Honor (39 page)

This distracted Honor. “Thee didn’t? Why?”

Royale shrugged. “I knew you intended to free your people. If you did that, Alec Martin wouldn’t want to marry you. No land.”

Ice went down Honor’s spine. “Thee means that he only wanted me for what I’d bring him.”

“I didn’t say that,” Royale amended. “Mr. Alec want you because you were the prettiest and you got special style and wit. But land and money are important to him.”

Royale’s confidences had only stirred up Honor’s emotions more. “To a lot of people.”

Royale let loose a sound of dry agreement. “I wish we could go out and talk to them, but with the catchers nearby, we can’t till way after dark.”

“I know.” Honor reached for Royale’s hand, seeking reassurance that she could count on her not to have changed, lied. She wanted to press Royale for more insights about Alec, but suddenly fearful, she asked, “Why is life always so unpredictable?”

Royale squeezed her hand. “I don’t know, but I do know we got a lot of laundry to do before it gets any hotter.”

Yes, better to concentrate on reality. “Go ahead. I’ll be right out.”

Honor watched Royale walk outside and tried to focus her mind, but her thoughts bounced around as if she were driving down a rough road. And that seemed to be an apt comparison. No matter what Darah had to say, this would be a rough road.

As the day passed, Samuel tried several times to get Honor to speak with him about the two women. She refused to discuss them and withdrew from him. He felt her absence keenly. How had he missed how much he’d come to prize her constant thought and effort for him, toward being his helpmeet?

Night loomed ahead, and he asked if she wanted to take the women their meal or let them come in. She blinked away tears. He had rarely seen his wife so distracted, so downhearted. It shook him. But he had no idea how to reach her.

After sundown and supper, he headed for the kitchen with his silent wife, who’d agreed to take the meal to the barn. Perlie dished up two more plates of food and put them in a water bucket in case the catchers had circled back in secret. Royale and Judah came along as well. The two couples walked out to the barn, side by side without exchanging words.

In the barn, Samuel lit a lantern and felt his wife withdraw further. Judah worked the lever on the wall, and with a rattle, the panel of bottles swung open. Within, the two women looked wilted from the day’s heat. Samuel hadn’t
fired up the forge today, but that didn’t look like it had helped. He hoped a cooling rain would drench the land soon and break the humidity.

Honor and Royale stood back as if not wanting to get too close. Wondering at this, he lifted the two plates out of the bucket and sent Judah to fill their jug with fresh water. Before they ate, the two hurried through the dark shadows to the necessary and back again. They sat down on the floor to eat their cold meal.

Samuel watched them eat, baffled as Honor stood like a statue, staring at her cousin, barely blinking. Even with the conflicted past that stood between them, he would have thought Honor would try to get answers out of this woman.

Royale also stared at the visitors as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. But she was the one who began the conversation. “Where’s Eve? Why she not here with you?” she asked, signing it too.

Darah glanced up and down and spoke. At her answer, Honor visibly reacted as if someone had struck her, but she didn’t reply or interpret for Samuel.

Royale also appeared shocked, but she gathered herself and signed what Darah had said: “Alec sold Eve south—without even asking me.”

Sending worried glances toward Honor, Royale explained to Samuel, “Eve raised with us to be Miss Darah’s maid. What call would make Mr. Alec sell Eve?”

“So Miss Darah be all alone,” the new maid said.

Royale signed this and let her hand fall. She moved closer to Honor as if shaken.

Samuel stood, watching, trying to figure out what this all meant and how to help his wife.

When the two women were done eating, Samuel needed to gauge their intent. Unwilling to disturb his wife or Royale, he asked through Judah, “Are you planning to go to Canada?”

The two women assented with nods.

Samuel watched the cousin’s drawn face for any betrayal of motive for this flight all the way to Canada. He saw only fear and worry and suffering.

Judah relayed their question. “They want to know how far Canada is from here.”

“Over a week, I reckon, by wagon.” Samuel knew that the other runaways had also headed to Canada, the only safe place for a slave to go. But what about Honor’s cousin? What was she running from?

Judah asked this question for Samuel.

“The maid will only say they won’t be safe till they both are in Canada.” Judah turned and signed, “I don’t understand either why a white woman is running away.”

Was this woman in her right mind? Taking her maid and running away like a slave herself? Something worse than he could imagine must have happened. But he wasn’t sure it was his place to dig deeper and wondered why his wife didn’t talk to her cousin. None of this added up.

He realized then that he must act. Honor was evidently not able or willing to take action, to face whatever her cousin’s appearance had triggered. He’d let other runaways go off by themselves. But he refused to entertain the idea of letting these two defenseless women go north
alone. Regardless of what had happened in Maryland, this woman was his wife’s blood kin. No matter what, one didn’t abandon family.

“Judah, tell them,” he signed, “that we will leave for Canada tomorrow at first light. We can just behave as if the maid is a servant traveling with us.”

His wife’s cousin vehemently shook her head no and began speaking rapidly.

“She says,” Judah translated, “that while her husband away, they traveled together as a veiled lady and her maid. They arrived in Cincinnati together but slipped out of the city in the dark because they were afraid that Miss Darah’s husband would come seeking a lady and her maid. They don’t want anyone to see them here with Honor or traveling with her so their trail dead-ends.

“They want to just disappear, leave no trace. You see, in Canada the maid can refuse to return to her master and the court will uphold her. But a wife would not be able to refuse to return to her husband. No one would stop a man from carrying his wife off.”

Samuel stared at them a long time, struck by this truth, wondering at this arrangement, waiting for his wife to speak. Finally he gave up and assured the women that they would be transported in secret. Raising a hand, he bid them a wordless good night.

Judah again shut them up in the secret room. Usually runaways only stayed one night. What if the catchers had gone back to Cincinnati to get a warrant?

Outside, Judah walked Royale back to the kitchen while Samuel and Honor headed toward their cabin. Honor
drifted beside him as a silent stranger into their bedroom. The boys were already asleep in the loft above. He turned to his wife, trying to think of some way to reach her.

“We will have to leave Judah to protect Royale and Perlie and the boys,” she signed abruptly. “I will have to drive.”

He agreed. Hovering near, he longed to hold her, something which had become more natural to them of late, but he hesitated to touch her now. Somehow the arrival of her cousin had distanced her from him in a way he couldn’t breach. And now they must face the journey to and from Canada with her. Samuel did not understand why a wife would flee her husband. He tried to imagine Honor running away from him, but that was impossible.

APRIL 5, 1820


Early the next day, Samuel opened the concealed door. He waved the women out of the hidden room and toward the wagon, parked in the barn. In the dim light, he whipped back the tarpaulin and showed them the empty bay in the middle between boxes of bottles. He’d strapped the boxes onto secured shelves so they would not fall on the women when the wagon rocked.

Samuel helped them into the wagon, pointing to a pallet they could lie on to soften the ride. After securing the tarpaulin again, he overcame his reluctance with the horses and led the team out of the barn and to the house.

At the cabin door, Eli and Caleb stood rubbing their eyes, still in their nightshirts.

Honor stepped outside as well, dressed in her boots,
gray dress, and bonnet for the journey. “While we’re away, boys, help Judah with the animals and mind thy elders,” she signed and said. “We’ll be back as soon as we can, but it will be a while.”

“Do you got to go?” Eli said, appearing a bit worried. Caleb stood close to Eli, also looking strained.

“Yes, we do,” Honor said. “But we will return.”
God, help us.

Samuel stooped and hugged each boy, reassuring them. Caleb looked like a lost lamb. Samuel stroked his hair and kissed his forehead. Then he rose.

Judah, Royale, and Perlie arrived and stood near the boys. “Don’t you worry,” Judah said. “I’ll make sure everyone stays safe.”

“If any catchers make trouble here, go to Micah or Thad,” Honor said. “They will stand up for thee.”

Then she let Samuel help her up onto the wagon, noting a rifle, which Judah had taught him how to shoot, resting at his side. No wonder. Shawnee and Wyandot still roamed the state. And bandits and slave catchers.

The round trip would take at least two weeks over routes that were more wheel tracks than roads. As she grasped the reins in her leather-gloved hands and slapped them, heading down Lebanon Road, Honor’s nerve nearly failed her.

She didn’t know if she had the courage or the strength to do this. But Darah was her blood, and something must have gone very wrong in Maryland. What could Alec have done? She wanted to know, yet she hoped she would never find out.

The trees crowded close to the wheel tracks on the crude road to Dayton. Honor slumped on the hard bench, weary of holding the reins, stiff from the day of driving. At least the past weeks had been dry, so mud didn’t slow or stop them. The front wheel hit another deep rut. As the horses struggled with the lines, Honor encouraged them forward with care. “Easy.”

Ahead, Honor glimpsed a break in the forest. She urged the team over the ruts. They still had a few hours of sunlight, but her stomach rumbled with hunger. All day her unruly mind had brought up memory of home after memory of home. Would it let her sleep, let her forget?

When they reached a clearing, Honor turned the wagon off the road. She drove in as far as possible. A log cabin, perhaps one from a long-gone French fur trapper, had fallen into partial ruin there, and she heard a brook running nearby. “Whoa!” She hauled back on the reins and halted the team. “Hello the house!” No one responded. “We’ll stop here tonight,” she told Samuel.

He nodded, getting down and walking to the rear.

Irritated that her husband went to help her cousin first, Honor moved slowly and eased herself off the bench and down to the thick spring grass. She limped around to the rear also, trying not to have uncharitable thoughts.

Samuel was already lifting out the boxes of bottles that hemmed in the hidden women. Both of them were lying down, and they slowly clambered out when Samuel cleared an opening. While Honor had sat on a hard bench,
controlling and guiding a team of horses over a narrow, rutted road, Darah had lain all day on a pallet. Resentment curdled in Honor’s stomach in spite of herself.