‘I do not wish to make our journey to Bristol seem more full of incident than it has truly been. But I must tell you of the dead babe.
‘Some miles outside Marlborough, as we were walking steadily enough down an empty road, my eye fell on a parcel lying in the ditch. I sent Friday to fetch it, thinking I know not what, perhaps that it was a bundle of clothes fallen from a carriage; or perhaps I was simply curious. But when I began to unwind the wrapping-cloth I found it to be bloody, and was afraid to go on. Yet where there is blood there is fascination. So I went on and unwrapped the body, stillborn or perhaps stifled, all bloody with the afterbirth, of a little girl, perfectly formed, her hands clenched up by her ears, her features peaceful, barely an hour or two in the world. Whose child was she? The fields around us were empty. Half a mile away stood a duster of cottages; but how welcome would we be if, like accusers, we returned to their doorstep that which they had cast out? Or what if they took the child to be mine and laid hands on me and baled me before the magistrates? So I wrapped the babe again in its bloody winding-cloth and laid it in the bottom of the ditch and guiltily led Friday away from that place. Try though I might, I could not put from my thoughts the little sleeper who would never awake, the pinched eyes that would never see the sky, the curled fingers that would never open. Who was the child but I, in another life? Friday and I slept among a grove of trees that night (it was the night I tried to eat acorns, I was so hungry). I had slept but a minute when I awoke with a start thinking I must go back to where the child was hid before the crows got to her, the crows and the rats; and, before I gathered my wits, had even stumbled to my feet. I lay down again with my coat pulled over my ears and tears coursing down my cheeks. My thoughts ran to Friday, I could not stop them, it was an effect of the hunger. Had I not been there to restrain him, would he in his hunger have eaten the babe? I told myself I did him wrong to think of him as a cannibal or worse, a devourer of the dead. But Cruso had planted the seed in my mind, and now I could not look on Friday’s lips without calling to mind what meat must once have passed them.
‘I grant without reserve that in such thinking lie the seeds of madness. We cannot shrink in disgust from our neighbour’s touch because his hands, that are clean now, were once dirty. We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable. If Friday forswore human flesh during his fifteen years on the island, why should I not believe he had forsworn it forever? And if in his heart of hearts he remained a cannibal, would a warm living woman not make a better meal than the cold stiff corpse of a child? The blood hammered in my ears; the creak of a branch, or a cloud passing across the moon, made me think Friday was upon me; though part of me knew he was the same dull blackfellow as ever, another part, over which I had no mastery, insisted on his bloodlust. So I slept not a wink, till the light paled and I saw Friday dead asleep a few paces away, his horny feet that seemed never to feel the cold sticking out from under his robe.’
‘Though we walk in silence, there is a buzz of words in my head, all addressed to you. In the dark days of Newington I believed you were dead: you had starved in your lodgings and been given a pauper’s burial; you had been hunted down and committed to the Fleet, to perish of misery and neglect. But now a stronger certainty has come over me, which I cannot explain. You are alive and well, and as we march down the Bristol road I talk to you as if you were beside me, my familiar ghost, my companion. Cruso too. There are times when Cruso comes back to me, morose as ever he was in the old days (which I can bear).’
‘Arriving in Marlborough, I found a stationer’s and for half a guinea sold him Pakenham’s Travels in Abyssinia, in quarto, from your library. Though glad to be relieved of so heavy a book, I was sorry too, for I had no time to read in it and learn more of Africa, and so be of greater assistance to Friday in regaining his homeland. Friday is not from Abyssinia, I know. But on the road to Abyssinia the traveller must pass through many kingdoms: why should Friday’s kingdom not be one of these?
‘The weather remaining fine, Friday and I sleep under hedgerows. For prudence sake we lie low, for we make an irregular couple. “Are you his mistress?” asked an old man of us, as we sat on the church steps yesterday eating our bread. Was it a saucy question? The fellow seemed in earnest. “He is a slave whose master set him free on his deathbed,” I replied — “I accompany him to Bristol, where he will take ship for Africa and his native land.” “So you are returning to Africa,” said the old man, turning to Friday. “He has no speech,” I put in — “He lost his tongue as a child, now he speaks only in gestures. In gestures and actions.” “You will have many stories to tell them in Africa, will you not?” said the old fellow, speaking louder, as we do to deaf people. Friday regarded him emptily, but he would not be deterred. “You have seen many sights, I am sure,” he continued — “great cities, ships as big as castles. You will not be believed when you relate all you have seen.” “He has lost his tongue, there is no language in which he can speak, not even his own,” said I, hoping the fellow would go away. But perhaps he too was deaf. “Are you gipsies then?” said he — “Are you gipsies, you. and he?” For a moment I was lost for words. “He has been a slave, now he is returning to Africa,” I repeated. “Aye,” he said, “but we call them gipsies when they roam about with their dirty faces, men and women all higgledy-piggledy together, looking for mischief.” And he got to his feet and faced me, propped on his stick, as though daring me to gainsay him. “Come, Friday,” I murmured, and we left the square.
‘I am amused now to think of this skirmish, but then I was shaken. Living like a mole in your house has quite taken away my nut-brown island hue; but it is true, on the road I have barely washed, feeling none the worse for it. I remember a shipload of gipsies, dark and mistrustful folk, cast out of Galicia in Spain, stepping ashore in Bahia on to a strange continent. Twice have Friday and I been called gipsies. What is a gipsy? What is a highwayman? Words seem to have new meanings here in the west country. Am I become a gipsy unknown to myself?’
‘Yesterday we arrived in Bristol and made directly for the docks, which Friday showed every sign of recognizing. There I stopped every seaman who passed, asking whether he knew of a ship sailing for Africa or the East. At last we were directed toward an Indiaman standing out on the road, due to sail for Trincomalee and the spice islands. By great good fortune a lighter just then berthed that had been conveying stores to it, and the first mate stepped ashore. Asking his pardon for our travel-stained appearance, assuring him we were not gipsies, I presented Friday as a former slave from the Americas, happily now free, who wished to make his way home to Africa. Regrettably, I went on, Friday was master of neither English nor any other language, having lost his tongue to the slave-catchers. But he was diligent and obedient and asked for no more than to work his passage to Africa as a deck-hand.
‘At this the mate smiled. “Africa is a great place, madam, greater than I can tell you,” he said. “Does your man know where he wishes to be set down? He may be put ashore in Africa and still be farther from his home than from here to Muscovy.”
‘I shrugged off his question. “When the time comes I am convinced he will know,” I said — “Our feeling for home is never lost. Will you take him or no?” “Has he ever sailed before?” asked the mate. “He has sailed and been shipwrecked too,” I replied — “He is a mariner of long standing.”