The Lost Quilter (35 page)

Moving day came, chaotic and sudden. Miss Evangeline and her father-in-law tried to keep order, shouting instructions, distributing people and cargo and slaves between two carriages and two wagons, one apiece for Miss Evangeline’s household and her in-laws’. The Harpers’ slaves and the possessions they had brought from James Island filled their wagon, along with other treasures from Harper Hall they could not bear to leave behind. Although Miss Evangeline had declared that they should take only the most precious, cherished heirlooms, she had been unable to pare down her selections to fit in one wagon, so at the eleventh hour she sent George out to buy another. He soon returned with the only conveyance he had been able to find on such short notice, a small, rickety cart, with a loose axle and charred boards as if it had barely escaped becoming kindling in the December firestorm. When Miss Evangeline learned how much he had paid for it, she cuffed him on the ear and upbraided him for wasting their money. Joanna looked away so the buckra would not see her scowl. If the wretched woman thought she could have found something better at a lower price, she should have gone on the errand herself. It would serve the temperamental mistress right if George had lied, if the price had been half of what he had reported and he had kept the rest of the money for himself.

Miss Evangeline was the first to depart, wearing a dark brown traveling dress over the quilted petticoat padded with cotton and silver coins, setting off in her carriage with Abner at the reins, making haste to her husband’s bedside. “Watch that one,” the mistress called through the window as she pulled away, gesturing to Joanna. “She can’t be trusted. She runs.”

And even though Joanna had never given the Harpers reason to doubt that she was any less a faithful servant than Asa, the buckra eyes narrowed as they shifted to her, measuring her,
suspicious. They would watch her constantly all the way to West Grove.

Miss Evangeline had been gone almost half a day by the time the caravan was loaded and ready to move out. The curtains drawn, the shutters latched, the doors locked, Harper Hall was shut up tight until better times might allow the family to return. Old Mrs. Harper dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief as her husband helped her into the Harpers’ coach. Mrs. Givens climbed in after her parents and sons, carefully cradling her nephew and murmuring that he must not miss his mother too much, because his auntie would care for him tenderly in her absence. From her place on the driver’s seat next to old Marse Harper’s coachman, Mattie looked down upon the exchange pensively, seeming bereft and distracted without baby Thomas in her arms.

Joanna sat in the back of Miss Evangeline’s wagon with the rest of the grown slaves, her back pressed uncomfortably against a steamer trunk, a knot of dread tightening in her stomach. There had not been enough room in the wagon for Ruthie and Hannah, even though Joanna argued that they could both ride on her lap, even though Minnie and Sally had insisted they didn’t mind a tight fit. Ignoring their pleas, Mrs. Givens had ordered them to ride in the cart, so Hannah perched precariously on top of the luggage, with Ruthie on her lap.

“It ain’t safe,” Joanna had protested.

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Givens called through the window of the carriage, entirely missing the point. “Together those girls don’t weigh fifty pounds soaking wet. The cart will hold together long enough to get us to West Grove.”

Joanna had made a soft nest for them out of her newest quilts and begged Hannah to watch over Ruthie, but that was all she could do for their safety and comfort. It would be a long, hard,
hazardous ride, and she knew she would feel every jolt and jarring bump in her heart.

When old Marse Harper gave the order to move out, the stable boy holding the reins to the carthorse quickly scrambled onto the seat and, out of longtime habit, made himself as small as possible to make more room for the driver. Though her gaze was locked on her girls as she silently willed them to hold on tight, out of the corner of her eye Joanna saw a smile flicker on George’s lips as he gathered up the reins and obeyed old Marse Harper’s command to start the wagon.

But the carriage and wagon moved forward only a few paces before old Marse Harper called the caravan to a halt. “What’s wrong with you, boy?” he shouted. “Get that cart moving!”

Adam, who, Joanna knew, was no more than nine years old, gulped and ducked his head. “Don’t know how, Marse Harper, suh.”

“What nonsense is this?” shrilled Mrs. Givens, unseen within the carriage.

“Adam tend the horses and clean stalls, missus, but he don’t drive,” George answered. “Marse Colonel don’t let boys drive his horses till they twelve year old.”

The carriage rocked slightly as old Marse Chester rose from his seat. “I’ll drive the blasted thing then.”

“No, Father,” said Mrs. Givens. “It’s a deathtrap. It’s not safe.”

Safe enough for my girls,
thought Joanna, studiously looking away so that the buckra would not see her glare.

“You can stay put, Marse Harper, suh,” said George. “This girl Joanna, she can drive, and she light enough for the cart.” He shot her a look that set her in motion, a warning that she should not delay long enough for the buckra to think of a contradictory argument.

“The laundress can drive a horse?” asked Mrs. Givens, her narrow, suspicious face appearing in the carriage window.

“Yes, ma’am. Her husband Marse Chester’s groom. He taught her all he know.”

They must not have heard of Titus’s disappearance, for Mrs. Givens and her father exchanged a glance, and then old Marse Chester said, “Very well, get to it, girl. We’ve delayed long enough.”

Quickly Joanna scrambled to her feet and swung the Birds in the Air quilt over her shoulder.

“What’s that you’re holding?” Mrs. Givens called out.

“Just my things, ma’am.”

Mrs. Givens’s mouth thinned into a suspicious frown. “That bundle holds all your earthly goods? Everything most precious to you in the world?”

Her children, Titus, and her dream of freedom were infinitely more precious, but of course Joanna could not tell the colonel’s sister that. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Then leave it be. You can have it back when we reach West Grove.” Mrs. Givens settled back into her seat, and Joanna heard her add to her father, “You heard what Evangeline said. The wench isn’t likely to run without her belongings, is she?”

Joanna could part with any of it in a heartbeat, except the Birds in the Air quilt, with its hidden symbols that would one day lead her back to Elm Creek Farm and Frederick. But she dropped the bundle, thanked Sally when she promised to look after it for her, and climbed down from the back of the wagon. She took her place on the cart seat next to Adam and gathered up the reins.

“Missus Givens, Marse Harper,” said George. “Don’t she need a pass?” He held up his own, a requirement for any slave traveling without his master present, but all the more essential since the declaration of martial law.

“Confound these endless inconveniences,” old Marse Chester grumbled as he climbed down from the carriage and set Minnie and Sally searching through trunks and valises for paper and pen. He scrawled a note, thrust it at Joanna, and ordered Minnie to repack everything as they rode. Joanna surreptitiously read the pass as she slipped it into her pocket: “This slave wench, Joanna, is the property of Colonel Robert Harper and is en route to his father-in-law’s plantation at West Grove transporting his goods and property including 3 young slaves. Please allow her to proceed unmolested. Signed, Wilberforce Edward Harper.”

At a word from old Marse Harper, Joanna guided the cart into place behind the carriage and the wagon and followed them through the wrought iron gates onto Meeting Street. No one had thought to tell her how to get to West Grove, so she followed the wagon closely, worried that she would lose sight of the others in the crowd of soldiers and businessmen and slaves, or that the fragile, creaking cart would fall apart beneath her and the children. Once George glanced over his shoulder, shook his head slowly and deliberately, and raised a palm, so Joanna pulled back on the reins to slow her horse and give the wagon more space. But the street was so busy that she couldn’t allow the gap to widen too much, or another wagon might cut in front of her, obscuring her view. She feared the cart wouldn’t hold together if she were forced to yank on the reins and bring the horse, a gentle mare that the colonel had kept past her prime for sentimental reasons, to an abrupt stop.

“Slow down.”

Joanna had never heard the voice before. She glanced at Adam, but he had turned in his seat and was staring into the back of the cart. She followed his line of sight but glimpsed only her girls, Ruthie in Hannah’s lap, sucking on one fist and clutching
the front of Hannah’s dress with the other, Hannah studying the wagon and carriage ahead of them.

Just then, Hannah’s lips parted and Joanna heard the unfamiliar voice a second time, pure and sweet. “Slow down.”

All at once Joanna understood.

“Right, Hannah,” she murmured, as if the Harpers might overhear. “Thank you, baby. You such a smart girl.”

She gave the reins a gentle tug, and the mare obediently slowed her pace. The carriage pulled farther ahead, the wagon not close behind it. Amidst the cargo and slaves Joanna spotted her Birds in the Air quilt, holding her belongings as safely as it sheltered the secrets of the way to Elm Creek Farm. Once she had believed that those landmarks would be sealed in her memory forever, but so much had happened since she had been snatched back into slavery, so much grief and pain and upheaval, that she sometimes could not remember the route. Sometimes at night she needed to study the patterns worked in thread before the images floated to the surface of her memory, before she could remember the order the landmarks followed. Without the quilt, she could not be sure she would ever get back to Elm Creek Farm, to the Bergstroms, to Frederick.

But Ruthie and Hannah were with her now, and Titus was out there somewhere, fighting for their freedom. He needed her even if he couldn’t admit it.

Another few streets, another imperceptible slowing of the cart. Her heart tore painfully as she lost sight of the Birds in the Air quilt. She could urge the mare into a trot, call out to Sally to throw her the bundle—but of course that was unthinkable, impossible. She would only draw attention to their escape.

The distance between the cart and the wagon increased. Another block. When a peddler’s wagon moved into the gap, Joanna
slowed the cart and ducked her head in a show of allowing the white driver precedence.

George glanced over his shoulder at her and smiled. Then he turned back around and urged his horses into a slightly quicker pace.

Joanna held the mare to a walk as other carriages and wagons and men on horseback sped ahead of her and obscured her view of the Harpers’ carriage and wagon. “Joanna,” Adam said worriedly, “we fallin’ behind. We gonna get lost.”

“Hush up, Adam,” said Hannah, low and urgent. “Mama know where we goin’.”

Adam fell silent, and Joanna bit her lips together so that she would not cry. Hannah was speaking. Hannah had called her mama. It was surely a sign.

When she could no longer spy the high top of the Harpers’ carriage, Joanna turned the cart down a side street and made her way south. No one cried out, no one pursued them.

At the edge of the city, they arrived at a camp of Confederate soldiers. A sentry party standing guard at the foot of a bridge challenged them, but when Joanna produced the pass, they questioned her briefly before waving her along, their attention already drawn to another approaching wagon.

“Where we goin’, Joanna?” asked Adam plaintively as the horse’s hooves clomped over the wooden bridge.

Hilton Head,
Joanna thought.
Hilton Head and Titus.
She knew only that it was south of Charleston along the coast, but she would put her trust in the Lord that he would guide her, perhaps sending sympathetic colored folk to tell her the way. Hadn’t he already given her a sign? Hadn’t he made the mute speak? But she couldn’t tell Adam her plans in case they were stopped and questioned again. “Don’t worry,” she said instead. “I’ll look after you.”

They traveled all afternoon, Adam wary and full of questions, Ruthie sweet and curious, Hannah inexplicably calm and speaking only rarely. But at least she spoke.

They were challenged only once more that day, by a party of four very young soldiers who seemed vexed to have been left behind to guard a little-used road when the excitement of the real battle lay only a dozen miles away. They studied Joanna’s pass, poked around the cargo for a while, and queried her about the location of West Grove, which was too new to have garnered any fame. Eventually they grew bored with her vague replies, and having found nothing threatening about her or a cart full of miscellaneous household items and skinny slave children, they let her go.

They stopped for the night in a small clearing in the woods, just off the road. In a stroke of good fortune that Joanna recognized as another divine blessing, Sally had packed many of the kitchen supplies in the cart, including sacks of flour, a tin of oil, dried apples, cheese, bread, and a peck of beans. Joanna was afraid to build a fire and take the time to cook, so she unhitched the mare, fed the children apples, cheese, and bread, and made a bed of quilts for them beneath the cart while they devoured every crumb. Exhausted though she was, she stayed up all night watching over them and listening for sounds of pursuit. Occasionally she heard explosions in the distance and knew that somewhere nearby the war raged on. She feared that she might be leading the children straight into it, but she could think of nowhere else to go but to Hilton Head.

She knew the Harpers would begin the search for her soon if they hadn’t already. She had almost no head start to speak of and
very little time. She would never make it to the North, not even with a horse, a cart, and a pass whose value diminished with time and distance from Charleston.

Her only hope was to reach a place where Northern freedom had come to South Carolina.