Sweeter than Birdsong (33 page)

Leah did not contain herself. “Our grandmother?” She reached up to twist a dark curl with a hesitant finger.

“Who else?” their mother asked curtly.

She stood, the letter in her hand. As she turned to leave, the silver tray carrying the teapot and sugar caught on the edge of her skirt and tumbled to the floor, spilling hot liquid and white powder across the dark floor. Kate regarded Leah with total shock, and saw the same expression staring back at her from her sister’s face. Ruth Winter had never spilled anything in her daughters’ presence. Never. And certainly not at tea.

But their mother was already halfway up the stairs, her neck as stiff as a soldier’s, not a hair out of place in her elaborate upswept coiffure. Her purple skirt trailed behind her. “Have Tessie clean that up,” she said to the girls without looking back, and then she was off down the hall and out of sight.

Leah sat silent, her eyes wide. “Will you pass me a ladyfinger?” she finally said, pointing to the plateful on Kate’s side of the table.

Disregarding manners, Kate picked one directly off the tray and handed it over. Leah gave her a tiny smirk, then shoved it in her mouth. For five minutes, they ate with an occasional furtively whispered question or speculation. Kate kept glancing at the stairs, afraid her mother would return and hear them. But she did not reappear.

The letter from Philadelphia did not leave her thoughts for the rest of the day. By late afternoon, it had given her an idea. If she could do nothing else in her silent uproar over the lack of word from Ben, she might at least write to him. She sat at her desk, pen in hand. Cornelia was gone to Worthington for another concert and would not return until tomorrow. Kate’s only choice was to take a letter for Ben to Cornelia’s house and leave it there for her friend’s return.

She wrote a few short lines, asking Ben to assure her that all was well and give any tidings of “the man of our acquaintance.” She folded up the note into a small rectangle, wrote “Benjamin Hanby” on the outside, and sealed it. While waiting for the wax to cool, she wrote another brief note to Cornelia. She folded the letter to Ben inside the other letter, wrote “Cornelia Lawrence” on the outside of the thick little packet, and held it in her hand for a moment.

She was being too impetuous. She did not need to take it this evening, for it could wait for Cornelia’s return. She would put it with the rest of her letters from Ben.

She pushed back her chair and stood, chilled by the draft through her day gown and shawl. A fire smoldered in the bedroom hearth, but it needed more wood. She would get some in a moment. She didn’t like to call Tessie for every little thing.

The house was silent. She crossed to her bed and knelt beside it. Inserting her hand between the mattress and its rope support, she felt the lump of papers and pulled it out.

A scrape came from the door behind her. She jumped up and whirled around, hiding her papers in one hand behind her skirt.

Her mother stood at the door with a suspicious look on her face.

“What are you doing, Kate?” She sounded like a Grand Inquisitor, and even looked a little Spanish in her dark red gown, with the comb in her hair.

“Just preparing something for Leah’s birthday.” Kate could not look her mother in the eye. She was not accustomed to telling untruths. It made her squirm, but if she did not, she would fail to protect Ben, not just herself. Still, a lie was a lie.

Her mother paced toward her with measured steps. “I hope that all continues to be well between you and Frederick Jones,” she said with superficial concern, and sat on the bed next to Kate.

“Yes, Mother.” Kate turned her head away. She must hope the letters were completely concealed under her dressing gown.

“I suggest you sort out your feelings promptly,” her mother said. “You don’t have any better suitor, and you won’t have any means to live if you don’t marry well. You can’t expect me to support you if you are so irresponsible as to refuse to marry an eligible and upstanding young man.”

Kate stared at the bedpost. The mattress shifted as her mother stood and walked around to place herself in Kate’s line of sight. Her pencil-thin, arched eyebrows creased into a line. “Do you hear what I say, Kate?”

“Yes, Mother,” Kate said again. Her mother began to turn away, then stopped, her glance moving to the bed and Kate’s gown.

Before Kate could move, her mother leaned over and seized a piece of paper that protruded from under Kate’s skirt.

“So this is what you are preparing for Leah?” she asked as she scanned the lines. Her face slowly went blank, then filled with fury.

She continued to read in silence for a few moments. “Stand up,” she gritted.

Kate could not stand, or her mother would see the rest of the letters beneath her skirt. When she did not move, Ruth grabbed her arm and hauled her up from the bed as she snatched up the letters in a clenched fist. “These are all from Ben Hanby? And all equally—passionate?”

Kate stood paralyzed.

“This is how you repay all I’ve done for you, all I’ve given you?” Her mother’s voice rose. “You throw yourself away on some pious musical dreamer who will set you up in a wooden shack and hum tunes while you starve?”

“I have not made any promises to anyone.” Kate’s voice shook.

“I should hope not. I had forbidden you even to speak to him.”

“And I didn’t. Only once, by accident.”

“So you can look me in the face and tell me you have not violated my instruction?” Ruth asked.

Kate avoided her eyes. Her mother gathered the papers together, strode to the fireplace, and tossed them in.

Kate watched Ben’s words shriveling and burning, thin lines of orange crawling across them and blackening into nothingness. Those might be the last words she ever had from him. She hoped her mother could not see her distress. Heat rushed to her face.

“I hope you are blushing for your own sins, and for the wrong you have done to a good man who is courting you,” her mother said.

“I have not deceived Frederick. He has not even proposed to me.”

“If he does propose, he is a better man than you deserve. If he knew about this—correspondence—he would leave such a deceitful young woman to boil in her own dishonesty.”

It wasn’t true. Kate did not think she was deceitful. And yet she had accepted the letters when she knew she should not.

“Let me be very plain, so that you will have no further opportunity for manipulation of my words,” her mother said. “You are to have no further contact of any sort with Ben Hanby, nor with anyone in his family. If you receive a letter from him, you are to deliver it to me immediately. Do I make myself clear?”

Kate nodded.

“Answer me!” her mother snapped.

“Yes, Mother,” she said faintly.

“I will tell Frederick you are indisposed this afternoon, as you are clearly in no condition to go out.” Her mother glided out into the hallway. She pulled the door closed behind her with a thud. That wooden sound echoed in Kate’s head until it sounded more like a heavy iron door clanging shut.

Thirty-Four

I
MPATIENCE JABBED AT
B
EN, DEPRIVING HIM OF
appetite even though the smell of his mother’s cherry pie rising from the plate should have made him ravenous. All he could think about was getting word to Kate about Frank. She must be so worried—they had arrived only an hour ago on the stage. He needed to get away from the dinner table and speak to Cornelia.

But first, he did want to hear what John Parker had to say.

John had come to town on his way north, so of course Ben’s mother had asked him to stay for dinner. Over potatoes and ham, he talked with Ben’s father about abolitionist orators. The subject was not one to fascinate Lizzie and Willie, but John was such an imposing figure that even the littlest Hanbys stayed quiet for a while when he was around, content to watch him and listen to his rich, low voice. He sat at the head of the table in a chair, as it was completely out of the question for his long limbs to fit on one of the benches. Ben’s father sat to his right, and his mother on his left. Ben sat at the foot of the table. His attention to the conversation was impeded by little voices piping at him. Lizzie and Willie could only restrain themselves for so long.

Twilight was falling. Ben’s mother rose and lit two lamps to brighten the kitchen. Now Amanda cut the cherry pie made from the winter preserves in the cellar, and Jenny handed plates around the table. The tart but sweet dessert kept Lizzie and Willie busy a few minutes longer, though they squirmed on the bench as they ate. Anna had already taken Samuel to play upstairs. No toddler could be still for half an hour, no matter how impressive the guest.

John Parker finished his pie.

“Excellent, as always,” he said.

Ben’s mother murmured her thanks.

The big man pushed his chair a few inches back from the end of the table, making a scraping noise. “I have some news,” he said. His face took on a pronounced stillness that drew every gaze to him.

“Perhaps the children wish to go play,” he said.

“Of course.” Ben’s mother nodded toward the steps in the way that told Amanda and Jenny it was time to take Lizzie and William upstairs.

As soon as the little ones were gone, John continued in a low voice. “I told you I am on my way north. I’m going to see Frank. The news I have for him must be delivered in person.”

It could not be happy news, not with the somber way he spoke. Ben’s mother turned pale.

“I met recently with a friend from New Orleans who had come up to meet with Mr. Garrison,” John Parker said. “This friend of mine is a wealthy planter who had a change of heart on the slavery issue after he fell in love with a quadroon years ago. He has been watching the New Orleans slave auctions for me ever since Nelly and her baby were sold down south. I had heard from another informer that they had been sold to one man for several months, but he passed away and his estate and slaves were sold, which sent them back to the auctions. My informant told me they were headed down New Orleans way.”

John paused, but no one moved or spoke.

“By going down to the saloons and buying drinks for the slave-running crews, my planter friend found Nelly. He got her slave-master to point her out in the crowd at the slave market. She was together with her baby, but they were dying.”

His mother took a sharp breath.

“Cholera had struck the market, which was packed and filthy,” John said. “They were quarantined with scores of others.

She was too weak to stand, and my friend was not permitted to approach her, nor could he have done so without attracting notoriety. But later, he obtained these from the slave-trader on some pretext.” He reached in his breast pocket and retrieved folded papers. He opened them up and handed them to Ben’s mother. “I’m sorry. There can be no mistake.”

She put them down on the table.

Certificate of Death
. Ben could read it from across the table in the black ink of the heading. Nelly’s name was written beneath.

His mother’s ashy face acquired a green tinge. She jumped up and ran out the kitchen door, which banged behind her. His father strode after her, caught the door as it rebounded, and followed her out.

Ben, Cyrus, and John sat in silence.

After a minute or two, Ben heard his mother sobbing outside, though he couldn’t make out the words his father murmured to her.

Ben bowed his head. Frank’s face filled his imagination, torn with the agony of his missing wife and baby. Then the dark house of Ben’s boyhood rose to his memory, with the lamplight flickering on the dying man’s face and the scrape of his hoarse voice, saying, “I’ll see my Nelly again.” A tide of regret and sorrow swept Ben back to the table and the reality of her death. She had gone to Joseph, at least, but at what cost to Frank? And she ended her days in filth, with her little girl sick beside her.

“Why?” Ben spoke the harsh word aloud, surprising himself.

John regarded him with understanding, but said nothing. It seemed as if they sat forever listening to his mother’s quieter sobbing, then his father talking to her.

Why did these innocent people die? Why couldn’t he help them? What good could he do, when he and others tried and tried, but the darkness kept rolling in?

His father finally returned, opening the door and entering before his mother, as if to protect her from their view. Her face was blotchy and her eyes were still wet. She walked over to the stove and puttered with some irons. Although she was no longer sobbing, tears rolled down her face, falling and disappearing into the fabric of her dress. She brought a handkerchief to her nose, pressing it to her face as if it could stop the tears.

Ben had never seen her so distraught. But she had wept many times because of the Railroad. Sometimes she wept at the awful things that fugitives told them, sometimes because they left so many behind. Or because they were sick and might die, like Joseph. Or sometimes, when his father didn’t come home, she wept while she waited to hear news.

His father walked to the shelves and took down a can of coffee. He held it out to his mother, asking with a lift of his brows if she wanted it. She took it from his hands and started the routine of putting on the kettle.