Not too many, and all must be open, Godfrey had instructed July when first teaching her this little deception. That way the massa never knew what had been drunk by his guests; so any accusation of thieving was made with a hesitation from the massa which allowed Godfrey to perform his well-used, big-eyed display of affront.
July was waving another bottle—was it heavy glass or was it full? Hearing the slop of liquid, she was about to pass it through the window when the man who was sleeping suddenly awoke. He stared upon her with a look so keen that July felt it like a finger poking within her forehead.
‘What are you doing there?’ he shouted. July stood as still as her quickening breath would allow, in the hope he would think her just a likeness from a portrait upon the wall.
‘What are you doing?’ he said again. And the whole table turned to see where July was standing. July, stepping out of the meagre shadow, held the bottle as if she were about to pour it for these guests.
‘Oh, Marguerite, thank goodness,’ her missus said. ‘Are you bringing the second course, we’ve been waiting an age?’
‘Yes, where is the second course?’ her massa said, ‘Tell Godfrey the ladies have been waiting quite long enough for their sweet.’
But the man from Windsor Hall said, ‘Can’t you see that she’s stealing from you?’
There was a quarrel begun at the table. July knew that she was its cause, but she could not follow what the white people were saying of her, for a noise like the rush of a wave over stones filled her ears. Her missus was blushing and flushed. Her massa’s eyes were rolling and peevish. Tam Dewar, looking to the window, began rising from his seat.
‘Come here, girl,’ someone said. But who? July was not sure. Was it her missus? Should she fall to her knees and beg her not to have her whipped?
‘I said, come here.’ It was the man from Windsor Hall. Him who had just woken to expose her crime. He beckoned her to him with an angry gesture, while her missus nodded for her to obey him. July wanted to run from this place and hide in the stables with the grey mare. Mr Godfrey, a scream within her head yelled, Mr Godfrey, come get me from here.
‘Come here now, nigger!’ The command came, once more, upon a vexed breath. July’s eyes were blind with tears and she took the smallest steps her feet would allow. Eventually she arrived by the side of this man. His drunken breath, blasting upon her face, rocked her giddy as he said, ‘What were you doing there?’ Then, as his ill-tempered spittle dried upon her cheek, she felt his hand, discreetly, out of all view of the other guests, searching across the back of her skirt. Fiddling at a seam, pulling upon the fabric, groping like a tiny rodent looking for a dark corner. His sweaty fingers soon found the opening to the garment and quickly burrowed in. Placing his full palm over her bare buttocks he squeezed her flesh and said quietly, ‘Well, what were you doing? Stealing, weren’t you?’
‘Me no steal, massa, me no steal.’ July said. His finger had a jagged nail that scraped across her skin as it probed to find other holes to fill.
‘You’re a little thieving nigger, aren’t you,’ he almost whispered into July’s ear.
‘Oh, come on, let her go so the ladies can get the second course,’ the Reverend Pritchard said from across the table.
‘Not until she admits she’s a thief,’ the Windsor Hall massa told him.
July kept as still as she could within this white man’s grasp, for the fingers upon his rude hand began to nip and pinch at her buttocks. But then, suddenly, there came a great commotion of running feet from outside.
The doors to the room suddenly swung open with a fierceness that extinguished most of the dying candles. Two men dressed in militia blue bounded in upon the room, bringing in the wood-smoke and dung stink of the night air. July was sure these men had come to take her away—to the stocks, or the wheel at Rodney Hall. She twisted herself from the man’s grasp and his fingernail tore the flimsy seam of her skirt as he snatched his hand from out of it.
July dashed under the sideboard and clung her arms around the wood of its leg. She gripped it tight as the snake that was carved there, lest someone made bid to grab her.
But no one came. They did not even glance her way.
‘There is trouble.’ A deep, hoarse voice began addressing all at the table. ‘A great deal of trouble. The negroes are burning plantations in the west. We need every man here to report for militia duty now.’
At once, many feet began passing by July in her hiding place—clattering around upon the wooden boards before her. Tam Dewar’s sturdy brown boots were out the door with the militia men’s muddy black shoes following. The massa from Unity’s slippered feet skipped a dance as he said, ‘The day is upon us. The day is upon us.’ Byron’s little bare feet slapped in upon the room, chased by the four paws of the dog, who barked and slid into furniture. The music stopped. Names—Clara, Giles, James, Bailey—were yelled upon fretting breaths. Beyond the window, horses’ trotting hooves shook the ground and cart wheels creaked.
Only July’s missus, Caroline, remained seated at the table. The massa, leaning down close to his sister’s face, whispered with urgent command that she should not worry; that all this would be in hand soon enough; that he would return to her as soon as he could; and that, until such time, he wished her to stay within the house. Did she understand him? he asked her. Yes, perfectly, came her resolute reply. ‘The negroes will see you come to no harm,’ John Howarth told her before pressing a small pistol into her hand and kissing her upon the forehead. ‘Now, where is Marguerite?’ he said. And, before July knew, her massa’s troubled face had breached her hiding place, ‘Marguerite, get up from there,’ he said, pulling at the cloth of July’s flimsy skirt. ‘Come and look to your mistress. She needs you with her.’ His feet then strode to the door in five long strides.
As July crawled out from around and under the sideboard she heard her missus sighing. July, moving to stand at her side said, ‘No be feared, missus, no be feared. Me here, missus.’
But her missus began quietly to weep. Then, through a halting pause, as she wiped her snivelling nose upon the back of her hand—which still gripped the pistol—she said, ‘Marguerite, that is a bed sheet on the table, not the Irish linen. My God, Elizabeth Wyndham will soon testify to everyone that a soiled bed sheet was on my table through this whole beastly dinner.’
CHAPTER 9
SOMETIMES MY SON DOES confuse me with all his education and learning until I do not know if I be in the right or in the wrong.
‘But this is the time of the Baptist War, Mama,’ he tell me. ‘The night of Caroline Mortimer’s unfinished dinner in your story is the time of the Christmas rebellion, when all the trouble began.’ He then commenced to blast me with fierce commands.
I should tell, he said, whether the firing of plantations started in Salt Spring when the negro driver refused to flog his own wife. Or, whether it began at Kensington Pen, up near Maroon Town. I must write all I know of Sam Sharpe, the leader of this rebellion—of his character and looks. I should make it clear how every negro believed themselves to have been freed by the King of England; how they had promised to do no more work until that freedom was felt; and how the negroes swore to wrest their freedom from the planters’ thieving grasp if it was not given willingly. And I must be sure to add how the noise of the shells and horns being blown at Old Montpelier and Shettlewood Pen did manage to frighten off the militia.