Washington and Caesar Read Free Page B

were taken were ransomed later, but I was not. I think my father took another wife. I do not know.” He crossed his arms to indicate that this was not a topic he wished to discuss. “Now I am here. Tell me about Virginny.”
    “What yo’ skill, Caesar?”
    “Be a huntah, suh.”
    “Hunter. Was your father of the Embrenake?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And weren’t such men distinguished by their speech? So it is here. Say hunter.”
    “Hunt-ar.” The other slaves had edged closer. As the foreign speech was replaced by English, they gathered courage to join in.
    “You goin’ to Jamaica again, then, Mista’ King?” asked one, a bricklayer.
    “Yaas. I go twice a year, weather allowing. Mostly I sail wi’ Mr. Gibson.”
    “You carry a message to my woman?”
    “If’n you give me a good idea where to find her. I don’ go too close to some plantations. I been a slave twice an’ I don’ mean to go that way ‘gain. Won’ sail again till spring.”
    Others asked for messages carried, or verbal messages, which King refused. He told them where to find a Quaker clerk in Williamsburg who would write out short messages for slaves, if asked nicely. Cese watched him eagerly, his head cocked a little to one side like a smart puppy awaiting instruction. King began to pass along whatever came to his mind, but they had questions of their own.
    “Mista’ King, you know who we go be wo’kin’ fo?”
    “I expect you be wo’kin’ fo Mr. Washington, if’n you be on his boat.”
    “What he like?”
    “They betta, an’ they worse. He be fair, and that somethin’.”
    “He fair? Do he let us’ns buy freedom?”
    “How ‘bout marriage? Do he abide black folks as marry?”
    “Is it true that Christian folk can’t be slaves in Virginny?”
    They were clamoring now, and their different accents were hard for him to understand. He shook his head at them. West Indian slaves were the most ignorant; they were kept in pens and didn’t get to hear much news.
    “No. Many Christian folk is slaves.”
    “Is you free if you gets to England?”
    “So I hear. I been there, and I ain’t seen no slaves.” It was common knowledge that a man was free if he could reach England. Sometimes a man could get free by enlisting in the Royal Navy, too. King had bought his freedom the first time, saving pennies from his fishing to buy his way free. The second time, he’d taken one beating toomany and run, joined a navy ship hungry for men, thin on the decks from the yellow jack in the Indies and with a hard first officer not liable to ask a man questions.
    He looked back at the boy.
    “You wan’ be free, Cese?”
    “I will be free, Mista King.”
    “You take care, now. Mr. Washington, he sell black boys wha’ try to run.”
    Cese nodded. He looked out at the shore for a moment.
    “Maybe I go England.”
    “Go to England, Cese. Maybe so. You know who Somerset was?”
    “No, suh.”
    “He was a black man like you. He run from his master in England. Got caught, got beat, got a white man to take him to court. He won. No slavery in England now.”
    Cese had heard a little of the story, but not so plain, always told elliptically so that an overseer wouldn’t understand. He thought it remarkable that a black man had got into a court at all, much less that his case should be heard. In the Indies, a slave couldn’t even give evidence, a fact of life that every slave knew all too well.
    “Maybe I go to England,” he repeated.
    “You take care, boy.”
    King nodded to Jones and they stood, Jones carefully wrapping twine around his pipe and putting it into a fitted tin. Before the mate could call them aloft, they were standing at the base of the mainmast, ready for the last tack into the bay, the boy and the other slaves forgotten.
    Cese watched the shore and thought about the raid and his last moments as a free man. He thought about it often, but now he tried to think about what England must be like, a land where men became free just by