‘What you expected?’ Simon grinned easily, but showed cracked teeth. ‘My background is somewhat unusual. Whether you judge that my subsequent experiences have been the worse for me because of that is up to you …’ He sipped his coffee. ‘As a little boy I was clever and good-looking – that’s not bragging, consider it a fair description of the merchandise. I was befriended by the younger son of the master of the house – this was a cotton plantation in the wilds of Louisiana, with a hundred or so head of slaves – when you’re children, you see, even such categories as slave and master blur into insignificance compared with the vividness of the game of the day. I was four years old.
‘Well, when Alexander – the young master – began his schooling, he was something of a restless soul, and his father, observing I was bright and a calming influence on him, brought me into the house as a companion. Even by then I was aping the masters’ speech, you see, and they would probably say “aping” is an appropriate term. But they dressed me up and encouraged me to speak well and mind my manners, and I became a study companion for Alexander – only at home, of course, never at school or beyond the bounds of the house. And in the process, naturally, I learned a good deal myself. I was brighter than Alexander but not markedly so; of course I knew not to outshine him overmuch in our shared work, but to let him think he could beat me at it – as often, indeed, he could. I was a happy child, sirs, unaware of my unholy indenture. It shames me to say that I was even unperturbed when my mother and my little brothers and sisters were sold on by the master – though later I would be enraged to learn from the other slaves that it was because my mother had refused the master’s lustful designs.
‘This went on as I grew up. Past the age of twelve or so Alexander was increasingly distracted by the company of his own sort, particularly the young ladies, but I was still useful as a companion at home. And I was given work around the house – and not just serving and cleaning and so on; past sixteen I was entrusted with some routine aspects of the plantation’s accounts. It amused the master to have me wait at table for his fancier friends: a skinny slave who had the manners and the speech of an English lord, as he liked to boast, if inaccurately.’
He seemed nostalgic as he spoke of these times, though to be treated as a pet, a toy, however kindly, struck Luis as ghastly.
‘Well, all things have their time. Alexander reached the age of eighteen and was sent off to a fancy college in New York. As for me, as I grew older I had no place in the household. A slave boy of twelve with fine manners is cute, but a man of twenty seems ever on the verge of insolence.’
Hackett said, ‘And so he was turned out of the house. Just like that, after a lifetime of decent living, even if he was wholly owned. Cast down among the field hands.’
‘You may imagine my fate,’ Simon said, his eyes averted. ‘To those men it was as if a white man had been cast among them. I was beaten, stripped, robbed of all I had, in the first hours. I fought back, oh, I fought back, but I was alone.’
‘No,’ Abel said now, stirring. ‘Not ’lone. Had me, his gran’pappy. But his daddy dead. His mommy sol’. Other fam’ly kep’ away. I fought ’em. Tha’s my gran’chile, I told ’em. But I’s old, suh, old and broken …’
‘All of this I could have borne,’ Simon said now, eyes closed, his voice steely. ‘I would have grown stronger. I would have found my place. But then I learned that the master decided I was a troublemaker – rather than the victim of the trouble, you see – and he intended to sell me on.’ He opened his eyes and looked straight at Hackett. ‘And that I could not bear, sir. I have seen the auction block – the slaves stripped naked male and female, grease rubbed into the skin to make it shine, the coarse inspection by the potential owners – the language of the stockyard.’
‘You cun see why we’s run,’ Abel said.
Hackett grasped their hands, both of them; Luis thought he had tears in his eyes. ‘Oh, I see it, sirs, I see it. And we will see you safe in the free states – where your learning and character, Simon, will be a boon, not a curse. Now, Burdon, Valienté – a word on tactics.’
He led the two of them outside. Luis found himself swatting mosquitoes immediately.
‘Slavery!’ Hackett began. ‘What an institution. To own a human being from cradle to grave, to use as you wish – and then you own the children too, and the grandchildren off into perpetuity, like the offspring of some prize racehorse. I don’t know which is the crueller – a life of grinding work, such as has broken poor Abel, or to be given a bit of kindness, a bit of civilization, then to have it arbitrarily swept away, like poor Simon.’