“When you’ve been bought, nobody has a mother or father.”
Kobe had given up, Mack realized. He had grown accustomed to his slavery and learned to live with it. He was bitter, but he had abandoned all hope of freedom. I swear I’ll never do that, Mack thought.
They walked about ten miles. It was slow, because the convicts were fettered. Some were still chained in pairs. Those whose partners had died on the voyage were hobbled, their ankles chained together so that they could walk but not run. None of them could go fast and they might have collapsed if they had tried, so weak were they from lying flat for eight weeks. The overseer, Sowerby, was on horseback, but he seemed in no hurry, and as he rode he sipped some kind of liquor from a flask.
The countryside was more like England than Scotland, and not as alien as Mack had anticipated. The road followed the rocky river, which wound through a lush forest. Mack wished he could lie in the shade of those big trees for a while.
He wondered how soon he would see the amazing Lizzie. He felt bitter about being the property of a Jamisson again, but her presence would be some consolation. Unlike her father-in-law she was not cruel, though she could be thoughtless. Her unorthodox ways and her vivacious personality delighted Mack. And she had a sense of justice that had saved his life in the past and might do so again.
It was noon when they arrived at the Jamisson plantation. A path led through an orchard where cattle grazed to a muddy compound with a dozen or so cabins. Two elderly black women were cooking over open fires, and four or five naked children played in the dirt. The cabins were crudely built with rough-hewn planks, and their shuttered windows had no glass.
Sowerby exchanged a few words with Kobe and disappeared.
Kobe said to the convicts: “These are your quarters.”
Someone said: “Do we have to live with the blackies?”
Mack laughed. After eight weeks in the hellhole of the Rosebud it was a miracle they could complain about their accommodation.
Kobe said: “White and black live in separate cabins. There’s no law about it, but it always seems to work out that way. Each cabin takes six people. Before we rest we have one more chore. Follow me.”
They walked along a footpath that wound between fields of green wheat, tall Indian corn growing out of hillocks, and the fragrant tobacco plant. Men and women were at work in every field, weeding between the rows and picking grubs off the tobacco leaves.
They emerged onto a wide lawn and went up a rise toward a sprawling, dilapidated clapboard house with drab peeling paint and closed shutters: Mockjack Hall, presumably. Skirting the house, they came to a group of outbuildings at the back. One of the buildings was a smithy. Working there was a Negro whom Kobe addressed as Cass. He began to strike the fetters from the convicts’ legs.
Mack watched as the convicts were unchained one by one. He felt a sense of liberation, though he knew it was false. These chains had been put on him in Newgate Prison, on the far side of the world. He had resented them every minute of the eight degrading weeks he had worn them.
From the high point where the house stood he could see the glint of the Rappahannock River, about half a mile away, winding through woodland. When my chains are struck I could just run away, down to the river, he thought, and I could jump in and swim across and make a bid for freedom.
He would have to restrain himself. He was still so weak that he probably could not run half a mile. Besides, he had promised to search for Peg and Cora, and he would have to find them before he escaped, for he might not be able to afterward. And he had to plan carefully. He knew nothing of the geography of this land. He needed to know where he was going and how he would get there.
All the same, when at last he felt the irons fall from his legs he had to make an effort not to run away.
While he was still fighting the impulse, Kobe began to speak. “Now you’ve lost your chains, some of you are already figuring how far you can get by sundown. Before you run away, there’s something important you need to know, so listen up and pay attention.”
He paused for effect, then went on: “People who run away are generally caught, and they get punished. First they’re flogged, but that’s the easy part. Then they have to wear the iron collar, which some find shameful. But the worst is, your time is made longer. If you’re away for a week, you have to serve two weeks extra. We got people here run away so many times they won’t be free until they’re a hundred years old.” He looked around and caught Mack’s eye. “If you’re willing to chance that much,” he finished, “all I can say is, I wish you luck.”
In the morning the old women cooked a boiled corn dish called hominy for breakfast. The convicts and slaves ate it with their fingers out of wooden bowls.
There were about forty field hands altogether. Apart from the new intake of convicts, most were black slaves. There were four indentured servants, people who had sold four years’ labor in advance to pay for their transatlantic ticket. They kept apart from the others and evidently considered themselves superior. There were only three regular waged employees, two free blacks and a white woman, all past fifty years old. Some of the blacks spoke good English, but many talked in their own African languages and communicated with the whites in a childish kind of pidgin. At first Mack was inclined to treat them as children, then it struck him that they were superior to him in speaking one and a half languages, for he had only one.
They were marched a mile or two across broad fields to where the tobacco was ready to harvest. The tobacco plants stood in neat rows about three feet apart and a quarter of a mile long. They were about as tall as Mack, each with a dozen or so broad green leaves.
The hands were given their orders by Bill Sowerby and Kobe. They were divided into three groups. The first were given sharp knives and set to cutting down the ripe plants. The next group went into a field that had been cut the previous day. The plants lay on the ground, their big leaves wilted after a day drying in the sun. Newcomers were shown how to split the stalks of the cut plants and spear them on long wooden spikes. Mack was in the third group, which had the job of carrying the loaded spikes across the fields to the tobacco house, where they were hung from the high ceiling to cure in the air.
It was a long, hot summer day. The men from the Rosebud were not able to work as hard as the others. Mack found himself constantly overtaken by women and children. He had been weakened by disease, malnutrition and inactivity. Bill Sowerby carried a whip but Mack did not see him use it.
At noon they got a meal of coarse cornbread that the slaves called pone. While they were eating Mack was dismayed, but not completely surprised, to see the familiar figure of Sidney Lennox, dressed in new clothes, being shown around the plantation by Sowerby. No doubt Jay felt that Lennox had been useful to him in the past and might be so again.
At sundown, feeling exhausted, they left the fields; but instead of returning to their cabins they were marched to the tobacco house, now lit up by dozens of candles. After a hasty meal they worked on, stripping the leaves from cured plants, removing the thick central spine, and pressing the leaves into bundles. As the night wore on some of the children and older people fell asleep at their work, and an elaborate warning system came into play, whereby the stronger ones covered for the weak and woke them when Sowerby approached.
It must have been past midnight, Mack guessed, when at last the candles were snuffed and the hands were allowed to return to their cabins and lie down on their wooden bunks. Mack fell asleep immediately.
It seemed only seconds later that he was being shaken awake to go back to work. Wearily he got to his feet and staggered outside. Leaning against the cabin wall he ate his bowl of hominy. No sooner had he stuffed the last handful into his mouth than they were marched off again.
As they entered the field in the dawn light, he saw Lizzie.