules fell to his knees, his fist breaking the thin floorboards as Jessie let out a heart-shattering cry. A cry that was heard across the community for days, weeks, even that night, hers blended in again with that of another. Their tears washed the small body clean as the cry gave way to a silent shudder. It broke them. It tore away t
he bond and left behind a gaping hole nothing could fill. Hercules lent in beside her, wrapping his arms around her shaking body. But she wanted no comfort, only her son back. For him to wake and wrap his tiny arms around her neck and tell her it was all a bad dream. But there was no life left in him. His soul had moved on and left her behind, knowing less of how to live in this godforsaken world than ever.

  The day Jessie and Hercules buried their son was the day all light and hope left their unity. She fell into a pit of despair, unable to eat, or even wash herself. Whilst he turned dark, wild, and reckless, talking back to the masters and relishing in the destruction. She had never seen this side of him before, and it scared her. The thought of losing him and her son together was too much to bear.

  Months after the burial, she dressed a new set of scars and deep lashes across his back.

  “Let us escape... we still have our plan... The conductor-man will see us through to the next station,” he growled through gritted teeth as Jessie pressed herbs into an opened wound.

  “You talked to him again?”

  “I did. You know we can’t stay here, nothin’ is left for us.” He sat up, wincing at the pain.

  “Our son is here.”

  “His body is in the ground. Our son is here!” He slammed his fist to his chest.

  “Who will visit his grave? Who will remember him in his home?”

  “That will keep us trapped here. Bent over his grave... he would not want that.”

  “We will never know what he wants again.”

  “We can start again, in another place, earn money for a proper doctor, not enter the earth before our time, powerless against the white man.”

  “You are ready to move on? To leave him behind already?”

  Hercules lent forward and held her face in his hands. “We will die here if we do not move on, or they will sell us both to different plantations. This is our last chance.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow, so soon?”

  “That is when the conductor can take us. If not, we will have to wait another six months: this is our chance.”

  She saw a glimmer of the light returning to his eyes, something she had not seen for six years. What else did she have left to lose? “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow we leave, and head north.”

  Chapter 14

  August 1832 Beacon Hill.

  “SARAH?” BEA LEANED over the bannister and called down through the house, forgetting the bell system. “Sarah?”

  On the lower floor, a commotion echoed through the hallway, followed by the sound of footsteps coming halfway up the stairs. “Yes, – Bea?” Sarah replied, smiling at the floating head.

  “Would you mind coming up for a second?”

  “Coming.”

  Bea picked up the demanding Grace off the blanket. “Aw, are you hungry, Gracie? I just need two minutes and then I’m all yours.” Sarah came into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. “Sarah, I have a favour to ask, and you can say no, but - Beth has gone out for a walk, and I need to nip to the shops. I’m not comfortable going so far by myself with the baby alone; not yet. But I know you don’t enjoy going out with me.” She read the look forming on Sarah’s face immediately. “It’s just I – Joshua - they invited us to an event, a gala-thing, and I need to look like one of them.” Bea had been dropping fragments of information about her past in recent weeks, informing Sarah that she was in fact a working-class girl without a society-driven bone in her body. Sarah liked her all the more for it. “So, I need a dress that would suit a formal gathering, and since this little one,” Bea’s hands tickled the restless baby in her arms, “my body has changed somewhat, and I could do with a few more day dresses too. Would you mind coming with us and being there if I need you?”

  “Today?”

  “This morning... Are you free? The gala is on tomorrow; Joshua only told me this morning. I think he forgot, perhaps lost track of time. Or maybe he feared I would say no if he gave me more notice... That doesn’t matter now though, as long as you can come?”

  Sarah hated going out with the white women of whichever house she worked, over the past thirteen years of living in Boston. She had worked for five women, four out of which had insisted she accompany them when they went shopping, a mark of their status, but for Sarah it was a reminder of the past, another white person owning her space, and her actions. Even though she was free, she was still in the bottom third of society and therefore had to walk two steps behind the Mistress. Walking side by side would signal a friendship, and that would not do, even in liberal Boston. But she saw the desperation in Bea’s her face and knew that this wasn’t the same as before; it was a need, a necessity, that someone had to go with her, just in case she fell or struggled. She would have chosen Sarah over anyone else in the city, and that meant something different.

  “I will come.”

  Relief flashed across Bea’s face. “Thank you, Sarah.”

  “When would you like to leave?” There was still a hint of reluctance in Sarah’s voice she couldn’t hide.

  “I will feed and change Grace, and then shall we go? Get it over with?” Bea tried giving Sarah a reassuring smile and adding a lightness to her voice.

  “Very well.”

  SARAH MANEUVERED THE grand pushchair from around the back of the house to the front as Bea gripped Grace in one arm and locked the door with the other. She hadn’t stepped out in public since Grace was born; months had passed, and she hadn’t felt the need. She thought it strange how her demeanour had changed since coming to Boston, and the trial. In Ulverston she longed to get out of the house each morning, to walk beside the old harbour, the woods and the meadows. Maybe it was the fact that Boston had none of those things, not in the same way as Ulverston. She had a park, but there was no genuine beauty in it, nothing wild or wide or powerful. There was a harbour, but it was too vast and busy for a single girl, and there were no woods to forage. Joshua had promised her that when the time was right and work had calmed down, all five of them would take a trip to the countryside, ‘upstate’, as she heard a native Bostonian say, and take lodgings in an inn, or rent a house. She hoped it would be during autumn; she had heard the leaves turned a stunning red and gold that flooded the banks of the lakes and reached taller into the sky than any of the trees in England.

  Bea placed Grace into the pram and pushed it down the hill toward the principal shopping street. Sarah walked two steps behind her. Bea hated this. Sarah was her friend, not just her employee . Society should not be able to tell her how or where her friend should walk. She glanced across the street and saw herself mirrored there, with a pram and a black servant walking behind. She noticed the other black woman looking at Sarah and giving her a nod. That was her world, her community, not her own, and it was so much harder to acknowledge. She struggled to keep a hold on the pram as it gathered momentum down the hill. Her stomach muscles were not used to this sort of strain, and she cried out in pain.

  The noise pulled Sarah’s gaze from an acquaintance across the road. She instantly stepped forward and grabbed hold of the handle. Her black hands interlocked with Bea’s white ones as she pulled back the pram to a standstill.

  “Thank you, Sarah,” Bea breathed through panicked breaths. “I am so glad you are here; I don’t think my body is quite ready for this.”

  “I should push the pram from here, Bea.”

  “Only if I can walk beside you?”

  “That’s not the way here, it ain’t right.” Sarah gave a look and then gestured to the women across the street.

  “To hell with that. - I’m not having you push Grace behind me while I strut forward like some sort of Queen. That is just not happening!” Bea enacted a mocking display of royal gesturing.

  Sarah couldn’t help but laugh as Bea joined in. “We can take the looks - and if Joshua says something, then I’ll put him in his place.” Bea gave Sarah such a determined smile she had not seen before. There was no
point in arguing.

  As they walked on to Charles Street, they certainly got the looks, but Bea simply smiled at each stare and nodded her head at the more gentile ladies. None of them were going to tell her where she was going to walk. She realised after twenty minutes that she was actually enjoying the situation, and was proud to smile at their arrogance, but when she looked across at Sarah beside her, she saw otherwise. She saw her head held low and avoid any form of eye contact with her smile replaced with a straight line. At that moment, Bea realised none of this was about her, it was about Sarah, and her personal defiance was causing her friend pain.

  “There are three shops I would like to visit; two dress shops and the haberdashery shop. Is there anywhere that you need to go?” Sarah shook her head. “This way first then.”

  Bea turned left and headed down the street towards a small dress shop, ‘Jane’s Emporium’ catering for daytime dresses. Bea held the door open whilst Sarah pushed the pram over the threshold. The lady behind the counter gave Bea a welcoming smile until she saw Sarah push the pram in and glanced nervously at the other two customers at the far side of the shop. Bea, unaware of her discomfort, gazed at the various displays of colourful fabrics and tailors’ dummies styled to show off the upcoming fashions. Soon it would be autumn, but the thought of wearing a thicker dress with longer sleeves in the current heat was unbearable. She had told Joshua she would get two new day dresses and one formal dress. She decided on a lighter dress that would transition with some for now and an autumn dress for the change of seasons. Since having Grace, her shape had changed, her breasts were larger and fuller, and her hips had become wider. Joshua had told her he loved her changing body, and her new curves just the other night: “You have a woman’s body now.” She stared at herself in the long ornate mirror, positioned beside the examples of lace and haberdashery, designed to add fare to the simpler designs. She had a sudden recollection of Mrs Johnson’s back in Ulverston. The thought of entering her shop to order two dresses had been an infrequent daydream-fantasy. What she would have given back then, to own such fabric... and the path she found herself on because of those desires. And yet, where would she be now if she hadn’t accepted that so-called gift? She wouldn’t have Grace or Joshua. She would probably still be feeling lost and alone in that cottage, looking for another route to escape. Either way, she was here now. She had faced hardship, but that had brought her own unique family, and nothing would make her ungrateful for that. Bea gazed at Sarah, and saw that same look of wanting on her face as her fingers skimmed across a cornflour blue muslin, dreaming of the dress it might become. Bea glanced back at the shop woman, glaring at Sarah, wondering if she really felt she would need to burn the fabric after her friend had touched it, as her expression seemed to suggest. It was the same look Mrs Johnson had given Bea if she had dared touch her own wares. What she would give to walk into that shop now, with money in her hands and a smile on her face, and order ten dresses in front of everyone who had ever looked down on her. But that would never happen. She could never set foot in Ulverston again, but she could do this. She could buy Sarah the blue fabric, a dress for her Sunday best, and remove that hateful look from the shop-woman’s eyes.