by Ann Turnbull
A new sound startles me: a clink of metal?
I whirl round. “Miata –”
Voices, breaking branches – danger! We clasp hands and run, but they are all around us: men armed with ropes and shackles. They seize me, tear Miata’s hand from mine, bind my arms behind my back. Miata screams. She too is caught and tied.
These men are not like those others who blundered along with dogs so that I heard them coming. These are hunters, men who know how to move silently in the woods. I see now that they have been following our tracks, all the time we thought we were free. I turn to Miata, cry out that I’m sorry, and she sobs and struggles to reach me. But they force us apart. They march us back along the trail.
Twenty-five
On fourth-day morning I offered to call in at the grocer’s on Front Street to fetch household supplies. Along the waterfront I noticed a group of surveyors at work, and realized they must be measuring out the area where the merchant Samuel Carpenter’s wharf was to be built – the first wharf in Philadelphia. This would allow ships like the Frances and the Chepstow to dock at the harbour wall and bring goods and people ashore without the need to transfer them to boats. I thought of how the merchants and their apprentices must be full of enthusiasm for the new wharf and keen to see the work go ahead. I had lost my chance to be part of all that now.
As I entered the grocer’s store I heard a buzz of conversation and knew at once that something had happened. With so many Friends among Philadelphians, there was usually little needless talk in shops or other meeting places. Today was different.
“…those runaway Negroes…”
“Taken together, the boy and girl. They hadn’t got far.”
Antony and Patience. Caught. It hit me like a blow.
“Poor creatures!” a woman said.
They were mostly women in the store; mild-faced women in grey homespun and plain aprons, wicker baskets on their arms: Friends, or Baptists, or others who must know what it was like to be hounded by the authorities.
I stood there, crushed by the news. So it had all been for nothing. And then I rallied, and thought: I’m glad we tried, even though it brought so much trouble. Antony had found Patience; he’d escaped with her. It had been a brief triumph for him. Their actions might lead to punishment, but they’d had time together, however short.
“George Bainbrigg will be glad to have his Negro back,” the grocer said to the woman he was serving. “I heard the buyer was not well pleased.”
“Will he still buy?”
“Sure to – Negroes being so hard to come by here.”
I thought of George Bainbrigg’s counting house, of the storeroom upstairs. That was where Antony would be now, awaiting sale to Isaac Shore. Unless he had already gone to Shore’s plot. And Patience? Returned to her owners, I supposed. I hoped, fervently, that they would not beat her. If only the two of them could have stayed hidden! I remembered those vast tracts on George Bainbrigg’s map marked only as “wilderness”. Antony and Patience were forest people. They could hunt, fish and farm. They could have survived out there.
But now they were caught, and it would be made harder for them to escape a second time. Kate had been snatched away from me, yet our troubles seemed as nothing compared to the plight of Antony and Patience.
Tokpa
As we approach John Outram’s place, Miata begins to wail. Outram’s people come out to fetch her, and she screams and falls to her knees and begs our captors not to send her back. Everyone is shouting. The dog barks and strains at its tether. Miata struggles as they untie her, drag her into the yard and shut the gate. She looks back at me in despair and we cry out each other’s names; then a woman appears and pushes Miata inside the house, out of my sight. I can do nothing to help Miata.
Our captors take me away, back to George Bainbrigg’s counting house.
Friend George does not beat me. But he locks me in the storeroom and sends word to my buyer.
This man comes and takes me in a cart to his plot on the edge of the city, in the woods. There he leaves me bound, pushes me into the yard and ties me to a fence post. He takes out a whip and beats me till I sag at the knees and cry for mercy. Then he unties me and says, “You run away – you get a beating. Run away again – I beat you again, harder. Understand?”
He sets me to work on his plot, clearing scrub. This is work I have done before, in the fields near our village, when we cleared the land for rice-planting. But there it was happy work. We sang and laughed together, and the women would bring us food and drink when we stopped to rest, and the fields and crops were for all of us to share. Here I have no reward but cuffs and curses, and the land is my master’s.
He is a harsh, hard-working, busy man, this Isaac Shore. He lives with his wife and son and a servant woman, and all four of them beat and curse me. I will not stay in this place. I will escape again and fetch Miata, and next time we will find a better place to hide.
Twenty-six
I stayed at home and helped my parents for the next two weeks. We moved the bookshop from the log cabin into its new home at the front of the house; dealt with orders; put up shelves. A letter came from Nat Lacon telling us that Florian Marshall, the typesetter, was now on his way to the New World and might be expected in July. This news spurred my father on to get the printing workshop ready. He found a carpenter to build the press, and we busied ourselves arranging the layout of the workshop and unpacking the crates we’d brought with us from London.
All this took my mind off Antony and Patience and what might be happening to them. And Kate: although I thought of her often, I’d still had no reply to my letter. My mother believed our separation was perhaps for the best while her father was so angry with me.
“Let the dust settle,” she said. “Kate won’t forget thee.”
But the dust was unable to settle, for the next thing we heard was that Antony had escaped from his new master, Isaac Shore. It seemed he had been caught almost immediately, but that very night he had broken out again, and this time had not been found, despite a hue and cry and enquiries at the Outrams’ holding.
He’s lying low, I thought, as he did before. And I wondered if he’d have made for the same part of the forest.
The next day, when I went to Front Street, there was still no news of him. But when I called in at the post office, as I’d been doing for the past week, I was at last rewarded with a letter from Kate. My spirits soared. I stepped out, breaking the seal as I went, and unfolded it eagerly.
“Jos,” she wrote, “forgive my hasty note to thee when I left. I hope Mary gave it thee?” So our letters had crossed, as I’d expected. “I did not dare ask Isobel – she is so loyal to my father. Poor Mary was frightened to death that Dad or Isobel would catch her with the note! She begged me not to make her do it, but I insisted.
“Jos, I am so angry with my father, and also a little angry with our Friends the Richmonds for offering to take me away, though I know they meant kindly by it. I love Margaret Richmond well. She says I may stay as long as I wish – but she must know I don’t wish! She is so good to me. She gives me motherly advice and is very interested in hearing all about thee. Well, I think nothing I say could make her disapprove of thee, but she warns against too much haste, impulsiveness, airiness of spirits – thou know how elders go on! She does not understand how much I long to be with thee.
“Of course we hear nothing here in Herring Creek of Antony and Patience. Are they safely away? I told Margaret all about them, and that Patience is carrying Antony’s child, and she was shocked – though I am not sure whether that was because Antony and Patience have been separated or because they are young and not married. I think she would be shocked also that I speak of such things to thee. I hope thou don’t think me immodest? I believe in plain speaking.
“I also have no news of thee. Was thy father angry? Did he blame thee? Will thou work for him now? I wish Dad would have thee back. Oh, I wish all was as before!
“Write to me, please, Jos.
I know it is not thought seemly for a girl to beg a young man to write to her, but I do.
Thy Friend,
Katherine Bainbrigg.”
I replied the same day:
“Kate, I care not if it is unseemly – but thou need not beg me to write. There is nothing I would rather do – except be with thee, of course. It is harsh that thou hast been sent away, and neither of us deserves it.”
I told her that Antony had gone on the run once more – and added, furiously, “I hate this whole business of slavery and would never consent to be involved in it again. And yet I was happy working for thy father. It seemed right for me – not only because of thee (though that was a big part of it) but because I felt capable and confident. Maybe I can find employment with another merchant, but I fear they may all be involved in the slave trade, some perhaps much more so. Oh, Kate, I wish we were not separated like this and could at least talk! Any news I send will be out of date by the time thou receive it. I love thee and long to see thee…”
The next morning, as usual, I joined my father and Betty in the print shop. But no sooner had we started work than my mother appeared with Judith Kite. Judith was dusty from the road and out of breath, and both women looked worried.
My father stopped work at once. “Judith! Is something wrong?”
“It’s the escaped slave – Antony,” said Judith. “He is with us at home; we took him in. Will, he is hurt. He has been brutally beaten.”
I started forward with a cry.
“I’m going back with Judith to care for him,” said my mother. She bit her lip, and the two women exchanged a glance. “Judith and I feel minded to say nothing to the authorities – at least, not yet.”
My father nodded, slowly. “For now, yes, I agree. It seems Antony is determined to escape, and if beating doesn’t deter him…” He frowned. “This new owner” – he turned to me – “is he a Friend?”
“I don’t know.”
“If he is, he may listen to Friends’ advice, otherwise the law may be the only recourse. Yes, go there, Su, and take Jos” – for he saw that I was anxious to go with them. “Antony will be glad to see a familiar face.”
As we walked to the forge, Judith said, “We found him near our house last night, exhausted and bleeding from his wounds.” She shuddered. “It reminded me of the old days in England, Su, when Friends were so cruelly treated and we tended to one another’s injuries.”
When we arrived we found Daniel at work, the fire glowing red-hot.
“I’m glad to see thee, Su,” he said. “And thee, Jos. He spoke of thee – the lad – he said thy name. Esther’s with him. But he seems afraid of me and Ben – maybe he can smell the fire on us; maybe some superstition his people have – who knows?”
We went upstairs, into the spacious house, then up the ladder to the loft.
“He’s well hidden here, for a while,” said Judith.
I was shocked when I saw Antony. He lay on his front, stripped to the waist, and his back was a mass of oozing wounds. This had been a vicious whipping. It had cut open his flesh so cruelly that it was impossible for Esther to tend the wounds without causing more pain. She was simply offering sips of water and murmuring sympathy. She looked enormously relieved when her mother appeared and took over, allowing her to escape downstairs.
“Those cuts have opened up half-healed wounds,” Judith told me. “He has been beaten more than once.”
I crouched beside him, touched his shoulder gently. “Tokpa…”
“Jos.”
When he turned to look at me I saw that he had also been punched in the face. His mouth was swollen and bloody, and blood had run from his nose and dried.
But he was determined to speak.
“I will not stay with that man,” he said. “I will die first. He is a demon. They are a house of demons.” His eyes burned with anger. “When I am free I shall come back and kill them all.”
I felt that I should say some word of restraint, or of forgiveness of one’s enemies, but I did not. The truth was, I rather relished the thought of Antony returning and killing whoever had done this to him. And I thanked God that George Bainbrigg had not sold the two of them, Antony and Patience, to Isaac Shore.
“He should be brought before the law,” I said – and I wondered how the law stood on this issue.
I sat with Antony while my mother and Judith cleaned his wounds and treated them with a salve that Judith applied with a feather so as not to hurt him too much. He bore this stoically. When they were finished they went downstairs, leaving us to talk.
Antony turned troubled eyes on me. “They won’t fetch men to take me away?”
“No.” I hoped I was right; the women had urged secrecy.
“The woman’s husband is a blacksmith. In my village the blacksmith is powerful. He makes spells. He talks to the spirits, to the ancestors.”
“Thou don’t need to be afraid of Daniel, or of Ben. They will protect you.”
“Good magic?”
“Yes,” I said. I was unwilling to argue about the choice of words, for I felt the meaning was the same, even though Friends denied magic.
Twenty-seven
The next day my mother and I went to the Kites’ again.
“He’s asleep,” said Judith. “It’s good. Sleep is healing.”
She and Esther and my mother busied themselves with household matters and Judith poured beer into three tankards, set them on a tray and sent me out to the forge. There I found Ben working the bellows while his father heated a lump of iron to glowing red-gold. They looked like the sorcerors Antony believed them to be, both of them black with smuts, their red curls of hair like fire. I put the tray down, turned towards the road, and saw a group of horsemen approaching.
“The sheriff,” I said. My stomach tightened.
The iron was glowing incandescent now, but Daniel motioned to Ben to stop work. Then he came forward and confronted the officers as they rode into the yard.
They dismounted. The sheriff said, “We’re searching for an escaped Negro. No doubt you heard the hue and cry?” He looked from one to another of us. “Have you seen anything? Any suspicious sign?”
Daniel stood four-square, hands on hips. “The man is here,” he said.
“Here?” The sheriff looked taken aback. “In thy house?”
“Yes.”
“Thou did not report it.”
“We knew you would come before long. The young man has been cruelly beaten. He collapsed near our home. My wife is caring for him.”
The sheriff turned towards the house. Daniel relaxed his stance and led the way. Ben and I followed. My breath came fast and I felt a fluttering in my stomach; I was afraid for Antony.
The group of us reached the house door as Judith opened it. My mother appeared and stood beside her.
“Thy husband tells me the Negro servant is here?” the sheriff said.
“He is,” said Judith.
“We ask thee to surrender him. He must be returned to his owner.”
“His back is criss-crossed with bloody stripes,” said Judith. “He is in no condition to be removed.”
“Nevertheless—”
“I cannot release him to you.” If Judith was afraid, she hid it.
“Then we must take him.”
Daniel stepped forward, but before he could speak my mother said, “If thou arrest Antony, thou must arrest all of us. We will not allow him to be taken.”
“Friends, don’t make trouble,” the sheriff advised. I could see that he did not know what to do. He was a Friend confronting Friends. My mother and Judith stood together in his way and he was unwilling to arrest them. He conferred a moment with his deputy, then said, “I insist on seeing the Negro.”
“Thou may see him,” said Judith, “but I ask thee not to bring thy officers with thee.”
She and my mother stepped aside, and the sheriff entered the house. Daniel and Ben followed, and I went after them, knowing that Antony must have heard the voices
and would be terrified.
“Ben,” said Judith, “stay down here with Esther and the young ones. They’re frightened.”
She led the way up to the loft.
When she reached the doorway she spoke softly, “Antony?”
He was not on the bed, though a few bloodstained bandages littered it. He was standing backed up against the far wall, where there was a tiny window – too small to climb out of. His eyes were wide, but he showed no other sign of fear.
“Antony, the sheriff wishes to see thy injuries,” Judith said. She turned to the sheriff. “Note his face, Friend, how he has been punched. Turn around, Antony.” He moved reluctantly, his eyes on me for reassurance. “We have tended his wounds, but thou can see how severe the whipping was. We will not send him back to be beaten like this again.”
“But he is the property of Isaac Shore,” the sheriff said. “If the man has been ill-treated, that is a matter for the law to raise with the owner. I advise you people to let us take him.”
Antony remained silent, standing instinctively as far away as possible from the door and close to the window. I wanted to show myself part of this resistance, and I moved to stand beside him. From there I watched the calmness and inner certainty with which my mother and Judith and Daniel, schooled in years of confrontation with the authorities, gently refused to co-operate.
“Give us another day,” Judith said. “Susanna Heywood and I will go and speak to Isaac Shore and see if we can reach an understanding with him—”
“The Negro must be taken into custody,” the sheriff interrupted. “If we leave him here he may escape again.”
“He is in no condition to escape,” my mother protested, and Daniel said, “I will ensure that he does not. I’ll answer for him. Only give the women a day.”