Rachel's Choice

by Judith French

  Jeremy’s friends had summoned a makeshift judge and jury from the ranks of prisoners. Robert Aston, a Methodist deacon, had stood on one leg, holding himself upright with a bloodstained crutch, to plead Coblentz’s case. The cleric had ignored his fever and the pain of his crudely amputated limb to argue for hours, begging the jury to spare the sergeant’s life and leave his sentence to God. But the twelve men had found Coblentz guilty of unnatural crimes and demanded his death.

  And when they’d drawn straws to see who would execute the sergeant, Chance had pulled the short one.

  He’d thought long and hard about what means he should use to kill Coblentz. It would have been more fitting if Coblentz had been awake to know what was coming, but that meant taking a terrible risk. And if Chance wanted to kill the sergeant and still make his getaway without alarming the other guards, he couldn’t put a bullet in his head. That left a knife or his bare hands. And Chance didn’t want to dirty his hands by tightening them around Coblentz’s filthy neck.

  And so he waited, knife in hand, for the right moment to cut the sergeant’s throat.

  Rachel guided the Windfeather back to the clump of reeds where she’d bid Travis to wait for her. The sloop gently nosed against the muddy bank, and Rachel listened for a few moments to the night sounds of the marsh.

  In the distance an owl hooted; closer, some small creature rustled through the grass. There were no stars visible, but Rachel didn’t need light to show her the way. She’d sailed this creek since she was a small child, and she knew every crook and shallow.

  Finally, when she was convinced that no other boats were near, she called out to him.

  “I was beginning to wonder if I’d been permanently abandoned,” he replied. “I know I asked you to put me ashore, ma’am, but this mosquito sandbar wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”

  “Come aboard,” she said. “Damned if I know what I’m going to do with you, but I fancy that Chance would be mightily annoyed if I lost you before he got back.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I believe he might be.”

  She helped Travis to climb over the side and was shocked at how weak he was. “I’m hiding you,” she said reluctantly, “but if anyone finds you, you have to say you got to my farm on your own.”

  When she reached Rachel’s Choice, she made him wait on the sloop until she carried Davy and Chance’s money up to the house and lit the lamps. Bear licked her hands, barked, and scampered around her like a pup.

  “Good boy,” she said to him. “Good dog. Did you think I wasn’t coming home?”

  Later, when Davy was safely tucked into his cradle with the money bag under his mattress, she left the big black dog to guard him while she put Travis in the hired men’s room in the barn. She brought him freshwater from the well and a medicated syrup to ease his hacking cough.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am, just tired.”

  “In the morning I’ll fix you a decent breakfast and see what I can find to help clear the congestion in your chest.”

  As she left his room, she heaped hay in front of the door to keep out any curious visitors and went to her own bed. But even though she was weary unto death, sleep wouldn’t come; she was too worried about Chance.

  “In the morning I’ll ride Blackie into town and pay off Isaac,” she whispered aloud, but she knew that she wouldn’t. She would wait here until Chance came home.

  Three days he had told Travis, maybe four. Not so long, not if she filled her days with farmwork. There was so much that needed doing. He’d be here before she knew it, she told herself.

  “You will, won’t you?” she whispered into the dark room. “You must come home … for Davy’s sake and mine.”

  Chapter 21

  The next four days were the longest Rachel had ever known. She cared for Davy, tended Travis, and hoed her garden. Solomon hadn’t returned her cow yet, so there was no milking to do. But she did have beans and tomatoes to pick, fish to salt, and cucumbers to wash and put down in brine to pickle.

  She worked from first light until she blew out her lamp long after sunset, but her mind was not on the chores her hands performed. She could think of nothing but Chance and the dangers that faced him between Fort Delaware and Rachel’s Choice.

  She could imagine him shot trying to escape, being devoured by sharks in the bay, or cramping up, slipping under the surface of the river, and drowning. If he died in the water, his body would wash up on some deserted beach, and she would never know what happened to him.

  Once she woke screaming in the middle of the night after dreaming that she’d found Chance on a sandbar, his handsome face eaten away by crabs.

  Not even Davy’s morning smiles and joyful cooing could dispel Rachel’s fears or her awful premonition that something dreadful had happened to Chance.

  “Please, God,” she prayed. “I’m not askin’ you to give him to me. Just let him live.”

  On the evening of the fourth day, Rachel walked the creek bank with Davy in a sling on her back and Bear trailing after her. And when she found no trace of Chance, she pulled anchor on the sloop and sailed out to the river and down to the bay. She saw three deer grazing in the marsh, an osprey swooping over the river with a fish in his talons, and a huge snapping turtle, but no other human.

  “Where are you, Chancellor?” she cried in despair. But the only answering call was the shrill hunting cry of a nighthawk.

  The next morning, after she’d dried and dressed the baby, she put him in a safe spot and began to bake blueberry muffins, pumpkin cookies, and raisin scones. She used every dusting of sugar and white flour in her cupboard, and then she mixed corn bread, sweetening it with wild honey.

  A few peaches were ripe on the tree near the barn. She picked those and packed them into a basket with hardboiled eggs and fresh-scrubbed carrots from her garden.

  “I’m going back to the fort,” she told Travis when she brought him his evening meal of eggs, crab soup, corn bread, and honey. “Something’s happened to him. I know it has.”

  The lieutenant lay propped up against the wall on Chance’s narrow bed, the bed where Davy had been born. Travis’s face was ashen, his features drawn. She didn’t believe that he was much older than Chance, but it was hard to tell because illness had drained him of youth and vitality.

  “If he dies, it will be my fault,” Travis answered in his cultured Virginia drawl. “I was wrong to let him trade places with me.” He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bulged out on his thin neck. “You see, ma’am, I have a little girl I’ve never seen. I knew my wife, my Mary, was with child, but I didn’t know if …” He inhaled a shallow breath, and Rachel heard the ominous rattle in his chest. “Another prisoner, a man named Mitt Welsh, told me that he’d seen Mary in church when he was home on leave. He said that Mary had a baby girl in her arms. He didn’t know the baby’s name.” Travis swallowed again, and his brown eyes clouded. “I just wanted to hold her once … my baby daughter. I just wanted to see her and my Mary before—” A spasm of coughing took away his breath.

  “If Chance is dead, it’s his own doing, not yours,” Rachel said. “I’ve seen Pea Patch.” She smoothed the folds of her apron. “No man deserves to be penned up in there. I wouldn’t treat my hogs so—if the army had left me any hogs.”

  “You shouldn’t go,” he replied weakly. “That’s no place for a woman.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she agreed, “but I’ll not rest until I know what’s happened to him. There’s eggs in the henhouse, beans and tomatoes in the garden, and bacon and ham in the smokehouse. You’ll have to manage for yourself while I’m gone. Be careful and try to stay out of sight. If you hear my dog bark, that will mean someone’s coming.”

  “I’m sorry to put you at risk, ma’am. I should have stayed where I was, but I wanted so badly to see that baby girl of mine.”

  “You will,” Rachel replied, but she didn’t believe it. In all likelihood she’d have a grave to dig for Travis Bowman on Rachel’s Choice
. “I mean to dress as a Quaker again,” she explained. “If it got me inside once, it should work this time.”

  She knew she’d have to ask Cora to watch Davy again, but she was dreading explaining where she was going. Cora might refuse to help.

  Pharaoh was home again. Rachel had seen him crossing her meadow on horseback with a pack of hunting dogs. If Cora confided in her son, Pharaoh would try to stop her from going. He might even come to the farm and murder Travis.

  She should be putting Davy first, but she couldn’t. So long as there was the slightest hope that she could get Chance out of Fort Delaware, she had to try. “I should think of my child, but I love Chance.”

  Travis smiled, and for an instant she saw the ghost of a dashing cavalry officer. “I know,” he replied. “He’s a hard man not to love.” And then he touched her hand. “There’s a decent Yankee guard in there. His name is Cochran, a lieutenant. If you get into trouble, ask for him. He won’t help you free Chance. Cochran’s too honorable for that, but he will protect you if he can.”

  “Then he couldn’t be bribed?”

  Travis ran his fingers through his light brown hair. “Not Cochran.” His lips tightened into a thin line. “There’s a Dutchman, Sergeant Coblentz, who could. Daniel Coblentz would sell his own mother for two bits, but he won’t be of much use to you.”

  “Why not?”

  Travis shrugged. “Because he’s the man Chance stayed inside the prison to kill.”

  “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?” Cora Wright asked Rachel at the door of her cabin. She held Rachel’s baby in her arms. “You think this Richmond lawyer is worth risking losing your babe and your land for?”

  “I’m in love with him, Cora.”

  Cora frowned and tried to find the words to convince her that what she was doing would only bring her grief. “He won’t marry you, child. No matter what he promises you, he’ll go back to his own life and his own kind.”

  Rachel shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’ve got to save him, if I can.”

  “And if you can’t? What happens to your Davy?”

  A single tear trickled down the white girl’s face. “There’s money, Cora, lots of money for Davy’s keep. I’ve written a will leaving the farm to him if I don’t come back. I hope you’ll look after him for me.”

  Cora sighed. “Love. What has it ever caused a woman but trouble? You’re mad as a hatter, girl.”

  Rachel nodded. “I know, but if I don’t try, I’ll spend the rest of my life regretting it.”

  “Go on, then. I can see there’s no stopping you. I’ll tend to your boy as long as I can. But if you go to prison, that father-in-law of yours will hear of it, and he’ll come for little Davy.”

  “I knew I could trust you, Cora.”

  “You’ve been a friend to me and mine for a long time. You may be white on the outside, Rachel Irons, but inside, your blood is the same color as ours. I won’t help you for your reb’s sake, but I’ll do it for you. Go with God, child.”

  Rachel brushed her baby’s cheek with one finger, then turned and ran toward the landing.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Cora called. This was bad business and no good could come of it. Rachel was a loving woman and the best neighbor anyone could ask for, but even Rachel—smart as she was—would have trouble getting into a Union prison and freeing her man.

  Still cradling Davy in her arms, Cora walked across the hard-packed earth to her son’s forge. “Pharaoh,” she called.

  The ping of a hammer striking iron told her that he was still shaping the shoes for Nathaniel’s mare. A blast of hot air hit her as she rounded the corner. Pharaoh saw her coming and paused, stopping the swing of his heavy hammer in midair.

  “Mother?”

  She smiled at him. He was a good boy who’d grown into a good man. It had been her lucky day to find him, abandoned by the side of the road, still wet from his birthing. He’d been the first of the children she’d taken to raise, and none would ever take his place.

  Pharaoh, she’d named him, after an old Egyptian king. He hadn’t looked much like royalty when she’d pulled him squalling from that mud hole, but she reckoned he’d grown into the name. His high cheekbones, wide, strong nose, and full lips made him a handsome man, and his dark African eyes and broad shoulders gave him an aura of power.

  But best of all, her son was wise, and not too full of his own ginger to listen to his mother. She never doubted that Pharaoh would do what she asked of him, no matter what he thought privately.

  “Pharaoh,” she said as she approached him. “I’ve a chore that needs doing.”

  He laid down the hammer and wiped the sweat from his brow. “What now, Mother?”

  “I know you just came back, but I want you to take another trip up to Pea Patch Island.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What scheme have you hatched up?”

  “Come to the house, son. I’ll explain it all.”

  Pharaoh’s lips thinned to a hard line.

  “As a favor to Mother, dear.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” he replied, and then he grinned at her.

  The first person Rachel saw as she nosed the bow of her sloop against the dock at Fort Delaware was Pharaoh. She immediately thought that he’d come to prevent her from rescuing Chance.

  “Mornin’, Missy,” he called. “Sho glad I ketched up wit you. Yore grandaddy wants you back to de house, right now.”

  “My grandfather?” She was totally confused. Why was Pharaoh talking like an uneducated fieldhand? And, since she’d heard him working in the forge at Cora’s, how had he gotten here to Pea Patch Island ahead of her?

  Pharaoh leaped onto her boat. “No, Missy. Don’t tie up here,” he said with an exaggerated shake of his head.

  “How did you get here?”

  “Nearly run two horses to death to do it,” he answered softly. Then he raised his voice again. “You gots to get back to Delaware City. Now.” He smiled foolishly at her, but the expression in his eyes was fierce.

  A Union officer walked down the dock toward Rachel’s boat. “Anything wrong here, ma’am? Is this negra bothering you?”

  Rachel’s mouth went dry. “Not at all,” she replied. “He works for my grandfather. An emergency at home.” She smiled at the captain. “A good day to thee.”

  Pharaoh pushed off from the piling. “You take the tiller or I will, Miss Rachel.”

  Heart pounding and hands numb, she turned the boat back toward the port town of Delaware City.

  “You been hiding a reb on your farm all this summer,” Pharaoh said when they were far enough from the landing to keep from being heard. “All the time I was hunting snakes, you had a rattler in your house.”

  “Your mother told.” She hadn’t believed that Cora Wright would betray her, and the thought made her sick to her stomach. “He’s not like you think.”

  “A slaver.”

  “No, not a slaveholder. Chance’s family doesn’t believe in owning slaves.”

  “So he told you.” Pharaoh’s grim features might have been cut of swamp oak.

  “Please,” she said. “You don’t know him like I do. He’s a good man, Pharaoh.”

  “Fighting to keep other humans under the whip.”

  “No. That’s not true. He told me that he joined the Confederate army because he couldn’t go against his neighbors and friends, not because he believed in slavery.”

  “And that’s supposed to make a difference to me?”

  A dark form glided under the boat, and Rachel stared down into the brown water. “I think that was a shark.” She shuddered. “I hate sharks.”

  “They’re good eating, if you know how to cook them. My Emma fries up—”

  “Why are you here, Pharaoh? Why don’t you just mind your own affairs?”

  He knotted the line and scowled at her. “I am minding my business. I’m doing a favor for my mother.”

  “What did she tell you to do?” />
  “Find you and keep you from doing something stupid.”

  “Are you going to have me arrested?”

  He shrugged. “Me? Have a white woman—a Quaker woman—arrested on my say-so?”

  Rachel flushed and looked down at her plain gray dress. “His name is Chance. He means the world to me.”

  “Family.”

  “What?” Puzzled, she looked up into his face again.

  “Family means everything to my mother. She wants me to help you get this reb free and see that he does the right thing by you.”

  “I don’t understand. You mean you haven’t come to stop me? You want to help me get Chance free?”

  “And see that he marries you.”

  “Marriage? Who said anything about marriage? He never asked me to marry him.”

  “Figured as much.”

  “Don’t judge him before you’ve met him.”

  “I already have.”

  “I can get inside the prison,” she said. “I’ve done it before.”

  “You will wait for me at Delaware City. I’ll go back and find out if your reb is still in there or if he’s been hung for escaping.”

  Rachel’s fingers tightened on the tiller as she guided the small sloop around a larger vessel bound for the prison with a load of flour. “How can you find him? You don’t know what he looks like. You don’t even know his last name.”

  “Mama said you told her it was Chancellor,” Pharaoh replied. “And you can give me his description.”

  “I still don’t understand what you can do.”

  He scoffed. “Lots of black folks work inside those walls. We have our own telegraph system. White people don’t take notice of us, or if they do, it’s as a servant. Fetch-and-carry boy. That’s me. Invisible. And a man who isn’t seen can go anywhere. I’m a darn sight more valuable to your reb than a Quaker lady who can’t take a step without fifty soldiers’ eyes on her.”

  Rachel nibbled unconsciously at her lower lip. “What will you do if you find him?”