Chapter 1
West End
December 1853
Lantern light spilled out from the carriage post as Alden Payne climbed inside the brougham, setting his valise on the broadcloth seat. The lantern cast a veil of light from the frosty window on the carriage up to the holly berries intertwined in a bough of fir hanging limply on his sister Eliza’s front door.
He should have been elated at the thought of going home early this morning, excited to see his parents and younger sister after another semester at Harvard, but his chest filled with dread instead.
As he waited for the coachman, his father’s face ballooned in his mind. The intense gray eyes that could find fault in any argument, the ash-colored hair salted with white.
Alden had inherited his father’s gray eyes and ash-brown hair. His father had inherited Scott’s Grove, a thousand acres of tobacco in Virginia, and the obsession to enlarge this plantation.
After Alden graduated from Harvard in the spring, his father expected him to join in his work at the plantation. What was he going to say when Alden told him that he’d already made a different choice? Other plans—especially ones that differed from his father’s decrees—weren’t tolerated.
The Negro coachman, dressed in formal livery, climbed onto the bench above the carriage’s front window, but before the carriage rolled forward, the front door to the house opened.
“Wait!” Eliza called out, tramping down the narrow carpet of light to the carriage door. She was tugging on the arm of the Negro boy who’d carried a pitcher of water up to Alden’s room last night.
Alden opened the door, concerned.
Eliza stopped beside the carriage door, tying the cord of her dressing gown around her waist. “I almost forgot to give you this.”
He looked at his sister’s hands for some sort of package, but they were empty. “What are you giving me?”
She pushed the Negro boy forward. “It’s a Christmas gift for Father.”
He eyed the boy standing in the shadows. His curly black hair was trimmed short over his ears, and he was as gangly as one of the stalks in Victor’s fields. Instead of studying the ground, the boy confidently met Alden’s gaze.
Alden glanced back at his sister. “You’re giving Father a slave?”
Eliza nodded, brushing her frizzy hair back over her shoulder. “To help him plant the tobacco.”
Alden stepped down onto the packed dirt of the driveway. Eliza’s husband, Victor, had inherited a farm on the outskirts of a village called West End, but Victor wasn’t nearly as competent of a planter and overseer as Alden’s father. It seemed to him that Victor needed the boy here to help with their hundred acres of corn.
“Are you certain?” Alden persisted, but Eliza didn’t seem to hear him.
“Father will be pleased,” she replied before commanding the boy to climb on top of Alden’s trunk, which had been tied to the back of the carriage.
She wagged her finger at him. “Don’t you move until you get to Scott’s Grove.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the boy replied.
“And I don’t want to hear of you giving my father or anyone else trouble.”
Alden studied the boy perched up on the wooden trunk. Temperatures had dipped below freezing this morning, but he only wore a linen tow shirt and trousers. His feet were bare. “Does he have a coat?”
Eliza shook her head. “He doesn’t need anything.”
“Perhaps a blanket?”
“Discipline is all he lacks, Alden. Don’t you dare coddle him.”
Alden climbed back into the carriage. “Thank you for your hospitality,” he said before tipping his hat toward his sister. Then he closed the door and rapped on the front glass.
The coachman prompted the horses forward, and the farmhouse slowly faded behind them, their lantern light illuminating the remnants of decayed corn stalks in Victor’s fields as the carriage wheels rocked over ruts in the road.
Victor and Eliza used to spend Christmas at Scott’s Grove, but they hadn’t visited in the past two years. Eliza had loved the annual festivities when she was younger, and in their early years of marriage, Victor seemed to enjoy celebrating with the Payne family as well. But Alden’s brother-in-law had grown more isolated as the years passed. His once immaculate farm had begun to fall into ruin. And now Eliza was acting oddly as well.
Turning, Alden looked through the window behind him at the boy clinging to the ropes around the trunk, his bare feet dangling over the side.
No slave—even the most defiant one—should be treated this way, but especially not one so young. It was at least a four-hour drive to Scott’s Grove. If the child didn’t freeze to death, he would surely catch pneumonia or something else from the cold air.
Eliza and Victor may not care if they lost one of their slaves, but it wouldn’t happen on his watch.
After they rounded a bend, Alden wiped the fog off the front window and then knocked on the glass until the driver slowed the horses. When the carriage stopped, Alden opened the door, the wind cutting like a knife through his wool coat.
The coachman looked down over his shoulder. “Yes, Master Payne?”
“What’s your name?” Alden asked.
“Thomas, sir.”
“And do you happen to know the name of the boy sitting on the trunk behind me?”
“His name is Isaac.”
“Very good,” Alden replied, stepping down onto the road. A patch of frozen leaves crunched under his boots as he rounded the carriage.
Isaac’s arms were wrapped around his chest. “Why’d you stop?”
“I want you to join me inside the carriage.”
Isaac didn’t move. “The missus told me to stay here.”
“It’s much warmer in the carriage.”
When Isaac shook his head, Alden wondered how often the boy had felt Victor’s whip on his back. He tried one more time. “You’ll freeze up there.”
“Niggas don’t freeze.”
Alden’s heart raced. “Who told you that?”
“Master said Africa boiled my blood.”
“That’s not what I mean. Who said you were—” Alden stopped. “Who called you that name?”
“The missus,” he said, rubbing his arms. “She don’t know my real name.”
Alden looked toward Thomas sitting up front in his warm livery jacket, and then back at the boy. “At Scott’s Grove, you’ll be known as Isaac.”
“That’s fine, mister.” He leaned against the window, his teeth chattering. “But I still ain’t gettin’ in the carriage with you.”
“I understand.” Alden closed the door to the brougham. Then he removed his leather gloves, stuffing them into his coat pocket before he propped his foot on the axle of the back wheel and propelled himself up on the spokes. “I shall have to join you up here, then.”
When Alden sat down beside him, Isaac scooted to the far side of the trunk. “It’s going to be a long ride to Scott’s Grove.”
The boy shrugged. “I’ve been on longer ones.”
Alden replaced his gloves and reached for the strap around the trunk. Then he called toward the front of the carriage. “Drive on, Thomas.”
The brougham didn’t move.
His voice rose. “I said to drive.”
Thomas climbed down from the bench and marched toward the back. Instead of looking toward Alden, he addressed Isaac. “When Master Payne tells you to get into the carriage, you get into the carriage.”
“But the missus—”
“Won’t know a thing if none of us tell her,” Thomas said, his deep voice resounding down the quiet road.
Alden leaned forward to whisper, as if Eliza could hear them from the house. “I won’t say a word.”
Thomas leaned against the wheel. “Neither will I.”
Isaac looked at one man then the other. “I’d never tell,” he finally said.
“Then it’s settled.” Alden inched away from the boy and grasped the side of the trunk before climbing back down the wheel. “Honorable men never break their promises.”
Inside the carriage, Isaac sat as close to the window as possible, his nose pressed against the glass, his feet tucked under his thighs. Thomas snapped the reins, and the steady beat of horse hooves drummed the route toward home.
What would the other students at Harvard think about his riding south in a carriage alongside a slave? Many of them were abolitionists, but their rhetoric against the institution of slavery was born out of blind passion. They knew nothing about the practicalities of running a Southern plantation that provided the tobacco they liked to smoke. Nor were they actually doing anything to abolish it.
Talk was easy. Cheap. Both students and professors liked to rant about freedom for all men—and pontificate about the evil Southern planters—but in Alden’s opinion, none of them were willing to sacrifice a thing—especially not their cigars—to help free the slaves.
The interior of the brougham was warmer than outside, but the boy beside him could still catch pneumonia. Alden reached under the seat and pulled out a blanket. “Put this around you.”
Isaac glanced down at the blanket, but he didn’t touch it. “I told you, my blood runs hot.”
“But your skin doesn’t,” Alden said, holding out the blanket.
“I’m fine, mister.”
“Suit yourself.” Alden lowered the blanket. “Are you always this defiant?”
“Obstinate is what the missus says.”
“Are you always obstinate?”
“Only when I have a mind to do what I want.”
Alden leaned back against the seat. “If you get ill, you won’t be able to work in my father’s tobacco fields.”
“I don’t aim to work in your father’s fields either way.”
“I suppose I can’t blame you for that.”
The boy’s chin climbed a notch. “I’ve got plans for my life.”
Alden eyed the boy again. He looked like he was about nine years old, but he talked as if he were a young man. “When we reach Scott’s Grove, you’ll want to keep those plans to yourself.”
Pale gray light slowly rekindled the morning as they journeyed toward the Shenandoah Valley. On the left side of the road was a grove of spindly looking trees. Isaac’s gaze was fixated on the mountain range silhouetted against the horizon on the right. The courtyards up at Harvard were blanketed with fresh snow when Alden left Massachusetts two days ago, but there was no snow yet for Christmas in Virginia.
“Out of curiosity,” Alden said, “what exactly are your plans?”
Isaac turned toward him, his face serious. “I’m going to California.”
That made two of them, then. “And what are you planning to do there?”
“Find a field of gold.”
He smiled. “I don’t think it grows out there like corn.”
“I’ll still find it.”
“Then you’ll be a wealthy man.”
Isaac studied him for a moment, as if trying to decide if he were going to trust him. Then he leaned forward. “What are your plans?”
The carriage hit another rut, and Alden grasped the rail on the side to steady himself. He wasn’t about to share that information with this boy or anyone else, at least until after he spoke with his father. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”
Isaac eyed the interior of the brougham. “Do you reckon you could drive this all the way to California?”
“I think passage on a ship would be the best option.”
“Not if you get seasick.”
“It’s definitely a risk to consider,” he said. “Are a few months of seasickness worth a field of gold?”
Isaac seemed to ponder his words. “What’s Scott’s Grove like?”
“It’s much bigger than the Duvall farm. My father has at least a hundred slaves working the tobacco fields.”
“I don’t know who my father is,” Isaac told him. “But my mother was a princess.”
Alden’s eyebrows rose. “A princess?”
“She was the most beautiful woman in all of Virginia,” Isaac said. “Her father was an African king.”
“So does that make you a prince?”
When Isaac nodded his head, Alden had to keep himself from smiling. Unlike his father and Eliza, he believed that slaves felt just as deeply as their owners. He didn’t want to hurt this boy.
“Missus Eliza said you were going to school to learn the law.”
Alden nodded. “That’s correct.”
“You must be right smart.”
“School doesn’t make a person smart,” Alden said. In fact, he’d thought himself to be quite smart until he started taking classes at Harvard. Then he realized he didn’t know much of anything.
“It sure don’t hurt,” Isaac said.
“I suppose not.”
“One day, I’m going to school too.”
Alden glanced out the window at a lake beside them, at the gaggle of geese that peppered its shores. Isaac reminded him of his childhood friend, a Negro boy named Benjamin. Except Alden hadn’t really seen Benjamin’s light-brown skin when they were children. Didn’t ever think about him as a slave. Benjamin was three years younger, and Alden treated him like a brother.
They used to race through the halls of the plantation house when it was too cold to play in the forest outside. They built forts in the drawing room, played Snakes and Ladders on the floor, and when his father was gone, they bowled in the cellar with his cricket ball.
They’d been the best of friends until his father sent Benjamin out to work in the tobacco fields the day Benjamin turned twelve. That year, Alden had been sent to Richmond to attend a private school.
He’d missed his friend when he came home, but he had been too distracted by the flurry of schoolwork to think much about the differences in their positions. Their futures. It wasn’t until he went to Harvard that his eyes were opened to the cruelty of an institution that seemed commonplace in Virginia.
“What about your mother?” Isaac asked.
Alden looked back at him. “What about her?”
“Is she a princess?”
Alden pondered the question. “More like a queen, I suppose.”
At least, that’s how he saw Nora Payne. The truth was that he didn’t know his mother very well. He’d been raised by Benjamin’s mother, a beautiful Negro woman they both called Mammy. In his mind, Mammy was the princess.
Isaac cleared the fog off his window. “How long until we get there?”
Alden slid his timepiece out of his pocket. “Another three hours.”
“And how long are we staying?”
“I’ll be there for two weeks,” he said. He didn’t know how long his father would keep this boy.
When Isaac yawned, Alden slipped the blanket back out from under the seat and handed it over. This time, the boy didn’t argue.
As Isaac slept, dread slowly trickled back over Alden. Then it began to pour. As the carriage neared the edge of his family’s tobacco fields, he felt as if he were drowning.
His father would be happy he’d come home, but it wouldn’t last for long. Not when he found out that his plans for the plantation were about to implode.
Alden would wait until after Christmas to say what was on his mind. Then he’d brace himself for the aftermath.