She put down the letter and walked to the window, looking out toward the president’s mansion. “If Mazorca fails, then he fails-and we are no worse off than we would be if we terminated his assignment. And if he succeeds…” Her voice trailed off, and her lips curled into a smile. “I have an idea,” she said, settling into her chair by the desk. “I will write two letters.” The cat sensed that it was time to leave. Still purring, it hopped to the floor. Grenier removed two small envelopes and some stationery from a drawer.
On the first envelope, she wrote “Mr. Mays” followed by Mazorca’s address at the boardinghouse. Then she scribbled a short note:
I have reason to believe Rook is watching me. You may be in danger as well. Proceed with extreme caution.
She folded the paper and stuffed it into an envelope. Then she placed the second envelope in front of her. For a moment, she stared at its blankness. Finally, in a careful script, she wrote the name of its intended recipient: General Winfield Scott.
Nat Drake finished unloading the other cars on the Virginia train, but he could not stop thinking about the woman in the box. When his crew was just about done, he returned to the open box. A cloth lay inside, along with a gimlet, some crumbs of bread, and an empty pouch that probably had contained water. He could not believe that this small space actually had enclosed a whole person. From the slight stench, he could tell that she had been in it for a while. He shook his head in disbelief.
The lid of the box rested a few feet away, upside down. Nat flipped it over. It was addressed to “H. Brown, Washington City.” The name sounded familiar, but he was not sure why.
Then it dawned on him: H. Brown was short for Henry Brown, which was the proper name of Box Brown, the slave who had escaped to the North in a box. Nat had heard the story many times. He recalled the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass criticizing its notoriety. Douglass thought the method should be kept secret, to prevent publicizing a successful method of liberating men and women from slavery.
Nat figured the woman was a slave. The only thing that made him wonder was the address on the box. Slavery was still legal in the District of Columbia. Box Brown had been shipped to Philadelphia, in the free state of Pennsylvania. That made sense, even if it was not foolproof. Fugitive laws covered the whole country, meaning that slave owners could reclaim their escaped slaves in states that did not permit slavery. There was no truly good place for runaway slaves to go except Canada or Europe, which many of them actually did. But free states were better destinations than slaveholding ones. Why would a boxed-up slave from the South allow herself to be taken to Washington when Philadelphia was only a little farther away? Nat could not think of a good reason. The box and its former occupant continued to puzzle him.
He decided that although he might not know the motives of the woman in the box, he might be able to protect her, assuming she was in fact a runaway.
“Martin!” he called out. Martin was carrying the last crate off the Virginia train. He set it down and came over to Nat.
“What, boss?”
“Did you mention this to anybody?” said Nat, pointing toward the box.
“No. I haven’t done anything but unload.”
“Let’s keep it to ourselves. I don’t think any good will come from it if we start talkin’.”
“Do you think that woman was a-”
“Stop right there. We should forget it even happened.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Go home now. See you tonight.”
When he was gone, Nat put the lid in the box and moved them off the train platform. He was not sure where to put them, but just about anywhere was better than leaving them where they had been unloaded, in plain sight. He carried them out of the depot. The first thing he saw was the Capitol. He headed toward it.
Before long, Nat was in a construction yard. There were piles of coal and wood. Columns in various states of disassembly lay strewn about, plus blocks of marble, keystones, and iron plates. He set the box down by a pile of rock chips and grabbed a small ax lying by a wheelbarrow. He pried and chopped until only a pile of scrap wood remained.
Leaving the work area, Nat thought he heard a foot scrape against the ground behind a tool shed. He hoped that nobody had seen him. When he heard the noise again, he went around to the back of the shed. There she was: the woman from the box. She was crouched low, with her arms folded across her chest. She was not well dressed for the brisk morning weather, and she shivered a bit at the cold. Had she followed him here? Nat was not sure. He could tell she was exhausted and confused. This did not surprise him, considering what she had just gone through. How long had she been in that box? One day? Two days? More? It was amazing she had even survived.
Yet her ordeal was not over. For a moment Nat considered leaving her there. As a free black, he knew his position in Washington was tenuous. He was not a slave, but helping one escape would make him lose what few rights he did have. It was a problem he did not need or want.
Just then, some life appeared in the eyes of the woman. She looked up at Nat. Her lips parted and her voice was weak.
“Please help me.”
Grenier’s guest slipped through an alleyway behind her house. He moved with a mixture of caution and speed, pausing in the shadows but also determined to get away as quickly as possible. The last thing he needed was for somebody to recognize him here. It would lead to questions he did not want to answer. He wished he had left when it was still dark.
At least it was early. The day had only barely begun. At Seventeenth Street, he stood in the gap between two houses and waited. When he was certain that nobody was on the street, he turned left and walked toward H Street. There he made another left. He tried to act indifferent to his surroundings, but at the corner of Sixteenth and H he could not resist a glance toward Grenier’s house.
He did not love her, but he imagined that it would be nice if she loved him. Sometimes he even let himself believe that she really did. It would have struck him as romantic to see her peering from her bedroom window, hoping to catch one more look at him. Perhaps he would risk a little wave, something to make her smile as he set off for another day of important meetings with top officials in the government.
No such luck. The curtains were drawn. The front of her house was as blank as the others nearby.
He crossed the street and entered Lafayette Park. He sat on a bench, aware that he had some time to pass before his first appointment of the day: a security meeting with General Scott and his top advisors.
Grenier’s desire to know about the inner workings of government was peculiar. He had never known a woman with such an interest. But what harm was there in telling her? She was merely curious. Why should he deny himself the opportunity to be in her good graces? What a pleasure it was to know such a woman, and in such a way. Already he wanted to go back to her.
His mind churned with ideas of how to make that possible and how soon it might happen, but he found it difficult to concentrate. That dark-haired beauty had a grip on his imagination.
A young man walked by-a civilian, probably a clerk at one of the government agencies. His footsteps snapped the man on the bench to attention. If the bureaucrats were already on their way to their offices, he thought, then he should be on his way as well. General Scott did not appreciate latecomers.
He rose from his seat and looked once more toward Grenier’s home.
“You’ll be hearing from me soon,” he whispered. “Very soon.”
He decided to send her a note promising more secrets the next time they were together. She would have it by morning-and he would have her again too.
The conference in the Winder Building was drawing to a close when Scott turned to Rook and gave the colonel a devilish grin. Right away, Rook did not like it. He had barely spoken during the meeting. Roughly the same cast of characters was present as compared to the previous day-Seward, Locke, and all the rest. Rook just wanted it to end without incident. The general’s look suggested that he would not get his wish.