Yet Caroline Mortimer was required to care for those negroes in the same way—with lodging and food and clothing. The missus bemoaned that compensation from the government may soon start to tinkle within her pocketbook, yet still her crops would remain within the field. Sweet teeth in England just did not know the trouble she bore for them.
Then upon one rainy, blustery morning, a sodden and bedraggled pack of some of the most forlorn, woebegone and wretched-looking negroes shuffled up in weary deputation on to the grounds of the great house. They had complaint about the dungeon, they called out, and had come to parley with the missus.
Caroline would not permit this nasty group to enter further than the end of her garden. Barely managing to stand against the gusting wind, these feeble apprentices had to shout. And they called out a tale of such merciless torture and despicable conditions within that house of correction, that the missus was forced to conclude that it must be the whip of the wind rendering the tale fanciful to her ear.
So with a look of pity, but a roll of her eye she sweetly said, ‘What nonsense.’
Come, see for yourself, was begged—not once, not twice, but over and over as the missus shook her head, waved them away and asserted that she had not the time.
With desperation, one of the scrawniest and ill-fed of this troupe (James Richards, a carpenter), summoned breath enough to blast, ‘Massa would have come if him been livin’.’
And Caroline’s attention was summarily seized. She mounted her horse that very afternoon.
The overseer, Henry Reed, could not be found, so it was his callow, pungently perspiring bookkeeper who reluctantly obeyed the command to lead the missus down into the dungeon.
The narrow passage and two arched cells of this prison were perfectly dark when the missus entered. The stench—like a dead rat decaying—was thick as gruel, yet still she believed those tiny stone-built chambers to be empty. But like bats first sensed within a cave, she began to detect the black walls moving as her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. The wriggling of the murk, however, was not caused by flying rodents, but by the many negro inmates of these cells writhing upon their chains. Sensing visitors, they began to move with more urgency. The scraping of metal, the clatter of shackles, the complaint of hoarse voices, all assailed her with one dissonance, as both languid and frantic eyes fought to find her within the black gloom. A man (Richard Young from the first gang) was pinned to the wall by his upheld arms. A naked woman (Catherine Wiggan, also from the first gang) was chained to the floor by her neck. A child (Catherine’s youngest daughter, Liddy, I believe) was encased within a stock by her ankles. And more this way. And yet more that. The dungeon was crowded.
The missus fled.
Arriving back at the great house, Caroline Mortimer directly took to her bed before plunging herself into the solace of a bottle of her sweetest Madeira. July found her missus vomiting upon her bed sheets and slurring the command that a trunk be packed for her as she was intending to take the next ship back to England. ‘I had no idea of it, I had no idea . . . I believed a prison cell with water and bread and rough furnishings . . . I am a Christian woman . . . Believe me, when I say I had no idea of it.’
How the missus did not know the pitiless conditions within that dungeon at Amity, July just could not comprehend. For every negro upon that plantation, even those within the kitchen, feared its viciousness. Come, negro children had even devised a rhyme for it, which they recited during the playing of passing stones:Me mama beg de bakkra na t’row mi in de dungeon,
Me sista beg de bakkra na t’row her in de dungeon,
De missus tell de bakkra go t’row dem in di dungeon.
So down de dread dungeon dem did go.
As her missus whimpered her useless innocence July, with a shrug of her shoulder said, ‘Then close up the dungeon, missus.’ When Caroline lifted her head to gaze upon July, her expression was quizzical as a guileless child. Her missus’s tipsy eyes were rimmed with deep red, her cheeks were of the dullest grey pallor, her lips were crusted with drying vomit, and her hair was as awry as a fallen cockatoo’s.