Somerset (5 page)

S
arah flicked the reins over the gelding's back and waved to Lettie, who had come to see her off from the stable yard. The manse vehicle was a strange-looking contraption commissioned by the First Presbyterian Church and constructed by the village blacksmith into a combination wagon and enclosed carriage. The name
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF WILLOW GROVE, SOUTH CAROLINA
on the doors protected it from the likelihood of being searched, the reason Sarah had selected it as the perfect conveyance for spiriting a runaway slave to the port in Charleston under the very eyes of the slave-catchers. Even the most brazen would not stop a white woman on the road who was about the church's business, and Sarah was becoming recognizable in the area as the replacement for the much-loved and popular Lettie Sedgewick, a cover that offered further protection for her activities.

“Can I take the kerchief off now, miss?”

“Yes, but you'll have to stay hidden until we get to our destination. The bounty hunters are about.”

Sarah spoke to a Negro man scrunched under the carriage seat. The “kerchief” he removed was a square of black fabric to hide his teeth and the whites of his eyes should anyone have cause to peer into the dark cab. She did not know his name, or he hers. She did not know the name of the plantation from which he had escaped. He had spent the night hidden in the barn with instructions to climb into the carriage after the Reverend Sedgewick, Lettie's father, had harnessed the horse to the vehicle and left. It was Wednesday morning, not the best day of the week to effect a slave's escape, but in the relaxed atmosphere of the day before Thanksgiving, vigilance over plantation owners' property was lax. Most escapes were arranged for Saturday night. Many masters did not make their slaves work on Sundays, and the runaway would not be missed until Monday morning when he would have had a day and a half's head start to his destination. Notices of the slave's escape and his description would not be published in the newspapers until the next week, by which time the fugitive might be in a safe house closer to his freedom in the North.

Not until the carriage was well on its way did Sarah breathe easier and her heartbeat slow. So far, so good. Many things—tiny, cruel, unanticipated caprices of fate—could wreck the best-arranged plans and lead to her discovery. It was a fear like a chronic ache in her stomach. Today, if things went wrong at the dock and her “cargo” was captured, it would be only a matter of time before he broke under the lash and told the authorities what they wanted to know. The trail would lead back to her. She would be deported to the North, if not subjected to worse, but at least she could betray no one in the escape system. She did not know the name of the agent who, under cover of darkness, had arranged to have the runaway deposited in the Sedgewicks' barn last night. She could not tell the authorities the location of the place where he had hidden before then or the route he'd taken. The success of the Underground Railroad depended on concealment of the identities of those involved. If discovered, she could give her interrogators no information that would jeopardize the network organized to help slaves escape to free states and countries where slavery was illegal, like Canada and Mexico. With luck and God's beneficence, the man under the carriage seat would be stowed away on a boat headed to Montreal by nightfall.

If captured, she'd be asked how she happened to have chosen Willow Grove as a site for her abolitionist activities, and her answer would be simple enough. Jessica Wyndham, her sister's classmate, had mentioned a teaching post coming vacant when the present schoolmistress married and emigrated with her husband to Texas. Willow Grove was located in the soul of the Deep South. What better place to serve as a conductor for the Underground Railroad than in South Carolina? What better cover than as a teacher in a little town in the heart of slave country? She would keep Jessica's involvement to herself. Never would they learn from her lips that the daughter of the state's most prominent planter had not only suggested but had arranged for her to be given the teaching job.

Did Miss Wyndham know you were a conductor for the Underground Railroad?

Of course not! When I learned of the vacant post, I intentionally ingratiated myself to her by pleading a broken love affair and the need for a teaching position far away from Massachusetts.

But Jessica
had
known. When Jessica learned of Sarah's affiliation with a group that trained supporters of abolition to infiltrate the South as cogs in an organized system to undermine slavery, she had proposed the teaching position as the perfect job to conceal Sarah's clandestine activities.

“There's even a small house you can rent ideal for your purpose,” Jessica had told her. “It's the property of the First Presbyterian Church in Willow Grove. It's set on the church grounds behind the cemetery, the reason it stays vacant, but it's very private and secluded.”

At first Sarah was disinclined to trust her. The school made no secret of its anti-slavery sentiments, and Jessica's wealthy and powerful father could have enrolled her to gather information about the system that assisted slaves to escape from the South. It did not take long for Sarah to realize that her suspicions of Jessica were unfounded. Jessica's parents were ignorant of the school's leanings, or they never would have sent her there, and their daughter genuinely and wholeheartedly abhorred slavery as a cruel and immoral institution. She considered her colored maid Tippy her best friend, and it was for Tippy's sake that once Sarah was ensconced in her position in Willow Grove, Jessica had regretfully explained she could do nothing to help her in her mission.

“My father will send Tippy to the fields if he discovers my involvement,” she'd said, and Sarah, having met Carson Wyndham and perceived exactly what kind of man he was, had no doubt Jessica's fears were justified.

“You've done enough,” Sarah had assured her. “Keep Tippy safe.”

At boarding school she had explained to Jessica that the Underground Railroad was no railroad at all but a highly secret network of escape routes and safe houses strung from the South to the North and farther into Canada or southward into Mexico. Railroad terminology designated the duties of the brave souls willing to help slaves escape. “Agents” were people who infiltrated the South to distribute abolitionist literature, contact anti-slavery sympathizers, and set up routes and safe houses run by “station masters.” The houses were known as “stations” or “depots” where fugitives could rest and eat. Conductors led the runaway—or “cargo”—from one station to the next, the job Sarah had been trained for.

When Sarah reported Jessica's offer to the “engineer”—the head of her group—he enthusiastically encouraged her to take the position. An agent was already in place in the area of Willow Grove, he told her. She was not to know his name in case she was caught, but he would know hers and make contact by code. Sarah had mailed her résumé to the school's administrative body, and a return letter granted her, sight unseen, the position and stated a date to begin her teaching duties the middle of October. Shortly afterwards, she had set sail for her destination to get settled before she assumed her post and was greeted by Lettie and Reverend Sedgewick as she stepped onto the dock in Charleston.

The Sedgewicks were another reason why her real purpose in Willow Grove must remain undetected. If suspicion fell on her, it might also fall on them, and they were innocent of what she was about in the secluded house behind the cemetery. There, having learned the secret, silent “language” by which she and the agent communicated, Sarah had received knocks late at night, found notes written in code slipped under her door or odd markings on her front stoop. Within days of taking up residence, she'd hidden a runaway for pickup at midnight, flashed signals by way of candle and lamplight into the woods across the creek, and left several cryptic messages to be collected from the back porch. The number of runaways and successful escapes had increased in the area, but so far no one had tied it to her arrival. The “freight” had slowed now that winter had blocked routes to points farther north. Sarah felt she'd lived a lifetime since her boat had docked in Charleston less than two months before.

“Fellow,” she said, barely moving her lips, her lowered voice urgent, “there's trouble up ahead. Put the kerchief back on and lie absolutely still.”

“Oh, Lord have mercy,” her cargo moaned.

A knot of horsemen had emerged from the thickets on one side of the road. Coiled whips hung from their saddle horns and all carried weapons. Sarah, at the raised hand of one of the riders, pulled at the reins and drew Jimsonweed to a stop. She recognized the heavy, well-tailored shoulders of the most affluent among them: Michael Wyndham, Jessica's brother.

He kneed his fine Arabian stallion toward the wagon, surprise, curiosity, and admiration mingling in his gaze beneath the wide brim of his low-crowned planter's hat. Sarah felt the back of her neck crawl. The man was a perfect replica of his father. Carelessly, Michael brought his fingers to his hat brim. “Mornin', Miss Conklin. What brings you along the road this day before Thanksgiving?”

“I'm on my way to the post office in Charleston,” she said. “And you?”

He laughed and threw a glance at his cohorts. “Isn't it obvious? We're looking for a runaway from Willowshire. You haven't by any chance seen a black man running for his life along the road, have you? He goes by the name of Timothy.”

A soft grunt came from under the seat.
Timothy.
The runaway was from Willowshire.
Good God, Jessica, what have you done?
Sarah's breath held from alarm that Michael Wyndham had heard the muffled sound, but his attention remained fastened on her.

“I'm afraid not,” she said, forcing a light but dismissive tone and regripping the reins to suggest she must be on her way.

The press of Michael Wyndham's muscular thighs urged his horse closer. Sarah knew he was attracted to her as only a man can be who enjoys the thrill of the hunt and satisfaction of the kill. Her patent indifference to him had backfired. If she'd been flirtatious and coy, he would have lost interest, but she presented a challenge he was determined to win. If only he knew how much she loathed him and his kind.

“Perhaps you'll allow me to ride with you to Charleston, Miss Conklin,” he suggested. “My cohorts can take charge of my horse and pursue the boy without me, and you and I can dine at the Thermidor after you've finished your business at the post office.”

Quickly, her heartbeat pounding, Sarah considered how best to respond to his offer. What argument could she give to dissuade the arrogant toad? Please, Timothy, do not make a sound. “I appreciate your kindness, Mr. Wyndham, but I have already accepted an invitation to luncheon with a longtime friend of mine, a gentleman who is visiting Charleston, and the morning is so fine, I confess to preferring my own company on the ride into town.”

Rather than being put off, rebuffed, as she intended, he threw back his head for a hearty laugh. “You seem always to know how to put me in my place, Miss Conklin, but I am not an easy man to stay put.” He touched his hat again, an imposing figure in his polished knee boots with his thickening girth minimized by the outward flare of a long jacket pinched at the waistline, a colorful scarf around his neck. “Enjoy your ride and your luncheon with your gentleman friend, and I shall look forward to another time when I have the pleasure of your exclusive company for both.”

He signaled with his hand, and the horsemen parted. Head held high and back straight, Sarah directed Jimsonweed through the pack without returning a nod of greeting and shortly heard the sound of hooves cantering off in the opposite direction.

There was a stir beneath the carriage board. “We clear, miss?”

Sarah put a hand over her heart to steady its hammering. “We're clear, Timothy.”

T
he Christmas season had arrived in Plantation Alley. The vast fields of the plantation estates sprawling along both sides of the farm-to-market road lay at rest. The cotton had been picked, the sugarcane cut, and the period on the calendar that Eunice Wyndham most dreaded was over. She welcomed the first prolonged spell of cold weather, but it meant that hog-killing time was upon them, when the pigs rounded up from the woods in early fall, penned, and fattened on generous feedings of corn and mash, would be killed and butchered. For the last several weeks, Plantation Alley had been a virtual slaughterhouse. Eunice had closed windows and doors, sacrificing the first bracing air of autumn to spare herself, Jessica, and the women servants the grisly sounds and smells associated with the killings. If the wind was right, the frantic squeals of “stuck” pigs and thick, strong odor of fresh blood, as well as smoke from pit fires burning in the curing houses, could carry all the way to Willow Grove.

Don't come for Christmas until the last ham is in the curing house
, Eunice wrote to her sister in Boston.
You won't be able to breathe the air without retching.

Those with more appreciation for the end result had learned to ignore the bloody business of sticking and killing and gutting, for it meant an abundance of meat for dining tables, larders, and smokehouses, not only for planters and their families, but, if their masters were generous, for the slaves as well. Carson Wyndham was the most munificent among them.

He kept for the Big House the kidneys, valued for their lard; bladders to be used as preserving sacks; pigs' feet for pickling; and the heads from which to make headcheese, but the meat not set aside to be cured for his own use he had distributed to his workers. During the butchering, the slave community of Willowshire enjoyed quantities of fresh sausages, pork butts and shoulders, backbones, ribs, tenderloins, slabs of bacon, and a share of the makings for cracklings—bits of fat taken from beneath pig skin to be fried and baked in buttermilk cornbread—and chitlings, pieces of small intestines cut up and fried as a treat.

Once hog-killing season was over, work eased, and master and slave alike could relax a bit and enjoy the fruits of their labor. At Willowshire, there were many. It had been a season of plenty. Profits from his numerous plantations and business enterprises allowed Carson Wyndham to budget a present of twenty dollars to be given Christmas morning to the head of each Negro household in addition to sacks of candy, popcorn balls, and whittled toys for the children. Pantries and root cellars were full. A mild fall had produced a bumper crop of vegetables, berries, and fruits. Cotton sacks brimmed with pecans thrashed from the most productive trees in years, and no family—planter's or worker's—wanted for sorghum syrup to pour over their cornbread.

Which was why when the alarm went up that somebody had stolen into the master's smokehouse and robbed it of two hams, Carson Wyndham called in his head overseer.

“I want you to find out who did this,” Carson ordered, his face the color of his reddish hair. Of all the sins the master of Willowshire could not forgive, stealing was at the top of the list. “It may be a runaway or an itinerant passing by, a vagrant, but if the thief is one of ours…”

“What am I to do then, sir?”

“You know the penalty for stealing, Wilson. Enforce it.”

Willie May had been listening while pouring the master his morning tea and she missed the rim of the cup, sloshing tea into the saucer. The door to the outbuilding where he received his overseers and dispensed his orders was propped open, and the fresh, holiday smell of the evergreen wreath tacked upon it was strong. Tippy had bound the cedar cutting with a limber wisteria vine and decorated it with painted wooden fruits and a big red bow. Passing it to enter the building, Willie May had felt a lift of her Christmas spirits. Now they drooped.

“What's the matter with you this morning, Willie May?” Carson asked, but not unkindly. Lately, he'd taken an undue tone with her because of Tippy. Displeased with the daughter, he could not be too friendly with the mother, but his posturing relaxed when he forgot himself and had his mind on other matters. Carson had come to rely on the good sense and wisdom of his housekeeper. She prevented his wife from going off half-cocked and kept the other servants in line without disrupting the order of his household. Other servants could bring him his tea in the morning, but he preferred Willie May, whose presence never jarred. “You're not coming down with the ague, are you?” he asked.

Willie May blotted the spilled tea with a corner of her apron. “No, suh, Mister Carson. I just hit my funny bone.”

“Well, you keep yourself in good fettle, you hear? We can't have you sick at Christmas when everybody else is having a good time.” He nodded to his overseer. “That'll be all, Wilson. You know what to do.” When he had gone, Carson swiveled his chair around to address the main cog that kept his house running smoothly. The redness in his face had eased. “What do you think, Willie May? Who's stealing from us?”

“I couldn't say, suh. I didn't know anybody was. I haven't heard a thing.”

There were hot rolls, too, and Willie May kept her attention on spreading butter and molasses on them, just like Carson Wyndham liked. She handed him a napkin, which he tucked into the collar of his crisp cotton shirt to catch the drips.

“Must be a vagrant,” he said absently, his gaze diverted to some reading material on his desk. “None of my people have reason to steal from me.”

“That is so, Mister Carson.”

“Wilson will find out who it is and may God have mercy on the culprit when he does.”

“Amen, Mister Carson.”

Willie May hoped the good Lord heard the invocation for mercy. She was the culprit. She had spotted the runaway, a boy not older than fifteen, stealing into the barn last week when she'd gone at midnight to check on Tippy, still quartered in the room next to Miss Jessica's. Her daughter had been coughing all day, and Willie May had prepared a hot mustard plaster to place on her chest. It was a clear, moonlit night, and she'd noticed a shadow move out from the cotton fields, hesitate, move forward again, then pause. It emerged once more, and she had a brief glimpse of a skinny boy of her race wearing ragtag clothes, too skimpy for the cold night, before the body melted into the shadows of the barn.

No building at Willowshire except the master's cabin—his outdoor study—was ever locked. The master's arrogance wouldn't have it. Nobody would dare steal from him. Barns, storage and equipment sheds, silos, root cellars, the two smokehouses, one for curing the most recent meat and the other for storing last year's—all were open for anyone to enter without the bother of keys, but none would be so brazen without proper reason to do so. Carson Wyndham's total control over his fiefdom guaranteed that.

So even her brief glimpse of the intruder convinced Willie May the boy was not one of Willowshire's one hundred slaves. A cold feeling stole over her. A runaway, then.

She hurried down the stairs and let herself out the back door, grabbing a shawl from a kitchen hook, and quietly but quickly made her way across the compound to the barn. Slowly, she opened the door. It creaked a warning but not soon enough for the boy to overcome his frightened curiosity and duck his head down. He had found himself a bed of straw in the loft, and when he saw that he'd been caught, he stared back at Willie May like a hare caught in the sight of a hunter's gun until she motioned for him to come down. The boy obeyed, his head hung, his shoulders drawn as if already feeling the lash of the whip.

“Don't be afraid,” she said, wondering why she felt no fear. The boy was thin but taller than she and obviously desperate. Her only concern was that someone in the Big House was up and had seen them. “I'm not here to hurt you. Who are you?”

“I…can't say, missus,” he said.

“I'm guessing I know why. You've run away, haven't you?”

The boy remained silent, and Willie May, seeing in him her own son who had died of tuberculosis at fifteen, felt moved by a maternal impulse to put her arms around him. His shoulders felt knife thin, and his tense, stiff body was shivering in his inadequate clothes, either from fear or because he had not had time to warm himself, probably both. She pulled away and stared into his gaunt, frightened face. Without thinking of her own welfare, she took off her shawl, wrapped him in it, and said resolutely, “I'm going to help you. You must trust me.”

Either he would or he wouldn't. Willie May could tell he was trying to make up his mind, but he looked hungry, and hunger took risks. “You can watch me go to the smokehouse, so you know I'm not going to get the master,” she said. “I'll bring you some food. You'll have to take it to your hiding place while it's dark to eat it. It's too dangerous for you to stay here. I'll leave you more food and something warm to wear behind the smokehouse tomorrow at dusk, and you can come and fetch the stuff when all is quiet. I'll hide everything under the firewood.”

She had snitched a ham and brought it to the boy, who had watched her from a crack in the barn. She exchanged her shawl for a horse blanket she found on a tack shelf and instructed him to leave it in the place where she'd hide the food. Before leaving him, she thought of a code by which they could communicate. Thank goodness it was Christmastime and the holiday napkins were out.

“When you see the corner of a white napkin tucked into the woodpile, you'll know the coast is clear to come to the woodpile. If you see a red one, you'll know to stay away,” Willie May told him. “The napkins will be easy to see from a distance. If you see a green one, that means they're looking for you and you're to try to make it to the gazebo where you can hide. Do you know what a gazebo is?”

The boy slowly shook his head, his forehead knotted in an effort to understand.

“It's that white, round-looking structure to the side of the master's house. You can see it from the woods. Most of the sides are open, but there's a shed right next to it for storing extra chairs with plenty of room for you to hide. The gazebo is never used, and no one will think to look for you in a place so close to the house. I'll come to you soon as I can.”

The boy had listened in silence, but his round, anxious eyes told her he'd taken in everything she'd said. Willie May wondered if his mama was still alive and worried out of her mind about him. After sunset the next day, she had left the items as promised, finding them gone when she returned with more food the following afternoon. For two days after that, though, she'd had to leave a red napkin in the chinks of the wood bin, and in that time after darkness fell, the boy must have stolen the second ham.

She had heard no news of a runaway or that anyone was looking for him. Willie May guessed the boy had no particular destination in mind when he took off. He'd run blindly on hope and luck, and his strength and courage had petered out somewhere behind the Big House of Willowshire. But now the overseers would be looking, and if they found the boy…

Why, oh why, had she sent Lulu—with a heart the size of a penny and an eye that could spot an overlooked spec of dust on a ten-foot windowsill—to fetch a package of jowls from the smokehouse when she should have gone herself? Willie May had been smart enough not to steal items from the pantry. If the discovery was made, Miss Eunice would suspect a house servant, and that would never do. Willie May had not believed two hams, out of the dozens remaining in the smokehouse from last year, would be missed. She had not counted on Lulu's eagle eye detecting the theft or her nasty delight in tattling on the trespasses of others.

Willie May gazed at the head of her master bent over his paperwork. “What will you do to…the culprit if he's found?” she asked hesitantly.

“If he's a vagrant, he'll be given a good thrashing. He can come to the back door and beg, but he can't steal from honest folks' smokehouses. If he's a runaway, he'll be taken back to his master, where he'll get whatever punishment is meted out for the offense. Most likely he'll be whipped. That's the penalty for one of ours caught stealing.”

“Suppose…the culprit was simply hungry, and his stomach won out over his conscience?” Willie May suggested.

Carson lifted his head from his reading and blinked at her as if the rapid shutting and opening of his eyes would help him understand a question he'd never been asked before. Willie May braced for a chastising, but he said, “Rules are rules, Willie May, and reluctant though I may be to punish a hungry man, if I relaxed the rules for one, I'd have to do it for the others, and people take advantage of Christian charity.”

“Yessuh,” Willie May said, wondering how he would know, but she'd see the runaway did not strain his “Christian charity.” She knew the person who might help her rescue him before his back felt the lash. She would first run to get a green napkin to stick in the woodpile, then she would go to Miss Jessica.