The Underground River

by Martha Conway

  Hugo walked onto the stage and said, more to the audience than to me, “Thank you, Miss Bedloe! Thank you very much!” and a few people clapped. I stood up from the piano bench and faced them, as I did every night. The justice of the peace looked at me without clapping, and Dr. Early’s eyes were bright and alert. I must have stood there longer than usual, for the scant clapping died away and Hugo had to walk over and escort me across the stage toward the wings. His hand on the small of my back felt warm and heavy.

  “All right, May?” he asked quietly.

  Behind us, Jemmy and Sam were busy pushing my piano out of the way. I said without thinking, “Hugo, I need your help.” I don’t think I’d ever called him by his first name aloud before.

  “I’ll help you, I’ll help, don’t you worry,” he said, and then he went back on the stage with his arms up to start his welcoming monologue. Too late, I realized he thought that I meant my part in the play.

  I started to open the back door, which led to the outside guard, so I could look for whoever was waiting for Lula and tell him my plan. But Jemmy and Sam, coming up behind me, said, “This way, May!” and laughed at the thought of me losing my way to the green room, its door only a few steps behind the stage. “We can’t mislay you now!” Jemmy teased. “We need you tonight.”

  In the green room the rest of the company were sitting on the chairs and sofa or pacing the few steps between them—everyone but poor Pinky, who was out in the audience with a chamois cloth wrapped around his throat. As Hugo began his introduction, I heard the audience settle itself into a quieter state, and my anxiety quickened. The little room felt crowded and hot. My small, discarded trunk was where Leo had left it, triangulated against the corner like a corner table. Mrs. Niffen was sitting on the closed lid while Liddy adjusted her wig, a dull brown shade that reminded me of a squirrel in winter. Mrs. Niffen was holding her red wig in her hands and fussing about which would be the better choice.

  “The red will clash with your costume,” Liddy told her.

  “It’s too bold,” Jemmy agreed.

  Mrs. Niffen frowned. “But the red will help me be seen from the last row.”

  “Brown,” Sam said in his usual succinct way. Celia, wearing a boy’s shirt and trousers—both of her two small parts being male—took the red wig from Mrs. Niffen and carefully fitted it over the wig stand on top of a crate.

  “I put on my own makeup tonight,” Celia told me in her quiet voice, turning to me with a tiny, proud smile.

  I smiled back and nodded, the best I could do, since I couldn’t pretend to be anything other than wracked by my own problems. Was Lula all right? Were there enough holes for her to get air? We tested it, I reminded myself. She said it was fine. As I stood by the door, trying to think of an excuse to go outside, my anxiety enlarged to include myself. Would I be all right? Would I remember to keep my face turned toward the audience? Would I forget my lines?

  Liddy said, “May, let me draw you some wrinkles on your forehead: you need to look like an old woman. My goodness! You’re shaking.”

  “I’m afraid,” I said.

  “That’s all right.” Liddy squeezed my shoulder. “Here, sit here.” She pulled a stool over, and I bent my knees a little too quickly and sat down hard. “Turn toward me,” Liddy said. “Now look up. Tilt your chin a little. There we are.” She bent over me with a brown grease pencil and I felt her draw a few quavering lines across my brow. Then she put a little more rouge on my cheeks with the tip of her pinkie. “I know you’re afraid. That’s normal. But you’ll be fine. And as the captain says, it’s good to be a little nervous.”

  “There are so many people!”

  “Don’t think about the audience, just concentrate on your part.”

  Her warm hand was on my chin, keeping my head steady. From the corner of my eye I could see Thaddeus watching us. “That’s right,” he said. “The play’s the thing. Eh? Am I right?”

  “Yes, absolutely, the play’s the thing,” Mrs. Niffen agreed. “Don’t worry, May. It will all be over soon.” She couldn’t bring herself to say that I would be fine.

  Thaddeus pushed himself off the wall he’d been leaning against and came up to me. His small eyes seemed closer together, and his lips were very red from the stage makeup, giving him up close a debauched appearance. “Just as Mrs. Niffen says. It will all be over soon.” He bent his head and whispered, “During intermission.”

  “What? What do you mean, ‘intermission’?” I asked loudly, drawing back from him.

  Liddy said, “What are you saying to her? Oh, Thaddeus, don’t frighten her.”

  “I just said that she should keep her voice up.” Thaddeus cocked his head. “Sounds like the captain is wrapping up his speech. We’re on.” He turned to Mr. Niffen. “Ready?”

  “Sir,” Mr. Niffen said, extending his arm.

  They walked out of the green room together, and the rest of us listened to the audience clap and stamp their feet, followed by a sudden falling away as Thaddeus spoke the first lines of the play. The rise and fall of sound put me in mind of my first day on the boat, when I felt so ill. Was Dr. Early going to search for Lula during intermission? Was that what Thaddeus meant? If so, I had to get her away before intermission and not afterward, as I’d planned. As I wiped my sweaty palms on my costume, I realized I was still wearing the Austrian cloak that I played the piano in, but my hands were shaking so much, I had trouble with the clasps.

  “Let me,” Liddy said gently. I felt a stab of emotion, like remorse. She was kinder to me than Comfort had ever been, and yet I would certainly ruin her happiness with Dr. Early if I could. We heard the General—Hugo—join Thaddeus on the stage, and Mr. Niffen came into the green room, having made the audience laugh with his exit.

  “Good house tonight,” he remarked.

  When the time of my entrance approached, I went to the narrow space we liked to call the wings to wait for it, and Liddy came with me. As I looked out onto the stage I was momentarily mesmerized by the short, fat flames in the small stage lanterns around the proscenium. My eyesight blurred and I took a step back.

  “Ah! My Lord! By heaven, here she comes, just returned from church.”

  That was my cue. I waited for my feet to move. When they did not, Liddy pushed me.

  “Donna Cecily, Donna Cecily!” Thaddeus cried out to me.

  We two were now alone on the stage. The space felt both wider and more cramped, and very near to the benches of people. I turned to speak my first line: “Signor.” But nothing came out.

  Thaddeus paid no mind but went on: “I think you are one of the domestics in the General’s house?”

  “Domestics?” I whispered, trying to find my voice. “Why, I am the governante general of the whole house!”

  “Can’t hear you!” someone shouted from the audience. I turned to see a man in a green quilted jacket push his way into the front row, squeezing the justice of the peace and Dr. Early. “Speak up,” he said as he settled in, looking straight at me. Something moved underneath Dr. Early’s jacket and I saw the head of a baby raccoon peep out. Rascal. He must have smuggled her on board.

  “Cecily,” Thaddeus said loudly, to cover the man’s voice, “I have something of the highest importance to communicate to you.”

  I began to speak, but my words seemed to fall into my nightdress.

  “Louder!” the man in the green jacket said again.

  I turned to him. “I’m trying!” I snapped. From the corner of my eye, I could see Hugo in the wings in his General’s costume. He was waving his hand away from the audience, signaling me not to look at them.

  Thaddeus said in a low voice, “Look at me.” Then louder: “You are severe, Cecily. That air you put on agrees with you but little.”

  I stared at him, trying to remember the next line. From off to the side of the stage, Hugo prompted: “And do you think . . .”

  “And do you think to cajole me?” I said, getting my voice up a bit louder now. “If you come hither after my y
oung lady,” I went on quickly, skipping a few of my lines and Thaddeus’s, too, “I have the pleasure to inform you, you won’t get her.”

  Somehow my voice stayed up and somehow we made it through the scene with no more missed lines or feedback from the man in the green quilted jacket. As I spoke I tried not to look at him, or at Comfort, who was staring at me from the second row in utter astonishment: I was on the stage. I was acting. I had taken her place, and now she was the one watching me instead of the reverse. Standing there in my servant’s costume and cap, I waited for Thaddeus to finish speaking his line, and then I spoke my own. Within a few minutes I was duped by Thaddeus, turned out of Hugo’s house, and humiliated. The only thing that was left was my dismissal.

  “Hear me, General—” I said to Hugo.

  Hugo: “Not a word. Be gone this instant, and tomorrow I’ll send the wages after you that you have so little merited.”

  When Hugo left the stage, I turned to Thaddeus.

  “Young gentleman, the General has provoked me so far, that I’ll serve you against my inclination. Therefore command me, and I will do all I can to obtain for you his niece, out of spite.”

  At this, Thaddeus turned to the audience and smiled triumphantly.

  Exeunt, as they say, and the end of the act.

  That should have been the beginning and end of my stage career, since Cecily made no more appearances in the play. But I had no time to be relieved before the next act began without pause. From there on the play would move quickly toward intermission.

  “You were wonderful!” Liddy told me. It wasn’t true, but I loved her for saying it.

  She walked with me back to the green room, where Celia congratulated me. I spoke a few words to her before muttering that I needed some air, and went out to the guard.

  Outside at last. I closed the door behind me, took in a long breath, and looked around. My heart was still pumping fast, but the fresh air was calming and the night was clear, with just the faintest last traces of purple sunset. I could smell lingering smoke from the day’s steamboat traffic, and one small steamboat was docked for the night at the far end of the pier. I looked up at the road that led to town but there was no sign of Donaldson or anyone else who might be waiting to carry away a fugitive slave, just a line of empty carriages and a solitary farm dray without a driver, the horse hitched to a post, his head in a feedbag. How was I going to get Lula out before intermission without anyone noticing? I leaned over the rail, trying to see farther up the road.

  Celia opened the door. She said, “You wanted me to tell you when Thaddeus was in Liddy’s trunk. Well, he’s getting in now.”

  I followed her to the wings, where Sam and Jemmy, wearing porter caps and moustaches, were closing the lid over Thaddeus’s head. On a silent signal they lifted the trunk and carried it out to the center of the stage. Liddy also stood in the wings, waiting for her next cue.

  “This chest contains a few trifles from India, which I mean to present to my destined bride,” proclaimed Mr. Niffen on the stage. In a moment Hugo and Mr. Niffen would exit and Mrs. Niffen would open the trunk to let Thaddeus out. It was time.

  “Liddy,” I whispered. “You have to help me. There’s a young girl, a young slave girl on our boat. A runaway. I need to get her to safety.”

  Liddy and Celia both turned their heads to look at me. “What!” Liddy whispered. “Here now?”

  “She’s young, only just Celia’s age. She was raped by her master; she had a baby . . .”

  Celia put her hand to her mouth. Liddy looked shocked.

  “Get everyone out of the green room, will you?” I asked. “I have to get her off the boat before she’s caught.”

  “Where is she?” Liddy whispered.

  But Hugo was exiting to the other side of the stage. From the trunk, Thaddeus called out in a loud but muffled voice, “Open the lid! Open the lid!”

  Still in my servant’s costume, I quickly stepped out onto the stage before Mrs. Niffen could open the lid.

  “Excuse me!” I said loudly.

  Mrs. Niffen stared at me. “Why . . . Cecily?” she said, and then frowned and made a jerky motion with her head for me to get off the stage. A few lanterns flickered for a moment as though they were surprised, too. Hugo was standing in the wings on the other side but I dared not look at him. I swallowed, trying to moisten the roof of my mouth, which felt like a rough, dry stone, and I made myself look at the justice of the peace, who wore the blank expression of someone witnessing an event without participating in it. Someone only there to witness events—well, if that was anyone, that was me, that was my life with Comfort; but now that life was over and I was making something happen, or trying to, and I didn’t like it at all, my heart was knocking around hard enough to break a rib and I had nothing on my side, not the law certainly, and not even the truth. I didn’t care about telling the truth, and for once I didn’t feel the need to, although I did.

  “I have to stop the show,” I said loudly, looking straight at the justice of the peace. “There’s a slave on this boat. A runaway slave!”

  He looked back at me blankly, as if this might still be part of the play.

  “A runaway slave right here on this boat!” I repeated.

  “A what?” Now his slack expression began to change into something harder, and he stood up. Beside him, Dr. Early tried to tuck Rascal, who was trying to climb out, back into his jacket pocket. He opened his mouth to say something, but I spoke over him.

  “What’s the reward for bringing in a runaway?” I asked. “Eighty dollars? I’ll bring her to you for eighty dollars.”

  “Now, wait a moment,” Hugo boomed out, walking quickly across the stage. Meanwhile, Thaddeus was knocking frantically on the lid of the trunk, and Mrs. Niffen remembered him. She opened the lid and Thaddeus scrambled to get himself out, saying to me in a snarl, “You tricked me! You want the reward money all to yourself!”

  “It’s a lot of money,” I said.

  Dr. Early jumped up and said to the justice of the peace, “Fred, I knew about this. I was going to tell you at intermission so we could go up together and get the girl. She’s in one of the staterooms. Come on.”

  I glanced over at Liddy, who was now standing on the corner of the stage, half on and half off, staring at her fiancé. Her face looked all at once soft and crumpled, older somehow, and more like Comfort’s face in the last few years when certain roles were denied her. But she was a good soul, a true friend, and after a moment she pressed her lips together and turned around—back to the green room, I hoped, to get everyone out. She held Celia by the arm while Rascal took the opportunity to jump out from underneath Dr. Early’s jacket, knocking over a small stage lantern, which Hugo quickly put right.

  “Upstairs!” I shouted to the justice of the peace. “I’ll show you.”

  The rest of the audience was now beginning to stand up to leave. They might not have known exactly what was happening, but it was clear that the stage actors were involved in some wrongdoing and would end up in jail or worse, and they wanted no part of it. Rascal, in her delight in being free, kept knocking over the proscenium lanterns, which Hugo picked up. Jemmy and Sam came out onto the stage to chase Rascal, and I didn’t know where Pinky was. I ran out of the auditorium and up the stairs with the justice and Dr. Early following me. Thaddeus was right behind us, wanting his cut of the reward. When I unlocked the door to my stateroom the two men rushed in, and Thaddeus pushed me aside.

  “She’s in that large trunk there,” he told them.

  I stood outside on the guard and watched them for a second. Then I shut the door and turned the key. I could hear them inside, hammering on the padlocked trunk, trying to get it open. It would take them at least a minute to discover they were locked in the room. And with all the noise of people leaving the boat, it was possible that no one would hear them for a while.

  I ran down the steps. I was so intent that I didn’t see Hugo at the bottom until he reached out and grabbed my arm, almost making
me fall.

  “Hugo!”

  His looked at me as if he were looking down a well, gauging its depth. His face seemed very close to mine. “Where is she really?” he asked.

  “What?” I breathed.

  “Whoever it was you brought over in my rowboat. Someone not picked up, I’m guessing. You had to hide her?”

  I stared at him, astonished. His accent was very thick, a sure sign of agitation, but he could not have been more perplexed than I was as I tried to fit this new information into the puzzle of the last few weeks. He knew? All this time? I must have asked him, for he said, “Who do you think left you the ham sandwiches? Who lit the lantern in the storm?”

  I had assumed all that was Leo. “But why didn’t you say? Why didn’t you tell me?” I felt tears prick my eyes.

  He made a gesture that conveyed a mistake or a regret, his palms facing out as if wanting something from me. “I thought that if I were directly involved, then everyone here, all the actors and Leo, they could be implicated, too. I didn’t care a penny’s piece about me, but I worried about them. Bad judgment or . . . I don’t know, but let me help you now, May, let me at least do that.”

  I heard a crash from my room: they had broken into the trunk. My heart was racing. There was no time to weigh right and wrong.

  “She’s in the green room,” I said.

  Hugo led the way, his hand still on my arm, weaving us through the crowd leaving the boat. Leo was in the green room when we got there but everyone else had gone—thanks, I suppose, to Liddy. When he saw me, Leo turned to open the small black trunk that he and I had carried down that afternoon, and Lula uncurled herself out of it. The trunk was too small for a man—Hugo was right about that—but not too small for a girl.