The magistrate looked at the papers before him, including the letter Content had written, which was now in the book of evidence. “I suppose I could notarize this,” he offered tentatively, “but it would be highly unusual.”
“You must do so then, in order that my neighbor here has peace of mind again on his lands,” Stanton said. Then, as if continuing a previous conversation with the magistrate, he added, “John, the law must be strong but blind. That is the true test of it.”
The magistrate took Magnus’s old forged papers and embossed them with the great seal of the House of Burgesses. Magnus felt a heavy stone lifted up from him when he saw the official seal of the colony on his freedom. After that, according to all accounts, he was at ease as he had never been before. Not only because he was finally free as other men — he had been that in fact for a long time already and, no matter the outcome of his trial, knew he was not going to be returned to his previous condition — but because he knew the law now stood solidly behind him. He was altogether different after that in the way he encountered and moved through the world. Immeasurably so.
The roads around Berkeley had grown chaotic with activity from the universe outside its boundaries, though, and things did not turn out so fortunately for everyone that year. On the last Sunday in September, Bastian Johnson went out to Turner’s Creek with Caleum and Julius, whose Sabbaths were of his own employ, to fish for walleyes and cat-fish. Of the three, Bastian was most successful that particular day and was overweaning in his pride of the fact.
After they hauled in their catch, which included several speckled rainbow trout as well, the boys built a fire and cleaned some of the fish, then roasted them over the embers. As they ate and relived the adventure of how the fish came to be in their fire, all praising Bastian’s skill, he himself ladled out fishing advice. “Walleyes don’t like no bait too fast. You need patience if you gone catch em. Now, trout is the opposite.” The anglers all reclined on the bluff above to the pool and debated the merits of various bait and techniques for the different fish, such as is common among trawlers and fisherfolk everywhere, regardless of age, language, or particular liking for fish.
As it grew late, Julius, tiring of Bastian, asked whether either of them had heard the tale of Witch Mary from Canary. When they told him they had not, he gave the others the story of how there lived a well-known witch on the African coast who, many years previous, had lost a son of sixteen. “Once a month, every month, she get on her broom and fly over the whole wide world looking for her boy. If she can’t find him, then she snatch another black boy of about his age and take him back with her. They say her son used to brag on hisself and so she always go for a loud talker. Say she keep her victim for about three weeks, but once she start to remember what her son looked like, she kill the one she brought back. They say the last thing he hear before she get him, and right before she kill, is three real loud knocks.”
They were all quiet in the purplish evening light as he told the story, and when he finished all said he had made it up. “That’s just another fish tale,” Bastian cried, waving him off. As they stamped out the fire, though, Julius told them to be quiet and listen. Sure enough, they could hear a sound in the trees like a hammer banging against the bark. When they heard it a second time they began to move closer to each other, uncertain what to do.
“We better go see what it is,” Julius said.
“I don’t think we ought to mess with whatever it is,” Bastian warned, not wanting to venture any deeper into the woods. “It’s getting late out here.”
Finally Julius and Caleum convinced him he was only being scary, and the three set out into the nearby forest. “Keep quiet, though,” Julius whispered, “Cause, if it is Mary, they say she always go for noisiness.”
As they walked on a small path in the direction from which the sound had emanated, they heard it again, then a third time in rapid succession. After the last there was a loud scream right afterward, as Caleum and Bastian both jumped back, startled. As they stood there afright, Julius began to laugh at them. He then pulled his hand through the air in a wide arc, after which there was a loud knock. He moved his hand again and laughed as Bastian and Caleum drew close enough to him to see he was holding a length of fishing twine. At the other end he had affixed a branch, which he could pull through a contraption he had rigged and knock it against a tree. He pulled it once more and laughed at them.
Finally, they laughed at the joke as well, as the three friends parted for the week, each taking with him some of the leftover fish. “Y’all be careful of Mary from Canary on the way home,” Julius called good-naturedly, as he went off to feed his master and mistress.
On his way back to Stonehouses, Caleum was in good spirits, thinking Julius very clever and Bastian in need of the lesson. Indeed, Bastian himself was in a fine mood and did not hold it against his friends for showing him up after he had bragged so much on himself. Still, he remained on edge from his earlier fright as he moved through the forests, and even the slightest sounds made him flinch. Even though he had walked through the woods around Berkeley his entire life, he was glad to be out of them when he reached the main road and breathed altogether easier. When he saw a coach coming down the lane he relaxed completely, no longer being alone on the evening road.
When the coach was even with him it slowed down, and he moved out of the way to allow it to pass. The wagon proceeded on a few paces, then came to a stop. Bastian continued walking in the gulch of weeds on the roadside, wondering briefly what had caused the wagon to stop but being otherwise unconcerned.
Once he was spotted, a man he didn’t know called down to him to ask what he was doing out at that hour. “I’m just comin’ in from Turner’s Creek, sir,” he answered.
“Looks like you had some luck,” the man called back.
“Ah, just a little,” Bastian returned.
“Say, can you tell me how to get to the wheelwright’s place? I think I bent a spoke back there,” the man said.
“You just keep headed straight around that bend,” Bastian answered. “Ain’t but two roads through town.”
“Why don’t you hop up?” the man said. “You might as well ride as walk.”
Bastian thought it odd that a strange white man should offer him a ride and declined, not knowing what sort of fellow he might be and not wanting to fall into the wrong hands.
“All the same,” the man replied, flicking lightly at his reins, until his horses started to gallop. The wagon went on until it disappeared around the bend ahead, and Bastian gained the main road again and continued on, already planning the week before him.
When he reached the bend, though, he found the wagon stopped and the man inside waiting for him with his pistol drawn. “Here, put these on,” the man commanded, throwing him a pair of iron bracelets.
“No, sir,” Bastian said. “My people expecting me.”
“Well, I don’t imagine they’ll be seeing you this evening,” the man told him, busting the side of his head with the pistol butt. Bastian blacked out and fell to the ground.
He woke up in the back of the wagon and, it seemed, as far from Berkeley as he had ever been his entire life. He could not tell by looking out of the tarp where they were, or even whether Berkeley was north, south, east, or west of his position. Through the top of the wagon he could see the sky, and it looked to him the same as the one he was used to, but he knew it was not. The only other thing he knew for certain was that it was deep into the nighttime and he was unlikely to make it home that evening.
Nor had he any sense of bearing until the next afternoon, when they stopped for lunch. The man, whose name he had not yet learned, came into the back of the wagon and gave him a tin plate of hominy that had a tiny piece of hog’s fat in it. “It won’t be so bad,” the man said. “You’ll see, one master is just like any other.” Bastian did not say anything in acknowledgment of this statement, and the man picked up a round stick, which was leaned against a barrel in the wagon, and slammed it into the soles of his feet, so that his knees buckled and he nearly lost the plate from his lap. “You answer when I say something to you,” he said.