Sunlight (The Four Lights Quartet Book 2)

by Fergus O'Connell

  ‘What are you talking about,’ said Gilbert. ‘That’s the most ridiculous plan I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘No boss, eez good. It’ll work.’

  ‘Of course it won’t work. It’ll get us both killed is what it will do.’

  Roberto seemed genuinely surprised by Gilbert’s reaction.

  ‘No boss, eez okay.’

  ‘No, it’s not okay,’ said Gilbert angrily. ‘It’s actually insane.’

  ‘Insane, boss?’

  ‘Crazy.’

  Gilbert indicated a winding motion at his temple with his forefinger.

  ‘No, eez not crazy, boss. It’ll work. Eez a good plan.’

  There seemed no point in arguing it to and fro any more, so Gilbert stopped. They settled into an uneasy silence. Anyway, as Gilbert thought about it, the more he reckoned it unlikely that they would meet the slave catchers again. The men would have been anxious not to continue going north. While doing so would possibly have enabled them to catch more runaways or free blacks, each step northwards took them further away from where those captives would realize a profit. They were also heading closer to where the Union army, as well as the Rebel army from which presumably they had deserted, were encamped or on the march. No, the risks of continuing north were too great. They would have turned south by now.

  As Gilbert was completing his analysis and coming to this comforting conclusion, they entered some woods. Up ahead was a right hand bend in the road. It was a gentle bend but nevertheless, Roberto slowed the wagon to a walk. Gilbert was just about to ask him why he had done this, when – part-way round the bend – they saw about half a mile distant, the familiar figures of the two riders and their band of slaves.

  ‘Hey,’ said Roberto and his face broke into a broad smile.

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Gilbert.

  Roberto flipped the reins across to Gilbert and jumped down.

  ‘They mustn’t see me,’ he said, running round to the rear of the still-moving wagon. ‘Keep looking straight ahead, boss.’

  Gilbert fumbled the reins, caught them and pulled back. Leonardo seemed more than happy to stop.

  ‘Will you stop being so silly, Roberto? Come back here.’

  Gilbert continued to look ahead at the distant party. The slave catchers didn’t appear to have seen them yet.

  ‘So here’s the plan boss,’ hissed Roberto from behind the wagon. ‘I’ll go through the trees. You need to give me about fifteen minutes.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Don’t you remember they said they’d shoot us if they saw us again?’

  Roberto ignored this.

  ‘Then you drive up to them. When you get there you ask if they’d like to see some special pictures.’

  ‘Roberto – we can’t do this. Those are armed men up there.’

  Gilbert felt ridiculous sitting on the seat of the wagon holding the reins and talking to the air. Leonardo looked round with an inquiring look on his face. Then he tossed his head and turned away again.

  ‘Will you come back up here where I can see you?’ Gilbert said.

  ‘You say to them that they have to come into the wagon to see the special photographs.’

  ‘Look, just get back up here and we’ll carry on. Forget about this crazy plan of yours. You can sell the pictures to soldiers in Gettysburg.’

  ‘While they are in the wagon, I’ll free the slaves.’

  ‘And would you mind telling me how are you going to do that?’ asked Gilbert.

  ‘With this,’ Roberto announced and Gilbert looked round.

  The Italian was smiling and triumphantly holding up a long, vicious looking knife.

  ‘And what happens when they get out of the wagon and find the slaves gone? They’re going to kill us.’

  ‘They won’t see me, boss. I’ll be back in amongst the trees.’

  ‘Oh, great,’ said Gilbert. ‘They’ll kill me.’

  ‘No, they won’t boss. They’ll want to find their slaves. They’ll go after them.’

  ‘I’m not doing this,’ said Gilbert. ‘You’re going to get us both killed.’

  ‘They go after their slaves. You and the wagon carry on. I’ll go through the trees and catch up with you.’

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ said Gilbert. ‘If you don’t get back on this wagon now, I’m just going to go on to Gettysburg without you.’

  ‘A hundred dollars, boss,’ said Roberto.

  ‘What’s a hundred dollars?’ asked Gilbert.

  ‘A hundred dollars is what you should get for the pictures. Two dollars for a set of four. Not a cent less. They’re good pictures.’

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ Gilbert said again.

  But then, out of the corner of his eye he saw movement. He turned his head in time to see Roberto darting into the woods on the left hand side of the road.

  ‘Remember, boss – fifteen minutes. Then you come on.’

  ‘Roberto – for heaven’s sake come back here. Roberto!’

  But it was already too late. The Italian had disappeared in amongst the trees.

  Gilbert sat with the reins in his hands. He looked ahead at the tiny figures of the slave catchers and their prisoners. Only a day or two ago he would have happily gone ahead with no care whatsoever about whether he lived or died. Indeed he might have preferred dying. He didn’t really believe in an afterlife but even if there was the tiniest possibility that he would have seen Sarah again, he would have embraced it. There was so much he wanted to ask her. Had she not known that he loved her? Did he not love her enough? Was she happy now?

  But now, today, he found that this wasn’t quite the way he felt. He would have liked to see her and talk to her – surely he would – and the pull towards that world was strong. But there was another urge now as well. Summer in the Pennsylvanian countryside. The sun warming his back on this tree-lined roadway; the blue sky overhead; the sounds of birds deep in the woods; the smell of foliage. It was hard to believe that a battle had been fought or was being fought forty miles up the road. Hard to believe that men held other men in bondage less than a mile away.

  The group had nearly disappeared by now. Gilbert judged that fifteen minutes had elapsed. There was nothing else for it.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ he said aloud. Then he tightened the reins, click clicked at Leonardo and they began to move towards the slave catchers.

  28

  For almost two weeks, Sarah wouldn’t go out of the house as the bruising went from vivid blue to jaundiced yellow and eventually began to fade away. The wedding preparations resumed. They chose a date – the first of September. They booked a room at a hotel and chose the menu. They sent out invitations to a small group of friends and relations. The dressmaker visited and Sarah told Gilbert later that the woman had stared at the remnants of the bruising on Sarah’s face. Gilbert wondered what the dressmaker must have thought about Sarah marrying a man who beat her. He said this to Sarah, hoping it might register with her in some way, at some level. But she just said, ‘I’m sure she didn’t think that, my love.’

  A few days later, another round of incandescent anger came completely out of the blue. Gilbert walked out announcing, as he did so, that he was calling off the wedding. As he strode away from Foggy Bottom, he thought that this must surely have an effect on her. He would show her that she wasn’t the only one capable of unreasonable actions. If she insisted on doing these things then he would respond in kind. Impossible behavior on her part would call down equally impossible behavior on his. Now she would see how it felt. She couldn’t ignore this. Maybe at last this was what was needed. He would shock her just as he had been shocked so many times. This would draw the ultimate line.

  She came to the studio three days later. He told her he would not go ahead with the wedding. She cried, she pleaded but he would not be moved. She walked out angrily.

  But the next day she came again. She accepted that her behavior had been outrageous. She understood that he couldn’t do anything else in the circumstances. He made her do a
ll the work involved in the cancellation – withdrawing the invitations – ‘due to illness’ she had written vaguely – canceling the hotel and the dressmaker. He hoped that she would see that actions had consequences. She complied meekly.

  They began to rebuild and rather quickly, things fell back into the happy pattern that he so loved and craved and missed when it was snatched from him. Several weeks passed. Another round of anger was followed by another separation of a week. It was the same old pattern. He began to fret that something had happened to her. If she had put another sign up saying that she was on vacation then nobody would be coming to the house. What if she had fallen again? Inevitably he made his way round. After the last episode he had asked her to give him a key and she had done so. He let himself in. There was no sign of her on the ground floor but there were some empty bottles – five or six of them. Panic began to rise in him as he wondered if she had either run away or was dead. At this stage almost nothing would surprise him. He ran upstairs and he found her.

  She was in her nightdress and half sitting/half lying on the floor. She was breathing and semi-conscious. As he went to lift her up her eyes drifted open for a second. There was a spark of recognition and she slurred his name. Then he felt warm fluid against his legs and the sound of splashing on the wooden floor as she urinated in a seemingly endless flood.

  29

  The slave catchers noticed Gilbert and the wagon when he was still a good way off. He had expected them to stop and was somewhat surprised when they didn’t. Were they under pressure? The next town ahead was Frederick City. He would have thought they would have to turn before they got there.

  They were as before with the one called Hays at the back, Leroy at the front and the seven black men and one woman between them. Gilbert suddenly found that his armpits were wet and his back damp with sweat. His face felt flushed and he was very, very afraid. Leonardo trotted on unconcernedly.

  ‘Morning, gentleman,’ Gilbert called, as he got closer. He had tried to make the greeting warm and friendly. Instead, the two words came out sounding shrill and wobbly. The slave catchers didn’t stop.

  Hays said, ‘Lost your foreign friend, have you?’

  The voice was unpleasant and hostile but Gilbert was encouraged by the fact that Hays had made no reference to killing him.

  ‘Just disappeared in Urbana,’ said Gilbert, trying to sound as casual as possible. ‘Think he met a woman.’

  Leroy spat onto the dust.

  ‘Foreigners, blacks,’ he said. ‘All the same. Can’t trust ‘em.’

  Gilbert was now level with them. The slaves trudged and sometimes stumbled along in the dust. Even though the day was not that old, they looked bone weary. The woman’s bruise looked worse than yesterday and the front of her dress was torn and gaped open. She looked as if at any moment she might stumble and fall.

  ‘You said it,’ said Gilbert. ‘You sure said it.’

  He was about to ask them about the photographs when Leroy spoke.

  ‘So with all that there equipment you have, you can take photographs?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Take long?’ asked Leroy.

  ‘Fifteen, twenty minutes,’ said Gilbert, surprised at the direction this had suddenly taken.

  ‘You know what I reckon would be a mighty fine idea?’ said Leroy to Hays. ‘I think we should get our picture taken. Be a nice thing to take back as a memento of our time here, our little business trip up north. What do you think?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’ said Hays, ‘But better make it quick. Hold up there you niggers.’

  The party stopped and Gilbert pulled the wagon in ahead of them. He wrapped the reins around the brake and Leonardo began to crop the grassy verge. Gilbert opened up the back of the wagon, took out the camera and set it up on the edge of the road. Then, in the darkroom he lit the safelight, a lamp whose glass had been painted red. Gilbert cleaned a glass plate. He took it, spread his first two fingers beneath it, placed his thumb on top in a corner and poured the collodion onto it. He was pleasantly surprised to see that he had no shakes. The old precise movements seemed to come back easily to him. He rolled the plate gently allowing the puddle of collodion to spread out until it covered all of the glass in a smooth layer. He tipped one corner of the plate down and allowed the excess liquid to roll off into a small glass jar.

  After that the plate went into a bath of silver nitrate. There was a watch in the darkroom and Gilbert timed four minutes. Then he removed the plate, placed it in the light proof box and stepped down off the back of the wagon.

  ‘Okay, boys. Whenever you’re ready,’ said Gilbert. ‘Just over here in front of the camera.’

  There was plenty of light – a short exposure would do it. Under the black cloth he transferred the glass plate from the box into the camera. He looked through the viewfinder. Hays and Leroy stood side by side.

  ‘Now, you’ll have to hold real still boys, until I tell you you can move.’

  The two men froze.

  ‘Smile,’ said Gilbert.

  The result was a grimace from Leroy and no change whatsoever from Hays. Gilbert removed the dark slide. Then he took off the lens cap and counted five seconds. He replaced the dark slide. Gilbert ducked out from under the black cloth.

  ‘Alright boys, just be a few minutes and we’ll have you on your way,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘I reckon we should have another one of us with these here negras,’ said Hays.

  Gilbert prepared another plate and the second exposure was made with Hays and Leroy standing on either end of the group of slaves. Leroy had a sly, cunning look on his face, Hay’s was unchanged, the slaves looked numb. The woman’s eyes were empty.

  Gilbert went back into the darkroom. It only took about twenty seconds to develop each of the plates. Then he fixed the image using potassium cyanide. Finally, he emerged holding the two photographs, one on the palm of each hand.

  ‘Now gentlemen,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no charge for these. Compliments of the house. Just hold them carefully at the edges.’

  The men took a picture each and the effect when they looked at them was remarkable. Leroy said, ‘hey’ and whooped and began to laugh. A smile even played momentarily on Hays’ face. Gilbert experienced a tiny glow of pleasure that he hadn’t felt in months.

  After a pause, he asked, ‘I wonder if I could interest you gentlemen in buying some photographs.’

  ‘Photographs?’ Hays asked suspiciously. ‘What kinda photographs?’

  ‘Photographs of women, of course,’ said Gilbert, with an assurance he didn’t feel.

  ‘I’d like to see them,’ announced Leroy.

  ‘Okay, well why don’t you step in back here and have a look?’

  ‘Why can’t we see ’em out here?’ asked Hays.

  ‘They use much more slow drying chemicals,’ explained Gilbert. ‘The chemicals are still slightly wet. If I expose them to the light now, they’ll be ruined.’

  ‘You saying they’re shoddy workmanship?’ asked Hays.

  ‘No, not at all. They’re actually very good photographs. But because of the nature of the subject matter I wanted to get lots of detail in them. And that can only be achieved with these slower drying chemicals.’

  ‘So then we can’t buy ’em,’ said Hays.

  ‘Of course, you can. If you decide to buy them I’ll put them in a light proof box. Give them another day and then they’ll be good and dry. You’ll be able to take them out and enjoy them.’

  Hays considered this.

  ‘Can I see ’em now?’ asked Leroy impatiently.

  ‘Okay, I’ll stay out here with the negras,’ said Hays.

  Gilbert wondered if Roberto was anywhere around. How was it going to work now if one of the slave catchers stayed with the negroes all the time? Maybe that was best – Roberto would have no chance to do anything crazy or dangerous. Gilbert would sell the photographs and hopefully get away with no trouble. Hell, he’d give them away if he had to.


  He and Leroy climbed into the rear of the wagon. Leroy smelt terrible. There was a box on the workbench and inside it were the sets of photographs, printed on small cards. He took out a set and passed them, one by one, to Leroy. He started with the one of Clara with her robe open and her breasts visible. Leroy let out a sort of sigh as he held it. Then came the picture with Clara’s bum cocked and her breasts hanging down.

  ‘Whoa,’ Leroy said, aloud.

  ‘What you seein’ in there?’ shouted Hays from outside.

  If Leroy heard him he didn’t answer.

  ‘Lemme see the next one,’ he said, and his voice sounded like it had suddenly become hoarse.

  Gilbert passed him Clara in front of the cheval glass in shoes, stockings and pearls. Gilbert glanced at Leroy’s face. He seemed mesmerized by the sight of Clara’s breasts and pubic hair.

  ‘Leroy?’ shouted Hays again.

  Next came Clara cupping her breast. Leroy touched the image with one skinny finger tracing Clara’s long legs. Then he touched his first and second fingers to her breasts.

  ‘Any more?’ he asked, in a husky whisper.

  ‘Leroy?’ Hays said, and now he was starting to sound anxious.

  Gilbert gave Leroy the final picture – Clara sitting back in the chair, thighs apart, her dark pubic hair not thick enough to obscure her vulva. Leroy let out a soft groan. As he did so, the canvas curtain parted, filling the darkroom with light. Hays stood in the opening with his revolver in his hand and pointed at them.

  ‘What the hell’s going ––?’ he began to say.

  ‘Come and see these,’ Leroy said, in a voice that almost sounded strangled.

  Hays hesitated for a moment. Then he turned towards his prisoners and said, ‘You negras stay there now, you hear – if you know what’s good for you.’ With his revolver still in one hand, he pulled himself up into the wagon. It bobbed violently as he got in.