The Potter's Hand by A. N. Wilson

Author:A. N. Wilson [Wilson, A. N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857899163
Publisher: Atlantic Books

4

BLUE SQUIRREL LEANED ON THE RAIL OF THE QUARTERDECK. The warm breeze refreshed her face, and played through her thick hair. She had just been baptized. The ship’s captain had insisted upon this.

—I’ll not marry a Christian man to a heathen.

—She’ll be happy with that, had been the sergeant’s view of the matter.

There was no easier passage to England than to go as Sergeant Powell’s wife. The discovery, soon after her encounter with the redcoats, that Captain Gower, and most of the men in B Company – the sergeant’s Company – were from the region of England near Wooden Leg left her in no doubt. She must go to England. If Tomtit, as she feared and suspected, had betrayed her, and if he had been responsible for allowing Boone and his men to return and perpetrate the massacre, then revenge must be taken. And if it turned out that she was mistaken, and that Tomtit was not responsible, then she wanted to see Wooden Leg. Who knows? She might fashion Cherokee clay in Wooden Leg’s pottery, and learn the technique which Tomtit had tried to describe to her, of ‘throwing’. She could not easily envisage how a potter’s wheel could work. One thing was certain: there was no returning to her old township in the Appalachian foothills. It was in ruins. Most of her relations had been killed or scattered. The Americans had taken control of the destiny of the Cherokee.

The scenes of panic at the dockyards had been terrifying. Hundreds, thousands of human beings had milled and swarmed, trying to get aboard one of the ships. From New York, she heard, they were sailing to Nova Scotia, and even to Africa, to enable some of the Loyalist negroes to start a new life. In Charleston, things had been otherwise. Captain Gower was not alone in wanting to reclaim ownership of his slaves, once the British defeat in the war had been recognized. There had been many hasty, makeshift little auctions all over Virginia and the Carolinas. Gower had expressed himself satisfied to have rounded up seventy. The promise was that, if they managed to get to the Bahamas Islands, any former owner who had repossessed himself of his slaves would be given estates by the Crown – ten acres per slave. The cargo they were now carrying from Charleston harbour would guarantee the Gowers the best part of a whole island to themselves. The Bahamas were not as fertile as the good arable land they left behind in Virginia, but they were able, at least – this was the captain’s view – to salvage something from the wreckage. Now, as she stood alone by the railing, she could hear the cargo below decks roaring out a hymn:

Nothing in my hands I bring,

Simply to thy Cross I cling;

Naked, come to thee for dress;

Helpless, look to thee for grace.

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