Beneath a Golden Veil

by Melanie Dobson

  Isabelle’s light skimmed across the dirt floor, stopping when it reached the metal lockbox. She slipped off the silver chain from her neck and removed the key. Inside was her collection of gold, profits from hotel guests and dining room customers alike.

  She also kept her most important papers hidden inside.

  Rifling through the documents, she found the one that Ross had signed before he left. The wording in the contract left little room for dispute.

  Ross was paid fairly for his co-ownership of the Golden Hotel, making Aunt Emeline the sole owner of their enterprise. In order to resume his co-ownership, he agreed to pay her aunt back the same amount he’d taken to finance his quest for gold. If he didn’t have the money to reinvest on his return, he and Emeline would discuss new terms, but her aunt was not obligated to partner with him again.

  The document was signed by Aunt Emeline, Ross, and their attorney.

  Isabelle read the terms one more time and locked it back in the box. After this, she and Aunt Emeline couldn’t go back into partnership with Ross, but what if he earned enough money to resume his ownership? She supposed they would have to sell him the hotel.

  Sighing, Isabelle climbed back up the ladder and replaced the panel and rug. Then she returned to her room and lit a candle to celebrate this Christmas Eve on her own.

  Chapter 6

  Scott’s Grove

  December 1853

  Alden sat on the edge of his bed, fully clothed in his cord breeches and traveling cloak, his valise resting on the floor beside him as he listened to the clock outside his room strike the hour of midnight. Except for the grandfather clock, the house was silent now, had been for the past hour, but still he waited. He didn’t want anyone to disrupt his plans.

  In the hours after dinner, while his family and their guests drank themselves into a stupor, he binged on black coffee. And his mind churned. The house staff had been up late cleaning after the party, but once they were asleep, he planned to sneak down and fetch the keys locked in his father’s desk.

  The skill of lock picking was something he and Benjamin acquired a long time ago, motivated by the Belgian chocolates his father kept hidden in his office. They’d been careful as children—only taking one piece of chocolate for each of them before locking the drawer again. Tonight he’d be even more careful as he used a hairpin to retrieve the key that imprisoned Benjamin. And if he couldn’t find the key, he and Benjamin would figure out how to pick the lock on his shackles.

  Standing up, he moved quietly toward his door and listened one more time before opening it. There were no sounds in the hallway. No padding of feet up the steps or rustling of skirts. If one of the slaves did see him, he doubted they would inform Master Payne, but he didn’t want anyone else to be indicted in what the local and national government considered a crime.

  The federal government had passed the Fugitive Slave Act more than three years ago, a supposed compromise between the Northern and Southern states. The northern part of the country used to be a safe haven for runaway slaves, but now anyone caught helping runaways was either given a steep fine or imprisoned. Or when the law looked the other way, some people were feathered and tarred for loving their neighbors.

  His father hadn’t yet given him the money to finance his last term in school, but his train ticket north was in the valise, and he had enough money to buy a ticket for Benjamin as well. As long as the conductor believed Benjamin to be a slave, traveling as his manservant, he should be able to transport him as far as Boston.

  Patrick, his roommate at Harvard, was an abolitionist. Surely, he would have the contacts to help Benjamin find refuge up in Canada until they traveled out to California.

  His own plans to finish school would be dashed—his father would never forgive him for this offense—but his conscience would be intact. And Benjamin’s life would be saved. Then he would work to secure tickets for both of them on one of the steamers going toward San Francisco. He could complete his education under Judah’s tutelage.

  Slowly he stepped into the hallway, a candle in one hand, his bag clutched at his side. This decision sealed the fates of both him and Benjamin. After this, he could never return to Scott’s Grove.

  He turned to close his door, but before it shut, a scream pierced through the darkness, echoing down the papered walls in the corridor. In an instant, he tossed his travel bag back into his room, followed by his cloak; then he rushed down the corridor toward his father’s chamber.

  Someone yelled again—a man’s voice—and he heard crying. A woman weeping behind his father’s door.

  “You should care what happened to him,” the woman shouted.

  Ice glazed over Alden’s skin. It wasn’t his mother in the chamber. It was Mammy, screaming at her master.

  “You killed my son, and you don’t even care . . .” her words trailed off in a sob.

  Alden collapsed back against the wall, stunned at her accusation. Then rage bubbled up inside him, and his head felt as if it might explode.

  He knew his father was outraged, that he might try to maim Benjamin in some way to ensure he’d never run again, but Alden never imagined him killing one of their slaves.

  Across the corridor, his mother opened the door and peeked out at Alden in the candlelight. In that brief moment, he saw something unfamiliar in her eyes. A trace of vulnerability. Shame.

  Perhaps she saw something new in his eyes too. Without a word, she slammed her door shut, as if the wood barrier could block out the reality of what her husband had done. And block out the fury—the accusations—of her son.

  Mammy’s wails grew louder. “How could you kill him?”

  “He wouldn’t stop running away,” his father replied.

  “You should have let him run,” she said, her voice trembling. “All he wanted was to be like Alden . . . and you.”

  “If I’d let him go, the others would have followed him.”

  “You are a proud man, John Payne, and the Lord above despises pride.”

  “You spoiled him ever since he was a child,” his father said, as if Mammy had somehow wronged him. “He was useless as a slave.”

  “Indeed.” She paused. “Benjamin was too much like his father.”

  A sound—a slap—resounded into the hallway, and when Mammy cried out, Alden reached for the doorknob, throwing the door open. Mammy cowered near the window, her dark eyes swollen. The red mark on her cheek matched Alden’s, and he felt as if he might be sick all over his father’s woven rug.

  His father towered over Mammy, his face stark white like one of the marble statues at Harvard. Lifeless and resolute. He pointed Alden back toward the door. “Leave my room.”

  “You—” His voice trembled with shock as he stared at the man who’d sired him. “You killed Benjamin.”

  “Get out, Alden.”

  Weariness swept over him, his soul reflecting the look on Mammy’s face. He was tired. Tired of his father’s demands and the expectations placed on his shoulders. Tired of watching other people being treated worse than his father’s dog. Tired of hands that folded in prayer over a meal before striking the backs of people who had harvested and prepared it.

  Mammy wouldn’t suffer anymore at his father’s hand.

  Alden reached out toward her. “She’s coming with me.”

  “This isn’t your business,” his father said, stepping closer to him.

  Alden’s voice escalated. “You killed Benjamin, and now you want to hurt her?”

  “I own them.”

  “No, Father,” Alden said, his tongue burning in anger. “It seems that slavery actually owns you.”

  His father lifted his hand again to strike, and Alden closed his eyes, waiting for the pain. He wanted to feel what Benjamin and Mammy had felt, suffer alongside them.

  But instead of hitting Alden, he lowered his hand. “Leave my room.”

  “Not without Mammy.”

  His father swore. “Both of you leave my sight.”

  Mammy slipped
out in front of Alden, and as he turned to follow, he heard his father mutter, “Nigger-lover.”

  The vile words echoed in his mind as he clenched his fists. He wanted to flog the man, then strap him to the back of the carriage and make him ride all the way back to the Duvall’s farm in the freezing night air.

  Alden dug a grave for Benjamin’s body long past midnight, in the small Negro plot by the trees. As they buried him in the icy chill of moonlight, he and Mammy grieved together the loss of her son.

  After Mammy returned to the house, Alden paced the rows of tobacco plants alone. In an hour or so, Mammy would be expected to help dress his mother and sister for Christmas morning, her tears dried, but Alden wouldn’t join them in the festivities. He had a week left before he was supposed to return to school—perhaps he would lock himself in his room until it was time to leave. Then he would never return.

  The decision was quite clear to him now. This plantation and all of its property was the pride of his father. Alden would never return to oversee the man’s kingdom.

  He plucked a dried leaf off the tobacco plant—Virginia’s own version of gold—and crushed it between his fingers, the pieces falling on the clumps of dirt below. If only he had whipped Benjamin like his father commanded. He would have saved his friend’s life.

  Or if he had left the house earlier last night, right after dinner while everyone was drinking and singing in the drawing room, he could have retrieved the keys and helped Benjamin escape. He knew his father intended to harm Benjamin, but he never thought his father would kill him.

  At this moment, he didn’t know his father at all.

  Bitter tears fell from his eyes. When had his father’s heart grown so hard? How could he not understand Mammy’s grief at losing her son?

  He sat on the cold ground beside the smokehouse, his mind in turmoil. He’d promised Benjamin that he would help him escape, both when they were younger and yesterday in the barn. He’d told young Isaac that an honorable man keeps his promises, but his own honor had shattered that very night. Promises—years of good intentions—couldn’t save someone’s life.

  He wasn’t any better than the other students who only talked about abolition. He had failed to save even one slave. Failed at being an honorable man.

  His friend was with his eternal master now, and Alden hoped he was finally running north, south, east, and west—whatever direction he liked. The image of Benjamin running free, his arms spread wide, made him smile.

  Benjamin no longer had to run away from the pain. And Alden could no longer stay here and either inflict pain or watch other slaves suffer at his father’s hand.

  The glitter of gold didn’t drive Alden like it did many who went to California, but the promise of freedom was as enticing as any type of gold, especially now. He would finish his degree at Harvard, and then somehow he would make his way to the land where he could carve out his own future instead of stepping into the one that would shackle him here as a slaveholder for the rest of his life.

  Chapter 7

  West End

  December 1853

  Victor Duvall rang the silver handbell by his bed for the second time. It was 7:15, but Isaac still didn’t come.

  Insolent boy.

  Every morning Isaac brought his morning coffee and a copy of the Alexandria Gazette, precisely at seven, but he wasn’t here today—nor had he come yesterday. Victor had to walk all the way down to the kitchen in his dressing gown to collect his coffee and paper.

  No thirty-year-old self-respecting farmer and gentleman should be collecting anything. Or getting dressed on Christmas morning by himself to attend services in town.

  Yesterday, he’d searched the entire house for the boy. When he finally asked Eliza about Isaac’s whereabouts, she’d said he went with another slave into Alexandria to buy gifts for Christmas. He had scolded his wife for letting Isaac go. Victor was the master of this house, and no one had asked him if the boy was allowed to leave their farmhouse. When it came to matters about Isaac, they all knew permission came directly from him.

  Either way, no one would have sent a slave into town on Christmas Day.

  He lifted the bell over his shoulder, and its trill shook the glass panes on his window. Still Isaac didn’t walk through the door.

  The boy needed more discipline. And more duties so he would appreciate the little that was required of him here. If Isaac wasn’t careful, Victor just might send him out into the cornfield to labor with the eight other slaves his father had passed along to him a decade ago.

  He flung back the covers and stepped into the hallway, clutching the leather strap of the bell in his hand. “Isaac!” he shouted from the banister, ringing his bell again.

  At the other end of the corridor, the door to the servants’ staircase crept open, and he turned to reprimand Isaac for being late. He wouldn’t whip him this time for his delay, as long as he apologized properly.

  But instead of Isaac emerging into the corridor, it was Hannah, the old Negro woman he’d bought at the market last year to work in the kitchen. She hobbled forward, her gaze on the floor.

  “Where is Isaac?” he demanded.

  Her face turned to the door behind her, the room where Eliza slept. Most mornings his wife stayed in bed until late, sometimes not emerging until the lunch hour. He always locked himself into his study before she rose, and unless he needed to go into town, he remained there until the dinner hour required that he join her for a meal.

  This morning was different, though. Eliza would be up soon to dress for church.

  He bent toward Hannah. “Look at me.”

  As she lifted her chin, her eyes shifted right and then left, refusing to meet his gaze.

  He stepped closer to her, towering over her by more than a foot. “Where did Isaac go?”

  “Miss Eliza—” she whispered, her gaze falling back to the carpet.

  Anger surged inside him. “What did Eliza do this time?”

  The woman shook her head. “She done put that boy on the back of the carriage when Master Alden left, in the terrible cold.”

  The bell flew from his hand, banging against the wall like a crack of thunder, falling to the floor. “Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”

  “I figured it weren’t my place.”

  “It’s always your place when Eliza’s lost her sense.”

  “Please don’t tell her I said anything,” Hannah begged.

  Victor stomped right around her, his gaze focused on Eliza’s door. His wife thwarted every attempt he made to achieve happiness, as if his pleasure gave her great pain and his pain brought her joy.

  Eliza was sitting up on her throne of pillows. Her mossy-brown hair, frayed from years of ironing, was tangled at the base of her nightcap, and the entire room stunk of stale rum. Her face, pockmarked with acne scars, was covered in a white paste. “What was that dreadful noise?”

  He clenched his fists together, the nails digging into his palms, in an attempt to control his anger. He’d only hit Eliza once since they’d been married. Afterward, she’d threatened him, saying if he ever hit her again, she would go straight back to Scott’s Grove and tell her father that he’d hurt her. Then she would stay at her parents’ home, and any chance of him inheriting even a portion of the Payne estate would be gone.

  The only reason he’d married Eliza was her family’s plantation—and because his father, Arthur the Honorable, had threatened that if Victor didn’t marry a respectable woman before he died, he would give the Duvall house and farm to charity.

  The only reason Eliza had married him was because no one else would have her, and she didn’t take well to the title of old maid. She preferred overseeing the two floors of the Duvall farmhouse to listening to her younger sister prattle at home. Rhody, he was quite certain, would have no problem finding a husband.

  He crossed his arms. “Isaac didn’t go into Alexandria yesterday.”

  “Of course not.” She laughed. “I gave him to my father.”

&nb
sp; “You can’t give away my slave.”

  “It was a Christmas gift.”

  “A gift I never authorized.”

  She reached for a jar of hand cream on her nightstand and dabbed it onto her thick palms, rubbing them together. “He’s incompetent,” she said as she leaned back against her cushions. “And we had no use for incompetency here.”

  Victor stepped closer. “He was our only houseboy.”

  She shrugged, his rage seeming to have no effect on her. “I suppose, but you never treated him like a servant. You treated him like he’s your son.”

  “He is my son.”

  Eliza glared at him. After twelve years of marriage, she hadn’t been able to give him a single child, and she despised any reference to the reality that Isaac was his only flesh and blood.

  He pressed his fists together again. “I swear, if you killed him—”

  “Then he can go be with his mama.”

  “You don’t know that his mother is dead.”

  “Seems likely,” Eliza replied, leaning back on her pillows. “To think that girl chose to run away instead of live with you.”

  He raised his fist, but he didn’t strike her. Instead, he shouted for Hannah. Seconds later, the woman rushed into their room.

  “Get Thomas for me,” he commanded.

  Before Hannah replied, Eliza spoke. “Thomas took Alden and Isaac to Scott’s Grove.”

  “How are we supposed to get to church?”

  “You know how to drive the runabout just fine.”

  He sat on the bed beside his wife. “I’m going to get Isaac back.”

  She reached for the jar of cream again. “My father won’t be very pleased if you ask him to return your generous gift.”

  His face steamed. “I’ll tell him that you deceived me.”

  “And I’ll tell him that you coddle a slave boy.”

  He leaned close. “Perhaps I don’t care what your father thinks.”