two

The two men sat across from each other with the fire burning low behind them, looking at one another only tentatively. Although they touched often, it was by accident and caused them both some small embarrassment at first, until they grew used to it. Breaking the center chain was very simple. Purchase did this with a strong chisel and a good sharp whack from one of the hammers on a workbench in the barn. The bracelets, though, were another matter, and he was forced to work at them a long time with the smallest tools in his possession.

It was an admirable lock, and when he finally deciphered its clenching mechanism he would feel some small sympathy for his defeated adversary, for its maker had designed that lock with great care and deep insight and intended it to hold until whosoever had mastery of the key released it, but not before.

“How is that?” Purchase asked, pausing in his work to get a better hold on one of the shackles.

Ware massaged his raw flesh beneath the iron and answered, “Not bad. But I have lived with them awhile and am not the best judge.”

“Do you want me to wait so you can catch your breath?” Purchase asked, for he could see how the skin under the handcuff had been almost completely removed and what pain Ware must be in, despite shrugging it off.

“No. Better to go ahead and have done with it.”

Purchase resumed work, trying not to aggravate the skin under the irons, which was orange with rust around the wounds where the metal had contacted his blood. As he watched the stoicism with which Ware bore this pain and intrusion, Purchase felt a tremendous respect for the other man and his private travails.

Ware, for his part, looked at Purchase, and how deliberate he was with what was undeniably an unpleasant and rough business, and his affection for the younger man took hold as for a brother raised under the same roof, and even if they were very different men, they were bound together then nonetheless.

They went on like this, with unspoken tenderness for each other, as they shared a singular understanding until the lock finally revealed itself and opened. Nor when it was done did they thank or comfort each other, but took it each in stride as roles that might easily be reversed.

When the irons were finally off, Ware plunged his hands up to the elbow in a vat of water, washing the filth and dried blood from them. As he did this, Merian and Sanne came into the barn. Sanne carried with her a parcel of clean rags, which she had cut into bandages. When Ware took his hands from the water, she dried them and began to dress his raw wrists in the cotton.

Merian surveyed this scene and did not speak, but he was exceedingly proud of all his family. This, he thought, far surpassed any birthday he had ever celebrated before, even that original year of freedom when he was still in Virginia and first gave himself one, knowing not when he was actually born. He went carousing that year with friends until the celebration turned some unmarked corner and he was left very sore off from celebrating. He figured then it was because he had not done it before and so was not used to it, but soon learned that that was the nature of joy — a flying that could also turn full around if you took it out of sensible range.

He thought this year he had achieved perfect balance.

When Sanne finished dressing Ware’s wounds, they all returned to the main house, where Sanne had Adelia bring out food from the kitchen for Ware, which he devoured at first in a rush, but soon slowed down, seemingly full. When he had his fill of meats he took a very little bit of pudding and a half glass of cider to wash it all down.

“Are you feeling better?” Purchase asked.

“Do you want anything else?” Sanne wanted to know.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he answered them. “A whole heap better than before.”

“What else—” Sanne began, but Merian intervened.

“There’s plenty of time for getting acquainted. I think Ware might like to rest right now.”

Merian led him to an empty room above the kitchen and asked whether there was anything else he needed to pass the night in peace. The new arrival replied there was not, and very soon after Merian left the room.

Magnus, as he himself preferred to be called, looked around in the dark, staring into the edges and corners of the unfamiliar chamber, trying to grow used to the climate indoors again and to figure what sort of course he had charted — not knowing whether he would be received here or not, or why exactly he chose to come to this place rather than great Philadelphia, or even as far off as Boston, anyplace where he might blend in with the general population instead of stopping where he had. He wondered still whether the law might catch up with him — and if they had been pursuing him at that very moment they surely would have, for he scarcely finished the thought before falling asleep from tiredness.

After showing Ware the room Merian went to his own bed, where Sanne lay awake waiting for him. “How is he?” she asked when he entered.

“Fine as might be expected,” Merian answered.

“And you?”

“It’s a great day for me, Sanne. I never on earth thought I would live to see it. Thank you.”

“Well, what happens now? He just shows up a grown man, very likely wanted by the authorities, and you take him in?”

“We will see, Sanne.”

“What about her? Where is she?”

“He didn’t say, and I haven’t asked him yet,” Merian said. In truth, though, he knew what had most likely happened. The boy would have never left Ruth if she was still alive, not if he had suffered everything long enough to become a full-grown man and hadn’t left before that. “There will be plenty of time for questions.”

“Don’t you want to know?”

“Good night, Sanne.”

“And I’m supposed to just stand back, whatever happens.”

“Good night, wife.”

“Good night, husband.”

Merian woke the next day before the rest of the house stirred and went first thing to town, where he met with Content but did not tell him straightaway of the new arrival.

“If a man needed to get papers, Content,” he asked, “where would he go?”

“Depends on what he needed them to say.”

“That he was legitimate.”

“Legitimate what?”

“Legitimate free before the law.”

“Are they for you?”

“In a way.”

“Everybody knows you and knows who you are.”

Seeing no other avenue Merian confessed to the new situation on his place and slid a guinea across the table. “Can you take care of it for me?”

Content nodded that he could but asked Merian why he hadn’t come out and told him the thing to begin with. “It would be a lot simpler that way, Merian.”

“Don’t give me your lectures, Content,” Merian said. “I don’t see that it’s all so complicated now.”

“It isn’t,” Content answered. “It just would have been simpler the other way.” Content went to the door, locked the tavern, and had Merian come with him to his office in back. There, he took out a sheet of very fine writing paper, an ink pot, and his quill. He asked Merian again for the name of his son and began to write a letter stating that the bearer was a free man. When he finished, Merian asked him to read what he had written and, satisfied, expressed to Content his deep gratitude.

“You would do the same for me,” his friend answered him, pushing the coin back at him.

“Well, you and Dorthea ought to come out and meet him soon. Maybe this Sunday,” Merian said, as he stood to leave.

“We just might. But why not give everything awhile to get to normal out there first,” Content replied.

Merian tipped his hat to his friend and took his leave. No longer able to sit a horse as he used to, he climbed into his carriage and rode the seven miles back out to the farm, remembering his own first days of freedom, and his own fresh beginning in this strange new country, though he was not a fugitive as his boy was.