Or Give Me Death (17 page)

"Whether there are uprisings or not, the powder belongs to the people, not to the government," Pa said.

It was enough. We all knew that now there would be trouble.

Pa insisted we all go about our regular business. For two days he went quietly about the house, studying papers he'd brought home from Richmond, reading his law briefs, riding out to see the spring fields, meeting with men callers in the traveler's room.

Then, on the third night after the governor seized the gunpowder, Pa and the boys left to join the Hanover Volunteers.

The citizens were assembling on the town green in Williamsburg, armed and fearful. And the governor was threatening to free the Negroes.

***

I
N THE WEEK
that followed, we found out about the war starting up north at Lexington and Concord.

Their war had started before ours. And we had Pa, speechifying.

The week after that, Patsy became terrified. Not of the war. Of our Negroes.

She refused to eat anything until Pegg tasted it first. "They're going to poison us," she said.

Betsy started to cry. Patsy scolded her and, for lack of anything better to call her, said she was a sissy boots. Edward, who was four now and said everything, told Patsy he wanted his morning hominy.

"Pegg has to taste it first," she said. "Wait."

"Want it now!" Edward banged a pewter spoon on the table.

Edward was the darling of the household, and he knew it. He was a cunning child, with his straw-blond hair, his peach-white skin, his smiling blue eyes, and his delicate ears that added to his fairy-child-like appearance.

Patsy slapped his hand, then pulled him off the chair and slapped his bottom. "No breakfast for you."

Edward commenced to wail.

"Don't hit him!" Will scolded. Will was taller than Patsy already, well onto becoming a young man and commissioned by Pa to be head of the household with the other men gone. But he was no match for Patsy.

"Hush. I'm head of this family," she snapped.

I got up and took Edward and Betsy by the hands.

"Where are you going?" Patsy demanded.

"To the kitchen. To have breakfast in peace with the children."

"Don't you dare take those children to the kitchen! Pegg will poison them!"

I left the room. So did Will.

"You hear me?" she yelled.

All I heard was her. Sounding like Mama.

***

I
PULLED THE
children outside. Spring had been with us for a fortnight, and nobody had paid mind. Trees were in bloom, crops already growing, new lambs and colts in the fields. If I were spring, I thought, and I got myself all gussied up for these people, I'd pack up and leave soon's I got here.

Edward was still sobbing, and I knelt down next to him. "Don't cry," I said. "Pegg will give us breakfast."

He stood wiping his tears. Then he pointed up to the sky. "I want Mama," he said.

I hugged him tightly. His little body responded. And I said, "Edward, I shall always protect you; please don't cry."

It worked. He and Betsy ran toward the kitchen. But I was crying now instead.

***

I
N THE DETACHED
kitchen,
I
did not see the cowed figure in the corner at first. I saw only Pegg and the children running to her, she sitting them down at the old wooden table and pouring them bowls of hominy and honey and milk. She set a bowl in front of me, too. I was about to put the first spoonful in my mouth when I heard the whimper.

"I's hungry, Pegg. Why cain't I eat?"

And there, cowering under a blanket in the far corner, I saw a slight Negro girl I did not recognize.

"Who?" I asked Pegg, but she put her finger to her lips and shook her head. "Hush now." But the children had already seen her and turned to stare.

"You all promise not to tell Neely be here?" Pegg knelt down beside Edward and Betsy. "Can't let Patsy know."

Neely! The girl I'd written my letter to the
Gazette
for! The girl who was always running off, whose master beat her.

I wondered where Will had gone, then minded that he was also to take care of John's horses.

I stared at the girl, but she was hidden in a blanket the color of old mushrooms.

"They won't tell," I assured Pegg. "But why is she here? I spoke to Pa about her master. And he said the burgesses gave Mr. Estave warning."

"Yeah, well, they didn't warn him enough, did they?" She motioned to Neely to get up, and the brown mushroom turned into a comely girl, who stood, shakily.

She had a round, pretty face. Her dress was of good fabric but torn. Her eyes were like lanterns in a storm, the light in them going off and on. She shied from me.

"He beat her ag'in," Pegg said. She sat the girl down at the table and gave her a bowl of hominy.

Neely ate, about starved. She ate quickly, casting an eye around to see who was watching, like a dog who had been mistreated.

"Neely," Pegg told her, "this be the young miss who wrote that letter to the paper to defend you."

Without looking at me, Neely nodded. "Much obliged."

I couldn't stop watching her. But I knew better than anybody what her presence would cause. "You can't stay here," I said. Patsy would have apoplexy. She would think there was a Negro uprising starting here and now.

"I'se takin' her to the Governor's Palace," Pegg said.

"The Governor's Palace?" Of course! She had heard what the governor was threatening. The Negroes had a better intelligence system than we did.

Pegg went about her business. "Tha's where she wanna go. Gonna ask the governor for help."

"He's got his own troubles now."

"The Negroes part of 'em. He say he gonna free the slaves."

I said nothing.

"Tha's why your pa go ridin' out of here so fast, ain't it?"

"He went to get back the gunpowder," I found myself saying. "He went to defend the honor of Virginia."

Dear God! I sounded like Patsy!

In one swift movement, Pegg pulled Neely to her feet, whipped the blanket off her, then ripped the cotton chemise she wore.

"This!" she said angrily. "This be the honor of Virginia!"

And there I saw the whip marks on Neely's back. The girl bowed her head and whimpered.

So did Betsy and Edward. Quickly I gathered them to me. "Don't cry, children," I said. "There, there, don't cry."

I fetched some rock candy from a bowl and gave them each a piece. I settled them by the hearth, where there was a mother cat nursing her kittens. Soon they became distracted and I went back to Pegg.

"I'm sorry," I said. "My pa doesn't countenance such," I told her, "and you know it, Pegg. So don't go blaming Pa."

She helped Neely adjust her clothing, then gathered her things. "I'se takin' her to the Governor's Palace," she said again.

"I won't stop you."

"I'se takin' a horse and gig."

"I said I won't stop you."

Should I? Was I supposed to? How could I? Then I thought about something. "Are you going to get yourself free?" I asked.

"That sister of yours. Think I doan know what she's about? Thinkin' I gonna poison her? Makin' me taste the food afore they eat it? How you think it make me feel?"

"I know how," I said.

"Was me took care of your mama."

Again I said nothing. I never had learned to go up against Pegg.

"That governor give us our freedom, we ready. At least this girl gonna be ready. She not takin' any more beatin's. Lots of Negroes goin' there. He got an armed guard of Negroes round the palace by now."

I felt helpless, stupid, and foolish. For all my studies, my pa being an important man, I felt like a cornstalk in a hailstorm here.

"My Nancy make the meals. Let Patsy think I'se sulkin'."

They went out the door. "Will you be back, Pegg?" I called after her.

"Maybe I will, and maybe I won't," she said. "I'se thinkin' on it."

I
WAITED AND WAITED
for Pegg to return. Oh, how I waited.

"Where is your mama?" Patsy asked Nancy at supper.

"She sulkin'," Nancy answered. "She hurt, 'cause you think she gonna poison you all."

Patsy said nothing. And she did not ask Nancy to taste the food first. But Nancy put the soup tureen down, picked up a spoon, and put some soup in her mouth and swallowed. "I got no fancy to die," she said. Then she stepped back and waited.

Patsy served the soup and we ate.

"It's very good, Nancy," Will said. He sounded a lot like Pa.

Nancy remained solemn-faced but nodded to Will. She liked Will, but then everybody did. "I thank you, Mr. Will; an' you wait an' see what I got for dessert."

It was whipped syllabub. As she put it on the table, Patsy waved her off. "No more tasting, Nancy, thank you."

Later I sneaked out to the kitchen, where Nancy and Jane were cleaning up. "Any word from your mama, Nancy?" I asked.

"Not yet."

"Do you think she'll be back?"

She turned to me. She was big-boned and dignified. It was hard to think we'd once run barefoot across the lawns together. "You want her to come back?"

"Of course I do!"

"So do I." Then she sighed. "But if she don't, I be your friend, Miss Anne. You know that."

We hugged. Years of friendship lay between us, and I was so confused. What if Governor Dunmore did free the slaves? What would we do without our people?

Worse yet, what would Governor Dunmore do with them? Pa was convinced he'd sell them into slavery to the West Indies.

***

M
AMA USED TO TELL US
that God has His reasons for everything. I just wish He'd let on to us on occasion is all.

Pegg didn't return until the next day with the horse and gig. I ran to the kitchen, where I knew she'd be checking on Nancy's bread dough, to ask what had happened.

"All those poor Negroes," she said. She sat down heavily at the table.

"Have you eaten?"

"No."

There was a pot of stew bubbling on the hearth. I gave her a bowl and sat down, too. "What poor Negroes?"

"The ones at the palace. They think this war be for them. To set them free. They all around the palace. Waitin'."

"Where is the governor?"

She laughed. "Gone. On the ship
Fowey,
wif his family. He done brought marines into town. An' he got a cannon at the palace entrance. And the mayor out there, beggin' the people not to attack the palace."

"And Neely? If the governor is gone aboard the
Fowey,
where is Neely?"

"Gone to find him in his ship at the York River. The governor hear that your pa be headed for Williamsburg, wif an army. Tha's why he flee."

I didn't know whether to be glad of this news or unhappy.

When I left her, Pegg was leaning over her bowl of soup. "Never did see nuthin' like the way that girl wanna be free," she was saying. "Never did see nuthin' like it."

***

T
WO DAYS LATER
I found Pegg alone in the kitchen, crying.

Pegg never cried. She was chopping vegetables and stopping every so often to wipe her face with her apron.

"Pegg?" I asked.

She turned and offered me a weak smile. "Neely dead."

"Dead?"

She went on chopping. "She get herself caught and sent back to her master. He give her eighty lashes."

"Eighty!" Never had I heard such a thing. I went weak.

"Tha's not all. After, he pour hot embers on her back."

I had to sit down. I could not conjure it in my mind. Who did such things? There were no words in me. That frail girl, who just two days ago had been here in our kitchen, eating our food. What manner of people were we?

Still Pegg chopped. "Never did I see a girl who wanted her freedom so bad," she said.

How do they stay sane, I wondered. My own mama went mad for a thimbleful of troubles. Are they stronger than us in their heads?

I put my hand on her shoulder. I hugged her. We cried together. And the only words I could think of were, "I'm going to tell Pa when he comes home."

***

W
HEN
P
A AND THE BOYS
came home on the eighth of May, the first thing that caught my attention was how agitated John was.

"They wouldn't let us fight." He took a cup of brandy in the traveler's room. The windows and door were open to the May evening, which was like the silk we weren't allowed to import anymore. You could wrap yourself in it.

But John's mood was as rough as the fabric of his hunting shirt that was hung with fringe about the shoulders and had
LIBERTY OR DEATH
painted on the back.

"We camped fifteen miles from town," he told us. "A thousand of us. The Tories called us 'shirt men.' And old Peyton Randolph wouldn't let us attack. So we were discharged."

"Only after Thomas Nelson underwrote the money they offered," MyJohn reminded him. "Dunmore threatened to shell Yorktown from his warship if we came to Williamsburg."

"We've accomplished what we set out to, son," Pa said quietly. "We must act within the bounds of delegated authority."

"Like the militia up in Massachusetts?" John flung at him.

Pa smiled. "The fighting up north requires that we meet again before we battle. At the convention in Philadelphia. And I'm a delegate to the convention."

"Meet," John grumbled. "That's all we do is meet."

"Because we are an organized citizenry," Pa said. "And not a rabble. Come now, let's go to supper."

***

J
OHN EXCUSED
himself from the table before supper was over and went to the barn.

He was up to something. I knew my brother. As soon as I could do so without making a problem of it, I went to find him.

***

I
CAME UPON HIM
and Dorothea. In one of the empty stalls.

They were kissing.

I don't know why it looked wrong to me. Certainly not for the reasons that would be given to any young woman of the day, but for another reason. I did not trust Dorothea.

Hadn't John seen the way she had cozied up to Pa the last time she came to our house for supper?