Freedom Stone
Page 22
Chapter Thirty
LILLIE AND CAL reappeared in Bett’s cabin just the way they’d been in their last moments on the battlefield—with Lillie lying down as if she were clutching her papa and Cal holding tight to her. Papa himself was still in Mississippi.
“Papa, Papa,” Lillie was saying between her sobs.
“Lillie, Lillie, let go,” Cal was saying to her.
Both of them then felt Bett’s warm, strong arms around them, and heard her murmuring to them.
“Hush, children, hush,” she was saying.
They opened their eyes, blinking in the daylight of the warm, dry cabin at Greenfog.
“Hush, children,” Bett repeated. “You ain’t where you was. You’re home now.”
Bett helped Cal and Lillie up, seated them in the hard, wooden chairs at her eating table, and listened as Lillie tried to tell her story. Again and again, her sobs interrupted her tale, and again and again Bett would try to quiet her. The old woman seemed to know what the young girl was going to tell her and didn’t want her upsetting herself with the effort. Cal stayed mostly quiet and stared ahead.
Bett helped Lillie and Cal clean themselves off and when they seemed more composed, she fed them warm bread, fresh milk and cold, just-picked apples. The children, to their own surprise, wolfed them down. They’d eaten nothing in the time they’d been away but the bit of salt pork and hard bread Papa had fed them, and now that they were out of danger, they were hungrier than they knew.
Even as Lillie ate, she found that Papa was the only thing on her mind, and when his face floated before her, her tears would flow again. In all the months he had been dead, she had often wished she could see him just one more time, talk to him just one more time.
But now that she’d gotten that chance, she wished she hadn’t. She felt as if she were learning all over again that Papa was gone—and understanding all over again that he would never be back, even though she’d begun to make her peace with that months ago. She resolved at that moment that while she would tell Mama everything that had happened today—and carry Papa’s message that he loved her and missed her—she would say nothing to Plato until he was older. The boy did not need the sorrow Lillie was feeling.
The letter from the farmer was still in her pocket and had escaped the rain that had begun falling in Mississippi. Lillie took it out carefully and pulled the precious paper from its neat little envelope. The man’s flowery script was hard to read, but Lillie was able to make out most of it. He wrote about the care Papa had provided him—leaving out any mention of Lucas, as he’d said he would. He told of the money he’d given Papa, and he went on to address the Master in a manner Lillie had never heard any other person use with him.
“You will take heed that the five hundred dollars in Union gold in your slave man’s possession is my property, which I gave freely to him,” he wrote. “Upon his discharge from the Army, that sum belongs to him. Upon his death, that sum belongs to his family, who shall be freed according to the terms of Army conscription. You will take further heed that I will view any interference with those terms as a theft of private wealth, and I will proceed accordingly.” The letter was signed “William T. Appleton.” Lillie reflected that until this moment, she did not know the man’s full name, and now that she knew it, she liked it fine. It was strong and simple and it suited him well.
Lillie was thrilled by the words. The Master was now required to return the money to Mama and the family and set them free, but first he had to see the letter, and that would not be easy. Lillie could not simply hand it to the Master, who would not believe it was real and would surely have her flogged both for fibbing and for knowing how to read at all. Bett, however, had an answer. She took the letter from Lillie and, later that day, gave it to a kitchen maid, who gave it to a parlor maid, who waited until the Master was away from his library and placed it atop the stack of plantation correspondence he read and answered each afternoon.
“What is the meaning of this?” the Master boomed as soon as he returned to his desk and read the letter. The Missus ran in to see what the disturbance was, and the two of them stayed behind closed doors for the better part of the hour—the Master pacing and shouting, and the Missus offering soothing words. He called the parlor maid in and questioned her closely about how the letter got there, and she coolly revealed nothing.
“I cleans around the letters, sir,” she said. “I never touch them. Besides, I couldn’t read them to tell one from the other nohow.”
The maid quickly reported back to Bett that the Master had seen the letter, and Bett reported that back to Lillie.
“Then we’s free!” Lillie exclaimed.
“You ain’t nothin’ of the kind,” Bett said. “Remember what your papa told you ’bout the weasel. It don’t let go o’ the chicken till it has to, and the same is true of a master and a slave.”
Bett was right, of course. The Master of Greenfog would not consider releasing three of his slaves and handing them five hundred dollars on the say-so of a letter he didn’t trust in the first place. But the farmer’s phrasing had been so firm he dared not ignore it, either. Instead, he stalked to his stable, mounted his horse and galloped to Bluffton, where he visited the telegraph office and sent a message all the way from Charleston County in South Carolina to Warren County in Mississippi, addressed to the man named Appleton. The telegraph cables, so far at least, had not been cut by the war.
“Letter received,” the Master instructed the telegraph man to tap out in code. “Authenticity in doubt. Please confirm.”
He rode back to Greenfog, and two days later a boy from the telegraph office arrived with a response from Mississippi.
“Letter authentic. Gold was mine. Proceed as instructed or I shall proceed as promised.”
Lillie and Mama and Plato knew nothing of the exchange of telegrams during those two days, and they had no choice but to go about their business and wait for some kind of word. Throughout that time, Lillie found that her thoughts and her dreams were filled with feverish images of the war and the battlefield and her muddy, dying papa. One night she awoke, screaming and sobbing, and Mama was suddenly beside her—holding her head and stroking her hair as she did when Lillie was a child smaller than Plato.
“Your papa ain’t here,” Mama whispered. “But your mama is.”
Finally, on the third day after Lillie’s return, the Master told the housekeeper to tell a kitchen maid to fetch Lillie and Mama and Plato up to the Big House. When they arrived, he was waiting for them on his porch—having no intention of receiving slaves in his library or even in his foyer. He stared at them coldy, with nothing but a nod for a hello. Then he read the letter from Mr. Appleton aloud. Lillie smiled to herself when she noticed that he left out the parts in which Appleton gave him instructions and threatened him with what he would do if he didn’t obey. A Master who had spent his life giving orders to others seemed not to want his own slaves to hear him taking them.
Mama gasped. “What does this mean, Master?” she asked when he was done.
“It means you’re free, Franny,” the Master said sourly. “You and them as well.” He gestured absently at Lillie and Plato.
He reached into his coat pocket and reluctantly handed Mama the gold coins. Lillie’s eyes welled when she saw the drawstring bag that held them. It was the same bag Papa had shown her just days before—still bearing traces of battlefield mud. The Master looked much sorrier at the prospect of losing his gold than at the prospect of losing his slaves, and Lillie took heart at that. Even before he had summoned them, she and Mama had discussed an idea.
“Sir,” Mama said now, “if you want some o’ this gold back, we’ll give it to you—’cept we want to trade it for two other slaves.” The Master didn’t have to ask if those two slaves were Bett and Cal, but he asked anyway.
“Yes, sir,” Mama answered. “Them’s the ones.”
Bett, they all knew, was almost worthless to the Master, but he demanded fifty dollars for her, which was far
more than she would ever fetch at auction. Cal had a lot of years of labor ahead and the Master demanded two hundred dollars for him. Even that was less than he could have gotten if he sold the boy when he was fully grown, but the Master was in need of cash now and settled for the lower price. Mama returned the payment for both of them before the coins had even grown warm in her hands. Then the Master ordered them to wait where they were, while he retreated to his library to write out the manumission papers for the five of them. He handed them to Mama and assured her they were in order. Later, in their cabin, Lillie and Mama read them through carefully. The papers were properly drawn and signed and named the entire family, plus Bett and Cal, as the slaves to be freed.
All five were instructed to be off the Master’s land by the very next morning. Lillie and the others used the one night they had left to pack their possessions and say their good-byes. Lillie ran to see Minervy, hugged the girl tight and told her to look after the babies and try to be brave. Minervy cried and promised she would. Lillie never set eyes on Sarabeth again, and that was fine with her. Sarabeth had been a better daughter to her father than she had been a friend to Lillie, and while that might be as it should be, she had done Lillie a terrible wrong all the same. The good and bad in all of that was more than Lillie wanted to sort out when she was feeling such joy.
Cal spent a final night in Nelly and George’s cabin and realized only when he was leaving the next day that they must have become true parents to him—otherwise he’d not be feeling the sadness he was. He cried as he said good-bye to them, but took care to finish up before he saw Lillie.
By the time the work horn blew the next day, Samuel’s wagon was hitched and waiting and the five of them were piling their bags aboard. As they were doing that, they heard footsteps crunching through the soil and turned to see Mr. Willis approaching. They froze at the sight of him—his whip coiled in his right hand, his expression a mixture of amusement and contempt.
“I reckon this is good-bye to the lot o’ you,” he said as he drew near. He stopped and spat in the dirt at his feet.
“Yes, sir,” Mama said.
“Can’t say I’m sorry to see any o’ you go,” Willis went on with a small laugh, and then gestured to Plato. “Though this one woulda fetched a nice price.”
Plato pressed himself against Mama, who held him tight. Willis then looked at Mama squarely. “Course I do reckon I’ll miss seein’ your face, Franny,” he said. He took a few steps toward her, reached out and took hold of her chin. Mama shuddered, but Willis didn’t notice and turned her head first one way, then the other. “You was a pretty one,” he said.
Before she could think, Lillie stepped forward. “Mr. Willis,” she said in a clear voice. “That’s a freedwoman you’re touchin’. She’s my mama, and her name ain’t Franny—it’s Phibbi.” Then she glanced toward the Big House, where the Master would just be getting up and would expect a quiet day, with no sign of the five freed slaves when he emerged for his morning walk. He would not care for Mr. Willis causing any unpleasantness and disturbing those plans. Willis followed her eyes—and her thinking—and looked back at Lillie with an icy expression. Then he released Mama’s chin with a snap, spat in the soil again and strode off.
Without another word, Lillie and the others climbed into the wagon. Two hours later, they were in Bluffton. While they were there, they stopped at the furniture store where Henry lived and gave him one hundred of the remaining two hundred and fifty gold dollars. That would not be enough for him to buy his wife and child back, but it would get him much closer—and allow the family to reunite much sooner. Shortly before nightfall, they all said their good-byes to Samuel, who turned his wagon around and headed back to Greenfog. Mama hired another wagon heading North—uncertain for the moment where they would all finally stop, but reckoning that Pennsylvania sounded like a fine and friendly place to live.
It would be only one more year before the war would be over and all the slaves on all the plantations would be free. In that time, however, the Greenfog slaves would still need their Friday bread, and the Master did allow the oldest of his kitchen maids to move into Bett’s cabin and take over the work. Bett had schooled the woman well in the ways of baking over the years, and the two of them had hugged good-bye on the morning Bett left. With all the farewells, no one had paid any mind to the heavy-looking, loaf-sized bundle Bett was carrying among her few belongings. But the first time the new baker woman tried to use the oven, she did notice that a single brick was missing from inside it.
Author’s Note
SLAVERY WILL ALWAYS count as America’s greatest crime. It was a period defined by greed and cruelty and inhumanity. But for the slaves themselves and the people who tried to help them, it was also a time of courage and sacrifice and sometimes even joy. Freedom Stone is a work of imagination, but it’s also one in which I have tried to include both of those sides of the Civil War South.
To the extent that I have succeeded in doing that, I owe thanks to what I learned from some fine historical works. Among them are: The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, by John W. Blassingame; Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, by Eugene D. Genovese; and, most remarkably, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, the 1789 autobiography of a slave who won his freedom and then told his tale. It is a moving and extraordinary book.
As always, I also owe thanks to my friend, confidante and agent, Joy Harris, of the Joy Harris Literary Agency. There is none wiser or better, and I am lucky to know her. Thanks too to Michael Green of Philomel Books, for giving Freedom Stone the thumbs-up, and to Jill Santopolo whose suggestions and recommended edits were always smart, insightful and precise. It is a far better book for having spent time in her care. For reading the manuscript and offering advice, appreciation goes to Steve Kluger and Garry Kluger, as well as to Kevin McAuliffe, the kind of grade-school teacher every child deserves but only the luckiest ones get.
Finally, my deep love to Alejandra, whose strength and love of family brought life to the character of Mama; and to Elisa and Paloma, who enchant and amaze me daily.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Author’s Note
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twe
nty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Author’s Note