threat.
“Step back, Crow. Now open your mouth, Edward!”
He would not. Hence, with all my force, I brought the statuette straight down upon his head. Shattered pieces flew in every direction. It was of harder clay than I had imagined, and Edward’s legs buckled. Blood trickled at his temple. I had opened a mean gash.
I was immediately ashamed of my actions. But I did not wish to betray my regret. I ordered him to get his mouth open as wide as it would go. Groaning, he complied.
“No matter what you are thinking,” I said, “you will not be mistreated if you obey me. We shall only lock you in the barn, nothing more.”
With Edward’s key, Morri unlocked the door to the First Barn. Once we had the Master, the two black foremen, Wiggie, and Joanne bound so that they would not be able to stand or crawl, we locked them inside.
Weaver came panting back to us. All of us were standing there outside the barn by now — every slave on the plantation. Those who had decided to remain behind at River Bend were too restless to wait at their cabins.
“I can’t get ’cross,” Weaver moaned. “Dey’s taken de boat.”
He explained that the boat had been rowed to the opposite bank.
“Why didn’t you just swim across?” I asked.
He hung his head and told us he didn’t know how.
“Can any of you?” I asked.
When no one spoke up, Weaver said, “I gots to stay behind.”
“No, you’re coming with us,” Morri declared.
“Ain’t no way. You-all gots to go wit’out me.”
“You goin’, Weaver,” Lily said. “Dey all know you’s involved. You stay behin’, you gonna hang.”
“I can’t leave Mart’a and my sons.”
Parker suggested that all of us ought to rush the men on the bridge at once, but his wife, Christmas-Eve, said they’d likely put balls in at least two of us and she didn’t want to risk one of them being her husband.
“None of us wants to die,” Morri noted. “But we have to do something — and quick.”
It seemed to me now that I had always known I would have to enter the water again one day. I was surprised, in fact, it had taken so long. A part of me even wanted to.
At the river’s edge, I slipped out of my shoes, socks, trousers, shirt, and waistcoat. Blades of moonlight reflected off the hard dark surface of the water. I imagined that it was deep, muddy, and cold, and that its arms would receive me greedily.
Weaver and Morri were with me. The others had stayed back at the barn.
“Is the current generally a swift one?” I asked, handing her my white feather.
“It can be. But tonight” — she looked across the water — “tonight it doesn’t look so bad. You say you can swim pretty well?”
“I haven’t had a swim in twenty-five years. We shall see,” I said, smiling.
A rush of fear overwhelmed me as my foot met the chilly surface. The river was thick with resistance as I took my first strokes. Then I imagined Daniel calling to me from the other shore:
Which is what I did. Anxiety kept me afloat and moving fast. On reaching the other shore, I shook myself off like Fanny. Daniel laughed at me, but I was happy to have him on my side.
Then I rowed as best I could back to River Bend, forty paces downriver from where I’d started. Weaver and Morri rushed through the woods and marsh grass toward me.
Weaver crouched into the boat as I dressed in my dry clothes. We agreed to meet at the piazza in two hours, at a quarter to midnight. He told us to leave without him after that, for it would mean he had failed to reach his family — or been caught on the way back to River Bend.
On checking the carriages in the Second Barn, we found that Master Edward had further outmaneuvered us. Each of the back wheels had been locked with two thick chains. None of Master Edward’s keys opened them.
When we entered the First Barn to remove Wiggie’s gag and question him, he told us that only Mr. Johnson had the key. We knew then we would all have to walk. Morri estimated that it was twelve miles to Petrie’s Landing. We could reach there in three to four hours if we made good time.
Fifteen Negroes and a white man traipsing down a rice-country road were sure to raise hot suspicions in any passing carriage. But forging through the woods or proceeding along the river’s edge would be impossible, according to Morri, since the overgrowth was woven thick and the swamps impossible to cross without being able to walk on water.
She went to her space under the piazza and got the last of the swords. We also took pikes, spades, and flails from the Second Barn and handed them around. As we would have to wait now for Weaver, we lumbered back to the Big House. The fear of death that I saw in Lily’s face made me think of my daughters. I would not have wished them to think I’d simply vanished, as I sometimes believed about my father. Turning to Morri, I said, “If things end up going wrong … After I have been hanged, I would like you to write to my children at that address I gave you in New York. I would like you to tell them that I did indeed die. You must tell them you are absolutely sure of it.”
“Me? John, I’m afraid you’re not thinking right. Don’t you know they’re going to hang me too? And long before a white man.”
Crow led me up to Master Edward’s bedroom, then went with Morri to keep the other slaves calm. From the window there, I had a clear view of the bridge leading to Comingtee. Mr. Johnson and his colleague had not stirred. From the way they sat, I believed they might even be sleeping. Watching them, I understood that we would have to capture them as well. For if they were to discover our absence before dawn, they might blow the alarm and set their dogs after us — and alert the patrols too.
I went to my room and packed my feather, arrow, and sketchbook, along with Midnight’s letter to me and the scrolled illustration done by Berekiah Zarco. They could bury me with those if I was caught.
Weaver returned at twenty minutes before midnight, with Martha, his two sons, and the girl Sarah in tow. They were all frantic, but Weaver believed they’d not been seen. All was quiet at Comingtee, he assured me.
I set off with them to join Morri, Crow, and the other slaves, leaving Lily behind at the Big House. But before we reached the cabins, two white men, each carrying a musket, appeared from out of nowhere. One of the men was Mr. Johnson. I didn’t recognize the other, but I later learned he was Mr. Davies, an overseer at Comingtee. They must have slipped away from the bridge during the two or three minutes I’d spent talking to Weaver and his family. They’d probably heard — or spotted — them rowing over to River Bend.
“And where might you be headed, Mr. Stewart?” Johnson asked me, grinning. It was plain that he would enjoy shooting me.
I sprang for him. I remember hearing his shot and feeling a thud in my left shoulder, as though I’d been hit with a plank of wood. In my rage and fear I did not hear the second shot, fired by Mr. Davies.
When I bulled into Johnson, I sent his musket flying. I had taken the breath from him too, and while he was doubled over, I dove at him, clouting him twice upon the jaw, as hard as I could. Helpless, he covered his face with his hands and groaned that he could not breathe. I stood back from him and retrieved his musket. As I rubbed my bloody knuckles, he begged me in a quavering voice not to kill him.
Gazing to my side, I then discovered that Weaver lay dying on the ground. The ball from Mr. Davies had pierced an artery in his neck. The blood was spilling over him, and Martha was wailing. Frederick and Taylor had managed to overpower Mr. Davies and had already speared him with his bayonet. He, too, lay dying.
Working quickly but silently, we moved the body of Mr. Davies into the Second Barn; we would not have wanted our prisoners to see his blood-soaked corpse. We gagged Mr. Johnson, causing him so much pain in his broken jaw that he begged us not to through his tears. I am not proud to say that I cared nothing for his comfort at that moment. For with his popping eyes he plainly wished to tell me that I would be a dead man if he had me in his power for but a moment.
