Freedom Stone (6 page)

“I expect you aim to do this thing,” she said.

Lillie nodded.

“And I expect you won't let me be if I don't give you some help,” Bett added.

Lillie shook her head no.

Bett sighed and then stood, pressing her palms down on the table to help herself rise, grunting with the effort. “I'm too old to be of much use to you myself,” she said, “but maybe I got somethin' that can serve.”

She made her way over to her baking shelves and took down a small, reddish jar, holding it carefully in both hands. The jar looked like ordinary Carolina clay, but it was shaped like it had been made with another land in mind. Bett carried it back to the table, set it down and took the lid off. She withdrew a small cloth bag and opened the drawstring that kept it shut. Then she tipped the bag into her hand, and a shiny chip of black stone fell into her palm.

“That,” she said, “is a piece of Africa.”

Bett slowly tilted the chip this way and that. It had a surface that looked as if it had been polished, and it reflected light like a bright coin. “Your papa never knew what part of the Ibos' land his people come from,” Bett said, “but I knew where mine was from. A place not far from the ocean, where the ground was cut through by rivers and streams. The water always ran fast and bright there, and my papa said his papa told him it tasted fine too—what a cloud would taste like if you could squeeze it down tight and put it in a bowl. Still, there was one place the water didn't run so quick, and that was on my granddaddy's land. When it flowed through there, it flowed like syrup. But if you scooped the water out and poured it on the ground, it spilled as quick as any water ought to. Ever see any other water behavin' like that?”

Lillie nodded.

“I reckoned you had. My granddaddy never could understand why his stream behaved that way. Then he dug beneath the mud where the fish and turtles fed and found black rock everywhere just like this chip—long, hard bones of it runnin' through the ground. The Africans called the rock firestone, 'cause it come from the hot rocks the mountains spit out. Granddaddy reckoned it was the firestone what held the magic that slowed his river, figuring stone that flowed fast and then turned hard could share its changin' nature with the water. He broke some bits offa the rock and carried them with him for luck. When the slavers caught him, he hid two of the chips under his tongue and promised himself he'd never spit them out—not when he got chained, not when he got whipped, not when they closed him in the belly of a ship and carried him across the ocean. He held on to 'em till he was sold to a plantation where he could hide 'em well and pass 'em on to his children and to their children who came after.”

“And this here piece is all that's left?” Lillie asked softly.

Bett smiled again. “No, child,” she said. “I got the other one too.”

Bett stood again and gestured to Lillie to follow her. She walked the three steps to her still-hot oven and crouched down in front of it. Lillie did the same, flinching at the heat coming out of the bricks. Bett pointed into the oven and Lillie followed where her finger indicated. At first she noticed nothing, but then she saw what Bett wanted her to see: a single brick in the oven wall, just the same as all the other bricks except that in the middle of it was a shiny piece of black stone, about as big as a small coin. The stone was plain to see once you knew where to look, but no one other than Bett would ever have cause to use her oven, much less crouch down low and peer inside.

“I reckoned I needed a place to keep at least one of 'em safe,” Bett said. “So I baked me a brick and mortared it in where no one would ever look. What I didn't figure on was that when I lit the fire, the magic o'that stone would get carried on the smoke. It flows out of the chimney and just like it slowed my granddaddy's river—”

“It slows the bees!” Lillie finished. “And the stream and the smoke!”

Bett nodded.

“What about the whip—the one what missed Cal?” Lillie asked.

“That too,” Bett said.

“But how did you make it work just right—so the whip didn't hit nothin' but the air?”

“That sort o' thing comes with practice. Part of it comes from just when you light the fire and just when you put it out. Part of it's how you bake. If I bake my bread the regular way, I can slow things down a little; if I bake it too long, I can slow 'em down a lot. I can even bake it too short and speed things up. There's other things them stones can do too, but they don't bear foolin' with.”

“What other things?” Lillie asked.

“Never mind. Didn't I just say they don't bear foolin' with?”

“But why not?”

“There's magic you touch and there's magic you don't,” Bett said firmly, “and I'll tell you which is which.”

“But s'posin'—” Lillie began.

“I said never mind!” Bett answered, and this time she spoke with a bite in her voice Lillie had never heard before.

Lillie fell silent and looked awkwardly down at her hands.

Bett softened her tone and smiled. “It was wrong o' me to make mention of such a thing. We got enough magic in this oven and this stone already without pushin' it places it ain't meant to go. Besides, I don't plan to use it at all 'less we got no other choice.”

Lillie nodded. “How will we know that?” she asked.

Bett's demeanor now changed entirely and she allowed herself a laugh. “Full of questions,” she said. “Too many for today. You go back to that nursery now 'fore anyone notices you missing. Ain't no one gonna bother your brother for a little while yet.”

“When can I come again?” Lillie asked.

“Two days,” Bett said. “ 'Round about then, I reckon I'll be needin' to make a trip to Bluffton, and I could always use the help of a young pair of hands.”

Lillie brightened, Bett's angry moment now entirely forgotten. “Two days!” she said excitedly. Then she jumped up from her seat as Bett struggled up from hers, and the old woman and young girl hugged good-bye at the door. Bett watched as Lillie ran off and vanished back the way she came. Then she closed the door, gathered up her stone and swaddled it carefully in its drawstring bag.

Chapter Six

MISS SARABETH was taking her morning stroll when she spied Lillie dashing out of the cabin where Bett the baker lived. That was a surprise, since near as Sarabeth could recall, the place Lillie belonged at this time of day was in the nursery cabin tending to the slave babies. The fact was, however, it had been so long since the two girls played together that neither one was entirely sure any longer how the other spent her day.

There was a time when Sarabeth—who was the Master's daughter—and Lillie, who was the Master's property, played together all the time. They played on Saturdays, when Lillie and Plato were done with their cabin chores and Mama let them go outside; they played on Sundays, when Miss Sarabeth had her afternoons free and the Missus gave her permission to go down to the slave cabins. They would sometimes even play after work was done on weekdays, when both of them had an hour or so before Lillie was called back to the cabin for a dinner of possum or fatback and Miss Sarabeth was called back to the big house for whatever grand meal she would be served that night—a meal that Lillie would ask her about the next day and that Miss Sarabeth would describe in detail, from the creamy soups to the venison or fowl to the tiny sweet cakes she and her brother would eat and the strong brown spirits the men would drink.

Nobody thought it especially strange that Lillie and Miss Sarabeth liked to play together. Plantation children of both colors often fancied one another's company—there being few other boys or girls anywhere nearby—and it was only the sternest masters who thought it unfitting for the colors to mix when they were so young. But when the children reached Miss Sarabeth's and Lillie's age, it was time for the white boys and girls to start behaving like the Southern ladies and gentlemen they were becoming and the black boys and girls to start acting like the slaves they already were and would always be.

Before long, Miss Sarabeth started coming to visit Lillie less and less. While she still sometimes stopped by on the weekends, it was usually in the company of the Missus, who liked to put on fine clothes and tour the slave quarters, smiling in a way Lillie never cared for.

“They look after themselves just fine, don't they?” the Missus would ask Sarabeth as if Lillie and the other slaves weren't there. “Your father was right to let them build good cabins that they'd be inclined to keep well.”

It had been about a month since Miss Sarabeth had made such a visit, and it had thus been that long since she'd last set eyes on Lillie. Part of her smiled this morning as she was taking her walk along the path by the tobacco field and saw her old friend leaving Bett's cabin—but another part frowned. Even before Miss Sarabeth drew near the cabin, she caught the scent of baking on the air. When she was small and she and Lillie would smell that smell, they would steal away from wherever they were supposed to be and run to see Bett, who would break off a piece of whatever bread or cake she was making and let them have some—always taking care to brush the crumbs off their clothes before they left, so that the fact that they'd been there at all would be a secret only the three of them shared. But after a time, Miss Sarabeth had begun to tire of the old baker woman. Bett always tried to give the girls equal helpings of bread, knowing that small children quarrel about such things. But the portions could never be exactly the same, and on those occasions that Lillie got the bigger one, Miss Sarabeth made her trade.

Lillie didn't appear to mind at first—that was how things were supposed to be—but Bett sometimes did. A disapproving look would flash in her eyes that Miss Sarabeth found she didn't care for at all, especially because it became clearer and clearer that Bett wasn't trying to hide it. Worse still, Lillie began to behave the same way, flashing the same cross look Bett did. It would be there only for an instant, but Miss Sarabeth knew her friend's face, and she didn't like what it told her. The last time the two of them visited the cabin, Miss Sarabeth didn't feel welcome at all, as Bett and Lillie chattered and baked and she sat sourly at the eating table, picking at the bread when it was done and wanting to be anywhere else at all. After that, she decided that it probably wasn't fitting for her to be visiting Bett anymore. Soon, she stopped visiting Lillie too.

As Sarabeth had first approached the cabin today, the baking smell had seemed especially strong and she had drawn it in, feeling sadder than she expected to. She sometimes missed the bread and missed the warm old cabin where she used to enjoy it—even if she didn't miss the odd old woman who lived there. It was then that she heard the door open and turned to see Lillie emerge. Bett whispered something to her and the girl smiled and ran off to who knew where else. An uncertain smile crossed Sarabeth's face and she started to raise her hand in greeting, but neither Lillie nor Bett saw her. She had the strange feeling that even though everything around her as far as she could see belonged to her father and by rights to her too, she was tarrying somewhere she shouldn't be.

Sarabeth was surprised at the sense of melancholy that came over her. Still, she couldn't quite make out why Lillie would be there at all at this time of day, or what she and Bett had been whispering about. There was something going on that they didn't want anybody else to know about, and Sarabeth decided she did not like that. Her father looked after all these slaves, and if they were up to something improper, they were worse than disobedient, they were ungrateful. When Miss Sarabeth contemplated this, she did not feel quite as melancholy anymore. What she felt was cross and sour—and suspicious too.

Chapter Seven

CAL WAS ABOUT as happy as he'd ever been when he came to the tobacco field to do his work this morning. He believed he had plenty of cause to be so happy—but the truth was, he had plenty of cause to fear for his life.

In recent months, Cal—like all slave boys his age—had begun to chafe at the kind of work he'd been doing since he was small. Bird chasing, which once seemed like such fun, was for babies, and weed pulling—which was the job he'd been doing for the last two seasons—was for old ladies. Neither was fitting for a boy like him anymore. Already two other boys just a little older than Cal had begun working the fields with shovels and scythes, and before long would even try their hands behind a plow. Cal couldn't help but notice the swagger they'd been walking with ever since they'd been put to their new chores—nor the fact that the girls seemed to notice it too. None of them were of a mind to notice how many grown slaves would eventually be broken by such labors; that was something they would learn when they were older. For now, the work seemed only manly and thrilling.

For most of this season, it had appeared that Cal would have to wait until next year before he'd be given such serious chores, but this very morning it looked like all that had changed. Mr. Willis himself came to his cabin during breakfast and told Cal he'd finally decided to give him a chance to work the plow in the tobacco fields. Cal beamed at the news—and Nelly and George beamed to see him so happy. The boy had jumped past the scythe and shovel work the older boys were doing and gone straight to the labors of a full-grown man. If Mr. Willis had been cross about what happened with Bull, certainly this was proof that his anger had cooled and he might even value the boy's unexpected brass.

Mr. Willis allowed Cal to gulp down a mug of milk and two biscuits Nelly gave him, then escorted him personally to the spot where he'd be working today—the two of them attracting curious stares as they strolled along the grounds. When the man and the boy drew closer to the tobacco fields, Cal could see a few other, early-arriving slaves already at work, their heads and shoulders rising and falling above the tall leaves. Just at the edge of the field was a long patch of unplanted land that was known as the scrub strip, for its stony soil and bristly weeds. There'd been talk in recent months that the Master hoped to plant there next year. Though seeding season was months off, it would not be unusual for an uncultivated stretch of land like that to be cleared and turned in the early fall so it would have the winter to take in air and water. As Cal approached now, he was thrilled to see a large plow already standing in wait in the scrub strip with a black horse rigged to the front. The animal occasionally pawed the topsoil and tossed its mane, looking as impatient to set to work as Cal felt. Cal smiled broadly—but his expression quickly changed when he took a few more steps and saw just which horse it was that was waiting for him. He stopped and turned to Mr. Willis.