Neither Bound Nor Free, page 1
Copyright
ISBN 1-57748-937-3
© 2000 by Barbour Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher, Truly Yours, PO Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683.
Scripture quotations marked kjv are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover illustration by Lauraine Bush.
one
Richmond, Virginia—October 1859
“One hundred,” the burly auctioneer said. The small black boy on the auction block stared straight in front of him, his face stolid, his eyes unseeing. His hands hung limply at his sides. The ragged homespun shirt that covered him stopped just above his knees, leaving his legs and feet bare, scabbed beneath the dried mud that streaked them.
In the front row of the crowd, Calvin Sharp shifted from one booted foot to the other and scanned the faces around him. Josiah Cooper wasn’t in this room. Calvin swallowed a sigh. He ought to get out of this place, but something kept him there, standing, watching. He swallowed hard and kept his face from revealing his disgust. He’d known slavery existed, of course, but this was his first trip to the South. He’d never come face-to-face with the reality before, never actually seen a little child auctioned off like—like an animal.
It was one thing to make an occasional contribution to the Anti-Slavery League. He’d done that as a matter of course, as any man raised by his mother would. He’d also heard about some kind of underground system, the Underground Railroad, it was called, that moved runaway slaves north to Canada. And he’d sympathized with its work—in the abstract.
But this—the selling of children—the horror of this ripped at a man’s guts, made him want to lose his latest meal or start tearing the place to pieces. He did neither, of course. A Pinkerton operative had to be in control of himself. At all times.
“He’s just a little ’un now,” the auctioneer told the crowd, raising the boy’s scrawny arm and releasing it to drop limply to his side. “But he’ll grow. You’ll see, in a year or so, he’ll pick lotsa cotton.”
The boy’s teeth were clamped on his lower lip, and he didn’t utter a sound. A brave child—or too scared to cry. Calvin couldn’t be sure which.
“Two hundred,” the auctioneer said, nodding to a rather slovenly planter who stood halfway round the circle, a cheroot dangling from his fat jowls.
To his left, Calvin heard a muffled sob. The boy’s mother perhaps. He turned. But the sob had come from a white woman—a girl actually. Tears stood in her huge violet eyes, and her pale hands twisted a handkerchief that she’d wrung almost to pieces.
The slave girl beside her, roughly the same age, looked too young to be the child’s mother, even though the planters bred slaves young. But from the granite set of her mouth, she was related to him and trying hard not to break down.
The boy ventured a quick look at the bidder, then looked away even quicker, fear in his dark eyes. The fat man was evidently well-known—and not for a kind heart. The little fellow’s bare knees were beginning to quiver.
“Do I hear three hundred?” the auctioneer asked.
Calvin felt the bile rising in his throat. His boyhood hadn’t been easy, but the worst of Chicago’s slums had been better than this! At least there everyone was considered human. No one ever assumed another was a thing—to be bought and sold, like a pig or a cow.
“Going, going—”
“Three hundred,” Calvin heard himself say. What was he doing? Had he lost his mind? Three hundred was almost all he’d saved in his years as a Pinkerton operative. And it was just about all he had with him for expenses.
Besides, he didn’t need a slave. He didn’t want a slave. The whole idea of owning another human being was abhorrent to him. He squared his shoulders. Well, God had obviously put the words in his mouth. So it seemed he was under orders not to let that fat brute carry off the child. He’d just have to wire Chicago for more funds. It was common knowledge at home that the chief was against slavery. Surely he’d understand this.
The fat planter gave Calvin an appraising glance, his beady eyes squinting in unuttered menace. But Calvin met his gaze serenely. It took more than a hard stare to cow a Pinkerton man. The planter looked away first, then he shuffled forward and prodded the boy in the ribs. The boy took it, staring stolidly into the distance. Finally the planter shook his head and muttered, “Nope. Not worth it.”
The room grew quiet. Calvin held his breath and breathed a silent prayer. Please, Lord, if You want me to take this boy away from here, don’t let anyone else bid on him.
Finally the auctioneer said, “Sold.” Calvin released his breath slowly and tried to look as if he bought slaves every day. Then, still wondering how he’d gotten himself into this predicament, he went forward to pay out the money and receive the papers that said he now owned one small black boy who looked at him from fearful eyes.
Calvin lifted him down, nothing but skin and bones really, and led him away from the block and its terrors. Near the wall Calvin hunkered down, bringing his eyes level with the boy’s. “What’s your name, boy?”
The boy’s eyes were big. “Willie, Massa.”
“Well, Willie, you won’t be picking any cotton.”
Willie nodded, his somber face indicating he expected a fate even worse than picking cotton. “What I gonna do then, Massa?”
That was the question. What could the boy do?
“You’ll just travel around with me, I guess. Run errands, maybe. That kind of thing.” He put a hand on the boy’s slight shoulder. “Maybe keep me company. You think you can do that?”
Willie’s smile was blinding. “Yes, Massa. I do that good! I be the bestest boy you ever had.”
“Good.” Calvin straightened. Now he had to get out of this place, had to be about the work the chief had sent him here to do. He’d traced the counterfeiter Josiah Cooper as far as Richmond, and then he’d lost him. But he was a Pinkerton man and he would—
“Excuse me, sir.” The low melodious tones came from behind him, from a female throat.
He turned. The young woman who stood there was smiling now, not crying. A planter’s daughter, he guessed. Her fashionable bonnet and shawl showed she was well-off. And up close she was even more beautiful than he’d thought.
“Calvin,” he said, managing to make his unruly tongue work at last. “The name’s Calvin Sharp.” She was so beautiful, her eyes still lustrous with tears. Under the bonnet her dark hair framed a peaches-and-cream complexion. And the sprigged dimity gown shaped a figure just reaching womanhood.
The slave girl fell to her knees and took the boy in her arms.
“I done a’right, Minta?” he asked.
“You done real good, Willie, real good.”
“Thank you, sir,” the young white woman said, smiling up into Calvin’s face. “We were afraid, so afraid—”
She looked like such a delicate creature. How could she be part of this evil? “Did the boy belong to you?” he asked.
“To my father,” she said, anguish in her voice. “My father, Colonel Hawthorne. I tried. I begged him not to sell Willie.” She gestured toward the slave girl. “He’s Minta’s brother. All that’s left of her family.” She swallowed. “I begged. But Papa said sentiment has no place in running a business.”
A business! A business in human bodies. Calvin bit back the angry words that rose in his throat. There was no use in raging at the girl. She was obviously in distress. And what could a mere girl do anyway?
“Is your father here today?” he inquired, glancing around.
She shuddered delicately. “Oh, no. Papa leaves the selling to the overseer, Vickers. That’s him over there, in the vermilion waistcoat.”
Calvin looked. This Vickers was a disreputable specimen if he’d ever seen one—his coat, trousers, and boots spattered with mud, and his body, what could be seen of it, not much cleaner. The vermilion waistcoat was starting to fray, his wide-brimmed planter’s hat rested on greasy hanks of hair, and his eyes gleamed with the evil that Calvin had already met, the evil that knew no regard for human life.
The girl shuddered again. “Don’t let him catch you watching him. He might—he might tell Papa.”
Moved by her distress, Calvin turned back to her.
“The boy will be all right. I promise. If you’ll tell me your name and where to reach you, I’ll even let you know how he’s doing.”
“Jesus bless you, Massa,” the slave girl whispered, gratitude shining in her eyes.
“Yes, the Lord bless you,” the young woman said, her lips curving in a smile. “We’d like to hear about Willie. You may address a letter to me—Sarah Hawthorne—at Hawthorne Hill. Everyone knows it. It’s the biggest cotton plantation in Virginia.” She paused, and a faint pink crept up to her cheeks. “Well, perhaps you should direct your letter to my mama. I am not accustomed to getting letters, you see.”
“Of course.” She looked very young, hardly sixteen.
“And perhaps you should not mention Willie by name,” she went on, “especially if you take
“Yes, I do.”
“And you know that in some Northern states slavery is illegal?”
“I know,” he said. “But this boy is too young to be on his own. I’ll keep him with me ’til he gets older.”
What on earth was he doing, digging himself in deeper and deeper? He could have asked the chief where to send the boy, to people who’d care for him. Now he’d committed himself to taking care of him. And there would be no weaseling out of it either. When Calvin Sharp made a promise, he kept it. So, it looked as if he was in for the long haul.
But when he looked into the misty violet eyes of Sarah Hawthorne, he couldn’t even feel regret at his actions. Meeting her made up for everything. How had such a beautiful, compassionate creature grown up in this part of the country?
“I must go,” she said, casting an anxious glance in the direction of the overseer. “Mama will want to know what happened. She’s waiting at the Exchange Hotel. She was feeling poorly today and so didn’t come along. Thank you again, Mr. Sharp.”
He resisted the impulse to reach out and take her little hand in his, instead contenting himself with saying, “Miss Hawthorne?”
“Yes?”
“If I were to come by the plantation, to—ah—discuss matters of business, would your father take my arrival amiss?”
She sighed. “Not as long as you’re a firm supporter of slavery.” Her eyes said more than the words. “Papa doesn’t care for anyone trifling with our way of life. He fully supports the Fugitive Slave Law.”
“I understand,” he said.
She peered at him. “Tell me, Mr. Sharp, do you ever travel on the good ship Zion?”
Ship? Odd question. What had ships to do with this? He shrugged. “A ship called Zion? No, afraid not. Never heard of it. Why do you ask?”
A sigh escaped the slave girl, but she remained otherwise silent.
“Nothing,” Miss Hawthorne muttered, turning away.
A few paces away she paused and smiled back at the boy. “You’ll be a good boy for Mr. Sharp, Willie. I know it.”
“Yes’um, Miss Sarah. I do my bestest.”
Then she was gone. And Calvin grew aware of a faint scent of gardenia that hung in the stale air. But almost as soon as he recognized it, it was gone. And all he could smell was the stench of unwashed bodies mingled with the odor of fear.
He heard a little sigh from beside him and looked down, just in time to see the boy keel over. Muttering under his breath, Calvin picked up his slave and made his way out of the auction rooms. A barbarous ungodly place, the South. The sooner he was out of it, the better.
two
Back at the Exchange Hotel, Sarah slipped out of her bonnet and shawl and hurried to where Mama rested on the chaise. “It’s all right,” Sarah told her. “A Northerner bought him. Willie’s safe.”
Mama sighed in relief, the lines in her tired face smoothing out a little. “Thank the good Lord! Oh, how I’ve prayed.”
“I been praying, too,” Minta said. “Prayers don’t always help. But this time they did! Praise the Lord Jesus. Willie’s gonna be all right. I feel it in my bones.”
“The man,” Mama said anxiously, “the man who bought Willie. Did anyone know his name?”
Sarah hesitated. What she’d done seemed very unladylike now, though at the time it had seemed quite natural. “I spoke to him, Mama. He was a stranger.” She pitched her voice lower. “A Northerner. I–I thanked him.”
Mama frowned. “A stranger. You shouldn’t—”
“We were so afraid, Minta and I. Beau’s papa was bidding on Willie. And you know how he is.”
Mama sighed again. Everyone knew how hard Reginald Gordon was on his slaves.
“The man who bought Willie is named Calvin,” Sarah went on. “Calvin Sharp. H–he offered to write to you, to tell us how Willie was faring.” She reached out to touch Minta’s arm. Poor Minta had been so worried. And so had she. It was awful not being able to help someone you loved.
Mama glanced around the comfortable hotel sitting room, looking at the door as though someone could be hiding on the other side, listening to them. Sarah nodded to Minta, and she padded across the room and quietly opened the door to the hall. There was no one there. She stepped out and looked both ways. Then she came back in, nodded, and shut the door. Perhaps it was silly to take such precautions, but they had to be careful. Many lives depended on them.
Still, though the hall had been empty, Mama’s whisper could barely be heard. “Is he—? Did you ask—?”
Sarah shook her head. “I don’t think he’s knows much about the Underground, Mama. He didn’t seem to know the code about the good ship Zion.”
Mama sighed again.
“But he’s a good man,” Sarah went on. “He said, he asked, if he could stop by to visit. If Papa would mind.”
Mama’s eyes opened wide in alarm. “He mustn’t—”
“I warned him, Mama. I told him Papa is a big slavery man.”
Mama struggled upright. “If your father ever finds out, if he ever discovers that we’ve been helping runaways all these years, he’ll—” She fell back, unable to go on, her face even paler than usual.
“Don’t you worry none, Missus,” Minta said, her dark eyes full of compassion. “If Massa finds out what we done, Minta take the blame. Minta take it all.”
“But, Minta—” Sarah began.
Minta shrugged. “If he ever find out we helping runaways, he know I be in on it. He sell me South anyway. If he don’t kill me.” She shrugged. “No matter. Willie safe now.” She sighed. “If only I could get Hiram to follow the North Star to freedom. I worry so ’bout that man.”
“Hiram will be careful,” Sarah said, though she worried about him too. “He loves you. And you know he won’t leave you.”
That made Minta smile. “He don’t love me no more than I love him.” She turned to Mama. “I go get you your afternoon tea, Missus.” And she went down to the hotel kitchen.
“I’m going to rest ’til Minta gets back,” Mama said with a little smile, and closed her eyes.
“Good.” Sarah put a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll be in the bedroom. Maybe I’ll lie on the bed for a while.”
In the bedroom, she dropped her bonnet and shawl on the chair. Strange how she could remember Mr. Sharp so plainly. Calvin Sharp. She repeated his name softly to herself.
Mrs. Calvin Sharp. Goodness! Now she was being plain silly. Mr. Sharp probably had a wife. And even if he didn’t, she was promised to Beau, had been ever since they were babies. If only Beau’s father weren’t so hard on his slaves, harder even than Papa. And Beau was just as bad as his father. She’d heard him boast about having slaves beaten for the littlest infraction of the rules. Or sending them off to the slave breaker just because they didn’t obey fast enough.
She sighed. How could she stand before God and vow to love and honor a man like that? She could never promise to obey him. She had promised to obey God—God who loved Minta and Willie and Hiram as much as He loved Beau and Mr. Gordon. Though why God should love such cruel people as them was hard to understand. But the Bible said it was so.
God didn’t care about the color of a person’s skin or the evil a person had done but had sent His Son to save them all. “Neither bond nor free,” the Bible said. God made no distinctions about people.
Did Calvin Sharp believe that? He had seemed like a good man, a kind man. A man needn’t believe in God to find slavery disgraceful, though that was more often the case. She hoped Calvin Sharp believed. She hoped he knew the comfort of a heavenly Father.
She slid her slippers off and lay back on the bed, closing her eyes against the sunlight filtering in through the lacy curtains. She’d known even before he spoke that Mr. Sharp wasn’t a Southerner. Something about the way he stood there, an intensity to his movements, made him different from the men she knew. She could still see his face. The hardness to the jut of his jaw, the angular look to the planes of his handsome face. Well, not exactly handsome, but attractive anyway. Very attractive.
And when she’d peered up into his dark eyes—everything about him was dark in a way, his eyes, his hair, even his skin—she could see pain there. He had endured some terrible hardship, some hardship that had molded him into the formidable man he was. And yet he wasn’t all granite. He’d bought Willie, been kind to the child. Somehow he had come to understand that the evil of slavery must be battled.
