Chains (15 page)

“Tell them I went north,” I gasped as I picked up my skirts and darted around the forge to the south.

The blacksmith called after me, but his words were lost in the din of the soldiers and the sailors who cluttered my path. The wind off the river cooled my face and helped with my decision. I would turn myself over to the rebels. I had helped them fair and square. Now it was their turn.

We were all fighting for liberty.

“Ad astra
!” I shouted. The words were not as magic as I had hoped, but the door eventually opened.

Colonel Regan was sitting in a chair, a white cloth around his neck, his face covered with foamy soap and his eyes closed. Behind him stood a barber, a slave, I assumed because of his African skin, with grizzled hair and an apron. On the table beside him stood a bowl of steaming water, a leather strop for blades, and a cup of lather with a brush in it. He turned the colonel's chin with one finger, then delicately shaved away a stripe of soap with a razor.

“By your leave, sir,” said the sentry.

“I am busy,” the colonel said, without opening his eyes.

“This girl knew the password, insisted on seeing you,” the sentry continued.

The barber scraped off another stripe of soap and whiskers. “Take her to Jamison,” the colonel said.

“No,” I said.

The barber froze in midshave, and the colonel opened his eyes.

“Please, sir, you must help me,” I said quickly. “As I once
helped you. She sold my sister. Please, sir, I'll do anything, just find Ruth, she's so small and—”

The door behind us opened. Two more sentries filed in, followed by Madam Lockton, breathing hard, and a tall gentleman I'd not seen before. My sentry waved me farther into the room so that the newcomers might all fit. I worked my way toward an open window.

“What is the meaning of this?” the colonel asked wearily.

Madam's voice cracked across the room. “Are you the man in charge?”

The colonel sighed deeply, waved off the barber, and stood up, his face still half-covered with soap. “Colonel Thomas Regan at your service, ma'am.” He bowed stiffly from the waist. “How can I be of service?”

“You have stolen my property,” Madam announced.

“We have several clerks assigned to record civilian concerns. My sergeant will show you—”

“I will not speak with subordinates or grubby clerks. That chit of a girl belongs to me, Colonel. She has committed terrible crimes and must be punished. I demand you return her to me.”

The barber rinsed the razor in the water bowl.

Regan looked from Madam to me and back again. “What did she do?”

“She abused me most violently, sir.”

The colonel put out his hand and the barber placed a clean towel in it. “Yet it is the girl with blood on her face,” the colonel said, wiping away the soap from his chin and cheeks.

Madam's eyes narrowed. “Give her to me.”

The sentries shifted their boots on the floor; one cleared
his throat. The gentleman who accompanied Madam stepped forward. “The law is quite clear on this matter, sir. None of us want to live in a world where servants rule their masters. Both the Parliament and the Congress give Madam Lockton rule over her slave.”

A flock of crows swooped past the window. A three-masted ship, sails unfurled, pushed down the river. Ruth could be on it. Or she was already at sea, in a dark hold with no candles. Who would feed her? Who would hold her when she shook?

“The girl says you've sold her sister,” Colonel Regan said.

“Do you mean to purchase Sal for the army?” Madam asked. “I'm sure she'd make a passing fine washwoman. I shall expect full payment, in cash.”

He handed the towel back to the barber. “A washwoman is the one thing I don't need right now. If you had any manservants capable of ditch digging, I'd take you up on the offer, but …” He paused and shook his head.

I looked out the window again. One crow had come back. It landed on a carcass near the water's edge—a dead dog or a rat. The crow pecked at the meat of the thing, snatched a pink strip in his beak, and tugged until the piece broke away. He beat his wings once, twice, and flew up in the air high enough to catch a breeze that rode him out over the water.

Another man had entered the room. The night of my first visit to the fort he had worn his uniform coat over his nightshirt. Now his coat was properly buttoned and his breeches tucked into his boots.

“Thomas, we cannot interfere,” he said. “This girl is not our concern. And you are late. We dare not keep him waiting.”

I looked out the window at the carcass. “Please, sir,” I said in a quiet voice. “Let me stay.”

Colonel Regan fastened his collar without looking at me. “The law binds my hands and my actions. You must return with your mistress,” he said, concentrating on his task. “Even during time of war, we must follow the rules of propriety and civilization.”

With that, the matter was concluded. Madam turned to thank the man who aided her. The sentries slipped into the hall. Colonel Regan picked up his hat from the table and set it on his head.

As I stepped toward the window, the barber studied me close. He shook his head once from side to side, just as Jenny had back in Rhode Island, one hundred years ago. Bad advice on both occasions.

I bolted for the open window.

I almost made it.

BUT AS IT IS, WE HAVE THE WOLF BY THE EAR, AND WE CAN NEITHER HOLD HIM, NOR SAFELY LET HIM GO. JUSTICE IS IN ONE SCALE, AND SELF-PRESERVATION IN THE OTHER. –THOMAS JEFFERSON, WRITING ABOUT SLAVERY

When I woke, the barrel of a gun was stuck up underneath my chin.

Men-voices shouted. Boots stomped. A rain of hands grabbed at me, countless bodies, smelly breath, unwashed feet. My head felt cracked in three pieces.

A woman shrieked and shrieked; she was a crow shattering the air with her harsh calls. I moved, not by my own devices. My toes dragged in the dirt. They tried to pull my arms from my body, ripping the arms off a cloth doll. They dragged me from one place to a second place.

More shouts. More shrieks and whistles and calls, rumbling thundervoices.

They dragged me from the second place to the third place, every voice sowing the wind, all things summoning the whirlwind that would sweep us all away to drown in the deepest sea.

My thoughts would not line up like good soldiers. They
swarmed afield and fled, chasing the blood that dripped from my head and stained my shift. My eyes were swold up and hard to see through. Someone had stolen a tooth or two.

They tied my hands together with prickly rope. They tied the rope to the back of a cart. They tied a horse to the front of the cart. The horse lifted one tired hoof after another and dragged the cart, and the cart dragged me up the broad street where people smiled and laughed and pointed. My eyes cast down. The cobblestones mocked too.

I tried to figure the whos and the whys of the matter, but my own name escaped me, and I knew only the pain in my head and the iron taste of lost teeth. My remembery broke into bits when they beat my head.

They took me to the dungeon under City Hall to await my trial. The jailer locked me in a cell with a toothless madwoman who huddled in the corner and spat at me. She pulled the hairs from her head and dropped them to the mud. She was near bald.

At sunset, the jailer came back with a cup of water and a piece of foul pork half the size of my hand. Dirty men in the other cells fought each other all night long.

On the second day we heard shouts and screams from the world above us, then came the boom and roar of cannons, followed by the crack of musket fire, and the sounds of hundreds of boots shaking the earth. Some prisoners hollered in panic and tried to pull their chains from the stone walls. The madwoman in my cell laughed and laughed, slapping her skirts.

At last the noise above ceased. The jailers threw buckets of cold water on the men who had lost their senses in fear.
They said for us to shut our gobs. The British had sailed their war ships up the North River and had fired on the town, but now all danger was past. Anyone who continued to blubber would feel the lash.

I said not a word.

The second night was same as the first, filled with moans and muttering, scratching, and the sound of teeth and claw. It rained. Water pooled on the floor and soaked through my shoes. Rats wandered in and out of the cells, squeezing their fat bottoms through the bars. I dared not sleep for fear they would bite me. The madwoman and the rats stayed in the corner, red eyes waiting for me all night long.

On the third morning, the jailer unlocked my cell and motioned for me to follow him. The madwoman laughed again.

He took me up the stairs to the courtroom. It was as big as the inside of a church, with the same white walls and dark wood. The windows were of clear glass, grimy with neglect. They stood me behind a rail. Kept my hands tied. I shook with fever and hunger.

“Oyez, oyez, oyez,” called a man in the shadows. He said more, but his words slurred together.

A tall man wearing black robes and a long wig sat at a table that was raised on a platform. He was a judge. This was a court. My head was broke and my sister was stole and I was lost.

The woman with the crow voice, her that threw the picture at me, stood up. I raised my head to look at her. Someone poked a stick into my ribs, hard, and hissed at me. I lowered my eyes.

Voices buzzed and blurred into words I did not understand. Lockton, I finally remembered. Lockton, Madam Lockton, her that bought us, her that stole Ruth away. I kept my head down, but lifted my eyes, tho' they pained me. The pain was good. It drew back the curtains of my mind and forced me to pay attention.

Madam was pretending to cry into her lace handkerchief. “… and I am but a poor woman, alone, my husband having fled for reasons I cannot comprehend. I plead with Your Honor to assist me in the correct punishment of this girl.”

The judge frowned and asked questions of two officers who stood near Madam. I wanted to ask about Ruth, and where the blood on my shift came from, and who broke my teeth, but I was the only person in the room whose hands were tied, so I kept silent. Questions were asked of the incident. Lies were given as answers.

Finally the judge said, “Where is the housekeeper who saw this crime, Missus Lockton?”

“Becky is indisposed, sir,” Madam answered. “She suffers the ague.”

“Are there no other witnesses to the events you describe?”

A stranger stood up in the back of the room. “I was passing in the street, Your Honor,” he said. “I heard the commotion, saw the girl fleeing, and observed the destruction myself.”

“There are several other people of standing willing to testify, Your Honor,” Madam added. Her tears had mysteriously vanished.

The judge used the end of his quill to scratch at an itch under his wig. “It is clear that this slave has violated the person of her master, destroyed valuable property, and attempted to run away, all contrary to the laws of our colony.”

“State, Your Honor,” reminded the lawyer. “We are a state, now. Independence and all that.”

The judge rolled his eyes. “Colony. State. Who knows what we will be next?” He sighed deeply. “No matter. This girl's crimes of insolence, property destruction, and running away from her rightful owner are not devious enough to warrant a sentence of death. Do you have any wishes as to the punishment that I should consider, Missus Lockton?”

Madam sighed deeply, like my behavior caused her great sadness. “She is a willful girl, Your Honor, with numerous character defects. I believe a permanent reminder of this day might prove the appropriate remedy.”

Her words stuck in the air, like flies caught in a spider's web. I could make no sense of them. I could make no sense of anything.

The judge scratched at his wig with fresh vigor. “You wanted her branded then? Twenty strokes of the lash would be more in keeping with her crimes.”

“We are now led by men from Virginia, I am told,” she said, “land of my birth. I assure Your Honor that in Virginia, we do not tolerate the rebellion of slaves.”

The judge nodded. “Once kindled, rebellion can spread like wildfire. Do you want your husband's initials used?”

Madam shot a sideways glance at me. “I prefer the girl branded with the letter
I
for ‘Insolence.' It will alert people to her tendencies and serve as a reminder of her weakness.”

The judge picked up his gavel. “So be it. Sal Lockton, it is the order of this court that you be branded on your right cheek with the letter of
I
in punishment for your crimes against your lady mistress.”

Crack!
The gavel cracked on the block of wood. “Next case.”

I ALSO HAVE BEEN WHIPPED MANY A TIME ON MY NAKED SKIN, AND SOMETIMES TILL THE BLOOD HAS RUN DOWN OVER MY WAISTBAND; BUT THE GREATEST GRIEF I THEN HAD WAS TO SEE THEM WHIP MY MOTHER, AND TO HEAR HER, ON HER KNEES, BEGGING FOR MERCY… –REV. DAVID GEORGE, ON HIS CHILDHOOD AS A SLAVE

A man pulled me by my rope outside to the courtyard. After two days in the dungeon, the noonday sun scalded my eyes. I stumbled but did not fall. The man led me to the stocks, then untied my hands and pointed. I laid my head and hands in the crescents carved into the wood. He lowered the top board, pinning me in place, and secured the two pieces together with a large padlock.

A brazier filled with hot coals set on the ground a few lengths in front of me. A second man stuck two branding irons into the metal basket to heat them up.

My knees turned to water. I sagged against the wood.

“Stand up, girl, or you'll choke yourself,” growled the man locked into the stocks to my left. I couldn't turn my head enough to see him, but his voice was rough and scarred. “Whatever you do, don't scream,” he continued. “That's what they want to hear.”