She had nearly reached Mrs. Doughty’s front door when she noticed a big man standing in the shadow of a doorway across the street, staring at the house. Although the brim of his hat shadowed his face, she could see that he was white. He had a thick neck, his shoulders sloped, and his shape was so bulky he made her think of a bear. When he noticed Charlotte looking at him, he turned his head away, as if his interest were in something further down the street.
“Did all go well?” Mrs. Doughty looked up from the kitchen table, where she was kneading dough on a floured board.
“Perfectly well. Mrs. Edgar made almost no objection to paying.” Retrieving the coins from her pocket, Charlotte placed them on the table. “But there’s one thing I should tell you. A man is watching your house. He’s there right now, standing in the doorway across the street.”
Mrs. Doughty flinched. After wiping her hands, she went into the front room, stopping close to the window, but not so close that anyone could see her from across the street.
“I have seen that man before.” She turned to Charlotte. “This house is often watched. None of my neighbours belong to the Society of Friends. Many have held me in suspicion ever since I was caught teaching a slave to read.”
“You were brave to do that.”
“Not especially brave. It began almost by accident.” Mrs. Doughty turned away from the window and returned to the kitchen. As she went back to kneading the lump of dough, she began to tell the story. Charlotte sat down to listen.
“The girl’s name was Phoebe. She was twelve years old. My husband rented her at the time of my last lying in.”
“Rented her!”
“It’s quite common. Some people purchase slaves for the sole purpose of renting them out. It’s an investment. For example, a family wanting an addition built onto to their house will pay a good price to rent a skilled carpenter. In my case, I needed somebody to help with housework and to take care of Patience and Charity.
“I had been ill with yellow fever in the first months of my pregnancy and was still not strong. Some Friends criticized my husband for renting a slave, until they realized that I needed more help than they could give.
“Phoebe was very bright. Her mistress, Mrs. Morley, was training her to be a household servant, and so she had taught her to sew and to speak correct English, unlike the Gullah dialect field workers use. Phoebe lived with us for eight months. Since Mrs. Morley had gone to England to visit relatives, Phoebe was not needed in their household during that time.
“When I gave birth to Joseph, Patience was four and Charity was three. Patience had a set of alphabet blocks, with which she’d learned to spell a few words. One day I sat nearby, holding Joseph in my arms, while she tried to teach her sister to spell ‘Charity.’ Phoebe, who was watching, said, ‘Can you make my name?’ Patience answered that she would try, and she spelled it as ‘F-e-e-b-e-e.’”
Charlotte smiled.
Mrs. Doughty continued. “‘Very good,’ I said. ‘But not quite correct.’ I then explained about ‘PH’ and ‘F’ making the same sound. I laid Joseph in his cradle, got down on the rug with them, and showed them the right spelling. Then I used the blocks to spell more words. From then on, Phoebe was making words with those blocks whenever she had a free minute. I gave her a quill and paper and showed her how to form letters. Then I taught her to read Bible verses. By the time she left us, she could read just about anything. That was two years ago.”
“I wonder how many books she’s had a chance to read since then?” said Charlotte. “Not many, I reckon.”
“Her mistress caught her reading one—a novel that had been left on a table. Its title was Fanny’s Garters. A foolish, wicked book, or so I’ve heard. I was shocked to learn that Phoebe would fill her head with such trash.”
“Was Phoebe punished?”
“I believe she escaped with a warning. At that time, she was a favourite with Mrs. Morley.”
At that time? But perhaps not now? Charlotte wished that Mrs. Doughty would explain, but it seemed she had nothing to add to the story.
In the afternoon, she asked Charlotte to go to another address to pick up laundry for washing the next day.
This time, Charlotte put on her old gown and cloak, as they seemed more suited to her work. It gave her a glad feeling to have a useful task. And picking up dirty laundry was certainly no worse than mucking out a barn, which had been one of her chores on the family farm.
As she closed the door behind her, Charlotte saw that the big white man still lurked in the shadow of the doorway across the street, and, further up the block, a black boy was also watching the house. He was young, of average height, and he had a thin, wiry build. His shirt was torn, his feet bare, and his breeches stained. The boy’s eyes met hers for a moment, and then he ran away, disappearing down a narrow passage between two houses.
This is strange, Charlotte thought. Two people watching—one white and one black. Why should either be spying on the house of a simple Quaker family?
Upon returning with the load of dirty laundry, she said to Mrs. Doughty, “I think someone else is keeping an eye on the house. He’s black, and he looks about fifteen years old.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Doughty’s eyes met Charlotte’s for an instant, and then she turned her head away.
Charlotte had the feeling that Mrs. Doughty wanted to tell her something, that she was on the verge but had not decided yet.
Chapter 7
A SCREAM CUT through her slumber.
A woman’s scream. Then a baby’s ragged cry. In an instant Charlotte was bolt upright, her body ready to act though sleep still blurred her mind.
Another scream. It came from the front room.
Then a crash, like a chair knocked over. Charlotte sprang from her cot and ran toward the noise. In the darkness, all she could see was the tall rectangle of the front doorway, open to the night. Framed in that paler darkness two figures struggled, a man and a woman. The man, big like a bear, was dragging the woman from the house. Over and over she screamed, “Let me go! Let me go!” It didn’t sound like Mrs. Doughty’s voice.
Men were shouting in the street.
A baby was crying.
Charlotte raced toward the door, when suddenly there was no floor beneath her feet. She was falling, tumbling. Her body bounced. Hip, spine, shoulder. She landed hard. Her head snapped back, struck something, and rang like a bell.
For a long moment the ringing in Charlotte’s ears drowned every other noise. Then the ringing stopped. The screaming and shouting sounded far away. But the crying baby was very near. Its wails filled the dank air.
If this was a nightmare, she wanted to wake up now.
Above her, footsteps thumped. Over the baby’s wailing, she heard Mrs. Doughty’s voice. “Charlotte! Charlotte!”
A candle flame appeared overhead, and behind the flame Mrs. Doughty’s blurred features. She was looking down over the edge of a big, square hole. By the candle’s light Charlotte saw a set of steep, narrow steps.
“I’m down here.” Now she realized what had happened. She had fallen through a trap door. She was lying in a cellar. The existence of either a trap door or a cellar had never crossed her mind. Her head pounded. The baby’s cries echoed all around.
So the woman being dragged away couldn’t have been Mrs. Doughty. Some other woman. Who? And what had she been doing in this house?
Mrs. Doughty was descending the stairs. Charlotte considered rolling out of the way, but before she could manage it, Mrs. Doughty stepped over her and knelt at her side.
“Is thee hurt?”
“A bit shaken.”
“That’s no wonder!”
“What’s going on? There’s a baby . . . and a woman . . .”
“I’m sorry! I should have told thee all.”
The baby was still crying. Charlotte turned her head. Now by the candle’s flickering light she saw a cradle on the cellar floor. The noise was coming from that cradle. Sobbing, choking—a baby in distress.
So it was neither a dream nor a noise in the street that she had heard the previous night. There was a baby in the house.
Mrs. Doughty set down the candlestick on a step. From the cradle she lifted the wailing infant. It was small. Not much bigger than a cat.
“There, there,” Mrs. Doughty murmured, patting the baby’s back, “that’s my brave little man!” The baby quieted after a few gulping sobs. Rocking him in her arms, she looked down at Charlotte, who still lay sprawled at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m sorry I failed to tell thee about the baby. It was both wrong and foolish to hide the truth from thee.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just tell me what’s going on. Who was that woman?”
“Phoebe, the girl I taught to read.”
“And that baby is her child?”
“Yes.”
“And the white man who’s been watching your house is the one who dragged her away?”
“The slave catcher. Yes.”
Although her head ached, Charlotte’s brain was beginning to put the puzzle together.
“What about the black boy who was watching the house?”
“His name is Jammy. The Morley family owns him as well as Phoebe. Jammy’s the stable groom.”
“Is he the baby’s father?”
“No. He’s not the father.” Mrs. Doughty paused. “Let me take the baby upstairs and then come back for thee. A dark cellar is no place to talk.”
Now that the baby was quiet, Patience, Charity and Joseph began a crying chorus of their own, the noise carrying from their upstairs bedroom down to the cellar. What a night for everyone!
Mrs. Doughty carried the baby up the steep steps. She would not return for quite a while, Charlotte thought, not until she had managed to settle all the little ones.
Charlotte moved her limbs one by one. Nothing felt seriously wrong. Putting her hand to the back of her head, she felt a bump, but no bleeding. No need to wait for Mrs. Doughty’s help. Bringing the candle with her, she crept up the steep steps.
At the top, she sat for a moment on the floor near the open trap door. She had better close it, she thought, before anybody else fell through.
The door moved freely on its hinges. When she had it closed, she went into the kitchen to rekindle the fire. The baby, wrapped in a blanket, was asleep on top of the quilt that covered Charlotte’s cot, where Mrs. Doughty had laid him down.
From above came the voice of Mrs. Doughty comforting her children.
When the fire was blazing, Charlotte filled the kettle and hung it on the hook over the flames. They could use a cup of tea while they talked, and they certainly did need to talk. Charlotte suspected that some terrible trouble lay behind the events of the night.
After a time, Mrs. Doughty came downstairs and collapsed onto a chair at the table. Charlotte poured the tea and passed a cup to her.
“Who is the baby’s father? Or doesn’t it matter?”
“It matters.”
Charlotte waited, expecting she knew not what.
Mrs. Morley set down her teacup. Her eyes met Charlotte’s.
“The father is Phoebe’s master, Lewis Morley. He forced himself upon her. She was fourteen.”
“Oh!” For a moment, silence hung between them. “That’s terrible.”
She didn’t know what else to say. She had been prepared for something bad, but not as bad as this. It was sad. It was sordid. It appeared to be dangerous. Mrs. Doughty had answered her question, yet the answer just raised more questions. Although Charlotte dreaded what she would hear next, she wanted to know the truth.
“It’s common,” Mrs. Doughty said, “for a master to abuse his female slaves. They have no power against him.”
“Common? If the slave owner is married, doesn’t his wife object?”
“The wives can’t stop it. Most pretend not to notice. Some accept it as a normal part of married life.”
“Merciful heavens! What can they be thinking?”
“They must accept what they cannot change. Mrs. Morley, like many wives in her situation, can’t stand the sight of her husband’s half-black children. The more they resemble him, the more bitter she feels.”
“I don’t blame her.”
“Mrs. Morley will not allow such children to remain in the household. Phoebe knew that her baby would soon be taken from her. Rather then lose him, she decided to run away with him, and she turned to Jammy for help.”
“He agreed to help her?”
“Yes. Jammy adores her.” Mrs. Doughty raised the cup to her lips, sipped, and then set it down. “Their plan was for me to hide Phoebe and the baby while Jammy looked for contacts to help them flee north. There’s slavery up north too, but it’s not as common. And the further away they went, the safer they’d be from slave catchers.”
“So you offered to help them?”
“Not exactly. It was a complete surprise when they showed up at my door last week. I hadn’t seen Phoebe for two years. She had the baby in her arms. ‘Phoebe,’ I said to her, ‘my house is the first place slave catchers are going to look.’ But she begged so piteously I hadn’t the heart to turn her away.
“Jammy helped me to set up a hiding place in the cellar, with a mattress for Phoebe and Joseph’s old cradle for the baby. I told him that my door would remain unlocked day and night until he managed to take Phoebe and the baby away.”
“I thought it strange that you didn’t lock your door,” said Charlotte. “There are so many footpads and drunken sailors around. But now I understand.”
“From the start, I saw slave catchers watching my house. After a few more days, I saw Jammy watching too. I hoped this meant he’d found somebody to help them and was waiting for a chance to take Phoebe and the baby away.”
“Then I arrived,” said Charlotte, “to complicate matters.”
“Thy arrival surely caused a problem. To reject Colonel Knightly’s offer would have raised questions, since everybody knew I needed money. It was foolish to imagine that I could keep thee from knowing there was a baby in the house. I should have told thee about Phoebe at the beginning.”
“I reckon you wanted first to know me better.”
“No. I trusted thee from the start. But I didn’t want to bring trouble upon thee. It’s a crime to help a slave escape. In the eyes of the law, concealing a crime makes one a party to it. If I could keep Phoebe’s presence a secret, thee would not be put in that position.
“For the past three nights I’ve scarce slept a wink. Tonight I heard the hinges squeak when Jammy opened the trap door, and then the uproar when the slave catchers burst in. There were two of them. One took Jammy. The other took Phoebe.”
“But they left the baby.”
“They had their hands full with Jammy and Phoebe.”
“Do you think they’ll come back for the baby?”
“Not likely. The Morleys don’t want him. As for selling him, a one-month-old infant wouldn’t fetch enough to pay the slave catcher’s fee. For the present at least, the baby is ours to care for.”
“In that case,” Charlotte said, “let’s bring the cradle up from the cellar. There are still a few hours left before dawn. After some sleep, we can think more clearly what to do.”
Standing up, Charlotte felt dizzy. Her head hurt badly while she helped Mrs. Doughty haul the wooden cradle up the stairs and set it near the kitchen fireplace. The sleeping baby did not wake when Mrs. Doughty lifted him from the cot and tucked him in the cradle.
Now all was quiet. Charlotte lay down on her cot, but she could not stop worrying about Phoebe, Jammy and the baby. Light was visible through the crack between the shutters before she drifted off.
Chapter 8
IN THE MORNING Mrs. Doughty went out in search of a wet nurse, confident that she could find among the Friends a nursing mother who would want to help.
A heap of laundry was waiting to be done. Charlotte filled the washtub with hot water and set to work. She felt better now, her headache gone. The baby was in hi
s cradle in the kitchen. The front room rug was back in place, hiding the trap door. Patience, Charity and Joseph were sitting on it, playing with little spinning toys she had made, one for each of them, from a button and a string.
Charlotte added her delicate nightgown to the clothes in the washtub. Her fall into the cellar, landing her on the dirt floor, had left the fabric embedded with grime. She scrubbed and scrubbed, although she knew that no matter how hard she tried, it would never be so fresh and pretty as before. But the state of a nightgown, she reminded herself, was unimportant when compared with the plight of Phoebe, Jammy, and the now motherless baby.
She was rinsing the clothes when Mrs. Doughty returned.
“I’ve found a wet nurse. Her name is Hannah Perkins. She can’t keep the baby in her home, because she has her own little ones to care for. I would like thee to take him to her twice every day. Friend Perkins lives on Meeting Street. I’ll give thee directions.”
“Will two feedings be enough?” Charlotte knew enough about babies to realize that they were hungry nearly all the time.
“He won’t think so,” Mrs. Doughty said wryly. “We’ll have to comfort him with sugar water in between.”
“When shall I take him there?”
“Take him now. I’ll finish the laundry. He’ll want a feeding as soon as he wakes.”
Charlotte bent over the cradle and picked up the baby. She was surprised at his weight. He was much more solid than he looked, a real flesh-and-blood little person with tawny skin and a fuzz of black hair.
“What’s his name? You never mentioned a name.”
“Noah.”
He woke as she was wrapping him in a shawl, staring up at her with wide grey eyes. She took a second look.
“His eyes are grey!”
“He has his father’s eyes.”
Mr. Morley’s eyes.
“Then it’s no wonder his presence made Mrs. Morley uncomfortable. If I were Mrs. Morley, I wouldn’t like it either.” Charlotte paused. “What about Phoebe? Those grey eyes must remind her every single day of what her master did to her. Frankly, I don’t understand how she can love this baby so much. I don’t think I could love a child born as the result of such a deed.”
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