The Pull Of Freedom

by Barrett, Brenda

  “Go with God, Kes. Do not worry, you have done much for us already, and you will do more. You are more valuable pretending to be a slave master than a slave. We will see each other again.”

  She walked toward the house and he could hear her commanding her troops. Her slight body was barely discernible among the crowd of slave who were dragging their treasures toward the hills.

  When he picked up the chest and headed toward the horse that he had tied on a post for his escape he saw a pouch made from Nanny’s dress material hanging around his horse’s head, he took it off and looked inside. It was filled with powder and a piece of paper was stuck in the top.

  For your ship’s journey, was the barely discernible scrawl that he read when he finally deciphered the writing on the piece of parchment paper days later. He knew Nanny planted it but he never understood why she would have given him a pouch with her herbs until he was abed The Majestic, the first merchant ship he could find on his quest to leave Jamaica and to search for his mother in England.

  The ship was swaying in the bad weather that had taken over the Caribbean Sea and he was suffering from seasickness, it was so bad that the captain and the crew were worried about him.

  “You need ale,” the blustery captain had pronounced upon seeing him clutching the slop pot. He was dry hacking over the pot and very weak. He could barely lift his head, his body was so weak.

  “Put some of that in there,” he pointed to the dirty pouch with the herbs, the captain looked at him puzzled.

  “Where’d you get this?” He asked

  “From a woman who seems to know everything,” he weakly said as he sipped the ale and the herb.

  He was better in less than an hour.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Did you hear the news about the massive slave revolt at the Braithwaites plantation in the East?” Peter asked Robert Simmonds.

  They were standing under the trees near the new batch of slaves that he had delivered to his friend to replace the twelve he had lost.

  “That is bad business,” Robert had a concerned look on his face, “they set the house a fire and the Braithwaite’s died along with one of the girls.”

  Peter nodded, “only Hilma survived, she got married last week despite the tragedy. Her sister was not as fortunate though. There are some rumours that she was so wicked to her slaves they ensured that she perished. Might be there is some truth to it, you are better off treating the slaves well.” Peter looked at Robert who stood contemplatively looking over the new batch of slaves that he had ordered. There was, only one girl, he hoped that that would appease his wife. His games with the slave girls were now so far and few between he doubted that Elizabeth suspected him of continuing in what she called his ‘sick practices’.

  She certainly seemed happier these days and her threats of leaving him were near forgotten. She still had her weekly tea meetings with Bridget and this kept her entertained and happy for days.

  “You seem far away my friend,” Peter grunted. “I hope you are aware that what happened to the Braithwaites can happen to you.”

  Robert shrugged, “I have more overseers and tighter security I'm not going to let any of those maroons run me from my land. This plot of land is mine. I intend to live here and prosper. I am determined to become richer than Elizabeth’s annoying father.”

  Peter guffawed and patted his stomach. “The Braithwaites were rich, Paul was a well known miser. It was rumoured that he had a chest that contained thousands of pounds worth of gold. When they searched around in the charred remains of the house they could not find it but they found him charred and burnt to a crisp. You just take care of yourself.”

  “Tell the missus I cannot stop today, I have more slaves to replace over at Timothy’s plantation. The old bugger loses slaves faster than we can get them.”

  He tipped his hat and walked away leaving Robert staring at his newly acquired assets. Over the past three months he had cleared the land and the new sugar cane plants could be seen row upon row in the fields.

  He was going to export not only sugar but rum and molasses and all the by-products of the plant. His head ran with ideas and he stood immobile for a long time, he could already taste the success.

  He shifted his stance and glanced at the new girl, she was plump, her bosom well developed. He smiled slightly; it was time to celebrate his newly acquired property. He glanced at the house; Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen.

  “You,” he pointed at the new slave girl, she looked at him and smiled with an eager expression on her face.

  “Do you know how to please your Massa?”

  She shook her head, the little face looked uncertain; her mahogany skin was slightly wet from sweat.

  “Follow me.” He walked toward the barn the little girl in tow.

  Mamee was outside the house spreading out the whites on the clothesline when she saw Massa Robert heading toward the barn with the new girl. The girl was walking and hauling her foot reluctantly. The Massa had purposeful strides he stopped and broke off a branch from a tree and stripped it of its leaves to be used as a prop for his sick sex game. Mamee cringed when she thought about it.

  Over the past months Martha had gotten quite close to Elizabeth, she was always going to their little tea parties and reporting back to her fellow slaves. Sometimes the information was good and sometimes nonsensical. The latest information was that the Massa was behaving himself and that he had promised his wife to be a better person.

  Mamee shook her head and then paused, might be if she alerted the Missus it would be one less slave girl raped and left to carry the shame of the brutal act around in her head for the rest of her life.

  She crossed to the back of the yard where the Missus was under a tree playing with Mark and reading stories.

  “Miss Elizabeth,” Mamee said hesitantly, “I am confused.”

  “What is it Mamee?” Elizabeth asked looking up, her eyes were lively and green; she looked playful and so relaxed that Mamee felt a twinge at her deliberate ploy to upset her. She wasn’t a bad person when she had settled down to island living and stopped acting like she still lived in England.

  “Er … I washed a white chemise and I was wondering if it was the right one.” She paused, that sounded terrible but it was the best she could do in such short notice.

  “It doesn’t matter Mamee,” Elizabeth said tweaking Mark’s nose, “do what you will.”

  “I think I bleached out the roses on this nice soft cloth,” Mamee tried again.

  “Oh no, let me see if it is the silk chemise that my sister Eileen got from India.” Elizabeth jumped up and followed Mamee to the side of the house, just when the reluctant slave girl was resisting being pulled into the barn. Tears were streaming down the young girl’s face and she was squealing.

  Elizabeth stopped in her tracks; Mark who was running behind her collided in her legs.

  “There isn’t a bleached out chemise is there?” Elizabeth looked at Mamee with tears in her eyes.

  Mamee shook her head and hurried back to the clothesline.

  “Mark go and find Martha,” Elizabeth said to her son, he beamed when he heard Martha’s name and ran into the house screaming her name at the top of his lungs.

  Elizabeth walked toward the barn, she could imagine her heart breaking into smithereens; she had given him one more chance and he blew it. He couldn’t help himself; he was little more than an animal. She pushed open the barn door just when her husband was fumbling to release the buttons on his britches; the little slave girl was lying on the ground wild eyed and crying, a welt could be seen on her cheeks.

  “Robert,” Elizabeth voice cracked, “I'm leaving on the morrow.”

  He spun around shocked; his eyes were still fevered, as he was about to indulge his addiction.

  “Elizabeth no,” he shouted, trying to button his britches as he hopped after her.

  “Nothing you can say will stop me,” Elizabeth said coldly furious.

  “Fine,” Robert s
aid knowing that he was caught red handed a sense of fatalism gripped him; “I don’t need you or your father’s wretched money. I'm going to be rich and I'm going to carve out a piece of this world for myself. Leave if that’s what you want to do.”

  “You are sick;” Elizabeth said quietly, she had passed the stage of crying. She wasn't going to turn a blind eye anymore.

  “Liz,” Robert said cajolingly, “it was a lapse, I'm sorry.”

  “I'm leaving,” Elizabeth said stricken, “even if I have to leave Mark. If I stay I will lose my soul to this place, like you have, and I can’t afford that happening to me. God help me, I would prefer to lose my son than to become one of those plantation wives who is empty and pain filled.”

  Robert watched as she walked away, fury gripping him at his weakness and the unbidden feeling of dejection that had him in its grip. He stalked back to the barn; the slave girl was still there on the ground immobile and shaking in fear. He successfully unbuttoned his britches and took out all his fury and his inadequacies on her young body.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Here we go again,” Martha mumbled as she packed Elizabeth’s cases.

  Elizabeth was on the bed howling and incoherently mumbling. “I don’t want to leave my son but I have to,” she looked up at Martha with blood shot eyes.

  Martha continued to pack her cases ambling slowly around the room, she was seven months pregnant and felt as if she was carrying the weight of the world on her body. She felt tiny contractions around her middle and a niggling pain at her back, she wanted to shout at Elizabeth and tell her to grow up and face the world. Slave women were forced to give up their children every day and not one white woman would lift their soft lily white hands to convince their men of the errors of their ways. But of course she couldn’t say that to her owner.

  She had to listen and nod and pretend that she was not in pain so that Elizabeth could escape her husband who found young black girls more pleasurable than he found her.

  Not for the first time, Martha wondered what life would have been like to be free with Cudjoe. She rubbed her back as she reached for one of Elizabeth’s dresses resentment boiling in her.

  She was going to give birth to another slave, another property of Robert Simmonds.

  If her child is of a certain shade then he or she could work in the house, if not she was going to have a field slave. Back breaking labour would be the fate of her offspring. She wished she could pack her bags and take a journey to somewhere she could call home.

  “Promise me, you will take care of him Martha.” Elizabeth sniffed and came off the bed; “I'm going to stay with Bridget tonight and then in the morrow I'm going to get a ship to England.”

  Martha nodded.

  “Tell him about me, lest he forget,” Elizabeth sniffed. “I will pray to God every night that he does not become a monster like his father.”

  A slice of pain gripped Martha and she nodded biting her lips.

  “Mommy,” Mark ran into the room and looked at his mother’s cases. “Are we going somewhere?”

  “No dear,” Elizabeth sat on the bed and lifted him unto her lap. “I am going to England for a long visit.”

  “When are you coming back?” He asked worried.

  “Whenever you miss me enough to want me back,” Elizabeth’s eyes filled with tears, “I love you honey. I always will.”

  She kissed his forehead. “Daddy thinks you should stay with him while I go to England. Is that alright with you?”

  Mark nodded wide eyed, “I will take care of Daddy till you get back,” he whispered to his mother, “I shan’t be bad, I will do my chores and listen keenly to Miss Primrose when she comes to do my lessons.”

  “That’s a good boy,” Elizabeth said getting up abruptly, “now run along and play.”

  Mark stared at her for a long while before he left the room, his little heart was constricting, he knew that Mommy was not telling the truth, he could hear her crying through the closed door.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Nanny and her maroons had a system of work going, they chopped down trees and cleared the area for a large village. For weeks they slept under make shift shacks made from palm trees and leaves. They were cold and were often times wet because of the frequent rainfall.

  Nanny would mix up different herbs to offset coughs and colds and the frequent fevers that seemed to overtake some of the women and children. There were no complaints from the band of escaped slaves. They worked together, mindful that they were in a tenuous situation where they were still considered the property of others.

  It took them days to reach Nanny’s spot. The spot that she said was the perfect place to be. They were laden with the different things that would make life a little easier for them and had eagerly attacked the building up process. Nanny was the chief advisor, and as young as she was, she enjoyed the deference of older men and the courtesies of children. She was often touted as the saviour of the slaves and had courage and determination as hard as the rocks in the Stony River below their village.

  They had horses in a coral, near the coral was the chicken coop; Nanny was standing with Quao and looking at the animals.

  “They eat enough for two men every day,” Nanny said to Quao, “we need more supplies from town, we will have to trade them until we gradually sell them all.”

  Quao nodded, “remember how we promised Adofo we would get his wife from the Spanish Town Plantation?”

  Nanny grunted, the mornings were especially chilly in the mountain and she could see Quao’s breath in the air as he talked.

  “I think we should go and get her now?” Quao phrased the statement like a question; he was a little in awe of his sister and her strategies of war.

  Twice the military had tried to follow their tracks since the attack on the Braithwaite plantation and twice Nanny had foiled them. She had designed such simple plots to confuse the military men and take their weapons that they had stopped looking for them.

  That could be because they had not raided a plantation in a long while because they still had supplies. Nanny thought that it was safer that they grew their own produce so that they could be independent of the plantations. She had seen to it that everyone had their own little garden and a good system of bartering was taking place in the village. It looked more and more like a village every day. Men and women would pair up and live together, children without parents were adopted into families and it felt like a typical African village.

  Nanny looked at Quao and smiled, “yes it is time to help Adofo our brother. Let us plan the strategy for his wife’s return and in the process collect some supplies.”

  A bird hooted in the bushes and it echoed through the mountains; an abeng responded in the stillness of the morning.

  Nanny laughed, “those white men will never learn,” she said to Quao, “we will not be defeated or enslaved. Why are they still trying to find us?”

  Quao looked pensive, “I wonder if Cudjoe, Cuffy, Accompong and Jelani are doing well.”

  “Yes they are,” Nanny said, “haven’t you heard about the raiding in the west, that it's causing a major upset among the white men? ”

  That’s definitely Cudjoe. He has always been a fighter. Likewise, he knows that we are fine and I'm sure that he is proud of us too.”

  “It’s a good thing we are not all together,” Quao said looking over at the greenery and the rolling hills. “The white men would have no peace.”

  He glanced over at his sister. She was still, very still. Her eyes were glazed and she had her ear cocked to one side as if she was listening to something.

  “What is it Nanny?” Quao asked urgently. The village was awakening, he could here children crying, women jostling pots and pans, fires were being lit for breakfast. Men were sharpening their cutlasses. The cleared area where the houses were was fairly large and encircled a meetinghouse in the middle, which was larger than the individual houses. That was where the villagers gathered in the evenings around a hug
e fire telling stories and eating.

  “Nanny?” Quao prompted, her stillness was unsettling.

  “Cudjoe’s offspring is about to enter the world,” Nanny said her voice flat, “but death is on the heels of gladness.”

  “What do you mean?” Quao asked confused, “which offspring of Cudjoe’s?”

  “Life is about to make herself known.” Nanny answered cryptically and walked toward her house.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  They waved as Elizabeth sat stiff backed in the carriage that would take her to the Williams’ plantation. From there she would leave on a ship to England. She had cried all day until a tired Martha had finished packing her trunks.

  Robert stood on the lawn and watched the carriage as his wife left. He had seen the disappointment in her eyes as she stared at him; a twinge akin to sadness gripped him.

  Mark stood beside him gripping his pant leg and howling for his mother, he patted Mark on his head and watched as the boy sank to the ground. He slumped beside his son and whispered, “don’t cry little one, I would never leave you.”

  He sighed as he rubbed his son’s stiff shoulders. He was becoming bored with his son’s crying and could only think of his work. He wanted to tell Mark that Elizabeth was probably better off in England with its myriads of entertainment and her doting father pondering to her every whim.

  He turned when he heard a scream and Martha who was standing on the veranda collapsed on the ground, Mamee ran to take her up, her movements frantic. He shrugged and went into his office passing the frantic activity on his front porch; he was tired of females and their problems.

  “Quick, get Mother Esther,” Mamee cried as a footman and the butler lifted Martha and brought her to their quarters behind the kitchen. “I think the baby is coming. It’s too early.” Tears came to Mamee’s eyes as she watched Martha writhing in the narrow bed.

  Mark stood in the doorway his eyes round.