‘She buy me, and she tell me one day soon she going set me free.’

‘And you believe her?’

‘Me know how to handle Mistress Josephine. Don’t you worry bout that.’

‘But why?’ After all the days and nights me give Mistress Josephine every little thing she ask of me, why she not buying me?

‘Mistress Josephine always get whatever she want,’ Calla say. ‘Then when she get it, she use it, toss it aside. Except no matter how much she try, she couldn’t have no pickney. Is me help her to get big with child. Is me give her little Rose. And now she want another.’

‘Is that what you do, Calla? Give people what they want?’

‘No, little Will. Me here to serve the spirits. Remember the Ancestors and pay dem homage. Is the spirit working through me that give life to little Rose, not me.’

Then Calla hug me up long and hard. I watch as she climb into the carriage with Mistress Josephine. She look straight ahead, don’t wave goodbye. Just sit, looking towards her future freedom. I didn’t know it then, but was the last time I going see old Calla, hold her close, the grandmother who helped bring me into the world, looked after me, kept me safe. Tried to teach me the right and wrong of the way of things.

Me slumped in the dirt, waiting to move on, a great understanding wash through me. Stella, Massa, James, now Calla, the most important people in my life, heading down different paths, gone for good. And the dream of freedom I had as a little boy, to be like my hawk, William the Second, flying free above the world of slavery, is finally gone too.

Part Two

Parish of Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica, 1826

No More Hiding

Is three years since Stella gone over to the Ancestors. I am alone, just one among many. No longer the son of the Massa. I use the skills I learn as a pickney to watch, to do as others do. Learn to blend in, to keep me own counsel. Ginger Hill plantation don’t just grow sugar cane, it also grow and harvest ginger. The owner, Mister Longmore, spend most times in the Mother Country so is the overseer, Mister Annand, that run the plantation. Busha Annand keep a hand in every little thing and him hand is strict.