In the next year it seemed that everyone of my own race felt it incumbent upon themselves to give me advice about my trip to London.
“Remember yourself,” from Aunt Cumsee. “Don’t hold him in higher esteem than he holds you. Or it will come to grief.”
“Do not let Nathaniel dally with you,” Obour wrote. “Remember to lay aside money from the earnings of your book. Do not garner expensive habits in London. And remember, they may be sending you to London, but they are still playing with you. Find some way to make a living for when they leave you to your own devices.”
Sulie became outright hostile. I swear that woman lay awake nights thinking of ways to plague me.
She would serve me cold tea. Or make the water extra hot and spill some on my hand while pouring it.
She would scorch a dress of mine when ironing it. Mrs. Wheatley had Aunt Cumsee take my measurements, so her own mantuamaker could fashion me a new wardrobe.
Sulie was to deliver them. She changed the measurements. Three new gowns, fancier than I’d ever possessed, made of silk with lace trim, had to be ripped apart and made over to remedy the matter.
Once she sent bad meat to my room on a tray. Mrs. Wheatley, realizing she could no longer trust Sulie, had Prince bring my food up to my room when I was working.
I was glad for it. I hadn’t seen much of Prince of late.
“You happy, Phillis?” he asked me one day after he delivered my noon meal.
I assured him I was.
“Then how come you look like they gonna take you out an’ shoot you at sunrise?”
I could never lie to Prince. “I was just pondering.”
“’Bout what?”
“Mrs. Wheatley wants some poems left out of the book.”
He scowled and set the tray down. “Which poems?”
“The one I wrote on the death of Chris Seider. And the one I wrote about the arrival of the British ships of war.”
Prince had read all my poems. In secret. The family still didn’t know he could read and write. But when I’d come back from Newport, after finding this out, I had managed to slip all my poems to him. “What about the one on the massacre?” he asked.
“That, too. She says they’re too anti-British.”
To my surprise, he didn’t object. He commenced to pour my tea. “You want words from me on this?”
“Yes, Prince.”
“Sure ’nuf, then, here’s the way I see it. Seems to me they wouldn’t be likin’ those poems over there in England, those people with the red coats. And the mistress knows this. Plenty of time to get those poems published here in America. After.”
“After what?”
“Plenty of time,” was all he would say.
I nodded, waiting. Surely there would be more.
There was.
“You gotta think on the important things now.”
I waited again.
“You know this Jonathan Williams they’re out visitin’ today?”
“Only as a neighbor.”
“His uncle-in-law is a man named Benjamin Franklin, who is colonial agent for Pennsylvania over in London.”
I felt something coming. I looked up into Prince’s lean, dark face.
“Mrs. Wheatley, she wants to fix things so as you meet Mr. Franklin over there. Franklin has influence. Mr. Nathaniel, he isn’t so fond of Franklin.”
“Why?”
“He’s from Philadelphia. A Quaker.”
“I never heard Nathaniel speak ill of Quakers.”
“Reason Mr. Nathaniel doesn’t like him got nuthin’ to do with religion.”
“Why then?”
“Think on it, Phillis. It will come to you. You smart enough to go to London, you smart enough to figure it out.”
Before he left the room, he paused. “If Benjamin Franklin calls on you over there, you see him, Phillis. Even if Mr. Nathaniel don’t like it. Promise.”
I promised. But for all the world, I did not know what pledge this was that I had given.
Two weeks later Scipio Moorhead, the Negro artist, was drawing my likeness in his studio. The Countess of Huntington, to whom my book would be dedicated, had written saying a likeness of me should appear in front of the book. Mrs. Wheatley had commissioned Scipio to do it.
“You be free in England. You know that, don’t you?” Scipio did not mince words.
I sat at a desk in front of a large window in his studio. In a far corner of the room Scipio’s wife, Sarah, was painting in lacquer on glass.
“How can that be?”
“Didn’t they tell you? No, I suppose not.”
“Tell me what? Don’t play with me, Scipio. What is there that I should know?”
“Just what Lord Mansfield said a year ago in London.”
“Who is Lord Mansfield?”
“A judge. You know. The kind what wears a long white wig, with all those curls? And black robes?”
“I know what a judge wears, Scipio. What did he say that has to do with my being free in London?”
“Scipio,” Sarah warned, “you got this job from the Wheatleys. And we need the money. So don’t go and ruin it.”
“Hush, Sarah. What’s the harm in telling Phillis what to expect in London?”
“The harm is that she’ll go home and tell the Wheatleys. And they’ll never commission you to do a sketch again. Or recommend you to their friends.”
“Then Phillis won’t tell the Wheatleys. Will you, Phillis?”
“I know when to keep a still tongue in my head.”
So he told me then. “A year ago this British judge, Lord Mansfield, handed down a decision. And there it is, written plain as the nose on your face. ‘As soon as a slave sets foot on the soil of the British islands, he becomes free.’”
I turned to look at him. “He never did.”
“There you go turnin’. You know this is a profile, Phillis. Now you sit properlike.”
“I’m sitting properlike.”
“What happened is,” he explained, “this Jamaican slave, name of James Somerset, was brought to England by his master. No sooner he gets there, he sues in court for his freedom. Judge Mansfield ponders on it and says, ‘The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, an’ every man is free who breathes it.’”
“Women, too?”
“’Course.”
“Then why didn’t he say so?”
“You know how these judges like to talk in riddles. Makes them seem smarter than the rest of us. So you just remember, when you get to England, you breathe some of that pure air. And you get yourself free.”
“But how will I do that, Scipio?”
“You just keep your mouth shut and your ears open. And sooner or later someone will tell you how. You’ll see.”