His voice rose. “I said to drive.”
Thomas climbed down from the bench and marched toward the back. Instead of looking toward Alden, he addressed Isaac. “When Master Payne tells you to get into the carriage, you get into the carriage.”
“But the missus—”
“Won’t know a thing if none of us tell her,” Thomas said, his deep voice resounding down the quiet road.
Alden leaned forward to whisper, as if Eliza could hear them from the house. “I won’t say a word.”
Thomas leaned against the wheel. “Neither will I.”
Isaac looked at one man then the other. “I’d never tell,” he finally said.
“Then it’s settled.” Alden inched away from the boy and grasped the side of the trunk before climbing back down the wheel. “Honorable men never break their promises.”
Inside the carriage, Isaac sat as close to the window as possible, his nose pressed against the glass, his feet tucked under his thighs. Thomas snapped the reins, and the steady beat of horse hooves drummed the route toward home.
What would the other students at Harvard think about his riding south in a carriage alongside a slave? Many of them were abolitionists, but their rhetoric against the institution of slavery was born out of blind passion. They knew nothing about the practicalities of running a Southern plantation that provided the tobacco they liked to smoke. Nor were they actually doing anything to abolish it.
Talk was easy. Cheap. Both students and professors liked to rant about freedom for all men—and pontificate about the evil Southern planters—but in Alden’s opinion, none of them were willing to sacrifice a thing—especially not their cigars—to help free the slaves.
The interior of the brougham was warmer than outside, but the boy beside him could still catch pneumonia. Alden reached under the seat and pulled out a blanket. “Put this around you.”
Isaac glanced down at the blanket, but he didn’t touch it. “I told you, my blood runs hot.”
“But your skin doesn’t,” Alden said, holding out the blanket.
“I’m fine, mister.”
“Suit yourself.” Alden lowered the blanket. “Are you always this defiant?”
“Obstinate is what the missus says.”
“Are you always obstinate?”
“Only when I have a mind to do what I want.”
Alden leaned back against the seat. “If you get ill, you won’t be able to work in my father’s tobacco fields.”
“I don’t aim to work in your father’s fields either way.”
“I suppose I can’t blame you for that.”
The boy’s chin climbed a notch. “I’ve got plans for my life.”
Alden eyed the boy again. He looked like he was about nine years old, but he talked as if he were a young man. “When we reach Scott’s Grove, you’ll want to keep those plans to yourself.”
Pale gray light slowly rekindled the morning as they journeyed toward the Shenandoah Valley. On the left side of the road was a grove of spindly looking trees. Isaac’s gaze was fixated on the mountain range silhouetted against the horizon on the right. The courtyards up at Harvard were blanketed with fresh snow when Alden left Massachusetts two days ago, but there was no snow yet for Christmas in Virginia.
“Out of curiosity,” Alden said, “what exactly are your plans?”
Isaac turned toward him, his face serious. “I’m going to California.”
That made two of them, then. “And what are you planning to do there?”
“Find a field of gold.”
He smiled. “I don’t think it grows out there like corn.”
