“Must be a vagrant,” he said absently, his gaze diverted to some reading material on his desk. “None of my people have reason to steal from me.”
“That is so, Mister Carson.”
“Wilson will find out who it is and may God have mercy on the culprit when he does.”
“Amen, Mister Carson.”
Willie May hoped the good Lord heard the invocation for mercy. She was the culprit. She had spotted the runaway, a boy not older than fifteen, stealing into the barn last week when she’d gone at midnight to check on Tippy, still quartered in the room next to Miss Jessica’s. Her daughter had been coughing all day, and Willie May had prepared a hot mustard plaster to place on her chest. It was a clear, moonlit night, and she’d noticed a shadow move out from the cotton fields, hesitate, move forward again, then pause. It emerged once more, and she had a brief glimpse of a skinny boy of her race wearing ragtag clothes, too skimpy for the cold night, before the body melted into the shadows of the barn.
No building at Willowshire except the master’s cabin—his outdoor study—was ever locked. The master’s arrogance wouldn’t have it. Nobody would dare steal from him. Barns, storage and equipment sheds, silos, root cellars, the two smokehouses, one for curing the most recent meat and the other for storing last year’s—all were open for anyone to enter without the bother of keys, but none would be so brazen without proper reason to do so. Carson Wyndham’s total control over his fiefdom guaranteed that.
So even her brief glimpse of the intruder convinced Willie May the boy was not one of Willowshire’s one hundred slaves. A cold feeling stole over her. A runaway, then.
She hurried down the stairs and let herself out the back door, grabbing a shawl from a kitchen hook, and quietly but quickly made her way across the compound to the barn. Slowly, she opened the door. It creaked a warning but not soon enough for the boy to overcome his frightened curiosity and duck his head down. He had found himself a bed of straw in the loft, and when he saw that he’d been caught, he stared back at Willie May like a hare caught in the sight of a hunter’s gun until she motioned for him to come down. The boy obeyed, his head hung, his shoulders drawn as if already feeling the lash of the whip.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said, wondering why she felt no fear. The boy was thin but taller than she and obviously desperate. Her only concern was that someone in the Big House was up and had seen them. “I’m not here to hurt you. Who are you?”
“I…can’t say, missus,” he said.
“I’m guessing I know why. You’ve run away, haven’t you?”
The boy remained silent, and Willie May, seeing in him her own son who had died of tuberculosis at fifteen, felt moved by a maternal impulse to put her arms around him. His shoulders felt knife thin, and his tense, stiff body was shivering in his inadequate clothes, either from fear or because he had not had time to warm himself, probably both. She pulled away and stared into his gaunt, frightened face. Without thinking of her own welfare, she took off her shawl, wrapped him in it, and said resolutely, “I’m going to help you. You must trust me.”
Either he would or he wouldn’t. Willie May could tell he was trying to make up his mind, but he looked hungry, and hunger took risks. “You can watch me go to the smokehouse, so you know I’m not going to get the master,” she said. “I’ll bring you some food. You’ll have to take it to your hiding place while it’s dark to eat it. It’s too dangerous for you to stay here. I’ll leave you more food and something warm to wear behind the smokehouse tomorrow at dusk, and you can come and fetch the stuff when all is quiet. I’ll hide everything under the firewood.”
She had snitched a ham and brought it to the boy, who had watched her from a crack in the barn. She exchanged her shawl for a horse blanket she found on a tack shelf and instructed him to leave it in the place where she’d hide the food. Before leaving him, she thought of a code by which they could communicate. Thank goodness it was Christmastime and the holiday napkins were out.
“When you see the corner of a white napkin tucked into the woodpile, you’ll know the coast is clear to come to the woodpile. If you see a red one, you’ll know to stay away,” Willie May told him. “The napkins will be easy to see from a distance. If you see a green one, that means they’re looking for you and you’re to try to make it to the gazebo where you can hide. Do you know what a gazebo is?”
The boy slowly shook his head, his forehead knotted in an effort to understand.
“It’s that white, round-looking structure to the side of the master’s house. You can see it from the woods. Most of the sides are open, but there’s a shed right next to it for storing extra chairs with plenty of room for you to hide. The gazebo is never used, and no one will think to look for you in a place so close to the house. I’ll come to you soon as I can.”
The boy had listened in silence, but his round, anxious eyes told her he’d taken in everything she’d said. Willie May wondered if his mama was still alive and worried out of her mind about him. After sunset the next day, she had left the items as promised, finding them gone when she returned with more food the following afternoon. For two days after that, though, she’d had to leave a red napkin in the chinks of the wood bin, and in that time after darkness fell, the boy must have stolen the second ham.
She had heard no news of a runaway or that anyone was looking for him. Willie May guessed the boy had no particular destination in mind when he took off. He’d run blindly on hope and luck, and his strength and courage had petered out somewhere behind the Big House of Willowshire. But now the overseers would be looking, and if they found the boy…
Why, oh why, had she sent Lulu—with a heart the size of a penny and an eye that could spot an overlooked spec of dust on a ten-foot windowsill—to fetch a package of jowls from the smokehouse when she should have gone herself? Willie May had been smart enough not to steal items from the pantry. If the discovery was made, Miss Eunice would suspect a house servant, and that would never do. Willie May had not believed two hams, out of the dozens remaining in the smokehouse from last year, would be missed. She had not counted on Lulu’s eagle eye detecting the theft or her nasty delight in tattling on the trespasses of others.
Willie May gazed at the head of her master bent over his paperwork. “What will you do to…the culprit if he’s found?” she asked hesitantly.
“If he’s a vagrant, he’ll be given a good thrashing. He can come to the back door and beg, but he can’t steal from honest folks’ smokehouses. If he’s a runaway, he’ll be taken back to his master, where he’ll get whatever punishment is meted out for the offense. Most likely he’ll be whipped. That’s the penalty for one of ours caught stealing.”
“Suppose…the culprit was simply hungry, and his stomach won out over his conscience?” Willie May suggested.
Carson lifted his head from his reading and blinked at her as if the rapid shutting and opening of his eyes would help him understand a question he’d never been asked before. Willie May braced for a chastising, but he said, “Rules are rules, Willie May, and reluctant though I may be to punish a hungry man, if I relaxed the rules for one, I’d have to do it for the others, and people take advantage of Christian charity.”
“Yessuh,” Willie May said, wondering how he would know, but she’d see the runaway did not strain his “Christian charity.” She knew the person who might help her rescue him before his back felt the lash. She would first run to get a green napkin to stick in the woodpile, then she would go to Miss Jessica.
Chapter Ten
Sarah waited in the cold shade of a cypress tree for Jessica to appear from the woods on her roan filly, Jingle Bell. Jessica had sent word to her by way of Lettie to meet her “at our usual spot.”
“Good gracious,” Lettie had said, appearing a little hurt at being excluded. “You two sound like conspirators. What are you up to?”
Sarah had rolled her eyes mischievously. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Understanding, Lettie’s cheeks had tu
rned pink. “Oh, now, you all don’t go planning anything for me, you hear? There will be enough gifts and prenuptial parties as it is. Truly, you honor me enough by being in my wedding.”
“We’ll try to keep that in mind,” Sarah said, giving her friend a patronizing pat on the shoulder.
Lettie assumed their “usual spot” was a tearoom tucked between a bookstore and ice cream parlor where the three women often met after school had dismissed. Sarah had few social distractions from her mission and enjoyed their gatherings. She looked forward to the lively conversation and hot tea and crusty scones before going home to a cold supper and the dangerous tasks that might await her, her homesickness as weighing as the gloom in the corners of her bleak little house. The Sedgewicks offered the diversion of a Wednesday night meal at their house followed by a game of cards, and Jessica was always after her to join her family for supper—“I’ll send the carriage to pick you up”—but those invitations Sarah declined. Michael would be sure to offer his services for the drive, and she could not have abided the proximity of him to her in the close quarters of the carriage. She saw the Wyndhams only if the Sedgewicks were invited and she could go and return with them.
It was in the tearoom that Jessica had slipped her a note during one of the group’s first get-togethers. Meet me tomorrow afternoon at the water mill by Lawson Creek, it read. That occasion had been in October, shortly after Sarah had come to Willow Grove. The spot referred to in the note was secluded but easily accessible by foot and on the route where Jessica took her afternoon rides aboard her filly. At that meeting, the girl had dismounted with a pleased, self-satisfied smile, relieving Sarah’s fears that the purpose of their rendezvous was grave. Her hackles had risen. If the girl thought her involvement with the Underground something to play at, Sarah would disenchant her of the notion before she could wipe that grin off her face.
“I hope you’ll forgive the mysteriousness of my note,” Jessica apologized immediately, apparently realizing the reason for Sarah’s scowl, “but I thought it best to establish a secret place to meet in case a situation calls for it. I see you found the spot easily enough.”
There was wisdom in her reasoning, and twice they’d met at the water mill by Lawson Creek. Jessica was not a member of the Underground—she’d vowed she had no hand in Timothy’s disappearance—but she passed on information vital to the safety of slaves trying to make it to freedom and the security of Sarah’s part of the network. Carson Wyndham had put Tippy to work in the afternoons weaving horse blankets at the looming cabin in the Yard—“no more lollygagging with my daughter all day”—and the maid learned things she told Jessica, who shared them with Sarah. Also, pro-slave factions met in the great paneled library of the Wyndham manor house—politicians, other plantation owners, slave-traders, federal marshals, bounty hunters, and the ubiquitous Night Riders, of which Michael was the leader.
When they gathered, Jessica’s ear was at the door. Who knew how many runaways had her to thank for avoiding a snare set by the Night Riders? The group had learned that lanterns or candles burning in windows of rural homesteads were a signal that the home was friendly to escaping slaves on their way to station houses, usually a distance of twenty miles apart. Attics, lofts, barns, even underground tunnels were used to hide the fugitives until it was safe for them to leave. Michael and his henchmen enlisted the aid of a farmer to place such signals in his windows to lure unsuspecting runaways into a trap. Jessica got word to Sarah, who rode out to the homestead on Jimsonweed and left large, mischievous markings on the fence post to alert the fugitives, believing the farmer would think them the prank of a child. Runaway slaves knew to look beyond the trusted signals for anything awry that could be a message warning of a trap.
Another time, Jessica had alerted Sarah of a bank teller planted to get evidence against another employee suspected of being an active opponent to slavery.
No information was ever passed in writing among those involved with the Railroad. For the safety of the network, it was absolutely essential to communicate by word of mouth, prearranged signals, codes, or symbols whose meaning could be deciphered only by the intended receivers. Jessica had been kept ignorant of them, the reason they must meet face-to-face in secret.
Sarah rubbed at her arms in her woolen cloak for warmth. Here in the coastal area of the Atlantic winters were mild, with temperatures rarely dipping below sixty degrees during the day, but a lasting cold front had brought the first true feel of winter and, for Sarah, a longing for her parents’ fireside, soon to be satisfied. School had adjourned for the Christmas holidays, and in three days’ time, Jessica would come by to pick her up in the carriage to take her to Charleston to catch a boat to Cambridge, where she would reunite with her family until classes resumed in January. She had especially missed her seven-year-old nephew, Paul, son of her older brother. Her sister-in-law had written that Paul had asked over and over, “When is Auntie Sarah coming home?”
Lettie had been alarmed at the thought that Sarah would be so glad to be back in Cambridge she might not return. “You must come back to us, Sarah! What would the students do without you? How can I get married without you? Don’t you let that little nephew of yours convince you to stay.”
There would be no chance of that, Sarah thought, much as she loved and missed the little mutt. Sometimes Sarah felt that her effort to put an end to slavery was like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon, but she must do her part. She believed that with faith and perseverance, people seeking to right a wrong would eventually prevail, no matter the odds against them.
She heard the sound of a horse’s hooves on the forest path, but not the usual gentle jingle of bells and casual clip-clopping that announced Jessica’s appearance. Jingle Bell burst out of the woods at a gallop, flowing mane threaded with ribbons in seasonal colors, and Jessica was out of the saddle before she’d reined the filly to a full stop.
Sarah ran to her. “Good Lord, Jessica, what’s the matter?”
Jessica almost fell into her friend’s arms. Her fair skin was blazing red from the ride and cold air, and she could not catch her breath. “You’ve got to help us, Sarah,” she gasped. “Willie May’s found a runaway at Willowshire.”
Casting a look over her shoulder, Sarah led her to a tree trunk to shield them from eyes and ears that might be prying from the woods. “Sssh,” she said softly. “You must lower your voice, Jessica. Calmly, now, tell me what happened.”
Jessica inhaled a deep breath of cold air and expelled it in the flow of her narrative. About ten days ago, at midnight, she told Sarah, their housekeeper had found a runaway in the barn—“not yet grown to a man,” she repeated Willie May’s description. He wouldn’t tell Willie May his name or where he was from or where he hid in the day. Two hams had been discovered missing from the smokehouse, and her father was now aware a thief was about. He’d dispatched their head overseer to investigate and find him. They didn’t think the thief belonged to Willowshire but was somebody hiding along the lake or in the woods. Jessica agreed with Willie May that it would be only a matter of time before the overseer and his men flushed the boy out, and then—Jessica closed her eyes as if experiencing sudden pain—“my father will send him back to his master to be flogged. Willie May says it wouldn’t take but a few lashes to whip the flesh right off his bones, the boy is so skinny…and young.”
“Why did Willie May go to you?” Sarah asked.
Jessica met her direct look with a defiant one of her own. “She knows my heart, Sarah. How can I keep it a secret?”
Sarah shook her head. “I fear for you, Jessica. What do you want me to do?”
“I’m going to get the boy out of there as soon as possible. Scooter, our blacksmith, is willing to help. He’ll hide the boy in the wagon when he comes into town to pick up a new wheel. He’ll let him out in the church cemetery, and the boy can stay with you until I come by to take you in the carriage to the dock in Charleston. By then, you’ll have made arrangements for his escape with those s
eamen you know—”
Jessica stopped at the look on Sarah’s face and pressed her hands to her wind-reddened cheeks. “Oh, my goodness, Sarah, have I presumed? Are you worried that Scooter will connect you to the reason he’s to drop the boy off near your house? I assure you, he won’t. Cemeteries are preferred hiding places for slaves.”
“No, of course you haven’t presumed.…” Sarah said. She sank back against the tree, gripped by a premonition that this time luck would be against them. There was a second’s flash of her nephew’s impish face in her mental vision. Perhaps her sense of doom was due to her reluctance to take on a mission so close to her departure for home.
“All right,” she said. “I can hide the boy until then. The Sedgewicks have gone to be houseguests of the Tolivers for a few days, a boon for us. When can I expect the delivery? I’ll need time to make contact with my source.”
“Sometime this afternoon. The boy is hiding in a shed in the gazebo, and we have to make sure it’s safe to spirit the boy into the wagon. Will that give you enough time to do…whatever it is that you do?”
“I believe so,” Sarah said. She would leave a light in her back window to alert her contact across the creek of a cargo to be delivered. He or she in turn would signal back that her message had been received. She would then be notified, again by code, that arrangements had been made at the dock in Charleston for pickup by personnel of steam ships willing to grant assistance. She never had to wait long for her message to be received and answered. Her instructions would be simple. She was to drop her passenger off at a prearranged spot at the dock and leave. The day she’d deposited Timothy, she had barely turned Jimsonweed toward home and cast a look behind her to see that he’d disappeared. It worried her that “the person across the creek,” as Sarah came to call the agent, knew her identity. She could only hope whoever it was would never be discovered, and they could both remain safe to meet the needs other tomorrows would bring.
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