Sweeter than Birdsong (31 page)

“He claimed he came back to find his relations. But I’m sure he simply wanted to come back to a populous place where living as a drifter or criminal is easier.”

“I don’t think we should believe ill of the Hanbys unless there is some proof.”

“And I do not wish to,” Frederick said. “My father is going into Columbus tonight to interrogate this slave at the old armory before they take him back across the state line tomorrow. Father assures me he will do everything possible to bring the truth to light, and thus, we hope, clear the Hanbys of suspicion.”

Kate’s heart sank. It must be Frank. Nelly’s Frank. He had grown desperate from the waiting.

Mr. Jones was about to head for Columbus, and if the authorities transported Frank south, it might be impossible for the Hanbys to help him. Someone had to warn them immediately.

“Kate!”

She turned to see Cornelia riding through the brittle filigree of the bare birch branches.

“Mr. Jones, you found her,” Cornelia said. “Thank goodness.” She was pale in her black coat.

“I am perfectly safe,” Kate said.

“But we’ve lost our way,” Frederick added.

“Never mind that. I followed you in, and I can find our way out.” Cornelia’s gray horse neared and she cued it to halt. “The gentlemen are farther downstream trying to pick up the scent of a new fox, as the other one is gone.” She beckoned with a leather-gloved hand. “Come along! Is Garnet settled enough to ride?”

“Oh yes,” Kate said. “She ran off her oats and now she is much calmer.”

“You gave everyone a fright.” Cornelia urged her mount forward on the path.

“I apologize, but I’m really quite all right.” Kate legged Garnet into a brisk walk to catch up, and Frederick pulled Bayard into line at the rear. In a few minutes, they were out of the trees and in the open field next to the creek, as her friend had promised. A hundred yards away, men clustered together and shouted to one another through the frosty air. The hounds circled in wide arcs between the horses. One lifted its head to the sky and bayed, and they were off again. The men gathered their reins and galloped after them across the field toward the town.

Now was her chance. She must pretend to be carried away as before. Kate applied a strong leg aid and let out the reins. Garnet bolted after the men’s horses. But when the hunting party turned east, Kate guided Garnet on straight ahead, back toward Westerville and the Hanbys. The fence loomed ahead, and Cornelia called out in fear behind her, but Kate rose in the air with Garnet and cleared the high obstacle with a foot to spare. Some of the men had slowed and pointed toward her. Frederick broke free of the pack and followed as if to lend her aid, but Bayard refused to jump the tallest of the fence hedges, and when Frederick turned to ride through the gate, Kate left him far behind. Only open fields and high jumps lay between her and the Hanbys. Cold wind numbed her face, but she urged Garnet even faster. Frank was in prison. Without immediate aid, he would be doomed to return to his master and perhaps to his death, without his wife and child.

Let them all think the mare had run away again. As long as she had a chance to warn the Hanbys about Frank, let them all think what they liked. She might never be allowed to ride the hunt again—or even to ride at all, if her mother found out—but what was that when weighed in the balance with a man’s life?

The terrain passed in a blur, one fence after another, until she made it to Africa Road. She cantered down the road until it turned into Northwest Street. Garnet labored to continue—she was unaccustomed to so much running. Kate pulled her back to a trot. She could not break her horse’s health, not even for the Hanbys or Frank Foster. At a more controlled pace, they rounded the corner onto the college avenue.

As she approached the Hanbys’ home, two men came out the front door—Ben and his father. They turned toward State Street, but stopped in the road as Garnet trotted toward them. Kate reined her to a halt. She could barely speak from the exertion of the ride. Ben and his father looked worried. Ben approached and took Garnet’s reins to steady her.

“What is it, Miss Winter? Are you in distress?”

She shook her head, taking several deep breaths. At last she had enough air. “Frank is in prison in the Columbus armory. They are going to take him back to Kentucky.”

Ben shot an alarmed glance at his father, whose eyes had also widened.

“I’ll go tell your mother,” Mr. Hanby said to Ben. “We must leave straightaway. We can still catch the afternoon stagecoach, and it will be our swiftest choice.”

“Yes, sir.” As his father ran into the house, his black coat swirling behind him, Ben kept his hold on Garnet’s reins. “Miss Winter, we are in your debt. You are a brave young lady.”

“Mr. Hanby, I’ll always be grateful to your family. You don’t know what you’ve meant to me.” Oh, that might be read in several ways. She must clarify. “Because of your family’s faith, and your example. I’ve not had such an example in my life before.” She dropped her eyes to Garnet’s mane.

He reached up one gloved hand to touch hers, drawing her gaze back to him. She did not want to look away from his face, which was tender and full of respect.

But every moment she stayed here was further defiance of her mother. “I must go.”

He removed his hands from Garnet and the reins and stepped back. “Thank you. We’ll do our best for Frank. Pray for us tonight, if you will, Miss Winter.”

“I will.” It did not feel awkward anymore to speak to him of faith. But she must not forget her last warning for him. “You must know this—Mr. Jones is going to question Frank this evening.”

“Indeed?” Ben looked dismayed. “We will be cautious.”

She nodded and turned Garnet back toward Northwest Street.

Thirty-Two

B
Y THE TIME BEN STEPPED OUT OF THE STAGECOACH
at the station on High Street, it was dark. Ben and his father stood under a gas streetlamp. A hackney cab could take them across the bridge toward Scioto Street. It should not be difficult to find one. Ever since the railroad came through four years ago, Columbus had boomed, and the business and leisure pursuits of the city went on well after dusk. A number of men and errand boys walked down High Street with preoccupied expressions and rapid strides. A young boy hawked newspapers only yards from where they stood.

His father spoke in a low voice. “The armory was once the state prison. It doesn’t have as many guards as it did back then, but I expect there will still be at least two or three watching the armaments.”

“Two, I hope.”

“The number of guards won’t make much difference if we don’t have a strategy to get in. Unfortunately, I’ve never been inside the building, so we won’t know our situation until we arrive.”

“We’re not going to drive right up to the door, are we?”

“No. I want to investigate the building first before we decide what to do. So we’ll ask the hack to drop us off farther down Scioto, next to the warehouses there.”

“And here comes one now,” Ben said. But the cab that approached already carried other passengers, and it was another five minutes before they were aboard a hack and headed across the river.

The single horse pulled the cab at a moderate trot over the plank bridge at the end of Main Street. Like the rest of the streets, it had been cleared of the worst of the snow. The cabbie was a grizzled older man who sported a battered, wide-brimmed hat. “I just took another man across not even an hour ago,” he said. “Partner of yours, maybe?”

Ben’s father remained silent.

“No,” Ben said. “We’re a father-son partnership only.”

Bad news for them, if that had been Jones ahead of them. Ben took a deep breath.

“Eh, that’s right—the other one was headed for the armory, but you’re going to the warehouses. A great thing, family business.”

“Wasn’t the armory once the state prison?” Ben’s father asked.

“Yep. It still looks like a prison, but it’s full of muskets and munitions, as far as I know. They kept a few cells, though, usually for prisoners being taken through town to somewhere else.”

“I see.” Ben’s father sat back as if he had no worries in the world.

The gray waters moved only a few feet beneath them. Moonlight shone on ice floes and snowdrifts bordering the river. The driver continued to chatter, but Ben’s thoughts wandered to Kate. If he ended up in jail, he wouldn’t be in any position to win her heart. But Frank needed their help. Ben wouldn’t allow any more deaths if he could help it.

The familiar memory returned—back in the Rushville house, so many years ago. Sorrow filled Joseph’s eyes as death forced him to abandon Nelly, who would remain enslaved. Ben blinked to dispel the image. No more slavery-spawned partings. The partings ordained by God were trial enough for humankind.

If Ben lost everything, even his freedom, he would still be able to see his family, for no one would bar family visits to a jail. That was more than many slaves would ever have. And if no one made sacrifices, their suffering would never end. He held to the thought to settle his racing heart.

They pulled up to a gargantuan building that loomed in silhouette against the pale Scioto River.

“This the place?” the driver asked.

“Yes, thank you.” His father jumped out with the agility of a much younger man and Ben followed. His father paid the fare and the hack drove away, back toward the bridge.

Ben stopped to wait for his father. “Which way?” Ben asked as the hoofbeats faded in the distance.

“We’ll go around behind the warehouses,” his father said. “From there, we can see the back of the armory.”

They walked with caution around the perimeter of the building. From the deepest shadow, Ben peered down the row.

“There’s no one around,” he whispered to his father.

“Just be cautious.”

They slipped from one building to the next, picking through the snow to avoid drifts and holes, until they reached the fourth warehouse. The windowless, two-story brick of the armory squatted thirty feet ahead. Only one small door relieved the featureless wall.

“Stay here,” his father murmured.

Ben turned his head to protest, but his father’s black-clad figure was already halfway across the open space, stark against the snow. In another moment, he was swallowed by the gloom cast by the armory. Ben listened hard but there was no sound— surely a good sign. Three or four minutes passed, then his father slipped back across the yard.

He spoke close to Ben’s ear. “God is providing. There’s one sentry. I almost stumbled into his view. He has wandered away from the door to smoke a pipe and left the door open. I’m sure he would be discharged for smoking in the armory, with the munitions in there.”

“Could you see inside?”

“No. But we’ll have to creep in unnoticed and take our chances.”

“I have another idea,” Ben said. “Is your pipe in your pocket?”

His father nodded.

“Why don’t you stroll by and smoke your pipe with that sentry, while I try to get in the door?”

He frowned.

“Come, Father, you know it’s the best way. We need a distraction, and I can’t be the one to smoke with him—I’ll cough and look ridiculous.”

“There could be other sentries inside.”

“I know, but we must take that risk.”

“You mustn’t be caught. You’ll be arrested just for trespassing on state property.”

“Understood,” Ben said. He hurried across the snowy ground to the back of the armory, the slight crunch of his father’s footsteps following. When they reached the relative safety of the wall, his father signaled that they should go in opposite directions around the building. Ben crept around to the front, hugging the rough brick wall. He must not make the slightest mistake. They could not afford it.

Ben crouched at the corner and peered around it. The lantern beside the front door cast a pool of light across the snow. The sentry lounged against the building, pipe clenched between his teeth. He struck a match, lit the bowl, and exhaled a cloud of gray into the frozen air.

“Halloo, my man!” came his father’s cheery greeting.

“Who’s there?” The sentry stood up and stared into the night.

“I’m on business from Westerville,” his father replied, and then moved into the light. “There’s not a match to be had in the warehouse here, and I’m in need of a bowl of tobacco myself. I see you might have a light?”

“I sure do.” The sentry turned toward Ben’s father and rummaged in his coat with one hand.

“Let me hold that for you,” his father said, and took the man’s pipe.

Now.

Ben stole toward the door behind the sentry’s back. He heard his father comment on the fineness of the man’s pipe, and then Ben was inside the building, in a long, narrow hallway. A candle lantern glowed ten feet ahead in a niche in the wall.

Two corridors crossed the hall up ahead. Every sense heightened, Ben inched up to the first crossing. No sign of anyone yet. Should he turn here or continue on? A few barred cells lined the side passage, and another candle lantern glowed down at the end of the hall, but still no sign of life. Behind the bars of the cells lay dim piles of objects—guns, perhaps.

Lord, guide my steps
. He crossed the corridor and moved down the main hall to the next intersection.

Another lantern glimmered in a wall niche down the left-hand corridor. A rustle and a groan rose from the cells there. Stealing past several empty, barred rooms, Ben found the source of the noise. A brown-skinned man sprawled on a straw pallet in the far corner of a cell. His arm covered his face, and black bruises circled his forearm.

He had no doubt of the captive’s identity. “Frank,” he whispered.

Frank lowered his arm and looked at Ben. His eyes widened. Ben held his finger to his lips. Frank nodded, then got to his feet slowly, as if he had the weight and pain of the world on his shoulders. He made a motion as if turning a key with his hand, looking at Ben with a question in his raised eyebrows. Ben shook his head.

Frank approached the bars and motioned for Ben to come close until he was only an inch away through the iron bars. “There’s a man here,” he said, barely audible. “Not the guard, another. Look out for him. They keep the keys down there.” He pointed to the opposite end of the corridor.