A Tangled Mercy

by Joy Jordan-Lake

  Hamilton’s gloved hand lifted his walking stick. “I insist you tell us.”

  Ned shook his head, sorrowful still. “Heavy head. What he called you. What he calls all the buckruh, he say.”

  The boy’s face changed from fear to surprise, and he jerked his head left and then right like he was shaking it no, but Ned’s hand closed on the boy’s shoulder.

  Pinckney bristled. “Explain yourself, boy.”

  Ned sighed. “Said white men must have bigger, heavier heads, too big for they own bodies, he say, maybe because they got so many more brains to be holding up there.” Ned bowed his head. “Don’t reckon the child meant any much harm.”

  Hardly able to breathe, Tom marveled at the attitude, all this bowing and scraping and flattery and distraction, that Ned could throw on like a cloak, not once betraying his disdain for his own words. Not so much as a blink.

  Colonel Drayton straightened. “Good God. There’s no call to take the child’s head off his shoulders for that.” He studied Ned’s face. “You are Ned Bennett. The governor’s Ned.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s who I be. And proud of it, too.”

  “You were the one who voluntarily appeared at the workhouse today. To testify to those of us on the council Mayor Hamilton called. To clear your good name.”

  Tom’s heart lurched in his chest. Had Ned sold them all out to save his own skin?

  And here Tom stood, only one breath away from discovery, three city leaders tensed and waiting.

  “Yes, sir, I did, sure enough. Heard around town my name’d got mixed up in these ugly rumors, somebody’s idea of a terrible joke. Couldn’t sleep, not for two seconds straight, thinking somebody might think there was some real kind of danger to Charleston. Couldn’t stand thinking Governor Bennett might waste any worry. Sorry thing when rumors get spread.”

  The mayor tapped his walking stick on the palm of his opposite hand. “Indeed. So it would seem that Peter Prioleau’s testimony of some sort of murderous plot would be only the ravings of an unsound mind.”

  Ned Bennett’s head dropped lower still. “If you’ll forgive me saying, Mayor Hamilton, sir, Peter Prioleau’s mind never was much hinged onto sound. Alltime be the victim of nightmares he’d wake up to thinking was real.”

  “Nightmares,” said Jackson Pinckney—with less conviction than he might’ve been trying to muster. He spat to one side.

  Their top hats tipping together as they conferred, the three white men walked on. Only Jackson Pinckney glanced back once, eyes narrowed, as if not quite sure what he’d just witnessed.

  Ned Bennett stood where he was a moment, the boy fleeing up the other side of the street.

  “So. Tom Russell,” Ned said after a moment.

  Shakily, Tom stepped from the doorway and waited until the top hats had disappeared around the next corner. “You want to tell me what that was about?”

  “A performance,” Ned murmured. “And a damn fine one, wouldn’t you say? One of the best audiences I had today.”

  “Pinckney wasn’t convinced.”

  “Maybe not. But Drayton and Hamilton, they both were. And Hamilton’s made hisself the head of the council he’s gathered to see if there’s any fire behind the smoke of that traitor”—Ned spat the name—“Peter Prioleau.”

  Tom dropped his voice even lower than Ned’s. “Prioleau’s a house slave. Vesey said he wasn’t trusting house slaves.”

  “It was William Paul”—Ned shook his head in disgust—“trusted Prioleau with the plans. Prioleau went straight and squealed. William Paul been at the workhouse all day.” Ned cut his eyes now at Tom. “Torture got a way of making even a brave man talk.”

  Tom made himself ask, “All of us named?”

  Ned shook his head. “Not by Paul. My name got listed by Prioleau, what I heard—and me in Governor Bennett’s house. I don’t got to tell you how much the mayor’d like to pin something like this on the governor—for him being too soft on his slaves, Hamilton thinks, and look what kind of chaos gets whipped up. So I took myself there to chat with the council. Scared the pants off Hamilton, me showing up, smiling and wanting to clear my good name.”

  “Hamilton won’t let this thing lie. If Prioleau—”

  “Prioleau’s a fool.” Ned’s whisper cut into the quiet. “They got no evidence but his word. And they got their own egos to argue everything’s fine—all of us black folk just real happy in chains.” Ned turned back to Tom. “All us, we’ll just keep on”—he glanced over his shoulder—“what we been doing.”

  In the late afternoon, as Tom was crouched at the back of the shop, frantically painting an iron grille to distract himself from the waves of what-ifs pounding in, the front door eased open. Tom’s eyes swung over the breadth of the forge for a possible bayonet or bullet or knife showing, but all was well covered. He rose.

  A small, bearded man in dark pants and a dark shirt stepped softly inside as if he did not wish to disturb the silence. Tom stayed back from the counter and let his right hand drop to the ball-peen hammer lying across the anvil. Here stood the man from the tavern—a Quaker, yes, but also a white man. A white man who’d stayed behind when nearly all the slavery-loathing Friends had left. And who may have heard more than was safe.

  “Shovel,” the man said. “If thee would craft one more shovel, I would be grateful.”

  Warily, Tom nodded. Stepped closer to the counter. “When is it you need it by?”

  The man looked toward the window. “Sooner, perhaps, than I’d thought. It may be that I have to leave town very suddenly—a death in the family that my good wife and I fear is imminent. And may occur sooner than planned—that is, than we expected.” He turned back and met Tom’s eye. “And I wish to be prepared. Perhaps thee can understand our concern for the possible hurry.”

  The Quaker made no attempt to discuss the length of the handle or size of the scoop or payment.

  Tom stared at him. For a moment, neither man moved.

  Rumors had raged last Sunday at Morris Brown’s church, warning that city leaders were trying to lure house slaves to spy on those who might know something of a planned insurrection. So why wouldn’t the same city leaders try to use this left-behind Quaker?

  Tom’s mouth opened for a question he’d no idea how to word.

  Shouts on East Bay sent both of them to the front window. A horse was galloping full tilt up the street from the peninsula’s southern tip, its rider’s top hat blowing off his head, the rider never slowing to retrieve it—or even seeming to notice. The rider’s face came into focus as he approached.

  “Well, hell,” said a white man just outside the front window. “If that ain’t the mayor. Wonder what’s got him stirred up.”

  Gripping the windowsill, Tom kept his face blank.

  Trying but failing to meet Tom’s eye, the Quaker slipped through the front door without saying more.

  For the dregs of the afternoon, Tom lived in the silence that deafens: the tension of hearing nothing, knowing nothing. For hours he swung his hammer up into its arc and brought it crashing down on his anvil—his only relief that he had something to do with his hands. Pouring sweat, refusing to let himself rest, Tom crashed his hammer down.

  Despite William Paul’s so stupidly spreading the word to a house slave against Vesey’s order, despite Peter Prioleau’s squealing, despite the torture and interrogations of William Paul, despite three servants in the governor’s own household being named as part of the revolt, the city lay quiet now in the late afternoon.

  Maybe Ned Bennett’s gift for the theatrical, his volunteering himself—eagerly, humbly—to the council for questioning, maybe that had saved them.

  Maybe the plans for their own version of storming the Bastille—when the captives would walk free—could go on as planned.

  But Tom did not feel like celebrating as he ducked from alley to alley, the streets too still on this Friday evening. In place of the usual bustle of businesses bringing their affairs to a close and carriages venturing out
in the evening’s relief from the heat, East Bay sat eerily silent. Not peaceful in its stillness, but as if something sinister hung over Charleston, the city holding its breath, waiting.

  It was well before the curfew bell, but still his instincts told him to hide. To run. That something in the course of the day had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

  At the last lot on Meeting Street, he slipped into the shadows of the oaks and palmettos. His burial of the latest batch of bullets he’d hidden well, the locations already shielded by brambles and weeds, then sand and shell swept with palmetto fronds over the freshly dug holes so that no part of the lot appeared disturbed. It was the least safe of the locations—most of the weapons they’d made were concealed at Bulkley’s Farm, and they would capture many more by raiding the city arsenal and gun shops once the revolt was in motion.

  But this little stash was vital, Tom thought—and Gullah Jack had agreed: a small store of ammunition hidden here at the peninsula’s tip. If, by some remote chance, the bullets were discovered before the revolt, they might appear to be only the fishing-net weights their molds intended for them to be. And even if someone suspected they might have been intended for bullets, nothing about them would lead to Tom Russell or anyone else.

  To be sure of that, Tom buried the bullet mold now and covered it quickly before a phaeton rattled past, its driver not even glancing to the circle of oaks where Tom hid.

  Just then Dinah appeared on the second-story piazza of the Pinckneys’ Meeting Street home. Holding an evening gown, she shook it out with gusto—her eyes on the shadows across and down the street where Tom hid.

  He emerged for only a moment, just long enough to be sure she saw him, and nodded at her. It was enough. That would comfort her spirit.

  But a cry and running footsteps stopped him in his tracks.

  Instead of diving back into the shadows, Tom stepped into the street.

  “George!” he called. “What is it?”

  George Wilson hurtled against him as if he were running with his eyes closed. Then, shoving himself away from Tom’s chest, George stumbled headlong across the Battery toward the seawall.

  Then up onto the seawall itself.

  “You!” called a white man. “You, boy! Seawall’s only for whites!”

  But the man needn’t have bothered. Because George Wilson had already thrown himself off the wall’s far end and into the harbor, where the water at high tide would be well over his head.

  By the time Tom Russell got there, George had disappeared. Tom dove under, grasping, feeling. Emerged for air. Dove down again, powerful arms against the currents.

  Nothing.

  Until one hand brushed the sleeve of a shirt. A man’s arm.

  Tom kicked hard. Grasped the body from behind, one of his arms across George Wilson’s small chest. Tom kicked, gasping for air, hauling the man to the seawall, then up over it.

  Convulsing, George Wilson coughed up brown water, then lay still, curled on his side.

  Dripping and spent, Tom bent over him.

  “Sorry you did,” George whispered.

  Tom bent lower still. “What’d you say?”

  “Be sorry you saved me when you find out.”

  “Find out what?”

  “That I told. Told it all.”

  Heart exploding inside his chest, Tom froze where he bent.

  Moaning, George shook his head. “God help me. God help us all.”

  Forcing himself not to run as every instinct told him to do, Tom let George’s limp form slide to the ground.

  Straightening, he walked away. Slowly. Deliberately. Pulse racing.

  So they knew.

  Tom could see Dinah leaning heavily against the balustrade, her middle protruding so far now she’d turned sideways to be able to lean out over the railing. One hand dropped protectively to her belly. The other hand covered her mouth.

  She would have heard at the church the whispered warnings that spies could be infiltrating every meeting, every conversation.

  She must have seen just now George Wilson, trusted house slave, try to take his own life.

  She must have guessed.

  Mingo Harth appeared at the ragged hem of the crowd, a straw hat pulled low over his face, but with the same swagger that always marked his walk.

  Mingo worked his way closer to Tom. Tom edged away, but Mingo would not be shaken, wandering up East Bay after him.

  A half block from his shop, Tom jerked his head back but did not slow down. “Won’t have you seen anywhere near me or my shop.”

  Mingo kept strolling slowly forward but didn’t turn his head toward Tom as he passed. Hardly moving his lips and keeping his eyes far ahead up the street, Mingo said, “New orders. All plans moved. June 16, this Sunday, we fight. Middlenight, we begin. Messengers already left for the outlying farms.”

  June 16. Midnight. Two days from now.

  Tom knelt to retie a shoelace that was not untied, its thin leather strips stiff and shaking in his hands. “Tell Vesey,” he said, head down, “George Wilson’s gone and reported it all. On top of Prioleau . . .”

  Mingo Harth stopped here, a good three paces past where Tom knelt over his shoe. Mingo peered in the window of the shop where he’d halted. “On top of Prioleau,” he choked out, “they’ll believe Wilson.”

  Tom shifted to attend to the laces of the other shoe. “Tell Vesey.”

  Mingo Harth had already vanished into the mouth of the alley that ran alongside Tom’s shop.

  A white woman in a simple gray cotton dress and a plain close-fitting bonnet was hurrying past, pausing a few feet from Tom as she dropped the handbag she clutched and bent to retrieve it. “By North Adger’s Wharf,” she whispered—so low he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d heard. “Two lanterns. Tomorrow night just after dark. If thee are in need of help.”

  Tom stared at the woman.

  “My husband,” she said. “I believe thee know my husband. He has come to thy shop, yes? For a shovel most recently.”

  She fumbled with the handbag, its contents spilling across the brick. “How clumsy of me,” she said. “Would thee be so good as to hand me the comb that’s bounced to thy feet? My husband and I must travel to Flat Rock to bury our dead, a dear friend, tomorrow, just after dark, and the grief has made me clumsy, I fear.”

  Tom bent for the hair comb she’d dropped, carved whalebone, two words etched crudely at its top: STEAL AWAY.

  “I thank thee.” She smiled at him. “It’s a favorite song of mine that’s carved into the comb.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tom said, watching her face and scanning the street, “for your grief.”

  The woman stood. Met his eye. “We do not grieve as those without”—she paused before the last word—“hope.”

  From several blocks north, near the workhouse, two riders approached, their horses in a fast trot.

  James Hamilton, still hatless, was one, looking paler than ever, even well into summer.

  And the other was Jackson Pinckney.

  “I must go,” said the woman.

  Tom would have slipped into the alley alongside his shop if Mingo hadn’t just gone that way. None of them could afford to be seen with the others now.

  Not ever again.

  But this was no time for looking frightened. Tom straightened. Flexed back the full breadth of his shoulders. Turned toward the door of his shop.

  “It would seem,” Jackson Pinckney was saying—louder than needed, “that Shakespeare was right.”

  “My God, Pinckney! What the hell has Shakespeare got to do with the Armageddon we’re facing here?”

  “Only this,” said Pinckney, still louder—and Tom knew for certain he meant him to hear. Maybe because he’d connected Dinah with Tom. Or maybe because he’d already heard Tom’s name linked with the rebellion.

  Tom turned and met Pinckney’s scowl.

  “That our informant George Wilson,” hissed Pinckney, his face purple with rage, “has revealed for us what we should have known f
or some time: that ‘hell is empty, and all the devils are here.’”

  Chapter 26

  2015

  Kate glanced up from her notes spread over the counter of Cypress & Fire, glad for the refuge of this place. After her experience at the bank yesterday, she needed time just to think. To reread her mother’s note. To try to cobble together the bits of truth she’d gathered so far from the past—both the recent and the far past—and see if they fit into anything other than a still-bigger puzzle with yet more pieces missing.

  She bent down closer over the copied picture of “My Tom.” The image was too blurred and faded to determine much about the age of the man, except that he was decidedly older.

  Spinning the planes of his Rubik’s Cube, Gabe caught the eye of his father, who was affixing gold and turquoise glazed tiles to the fluted edges of a large mirror. Setting his cube aside, Gabe sheepishly drew his homework closer. To Kate he whispered, “I told you this would be a good quiet place to get some work done. And sort out the sad.”

  “Thanks, big guy. The archives were seeming kind of lonely today.”

  The boy raised his hand to hers for a fist bump. “What friends do. Alltime.” He bent his head over his book.

  Surreptitiously, checking to see that both father and son were engrossed in their work, Kate held up the image of “My Tom.” Gabe’s curls flopped over the forehead he’d bunched in concentration. Daniel’s back was turned as he focused on the tiles. Trying to determine family resemblance from a photocopy of an indistinct image two hundred years old was pretty futile.

  And Daniel caught her at it. Turning before she’d set the page down, he shook his head, chuckling. “I’ll give you this: You don’t give up easy, do you?”

  “Stubbornness is one of my few virtues.”

  “I keep saying if I knew more about the family connection back to Tom Russell—or not—I’d tell you. Like to know myself.”

  Sighing, she set the page down. “Sorry.” Her eyes resting on the leather cord at his neck, its medallion hidden by his T-shirt, she opened her mouth to ask to see it.

  His eyes following hers, Daniel’s hand went to the cord, pulled the disc gently out to rest on top of his shirt, then dropped to run along the grain of a cypress board, as if he were feeling its movement. “Gave this to my wife.”