Authors: Chris Dolan
Had she passed town? Or was the town not where it used to be? At forks in the road she took one or the other, without thought. Her mind was beyond all decision-making. Her body had once more taken charge. North. The only word in her mind. A memory that the Coak plantation lay somewhere North. A woman sat on a stone where a house, a street perhaps, may once have been. Her hair was soaked. Her fine robe soiled and ripped. Face powder streaked.
“North?” asked Elspeth.
The woman wasn’t much older than her, but she looked like a
hag. A ghost come to haunt her. Her hair a holy mess, clothing
disarrayed
, one shin and one breast exposed in accusation. Raped by the wind, degraded, a reflection of Elspeth’s conscience. The idea of “north” bemused her, and she turned and looked to her right, as if a faint memory of there once being something called north lay in that direction.
Discourse & Argument
A Disclosure On Captain R. Shaw
& the Path that led to his
Discoveries & Life’s Work
Only vainglorious old scunners – with as much of interest to say as a vomiting cur – log their tedious adventures & dreary thoughts. & only those partial to pukings adjudge them profundities. Amid the dross there are but a few Scientific & Progressive Men who have committed – reluctantly as I do now – the History of their Practice to paper.
Perhaps one day I will be granted a degree of leisureliness – surely my Successes will allow me that! – to supplement these first scribblings with greater detail. For the moment the barest facts will be here recorded.
There is a War going on in the heavens & until it is triumphed War will be waged on earth. ’Tis the only way of explaining the vile state of things. I have been a soldier in that War – & a Tactician in it. I am a Christian man – though religiosity in its present guise holds little attaction for me – & I know in my bowels that the Almighty has been in trouble for some decades & still is.
My Father & my Forefather recounted to me tales of our common Progenitor – the first Shaw in this land – of his valour & struggle for Justice. He was faithfull to his Celtic blood which is of the house of Gaul. The Gallic & the Celtic are close related as is proved. They are of the same Nation & therefore share the same circumstances & Nature. I have respect for their attributes but am sensible too to their Faults.
The Celtic is the most spiritual of all the Races. Churching & psalming can be a weakness in him – put the Celt in a tight spot & it’s as likely he’ll reach for his prayer book as for his blade. In the credit column we must concede that he will take up arms in defence of Good & Right & for the deliverance of his Soul. He is not so bellicose as his Saxon cousin who in matters Political is his Superior. Sometimes these natural allies have become confused in the Battlefield. Such was the case with my Forebear who fought one Tudor King in the cause of a Stewart one. A Jacobite he called
himself – but became Loyal to the King of England upon his removal to this Land once the cause he fought for was lost. It was Kingship itself that mattered – that state being a reflection of the Heavenly Order.
But a black beginning – as my father was fond of saying & indeed was himself the proof – makes a black end. They sent that first Shaw to this land in Punishment in the year seventeen sixteen & degraded him to the rank of slave. Robert – as was his Christian name – was made the Property of a fellow Scotch man – a Lowlander more civilised than the Highlander – who blamed him for his stance in the old War but was sympathetic to his Nature. This Planter – Bell by name – ensured that Robert served only the minimum of his Indenture & manumitted him after the passage of five years. Thereupon he bestowed on Robert ten acres of his own land in the parish of St. Andrew & the largest of his slave houses. Robert Shaw – as is inborn in our family – worked industriously & kept lealty to his Patron & became a faithfull servant of the Colonial Yeomanry or Militia.
By the time of his son – my great-Grandfather Jamie – our family property had increased to twenty acres & by the time of my Grandfather – Robert again – we kept a gang of Negroes. Robert Shaw II was promoted to the Rank of Captain in the Militia. His family were yet poor & no blame in that. This second Robert Shaw bequeathed his rank & acreage to my own Father who was not such a canny fellow in matters of agriculture. I was brought into this world in the year seventeen ninety-seven – while we fought the French rebels in the New World & our Militia was redoubled in strength.
My Father was a misguided unchancy beast but I believe that at bottom he was a Good Man. I say this as someone all would agree was treated most unjustly by him. His name was James & he was loved by all acquainted with him. Such love was the root of his weakness for he came to thirst for the friendship & good word of others. He saw no wrong in any man or woman & was beloved by his own Niggers – many of whom he manumitted before they were ready for such responsibility. He even gave them parts of his land – causing altercation & argument throughout the Colony. At his demise he had decreased rather than amplified our family holdings.
Whereas my Father was always for smiles & banter & the tussling of my hair my mother was strict. I am of a blend of bloods. My mother was of Norman descendancy – a haughtier people entirely. She was a lover of the Law – but more prone to material consolation than my father. She was never much of a Church-goer but solemn & righteous. My father used to joke that she needed no Kirk as she was her own bishop & priest & congregation.
She was strict with me – understanding that the Child is the apprenticeship for the Man. In my Father’s company I mirthed & played more than was good for me but with her I remained stony of expression & conduct which earned me some compliments from her. As I grew up she despaired of me, detecting traits of my Father’s character. I played with any other boy & was a leader of them all whether Christian or slave or of colour. My mother was of the opinion that I should ensure they retained a respectfull distance as one day I was to lead them in more than childish games.
Her husband took to drinking his own bush rum which caused as much disharmony between he & my mother as did his taking of a mistress. It occurs to me now that she was relieved to be rid of his rude attentions. To be free of him can be the only reason she did not cause more of an uproar than she did over Nancy – his fancy woman & slave.
It was well known that many men used these lesser mortals to expunge their baser desires but few were so open about the matter as my reckless father. James freely courted the woman in society. & a great black buxom blunderbuss of a woman was Nancy! Favoured – I’ll grant – in the light of her eye & the whoop of her laugh & the shape of her succulent rear & paps even at nigh on forty. Before I learned of her unholy partnership with my father I had fair adored the besom. She turned the dreary house into a carnival & she japed & jested with me. So it is not her I blame for the calamity but James who preyed upon her guiltless inferiority. But his greatest sin – & one that smote me to the spirit – was yet to come.
He had a son of her. In one stroke he mixed blood that should not be mixed. He made an open harlot of poor Nancy & a rejected woman of my mother. & he cheated me of my ancestral rights. Had he sold the chile to a neighbour’s plantation – in the antique &
accepted style – my mother & I would not have suffered as we did. But his need for the delusion of affection made him think he loved Nancy & her bastard son more than he did my mother or me.
This was the cause of my mother’s demise & the prompting of my own rowdiness. I had just joined the Militia – the bastard Negro boy arrived in my fourteenth year – & I took my duties seriously. Yet within a year or two I was finding consolation in the cup & the jug. My mother for her part rather than rankle of affrontery had the gumption to drop dead. She did it one morning with her usual competence & lack of fuss dressed in her Sunday best right in the room where her body would be laid out.
Thereafter I took delight more in drinking & carousing with my fellows & saw my imbibing as a means of watering my mother’s grave with ruefull tears. My Father could not complain of my Rudeness & Mischief as he himself was seldom sober in his advancing years.
He had come to be a critic of the Militia – fallen as he had into the sphere of influence of Nancy who it must be said was clever. Quoth he: “The Militia is nae more than the defender of the rich planters, Robbie.”
He had taken to addressing me in the Scotch style & using other words of that land – two generations removed from him – about the same time as he had taken up with Nancy. It was part of his deterioration under the black whore. He reminisced of his own father & the earlier Robert the Jacobite. He dreamed of “guddling trouts” in broad rivers & traipsing through gloaming with lassies. There’s no fool like an old fool, as my mother used to say and – though it shames me to scribe it – he wasted his talents on rum & injudicious talk & riding his Nancy like she were a thoroughbred mare.
As to his mistrust of the Aristocracy of this colony I shared his opinion in certain measure – they cared nothing for hardworking farmers & failed to discriminate between us & Negroes. “Your Yeomanry Robbie would spend its time better defending the people they were weaned with & not wasting their time guarding the fields of those who despise us.” He was deep impressed with the philosophie of the babbling French. “There is not a man jack of us who would be welcome at the table of a Combermere or a Bell though the latter be our ain kin.”
Ain kin! Never was a man so insensible to his “ain kin”! Had he not thrown over his own wife – as Christian & white as the Saviour’s robe – in favour of a heathen African woman? My Father’s newfound devotion to kinfolk was naught more than Romanticisation. As much as he employed words of the old country he prattled in the gibberish of the Dark Continent. Among his “guddling” & “Robbie” & his “muckles” & “pickles” he gaily spoke of “unna” which is the grunt Nancy used when she meant “you, sir” & he shouted out “Bashment!” & “Rassole!” so that no educated person could make head nor tail of him.
My Father misunderstood the Struggle of his day. The Nobility had for many years betrayed us – manumitting slaves & giving them more land than we had – thus devaluing our industry. We were squeezed from above & below & black fellows who had tasted the crack of the whip comported themselves & dressed as though they were our betters. In years to come I would understand how melancholy a sight it was to see an African dressed as a London dandy. My father could not comprehend my argument that an alliance with the poor dumb slave was a worser kind of moonshine than trusting in the Landowners.
I left my father’s house at the age of seventeen meaning to return to it only when he had passed away & the land was mine. To pay him his due he did not injure me more by delaying much in perishing – only six years after the loss of my mother – when I was at nineteen years of age. Tippling at a rumshop frequented by the basest of fellows he got himself into a Discussion & the knife of a yeoman ended up in his pickled breast.
But returning to our acres for his burial I was dealt an even greater blow – one that altered my life for ever. My Father – I learned – had not bequeathed our land to me – his only son – but to his African mongrel bastard. He had made a cock-laird out of the pickaninnie & a familial cuckold of me.
The news was delivered to me as bold as you like by none other than Nancy herself. & at the funeral of my own father! She had the effrontery to be in tears & to put her arm around my shoulder & thought herself gallant in telling me it was her intention to act as a parent towards me.
A parent – Nancy! She continued that – although the deeds to my property were now in her misceginated bastard boy’s hands – if I came home I could regard the house & acreage as mine own & even tell others that that was the case to absolve me from any shame. She declared that she was content to return to her old chattel-house & that the larger of the two domains would remain to all extents & outward view my own. Even now I have not the words to express the fury that enveloped me.
Naturally I did not let the matter rest there. I at once made my way to the great Plantation House of which my father was a tenant. The squire of that land – Mr. Yorke – had a great good deal of sympathy for my plight & felt certain that my legacy would be justly restored.
For many years there had raged a debate in our country as to how much land a Negro or man of colour – the ill-begotten results of farmers & their brainless concubines – could own – if any he could own at all – & to what degree he could protect that land. My Militia friends assured me that if Courts could not settle my case sensibly & that if Nancy & her bastard child should need to be killed, I should rely upon their help. But another Law had been passed that made the Killing of a Negro a crime.
Thus I had to place my trust in Mr. Yorke & the unscientific & sophistical ways of the Courts over the return of my propertie. Months – & eventually years – went by & I wasted time conferring with big-wigged & small-spirited solicitors & juriconsults who were satisfied that nothing could be done. A few scant acres of Irish Jacobite land – as English Magistrates in their wisdom perceived my inheritance – was of little interest. Moreover my unchancy father – it seemed – knew his jurisdiction better than he did his black strumpet’s cunt. (Perhaps if I am granted liberal retirement I will polish this text. For the moment I will write as my hand directs.)
I met the mulatto who was the offspring of my Father one night while walking out from a Militia meeting. It shocked me to see him – for he was like an hourglass come to life. That bawling suckling had grown legs & arms & – though he could not have been more than twelve years of age – a grinning insult to me & reminder of years wasted – he strutted & swore already as his kind are wont to do til
the end of their days. As is the temperament of his Race he waited until my comrades had gone some way off before approaching in order to inform me that he refuted his mother’s promises & that I was not welcome in my own home nor ever again would be.