‘Jamaica first, but the captain brought me on to England. He wanted a slave. Lost me in a game of cards to a London merchant, he sold me to Mr Hobert who wanted to bring a horse to Virginia to do his ploughing for him but was advised that he couldn’t ship a horse but a man would do the job as well. So now I am a plough-horse.’

‘He doesn’t treat you badly,’ John said.

The man shook his head. ‘For a horse I’m doing well,’ he said with quiet irony. ‘I get to live in the house and I eat what they eat. And I have a piece of land of my own.’

‘You will grow your own food?’

‘My own food, my own tobacco, and I will trade on my own account, and when I have earned fifteen shillings Mr Hobert has agreed to sell me my liberty and then I will be his indentured servant, and not his slave, and when I have earned enough to keep myself I shall buy more land and then I shall be a planter, as good as you.’

‘You will be freed?’

‘Mr Hobert has promised it, the magistrate has witnessed it, and the other black men tell me that it is not uncommon. In a country as big as this a man has to agree with his slaves how long they shall work for him. It’s too easy for them to just run from him to a master who will offer better terms. There are always other planters who would give them work, there is always more land for them to plant for themselves.’

‘Don’t you want to go back to Africa?’

An expression of deep pain passed swiftly across the black face and was gone. ‘I have to believe that I will be there at the hour of my death,’ he said. ‘When they talk of paradise and going to heaven that is where I think I will be. But I don’t expect to see it again in this life.’

‘Did you leave a family behind?’

‘My wife, my child, my mother and two little brothers.’

John was silent at the enormity of this loss. ‘You must hate us,’ he said. ‘All of us white men for taking you away.’

The man looked directly at him. ‘I don’t hate you,’ he said. ‘I have no time left for hate.’ He paused. ‘But I don’t know how you can pray to your god and hope that he hears you.’