North by Night (7 page)

“Did you come a long way?” I asked as I hemmed a shirt.

“We come from Carolina,” Emma told us. “Take a lot of nights walking to get here.”

I looked over to the bed where Cass dozed. “It must have been hard, with the children and with Cass sick. Is she feeling better yet?” Emma and Miss Aurelia spend more time tending Cass than I do. I mostly haul things up and down the stairs.

“She resting a lot.”

I bit my bottom lip. “How long do you think? Until she has the baby, I mean. Will she get better after that?” Papa would scowl at my questions, but Miss Aurelia just sat up a little straighter and listened, like she was glad I’d asked.

Emma frowned. “Month or two, I guess. I hope she get better sooner, so we can get north ’fore the child come.”

“I hope so too. I’m praying for her. For all of you. And Abraham.”

Emma nodded. But the mention of Abraham seemed to take her back into her own thoughts. And so we just sat and stitched.

S
UNDAY
, J
ANUARY
19, 1851
A
FTERNOON

We held services this morning, and they were much finer than any I’ve heard lately in the Presbyterian church. We began with hymns. Miss Aurelia and I sang “A Mighty Fortress.” Emma and the children shared one called “Climbing Up the Mountain.” We sang “He Walks with Me and He Talks with Me.” They sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The songs went on for quite a while as we tried to teach each other the tunes and the words. The music seemed to comfort Cass, for she sat up and sang along in a low, sweet voice.

Emma ended by singing a real slow song all by herself, “Steal Away to Jesus.” I liked it a lot, for that’s what we do, help the fugitives steal away. And I figure Jesus is on our side in the matter.

After we sang, Miss Aurelia got out her Bible. Before she could even open the pages, the children began to clamor for stories.

“Tell my story,” Naomi said. “Mine and Ruth’s.”

“No, mine,” Daniel insisted. He raised his hands, pawed the air, and roared at me like a wild lion cub.

Daniel in the lion’s den. Naomi and Ruth’s promise of lifelong devotion.

The older children decided the order of the stories.

“Me and Shad be the biggest, so we be first,” Ben said. He smiled at me as though he expected me to understand.

“Your names come from the Bible, too?” I asked, puzzled.

He nodded. “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. That Shad, Mesha, and me,”

“Oh! My brothers like that story, too,” I said. “It’s scary.”

Miss Aurelia found the right pages and began to read. “Nebuchadnezzer the king made an image of gold whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura.…”

I knew this story. But never before had I understood its true meaning. God loved all his children, and he would deliver them from harm, from a fiery furnace, from a lion’s den. Emma and Cass had named their children in the faith that God would deliver them from the evil bonds of slavery.

I prayed that deliverance would come soon.

Miss Aurelia read from the Book of Ruth—in the place where Ruth is told to return to her homeland, but she refuses. “And Ruth said, ‘Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.…’ ”

Naomi took Ruth’s little hand and said, “I be your people.”

Ruth nodded. “I be your people, too. I go where you go.”

I could barely listen. My throat thickened and my eyes fogged. I’d thought myself educated. I’d thought myself a serious thinker and a strong Christian. But looking at those two little girls who held tight to each other’s hands, I realized they’d traveled miles and miles ahead of me.

Dear Lord, I still have a long way to go.

S
UNDAY
, J
ANUARY
19, 1851
E
VENING

I have tried to write a letter to Jonathan. My conscience nips. I must write him, for we have liked each other a very long time. Yet I can’t find the words. To be completely honest, I also can’t quite find the affection I ought to have for him. I try to imagine his face, but dark eyes replace blue ones in my mind.

And so I dawdle and chew on my pen. Am I a coward? Flighty? Probably. So be it. Once this adventure is finished, surely I’ll settle down and return to my usual self. My heart will remember Jonathan, and we will go forward together. But just now I’ll write to Jeremiah instead.

19
January

Dear Jeremiah
,

Your letter brought a smile to my face. Who would have thought that our common love of nature studies, and in particular our interest in the migration of birds, would lead to kisses?

Rest assured you did not offend me with your attentions. I’ll admit you startled me, but I am a girl who likes surprises. I will not be sorry if you should choose to surprise me again
.

In the meantime, between snow and chores and caring for my responsibilities, I keep quite busy. But not so busy I haven’t wondered about your journey. Was it successful? Did you voyage into a sea of snow like some long-ago explorer? I think of you often as the wind blows and the drifts grow ever taller. I hope you will return tomorrow, with news perhaps, and share your adventures with me
.

Just a word about our common interest—I have watched the skies but seen neither beak nor feather, neither goose nor hawk. Even the birds are deep in hiding from the storm, safe and warm, in their own nests, perhaps, or in borrowed ones. I hope you are likewise, safe and warm, or that soon you will be. I also pray that God will remind the sun to shine upon us so that all His creatures may again walk, run, swim, or fly, freely, to their destinations
.

Your bird-watching friend
,
Lucinda

M
ONDAY
, J
ANUARY
20, 1851

The calendar will say otherwise, but for me today was the longest day in the year. I waited and watched, but Jeremiah never came. He sent no messages. I found no letter wedged in the door, although I looked several times.

What is happening? Has he been caught, like Friend Whitman? Or did the storm stop the rescue? Is he in danger from magistrates and catchers, or from the same storm that blows snow against the barn in ten-foot drifts? I can’t bear to think about either possibility, but danger has haunted me all day long.

Still, chores must get done. Miss Aurelia and I washed a week’s worth of clothing for ourselves and our visitors. With the weather so bad, I hung the wet laundry in the attic, where a clothesline is strung at one end. Emma pegged up the clothes with me, which helped a great deal, for there was twice the load Mama and I usually wrestle with. We hummed our hymn tunes softly, but by the end
of the day, hymns or no, my fingers were raw, and my heart was too.

T
UESDAY
, J
ANUARY
21, 1851

Still no news of Jeremiah, nor any sunshine. The snow has stopped, at least, but clouds remain and cast gray shadows in my heart. I hefted the heated flatiron today with the force of my worries, and if the cloth could speak, it might have said, “Ouch, don’t pound on me.”

W
EDNESDAY
, J
ANUARY
22, 1851

I have learned so much today that my mind has less room for worry—at least about Jeremiah, though I do wonder if he cares for me, since he has sent no messages. Bah!

We sat by the attic window again today and stitched. I sewed on a blue dress for little Ruth. Emma needed some thread.

“Miss Lucy, will you pass me some black thread?”

“Sure, Emma. But why do you call me Miss Lucy?”

“The children, they trained to call grown people Mister or Miss. It be proper. Show respect.”

“But you’re older than I am. I should call you Miss Emma.”

“You white. I colored. The rules be different. But I not so old,” she said with a laugh. “I about twenty-four, twenty-five, something like that. My sister, Cass, she about nineteen.”

Sisters! What a dunce I am. I missed all the clues.
Cass is so heavy with child that I failed to notice the similarities—both women are tall, with strong, wide cheekbones, deep-set eyes, rich brown skin.

Emma seems old, thirty or more. And Cass is just three years older than I am. Impossible.

I looked over to the pallet where Cass lay, dozing. Papa’s rule buzzed in my ear, but I ignored it.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s wrong with Cass? What I don’t know about birthing babies would fill a whole shelf of books.”

“Her legs. They swell up. She got to lie down till the child come. Then she be herself again.”

“Does that happen often?” Miss Aurelia asked. She pulled her chair close to Emma and me. “I haven’t often seen a woman close to her time.”

Now isn’t that a pickle? Miss Aurelia and I are both ignorant about babies. Great help we’ll be if Cass starts having her baby here. But she won’t start yet, will she? Surely she’ll wait until Abraham gets free and they go to Canada. I’m counting on that. Besides, Emma’s here. Emma knows what to do. She’ll take charge.

“It happen,” Emma continued, as we stitched up in the attic. “Cass, she swell up every baby. I never do. Too bad she have to come north when she so far gone.”

Far gone
—that sounded bad. “Did something make you hurry?”

“You might say. Abraham and me, we talk. Our boys grow big enough to work like men. That mean they grow big enough to get sold. So we plan to cut and run when spring come—after Cass birth her baby and mend awhile. But that Missy Roberts, she wicked. The master gone
a-travelin’ and the wife, she decide to get rid of Cass. One of the cooking gals hear about it. So we run, every one of us, swelled-up legs or no.”

“The master’s wife planned to sell Cass?” Miss Aurelia asked. She frowned. “Has that happened before to your family?”

“Oh, yes. Cass, she all I got left. Our mama die. Our daddy, our brothers, they long gone. Sold south. Master, he keep Cass and me to breed. We grow new slaves for him, so he keep us and sell off the rest.”

To breed? The word exploded in my mind. We’d heard tales of families separated and sold apart, but breeding? That word was meant for livestock—not people. Did Mama and Papa know about this? I needed to understand. “Did Cass’s man get sold, too?”

Emma snorted. “Cass ain’t got no man. She ain’t allowed to have no man. Any man look at Cass, he get a taste of that cowskin.”

“But …”

“Ain’t you studied little Ruth? Mesha? They be mighty pale.”

The truth hit me with a whoosh, a heap of snow sliding off the roof. The master. Cass’s children were
his
children. And of course his white wife would have gotten rid of Cass while he traveled. Out of wretched jealousy, she’d have sold Cass and broken up the tiny remnant of family the two sisters had saved.

My breakfast felt heavy and sour in my stomach. I took Emma’s hand. “I’m sorry. I had no business asking.”

“You got no reason for sorry, Miss Lucy,” she said. “The good people must know what happen down south if
they going to stop it.” She stabbed her needle in and out of the trousers she held.

She’s right. But the knowledge frightens me. Now I understand why that awful slaver chased after them in such a hurry. He’s lost ten slaves. One was his mistress, two others his own children.

Poor Cass. She’s my age, or close to it. I have two young men I like, and the time and freedom to choose one. She has no choices at all. Just a master. An owner. Try as I might, I can’t get these hard words out of my mind.

“You all right, Lucinda?” Miss Aurelia had asked. She’d put her hand on my forehead, testing for a fever.

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

I lied, of course.

I can’t imagine ever being fine again. The notion that people not only
own
other people but use and misuse them however they wish—it’s evil. I sit here and shiver. The skin on my back ripples, like a hundred spiders are crawling on it.

And then another thought comes. I saw this man, their master, in church. He winked at me, as if he thought me interesting and wanted to know me better. He, a married man who kept a mistress. And like a fool, I thought him handsome. I smiled back and blushed like a schoolgirl.

Shame and horror wash over me. How could I have been so wrong?

T
HURSDAY
, J
ANUARY
23, 1851

The sun! Early this morning the clouds broke, and now the sun shines down on us! The world outside the window gleams white like a fairyland. And the wind blows warmer. The snow will melt soon.

I think if today had been gray yet again, something inside me would have cracked open. For yesterday’s revelations continue to shock and anger me.

I know about kissing, and I like it. But other aspects of the relations between men and women … well, for me that belongs to the future. Something to wonder about, but not too closely.

Perhaps I considered Emma and Cass much older because they have children. I assumed that the children they have borne began in love. For Emma, that seems to be the case. But for Cass, poor Cass … I still feel my skin crawl when I think of her being forced.

It is only the sun warming my shoulders that allows me to push these thoughts away and think instead of this family’s deliverance to Canada. It can’t come too soon.

F
RIDAY
, J
ANUARY
24, 1851

Company at last after ten long days. The roads have cleared enough for riders to get through. My brothers came at midday and brought letters and such news as there is from a village wrapped in snow. Can Jeremiah be far behind? I surely hope not.

Tom unloaded baskets of bread, cold chicken, and
cakes from Mama’s kitchen. Will handed me a packet of letters.

“Oh, Will, thank you so much. Could you please deliver the ones I’ve written?”

“I feel like a durned letter carrier,” he grumbled. “I’ll start charging for delivery.” He passed me another letter. “This here’s from Jonathan Clark. He hightailed it over to our place before breakfast. How’d you get him so riled up, Lucy? He breathed fire.”