Patricia Rice (4 page)

By the time Joshua found him and carried him back to his room, Pace's agile brain had already sketched the outline of a plan. When the big black fieldhand laid him down on his bed, Pace whispered, "Tell Tessie to be ready tomorrow night. I'm getting her out of here."

Joshua's battered face screwed up in a frown of worry. "You ain't goin' nowheres for a while, Marster Pace. Them ribs need bindin'. You lucky you ain't coughin' blood."

"Tessie will be worse off than I am, and Charlie won't leave her alone now. You want her to go through that again tomorrow night?"

Joshua looked sick and turned his hulking back away. "She ain't gonna be in fittin' condition to run. She'll need her mammy. We cain't jist take her 'way like that."

Pace leaned wearily against the pillows. "It's your choice, Josh. If you think you and Mammy can slip away too, then I'll take the lot of you, but it won't be easy. My mother expects Mammy there with her all the time. How will you get her out of the house?"

Josh's broad shoulders straightened. "I'll get her out. You get Mammy and my little girl outa here, and I'll stay behind and keep them dogs away. See iffen I don't."

Pace nodded even though Josh couldn't see him. "All right. Tomorrow at midnight, down by the old cotton-wood. If those dogs follow, we're all in big trouble and won't anyone get away for a long spell." When Joshua started for the door, Pace said with a catch in his throat, "I'm sorry. Josh."

The big man didn't turn around but bent his head and answered in a voice raw with unshed tears, "Ain't nothin' you coulda done, boy. Ain't nothin' none of us coulda done."

Pace clenched his fists and stared unseeingly at the ceiling long into the night. There had to be something someone could do, and it looked like it fell on him to do it.

He'd much rather cry and pretend it wasn't so.

* * *

Pace slipped out of the house early next morning before his mother could see the blackened circle around his eye and the swollen angry red of his jaw. He didn't have much interest in looking in the mirror himself. He didn't think he should expose his mother to it.

His ribs ached with such pain that he gasped for breath by the time he rode into town, but he'd made a promise, and he meant to keep it. He might not be good for much of anything, but he could at least keep a promise.

He rode the back alleys, avoiding Homer's store on the main street, skirting the mayor's house where another of Charlie's good old boys resided. Joe Mitchell was twenty-four and still lived in his father's house. He didn't have much incentive to do elsewise. The elegant mansion with its fancy ironwork brought all the way from New Orleans was the finest house in town. It came provided with servants to do the housework and cook the meals. Joe's dead mother couldn't complain about the hours her son kept, and his father kept too busy with his own late hours to notice what his boy did. Pace had heard Charlie and his friends snickering over the women they'd sneaked into the mayor's mansion while the mayor was out politicking with the Frankfort bigwigs. Joe had everything a man could want and didn't lift a hand to earn any of it.

Pace didn't hold any bitterness on account of Joe's having everything while he would have nothing. It was a fact of life known since birth that Charlie would inherit the farm and everything on it, and Pace would have to make his own way in this world. He didn't find that thought in the least dismaying. First chance he got, he was going off to college to learn to be a lawyer, and then he would be the one in Frankfort doing the politicking. It was about time someone around here heard a little sense, and it sure enough wouldn't come from their current backwoods mayor.

His reason for coming to town had nothing to do with Joe or Charlie or Homer. Not this time, leastways. Pace led his horse into the livery so no one could see it tied up where it shouldn't be, then slipped off on foot down still another alley.

The old man living in the last cabin at the very edge of town was so old and bent and grizzled that even the slave sellers didn't want him. He'd been given his freedom at his master's death, but that had been too late for Uncle Jas to enjoy it. He scraped a living by bartering with those too poor for the town's main shop and fed his soul with pursuits only a very few knew about.

Pace was one of those few. As he stepped onto the old man's porch, Uncle Jas flung open the door and hurried him in before anyone could see him.

"Young fool," the old man muttered, going back to the crate holding his platter of ham and eggs. "Ain't no call for you to be here when they's all up and about." He gave Pace's battered face a shrewd look from beneath bristly white eyebrows. "Reckon you couldn't make it last night."

Pace ignored his host's mutterings. "I've got two to go tonight. Josh is taking care of our hounds. What about Howard's?"

Jas shook his grizzled head and clucked disapprovingly. "You take too many from 'round here, and they's gonna come lookin' for you. That ain't the whole point at all, boy."

Pace clenched his fists in frustration. "I know it, but I can't let them stay. Charlie and the boys raped Tessie last night. I can't let her stay and take more of that."

Clouded eyes looked sad as they stared out at nothing. "That's the way it is, boy. Tessie would get used to it, just like her mother did."

Pace nearly exploded with rage. "You mean you want her to stay here? Whose side are you on? They'll kill her!"

The old man clucked again while Pace strode furiously up and down the narrow wooden floor. "She won't be the first, and she won't be the last. You learn that with age, boy. You cain't change the system one person at a time. You gets yo'self that fancy college learnin' and go up and meets the president, and you tell him what it's like out here. Make him change the laws. Then you'll be helpin' some. Right now, all we can do is help the little trickle that comes to us for help. And you hurtin' that trickle by bein' selfish and helpin' those you know best first."

Pace understood all that. He knew if slaves kept disappearing from his father's house that all eyes would turn to him and pretty soon they'd suspect anyone he had any dealings with. He'd tried being patient. He'd turned his head from more atrocities than he cared to admit. He couldn't turn away from Tessie.

"If you won't help me, I'll do it myself." He turned around to walk out, but the old man called him back.

"We'll get Tessie out, but you gonna hafta change your ways, boy. You gonna hafta be one of 'em. You gonna hafta find yo'self a little gal and you gonna hafta go with 'em when they go out huntin' them runaways and you gonna hafta bad-mouth niggers like ever'one else 'round here or you ain't gonna be no use to me anymore."

Pace felt the sickness fill his stomach again, but he clenched his fists and fought back the waves of nausea. He turned slowly to face the former slave and nodded slowly. "You just tell me what to do, and I'll do it."

* * *

Pace nodded off beneath the thick canopy of maples along the creek bank the afternoon after Tessie and Mammy disappeared across the river. He'd stayed out all night helping row the boat and guiding them to the first outpost on the Indiana side. He'd had his ribs wrapped, but they still hurt worse than the seven rings of hell. He hadn't had an ounce of sleep in forty-eight hours, and exhaustion had taken its toll. He didn't have the strength for returning to the house to get his hide whipped off. Resting his head in his hands against the grassy bank, he dozed. His fishing pole went ignored.

Gradually Pace became aware of a silvery tinkle of song humming in his ears, teasing at the back of his mind in some unfamiliar lilting form. He brushed off the hum as he brushed off the gnats swarming around his face, but its persistence worried at his conscious mind and his sleepiness faded. The sound came closer, a singsong caress in his ears. Nothing dangerous, just a curiosity that grasped his attention and brought him more fully awake.

He opened his eyes and stared up into the mass of leaves overhead. He could see nothing but thick green shade and the silver shimmer of branches. He listened closer. The sound came from his left, a sliver of song, a tinkle of childish laughter. He smiled, remembering long ago tales of angels and harps he'd heard in the nursery. He sure as hell didn't believe in angels anymore, but the careless innocence of the song pleased his ear. He relaxed and waited for the singer to come closer.

The little brat must be crawling from tree branch to tree branch. The sound shifted to almost directly overhead. If he looked close, he could almost see a flash of blue that had nothing to do with sky.

"I shoot bluebirds that wake me up," he called out loud, in his most menacing tones.

The silvery sound stopped, and he almost regretted disturbing it. Then a maple seed whirligigged down, hitting his nose, and he grinned. "I do believe there must be angels in my maple trees. Oh, woe, what will become of me?"

Childish laughter floated in pure tones over his head. Pace tried to figure which of the black children from the slave quarters would dare explore this part of the farm, but none of them came readily to mind. He had to develop a new image of a white master like his brother, but he couldn't bully children just yet. The image of Tessie's once-innocent smile now sullen and shamed was still too raw in his mind.

Two more seeds whirled idly downward, missing his nose but landing on his chest. The laughter was quiet again, tense, as if the child waited for his reaction. He picked up one of the seeds and sent it whirling toward the trickling creek. A shriek of delight accompanied his trick, and he sent the other seed whirling in the same direction. The delight turned into a fey tune sung in accents totally foreign to him.

Pace struggled to make out the words but couldn’t. Puzzled, knowing none of the slaves could possibly have made up such a song or sung it in such a manner, he strained to see the creature perched above him. He was rewarded with only another flash of blue and white as she climbed higher. It had to be a she. Those were very definitely pantalets, and no male voice could ever make such a pleasant sound.

"I've heard of little angels breaking their legs by falling from trees," he warned. "You'd best climb down here before you fall."

"Angels fly." The sound drifted down to him much as the seeds had done. Maybe he'd had too much sun and too little sleep and he imagined this. Wouldn't his brother get a laugh out of him talking to trees?

"Angels can fall," he replied firmly. "You'd better climb down before I come up and get you."

Instant silence. Only the rustle of leaves in the breeze replied. Or the rustle of leaves as one mischievous elf scrambled from one tree to the next. The silvery song rang from his right now.

"I'm staying right here until you come down," he warned, resting his head in his hands and stretching his legs toward the creek bank.

"Angels sing lullabies," the childish voice announced in full round tones not of this world that he knew.

Pace grinned and closed his eyes now that she wasn't in sight. "Bluebirds sing lullabies. Go ahead and sing, little bluebird. I'll still catch you when you come down."

Unconcerned by his threat, she sang. Occasionally he caught threads of her words, familiar sounds about rocking horses and babies sleeping. So bluebirds and angels did speak some form of English, he decided sleepily.

When finally exhaustion overtook him and he slept, the slight figure in the upper branches pushed aside the leaves and daringly looked down.

He looked even more battered and bruised than her mama had after a quarrel with Papa.

With a soft sigh of sympathy, she scrambled down from the tree and quietly laid her newest treasure on his chest, between his crossed hands.

The blue feather remained snugly between his fingers as she scampered away, holding her bedraggled doll in her arms.

Chapter 2

We hate some persons because we do not know them;

and we will not know them because we hate them,

~ Charles Caleb Colton,
Lacon
(1825)

December 1857

Dora adjusted her boots and reached for her gray wool cloak. Kentucky winters couldn't be any worse than Cornwall winters. They certainly couldn't be any wetter. She just remembered Cornwall as warmer and dryer, probably because she had never been allowed outside.

Six years had succeeded in dimming most of her memories, and she stayed too busy for wasting much time recovering them. She remembered them as mostly painful and not worth remembering. Papa John was the only father she wanted, and if Mother Elizabeth seemed a little harsher, a little more unbending than the sweet, frail woman in her mind, she didn't complain. She had come to understand that despite the Bible's promises, the meek wouldn't inherit the earth until the ugly stripped it bare.

Still and all, she had found her place in this new world to which her adopted parents had brought her. It was a simple enough task hiding behind shapeless gowns and concealing bonnets, speaking only when spoken to, going about her daily tasks without being told. The regimen, rather than confining, actually represented more freedom than she had ever known.