An Unconditional Freedom
Page 25
“And help them,” she said, clearly confused.
He could read the hurt in her eyes. She’d never been good at hiding it; that hadn’t been her skill. But he wouldn’t stop hurting her because if he let her think this was a good idea for one moment, she could run off and get herself killed.
“What makes you think you can help them? You have failed at nearly every level as a detective, but you think you can rush in and save the day?”
Her expression crumpled and her shoulders hunched, and Daniel hated himself even more. That didn’t stop him, though. This was less frightening than the hope and light that had been set before him. It could be snatched away at any moment, because he was undeserving. He’d stamp out that light himself; at least then he wouldn’t have to worry about someone else doing it for him.
“All you’re going to do is cause them trouble. You’re the pampered daughter of a slave master. Why should a few more Negroes suffering suddenly upset you?”
The tears flowed from her eyes, but where her gaze had been soft it now went steely.
“You know I read people well, even if I am a bad detective. I know exactly what I’m supposed to do here. Comfort you. Tell you that you’re better than this and know the right thing to do.” She shook her head and dashed the tears from her cheeks. “To hell with that. You’re trying to hurt me? To push me away? You’ve succeeded.”
Daniel sighed and flexed his feet in his boots to make sure the floor was still solid beneath him. He felt as if the world had tilted sideways and he was clawing toward the only thing that made sense to him in his pain: vengeance. “Jefferson Davis and representatives from the Sons of the Confederacy will be here in a few hours. We don’t have time for emotions.”
She laughed, and the harsh beauty of the sound hit him like she’d thrown one of her knives into his chest. “Dios mío, that’s amusing. I’m crying because I’m frustrated with your behavior, which is delaying me in saving our friends. You’re lashing out because you’re afraid. But please do tell me about how my emotions are the problem here, Cumberland.”
He exhaled a shaky breath. “I may never have the opportunity to be this close to Davis again. Someone has to do what’s right for our people.”
Her eyes went wide.
“You’re serious.” The disappointment in her voice was almost like a balm, soothing the parts of Daniel’s mind that told him he deserved no better. “You really suppose that chasing after Davis is doing what’s right for our people when our friends are imprisoned? Because of us?”
Daniel shook his head, stepped back.
“Jim understands,” Daniel said. “He knows that Davis has to be stopped.”
“What about Moses? Oh.” Understanding dawned in her eyes, and her lips formed a blanched dusky pink line as she nodded stiffly. “I see now. Our people are your means to an end. You want a reason to hurt someone, to make people hurt like you’ve been hurting. You’d rather do that than help.”
Daniel walked around her into the room, his feet carrying him to the window because he couldn’t look at her anymore.
“I’m doing what the Loyal League expects of me,” he said as he watched servants preparing for the arrival of the President of the South. “I’m doing what no one else wants to sully their hands with.”
“You’re hiding. And you’re choosing this. No one is making you do anything.”
“You’re right.” He looked back over his shoulder at her. “I’m choosing to do my job as a detective.”
“If I’m such a failure as a detective, then you’ll accept my resignation.” She began pacing around the room, gathering her bag. She drew out her pistols and examined them, pulled out her ammunition box and closed it securely before placing it in his bag.
“You can leave my room now.” She didn’t look at him. “Me and my emotions have to figure out how to help our friends, and you and your vengeance have your own logistics to attend to.”
Panic clawed at Daniel’s back and shoulders and neck. This wasn’t what he wanted.
But it’s what you deserve.
“Janeta.” She paused and her shoulders hunched.
“I want to ask you to stay. I want to say I can soothe that hurt inside of you. I can’t. I will be here for you if you need me, but I won’t be a target for you to direct your pain at.” She released a shaky breath. “Leave. I’m scared I won’t be able to say that again. If you’re going to be hard, be gentle about it. Dejame tranquila. Please.”
Pain bloomed in Daniel’s chest. He knew he should stay. They were partners. Friends. Lovers. And he cared for her. But she was better off without him. Everyone was. If he stayed, he’d be sealing her fate, just as he had for everyone else.
He stormed from the room, his mind full of darkness and confusion that he hoped would give way to clarity. He had an assassination to plan.
That was all he was good for.
CHAPTER 22
Janeta willed herself not to cry. That only a few tears escaped reminded her of how strong she was, not how weak. She’d survived losing Mami. She’d survived moving to a strange new world, being used body and soul by her lover, and watching her father be dragged off in chains.
Her whole life had been surviving as she knew best—she’d figure out how to make do without Daniel. This was what life was: swallowing bitter disappointment and smiling instead of retching it back onto the ground. Hoping there was some nourishment mixed in with the pain.
She’d sank down onto the edge of her bed as soon as Daniel had left the room, her travel bag clutched in her hand. She hurt for herself, but she hurt for him, too.
He’d said horrible things to her, and she couldn’t easily forgive that. But he’d forgiven Janeta her worst transgressions—against him, his country, and their people.
And she had recognized exactly what he was doing as he spoke to her. He’d found the words that would hurt her most and hurled them at her, aiming their sharp tips at her vital organs. It had been all the more painful because only someone who knew her well would have been able to hone in on those things. Daniel had said he knew her and he hadn’t been lying, and he’d used that knowledge to push her away because it frightened him, his knowing her.
She’d seen the fear and confusion in his eyes even as he’d used the strength of their connection as a cudgel. It might have been unpardonable if it hadn’t revealed so much about how he saw her, and how he saw himself.
She remembered how even in the safety of the dark library he’d been sure of his own lacking. She remembered how he’d cried out into the night in the Mississippi woods. And she remembered his face when he’d talked about his experience during his enslavement, and how he had made life worse for everyone around him. Daniel was a man who focused on the fact that he seemed to attract sorrow. And now the people they had just traveled with were in trouble.
Janeta brushed away the tears that welled in her eyes again. Daniel was hurting because he thought he’d hurt others. He was running toward what he knew: violence and pain and maybe death. And Janeta couldn’t save him.
For the first time in a long time she allowed herself to think of her mother in those last days. How she had stopped eating and lost the will to live, and cried for her own mother in a language Janeta could not understand—she had understood her mother’s pain, though. That had needed no translation, but she had been unable to do anything to fix it.
“You must be perfect,” her mother muttered to her, twisting at her matted hair.
“I will, Mami,” Janeta said. She pretended her mother didn’t smell terrible and look like a skeleton and smiled brightly.
Her mother’s bony fingers grabbed her by the face and, even though it hurt, Janeta didn’t let her mouth pull down into a frown. She didn’t want to upset Mami.
“Good girl. You must smile. You must give them what they want so they won’t send you to the fields.” The tears started again then. “My mother couldn’t save me. Maybe I can’t save you. I couldn’t even save myself.”
She had tried everything she could to save her mother. Toward the end she’d even begged her to leave her bed, falling to her knees and tugging at her hands as their slaves looked on with pity and judgment in their eyes. But whatever ghosts had haunted her mother were too numerous for Janeta to defeat without her mother’s help. And whatever haunted Daniel was the same.
Her mother hadn’t been weak, and neither was Daniel. They’d had their souls crushed by a world not worthy of them, and however much she wished it, Janeta was not enough to heal someone else’s soul. Her love was strong, but it wasn’t magic.
When Daniel had turned away from her, he had walked into his own lake of pain and submerged himself. She’d told him she would be waiting on the shore for him. She could only hope that he would return to her—not because she needed him or he needed her, but because he’d caught a glimmer of his own worth in the past few days. He needed to walk back to land for himself, of his own volition. She couldn’t help him before that, as much as she wanted to. There were others who she could help, though.
She took a deep breath and stood from the bed.
She was Janeta Sanchez: daughter of slaves and conquistadores, former Rebel spy, disgraced 4L detective. She was a photograph that had just been developed, and the picture was of a woman who would trust in the abilities she’d been given. She was going to save their friends, with or without Daniel’s help.
She began moving down the hallway with purpose, toward the front door and the unknown. Janeta had always done well at strategy games because she could often read people’s minute reactions. This was a different kind of strategizing. She couldn’t see her opponents, and might rush headlong into something that required subtlety.
She heard the sound of something being dragged as she passed one of the empty rooms and poked her head in. Maddie and Michael were somberly packing Roberts’s belongings into wooden crates. Several wooden crates large enough for the ornate furniture stacked along one wall stood empty.
Janeta felt the stirrings of possibility.
“What is all of this?” Janeta asked politely. “Mr. Roberts’s belongings?”
“Yes,” Michael said as he carefully wrapped glassware. “The rails to the South is all messed up by the Yanks, bless ’em, but we got to load ’em up and send ’em off North.”
Inspiration struck Janeta. Cargo was cargo, was it not? If she could get to Jim and Augustus and get them inside the wooden boxes—
“It’s not gonna work, girl,” Maddie said, scrutinizing her. “They gotta open the boxes to check the cargo, and the way they load ’em is too dangerous besides.”
“What do you mean?” Janeta tried to feign ignorance, but the woman wouldn’t allow her to.
“You know that we know everything that happens in this house. You can’t save those men with some half-cocked idea. But if there really is Sons of Confederacy around here stirring up trouble for your friends, then maybe I know someone willing to help you.”
Maddie spoke with a surety that surprised Janeta, though it shouldn’t have.
“Ever heard of the Daughters of the Tent, girl?” Michael asked calmly, still packing.
“No,” Janeta said. “Wait, yes. Roberts mentioned them at that first dinner. Is it another secret organization?”
“Secret enough to get what needs to be done done,” Maddie said. “We don’t have time for all this messing about with handshakes and passcodes and 4L nonsense. Men are so tiresome with their ceremonies. Just get to work!”
Maddie sucked her teeth.
“You are a detective?”
Maddie shrugged. “I ain’t no detective. I’m a woman trying to help her people working with other women trying to help their people. What are you?”
Janeta took a deep breath. “That. Sí, I think I am exactly that.”
Maddie nodded firmly. “Well, then. Welcome to the Daughters of the Tent.”
CHAPTER 23
“She’s gone, you know.” Roberts said the words casually as he took a sip of his brandy.
Daniel was pacing in agitation. “I know.”
When he’d gone back to Janeta’s room, her bag had been gone. He didn’t know what he’d expected to find on the scrap of paper lying on her bed, but the short missive had lanced him worse than reading all of Elle’s letters had.
I know you’re a good man. You need to
know you’re a good man. Buena suerte.
Daniel had crumpled the paper, then flattened it and smoothed out the wrinkles before tucking it into his pocket. For someone who didn’t care about connections, he was terrible at letting go of them.
“Do you know where she is?” he asked.
“Yes.” Roberts took a sip of his drink and ran a hand through his hair. “Davis should be here by now.”
Daniel stopped pacing and looked at Roberts. “You’re not going to tell me?”
“If she wanted you to know she would have told you herself. Or perhaps you have some idea, and could go find her, but you are here instead.”
Daniel ran the heel of his hand along his stubbled jaw. “I’m a detective working for an organization that has prioritized undermining the Rebels. If Jefferson Davis is going to be here, if the Sons of the Confederacy are going to be here, then I will be here.”
“And how exactly will your presence undermine them, if I may ask?”
Daniel simply stared at Roberts. “These men have committed countless atrocities. They should pay for them.”
Roberts laughed without humor. “Cumberland, I know you mean well, but this mind-set can only lead to ruination. I have yet to meet a politician holding high office either home or abroad who has not played a part in some atrocity or another.” He held up his hand when he saw Daniel ready to leap in with questions. “I do not condone this. I simply ask whether you believe that every politician be made to pay? Because your current government in the capital has done the Indian tribes many a disservice, in addition to the abominable treatment of the Negro. Should they not pay? And who will make them?”
“I don’t have time for your detached morality,” Daniel bit out.
“I suppose not, since you’ve already made up your mind that you are the sole method of ending the Rebellion in the States. That no one else has thought ‘oy, just kill him’ in the history of civil wars before. I have to admire that kind of confidence.”
Daniel stalked over to Roberts and looked him in the eye. “I will not be the jest of a white man with no stake in this matter.”
“A smaller stake.” Roberts held his gaze and lifted his glass to his lips. The bottom of it grazed Daniel’s chin.
Daniel felt the ugliness rise inside of himself again, the same that had led him to lash out at Janeta. “Ah, let me guess. You fell in love with a slave girl, or had some poor abused friend who met a pathetic end at the hand of racists. Or you feel that you must save us because we cannot save ourselves.”
Roberts’s nostrils flared. “If one need have personal reason to find slavery abhorrent, that is abhorrent in itself. I despised slavery from the moment I knew of its existence. I do not think it belongs in a fair and just world, and I need no reason further than that to throw everything I have against it.”
“Aren’t you special?” Daniel sneered.
“Absolutely not. Well, yes, in other ways. I’m quite a good poet, if you must know. But because of this? No.” Roberts opened and closed his mouth, a movement Daniel had seen when the man struggled to compose his thoughts. “I understand that this is personal for you in ways that I can never, ever understand. It must chafe to have me presume to know what you should or should not do. I do not. I would simply ask that you ask yourself why you are doing something, and who it will benefit, and in what way.”
Roberts moved away from him,
toward the window, and Janeta’s words popped into his mind. You need to know you’re a good man.
Though the room he was in was bright with late-afternoon sunshine, he felt consumed by darkness. He thought of the troubles he had caused at the plantation, with his fellow detectives, with Elle . . . his head snapped up.
Presumption.
He had presumed he knew what Elle wanted, and how enslaved people should behave, and what his fellow detectives really thought of him. And he had been wrong.
And now he was presuming to know how to fix the Jefferson Davis situation, but in truth he wasn’t sure he was right. He’d sworn his Loyal League oath on vengeance instead of the 4L—Loyalty, Legacy, Life, and Lincoln—but he’d begun to think that perhaps vengeance was the true toxin—perhaps he was poisonous, because he carried that toxin in him. Perhaps the only one to suffer its effect was himself.
“Ah. The first carriage is arriving. Come along. I suppose you can make yourself scarce if you don’t want to pretend to be a servant. Don’t try that Cuban bit again—your Spanish is atrocious.”
Roberts walked away and Daniel followed him in a daze. There seemed to be a tunnel before his eyes, and he stared at Roberts’s feet so that he would know where to step. The man was talking, but it was a murmur blocked out by the beating of Daniel’s heart and the buzzing in his head. Sweat broke out on his scalp and palms, and his body felt incredibly heavy and slow.
An image of Winnie being yanked away by Finnegan appeared in his head. Winnie’s wide eyes and fear, and how she had looked to Daniel for help. Her family’s anger, and her crushed hands.
Daniel dropped to his knees in the hallway, the tunnel before him narrowing to a pinpoint. He couldn’t breathe—he felt like he was drowning. And though he thought often of the peace death would bring, a sudden and overwhelming fear filled him.
He didn’t want to die.