46

Charlotte

I hide the journal in a different place every day and pray Achan does not discover it. He has become even more volatile, to the point of obsession. Is it the war the South seems to be losing? Or is it reports of slaves escaping to the North that feed his rage? That he has engaged someone within our own household to report on me chills me to the bone.

“You hide that extra good, you hear?” Nettie eyed the journal in my lap. “The devil inside Master Achan makin’ him all kinds of crazy these days. I don’t know who he got workin’ on his side, but he got somebody. And if he ever finds your book . . .”

“I’ll hide it well, Nettie. I promise.”

She gently touched my chin, either evaluating the recent bruising on my jaw or making sure I was listening, I couldn’t be certain. Her touch always carried such love.

She closed the bedroom door as she left, and I continued writing, knowing time was short.

Eleven trains have run from this depot in recent weeks. One hundred and three tickets sold, each soul reaching the Promised Land, per word back down the line. Yet I wonder with each train that departs if it will be the last, and if all will be discovered.

Nettie reckons my time is still about a month away, and while we had planned to use our own tickets after the baby’s birth, we can wait no longer. The Federal Army has targeted Atlanta, determined to cut off the city’s supply lines to the Confederates. Many are starving. Raids on homes are commonplace, rogue Southern soldiers stealing food, livestock, anything of value. Including most of the horses. Rifle fire echoes through the woods.

Reportedly, President Lincoln is pushing his generals to end the war. Even this morning I prayed it will end too, but not us with it. Hence, tonight the very last train will run from this depot, and Nettie and I will be on it. I will travel with them for a night and a day. Then someone with a carriage will meet us to take me on ahead. While I am grateful and have promised her I will not slow them, guilt presses on me as I realize that, as always, my troubles will be light and momentary compared to hers. To theirs. But I am determined to do all I can to help—

At the sound of boots on the stairs, I grabbed a half-sewn baby gown from my sewing basket and shoved the journal to the bottom. I’d completed a second stitch when the door flew open.

“Miss Charlotte!” Nine-year-old Maisie, lithe as a beanpole, fought for breath. “Nettie needs you! Two men down in the parlor say they ain’t leavin’ till they see Master Achan.”

“He’s in the fields.”

“They say he ain’t there no more. No one can find him. Meanwhile, them men walkin’ ’round the house like they own it. Say they lookin’ for payment.”

“Payment for what?” I struggled to my feet.

“They won’t say. Nettie just give me a look to fetch you.”

I’d cherished this girl since her birth only days after I lost my precious Ophelia. It pained me to think of leaving Maisie and her mother behind, but all sixteen remaining slaves had been given the opportunity to leave. Perhaps Maisie and her mother were coming with us, but I had been told not to ask. Passengers were never informed who their fellow travelers would be. That way, no one could divulge information, even if beaten or threatened with death. But Nettie had to know the roster. Someone had to. Once again, her courage put me to shame.

“Help me to the bedside, please, Maisie. Now face the other way.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, but the less the child knew, the better. I removed the top drawer from my nightstand and reached all the way to the back until I found the leather pouch containing a Derringer my Jonathan had taught me to shoot ages ago. I quickly unwrapped it and slipped it into my skirt pocket before returning the drawer to its place.

Maisie helped me navigate the stairs faster than I should have.

Nettie barred the dining room, hands on hips. “Not them candelabras, you ain’t.”

“I ain’t gonna tell you again,” the larger of the men said, adding expletives as he approached her.

“Then perhaps you will tell me, sir,” I said, summoning courage from Nettie and the weight in my pocket. “Since I am mistress of this house and you are both strangers.”

His gaze dropped to my belly. Perhaps I should have been embarrassed to be seen so heavy with child, even by criminals. But war had a way of dismantling such propriety. “What business do you have in my home?”

“We are here to see your husband, Mrs. Crowley. You would not be hiding him by chance, now, would you?”

At a sharp pain in my abdomen, I gripped the newel post at the bottom of the staircase. “Why would I need to hide my husband? And what’s your business with him, Mr. . . . ?”

He appeared to size me up like a piece of livestock. “You mind if we take a look around?”

“Indeed, I would. And my question stands. What’s your business with Mr. Crowley?”

I slipped my hand into my pocket, and he paused, looking wary.

“Tell your husband Drake wants to see him. Today.” He glanced at Nettie, then at Maisie. “You’d best take care now. These are perilous times.”

No sooner had the men left than a pang like a swift kick to my belly doubled me over. I sank to the stairs, the entrance hall swirling.

Maisie crouched down. “You all right, Miss Charlotte?”

“I’m fine. I took the stairs too fast, is all.” But I’d delivered five children. I knew birthing pains. This felt different.

Nettie slipped an arm around me. “Just breathe, Miss Charlotte. You gonna be all right. Help me get her back upstairs, Maisie. We’ll take it slow this time.”

They eased me into bed, my head still swimming. Four more weeks—that’s all this baby needed to wait, and we’d be safely to the North.

“Maisie, run tell your mama, and only her, that we might need to take that quilt off the line. Tell her it looks like rain might be comin’.”

Maisie glanced out the window. “But it don’t look like rain at all. They ain’t a cloud in the—”

“Do as I say, girl!”

I waited until Maisie was gone. “Nettie, I told you, I’m fine.”

“I’m just gonna make sure there ain’t no sign of the baby.” Once she finished her examination, she rinsed her hands in the washbasin. “Still hurtin’?” she asked.

“It will pass.”

She moved her hand in slow arcs over my belly, the gentle pressure gradually coaxing relief. I closed my eyes and drank in the closest thing to a mother’s touch I’d ever known. Why the woman who birthed me had rejected her own baby while I still had breath in my lungs, I would never know. But I had Nettie. And she was more than enough.

“Any idea why them men want Master Achan?”

“I assume he’s deeper in debt than I realized. Gambling.”

“So that’s why more silver’s gone missin’. I didn’t want ’em takin’ those candelabras. They been in Mister Jonathan’s family since way back.”

Tears rose unexpectedly. “But we’re leaving all of that, aren’t we?”

“Still, don’t want trash like that havin’ ’em.” She gave a tiny smile. “’Sides, what’s waitin’ for us is better than any silver or gold.”

Through the window, I heard the sound of digging and of hammers striking rock. “Does he have them working on that again?”

“Yes, ma’am, he does. Says he wants it finished by tomorrow.”

“Why he wants a brick patio in such a time as this makes no sense.”

“Nothing that man ever done made sense.”

She didn’t mean to be hurtful, but her words still stung. “I’m sorry I ever married him, Nettie. I didn’t know what kind of man he was. He acted so charming at first, and I was frightened of being alone, what with rumors of war coming and—”

“We done walked this road, too many times, and we ain’t goin’ back over it again.” Her eyes softened. “Best we move on from it. For good.” She brushed the hair from my face as though I were still a child. “I know you’d do things different if you could. We all carry them things inside us. Choices we’d give the world to unravel and stitch up again. But that ain’t how life works, is it?”

“No,” I whispered, “it’s not.”

The late morning sun slanted through the window and fell across the bed, and my eyes grew heavy.

“You rest awhile. I be back shortly.” She leaned close. “Need to check on some things for tonight. Far as you know, Master Crowley still goin’ to his club meetin’?”

“He never misses it.”

“Then after he good and gone, we be gone too.”

I awakened later to the sun on my face and the drumming of hammer on brick—but also to urgent whispers from the hallway.

“What you mean tellin’ Maisie to tell her mama that quilt might got to come off the line? It ain’t comin’ off for nobody, Nettie, and you need to get that through your thick skull. We leavin’ tonight. With or without her.”

“Don’t be takin’ that tone with me. I been—”

“I’m takin’ that tone ’cause I love you, woman. I wants a life with you, you hear me? And we gonna have it. But we got to get outta here. Tonight.”

Nettie’s voice I knew like my own. The other I couldn’t place.

“Don’t you think I know that? But I been straight with you from the start. I ain’t leavin’ without her.”

“Listen to me, Nettie. She a good woman, I know. She been good to you. And I know you’s close to her, but what if she—?”

“I’m more than close to her, Jeremiah. I—”

“Would you let me speak a full thought ’fore you start climbin’ down my throat?”

Jeremiah. A field hand. Always kind to me. A leader among the men. But he and Nettie? How could I not have known that? I’d never caught drift of anything more than friendship.

I laid perfectly still so as not to miss a word.

“All I’m sayin’, Nettie . . . If she starts havin’ that baby while we’s runnin’, she gonna get us all killed. And herself for helpin’ us. They’ll string her up ’longside us, God’s truth.”

My breath came hard. “Nettie?” I called out.

They fell silent.

Seconds passed before Nettie walked in. “How you feelin’? Any better?”

“Jeremiah?” I said. “Please come here!”

“Miss Charlotte,” Nettie started, but I silenced her with a look.

Jeremiah stepped into the doorway and stopped, eyes downcast, slouch hat in hand. “Miss Charlotte,” he said softly, his voice deep like water rushing over smooth rock. “Sorry if you heard what we’s sayin’. Lay the whole blame on me. It weren’t Nettie at all, I give you my word.”

“There is no blame, Jeremiah.” I motioned him in, but he didn’t move until Nettie gave a subtle nod.

She propped an extra pillow behind me while Jeremiah stood near the footboard, shifting his weight and fidgeting with his hat. I’d never had a male field hand in my bedroom, but after what I’d just overheard, once again, war was clarifying life.

“Jeremiah is right, Nettie,” I said.

“No, he ain’t, Miss Charlotte. You—”

I held up a hand. “I simply hadn’t seen the truth for what it is. I’ve been so focused on the baby and so eager to be away from here, from him, but mostly because I cannot bear the thought of”—my voice broke—“being separated from you.”

Her eyes welled with emotion.

“But Jeremiah, what you said is right. I can’t go with you. If something happened to you all because of me . . .” I shook my head, unable to finish.

“I’m sorry again, ma’am, for sayin’ it so plain like. If I’d knowed you could hear me . . . it wasn’t in my mind to bring you hurt.”

“I know that,” I whispered, my thoughts traveling a thousand directions at once. “You’re not to blame. God will show me a way.”

Nettie huffed. “You two actin’ like this is a settled thing, but it ain’t. Miss Charlotte, you can’t stay here. Not after this train runs.”

“I can. I’ll seek shelter with those staying behind, if they’re willing, and only for a couple of nights. Achan would never think of searching for me in their cabins. He’ll likely head to the train station first. I’ll wait a couple of days, then somehow get onto a train.” I fingered my wedding band. “Surely this will be payment enough.”

But Nettie was having none of it. “You ain’t understandin’ me, Miss Charlotte. You can’t be stayin’ here. Not after tonight.” She stared hard as if weighing something troublesome. “Me and Jeremiah, we the only ones who know this—”

“Don’t, Nettie!” he said low.

“But you gonna know it soon enough too,” she continued. “There ain’t gonna be nobody left here. Every last one of us got tickets. We all goin’. So you gotta go too. Or he’ll kill you, for sure, ’long with the baby.” She squared her shoulders and threw Jeremiah a look. “She goin’ with us.”

Jeremiah looked at me, not hesitantly this time but full on. Something passed between us, and I knew what I had to do.

“I am not going with you, Nettie,” I said. “I will find a way to get away from here, and later I will find you up north. I’ll—”

She shook her head. “If you stayin’, I stay too.”

Jeremiah took a step toward her. “Nettie—”

She raised an arm to ward him off, all the while staring at me. “You askin’ me to do somethin’ I cannot do, Miss Charlotte. You’s like my child. And I ain’t havin’ another. So, me leave you here? Better you ask me to cut off my own leg, then tell me to run. I can’t do it.”

I reached for her hand, and she sank to the edge of the bed.

“Nettie, I’ve always looked at you as the mother I never had. I would’ve died without you. But you’re young yet. You and Jeremiah will have other children one day.”

She squeezed my hand. “You always sayin’ it was me who saved you, but . . . You got to know that the man who owned me ’fore your papa, he was a wicked sort. Specially with little girls. He done with us as he pleased. So when your papa bought me to take care of you, you did save me.” She gripped my hand. “But no more children for me, Miss Charlotte. That wicked master seen to that. So don’t be askin’ me to leave behind the only one I got. Now here’s how all this got to go tonight. . . .”