AS MY CARRIAGE sped away, my thoughts were of Caroline and how desperate she would feel to think I had abandoned her once again. However, I knew well that her father was capable of carrying out his threat if I did not leave.
“Nigra!” he had called me. I had been called that name before, and the sound of it brought terror. Fighting the wretched memories, I closed my eyes and leaned back against the seat; when I felt something moist on my waistcoat, I glanced down to see blood on my fingers. I had an aversion to blood and fought for control as I unraveled my cravat to press it against my neck wound.
I opened the carriage window to take in gulps of cold air while reminding myself that soon I would be home, where Robert would be waiting for me. He would know what to do.
AN ALARMED ROBERT took me straight to the study, where he removed the bunched-up cravat to study the wound. “It is a small cut and has stopped bleeding,” he said reassuringly. I gratefully swallowed the brandy he handed me, but it wasn’t until I drank the second one that my breathing came more naturally.
“Come.” Robert led me to my favorite wingback chair. “Sit by the fire.”
I sank down, head in hands. Everything I had worked for was gone. All of my carefully guarded secrets were exposed! I was ruined. “I don’t know what to do, Robert! I don’t know what to do.”
“I will do all I can to help you. Is it Miss Caroline?”
“Yes! Yes, she is so sick! But her father . . . I have to leave Philadelphia. I have five days.”
Robert took a step back. “You must leave?”
“Her father threatened to kill me if I did not leave.”
“For good?” he asked.
I nodded. “There’s more,” I said, staring up at him.
“More?” Uncharacteristically, he sat down.
I worked to clear my thoughts. “I need to tell you everything, Robert,” I said. “You need to know who I am!”
“You’re upset. This isn’t necessary—” he began.
“Yes, it is necessary!” I shouted. I needed him to listen. He had to know the truth. If I lost him, at least I would know where he stood. I began to speak before I lost my nerve. “When I was thirteen, I found out that my mother was a mulatto. Before then, I thought I was white. Marshall Pyke owned the plantation where I was born, and I had no idea that he was my father. My grandmother raised me to believe that I was her son and that my grandfather, who had died, was my father.”
It was as though the words released a lid from a fermented jar of memories, and those most fiercely suppressed spilled out. I was a child of six again, back at Tall Oaks.
“Marshall was an awful man, Robert. I was hiding under the bed when he pushed Miss Lavinia into the bedroom. He kept hitting her. ‘Please, no, Marshall,’ she said over and over. I put my hands over my ears, but I could still hear what else he was doing to her. I was so scared I wet myself, and after he was gone, I was too ashamed to crawl out and comfort Miss Lavinia.”
“That must have been terrible,” Robert said.
“It was!” My voice sounded strange—high and childlike—and I gripped the arms of my chair. “Only days after I found out he was my real father, he had me tied up and taken down to the quarters so I could be sold for a slave. That night there was a house fire, and Grandmother died in it. I heard her calling me for help, and I couldn’t get to her, Robert! The next morning, when I broke free, I found a gun.”
“You don’t have to continue,” Robert said, but I silenced him with a wave of my hand.
“Before I shot him, I wanted him to look at me, and I called out to him, ‘Father! Father!’ When he looked at me, I pulled the trigger. He just blew apart. And then, oh God, bits of him stuck to me!” I felt again the damp bloodstain on my chest and gave a shuddering sob.
“Come now. That is in the past. It’s best we leave it there,” Robert said, rising and coming over to me. “Come, stand up and we’ll take off your waistcoat. I’ll clean it later.”
His help brought me back, and by the time I sat again, I felt more myself.
“Would you care for some tea?” he asked.
“Did you hear what I said? I killed my father.”
“I understand,” he said. “There are circumstances that might drive us to do things that appear wrong, but who is to judge? You were fighting for your life.”
“Do you think so? Do you believe that?”
“I do,” he said.
“I was! I was fighting for my life.”
“And you were only thirteen.”
“But now I’ve ruined everything. Caroline’s father . . .” With that, I told of the debacle at Stonehill and of Mr. Cardon’s ultimatum. “I had to leave Caroline behind. I had no choice,” I said. “And now I have to leave here. I don’t know where to go, and how can I leave without Caroline?”
“Who is to say that Miss Caroline won’t join you after she is well?”
I looked at him. Was that possible? It was at least a ray of hope. “And will you come with me?” I asked, though I dreaded his answer.
“Whatever you decide, I will be there to assist you.”
“Even now?” I asked. “With everything you know?”
“I’d already guessed at your burden,” he said.
I stared over at him. “How did you know?”
He met my eyes. “I recognized in you the struggle I have within myself.”
I looked at him with new eyes. Of course! Why had I not seen it before? “Are you half white?” I asked.
“I am,” he said. “I am also half Negro.”
“You speak of this as though you carry no shame,” I said.
“There is no shame in who I am,” he said. “There is only shame in how I came to be, and that is not my burden to carry.”
“So you don’t blame me for—”
“Your road is one I might easily have taken, given your coloring. Your choices are not for me to judge.”
I might have stood to embrace the man, so grateful was I to him. Instead I offered him the only words that came. “Thank you, Robert, for being my friend.”
EARLY THE NEXT morning a sealed envelope arrived. Inside was a card with only two boldly printed words: “Day One.” There was no question that Mr. Cardon meant to carry out his threat. A message from the museum came later in the day to inform me that my funding for the excursion was withdrawn. I doubted not Mr. Cardon’s involvement.
Though I was desperate to get word to Caroline, I could think of no safe way to reach her. I had no choice but to leave and get myself settled elsewhere. In a few months I would send funds and a carriage in hopes that Caroline and the child would come to me.
It was Robert’s suggestion that he stay on until the house was sold. After the sale, he would release the staff and join me. New York seemed the most likely destination.
WE MOVED QUICKLY and purchased a small house nearby in Robert’s name. There we stored some of the best furniture, the portraits of the Burtons, and the finest of the china and silver.
Mr. Cardon’s envelopes continued to mark the days, but on the morning of day four, the usual morning message did not arrive. In the late afternoon, a black-edged note came from Mrs. Cardon, stating that both Caroline and the child had died.
I took the note into my darkened study, where I sat throughout the night, holding tight to the printed words, too shocked to make sense of it.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, day five, I was still in my study, staring about the oak-paneled room, now stripped bare but for the dark blue draperies shielding the sun and the worn leather chair in which I sat. I could not believe that Caroline was gone. Surely it was a lie. But it had come from Mrs. Cardon. I wanted to go to Stonehill to see for myself, but I remembered only too well Mr. Cardon’s threat, and I dared not chance it.
There came a quick rap on the door, and from behind Robert, Henry rushed in. “I jus’ found him! Pan down in the Car’linas! I’s right! They sell him for a slave! But I found him! He at a place in the Car’linas,” he said excitedly. “Place called Southwood.”
Caught up in my own tragedy, I had forgotten about Pan. “Henry, I’m not—” I began, but in his wild enthusiasm, he cut in.