High on a Mountain (25 page)

A large, white building sat in the middle of
a field of mown grass. Wide steps led from the grassy expanse to a
platform which stretched across the front of the building from one
side to the other. A railing was built along the edge of the
platform, and the roof of the house extended over it.

Green bushes, dotted with white flowers, grew
around the base of the building, and tall trees with large, glossy
leaves and a scattering of huge creamy blossoms flanked it. Strange
trees with gray beards hanging from their spreading branches
surrounded the field. A sweet perfume hung in the air and wafted to
Ailean on a cooling breeze. He closed his eyes and breathed
deeply.

James got the men seated on the bed of the
wagon, climbed onto the driver’s seat in front and picked up the
reins. He clucked to the horses, and the wagon rolled forward. It
followed a dirt track away from the open field into a passage
bordered with a thick growth of tall trees. Shortly, it emerged
into a cleared area with a cluster of small houses arranged along
both sides of the lane. At the end of it stood a long, low
building. James stopped the wagon in front of the structure and
jumped down.

He directed the men to get off the wagon and
led them into the building. Wooden cots lined the walls and bars
covered the open windows. James indicated to the men, using signs
as well as words, that they should sit on the floor in the middle
of the room. After all of them were seated, he went to the door and
gave instructions to someone outside.

Presently, two black women entered. One
carried an iron pot, and the other carried stacks of bowls on a
tray. James handed a bowl to each man. He dipped a thick, aromatic
stew from the pot and ladled some into each bowl.

Ailean raised his bowl to his mouth and
sipped. It was the first food he’d eaten other than the bread and
occasional thin gruel he received while he was imprisoned in
Inveraray and transported on the ship. It tasted good, although
different from anything he’d ever eaten.

But after a few bites, the richness of the
stew made his stomach cramp, and waves of nausea pushed what he’d
swallowed into his throat. He set his bowl on the plank floor and
struggled to overcome his queasiness. Tòmas Camshron, seated to his
left, drank his own stew and licked his lips.

“If you’re not going to eat yours,
MacLachlainn, I’d like to have it,” he said to Ailean.

“I can’t eat any more,” Ailean told him. “If
you can, you’re welcome to it.”

Tòmas picked up Ailean’s bowl, and James
spoke firmly to him. “No. Eat your own.” He gestured for Tòmas to
put it down.

Tòmas set the bowl on the floor and glared at
James, who stepped in front of Ailean.

“Eat,” James said.

Ailean looked up at James, rubbed his
emaciated stomach, shaking his head. “Tell him I can’t eat it,”
Ailean said to Ruairidh. “Tell him I feel sick.”

Ruairidh told James what Ailean said. James
replied, and Ruairidh relayed the orders to Ailean, “He says to eat
a little at a time, but you have to eat it all.”

As the evening wore on, Ruairidh provided the
means of communication between James and other Highlanders.

James kept the men seated on the floor until
all of them emptied their bowls. The two women took the dishes away
and brought bundles of clothing. James handed each man a shirt and
a pair of
triubhas
, like the
Sasunnach
wore. He spoke
to Ruairidh, who conveyed James’s instructions: put on the clothes
and throw their rags into a pile.

Ailean had never worn
triubhas
. He
took off what was left of his tunic, put on the shirt and then
struggled to get his legs into the
triubhas
. He stood to
pull them up to his waist. They were so big they fell to his ankles
when he let go.

James threw back his head and laughed. He
left the room and returned with a handful of cords. He handed one
to each man.

“Here. Tie your pants up around your waist,”
he said, and demonstrated what he expected them to do.

Ailean tied the pants in place and started to
put what was left of his tunic onto the heap of rags but hesitated.
He fingered the fabric, remembering that Mùirne had spun the wool
for his tunic with her own hands. It was the last remnant of his
life with her. He tore a piece from the tunic, kissed it, and
tucked it at his waist next to his skin, behind the cord-tied
triubhas
. He dropped the remainder onto the mound of
tattered cloth.

After they dressed, James assigned each man a
cot and told them to go to bed. They lay on their cots, and James
left the room. He closed the door, and Ailean heard the metallic
click of a key turning in a lock.

He fell asleep immediately, stretched out on
a bed for the first time in almost a year. In spite of the
strangeness of his surroundings, the warmth of being fully clothed
and the comfort of a full stomach lulled him into a deep sleep.

Before sunrise, James and the two women came
with food and woke the men. James allowed them to sit on their cots
to eat the morning meal. One of the women handed Ailean a bowl of
white mush. It was different from anything Ailean had seen or
tasted, and the piece of bread she gave him was also foreign. But
he ate his entire meal without stopping, and he felt
strengthened.

James talked with Ruairidh and waited with
his arms crossed while Ruairidh translated his words.

“We are to go to the fields and observe how
the work is done. Then we will come back here, eat again and rest
so we will grow stronger. Tomorrow, we will begin to work in the
fields alongside the other slaves.”

“Other slaves? Are you saying we are slaves?”
asked Seumas Mac’Ill’Eathainn.

Ruairidh looked around the group, from one
man to the next, before answering.

“Aye. We are slaves. Now listen to me. James
says we will be allowed to work unfettered if we cooperate. But if
any man causes trouble, he will be whipped and shackled again.”

Ailean regarded his own raw, scarred wrists
and ankles.

“He says it is better to obey,” Ruairidh
continued. “There is no escape. If anyone tries to run away, he
will be caught and punished…severely.” He fell silent, a grim look
on his face.

____________

Ailean recovered his physical health and
strength over the next several weeks. The hot sun transformed his
sickly pallor into a healthy bronze and bleached red and yellow
streaks in his hair again. Abundant food put flesh on his emaciated
frame. And hard work in the rice fields toned his flaccid muscles
which had wasted away during his imprisonment in Scotland and the
voyage to the colonies. But nothing seemed able to revive his dead
spirit.

Ailean didn’t care what happened to him, nor
did it matter to him that he had to take orders and perform the
kinds of menial tasks that women had always done in the Highlands,
tasks he would once have chafed at. He performed them all woodenly,
submissive and docile, not from a desire to be obedient, but from
the lack of a sense of self. It was as if he had died with Mùirne,
and only his physical body still existed, without the animating
spark of life, without Ailean himself inside the fleshly husk.

At times when he was bone-tired, he wanted to
shirk his duty, wanted to do a half-hearted job of whatever he’d
been told to do. But at those times, a faint voice echoed through
his mind from the past:
“A man doesn’t leave his work for others
to do. Not if he’s any kind of an honorable man.”

Somehow, through the deadness, through the
sameness of each hour, each day, Da and his admonitions still held
sway. Ailean needed to please a father who no longer could see him,
who could no longer approve or disapprove of his actions.

And so, as days passed in their monotony, one
by one, Ailean exerted himself more, tried to do more, tried to do
better. Tried to be an honorable man. For Da.

____________

The slaves worked their way methodically
across the field, hoeing weeds from around the small rice plants.
Ailean was grateful for the hard work. The mindless physical
exertion used up his energy by the end of each day and left him
tired. Too tired to think, remember and suffer. All he had to be
concerned about was the next spot where he would sink his hoe into
the soft, moist ground.

Some of the men had not adjusted to their
plight. Tòmas Camshron’s face wore a perpetually angry and
rebellious expression. Ruairidh scowled whenever James ordered him
to go back and rework a row he hadn’t fully cleared of weeds.
Ruairidh, who had been the chief’s tacksman and had given orders to
other men, displayed resentment at being in a subservient role
himself.

One overseer, a white man, armed with a
musket, stood guard over the Highlanders as they worked. He told
Ruairidh he had orders to shoot any white slave who disobeyed or
presented a problem.

“Only the white slaves, not the black ones?
Why?” Tòmas Camshron asked.

“Because, the black slaves are valuable, he
says. We are not.” Ruairidh paused. “And he says we are
dangerous.”

Several times each day, a young woman brought
a bucket of water to give the field hands a drink. Ruairidh noticed
that the white overseer leered at the woman as she traversed the
field, proceeding from worker to worker, dipping water for them
with a gourd. And the young woman apparently welcomed the interest
of the overseer. Her movements became slow and sensuous when she
passed the platform where he stood, and she smiled at the overseer
seductively when she handed him the gourd.

“Yeah,” James said when he saw Ruairidh had
taken notice. “They’s billing and cooing at one another like doves.
Been going on for a while.”

“Are they married?”

“No, they ain’t married.”

“The master allows such behavior between
unmarried people?”

“He don’t know about it. Ain’t nobody going
to tell him, neither.”

The sun hung low in the western sky when
James rang the bell to signal the end of the work day, and the
slaves began the long walk back to their houses.

The black slaves had their own homes in the
slave village where they lived with their families, but the
Highlanders stayed in the barracks when they weren’t working in the
fields. Ruairidh learned from James that all new slaves were
strictly supervised: under lock and key in the barracks at night
and under armed guard during the day until they adjusted to life on
the plantation. James himself had never been locked in. He was born
on the plantation. It was home to him.

But Hadley Hollingsworth deemed the
Highlanders a threat. They were barbarians, too dangerous to be
allowed to live a normal life in the slave village with the other
slaves. He told James to keep them in the barracks.

Permanently.

THIRTY-ONE

His father grew indigo when he first came to
the colony, but Hadley Hollingsworth, like most other planters in
the area around George Town, began planting rice as well. Growing
rice proved to be lucrative, and rice planters were becoming
wealthy. Hadley wanted to be one of those wealthy planters.

The acreage along the river couldn’t be used
for other purposes, but it was ideal for cultivating rice. And the
swampy areas where stands of cypress and gum trees flourished could
be cleared and made into productive rice fields. Hadley wanted as
many acres of his plantation as possible put into cultivation.

When the rice plants were of sufficient size
that the fields could be flooded, the slaves no longer had to hoe
and weed the fields. Most of the black slaves were employed in
growing and processing indigo during that time, but some of them,
and all of the Highlanders, were set to work clearing more acreage
for rice growing.

Black slaves chopped the trees down with axes
and saws, removed the branches and cut the tree trunks into pieces.
Some of the Highlanders stacked the wood on sledges to be hauled to
the slave village for firewood. Others were set to work grubbing
the stumps and roots from the ground. It was heavy, grueling work
and the weather was hot and humid, like nothing the Highlanders had
ever experienced. They made piles of the roots, branches and other
unusable debris and burned them, the heat from the fires adding to
the scorching heat from the mid-summer sun.

Logs and limbs from trees which had been cut
the previous year still lay where they had fallen. James cautioned
the men to be careful as they started working to clear the older
piles of wood and detritus.

“They’s poison snakes’ll bite and kill you.
They hide up under logs and such,” he told them. “Look before you
go to pick up them old pieces. And don’t never step across a log
without you look first, make sure no snake be hiding under it.”

On the second day of work clearing the field,
Ailean, Ruairidh and Tòmas were given the task of digging up a
large stump.

They worked almost an hour when Ailean
noticed that Ruairidh’s face was flushed a mottled red from the
heat. The older man appeared to be losing strength. Each time he
hefted the pickaxe to his shoulder and swung it into the earth, his
arms trembled. And each swing was slower and weaker than the
last.

“Stop, Ruairidh.”

Ruairidh continued the motion of lift,
breathe, drop.

“I said ‘stop,’” Ailean insisted.

Ruairidh lowered the head of the pick to the
ground, leaned on the handle and rested.

“Give me the pickaxe.” Ailean took the handle
from Ruairidh’s hands.

Ailean raised it and swung it down. It landed
with a thunk, embedded in the earth surrounding the stump.

“But I have to be working. We’ll both be in
trouble if they see I’m not at work with the pickaxe.” Ruairidh
scanned the field, and his gaze came to rest on the guard. The
overseer’s attention was fixed on a group of men who had hitched a
mule to a stump. One man urged the mule forward while others used
poles to pry the stump from the ground.