by Anya Seton
Lord, this is real—the thought flashed through her like a galvanic shock; she pushed the woman and the baby toward the broom closet. These were real people in terrible danger. Her trembling fingers released the pin, she slid the panel back and gave the girl a candle. “Up the steps—” she whispered, “there’s food. Don’t let the baby cry. The slave-catcher’s here.”
The colored girl gave a stifled moan, then noiseless as smoke she vanished up the narrow stairway. Hesper slid the panel, dropped the pin, and shoved the brooms and musket back in place.
The old man stood in the dark, silent until she lit another candle, then he stepped forward, and his steady wise eyes ran over her. “They safe?” “I think so, nobody knows the hidey-hole, but—”
“You’re not in this alone?” he interrupted anxiously. “The brig’s waiting off the Island, the Scotia from Halifax, someone’s got to get ’em out there.”
“I know, we’ve arranged, Ma and a fisherman—”
He nodded quickly. “Then I’ll be oil, left the wagon outside of town in a covert. Should’ve got ’em off at Lynn, but the chase was too hot. So we had to use you people. Poor things—” he shook his head, looking toward the broom closet. “She’s the most pitiful of all those I’ve helped—God’ll help you to help them too. The cause is just.”
He gave her a smile of great sweetness and dignity and wrapped his cloak around him. The door from the taproom was thrown open with a bang. Hesper jumped, and her mouth went dry. The slave-catcher walked in to the kitchen.
“Pardon me, Miss—” he said, not looking at Hesper, but at the old man who stood motionless by the settle. “All of a sudden I had a fancy for a drink of water.”
I mustn’t show anything, I mustn’t—she clenched her hands on the folds of her skirt. “Well, take it then—” she said tartly, in her mother’s voice. “There’s the sink and a cup.”
Clarkson did not move. “You’ve a caller, it seems—”
Before she need answer, the old man shuffled forward, and spoke in a feeble whine, “I seed t’ young lass through t’ winder, she’s a pokin’ up t’ stove, so I knocks n’ axes her fur a handout. No har-rm in that—mister. Me pore ol' belly’s empty as a cask.” He seemed to have shrunk to half his size, his shoulders hunched, and there was a vacant look on his wrinkled face.
Gratefully accepting her cue, Hesper hurried to the stove and felt of the coffeepot which always stood there in readiness.
Clarkson stood his ground staring at the old man. His sharp lower teeth gnawed on his mustache, his fingers through a gap in his buttoned coat twitched on the handle of his pistol. Suddenly he swung out a long arm and grabbed the old man’s shoulder, yanking him into the full light of the candle. “God damn it, you old bastard, I’m sure I’ve seen you before. In Medford, that’s where. You’ve got a farm with a mighty convenient haycock on it, keep it filled with blackbirds, don’t you!”
Hesper’s cold hands grew clammier. She clattered the poker against the stove lid.
“Lemme be, mister—” quavered the old voice. “I ain’t done nothin’ but ax for some vittles. I ain’t got no farm no place. I ain’t got nuthin’.”
The fiddler in the taproom blared louder for a moment, and then the noise was shut off, as Susan came into the kitchen and closed the door.
She paused for a second taking in the scene. The slave-catcher bent menacingly over a trembling old tramp, and Hesper, white as the plaster wall, prying at the stovelid with the wrong end of the poker.
“What’re you doin’ in my kitchen!” She brought her fat freckled hand down sharply across Clarkson’s arm, which dropped involuntarily from the old man’s shoulder. “Quit bullying this pore old man.”
“So you know who he is!” cried Clarkson turning on her.
“Never saw him afore in my life,” answered Susan.
“I say you did! I say you knew he was coming, and you know what he’s brought. I’m going to search this house.” Clarkson jerked out his revolver, beside himself with fury. His arm tingled from the blow this woman had given it, her cool contempt enraged him.
“Sheriff!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Sheriff, come here!” But Ambrose was playing as hard as he could, and singing too, and many of the dancers sang with him—“As I was walking down the lane, down the lane, down the lane—”
“God damn that caterwauling nigger—” said Clarkson through his teeth, he looked at the three in the kitchen with him, and he dared not leave them. He cocked the pistol with his thumb, deliberated a moment, then shot through the west outside wall of the room. The old plaster starred and cracked a little around the black hole, the bullet buried itself in a stout oak upright beneath the clapboarding.
That brought them. The fiddle stopped. The sheriff ran in looking scared, and with him Johnnie, Nat Cubby, and as many of the guests as could squeeze through the entry. And it brought Roger too. He rushed out of his study to see his kitchen crowded with people, and a slimsy black-mustached fellow in the middle of them holding a smoking pistol.
“What is this rumpus?” shouted Roger. “What’s the meaning of that shot?” His eyes were no longer vague, but bright with anger. He looked at the bullet hole, and his marred wall. “I’ll have you arrested!”
“Who’s this man?” Clarkson growled to the sheriff. The others crowded around open-mouthed.
“Why, that’s Mr. Honeywood. Ye didn’t oughta go shootin’,” answered the sheriff unhappily.
“Oh you’re Mister Honeywood, so I reckon you know all about it, but I’d be glad to clear your mind anyhow. I represent the law and I represent Mr. Delacort, owner of the Albemarle Plantation on the Santee River in South Carolina. One of his best nigger wenches lit out with her brat four weeks ago, and he’s commissioned me to find her. She’s a good breeder and smart too, worth two thousand dollars. I’ve reason to believe she’s hidden in your house.”
“Indeed she is not!” said Roger, quivering, but in a quieter tone. “You may take my word for it.” He glanced at Susan’s blank face. How glad she must be now that he had forbidden her to receive the fugitives.
Clarkson was a trifle nonplussed. This one spoke more like a gentleman than the rest of these oafs, and his voice had the ring of truth; still, the women might be trying something on their own.
“I’m going to search the house and grounds,” he said doggedly. He turned his back on the Honeywood family and the old man to confront the silent group of fishermen. A dozen pairs of eyes stared back at him, unwinking. “Any of you men lend me a hand?” he asked, “Can’t all be god-damn traitrous abolishers.”
Cap’n Lane gave an angry grunt, and his fists clenched, otherwise nobody moved.
“You?” said Clarkson at random, pointing at Johnnie with his pistol.
“Why, no—” said Johnnie, “I’d rather not.”
Clarkson scowled and pointed to Nat—“You then, you were eager enough to bring me here.”
Hesper held her breath and it seemed to her that the others did too. Nat stood beside Johnnie, staring at the slave-catcher. He shifted his feet a trifle. His eyes were speculative. “What’s there in it for me?” he asked.
“A hundred dollars if we find ’em—”
Johnnie swung around looking down at his friend. “Dirty money, Nat, I never thought it of you. I’m sure your ma’d not think it of you, either.”
A strange expression flickered across the sardonic face. Nat twisted his head and met Johnnie’s eyes, “You’re a soft fool—” he said very low, but he turned on his heel, shoved his way amongst the watching men, and strode through the outside door, slamming it behind him. The little bell jangled and faded to stillness.
“All right, all right,” said the slave-catcher, “I’ll do it alone. Sheriff, you keep ’em in the taproom. You know your duty?”
The sheriff nodded and coughed, staring at the floor.
“Well, get moving! And there’s any hanky-panky, I’ll set the federals on you, after I’ve done with you myself.”
The sheriff sullenly motioned with his hand, and the fishermen moved back into the taproom to be met by excited or frightened questions from those who hadn’t been able to understand what was happening. .
“This is an outrage!” cried Roger, while Clarkson himself saw to the bolting of the doors. “You’ve not the slightest shadow of excuse—I told you there’s nobody hidden here.”
The slave-catcher twisted his pistol and paid no attention. Susan sat down on her regular stool behind the counter. Her face was white as Hesper’s and the freckles stood out between beads of sweat. The old man in the cloak huddled himself into a dark corner between the fireplace and a keg of beer. Ambrose still sat on his box, staring again at the beams, his fiddle quiet as Clarkson had ordered. Even Charity was subdued and had squeezed herself on a bench beside her mother.
“You—girl—” said Clarkson suddenly pointing at Hesper. “You’re coming with me. You can hold the candle, and you know the house.”
Hesper glanced at her mother, Susan gave a helpless shrug. Helpless, and she looked frightened. Ma! Ma couldn’t do anything, and she didn’t rightly know what had happened in the kitchen before she came in. Hesper felt an unexpected surge of pity, and then a headier intoxication. Her heart stopped pounding, warmth returned to her hands. She picked up a candlestick, and walked toward the slave-catcher.
“Come then—” she said, cool and easy. “And you might stop waving that pistol about. You’re not like to use it.”
Clarkson looked startled, and she heard Johnnie’s laugh. “Good for you—Hessie!”
“We’ll start with the outhouses—” commanded Clarkson, shoving Hesper ahead of him. She gave him a freezing look and he muttered something that might have been apologetic. He thrust the pistol back in his belt. They went through the kitchen door, having picked up a lantern from its shelf in the entry. Clarkson searched every inch of the barn and the hay loft, thrusting a pitchfork again and again through the scant heaps of straw, and disturbing only poor “Looney” who was asleep on a mat in a corner. He looked in the pigsty and even the privy, then returned to the house. He hadn’t expected anything of the barn, anyway—much too obvious for experienced agents like that old graybeard, if he was the man from Medford. Not quite sure. Not sure of anything except that two thousand dollars worth of human merchandise was secreted somewhere along this infernal rocky coast.
He hustled Hesper back to the kitchen, where she stood in the middle of the floor holding the candle while he opened cupboard doors, peered into the Dutch oven and the bottom of the china closet. Once he tapped the plaster wall on the north side between the kitchen and the lean-to, but the sound was dense and flat.
Then he opened the broom closet, and motioned her nearer with the light. Hesper’s courage ebbed, and her palms grew wet, but he scarcely glanced at the brooms and mop and musket in the shallow closet, and had he bothered to sound the false back, he would not have been enlightened. Lot Honeywood and his brother-in-law the pirate had built cannily. The oaken slab was nearly two inches thick and would give out no resonance.
Hesper went from room to room as he ordered her. They entered her father’s little study; she saw that when he had been interrupted by the shot, he had been working on the “Memorabilia,” and while she held the light for Clarkson, she read one line—
“In olden times in Marblehead, there was many a deed of valor—” The thought did not come clear to her, but as she led the slave-catcher from the buttery, through the larder and into the borning room, pausing in each for him to poke and pry and open cupboards, she was puzzled by a question. Why did the olden times seem so romantic—while the present never did? She had a vague realization that this night’s work would also seem romantic someday, but it didn’t now. That’s because I don’t know the ending—she thought. Things you hear of from the past, you know what’s happened, you don’t have to worry. Yet at the moment, she wasn’t worried. She felt contempt, mastery, inner excitement, not worry, as she led the slave-catcher through the rambling house, even pointing out cupboards and crannies he might overlook. They descended to the cellars; the shallow, crude excavation under the old part, the capacious dry rooms under Moses’ wing. Clarkson picked up a long stick that was used for stirring the brine in the salt-pork barrel and thrust it into the potato bin and the apple bin. He moved the spare casks of rum, and the kegs of beer. He kept a sharp eye for any suspicious marking in the masonry.
The cellars and attics of these old houses were prime choice for hiding places. He found nothing. He kept a sharp eye on Hesper too for any signs of tension, but he could see none. Queer sort of a girl with all that tumbling red hair, her squarish white face set in an expression of chill indifference. Younger than he’d first thought too, not more than sixteen, and innocent-looking for all her loftiness. His certainty that Delacort’s fugitive nigger wench was hidden in the house began to weaken, but he pursued the search.
Hesper led him up the newer cellar stairs, to the parlor, still brilliantly lit. From the other side of the door they could hear the uneasy shufflings and murmurs of the company imprisoned in the taproom. They continued to the second floor up the beautiful mahogany front staircase. She waited for him to look under the canopied beds and into paneled cupboards in the four spacious bedrooms built by Moses. They descended two steps to the back passage and the old wing. Here there were three bedrooms, her own, her parents’, and a spare room, all small and low-ceilinged, sparsely furnished with the rough pine bedsteads and rush-seated slat-back chairs they had always contained.
Clarkson shook his head and snapped, “Now the attic—if that’s all down here. House’s a regular rabbit warren—up and down, little rooms, big rooms, crazy way to build.”
Hesper said nothing, but she saw that the slave-catcher was losing hope, and her spirits rose higher.
There was a bad moment in the attic. Clarkson stumbled around amongst the accumulated lumber of centuries, the spinning wheels and flax carders, the long cradle and the wooden chests and brass-studded cowhide trunks. Hesper held the candle for him as he demanded it, and he halfheartedly opened a few lids, shook those trunks and chests which were locked. He groped around the masses of the huge central chimneys, the old one of stone, the newer one of bricks. He took the candle himself to examine the roof and the rough-hewn rafters, and did not discover so much as a cobweb, so thorough was Susan’s housekeeping. “I’ll take oath there’s nothing here—” he muttered when a strange little sound came to them, a small, choked wail.
“What’s that?” cried Clarkson, his hand flew to his pistol, he swung the candle this way and that, peering. The sound had seemed to come from the floor near the old chimney.
It’s the baby, thought Hesper petrified. Pray God it doesn’t do it again.
“I didn’t hear anything—” she said. “For the Land’s sake aren’t you through up here yet?”
“Shut up! I heard something. Keep quiet.”
They stood in the old attic, listening. There was no further sound. Hesper saw plain what must be going on down there, the terrified mother crouching on the pallet in the little cubicle beneath the floor muffling the baby’s mouth with her hand, or her breast.
“Very like you heard a rat, or the wind in the chimney—” said Hesper in just the right tone of boredom and impatience. Strange how easy it was to lie. Stranger yet that these lies were allowed. Ma herself, who was so strict, had been telling them all evening.
As though the slave-catcher had caught an inkling of her thought, he suddenly held the candle to her face. “Look, honey—” he said quite gently, “you people don’t act like you realized I’m only doing my duty and my job, and the law’s solid behind me, remember that. You seem like a smart nice girl. I’m going to put it to you fair and square.” His mustache lifted in an ingratiating smile, the hand that held the candle touched and pressed against her shoulder. “Have you seen, or do you know of, any fugitive slave hidden anywhere on these premises?”
“No,” said Hesp
er, moving her shoulder away. Clarkson made a disgusted sound through his nose. He turned and stamped down the attic stairs in glum silence. Maybe the wench was telling the truth, maybe the whole business was a mare’s nest after all. Thing to do now, was let the old graybeard loose and follow him. See what he did, come back here later, when they were off guard, maybe find a clue then.
He unlocked the taproom door. “You can all go now—” he said sulkily, entering. He had put the pistol back in its holster, and he didn’t look at anyone; not even Charity, who thought him most attractive, and had spent this imprisoned hour envying Hesper her opportunities, rambling alone all over a dark house with a handsome, sophisticated man like that. What if he was a slave-catcher! Who cared about the silly slaves anyway. Ma’d often said they were far better off on the plantations than they’d be anywhere else. Now that Mr. Clarkson had satisfied himself he wasn’t going to find whatever he’d been looking for, maybe he’d relax and enjoy the party, come and sit by her again, repeat that she was the prettiest little piece he’d laid eyes on in many a long day.
Charity’s hopes were dashed. Mr. Honeywood, who always seemed so meek and spineless, suddenly pulled himself up until his head grazed the beams, and stiff as a flagpole, pointed a long bony finger toward the door. “Your behavior has been outrageous, sir,” he said in a high quivering voice. “Get out of my house.”
And Mr. Clarkson picked up his wide-brimmed black hat and went without a word. The minute he left all the others started leaving too. Charity sighed. First to last the party’d been a failure. She’d only danced two dances, there hadn’t been any forfeits, and Johnnie Peach hadn’t been near her at all.
The sheriff left next, murmuring a sheepish apology. The others followed quickly. No one mentioned the evening’s interruption.
“Oi misloike leavin’, ma’am—” said Cap’n Lane, shaking first Susan’s hand then Roger’s—“but Oi needn’t tell ye, a seaman keeps ear-rly hours. We’ve to be abar-rd by cock-crow. Thanks for the good cheer-r.”