Текст книги "Dominion"

Автор книги: Calvin Baker

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III. settlement

one

The boy took quickly to Stonehouses, as certain plants transferred from one soil to another find their new environs equally conducive to growth – for example Solanum tuberosum, the common potato, which he ate for his lunch, or Taraxacum officinale, the dandelions they consumed as greens at dinner and which, when he was older, he and his friends would harvest late in the summer to produce a crude, heady wine – until it was impossible to tell it was not his original home. Though perhaps one might have called it his urhome or great home, as certainly it suited him as well as the first, which he never forgot. Being young at the time of his orphanage – once he determined it was a permanent situation – he also took to Magnus and Adelia’s care with amazingly little rebellion and, in fact, great joy that this newfound warmth and security belonged now fully to him.

Nor was he without the normal assertiveness of boys his age, far from it; he often resented the scrutiny to which Magnus and Adelia, being new to parenting, subjected him. It was simply that, having lost one home, he was hesitant to do anything that might make the residents of Stonehouses angry at him or in any way jeopardize his station. Eventually, this habit of obeying became second nature to him, so that at the time when other young men felt the need to revolt against authority and claim independence he was calm and found the strictures placed on him quite bearable, if not always fair. In short, he was a model boy.

Adelia for her part never tired of spoiling him with attention, and Magnus, who could be so stern in everyday life, was made happy by the boy’s ethic of work and good personal habits. This was especially vital, as there were some things they themselves could not help him with but had to rely on his own discipline to accomplish.

Although Magnus was able in mathematics, for example, after he enrolled Caleum in school there were many questions he could not answer for the boy but was still anxious for him to learn, so that certain skills and knowledge he deemed important might be restored to the household. Perhaps because of this expectation, Caleum soon became among the best pupils at Miss Boutencourt’s, the woman who taught all the Negro children whose parents wanted them educated. It had originally been a white school, but as there were so few of either color interested in education she decided it prudent, and necessary to her income, not to discriminate between them. In the beginning, however, none of the Negro families sent their children to her, being uncertain of the arrangement, until Magnus inquired, through an intermediary, about teaching Caleum, and she affirmed a commitment to teach any child in the county who would learn. After that, Magnus told everyone he knew with school-age children what a brilliant teacher she was and that he was entrusting Caleum to her tutelage – this he did both to spread general knowledge and to ensure that his own ward would not be so isolated when classes resumed.

It always gave him pleasure, in the months and years that followed, to hear Miss Boutencourt report the boy’s progress. He was as generous with praise then as Adelia was with sweets and gifts, telling his nephew how proud both he and his grandfather were, and that his mother and father would be as well if they knew of his achievements. For every subject mastered he would also add a pound to the boy’s allowance, telling him to spend it freely. However, seized with worry about spoiling him, he then became careful not to let him slack at his other chores. In general, though, he thought he could not have asked for a better son if it had been given to him to choose.

This is not to say those early days were without incident. Whenever Caleum performed below satisfactory levels in schoolwork – else was lax with his chores or on rare occasions even unruly – Magnus was unrelenting in his punishment. Midsummer would find the boy out with the hired men under the unsparing sun, stomping water into clay and then molding rough bricks. When the brickmaker came and fired the kiln he was ordered to stay at the man’s side as he supervised the fire, which could go on for days at a time without pause or rest.

When the firing was over, and the bricks were cooling in the kiln, Magnus would call Caleum – who had not slept properly for nearly a week by this time – and ask whether he had learned his lesson and now knew, for example, that it was offensive to fail at spelling or that drinking dandelion wine behind the church house was a disgrace. Magnus, even in these moods, would always attribute Caleum’s bad behavior to the influence of his friends, but he knew the boy had to learn right from wrong whatever the case.

Caleum, however, being at least as prideful as honest, always pointed out that the activity in question had been his idea. He would do this even if it meant another week in the kilns. “I might be a bad speller,” he would say, “but I’m not so much a fool as to be one because William Gibbs is.” Or, “It was my idea to brew the wine. Who else of them do you think could have figured how it is made?”

It was true. Among the free boys of color he was the acknowledged leader, and if he had done poorly at his spelling exam there was as likely as not a rash of poor fourteen-year-old Negro spellers running around Berkeley that particular year.

The other parents, however, were all so happy to see their sons befriend the well-regarded young Merian that none ever suspected it was Caleum who hatched their more reckless adventures, believing rather that the slave Julius was behind it all.

During the three years he attended Miss Boutencourt’s, Caleum’s most steadfast and dependable companions as he began exploring the world around him were the two Darson boys, George and Eli, whose father ran a farm down the valley about half the size of Stonehouses; Bastian Johnson, whose father, also called Bastian Johnson, was the local gunmaker; and a boy named Cato, whose father was called Plato and had been born a slave but settled in Berkeley as a wheelwright after his mistress freed them, because he heard it was a place hospitable to people of his kind. Neither father nor son had a last name or, for that matter, saw the need of one. There was also the aforementioned Julius, whose master was too poor to care for the souls he owned and so hired out any with skill to support his meager holding. Although Julius did not attend school with the other boys, he was a most gifted apprentice to the cabinetmaker, who allowed him to come and go as he pleased, so that he often spent time with the free boys after their lessons.

Even if he was often scapegoated, Julius himself was hardly an innocent. Being aware, however, of his place, he would never have suggested the boldest of their schemes, such as trying out their new dandelion wine behind the church house; or, “the white church,” as it was generally known, as religion had not been integrated in the town since the days Merian had attended service. In the time since the free Coloreds had switched over mainly to the Baptist church, where there was a section devoted to their exclusive use, and the slaves received their religious instruction on the plantations.

When the six boys were found drinking behind what was nevertheless a house of God, Reverend Finch whipped Cato, the two Darson boys, and Bastian Johnson. He sent word to the cabinetmaker about Julius’s behavior, not wanting to lay hands on another man’s property. Nor did he lay his hand on Caleum, although whether it was out of respect for the Merians or for some other reason of his own no one ever knew.

When the preacher sent word around to Magnus about what had happened, though, Magnus himself did beat Caleum, being very clear that the lesson was not for drinking but for the position he had let himself into.

“You shamed us,” he said to his nephew, with grave disappointment.

Caleum bore his punishment and was remorseful, never having thought guilt for his actions might spread beyond himself. It was a hard lesson, but he understood the truth of it when, later that summer, the two Darson boys began to tease him about the rumors they had heard regarding his father, Purchase.

“We heard your papa once killed a man.” George Darson taunted one day.

“You’re a liar,” Caleum replied evenly.

“Are you calling my brother a liar?” Eli Darson asked, approaching him.

“He is if he doesn’t take that back.”

“I will not!” George Darson shouted. “I heard it from my father, so if you call me a liar you’re calling my father one too.”

“I’m calling the whole lot of you liars,” Caleum said.

When he heard this, Eli Darson did not repeat his warning but, his fists balled and angry, rushed in at Caleum. Eli was a full two years older, but Caleum was big for his age and did not think twice about ramming his fist into Eli’s mouth when he came into range. The two were well matched, and fell to the ground wrestling, neither gaining advantage over the other, until George Darson joined in on his brother’s side.

The other boys circled them, uncertain whether to intervene or let them continue until they reached their own conclusion. Being attacked by both of the Darsons threw Caleum into a rage, and he began to pummel the younger brother, George, violently as Eli clenched his throat. He struggled to escape, then bent and gathered a handful of dry dust in his palm, which he threw into Eli’s face. When his opponent could no longer see he drove his fist into his gut, hobbling him, and squaring the fight again, as he momentarily faced only one assailant. Caleum continued to fight the brothers, angrier and angrier that the two of them should attack him together instead of choosing one to stand for both as fairness would have had it. Still, he proved their equal, beating both brothers badly, even though he took quite some blows himself.

When he arrived home later that evening, his eyes swollen, Magnus asked what had happened. Caleum said simply that the Darsons had told lies about his family, and he was no longer friends with them. He never once thought to ask his uncle whether there was any truth to their slander.

He ceased his studies soon thereafter, on the premise, as he argued it with Magnus and Adelia, that he had learned to read and calculate as well as he would ever need to know, and that he was due to be finished soon anyway. Miss Boutencourt, who was used to seeing the boys from the country cease their studies all of a sudden, was surprised when Caleum stopped, as he had been such a good pupil. If he was needed on his family’s farm, though, as he told her, there was little she could do about it, as that was the rhythm of life in that region of the world. It was in moments like this that she herself longed to live in one of the great towns of the colonies or, in bolder moments of dreaming, even London. But even though she had started her own voyage in Devonshire, she knew she would never see London in her lifetime, and perhaps not even Philadelphia.

Under her tutelage Caleum had mastered his primer and could now read as well as any boy in the colony. Having full command of arithmetic, he could also keep a ledger, so when Magnus tested his knowledge he was not only satisfied but duly impressed.

He also had to admit he was happy for the extra hand, as a shortage of labor was thwarting any ambition he might have had to expand on what Jasper Merian had started. How Jasper had always acquired workers was simply to pay them a wage above what they would make in the first years of starting their own farm, so men who thought they were heading west might be easily persuaded to receive a salary for a time, before going on to face the privations of the frontier. When they amassed capital enough they pushed on, one way or another, or else stayed on. However, men had seemed to evaporate the last few seasons, being either greedier for the far country or, for reasons of their own, unwilling to stay. It had become increasingly clear to Magnus that, if Stonehouses was to last, there were only two hopes: the first was if Caleum someday produced many children, as he knew he and Adelia would never be so blessed; the other was to make an investment in permanent labor.

He found slavery too unsettling to contemplate and so contrived to think of it by other fashions, but the truth was still there before him. Despite this reluctance, he knew it to be a logical course of action. Even so, he dare not capitulate to it so long as his father was still alive. And so Jasper Merian’s crippled existence in his upstairs room was all that kept Stonehouses from becoming like the places on the coast both father and son had worked so hard to escape.

That way of life was spreading, however, and Magnus did not think they would ever again do so well as when he and Merian had worked the land together and produced as much as any ten men between the two of them.

When Caleum finished his studies and began devoting himself to the farm, showing an interest in everything about the place, Magnus was relieved then from some of his anxieties and began to treat the boy from that point forth as more of an adult and partner.

Caleum still kept up his friendship with Bastian, Cato, and Julius, but now he was less prone to allow himself boyish pleasures and indulgences. When he would go to town on an errand for his uncle and happened to see one of his friends, he was just as likely to excuse himself as dawdle. Instead he would try to arrange some meeting for when he was not working. “I have to get back now,” he might say, “but let’s meet at Turner’s Creek on Sunday and see if we can’t catch a few fishes.”

He would spend the Sunday as carelessly as any other youth in the piedmont, but Monday morning his newfound devotion was again upon his face. Like his uncle, he had also begun to sense the pressure upon their way of life and knew what was at stake if they failed in their way of doing things.

It was years since Berkeley had been the isolated place Merian settled, and the frontier was now moved far to the westward. In that time other ways had come steadily to their area, so that there were very few who remembered what life there had been like before it was all conquered and brought under cultivation.

Magnus, when he would go into the town of Berkeley, would stop by at Content’s and Dorthea’s, who had been as good friends to him as they had been to his father. He would drink a beer, and Content, who still came into the bar every day to see his customers, would look at the younger man absorbed in his private worries.

“You know it was never any easier,” Content always said. “In fact, it was probably harder before.”

At least then, Magnus thought, no one harassed them and their labor was their own.

“You are doing better than most,” Content reminded him. “Better than Merian even, who braved so much uncertainty out there.”

Magnus was an apprehensive soul, though, and when he left he would be just as worried as when he entered. These were the moments he thought most seriously about acquiring bought labor, and he would sink further into his anxieties.

Whether life in Berkeley had actually changed, or whether Magnus was simply bearing the burden of leading the family now, was a difficult thing to know. The area itself had changed undeniably, but he was also one of the better-off denizens and was a welcome guest of both his white and Negro neighbors. Still, no matter how well he managed the affairs of Stonehouses, he missed having Jasper to guide him.

Merian was still there among them in the house, but he was by then barely in command of his own faculties and certainly not in command of the same intellect he had before. He referred to Magnus, for instance, as Purchase, and to Caleum as Magnus. When he asked about Chiron he sometimes meant his old friend, who had once been a slave with him, and sometimes his second son. Adelia might be Sanne or Dorthea, and Content – on the occasion of his last visit, was met at first with a blank stare, until Merian finally remembered him. What he called him then was not his Christian name, Content, but rather Governor of Utopia.

Content laughed, taking it that his friend was not so far dispossessed of his senses that he could not still make a joke. It heartened him, especially as he was losing power over his own body as surely as his friend was over his mind. “A fine pair we make,” he said. But Content grew increasingly weak soon after that visit and could no longer travel. It was all he managed to make it down to his tavern in the afternoon, where he might still see an old friendly face.

When he died that winter it was a time of great disconsolation at Stonehouses, as it was throughout the valley and hill country. The entire reputable population, if not in fact everyone who owned shoes, came out for the funeral, including many who thought he had passed on long before. His death was seen by all as the endpoint of an era in that part of the world, and gripped all of them in sadness, for they feared the best days there might be ended.

Content had been among the first to settle the area and the very first to think it deserved a name, suggesting Berkeley after one of the Lords Proprietor. He had been first in all civic matters as well and had for a term represented them in the House of Burgesses. In matters familial he had proved fortunate and capable, leaving two sons and an equal number of daughters who survived into adulthood, and much goodwill and happiness. As a friend, his generosity and steadfastness were known to be among the best men may achieve. Even the old chandler, Pete Griffith, who could find an ill thing to say about every man in Berkeley, never found one syllable of bile for Content.

Jasper Merian, who recognized so little by then, remembered him who gave him shelter his first winter when he was without, and who introduced him to his wife, Sanne; Merian cried when he realized his old friend had died.

All his oldest acquaintances had seen him in life for the last time at the funeral of his wife, Dorthea. Her death had been cause for widespread mourning in its own right, as she had been friend and confidante to so many in the region. The two had been married since both were nineteen, and they had sailed from their home country before either was yet twenty-one. By all accounts, their marriage was a successful one.

She was near ninety when she died and, although her life had been other than what she would have expected, she was on the whole exceedingly pleased with it.

What is further, certain old wives’ tales, and other fanciful sources, claim to measure the love between man and wife by the time between the death of each.

In cases of extremely strong love among young people, who have not yet learned to govern so violent an emotion, the death of one could cause the other to take his own life. Among the seasoned old it was thought more usual for those who had loved each other well and long to die within a decade of the other’s passing. There were also a scattered few cases known in which the beloved departed within the year, oftentimes on the anniversary of the other’s death or another meaningful occasion. But such cases were so rare that when they occurred they were immortalized in song, verse, and speechifying.

Content, when he lost Dorthea, lived on another three days, then took his leave with little else said about the matter but that he was also done here.

two

Not long after Content’s death, a rash of outlanders appeared in the county. It began with the new tax assessor, a man named Paul Spector, who hailed from the neighboring town of Chase. He came originally out of Charleston and had set out that spring to do what he thought would be a favor for himself and the county alike. Instead, he finished by stirring up no end of mischief and bad blood.

The new tax code called for all members of free Negro households to be assessed thirty pounds sterling, and after Spector saw this provision he figured a way he could bring in even more revenue from his post. When he went to collect taxes from the Colored segment of the citizenry that year, he asked each head of household to show him proof of freedom for everyone in the house. For those who had been bonded, ready proof was easy enough. Those born in freedom seldom possessed documentation, though, as births were not yet recorded in that part of the world. Faced with this dilemma, nearly everyone he approached paid Spector ten additional pounds for a certificate attesting to the fact of their freedom. For those without the ten pounds, who were nonetheless willing to pay, he charged them whatever he could get for temporary clemency, warning them they had better have either their proof or his ten pounds the following year.

Such was his tack when he arrived at Stonehouses. As he stood in the doorway, telling of the two available courses of action, Magnus could only think of the harm he would like to do to the man. Instead of seeking to avoid trouble, as would have been prudent, he simply refused to pay this extortion. He knew, even as he did so, how foolhardy it was, but he hated what the man was doing so much he was unable to bear even the sight of him. He had lived with the fear of his legal status so long, he was bold then as anything attacked. “If I give you ten pounds this year, Mr. Spector, you will want twenty next. If I pay that, you will want more the following year, but if I were to treat you for the rascal you are and take a switch to your backside, that might just stop all of this before it gets going good.”

The tax collector only stared at him in stunned disbelief before going away. He returned the next day with the county sheriff, Peter Wormsley, who knew all the Merians and knew them to be free people, and law abiding besides. He said as much to the tax assessor, but the other man ignored his witness and employed his higher rank to insist on Magnus’s arrest.

“He will come round once he has a little time to consider it,” Spector said, having grown up among Negroes and so claiming to know their ways.

“I just don’t know,” Wormsley argued. “Everybody around here has known the Merians a long time. You might start some stink with all this.”

“I do not care for your opining,” Spector answered, issuing Magnus a summons to appear before the county magistrate, who happened to be his cousin by marriage and whom he had sent for the previous day. He then ordered the sheriff to bring Magnus down to Chase to be held until his hearing.

Magnus, in irons, was quite fearful by now, but held himself in as dignified a posture as possible when they carted him off. Having provoked the law, however, he had no idea what would happen to him next.

They held him in the Chase jailhouse for two days, waiting for the magistrate to arrive from Edenton. During the time of his imprisonment, word of what had happened spread throughout Berkeley, until everyone was debating the fairness of the law or else arguing what they knew about the Merian family. There was no shortage then of invention to the stories people told, as they anticipated what would transpire and tried to fill the void of not knowing.

Some claimed Magnus deserved whatever treatment he got, as there were too many people settling in the area anyway. Others pointed out that the Merians were among the first to arrive. Still others claimed the Merians weren’t Negro at all but that Jasper was a Portuguese who once worked in the Crown’s employ.

Adelia was unwilling to leave to her neighbors’ imaginations what should become of her husband, and when the sheriff’s wagon rolled away she did not despair but began to think what she might best do to help get Magnus released. At last it occurred to her, and she had Caleum hitch a team and drive her over to Rudolph Stanton’s place.

Stanton was their neighbor to the north and one of the wealthiest landowners in the colony. Over the years, she knew, both Merian and Magnus had performed small favors for him, such as one neighbor inevitably does for another – returning a lost calf here, mending a broken fence there. He was also their representative in the Assembly and, although he kept slaves himself, was known to be otherwise fair and without general prejudice.

Despite these things she approached the house with trepidation, it being rare for anyone from Stonehouses to go outside of it for help in anything. She also knew Stanton to be greedy for land and feared, as she went up the driveway, he might try in some way to take advantage of their weakened situation. She fretted at last that she simply did not know the man and there was no reason for him to help her.

When she was let into the house it was early afternoon, and Stanton had obviously just woken. He received her nevertheless, and was outright angry when he heard what had happened. When she finished he promised to intervene on Magnus’s behalf.

Having given his word in the matter he was true to it. Immediately after lunch he sent a message around to the sheriff stating that, among other things, Magnus Merian should immediately be released from prison and allowed to return to his home. Wormsley was only too happy to oblige with this, and sent word back to Stanton, as had been requested, promising to let him know when the magistrate arrived.

Magnus, as he awaited his trial at Stonehouses, thought how he would defend himself. He knew he was free, and none could prove otherwise without sending to Virginia, but he wondered what difference that would make to a court that let law be written by the whims and wants of the moment. As for his legal status, his only evidence was the paper from Content, and if anyone asked how he came to be free he would hardly have an explanation. He worried then those two nights – as he did his first out of captivity – about what would happen to him and his family if things proceeded poorly. If only, he thought, he had paid the tax assessor his toll. Never mind that he felt he had been paying tax since his first day on earth.

When the magistrate arrived in town, Rudolph Stanton sent round for Magnus to come to his house. Relieved that it would soon be over no matter what the outcome, Magnus left Stonehouses with a light heart that morning. The closer he drew to Acre, Stanton’s place, the heavier the burden inside him seemed to grow, though, until he stood before the door almost unable to move. Mustering his resolve, he knocked at last at the towering mahogany door and was led to an upstairs room by the housemaid. When he entered, the judge was already seated, along with the sheriff and his nemesis the tax assessor. He looked at each in turn before sitting in a chair Stanton pointed out to him.

“I have called all of you here so that we might conclude this matter as expeditiously as possible,” Stanton said flatly. “Now, it would appear that the tax assessor, Mr. Spector here, attempted to extort my neighbor, Mr. Merian there, and, when he failed to receive this danegeld, kidnapped him from his family’s lawful lands and possessions.”

The magistrate was taken aback when he heard such strong terms, because Stanton had not let him know his stake in the matter beforehand. Stanton then turned and addressed him directly. “John, you have sent here a man without scruples, who makes up law and spreads terror across the county without cause, other than his own need for profit and mischief. He has taken monies from its citizens and behaved in general like his very own private Parliament.”

“He did not mean to, Rudolph,” the magistrate said on behalf of his cousin, who, sensing the jeopardy he was in, remained silent.

“What is it exactly you are saying he did not mean to do,” Stanton pressed, “spread terror or invent law? Mr. Merian is a sizable landowner here. The Merians have always paid their taxes and performed what was required of them in civic matters. Now you have sent out a highwayman, masquerading as a tax collector, who carts him off to jail for not having proof of his freedom? Why, John, what proof have you of yours, any more than he of his?”

“None,” the other admitted, “but it’s not the same thing.”

“It isn’t? The only thing I want to know is how the legitimate law intends to stand behind Mr. Merian in protecting his rights.”

“But Rudolph,” the magistrate protested, trying to find suitable terms to make the matter go away, “he’s kin to me. You can’t mean for me to jail him.”

“Then what do you propose?” asked Stanton, who thought children should always be given the chance to choose their own punishment.

Magnus had not dared to speak all the while this was going on. He knew his father had been held in esteem by his neighbors, but his own contact with them had been so scant he was genuinely surprised to see another man stand up and defend him. Watching Mr. Stanton and the magistrate, it seemed to him they were two great men involved in private discussions of very weighty matters and affairs affecting the whole county, until he remembered he was the reason for the day’s proceedings. So when the magistrate said he would fire his cousin from his post, and Rudolph Stanton added that the man should first issue him a written apology, it took a very long time for Magnus to make his own request.

“Begging pardon, Mr. Stanton, but how can I know the next tax collector won’t try to do the exact same thing?”

“Indeed. How will he have confidence of that?” Stanton asked the magistrate, raising one of his large bushy eyebrows.

The magistrate looked at the papers before him, including the letter Content had written, which was now in the book of evidence. “I suppose I could notarize this,” he offered tentatively, “but it would be highly unusual.”

“You must do so then, in order that my neighbor here has peace of mind again on his lands,” Stanton said. Then, as if continuing a previous conversation with the magistrate, he added, “John, the law must be strong but blind. That is the true test of it.”