The Seeker

by Ann H. Gabhart

  As if Mellie had heard his thoughts, she whispered, “Puts your hand over top us, Lord, and bring us on out a this dark place.”

  Once back out on the road, the sun was too bright, pointing them out as something not right to anybody who might see them. A white stranger with a Negro woman in a bedraggled Shaker blue dress riding in front of him on his horse. That would be something a person would remember if the slave catchers talked to them. So maybe the darkness was more to be desired after all. Adam went off the road again at the next stand of trees. He needed to come up with a plan. He couldn’t hear the dog or the men chasing Mellie anymore, so that was good. But they wouldn’t give up. She must have looked like easy money to them. They’d keep looking.

  When he was sure no one could see them from the road, he dismounted and helped Mellie down. Her legs almost gave way with her, and he had to hold her up until she was able to pull herself together and step away from him.

  “You was an answer to prayer, Mr. Adam, but you’s can go on and leaves me here now. I can make my way on to the freedom river from here.”

  “You’re a long way from that river, Mellie. And even if you can get there, how do you plan to get across to the other side?” With the horse’s reins in his hand, Adam leaned back against a tree and studied the problem in front of him. It wasn’t like him to get pulled into this kind of mess. What was it Jake had said about him? That he was an observer. He didn’t get involved. And now here he stood with a fugitive slave in the middle of nowhere with no idea of what to do next. “Everybody will know you’re a runaway.”

  She lifted her chin. “I ain’t no runaway. Leastwise no runaway slave like as how you’re meaning. I did run away from them Shaker people, but they ain’t likely to send nobody after me. They knowed I was free and could do what I wanted. Miss Lottie give me my papers.” She touched her bosom. “That woman Massah Charles brung home was wantin’ to sell me down the river, but Miss Lottie didn’t let that happen. She took me to that Shakertown and told me to stay there where I’d be safe.”

  “But you didn’t stay.”

  “I couldn’t. Not after Nate come after me.”

  “Nate? Who’s Nate?”

  “He come from Grayson like me.” She stared down at the ground, her defiance gone. “Only he don’t have no papers. We was goin’ north where that might not matter.”

  “Where is he? Did they catch him?”

  “No, sir. Least not that I knows. I tol’ him to go on. They hadn’t seen him. I tol’ him they couldn’t take me since I had my papers.” Mellie’s lip trembled. “They said they didn’t care about no papers. That paper burned right easy. And that good, healthy breeding stock brought top money where they was headed. I didn’t wait to hear no more. I think they thought I was too scared to run, but I give them the slip and was makin’ headway till they set their dog on me.”

  “So where’s Nate now?”

  She shook her head. “I ain’t got no way of knowin’. I made him promise to go on. He didn’t want to, but weren’t no need in both of us gettin’ caught. And I thought I’d be right behind him soon’s as I showed them men my free papers.”

  “How were you supposed to find him?”

  “He told me about this house up ’round the river. Some place called Maysville. Nate knew the way. He drew a map in the dirt. It just looked like chicken scratchin’ to me, but I pretended I understood the way so he’d go on.” She looked up at Adam. “You know where he was talkin’ about?”

  He met the woman’s dark brown eyes. “I might be able to find out.” What other choice did he have? He couldn’t just leave her there. Not and ever look Charlotte in the eye again, and no matter how much he tried to deny it, he wanted to see Charlotte again. “If you do something for me first.”

  Fear flashed in her eyes, but then she squared her shoulders a bit and took a step toward him. “Whatever you want, I’ll do.”

  He held his hand out to stop her when he realized what she was thinking. “Nothing like that, Mellie. I’m not a monster like those men you were running from. I just want to know where Charlotte is.”

  Her shoulders slumped and she mashed her mouth together. “I can’t tell you that. She asked me not to and I ain’t never broke my word to Miss Lottie.”

  “I know she’s been sent to a school in Virginia. I just need to know what town.”

  Mellie frowned a little and opened her mouth to say something, but then shut it tight.

  “It might not be safe for her in Virginia,” he added.

  Mellie looked almost sad as she said, “I’d help you, Mr. Adam, but I don’t know nothin’ about Virginia ’cept the Shakers say there’s fixin’ to be a war there. You needs to go ask Massah Charles about Miss Lottie. He can tell you where she’s at.”

  “Why’s it such a secret?”

  “Miss Lottie, she sometimes gets overproud and then shamed if things don’t go the way she thinks they should. What with Mr. Edwin turnin’ her down and then that woman tearin’ apart her home, things has gone bad lately.” She looked straight at Adam’s face again. “And she don’t trust you, Mr. Adam. I’m thinkin’ she’s lovin’ you, but she’s not trustin’ you. She thinks you’s just playin’ with her, that that kiss in the garden didn’t mean nothin’. But I’m thinkin’ she might be wrong from what I can see on your face.”

  “It won’t matter if I can’t find her.”

  “You two is suited. Neither one wants to admit you need any lovin’, but I think Miss Lottie’s findin’ out different and maybe you will too.”

  When he just looked at her without saying anything, she sighed and went on. “I thank you for helpin’ me out back there, Mr. Adam. I wouldn’t have got away without you. But guess I’d better be movin’ on north now.” She looked around and then started off in the wrong direction.

  Adam let her walk a ways before he called after her, “That’s south.”

  She turned to look back at him. “You sure?”

  “Surer than you are.” He couldn’t keep from laughing. “Come on back here. We need to come up with a plan.”

  “That’s Miss Lottie too. Always with a plan. I’m hopin’ yours has a better chance of workin’ than that last one of hers.”

  “What plan was that?” Adam asked casually as if he didn’t care what she answered.

  “You ain’t trickin’ me into breakin’ my word to Miss Lottie.” She planted her feet on the ground and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I done tol’ you. You gonna have to ask Massah Charles. That’s who.”

  “All right, Mellie. I know when I’m beat.” He let out an exaggerated sigh as he beckoned her toward him. “No more questions about Charlotte. But we better put our heads together to figure out a way to this house in Maysville Nate told you about.”

  The plan was simple. They waited till almost dark and then rode in the gathering twilight to the nearest town. There at daylight, Adam bought train tickets to Maysville for him and the slave he was taking to his sister. Nobody thought a thing out of the way about it. Mellie rode in the baggage car with a few other slaves. One of them had heard about the house on the way to freedom, and he whispered what he knew to Mellie. A rusty roof with an edge of tin curled up on the left dormer, and if it was safe to come to the door, a white wooden flower box between the second and third posts on the porch.

  It was late afternoon when they got off the train in Maysville and near dark before they found the house. Out of sight behind a nearby barn, Adam gave Mellie most of the money in his pockets and then smiled a little as he wrote out Phoebe’s address again in case she made it all the way to Boston. Phoebe was going to have a houseful of servants before he was through, but it served her right. None of this would be happening if she hadn’t insisted he do that wretched portrait of Selena Vance. But then he wouldn’t have met Charlotte either, if not for Phoebe. Right now he wasn’t sure if he should thank her for that or wish Charlotte from his thoughts forever. Love complicated things. Yet every time he remembered Mellie’s words
saying Charlotte loved him, his heart practically floated inside his chest.

  He didn’t go with Mellie to the house. He told her goodbye in the deepening shadows.

  “The good Lord will bless you for your goodness, Mr. Adam.”

  “I didn’t do this for the Lord,” Adam said.

  “I knows who you did it for. Miss Lottie.” Mellie stared at him in the dim light. “If I ever sees her again, I’ll tell her I ended up safe ’cause of you.”

  “But is she? Safe?”

  “She’s safe enough, but what good is it to be safe if a person don’t never get the chance to know love?” She didn’t expect him to give her an answer as she went on. “Me and Nate, at least we wasn’t too scared to try.”

  “I hope you find him.”

  “I will. Either here or on the other side.”

  Adam knew she wasn’t talking about the other side of the river. She brushed his hand shyly with her fingertips before she started toward the house. Then she turned back to him to say, “Ain’t no need lookin’ for her in Virginia.”

  “Did she go to the Shakers with you?” He frowned, hardly able to believe he gave that idea enough serious consideration to even speak the question aloud, but at the same time the memory of the lady’s hand pulling down the Shaker cap to cover her hair popped into his mind.

  Mellie stared back at him. “I just told you she wasn’t in Virginia. You got to ask Massah Charles the rest of it.”

  And then she was slipping from shadow to shadow until she was on the porch. The door opened and hands pulled her inside. No one saw her. He’d done what he could. For Charlotte.

  The next morning, he went to the train station with no sure destination in mind. He could go to Frankfort and find Charles Vance. He could find out about Charlotte and about Kentucky’s determined neutral stand. But he already knew about Charlotte. As hard as it was to believe, that had been her pushing her way out of the Shaker meetinghouse to escape his notice. He was sure of it. He was also sure if she hadn’t wanted to see him two days ago, she wouldn’t want to see him now.

  And if she’d gone to the Shakers, it would have been to chase after Edwin Gilbey. Some plan she had, according to Mellie. A plan that hadn’t worked out. But for certain a plan that included no thought of Adam.

  What of his own plans? Was he going to just toss them aside because he’d kissed a pretty redhead? So what if he couldn’t get her out of his thoughts. So what if every time he picked up a pen or pencil he wanted to draw her eyes. That didn’t mean he had to rush back to the Shaker village to beg to see her and perhaps suffer the humiliation of being refused. It would be better to give it time, to see if his infatuation faded. Besides, the war drums were beating louder. He couldn’t miss the battle chasing after a woman in Shaker blue.

  He stepped up to the ticket window and said, “Next train to Washington, D.C.”

  He ignored the way his heart grew suddenly heavier. It was the right decision. The only decision for him. He couldn’t be tied down. Not by a woman. Even one as entrancing as Charlotte Vance. There’d be time for love later on. After the war. After he had the pictures he wanted.

  She was safe at the Shaker village. He smiled a little at the thought of Charlotte living the Shaker life. It was almost more than he could imagine. A Southern belle in drab Shaker dress. Working with her hands. Dancing for the Lord instead of to capture a husband. No husband-capturing would be going on in the Shaker village. Not even if she was still trying to convince Edwin Gilbey to stand by his promise to her. That wasn’t going to happen. Adam had seen Edwin’s face during the Shaker worship. He would not give up his newfound passion with the Shaker way.

  So it wasn’t as if Adam had to worry about Charlotte marrying another before he returned. If he decided to return. Not as long as she was with the Shakers. While there was much he still didn’t know about the Shakers, everybody knew the normal bonds of marriage were strictly taboo in their society. Charlotte would be safe both from the impending war and a hasty marriage.

  Life matters shouldn’t be decided in haste. If he truly loved Charlotte, if she truly loved him, a few months wouldn’t make that much difference. Better to hesitate and be sure than to jump into a quagmire that might trap him forever. He believed that. He was sure of it, but even so his feet very reluctantly climbed the steps up onto the train. His mind was telling him one thing, but his heart wanted to run back in the other direction.

  He found his seat and looked around to see if he could spot a likely subject for his pencil. But when he opened his sketchbook, he began drawing Charlotte’s hand pulling the Shaker cap down to cover her red hair, running out the door away from him. What was it Mellie had said? That at least she and her man weren’t too scared to try for freedom and love. And as he drew, he imagined a tremble in Charlotte’s hand.

  When he got to Washington, he sent a telegram to Senator Charles Vance. Want to see Charlotte. Where is she?

  In spite of the drawing Adam had made on the train where every line he remembered of the Shaker sister running from The Seeker the meetinghouse matched perfectly his memory of Charlotte, it seemed necessary to have absolute proof that it had really been her in that Shaker dress. Mellie had kept telling him to ask the senator.

  He got a return message the next day. In Virginia. Miss Josephine’s School for Young Ladies. Tell her all well at Grayson.

  Adam read the telegram from the senator three times. Then he stared at the sketch he’d drawn on the train. And he wasn’t sure which was the lie.

  23

  As the days passed and became weeks, Charlotte found a certain comfort in being relieved of the need to make decisions. No more plans to go awry. Instead she got up every morning at the sound of the rising bell and followed the path laid out for her. She didn’t have to think. Just do.

  She discovered her hands were strong and capable, work was not offensive, and a sincere prayer could take wing from her heart up toward heaven. Now when she knelt to silently pray at the appointed times, her mind didn’t stay blank. At first her timidly offered prayers were for Mellie’s safety and that only, but as the prayers piled up, other thoughts began to come to mind. Even when she stumbled around in her mind searching for proper words, she rose from her knees with a lighter spirit. In her heart the assurance grew that someday, somehow there would be answers. She prayed for Grayson and her father’s forgiveness. She prayed for her countrymen both to the north and to the south as soldiers massed in the east for battle.

  While the Shakers had withdrawn from worldly living, they did not avoid news of what was happening in the world outside their village. Instead the leaders read newspaper reports at meetings and expressed much concern over what war could mean to their Shaker communities here in the state and all across the northeast. It was feared that even if Kentucky did block the war from between her borders with a neutrality stance, the conflict between the states would greatly hinder their travel into the South where the Harmony Hill traders sold most of their products. The Shakers prayed often and with much conviction for the peaceful preservation of the Union and a just end to the abhorrent institution of slavery.

  That was a prayer Charlotte echoed fervently in her heart. She knew her father claimed Grayson could not survive without slavery, but perhaps he was wrong. He was wrong about Selena. He could be wrong about much else.

  Sister Martha claimed those of the world were often plagued by wrong thinking and that Charlotte’s father demonstrated an obvious lack of understanding when he refused to accept the wisdom of Charlotte’s desire to seek spiritual peace among the Believers. When the letter from Grayson and the departure of Mellie had threatened to plunge Charlotte into a dark state of melancholy, the elders had taken pity on her and replaced Sister Altha’s stern guidance with Sister Martha’s gentle encouragement. Sister Martha, while not straying from the uncompromising Shaker tenets, was gifted with patience as she listened to Charlotte’s hesitant confessions of what the Shakers considered wrongs.

  And un
like Sister Altha, she voiced no condemnation of Mellie for leaving the village. In those first days after Mellie ran away, Sister Altha had refused to even allow Charlotte to speak Mellie’s name as she ranted about the worldly destruction that would surely swallow up their “former sister.”

  Thankfully Sister Martha had not shown the same indignation and encouraged Charlotte to speak to her of Mellie leaving the village. She had responded with sad kindness. “It is a sorrow to lose our sister, but each who comes among us must choose her own path. Our Sister Melana chose as many do. I regret to say it is not uncommon for those in the Gathering Family to cling to their worldly desires and slip away from our village.”

  Not long after Mellie left, Gemma began working with a new novitiate and Dulcie became Charlotte’s instructor insofar as her work duties. They finished their stretch of ironing duty and then spent a few weeks in the kitchen peeling mounds of potatoes for the giant pots and kneading and shaping dozens of loaves of bread every morning. In spite of the mind-numbing sameness of the chores, Charlotte found the kitchen to be an amazing place where it seemed the Shakers had fashioned a new tool to make nearly every chore easier and quicker. The cupboards were built into recesses in the wall to keep the floor uncluttered. The work area was open and full of light from the tall windows. Huge ovens accommodated the large multiple-loaf pans. The smell of the bread baking and the clang of spoons in the pans made Charlotte wish she could look up from her chores and see Aunt Tish standing in front of the stove instead of Sister Wilma who was in charge of this kitchen.

  Dear Aunt Tish. She’d heard nothing from Grayson since Mellie had left the village in the middle of the night. No news at all. Sometimes Charlotte stood on the southwest side of the village and stared overland toward Grayson. She could not see even the first Grayson fence post, but her mind dwelt on the roll of the land and the graceful lift of the Grayson manor house dormers. She imagined standing in her mother’s garden and sometimes, if she couldn’t block the thought in time, Adam came from the shadows to enfold her in his arms. At those times she regretted running from his eyes. It had been the right thing to do. The only sensible thing to do. And yet, she wished now she had thrown caution to the wind and dared his scorn and laughter. At least then her heart wouldn’t wonder.