Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [141]
He turned, his forehead creased. 'Why do you call me that?'
She backed away. The man was offended that she'd dared to speak to him.
But then he took a step towards her. 'Do I know you?'
Abi shook her head, very fast. 'No, sir. I mean, no,' she corrected herself.
'Don't be alarmed, sister,' he said, coming up close and speaking softly. 'I'm only a plain human soul like yourself; my name is Daniel Flyte. What need have we of titles?'
Abi's eyes narrowed to cracks. This was a very strange sort of Englishman. He wore his own hair, grey and thin. His buttons were made of horn. His coat, his shirt, his breeches, were all one grey, as if he'd been bleached in a sheep dip. But his face was brown from the sun and his eyes were bright.
'What can I do for you?' he prompted her.
She didn't know how to begin.
'Will you go along with me?' He resumed his brisk walk.
'My name Abi,' she said all at once, stumbling along beside him.
'Abi what?'
She was at a loss. 'That's all.' She stopped herself from saying sir, that time.
'Have you no surname?'
'Some say Abi Jones,' she admitted.
'Well, then,' he said patiently, as if to a child.
'But the Joneses not my family,' she blurted. 'They my owners.'
This, evidently, was the key to unlock Daniel Flyte. He stopped in his tracks, and his face came to life, all furrowed with distress. 'Sister,' he said, taking her by the wrist, 'no one owns you.'
Sometimes it was best to agree with whatever white folk said. Abi shrugged.
'You belong to your Maker, but your soul is free,' Daniel Flyte assured her. 'No man can hold another as property.'
'Well, the Joneses my masters, anywhichway,' Abi told him glumly. 'We live on Inch Lane.'
'You receive no remuneration?'
She blinked at him.
'Pay, that is? Wages?'
'No, sir.' She remembered his resentment of the title. 'I mean—'
'Never mind,' said Daniel Flyte with a wintry smile. 'Call me what you will.' His smile fell away and he tightened his grip on her arm. 'So these people, these Joneses, hold you in forced servitude?'
'I suppose,' said Abi.
The old man shook his head violently as if in pain. 'I belong to a Society of Friends,' he told her, 'who believe all men and women are worth the same, because they each have a bit of the same light in them. Do you see?'
She stared at him.
'A little fragment of light, hidden in each of our hearts. You follow me?'
She nodded, wary.
'Do you know what it says in the Bible about slavery?'
She shook her head, as he seemed to expect it.
Daniel Flyte's voice took on a fervent resonance. 'It says that masters must give fair wages to their servants, because they too have a master in heaven. It says, You shall eat the fruit of the labour of your hands. It says furthermore, Do not submit to a yoke of slavery!' His cheeks quivered with emotion; his lips were wet.
Abi was losing her grip on this conversation. She had to ask him, before they were interrupted. 'So I wonder,' she whispered, stepping closer, 'I wonder if you come, maybe. Come speak to my masters.'
'Ah.' Daniel Flyte let go of her wrist, then, and covered his mouth with his blunt-nailed hand as if he had just remembered something. 'Now therein lies a difficulty. I must tell you, sister, that our Society is a small and generally ill-liked one in these parts.' His voice had shrunk. 'Our policy is not to ... intervene directly. In private families, that is to say. The risks are such—the delicacy of our position with regard to our neighbours—'
Abi felt her strength drain away through her feet. When he came to a pause in his speech she muttered, 'Must go now. Mustn't be late.' She turned and walked away.
'But sister, if you come to our Meeting—'
She kept walking. Well, that was what you got for talking to strangers: less than nothing. The