Joseph Knight

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‘Then Mr Hodge’s observation is correct,’ said Davie Fyfe. ‘There’s plenty like him.’

‘Sometimes it’s necessary,’ said Kinloch.

‘No,’ said John, ‘it is necessary to be strict, to punish where punishment is due. Of course we can all agree on that. But Irvine – no, I’d not have him at my table.’ He made a rasping sound in his throat.

‘What on earth is it he’s done?’ Hodge asked.

‘We were down there three weeks ago,’ James explained. ‘His crop was all in – you know he hasn’t as much land, and what he has is poor, badly drained – and we thought we might hire some of his slaves to help finish ours. But they were in such a miserable, wasted condition we’d never have got the work out of them to make it worthwhile. We went to see him and he was wandering about in just his shirt. Said he’d lost his breeks and couldn’t be bothered to look for them. The place was stinking. One of his lassies had asked if she could go to tend her garden as there was nothing to be done in the house, so he shat in the hall and told her to clean that up.’

‘Maybe he is demented,’ said Kinloch. ‘The heat, Mr Hodge.’ But Mr Hodge had gone rather quiet, and did not seem to hear.

‘Is Mr Collins demented?’ asked Fyfe.

‘Collins? Of course not. Why?’

‘I heard if he catches a slave eating cane, he flogs him and has another slave shit in his mouth. Then he gags him for a few hours. Or he has one slave piss on the face of another. Is that the behaviour of a sane man?’

‘It may not be pleasant,’ said Kinloch, ‘but it’s no mad. If it was him doing the shitting and pissing, I grant that might suggest an unbalanced mind. But he instructs another neger to do it. He maintains his ain dignity.’

‘For God’s sake,’ John Wedderburn said. There was a round of more or less revolted laughter from the others, which he at last joined in. The story was neither new nor particularly shocking. They might not have stooped quite to good old Tom Irvine’s level, or Collins’s, or at least if they had they were not saying, but they had done other things – dripped hot wax into wounds opened by whipping, rubbed salt or hot peppers in them. Or, more to the point, they had not actually done these things: they had had others do them – white employees, other slaves – and watched. Or not watched. Like Collins, they had kept their distance, and thus their dignity.

‘In any case,’ Kinloch added, ‘eating shit is just a step frae eating dirt. I suppose some of them don’t mind it much.’

There was silence around the table as they all considered this. Dirt-eating was one of the great mysteries of the plantations. Some slaves had a craving for the ground, clay in particular. Nothing was more likely to send a white man into a fit of revulsion than the sight of an African grovelling in the field, stuffing his face with soil. Nothing brought down the lash so fiercely. It was like watching some wild beast sniffing and scraping at a midden. It seemed to mark the distinction between the races more clearly than anything.

‘We have a case of that just now,’ said John, passing round a new bottle of claret. ‘A boy called Plato. We’ve had to strap him to a board to keep him from it. Did you see him today, James?’

‘On my way up. I’ve put him in a hut away from the others. He has a sore breaking out on his face that I fear may be the start of the yaws. I’ve told that old witch Peggy to look after him – nothing kills her, and her herbs and potions will not hurt him – may even be of help. I looked in his mouth. He has worms there.’

‘From the dirt, nae doubt,’ said Kinloch.

‘I’m not so sure,’ James said. ‘Davie and I have been giving this some thought. I begin to wonder if it’s not the other way round – if the dirt does not come from the worms.’

Kinloch snorted. ‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘Well,’ said Fyfe, ‘why should the soil which gives us our good crops cause so many ailments among the slaves? A dirt-eater comes down with everything: the flux, dropsy, fatigue, stupidity –’

‘And there ye pit your finger on the nub,’ said Kinloch. ‘Idleness and idiocy. The only thing that will cure thae ills is a thrashing. A good sound Negro never came doun wi dirt-eating.’

‘But George,’ said James, ‘suppose for a moment that a good sound Negro did. What would be the cause of it? Suppose, for example, that he got the ground itch – you’ll agree any Negro can get that between his toes?’

‘We’d get it if we didna wear shoes. Ye’re no wanting to gie them all shoes, are ye?’

‘The ground itch is caused by hook worms,’ said James, ignoring the question. ‘You clean out the scabs, bathe the feet, and with time the itch is gone. But suppose the worms – some of them – get under the skin, and into the blood. Where do they go? They go through the blood to the lungs. Your good Negro coughs to clear his lungs. This brings the worms to his mouth. He takes a drink. The worms are carried into his gut. They feed there. The slave, consequently, is constantly hungry. He has a craving for whatever will fill his belly. The cane, or the ground it grows on. The worms grow inside him. They lay their eggs. The good Negro shits in the cane field. His shit is full of eggs. Need I go on?’

‘I see,’ said Kinloch. ‘Ye mean getting one slave to shit in another’s mouth may spread the worms?’

‘For God’s sake, man,’ said Fyfe, ‘forget about that. The ground is covered in hook worms. All we’re saying is, if Plato is infested with worms, maybe that’s the cause of his dirt-eating. Not the other way round.’

‘It’s the same with the yaws,’ James went on. ‘It never seems to come on its own. And you’ll grant that not even the most devious malingerer can feign it.’

‘He’d be a magician if he could,’ said John. ‘And mad.’ The raspberry-like sores and eruptions on face and body, the weeping tubercules and ulcers, the swellings and blisters on soles of feet and palms of hand, the obvious and intense pain caused by all this – nobody could, or would want to, fake the yaws.

‘It’s their foul habits,’ Kinloch said decisively, reaching for a third slice of cold plum pudding. ‘If they didna live such filthy lives we wouldna lose so many o them. Ye never see a white person wi the yaws.’

‘Perhaps that’s because our houses are bigger, airier,’ said Fyfe. ‘We die of all the other things they have, though. Yellow fever, the flux, dropsy. And then we have our own diseases: I never saw a Negro with the gout, or the dry belly-ache.’

‘Ye’re contradicting yoursels,’ said Kinloch. ‘First ye say that we’re like them, then that we’re no. I ken where I stand. I’m as like a neger as a – as a thoroughbred horse is like an Arab’s camel.’

‘I only wonder,’ said Fyfe, ‘if we exchanged places with them, if we’d exchange diseases too. As you said yourself, if we took off our shoes …’

Charles Hodge, who had been sitting, eyes closed, trying to contain a growing disagreement between his stomach and either the oysters or the topic under discussion, suddenly startled everyone with a drawling laugh. ‘Haw! Exchange places, sir? Haw! Take off our shoes! That’s the kind of metaphysical … perprosal you’d expect from a Scotchman. It’s a impossibility. Mr Kinloch is right. We are horses, not camels!’

He stood up, knocking his chair over, and swayed out of the room to be sick. The others watched him go, only vaguely interested in seeing if he made it outdoors. If he did not, it would just be one more mess for the maids to clear up in the morning.

‘All Davie is saying,’ said John, ‘is we should take more care of them. That’s Christian if nothing else.’

‘Oh man, dinna let them near Christ!’ Kinloch exploded. ‘Christ and kindness are troublemakers on a plantation. If ye gie them a sniff at Christ, they’ll say they’re saved and that makes them as good as ony white man. Treat them wi kindness and they’ll repay ye wi idleness, complaints, grievances. It’s but a step frae there to resentment and plotting.’

‘Kindness doesn’t enter into it,’ said James Wedderburn. ‘And I’m not interested in saving their souls either. I want as much work out of my slaves as you. I want as much money out of the crop. The best way to get that is healthy slaves. How much does a slave cost? A good one, a young, fit, Africa-born Coromantee?’

‘Fifty pound,’ said Kinloch.

‘Sixty,’ said James.

‘Ye’re being robbed.’

‘Well, give or leave the ten pounds, it’s a high price. I want that slave to last ten years at least. Perhaps twenty.’

‘Away!’

‘I have to season him for a year –’

‘Six months.’

‘– feed him and clothe him while he lives. I want him free of worms, yellow fever, the flux, poxes, consumption, the yaws – anything that stops him working. If I whip him every time he is ill, that is more time lost while he mends. Whip a slave for theft, or insolence, or running away, or refusing to work – of course. But let’s be sure we whip them for the right things. Oh, and I want him to make me a lot more slave bairns too. I don’t practise kindness, George. I practise economy.’

Except when it comes to your own slave bairns, John thought, but he said nothing.

‘I prefer common sense. If ye treat a black soft, ye soften yoursel. Then ye think ye’ll ease their labour a bit, gie them better hooses. The next thing ye’re beginning to doubt the haill institution.’

‘You’re over-harsh, George,’ said John. ‘We are not tyrants.’

‘Aye we are,’ said Kinloch. ‘We maist certainly are. We hae to be. It’s the only honest way. If ye look at the thing true, ye’ll agree.’

Later, long after Hodge had been put to bed with a bucket beside his head, and Kinloch and Fyfe, blazing drunk and barely able to stand, had somehow mounted their horses and trotted off homeward, the four Wedderburns played a few rather listless hands of rummy. They were all staying the night at Glen Isla. In the darkness the singing and drumming from the slave huts rose and faded on a light breeze.

James kept lifting his head, as if trying to catch something of the songs, almost as if he were envious of a better party. Peter pulled out his dirty book and, between turns, studied the pages for salacious passages, silently mouthing the French as he read. Alexander yawned constantly. Only John was concentrating much on the cards.

At last James flung down his hand. ‘Damn it, John, Peter was right. I could devour that Peach just now. Or any of them. Let’s go down for them.’

John shook his head. ‘That, I think, even George Kinloch would think unwise at this time of night.’

‘Well, can we not send for them?’

‘No one to send. Unless you want to ask the formidable Phoebe. No? You’ll just have to suffer alone then. Drink some more wine.’

Sandy stood up. ‘I’m for my bed,’ he said. He sidled out, clutching the other French book.

‘Don’t be up all night now,’ Peter called after him, but this drew no response.

‘He’s writing a novelle himself, I think,’ Peter told the others.

‘What?’ James frowned at him.

‘He’s writing something anyway. He’s been scribbling away in a book since Christmas. But he keeps it hidden and he denies it if you ask.’

‘Between that and his sketches, he’s becoming quite an artist,’ James said derisively.

‘Leave him alone,’ said John. ‘We’ve all little enough privacy here as it is. Let him be.’

James yawned. ‘I’m for my bed, too. By the way, Geordie Kinloch was right about one thing.’

‘What?’ John asked.

‘About us being tyrants. Benevolent we may be, but tyrants is what we are.’

‘James, you’re not surely feeling guilty?’

‘Not a bit of it. And it’s not madness either. It’s a natural state of affairs. It has to be. God’s providence. What other reason for such a distinction between the races? So we may as well make the best of it.’

‘But,’ John said, ‘it behooves us to behave like civilised men. A lass like Peach – whip her if she’s troublesome, but why mistreat her if she is a good girl? That is my view, and will continue to be.’

‘No shitting in the hall for you, then,’ James said. It was hard to tell if he was mocking John again. There was a trace of laughter in his voice, in the brightness of his eyes, but his mouth was unsmiling. He stood up, drank off the last of his wine.

‘By God, though, a night like this, does it not make you yearn for a wife?’

‘There’s Mrs Hodge in Savanna unoccupied,’ said Peter, glancing up. ‘You should have ridden off with the others.’

This did finally produce a laugh from James. ‘You are trespassing on the bounds of propriety, Peter. Be sensible. Why would I want all the trouble of seducing a white woman? In a country like this? And as for a wife, well, I was jesting. I don’t have the patience for that. Not yet, at least.’

Dundee, May 1802 (#ulink_c97590ea-aac4-5c93-8bf2-b6a7c163400d)

The weather had finally turned, it was warm and sunny, and the four younger Wedderburn girls were in town. They were in high spirits at the prospect of a day in Dundee. Their half-sister Margaret had avoided having to chaperone them by pointing out that there was not room inside the carriage for them all, and that she had no desire to go. So Aeneas MacRoy was accompanying them, sitting up with the stableman, William Wicks, who was at the reins. At the old West Port the girls decanted, and MacRoy, after telling Wicks to drive to the shore where the horses could feed and rest before the return journey, got down stiff-legged from his seat and followed them at a discreet distance. He had been instructed by Lady Wedderburn, who was in bed with a cold, to keep an eye on her girls: Dundee could be rough, even in daylight, and MacRoy’s task was to make sure the lassies did not wander away from the main streets and into trouble.

MacRoy reckoned they were safe enough, with or without his assistance. Generally speaking, the poor and desperate robbed and bludgeoned one another, not their social betters. There was less risk involved. The fact that it was he – a man of sixty-eight, and hirpling somewhat these days – who had been entrusted with the girls’ protection, suggested that not even their mother anticipated any difficulty. What could she be expecting? A band of brigands to carry them off to Araby? And what, in such an eventuality, could an aged dominie do to stop them? Then again, it would be a bold brigand who would cross Aeneas MacRoy. Small and ancient he might be, but he was still a force to be reckoned with when roused. Tough as knotted wood and fierce as a wildcat, especially if the Wedderburn honour was at stake. Lady Alicia had known him twenty years. She did not really understand him, but because her husband trusted him, so did she.

The sisters intended to visit Madame Bouchonne’s in the Overgait, as she had recently advertised a large consignment of materials and designs newly arrived from London and the Continent. They wanted – or at least three of them wanted – to promenade up and down the Nethergait and High Street, to see what else might be new, and of course to be seen: the Wedderburn name was embedded in Dundee history – merchants, ministers, landowners, lawyers, burgesses, soldiers – and everybody knew who they were. Perhaps they would run into other ladies in from the country. They would almost certainly meet a cousin or two. They would, take tea at the New Inn, where who knew what interesting persons might also be passing the afternoon? A gallant young captain from the Forfar Militia perhaps, or better still a major in the Perthshire Regiment. And after all else, there would be the elephant. Fourteen-year-old Annie very badly wanted to see the elephant.

Aeneas MacRoy planned to watch them for a few minutes, then slip off to one of a number of dram shops he knew, and while away an hour before meeting them at the inn.

Susan, lingering in the wake of her sisters, had come to town in a mood of ambivalence. It was not that she did not want to be here – there was, after all, so much to see compared with the fine but too peaceful surroundings of Ballindean. Dundee was thriving, noisy, its narrow central area a constant mêlée of vehicles and hurrying people. It had a population approaching twenty-five thousand, which made it bigger than Perth and almost as big as Paisley. Dundee’s spinners and weavers had something of a reputation for radicalism, which appealed to Susan as much as it appalled her mother. There were, apparently, some truly dreadful backstreets and wynds, inhabited by characters who would, according to Aeneas MacRoy, stab you with a look. The thought of these dangerous places and people sent a thrill through her.

The huge new steam-driven flax mills built on the burns running down from Lochee might seem monstrous, but she could not help but be impressed by their power. Likewise the bustling harbour – with its intoxicating mix of foreign-looking sailors and merchants, and its hubbub of strange tongues; its ships carrying grain and linen to England and Holland; barrels of salted herring to the Indies (herring, she’d read, was a staple of the slaves’ diet), to Danzig and Riga, and bringing in iron, copper, tar and pine boards from Sweden and Norway – the harbour both intimidated and exhilarated her. And Dundee’s main streets and fine location below the Law, overlooking the gleaming firth, were gracious and charming. All this Susan saw and understood – much more so, she felt certain, than her sisters; and that was the source of her ambivalence. She would rather be here on her own, in disguise perhaps, able to walk the streets unnoticed and in her own time, not as part of a Wedderburn parade.

She was looking forward to fussy Madame Bouchonne only for the opportunity to laugh secretly at her and her claims of aristocratic blood and narrow escape from Madame Guillotine. Her outrageous accent could not possibly be Parisian, as she maintained, but was surely grafted on to something closer to home – Ayrshire, perhaps, or Dumfries – and her name bore an uncanny resemblance to Buchan or Buchanan. Madame Bouchonne might be a rare and exotic flower which her sisters would be loath to see wither, but Susan would rather have browsed for hours in the booksellers’ at the Cross, without Annie tugging at her sleeve. She wanted to go into the mills, see the men and women working there in their strange new crowded way, like a nest of ants. She wanted to talk to the weavers at their looms. She wanted to wander without sisters or chaperone, to sit by the harbour and drink in its sights and smells. But she could not do these things: she was hemmed in by her skirts and stays and family name. She wanted to be – for a day, or a week, or a year – a boy of seventeen.

She was beginning to feel that she had put enough yards between herself and her sisters almost to be not counted as one of them, when a man suddenly stepped from a close in front of her. She put out her hand in fright, but disappointingly he did not try to stab her with a look or any other implement. He stopped abruptly to avoid bumping into her, and made a short bow of apology.

‘Mr Jamieson!’ she said.

The plumpish man in his crumpled black clothes looked startled, then broke into a smile, friendly yet slightly awkward, even humble. It was enough to renew in Susan the confidence that came with being a Wedderburn. What she most disliked about herself was also one of her strongest attributes.

‘Miss Wedderburn. Ye’ve come tae shed licht on oor dark toun.’

She looked up at the blue sky, then at the busy street. ‘That’s hardly necessary.’ Then, peering into the close from which he had emerged: ‘Although down there, perhaps … Is that where you stay?’

‘Na, na,’ he said. ‘I was, em, looking for someone.’

‘Not Joseph Knight still?’ she asked. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh. Glancing ahead she saw her sisters slowing, becoming aware of her absence. She stepped quickly into the close mouth, cleeking Jamieson by the elbow and taking him with her.