by Tommie Lyn
The sailors lowered one of the ship’s dinghies into the water and rowed it to a ladder which descended from the pier to the level of the water. James directed the Highlanders to climb down the ladder into the dinghy, using gestures to communicate with them. When they were in the boat, he climbed into it.
The two sailors who manned the oars rowed with a will and deposited their cargo on the west bank of the Sampit River, where Mr. Hollingsworth waited with a large wagon belonging to his neighbor. He sat astride a roan horse which he had also borrowed.
The Oaks, Mr. Hollingsworth’s plantation, was located on the western bank of the Santee River. For short trips into George Town on business matters or to buy supplies, John, the slave captain of The Oaks’ periagua, rowed his master across the river in a small skiff to the dock of a neighboring plantation on the east bank. Mr. Hollingsworth used his neighbor’s horse for the twelve-mile trip to George Town. He also borrowed a wagon if he had to buy supplies. In exchange for this convenience, he lent his neighbor the periagua and its crew for an occasional trip down the coast to Charles Town or up to Pawley’s Island.
James supervised the Highlanders as they climbed into the wagon, and Mr. Hollingsworth moved to James’ side to speak to him. A white man on horseback, holding a musket, followed Mr. Hollingsworth.
“James, this is one of Mr. Bentley’s men. I’ve arranged to have him ride alongside the wagon. He’ll make sure none of these men give you any trouble. Although,” Hollingsworth said, with a shake of his head, “they look so weak, I doubt they’re able to cause trouble.”
James nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“I’m going to ride ahead. I’ll have John bring the periagua across and have it ready so we can take these men and the supplies across the river with one trip. It would take too long in the skiff.”
“Yes, sir, master,” James said.
Mr. Hollingsworth rode away, and Mr. Bentley’s man walked his horse to the back of the wagon. James climbed onto the driver’s seat. He gathered the reins, shook them and clucked to the team. The wagon jolted to a start and moved slowly westward along the dirt road.
Ailean watched the small town and the docked ship recede into the distance as the wagon rattled over the rutted road. Bordering the road, a flat tract, covered with a bristly blanket of sea marsh grass and tufts of scrub growth, stretched to a bay where water sparkled in the sunlight.
Beyond the bay was the sea, and across its watery expanse lay his homeland, far away, out of his reach. He thought of the hours he’d spent on the mountaintop, looking at the silver ribbon of water which snaked from the ocean, meandered between the mountains and became Loch Fyne.
That same ocean had borne the ship on its surface, its wind and waves had pushed the ship to this strange land, had carried Ailean far away from everything he’d ever known. He leaned to one side for a final glimpse of the water that was his last connection with home. But trees and bushes blocked his view as the road became enshrouded in a shaded narrow passage, walled by a tangle of vegetation growing along its edges.
THIRTY
The Oaks Plantation, South Carolina, April 1747
The wagon reached the Santee River, and James drew it to a stop next to a set of steps leading down the riverbank to a wharf. A large boat awaited their arrival. The crewmen of the vessel loaded the supplies Mr. Hollingsworth had purchased in George Town, and then James brought the Highlanders on board.
The crew rowed the craft upstream a short distance and brought it to dock at a wharf on the west bank of the river. James led the men off the periagua and up to a wagon. As he climbed onto the wagon, Ailean got a glimpse of the open area which lay beyond the landing.
A large, white building sat in the middle of a field of mown grass. Wide steps led from the grassy expanse to a platform which stretched across the front of the building from one side to the other. A railing was built along the edge of the platform, and the roof of the house extended over it.
Green bushes, dotted with white flowers, grew around the base of the building, and tall trees with large, glossy leaves and a scattering of huge creamy blossoms flanked it. Strange trees with gray beards hanging from their spreading branches surrounded the field. A sweet perfume hung in the air and wafted to Ailean on a cooling breeze. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
James got the men seated on the bed of the wagon, climbed onto the driver’s seat in front and picked up the reins. He clucked to the horses, and the wagon rolled forward. It followed a dirt track away from the open field into a passage bordered with a thick growth of tall trees. Shortly, it emerged into a cleared area with a cluster of small houses arranged along both sides of the lane. At the end of it stood a long, low building. James stopped the wagon in front of the structure and jumped down.
He directed the men to get off the wagon and led them into the building. Wooden cots lined the walls and bars covered the open windows. James indicated to the men, using signs as well as words, that they should sit on the floor in the middle of the room. After all of them were seated, he went to the door and gave instructions to someone outside.
Presently, two black women entered. One carried an iron pot, and the other carried stacks of bowls on a tray. James handed a bowl to each man. He dipped a thick, aromatic stew from the pot and ladled some into each bowl.
Ailean raised his bowl to his mouth and sipped. It was the first food he’d eaten other than the bread and occasional thin gruel he received while he was imprisoned in Inveraray and transported on the ship. It tasted good, although different from anything he’d ever eaten.
But after a few bites, the richness of the stew made his stomach cramp, and waves of nausea pushed what he’d swallowed into his throat. He set his bowl on the plank floor and struggled to overcome his queasiness. Tòmas Camshron, seated to his left, drank his own stew and licked his lips.
“If you’re not going to eat yours, MacLachlainn, I’d like to have it,” he said to Ailean.
“I can’t eat any more,” Ailean told him. “If you can, you’re welcome to it.”
Tòmas picked up Ailean’s bowl, and James spoke firmly to him. “No. Eat your own.” He gestured for Tòmas to put it down.
Tòmas set the bowl on the floor and glared at James, who stepped in front of Ailean.
“Eat,” James said.
Ailean looked up at James, rubbed his emaciated stomach, shaking his head. “Tell him I can’t eat it,” Ailean said to Ruairidh. “Tell him I feel sick.”
Ruairidh told James what Ailean said. James replied, and Ruairidh relayed the orders to Ailean, “He says to eat a little at a time, but you have to eat it all.”
As the evening wore on, Ruairidh provided the means of communication between James and other Highlanders.
James kept the men seated on the floor until all of them emptied their bowls. The two women took the dishes away and brought bundles of clothing. James handed each man a shirt and a pair of triubhas, like the Sasunnach wore. He spoke to Ruairidh, who conveyed James’s instructions: put on the clothes and throw their rags into a pile.
Ailean had never worn triubhas. He took off what was left of his tunic, put on the shirt and then struggled to get his legs into the triubhas. He stood to pull them up to his waist. They were so big they fell to his ankles when he let go.
James threw back his head and laughed. He left the room and returned with a handful of cords. He handed one to each man.
“Here. Tie your pants up around your waist,” he said, and demonstrated what he expected them to do.
Ailean tied the pants in place and started to put what was left of his tunic onto the heap of rags but hesitated. He fingered the fabric, remembering that Mùirne had spun the wool for his tunic with her own hands. It was the last remnant of his life with her. He tore a piece from the tunic, kissed it, and tucked it at his waist next to his skin, behind the cord-tied triubhas. He dropped the remainder onto the mound of tattered cloth.
After they dressed, James assigned each man a cot and t
old them to go to bed. They lay on their cots, and James left the room. He closed the door, and Ailean heard the metallic click of a key turning in a lock.
He fell asleep immediately, stretched out on a bed for the first time in almost a year. In spite of the strangeness of his surroundings, the warmth of being fully clothed and the comfort of a full stomach lulled him into a deep sleep.
Before sunrise, James and the two women came with food and woke the men. James allowed them to sit on their cots to eat the morning meal. One of the women handed Ailean a bowl of white mush. It was different from anything Ailean had seen or tasted, and the piece of bread she gave him was also foreign. But he ate his entire meal without stopping, and he felt strengthened.
James talked with Ruairidh and waited with his arms crossed while Ruairidh translated his words.
“We are to go to the fields and observe how the work is done. Then we will come back here, eat again and rest so we will grow stronger. Tomorrow, we will begin to work in the fields alongside the other slaves.”
“Other slaves? Are you saying we are slaves?” asked Seumas Mac’Ill’Eathainn.
Ruairidh looked around the group, from one man to the next, before answering.
“Aye. We are slaves. Now listen to me. James says we will be allowed to work unfettered if we cooperate. But if any man causes trouble, he will be whipped and shackled again.”
Ailean regarded his own raw, scarred wrists and ankles.
“He says it is better to obey,” Ruairidh continued. “There is no escape. If anyone tries to run away, he will be caught and punished…severely.” He fell silent, a grim look on his face.
____________
Ailean recovered his physical health and strength over the next several weeks. The hot sun transformed his sickly pallor into a healthy bronze and bleached red and yellow streaks in his hair again. Abundant food put flesh on his emaciated frame. And hard work in the rice fields toned his flaccid muscles which had wasted away during his imprisonment in Scotland and the voyage to the colonies. But nothing seemed able to revive his dead spirit.
Ailean didn’t care what happened to him, nor did it matter to him that he had to take orders and perform the kinds of menial tasks that women had always done in the Highlands, tasks he would once have chafed at. He performed them all woodenly, submissive and docile, not from a desire to be obedient, but from the lack of a sense of self. It was as if he had died with Mùirne, and only his physical body still existed, without the animating spark of life, without Ailean himself inside the fleshly husk.
At times when he was bone-tired, he wanted to shirk his duty, wanted to do a half-hearted job of whatever he’d been told to do. But at those times, a faint voice echoed through his mind from the past: “A man doesn’t leave his work for others to do. Not if he’s any kind of an honorable man.”
Somehow, through the deadness, through the sameness of each hour, each day, Da and his admonitions still held sway. Ailean needed to please a father who no longer could see him, who could no longer approve or disapprove of his actions.
And so, as days passed in their monotony, one by one, Ailean exerted himself more, tried to do more, tried to do better. Tried to be an honorable man. For Da.
____________
The slaves worked their way methodically across the field, hoeing weeds from around the small rice plants. Ailean was grateful for the hard work. The mindless physical exertion used up his energy by the end of each day and left him tired. Too tired to think, remember and suffer. All he had to be concerned about was the next spot where he would sink his hoe into the soft, moist ground.
Some of the men had not adjusted to their plight. Tòmas Camshron’s face wore a perpetually angry and rebellious expression. Ruairidh scowled whenever James ordered him to go back and rework a row he hadn’t fully cleared of weeds. Ruairidh, who had been the chief’s tacksman and had given orders to other men, displayed resentment at being in a subservient role himself.
One overseer, a white man, armed with a musket, stood guard over the Highlanders as they worked. He told Ruairidh he had orders to shoot any white slave who disobeyed or presented a problem.
“Only the white slaves, not the black ones? Why?” Tòmas Camshron asked.
“Because, the black slaves are valuable, he says. We are not.” Ruairidh paused. “And he says we are dangerous.”
Several times each day, a young woman brought a bucket of water to give the field hands a drink. Ruairidh noticed that the white overseer leered at the woman as she traversed the field, proceeding from worker to worker, dipping water for them with a gourd. And the young woman apparently welcomed the interest of the overseer. Her movements became slow and sensuous when she passed the platform where he stood, and she smiled at the overseer seductively when she handed him the gourd.
“Yeah,” James said when he saw Ruairidh had taken notice. “They’s billing and cooing at one another like doves. Been going on for a while.”
“Are they married?”
“No, they ain’t married.”
“The master allows such behavior between unmarried people?”
“He don’t know about it. Ain’t nobody going to tell him, neither.”
The sun hung low in the western sky when James rang the bell to signal the end of the work day, and the slaves began the long walk back to their houses.
The black slaves had their own homes in the slave village where they lived with their families, but the Highlanders stayed in the barracks when they weren’t working in the fields. Ruairidh learned from James that all new slaves were strictly supervised: under lock and key in the barracks at night and under armed guard during the day until they adjusted to life on the plantation. James himself had never been locked in. He was born on the plantation. It was home to him.
But Hadley Hollingsworth deemed the Highlanders a threat. They were barbarians, too dangerous to be allowed to live a normal life in the slave village with the other slaves. He told James to keep them in the barracks.
Permanently.
THIRTY-ONE
His father grew indigo when he first came to the colony, but Hadley Hollingsworth, like most other planters in the area around George Town, began planting rice as well. Growing rice proved to be lucrative, and rice planters were becoming wealthy. Hadley wanted to be one of those wealthy planters.
The acreage along the river couldn’t be used for other purposes, but it was ideal for cultivating rice. And the swampy areas where stands of cypress and gum trees flourished could be cleared and made into productive rice fields. Hadley wanted as many acres of his plantation as possible put into cultivation.
When the rice plants were of sufficient size that the fields could be flooded, the slaves no longer had to hoe and weed the fields. Most of the black slaves were employed in growing and processing indigo during that time, but some of them, and all of the Highlanders, were set to work clearing more acreage for rice growing.
Black slaves chopped the trees down with axes and saws, removed the branches and cut the tree trunks into pieces. Some of the Highlanders stacked the wood on sledges to be hauled to the slave village for firewood. Others were set to work grubbing the stumps and roots from the ground. It was heavy, grueling work and the weather was hot and humid, like nothing the Highlanders had ever experienced. They made piles of the roots, branches and other unusable debris and burned them, the heat from the fires adding to the scorching heat from the mid-summer sun.
Logs and limbs from trees which had been cut the previous year still lay where they had fallen. James cautioned the men to be careful as they started working to clear the older piles of wood and detritus.
“They’s poison snakes’ll bite and kill you. They hide up under logs and such,” he told them. “Look before you go to pick up them old pieces. And don’t never step across a log without you look first, make sure no snake be hiding under it.”
On the second day of work clearing the field, Ailean, Ruairidh and Tòmas were given the task of digging up
a large stump.
They worked almost an hour when Ailean noticed that Ruairidh’s face was flushed a mottled red from the heat. The older man appeared to be losing strength. Each time he hefted the pickaxe to his shoulder and swung it into the earth, his arms trembled. And each swing was slower and weaker than the last.
“Stop, Ruairidh.”
Ruairidh continued the motion of lift, breathe, drop.
“I said ‘stop,’” Ailean insisted.
Ruairidh lowered the head of the pick to the ground, leaned on the handle and rested.
“Give me the pickaxe.” Ailean took the handle from Ruairidh’s hands.
Ailean raised it and swung it down. It landed with a thunk, embedded in the earth surrounding the stump.
“But I have to be working. We’ll both be in trouble if they see I’m not at work with the pickaxe.” Ruairidh scanned the field, and his gaze came to rest on the guard. The overseer’s attention was fixed on a group of men who had hitched a mule to a stump. One man urged the mule forward while others used poles to pry the stump from the ground.
“You’ll be dead if you keep swinging this pick.” Ailean continued the rhythmic motion. “Use that shovel, look busy, but don’t push yourself.”
Ruairidh picked up the shovel Ailean had laid aside and joined Tòmas in removing the dirt Ailean broke loose from around the stump.
Tòmas stopped to catch his breath. “Look over there.” He wiped away the sweat pouring down his face. “If you could get far enough into those woods, they’d never find you. And if you could make your way to a ship…”
Ailean squinted across the cleared area toward the woods. The rising heat made the distant trees waver, and the sun’s brilliance seared his eyes.
“Don’t try it,” Ruairidh said. “You’d be shot before you were out of sight.”
Tòmas made no reply, but he looked with longing at the tall trees and thick vine-matted brush beneath them. He resumed work, digging away the loose soil from the roots of the stump.