An Unconditional Freedom

by Alyssa Cole

  Janeta looked at the man beside her, who was sopping the grease from his plate with a hunk of bread.

  “What is your name?”

  He paused. “Hudson.”

  “Hudson, did you ever think that your master was kind?”

  Hudson’s eyes narrowed.

  “That man always went on about how kind he was to us. For giving us these clothes that scratched our skin all day long even though the cotton we picked was softer than you could imagine. For only selling one child away, instead of all of them. For only doling out ten lashes instead of fifty, when truth is he was just too lazy to do more than that. Wasn’t a kind bone anywhere in that man’s body, ’cept for in his imagination.”

  He took a disgruntled bite of the bread and his features, which had just been bright with celebration, darkened with anger.

  Shame washed over Janeta, for she had made another misstep.

  “I apologize,” she said smoothly. “I just hear people say that, about the kindness of masters in the States, and wondered why they did.”

  “To make themselves feel better,” Hudson said. “Same way massa said my wife wanted to give what he took from her. They tell those lies so much, they start to believe ’em. But God ain’t ever lied, and when they meet they Maker—whoo boy!—they gonna be in for a surprise.”

  He grinned viciously and Janeta’s stomach turned.

  Papi must have been confused. He just didn’t understand. God forgives mistakes, doesn’t he?

  Her heart squeezed in her chest because she had always thought her father a good man, but in that moment, she wasn’t sure what would happen were he to be judged. She had an awful, awful thought.

  Perhaps he wouldn’t be forgiven. And perhaps I won’t be either.

  “Was your massa kind to you?” Hudson asked suddenly, looking at her from the corner of his eye.

  She stood abruptly. “I must go to bed, Hudson. Thank you for sharing your food.”

  “Night,” he said, then scrubbed roughly at the back of his neck with one hand. “Don’t go asking nobody else around here them kind of questions. I know you mean well, but some people not gonna take it as kindly as I did.”

  “Sí. I apologize.”

  He nodded, and she moved off toward the tent. The murmurs and conversations all around mixed with the sound of autumn night birds, creating a buzz in her head that almost drowned out her own frantic thoughts. Flashes of her father the last time she’d seen him, manacled and humiliated. Henry, telling her there was only one way to help Papi. Hudson. Daniel. Mami.

  Before leaving Palatka, she’d never imagined that she could doubt anything her father said, or the things Mami had shared with her before she’d gone to bed and hadn’t left it. She’d been told time and time again of her place in the world, of everything she was despite her brown skin. Now she was learning what she was because of it.

  She was someone who shouldn’t be spying for the Confederates.

  She clenched her fist and shuddered as a cool breeze gusted against her, the slap of cold a reminder that she didn’t have the option of should. It didn’t matter who anyone thought she should be. The only thing of importance was ensuring that her father made it out of prison alive, and soon, and there was only one way to do that.

  When she ducked into the tent, a low candle burned in the darkness, just faintly illuminating Daniel stretched out on the bare ground. He’d left a bedroll for her.

  She settled down onto the ground, hard even through the bedroll, and bit back her annoyance. There would be no soft mattresses for her now.

  She moved to roll back an edge of the bedroll to place one of her knives under it, just in case, and for a moment was confused when instead of the ground she saw more fabric.

  Daniel hadn’t left her the single bedroll. He’d given her his, too. Despite his threats of driving her away, he’d done her this small kindness.

  Tears welled up in her eyes and she leaned over and blew out the candle, a sob catching in her throat as she exhaled.

  Daniel was right. She was a fool.

  She sniffled.

  “Everything all right, Sanchez?”

  “You’re awake?” she asked, silently wiping at her eyes and nose in the darkness. She’d lost her handkerchief several states back.

  “I don’t sleep much,” he replied. There was no trace of slumber in his deep voice.

  “Thank you. For giving me your bedroll.”

  He grunted in response.

  “Cumberland . . .” She took a deep breath and tried to swallow the tremble in her voice. “This evening I asked a man whether he thought slave masters could be kind.”

  “Why would you do a fool thing like that?”

  “Because sometimes you want to believe in a thing even if you know it to be false.” She closed her eyes and let the warm tears stream, catching in the hair at her temple and cooling in the night air. “If they’re all bad, and they are the people held up as the pillars of our societies, then what kind of world is this?”

  If my spying keeps people like Hudson in chains, what kind of person am I?

  “Sanchez, instead of asking others such questions, you might puzzle out if you don’t know the answer already.”

  He was silent after that, and so was she. She closed her eyes and wished that this war had never started, that her family had never left Cuba, and maybe even that she had never been born. Whatever it would take so that this awful knowledge had never been set before her. More than that, she wished she really was a Loyal League agent, brave and good. She wasn’t either of those things.

  Different memories came to her in the darkness: Papi and Mami holding hands when they didn’t know she was watching, her father letting her sit on his knee as he spoke with his friends. How he always, always told her that he loved her and wanted the best for her. She was confused about many things, but not about how much her father loved her. And not about the fact that her foolishness had led him to be arrested.

  She wasn’t a Loyal League agent, she was a Sanchez, and at the next opportunity she would pass on the information she had gathered from the Russians. Her newfound worldliness didn’t change the fact that she had to save her father; it just meant that she’d pay an even greater price. But Papi was her world, and she wouldn’t abandon him, even if the cost was her soul.

  CHAPTER 9

  Daniel was wide awake when Lake entered the tent with his lantern and took a seat on the ground between him and Janeta.

  His body was exhausted from their travels, but his mind had refused to allow him even a moment of rest. He longed for sleep, but it eluded him like so many of the things he’d previously taken for granted. It rarely came to him, and when it did there was no guarantee it would be peaceful. It was another bit of comfort just out of his reach.

  “Cumberland? Sanchez?” Lake’s voice was gravelly; Daniel wasn’t the only one who hadn’t slept.

  Always thinking of your own struggles. Selfish. Weak.

  “Estoy despierto. Oh! I am awake.” Sanchez’s voice was husky with sleep and Daniel didn’t like the way it vibrated through his whole body, despite his fatigue.

  He’d spent some of the night as he usually did—curled in on himself as memories from his time on the plantation assailed him. His anger, how he had assumed he knew more than the enslaved people who seemed to work willingly, and the repercussions of his stubborn resistance to his new reality. His insistence on trying to reason with evil, to circumvent it, had brought the lash down on his own back and worse, onto others.

  He’d also turned the words of the Russians over in his head. Jefferson Davis was on the move, away from the heavily fortified Richmond, where he’d been untouchable as he led this war to uphold evil. The figurehead of the Confederacy would be vulnerable, as would the men who controlled the Sons of the Confederacy. Daniel had been taught by the institution of slavery itself just how to break a people down using their vulnerabilities. Take away their hopes and dreams, rend the bonds that provide them with the
illusion of security.

  Could he do this? He of all people? He was weak, but perhaps he had enough strength in him for this one act. Perhaps his life would have meaning if he could accomplish this one thing.

  Other, less noble thoughts had plagued him, distressing in a vastly different way. His mind had meandered down a road lined with musings on Sanchez. The way she’d batted her lashes at the Russians before doling out threats. How she took a moment to evaluate each situation before speaking, and managed to say the right thing at the right time. The devastation in her voice at her belated realization that the world operated on explicit unkindness.

  He’d brushed aside her attempt to talk, but it had reminded him of his debates with Elle, where she’d informed him in that superior tone of hers that morality and justice had nothing to do with freedom, that he could study himself sick and not find a cure for the evil of slavery.

  Daniel had once been the one asking questions he now had the answers to inscribed on his back with the lash.

  “Do not doubt my belief in the rule of law, Daniel, but understand that laws are put in place by men. They do not spring from the ether. Until I can trust that those men care about people like us—or that we can force them to care—laws alone will not suffice.”

  Her constant corrections had driven him mad—just once he’d wanted to show her that he could be right. He’d wanted her to feel the same awe and reverence he experienced when she shared her formidable intellect, and the jealousy and frustration he felt when his argumentation withered before hers. He’d learned too late that you could no more compel the type of admiration you wanted from a person than you could the type of love.

  It didn’t matter anymore—Daniel had thought that eventually he would change Elle’s mind, but, by all accounts, the man she’d chosen instead of him followed her around like a lovesick Scottish puppy. He’d been wrong about her, as he had been about everything in his pathetic life.

  “Cumberland? You all right?”

  Daniel rolled over and took in Lake, the man’s stark features barely visible in the early morning darkness.

  “Close enough,” he answered. He was still alive and still able to fight. That would do.

  “I met with some Union men from Camp Defiance,” Lake said. The nearby fortification was at the apex of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, a strategically advantageous position for the North.

  Daniel pulled himself to a sitting position, his longing for sleep pushing down on him like the bales of cotton he’d been forced to haul.

  “Any news?” Daniel asked. Obviously, there was; otherwise Lake would still be out searching for it.

  “They have a transport carrying troops and supplies heading South tonight. There’s room for you two. Not planning on making another trip for a few days, so if you want to get, you got to get now.”

  South.

  Daniel’s stomach flipped and he tried not to show the brief panic that gripped him. The boundary between North and South was intangible, but the fear that slithered over him and squeezed the breath from him felt more real than anything. Fear that he would be taken back into slavery, be forced into perhaps even worse circumstances than he’d faced before, always rose within him before he had to undertake these dangerous missions. People thought him brave to the point of recklessness, but he was a coward, trying to still the sudden trembling of his hands.

  Run. Enough of this. You are too weak, unfit to bear the title of detective.

  Daniel ran a hand over his face, as if he could wipe off the residue of the dark thoughts lashing at him. He hummed tonelessly to drown them out in his head before answering. “We shall go.”

  Sanchez began gathering her things, and he did the same. He pressed his hand against the letters from Ellen after he tucked them into the pack. He couldn’t read them, but the crinkle of them against the palm of his hand calmed him a bit.

  “Is it possible? Traveling by boat?” Janeta asked doubtfully.

  “How did you get here from Florida?” Daniel asked in an aggravated tone.

  “I flew,” she responded with a grin as she stretched and flapped her arms.

  Daniel rolled his eyes. She was here, and he was stuck with her, no matter how she’d arrived.

  “The North has had control of the Mississippi since Vicksburg fell,” Lake responded helpfully. “There’re still attacks from the shores, but I imagine you’ll be in a pook turtle, so you’ll be safe.”

  “Pook?” Janeta’s head tilted to the side, her gaze drifting to a corner of the tent. It was then that Daniel remembered English wasn’t her first language, and the reference to the City-class ship had thrown her off.

  “It’s an ironclad,” he said. “The navy has outfitted steamboats with sheets of metal to protect those onboard from attack.”

  “Oh. Thank you,” she said, looking sheepish. “Pook turtle. What a strange name.”

  Lake chuckled, pulled back the tent flap, and waited for Janeta to pass through it. Daniel tucked his knife into the sheath at his belt and rubbed at his weary eyes before following them out into the chill autumn morning.

  The camp was quiet and dark; most people still slept, though there were murmurs of conversation here and there. They passed a man sitting before a low-burning fire, wrapped in a blanket, rocking on his heels and glancing about. His gaze locked with Daniel’s, and Daniel felt a jolt of kinship at the fear in the man’s eyes. In those dark depths, he found a shared knowledge: that the people in this camp were free, but they were not safe. That they might never be safe.

  Emotion lodged in Daniel’s throat, and he swallowed against it, nodding at the man, who gave Daniel a nod in return before turning his gaze toward the flames.

  While Daniel often thought of the reasons he should leave the Loyal League, he generally kept a safe distance from pondering his motivations for staying. The reason was in that man’s eyes, and it couldn’t be escaped. He did the work for people like that man. Perhaps because he wished someone had done the work for him. If the government had abolished the barbarous trade, or if the fugitive slave laws hadn’t allowed free Negroes to be kidnapped so easily, or if instead of compromise, the slavery question had been met with a definitive and resounding rejection . . . but none of those things had come to pass. Now Daniel had to work with the materials he’d been given. His anger and his pain, his body and his blood.

  The North prevailing might not be the salvation so many thought it would be, but it was a damn sight better than the situation that produced men who couldn’t sleep for fear they might lose their family, life, or liberty if they blinked too long.

  He considered what could give a man like the one before the fire a good night’s sleep, even just one, and his thoughts strayed to Enterprise. To Jefferson Davis traveling freely and in style, unafraid.

  Daniel’s hand went to the hilt of his knife; he would see what he could do to give the man rocking before the flames succor.

  “Is it true that Davis’s wife is a mulata?” Janeta asked, as if they had been in the midst of lively conversation and not walking in silence.

  Daniel wondered at what her thoughts must be like. She was full of questions, but never asked the ones he expected from a detective.

  She looked about suddenly, as if realizing it was a strange thing to inquire about. “I heard someone say it last night and I wondered.”

  “Wondered why one of us would be married to the president of the Rebels?” Lake asked with a harsh laugh. “I think that rumor is hogwash. No one would sink so low.”

  “I can certainly imagine why one of us who could pass as one of them might do it,” Daniel said. Lake scoffed and began to talk, but Daniel cut him off. “Marry Jefferson Davis, that is, not the President of the Confederacy. He was just a man like any other when they married.”

  “Well, he ain’t a man no more,” Lake said. “These fool Rebs treat him like a god.”

  “Maybe she feels she can’t leave,” Janeta said.

  “Lots of folk feel they can’t l
eave their husband or wife, but they don’t got a choice in the matter, because of men like Davis. Instead they watch their love get sold away,” Lake replied, then shook his head. “I think it’s just a rumor, but if she is one of us, well, she’s made her decision about where she stands.”

  “Sí,” Janeta said quietly.

  “She might think about sharing some information for the Cause, though.” Lake added with a low laugh, dissipating the tension left behind by Janeta’s question. “Help us out, Varina. Come on now.”

  Daniel chuckled.

  They walked out of the contraband camp, with Lake stopping to chat with Union pickets posted along the path. Daniel couldn’t help but notice how all the men they passed eyed Janeta, some blushing, some leering. She walked with her chin high, responding politely to salutations, but there was something different in her demeanor. Her gait was stiff, her hands clenched. He couldn’t quite get a grasp on Janeta—her behavior changed like the waves breaking along Massachusetts’s rocky shores—but if she was showing that she was ill at ease, he’d do something about that.

  Daniel sighed in annoyance, then quickened his pace until he was walking beside her. She glanced up at him, but turned her gaze back to the trail before them. Still, her body leaned toward his as they walked, her arm brushing his every now and again because she was so near. If they hadn’t been heading deep into enemy territory, and she hadn’t been an unwanted burden who might get him killed, they could have been mistaken for a couple on a pleasant stroll. He supposed it was as good a time as any to find out more about her.

  He tried to remember what he’d talked about with Elle on their walks—abolition, his future as a lawyer, their country. Topics that were unsavory to him now, but it occurred to him he’d never asked Elle much about her own future, because he’d assumed it would be by his side.

  “What did you plan to do with your life before this war began?” he asked Janeta, surprising himself as much as he had her, judging from the way her eyebrows flew up and she had to wrestle her expression into composure. He should have been asking about the here and now, but he told himself that he was using one of the more practical tools in any detective’s tool kit: banal conversation.