When she had wept her eyes and throat raw, she fell asleep, and her body unclenched like an opening fist. In broad daylight, as Line Street washed and sewed and carted and built, Caroline Jarvie slept.
The sound of the knock on the door woke her. It was still daylight, and the sounds of the street had not abated since the morning. Neither had the day’s heat. She sat up, a little dazed with sleep, and smoothed her hair. She stood up and smoothed her wrinkled dress. Yawning, she descended the stairs.
The knock sounded again, and it woke her to fear. Who wanted her?
She crept into the front room, where she could see out the window without revealing herself. Her heart pounding, she peered around the curtain.
A stranger stood on the steps. She was a dark-skinned woman wearing an apron and a white kerchief that made her skin look darker. She carried a cast iron pot, holding it with both hands.
Caro put her hand to her chest to steady herself. She opened the door. “Who are you?”
Surprised, the woman asked, “Didn’t Mr. Desmond tell you I’d stop here?”
Caro leaned against the doorframe. “No. Who are you?”
“Friend to Mr. Desmond. Mrs. Evie Harris. I live next door.”
“What are you doing here?”
She lifted the pot, and the smell of hoppin’ john wafted from it. “Brought him some supper. Ain’t unusual, unless he tell me he stay in Charleston with his friend Miss Sophy.” She shook her head. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Thought he’d tell you I’d be here.”
Caro stepped into the foyer. Mrs. Harris was taller than she had appeared. Her expression was unruffled. Caro said, “What did he say about me?”
“That you need a place to stay after your mama pass on.”
Caro felt stupid with sleep and fear. “Anything else?”
As Caro hesitated, Mrs. Harris said, “Didn’t mean to give you a scare, girl child.” She sighed. “Mr. Desmond’s friend, the man who make the delivery yesterday, he board with me.”
“I thought the Guard had come for me.”
Mrs. Harris’s eyes glinted. “The Guard don’t come up to the Neck. We take care of ourselves up here.” She raised the pot again. “Let me put this in the oven, keep it warm for your supper.”
After Mrs. Harris left, Caro’s fear blossomed. She tried to sit in the front room and couldn’t. She was afraid to pace and show herself before the window. She ran up the stairs and forced herself to sit on the bed. She couldn’t. She ended up in the rocking chair in the front room, as far from the window as possible, too wrought up to read, waiting.
At the sound of the key in the lock, she sprang up, not thinking whether she could be seen, and rushed toward the door. Her voice ragged, she said, “Mrs. Harris came. I didn’t know to expect her.” She pressed her hand to her chest again. “Scared me half to death!”
He shut the door. “Caro, sugar, didn’t mean to frighten you. Left you a note about Mrs. Harris. You didn’t see it?”
“No.”
“Thought I left it on the table,” he said, his face creased with concern.
She had missed it in her grief this morning. Trembling, she said, “I thought the Guard had come for me!”
“We get away from the window,” he said gently and took her by the hand. He settled her at the table. Still holding her by the hand, he said, “You right to be wary.”
“Mrs. Harris told me the Guard won’t come up here to look for me.”
“That true. The Neck ain’t their beat. They don’t come here.”
“But I’m not safe up here.”
“I bring you something to show you.” He handed her a copy of today’s Mercury.
She took it with trembling fingers. “The notice. The runaway notice. You saw it.”
“No. No notice.”
“How can that be? Lawrence Jarvie wants me back.”
Sunday said, “He don’t want to advertise it. Big man, run for Assembly, all hot about secesh. Do he want Charleston to know that he can’t keep his own servant in the house? No notice.”
“But he’ll send someone to look for me. Someone to do it quietly.”
“Maybe,” Sunday said.
“No, certainly.”
“If he do, we don’t make it easy for him, up in the Neck. The Neck home to all kinds of people who should be elsewhere. Some of them should be in massa’s house, and some of them should be in the Work House. We make the Neck a refuge for them, like the swamp a refuge down in the Low Country.”
She searched the seamed face and thought of yesterday’s promise: We shelter you. She said, “You’ve done this before.”
“Yes, I have,” he said. “Lewis and Evie, they help me.”
“The others,” she asked. “Did they get away? Are they all right?”
“Hush,” he said.
It reminded her of Sophy, who told her to be quiet when she had something to conceal. Sophy had never given anything away when Caro pressed her. Sunday wouldn’t, either.
He let go of her hand. “What you say we eat some of Mrs. Harris’s good hoppin’ john? We put some meat on your bones, build you up.”
Despite Sunday’s reassurance, Caro felt despair wash over her. “What am I going to do?”
“After supper, we talk about how you lay low,” he said.
Emily knew that her father had browbeaten every slave in the house, demanding that they give Caro up, and he had been furious when they insisted, pleading and weeping, that they didn’t know where she was. He had even been rough with Ambrose, whom he liked so much. She wondered if he had threatened to sell Ambrose, too.
But her father hadn’t put a notice in either newspaper, the Mercury or the Courier, the easiest way to announce a flight and find a runaway. He would consider it a private family matter, nothing to advertise in public. If he planned to find Caro, he would do it quietly.
A slave who ran away had to act in secret. Anyone who sought a fugitive, who was under suspicion herself, had to be secretive, too.
Since Dr. Powell’s visit, Emily had been as tractable as a servant. She had kept her eyes cast down, and her voice pitched low. She never left the house unless it was to accompany her stepmother on an errand or a call. She had hidden away her diary and ceased to write in it. She spent no time in her room unless it was to dress or to sleep. Every moment of her life, save for using the chamber pot or dreaming, was visible to her father and her stepmother.
On a warm morning several weeks after Caro’s disappearance, Emily sat with her stepmother in the back parlor. As Susan ripped open her letters, Emily opened the latest issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book and let it rest in her lap. When Susan looked up from her letters, Emily said softly, “Mother, may I ask a favor of you?”
“What is it, Emily?” Her stepmother had become less curt with her as she had become more and more docile.
“May I go for a walk in the morning, before the air is so hot? A constitutional, for exercise.”
Susan sighed, the sound of a mistress beleaguered by bad behavior in the yard and the kitchen. “I promised your father I’d keep an eye on you,” she said.
“I know. But I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me. I’ve broken with Mr. Aiken.” She let her hands rest on the pages of Godey’s. “I burned all his letters. I’ve agreed to the wedding. Just a few minutes of fresh air. Please, Mother.”
Susan looked down at her letters, the envelopes ripped ragged from her zeal to open them. She said, “Take Peggy with you.”
“You know as well as I do that Dulcie needs her in the kitchen. But if you insist, I will.”
Emily saw the old affection flicker in her stepmother’s face. “You aren’t a prisoner,” she said. “All right. A few minutes by yourself to take some exercise.”
Emily rose and took her stepmother’s hands. “Thank you.”
Susan pressed her hands, and a shadow of worry passed over her face. “I’ll speak to your father. I’ll manage him.�
�
Emily asked Ambrose to unlock the gate, and she strode onto the pavement of King Street. She breathed in the azalea fragrance and welcomed the damp kiss of the breeze on her face. In a plain skirt and stout shoes, she delighted in taking a long stride, and to confuse anyone who might be watching her, she made her way to the Battery.
How could she find the spot where she and Joshua had stood when the railing looked the same wherever it had been erected? The wind skated over the water, bringing the smell of salt and fish and rot. She remembered the promise that Joshua had made to her, and hers to him. His voice, his expression, and the touch of his fingers were hers forever, even though the letters were ash.
She straightened her shoulders and turned to find Tradd Street.
Sophy came to the gate. Her face gave her away before she spoke. She whispered, “Go away, Miss Emily.”
She didn’t speak. She dropped her eyes. Emily reached through the gate to touch her arm, and she drew back.
“Sophy,” Emily said softly. “Did my father come here?”
Sophy shook her head.
“Or was it his agent? A man in a checked coat?”
Sophy didn’t reply.
“What did he say? What did he do?”
Sophy cast her eyes down and didn’t reply.
“He threatened you, didn’t he?”
Sophy remained silent.
“What was it? Was it the Work House?” And suddenly she knew. “Or was it that my father would sell you?”
Startled, Sophy raised her eyes. But when she spoke it was so softly that Emily could barely hear her. “Can’t say, miss.”
Emily reached through the ironwork, hoping to touch Sophy’s arm or even to take her hand, but Sophy pulled away. Emily bent close and whispered, “Sophy, please. Tell me. Where is she?”
Sophy raised her head and let Emily see her fear for Caro. She whispered, “I don’t know a thing, Miss Emily, and you shouldn’t, either.”
She couldn’t stay. It was one thing to risk her own punishment; that was hers to choose and hers to bear. But she could not jeopardize Sophy. Just as softly, she whispered back, “Take care, Sophy.”
Emily turned and walked slowly to Queen Street. She hoped that Thomas Bennett kept a workman’s hours there rather than a planter’s. His door was locked, but he was within. He unlocked the door and said to her, “Miss Jarvie. I’m not open for business yet.”
“I’m sorry to trouble you. May I speak to you for a moment?”
“Are you here on your father’s account?” His tone cooled.
“My father doesn’t know I’m here. Has my father’s agent been to see you?”
“His slave catcher? Yes, he has. He demanded that I tell him where Caro was, and when I told him I didn’t now, he threatened to have me arrested.”
“Arrested? Whatever for?”
“Miss Jarvie, have you looked around you? The Guardsmen patrol the streets day and night. They arrest anyone they please, brown or black, slave or free. Yesterday, outside my door, I saw a man arrested for not doffing his hat to a Guardsman.”
“Why?”
He said bitterly, “Why not? It seems that a man of color can offer insult by walking down the street and minding his own business.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Thomas Bennett’s voice became icy. “I couldn’t help your father’s agent, and I’m afraid I can’t help you, either, Miss Jarvie. I have no idea where Caroline is, and no threat will alter my ignorance.”
“Is your nephew here?”
Thomas Bennett said, “Please leave him alone, Miss Jarvie.”
She was wrong to think that a free person of color in Charleston would not be in jeopardy. “I’m sorry to have troubled you,” she said.
Thomas Bennett swiftly shut the door and locked it again.
Caro adjusted to the oddity of her new circumstances. If Sunday was out, she obeyed him and stayed quiet in the house, not moving much, not lighting the fire. She settled in the armchair in the parlor and tried to read Mr. Douglass’s life story. His early life—the loss of his grandmother, then his mother—refreshed her own grief, which wearied her so much that she climbed the stairs to lie down. She lay on her bed, too exhausted to move or plan.
I can’t stay here, she thought. But I don’t know where else I might go. Douglass’s journey as a fugitive seemed impossible to her.
She missed Sophy and worried about her. Sunday was cagey about Sophy, as he was about everything outside her hiding place. But one day he came home with a bundle made from an old sheet, which he handed to Caro.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s from Sophy.”
“You saw her? How is she?”
“She all right. She give me this for you. Open it.”
Caro laid the bundle on the dining room table and untied the knot. “Oh, my shawl!” she said, shaking it out, pleased through her worry. “And my best dress!” Her eyes stung as she remembered the day that Danny had brought her Uncle Thomas’s gift. The yellow roses seemed to glow in the light of the dining room. “And my boots! I hope she didn’t buy me another pair.”
Sunday forced a smile. “No, she said to tell you special that they your own. Dulcie take them away from Bel, since her feet too fat for them, and Dulcie give them back to Sophy for you.”
Sunday said, “And there’s something else, too.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew another bundle, the size of a man’s handkerchief.
“What’s that?”
“Your money that you had under your bed. Sophy guard it for you, and now she want you to have it.”
“But there’s so much less of it.”
Sunday nodded. “I take all them little coins you have, them nickels and dimes, and I go to the bank and ask for ten-dollar silver coins instead.” He hefted the handkerchief. “Easier to hide.”
“Why, Sunday?”
His good cheer faded.
She pressed him. “What else did Sophy tell you?”
“You right, Miss Caroline.”
She grabbed his arm. “What is it?”
“Mr. Jarvie hire someone to search for you.”
Caro stared at the money in the handkerchief. She thought, Easier to flee with.
Alone in the house, Caro smoothed the gray windowpane dress with its yellow roses and pagoda sleeves and slipped it over her head. She struggled to reach the back buttons by herself, thinking sadly of the times that Sophy or her mother had buttoned them for her. She sat on the edge of the bed to put on the boots. Those buttons were easy to reach, and once they were done, she admired the sight of her feet, glad that they were daintier than Bel’s.
Even though she had no mirror, she took pleasure in the pattern of the cloth across her lap. She thought of the day that Danny had brought her this dress, and the day that he had blushed and stammered to see her in it. She had worn this dress on the day he kissed her, and the sight of the roses brought back every pleasure of that day: the acrobats, the marching band, and even the peculiar food. How odd that recalling the taste of pickled cabbage would make her feel so glad.
The dress reminded her of the life she had lived before Lawrence Jarvie had reclaimed her as a slave and hastened her mother’s death with a stay in the Work House. She smoothed the pattern of gray squares and yellow roses and let them summon the self that had taken pride in the money she earned “with her own hand.” Who had fallen in love with a free man of color and had felt like his equal. Who had believed that her beloved could marry her and that nothing would keep them apart.
She remembered what it had felt like to be free.
She had always prided herself on being her father’s daughter, the clever girl who could translate from the Latin and take apart an argument the way that a good cook could dismember a chicken. She had tried for weeks to read the life of Frederick Douglass to teach herself to feel free. With an ache in her heart, she realized that she was her mother�
��s daughter, too, half a slave and half a lady.
For the first time since her father died, for the first time since her mother died, she knew that they would always be with her. They would remain close to her in spirit, urging her toward a life of freedom. Part of freedom was being able to read Cicero, who had hated tyranny. And part of freedom was standing tall in a dress with pagoda sleeves. She let the tears fall, and for the first time since her mother’s death, the agony was laced with a sadness that twined together the bitter and the sweet.
Sunday, who wanted to reassure her, was obviously worried. He brushed it off when she asked him what bothered him. But one afternoon, when she lay on her bed in a doze, he returned early, accompanied by his friend Lewis. Their voices drifted up the stairs to her bedroom, rousing her.
Sunday said, “It blow over, like it always do.”
“Never seen it like this,” Lewis said, his deep voice resonant even at a low volume.
Alarmed, she sat up and dispensed without making herself look presentable. If there was trouble, it didn’t matter whether her hair was mussed and her dress wrinkled. She ran down the stairs and found them at the dining room table.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her heart pounding.
“Miss Caro, did we wake you?” Sunday asked in apology.
“I was awake. What’s the matter, Sunday? What’s happening?”
Sunday said, “Some trouble in Charleston. Nothing to worry you here, Caro.”
Lewis glanced at Sunday. Caro said, “I’m not a child. I’m not a fool. I’m in trouble myself. I think I should know.”
“The Guard arrest some people. That business about the badges again,” Sunday said.
Lewis said, “Some! They act like they gone mad. Arrest dozens of people a day. Slave. Free. For not having badges. For not paying capitation tax that free colored people pay. For not taking off they hats in respect or for sassing the Guardsman in the street. Jail and Work House must be full to bursting.”
She said, “Is it about hiring out, like last time?”
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