Hunting Midnight (36 page)

“Shut that big mouth of yours, nigger!”

Mr. Johnson turned to Backbend and raised the lash above his head.

After the third stripe across the boy’s back, when his tears were rolling down his cheeks and he’d already filthied himself, Papa limped forward and said, “I did it. I killed Big Master Henry.”

“Done it how?” Mr. Johnson demanded.

“I took the ladder and I climbed up quietry-quietly. Big Master Henry was asleep and I stabbed him.”

“You, with that gimp of yours? Climbin’ up the ladder would be near impossible.”

“Yet that is just what I did, sir.”

“Why would you?” said Mr. Johnson, squinting.

“He cut my heel-strings, sir.”

“That was more than ten years ago.”

“Still, that is the reason.”

“So how d’you kill him without getting blood on you?”

“I wore gloves.”

Mr. Johnson spit. “Where are the gloves now?”

“Christmas Creek.”

“And how did you get the damned ladder out of the barn?”

Papa couldn’t answer that, since everyone knew only Mr. Johnson had the key.

“Not another word from you, Samuel!” he warned.

He was about to start whipping Backbend again, and then it would be my turn, but Weaver stepped forward and said that he had done it.

“And how did
you
get the ladder out of the barn?” Johnson asked. He spit twice real quick, which meant he was at the end of his patience.

“Wid da key, Mistuh Johnson.”

“My key?”

“Yessuh.”

“But I had my key with me all evenin’. I’m sure of it.”

“I duhn used mah root bayag,” Weaver confessed.

“What bag was that, nigger?”

“De condrin’ bayag.”

“What in God’s name are you talkin’ ’bout now?”

“His conjuring bag,” Papa repeated, because Mr. Johnson sometimes pretended that he was plain unable to understand Weaver and some of the other slaves.

“Weaver,” the overseer spat, “get your ragged black hide back in line now!”

Papa stepped forward again and said, “Nobody knows who killed Big Master Henry, Mr. Johnson. So take me instead of my Morri or I promise I’ll put an arrow in your heart.”

His words made me shake. Papa was just over five feet tall, with tight peppercorns of gray hair growing a bit thin on top, but he was more than Mr. Johnson’s equal, and we all knew it. Now
that my papa had threatened him, the overseer was finally getting the idea that he was losing this wrestling match with us. Because if my father was willing to risk being lynched for speaking the way he did, then he could be pretty damned sure that we weren’t lying and that no one knew the identity of the killer.

“You niggers get back to work. I’ve had enough of your lies for one day,” he shouted.

After that, he cut Backbend free, and the boy ran off.

The crime was never solved, though I was pretty sure I knew who’d done it – Little Master Henry. He’d been out at a party, but he could have walked the last few hundred yards of his way home and snuck back into the house without being seen. Or maybe he
had
been seen. And heard too. Likely no slave would have admitted to that, even if Backbend had been flayed down to his skeleton. Accusing the heir to the throne of River Bend would have been a death sentence.

Little Master Henry had everything to gain from his papa’s death. With the blade of one small knife, he inherited half the plantation. The other half went to Mistress Holly, of course.

In any event, we were about to have ourselves a new Master.

Two weeks after Big Master Henry’s death, on a bright Sunday afternoon, Papa asked me to sit on a stool with him inside a circle of fuchsia bushes he’d planted. Dozens of pink, purple, and red bell-shaped flowers were dangling all around us. Papa always said that fuchsias liked people knowing how pretty they were and grew offended if you looked away too quickly. I knew what he wanted me to tell him, but my heart was thundering. He said, “I’ll not make you say a thing. You can tell me when you’re ready.” I leaned my head upon his shoulder. “Sleep,” he said. “Sleep against me, Morri. I shall not let you fall.”

XXXI

A
fter learning of my father’s betrayal from Benjamin, I
immediately
posted a letter to Mother and Aunt Fiona asking that they be ready to receive us in their home in about two weeks.

Grandmother Rosa clearly wished for me to invite her too, if only so that she might be allowed the dignity of a refusal, but Mama would have had my head on a platter if she joined us.

Grandmother’s last words to me were “John, you were always a clever child, but never kind. Much like your mother in that regard.”

“I am genuinely sorry, Grandmother. I’d have preferred being a better grandson. I assure you that if I could stay in Portugal, I would. Cruelty is not my intention.”

“It is never our intention, John.”

Luna Olive Tree had no living relatives, so I went to her home on St. John’s Eve to ask her if she might consider joining us in England once we were settled in; Portugal’s precarious political situation was making me think we’d all be better off there, at least for the foreseeable future.

“Oh, John, it’s too late for an old goat like me to go
anywhere
,” she sighed.

I argued with her, but she kept telling me that it was impossible. I thanked her for all that she and her sister had ever done for me, which was a great-great deal. “You saved my life by finding Senhor Gilberto to train me,” I told her.

To make me cry, she said, “We never had children, but we had you, John, and both Graça and I were eternally grateful.”

Aboard our ship, a sense of death lodged itself in my gut. The mad thought that Papa might still be alive somewhere, hiding from us out of shame, kept me bound to silence. I knew it could not be true, but I could not fully accept his death, even after all these years. When my daughters came to my side, we held hands and watched our home disappear.

We arrived in London on the afternoon of July the Third. We found Mother and Aunt Fiona in hearty spirits, so thrilled by our arrival that they hopped around like schoolgirls and asked endless questions without waiting for replies.

Our initial conversation set the slightly hysterical and comic tone for our first days with them, which pleased me greatly as it served to camouflage my worry.

Fiona’s blue eyes were radiant. “I
canna
believe it!” she kept exclaiming. “They are
bonnie
bur
dies
indeed. Why, their
doony
feathers are all gone!”

“What’s
doony
?”
Esther asked.

“Downy,” replied Mother.

“And
burdies
?”

“Lassies.”

“Let me get a good look at you all!” Fiona said, moving back to take us in as we sat on the sofa.

“You’re frightening the children, staring like that,” Mama joked.

Fiona patted her bun of gray hair. Her eyes filled with tears as she whispered
bonnie
burdies
to herself. Then she said what Mother and I had been hoping she would not: “If only James were here to see you all.”

Mother looked wonderful and had allowed her hair to shine with its natural silver. That first day she wore amethyst earrings and a pearl necklace I remembered from my childhood. She attributed her overall confidence to London, where she felt perfectly at home and could live openly as a Jewish woman.

Fiona agreed that the city’s astonishing diversity had certainly
helped my mother, but she ascribed more importance to her piano lessons. Highly regarded as a teacher, her fame had spread, and she currently had students from as far away as Camden Town. One of her former pupils, a twenty-two-year-old
Londoner
by the name of Ian Pitt, had accompanied the well-known tenor Renato Vecchia on his recent tour of France and Italy.

As for me, I attributed much of her change to Aunt Fiona herself, who was very little put out by what others – particularly men – thought of her. She dressed the way she wanted, spoke her mind, and anyone who didn’t like it be damned!

One last reason for Mother’s sense of peace may have been that, in moving to England, she had placed herself a thousand miles from her own mother’s criticisms. She and I did speak of Grandmother Rosa upon my arrival, of course. When I
suggested
that she might consider inviting her for an extended stay, she retorted, “John, my mother only wanted your sympathy. She and my brothers have always been at war with me, so now let them delight in each other’s company.”

Mama finally told me what had caused the rift between them and how her deep affection for Violeta – and even Daniel – was connected to her own past.

When she was just fourteen, her piano teacher had touched her in inappropriate ways. “I was left scared and confused,” she said. “I’d looked up to him like a god – he played so beautifully. And I’d always trusted him. To have him betray me like that … in that terrible way, it took away my faith in so many things.”

“What did you do?”

“I thought it best to keep quiet, but during our next lesson, he did it again. So after he was gone, I told my mother, but she only accused me of being too flirtatious with adults. She said that if he had touched me inappropriately – which she wasn’t willing to believe just because I said so – then it must have been because I’d been leading him on. To punish me, she forbade me from taking further piano lessons with anyone else ever again. John, you know how I adore playing the piano. I was brokenhearted – completely lost.

“As if that wasn’t enough,” Mama continued, placing a hand to her chest to steady her breathing, “my former teacher spread
vicious gossip about me, claiming that I was a wicked
Marrana
girl and that I’d tried to seduce him.”

She shuddered when she said that adults from her
neighborhood
had referred to her for years as “that lying Jewish whore.”

“So you never took another lesson?”

Mama grinned slyly. “You know me better than that, John. I found a teacher on my own and for more than two years studied with him in secret. His name was João Vicente, God bless his memory. He didn’t ask for any payment at all. He told me that when I was a rich and famous concert pianist I would pay him back. But then one of my
dear
elder brothers followed me in secret across the city and told my mother what I’d been up to. You know what your Grandmother Rosa did? She beat me on the palms with a paddle, shouting with each strike that I’d never play music or humiliate the family again. It took weeks before I could even sew a few stitches. I felt like an outcast for years after that. The worst part was that I was prevented from doing what I most loved. I only started to feel like myself again when I left home and could play anytime I wanted.”

It was Father who saved her life in a sense, since he’d cared not a fig for the rumors about her character and believed only in the love they’d found together. “His first present to me after our marriage was a pianoforte he ordered from London – the one I still have.” Mama’s eyes radiated love for him.

“Then, when I gave birth to you, John,” she said, tapping my nose playfully, “I knew that I had overcome all the evil done to me. You were my proof that all would be well in my new life.”

To me, of course, this fierce and intuitive solidarity between my parents made the destruction of their marriage even more terrible.

We then discussed my life since Francisca’s death, and she listened intently. I had been unaware of how strongly – and for how long – I yearned for this simple act of listening. She in turn spoke to me of her desire to open a music school, where, with Fiona’s help, she might begin to accept scholarship students.

She burst into tears upon hearing that I’d received a letter from Violeta, for whom she had prayed every night for many years. I refrained from telling her about my plans to see her in
New York. I could not yet bring myself to speak of the troubling matters that concerned Mother directly.

Over the next days, Esther and Graça enjoyed visits to St. Paul’s and Kensington Gardens and were much taken with the
perfumeries
in Shire Lane and a Fantoccini performance on Oxford Street. Secretly, I posted a letter to Violeta saying that I would be arriving in New York as quickly as a ship might carry me. I added that I’d very much like to make a tile panel for her home, but that it might have to wait for a month or two while I attended to other business that I would explain to her upon my arrival.

I begged the others for a day alone to rest after the sea journey. From the sideways looks that Mother and Fiona gave me, I was sure they believed I had an afternoon of debauchery in mind. Not so. On Oxford Street I hired a hackney to a shipping agent’s countinghouse in King William Street, where I booked a room aboard the
Saxony,
which only a few months later would sink famously in a storm. I would be departing from Portsmouth precisely eight days hence.

I was feeling very relieved to have the ticket in my hand, until I asked the booking agent how long we would be at sea. “Last year,” he replied jovially, “at the very same time, her sails caught every gust of wind and she made the crossing in twenty-four days.”

I ought to have kept my mouth shut, but I could not help asking, “And if she fails to catch just a few of the breezes?”

“In that case” – he grinned – “I’d say you were looking at a journey of three months at least.”