Maybe it would be better if backra killed me. Shot me dead. Left me by the side of the road for me body to bloat, turn rotten. For the johncrows to come pick at me, have a good feed. Forgotten by all except family. Must be the strength of the Ancestors, of Stella, of Calla, of James protecting me. And for this, I always going be grateful. Except is I that have to live with them orders. Orders to leave the island, leave everything I know and love behind. Suffer whatever backra sending down the line.

If only Sam Sharpe had been alive when whispers started to spread cross the island again. Whispers and rumours that the king going grant slaves them freedom, for true now. Was Eliza told me, when she finally got permission to come visit me in the workhouse, after I been locked up bout a year. Bring extra food to help keep me strength up.

We hugged each other up and I gobbled up the food she bring me, and after, I asked her for news, longing to hear bout life outside me cell walls.

‘Big news, little Will. Big news,’ she said, a wide smile cross her face. ‘It soon going be law that backra must free each and every one of him slaves.’

‘So the rumour them is true?’ looking at her straight, waiting to see what lies hiding behind it.

‘Yes, little Will. Freedom.’

‘Real freedom? I don’t believe it. Even if the king make it law,

I know backra not going follow through.’

‘We still going have to work for Busha. Get called apprentice, no longer slave.’

‘Apprentice? Just a fancy word for slave!’

‘Listen to me, Will. We going get paid. Get paid to work. Come to fulfil Sam Sharpe plan.’

Eliza was so excited she didn’t notice how I turned away. Grew silent.

‘Is true, Will. Is true. Is in all the newspaper dem. If only Mama still alive to see the brightness of that coming day. To know her children and her grandchildren will no more be slaves,’ and she hugged me up with tears in her eyes.

With that she made me get down on me knees beside her to give thanks to the Lord. During the praising and the praying, me heart started to feel the happiness she was feeling and finally I was able to join in and shouted out with joy.

And I remember the terrible confusion I suffered when another year passed, and I was still locked up sitting in a cell, listening when them bells rang out all over the island, on a date I going never forget. The first of August, eighteen hundred and thirty-four. The date when slavery finally was abolished.