“I’m shaking?” he stammered.
“A little.”
“It’s the cold, yes, Judith?”
“The cold.”
“Not the fits?” he whispered.
“No, love.”
“They’ll think me mad, lock me up, with those chains. Not the fits again?”
“No. The cold, that’s all,” she pressed him close, praying it was the truth.
He closed his eyes. Judith could feel him trying to will himself warm. But even his soft groan of frustration shuddered. Del appeared on his other side and together they brought him to his feet.
“You’ll be right as the rain once warmed, clamdigger,” he assured them both. “Come. Lean on me.”
I
nside the lightkeeper’s house Ethan breathed in Queen Ida’s clam-and-strudel scent as she peeled back the blanket and rubbed his arms as if they were tinder to start her hearthfire.
“Need more meat on you, bridegroom. It’s no wonder you can’t handle the cold!” she admonished, making him smile. She threw a pair of her husband’s light trousers and a shirt from the basket at her hip. How kind this gruff woman was, even in the midst of her own adversity, he thought.
And her eyes told him she was guilty as charged. Del and Ida Burnett had been keeping more than the light, and the men with the iron chains were out to see them destroyed for it. A worried glance passed between Ethan and Judith as he pulled on Del’s trousers and she helped him with the leather braces. Judith knew. Wasn’t his wife a lawbreaker too? And he himself had given the silver buttons away to the eight-fingered Atlas.
“Damnation,” the head slave catcher said, suddenly pumping Ethan’s hand. “You can have the full reward on that young buck, sir! I ain’t never seen anything like what you done to yank him back from the—”
Ethan stood. “Reward? What are you talking about?” he demanded. “These are my people, sir.”
“What?”
“Seek your runaways elsewhere. Martha and Aaron and their children are my father’s seasoned house servants,” he said in his most imperious Virginia accent. He faced the huddled family. “You all were sent up the coastal waterway by my relatives, weren’t you?” He turned to the constable and slave catchers. “My family does not think my wife and I can survive our simple seaside holiday without being tended! I warned you to be on watch for them, did I not, Del, Ida?”
“You did indeed sir,” Ida said quickly.
“When I get ahold of my brothers, I will wring their necks for putting valuable property in danger!”
Judith took his fisted hand in her gentle grasp. “Now, husband,” she soothed, “calm yourself.”
He stood. “What do you think, Aaron? Can the mast be repaired?”
The oldest male of the boatmen bowed. “We’ll fix her, master, we’ll set all aright, you be at your ease ’bout that!”
The woman beside him pulled the drying cloth from the hearth and began to rub it gingerly against Judith’s scalp. “Leave the men talkin’ ’bout that wicked sloop like she was a child, missus,” she chimed. “Let Martha look after your own self now!”
Judith smiled at the kindness, then looked to Ethan as if wondering if she should have ignored it, the way Clara and Hester ignored the slaves at Windover. Ethan grinned, no help at all.
The head slave catcher’s eyes narrowed. “And your name, sir?”
“Washington. Henry Washington. My wife, Judith.”
The uneasy constable came forward. “Washington, sir? Virginia Washingtons? Related to—?”
“We want no preferential treatment because of our name, of course, Constable. We are, as Del said, residing here humbly as their guests.”
The man stepped back. “Of course.” He turned to the slave catchers. “He went into the water after his own property. He’s not daft. That makes sense.”
Ethan hoped only Judith heard the grinding of his teeth. He raised his head. “I would appreciate your leave to get my wife and servants settled before a higher toll is taken on my father’s estate.”
Constable White squared his shoulders. He faced the head slave catcher. “I believe you are mistaken in this hunt, Mr. Stone.”
“Where’s proof—like their papers sayin’ that these niggers are not runaways but his daddy’s blasted house servants?” Stone demanded.
“Out there,” Ethan replied tersely, pointing with his chin toward the ocean. “I have heard of such things happening in the North—of loyal traveling servants being ruthlessly hounded, captured, sold to new, unscrupulous
masters. But here? Here, south of the Mason-and-Dixon line? I am appalled, sir!”
“Easy, Mr. Washington,” the constable said. “No one’s going to—”
One of the clanging men glared at Judith. “Now, this patched-together woman don’t look like any damned plantation mistress!”
Ethan stepped between them. “I am only a third son, but you will speak more respectfully in the presence of my wife, sir!” he demanded. The four black men quickly flanked him, even the recovering boy. The woman and girls surrounded Judith.
“You and your men will leave these people to their recovery. You are banned from this property until further notice, Mr. Stone!” the constable stormed, finally standing at his full height.
“It’s these lightkeepers are the lawbreakers! You cannot—”
“I have so ordered! Take your complaint up to the magistrate!”
“Merde.
Magistrates again,” Ethan whispered.
O
nce the intruders had gone, Judith felt that the hearth room was infused with triumph and a celebration held down from giddy heights by a cautious hope. She watched with pride as Ethan listened intently at the boy’s back as he breathed.
“Sounds good, sir?” his mother asked.
“Better than this bruise looks.” He lifted the boy’s shirt higher and winced. “I’m sorry I hit you so hard. What is your name?”
“Whatsoever you say it is, sir.”
Ethan smiled. “Free people choose their own names.”
The boy cocked his head. There were gold glints in his tightly curled hair. “Who was Aubrey, Doctor?”
“I’m not nearly a doctor.”
“But Miss Ida, she say—”
“Queen Ida’s the most skillful deceiver in these parts, I’d wager.”
The large woman spun around, fisting her hands at her waist. “You’d prefer to live on in song and story as the Almighty Himself maybe, with the power to bring back the dead?”
“I—” Ethan stammered under her ferocious tone.
She turned her attention to the boy and his mother. “He’s only just a doctor, like I said, one who knew there was a wad of seaweed in the child’s throat,” she explained softly, reserving her flinty tone for when she glanced back at Ethan. “And I’m no grand dissembler. Lost my title to you this night, ‘Henry Washington’! What tales you can weave of whole cloth!”
“Judith!” he commanded. “Tell this confounded woman I never lie!”
Judith smiled. “Ethan is in need of spectacles, perhaps, concerning the identity of these travelers.” She eased herself under his arm, turning him back to the boy on the bed, who was rubbing his eyes in exhaustion. “Ethan,” she chided softly, “answer this child.”
“I forgot the question.”
She shook her head. “Aubrey was my husband’s friend,” she said. “He taught him how to swim.”
The boy raised shining eyes to Ethan. “He taught you right good.”
“Yes.”
“He be dead now?”
Ethan bowed his head. Judith hugged him close. The boy smiled, and held up his hands, as if he were offering them something.
“My old master, he likes them Roman folks. Named me for one: Octavius—Gus. But I’m right taken to this name you hit me with, sir. I’ll be Aubrey in the cold country, the one that will not send us back, if’n you gives me leave of his name, Doctor.”
“Hush, child,” his mother admonished him softly.
Ethan looked into the boy’s eyes. “I’ll tell Aubrey’s parents there’s a new freeman in Canada with his name,” he whispered, then turned abruptly from the bedside. He walked past the girl stirring fresh chowder on the hearthfire and out the door.
J
udith followed. The wind picked up the red skirts of the gown Ida Burnett had bestowed on her, billowing the excess material. Ethan sat below her on the porch steps. It was time, for some unburdening. Before the dolphins took him below the waves again.
“Aubrey was my nephew, Judith. My kinsman.”
“Ethan.”
“Aaron is my father’s son, his oldest son, by a slavewoman named Hagar, who wore a red cardinal feather, here.” He pressed his finger to the knot of Dr. Foster’s fading red stitches at his temple.
She took his hand down gently, kissed the scar. Why did she do that?
“You … don’t think me blighted?”
Her brows slanted in amusement, in that way he loved.
“Blighted?”
“For coming from such people? Who would hold slaves, who would make a woman … Then own his own son?”
“Aaron is a fine man, who is also related to your father, husband.”
“Yes, but—”
“And I am married to a fine man. I thank his parents for their part in his existence.”
It was taking her less and less time to disarm him, Ethan realized, smiling. “I share kinship with slaves, Judith.”
She shook her head. “Only you would take that view of it, Ethan Blair,” she told him. “Not that they share your blood, but that you share theirs.”
He didn’t understand the difference, but her words sparked another thought. “Perhaps that’s why they sang to me, the slaves in the hold of the
Standard
. Perhaps that is why I must keep my vow to see Aaron and his family freed.”
“You vowed—?”
“Yes. Before I left for Pennsylvania. I have no idea how, of course. Only the burning need. It’s worse, now.”
“Oh, Ethan.”
He shrugged. “Not much of a Randolph, am I?”
She held his face between her long, seamstress fingers. “I think you would feel the same if you were Hagar’s son, or Eli Mercer’s, or Maupin’s,” she said. “And I take a measureless pride in my husband.”
She kissed him then, and he returned her sweet generosity, before easing himself comfortably against her skirts.
“This Inner Light business, Judith. It’s dangerous sometimes, isn’t it?” he whispered, watching for the rise of the moon.
She rested her hand at his shoulder. “Yes, love.”
“Not that I regret today—who could? I used to dream of swimming with the dolphins who followed behind the
Standard
, remember?”
“I remember.”
“And today, I did.” He stared into the sky as the fast-moving clouds cleared their view of the constellations. “And … I think I talked with one, Judith.”
“My.”
“Not talked exactly, of course, but I heard—here, inside my head. He reminded me to kick. Are you laughing?”
“No, Ethan.”
He squeezed her hand and leaned his head deeper in her voluminous borrowed skirts. “Judith. If, sometime, anything should happen …”
“Nothing will happen.”
“Judith, listen. If the convulsions come over me again—”
“They did not, it was the cold!”
He sat up, brought her hand to the curve of his face before trying
again. “But, should they,” he insisted quietly, “or should my brothers, or any manner of local, commonwealth, state, or federal officials ever achieve their dearest wish to lock me away from you—”
“Ethan,” she pleaded, “don’t, please. I can’t bear this.”
“Oh, you’ve borne much worse, love,” he reminded her, stroking her tear tracks gently with his thumbs. “Judith. The thought of having you and Eli caring about what happened to me kept me alive after Fayette on the
Standard
. Did I ever tell you that?”
She shook her head.
“No. Exactly. I have been remiss. Out there in the water today, all I could think about were the things I’ve yet to tell you. Things like—Judith, you gave your father to me. And I, who thought that fathers were cold and distant and demanding … well, suddenly this wondrous man was calling me ‘son.’ … I’m not doing this in the right way.”
“It’s right,” she assured him, though she was still crying, not celebrating, as he imagined the Quaker manner of grief to be. He kissed their twinned fingers.
“Jordan will be that for you, Judith. And my sister is your sister. And Mother, yours. We have a family, you and I. Promise me you’ll stay with them if the need proves—”
“Yes, yes.” She pressed cold fingers to his lips and nodded.
“Done, then.” He pulled out his ever-present handkerchief. “Now, now, no more of this, or Dr. Blair will give you a proper blow and make your poor back as bruised as that of my hapless patient in there.”