Authors: Beverly Swerling
None of that way of talking was left in her mouth now. Thanks be to God.
You can go on speaking like a little slave girl, or learn to speak proper English and let no one think they’re your better.
That’s what Cuf said after she and Molly got to Nova Scotia.
She had learned Cuf’s lesson well. By the time Laniah turned herself into Delight Higgins, she spoke as well as any lady alive. But New York remained a dangerous place for people of her sort. The newspapers were never short of notices offering hefty rewards for capturing this or that nigra, many described as light-skinned, like her. But whatever shade of black or brown you might be, unless you could produce a paper that said you were born free or officially manumitted, the blackbirders could take you, and be legal about doing it. There wasn’t a magistrate in the city who would find for a nigra without papers over the claim of a white. Besides, most disgruntled owners weren’t fussy about whether the slave being returned to them was the one they’d lost.
“Don’t worry,” Joyful had said the one time she spoke to him about the danger of the blackbirders. “Just get word to me and I’ll come and sort things out.”
Dear God, how long had she trusted in his promises, spoken and unspoken? And despite everything that followed—even becoming her lover—he never once recognized her as little Laniah. In the Knave she was Delight Higgins in her fancy gowns and her jewels, his for the taking whenever the mood might strike him. Outside of that special, secret place she was only another darkie who barely cast a shadow. Outshone by a golden girl who’d never felt a switch across her back, or had to use her body to make her way.
According to Elsie Gruning, Manon Vionne was the girl’s name. She had offered the information willingly enough when Delight said she was a laundress looking for work, and thought the young woman might be a kind employer. “
Ja,
kind she is. And she might hire you. Call at the goldsmith’s on Maiden Lane.” A darkie to do the white girl’s washing—that was the way of things. That in her foolishness Delight Higgins had really believed Joyful Turner loved her—that would be a cause for astonishment. She’d stood at Elsie Gruning’s table, trying to ignore the anguish that thrummed in every part of her, and over the way, beneath the roof where the butchers plied their trade, a big, red-faced man had held a wood pigeon by the feet, the bird madly fluttering its wings in a hopeless quest for freedom, then lowered it to his chopping block and brought his cleaver down on the bird’s neck. Delight had put up her hand, as if she could feel the creature’s pain.
She could feel it still.
It was after four now, and the sun yet blazed in a cloudless blue sky. She turned into Scrivener’s Alley, the short passage between Front and Little Dock streets, where most of the town’s clerks-for-hire could be found. Usually, the city’s alleys were dank and shaded; by law they need only be wide enough to accommodate the withers of an average size horse. This one was broad enough to admit sunlight. Delight kept her parasol open as she walked on. The last house on the left was the residence of Silas Danforth, Master Scribe, according to the brass plaque beside the door.
Slyly Silas, he was called by those who knew him best. “You go see Slyly Silas Danforth in Scrivener’s Alley,” the black brewer who delivered kegs of ale to the Dancing Knave had told her a few weeks before. “He’ll see you right, Miss Delight.”
“Now why would I be wanting a scrivener?” Keeping her tone light, not letting the brewer see the hope and the fear at war in her belly, threatening to escape into her eyes. “It’s cash money at the Knave; I don’t keep accounts here.” While she spoke, she’d pressed into the man’s palm the coins to pay for the week’s supply of ale.
The brewer’s hand had closed over hers, imprisoning her slim, pale gold fingers in his large black fist. “I know ’bout you,” he’d said softly. “I can always tell them as ain’t entirely secure inside their skin, them as is looking over their shoulders for the white man with the whip or the blackbirder with the chains. Slyly Silas Danforth in Scrivener’s Alley. Say you be sent by Tap-a-Keg Jonah and he’ll see you right. Cost a bit it will, but you be sleeping a whole lot better after than you do right now.”
It wasn’t the same as being on the registry of Negroes born free and those officially manumitted, but it would be better than the nothing she had right now. Of course, if Joyful were to live with her openly, everything would be different.
Dear God but you’re a fool, Delight Higgins. You might as well still be Laniah the slave girl for all you’ve learned. She closed her parasol with a snap and used it to knock on Slyly Silas’s door. No reply. She tried the handle. The door wasn’t locked; the scrivener’s tiny office, however, appeared to be empty.
Delight waited for her eyes to adjust to the interior dimness, then looked around to be sure Danforth wasn’t sitting somewhere in the shadows, enjoying himself at her expense. The room was just big enough for a desk and two chairs, and a low table beside the street door. She’d come here twice before, once to make her request and once to pick up the goods she’d ordered, but on the second visit Slyly Silas had sent her away empty-handed. Not ready, he explained, the press of custom. If she still wanted the papers, she’d have to return to get them. What she wanted was to scratch his eyes out, but she’d said she would be back in a week.
There was a small handbell on the table. She picked it up and gave it a vigorous shake. “Delight Higgins,” Slyly Silas said as he pushed aside the dusty yellow cretonne curtain that separated his business from his house and entered the office. “Freewoman born in Nova Scotia in 1780. Daughter of Lizzie James Higgins and Cuf Higgins. Also free.”
Danforth was short and bloated, with a rounded paunch that stuck out in front of him, short black hair, and dark, protruding eyes. His two front teeth hung over his lower lip. Like a rat’s, she thought, a sly, self-satisfied rat. “Born in 1784,” Delight corrected. As for claiming Cuf as her father and inventing a wife for him, considering her purpose, she was sure he wouldn’t mind. “That’s what we agreed.”
“Oh, did we? I must have erred then. I can do the papers over if you like. Take another week or two and cost a bit more. But you won’t mind that, will you? Miss Delight Higgins isn’t any ordinary nigra, she’s a woman of property.”
“Indeed she is, Mr. Danforth.” You won’t provoke me into an outburst, you poxed bastard. I can be so cool my breath will turn you to ice and freeze you solid right where you’re standing. “A few coins more or less is not any mind to me. Nonetheless, I’ll take the papers as they are.”
Delight reached into her drawstring bag for the money she’d counted out and wrapped in muslin before she left the Knave. Born in ’80 as he’d written, or in ’84 as she’d asked, it made no difference. She wasn’t sure of her real age anyway. She’d guessed she might be shaving off three or four years with the birth date she’d chosen.
Must be that Clare magicked you up a youth potion when you were a lass.
That’s what Cuf used to say.
The years go by, but you don’t look any older.
Cuf was well into his sixties last time she saw him, with his hair gone entirely white and his skin—mulatto tan like her own—a web of creases. She didn’t bother to tell him the only thing Clare Devrey ever gave her was the back of her hand, or the flick of the woven willow switch she kept conveniently hanging by the kitchen door.
“I have your money right here, Mr. Danforth. If you’ll just let me see the papers, we can conclude—”
“You mustn’t be in such a hurry, Miss Higgins. A day like this, when it happens the whole town is well occupied with the unexpected bounty just come from Canton, and you and I are fortunate enough to be alone in this quiet spot…Why rush off?”
“I will decide how I spend my time, Mr. Danforth. Now, do you have what I’ve come for?” Ten guineas she’d paid him when she placed her order, add to that the eighteen she had in her hand and his fee for the papers that said she was a free woman was one hundred dollars. She gave Vinegar Clifford twenty dollars a month, and he was among the most generously paid workingmen in the city. The youngest and prettiest girl in the Ladies’ Salon might earn thirty coppers on a busy night. Slyly Silas was an extortionist, but he was surely a wealthy one. “For my part, I have what I owe you right here.” She let him see the roll of coins.
“A woman of business,” Slyly Silas said. “Comes directly to the point.” The yellow curtain had closed behind him when he came in, now he reached up and pushed it open. “Very well, we will waste no time on idle chatter. What you’ve come for is in here. Come and claim it, Miss Delight Higgins.”
“I prefer that you bring the work out here, Mr. Danforth. That way I can get a good look at what I’m buying before I pay for it.”
“It’s flawless work, Miss Higgins. You know that or you’d not have come to me. None of your kind would come to me unless they knew that in return for giving me what I ask, they get what they must have.”
“I still want to examine the goods.”
A smile spread across his rat-like face. “So do I, Miss Higgins. So do I.”
The chill started in her belly and moved toward her throat. Slyly Silas continued to hold the curtain aside, waiting for her to pass into what she now realized must be an empty house.
It was fifteen years since she’d spread her legs on anyone’s say-so but her own. Slyly Silas Danforth would not be the one to make things the way they used to be. He would not resurrect Laniah, who ran away from Nova Scotia four years after she got there, because she was tired of being expected to wait hand and foot on Molly Devrey, despite the fact that Laniah was the only one who knew secrets Molly would sooner die than have exposed. Only one way she could survive in York once she was there, on the streets at first, finally in the best parlor house in the town. Until one day she sat herself down in front of the mirror that belonged to the woman who ran the place and recognized two things. First that she was truly beautiful. And second that she had two choices, to be a whore or a mistress of whores.
There had to be other scriveners in the city who could do what Slyly Silas did as well as he did it. As for the thirty-some dollars she’d already paid him, even after she paid Joyful his share, she earned three times as much in a week. The devil take the money and Danforth beside. She opened her mouth to say so.
The scrivener spoke first. “They tell me there are lots of blackbirders in the city these days,” he murmured, still smiling. “And more to come. A fine business, blackbirding. Pay a tidy sum those bounty hunters do for information about any nigra as doesn’t have freedom papers.”
Damn you to hell, Joyful Patrick Turner. Damn you for eternity for letting me believe what was never true, that you meant for us to be together always. Damn you and damn that yellow-haired vixen you prefer to me.
Never let a white tormentor see how they make you feel, you’re just marching to their tune if you do.
Another lesson learned from Cuf. Delight walked past the scrivener into the room in the rear. When he came after her, she imagined she could feel his hot devil’s breath on the back of her neck. She did not have to imagine his hand on her buttocks.
Chapter Ten
New York City, 5
P.M.
B
LAKEMAN HAD EVERY INTENTION
of going to Eugenie after the sale. Instead he found himself riding his horse all the way uptown to Rivington Street, conscious that there were twice as many soldiers in the city as had been there the day before. Mostly Yorkers, the blue-and-buff-clad New York state militia whose long history went back further than the colonial wars with the French and the Indians, but men from some of the New England regiments as well. Blakeman felt his gut tighten. He was closer than he’d dared dream to getting everything he wanted. An attack by the British now could raise patriotic sentiment where none previously existed, and that could scuttle him.
Forty minutes later he reached the Dancing Knave. He tethered his horse at one of several empty hitching posts and rang the bell hanging beside the door. It was still very early for these ladies of the night. He settled back against the porch railing to wait.
Bearded Agnes poked her head out of a partially opened door, her black whiskers hidden by the frame. “We’re closed until seven. Glad enough we’ll be to see you then, Mr. Blakeman. Be sure and return.”
“I’m not looking for entertainment. I’ve private business with your mistress.”
“Miss Higgins is indisposed. She’ll be available later this evening as well.”
“I’m sure that’s true for every other man in New York, but I think she’ll see me now. I have a thousand dollars that belongs to her.” Blakeman held up one of the smaller moneybags he’d filled earlier at Barnaby Carter’s warehouse, thrust it close to the cracked door, and jiggled it so the coins made a clinking sound. “One thousand exactly. Don’t you think you’d best tell her?”
Agnes opened the door wider and stepped aside. “You can wait in there.” She jerked her head to indicate the now empty Ladies’ Parlor, then left! Minutes later she reappeared. “Follow me, sir.”
She took him to a small room on the third floor. It was elegantly furnished, with a decidedly feminine air, the delicate furniture painted white touched with gilt and upholstered in pale silk. “Miss Higgins will be with you shortly. Meanwhile, feel free to take your ease.”
There was a decanter on a spidery-legged table under a window. Blakeman removed the glass stopper and sniffed. A fine Malmsey from Spain. He found a glass and poured himself a tot, downed it quickly, then poured another.
“I’m pleased you have discovered the refreshments, Mr. Blakeman.”
Delight Higgins stood in a doorway he had not noticed. She wore a silk dressing gown the color of green apples, with a swirling skirt and a tight bodice held together with a line of bows. The gown’s deep neckline exposed the curve of her spectacular breasts. “Afternoon, Miss Higgins. Your wine is as delicious, or perhaps I should say it’s as beautiful, as everything else in this place.” He lifted his glass in a toast, then took a long drink.