“It’s all right, baby boy,” Kessiah said. “Go back. We have her now. It’s all gonna be all right.”
* * *
—
There was more, I assure you. But I cannot describe the fatigue and pain that was then upon me. I would like to give you some final notion, some look upon Thena’s face at the reunion with her daughter, recovered from among the lost. But I was then falling again, tumbling, amidst all the memory of my life, tumbling back through years, through Micajah Blands and Mary Bronsons, tumbling through my many lives, through free lovers and factory slaves, tumbling past Brothers White, tumbling back into the world.
34
I AWOKE IN A STRANGER’S bed, and like the morning a year ago when I had been conducted into the river with Maynard, all my muscles felt weighted. I looked over and saw sunlight peeking through the drawn blinds. I was in that rattled and confused state that one so often finds oneself in having just awakened, but slowly the memories of that night came back to me. Thena was gone.
I stood and, wanting to know the hour, walked gingerly over to the blinds, pulled at the rod, and brought in the sun. It was a blaring and bright January morning. When I turned to walk away, I fell to the floor, and likely would have lain there had Hawkins not then come through the door.
“Carried her off, did you?” he said. He was reaching down to help me back to the bed. I managed to sit and I felt life returning to my legs. “Carried her right off,” he said again.
I rubbed my eyes, then craned my neck toward Hawkins and said, “How?”
“Likely you know better than me,” he said.
“No, how?” I said again. “How did I get here?”
“Your girl called on us,” he said. “Your Sophia. Say she found you, just outside her cabin yesterday morning, shivering on the cold ground, fevered and mumbling. She sent for us in Starfall. We knew. Talked to Howell. Said you should be brought into town for treatment, of course.”
“Of course.”
“You know we had no angle on what you might say in your condition, who you might speak to and who it might come to. So we thought to keep you here. Which was a good thought, because this Thena is gone and though Howell is not precisely aware of all events, he will take note. And it is the oddest thing how her vanishing do match up well with your fevers. But we know nothing of it, do we? Not even here. Because ain’t no way you had anything to do with that. No way you would countermand Corrine. No way you would endanger the Virginia Underground.”
“No way,” I said.
“Just what I thought. Soon as you feel fit, you may dress yourself and tell Corrine that directly.”
By evening I felt somewhere close to myself. I dressed and walked down to the common room of the Starfall Inn. At a far table there were three men, agents, enjoying an ale. At the far end of the common room a barkeep stood in conversation with Corrine, who was just then laughing at some joke or story. She was in her lady clothes—face-paint, balloon dress, and purse. I stood at the edge of the room, just by the staircase, watching her for a moment, wondering why her, what was it in Virginia, or in the North, that had so awakened the spirit of revolution? And what was it that would make this woman, this lady, who had it all, risk it all? I looked out on the common room, marveling at what Corrine had managed right there in the heart of Starfall, taking root right there in the heart of slavery.
Presently, she looked over and saw me, and the mirthful look faded. She nodded toward a table by the fire. We walked over and as we were sitting down she said, “So you have done it.”
I did not answer.
“You need not reply. We knew what you were, and the possibility of such a thing has long been told since the stories of your grandmother. Hawkins knew.”
“I did not,” I said. “And it ain’t work quite how I wanted it.”
“But she is gone.”
“She’s gone,” I said.
“I don’t like it,” said Corrine. “It is a problem. I must be able to depend on my agents. I have to know their minds.”