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  MRS. CRAFT:

  An Extraordinary Journey

  by Sara Dahmen

  MRS CRAFT: AN EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY

  Copyright ©2022 by Sara Dahmen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without prior written permission. This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Promontory Press www.promontorypress.com

  ISBN: 9781773740997

  Cover designed by Edge of Water Design

  Prologue

  May 1, 1846

  Macon

  The first time she meets him, she recognizes the loss. It wavers in the slants of his eyes, and when the sunlight catches the planes of his face, the pain is in the clench of his jaw. There is loss in the way he moves, and she recognizes it because she holds the same in the depths of her belly.

  They brush elbows the day her master buys a share of his flesh, and when he looks at her, she feels as if he sees her for all she is, and more besides.

  “Who?” she asks him softly.

  His body leans toward hers, as if they are connected by tendon and magic. “My parents. Sold for their age. My sister, my brother, sold for profit. Gone, and may God protect them.”

  It is enough. He means everyone. He has been stripped of all family and is left naked and unsheltered, alone and unfettered to anyone.

  And what does she have? She has her father’s lack of interest, and the disdain of her half-sister, who serves as her newest mistress. Does this serve as family? She does not think so. More than anything, she feels the aching absence of her mother, who is the only family she counts as true.

  He still stares at her as if measuring her future with his. She yearns for it suddenly, with all the pleasure and dangers it would mean. If they could join their souls, she thinks she might be content, and the fierceness of the idea takes hold and puts up roots in every fiber of her heart.

  “Love and family are a risk for those like us,” she says. It is a reminder to herself more than a statement of fact. She says it against the wild, fearful wanting in her bones to bind herself to this William. “I would not like to be made so vulnerable.”

  “Do you not think the risk is worth it?” he wonders. And there seems to be a glimmer in his eyes now, chasing away the loss.

  “Maybe,” she says.

  The glint in his eyes turns to hope, and it reflects inside of her too.

  December 18, 1848

  Macon

  What does it take to be a proper gentleman?

  It’s this thought that rattles her mind the moment sleep might claim her bones each night. It’s this worry pulling on the edges of her eyes when she serves at her half-sister’s table and watches the men perched on their chairs, drawling on about the weather.

  What does it require to pass as a Southern slaveholder?

  Tonight, the comments of her coloring are few. Only Mr. Cray says something, and only once, when she serves him dessert. This is good, for there is nothing happy that comes when anyone makes a parallel, when her half-sister is reminded of the circumstances of birth and the blood their father gave them both. From the shape of their nose to the bow of their lips, and even the shade of their necks, he left his mark on them both for all the world to compare.

  She tarries on the rim of the room, stuffed with high-back carved chairs on spindle legs, creaking under weight and upholstered in slippery silk and bumpy damask. The curtains stir every time she walks past, the sheer lace fluttering only when she moves along the edge of the space as there’s no wind. She must be careful and disinterested, but all the while listening to their voices toss away lives and families as easily as if bodies of beloved siblings or parents were nothing but the last of the cotton crop, blowing east or west… or north.

  She won’t think of the North. Not yet.

  As the evening draws to a close, she takes a deep breath and waits for her sister-mistress to go up to bed so she might rub the dainty feet extra long and beg the favor everything rests upon.

  “I was hoping you’d allow me a pass for a few days.” The words are out, lurching.

  “Why, Ellen? What could you possibly plan to do over Christmas?”

  It isn’t an immediate refusal.

  “William and I would like a little time together. We haven’t been married long, and I would beg to have the holiday with him.” None of this is a lie, and the words are said easily.

  Her half-sister smiles, leans forward, and clasps her hands with a short squeeze. “Bless your heart.”

  The message inside the words is clear. Have children. Prosper—so that I may prosper too. So that your babes increase my property. So I might sell them and profit from the fruit of your loins.

  She nods and withdraws her hands and creeps down the stairs in the dark, the feather-light slip of paper creased and crinkling deep in her pocket. She clutches it blindly and realizes how much she still depends on her mistress, for the words written could say anything and she would never know until it was too late.

  When she enters her tiny room, where the bed smashes the wall, the furniture is cramped and there is scarce room to walk frontward, William is already there. He fills it with his size and the smell of yellowy-green wood shavings, pungent and fresh. He urgently stands from the bed, and his eyes ask the question.

  “Yes,” she says, and means both the pass in her pocket and her consent, and he smiles in the near-dark, his teeth white against the dusk and deep umber color of his cheeks.

  December 19, 1848

  Macon

  It is a wild notion. An insane one. Dangerous. Necessary. Foolhardy. Desperate.

  Imperative.

  Her stitches are tiny and precise. Flick. Flick. Flick. Up and down, the sliver of silver flashes through the pebbly cotton.

  When William enters, the slim package in his hand sends a line of dread from her breastbone, spreading like a poison in her ribcage. It’s the last piece, paid for honestly by this husband of hers, who spends his coin without question, no matter her request.

  Later, when she bites the thread from the last stitch and pulls on the pants, he places the green glass spectacles over her eyes and searches her face. His eyes go dark and swallow the light, and then he frowns.

  “You’ve no whiskers,” he tells her. “Everyone has whiskers.”

  She cradles her cheeks in scratchy palms and is sure her fear pierces through the glasses. How could she have thought they’d be enough to hide her wild-eyed terror?

  Turning to her shimmery reflection in the bottom of the tin-plate mirror, she stares at the paleness of her jawbone and the high catch of the shirt collar underneath.

  He’s right. It’s still not enough.

  “If only it was right and proper to travel as a woman without escort — if you as my slave were chaperone enough,” she says, repeating what they’d circled for days. But it was a shallow wish — there were too many other if onlys.

  If only she had not looked like her half-siblings and her father’s wife didn’t have to correct people of her birth.

  If only she had not been sent away from her mother all those years ago.

  If only William had not been torn from his parents and brother and sister…

  If only it was safe to have children — if only they knew they’d never be ripped away from them at the least desire of their masters.

  She binds up her arm with William’s help, and slowly circles her face with the leftover muslin, hiding herself further, burrowing inside the wrappings until she is scarcely visible among the bandages.

  They gaze at one another, speechless in the face
of the transformation, the audacity, the dream.

  Ellen looks again at the soft-edged vision of herself. Himself. She is now himself. But she is still the same, under it all. She can feel it in the thump of her heart under the well-fitted coat and the sweat bursting between her fingers inside the new white gloves.

  December 20, 1848

  Macon

  It is her last day as Ellen Craft.

  As she serves her sister-mistress, she rehearses the qualities of a man in the back of her mind, as if saying them over and again will imbed it into her pores.

  A gentleman is honest and gentle, generous and brave, with high, elegant tastes and household bills paid up each month.

  These are good qualities in man or woman, she thinks. It is possible to remember this.

  But she knows, and William knows, that though a gentleman might show these charities to their peers, it is not the way of the gentleman to behave with his slaves.

  She must remember that too. She must practice disdain and nonchalance, or those they meet will wonder why it is she gives William so much deference.

  She spills tea in the drawing room and cleans it up to frowns at her backside.

  She burns a corner of lace so it curls, brown and crinkly.

  It won’t be found until tomorrow.

  And when she gets back to her tiny room, William is there with shears spirited away from the carpentry shop, and he carves off her dark curls until her head feels light and barren.

  That night, she leaves him to sleep and stands naked in the middle of the room, the darkness shielding herself from herself. She runs her hands down her legs, along the edges of her hips and across her shoulders.

  She must forget Ellen Craft and will call herself Mr. Johnson. An easy name to remember, and a name just as easily forgotten.

  December 21, 1848

  Macon to Savannah

  The top hat feels as though it might blow over with the slightest breeze, so she walks straight and unnaturally. As she reaches the big sugarberry tree, the strange fruit hanging sends out a ripe stench of rot, and she hurries even faster without looking up again. It’s too close to her own fate if they are found.

  Halfway to the train station, she realizes her gait is nothing like that of an invalid, and she leans over on her walking stick with her unbound arm and hobbles.

  It will do.

  She deepens her voice when she pays for the tickets. William is a looming shadow behind her as she puts down the Georgia-gold coin, so carefully saved, to pay for the first passage from Macon to Savannah. The ticket master glances up once, but at the sight of the bandages, he looks down again, as if embarrassed or too polite. The beat of her pulse slows a fraction, and she breathes out, but not too loudly.

  When she takes her seat, the red velvet under her bottom feels like the back of a caterpillar, and she shudders at the thought of a thousand legs, like the creep of a thousand centipedes, under a thousand inches of sand, as if she were buried alive.

  If only William might sit next to her, his long thigh pressed against hers.

  But no — he is not allowed here, in this car.

  As she glances out of the window, the leaded glass a wavy and watery barrier, a man hunts among the throng, urgent and inquiring. After a moment, she realizes it is the carpenter, the man who owns William, the man who gave her husband the pass for today — the man who would recognize him and snatch him from the train. And would she be able to stand and speak out and say to all the surrounding slaveholders that no, this man belongs to her? To this “Mr. Johnson”?

  No. She would have no proof.

  But the train rattles and shudders and jumps, and the rails eat themselves below — and they are away! Away!

  And as she sinks inside her bindings and her layers, her skin turns to ice as a voice jolts the air.

  “It is a very fine morning, sir.”

  The voice is alarming in its familiarity and lilt and twang.

  At first, she doesn’t move, frozen and disbelieving. Titters and snorts of others in the car send flares of fear shooting up and down the bones of her arms and shoulders.

  “I will make him hear,” says the wheezing voice, as old as she recalls. He repeats louder, “It is a very fine morning, sir!”

  She can see no way out of it. Slowly turning her head, petrified Mr. Cray will recognize the slant of her nose or the tilt of her mouth, she says, so toneless it hurts, “Yes.”

  And the relief hits so profound and heavy it aches her teeth when the rest of the carriage decides her feigned deafness is a very great sorrow indeed.

  And she thinks — How?

  How will this be possible, to be a gentleman? To hide in plain sight, and hope?

  But then, why do this at all if there was never any hope?

  December 21, 1848

  Savannah

  Savannah glows blood-red and ocher, as the sun slips to the west and the water of the harbor turns black. The tops of the crispy waves are rose and gold. They sneak in and pull themselves back out, and she watches them go, still hunched under the bandages. Will the colors of the North be rose and gold? Maybe it’s not really gold and rose at all. The green of the glasses tinges everything with a muddling that reminds her of moss and the undersides of okra leaves.

  She waits for William to bring a tray from the hotel, a charade to be sure, but one she welcomes, as the notion of tea and bread feels a strange, tactile comfort in the swimming of the unknown.

  When he brings it out, she layers the bakery with a skim of butter. Awkward, because she still has no use of her right arm, pulled up in its farce of a sling. He does the buttering for her and takes one stealthily for himself, lest someone wonder why she shares her meal with a slave.

  “By tomorrow, we will be in Charleston,” he says and wipes crumbs from the edge of his beard.

  “Yes,” she replies, and rubs the delicate skin under her eyes carefully. William sees, and his hand hovers over hers, but he pulls it away fast and snappy, balling his gouged fingers inside themselves, a curled claw of a wish that rests instead on his knee.

  She is tired already. This weariness is tight, tart, and skinny through her marrow and replaces the taste of the tea with that of salt and dryness. The bandages chafe on her chin and under the soft parts of her ears, and she is sure already it is raw and near bleeding. All one can see of her is her forehead and nose, and the pucker of her lips. What must they think of her? Do they think she is diseased? Perhaps and maybe the better of it.

  “I do not know if I can do this,” she says, even though she knows the words are too late. She recalls the moments of weeping in William’s arms before they left the little room, when she was sure she could not become a Southern gentleman and play the role unendingly for days upon days.

  “I do not know either,” he tells her, and the honesty circles her chest and squeezes. “But we have no reason not to try.”

  And he, too, means children. He, too, speaks of the hopeful fertileness of her womb. That is the reason they run, after all, so they will never see their children gone, sold, disappeared, forever lost in the frothy ether of space and distance and time.

  She will not bear a child who is bound by the laws of slavery.

  It was her requirement, made in the first throes of their wedded days. He did not question her mind and is careful each time he touches her. He waits for their freedom twofold — maybe threefold — as a man will.

  William flattens his palm on his thigh, and quickly — so quick she thinks it is a mistake — his smallest finger brushes hers. A small touch, a small thing. But it steadies her because when she glances up at him, his eyes cut across, and in that look, she knows he sees her. All of her. And that is enough for today.

  December 22, 1848

  Savannah to Charleston

  She wakes and reaches in the narrow bed for William, already a habit, even though their marriage is new and early. He is not there, and it is not only because there is no space in the tiny steamboat room. She wonder
s where they forced him to sleep and worries.

  It is a dark ball of terror, deeply buried, that she cannot know of his well-being, and cannot seek him.

  She dresses quickly, remembering to put on the new poultice he made last night — to much fuss — and the excuse given so she could retire quickly into her private room. It is an overly pungent concoction of opodeldoc and camphor, rosemary, and wormwood. She hopes it will keep others away.

  But in the stateroom, there is a place waiting for her at the captain’s table, and her breath sinks into her boots when she realizes her bandages have the opposite effect. She’s a curiosity, not one to ignore.

  When the captain calls her over, it is too late to pretend she cannot hear, and she limps to the chair, gripping the walking stick with knuckles first pink and then white. The chair pulls out on its own, but when she looks up, it is not a ghost moving it, but William. The joy pours in, and she is at once grateful for the stinking poultice swaddling her face so none of the portly men will see the happiness bursting out, so hearty and thick it must be a visible light.

  She sits, and heat pops out in every crevasse of her body as the captain asks of her health, and in the same breath, speaks to William’s precise cutting of her food.

  “You have a very attentive boy, sir,” the captain tells her. “But you had better watch him like a hawk when you get on to the North. I know several gentlemen who have lost their valuable slaves among the damned cut-throat abolitionists.”

  She swallows her food too hard and too fast, and it catches. In the space of the breath she needs, another speaks up as he gnaws with great gusto on a half-chicken.

  The grease slides down his sausage hands to his elbows, which rest with significant weight on the table, sinking one side down. “Sound doctrine, captain, very sound.” He leans back without wiping the oil from his fingers, soiling his fine brocaded vest without a care, his wealth bought on the sale of the flesh of others. “I would not take a slave to the North under no consideration,” he tells her seriously, with all the airs of a man who knows everything and nothing. “If you have made up your mind to sell that here slave, I am your man; just mention your price, and if it isn’t out of the way, I will pay for him on this board with hard silver dollars. What do you say, stranger?”