The Lost Quilter Page 24

  Miss Evangeline put her head to one side and regarded Joanna through narrowed eyes, suddenly calm. “That was a very good answer. Get inside. There’s mending waiting in your basket.”

  Joanna obeyed, closing her fist around the coins in her pocket so the mistress would not hear them jingle.

  Miss Evangeline did not let Joanna leave the house for two weeks, but eventually necessity overcame her resolve and she sent Joanna out to the market for a spool of thread and a packet of needles. On her way home, a man in a long brown coat stopped her and asked to see her badge. “I ain’t got no badge, suh,” she said, showing him Miss Evangeline’s handwritten pass, praying he would not order her to some other task. “My master don’t hire me out.”

  He studied the pass. “You belong to Colonel Harper?”

  I belong to myself was her first thought, and then, I belong to Titus. And to Ruthie, and to Frederick so far away but never forgotten. And to Hannah. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. “Yes, suh.”

  He folded the pass and scrutinized her face, his gaze lingering as everyone’s did on her scar. Then, to her relief, he handed her the pass and waved her on her way.

  She saw the man again at the market a few days later; he gave her a tiny nod and looked away before she could drop her glance. Later that same week, she could have sworn he followed her as she went from street to street searching for the items Miss Evangeline had requested. The Union blockade led by the fearsome warship Niagara had successfully prevented ships from entering the Charleston port, and though a few swift blockade runners had managed to elude capture and bring in some supplies, the markets were all but depleted of their usual goods. But the brown-coated man did not demand to see her pass, nor did he speak to her again. He must have some official position in the city, she decided. A secret policeman, or a patroller. Nearly every other able-bodied buckra man his age in Charleston wore the uniform of one militia or another. He did not, so he must serve the Confederacy in another fashion.

  With the blockade in force, Fort Sumter taken, and Charleston under siege, Harper Hall became a sort of military compound, with messengers running back and forth with sealed letters and officers gathering at all hours to meet in the colonel’s study. Joanna and the other slaves were constantly in motion, scrambling to attend to their usual duties as well as the extra work the unexpected guests required. With so many buckra eyes and ears around, Joanna had to abandon Hannah’s reading lessons. The girl silently continued on her own, studying the letters on a sack of flour, peering at the cover of a book left open on a chair. Sometimes Joanna had to whisper a warning that she must take care not to seem too interested in the written word, and Hannah would gaze steadily up at Joanna, silent but sure, as if to say that she, of all people, knew the danger.

  Summer settled in, and the blockade continued. As Miss Evangeline neared her time, she wrote reams of letters to her father at Oak Grove, to friends scattered on plantations around the low country, to her aunt Lucretia a few short blocks away. Joanna dressed the mistress’s hair, listened to her complaints, and prepared the Harper baby’s layette, wishing she could fashion the soft, gentle fabrics into clothing for her own children. Hannah had outgrown her best dress long ago, and Ruthie grew so quickly Joanna had to make over her dress nearly twice a month. But whenever she asked the mistress for fabric, Miss Evangeline would shake her head and make vague excuses about the difficulties of obtaining goods because of the blockade. Joanna, who had seen the bales of cotton piled up on the wharf for the lack of ships to carry them away, knew that Marse Chester surely had stores of his own going to waste. Surely some could be spared for Joanna’s girls and all the Harpers’ slaves. Joanna was willing to learn to weave homespun to clothe the entire household. But when Joanna hesitantly suggested this, Miss Evangeline merely sighed, interlaced her fingers over her rounded abdomen, and said she would ask her father.

  One day Joanna was sewing in the back room off the kitchen when she heard the rattle of a familiar wagon—Marse Chester’s wagon. “Titus,” she murmured. Leaping to her feet, she ran outside only to find an unfamiliar slave driving Marse Chester’s wagon up to the carriage house.

  “Where Titus at?” she cried, clutching her sewing so tightly that a needle pierced the fleshy base of her thumb. “Why didn’t he come?”

  “Titus sick,” the man said, climbing down from the seat as Abner and the stable boys came to help him unload the wagon. “Yellow fever hit the quarter hard. His sister die yesterday. His auntie, two days before that.”

  Dizzy, Joanna slumped to the ground. “Pearl?” she said faintly. “The children?”

  “They still all right when I left.” The man peered at her quizzically, then drew back, chagrined. “You that yellow girl, Titus’s woman.”

  Joanna nodded.

  “Titus strong,” the man said quickly, too quickly. “He prolly be sound by time I get back. You want me carry him a message?”

  “Tell him I love him.” Joanna’s heart seemed to splinter in her chest, cutting her to the quick as the shards fell apart. Tavia. Auntie Bess. Titus, her beloved Titus. “Tell him he got to get better, for me and for Ruthie. Tell him to keep breathin’.”

  The man nodded, his eyes full of sympathy that offered Joanna no comfort.

  The wagon had brought cotton from Oak Grove, some in bales in hopes that Colonel Harper might be able to arrange for a blockade runner to speed them past the Union ships and earn Marse Chester some sorely needed cash. A smaller portion had been woven into coarse homespun, which Miss Evangeline presented to Joanna with a warning not to waste it. “Use the scraps for your patchwork,” she suggested. “I’m sure our other servants would be pleased if you furnished each bed with one of your creations, and the colonel would certainly approve of such frugality. Perhaps something like that other quilt you made, the one with the triangles and the intriguing stitches. It’s very quaint, quite lovely in its way.”

  Joanna was so terrified that the mistress might ask for a closer look that she almost forgot to thank her for the homespun. From a distance the quilted images blended in perfectly with the coarse muslin, but a careful inspection would reveal each unexpected irregularity, and Miss Evangeline had too sharp a mind to dismiss them as mistakes. But the mistress promptly forgot the Birds in the Air quilt, out of sight in the slaves’ dormitory above the kitchen, and Joanna soberly beckoned Ruthie to come closer so Joanna could measure her with a long strand of yarn. She blinked away tears as she cut out the pieces for the girl’s new dress, heart heavy with grief, imagining Titus tossing and turning in his hayloft bed, sweating and groaning with pain and fever. Or perhaps he was in Tavia’s cabin, tended by his niece. Pearl would care for him. Though she was young, she was strong; she had learned to be strong in the cotton rows, and now she would care for her brother and sister as her mother had done—

  It was too much to bear. Sewing allowed Joanna too much time alone with her thoughts. She welcomed errands that sent her from the busy house with its constant coming and going of soldiers and into the streets of Charleston, where she could forget her heavy heart in the challenge of finding the scarce goods Miss Evangeline craved.

  Midmorning one day in mid-July found Joanna running to the fish market to procure something for the colonel’s supper. “For once we won’t have guests, so get the best of whatever they have,” Miss Evangeline instructed Joanna and Sally, counting out coins into Joanna’s palm. “There must be nothing unsavory to distract my husband from the pleasure of my company.”

  “Should’ve sent you first thing this morning,” Sally grumbled after the mistress left the kitchen. “Everyone know best fish all gone by now.”

  “Just pour a lot of sauce over it and they won’t know no better.” Joanna adjusted her headscarf and snatched up her basket. The mistress was becoming increasingly capricious as her frustration with her confinement—and her husband’s inattention—grew, and the slaves bore the brunt of her bad temper. As Joanna hurried down the street, rain-soaked and muddy
from a recent downpour, a painful flash of memory struck: Titus fishing in the river just beyond the quarter, Titus bringing home a string of trout for Tavia to fry up, Titus watching Pearl and the younger children licking juices from their fingers and beaming at their uncle as they filled their bellies. Not a word had come to her about how her beloved fared, and in her desperation for news, she had begun sneaking into the colonel’s study whenever it was unoccupied and searching desk drawers and pigeonholes for letters from Oak Grove. She read about thriving crops, destructive storms, admonishments for Miss Evangeline to exercise moderately for her health, and countless other minutiae, but nothing about her own dearest ones. She tried to convince herself that the absence of her husband’s name from the letters was a good sign. Marse Chester so prized Titus that if he had been obliged to purchase a new driver, he surely would have mentioned it.

  Joanna reached the fish market and inspected the nearly empty stalls with a sigh, resigned to failure. She ought to just drop a line in the harbor herself for all the good this would do her. She made her way down the block, looking for something decent enough to please the mistress, when she spotted a small, handwritten sign tacked to a barrel of redfish: “All redfish and speckled trout half-price after noon.”

  Joanna glanced at the sky; noon could be no more than thirty minutes away. Sally was right that all the best fish were sold by morning, but if she waited and the fishmonger didn’t sell out, she could keep the difference for herself. The mistress would never know how much she had paid, and the blockade had sent prices soaring so high that she would not expect Joanna to return with change. The pass in her pocket did not say what time she was expected home, and given the scarcity of goods in the city, Miss Evangeline would never think to wonder why Joanna had taken so long to find what she needed. Joanna could conceal the unspent coins under her bed with her wages from her day at the soldiers’ laundry, her tin cornboiler, and her few other treasures. She would need money when she ran.

  Joanna made a show of considering the redfish before shaking her head and moving off through the crowd. Other colored folk milled about, some with badges pinned to their clothes showing they had been hired out, others with the same sober, wary look of slaves she was sure they saw in her own eyes. Free people of color worked their shops, their smiths, their fruiteries—and how Joanna envied them. It appalled her that some of those free colored folk owned slaves of their own, something she had never seen before coming to South Carolina. Colored folk should lift up other colored folk, not spend their hard-earned freedom working other slaves. To Joanna, that made them worse than the cruelest of the buckra.

  Joanna finished her other errands, and as soon as a bell in a distant church tower struck noon, she returned to the fishmonger and purchased a string of fine redfish. She wrapped the unspent coins in a bit of cloth so they would make no sound as she went about her work back at Harper Hall. She probably wouldn’t be able to sneak them from the big house to the slaves’ dormitory above the kitchen until much later, and until then, she had to be careful.

  “You there, wench.”

  A hand on Joanna’s shoulder spun her around, and she faced the man in the long brown coat. There was a glint of intelligence in his green eyes, but she quickly remembered to drop her gaze to his boots. Buckra hated being looked in the eye; they thought it impudent. “Yes, suh?”

  “Come with me,” he said, his voice low, his grip on her shoulder firm. “Don’t make me drag you.”

  Heart pounding, she allowed him to steer her away from the busy market, away from the confusion and down a secluded alley. Her hands clenched around the basket, but she forced herself to remain calm, clear-headed. As soon as he released her to unfasten his trousers, she would strike him with the basket and run.

  But he did not let go. He guided her into a doorway, glanced over his shoulder, and regarded her appraisingly. “You read that sign.”

  Her heart was in her throat. “No, suh, Marse. I can’t read.”

  “Don’t lie to me. I’ve been watching you. You read that sign, then you bided your time and came back when the fish were half-price.”

  “His fish always half-price after midday. Everybody know that.”

  “You’re quick-witted but wrong. That lie could be easily disproved.” He released her and took a step back, searching her with his eyes. She held the basket in front of her as if it would keep him at bay, but she no longer feared he meant to molest her. But if he reported that she could read, it would be far worse for her. She could be beaten or killed, separated from Ruthie and Hannah and Titus forever. No matter what this strange man said, she would not admit she could read.

  “I’d like to hire you.”

  Hire her? “My marse don’t hire me out, suh.”

  He shook his head, impatient. “This has nothing to do with your master, do you understand? You help us, and we’ll help you. If we succeed, we may help all of your kind.”

  Joanna risked a quick look at his face and saw only clear determination there, no malice, no deceit. Still…“Don’t know what you mean, suh,” she mumbled, looking to his muddy boots again.

  “You’re sensible, you’re well placed, and you can read,” the man said as if she had not spoken. “You could be our eyes and ears within the headquarters of the military defense of Charleston. You can intercept letters, overhear conversations, gather information, and I’ll pass it along to those in a position to use it. You can help end this siege, Joanna, and bring a swift conclusion to the war. Wouldn’t you like to see the Confederacy fall? Wouldn’t you like to see an end to slavery?”

  How did he know her name? “You could be anybody,” she said, meeting his gaze boldly. “Maybe you think to trap me, get me to defy my marse, and get me killed.”

  “Why would I bother? You’re just one housemaid. What would I possibly have to gain?”

  “What I got to gain?”

  He smiled grimly. “Aside from freedom for your people if we succeed? I can pay you a little. The rest of your reward will have to wait until after the war is won.”

  She had not given any thought to a reward. “That ain’t what I want. I got two children here with me, two girls. I get you your secrets, but you got to help me when I need you. I get caught in the marse colonel’s study and he kill me for it, you buy my girls and get them north to freedom. My marse try to sell them, you buy them and set them free. He try to sell me, same thing. My family never get split up, never get sold away down south. That’s it. That’s my price.”

  He needed little time to mull it over. “Agreed.”

  Joanna nodded and let out a deep breath she had not realized she had been holding. “What I got to do?”

  Quickly the man explained that she should gather information about troop movements, supplies, and defenses, and report to him once a week, every Friday in that same alley. If she could not get away from Harper Hall at the appointed time, she should set her basket on the kitchen windowsill as a signal. If she discovered news so important that it could not wait, she should go to the market and drop her basket in front of the stall where she had purchased the redfish. “I’ll be watching you,” he said. “I’ll know.”

  He tugged on the brim of his hat and turned away.

  “Wait,” she said. “Who you be? What your name?”

  He smiled. “I’m with Mr. Lincoln’s army, and you may call me Mr. Lewis.”

  With that, he strolled from the alley as if utterly unconcerned and melted into the busy throng of craftsmen, slaves, gentlemen, and passersby. By the time Joanna reached the street, he was gone.

  Joanna’s theft of Marse Chester’s letters to Miss Evangeline had trained her well for Mr. Lewis’s assignment. She had learned when Colonel Harper was most likely to be away from the study; she had trained herself to wake in the middle of the night, leave the dormitory without waking anyone, and creep silently across the cobblestones and through the darkened house. She had learned how to open the second desk drawer, the one that stuck and opened with a loud sque
ak, without making a sound by lifting the handle just so, and she had discovered a nook between the bookcases where she could quickly and invisibly read the news from Oak Grove, unseen by anyone who might cross the hallway or pass outside the windows. In the day, she worked upon her sewing and mending on the front porch instead of the back piazza so she could monitor the comings and goings of messengers and eavesdrop through the open window on discussions in the colonel’s study. She silently repeated unfamiliar names of people and places until she knew them by heart, for she dared not steal paper and ink and write down the secrets she discovered. If even a single sentence on a scrap of paper were found on her, it would mean her death.

  Friday came. She concealed her impatience as she waited for the mistress to send her on an errand, and when no errand appeared, Joanna hid the last spool of black thread and said that she had used it up mending the colonel’s trousers and needed more to finish the job. A few minutes later, pass in hand, coins jingling in her apron pocket, she ran off to meet Mr. Lewis in the alley off Market Street.

  At first she thought she was alone, but a movement in the shadows suddenly revealed him. “Good girl,” he greeted her in a murmur, then took her elbow and steered her deeper into the alley.

  He listened intently as she told him everything she had learned since their first meeting—new fortifications being built around the city, the appointment of a Cuban soldier of fortune as General Beauregard’s chief of artillery, the names of Charleston’s most successful blockade runners and their ships. Mr. Lewis kept his face impassive, so she could not discern whether he considered her news good or bad, helpful or worthless. For all she could tell, he already knew everything she told him.

  “Have you seen any maps?” he asked when she had finished. “Anything to indicate troop movements, future offensives, plans of attack?”