The Conductors

by Nicole Glover

  “Stop it,” Hetty hissed, pushing Oliver back. “He’s a passenger and needs help.”

  “I’ll help them,” Oliver said, and with a gesture, he urged the runaways into the next room.

  Hetty settled at the table and picked at the stitching in her scarf with her sewing needle. She had unraveled most of them when Oliver returned.

  “You should rest.” Oliver pulled out a train schedule and spread it across the table. “I can wait up for Finch.”

  “He’ll be back soon enough.” Hetty eyed the schedule. The tiny printed words blurred before her eyes, before she gave up on it. “I’m glad you’re here. I was worried we’d be too early.”

  “You’re lucky this time.” He paused. “Can’t promise I’ll be here next time you pass through. The doctor signed up for war, and I’m going with him. If I make it through the other side with him, I’ll be free.”

  “The doctor is a good man.”

  “You think he’s lying?”

  “He won’t admit he’s your brother. Though none of them do, even when their father’s faces are staring right back at them.”

  Oliver shook his head. “You can’t just wish me luck?”

  “You’ll need more than luck,” she said, “but when you’re free, we can find a place for you in Philadelphia.”

  “Is that city so wonderful?”

  “It has been for me.”

  Dawn slipped through the shutters the next morning, and Hetty watched as sunlight tiptoed into the room. The brothers and Thomas were still asleep, but Penelope was awake.

  She entered the kitchen just once with a question she never asked once she saw Hetty’s face.

  The scarf had holes in the places where she’d ripped out the stitches and used the thread to a new purpose. She was finishing off the last set when a bird flew through the wall—a dark blue bird glittering with the sheen of the stars.

  “Pack the wagon!” Hetty called as the bird flew away. “We’re leaving!”

  Voices called back in alarm, but she didn’t hear them as she ran out to where the wagon was waiting.

  But someone was already there.

  Benjy lay stretched out in the wagon’s bed. He was covered head to toe in mud and one of his sleeves held on by the barest of threads.

  At the sound of her approach, he lifted his hand off his face and grinned at her.

  Hetty tossed his tool bag into the wagon. It bounced and nearly struck him, but that cheeky grin didn’t fade.

  “You’re late!” she grumbled.

  “I got here before dawn,” was all Benjy said. “Where were you?”

  BIRD OF PARADISE

  15

  THE FUNERAL WAS LOVELY.

  The mourners echoed those words as they trekked into the cemetery in pairs or in clusters, each pleased by the beautiful service honoring the deceased.

  Hetty didn’t know if this was true. She hoped it was. While she had been there the entire time, she was not truly present. Throughout the entire service she moved from place to place, unable to sit down once, not even for the eulogy Pastor Evans delivered. From the moment people entered the church she was there, helping people find seats, find fans, move something out of the way, hand out the spare Bibles to those that could read them, and anything else people stopped to ask her for.

  Then there were the candles.

  Five large white candles spread around the church dressed with special oils and with important sigils carved into their sides. They were not there to add light but to observe rites that would help provide safe passage of the departing soul.

  They were gorgeous candles, but she had to keep lighting them as the press of people kept causing them to flicker out. No matter how quietly she did it, with or without magic, people glowered at her for the distraction she presented.

  For all she endured, she was luckier than Benjy.

  He didn’t even make it inside the church.

  Oliver did not let the cemetery caretaker know that burial services were to be performed later that day. This meant nothing had been prepared, not even the digging of a grave—a task that fell squarely on Benjy’s capable shoulders along with whatever else that had been left undone. All that entailed was something they didn’t know either, for Oliver had vanished like the wind after passing the casket into their hands.

  The whole thing had left her so filled with rage that when everyone went to the cemetery, Hetty was glad she needed to remove the decorations. Anger roiled in her chest as she ripped things away, but it was only when she blew out the last candle that she realized it wasn’t just at Oliver. Yes, she would have words with him the next time they met, but the anger wasn’t for him.

  It was for Charlie. Not for dying. But for dying with her still so angry at him that she couldn’t shed a single tear.

  Charlie had been the first person they had rescued from slavery. He had married someone Hetty had called a friend, in a match she arranged. He was the jokester in the group, the one whose good fortune everyone aspired to even when they disliked him for it. He had been a friend, even when he hadn’t been kind to them in the end.

  And he didn’t deserve this death, not before she had gotten a proper apology from him.

  “Don’t run,” Cora said when Hetty finally arrived at the cemetery grounds. A bit of a smile took the sting out of the reprimand. “Charlie is not going anywhere.”

  Cora stood at the fringes of the group, and while she faced the procession of the casket, her attention had fallen to Hetty.

  “I thought I missed something.”

  “Like the rest of the service?” Cora asked. “I had to look to see if you were there at all. When I did, I only saw a swiftly moving blur. I’ve just seen Benjamin now, and he was here waiting for us. Was he even there for the service?”

  “There were things to take care of.”

  “I’d say,” said another voice.

  Recognizing that particular voice, Hetty looked beyond Cora to see Bernice Tanner sitting atop a gravestone.

  A regal woman with a mane of pure white hair, she leaned against a polished cane, her round dark spectacles glinting in the light.

  An old friend of Cora’s, Bernice had also worked with the Vigilance Society but in a vastly different role. From the time before she lost her eyesight and long afterwards, she was the source of all information that went in and out of the city. News came to her, and from it she charted routes for conductors, made sure the cargo also made it to their chosen destination, and provided assignments for retrievals down south. A few of those assignments ended up in Hetty’s hands, although they were undertaken rather reluctantly, because helping Bernice took away from the search for Esther.

  Despite the old woman’s friendship to Cora, Hetty was surprised to see Bernice here. Bernice did not suffer fools lightly, and Charlie had been one of the biggest, even on his best days.

  “You hit all the right notes, but it was sloppy. If you ran a proper funeral home.” Bernice stood up, planting her cane into the ground with care. “You’d never stay in business long, based on today’s performance.”

  “I heard no complaints.”

  Bernice shrugged. “Because they don’t care about the dead, just the show. You’d been better off letting things fall apart so you could properly mourn.”

  Cora nodded along with her friend’s words. “You didn’t need to do all this. You’re Charlie’s family as much as anyone. You deserved to have a moment to mourn, and have that time respected without people asking for assistance.”

  “I’ve mourned.”

  “You have not had even a spare moment to do so. They expect you to be strong, to not show a bit of weakness no matter what you’re going through.” Cora held Hetty’s gaze, the affection in her eyes softening what could have been stern words. “Don’t accept the burdens they cast onto you. They don’t take them on themselves for a reason.”

  “Someone has to take them on,” Hetty said. It was a fight to keep her voice calm, to neither hurt her friend nor gai
n the scorn of Bernice Tanner. Cora’s words had the air of an observation. An observation held back until it could be delivered at the right moment without dismissal. “If not me, who else?”

  “Plenty of others,” Cora said. “Unless this is the path you choose.”

  “It is.”

  “Then I hope you do so for the right reasons.”

  “And get your just rewards,” Bernice added. She pointed her cane toward the graveside, the brass tip uncannily landing on the burial party. “You do too much work and no one knows it.”

  The pallbearers that brought Charlie’s casket to the graveside were all unfamiliar, except for George and Clarence. Benjy stood in the background. Even from a distance, she could see smudges of dirt he hadn’t managed to hide. His jacket wasn’t as dirty as the rest of him but was still mussed.

  No one seemed to have noticed. They probably thought he was the cemetery caretaker.

  As things progressed, Hetty finally got her first clear look at Marianne. She stood flanked by her three children with an older woman in her shadow. While her black dress was unremarkable, it was paired with a lace veil, making her a beautifully tragic figure, trembling as Charlie was lowered into the grave.

  Then one of the pallbearers started to draw star sigils in the air.

  Cora gasped along with a few in the crowd. “They’re going to use magic to bury him,” she said, voicing their unspoken horror. “That’s not right!”

  “By the stars, it isn’t,” Bernice growled. “You bury the dead with your own two hands, and nothing else.”

  Benjy was already moving forward with his shovel even before George turned to the first man and said a few stern words.

  It was brief, but Hetty saw anger in the man’s face. She didn’t know him, but he had the face of someone who knew he was handsome and made sure everyone agreed. That flash of anger was hardly flattering, although he backed away as Benjy stepped forward.

  Together, Benjy and George buried Charlie, with only token shovelfuls of dirt from the others.

  The crowd dissipated as they did their work, heading out of the cemetery to the repass that waited at the Loring home.

  Hetty lingered a bit, watching as the man who dared to shift dirt with magic moved behind the graveside and bent over to—

  “Henrietta,” Cora called. “Are you coming?”

  “I am,” Hetty said, forced to turn away before she could see what the man might have been up to. “I’ll be right there.”

  * * *

  At the Loring home, Hetty was promptly abandoned by Cora and Bernice for other conversation.

  Left to her own devices, Hetty milled around, making polite conversation. From the people that knew her, she received compliments on her work for the funeral, condolences for the loss, and questions about what would happen with Marianne and the children. While none was a conversation she wanted to have, particularly since the compliments of the funeral service skated close to insult, these interactions were much preferable than when Alice Granger called her name.

  At first Hetty thought herself mistaken.

  Many voices sounded alike in this crowded room, but at the sight of the butterfly brooch at Alice’s neck, Hetty knew what she saw was the truth.

  Alice stood there in a dark gray dress wearing gloves of a similar shade. Between the coloring of the dress and her hair twisted into a style that was a growing fashion around town, she looked like she belonged in the room. She certainly was at ease, even more so than the last time Hetty had seen her.

  The shock of seeing her was enough that Hetty didn’t even try to hide it. “Why are you here?”

  “Everyone knows Charlie Richardson,” Alice said with a little shrug. “I didn’t know him personally, only by reputation. He was a young healthy man who died suddenly. I grieve his loss. I heard he’d gone missing before he died. If only he was found sooner.”

  “You’re quite impatient. You just hired me yesterday.”

  “Time moves fast,” Alice reminded her. “I wouldn’t have contacted you if I had plenty to spare.”

  “What about the will to search? Do you not have that, either?” Hetty asked. “Like a lizard, you can change your colors to blend in with your surroundings.”

  “And it always suits me,” Alice replied. “Try to shame me all you like. My sister did much the same, and she knew where to cut. But it’s not my fault. People see what they wish to see, and often with little effort on my behalf.”

  “Did you come here because you thought your threats failed?”

  “I’m not here for you,” Alice said. “You’re just a nice surprise.” To prove her point, she turned her back on Hetty and walked right into the crowd of mourners.

  Hetty considered following, but strands of piano music tugged at her ear. She listened for a moment until she made a connection to its sudden appearance.

  Seated at the upright piano in the corner, Benjy danced his hands along the ivory keys, and slow, melancholy notes drifted into the air.

  The first time Hetty heard him play was when they disguised themselves as traveling musicians to gain access to a plantation. While Benjy dazzled the room, Hetty sneaked into darkened corridors looking for a ledger of some importance. She nearly missed her cue. Music had been noise to her for so long, that she was surprised to find herself nearly lost in the gentle melody. Although she could now admit it might not have been the music at all.

  Hetty leaned against the piano’s lid, and Benjy’s eyes flicked up in her direction.

  “Did you see her?” Hetty asked.

  “See who?”

  “Alice. The woman with the missing sister.”

  Benjy shook his head. “Impatient, isn’t she? Though I’m surprised she was able to blend in with this crowd.”

  “Why are you surprised? Look at who’s here.” Hetty waved a hand at the smartly dressed men and women, many of whom were born free in the city, or had come into some fortune that let them hide every trace of any unsavory past. These folks were rich, powerful, and tended to associate only with each other.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” Benjy remarked.

  “We don’t belong here. We belong to the past Charlie tried to scrub away. There was no mention of him being a runaway, not even once throughout the ceremony. It was struck from his personal history, and that means he struck us away too. You weren’t even a pallbearer.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me,” Hetty said. “We knew Charlie better than anyone, and I’ve got people asking me to fetch them water.”

  “You should have changed into a better dress.”

  Because she knew he was only teasing, Hetty let that comment pass unremarked.

  She wasn’t even sure why she was so upset. This wasn’t anything she didn’t already know. At some point over the years, her friends started associating more and more with the luminaries of town, and only Hetty and Benjy’s past as conductors kept them even on the periphery of that circle.

  “Can we leave early?” Hetty asked.

  “You’re asking?”

  “Don’t want to disappear and leave you to the wolves. After all, you’re convinced all our friends might be tied to Charlie’s murder.”

  “Not all,” Benjy said, rather earnestly. “Penelope would have poisoned him and made the death look natural. Pastor and Mrs. Evans—”

  “You can’t consider them!” Hetty exclaimed.

  “They were at the same dinner with the Waltons.” Benjy grinned. “But they’re implausible as well. They had a deathbed vigil they attended shortly afterwards. No time at all for murder. Oliver has no motive that would make sense. And Thomas, of course, is impossible, as he is not in town.”

  “Why not add Marianne and Darlene to this list?”

  Benjy didn’t stop playing, but his hands moved slower as he considered his next words. “Because it’s an emotional choice instead of a logical one. Especially when they are more involved in this than the others. This case was never goin
g to be easy.”

  “Which is a reason we should do this together,” Hetty said. “Burdens lessen when they are shared. Or will you better understand this with a story?”

  He snorted. “I’m curious at how you’ll tell it. Would it be a story told with animals? Of mice banding together to scare off a lion? Or ants that carry a bounty of food home? Oh, I know just the one: It’ll be about birds that roll a pumpkin home?”

  “It’ll be a story about three impossible tasks the husband can’t figure out until the wife shows him the trick.”

  His lips twitched up into a smile. “You just made that one up.”

  “Where do you think my stories come from?”

  “You heard them in the quarters and at your mother’s side as you shelled peas. You collected them from old aunties and uncles with more dreams than memories of African kingdoms. And most of all, you gathered them from the fancies of others wanting nothing more than to pass the time.”

  “That’s one part,” Hetty murmured, “and it’s a very small part. A story is a living creature, and they need a personal touch to live on. You breathe in your woes, your loves, your troubles, and eventually they become something new. They aren’t the books you love so much. Stories change with the tellers.”

  The music had stopped. Not for long, but long enough for her ears to note it before it started again.

  She waited for him to protest, to offer up some argument, but he only shook his head.

  “You win,” he said as his fingers glided into a new song. “I won’t make another move on this case without telling you first. A promise I can start fulfilling right away, as the next suspects on the list are fast approaching.”

  As she questioned how he even saw them, Hetty fixed her face into something suitable for the occasion.