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is still moving through the air. He is, he thinks, the first man ever to fly and stand at the exact same time. The war out of the machine. He holds the small bag of letters up in salute. On they come, soldiers, people, the light drizzle of gray.
    Ireland.
    A beautiful country. A bit savage on a man all the same.
    Ireland.

1845–46

      
freeman
    D AWN UNLOCKED THE MORNING IN INCREMENTS OF GRAY . The rope tightened hard against the bollard. The water slapped against Kingstown Pier. He stepped off the gangplank. Twenty-seven years old. In a black greatcoat and a wide gray scarf. His hair worn high and parted.
    The cobbles were wet. Horses breathed steam into the September mist. Douglass carried his own leather trunk to the waiting carriage: he was not yet used to being waited upon.
    HE WAS BROUGHT to the home of his Irish publisher, Webb. A three-story house on Great Brunswick Street, one of the better streets in Dublin. He relinquished his trunk. He watched a footman struggle with the weight of it. The servants stood in a line and greeted him at the door.
    He slept through the morning and afternoon. A maid ran a warm bath in a deep iron tub. It was filled with a powder that gave off a fragrance of citrus. He fell asleep again, woke panicked, could not tell where he was. He climbed quickly from the water. The print of his wet feet on the cold floor. The towel touched, coarse, at the back of his neck. He dried the sculpt of his body. He was broad-shouldered, muscled, over six feet tall.
    He could hear church bells ringing in the distance. A turf smell in the air. Dublin. How odd it was to be here: damp, earthy, cold.
    A gong sounded from downstairs. Dinnertime. He stood at the hand basin, before the looking glass, and shaved closely, shook the creases from his jacket, mounted his cravat tight.
    At the bottom of the stairs, at the end of a corridor, he stood for a moment disoriented, unsure which door to go through. He pushed one open. The kitchen was steam-filled. A maid was loading plates onto a tray. So very pale. The proximity of her sent a shiver along his arms.
    —This way, sir, she muttered, squeezing past him in the doorway.
    She led him along the corridor, bowed as she opened the door. A fire leaped orange in the ornate mantelpiece. A whirr of voices. A dozen people had gathered to meet him: Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians. Men in black frock coats. Women in long dresses, aloof and elegant, the mark of bonnet ribbons still on the soft of their necks. They applauded quietly when he walked into the room. His youth. His poise. They leaned in close as if to secure his immediate confidence. He told them of his long travel from Boston to Dublin, how he was forced into steerage on the steamer
Cambria
even though he had tried to book first class. Six white men had protested his presence on the saloon deck. Threats of blood were urged against him.
Down with the nigger
. They had come within a whisker of blows. The captain stepped in, threatened to throw the white men overboard. Douglasshad been allowed to walk the deck, even delivered a speech to the passengers. Still, at night, he had to sleep in the underbelly of the boat.
    The listeners nodded gravely, shook his hand a second time, said he was a fine example, a good Christian. He was guided into the dining room. The table was laid with fine cutlery and glassware. A vicar stood to give grace. The meal was exquisite—lamb with mint sauce—but he could hardly eat. He sipped from the water glass, found himself faint.
    He was called upon to give a speech: his days as a slave, how he slept on a dirt floor in a hovel, crawled into a meal bag to stave off the cold, put his feet in the ashes for warmth. How he had lived with his grandmother for a while and had gone, then, to a plantation. Was taught, against the law, to read, write, and spell. How he read the New Testament to his fellow slaves. Worked in a shipyard with Irishmen as companions. Ran away three times.