“I need help with cleaning too and changing beds. We use real linens at this hotel.”
Fanny crinkled her nose for a moment, but then composed herself. “I can make beds.”
“Very good,” Isabelle replied. “I suppose you can stay here and work until your husband returns.”
“When he returns with his gold, we’ll be able to live wherever we want.”
Isabelle leaned forward to pat the woman’s bare hand.
Chapter 4
Scott’s Grove
December 1853
The stench of decaying leaves seeped between the walls of the curing barn and out into the yard. Alden hesitated by the door, afraid of what he would find inside. His father hadn’t spoken to him during their walk to the barn, hadn’t asked about his journey or his last term of school. Silence was one of the many weapons in his arsenal, and often it felt more destructive than his words.
Moses waited patiently beside Alden as Master Payne stepped into the door of the barn and returned with another of his weapons, a long black whip, the strips of leather coiled at his side. “It’s time for you to grow up, Alden.”
His heart beat faster as he eyed the whip. “I’ve already grown up.”
“You’ve been pandering too long.”
Bitterness boiled in Alden’s throat, his heart slamming against his chest. His father had no idea what he had been doing, and he didn’t care to know. “I’ve been studying law, not pandering to anyone.”
His father held out the whip, but Alden didn’t take it. “Where is Benjamin?” he asked.
“By the pillory.”
Alden followed his father and Moses into the barn, between the wooden racks and ropes that held the tobacco as it dried each summer and fall. Light slipped through the cracks in the walls, falling on scraps of dried leaves and straw that cluttered the dirt floor.
The wooden pillory was located at the other end of the barn, positioned by the back entrance so their slaves could see them whenever they entered the barn. Usually Jeptha flogged the slaves who’d tried to run, but his father was seething in his anger—it seemed at both Benjamin and Alden.
Was it because he and Benjamin had once been friends? Or because Alden had been determined to finish law school? Or perhaps his father finally realized that Alden hated the institution called slavery.
Benjamin’s head wasn’t in the pillory, but his legs were shackled to it, his face bloodied, back bare. At one time, his friend’s gaze had been filled with mischievousness—laughter—but all Alden saw now was rage, like the anger that boiled in his father.
What would his fellow students do if they saw Benjamin here in chains? The abolitionists would be livid at the injustice of it. It might even incite them to give up their cigars.
Moses growled as John spoke to Benjamin. “Apparently Jeptha and I haven’t given you enough incentive to stay on the plantation,” he said, his voice steely and cool. “This time you won’t forget to stay where God meant for you to be.”
Benjamin jerked against the shackles around his ankles. “You don’t speak on behalf of God, John Payne.”
He leaned toward the young man. “Master Payne.”
Benjamin stilled, his gaze strong. “Only master I have is Master Jesus.”
Alden’s father unwound the whip, cracked it toward the pillory. Alden flinched as the sound echoed through the barn. He remembered the lashes on his own backside when he’d been a child, after he’d convinced Benjamin to go swimming in Morris Creek. The bruises had lasted for weeks.
His father held the handle out toward him again. “You must step into your role, son.”
Alden looked at the whip as if it were a black snake, one of the deadly moccasins that hid along the banks of the creek. And courage swelled inside him. A moccasin only killed those who didn’t respect its territory. Those who weren’t paying attention.
He met Benjamin’s gaze, and his old friend glared back at him, as if he thought Alden wanted to keep him in chains too.
Alden glanced back up at his father. “He only wants freedom, like all of us.”
“Freedom to do what?” his father asked, his voice rising.
