Good Man Friday (22 page)

‘What you shall see, sir,' replied Trigg, ‘is how men stack up against men, on this particular day, in this particular light … And that is all you shall see.'

‘Oh, I think should our friends the Stalwarts win,' said Adams, with a creaky chuckle, ‘we'll be treated to any number of interesting expressions on the faces of the Southerners present – and that's what
I'm
here to see. I dare say they don't know who to “root” for: the Invaders of their soil, or defenders who they have claimed repeatedly shouldn't be able to defend. You behold me –' he flung up his kid-gloved hands and waggled his fingers like a schoolgirl – ‘all a-twitter with anticipation.'

Trigg laughed and strode off to meet Jules Gonesse beside the worn dip in the grass that marked the thrower's position in the middle of the square. The three referees were chosen – Charlie Springer of the Stalwarts, one Invader (a Prussian secretary who'd been in Washington for years and spoke excellent English), and Perce Inkletape, one of Senator Webster's clerks known for his fairness and his abolitionist sentiments.

The Stalwarts won the toss and took their places on the line of goods boxes to await their turn at bat.

‘You think he's here?' Mede whispered to January.

No need to ask who he meant. Or to guess at how much sleep the young man had had, judging from the drawn look around his eyes.

‘I doubt he's even awake.'

Mede nodded.
Of course. I should have thought
… ‘I'll go there once the game's done. He'll want to know,' he added, as if he heard January's thoughts, ‘and it's what a friend should do. I'm still his Man Friday, even if I am free now. He shouldn't be alone.'

No need to ask, January reflected, whether a man with his wife at his bedside and a family friend like Oldmixton at hand was to be considered ‘alone'. He'd had friends in Paris, after his wife had died. ‘Alone' was not something reckoned by how many other people were in the room.

‘You still think he did it himself.'

‘I still think he might have.' Mede's eyebrows tugged together. ‘If what she says is true …' Again, no need to define who
she
was. January could almost hear a capital letter on the name:
She
. The only
She
who mattered, in that household or in the small, closed circle of Mede and his master.

‘If what she says is true, he's changed so … Debts never used to trouble him. Yes, he gambles too much, and he did sell off two of the horses … but he sold Caro because she stole Mrs Bray's earrings, not because he was desperate to pay what he owed. But he laughed about the horses, and his friends joshed him something terrible.'

Mede fell silent, picking at a splinter on the box with his thumbnail.

Remembering the times when Luke would haul him along to practice, would make him throw thousands of ‘good' tosses that he and his friends could swing at?

Or thinking of that ravaged face by the lamplight, the big hands – duplicates of Mede's own – lying empty on the coverlet, swathed in bandages to the wrists?

‘Even this trouble between him and Mrs Bray,' he continued hesitantly. ‘Her turning cold on him, locking him out of her room … He'd no more harm himself over that than he'd … than he'd become a monk, sir! I know him! I
did
know him …'

Hoots and curses yanked January back to the present. Red Vassall – one of the Centurions who'd been loaned to them as a ‘sure-fire' striker – had taken a swing at the Frenchman's pitch and missed, putting the team out. On the way out to the field the kidding was good-naturedly fierce: ‘You swattin' flies there, Red?'

‘Whoa, he saw Miss Prissy standin' in the crowd—' Miss Prissy was Vassall's sweetheart of the moment.

‘No, he's tryin' to impress his mother …'

‘Don't worry about it.' January gripped Mede's shoulder reassuringly. ‘Mr Bray's fine. He'll sleep through the day and won't know anything about this. You know he wants you to win. That's all you need to know right now. The rest is for tomorrow.'

‘Tomorrow,' said Mede softly, and walked to the striker's position, straightening his shoulders in the silvery light.

And within moments January saw that his worry over the young man was totally needless. Mede threw like a demon: changeable, tempting, tantalizing, and devastating. Gonesse, Baldini, and a young man named Djemal from the Turkish embassy managed to hit every ball Mede threw, and scored a respectable number of tallies, but the rest of the foreign team was at his mercy. They swung at deceptive slow-balls. They lashed and swatted at fast sidearm flings. A dozen arguments ensued among the three Referees about whether the striker
could
have hit the ball instead of simply standing there and letting it go past, in order for the fourth throw to count as a knock, and the game became one of gnawing attrition. The Invaders went out earlier, and more often. The Stalwarts got a slim lead, held it, widened it. When they reached fifty tallies, to the enemies' thirty-five, even the Southerners in the audience started cheering.

Tomorrow
, thought January. When the game was over, and the ‘honor of America' saved or lost … Did Luke Bray really think his Good Man Friday was going to come back to him?

Did Mede really think the young planter capable of being friends with a black man who had formerly been his slave?

From his waistcoat pocket he unfolded the small sheets he'd taken from Bray's watch, studied the five little diagrams. The notepaper itself was clean, the creases fresh-looking in the waning evening light.

And what about this?

He took out the red-backed notebook that never left him. Page after page of magic squares, including these five.
Why copy these?

And from where?
There had never been a time, so far as January could tell, when Bray had had access to Singletary's notes.

If Mede goes back tomorrow, can I go with him and ask Bray where he found these?

And if I did, would he tell me the truth?

The Invaders rallied when Trigg took Mede out into the field for a time, to let his arm rest, but they never managed to close the lead. When, at seventy points to forty-five, Mede walked back to the throwing mark, the shouts and whoops were deafening.

By that time the sky was nearly dark, and fog was beginning to rise. The distant houses back in the direction of K Street were speckled with light. Mede put out the first French striker without effort, and after the French regained the offensive by plugging the Reverend Perkins on his run from third base to fourth, put them out again on his first throw.

At that point the referees called the team captains together, and Gonesse conceded that there was no way the Invaders could recover the lead.

The game was declared for the Stalwarts.

Shouts, shrieks, howls of triumph. Gnashing of teeth, too, thought January, if people really had bet a thousand dollars, that whites – even Frenchmen – were better players than blacks. A phaeton – led by a groom at the team's head – worked its way toward them through the crowd, and January was astonished to see Luke Bray sitting up in its high seat, chalk-white and clinging to the polished brass rails for support. As it came near Mede cried, ‘Marse Luke!' and shoved his way forward, reached the vehicle even as Luke – with the assistance of the disapproving Jem – climbed down, his face aglow with his smile.

‘You did it, Friday!'

The two men embraced, Mede's strength holding his former master on his feet.

‘You shouldn't have come!'

‘I don't need you nursemaidin' me, Mede.' There was deep love in his voice. ‘It's worth it seein' you standin' up there like an oak-tree puttin' them French pussies in their place. Worth it seein' those polecats from over at the Treasury coughin' up money they didn't have any better sense than to bet—' He swayed on his feet.

Both January and Royall Stockard sprang forward out of the press to support him. Stockard scrambled up into the phaeton, said, ‘Pass him up to me, boy,' and January and Mede lifted him to the high seat. ‘Dumb idiot,' Stockard added affectionately, and hugged Bray around his shoulders. ‘You didn't have to come down here – good
Lord
, Dickerson said you'd had a fall from your horse but he didn't say you'd half killed yourself! You didn't have to come down here to know even our niggers could whip a bunch of Frenchies!'

‘Knew they could,' gasped Bray, still grinning from ear to ear. ‘By God, I wanted to see it … Wanted to see my boy.'

From the other side of the phaeton, Mr Noyes raised his sharp New England voice. ‘
Even
your niggers, Mr Stockard? I seem to recall it was those same Frenchies whipped
you
.'

Stockard turned his head. The other Warriors who had gathered around the phaeton grew silent, and the silence spread like blood in water.

The young Congressman climbed down, stood four-square before the abolitionist, the other Warriors of Democracy grouped behind. ‘What are you sayin', sir?' he inquired in a soft and deadly voice.

‘I'm saying …
sir
–' Noyes' pale eyes sparkled with a holy warrior's gleam – ‘is that if the sons of Africa have proven themselves better men than the white sons of France, isn't it time that you – and these other
honorable
sons of Virginia, and South Carolina, and the other states of this Union whom you disgrace before the eyes of the world with the blight of slavery – admit that these men who have, in your own words, “saved the honor of America”,
are
men? Men like yourselves?'

Someone in the crowd shouted, ‘You know fuck-all about it, Yankee!'

And the abolitionists who had quietly assembled behind Noyes shouted back, ‘You can't have it both ways!'

‘They are men, sir,' Stockard replied. ‘But if you weren't a fucking fool pur-blind on abolitionist drivel, you'd see by lookin' at 'em they aren't men like ourselves. They are niggers.'

‘Then give us a chance to see what kind of men
you
are,' returned Noyes, in a voice pitched to carry over the whole of the crowd. ‘Mr Trigg, will your men be ready, in two weeks' time, on this spot, to let the sons of Virginia, the sons of South Carolina, the sons of Maryland test their
honorable
manhood against you in an honest game?'

‘I will, sir.' Darius Trigg stepped forward out of the crowd, and the Stalwarts moved in around him: weedy Reverend Perkins, Frank Preston, Handsome Dan. January stepped back from the side of the phaeton and stood behind the flute player. ‘Two weeks from this evening we'll be here on this field waiting for you to defeat us, Mr Stockard, sir.'

He spoke humbly: three years ago whites had rampaged through Washington burning black men's businesses and every black school in the city. But the challenge was there. Before Stockard could retort, a loud-voiced Indiana Senator bellowed, ‘I got a hundred dollars says the Warriors'll take 'em!'

‘I'll see that—' somebody yelled, and a pandemonium of betting swept the crowd.

Mede started to walk toward his teammates, and Luke Bray held his whip down from his seat on the phaeton, blocking Mede's path with its whalebone shaft. For a long minute their eyes met.

Don't you fucken dare
…

Gently, Mede slid his shoulder past the whip and walked over to stand beside January.

Bray fumbled for the reins, then sagged back with a gasp. Stockard, his face like stone, leaped back up to the high seat, snatched the whip and the reins, and without a glance at Jem – who had stood all this time at the horses' heads – lashed the team with a crack like lightning. The startled horses sprang straight at the Stalwarts, who leaped aside, and the whole crowd, black and white, had to scramble out of the way.

January looked around him, as if only then he became conscious of the shoving, shouting men. Yells of, ‘Six to one … Three to one … Dammit, they can beat them …' hammered him from all sides. He felt slightly short of breath, aware he'd seen something unprecedented, unheard-of. Though carefully phrased in the humblest of language, black men had challenged white ones to combat.

It was as if poor Gun, back in New Orleans, had risen from his bench and broken Eph Norcum's well-deserving nose.

‘No fucken way white men gonna play against niggers …'

‘You think they can't win?'

‘I think it ain't right …'

‘I got ten dollars says they can't win …'

He looked around, glimpsed Frank Preston hurrying Dominique, Thèrése, and Mrs Perkins – who was shouting imprecations back over her shoulder – away in the direction of Connecticut Avenue. To Mede he said, ‘We'd better get out of here.'

It was only a matter of time before some outraged soul ran to call the constables …

If the constables weren't there already.

Or some enthusiastic Democrat came to the conclusion that the way to avoid the whole issue was to beat the living crap out of the Stalwarts …

A hand touched his elbow; a voice said, ‘Ben.'

He turned and found himself looking at Bill, the sweeper-up in the offices of the surgeon Charles Date.

Bill held out his hand. ‘I found your grave robber for you. Feller name of Wylie Pease.'

E
aster morning. There were Masses at Holy Trinity in Georgetown at noon and two as well as in the morning; January knew in his bones that Mede shouldn't visit Luke Bray alone.

‘Might I beg you to wait a few minutes?' When she came into the kitchen to meet them, Rowena Bray didn't look as if she'd slept much last night. By the activity around the work table – the cook working pastry, and a girl in a housemaid's calico dress pressed into service cutting up fruit – there would be company for dinner that afternoon, despite the illness of the master of the house … Or perhaps as a means of showing Washington society that he was not so very ill? ‘I fear Dr Gurry is a Southerner, and these Americans …'