GEMINI

11

HETTY ARRIVED AT THE GENERAL GOODS store a few minutes earlier than the marked time. This was fortunate, for it allowed her to familiarize herself with the shop. While the selections of most of the goods were far more expensive than she cared for, she only came here for fabric, since the shop had the highest quality. When she had commissions from the rich ladies up on Society Hill, Hetty came here to purchase fabrics, knowing the good quality would only further elevate her work.

She was studying a roll of golden pink, wondering if it would be suitable for an underskirt, when footsteps approached and stopped right next to her.

“Will you be buying this?”

A shop assistant stood right in her shadow. The same one who kept her in sight as she moved toward the more expensive side of the store. Although he was not tall enough to look down his nose at Hetty, he made a fool of himself trying.

This was vexing, but she knew how to handle people like him.

She held up the fabric in her hands. “Yes,” Hetty said. “I will be buying several yards.”

“Who is this for?” the assistant said, his eyes clearly taking in her plain dress as much as her brown skin. “What name shall I place on the tab?”

“Alice Granger.”

A white woman approached them. Her gray dress was plain, but the fabric was of a quality equal to the ornate butterfly brooch at her neck. A few curls of light brown escaped a neat bun, and her smile was distant yet pleasant.

The shop assistant, who looked ready to toss Hetty out of the shop just moments ago, was all smiles now.

“Miss Granger,” the shop assistant said, “you’ll be wanting . . .”

“Everything she just said,” the strange white woman declared. “Although, double the order. I didn’t tell you earlier,” she said, turning to Hetty, “but I changed my mind. I will have several dresses made with the material. It is so versatile.”

Hetty went along with this ludicrous statement, enjoying the shop assistant scrambling even as she kept a wary eye on the stranger.

Continuing with the ruse, Hetty followed the woman out of the shop. On the street awaited a cab driver, who jumped down from his perch to help them inside.

Hetty pressed the package close to her chest, less of a shield than a ready weapon to throw if needed.

“Thank you for purchasing this for me,” Hetty said, with her eyes lowered to the ground. “I’m very grateful.”

“It was no trouble,” the woman said. “It looks ready to rain again. Come, I can take you to where you’re going next. Hop inside.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.”

“I insist. I have a favor to ask of you.”

Those simple words stopped Hetty’s protests. Not because she believed them, but because they explained her circumstances quite clearly. With this clarity, Hetty broke her rule about not entering a wagon with strangers and climbed inside without any more protest.

“A favor from me,” Hetty asked after the woman tapped on the side closest to the driver. The wagon lurched forward. “I’m not sure about that.” She looked the woman straight in the eye and dropped all pretense. “I am not in the habit of helping white women. Though I suppose it does not matter, since you are not one.”

Alice sat back, more than slightly stunned.

“What gave me away? Was it that I helped you?”

“No.” Hetty tapped her nose, and the act made Alice touch her own in horror. “If you know what to look for you can see the truth.”

People who could pass for white often did. Many of the runaways that escaped the plantation leveraged their light complexions to hide in plain sight. While it was often a temporary act dropped the moment trouble ended, some chose to live their lives out in full this way. For most, it was not an easy choice. Passing meant cutting ties to family and friends and living in fear of the smallest mistake that could end everything. While some used that privilege to aid others, some passed purely for personal advancement.

Given that Hetty sat across from Alice in a cab with a package of fabric worth several months’ rent bundled next to her, she suspected the latter to be the case here.

“I heard stories about you,” Alice said. “About what you do, what you have done. Amazing things, remarkable rescues, escapes, all right under people’s noses.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear. It’s often exaggerated.”

“You are the only one that can help me.”

“Help you how? You appear well off.”

“I’m exceedingly well off,” Alice admitted. “But it’s not me that needs your help. There is—” she paused, and started again, “There is someone teaching servants Sorcery.”

“Good for them. Though rather risky, given the laws. But, as there isn’t a citywide uproar about it, I don’t see how this is a problem.”

“It might explain her disappearance.”

“Whose disappearance?”

“My sister. Judith Freeman. I haven’t heard from her in several days.”

“Do you talk regularly?”

“Only through letters,” Alice laughed. “Though she has visited me on occasion, pretending to be a servant on an errand.”

Hetty’s hand curled into a fist, and she shoved it into the folds of her skirts. “If you’re worried, why are you wasting time talking to me?”

“I can’t seek out my sister,” Alice admitted, stating the obvious. “I would lose everything!”

“I think you already have.”

Alice’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m not asking for your help. This is a job. I just purchased several reams of fabric for you. Consider that your payment.”

“I have a right to refuse this job.”

“You do not.” Alice smirked like every rich girl Hetty had seen before. “Or we’ll have to bring others into this conversation. Some of them might be curious about the fabric in your possession.”

And who, Alice’s smug smile seemed to say, would people believe if Alice claimed Hetty had stolen it?

Certainly not Hetty.

“We have our differences,” Alice went on, “but my sister would never have willingly disappeared like this. I’m worried. The rich have ways of making problems quietly vanish when they desire it.”

Hetty grimaced. Despite the protests on her lips, she knew in the end what her answer would be.

She already said no to someone else who had been desperate for her help, and he ended up dead. Benjy might say she bore no blame for Charlie’s death, but that was a lie. Charlie’s death was on her back. Alice might be exaggerating her sister’s plight, but Hetty would take no chances this time.

“I’ll take the case. But I need information to help me start.”

Alice gladly gave Hetty the information she wanted. It wasn’t much. An address for Judith’s apartment, names of a few friends, an abridged history of the sisters’ separate lives in the city. Information full of holes that needed filling if Hetty was going to get any use out of it. All of this paled compared to Alice’s reluctance to give Hetty any easy way to contact her.

“If you need to talk to me,” Alice said when they arrived at the address Hetty had given her, “I sell perfume at the store on Grand. Slip me a note saying it’s an order from your mistress and I will meet you in a place where we won’t be seen.”

So much caution for such a lie. Hetty couldn’t help but wonder if Judith had disappeared simply to stop playing her sister’s games.

The unkind thought lingered in Hetty’s mind as she turned the corner to the blacksmith’s shop.

Sy Caldwell stood in the front, fumbling with a horse’s tack as Hetty entered. The lanky young man fought a losing battle, and it slipped out his fingers the more he worked at it.

“You need to unbuckle it,” Hetty pointed out.

“It’s fused,” Sy said, just as his elbow bumped against the table.

One of Penelope’s younger cousins, Sy had run off the plantation to join up with Union soldiers at the tender age of fifteen. Not wanting to spend his time doing laundry or playing nurse, he cut his hair and changed his name. Doing this left him tasked with leading supply wagons instead, and he soon discovered that what had been a disguise was something that reflected his true self. In his transition to civilian life, he took night classes at Darlene and George’s school, where his interests ran toward numbers. However, his best skills didn’t lead to any employment until Penelope persuaded Benjy to take him on as an apprentice. Sy was practical, easily excited, and still had the job at the forge only because the owner was seldom there.

“Looking for Ben?” Sy asked. “He’s around back making horseshoes.”

“That shouldn’t keep him busy,” Hetty observed.

Sy lowered his voice, “It’s for one of those folks uptown.”

“Are they there watching?”

“No.”

“Then,” Hetty said, “I shall not bother him too much.”

Sy’s protests followed Hetty as she slipped into the back of the forge.

She heard the banging of a hammer long before she saw him. Clouds of steam rose up around Benjy, obscuring him partly from sight even as Hetty drew near. The heat pushed her back, and she could see his work shirt tossed haphazardly on the stool, covered in soot and drenched with sweat.

Hunched over the forge, Benjy struck the metal over and over with a hammer hard enough that sparks flew. The fire behind him cast long flickering shadows that made him loom even taller in the room. He was drenched in sweat, and each movement only served to emphasize his well-formed muscles—the product of working in the forge since he arrived in Philadelphia.

Several things came to mind at the sight, but the foremost was one of her favorite stories, in which the hero met the god of the forge and asked the master blacksmith for items of great power. When her mother told it, the items were humble tools like hoes or kitchen pots. Since Hetty was married to a blacksmith who made clever things with many uses, over time the items became a key that could open any lock, a coin that cast a spell of invisibility, a lantern that needed no oil to burn, and a compass that pointed to your heart’s desire.

“Hetty.” Benjy absently dabbed his face with his apron. “How late is it?”

“Not late at all,” she said, eyeing the stack of horseshoes. They were stacked high enough to nearly topple over. “How long have you been at this?”

“Forever, it seems,” he remarked. “Still more to do.”

“I can wait until you finish. I don’t mind watching you work.”

These teasing words led him to roll his eyes, but Benjy couldn’t fool her. She saw a smile tug at his mouth and knew that even if he had a large and complex work order to finish by the day’s end, she wouldn’t be sent away. He might try to convince her to work the bellows, but he would let her linger around the forge even if she was nothing more than a distraction.

There was a box that once held some matter of tools, and she placed her package on top with care.

Mindful of the flames, she walked to the workbench. It was rather empty today, with only a few tools scattered across the surface. Usually there was a long line of work across it, from repairs to drawings of new work. She even came here once to find a sword among his work for the day. But there was nothing on the workbench to make diverting conversation, so she sank onto a nearby stool and rolled one of the chisels along the surface in front of her.

“Is something the matter?” Benjy dropped another horseshoe onto the stack.

“Do you know someone named Judith?”

He picked up a hammer and proceeded to wag it at her. “You should rephrase that question before I give an answer that gets misunderstood.”

“Oh!” Hetty laughed. “I was just wondering if the name was familiar.”

“It’s not. Who is she? No,” he corrected himself, “what is this about?”

“The odd note that was in our post. I met the writer, and the lengths she took to meet me was because she’s passing. It’s also why she sought me out. Her sister Judith has gone missing. According to her, Judith taught Sorcery to others and recently disappeared. But she’s only worried because there’s a chance Judith’s activities will be connected to her, even though it shouldn’t matter. This is her sister and she is more concerned about being caught living a lie.”

“Then don’t take the case.”

“I can’t.” Hetty’s protest was scarcely off her lips before she saw her hands were shaking. She shoved them behind her back, but it was too late.

Benjy had dropped his hammer, the half-formed horseshoe, and everything else he was doing to come around to where she sat. He exchanged his apron for the abandoned work shirt, her stitch-work glowing for a moment as the fabric brushed against his skin.

“This isn’t about my sister,” Hetty said in answer to his unspoken concerns. “This woman, Alice, she bought all this expensive fabric for me. I can’t refuse, or she’ll have me arrested.”

Benjy didn’t reach out to touch her, but loomed overhead like a thoughtful cloud, as if touching her would bring on a storm of tears.

She wasn’t sure she wanted him to grab her hands and say everything would be fine and he’d take care of it, but this wasn’t much better. Looming over her with concern just made the distance between them greater than what it was.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Benjy said, looking more at the arrangement of tools on the walls than at her face. “This woman considers you her only hope to find her sister.”

“If I’m her only hope, it’s only because she doesn’t want to look herself !”

“But you do. And you will.” He paused before adding, “Would you like help?”

“What happened to ‘This is your case, Hetty’?” she said, mimicking his voice. “Now you want to help? Is it because it involves a missing sister?”

“Yes, that’s exactly my reason,” he replied. “This is your weakness and it skews your judgment. You’ll lose yourself in this case.”

“I haven’t before.”

“It only takes one time.”

She heard an echo of their conversation last night about Marianne, and her dismissal about naming her friend as a suspect. Just like then, he was casting doubt on her judgment, but this time she wasn’t nearly as vexed to hear such words.

He had the right of it.

Her love for her sister led her to see that relationship echoed in other sibling pairs and to be surprised when the bond wasn’t strong. He was right to warn her. But it was already too late.

“Why do you have to be right about that?” she grumbled.

“Sometimes I don’t wish to be.”

Benjy’s face was carefully blank, which made his words an even greater puzzle. She was still considering what to make of them when footsteps filled the thoughtful silence.

“Am I interrupting?”

Darlene stood in the doorway with her daughter cradled in her arms. She eyed the room hesitantly, as if she was uncertain if her dress or baby could come to greater harm.

“There’s nothing to interrupt,” Benjy said as he stepped toward the workbench, abandoning Hetty as he tucked his concerns away.

Darlene, deciding to take a risk, moved forward in the space, nodding briefly at Hetty as she did. “I’ve come to ask you a favor. It’s a bit short notice, but I am only a messenger. Benjy, will you play the piano at the repass tomorrow? Eunice thought it would be a grand idea since it’ll be hosted at her home.”

“Repass?” Benjy echoed. “At the Loring home?”

“Charlie’s funeral is tomorrow.” Darlene frowned. “Didn’t Hetty tell you?”

“I didn’t get a chance,” Hetty admitted, speaking directly to Benjy. “Marianne insists on services as soon as possible. Oliver is busy getting ready, but he’s not asking for help.”

“Then I should change his mind,” Benjy replied.

“Will you play the piano?” Darlene asked again.

He nodded.

Then, strangely, he made a show of looking at the horseshoes. “I think I got the number of horses wrong. Excuse me, I’m going to talk to Sy.” Rather abruptly he left them, but not without giving Hetty a peculiar look as he passed.

It happened too quickly for Hetty to catch his meaning. But it had to be something about Darlene.

Her friend would not have come to ask Benjy about the piano. A piano needed only to be present in a room and he would play. No, Darlene came here for something else.

True to form, Darlene lingered, biting her lip as she glanced around the forge.

“I’m sure he’ll be back,” Hetty said, collecting her package. “Just wait a few moments.”

“I didn’t come to talk to him. I mean,” Darlene added, “I came to talk to him because I wanted Benjy to pass along a message to you. I went around to the dress shop and they said you weren’t there.”

“I quit—the usual story.”

“Ah.” Darlene stumbled at this. If Hetty wasn’t already curious, she would have been now. Like a berating elder sister, Darlene always had a few choice words when Hetty announced she was looking for work. Usually to the tune of tossing aside perfectly good opportunities on a whim. “Good, then you’ll have time to talk,” Darlene said. “I need to tell you something. I went to see Marianne. There’s something about Charlie’s death that she’s hiding!”