The Kingdom on the Waves Read online

  “Dangerous? Oh, I quaffed swigs, sir. Washed my teeth with it. Sang, ‘Hey, nonny, no.’”

  “I’m sure. Continue.”

  “So I take the liver of sulphur up to my quarters, up where they stash us in the top of the house, and I begin crushing it with a stone. You have never seen any single thing crushed so fine as I crushed that powder. I reckon I spent an hour in the crushing. That was my preparation.

  “Then come the ball, all the ladies are giving their courtesies, and the young gents, looking so fine, and Miss Fanny, she’s demure. No little lady who threatened destruction to a man the night before.

  “So there are the excellent gentry, all smiles and blushes, stepping their measures. First they have the minuets, then the reels, then the country-dances. And I take one last look at the young miss whispering to her friends and clapping, and her father in his fopperies, and I turn from the hall and go up the creak-crack old stairs to my quarters and move the bowl of powder to a closet near the dance-hall, where I know there will be a good draft going past. I hide the bowl in there and I pour in the oil of vitriol. The whole pot, it starts to smoke and it smells so awful and sulphurish I can’t barely breathe. The smoke is all spreading. When I seen that, I know I don’t have long, so I close the door to the closet and I bolt through the servants’ door and I run on out of the house, quick as I can.

  “I’m at the woods when I hear the shrieks. Because there was a devil of a stink, first, and I fancy that the young gents held their noses. And then there was louder screams, shouts. Because all the fine ladies, all the girls sweet-eyeing their beaux, have just turned black. All their face-paint. First dingy, I reckon, then smutty, then to rotting, then to coal, then to midnight. All of them.”

  We, his auditors, were enthralled — swept away in awe. “Bono,” said Dr. Trefusis, “will you be my bride?”

  “So I run through the little wood —”

  At this interesting juncture, Serjeant Clippinger appeared. “This don’t sound like any lesson, sir,” he said to Dr. Trefusis. “On philosophy.”

  “Serjeant, we yet discuss mutability. Private Williams is providing us with an excellent example. He demonstrates how change occurs, and how the senses remark upon change.”

  Said the Serjeant with sarcasm, “As when you don’t smell and then you do smell.”

  “You recall our conversation of the other day. Indeed. Though that, methinks, was not precisely my example at the time. Rather, when one smells constantly — of old age, say — one should no longer be able to mark the smell until it alter; or when there are objects hung long on a wall, the eye ceases to see them, until something is shifted. Or if one regards an officious myrmidon too lumpen to move for long periods of time, one ceases even to note him until he actually motivates himself and speaks.”

  “A myrmidon.”

  “Indeed.”

  “What is a myrmidon?”

  “An ant.”

  “A speaking ant. I’ll warrant y’art being cute.”

  “I’ll warrant I have a warrant, ha ha.”

  “He has the letter, Serjeant,” said Bono.

  “The letter!” exclaimed Dr. Trefusis, producing it from his coat. “I do indeed have the letter. From John, Earl of Dunmore, Baron Murray of Blair, of Moulin and Tillimet, Lieutenant and Governor-General of His Majesty’s Colony and Dominion of Virgina, and Vice-Admiral of the Same, ‘Sir: It is my wish that Dr. John Trefusis shall be granted —’”

  “Indeed, sir. I read the letter. I will hope that there is no treasonable intelligence exchanged here, as I don’t hear no philosophy.”

  “I avow, Serjeant, we shall commit ourselves wholly to philosophy without a grain of intelligence intermixed.”

  “You ain’t witty,” said the Serjeant, turning away. “Y’art just an old man who can only find Negroes to laugh with him.”

  He left, pacing the deck, and Bono inquired, “What is a myrmidon?” to which Trefusis rapidly replied, “Good God, sir! Continue!”

  “I run through the woods, at once applauding myself for my wit —”

  “Well deserved, sir. Well deserved.”

  “And at the self instant, I am grinding my teeth because I am a vain, proud, revenging idiot and shall be run down because of it. Certain, they knows I’m gone within fifteen minutes, I reckon. Soon I can’t hear the protests at the hall no more, but I can hear the dogs. They’ve let the dogs out.

  “I can hear them approaching. I tears through the woods — knees up — and over some fields. I know the general way. But there are horses on the roads and I’ll warrant alarums.

  “It’s not another twenty minutes before the dogs are on me.

  “I can hear them a-crashing through the leaves. And thrashing. And I see torches through the trees, and I hurry quick and hide me in the bushes. But no avail. They going to find me.

  “Then — it’s now I smell a thing. Not just the sulphur on me. Sirs, with my sulphur, I am attracting the curiousness of a skunk. Walking through the bushes to me as bold as Sunday.

  “Every inch of me wants to run. Its stink is prodigious — my eyes is near watering — and the hounds is coming — by God — what does a body do?”

  “Indeed.”

  Bono rose. “Sir, I reckon our time is over for today. My deepest apologies, an’t please Your Honor.”

  “Sit! Plautan varlet! Speak!”

  “Oh, me, sir?”

  “Sit!”

  “Do you order me, sir?”

  “Speak!”

  “By your grace, sir.” He sat. “So the dogs is coming close and the skunk is already there and I’m shivering with fear and my eyes is burning and the skunk, he sees me, he sees my bulk, and spang — afeared. He lifts up his tail and sprays me and run off.”

  Dr. Trefusis made a noise of great disgust.

  “I — it’s what I can do, just not to vomit. My eyes are burning. I tell this all as a jest, but it was — I was wracked, sir. I was in the bushes, wracked. And death to retch. Death to make any solitary sound. All curled up, and can’t move. And the vomit in my mouth. Can’t move, but — oh, Lord, sir. It was horrible.

  “The dogs, they sniffing closer, and the men calling out, ‘Something here! Something here!’ And I’m in the bushes praying to keep still. It’s too dark to see. I can’t see a thing. The whole pack was coming straight for me. That I could hear, and I put my head under my arms and prepares for the biting.

  “But then, the dogs — the dogs smelled the spray. They smelled it and started whimpering back. The men behind them, they shouting, ‘It’s a damn skunk! Call ’em back! It’s a skunk!’

  “I wait and I wait, and every few minutes, the burning again, and all down my throat, and — sweet Jesus, there’s no smell like as . . . I can’t even say how deep that skunk smell is. You can keep falling through parts of that smell and there are other parts, whole other rooms and wings you ain’t known about. That is one devilish power of a smell.”

  He smiled with some satisfaction in the rapt attitudes of his hearers; for both of us could not have been more attentive, though I, for empty shew, flipped the pages of my Locke.

  “That smell, gentlemen, is what brought me here today. That smell is my salvation. The next week, I walk along the riverbank, walking all night. And where I hide, nobody wants approach me. No farmers, no magistrates, no slave patrollers. One breeze and they keep their distance. No way they’s coming into the bushes after that.

  “After a day, I got famished, and so I killed a sheep and took him to a barn I reck’d would be safe and lit a little fire to cook part of it. Some slaves saw the light and come in and I say I’m Richard Richards and this here was my sheep and did they wish a leg? For a while, they eats and I eat and we are all genial; them asking me questions and me telling them stories as to how I’m a honest Dutchman new come from the Antilles. Then I see that they is waiting for us to finish before attacking me and turning me over to their master, so they is fussing with rope and one has a machete. It was then or never
, so I burst for the door and there was a scuffle and I take a firebrand and swing it around and push them down, and I throw the burning stick into the hay and run, and I believe that barn burned behind me. They was running down the slope after me, and there’s the river in front of me.”

  “By God,” said Dr. Trefusis.

  “Prince O., you recall when we was up at Lake Champlain?”

  I answered, “It was a most gratifying time.”

  “That it was, sure. And I watched you close while Lord Cheldthorpe taught you to swim. You out there a-wiggling your little twig arms.”

  “You said there were channels to cross.”

  “So there were, Prince O. I knew then that when some tries to flee through the woods or such, they come to a river, and it’s a wall; but for me, I wanted it to be a road. I wanted it to be the very gate wide open. And that’s what it was, now. Rivers don’t stop me. I swum in Boston Harbor. I swum out in Canaan. And now I swum in Virginia.”

  I saw the Serjeant’s eye upon me from across the room, and dropped my own gaze to the page, where I helpless took in several incomprehensible paragraphs regarding place, chess pieces, ships, and substance. While my eyes were thus burdened with the page, however, my ears were free, and followed Bono’s tale.

  “I swim, I walk, I swim.

  “Long last, I get near Williamsburg. Hide in the bushes. Every day I been bathing in the river. It’s not so much my skin that smells still, more my clothes. They have a reek. That last day, I washed there again in the James and saw the laundresses mashing the clothes and talked real sweet to them and offered to do some wringing. They says thank you kindly, and ain’t I a good fellow; and so soon as I got my hands on some breeches and a shirt, I sink them under the water and put a stone on them with my feet and then keep wringing, and then the women smells my own clothes and it’s, ‘You ain’t no man to be doing laundry!’ and ‘What you play at?’ and them cursing me. I laughed and they takes the rest of their clothes and frumps off down the riverbank. I wait a few minutes and get the breeches and shirt out from under my feet and go to dry them.

  “That evening, I present myself at the Palace. I guess I speak to a factotum. It seems His Lordship is not at home; he’s fled on board a ship, but if I wish, the factotum says, I can sleep in the stables with another little crowd of Negroes awaiting His Lordship’s pleasure. Eleven or so of us who’d fled, hearing rumors.

  “Since then, I served Lord Dunmore. I served on the first ship, the Fowey man-of-war; and then back to the Palace, where I stood as a picket guard when the population was got all restive. Then when he fled again, there was more of us — and we went with him, and you know then. We drifted up and down the river. We was sent out on nights to catch some poultry from farms. We steal cows so the Marines can eat. Other times, we pay for forage, if it’s Loyalist. We hope.

  “For months, I been on the river, up and down. I was with His Lordship for our first skirmishes, when the rebels all run away. I can’t tell you, Prince O. — I can’t tell you the fine sensation of victory. When you run on their heels — and they fleeing, like we always fleeing — they running before you — scared — and you chasing — when those boys caught their own master in that swamp — sweet dicker of mercies — I ain’t a praying man, but that night, I fell on my knees. I fell on my knees under the stars and thanked the Lord who delivered me out of all distresses.

  “That was Kemp’s Landing. Then I was posted on garrison near Great-Bridge. We heard the Proclamation read. And Prince O. — Prince, we seen some terrible things — we seen that battle — we seen things that chill the blood — but there’s one thing, still: We is free. That’s the great change. In all legality, we is free now.”

  I believe the eyes of both auditors now were full, though Bono would not admit of tears himself; and that excellent and ingenious man, so like a brother to me, voice tremblant with his passions, said, “This is the war where we change. This is the trickster war. It’s where we disappear, just like they desire us disappear. I spoke it you before: They wish us blank,” he said, gesturing without thinking at Dr. Trefusis, who was the nearest exemplar of the white race. “They want us with no history and no memory. They want us empty as paper so they can write on us, so we ain’t nothing but a price and an owner’s name and a list of tasks. And that’s what we’ll give them. We’ll give them your Nothing. We’ll give them my William Williams and Henry Henry. We’ll slip through and we’ll change to who we must needs be and I will be all sly and have my delightful picaresque japes. But at the end of it, when it’s over, I shall be one thing. I shall be one man, fixed, and not have to take no other name. I shall be one person steadily for some years.”

  He took my shoulder. He shook me. “This is why we got to win,” he said. “We only lost one battle. We got to win, Prince O. If we ever wish to be one person, we got to win.”

  For Dr. Trefusis:

  SYNOPSIS OF LOCKE UPON MOTION AND PLACE

  Locke giveth this example of motion and place: That if we leave a chess piece on a board, and move the board, we still say the chess piece hath stayed in the same place; for we judge its movement according to its place on the board, not relative to the room or the table.

  Further, he saith that the chess board, neglected upon a desk in the cabin of a ship through the night, stayeth in the same place, to our mind, though the ship hath moved across the waters — for motion and place are relative.

  So be it; but, sir, I wish, whether motion is relative or no, we would move. We have all traveled far to get to this place, though this place alter as our camp alters from shore to ship and our ship shifts on its anchor cable.

  We are prepared to prove ourselves again and redeem our loss.

  As I conducted Dr. Trefusis back to his shallop, he said to me, “I divine that Bono seems under the misapprehension that . . .” Dr. Trefusis could not continue, soured his visage, then made another attempt, this time more gentle in his tone. “Upon our meeting, Bono expressed his happy anticipation of seeing and speaking with your mother again,” said he.

  I did not respond.

  “How long?” asked Dr. Trefusis. “When wilt thou tell him?”

  I could not speak. We had reached the quarterdeck.

  “The portions of our history you have related to him are incomprehensible,” said Dr. Trefusis. “You have told him that we decamped and returned to Boston just as the siege began and we should have fled. He does not understand why, you assisting with His Majesty’s Army in Boston, you did not seek out your mother, if she was there as well. He believes that you left her behind.”

  I said simply: “I did.”

  He frowned. “Oh, my boy,” said he, in a lamenting tone. “Oh, my dear boy. Do not take that weight upon your shoulders, or you shall never rise from your knees.”

  It appears Bono is known among our Company, and is a favorite already of many. No sooner had he and I settled beside one another, than Bono was asked with surprise, “You friend of Buckra, before you come to Lord Dunmore?”

  Bono saw that by “Buckra,” I was meant; and replied, “Oh, I known Buckra since we all had to wipe his behind and weigh the leavings.”

  This was not, perhaps, the introduction I would have wished, contributing little to my own stature or ease; and I find myself fervently wishing that he could have refrained from referring to that gloomy period of my infancy and its galling rituals. Still, however, Bono is too dear to me, and I admire too greatly his facility with others and fear too much his wrath if corrected to protest; and so I swallowed shame and smiled when the rest laughed.

  December 20th, 1775

  Quiet aboard the ship.

  We had a one-day flux, which we feared was a bloody flux. ’Twas, I think, the pork, which Slant said was slimy before cooked. We all were violent in our disturbances; but once ejected, the meat’s evil influences seem to have passed.

  We hear that the citizens upon their schooners, brigs, and snows suffer greatly from hunger, for the rebels will not allow the
m to land and purchase provisions. I did not go above-decks today, being too ill; but those who did, say there are many sallow faces to be seen upon the fo’c’sles of other ships.

  December 21st, 1775

  Today arrived the Liverpool man-of-war, a frigate of twenty-eight guns, which eases our mind somewhat. We heard a great cheer go up from the rest of the fleet upon its appearance, as were we delivered.

  We know not what command awaits or what the vessel’s arrival portends; but we tallied this day, and we have now five sizeable fighting ships — the Liverpool, the Otter, the Kingfisher, the William, and the Dunmore — as well as assorted schooners and sloops-of-war. I was on the larboard dogwatch this day, and so could observe the positioning of those ships, it appearing that we are preparing for some great action against the town of Norfolk.

  The ships are arrayed thus: The Dunmore sits at the northern end of the town, the Kingfisher at the southern, and the Otter and Liverpool between them. They ride with springs on their cables, tampions out, as if prepared to open fire and level the town with broadsides.

  They shall not mock us for many days longer.

  December 22nd, 1775

  I believe the presence of Pro Bono — or as I should perhaps call him, Private Williams — shall change much for me upon the Crepuscule. He is known to many of the men of my Company, having been present before the Regiment was formed, in those months when the Governor’s black forces were smaller, before that body were divided into distinct corps. Both his affability and his harshness compelled others as they did me; and he hath been admitted into a great variety of circles of friendship and amity that remain generally closed. His art in greeting, in laughing, in commiseration, in knowing when to speak and when to keep silent, is prodigious, and causes men to admire his practicality and sturdiness, and women to enjoy his ease, wit, and scurrility. He was, in short, a favorite among our number instanter, and continues so.