Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons (20 page)

I held my breath and waited. I made small talk. "Do you miss America?" I asked.

"I have violent longings for home, which I cannot subdue but by promising myself a return next spring or fall."

"But you have many good friends here."

"Yet I am fearful that some infirmity of age may attack me before I get the opportunity to return home."

A quiet moment passed between us. He smiled and my spirit quickened to some gentleness in him, some benevolent concern.

"I love the English summer," he went on. "Parliament has adjourned and left me free to wander. I spend long weekends on country estates. Lord Dartmouth invites me often. He is a good man and sincerely wishes a true understanding with the colonies. But he does not seem to have strength equal to his wishes."

"Nor do any of us," I said.

He set his teacup down. "What do you wish, child?"

Tears came to my eyes. "To be free," I said.

He was not surprised. "Do you know that you are free here in England? By virtue of simply setting foot on its soil?"

"Is that what you have come to tell me?"

"I felt it my bounded duty. I speak of Judge Mansfield's decision."

"I have heard tell of it."

"Who told you?"

"A Negro friend back in Boston. But I would not know how to secure this freedom. I am dependent upon Master Nathaniel. I cannot move a step to the right or the left except by his leave and under his protection."

"Fetch me paper and quill," he said.

I did so, quickly. There had been a whispered urgency in his voice.

Quickly he scratched something on paper, folded and handed it to me. "This is the address of my house on Craven Street. I board there, but Mrs. Stevenson allows me to think of it as my own. If..." He paused. "...
When
you are ready to announce to your master that you wish to take your freedom, send a note around to me. Mrs. Stevenson will always receive you and attend to you if I am away."

I took the folded paper and thanked him.

"I have a niece, Sally, living with me. She is from the English side of my family and nineteen. And I have seen to the education of my grandson, William. He is twelve. He goes to school in Kensington. I shall be happy to avail myself to you in any way that I can."

"Oh, thank you, sir!"

He got up and waved away my thanks. "I come late to speaking out against the evils of slavery," he said.

Then he was gone.

Sooner or later someone will tell you how,
I heard Scipio say,
you'll see.

"Is that what you truly want, Phillis? Are you sure of it, then?" Nathaniel's face was ashen as he turned from his desk to look up at me.

"Yes," I said.

Sighing heavily, he tossed aside the letter he was reading and for one long and dreadful moment said nothing.

I waited, expecting the ax to fall. It had taken me full two weeks to approach him and tell him I had decided to take the freedom that was mine simply for the taking. Those two weeks were not without anguish.

It seems I hadn't slept in all that time, but lain awake listening to the carriages rumbling along on the street outside. I had much to ponder.

Nor had I taken sufficient nourishment. Maria had threatened to tell Nathaniel I wasn't finishing my meals.

"Clear the air for me, Phillis," he said, sounding bored. "Are you telling me you wish to stay here? And not return home? To my parents who have done so much for you?"

"I have pondered it," I said.

"And?"

"The thought of not seeing them again has sore afflicted me. I would have you write and ask them to free me when I return home."

"And? If they refuse? Then you will stay here? And consider yourself free? Simply by virtue of breathing the pure air of England?"

His sarcasm cut me. I said nothing.

"So, then, this letter of mine carries not only a request. But a threat."

"No threat is intended, Nathaniel."

"Well, well." He gave a short laugh. "The little black poetess has been doing more than receiving accolades here in London. She has been plotting, is that it?"

"I have not been plotting, Nathaniel. Just thinking."

"Not alone, though, I take it. Surely someone has been tutoring you in your rights. Do you care to tell me who that someone was?"

I bowed my head and kept my silence.

"It was Franklin, wasn't it? I smelled a rat the day he came to call. Damned upstart Franklin. He does more harm than good. Disgusting old man. Isn't he content with meddling in politics? And bringing us to the brink of separation with the Crown? Must he meddle in personal lives, too?"

I raised my head. "Nathaniel, I knew about Judge Mansfield's Somerset decision before I came to England," I said softly.

His eyes narrowed. "Yes, but Franklin must have cleared the path for you. What has he done, offered you asylum?"

I shook my head no.

"Don't flummox me. What would you do if I gave you leave to go this day? Where would you go?"

I felt a shiver of fear. "This day?"

"Ah. Not prepared for that, are you? Freedom is a juicy morsel to contemplate. But it makes for meager fare on the plate and cannot sustain you."

"I would make my way," I said with dignity.

"There's no profit in pride, Phillis." He got up and began to pace. "You can't eat it when you're starving. It will not warm you when the winds blow cold."

"I can live from the proceeds of my poetry. You always said I would someday be free by the fruits of my pen."

"I see." He went to look out the window. "You can live from your poetry here. But not at home. They will still not accept you at home."

"I shall manage."

"In Boston as a free woman, you'll not be wearing any fancy frocks such as the one you have on now."

"I seek things more suitable to the immortal mind."

"How laudable. I have underestimated you. You pretend to be amiable and demure, but you are an independent, ungrateful little baggage."

I said nothing.

"Why do I get the feeling you are doing this to punish me because I am marrying Mary Enderby?"

I faced his back. "You do underestimate me, Nathaniel."

He turned from the window. "Regardless of your reasons, it will come to ill, this freedom of yours. Mark this day that I have said it. You play with fire. You and the colonies."

"The colonies?" I gaped. "You liken me to the colonies?"

"Yes."

"All thirteen? Or just one?"

"Don't be saucy. You think I haven't minded all the metaphors of iron chains in your poetry? And wanton tyranny? Boston is a hotbed of sedition. Living there has addled your brain."

"My brain has never been clearer, Nathaniel."

"Yes, well then, you will understand when I say that I cannot predict the outcome of this freedom with the colonies. But I can with you. It will be the death of you, Phillis. Your ruination."

I felt a knell in my bones.

"Nevertheless, it is my place neither to give it nor to refuse it It is the place of my parents."

"Then you will write in my behalf?"

"I shall pen Father a letter this day and mail it. Or would you prefer to take it to him yourself when you sail on the twenty-sixth?"

I gasped. "We're leaving? But we haven't seen the countess yet. And I am to be presented to the king and queen as soon as the Court of Saint James reopens with the new season."

"You are leaving, not I." He sat down and began to write.

I felt something ominous in the air.

He finished with a flourish. "George the Third and Queen Charlotte will have to muddle through somehow without meeting you. My mother is ailing. I had a letter on the seventeenth. She requests you home. Unless you wish to stay until my father sends your free papers. In that case you will not see my mother again. I strongly suspect that she is dying."

I knew something was wrong when Prince did not meet me at Long Wharf in Boston. The Wheatley carriage was there, all right, looking old and in need of repair in comparison to the fancy gold-trimmed coaches I'd seen in London.

But no Prince.

A nigra man met me. Name of Bristol.

"Sulie's husband," he told me.

"I didn't know Sulie had wed."

He smiled at me.
Why,
I thought,
he's all puffed up with himself.

"Lots of things you doan know. Been away awhile, haven't you?"

"Four and a half months."

"Things change in that time."

I did not like him. He knew things that I didn't. And he acted superior about it. "Where is Prince?" I asked him as he commenced to pull away from the wharf.

Everything was wrong. For one thing, Boston looked smaller. What had happened to it? For another, I had a sense of dread.

"Prince gone."

"Where?"

He shrugged. "Been messin' wif those Sons of Liberty. Gone." It was all he would tell me.

Sulie opened the door. "So you's home. Good thing, too. I'm tired."

The house seemed seedy and in need of a good cleaning. Where was Aunt Cumsee? I looked around. No one made a move to take my bags. I had to carry them upstairs myself.

My mistress lay in bed, looking wan. She held her arms out to me. "Phillis, child, come to me."

I ran to her and knelt down beside the bed. She smelled of sickness. I noticed a stain on the front of her bed gown. Never would she have allowed such in the past.

"Where's Aunt Cumsee?" I asked.

"Oh, Phillis, we were both taken with the fever at the same time. She's so old, you know. We had to send her to her sister's. We have only Sulie now. She and Bristol run things."

"They aren't doing a very good job of it, from what I can see."

"Hush, dear, they're doing their best. Now, tell me all about London."

That night, as a cold September rain slashed outside the dining room windows, I left Mrs. Wheatley sleeping and went belowstairs to seek out my master. In the pocket I wore around my waist was the letter Nathaniel had penned asking for my freedom.

But I had something to attend to first. I stood in the kitchen. "There's no more wood for the mistress's fire."

Sulie was spooning some soup into a bowl. "Then get some. Or did you forget? It sits right outside the door there." She turned to face me.

So, then,
I minded,
this is how it is to be.
But I would not chide her. She was waiting for me to do that. She had been waiting a long time to put me in my place.

I just stared at her stonily.

"Oh, I forgot." She cocked her head and put one hand on her hip. "You was supposed to see the king and queen. Well, we can't have you fetchin' wood now, can we? Wouldn't be seemly. Then suppose you bring this to the master in the liberty. And I'll get the wood."

I put the soup on a tray, sliced some bread and cheese, and fetched a glass of Madeira. I found Mr. Wheatley at his desk before a meager fire, scribbling by the light of a lone candle.

"Phillis!"

I set down the tray.

He got up and hugged me. Then he wept.

I comforted him. The sight of him weeping like that undid me. He looked so different, so old. His hair was thin and white; there were sagging lines under his eyes. His hands shook.

"You find me not at my best. My gout has been plaguing me. How was your voyage? Won't you sit and sup with me?"

"You sup in here?"

"Sulie says why bother with the dining room when I eat alone anyway? It saves lighting the hearth in there."

"Sir, forgive my asking, but are we suffering a shortage of funds?"

"Of course not!"

"Then why do I find you and my mistress in such mean circumstances?"

"We're as we always were, Phillis. Mayhap your sojourn in London has made your blood too rich for our simple tastes. Speaking of which"—and he took a sip of the soup—"go fetch a bowl and sup with me. There are more important things we must discuss."

"Things are not good," he said, after inquiring after my health and telling me how proud and happy I had made them. "Governor Hutchinson is walking around saying that any union between the colonies is pretty well broken. And I'm afraid it is true. The nonimportation agreement turned us against each other. New Yorkers call Boston the common sewer of America. The
Boston Gazette
describes Rhode Island as filthy, nasty, and dirty."

He would talk politics. And I must listen.

"The king now pays the judges himself. No more are they receiving their salaries from the General Court of Massachusetts. So they now act without regard to the wishes of our local officials."

"Sir, have you become a Whig, then?"

"I? No, Phillis. The Whigs are scattered. People are tired of riots and rabble in the streets. But now we hear that in order to save the East India Tea Company from bankruptcy, the Crown is giving it the monopoly on the American market. We must now buy only what tea is sent to us. No more smuggling in Dutch tea. The merchants are terrified. Suppose the Crown does this with Madeira? Or shoes?"

"Where do your sympathies fall, then?"

"With Englishmen of liberty everywhere," he said solemnly, "here and abroad."

It was a vague answer, I thought, from a vague man. He did not seem to know what he was about. He seemed confused. Yet he pored over notes and newspapers on his desk as if he were Benjamin Franklin.

We talked for a while. He inquired after Nathaniel. I felt the letter in my pocket. Before I had a chance to speak, he smiled at me. "Ah, Phillis, it's so good to have you home. We need you here. Now things will get back to the way they used to be."

"Yes, sir," I said weakly.

Then he said he must get back to work.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

He smiled at me triumphantly. "I am proposing myself as a consignee to sell the tea when it arrives from England. Only certain shoppekeepers are being selected to sell it. And will make the profit"

"But you said the merchants are terrified of this tea."

"Yes, but everyone trusts me, you see. I had a respected merchant house for years. We can't allow the Hutchinsons to be selected. And they are putting themselves forth for the job."