Thomas Hamilton watches the ocean as he rides on the long boat from the ship, Peter left on board, toward the shore. He sees the crests of the waves change into froths of white as they near the sand. He watches the buildings of the small settlement of Savannah quickly change into dense forest as their locking carriage bumps along a dirt path that is barely a road. The forest blocks much of the sun and looks wild as the new world claims to be. He watches the sun as they step out of the carriage before the gates of the plantation appearing out of the trees. The sun shines and Thomas feels now the heavy heat so unlike London.

"My hell was cold so can this be a heaven instead?"

"Come along!" A man shouts near the gate, Thomas' three fellow prisoners ahead of him.

Thomas looks down at them now, the gate opening in the middle of the engraved words 'Non sibi sed aliis' on the face.

"'Not for ourselves, but for others,'" Thomas reads as they walk through.

Behind them, the door clangs shut. Thomas looks over his shoulder and sees heavy locks bolted into place. Two men holding rifles flank the doors. This may be the new world, a place of air and sun, but it is still a prison he cannot leave.

"Gentlemen." Thomas turns back as their prisoner party stops. A man wearing a grey wig which would use some attention stands in their path with two younger men beside him. "Welcome to Oglethorpe plantation, I am he."

"Oglethorpe," Thomas whispers to himself.

"It is my policy that those who enter this plantation are not to leave it again. So while you will find some relief here from the punishments you may have suffered in the old world, do not think this your manor house or autonomy to do as you like. You are still criminals of your own kind."

Mark makes a derisive noise.

"Mercy does not mean freedom," Thomas says to himself.

"Here you shall work. You shall be useful to others and perhaps find some peace for yourself. Our society in this new world should be one of a more equal footing than the old."

"That why you need the walls?" Mark asks under his breath.

Oglethorpe glances at Mark for a moment then returns to his presentor guise. "You shall all be given beds and clothes in the barracks then assignments for your work. Do as you are told and you shall be treated well. Adieu."

The two men who stand with Oglethorpe stay where they stand as he walks away.

"Right," the taller one says, still a few inches shorter than Thomas, "this way." He gestures to the left and they follow him, the other man taking the rear of the party.

Both men carry rifles but they wear them slung over their back as though their presence is merely a formality. They walk past rows of swaying stalks as high as Thomas' shoulder. They pass one field still waiting to be sown with parallel rows dug into the dirt. Thomas sees another field beyond the tilled earth and wonders how many acres this plantation consists of. Savannah is still new and how much land could they have cleared already?

Then Thomas sees three long buildings in a row, end to end at the edge of the fields where the forest begins again. The man in front walks toward the first building. He stops near the door and points at Matthew and Tad, "You two will be here." Then he gestures with his head for Thomas and Mark to walk on.

"Follow me," the man behind them says as he walks around to lead.

Thomas and Mark glance at each other but say nothing. Thomas' descent into secluded melancholy during their weeks on the ship did little to endear him to Mark but Thomas did not wrong him either. They walk to the third building at the end of the barracks line. Their guard pulls out a large metal key and unlocks the door. Thomas feels a twitch in his arms. Then the man opens the door. Thomas sees rows of beds, trunks at the foot of each one and small cabinets between each pair of beds, which must double as a place for storing personal items and as a side table.

"Right," the man says. "A bed there and a bed there. You, Thomas, the far one and Mark, the one there in the middle. Should have clothes in the chest." He looks at Thomas, his eyes ticking up and down once. "Probably will fit."

"Might be difficult to change if that's what you want," Mark says.

The man looks back at Mark with a frown. Mark holds up his hands, manacles still binding them.

The man makes a 'tsk' noise. "Right." He pulls a straight key out of his pocket, steps up to Mark and unlocks the manacles so they drop to the floor. He sides steps and does the same for Thomas, catching Thomas' before they fall. "There."

"Appreciated," Mark says.

"Thank you," Thomas echoes.

"Right, so get changed and then we are going back to the field where Mr. Oglethorpe spoke to you. We grow two crops here. You both are on sugar cane."

"What's the other?" Mark asks.

"Cotton."

Thomas nods. The cash crop of the new world. "And our compatriots?" Thomas asks. "They are cotton?"

The man laughs once. "Not as hard to teach a slow one to pick the cotton and the other is a…" The man purses his lips and does not finish his thought. "Sugar cane takes a bit more muscle, is all."

Mark gives Thomas a skeptical sidelong look that Thomas rather agrees with. However, he suspects his height to be the culprit in this case. To some, tall means strong.

"Either of you farmed before?" the man asks as the two of them move toward the beds the man indicated for them.

Mark scoffs as he reaches his far closer bed. "I was a navy man."

"Navy…" the man mutters.

"Better me on a boat than your field, son."

"Well, you've got a field," the man snaps. "And you call me son again you'll have less."

"Yes, sir."

Thomas reaches the bed on the end of the row. It looks likely to be a good four inches shorter than he would need. He crouches and opens the trunk at its foot. Inside are two pairs of gray breeches, three gray shirts, some stockings and a pair of shoes. The shoes certainly appear too small. He somehow doubts they will force him into bare feet here.

He thinks of the stone floors of Bedlam – holes in his shoes, in his stockings, dirt between his toes, the crack in the floor in front of the bath room, the tile that pinched vulnerable skin if you forgot to miss it between the second and third tubs, the unevenly shaped and far too familiar flat stones of his cell rubbed smooth in certain places from prisoner after prisoner, from his own feet and body moving over the same spots.

"What about you?"

Thomas drops the lip of the trunk with a loud bang in the near empty space. He turns his head back sharply to the man who led them here standing in the middle of the long room now. Closer to the front door, Mark pulls a new shirt over his head and gives Thomas a quizzical look.

"No," Thomas finally answers. "I have never farmed."

When the two of them change into their new plantation wear, minus Thomas' shoes, they make their way with their half guard, half escort, through the lines of fields. The clothes feel similar to Bedlam, plain linen except that every piece is fresh and new. Thomas tries not to see vomit or blood stains from clothing gone when he looks down at himself.

"Christopher!"

Thomas stops suddenly as their guard halts his brisk pace at the edge of an open, dirt field where at least a dozen men work. A man with short, mousey brown hair turns at the yell then jogs over to where they stand. Christopher is tan as their guard, a head shorter than Thomas with slight muscles standing out on his forearms where Thomas can see and a ready smile on his oval face.

"New?" Christopher asks, his eyes coasting over the two of them quickly.

"Fresh off the boat." The guard points at each of them in turn. "Mark, Thomas, and not an experienced hand between them."

"Oi," Mark says indignantly.

He makes a nonplussed noise and says as though it were a curse, "navy."

Christopher raises his eyebrows and looks at Mark. "Navy?"

"And what has anyone against the navy here, eh?"

"Likely you do, since you're not with them anymore," Christopher comments then turns to Thomas without waiting for Mark to retort again. He looks Thomas up and down once then his lips twist. "Gentry or a lord?"

Thomas only looks levelly back at him. "I am less now."

Christopher scoffs. "Aren't we all, but it means you'll take more work than him to get into condition."

Thomas thinks perhaps he should be insulted, and maybe another man would be, but Thomas knows in the real world of working men his skills are minimal and his time in Bedlam will not have helped.

"All right," Christopher continues now to the guard. "I can take them from here if you like, Will, you can tell the master I will sort them out."

"You know he doesn't like when you call him master; you're not slaves. There's no slavery here."

Christopher nods. "Right, right, and I can leave then, can I?"

Will's lip curls into an ugly expression but he simply turns on his heel and marches away. Thomas and Mark watch him then both turn back to Christopher with likely matching expressions of surprise. Christopher looks solemn for a moment then his eyes tick to the two of them and he smiles.

Mark barks a laugh. "Well now, can't say they must like you much here if you go on like that!"

Christopher shrugs. "He would never have liked me much anyway so why work toward otherwise? Plus, he's an ass." He gestures toward the two of them to follow. "Come on, lucky for you we are planting right now which is the easier part of sugar cane farming."

"What is the harder part?" Thomas asks.

Christopher looks at him. "Well, when you have to chop stalks taller than you with a machete but make sure you chop in the right place so not to lose that molasses and burn the field in preparation but not so much as to burn the forest too of course and keep the plants well so they can grow again the next year." Christopher purses his lips again. "And this is only our second season here, been barely a year."

"Have you been here a year?" Thomas asks.

Christopher does not answer for a moment, giving Thomas a searching look. "Nearly." Then he turns away back to the plowed lines where other men work. "Now, today we plant seeds and you learn how many places in your back can hurt."

Thomas finds Christopher's joking comment to be completely justified by the day's end.

Mark and Thomas join Christopher and about half a dozen other men in walking, half bent over, through the plowed lines down the field. Each row lies a yard part from the row next to it, a man to each row. They have a bag of seeds and must dig a small hole with a trowel for each seed. Place the seed inside the hole, cover it with dirt and then move on once more. Christopher said to give a yard or so between each seed. Thomas moves slowly in a constant hunch as he digs, seeds, covers, then repeats. He shoes soon turn browner with the dirt and a line seems to creep up his stockings. Thomas finds himself counting in his head as he drops seeds.

Twenty… twenty-one… twenty-two…

It numbs his mind quickly. He does not find himself day dreaming yet, not with the sweat on his neck and dirt framing his fingernails. He focuses on the simple actions in front of him, the feeling in his back and the blur in front of his eyes.

When Thomas reaches the end of his row, Christopher says, "And now the next field."

Thomas counts steps between each hole and drop of a seed, the bag over his arm feeling heavier instead of lighter as he moves. His joints ache more with each step.

"One, two, three, plant…"

He wonders at so small a thing as the seed on his palm creating a towering plant with a liquid so valuable inside. He wonders at the history of sugar. Who first thought to cut into this specific plant in search of something to eat, something to taste, something to sweeten their life. In Thomas' past schoolings and the extensive reading on his own, a history of the sugar cane plant was not among the pages read.

"One, two, three…."

He feels the dirt under his fingers, something real, something he can move and change. The walls of Bedlam were solid, unyielding. If you chose to smash your hand or your head upon them, it would be you that changed and bled, never the wall. The dirt slips over his palms leaving tiny traces in creases he never noticed in his skin. It falls back to the ground not quite the same as when Thomas first shoveled it up then packed it back down.

"One, two, three…"

He hears the other men moving along in the same rhythmic pattern as him. Their shoes scuff through the dirt at a shuffle. Occasionally a man will groan or bones with click as someone pauses to stretch pained limbs. It reminds him of the crack of bone on stone.

"One, two…"

It reminds him of the man who tapped his head against the stone wall in Bedlam day after day. Thomas tried to stop him once and failed. He watched him several times, dozens maybe, when he was still permitted to leave his cell. He watched the tap that was more like a 'thunk,' skin and bone meeting stone. The spot on the wall turned into a muddy red, dirt and blood combined on the textured stone. One day Thomas saw the man lying on the floor beside the wall, the spot on the wall evident as ever and a matching color tone on his forehead. He breathed in sharp gasps spaced apart too long. Another patient said something about a wheeze and crack. The orderlies left the man there for three hours before finally taking him to a room somewhere. Thomas never saw him again but the spot on the wall remained red then brown for months.

"Thomas?"

Thomas drops his trowel and pulls his eyes up slowly from the reddish mud at his feet. Christopher stands beside him, one hand touching Thomas' shoulder and the other holding a cup. Thomas shifts just enough so Christopher's hand no longer touches him.

"Yes?"

"Your hand."

Thomas looks down and sees a thin line of blood on his hand. He looks down and sees the match on the edge of his trowel. Christopher shifts around Thomas and pours a small bit of water from the cup over Thomas' hand. The blood mingles with the dirt for a moment in his palm making a new color like James' hair before spilling over the edges of his hand onto the ground. Then Christopher holds out the cup.

"Do not forget to drink," he says, "or the sun will put you down."

"It has not been long," Thomas says though he takes the cup regardless.

"It has been hours," Christopher says, "past midday."

Thomas only stares at him.

Christopher reaches into a pocket and pulls out a handkerchief. He then presses it against Thomas' hand. Thomas pulls back his hand from Christopher's fingers, the handkerchief nearly falling to the dirt but Christopher catches it in time. Thomas sees a faint line in red on the white cloth.

"You should eat your midday meal before starting again," Christopher says after a pause between them. "They allow us fifteen minutes. Follow the rows back to where we started. Will shall have a tin for you."

Thomas looks up and sees more rows and tilled fields than he remembers counting or planting, the time having slipped through him measured incorrectly.

"How many fields are there?" Thomas asks finally turning his head to look at Christopher.

Christopher's tongue clicks as he glances around at the men working. "It began with only two hundred acres last year, now we have three hundred more to plant."

"In addition?"

Christopher looks back him. "Sugar cane is a hardy plant. It can be harvested several times if you maintain the plants right and we have only put those plants through one season. So they should be good to harvest again. Two hundred acres already planted and three more to add to that." He shrugs a little. "Who knows how Oglethorpe may wish to expand after that if Tomochichi will let him."

Thomas gives Christopher an uncomprehending look at the name. Christopher nods. "Local Indian chief. Oglethorpe likes working with him instead of just shooting at them like they do up north." Christopher shakes his head. "Never seen him."

The silence stretches for a moment then Christopher folds up his handkerchief and places it on Thomas' cut hand without touching Thomas. Then he taps the rim of the cup in Thomas' other hand. "Drink then go eat."

Thomas looks down into the water of the cup. He takes a sip. The water is not cold but nor is it warmed by too much sun. He turns his head to Christopher walking back over to his own row of planting. "Thank you."

Christopher waves a hand over his shoulder.

They plant another five hours, stopping only when the sun dips low enough and they lose their light to see. Thomas feels weak from too many hours on his feet and the heat of the sun; he has never worked so many hours in his life. Just as Christopher said, his back pains him no matter how he stands or moves. His lower back especially stabs from the stooped posture of the day.

The men all converge together to eat supper in a large hall closer to the wall around the plantation and within sight of the manner house. The room houses about half a dozen long tables with around ten men to a table. The overseers do not eat with them, taking turns guarding the doors before leaving to eat their own meals elsewhere.

"They used not to bother with watching over dinner," a man at Thomas' table by the name of Bartholomew says. "But when our conversation grew too noisy, they changed up to this guarded eating."

"Because you started singing sea shanties," another man quips.

Mark snorts into his mug of beer.

"What sorts of songs?" Tad asks, his fingers crumbling up his piece of bread onto his plate.

"No!" a few men snap loudly making one of the overseers near a door perk up.

"He'll sing again and we are close enough to them leaving us alone for an hour that I would give up your singing, yeah?" A blond man says, pointing with his fork.

Bartholomew frowns and gives the blond a lofty look. "Just because you cannot sing, Stephen."

"Sing in the field then," Mark says quietly, "the slaves do that, I hear."

Their table falls quiet, the clink of cutlery and a muffled laugh from a far table.

"We are not slaves," Stephen finally says, his voice strained.

"Aren't we?" Mark asks.

Beside Mark, across the table from Thomas, Matthew stares down at his plate, his breathing a little off. Thomas wonders if he tries not to cry. On Mark's other side, Christopher watches Mark for a long moment then his eyes turn to Thomas. Thomas looks down at his plate and thinks about the sea, sunken ships bearing chains underneath the waves.

After the meal, the men are allowed time to themselves in their barracks. Two candles stand on each small cabinet between the beds allowing each man his own light. Thomas' bed proves more shadowy simply due to his being on the end. Bartholomew's bed sits right next to the door in Thomas' row. Thomas does not see Stephen so he must reside in one of the other two barracks. Matthew and Tad left with the smaller group of cotton laborers. So the only other two in his barracks which Thomas recognizes are Mark and Christopher.

Mark reads from a slim volume, dressed now in his night shirt on his cot. Thomas cannot tell from this distance if what he reads is a book or a journal of some kind. In the dimming light, Mark's hair appears redder, too red to be James. His hair is too short, his shoulders less broad, his smile wrong – he no longer reminds Thomas of James as he did on the ship. Perhaps without the sea as a backdrop the comparison fails. Thomas is grateful for it.

When they returned, Thomas found a bag on top of his trunk containing the few possessions left to him – another set of clothing bought for him by Peter when he was released and the book Peter lent him on the ship. Peter either forgot or did not wish to take it back. Thomas cannot decide if he wants any of it. Would it only remind him of betrayal now due to the source or are they merely things?

"Lights out!" Will suddenly shouts from the door, closing it behind him again with a careless bang.

Candles blow out around the room. Thomas hears one man grumble something – 'like children' – while another replies – 'grateful it's not…' – and then only Thomas' candle remains. He looks at the flame, warm like the sun from the field of today. The room itself remains warm, not chilled or damp, and Thomas realizes with a start this surprises him.

"Oi." The man in the cot next to Thomas leans up and blows hard. Thomas' candle snuffs out.

Thomas lies back on his bed, alone again in another prison. He has a bed under his back now, a blanket over his body. The walls around him contain windows where he sees the trees of the forest and a strip of sky. He does not hear moans or cries; he hears a gentle buzz, insects in the night. Thomas' melts back into sleep before he truly realizes his eyes close – an ache in his shoulders, exhaustion in all his limbs and the sense of alone on his mind.


Thomas' days on the plantation follow very similarly at first. He spends his days with the other men in the fields. They plant sugar cane seeds until all the tilled fields fill with seeds. Thomas' back hurts constantly, his legs feels stiff despite their use and the sun tans his skin slowly but surely so he watches lines form where he rolls up his sleeves at his elbow. He ends every day exhausted and pained with blisters on his feet. It takes him longer, as Christopher suspected, to get into a physical condition to truly handle the work. For weeks, he feels faint many times a day or his hands cramp so much he can barely use them. But he keeps moving, he keeps working and he grows stronger.

When their fields are full, Will divides them further still into groups. Mark disappears with some of the other more burley men to begin clearing more land for planting. Thomas hears the distant sound of chopping and the occasional crash as another tree falls, pushing the forest further back toward the distant walls which surround Oglethorpe's land.

Thomas joins half a dozen men to till acres of land into uniform fields for more planting. Thomas receives a basic hoe with a wooden handle and a metal head.

"You've seen the fields before," Christopher says to Thomas and a new man who arrived a week past. "Straight rows until you hit the other end where it's marked. Make them each about a foot wide. I can show you how to use the hoe if you need."

Thomas stares at the hoe thinking oddly of his father and what he should think of Thomas' now. He thinks of his father telling him how a man such as Thomas deserves far worse and that he once gave it to Thomas. He thinks of the hoe smashing into his father's head until the end becomes a sword, the field the sea, until his father's face turns into James' dripping with blood. Christopher has to pull Thomas up to standing again when he sinks down low in the dirt, the hoe clasped so tightly in his hands that Christopher cannot make him let go.

Thomas hoes line after line, creating gullies to walk through and mounds awaiting seeds. He focuses on straight lines and a steady rhythm. He listens to the sounds of Bartholomew singing softly rows away; the overseers do not stop him.

We'll rant and we'll roar, like true British sailors,

We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt seas…

Thomas wants to ask him why he sings of the sea when they work a field. Perhaps the man misses the sea now he is confined to earth.

The rows grow longer, the fields appearing out of the cleared land. They plant more seeds, stooping low and Thomas counting in his head. After weeks, a month they begin to tend the newly growing plants.

"When they start to sprout you have to turn the furrow inward," Christopher explains.

Thomas moves dirt around with his hoe, his hands no longer smooth or fine and a beard on his face. He sometimes wonders as he works the dirt with sweat on his brow and his clothes wearing into familiarity, is this eternity here? Is this really the place where he will die one day?

They eat the same round of meals each day, nothing so fine but steady with meat and potatoes and carrots often enough. They eat enough to work well on and Thomas barely notices the taste. He does not, however, cringe away from it either. He hears the other men talk, during their meals. He learns names and snippets of pasts. Brian, a debtor from Cork; John, a counterfeiter and debtor of London; George, a gentry debtor who lost all his land; Patrick, a minor son from a family of some wealth in Ireland who bankrupted his family; even Matthew appears to be in this place because of some misuse of money.

"Oglethorpe prefers a certain type of criminal in his new prison plantation," Christopher says to him, his voice low when Thomas happens to hear of yet another debtor among them. "Have you noticed?"

"A more polite crime perhaps?"

"Less violent to be sure."

"And you?" Thomas asks.

Christopher looks away. "Oh, well." He glances back. "I am not a debtor." He raises his eyebrows. "Are you?"

"No."

At night, Thomas sometimes wakes when the sun has long since set and quiet darkness surprises a man who lived so long in London. He finds his breath fast and must watch the trees, stand from his bed and tip open the window to breathe the fresh, outdoor air before his pulse calms again. He stares up at the sky seeing more stars than he can count above the forest and the open land of the fields. He thinks of a tiny view of sky through metal mesh. He thinks of stars reaching the sea at the horizon. He sometimes stands by the window for an hour or more as he thinks of chains and blood, a bruise on his arm or back, a hand brushing low along his stomach, scars around his wrists he still traces with now rough fingertips. He focuses on his breath, on how fresh the air tastes on his tongue and how very different the woods and sky are here than the buildings and smog of London. When he sleeps again, he does not dream.


It takes time. It takes months of working, of the pain lessening slowly, of muscle building from daily hoeing and planting and watering and moving wood from felled trees. It takes months. It takes Mark asking him why he stares into his stew for too long not eating because he remembers something worse. It takes the sugar cane growing tall with the leaves that touch each other in their rows. It takes Tad disappearing to work at the mansion. It takes Thomas heaving the contents of his stomach behind the wash house when he sees a line of two tubs inside. It takes five new prisoners joining their plantation. It takes Christopher pulling Thomas' fingers out of fists because Thomas cuts welts into his skin from his fingernails when a new prisoner is named Jonathan. It takes the sugar cane growing taller than Thomas and becoming ready for harvest. It takes time.

Thomas begins to feel like himself once more. He begins to feel like the man he was before Bedlam. He begins to see not something broken and lost, not something just alive. He begins to remember who he was, who he is now.


Work in the fields starts to feel more a gift than a curse. The sun is healing, the air is freedom enough. Work is heaven because his hands and legs are free from chains. The open space is an Eden because he can see beyond walls and his past lies far away across an ocean. The long days in the fields, the baking sun, the hoe in his hand, the growing calluses feel like relief. Perhaps that is why men call it 'honest work.' He sees the product of his labors before him every day and while he may still feel alone – while he remembers well what he has lost and misses – he is not caged or confined in the same way. He does not dread the opening of a door or the touch of certain hands or strain against chains. He does not often bleed and he is not sick. He thanks the world for small mercies because he has already suffered the largest cruelties.

Thomas begins talking. He had not realized how much he had stopped.

"Why do you sing of the sea?" Thomas asks Bartholomew in the field.

"You don't like my singing?"

Thomas shakes his head. "I ask more about the subject. We are not on a boat, are we?"

Bartholomew only shrugs. "They're the songs I know."

"What?" Brian calls from the row on the other side of Thomas, "you don't like a jolly sailor?"

Thomas stares at him and sees James' smile, his boots in the dirt and his uniform resplendent in the sun. "One cannot speak ill of a sailor," Thomas replies.

Mark laughs at Thomas at dinner in the evenings as he debates with Matthew as to the policies of debtor's prisons and imposing fees for prisoner's own upkeep upon those already imprisoned for a loss or dearth of money. Thomas glances at him, cup in hand. Mark only shakes his head.

"You would rather increase one's debt to keep them where they are? Better more in prison than a method for them to find release?"

"You have a plan laid, our parliamentarian?" George quips, hair in his face and a grin on his lips.

"No," Mark says to Thomas before Thomas can respond to George. "No, I just can't believe you. On the boat here could barely get a word out of you but now…" He laughs once and smiles genuinely. "It's better."

Thomas wonders what he looked like to them on the boat. He wonders what they saw. He takes a drink from his cup then puts it back on the table. Then he nods once at Mark. "It is better."

As he turns toward George again, he catches, for a moment, Christopher watching him with an unreadable expression on his face.


Six months into Thomas' new residence at the plantation outside Savannah – through the burning of the fields, Christopher showing him how to use the machete, the plants striped of leaves and canes stacked in baskets or on carts – Oglethorpe asks to speak with Thomas.

Thomas walks up to the manor house, Will beside him. The house is certainly not as grand as country mansions Thomas has visited in England. It is, however, grander than any building he has entered in years. Six Greek white columns line the front of the house, two windows with paned glass on either side of the black door. A second floor above has five windows to line up with the floor below, most of the windows wide open to cool the house some in the oppressive heat of the Savannah summer.

"And what is it Mr. Oglethorpe wants with me?" Thomas asks. While time has passed, Thomas' trust in his fellow man is far from wholly restored.

Will makes a non-committal noise and simply opens the front door.

They walk through the entryway, a high ceiling with a wide staircase to the left. Thomas spies a front parlor with dental molding at the ceilings to his right and a dining room with Prussian blue walls to his left. Will, however, does not stop at either of these public rooms but leads Thomas around the back of the staircase to the family portion of the house into what proves to be Oglethorpe's study. Thomas feels a tension he had been unaware of ease somewhat from his shoulders.

A tall desk stands against the back wall of the study between two windows, which look out on the back garden. Thomas spies what appear to be vegetable gardens a few yards from the house. He sees a pair of women bent low with their hands in the dirt. Are there women prisoners here as well or has Oglethorpe a family?

What really draws Thomas' attention, however, are the books. The amount of books is not large by English standards. The amount of books Thomas owned in his time could have filled the parlor and the dining room here. However, Oglethorpe's study contains more books than Thomas has seen together since the day he last saw Miranda crying his name. Two books shelves flank the fireplace on the wall to the left of the windows and a third sits nearest the door where Thomas stands. He sees most of the books near the door appear to be related to agriculture, climate studies, a few accounts on the new world. The far bookcases are at too great a distance for Thomas to read many titles. He recognizes a volume of Chaucer that he once owned; he sees Pythagoras and Plato; a title that looks to be in French.

He hears Miranda's voice, 'L'homme est libre au moment qu'il veut l'être.'

"Thomas Hamilton."

Thomas blinks as James Oglethorpe stands from his desk to face Thomas. Thomas hears the door close behind him and Will is gone.

"You are Thomas Hamilton, are you not?" Oglethorpe asks though he must know.

"I suppose so, though it has been a long time since a thing like surnames had any place in my life."

Oglethorpe looks at him oddly. Thomas does not know the man well enough to tell what the expression might mean. Oglethorpe turns and walks toward the bookshelves on the wall. He slides his finger across the spines on one shelf then pulls out a book. He walks the four steps across the room and holds out the book to Thomas. "Have you read this?"

Thomas looks down at the book, Paradise Lost, John Milton. Thomas looks up again with a twist of his lips. "Is this meant to be a joke?"

Oglethorpe frowns. "How so?"

Thomas chuckles once with some actual mirth then takes the book. He shakes his head, running his fingers over the leather bound cover. Touching a book feels different with his laborer's hands. "I have read it."

"Then what of it?" Oglethorpe asks, rocking back on his heels.

"'What of it?'" Thomas parrots. He tips the book up so the cover is flat toward him, his eyes looking over the pages inside pressed tight together, no dog-ears to be seen. "Are you asking me for a summary?"

Oglethorpe scoffs. "No, of course not; I have read it. It is in my library."

"Many men own libraries they have not read."

Oglethorpe paces a few steps to the side. "I am asking your opinion on the work."

Thomas almost scoffs at the absurdity. Does this man not know what Thomas is now? Has he forgotten Thomas is a prisoner on his plantation? Does he hear himself? Thomas looks at Oglethorpe as he peers back at Thomas, his face in profile now. Thomas thinks more critically about where they reside – an isolated plantation near a settlement, which can barely be called a town, not yet part of an official colony in the Americas, far from any English society or salons or learning.

"You are asking for a conversation about this book," Thomas says. Oglethorpe only watches him. Thomas frowns. "I would ask, why me, why now?"

"Because of all the men here, you are the most learned."

"You know all the men's histories?"

"I know yours." Thomas purses his lips and his fingers stray from the book's cover to the scars on his wrist. Oglethorpe continues. "I have the management of this plantation on my desk most days but I am not without a want of conversation and Savannah society is not a society yet."

"What do you call your plantation here then? A microcosm of a society and yet not enough for your needs?"

"I call it an experiment or a hope."

"Your equitable agrarian society based upon the relocating of prisoners so we might improve upon our moral failings with physical labor?"

"You could put it as such. And the hope that it will grow."

"I think you idealize this place, perhaps. I see a farm as any other. I see men working fields and I see the hierarchy any man would expect to see here. What difference is there in your experiment?"

"This is only the start and it will not be the only plantation." Oglethorpe's voice rises with what Thomas' recognizes as a passion in his own convictions. "Savannah will grow and those who were treated unfairly, imprisoned and given no proper recourse to atone or improve their station may do so here. You think this simply a farm? No, it is a chance. Men may restart their lives, may prove of value rather than wasting in some prison."

"Or asylum."

Oglethorpe looks at Thomas, pausing in his speech. He nods once. "Savannah may become a haven. A different sort of world than the one we left."

"And yet you built a wall around it."

Oglethorpe purses his lips. "It must start somewhere and the men I would wish to bring here would not be released without another wall to hold them in."

"And what should England care once you have them?" Thomas counters. "Do they check the gates for a lock? Or are you simply obtaining a different type of slave without having to pay for him?"

Oglethorpe visibly bristles at that. "I have outlawed slavery in this colony."

"Then what am I?"

"Prisoners and slaves are not the same. Prisoners have a reason to be where they are; they have broken the law in some manner and must pay a price."

"And thus deserve to work your fields?"

Oglethorpe frowns and paces again. "I asked for your presence because I thought you a man of knowledge, one who I could have conversation of literature, of politics, not –"

"Is this not politics?" Thomas quirks his head. "Have you not considered these ideas yourself? As you said, you banned slavery."

"Yes, I…" Oglethorpe stops suddenly watching Thomas. Then he laughs. "Do you truly believe as you say or is this…. Is this the Thomas Hamilton I have heard of, able to argue any point or issue he should wish, so quick witted." He raises his eyebrows. "Some forward thinking ideas about pirates?"

Thomas realizes with some surprise that this conversation was just as Oglethorpe says. It is Thomas arguing the point because he can see the path, because he sees the left and the right of the issue, the side roads and the dips in the journey. He can make the road without intending to and then watch how whomever walks with him takes the path. He moved forward with this debate just now without any intention to do so, without even realizing it. It is a vision of his past he assumed lost.

Thomas feels his hand shake and he suddenly puts the book down on a side board next to the door. He looks at Oglethorpe after a beat. "I am not that man now."

Oglethorpe's lips rise a little into a slight smile. "But you have read the book?"

"I do not know what you should wish to coax from me, sir –"

"I would think I already have."

Thomas frowns, disliking the turn of the tables now but it is his own fault, his own hesitancy. He was fine speaking with his fellow prisoners, the men put to lower station like him but this is the man who imprisons him yet in some ways saved him. Thomas cannot decide how he should feel toward the man.

Thomas says. "I have read the book. Heaven and Hell, the fall of man. If you would want a conversation, I would ask you to think on why you chose this book to hand to me. 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.' Is that what you do here perhaps? Are the colonies hell compared with England? Or are we all serving something more in this new world heaven instead?"

Oglethorpe chuckles. "I do not see myself as Satan if that is what you ask. We are on earth, neither heaven nor hell."

Thomas laughs once but the sound is hollow. "I have seen hell, Mr. Oglethorpe, and I have lost a paradise so perhaps your choice of literature is ill thought."

Oglethorpe frowns and blinks in surprise. "You mistake me."

"You mistake me," Thomas counters. Then he shifts back toward the door. "Your fields will not tend themselves. I should leave."

Oglethorpe looks for a moment as though he may order Thomas to stay. Then he turns around back toward his desk. "Go." Thomas opens the door but before he can step out, he hears Oglethorpe say, "Perhaps a different book next time."

Thomas walks out into the hall, Will waiting by the main door. As they walk back out into the Georgia sun and heat, Thomas thinks he has more scars than he can see.


A man by the name of Robert stops at Thomas' bunk just as they retire from dinner and work that evening. He holds out a book with a deep red cover. "He said to tell you, this one might be a better start."

The book is The Canterbury Tales. Thomas laughs once. Better indeed.

"Thank you," he says to the man as he walks away and Thomas wonders if Oglethorpe intended to make Thomas laugh.

"A book?" Thomas looks up at Christopher now standing in the other man's place. He tilts his head so he may read the spine. He raises his eyebrows. "Bit bawdy at times, isn't that one?"

Thomas grins. "I think this might be a joke."

"What kind of a joke?"

"Perhaps he is telling me not to be quite so serious."

"Oglethorpe?" Christopher moves up along the far side of Christopher's bed as Thomas opens the book. "Are you two reading together now?"

Thomas runs a hand down the pages, remembers the feeling of paper, the weight of a book. He sees words on the page, prose and speech. He remembers sitting in a window as the rain drummed patterns on the glass, Miranda humming to herself and James' quill scratching on paper. He remembers a book in his hand and serenity all around him.

"Have you read this?"

Christopher makes a face. "Not recently and, I must admit, not in its entirety."

"And what did you skip?"

"Well, a tale from a monk or nun…"

Thomas chuckles. "You might be surprised."

"Oh, I think such now but I was far younger then."

Thomas nods almost to himself. He was younger, he was naive, only five years or six or four, sometimes he is not sure, but in so short a time Thomas feels he may have aged fifty years. "Younger…. Yes…"

"Might I read it with you?"

Thomas looks up at Christopher. Christopher leans against the wall, arms crossed. Thomas' eye follows the line Christopher's stance makes down his arm and the curve of his hip. Thomas slides over enough on his small bed. Christopher sits beside him, his leg curled under him and to the side so they manage the space well enough. Thomas opens the book as Christopher's shoulder presses against his own.


Oglethorpe's requests to speak with Thomas and his sending of books are infrequent. Thomas still remains a prisoner as the rest of them, working the fields in whatever manner the month may be in long days in the hot sun. He sweats and strains and watches as the thin wisp of a man Bedlam made him changes into muscle and strength which he did not have even before his first cage. Yet every so often, Will appears at breakfast or dinner and call his name. Thomas enters Oglethorpe's study and a book will wait on a circular table with a chair near Oglethorpe's desk.

"Have you read Shakespeare?" Oglethorpe asks. "I know one once spoke more of John Fletcher, perhaps, but there is much to be said of Shakespeare of late."

"I think Shakespeare knows how to mock society."

Thomas soon realizes he need not define Oglethorpe, his position as master and this discourse with Thomas as if still an equal. These conversations and books and respites to the manor are not a trap or a danger. It is simply that Oglethorpe seems lonely and has no one to talk to.

Thomas reads again. He feels books in his hands, pages with crisp edges, words he has read before and forgotten or locked too far away. He hears Miranda's voice when he reads, sees James' face at the foot of the bed. It hurts but it soothes him too. Christopher sits beside him sometimes, whispers the words as they read together. A part of him thinks it a betrayal but another part tells him life moves forward.

"Do you read French?" Oglethorpe asks.

"And German," Thomas counters, "and Latin should you wish a return to schooling."

He makes Oglethorpe laugh. It reminds him of Peter and often unsettles him. But Thomas reminds himself that Oglethorpe is not the one who ruined his life, he is merely his benevolent jailor. Thomas manages to make the man cross as well, arguing the points he knows Oglethorpe opposes. At times Thomas hates the man himself, sees his own past naiveté and blindness in what Oglethorpe attempts to create in this new world. Is this plantation the Eden he would think or just another work camp? Oglethorpe is not a friend; Thomas cannot even tell if he likes the man but it is a change, it is something of a life.


The end of the harvest season draws near. The fields look strange with the leaves gone and the stalks chopped low. Thomas helps to load canes onto carts to be taken away to the sugar mill in town. They harvested the hardy plants from last year and then on to the new ones as they grew tall enough.

"If these plants last into next season we won't have to plant as much then, yeah?" Brian asks as he wields his machete.

"Unless they clear enough land to make more fields," George grumbles. "Have heard Mark talk of –"

"But they cannot keep going on forever, right?"

"Don't worry," Christopher interrupts, "if we run out of sugar cane we still have cotton fields they can put us in."

Brian sighs and Christopher shoots an amused look at Thomas. Thomas cannot help but smile as the two of them shove more of the canes back into line. As their hands brush on the edge of the cart, Thomas realizes he has been at the plantation now for more than a year.


"Have you ever considered that some of the people imprisoned in your plantation do not belong here?" Thomas asks one day in Oglethorpe's study.

"Such as yourself?"

"I am not the only one."

"They, and you, were imprisoned in England. I am simply giving them some humanity but they are still criminals."

"None are imprisoned unjustly," Thomas replies with obvious question in his tone.

"English law –"

"Never makes mistakes?" Thomas interrupts.

"It may have faults in its execution," he retorts. "But it is not wholly wrong; it serves its rightful purpose. If a man falls into debt it is not due to an abundance of good."

"And how many here were imprisoned for political reasons more than anything to do with crime or madness?" Thomas continues, pushing the issue.

"This does not include you, sir." Oglethorpe snaps his book closed. "I know the true reason for your incarceration despite what London rumor may whisper."

Thomas laughs; of course. He wondered how long it would be before they crossed this threshold. "Ah yes. The 'true' reason."

"Your unnatural appetites."

"Appetites." Thomas thinks it funny the words society uses to categorize that which they fear to speak aloud, something so simple as a love unlike their own. "You may have such ideas about the reason for my years under lock and key reversed."

"Whatever the reason you found yourself in Bedlam originally, such deviation is well enough to keep you there, something so profane."

Thomas stands from his chair, pacing now and shoots Oglethorpe a glare. "Then why these conversations? If I disgust you so why speak to me at all?"

"I endeavor here to give all men a chance at redemption. Yours is not excluded from that." Oglethorpe purses his lips. "And your... tastes do not negate your intelligence and conversation."

"I suppose I should be flattered." He moves around the edge of the room, touching the spines of books. He looks at Oglethorpe again and tilts his head. "You consider intelligence to be more important than passions? Then why imprison a man for his love and not for idiocy or gross errors of judgement? I could give you many a man in no less a place as parliament who would have levied a crime as deep in his idiocy as I did in my 'tastes' as you say."

"That is hardly the point!" Oglethorpe says with some chagrin.

Thomas raises his eyebrows in question. "Then what should the point be, sir? Should the point be that, perhaps, society has it wrong?"

Oglethorpe opens his mouth but does not appear to have a retort. He closes it again then stands and pulls a volume from the shelf. "I assume you have read Homer but what of the Cypria?"

The conversation shuts and changes as Oglethorpe holds out the book. Thomas feels himself the winner. Yet he also feels oddly grateful. Oglethorpe knows but, despite his censure, still wishes to speak with Thomas. Perhaps Oglethorpe's new world of hope is not such a fantasy.


When it is time to plant again, there are still some fields newly plowed and waiting for sugar cane seeds. The five hundred acres increased to six hundred and some of the plants look as though they might not survive. Thomas and Christopher work together to uproot some of the failing plants so they can make space for new seeds instead.

"Did you know Oglethorpe before you were sent here?" Thomas asks.

Christopher gives him a strange look. "Why do you ask that?"

"You have been here almost from this place's inception, you said."

"Yes."

"And you are not a debtor."

Christopher laughs once as he wipes some sweat from his brow then bends again to chop at the rotted base of one sugar cane plant. "Are you trying to ask me what I did to be sent here, Thomas?"

"I am asking what your life was like before here."

Christopher glances up at Thomas. "I did not farm."

"Nor did I." Thomas pulls out a small slip of a plant from the earth and tosses it to the pile they have made between fields. "I think I can see you on an estate." Thomas smiles playfully. "A good horseman maybe."

Christopher laughs again. "Oh no, horses were never my favored pass time. My sister called me a hopeless rider but most were hopeless compared to her." Christopher's lips twist. "She died in childbirth."

Thomas says nothing. Christopher stands up straight, pushing on the plant with his foot where he had been cutting until it makes a loud cracking noise and bends over.

"You ask about my life before." Christopher looks at Thomas again. "I imagine it was much like yours, pampered and privileged with money and a title and something that seems very far away now."

"Yes."

"Do you really wish to think back to that, to what we've lost?"

Thomas breathes in slowly. "I think I should never wish to forget the happiness and hope I had but I also do not try to live there any longer."

"Not just in memory," Christopher whispers.

Thomas does not try to live in those memories because he knows where they lead and he will not corrupt the joy with the sorrow and pain and desperation that came after. He can look at them as pictures – as auburn hair and heavy weight, a pale blue gown and a high laugh, devoted eyes and a freckled back, the two of them near him, a hand in each of his, a kiss beside a dining room table and a man trembling in his arms.

"Life is something else now, you are right," Thomas says. "I should not have asked you."

Christopher shakes his head. "No, it is fine. I have wished to ask you as well." His eyes tick away, slide slowly down the off color linen of Thomas' shirt. "I have wished to ask why you smile sometimes at the sun, how you have come to read so many books, why you used to shake or freeze at things that have no danger in them. But that does not matter, does it?"

Thomas stares at him and can only say. "No."

Christopher reaches out and touches Thomas hand over where the marks of Thomas' fingernails once pressed until his skin broke. Thomas does not pull away until Christopher's thumb brushes a scar on Thomas' wrist.

"Calloused now," Christopher says, his eyes still on Thomas' hands. Then he looks up to Thomas' face again. "Does it bother you?"

Thomas shakes his head. "It protects one's hands, doesn't it?"

"From?"

Despite the past behind them and the now where they stand, Thomas knows what Christopher might wish to ask and some part of Thomas might tell him.

"From many things," Thomas says and sounds mysterious as he never used to be and Christopher smiles. His eyes are green like the trees, like the forest, like something new.


Thomas still wakes up sometimes in the night, his heart beating fast and his breath tight. He still feels chains around his ankles, stone walls at his back, insistent hands at his hips or water over his head. He still needs to stand up and breathe the night air at the window.

The locks on the barracks door are hardly complex, something which can be rattled into opening, so Thomas sneaks outside. He leans against the wall of the barracks near where his own bed lies inside until his breath calms. His barracks lies at the end of the line, all of them close to the woods. He stares into the dark of the forest, thinks of the leagues of land he cannot see. He breathes into the darkness until the memories diminish and the feeling on his skin is only the wind alone.

Until he is not alone.

Christopher leans against the wall beside Thomas. His hand gently touches Thomas forearm, slips down to the scars on his wrist. Thomas does not pull away.

"Why do you wake up at night?" Christopher asks.

Thomas answers him. "I was in Bedlam."

Christopher looks down and lifts Thomas' arm, his finger tracing one scar. Thomas notices they appear paler now than before but perhaps that is only the dim light.

"For how long?"

"Years."

Christopher looks up from Thomas' scars to his face. "Why?"

"Because of my father. Because of politics. Because of who I am."

"Who you are?"

"Why are you here now, Christopher?" Thomas asks in turn. "Where were you in England?"

"Newgate, for a year and two months."

Thomas raises his eyebrows. "You know that closely?"

"A year, two months, one week, and three days." Christopher smiles, it is neither happy nor sad. It simply is. "I understand." He presses his thumb against Thomas' scars. "I understand these."

"Why are you here?" Thomas asks again.

"Why are you here?" Christopher asks right back.

They stare at each other. The moon is waxing now, near half full so Thomas sees the green of Christopher's eyes in the moonlight. The green is dark like the woods, almost black. His hair curls a little at his temple and Thomas pushes some of it back behind Christopher's ear revealing a scar just before Christopher's hairline Thomas has not seen before. Thomas' hand lingers at the edge of Christopher's jaw.

Christopher lays his palm against Thomas' chest, takes one step forward and presses his lips to Thomas'. Thomas closes his eyes – he does not think of James – holds tight to Christopher's jaw. He listens to the sound of the wind in the trees, the buzz of crickets in the grass, something safe, something different, and Thomas kisses him back.