remember the shards cutting into my skin as they were shattered by his fist. Since then, I have not questioned him. He thinks that every part of me is his to command. He does not own my soul, but I’d rather he didn’t discover that fact whilst I am trapped within these walls.
My soul belongs to Africa: my mother, father, family all. The land from which I was torn as an infant, fourteen years ago. I was too young to remember its blazing sun and desert sands, but I know in my heart that I was not made to be ripped from its plains and condemned to servitude in the London rain. It is unending: a grey, wet world outside my window from dawn until dusk.
I am lucky, they tell me, to have a place in the house of the Duke. I could have been sent to hoe the soil with the other girls my age, in the English fields far north of this wretched city. I can’t say I would have preferred it; I would prefer not to be in this country at all.
I look down at the shining blade in my hands. Perhaps I won’t have to be here much longer, if promises are all that they seem.
*
If the sight of a fourteen year old slave girl holding a knife above her sleeping master seems strange to you, then the circumstances which have led me to this moment will appear totally fantastical. I met a man, you see. A man who isn’t really a man, but I know of no other word to describe him. He looked like a man, save for the colour of his skin, and he smiled like a man when he promised to deliver me back to Africa.
It was early in the morning on January the second when he first appeared. After a vigorous day of celebrating the prospect of a successful new year, the Duke and his family had retired to late beds and left the main parlour in a state of ruin. The white-skinned maids wouldn’t lower themselves to the task of scraping the Duke’s drunken vomit from the carpet, so at four o’clock I found myself in pitch darkness, scrubbing until my fingers bled. That was the moment that I noticed the light behind me.
A pale blue glow was reflected in the mirror over the fireplace, an antique glass and gilded frame emblazoned with roses and thorns. I gave it little more than a passing thought until my cleaning work was done, assuming that a light from somewhere outside the parlour had caught in its reflective surface. It was only when I used the mirror to check myself over that I realised there was something strange afoot.
I could see my face within it, inspecting the oval of my forehead and jaw, my black curls scraped back under an ugly white cap that only served to highlight the deep brown of my skin. In the darkness of the parlour, I should have looked like a shadow in the glass, but my hazel eyes were lit bright blue. The light I had worked by was no illusion or reflection: it was shining straight at me.
The light was coming from inside the mirror, from an impossible distance within the glass. I didn’t dare remove the heavy, priceless frame from the wall to see if there was some hollow or secret place behind it, but I did put my hand to the mirror’s surface to try to make sense of the illusion. My palm was flush against the reflective pane, but the light shone out around my splayed fingers, casting a shadow onto my face.
“Dirty, bloody fingers on my mirror. Tsk, tsk.”
I turned instinctively to the parlour door, but saw no-one who the voice could have belonged to. I had expected as much. The voice had come from a direction I wasn’t willing to admit to. I could feel its vibrations on my palm as it spoke again.
“Take your hand from my glass, Aberash.”
I obeyed, but shook my head at the light in the mirror.
“That isn’t my name,” I whispered.
“You take the name that your oppressors give you,” answered the voice in a lightly mocking tone. It was rich and masculine, deep as oceans I had never seen, but always wished to. “Aberash is the name your mother cried the day you were stolen from her dying body.”
Dying. The words haunted me. The
My soul belongs to Africa: my mother, father, family all. The land from which I was torn as an infant, fourteen years ago. I was too young to remember its blazing sun and desert sands, but I know in my heart that I was not made to be ripped from its plains and condemned to servitude in the London rain. It is unending: a grey, wet world outside my window from dawn until dusk.
I am lucky, they tell me, to have a place in the house of the Duke. I could have been sent to hoe the soil with the other girls my age, in the English fields far north of this wretched city. I can’t say I would have preferred it; I would prefer not to be in this country at all.
I look down at the shining blade in my hands. Perhaps I won’t have to be here much longer, if promises are all that they seem.
*
If the sight of a fourteen year old slave girl holding a knife above her sleeping master seems strange to you, then the circumstances which have led me to this moment will appear totally fantastical. I met a man, you see. A man who isn’t really a man, but I know of no other word to describe him. He looked like a man, save for the colour of his skin, and he smiled like a man when he promised to deliver me back to Africa.
It was early in the morning on January the second when he first appeared. After a vigorous day of celebrating the prospect of a successful new year, the Duke and his family had retired to late beds and left the main parlour in a state of ruin. The white-skinned maids wouldn’t lower themselves to the task of scraping the Duke’s drunken vomit from the carpet, so at four o’clock I found myself in pitch darkness, scrubbing until my fingers bled. That was the moment that I noticed the light behind me.
A pale blue glow was reflected in the mirror over the fireplace, an antique glass and gilded frame emblazoned with roses and thorns. I gave it little more than a passing thought until my cleaning work was done, assuming that a light from somewhere outside the parlour had caught in its reflective surface. It was only when I used the mirror to check myself over that I realised there was something strange afoot.
I could see my face within it, inspecting the oval of my forehead and jaw, my black curls scraped back under an ugly white cap that only served to highlight the deep brown of my skin. In the darkness of the parlour, I should have looked like a shadow in the glass, but my hazel eyes were lit bright blue. The light I had worked by was no illusion or reflection: it was shining straight at me.
The light was coming from inside the mirror, from an impossible distance within the glass. I didn’t dare remove the heavy, priceless frame from the wall to see if there was some hollow or secret place behind it, but I did put my hand to the mirror’s surface to try to make sense of the illusion. My palm was flush against the reflective pane, but the light shone out around my splayed fingers, casting a shadow onto my face.
“Dirty, bloody fingers on my mirror. Tsk, tsk.”
I turned instinctively to the parlour door, but saw no-one who the voice could have belonged to. I had expected as much. The voice had come from a direction I wasn’t willing to admit to. I could feel its vibrations on my palm as it spoke again.
“Take your hand from my glass, Aberash.”
I obeyed, but shook my head at the light in the mirror.
“That isn’t my name,” I whispered.
“You take the name that your oppressors give you,” answered the voice in a lightly mocking tone. It was rich and masculine, deep as oceans I had never seen, but always wished to. “Aberash is the name your mother cried the day you were stolen from her dying body.”
Dying. The words haunted me. The
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