by Lynn Austin
“Do you want to come up, Beatrice? Stretch out your arms, and I’ll pull you up.”
The thought of being hauled up into the unknown void frightened Bebe more than descending into the root cellar had. But she knew her mother was strong and completely trustworthy. Bebe raised her arms above her head and allowed Hannah to grip her wrists and pull her up into the cool, dusty attic.
Dried herbs hung from the rafters along with garlands of cobwebs. Discarded chairs, an old dresser, and a battered steamer trunk lay scattered across the floorboards. Bebe worried about spiders. And mice. And bats. In the middle of the floor lay a heap of bedding, covered with one of Hannah’s good winter quilts.
“Good morning,” Hannah called into the still, dead air. “I brought you some breakfast.”
Bebe’s heart raced as the lump beneath the quilt stirred and pushed the blanket aside. When the real live escaped slave sat up, Bebe gaped in surprise. It was a woman! Bebe never imagined that an escaped slave might be a woman. All the slaves she had seen at the society meetings had been men.
The quilt shifted again and a second figure sat up—another woman, younger than the first. The two “packages” who peered at Bebe with dark, frightened eyes were the most exotically beautiful people she had ever seen. With their dark brown skin and woolly black hair, they seemed like little more than shadows in the dusky attic.
“Don’t be afraid,” Hannah told the pair. “My daughter, Beatrice, and I brought you some food.”
Bebe stayed close beside her mother as she inched across the dusty floor on her hands and knees, dragging the basket. The attic was too cramped for Hannah to stand upright except in the very center beneath the ridge beam, but Bebe could easily stand.
“Beatrice, our new friend’s name is Mary,” Hannah told her.
“And her daughter’s name is Katie.”
Bebe knew it was rude to stare, but she couldn’t help it. The younger slave, Katie, was not much older than Bebe’s brother William, who was twelve. Mary looked much too young to be her mother. She smoothed back her sleep-tousled hair as if wanting to make a good impression.
“We appreciate your help,” she said softly. She started to crawl forward, but Hannah stopped her.
“No, sit still, Mary. I’ll bring it to you. I know you must be exhausted after walking all that way in the middle of the night.” Hannah spread the dishtowel on the floor like a little tablecloth, then removed the plates from the basket and placed them on it. She had even packed two napkins.
Tears glistened in young Katie’s eyes as she examined the bounty. “All this food for us?”
“Yes, it’s all for you,” Hannah replied. “We’ve already eaten our breakfast. And if you’re still hungry, let me know and I’ll fix more. We have plenty.”
Katie scrambled forward to grab her plate. “Ain’t you forgetting something?” Mary asked. Katie glanced at her mother, then set down the plate and folded her hands. Both women bowed their heads as Mary prayed. “Lord, we so grateful for these kind people and for all this food they fixing for us. Please bless them, Lord. This a good thing they doing. Amen.”
Bebe watched Katie gobble her food, shoveling it down the same way her brothers did after baling hay. If any mice did inhabit the attic, the women weren’t leaving them a crumb. When Mary and Katie finished eating, Hannah packed everything back into the basket.
“Please, ma’am . . . I need the privy,” Katie whispered.
“Of course,” Hannah replied. “Follow me downstairs and I’ll show you the way. And I have plenty of hot water if you’d like to wash up.”
“You don’t need to be waiting on us this-a-way,” Mary said. “But we surely do thank the Lord for your kindness.”
Hannah lowered herself through the attiCopening first, and Bebe had a moment of panic when she realized she would have to drop down into her mother’s arms. But she made it safely, followed by Katie and Mary. Bebe offered to show them the way to the privy. Both women followed her cautiously, as if expecting someone to jump out of hiding and pounce on them, the way Bebe’s brothers did when playing hide-and-seek. She thought the two women were right behind her as she stepped out the back door, but they had halted before venturing outside, gazing all around, eyes wide and alert.
“Ain’t no paddyrollers round here, is there?” Mary asked.
“What’s a paddyroller?”
“They the white men on horses who chasing after us. They wanting to take us back to our massa’s place, but I sooner die than go back down there.” Her words made Bebe shudder, reminding her of the risk they all were taking.
“I haven’t seen any,” Bebe replied. “Besides, we’d hear them coming up the road a long way off.”
The women sat outside on the back steps after they finished washing up, warming their faces in the thin spring sunlight. A grove of fruit trees ruffled with blossoms hid the back of the house from view. A cowbell jangled dully as Henry’s cows headed down the path to the pasture.
“It’s nice here,” Mary said quietly. “But why ain’t anybody working all this land?”
“What do you mean?” Hannah asked.
“I ain’t never seen a farm that didn’t need slaves to keep it going. This late in the morning, we’d already be out there sweating and straining, with the overseer’s whip just a cracking on our backs. Sometimes we’d have to start in singing just to keep our spirits up.”
“People around here don’t farm more land than the family can handle by themselves,” Hannah said. “My husband does all of the work with the help of our four sons.”
In the peaceful silence of the morning, Bebe heard a crow cawing from the pine tree, a blue jay scolding its mate, a woodpecker hammering into a fence post near the barn.
Mary sighed again. “It’s so peaceful here. I wish we could stay.”
“I wish you could, too,” Hannah said. “I think you’re the most courageous women I’ve ever met.”
Mary wrapped one arm around her daughter and pulled her close. “It ain’t courage making me do this, it’s fear. If I stay down there, I lose my child. Lizzy, up in the big house, say Massa be selling my Katie to another massa—and he planning to use my girl for hisself.”
Hannah glanced at Bebe as she patted Mary’s shoulder. “There, there . . . I understand.” Several years would pass before Bebe understood what Mary had meant—and when Bebe finally did comprehend, she was outraged.
“My Katie is already bought and paid for, so now both our massas is chasing us.”
“Well, with the Good Lord’s help you’ll make it all the way to Canada, where you’ll be free,” Hannah said.
The women climbed back up to the attic to hide before Bebe’s brothers arrived home from school. Hannah repacked the basket with food and water for their supper and sent it up with them, along with a chamber pot. That night Bebe and her brothers slept in their bedrooms beneath the attiCas usual, but Mary and Katie were quieter than a pair of mice. They never squeaked a single floorboard. Their lives depended on silence. Bebe listened to her brothers laughing and scuffling as they dressed for school the next morning and smiled to herself. They had no idea that two escaped slaves were hiding right above their heads.
On the third day, as Bebe and her mother packed the breakfast basket, they heard horses trotting up the road to their farm. “Go look out the front window, Beatrice, and see who’s coming.”
Bebe ran to the front room and peeked through the curtain just as two men on horseback drew to a stop in front of the house. She hurried back to the kitchen. “It’s two men, but I don’t know them, Mama. Should I let them in?”
“No, stay inside. Your father will talk to them.”
“Are they the bad men who are chasing—?”
“They might be.”
What had Mary called them? Paddyrollers. Bebe ran into the parlor and peered through the window again as Hannah hurried upstairs to deliver the women’s breakfast and to warn them to stay hidden. Bebe’s father ambled out from the barn with a sho
vel in his hand and stood talking with the men for a while as if chatting about nothing more important than the weather. When Hannah returned, she took Bebe’s hand and led her away to the kitchen.
“Help me wash the eggs, Beatrice. I want to take them into town to sell later this week.” Hannah put the basket of eggs they had collected that morning on the table, along with a basin of warm water. Bebe dampened a rag to clean them, careful not to break the delicate shells.
“Mama, I know Papa would never tell a lie. But what if they ask him about—?”
“Your father can honestly say that he hasn’t seen any escaped slaves because he hasn’t. That’s why you and I always bring the food upstairs—and why we can’t go outside right now.”
“Will we have to hide if Papa invites the men inside?”
“He won’t invite them into our home if they’re bounty hunters.”
Bebe waited in the kitchen with her mother for a very long time. She never knew that her heart could beat so hard and not give out. At last she heard the horses ride away again, but Mary and Katie stayed hidden in the attic all day.
“What did those men want?” Hannah asked when she and Bebe brought Henry’s lunch outside to him.
“Claimed they were looking for two escaped slaves. Two women. Showed me a wanted poster and everything. Said there’s a reward for finding them.”
“I never heard of bounty hunters coming all the way out here. Have you?”
“Greed, Hannah. Men will do anything for selfish greed.”
Bebe’s brothers arrived home from school that afternoon whooping with excitement and jostling each other as they competed to share their news. “Two strangers on horseback showed up at school today,” William said, outshouting the others.
“And guess what they asked us?” Joseph said.
James elbowed him aside. “They wanted to know if we’d seen any Negroes hiding around here.”
“My goodness,” Hannah murmured. “Imagine that.”
“The men said they would give us candy and other treats if we showed them where the Negroes were hiding,” Joseph added.
“One of the men had a shiny new silver dollar that he kept flipping up in the air and catching.” William tossed an imaginary coin to demonstrate. “He said we could have it if we helped him.”
Bebe feared she might burst. Keeping a secret was such a hard thing to do. But her mother crouched beside her and pulled her close, the same way Mary had pulled Katie to her side the other morning. Bebe felt Hannah’s courage flowing into her.
“My friend Louis told the strangers that he’d seen Negroes in New Canaan,” James continued, “but he was talking about the meetings at church that you and his mama go to sometimes.”
“The man gave him a stick of licorice anyway, just for helping,” Joseph said. “So then all the other kids started telling stories, too.”
“You seen any Negroes around here, Pa?” William asked as their father tromped in from the back porch.
“Who’s asking?”
“Two strangers showed up outside the school today and—”
“Oh, them,” Henry said with a grunt. “They came out here and asked me the same question. I told them I haven’t seen any Negroes. But even if I had, why would I tell some stranger about it?”
“They’ll give you a whole dollar, Pa, that’s why.” Franklin hopped up and down as if he needed the privy. “A whole dollar!”
Their father frowned. “Sure, you would get a dollar. And you know what those poor Negroes would get? Forty lashes with a bullwhip.” Franklin took a step backward as if fearing the lash himself. “Then those men would carry the slaves down south again, where they’re treated worse than animals. Don’t you boys get mixed up with those strangers, you hear?”
“Yes, Pa.” Their enthusiasm vanished like a gopher down a hole.
“If you want candy and treats and such, then earn the money the honest way by working for it, not by selling another human being into slavery.”
Bebe thought of Mary and Katie, hidden beneath a quilt in her attic, and knew she wouldn’t hand them over for all the licorice in the world. She felt like she had grown three years older in the last three days.
On market day, Bebe and her mother drove into town to make their weekly egg delivery and to pick up a few things at the general store. One of their egg customers, the minister’s wife, invited them into her parlor for coffee. Reverend Webster himself joined them, which seemed highly unusual to Bebe. He surprised her even more by speaking in a near whisper instead of the booming voice he always used on Sunday mornings. In fact, Bebe had to lean close to hear what he was saying.
“I don’t know how to advise you, Mrs. Monroe. It’s too dangerous for your visitors to stay and it’s even more dangerous for them to leave. Packages usually travel at night, on foot, but the bounty hunters must have tracked them this far because they’re hanging around town, waiting for someone to slip up. They take turns patrolling the roads, day and night. They even have dogs on the scent.”
“How far is it to the next station?”
“About sixteen miles. It would take the better part of the night to walk that far.”
Hannah set down her coffee cup and stared at her hands, folded in her lap. She seemed to be thinking—or maybe praying. “Can you send word to the next station for me, Reverend?” she asked at last. “Tell them I’ll deliver the package myself, tomorrow morning. I’ll hide our friends in my wagon—”
“In broad daylight?”
“Yes, sir, in broad daylight. Beatrice will come with me, won’t you, dear?”
Bebe wanted to say, “No!” but not a sound came from her throat.
CHAPTER
4
On Friday morning, before Bebe’s brothers left for school, their father ordered them to pitch a load of firewood into the back of the farm wagon. “Who is all this wood for, Pa?” William asked.
“Someone in need. Hurry up now or you’ll be late for school.”
Henry moved some of the wood aside after the boys were gone and hoisted a small coffin-like box that he’d built onto the wagon bed. Mary and Katie would ride to the next station in this secret hiding place, buried beneath the wood. Before the women climbed into it, Hannah gave them a map she’d drawn.
“It’s always best to know exactly where you’re headed,” she told them. “You can’t get anywhere in life without a map. I’ll drive you to the next station, but if you find yourself off course after that, you can always look for the landmarks I’ve drawn.”
“I don’t know how we can ever thank you,” Mary said.
“There’s no need.” Hannah surprised her with an embrace. “And now I think we should pray and ask the Lord for His protection.”
The women joined hands and bowed their heads. Bebe’s stomach cramped as if she’d eaten too many green apples as she held on to Katie’s and Hannah’s hands. She didn’t close her eyes. Instead, she watched her mother’s face as she prayed.
“Lord, please send your angels to surround us, to guard us and guide us on our way today. Blind our enemies’ eyes, Lord, as you did for your servants in times past, so they don’t see these precious daughters of yours. We ask you to protect Mary and Katie on their journey and help them reach freedom in Canada. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
The prayer didn’t make the sick feeling in Bebe’s stomach go away. Her heart thudded as she watched the women crawl inside the tiny space. Then her father buried the little box beneath the pile of firewood. “Can you breathe in there?” he asked.
“We’re fine,” came the muffled reply.
Henry helped Hannah climb onto the wagon seat, then handed her the reins. Last of all, he lifted Bebe up beside her. The wagon started with a jolt.
New leaves sprouted from the trees along the way as the countryside burst into life after the long, cold winter. The creaking wheels and plodding horse hooves drowned out the birdsong as the wagon traveled on, but Bebe could hear her mother humming softly as they rode.
“The Bible says that He can. When the prophet Elisha was surrounded by a huge army with soldiers and horses and chariots, he said to the Lord, ‘Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness,’ and God did just that. He blinded the enemies’ eyes to what they were really seeing, so that Elisha could lead them far away to another place. In the New Testament, Paul and Barnabas were on one of their missionary journeys when an evil sorcerer tried to stop their work. Paul prayed and the sorcerer was temporarily struck blind.”
Bebe had heard of Jesus giving sight to blind people, but she’d never known that it worked in reverse. Even so, she hoped they didn’t meet any enemies along the way. She would hate for her mother to be responsible for making anyone blind.
A little while later they reached a fork in the road, but instead of turning toward New Canaan as usual, Hannah steered the horses down the other road, toward the distant hills. Bebe had never been this way before. She looked around at the unfamiliar scenery and remembered another part of Hannah’s prayer.
“I don’t see any angels around us, Mama.”
“They’re here with us, just the same, dear.”
“I wish I could see them.” Maybe the sick feeling in her stomach would go away if she could glimpse a halo or two. “Are you scared, Mama?”
“Of course I’m scared. It’s only natural. But I’ve decided to trust God and to follow my conscience. I believe that the Good Lord wants me to help our new friends.”
“I heard Mr. Smith say you could go to jail.”
“Well, if I have to go to jail for helping Mary and Katie, then so be it. I’m sure God will have a purpose for sending me there, and He’ll be with me in jail, too.”
Bebe swallowed. “Will I have to go with you?”
“No, you’re much too young, dear. But someday when you’re all grown up, God is going to give you a task to do in your own time and place. Then you’ll have to put your faith in Him as you follow your conscience. That’s why I wanted you to come with me today. We grow stronger every time our faith is tested. That’s how we learn to trust Him.”