by John Jakes
•
September the 10th. I am reduced to penury—living in a hovel and tending the stables for the smartly dressed young cadets at the Military Institute. I am an outcast among those I sought to serve. Only Dr. White’s merciful intercession enabled me to remain in Lexington at all, gaining for me as he did this lowly position. Captain Tunworth has assumed responsibility for the worldly needs of Fan and the boys—and is providing for them more handsomely, I am sure, than ever I could on my slim stipend as an itinerant preacher.
It is an irony that my cousin once removed, would I but make the effort to locate her, could rescue me from this wretched state by virtue of my father’s gold. Yet I am not willing to take steps to contact her. To throw myself upon her mercies would be to deny the dictates of my conscience—
So I wear rags. Subsist on the coarsest of fare. Perform menial work while enduring the jibes of some of the cadets. I know I am considered the worst sort of fool—a self-condemned martyr.
I also suspect that many in Lexington wish I would leave. I am conscience made visible. A pricking thorn. That is why I will not go. My resolve has become as a stone. I answer to God and His Son Jesus Christ and Their higher law, and to no others.
•
September the 11th. Only my faith gave me the courage to endure an incident which transpired this afternoon. I saw Fan and the boys on the grounds of the Institute, bound upon some social errand or other.
Little Matthew would have spoken, but Fan pulled him sharply away and struck his hand when he resisted. Gideon showed, no expression whatever; I believe he knows it would not please his mother if he recognized me.
Jeremiah, four, is too small to do so—especially as I am an unkempt, threadbare figure—no longer the same man physically or spiritually that I was a mere six months ago.
I watched them until they passed from view. Not even Matthew would look back.
•
September the 12th. A professor at the Institute informed me this morning that California has been admitted as a free state. After much struggle and many portents of failure, Clay’s program is at last being maneuvered through the Congress—largely with the help of a senator who belongs to the Democracy, Douglas of Illinois, whose support had not previously been counted on.
Old Webster is now in Fillmore’s cabinet, Secretary of State. Clay, exhausted, has gone to Rhode Island to rest. Neither can directly engage in the legislative battle. But Douglas has seen the danger, and responded to it—
If the rest of the compromise bills can be passed, perhaps the Union can be saved. That now appears more likely than it did at the start of this tumultuous season.
Autumn is coming to the valley. The coloring of the countryside, the hue of change, reminds me that men too must undergo change. So I have done, by speaking my beliefs and enduring the consequences.
I do not hate those in Lexington who abuse me openly or in private—the cadets, Captain Tunworth. I pray for reconciliation. I pray the Union may be preserved, though I am frequently pessimistic. I fear the issues are too deep and divisive for Clay’s compromise to bring more than a temporary tranquility.
Later. The voice of the higher law spoke to me again. I cannot remain passive in my protest—though I will be circumspect, so that I may be useful to the Lord for many months to come.
Tomorrow, I will seek out Syme and reveal my willingness to help him perform the secret work I am convinced must be done.
* Book Three *
Perish with the
Sword
Chapter I
The Legacy
i
OUTWARD BOUND FROM BOSTON HARBOR, the gigantic six-masted steamship belched smoke from her stack. Louis Kent, watching from the port rail of Yankee Arrow, a much smaller coastal steamer, nearly lost his broad-brimmed wide-awake to a sudden gust of wind.
He caught the hat as it tumbled off his head, then exclaimed, “I can’t make out her name. But I see the British flag—”
A few steps further along the rail, clutching her parasol with one hand and her spoon bonnet with the other, Amanda turned to her companion, a broad-shouldered, six-foot Negro in his early thirties. He had a prominent nose, deep eye sockets that accentuated the darkness of his eyes, and skin of a lustrous bronze hue. His long hair, neatly trimmed at the line of his collar, tossed in the wind. He was faultlessly dressed in a frock coat and strapped trousers whose elastic bands fitted under the soles of polished boots.
“Is that one of the Cunard steamers, Mr. Douglass?” Amanda asked. She and Louis had made the gentleman’s acquaintance on the voyage up from Norfolk—he had boarded at Philadelphia—and had dined at his table, despite the purser’s whispered suggestion that they needn’t segregate themselves in that fashion. Amanda had remarked tartly that the other white passengers were the ones segregating themselves—foolishly—since the gentleman was delightful and provocative company.
“No,” Douglass answered in a mellow voice. “I believe that’s a sister ship of the Great Britain. A competitive line. At the end of my lecture tour in ’47, I came home on the Great Britain. She’s screw-driven—just like that one. Those masts are an innovation too. All but one’s hinged. They can be lowered to the horizontal for less wind resistance and greater speed. Great Britain brought me to America in just under thirteen days.”
Amanda marveled. “Thirteen days from Europe. Imagine! It seems machines are changing the whole world—”
Mr. Douglass smiled in a rueful way. “Every part of it except the most important. The human mind. Two years ago, I was the only male delegate at the conference on women’s rights in Seneca Falls. Afterward, I said publicly that I agreed with the ladies attending the conference—society does discriminate against women. The good folk in Rochester treated me as if I were twice a leper. Leprous once for being black, leprous again for daring to suggest women are entitled to equal treatment under the law. Those Rochestarians thought I was crazy! There’s not much a steam engine can do to change attitudes of that sort, I’m afraid.”
“I still don’t see why she carries sails,” Louis said, absorbed by the sight of the huge ship putting out to sea. He’d hooked his elbows over the rail and was hanging onto his wide-awake with both hands. He looked smart in his trim black jacket, vertically striped railroad trousers, button boots and dark green cravat.
“For the same reason we do,” Douglass said, gesturing to the masts of the Arrow. He spoke loudly because of the thump of the Arrow’s engines and the steady roar of water spilling down from her enclosed paddlewheels amidships. “To conserve coal—and the engines—when there’s a fair wind,” he explained to the boy. “To provide motive power if the engines fail.”
He settled his white summer top hat on his head. “We’ll be at the pier shortly. I’d better go below and sign that book for you, Mrs. de la Gura.”
“I thank you for that, Mr. Douglass—and for the pleasure of talking with you during the voyage.”
Amanda smiled as she said it. But she was decidedly uncomfortable in the four-foot-wide skirt of crinoline and the flounced, stiffened muslin petticoat beneath. Summer-weight the materials might be. But all the clothing was a burden to someone accustomed to the more casual dress of California.
Still, she was determined to get used to wearing what was proper. She looked quite attractive in the expensive outfit. Her hair was done in the style that had been popular for more than a decade: parted in the center, with the sides drawn down and beneath the ears and pinned up in a bun in back. Mercifully, daytime fashion permitted her to go without the annoying ready-made side ringlets held in place by cumbersome combs. The ringlets were mandatory in the evening.
As Douglass started away, she added, “I do hope I may be able to make a donation to your paper soon.”
The black man turned back, pleased. “A shortage of money is the constant plague of The North Star. Without the help of friends, my paper would never survive, and my message could never be spread so broadly. As it is, I spend too much
time running from city to city presenting lectures and soliciting donations. Your contribution would be very welcome. An address reading Fred Douglass, Rochester, New York, will bring it to me—”
“I’ll remember.”
As Douglass disappeared down a companionway, Amanda turned toward the panorama of Boston, a murky jumble of piers, hills, residences, and commercial buildings that poured smoke from tall chimneys into the already gray air of the late June morning.
“I’m not sure all those factories are as great a boon as everyone claims,” she remarked to Louis. “Look at the dirt they spew into the sky.”
The boy was more interested in their departed companion. “Is Mr. Douglass really famous, Ma?”
“Louis, I’ve reminded you before—it’s time you began saying Mother.”
The dark-eyed boy scowled. “What’s the difference?”
“One sounds more genteel than the other. And to answer your question—yes, Mr. Douglass is just about the most famous runaway slave in America. People pack his lectures.”
“Then why wouldn’t anyone else sit with him in the dining room?”
“Because he’s a black man.”
“But he’s very nice.” His scowl deepening, Louis surveyed the passengers along the rail. “People should be whipped for treating him that way.”
Amanda said nothing. The remark about whipping disturbed her. Louis was beginning to display some less than admirable traits. She recalled the dreadful row with Jephtha’s son over a toad during their visit in the Shenandoah Valley.
She tried to recall when she’d first become aware of the boy’s aggressive attitude. In California, she decided. Soon after she told him of the shooting in Hopeful. She’d taken pains to explain that the man had threatened her, but it was the fact that she’d killed him that seemed to make the greatest impression on Louis. Quite a few times since, she’d noticed him watching her with a speculative expression.
Now, while his attention was diverted, it was her turn to study him. He was handsomer than Cordoba. Yet he seemed to lack the Mexican officer’s softening humanity.
On the long voyage from San Francisco, she’d finally told Louis about his father. The experience had been harder on her than it seemed to be on him. He’d asked a few questions about Cordoba’s appearance and character, and accepted Amanda’s statement that the officer was an honorable man whom she’d loved.
She deliberately refrained from cautioning the boy about mentioning his illegitimacy to others; he had no friends with whom to discuss it, and she was afraid that undue emphasis would lend it an unhealthy importance it shouldn’t have.
Louis hadn’t brought up the subject since that one and only discussion. In many ways, the boy was an extremely private person. Not surprising, since she’d been occupied with so many other things these past few years. And would be in the weeks and months to come. She wondered whether their new life in the east would be good for him—
A bit too late to think of that, she reflected. Still, his words about whipping put her on guard. If she were required to perform any unpleasant actions in connection with Hamilton Stovall, the boy must never become aware of them.
The pilot maneuvered Yankee Arrow through the crowded harbor. Amanda felt just a bit intimidated by the great city rising before her. She was angered by the reaction. Here she was, about to step ashore to begin a new life just the way her grandfather had done eighty years ago, and her gloved hands were trembling!
Despite her anxiety, she was fascinated by the sprawl of the city, the gush of smoke from the manufacturies, the crowded confusion of the docks becoming visible off the bow. Boston, like the other cities she’d glimpsed on the trip, seemed to symbolize the wealth, the power, the human energy and inventiveness of the industrialized east. In all her years, she’d never seen anything that even resembled this part of America.
There were nearly twenty-five million people in the nation now. Population, according to Mr. Douglass, had grown at an unprecedented rate of thirty-six percent in ten years. And there appeared to be no limit to the mechanical genius of the country’s citizens.
For two decades, McCormick’s reaper had been improving the productivity of the farms. Three rival inventors—Howe, Wilson and Singer—were vying to produce a device for mechanized sewing. She’d overheard a man on the steamer discussing a fellow named Otis, who proposed to build some sort of oversized box to lift and lower passengers within a shaft inside a building. The man had made an extravagant prediction: structures as tall as eight, ten or twelve floors would be commonplace if Otis succeeded.
The marvels were by no means limited to the large and spectacular. In her cabin, Amanda had a half dozen samples of a remarkable little invention called a “safety” pin, perfected only a year ago. The sharp end was springy, and hid away within a small metal cap when the pin was fastened.
She was both fearful and excited at the idea of creating a place for herself in this restless, fast-changing society. It would be an important place, too. She had the means. In her portmanteau, she carried the document Jephtha had signed, granting her the right to administer the California claim—
For a few moments she pondered the sad enigma of the Reverend Jephtha Kent, a pious, haunted-looking young man who scarcely resembled his father. Something was seriously wrong in Jephtha’s family; she’d sensed that all during her visit.
Perhaps it was friction over the slave problem. Jephtha’s petite and attractive wife had made it clear she was a partisan of the system. His father-in-law, a detestable rogue named Tunworth, had been even more outspoken, positively vitriolic. But Jephtha himself had given few hints of his own convictions. To Amanda that suggested he didn’t feel free to voice them. Having secured what she came for, she’d been glad to leave the tense household.
Thoughts of her cousin once removed reminded her of Bart’s warning about the stormy political situation here in the east. She had seen another tangible example aboard the Yankee Arrow: the public shunning of a noted man who happened to be black.
Perhaps the socially generated turmoil was one more reason she felt uneasy. She didn’t want to be drawn into it. And yet, quite without realizing she was being drawn in, she’d taken Louis to sit with Douglass in the dining room. No great damage done by that—snickers and glares could do her no harm. But she’d have to be careful of any deeper involvement. It could divert her from her purpose.
ii
With her autographed copy of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass tucked under one arm, Amanda waited impatiently near the open door of a private office at Benbow and Benbow.
Yankee Arrow had let down its gangplank less than an hour ago. Clerk’s pens had stopped scratching the moment she and Louis walked into the dusty-smelling outer room of the law firm.
She was still conscious of eyes turned her way.
Louis raised his head at the sound of faraway thunder. At the open door, a clerk was speaking to the invisible occupant of the private office: “—a Mrs. de la Gura, sir.”
A somewhat high-pitched male voice snapped back, “The Benbows have no clients by that name. If she insists on seeing someone, refer her to one of the junior partners—”
Amanda stepped forward. “If you’ll excuse me”—the clerk had to move or be bowled aside—“I insist on speaking to one of the senior partners.” She stopped in the doorway. “Is your name Benbow?”
At an ornate desk in front of a wall bookcase jammed with reference volumes, an elderly man with thin white hair and pale skin swung his spectacles back and forth from one hand. He studied his visitor disapprovingly.
“Yes, madam, I’m William Benbow, Junior.”
“Well, I’m not precisely a client as yet. But before we finish our interview, I will be. Now if you’ll dismiss this young man, I’d like to discuss my business—”
Benbow flung down the spectacles. “See here! I am preparing an important brief. If you insist on seeing me, make an appointment for sometime next week.”
Amanda shook her head and walked into the gloomy office. “You don’t understand, Mr. Benbow. I’ve come all the way from California, and I don’t propose to wait. I’m Gilbert Kent’s daughter.”
William Benbow, Junior, was seized with a fit of coughing. He groped for a crystal water jug and overturned one of the tumblers before he poured and gulped a drink. It was a full minute before Amanda was sure the old man wasn’t going to faint away.
Turning to the clerk, she said, “You may go.” She took hold of the door and pushed to make certain he would. Louis grinned and darted into the office before the door shut.
iii
“Incredible,” William Benbow, Junior, said at the end of Amanda’s rapid summary of her history—the portions of it she cared to reveal, that is. “Absolutely incredible. You do resemble your father. At the time he died, my father”—a gesture toward a dour portrait on one wall—“was his attorney. I was still clerking in the outer chambers.” The lawyer wiped his eyes with a kerchief, replaced his spectacles. “You mentioned business—if it has anything to do with your gold claim, I should advise you that the Benbow firm has no expertise in that area.”
Amanda replied, “No, it has nothing to do with the California property. I may need your help with a simple real estate transaction.”
Benbow looked a trifle crestfallen. “Real estate?”
“I assure you, Mr. Benbow, if you serve me capably in this small enterprise, I’ll probably have a good deal of work for you later on.”
“You plan to stay in the east permanently?”
“That depends on a number of factors we needn’t go into right now. Are you familiar with the house my father owned on Beacon Street?”
“Quite familiar.” Benbow nodded, his manner growing more cordial. “My father took me there to visit on several occasions. A handsome residence—”