“I do,” she said. “I do. But I need reminding every now and again.”
“I don’t doubt you,” I said. “But my grandmother, Santi Bess, she was before all of this, and this Conduction, it belongs to something older than the Underground. And as sure as I must be loyal to you, I have got to be loyal to that.”
“And the other girl, this Sophia? Will you conduct her too?”
“I will be loyal to her,” I said. “That is what I can say. Loyal to what she has done for me. This the second time she saved me. I cannot forget what I am working for, and there can be no distance between what I am working for and who I am working for.”
The barkeep brought over two warm ciders. The agents were still in their chatter. I drank from mine and said, “These people are not cargo to me. They are salvation. They saved me and should I be presented with any instance where I feel I must save them, I will do it.”
“Well then, we’ll just have to make sure no such instance arises,” Corrine said.
“And how will you do that?” I asked. “We are here in the heart of it, in the maw of the beast. Even with you having her title. What more could possibly be done?”
Now it was Corrine’s turn to be silent, and this she did, drinking from her cider and staring out on the common room, marveling at her own work.
* * *
—
It took another year to understand what Corrine’s cryptic meaning was, but I think now I should have seen the outlines of it all the time. My father died that following fall, and at his inquest the facts of his last days became clear. He had driven Lockless completely into debt—but had been rescued by Corrine Quinn under the stipulation that the entire manse and all who remained within its borders become her property.
And so the month after he died, we began a transformation of the property so that it resembled in form and function Bryceton, which is to say, on its face, an estate of old Virginia, but on its interior, a station on the Underground. We arranged to have the few remaining Tasked quietly dispersed into the country of upstate New York, New England, and some areas of the Northwest where Underground men had their share of land.
And with each of these sent out, we replaced them with agents, who continued their work throughout the state and even farther into those states that bordered. To the outside world it was Corrine’s property. But the stewardship of the estate fell to me. It is not how I imagined. But there I was, putative lord of the manor, agent for the Lockless station.
* * *
—
Two days after Thena’s departure, Hawkins drove me back up to Lockless. It was evening when we arrived, and my father was being served his supper. I looked in on him and he smiled.
“All better now, are you?” he said.
I leaned down low next to him, so that the cowrie shell necklace, which I still wore, shook a little and fell out from under my shirt.
“Better,” I said to my father. I did not bother to look at him as I said this. I was not interested in his response. But I wanted him to know that I now knew all that he knew, that to forgive was irrelevant, but to forget was death.
Then I walked down to the far end of the Street. I found Sophia in the cabin, over the fire, preparing supper. Carrie was on the bed, pulling gently at the cover and calling out various infant nothings. When Sophia saw me, she smiled, walked over, and kissed me softly. Then, while she finished dinner, I played with Carrie. We ate together in the far corner, the same corner where I once ate with Thena. I held Carrie on my lap, and pulled off small bits of ash-cake for her. Sophia just sat there watching us for a moment, smiling, and then she ate.
We all slept up in the loft that night, for even though Thena was gone, it felt somehow proper to respect, and observe, her place in the house. Halfway through the night, we were still awake. Sophia was looking up at the gabled ceiling, with Carrie asleep on her bosom. I had my fingers in Sophia’s thick hair, gently twisting the strands into nothing in particular.
“So what about us?” I asked. “What are we now?”
Sophia shifted Carrie off her bosom, so that the baby lay between the two of us, and turned on her side until she was facing me.
“We are what we always were,” she said. “Underground.”