But as I was troubling myself, Din’s face appeared, smiling, in the gloom above the stairwell.
‘You not goin’ to follow me in, lady?’ He came through the doorway and started to walk towards me, holding out his hands.
‘You come all this way, and you want to miss the party? I can’t leave a lady standin’ out.’
‘How on God’s earth did you know it was me?’
‘I’d know you anywhere from your gait, for all those foolish boots.’ He took me firmly by the arm, and I shrank at his touch,
then relaxed into the warmth and firmness of his grasp, which was as welcome right now as a warm brandy and milk.
‘Where are we?’
‘Whitechapel,’ he replied. ‘Come on in.’
‘Can I?’
‘It’s not good, no. I was close to roundin’ on you all the way. But I’m not angry no more. You’re stupid, though. If I leave
you up here, you’ll be dead when I get back.’
We descended the steep wooden staircase – Din gripping my arm above the elbow – and I used both hands to lift my skirts. We
reached a room in the cellar. ‘You would do well to leave your veil on,’ he whispered.
Inside were congregated about ten people; most, but not all, of the same hue as my escort. Two were of the fair sex, although
whether that was a suitable title for a woman whose skin was blacker than Din’s, I was not altogether sure; Sir Jocelyn, no
doubt, would have had some words on the matter. Din found me a seat in the shadows at the back of the room where he left me,
and went to roam around. He waved at some of the occupants, placed his hands on the shoulders of others and patted them warmly,
and chatted to still more. Occasionally, while talking to someone, he would gesture back to me, and his companion would look
at me, and nod.
I was more nervous than when I was following him on the streets. My hands were clammy inside their gloves, and my armpits
too, despite the cold. Nobody seemed to look at me for long, but one of the women had a baby on her lap, and the baby was
staring hard at me. I was grateful for the veil, and wondered if Din would offer me his protection, should his colleagues
demand the removal of my disguise. I wondered when the fighting would start.
‘Back to our business here,’ a tall man with a red hat said, with a gesture to the minor disruption of our entrance.
Quickly the discussion grew, and the atmosphere in the room was as serious as death. Most of what they said passed me by completely;
names of people and places were tossed around, some I’d heard of before, others which were completely new to me. Someone mentioned
Freddie: Freddie Douglass. Harpers Ferry. John Brown. The conversation heated up. Shouts were thrown, fists pounded tables.
But this was not sport with a rabble of tanners. What was it then? An abominable brotherhood? A satanic sect?
‘South Carolina is gonna secede. We have to strike there.’
‘Our scouts are in Mississippi,’ a small, scruffy white man said. ‘All our people are there. South Carolina will be impractical,
impossible.’
‘South Carolina is where it’s at. Barnwell Rhett is our man, not Davis. We be fools to miss it.’
‘We be fools to try. Mississippi will go too, believe it. We still go for Davis.’
‘He’s saying he ain’t gonna. He opposes it in principle.’
The speaker was swooped on by half his listeners: ‘But in
practice
, fool?’ ‘You believe him?’ ‘Watch Mississippi pull away.’ ‘Watch and wait.’
The argument did not abate when the landlord brought in a tray of beer, which he distributed amongst the guests. A few took
their glasses from him with a nod and a smile, which he reciprocated; the tall man with the red hat ignored him, and the drinks
too. The landlord lingered for a while, listening to the debate, then left, seemingly unperturbed by, or accustomed to, the
rising tension. There would be a fight, I was sure of it.
‘He’s right,’ said the white man. ‘It’s stepping up, and we must step up too. Strike while the iron’s hot; strike while the
President’s fresh.’
‘You’re wrong. It’s too dangerous now. We shoulda nailed him earlier. He’ll get too big soon . . .’
‘. . . an’ bigger if Mississippi go too.’
‘The bigger the better.’
‘So nail him now!’
‘We don’ dare . . .’
‘Sol is right, but for the wrong reasons.’ This was Din speaking. He stood up, and the room hushed. Din. My heart beat loud
and I grew hot with fear. What was his role here? Was he some cat’s-paw, or a ring-leader, or a stooge? ‘We go for Davies.
But we don’ kill him. Davies is the mos’ importan’ man in the South, an’ we can’ have blood on our hands at this time. We
revert to the July plan.’ His accent was more pronounced than ever; I had never heard him talk like this. He made to sit down,
but nobody was going to let him.
‘You change yo’ tune, Din, little man! What’s gettin’ you?’
‘Nothin’,’ he said, rounding on his accuser. ‘I jus’ think . . . we’re wrong to use violence.’ I was stunned by his authority.
No one yet had elicited such a reaction. It was deafening. There were hisses from some, boos from others, gasps of surprise,
and even a few cheers by yet others.
‘Wrong to use violence! Do you hear the words of Dinjerous Din? Wrong to use violence!’
Din started to talk again, his voice low but solid. ‘Kidnap him and hol’ him hostage. Bring the country to its knees. Hol’
it to ransom.’
‘I’m hearin’ you, Din!’ shouted another man from the corner.
‘Give him a taste o’ captivity; and kill him if our demands aren’ met,’ Din continued.
‘Kill him first! Kill him first!’ someone else shouted amidst the rising hubbub.
‘Silence y’all!’ Din was standing in the centre of the chaos. ‘We take; we don’ kill. We bite; we don’ kill. We strike; we
don’ kill. Why?’ The fuss started to die down around him. The man was a great speaker. ‘Cos we wan’ time. Time to take our
demands to the Senate, and time for them to consider them. There is too much blood already on our hands.’ Then he added quietly,
‘I know that more’n all.’
‘Din, you have been baying for blood since you joined us!’ the man called Sol said. He had a warm face; he looked tired, and
old, but I liked him already. ‘What’s changed, brother?’
‘What’s changed? What’s changed is that I know I’m a fighter. We’re all fighters here; an’ we can’ fight if we are dead. I
ain’ gonna risk a hanging without trial. I ain’ gonna risk that. The day I risk a hangin’ will be the day I know I am seen
as a citizen of the United States, and that I be granted a trial for my wrong-doin’.’
‘You’re a coward, Din. A cheap chicken-heart.’
‘You wrong me, Adam, you
wrong
me. Remember New Orleans? That was nothin’ short of a suicide mission, but I took it. I will die for my people and my country.
If
I believe it is the right action. But now, it’s changed. You can smell it too. And Jefferson Davis is mo’ use to us alive
than dead. Don’ misun’erstand: I could pull the knife on the man if I wanted to. I could kill any man who says he’ll uphold
slavery at any cost, includin’ the cost of the union. But if I am to lead the team o’ hostage-takers – and I have been chosen
by you, all o’ you – I will feed that man the finest foods and wines three times a day an’ mo’; I will treat him in his captivity
like an African king – nay, an African god – if it will secure freedom for ev’ry nigger under the sun, and under grey skies
too, for that matter.’
‘We chose you, Dinjerous Boy, to hijack the man,’ said the man in the red hat, amidst nodding faces. ‘We did not choose you
to decide. If we wan’ you to kill him, you kill him! What’s change’ yo’ tune, bogus boy?’
I was trembling so hard the veil must have been bobbing visibly to the entire room, although no one was interested in me.
I was sharing a room with a renegade group of fugitives in a tiny corner of an unimportant district of London, yet here the
plans to overthrow the entire remaining centuries-old institution of slavery were being laid down. The secret I had hoped
to procure in order to barter with Din for his loyalty was proving larger, more horrific, more noble, than I had ever, ever
imagined.
And here Din faltered.
‘What’s change’ yo’ mind, for you, hmm? Bin seein’ too many pretty ladies, hmm?’ A peal of laughter went round the group;
some of them looked over at me.
‘Leave her out of it,’ Din said.
‘But you brought her here, Din-din. Did yo’ ask? Don’t nobody bring no one here without askin’. Who are you, precious girl?’
Red hat called over to me. ‘Stand up. Let me see your pretty face.’
There was more laughter; I wished I could have pleaded with my eyes to Din to know what to do.
‘Leave her, Jon-Jo,’ Din commanded.
‘You makin’ me?’
‘Yes I am. The lady will be no trouble. No trouble at all. She’s got enough dirty secrets of her own to worry about. It’ll
be easy for me to keep her quiet.’
‘Make sure you see to it, brother. Personally.’
‘Oh, an’ I will.’ He threw one more glance over at me, and with that, the attention shifted away from us, and I exhaled, and
Din too, by the look of him. He chewed the skin round his fingers as the conversation turned elsewhere, but he did not look
back at me.
I concentrated hard for the rest of the evening, and I learnt a lot. I learnt that it was one thing to leave America if you’re
black, and quite another to get back in again, and I heard the pros and cons of route A (Cunard, the Great Western, steerage
and Ellis Island), versus route B (cargo, trade, contraband and stowing-away). I heard news about sources of funds, timing,
different ways to get messages safely to the mostly Quaker families closest to Davis’s homestead who had offered their support.
Only by listening hard could I forget about myself; slowly, my trembling subsided, and the meeting, too, started to relax.
Eventually Din came over, and offered to escort me home.
‘You not comin’ to the tan-pits, Dinjer Boy?’ someone called, but Din shook his head. We climbed the stairs together, knowing
that we were leaving something of a stir behind us, and stood outside in the dark.
‘Don’t take me home. You are going to the Borough.’
‘So? You goin’ to Lambeth. I will survive the journey; you might not.’
I was grateful, in truth, for it wasn’t safe for me. Besides, I knew I needed to explain my presence there, but the questions
poured forth as we walked, and I believed my interest compensated for my transgression. I knew nothing, and wanted to know
every how, why and wherefore that had brought Din to that dingy basement in Whitechapel.
So he told me, on the long journey back to Lambeth, about the many slave insurrections that had been tried and which had failed,
and the difficulty in co-ordinating uprisings across the country. For a full-scale revolution, he told me, a critical mass
of insurgents had to be reached: the big ones – Gabriel’s Rebellion in 1800, Southampton County in 1831 – were not big enough.
They might have raised awareness of the sufferings of slaves, but only served to increase fear of the darkie. He told me too
of John Brown, a white man, who nearly succeeded, seizing a hundred thousand muskets and rifles from the arsenal at Harpers
Ferry in Virginia just a few years ago, with the intention of galloping south with them to arm every slave he met along the
way, but he failed.
‘Why? There must be millions of you, Din, enough for several armies.’
‘Do you know, ma’am, what slavery does to you? Do you think all slaves are always poised for a rebellion, watchin’ an’ waitin’
for any chance to rise up an’ conquer? Liberty’s been so long gone now, folks are scared of it. Slavery makes you dependent.
It’s a drug you’re forced to swallow, a drug that lays you low and strips you of all your dignity. If you ain’t got dignity,
you ain’t got nothin’ to fight for. There ain’t gonna be no wholescale rebellion, only isolated escapes here an’ there. You
can’t tell a man to give up opium once the doctor has made sure of his addiction. You can only destroy all opium around, an’
help the addict find something better.’
‘So, why are you planning to take someone hostage?’ I asked.
‘Call it a new approach. It’s radical, an’ it’s simple. Can you imagine white folks allowin’ a man like Jefferson Davis to
become a martyr, to die at the hands of niggers?’
‘They said you changed your mind; said that you wanted murder before.’
‘I did, for a while. But now I’m not so sure.’ He fell quiet, and I did not know what to say. My body was suffused with some
strong feeling for him, and it ached for reciprocity. ‘This way, America will be forced to listen; they will rewrite the statute
books.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘Yes. And no. Ain’ nothin’ sure when you’ve been a slave. But it won’t be much longer. I can feel in my bones that a war is
imminent. Yet too I wonder if it will ever happen. I promise you now, ma’am, I will die tryin’.’
‘I believe you. But I do hope you won’t.’ Oh, but I curled into myself, for my trite words could not say the half of it.
‘It’s what I live for, ma’am. Once my mamma died, I had nothing else, except the freedom of my people and their children.
It is all I live for. It is how I love.’
Love. We were here at last. He had said the word. I probed him gently. ‘I do not understand. How is it how you love?’
‘Is love not only sacrifice? Do we not give up those we love, in order to prove to them that they are loved? My mother gave
up her freedom for me; I gave up my chance of freedom for her. I only know love for what we lose by it.’
And I was lost myself, for I started to realise then what what I wanted with this man, and knew that I would never have even
half of it, and was not sure that I even deserved it.
Eventually I was too tired to ask any more, and he had spoken enough. We sat in each other’s silence on the omnibus home,
and barely looked at each other. I kept my veil on; it was easier that way. After all, I was meant to be returning from a
funeral, and whatever little reputation I might have in the neighbourhood would be lost entirely if I were seen publicly with
a black man in the small hours of the morning. But he was my protection too; I was safe from the drunkards, the leering swells,
the policemen, the beggars. I did not for a moment think I might be at risk from him.