An Unconditional Freedom Read online

  “Do not worry over me, Janeta. I have made my peace with the world, and if I am reunited with your mother in the afterlife sooner than later, that is more than fine with me, princesa.”

  But Janeta had to worry over him. She was the reason he had been pulled from his bed in the dark of night. She was the reason officers put their boots up on his couch, smoked his cigars, and groped Janeta and her sisters in hallways of their villa. He was her father, damn it. She had to make this right.

  “You can help your father, Janeta, and me too, if you are brave enough,” Henry had pressed. “Do you think you are, my sweet girl?”

  Janeta took a deep breath as Lynne pulled open the barn door and they stepped inside. The conversation died down until there was only the sound of cutlery against plates and chairs creaking as their occupants turned to look at her.

  The room was full of Negro men and women, with skin tones ranging from much lighter than Janeta to deepest brown. Their clothing also represented a spectrum, from rough-hewn and ill-fitting to finely tailored. Their expressions, though, were all similar—friendly curiosity, more or less—with the exception of one man.

  He was dark skinned and broad shouldered, a beard covering his jaw but not distracting from the intensity of his gaze on her. There was such anger in his eyes, and his full lips were pulled into a frown.

  “Is this our newest operative, Lynne?” a man at a nearby table asked in a friendly voice. “A few others have arrived, and I believe she’s the last of them.”

  Lynne nodded and inclined her head toward Janeta. “She is, Dyson. This is Janeta. She’s Cuban, so her accent alone will grant her access to places us American Negros would be barred from.” The word American was spoken with an undertone Janeta didn’t understand. “She speak Spanish and French, too, which should help with some of these European agents crawling around.”

  “A bit of Italian and Russian, too,” Janeta threw in. “And the Russians have implicated that they would help the North should France or England throw their hats in the ring.”

  Janeta knew there were many other Negros who spoke French, particularly the Haitians who assisted the North, and other Cubans. She hoped that her Russian would make her more valuable to the Loyal League. She needed to be as valuable as possible.

  There were murmurs around the room, and Dyson smiled broadly.

  “Excellent. We need as many talented brothers and sisters aiding the Union Cause as possible. You’ll be paired with one of our seasoned detectives, who has been investigating the European connection.”

  There was a huff of annoyance and Janeta’s gaze was again drawn to the hard-eyed man.

  “Ohhhh, you pairing her with him?” Lynne let out a chuckle. “I guess we could use more dramatics, huh?”

  “Is there going to be a problem, Cumberland?” Dyson asked, turning to the man.

  “No, sir. Long as she doesn’t get in my way.”

  The derision in his tone chafed at Janeta, the way it always had, whether coming from her sister or her father’s business associates.

  “What makes you think you won’t get in mine?” she asked because her exhaustion had overruled her common sense.

  His gaze landed on her and she wished she hadn’t said anything. Janeta knew what hatred was; she’d felt it every time she’d visited her father in prison, every time she thought of how a great man had been reduced by these Americans in a war that wasn’t even his. The hatred she’d felt was a flickering flame compared to the inferno she saw in Cumberland’s gaze.

  “Are you sure this accent is to be such a boon?” he asked Lynne, though his gaze was still locked on Janeta. “I have met many a slave with an African accent, even though by law the import of slaves was stopped in 1808. Their foreign accents do not help them. Perhaps our Cuban friend can enlighten us about how such accents still exist?”

  The hair at Janeta’s nape raised under his scrutiny, and that of all the other operatives. She chose her words carefully. “Ships still import slaves from West Africa, and Cuba is a place where they are sold—sometimes to American buyers.”

  Cumberland nodded grimly. “I was friends with a Cuban man on the plantation where I was first enslaved. He told me about your country, and how the color of one’s skin wasn’t always an indicator of one’s allegiances.”

  Janeta had not expected to be met with immediate suspicion.

  What have I done wrong? Will I fail Papi already? And Henry?

  She kept her face impassive. “Yes, social castes are different in Cuba, but both America and Cuba are slave societies that must be dismantled. Right now, slaves are transported on ships that are allowed to carry out this barbarous trade because they fly the American flag as protection against investigation by British antislaving patrols. If slavery is abolished here, that flag’s protection means nothing, and Cuba must soon follow suit, no?”

  “And is that your reason for joining the Loyal League?” Cumberland pressed. “Abolition?”

  Janeta was searching for the correct deferential response to his parry, examining each word to be sure she wouldn’t reveal herself, but then paused and took in the body language of the people around him. Dyson looked annoyed, as did several other operatives. The man beside him wore an expression of chagrin. A few people rolled their eyes, and she heard at least one suck of tongue against teeth. It seemed Cumberland was not well loved.

  How surprising.

  “Is that not your reason?” she asked, letting steely challenge hone her voice. It was a risk, but if standing her ground against Cumberland endeared her to her fellow operatives, it would be worth it.

  “No,” he said baldly. “Abolition is a welcome byproduct, but I have a much more sensible reason to fight.”

  “And what greater cause is there than freedom?” she asked boldly, thrusting her chin up. Henry would be proud of her. Papi would, too. She would tell him about this moment when he was released and her family was reunited.

  Cumberland’s hand went to the blade sheathed at his side. “Retribution.”

  A shudder went through her at the word because there was no longer hatred in his eyes as he said it. There was nothing at all. A sinkhole had once opened up in her small Florida town: sudden, inexplicable, leading down to a fathomless darkness. She felt the same looking into Cumberland’s eyes as she had staring into that dark abyss.

  “Enough, Daniel,” the man beside him said. “I know distrust comes natural to you, but every new detective is thoroughly vetted.”

  Cumberland grunted, finally tearing his gaze from Janeta. She released the breath she’d been holding and resisted the urge to lift her hand and cross herself. Daniel was a man, not a demon. She needed only her wits to best him.

  “Of course. Of course,” he muttered. “I’ll do as I’m told, Logan. We all know how to do that here, don’t we? Who needs a lash when propriety dictates our actions just as well?”

  Daniel stood suddenly; Logan didn’t flinch, but others around him did.

  “I’ll go for a walk now,” he said abruptly.

  “But—” Logan began. Cumberland stormed past him and out the door.

  Janeta schooled her face to timid fear as she moved into the seat he had abandoned. She took in Logan’s frustrated expression. He was obviously a man who cared about people; others were annoyed, but he seemed more worried than anything.

  Janeta pitched her voice soft and tremulous. “I didn’t mean to upset him.”

  “It’s all right,” Logan said. “Cumberland has had a hard go of it.”

  “Haven’t we all?” Lynne asked, settling into another empty seat at the table with two plates. Her frostiness toward Janeta had all but melted away. She handed her the dish of cold chicken. “I’m sorry you got stuck with him. You’re in for a rough road. Dyson, maybe you should pair her with someone else.”

  Lynne turned in her seat as if to call over the man in charge.

  “No, it’s all right,” Janeta said. “He’ll warm up to me.”

  Another woman be
side her laughed.

  “Darlin’, he ain’t got nothing inside him to warm. I don’t know what he was like before, but that’s a man that been turned hard as stone.”

  Janeta knew what that was like, to lose the soft parts of yourself. Maybe she’d get along with this Cumberland better than she imagined. Either way, it was clear he wasn’t liked or seen as trustworthy.

  He was exactly what she needed in a partner.

  “I’m sure we’ll get along just fine,” she said with a polite smile. “Thank you for the food.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Daniel glanced up at the night sky, visible through knotty branches shedding their many-hued leaves. He remembered the autumn in Massachusetts, rivers of gold and fire above his head. He remembered lying in a pile of leaves with Elle in the forest behind their homes, kissing her with the youthful certainty that she was the only one he could ever love, a certainty that had never left him.

  When he’d returned home to visit his family after his rescue, the trees had been as bare and spindly as he’d felt standing before his parents. He’d reconsidered his pledge to join the Loyal League—after all, hadn’t he dreamed of nothing more than returning home? But when he’d tried to return to work, the lawyer training him had caught Daniel sitting in the courtroom with tears streaming down his face and gently told him to take some more time to recover. His mother had been unable to stop staring at him pityingly, buying him several new cravats to hide the scarring at his neck, and had doted over him as if he were a foal taking its first awkward steps. Worse, Daniel had felt like one, uncertain that his legs would hold up beneath him as he struggled to move forward. His father had been worse—the man he’d so admired had been unable to look at Daniel at all, sharing his observations about the war with some specter over Daniel’s shoulder. Telling Daniel’s left bicep that, really, other Negroes had it worse, and he needed to be strong and forget what had happened.

  Daniel had considered leaving the Loyal League too many times to count. On his first mission, he’d been posing as a server during a meeting of influential Confederate officers. One had grabbed him by the arm to ask for another glass of wine—innocuous, as far as those things went—and Daniel’s body had gone taut as a bow, his mind blank save for the memory of his overseer grabbing him by the arm.

  “You think you can come stir up trouble? You think you smarter than me, boy? I’m gonna show you what your meddling gets you and these pickaninnies.”

  Daniel had nearly been sick on the table, though he’d managed to wait until he could run out behind the restaurant to retch. He’d claimed to have eaten spoiled meat and no one had known what had really happened—that his past had risen up to claim him, as it did so often since he’d gained his freedom. His shackles had been unlocked, but the ghost of them remained, tightening against his stomach or throat or heart at the most inopportune moment to remind him that he would never, ever be rid of them.

  He’d thought about quitting every time he heard the names Burns and McCall—which was often, as they were the League’s most celebrated detectives. It seemed that, even when undercover, they couldn’t evade the eventual accolades. Last he’d heard, they’d stolen troop movement plans from an officer on a train, and, when cornered by Rebs, Elle had grabbed Malcolm’s hand and jumped, pulling him after her from the moving train. Some thought the story to be greatly exaggerated, but it was her bravery and stubbornness that had made Daniel fall in love with her. It may not have really happened as reported, but it certainly could have.

  He sat on a fallen tree in the dark forest, away from the noise and annoyance of the barn, and fingered the letter from Elle—his best friend, once. The woman he had thought would be his wife. He’d been so sure. But everything he’d been sure of had proven to be a lie given enough time.

  Tension gathered at his neck as stared at the rumpled rectangle of low-quality paper. He couldn’t bring himself to open it; he’d once called Elle hard-hearted, but she wasn’t in truth, and that was why he couldn’t read her words. He couldn’t bear to see whatever kindness she had sent him. Worse—whatever pity might be hidden between the lines.

  It was best he didn’t respond; her letters were being sent to the wrong man, anyhow. The Daniel Cumberland she’d known had died in the bed of a slaver’s wagon. Elle wouldn’t like the new Daniel. No one did.

  He considered quitting whenever a fellow detective tried to engage him in discussion of the bright future that lay ahead for America, once this war was over. Daniel had been optimistic once, too. He’d been two years into his clerkship with a local abolitionist lawyer when he’d been kidnapped. He’d thought he could change things from within the system; he’d thought the American system could be changed. Then he’d awoken in a coffin with manacles around his wrists. He’d seen how casually white slave owners and overseers doled out the most humiliating and painful punishments—punishments for the simple crime of having been born a Negro and not showing proper shame in that fact.

  His hope for America had died many brutal deaths; stripped nude and lashed with leather straps, choked by fusty hemp rope against his throat, crushed by the weight of bales and bales of tobacco.

  Elle had once scoffed at his idealism.

  “You think you can fix everything with a suit and tie, in a courtroom. Slaves probably built that courthouse, but white men crafted the laws, and changing them will take more than a fine suit and a quick tongue,” she’d said.

  “Someone has to try to change the laws,” he’d replied, agitated by her calm dismissal.

  Elle had looked at him with the queerest expression. “I’m not talking about changing the laws, Daniel. I’m talking about changing the white men who craft them. Show me how to do that and we’ll solve the problem of America.”

  Daniel had to laugh bitterly at that now, given her choice of husband.

  But just because he didn’t believe in his country anymore didn’t mean he didn’t have ideas about how to save it. There were other fools who hadn’t yet awoken from their dream of freedom and equality, and even if America didn’t deserve such citizens, those fools deserved some reward for hope in the face of such insurmountable evidence. His ideas were best enacted alone, however. And now he was stuck with a bothersome distraction of a partner; he was sure this was punishment of some sort to rein him in.

  He tucked Elle’s letter into the pocket of his jacket.

  Janeta was lovely, to be certain. She had large brown eyes framed by long lashes, a wide, pert nose, pillowy lips, and a shapely body. She was a bit lighter skinned than Daniel preferred—evidence of her mixed racial heritage, which wasn’t uncommon amongst the enslaved. Her general comeliness was all it took to distract a person, he supposed. He’d been more interested in her gaze than her body.

  She’d clearly been nervous, but despite that her gaze had remained guarded and had revealed nothing. And she was observant. Keenly so. She’d been deferential to him until the moment she realized that he was operating as a lone wolf. She’d picked up on that quicker than most. Then she’d nipped at him—just a bit. Just enough to garner the respect of the other operatives. He’d seen the same technique in canny lawyers putting on performances for their juries that had nothing to do with their real goal, and everything.

  He wondered what her goal was, exactly. Logan had laid out her background for him, along with whatever contrived reason Dyson had for forcing Daniel to take her on as a partner, but Daniel still wondered how she’d found herself mixed up in this detective business.

  He heard a sound that didn’t belong in the forest night, and though he remained seated, he unsheathed the knife that hung from his belt. It was a long, sharp blade that he’d taken from a Reb—the first member of the Sons of Confederacy that he’d squared off with and come away the victor. It was only afterward that Daniel had learned how other detectives avoided tangling with the members of that abhorrent organization. He’d been treated with a new respect, and an awe imbued by fear, when word had spread of his deed. The knife gave
him a kind of comfort, like a talisman. He had taken it from a man using it for evil—a man who’d sown the land with hatred and bigotry and cultivated a crop that would be disastrous for Negroes—and turned it against that man. When Daniel held it, it reminded him that he might be able to turn the evil of the Confederacy against itself, too.

  What does it mean that such a thing brings you joy?

  Sometimes he had different, even darker, thoughts about his knife. He imagined the relief that would come from running it over his wrists and letting his own blood soak into the soil of this country that had already consumed every other part of him.

  He pressed the blade into the sensitive skin just below the heel of his palm as he sat and listened in the darkness of the autumn wood, taking a morbid joy in the scrape of the knife’s sharp edge against his pulse and the sense of control that flowed through him as it did. Everything would be so much simpler if he applied just a bit more pressure to the blade. He would no longer burden those around him—all those formerly enslaved who were somehow so much stronger than him, who survived instead of enduring—with his sulking presence and stormy moods.

  Footsteps approached and Daniel lifted the knife away; no time for existential thoughts on the nature of inanimate objects, including himself. It might be someone dangerous approaching. He hoped it was someone dangerous approaching; his nerves were jangly with the excess energy that had driven him from the barn.

  “Cumberland?” The voice was soft and accented—and there was the slightest tremor of fear.

  Of course, the meddlesome woman had sought him out, even though he’d be stuck with her for who knew how long. He sheathed his knife, but didn’t answer. Didn’t move.

  Let her find me if she’s so determined.

  “I know you’re here. It’s cold, and I have a flask if you need to warm up.”

  Attempting to ply him with alcohol? She really was new to this.