So Ends This Day: Masters of Our Own Fate

By Graham Young

As strong as ever, the false accusations of murder have spread like wildfire, and by the year 1833 the nameless orphan and his escaped slave partner are still being actively pursued and hunted down like dogs. WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE posters seem to be in every town square and “Armed and Dangerous Orphan and Runaway Slave” is the topic atop everyone's mind. Narrowly slipping away and staying just ahead of the grasp of authority, the “foundling” orphan and runaway slave part ways due to a strange stroke of fate in order to escape with their lives. Coached for days into putting on a clever act and disguise by their newfound friend, it will take all the courage and patience he can muster to pull it off. This complex and well thought out charade of hiding in plain sight barely shields them both from capture only to expose the orphan to even greater danger. If they can just play the parts for which they have been cast, they might be able to succeed. Now he must navigate his way through unknown territory and villainous characters that seem to only want to squeeze the life out of everyone they meet and everything they touch. By using the advanced education and training the “Academy” and orphanage so graciously bestowed upon him, he is able to overcome many obstacles on his long and treacherous path in search of freedom. This often puts him in a good light with many that are willing to keep him around as an upstanding member, which eventually leads him to greater opportunity. Always flirting with death around every corner, the washed up orphan seeks to find out the real truth of his origin and attempts to discover his real name and true family heritage. While attempting to find out the truth, he is discovering a world full of hate, violence, wonder, love, deceit, acceptance, denial, and also promise. He is plagued by misfortune at every turn and is only spared but a few meager triumphs. By happenstance he earns the title of “Captain” and his voyages take him on a journey around the “Triangle Trade”. Join him on his quest for truth that takes him around the world and you may discover a few truths along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Graham Young
• Release date: Apr 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9780996612821

Graham Young

After a continental education in the various capitals of Europe, Graham received a “Fine Arts” training in Paris. Here he gained a lifelong interest in the possibilities of film and education leading to a decade with camera and brush, recording tribal life and big game in Africa, while developing an educational program for third world countries using film pictorially as a multilingual medium. With a newly formed museum in America interested in his work, he joined a companion on his thirty-four foot yawl for a seven month crossing of the South and North Atlantic from South Africa to North America, always recording their voyage and experiences with camera and brush. Lecture tours followed on educational circuits, then an expedition on Arctic ice counting seal herds and collecting specimens, again covered with camera and brush. This was followed by filming the “Tall Ship North Sea Race” onboard the famous “Christian Radich”, then a voyage around the coasts of Norway in the square rigger “Staatsrad Lemkhul” winner of the race. While engaged on film production in the USA, his lifework collection of film, photos, and paintings in process for exhibition was totally destroyed by fire. Viewing this disaster as a salutary catharsis Graham turned to television joining the United Nations’ Department of Information, then helped pioneer England’s move from the BBC as a single provider of programs into the wider field of commercial TV. Continuing his interests in educational projects Graham now spends his time writing and painting between Canada and the USA.

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Acknowledgments

I wonder whether there has ever been a book written totally without the aid of friends and people of goodwill. This book is certainly no exception and I thank the undying patience of those who put up with me long enough to keep this project alive until it saw the light of day. Because this is the first book of a trilogy that has taken many years to research and write in more than one country, some of which have a different regard for individual freedoms, these good Samaritans are become too numerous to mention either by name or by discretion although my thanks go out to them all individually. Then there are those who went the extra mile with unflagging help giving generously of their time for proofreadings, constructive criticisms, and ideas who deserve a special thanks: George MacDonell, Anne Dobbs, Mern O’Brien and John Brett, Michelle Gallinger, Julia Landry, Paul Hemphill, Julia and Bryan Hope, and Joe Weeks who provided reference material including a key diary from the Cuban period. What would I have done without you all and the warmth and caring of your friendship?

Graham

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Table of Contents

SO ENDS THIS DAY

BOOK 2: Masters of Our Own Fate

Life is seldom what it seems when truth is hidden by falsehood and hate is masked with smiles. Tricks of light distract that the eye be deceived by the conjurer’s hand while the truth, ever in plain sight, goes unperceived because eye and mind are led elsewhere!

This is just such an occasion, a day of deception made even more plausible by a clear, bright, and shining sun that lights every corner. A rainbow glints in the rain washed sky, gulls scream and wheel catching the bread we toss before it has a chance to reach the sea. The two young make-believe slave girls, who accompany me lean over the rail beside me laughing, delighted with the successful role they are playing, the sparkling day, and the antic gulls.

They are sisters, the younger no more than nine or ten and the elder maybe twelve, perhaps even a little older and nearer to my age. They are both happy because they are runaways from different plantations who have at last been reunited in their escape from bondage and at the end of this voyage. Followed by a long land journey, they will be reunited in the freedom of Upper Canada with the parents who escaped before them and whom they have not seen since the family was divided by auction, sold separately, and scattered over half the Southern States this two years past.

Family love and life itself are the slave’s only true possessions. Fear of the auction block and division of family is the fate that haunts them always for at any time the family unit may be broken on no more than an owner’s whim, a failed bet, or circumstances always beyond the slave’s control.

These two girls are both runaways trusting their direction to unknown well-wishers, aware only that a final sanctuary and their parents lie somewhere far off in an unknown north several hundred miles away called Upper Canada. To reach their goal they must depend on a still unformed organization, which when fully active will be known as the Slave Underground Railroad, which is underground only in the sense that it is provided by a secret and ever growing number of Southerners and Northerners who are ranged implacably against the sin of one human owning the life and labor of another.

Only three days ago these two sisters, enslaved miles apart, were spirited secretly away from their plantations, reunited for the first time in two years, and placed in my charge to give them cover for their ongoing flight to Canada. For this and my own needs I act the part of a sickly and spoiled young mistress so that they may travel openly as my young maidservants in training. Now I must be sure to remember not only their new identities and cover stories, but also my own, for I too am in flight from the law for on an earlier occasion helping a so-called dangerous slave escape to freedom.

The older girl is intelligent, strong, and cheerful, and I think willing and capable of carrying on board both my luggage and myself at the same time had the need arisen. Sold separately when their family was broken up they were both fortunate to become house servants, even if on different plantations, and so avoid the backbreaking drudgery of fieldwork.

The younger, who dressed my hair this morning is bird-like, neat, and deft of hand with a marked flair for style, and at the time of her escape was being trained as a lady’s personal maid. This morning, with a most solemn concentration, she carefully combed out my long, dark hair before parting it centrally in the latest fashion, pulling it scalp tight to the sides then plating each into a heavy braid, coiling one neatly and modestly one over each ear before trapping this triumphant creation firmly in place with such a plethora of metal pins my head is become noticeably top-heavy and I feel a constant need to check its balance upon my shoulders. This child, already wise beyond her years, knew far better than I, that out on this windy deck laughing as we feed the seagulls’ every last pin would be called upon to do its duty, despite the extra precaution of a scarf wrapped around my fashionable coiffeur.

The elder girl, while training as a chambermaid, proved so swift and deft with a smoothing-iron she was immediately posted to the laundry next to the great house of the plantation from which she escaped. She sustains us constantly with her strength and wit, and by the seemingly endless quality of her good nature. Rewards for the capture of runaway children are seldom large and usually graded in accordance to their age and size, but these two are exceptions highly valued for their skills, and the pleasing manner in which they discharge these duties is attested to by rewards for their recapture running into several hundreds of dollars.

They eagerly wait upon my every need as a pretend invalid making a laughing, enjoyable game of this fake attention, and the eager dissimulation of their servitude. I supposedly am a spoiled young lady of fashion, but in truth am so completely unused to all these attentions it is they who must correct my mistakes while teaching me all that a young lady of equivalent style and fashion would expect of her personal maids, and in so doing reverse our roles, for I become the slave to their direction and they the masters of my fate... a joyous charade acting as ladies-in-waiting, attending upon a non-existent invalid girl of pretend importance and fine family lineage, all fabricated out of long-cloth and the traveling costume in which they dressed me this morning, which is as practical and stylish as my neatly coiffured hair. It is of a fashionable herringbone tweed, croft-woven in the Isles of Scotland and sold in the fashionable shops of London’s Bond Street, and it is both modest and suitable to a young girl on the cusp of womanhood. It has come straight from England on the Brig, Mersey Maid out of Liverpool, Moses Trent, Master, and arrived on St. Simons Island, Georgia, just in time to disguise my own departure. Both the long skirt and the short Spencer jacket are of a russet complexion, which sets off the pallor of my cheeks and marks me for the speechless invalid that now cloaks my covert, secret, everyday life!

Because of this speechless, silent role I carry with me at all times a set of flash cards, hand printed with requests and useful phrases, ostensibly to spare my voice, but in reality to fob off the curiosity of those with nothing better to do with their time than feast upon the misfortunes of others. Unfortunately, this describes most passengers gracing the ornate splendors of the Grande Salon on this mail packet boat that is all gilded and decorated in the French Style to the height of Parisian taste, which also accounts for the exotic spelling of what on any lesser vessel would plainly and simply be called the main saloon, a spacious chamber accommodating lounge, library, smoking room and bar, and where, other than out upon the open deck and the dining room, we must all congregate to spend our days at sea.

The only other refuge we have from this forced togetherness is our minuscule cabin, which is little bigger than a walk-in closet and on this fancy vessel is called a cabinette.

My two slaves and I are bound coastwise on this paddle steamer from Brunswick, Georgia, via the port of Wilmington, North Carolina, to the Chesapeake Bay, that long and majestic highway piercing far into the heart of the Southern States and largely serving those areas founded by the first Colonists arriving on North America’s shores in the late fifteen hundreds. To the north this wide and navigable waterway links Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia to the Free State of Pennsylvania, Free meaning it does not recognize slavery, and to the south it pours its vast body of water directly into the Atlantic Ocean giving access to the whole wide world.

Alas, Pennsylvania offers but a temporary refuge for escaping slaves, because the slaveholding states are determined to push the Fugitive Slave Act through Congress and they have a lot of money and a powerful lobby behind them. Once passed, a runaway slave will not be safe in any of the original thirteen colonies or in the increasing number of states joining the Union. It is the Abolitionist’s plan that the Underground Railroad will be in full operation by then.

Our packet boat started its regular pattern of calls far to the south in Jacksonville, Florida, from thence traveling coastwise north to Brunswick, Georgia, where the three of us boarded her, not of choice or free will, but in the haste of needing to escape immediate and fatal discovery. Then as if to mock the urgency of our precipitous flight from Brunswick, our voyage since then has been constantly plagued by a series of fierce storms, sending a continuity of heavy weather and head seas to buffet and delay our progress.

Whenever the skies are clear enough, we three keep to the open deck and the fresh salt air, largely to avoid the gossiping curiosity of our fellow passengers whose long-nosed probings are as intrusively unwelcome as they are dangerous to the covert nature of our mission.

This situation of having two young girls as body servants attending upon my every need comes as a strange mockery, for never in my life have I owned so much as a single slave, being prohibited from so doing both by the threadbare existence of the foundling-orphan, which is my true self, and by the strictest of abolitionist and anti-slavery upbringings. Yet despite these beliefs, I now pretend the pampered and indulgent life of slave-owning privilege as cover for these two young sisters until they pass from my care to other friendly hands, until weeks or even months later they will be reunited with their parents who themselves are newly escaped from slavery and now impatiently await reunion safe across the borders in the foreign territory of St. Catherine’s in Upper Canada where slavery is neither recognized nor tolerated.

So let not this sparkling day nor our carefree laughter deceive you, for we are not in any way what we pretend, for all our finery is a charade and make-believe conceived on the spur of necessity by the most famous Shakespearean actress of our day, herself an ardent abolitionist who skillfully used her stage-craft to smuggle us safe away in deep disguise, but otherwise openly as her house guests beneath the very eyes of our pursuers. This was no light-hearted deception, but one of such consequence that life may depend upon it, and unfortunately, that life is mine!

For the time being and length of this voyage from Brunswick to Baltimore, I was of necessity recruited to act as an early test run of this much needed and long planned for Underground Railroad, which in a literal sense is neither underground nor a railroad, but a states long conduit of co-conspiring Abolitionists passing escapees from hand to hand near half the length of the U.S.A. to relieve the human misery and suffering of slavery. Necessarily it is largely conducted under cover of night, and by day as much as possible out of sight or with the use of forged papers and passes, and a great deal of risk, because in those states where slavery is legal, helping runaways escape their masters is to become accessory in the theft of valuable property, which is punishable as such to the fullest extent of the law.

Philadelphia is a city crammed with runaway slaves, who while the infamous Fugitive Slave Act is still pending, need flee no further north than across the Mason & Dixon line to safety in that city. But once that act is passed, as I am afraid it will be, no refuge or hiding place will be left in the whole of these United States so leaving the two British Colonies of Canada to the north and the Bahamas to the south, as the only near and available escape-territories where our laws do not reach, and where the owning of one human being by another is not tolerated.

The act of smuggling wines, brandies, silks, and exotic teas across national borders is simple compared to similarly smuggling living creatures who must be fed and secretly housed while traversing hundreds of miles of hostile territory in order to cross beyond reach of the Laws of the United States. For successful escape slaves need leading over carefully planned escape routes with responsible guides familiar with all the hidden ways and least populated areas to be traversed, and must at all times be provided with funds, food, and a sufficiency of warm clothing and medical attention that escapees’ strength be maintained to cover the long and arduous miles to freedom.

No similar organization is planned for the far longer and more dangerous route down through the Southern States to the east coast, and the provision of a safe boat to carry escapees secretly to the Bahamas across the heavily patrolled waters of the Straits of Florida.

Unlike my vigorous young girls, many escaping slaves are of a frail countenance induced by advancing age, or are mothers burdened by small children, while others may suffer wounds or injury acquired in the process of escape. It is no simple territory they must cross, but a state by state gauntlet where Patrollers, spies, slave catchers, and sharp-eyed vigilantes hunt them across the land, and all the ways they must pass in their journeyings.

False papers, forged passes, and disguises such as mine, are essential tools for escapees, but none of these would be available without the vital funds provided by well-wishers from both the deep south and the far north, who contribute the necessary funds to cover the costs of guides, food, bribes, and wherever possible fake documents that make possible the risks and costs of using public transport. Where there it is a choice of walk or ride, every day saved is a day less exposed to pursuing authority, although against this benefit goes the heightened risk of discovery, for at all times public transport comes under the closest and most intense scrutiny of slave chasers and the law.

Bearing all this in mind, voyaging with my two girls on a packet boat was a dangerous way to travel, because it exposed us for several days to the curiosity of fellow passengers with nothing better to do than pry and probe into our lives, then idle away their empty hours gossiping about it. With my pretended disabilities of speech, we immediately became prey to their curiosity, and what they failed to learn from my flash cards they tried to prize from my two girls. It seems that all my fellow passengers feel the same irresistible urge to lure me into breaking my silence, less out of interest in my health than for a relief of their boredom and take as personal affront my stubborn refusal to gratify their probings. Failing to breach my silence, they are foiled again by the pretended innocence of those two smart little girls who take the greatest pleasure in frustrating the overly curious with wide-eyed looks of innocent but helpless non-understanding.

So it is become a challenge to breach our defenses, and hours are devoted to the task by people who otherwise seem incapable of concentrating long enough to read a novel from the ships library and are soon bored with the journals, which came aboard at every port of call, for in fact, our packet boat is a waterborne omnibus stopping frequently along the coast wherever we might pick up or drop off a passenger, while also carrying mail and packages for all the coastal towns.

No covert role such as ours, even with the most carefully devised and well-rehearsed cover story, can long remain proof in the face of endless questioning, and though I was well-equipped with flash cards devised to limit the unavoidable probings of fellow passengers, I still found it necessary to walk miles of open deck or retire early to the privacy of my cabinette in order to escape even a modicum of their attentions.

This false silence of mine became imperative when a massive house to house search was mounted to find us, which made discovery inevitable and left no time for rehearsing any other riskier role where my voice, which could not be disguised, might betray us at any moment! Flash cards and the role of voiceless invalid were the only alternative, and a single quick run-through of our parts was all that time allowed. Hundreds of armed searchers were probing every building, bush, and tree determined to find us, and clad in invalid disguise we were rushed onboard the packet boat Alwilda bound coastwise from Jacksonville in Florida, to Baltimore in Maryland. Passage had previously been booked on the Alwilda for our mentor in order that she might join her husband attending Congress in Washington, D.C. This clever and greathearted woman immediately made her passage and cabinette available to us that we might escape the fast closing net, and then to deceive the eyes of our pursuers, personally led us openly through their ranks in plain sight of everyone to get us safe onboard!

For the duration of this voyage my flash cards proclaim an inflammation of the vocal cords so acute that I am bereft of speech, and with an affliction of such gravity, I may not even hum a tune! All speech denied, I travel in complete silence on a cure-seeking pilgrimage to the most imminent of medical authorities at the Harvard School of Medicine in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just across the river from the City of Boston.

Unfortunately, once onboard, defining the exact nature of my affliction has become the unwelcome distraction I have already described and most of my fellow passengers are now joined in a guessing game that has promoted active gambling on who first can induce me to break my silence. Then in the absence of positive information on my condition, and ignoring my ladylike sensibilities, openly hint between themselves at improprieties and debaucheries that might account for such a calamitous infection of my throat and vocal cords!

In this way I have progressed from mere distraction to a challenge that offers refuge from the aridity of novels, news-sheets, and needlework, and have from there moved up to become a scurrilous source of gossip and innuendo and finally the butt of their gambling instincts for they are now openly making book on me.

To escape such unwelcome attentions we take to decks made unpopular by blustery weather, rain, and the dash of sprays as we head into high seas that march implacably against us, and seem always to delay our headway.

We brave the winds as much as the insufficiency of our clothing will allow. Then return to the Salon for a warming up, and each time we step back, the Torquemada of questioning starts again and offense is always taken when my flash cards produce the same unsatisfactory replies until frustration of the questioner gradually mount towards anger.

The undisputed leader of this gossip group is the imposing, statuesque, and socially unassailable Mrs. Stefan Te’Hout, a name she proudly pronounces as Terhote, self-acclaimed dame of the Grande Salon who assumes the authority and curiosity of the Mayor and Selectmen of my small home town of Kingston on the Albemarle who believe Divine inspiration illuminates their every word. To be fair the Te’Houts are a fine Old Dutch family from up the Hudson River in New York, with a socially impeccable background from Pieter Stuyvesant’s time when New York City was still named New Amsterdam.

Yes, I know there is every reason for me to have been socially impressed, and I should have shown more respect for so old and grand a name, but I have an ingrained problem with such grandeur, which I will explain later. Then I was conscious that she is only a Te’Hout by marriage, with the maiden name of Charlotte Jane Matthews from a tea importing family up near Albany. Such social eminence impresses the Grande Salon, and everyone else save me whom she just plain scares.

As a foundling and orphan without name or family background, I was known only by my nickname of Boy. I was raised in the Kingston Academy founded by that great southern humanitarian and abolitionist, Dr. Standfast Peacewell Ashton Stirling who administered the orphanage as an educational institution of advanced learning and practice, with the energetic and inspired aid of Miss Louise d’Aubigny, a highly educated ex-slave, in the small town of Kingston on the Albemarle. There, as I entered my teens, I attempted to correct the injustice done a wrongly persecuted slave, and by helping him escape became falsely accused of attempted murder!

There was no murder or attempted murder, and this entire fabrication was devised as a face-saving measure by a drunken moonshiner and a youngster newly enrolled in the Patroller Force, and his fellow Troopers or Pattyrollers, to hide their inefficient and bumbling attempts to recapture the slave I was helping escape.

In the aftermath of the hysteria and fear generated by Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in August of 1831, that murdered planters and their families, and marched on the City of Richmond before they were defeated, the town completely ignored the single witness on my side, and the Academy’s claim that I had never owned or fired a musket in my whole life, and that I was being railroaded for a non-existent crime.

No protest was of any use, and to escape the town’s vengeance I became an outlaw on the run with the slave I helped escape, who in the dangerous months that followed, became an inseparable ally (see So ends This Day: Far Horizon, book 1 of this trilogy) until we were finally befriended by a woman of great courage, position, and principle, who disguised him as the Black Mate of an English Bark, and with the aid of her Captain got him safe away from the South and up to New England. Then she disguised me as this rich and fashionable young lady without a voice, enrolled me as escape leader for the two young slave girls accompanying me, and provided the three of us with a suitable passage on the packet boat Alwilda to Baltimore. There a Miss Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who regularly returns to lead escapees to freedom, will take over my girls for the last leg of their escape to Upper Canada.

Until we were finally offered both help and sanctuary by an Abolitionist, the slave with whom I was helping escape, a man named Munna Let Satse which translates as Man of the Sun, and I had been constantly on the move, living off the land, scraping together a bare existence in the wilds for upwards of a year, managing all the time to keep just ahead of the law.

This living by our wits had taught me to judge those I encountered in the long months of our escape by even the smallest kindnesses or humanity shown us. Integrity, moral code, and sense of humor I found as much in wagon drivers, the owners of market-stalls, poor but sober citizens, and drunks alike than in the privileged, although this may be because there are so many more of the one than the other. The luster of family name and the power of wealth seems to breed a protective suspicion of any less powerful than themselves, or less endowed than they, but then of course, this may be less marked or entirely absent when such lustrous equals meet.

I know that later generations of Te’Houts were founding members of what is now New York State, but I think the rhyme describing a proper Bostonian equally fits the Te’Hout image... well judge for yourselves:

Here’s to the city of Boston.

The home of the bean and the cod.

Where Lowells speak only to Cabots,

And Cabots speak only to God.

But in fairness, I have greatly benefitted by the many exceptions to this rule of snobbery. Consequently, while insufficiently impressed by Mrs. Te’Hout’s social standing, I was very conscious of the power she wielded amongst the passengers and officers of the Alwilda, and wondered if there was a way to win her over to my side for I certainly did not need an enemy of her caliber!

To me she was as fascinating as she was frightening, and I tried vainly to see beyond the castellated walls of power and prestige. Did she enjoy the remote and lonely heights of her grandeur? At the close of each day she ruled, did she finally set aside the whale-boned corsets of her rigid regality and relax? Did family, friend, or foe, or anyone then dare pretend the intimacy of addressing her by her given name of Charlotte? Or did she sleep encased and cocooned in the whale-boned support of that same inflexible dignity?

Leadership in any form is lonely, and the view from such Olympian heights of society must always be downwards towards the lower and more normal levels of humanity. Therefore, to admit possessing the same morbid curiosity as that of the plurality would be to admit an unconscionable breach of, or at least a weakness in, the close ranked defenses of prestige. Could a Te’Hout express such vulgar curiosity without being vulgar? I rather thought so, and wondered just how this Grande Dame of society would approach the satisfying of her curiosity without demeaning herself by the common asking of it?

Quite simply, she leaned the weight of social prestige against me. First, she kept a sharp-eared distance and stayed aloof from those encircling me, but always close enough to hear and see, all while in effect they did the probings for her: What was my name? Where was I from? Where was I going? Why was I going? What was the nature of my affliction? Was it catching? Was it curable? What mischief had I been up to that might have opened the gates of my defenses to such infection? What indeed were my habits and were they questionable? Who were my friends and what was their level? Were they foreign and therefore tainted, or had I committed the indiscretion of traveling outside my own country where everyone knew corruption and disease ran unchecked? On and on it went right down to the personal, What brand of soap did I employ or was it home made? Did I wash too much or too little? When I frowned and shook my head in disapproval and protest at so close an invasion of privacy, they took offense and spoke angrily at the impertinence and ingratitude of so young a girl!

At such times I stopped writing careful evasions on my tablet and simply returned to holding up my basic flash cards in reply, starting with: I am Miss Victoria Alice Milne, currently visiting on St. Simons Island. This was a name allocated to me on the spur of the moment as cover for this operation... but to continue with my cards: I am currently bound for Baltimore, thence by road to Boston. and I go to consult the most learned of medical authorities at Harvard College for a cure to my condition.

Again and again, I held up my messages for all to see, taking my time about it, in the hope my questioners would tire of their game and wander off a ploy notable for its almost total lack of success. So on I went with what I hoped was an ingratiating and winning smile, hoping to establish innocence and inspire trust, while keeping the two girls close by my side to prevent, as far as possible, their being cornered out of my sight and questioned separately.

So since there was no other way to answer without breaching silence, I continued holding up card after card, each with its particular message written on both sides so that I could see what I was signaling and so prevent mistakes, and always I looked pale and grave with all the forbearance I could muster: It is at the wish of my guardian, Colonel Anthony Portman, of Savannah and Beaufort, that I am to consult with therapists at the Harvard School of Medicine in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

While this originally drew knowing nods of respect, it now with repetition only sharpens curiosity without satisfying it, so I again progress to, I suffer an inflammation of the vocal cords so severe that I am forbidden all speech. And My condition does not arise of a contagion, and after diagnosis the doctors in Boston will inform my Guardian of the treatment needed for a cure... and so it continues tediously and without let up until the answering abilities of my flash cards are again exhausted without anyone being the wiser, and to everyone’s complete dissatisfaction.

So now they try again: Surely there could be no possible ill effect on your voice, Miss Milne, if you just put down your cards for a moment and answer a few simple questions? and when I continued to shake my head, their patience runs out and tempers fray. Their requests begin to sound more like threats and demands, How could I be so ill-mannered as to deny them the vocal explanations a junior naturally owed her seniors, especially when everyone knew that politeness and good manners never hurt anyone’s voice?

It reached a critical flash-point when someone voiced the opinion that the world was come to a pretty pass when a young girl, not yet a woman, defied her betters so outrageously and were I family, which the Good Lord forbid, they would soon restore my voice, along with the manners and due respect, by the smart application of a horse-whip! That was when the majesty of authority, in the form of Mrs. Stefan Te’Hout, stepped in, My Dear Child, you are quite right to respect the direction of your Guardian in every way!

That stopped the Grande Salon dead in mid-complaint!

She swept an imperious and challenging look around the room to silence their hectoring, catching each eye in turn making sure that none dare oppose her taking up the cudgels, then continued after a significant pause: You are a fortunate child indeed to have so fine and wise a gentleman as Colonel Portman to advise and guide your young steps.

Someone on my side at last, and with the kind of support I most needed... so why was I uneasy at this hand proffered in friendship? I could not afford to affront such authority or refuse help from any quarter, yet instinct urged caution, while discretion told me that flash cards already exhibited would be an insufficient recognition of the Te’Hout importance and superiority.

So I put my hand to my throat and leaned eagerly forward as if I wished for nothing more than to pour out the words of thanks such magnanimity deserved, then I leaned back as if in resignation, grabbed up my tablet and pencilled, Dear Mrs. Te’Hout, my deepest and most sincere thanks for your great kindness in coming to the support of a young woman hitherto unknown to you and unworthy of your condescension.

I made as if to rise and hand her my note, but she gestured me to hold it up snapping open her lorgnettes and reading it for a sufficiency of time that everyone might crane their necks and read it as well, which of course they all did.

Her reply was totally unexpected, You presume far too much, my child, I do this not for you but for my old and dear friend Colonel Portman with whom I have regularly corresponded from long before you were born... it is out of duty to his wishes that I address you, for had he known in time that I would be traveling on the ‘Alwilda’ he would immediately have placed you in my charge... I will of course telegraph him when we put in to the Port of Wilmington tomorrow, and confirm that I have temporarily taken over your guardianship on his behalf... after I have partaken of a light lunch you will attend me at my regular window seat and I will give you permission to speak to me very quietly so that your voice will not in any way be strained while you acquaint me with the nature of this nonsensical condition, which I am convinced is but an hysteria of girlhood. For now, until I send for you, you are to remain silent... is that clearly understood?

She was so convincing I almost believed her... could she really correspond with Colonel Portman in Savannah? No! Her weekly correspondence’ set the lie to a man who took six months to reply to any letter... Her story had to be a complete fabrication aimed solely at gaining control of me and assuring my submission!

But her self-confidence was so convincing I had to reassure myself that Colonel Portman, being so concentrated on writing the history of American firearms, would never have time to engage in regular social chatter, which consequently had to be a fiction created solely for the purpose of establishing her authority over me, and breaking my silence to which in truth I could in no way comply... not for any medical reasons, but because speech might at any time betray the very nature of our cover!

What then was she after? Was it more than just dominance? Had I roused her suspicions? Did she hope to unmask me? Or was it all to demonstrate her power? Was it simply to show that the Te’Hout name alone could break my silence where the whole Grande Salon had failed?

Whatever her motives, I had to immediately scotch her plans for an after lunch tete-a-tete, even if it meant antagonizing her. I was trapped in necessary refusal that would be taken as affront, and with my mind racing frantically could think of no way to soften such challenge to her authority. I did the best I could by feigning eagerness to follow her commands... taking up my tablet again I quickly pencilled, Colonel Portman requires I telegraph him regular reports, and reaching Wilmington will seek permission for speech as you recommend with attached conditions. Until then I promise to follow your instructions and the letter of his commands for complete silence.

She did not take it well. Any opposition to her plans was a challenge to her authority, and this was a challenge before the whole Grande Salon. Thunder-faced, she forced herself to give a bitter smile of approval at my supposedly dutiful actions, adding as a face saver that with Colonel Portman’s approval assured it was really unnecessary to send any telegrams at all, to which I of course, politely smiled with agreement and at the same time gave a moue of despair, in recognition of male power I was unable to either ignore or disobey.

But from that moment on, she revenged herself by encouraging the Grande Salon in its every outlandish effort to amuse themselves at my expense while ridiculing my silent resistance to her demands. Now full of malice she urged the taming of my rebellious spirit upon the most persistently obnoxious of all my fellow passengers.

This was an impeccably neat and florid little man, fast eating himself into middle-aged rotundity, dapper, pompous, and endlessly intrusive. He had, I estimated, richly enjoyed some thirty birthdays in a fullness of living that was adding a solidity to his form like growth rings on a heavy tree. This indulgence had apparently so otherwise robbed him of direction he appears unable to travel or manage his days without the constant guidance of his mother, a woman bent over by such a rheumatic anomaly of the spine that she is only half as tall as the son she dominates.

She perpetually hobbles after him with the aid of an elegant gold-headed cane and an ear trumpet she directs at his back as he strides ahead in what appears a symbolic seeking to distance himself from the parental authority he otherwise lacks the power to escape.

In his hand he carries a small, soft, leather-bound bible, finger between pages marking the passage on which he pontificates whenever he isolates an unfortunate victim. His arrival in the Grande Salon is usually signaled by a hasty exodus from any vicinity where he and his mother might choose to sit.

This man then was Madame Te’Hout’s vengeance upon me!

Apart from a discrepancy in height, mother and son were of similar build with almost identical features. Both had dark, thick brows arched over protuberant eyes of a brown so liquid that it appeared to have run into the whites until they were muted and tinged. Small, sharp-beaked noses seemed pinched and inadequate between the roundness of their plump, rouged cheeks and both spoke with a slight lisp. His lips were full, petulant, and shone moistly with a fine spray of spittle whenever he spoke.

Mother and son dress in the height of fashion, and solace the passing hours snacking sandwiches and pastries in the Grande Salon, pausing only for the more solid eating of meals. Both also wear the latest style in hats, which by an eccentricity of habit they at all times keep so centrally fixed upon their heads that one wondered whether they could sleep without them... that is if ever they took them off?

The mother continually proclaims with a peculiarly loud lisp the virtues of this son, qualities less apparent to those unfortunates caught in the web of her social net and held captive to the endless approval lavished upon the fat majesty of so obnoxious and intrusive a man.

Meticulously garbed at all times in the dandified wardrobe of a gentleman, he bears himself with a waspish arrogance always condescending in compensation for the insecurities of his maternal dependence. Were it not for his frustrated, spiteful pecking at the weaknesses in others, he would, I think, engender a genuine sympathy for the apron strings of steel, which all bind him in an ineffectual protest of subjugation to his mother.

Perhaps because of the challenge in my voiceless condition and consequent pilgrimage to Boston, the mother has proclaimed her son a learned medical authority, capable of diagnosing whatever ails my vocal cords, and from the depths of his great and all-encompassing knowledge, effect a cure!

In the ignorance of her misinformation, she directs her son’s attentions at one who, until recently and despite my youth, studied the practice of medicine under a distinguished graduate of that most famous of institutions to which in pretense I now proceed, the Harvard School of Medicine in Cambridge, just across the river from the City of Boston. Little realizing that, in the current state of medical knowledge, a cure for inflammation of the vocal chords depends on silence, rest, and hope, while irrigating the throat with a solution of sea salt in warm water. And of course, for a non-existent condition such as mine, the cure is equally non-existent!

Trumpeting her son’s vaunted abilities, she has gradually so enlarged upon them that now she has progressed from theory to practice, and has forcefully informed the whole saloon that I should be honored to submit myself to his thorough examination for a general benefit of my condition.

This, to the entertainment of the Grande Salon for mother and son, immersed in a fantasy world of their own, seem unaware that they are treated as eccentrics with oddities to be endured solely for any entertainment that may be extracted as sport and game, but never taken seriously. Always eager for a diversion at someone else’s expense, the whole Grande Salon now urges me to accept this generous offer of bogus medical help, while at the same time, continuing their manifest displeasure at my flash card refusals.

Mother and son miss the hidden sniggers and take this pretend encouragement so seriously, they have come to see my silent refusals as an affront to the dignity of his learning. Now, to the delight of the Saloon, they have expressed their opinion that my guardian has been neglectful of that physical discipline necessary to the improvement of all children’s manners, which in me would help restore an appropriate, and acceptive, sense of gratitude before my superiors. Of course, the Grande Salon is delighted and pretends agreement, uncaring of their playing with fire by encouraging this mother-stifled and suppressed man to actions, dangerous if not fatal, to the deceit of my two girls and I must at all costs maintain!

In protest to the increasing pressure of these advances, I continually flash my cards and shake my head more and more, but my obstinate silence is a further challenge that only spurs them on. Their latest ploy claims my condition may be infectious, and to prove I am no health risk to anyone onboard, I should immediately submit to a thorough examination performed publicly before the whole Grande Salon by this supposed medical genius of a mother’s son!

Needless to say, any such thing is entirely out of the question, and my worry is that the Salon’s amusements may goad this unfortunate man to some explosive and inappropriate course of action requiring the Captain’s intervention, and in exerting his authority our deception will be exposed, and the covert nature of this rescue mission and our escape, betrayed.

Does this unfortunate man believe that striking against me is a blow for his own freedom? Is this attitude of his a symbolic strike he lacks the courage to openly make against his mother? Is achieving my submission with her aid a token strike against the womanhood that so dominates him? In my own crusade against slavery, I almost reach out to him in sympathy for the oppression of his bondage!

What the Grande Salon sees as an acceptable diversion, I see as encouraging a repression so heated that it could blow up at any minute. I pray theirs is the right interpretation and all this a harmless diversion, which unfortunately grows under their encouragement, and ever gains in scope and repressed violence.

So now, in addition to the traditional daily lottery on the ship’s run, bets are also being laid on my ability to hold out against this ever-increasing barrage of pressure, with the Grande Salon gambling on the chance I will crack before we reach Baltimore.

Quite apart from my dislike of these proceedings, my yielding in even the least degree is totally out of the question, for I am even more at risk than my two wards, this not being the first time I have helped a slave escape to freedom. Because of this earlier attempt, I now have a price on my head for I stand accused of shooting at a Patroller and at a moonshiner with intent to kill, then wounding more Patrollers in the act of escaping! This despite the fact that I have never owned or borrowed either musket or pistol, let alone discharge a firearm to the danger of another human being!

For helping runaways, yes, I am guilty as charged! But for the other crimes I am totally innocent, for they do not even exist, but were invented by the so called victims to make their embarrassing failures of duty appear heroic, and to avoid any resulting charges of incompetence... and in one case of a possible cowardice.

Innocent or guilty I had to escape and fast! Fortunately, hiding by day and emerging only by night had left me pale and invalid of appearance, and my uncut hair hung near down to my waist, then my small slight size, if not inherited from my unknown parents, may well have derived from my harsh half-starved beginnings as well as from my three-quarter-starved year-long flight, which may have materially delayed the growth normally associated with teenage years.

So now, my small size became a blessing of opportunity with flash cards as the only effective way to mask the uncertain quality of my voice. By good fortune, the tweeds I now wear had just arrived as a gift for a niece by marriage of my benefactress, and commandeering them for my disguise became another act of opportunity.

The current escape plan, which necessitated borrowing these fashionable tweeds, was the brain child of that most courageous lady, dedicated abolitionist and great Shakespearean actress, Fanny Kemble, who married Mr. Pierce Butler of Brunswick and St. Simons. Fanny, talented and beautiful daughter of the Kemble acting family was the English niece of the London and Continental stages’ legendary Sarah Siddons, the most famous actress of her time. Fanny, who hid me in the hollowed out woodpile on her husband’s plantation, had been courted by Pierce Butler when she came to America for a highly successful Shakespearean tour. After a whirlwind courtship they married, and with the social restrictions of the day, barring discussion of finance and politics in courtship they did so without her discovering that Pierce and his brother were among the greatest slaveholders in the Southern States, and for him that Fanny was an ardent abolitionist!

Torn between loyalty to her husband and her own beliefs, Fanny, having vainly pleaded manumission with Pierce and his brother, failed to win the freedom of a single slave and instead devoted her time to improving working conditions on the Butler Plantations and these, with her humanitarian motives, were perhaps the reasons why, whenever they were brought to her attention, she was willing to help runaways escape from other plantations.

This compassion for runaways she extended to me, when we met by chance in Brunswick town, when on learning of our condition, she undertook to hide the two of us in that enormous woodpile on St. Simons Island.

After weeks of waiting, the British bark Wanderer of London, Captain Prior Master, arrived to carry the Butler Brothers’ long staple Sea Island Cotton to the distant mills of Manchester in far off England. Captain Prior, also an abolitionist was already pressed for cabin space and had no room for me as a passenger, but was short of an officer so it was considered practical to get Munna away first in open disguise as the new Free Negro Mate, Silas Duke, complete with false papers and with the full cooperation of Captain Prior who Fanny (changed from Felicity) trusted implicitly, for he as a Londoner and ardent theater goer, had known the Kemble family since Fanny was a child.

Whenever I am up against adversity I think of that gallant, resourceful woman, who so befriended me and became my true friend, and who with her stage magic, and before everyone’s eyes openly got Munna signed on as first mate on the Wanderer, and later magicked me and the two girls away on the Alwilda, and by so doing successfully achieved our escapes to freedom.

I always think of her as Fanny Kemble, although I should still be addressing her properly by her married name as Mrs. Pierce Butler. But years later, after bearing Mr. Butler’s children, she finally refused to further countenance his infidelities leading to a divorce she dreaded, because under the partisan laws of the time the husband, despite any wrongdoing or grievous nature of his misbehavior, retained custody of the children against which there was no appeal. Later, Fanny returned to live in England, where I was fortunate enough to meet up with her again, but that was all in the distant future.

As for reason behind her choice of such a fashionable disguise for me, to which I at first protested with all my outraged, but ineffectual, powers of persuasion, my wanted poster left little or no alternative, for it described me as:

$500 REWARD for the wanted orphan named

Boy a young White Male of unknown family.

Height approx. 5ft.6ins. Black hair, Blue eyes.

Slight build, age approx. 12-14, clothing ragged.

Appearance unkempt and gaunt in the extreme.

Escaped from an orphanage in Kingston, N.C.

To be considered armed and dangerous.

Approach with extreme caution.

I left St. Simons a fashionable girl on the arm of my benefactress, smiling as the two of us strolled nonchalantly down to the jetty through the ranks of Patrollers and searchers who were so diligently looking for us, with my two little pretend slave girls carrying my portmanteau and their bundles, to be rowed from St. Simons Island to Brunswick’s Port by a crew of smiling slave oarsmen, all co-conspirators in Fanny’s covert operations.

Having openly passed through the ranks of our diligent searchers with smiles of silent gratitude for their courageous protection against the threat of so murderous an outlaw as myself, we boarded the packet boat, Alwilda, which now carried me and my two wards away from the immediate dangers of Georgia to the less immediate ones provided by the State of Maryland.

So instead of a violent menace, I became the frail and harmless invalid supported at every sad turn by her two faithful child slaves, and on this fragile deception depended the freedom and happiness of two young runaway Blacks and one runaway White!

CHAPTER 2

Now you know the background as to the why and how I came to be on a steam packet bound up the Chesapeake, via Annapolis, for Washington and Baltimore, disguised as an invalid girl, helping two young runaway slaves escape to join their parents in Canada. And why they in turn are helping me escape, not to that same country, but to what I intend will be a fine sailing ship and a life at sea, long enough away from persecution and false charges against me to cool down, that I may come back to clear my name, and I hope, develop the forbearance to restrain from a revengeful settling of old scores! And that, unless something better offers, forms the basis of my current plans.

Now, back to my passage onboard a Baltimore bound packet boat. I had to remember that I was acting the part of a sophisticated young lady of quality, whose mouth should not hang open in wonderment as did mine, for coming from an orphanage I had never seen such elegance as that of the Grande Salon, which to my eyes was more magnificent than any palace. Its walls were handsomely paneled in mahogany with a carved grape vine motif picked out in white with a gold-leaved trim, and between each window, for they were more windows than ports, were a pair of magnificent oil lamps with glass bowls wrought in the form of tulips, each hung around with carved glass pendants which sparkled like diamonds. Where the gimbals, which kept the lamps forever upright, were bolted to the wall, they were surrounded by carved and gilded wreaths of vines, tendrils, and grapes so magnificent that it was breathtaking. A deep burgundy colored carpet stretched luxuriously from wall to wall, and throughout the Saloon were scattered comfortable armchairs covered in a richly padded leather dyed to match the carpet. What wood showed, such as the legs and the gracefully arched frame of the backrest, was of mahogany and around the walls, the chairs stood in pairs with a stand for drinks, books, and newspapers between each of them. Away from the walls, the chairs were grouped in fours and sixes around circular mahogany tables. The greatest glory of the Grande Salon was its magnificent centerpiece, and that was of a splendor no palace, or even the White House, could match, for rising from floor to ceiling was the pilastered, fluted, and carved mahogany trunk, a good ten feet in diameter, that carried the funnel up from the engine room to exit through the apex of a circular stained glass dome with a surround of shining vines and grapes. The trunk was hung with more lamps in gimbals matching those along the walls. A door on each side of the Salon gave access to the decks and just forward of the funnel’s trunk a wide circular staircase descended to the dining saloon below.

All that now lack for description are the accommodations or cabinettes, which were small and neat, but in no way as grandiose as the Grande Salon. They were accessed by two doors set one each side at the back of the Salon leading to a wide corridor lined with class A cabins, each facing aft with a porthole and adjustable ventilator, and class B cabins backed up against the Salon wall with no porthole, but a skylight scuttle overhead and a ventilator.

Whenever I saw something new or spectacular, and the Alwilda certainly qualified, for to me it was no less than palatial, I longed to tell Cookie and Josie, my closest and dearest friends of so amazing a spectacle, but they of course were as inaccessible to me as was my former life in the Kingston Academy for Orphans to which, now with a price on my head, I could never return. Seeing such splendors and having no one with whom to share them was a frustration of loneliness, which at times near overwhelmed me!

Of course, for the duration of the voyage, and however long a continuance of this invalid disguise may be advisable, the silence enforced denies all vocal describing and posed a strictness of control that dampens excitement while promoting an inner anger and resentment at such restrictive circumstances.

Determinedly choking back all vocal sound was a wearying process and placing my hand dramatically against my problem throat not only failed to arouse compassion or allow respite, but encouraged curiosity and increased the persistent nature of passenger questioning. So as a method of establishing my status as an invalid, I retire early with my two wards planning to rise late on the morrow, and by so doing confine myself to what I hope will continue to be the safety of my cabin.

After the space and splendor of the Grande Salon, the cramped smallness of the cabins is almost an affront. In truth, they are more like cubicles than cabins, so confining that other than the pleasure of a porthole facing aft they had little else to recommend them.

There was barely space enough for two bunks placed one above the other, along with the teak ladder for reaching the upper one. A built-in wash-stand with ewer, wash-basin, water carafe and glass, and the necessary slop-pail beneath, flanked by a pair of chamber pots, all decorated with a wide blue band in which the name of the shipping company was picked out in white, and all set in fiddles that held them secure against the liveliest of seas.

Also in these tight quarters consisted a built-in wardrobe with slatted teak doors and a single shelf above it, a sturdy chair held captive in place by a chain that fastened centrally to the deck immediately below, two brass lamps in gimbals, one above the washbasin and the other to the left of the heavy paneled door, which opened outwards to hook back against the passageway wall, that it be safe, trapped against a rolling sea.

What was not brass or varnished teak was painted white and helped, by its brightness, to lessen in degree the acute sense of confinement, which this crowded 8 x 10 foot space conferred. With the three of us, my portmanteau, and the girls’ two bundles all in there together, we could barely move until we had stowed our gear away.

But it was our refuge and we settled in comfortably enough with the girls happily sharing the upper bunk and passing the time playing cards, while I took the lower bunk where playing the invalid I stretched out reading a most interesting book called the Oddesy, chronicling the adventures of a man named Ulysses in his search for the Golden Fleece, and likened his escapes to my own in pursuit of the gold of freedom.

How our perceptions of the world and our circumstances change with altering viewpoints. When Fanny Kemble first presented my two wards to me, she gave them the cover names of Esmeralda and Roseanne, and I was despairing for I saw them as an unwarranted responsibility and the most oppressive of burdens. But right away they established their rights as individuals by choosing new names for themselves with the youngest becoming Litty, and the eldest Morinda, while not only did they become my greatest stay in adversity, but had it not been for their constant support and the comfort they continually offered me, I think I might well have given in under the intense pressure of my fellow passengers, at least enough to endanger the assignment!

Coffined in this oppressive manner, in late afternoon, delayed by headwinds and heavy seas between Brunswick and Wilmington, there was a knock on my cabin door, and expecting the Steward I directed Litty to admit what I thought to be our early suppers, but which instead allowed a dapper, lavender scented, obnoxious little man to force his unwelcome presence upon us!

Thrusting Litty out of the way and ignoring Morinda’s protests, this immaculately clothed busybody of a form so full and pampered that it pledged a long devotion as much to wine as to food and good living, presented himself without shame at my bunk-side, bible in hand. Needless to say, had I not been in my bunk, there would not have been room in the cabin for the four of us.

Paying no attention whatsoever to my flash cards with their mute pleas that my invalid condition and my privacy be respected, he launched into a long declaration of how great was my good fortune in finding myself onboard this packet boat at the same time as he with his special talents.

My dear young lady, he stated pompously. I am come to rescue you from the bonds of your misfortune. As a man greatly respected for the all-embracing nature of my renowned medical knowledge, it is my mission in life to bring lasting relief from the ills that torment you and so many other young ladies in this troubled age of ours. As a man of science my cures are famous and the envy of the medical profession from Harvard to Edinburgh.

He beamed at me in a complacency of self-satisfaction so intense it needed no