Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [69]
My eyes strayed up to the top of the page.
shackles and whipped me like a dog till the skin of my back was in ribbons. When after many years in England I ran away from this devilish master he had me kidnapped and pressed on a ship in the Thames wh was bound for Jamaica. Kind friends secured my release but now my so-called master demands me back and I live every day in periL The matter is in your bands Lord Mansfield sir. I hear that you have on sevl prior occasions ruled that blacks should be returned for resale in the Indies out of respect for the law of property. I ask you now your Lordship if I may be so bold to respect the law of humanity instead.
Your servant (tho no man's slave),
James Somerset
I dropped the page as if it was on fire. I was shaking all over. I had known that such things happened; I must have known. But I never had cause to think about them, in the course of a day at Kenwood. If I dwelt on such things at all, I supposed they happened far away, to unimaginable people who were used to such things, people for whom nothing could be done. Not here in England. Not to somebody like James Somerset. Like me.
I folded the letter up small and put it in my dress. Faintly I heard my name being called in the Ante-Room. "Dido! Dido!" Not a real name, of course, but a play one. I had been baptised Elizabeth, but when my cousin Elizabeth came to live at Kenwood, I became Dido—nicknamed for an African queen, I was told, who was once abandoned on a shore.
"I must go out, Elizabeth," I told my pink-cheeked cousin as I brushed past her in the Hall.
"Out?" she repeated, disconcerted. "Out where, Dido? For a walk?"
"An urgent message has come for his Lordship. I shall need the carriage—"
"But he's taken the carriage into town himself, silly."
Of course he had. "Then"—my heart pounding as if I was running a race—"I shall tell John to saddle the old roan to the little curricle."
"But Dido, dear—"
"I tell you, it can't wait."
I ran upstairs to fetch my shawl, before she could stop me. I had never behaved like this in my life. I was Dido Bell, known to the family and visitors as a sometimes pert but amiable girl. What was I doing? Was I a fool, or had I been a fool all my life till today? The walls of my room were covered in China papers; little people in strange draperies and pointed hats walked up and down. I remembered Mr. Adam telling me that Chinese figures were best for bedchambers, as they were conducive to dreaming. But I was not dreaming now.
Out in the coach house, I overrode Johns protests; I looked him square in the eye and told him that his Lordship had made me swear to bring him any message received today. In a quarter of an hour, the curricle was wheeling out the front gate and heading straight for the City.
The journey was a short one; it all went by me in a blur of stink and noise. I did not even know we had reached the Inner Temple till John pointed at the gate with his whip. As he was helping me jump down, a passing girl squealed "Look at that dirty blackamoor got up like a lady!"
Shock stopped my breath. I had never been spoken to that way in my life. My heart was stuck in my throat like a piece of gristle. What was I? I asked myself now. Blackamoor or lady? A terrible mixture. Neither fish nor flesh nor fowl.
I asked John to escort me in, but he set his jaw and said he had to stay with the horse and curricle or they would be stolen in a blink. So I marched in the gate myself. Pale men and red-faced ones pushed past me in long robes; I avoided their stares. My great-uncle's chambers were on King's Bench Walk, I knew that much. At the top of the steps I cleared my throat and asked to see Lord Mansfield. The porter