Otha as a remembrance of her. Then, posing as their owner, Bland would lead the family back out. Should they become separated, the passes would certify the right of Lydia and her children to be on the road. The plan was not simply daring in its steps, but in its timing. It was early August—a long way from those seemingly endless winter nights that offered an agent of the Underground so much cover. But it had to be done just then, for it was said that McKiernan was on hard times, and might, at any point, start selling off hands, and then our knowledge and planning would be lost.
20
IT WAS NOW THE end of summer, the slow season for rescues, so that we would have had little to do but await news of Bland’s mission. But fortunate for us, the time coincided with an annual gathering of all those who made legitimate and open war against slavery—concerned citizens who through the journals, oratory, and ballot fought for abolition. We in the Underground fought a secret war, covert, mystical, violent, but were quietly allied with the open one, and the August meeting was the only time when our two factions, hailing from across the country, could meet. The prospect of a reunion with Virginia, with Corrine, filled me with apprehension. After Bland’s departure we began to make our preparations and two weeks later we were off, Raymond, Otha, and I, aboard a private stage, so that as Bland now made his way south, we endeavored to make our way farther north, into the mountainous region of New York.
I was coming to understand that Raymond and Otha fought on both fronts of the war, were leading lights among the abolitionists while keeping their hands in the darker business into which I had been drawn. No station east of the Mississippi conducted more coloreds into freedom than those brought through Philadelphia. Adding to that fame was the odyssey of Otha from the depths of Alabama, from the depths of orphanage, into the waiting arms of his family. But on the second night of our carriage ride, we were joined by one whose regard outstripped us all. Moses.
I now knew her not simply as a creature of legend, but through the many exploits detailed in Raymond’s files. Still, when she stepped into the coach carrying with her the air of all her adventures, I was so dazzled I barely managed a greeting. She exchanged warm pleasantries with Raymond, nodded at Otha, and then held her gaze on me.
“How you holding up, friend?” she asked. It took a moment before I remembered that when she’d last seen me, I was recovering from Ryland’s assault.
“Well,” I said.
She had with her a walking stick, as she did that same night I’d seen her out in the woods, and now, in the daylight, I could see that it had across its body a series of carvings and glyphs. She saw me studying the thing and said, “My trusty walking stick, stripped from a branch of the sweet gum tree. Goes wherever I do.”
The coach rolled on. I found it incredibly difficult to not stare. Even without her power of Conduction, she was the most daring agent on the Underground. I had seen enough of the world, had read enough of Raymond’s files, to know that hers was a soul scarred, but not broken, by the worst of slavery. And I thought then back to my burial in the hole, the time in the jail and those nights when I was hunted as prey. Perhaps I needed it. Perhaps I had to see more of it, to know for myself how low and evil it all really could be. Raymond called this woman Harriet, a name she claimed to prefer over all her other titles. But still he gave her all the respect a soldier might give a great general, answering all her questions while posing few of his own in return, waiting upon her constantly though she rarely requested anything.
A day later, we rolled into the Convention, a campsite nestled in a cleared field, not far from the border with Canada. The land belonged to one of the great benefactors of the Underground, who it was said had plans to resettle a community of coloreds here to task only for themselves. Rain had come a day before our arrival, and as we unloaded from the coach, we sloshed in our brogans. The three of us claimed