Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons Read online

  He was grinning. He had such white, strong teeth. His handsome face, swooned over by so many women in Boston, was close to mine.

  He took my hand in his own. "You have won, Phillis," he said. "You have won. For your race. There is no doubt now that the African species of man can create formal literature. And master the arts and sciences."

  I felt tears in my throat. "I did well, then?"

  "Well? They are fair to fainting from your responses. We are ready to draw up a paper saying the poetry is yours. We will all sign it. My signature shall be the largest. And written with the most flourish. I'll send Nathaniel out to sit with you."

  And with that, John Hancock winked at me and went back to sign the paper saying my poetry was mine.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  We whose names are under-written, do assure the World, that the Poems specified in the following Page, were (as we verily believe) written by PHILLIS, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few years since, brought an uncultivated barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is, under the disadvantage of serving as a slave in a Family in this Town ...

  Signed, this seventh day of May, in the town of Boston, province of Massachusetts, in the year of our Lord, 1772.

  Thomas Hutchinson, governor

  Andrew Oliver, lieutenant governor

  Councilmen Thomas Hubbard, John Erving,

  James Pitts, Harrison Gray, James Bowdoin,

  JOHN HANCOCK

  Merchants Joseph Green, Richard Carey

  Reverends Charles Chauncy, Mather Byles,

  Ebenezer Pemberton, Andrew Eliot, Samuel Cooper,

  Samuel Mather, John Moorhead,

  Nathaniel Wheatley, signing for her master,

  John Wheatley

  "Those dear men. I am so gratified." Mrs. Wheatley dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  "I'd be considerably more gratified if they hadn't taken on so about Phillis being a slave," Mary said angrily. "In heaven's name, what's wrong with Hancock? He knows we don't refer to our servants as slaves!"

  It was late afternoon. Nathaniel and I had just returned from the governor's mansion with the signed paper in hand.

  Nathaniel was triumphant. I was dazed. It had started to rain outside. Aunt Cumsee had just served tea. The paper was passed around and digested with the tarts Aunt Cumsee had taken from the beehive oven.

  When it came into my hands, I could scarce believe it. There it was, the richest of vellum, with the blackest of ink. All those signatures saying my poetry was mine!

  "Couldn't you have had some say about the wording, Nathaniel?" Mary asked. "'Under the disadvantage of slavery'? This paper must go to London! What will people think?"

  I knew what I thought. That I would like to get up and throttle Mary, despite the fact that she was balancing four-month-old John Lathrop, Junior, on her knee and was already two months in circumstances with her next one.

  Did she have no idea of what I had been made to endure this day? Could she have stood up to such questioning?

  "We're wearying Phillis." Mrs. Wheatley got up, reached for a shawl, and put it around my shoulders. "We must think of her welfare. She isn't that strong."

  "I'm fine, ma'am," I said.

  "I still think that Nathaniel should have insisted on having the wording changed," Mary said. She was determined today, to give the devil his due.

  "No matter, Mary," her mother said.

  "That was not Nathaniel's duty," her father said. "He was acting in my stead. If not for this gouty foot I'd have been there myself. By heaven, I missed it! No! Nathaniel acted as I would have done. He acquitted himself well. Now I will hear no more of it."

  The matter was finished.

  "Nathaniel, fetch my Madeira. By heaven, I will have a toast!" My master set down his cup.

  It was done. Nathaniel poured some for himself and his father, who held up his glass. Toasts were made.

  They toasted the committee. Then John Hancock. Then Mrs. Wheatley. Finally, Mr. Wheatley held up his glass to me. "To Phillis," he said, "for you do us proud."

  "Hear, hear," Nathaniel said.

  "And now, I have an announcement." Mr. Wheatley still held forth his glass. "I am retiring. An advertisement saying such will appear in all the papers tomorrow. Nathaniel has done so well running things that I feel assured in leaving everything in his hands."

  Everyone cheered.

  "And another announcement. Within the year, Phillis will have to set sail for London. Mrs. Wheatley has been in correspondence with the Countess of Huntington, who will sponsor her there. She will travel under the protection of Nathaniel, on our own ship."

  "Nathaniel is going to London?" Mary was full taken aback.

  I almost felt sorry for her. Mary knew she would never go abroad.

  "He must," her father said. "Our mercantile business has grown so that we must set up an office in England."

  There was much kissing and hugging all around. Nathaniel was congratulated by his father. His mother embraced him. Mary offered her cheek for a kiss.

  "London!" Mary whispered snidely to me later in the hall as I held little John so she could put on her cloak. "Well, just remember who you are. Remember your place."

  "How can I not," I returned, "when others are constantly speaking of it?"

  She turned away. I could not dismiss her remark out of hand. It cut like a knife. But I was numb. Numb with joy. I was, after all, going to England. My work would come out in a book there. I was being sponsored by a countess.

  But more than all else, I was going with Nathaniel.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  In the next year it seemed that everyone of my own race felt it incumbent upon themselves to give me advice about my trip to London.

  "Remember yourself," from Aunt Cumsee. "Don't hold him in higher esteem than he holds you. Or it will come to grief."

  "Do not let Nathaniel dally with you," Obour wrote. "Remember to lay aside money from the earnings of your book. Do not garner expensive habits in London. And remember, they may be sending you to London, but they are still playing with you. Find some way to make a living for when they leave you to your own devices."

  Sulie became outright hostile. I swear that woman lay awake nights thinking of ways to plague me.

  She would serve me cold tea. Or make the water extra hot and spill some on my hand while pouring it.

  She would scorch a dress of mine when ironing it. Mrs. Wheatley had Aunt Cumsee take my measurements, so her own mantuamaker could fashion me a new wardrobe.

  Sulie was to deliver them. She changed the measurements. Three new gowns, fancier than I'd ever possessed, made of silk with lace trim, had to be ripped apart and made over to remedy the matter.

  Once she sent bad meat to my room on a tray. Mrs. Wheatley, realizing she could no longer trust Sulie, had Prince bring my food up to my room when I was working.

  I was glad for it. I hadn't seen much of Prince of late.

  "You happy, Phillis?" he asked me one day after he delivered my noon meal.

  I assured him I was.

  "Then how come you look like they gonna take you out an' shoot you at sunrise?"

  I could never lie to Prince. "I was just pondering."

  "'Bout what?"

  "Mrs. Wheatley wants some poems left out of the book."

  He scowled and set the tray down. "Which poems?"

  "The one I wrote on the death of Chris Seider. And the one I wrote about the arrival of the British ships of war."

  Prince had read all my poems. In secret. The family still didn't know he could read and write. But when I'd come back from Newport, after finding this out, I had managed to slip all my poems to him. "What about the one on the massacre?" he asked.

  "That, too. She says they're too anti-British."

  To my surprise, he didn't object. He commenced to pour my tea. "You want words from me on this?"

  "Yes, Prince."

  "Sure 'nuf, then, here's the way I see it. Seems to me the
y wouldn't be likin' those poems over there in England, those people with the red coats. And the mistress knows this. Plenty of time to get those poems published here in America. After."

  "After what?"

  "Plenty of time," was all he would say.

  I nodded, waiting. Surely there would be more.

  There was.

  "You gotta think on the important things now."

  I waited again.

  "You know this Jonathan Williams they're out visitin' today?"

  "Only as a neighbor."

  "His uncle-in-law is a man named Benjamin Franklin, who is colonial agent for Pennsylvania over in London."

  I felt something coming. I looked up into Prince's lean, dark face.

  "Mrs. Wheatley, she wants to fix things so as you meet Mr. Franklin over there. Franklin has influence. Mr. Nathaniel, he isn't so fond of Franklin."

  "Why?"

  "He's from Philadelphia. A Quaker."

  "I never heard Nathaniel speak ill of Quakers."

  "Reason Mr. Nathaniel doesn't like him got nuthin' to do with religion."

  "Why then?"

  "Think on it, Phillis. It will come to you. You smart enough to go to London, you smart enough to figure it out."

  Before he left the room, he paused. "If Benjamin Franklin calls on you over there, you see him, Phillis. Even if Mr. Nathaniel don't like it. Promise."

  I promised. But for all the world, I did not know what pledge this was that I had given.

  Two weeks later Scipio Moorhead, the Negro artist, was drawing my likeness in his studio. The Countess of Huntington, to whom my book would be dedicated, had written saying a likeness of me should appear in front of the book. Mrs. Wheatley had commissioned Scipio to do it.

  "You be free in England. You know that, don't you?" Scipio did not mince words.

  I sat at a desk in front of a large window in his studio. In a far corner of the room Scipio's wife, Sarah, was painting in lacquer on glass.

  "How can that be?"

  "Didn't they tell you? No, I suppose not."

  "Tell me what? Don't play with me, Scipio. What is there that I should know?"

  "Just what Lord Mansfield said a year ago in London."

  "Who is Lord Mansfield?"

  "A judge. You know. The kind what wears a long white wig, with all those curls? And black robes?"

  "I know what a judge wears, Scipio. What did he say that has to do with my being free in London?"

  "Scipio," Sarah warned, "you got this job from the Wheatleys. And we need the money. So don't go and ruin it."

  "Hush, Sarah. What's the harm in telling Phillis what to expect in London?"

  "The harm is that she'll go home and tell the Wheatleys. And they'll never commission you to do a sketch again. Or recommend you to their friends."

  "Then Phillis won't tell the Wheatleys. Will you, Phillis?"

  "I know when to keep a still tongue in my head."

  So he told me then. "A year ago this British judge, Lord Mansfield, handed down a decision. And there it is, written plain as the nose on your face. 'As soon as a slave sets foot on the soil of the British islands, he becomes free.'"

  I turned to look at him. "He never did."

  "There you go turnin'. You know this is a profile, Phillis. Now you sit properlike."

  "I'm sitting properlike."

  "What happened is," he explained, "this Jamaican slave, name of James Somerset, was brought to England by his master. No sooner he gets there, he sues in court for his freedom. Judge Mansfield ponders on it and says, 'The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, an' every man is free who breathes it.'"

  "Women, too?"

  "'Course."

  "Then why didn't he say so?"

  "You know how these judges like to talk in riddles. Makes them seem smarter than the rest of us. So you just remember, when you get to England, you breathe some of that pure air. And you get yourself free."

  "But how will I do that, Scipio?"

  "You just keep your mouth shut and your ears open. And sooner or later someone will tell you how. You'll see."

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  APRIL 1773

  "So we're going to England, Phillis," Nathaniel said.

  "Yes."

  "Together. On the London Packet."

  "As your mother wishes."

  "And you don't?"

  "I want to go, but I'm afraid of ships."

  "You have better things to fear. The ship is sound and smart. She's a three-masted schooner merchantman. I'm engaging a woman to travel with you. A Mrs. Chelsea from Boston. She's joining her husband in London. She brings two servants. I'm giving her an allowance of milk from the cow Mother is sending aboard. And fresh eggs from the chickens. In exchange for having one of her servants assist you. And for her companionship."

  "Companionship?"

  "Yes. You two and the servants will be the only women aboard. Because you will be the object of considerable attention, I expect you to spend most of your time in your cabin and behave with the utmost decorum at all times. People will be watching."

  "How will they be watching me if I'm in my cabin?"

  "It's a very commodious cabin, with everything you need."

  "Will I have my own bed?"

  "Of course, but it's called a bunk. You were on a ship before. Didn't they call it a bunk?"

  "When the sea was calm, I had a small corner on deck. With a canvas over me."

  "Yes, of course. Well, you will be permitted to stroll on the deck at certain times. If the sea is calm, you and Mrs. Chelsea will be invited to dine with me and the captain."

  "And if it isn't calm? Where do I dine then?"

  "If it isn't calm, you won't feel like dining."

  "Oh."

  "If anyone asks, you are traveling under my protection. You are not my servant. And you are not to behave like one. Neither are you to tag all over with me on the ship."

  "Why should I want to do that?"

  "Yes. Well, you'll have your work to do, going over the poems. And I have my work. I just thought I'd make mention of these things. We have to keep matters seemly."

  "Yes," I said, "seemly."

  "We clear Boston Harbor on the eighth of May. The voyage will take five weeks. Captain Calef makes this trip often."

  "Does he have a first mate?"

  "Of course. Why do you ask?"

  "I just wondered."

  "We have a full hold, lumber from Vermont, cases of smoked salmon, crates of candles, stacks of woolen fabric, pelts of beaver, and at least fifty-eight pipes of rum. Don't look at me like that. I'm not engaged in the triangular slave trade. When we get to London, you will not enter into any discourse on politics. Or go about spouting any Patriot folderol. I have gone out of my way to remain neutral in the current unpleasantness. And I am about to expand our mercantile interests in England. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Nathaniel. I understand."

  I lay in my bed, which I must remember to call a bunk, dying.

  We were both dying, I and Mrs. Chelsea. It had been so for the whole first week at sea. I was more wretched than I ever recollected, though I was waited on hand and foot and covered with velvet and propped up against lace pillows.

  The London Packet pitched and heaved. And I pitched and heaved with it. As did Mrs. Chelsea in her own bunk.

  Her two servants, Susan and Passy, held porcelain bowls for us to vomit in, cleaned us, and attempted to spoon broth into our mouths.

  I did not eat for four days. Dimly, I was mindful of Mrs. Chelsea on her feet, having recovered. Why didn't I?

  Because I was plagued by my old cough, is why, the one that claimed me every winter, that gave Mrs. Wheatley a regular fixation of worry about me.

  Now she was not here. And the cough raged. I got over my seasickness, but I developed a fever. Soon I was in delirium.

  Mrs. Chelsea was young, blond, and possessed a sense of humor that served her in even the most dolorous situation. She could jo
ke at her own seasickness. And once well, she took charge.

  I was somewhat aware that she was having the cabin scoured all around me. But I did not care. I was too busy—not dying now, but trying to live and breathe without gasping for air.

  I heard Nathaniel's voice. "Mother sent along this remedy. Just in case the cough came."

  "Bless your mother," Mrs. Chelsea said. Then she pushed a spoonful of the familiar hateful stuff between my lips.

  I swallowed and slept.

  I awoke drenched with sweat, and coughing. Every cough sent drums through my head, like the ones held by the Negro drummers the British had once sent to Boston.

  Was I in Boston? Where was I? The place was pitch dark, except for a small candle hanging overhead. It cast shadows. I heard fearful creakings. There was nothing solid under me.

  I was on a ship.

  Then I smelled vinegar. The crew had just washed the stench from below, yes. Where the slaves were shackled.

  From the upper bunks came breathing. Was I belowdecks? Shackled? I moved. No, I was free. But where was Obour?

  "Obour!" I yelled for her.

  Someone was leaning over me.

  "Do you want to be thrown to the sharks? Do you want to be flogged?"

  It was Captain Quinn's voice.

  Next thing I knew he was forcing food into my mouth and yelling, "Eat!"

  I thrashed in my bunk. I pushed the spoon aside. "I want my mother!" I yelled. "Don't throw her overboard. She did nothing! Mother!"

  "Bring the lantern closer," I heard a man's voice say. I knew the voice, but I could not name it.

  "I want my friend Obour!" I yelled. "I will eat, and I will tell her to eat, if you leave us both unshackled. I promise!"

  "Dear child," a soothing woman's voice said, "what have they done to you? What have you suffered? Nathaniel, you will not believe it, but I was in the room when she dressed. She has a brand on her hip!"

  Nathaniel! No, she must not tell him that. I had told no one.

  "Your friend is here," the woman said. And a cold cloth was laid on my forehead. "Your friend is here." I felt a hand in mine.