Читать книгу Flint and Silver - John Drake, John Drake - Страница 14

3rd April 1751 The Delacroix Plantation, South Carolina

Selena fought all the way, but her mother was twice her weight and three times her strength. The woman just put her head down and took the blows she received from her daughter and never gave back one – which amazing behaviour frightened Selena more than anything. Instead, her mother got sullen and angry and tried to persuade.

“What you do, girl?” she cried as she pulled Selena along. “You think you not like all women? You think you better? You … you … you …”

But her words failed. She’d never learned English very well and she switched to the liquid speech of her homeland, which the youngsters like Selena barely understood – for it earned the toe of the overseer’s boot to be heard “talking African”.

But this time Selena’s mother didn’t just speak it: she bellowed it. And since it was dusk, and the day’s work was done, the people came to the doors of their shacks as Selena was dragged by. They came to see what all the fuss was about. When they saw, they understood and they laughed or pitied according to their individual character. Mostly the men looked at Selena and licked their lips and thought their own thoughts, but the women screeched and laughed and slapped their sides in happy chorus.

“It’s your time, girl!” they cried. “Now you just like all the rest!” And they nodded to one another in righteous enjoyment at the fall of one who had put on such airs.

“Where’s Miss Jeanie?” they mocked. “You want me to call her from Paris?”

And the children hopped and capered along behind, laughing and mimicking, even though they didn’t understand. But they would, given a few years; especially the girls.

Yard by yard, Selena was hauled away from the neat line of shacks and out towards the big house. The crickets sang, the moon came out, the stars shone, and soon the children scampered back home with final jeers, for they were getting too near the big house, and knew better than to make trouble there.

The big house was ablaze with light and music. The master and mistress were entertaining. White-folk visitors were come from far away beyond the plantation, where no slave was allowed to go. There were carriages drawn up outside the big house, but that was at the front, which was forbidden to Selena and her mother. Instead, Selena was dragged the last few hundred yards to where Sam the overseer lived in his smart, plank-built house with the veranda and the whitewashed walls. Sam’s house stood way out from the shacks where the common folk lived, and close enough to the big house to be ready for the master’s call.

Sam was a greatly privileged creature. He wore shoes and a white man’s hat, and was even trusted with a gun, and now he sat with this badge of office across his knees as he rocked on his own porch.

Selena’s mother dragged her up the steps and brought her before Sam. He was a big, hard young man, chosen for his ability to knock down any other slave with his fists. But he smiled and shook his head in admiration of Selena.

“My oh my!” he said. “Ain’t you just ripe and ready.” He slid his hand into Selena’s cotton dress and reached for one of the hard breasts that were bouncing so appealingly as she struggled.

“No!” barked Selena’s mother, and caught Sam’s arm a blow with her fist. “She not for boy like you!”

Sam snarled and raised his musket butt to smash the woman flat. He was top dog and didn’t take no crap from nobody.

“Hold you hand, nigger-boy!” cried the woman. “My Selena, she be Master’s girl – yes? Master do what she say – yes? Selena say, ‘Flog Sam black ass’ – Master flog Sam black ass!”

Sam froze. It was true. It could happen. So long as the master’s fancy lasted, he’d give a girl most everything she wanted … especially if it was so little a thing as flogging an uppity slave. Sam had seen too many floggings to suffer one on his own sweet hide. He doused his anger and lowered his gun.

He said nothing, but got up and led the way to the “special house” down in the hollow by the river, among the trees and out of sight of the big house, where it had been placed by a thoughtful husband to spare the blushes of his wife. What the mistress did not have positively thrust before her eyes, she could contrive not to know. Indeed, as far as the mistress was concerned, what went on in the house in the hollow served the invaluable purpose of focusing her husband’s attentions where they would do the most good and the least harm.

Sam had the keys to the special house. He unlocked the door and lit the candles inside. He looked sidelong at the two women to see their wonder at the fine things on display, things no field slave ever saw: the curtains, carpets and furniture, the silks, satins and linen, the wines and food, the big bed, the great mirrors and the gold-framed paintings of naked white women, luscious and plump. Tonight there was also a big bathtub, with water, soap and towels, and a selection of brightly coloured dresses.

“Now you get that girl ready, you hear?” said Sam, for the benefit of his dignity. “You get her clean and dressed up right pretty, or it gonna be your black ass gets flogged!” With that, he straightened his shoulders and marched off, master of the field.

Selena’s mother sighed.

“Get you clothes off, girl.”

“No!”

“Get you clothes off. How me clean you, if you not take off clothes?”

“Take me home. I wasn’t bred for this!”

“No! You stay here. You stay!”

“Why?”

This simple question finally broke the dam of Selena’s mother’s emotions. The woman burst into loud slobbering tears and called Selena a wicked girl who’d see her ma and pa sold away and all her brothers and sisters too.

“Sold away!” cried Selena’s mother, voicing the dread fear of the plantation slave. “Sold downriver. Me never see you. Me never see me man. Me never see me childrens. Never never never. That what you want? You creature!”

“No!” screamed Selena, and stamped her foot. “But why should it be me?”

“ ‘Cos Master want you. That why he let you live in the big house! That why you get fancy clothes and fancy words. You got them ‘cos he want you for fancy piece!”

“No! Miss Eugenie – Jeanie – she loved me!”

“Huh! She love you when you small. You was her nigger doll. And now she gone to Paris for schooling and left you behind when she could’ve taken you with!”

“No!”

“No? So why you back in fields? Why you sleep in Mumma’s house and not Miss Jeanie’s room?”

“It’s all your fault! You told me to smile at the master in the first place!”

Selena’s mother bit her lip and the strength drained out of her indignation.

“Well,” she said, searching for words. She searched hard and came up with a powerful word: a white man’s word. “I told you to smile ‘cos it proper,” she said, and nodded in satisfaction.

“Huh!” sneered Selena. “ ‘Proper’, you say? I say you just want all the things I can get you while I’m the master’s girl!”

If a woman with skin the colour of black velvet could have blushed, then Selena’s mother would have done it. Since this was impossible, she took her daughter by the hair, stripped her naked, lifted her bodily into the bathtub, and doused and soaped and scrubbed the slippery body as if she’d have the skin off it. Then she laid on with the towels, bound up the girl’s hair to look nice, and crammed, jammed and rammed her into the first dress that came to hand.

“Now hear me, Selena,” she said, with a face as grim as a bulldog’s. “Me don’t want no more. You always stamping and cussing. You always having you way. Me always let you. Me let you, ‘cos you fine and you pretty.”

She stood back, hands on hips and leaned forward so her nose was an inch from Selena’s.

“Now you pay me back, girl,” she said. “You bump you ass for Master. You bump real good. You think on me. You think on you father. You think on you brothers and sisters.” In a final burst of anger, her voice screeched in fury, hitting a pitch previously unsurpassed. “If you not do, then no place for you in me house. Not food, not fire, not water. Nothing! NOTHING! You hear me?”

There was silence as the two looked at one another, balked in anger. Then, seeing the faintest flicker of a downcast eye from Selena, and seeing that the girl made no move to run, the mother said, “Huh!” loudly. Then she cleaned up the bath things, made everything neat and tidy, hauled the bath outside and emptied it, and marched off back to her own place, and her husband, and the rest of her eight surviving children.

She was a good woman. She was doing her best, under iniquitous rules, for all those who depended upon her. She was the exact moral equal of a noble commander who wins glory by sacrificing a regiment to save an army. She wept all the way home, nonetheless.

Left alone, Selena first did some weeping of her own. Then she threw some things about and broke glass and china. Then she looked at herself in a mirror, admired the incredible gown, and then she sat down on the big bed to think. Ideas sped and tumbled through her head with the wild energy of a sharp and penetrating brain. But she saw no way out, other than the one her mother had specified.

Thus she came to a decision. First she brought herself to face and accept her betrayal by Miss Eugenie. She cleared that monstrously difficult fence with valiant courage and with maturity beyond her years. She did it all by herself and with none to advise her. Next, she accepted her duty to her mother, to her father and to her family. Finally she lay back on the bed, spread her gown to best advantage, and waited for the master. But the master did not come, and eventually, being unused to staying awake at the end of a hard day’s work, Selena closed her eyes and went to sleep.

She was awakened by a fumbling at the front of her gown and a man’s drink-loaded breath wheezing in her face. A fat belly pressed down upon her with the buckles of his clothes scratching. Hands squeezed her breasts and a foul mouth pressed on hers, licking and sucking.

At forty-six years of age, the master, Mr Fitzroy Delacroix, had long since established his etiquette where slave-girls were concerned. He liked them young, he liked them slim, he liked them full-breasted and he liked them virgins. The delight of slave-girls, to his way of thinking, was that you could do what you damn well liked to them, when you damn well liked, and not have to waste hours bringing them to the boil like you did with decent white women. As for whores, slaves beat them every time because you didn’t have to pay and you couldn’t get poxed.

Added to these usual benefits was the particular one that Selena had been his own daughter’s playmate, raised alongside her, and equipped with the speech and manners of a white girl to the degree that – for some time now – Delacroix had been just itching to get his hands on her. Thus it was very much the case that his daughter’s desire for a wider education and her hopes of fluency in the French language were far from Delacroix’s only reasons for sending Miss Eugenie to Europe.

Not sharing Delacroix’s point of view, Selena struggled furiously and got a ringing box round the ears in reply. Delacroix laughed and threw her skirts over her head. Holding her down by the wrists, he buried his nose into the soft recess between her thighs and gorged like a hog at a trough. Enjoying himself hugely, he rolled to one side to unbutton himself and haul out his shaft. But, freed from his weight, Selena leapt up and darted to the door … which was locked.

Delacroix positively roared with laugher, and staggered after her with his drawers round his ankles and his paunch wobbling over his upstanding lust. He grabbed at Selena, but he was full of drink and she ducked under his arms, snatched up a silver candlestick and swung it at his head. He just managed to raise his arms in defence and the blow thumped painfully into his left elbow. He fell back, stumbled and sat down heavily on the floor, legs stretched out in front of him.

“Ow!” he said, rubbing his elbow in surprise. “Well, I’m damned!” And he doubtless was, for those were his last words on earth.

With a huge quantity of food and drink in his stomach, and sick from the pain of the blow, Delacroix suddenly vomited heavily, gulped and choked … and inhaled a good lungful of half-digested beef and claret. He then throttled and kicked for a minute or two, before expiring purple-faced and pop-eyed at Selena’s feet, with his tongue lolling out of his open mouth.

Philosophers would argue that Delacroix was entirely responsible for his own death – and a shameful death too – from gluttony and attempted rape, but Selena knew that the world would see things differently. A slave found with her dead master was just meat on the hoof. They’d not ask her what had happened. They’d simply hang her.

Fear and panic surged out of the dark corners of the room. There was no refuge on the plantation. They’d hang any slave who tried to help her, and her mother’s house was the first place they’d look – even supposing for one minute that her mother would take her in. But beyond the plantation was the great, wide world: the outside world that Selena had never even seen, let alone visited. And now she had to get out into that world and make her way, and not get caught. And all she had to guide her was her own native wit.