HABS FINISHED TYING his hammock, pulling the ropes, testing the knots. His was the lowest bunk and had been since he’d arrived; he preferred it that way. ‘Too many falls,’ he’d say. Three feet up the stanchions, Ned was already splayed across his hammock and humming, loudly.
Habs winced. ‘That ain’t like no tune I ever heard.’
‘It’s a harmony, Habs,’ said Ned.
‘Tha’s what you think?’
‘Tha’s what I think,’ said Ned. ‘And my one and a half ears still better’n your two.’
Habs laughed, slid into his hammock and pushed his feet against the sagging shape above him. ‘But I have two good legs here sayin’ it’s time to hush, old man,’ he said. ‘King Dick can’t be far away.’
They both lay still and listened.
The turnkeys had called the roll then shut and bolted the doors. This was the daily cue for nine hundred and ninety-five hammocks to be slung, but in Mess 190 they were still waiting for the King. Habs peered from his lowly vantage point. King Dick’s mess was at the back of the first floor, two mattresses and a heap of blankets marking his sleeping quarters. Above him, two hammocks held the already sleeping forms of Alex Daniels and Jonathan Singer; one pale arm dangled from the lower, a mop of brown hair from the upper. In the other berths, the King’s favourites: the sailors he could rely on. Some acted with him, some made him laugh, others ran the gaming. All would fight for him.
Outside, it was snowing again, a few flakes making their way through the prison’s shutters and melting into small puddles. Inside, the temperature had been pushed above freezing only by the sheer number of men clustered together and their flickering pipes. As usual, a cloud of grey smoke rose from Sam’s hammock.
‘Good night, King Dick!’ and ‘God bless you, King Dick!’ came from all around and, instinctively, Habs rolled back out of his hammock.
‘You gonna blow his candle out for him or some such?’ said Ned, peering from under his thin blanket. ‘’Cos I’m sure he can do that by himself, y’know.’
‘Shut up, Ned,’ said Habs. ‘He’s here now.’
Lamp in one hand, club in the other, the King strode up to the mess. ‘Mr Hobbs, Mr Watson, Mr Palmer.’ He raised the flame to each in greeting, and three voices shot back, ‘Good evening, King Dick!’ He walked to his bed, nodding at Habs as he passed, gently placed Alex’s arm inside the hammock, then slumped to the floor. The hammocks trembled and Habs fancied that everyone in Four always knew the exact moment King Dick had reached his bed. And maybe in Five and Seven, too.
‘Mr Habakkuk Snow, Mr Sam Snow and Mr Ned Penny,’ said the King. ‘I enjoyed that readin’ today. And your new friend. Mr Joe Hill, is quite somethin’ as Juliet. Providence has been good to us, don’t you think?’
‘I say so, too,’ said Habs, ‘and by the end we had quite a crowd, didn’t we? They was sorry to see us go.’
King Dick propped himself up against the wall, blankets behind him, blankets on top of him. Swapping his club for a bottle of rum, he poured a large portion into a cup then swallowed half in one deep draught. ‘For never was a story of more woe,’ he intoned, his voice easily projecting through the prison din, ‘than this of Juliet and her Romeo. I love that line,’ said the King. ‘Ever since I first read it. No wonder they applauded – I wanted to applaud, too.’
‘Poor Master Jackson shed a tear,’ said Sam.
‘Which,’ said Ned, ‘as he was playin’ the recently slain Paris, was mighty clever.’
A voice from a nearby mess. ‘Will there be time for a show, King Dick?’ Then another: ‘Will we be home soon, King Dick?’
‘Who is that callin’?’ said the King, peering past his candles.
‘Fountain, sir,’ came the reply. ‘Fountain MacFall, freeman from New York.’
‘And before New York, Mr MacFall? Where did your family call home?’
‘Charleston, South Carolina, sir. Place called Rocky Point.’
‘And before that?’ said the King. ‘Do you know your history, Mr MacFall?’
‘My folks said we come from a country called Senegal, but I never been there and I know nothin’ ’bout it. Like I said, home is New York. Place called Fresh Water Pond, but there’s no fresh water there, King Dick, case you come callin’.’
The King laughed and raised his cup towards Fountain’s hammock. ‘Well, I might just do that, Mr MacFall from Fresh Water Pond and Senegal. My ol’ family musta been your neighbours, jus’ down the coast.’
Ned, his mouth up close to Habs’s hammock, whispered, ‘Penny on the kidnap story again.’
Habs reached out to shake Ned’s hand.
The King finished his rum in two mouthfuls. He had seen the transaction.
‘You got some business goin’ on there, Mr Penny, Mr Snow? Somethin’ I should know about?’
Habs jumped in, thinking fast. ‘No, sir. I was jus’ offerin’ Mr Penny here one penny to tell his story, if you need him. You know how reluctant he is …’
A voice from the hammocks. ‘Yeah, you got that ’scapin’ story, Mr Penny, tell us that one.’ A chorus of agreement around the messes.
‘Say your piece, Mr Penny,’ said the King, ‘then Mr Snow can pay you.’ He wafted his free hand. The stage was Ned’s.
‘If you sure, King Dick,’ protested Ned. ‘I reckon pretty much everyone knows …’
He was silenced by the King’s theatrical coughing.
‘I have a question for Mr Penny,’ he said, after loudly clearing his throat. ‘You a free man, Mr Penny?’
Ned was now sitting upright on his hammock. Sam handed him a pipe, Habs a bottle. ‘Uh-huh. In my head, yes. In my soul, yes. Always.’
Applause and shouts of ‘Amen!’ greeted that.
‘But legally speakin’ and in truth, I am property. I am ’scaped from the Pointe plantation, state of Louisiana.’
Applause rolled around the room.
‘Had an overseer on that land, name of McDonnall. I still shiver to say his name. Meanest fucker I ever saw. We cut his stalks, did his grindin’, did his boilin’, workin’ sixteen hours a day, an’ if we dropped dead then he’d jus’ buy another one of us. When them census takers came callin’, they was jus’ chased off the land, on account of McDonnall not wantin’ anyone to know who’s alive and who ain’t. So when he died – I forget how that happened exactly – many of us jus’ took to the road. We knew we was headin’ north, knew Massachusetts was the only state, so we was told, with no slaves. And we said that over and over. We said that all the time, it was like a magic spell to us. No slaves! Who’d heard o’ such a thing?’ He took a swig of beer and inhaled deeply from the pipe. ‘This story takes two years, by the way – you want it all?’
There was laughter and some encouraging cheers, but Ned batted them away.
‘You know what happens. We moved at night, a few miles where we could, find friends where we could. Lot of us didn’t make it. Bounty-hunters, slave-catchers, white devils of all kinds, traitors, too, they all come after us.’ Ned’s voice tailed away. He closed his eyes and shuddered, the remembrance too easy, too familiar. There was an almost-silence, the closest to quiet Habs could recall for many years.
‘You want me to finish it for you, Ned?’ he whispered.
‘No, I’m not an imbecile jus’ yet,’ Ned replied. ‘We was in North Carolina, hidin’ in some woods outside o’ Wilmington, I think it was, when we got news of a ship would take us north. There’s only three of us by now. Me an’ two boys, names of Otis an’ John. They don’t trust no boat captains but I persuade ’em to stow away, as we ain’t fit for walkin’ an’ hidin’ no more. The captain, he put us in crates, an’ I arrived in Boston June 18th 1809, sharing a box with some printin’ press machinery stuck in my face.’
‘That explains why you so ugly, then!’ called Habs.
‘Oh, I was pretty back then, real pretty,’ Ned said over laughter. ‘Everyone said so. S’jus’ the war and that cannonball gone an’ done for me.’
From a distant mess: ‘An’ what happened to the boys? Otis an’ John?’
Ned dropped his head, his shoulders sliding forward. ‘You know what happened,’ he said. Ned lay back on his hammock as the word ‘slavecatcher’ was muttered around the block.
‘A penny for Mr Penny,’ growled the King.