Robbins stepped to Moses. “Take them things off,” he said to Moses about the rags he was wearing. “Sir. Master Sir, this woman, her and me is together,” Moses said. “Do what I said,” Robbins said. In a moment Moses was naked. Robbins walked around him and after squeezing both his arms and legs and looking into his mouth, he said to Broussard, “How much?”
“Eight hundred dollars, Monsieur Bill.”
Robbins said, “When I ask you a plain and simple question, I expect no less than a plain and simple answer.” Henry shifted from one foot to the other. Broussard held tight to the bars.
Sawyer was still trying to catch his breath. He took out a rag and leaned against the wall. Skiffington had the only chair at his desk. He had been standing beside the desk, but now he took two steps and was in the chair. Sawyer wiped his face and the back of his neck. Skiffington picked up the list of questions. Now he would have to start all over again. Nature of the Alleged Crime. Are there witnesses to the alleged crime? Can such witnesses be believed?
“But, Monsieur Bill, they are finer human beings. Please, please, my beautiful wife is waiting.”
“Sir, I have never known your wife, beautiful or otherwise, and she has never known me.”
“Yes. Yes. Then seven hundred dollars, Monsieur Bill. And five hundred for the woman. Good prices. They come from Alexandria. You have heard of Alexandria. Alexandria, Virginia, has known for the humans it sells. Go to the Alexandria for the best humans to sell, people told me. Alexandria. Ancient like the Egypt.”
Skiffington wrote. Name of Alleged Victim or Victims. Name of Alleged Criminal or Criminals.
Robbins said to Bessie about her rags, “Take them things out.” Henry moved a half step back until the doorknob was in his back. “Please, Master Sir,” Moses said, “we together, her and me. Don’t pull us apart. We together.” It was true that he and Bessie had come from Alexandria, where they first met in a holding pen. And now, after two months, he could not stand the thought of being away from her. “Please, master sir, she and me be family.” Robbins ignored him. Bessie began crying again, and she went on crying as she disrobed. Robbins touched her the same as he had touched Moses. “Please…” Moses said. “If you say one more word to me,” Robbins said to Moses, “I will buy you just to take you out in the street and shoot you. Just one more word.”
Skiffington looked up from his papers. I arrest you for the murder of this nigger right in front of my eyes.
Robbins went to the bars and said to Broussard, “I will give you five hundred and twenty-five for the man and not a penny more. If you say anything but ‘Yes,’ I will leave.”
“Yes, Monsieur Bill. Yes.” Broussard took his hands from the bars and put them at his sides. “Yes, Monsieur.”
“What am I gonna do with the woman, Bill?” Sawyer said.
“I don’t know, Reese. I really don’t know.”
Where did the alleged crime occur? That was the easiest question of them all, and he wrote, “Manchester County, Virginia.” Date of the Alleged Crime. He had forgotten the exact day of the murder and would have to ask Broussard. He knew that way down on the list was a question about witnesses. He would have to ask Broussard about that as well.
“We together, Massa,” Moses said to Skiffington. “Me and Bessie together. She all I have in this world. We is one as a family.”
“I know that,” Skiffington said, trying to write. “Don’t you think I know that?” It occurred to him that a white woman might pass the window and have her sensibilities offended by seeing a naked slave man and he stood and went to the window, as a kind of distraction for any woman passing.
“Please, now, we is one, her and me. We is one.”
Skiffington saw Mrs. Otis strolling on the other side of the street. She stopped to pass the time of day with Mrs. Taylor, who was obviously in the family way. Mrs. Otis had the hand of her youngest child, a boy who had not developed as swiftly as her other children. Mrs. Taylor laughed at something Mrs. Otis said and put her gloved hand briefly to her mouth. She held her unfurled parasol down and to her side. The Otis boy was fascinated by it. Skiffington liked the Otis boy and thought that all he needed was a few years and he would be no different from any other boy his age. “Give him time,” he said more than once to Mr. Otis. He would not say that to Mrs. Otis because she did not believe there was anything wrong with her boy. The boy reached for the parasol and Mrs. Taylor, knowing what he could do if he got hold of it, raised it up and out of his way. While Skiffington was hopeful about the boy’s progress, he was not blind. There had to be a problem with a boy sucking three fingers at a time at twelve years old and afraid to leave his mother’s side because the demons would eat his private parts. It was that boy, along with his older brother and a slave boy named Teacher, who would burst into flames in front of the dry goods store. The younger white boy first going into flames, then followed by his brother. The slave Teacher would go five minutes after that, just as a man with a bucket of water came running up the street.
Moses said once more that they were together and Sawyer told him to be quiet because he was hurting his ears. “I got only her, Massa. We family.”
In moments they were all gone from the jail except Skiffington and his prisoner, who stayed quiet long enough for Skiffington to complete the petition. Then he signed his name and gave his title and ended by putting down the date.
“I will reward you for your assistance, Monsieur Sheriff,” Broussard said after a time. He was on his cot and quite pleased with how things had gone, even though he had Bessie yet to sell.
“I want nothing, Broussard. They pay me for what I do here.”
Broussard jumped up and came to the bars. “But no. No. I want to show how I appreciate.” He pointed to the left wall where Skiffington had hung a map, a browned and yellowed woodcut of some eight feet by six feet. The map had been created by a German, Hans Waldseemuller, who lived in France three centuries before, according to a legend in the bottom right-hand corner. “I live where they make that beautiful map. I know who make them, Monsieur Sheriff, and I can get you better, bigger map. I can do it to show how I appreciate.”
“That one will do fine,” Skiffington said. A Russian who claimed to be a descendant of Waldseemuller had passed through the town and Skiffington had bought the map from him. He wanted it as a present for Winifred but she thought it too hideous to be in her house. Heading the legend were the words “The Known World.” Skiffington suspected the Russian, a man with a white beard down to his stomach, was a Jew but he could not tell a Jew from any other white man.
“I get you better,” Broussard said. “I get you better map, and more map of today. Map of today, how the world out together today, not yesterday, not long ago.” The Russian had told Skiffington that it was the first time the word America had ever been put on a map. The land of North America on the map was smaller than it was in actuality, and where Florida should have been, there was nothing. South America seemed the right size, but it alone of the two continents was called “America.” North America went nameless.
“I’m happy with what I got,” Skiffington said. The map had come from the Russian in twelve parts, each weighing about three pounds, and Skiffington had had a time putting it together. He did it while Winifred and Minerva were away at Clara’s, and when Winifred returned and told him she did not want it in her house, he had to dismantle it and reassemble it again in the jail.
“You see, Monsieur Sheriff,” Broussard said. “I get you better. I get you more better map.”
Jean Broussard was convicted of murder in the first degree and taken to Richmond and hanged. The ne’er-do-well brother-in-law of the prison warden managed to find in Richmond a Roman Catholic priest-a man who was at a time in his life when all the people in his dreams spoke Latin-and that priest, seeking to escape those dreams, stayed night and day with Broussard until the end. The $525 Broussard would have received for the sale of Moses was conveyed by Skiffington to Richmond, who conveyed it to Washington, D.C., who conveyed it to the French embassy. And in five months the money, now in francs, reached Broussard’s widow. Mrs. Broussard never had a fixed idea of America, was never able to comprehend that America was a place of separate states and yet one country at the same time. And with that notion in her head, she was never to understand that the money came from the government of the Commonwealth of Virginia. She, along with her children and her lover, would always believe the money came from the government of the United States of America, and that it was payment for what the government had done to her husband, an American citizen.