her go. This really is too flimsy a case for jury to hear. Let us get on—it is far too hot.’
Once the judge-man had struck his gavel down so our July might be led out and his next case conducted in, a little commotion began to stir within this hot-hot courtroom. For a man stood up from within the seats upon which the jury sat. But this was not a white man. No. Not a mulatto. Not a quadroon, nor a mustee, and certainly not a mustiphino. It was a negro; a nigger; a black man that stood. A black man raised himself from out the jury. And his voice, as he requested leave to approach the judges’ bench, ran about the courtroom genteel and refined as any Englishman.
‘Most irregular, most irregular,’ came spluttering from the lips of all the white men within this room.
Come, July would not be led from her box—she did cling tighter to its walls for she wished to view this spectacle; a nigger thrown from the court for impersonating a gentleman. For sitting in quiet deceit amid a jury! Stealing a hen—what a puny crime when this tricky man was breathing amongst them. Let her see them chasing him around. The bewigged fat man blundering and puffing within this hunt to grab the nigger-rogue by his toe. The skinny Constable Campbell leaping over chair and table to seize this crafty puff-up black man, shouting, ‘Hold up there, hold up there,’ just like he pitiful commanded when pursuing her. The judge rising to yell, ‘A nigger is escaped in my courtroom. Catch him, catch him. I will see him hanged!’ Someone will surely arrive to fire a whip upon this cunning negro’s back. Oh, what a fuss-fuss must soon arise!
But this black man was not chased, nor grabbed; no chairs or tables were overturned in his pursuit and no whip was cracked. Approaching the bench with an upright gait, this negro man, with his hands waving gracefully to aid in the reasoning of his enquiry, spoke in a whisper to the judge. True—the judge did lean back a little, his eyebrows raised, as the negro breathed words upon him. But this judge did not command him to be caught and hanged. No. Soon he leaned over to consult his clerk upon this black man’s quandary. Eventually the judge shrugged, a you-have-my-permission-to-do-as-you-please-gesture upon the negro, who graciously bowed his head to him.
There was no fuss-fuss at all.
‘But what of me hen? The constable did make me lose it,’ July asked loudly as she was led from the court by the scaly-head man. Come, she had repeated that lie so often she now believed it to be true. But once she was outside and under the hot-hot sun, the constable merely shooed her saying, ‘Be off with you and be thankful you’re not in shackles. Go on, be off with you.’
Once July had amassed saliva enough to spit upon this man’s departing back, she dropped to sit weary upon the ground. How long would she be permitted to rest before some constable or busybody did think to move her? Could she gather her spirit to tread those stony miles back? And which way must this miserable trek to the rough, unlevel spent lands near the plantation that was once named Amity begin? As she considered whether this way up the street or that way down it, would make the right place to start, two shiny black leather shoes stepped to stand before her.
‘Are you July of Amity?’ an English voice said.
July made no reply but that of a sigh. For she was thinking of the heave she must make to see herself lifted from the ground.
‘I know who you are—I have just come from the court,’ this English voice carried on.
She had not will enough to cuss, ‘So why you bother asking me, nah? Cha!’ for even thinking it, tired her. She just stared upon the black polished shoes, then up the grey trousers to the matching cutaway jacket, over the stiff collar of the white shirt with its knotted scarlet silk tie, then gasped. For all at once she was gazing up upon the face of that black man.
‘Are you July?’ this man again said, ‘once a slave, a house slave at Amity? Your mistress was Caroline Mortimer?’
‘No,’ said she, ‘Not me.’ For there was such certainty within the tone of his questioning that she was sure this answer would find least trouble for her.