Come August, Come Freedom (13 page)

Jacob nodded slowly. “Son, there is no
right now
with liberty. Freedom takes time and patience.”

“I have never disagreed with you, but, truth is, there is only
right now.
And there is only one choice left for this business of liberty,” Gabriel told him.

“Do not mistake politics for principles. Adams is on Toussaint’s side because of America’s concerns with France, not because America believes in Toussaint,” said Jacob.

“Jacob, is freedom not America’s concern?” Gabriel asked him. “This forge is your own. You work and move about the city as you please. Do you love your freedom?”

“None but the wealthiest men among us move about fully as they please,” said Jacob.

Gabriel lowered his head in disappointment.

“You deserve your freedom because you are entitled from birth,” the old smith continued. “Liberty is a God-given right, Gabriel, not for man to dispense or withhold at will. But, son, I am old now. I have lived through one war.”

“But this is the unfinished business of your war,” said Gabriel. “There is no other choice left for me. Will you help me?”

The old man clung to Gabriel. “Yes, I will always be here, should you need me.”

For six weeks, Gabriel worked in Jacob’s forge, before returning to Brookfield. Jacob gave Gabriel the larger share of his profits for that time, and soon the Henrico blacksmith’s pocket was full of money. Still, the money he had earned was not enough to fully repay the bond to Thomas Henry and not nearly enough to manumit Nanny.

I return with only my heart and my hands to offer her,
Gabriel thought, and he walked on back to Henrico.

Over and over on the road, he stopped, unfolded Quersey’s leaflet, and looked at the written-down story of Toussaint L’Ouverture’s success. He opened up the page to see the truth: all the world over, humanity now reached up to God and people reached out to each other for freedom.

Alone on the way back to Nanny, Gabriel recalled Toussaint’s cry to his people: “Death or liberty!”

Toussaint raised an army of four thousand and repelled the French and the British troops. Toussaint, who can read and write. Toussaint, but a slave. Toussaint, the black general.
He thought of the game he and Thomas Henry once played.

“Yes!” Gabriel said aloud. “Death or liberty!” This time, the words were not a game to him, for now Gabriel believed.

WHEN GABRIEL
returned to Henrico, the harvest was all picked and winter nearly arrived. The tobacco at Young’s and at Brookfield was being pressed into the hogsheads, good separated from bad, and readied for the market. An early snow had come and gone already. Trace mounds of white clung to the shady hollows around the brook, but as was often wont to occur in a Virginia December, the sun interrupted the dead season to mimic springtime for a day or two.

So on Saturday afternoon, Gabriel went to meet the folks under the apple tree at Brookfield. They would make their way to Brook Bridge to meet up with the kin of blood and the kin of spirit — kin from all around the neighboring farms. Such a warm winter Saturday stirred people from all around the countryside. The time permitted them to leave their work was short, so all the people made haste to Young’s spring.

Once gathered, the little children would go and sneak their feet into the ice-cold creek. The elders would be there, counting among themselves who still lived and lamenting together what they had been left to endure. Yet, despite the burdens laden on each, on this day, the people would make praise.

Gabriel reached the meeting place by his tree early. He could hardly keep up with the anxieties swirling through his mind.
Will Nanny want me? What if she fell in love with Jupiter while I was in Richmond? What if the old colonel sold her south? Or hired her out to Johnson?

Gabriel took the pamphlet from Charles Quersey out of his pocket. He sat beneath the apple tree, reading, awash in the liberation of Saint Domingue. For a time, he set his own yoke down. President Adams’s recognition of Toussaint’s leadership swelled a new kind of belief in Gabriel — the kind of hope for himself and his kin that could not be bought, even with all the money he might make for the rest of his life.

They broke free! Liberty prevails on Saint Domingue. A man like me — Toussaint! Toussaint saved his people with a heart and a sword for freedom, and now America protects Toussaint! Ma would invoke the Lord God if she were here with me,
Gabriel thought. For the first time in his twenty-three years, Gabriel now asked something of God, too.

If you be the true God,
Gabriel prayed,
then tell me, who will save me and my people?

It was Nanny’s voice, not God’s, that answered. His beautiful woman came running up the hill, waving her arms and calling his name. “Gabriel! Gabriel, it’s you!”

Solomon and Martin could not keep up with her, and Jupiter could not keep up with any of them. Nanny slid under Gabriel’s shoulder. “It’s you they’re askin’ for at the spring; we’ve been lookin’ all over for you. Come, join us!” Nanny took up his hand and kissed the mark of the cross, only recently seared into his palm. “Come! We’re all waitin’ for you.”

Wearing her best dress, one she had made herself from the handed-down wedding gifts of sky-blue cotton fabric and yellowing old lace, Nanny hooked her arm through his and led him down the hill. “We are way late jumpin’ the broom. I waited for you, Gabriel. We all waited for you; no more waitin’ now.”

He let Nanny pull him down the hill a few steps, then he stopped her. “Toussaint won, Nan.” He held the worn article out to her. “Have you heard?”

Nanny covered up Gabriel’s hand with hers. “Come to my house tonight as my husband and read this story to me by the fire.”

They had no hog, no calf or great feast of any kind. Gabriel did not even have time to run get his own handed-down gift of Jacob’s old velvet overcoat. In his soiled, graying work shirt, he married Nanny by the creek on a May Saturday in December, so common to Virginia.

He returned to the countryside with a cross burned into his hand and having barely escaped the gallows. He had relinquished all of Nanny’s freedom money and more to Thomas Henry and so had no wedding gift to offer. No way to keep his promise. Yet by the time he married her, Gabriel could see the only true way. Now his true purpose no longer lay dormant or hidden within.
The way
was clear now. The work of his life was not to make fire but to make freedom. After the wedding, Nanny received the congratulations of the women, and Gabriel gathered the men near to talk about the business of liberty.

HE
’
S MY
husband now,
Nanny said to herself. She kissed Gabriel’s hands while he slept.

How I have missed these hands.

On their wedding night, Nanny made it so that Gabriel rested well. While Gabriel slept, she sat curled up on the bed with her knees tucked around his shoulders. She laughed at how his feet hung well off her bed and smiled at how he had not complained but instead promised to build them a new bed — one with room enough for a man and his wife to love each other good.

Nanny kissed his eyes.
How I have missed this man.

She cradled his head against her thighs, and with her finger, she drew along the two scars on his forehead, and then she kissed those places. “Here, too, they marked you. I know this story.”

She traced Gabriel’s long and bony, lovely brown face until all his twitching ceased. She touched the two scars again, then lingered her fingers over his brow. She followed the outline of Gabriel’s nose, his chin, and by the time she reached his lips, Gabriel was deep in sleep. She watched him until his eyes darted back and forth under his lids.

Nanny’s mind was too busy for sleep, so she rose to sew and clean by the moonlight.

Tomorrow is Sunday, a day of rest even for the likes of me. I’ll sleep tomorrow, under the tree, and make Gabriel let me set my head in his lap to catch up on these lost hours.

She could tell Gabriel hadn’t washed in weeks; his britches smelled of red cedar and apple wood, smoke, and hard work. She picked up his shirt and pants from the floor, and while he slumbered, Nanny beat his clothes free of all flecks and bark and briars.

He is my husband now. I will care for him,
she resolved. She could, at least, sew a new shirt for him, so when one got too soiled, he could wear the other.

When Nanny finally grew tired, she crawled beneath the quilt she had long ago pieced with her sisters, the only remnant of her family. She put her head on Gabriel’s chest. Anchored to the rhythm of her husband’s breath, Nanny had just slipped into the dreamy cove when Gabriel’s fit woke her. Thrashing and kicking, he called out in words she could not understand. The firelight glowed amber across Gabriel’s face.

Even in his sleep,
Nanny thought,
he finds no peace.

She tried to cast off the nightmare. “You’re safe with me,” she whispered to him.

When he cried out, “Water! Water!” Nanny sprang from the bed. She dipped her cup in the wooden bucket and held the water to Gabriel’s lips. His eyes shot open, yet he slept on in the grip of the night terror.

Nanny shook him. “Here, drink. You asked for water.”

He pushed her hand away. “No. I’m meeting him,” Gabriel said.

“Who?” she asked, and tried again to shake him awake. “Who, Gabriel?”

“I’m meeting him at the water,” he repeated. “About the business.” He fell back on the bed, and Nanny lay awake, watching over him.

In the morning, when she heard Gabriel stir, she first-thing said to him, “Tell me about the business. Who you plan on meeting at the water, Gabriel?”

He revealed how the Frenchman had sought him out at Jacob’s forge. He read Nanny the pamphlet. “Can I not do for Virginia what Toussaint has done for his people?” he asked her.

At first after he told her, Nanny wanted Gabriel’s plan to be from God. “Has the Lord shown you the way? Did you have a vision?” she asked him.

“I think I have always had this vision, Nan. Is my plan of God? I can only hope.”

“Do you hear voices, Gabriel, tellin’ you what to do? Where to go? What to say?”

“I have heard these voices since I was a little boy — Ma’s, Pa’s, Old Major’s. Yours, my own, those of the children we will have.”

“And you can imagine not only a free Nanny or free Gabriel but a free Virginia?”

“The entire world is turning free. Since childhood, I have asked myself, ‘Why not my home?’ A free Virginia is all I can imagine.”

Nan let her eyes wander the room, searching for some answer, some insight into what to say or do next. She knew she had married a truehearted man, but Nanny had not expected sorrow — the frequent companion of truth — to interrupt her nuptials like this. Seeing no way to change her husband and not sure she wanted to, she implored her Lord God to set aside the quiet and steady work He was known to love in favor of a glorious, bold, and victorious swift Hand. She gave her own hands over to Gabriel. “I am your wife,” Nanny said. “I will never abandon you, not even in death. What will we do?”

And Gabriel told Nanny of his plan.

“We will raise an army from the city, from the countryside, and from the waterfront. We will arm our soldiers with swords forged from pitchforks and scythes. We will field a cavalry of borrowed stallions and raid Mr. Jefferson’s capitol. We will do whatever it takes, Nan, whatever it takes.”