The Last Runaway. Tracy Chevalier
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change before those affected are fully aware.’
Honor was only half listening, for threaded through his words was the sound she had been expecting since leaving Wellington: the uneven hoofbeats of Donovan’s horse approaching from behind.
He drew up alongside them, smelling of whisky and stale smoke. ‘Honor Bright,’ he said, ‘you didn’t think you could leave town without a goodbye, did you? That wouldn’t be polite, after all. Wouldn’t be friendly.’
Adam Cox pulled on the reins to stop the wagon. ‘Hello, friend. Thee knows Honor?’
‘This is Mr Donovan, Adam,’ Honor broke in. ‘I met him on the road to Wellington.’ She did not add that he was Belle’s brother: that would not help Adam’s opinion of the milliner.
‘I see. I thank thee for any kindness thee has showed Honor during this difficult time.’
Donovan chuckled. ‘Oh, Honor’s been quite the fixture in town, ain’t you, darlin’?’
Adam frowned at the coarse familiarity. However, he knew no other way to be than honest. ‘I am taking her to live in Faithwell. If thee has finished, we will continue.’ He held up the reins expectantly.
‘What, you gonna marry her now the sister’s gone?’
Honor and Adam flinched and leaned away from each other. Honor felt physically ill.
‘I have a responsibility to look after Honor,’ Adam said. ‘She is like a sister to me, and will live with my sister-in-law and me as family.’
Donovan raised his eyebrows. ‘Two sisters-in-law and no wife? Sounds cozy for you.’
‘That’s enough, Donovan.’ Honor’s sharp tone was almost as surprising as her dropping of ‘Mr’. Adam blinked.
‘Ah, got your claws out! All right, all right, my apologies.’ Donovan half bowed from his saddle, then dismounted. ‘Now, I’ll just have a look in your wagon. Down you get.’
‘What reason could thee have to search our things?’ Adam demanded, the colour rising in his face. ‘We have nothing to conceal.’
‘Adam, allow him,’ Honor whispered as she climbed down. ‘It is easier that way.’
Adam remained on the seat. ‘No man has the right to search another’s possessions without cause.’
The violence when it came was so swift Honor caught her breath. One moment Adam was sitting hunched but defiant on the seat of the wagon; the next, he was lying in the dust of the road, crying out and holding his wrist while blood spurted from his nose. Honor ran and knelt by him, holding his head in her lap and mopping the blood with a handkerchief.
In the meantime, Donovan had opened her trunk once again, pawing through the contents and scattering them about on the wagon bed; he did not remark on the signature quilt. Then he lifted the seat they had been perched on and rummaged about. Satisfied at last, he jumped down and stood over them. ‘Where’s the nigger, Honor? You know you can’t lie to me, Quaker gal.’
Honor looked up at him. ‘I do not know,’ she was able to say honestly.
Donovan held her gaze for a long moment. Though weary from his Saturday night carousing, his eyes were still lit with interest, and Honor found them mesmerising, for in the clear brown were little flecks of black like pieces of bark. He was still wearing her key under his shirt – she could see its outline.
‘All right. Don’t know why, but I believe you. Don’t you ever lie to me, though. I’m gonna keep my eye on you. I’ll be paying you a visit over in Faithwell soon.’ He swung up on to his bay horse. Turning its head back towards Wellington, he paused. ‘My sister’s bonnet suits you, Honor Bright. Them colours are from a blanket we had when we was little.’ He clucked his tongue and the horse sprang away into a gallop.
Honor wished he would not tell her such things.
In the distance another wagon was coming. Honor helped Adam to his feet so that he would not be further shamed lying in the dirt in front of strangers. He clutched at his wrist.
‘Break or sprain?’ she asked.
‘Sprain, I think, thanks be to God. It just needs binding.’ Adam shook his head at the mess of Honor’s things in the wagon. ‘What did he think he would find? He knows we won’t have any liquor or tobacco, or indeed anything of value.’ He turned his bewildered eyes on Honor, who had retrieved his hat from the side of the road and was dusting it off.
She handed it to him. ‘He is looking for a runaway slave.’
Adam stared at her until he had to move to make way for the approaching wagon. He said nothing until they were seated again, his wrist bound with one of Honor’s neck cloths, and heading once more towards Faithwell. Then he cleared his throat. ‘It seems thee is quickly learning the ways of Americans.’ He did not sound pleased.
Faithwell, Ohio
6th Month 5th 1850
Dear Mother and Father,
It has been a very long journey from Bridport to Faithwell. The best part of my arrival was not lying down in a bed I knew I would not have to leave the next day, but seeing your letter awaiting me. Adam Cox told me it has been here two weeks. How can it have arrived so long before me when it had to make the same journey? I cried when I saw thy hand, Mother. Even though it was written just a week after I left, I relished every bit of news, because it made me feel I was still at home, taking part in all the daily events of the community. I had to remind myself by looking at the date of the letter that thy words and the things thee describes are two months old. Such a delay is so disorienting.
I am sorry to have to tell you that Matthew Cox has passed: the consumption he suffered from overtook him four weeks ago. This means the Faithwell household I have joined is now very different from what was anticipated. Instead of two married couples and me, there are just three of us, with tenuous ties to one another. It is awkward, though it is early days yet and I hope to feel more settled eventually, rather than a visitor, as I do now. Adam and Abigail, Matthew’s widow, have been welcoming. But Grace’s death has been a great shock to Adam, who of course had been looking forward to marrying and settling his wife into a new life in Ohio. My appearance was also a surprise, for the letter informing him that I had decided to accompany Grace to America never arrived.
I often find myself thinking of how Grace would have coped, how she would have smoothed the rough edges of the circumstances with her laughter and good humour. I try to emulate her, but it is not easy.
Adam’s house in Faithwell – or Abigail’s house, perhaps I should say, for she owned it with Matthew – is so different from what I am used to. I feel when I am in it as if the air around me has shifted and is not the same air I breathed and moved in back in England, but is some other substance. Can a building do such a thing? It is a new house, built about three years ago, of rough pine boards that smell of resin. The wood makes me think of a doll’s house: it lacks the solidity of stone that made our own home on East Street feel so safe. The house creaks constantly, with the wood responding to the wind and the moisture in the air – it is very humid here, and they say it will get worse later in the summer. Apart from my bedroom it is spacious, for one thing America has is much land on which to build. There are two floors, and everyone knows when others go from one to the other, as the boards squeak so. The downstairs comprises a parlour, kitchen and what Americans call the sick room – a bedroom off the kitchen where whoever is ill at the time stays to be looked after. Apparently Americans get fever so often that they need such a room set aside for them – which is troubling, given what I have just witnessed with Grace.
There are three bedrooms upstairs: the largest, which Abigail would have shared with her husband, a medium-sized that Adam was expecting to share with Grace, and a tiny room that would have been for the baby if there were one. They have put me there, for now; the arrangement feels temporary,