surprise when I alighted upon an essay printed within this august volume which was penned by none other than the wife of the baptist minister-man—the saintly, good-goodly Jane Kinsman! Within it, she wrote of the time when she—living in Jamaica with her husband and her two sons—found a negro slave child abandoned outside the door of their manse. After taking in the child and baptising him Thomas, she then ventured to find out who had mothered this slave. A person within the nearby town (she did not within this essay say whom), believed the baby to have been the pickney of a house slave called July. Imagine, July’s name was printed there for all in England to read!
The story then carries on that this house-slave, July, was approached secretly within the gardens at Amity by Jane Kinsman. When this slave realised that the woman who had her pickney was now standing before her, she did begin to shake with fear. She then begged Jane Kinsman to keep her son or else her missus (this paper did not say Caroline Mortimer, but all would know, for there was no other missus at Amity), was determined upon selling her slave baby away. Our author then goes on (at great length and in a very ponderous style that could have done with some lightness within its tone), to say that this is what she did—she promised this slave girl that she would rear her baby so the baby would not be sold.
Oh, reader, how this article did make me laugh when this missionary’s wife went on to say that when she assured the slave that she would take good care of her baby, the slave was so pitifully grateful that she did drop to her knees, snivelling and crying and kissing this woman’s hands. And you know what? It is true, reader! For it was exactly how July behaved upon that day; come, how else was she to get this white woman to raise her black baby?
But then Jane Kinsman did add (in this too sentimental essay, full-full of self-regard that was so beloved of white women at this time), that she did ask the little slave girl (that is our July), ‘Was your son born in wedlock?’ Jane Kinsman then states that this guileless, naïve and simple negro (these are her words, reader, and not my own), did then reply, ‘No, missus, him was born in de wood—where be wedlock?’
Reader, let me assure you now and make as plain as I might—July said no such fool-fool thing to that white missus, at that time or any other! Cha.
My son agrees, I must now return to my story with some haste, before another foolish white woman might think to seize it with the purpose of belching out some nonsensical tale on my behalf. But before my son does accuse me once more of falsehood, allow me to make a minor amend.
Do you recall, reader, that midnight hour when slavery ended? The pages within my tale which told of how the coffin that fancifully contained that oppression was buried within the earth? That remarkable night where Molly did fondly hug July? Well, here is where my correction must come. As far as your storyteller is aware, Molly did never once embrace anyone in the whole of her days. And July was not within the town to bear witness to the portentous revelry of that night. Your storyteller did find the chronicle of that occasion written within the pages of some other book—the title of which is no longer within my recall.
For I feared you would think my tale very dull indeed if, when the chains of bondage were finally ripped from the negro, and slavery declared no more, our July was not skipping joyous within the celebrations. But, alas, upon that glorious night of deliverance, July was, as you shall now read, confined within the tedious company of her missus.
CHAPTER 19
TICK-TOCK, TICK-TOCK, tick-tock. Through one ear July could hear the long clock within the drawing room as it counted down for her the appointed hour when the false-free of apprenticeship was ended, and she could truly no longer be held as a slave. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Her other ear, however, was forcibly required to heed the babble of her missus.
Caroline Mortimer was engaged in belatedly answering the points of an argument she had recently had with her overseer John Lord —just before that overseer, in a bluster of contempt, had run down the piazza