by Alyssa Cole
The fact that he was thinking of a future at all meant something had shifted in him. Maybe it was like Janeta had said: people were always changing. If he never went back to being the affable and naïve Daniel Cumberland, that was just the way of the world and not evidence that he deserved to suffer.
He huffed a sigh just as Maddie passed by the parlor door, carrying a stack of folded linen. He jumped to his feet and made his way toward her.
“Maddie?”
She slowed her pace and looked back at him over her shoulder, but she didn’t stop. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he caught censure in her gaze. He jogged to catch up to her.
“Miss Maddie?” he said, remembering his manners, and when she glanced up at him the censure was gone and she seemed pleased. She stopped walking at the foot of the stairs and paid him her full attention.
“How can I help you, Mr. Cumberland, sah?”
“I was wondering if you might point me toward Mr. Roberts’s office?”
“I’m heading that way,” she said. “Come along now.”
“I can take that for you if you’d like,” he said as he started up after her, but she shook her head.
“If there’s two things in this world I carry well, it’s laundry and secrets,” she said. “Certainly don’t need help from you, though I appreciate you tryin’.”
Daniel sized the woman up: older, proud, with the regal gait of a woman who wouldn’t be bowed by circumstance.
“Do you find yourself carrying secrets often, Miss Maddie?” he asked quietly.
She glanced at him as they reached the top step, and gave him a smile that made him understand she’d brought many a man to their knees in her youth and probably still could.
“Mr. Brendan’s office is the first door over on the left. Good day, Mr. Cumberland sah.”
She kept walking, leaving him behind, and Daniel decided to ask Janeta about her interactions with the woman later. Something about her had caught his interest, and maybe Janeta had sensed something as well.
“Can I help you?” Roberts asked without looking up from the paper he scratched at with a quill when Daniel presented himself.
“Yes, I need something to do. Sitting and staring at the wallpaper might be of interest to aristocrats, but it’s not to me.”
“Can you not find a darkened alcove in which to pass the time with your fellow envoy of the Spanish throne, as any good houseguest would?” He was jesting but probing, which Daniel understood but didn’t appreciate. He adjusted the cuff of his shirt.
“I’m not sure Ms. Sanchez would care for your assumption of her character. I certainly don’t.”
Roberts pointed at a stack of correspondence without apologizing. “Read those. Summarize each one in a written sentence or two. Tell me if it’s something of importance and indicate whether I need to read it myself. Obviously, if you discover something of major import, you can just bring it to me.”
Insecurity suddenly nagged at Daniel. He remembered when he’d returned home and attempted to return to his studies. How he could no longer focus—how he no longer cared. He’d let down the abolitionist lawyer who had taken him on as an apprentice; he’d heard the chatter asking what the man had expected by taking on a Negro, whose intellect wasn’t made for handling such work. He’d hurt the chances of any of his brethren who would attempt to study law in his town after him.
“You’re going to trust my capabilities?” he pushed. “Not even going to ask whether I can read or write?”
Roberts didn’t speak for a moment—Daniel wasn’t even sure he was listening. Roberts wrote with intensity, brow furrowed. When he finally looked up a moment later, his gaze was sharpened by annoyance.
“If you couldn’t read and write and wanted to work, you would have asked Maddie or Michael, not me. You came to my study because you wanted to do something that one attends to in a study. I suppose you can lay a fire if you don’t feel up to the task. Or you can take this and stop distracting me.”
He held up the packet of letters and gestured toward a smaller, less ornate desk facing the window, and Daniel strode forward and took the bundle from him. Roberts immediately returned to his work without so much as a “thank you.” Daniel went over to the desk assigned to him and tugged it carefully away from the wall, turning it so his back was not to Roberts or the door.
“Very well. I shall busy myself with your busy work,” he said, summoning his resolve as he took his seat. He’d once sat at a desk every day, but it seemed strange now.
Roberts looked up from the next letter he had begun to write. “Busy work? No, there are matters of grave importance tucked in with the invitations from anxious mothers wanting to thrust their daughters at me, though I suppose those mamas imagine their invites are matters of life and death. I need you to pay attention and to take the work seriously, but you seem like a man for whom that won’t be a problem. A man who can work independently.”
Roberts nodded firmly, then turned decisively back to his own work.
Daniel first sorted the paper by quality of material. The clearly reused paper and scraps of wallpaper he set into one pile, the fine, thick paper he set into another. That was one preliminary step to sorting foreign and domestic, given the impact the war’d had on access to paper in the South. He took up one letter and read through it once, glancing up sharply every few moments. Roberts had entrusted him with this?
He took up the clean sheet and the pen on his desk and wrote his first summary:
One. A report from Lord Russel detailing a contentious meeting of Parliament in which a speaker on the behalf of the Confederacy made a stirring argument that would have won over the crowd, if he had not then been thoroughly refuted by information passed along by the consul in Mississippi.
Daniel had known things were precarious, but not that those sympathetic to the South had such reach as to be able to take the floor of Parliament. Enclosed was a newspaper clipping detailing the man’s near success and how at the last moment it had become his national shame.
Daniel moved on to the next crisp, cream paper.
Two. Rose Greenhow, known Rebel spy currently taking refuge in Europe, is said to have met with the Emperor Napoleon himself, and secured his promise of aid for the South. He plans for French expansion in Mexico and therefore seeks to be on good terms with the Confederacy.
Daniel skimmed through some of the shabbier looking letters then. Like Roberts had predicted, many were invitations for tea or to dinner from mothers lamenting their lonely daughters, though one caught his eye.
Three. Appeal for aid after an encounter with a strange man supposedly searching for Roberts’s residence. Man did not give his name, though he was dressed in fine clothing. A slave who led the man to Roberts never returned to his owner. Some believe the slave ran off, but his master believes he was killed and requests assistance.
Daniel’s blood chilled. The slave may have run off, but something about the strange visitor had disquieted the slave owner enough that he would write to Roberts. Even the toughest government detective and most seasoned members of the 4L gave members of that particular society a wide berth.
Daniel had sought them out.
Something pricked at him, and he placed the quill down and looked at Roberts.
“You say you don’t intend to kill us but—”
“I never said that,” Roberts said blithely. “I said I don’t want to. I fully intend to if either of you gives me reason. I don’t think you will, though.”
Daniel couldn’t even grow agitated at that. The man was odd, and either too honest or too skilled a liar. Daniel would play along.
“If you don’t want to kill us, why are you allowing me to read all of your correspondence, including what seems to be private governmental information?”
Roberts kept writing.
“I am a man short on time, Mr. Cumberland.” He groped about on his desk with his free hand, then held out a folded paper.
Daniel walked over slowly, taking it t
o read for himself.
My dearest Brendan,
I have held Secretary Seward at bay for as long as possible, but unfortunately, you will be recalled. The uncouth lout rails and rages and doesn’t understand that he hurts his own cause! Much will be lost on both sides when you return home, and I can only hope that this war comes to an end soon thereafter. I can give you a month; after this meeting, you must return home immediately or lose the protection of the Crown.
Yours,
Lord Russell
“You are leaving?” Daniel asked.
Roberts’s grip on his quill tightened, but his voice was level when he spoke. “While I do hope for the North to prevail, if they do it won’t be because of Seward. He’s a bull in a porcelain shop, crushing those who might help him to proverbial dust under his hooves.”
“Why can’t you just tell him that you are for the Union?” Daniel asked.
“Because I am not. I am for England, as is proper and expected for a man of my position.” Roberts sighed and placed his quill down. “I have explained myself to this numbskull repeatedly, with many, many a suggestion that while I cannot express pro-Northern sentiment, I am most certainly not for the South. Any man with a dash of sense would have taken my meaning, but Seward’s surety of my ill will to the North, or some devolution in the American wit, has rendered him incapable of reading between the lines.
“Thus, after the meeting, I shall bid these shores farewell and return home. I will do what I can from England, but it will certainly be much more difficult than being here. But if I can use this meeting to gather the requisite information, then I will have done more than I thought possible when I arrived in this dismal backwater.”
Roberts gave him a put-upon grin and a resigned sigh, but Daniel could see the fury and frustration in his eyes. He wasn’t good at dissembling, which made Daniel . . . not trust him, exactly. But feel slightly better about whatever this strange alliance was between them. He still had to question his motives, though.
“Being short on time doesn’t quite explain this carelessness,” he said.
Roberts raised a brow and regarded Daniel with a suddenly steely gaze. “Carelessness? I didn’t think that was the case, but perhaps I was mistaken about your capacity.”
Daniel swallowed and dropped the letter onto the desk before walking back to his own. “This meeting. Sons of the Confederacy and Jefferson Davis himself. All under one roof. You’re leaving anyway—why not poison them all and be done with it?”
The sharp laughter from Roberts startled Daniel. He’d thought the man was pointing out his foolishness, but he’d apparently found Daniel’s take truly entertaining.
“Mr. Cumberland, yes, I did think about poisoning their tea in a moment of great frustration, but I decided that it would be abominably impolite in addition to a declaration of war. One that would solve nothing.”
“What do you mean it would solve nothing?” Anger constricted Daniel’s breath suddenly. It was easy for Roberts to say such a thing from his mansion with hot water and plumbing and gas lighting, where even in the throes of war he still had tea and supper and tobacco. “Ridding the world of men such as these would solve a great many of my problems.”
“Would it?”
Daniel sucked in a deep breath. How dare he talk down to Daniel. How dare—
“When we carried you from the carriage, I felt the scar tissue on your back,” Roberts said somberly. “I am going to say this in complete seriousness and please don’t think I’m making light—slave masters have been whipping slaves for generations. They’ve been killing slaves for generations. Has all of that pain and all of those deaths stopped the Negro from desiring freedom?”
“Of course not,” Daniel bit out. “We are human and want to be free.”
“Exactly. Freedom is an idea. But the supremacy of the white race is another idea, a twisted and warped notion of gaining strength from the subjugation of others, and you can no more kill that by poisoning a handful of men than you can stop hope by whipping a slave.”
Daniel had no reply. This man was wrong. He spoke in hypotheticals because he had no idea, and could never begin to imagine suffering such as Daniel had known.
“I’ve angered you.” Roberts stood and walked over to the fireplace, throwing another piece of wood onto the flames. “I did not mean to. Please, I’d love to hear why you disagree.”
Of course, Roberts could discuss this logically; it wasn’t his humanity up for debate.
“By your logic, the North should have just surrendered to the South instead of fighting,” Daniel said. “What’s the point if you can’t kill an idea, after all?”
“No, no, no, that’s not what I said. I said you cannot kill a man in place of an idea. You can fight against an idea, as the North is to some extent, and you can defeat it. The Emancipation Proclamation did more damage than the Gettysburg, Sharpsburg, or Chattanooga campaigns.”
Daniel scoffed and when he spoke his voice was constricted by rage. “That half-assed token attempt at baiting the South? It was a weak nod to abolition driven by politics, not passion, and it’s conditional. When you can say a man is free here but not there, that’s not true freedom. The Rebels don’t care about that proclamation except wanting to spite it.”
Roberts opened his mouth to speak, shut it, then seemed to find what it was he wanted to say. “The damage done wasn’t in telling the Rebels that their slaves had to be freed. It was in telling the slaves that they could be freed. By order of law. Do you think there’s any going back from that for a people who have been waiting for a miracle and working to make one for themselves and their families? To my knowledge, freedom being granted seemed like an impossibility, and yet it has happened. The impossible is possible. Ideas are not immortal—they can be killed by newer and stronger ones.”
Daniel gripped his hands together in his lap. His fingers flexed, the muscles at his neck tightened, and he felt he couldn’t control the expressions his face was making.
He tried to school his expression to something resembling calm.
“I don’t believe I’ll be swayed by the words of a white Englishman who gets to leave this country and never deal with its inherent evil again. If someone were to get rid of Davis, in a public and terrible manner, the South would know fear. It would puncture this puffed up pretense of grandeur they’ve created. If you aren’t up to the task, just say so, but don’t hide behind these false notions of justice and an America that doesn’t exist.”
Roberts nodded a moment, then rubbed at his chin.
“That doesn’t exist yet. You are still in the cradle as a country. Not even one hundred years have passed since Yorktown! There remains plenty of potential in this American experiment; hope is not lost, Mr. Cumberland.”
“This country is young, but steeped in an evil as old as time. And sometimes evil only speaks the language of evil, and the only force that can stop it is one driven by a matching hatred. I cannot hope while men like Davis blithely rend the country in two and rip away the possibility for a better future.”
Roberts chuckled ruefully. “All I will say is that if someone was to get rid of Davis they’d be doing his opponents a favor. And his generals, too. It would certainly be a shock, but while the mourning clothes were still starched, men with more common sense and political prowess who’ve been waiting to harness power would step into the empty space he left behind. I’d be worried indeed if anything were to happen to dear old Jeff.”
Roberts didn’t understand that all his talk of killing ideas actually fit perfectly with what Daniel had planned. To many a Southerner, Davis was a rallying point for their cause. His politics didn’t matter, and neither did his prowess. He was an idea, and Daniel would smite that idea, lectures from an Englishman be damned.
Daniel stood. “I believe I’ll go find Sanchez.”
He didn’t interrogate why he wanted to be with her instead of alone when the property was large enough to provide him with the latter. Maybe he would tell her
his plan now. Or maybe he wouldn’t. That was the thing with detectives: they tended to keep secrets, even when they shouldn’t.
Roberts nodded. “Thank you for your assistance. Feel free to return later if you wish. I can use all the help I can get.”
Daniel gave a terse nod and stalked out.
He had his own mission and a few words from Roberts wouldn’t change his mind. Someone had to pay for all of this, didn’t they? For his pain? For the pain of his people?
Daniel had already learned he could rely on neither God nor the law to pass judgment on evil men.
He’d do it himself, and take the consequences as they came.
CHAPTER 20
Janeta wanted to leave.
She didn’t know where she would go, but the familiar wealth of Roberts’s home, and the time to reflect on all that had passed since she’d left her own, assailed her resolve and her growing sense of self.
She felt like one of the ruined daguerreotypes she’d seen in the back room of the photographer in Palatka, with the photo’s subject blurred and seemingly several versions of themselves struggling to exist at once.
It was hard, not falling back into the mind-set of the old Janeta while being waited on and chastised when she tried to help. It was hard, looking at Daniel working in Roberts’s office, handsome and smiling, engaged deeply in conversation with Roberts. He’d spent the last two days at work, and though he occasionally sought her out, he’d kept their conversations cordial. All business, as he described what he’d read in the missives, and what Roberts said. Meanwhile, she couldn’t stop thinking of the comfort she’d felt when their hands had touched on the porch.