I knew something was wrong when Prince did not meet me at Long Wharf in Boston. The Wheatley carriage was there, all right, looking old and in need of repair in comparison to the fancy gold-trimmed coaches I’d seen in London.
But no Prince.
A nigra man met me. Name of Bristol.
“Sulie’s husband,” he told me.
“I didn’t know Sulie had wed.”
He smiled at me. Why, I thought, he’s all puffed up with himself.
“Lots of things you doan know. Been away awhile, haven’t you?”
“Four and a half months.”
“Things change in that time.”
I did not like him. He knew things that I didn’t. And he acted superior about it. “Where is Prince?” I asked him as he commenced to pull away from the wharf.
Everything was wrong. For one thing, Boston looked smaller. What had happened to it? For another, I had a sense of dread.
“Prince gone.”
“Where?”
He shrugged. “Been messin’ wif those Sons of Liberty. Gone.” It was all he would tell me.
Sulie opened the door. “So you’s home. Good thing, too. I’m tired.”
The house seemed seedy and in need of a good cleaning. Where was Aunt Cumsee? I looked around. No one made a move to take my bags. I had to carry them upstairs myself.
My mistress lay in bed, looking wan. She held her arms out to me. “Phillis, child, come to me.”
I ran to her and knelt down beside the bed. She smelled of sickness. I noticed a stain on the front of her bed gown. Never would she have allowed such in the past.
“Where’s Aunt Cumsee?” I asked.
“Oh, Phillis, we were both taken with the fever at the same time. She’s so old, you know. We had to send her to her sister’s. We have only Sulie now. She and Bristol run things.”
“They aren’t doing a very good job of it, from what I can see.”
“Hush, dear, they’re doing their best. Now, tell me all about London.”
That night, as a cold September rain slashed outside the dining room windows, I left Mrs. Wheatley sleeping and went belowstairs to seek out my master. In the pocket I wore around my waist was the letter Nathaniel had penned asking for my freedom.
But I had something to attend to first. I stood in the kitchen. “There’s no more wood for the mistress’s fire.”
Sulie was spooning some soup into a bowl. “Then get some. Or did you forget? It sits right outside the door there.” She turned to face me.
So, then, I minded, this is how it is to be. But I would not chide her. She was waiting for me to do that. She had been waiting a long time to put me in my place.
I just stared at her stonily.
“Oh, I forgot.” She cocked her head and put one hand on her hip. “You was supposed to see the king and queen. Well, we can’t have you fetchin’ wood now, can we? Wouldn’t be seemly. Then suppose you bring this to the master in the liberty. And I’ll get the wood.”
I put the soup on a tray, sliced some bread and cheese, and fetched a glass of Madeira. I found Mr. Wheatley at his desk before a meager fire, scribbling by the light of a lone candle.
“Phillis!”
I set down the tray.
He got up and hugged me. Then he wept.
I comforted him. The sight of him weeping like that undid me. He looked so different, so old. His hair was thin and white; there were sagging lines under his eyes. His hands shook.
“You find me not at my best. My gout has been plaguing me. How was your voyage? Won’t you sit and sup with me?”
“You sup in here?”
“Sulie says why bother with the dining room when I eat alone anyway? It saves lighting the hearth in there.”
“Sir, forgive my asking, but are we suffering a shortage of funds?”
“Of course not!”
“Then why do I find you and my mistress in such mean circumstances?”
“We’re as we always were, Phillis. Mayhap your sojourn in London has made your blood too rich for our simple tastes. Speaking of which”—and he took a sip of the soup—"go fetch a bowl and sup with me. There are more important things we must discuss.”
“Things are not good,” he said, after inquiring after my health and telling me how proud and happy I had made them. “Governor Hutchinson is walking around saying that any union between the colonies is pretty well broken. And I’m afraid it is true. The nonimportation agreement turned us against each other. New Yorkers call Boston the common sewer of America. The Boston Gazette describes Rhode Island as filthy, nasty, and dirty.”
He would talk politics. And I must listen.
“The king now pays the judges himself. No more are they receiving their salaries from the General Court of Massachusetts. So they now act without regard to the wishes of our local officials.”
“Sir, have you become a Whig, then?”
“I? No, Phillis. The Whigs are scattered. People are tired of riots and rabble in the streets. But now we hear that in order to save the East India Tea Company from bankruptcy, the Crown is giving it the monopoly on the American market. We must now buy only what tea is sent to us. No more smuggling in Dutch tea. The merchants are terrified. Suppose the Crown does this with Madeira? Or shoes?”
“Where do your sympathies fall, then?”
“With Englishmen of liberty everywhere,” he said solemnly, “here and abroad.”
It was a vague answer, I thought, from a vague man. He did not seem to know what he was about. He seemed confused. Yet he pored over notes and newspapers on his desk as if he were Benjamin Franklin.
We talked for a while. He inquired after Nathaniel. I felt the letter in my pocket. Before I had a chance to speak, he smiled at me. “Ah, Phillis, it’s so good to have you home. We need you here. Now things will get back to the way they used to be.”
“Yes, sir,” I said weakly.
Then he said he must get back to work.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He smiled at me triumphantly. “I am proposing myself as a consignee to sell the tea when it arrives from England. Only certain shoppekeepers are being selected to sell it. And will make the profit.”
“But you said the merchants are terrified of this tea.”
“Yes, but everyone trusts me, you see. I had a respected merchant house for years. We can’t allow the Hutchinsons to be selected. And they are putting themselves forth for the job.”
“‘We’?”
“We’re all giving the Hutchinsons a run for their money. I, John Hancock, Will Molineaux, and John Rowe.” He went back to his scribbling.
“But you have no more shoppe,” I reminded him.
“I’ll sell the tea from my front parlor if I must.” He winked at me. “Nathaniel isn’t the only merchant in the family. There’s life in this old boy yet. I’ll show him.”
So that was it. He had nothing to do with himself; Nathaniel had taken everything over. My master had no more life’s work. He sat in this dimly lighted house with his wife sickly upstairs, pushed around by Sulie, lonely, ailing, and confused by the changing world around him.
“Sir,” I asked, “where is Prince?”
“Prince?” He considered the matter for a moment. “He’s taken up with the Patriots in Newport. While you were away he made a trip there and became involved in luring a royal schooner into shallow water, then boarding and burning her. I couldn’t have that, Phillis, not with my son a London merchant. I gave him his freedom and let him go.”
“You freed Prince?”
“Why, yes. I had to. Loyalists were after his hide. I could not have him connected with this house.”
I felt for the letter in my pocket.
“And he’ll come to no good. There are some people who just don’t know what to do with this freedom. He’ll end up on the end of a rope. Mark what I say.”