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Brimfield closed his eyes. “I am old,” he said. “This memory has haunted me, and I hoped, well, if I might have spoken with Mrs. Wharf, there might have been some peace. But she is gone. Your vengeance is proof that my guilt is still current, hereabouts. But the murderer is gone, I tell you. Died in his own feather bed, eighty-seven years old, though there will be no repose for him in hell.”
Sure the mortal blow would follow next, Brimfield struggled to keep his bowels within him. But the moments passed without any change in his attacker’s grasp.
“What of the baby?” Ruth whispered, at last.
“Mistress Wharf warmed it in her own shawl and gave it a cloth teat. She dressed me in her son’s coat and said to take the poor creature to her cousins in Providence. From there I went on to their brethren in Philadelphia, to the Society of Friends, where freeing the African has been my life’s work.”
Ruth heard the expectation of thanks in his voice and knew him for a fool.
But Brimfield sensed that something had changed; there was a loosening of the lock on his arm, and he no longer could feel the pressure of the blade on his back anymore. He changed his tone, speaking as he would to a child that might be coddled out of a bad temper. “I wanted to thank Anne Wharf,” Brimfield said. “Without her, I might well have left Phoebe’s child out in the woods, and for such a transgression I would have been doomed for eternity.”
Ruth discovered that she could not draw a full breath as he continued. “I am convinced beyond argument that the African is endowed with a God-given soul. I will give Mistress Wharf my thanks in heaven.”
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Sweat beaded on her face and the chisel fell from her fingers.
Hearing the thud, Brimfield peeked behind him and saw the crude iron weapon on the ground; the black man’s eyes were squeezed shut. At that, Brimfield started to tiptoe away, slowly, tense as a cat. As soon as he had reached the trees, he broke into an awkward gallop and did not stop until he saw ships in the harbor.
Blood pounded in Ruth’s ears. She had never felt weaker or more confused. This was the moment she’d been living for, but the only thought she could muster was that her mother had not been Phyllis, as she’d been told, but Phoebe.
The only time she’d ever heard that name before was from Mimba. “The African names came with the mothers,”
she said. “Cato is from Keta. Phoebe is from Phibbi. Most of them here don’t remember. The mothers be dead. But I remember.”
“Phoebe,” Ruth whispered. “Phoebe,” as though
Mimba were still there to hear. “Waking and dreaming, not big different,” Mimba used to tell her. “Now-days and times-past, not so different.”
Brimfield had provided Ruth with one piece of the puzzle that had always eluded her. The slaying of Dr. Henry Brimfield’s slave girl was an old tale, but such a juicy story that it was repeated whenever any murder was mentioned.
When Gloucester had first discovered that the younger Brimfield had disappeared on the very night the corpse was
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discovered, covered in his coat, killed with his sword, the court of public opinion pronounced him guilty. That turned out to be the only form of justice ever meted out as Dr.
Brimfield, the father, had friends in the law. No warrant was ever issued and no search ensued, a breach of fairness that remained a shocking and satisfying detail of the gruesome story. Long after the slave girl’s name was forgotten (she was “the slave wench” or “Brimfield’s girl”), the locals continued to tut-tut about the murder: “Respectable is as respectable does.”
But of all the times Ruth had heard the tale repeated at Easter’s hearth, there was never any mention of a baby.
That knot was unraveled for her, but there were new mysteries now, and there was no way any of them would be solved.
She unfolded the paper packet again. The lock of hair was tied with a pink ribbon faded nearly white. Had he cut this from her head after she was dead? Did he use the saber that killed her to remove it as a souvenir?
The silver ring would not pass over the first knuckle of her littlest finger. Were her mother’s fingers so small?
Could a Yankee slave have owned such a thing? Was it a reward from her master, a gift from her mistress, a stolen secret? Did she wear it on her hand?