her fingers until she began sucking it keenly within her mouth.
The lace had been gifted to Emily by Robert Goodwin. He had hoped July to stitch it into a christening dress for his daughter. The christening would now never take place, but July leaned forward to her pickney to promise, ‘But me still gone make the dress for you,’ as she wrested the soggy lace from Emily’s sticky hands.
It was then that Molly arrived. She stood before July saying nothing, just staring her one good eye down upon her. So long did Miss Molly remain silent, that July thought to ask her where she would go now there were no white people within the great house who required her nasty food.
Molly lifted her gaze to the clouds to at last speak. She began by saying that she had milk. It was warm and fresh and straight from the cow and should she take Miss Emily to feed her some? Then she smiled upon July.
July thought nothing of it as she handed her pickney to her, for Molly often fed her. But perhaps if she had noticed that Molly was wearing a hat—a missus cast-off with a blue satin bow that hung down comically in need of a stitch—she would have waved her away. Oh, reader, if July had remembered that Molly, in the whole of her days, had only ever smiled in spite, perhaps she would have just clutched her pickney tight to her.
But she did not.
July walked the path up to the great house, where every window and every door of that big place was barred and sealed to her. Only the veranda remained open to welcome. July lifted herself into Robert Goodwin’s hammock. As she rocked there she watched a column of red ants determinedly climb the veranda steps. They marched in their thin red line straight under the bolted door of the house. Where once July would have chased them back with a broom or threatened them with a fire stick, now she let them go. And there was no missus to squeal, ‘Marguerite, Marguerite! Come quickly, there are ants!’ Come, so quiet did it remain that July could hear the pitter-patter of the ants’ legs as they walked that wooden floor. And she fell asleep there, rocking within a hammock that smelt faintly of an Englishman.
When she awoke, it was nearly dark. The commotion that roused her was made by Byron and Elias returning from town. They unharnessed the horse from the carriage with so much squabbling that July was sure Byron was once again drunk upon rum. July called out to Molly. When there came no reply, she walked to the kitchen.
But the kitchen was empty. The stove was unlit. The jalousies were closed. When Elias mounted the steps on to the veranda, July was upon him. She grabbed him at the shoulders, ‘You see Miss Molly?’
And Elias answered, ‘Yes.’
‘Then where she be?’
Elias, shaking himself from out July’s grasp looked puzzled on her as he replied, ‘She be gone to England with the missus.’
July had to wait a moment for her breath to return before she asked, ‘Did she have pickney?’
‘Oh yes,’ Elias told her, ‘She carried the massa’s pickney with her.’
And July roared upon Elias, strong and commanding, telling him to run to Byron—the cart must be got up, a pony harnessed. She must be taken into town and she must be taken now, for she must find her pickney. Now. Quickly. What did he wait upon? Now!
When Elias just stood looking confused upon her, she bashed him about his ear, nearly knocking him down. ‘But the boat be sailed,’ he told her. ‘Me did watch it. Five did sail upon the tide. One big-big sight them sails flapping, and them calling out and . . .’ Elias stopped in his musing as July gaped upon him. ‘No fear, Miss July,’ he went on with a pride intended to calm her, ‘it be the massa and missus be taking the pickney to England.’ And when July suddenly dropped to sit upon the floor in front of him, he gently asked her, ‘But what, Miss July, did you wan’ keep that little pickney for your own?’
PART 5
CHAPTER 34
ONLY HIS MAMA CAN rouse my son, Thomas, to quarrel. Let me place you as a guest at our Sunday table so you might find evidence for this judgement. See before you a white cotton cloth upon which sits, between knives and forks, the porcelain dinner plates decorated