Freedom's Banner

By Teresa Crane

This Civil War family saga “bear[s] comparison to the work of Jane Aiken Hodge” and “sweeps readers along with a nice blend of drama and social history” (Publishers Weekly).
 
Nineteenth-century Britain: the abolitionists have won. Slavery is outlawed. A valiant victory—but it’s all too easy to forget that in the rest of the world the inhuman practice is still a part of everyday life. A thought that the usually clear-thinking Mattie Henderson chooses to suppress when she finds herself unexpectedly married and on her way to South Carolina with her new husband.

Mattie realizes too late that she is heading towards a country where a bitter civil war is about to break out—brother against brother, father against son. And the innocent, as always, will suffer with the guilty.

A generation later and the battle is still not won: the grim slave trade still flourishes. This time it is Mattie’s estranged and headstrong son Harry who, against the backdrop of the glorious Nile finds himself caught up in the murderous machinations of the slavers.

From the American Civil War to the slave trade in Egypt, Freedom’s Banner is the perfect generational saga of love, family, and redemption.
 
“Crane is gifted at tying political and historical strands together into an unusually gripping family saga with a sense of purpose” —Booklist

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781788633628

Teresa Crane

Teresa Crane had always wanted to write. In 1977 she gave herself a year to see if she could, and since then has published numerous short stories and several novels published in various languages.

Book preview

Part One

Bath, England

1860

Chapter One

It was a certain fact, an exasperated Constance Barlowe reflected, that Mattie Henderson was one of those unfortunate people who could drive a saint to distraction without the batting of an eyelid or the lifting of a finger. Surreptitiously she adjusted her shawl to cover the stain on her green silk where baby Nicholas had dribbled that morning, tucked a few strands of mousy hair back up inside her neat-fitting bonnet, and attempted to conduct amiable conversation whilst fixing aggrieved eyes upon her cousin, willing her to smile, to chatter, to laugh, as those about her were politely smiling, chattering and laughing.

Mattie, sitting with a group of younger folk in the pleasant, dappled shade of a small birch grove a few yards away, did not notice the look. Mattie indeed did not appear to be noticing anything. Constance breathed a small, long-suffering sigh. What in the name of heaven did the girl think she was about?

Around them the summer air twittered with the light, untroubled sound of voices. Sitting poised and straight-backed upon the wrought-iron garden seat next to Mattie, Sally Brittan fluttered her fan becomingly and chattered like a jay at a tall, thin-faced young man who stood beside her, his head with its large, sun-reddened ears bent dutifully to her. Every now and again he fingered his stiff collar as if it were choking him and a prominent Adam’s apple bobbed disconcertingly as he attempted to edge the odd word into the one-sided conversation. On the grass at Mattie’s feet that little hussy Alice Thompson, her pink skirt spread like the petals of a full-blown peony, her face bright with laughter, was openly – one might even say brazenly – teasing the young Hopley lad. Now there was a match that would be made by the end of the month, or Constance Barlowe was a Dutchman. Even the very plain Miss Esme Spencer was sitting austerely to attention upon a canvas chair, thin hands folded about a drooping daisy chain in her muslin lap, talking with decorously lowered eyes and with a clear trace of heightened colour in her wan cheeks to a middle-aged man whom Constance recognized instantly as Mr Ashby-Jones, a widower of Eastbourne, who was in Bath – according to the omniscient Mrs Johnstone – to take the waters and to find a wife.

And Mattie? Mattie was sitting, calmly composed, staring into the middle distance with a tranquil and distracted concentration which cut her off from her companions as effectively as a firmly closed door. She might as well, Constance thought, with a spurt of enraged indignation, hang a sign about her neck and have done with it: ‘Strictly private. Keep out!’ The problem with Mattie – Constance pursed her lips and reframed that thought – one of the problems with Mattie was that she had absolutely no idea how to behave in smart company. She would sit so for hours, quietly, taking no part in the gossip about her, exuding what could only be described as a polite disinterest, enough to dampen the kindest of interest or effort. It was her father’s fault of course – a vexed frown marred the pale smoothness of Constance’s forehead for a moment – oh, yes, entirely Cousin Henry’s fault. The Lord only knew what he had thought he was about, bringing up a child – a female child! – in such a ridiculous and contrary manner! Constance winced, remembering her own dear Herbert’s understandable embarrassment the evening before upon being drawn into an unsuitable discussion about the outrageous theories of that dreadful Mr Darwin. But then, in charity, one could only give Mattie the benefit of Christian sympathy; whatever could be expected from such a very odd background? In fact it really had to be said that it was a positive blessing that Henry had died when he had; or this awkward orphaned daughter of his might well have been altogether beyond saving, completely unmarriageable, and thus a burden to herself as well as to others. Constance smoothed her crocheted gloves over plump fingers and graciously acknowledged the greeting of a newcomer. Of course even that would not have been such a very bad thing if her own original plan had worked out a little more satisfactorily. But, alas, it was not to be. The idea of her lonely, bereaved second cousin as friend and helpmeet to herself, and nurse and tutor to the children, properly grateful for a roof over her head and the kindly companionship of a happy family, had been seductive. But at the time of its promising conception Mattie and Constance had not met in ten years, since Constance’s marriage, when Mattie had been no more than twelve years old. To be sure, she’d been an odd little thing then, but it had not occurred to Constance that her cousin’s daughter could have retained such eccentricity into adulthood. Henry’s fault, all Henry’s fault! What young woman could possibly have grown up in any normal fashion in that great uncomfortable barn of a house with no company but her father and those peculiar – why, one would simply have to say in some cases downright disreputable – friends of his? Constance smiled sweetly again and nodded, acknowledging a distant, lifted hand as a small party of ladies and gentlemen strolled by at the far end of the garden, taking the fresher air of the terraces that overlooked the city. The smile faded rapidly as she noticed amongst them the portly Mr Andrews, a London banker, escorting much too attentively the well-rounded but nicely proportioned figure of Miss Faith Edwards. Too late, then; there was yet another chance that Mattie had let slip. Really, one could almost imagine the trying girl didn’t want to make a match!

Constance turned her head a little, her attention caught by a sudden murmur of interest that had lifted like the buzz of bees about a flower bed from the lawns behind her. Mrs Johnstone’s voice called in shrill greeting. ‘Why, Mr Sherwood! How delightful to see you! How very kind, to grace our little gathering – Anna, my dear, make a place for Mr Sherwood.’

Constance watched, as enthralled as anyone. A tall, gracefully built young man, deeply tanned, was making his way from the open windows of the house across the paved terrace to the garden. His broadcloth cutaway coat was dark green, the waistcoat and trousers beneath it a soft fawn and obviously, like the coat, of expensive cut and material. His soft-collared shirt was a spotless white and the dark green silk neckcloth faultlessly tied and fastened with a gold scarf-pin. In one hand he carried hat and gloves, in the other a small book. His thick and shining black hair, parted in the middle, fell forward like a boy’s onto his forehead. His eyes gleamed dark as the jet beads that bedecked his hostess’s ample bosom, and his expression was apologetic. ‘Mrs Johnstone – Ma’am – I do hope I’m not unforgivably late? I had a meetin’ in Bristol yesterday with our mutual acquaintance Mr Salisbury, who, by the way, sends his best regards to you –’ he bowed his dark head a little, impeccably courteous ‘ – a meetin’, as I said, concernin’ some final details of the shippin’ arrangements for next season’s Pleasant Hill cotton. I have only just returned.’ The voice was pleasant, the slow drawl magnetically attractive set as it was against the clipped English accents. Heads turned. Eyelashes fluttered. Fans were lifted and a small sibilance of whispers scurried around the garden like a summer breeze.

‘My dear boy, of course not! Come – join us for tea. It’s a warm day for travelling.’

‘It is indeed, Ma’am.’ With the exquisite manners of which every Mama in Bath had taken approving note, the young man subsided with good grace and a charming smile onto a narrow bench beside Mrs Johnstone’s daughter Anna.

Mrs Johnstone leaned forward, handing him tea in a dainty flowered cup. ‘So very delighted to see you, Mr Sherwood. We were quite cast down when we thought you wouldn’t come. Anna was saying just this morning how fascinating she found your stories of your home in the romantic South – and how much she hoped you might be here this afternoon and willing to tell us more.’

On cue, Anna blushed, becomingly.

Constance sniffed. So that was the way of things, was it? Trust Emma Johnstone to have her predatory eye firmly on the most eligible of the young men in evidence this year for her own pert offspring. That explained Mrs Johnstone’s ill-humour the other night when this same young Mr Sherwood had so inexplicably sat out of the dancing and had spent almost the whole of the evening with – of all people! – Mattie Henderson, earnestly discussing, so Mattie had mildly insisted, the ideas and poetry of Mr Shelley and Lord Byron. Constance had not believed a word of it then, and still did not. Mattie could be a sly one sometimes, there was no mistake about that. She glanced again at her cousin. Mattie’s hands were idle in her lap. Her eyes were fixed upon the distant, shining ribbon of the river that wound through the city beneath them. Her wide, pale mouth drooped a little. It was perfectly obvious that she had not noticed the newcomer, nor was she making the slightest effort to join in the talk and laughter around her.

For just one moment Constance had the almost overwhelming desire, hastily suppressed, to slap her.

---

Constance was right. Mattie Henderson’s thoughts were very far from this garden, from this gathering – far, indeed, from Bath itself. Watching the play of sunshine upon the distant river and the golden spires of the Cathedral Church she was indulging in what she was perfectly well aware was an absolutely disgraceful bout of self-pity. As the silly, inconsequential talk and laughter fluttered unnoticed about her ears she was at that moment back at Coombe House, much-loved home of a childhood she knew she should long have outgrown, but that had only truly come to an end on that day five months before when her father had died, in his sixty-eighth year and her twenty-second. The rigidly formal manicured garden where she now sat, high on the hillside above a city that, for all its airs and its still-fine classical buildings, was showing unmistakably the first signs of a genteel decay, was a far cry from that other garden her heart knew so well. That garden – empty now, she thought desolately, an unkempt graveyard surrounding an equally betrayed and abandoned house – was lush and beautiful; flower-filled, half-wild, secret; hidden in a tree-filled valley in the quiet Kentish countryside, its western boundary a fast-moving, singing stream. That garden, as she so often remembered it, had been full of birdsong, and windsong, and her father’s voice. With a painful twist of her heart she could hear that voice now, far clearer than these others; deep and well-modulated, edged more often than not with laughter, or with passion, engaged in one of those usually amiable and always subversive wrangles in which he so loved to indulge. ‘My dear old chap, of course we can keep the ungrateful natives pacified in the short term; it will be a long time before they – or we! – forget the lessons of the Mutiny. Why, they have an Empress now, of their very own, the lucky fellows! But the long term, my boy – look at the long term! The greatest of empires tumbles at last – see for yourself, for otherwise you and I would be sitting here draped in sheets, crowned with laurel and conversing in Latin! Mattie, my dear, come share this excellent wine and support your old father – Albert here seems to believe that God has given the vast and treasure-filled continent of India to the British for India’s own good and on an entirely permanent basis!’

Mattie took a very slow and rather careful breath. This was simple, perverse self-indulgence. It could serve no possible purpose. Think of something else.

‘You’ll grieve, my dear – of course you will,’ her father had said at the end. ‘But it will pass. I promise you. The time will come when you will remember me simply with affection, and I hope with laughter. I’ve been a wickedly selfish old curmudgeon, to keep you here beside me for so long. You’re young. You have a life to live. Live it knowing that my love and my blessings are with you always. And remember – the pain will not, cannot, last for ever.’ And he had been right, of course, as he almost always had been. The devastating, the agonizing pain of loss had eased. If it had not she might well have eschewed good taste altogether and lost her reason. The problem was that what now stood in its place was, if anything, worse; the emptiness, the numbing ache in heart and soul, the certain knowledge that nothing would ever again be as it had been, that she would never again see that dear face with its wise, bright eyes, hear that special note in his voice that was for her alone…

‘Miss Henderson?’

A darker shadow stood in the dappled light. Disconcerted, she lifted her head, blinking up at the tall figure beside her, aware even in her surprise that an interested silence had fallen about her, that bright, inquisitive and astute eyes were watching. A dark-skinned, well-shaped hand was extended towards her. In it was a small and very scuffed leather-covered volume. ‘I promised I wouldn’t keep it too long, Ma’am,’ Johnny Sherwood said, in his soft, intriguing drawl, ’though it’s with great reluctance that I return it.’

Mattie rose, smiling, and took the book, refusing to betray the slightest hint that beneath the calm there might be any unsettling sensation of excitement, of quickening blood. ‘You enjoyed it, then?’ Her voice was satisfyingly composed, coolly friendly.

His reply was a moment in coming. He did not smile. ‘Enjoy is too insignificant a word, Miss Henderson, when you talk of genius.’ Formally he extended his expensively clad crooked arm. ‘Please – might I ask you to walk with me awhile? I’d very much like to talk with you.’

Mortifyingly Mattie found herself to be blushing; an occasion so rare as to be all but unique. In wary silence she placed her gloved hand upon the proffered wrist. Beneath the strong smooth weave of the broadcloth she was unnervingly aware of the warmth of him, of the horseman’s strength in the steady arm; as they stepped together into the sunshine she caught Constance’s astonished eyes upon her, unblinking. The pale gaze was so disbelieving, so truly thunderstruck, that it almost brought open laughter, the constraint of which at least helped to overcome those mystifying sensations that had for a moment surprised her into awkwardness. She ducked her head, hiding her amusement beneath the wide brim of her flower-trimmed straw hat and, wide skirts swaying, accompanied her escort along the paved path that led through rose-hung pergolas to the terraces.

They walked for some moments in silence, returned the polite salutes of a couple who passed them on the way back to the house, the two young women manoeuvring the silk- swathed cages of their crinolines like bright flowers nodding greetings to each other in a summer’s breeze. ‘Confound the thing,’ Mattie said, conversationally. ‘And confound its inventor. Did you ever see a more ridiculous and constricting fashion?’

Johnny turned upon her a quick smile that lit his darkly handsome face like a gleam of sunlight. With warmth in her cheeks that once again could not be entirely attributed to the balmy day, Mattie looked away, apparently absorbed in the view of the city that unfolded beneath them. Unconventional she might be, and to Constance’s permanent chagrin not brought up in the fine and mannered fashion of declining Bath, but even she knew how very rude it was to stare. ‘I find them very becoming,’ Johnny said.

‘That well might be because you don’t have to wear them.’ It was a small triumph to discover that she could return his smile in her most unflustered fashion, to take the bite from the words. She lifted the book. ‘So – do I gather that you approved of my Mr Shelley?’

‘Miss Henderson, I think you know that approve is not – cannot be – the word.’ All levity was suddenly gone from the boyish face. ‘The man, as I said, possesses pure genius. I had read a little –’ he spread his thin, strong hands ‘– a very little I fear; small excuse, I know, but there seems little time for such leisurely pursuits at home. So of his lyrical dramas I knew nothing. I cannot thank you enough for introducing me to them.’

Mattie was holding the small book to her breast, her hands folded around it almost protectively. She glanced down at it. ‘I’m glad you liked them so much. I truly wish I could have given you the book. But – it’s very precious. I couldn’t bring myself to part with it.’

They had reached a small terrace, bounded and perfumed by tumbling roses, at the far end of which was set a shaded stone bench. Beside the seat, in a little fountain-splashed pool a mermaid gazed with stony concentration into a large shell. With one accord they stepped from the path and strolled towards it.

‘I couldn’t help but notice that the book is signed to your father from Mr Shelley himself.’ Johnny helped her to arrange her skirt so as to make the business of sitting at least possible if not entirely comfortable. ‘May I ask – did they know each other?’

‘Yes, they did.’ Mattie laid the book upon the pale lemon silk of her skirt. Earlier she had found herself wondering what had prompted her to the extravagant caprice of wearing this, just about her only flattering and fashionable day dress and certainly her most expensive, to accompany Constance upon her visit to the abominable Mrs Johnstone this afternoon. Now, in honesty and not altogether comfortably, she knew, and the knowledge was disconcerting. She was not used to deceiving herself. ‘They were at University College together, at Oxford. In eighteen hundred and ten, or thereabouts –’

He cocked his head. ‘Fifty years ago? Your father – he wasn’t a young man when he died, then?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’ Her low voice had taken on that note of warmth and animation that it always held when she spoke of her father. ‘He just seemed it. As for Mr Shelley, he came often, I believe, to Coombe House – where we lived. I never knew him, of course. His tragic death occurred some years before I was born. Father always spoke of him with great respect and affection, and wouldn’t hear a word against him, though there were always plenty to try.’ Beneath the calm she had the most absurd and disorientating feeling that she was talking utter nonsense, that there was no connection whatsoever between what was going on in her mind – in her heart? – and the words she spoke so crisply. Firmly she tried to focus her thoughts. ‘I was brought up on his poems.’

Her companion slanted a dark, questioning look at her face. ‘The dramas too? Strange fare for a small child, Miss Henderson.’

‘Yes. It was. As many, of course, were ready to point out. But then I suppose I was an odd child.’ Mattie could not prevent a small, caustic smile. ‘Just ask poor Cousin Constance.’

She thought she caught an answering flicker of amusement in his eyes but when he answered his tone was sober.

‘Didn’t such reading matter produce nightmares?’ he asked, and then with the smallest of smiles, ‘even for a child as odd as I grant you might have been?’

She would not rise to his bait. ‘Only occasionally.’ She turned from him, folded her hands about the book and let them rest peaceably in her lap. The scent of roses flooded the warm air about them, a perfume to drug and to drown the senses.

Determinedly she looked not at her companion but at the distant, diamond glitter of the river. Face and voice were obstinately schooled. Fluttering fans and palpitating hearts were for the likes of such as Sally Brittan. He must take her – or, her practical heart told her, more likely leave her – as she was. ‘My father was always there, you see. He knew so much – could explain so much – there seemed nothing that he could not explain –’

Johnny was watching her with frank interest. ‘You talk a lot about your father. You must have been very close?’

‘Yes.’

‘And – you had no other family? No brothers, or sisters?’

Mattie shook her head. ‘No. No mother either – she died when I was two and I don’t remember her at all. There was just Papa and me –’ she half smiled ‘– and a positive colony of cats and dogs. And many friends, who came and went as they pleased.’ She looked out for a moment, distracted, across the sunlit city to the green hills beyond. Then she took a small, brisk breath. ‘And you, Mr Sherwood? You have a family?’

He had half turned to face her. Disconcertingly, she found herself looking full into the lean, brown face; a situation she had been doing her level best to avoid. Even more disturbingly she found her hands, still clasped about the book, taken impetuously in his. Felt the strength, the callused skin of hands well-kept but most certainly used to wielding more than a silken handkerchief or a snuff box. ‘Yes, Miss Henderson.’ He emphasized the polite formality of the name with half-humorously lifted brows. ‘I have a family. I have a father and three brothers. And a sister-in-law, sent from the devil to plague us, who is a perfect Louisiana Belle, as was my mother, who was a Creole, and a beauty – of course – and who also, sadly, has been dead these many years. We too have dogs, and horses – Pleasant Hill’s Arabian strain is famous.’ The hands holding hers were firm, very steady, and confusingly were, like the clear dark eyes, somehow saying more than the voice.

She swallowed, with some difficulty. Struggled on. ‘Louisiana, Mr Sherwood? Is that where your home is?’

‘No, Miss Henderson. My home is in Georgia, as I’m sure I told you the other night. The most beautiful place in the world, about which I will tell you absolutely anythin’ you wish to know but –’ pausing at last for breath he lifted a finger ‘– not before we have finished our conversation about Mr Shelley.’

She eyed him cautiously. ‘We haven’t finished it?’

‘We most certainly have not, Miss Henderson. When a backwoods Sherwood is so struck by a piece of poetry that he takes it into his head to spend an uncomfortable journey from Bath to Bristol and back again in memorizin’ it, why that is such an unusual occurrence that it seems to me that the very least that a kindly person might do is to give him a chance to recite it!’ He was openly laughing now, the dark eyes as mischievous and challenging as a boy’s.

Suddenly light-hearted, she capitulated. ‘And I am that kindly person, Mr Sherwood?’ God forgive me, she found herself thinking, I have after all listened to Sally, and to Alice, and to all their sisters in flirtation, once too often!

The teasing gleam brightened. ‘Why, most certainly you are. I can think of no other to whom I would rather dedicate my new-found devotion to Mr Shelley. You’ll listen, Miss Henderson?’

‘I’ll listen, Mr Sherwood.’ Mattie knew, in that split second, the mistake she had made, the trap into which she had stepped like any empty-headed child, like any green girl who did not know her Shelley from a shopping list at Jolly’s. She could have recited the poem with him; it was one of her favourites. She did not. She sat fighting the colour that lifted relentlessly in her face at his effrontery.

‘The fountains mingle with the river,

And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of heaven mix for ever,

With a sweet emotion-’

He paused for a moment, watching her.

Colour high, she schooled her face and said nothing.

‘Nothin’ in the world is single,

All things by a law divine,

In one another’s bein’ mingle,

Why not I with thine?’

‘Mr Sherwood,’ she said with an attempt at severity that fell far short of its aim, ‘I really don’t think –’

‘See the mountains kiss high heaven,

And the waves clasp one another,

No sister flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea –’

He hesitated again. His eyes searched her face. His voice was very quiet.

‘What are all these kissin’s worth,

If thou kiss not me?’

‘I think,’ Mattie said, in the lamentable absence of any other inspiration, ‘that we should walk a little further.’

Wordless he stood, and extended a polite hand. She took it, stood, straightened her wide skirts.

‘I’ve offended you?’ he asked.

She lifted her face to look at him levelly. Shook her head. ‘No. I don’t think so. Not offended.’

‘What, then?’ He was watching her intently.

She hesitated. Then, ‘Confused,’ she said, with the honesty that was her bane and her pride. ‘You confuse me, Mr Sherwood.’

He fell into step beside her. ‘I can’t imagine why. It surely can’t be the only time, Miss Henderson, that a man has wanted to –’ he hesitated, sent her a look sly as a cat’s ‘– recite a poem to you?’

She had to laugh aloud. ‘Are you always so devious, Mr Sherwood?’

The sun was dipping westwards, rose-tinted now, and fiery. The light slanted, etching his dark profile against the brightness of the sky above her. Mattie was not small, yet she came only to his shoulder. He moved with ease, his hair, a little too long for fashion, curled thickly about his face and neck. He was, indisputably, a very handsome young man.

And what was such a young man doing reciting love poetry to too-tall, too-thin, and above all too-opinionated Mattie Henderson? Mattie had few illusions about herself; indeed what few she might have had had been well dispelled by Cousin Constance and her cronies over the past months. ‘My dear, what a shame it is that your shoulders are so very thin – ah, well, perhaps a shawl –’ and ‘Oh, Mattie, whatever are we to do with this hair? So long and so heavy and so very straight. I declare it gives me a headache simply to look at it! The irons won’t even crimp it unless you consent to have it cut!’ And ‘Cousin, really, you must learn to be a little more –’ fluttered fingers, butterfly sighs ’ – appealing in company –’ What then was this contrary and unalluring creature doing leaning upon an ivy-clad stone wall beside this attentive and attractive young American that every girl in Bath – and every girl’s Mama – had set her cap at, gazing out over a city that was lit with the glory of a summer’s evening and that suddenly, and alarmingly, held some perilous enchantment far beyond its usual comfortable charm?

She turned. ‘Mr Sherwood –’

‘Johnny,’ he said, quietly. ‘My name is Johnny. And yours is Mattie, I know. May I call you Mattie, Miss Henderson?’

She was utterly taken aback. ‘I – why, yes, Mr Sherwood – Johnny – I see no reason why not –’

‘And would it bore you if I told you of Georgia, and of Pleasant Hill?’

A little more positively she shook her head, smiling. ‘Of course not. Far from it.’ Had he offered to recite the alphabet for her she would at that moment have accepted with pleasure, she realized. And indeed she listened almost without hearing as he talked in that slow and pleasant drawl, before the glamorous spell woven by the sheer sound of his voice wore off and it dawned upon her with a shock what he was actually saying. He spoke of the green splendour of Georgia’s countryside – the mountains to the north, the vast and verdant forests, the wide rivers and the rich, lush plantation lands, most of them cleared and planted within the last generation – of the growing, gracious towns and the houses with their oak-planted parklands, of the people with their fierce pride, their high temper, their ready laughter, their open-handed hospitality. He spoke of his childhood and his home, of his three older brothers, William, Robert and Russell, and of the plantation upon which they lived, Pleasant Hill, with its wide-porched house, its cotton fields and its people.

It was then that it hit her.

She turned to face him. ‘You – your family – you’re slave holders?’ She could not, for her life, keep the sudden horror from her voice.

He stiffened. Every line of his face hardened. When after a moment he spoke the warmth had gone, his address was formal. ‘Pleasant Hill is a working plantation like any other, Miss Henderson. We have to run it. We have a livin’ to make. How else would you expect us to do it?’

‘But – slavery! It’s – it’s an abomination!’

He looked at her in silence for what seemed a very long time; long enough for her to realize how great had been her lapse of manners, and to blush for it; long enough to realize that the fragile enchantment of the evening was gone. Long enough for the shadow of a wish to form: that she had, just once, kept a curb on her intemperate tongue. In defiance she dismissed the thought.

‘What do you know about it?’ he asked, at last, pleasantly enough.

The frankness of the question caught Mattie unawares. ‘I know – I know what any reasonable person surely knows, that it is utterly wrong to own a man or a woman as if he or she were a beast –’

‘Ah. An’ it’s as simple as that, is it?’ He leaned against the low wall, watching her. ‘It must be mighty reassurin’, Miss Henderson, to be so very certain of one’s ground. But then, of course, like any good little Abolitionist you will have read Mrs Beecher Stowe’s much admired book?’

‘Yes.’

‘And will have condemned – as any reasonable person surely must –’ the mimicry was harsh and deliberate ‘– the cruelty depicted therein; the tortures and the floggin’s, the tearin’ of babies from their mothers’ breasts?’ His quiet voice remained relentlessly pleasant.

Temper stirred. ‘Yes, of course. And you can make me sound as much of a sanctimonious fool as you wish – it does not change facts –’

‘But what are the facts, Miss Henderson? Do you know? Can you be so sure?’ The depth of his anger, the strength of his effort to control it were obvious in his still, clenched hands, his fierce eyes. His face was dark with it. ‘I can give you some facts, if you are ready to listen. The first is this: if the Union is dissolved and bloodshed should come to my homeland, which God forbid, though there seems no guarantee that He will – Mrs Beecher Stowe will bear a very great responsibility for it; I only hope she can square that with her fine, self-righteous Northern conscience! And the second: on Pleasant Hill we do not sell our people down the river. We do not flog them to death, nor rape and torture their women. We do not sell children from their mothers nor husbands from their wives unless some circumstance absolutely demands it. We do not abuse the loyalty of our Uncle Toms.’ The last two words were invested with a singular scorn. ‘Our folk live good, modest, Christian lives. They marry and beget children, for the most part in safety, in comfort and in peace – which is more than can be said for many in this world. Tell me, Miss Henderson –’ Mattie had opened her mouth to speak but he pressed remorselessly on ‘– would you say that there is no slavery in England?’

‘Most certainly I would!’

‘Then you’d be wrong. Have you seen your factory workers, enslaved to their industrial masters, your mineworkers in thrall to the coal barons, the little children worked to death in mills and up chimneys? The babies that die of want and disease in your slums, the girls forced to sell themselves to keep breath in their abused bodies? No child on Pleasant Hill is worked till he drops, Miss Henderson; no child is expected to work at all until he is old enough and strong enough to do so. Don’t talk to me of slavery, Miss Henderson. Not until you have seen how the great majority of your own people live!’

How many times had her enlightened father said much the same thing? And how many times, stubbornly, had she answered? ‘Two wrongs can never make a right, Mr Sherwood.’

‘And which, then, would you count the greater wrong?’ he challenged, quietly.

‘The institution of slavery can never be anything but abhorrent. I’m sorry, Mr Sherwood, but it seems to me that the owning of one soul by another can be nothing but degrading to both. I accept that what you say is true – that not every slave holder is wicked, or licentious, or weak – but the institution itself is constantly open to abuse. Surely you can’t deny that? These people have no rights, no law protects them. They are treated like animals –’

‘As are the men and women who pull trucks like beasts in your coal and tin mines!’ It had become a full-blooded, passionate quarrel, and there was nothing either could do to stop.

‘It is a different thing, Mr Sherwood!’

‘And still I beg to differ, Miss Henderson! Tell me of these people’s freedom, tell me what choices – what real choices – they have, these so-called free men? Are they able to choose where and when to work, or for whom? No. Can they choose, even, where to live? No – except in such choice as exists between one squalid slum and another. Might they be able to choose that their women and children should not work from dawn until beyond dusk? That their young be educated? That they should breathe clean and healthy air? No! Can they choose to be doctored for their ills, to be paid a livin’ wage for their labour, to refuse to be exploited by those set above them, to be certain of a safe and comfortable old age? No again, Miss Henderson! So I ask, where are these freedoms of which you are so certain and so proud?’

In the pause he took for breath, and before Mattie could speak, the melodic sound of the dinner gong reached them from the house.

They stood in hostile silence for a long moment. Then, ‘We should go back, I think,’ Mattie said, very coldly and very quietly, ’for Mrs Johnstone is extremely particular about the timing of her meals.’ With the blood still high in her cheeks, she turned and lifted her skirts a little, to walk back up the steps and the sloping paved paths to the lawn above. In equally chill silence he fell into step beside her, escorting her politely, opening gates, drawing away stray rose branches from the silk of her skirt.

Upon the lawn they found the company awaiting them.

‘Mr Sherwood, Mattie, my dear –’ Mrs Johnstone trilled, her eyes sharp as blades upon Mattie, ‘– we wondered where ever you might have disappeared to! Anna, there, you see? I said Mr Sherwood would be back in time to take you in to dinner. Come, my dears, lead the way – I really don’t think we need to bother with too much formality, do you?’

‘I’m sorry, Ma’am.’ Johnny took his hostess’s hand and bowed above it. His back, to Mattie – all she could see of him – looked straight as a steel rod, and about as ungiving. ‘I fear I can’t stay. Family business, you see – as you know I have little time left – I sail for home in just a few weeks’ time, an’ there’s much to be done.’ His voice was still harsh with anger and he made little attempt to make the excuse believable.

‘How very vexing for us all,’ Mrs Johnstone said, casting a stony glance at Mattie’s calm face. ‘But, my dear, you will oblige us for our musical afternoon on Thursday, will you not? We spoke of it last week, if you remember – we are all so looking forward to hearing you sing again.’

Johnny agreed rather more gracefully that yes, indeed, he remembered and would be there. With reluctance Mrs Johnstone relinquished his hand. He nodded to the company, still unsmiling, murmured farewells, studiously avoiding Mattie’s eyes.

Mattie watched the tall, broad-shouldered figure cross the lawn and enter the house, aware of speculative glances, all interested, a few relatively friendly, others decidedly less so. She lifted her head, taking battle to the enemy. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, quietly, to Mrs Johnstone, painfully aware of the avid silence that cradled her words, ‘I fear I have offended Mr Sherwood.’

As she turned she caught a glimpse of Cousin Constance’s face, a picture that might under other circumstances have afforded her amusement, before allowing her arm to be taken by a portly gentleman in black broadcloth and a canary yellow waistcoat. ‘Cheer up, my dear,’ he said, the words kindly meant. ‘It’s dinner time – and dear Mrs Johnstone does keep a wonderful board.’

Dear Mrs Johnstone did indeed. As soup was succeeded by three kinds of fish, a joint of mutton and a joint of beef, a choice of duck, quail or chicken and a mountain of sweet things that must, Mattie thought, have stripped some far island of its year’s crop of sugar, she sat smiling emptily and nodding, toying with her food and speaking inanities whilst attempting not to remember the awful things she had said to Johnny Sherwood; and for the first time in her life she found herself close to some accord with Cousin Constance. ‘Do try not to think quite so much, Mattie. And never – never! – answer back. It doesn’t go down well with the gentlemen, you know.’ Well now, she supposed, she did know. The worst of the matter was that, again for the first time in her life, she cared. And there was nothing she could do about it. No amount of wishing could take back the words she had spoken, the offence she had obviously given. She accepted yet another titbit from her portly escort, smiled politely and gave herself up to a sudden and overwhelming misery. A misery, however, that held within it an intransigent core of resistance. She had been right, surely she had? She had been, perhaps, too vehement, too provoking. But for all Johnny Sherwood’s well-argued rebuttals, that did not make her wrong. She just wished she could forget the whole stupid, miserable episode. But she could not. Because, beneath the acutely embarrassing memory of the quarrel lay another memory; of intent dark eyes, and a soft voice: ‘What are all these kissin’s worth, If thou kiss not me?’

---

Cousin Constance would not – could not, Mattie thought, tiredly – let the incident drop. All the way back to their lodgings in Great Pulteney Street, where the Barlowe children had been left in the charge of Kate, the young nursery maid, she scolded and chattered like a bad-tempered sparrow.

‘– Truly, Mattie, if you will not think of yourself, then you might at least have the grace to think of others! Why, I thought I might die of embarrassment! How could you? First to monopolize Mr Sherwood for so long – quite noticeably long I might add! – and then so to have offended him that he left the gathering, and with such a black face! Lord knows what you might have said to him to create such temper!’

‘Connie, it was neither my fault nor my doing that Mr Sherwood chose to spend time with me. I’m sure he regrets it now, and won’t make the same mistake again, so you can rest easily on that score at least. As to the other –’ Mattie stopped.

Constance glanced up at her, waiting, blatant curiosity in her pale eyes.

‘As to the other, it really is no-one’s business but ours. We had a disagreement. I spoke perhaps a little too forcibly.’ She ignored Constance’s sharply clicking tongue. ‘The thing is done. There’s no use going over it.’

‘Well, I must say I wish you realized how very awkward it has made things for me –’

‘I can’t see why.’ Mattie’s temper was getting shorter and shorter.

‘With dear Mrs Johnstone, of course! Oh, Mattie, you are so very thoughtless! We go to the Pump Room with her and with Anna tomorrow. And then there’s Thursday’s soiree – Mattie, for goodness’ sake, do slow down a little – you know I can’t keep up with you when you stride away so! I declare you walk like an Amazon! It really is most unladylike!’

‘I don’t think I shall go to the soiree on Thursday.’

‘Nonsense. Of course you must go. Mrs Johnstone told me she was quite relying upon you to play the piano.’

‘Anna can play the piano.’

‘Not as well as you can, dear. And anyway –’ Constance stopped.

And anyway, Anna must be left free to circulate, to hand around the cordial, to simper and to pretend to be the empty-headed fool that Mattie knew perfectly well she was not. Anna must not be tied to the piano stool all afternoon. ‘I’m sorry, Constance, but no. I’ll not be going on Thursday. I’ll take the children on the river. I’ve been promising them for weeks.’ It had been at one of Mrs Johnstone’s musical afternoons that Mattie had first met Johnny Sherwood. He had sung, very pleasantly, a duet with Anna, and had, with his impeccable courtesy, congratulated Mattie on her playing.

Infuriatingly Constance chose that very moment to produce one of the few perceptive remarks Mattie had ever heard her make. ‘Well,’ she said, lifting her vast, swaying skirts as she negotiated a broken paving slab, ‘I have thought you many things, Mattie Henderson, and have made no bones of it, as you know – but I must say that I never thought you a coward.’

They finished the walk to the house in a somewhat dangerous silence. Once there, and having rescued poor Kate from a screaming Nicholas, a bad-tempered Elizabeth and