“Why not?”
In despair, he said, “We can scarcely get out ourselves. We spent the day trying to find an agency that would sell us tickets. They think that every colored person is a fugitive.”
“But you’re not,” she said.
“We can’t risk taking a fugitive slave with us. We’d be found out and arrested. And all of us would go into the Work House. We’d all be slaves together.”
“But you have papers to prove you’re free. And I could hide somehow.”
“I have my mother to take care of. My brothers. We can’t risk it. We can’t take you with us.”
She reached out her arms and cried, “Don’t you love me?”
He blanched. He said, “God help me. I do.”
As he left, she stood with her arms still outstretched, too stunned to lock the door behind him.
Caro told Sunday that she didn’t feel well and that she didn’t want any supper. She lay on the bed in her white-walled room, still hot early in the evening. She was too shocked to cry.
What a fool she had been to hope that Danny Pereira would free her.
No one would free her—not her father, not her uncle, not her cousin Emily, not her cousin Danny. The bonds of servitude wrapped tighter and tighter around her.
If she stayed where she was, Lawrence Jarvie would find her. He would send her to the Work House. He would likely sell her. She would join a coffle bound for the cotton fields of Mississippi or Louisiana, where slavery was a prison of heavy labor and punishment until death stole a slave away.
Or she would end up in a different kind of prison, the subject of a white man’s fancy, whether in Charleston or Natchez or New Orleans. Her mother’s fate, without the guarantee of her father’s affection.
She was alone in the world, with no one to help her and no one to stop her.
Ambrose passed Emily in the hallway and bent to whisper to her, “I have something for you.”
“What is it?”
Since her father had threatened him, Ambrose had become secretive. He slipped it into her hand. “Come this morning.”
The envelope was blank. The paper inside had no date, no salutation, and no signature. It bore only an address.
She tore the paper into tiny, undecipherable pieces and handed them to Ambrose. “Would you burn that trash for me?”
“Yes, miss.”
Do nothing unusual, she thought. Asking Henry for the carriage was unusual for her, as was taking a hired carriage. A walk was not. She told her stepmother that she would linger after her walk today to stop on Queen Street. “I need a new pair of gloves,” she fibbed.
Susan said only, “Well, wear your bonnet and carry a parasol against the sun, or you’ll get a headache.”
She took Meeting Street, which ran due north, keeping her pace leisurely. It was more heavily traveled than King Street, and she would be less noticeable in the crowd. She had never gone past Calhoun Street on foot. North of Calhoun Street, the sight of a white woman on foot was not unusual. The women of the Neck, white as well as black, traveled that way.
She wished that she had brought her sketchbook. Whatever she observed, she thought of Joshua and how she would tell him about it.
She realized that the slave catcher might follow her. She scanned the crowd for the curling whiskers, the top hat, the frock coat. She turned to look behind her. She saw no one she knew, no one she could identify. Should she muddy the trail? Walk out of her way? She scanned the crowd again, and a stranger stared at her for her rudeness.
Emily wiped her face with her handkerchief and turned from Meeting Street onto Line Street.
Before the house she hesitated. She glanced up and down the street, but it was quiet, save for a couple of little boys who carried a pail of water. She mounted the steps and knocked on the door.
She waited, but no one answered. Had she gotten the address wrong? Or was Caro already gone? She began to feel a gnawing fear.
The door was unlocked by a cautious hand and opened only a little to admit a cautious eye.
An uncautious gasp floated through the opening.
“May I come in?” Emily asked.
The door opened, and Caro beckoned her inside. She locked the door and stared Emily up and down. “Why are you here?” she asked.
Caro looked less gaunt, but her eyes were reddened, and her cheeks were drawn. Still grieving, Emily thought, remembering James Jarvie’s beautiful, stricken daughter in her fine black silk.
Emily said, “Because I’ve missed you.”
“Missed me?” Caro said, her tone derisive.
Emily heard how foolish it sounded.
“Would you miss me if I went to the Work House? Would you miss me if I were bound into a coffle for Mississippi?”
“I was in terror that I wouldn’t find you before my father did.”
“Will he find me?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“I don’t think you can,” Caro said quietly. This wasn’t Miss Sass. However quiet, this was defiance. Caro said, “Do you know what’s happening to the colored people of Charleston?”
“Yes, I do,” Emily said, her tone as quiet as Caro’s.
“The Pereiras are gone,” Caro said. “Afraid for their freedom.”
“He didn’t take you with him,” Emily said.
“No, he did not.”
“I’m so sorry, Caro.”
Caro said, “Don’t be.” But the shell cracked a little as the choked note came into her voice.
“What does it matter?” Emily asked, defiance seeping into her voice, too. “A love lost? A love affair broken? For either of us?”
Caro took a deep breath. She asked, “Would you like a glass of water?”
The house was small enough that Emily could hear the clink of the glass, the gurgle of the water from the pitcher, and the stifled sob. Caro returned with the glass, and Emily drank deeply, with no ladylike pretense, and set the glass down. “I’m getting married,” she said.
“I heard. To a Mr. Ellison of Sumter County. A cotton planter. How many slaves does he have, Emily?”
“One would be too many.” Emily brushed her cheeks with her hands, ashamed of the way her eyes were misting. “My father brought a madhouse doctor from the asylum in Columbia to declare me mad unless I agreed to marry Mr. Ellison.” She stared at her hands, which were clenched in her lap. “I can’t bear it. I can’t do it. And I don’t know how I can escape it.”
Caro leaned forward. “I do.”
“How?”
Caro reached for Emily’s hands. “Two fugitives together,” she said.
Chapter 17: The Northern Star
Do nothing unusual, Emily reminded herself, as she left the house to visit Benjamin Pereira at his office. She certainly could go to the Bank of Charleston and withdraw any sum of her money. But they had never seen her before, and if anyone asked, they would remember her.
“Miss Jarvie,” Pereira said, sending his light-complected office boy to bring a cup of tea and some sesame wafers. “What can I do for you?”
Emily had dressed carefully for this visit in a new dress of blue flowers on a white background. The sleeves were ornate enough to make a dressmaker mad. The dressmaker had trimmed the new bonnet with a matching ribbon in the same azure color. She said, “Mr. Pereira, I’ve done a foolish thing, and I need your help.”
He laughed. “Surely you haven’t struck someone in a drunken brawl or contracted a debt of honor. What it could it possibly be, Miss Jarvie?”
“I’ve run up such a bill at my dressmaker’s,” she said, lifting her arm prettily to let him see the fussy sleeve. “More than my father allows me.”
“I don’t think your papa would begrudge you a few dollars at the dressmaker’s.”
“But I’m getting ready for my wedding, Mr. Pereira, and there’s been quite an expense already for the trousseau. I hate to ask him for more. So extravagant!” She disliked the tone in her voice, t
he one that Camilla Aiken used to fool her suitors into thinking she was a ninny.
“How much is this extravagance, Miss Jarvie?”
“I shudder to think of it. Nearly two hundred dollars.”
He laughed again. “Compared to a gambling debt, it’s a bargain,” he said.
“Don’t laugh at me, Mr. Pereira. I feel awful about it.”
“How can I help you?”
“If you could help me withdraw my money from the bank—discreetly, so my father doesn’t find out—I’d be in your debt, Mr. Pereira.”
“I see,” said Benjamin Pereira. “Would you like a draft in your dressmaker’s name?”
“Oh no,” Emily said. “My dressmaker prefers cash. In coin, and it might as well be in large denominations, since it will go right from my hands to hers.”
“That’s no difficulty, Miss Jarvie.”
“Thank you so much, Mr. Pereira.”
Two days later, summoned by his note to her, she returned. He handed her a small canvas bag. “I withdrew all but a few dollars for you, to keep the account open,” he said.
She hefted the bag. The coins made a dull chime. “How much was it, in all?”
“Two hundred dollars. That’s a lot of dressmaking, Miss Jarvie.”
“I know.” She made a rueful face. “I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll never be so extravagant again.”
Pereira regarded her with his keen azure eyes. He said, “Miss Jarvie, I believe you’re foxing me, as my daughter likes to say.”
Emily kept up her pretense. “Why would I?”
He dropped his voice. “If you told me what this is really about, I might be able to help you more,” he said.
She replied, “If I don’t tell you, you can say that you didn’t know.”
When Caro told Sunday of her intention to leave, he said, “It too dangerous.”
She said, “And to stay? What of that?”
Mrs. Harris, who had briefly been a servant to a woman who put on amateur theatricals, said to Caro, “You need to disguise your looks. Dress different. Talk different.”
Caro fell silent, as though she were taking in this piece of advice. She dropped her head, hunched her shoulders, and let her hands hang loosely by her sides. She shuffled her feet and took the smallest of steps, as though her joints hurt. When she stood up again, she said, in the heaviest Gullah Low Country accent, “Like dat? Like my rheumatiz bodder me somet’ing awful? Just like dat?”
Mrs. Harris laughed. “Yes, like dat,” she said. “You do better not to talk at all. Not to call attention.” She gave Caro an appraising look.
Caro said, “Stop that. You aren’t selling me.”
“No. Figuring how to rough you up, hide that pretty light face of yours.”
“Smear me with dirt?”
“Coffee,” Mrs. Harris said. “Put the grounds on your face, soak your hands in the brew.”
Caro began to laugh. “Coffee to make me black!”
They experimented, and while Caro would never be dark brown, the coffee turned her from ivory to tan. Mrs. Harris said, “That help you a lot. Not so pretty.”
Sunday looked askance at their efforts. “Never saw a light-skinned woman turn herself dark,” he said.
Her face was covered with coffee grounds, Caro said, “You know it isn’t for beauty’s sake, Sunday.”
“You all wrought up,” he said. “Giddy. Got to calm down. Otherwise you act wrong, someone notice, you get found out.”
Caro sobered. She asked Sunday, “Can I say goodbye to Sophy before I go?”
“Wouldn’t let you go without it,” he said, his voice full of regret.
In the secrecy of her room, Emily slipped the money into her reticule: a half dozen silver coins from her hoard of twenty. Cabin passage on a steamer was fifteen dollars and a servant’s ticket ten, but she had never forgotten the lesson of the Work House, where the right silver coin helped a Guardsman to look the other way.
She strolled to the agency office on East Bay Street, close by the docks where the great ships arrived and departed. The smell of the sea was strong on East Bay, briny and rotten. She pushed open the agency office door.
At the counter stood a man of color, well-dressed in a frock coat and a beaver hat. Behind him huddled his wife, light-skinned and bonneted. A half-grown girl in a white lawn dress pressed close to her; a little boy clung to her skirt; another child, in the long dress of a baby, hid its face against her shoulder.
The well-dressed man, whose fist was curled on the counter, said to the agent, “Sir, it’s urgent. We must have passage on the next steamer to Philadelphia!”
In an agitated tone, the agent said, “I can’t sell you a ticket unless you can prove to me that you’re free.”
“Sir, we’re well-known as free persons of color. I have no such papers.”
“Then I can’t sell you a ticket.”
The man struck the counter with his fist. “Sir, I implore you! We have the money. What will it cost us?”
The agent said, “If you can’t act civil, I’ll have you thrown out.”
The half-grown girl began to cry, and the little boy joined her. The bonneted woman, whose arms were burdened by the baby, began to sob, too.
The agent said, “Get out of here, all of you. I can’t have you bawling in the office.”
As they left, Emily asked the ticket agent, “Why won’t you sell them a ticket?”
He glared at her. “Do you know how much trouble I’ve had with fugitives running away?”
Emily leaned against the counter to control her trembling. She said, “I’ve come here to buy a ticket for the next steamer leaving for Philadelphia.”
“Just you?”
“And my maidservant.”
“How do I know she ain’t a fugitive?”
Emily forced herself to laugh. Camilla Aiken’s laugh. “I never heard of slaves having to prove they were slaves,” she said. “You’ll have to take my word for it.”
“It’s on my head if I sell a ticket to a runaway. Do you have anything better than your word?”
Emily opened her reticule and slid one of the shiny ten-dollar coins onto the counter. “Does that help?”
He glanced at the coin and made no move to take it. She pulled another coin from her reticule and laid it on the counter so that the reverse, the figure of Lady Liberty, was visible. He swept both coins from the counter and put them into his pocket. He said, “Do you want her in the servants’ quarters or will she berth with you?”
“With me.”
“That will be the full fare. Fifteen dollars each.”
Shaking, Emily exchanged the coins for the two slips of pasteboard. Still shaking, she slipped them into her reticule. As though he had been courteous to her, she smiled and said, “Thank you, sir.”
Sunday brought word of the departure date, and very early in the morning, before sunrise, Lewis drove his wagon into the side yard. Inside, shielded from view, Caro stood with Sunday. He said, “Time for you to go.”
She clasped his hands. “Thank you, Sunday. You kept your promise. You sheltered me.”
He enfolded her in a rough, fatherly grip. “Miss Caro. Miss Sass.” He stroked her hair as though she were a child. He whispered, “You stay safe. You get free.” When he let her go, his eyes were wet with tears.
She pressed her hand to her own eyes as she ran down the stairs toward the wagon. Lewis lifted her up. She wedged herself and her bundle into the wagon bed, which was full of boards today, a plausible delivery. The smell of the wood was pleasant, even if the boards made for a narrow berth.
“Let’s go, Mose!” Lewis called to the horse, and the wagon began to move slowly south, to Charleston.
This time she knew not to panic in the canvas-induced dusk deepened by the predawn darkness. She rested her head on the bundle that held her good dress and shawl and patted the smaller bundle, the coins tightly tied together to keep them from making
a sound in her pocket. She felt oddly calm. I may be godless, she thought, addressing her thoughts to Sophy as though she were in the wagon, but it’s in God’s hands now, not mine.
By the time the gate at the Tradd Street house whined and opened, Caro was so relaxed that she had begun to doze. The jolt of the wagon woke her. She heard Sophy’s voice scolding Lewis in her worry. “You brought that delivery?” As the canvas was peeled away, her calm deserted her, and she sat up with a start.
Lewis extended his hand to help her from the wagon, but she clambered out by herself. Sophy embraced her and held her at arm’s length, scrutinizing the disguise.
“How do I look?” Caro asked. “Less like myself?”
“Pull your scarf down low and wear your shawl high up. And keep your head down, too. Don’t let anyone look you in the face.”
Caro nodded. “Is Emily here?”
“She in the kitchen.”
“How is she?”
Sophy’s eyes glittered. “Scared,” she said. “She should be. And so should you.”
“Not anymore,” Caro said.
“Don’t be a fool.”
“I’m not.”
Sophy took her hand and led her to the kitchen.
“Sophy, what is it? This isn’t like you.”
“I’m scared for you.”
Emily sat at the kitchen table dressed in a plain gray dress. She started to her feet when she saw Caro. At her side was a carpetbag, the kind that genteel travelers without much money carried. Caro said, “Is that my old dress?”
“I’m pretending to be a widow who isn’t rich. Am I all right?”
Caro nodded. “What are you calling yourself?”
“Mrs. Morris.”
“What am I called?”
“You’re my servant Annie. You don’t mind? I thought it was a name that no one would remark on.”
Caro pulled her kerchief so low that it covered her eyebrows. She dropped her head and murmured in her Low Country accent, “I be like a shadow, missus. No one see me at all.”
Emily’s laugh was a little ragged with nerves. “Don’t overdo it,” she said. She took a deep breath, but it didn’t help her. She asked Caro, “Aren’t you afraid?”
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