The day in December upon which Dr. Trefusis, Pro Bono, and I were reunited, before Norfolk was burned, before the plague took us, before Gwynn’s Island fell, we crouched together in the rank darkness of the Crepuscule, and Bono related to us the tale of his escape; and with childish zany, he and my tutor jested and mocked our surly officer; and, we being once more together, we did not merely rejoice, but in our convergence projected great clash and triumph to come. While they recounted and sported, I pretended study, regimental discipline at that early date not having yet surrendered to the negligence of tactical despair.

That night, Bono talked of flight — and John Locke, beneath my indifferent eye, spoke of place and of motion. Locke wrote that if we have a chess piece — a black king — upon a board, and we remove the chessboard into a different room, we should still say that the black king had not moved its place, if it still stood upon the same square; for we judge its place according to locations upon the board. And such would be true of the board as well, said to remain motionless if it stayed upon the same desk in the cabin of a ship, though the ship makes its way along a river, and the river moves against the fixed land, and the Earth hath turned in its revolutions, swinging with it land, and river, and ship, and cabin, and desk, and board, and king, and pawn. Still would the board and the black king be in the same place; for motion is not absolute.

I recall this lesson now, O best of tutors, kindest of wards, philosopher most delighted and most despairing; I recall it as I think upon our travels, upon our fleet’s ignominious flight, upon the betrayals offered to my people; as I think of the forests through which Negroes still flee, and the rivers down which they pass in terror and hope of liberty, ignorant of Dunmore’s motion and removal. I know not whether there is possibility of change and motion, or whether we are all stranded within one monadic unity; but when I ask Where doth the black king stand, and where the cabin, and where the ship in motion? then do change and motion disappear: for what is flight, if you cannot approach safety? What is a sojourn, if you have no home to return to? How doth one conduct a campaign, if there be no hope of victory? For we shall always be human, and always vicious; suspended motionless, yet never at rest; trapped, yet without any solid thing to grasp.

I cannot continue this narrative. A quest must have a final goal, and each campaign its objective, that their success might be judged; but here is no goal which might be obtained, motion toward no succor, a campaign without territory to claim or lose, the field shifting beneath our prow.

There is nothing. And so I make my end.

“Lo! Thy dread Empire, Chaos, is restored;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall;
And universal Darkness buries All.”