Circle of Spies (9 page)

He picked up his mother's cloak and handed it to her with a smile. “Thanks, Mama.”

She waved away his gratitude as she always did, and let herself out.

Cora's stew sure smelled good, and Walker's stomach rumbled its agreement as he put Elsie in her favorite spot, atop the table. She kicked her legs and giggled—a sound he wished he could bottle and pull out whenever he needed a smile throughout the day.

He could go ahead and serve them, he knew, but he would rather give Cora a few minutes to join them. He had some time to spare before he had to start his afternoon chores. He picked up the only book Elsie ever showed any interest in, the nonsense verse with illustrations. He held it where she could see it, and she clapped her agreement and reached for him.

Smiling, Walker scooped her up again and settled in his chair by the stove with her on his lap. He opened the book to a random page. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…”

He finished reading it, though Elsie made no shift when he stopped. Her finger was tracing the drawing of the man-egg, touching his boots, his hands, the ink bricks. What did she wonder?

For the millionth time since they realized their angel couldn't hear them, he wished for some way to know. They had their method of communicating, to be sure. And at two, she was still so young that even if she could hear and talk, they would probably scarcely understand her. But what about the future?

The door opened, and Cora came in with the wind. Her rosebud mouth smiled. “You could have started.”

“This was better.”

Her smile stayed put until she unfastened the cast-off cloak
Marietta had given her last year. But when she reached to hang it up, she winced and put a hand to her back.

Walker stood, Elsie and all, and moved to her. “That pain again?”

She rubbed at it and nodded. “I reckon I oughta be used to it by now, but—”

“Go lie down for a minute and stretch it out.” He handed the reaching tot to her mama and put a hand on Cora's rounded abdomen. His babe within kicked. Smiling, he leaned down to greet his wife properly.

She kissed him back, but her look afterward was rebuking. “You know I don't have time to rest, Walk.”

“Yetta won't care if you're ten minutes late sweeping the hall.” Only when her gaze went hard and cold did he realize his slip. Usually he called her Miss Mari like the rest of the servants, but sometimes he just forgot. She had been Yetta all his life until he came here.

A reminder Cora never much appreciated. “
Yetta
ain't the one I worry 'bout.”

He said nothing. He just leaned against the solid table while she, with Elsie on her hip, pulled out three bowls and spoons. The way he saw it, old Mrs. Hughes oughtn't to evoke much fear. The house was Marietta's, even if the servants still belonged to the older woman.

But then, Tandy and Norris, Norris's uncle Pat, Jess, and her late husband had come with her from Louisiana. Cora had been born here to Jess, a slave too. And so Elsie was, legally, because her mama was. No matter that Walker was free.

No matter that the South's slaves were free. The Emancipation Proclamation hadn't covered them here in Maryland, hadn't freed them. Far as he could tell, the politicians hadn't wanted to shake things up with the border states. If Maryland seceded, Washington would be completely surrounded by the Confederacy. The politicians had tried to strike a balance.

And in doing so, had left his wife's family in chains.

Elsie tugged on a tight spiral of Cora's hair. Cora chuckled as she pulled the lid off the stew pot, sending aromatic steam wafting upward.

“Cora.” He kept his gaze on their little one, watching her eyes and wondering. Just wondering. “Have you thought more about it? Teaching her signs?”

She sighed and put the girl upon the table so she could reach for the bowls. “What good would it do, Walker?”

“What good? We could talk to her. Know what she's thinking. She could talk to
us
and know what
we're
thinking.”

“We do well enough with our own gestures. And it ain't like no one else will be able to talk to her, even if we teach her these signs.”

“Sure they will, some of them. I asked Mr. Lane about it. He said there's a school in Connecticut—”

“You wanna send her away?” Cora spun around, nearly sloshing the bowl of stew she held. “Send away our baby? As if they'd even let a slave girl in?”

“No, that's not…I don't want to send her anywhere.” He pulled out his chair and sat, sucking in a deep breath. “I just meant to tell you that they have developed a universal system of signs there. They call it American Sign Language. They're trying to get all the deaf folks in the country to use it so they can all talk to each other. It's pretty close, I understand, to what Mr. Lane learned from his mother. They've got a book. We could get it, learn it. Teach it to her.”

“A book.” Her tone said it all.

Walker sighed. “With drawings, I bet, of the motions.”

She slid his bowl onto the table and urged Elsie into her chair. “A book.”

He picked up his spoon. “We could do it.”

“Walker.” With a shake of her head, she turned back to the pot and ladled up a small portion. “Blow on this for her.”

He took it, blew and stirred.

Cora rubbed at the pain in her back, the same spot that always hurt her after a morning of cleaning. The one that often got so bad by night that she hobbled up the stairs to their rooms, whimpering in pain.

“I just don't see the point. I know you wanna talk to her, but we can do that on our own, with our own ways. Don't need no
book
to show us how. Not with me who can't read and you who say yourself you don't learn well from paper and ink. You need visuals. Ain't that what you said?”

It was, and he did. But wasn't it worth trying? “Mr. Lane would help.”

“Mr. Lane's got his own life, his own family. How much time could he give us? An hour here and there? Wouldn't do no good, honey.”

He had the Culper business too, and the weight of the fractured nation upon his shoulders. But Walker couldn't mention that to Cora, and wouldn't anyway, as it hardly helped his point. “He taught it to his kids. Miss Julie taught it to us. I don't remember much, but…”

But Marietta would. She'd remember every gesture, every meaning. Every single lesson. She'd be able to glance at one of those books once, and it would be in her head forever.

Cora turned back to him slowly, obviously knowing the direction of his thoughts. She plunked her bowl onto the table and eased into her chair, eyes glinting. “Don't even suggest it.”

“She could help.”

“I ain't asking that woman for nothing—
nothing
. You understand? Maybe you could, you who don't have to serve her each day, empty her slops, obey her every command, but I'm tellin' you I
won't
. And you better not neither.” She picked up her spoon and stabbed her stew with it.

Walker tested Elsie's and, finding it cool enough, slid it over to her with a smile. “But if she could help Elsie—”

“It wouldn't help. And I won't go beggin'.”

“It wouldn't be begging. It would be…” He let his voice fade as pain burst through her eyes again, screwed up her face, and made her back arch. Maybe he should let it drop. The last thing Cora needed was more distress. That couldn't be good for her or the baby. “You all right, honey?”

“Mm-hmm.” She stretched, and the discomfort eased from her face. She took another bite. “I doubt she'd help anyway, even if you did ask. That woman never does nothing unless it's for herself.”

At that, Walker grunted and chewed one of the few pieces of meat in his bowl. She hadn't always been that way. When they were children, Marietta had been as bright and cheerful as Elsie. Always laughing and shrieking at the four boys—him and her brothers, Stephen and Hez and Isaac—when they played pranks on her.

Surely that Yetta was still inside somewhere. And maybe, if he prayed hard for her, this shake to her foundation would set her loose.

Cora rubbed her abdomen. “Did Mr. Lane say anything more about the amendment nonsense when he was here yesterday?”

“The House is still debating or whatever they do. But they'll pass it. If it passed in the Senate, it'll surely pass in the House. You'll be free soon.”

She kept on rubbing and gazed at Elsie, who happily spooned up a potato chunk. “What if it ain't soon enough? I don't want this new baby to be born a slave, Walk.”

He didn't either, but what could they do? “He won't be. And even if he is, it won't be but for a few months. They're going to grow up in a whole new world. A world with no more slavery, where they can be anything they want.”

Hopeful idealism. He knew it even as he said it. He had been born free, after all, and that didn't open any doors for him. There might be white men aplenty who had a moral objection to owning another man, but there were few indeed who thought blacks equal to them. The Lanes and Arnauds were the only ones he'd ever met he could say that about.

Obviously it hadn't been true of his father, whoever he was. His mother never spoke of the attack, but he had gleaned enough over the years to know she had roused the suspicion of a runaway's master and he'd found her one night. Punished her. Left her with a son on the way and no man to be a father.

“Maybe we should just leave. Surely with the amendment coming, they wouldn't hunt us down if we ran.”

She had made the suggestion once before, when it was Elsie growing inside her. He reached across the table and took her hand. “We're not running, Cora. You're not going to be a fugitive.”

Though she turned her hand so she could squeeze his fingers, sorrow blanketed her face. “We both know that ain't why you refuse to go.”

Little fingers landed on his other hand, and he grinned at Elsie, who was trying to reach for her mother too.

Cora slid the bowl out of the little one's way and clasped her fingers, but her smile was still sad. “He's long gone, Walker. I know you miss him. I know he was your best friend, but he ain't here no more to hold you to your promise.”

“That was the point of it, honey. He knew he might never come home to watch over her again.” He held her hand another moment and then tightened his grip on it. “And I never would have met you if I hadn't come here like Stephen asked.”

She released their hands and went back to her stew. “I gotta get away from this family before it gets worse. My mama will understand. She won't leave, but she won't mind my goin'.”

“It won't get worse.”

“It will. When Miss Mari marries Mr. Dev, it
will
.”

“She's not gonna marry him.” Funny how he said it with such certainty, when two days before he would have said the opposite and felt just as sure. But he'd seen the look in her eyes when she caught sight of that poster. The horror, the realization.

And this being Marietta, it wasn't something she could forget. Not to say she hadn't done a fine job of ignoring things in the past, but this was different.

Cora, however, had no reason to believe him. She shot him a look of utter incredulity and set about finishing her meal.

He let her. And he sent up a silent prayer that Marietta would make her way back to the stables soon to demand answers of him. Because he had a few questions to put to her too.

How long could one stay numb? Marietta moved the teacup from saucer to mouth and back down again and felt as though she were merely watching a play. Nothing that day had penetrated the fog inside her. From the time she'd pulled herself from the floor at dawn, a cloud had descended over her vision. Of all the memories branded into her, yesterday's would remain the most vivid.

She had betrayed Lucien.

Dev was a monster.

Her grandfather was a spy.

And she had been charged with protecting a wolf. Though she was none too sure he wouldn't turn around and snap at her if she tried.