Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons (18 page)

She was comely and rounded and always smiling. She and her sister were supporting their invalid mother. She knew London, the shoppes, the bookstores. "Ask your master to let me take you about," she said that first morning. "I know where to go to get the loveliest gowns. Especially if you are to be presented at Court. You must have a hoop, ruffled cuffs, and a lace cap with two white plumes. Also, pearl pins for your hair."

Every morning a note came from Nathaniel with my breakfast, telling me where we were expected that day and what to wear. After a week of begging, he finally let me go with Maria for new finery. At first it was difficult for him to allow me such friendliness with a maid, but then Maria told him about the proper dress for Court and he relented.

She took me, forthwith, to the mantuamaker's where her sister worked. And I was fitted for a gown of white silk with a train, for Court. Of course, we got the hoop for under the skirt. And the required lace cap with two white plumes and pearl pins for the hair.

I even purchased a straw hat for everyday wear. Maria said it was worn by ladies in Virginia.

"I was lady's maid for a while to Hannah Philippa, wife of William Lee. They're from Virginia. You should be glad you weren't sent there. I can tell you, they would not be buying you such frocks."

It was all she ever said about my being a slave. She never spoke of it again.

Satisfied with my purchases, Nathaniel then allowed Maria to take me out some afternoons, as long as we stayed in the neighborhood. There was much to see. Elegant shoppes displaying all kinds of frippery I had never seen at home. Bookstores and, of course, the park, where we would buy ices and sit and watch the people go by. Or I would sit and read while she did her needlework.

One day we heard a great fuss. Dogs barking, people gathering and shouting, soldiers on horseback. "Is it a riot?" I asked Maria.

She smiled. "No. This is not Boston, this is London. We don't have riots. It's the Countess of Effingham, likely on her way to see the queen. See? There is her carriage."

All that fuss for a countess,
I thought.
What must they do for the king and queen?

We were expected everywhere, Nathaniel and I.

At the pleasure gardens at the end of the city. At musicals. At Westminster Abbey. At the theater to see
Othello
and
Macbeth.

At the home of Lady Cavendish for a wonderful supper. At the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. At a Bach concert at Covent Garden. At the Hill Street home of Baron George Lyttelton, a distinguished English statesman and man of letters who was ailing.

Lyttelton sat the whole time in a large wing chair while we and his wife and other guests sat at the table. He could not leave the chair. But afterward, he bade me come sit beside him. And in a voice weakened by some terrible sickness, he told me that I was "God's little poetess."

It brought tears to my eyes. Nobody had ever put it in such a light before.

"Where do you go this afternoon?" Maria said, leaning over me to set a lace mobcap on my head.

"The Tower of London. Nathaniel is taking me. I can't wait to see it."

She shrugged. Like most Londoners, she had never been inside the Tower. "Just a pile of old rocks," she said.

"How can you say that? Anne Boleyn was imprisoned there."

"People make their own towers," she said.

In three weeks we had come to know each other well enough to have exchanges of conversation I would never dare to have with a serving girl at home. Maria knew a lot, though she'd had no formal schooling. She had a whole set of opinions and quirks all her own.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked her.

She smiled in that secretive way of hers. "We build walls around ourselves. We imprison ourselves with longings."

I fell silent.

"Your master is handsome," she said then.

"Yes."

"And very much in demand."

Nathaniel was very busy of late. He had joined the Royal Exchange. And the Haberdashers, an influential guild. He had made friends with Stephen Sayre, an American merchant; the Earl of Chatham; and Lord Dartmouth, who was a stepbrother of Lord North.

"It's no wonder that Mary Enderby is making a fool of herself over him," Maria said.

My ears perked up. Mary Enderby? I had heard the name. "Who is she?" I tried to keep all feeling from my voice.

"Oh, the Enderbys are one of London's foremost merchant families. And Mary is their only daughter. Your master has business with the family. He spends many mornings there. Didn't he ever tell you?"

I did not ask how she knew. "Of course," I said.

It turned out that Maria knew more than she let on. Was she preparing me?

That morning Nathaniel's note disappointed me.

I find I cannot accompany you to the Tower this day. You must find your own amusements. You have been looking peaked of late. I suggest you stay inside and rest. We have supper tonight at the home of Lord Lincoln.

The bright July day stretched before me. Then, about midmorning, the Reverend Granville Sharp came to call. Nathaniel summoned me to his apartment.

"Reverend Sharp wants to take you to see the Tower." Nathaniel's voice and manner were distant. He did not offer Sharp any refreshment. I immediately sensed some dislike on his part for the man. Did he want me to say no?

"I would wait until you can take me if you so wish, Nathaniel," I said.

"No, no, go, by all means. I find I'm busier than I thought. Maria will accompany you."

Indeed. His maid and butler were laying out a lunch of cold chicken, fresh fruit, and champagne. "I am expecting guests," he said.

He did not look me in the eye when he said it.

So, then. He had broken his promise to me for these guests. I did not have to ask who they were. I knew in my bones that one of them would be Mary Enderby.

All the while, the noodleheaded woman setting the snare for him had been here in England, not in America.

There was no way I could say no to Sharp, of course. I felt Nathaniel wanted to be rid of me. I ran to tell Maria we were going to the Tower.

Sharp took us not only to the Tower of London but to the place they called the zoo, where they kept lions and panthers and tigers.

I shivered in fear, standing with Maria so close to these fierce beasts, with only iron bars to separate us. At home in Senegal we had wild beasts. But we kept them at bay. My father hunted them. We did not bring them close and cage them behind bars.

"What do you think? Aren't they beautiful?" Sharp asked.

"Yes," I said, "but I feel sorry for them. They should be free."

It was not until we were returning to the Bath Hotel in his carriage that he asked me, "Do they know of me in America, my dear?"

"We have heard your name," I said. "For some reason I cannot recollect."

He smiled. "Three years ago I raised a fuss. I ridiculed the Americans for claiming rights to liberty when they keep thousands upon thousands of Negroes enslaved. No better than those lions and tigers we just saw, whom you wished free."

I felt uncomfortable that we should be having this conversation in front of Maria. Then I saw she was asleep.

"I am considered a dissenting clergyman," Sharp said. "I took issue with none other than your Benjamin Franklin on the subject."

One thing about these Britishers. I might be Negro and a slave, but they all considered me American. He was
my
Benjamin Franklin. "And what does my Franklin say on the matter, then?"

"He said we have no right to raise a finger at Americans while we enslave our own laboring poor. Have you met Franklin yet, my dear?"

"No, I have not had the honor."

He smiled. "At first he would not come out in public and condemn slavery as a moral evil. Then, last spring, Anthony Benezet, leader of the abolitionists in America, wrote to Franklin of the horrors Negroes endured on the passage from Africa to America. Franklin immediately sent a letter to our
Chronicle
and attacked slavery as an outrage against humanity."

I had the feeling this was more than idle conversation meant to fill in the gaps on the long ride back to my hotel. And the zoo had been more than just a place to see the animals.

And I knew now why Nathaniel did not like him.

"There is a small group of people here in London," Nathaniel's note read, "who support us in our troubles against the Crown. We dine at their home this evening. Lord Dartmouth will be there. Wear your best."

Our
troubles against the Crown? I smiled and put the note in the sleeve of my morning gown so Maria would not see it. Nathaniel walked a fine line between the American Patriots and the Crown. He cozied up to both sides. All merchants had to do this or perish, he said.

I could have argued the point with him. I knew that some merchants in America had taken sides. But I was at peace with myself and the world this morning, this first week in July.

Two days ago Nathaniel had sent a present to my room, wrapped in black velvet. It was a ring with my initials, P. W., on it.

"You can use it to imprint the sealing wax on your letters," the note said.

He had purchased it at a jeweler's near Fleet Street. I had not yet seen him to thank him properly. I would do so tonight.

To add to my gratification of spirit, this morning's edition of the
London Chronicle
carried a poem of mine, "A Farewell to America."

I'd written it before I left. Mrs. Wheatley must have sent it on the very next ship bound for London after we departed.

For the third time since I'd sat myself down to sip my morning chocolate, Maria had brought flowers into the room.

Flowers from Benjamin Franklin, who said he would soon call.

From the Countess of Huntington, along with a note saying my poems were even now being printed into book form. "I am seventy-one years old this summer," she wrote. "I look forward to welcoming you and your guardian to Trevacca, the Methodist missionary school I support here on Talgarth, my estate in South Wales."

Flowers from Lord Dartmouth. He also sent five guineas: "Purchase, in my behalf, the whole set of Pope's works," he wrote. "Until this evening, I remain—your servant."

This was heady stuff for a skinny nigra girl the color of ashes, with next to nothing for a bosom and a brand saying she belonged to Timothy Fitch on her hip.

On my bed was a new gown of lemon yellow muslin. And this evening I was to be the guest of honor at a supper. Nathaniel would escort me. I had not been out with him of an evening in over a week. He had been busy. Political dinners.

In London, women did not go to political dinners.

I fingered the ring on my hand, sipped my chocolate, and for the tenth time, let my eyes linger on my poem in the paper.

My life was complete.

Nathaniel was late coming home from the Royal Exchange, so he sent a note around. His carriage would take me to the home of Reverend Richard Price, another dissenting minister. Lord Dartmouth would be there.

Lord Dartmouth, who "had the best disposition toward the colonies; who wished, sincerely, for their welfare," as Nathaniel had described him, was there himself, waiting for me at the door. He escorted me inside.

"I have been asked by my friend Nathaniel Wheatley, who has been delayed, to introduce America's first Negro poetess," Lord Dartmouth said. "Ladies and gentlemen, the honor is all mine. I present Phillis Wheatley, whose poem you all read in the
Chronicle
this morning."

The party was held in the good reverend's garden, behind the house. Lanterns were strung from trees. Flowers scented the air. The elegant ladies and genteel men clapped. I stood on the walk next to Lord Dartmouth and made my curtsy.

My muslin gown billowed around me. Overhead the stars twinkled. From somewhere in the scented darkness a violin played. Handel. Perfect. Glasses tinkled. Delicious food was being set down on flower-bedecked tables.

Dissenting ministers here live grander than Congregationalist ministers at home,
I minded.

I thought my heart would burst with joy as Lord Dartmouth escorted me around and introduced me to everyone. My head swam with their compliments.

One elderly lady with sparkling eyes and white hair piled high on her head reached out a bejeweled hand. "My dear, we have a mutual acquaintance. I understand my brother dined at your house in Boston."

"So many people have," I said.

"Surely you must know him. Your guardian, Nathaniel Wheatley, acts as foreign exchange agent for him. His name is Aaron Lopez."

My smile froze on my face.

"Your brother?" I asked stupidly. "Aaron Lopez?"

"Yes, he is a Newport merchant well known in the colonies."

"I met him." My ears were buzzing. I felt light in the head. "You say Nathaniel is his agent?"

"Yes, dear. Nathaniel handles all his affairs here in England. Imagine that we should meet like this." Her smile was fixed. I saw it as a glaring death's head.

I wanted to hit her in the face.

Nathaniel? Agent for Lopez? The slave trader?

For a moment I thought I would be sick. I felt a cold sweat break out on my forehead. My hands went icy, my thoughts jumbled. My head went addled. I could think of nothing to say. It was as if someone had moved the very ground under me.

At that moment he appeared. Nathaniel. He came through the flowered archway at the end of the garden, from the side street. One by one people recognized him.

"Here he is now," Lord Dartmouth said. "Thought you'd never arrive, old chap. What's detained you? Or shouldn't we ask?"

Everyone laughed. Then they applauded.

They applauded Lord Dartmouth's remark. And they applauded the woman on Nathaniel's arm.

She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She was a vision. And at the same time, she was a nightmare.

Her gown was lavender silk, barely clinging to her shoulders. It molded itself to her body contours, then splashed out in folds of swishing silk and lace. Her hair was spun gold. The curls spilled down, barely contained by the elaborate fixtures placed in her hair to hold them up.