Magnus, when he would go into the town of Berkeley, would stop by at Content’s and Dorthea’s, who had been as good friends to him as they had been to his father. He would drink a beer, and Content, who still came into the bar every day to see his customers, would look at the younger man absorbed in his private worries.
“You know it was never any easier,” Content always said. “In fact, it was probably harder before.”
At least then, Magnus thought, no one harassed them and their labor was their own.
“You are doing better than most,” Content reminded him. “Better than Merian even, who braved so much uncertainty out there.”
Magnus was an apprehensive soul, though, and when he left he would be just as worried as when he entered. These were the moments he thought most seriously about acquiring bought labor, and he would sink further into his anxieties.
Whether life in Berkeley had actually changed, or whether Magnus was simply bearing the burden of leading the family now, was a difficult thing to know. The area itself had changed undeniably, but he was also one of the better-off denizens and was a welcome guest of both his white and Negro neighbors. Still, no matter how well he managed the affairs of Stonehouses, he missed having Jasper to guide him.
Merian was still there among them in the house, but he was by then barely in command of his own faculties and certainly not in command of the same intellect he had before. He referred to Magnus, for instance, as Purchase, and to Caleum as Magnus. When he asked about Chiron he sometimes meant his old friend, who had once been a slave with him, and sometimes his second son. Adelia might be Sanne or Dorthea, and Content — on the occasion of his last visit, was met at first with a blank stare, until Merian finally remembered him. What he called him then was not his Christian name, Content, but rather Governor of Utopia.
Content laughed, taking it that his friend was not so far dispossessed of his senses that he could not still make a joke. It heartened him, especially as he was losing power over his own body as surely as his friend was over his mind. “A fine pair we make,” he said. But Content grew increasingly weak soon after that visit and could no longer travel. It was all he managed to make it down to his tavern in the afternoon, where he might still see an old friendly face.
When he died that winter it was a time of great disconsolation at Stonehouses, as it was throughout the valley and hill country. The entire reputable population, if not in fact everyone who owned shoes, came out for the funeral, including many who thought he had passed on long before. His death was seen by all as the endpoint of an era in that part of the world, and gripped all of them in sadness, for they feared the best days there might be ended.
Content had been among the first to settle the area and the very first to think it deserved a name, suggesting Berkeley after one of the Lords Proprietor. He had been first in all civic matters as well and had for a term represented them in the House of Burgesses. In matters familial he had proved fortunate and capable, leaving two sons and an equal number of daughters who survived into adulthood, and much goodwill and happiness. As a friend, his generosity and steadfastness were known to be among the best men may achieve. Even the old chandler, Pete Griffith, who could find an ill thing to say about every man in Berkeley, never found one syllable of bile for Content.
Jasper Merian, who recognized so little by then, remembered him who gave him shelter his first winter when he was without, and who introduced him to his wife, Sanne; Merian cried when he realized his old friend had died.
All his oldest acquaintances had seen him in life for the last time at the funeral of his wife, Dorthea. Her death had been cause for widespread mourning in its own right, as she had been friend and confidante to so many in the region. The two had been married since both were nineteen, and they had sailed from their home country before either was yet twenty-one. By all accounts, their marriage was a successful one.
She was near ninety when she died and, although her life had been other than what she would have expected, she was on the whole exceedingly pleased with it.
What is further, certain old wives’ tales, and other fanciful sources, claim to measure the love between man and wife by the time between the death of each.
In cases of extremely strong love among young people, who have not yet learned to govern so violent an emotion, the death of one could cause the other to take his own life. Among the seasoned old it was thought more usual for those who had loved each other well and long to die within a decade of the other’s passing. There were also a scattered few cases known in which the beloved departed within the year, oftentimes on the anniversary of the other’s death or another meaningful occasion. But such cases were so rare that when they occurred they were immortalized in song, verse, and speechifying.
Content, when he lost Dorthea, lived on another three days, then took his leave with little else said about the matter but that he was also done here.
two
Not long after Content’s death, a rash of outlanders appeared in the county. It began with the new tax assessor, a man named Paul Spector, who hailed from the neighboring town of Chase. He came originally out of Charleston and had set out that spring to do what he thought would be a favor for himself and the county alike. Instead, he finished by stirring up no end of mischief and bad blood.
The new tax code called for all members of free Negro households to be assessed thirty pounds sterling, and after Spector saw this provision he figured a way he could bring in even more revenue from his post. When he went to collect taxes from the Colored segment of the citizenry that year, he asked each head of household to show him proof of freedom for everyone in the house. For those who had been bonded, ready proof was easy enough. Those born in freedom seldom possessed documentation, though, as births were not yet recorded in that part of the world. Faced with this dilemma, nearly everyone he approached paid Spector ten additional pounds for a certificate attesting to the fact of their freedom. For those without the ten pounds, who were nonetheless willing to pay, he charged them whatever he could get for temporary clemency, warning them they had better have either their proof or his ten pounds the following year.
Such was his tack when he arrived at Stonehouses. As he stood in the doorway, telling of the two available courses of action, Magnus could only think of the harm he would like to do to the man. Instead of seeking to avoid trouble, as would have been prudent, he simply refused to pay this extortion. He knew, even as he did so, how foolhardy it was, but he hated what the man was doing so much he was unable to bear even the sight of him. He had lived with the fear of his legal status so long, he was bold then as anything attacked. “If I give you ten pounds this year, Mr. Spector, you will want twenty next. If I pay that, you will want more the following year, but if I were to treat you for the rascal you are and take a switch to your backside, that might just stop all of this before it gets going good.”
The tax collector only stared at him in stunned disbelief before going away. He returned the next day with the county sheriff, Peter Wormsley, who knew all the Merians and knew them to be free people, and law abiding besides. He said as much to the tax assessor, but the other man ignored his witness and employed his higher rank to insist on Magnus’s arrest.
“He will come round once he has a little time to consider it,” Spector said, having grown up among Negroes and so claiming to know their ways.