The Professor nodded. “We will depart as soon as we can, but, as you see, Hannah is still too sick to travel through the woods. Thank you for your advice, Murdo, and for your help. You’re a good man. God speed.”
Just then, Fred popped his head around the door. “Annie, will you mind if I go with Murdo to fetch supplies? Will you be all right?”
“I’ll manage,” said the Professor, with a dismissive wave. “Take care, though, and hurry back.”
“Don’t worry, I will,” Fred said. “I can pretend as usual to be Murdo’s slave, and then we may both vouch for Sukey if anyone comes asking.”
Sukey bade Hannah and the Professor a warm farewell, and then slipped out behind Mr. MacKenzie and Fred.
As soon as they were all gone, Hannah turned to the Professor. “How can you trust MacKenzie? He’s white. He owns slaves, right?”
“We know him well,” said the Professor calmly. “And he knows us. Mr. MacKenzie has had a hard life, and he is one of the rare white people here who have turned their own misery into kindness and compassion, rather than into greed and violence and selfishness. There’s something else: He owns a slave, yes, but he doesn’t depend on slavery for his livelihood, which makes it less tempting for him to treat his slave John as less than human. He has built a relationship with John, one that is not entirely about exploitation. Don’t get me wrong: Slavery is slavery. Mr. MacKenzie holds unimaginable power over John, and of course John would rather be free than belong to another man. But his situation is better than most. Slavery is never a good thing, but people’s experience of it is not always the same everywhere.
“Now,” she said to Hannah, who was thinking grimly to herself that the Professor still knew in her old age how to deliver a long and pointless lecture, “Would you like a cup of tea?”
Mr. Osborn slapped the side of the last box after he loaded it onto the back of the wagon. “This miserable and paltry collection is all my worldly goods,” he said ruefully. But then he smiled. “I confess, though, that I am also returning with a shipment of Carolina rice I bought with the proceeds from selling my animals. I hope to make a small profit.”
Brandon said sadly, “I hope you do. Thanks for all your help, Mr. Osborn.” He had come to like and respect his master. For all Mr. Osborn’s puffed-up pronouncements of self-importance, he was a decent man.
Mr. Osborn put a hand on Brandon’s arm, looked him in the eye, and asked him, “Are you quite sure you will not return with me to England?”
“Quite sure,” Brandon said firmly. “Somebody has to look after Cato. And it was really generous of you to sign him over to me.”
Alex gave a wan smile. He wasn’t sure how he felt about being Brandon’s slave, even if it was just for appearance’s sake.
“I could not, in all good conscience, sell Cato to another master,” Mr. Osborn said stiffly. “Knowing as I do from whence you both claim that you hail. And after witnessing the effects of slavery on white men, I can no longer condone it. It corrupts the souls of the slaveowners.”
“And it’s brutal to black people,” Brandon said quietly. “Yes, well, even so, I know what a huge sacrifice you’re making for all of us. You’re a true servant of the Lord, Mr. Osborn.”
Mr. Osborn inclined his head toward Brandon, and then shook his hand. “And you, sir, are a true Christian, and a true gentleman. Pray God, we shall meet again, and under better circumstances.”
He squeezed Alex’s shoulder, and then climbed up on the wagon, next to Jane. “I must make haste to Savannah,” he cried, “for our ship departs early on the morn. Farewell, Brandon and Cato! God be with you!”
“And also with you!” Brandon called, his voice catching in his throat, as the horse jangled to a start. Jane and Alex waved frantically to each other until the wagon was out of sight.
“Do you think they’ll be okay?” Alex asked Brandon.
“We can look it up when we get home,” Brandon said, still fighting tears. “See if we can find out about them in a history book or something.”
Alex bit his lip. “So do you think we will get home? Without the Professor?”
Brandon paused. Will we? he wondered. “I don’t know. Let’s head back to the witch’s house. We have to see how Hannah’s doing, and figure out our next move.”
Stepping into the little cabin in the woods, they found Hannah taking tea with the witch. Proudly, she said, “Guys, I want you to meet someone.”
Alex and Brandon were puzzled. There was nobody in the room they didn’t recognize.
Hannah smiled at their confusion. “Alex? Brandon?” she said, “Meet the Professor.”
They stared at Hannah for what felt like forever, until first Alex and then Brandon turned to look at the Professor, who was smiling broadly.
“Oh, awesome! It’s you! It’s really you!” Alex cried out, leaning down and throwing his arms around the old woman. But Brandon held back. Alarmed, he had noticed that the Professor was wearing the fatal ring.
With one arm around Alex, the Professor clutched at her heart with the other hand, in mock exhaustion. “My goodness, all this excitement has quite worn me out,” she said. “Now, Fred doesn’t know who I really am, and it would just confuse him if you said anything, so don’t, all right? Oh, and by the way, I don’t expect him back for some time. He has gone upriver with Sukey and Mr. MacKenzie, so I’m glad you boys are here. Now, let us talk. I am sure you have questions.”
Alex piped up, “Why are you so old?” Brandon cringed at his lack of tact, but the Professor laughed happily.
“Because I am old,” she said. “I shall be eighty-five next birthday, best as I can remember. I haven’t suddenly aged, dear. It’s just that I am a time traveler, and I arrived here many years after you first met me. Does that explain?”
Alex nodded, although he was still confused. “Is Sukey going to be okay?” he asked forlornly. He was sad that she hadn’t asked him to go with her, even though he knew that going with her would have been very dangerous.
The Professor gave him a wistful look. “Alas, I have no idea. She disappears from the records, you see.”
Alex looked crestfallen, but Hannah perked up. “So you do finally leave here! Otherwise, you wouldn’t know that, would you?”
The Professor smiled at Hannah briefly and ignored her question. She returned her attention to Alex. “It’s not a surprise that there’s no record of her. Most people in this period vanish from history. Perhaps, if you are lucky, you or I will one day find mention of Sukey in an archive. But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”
Alex looked away, sadder than ever.
Brandon asked, “What about Mr. Osborn?”
“ . . .and Jane?” added Hannah.
The Professor leaned back and began tapping the arm of her chair. “Let me see . . . . Well, they made the voyage safely. When they landed in London, nobody knew that Jane was a returning criminal. Thanks to Hannah, she had not been branded on the thumb, as many criminals were in the eighteenth century. If she had the brand, her return might have raised awkward questions. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins must have recognized her as their daughter, for she returned to live with them. She . . .”
Here Hannah interrupted. “But did she get along with them? I mean, I love Jane, but she’s, like, a street urchin. Did she start stealing again when she got back?”
“Not so far as I know,” the Professor said. “Her story seems to have ended happily enough. She . . .”
It was Brandon’s turn to interrupt. “But what happened to Mr. Osborn? Did he take her to Balesworth?”
“I assume so,” the Professor said. “But listen, Brandon, because I will tell you something very interesting.”
She shifted slightly in her chair, smoothing out her skirt. “The Bishop of London kept an excellent archive,” she said. “We do know from those records that Mr. Osborn failed to convince the Bishop to appoint him to a new living as a rector. Like most young Church of England ministers at this time, he had very few j
ob opportunities, and I don’t suppose it helped that Mr. Jones and Mr. Gordon wrote some very nasty letters about him to the Bishop. But the Bishop was getting wise to the complaints of Americans by this time, and so he ignored them, and offered Mr. Osborn a curacy in Yorkshire. However, Mr. Osborn turned it down.”
“Why?” gasped Hannah.
“Ah,” said the Professor, waving her index finger. “You need to know that to a man like Mr. Osborn, from the south of England in the eighteenth century, moving to Yorkshire was like moving to North Dakota would be for most of us. It wasn’t very appealing. He had had enough of living in the back of beyond, but he took a terrible risk in refusing the Bishop’s offer. He might never have found another job in the Church.
“Fortunately, after leaving London I suppose, he stopped in to see the rector at St. Swithin’s in Balesworth. Now, it turns out, the rector despised the curate who had replaced Mr. Osborn, and so when Mr. Osborn returned, he got offered his old job.
“I imagine Mr. Osborn was a little nervous about explaining to Balesworth people why he had returned with Jane and without Hannah, but perhaps he didn’t deliver Jane in person. Perhaps Jane had made her own way home from London while Mr. Osborn was discussing his case with the Bishop of London? Or perhaps he used the excuse of mistaken identity that you suggested to him, Brandon? Who knows, because he never wrote about it, so far as we know. And neither the magistrates nor Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins left behind any letters or diaries.”
All those lives, Hannah thought, disappearing without trace. It was heartbreaking.
Brandon was thinking about Mr. Osborn, and his crushed dreams and ruined life. His wife dead, his career destroyed. It was so unfair.
“I’ve been saving the good news for last,” the Professor said cheerfully. “Jane seems to have been welcomed back into the family. But by the time she turned eighteen, her father had died, and I imagine her widowed mother was getting older, and finding it hard to run the inn alone. So Jane married the widowed curate, Mr. Osborn, and he gave up holy orders to become the innkeeper of the Balesworth Arms.”
Hannah looked more excited than she had since her illness began. “But that means . . . Mr. Osborn was one of Mrs. Devenish’s ancestors, too! And the couple in the portrait Verity found, it’s them! It’s Mr. Osborn, Jane, and Mrs. Jenkins!”
The Professor nodded. “Jane and Mr. Osborn produced a very interesting family,” she said. “It has been a long time since I researched this, but I seem to remember that among their descendants were quite a few clergymen and teachers, all the way to the present day. The family also included a famous Victorian poet called Joshua Palmer-Osborn, and several actors. In fact, one of their multiple-great-grandsons in the early twenty-first century is a very famous actor. Let me see . . . .What was his name now?” She paused, thinking.
“Harry Osborn?” suggested Hannah excitedly.
“Yes, that’s it!” exclaimed the Professor, pointing a finger at her. “Well done, Hannah!”
“Oh, he is so cute!” Hannah gushed. “I’ve got a poster of him up in my room. He’s adorable.”
The two boys made fingers down throat gestures to each other.
“What?” Hannah snapped, glaring at them both. “What’s your problem?” “Makes sense that all these actors are descended from Jane,” Brandon muttered. “She’s a total drama queen.”
“Now, as for Mr. Gordon,” said the Professor, folding her hands in her lap. “I expect you want to know about him, too.”
There was a silence. Nobody really cared much what happened to Mr. Gordon.
“Mr. Robert Gordon,” the Professor said with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, “closed his apothecary shop and sold off everything he could, including his house . . . .”
It took a moment to sink in. “Oh, that Mr. Gordon!” cried Brandon.
“Wait, are you saying there are two Mr. Robert Gordons?” said Hannah in disbelief.
“Yeah,” said Brandon, “I couldn’t tell you because you were sick, but the pharmacist who gave us the meds for your malaria had the same name as your Mr. Gordon, the planter.”
“No way,” exclaimed Hannah.
“AND,” the Professor continued in a loud voice over the kids’ chattering, “That Mr. Gordon, the apothecary, bought Kintyre Plantation from your Mr. Robert Gordon. Your Mr. Gordon made very little money from the sale, because land here at this time is pretty cheap. But he returned to South Carolina, where he finished his house in Charleston, married again to another young woman, and became a fabulously wealthy gentleman of the city. His house is open to the public if you care to visit, so you can see exactly how filthy rich he got from slavery.”
“That stinks,” Alex said, wrinkling his nose.
Brandon was speechless. He looked disgusted.
“Believe me,” said the Professor gently, “I share your feelings. But history is seldom nice or fair, my dears. And when we try to pretend that it is, we lie to ourselves.”
“What about nice Mr. Gordon from the apothecary shop, then?” Brandon asked. “He seems like a good guy.”
The Professor said slowly, “Well . . . Of course, he must have soon discovered that he had bought some pretty lousy real estate. I understand that he gave up his apothecary shop to raise cattle there, and that he scraped out a small living. He couldn’t afford slaves. But his great-grandson began raising cotton at Kintyre in the late eighteenth century, soon after the cotton gin was developed. He plowed all his profits back into buying slaves and land. By 1820, the greatgrandson also bought what was once Mr. Jones’s land, and he cleared the trees all the way to the foot of the hill on which Snipesville was built, so he could grow more cotton. And then it was his grandson who, in 1851 . . .”
“ . . . gambled away the plantation in a poker game,” Alex concluded for her.
“In a nutshell,” said the Professor, grinning.
“But I don’t get this,” Brandon said slowly. “You’re the Professor from a later point in your life, right? And if you’ve been stuck here, as you claim, how could you have found out about all these people?”
The Professor looked at him, serious now, and said, “I know all about them because you told me.”
The kids stared at her.
“Okay,” Hannah said gravely, “You finally lost your marbles.”
“Less of your cheek, young lady,” warned the old woman. “I’m absolutely serious. When you get home, you must tell me—the other me—what I just said, and she—that is, I– will help you look it all up. I can tell you where to start: The family papers of the apothecary Mr. Robert Gordon are in the Savannah Historical Society archive.”
“But how will we find the rest?” Brandon asked, perplexed.
The Professor replied impatiently, “I told you, I will help. Just tell me . . . That is, the ‘me’ you know in the future, and I will help you. And then she— that is, I—will know.”
“So do we get to go home?” Alex asked. “Man, this is making my brain hurt.”
“Yes, you do go home,” said the Professor.
“When?” said Hannah eagerly.
The Professor smiled, “Ahh, you see, I know the answer to that question because you told me that, too.”
“But how can we tell you something that hasn’t happened yet?” said Alex in a confused whine.
“A very good question,” said the Professor, getting stiffly to her feet. “That’s one of many mind-blowing questions about time travel.”
She gazed at the ring on her finger. “I think it looks rather good on me, kids, don’t you?” There was a stunned silence.
“No,” cried Hannah suddenly. “Don’t keep wearing it, please. Don’t you get it? It means that you’re the dead woman in the grave. It’s you.”
The Professor gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “Don’t concern yourself so, Hannah. I told you, I’m eighty-four years old. What makes you think that I’m not ready for death? Death has no fear for me now. As I told you, I probably have cancer, and in any case, I am rea
dy. I admit, I should like to have seen my . . .” She stopped herself, as though she thought she had already said too much. “But no, there’s no sense in wishing. I am content. I am tired. And I have had an astonishing life. It is time.”
She smiled at Hannah. Hannah jumped up, threw her arms around the Professor, and began to sob. “Thank you f-for looking after me,” she managed to say.
The Professor patted her back with one crooked and wrinkled hand. When Hannah broke away from her, she took Hannah’s hand, and looked into her eyes. “Be brave, Hannah. I’m almost finished here, but there is so much required of you yet. You must be up to the task. And you will be.”
Hannah’s heart sank. She had thought they were about to go home, but obviously that was not to be. What else was left for them to do?
“Why can’t we go home now?” Hannah asked desperately.
But the Professor didn’t answer.
“Come outside with me, all of you,” she said with a sigh, leading the way to the clearing outside the house.
Looking upward, she said, “What a beautiful sky,” almost as though she were saying a line in a play.
Tilting their heads back, the kids gazed through the tops of the pine trees at the pink evening Georgia sunset, where light, puffy trails of clouds fell one upon another, layer after layer.
“Now,” said the Professor, “I need you to leave here. Things are very dangerous, I’m afraid.”
“But how will we get home without you?” Alex asked, his lip trembling.
“I don’t know,” said the Professor. “Honestly, I just don’t. But you will, I do know that much. Now, be gone with you, and good luck.”
With that she abruptly returned to the house, and closed the door.
“That’s it?” Hannah said, on the verge of tears. “We just have to take off?”
“I guess,” Brandon said uncertainly. He felt like crying himself. “Where do we go? Who will we go to? Mr. Gordon?”
“No!” Hannah spat. The boys shrank back from her, and she struggled not to panic. “Okay, I know where we can go. Let’s follow Sukey to Mr. MacKenzie’s. He’s nice. Maybe he can shelter us until we figure out what to do next.”
Look Ahead, Look Back (The Snipesville Chronicles Book 3) Page 30
