HER HUSBAND HAD been up all night nursing Elizabeth. She had coughed up a lot of blood so was feeling terribly weak. They had tried to keep this episode from the boys though Billy had wandered into their room at some point calling out, ‘Mama, are you dying?’ That was his fear. How much worse was his mother’s nightmare? His father took him back to bed and then returned to complete the wiping up of the bloody evidence before Lydia found the sheets and had to spend the morning washing.
All these bedside ministrations and ablutions brought back, for Elizabeth, those dark days at Caen Wood, nursing her Master. Then it had been her wiping up the blood.
Autumn, then winter, made the coughing worse.
She rested. Her husband’s affection was more valuable than ever. His touch had always healed her sadness.
‘You must leave off from the reading of those letters and write to your mother,’ he counselled.
Yes, darling, I must.’ She folded away the first letter of the day.
Dear Mammy
I hate them all. I know I never show it. I am always most obliging and thankful, but the hate that springs in me hurts me because often they are so kind — in their way. I read of the accounts of capture and abuse on London streets and along the hedgerows of England, and so have to be thankful for this place where my father has put me, where I am captive. Please write me. Please, please write to me…
Nearly losing Charles had banished any fear Elizabeth had of failure in this endeavour of writing to her mother. She was prepared now to risk any nervous anticipation, any disappointment that there might be. Dr Featherstone had been very kind ever since Johnny’s death. He had made Elizabeth comfortable with a homeopathic remedy. Also, she and John had been able to get advice from him about the post and its reliability when sending letters outside of the country. He had had reason himself to send a letter to a cousin who was living in Boston. He advised them to contact the captain of the ship, the Dover. The changes that had taken place with shipping to Pensacola, now that it was no longer a British colony, meant that they had to be more certain than ever of the ship’s destination. Ship post was the best rather than the packet post, he had explained.
Mr d’Aviniere had, with the aid of Seamus, made contact with the captain of the Dover. Captain Richardson was happy to be their messenger though he did not hold out great hopes. ‘So much has changed in those parts,’ he warned. The ship would sail within the fortnight. He had agreed to deliver the letter to Maria Belle on Wharf Street, her mother’s address mentioned in one of her letters to her daughter.
It was now left to Elizabeth to write to her mother. She had to put her fears away and write at once in order to catch the Dover before it sailed.
My Dearest Mother
Are you alive? I’ve been so lost and now that I have found you in your letters I must find out that you are still there. I cannot believe I am writing to you again with so much distress at what has happened and with such hope. You will receive this letter safely within the month. That is my hope and then that you will write to me. I feel wretched. You must not think ill of me. You must wonder why you have never heard from me since our exchange of letters when you left these shores in 1774. I did receive that first letter. In the last few months your letters together with my own have been returned to me by Beth. You must remember Beth, she was the girl who came to live with the Mansfields, my Master and his wife. I am sure you remember my difficulties in the early days with her, which I would tell you about at Mary Hill in Greenwich. But so much time has slipped away. Are you there? That is all I need to know. The complications and the reasons why your letters were never given to me, or mine to you, are beyond me to explain as is so much that has controlled our lives for decades. I do not wish to waste time with that matter now. I will only rage. So will you when you hear the reason. I will tell you all later. Hopefully. Are you there? I want to know that you are well. I want you to know that I am married to a dear man, John d’Aviniere. I have two sons, Charles and William Thomas, our Billy, who wants to see and hear from his grandmother. Charles’ twin brother Johnny sadly died a couple of years ago. I have always told them about you. I live in Pimlico on the other side of London. I am not so well. As you know, I was at times weak as a child with that persistent cough. I am worse with that, but not to worry now. As you must know I am 43 years of age. And you? I can’t believe are more than 59. That you are there is all my concern. Please forgive if you ever felt I had neglected you. I never did. This is a trick they have played upon me, upon us, for mine and your own good, I am told. But no, let us not give in to rancour. I want you, if you receive this letter, to reply at once. I understand ship post is best. Even better, if actually delivered to the captain of your ship. I have all the evidence that you know about post, so what can I teach you. I am hoping this will sail safely to you. I live at No. 9 Ranelagh Street in Pimlico. Please, please write to me. We live in continuing troubled times. But I am sure if you are there we can begin to talk through our letters. Dare I wish for more? I do. I do. I do.
I have given up the name of Dido. There is much to explain.
Your ever dearest daughter, Elizabeth, Lizzie as some close to me call me. You may want to call me Lizzie, never Dido.
She folded the letter, her eyes brimful, as her mother’s small parcels had been sent, her own less expertly. She heated the wax and sealed it at the folds. She gave it to her husband who went immediately that afternoon to convey it to Captain Richardson.
Elizabeth told Dr Featherstone he had to keep her alive. To hear from her mother filled her mind with too much wakefulness. He had to give her something for a good night’s sleep. She worried about what she saw as her unexpected and imminent death due to the erratic behaviour of her illness, which saw her healthy one moment and then quite ill another. She worried whether her mother would be able to travel. Her husband told her again that she must prepare herself for disappointment. She should not be surprised at any delay in a reply. Captain Richardson might not return for at least a month or two. She might not hear anything before the end of the summer.
Time in the hourglass on the pantry dresser was slipping through with the falling sand. She worried about what she had heard of storms and wars. She dreamt of shoals and rocks and prayed to the god Hurucan, who she remembered her mother talking of, to be merciful.
Billy and Charles were frustrated and irritable with the rainy weather not being able to play outside. While she still feared every moment that Charles was away from home, she and Mr d’Aviniere wished to build the boys’ confidence in going out. She had to keep her anxiety from the household so that they would not guess at her worry over her mother and about her own health. She had told the boys about the letters that Aunt Beth had brought and about the letter she had just written to their grandmother. They were curious and had begun to ask questions.
Elizabeth and her mother had both been writing into a void; just the longing and the plea, asking for each other, inquiring why are you not writing? The difference now was that her mother did not have her own letters nor her daughter’s.
Line upon line across the empty sea, an empty page she received with each breaking wave upon the shore of Pensacola, an empty page returning to her daughter in England on the tide.
Today, Elizabeth was led to the story of the ship the Zong, mentioned in her letters to her mother. She did not want to be near to that story. She remembered that it had been Mr Equiano who had alerted Mr Sharp to that fateful ship and the story of the murders. It was the first time she had heard the writer’s name.
Her Master had fallen from his horse that year. Why was that inserted there in her memory now? Might the injury have affected his judgment? Her mind was suddenly on fire. It was while she was nursing him that he mentioned the name of Olaudah Equiano, the African.
Names and facts shrieked at her with the persistent clarity of the insane she sometimes could hear coming over the marshes from Locke’s Asylum.
She eventually found what she was looking for. She remembered that she had written to her mother at the time of the Zong case. She recalled it well after all those conversations during the evenings over coffee. She still refused at that time to have any sugar. It was all she could do to keep Beth awake and insist that she listen to these extraordinary stories they were hearing. Returning to the desk in her room, she would sit up late, beginning under candlelight, day after day until each letter was completed and handed into Lady Betty for posting.
She now knew that they must have read her thoughts on these matters.
Dearest Mother
To whom can I speak openly of this matter? I cannot sleep. When my Master paused in the court, it was portentous. I too shuddered. What was it that would make a courtroom shudder? This is what we are told in the papers. The name Zong tolled like a death knell. Another word was Tobago, the small island. Do you remember, in the distance? I sneaked a look at maps in the library with my candle. I spun the globe. Was it not on that journey on my father’s ship, that journey to Cartagena when I was a small child? Do you remember? My father pointed. It surprised me all these years later to hear that the Zong was lost off Tobago, adrift, miles from its destination to Kingston, Jamaica. I remember the swell of that sea. Have you had the news of the trial? Do you get wind of these things? Maybe a captain on a ship speaks to you as you walk along the seafront where I imagine you. I heard my Master say that we are property, speaks of hundreds, thousands as property. I have known it. But now it makes me shudder as those in court who heard it and knew it of themselves. Am I still property? Freedom from being property? Is that what will happen? Is that what happened to you before you left? Might you become property again? I long to hear from you even after all these years. Why don’t I hear from you?
Your dearest daughter, Dido.
Elizabeth saw it plainly now. Lady Betty had paid little attention anymore and just gestured that she should rest her tight parcel of words on her dressing table. She had stopped looking at her when Dido brought her a letter. Elizabeth was certain she was not imagining it. She was remembering the moment as if yesterday.
Dearest Mother
The ship was bound for Jamaica. Captain Collingwood lost his way, this time between Hispaniola and that island. It had been a packed ship when it set sail with 470 souls. Too packed for the size of the slaver, as they call the vessel. Many had died of a sickness early in the voyage including seven of the seventeen-man crew. This was a fated ship. I listened gravely over coffee after dinner, even Beth was shaken into consciousness, even she shuddered. Supplies of water were running out. Luke Collingwood thought the sick should be thrown overboard. He ordered the crew to dispatch the bodies into the water. It was seen even as a mercy because of the severe disorders among the ill. My Master depended on facts and these were the facts that he was given. One hundred and thirty-one of the live cargo was thrown into the sea. The fast moving vessel was deaf to the cries of women and children, arms raised from the swell as they floundered, drowned. There is more I must write, but for now, I rest.
Your dearest daughter,
Dido
As a girl, she had told herself the story as a ghost story. She thought she could hear the cries like sea birds upon the waves where they fed on the drowned in the wake of the vessel, blood rising from those fathoms. Now there were the gulls overhead from the river, gulls circling and keening above her garden, their cries sounding like a knife scraped against porcelain.
Dearest Mama
Facts, Master asked for the facts. Some were thrown from the deck in the sight of their kindred, some shackled who revolted at their fate were thrown fettered into the swells, ten with loosened chains freely throwing themselves into the brine. They chose their own death as the best freedom they might achieve. It was reported that one man grabbed a rope and pulled himself aboard to freedom. I can hardly continue with this story and must leave off to go and supervise the milking. But I must tell you more as soon as I learn more facts.
Your Dido
To freedom? What freedom was that to climb aboard a slaver? What a man was he to find in the fury of that sea a rope swinging?
It was during one morning in the library as Elizabeth saw it clearly now, conversations overheard. It was not long before milking. The voices would not stop. And to stop it she had had to tell her mother the madness in her head that those gentlemen conversed about.
Dearest Mother, dear
My Master says that there was deception in the owner’s case. That was my Master’s voice in the library across from his dressing room. I talk of the house as if you know it. But of course you did not come here. I came to you along the river. I hold to those meetings, go over them in my head and have your voice for comfort and counsel. Caen Wood has disappeared into fog this morning. Master and Mr Way talk of the men you first told me about, Mr Granville Sharp and Olaudah Equiano, the African, who is the one that alerted Mr Sharp who then brought this case to my Master. It has not pleased my Master. The water shortage was to blame, and the sick. These two facts would threaten the entire cargo. That’s what they call it. This was the captain’s reckoning. No sooner had the captain chosen the first 54 infirm from below deck and ordered them thrown into the sea that it began to rain. Water was plentiful. He continued to argue that the sick were still a risk to the safety of the remainder of the live cargo. He convinced himself it was a mercy to throw them to the waves so to ensure the safety of the remainder of his cargo. This makes it that the insurers have been wronged. This is the case that Master must judge. If there were enough supplies of water, there was no necessity to jettison the live cargo. These are all Master’s thoughts. I learn this vocabulary. If of course there was no water that would be another matter altogether. They might then jettison the property, the cargo. He speaks of the likes of you and me, dear mother, as cargo. This is exactly what he must look into, he says.
Elizabeth looked at her boys playing, and at Lydia preparing the supper and felt so fortunate to be where she was now with her husband and her children.
Dearest Mammy
The captain, Luke Collingwood, had died soon after the ship arrived in Jamaica. But there is a witness who says that within sight of Jamaica another batch of cargo was pitched into the water from the deck in full sight of those brought up onto the deck that morning for washing. He also witnessed that it rained again. The slaver, as I now know to call the ship, was lost twice. Who can argue that we have solved the problem of longitude? Do you remember my father always talking of longitude and Mr Harrison’s clock? The Zong arrived in Kingston Jamaica with 420 gallons of water on board, 132 live cargo jettisoned upon the ocean. Master and two other judges have ordered a retrial. The law is the law Mr Way kept saying while he drank coffee with Master. He uses spoons of sugar in that coffee. Did I tell you that I do not use sugar anymore? It is my protest. The girls in the pantry giggle. Have you lost your sweet tooth, they say. They know I like cakes. I must confess to the tiniest portion of cake at times. In Master’s court there were cries, not property, not property, meaning that the cargo should not be termed property. But in law it is so. Slaves are property. We know. I expect that was what provoked the description of ‘shudder’ in the Morning Chronicle, imagining those cast as horses or furniture into the salty waves of the Atlantic ocean. Had cast you dear mother, had cast me? They shuddered at Master’s remarks. The original judgment favoured the captain’s assertion that there was no water. That is my Master’s view. To hear Master speaking like this forces me to ask, to whom do I speak? Beth was asleep I had to wake her. I must try and sleep…
Elizabeth remembered sleeping and then rising early before milking to complete her letter.
I continue. But what is clear is that there was plenty rain water for drinking, sufficient, so no need to jettison the live cargo. So there must be a retrial as it would not be lawful for the owners to get away with thinking that they were owed compensation. That is what Master says. I kept spinning the globe in the library as I listened to them across the corridor in Master’s dressing room. The ocean blue is so vivid in the story as it is upon the globe. What Mr Granville Sharp wants is a judgment that will aid the argument for the abolition of the trade. Planters and the American lobby want a judgment that will back them in continuing with their trade and the development of their plantations. Master says that if there were such an abolition it would help no one because the slaves would then be treated badly on less regulated ships by foreigners. There is no doubt that the merchants in Liverpool and Bristol will lose revenues. He says that we can’t risk that sort of catastrophe. Every owner from the little widow in Aldershot with her two slaves in Antigua, to the rich planter with numerous slaves and carriages in the West Country will lose according to their investment. Even a vicar in Hackney in need of his investment would be ruined. How on earth could they be compensated for such a loss? That would be something they will have to think about in the future, he says, if it ever comes to that. As you can see, dear Mammy I’m overwhelmed and wish you above all were here to advise me.
Your dearest, Dido.
PS I am beginning to hate myself. My good fortune worries me when so many die. And not to have sugar is the least I can do. Lost your sweet tooth, Dido, Master said the other evening when Molly came in serving cake to go with our coffee.
Elizabeth glanced at another of her mother’s letters and read: I can send for you now. But where are you? I never hear back from you.
She had never heard her Master talk of a retrial. She did not believe there had been, in the end, a retrial. She had not heard of one at any time thereafter. Her inquiries had been ignored.
She now remembered when Mr Equiano had come to speak at the Shoreditch Meeting House. It was packed to the rafters, she and Mr d’Aviniere squeezing in for a seat. They were already courting. It was like one of those early meetings, which her mother had taken her to, to learn about abolition. She was inspired to speak and she felt bold to ask a particular question concerning the retrial of the Zong case. He had answered briefly but then, after the meeting, when she got a chance to meet him with her list of questions he confirmed her belief that there had not been a retrial. She had needed to have that confirmed. No person had been held responsible for the murders. There never was such a trial, dear lady, and of course there should’ve been one. Justice can easily be done. And maybe they thought they had done the justice. But to do right is not easy. We must do the right thing. To do justice is easier, to do right, much harder. Elizabeth had marvelled at his eloquence and wisdom. She and John thanked the African gentleman for his undying work.
My Dearest Mother
In the last months it is the weather that has consumed everyone’s attention. The strange, unusual atmosphere we have all been noticing has become a national conversation. Newspapers up and down the country report it. To me it is the gloom of the trial…
Elizabeth, as she thought back, could not reconcile her regard for her Master’s wisdom in other matters, his affection, that chuckle, that laughter in his eyes which made him so human with his legal logic. There was the law as it stood, but could he not have, with his power, altered it? He was known for reforming mercantile law and the law of commerce. That was always the overwhelming concern, the loss of profits, which determined his view, the view of the age. This problem was still present. How much longer the struggle for freedom? Certainly Mr Equiano was asking that question. Elizabeth remembered looking at her Master years later, on his deathbed, and asking herself, was there ever a reckoning in his mind on these matters? Or, was the law always, as it had been, a narrow place to hide?
Dearest Mother
I must keep writing to you to keep you alive even though I don’t hear from you. 1783 has us still reeling from that terrible weather and more importantly from the almost inevitable diagnosis that Lady Betty is indeed very ill again. We had had experience of these bouts, which she suffered in ‘74 and ‘78 but this is much worse, sudden and violent. Master’s distress is visible. Against the strict instructions of the very good doctor in Kentish Town, Lady Betty has refused swallowing remedies of bark and the taking of asses’s milk which she had imbibed on the other two occasions.
Elizabeth was alone in the house when Beth’s letter was delivered.
Dear Lizzie
Forgive my delay. I have not known how to reply. You said that those close to you might call you Lizzie. I do feel close to you despite all that has happened to us, all that has been done. To undo it is to change the world and my little head is dizzy with such large questions. I leave it to Mr Finch-Hatton as I manage his house and his children. I still do ride. You will smile. But it is so important for me to ride out on my own and gallop away my worries. How do I answer your letter, your plea, your need for answers? I cannot fill in all the blanks. It was when I was coming of age, being prepared for marriage, that Lady Betty let me into the secret. I did wonder about your mother’s letters before since I never saw you reading them. I knew they had come to the house since I often collected the letters both at Bloomsbury and at Caen Wood and you did not speak of your mother in Pensacola. I did not know then about your letters not being posted. I saw you writing them and presumed they had been posted. But the original plan of your father’s and then carried out by Lady Betty came to me at the time of the portrait. I know you were angry about that, but to have told you about the letters at that time and to have broken my word to Lady Betty seemed impossible for me to do. Yes, you were different. You were lovable but you were different and we treated you as such, a sort of cousin. Your anger, your rage, is reasonable, Lizzie. No one thought of your mother’s feelings and no one thought it would be better for you to be with her. Everyone thought they were offering you a better life. Personally, I’m sure that it was always Lady Betty’s intention that eventually you should have the letters. But I think she just did not know when was quite the right time to do that. When Lady Betty died and then I got married I never thought of the matter again, until I was entrusted with the task by Aunt Anne of bringing Aunt Marjory’s inheritance and the letters to you. I suppose they thought that they all belonged to you and what harm could be done now. I cannot offer any other explanation nor help with the ways to contact your mother. Your life was not your own to determine. I suppose that is the truth of the matter. You belonged to your father, to my great-uncle and that was how they saw it, how we all saw it. You were just Dido. I can only hope that now you have the letters and you have your husband and children and with some inheritance from my great-uncle and Aunt Marjory you can begin to determine your own life with your husband, though the world has not changed sufficiently for me to be secure in that view. You will always be Dido, I suppose. That sounds harsh, maybe. I cannot imagine it otherwise. I’m sorry your heart is broken.
Your cousin.
Beth
Postscript
The children seemed happy enough together. Perhaps they’ll meet again. Then, what do children know till they are taught. They must be taught. I was taught. You did not eat with us, Dido, that made all the difference.