in their customs. A way of comprehending all of those things beyond your station. He is a gentleman, of some education and schooling, as are many of the great slave-holders in this country.”
I must have looked confused because Corrine now said, “What do you think you’ve been studying down here?”
I said nothing. She continued on, “What we do is not idle exercise, nor Christian improvement. First you learn what they know, in the general. And then you learn them in the specific—their words and their hand. Own the man’s especial knowledge and you shall own the measure of the man. Then you might fashion the costume, Hiram, and make it yours to fit.”
I began my study the very next day. Quickly I ascertained that all the documents were drawn up by the same hand. Studying them, a portrait began to emerge. From the artifacts of the author’s life—the balance of his ledgers, his communications with his wife, his journal entries upon certain deaths, the accounting of consecutive harvests—the man, in all his traits and foibles, was summoned before me. I saw his daily habits, his routines, his particular philosophy, and by the final hour, having never known him, I could render nearly all of his features.
Corrine met me again, a week later, in the library. I provided her with all I had ascertained, and under her rigorous interrogation, I provided even more. What was his wife’s favorite flower? How regular were their departures? Did this man love his father? Had he yet turned gray? Where did he stand in society? And how ancient was his fortune? Was he given to the infliction of random cruelties? I responded to every query—I had, with my gift of memory, inhaled all the facts of the man’s life. But Corrine pushed on to questions that went beyond the facts that might be committed to memory to matters of interpretation. Was he a good man? What did he covet in life? Was he the sort to revel in perceived wrongs? The next night she picked up this line of inquiry and pushed me to construct the man down to the last loose thread of his waistcoat. On the following night of interrogation, I found that the more speculative questions came easier, and then by the last night they were so easy that I felt them to be matters of my own life. And that was the point of it all.
“Now,” she said. “You have read well enough to know this man to be in possession of a particular property of which he is most fond.”
“The jockey, yes,” I replied. “Levity Williams.”
“The same,” she said. “This man will need a day-pass for the road, a letter of introduction for the further portion, and finally free papers signed by his master. You will provide these.”
She pulled from her case a tin and handed it to me. Opening it, I saw a fine pen, and by handling it, I knew it was the same weight as the one so often employed by the object of my study.
“Hiram, the costume must fit,” she said. “The day-pass must be done with the same hurried disregard, the letters must have all that official flourish, and the freedom papers the same arrogance that is surely the right of these vile people.”
There was still the practical fact of copying his signature and penmanship. But here my memory and gift for mimicry triumphed. It was no different than what I’d done all those years ago, when Mr. Fields showed me the image of the bridge. Harder were the man’s beliefs and passions, and my ability to convey them with confidence and ease, as though they were my own. I never forgot that lesson. It was essential to what I became, to what I unlocked and saw.
I don’t know if those documents ever loosed Levity Williams. Everything we did was done under so much secrecy. But still, in forging these documents I felt something new arising in me and the new thing was power. The power extended out from my right arm, projected itself through the pen, and shot out through the wilderness, right at the heart of those who condemned us.
Soon this became regular labor. Every few weeks, Corrine presented me with a new package. And each week I fitted myself to the costume, so that when I finished, I was sometimes unsure of where I ended and where the Taskmaster began. I knew them. I knew their children, their wives, their