The Messenger (18 page)

He did as I had hoped and followed at my heels.

“Can I have one of those?”

“One of what?”

“One of those eggs. I’ve a passion for them.” He was looking at me as if I was bound to say yes.

“No.”

He blinked. “I’m only asking for one.”

“And I can’t give you even one.”

“When did you become such a disagreeable cur?”

“Look, I’ve my own affairs to worry about. I’m trying to get back in with Miss Sunderland’s family.”

“Oh! Say no more. Miss Pennington told me all about her disagreeable uncle.” He winked as he turned off toward Fourth Street. “I think I’ll take your suggestion and look for something on Mulberry Street.”

I walked back to the tavern with quaking legs and a pull in my gut. Passing that message in John’s presence had been much too dangerous.

Hannah

Breakfast had been served on seventh day and eaten with no help from any of the slaves. At least not for us. Father had insisted that Mother do our serving. And when Doll moved to take away our plates, Father gathered them himself and broke two of them in the process. It was one thing not to wish to encourage the practice of enslavement. But another thing entirely to try to avoid it in a place such as Pennington House.

I hesitated in dressing that afternoon. My gown could not be too fine, for my calls would include a visit to Robert at the jail. I had already explained away my sudden insistence upon wearing my best cloak. I simply told Mother I had given my other one to someone in greater need of it than I. It was nothing more than the truth. Sighing, I pulled a gown from my trunk, shook out the skirt, and examined the hem. Somehow Doll had managed to remove every sign of last week’s visit. Not a speck, not a smudge, not a smell lingered.

I took off my gown and wound one of my sheets around my middle. I planned to stow my extra night cap beneath my hat. But then I was left in a quandary. William Addison had requested a shovel.

Doll had scavenged a rusted-through shovel head from the rubbish pile. It was up to me now to figure out how to smuggle it into the jail. I pulled it from its hiding place within my trunk. It was much too big to fit into my pocket and it was too bulky to secure with my garter. The rust had eaten a hole through its neck . . . perhaps . . . I pulled a leather thong from my trunk and threaded it through the hole. Lifting my petticoats and skirt, I tied the thong about my waist, letting the shovel head dangle between my legs. It was heavy and I would have to forgo the bag of grain this week, but if it would hold, it might just do. I practiced walking, promptly banging the inside of my knee against its edge. I tried again, more slowly and with my legs further apart.

It felt odd.

And it probably looked odd as well.

But as long as the thong stayed fast about my waist and hidden beneath the fullness of my skirts, no one should suspect anything. I met Doll out back and we walked around to the front gate together. As we walked, I began to fall into an awkward, if regular, rhythm of walking.

“What yo
u got under there?”

I glanced at her. “Thee don’t want to know.”

“I do too want to know. If you going to be walking the streets like some kind of rheumy old goose, I ought to know what’s going on.”

“It’s the shovel. I’ve got it beneath my skirts.”

“The shovel? You got that under there!” She looked the length of me as if wondering where, exactly, it was hiding. “If those men don’t manage to escape, it won’t be because you didn’t help them none!”

We had come out onto Walnut Street, joining the throngs of citizens and soldiers. “Let’s not talk about that.” I hissed the words over my shoulder at her. She still had the annoying habit of walking one step behind me.

When we reached the jail, I left her on the corner and mounted the steps. After showing my pass to a guard, I was led to the door to the basement. As I walked down the stair, hand on the rail, I felt a loosening of the thong around my waist.

Just one minute more.

If it would hold until I made it to the cell, then all would be fine. But when I reached the bottom of the stair, there was no guard in sight.

“Keeper?” My call echoed in no one’s ears but my own, and the door to the guard keeper’s room had been padlocked. The thong gave once more, leaving the shovel to hang at my ankles. Perhaps it was a blessing that no one was there. I set my basket on the stair, meaning to lift my skirts and draw the thong tight, but the door above me opened at that moment and the lumpen form of the guard appeared.

“You again?”

He eased his bulk down the stair, a hand to the rail. At the bottom he paused beside me, straining for breath.

Hurry!

He hitched his belt up over his wide girth and then ambled over to the door, taking a long moment to find the key in his pocket. Once we gained entrance, he shuffled behind his table and then hefted his bulk into his chair. “I don’t mind saying that I was hoping you’d visit today. I was feeling a bit peckish.”

I pulled a wedge of cheese from my basket and set it before him.

He broke off a hunk right then and shoved it into his mouth. “I don’t suppose you have any bread for me? To go with it?”

I shook my head. I did have bread, but it wasn’t for him. It was for Robert.

“Shame. Haven’t had any in months. Least none that’s good enough to mention.”

“May I see my brother now?”

“Hmm? Oh. Of course.” He rose with a sigh and then knocked on the door.

As I moved toward it, I felt the thong give way altogether. The shovel landed between my feet, biting into the bone at my ankle. I swallowed a cry. At least it had only fallen on packed earth. Had it been paved with stone, my secret would have been discovered for certain.

“You going in or did you change your mind?”

“I . . . just . . .”

He was waving a hand in front of his face against the stench that had blown into the room through the door.

The moment I moved, the shovel would be exposed, and there was no good reason to offer for having hidden one beneath my skirts.

He shrugged and began to shut the door. “Don’t blame you for changing your mind. Their own mothers wouldn’t recognize the sorry wretches.” He gestured toward the basket. “You can just leave the rest of what’s in there for me. With me. I’ll make sure he gets it.”

I was quite sure that he wouldn’t. In any case, I had no intention of abandoning my basket. “No. I do want to see him. It’s just that . . .” If I couldn’t advance toward the door, neither could I retreat and go back up the stair. Either movement would reveal what I had tried so hard to hide. “I don’t . . . I wonder, could you go see . . . are they—I mean is he still in the same cell?”

“The same cell? I suppose he would be!” He called to the guard, who sat on the other side of the door. “You haven’t changed anybody round, have you?”

“No.”

If only I could get him to leave the room! It wouldn’t take but a moment to pull the thong tight once more. He turned toward me. “No. So are you staying or going?”

Could I pray to God for help with a deception? “I’m . . . going.” My glance fell to my basket. “I’m going to offer thee some bread to go with that cheese.” If food would take him back to his table and make him turn around for just one moment, then it was worth the giving of it. I pulled the loaf from the basket and offered it to him, mourning the fact that I was taking it from Robert’s own mouth.

A smile lit his face. “Cheese with bread.” He held the loaf up to his nose, sniffing at it. “Better than what the army feeds us.” He turned toward his table.

I had just one chance. I slipped my hand beneath my cloak, into the slit in my skirts and jerked hard on the thong where it had given way. Keeping my hand there, hidden, I walked through the door.

Robert was none better, though he was sitting by the wall instead of lying on the ground. My cloak had been passed to another man. William Addison shielded me and ordered the others to look away while I untied the shovel and pulled the sheet from my middle. Robert saw my basket, lifted the cloth out entirely, and shook bread crumbs into his hand.

“I’m sorry. Next time I’ll try for a blanket.” I didn’t know that I would be able to find one, however. The army had forcibly requisitioned all they could find—and all they could steal—from the citizenry. “But . . .” I removed my hat and handed him the nightcap. “I brought this. I had to give the bread to the guard in order to bring the shovel in. And I had to leave behind the grain in favor of the shovel . . . I’m sorry.” Sorrier than he could know that I’d had to choose the general welfare of the soldiers in that room over his own. I couldn’t keep tears from leaking into the corners of my eyes. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t care about the rest of them. I mean . . . I did. I had to in order that they could save my brother. But they were the kind of people who had always despised Quakers. Who probably, if truth be known, despised us still.

When I came out, I expected to find Doll waiting for me at the corner. She wasn’t there. I walked past Fifth Street and still found no sign of her. I turned around and started back the way I’d come. That’s when I saw her. She was a flurry of blue- and red-colored skirts, beating her hands against a soldier who had her pinned up against a wall in the shadows. My legs began to shake and I fought nausea as I remembered one of Father’s captors trying to do the same to me.

Doll cried out, wrenching me to my senses.

“Let go of her!”

The soldier looked at me with a sneer. “What’s it to you?”

Rage overcame my shaking. “She belongs to me. Now take thy hands off!”

He planted an indecent kiss on her lips before releasing her. Doll smoothed down her skirts and put a trembling hand up to her head scarf.

“Did he—?”

“He didn’t do nothing nobody ain’t done before.”

“He didn’t hurt thee?”

She glowered at his back with narrowed eyes. Spit into the dirt in his direction.

“Has that . . . happened before? While thee have been waiting for me?”

“Some of them soldiers think any Negro standing around at corners got nothing to do but please them.”

I took her words as a yes. “Thee ought to have told me!”

“He the only one been so shameless about it.”

Guilt at having subjected her to such indignities mixed with the shame I felt at saying what I had and for the lie I had spoken. “I didn’t mean it, Doll, about thee belonging to me.”

“I certainly don’t belong to him.”

“This is too dangerous, leaving thee on the corner standing about. There are too many soldiers here.”

“They not all as bold as that one. And I’d of bit his nose right off in another minute.”

It wasn’t right that my decision to help Robert should place any in danger other than myself. “Thee mustn’t aid me anymore.”

“Who’s going to walk with you? And who’s going to clean you up after?”

“I’ll care for myself.”

“Who’s going to know whether you come back out of that place if nobody know you go in?”

“Thee know where I go on these afternoons. If ever I shouldn’t return, thee must tell my father where I am.”

“Davy says I gots to go with you.”

“Davy doesn’t know what I do.”

“You need someone to help you and that’s the truth. That Mr. Jones can tell you what to do all he want, but he don’t know, do he? He don’t know what it is he asking you to do.”