The Long Song

In 1831, Caroline plans an elaborate Christmas dinner, giving extensive instructions to Hannah. During the preparations, she argues with the headman, Godfrey, over the cost of supplies for the feast and strikes him. As peddlers arrive at the kitchen to sell their wares, they gossip about a preacher’s sermon about freedom. The preparations are chaotic, and Godfrey, in a moment of mischief, instructs July to use a bedsheet for the formal dining table instead of the proper Irish linen.

Caroline’s Christmas dinner party begins. The enslaved musicians, hired for the occasion, deliberately play poorly for their white audience. An attorney, Henry Barrett, dominates the conversation with talk of a rumored rebellion of enslaved people. Meanwhile, the house servants and servants from neighboring plantations hold their own party with the leftovers. July gets into a verbal spat with Clara, a haughty, light-skinned lady’s maid.

Later, Godfrey sends July to steal more liquor from the dining room. As she passes bottles out a window to Byron, the man from Windsor Hall wakes and catches her. He accuses her of theft and, while interrogating her, secretly gropes her. The confrontation is interrupted when militia men burst in, announcing that plantations are being burned in the west. They summon all the white men to duty, and the party dissolves into chaos. Howarth gives Caroline a pistol for protection and tells July to look after her. After the men depart, Caroline cries with social embarrassment over a guest possibly noticing that she had used a bedsheet as a tablecloth.

July interrupts her story to address the reader directly. She explains that Thomas has criticized her for not including more historical facts about the 1831 Baptist War, also known as the Christmas Rebellion. July dismisses his demands, arguing that news was unreliable in that era and that her personal experience was limited. She directs the reader to Baptist minister George Dovaston’s pamphlet Facts and Documents Connected With the Great Slave Rebellion of Jamaica (1832) for a fuller account, while warning them away from the pamphlet Conflict and Change. A View From the Great House of Slaves, Slavery and the British Empire by the enslaver John Hoskin. She concludes by stating that while a rebellion raged across Jamaica, life at Amity was quiet.

Three days after the dinner party, Caroline remains isolated in the great house with only her enslaved servants. She’s terrified by the distant sounds of the rebellion. Her fear is amplified when July pretends that an unknown Black man is approaching on horseback. The rider is actually Nimrod Freeman, a former groom at Amity who has purchased his freedom. July is delighted to see him and leaves Caroline locked in a room to go speak with him. Nimrod tells the other servants stories of the rebellion, claiming that white men are being thrown into boiling sugar and that the militia is paying for Black rebel ears. He expresses genuine concern for Caroline’s safety, insisting that she must be taken to a ship in the harbor. After initially dismissing the idea, July becomes concerned for Caroline and agrees to deliver the message.

After learning that she must flee to a ship, Caroline is anxious, fussing over which clothes to pack. She accuses July of plotting against her. When Godfrey arrives to drive her to town, he refuses to leave until she pays him, citing the danger of traveling with a white person during the rebellion. She makes to strike him, but Godfrey seizes her wrists and forces her to her knees. Defeated, she agrees to his price. Godfrey makes Caroline say July’s real name three times. He then asserts his authority further by ordering her to ride in a humble mule cart instead of the gig and lie hidden under a smelly blanket. As Godfrey drives away with Caroline, July has no idea if she will never see him again.

With the house empty, July revels in her newfound freedom, exploring rooms and playing games. Nimrod appears, and they engage in a role-playing game where she’s the “mistress” and he’s her “slave.” After drinking wine for the first time, a drunk July allows Nimrod to seduce her in “the master’s” bed.

The next morning, they’re woken by the return of Howarth and Caroline. July and Nimrod hide under the bed just as Howarth enters the room in a state of extreme distress. After pacing and muttering to himself, he sits in a chair and, to their horror, fatally shoots himself. His body falls to the floor just inches from their hiding place.

Caroline and the overseer, Tam Dewar, discover Howarth’s body. Dewar confirms that it was a suicide, but Caroline denies it, fearing that a finding of suicide would mean the seizure of all their property—a consequence she knows from the ruin of her London neighbor Jane Glover after Jane’s father hanged himself. An authorial aside reveals the cause of Howarth’s despair: During his militia duty, he witnessed not only the brutal killing and torture of many enslaved people but also, more shockingly to him, a group of his white peers dressed as women, tarring and feathering a Baptist missionary, whom they blamed for encouraging the rebellion.

While July remains unnoticed, Dewar spots Nimrod hiding under the bed, and Caroline immediately accuses him of murdering Howarth. Dewar, understanding the opportunity, coaches her on a believable lie: Nimrod shot Howarth from the front, in the mouth, and she in turn shot Nimrod as he fled. Dewar brutally beats Nimrod and then prepares to kill him. As Dewar aims at Nimrod’s head, July bursts from her hiding place and tackles him. The shot blasts into the ceiling, bringing down debris that pelts Caroline and causes her to fall heavily on top of Dewar, knocking the wind from him. July grabs the dazed Nimrod and escapes, locking Caroline and Dewar in the room. She drags Nimrod to the village of enslaved field workers, where an old woman named Miss Rose recognizes her as Kitty’s long-lost daughter.

The narrative flashes back to describe Kitty’s life. Her most hated work is manuring the cane fields, a physically agonizing and degrading task. On the day of the rebellion, Kitty hears that her daughter has reappeared at the plantation just as the militia attacks their village. Ignoring the chaos of burning huts and rampaging soldiers, Kitty makes her way to the mill yard.

There, she finds Dewar, who has just shot Nimrod in the face, raising his pistol to strike July. Kitty attacks him with savage force, screaming for July to run. In the ensuing struggle, which no one clearly witnesses, Kitty beats Dewar so severely that he dies from his injuries two days later. The militia finds Kitty sitting calmly beside the overseer’s mangled body and arrests her. The enslaved cattle-man Benjamin Brown specifically testifies that Dewar was July’s father, recounting that Dewar had repeatedly forced himself on Kitty when he first came to Amity.

While hiding in the town’s market square, July watches as Kitty is brought to the gallows. Kitty’s face is swollen and bruised from being beaten, and she’s confused, not understanding that her trial is over and that she has been sentenced to death. The townspeople have grown numb to the frequent executions and pay little attention. Kitty is hanged on a gibbet alongside two other men—one condemned for burning down his overseer’s house, the other for merely watching the flames “open-mouthed.” July watches as her mother struggles at the end of the rope before finally going still.