by Tara Cowan
“And here my story begins: a plantation in Maryland,” he began once the applause had died down.
They listened as he told of his childhood, of being snatched away from his mother and then his grandmother when he was moved to another of his owner’s plantations. Of never knowing his family, of never questioning slavery until he learned to read and knowledge unlocked the pathway to freedom. Of teaching others to read and being clubbed for it, of being hired out to a poor white farmer, who whipped him and others daily, of meeting, finally, the woman who would become his wife, a free black who gave him the courage to flee. He spoke with grace and proper grammar, with eloquence and depth, and his audience sat raptly. None more so than Shannon’s husband, who was obviously deeply moved.
“I have often been asked, how I felt when first I found myself on free soil. And you here tonight may share the same curiosity. There is scarcely anything in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath, and the ‘quick round of blood,’ I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words can but tamely describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after reaching New York, I said: ‘I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions.’ Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil.”
Shannon sat stiff and pale, and the knowledge of how detrimental his testimony was to the institution of slavery, to the argument that slaves were not intelligent enough to be freed and fend for themselves, could not be lost on her. She could not remove her attention from him: she was as captive as the rest of them.
The man at length closed with a prayer and an entreaty, thanking them again. The Haleys did not wait to talk with the others, for there were some hecklers outside growing obnoxious. And Shannon walked out in a daze, feeling ill.
Massachusetts, April 1860
Chapter Twenty-One
Shannon had fallen asleep almost as soon as she had changed the night before. John Thomas, sitting in the chair in his chamber long past the time she had been rising the last few weeks, watched her while she slept.
When she began to stir, he sat up, remembering her intense anger the night before, and then her shock. He had not known her long, but he knew very well her passion, how it quivered within her, and he knew she had exhausted herself to the point of being ill.
She looked up at him, and he stood, walking to her. He slowly sat beside her, unsure whether she would even speak to him, much less let him touch her. She swallowed, looking fragile to him. “Good heavens.” She moistened her lips. “Did I sleep late?”
“Yes.” His eyes swept her features. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” she whispered, flushing. Her eyes filled. “I’m sorry.”
He gripped her hand. “I should have warned you. I ought to have thought…”
She shook her head. “No. Yes. That is, I think I never realized until last night how…how much divides us.”
He went entirely still. “Us?”
She turned her blue eyes on him. “No. That is, the North and South. I had…never heard anyone who disagreed with me. Except you. I thought it was only a religious qualm.”
He studied her for a long moment, the sunlight streaking through the windows, casting her beautiful features into fine relief, but his mind was faraway. He hesitated. “Shannon, I… My faith is more than that. By it, I see everything else. It tells me that slavery is wrong. We can argue what is between the covers of the Bible, but I can’t deny the way I feel. If you were thinking it was a silly qualm, you were hoping to change me. I’m sorry. We don’t have ever to mention this again, but I did need to clarify that. I won’t change.”
She swallowed, nodding once and turning her head on the pillow, looking away. A tear escaped and rolled into her hair.
“Shannon,” he whispered, his voice faltering. “I’m so very sorry if I hurt you, my darling. We ought to have discussed it before–”
She looked back at him quickly.
“Before it came to this,” he rushed to say.
Elegant tears began to fall down her face. “Shannon!” He put his hands on her arms, drawing her up and holding her there. “You know I didn’t mean that. It wasn’t what I was going to say!”
She shook her head. “I know,” she said softly. “I know.”
He held her against him, her head on his chest. “Ah, Shannon, then why are you crying?” he pleaded.
“I’m very sorry for my behavior last night,” she said. “It was unbecoming. It won’t happen again, John Thomas. I promise.”
“Shannon, if you say that just one more time–”
She laughed softly. “Very well. But I do mean that.”
He held her for a moment in silence. “There is something else, isn’t there?” he said, holding her out from him, worry in every line of his face.
She held his eyes, confirming his belief, but didn’t say anything more than, “I cannot explain it…”
He studied her for a time before realization dawned. Taking her chin in his hand and tilting her face towards his, he said, “Shannon, I know what it is to feel disloyal to your family, to yourself.”
She met his eyes. “I know you do.” Looking away, she added, “It is only… They speak of Southerners, think of them, as though they are evil. And they are not,” she said with unshakeable belief.
“Oh, Shannon,” he said, sighing. “I know. I chose my wife right from the belly of the beast, remember?” She smiled faintly. “My family does not feel that way. Only the foolish do,” he said, stroking her hair back.
Shannon swallowed.
He kissed her temple and then laid her back against the pillows, covering her once more.
“What are you doing? Your mother will think I am a fancy lady.”
A faint smile flickered. “I will tell her you have one of your stupid headaches. Come, rest. It isn’t every day a proper Southern girl is forced to hear an abolitionist lecture.”
She smiled, reaching for his hand. He gave it willingly, holding her blue eyes, in no hurry to leave. “You really are a very decent man,” she said, tired eyes smiling.
He smiled. “I’m glad to hear you still think so.”
She reached up, brushing her fingers through his hair and drawing his head down. Their lips met, and his hand gripped the coverlet. The hand that was holding hers left and trembled up into her hair. Shannon’s fingers trailed from his jaw down his neck, and he groaned. “I know,” she whispered. “It is daylight.”
“Who cares for that?” he said, finding her lips once more. He stopped, lifting his head and meeting her eyes. “Are you feeling better?”
“Quite better.”
Shannon spent all of the afternoon knitting stockings with the Haley ladies for another distribution to the poor until her poor fingers were quite stiff. None of them said anything about her failing to come below stairs until long past tea time, nor did they ask the reason. John Thomas had told them she had a headache, but Lizzie had already described her as being “very upset” the night before.
Mrs. Haley had nodded quietly, saying after Sarah had left, “She will have to learn that she is in a different world now. It will be that way even in Washington. Best she learns it now.”
Mr. Haley was the only one inclined to question his son as to why he had not come down to assist his brothers. Mrs. Haley had informed him, straightening his cravat, that John Thomas doted on his wife, to which Mr. Haley had said somewhat explosively, “A man who dotes on his wife to the point of hanging upon her every whim–” A lifted eyebrow had suggested to him that this line of speech was not fortuitous, and, clearing his throat, he said, “Well, well, they are newlyweds, after all. Send him to me, please, when you see him.”
John Thomas had g
one into his father’s study, saying softly, “You wanted me, Father?”
He looked up beneath his bushy, almost white brows. John Thomas’s breath caught. When had his father become an old man? But he was nearing seventy, and there was no getting around it.
“Yes, I have something to discuss with you, if you have a moment of your time to give to me.”
John Thomas leaned against his desk, saying docilely, “I am always at your disposal, Father.”
“Ha!” His father looked at him admiringly. “You are a handsome lad. Much like myself when I was young, though it seems a lifetime ago. You won’t tell your brothers that.”
“No.”
“Now, listen, my boy. You’ve gotten yourself a beautiful wife, and you have your career laid out before you with boundless opportunity. I will tell you the same thing I told Adams: you must seize every opportunity for advancement. You have the world at your fingertips as my son, but I don’t choose to give it to you, I choose to let you find it. It is the Haley way, and purifying for the soul. In whatever you do, build a name for yourself, and make your mother and me proud.”
John Thomas smiled unhurriedly, briefly covering his hand. “Don’t worry about me, Father.”
There was a slight pause. “No, I don’t,” he said finally. “In whatever you do, you must prosper, because of your devotion to the One who created you.”
John Thomas was silent for a moment before parting his lips to speak. “I shouldn’t worry about Charles, Father. He will find his way.”
“He is at loose ends since returning from Harvard,” he said gruffly. He never talked about one of his children to another, and that alone let his son know how seriously his mind was disturbed. John Thomas cast his mind back through his talks with Charles, seeking about for the source. He could think of none, but then remembered Shannon’s remark about Braintree and felt an unwelcome tingle. She had spotted a restless young man in an instant, something her society was far from lacking.
Then he thought back to when he had first met Frederick, to how he had been, to how John Thomas had quietly shown him there was another way. “Women?” he asked.
“Heaven knows. Certainly drink. I do not think he is addicted to it, but for how long? Something is possessing his mind, and he cannot overcome it.”
John Thomas sat silently, taking this in. And, catching his father in this fortuitous mood, he said, “And Adams?”
“I do not worry for Adams. Saints preserve us from his distraction, but he is a rock. He will always do what is right.”
“I know.” He gentled his tone. “But you must let him marry, Father.”
“Adams knows he must establish his name in the business before he does so,” he said gruffly, mood changing swiftly away from the confiding.
John Thomas studied him, choosing to say no more. It would’ve been useless.
The library was a short walk from the study and much larger and grander. John Thomas stopped in the doorway, looking at Adams where he sat on the gray pillow of the window seat, writing something on a notepad. John Thomas studied him for a moment, his heart twisting with affection.
He walked forward, and at the noise, his brother looked up. “John Thomas. I hope Shannon’s headache is better?”
John Thomas smiled. “Yes, she is with the other ladies now.” He went and stood near him, leaning against the window encasement. “Are you courting any lady?”
Adams glanced up at him fleetingly and then away, out over the rolling field. “I want to wait until I am at least thirty to marry.”
“Do you ever…see Emma?” he prompted. Emma Rawlins was a young woman in the community whom Adams had wished to marry some six years before. Their father had swiftly put an end to the affair, citing high expectations for his firstborn and the youth of both parties.
Adams looked back slowly, holding his eyes, and then away again. “She’s married, John Thomas.”
His lips parted. “Oh,” he said, releasing a breath.
“To Elisha Moore,” he said, getting up, glancing back at him. “I…must collect Vincent at Reverend Whitcomb’s.” John Thomas knew well that a servant was usually sent to collect the young scholar but did not mention it. “Do you wish to come?”
“Yes, I will,” he said, and walked out with him.
Massachusetts, May 1860
Chapter Twenty-Two
Shannon, spending the morning above stairs, sat at the little writing desk in John Thomas’s room, reading and returning letters from South Carolina. Since it was Saturday, and a rare day in which work was not expected, John Thomas also sat behind her leisurely in the striped chair, reading the newspaper.
Her eyes skimming over the words of the letter in her hand, she gasped. “Oh!” She turned, holding the letter, and to his lifted brows said, “Marie is with child!”
John Thomas smiled. “Is she? Frederick writes nothing of it,” he said.
“I daresay they don’t want it known, since it is early days, but of course, she must tell me.”
He laughed. “Of course. I shall be an excellent uncle, wouldn’t you agree?”
She smiled at him. “Indeed,” she said fondly. “It will look, I daresay, like its Aunt Shannon.”
“Naturally. Frederick a father!”
She smiled. “The mind revolts, does it not?”
He laughed but shook his head. “You underestimate him.”
“If a sister is not allowed to do so, who may? I imagine he will be absently devoted and not set his foot over the threshold of the nursery above twice a year,” she said, blue eyes glittering.
He looked surprised. “Truly? We saw my father daily as children, were with him often, especially here.”
“I believe our upbringings were very different. I was sent to school at the age of eight.”
“Yes, I believe I was, too.”
She shook her head. “I don’t mean in the way that Vincent goes to school. I was sent,” she said.
His brows drew together. “You only were with your family during the summers and Christmas holidays?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” she said, looking away. “Otherwise I was at Ingersoll’s Select Seminary for Females.”
He studied her from behind. “I didn’t know that,” he said at length.
“Didn’t you? They called me Mary, at the insistence of the headmistress.” She moistened her lips. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter, except that I believe I will tell Marie not to send her daughter there. She would know nothing of it, having been taught by a governess at home.”
He continued to study her, and her cheeks began to grow red. She sought about for something, anything to change the subject and said softly, “She must have conceived right away.” She flushed even deeper, until she remembered that he was a New Englander. “Yes,” he said absently, elbows on his knees, blue eyes searching her face. Somehow she did not think he was thinking of Marie at all.
She cleared her throat softly. “Well, I suppose I had better return her letter.”
“You will send them our felicitations,” he said. She could feel that he was still watching her.
“Yes, I shall—where are you going?”
He had gotten up and was walking toward her, extending his hand so that she might give hers. He rarely touched her unless she gave some sort of permission. She knew it was her own fault and felt vaguely disturbed by the notion, but she was helpless to correct it. “I must go meet with Charles to make the preparations for our trip,” he said. “We are leaving Monday, you know.”
All of the men in the family were going to a friend’s hunting lodge somewhere in Connecticut for a party of hunting or shooting—Shannon hadn’t particularly been listening. From there, John Thomas and Charles were journeying on to Washington to make arrangements for their lodging and so that he might sign all of the formal papers necessary to joining the military.
She smiled. “Yes, because you must never travel on the Sabbath,” she teased.
He smiled, pressing her hand, eyes scanning her face. “Ride with me later?”
“Yes, I shall.” She turned back to her writing, averting her face.
He waited in silence and then bent and kissed her cheek tenderly. He left before she could again meet his eyes, and her heart squeezed within her chest, aching, with the thought of him, with something else, too.
Supper on Sunday nights was generally a more formal affair in the Haley household, and so Shannon, having worn all of her more modest options, decided upon a gown at the very cusp of fashion. This was a red silk creation with the widest possible skirts, which made her waist stunningly tiny. The neckline scooped to put to best advantage her thin chest and the tops of her breasts, and it hugged just below her shoulders, displaying her collarbones. The effect was stunning, just as Louisa Ravenel had intended. Shannon had worn it once to dinner and a play in Charleston.
She sat at her vanity in her undergarments as Phoebe did her hair, parting it down the middle, streaming sections and braids in and out until it was a work of art.
Shannon glanced at her in the mirror.
“That pullin’, Miss Shannon?”
“No,” she said softly, still studying her. There was a pause. “What will you do, now you are free?” she asked.
“Stay right here, ma’am.”
