“So there’s no reason Mr. MacKaye should return here to Thatcher Lane.”
“None.” She held up his card. “I’ll see him before he needs to think of Eli again.”
“Are Eli and those other boys safe?”
“As safe as any of us are, William.”
There being no adequate response to that, William Tillman stood and walked to the door, his body already tensing for the cold air he’d meet. “I’ll send a message about our next meeting,” he said, shaking her hand. “Please be careful and safe, Eugenia.”
“You as well, William. And let Adelaide know I’ll see her bright and early in the morning.” She opened the door and he rushed out before too much cold air could rush in. She quickly closed the door and stood before the fire for a moment to banish the chill before serving her dinner. Their next meeting. Would it be sooner rather than later? There was no way to know or predict, which meant that they didn’t know whether they would have days or mere hours to prepare for the arrival of Miss Harriet Tubman and the slaves she was delivering to freedom. They just had to be ready.
CHAPTER TWO
True to her word, Genie set out to work early the next morning. It was barely light, and she didn’t know until she passed through the space between the Back Street and Thatcher Lane that Arthur would be there to meet her and walk her the short distance to work—half the distance up Thatcher Lane to the main street, turn right, fifth storefront on the north side of the street, the one with the red door. She was dressed as Miss Eugenia Oliver, a gentlewoman of Color. Her hand, deep within the pocket of her voluminous skirt, caressed the ever-present derringer. She was not afraid, not like last night. She was, however, wisely cautious, as always.
“Good morning, Arthur,” she said cheerfully—and gratefully—when she saw him. He was the only person she trusted as much as she trusted William.
“’Morning, Miss Eugenia. How you today?” He touched his hat politely and offered his arm, which she took. Arthur was perhaps thirty years old and worked for William in his blacksmith shop. He walked with a pronounced limp, courtesy of a horse who had not been happy about being shoed, but anyone who equated Arthur’s infirmity with weakness did so only once.
“Well enough, Arthur, thank you. And you?”
“Just the same, ma’am.” Arthur was known to speak only to William and Adelaide Tillman, and to herself, and after his words of politeness she didn’t expect any more. She appreciated his silence and was accustomed to walking in silence with him, so she was surprised, startled, almost, when he kept talking. “Mr. William tol’ me about those boys live in that shack down from you. I got me two nephews, my sister’s boys, don’t have no place to live. They work carpentry and they good at it. Could fix that shack up real good.”
Now Arthur was done talking, having uttered more words than she’d ever heard from him. Genie thought about what he’d said. Certainly, having repairs made to the little-more-than-a-hovel where Eli lived with two other boys would benefit them, and apparently Arthur’s nephews as well, perhaps the entire street. But that would depend on the kind of men the nephews were, and Genie didn’t feel she could ask Arthur.
She could, however, ask Adelaide, which she did almost immediately on arriving at the shop, but Adelaide didn’t want to talk about Arthur’s nephew. She wanted to talk about Genie’s bold confrontation of Ezra MacKaye.
“Does anything frighten you, Genie Oliver?!”
“Many things!” Genie laughed when she spoke the words but it was the truth. “I just try not to show it.” Or speak of it. Genie had been afraid most of the time for most of her life. It was only recently that some of the fear had dissipated and she felt it safe to relax. Then that fugitive slave law had been passed and not only were escaped slaves like herself endangered, but any Colored person could be grabbed up and sold South at the whim of a self-appointed slave catcher.
“So, you were afraid yesterday?”
“Terrified. But I was more afraid of what would have happened had he come too far into the lane and someone even more afraid than I had shot and killed him.”
Adelaide’s sharp intake of breath said that was a possibility she hadn’t considered and that its implications truly were terrifying. Every house in Thatcher Lane would have been leveled, every occupant jailed. Or worse. No Colored person could kill a white one, no matter the reason, without dire consequences. Adelaide knew this. Not for the first time Genie wondered why William didn’t talk more honestly with his wife. She was a very intelligent woman, and a very brave one: She knew of their Underground Railroad work and she not only supported it, but provided assistance whenever and however she could. She had to want more involvement, Genie thought, and the thought immediately evaporated as she thought how protective William was of her. He would be even more so of his wife.
“Arthur’s nephews are good boys,” Adelaide said. She explained how, at ages sixteen and seventeen, they had come to be in the care of their uncle: Their mother married a man who wanted to move the family to West Chester where he had a job working for the railroad. The boys did not want to leave Philadelphia so their mother allowed them to remain with their grandmother, who suddenly died. “She was the cook in a rooming house and lived there rent free. Since the boys can’t cook—” With a wry smile and slight lifting of her narrow shoulders, she left the inference to achieve its logical conclusion.
“I don’t think that place where Eli lives is the best place for Arthur’s nephews but I think I might just know of a place,” Genie said thoughtfully.
“Why not, Genie? It was William’s idea.”
Knowing better than to offer any comment critical of William, Genie said, “In another few days none of those boys will live in that place. It’s not much more than a hovel, Adelaide, and it has no stove or fireplace, and not even the best carpenter can make a place livable without a stove to warm it in the winter. The boys will be sleeping where they work within the week.”
“What’s your idea, Genie?”
“You know Peter Blanding, the watch and clock repairman?”
Adelaide was nodding. Of course, she did—everyone knew Peter Blanding, if not by name then certainly by sight. He was over six feet tall with a shiny bald head and a snow-white beard that almost reached his waist. Genie saw the understanding dawn in her eyes. “Do you think he will, Genie?”
She was on her feet and wrapping her shawl around her shoulders. “I’m going to ask him right now.” There was a room with a separate entrance at the rear of Blanding’s shop where his son and daughter-in-law had lived until a month ago when the couple moved to New York to work for her father, who made watches and clocks for the wealthy instead of merely repairing them for the modest of means. Adelaide and every other merchant in their street knew this. What they didn’t know, what only Genie, William and one other person knew, was that the cellar of Peter’s store was a hiding place on the Underground Railroad. With Mrs. Tubman due to arrive with a new shipment in the very near future, having someone living in that room would be better than having it empty. No suspicion would be aroused by people entering and exiting the back door, especially if the people were Colored.
Blanding looked up when the bell above his door tinkled its greeting, and his face broke into its own wide grin of greeting when he saw Genie. He dropped his tools and hurried from behind his repair counter. “Eugenia Oliver!” he exclaimed. “To what do I owe such a visit?” He embraced her warmly and whispered into her ear, “Is anything amiss?”
“Everything is fine, Peter. I’ve heard nothing to the contrary,” she whispered back. Where Mrs. Tubman was concerned, no news truly was good news. “You’re looking well,” she said aloud, stepping away from him. “I’ve heard that you take your supper with the widow Carpenter and I also hear that she is a very fine cook.”
He blushed so furiously that Genie was afraid that his head would explode so she told him the reason for her visit to give him something else to think about. He readily agreed, even after wondering
whether the boys were too young to be on their own, then reminding himself that he’d been on his own since about that same age. He took her through an all but invisible door at the rear of the shop and into the room behind it. It was partially furnished—the boys would need another bed, but being carpenters, that wouldn’t be a problem. There was a cast iron stove with a stack of wood beside it, a built-in sink, and cabinets sufficient for clothes, personal items, and cooking and eating utensils. Genie unlocked and opened the door to the outside. It would be perfect for Arthur’s nephews. Instead of returning to her own shop to give Adelaide the news so she could tell William when he got home that night, and he, in turn, would tell Arthur the following day, Genie left Blanding and hurried to the blacksmith shop—hurried because chilly had become cold and because there were fewer people walking the route to the smithy. Fewer people meant greater danger.
Both William and Arthur were busy with customers when she entered and her arrival startled them. Arthur recovered first: She looked just as she had when he had left her several hours earlier, so no harm had come to her. Whatever business she had with William was not his concern unless William made it so. Arthur turned back to his customer. William, on the other hand, knew that Genie Oliver only visited his shop in the dead of night, disguised as a man, to discuss the safe passage of escaped slaves. She smiled brightly and nodded her head to indicate that there was no problem, and he returned his attention to his business. Only someone who knew him well would notice his agitation. She should not have surprised him like this!
“Good day, Mistress Oliver,” he said, extending his hand to her a few moments later as his customer exited. “How are you?”
“All is well, Mr. Tillman,” she replied, gripping his hand firmly and meeting his questioning gaze with an unwavering one.
“Adelaide?”
Genie could have kicked herself! She hadn’t considered that her unusual arrival would cause her friend to be concerned for his wife. “Adelaide is fine, though no doubt worried that I’ve been away for so long,” she said sheepishly, and quickly told him of the plan for Arthur’s nephews. He gave her a wide, warm grin and hurried across the room to the forge to tell Arthur, who dropped the equine foot he was holding and hurried over to Genie faster than she would have imagined possible. He gave her a regal bow, thanked her profusely, said he’d see her in the morning, and returned to his work.
“That’s a very fine idea, Genie, to put Arthur’s nephews in that space. We can prepare the cellar without raising suspicion.”
Genie nodded, then said, “I need to speak with Eli, William. He hasn’t returned to the Back Street since he ran away from Ezra MacKaye and I need to ascertain whether he knows what Mr. MacKaye thinks he knows.”
“We’ll find him and send him to you,” William said, adding that he’d drive her back to her shop in his mule trap. That way he could see for himself that his wife was well, Genie thought with an internal smile.
✴ ✴ ✴
Ezra walked briskly, hands stuffed into his pockets and shoulders hunched against the cold, damp, grey dawn. He’d done considerable walking lately, from Montgomery Street all the way down to South Street, and across the city, from the Delaware River to the Schuylkill, looking for Edward Cortlandt. He’d learned that the back rooms of seedy bars and chop houses were not warm, welcoming places but ones that stank of grasping desperation. The men who frequented these places were not the kind of people he’d ever trust enough to do business with despite the fact that many of them were wealthy and prominent. They didn’t even trust each other: Not one of Cortlandt’s friends owned having seen him. In fact, to hear them tell it, they weren’t really his friends, just men with whom he gambled, the difference between them being they were men who paid their gambling debts. On this dismal November morning, Ezra felt very much like a gambler himself. He was playing his final card: Checking the passenger manifests of the cargo ships for a man fitting Cortlandt’s description. If he failed, he would lose the promised referral of his services by the senior Cortlandt to other wealthy Philadelphians. That dire possibility weighed heavily on him.
He kept his head down as he walked toward the docks but let his eyes wander, watching for Colored citizens. This was a new habit, one adopted since meeting Eugene Oliver five days earlier. What he saw were Black men and women everywhere, and not just servants, but carpenters and smithies and wheelwrights and hod carriers. They were part of the scenery, and Ezra chastised himself for his failure to notice before now. No wonder he couldn’t find Edward Cortlandt; he couldn’t even see people who weren’t in hiding! He thought again, as he had so many times, of Gene Oliver’s confident proclamation: “If young Master Cortlandt is still in Philadelphia, I will tell you where to find him.” So sure of himself had he sounded that Ezra had wanted to believe him; had believed him, briefly. Then rational thinking had taken hold. How could a poor Black man find a wealthy white one who didn’t want to be found in a city that lived and breathed catering to wealthy white men? Too unlikely for words.
“Help! Help me! Oh God please help me!”
The woman’s screams followed by loud male commands to “Stop!” snapped Ezra from his musings and put him on alert. People were scattering, clearing a wide path for whatever trouble was manifesting. A horse bus clattered rapidly down the middle of the street, as if trying to get clear as well. Only Ezra did not change his direction, but he did stop walking, placing himself directly in the path of a running, screaming Colored girl. Close on her heels were two scruffy, scraggly white men.
“I ain’t no runaway, honest to God I ain’t!” The girl’s terrified scream hurt Ezra’s ears and sent a shiver down his back. He’d never before heard the sound of pure, raw terror.
“Move aside, mister. This ain’t yer biz’ness.”
He’d also never before personally encountered slave catchers. Until he met Eugene Oliver, he’d never even given them serious thought, beyond a passing knowledge of their existence. Now Ezra looked calmly and steadily at the two breathless men before him, looked into their eyes, one pair at a time, because their eyes were the best hint to the ages of the men as both were fully bearded with long, wild-looking hair protruding from beneath the wide brims of dusty hats. Their clothes were rough and dirty, their hobnail boots mud-caked. They looked and smelled as if they hadn’t washed in weeks. Slave catching obviously wasn’t a very prosperous enterprise. “This girl is a runaway?” he asked the one who had spoken and whom he judged to be the elder of the two.
“Like I said, this ain’t yer biz’ness.”
“No! I’m a free Colored person! I was born free!” the girl screamed from behind him. “I gave him my papers to prove it! He’s got my papers! My name is Liz’beth and I work for Miz Read, me and my Ma, and Miz Read, she hires me out! I ain’t no runaway! I’m free-born like my Ma!”
Ezra moved a step forward, trying to escape the shrill wailing of the girl who now held on to his coattails, but the slave catchers took his action as threatening.
“I’ll shoot yer ass!” The younger man reached inside his coat as the words left his mouth, but the effects of the drink that was an obvious part of his existence slowed him, and Ezra grabbed the hand that held the pistol.
“I’ll shoot you with your own gun,” he said, forcing the man’s hand to turn inward, toward his own chest, “if you don’t let it go. I mean it.”
“Help, Algie! Make him turn me loose.”
“Give ’im the damn gun, Jack,” the older man said, spitting a dark, ugly stream of tobacco from the side of his mouth without ever taking his eyes from Ezra. Because he was watching Ezra, he couldn’t see how quickly and comically the gathered crowd moved away from the stream of nasty tobacco juice.
“Damn Quaker,” Jack muttered, but he released the gun, and Ezra quickly cocked it and pointed it at Algie’s chest.
“Do you have this girl’s papers?”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Algie snarled, his lips wet with tobacco juice. “Why yo
u care what happens to a nigger slave girl?”
“How much will you get for her?” Ezra asked, and felt the terrified tug on the back of his coat. “When you steal people like this girl and sell them South, how much do you get? Because I’ll pay you double. Right here and now. Give me the girl’s papers and I’ll pay you double what you’d earn selling her South.”
“Twenty dollars!” Jack yelled, ignoring the warning look from Algie. “That’s what we git! You give us forty and you can have her sorry Black ass!”
Ezra kept the gun leveled at Algie’s chest and reached into his coat pocket.
“Why’re you doin’ this? You ain’t no Quaker, you’re a bleedin’ Scotsman is what you are,” Algie hissed, and spit again, this time directly at Ezra’s feet.
“Do you want the forty dollars?”
Algie gave Ezra a look of cold hatred. This man, this slave catcher, would kill him given the chance. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I want the forty dollars. And I want my gun back.”
“Your gun?” Ezra asked He tried to sound amused though he was anything but. “This is a Navy Colt and there’s only one way a degenerate like you could get a revolver like this: By stealing it.”
“He were already dead, so I didn’t steal nothin’,” Algie said defensively.
Ezra’s eyes scanned the crowd, then returned to Algie. “So. You steal from a dead sailor and you steal children. The only reason I don’t shoot you myself is it would be a waste of good gun-powder.” There was a muffled chuckle from the crowd as Ezra held out the money. Jack reached to grab it but Ezra pulled it back. “I want the girl’s papers.”
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