The Abolitionist's Daughter

by Diane C. McPhail

  “Never had none. Served it before. I been a house gal, but never had nothing except molasses myself. Has you, Nathan?”

  “Had a little honey once,” he said, grinning. Jessie bit into the biscuit.

  Rapid hoofbeats clipped the air.

  “That’d be Dr. Slate,” Ginny said, rising.

  * * *

  Taking the reins, Benjamin motioned the doctor toward the porch. Charles Slate, ash-brown hair disheveled, mounted the steps two at a time. “Understand you have a patient here,” he said to Ginny. His dark hazel eyes rested on Nathan. “What’s your name?” Slate gave Jessie a penetrating side glance.

  “Nathan, sir.”

  “Well, Nathan, finish your breakfast while I speak to the judge.” He beckoned to Ginny. “Get me some lint for bandages. I’ll need a good bit. And linen for a sling. Give that man a shot of whiskey. No, several.” He looked around for a likely place to examine the injury. “And make me some fresh coffee. Where’s your master, Ginny?”

  In his study Judge Matthews looked up from his conversation with Emily as Slate knocked on the doorframe and entered without pausing. He straightened and stepped forward.

  “Dr. Slate, this is my daughter, Emily,” Judge Matthews said, half blocking the space between them. Extending her hand, Emily curtsied to the doctor and took her father’s arm. He kissed her cheek and nodded toward the door. Though slow to withdraw her hand, she obeyed her father’s silent bidding and exited. Charles stared after her, taking in the hay-colored hair, the narrow waist, and swaying hoops. The judge cleared his throat and said, “You see my new man?”

  “Yes, sir. Looks right ashen.” Slate swiveled, his eyes on the empty door where Emily had parted. “What happened?”

  Judge Matthews stepped across the carpet and stood with his back to the door, as if to shield even the vanished shadow of his daughter from Charles’s gaze. He focused on the issue at hand. “Man was posted for auction this morning. Without his family.” He cleared his throat. “I made Conklin an offer for the lot of them, and McCabe delivered them earlier. Obviously not in the condition the man would have been for auction.”

  “First glance, I’d say he’s likely to have a bad break. Woman doesn’t look so good, either.”

  “McCabe claimed the man fell off his porch drunk in the night.”

  “I reckon it’s a possibility, Judge. But I expect Conklin keeps tight control over there. So McCabe claimed he’s a drunkard? Feat for a slave to get his hands on enough liquor for that.”

  “That’s what he said. I find it unlikely. I’d say Conklin’s control on alcohol might be selective.” The judge returned to his desk and straightened some papers. “Convenient timing. Conklin wasn’t keen on selling the woman and children. My offer was fair and for the lot only.”

  “Buck looks strong. Eye will heal, I warrant. Shame about the arm. If it’s broken, it might be two, three months that he’ll be no good to you around here.” Charles hesitated. “Don’t know as I’d trust Conklin, Judge Matthews. But he’s a friend of Jeremiah, isn’t he? Be that as it may, the man has a vicious streak. I hear tales and I’ve seen enough evidence myself. Shame he had to rough up a good nigger to get at you.”

  Judge Matthews’s face hardened. “Yes, a good Negro man. See what you can do.”

  “Well, let me go see what we’re looking at here,” Charles said. “Are you coming, sir? You may want to know the condition of your merchandise.”

  “That would be wise.” Judge Matthews stared after him, shut the drawer of his desk, and locked it, pocketing the key.

  Out on the porch, Charles straddled a bench. He took Nathan’s injured arm in his hands, his hold strong and precise, fingers deft. Charles studied the man as he manipulated the arm slightly, one way and then the other. The slave’s face was taut, the mahogany color drained. As Charles rotated the arm another fraction, a constricted groan escaped the man’s throat, though his expression did not change. Charles supported the arm in one hand and with the other pulled down the lower lid of Nathan’s uninjured eye. What should have been a robust rose was the color of putty. He pulled open the man’s lower lip. The same deep gray. Charles palpated the swollen, purple flesh of Nathan’s arm, avoiding the open wounds, which appeared superficial. Midway of shoulder and elbow, he probed. As another deep groan surfaced, Jessie’s head jerked up in alarm.

  “Arm’s broke bad,” Charles said. “Ginny, I’ll need—no, wait. Put a big pot of water to boil. And go fetch Benjamin.”

  Charles scraped back his chair and motioned to the judge. The two men kept their eyes on the ground as they strode to the rear fence. The judge waited. Charles spit and cracked his knuckles.

  “Well, Judge, here it is,” Charles said. “I can do nothing, put him in a sling, and it will heal maimed, somewhat useless, and likely painful from here on out. I can amputate. Don’t need to expound on that one. Or I can set it, splint, and starch it. It’ll take a couple of hours to do and overnight to dry. Healing, if it can, will take a good eight weeks or more. Can’t be gotten wet or the lint’ll come undone. Like washing the starch out of a petticoat. And I can’t guarantee the arm’ll be good afterward. Don’t know how much more investment you want to make here.”

  “There’s no decision to be made, Charles. Set the man’s arm and splint it. Let me know when you’re finished.”

  The judge strode back to the house. At least the doctor was competent and apparently cared, despite his derogatory language—and the questionable amount of time his horse spent tied in front of the brothel. The judge nodded to the slaves as he passed through the porch. He was displeased to see Emily standing in the shadows with Ginny and Samantha. Benjamin had joined the group and nodded back.

  “Benjamin,” Charles said, entering the porch. He hesitated when he, too, spied Emily, then proceeded briskly. “I need a piece of wood the length of this man’s upper arm and a piece of leather strapping. Then I want you to carve me out another piece to fit around the back when I close it up with the bandages and starch. Come here and get the feel of this arm up and down. Whittle me out a piece as close to fit as you can. And not so thin the wood might be apt to break.”

  “Ginny,” Charles said, “show this family whatever cabin they’ll be occupying. And get back quick now. I need you.”

  Judge Matthews nodded and held out his hand for his daughter to come into the house with him.

  “Yes, sir,” Ginny said. “Come on, young’uns, and bring your mama with you. Hop to it, now.” She herded mother and children through the tree-lined path to the quarters and into the first of three vacant cabins. “They’s bedding already here,” Ginny said. “You may want to lay it over the fence, air it out in the sun a bit. The well’s thataway and outhouse yonder. Cooking shed between here and the big house. You need anything, you find me or Benjamin. Right now, you see to the bedding and send these childrens up the lane to Auntie Mag, last cabin this row. Make them some friends here. Maybe even learn them some letters.”

  The door creaked as Ginny left the woman and her children alone. Jessie sat on the mattress. The children curled themselves over her knees, one on each side, heads in her lap, tapping their fingers on one another’s arms.

  CHAPTER 3

  Days passed in the way days tend to do. Emily worried some over Nathan’s arm, but contented herself with having kept a family together. The heat clung to everything with an unrelenting dampness. Seeking some relief from the stifling afternoon, Emily entered the library to find Ginny engrossed in one of the many books collected there, by both the judge and her mother, who by all accounts had been an avid reader. Emily loved to come upon Ginny reading and felt a surge of gratitude to her father for including Ginny in their household tutoring, for setting up a school for all his slaves in spite of their education being illegal. Emily tilted the corner of the book to see the title: Jane Eyre, one of her childhood favorites. She identified with the orphan girl and remembered weeping inconsolably at the death of Jane’s only friend, Helen.


  “What do you think of it, Ginny?”

  “I think I wished I knew a woman that strong.” Ginny laid the book aside and picked up the feather duster. “I think I wished I was one.”

  “Yes, I wish the same. Now leave that, Ginny. Take some time to read.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m gone finish up this here library right now. I gots a heap to get done today.”

  Emily studied Ginny’s back for a moment. “Ginny,” she said, “there is something I keep wondering about and maybe now is the time to ask. You studied with me, with my tutor. You spent most of your life in this house. Why do you not speak correctly?”

  Ginny took several swipes at a high shelf before answering. She lowered the duster and turned. “Yes, Miss Emily, I have studied and I have learned almost everything that you have, though I began somewhat later than you did. Was that correct enough?” She turned and pushed the duster into the back of a shelf.

  “Yes, of course, Ginny. I know you can speak as well as I do, and yet you persist in speaking the slave dialect.”

  “And do you know what speaking as well as I know how to, as well as you do, speaking better than lots of white folks around here, would make me? An ‘uppity nigger,’ that’s what. Do you know what happens to ‘uppity niggers’ around here, especially women? Rape? Lashings? Things you couldn’t protect me from in spite of owning me.”

  “I’m sorry, Ginny. I didn’t mean—” Emily stumbled on her words. “What I mean is your education makes you special. You shouldn’t waste it.”

  Ginny pulled the duster through her other hand and shook her head. “No, Miss Emily, I ain’t special. I tell you who special. Them black folk breaking they backs out there in the sun trying to make a life for themselves out of leftovers, they the folk who special.” Ginny straightened to her full height and laid the duster beside the closed book. “Education does not make a person special,” she said, her face clear and open. “Courage and fortitude and perseverance, self-denial, and any number of other admirable qualities, like Jane Eyre, like your papa going up against slavery—those things make a person special. And as to dialect, I don’t know what that is. I do know this. What I am speaking so correctly now is ‘white’ dialect. It sets me apart from my own and I choose not to be set apart. What we speak is a language, black language, slave language, one forged out of the most impossible conditions: seized from all parts of Africa, speaking hundreds of different languages, unable to understand even one another, chained up by slavers speaking multiple other languages. And out of that, Miss Emily, these tortured people made a way to communicate with one another and with their enslavers. That is history you have not studied in your books. And those are my people whose language I will not dishonor by failing to speak it. You asked me plain out, Miss Emily, and I answer you plain out. And I ain’t saying nothing about that subject again.”

  Ginny returned Jane Eyre to the shelf, picked up the duster, and left Emily alone in the room full of books.

  CHAPTER 4

  At the edge of the swirling dancers, Emily buried her hands deep in the pockets of her green gown, her fingers worrying at some dry seeds she had picked up somewhere along the way. Around her the dancers circled, clapped, changed partners, tapped their feet as the fiddler wove his spell. Emily did not dance, though she wanted to, longed to, even, and found her toes tapping under her hoops whenever there was music. As a young girl, occupied with the grief of her motherless upbringing, she had deemed herself clumsy. Her father tried to teach her the steps, but she never found them natural—too much counting and concentration on left and right. Nor was Emily at ease in conversation, except in her family; even there she often kept her thoughts to herself. Social events were a self-conscious agony to her. However, her widowed father insisted on attending, hoping somehow that social exposure would make up the deficit.

  Now Emily lifted her gaze to the gangly fellow who pranced through the line of dancers with one of the Sutton girls on his arm. Here was her younger brother, Jeremiah, all mouth and legs, same as on his horse or in the field, and even at his studies, prone to blurting out whatever came to mind. He moved incessantly, prone even in sleep to toss and jerk. Perhaps juggling his mother’s death like an endlessly burning coal. Emily turned away from the current of dancers, seeking refuge by the door, ajar to the cool night air.

  At the door, Emily’s elder brother, Will, was speaking intently with Michael Lambert, who smiled and nodded to her. She knew Mr. Lambert as kind, a quiet man, one of a pair of old bachelor brothers working their homestead together. Emily returned the nod, but hesitated, unwilling either to be drawn into conversation or to turn back toward the undertow of dancers.

  Emily sensed Will’s brooding. Bereft since the death of his wife, Fran, and their infant boy, he had never recovered himself. Lately, however, Belinda Slate, the doctor’s sister and a school friend of Emily’s, had charmed him with her excess of senseless exuberance. Her lighthearted, effusive babble had raised Will’s spirits, given him hope. In that momentary hope, he had posted a letter proposing marriage on her graduation, only to be answered by an inexplicable silence. Now he brooded incessantly. Emily nodded again at Mr. Lambert and returned her attention to Jeremiah, cavorting down the line again, so forward, so lacking limits.

  From behind her, a man spoke. “A special evening, Miss Matthews. Leaving so soon?”

  Emily startled. The voice had laughter in it, quiet like a whispered secret in her ear. She turned. Stylishly dressed in a double-breasted black frock coat, the man stood mid-height, tan and muscled like a man of the field, yet somehow not. Emily knew she should recognize him, but no name came to her aid.

  “Charles,” he said, relieving her. “Charles Slate, Miss Matthews. I’m Belinda’s older brother.”

  “Ah, yes, Dr. Slate,” she said. “You treated my father’s new slave. I do remember. I was distracted. I beg your pardon.” She did not offer him her hand, guarded in her pocket, working the little seeds. Belinda’s often unflattering gossip about her brother’s exploits with women flitted through Emily’s mind. But she gave credence only to bits of Belinda’s endless tales.

  “I’ve not seen you on the floor tonight, Miss Matthews. Are you saving up your dances for some absent partner, lucky man?”

  “No, Dr. Slate, I just—” Emily faltered. “Well, I’ve no knack for it, you see.”

  “Well, that can be remedied, much like a chill or a fever. Perhaps you’ll allow me to judge the temperature of your dancing?” He held out his hand, but she shrugged, losing hold of the seeds as she flattened her hands in her pockets. “Come now, Miss Matthews, I’m sure there’s a cure for this. And equally sure, I might be the one to have it.”

  Emily raised her eyes, and her hand. Inside something unfamiliar stirred, like pangs of early hunger before breakfast.

  “I thank you, Dr. Slate,” she said, so softly he had to lean forward to hear over the music and stamping feet. “I am most inept. I shouldn’t want to shame you on the floor.”

  “A highly unlikely outcome, Miss Matthews. Highly unlikely.” He took her hand and stepped onto the floor. They were immediately absorbed into the whirling crowd and he guided her skillfully, so that her steps hardly mattered. Emily laughed at her missteps. It was a short venture. The music stopped and he led her back to the bench. “May I fetch a glass of punch and sit beside you here? Watching this crowd is entertainment in itself. It’s a marvel how old Widow Jones keeps up with that young Darrell Snow! Dancing him right into the floor, she is. You wait here in the fresh air and don’t be dancing off with someone else, now.”

  Emily sat rolling the seeds at the tips of her fingers until Charles returned with the punch. She drew her right hand from its hiding place and took the cup, careful not to touch his hand as she did. She was grateful for the focus of the cup. She raised her eyes at the laughter that filled the interval between the last note of the fiddle and the first of the banjo beginning another round.

  Charles settled beside her on the bench, leaving sp
ace for only her hoops between them. He stretched his legs out in front with his back against the wall. Less than gentlemanly, Emily thought. He made no effort to elicit conversation. Under his breath, Charles hummed the tunes, sang a word or two, off-key.

  “You’re beautiful, you know,” he said, without turning his head toward her.

  Emily lowered the cup. A dark seed that had stuck to her thumb dropped into the green silk of her lap. She brushed it away, but it caught in the ruffles of her skirt.

  Charles rubbed the toes of his seamless riding boots together, then planted them flat on the floor, his hands on his knees. Emily marked the neatness of his striped trousers and the cleanliness of his nails. Like my father, she thought.

  “Yes, beautiful,” Charles said. “Just so you know.”

  The caller announced, “Last dance.” The fiddler struck the pace. Charles stood and bowed ever so slightly.

  “Good night, Miss Matthews,” he said. “I plan to have you dancing every tune. And don’t forget to plant those seeds. I’ve seen things sprout and grow even after much neglect.”

  Emily blushed that he had seen, had caught her tension out, but she raised her face and said, “Yes, Dr. Slate. I expect you are correct. Good night.”

  She sat a few minutes more, then rose when her father came toward her.

  “Two Slate courtships with my children?” he said. “Hardly what I envisioned for either of you. However, Belinda seems to have lost interest. Erratic and flighty, that girl, even if she is your friend. I’m grateful that Will has been introduced to Lucinda Morris, who seems thoroughly solid and willing, though he doesn’t appear much cheered from the looks of his face tonight.” He offered his elbow to escort her home. “Be careful with yourself, Emily. Though he is a good doctor, I have my misgivings about Dr. Slate. I believe he may be a bit too practiced at how to put himself forward.”

  * * *

  A week later, Charles Slate dismounted his sorrel and handed the reins to Benjamin, who had stepped out from a nearby shed at the sound of the approaching horse. Benjamin wrapped the reins around his wide hand and smiled at the profusion of flowers arching across the doctor’s arm.