“Maybe not.” Fancy had been unusually quiet during this debate, but now added, “I’ve read that Lord Dunmore has already offered any slave or indentured servant their freedom if they fight for us… I mean, the British.” She laughed a little uncomfortably. “Sorry, not quite used to being a colonist yet. My point being, if you do the same, the southern colonies have nowhere else to go. The hope of independence would then seem to be a heavy inducement.”
“They could just sit out the war,” Franklin observed.
“Either way, they won’t fight for the British,” Fancy concluded, “…I hope.”
Benjamin Franklin cast her an amused look and heaved a sigh. He sat down heavily in one of the straight-backed chairs situated around a small table and said, “That is what all this is about, isn’t it? As a contingency if the southern colonies refuse to ratify independence without slavery… if they refuse to stand with us.”
Gabriel pulled a chair up next to him. “We have to stop it here, Ben. You were there on that ship. You heard Ambrosius. If we allow slavery to continue as part of a new nation, as part of a free nation, we are releasing a sickness that will infect society for generations to come, perhaps never to recover.”
“We don’t recover,” Odell said matter-of-factly. “The fractiousness of the Civil War never goes away. Bitter anger and defeat seethe always beneath the surface in the south. It poisons our political discourse and makes it almost impossible to come together on important issues. It’s sometimes like we’re two different countries.”
“And with Odell’s strategy, we can at least try to avert another great wrong,” Gabriel added.
“You’re speaking of the natives,” Franklin replied. “You’ve made few friends, Gabe, advocating their cause.”
“Few white friends, you mean,” Gabriel retorted.
Benjamin Franklin laughed and muttered half to himself, “I’m too old for this.”
“If we push for the emancipation of slaves in some sort of… of declaration at the next congress,” Gabriel persisted, “we will likely lose Georgia and South Carolina, maybe Virginia. But I think we have Jefferson on our side, which may have some impact on Washington.”
“I can tell you right now, Washington is resistant to having blacks in his army, definitely not slaves,” Franklin informed them grimly. “He’s afraid, as is every slaveholder, of arming them.”
“They won’t be slaves; they’ll be freemen,” Gabriel declared. “And we must give them every reason to fight for that freedom.”
“If the southern colonies refuse to join us, we lose their slaves as potential soldiers,” was Franklin’s reply.
This produced a quick exchange of glances between the others present. It was not lost on the astute old diplomat. “What?” he demanded.
Hugh cleared his throat. “With respect, Doctor Franklin, we’ve come up with a… um… possible way around that.”
“Oh?” Franklin raised his eyebrows.
“Well, there is… you may not be aware, but there is a network in place to help escaping slaves.”
Benjamin Franklin sat up straight in his chair. “I cannot be party to illegal activities. This—”
“Ben!” Gabriel exclaimed. “The revolution is illegal! And, if we fail, it is unlikely any of us will escape a traitor’s end. Are you really telling me that your scruples are so fine as to parse skin color? That illegality is only a factor of race?”
Franklin sat silent, his crossed arms resting on his stomach. Finally, he said, “I’ve never understood, Gabe, why you eschew politics.”
Gabriel sat back, relaxing. “Yes you do. I’m a failure at compromise.”
“And I’m a master of it?” Franklin queried.
“Of negotiation, yes. And admirably so,” Gabriel replied. “But there is a point where we have to stop negotiating. When that time comes, if the southern colonies decline to join us, we have to have a plan to free their slaves in place.”
“And that plan is…?”
The string of expletives that followed its revelation impressed even Fancy.
*
Odell walked across the paneled assembly room and exited the door he had seen Ava use a little over an hour earlier. He had hoped she would be waiting for him outside the committee room, but she had clearly not had her fill of exploring the historic building.
He entered the central hall and stood looking left and right, uncertain in which direction to search. An old, spare man approached from the rear of the building, just beginning to make his rounds.
He stopped. “Are you lost, sir?”
“No, not at all, Mister McNair” Odell replied, “I’m just looking for um… a young lady—”
The old man’s wrinkled forehead cleared. “Your servant, then? Mister Wright instructed me to let her look around while she waited.”
“Do you know where she went?”
“Sure do. Up them stairs,” he said, pointing back the way he had come. “They lead to the tower.” He shook his head dolefully. “Shouldn’t have let her go up there, the steeple being rotten part way through. But she was so insistent and has such pretty ways…”
Odell had turned to follow the direction of his finger, and the old man joined him, keeping up a running commentary, “Is she a foreigner or something? She don’t seem to fit in. Not like the other blacks, is she? She wandered around a bit up and down the hall, but most of these rooms here are locked, being afterhours and such. So she headed up the tower. Said she wanted to see the bell. Not quite sure why. Right taking thing she is, to be sure, and the way she talks… told her to be careful up there…”
They had reached the bottom of the stairs, and Odell turned. “Thank you for your help. I’ll just go fetch her.” The old man nodded and gave him a little salute before turning his steps and heading back into the central hall.
The stairs were low and broad at this level, and Odell took them two at a time. Eventually the stairwell narrowed and he slowed, noting the dank and rotting nature of much of the wood. He had almost reached the lower gallery of the steeple when he heard Ava call out, “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” he replied.
“Oh, I’m up here.”
He looked around to find a ladder leading up into the belfry. Testing out the first couple of rungs for soundness, he quickly ascended it; his head emerged through a trapdoor of sorts. Odell put his hands on the floor and pushed himself up and over the opening. He stood and saw the lower part of Ava’s body, the upper part being obscured by a very large bell. Walking around it, he found the rest of her staring up at its top.
“Do you know what this is?” she asked, her voice trembling with excitement.
“I’m no historian, but I do believe it is the Liberty Bell.”
Her smile was so wide she hardly seemed capable of containing her glee. Odell could easily see why the old custodian had been so taken with her. Even standing still, her emotions imbued the air around her with an electric charge. Head tilted back on her long, graceful neck, she lifted her arm with the sweeping arc of a ballerina to point at the inscription encircling the bell and read:
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
She dropped her arm and looked at Odell. “The bell was commissioned for the fiftieth anniversary of William Penn’s Charter of Privileges. It was a rather forward-thinking document.”
“From what I understand William Penn was a decent sort. His son… not so much though.”
Ava laughed. “Not as bad as some, but certainly not the man his father was.”
She placed her hand lightly on the rim of the bell and dragged it over the surface as she walked around it. “The crack didn’t appear until sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. No one knows exactly when or how it happened. Although the bell was never particularly sound, having been recast twice. It looks odd without it, don’t you think?”
He hadn’t noticed, but upon making a turn around the bell, stood back and said, “You’re right.
I didn’t know that. The crack should be here.” He indicated the date inscribed just below “Pass and Stow” the names of the two foundry workers who had recast it.
Odell came back around to where she stood and was momentarily shocked to see a single tear sliding down her cheek.
With her hand still resting on the bell, she said, “It didn’t gain the name ‘Liberty Bell’ until around the eighteen fifties. Abolitionist claimed it as their icon, ‘…unto all the inhabitants thereof…’ liberty for all, including slaves.”
She dropped her hand from the bell and stood absently wiping it on the rough-spun linen apron around her waist, then hugged the woolen cloak more tightly around her shoulders. She looked up at Odell.
“The incompatibility of slavery with the sentiment expressed upon this bell cannot be ignored. The fact that it was, is astounding.” She balled her hands into fists and held them together in front of her face as if in chain manacles. “Half a million slaves fueled the economy of these colonies both north and south, half a million souls in chains. It was the love of wealth that overrode the love of liberty… racial superiority supplanting equality.
“There is no excuse, Odell! No excuse! Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, they all know it is wrong and immoral. They are eloquent with words, but their actions only equivocate. While others, Gabriel, Hugh, all the black voices, we barely hear them over the long stretch of centuries. But they are loud; here in this time, they scream for justice. How could they ignore them… their own consciences? Really, how…?” Her voice choked up, and he stepped close to hold her tight.
Odell was taken aback by her vehemence. She had projected an academic distance that never failed to impress him. Their evenings together in the small kitchen of the house on Walnut Street were shining examples of reasoned discourse and debate. They would brew tea and sit at the sturdy wooden table, perhaps with a plate of Mrs. Daniels corn muffins between them, and discuss the events of the day.
Ava typically accompanied Evelyn when shopping needed to be done and had become embroiled, much to Odell’s discomfort, with tracking the movements of the loyalists. She could often be found at Cara and Hershel’s house, Cara being one of the few adult women in this time who was truly comfortable with, and welcoming to, a black woman. The opportunity to involve herself in Hershel’s investigation of the syndicate and murder of the unidentified woman was an added bonus. But Gabriel had also begun to claim significant portions of her time with drafting his legal arguments for emancipation within the framework of revolution. This task brought her into close contact with the fiercely intelligent and handsome Hugh. It was a situation that encouraged Odell not to let anything interfere with their nightly debriefings, something that was becoming more and more difficult as he spent greater amounts of time with Jon Sinclair and, ironically, Hugh.
Odell cleared his throat and held her away from him. His hands rested on her shoulders. He looked down into eyes bright with the clarity of tears.
“You are right. There is no excuse. I am sorry.”
An indrawn breath and his hand brushed across her tear-stained cheek. Embracing warmth and yielding lips, Odell’s consciousness flew out and winged its way around the tower. Like an airborne camera it circled the belfry recording the image of two young lovers, kissing as lovers do—oblivious to everything but each other, oblivious to the darkening sky, oblivious to the wet chill, oblivious to the man who stood just below them at the foot of the ladder.
His hand rested on one of the rungs. He stared contemplatively down at the dusty wooden floor. Benjamin Franklin rarely had an opportunity to visit the belfry. It was a long time since he had hauled his aging bones up the ladder to look out upon his beloved city. He had come here now in search of quiet and solace. To see the city spread out below him, a neat and orderly map, a testament to industry and moral fiber. Or so he had always believed.
The Liberty Bell… that is what it would one day be called. He remembered when the bell arrived from England, how it had cracked with the very first strike of the clapper. The initial recasting had yielded a bell with a discordant sound. The next wasn’t much better, but, by that time, they just needed a bell. It could have been a sign, an omen. The fragile nature of liberty, the clamoring voices of unity, the discordant cry of revolution, he could go on…
What had she said? That the love of wealth had supplanted the love of liberty? It stung. Particularly for a man who had given so much, a man who had eschewed significant personal gain for the greater good.
He had thought the issue of slavery a complex one, a concession in his negotiator’s arsenal. She had made it sound simple. One either believed in liberty for all, of equality, or consigned an entire race of people to perpetual servitude. Why did he think the question of their liberty less pressing than his own? He thought of the children at the Negro schools he supported. He thought of the souls he had once owned. He thought of the black woman in the arms of the white man who loved her, a woman of grace and intelligence.
She made him uncomfortable, because she was a rebuke to the man he believed himself to be. What was he holding onto? Racial superiority? Her words again.
She was eloquent that one, he thought as he moved to retrace his steps back down to the central hallway, reluctant to be found by the two in the belfry. As he walked, a sly smile curled his lips, and a spark in his brain ignited a whole new train of thought. He was good at finding the useful, in both objects and people. And she could be useful… very useful.
Twenty-One
EVELYN WATCHED THE two men meet and pass each other as if they were strangers. She had been following “peach breeches” for several blocks when, on the corner of Second and Pine Street, he met “blue waistcoat.” She didn’t see the handoff, but she knew it had occurred. Pretending an inquisitive look in her basket, she turned nonchalantly to follow “blue waistcoat” back up Pine Street.
Evelyn was practiced at the discreet tail. It helped that the weather was still cold enough to require a hooded cloak. Not that her face would have sent up any red flags. Regardless of their abolitionist work and revolutionary sympathies, her family had maintained a low profile in Philadelphia. She was familiar enough not to elicit any undue notice, yet not so familiar as to garner attention wherever she went.
They had just crossed Third Street when she saw “blue waistcoat” turn abruptly left and walk up the path to Saint Peter’s Church. Evelyn hesitated and hung back. There were not many people about, and she couldn’t be sure this wasn’t a ploy to reveal a follower such as herself. She watched from behind the brick wall and saw him disappear around the corner into the churchyard. Biting her lip with indecision, she finally stepped out onto the dirt walkway, but instead of following him directly she took the path around the opposite side of the building. It was a risky move. If he were trying to shake off a tail, she would run into him face-to-face. Better that than him turning and finding her trailing behind, she thought. At least this way, it was plausible that she was in the churchyard on business of her own.
She was disappointed upon turning the far end of the building and finding the churchyard empty. The gravestones scattered beneath the broad naked shade trees stood in lonely silence. Evelyn suppressed an urge to look around for her quarry and continued walking down the path alongside the church. Near the corner of the building, she noticed a deep footprint in the soft ground just off the path. It was followed by several more that led out into the graveyard beyond. The thawing ground was slushy, and the footprints were recent. “Blue waistcoat” was a large man, and in a hurry. She followed them.
The churchyard wasn’t especially large, and soon the footprints ended at a grave before doubling back to the building and the street beyond. It was a humble tombstone. She could see no distinguishing features that would occasion a man to stop here. She thought that the occupant could perhaps be a relation, but the visit was too quick, too perfunctory for grief or even duty. The grave itself was outlined with brick. She used the toe of her shoe to test each one
and grinned when the brick closest to the tombstone wiggled. Evelyn bent down and easily pulled it away from the ground to find a folded oilskin pouch just beneath.
This time she did look about her and quickly determined that no one else had entered the churchyard. Stuffing the pouch into her basket, she replaced the brick and walked as leisurely as her racing heart would allow back to the dirt path and out onto the street.
Her head felt fuzzy with fear, and the adrenalin coursing through her veins turned her feet in a random direction. Evelyn had almost reached the docks before she could finally think. She stopped in front of the Quaker Meeting House on Pine Street. It was getting late, and Evelyn turned to retrace her steps up Second Street.
“Ho, Evie.”
She started and looked around to see Jimmy Reynolds coming out of the meeting house. In her haste, the hood of her cape had fallen back revealing charmingly disordered dark curls. The brisk exercise had heightened her complexion, and her blue eyes sparkled with excitement. It was a vision that literally stopped him in his tracks.
He cleared his throat. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
“Jimmy,” she could barely pronounce his name through her closed throat, “I’ve… I’ve…”
He stepped close casually grasping her elbow and steering her back toward the docks. He smiled and nodded as if she had said something mundane. “What has happened?”
His everyday manner steadied her. “I was assigned to follow the Arch Street Group,” she said, referring to the loose alliance of loyalist families on or around that street.
He wrinkled his brow. “They typically don’t operate in this part of the city.”
“I know,” she replied and looked away, an even more heightened color on her cheeks.
Contrary to his lighthearted demeanor and good-natured raillery, Jimmy’s sharp mind missed very little. “If you’ve been following since Arch Street, there should have been a trade-off when you passed Market… someone else should have picked up the trail. You could have been exposed following for so long.”
Twin Speex: Time Traitors Book II Page 21
