“I’ll still find it.”
“Then you’ll be a wealthy man.”
Isaac studied him for a moment, as if trying to decide if he were going to trust him. Then he leaned forward. “What are your plans?”
The carriage hit another rut, and Alden grasped the rail on the side to steady himself. He wasn’t about to share that information with this boy or anyone else, at least until after he spoke with his father. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”
Isaac eyed the interior of the brougham. “Do you reckon you could drive this all the way to California?”
“I think passage on a ship would be the best option.”
“Not if you get seasick.”
“It’s definitely a risk to consider,” he said. “Are a few months of seasickness worth a field of gold?”
Isaac seemed to ponder his words. “What’s Scott’s Grove like?”
“It’s much bigger than the Duvall farm. My father has at least a hundred slaves working the tobacco fields.”
“I don’t know who my father is,” Isaac told him. “But my mother was a princess.”
Alden’s eyebrows rose. “A princess?”
“She was the most beautiful woman in all of Virginia,” Isaac said. “Her father was an African king.”
“So does that make you a prince?”
When Isaac nodded his head, Alden had to keep himself from smiling. Unlike his father and Eliza, he believed that slaves felt just as deeply as their owners. He didn’t want to hurt this boy.
“Missus Eliza said you were going to school to learn the law.”
Alden nodded. “That’s correct.”
“You must be right smart.”
“School doesn’t make a person smart,” Alden said. In fact, he’d thought himself to be quite smart until he started taking classes at Harvard. Then he realized he didn’t know much of anything.
“It sure don’t hurt,” Isaac said.
“I suppose not.”
“One day, I’m going to school too.”
Alden glanced out the window at a lake beside them, at the gaggle of geese that peppered its shores. Isaac reminded him of his childhood friend, a Negro boy named Benjamin. Except Alden hadn’t really seen Benjamin’s light-brown skin when they were children. Didn’t ever think about him as a slave. Benjamin was three years younger, and Alden treated him like a brother.
They used to race through the halls of the plantation house when it was too cold to play in the forest outside. They built forts in the drawing room, played Snakes and Ladders on the floor, and when his father was gone, they bowled in the cellar with his cricket ball.
They’d been the best of friends until his father sent Benjamin out to work in the tobacco fields the day Benjamin turned twelve. That year, Alden had been sent to Richmond to attend a private school.
He’d missed his friend when he came home, but he had been too distracted by the flurry of schoolwork to think much about the differences in their positions. Their futures. It wasn’t until he went to Harvard that his eyes were opened to the cruelty of an institution that seemed commonplace in Virginia.
“What about your mother?” Isaac asked.
Alden looked back at him. “What about her?”
“Is she a princess?”
Alden pondered the question. “More like a queen, I suppose.”
