Caro reached for Emily’s hand. “Courage,” she said.
Emily squeezed Caro’s hand and looked into her eyes. She breathed deeply again. “Courage,” she said.
“How will we go?” Caro asked.
“I’ll hire a carriage. It’s safer.”
Caro said, “I have money. Do you have yours?”
Emily nodded. “I brought something else,” she said.
“What is it?”
Emily pulled a small velvet bag from her pocket. She opened it and let the earbobs spill into her palm. “Your mother’s earrings,” she said. “The ones my stepmother took from her.”
Caro closed her eyes against the memory.
Emily said, “They belong to you.”
Caro opened her eyes but didn’t reply. Emily pressed them into her hand. “Take them,” she said.
Caro stared at the diamonds, bright in the early morning darkness. She curled her hand into a fist, and she put her fist into her pocket.
The carriage let them off at Adger’s Wharf just as the sun was beginning to rise. When the driver handed them out, a muscular black man asked them, “Does you have a trunk, ma’am? I carry it for you.”
Caro said, careful to use her Low Country accent, “I help missus.”
The man looked askance at the carpetbag, as though he had never seen a white lady travel with so little. Emily, playing the lady, took Caro’s arm. “Come along, Annie,” she said, pretending to be severe. “The agent told us to be there early.”
Along the dock, Caro whispered, “Should have tried to manage a trunk.”
Emily whispered back in irritation, “A trunk? How would I have smuggled a trunk from King Street?”
Caro began to feel afraid. What else have we done wrong? she thought.
They hesitated on the dock. Emily stared at their boat, the James Adger, named after the family that had also named the wharf. In dismay, she said to Caro, “I thought it would be bigger. I thought we could disappear on it.”
“How many passengers?”
“I don’t know.”
As they waited, the crowd grew: white families, surrounded by trunks and servants; groups of white men, with neither. Caro saw no well-dressed people of color. She wondered if the Pereiras had gotten to Philadelphia safely.
Emily scanned the faces. She whispered to Caro, “What if I see someone I know?”
Caro whispered back, “Do you?”
“No. They’re all strangers.”
Caro ached with impatience to board the ship and disappear into their cabin. She hoped that they could stay there. She felt more and more exposed as they waited.
A man in a dark-blue frock coat made his way through the crowd to stand on the gangway. He raised his voice. “Ready to board,” he said. “Have your tickets out.”
The passengers formed a ragged line, the servants carrying the trunks, and the sound of friendly chatter rose from the crowd. Emily pulled the tickets from her reticule and held them tightly in her gloved hand. She was pale and obviously nervous.
The woman behind them laid a hand on Emily’s arm. Gray hair escaped from her bonnet. Age had crinkled the skin around her eyes, but she looked as though smiling had deepened the lines around her mouth. “What’s the matter, my dear?” she asked Emily, in a Yankee accent.
“I’ve never taken a steamboat before.”
“It’s as safe as a carriage. There’s nothing to worry about. Are you alone?”
“With my servant.”
The friendly woman said, “It’s all right. Two days, and you’ll be in Philadelphia.” She added, “I’m sure I’ll see you in the ladies’ cabin.” Once her ticket had been handed over, she walked the gangway onto the boat.
Caro wished she could give Emily the advice that everyone had given her: Keep your head down. Don’t show off.
The clerk said to Emily, “Tickets, ma’am.”
Emily handed him the tickets. He said, “There’s a space on the deck for your servant.” He glanced at Caro, and her heart constricted in her chest.
Emily said, “I’d rather have her stay with me.”
Caro dropped her eyes and wished she could pull her shawl over her face so that he would have nothing to remember if anyone asked. He asked Emily, “Do you have a trunk?”
“No, sir.”
Caro thought in silent fury, Why didn’t you get Sophy to help you find a trunk? We’re the only lady passengers on the boat without one! He’ll remember that!
But all the clerk said was, “Ma’am, if there’s anything you need, for your convenience or your comfort, let me know. You can send any of the cabin boys for me.”
Emily stepped carefully onto the gangway, and Caro followed her. Still raging, Caro reminded herself to keep her mouth shut and her head down.
The cabin was small and square, most of the room taken up with the bed. The room also contained a dresser and two armchairs. Everything was plain. Emily set down the carpetbag. She said, “I thought it would be grander than this.”
Caro sat wearily in one of the armchairs. “It doesn’t need to be grand,” she said, dropping her accent.
Emily hissed, “Keep your disguise!”
“Here? Who will know?”
Emily gestured toward the window, which could be fully opened to let in the sea air. “Anyone could hear us.”
Irked, Caro made a point of her accent. She thought of Sophy, and Sophy’s advice, as well as her diction, came out of her mouth. “Well, you stay in disguise, too, Missus Morris. Might be smart to lay low. Stay right here and not call attention to yourself instead of setting down to dinner and getting friendly with the first person who act kind to you.”
Emily said fiercely, “If we stay in our cabin, they’ll notice. We go out, we hide in plain sight.”
“I won’t.”
“Yes, you will. I’m going to midday dinner, and so should you. Wherever the servants eat their dinner.”
Caro stared at Emily, a new worry frothing up in her. “What happen, Missus Morris, when your family notice that you gone?”
Emily clenched her skirt in her hands hard enough to wrinkle the heavy cotton of her traveling dress. “I tell a tale. And I pray I tell it well enough that whoever asks will believe me.”
Caro grabbed Emily’s wrist. She was too upset to keep her accent. She said, “Then we spin that tale together, and neither of us goes anywhere until we can tell it as though it’s the truth.”
By midday, the steamer had reached the open water of the sea, and with the movement of the ship, Emily had begun to feel peculiar, slightly nauseated and slightly dizzy. She opened the cabin door, which opened to a hallway that led to the salon. The smell of food, meat and potatoes fried in grease, made her feel even queasier. She hoped there would be a clear soup to eat.
One end of the salon had been set up as a sitting room, with sofas and chairs arranged for conversation, and the other, as a dining room, with several tables, each big enough to seat a party of eight. The furniture here, like the furniture in the cabin, was plain. The tablecloths were linen, but the fabric was coarse.
At one of the tables, the friendly woman from the ticket line was already seated. Her pleasant face broke into a smile at the sight of Emily. “Please, sit with me,” she said.
Emily sat and they made their acquaintance. Her name was Mrs. Reynolds, and she was from West Chester in Chester County, Pennsylvania. She had been visiting a friend who had recently married a man of Charleston. Emily admitted that she had grown up in Charleston but had married a man from Kershaw County, who had left her a widow in straightened circumstances. She was going to stay with a distant cousin in Philadelphia, a Carolina girl married to a Yankee.
Mrs. Reynolds said, “I hope you don’t hold it against her.”
The lies pressed on Emily’s chest, and her queasiness grew worse. “Of course not,” she said, smiling.
A family with two children, a boy and a girl, also joine
d them. They were Pennsylvanians on their way home, and when they discovered that Mrs. Reynolds was a near neighbor, they asked after her acquaintance. It was a relief to Emily. Waiters brought soup, which had grown cold in its journey from the kitchen. To her surprise, the waiters were white men. Just after the soup arrived, a dapper whiskered gentleman in a frock coat, the color too loud for gentility, claimed the chair next to Emily’s.
“Excuse me,” he said.
The accent made her heart sink. She knew that voice, with its upcountry accent.
But he didn’t blink an eye when the introductions were made. He told her that his name was Mr. McHenry and that he was a broker in Orangeburg County, but he had kin up North, and he liked to see them several times a year.
She went along with his fiction. “What do you broker, Mr. McHenry? Are you in cotton?”
“Mostly cotton, but I buy and sell whatever comes to hand,” he said. “Livestock and corn, if that’s all I can get.”
She accepted his lies, as he accepted hers.
How had he found her? And unbidden came the memory of the ticket office, where the coins glittered on the counter. And what did he plan? She pushed that thought away.
As the rest of the meal appeared on the table, she felt too nauseated even to attempt it. She stayed at the table until the pie and the custard had been eaten, and she excused herself and rose. She walked slowly to the promenade, where she could lean against the railing and look at the sky and the sea. She was sure that fresh air would make her feel better.
Mrs. Reynolds followed her to stand beside her. She said, “You don’t look well, dear.”
Emily felt so ill that she couldn’t reply. To her shame, the illness overwhelmed her, and she managed to cast the little she had eaten at dinner over the railing.
Mrs. Reynolds said, “It’s all right, dear. You’re seasick. You go into your cabin to lie down. May I help you?”
Emily nodded. Her face flaming, her eyes tearing, she took Mrs. Reynolds’s arm.
Caro pulled her kerchief low on her forehead and regarded her hands with dismay. The coffee was already wearing off. Perhaps she could wear Emily’s gloves. Or keep her hands in her pockets.
The servants ate at a table on the deck that was placed awkwardly near the kitchen. The smell of the food—and the refuse—interrupted the servants’ meal, as did the waiters, who carried tray after tray of food past them to the salon above.
The meal was simple but generous, black-eyed peas without rice, cooked with salt pork and too much grease. Even the greens were overcooked and swimming in fat. Caro took a piece of cornbread and ate it plain.
“Is that all you eat?” asked an older woman, a mauma from the Low Country by her speech.
“Not hungry.”
“You never been on a boat before?”
“Not on the open sea.”
“Where you bound?”
“Missus has kin in Philadelphia.”
The woman leaned forward and dropped her voice, despite the noise from the kitchen and the rattling roar of the steam engine. “I hear that colored people in Charleston run to freedom in Philadelphia,” she said.
Caro dropped her eyes and shook her head. “Wouldn’t know,” she said, as stony as Sophy.
“I hear that a colored family get put off the boat. Say they free, but the captain think they runaways.”
Caro felt as though she would choke. She said, “Haven’t got any idea.” She cursed Emily’s foolishness. They would stay in the cabin for the rest of the journey if she had anything to say about it.
When she returned to the cabin, she found Emily lying on the bed, her shoes off, her hand over her eyes.
“Is you all right?” Caro said, remembering the pretense.
Emily groaned. “Seasick.”
“Set up and let me help you.”
Emily groaned again. Caro sat on the bed and dropped her voice to a whisper. “What’s the matter, Emily?”
Emily didn’t bother to lower her voice. “Sick as can be, and I’m not getting up until I feel better.”
By evening, Emily hadn’t improved, and although Caro hated to see her so ill, she was relieved that supper in the salon was out of the question. “I’ll tell them that you’re sick and that you want supper in your cabin,” she told Emily firmly. Even though Emily groaned, she did not refuse.
Caro made her way to the kitchen, where one of the waiters, used to seasick passengers, assured her that it was no trouble to assemble a tray. He was a white man with a Yankee accent, and as she waited at the table reserved for the servants at their meals, Caro wondered what it would be like to be addressed politely by white people day in and day out.
The waiter returned with the tray, the plate covered with a metal dome. He gave her more than a passing glance as he handed it to her, and suddenly Caro hated that anyone would look at her because he might recall her.
She walked carefully down the passageway and up the stairs to the cabin deck, not used to the ungainly tray. As she reached the promenade, she heard footsteps behind her. A man’s steps, judging from the tread of the boots.
Don’t be a fool, she told herself. Anyone might walk along here. But she was wary.
When she turned to take the passageway to the cabin, the footsteps followed.
She thought, His cabin is along here somewhere. It’s nothing.
But when she stopped before their cabin, the footsteps stopped as well. Unable to open the door with the tray in her hands, she had to set the tray on the floor. As she straightened, she turned her head.
He lounged against the wall a few feet away, taking his ease as though he were about to light a cigar. He watched as she opened the door and picked up the tray. In the room, she set the tray on the dresser.
As she shut the door, he was still there, watching, as though making a note of the cabin.
Shaking, she brought the tray to Emily, who sat up and said, “Is that toast? I believe I could eat a piece of toast.”
Caro fell into the armchair that she had pulled close to the bed. “Someone followed me when I brought up the tray.”
“Followed you?”
“A man in a frock coat.”
“Dapper-looking? Dark whiskers?”
Caro nodded.
Emily stared at the toast in her hand. “I met him in the salon. He says he’s a broker from Orangeburg County, but I know better.”
Caro said, “He’s the slave catcher.”
Emily’s hand trembled so badly that she had to set her toast down. “Yes,” she said.
Their cabin was situated to show them the setting sun, and as the last glow of dusk entered the room, so did the air, a pure smell of salt this far from the coast. Emily rose to stand at the window. “I feel better, breathing the air,” she said, but she clutched the windowsill as though she were still dizzy.
The knock on the door alarmed them both. Emily turned, but Caro said, “I go,” disguising her voice for whomever it might be. She asked through the door, “Who is it?”
“Ship’s doctor,” said a muffled voice.
“Didn’t send for the doctor,” Caro said.
“Mrs. Reynolds asked me to inquire.”
Emily asked weakly, “Mrs. Reynolds? Is she there?”
“She sent me,” said the voice.
But Caro opened the door to a dapper man in a frock coat whose whiskers curled darkly around his face.
He didn’t grab her wrist to manacle her. Instead, in a pleasant tone, he asked, “Is your missus here?”
He was subtler than she realized. He had been quiet all those months in Charleston, and he would be quiet now.
Caro looked down, acutely aware of the way that her coffee-ground dye had faded since this morning. She would be subtle in return. “Sir, she ain’t feeling well.”
“It’s very important that I speak with her. Please tell her that Mr. McHenry is here to see her.”
He wanted Emily, too. And
he was reluctant to use force to capture a lady. Caro turned to say to Emily, “Missus, there’s a Mr. McHenry to see you, and he insist on it, even though I tell him you ain’t well.”
Emily braced herself against the wall beside the window. She raised her head. “It’s all right. I’ll see him.” She took the few paces toward the door.
Mr. McHenry stood outside in the passageway. “May I come in, ma’am?” he asked. Still that low, pleasant, honeyed voice.
“Sir, this is a lady’s private room.”
“This is private business, ma’am. I don’t wish to discuss it in the passageway.”
Emily hesitated. She said, “You may come in but only if I leave the door ajar.”
He stepped into the room without replying and stood as though he belonged there. Caro’s stomach tightened, as though she had caught Emily’s queasiness.
He gave Caro a long, appraising gaze, the professional look of a dealer in enslaved flesh. He said to Emily, “Your servant is very like a runaway advertised in the Charleston papers.”
Emily laughed, as though he had offered her a beau’s pleasantry. She said, “That can’t be. She’s been with me for years. I’ve always known her whereabouts.”
Mr. McHenry appraised Caro again. She felt sick with fear, as she had before Lawrence Jarvie. She thought, He came alone, and quietly, because he knew Emily was ill and thought I was unlikely to fight.
If she screamed, if she resisted, if she fled, he would call a hullabaloo, and she would be in shackles in minutes, bound for auction, and Emily would be arrested, bound for jail and trial in Charleston.
Caro slipped her hand into her pocket and drew out the little velvet bag. She handed it to Emily.
Smiling, Emily asked, “Do you have a wife, Mr. McHenry?”
“I do, but what does that matter here?”
Emily opened the bag and let the earbobs spill into her palm. Even in the low light of sunset, the diamonds flashed and the gold gleamed. “Perhaps she would like these,” she said.
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