by Oak, B. B.
After a year I returned to my village, and my father judged me ready to become a healer like him. He taught me songs, chants, and spells and the use of roots, herbs, animal skins and bones to make good or bad medicine. When my father died, I took his place as the village inyanga. I became such a powerful healer that people came from villages near and far to receive my treatments. I turned no one away. I practiced my arts day and night. I did not take a wife or have children, for my tribe was my family. I did not want any other life.
But I got another life.
Treachery brought me low. I was so loved and respected by the Ewe people that the tribal chief came to believe I was a threat to his power. One night I was attacked and knocked senseless, and the next morning I found myself being walked in a slave caravan to the coast. A long line of us, perhaps two hundred men and women, were bound together and beaten and lashed to make us walk toward a life worse than death. The slavery business is most wasteful. So many die before they reach the coast to be sold. Many more die going across the sea. And then a great many die as slaves in the sugarcane and cotton and rice fields. So there is no end to the wanting of more and more men and women to feed the jaws of slavery.
I chanted and sang to relieve the suffering of those around me as we walked. The white slave drivers would taunt me as I chanted, but when one of them fell ill with a fever and white medicine failed to cure him, he asked for me. I was allowed to go into the jungle and find the herbs I needed, and I cured him. He rapidly recovered, so the caravan could go on. Why did I help him, you may wonder. Because I am a healer. As the scorpion stings and the leopard bites, I heal. I can do great harm as well, but that is very much against my nature.
By the time we reached the fort on the coast, I believed the man whose life I had saved had forgotten me altogether. But he had not. At the fort, buying slaves for his ship, was Pelletier, and, like so many Europeans, he fell ill from the rotten water and the spoiled meat. Thinking he could gain advantage with Pelletier, the slave driver brought me to him and swore I could cure him. But Pelletier, ill as he was, laughed in the man’s face and sent me back to huddle with the rest.
Yet he bought me. Why? Perhaps he saw something in me. Or perhaps, because I was too old to work long in the fields in the sun, he got me very cheaply. Whatever his reason, he bought me, and that saved him as well as me.
Pelletier was both owner and captain of his slave ship. The French then and for long afterward transported and sold more men and women into slavery than any other nation. He captained what was called a tight-packed ship, which was the most cruel and wasteful way to carry slaves. It meant shackled slaves were packed together hip to hip in the hold and never moved the entire voyage. Many died from living in their own filth or from lack of food and water. Pelletier believed this cruelty was cheaper for him than taking the trouble to feed us or even give us water but once a day. He also feared that if we were unshackled to exercise, we would revolt and kill him and the crew. To avoid that danger we sat in one place and suffered. Those who died amongst us were left for days in the suffocating heat before they were unshackled and thrown overboard. Many tried to take their own lives rather than live in that misery. Those of the highest value, such as the strongest young men and most attractive girls, were force-fed by pouring porridge down their throats, like the French stuff a goose, so they would not die.
Then one day I was unchained and hauled up onto the deck and washed with sea water and taken to the captain’s cabin. Pelletier was far more ill than when last I saw him at the fort. A fever was burning his body up like a fire smoldering in charcoal. He had been given every medicine on board, and nothing had worked. In his fear of death and desperation he remembered me and demanded that I be brought to him. He stared at me a long time, and then I was made to understand through an interpreter that if I cured him he would give me my freedom.
What was there to lose? I had no plants or animal parts, so I gathered up some seaweed, and took bits of the eyes, beak, and suckers from a caught octopus as well as the edge of the tail and juice from the stomach of a great shark. The ship always had schools of sharks trailing after it, waiting for the sick, dying, or dead of my kind to be tossed overboard. I also took a drop of my own blood, the quill of a feather from an albatross that had died and fallen on deck, and a chip of wood from the topmost tip of the mainmast. You may wonder why I collected these particular items, but I can only answer that my Spirits told me to. When I put them all together in a cooking vessel, they glowed with a light that perhaps only I could see. I boiled the mixture down and added a dram of brandy to it. I brought it to Pelletier.
His eyes widened with fear when he saw me, for I had painted myself with whitewash and red from some iron in the stones in the ballast. I started in with my song that would make all that I had shredded and sliced and ground and thrown whole into my pot into a healing potion of great power. Pelletier drank the liquid, gagging with each swallow. That he managed to keep it down proved to me that he very much wanted to live. I chanted by his side for a day and a night, and at the next dawn his fever lifted. I was glad of it, for he had ordered that if he died, I was to die with him.
Pelletier recovered good strength in a matter of days. I never returned below decks. As he drank my potions and listened to my chanting, he became convinced of my powers. He thereafter looked at me with gratitude and I know a touch of fear, which has helped me all these years since. I told him I could keep him alive and healthy for as many years as he wished if he would give up the slave trade. He agreed. It was only later that I learned the French Government had outlawed the trade and so it was not so great a sacrifice for him and he was already a rich man. That was his last voyage as a slaver.
He told me I would be treated well, better than any Negro, free or slave, could expect to be treated, and he has been true to his word for twenty years now. I had the best of tutors to learn French and English so as to be of use to him in many ways. I have even been allowed to retain a small portion of the profits Pelletier makes in business enterprises my Spirits advise me to have him invest in. In truth, my Spirits never advise in such matters. What care They about worldly profits and losses? I have managed to give Pelletier good advice by listening to my own good sense. Using his money to make some for myself has been a great incentive for me to stay at his side. Health and profits have been Pelletier’s incentives to keep me there.
There have been times over the years, however, when Pelletier has been foolish enough to doubt my usefulness to him. He then becomes quite ill. And I then cure him once again, and his faith in me is restored. He has of late fallen prey to a stomach ailment for which I am most carefully treating him.
And now that he had told us all that he cared to, Mawuli gave us no opportunity to question him further, but left us rather abruptly and went for a stroll in the Green. I watched him amble down the shady path, paying no notice to the townspeople who stared after him.
“Well, he certainly has an original view of the world,” I remarked to Henry.
“He is a man sprung from Nature,” Henry said, “and his intimate knowledge of it has revealed to him truths and insights beyond most people’s comprehension. I do not doubt he has great power to affect those to whom he ministers.”
“His power comes from ignorance and superstition,” I said.
Henry smiled. “Ever the skeptic, Doctor.”
“Ever the man of science,” I replied. “I know from experience that if a patient believes in the efficacy of some particular treatment or pill or device, it can have a positive result. Why, just last month an elderly patient of mine who is suffering from the Consumption demonstrated this to me. When I placed my new ivory stethoscope, an instrument she had never before seen, to her chest to listen to her heartbeat, she declared that she felt a weight lifted from her lungs and asked why I had never given her this special treatment before. Her breathing actually eased, and her heartbeat dropped. But of course the effect was only temporary.”
“Even so
,” Henry said, “your example proves that our reality is a manifestation of our minds. Mawuli believes in his powers, and his perception is his reality. Hence, his power is real.”
“Do you think he truly saved Pelletier’s life with his mumbo jumbo?”
“I think his mumbo jumbo, as you call it, comes from deep within his being,” Henry said. “Mawuli’s intense study of Nature gave him a far better understanding of the laws that govern life than the study of musty books filled with secondhand knowledge gives us.”
“Such as the books I studied at Medical School?”
“I don’t mean to disparage your education, Adam. But my own experience at Harvard left much to be desired. There are far better ways to learn than by rote.”
“To be sure, hands-on experience is the best education for a doctor,” I said. “And I do not hold with treatments such as purgatives and blood-letting that those musty old medical books you refer to advocate. Medicine should move forward, not backward into the past. I predict great advancements will be made in the near future. It is beginning already. The use of ether in surgeries, for example. How I wished I’d had ether to administer to that poor Quaker when I cleaned and stitched up his wound.”
“That quack Quaker, you mean,” Henry said. “I posted a letter to the Friends’ pastor in Amesbury, but I need not wait for confirmation from him that Jerome Haven is not who he claims to be. I merely had to look at a clock. Come, I will show you.”
We went into the tavern entrance hall. There stood a tall teacher’s desk that held a guest registry book, a candle in a pewter holder, a steel dip pen, an inkstand, and a wooden mantel clock.
“Read the clock face,” Henry urged me.
I did so with a glance and then checked my pocket watch. “It is correct,” I pronounced.
“Not the time,” Henry said impatiently. “Read the writing on the dial.”
I looked at the area surrounded by the twelve Roman numerals. Therein the clockmaker’s name and place of business was written in script: Chauncey Jerome New Haven Conn.
Henry opened the book to Wednesday, May 17th and pointed to the one signature on the page: Jerome Haven. “Obviously an alias the Quaker imposter concocted by looking at the clock.”
“It does seem suspicious,” I said. “Did you compare this signature to the assassin’s handwriting in the letter?”
“Yes, of course,” Henry said. “They are not at all similar. But that doesn’t mean they were not written by the same hand. The penmanship could have been deliberately disguised either here in the registry or in the letter.”
“Or someone else could have written the letter for Haven,” I suggested, “if indeed he is the assassin.”
“The more I observe him, the more I suspect him,” Henry said. “He doesn’t come downstairs too often, and when he does he acts both nervous and restless. Whenever a stagecoach pulls up and passengers come in for refreshments, he slinks away. He went up to his chamber a few hours ago and has not left it since, but I cannot keep continuous watch. I have to look like I’m working once in a while.”
“How’s the job progressing?”
“As slowly as possible,” Henry said. “Building a dumbwaiter is a relatively easy project, but I want it to last for as long as Haven stays at the Sun. And when he leaves here, I intend to follow him. How much longer do you think it will take for his leg to mend well enough for him to travel?”
“That depends.”
Henry smiled. “You sound just like a doctor, Adam.”
“Well, the human body is a complicated organism. In fact, I think I’ll go check on Haven now. My main concern is infection setting in.”
I went up to Haven’s chamber and found him sound asleep, or more likely passed out. His breath stank of rum with every snore he respired and the telltale empty bottle lay on its side by the bed. I attempted to awaken him, and, when that proved impossible, I examined his wound without his damn permission. It was healing quite well. As I was reapplying the dressing the door creaked open, and Edda Ruggles peeked in. She saw me and quickly withdrew. When I left the room she was not in the hall.
I stopped by the taproom to ascertain what Sam Ruggles knew about Jacques Pelletier. Henry banged away in the storeroom below us whilst we chatted.
“So who is this important guest you are expecting tomorrow?” I asked Ruggles in an offhand manner.
“Edda and I call him the Mysterious Stranger, for his valet will not even tell us his name. All we know about him is that he is most particular about his food. Our Mysterious Stranger will eat nothing but beefsteak! He believes it the secret to longevity or some such nonsense. And it must be cooked bleu. I had no notion what that meant, but Edda did. In plain speak, he wants his steak very rare. And hark this, Adam. He must eat this near raw beefsteak four times a day. Morning, midday, late afternoon and midnight. Served with very strong coffee for the first two meals, and with claret for the last two. You think that sounds like a healthful diet, Doctor?”
“I have never heard the likes of it.”
“Our Mysterious Stranger must be a foreigner,” Ruggles said. “Of course every American man worth his salt likes a beefsteak now and then. But every meal, every day? Not for me. I say variety is the spice of life. Not in all things however. Certainly not in women.” He raised his index finger. “One woman is enough variety for me if her name be Edda Ruggles!”
I was spared another discourse from Sam on his wife’s many fine attributes when Shiloh Prouty came in, looking hangdog as usual. He was carrying a stack of handbills and placed one down on the bar. Depicted above the printed words was a silhouette drawing of a marching woman carrying a basket, the symbol of a female runaway.
“Will you kindly post this on the tavern’s notice board, sir?” he said.
Ruggles glanced at the handbill without touching it and shook his head. “I don’t post such notices, Mr. Prouty. And I doubt any other place of business in this town will either.”
“I hope you are wrong about that,” Prouty said, “for it has cost me the last coins in my pocket to get them printed.”
“Then how you going to pay the reward money you promise here?” Ruggles stabbed his finger at the handbill.
“I got that amount put in safekeeping. I won’t use it for nothing but to get Tansy back.”
“Not even to pay for your supper?”
“I reckon I won’t be eating supper no more,” Prouty replied and slumped off with his bundle of handbills.
Ruggles shook his head as he watched Prouty depart. “He’s sleeping for free in the barn, and now he can’t even pay for his vittles.”
“Since he can’t pay his way, you should send him on his way, Sam,” I said. “If Prouty hangs around here he might succeed in finding his slave. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”
“Of course not. And to my way of thinking, the longer Prouty sticks it out here, the less likely he is to find her.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Well, no one has seen hide nor hair of her, have they?” Ruggles said. “My guess is she must be well on her way to Canada by now. So if Prouty is under the delusion that she is close by, let him remain so.”
“I still say good riddance to him, Sam.”
“I just don’t have the heart to kick him out of the barn,” Ruggles said. “That poor son of a Southerner looks like he’s been kicked around enough in life.”
I considered telling Ruggles there and then where Tansy was and how Prouty’s persistent presence around town was keeping her in hiding. But along with his good heart and generous spirit, Sam Ruggles had a big mouth, and I wasn’t sure I could trust him to keep it shut concerning Tansy. He just gabbed with too many people day and night. Besides, even if he didn’t let something slip to a customer, he most likely would tell his wife where Tansy was hiding. And there was something about Edda Ruggles I didn’t trust.
When Ruggles went to the other end of the bar to serve a customer I slipped the handbill into my pock
et. I brought it to the house to show Julia. It enraged her beyond measure.
JULIA
Sunday, May 21
Tansy was sitting Indian-style on the makeshift bed reading the Bible she’d requested when I fetched up her breakfast this morning. She stood up in the cramped attic space, stretched her strong, solid body, and groaned. “My limbs are crying for locomotion,” she told me.
“Yes, I’m sure it must be very tiresome for you to be cooped up here day in and day out,” I said. “And I’m afraid you’ll have to keep even more still when my hired girl comes to do housework tomorrow. Molly has no reason to go up to the attic, but she will be in and out of the rooms right below you. She comes on Wednesday and Friday too.”
Tansy groaned again. “If I’m still stuck up here by Friday I am sure my poor joints will be ossified. I have half a mind to take a stroll out back when it gets dark.”
“I don’t think that would be prudent, Tansy. Especially now.”
She looked at me sharply. “Why especially now?”
I took the handbill from my pocket. I’d been reluctant to upset her with it but realized that she needed to be aware of the danger she was in. “Prouty has had a stack of these printed up, and he’s aiming to post them all over the area.”