Inside the blacksmith shop, he resumed the work he did before the escape, except now both his ankles were shackled by long chains. One of the armed local night patrollers watched him. At once, he set to repairing tools and getting the chores finished. All the while, he stoked the furnace and kept a crucible of molten iron red-hot and ready to pour.
The patroller observed this activity with much diligence and without comment. However, after several hours, and having been out the previous night at his normal work, the heat in the building began to erode his alertness. Elymas noticed and stopped pounding iron, instead rubbing the file up and down along the edges of tools, placing each one silently on the tall table nearest the forge. He pumped the bellows and carried his chains, lest their clinking disturb the man’s light slumber.
After a while, snores emanated from the guard. Elymas drew close to the fire, placing his chains neatly on the floor, links near his ankles lined up in parallel. He grabbed the crucible with long-handled tongs and poured the molten metal onto the chains. Heat transferred from one to the other and up the links to the cuff around his ankle, burning him. He held his breath and gritted his teeth. The chain directly under the stream of red-hot iron weakened until he was able to simply yank the bonds apart. The remaining chain was hot, but he could not risk cooling it and raising a spurt of steam. In his gloved hands, he grabbed the hot chains and ran for the river, careful to avoid the tobacco fields and the overseer who watched the slaves in the darkening day. At the river, he found one of the leftover logs from the original raft. He pushed himself out into the current, the cold water soothing the blisters on his ankles and the whip marks on his ribs.
In that way, he rode down the river, through the patch of rapids that had previously torn their raft apart, and began again his journey toward Utica.
A guffaw of laughter brought Elymas back into the present. Ruggles, Tappan, and a black grocer named James W. Higgins were talking animatedly about the upcoming abolition convention, but Elymas just looked out the window, occasionally touching the scar on the corner of his mouth, and nursing the belief that he was heading toward his family.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
IT WAS LATE IN THE DAY and the sky outside Maggie’s window melted from deep purple to black. Joe slumbered on the floor in the corner, his feet resting on a three-legged wooden milking stool. Imari lay surrounded by pillows, in the same place on Maggie’s bed that she had occupied for days. Imari was certain that the baby’s time was approaching, but had deliberately hid that fact because she knew that the cook watched her for any signs of illness or want. Besides, the pains were neither regular nor intense.
“You got a name for the baby?” asked Maggie.
“It ain’t decided,” said Imari. She shifted her position on the bed to relieve the strain on her lower back. She let her mind stray to Elymas. They should be naming the baby together. That would never happen now. But the idea that he would catch up had been etched on her heart. It was hard to give up. She never should have run off after killing Colby. I shoulda beat in Hickox’s head—or shot him.
“You best decide soon,” said Maggie.
“It sorta depend on what the baby look like.”
“What do you mean?”
“Will it look like Elymas? Or,” she whispered, “like Master Arnold?” She met Maggie’s surprised expression. “I don’t know.”
Maggie clucked her tongue and shook her head. “The new master too?”
“Like he can’t stop himself, trying to be the master with his daddy’s ghost flying over his head.” She shuddered and then took a deep breath. “Missus Bea, she named Joe. I want to call him Elymas. But she say no. I brung him to her and she looks into his eyes and claims they’s like saint’s eyes. He a quiet baby, so she gets to thinking about which saint has the most patience. Well, that gotta be Joseph. Here, his wife giving birth to a boy who ain’t his own and he don’t care about it, but he gonna love baby Jesus anyway. That sound like a saint to me. She says that they ain’t no other name for him but Joey.”
“I hope he don’t turn out to be no saint,” said Maggie. “Saints, they gotta be good all the time, and who wants that?”
“You got a little bit a that devil in you,” said Imari, smiling. But then the merriment dropped from her face. She lowered her voice. “Master Arnold, he got something bad in him. He like a cat that don’t know if he want in or out, but he pretty sure about me being his territory. After I know the baby coming, I tried to stop him when he come knocking on Missus Bea’s door with some excuse. She knew what he want too, told me to quote the seventh commandment, Thou shalt not commit adultery. That don’t work with no man. I can’t have him on me ’cause a being slippery. I told him he gonna hurt the baby. Well, now he gotta have me more. He don’t care who know it. More than anything, it be like he mad at me.”
“All that musta burned up Elymas’s heart,” said Maggie.
“Elymas be mad. He take some of it out on the iron. But Elymas burns. At the end, if we don’t go, his temper might get him killed, is what.”
“What set you all off?”
Imari thought for a moment, gauging Maggie. She lowered her voice, unsure if Joe was actually asleep. “We been talking about running and making some plans, but it wasn’t like it had to be now. We be looking for a chance, but this here baby mean we gotta wait. I be working in Missus Bea’s room, cleaning her little thingums while she nap. I hear Master Arnold in his daddy’s office, talking with Hickox about how he gotta sell some of us right after the tobacco comes in. But that makes Elymas go? No. He don’t believe it gonna touch him. We safe, he says. But how safe can we be if Master Arnold’s daddy sold my Jimmy, his own son?” She tapped her heart softly.
Maggie shifted as if suddenly uncomfortable.
“You all right?” asked Imari.
“Now you’re gonna take care a me too?” said Maggie. “Go on about Master Arnold.”
“Nothing matters to them white men when they got they needs. Don’t care who gets they heart ripped out. At the very end of July, Master Arnold, he corner me outside Missus Bea’s and pull me into his daddy’s room. He pushing and pulling me to the office and he shove me on the rug. I turn over and I yell no at him. He goes stiff. Ain’t never heard that word from a slave. On my knees, I beg and pretend like I know it’s his own boy I carry. He ain’t got no boys, so I figure that maybe he gonna want this one.” Imari started to cry. “He don’t say nothing. He turns to stone. Instead a yelling, he swings his leg back like he gonna kick the baby, but I scream like I never done and roll away. Suddenly, Missus Bea, she hears me, I guess. She busts in and whacks him right across the head and it looks like he gonna hit his own mother right back. Instead, he walks out. I think Missus Bea save me. Everything over.”
Maggie reached out and grabbed Imari’s hand. “What’d he go do?”
Imari pulled her close. “He take it out on poor Joe,” she whispered. She waved Maggie closer and spoke into her ear: “He done to him what he wanted to do to me.”
Joe’s feet twitched, as if they knew what was being discussed. But the sleep that embraced him was as deep and muddy as the Potomac after a heavy rain. More than once he had blinked open his eyes only to have the tentacles of his dream push his lids down again.
He sat cross-legged on the bottom of the river with a large stone resting in his lap to keep him from floating away. The water cleared and he noticed the sun’s shimmering light. All manner of fish and plants drifted past. Beside him, two dark tree trunks stood upright, and when he looked up, he saw that their leaves vibrated in the current. He realized that he no longer needed to hold his breath and began taking in water. He wanted to swim, but the stone trapped him. Again, he looked up. The tree branches swayed wildly. The trunks themselves began to bend and combine, driven lower by the violent storm. He fought with the rock. It became huge and he was soon dwarfed by it. The trees shook and swayed, churning up the water. At their base, he noticed the roots had transformed into paws. It was th
e bear, its pelt so black that it absorbed the sunlight. It opened its tan muzzle, revealing the sharp peaks of its white teeth and a cavernous pink mouth. It bent down, sharp claws tearing through the thick water, reaching for him. He screamed as its front paws tightened around his body and its bulk pushed him down into the muck at the bottom of the river.
When he sat up, suddenly awake, he was confronted by the startled faces of his mother and Maggie.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
IN THE YELLOW CANDLELIGHT, clothed in her dressing gown, Helen stopped at her washstand, poured cold water into the basin, and brought some of it to her face in cupped hands. She tried to piece together the past hours … or days? She wasn’t certain, but clearly remembered Maggie helping her get out of the bed and … had she somehow been in Dr. McCooke’s bedroom? She pictured him looming above her, but her dreams had been so wild and peculiar that she wondered what was real.
A twinge of pain troubled her abdomen. Without warning, the memories filled her: the collapse in the library, McCooke’s hands on her as she fought, and the draft of brandy and opium he had forced her to drink.
Each snippet came together until she imagined a tiny infant slipping through her fingers. Sadness bore down on her. The poor little babe never took a breath of air or felt sunlight on its face, she thought. There would be no warm cooing baby to hold and protect—only terrible emptiness. She sobbed. Was she to have nothing to love in this world? Surely the Lord was harsh.
In the mirror, her irises stood out against the redness of her eyes, still sharp in their brown-black luster. Her face was pale and drawn—somehow changed, more mature, she thought as she looked at herself from different angles. What did others see? A girl? A wife? A mother-to-be? Nothing seemed to fit anymore. Sighing, she patted herself dry with a cotton cloth and pressed back a few strands of hair. Without thinking, she brought her index fingers to her widow’s peak and ran them along the hairline, circling her face. The gesture was a favorite of her mother’s as she sang, “My heart, my heart, my heart belongs to Hel-en.” To whom would she sing silly songs? A tear broke away from the corner of her eye and streaked across her skin to her lips. Salt. Her mother called the eyes God’s ocean. “Blue, green, gray, or dark brown, like you and your father, it does not matter. The salt is the proof.”
If only she could still run to her and hold her and ask her to please make sense of this life. A parade of sudden change had destroyed every illusion she’d held.
Outside, in the dark beyond her window, a branch snapped. Searing anger flared. It must be those awful slave catchers sneaking around and looking for Imari and Joe. The nearest object to her hand was a sizable bottle of eau de toilette that Augustin had purchased in New York over her objections. She rushed to the window, shoved back the curtain, pushed up the sash, and threw the bottle at a form below.
“Ow!” someone cried, and the overpowering odor of lilac, lavender, and geranium wafted up from the ground.
“You’ve been told—stay away,” Helen hissed at the intruder.
“I’ll withdraw, of course,” came the distressed whisper of a male voice.
“Wait,” Helen said as she fetched the candle and leaned out the window. “Who’s that?” The light flickered down on Pryce.
“Your humble and obedient servant.”
“Please forgive me,” she whispered, a smile breaking on her lips. “I took you for one of those awful slave catchers. But why are you here?” She placed the candle on a table near the window and rested her hip on the sill. A long silence came from below. Pryce’s shadow moved and leaves stirred. “You still there?” she whispered into the darkness.
Evergreen fronds brushed the side of the house and she understood that he was moving up the trunk of the pine tree, branch by branch.
Her heart pounded and she closed her eyes, remembering that when she had been no more than seven years old, she had climbed high up in a similar tree in the yard of her father’s blacksmith shop. A gust of air had gently set the tree to swaying. Fear turned her body cold. But as she held on, she found that she liked the back-and-forth motion. Close by, she saw the blue-black strip of the Mohawk River as it meandered through the green valley. Buildings clustered around the canal. Beyond, the hills looked like sleeping cats, the humps of their backs resting easily against the sharp blue sky. She vowed to go up each day so that she might learn what people were doing. When she came down, her father said nothing about it and sent her home. The next day all the low branches of the evergreen had been sawed off. The trunk was bare far above her reach.
She opened her eyes. Pryce was near to her now. Her skin warmed. This was no girlish blush.
“You must go,” she whispered.
“But I don’t want to,” he said. “You intrigue me.”
“I?” she said, a hint of breathless eagerness in her voice. “I’m as plain as paper.” In the murky light, Pryce inched toward her, steadying himself with nearby branches. The limb began to bend. “Careful,” she whispered, her heartbeat quickening.
“Today I discovered that I’m bold.”
“Don’t come near,” she said, bending toward him.
“You’re a universe,” he said as he extended his hand. “Please.”
She stood on the tips of her toes, leaning on the window frame, one hand holding on, the other reaching, their fingers inches apart. He angled forward and for the very first time his skin touched hers. He slipped something flat and hard between her index and middle fingers. A breath caught in her throat.
She heard a crack. He dropped.
“Mr. Anwell!” she gasped, lunging toward him as if she might catch him, almost losing her balance.
He dangled from the limb by one arm, his feet pedaling the air. Helen dropped his token on the floor and covered her mouth, stifling a scream. He brought his free hand up and grasped the branch, beginning, hand over hand, to move closer to the house. Swinging his legs, he managed to rest his feet on the top of the first-floor window frame. Helen reached out and together they strained until he scrambled into her room and stood before her.
Each gripped the forearms of the other and in the flickering light of the candle, their eyes locked. Like a sigh of surrender, they came together, lips meeting. Helen, suddenly aflame, leaned into his body. Tears spilled down her face. To feel the sweet arms of affection around her. She clung to his thin strong frame. This is what love should be—two alike people, she thought. He kissed her moist cheeks.
“I love you,” he said.
“I … I …” The words would not come. A vision of Augustin stifled her. The intensity of her desire for Pryce was nothing like what she’d experienced in all her nights with her husband. “This is wrong,” she moaned, still holding him, her head bent back. “I am a sinner.”
“I wanted to return after we hid the slaves,” whispered Pryce. “But Stewart said I’d expose everyone to danger.” He held her face and covered it with small kisses. “This can’t be wrong.”
“God watches us,” she said, and pushed him away. But the moment his arms slackened, disappointment pulled down his features, and she rushed forward, embracing him again. His kisses ran up her neck to her ear. She explored his hair and the contours of his face. Through her thin robe, the coarse wool of his overcoat brushed against her uncorseted body. His hands squeezed her, fingers pressing into the softness around her waist. She thought again about stopping him, but decided—not yet. It was as if his touch warmed her whole being. In his arms, the pain in her loins transformed into an erotic ache. As her heat grew, the idea of not feeling this, of not following her desire, seemed impossible. Even though she knew that she should resist, she would not stop. Powerful need strummed her body.
Scared that she might cry out, she pulled back, trying to breathe. Their eyes met and she burst into sobs. The thought of lying with Augustin again sickened her. To have one’s longing for love—fulfilled, yet a mortal sin. Did these kisses mean she was forever damned? There could be no confession to Father Quarters. Mig
ht he not tell Augustin that his wife was an adulteress? She would be cast out of the house, and deservedly so. Miss Manahan would not take her back—not after this.
“Don’t cry,” said Pryce, pressing her hand to his lips. “I’m sorry. I was a beast.”
“Leave,” she said, her voice thick with tears.
“Of course.” He went to the window. As he sat on the sill, he looked back at her. “I love you—I want to be with you no matter what happens.”
She ran to him and they kissed once again. “Go. Don’t come back.” Turning away, she wept into her hands.
He touched her arm. “I can’t promise.” Grabbing an evergreen branch, he swung to the ground, taking several limbs with him.
She watched him from the window, saw him rise unharmed. The memory of his touch made her whole body tingle. A little sparkle on the floor caught her eye. It was his gift, a small, thin river stone—smooth, dark gray, and flecked with bright bits of mica. Though it had once been circular, a divot had been chipped out of the edge so that it resembled a small heart.
How sentimental, she thought. She drew the present to her breast. A silly, boyish gift. Her chest swelled, brimming with feeling, breaking and mending, because she knew that before her marriage, love with him could have been possible. But now … she could not afford an illusion such as that.
In bed as she tried to sleep, the memory of Pryce drifted round and round. Augustin might have been within his rights to kill him like a raccoon in a tree, she thought, smiling. Miss Manahan would call him a demon leading her to hell. Climbing the evergreen had been the brashest, most daring thing any man had ever done for her. But it was she who had pulled him into her room, she who had almost lost herself. The demon resided in her own breast. Her place in hell might already be set. Disgrace would descend upon the house. It might be better to throw herself off the roof than to be found out. Augustin would believe it was because of the baby. At least she would leave this troubled world.
The Third Mrs. Galway Page 25