Before heading to the courthouse, as he had promised, Robert checked out of the inn and headed to the garrison with his carpetbag. He dropped it off with the duty officer and then walked back to the jail, where he saw Harrison and his family waiting.

“Did Lt. Sanders end up talking to you?” Robert said to the Sadies.

“Oh, was that what his name was?” the elder Sadie replied.

“Yes, the one who helped you to prepare your belongings?” Robert asked helpfully.

“I’m not sure how much help he was, but we’re ready to go if need be,” the elder Sadie continued.

“As long as you have everything ready, we can head to the courtroom and see what the judge has prepared for us,” Robert said evenly. The guard took this as an invitation to prepare Harrison for the walk to the courtroom, which they all took together in silence. When they got in the courtroom, they found it crowded as usual, and they all took their usual seats. Before too long the judge entered the courtroom and court was called into session.

“I have been placed in quite a dilemma,” the judge said. “By the law, as it is written, we have no proper means to keep Harrison DuPont imprisoned any longer.” There was angry murmuring in the courtroom at this. “That said, the safety of our community requires that something be done. It is to be regretted that there were no reduced charges that were filed in this case, which is an oversight that I do not expect to be repeated.” At this the prosecutor nodded, somewhat ashamed. “Therefore there is little that I can do except to note that I have accepted the motion for summary judgment on the part of the defense, to set Harrison DuPont free from prison.” There was somewhat loud and angry murmuring in the courtroom at this. “I do not wish, however to stop there.” The crowd was silent, waiting for something that would gratify their hostility to the defendant. “The position taken by the defense that Harrison is owed freedom as a result of the law is a highly alarming one, and it is to be hoped that at the soonest possible moment some of the loopholes in our laws are closed that would prevent this sort of legal situation from occurring again. We know that there is no desire on the part of our citizenry to allow for even free blacks the right to be confrontational and combative with whites, regardless of whether those whites are their fathers. We expect to see the social order of this community respected by all, especially by those who reside here at our sufferance and who we have granted freedom from slavery, the proper state of all of the sons of Ham. In light of all this, this court orders, on behalf of the entire community, that Harrison DuPont and all who are associated with him–his sister and his mother, as well as his counsel–are hereby ordered to leave this city, never to return again on pain of imprisonment, or worse.”

This was about what Robert had expected. Also, as expected, he heard the cheering of the crowd as the statement was made. “This was the best outcome that could have happened given the climate of this city,” Robert said to Harrison.

“Thanks for saving my life,” Harrison said, sincerely grateful. “I’m sorry it came at some cost to you.”

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Robert said stoically. “My belongings are already at the garrison and I am ready to depart. Would you like to accompany me to the garrison? I have a feeling this crowd is going to follow us there and perhaps even grow.”

“I suppose it will be safer to walk with you than to walk alone,” Harrison said. “I figured this city would have it out for me as soon as I saw my father fall.”

“Can you bring as many belongings as you can to the garrison? We will likely be making sail for New Providence today,” Robert said to the ladies.

“It won’t take us much time at all, especially if we have some help from some of the soldiers,” the younger Sadie replied.

With that, Robert got up and walked alongside Harrison once he had been uncuffed and set free from formal restraint. That said, there was plenty of informal restraint to be found from the restive crowd of people who wanted to make sure that Harrison and his counsel left the city as soon as possible, with no excuse for tardiness. Robert and Harrison were both inclined to walk in as dignified a fashion as possible, so they walked without looking particularly hurried despite the jeers of the crowd that surrounded them. Before too long some of the soldiers came up, some of which went to help the ladies get the belongings from their abode to bring to the garrison and the rest stood all around Robert and Harrison to protect them from any sort of violence from the crowd.

“There you are, old friend,” Lt. Sanders aid to Robert.

“I’m not sure I would call you an old friend,” Robert said. “But thanks for bringing some support.”

“You weren’t wrong when you said that you had made yourself a bit unpopular with the locals in defending Harrison so ably, and I felt somewhat responsible for that,” Lt. Sanders responded.

“You aren’t wrong there either,” Robert said.

Before too long, Charleston not being a particularly large city at this time, Robert and Harrison found themselves in the garrison. The crowd stood outside of the encampment, seeing Robert and Harrison talk about their departure and get on one of the small boats that was soon rowed to a larger boat in the harbor with the British Union Jack on it. Before too long, the boat returned and then brought the two Sadies along with the belongings they were able to bring to the boat. It was not long after that before Robert found himself downstairs in his own room of the larger vessel that was headed to New Providence, where he took a piece of paper and started writing on it.

“Charleston, South Carolina, _________, 1782

Dear Mum,

I have found myself unable to return home as I had hoped after being summoned to help defend a black man in Charleston, South Carolina, from the threat of summary justice and an unjust execution. I was fortunately able to successfully defend his life, but as a result I have made myself unwelcome in the city and forced to depart rather abruptly. I will be helping some freedmen to settle down in New Providence. I know you do not like the area yourself, but I will be there for a bit of time at least, so I would appreciate it if you could continue to look over my belongings and to make sure that the house is taken care of. I do not know how long it will be before I am able to return to St. Augustine. I hope it will not be long, but one never knows for sure.

Love,

Robert”

After he wrote, Robert folded up the letter and went upstairs to see if the ship had departed yet. Fortunately, it had not, and Robert gave his letter to one of the crew to mail off on one of the ships that was headed to Florida relatively soon. With that, he found a comfortable spot on the deck to sit at and look towards Charleston. For as hateful as the city had been, and as irritating to him not only now, in exiling him altogether, but in the past for the various indignities he had suffered in the past there, it was a beautiful city, he had to admit. Despite its beauty, the city had done something to make itself accursed, and he wondered what it was, and how long the city would remain a curse when it came to matters of justice. “What is it about a place that becomes full of so much evil? Do certain deeds draw evil to places that lingers long after the deeds are done?” This was a matter that was far beyond mere philosophy.

Though Robert did not know it, there had in fact others who had asked the same sorts of questions for themselves. One of the great travelers of the world, one Ibn Khaldun, had made a series of remarkable voyages not only in North Africa but also in the Middle East and neighboring countries, and he too, like Robert, was a man given to notice the areas around him and to ponder the cycles of the rise and fall of nations. Later on, people would find statistical relationships between the endurance of slavery and the poisoning of social relations for long periods of time. Those areas around the world where slavery had laid an ugly hand and shaped social relations for generations were areas that never seemed to recover from it. Even thousands of years later people were still unable to join together or build functioning civil societies once their relations had been marked by high amounts of enslavement. The ports where slaves traveled to remained places of poverty, of inequality, and of social misery long after the slaves were gone. Something evil remained, and would remain for a long time.

The sense of this troubled Robert as he stared out over the town, as the ship drew up its anchor and sailed into the wide Sargasso Sea where the currents of the warm gulf stream traveled from the straits of Florida to the British Isles and Western Europe. Robert was lost in thought, dimly aware of the passage of time as he mused upon the persistence of evil and the way that men’s deeds reverberated through the ages long after they were done. He was not a man given to great evil, but it troubled him that the repercussions of the deeds of mankind could linger so long and pollute a place so deeply. How was such pollution to be cleansed from the earth? He did not have any answers, and no one under heaven had any answers to give him either.

Those who were on the deck saw Robert’s far off gaze and thought better than to interrupt him from his reverie. No one on the boat could have been aware of the direction to which his thoughts had turned. There were no other philosophers on that ship, after all. Robert had suffered no obvious trauma, and if his expected jubilance at succeeding in arguing his case successfully was tempered by the obvious hostility of the crowd and the injustice of a judge who felt it necessary to pander to racists rather than stand up for the justice of an innocent accused man, the depth of Robert’s thinking and feeling were not something that anyone could have understood. It was only when the grumbling of his stomach interrupted his thinking that Robert turned from his staring afar off and looked around him. Seeing a crew member, he asked. “What time are meals on this ship?”

“You will be eating with the officers, I reckon,” the crewman said. “If you head downstairs, you should be able to find something for a quick bite, before we sup in the evening.”

“Thank you muchly,” Robert said politely, going down into the ship to find some food. The thoughts that filled his minds would remain there long after his belly was full, anyway.