Lucas moves quickly into the hold.
“Come down!” he orders.
“Just what is going on?” Swinbourne calls from somewhere behind him.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” Lucas answers. “Go back and finish your business. Woman, come down here to me!”
Elise doesn’t cower and she doesn’t budge. But all the other women who’d stood sit right back down.
“Get down here, I said,” Lucas growls. “You too, boy!”
“We’re not going anywhere with you,” I say, made brave by Elise’s courage. “You’re really sick, you know that? Treating your own people this way.”
“Ain’t my people. Don’t have people. All I got is me and I need money.”
“There’s other ways to make money.”
“What? Work as a field hand? Or one of them scavengers picking up everyone’s slop off the streets? Ha! Now, girl, you come on and I’ll put you back and we’ll not say no more. Won’t get whupped or nothing. But come now. Otherwise, it’ll go hard—”
Above our heads, the deck hatch flies open. A barefoot white guy charges down the stairs. Elise has almost no time to think, but that doesn’t stop her. Graceful as a dancer, she moves to the side of the stairway, sticks out her foot, and trips him; sending him flying to crash into Lucas.
Powder flashes and the pistol barks. The ball buzzes by me like an angry wasp before thudding into the hull.
“Marcus! Allez! Vite! Vite!” Elise calls from the open hatch. I run up the stairs into a cold rain that slicks the deck.
“This way,” I pant, heading for the side to look for Solomon.
He’s gone. But the entry port and the rope ladder down to those two row boats is unguarded.
“Can you climb down?” I ask.
“Oui!”
She sits on the deck, maneuvering to find the first rung of the ladder with her foot.
I look back at the hatch, expecting to see Lucas or the white guy, but there’s no one—not yet.
I look down. Elise is moving so slowly.
“Hurry!” I say.
“I go as fast as I can!”
“What’s the matter?”
“You wear these skirts and see how you do!”
Now she’s half-way down, with maybe another five feet to go. I sit in the entry port, feeling for the first rung of the ladder with my foot.
I look back—still no one; then look down. Elise has made it into the first of the two boats.
“Climb over to the next boat,” I say, starting down the ladder, watching the forward hatch for Lucas.
But it’s from the stern that I hear men running. Turning, I see Lucas and the barefoot guy, both carrying rifles. They haven’t seen me yet. I duck my head below the deck and scramble down the ladder and into the first boat. Untying it from the ladder, I push off, freeing both dinghies from the slave ship. I scramble into the second boat, untie it, and push off from the first. Luckily, the oars are resting in their oarlocks. Fast as I can, I push them into the water and start rowing.
Or try to. The Delaware is rough. My first pull, I dig the oars in too deep and almost lose them. My second, I barely fan the water. Three pulls later, I’ve made maybe ten yards.
By the light of the slaver’s deck lanterns, I see Lucas and the white guy at the rail taking aim with their rifles.
“Over the side!” I shout to Elise. We both tumble overboard. Just as I hit that cold, black water, I hear the shots. I just know one is going to hit me. But I get lucky.
The current is strong and my clothes and shoes, heavy with water, drag me under. I kick for the surface, in the direction I think our row boat is. But when my head breaks water, all I can see are the dim lights of Philadelphia. Or is it Camden? I’m not sure because I’ve completely lost my bearings. Struggling to stay afloat, I swivel in the water. The rain comes harder; big, pelting, marble-sized drops that make it hard to see.
About ten yards away, I see the gray hull of one of the dinghies. I swim to it, grab its gunwale, and twist this way and that, looking for Elise. I can just make out the slaver. The current has carried me and the boat pretty far. But there is no sign of Elise.
I call out to her. No answer.
Shivering, all I can think is: Oh God, please don’t let her be shot!
I call again. The hiss of rain on the river’s surface is the only response.
But then, behind me, I hear the water stir. A hand covers my mouth as a warm body presses against my back.
“Shhhhh,” Elise whispers in my ear. “Someone comes.”
She points. A white hull with quick-moving oars heads straight for us—fast! Whoever is rowing has to be strong. I figure it must be Lucas. The bottom drops out of my stomach. I can’t think what to do.
“Whatchy’all doin’ down there?” Solomon rasps. “Boats is for being into, not out of.”
It’s a struggle, scrambling into that little dinghy. But we make it.
It takes Solomon a half-hour of hard pulling to get us to the Market Street wharf. It’s late and very quiet in the now gentle rain.
We climb quickly up the ladder and hurry for Market Street.
“That sure was some excitement,” Solomon says. “Boy, you’s a sight! Look at you! Fat lip, blood still leakin’ out your nose—!”
“Where the heck did you go?” I ask angrily, swiping at my face with my sleeve and getting a jolt of pain as my reward.
“Stood off when I heard that first shot. You’s paid me to row, not get kilt.”
“I know you, don’t I?” Elise asks Solomon.
“Come eat your soup ever’ day I can, ma’am.”
“Ah, you are one of the ones we charge a penny because you cannot afford more. Yes?”
“Yes’m.”
“You came all that way for me?”
“Yes’m.”
“You are very brave, to do that for someone you know so little.”
“No’m,” he says with an embarrassed duck of his head.
“You like our soup, yes?”
“Yes’m.”
“From now on, every day, for you it is free.”
***
As Elise and I walk back to Franklin’s, she starts to shiver. I try putting my arm around her.
“Non!” she says, stepping away.
“Just trying to get you warm.”
“That I do not deserve! I am such a fool! I know better.”
“Hey, we all make mistakes.”
“Not me. Not with men. Not anymore.”
“Don’t say that,” I plead.
“You are a good fellow, Marcus. Thank you for this. But still, you are not for me.”
“Because I’m not strong enough?”
“Non. About that, I think I was wrong. It is because Franklin says you will leave.”
Thanks, Doc!
***
We get back to the house after midnight.
“We must be quiet,” I say. “While you were gone, Franklin became very ill.”
“No! Mon Dieu! What is the matter?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Franklin calls down from the top of the stairs. “Honestly, a man eats one bad oyster and the world stops turning.”
“You aren’t supposed to be eating oysters,” I say.
“Spare me! I’ve already been scolded by both Sally and Dr. Rush. Washington, Hamilton, Wilson, and Madison were all making a meal of them over at the Indian Queen. I couldn’t let them have all the fun.”
“Everyone else get sick too? I ask.
“No. It seems I got the only bad one in the bunch. Either that or it did not like the Madeira,” he says and then grimaces, like he’s just spilled a convention secret.
“But you are not supposed to drink—”
“I’ll thank you to keep that revelation to yourselves. I’ve had quite enough of Sally’s upbraiding. Now, where have the two of you been? You look drowned and you are dripping all over the floor. Sally said something about your being in trouble Elise? Go change and come to the library. I must hear everything.”
In the library, we take turns telling what happened. Elise tells how Lucas invited her to go for a cooling row over to Camden, only to detour to Swinbourne’s ship.
“I knew from the smell something was wrong, as we came up to that ship—and also, because Lucas would not answer my questions. When we got there, he said go up the ladder and I said no, that he must take me back. A very heavy net fell on me. It knocked me down to the bottom. I hit my head. Next, I remember waking up with my feet locked, in that awful place. Then Marcus came.”
“Yes, that!” Franklin says. “Tell me about that.”
So I do, beginning with my hunt along Market Street.
“One thing is certain, Marcus. No one can doubt your bravery,” Franklin says when I’m finished. A warm feeling runs through me and, for just a second, I wish Gus could be here.
“What are you going to do?” I ask him.
“Why, I should think that would be obvious. Go to bed.”
“No! I mean, what are you going to do about what happened?”
Franklin blinks that slow, owlish blink of his.
“Nothing. There’s nothing I can do. The ship was on the New Jersey side of the river. It may be illegal to import and to buy and sell slaves in Pennsylvania, but in New Jersey, it is still quite legal.”
“But he kidnapped her!”
“Did he? It sounded as though she willingly accompanied him—at least at first, while still here in Philadelphia. Best to forget it.”
“Forget it? Suppose he tries again? Suppose he goes to the market and drags her off?”
“The market?” Franklin repeats, eyebrows raised high. “Elise, you don’t mean to say you’re continuing with that business.”
“Yes, of course I must,” she answers. “I need money to find my family.”
“No!” Franklin says. “I cannot have that! Things are at such a delicate stage with the convention right now. For you, the market is finished. I cannot risk calling attention to myself, not in a fight with Swinbourne, not concerning the issue of slavery.”
“But—”
“My word on this is final. Elise, you are finished at the market.”
“And if I disobey?”
“It isn’t a question of disobeying me. I am not your master. But I must make it a condition of your continued association with this house. You must choose: either remain here, under my protection, and forsake the market; or return to the market, but find yourself other accommodations and employment.”
He softens the sternness in his voice.
“I realize I am forcing a harsh choice upon you. And I really don’t want you to leave. So here is what I propose. I will do everything in my power to find your mother and son. I will pay whatever it takes to have them found and I will buy them and pay to bring them here and then I will set them free.”
“You can never find them,” Elise says forlornly.
“My dear, have you no faith? I spent years running our postal system, first as the Crown’s deputy postmaster for the colonies, and then as Postmaster General of the United States, in which office Sally’s husband, Richard, succeeded me. We have friends in every post office in the country. And who is it in every town that knows everyone? Why, the postmaster. If our friends cannot find your family, your family cannot be found.”
“But I do not have the money for that, for any of it,”
“It will cost you nothing. Let it be my gift to you.”
“I could never accept such a gift.”
“Think carefully now,” Franklin says, raising a warning finger. “Do not let pride lead you astray.”
“May I take time to think?”
“Wisely said. Of course you may. However, while you consider, there can be no going back to the market. In fact, it would be best if you both confined yourselves to the house and garden—at least for the next few days. Lay low, so to speak, while we see what consequences this evening’s commotion brings. Although I doubt there will be any, considering the parties involved. Both Swinbourne and Wimpole know that you are under my protection and that I can make life very unpleasant for them both.”
I have the nagging feeling there is something I should be telling Franklin. But I can’t think what. I’m more tired than I’ve ever been. Elise looks just as exhausted.
But she’s not too exhausted to ask Franklin: “May I at least continue to cook the soup for Mrs. Carver. She has been depending on me—”
“As long as you remain here at the house, it should be alright. But when you see Mrs. Carver, tell her that if she hears anything about you or what happened tonight, she’s to come tell you immediately. Clear?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Good. And now, get me to bed. You two may be able to laze about tomorrow; I still have a convention to attend.”