The Night Angel (21 page)

“And I didn’t say his name was John. On account of how I didn’t know it myself.”

“So how did you sign the papers selling him your man?”

“I didn’t. He took the bill of sale and left. Same as I’m asking you to do.”

“He bought a slave and didn’t have you fill in his name? That means the slave is still yours to claim.” Cody tried to get his tired mind to work faster. “Don’t sound like any slave owner I’ve ever met before.”

The merchant chewed on his beard, clearly conflicted. “If ’n you find Joseph, will you bring him back to me?”

“What else do you know, old man?”

“First you tell me what I want to hear.”

“Yeah, all right. We find your slave, we’ll deliver him back. Now tell me what it is you’re chewing on there.”

“Maybe it ain’t nothing,” the merchant said. “But I took Joseph off the Moss Plantation. For gambling debts.”

“You said Moss?”

The merchant was sharp enough to have survived years dealing with the kind of folk who had no business in downtown Richmond. “You know him,” he observed.

“Yeah, I mighta met him somewheres before.”

“Joseph was born on the place. He had himself a common-law wife and two boys. He pined something awful for his family.”

Cody Saunders knew he was being given the pieces to a puzzle. Only his brain wasn’t made for fitting facts together like his brother could. He walked over to the horse trough and dunked his head. He came up gasping. “Bring me a plate of that fatback and beans I’m smelling. And some fresh-baked corn pone.”

The merchant was back on familiar territory. “That’ll cost you four bits.”

Cody Saunders wasn’t in the habit of paying for his vittles. But something told him his brother might want him to visit with this merchant another time, so he fished a coin out of his vest pocket and tossed it over. “You got any fresh coffee?”

The man caught the coin. “You’ll eat and be gone, and next time I see you will be to return me my slave. That right?”

“Sure thing, old man,” Cody lied. “Now bring me my grub.”

Falconer rose from his bed long before daybreak. Dawn was little more than a faint stain upon the deep blue sky. Out west the stars were still clear, the moon a fingernail’s sliver. He walked to the well in the inn’s forecourt and took his time washing. As the light gradually strengthened, a mockingbird challenged his claim to the morning.

Ada Hart ran Salem’s only guesthouse, what her son had called the Strangers’ Inn. It stood on Main Street, about midway between the central church and the outlying paddocks. The home was large, with a full three stories framed in stout red brick. The downstairs rooms were floored in heart of pine, waxed and aged until it shone like frozen honey. Falconer took his Bible to a bench placed by the inn’s eastern wall. He prayed silently until the light became strong enough for him to see the words on the page. He turned to the verse he had been reading to his charges when the armed farmers had arrived. Falconer found himself missing this group of people. So he prayed for each of them in turn and asked for a swift passage to a safe haven, one that would welcome and succor and offer them a future. And he tried not to let his own loneliness taint the silent words.

The sun rose to where the eastern hills became golden waves. The distant trees wore their spring green like delicate mantles. Ribbons of chimney-smoke rose into the cloudless sky. Falconer closed his Bible and gazed around him, feeling the sense of reward the dawn held. He had started his quest. He had delivered his first charges to safety. By noon he would be filled with restless hunger, for he was not the sort of man to remain sated for long. A doer, a man of action, and God’s entry into his life had not changed that. Only the direction and how he got to the goal.

Falconer heard the young lad before he came into view. He rounded the corner singing another hymn and swinging another pail. He beamed at Falconer and cried, “I told Mama you were up with the Good Book for company. But she shushed me and said I was to let you sleep.”

“Where are you off to this morning?” He could see the boy looking at his scar, and he turned slightly so the sun was shining on his good side.

“We keep one milk cow in yonder barn. Mama says it’s too far out to the farm and back every morning, and our tenants deserve fresh cream with their porridge.”

“Your mother sounds like a wonderful innkeeper.” Falconer rose to his feet and followed the boy. “And you strike me as a great help to all your family. But I see no barn.”

“It’s hidden beyond the trees and God’s Acre there.”

“I beg your pardon, beyond what?”

“God’s Acre,” the boy repeated. “Right there before you.”

“I only see a cemetery.”

“Which is God’s own resting place,” the boy said, grinning up at him. “God’s Acre. That’s our name for it.”

“Who is it doing the naming?”

“Moravians, sir. Do you not even know where you be this fair morn?”

Falconer laughed aloud. Not at the question, but rather at the boy’s odd mixture of childishness and adult speech. “I confess I was so tired I probably heard and then forgot before the words took shape.”

“How can someone forget the place they labored so hard to reach?”

Falconer followed Matt around the cemetery and along a path through the stand of hickory and dogwood. Falconer heard a cow lowing from the lean-to up ahead. “The trail was very hard for us.”

“I’ve heard some of the brethren speak of it. But I’ve never been beyond Bethabara.” He set a milking stool beside the cow and sat down. “Is it ever so exciting?”

“Sometimes,” Falconer allowed. “Mostly it is hard. Some days, however, can be very exciting indeed.”

A woman’s voice spoke up from beyond the barn’s shadows. “I shall thank you, sir, not to be filling my son’s head with idle chatter.”

“He wasn’t, Mama. Honest. I just asked him about the trail, is all.”

Because of the growing light, Falconer saw only the woman’s silhouette. But he recognized the voice and the woman’s erect stance. “A very good morning to you, Mrs. Hart.”

The woman stood in silence for a moment longer. Her shadow cut a very womanly silhouette. With a slender neck and a fine figure, even her petite stature carried its own presence. “I do not hear anything touching your pail, Matt.”

The milk began rattling into the bucket. “I’ll be just a few minutes, Mama.”

“Hurry, now. I’m about to call our guests to the table.” She turned around. “John Falconer, a word, if you please.”

“Of course, ma’am.” He followed her into the sunlight. “I can’t thank you enough for your hospitality, Mrs. Hart. As I explained last night, I have no more money with me. I’m good for the debt, though, I assure—”

“How long did you intend to stay, John Falconer?”

“To tell the truth, ma’am, I had no plans beyond seeing these first ones brought to safety. A few days—long enough to gather some provisions and perhaps find a horse. That is, if I’m able to arrange a loan.”

“One of your charges, as you put it, is waiting for you by the front door. The man known as Joseph. He seeks a word.”

“Thank you, ma’am. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go—”

“That is not what I wished to speak with you about, sir.” She led him back through the grove and directed him to a bench beside the cemetery. “Would you be so kind as to sit with me a moment?”

“Certainly, Mrs. Hart.”

When they were seated, she did not speak. Instead, the woman pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and knotted it, bunching it tightly between her hands. “I would ask that you speak to me again of your plans, John Falconer.”

He realized with a start that the woman did not like him. Or perhaps merely distrusted him. Whatever the cause, the tension radiated off her in waves. “There is little more I can tell you, ma’am. It is all so new and unshaped in my head, I can scarcely find the proper words.”

“Do the best you can,” she replied tersely. “It is the most we can ask of any man.”

So he repeated all he had said the previous day. Of his sense of being called to free the same number of slaves as he had transported into captivity. Of the gold mine. Of his plans for the money.

She stared over the graves as he spoke. Her expression was taut. Falconer had no idea of her age, but he guessed it as somewhere around his own thirty years. When he finished talking, he continued to watch her. He sensed something deeper beneath the surface. A dark stain, a sorrow perhaps. Or an illness. Something that she most likely thought was hidden from the world.

When she finally spoke, it was to the rising day and not to Falconer directly. “You did not mention having acquired the plantation.”

“Did I not?” Falconer tried to recall. “It was an omission due to weariness, Mrs. Hart. I do not seek to hide anything from you.”

For some reason the words only pinched her face up tighter still. “What do you seek to do with the farm, John Falconer?”

“To be honest, ma’am, it was arranged on an impulse.” He felt foolish even speaking of it. More than that. Her rigid inspection of the horizon left him feeling that he had done something wrong. “I have no use for land, Mrs. Hart. I just thought . . .”

“Yes?”

“I thought if I had all these freedmen passing through, it might be good to have a place to let them rest up. Maybe find a more regular channel from there to safety.” He hesitated, then asked, “Have I done something ill-advised?”

She started to respond, then clamped down hard on her words. “I ask that you attend the morning church with us, John Falconer. There are several matters which must be addressed.”

He took that as a dismissal and rose to his feet. “I have no money, Mrs. Hart. But I will repay what I will owe you.”

She waved that aside, as though of no consequence. “Go and speak with Joseph, sir. Breakfast will be on the table when you are done. Church begins at nine sharp. You will be called by the ringing of the bell.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” He could use the second set of clothes he carried in his satchel. He crossed the rear yard and started around the tavern, wishing he knew what he’d done to upset the good woman so.

Joseph was seated by the tavern’s front door. He gazed out to the north, his face so intent it seemed to Falconer that every furrow was realigned so as to magnify the aim. Falconer came over and seated himself on the bench. The more he came to know this man, the more he respected him. “You wanted to see me?”

Joseph shook his head at the rising sun. “Never thought I’d hear a white man talk to me like that.”

Falconer eased himself back to rest against the tavern wall. “Like what?”

Joseph turned then, drawing the furrowed intensity around to where it aimed straight at Falconer. “Like I was his equal.”

“God says all men are brethren.”

“There you go again, sayin’ them words. Like you was taught a different language. One that sounds the same but ain’t.”

Falconer felt the testing behind the speech and the look both. As with the woman he had just left, he sensed an undercurrent he could not identify. “Perhaps you have to sink as low as I have fallen. Descend into the depths where the gates of hell are a mouth waiting to swallow men whole. Only then can you truly recognize how little difference there is between one man and another. How the color of skin does not distinguish the soul. How we have all fallen short and can claim salvation only through God’s eternal grace.”

“Them words you say, they might as well be comin’ from a dream.” Joseph shook his head very slowly. Back and forth. But the dark and flint-hard gaze did not stray. “Geraldine and I talked away the night. I still wasn’t sure what to do when I got up this morning. Now I know.”

“Joseph, you are not beholden to me.”

“Now I know,” Joseph repeated. “If you’re called to the road, then so am I.”

“We covered this ground yesterday. Ada Hart will—”

“I told you the first day we was together. You don’t know nothing. You need a strong arm and a steady eye and somebody who’ll talk to folks who’d run at the sight of you.”

“What about your family?”

He turned his attention back to the northern horizon. “West of the road we come in on is another village. They call it Bethabara. My Geraldine, she calls it heaven on earth. They’s more of us there.”

“Freed slaves?”

“Some of ’em. Others born free. We’s all welcome there. They don’t hold to slaves in this place. Mostly they send folks north and west, along the Underground Railroad. You heard of that?”

“Yes.”

“Them folks, they’s already heard ’bout what you’re doing. They told me my family’ll be taken in and cared for so’s I can go off to watch your back.”

Falconer mulled that over. “So people know about me.”

“Don’t you worry none. These folks, they know how to guard a word.” Joseph rose to his feet. “When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow or the next day.”

“I’ll be ready.” Joseph started away, then turned back to add, “The others we come with, they’s callin’ you their Night Angel. Reckon it’s their way of saying thanks.”

Ada Hart sat and stared at the gravesites. Her son passed by, tilted sideways by the weight of the full pail. He spoke to her. But Ada Hart could not make sense of the words. Matt followed the direction of her focus. Matt was an intelligent and sensitive lad. He had seen her seated in this place often enough before, lost to the earthly realm. Matt’s face creased in a sadness far too old for his years.