Clockwork Souls (2 page)

“Friend, this is a rough night to venture abroad. What
calamity draws thee from thy bed?”

The figure moved closer, and Thomas discerned a smooth oval
face, neither young nor old, and as empty of expression as any he had ever
seen. Dark hair hung limp and drenched, and the suit of cheap coarse-woven
cloth suggested some time on the road, yet the man showed no discomfort. Rain
dripped off the end of his nose.

“I have come for the slave.”

“I fear thee will have found thy death if thee remains
standing out in the rain.” Thomas stepped back in invitation to enter.

The slave-catcher remained where he was.

“Thomas, what is it?” Hannah’s voice drifted from the
interior of the house.

“A poor benighted soul, caught out-of-doors in this rain.”

“Bring him in, then, and warm him by the fire! I will be
with thee shortly.”

“Get inside, friend,” Thomas urged the stranger. “Thee is in
no condition to conduct business of any sort. Once thee is warm and dry, with a
cup of my wife’s chamomile infusion inside thee, then we can discuss the
matter.”

“I have come for the slave.”

Thomas studied the stranger, debating in his own mind
whether the man might be simple or merely so exhausted as to have no thought
beyond his quest. “I am sorry, friend, but the rain makes such a clamor, and my
ears do not work as they once did. I am having difficulty understanding thee.
Will thee not come in?”

By slow degrees, Thomas convinced the slave-catcher that no
business would be conducted until he entered and allowed himself to be dried
and seated before the fire. By this time, Hannah had come down, properly
dressed. The slave-catcher refused her offers of chamomile infusion or coffee.
Thomas counted the minutes in his mind, the miles along the road to Wilmington,
and when William and Nat would be safe with Thomas Garrett.

When the slave-catcher pressed his cause, Thomas inquired
mildly whether he had a warrant, “For if thee will not take the word of an honest
man that there are no slaves in this house, thee must proceed in a lawful
manner.” The man produced a document, surprisingly undamaged by the rain, and
Thomas proceeded to study it at great length. By this time on previous
occasions, the slave-catchers had grown impatient and restless. This one waited
with admirable stillness. When Thomas glanced up from his reading, the
slave-catcher rose.

“I will search the premises now.”

“Indeed, it appears you have the right to do so,” Thomas
agreed. “But this warrant is made out only as ‘Agent of Robert A. Cochoran.’
Has thee a name?”

“A name?” The slave-catcher paused, his face as
expressionless as always. “It is of no importance.”

“It is of very great importance,” Thomas said gently.
As every slave knows.

“Then call me whatever name you choose, but let me get on
with my work. We have spoken too long.”

The slave-catcher made to push past Thomas, but Thomas stood
firm, studying the other man’s face and finding nothing of any personal or
particular nature, no clue as to temperament or history, joy or sorrow or hope.

He is like Adam,
unmarked as yet by life’s travails, but an Adam corrupted and turned into an
instrument of evil by the vile practice of slavery.

They went upstairs together. Thomas took the lead, opening
each door to show the emptiness of the chamber beyond. In this manner, they
proceeded through the house. When Adam, as Thomas now thought of him, announced
his intention to search the barn next, Hannah gave Thomas a warning look.

“I am an old man, as thee sees,” Thomas explained, “and this
night is too chill and damp for me. Will thee stay the night with us and
continue the search tomorrow?”

“I have come for the slave. I will search the barn now.”

“Thee will not find him there.” Thomas accompanied Adam to
the door and handed him a lantern. “Mind thee not disturb the gray mare’s rest.”

Without a reply, Adam walked into the rain. Hannah, drawing
her knitted shawl more tightly around her shoulders, came to stand beside
Thomas. They watched the upright figure cross the muddy ground between house
and barn. The lantern cast a wavering light through the drizzle.

“Such a strange man,” Hannah murmured. “Does he not arouse
thy pity?”

“He does indeed. I fear he is as much a slave as Nat. Unlike
Nat, however, he cannot escape to freedom.”

The barn door opened and the slave-catcher passed within.

“Thomas, I think we must try again to have him stay the
night with us. No man should be abroad in such—”

A horse’s furious squeal issued from the barn, followed by the
sound of thumping so loud it could be heard clearly above the rain. The mare
must be kicking her stall to splinters.

Not pausing even to put on his coat, Thomas sprinted across
the yard, Hannah following but a pace behind. They reached the barn just as the
mare let out another squeal. The door to the stall was ajar and yellow light,
too bright to come from the lantern alone, filled the space. The mare reared,
hooves flailing the air.

Thomas reached the stall. The mare backed up, her rump
pressed against the far corner. Her ears were pinned flat against her neck and
white rimmed her eyes.

Adam lay facedown and unmoving in the center of the stall.

The lantern had toppled on its side. Already, flames were
spreading through the straw. Thomas seized the mare’s water bucket, which hung
just inside the stall door, and dumped it over the burning straw. Steam and
smoke billowed up, leaving a carpeting of sullen orange flames. He moved into
them, stamping and scattering cinders. Hannah thrust her shawl into his hands.
A moment later, the last of the fire was extinguished. Coughing from the smoke,
he straightened up. The barn lay in near darkness. Hannah knelt beside Adam and
turned him on his back.

“Thomas. . . .”

He looked over her shoulder. Adam’s still form was barely
discernible, a shadow among shadows.

“Thomas, he’s not breathing.”

“We must get him into the house.”

Adam was surprisingly heavy. Between the two of them, Thomas
and Hannah were able to load him onto a handcart and wheel him to the house.
They laid him out on the kitchen table. In the lamplight, they saw that one
side of the slave-catcher’s skull had been laid bare, most likely by the mare’s
hooves. There was no blood, only a slight amount of oily fluid. Instead of pale
bone, the gaping wound revealed metal couplings and gears of surpassing
delicacy, and bits of glass, some of which shone like embers, blinking on and
off. Similar structures were visible in a second gash along one forearm, as if
Adam had tried to protect himself when the mare whirled and kicked. A faint,
irregular clicking sound, and a hiss like escaping steam, arose from the body.

“What can this be?” Hannah murmured. “A man of gears and
lights?”

Thomas had read of such things in newspapers sent by
Philadelphia Friends. The specimens had been imported from Switzerland as
playthings for the wealthy. Perhaps Yankee industry was now producing domestic
models. Automata, they were called. He had not realized they would be so human
in appearance.

Hannah looked up at Thomas, and never before had he seen
such confusion in her eyes. “Is he—a mechanical person? Or a machine, crafted
in the appearance of a man but with no more of the Inward Light than a pocket
watch?”

After a moment’s reflection, Thomas said, “I do not know
what he may be, nor do I think he himself can tell us, damaged as he is.”

She made a helpless gesture. “This work is beyond thy skill
or mine to repair.”

“But not, perhaps, that of Samuel Pusey.”

“Yes, a watchmaker might have the knowledge.” She lowered
herself to one of the straight-backed kitchen chairs. “I do not know whether to
bandage him or not. A poultice might make the damage worse.”

If this had been a human man, a flesh and blood man, she
would have washed him and dressed his wound, found clean clothing for him, and
tucked him into the bed that Nat had so recently vacated. But she did not know
what to make of this . . .
automaton
,
this clockwork man. And, Thomas admitted to himself, neither did he.

Samuel Pusey straightened up, replaced the slender
riveting hammer beside his other tools, and removed his watchmaker’s loupe. He
had worked through most of the day, carefully removing tiny, intricate pieces
of metal, sometimes straightening them, other times fashioning new ones. Adam’s
eyes had remained open through the entire process, his body likewise unmoving.

“The mechanism is most marvelously wrought,” Samuel said. “In
all my years, I have never encountered its like. My cousin, John Pusey of
Doylestown, wrote that he’d seen one some years ago, but he did not have the
opportunity to examine it.”

“The automata must have become more common since then for
one to be found so far from a city,” Thomas commented. “It appears they now
have employment beyond being mere curiosities.”

Samuel nodded, his expression troubled. “I have repaired the
damaged parts as best I could, but I cannot say whether it will function as it
did before.”

Thomas bent over Adam, still stretched out on the table. “He
does not appear to be functioning at all.”

“There is one more connection to be completed. Thomas, is
thee certain this is the right thing, to risk the reanimation of a
slave-catching device?”

“I do not know that Adam is a
device
, Friend Samuel. Were he flesh and bone, neither thee nor I
would ask such a thing. Are we not, as our Friends in Farmingham remind us,
under solemn obligation to use all in our power to ameliorate the condition of
our fellow men, of every color and every condition in life?”

“That has never been in question,” Hannah said quietly from
where she sat sewing by the window. She was making a shirt, although Thomas had
not inquired whether it was for the next runaway slave to pass through their
farm, or for Adam. She did not add what they were all thinking, which was how
to respond to a being that looked like a man and spoke like one, but was in
fact not a man.

They sat in silence for a time, each seeking counsel from
the Light within. Thomas found no answer to his own uncertainty, and no less
certainty regarding how to proceed. Samuel Pusey roused, and, without speaking,
bent again over the slave-catcher’s head. Adam’s eyes remained open. No hint of
expression altered the undamaged areas of his face. Thomas heard a faint
wheeze, like softly escaping steam. The slave-catcher’s eyes blinked, irises
dilating and constricting rapidly.

“Do not be afraid,” Thomas said. “Thee is among friends.”

“I remember you.” Adam’s voice sounded rusty. “Are you my
master?”

“There are no masters here, nor slaves,” Thomas said, “for
we are all equal in the eyes of God.”

“All
men
,” Samuel
amended.

Adam sat up. “Am I a man?”

Thomas exchanged glances with Hannah, and saw that they were
of like mind.
I do not know.

“If I am not a man,” Adam said, but slowly, as if the
process of reasoning were foreign, “then why have you repaired me? And if I am,
if I am a . . . slave-catcher—yes, that is why I came among you
and why we ought to be enemies—then the
question is the same. Why did you help me?”

“Must there be a reason?” Thomas said. “Does kindness
require any cause beyond that of God which exists in all of us?”

“How do you know I will not continue as I have done,
following the slave who sheltered among you?”

“No fugitive has ever come to harm in our care.” Thomas laid
his hand on the automaton’s shoulder. “Even thee.”

“I don’t understand.”

Hannah finished sewing a button and snipped the thread with
the little pair of scissors she kept in her apron pocket. “Then bide with us
and see if understanding does not naturally arise from thy own experience.”