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Twenty-Eight

The first of August came quickly. I stood outside Exeter Hall in the sweltering heat amongst the crowds of England’s adoring

public waiting for the Prince of Wales’s carriage to arrive. I adjusted the purple bonnet with flowers pinned on the brim.

At least it was wide enough to block out the unforgiving sun, but it was hard to see above so many heads.

“There! I see it coming!” Gowramma tugged my sleeve and pointed down the road. Ever since I told her about the event, leaving

out the more exciting details of course, Gowramma had insisted on coming. “Fun things always seem to happen around you, Sally,”

she’d told me with a coquettish wink. Now that she was here, she was rather useful as a lookout.

The royal carriage rumbled down the street, pulled by white horses, the gold lining twinkling underneath the morning sun.

Officers kept the crowd under control, but they still tried to rush the prince anyway as he stepped out in his bright red

military regalia.

“Your Majesty!” they screamed as he soaked in the adoration from his subjects. Obsessed royal watchers. Unlike others in the

country, they didn’t care a whit about any scandal as long as they could glimpse their favorite family every once in a while.

Bertie probably appreciated the flattery.

He wasn’t alone, as I knew he wouldn’t be. William McCoskry got out of the carriage and followed behind, waving pompously to a crowd of people who hadn’t a clue who he was. The crowd parted as Bertie and McCoskry strode through the white Corinthian columns to the front doors of Exeter Hall.

Bertie grinned at me from ear to ear before giving Gowramma and me a gentlemanly bow. “Shall we?” Bertie offered me his arm.

“How scandalous!” Gowramma said what others would have been thinking if they saw me walk into a public meeting arm in arm

with the prince.

Reddening, Bertie retracted his arm and straightened out his jacket. “She is my god-sister,” he mumbled.

“Exactly.” Gowramma wouldn’t let him get away with such a flagrant display of affection. That, I appreciated, given the prince’s

so-called affections were like scattering pollen in an ever-changing wind. Besides, there was work to be done.

“Let’s go,” I said, gesturing toward the door.

Bertie, his ears still as red as McCoskry’s misshapen beard, entered the hall.

Exeter Hall, broad and vast, was the home of many important and intriguing gatherings. Men and women of importance in society

often met to discuss pressing social issues. Regardless of the organizations they belonged to, they purported to have one

goal: the advancement and betterment of humanity. Of course, the abolition of slavery was one of them. They were all here,

a crowd of thousands, packed into the first floor of the Great Hall. We were taken up to the platform on the east end, separated

from the rest of the hall by a curved railing. Behind us were rows of seats where the most influential guests were already

seated. The most prominent members of the Anti-Slavery Society nodded in approval as the prince greeted the chairman.

“There must be at least three thousand people here,” Gowramma whispered to me as we took our seats. “Maybe more.”

“I’ve never known Exeter Hall to take more than four thousand at the most, but this certainly is challenging that perception.”

I watched McCoskry take his seat next to Bertie’s.

I thought of William McCoskry licking his lips and rubbing his red beard the night I entertained them like a caged clown in

Mrs. Phipps’s drawing room. He licked his lips now. He looked as pompous, as entirely lacking in empathy, as the day I was

presented to Queen Victoria. The memory of his laughter made my hair stand on end.

Mr. Bellamy. Mr. Bambridge. Uncle George. McCoskry. Phipps...

It was startling how none of them had changed since my childhood. Instead, they’d only gotten worse, more brazen in their

arrogance. They all needed to be brought low.

“The meeting is in session,” said the chairman, who wore a long jacket with a forked tail almost dragging upon the floor.

“We are delighted to present Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, who has agreed to hold a speech about the need to support the

abolition of slavery wherever its vines have spread across the world.”

Sweat drops were building beneath Bertie’s hairline as he stood up and greeted the crowd. He looked to me for help, his eyes

wide in silent panic.

And yet he was usually so confident when in the presence of booze and cabaret dancers . I urged him on with a polite, endearing smile.

Wiping his forehead, he sucked in a breath and began his speech. “Almost two years ago,” Bertie began, his voice struggling a bit before finding its volume over the hushed crowd, “I was invited by British North America so that I could—well, a-as they wrote in a letter to my mother—witness the progress and prosperity of this distant part of our dominions.” He paused, clearly trying to remember his speech. “When I went across the pond, well, it was certainly an arduous journey, you know. I didn’t know what to expect.”

An audience member coughed. I resisted the urge to make a bet with Gowramma as to whether or not Bertie would pull himself

together.

Bertie cleared his throat. “It was an arduous journey,” he repeated, “but upon arriving to Upper Canada, I saw the majesty

of British civility. Even in the furthest-flung places of the world, I could feel the people’s loyalty and their love for

the throne. This love, loyalty, and indeed prosperity is what the British Crown has given them.”

Which people? I wondered. Certainly not the Indigenous nations, whose populations were decimated by disease and treachery?

What had my mother always told me back in Africa? The hand of the giver is always at the top. I’m not sure she meant it like

this. But now all I could see were the lies of the Crown’s civilization project parroted from its inheritor’s mouth faithfully

and without question. I stifled a sigh. This was going to be a long speech.

Indeed, Bertie droned on, talking about the natural wonders he saw, Niagara Falls, something about a man tumbling down in

a barrel. I could see certain members of the society behind me squirming impatiently, wondering, as I did, when he’d get to

the point.

“And when I came to America, I was met by the most kind president—or former president, James Buchanan, with whom I stayed

three days at the White House.”

Most kind. I wondered if Dred Scott would agree. It was Buchanan who supported the continuation of slavery, after all.

“While I was there, I met a number of interesting fellows. Among them, it is my discussions with Ralph Waldo Emerson that

have remained with me. It is his work, his writings that I recalled as I prepared this speech for you today. And his resounding

call—a reminder to us all: civilization depends on morality .”

He let the last line boom through the hall. It was a crowd-pleaser. Applause erupted, with many of the guests nodding in agreement. Bertie waited for the applause to die down before he proceeded.

“And what, can I say, is at all civil or moral about slavery? They call it an institution. I call it a destitution .”

“Ooh, good line,” Gowramma leaned over and whispered in my ear as the crowd applauded again. Yes, Bertie seemed very proud

of himself as the crowd nodded eagerly. It was a good line. A familiar line...

“Imagine!” Bertie shouted, for the applause had given him a second wind. “The stealing of men and setting them to work. How

many years has it lasted? How many years has it yielded cotton and sugar? All honest men strive to earn their bread by their

industry. Slavery insults the faithful workman at his daily toil—”

“For such calamity no solution but servile war, and the Africanization of the country that permits it.”

I finished Bertie’s sentence under my breath. We spoke the same sentence, word for word, because I now knew where Bertie had

stolen his words from: Emerson’s article for the American magazine The Atlantic , published only a few months ago in April. Bertie must have been counting on most people in Britain having no access to it.

Oh, what criminalities royal privilege enabled.

I sighed and shook my head. Bertie was never very good at doing his homework properly, but I didn’t imagine he’d stoop so

low as to pilfer the words of a man whose abolitionist sentiments didn’t seem to exclude actual racism. It was the Africanization

of America that enabled its insistence on slavery? An interesting hypothesis. He also called us “brutes” and “savage tribes”

in the same essay. It was an ill-kept secret by now that most professed abolitionists didn’t actually like us very much.

Still Bertie continued. “The British Empire abolished slavery decades ago. But what of other nations? If there be a country where knowledge cannot be diffused without perils of mob-law and statue-law, where speech is not free, where liberty is attacked, where the position of the white woman is injuriously affected by the outlawry of the black woman—”

“The outlawry of the what?” Gowramma muttered, aghast as I reeled in my seat, glaring at him with full disdain.

“—that country is not civil, but barbarous, and no advantages of soil, climate, or coast can resist these mischiefs!”

The crowd gave a standing ovation. For the Prince of Wales or Ralph Waldo Emerson, I didn’t know and, it seemed, neither did

they. It didn’t matter either way: both men were ridiculous. But we were just getting to the good part. Bertie gestured toward

McCoskry, who impatiently jostled in his seat, ready.

“If there’s anyone here who knows the evils of slavery firsthand, it is this gentleman beside me. Serving as the acting governor

of Lagos in West Africa, he saw slavery in a colony that was meant to have ended it by British decree. There, in his dealings

with slaves, free and bound alike, he learned the true meaning of liberty and civility. Please join me in welcoming Sir William

McCoskry.”

The crowd went on clapping even as they sat in their seats. McCoskry straightened out his jacket and greeted Prince Bertie

with firm handshakes, smiling for the cameramen who took their shot from the edges of the hall for the upcoming newspapers.

McCoskry probably thought this would be one of his crowning moments. And if Rui didn’t come through with his end of the bargain,

it would be. Even if I angered him at Strangers’ Home, surely he wouldn’t let my opportunity for revenge slip away from me.

I watched the entrance on pins and needles.

“Yes, it is true, my fellow Britons. I, William McCoskry, who began my work as a humble merchant in Lagos, soon found myself becoming acting consul, and then acting governor of the Lagos Colony.”

With one eye on Exeter Hall’s entrance, I used a gloved hand to cover my snarl. I was right. He hadn’t changed. Still aggrandizing

himself. Still lying, as if he hadn’t used my homeland as his own personal playground. And the people here drank it all up,

such self-serving fools.

“In Lagos,” McCoskry continued, “I gave protection to runaway slaves and dealt with the issues of domestic slavery that continued

across the colony. Slavery is not limited to America, as bloody as their current war may be. Its evils continue throughout

the world. And though I have returned to being a private merchant, I will continue my good work on the African continent.

I will not stop until the evil of slavery has been stamped out on this earth.”

The crowd was too busy cheering to notice the troop of seven Africans who had just burst into Exeter Hall. All of them dressed

in working-class britches, shirts, and dresses, because in England, this was all most could afford with what few work opportunities

they had. Not all were lucky enough to be adopted by a Queen. That’s why the money offered to them had to be, as I promised

Rui, “stunningly immodest.”

I let out a relieved sigh and watched the play.

“William McCoskry!” cried one man, his graying beard almost as long as McCoskry’s. He walked with a limp as the line of Africans

pushed their way to the front of the hall just below where Bertie and McCoskry were standing. “You speak of stamping out the

evil of slavery. Then why, during our trials in Lagos, did you rule in favor of our slave owners when we came to you for help? Why fight so hard for their rights

and not ours?”

McCoskry squinted in confusion, looking around, baffled. He wouldn’t remember them. They were sailors from Strangers’ Home. They had never been under his jurisdiction. Rui had chosen well—these men were great actors.

Even if they were former slaves under McCoskry’s rule, he wouldn’t have recognized them individually. That was how little

he cared. The blood drained from his face.

“You never cared. You sent me back to my slave master, who beat me!” cried a man, his natural hair a halo over his head. “You

laughed at me!”

“I heard it with my own ears,” said another, a young man with long, slender limbs. “That when I fled slavery you compensated

my owner with money. Where was my compensation?”

Their anger felt real. As real as mine. Maybe it was the money they were paid. But it couldn’t have just been that. There

was a deep pain we all shared here, all of us Africans forced to survive in the land of the ones who’d so irresponsibly twisted

our homes as if our land, our kingdoms, our cultures, were nothing more than their playground. That anger was real. It was

real for all of us, whether we realized it or not.

“William?” Shocked and barely able to move his face, Bertie stiffly turned to McCoskry, looking for answers. McCoskry could

give none. His smile had turned into the picture of terror, pasted on his face. Both men were frozen.

A second man, who looked around Davies’s age, beat his chest with his palm, his glittering eyes burning with the pain of his

past. “It was you who, during my trial, said that slave owners had the right to keep their property. Was I property to you,

McCoskry?”

The crowd was whispering, gossiping until the sounds of disapproval lifted into the air.

“McCoskry is a liar!” said one amongst the crowd. “He doesn’t support abolition at all!”

“He kept the Africans enslaved!”

“What is he doing here? How could the prince invite him? Is he mad?”

“This is a disaster,” said one member of the Anti-Slavery Society behind me with a deep groan, his head in his hands.

A disaster. Just as I’d intended.

The sailors began shouting at once, in unison with the scandalized abolitionists and the confused, angered crowd who began

pushing each other to get to McCoskry. Gowramma and I stayed in our seats for our own safety, but I was sure my friend was

just as curious as I was to see how the messy event would unfold.

It unfolded exactly how I thought it would. With a riot. Men and women didn’t wait for McCoskry’s excuses. They charged the

podium, determined to run them out of the hall—perhaps even out of town. As the chairman shouted for order, pushing off those

upon him, Bertie and McCoskry escaping their humiliation through the back exit.

McCoskry would never be able to show his face in England again. Every detail of this farce of an event would be recorded and

sold in tomorrow morning’s newspapers. And the Queen? The Queen’s reputation would take another hit. Her son wasn’t up to

the task after all. His father’s royal ghost would be spinning in his grave if he wasn’t so busy posing for postmortem pictures

with his obsessed wife.

I wanted to hug that little girl dancing for fear of her life in the drawing room. Dancing for those self-serving ghouls.

It felt, for a moment, as if Ade was hugging her. Hugging me. Telling me to rest. But I couldn’t rest. Not until my revenge

was complete.

“I told you fun things always happen around you, Sally,” Gowramma said, fluffing her dress over her knees and fanning herself.