The Lost Quilter (5 page)

“My mother was from Virginia. I expect I sound like her.”

Ida Mary nodded as if her curiosity was satisfied. “Sometimes cooking three meals a day can be so tiresome,” she said, laying a bunch of green-tufted carrots on the cutting board and taking a knife from a drawer.

“May I help?”

“How kind of you to offer. There’s a way you can make the time pass more agreeably.” Ida Mary nodded toward the front room. “My book of psalms is on the knickknack shelf in the parlor. Would you read to me while I work?”

“Of course.” It was a test, but not a very good one. Everyone knew slaves were not permitted to learn to read, but even some white folks couldn’t. Joanna went to the front room and found a small book bound in green leather. Thanks to Gerda and her lessons, Joanna would pass Ida Mary’s test, but would she be safe even then? If Ida Mary was suspicious enough to test her, Joanna should not wait until nightfall to flee. She should set down the book and keep walking, right out the front door. But her clothes, still damp on the line, and the concealing darkness, and food for the journey—she could not leave without them. And the wheat field separating her from the woods—Miles Dunbar would spot her as she crossed it, and he could easily overtake her even if she ran as she had never run before.

She had no choice but to wait until the family slept to make her escape.

She returned to the kitchen, book in hand. “Which psalm would you care to hear?”

“The thirty-second,” Ida Mary replied, watching her carefully.

Joanna nodded, found the page, and read aloud, trying to sound like a northerner rather than a slave out of Virginia. The prayer, full of longing, stirred up memories of prayer meetings at Greenfields, sitting on the dirt floor of a slave cabin and raising her voice in a song of worship, a plea for deliverance. And the Lord had heard her. After so many years of suffering, the Lord had opened the door for Joanna, but Anneke had closed it.

Joanna read the final verse with tears in her eyes. She blinked
them away and looked up from the book to find Ida Mary regarding her. “It’s my favorite, too,” Ida Mary said. “I can see you’re a good Christian woman. You needn’t fear that any low slave catcher is going to keep you from your husband and children. They’ll have to get through my Miles, and there aren’t many men foolhardy enough to take him on.”

“You’re very kind,” said Joanna, praying that she would not have to put Ida Mary’s staunch promise to the test.

Before long, Miles and Johnny washed up and came in for supper. After helping Ida Mary set out fried chicken, succotash, fresh baked bread, and pickled cucumbers, she hesitated before accepting the seat Ida Mary offered her on the bench across the table from Johnny. She had never sat at a table for a meal with any white folks but the Bergstroms. Smiling to hide her discomfort, she took her place and complimented Ida Mary on the meal.

“It’s our own Independence Day celebration.” Ida Mary filled their cups with lemonade, set down the pitcher, and took her seat at the foot of the table. “My husband is too industrious to take a day of rest except on the Sabbath. Since we couldn’t go into town, we’ll have our picnic—” Suddenly she fell silent, frowning.

At the same moment, Joanna heard the distant baying of dogs. Her stomach lurched and she bolted upright. “I got to go now.”

Miles rose and went to the window. Over his shoulder Joanna saw Peter and Isaac emerging from the woods on horseback, accompanied by two other men on foot. One was pulled along by three leashed bloodhounds. The dogs led the men straight across the wheat field to the pump where Joanna had drank and washed the mud from her hands and feet. Isaac pointed somewhere out of sight, and Joanna knew he had seen her dress on the clothesline.

Her head spun. She gripped the edge of the table to keep from falling.

“Now, don’t you fret,” Ida Mary said briskly. “We’ll get this sorted out. You won’t come to any harm.”

“Are those the men who took you?” asked Miles.

Unable to speak, Joanna nodded. She sank down heavily on the bench, her thoughts churning. What now? If she ran out the front door, she would be spotted even if the men stayed out back, and the dogs would be upon her before she could reach the distant trees. She was trapped.

Someone pounded on the back door. “Open up, Dunbar,” a man called. “We don’t want trouble.”

“You stay put,” Miles ordered Joanna. He opened the back door off the kitchen but kept his hand firmly on the latch, barring entrance to the two men who stood on the porch. The bloodhounds yelped and slavered at their feet, knowing their quarry was near.

Miles’s frame nearly filled the doorway, forcing the two men to crane their necks to peer into the house. The man holding the dogs nudged the other as his gaze came to rest on Joanna.

“Wilson. Boyle,” Miles’s deep voice boomed. “What brings you fellows out our way?”

“These two men say their slave’s run off, and Boyle’s hounds led us here.” Wilson indicated Joanna with a jerk of his head. “From the look of things, I reckon they earned themselves some nice, juicy bones.”

“This unfortunate woman is no runaway,” said Ida Mary, standing between Joanna and the men. “Her name is Constance Wright. She’s a free woman from Pennsylvania, abducted by these unscrupulous men when they could not find their rightful quarry.”

Wilson removed his hat. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but they tell a different story.”

“That there’s her dress hung out to dry,” bellowed Isaac from the yard. “Bring her out or we’ll come in and get her!”

Miles stood a head taller than the largest of the other men, and a single skeptical look was enough to make Wilson and Boyle shift uncomfortably on the doorstep. “Look, Dunbar, they swear she’s a runaway,” Boyle said apologetically, yanking hard on the dogs’ leashes to keep them from bolting into the house. “We won’t let them set foot in your home if you say so, but you should hear them out.”

“We don’t care to listen to liars and scoundrels,” said Ida Mary.

Joanna’s heart pounded and her palms were slick with sweat. Her thoughts darted, desperate to find an escape, but came to a crashing halt at the sight of Peter at the doorway. “Take a look at this,” he said, reaching past Wilson and Boyle to thrust a crumpled sheet of paper at Miles.

A glimpse was enough. Joanna recognized the handbill Josiah Chester had printed up after her escape, the one describing her unmistakable scar. She had seen the handbill before, at Elm Creek Farm. Gerda Bergstrom had torn down one that had been posted outside a shop in town.

Miles studied the paper before holding it out to his wife. As she read it, she grew very still. She drew herself up, mouth pursed, and with a flick of her wrist, she beckoned the men inside. “Take her.”

Joanna went cold. “Please, ma’am—”

“Be quiet, Constance, or whatever your name is,” Ida Mary snapped as Wilson and Peter entered the kitchen. “You lied to us. Freedwoman, indeed. You’re nothing but a runaway and a liar.”

“Ma?” Wide-eyed, Johnny clambered off his bench as the two men circled the table.

Joanna darted into the front room, but before she reached the door, Peter seized her around the waist and brought her to the floor, his weight crushing the air out of her. He stank of liquor. She gasped for breath as he and Wilson pulled her to her feet. They wrestled her out the front door and around the back of the house, where Isaac waited with the rope. Kicking, clawing, Joanna fought to free herself, but the men held on, cursing her, and all too soon her hands were bound and the other end of the rope was lashed to Isaac’s saddle. She threw one desperate, pleading look to the Dunbars, who stood at the back door watching the scene unfold.

“Don’t forget her clothing,” said Ida Mary.

Grumbling, Isaac snatched dress and shift down from the clothesline and stuffed them into his saddlebag. She saw money change hands as Peter paid Wilson and Boyle and thanked them for their services. Then the slave catchers mounted their horses and set off for the road south, pulling a stumbling Joanna along behind. A cry of anguish and pain escaped her throat; she tripped and fell, but the horses did not slow their pace. A wrenching pain shot through her knee as she struggled to regain her footing. She collapsed and cried out as the horses dragged her through the dirt and gravel. Swearing, Isaac reined in his horse. “Get up,” he shouted, tugging sharply on the rope that bound Joanna’s hands. “Get up now unless you want a beating.”

Slowly, painfully, Joanna struggled to her feet, and Isaac chirruped to his horse. “We should hobble her,” he said to Peter, his words slurring. “That’s the only way to cure a runaway.”

“That’s for Mr. Chester to say, not us.”

“She ain’t worth it.” Isaac shook his head, swaying slightly in the saddle. “No slave’s worth all this trouble.”

“Chester must think she is. His wife favors her sewing.”

The men fell silent as they made their way south. It was nearly twilight before they made camp near the bank of a rushing river. If only she had not given in to her thirst and allowed the Dunbars’ pump to draw her out of hiding. She could be free, right now, and miles closer to the Elm Creek Valley and her son. What did it matter now if she lived or died, if she died of thirst on the way to Greenfields or was beaten to death after her arrival? She would never have another chance like the one she had just let slip through her grasp.

It might be better to close her eyes forever right there on that riverbank, never take another step south, never take another beating. Her son was beyond her reach; she could do nothing to protect him. She was as good as dead to him already. Why live another day as a slave?

Too exhausted for tears, she pulled off the secondhand shoes, which would surely never find their way back to Ida Mary’s neighbor now. She washed her feet in the river, slowly and deliberately. In all the years she had lived at Greenfields, Josiah Chester had never hobbled a slave by cutting the tendon joining heel to ankle, not out of kindness but out of concern that the maiming would lower the slaves’ value should he have to sell them. But no slave had ever fended him off with the sewing scissors or threatened to tell his wife about his nighttime visits to the slave quarter. No slave had ever fought back, or drawn his blood and then run off. He might hobble Joanna as a lesson to the other slaves. If the wound didn’t putrefy and kill her, it would at least make certain that she never ran again.

Behind her came the sound of boots scuffling in the dirt. “Get out of those man’s clothes,” Isaac ordered. “It ain’t proper.”

He threw her clothes at her back; they struck her across the shoulders and fell to the ground. Joanna reached behind to pick them up, drawing her feet out of the rushing water.

“Go on, then.” Isaac nudged her with the toe of his boot.

Slowly Joanna unbuttoned the borrowed shirt, slipped her arms from the sleeves, and folded it, and set on the ground beside her. The dress was still slightly damp from washing. Despite all it had been through, it was still beautiful. Anneke had cut and fit the pieces, and she had added the lace trim with her own hand. How could the same woman who created such a lovely gift have betrayed her?

“Turn around.” When Joanna did not move, Isaac raised his voice. “I said, turn around. Stand up while you’re at it.”

She knew it would do no good to argue. Concealing the pins in her palm, she unfastened the trousers, let them fall to her ankles, and stepped out of them. Though the summer night was balmy, she shivered as she turned to face the men, knowing that pregnancy had left its telltale signs upon her body. The pins pricked her palm, a small reassurance that she was not defenseless.

Peter stared. “Were you a wet nurse on the Chester plantation?”

“No, sir,” said Joanna, trembling. It was no use to pretend she had been. The youngest of Mistress Chester’s children was four years old, and the wet nurse had been sold away long ago.

“Don’t she have to have a baby before…” Isaac gestured. “Before all that?”

Peter nodded, grim. “Do you have a child waiting for you back at Greenfields, wench?”

Joanna shook her head.

He frowned, and Joanna knew he was counting the months between her escape and her recapture. Not that it mattered when she had given birth, or who the father of her child was. A child born to a slave was a slave.

Unbidden, Joanna dressed herself, pulling the soft cotton shift over her head, slipping the dress over it. Her heart lifted. They had not known about her boy. The other men had not sold him off into slavery someplace far away, and she refused to believe Anneke would. Her son surely was safe and sound on Elm Creek Farm.

“Her child is Josiah Chester’s property,” Peter said. “If he finds out that we left it behind—”

“He don’t ever have to know,” said Isaac.

The men fixed Joanna with twin glares. “You can’t tell him, either,” ordered Peter. “You know that’s the only way to keep your baby safe.”

“My baby already safe,” she retorted. “He on his way to Canada. He set out with an abolitionist lady two days before you caught me. You’ll never find him.”

As Peter raised his hand to strike her, Joanna darted out of reach. “I might be inclined to forget what I know if I was treated more kindly.”

Peter slowly lowered his hand. “Is that so.”

Joanna knew she was unlikely to get anything more from the men in payment for her silence. “As far as Marse Chester ever know, I never had no baby.”

They crossed the Virginia border a few days later. Joanna would not have known except that Peter announced the news as the horses splashed across a stream. Only a few months before, shel
tered by a kind Quaker family in a barn on the Pennsylvania border, she had vowed never to return to Virginia. Then she had dared dream that someday she would live as a free woman in Canada. Now the most she could hope for was that Josiah Chester would not hobble her, she would not be sold off so far south that escape to the free North would be impossible, and that her son would remain safe.

She would wait, and stay alive, and bide her time, and when the time was right, she would run.