The Night Angel

by T. Davis Bunn

  “The gray lady. I thought mebbe it was a legend. ’Bout how a gray lady waits at the end of the trail.” Joseph nodded once. “Reckon this one tale is true, sure enough.”

  The woman walked over, accompanied by Matt and three of the men. Up close she was even more lovely. Her hair was almost too dark to be called auburn, save for the copper tint where the sun touched. Her eyes held the same emerald illumination as her son’s. “What do they call you, sir?”

  “John Falconer, ma’am. I apologize for my appearance—”

  “God’s greetings to you, John Falconer. I have seen before what the trail can do to a man.” She turned to Joseph. “And you, sir. Your name, if you please.”

  “I’s called Joseph, missus.”

  “I am Ada Hart.” She looked over the other folk, then turned her gaze back to Joseph. “Sir, I ask you to give me one good reason why you would trust this white man’s word.”

  “He bought me, took me into the forest, and wrote I was free on the papers they give him.”

  “Do you have those documents?”

  “I do,” Falconer said. “In my satchel.”

  “Fetch them, if you please.” As Falconer stepped to his almost-empty sack, she asked Joseph, “What makes you believe this man will do as he says?”

  “He’s used up every cent he carries to buy us. Tha’s my family over there. My two boys, they was takin’ them away.”

  “Who was? Slavers?”

  “Yes’m. This man, he bought the whole line. I watched his face, missus. It tore him up to see these people in chains. Tore him up somethin’ awful.”

  “Thank you, Joseph.” She watched Falconer approach with a sheaf of papers in his hands. “What are those?”

  “The bills of sale for all those you see gathered here.”

  “You are just giving them to me?”

  “I hope and pray for your trust, and that of the people here,” Falconer replied. “How could I offer you anything less in return?”

  She gave the pages careful inspection. By the time she finished, all the farmers were gathered around her, including two young women and a lad just old enough to have a bit of fluff on his chin. “Just exactly who are you, John Falconer?” Ada Hart asked.

  “My story is perhaps not one for these young folks to hear, ma’am.”

  She held him with a gaze both steady and timeless. “They may as well hear of the world’s woes while sheltered within our clan. Speak.”

  He took a very hard breath. “I am a seafaring man. I worked mostly on merchant ships. But one journey I skippered a slaver.”

  A quiet moan flitted through the gathering, a sound of sorrow on what was otherwise a pristine day. Falconer forged ahead. “The evil I did stained me, true enough. It also brought me to my knees. I stand here today saved by the blood of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”

  “Amen,” said one of the other farming women, and it was echoed by several others in the group.

  Ada Hart, however, continued to watch him carefully. “Please continue, John Falconer.”

  So he told them all of it. Or nearly all. How he had most recently been hired by a cautious Venetian merchant prince to determine whether a gold mine truly existed. And given four purses of gold, supposedly to pay for his travel and his safety. The farmers grew round-eyed at Falconer’s account. Their children crept in close, as if they were hearing fanciful tales by an evening fire. The tow-headed boy held onto his mother’s skirt, so entranced by Falconer’s tale he ignored the pup toying with his dusty feet.

  Ada Hart, however, was made of sterner stuff. She heard him out in watchful silence, then observed, “You have made no mention of why you chose to buy and free these slaves.”

  This breath was harder still. “I feel that God has spoken to me, ma’am.”

  “He has called you to buy slaves and free them?”

  “The slave ship I skippered held a manifest for four hundred and nineteen poor souls. They are lost to me. But I seek to free at least that number of their brethren.”

  Even Ada was stunned, and the group murmured among themselves. “Four hundred and nineteen slaves will cost you a king’s ransom, John Falconer,” she said. “You had best hope your mine proves of enormous value.”

  “I will spend what I have, Mrs. Hart. I can do no more.”

  The gray-bearded farmer said softly, “Ada.”

  She turned from her inspection of the man before her. “Yes, Brother Joshua?”

  “Enough.” The man spoke with gentle authority. “It is too long, this questioning.”

  “There is still more I wish to know.”

  “As do I. We can speak further when he is bathed and properly rested. The man speaks truthfully and shares our cause.”

  “You are persuaded of this, Brother Joshua?”

  “Standing here in the sun any longer is not proper. The man is exhausted, along with his little band. More questions will not bring us any closer to certainty. That I do know.”

  Ada pursed her lips in deep indecision. She gave Falconer a final inspection. Then she nodded cautiously. “Very well. But your charges must leave you here, John Falconer. You cannot know where they go. Nor can you ask.”

  “I deliver them into your care,” Falconer solemnly agreed. “Were I in your position, I would require exactly the same.”

  Yet his words seemed to do nothing to erase the anxiety creasing Ada Hart’s features. Approaching footsteps turned them both about. Joseph shuffled over, nervous at drawing near yet determined. “Y’all is gonna put us on the ghost train to freedom?”

  Ada’s gaze shifted away from Falconer. “Your name is Joseph, is that not correct?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Joseph, there are some things of which it is best never to speak. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes’m.” Though the man’s face remained tense and deeply lined, he held his ground. “Reason I’m askin’, missus, I wants to stay with Mistuh John here.”

  Falconer saw Geraldine rise to her feet. He quietly protested, “But your family, Joseph.”

  “They’s gonna be safe on account of you and what you’s done, suh. I knows that for a fact.”

  “We will do our best to bring you to freedom,” Ada said.

  “Ain’t nobody never done nothin’ for me before this man.” He managed a single glance straight into Falconer’s eyes. “And when he reads to us from the Book, missus, I hear my heart singin’. Ain’t never heard that before. Not my whole life long.”

  Geraldine came over to stand beside her man. She gripped her husband’s arm and looked Falconer full in the face. “They’s gonna be a new tale told now. Folks who ain’t got nothing, too scared to dream, they’s gonna hear about this. ’Bout a man who travels hard roads for the King. Big man with an angel’s heart. Strong man. Ain’t afraid of the night or nothing else.” Her head moved up and down slowly. “They’s gonna hear. They’s gonna hope.”

  The gray-bearded farmer settled a hand upon Ada Hart’s shoulder and spoke more firmly this time. “We have heard enough, Ada.”

  Chapter 18

  His name was Cody Saunders and he was Jeb’s younger brother. The Saunders brothers had a reputation that stretched from Fredericksburg all the way to Atlanta. Cody Saunders took pride in being who he was and the fear people showed when they heard his name.

  He was grinning with pleasure now as the tavern keeper at Burroughs Crossing reached inside the doorway for his musket. Cody said, “Get your hands out where I can see ’em, old man.”

  “I know who you are, Cody Saunders.” The man drew his hand back into view. Along with it came the musket, which he cocked and brought to his shoulder. “And I’d as soon plug you with lead as offer the time of day.”

  “And I’m telling you to lay down your piece.” Cody Saunders twisted in the saddle, causing the leather to creak. He was no more concerned about the merchant than he was the drovers who clustered by the first corral. “You take aim at me again, my brother’ll burn your place to the ground
. But not before he hangs your whole family from the rafters. And you know I’m talking truth.”

  “What do you want?”

  The saddle creaked once more as Cody Saunders worked the knot from his shoulders. It had been a long hard slog through rain and muck, and he was tired. “I ain’t telling you again, old man.”

  Reluctantly old man Burroughs set the musket down by the doorstep. “I asked you a simple question.”

  “Now that we’re jawing polite, I’ll tell you. I’m after information. Give me what I want and I’ll ride on.” He pointed his leather quirt at the drovers. “Y’all stop playin’ all restless with them pistols. Else somebody’s gonna be breathing their last.”

  “Do as he says,” the merchant ordered. When one of the drovers started to make a move, Burroughs raised his voice. “Don’t you know nothin’? This here’s Cody Saunders. Only man I’d worse like to squabble with is his brother Jeb.”

  When the drover let his mates pull him back, old man Burroughs said, “What information might that be?”

  “You owned a gray mare? White-maned with leggings on its forefeet?”

  A voice piped up from within the inn, “They’s talking about my mare, Pa!”

  “You just pipe down and let me handle this. And stay back there like I told you.” The merchant squinted at the dirty rider. “I mighta had a horse like that. What’s it to ya?”

  “What can you tell me ’bout the man what bought it from you?”

  “Not a solitary thing. Don’t even know his name.”

  “He just waltzed in here outta nowhere?”

  “Pretty much. Walked down that road there, plunked down good gold coin, bought supplies and my horse, then headed south.”

  “And Joseph, Pa,” the lad cried. “You forgot Joseph.”

  “I ain’t tellin’ you again, boy.” He turned to glare into the dark room behind him.

  Cody Saunders slipped from his horse. “Who’s this Joseph, now?”

  “Slave I bought me a while back. There’s too much work needed doing round this place for me and my clan.”

  “So this feller John comes up outta nowhere. He plunks down waxed gold coin, buys a horse and supplies and a slave. And heads south without a by-your-leave.”

  The merchant was eyeing him tightly. “I didn’t say nothing about them coins of his being waxed.”

  Cody bit down on his retort. This was why he hated dealing with the outside world without his brother by his side. “I knowed it anyway.”

  “And I didn’t say his name was John. On account of how I didn’t know it myself.”

  “So how did you sign the papers selling him your man?”

  “I didn’t. He took the bill of sale and left. Same as I’m asking you to do.”

  “He bought a slave and didn’t have you fill in his name? That means the slave is still yours to claim.” Cody tried to get his tired mind to work faster. “Don’t sound like any slave owner I’ve ever met before.”

  The merchant chewed on his beard, clearly conflicted. “If ’n you find Joseph, will you bring him back to me?”

  “What else do you know, old man?”

  “First you tell me what I want to hear.”

  “Yeah, all right. We find your slave, we’ll deliver him back. Now tell me what it is you’re chewing on there.”

  “Maybe it ain’t nothing,” the merchant said. “But I took Joseph off the Moss Plantation. For gambling debts.”

  “You said Moss?”

  The merchant was sharp enough to have survived years dealing with the kind of folk who had no business in downtown Richmond. “You know him,” he observed.

  “Yeah, I mighta met him somewheres before.”

  “Joseph was born on the place. He had himself a common-law wife and two boys. He pined something awful for his family.”

  Cody Saunders knew he was being given the pieces to a puzzle. Only his brain wasn’t made for fitting facts together like his brother could. He walked over to the horse trough and dunked his head. He came up gasping. “Bring me a plate of that fatback and beans I’m smelling. And some fresh-baked corn pone.”

  The merchant was back on familiar territory. “That’ll cost you four bits.”

  Cody Saunders wasn’t in the habit of paying for his vittles. But something told him his brother might want him to visit with this merchant another time, so he fished a coin out of his vest pocket and tossed it over. “You got any fresh coffee?”

  The man caught the coin. “You’ll eat and be gone, and next time I see you will be to return me my slave. That right?”

  “Sure thing, old man,” Cody lied. “Now bring me my grub.”

  Falconer rose from his bed long before daybreak. Dawn was little more than a faint stain upon the deep blue sky. Out west the stars were still clear, the moon a fingernail’s sliver. He walked to the well in the inn’s forecourt and took his time washing. As the light gradually strengthened, a mockingbird challenged his claim to the morning.

  Ada Hart ran Salem’s only guesthouse, what her son had called the Strangers’ Inn. It stood on Main Street, about midway between the central church and the outlying paddocks. The home was large, with a full three stories framed in stout red brick. The downstairs rooms were floored in heart of pine, waxed and aged until it shone like frozen honey. Falconer took his Bible to a bench placed by the inn’s eastern wall. He prayed silently until the light became strong enough for him to see the words on the page. He turned to the verse he had been reading to his charges when the armed farmers had arrived. Falconer found himself missing this group of people. So he prayed for each of them in turn and asked for a swift passage to a safe haven, one that would welcome and succor and offer them a future. And he tried not to let his own loneliness taint the silent words.

  The sun rose to where the eastern hills became golden waves. The distant trees wore their spring green like delicate mantles. Ribbons of chimney-smoke rose into the cloudless sky. Falconer closed his Bible and gazed around him, feeling the sense of reward the dawn held. He had started his quest. He had delivered his first charges to safety. By noon he would be filled with restless hunger, for he was not the sort of man to remain sated for long. A doer, a man of action, and God’s entry into his life had not changed that. Only the direction and how he got to the goal.

  Falconer heard the young lad before he came into view. He rounded the corner singing another hymn and swinging another pail. He beamed at Falconer and cried, “I told Mama you were up with the Good Book for company. But she shushed me and said I was to let you sleep.”

  “Where are you off to this morning?” He could see the boy looking at his scar, and he turned slightly so the sun was shining on his good side.

  “We keep one milk cow in yonder barn. Mama says it’s too far out to the farm and back every morning, and our tenants deserve fresh cream with their porridge.”

  “Your mother sounds like a wonderful innkeeper.” Falconer rose to his feet and followed the boy. “And you strike me as a great help to all your family. But I see no barn.”

  “It’s hidden beyond the trees and God’s Acre there.”

  “I beg your pardon, beyond what?”

  “God’s Acre,” the boy repeated. “Right there before you.”

  “I only see a cemetery.”

  “Which is God’s own resting place,” the boy said, grinning up at him. “God’s Acre. That’s our name for it.”

  “Who is it doing the naming?”

  “Moravians, sir. Do you not even know where you be this fair morn?”

  Falconer laughed aloud. Not at the question, but rather at the boy’s odd mixture of childishness and adult speech. “I confess I was so tired I probably heard and then forgot before the words took shape.”

  “How can someone forget the place they labored so hard to reach?”

  Falconer followed Matt around the cemetery and along a path through the stand of hickory and dogwood. Falconer heard a cow lowing from the lean-to up ahead. “The trail was very hard f
or us.”

  “I’ve heard some of the brethren speak of it. But I’ve never been beyond Bethabara.” He set a milking stool beside the cow and sat down. “Is it ever so exciting?”

  “Sometimes,” Falconer allowed. “Mostly it is hard. Some days, however, can be very exciting indeed.”

  A woman’s voice spoke up from beyond the barn’s shadows. “I shall thank you, sir, not to be filling my son’s head with idle chatter.”

  “He wasn’t, Mama. Honest. I just asked him about the trail, is all.”

  Because of the growing light, Falconer saw only the woman’s silhouette. But he recognized the voice and the woman’s erect stance. “A very good morning to you, Mrs. Hart.”

  The woman stood in silence for a moment longer. Her shadow cut a very womanly silhouette. With a slender neck and a fine figure, even her petite stature carried its own presence. “I do not hear anything touching your pail, Matt.”

  The milk began rattling into the bucket. “I’ll be just a few minutes, Mama.”

  “Hurry, now. I’m about to call our guests to the table.” She turned around. “John Falconer, a word, if you please.”

  “Of course, ma’am.” He followed her into the sunlight. “I can’t thank you enough for your hospitality, Mrs. Hart. As I explained last night, I have no more money with me. I’m good for the debt, though, I assure—”

  “How long did you intend to stay, John Falconer?”

  “To tell the truth, ma’am, I had no plans beyond seeing these first ones brought to safety. A few days—long enough to gather some provisions and perhaps find a horse. That is, if I’m able to arrange a loan.”

  “One of your charges, as you put it, is waiting for you by the front door. The man known as Joseph. He seeks a word.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go—”

  “That is not what I wished to speak with you about, sir.” She led him back through the grove and directed him to a bench beside the cemetery. “Would you be so kind as to sit with me a moment?”

  “Certainly, Mrs. Hart.”

  When they were seated, she did not speak. Instead, the woman pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and knotted it, bunching it tightly between her hands. “I would ask that you speak to me again of your plans, John Falconer.”