The Kingdom on the Waves Page 11

  His praise-song being completed, the women sent forth a maiden to sing who must be a favorite among them; being graced not only with elegance of gesture, but symmetry of feature and comeliness of form; and she sang a lamentation in her tongue which could not have been more interesting and affecting.

  I cannot write too much praise of this girl. Her every movement was fascination. Her hair was close-cropped; her dress was modest; her voice compelled attention.

  I would gladly have heard more of her solemnity; but following her performance, the music ceased, the fire was banked up, and conversation became general.

  There were many stories this night; several recounted in tongues I knew not to groups of four or five; a few sung; some ancient tales told. Many related the stories not simply of antique times, but of their flight from their owners, which seems a ritual of our Regiment, the telling of these tales, of which each of us has one to relate; and among the auditors, there was much laughter at the ingenuity of contrivance, the boldness of deceit, and the gullibility of white hauteur. To wit, Will and John told again of their turkey call. One man told of his flight that he had stolen not only some few silver buckles, but also a bridle from his master’s stables; and so far from him proceeding in dead of night, in silence and stealth, he walked through the woods in open daylight shouting, “Bellerophon!” as loud as he might; and when white men approached him, he explained that his master’s horse was fled, and he sent out to capture it. Another man was a day from home when he espied the slave patrol approaching upon the road; and he repaired into a yard and split wood until they passed. Others spake of boats stolen, of rivers navigated, of days spent humming on smacks.

  Following these tales, a man rose with his wife held close to him, and both spake their tale; how the wife had lately been great with child; and how as she grew, she was beset by new hungers, there being no meat allowed the slaves in that place, but only corn. She worked in the master’s kitchen, and could not forbear to snatch some few shreds of chicken from the preparations she was daily engaged in, to ward off the terrible famine that wracked her gravid frame. She was taken in this theft, and condemned to be beaten. The master seeing that she could not well support herself under such duress, he determined that she should lie upon the ground while receiving her punishment, with a small ditch dug for her stomach so the child should not be harmed for the crimes of the mother.

  The husband told us, “He give me the shovel. He give me the shovel, and he say, you dig the place for the belly. And I weeping; I weeping, and no wise could dig. But Mr. Spritely, he say he whip her more if I don’t dig; he say more strokes if I don’t make the hole; and so I takes the shovel.”

  And so he dug, and his dear wife was laid upon her stomach and whipped; and as, three weeks later, he dug another trench, this one in which to lay the stillborn child, he knew they would run; that death itself was not terrible; and a month after that, they had lit out for Lord Dunmore’s flotilla at Hampton.

  This narrative was greeted with tears and sung expostulations, prayers and awful wailing; and the women began a song, which transfixed me not in small part because the damsel, with modest blushes, chanted with the chorus, and in the midst of it, sang a solo. I inquired of those around me what the maiden sang; and found finally one who spake the language; he informing me that ’twas a praise-song, as men would sing of their forebears; but that she sang not for deeds done, but for those as yet undone.

  The maiden sang the praise of our Regiment, a prayer to her gods for our victory; she sang that we should be remembered by our descendants, and that, triumphant, we should be those who would lead the dead home from their long exile, and end at last their hungry wanderings.

  November 27th, 1775

  Today, all hands to fortification.

  A thing which troubles me: I am sensible of a silence that accompanies me in all conversation. It stops up my mouth and the mouths of others. My own voice galls even me; it oppresses me like a silver fork scraped across porcelain.

  Not so when we are upon fatigue: When we dig, bind, do any of the work of entrenchment — these things I know from long practice — I am one of the number. There is no distinction of habit or effort.

  But when we sup or dine, I know the looks my voice will invite, and I cannot bring myself to speak. I am ashamed at my words before they scape the teeth; I clutch my trencher on my knees; I discover myself practicing all the arts of concealment which I learned in my years of service, when I little wished notice from Mr. Sharpe. I say nothing which might offend; I respond if questioned, so as not to draw interest through unoccasioned silence; I do what is asked of me; and most of all, I observe.

  Among the Collegians, silence was protection; among the rebels, ’twas grief. Among the members of the orchestra, ’twas policy; and among the work crews, ’twas prudence.

  I do not know what it signifies here, where there is no purpose of concealment nor need of diplomacy; and I am tired of it.

  I may write this, that I know not; but I do know on several heads why I am ashamed here; one being, that in this company where all have a story of suffering, all have a history of grief and a narrative of flight, I am suddenly the least of them.

  A new youth, a boy younger than me by a year or two, enlisted this day. He labors under an affliction in his speech, acquired through long habit of degradation or sudden excess of horror. When he talks, his throat or tongue will of a moment seize up, and he be unable to speak more. I fully compassionate in his distress, having but the other day, when enlisting, felt I should never speak a full word again. A gentle soul, already long and spidery of limb and uneven of tooth, this boy was introduced to me in the evening in some embarrassment. He said that it had been told him that I could read; which accomplishment I could not deny. He asked me then to read his badge; which I did, saying that it read as all of ours did, Liberty to Slaves.

  He told me that Serjeant Clippinger had howled when he had seen it, jeering that the woman had sewn it wrong, and it was a perfect fit for a three-toothed black coxcomb like himself. He asked me again, earnestly, to con it out; and I admitted that the letters were not formed in complete perfection; that it resembled somewhat, Liberty to Slane, with a wriggling trail after the e. I inquired if that was Serjeant Clippinger’s reading; and he replied glumly, Liberty to Slant.

  Upon hearing this, Will and John broke into great laughter and patted him on the back, crowing out the motto, tilting comedically, embracing him until he too laughed. The men now call him Slant, which would be wounding, were it not exclaimed with such an achievement in the “Liberty” that the “Slant” might be righted with balance and equanimity.

  And the men now call me Buckra, which is their word for a white man; for having seen me read, they say that I am a white man hidden in a black skin.

  And I have just called them “they.”

  November 30th, 1775

  Dr. Trefusis’s ingenuity is marvelous. We have been here but ten days, and he has got himself introduced into the finest houses in Norfolk; he has written to Lord Dunmore, describing his experiments and begging permission to visit with his ex-slave Octavian Nothing; and he received a written pass, that he might spend one hour with me this evening under the pretext that my lessons must continue, if his philosophic endeavors are not to founder through disuse. He was merry, and we sate in an office in the warehouse while he feigned instruction and I feigned learning.

  Serjeant Clippinger could not conceal his distaste and jealous suspicion of this connection, and scrutizined Dr. Trefusis for all the marks of a spy. Throughout the time of our discourse, he paced past us, frowning.

  Our hour was spent pleasantly. I wished to speak to him of my silence; of my name, Buckra; but he was so giddy, his hands strapped about his knees, rocking, that I could not.

  Dr. Trefusis informed me that he is become marvelous familiar with various of the local gentry and the officers, and has been entertained in parlors of the most gracious rank, having merited introduction by the rumor t
hat in his youth he was in attendance at Versailles and Sanssouci.

  The principle pleasure of these audiences, says Dr. Trefusis, lies in referring to royalty without either revealing or denying the closeness of his connection, viz. “You know, sir, His Majesty, Frederick of Prussia, once said after supper . . .”; or “Philippe d’Orléans, of course, was no enemy to flatulence; I recall Louis XIV used to jest about how his late brother held contests in after-dinner eructation en famille,” which careless talk greatly discomfited his hosts, who wished to determine the rank of the man to whom they spake.

  “Am I tramp or baron?” mused Dr. Trefusis. “My wig saith baron, but my odor saith tramp.”

  “’Sdeath,” Serjeant Clippinger interrupted, “you’re to be teaching the Negro somewhat, sir, yea? Or absent from military property, if y’please.”

  “I am indeed teaching him,” Dr. Trefusis insisted. “About odor, which is what Locke would call a secondary quality of bodies. What is unexpected is that time has a smell, Octavian; how else might we explain that old men exude the scent of years?” He held his wrist to his nose. “’Tis startling when one acquires it oneself.”

  I inquired, “Is it not surprising, sir, that despite its long continuance and your constant intimacy with it, you can smell it still?”

  “Passing over your delightfully clumsy reference to the extremity of my age, it is indeed surprising. The human primarily observes change; those things which remain unchanging become invisible to us. A smell to which we are long accustomed ceases to be a smell; objects hung upon the wall for years no longer garner interest.”

  I remarked that I had thought the same of a shackle (when I was sitting enchained) or a bit in the mouth.

  Dr. Trefusis, noting that Serjeant Clippinger had passed on, asked intently, “What mean you?”

  I said, “A shackle on the wrist the first day is an outrage; after weeks or months, it belongs to one, and one would feel nakedness without it.”

  For a long while, Dr. Trefusis regarded me warily. Said he, “Indeed. Indeed. One forgets that one is shackled. One forgets that one smells. This focus is necessary for our operation: Did we see every brick and tree anew each time we saw it, did we encounter every personage we met as an infant does, were we sensible of every outrage every moment, perception had disordered us to so great a degree we should not be able to carry on the business of life. So what the senses notice is primarily that which doth change.

  “And yet,” he mused, patting at his waistcoat, “the change from youth into age one perceiveth not. You awake one morning, and find you have smelled of old man for some time. You have been deceived by the passing sameness of days; they have accumulated upon you like powder. A vaguely”— he sniffed —“moth-scented powder.”

  “D’ye say,” said Serjeant Clippinger, returned with sarcasm heavy in his voice, “that this lesson is to make a better soldier of him?”

  “Indeed, Serjeant. It improves him.”

  “He don’t need improvement,” said Clippinger. “He’s a private.”

  “I would think,” said Trefusis, “that to make a man a good soldier, you first must make a man worth losing.”

  December 1st, 1775

  All hands to fortifying the town. In the afternoon, drills.

  Supped with Slant, the gentle, timid arrival of the other day, and another youth, Pomp. The boy Slant suffers some disorder that causes him to choke upon his words. In the course of common speech, ’tis but a hesitation. When he is excited, however, some fist doth clutch his jaw or some finger pinch his tongue; no sound comes forth from the working mouth, and shame fills his eyes, that he cannot speak. I fear to think out of what grim circumstance this arises.

  We sat upon the dead grass and ate our rations as we watched Will and John, who are the favorites of our company, engage in their antics by the berm.

  This amiable Pomp hath a fund of stories, delighting particularly in those most horrible to hear, and I, giddily diverted not only by his wonder-tales but also by this hour of companionship, begged him to favor us with descriptions of the world’s chiefest monstrosities. He thought hard upon it, smiled widely, and informed us of his two most favored water-beasts: the Scottish water-bull which lurks in Highland tarns and waits to devour the child dangling his fingers in the peat; and the ninkenanke, the dragon of the Gambia, which devours goats and men, pulling them shrieking into the mangrove swamps. The latter beast hath, says he, a diamond in its head.

  Slant, who is tall in stature but still a boy in years and spirit, was much affected by these tales, thrilled with fear and pleased with the discomfort; after our dinner, when we sate about the fire, he asked Pomp whether he — . . . believed such monstrosities.

  “I don’t reckon so,” Pomp answered. “Except saving when I’m out with my cattle in the swamp at night, and no stars. Then I believe everything.”

  Slowly, friend Slant nodded. He kept his eyes fixed upon the flames.

  “I don’t mind to tell you,” said Pomp, “and this is truth: There’s a lake near where I keep my cows, and each night, a column of light come straight down from the sky and search out the middle of that lake.”

  Greatly intrigued, I asked whether he had seen this illumination and sought its source, saying that this was a worthy object for the inquiries of philosophy.

  He nodded solemnly. “One night,” he said. “I went to see it.”

  Asked Slant, did he know what it — what it was?

  Pomp said, “If I seen that there’s a light sometimes come down from the stars and burn on a lake, you reckon I go paddle out and see where it come from? After the once, I never seen that damn lake again after dark.” He laughed; then, seeing Slant’s fear, he took pity and said, “I sleep better, nights, knowing that light’s an hour walk away from my tent, sitting on the water. If there ain’t no light, I wouldn’t sleep so good. Then there ain’t nothing but darkness. Then you don’t know where the danger’s really hiding.”

  December 3rd, 1775 — the Sabbath

  This day, for the first time, I fired shot in our drilling. I am no exquisite marksman, and almost dropped the piece when it fired. It is incomprehensible that I shall use this weapon against men of flesh and blood. I fear I am the worst of soldiers. It takes near a full minute for me to load.

  Tonight, the visit of some of the women to our fire, and some singing. The maiden was among them; she chanted at the request of the women; I blush to relate it, but I (pridefully) painted in my fancy a scene where I played the violin for her, and she was delighted.

  December 6th, 1775

  This day, all hands to raising a redoubt and securing emplacements for the guns. The cannons are aimed, for the moment, at cattle upon the glacis, and children batting at the sky with sticks.

  Still do our numbers swell with those who flee to join us. This day a man named Peter, of some thirty years, was admitted to our Company. In the evening, when we were retired, Peter recounted his tale of escape to such as wished to listen.

  He was all his life in the service of a Major Marshall, who is an arch-rebel among the provincial militia; and come the commencement of the rebellion, Peter said to his master, “Sir, if you want the freedom, why don’t you give me a little sip of that cup, too, if it please, sir?” His master would have none of it; but scolded him for his importunities.

  Peter, serving his master as gentleman’s man, traveled with the rebel army as they marched to launch their assault upon Lord Dunmore and our gathering forces at Norfolk. They were, as is known to us, stopped in their progress at Great-Bridge, and here they now rest, entrenched, frowning at our stockade across a great marsh.

  The rebels being so poor in numbers, Peter was given a musket and told he would sally forth as a soldier, when the time came to attack the stockade. “I tell him,” said Peter, “‘Sir, I ain’t going to fight them Royal Ethiopians.’ That’s what I tell him, boys — I ain’t going to fight you — and he said, ‘You will do what I tells you to do,’ and scritch and scratch and done.�
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  But one night, when Peter was sent out to victual several snipers who occupied houses on an island in the marsh, he found himself in the midst of an action, the Royal Ethiopians attacking; and when the Virginian shirtmen retreated, Peter did not flee with his rebel masters. They little noted in the confusion when he remained upon the island, nor when he stole down into the marsh and followed the Royal Ethiopians, hands up and whispering for quarter.

  He was taken into custody, questioned closely, and eventually was hied to Norfolk, where he has enjoyed an audience with Lord Dunmore himself. “Lord Dunmore,” said he, “he asked me questions hisself. He wishes especially to know what I seen, and I don’t mind to help a man such as Lord Dunmore is, the Governor and all. I tell him, ‘I tell you how it lies, sir. Sir, right now, there ain’t above three hundred rebels there, at the Great-Bridge. You best move quick, sir, Your Honor, you best.’ I reckon that he will, based on my intelligence I brung him, because I say, ‘Sir, you best move soon, because in a few days, they bring up them cannons from North Carolina, they get them here, and they’ll shiver your little wood fort into splinters. Three hundred men right now. Just three hundred. But they get their thousand Carolinians and their cannons — you and the Ethiopian Regiment is through.’”

  I surveyed the faces of the men as this tale was told; we none of us like his pride in predicting disaster, but we like less the sound of those cannons.

  Thus the tale of Peter, our new recruit.

  There followed talk of circumstances near Great-Bridge. While we have been laboring here, raising fortifications around Norfolk, against the rebels break through our lines and assault us, there are daily small actions and sorties in the swamps to the south: houses burned, raids on entrenchments, mortar shelling, a few dead from snipers or volleys from our stockade.