A Fine Showing for the Court of Owls

And thorns shall come up in her palaces . . . it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.

—Isaiah 34:13 (KJV)

The day was beginning to fade. The cave lay in the soft gold light of late afternoon, a breeze passing its fingers through the fronds of pine branches laid across the cleft in its roof. 

Words from earlier in the day rose up in his mind, both his and others’:

A diminutive man, animated and wiry despite his gray beard and hunched back, made his way up the slight slope to the cave’s mouth and entered his home, sweeping the thick cloak wrapped about him onto a hook. 

“God Almighty loves all His human creatures equally.”

“Impudent idiocies! This cannot be borne with!”

His wife’s voice cut through his reverie. “Well, Benjamin, was it a good showing for the court of owls?”

Turning, he smiled at Sarah, who was waiting for him, as she always was these days.

He laid the items he had been carrying onto the table: a leather-bound book with a gaping, ragged hole worked into its center, sticky and dark and red, and a small cloth bag soaked through with the same viscous liquid. Having set a fire, he dropped these things into the flames before scrubbing his hands thoroughly, stained as they were with the juice from the bag and book.

“It would never do to take any of that in my mouth, Sarah,” he explained over his shoulder to his wife. “Pokeberry juice is noxious, noxious.”

“No one else took any, I hope. Benjamin?”

He stopped scrubbing for a moment, squinting over his shoulder. “Sarah, please.”

“I am sorry. What did the owls of desolation and dragons of destruction in the meeting make of it?”

Benjamin Lay began unbuttoning the soldier’s jacket he was wearing. “Patience, Sarah. If you cannot accompany me, you must wait until I am ready to tell.”

“It cannot be helped that I was not there.”

He acknowledged her words with a curt nod. “Nevertheless, I must put off these horrible clothes, get on something more myself, and set something to cook. I shall roast turnips and butter some bread.” His head twitched slightly, his voice hardening a little. “For me of course. You won’t be joining.”

Sarah’s voice held a trace of remonstrance. “Well of course, Benjamin, we both know that.”

Lay set water to heat as he peeled the turnips; bubbles clawed their way to the water’s silver surface as he scraped and chopped the grenade-like vegetables.

“All around were Quaker worthies, dressed in their First-day frills and finery. My heart clenched at those haughty so-called Quakers, Sarah, so many owls and dragons wrapped up tight and respectable within the softest shoe leather and finest cloth. . . .”

Later, a plate of roasted turnips before him and a cup of warm milk to wash it down, Lay was ready to tell the tale.

“I imagine many couldn’t recognize Little Benjamin, muffled up inside of that thick overcoat.”

“Just as well they did not. They might have interfered with you.”

“I daresay. It’s not every day a man disrupts Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. I shuffled through the throng into the meeting room. All around were Quaker worthies, dressed in their First-day frills and finery. My heart clenched at those haughty so-called Quakers, Sarah, so many owls and dragons wrapped up tight and respectable within the softest shoe leather and finest cloth. . . .”

He could hear his voice rising a little. He sipped some milk and ate a piece of roasted turnip, distracting himself with the crisp skin and soft, floury innards. 

Sarah’s voice broke the silence. “I know how difficult you find those things, Benjamin, but that is not important; pay it no mind.”

Lay popped another piece of turnip in his mouth, sipped his milk.

“You are right, but I confess my own pride leaped at how those upstarts, fresh off the boat from England, could overtake me in Quaker esteem as to be recorded ministers of the Word for their nonsense noises. . . . Men like Morris, Pemberton, and Kinsey. . . . It took me some time to take stock in my thoughts and prayers, to allow the Spirit to indicate to me the correct moment to rise.”

“But it did?”

“Presently, the Spirit opened a comfortable field of silence for me, and stand I did, and performed it as we agreed: speech, sword, and all.”

“So you are satisfied, Benjamin?”

“It was as fine a showing as I could muster on my own, Sarah. But satisfied? Only when the weed of slavery has been dug out by the root, in every place that it can be found. Do you not recall how it was in Barbados?”

“Of course, Benjamin.”

Lay stared at the remnants of turnip on his plate for a moment, memories flooding his mind.

“Richard Parrot, a Cooper, an upstanding Quaker, so-called.”

“I recall, Benjamin.”

“An upstanding Quaker who loved to whip his slaves on Second-day mornings to teach ‘em respect. So many of those poor people would bewail their conditions when they came to our store: ‘My Master very bad man’; ‘My Mistress very bad woman.’ They came to us to ask for help, beg for it.”

“Which we gave as far as we could.”

Lay snorted. “Oh yes. We gave them the leftovers, the scraps that we would have thrown to the dogs. Dried crusts alive with weevils and scraps of meat writhing with maggots.”

And again, sweet Sarah’s voice, as soft as a breeze, as reasonable as a lawyer’s. “Benjamin, dearest, pray do not take on so. What else could we have done?” 

Lay could not bear to cross his words with hers, so pursued his memories: 

“This Parrot’s man, lusty and a skilled cooper himself, earned Parrot as much as seven shillings sixpence each day that he worked, told us, did he not, ‘My Master Parrot very bad man indeed, whippe whippe poor Negro evee Munne Morning for notin at all! Me no bear no longer.’”

“Benjamin. . . .”

“And he did not bear it much longer, did he, Sarah? He hanged himself that First-day night. All while we lived on Barbados. We knew Parrot and spoke to him, yet he would continue to use his slaves so cruelly. . . . A dragon indeed.”

Lay looked up from the cold fragments of food on his plate; looked across at his wife, Sarah; and looked into himself through the years that had passed since they had concluded their experiment of  living in Barbados. His wife’s voice sounded softly in the air.

“I agree that he was a dragon, Dearest, a cruel one.”

Benjamin Lay looked up at the pencil sketch of his wife that he had kept in their house these past three years since she had passed away.

“He was a dragon to be sure, Sarah, but were we not owls?”

“What do you mean, Husband?”

“We did not fight as much as we could have.”

“What else could we have done, Benjamin? We were fighting to survive ourselves.”

Lay looked across at the sketch of the woman he had loved and still loved, then back at the remains of his meal, the drained cup of milk. Tears of anger and shame pricked his eyeballs, and he looked away to the mouth of the cave. “Our Lord does not exhort us to lay up grain in our storehouses or gold in our treasure houses.”

“We were not laying up grain or gold, Husband. Only finding enough food for our bellies so that we could go on.”

Always so sweet and reasonable. He realized that he was bunching his hand into a fist; the nails bit into his palm. He dropped his hand loose again. Sarah had been a recorded minister in Quaker meetings in her time, but he had never been considered acceptable: too much of a loose cannon. Unpredictable. Did not defer to gospel order. Pshaw! When the Spirit moved, who dared stand against it?

They had even wanted to split him and Sarah apart: had demanded their certificate of marriage. And she had flatly refused to surrender it to them. Tears pricked his eyes again as he looked back at the pencil sketch; that was the only physical image he still had of his beloved Sarah. Sometimes her steady good sense had enraged him beyond words. Yet she had steadied their ship as he set course for storm after storm.

He sipped the last of his milk. It was creamy but quite cold now. “I do miss you, Sarah,” he whispered.

“And I you, Benjamin.”

Out beyond the edge of the cave mouth, somewhere in the towering pines, an owl hooted. Somewhere further off, a bear growled. Lay smiled. He and Sarah were fond of talking of the owls of desolation and dragons of destruction that Isaiah spoke of. Sighing, he fed another piece or so of wood into the fire. Looking upon his shelves, his eye fell upon Thomas Tryon’s The Way to Health, Long Life and Happiness. “I shall read a few pages whilst I await sleep, Sarah.” He made his bed and prepared for the night.

A while later, with the book’s pages furling before him and the firelight dying, he suddenly sat up in his bed and addressed the portrait again.

“Will they ever see, Sarah? Will they?”

“I do not know, Benjamin. We must wait and pray.”

The Nineteenth day of Ninth Month, in the Year of our Lord 1738

Report of Burlington Meeting elders required to handle the impudent and naughty Benjamin Lay during a disturbance during yearly meeting this day. 

Yearly Meeting began well enough, until the notorious troublemaker suddenly rose. One or two groans were heard around the room. All noises died away, however, as he cast his greatcoat off to reveal beneath the dark blue of a soldier’s uniform, and brandished—a sword! 

Lay spoke: “Friends, I am compelled to point out to you that God Almighty loves all His human creatures equally. Yea, rich and poor, men and women, White and Black alike. If that be so, slave keeping is the greatest sin in the world. Therefore, how can a people who profess the golden rule keep slaves?”

We elders were nearly upon him, which doubtless prompted him to act with dispatch. Lifting a black leather-bound book signifying a Bible and a sword, to the consternation of those closest to him, he dared to continue:

“Thus shall God shed the blood of all persons who enslave their fellow human creatures.” So saying, he drove the point of the sword into the Bible. What infernal thing was this? Blood squirting from it down his hands and arms, splattering not a few of the company seated around him. 

More than one woman in the room swooned. As we laid hands upon him, Lay took care to shake the book as hard as possible, showering red droplets onto those sitting nearest. 

As the company was thrown into chaos, the impudent disrupter was hustled from the room with our enraged questions in his ears: “Why, why have you done such a thing?” All of his reply was from the prophet Isaiah: “I have sworn by myself, the Word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return.” Impertinence!

Elders secured the sword, and following an interview, Benjamin Lay removed himself from the site. The whole sorry incident, alas, confirms our view that this individual is not suitable to be included on our list of membership. In his own deranged mind, he is an honourable man doing God’s work, but how such a one, raising scenes of outrage and consternation, and calling for the end to accepted traditions upon which so much of the wealth and security of this Commonwealth depends could be thought of as discharging the Lord’s work, genuinely confounds us.

We recommend to the meeting that a particular watch be kept for Benjamin Lay forthwith, and should he be suspected of further naughty scheming, that steps be taken to limit his behaviour further. 

We trust that the Lord will safeguard the Truth to emerge.

Signed this day,
Anthony Morris 
Israel Pemberton 
John Kinsey