An Unconditional Freedom

by Alyssa Cole

  “I . . . well, there is a man who said he wanted to ask to marry me,” she said. There was a hesitant embarrassment in her tone that Daniel was familiar with.

  “He wanted to?” he pressed. “Wanted to in the past or intends to in the future?”

  “Intends to, I suppose.”

  “What stopped him from doing it when he made this declaration of want?” It seemed odd to make your intentions known for the hell of it. He’d told Elle he’d marry her when they were children, but when he’d gone down on one knee as an adult he’d wanted her as his wife with no delay.

  Janeta sighed. “Well, things were complicated. There’s his family to think of, and their status. He wanted to wait until the war was over and our situations were settled. It wouldn’t be fair to leave me a widow, he said.”

  She said the words with a decisiveness that told Daniel everything he needed to know. Such resolve was only necessary when trying to convince yourself; he’d used the same tone when he’d told everyone Ellen would change her mind once she returned from Liberia. He could have told Janeta that the situation was already settled, but he let her keep her fantasy. “Right.”

  “And you?” she asked. “Who is she?”

  Daniel whipped his head in her direction. “She?”

  “The woman who has your heart,” Janeta said.

  “No woman,” he said gruffly. “No heart, either.”

  “I see.”

  He wasn’t the only one feeling pity for a misguided partner, it seemed.

  They walked on in silence and soon arrived at Camp Defiance, where even more men bustled about. White Union soldiers readying provisions; freed Negroes working as labor loading the provisions onto boats.

  “These are the detectives I told you about, Captain Hooper,” Lake said, walking up to an officer with a thick blond mustache and graying sideburns.

  Hooper turned his attention to them, eyes narrowing as they settled on Janeta. “A woman?”

  Lake was obviously confused at the annoyance in his tone, too. “Sir?”

  Hooper closed his eyes and exhaled. “They can ride up front, in the pilot house. I can’t have a woman like her in the middle of men heading to battle.”

  “A woman like me?” Janeta looked into the face of each man, brows raised, before returning her gaze to Hooper.

  “Women are bad luck. And I must question the morality of a woman who would want to ride with a pack of stinking soldiers,” Hooper said, lip curled.

  Daniel had encountered reticence and outright hostility when working with Union officers before, but it had been directed at him. It was strange to see prejudice directed elsewhere, and to hear thoughts that were shockingly similar to his remonstrances of Elle when she’d first set her mind to the Loyal League. His frustration with himself and the look of embarrassed shock on Janeta’s face acted as a bellows to the flame beneath the anger that was always simmering in him.

  He took a step toward Hooper, ready to give the man a piece of his mind, but Janeta raised a hand to her mouth demurely and made a sound of pity. “Oh, I see. I am accustomed to officers whose men respect them enough not to behave dishonorably toward any woman in their presence. Since you lack control over your men, sir, I am quite happy to pass the voyage in the pilot house.”

  With a sweep of her skirts, she walked past Hooper to the man who appeared to be his second in command. “If this gentleman would be willing to lead the way?”

  The burly man glanced uneasily at Hooper, who gave a stilted nod of the head despite his flushed face. Janeta waved her goodbye to Lake and followed the man toward the bizarre looking ship.

  “Well, she seems able to take care of herself,” Lake said, grinning as he took in Daniel’s stiff stance—he hadn’t yet had time to relax, she’d turned that situation around so quickly.

  “We’ll be off soon,” Hooper said, turning and following Janeta.

  Daniel and Lake clasped hands, and Daniel nodded. “Thank you for the information, and for arranging our passage.”

  Lake shook his head. “You’re heading into the danger to try to help end this war; I’m the one who should be giving thanks. You two stay safe, hear?”

  “That’s my plan,” Daniel said, trying to inject some enthusiasm into his voice as he’d once been able to.

  Lake headed back toward the camp and Daniel walked toward the ship, where he found Janeta conversing with the man whom she’d asked to take her over.

  The pook turtle was a marvel of ridiculous design. It was a broad-bottomed thing, with two huge paddles at midship and two chimneys jutting out from the steam engines. The pilot house where they would spend the journey was on the hurricane deck of the ship, an octagonal iron shield surrounding it, and bulwarks ran along the ship’s upper decks shoulder high. The protective iron plates and the fact that much of the ship couldn’t be seen beneath the surface truly made it look like some ancient turtle risen from the muddy depths of the Mississippi—a turtle prepared for battle.

  “There are three guns in the bow, eight in the broadside battery, and two in the stern battery, ranging from a sixty-four pounder to a thirty-two pounder.” Janeta’s guide was pointing out the guns to her as he talked.

  “My so many big guns!” she exclaimed with a laugh of delight, and the man’s cheeks went pink. “And the Confederate weapons are useless against this type of ship?”

  “Oh, not useless, but less effective, unless they hit us with something big or we run into one of the floating torpedoes.”

  “I see.” Janeta shot him a worried glance. “Does that happen often?”

  “Oh no, we have a scuttle to detonate anything in our path, after losing one of these in ’62.”

  “Are you done with the Inquisition?” Daniel asked.

  “I was just curious,” Janeta said, rolling her eyes.

  “Curiosity is your resting state,” he muttered.

  “If you don’t ask questions, how do you learn things?” she replied with a smile. Some very small and inconsequential part of him took note of the smile and how effective a tool it was, rendering its recipient incapable of a comeback. Her arsenal was perhaps more formidable than he’d given her credit for.

  A group of soldiers near the ship had turned to stare at her and their grins had a lascivious tilt to them. They’d noticed the smile, too.

  “We can head aboard now,” Daniel said, stepping closer to her. He tried to tamp down the protective urge, but Janeta had already shown that unwanted male attention unsettled her, and he was her partner, as much as he resented that fact.

  She nodded and slid her arm into his, the brush of her coat sleeve against his waist sending a frisson of unexpected sensation through his body. Good sensation. He stiffened and almost pulled away from her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly as they followed the man up through the gangplank. “In my experience, men only respect that which they believe to be claimed. It’s a bit frightening walking onto this ship full of soldiers after being told that my safety is an inconvenience.”

  “An unfortunate truth,” he replied with a sigh. He couldn’t tell her otherwise. She faced different dangers, the very same that he had pointed out to Elle to try to dissuade her from leaving for Liberia.

  Daniel steeled himself a moment before they entered the pilot house: it wasn’t a very small space, but it wasn’t a large one either. Sweat sprung out on his brow as they entered. He could often avoid the memory of waking up in that coffin, but his body and mind seemed unable to forget the sensation. Now every place that might hold him captive triggered not a fear of being trapped, but the fear of how his body would react if he thought he was.

  He walked through the door, saw that it had a latch on the inside to hold it fast, but no keyhole. The door pulled inward, and no one could bar them in from the outside. His tension dropped as he wiped his palms on his pants and shook hands with the taciturn Captain Kendall, who seemed no more interested in him and Janeta than a pair of flies that had buzzed into the enclosed space
and rested on the wall.

  Kendall was busy prepping for the voyage.

  “How can we help?” Janeta asked.

  “You can go sit over there,” Kendall said without looking at them, but his tone was more focused than derisive.

  The coal engines roared to life, and the boat juddered around them. Janeta gasped and placed her hand against the iron wall, slipping her finger through one of several bullet holes that mottled the metal.

  “Should we be worried about this noise? And swaying?” she asked the captain, raising her voice in order to be heard.

  “No point worrying over that which God has planned for us,” was all Kendall said before turning to the wheel. “But a prayer won’t hurt none.”

  Janeta made the sign of the cross and began whispering to herself. Daniel did nothing—there were worse things than dying. He settled onto the sacks of grain against the iron wall behind the wheel. Janeta stood beside him, peering through the slit window above him.

  “When we sailed to the US from Cuba, there was just blue ocean and blue sky,” Janeta said amiably. She spun and sank down beside him. “I was terrified the entire trip, but I forced myself to stand at the railing with Papi. He wanted me to see the view.”

  The boat rocked from side to side as it was buffeted by the river’s current, and her fingers dug into the sack beneath her.

  “You’re afraid of water,” Daniel noted, taking in her ramrod-straight back and the way her teeth seemed to be set hard against one another.

  “Don’t be silly. I’m not afraid of anything.” She said it so confidently he was confused, thinking he’d misunderstood her story about her trip from Cuba; then the boat lurched, and she sucked in a breath and glanced up at him with wide eyes. “Can you swim?”

  Daniel sighed. He might have been annoyed at her nerviness, but he wasn’t exactly some bastion of unflinching bravery. If the door had been hung on its hinges in the opposite direction he might have been in the throes of panic. It helped him, having to put someone else’s fear before his own.

  “Can’t swim, but I suppose I could float if it came down to it,” he replied, settling into the grain as it shifted under his thighs. “I used to manage it as a boy.”

  “Did you grow up near the water?” She didn’t pull her gaze away from his; she was curious. And frightened. They had hours ahead of them, and if he could distract her with a bit of small talk, perhaps he could have peace for the rest of the voyage.

  “There was a lake, but we didn’t do much swimming,” he said. “We weren’t allowed to because the white families did their swimming there. Sometimes we would sneak in a soak on days when it was too damned hot to stand it. In the winter, the lake would freeze over and we would go out on ice skates my father had made.”

  Janeta squealed with delight. “Ice skating? I’ve read about that in books, though I admit I find it hard to imagine. What does it feel like?”

  Daniel opened his mouth to answer, then realized he had never given it much thought. It had been a treat, something he’d looked forward to, but he’d never much thought about why. He remembered Elle stepping out onto the ice, her first wobbling steps forward. He thought about gliding along, carefree, with her and the other colored children of their church during the time allotted to them.

  “Well, it’s cold, of course,” he said.

  “Colder than it is here?” She shuddered dramatically, and he frowned to avoid the smile that almost pulled his mouth up.

  “This is nothing. It’s autumn yet and not even as cold as autumn gets.” He tried to recall what it felt like, all those winters on the ice. “When we would skate, it would be so cold that your fingers went numb after a few moments of exposure and tears sprang to your eyes, and each breath felt like swallowing a lungful of frost needles.”

  “That sounds awful,” Janeta said, raising a hand to her chest.

  “No, it was good. There was something about being out in the winter air that made you feel . . . alive, I suppose.” He leaned back into the iron wall a little harder. “Like each pinprick of icy air was a reminder that warm blood was pumping in your veins. And the skating? It’s like—have you ever seen a bird fly? How it just kind of catches a breeze and glides?”

  He made a long, sweeping motion with his hand, and she nodded.

  “If you caught a good patch of ice, you could get a bit of that feeling, with the cold wind buffeting your face and your heart beating hard in your chest.”

  Daniel had forgotten about simple pleasures like strapping blades to the bottom of your shoes and feeling for a moment like nothing in this life could catch you. Joy had once been such a simple thing that he could chase it with a good push across the ice. He couldn’t imagine having such trivial fun now.

  “That actually sounds wonderful,” she said. “I’d like to try it.”

  Daniel shrugged. His family had tried to take him skating after he’d returned home, but he hadn’t been able to muster the energy to even step outside the house.

  “I’ve never felt true cold,” Janeta said. “When we left for Florida, I was so scared that I might freeze to death there. I told that to one of the men on our ship and he laughed at me.”

  “Why did your family leave Cuba?” Daniel asked as casually as he could muster.

  Her head tilted a bit and she looked at the wooden planks of the floor before her. “My mother died,” she said. “She felt bad, and started moving more slowly, and then started getting out of bed less and less. My father tried to save her, but after she died he wanted to leave. A business opportunity arose in Florida, and me, him, and my sisters packed up and followed it.”

  She didn’t look sad exactly—wistful was perhaps a better word for it. But her story raised more questions for him. One didn’t die from not leaving a bed, though Daniel had wished that was possible when he’d returned home, and moving from one country to another wasn’t something just anyone could do, especially anyone like them.

  “Were your parents both mulatto?”

  She glanced up at him, holding his gaze. Her face was slightly taut with indignation. “My mother was born a slave. And my father was not.”

  That didn’t quite answer his question either, but he didn’t press. Not yet. If someone asked him something he didn’t want to answer and wouldn’t let it drop, he’d lie. Daniel wanted the truth, and the fact that she hadn’t given it freely meant it was likely worth looking into. His fellow detectives took him for a mad brute, but he did have a good nose for sniffing out a lead, and it was twitching just then.

  “My parents were born free,” he said. He’d circle back to her own lineage at some other time. “My grandparents were freed people, manumitted after their master’s death.”

  “I see. I heard you say that you joined the Loyal League for vengeance. How did you come to be . . . not free?”

  Daniel’s neck tensed. The engines growled somewhere behind them, and the waters of the Mississippi slapped against the sides of the boat. The conversation of soldiers drifted into the air. He focused on those sounds as he talked instead of his heart beating in his ears.

  “I was kidnapped by slavers. They told me they were recruiting for abolitionist work. I thought I was joining some fine cause, only to be manacled and shoved into a coffin. I was sold onto a plantation, where I was forced to work from dawn until past dark.”

  She shifted beside him. He expected her to offer him her false sympathy while secretly pitying him for the pathetic man he was. Perhaps she would finally consider switching partners now.

  “Surviving that must have required an enormous strength of will,” she said quietly.

  “No more than any of my brethren who were born into it,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Sometimes I’m so homesick I just want to lie down and weep. Sometimes I feel so changed that I don’t know how I will ever return home. But I left by choice and haven’t been forced to labor. To have your life change so suddenly, and to now be here fighting is admirable.”

&nbs
p; She was looking at him strangely, with something like respect.

  “Forced labor is just one part of the horrors of slavery,” he said tightly. He was angry for some reason, angry at how she had called him strong, and how she had so neatly described how he felt.

  Things weren’t supposed to be like this between them. He wanted to shock her, to push her away from him in the small pilot house. “I would have rather plucked tobacco under the hot sun until I died than know of the other things they see fit to force us Negroes to do.”

  His mind started to slip into the past, but then she was speaking again, pulling him back into the conversation.

  “How were you freed?”

  I was saved by the white man who won the love of my life.

  No. Elle wasn’t an object to be won.

  “Happenstance. A childhood friend learned of my impending sale and her husband helped secure my freedom.”

  That was close enough to the truth, though he’d glossed over some details.

  “She learned of your sale by chance, and you are free because of this?”

  He nodded.

  Janeta’s eyes went wide. “That’s a miracle! You are a miracle, Cumberland.”

  She looked at him like he was Christ emerging from his tomb, and it made his skin prickle with shame—he always turned a jaundiced eye toward his rescue. Elle’s pity; McCall’s quick thinking; their union. God had turned his back on Daniel Cumberland, he was certain. He didn’t like the way the word miracle falling from Janeta’s lips challenged his view of the situation, one that he’d thought was set in stone.

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” he said.

  She scoffed, her fear of the ship seemingly forgotten. “What other way is there?”

  That it would have been better to die than live with what happened.

  He could feel a headache beginning to build and didn’t want to discuss himself any longer. “How did you come to join the Loyal League?” he asked. If she was so fond of questions, she could answer some of his.

  The expression of awe on her face slipped away by degrees.