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Way
Down in Egypt's Lane|
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Reviews
"Perry's impressive all-original anthology of 15 biblically based whodunits spans the ages from ancient times to the present. Topnotch entries include...Lillian Stewart Carl's 'Way Down in Egypt's Land,' a marvelous tale about 19th-century slavery." --Publisher's Weekly
Excerpt
From the veranda of the plantation house, Alexander Fraser could hear only faintly the crack of the lash and the cries of the wretch it was laid upon.
The prospect before him was admirable—the lawns dotted with grand old trees, the river a sheet of silver reflecting the last pink glow of the sun, and on the far shore, two miles away, the groves and fields of the neighboring estates. A cool breeze not only diluted the heat of the day, but also carried the fragrances of wood smoke, tobacco, and roasted meats to his nostrils. He should have been content. Instead, he stirred uneasily.
Fraser was not unfamiliar with the screams of soldiers in battle. Here, though, he was not on the field of battle, riding with the Scots Greys in their bravura charge against Bonaparte’s Guard. Here he was a guest. If Edwin Harrington was bound by the conventions of hospitality, then so was he, compelled to make no comment about that peculiar institution upon which his host’s prosperity was founded. And yet the subject was the most disagreeable and the most difficult that could engage the attention of a visitor to these southern American states.
A movement at his elbow drew him abruptly from his grim reverie. The household’s footman stood beside him, proffering a silver goblet so brightly polished it put the shine of the river to shame. With a polite if distant nod to the young bondsman in his tidy white and blue livery, Fraser took the goblet and drank deeply of his host’s whiskey. Its acidic tang caught his throat.
The youth’s whiskey-colored face turned toward the sounds of violence and misery and his dark eyes sparked, then quickly hooded themselves. For a long moment he stood as still and cold as a statue upon the Acropolis or, more aptly, as one of the great statues along the Nile. Then he turned and slipped back into the house.
The discomforting noise ceased at last. Along the row of small houses almost hidden behind a cedar hedge, set aside from the general prospect, the Ethiopians in bondage shook off their own petrifaction and continued about their work. They gave wide berth to the man striding amongst them, his white face reddened by his ire and his exertions both.
Pollard, the plantation overseer, was neither fish nor fowl. By lack of possessions he was excluded from the ruling class, by virtue of his color he was set above the bondsmen. Save for his Saxon name, he could perhaps be descended from one of Fraser’s fellow countrymen, those Scots transported to the American colonies as indentured servants after Prince Charles’s rebellion of 1745. Some of them had prospered. Some of them had been reduced lives as unwholesome as those of the African captives.
Pollard stamped toward the veranda and threw himself down upon the top step so heavily it creaked beneath his bulk. “Mason!” he called.
The stripling footman reappeared in the doorway.
“Whiskey!”
Mason vanished. Pollard glowered out into the twilight, still holding the length of cowhide that was his badge of office. Its end was dappled in crimson, and crimson flecks lay upon the white skin of his right hand. Only when Mason returned with another serving of the water of life, American-style, did Pollard drape the lash across his lap. His besmirched fingertips took the goblet from the tray without looking at the dark hands that held it, and he gulped down its contents. “Well then, Captain, you see what we are up against here.”
“I beg your pardon?” Fraser replied.
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