Honor rocked the cradle, hoping the movement might send Comfort back to sleep. It did not, however, and she picked up the baby and put her over her shoulder, walking around the room and patting her back. At the same time she listened out for what might be taking place by the wood.
A few minutes later Belle reappeared, her arms full of logs, which she dropped in the box by the stove. Donovan was following her. “Donovan, no brother should let his sister bring in wood without carrying some himself. What the hell’s the matter with you? People like Honor here got a low enough opinion of you without you makin’ it worse by bein’ so ungentlemanly.” She squatted and began arranging the wood. “You gonna bring in another load or do I have to do all the work myself?”
Donovan frowned, then went back the way he’d come. He must be younger than Belle, Honor thought, reminded of the natural authority her older brothers had held over her and Grace.
Belle opened the stove and added another log, though the fire didn’t need it: there would be no more customers for the day and they would move to the kitchen fire. It was this unnecessary action that told Honor Belle was nervous.
Donovan came back with a stack of wood, Thomas behind him.
“That should see you up to Christmas, Belle,” Thomas said. “Though I’ll top it up when I’m in town, if you like.”
“Thankee, Thomas. What do I owe you?” While Belle and Thomas went over to the counter to settle up, Donovan began stacking the wood on top of what his sister had brought in. Comfort’s eyes had begun to focus and she followed his movements over Honor’s shoulder. This seemed to bother Donovan, and he hurried to finish. As Thomas was leaving through the kitchen to go back to his wagon, Donovan stood up and made a move toward the front door.
“You want some coffee before you go, Donovan?” Belle said, sounding amused.
“I’ll just scare off your customers. You watch yourself, Belle, Honor. I ain’t through here.” He banged the door behind him.
Belle chuckled. “That baby sure spooks him more’n anything else can. She should stay here all the time. That would keep him away, like a lucky charm.” She kissed the top of Comfort’s head, dusted with wispy white-blond hair. It was rare for her to show the baby affection.
They listened to Donovan’s horse clop away. “Honor, go to the window and check he’s ridin’ it,” Belle said. “He’s tried that one before.”
Honor looked, and recognized his tall silhouette slumped in the saddle. She watched till he was out of sight. “He’s gone.”
“Good. Now, you stay there, and make sure he don’t come back.” Belle hurried to the back of the house. A few minutes later Honor saw Thomas’s wagon go past, rattling now it was empty of its load of wood.
She and Comfort stood on in the window, the baby quiet, balanced on her mother’s shoulder and reaching her hand out toward the darkness. In the last few days she had stopped flailing so much, her movements more controlled.
Soon Belle was back. “All right. I’m gonna fix supper.” When Honor opened her mouth to speak, Belle interrupted her. “Don’t ask. If you don’t know, then you won’t have nothin’ to tell Donovan when he comes back. ’Cause he will come back tonight. He’ll be back for another look.” She was talking as if Honor knew what was happening. She did know. She just did not let herself think openly about it. Some things should remain hidden.
* * *
But they did not remain hidden. Honor and Belle were eating in the kitchen, the baby asleep in the cradle at Honor’s feet, when she heard a whimper. It was not Comfort—Honor was so attuned to her child’s noises that she did not even glance down at the cradle. She froze, her knife stopped in the groove it was carving into a pork chop, and listened.
Belle, however, clattered her cutlery onto her plate and stood up, pushing her chair back so that the legs scraped along the wood floor. “You know what I feel like with supper?” she said. “Tea. The English drink tea anytime, don’t they? I’m gonna boil some water.” She picked up a jug of water and filled the kettle. “Makes a change from coffee or whiskey, don’t it?” Belle banged the kettle on the range. “You ain’t never touched a drop o’ liquor, though, have you? No whiskey or beer or nothin’. Poor Quaker.”
Even under Belle’s valiant effort to make noise, Honor heard another whimper, then the low murmur of a woman’s voice. Not just any voice: it was a mother’s, shushing her child. Now that Honor herself was a mother, she was much more sensitive to the sorts of tones a mother needed to use.
“Where are they?” she said in a pause among Belle’s clatter.
Belle looked almost relieved, and smiled as if to apologize for thinking Honor would be fooled by her clumsy attempt at concealment. “If I show you,” she said, “you gotta think about what you’ll say if Donovan asks you ’bout ’em. I know you Quakers ain’t supposed to lie, but ain’t a small lie that helps a bigger truth all right? God ain’t gonna judge you for lying to my brother, is He? And if the Haymakers judge you for it, well . . .” She did not bother to fill in her thoughts about Honor’s in-laws.
Honor thought. “I have heard of Friends blindfolding themselves so that they do not see those they’re helping. That way they can honestly answer no if asked whether they have seen them.”
Belle snorted. “That’s just a game that God’s gonna see right through anyway. Ain’t playin’ with the truth like that worse than lyin’ outright for the greater good?”
“Perhaps.” The child was no longer whimpering, but crying outright, the sound coming from the hole by the range that led into the lean-to. Belle could reach in through the hole for wood without having to go outside. Though covered with a thick cloth to keep out drafts, it did not completely muffle the sounds. Honor could not bear the crying. She let out a deep breath she did not realize she had been holding. “Please bring in the child,” she said. “I would not have it freeze because of me. I will lie to Donovan if I must.”
Belle nodded. Pulling aside the cloth, she called through the hole. “It’s all right, Virginie, bring ’em in for a little while.”
After a moment a pair of brown hands pushed first one, then a second girl through the hole and into Belle’s arms. She set them on their feet, side by side. They were twins, identical, about five years old, with wide dark eyes, their hair plaited and tied with the red ribbons Thomas’s wife had taken the day before. They stood solemn and mute in front of Belle and Honor, the only difference between them being the runny nose and wheezy cough of the one who had been crying.
Belle pulled them aside as a gray bonnet pushed through the hole. Honor caught a flash of its pale yellow lining and started.
Belle smiled. “So that’s where that bonnet got to. Didn’t recognize it in the dark before. I thought you’d left it with the Haymakers—though Lord knows what they would do with it. Make it into a milk bucket, maybe.” She gave a hand to the runaway woman so that she could stand. Honor recalled her slender height, her sallow skin, her steady gaze.
The woman looked back at Honor and nodded. “I see you still here. Got your baby now. Well, I got my babies too.” She put her arms around the girls. Now that she was out in the open, her mother beside her, the girl with the cold felt confident enough to begin crying freely.
“Honor, get her some raspberry jam in hot water,” Belle commanded. “Kettle’s boiled. Add a drop o’ whiskey to it. Don’t you frown at me—it’ll do her good. I’ll make up a poultice for her chest.” She glanced at the window, which had a heavy curtain pulled across it, and at the door between the kitchen and shop, which she had pulled shut. “Can’t be out like this for long—Donovan’ll be back. We fooled him once—he thinks you ain’t here yet. But he’ll come round again soon enough.”
“When did they get in?” Honor asked.
“Right at the end, just when Donovan was leaving. That’s always the best time, when they’re still here but not suspicious any more. Old Thomas moved ’em. He hid ’em in his wagon, in a compartment under the bottom of the wagon. You lay out flat
an’ they put the false bottom over you. It ain’t comfortable, is it, Virginie?”
“Is that how Thomas brought the runaway from Hudson when he drove me here?” Honor thought of Thomas stamping his feet now and then, and his talking while she was in the woods, and the feeling she had had that someone was with them.
“Yep. And Donovan still don’t know about it. He looks under the front seat.”
Now that she knew Honor wouldn’t give away her secrets, Belle became chatty, proud of the ruses she and Thomas and others working on the Underground Railroad had developed to keep runaways hidden. Once they’d dosed the sick child with raspberry jam and whiskey, and spread a mustard paste on her chest, Belle had Honor crawl through the hole into the lean-to, which was deeper along the side of the house than she’d realized from seeing it from the outside. Belle and Thomas had stacked the wood so that it seemed to be up against the back wall, but actually there was a gap between the woodpile and the wall, making a small chamber barely bigger than a cupboard, which you got to by squeezing around the stack. Inside the chamber were three stumps the runaways must use as stools, though turned on their sides they would look innocuous enough. Indeed, if you pushed the back stack of wood into the space it would turn into a messy pile waiting to be burned. As she gazed on it, Honor wondered how many runaways had hidden here. Dozens? Hundreds? Belle had lived in Wellington for fifteen years, and there had been runaways probably for as long as there had been slavery.
Honor heard Comfort crying then, and hurried to get back to her, struggling through the hole so clumsily that Belle chuckled. By the time she was on her feet, Comfort was quiet in the black woman’s arms. Though Honor reached out, the woman did not hand Comfort back. “I looked after a string o’ little white babies for the mistress,” she said, swinging Comfort in the crook of her arm with ease. “Feels good to hold a baby again. Look at her, girls,” she said to her daughters seated at the table. “She ain’t smilin’ yet. She only a month old. Too young to smile at us yet. We got to earn her smile.”
Honor struggled not to snatch her daughter back, even though rationally she knew that Comfort could come to no harm.
The woman’s name was Virginie. The whole night Honor had been with her in the woods and fields, she had not thought to ask her name. Indeed, she had never asked any of the runaways their names. Now she wondered why. Perhaps she had not wanted to personalize them in that way. Without names it was easier for them to disappear from her life. And they did—all except the nameless man buried in Wieland Woods.
Look for the measure of Light in her, she counseled herself, for it is there, as it is in every person. Never forget that.
Comfort was too young to make any judgment other than whether she felt secure in the arms that held her. And she did. She looked up at the black woman, who began to sing:
I’m wading deep waters
Trying to get home
Lord, I’m wading deep waters
Trying to get home
Well, I’m wading deep waters
Wading deep waters
Yes, I’m wading deep waters
Trying to get home.
“She is smiling!” Honor cried.
Virginie chuckled. “Jes’ wind. But nice to see anyway. Go on back to your mama, li’l girl, an’ give her a smile.”
Belle fed the runaways chipped beef and corn bread, spreading the latter with apple butter Honor had made the day before. One twin gobbled it down, but the other picked at the food, then laid her head on her arms. Belle studied her when she came down from the bedrooms, her arms full of quilts. “Y’all best get back there now.” She stuffed the quilts through the hole, but went outside to look around before entering the lean-to.
Honor and Virginie nodded good night and then the runaways crawled through the hole to their hiding place. After a few minutes Belle returned via the back door. “Hope that little one’s gonna be all right.” She shook her head. “It’s snug enough in there, but we don’t want her gettin’ worse. And they’re so close to Canada. Even at a little girl’s pace they can’t be more’n a week away from Lake Erie. Plus if they get to Oberlin they can hide in the black community a while till she improves.”
“Belle, is thee a—a station master?”
Belle snorted. “You know, I never use those silly phrases: station master, depot, conductor. Even Underground Railroad tries my patience. Makes it sound like children playin’ a game, when this surely ain’t no game.”
The girl’s coughing began again. Honor listened as she washed dishes. “The cold air is getting to her chest,” she remarked.
Belle sighed. “Donovan’ll hear her when he comes snoopin’ ’round in the middle of the night. She needs to sleep inside in a bed where it’s warm. That’ll quiet her—that and some paregoric. Can’t bring ’em all in, though—we couldn’t hide ’em all from Donovan.” She drew aside the cloth and whispered into the hole. A few minutes later the sick girl was passed through to Belle. She gave her a spoonful of thick brown liquid from a bottle, then said, “C’mon, honey, I’ll put you in my bed. You be real quiet now.”
Honor went to bed herself soon after, exhausted from nights of broken sleep and from the tension of the day. Leaving the door ajar so that she could hear and see a little from the light downstairs, she lay in bed, baby at her side where she could easily feed her in the night without getting up. Belle was still down in the kitchen, making flowers out of straw for her hats, waiting.
Honor was not yet asleep when she felt a tiny presence next to the bed. In the glow from downstairs she could just make out the girl’s outline. Without saying anything the girl climbed into bed, careful around the baby, and slid under the quilt to press up against Honor’s back, like a little animal looking for warmth. She coughed a bit and then fell asleep.
Honor lay very still, listening to the girl’s snuffling breath and her daughter’s almost imperceptible sigh, marveling that a black girl was snuggling up to her, as Grace had done when they were girls and it was cold. The barrier between them was dissolving in the warm bed; here there was no separate bench. Whatever the uncertainty downstairs, outside, in the world at large, in this bed with the children close by and reliant on her, Honor felt calm, and part of a family. With that clarity she too was able to sleep.
* * *
Donovan was never going to enter quietly. Honor jerked awake with the banging on the front door. Her movement, or the noise, woke the girl, who whimpered.
“Shhh,” Honor whispered. “Be as quiet as thee can, and don’t move.” Luckily she was on her side facing the doorway, and with the girl huddled against her back under the quilt, Donovan might not see her. Honor pulled the quilt over the child’s head, hiding her plaits tied with red ribbons.
She heard voices, steady, not raised, then the methodical searching of first the shop, then the kitchen. Donovan was not deliberately destructive. He did not break glass counterpanes or tear up cloth or stamp on hats. He did not throw down crockery or upend furniture. Honor even heard Belle laugh as if sharing a familial joke. Doubtless he had searched her house many times. Perhaps he was simply going through the motions. Or he suspected she was smarter than him and one day he would work out how she hid her runaways.
Then the girl coughed, juddering against her. It was not loud but it was distinct. Honor felt a spike of ice in her stomach. She heard Donovan’s voice, and Belle answering him. She thought she heard her name.
The girl coughed again, and when she stopped, Honor coughed too, trying to imitate a small girl’s breathy chest. She heard footsteps on the stairs, felt the girl’s quivering fear at her back, joined it with her own.
Then Belle’s voice came, telling her what to do. “Donovan, you gonna interrupt her feeding her baby. You really wanna do that?”
Honor reached for Comfort, shaking her gently as she gathered the warm round body to her. Unbuttoning the neck of her nightgown, she pulled out a full, swollen breast that began to leak milk even before Comfort stirred and, half-asleep
, opened her mouth and latched on. Gumming the nipple, she sucked hard, so that Honor took in a deep breath of pain and release.
Donovan searched the small bedroom where Belle slept first; then the lantern light swung into the larger bedroom, arcing over her and Comfort. Honor prayed the girl would not cough or move. He stared down at her, trying not to let his eyes slip to the baby and the breast, but failing. Though he fought it, a kind of longing spread across his face. It had the effect Honor had hoped for: he did not come further into the room to ransack the piles of material Belle stored there, or look under the bed.
“Sorry,” he said. But he did not leave immediately. His eyes wandered over the quilt. “That’s Ma’s quilt,” he said. “What’d you call that design? You told me once, when we first met.”
“Star of Bethlehem.”
“That’s it.” Donovan looked at her for a moment, then nodded and backed out.
Honor and the girl remained still and silent. Only Comfort squirmed and sucked, her tiny hand grasping at Honor’s nightgown. They could hear Donovan go out of the back door. Now he would find the others or not. What would they do with this girl if Donovan took them away? Perhaps that was what she herself was thinking about, for suddenly the girl began to sob.
“Oh no, not that. Thee mustn’t. Not now.” With difficulty, Honor detached Comfort and sat up. Leaning against the headboard, she put the baby back on her breast and her free arm around the girl. “Don’t cry, now. We must pray that God will keep them safe.” She closed her eyes, and listened.
He did not find them. Half an hour later Belle came up and sat on the edge of Honor’s bed, careful not to disturb the sleeping baby. “He’s gone. You can go to sleep now. You too, little one,” she added for the benefit of the girl pressed against Honor.
“Belle, how will we get them safely away from the house?”
“Honey, don’t you worry ’bout that. I always got tricks up my sleeve.”
The Last Runaway Page 24
