A Sea Unto Itself (3 page)

Charles extended his hand. The African carefully wiped his own against his jacket before accepting it. “Is it true that you are recently escaped from slavery, Augustus?”

“Yes, sah.” The man’s eyes narrowed in suspicion and the smile vanished.

“I repeat that I owe you a debt of gratitude,” Charles said quickly. “I’m certainly not going to send you back. You were a free man once you touched English soil anyway.” This Charles knew to be true. Owning slaves had been abolished in Britain for some decades. By law, any setting foot in the country were automatically free. The institution was still practiced in the colonies, however, and Parliament had passed no law prohibiting the lucrative trade in slaves, still continued by too many Liverpool, Bristol, and London merchants.

Penny brushed at some dirt on Charles’ coat, then tilted his head with her free arm to examine where he had been struck. “Tisk,” she chided, releasing him. “Thou wilt certainly be bruised. Thou shouldst never have provoked such a rude person. See what thou hast wrought.”

“I didn’t. . .” Charles began, but she had already turned her attention toward Augustus.

“I wish to say my thanks to thee for rescuing my husband,” she said. Looking out at the nearly empty square, she added, “Where hast thy companion gone?”

Charles looked around him. The crowd had entirely disbursed. Only the box the speaker had stood on remained, and sitting alone on that was the African woman he had noted earlier.

“I don’t rightly know,” Augustus answered slowly, rubbing at his chin. “Mebby Miss Viola can say.”

Charles drew his watch from his pocket, flipped open its cover, and saw that it was nearly noon. “If you would be so good as to introduce us, the least I can do is to provide you both with a good supper, if you are free, of course.”

“We free,” Augustus answered with a small frown. “Mebbe too free.”

The woman rose as Charles, Penny, and her companion approached. “Be you fit, Mr. Augustus?” she called out.

“There weren’t no real difficulty,” the man said. “Where be Mr. Willard?”

“I can’t say,” the woman answered, her eyes studying Charles for a moment, and then settling on Penny. “He lit out with some white folk hot after him. He already long gone to my thinkin’.” Charles thought she didn’t seem particularly concerned.

“Who is Mr. Willard?” Penny asked.

As Augustus spoke, Charles took a moment to study the pair. The man, he decided, was likely in his mid-twenties. He was tall, taller than Charles, and heavily muscled, but in an oddly proportioned sort of way. His shoulders seemed unnaturally large with no discernible indentation around his middle between chest and hips so that he looked something like a section taken from the trunk of a good-sized tree. The woman seemed a little younger, although it was hard to be sure. She was diminutive by comparison, with slender features, alert black eyes that gave her a kind of calculating look, and black hair bound up in a scarf. Her skin was the color of lightly creamed coffee, which made her a mulatto, he assumed. She held herself stiffly, almost defiantly, erect.

“Dost thou not agree, Charlie?” Penny said.

“Dost I not agree to what?” Charles answered.

“Dost thou not agree to sup at our hotel?”

He took a moment to consider this. Their lodgings were booked at the Prince Regent on St. Bridget Street, a respectable establishment catering to ships’ officers, bankers, insurance brokers, and other moderately well-heeled travelers in the mercantile trade. He suspected that the management would be reluctant to welcome two shabbily dressed blacks, indeed any black Africans, as guests in their establishment. They would just have to adjust their way of thinking, he decided. “Fine,” Charles said. “What an excellent suggestion.” With that, Penny took up his arm and the four set off across the square.

“Oy, you there!” the hotel clerk shouted as Augustus and Viola tentatively entered into its spacious foyer. “Get you back where you came from. We won’t have your kind in here.”

“They are with me,” Charles said firmly. “I have invited them to dine with Mrs. Edgemont and me.”

“Oh, I am sorry, Captain Edgemont,” the clerk apologized. “But this establishment does not permit blacks, and certainly not in the dining room. It’s a long standing rule.”

“I insist that you make an exception in this case,” Charles said in his best quarterdeck I’ll-brook-no-argument voice. When the clerk hesitated, he added more menacingly, “I wish to speak with the owner, Mr. Carthwright.” Mr. Carthwright quickly agreed to a private room where their meals were brought and the door kept tightly shut.

“Tell us,” Charles said to his guests after they were settled, “how you two came to be in our fair city of Liverpool.”

“How much do you want to hear?” Augustus said cautiously.

“All of it,” Charles answered.

Augustus cast a glance at his female companion. After she nodded, he spoke, reluctantly Charles thought, as if it were a closely held secret. “Miss Viola and me both be at this place in ‘Ginia. Mostly I work in the rows, Miss Viola in the house. One time she say she is decided to run. I allow I am partial to go along. She hear of a way, a place we could go on a certain night, and there was some what would help us. We slip away in the dark and sure enough there be two men there, a black and a white that put us up in a hayloft in an old barn with some others.” He stopped for a moment with his eyes fixed as if on some distant object.

“Why didst thou decide to run?” Penny asked, directing her question to the girl.

“I don’t want to say, missus,” Viola answered, her face coloring. “Everyone want to run.
 
But for me it was just some attention I was getting.”

Charles could guess what that meant, with white owners and supervisors feeling themselves naturally entitled to the favors of slave women. “Go on,” he said.

“Yes, sah,” Augustus nodded, and then spoke in a faster tempo as if he wanted to be done with it. “We move every night. There always be a rick or cellar to put up in, and a little food, and then someone come to show us the next place. After a time we come to a city, the largest place I ever seen. Philadelphi, it were called. Straightaway, Miss Viola and me be put into a ship by some what was guiding us. Then we were sailed to here. We only come just this mornin’.”
 
.

“Philadelphia!” Penny exclaimed. “Philadelphia is a Quaker city. Who was it that helped thee?”

“I don’t rightly know, missus,” Augustus answered. “A white man, a gen’leman like your husband.”

“Were they Quakers?” she persisted.

“I don’t know, missus,” he said again, clearly trying to be helpful. “But I didn't see them shakin’ or quiverin’, nothin’ like that.”

“I see,” Charles said with a smile. “One last question, who is Mr. Willard?”
 
He had missed that part.

Viola answered. “Him who fetched us from the boat,” she said. “He brought us direct to that place and started into speaking.”

Charles nodded. It wasn’t a very helpful answer. He was beginning to think about what he should do for them. They couldn’t just be turned back onto the street; he owed them some consideration. It was obvious they knew no one besides the vanished speaker. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Penny watching him intently and knew what she was about to suggest, if “suggest” was the correct term. She would want him to give them employment or some such. But what if this Mr. Willard had already made arrangements for them? What if he were out searching the streets at this very moment? Charles didn’t think it likely, but he wanted to be sure.

“Charlie,” Penny said, touching his sleeve. “We must . . .”

“Yes, of course,” Charles said. “Just one minute more.” To Augustus and Viola he said, “Do either of you know what you were to do when you reached England? Did this Mr. Willard say anything?”

“No, sah. Nobody didn’t say nothin’,” Augustus answered. “But the gen’leman in Philadelphi, he gave us a paper.” Augustus reached inside his jacket and came up with a somewhat soiled envelope addressed “To Whom It May Concern.”

Charles took the object, opened it, and removed a single page. To Whom It May Concern, the salutation repeated.

I commend into thy care these two souls, Augustus and Viola, recently emancipated from the iniquitous practice of slavery, which is out of harmony with the teaching of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who doth instruct us to love all His Creatures, that thou take them under thy protection so that they might secure sustenance and succor adequate to the requirements of their persons and spirits.

Peace be among thee,.

Richard Pemberton.

Pine Street Meetinghouse.

Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania.

“This is more in your line,” Charles said, handing the page to his wife. He turned back to the two. “Is either of you in need of employment? I mean a regular position, with wages. If my wife agrees, I am sure that we would be pleased by your presence.”

*****

“They’re coming, sir,” Tom Pearson called down from his bench at the front of the carriage. “I can just see t’ lanthorns round yonder bend.” The one-legged former seaman was Charles’ driver on this occasion, one of the former crewmen he had brought to Tattenall to recuperate from disabling injuries, and who had stayed as an employee on his estates.

Charles lowered the curtain over the window by his side and looked out through the falling rain into the dismal light of the new day. He picked out the twin lamps of the post coach in the distance as it hurried along on its scheduled two-day journey from Chester to London. The lanterns seemed ethereal flickers, suspended unmoving in the distant gloom, but he knew they would be up to them all too soon. He had reserved space inside for two persons, with the instruction that they would board at Handley, on the King’s Highway a short distance from Tattenall.

“Thank you, Tom,” he said, unlatching the door and stepping out from the shelter of the carriage into the weather. “Come along, Augustus. I’ll give you a hand with the luggage.”

“Yes, Cap’n,” the black man answered, squeezing his frame through the restricted exit. He had taken to addressing Charles as ‘Captain’ after Charles had explained his profession and offered Augustus a position as his steward. The two men turned toward the foot of the carriage and began loosening the straps securing their sea chests.

The London coach clattered loudly to a halt, its six horses snorting and steaming from exertion. The chests were quickly handed up and lashed in place beneath a tarpaulin on the roof.

“Thank you, again, Tom,” Charles said. “And mind that everything stays shipshape at home.”

“Good-bye,” Pearson answered, touching his hat. “I wish you easy seas and a speedy return, sir.”

Charles pulled open the door and heaved himself up. There were four passengers already present, three men in overcoats and top hats, and a rather richly dressed woman of middle age wearing an elegant chapeau and a pelisse trimmed in fox. Her maid, he had noted, rode on the carriage top, out in the weather.

“Your pardon, madam,” he said as he eased by the woman. The matron nodded her acquiescence and shifted her knees to make room for him to pass. Charles said his thanks as he settled down beside the far window. She gave him a half-smile in acknowledgement, then turned to stare open-mouthed as Augustus followed, dropping his bulk into the only remaining space next to her. Immediately the coach lurched and resumed its jolting progress onward.

Charles exchanged the obligatory ‘good-morrows’, and observations on the weather with the other passengers. Then he arranged his sword and scabbard between his thighs and settled back, hopefully to compose himself for sleep. He had parted from Penny in the parlor of their home barely an hour earlier, dreading the moment of separation and hating himself for causing her anguish. She had cried, then wiped at her tears. “Goeth where thou must, Charles Edgemont,” she said sternly. “And may God watch over thee, for I cannot.” They held each other tightly before she pushed him away. The collection of such servants as they had lined the hallway as he passed by: Timothy Attwater, his wife and two of his daughters; two more of Charles’ former crew, both missing arms; and Viola, the newest and already, to Charles’ mind, the most useful of the lot. Holding Viola’s hand stood a very sleepy Claudette in her nightcap and bed clothes, disordered curls of dark hair around her face. He’d bent to stroke the child’s cheek and received a dutiful kiss in return. “Gud-bye, Misseur Charle,” she’d said.

Only Attwater, his wizened and, if nothing else, faithful steward for the past two years, had protested at being left behind. “Ain’t you sure you won’t reconsider, sir?” he’d said as soon as a fit of coughing had allowed him to regain his voice. “It ain’t right you not being tended to by someone what don’t know your needs like I do.”