Calvin Baker - Dominion

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.

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.

“I just don’t know,” Wormsley argued. “Everybody around here has known the Merians a long time. You might start some stink with all this.”

“I do not care for your opining,” Spector answered, issuing Magnus a summons to appear before the county magistrate, who happened to be his cousin by marriage and whom he had sent for the previous day. He then ordered the sheriff to bring Magnus down to Chase to be held until his hearing.

Magnus, in irons, was quite fearful by now, but held himself in as dignified a posture as possible when they carted him off. Having provoked the law, however, he had no idea what would happen to him next.

They held him in the Chase jailhouse for two days, waiting for the magistrate to arrive from Edenton. During the time of his imprisonment, word of what had happened spread throughout Berkeley, until everyone was debating the fairness of the law or else arguing what they knew about the Merian family. There was no shortage then of invention to the stories people told, as they anticipated what would transpire and tried to fill the void of not knowing.

Some claimed Magnus deserved whatever treatment he got, as there were too many people settling in the area anyway. Others pointed out that the Merians were among the first to arrive. Still others claimed the Merians weren’t Negro at all but that Jasper was a Portuguese who once worked in the Crown’s employ.

Adelia was unwilling to leave to her neighbors’ imaginations what should become of her husband, and when the sheriff’s wagon rolled away she did not despair but began to think what she might best do to help get Magnus released. At last it occurred to her, and she had Caleum hitch a team and drive her over to Rudolph Stanton’s place.

Stanton was their neighbor to the north and one of the wealthiest landowners in the colony. Over the years, she knew, both Merian and Magnus had performed small favors for him, such as one neighbor inevitably does for another — returning a lost calf here, mending a broken fence there. He was also their representative in the Assembly and, although he kept slaves himself, was known to be otherwise fair and without general prejudice.