Blessing (16 page)

He shoved his pistol into the holster concealed beneath his arm, aware of the black men guarding the gates and the back door. It was just as well they had stayed in the background as reserve troops. The thugs would back down when faced by a white man, but not by a black man. They would have rushed him regardless of the pistol.

Before he knew it, Blessing had run forward. “Is thee all right?”

“I’m fine,” he murmured.

“Thee is not completely unscathed. Come inside.” She took his hand, leading him. He didn’t pull away, all his senses dazed by the recent events. And suddenly he registered stinging in various parts of his body.

Inside the kitchen, the brighter lamplight made him blink as his eyes adjusted. Every window shade was drawn. Black men ringed the room, and a few women hovered near the table, including Deborah Coxswain, who sat with the infant who’d been rescued. Blessing nudged him into a chair. Tippy
was bending over Stoddard’s head, dabbing what smelled like alcohol onto his face.

The black woman he’d carried here sat slumped in her chair. Her two children huddled on her lap. Another woman was comforting her and trying to get her to rise.

Gerard stood. “She’s in shock. Is there a bed for her? I’ll carry her.”

“I can do that.” A young black man approached. He’d been watching around the edge of the window shade. He nudged the toddlers toward one of the young women and carried the wet nurse out of the kitchen.

“Joanna, I’ll come up soon,” Blessing called after the younger woman. “Get Theodosia out of that burned clothing and wrap her in blankets.”

Gerard let the widow push him back into his chair.

“I am going to wash the soot from thy face and then anoint thy wounds.”

“Wounds?”

“From burning debris in the air. Thee suffered small burns and cuts all over thy face, hands, and neck.”

“So did you,” he said, touching her face. Her bonnet had slipped down and her bun had lost pins and sagged over her left ear. Black soot smudged her complexion. He stroked her cheek without thinking of propriety, trying to reconcile its softness with her staunch bravery. He was still in disbelief that she’d tried to run into a burning building. She was mad; she was fearless.

“My bonnet protected me. But thee lost thy hat, and—” she felt the back of his head—“thee must have been hit with a sizable stone.”

He winced at her touch. “How has this all happened? Out of nowhere.”

“Not out of nowhere,” Mrs. Coxswain said. She gently rocked the baby. “Cincinnati is a main conduit for the Underground Railroad, and that angers slaveholding Kentucky, right across the river. Businessmen here are concerned about their profits.”

“And the prejudice against free blacks is always there, just under the surface,” Tippy added. “Some whites resent that, in spite of all the prejudice against them, their industry and skill succeed. They don’t keep to their
place
, you see.”

Gerard tried to take it all in, but the gentle yet confident touch of Blessing’s hand as she treated his cuts claimed all his attention. Finally he caught her wrist. The widow was caring for his hurts when she needed tending as well. “Miss Foster, Mrs. Brightman requires your attention.”

“Oh!” Tippy turned away from Stoddard and their murmured conversation. The young socialite shoved Blessing into a chair and accepted a fresh basin of water.

A black woman he assumed was the cook set cups of coffee and plates of sliced bread with butter and honey in front of Gerard and Stoddard. “Eat,” she ordered.

He didn’t argue. The coffee was strong, and the bread and butter did much to restore his strength. While he ate, he watched Tippy tend the widow’s cuts and small burns. Blessing had closed her eyes and tilted her face upward. Her expression spoke of weariness and distress. He’d never met anyone like her in his life. She needed someone to protect her from herself.

He thought of the play and his motive behind inviting this woman to it. His machinations all seemed so ludicrous
in light of subsequent events. This night had shaken him. Its images and sounds still blazed in his mind.

Gerard woke suddenly, a crick in his neck. He found himself lying on a sofa in a strange parlor, his head propped on the stiff arm. Gray dawn was lighting the windows and the house was silent. He tried to sit up but found a small child sprawled half on his chest. Like a cold rushing river, the events of last night washed over him.

Had he really run into a burning building? Caught a woman and children dropped from a window, lost his hat, and faced down a mob with his Colt? This couldn’t be real.

“His name is Scotty,” Blessing’s voice murmured through the dimness. “He was frightened and discovered thee here.”

His mind scrambled before he could ask, “He’s one of your orphans?”

“Yes.”

Gerard carefully lifted the child, who must have been younger than school age, and sat up, extending his legs the length of the sofa. That the sofa was not as long as he was tall accounted for the crick in his neck, and in his current position he had nowhere to lay the child. He settled the boy on his lap, wondering why the child still didn’t stir.

Gerard could hear the soft sounds of others sleeping in the room, people whose presence he hadn’t fully registered until now. The dawn grew gradually brighter. He glanced down to see, dimly, the shapes of his cousin and Tippy sleeping side by side on the parlor carpet. As their chaperone, Deborah Coxswain was snoozing in a rocker across the room,
her white hair stark in the low light. Tippy and his cousin lying so close, so intimate, did not upset him as much as he would have expected under normal circumstances. They looked right together.

He noticed that the widow, seated in a nearby armchair, was gazing at him. “I’ve decided thy cousin will not be a dreadful husband for Tippy.”

He was startled by her touching on the same topic he had been thinking of. He didn’t know what to say.

Blessing’s face was still hidden in the shadows. She also had a child resting on her lap. “Who’s that?” he asked, switching subjects. He gestured toward her child.

“This is Daniel Lucas, the boy I rescued the first time I ran into thee at the wharf. I have decided to adopt him.”

Gerard didn’t know how to respond to this. The child in his arms let out something like a whimper, and Gerard pulled him closer, reassuring him.

“What kind of man is thee, Gerard Ramsay?”

Blessing’s question startled him. He stared across at her but avoided answering. “You are in a strange mood, ma’am.”

“What kind of man is thee, Gerard Ramsay?”

Her repetition of the question irritated him. “What do you mean by that?”

“We are here alone in the gray dawn. Be honest. Why did thee invite me to the play, knowing that I couldn’t go?”

“Why couldn’t you go?” he said, not liking his own feigned ignorance or the defensiveness in his tone.

“My late husband was not a Friend. I was put out of the meeting when I married him. I won’t do anything that will cause me to risk shunning again.”

“The Quaker elders didn’t like you marrying a brewer?” he asked with a sneer in his tone.

“Thee will not evade me. What kind of man is thee? Why did thee come to my rescue last night? Why did thee face a mob bent on destroying this orphanage and driving out those who’d come here for refuge?”

“I’m not a saint,” he snapped, “just because I will not allow a woman and her children to be burned alive or allow a mob to attack helpless orphans. It merely means I was raised to be a gentleman. That’s all.”

“I think thee could be much more—”

“Don’t try to reform me,
Friend
. I’ve always found that the prim and proper have a dark sin they’re trying to make up for. What’s your sin, Blessing Brightman? What have you done that you have to hide?”

A ray of true dawn light flared in over the curtains, casting itself full onto Blessing’s face. Her expression grabbed him. She looked as if he’d jabbed her with a sizzling, white-hot poker. Gerard inhaled sharply. He’d hit the mark, all right. And found himself as astonished as she. What was the widow’s secret sin?

OCTOBER 2–4, 1848

Two days later, with all honest citizens hunkered down in their homes or their closed businesses, in fear for their lives, the mayor finally seemed to realize that he’d lost control of the mobs and that a city in lawless chaos was far worse for business than the presence of free black people.

The police issued a call for volunteers to help them regain
order. Deputized citizens formed patrols and arrested any man who was causing trouble on the streets. The city jail and courts were jammed, but peace was eventually restored.

On the morning of the fourth day, Blessing stood on the orphanage’s covered back porch and rested her forehead against a post. She felt as if she’d been through a war. Now she must face the aftermath and whatever changes it brought. She tried not to dwell on Ramsay’s question about her secret sin—a sharp blade in her side.

Brother Ezekiel, his family, and some members of his flock who’d weathered the riots at the orphanage approached her. “We want to thank you again for sheltering us.”

“I wish I could do more,” she said simply. “If any of thee needs a roof, come back. If we run out of room in the orphanage, there is always the loft above the carriage house.”

“We will keep that in mind.”

“I’m takin’ my family out of Cincinnati as soon as I can pack,” one man said. “We’re goin’ to Canada. We’re not safe here.”

Blessing couldn’t blame them—but how would the Underground Railroad function effectively without free blacks in the city to run the stations? She didn’t voice this. It was unnecessary.

The group left, walking close together, the women and children in the middle. The men all carried clubs or sticks.

Blessing left her place against the railing and sat on the top step. She hoped she never had to face anything like this again. But only God knew what lay ahead.

In spite of her efforts, Ramsay’s question continued to haunt her every waking thought.
“What’s your sin, Blessing Brightman?”
In her mind, Richard’s face stretched in shock, and she heard her own scream. She shut her eyes, forcing away the memory. Blessing knew that God could forgive her, had forgiven her long ago. But forgiving herself loomed as an impossible task.

She blinked back tears. Life would continue to go on, often lonely and exhausting on some deep level. She couldn’t deal with the past right now. She had children depending on her, and she must press on regardless of past mistakes, past sins.

Gerard was loath to visit the docks tonight, but he’d received a summons from Mr. Smith and, though affronted, knew he must go.

As he opened Mrs. Mather’s door, Stoddard hailed him from the parlor. “Where are you off to?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Stoddard approached and stared at him. “The papers say men should still travel in pairs. People died in the riots, Cousin.”

“I have my Colt.”

“Who has your back?”

Gerard merely waved and marched off. He tried to put away reflections on what had happened during the riots. Yet the past few days had cast his mind into a darkness that wouldn’t lift. Tonight he found himself alert to danger on the one hand, yet most of his mind was occupied with remembrances—flames leaping against the night sky, people running through the streets, a mob threatening an orphanage.