If Serpents Envious
a Joseph Fisher Colonial America Mystery
by Clayton Emery

Seagulls flapped and pecked around an iron cage hanging from a post. The gray-white birds were frustrated by something black that fouled their beaks. Joseph Fisher stopped and the birds flapped away. The cage was a gibbet. Propped inside was a dead man, neck elongated by hanging, body coated with tar. Joseph reached with a bony finger, touched a black foot. Tar pulled loose in a string.
"Hurl'd headlong... to bottomless perdition, there to dwell in adamantine chains and penal fire, who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms,'" murmured the student. Wiping his finger, he trudged into Newport. What the Narragansett Indians had called Aquidneck, "Isle of Peace".
The road was dusty and deeply rutted, almost impassible even dry, and wandered between stone walls and pastures and maple trees that nodded great green heads uneasily. Seeking food and escape from the blistering sun, Joseph aimed for the first store.
On a narrow porch of warped unpainted boards blackened by salt hunched an Indian, face slack and cracked from drinking, in a filthy shirt with breechclout and leggins. At the feel of footsteps he extended a shaking hand, begging for anything but mostly rum. The stuporous Indian blinked when the young white man addressed him in Algonquin tangy as pine sap. "Seek you the woods, brother, and drink the water that flows from the headlands."
The shop had two ends. The front, anchored to the road, bore farm implements -- singletrees, harness, grain buckets, feedbags, horse liniments. The rear hung over the harbor on pilings with a dock below, contained chandler's supplies: boathooks, cordage, buckets of tar and oakum, fishhooks, oars. The store was hot, any loafers dispersed. The lonely proprietor in a cocked hat and flour-dusty apron of green baize braided something from rope and codline. From a back pantry came the squawling of a baby.
The storekeeper ran his eye over Joseph, peered into his pockets. The student was not tall and thin, shabby in a brown waistcoat and breeches with small pewter buttons, tattered hose and broken shoes. A blanket roll and and chunky satchel marked him as a traveller, yet he wore no hat and let his long brown hair fall free. His complexion was fish-belly white with deep-sunk burning eyes. A man not long for the world, who sought day-old bread and green cheese that wept in the heat.
With pennies in the till, the shopkeeper talked as he knotted. Where was Joseph from, where bound, what the news? Boston, just travelling, new blue laws heaped on sinful heads by the Massachusetts Legislature. Out loud, the Scottish Presbyterian thanked God he lived in godless Rhode Island.
Joseph munched bread and sipped cider. The baby screamed on and on, and he wondered idly where its mother had gone. Instead he asked what the storekeeper braided.
"Nigger whip." Codline wrapped a rope handle that split into seven thick strands ending in overhand knots. The owner slapped the scarred counter like pistol shots. "Had three in stock and sold 'em this morning. The old sailor who made 'em took to selling 'em on the street, damn his eyes, so I must fashion my own. But t'ain't hard. Not fancy like a horse whip: you shouldn't never hit a horse. Just stiff enough to smart but not break the skin. Say, you wouldn't care to buy a baby?"
"A baby?" Joseph choked on crumbs, racking and hacking, so badly the shopkeeper splashed rum into his cider from a jug under the counter.
"No charge. Here, I'll show you."
The shopkeeper fetched the shrilling infant, toting it by the ankles. He spread a bloodstained butcher's sheet and laid out the child like a smoked ham. Naked and dusky, the boy had black hair flat and straight above a purple face. It clenched its fists and screamed.
"He's mostly nigger. Got some Indian in him, but that'll help him tolerate the winters. Good lungs, good grip, good size. Stick it on a wetnurse and in three, four years, it could help around the house and dooryard. Raise it right, don't spare the rod, and it'll suit better than any scrawny bound boy off the ship from London."
Numbly Joseph regarded the screaming infant. It kicked and thrashed, too young to even roll off the counter. "Where is its mother?"
The shopkeeper prevaricated, finally sighed. "In jail. She's to be burned at the stake tomorrow. That's her mate ripening out there." He nodded towards the distant gibbet. "That's why I'm stuck with this brat. Their goods was forfeit, and the mistress bade me take them all, including this'n. No one wants it, reckon it's bad luck. But I don't hold with that."
Joseph nodded absently. Only Negroes were burned at the stake, and he could guess the couple's crime. "They killed their master?"
"Aye. You must'a heard. They fed him a snake in his sleep. A timber rattler. Bit his insides and poisoned him. He screamed from dawn till dusk. But it's an ill wind. Lots of folks've never seen a burning, so they'll flock in from all over the colony. And everyone's beating their niggers for fear of an uprising, so I'm clean out of whips."
He had to speak over the baby's squawling. He tried slapping the child's face lightly, then harder to stun it, but the infant only howled louder. Finally he pulled the jug from under the counter, soaked a bar rag to squeeze rum into the baby's mouth. "Some Mother's Mercy might --"
His hand was arrested by Joseph's, slim and cold but surprisingly strong. "I'll buy the child."
"Well, now, that's mighty fine." A broad smile. "I'd say it's worth --"
"Two shillings."
"Oh no, I don't think so. A bonny bairn like this --"
"Two and six, and a swaddling cloth."
The shopkeeper shrugged in largesse and fetched a rag crusted with pine pitch and shavings. "You won't be sorry. Raise 'em right and they're loyal as puppies. I'm glad you took him. I'd'a strangled it for the dogs or pitched it off the wharf for the crabs." The shopkeeper wrapped the baby neatly and handed it to Joseph. "There, enjoy it. You're a good Christian, son."
"`Christ, conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary: suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.'" But Joseph quoted in Aramaic, and the shopkeeper only looked puzzled.
Shouldering his blanket roll and book satchel, hugging the screaming baby to his chest, the student stepped into the hammer of summer sun. The wasted Indian by the door stuck out his palsied hand. Angry with the world, Joseph snapped, "Fly to the wilderness, far from this Gehenna, where backsliders sacrifice children to Moloch and Baal!"
Aware only that he got nothing, the Indian slouched against the wall. Joseph stalked into Newport. The child's crying brought seagulls keening overhead as if in sympathy, but in fact seeking a meal at the source of distress.
&&&&&-----&&&&&
At the first stream that cut the road, Joseph squatted and dipped his finger. Immediately the child stopped bawling to suck. Spooning more, Joseph traced a cross on the child's forehead. "I never completed my studies, child, and am more French than English regarding baptism, but I reckon you need succor, spiritual and corporeal."
Thirst slaked, the child's hunger set it crying loud as before. The student tucked the baby close and steered down the widest street. Newport jammed a narrow spit jutting into Narragansett Bay, which itself was hemmed by bluffs of purple- and red-gray granite before reaching the ocean in the south. Some hundred white gambrels with barns made up the town. Warehouses encroached on the water, and half a hundred wharves pointed to a forest of masts in the harbor: sailing ships returned from Europe and the Caribbean and Africa, fishing smacks no bigger than a wagon. Heat made people veer for shade. Joseph hailed a black girl in a head scarf and patched apron who carried a basket of blue crabs. She told of a Negro wetnurse named Maroca who lived along Butcher's Brook.
Blanket and satchel chafed his sweaty shoulders and the baby cried in his ear as he trailed the Sakonnet River. He found a rocky defile split by the brook, then a shack made from tarred and barnacled lumber salvaged from shipwrecks. A large black woman washed clothes in the stream while a brood of dark children worked in the shade or splashed in the brook.
The infant's crying made the woman abandon her washing. Her face stayed blank as a slate, but her yellow eyes quickened as she took the baby and tugged open her bodice. Joseph glimpsed a pink Y branded on her right breast as she cradled the child to nurse.
"You know this child?" asked Joseph.
"Yea, mon. He be the boy-child of Cuffy and Hazel, and an orphan both ways soon." Her voice dripped with molasses from the Sugar Islands. She wore a claret-colored skirt and bodice like any English woman, but a yellow turban covered her head above big gold hoop earrings. "How'd'joo get him?"
"I bought him for two shillings sixpence."
"Bought him? You be a bad bargainer, white man. Black babies dey give away like puppies. Storeman should'a paid you to take him." Irony rang bitter. "Poor unfortunate, but not as unfortunate as his parents be."
"These parents who murdered their master by making him swallow a snake?"
"Yea, mon." The large woman swung towards her shack, the baby gurgling at her breast. "They 'ministered a snake to Marsa' Pearson, or snake poison. Caught red-handed. 'Course, she had good reason, de way she was used so ill. But she'll return to Ah-frica soon, lay her burden down."
Joseph trailed her across the river-rounded rocks of the defile. "When she dies, you mean."
"Yea, mon. Cuffy, don't know where he'll end up, but it be to glory somewhere. He was a gen'le man and no two ways 'bout it. 'Course, no one knows de human heart. I can't keeps dis child, you knows."
"Eh?" Shuffling ideas in his head, Joseph found himself surrounded by children with brown-white features and kinky red-brown hair. "No, I expect you can't."
The shack had no windows. Summer glare through the doorway showed a room fitted like a ship's forecastle with bunks along the walls and a table that hinged down. The floor was dirt strewn with cattails. Nursing with one arm, Maroca shooed children hither and thither to wash their hands, sweep the table, lay out wooden bowls and spoons.
"I'se a freewoman. My husband's white. He sails on de slavers. He fancied me and bought me. My chillun was born free, and we'll stay that way, long's as we stay close to home where ever'body knows us. We journeys elsewhere, we likely collect a chain on our laig." Introduced, she fixed Joseph with bulging yellow eyes.
"Um, I am called Joseph Fisher. I was captured young in the late warÝ, raised by Penobscots, trained by Jesuits in Quebec. Peace returned me to the English sphere, and they sent to Harvard to be a missionary to Indians. Lately I... wander."
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Ý The first French & Indian war, King William's War of 1689 - 1697.
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"I'm not surprised," Maroca snorted. "You been blown 'bout so much, you almost a black white man. 'Stead's you red and white. You ever think dem Penobscots what raised you might'a killed your folks?"
A boy fished in Joseph's pockets, caught a rap on the skull from his mother. "I have meditated upon that. But I was young and they were kind. They called me Monminowis, Silver Cat."
"I call you to supper. You care for one of ours, you share our food." Maroca nodded to the table. The children hopped to their places, packed as herring, hands clasped, eager to see Grace done. "And since you comes from Hahvard, you say de blessing."
There was only fishhead chowder, pickled sorrel, and ship's biscuit. As the children devoured their portions, Joseph settled for a biscuit and spring water. Maroca nursed the child, which wouldn't get a proper name until its first birthday: it was just "the baby". Supper was quiet, the children shy before a stranger. Joseph absently gazed about the room. A fat-bellied grotesque on a shelf was adorned with chicken feathers: a voodoo fetish.
Abruptly Joseph said, "Do you believe a man could be forced to swallow a snake?"
Maroca's thoughts and emotions were sealed like brandy in a dark brown bottle, but she shrugged. "De man died. He was all swoll up, dey said, like when you gets bit. And he screamed 'bout snakes, and tried to claw his own belly open till they had to tie his han's. Dere's timber rattlers here'bouts. Men'll dig a cellar, come back de next day, de hole swarmin' wid 'em, have to kill dem with shovels. You should have a snake charm you'self. Hang four buttons around your neck, ward off de consumptionÝ."
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Ý Tuberculosis.
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Joseph nodded, half-hearing. "Did anyone actually see the snake? Did anyone think to -- open him?"
Even Maroca, who'd seen everything, blinked at the idea of dissection. But she nodded. "Dere was a snake. De mistress seen Cuffy wid it in his own han'." Sweat ran off her round face in the evening heat, the droplets splashing the baby's flat black hair.
"`Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,'" Joseph murmured. "Do you know aught of the murdered man?"
Another shrug of round black shoulders. "Marsa' Pearson was a merchant-man. Dey's the richest in Newpoht. Owns a fine house and warehouse and ships and docks and six slaves -- four now. His ships travel all over de world, dey say. Includin' Gambia." In the six years since the British Parliament had legalized the slave trade, Newport had boomed. Gambia on the Ivory Coast was its chief port of call.
"So a man who lived by slavery died by it, eh?"
"Mebbe so. But Cuffy, he was a gen'le man, good in the heart. He plied cures on all de colored folk here'bouts. Learned dem from his mother. But I don't wants to be talkin' about de dead. Nor 'bout Hazel, neither, poh thing. And poh thing you." She bobbed the near-orphan at her breast.
"Hazel..." Joseph pictured a slave woman alone in a oven-hot cell, fearing the flames that would lick her thighs the next day. "Has a minister attended her?"
"No minister for colored folk. We stand at the back of the church, behind a curtain, is all."
Suddenly animated, Joseph reached for his clumsy satchel, extracted a King James Bible, its black leather cover worn white. "'There is no salvation outside the church.' Will someone show me the jail, please?"
Maroca ducked her head to peer out the door. "Evenin' comin' on."
Slaves were not allowed out after dark, Joseph knew. But "I thought you were freemen."
"Freedom's for white folk, and not all of dem."
"I'll show you. I can help." The eldest, a womanly girl, Quamino spoke with only a trace of brown sugar. Her mother opened her mouth to object, then sighed and nodded.
Toting his heavy bible, Joseph stroked the baby's head for luck. Black girl and white man passed into the gathering gloom.
&&&&&-----&&&&&
At the last corner, Quamino hung back in the shadows, so Joseph went on alone. Newport's jail was near the waterfront, handy for rowdy sailors or captive pirates. The old wooden building tilted alarmingly over the street. A torch-lit crowd watched the oak-barred windows of the second floor for a glimpse of the murderess. All were white, many drunk, faces sweat-shiny under tricorn hats and mob caps. "We'll burn your hide blacker tomorrow, witch!" "Fat's gonna be in the fire!" "Stuff an apple in your mouth before the pigroast!"
Daining the crowd, Bible in hand, Joseph glided nose-high towards the jail like a Harvard don. Not recognizing him, the crowd nudged one another. Ducking inside the cockeyed doorway, the student almost collided with a jailkeeper and two lackeys who crowded a small stifling hall. The keeper of the keys perched on a three-legged stool with a noggin of ale. Obviously they guarded against the villainess being seized and lynched before her appointed time -- and a proper crowd.
The jailkeeper barked blearily. "What the hell are you about? Get out!"
The two lackeys unfolded arms and iron-tipped batons, but Joseph stood firm with the Bible in his hands. "I would see the slave woman Hazel. Despite her heinous crime, she has yet a chance to enter into a personal covenant with God, to grasp at the keys to the kingdom of Heaven. To save her soul."
The lackeys looked to their boss, who stared at Joseph. "Uh... She ain't allowed any visitors. Besides, nigger ain't got no souls. They're animals, like."
Pompously, Joseph snapped open the Bible where his finger marked. "You would block God's work? You would contradict the Bible, breathed by God, therefore infallible and stamped with God's own authority? Consider the parable of the sheep and the goats. `I was in prison, and ye came unto me. And the King shall answer, inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of my brethren, ye have done it unto me.' Else, 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. Everlasting punishment!'"
Threats of doom made the tipsy jailkeeper squirm. "All right. T'ain't no harm, I suppose. Take him up, John, but watch him. Don't let 'im slip her a knife to end it early." Joseph fought down a grin as he marched up the lopsided stairs.
The second floor had four cells with stout oak doors broken by thick slats. In the last cell huddled a black figure wrapped in a bodice and gown so faded they had no color at all. African-black, the woman's skin glistened like an oiled whetstone in the heat, yet she shivered uncontrollably as she rocked on her knees. Bloodshot eyes, stark white in her black face, stared at the corner.
Joseph leaned on the oaken bars. "Hazel. Child." He called her name repeatedly without result. "Hazel, please listen. Your baby is safe. He's with Maroca. She'll care for him."
The white eyes flickered, and Joseph pressed. "Hazel, for the sake of your child, can you tell me why -- your husband -- had the snake? What did he intend with it? He was a gentle man, we know, and wouldn't kill Master Pearson. But what was the snake for?"
Hazel whispered, a shuddery hiss like a teakettle come to a boil. "Cuffy, he -- he had a dream. 'Bout a snake. A snake read his -- heart. Snake tole him, someone'd kill him. Did kill him..." Choking on sobs, she curled into a black ball of misery.
"Dreamt of a snake?" Joseph was electrified. He called, "Bear up, Hazel. God is many things, but above all, love, patience, and mercy."
He barely heard the turnkey's order to leave, or the crowd's questions. He walked into the hot night in a daze, muttering, "... The baby has straight hair. Straight hair."
Quamino hissed and he slipped into an alley beside her. "Why didn't you tell me Cuffy had Indian blood?" In his excitement, he named the dead man.
He felt the girl shrug. "He didn't look it, hardly. His mama was a red woman."
"It shows in his child. One-quarter Indian, it has lank hair, not kinked like an African's. I couldn't see the dead man's features for the tar, yet the storekeeper mentioned it... Can you show me Master Pearson's house, please?"
The girl squeaked. "That's a hoodoo place! Mama said Mars'er Pearson's death'll fetch all his slaves with him. Like the cannibal kings in Dahomey what files their teeth and takes a thousand slaves to their graves. What d'you want there?"
"I want to rifle a king's midden."
&&&&&-----&&&&&
It felt strange to Joseph, a child of two cultures, to see through the eyes of a third, the African slaves of New England who remained unseen until summoned. For instead of walking the thoroughfare, Quamino led a torturous path through dooryards and gardens that reeked of garbage and privies and apple trees that gave off a winey perfume in the summer night. The third time Joseph tripped over a sleeping pig, he opined, "I dislike this. Pigs have a passion for snakes." Quamino said nothing, though her white eyes were large and luminous.
Threading apple trees and gardens and outbuildings, she approached the back of a tall square mansion, pressed her ear to a window, rapped an erratic tattoo.
A bar slid aside, and a young black in a shirt and bony knees stuck his head out. He'd obviously been sleeping on a pallet in the corner. "Quammy! What'choo doing here? You wanna -- eh?" He froze upon spotting Joseph's wan face, skeletal in the summer night.
"Hush up, Prosper! This here Indian gots a order for you! So you do it or he'll tomahawk that wooly poll a'yours and hang it for the crows to peck! Fetch the spade you uses to turn the midden! Gittup!"
Agitated, Prosper blundered down the stairs, remembered he wore only a shirt, stumbled back and grabbed his shabby breeches and ancient shoes, fumbled into the barn where horses nickered. Fetching a punched-tin lantern and a spade, he threaded a small orchard. Silky leaves rustled at either hand.
Prosper moaned, "I din't wish you'd make me work the night long too, Quammy. I works enough durin' the day. At night, I'd a thought you'd come for somethin' else."
"Day I needs what you gimme is the day I die," snapped the girl. "Hush up."
The back of the property was screened by a woven-wicker fence. Prosper stopped at a baulk of half-rotten timber and thumped his shovel on it. Quamino slapped his shoulder for silence. The girl struck the candle alight, then lifted her skirt and set the lantern between her ankles to obscure the glow. The silhouette of her legs and hips distracted the men, but Joseph tipped up the flat cover of wood. A sour reek fermented by summer sun gushed up in a wave.
Gasping, Joseph asked, "Why this baulk?"
"Mistress don't like pigs in the garbage, not hers nor nobody else's. Say if she's eat pork, she'll know what the pig's et first. Our pigs stays in the crib. Eat better'n me, most days."
"Serves you right for wasting your substance with riotous living, and devouring thy living with harlots," quipped Joseph. Prosper just stared at the cadaverous white man who came in the dark to pick at rubbish. "Tell me. Have you seen a dead snake in the past days?"
"T'was a snake killed Master Pearson," whispered the boy.
"If so, and I doubt it, that snake was interred with Master Pearson." Since ashes went into a hopper for potash, vegetable and table scraps to the pigs, and bones to the dogs, the trash was mostly dried stalks and fish bones and lobster shells. And fragments of glass, expensively cut. "What is this crystal?"
"Master Pearson took sick at the table. He fell out of his chair, kicking and yelling and clawing his belly. He pulled down the tablecloth and broke some goblets. I would'a got whupped for it, 'cause I sets the table, but Mistress Pearson was so upset I din't. I's always getting whupped for no reason a'tall."
"You hush up or I'll flatten your thick head with that spade," spat Quamino. "I never saw such a whiney --"
"Eureka!" Joseph's hand stabbed down, plucked up a snake. Scarcely a foot long, dark green with long yellow stripes, lacking a head, it resembled a thick bracelet. "Cuffy discarded this, didn't he?"
Prosper shook. "I dunno, I dunno. He catched it in the garden, under the hubbard squash --"
"After your master took sick, no?" Excited, Joseph's French intruded. "He plied this snake on Master Pearson --"
"No sir! Beg pardon, but he plied it to hisself! T'was t'other snake he voodooed on Mas'er Pearson!"
"What? What other snake?" Joseph's deepsunk eyes glittered like a skull on a spike. "No, there couldn't be another snake."
"There was! I seen it! Cuffy took sick, and he catched that snake and drank the blood!"
Now everyone was confused. Joseph persisted, "No, he gave the blood to Master Pearson!"
"No, he drunk it himself! He was crazy! I stayed clear'a him!"
"Oh!" Quamino blinked. "He's right! Cuffy came to see my mama! He had the stomach cramps, and she dosed him with hellebore. He puked the night long, kep' all the chillun awake!"
"Cuffy took sick? When was this?"
Quamino didn't hesitate. Reared in oral tradition, Africans had phenomenal memories. "Monday last, day after meetin'."
Joseph rolled the flaccid snake in his fingers as if hunting a hidden message. "But this is fresh, a day or two. So there must be two snakes... Hazel could attest, but... Oh, Lord, I see! Cuffy was seen bleeding a snake, and someone assumed he poisoned the master with the snake!"
"Tha's what happened, master, 'xactly!" breathed Prosper. "Mistress seen the snake in Cuffy's hand and screamed to wake the dead! She were screaming, crying Cuffy had to get out, then she flung herself out the door with the chillun afore her! Us niggers was huddling close, trying not to get whipped! Sheriff's men came and they beat Cuffy so bad he couldn't stand, and when he tried to talk they smashed his mouth with clubs! And Hazel they kicked in the stummick, and tooken her babe away and her shriekin' --" The boy stopped, his voice shuddery.
"Fie on people with short sight!" rasped Joseph. "But if Cuffy... How?.."
Unknowingly, Joseph stroked his chin with the dead garter snake. He hunkered, silent, so long that Quamino gave an experimental push to his shoulder. Roused, he shielded his eyes from the lantern light and looked east. "Dawn not two hours off, and Hazel to be burned at noon." Coiling the dead snake in his coat pocket, he took the lantern.
Prosper tipped the baulk over the midden. "Please don't tell no one I was out here, sir. The mistress she'd have the bulls take off my hide a strip at a time --"
Quamino chopped the air, imitating a tomahawk. Prosper peeked at Joseph's back and felt his head. "Scalped, whipped, an' all. Be lucky if'n I don't go to the stake 'longside poor Hazel too."
&&&&&-----&&&&&
Trinity Church perched on a hill that it might overlook Newport. Behind it stood the parsonage, a solid, fresh-painted, proud building connoting the congregation had money to spend. Joseph found the church empty, the front door of the parsonage unresponsive, the kitchen open to the morning heat. In the back yard a black woman plied a long-handled paddle to turn baking bread in a beehive oven. Joseph waited patiently by the picket fence. There was no seawind this morning, and heat lay like a wool blanket higher than his head. Still, rather than clog his lungs with consumption, as was thought hereabouts, the warm salt air seemed to bake his lungs and clear the phlegm, as water is baked from a clay jug by a kiln. Yet Joseph had been up all night, pacing and thinking, and felt tired both inside and out.
His reverie was interrupted by a brusque, "What do you want?"
The slave flung the picket gate open as if to bat Joseph away. Her dark eyes ranged over his shabby clothes and shoes, marked him for a mechanic or beggar, and a diseased one at that.
But Joseph introduced himself as a divinity student to see the parson. "Please. Maroca thought I should pay him a visit."
"You know Maroca?" No trace of African or Caribbean accent here: a blind man would think her an English housewife born in Sussex.
"Yes. I'm a guest in her house."
That raised an eyebrow. "How's her son faring?"
"You mean Zingo, with the cast in one eye? He's been croupey all week, but dosings of sweet-fern tea have tamed it."
"That's good." Warming, the woman started over. "Reverend and Mistress Treat attend a gentleman who only takes callers in the morning." From four to eight. "They'll return soon. You're welcome to await them. I can feed you."
"That's most gracious of you." Ten minutes later Joseph was seated at the kitchen table, and heaped before him was ham, hasty pudding with maple syrup, pickled cabbage, baked beans, cranberry tarts. Identified as an upright member of the lowest class, the slave gossiped as if they were old friends. Her name was Jin, "like an old she-mule". Inevitably she came to the morbid death of Master Francis Pearson from swallowing a snake. Although her talk circled around blame, Joseph understood Master Pearson had been a cruel and callous man, and it was high time someone murdered him. But to see poor Cuffy, the kindest colored man in Newport, hanging as crowbait, and to think of "poor suffering Hazel" going into flames at midday was a shame. Even as she talked, the woman packed a basket: a picnic for a burning.
Time slipping away made Joseph fidgety. He interjected, "I've heard it said time and again that poor Hazel was misused, but --"
A voice carolled from the front of the house. Wiping his mouth, Jin hustled Joseph through a closed door into a house smelling of book leather and ink. It gave him a flutter of nostalgia, and a wish to be somewhere else, if only he knew where.
The parson was a dark-browed thick-haired man not much older than Joseph, his wife a plain thing in a gown and bodice of burgundy and a sunbonnet with a matching ribbon: clothes considered scandalous in Boston were demure in free-and-easy Newport. Both frowned at the shabby guest.
"A divinity student, eh? Belike." The young parson still aped the pedantic speech of his teachers. In Latin he quoted, "`Of making many books there is no end: much study is a weariness of the flesh.'"
Joseph completed the passage in the same language. "`Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.'"
The young man's face lit up, banishing his feigned dotage as if throwing off a heavy cloak. Plunking his fellow scholar in his study, Reverend Treat called for wine and water. As Jin delivered and left, the reverend said, "I don't hold with slavery, myself, but, uh, Jin came with the house." Out in the hall, the slave woman snorted.
The reverend poured Joseph madeira, red wine from Portugal, then offered well water after local custom. Joseph took more water than wine: he needed a clear head. Coming out of heat and a dusty road, the minister gulped his portion and poured more. "So, Joseph, what brings you to `Rogue's Island'? Have you lost your faith? Reverend Doctor Mather tells us, 'If a man were to lose his religion, he'd be sure to find it in Newport.'" He chuckled.
Joseph did not. Time flew. "Reverend, I've come about this burning."
The man's enthusiasm slipped. "Ah, yes, a dolorous business. I'm opposed to burning, myself. An invention of Catholics and Episcopalians. Hanging is quicker and less messy. But the gentry are set on a gruesome punishment to deter other slaves from considering assassination. There's no way I can intervene. It wouldn't be, uh, prudent." Not for an upstart paid by the congregation.
"But suppose she's innocent, and Cuffy were too? You could intercede then, surely."
"Well, uh, surely there's no way to prove her innocence. Cuffy was found, uh, administering a snake to the, uh, deceased."
To the reverend's amazement, Joseph pulled a headless snake from his pocket. "I found this. A garter snake, entirely harmless. They don't even have teeth, but crunch crickets and spiders. Cuffy was half-Indian, I've learned. Half Wampanoag. He spoke the words of Passaconaway, an Indian powahee, a prophet of the last century, who made snow burn and trees dance. Passaconaway said that a snake can read your heart, and see the future, and know if an enemy conspires to kill you."
"God cursed the snake," interrupted the parson. "Genesis 3:14."
"Nonetheless, Indians revere snakes. Mohawks consider At-o-sis the mother of their race. Snake blood is a nostrum for women in childbirth: even a spoonful will deliver a healthy baby in a trice. Cuffy learned the cure from his mother, and tried to administer the potion to Master Pearson. He'd tried to cure himself of a stomach ailment just the week before. But the woman of the house saw the snake and concluded Pearson died of snake poisoning, or ingesting a snake even."
"He died in agony, screaming. The venom --"
Joseph shook his head, made his brown hair ripple. "Only pit vipers have venom, only timber rattlers around here. Garter snakes have none."
"Then what killed him?"
"Some other poison, I suspect. I don't know which. There are so many."
"An Indian root? One Cuffy might know?"
Joseph shrugged like a Frenchmen. "There are roots will sicken a man, but few that kill. Snakeroot from the Carolinas is so potent that should a cow even eat it, children can die drinking her milk. But Master Pearson might have had a crabÝ in his stomach, too. Whatever the cause, a physician should have found it. And given that Cuffy tried to cure his master, we must err with mercy."
-------------------------
Ý Cancer.
-------------------------
"Negroes are notorious poisoners," Treat insisted. "Everyone here in Newport is careful. They make the slaves eat from the pot first. Masters hold the cellar keys and open their own bottles."
For answer, Joseph held up his goblet. Treat reached to pour more wine, then got the message. "Oh. Yes, I see... But Jin has served this parsonage since she was a girl, and..." He set down his goblet carefully. "I suppose we better talk to the sheriff. He oversees the execution, but the Pearsons pay the piper, so they call the tune. Yes, I suppose we best see the Pearsons." He sighed at the prospect of disrupting his parishioners -- and employers.
&&&&&----&&&&&
The Pearson family, friends, and parlor were draped in black for mourning. Joseph thought they looked more like Quakers than the normally-gay citizens of sinful Newport, yet an incongruous festive air permeated the crowd, for outside Negroes waited with carriages to ferry them to the field where Hazel would be burned.
Reverend Treat was welcomed quietly, shaking hands all around. People peered at motheaten Joseph, "a travelling divinity student." The white Indian glimpsed a black face at the kitchen door: Prosper, wide-eyed and appalled that someone who associated with servants should be received cordially in the parlor.
Joseph accepted more madeira with water while the Pearsons took theirs straight from deep goblets. Mistress Pearson -- so far not "Widow" -- bore finery and a plumpness that bespoke a rich merchant's wife. Pearson brothers George and Chad matched a black-draped portrait of the late Francis: a curly head, lips like a mink trap. John Williams was Pearson's business partner. Despite open windows and high ceilings, the room was roasting.
The Reverend Treat, having again donned his eldery persona, made consoling noises. "Gone to God... In the bosom of the Lord..." Joseph fidgeted. In an hour Hazel would be tied to a stake and committed to flames while all of Newport bore witness. The student had come to beg a stay of execution, but was unsure how to begin -- especially since he'd need to accuse someone else of murder.
Wine-sodden talk buzzed angrily. All present were slave owners. "Burning's the best thing we can do! Put the fear of God into 'em!" "We've been too sparin' of the whip hand and now Francis's paid for it!" "Too familiar, that's what they're getting!"
"But what if Hazel's not guilty?"
Joseph's mild outburst stunned the room. Wine sloshed in goblets as all eyes turned. Reverend Treat sidled away as if from contagion.
"Why," blistered Mistress Pearson, "would you think her innocent? She's a slut! A filthy lying trollop who deserves to die!"
"You must be mad to come here and insult us so!" chorused a brother. "Treat, who is this dimwit?"
"Negroes are notorious poisoners!" added another brother. "There's none we trust with our lives!"
"Even if she were innocent, it's time we burned a nigger to teach the others a lesson!"
Amidst a hail of angry remarks, a heavy hand clamped around Joseph's elbow. The sheriff hoicked the student from the room as if gigging a frog, towed him across the kitchen, and pitched him down the back stairs. Joseph clambered up, shedding dirt and clam shell crumbs, only to receive a jab in the belly from an iron-shod baton that doubled him over, set him coughing.
"I'm warning you out, rascal! Hie back to Massachusetts and your tight-arse Puritans! Now get!" A rap on Joseph's elbow sent electric pain rippling up and down his arm. Joseph was dragged to the street, obviously to be frog-marched clear to the town limits and flung over the line.
Yet rounding the corner, they almost collided with Reverend Treat, who stumbled down the front steps, apologies spilling from his lips. Prosper slammed the front doors. The stunned Treat whirled as Joseph gasped, "I'm a guest -- of the reverend."
The sheriff halted at Joseph's rapid rise in status. "Is 'at true, sir?"
"No!" snapped Treat. "Oh, dash it all, yes. I brought him. I'll be responsible." The sheriff reluctantly ceded control of the miscreant, but added his orders still applied.
Joseph stumbled after Treat, who flipped his hand as if to banish the Devil. "Why, why, why did you say that? Why intimate that Cuffy and Hazel don't deserve to die? You can't imagine the ruckus you've stirred up! You dandisprat! You hog-rubber! Those people trusted me, and there you jabber like a Barbary ape! How dare you --"
"I dare," Joseph rubbed his stomach, "because Cuffy was innocent of any crime and Hazel is still! Yet these mugwumps will see her burned to death, shrieking to Almighty God, because it's convenient to punish her! `The judge is condemned when the criminal is absolved!'" The last in Latin.
"There's your downfall!" retorted the reverend. "Steeping your mind in classics, clouding your judgement with pagan passions when you should study Holy Writ instead!"
"`Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee' then!' `They sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes!' `The faces of all of them gather blackness!' `Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men!' He had to stop, out of breath.
"`Judge not according to appearance!'" Then a sneer. "`Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!'"
"`For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings!'"
Treat merely stamped harder down the dusty road. Joseph stumped alongside, alternately rubbing his stomach and elbow. After they'd gone a hundred yards, the student asked quietly, "`Can two walk together, except they are agreed?'"
"I don't know what you expect of me!" rapped the preacher. "Or God either! You should be gone hence! You're not wanted!"
"I'll go an hour after midday. I'll go then as did Lot. Nor shall I look back."
Treat stopped dead in the middle of the road and glared at Joseph. But the student's pale, hollow-eyed stare was like something dead, and the parson looked away. In the silence came a foot-slapping, a man half-trotting to catch up. Chad Pearson, the dead man's brother. "Hold up! Reverend, you!"
The two clergymen waited in the hot dusty street while Chad Pearson clopped to a stop. Yet having caught up, the man only hemmed and loosened his stock. "I, uh, wanted to say. This, uh, whole affair. It's deuced bad."
Joseph waited, staring, as did Treat.
Reddening, and not from heat, Pearson went on. "Um, I'm sorry you were ejected that way. We don't, uh, usually have the sheriff in --"
"Why does Mistress Pearson hate Hazel so?" shot Joseph.
"Oh, uh. You can't believe everything she says. You know how women are..."
"Why?"
Treat cleared his throat. "There's no need to be rude."
Chad Pearson looked up and down the street. "It's damned difficult to explain. It's easier if you're drunk. It's just that, well, Sister didn't like having Hazel around -- Hey!"
Joseph grabbed the man by the lapels, and only Treat's imploring hands kept Chad Pearson from being rattled like a dice cup. The student rapped, "Tell me and be quick!"
"All right!" Chad backstepped, smoothed his coat. "Francis would -- We'd be drinking and he'd -- spice up the betting. George and I don't have any nigger women, you see. No good-looking ones, anyway. So he'd, uh, bet her --"
Joseph chopped off his maundering. "You'd hand her around the table. Whoever trumped slept with her."
Chad turned redder. Joseph whirled to Reverend Treat. "Why didn't you tell me this?"
"I didn't know! That's not the sort of thing they'd tell a minister! Sometimes I don't know anything my parishioners are doing!"
"`Haste thee, escape thither,'" quoted Joseph. "Sodom and Gomorrah are rebuilt in the new Israel, and not even Lot's family shall escape this time... This news wounds our cause. What could Cuffy think seeing his wife steered to bed at the behest of his master? It's enough to kill for. How know his child is even of his blood?"
"He couldn't complain much," insisted Chad Pearson. "Francis gave Hazel to him for a wife, bought her special. Cuffy should have been grateful..." His voice trailed off at Joseph's black look.
Growling, the student went on. "Worse yet. Hazel herself might have poisoned her master. But so could any of you Pearsons be guilty."
"What?"
"All of you stand to inherit, and anyone could have poisoned his food or spirits! And his partner too!.. Wait. You import slaves from the Sugar Islands, yes? And own ships, and warehouses? Ships in tropical waters suffer from toredo worms, do they not? The warehouse, have you the keys? Good!"
Bedazzled by this babble, Pearson and Treat were taken in tow as Joseph plowed like a frigate under full sail for the docks.
&&&&&----&&&&&
Chad Pearson fumbled to unlock the side door of the warehouse. Seagulls banked and keened, hungry for scraps, but the wharfs were oddly deserted, for most everyone had trekked to the burning field. As Joseph waited, he noticed tucked behind a narrow two-story building of stone with iron-barred windows: the slave hut into which "black gold" was herded by midnight moons. He shook his head, tried to ignore the sun striking his shoulders, the ache in his skull.
It was no relief to step into the stifling warehouse. Among crates and bolts of cloth stood pyramids of small casks, called butts, branded in Portugese. The hot air reeked of wine and spices and tar and cedar and turpentine.
Joseph stopped short. "Wine. The best way to introduce the stuff. Yes... We know the wine was adulterated because Cuffy fell victim also."
"We do?" asked Pearson and Treat. "He did?"
"Yes. A week before Francis Pearson died, Cuffy suffered a stomach ailment that he tried to treat with his own snake potion, then Maroca's potions. Nothing worked -- a potion can't undo poison -- but he recovered. From this we infer that one of those times when Master Pearson had been dosed, Cuffy, in clearing the table, drained Pearson's glass: all servants will when they can. He got the poison intended for Pearson: the stuff is heavy and it sinks."
"But Francis didn't drink that much madeira because of his gout," insisted Chad. "He took it with water always."
"Wait. What stuff?" asked Reverend Treat.
"I'll show you. Where is your paint locker?"
The paint locker jutted under the eaves of an addition, with a boarded wall and door that could shut and lock, though no lock was in sight. Joseph stepped into the sharp stink of turpentine. By the light of a tiny window he hunted, under a table found a small cask with a wooden cover. Lifting the cover showed a gray-white powder and a wooden scoop.
"This stuff. Arsenic." Joseph took down a dry paint pot and scooped. "It's used to kill pigs and rats, but is also mixed into red-lead bottom paint to kill toredo worms that riddle hulls so fiercely in the Caribbean, even white oak. There's enough arsenic here to kill half of Newport."
"What?" Brushed by death, Chad Pearson touched his breast.
Treat shook his dark head. "It makes no sense. Only Master Pearson was poisoned, but everyone drank madeira and other wines. You haven't been troubled by stomach cramps, have you, Chad?"
"What? No, never!" The man felt his throat now.
"Perhaps it was meant the whole family to succumb, and something went wrong. Perhaps everyone else was immune." Joseph mused, not believing it himself.
Abruptly he turned to a pyramid of casks, grabbed up a cracked one that had leaked its contents. Joseph rapped a knuckle on the oak bung, peered inside at the wider end. "These bungs are hammered from the inside, then the casks are filled and sealed in the Canary Islands. When broached, the bung falls inside the cask. I see no way a man could remove a bung, poison the wine, then replace it. It would be impossible to tamper with these casks and not have someone notice."
"Of course not," snapped Chad Pearson. Fright was giving way to anger. "But someone did poison my brother, you say. Who? How?"
Joseph paced, passing the pot of arsenic from hand to hand, juggling possibilities in his head until he was dizzy. The oven-heat of the warehouse made him dizzy too, and he stepped outside. The sun was like a hammer, so he moved against the building. The shady strip was a popular place this blistering summer, and posted along the wooden wall were notices announcing auctions or the sale of pirated goods.
Unintentionally, the student read the broadsides, as he read everything that came before his eyes. One poster announced a forthcoming auction conducted by Pearson and Co. "Prime Likely Negroes, both Male and Female, from Ten years of age to Twenty, imported the Last Week from Nevis, and were Brought from Guinea. Seasoned against Smallpox. Also a House Servant, able to Read, trained to Table, raised from a Boy --" The rest was obliterated by the black word CANCELLED. The holder's sudden death had thrown his estate into limbo.
Chad Pearson's jaw and fists were knotted. He looked ready to smite the wall, or Joseph. "You haven't told me yet! Who killed my brother? Who?"
Joseph shrugged his shoulders like some Quebecois. "I don't know! Too many could want him dead! The puzzle needs sorting, wheat from chaff! It's best, I don't know... It's best to ask, which single person would most prosper from his death?"
Pearson growled, Treat sighed, while Joseph rubbed his temple. Something nagged him, buzzed in his brain like a rattlesnake's warning. Stock still, he waited for the idea to settle and take root.
Yet Chad Pearson, furious, grabbed Joseph's shoulder and spun him around. "I demand --"
Joseph gazed over the man's shoulder at the auction broadside. Slowly he breathed in Latin, "`I do not distinguish by the eye, but by the mind, which is the proper judge of a man.'"
"Eh?" asked the parson and merchant.
Joseph pointed at the poster, turned without a word and ran up the street, careful not to spill the arsenic. "We must make the field! We must stop the burning!"
"What?" called Pearson. "Come back here!"
"What can you say?" objected Treat. "They won't like it!"
But Joseph was gone, running flat out.
&&&&&-----&&&&&
All of Newport filled a pasture near where the tarred Cuffy hung in his "iron suit". Children grabbed the bottom of the cage and squealed to be swung. Adults jammed the shade along the stone walls or else sat on horse blankets under parasols. In the full glare of the sun, a stake was surrounded by pine shavings from a mill and branches culled from nearby orchards: applewood burned so hot it would melt andirons in a winter. Against the stake was propped a four-legged stool with a cracked seat. In the seat sat Hazel, feet amidst the fagots, chains on her wrists and ankles. A noose around her neck bound her to the stake, half-throttling so she sat bolt upright. At four corners of the pyre, men with batons keep gawkers at bay. The sheriff talked to a large man sweating in a purple coat, gesturing to the pyre with a birchbark torch. Foremost on blankets the Pearsons sipped madeira proferred by the house servant Prosper. Far back in sun stood the colony's few free Negroes, including Maroca's brood. The onlookers droned like cicadas.
The buzz deepened when Joseph hopped the stone wall, Chad Pearson and Reverend Treat trotting behind. The sheriff cursed Joseph in round tones, Reverend Treat and Chad Pearson shouted him down. Joseph held his chest, breath rattling and sobbing. He held up the tin, but the sheriff slapped it out of his hand so white powder dusted everyone. "What the hell's that?"
"Your 'snake'!" gulped the student. "Arsenic! It kills by stomach cramps, making a man swell up and suffer terrible thirst, so he drinks more and poisons himself further! But it wasn't stirred into the madeira, because no one else fell sick. Pearson suffered from gout. Straight madeira was too rich for his blood, so he took his wine watered, the only family member to do so. And who fetched him the water? It wasn't poor Cuffy yonder! He fell sick with stomach cramps himself, rest his soul, and a man would hardly drink wine he'd poisoned. But there was another in the household who might prosper by Pearson's death!"
Joseph's rasping was quiet, but everyone heard. "At the bottom of a broadside for a slave auction, Master Pearson advertised for sale a house servant raised from a boy, trained to table, able to read. A young servant who ran errands to the docks, where he could read an auction notice, and lay hand to arsenic. Rather than be sold, this young slave poisoned his master's water. Pearson's sudden death froze his assets and stalled the slave's own sale."
The stunned crowd swivelled to stare where the Pearsons sat in the place of honor. The family members drew back, open-mouthed, until the house slave Prosper stood alone. His dark face went gray as smoke.
A muttering, then a howl rose. Men broke from the crowd, shoved the Pearsons aside, grabbed the terrified slave. At the stake, the sheriff's men loosed the rope throttling Hazel and hurled her off the stool to make room for Prosper, who shrieked and blubbered as a score of hard hands banged him in the seat. A chant rose. "Burn him! Burn him! Burn him!"
Joseph caught Hazel's chains and led her into the sturdy arms of Maroca. Hazel was more dead than alive with fright and shock, shambling like a statue of ebony wood, chains clinking. Yet she enfolded her son, kissed the head of flat black hair.
Prosper screamed, prayed, begged as he was lashed with rope, swaddled like a mummy. Men slapped his head, kicked fagots under his feet. Cries went up for a torch.
Keeping his back to the morbid scene, Joseph pushed amidst the Pearsons to fix the mistress with a deep burning stare. "Hazel has suffered much in her innocence, being damned and incarcerated and near-burned after losing her husband. She'd have precious worth in your household now. Will you give her to me? As a fee for uncovering the true murderer?"
The merchant's wife ran a rapid calculation in her head, then discarded it. "Yes, yes, you may have her. She wasn't good for much anyway. Only to my husband and brothers-in-law," she flared.
"You are all witnesses, eh?" Excited, Joseph's French mannerisms surfaced. "She belongs to me. Then witness, too, I set her free and charge her to the care of Maroca, a freewoman."
He turned to go, but Chad Pearson caught his sleeve. "Wait. Prosper poisoned Francis to stay in our household? That makes no sense! What difference the master?"
The student shrugged. "What does a slave own? Nothing, not even himself. Only his station, the only life he knew. Think on Cuffy, who despite seeing his wife abused, fought to save his beloved master with a snake panacea. `The slave loves the whip.' And remember this: `Master, be good to your slaves, for know that you have a master in Heaven.'"
A sheriff's man had unlocked Hazel's manacles. Sweeping his arms wide, Joseph gathered in Maroca and her children and Hazel and her baby, urged them, pushed them, hurried them down the dusty road towards Newport and home. He had to drag Quamino, who stood stricken. Tears spilled down her cheeks, the first tears he'd seen on any black. "Quickly, apace!"
They weren't fast enough. Prosper screamed as flames licked his legs. To cover the noise, Joseph thought to recite. But all he could quote was, "`If poisonous minerals, and if that tree, whose fruit threw death on else-immortal us, if lecherous goats, if serpents envious cannot be damn'd; why should I be?'"
END