In one gangly motion, the president grabbed a brass cylinder from his desk, swung his feet to the ground, and rose. There was a window just to his right, stretching almost from the floor to the ceiling. From this second-story vista, he could see for miles to the south. He twisted the brass tube, and the thing expanded to three times its original length. It was a telescope, and Lincoln now raised it to his eye for a long look. He spotted the buildings of Alexandria in the distance. The docks on the waterfront were busy, as usual. The city was a rail terminal for the whole South-travelers destined for Washington by train would end up here, where they could get on another train and cross the Long Bridge or take a ferry to the wharves on Sixth Street. Lincoln could see one of these boats approaching Washington now. He might have watched it come in, except for the knock on his door.
“Yes?” called out the president, wearily. John Hay, his young secretary, stepped inside.
“Mr. President, perhaps we should get started. The lines will only grow longer today, especially if we don’t get through a few of these people before your other meetings this morning.”
“I guess somebody has to keep me on time, no matter how badly I want to avoid these office seekers,” said Lincoln with a forced smile. “All right, Hay, send one of them in.”
Lincoln returned his spyglass to its place on the desk. If he had continued to look through the window, he would have observed the George Page, a ferry steamer that shuttled people between Alexandria and Washington. On this trip, it was moving in Lincoln’s direction. The ship stopped at a dock and unloaded a handful of passengers.
The last person to disembark was a man who had made it to Alexandria only the day before, after spending the night in Richmond. He slipped a bank note to a porter and asked him to look after his trunk-he would send for it in a few hours. Unencumbered, the man now turned his sights to the city spread before him.
Mazorca had arrived.
Lucius awoke before anybody else in the Bennett manor. Truth be told, he had hardly slept after watching Portia and Joe ride away. Nerves had kept him up for long stretches. Even when he dozed fitfully, his head was full of questions and worries: Where were they now? How far had they gone? What if somebody saw them on the roads? It occurred to him that he might never know their fate. If Portia and Joe were caught between here and Charleston, they would be brought back. That would probably happen in the next few days, if it were to happen at all. If they were captured outside of South Carolina, their fate would depend on whether they revealed who owned them. They would be held in prison until they confessed or someone claimed them. If neither came to pass, they would be sold at auction.
If they actually made it all the way to Washington, thought Lucius, he probably would not hear about it. Confirmation simply would not come. They did not know how to write, and he did not know how to read. Even if Portia and Joe had somebody do the writing for them, there was no chance of Bennett letting a note pass through to him. So Lucius figured no news would be good news-or at least it would not be bad news. He would have to learn to cope with the anxiety of not knowing.
A rooster crowed in the distance. Lucius barely noticed as he wandered around the mansion. He moved with the careful silence of a thief, avoiding the squeaky floorboards. The house sometimes seemed empty during the daytime, with no family in it. Now it was desolate. Bennett only occupied a fraction of its rooms-mainly a study, the dining room, and his bedroom. Yet he insisted on having the whole place kept up, as if it were full.
Lucius paused in front of a portrait hanging above the mantle in the dining room. The picture showed Bennett sitting in a chair, with one son on either side. The boys must have been ten or twelve years old when it was painted. Lucius remembered when they sat for the artist, and how hard it had been to keep them still for more than a few minutes at a time. Bennett had a warm look of satisfaction on his face-something Lucius had not seen much since the boys’ death in Kansas.
That was the real reason the Bennett home seemed so lonely. Most plantations had large clans of white folks living on them. There were sometimes three or even four generations’ worth, and lots of visiting relatives besides. Children were almost always around too. Whenever Lucius accompanied Bennett on a social call to another plantation, he never failed to notice how the white kids and slave kids played indiscriminately. It had been that way on the Bennett farm as well, when Bennett’s boys were growing up. But there came an age when the white folks insisted that the play stop, usually around the time the slave children could start performing useful chores. Before that moment, though, these kids were innocent of what separated them. This was one of the things that prevented Lucius from hating white people-he thought they were not born bad, but made bad.
The other thing, of course, was his relationship with Bennett, however much slavery stained it. When he told Portia that he could not do what he was asking her to do, he only told part of the truth. He was certainly too old to attempt any kind of escape. But neither could he envision life away from Bennett. The very idea of it was inconceivable. Where would he go? What would he do? Slavery was not something he enjoyed, but he frankly could not imagine improving his lot. For Portia and his other grandchildren, of course, the matter was entirely different. They had many years to live, and he wanted freedom for them.
He remembered the night Lincoln was elected, and all of Bennett’s bitter cursing. For months he had listened to Bennett lecture on the horror of Lincoln, and he realized during one of these little speeches that this politician from the North represented hope. Lincoln was the subject of much whispered talk in the plantation fields and anywhere else black people gathered away from white ears. Nobody knew very much about him, but many, like Nelly, had come to view him as a savior. Lucius was not comfortable going that far, though he did suspect that if the plantation owners hated Lincoln, then he was probably someone to like. It was this half-formed conviction that inspired Lucius to send Portia on her journey.
He wondered where she was at that very instant. Had she hidden in the woods now that the sun was coming up? Would she try to sleep? What would they do with the horses?
Lucius stepped from the dining room to the foyer, opened the front door, and walked onto the front porch. The sky was clear of clouds. The first slaves were already in the fields, with more on their way. He heard Tate issue instructions to a group of young men in the distance. Hammers clanged in the direction of the blacksmith’s shop. Smoke billowed from the kitchen chimney. Then he looked down the long lane to the main road. This was the path Portia and Joe had traveled just hours before, and the last place he had seen them. They had left at a trot. Lucius recalled his final view of Portia, how she turned around and waved to him just before slipping into the darkness. He closed his eyes and remembered the image.
“Good morning.”
Lucius nearly fell off the porch at the sound of Bennett’s voice.
“I didn’t mean to startle you, Lucius,” said his master.
“Sorry, sir. I didn’t hear you.”
“What are you looking at? I’ve been watching you from behind for a couple of minutes.”