Midnight Rose (15 page)

“Ben, you say too much!” one woman cried.

Rosa was quick to defend him. “No, it’s all right. Miz Erin can be trusted. She’s our friend. I speak for her.”

There were some disgruntled mumblings, and Ben waved everyone out. When the three of them were alone, he exchanged an affirming nod with Rosa, took a deep breath, and proceeded to tell Erin why they were all so relieved. “I guess it’s all right for me to tell you, ’cause you’ve sure let us know you ain’t like them other white folks, the ones what don’t think of us no better than a hound dog.”

“Go on,” she urged, anxious to learn finally what was going on.

“There’s a secret group callin’ themselves ‘Free Soilers,’ that’s helpin’ runaways. It’s made up of free blacks and runaways, and they’re in every community along the way north. Letty will be fine once she makes her way to one of them, and she’s better off than most runaways, ’cause thanks to you, she’s smarter. You broke the rules and taught her to read and write.

“I’m gonna tell you somethin’ else, too,” he went on. “Me and Letty had been talkin’ about runnin’ away, ’cause things here are gettin’ so bad”—he paused to flash an accusing look at Rosa—“but she couldn’t talk her mammy into goin’ with us and wouldn’t leave without her.”

“I’m too old to run,” Rosa said brokenly, wearily.

He ignored her to continue, “So you see, Letty is on her way now, and she’ll find a way to get word to me where she is, soon as she can.”

Erin was fascinated, dared to feel hope that maybe there was justification to rejoice. But she wanted to know more about this new group that she was glad to hear existed. “Where do you think she went? Where does this…this underground trail take the runaways?”

“The free state of—” He hesitated, not sure how to pronounce it. “Penn…suhl…vainyuh. A place called…” He shook his head. He heard only smatterings of what went on up north, and if the words and names and places were unfamiliar, they slipped right over his head.

“Philadelphia?” she guessed. He nodded. Remembering her geography, she went on to point out, “Pennsylvania would be a likely state. It’s the only one immediately north of the Mason-Dixon line that has an international port—Philadelphia. It would be a natural meeting place for boats traveling north from Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.”

Ben wanted to know what the Mason-Dixon line was, and Erin explained that between 1763 and 1767, two Englishmen, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, surveyed the two-hundred-thirty-three-mile line to define the long-disputed boundaries of the overlapping land grants of the Penns, proprietors of Pennsylvania, and the Baltimores, proprietors of Maryland. “Actually, it’s considered the dividing line between slave and Free Soil states. That’s obviously where the group helping runaways got their name—the Free Soilers.”

When he seemed to understand, she prodded, “Do you know what happens to the fugitives once they get there?”

“Well, I’ve heard there’s a bunch of folks up there called Quakers, and they’re helpin’ set up places where they can live. Like colonies, I heard somebody say.”

“The Quakers,” she clarified, “are a Christian group, and their church is also known as Friends. I’m not at all surprised to hear they’d oppose slavery. Pennsylvania would also be a perfect state for sanctuary for runaways, because once they cross the rough terrain of the mountains in the south central part, the same mountains will prove to be a natural fortress to protect them from slave-catchers.

“I’m glad you told me all this, Ben,” she said, satisfied. “Now maybe I can help, too.”

He and Rosa looked at each other, not understanding. Rosa asked what she was talking about.

Bluntly she declared, “I’ve always been against slavery, and if there’s an organization to help runaways, then I want to be a part of it. I wish you’d told me all this sooner.”

Ben spoke up to warn, “If Mastah Zachary was to even hear you talkin’ like this, he’d likely drag you through them swamps to that whippin’ post and have old Frank beat you bloody with that rawhide whip, just like he beats us. You is a fine woman, Miz Erin, and me and all my people love you, but you just can’t get messed up in this. It’s too dangerous.”

She dismissed his fears with an airy wave of her hand. “He’s not going to find out. Now, I’ve got something to share with you two.” She proceeded to confide her plans to marry Ryan Youngblood, sharing her motivation, and her ultimate goal for her mother to be able to leave Zachary. “Once I’m established as mistress of Jasmine Hill,” she predicted, “I’ll have access to Youngblood money. I can help the cause in many ways, and I think I’m smart enough to do it without getting caught.”

Ben was quick to agree, “You’re smart, all right, Miz Erin. If anybody can do it, you can. We just don’t want you gettin’ in no trouble.”

Turning to Rosa, she assured her, “I’m going to help you get out of here as soon as possible.”

“Letty won’t never be happy till she’s got you with her, Rosa,” Ben chimed in.

“I can’t leave Miz Arlene,” Rosa announced, casting her eyes downward, rubbed at them with the back of her hand as fresh tears stung. “I just can’t leave her.”

Erin quickly reminded her, “But I told you, I’m going to persuade her to move with me to Jasmine Hill. I’m sure the only reason she’s put up with Zachary’s meanness all these years, anyway, is that she hasn’t had anywhere else to go, and she was also determined to make sure I’d never want for anything. It’s all come together for me these past weeks, don’t you see? She’s wanted to get me married off, so she wouldn’t have to tolerate his abuse. Maybe all along she was hoping she could go with me, and—”

“That ain’t the only reason, Miz Erin.”

Erin felt the cold fingers of apprehension twist about her spine. Perhaps, in the back of her own mind, she’d known all along something else was being kept from her. “Tell me.”

“Your momma ain’t well. It’s nothin’ I know for certain, now, so don’t you go gettin’ upset and thinkin’ she told me somethin’ she wouldn’t tell you. It ain’t like that at all. It’s just that I’ve known her so long, you see. Mastah Zachary, he bought me right after they got married, remember? While you and her was on the way here for the first time. I’ve known her and loved her all these years, and I’ve seen lately how she’s fadin’ away, gettin’ weak from that awful coughin’. Why, I tol’ Tulwah just the other day about how bad it was gettin’, and he’s got some special syrup brewin’ in his shack down in the swamp right now, just for her.

“She just ain’t well, Miz Erin,” Rosa repeated as she looked at her with worry etched in her dark face, “and I can’t leave her right now, but you got to, ’cause she tol’ me how powerful bad she wants you to marry Mastah Youngblood. Then you can talk her into goin’ with you, but till then, I can’t leave her, ’cause with you gone, she wouldn’t have nobody.”

Erin hugged her with gratitude and smiled through her own tears. “Thanks for sharing all this, Rosa, because I’ve been afraid something was wrong, and now that I know for sure, I’m all the more determined to get her moved in safely with me.

“Then you can be on your way to Letty,” she added with a confident smile. “As for you, Ben…” She turned to him once more. “When do you think you’ll hear something from her?”

“You didn’t know about Micah. He run away from here just befo’ Christmas, and it wasn’t till two weeks ago we finally heard he’s doin’ fine and livin’ in a colony called Meadville, up in Penn…suhl…vainyuh.” He struggled once more to pronounce the word before he continued. “So we might not hear no news of her for a while. The man who told us about Micah is a secret Free Soiler. He pretends to be a peddler. Sells things like rheumatiz ’lixer from the back of his wagon. Letty will know to get a message to him when she can, ’cause she knows he comes through these parts often.”

“But if you go ahead and run away, could you find your way to her?”

He gave a helpless shrug. “Don’t know. I’d find the first Free Soiler agent, and he’d send me to the next stop. I’d have no way of knowin’ where I was goin’. There ain’t nothin’ regular about none of it, we hear. They change the way all the time, sayin’ there’s less chance of bein’ followed after if they don’t stick to the same route. But that don’t matter. I’m gonna go as soon as I can, but there’s no tellin’ when that might be. When a slave runs away, the mastah, he keeps an awful close watch for a while.”

“I wasn’t aware there were any slaves running away from here,” she admitted.

Rosa was quick to inform her solemnly, “Miz Erin, all over the South, overseers are blowin’ their horns every mornin’ to rouse the slaves, and every time, they’re findin’ out the number reportin’ to the fields is dwindlin’. They’re runnin’, Miz Erin,” she said in a voice etched with bitterness and pain, “runnin’ from bein’ beaten and bein’ thought of lower than the dogs trained to hunt ’em. It’s gonna get worse, too, ’cause my people are gettin’ tired of it. They’d rather go to their maker than be slaves.”

Erin, overwhelmed by everything she’d just learned, began to experience an emotional and spiritual kinship with the wretched souls of all slaves everywhere. “I’m going to do everything I can to help,” she vowed, there in the oppressive heat of the shabby slave cabin. “I promise.”

“Then you might as well know somethin’ else.” Rosa looked to Ben for his consent that she tell all. He nodded, and choking on a sob, she hoarsely whispered, “Mastah Zachary, he been takin’ his pleasure with Letty. That’s why she was wantin’ to run away so bad.”

Erin became dizzy with flashing rage. It was all she could do to keep from marching straight back to the house and trying to strangle the devil with her bare hands. Instead, she told herself to be calm, that there was much more to be accomplished in secret. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, barely able to speak beyond her fury. “You
can tell your people that from this day forward, they can count on me to help them any way I can.”

For now, she told herself fiercely as she left them, it’s time for me to make some wedding plans.

Chapter Ten

Ryan was at one of the stables, assisting
with a difficult foaling. When one of the hands came rushing in to inform him a female rider was coming up the road, he frowned at the interruption. “Whoever it is, tell them I can’t see them right now. Damn! When will people learn they aren’t welcome here unless they’re invited?” He returned to the task at hand, dismissing the potential intruder.

A few moments later, Erin walked into the stable. She surveyed the dramatic scene—Ryan with his sleeves rolled up, hands and arms smeared with blood, as he worked feverishly with what appeared to be a very anguished mare. The thought of just backing out didn’t occur to her. Instead, she watched in awe as he ultimately succeeded in delivering a shaky-legged colt into the world.

“This one is going to be a fine stallion,” Ryan announced proudly to the Negroes hanging on the railings about the stall. “It was well worth the effort to save him.”

He stood and began to wipe his hands on a towel someone had handed over. It was only then that he noticed how the onlookers were staring beyond him, to the open stall gate. As he turned to see what held their interest, he was immediately jolted by a flash of anger.

Erin Sterling.

The bitterness came rushing back over the conniving way she’d set out to trap him into marriage from the very beginning. Yet, as he continued merely to glare at her in icy silence, rankled by her presence, there was no denying she was truly a splendid sight to behold.

She was wearing a pristine dress of pink cotton lace. Her long, thick, glossy hair was blue-black, like a moonless sky at midnight. Her skin, so soft, still reminded him of rich cream laced with warm coffee. He’d always thought her eyebrows so extraordinary, arched like raven’s wings above thick-lashed eyes of that strange color, cognac, with flame stars at their centers, like the fiery topaz jewel they simulated.

Late this humid July afternoon, Erin wore her hair upswept, tied with a pink bow. Her dress fit tight across her bosom, emphasizing full, round breasts and tiny waist. Gracefully, her skirt draped to offer a glimpse of slender, shapely ankles.

Disconcerted by her unexpected appearance, and also exhausted by having been at his task since before dawn, Ryan could only stand there and drink in the sight of her.

Finally, with a saucy smile, she tilted her head back to tease, “Goodness, Mr. Youngblood, is this any way to receive a lady who’s come to accept your proposal of marriage?”

He tossed the towel aside, stepped over the exhausted mare, and walked out of the straw-littered stall. He suppressed his amusement as he fired back, “That would be the last reason I’d guess you were here, after your mother’s visit of a few days ago.”

She fell in step beside him as they left the stable. With a shrug of nonchalance, as though it were mere whimsy, Erin reminded him, “Well, as you know, I was insulted, justifiably so, I might add, by your previous offer—”

“I never made any offer,” he corrected. “I only admitted to intent.”

“Whatever,” she airily dismissed his statement. “I thought it over and decided perhaps it was to my advantage to accept. After all, servants talk and word gets out, and I can’t have my name sullied. So I finally gave in to my mother’s insistence that you owed it to me, after your disreputable behavior, to marry me and protect my virtuous reputation.”

It was all he could to keep from bursting out laughing. She was quite the little schemer and played the role of indignant damsel to the hilt.