complexioned, dark-haired man of perhaps thirty years of age was working over a ledger book. Placing his pen in its holder, he looked up at me and smiled.
“How may I be of assistance to you, sir?” he asked.
“I shall come right to my subject, sir, as I would not wish to take up your valuable time. I’m Portuguese and half-Jewish. I am alone in Charleston and in great need of a trustworthy person who might help me with a problem.”
In awkward Portuguese, he replied, “And where are you from?”
“I was born in Porto, though my father is Scottish. My grandmother’s name is Pereira. She still lives in Porto, though most of my family is in London now.”
“Yes, I have been told that there are many Pereiras in Portugal,” he replied.
In his chilly gaze, I could see he wished to discount any common ancestry we might share. In his own way, he was telling me that I had no right to expect his assistance. To confirm this intuition, I said, “Indeed there are, sir — thousands. And it was presumptuous of me to come here to see you based on a similarity of family names.”
“But understandable, sir,” he acknowledged.
“I beg your pardon for the interruption. I shall leave you to your work.” I paused to give him time to protest. As he simply nodded, I added, “Thank you for seeing me. It was most kind.”
Humiliation obliged me to proffer a small stiff bow.
It was Thursday, August the Twenty-Eighth, and with every new day in America it was becoming ever more obvious that I was never meant to be a hunter.
XLIV
Mr. Rollins told Weaver that he knew of a man who might get us our muskets and pistols. I’ll call him Mr. Trevor, since he’s still in Charleston by all accounts. It was another six weeks before I got permission to go to town to do our marketing and try calling on him. Master Edward refused to make do without Weaver that day, but I knew how to handle the horses well enough and went alone.
Mr. Trevor’s wife welcomed me into their small home and sat me down in a study filled with more books than I’d ever seen. She told me her husband would be with me right away.
Mr. Trevor always scared me, to tell you the truth. He was light-skinned and tall, and his eyes were always burning with awareness, as if he could see straight through you to your thoughts. His profession, which I’m not going to reveal, required a whole lot of learning.
That first day, I told him about the dreams I’d had of a city where it was always snowing. I told him about Papa having his heel-strings cut. I told him about Marybelle being dissected still warm.
“What makes you think a frail and uneducated girl like you is going to be able to succeed in this rebellion?” he said in a skeptical voice. “Because make no mistake, young lady, a slave rebellion is what we are discussing here, even if it’s only a few individuals.”
I do not know what gave me the ornery strength to say what I said: “It’s you who ought to make no mistake, Mr. Trevor, because I’m getting out of River Bend one way or another. And I’m taking my friends with me. I swear that on my mamma’s grave. You can help me if you like or not. But I
I don’t think I made any impression on him at all. He looked at me with amused eyes. “Little moths usually fly straight into candle flames,” he told me. “They think they’re flying toward some eternal light, but they just burn up to nothing.”
If Weaver hadn’t come to our next meeting with Mr. Trevor, I’m sure we’d have been given no help at all. But getting him permission to go to Charleston proved an uphill battle and the only way I could get it was by convincing Mistress Anne that she was in need of a chicken coop for her town house.
It took me three whole months of nagging to wear her resistance down. So it wasn’t until June of 1822 that I could get Weaver into town to build her coop and meet with Mr. Trevor in secret. He told us not to come into his study this time, so we sat in the parlor, studying the framed pictures on the walls, which were all of Negro heroes. He even had one of a black man crucified on a desert hilltop. Mrs. Trevor told me it was Christ.
“Was Jesus a Negro?” I asked. “I thought he was Jewish.”
“He was one of us in spirit,” she replied, which made me want to laugh at first, but then later I felt something tingly in my fingers and toes while thinking about it — almost like my papa had said it.
Looking at that painting, I knew that if the white militia from the Citadel ever raided this place, they’d burn it and everything else in here to ash regardless of anybody’s spirit. They’d never let a black Christ be crucified in Charleston. No, sir.
Mr. Trevor must have been persuaded by something Weaver said, because he told him that he could get us some of the arms and ammunition that had been stored by Denmark Vesey and his friends before they were arrested and hanged for trying to make an uprising.
Weaver and I weren’t sure how we would smuggle everything up to River Bend. That put some cold worry in our hearts. And worse, it had never occurred to us before that we had to pay for the muskets and pistols, but Mr. Trevor told us, “Guns don’t come free to any man.” Then, laughing, he winked at me and said, “Or girl.”
All that summer, while Master Edward’s family lived over at their town house in Cordesville, I took advantage of their absence to steal everything silver I could wrap my little fingers around. Throughout the fall and winter too. Every two months or so, I made my way to town with what I’d robbed, all those trinkets and pieces of silverware shrieking at me from inside my pockets and my bag. Throughout those first months of 1823, robbery, guns, and waiting to get out were all I was thinking about.
It sure does take ages for a ripple to reach the shores of slavery in the rice country of South Carolina, and by May, after a full year of me robbing my hands raw, Mr. Trevor said we still had given him only enough silver to pay for five muskets, two pistols, and three swords. Though he would also add an extra musket and sword with his own money.
I figured that wasn’t going to be nearly enough for the twenty or more slaves I was hoping to take with me. We were planning to give everyone at River Bend a choice of coming or staying the week before we left. Weaver would train a few of the men at using a musket or pistol. We reckoned we’d make our escape on a Sunday night, since that was the only evening when Weaver’s wife, Martha, and their children could get a pass to come to River Bend, and we’d get on our way in July, August, or early September, because it was then, during the sickly season, that the countryside would be nearly empty of white folks and patrols.
We were planning on leaving from Petrie’s Landing, a little-used wharf along the Cooper River for folks living in the town of Belmont. Beaufort had been braver than I ever could have hoped and had gone to speak to Captain Ott. The Englishman had not only agreed to help me, Weaver, and anyone else who could reach his ship, but he would have his crewmen take three rowboats to Petrie’s Landing a day or two before the night of our departure. We would take the boats and meet his ship in the harbor. He would be captaining the
Captain Ott told Beaufort he’d be returning during late August or the first half of September, most likely. As soon as he docked, Beaufort would hire a carriage out to River Bend. He would tie a red ribbon around a plank of the front gate and also leave a plant of some kind just inside the fence. If anyone saw it, I was to say it was a present for my garden from a friend in Charleston. But it was our signal to get moving toward Petrie’s Landing that Sunday.
Sometimes I was so frightened things wouldn’t work out that I’d need to run down to the river and sit with my legs in that ice-cold water just to keep my heart from exploding.
I said nothing to Beaufort about our guns. The less he knew the safer he’d be. Weaver and I promised him that if we were taken prisoner we would never name him. But I worried that if they were to cut off some of my fingers or put burning coals on my eyes, I’d name everybody I ever knew and even a few I ain’t never met, black
