Hunting Midnight (50 page)

LI

O
ne seemingly harmless remark from Mistress Anne at our supper on Saturday evening, along with one of my own observations, combined to give me suspicions about the origin of the spells suffered by both Big and Little Master Henry. If I had not discovered their cause, then I believe that Morri might never have grown to trust me.

I was close to despair when the meal began, as Morri had again refused to even consider coming away with me. I’d seen her caring for a sick baby that afternoon and spoken to her gently, but she shouted back that I was making her life even more difficult than it already was. I simply couldn’t seem to say anything right to her.

Mistress Anne spoke viciously at first about her dead father and brother, calling the former a brute and the latter a weakling. In the end she softened, however, and she improved my mood when she asked Lily to prepare fresh lemonade for us all, as in the days of her youth when Samuel had given a glass every night to her father and brother for health reasons.

“You know, Mr. Stewart,” Mistress Anne said, “my father and brother were subject to the most terrible spells of fever and dizziness. To be totally honest with you, I occasionally fear my children have inherited this propensity, but so far we have been most fortunate.”

To my subsequent questions, she replied that she had never asked Lily for her lemonade recipe but that it must have contained some of the herbs Samuel grew in his garden. “We all benefited considerably from his presence. Though he vanished into nothing three years ago. I tremble for the fate of the poor little man. I truly do. By now, dogs have probably eaten him down to the last bone.”

As Lily entered the room with drinking glasses and a jug of lemonade, Anne requested that she tell us her recipe. It consisted of lemon juice, water, honey, ground mint leaves, and a powder made from several other herbs. Which ones precisely, she could not say. She told us that only Samuel had known, though Morri had come up with a recipe nearly as good.

By now I understood that the herbs were irrelevant, however. This would not have occurred to me if, during my childhood, Midnight and I had not read together on dozens of occasions Strabo’s account of the victory of King Mithradates of Pontus over the Romans.

What
was
relevant was the honey.

I questioned Crow and Lily further the next day. Each was hesitant to speak to me, but through the accumulation of small details I was able to bring the dark treasure I sought to the surface.

Crow told me that Big Master Henry’s spells had started before Midnight’s arrival at River Bend, but he also dated that to 1809, which – from what Morri had told me – I knew to be a lie. He confirmed that only Mistress Holly and the Master had had keys to the bedroom in which his body had been found.

I questioned Crow at the door to his small room, just off the study. To change the subject, he showed me some of his
knick-knacks
, including two molds he had made by pressing scallop shells into riverbed clay. He said he’d once had many others, some of which had been fired in an oven by his recently deceased younger brother, who’d been a blacksmith over at Limerick Plantation. And not just shells – he’d made molds of coins and Samuel’s flowers as well.

Later, Lily told me that when Big Master Henry was under the power of the spells, it was as though he were soused to his eyeballs. Little Master Henry had been just the same, she said.

She also assured me that Samuel’s medical knowledge and care had always returned Big and Little Master Henry to health. She started when I asked if the particular lemonade she made during their spells was in any way different from her daily brew. She denied any difference.

I knew I would also hide the truth if I were in her position. To
alleviate her fears, I said that I was quite certain she had never done anything wrong to either of her masters. Then it was my turn to lie. In a confessional voice, I said that one of my daughters back in England was subject to similar spells. I explained that I was merely hoping to learn the secret of her recipe so I might alleviate my child’s suffering.

Thinking of my girls in faraway London, it was all too easy to let my eyes fill with tears. Softening, Lily whispered that when the Master was feeling a bit under the weather Midnight would sometimes ask her to secretly use what she called the curing honey – a powerful and dark variety that he extracted from the combs of a particular hive in Porter’s Woods. Only he knew its location, though he had passed that secret on to Morri. Lily assured me that Morri would surely give me a jar of it for my daughter before I left River Bend.

I kissed her for this kindness, and glimpsed her rubbing her cheek as I stepped out the door.

So I learned how Midnight had brought on the spells. As to his motivation, it didn’t seem that a slave would need a particular reason to give
mad
honey
to his master. Yet Morri had provided me with one earlier, when she told me that her father had earned her the right to read, as well as gardens for himself and the other slaves, by curing Big Master Henry of the worst of his spells and then threatening never to help him again. Little Master Henry had likely granted further concessions for the same reason.

Lily always thought the spells got worse by themselves and that the curing honey was all that stood between her master and the grave. She had no reason to doubt Midnight, whose talents as a healer were renowned. He told her when to start using it and when to stop.

Of course, it might have been possible that the very first spell had been real and had given Midnight the idea for his gambit. In any case, once he had seen how easy it was to produce a grave illness and then effect a cure by withholding the cause, he
understood
the usefulness of this ruse. He had planted his
rhododendrons
to have access to the mad honey made from their pollen.

It was, in fact, a brilliant strategy. Likely he’d regarded it as unfortunate but necessary. And sanctioned by history through the victory of King Mithradates. It would have also been a reminder of the power that honey held in the Bushman culture.

During my very first talk with Morri, she told me that Big Master Henry had had his way with some of the slave girls for a month prior to his falling victim to a terrible spell. A sudden spark in her eyes – which she tried to hide from me by gazing down – led me to believe that she had been one of his victims. Even if she had kept this a secret from everyone, her father would likely have guessed from some subtle change in her bearing.

This was motivation enough for Midnight to commit murder, as I saw it, as was the cutting of his heel-strings. Yet I didn’t believe he had done either killing. For if he had sought to end either Big or Little Master Henry’s life, he merely would have had to increase the dosage of honey or add a more potent poison to Lily’s lemonade.

When I mentioned the possibility that Mistress Holly had committed the murders to Crow and Lily, they replied that it was impossible. They assured me that she’d cowered in front of her husband like a whipped dog. Lily also told me that the Mistress had been so fond of her ne’er-do-well son that she would have laid down her life for him without a moment’s hesitation.

It seemed possible that up to three different people were involved in the murders: Midnight to bring on the spells with the mad honey and one or two others to plunge knives into Big and Little Master Henry.

If, in the first case, the perpetrator had been Mistress Holly, then her husband would not have cried out upon seeing her in his room. Though likely the murderer had stabbed him at the height of one of his spells, when he was delirious, and he therefore might not have been able to cry out the killer’s name, whoever he or she was.

Unless he was already dead prior to the use of the blade and it had been used merely to divert suspicion from poisoning. That
seemed to me likely, except that Crow had said that a great deal of blood had soaked into the victims’ shirts. If they had been dead for even half an hour, I did not believe this would have been the case.

Perhaps the second murder had been the handiwork of
Mistress
Anne, who seemed to me a lady of thwarted hopes and vengeance, carrying all the rage her mother had never dared to express.

I’d had little reason to seek out Mr. Johnson previous to these discoveries, but I now went to him in the fields to see if he might have any ideas on the matter.

“I’ve nothing to tell you, sir” was all he would answer with regard to the murders. In the stern compression of his lips I could see he might have liked to thrash me for questioning him about such a delicate matter. The obvious had yet to occur to me – that he regarded himself as partly responsible, since the day-to-day running of the plantation was under his command.

“Do you believe one of the slaves capable of having committed the murders?” I asked.

“I would believe none of them incapable.”

“And Mistress Holly?”

He bristled. “What are you suggesting, Mr. Stewart?”

“Only that she was gravely unhappy.”

“I can’t rightly see how that concerns you. No, I can’t see that at all.”

His stance had changed to one of defiance, and I could plainly see that I had made an enemy. I apologized quickly and walked back to the Big House.

From my window, I spotted Morri returning home late that night, near the stroke of twelve. As she whispered good night to Weaver on the gravel driveway by the piazza, I realized what I’d previously refused to admit – that speaking with her would prove useless. She had told me so much in passing the day before, but I saw now, in the way she gazed slowly around the
plantation, how hard it would be for her to leave this place without her father. Particularly as it was the only home she had ever known.

Sitting on my bed, listening to the ratcheting sound of the crickets and the hooting of a far-off owl, all the night seemed to be telling me,
Several
lives
are
depending
on
you.
You
can
work
things
out
if
you
go
slowly
….

I decided then that it would be best for me to join Isaac and Luisa for a few days. This would give Morri an opportunity to consider her destiny without my wishes playing havoc with her emotions. Also, I would prevail upon Luisa to return with me and speak to Morri. I was sure that she would have a much better chance of convincing the girl to leave River Bend than I did, that no argument I could ever come up with would be nearly as eloquent as Luisa’s freedom itself.

Staying with Luisa and Isaac – having time to think in congenial surroundings – only made me realize that I had no choice but to defy Morri’s wishes and offer Edward every penny in my possession for her, even if she did not want to be bought. If he refused to sell her, I would find a way to steal her. I would undoubtedly need help, but Luisa had already mentioned that she and Isaac had hidden runaways before, and I felt certain that I could count on them.

I remained with Isaac and Luisa for three and a half days, and on the last morning Isaac proposed a way to get Morri away from the plantation without arousing suspicion – so I could talk to her calmly and wear down her opposition.

“Just lease her,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Slaves are leased out by their masters to do all sorts of work – as stevedores, seamstresses, cooks … Tell Edward that you want to lease Morri for a week or two to help you travel around the plantations of the Low Country. Offer him fifty dollars for her and another fifty for use of one of his carriages. He will accept. Then you will have plenty of time to convince her and you’ll not have to force her to do anything. You can bring her to our home
and Luisa will talk to her about the differences between slavery and freedom. It’ll be quiet here, and we can all get to know one another.”

Luisa was in agreement. We even dared to regard it as a foolproof plan.

LII

Seventeen
Lives
in
My
Hands

M
aster Edward called me into the tea room with a nasty shout just before noon on Thursday. His voice was so loud I thought maybe he’d crack some of the crystal I’d just dusted. John, who’d come back late that morning to River Bend, was with him.

“Morri, I have a rather exciting proposition for you,” the Master said. “Mr. Stewart would like to lease you for a week or so, to help him orient himself in the Low Country. It would involve some travel. There would be a five-dollar wage in it for you. I daresay that we could spare you without too much suffering around here.” He smirked at me. “What do you say to that?”

He was so full of himself that you’d have thought he’d won election to the State Legislature. He looked too happy for this to be good for me, and I ought to have known that some cold-
as-death
plan was hiding inside him.

“I ain’t got no desire to leave, Master Edward. I’d shawly prefuh to stay here at River Bend, if it’s all the same to you.”

“You know I can order you, but Mr. Stewart and I would both prefer that you agree to go.”

“Would you mind my saying a word?” John asked.

“No, no,” Master Edward replied, “go right ahead, sir.”

“Morri,” he said, “I assure you that I truly want your help. I believe you might even appreciate the adventure. And Edward and I both agree that you are the person most qualified.”

“Mr. Stewart would like to set out with you on Saturday,” the Master added. “But you’ll have to come up to Comingtee on
Sunday because there’s a supper we’ve planned. It’s going to be a big party. I’m sure you’ll like being there.”

It was plainly the first time John had heard about the fete. Master Edward explained to him that some planter families were getting together. “We’re counting on you coming,” he said.

“I’d be honored.”

Edward the Cockerel turned to me and gave me a stern look. “So, Morri, I’m expecting you to travel with Mr. Stewart on Saturday. Then on Sunday afternoon you’ll come up to
Comingtee
with us all and help in the kitchen. Monday, you’ll be back with Mr. Stewart, this time for a week or so.”

“I ain’t sure.”

“What aren’t you sure about?”

“If I’s going with him.”

“I don’t mind telling you that I’m mighty disappointed in you, girl. I rightly thought you’d be pleased to get this opportunity. If I have to, I’ll order you with the lash. How’d you like twenty? You hear that, you silly nigger girl?”

I sat in my room trying my best to think what to do, but it was like I was stuck in a big old chimney without any light – no way up and no way down. I couldn’t think of how to make John not take me along with him without telling him about us running away. Just for once I wished I had the power to say
no.
When I got the right to say that one simple word up North, I didn’t know if I was ever going to say
yes
to anything ever again.

John came to me an hour later, while I was ironing in Lily’s room, just upstairs from the kitchen. He apologized for Master Edward’s rudeness and said that he had hoped I’d be pleased to leave the plantation for a week or so.

Holding tight to all my years of anger, I said, “You don’t know anything about me or River Bend. You’re just a stranger here. And you come in meddling and everything, thinking you know what’s what. But you don’t. You don’t know what an infernal
mess you’re making just by being here. Now, I’m not about to change my mind, so don’t you go trying to make me. Because even if you have me whipped, I won’t agree to leave with you. I’m not about to go traipsing across the countryside with you or any other white man. And now,” I said, picking up my iron and sliding it along a collar, “I got plenty of work to do. So just you let me and everybody else be. I know you were fond of my papa, and I know he was fond of you, but he’s long gone. He might even be dead. And I’m not him, so just leave me be. Just leave me be right now!”

I made myself as mud-mean as I could, because he’d proven himself more stubborn than I’d thought he was. With only three days and nights till Sunday, I had no time left to talk nice to a white man, no matter who he was. I had seventeen lives in my hands.

When he wouldn’t budge, I screamed like a banshee at him. “Don’t you understand what I’m saying? We don’t want you at River Bend.
I
don’t want you here. Get out and find yourself someone else to buy!”

That night, after supper, Master Edward had Crow call me into his study, where he asked for my decision. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I gots to get my work done here at River Bend and that’s what I aim on doin’.”

“And what if I were to call Mr. Johnson?”

“Then you go on ahead and do your callin’.”

He stomped out of the room like he was trying to push his big ugly boots straight through the floor. I ran to Lily, because I was frightened.

Next thing that happened was that Copper, one of the black foremen, rushed into the kitchen behind Mr. Johnson, murder in his eyes. Lily was standing in front of me as a shield, but Copper threw her into the cabinet where she kept her pans and grabbed me by the wrist. I tried kicking him, and so did Lily, but he caught my leg and lifted me right up over his shoulder.

Lily was screaming now, but Mr. Johnson slapped her so hard she fell to the ground with a shriek. While she was lying there, he
kicked her twice in the gut. “You don’t defy me, you useless nigger sow!” he shouted.

Copper hauled me out to the yard, where he and the other foreman tied me to the whipping barrel.

“Are you going with Mr. Stewart on Saturday?” Master Edward snarled.

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere with nobody!” I shouted.

In that moment before the lash cuts into your hope, you think you’ve got the strength to defy it. You think your righteous anger is so rock hard that it’s going to make you invincible. And you think you ain’t your body. No, the
you
that’s important is deep inside, where nobody can reach it. But what you forget is that even the biggest wall of determination crumbles to dust when it’s pounded enough. When it does, you find you ain’t so deep inside your body as you thought. No, you’re right there on the surface, where your skin is coming off in burning strips. You’re nothing but the pain itself and you hate it more even than you hate the white man doing the lashing.

“Give her twenty to start with, Mr. Johnson,” Master Edward ordered.

I gritted my teeth. The first stroke cut the air. It didn’t hurt so bad – just stung like a wasp. I thought I could make it to twenty without peeing all over myself.

“Two …”

That one singed. I let out a shriek.

“Three …”

I felt my anger running clean away, hopelessness rising up to meet the next lash.

“Four …”

I let go all over the barrel and my legs. I couldn’t help the tears from coming now. And I couldn’t catch enough breath.

“Five …”

The whip hit bone. I pictured Lily hanging on to that cross of hers. I thought of God. I begged Him for help. I began to recite a verse from one of my favorite Psalms: …
the
snare
is
broken
and
we
are
escaped
…
the
snare
is
broken
–

“Six …”

“Please stop, Master Edward,” I moaned. “Please stop.”

“Seven …”

I imagined my whole self was coming off – in bloody bits.

“Please let Morri go, Mastuh Edwood,” Crow shouted. “You whip me instead.”

“Eight …”

I was weeping now. Then I shrieked for help as loud as I could. And I hollered what he wanted: “I’ll go with Mr. Stewart!”

Mr. Johnson stopped, but Master Edward ordered him to pay me no mind and keep on going. What I didn’t realize is that he wasn’t truly punishing me for defying him at all. No, sir, he had another, better reason for hurting me good and he was enjoying this.

“Nine …”

By now I was tugging something fierce at my bindings and crying out to God and Mantis and Papa. And I kept on shrieking for them, but no one would come.

“Ten …”

Crow begged again for Master Edward to lash him instead of me. I knew he was offering himself not just for me, but out of loyalty to my papa. But his voice was far off. Then I heard him grunt. I think Master Edward must have kicked him in the belly. I couldn’t get enough air to scream so loud anymore. Which was damned good, because it meant I’d faint soon. I was hoping that Copper wouldn’t throw water on me to wake me up.

“Eleven …”

Eleven didn’t fall. By turning my head, I could see Mr. Johnson on the ground, his face in the dirt. He was getting to his feet real slow, but revenge was in his eyes.

“Whoa there!” Master Edward shouted. “Just wait a minute, Mr. Johnson!”

I could hear a scuffle and men yelling. When I faced forward again, I saw a shadow crossing in front of me. I thought it was my papa’s.

I must have fainted sure enough, because when I woke up I was facedown in my own bed and Lily was smoothing some fat onto my back.

“Ya gonna be jes’ fine, baby,” she was saying.

I turned to look at her. Her left eye was puffy and nearly closed.

“Can’t see nuttin’ outta mah left one anyways.” She lifted a glass of water to my lips. Crow was there too, standing back from the bed. In a voice hopping with righteousness, the likes of which I hadn’t heard coming out of him in years, he explained to me that Mr. Stewart had dashed down from his bedroom when he heard me screaming and run straight for Mr. Johnson and knocked him hard in the dirt, threatening to kill him if he ever touched me again.

“Ooh, baby,” Lily said, “dat man was rattlesnek mad!”

Crow added that Mr. Johnson had wanted to fight a duel with Mr. Stewart right then and there, but Master Edward had calmed him down and sent him to his cottage. As he was leaving, he apparently gave me one more lash just to be spiteful.

“And Mr. Stewart?”

Lily replied that he’d been here to see me already, had been right where she was sitting. He’d wanted to make sure I was still alive. He had already spoken to Master Edward and was back in his bedroom now.

“What did Edward the Cockerel say to him?”

“He bawled him out at first, for hittin’ Mr. Johnson,” said Crow. “Then they drank some whiskey and ever’t’ing was jes’ fine.”

“And nobody’s told about us?”

Lily smacked my hand playfully. “Now, you hush up and stop frettin’ yousself, chile!”

I woke up Friday morning wishing I could slip out of the skin on my back like a snake and leave it to holler at someone else. One thing was for sure – I was going to have to figure a way out of going away with John the next day and of taking him to Comingtee on Sunday. If I couldn’t, Weaver and the others were just going to have to escape without me. And I sure as hell didn’t intend to get left behind in Egypt with Pharaoh. No, sir.

An hour later, I was already running a fever and slurring my
speech like my tongue was made of glue. Crow reckoned it was the whipping. Lily took care of me in her room.

Master Edward had gone back with his family to Cordesville by now. He’d be returning Saturday morning by nine and had told Mr. Johnson that if I hadn’t left with Mr. Stewart by the time he got here I was to be given thirty more lashes. Lily ran to fetch John, who was sitting down by the river, sketching the slaves in the rice fields nearby. She said we owed it to him to tell him how I was doing since he’d clobbered Mr. Johnson
something
good on my behalf. He came in looking all glum and sat by my bed, with his arms crossed over his chest, not saying a word. I was too weak to say anything mean-spirited to him. Truth is, I liked him looking at me with those clear, sad eyes. I guess everybody likes to feel sorry for themselves once in a while.

He asked Lily if he could be alone with me for a few minutes, so she went back to her cleaning. He felt my pulse and found it racing, then wet a towel with water and laid it cool across my forehead. He said my papa had done that for him once, almost twenty-five years ago, just before making Hyena leave him be. He said he would never forgive himself for getting me whipped.

“You’ve got to stop saying you’re sorry all the time,” I said, smiling.

“In any case, I would never want to force you to come away with me.”

“So you’ll go?”

“I don’t know what to do. I suppose I’ll stay through Sunday, when I have to go to that dinner party at Comingtee with Edward. I pray that you’ll change your mind by then. This is no life for you. You must know that.”

“I know it, but I still can’t go,” I said.

“I don’t think I’ll ever understand that. Morri, I know it’s a big decision, and I’m willing to wait for you for as long as it takes. I can go back to Charleston and wait there for a few days, then come back here. I can keep coming back. Don’t you see, I can’t just let you stay here.”

I figured that John would hear about our escape soon enough. Whether we got away or not, he’d be freed from his need to help me. “Just wait a week for me,” I told him. “If I don’t send you
word, then leave without me. I know it makes no sense, but just do what I ask.”