The Kingdom on the Waves Read online

  We walked now upon the road. We passed through villages.

  We came upon torches and a crowd of men who blocked the road — slave patrollers seeking runaways. They were fortified with drink and incendiary slander.

  “Where’s you headed with your Negroes?” asked one of them.

  “Nansemond County,” the Serjeant answered. “They run away from home.”

  “See that. Long way from home.”

  “They was seeking Lord Dunmore.”

  It seemed an innocuous excuse; and yet, it spoken, the man took a greater interest in us, stepping close and glaring into our faces.

  I dropped my head so I did not look upon him.

  He examined Olakunde, and then said, “Cut-face son of a bitch.”

  Olakunde returned his look.

  “You put down your head,” the man demanded. Olakunde would not budge. The man reached out, gently cradled the back of Olakunde’s skull, and forced my friend to look down, and then to fall upon his knees. As we were yoked together, this forced me down as well.

  When the patroller retracted his hand, Olakunde did not lift his visage again.

  The patroller resumed, “Run to Dunmore?”

  Clippinger nodded.

  “Then you gots take them to the Committee of Safety. They pay you.”

  Clippinger, sensing the danger of an escort, did not argue, but replied, “Where do I go? For the Committee?”

  The man gave us directions; and told Olakunde and me to stir a bone and get up — we had a real long journey ahead of us. With that blessing, the patroller bade us all a jeering farewell.

  As we passed through the knot of them, men mocked us. “You pleased now, honey? You real happy now?”

  We traversing a mile farther along the road, Serjeant Clippinger began to press upon us a new plan. “This, boys, is what we does. I delivers you up to the Committee, and get the fee, then tomorrow night, I hies you out of the jail. Then we has a guinea or two to show for our trouble.”

  “No, sir,” said Bono simply.

  We walked for a ways in silence. Clippinger at this point continued, “You ain’t in any danger, because even if they try you and ask you who your master is, you can’t give testimony. Y’ain’t people. You can’t turn evidence against yourself. I tell you. You can’t. No more than a barrel or a dog or such-like. And no one else knows you, so no one else can turn evidence against you. So they hold you, and then I slips in, look you, I slips in at night and I frees you.”

  “No, sir,” Bono repeated. We walked farther.

  Serjeant Clippinger said, “I’m your commanding officer.”

  “Sir, if you do persist in recommending this,” said Bono, “I shall kill you.”

  Following this, we walked onward without speaking.

  When we stopped to rest in a copse, we did not all sleep, but one at a time stayed awake to watch the Serjeant and make sure he attempted no act against us.

  We awoke before dawn to the sound of horns blown on plantations to call the slaves to toil. We began again our march.

  The road passed through tobacco fields. Our stomachs complained mightily of hunger, for it had been two days since we had eaten. At every approach of horseman, cart, or carriage, I turned fearfully, certain I should see some minister of injustice come to enchain us.

  I schooled myself to face forward with greater looks of despond, that we might not be detected in our imposture. We practiced the slump of the shoulders born of defeat, the shuffling gait of those who knew that there was no pleasant or agreeable end to their pilgrimage. Riders passed us without challenge.

  The sun burned through the morning haze, and we all were sensible of thirst and weariness. I ventured to ask how long we might have before the farmer we’d tied beneath his bed was found and released, and might convey an idea of our number and appearance to the slave patrollers.

  Serjeant Clippinger, in preening tones of pride and satisfaction, said, “Now I warrant y’art sorry you didn’t hearken to your Serjeant and kill the man outright. Tell me, lads: Don’t you regret you didn’t listen to my word, but you left the dog to be found and to tell the story of who we is?”

  Bono said, “He ain’t going to be found too soon.”

  “Don’t fear anyway,” boasted the Serjeant. “He won’t escape. I killt him.”

  This news was received with horror. I could not feel my hands. We could not continue our march; but stopped in the midst of the road, and all swayed, as were we confronted with some great gulf or precipice before us.

  Bono said, “You killed him?”

  “After I dressed. I put my bayonet through his skull like you said.”

  I found myself shaking my head slowly, as if to clear it: I painted for myself the man lying beneath the bed, trussed amidst the curls of dust, certain we should soon be gone, and he calculating how many days until friend or neighbor sought him out; envisioning already his freedom, the tale he would tell, pointing at the road and the wood; and then Clippinger’s shoes by the bedside; his knees as he knelt to locate the quick of the watching eye.

  “Sweet God,” swore Bono. “Sweet God.”

  “He would have roused the whole country.”

  “A shirt and breeches. We stole a shirt and breeches. You killed him?”

  “Him or us, lads.” Clippinger pointed before us. “March on.”

  I could scarcely move for disgust. Olakunde’s tripping steps dragged me forward — and Bono spake for all three of us when he continued to whisper, “A shirt and breeches. Sweet mercy. Sweet mercy.”

  We passed on a causeway over fields. Slaves watched our dolorous procession. A child threw stones at finches.

  I heard hooves and was certain it was a patroller seeking out the murderers; but it was a youth who rode past without so much as marking us.

  We marched on through that hostile country.

  The day grew intolerably hot. The air was thick as syrup. In the long rows of tobacco mounds, children stood in the sun and watched the turkeys eat the hornworm and the devouring beetle off leaves.

  We passed a manse where two white women, dressed in brilliant sacques, walked arm-in-arm among the blooms, commenting upon the excellence of the sweet peas. Their silken shoes scraped and rattled on paths of oyster shell: handsome women of forty years, speaking of the world as gardeners stooped around them, and, in the distant fields, their bonded farmhands shouted out ragged calls across the furrows.

  We marched through village and forest.

  We passed farms and mills; we passed slave quarters where goats wandered among the huts, and corn was laid to dry; and there was a spreading oak tree hung with jugs, which spake softly in the summer’s breeze.

  Women walked by us with baskets of corn upon their heads; men mowed wheat with scythes, followed closely by teams of gatherers. A boy, all but naked, squatted upon the ground, sooting fruit trees to protect them from some scourge.

  We passed a great house of some Loyalist where a crowd stood gathered, and all the house’s things were arranged upon the pebbles of the street, and animals were tied in the yard, ready for vendue or lottery.

  We made our way through the crush, our visages cast down, little liking the press of people.

  Farther along the road, we saw a black man sitting in an odd attitude by the side of the road, and smellt an awful smell; and when we reached him, we discovered him dead.

  My eyes could not be drawn from this terrible spectacle; they sought it again and again for confirmation, that the body might be so rent, the face thus disassembled; reason would not countenance it, and nature rebelled against it.

  It was but a quarter of a body torn from the rest: unseeing, gaping head and lolling arm with shoulder and ribs to join them, impaled upon a stake, and much busied with flies. The stench made breath difficult.

  We proceeded past it retching, Olakunde muttering prayers.

  ’Twas not merely the violence of the death which caused our hearts to quail; not merely the disgust at decay; but the hor
ror that he was set there as a sign to such as us.

  We walked on for some time after this without speaking a word.

  ’Twas Bono, eventually, broke our silence, speaking low. He said, “We shall reach Gwynn’s Island. No way we ain’t. I am going to meet Nsia again. I am going to press her to my bosom. You mark me, few years along, war over, we is going to have some sturdy little children. And Prince O. is going to sit by our fireside, reading Homer. I vow it. I do vow it.”

  He said it with such firmness, we knew his words were laid plank on plank to obscure the marker we had seen. He built a barricade as best he could.

  We marched.

  We slept again in the woods, if our uneasy watches, gruesome dreams, and hours plagued by bites and bleeding feet might be called sleep.

  Come morning, we rose and set out. Come noon, we arrived at the Rappahannock and walked along the road by its banks until we came to a house where the grounds were not full of activity. We determined that we should make our way to their dock and steal whatever boat we might find.

  The place was, we swiftly perceived, a plantation recently sacked and brought low. The plantings in the gardens still retained their linearity and rectitude of bloom; but a chicken-house was mere ash, and the windows of the mansion were broken.

  We found the dairy empty. No one was in the stables; no horses, neither. A phaëton still stood, the traces at the ready, as if prepared for flight.

  The kitchens stood at a distance from the house, and it was to this building that we repaired with hope of some new sustenance.

  Within, there were the remains of a feast: a ham and bread. We waved off the flies and tried some of the flesh. Its taste was acute and sweet, and we quickly spat it out.

  Our investigation of the kitchen being done, we determined to enter the house. The door was open.

  “If it is empty,” said I, “we should wait here until the evening and set out then upon the river once it is become dark.”

  “This is not making me easy,” said Bono, indicating with his head the lawn, the open door, the window-glass.

  “You boys enter,” said Clippinger. “I shall stay without.”

  We posted Olakunde as a guard with him, saying he should not be safe alone; though in truth fearing that he sought an occasion to flee us. We took our muskets from the sack and affixed our bayonets. Olakunde and the Serjeant flanked the door.

  Trepidatiously, Bono and I held our firelocks and stepped within. The drone of cicadas in sun and the cries of birds gave way to silence and coolness.

  The furnishings in the parlor had been savaged with an ax. We liked not the look of the violence. We frowned to each other and held our bayonets before us.

  The next chamber we entered was the dining-room. The table was gone, though chairs remained; the floor was ankle-deep in shards of shattered china plates and bowls. We picked our way through, though with little stealth remaining, for each step cracked and snapped as porcelain shattered beneath our heels. We had no shoes; we feared laceration, and walked with care.

  This tide of crockery lay thin upon the floor of the next chamber as well. The room was dimmed with curtains; it took some time for our eyes to report what lay therein. It was a room empty of almost any furnishings, save a few greasy prints of herbs on the walls.

  A woman in a fine cambric gown sat with her back to us, unmoving in a chair. At first, we thought her dead, for she exhibited so little curiosity as to our approach; and then she moved, putting her face in her hands.

  ’Twas then we saw that in front of her, on the floor, a child was lain prone, facedown, arms spread-eagled.

  The woman dropped a hand from her face and scrabbled about on the floor, picking up the broken handle of some earthenware porringer.

  She shied it at the child, which lay unmoving.

  We could not perceive the significance of this tableau.

  “What have you come for?” the woman asked without turning.

  “Madame,” said I, “’twas far from our intention to intrude upon the grief of any; but believing the house unoccupied, we wished to take shelter here for a few hours before resuming our journey. We shall, of course, remove ourselves, unless there be any way in which we might render service.”

  She turned and saw us. She pointed at her child. “He won’t get up. They took his father.”

  We nodded.

  Bono, at length, cleared his throat and inquired, “Where you wish us to . . . remove him to?”

  We heard the clanking of the drabware behind us, and turned, startled, to confront a young man of fashionable dress and perhaps twenty summers. “Who is it?” he asked.

  “Some Negroes,” said his mother. To us, she said, “They took all our Negroes.”

  “When was the assault?” I asked.

  “Three days ago,” answered the woman. “Three long days.”

  The young man, her son, inquired again of us, who we were; to which we answered shortly that we were traveling down the river.

  “Gwynn’s Island?” he asked. “Lord Dunmore?”

  We looked at each other for confirmation; before either of us spoke, he continuing, “Take us. The rebels, they took my father.”

  “We ain’t going,” protested the child upon the floor. “I weigh a thousand pound.”

  To the youth, Bono said, “You wish to go down the river to join Lord Dunmore.”

  “The rebels laid us low,” said the youth. “We don’t have nothing but broke crockery.”

  We agreed, therefore, to take them with us. “We do have need of one thing,” said Bono. “Which is a boat.”

  “We shall take our boat,” said the youth.

  Hearing this, the woman roused herself from her seat. “I must choose what best to wear,” she said. “I have only met His Lordship twice.” She seemed suddenly beset upon by some frantic animation. “John,” said she to the eldest son, “attend me. What think you of my plum watteau?”

  “I am sure,” said he, “I don’t know.”

  “With a little jacket trimmed with galloon, and that petticoat of tobine. Given the chills on the river.” She held her head again in her hand. “I can never determine whether tobine seems it should be light, yet feels stiff and heavy, or seems ’twill be stiff and heavy and then feels too light.” She shifted upon the pool of crockery, sending up a great clanking throughout the chamber.

  “My skull is staying touching this floor,” said the child.

  “Are we leaving presently?” the woman asked.

  We admitted we were not departing for some hours, until darkness.

  “Excellent,” said she. “I shall arrange my toilette.”

  In that ruin of a house, she went about her coquetry, applying her dyes, her pomander and pouncet-box. Once her hair was set, she would not disturb it, and sate sleeping in a chair, that it might not muss. The eldest son bounced a ball against the wall; the youngest remained prone.

  Olakunde and Serjeant Clippinger being informed of the situation, Bono and I proceeded down to the dock to examine the boat for its readiness. There was nothing left there but a small dinghy that should barely fit us all.

  With this news, we returned to our companions, and spent the afternoon sitting in the garden.

  Come seven o’clock, we determined to set forth. At the instruction of the elder brother, Olakunde picked up the younger and carried him without.

  “Leave me lie!” protested the child as he was brought down the bank. “Leave me lie!”

  The elder son dragged a trunk after him, scraping ruts in the grass. Olakunde deposited the young child on the dock, where he no sooner had stood than he began to scream shrilly.

  The mother looked about her garden, preparing to abandon it forever; and bade her eldest coquettishly to fetch her a flower to lay in her bosom-glass, “just peeking out,” as she said, “between them two fair snowy hills.”

  It may be imagined, our impatience at these delays, for our spirits quickened at the sight of the river, smooth in its evening und
ulations; and everything within us pled to be excised from the ruinous shore and allowed to float free. All delay was torment.

  The elder son ran from the shore and brought his mother back a phlox flower, which he presented to her with great show of gallantry. While he performed this office, Serjeant Clippinger, Bono, and I waited in the dinghy, desperate to cast off, with Olakunde standing by to hand them in to us.

  They came to our side and prepared to step into the dinghy with us.

  ’Twas then that we observed the full extent of the mother’s gown.

  “Why those looks?” she asked imperiously. “You object to the panniers?”

  “It is a small boat, madam,” said I. “This is no space for panniers.”

  She turned to her son. “One of them could remain behind. Ask one of them if they will remain.”

  He turned to us.

  “We will not,” Bono said.

  “Madam,” I pressed, “I have it on the best authority that among the finest mantua makers of London, the pannier is no longer the mode.”

  “Whose authority?”

  “My mother’s, madam. She was a woman of fashion and exquisite raiment.”

  “Your mother?” she said with deep incredulity. “What does she wear, linsey-woolsey and a Negro cap?”

  “She is deceased.”

  “That don’t hardly recommend the seasonability of her taste. Mind you, Lady Dunmore wears French hoops.”

  We insisted — and her son now urged compliance — that she remove the panniers. She refused, her voice higher, lighter as a panic rose within her.

  “We will need space adequate for rowing, madam,” said Bono. “Pulling the oars and such.”

  “The space is already small,” I said. “And the boat will be none too stable when we are all afloat together, madam.”

  “This is absurd,” said the mother.

  “If you please, madam,” said Serjeant Clippinger. “We wish to cast off.”

  “You shall do no such thing.”

  We bobbed, clasping the dock. The boat’s draw was greater than I would wish, and with but three of us, the water lapped high on the gunwales, threatening to spill over.