by Alyssa Cole
He had so much to do. He had something to live for. Not Janeta, though she was a part of it.
Moses’s face floated before his. That boy was the future of this country. Would vengeance and death serve the Moseses and Winnies of America? Would it serve Daniel?
Something bittersweet and frightening spread within his chest, filling his lungs, and maybe filling his soul, slowly inflating the crushed, useless thing it had become.
Hope.
Hope.
Just the slightest ray of light, but even a trickle of light when you’ve been shrouded in the deepest darkness was painful and overwhelming.
God, how had he missed it? All those men and women and children in Cairo? Jim and Augustus and Shelley and Moses. There was something in all of them that knew they deserved freedom. Some had taken it for themselves, some had been granted it, and most would only get free if the South fell. For all his anger at Lincoln and for all the Emancipation Proclamation’s faults—what Roberts had said the other day was true. It was an ideal. It was a flame in the darkness. And if enough people added their own kindling to that flame, maybe it would be more than that. Maybe it would light the way toward something more.
Would Jefferson’s blood fuel that flame or douse it?
The same optimism that Daniel had once felt as he pored over legal cases, searching for the key that would unlock the shackles of his people, galloped through the arid plains of his soul, leaving a trail of verdant green. That trail of green sliced through him like a wound; it was too much, this desire to believe that hope wasn’t futile.
He dragged in a deep breath and the darkness before his vision began to clear. As the hallway came back into view, Daniel pushed himself back to his feet. He felt slightly woozy but walked to the end of the hall and turned the corner. Roberts had gone outside, but Daniel didn’t follow him. He entered the dining room and made his way quietly to the window, moving aside the curtain to glance outside.
Jefferson Davis was a few feet away, on the other side of the glass. Daniel was frozen in place. He had built this man up in his imagination, made him into a dragon that needed to be slain, but he was a man. Tall, lean to the point of gauntness, with hollowed-out cheekbones that made his clear gray eyes seem too large. The wave of his hair was rumpled by travel, and his expression was serious but kind as he talked to Roberts.
A Black man bounded up the stairs, eyes locked on Davis, and for a moment Daniel thought someone had usurped his plan. But the man was smiling, and when Davis turned toward the movement, he smiled, too. The man handed Davis a small box, which Davis took. He clapped the man on the back and said something; then both he and the man laughed heartily.
Daniel closed the curtain as the man, likely his coachman or valet, jogged back down the stairs.
He didn’t feel anger or hatred or rage. Jefferson Davis was a man who would die like any other. His death would change something, but exactly what Daniel could not predict with certainty. His eyes burned with pent-up anger and frustration, despite his recent burst of hope. Killing Davis wouldn’t stop men like Finnegan, but a man like Finnegan had hurt Moses and Jim and Augustus. Janeta had gone to Meridian to save them because that was what a true detective would do. She was fighting for Loyalty and Life and Love. And maybe . . .
Maybe Daniel was toxic because he’d been more loyal to his hate—of himself, of his country—than he had been to life and love. He was still broken. He was still unsure of his worth. But there was someone in his life who had picked up the torch that would light the way toward the future, when she had little reason to. She’d accepted her faults and was working to fix her mistakes instead of running from them. Daniel needed to follow that flame in the dark.
Hate made good kindling, but hope burned much brighter. It flared up in him, that sensation he’d thought he’d never feel again.
He stood in the parlor, the murmur of the President of the Confederacy outside the window, and walked away from the idea that his only use in this world was vengeance, or that vengeance was only hatred and pain. Vengeance was happiness in a world that wanted to crush him. Vengeance was love in a world that wished him misery. Vengeance was stopping injustice, like what might be perpetuated against his friends.
He made for the stables to find a horse that would carry him to Meridian, and Janeta, as fast as the newfound purpose now pushing at his back. He would follow her down that verdant path of hope because that was braver than continuing on the dark and craggy road through his pain.
He’d told Moses to be brave, and he would be, too.
CHAPTER 24
Janeta had ridden along with Maddie in the wagon carrying some of Roberts’s items into Meridian to be shipped, sending sidelong glances at the older woman all the while.
“Why did you ask me to join you?” Janeta asked.
“Because you’re my sister in the Cause,” Maddie said plainly.
“I was a Confederate spy,” she said. “I’m not any longer, but you should know before you place your trust in me.”
“Girl, I told you that I know everything that happens in that house. Even better is what I say. You know more about these people than some of us do. We can always use someone who knows how these folk think because I surely don’t most the time.”
Janeta was past the point of warning people away from her, especially after witnessing Daniel’s behavior, but it was hard, this brushing away of her crimes.
“Do you think I will be accepted?”
“Long as you don’t do nothing foolish, like questioning my judgment of your character.” Maddie gave her a narrow look and Janeta nodded. “Now tell me how you gonna save your friends?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to think, and if they’re imprisoned, then I’m not sure what can be done.” Papi was still in jail somewhere, and she hadn’t been able to get him out either. Impotent anger assailed her, but she tried to keep her mind clear. “When they took my father, I thought about just blowing the prison up,” she said with a bitter laugh.
“Hmmm.” Maddie rubbed at her cheek like she was massaging a painful toothache. She stared at the crates in front of her. “That could work. That just might work.”
“What?”
Maddie looked at her. “First thing you learn about being a Daughter—sometimes you gotta be subtle, and sometimes you gotta burn it all down.”
“But where are we going to get dynamite? And if we do, how do we make sure no one gets hurt?”
A mischievous look glinted in Maddie’s eyes. “Someone’s gonna get hurt either way, child. Hopefully it won’t be us and ours.”
After the wagon reached the outskirts of town, Maddie and Janeta hopped down. They made their way to a house off the road, hidden behind a thicket of trees. A woman as old as Maddie opened the door, and her gaze leapt from Maddie to Janeta like flames from branch to branch.
“Sister?” the woman asked, and Janeta nodded firmly.
The woman stepped aside to let them in.
Janeta almost thought the dark-skinned man in the center of the room was sleeping, but there was something unnatural about his repose. She jumped back when she realized he wasn’t asleep, knocking into Maddie.
“Annabelle here handles deaths. That’s Jeremiah, gonna be laid to rest tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Janeta said, her heart still racing. She’d never seen a dead body before—she hadn’t even been allowed to see Mami. She glanced at the man out of the corner of her eye.
“Why are we here?”
“Because when you dealing with a life-or-death matter, this is where you come,” Maddie said. “Annie, you got any of that stuff we used for blowin’ those tracks?”
“Sure do,” Annabelle said, moving slowly to the corner of her one-room house, kneeling, and pulling up a wooden plank that wasn’t nailed down.
She groped around for a bit and then came up with her age-spotted hand wrapped around a bundle of dynamite.
Maddie elbowed Janeta. “You ready?”
Janeta w
ondered what Daniel was doing. If she would ever see him again. She wished that things had turned out differently.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Take the path through the forest instead of the main road,” Annabelle advised as they passed out of her house, hopefully leaving death behind them. “Leaves you right behind the jail.”
* * *
Janeta gingerly held the two sticks of dynamite that Maddie had given her, out as far away from her body as she could manage. Annie had mentioned something about the explosives being “volatile” and warned them not to trip as they made their way through the woods.
They were watching the jailhouse from the forest, having just arrived, and things didn’t look good. A group of white men milled about, yelling taunts and demanding to be let inside to deal with the darkies. The sheriff came out and tried to placate them, but some were clearly inebriated and others just spoiling for a fight.
“These are the men left behind, looking to show just how brave and strong they are since they ain’t decked out in gray,” Maddie said with disgust. “Someone’s riled ’em up good. Probably these Sons of the Confederacy bastards who been hanging about. I told Roberts they was up to no good and to just have the damn meetin’ already, but he wanted to wait for Davis and now look.”
“We need a distraction,” Janeta said. “Maybe we should set off one stick elsewhere, then when they go to investigate, we can blow the wall here?”
Maddie smiled proudly. “See? I told you I was a good judge of character. Look at you, strategizing.” She carefully took one of the sticks of dynamite, then pulled out a flint strike and handed it to Janeta.
“Aren’t you going to need it?” she asked.
“No, I’m gonna head over to old man Watson’s store. He keeps the wood stove goin’ out back to make warm drinks this time a year. Blowin’ that up will be payback for the time he accused me of stealing and beat me around the ears. I wasn’t stealing, but he’s gonna lose a lot more than a handful of grain now.” Maddie grinned. “Once you hear the explosion, wait for ’em to run; then light the stick and leave it at the base of the wall. Tell the people in the jail to stand close to the bars on the other side and cover their ears.”
Maddie padded off into the darkening night. She’d explained her plan as if it were mundane, and not a prison break to release enslaved men; not the exact situation white men and slave-owning territories all over seemed to hope for, so they could have an excuse to react with violence. Janeta didn’t see much choice in the matter though. She would not leave her friends’ fate to chance, especially when there were already men who seemed intent on doing them harm. At a certain point you couldn’t worry about future evil when present evil was unfolding before your eyes.
Janeta crouched in the forest and watched, looking around at the growing shadows and jumping at every rustle in the trees. She began to shake as she waited there. She began to doubt. And when a man lumbered up the bushes just a few feet away from her, she resisted the urge to run. He swayed as he fumbled with his trousers and pulled his penis out to urinate. Janeta wanted to look away, but she couldn’t risk him spotting her while she was trying to be proper. She kept her eyes above his waistline, watching his face as it contorted with relief.
The acrid scent of urine hit her nose and she held her breath. He stared off into the distance as he relieved himself, but suddenly his eyes drifted in her direction and focused as his mouth twitched into a frown.
“What you doin’ here, boy?”
Boy?
Janeta glanced quickly behind her and all she saw was a flash of dark fabric and broad shoulder, but she knew who it was. Daniel. He had come! But he was also in danger, as was their plan. All the man had to do was yell to raise the alarm and bring his posse of angry friends over, and they would all be caught. The Loyal League, the Daughters of the Tent, Roberts before he could return to England.
Janeta did something she’d practiced for as long as she could remember, the motion so familiar she could perform it without thinking. In fact, that’s how it happened: without thought.
Her mind was still frozen with fear—it wasn’t until the blade was pinched between her fingertips and her eyes squinted as she focused on the man’s throat that she began to comprehend what she was doing. She shifted her footing to one with more balance as she squatted, and the man’s gaze moved to her just as she let the blade fly.
It didn’t thud like it did when she practiced with wood and paper—it pierced his neck with a sickening sound, familiar from the days of watching Roberto cut meat in the Sanchez kitchen. Janeta didn’t move from her crouch as the man fell, gurgling quietly. Her mind was catching up with her body’s actions.
She’d killed a man.
“Ted, what are you doin’ back there?” one of his compatriots called.
Still Janeta didn’t move.
“Janeta. Janeta. Sanchez.”
She realized Daniel had wrapped her in his arms.
“Careful of the dynamite,” she said blankly.
Ted twitched a bit on the ground, but he wasn’t blinking. He’d fallen away from the bushes instead of into them, and his sprawled body would be evident to anyone who came near enough. There would be no time to drag him into the shadows.
“Hey, Ted, I said what are you doin’?” Footsteps started to approach them, dry leaves crackling under boots.
“He’s dead,” she whispered. “I took his life, and they’re going to find us anyway.”
One of Daniel’s arms released her and she knew he was reaching for his knife. “Well, then more of them will die. I won’t let them take you.”
Then the night was torn by a deafening boom.
CHAPTER 25
Daniel had rushed to Meridian thinking he would have to save Janeta—inexperienced and untested Janeta—but here he was cradling her after she’d killed a man with more stealth and skill than Daniel had ever managed.
It was no surprise, now that he thought of it. She’d fought by his side on the pook turtle, after overcoming her fear. She’d walked into a den of Loyal League detectives with devious intent and won most of them over with a smile. She’d declared herself aristocracy and talked down to men who might have killed her just for looking them in the eye.
That Janeta had saved him was about right. But now she needed him.
“Sanchez. You all right?”
“I’ve been better,” she replied faintly from beneath him. When the explosion had rocked the night, Daniel had thrown himself over her. She pushed her way up and he rolled off her. “Have the men left?”
He dusted off his hands. “Yes, they’ve gone to see what the disturbance was.”
“Then let’s go. We have to move now before they come back if we want to save Jim and Augustus.”
This had been a plan. Her plan. He was impressed.
She started crawling toward the jail, then pushed herself to her feet and ran shakily toward the building holding the jail. She had a flint lock in her hand and she began striking it as she stood beneath the window. She handed the dynamite she had mentioned to Daniel, barely looking at him, and in that moment his heart was well and truly hers. She trusted him to do what she needed of him, without asking. She trusted him to support her, without second guessing her. She trusted him to trust in himself.
“Jim. Augustus? Step far away from the wall,” she called out.
“Janeta?” Augustus’s shocked voice rose from the cell.
“Yes, it’s me,” she said, her voice trembling as she finally produced a flame. Relief softened her features for a moment; then her eyes narrowed and an expression of devious determination settled on her face. “I’m going to blow you out of this filthy place. Now step back.”
Daniel loved her.
She began passing the flame over the dynamite’s wick.
“Hold on, hold on. Don’t blow nothing up yet.” That was Jim.
There was silence for a while; then there was a creak in the room and footsteps.
&nbs
p; Jim and Augustus and Shelley staggered around the back of the building, blood stains on their clothes. Two dark arms were clamped around Augustus’s neck and two legs crossed around his waist.
Moses.
Daniel rushed over and gently pried Moses off the injured man before swinging him onto his own back. Augustus nodded his thanks and limped toward his brother.
“Sheriff left the key when he ran off,” Jim said. “Now we should run off, too.”
Someone hurried around the corner and Janeta reached for her knives but stopped when she saw the woman—Maddie. One of Roberts’s servants, and apparently even more than she appeared, like so many of the women in his life.
“Let’s go,” Maddie said. They hurried into the woods, cutting through a stand of bushes and sharp, leafless branches that tugged at Daniel’s pants and shirt.
Soon a thin path opened and they stuck to it as the forest changed from patches of swampy mud and back to hard-packed dirt.
“I didn’t protect everyone,” Moses whispered as he bounced on Daniel’s back. “I failed.”
Daniel adjusted Moses on his back. “No, I failed by letting you think that you had to. It’s not your job to protect anyone. You’re a child. You are to be protected.”
“But—”
“No. What happened was wrong and it was not your fault. You understand that?”
Moses was silent.
“Do you understand that, Moses?” he asked a bit more harshly. He knew what guilt and anger and frustration did to a person. He wouldn’t have Moses take on that load at such a young age.
Finally, the boy nodded into his shoulder, gripping Daniel more tightly with his spindly arms.
“I told ’em you’d come back for us,” Moses said.
Daniel focused on the trail ahead of them. He almost hadn’t come back. He’d almost let vengeance stop justice. He committed to memory the feel of Moses’s small body clinging to his. He memorized the warmth of the boy’s tears running down the back of his neck, and the hiccup of his quiet, relieved sobs. This was why he fought. This was what mattered.
Daniel would die one day, as all creatures did. He didn’t have to chase death and destruction when he could chase life and love instead.
