Sorry. I'm late with this post. I'll try to get one more up by Wednesday.
Maria continued to cry for several more minutes to make sure that she truly seemed distraught. From that point forward, whenever she knew someone was near, she did her best to cry and wail as much as possible.
A few hours later, Mr. Walters visited the prison, carrying with him a thick whip of solid leather. After Maria refused to answer any of his questions, he used it savagely on her. In spite of the terrible pain, she did not move and refused to answer any of his questions.
This incident replayed itself every morning for the next three days, which seemed to stretch on forever in Maria’s mind. Long periods of idleness mixed with hours of crying and wailing. She eventually found that real despair was beginning to set in, despite her best efforts to control it. She had to escape, but where would she go? She did not know the terrain, and she was not dressed appropriately to be outside in the middle of a cold spring night. She needed to have a plan, and it was on the fourth day of her imprisonment that the answer was thrown into the cell with her.
Just after lunch on that day, a young woman was flung into the jail with Maria. The unfortunate girl had a large welt across her face, obviously the result of a cruel whip blow. The woman did not move from the spot where she landed, but rather rolled over onto her back and groaned in pain. Tears began to form in her eyes.
“Are you okay?” asked Maria.
The woman did not answer; she merely began to cry. Maria slid over to the crying woman, took her in her arms and sat there for a long time, comforting her as one would comfort a distraught child.
Finally, the woman spoke. “Do you have any water?”
Maria walked over to the rusty tin pail that held her day’s supply of water. She returned with the pail to the woman, who took a large drink before returning the pail to Maria.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m glad you were in here. It’s much harder to be in here alone.”
“Are you saying that you have been in here before?” asked Maria. It was the first words she had spoken in several days, and she struggled a little with finding the correct English words to use.
“Yes,” the slave replied, “I get thrown in here about once every month, usually when Mr. Walters is in one of his more foul, more drunken moods.”
“What do you do that causes him to treat you so poorly?”
“I’m the cook,” answered the woman, “and it’s generally some sort of silly reason, like the biscuits were undercooked or the beans overcooked or the stew wasn’t quite right.
“I’ll tell you this, that I’ve about had enough of this kind of treatment. I hear that there’s a man who lives on a plantation west of town who will redeem slaves from the owners and let them work for him as employees. They say that all you have to do is to get to his plantation and ask for his help. He’s already redeemed fifteen or twenty in the past week, or so the story goes. His name, they say, is Colonel Williams, and he runs a plantation called Providence Estate.”
This story, of course, was exaggerated. The story of Williams rescuing Alejandro and redeeming Pedro had spread throughout the slave community. Few slaves dared try to escape, but it was encouraging for them to tell the story nonetheless.
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