Joseph Knight

by James Robertson

  It was romance that had attracted him to Janet fifteen years before. She had been such a contrast to Mary, who had been all rosy-cheeked practicality, soap and bustle, never happier than when she had a bairn wriggling in her arms and two more crawling under her feet. He had adored Mary, especially because of the gift of their children, but there had been nothing intriguing or alluring, and certainly nothing difficult about her. Mary had been exactly the way she appeared. Janet Hunter had been quite another proposition: willowy, pale, quiet-spoken, conscious of her looks and of the effect they had on him, yet not vain. She was the third daughter of a lawyer who occasionally gave Jamieson work, and who to his immense surprise had not objected when he began to pay Janet visits. In fact the father had been a good deal more encouraging than she, who had given no sign that she might be responsible for the healing of the wounded heart of Archibald Jamieson, and certainly had seemed astonished when he proposed to her after only a few weeks. Was it not too soon after his wife’s death, she had asked. Was he certain of his feelings? What made him hopeful of hers? It was as if she were conducting an interview on behalf of a third person, the true object of his intentions. He fumbled through his answers, and his awkwardness seemed to make her warm to him. She asked for a week to consider, during which time there should be no contact at all.

  She was testing the depth of his desire. He did not realise how much he had fallen for her. By the sixth day he was practically drowning in love, half demented with fear that she would turn him down. Her father, meeting him in the street that day, apologised for his daughter and for Archibald having to tolerate such obduracy. This, he lamented, was the way of the modern world, where young women thought it amusing or their right not to be at once grateful for any offer of marriage they were made. But on the seventh day, Janet smiled peacefully and accepted him.

  Leaving his children in the care of Betty Fraser, they had a two-day honeymoon in Montrose, the most dreamlike two days Archie Jamieson had ever experienced. And that was – had been – the thing about Janet: she was a lily, a singing bird, a shepherdess from some pastoral poem. But like most pale, poetic shepherdesses she was fond neither of animals nor the countryside. It also became very clear that she looked her best, and was best company, when unencumbered with bairns, bills, domestic crises or even domestic normality. Within two years, and despite Archie’s endless efforts to ease her sense of oppression, the life went out of their marriage as it went out of her two babies, and Mr and Mrs Jamieson settled into a kind of routine of evasion.

  And so it had been ever since. They never fought, they never made love (not, at least, with each other), they talked only of things that it was necessary to talk of in order for the routine to continue. He spent long days away at work, she spent long mornings in bed, and at night occupied herself with sewing or reading a book. Archie wondered how it could have come to this: he could still feel the kick of his heart from the week she kept him waiting. But there never seemed to be time now to make things better between them, perhaps because things never seemed to be quite bad enough. It was his hope that when, in a year or so, his youngest boy left school, he and the new Mrs Jamieson would be able to make a fresh start. What he did not know was whether she had the same hope. Nor did he know whether he would be able to bring himself to end his excursions to Pirie’s Land before the fresh start was tried.

  Meanwhile, the work went on. He had begun as a clerk for the town council thirty years before, a bright lad quick at copying and sums, then had moved into legal work, impressing his employers with his dogged ability to persevere at the worm-like syntax and intricate minutiae of memorials, assignations, petitions, protestations, representations, missives, mandates and obligatours. But clerkship also involved running errands and seeking out information, and Archie had found this far more stimulating. Over the years he had developed the excavation of facts as an independent sideline, and while he still turned in a fair number of pages every week for this lawyer or that, he preferred the less regular, more risky – financially and physically – side of his work. He was a kind of primitive detective. It might never make him rich, but it kept him agile.

  He was not always proud of what he did, but, as he used to tell himself, pride came before a fall so he was as well not to be. The sneaking, snooving side of his work was hardly manly, and it had brought a couple of beatings down on his head. The alarm over the United Scotsmen, his having to delve deep into the plots of disaffected weavers – that had involved him in deceit and trickery and he was glad that, for the time being at least, the political situation had quietened.

  He was no radical. He was a king’s man, a Scotsman and a Briton. He could see the other point of view, and he wished no ill on any man for speaking his mind, but he believed in a settled constitution and, by and large, that the propertied classes knew what they were about. That was how they had become propertied. Although there were exceptions. There were exceptions to any rule.

  Betty came in with a fresh pot of coffee and laid a package down on the table at his elbow. ‘A laddie jist cam by wi that,’ she said.

  He picked it up, inspected the seal.

  ‘The penny post laddie?’

  ‘Is there a penny stamped on it?’ She looked at him as if at an idiot, a look he found strangely comforting. ‘Na, jist a street laddie.’

  ‘Still there?’

  ‘He was halfway doun the street afore I had the door open. So it’ll be some o your mischievous business that’s in it.’ She gave the package a stare not dissimilar to the one she had given him, and went out again.

  There was something special about a delivery one was not expecting. Jamieson delayed the moment of opening, lengthening the pleasure of anticipation. It was a neat, small package but it also somehow had bulk. The address was written in a feminine hand. The dripped wax of the seal did not bear a sender’s mark. He broke it open. Inside was a brief note:

  I told you I had found Mr K. He was hiding in my father’s writing-desk. My uncle – Alexander, the one that did the painting, not James – has told me all about him. We always understood it was yellow fever killed uncle A. but it was not that alone – what do you think?

  When I saw you in Dundee I had not read this fully but only glanced at it. The wickedness and cruelty of life in the plantations I always suspected but now I know. The horrors of how they lived are beyond what I can express.

  I don’t think Mr K. will be missed. My father is very wandered of late. Start at March of 1762.

  You must try to find him.

  S.W.

  He unwrapped, from a piece of (he sniffed) slightly scented linen, what appeared to be a private journal. Old, yellowing pages, the ink faded badly in places. Did it count as stolen property? Borrowed, perhaps. One thing was sure: he could not return it to its rightful owner, who, it would appear, did not know it was gone. Jamieson sipped his coffee, glanced at the opening pages:

  1760

  Tuesday, 1st January. Blewcastle. This day I ressolve to make note of events both interesting & dull, so as not to forget them. I am here 6 years now and can not mind one yr from an other so this will be my task to do so. Also it may impruve my riting which is none too strong.

  Drank in the Yr with James & Peter. Head now like a drum. No more to rite here.

  Wednesday, 2nd January. Peter’s birth day. He is 24. We drunk his health – John, James, I, Dav. Fyfe. James made him gift of the house maid Nesta for the night. I had her at Christmas but did not say.

  Saturday, 12th January. Wt James & Peter shooting duck at the river. We got 10 brase of coot but the moskitos plaged us terible.

  Saturday, 19th January. To Savanna with John & Peter where we train with the milisher. We rode down ystrdy & stayd at Mr Hodge. Wt his lady there we was best behaved. In the morning exercises & drill outside the town. John as an offiser and one of the few thats been in a war is disapointd with state of the foot which is composd mostly of town folk & book kepers. You never saw a stranger mix of jackits & britches posing as u
niforms. If not for the carabines muskats & sords a plenty among us we wd put little fear in the Negroes and none in the French.

  Herd that Tom Irvine very sick wt the gowt & dropsy. It is not lookd for him to live long with the rainy season aproaching. England wd treat him more kindly but Peter says he can never go back to England as the ladies ther wd object to him shitting in the parler.

  Jamieson found all this only mildly interesting. The debasements of the plantocracy, he suspected, had probably changed little in forty years. But no wonder Susan was shocked – the word ‘shitting’ written in her uncle’s hand; the nocturnal services of Nesta. How these old words would jump from the page in the douce surroundings of Ballindean!

  Reading the journal would presumably have washed some of the gloss off her view of the world. It would certainly confirm her distaste for slavery. Perhaps she had copied out passages ready to quote at anti-slavery meetings. Then again, such meetings would have to exist. Public demonstrations against slavery were not exactly common in Dundee. Jamieson had heard of Quakers and Methodists ranting and frothing in Bristol and Liverpool, but there had never been anything like that here. Ladies wrote to their friends asking them to abstain from buying cloth dyed with indigo, or drinking coffee, or eating sugar – that was about the extent of the agitation.

  As Jamieson had admitted to Miss Wedderburn, he had never thought much about slavery, and he reckoned he was typical. An abolitionist tract had come into his hand recently, in a coffee shop of all places. It had been headlined SLAVERY POISONS EVERY LIFE IT TOUCHES. He had skimmed through it, found it rational, and put it aside. If that is true, he had thought at the time, we are all poisoned, each and every one of us. And Miss Susan Wedderburn, he thought now, and all her brothers and sisters, had been poisoned since birth.

  He tried to analyse her motivation in sending him the journal. Why would she expect him to be interested? Why would she want a stranger to know the secrets of her family? Was this her way of easing the guilt? But why choose him, Archibald Jamieson?

  The answer came back at once: because he was an outsider, nothing to do with Ballindean or the Jamaica plantations. She needed him like a doctor. She wanted him to extract the poison.

  Well, he would not do it. The Wedderburns, father and daughter, could do their own dirty work.

  Archibald Jamieson sat tapping the journal with his fingers for fully two minutes. He looked at her note again. Joseph Knight was in the journal, she said. Yet she insisted that he try to find him. Why? It was absolutely nothing to do with him. His search had revealed nothing, and the case was closed. He had been paid by Wedderburn’s lawyer, Mr Duncan. Nevertheless, there was something about Joseph Knight that still intrigued him. What it was, he could not say. Perhaps it was simply his own curiosity, his pleasure in digging out hidden information …

  He reached for the coffee, refilled his cup, turned forward to the date she had mentioned, and began to read again.

  Jamaica, 1762

  Saturday 6th March, 1762. Glen Isla. This last week spent preparing the mill & such for the cane. Peter has a way with the machinary and with Wilsons help he keeps the negers in line, they will slack so soon as yr back is turnd. Wilson sees to clening out the old hogs heads and repare of looss staves &c. We are back & for between Blewcastle and heer all week as James away doctoring. John says from the look of it we’ll have our best crop yet.

  This evening after dinner Peter took the sulky wt a new young horse in the traces, and showd us his skill. The sulky being light & frale you think it will coup at any moment but P. is so fine a driver he held it on the balance. The horse ran as if the weels was chasing it. We stood on the porch and cheerd wheniver he came round the house, Jacob & Julius whoping and leeping with delight below us till Phebe chase them inside. Later Jacob tell me, Massa Peter go like the wind, him fly-y-y!

  Rosanna James’ maid or house keeper as she stiles herself comes fleeing to Glen Isla this night. She says he bate her most crool and shes taken the chance of his absince to beg our protection. We do not dowt she is a lying hoor.

  Sunday 7th March. We have word that the Katharine is a day off Savanna. It is a year and four months since she was last here and John did trade with her master Capt. Knight, not long after Tacky. Then he boght 6 Koromanties off him, to make up half of them we lost in the revolt. John boght a further 10 about a year past from an other ship, I forget the master, but we lost 4 of these to yellow fever and the rest are not sesond where as Knights all florish. John & James say they never boght a falty slave of him yet, only wicked ones that went out in the rebellion. That will not happen again, says Jo., we’ll keep them on a titer rope from now, God protect us.

  Rosanna does show sines of rough treetment tho she may deserve it. She has stripes across her back very angry looking, also she is wt child, we can not but think this is an other of James’s conquests. If so or indeed even if the bairn is not his he probly shld not have struck her. John at first says she must go back to Blewcastle and she grew histerical falling at his feet &c. At last John says she can stay and be put to work by Pheobe till he has spoken wt James. She’s to sleep with Peach, an envy to us all. She is not ill looking her self and Peter says he may intrude him self atween them if the bed be wide enogh. But knowing John’s views he will not try it.

  Wednesday 10th March. Savanna. John & I to Sav to meet with Knight & dine with him. Jo. says its time I was aboord a slave ship & saw how the negroes come to us. The ship has come thro feerce wether and lost a score of blacks to the bloody flux but Knight is well plesed with what he has left and says theres many good ones to be had. To-morrow we bord to make our choise ahead of the crowd.

  Knight is a big feerce looking man but wt a tender side to him. He has thick long red hair and a grate shaggy rusty baird, parts of it bleeched out by the salt and sun. With its many various shades he resembils a Scotch bull. You allmost look for his hornes but he has none in fact is amable tho runs his ship from what he tells us with strict disipline. Tis the only way to do it he says. No man can long stay master of such a tribe of villanes as make up a ships crew if he be weak, and he wd be both weak and a fool if he relaxd his vigill on three hunderd Africans made despirate by their dismall situation. He spoke long of his wife in Liverpool, he has not seen her a year, and three children a boy and 2 girls. He says one more passage to Ginea will suffise him, he will remove to the cuntry and grow fat on eggs and beef. He seems fat enough already tho tis hard to tell under all the hair. We sat till late and he staid with us at the inn trusting to his crew the villanes to have all in preperation for us to-morrow.

  Thursday 11th March. By long boat to the Katharine. Have not been a board a sea going vesell since I got heer 8 years ago. I was so greevous sick coming over I am made unesy at the meer thought of it. The prospect of seeing Scotland again so plesing in it self is diminishd by fear of the pasage.

  The ships side reard up above us like the wall of a grate tower. The day fine and the water flat cawm so it was less of an anxety to me than mite have been. We climbed abord and an astonishing site met our eyes.

  There displayd along chanes across the middel part of the deck, was the cargoe or part of it for Capt. Knight assurd us he only broght up the best he had, the others older weak or sicklie being yet confind to the belly of the beest. In any case it was not posibill to have all the Africans above decks at once, from a shortage of space and of fettirs and chanes forby the fear of them louping into the sea. I past an unfastend hach that must go to the slave deck the stench eminating from it was such as I never hope to smell agane. I reeld from it. John saw me and says in a low voyce, they will have cleend it out, think what it was like a week past.

  The slaves look very fine many of them. There is a grater proportian of wimen & yung girls than ever before. At his last visit Cap. Knight was impressd by the tales he hard of Tacky & Apongo, and there was many planters toled him they wd not buy Koromanties agane they were too dangerus. The generall notion has been to breed more creeols, if they are bo
rne into slavery they will not object to it so much but see it as their natural state. All ways til now there has been more males than females and some of the wimen not fertil, or their young do not survive. Its even said some smuther them rather than let them growe up in bondage, it is hard to beleeve this cruwelty of females.

  In spite of this fear of the Koromanties Knights best slaves are the same, Gold Cost ones and he knows John & James will still pay top prise for them, as will others for they are the best workers in spite of the risk.

  Knight did not stray far from our side but he did let us inspect them pritty close, making them stand turn around bend jump open their mouths &c. This as ever is somwhat repugnent to me. John also says he does not like to tuch them too close but will do so to ashure himself of ther quality. They were all well rubbd with pawm oil to make them glissen, had been given pipes & tobacko to put them in better humor and their wool was all shaven so one cd not so easy tell an older man from a young one but there were no tricks with calk or die as some practis. Knight knows we Wedderburns are good customers and tis not in his interest to cheet us.

  After an hour or more we had made our choyse. John wanted six men and six wimen and found them, but Knights prices were steep. He wanted £60 a man and 40 each for the females. Six hunderd the lot, and John says five hunderd, Knight comes down to five 50 but will not buge from there. We go to his cwarters to drink a glass & come to a bargin, and that is when we saw the boy.