A Tangled Mercy

by Joy Jordan-Lake

  Yet I sometimes lie awake and wonder, What if even now we’re plotted against, our throats about to be slit in our very beds?

  Kate and Rose exchanged glances over the journal.

  “Oh my God,” Kate said.

  Nonsense, Nina assures me. We simply misheard.

  She has seen, she says, the way her mother makes the family servants regret the slightest word out of place—their legs and backs, even their mouths torn to shreds. On that, Nina is right. I myself was served tea by a Grimké servant whose iron headpiece included a bit such as I would not place on my horse. The servant had attempted escape.

  Yet, I see a look in Dinah’s eyes now that I’ve not seen before—full of fury, I think, and sometimes even contempt. Why I am subjected to this from my very own maid, I cannot say.

  Some days I feel as if there were something welling up from under the harbor—as if a wave were swelling from deep underneath, and will soon crash down upon us.

  Rose shut the journal gently, smoothing its cover and her linen skirt with one sweep of her arm. “Well, now. I suppose that is enough for our first day together, don’t you?”

  Kate sat stunned at the abrupt shift—as if Rose had dangled a life preserver in front of Kate’s flailing, drowning form—the element for her research that might land her a final chance in the department—then blithely walked away.

  She laid a hand on the old lady’s arm. She was willing to beg. “Rose, don’t stop there. Please. This sort of find is invaluable. I’d love us to read on. I’d love to know more. This could be really, really important.” Not just to the advancement of historical scholarship, she wanted to add, but to my survival in the department. The only place I really belong. If I belong anywhere.

  “Of course, dear. However, as you and I are only getting to know one another, let us proceed accordingly, with properly small steps, shall we?” Rose leveled her gaze, the old woman’s eyes so pale, so nearly translucent, Kate had the odd sensation of seeing straight through them, even as Rose was seeing out.

  Kate made herself nod. “Of course. It’s your journal, Rose. And I’m grateful for the chance to look at it. I would so, so love to come back again.” She risked adding, “Soon.”

  “I believe I would like that as well, Katherine. Do give me a way to contact you, won’t you? And I’ll be in touch.”

  Scanning the phone number that Kate jotted down, Rose Pinckney raised a julep tumbler as if in a toast. “Trust, my dear, is earned over time. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  And with that, Mrs. Lila Rose Manigault Pinckney saw her to the door.

  Kate emerged onto Meeting Street, blinking against the sun. At the street’s end, where it ran headlong into a swath of crushed shell and live oaks and, beyond that, the sea, sat the sprawling white inn where Percival Botts was staying.

  Botts, who had yet to answer her calls.

  Taking two steps at a time, Kate leapt up to the porch of the inn and rang for the innkeeper, who answered the door with a broad smile and the smell of vanilla about her.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Kate said. “I was scheduled to meet with one of the guests of your inn, but he failed to show up for our meeting. A Mr. Percival Botts. I just wanted to be sure he was all right.”

  The innkeeper bobbed her head. “Well, how sweet of you to check on Mr. Botts. The attorney you’re meaning, right? As a matter of fact, dear, he seemed fit as a fiddle—for a man of his age, I mean—when he checked out yesterday afternoon. Bless his heart, I had to charge him for the room, since it was a last-minute issue that called him away. I do so hate to do that, but I couldn’t very well rent the room. He did understand. So kind of you to check.”

  Yesterday afternoon. Which would have been right after he’d left Penina Moise. Right after, no doubt, seeing Kate there.

  What was it he so wanted to avoid being asked about her father or about her mother or about their connections with—and their fears of—Charleston’s past?

  What was Botts wanting to hide?

  Not caring what direction she walked but needing to think, Kate found herself at the City Market, with its stalls of T-shirts and sweetgrass baskets and porcelain magnolia mugs.

  Replaying in her mind what she’d just heard, she collapsed onto a bench, around her the chatter and swirl of the market—the Gullah and Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, the rumble of horseshoes on pavement and the shuffle of tourists through the merchandise stalls—like the low churning of the sea a few blocks away.

  Her gaze swinging out to the water, Kate thought of Tom’s name on the list of Russell household possessions, his beginning to craft bayonets not long after the list had been penned. And Sarah Grace, her pages of notes and underlinings, all of them determined to prove that Tom Russell, blacksmith and weapon maker, somehow survived that summer—the turmoil and violence that was coming.

  Kate heard Rose’s voice forming Emily’s words again—Emily, who in that spring of 1822 must have sensed deep down what she would have never spoken aloud:

  Some days I feel as if there were something welling up from under the harbor—as if a wave were swelling from deep underneath, and will soon crash down upon us.

  Chapter 19

  1822

  The four men huddled under the trees froze.

  Nothing moved. Nothing except for Morris Brown’s Bible, one page lifting in a soft sea breeze.

  “It’s not death,” Morris Brown said again, “we should fear.”

  Their eyes on the patroller, whose gun was still leveled on Tom, Mingo and Ned raised their shovels and gently began sifting the sandy soil onto the coffin’s lid.

  “When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stepped into the fire, who was it they feared? Was it the approval of the king? Tell me now. Or was it the Lord?”

  Mingo Harth looked up at the preacher. Shoveled again.

  Dismounting, the patroller seated himself under a live oak and rested his gun on his knee, its mouth still pointing toward Tom.

  “And when Daniel got dropped into that den for failing to obey the law of the land, was it the jaws of the lions he feared? Was it? Or was it the roar of the justice of Almighty God?”

  The preacher’s words came faster now, gathering force like the pull of a tide.

  The patroller’s chin sank back into the fleshy rolls of his neck.

  “Here’s who we have to fear: the one who said, ‘I stand against those who cheat the worker of his wages, oppress the poor widow and the orphan child.’”

  On the sermon rolled, wave upon wave, cresting and ebbing and cresting again.

  Tom took his turn with the shovel, the burn and strain of his arms and back a welcome relief from the standing-still fear of wondering what the patroller might think to inspect.

  The patroller’s face was dropping now, parallel with the ground. The clay and the sand rumbled and shushed on the pine lid of the coffin.

  “Here’s who we have to fear: the one that tramples the wicked, the one makes ashes of the folks caring only for their own pockets.”

  One shovelful after the other refilled the hole. Crunch and toss and rumble. Rhythmic and steady. Crunch and toss and rumble.

  “Help us, Almighty God. Give us hope.”

  Crunch and toss and rumble.

  “Give us courage.”

  Crunch and toss and rumble.

  “Teach us to look for the day when your will is done. When your kingdom comes.”

  At this, Ned tossed his next shovelful high in the air, shell and rock pummeling the new grave like distant thunder, a storm coming.

  The patroller woke up with a start and a curse. Stretched. “Finished?” he yawned.

  Morris Brown raised his head. “It is finished.”

  The patroller herding them from behind, the four men trudged back to the buggy and dropped the shovels into its bed.

  Mingo Harth tipped his head toward Morris Brown. “You prayed for mercy. And we thank you for that, Reverend. You and your merciful God.” He spat this last phrase.

/>   Ned raised a restraining arm to Mingo’s chest. “Enough for now, Mingo.”

  Mingo ignored him. “But here’s what I got to offer back, Preacher. A curse. For every drop of blood shed by every slave ever lived in this city. A curse. And not just today. But generation to generation. From the fathers all handed down. A curse, Reverend, that’s what I got to call down.”

  The patroller still a few yards away, twirling his pistol as he waited for them to check the harness traces, Morris Brown turned to the other three men. Looked Mingo Harth in the eye. And nodded.

  “I cannot disagree with you. How could I when I look at the pain of this world?” Morris Brown’s gaze swept over the three of them and rested finally on Tom. “I simply believe the curse will not have the last word.”

  The patroller whirled his horse then, reining the creature in only inches from Tom. “You know, blacksmith, there’s something I don’t like about the kind of slave who don’t live at the quarters where he belongs. You live in the Neck, boy, am I right?”

  Muscles twitching, Tom forced his gaze to stay on the ground. He nodded. But then—he could not stop himself this time—he raised his eyes to meet the patroller’s.

  Gripping his gun by its barrel, the patroller circled the firearm once over his head and brought its butt down on Tom’s skull with a thundering crack.

  Chapter 20

  2015

  The clang of iron on asphalt echoed up the street. She’d barely set foot on the sidewalk of East Bay when she heard her name—or a form of it.

  “Katie, Katie, Kate!” On the first row of the passing carriage, a little boy had bounced to his feet, waving with both hands.

  “Gabe!”

  Laying a hand on his father’s arm to rein in the horse, Gabe bounced on the seat. “Want to join us, Kate? We’re near up to the end, so no charge.” He turned to his father. “Right?”

  Daniel nodded as Gabe leapt down from his seat, grabbed her hand, and tugged.

  Kate shook her head. “It sounds great, but honestly, I’ve got so much more research to finish today and more appointments to set up. And I left all my notes spread out in the Special Collections archives. I wish I could.”

  Gabe gestured with his head toward the buggy, where his father stood waiting in the driver’s seat. “Didn’t you say you’d got some research-finding questions to ask me and Daddy? And didn’t my daddy say you’d better get to Mother E soon if you want to understand squat about Charleston?”

  Lifting a hand to Daniel’s wave, Kate read the sign on the carriage’s back for the first time:

  GULLAH BUGGY

  “THE ONLY THING NEW IN THE WORLD IS THE HISTORY YOU DON’T KNOW.”

  —HARRY S. TRUMAN

  Her gaze swung back to Gabe. “Are you really passing by that church with the sculpture as part of the tour? And the two of you narrating . . . I was about to pass up my best source, wasn’t I?”

  “She’d love to,” the boy answered for Kate and hauled her to the first row beside him.

  From the rows behind, a man with a Brooklyn accent muttered, “Is that what it takes to get to ride free—be a friend of the kid’s?”

  The man’s wife elbowed him hard in the side. “You got more money than you know how to spend, and the girl looks exhausted. How about you show some compassion for once?”

  Kate collapsed onto the bench, her backpack at her feet. “You know what? Thanks. I’m whipped from reading two-hundred-year-old handwriting all day.” She shot a glance sideways at Daniel, whose face streamed with sweat. “Which,” she added more quietly, “doesn’t sound very exhausting now that I say it out loud.”

  “Welcome”—Gabe swept an arm back to the carriage full of tourists—“to Gullah Buggy.”

  Daniel’s head ticked back as the carriage rolled forward. “Gabe here brings with him both superior social skills and connections with people in high places.”

  “My daddy was just telling these folks about how we run this business together, me and him,” Gabe said.

  “How’s this strike you for a job title? Supervisor of Song Quality, Harness Readiness, and All Right-Hand Turns.”

  Gabe considered, a finger to his chin. “I like it.”

  As Daniel launched back into his stories, Gabe cuddled into Kate’s side. Awkward at first, she patted his back. “Nice to see you again,” she whispered.

  As Daniel spoke, both hands helping make his points, Beecher ignored the bounce of the reins on his back. Kate checked Daniel’s neck for the leather cord attached to the medallion—but he wasn’t wearing it today. That question could wait.

  Hardly pausing to look forward as he told his benches of guests about the town, Daniel guided Beecher onto Church Street. “Dead ahead would be St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, its present structure completed in 1838, in whose graveyard are buried a number of notables, including the infamous senator John C. Calhoun, who made a political name for himself spinning slavery not just as an economic necessity but also as a God-ordained good. And who, by the way, abhorred Charleston and its hedonistic, too-tolerant ways.”

  Interspersed with his stories, Daniel sang, a deep bass rolling from him.

  “These were songs the people worked to,” Daniel said. “The songs they wept to.”

  Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus

  Steal away, steal away home,

  I ain’t got long to stay here.

  My Lord, he calls me, he calls me by the thunder . . .

  He seemed to know stories about every building in Charleston. “If you listen real close, you can still hear the sounds of those days.” He cupped a hand to his ear. “Come on now. Listen.”

  All the people on the buggy cupped their hands to their ears.

  “Because there was music down by the water in Charleston: the beat of waves slapping onto the seawall—the wall lower back then. The rhythms of the street vendors’ Gullah. The snap of ships’ sails coming unfurled. The chuckle and clink of kopecks and ducats and rupees, pennies and francs, all changing hands.”

  “I’m starting to hear it,” the woman from Brooklyn said, her accent taut against the sway and roll of the driver’s voice.

  “And you can hear, too”—he nodded—“the music of languages: Scots brogue with Sephardic Hebrew with French creole. People from all over the world. In the taverns. In the market. On the wharves.”

  “Hold on. Mixing? Here?”

  “Before, that is, a slave revolt planned in 1822 made all that mixing suddenly seem like a security threat.”

  Kate sat forward then, knocking Gabe out of an almost doze.

  “Damn city government,” groused the man from New York, “getting in the way of free enterprise. Like always.”

  His wife threw another elbow at him. “Shut up, Harry, for God’s sakes, and listen.”

  As they passed the Old Slave Mart Museum on Chalmers, already closed for the day, Gabe swung his legs back and forth from where he perched on the edge of the buggy’s first row. “Something about the dusk-end of a day always sends me to pensive.”

  Kate chuckled.

  “What? Didn’t I use the word right enough?”

  She tousled his hair. “Sends me to pensive, too.”

  Gabe squeezed her hand. “Whenever you’re feeling the sad coming on, I got your back.”

  She squeezed his. “And I got yours.”

  Arms never still as he talked, Daniel told of Fort Wagner on Morris Island and its beachhead defenses. About the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment featured in the film Glory.

  Gabe closed his eyes, lulled by Beecher’s rattle and clop.

  “Let me ask y’all,” Daniel said, “to think on whatever sorrows you got. The old slave spirituals were written to code the longing for freedom, to help carry the sad.” Gabe leaned close to his father as Daniel’s voice swelled up low and soft as the dusk:

  Deep river, my home is over Jordan.

  Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over . . .

  “That
young man,” said the woman with the New York accent, “has a voice made for the stage. I’ve not heard a first-class baritone like that in years.”

  “How many first-class baritones do you hear in Queens?” the woman’s husband wanted to know.

  She pinned him with a glare. “I get out, Harold, more than you know.”

  Daniel sang on without missing a note:

  The trumpet sounds within my soul:

  I ain’t got long to stay here.

  “I’m sorry,” Kate whispered, “about your momma.”

  “Me too.” Gabe sighed, his body giving a small shudder. “Real sorrowful sorry.”

  Daniel pulled Beecher to a stop on Calhoun Street in front of a steepled white brick edifice, a sweep of steps climbing to the second story and above that a soaring arch of stained glass.

  Daniel raised an arm. “Ladies and gentlemen, you see here before you a church that hope built. And rebuilt.”

  Cameras clicked, the whole buggy of passengers straining for a good and then a better shot.

  The moon full above the steeple, the church’s white-painted exterior glowed, its neighbors on Calhoun dark. The tip of its steeple glinting and its form staunch and towering, it stood like a soldier refusing to retreat when the rest of a battalion had run into the night.

  Kate sat bolt upright. “Oh my God, this is exactly where I needed to come next for research. This is where Denmark Vesey taught a class, and—”

  But Daniel had already launched into the church’s founding, his voice projected for the back row to hear. “Come back for a morning Gullah Buggy tour on a Monday, and I’ll give the whole history of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. For now, I’ll just say that in recent history, a number of key political, cultural, and Civil Rights leaders have spoken from this pulpit: Booker T. Washington, for example, and Martin Luther King Jr. Coretta Scott King led a march in support of striking hospital workers that began right here at this church. It was formed out of a general frustration by slaves and free blacks alike having to worship under the leadership of whites only. A man named Morris Brown founded this church, and a good three-fourths of Charleston’s black population came with him. But in its earliest days, a number of the key strategists of a slave revolt in 1822 were members of this church.”