11
The smell did not leave me for the next month, but I did not care. I was free, and away from the city. Not like those poor souls on the Zong, or the other slaves I had grown up with at Barratt Hall.
My first night of freedom is still so clear to me. Mr Colley drove us as fast as his poor horse would go, all across town in the dark, straight to The Cat and Mutton in the docks. Henry was watching for us outside the inn.
“Nat! As I live and breathe!” Henry ran forward to hug me but stopped in his tracks as he saw I was covered in human filth. He laughed. “You do smell to heaven of all that’s rank and rotten! But I am so glad to see you I will shake your hand anyway.”
Henry took us round the back of the pub to a room where I washed and changed into some of his clothes.
“You are lucky to have found me,” Henry said, as he led me into the main room. “I am sailing at the end of the week.”
My heart sank a little then. But that night I ate and drank heartily. Mr Furman too, and we watched him dance and play the violin – Mary Lee was right, he could make the ship on his hat roll and sway exactly like a real three-master.
I had so much pork pie and good beer that my stomach stretched so full I could barely move. My head rang with the dancing tunes, and even though I still smelled of the night-soil cart I fell asleep by the side of the fire.
In the morning, the noise of the breeze making the ropes and sails on the river snap woke me early. I found myself in a bed under a roof made of thatch.
For a tiny moment I forgot myself. I was terrified and did not know where I was. Then I remembered. I was free.
I stayed in The Cat and Mutton for a few days, just in case – although Henry agreed it would be better for me to get out of the city, one way or another. Then, on the third day of my freedom, Mr Furman returned with a new coat and breeches, a gift from the Sons of Africa. I was very grateful. The coat was wool and well made, the best I’d ever had, and a fine shade of blue like the sky back home before a storm. I put it on straight away.
“Now, Nathaniel,” Mr Furman said sitting down at one of the inn’s large wooden tables, “I have a proposal for you.” He took out a letter. “This is from Mary.”
He began to read. Up until then I had been thinking about going to sea with Henry, perhaps working a ship as a free man. I knew I was happier on land, but beggars could not always be choosers. Now though, as Mr Furman spelled out another, different future, I was so happy I almost wept.
“She has found me work with her brothers?” I said, just in case I had got it wrong.
“If you want it.” Mr Furman nodded. “In the gardens they work at, out of town up in a village called Hackney, in…” He screwed up his face to read the words. “Mr Loddiges Nursery,” he read aloud. “Mr Loddiges has many glasshouses and needs a lad with experience of exotic plants…”
I smiled so wide, Mr Furman laughed. “Boy, you look like the cat who got the cream never mind the mutton!”
And that was that. I took my leave of Henry, my first friend.
“I will learn my letters,” I said. “I will, to write you.”
“Then I’d better learn mine too!” he said. “We shall make it a race, the first to write buys the other a pork pie and a jug of beer this time next year!”
We shook hands. And I set off with Mr Furman for my new life. As we walked the road north into the countryside, I thought happily that I was no longer bought or sold or owned by anyone. Soon my labour would bring me money I could call my own. Mamma and Old Thomas would be so proud of me.
I saw Mary again on the Whitsun holiday when she came out for a picnic with her brothers. It was a glorious day. We set out across the fields together, me, Mary, Joshua, who worked in the glasshouse with me, and Benjamin her older brother, who worked with Mr Loddiges, talking to customers.
Joshua and I carried the basket between us. Up in the sky, swallows – for I knew what those birds were called now – sliced through the air.
“Your namesakes, the Barratts, will be back to Jamaica in a fortnight,” she said.
I protested. “Oh, they are not my namesakes! Not any more. I will not be called by those that owned me!”
“Too right!” Joshua said, and Mary nodded.
“I’m Nat Thomas now. That’s my name.”
We found a patch of meadow and set out our feast. Mary had brought some beer and we had bought a good cheese from a dairy close to the gardens.
“How’s Mr Bird?” I asked. I hoped perhaps he had flown away too.
“Oh, he’s just the same, he went for Maggie when she was doing the fire up in the library, she’s lucky to have all her fingers. She forgot herself and ran straight down the proper stairs instead of the servants’ ones, bashed clean into Mistress Barratt, almost knocked her over!”
We all laughed, and Mary smiled. “How’s work going?” she asked.
Joshua grinned. “Nat’s teaching me all he knows, about the pineapples…”
“And Joshua’s teaching me my letters,” I replied.
Joshua nodded. “Nat’s a fast learner!”
Mary smiled. “You’ll be writing to Henry before he does I bet!”
I looked round. I was so lucky. Here we were in a meadow, the sun on our backs, the birds calling in the sky. My new life was still full of hard work, but I liked it. Sometimes, in the very early mornings, I would get up an hour before the others and help the night-soil men. Loddiges’ garden used a lot of night soil to help the plants grow and Mr Colley was one of the men that delivered to us. Most of the other lads hated the job, Joshua specially said the smell made him vomit. I did not mind one bit. Mr Colley always brought news of Mr Furman and every time the cart opened and the dirt fell out on to our manure heap I saw, in my mind’s eye, the Barratts covered in the stuff. I remembered again just how lucky I’d been to get away.
I raised my mug. “A toast to Mary!” She blushed and threw a handful of grass at me. “Thanks for your excellent help in my escape. And to friends and family far away.”
I thought of Mamma and all the folk across the ocean, and Henry crossing the North Sea. And I blinked then; it felt as if I had the most enormous stone in my throat. Mary put a hand on mine.
“You will see your mother again,” she said quietly. I nodded. It would just take time.
“I’ve got a toast!” Benjamin sat up. “To new friends!”
I raised my mug again. Mamma would be so pleased to see me here, among real friends. Working hard, free at last.
“Are you all right?” Mary asked.
I wiped my face. “It’s only some of that grass you threw at me, got in my eye…”
Joshua drained his cup. “Enough toasts!” He got up. “Who can climb to the top of that beech tree the fastest?” He ran across the meadow and reached the bottom of the tree before any of us had even had a chance.
“Not fair!” Benjamin called.
I sped up and jumped for the low branch, but Benjamin still beat me to the top. I pulled myself up and sat down beside him, panting. I looked out across the city of London to the south. And I felt at home.