Copyright © 2013 by Tracy Chevalier

SHE COULD NOT go back. When Honor Bright abruptly announced to her family that she would accompany her sister Grace to America-when she sorted through her belongings, keeping only the most necessary, when she gave away all of her quilts, when she said good-bye to her uncles and aunts, and kissed her cousins and nieces and nephews, when she got into the coach that would take them from Bridport, when she and Grace linked arms and walked up the gangplank at Bristol-she did all of these things with the unspoken thought: I can always come back. Layered beneath those words, however, was the suspicion that the moment her feet left English soil, Honor’s life would be permanently altered.

At least the idea of returning drew the sting from her actions in the weeks leading up to their departure, like the pinch of sugar secretly added to a sauce to tame its acid. It allowed her to remain calm, and not cry as her friend Biddy did when Honor gave her the quilt she had just finished: a patchwork of brown, yellow and cream diamonds pieced into an eight-point Star of Bethlehem, then quilted with harps and the running feather border she was known for. The community had given her a signature quilt-each square made and signed by a different friend or family member-and there was not room for both quilts in her trunk. The signature quilt was not so well made as her own, but of course she must take it. “’Tis best left with thee, to remember me by,” she insisted as her weeping friend tried to push the Star of Bethlehem quilt back at her. “I will make more quilts in Ohio.”

Jumping over thoughts of the journey itself, Honor tried to fix her mind instead on its end at the clapboard house her future brother-in-law had sketched for Grace in his letters from Ohio. “It is a solid house, even if not of the stone thee is accustomed to,” Adam Cox had written. “Most houses here are made of wood. Only when a family is established and unlikely to move do they build a brick house.

“It is situated at the end of Main Street on the edge of the town,” he had continued. “Faithwell is still small, with fifteen families of Friends. But it will grow, by the grace of God. My brother’s shop is in Oberlin, a larger town three miles away. He and I hope to move it when Faithwell has grown large enough to support a draper’s. Here we call it ‘dry goods.’ There are many new words to learn in America.”

Honor could not imagine living in a house made of wood, that burned so quickly, warped easily, creaked and groaned and gave no feeling of permanence the way brick or stone did.

Though she tried to keep her worries confined to the notion of living in a wooden house, she could not stop her mind straying to thoughts of the voyage on the Adventurer, the ship that would take them across the Atlantic. Honor was familiar with ships, as any Bridport resident would be. She sometimes accompanied her father to the harbor when a shipment of hemp arrived. She had even gone on board, and watched the sailors furling sails and coiling ropes and mopping decks. But she had never set sail in one. Once when she was ten her father took them to nearby Eype for the day, and Honor and Grace and her brothers had gone out in a rowboat. Grace had loved being on the water, and had shrieked and laughed and pretended to fall in. Honor, however, had gripped the side of the boat while her brothers rowed and tried not to appear alarmed at the rocking, and the curious and unpleasant sensation of no longer having stable footing. She had watched her mother walking up and down the beach in her dark dress and white bonnet, waiting for her children to come back safely. Honor avoided going out in a boat again.

IT STILL SURPRISED Honor that she had to rely so completely on strangers to shelter her, feed her, bring her from place to place, even bury her dead. She had not traveled much in England: apart from short trips to neighboring villages, she had been only to Exeter for a Yearly Meeting of Friends, and once to Bristol when her father had business there. She was used to knowing most people she came in contact with, and not having to introduce and explain herself. She was not a great talker, preferring silence, as it gave her the opportunity to notice things, and to think. Grace had been the lively, chattering member of the family, often speaking for her sister so that Honor did not have to herself. Now without her sister Honor was forced to talk more-to describe her circumstances over and over to the various strangers who took charge of her when the coach first dumped the Brights at the hotel in Hudson.

Once Grace was buried, Honor did not know if she should send word to Adam Cox and wait for him, or find another way to Faithwell herself. She discovered, however, that Americans were practical, resourceful people, and the innkeeper had already found her a lift. An elderly man called Thomas was visiting Hudson, but lived near Wellington, a town seven miles south of Faithwell. He offered to take Honor with him on his way back. From Wellington she could find someone to drive her on to Adam Cox’s, or contact Adam to collect her. “Only we must start early,” Thomas told her, “for I want to get home in one day.”

They set out for Wellington when it was still dark, her trunk stowed behind them in the wagon. It was heavy with Grace’s clothes, for Honor had left behind her sister’s trunk to keep Thomas’s load lighter. She had also been forced to leave behind the quilt she’d made especially for her sister’s marriage: whole-cloth in white, quilted with a delicate rose medallion in the center and surrounded by intricate geometric borders, the space between filled in with double diamonds. Honor had done all the quilting herself and was pleased with the result. However, the innkeeper at the hotel had insisted they use their own bedding, and afterwards the doctor told her the quilt, along with any clothes Grace had worn when she was ill, must be burned so they wouldn’t spread the fever.

Before bundling up the clothes for burning, Honor defied the doctor: she got out her scissors and cut a piece of material from Grace’s chestnut-brown dress. One day she would use the cloth for part of a quilt. And if it was infected with fever and killed her, then that was God’s will.

Though she had not cried when her sister passed-Grace was in such a state at the end that Honor prayed for God to release her-once she’d handed over the clothes and the quilt, she hid in her room and wept.

Thomas seemed to prefer silence as much as Honor did; he asked no questions, and for the first time since reaching land in America she was able to sit and look about without other passengers or the worry over her sister to distract her. Though they drove into darkness, soon the sun rose behind them, tinting the surrounding woods in a soft light. Birdsong intensified until it became a frenetic chatter, most of the sounds unfamiliar to her. She was startled too by the vivid plumage, in particular a tufted scarlet bird with a black face and a blue bird with black and white striped wings, their raucous screams scattering smaller, duller birds. She wanted to ask what they were, but did not like to disturb Thomas. Her companion sat so still that she would have thought he was asleep except that every few miles he stamped his foot twice and shook the reins, seeming to remind the fat gray mare pulling them that he was there. The horse was not fast but she was steady.

They were on a much smaller road than any Honor had ridden along in the stagecoaches through New Jersey and Pennsylvania. There she and her sister had followed well-traveled routes, where the roads were wide and sprinkled with houses and towns as well as inns for changing horses and eating and sleeping. Here it was more a track of dry, rutted mud cutting through dense trees. There were few houses, or clearings, or anything other than woods. After several miles driving through the same forest without any sign of people nearby, Honor began to wonder why such a road existed. Most roads where she was from had a clear destination. Here the destination was much farther away and less obvious.

But she mustn’t compare Ohio to Dorset. It did not help.

Occasionally they passed a house carved out of the woods alongside the road, and Honor found herself letting out a breath, then taking in another and holding it as the woods closed in on them once more. Not that the houses were much in themselves: hardly more than log cabins, many of them, surrounded by stumps. Sometimes a boy was outside chopping wood, or a woman was hanging out a quilt to air it, or a girl was hoeing a vegetable patch. They stared as Thomas and Honor passed and did not respond to Thomas’s raised hand. He did not seem to mind.

An hour into the journey they descended a shallow valley to a bridge crossing a river. “The Cuyahoga,” Thomas murmured. “Indian name.” Honor was not listening, however, nor looking into the river. Instead she was staring above her, for the straight wooden bridge they rumbled across had a roof. Thomas must have noticed her bewilderment. “Covered bridge,” he said. “You’ve not seen one before?”

Honor shook her head.

“Keeps the snow off, and the bridge from freezing.”

The bridges crossing streams and rivers from her childhood were stone and humped. Honor had not thought that something as fundamental as a bridge would be so different in America.

They stopped after a few hours to give the horse water and oats, and to eat the cold corn mush Ohioans liked for breakfast. Afterwards Thomas disappeared into the woods. While he was gone Honor stood by the wagon and studied the trees on the other side of the track. They too were unfamiliar. Even trees like oaks and chestnuts she knew from before seemed different, the oak leaves more pointed and less curly, the chestnut leaves not in the fanned cluster she was accustomed to. The undergrowth looked foreign, dense and primitive, designed to keep people out.

On his return Thomas nodded at the woods. “You’ll want relief.”

“I-” Honor had been about to protest, but something in his manner made it clear she should obey him, the way one does a grandfather. Besides, she could not admit she was frightened of Ohio woods. She would have to get used to them at some point.

She stepped off the track and into the trees, placing each foot with care onto dead leaves, mossy rocks and fallen branches. All around there was a raw, earthy smell of ferns and decay; rustling too, which Honor tried to ignore, reasoning that the noises must be made by mice or gray squirrels or the small brown rodents with furry tails and black and white stripes down their backs she had learned were called chipmunks. She had heard that the woods were home to wolves, panthers, porcupines, skunks, possums, raccoons and other animals that did not exist in England. Most she would not even recognize if she saw them-which in a way made them even more frightening. Apparently there were many snakes as well. She could only hope that none was in this patch of forest on this particular morning. When she was thirty feet or so from the road, Honor took a deep breath and forced herself to turn around so that she was facing the wagon, her back to the endless ranks of trees potentially hiding animals. Finding a place where she was shielded from Thomas, she lifted her skirts and squatted.

Apart from the wind rustling the leaves and the birds singing, it was quiet. Honor heard Thomas open the hinged seat they had been sitting on, where there must be storage space. She heard his low voice, probably talking to the horse, reassuring it as Honor herself needed reassurance that wolves and panthers were not hovering. The horse replied in a low nicker.

Honor stood up and rearranged her skirts. She could not relieve herself: being so exposed in the woods made her too tense. She looked around. This is as far from home as I can be, she thought, and I am alone. She shuddered, and ran back to the safety of the wagon.

When she had climbed onto her seat, Thomas stamped his foot twice and they started again. Breakfast seemed to have awakened him. Though he did not speak, he began to hum a tune Honor did not recognize, probably a hymn of some sort. After a while the humming, the rattle of the wagon and jangling of the horse’s bridle, the wind, the birds-this ensemble of sounds lulled her, as did the track extending straight out of sight ahead of them, and the trees rippling by. She did not fall asleep, but settled into the familiar meditative state she knew from Meeting. It was as if she were having a two-person Meeting with Thomas right on the wagon-though Friends did not normally hum during it. Honor closed her eyes and allowed her body to sway naturally, harnessed to the rhythm of the wagon’s movement. Steady and comfortable at last, she sank down inside herself to wait for the Inner Light.

It was all too easy to be distracted during Meeting for Worship. Sometimes her mind would be crowded with thoughts about a cramp in her leg, or remembering that she had forgotten to run an errand for her mother, or noticing a mark on a neighbor’s white bonnet. It took discipline to quieten the mind. Honor often found a kind of peace, but the true depth of the Inner Light, that feeling that God accompanied her, was harder to reach. She would not expect to find it in the middle of Ohio woods with an old man humming hymns beside her.

Now, as she sat in the wagon that was taking her west, Honor began to feel a presence, as if she were not alone. Of course Thomas was with her, but it was more than that: there was almost a buzz in the air, a knowledge that she was being accompanied on her journey into the depths of Ohio. Honor had never felt this so tangibly before, and for the first time in a lifetime of Meetings, she was moved to speak.

She opened her mouth, and then she heard it. From far behind them there came a kind of scratching sound. After a moment it separated into a rhythm of hoofbeats, pounding fast.

“Someone’s coming,” Honor said-the first words she had spoken to Thomas all day. It was not what she had intended to say.

Thomas turned his head and listened, his eyes expressionless until he too picked up the sound. Then his gaze seemed to intensify, revealing some meaning Honor could not decode. He looked at her as if wanting to acknowledge something without saying it, but she did not know what it was.

She pulled her eyes from his and looked back. A dot had appeared on the road.

Thomas stamped his foot three times. “Tell me about your sister,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“Tell me about your sister-the one who died. What was her name?”

Honor frowned. She did not want to talk about her sister now, with someone else appearing and a new tension in the air. But Thomas had not asked her many questions on the trip, and so she obliged. “Grace. She was two years older than me.”

“She was to marry a man from Faithwell?”

The sound was clearer now: one horse, ridden at a gallop, with a thick shoe that made a distinctive thud. It was hard not to be distracted. “He-he is English. Adam Cox. From our village. He emigrated to Ohio to help his brother run a shop in Oberlin.”

“What kind of shop?”

“A draper’s.”

When Thomas looked puzzled, Honor thought back to Adam’s letter. “Dry goods.”

Thomas brightened. “Cox’s Dry Goods? I know it. On Main Street, south of College. One of them’s been poorly.” He stamped his foot three times again.

Honor glanced back again. The rider was visible now: a man riding a bay stallion.

“Why did you come with your sister?”

“I-” Honor could not answer. She did not want to explain to a stranger about Samuel.

“What are you going to do now you’re here without her?”

“I-I don’t know.” Thomas’s questions were direct and cutting, and the last was like a needle pricking a boil. It burst, and Honor began to cry.

Thomas nodded. “I beg your pardon, miss,” he whispered. “We may need those tears.”

Then the rider was upon them. He pulled up next to the wagon, and Thomas stopped the gray mare. The stallion whinnied at her, but she stood solidly, with no apparent interest in this new companion.

Honor wiped her eyes and glanced at the man before folding her hands in her lap and fixing her gaze on them. Even sitting on a horse it was clear that he was very tall, with the leathery tanned skin of a man who spends his life outside. Light brown eyes stood out of his square, weathered face. He would have been handsome if there were any warmth to his expression, but his eyes were flat in a way that sent a chill through her. She was suddenly very aware of their isolation on this road. She doubted too that Thomas carried a gun like the one prominent on the man’s hip.

If Thomas had similar thoughts he did not reveal them. “Afternoon, Donovan,” he said to the newcomer.

The man smiled, a gesture that did not affect his face. “Old Thomas, and a Quaker girl, is it?” He reached over and pulled at the rim of Honor’s bonnet. As she jerked her head away he laughed. “Just checkin’. You can tell the other Quakers you know not to bother dressin’ niggers up in Quaker clothes. I’m on to that one. That trick’s old.”

He removed his battered hat and nodded at Honor, who stared at him, bewildered by his words, for they made no sense to her.

“You don’t have to take your hat off to Quakers,” Thomas said. “They don’t believe in it.”

The man snorted. “I ain’t gonna change my good manners just ’cause a Quaker girl thinks different. You don’t mind if I take off my hat to you, do you, miss?”

Honor ducked her head.

“See? She don’t mind.” The man stretched. Under a brown waistcoat his collarless white shirt was stained with sweat.

“Can we help you with something?” Thomas said. “If not, we have to get along-we’ve a long road ahead.”

“You in a rush, are you? Where you headed?”

“I’m taking this young woman with me back to Wellington,” Thomas said. “She has come to Ohio from England, but lost her sister in Hudson to yellow fever. You can see from her tears that she is in mourning.”

“You from England?” the man said.

Honor nodded.

“Say something, then. I always liked the accent.”

When Honor hesitated, the man said, “Go on, say something. What, you too proud to talk to me? Say, ‘How do you do, Donovan.’”

Rather than remain silent and risk his insistence turning to anger, Honor looked into his amused eyes and said, “How does thee, Mr. Donovan?”

Donovan snorted. “How does I? I does just fine, thankee. Nobody’s called me Mr. Donovan in years. You Quakers make me laugh. What’s your name, girl?”

“Honor Bright.”

“You gonna live up to your name, Honor Bright?”

“A little kindness to a girl who has just buried her sister in a strange land,” Thomas intervened.

“What’s in that?” Donovan switched his tone suddenly, gesturing to Honor’s trunk in the wagon bed.

“Miss Bright’s things.”

“I’ll just have a look in it. That trunk’s the perfect size for a hidden nigger.”

Thomas frowned. “It’s not right for a man to look in a young lady’s trunk. Miss Bright will tell you herself what’s in it. Don’t you know that Quakers don’t lie?”

Donovan looked expectantly at her. Honor shook her head, puzzled. She was still recovering from Donovan pulling at her bonnet and could barely keep up with their conversation.

Then, faster than she could have imagined, Donovan jumped from his horse and onto the wagon. Honor felt a dart of fear in her gut, for he was so much bigger, faster and stronger than her and Thomas. When Donovan discovered the trunk was locked, that fear made her pass over the key, which she’d kept on a thin green ribbon around her neck during the long journey.

Donovan opened the lid and lifted out the quilt Honor had brought to America. She expected him to set it aside, but instead he shook it out and draped it over the wagon bed. “What’s this?” he asked, squinting at it. “I never seen writing on a quilt.”

“It is a signature quilt,” Honor explained. “Friends and family made squares and signed them. It was a gift to mark my move to America. To say good-bye.”

Each square consisted of brown and green and cream squares and triangles, with a white patch in the middle signed by the maker. Originally begun for Grace, when Honor decided at the last minute to go to America as well, the makers rearranged the configuration of names so that hers was in the central square, with family members in the squares around it, and friends beyond those. Quilted in a simple diamond pattern, it was not especially beautiful, for the work varied according to the skill of each maker, and it was not designed the way Honor would have chosen. But she could never give it to anyone else: it had been made for her to remember her community by.

Donovan squatted in the wagon bed and studied the quilt for so long that Honor began to wonder if she had said something wrong. She glanced at Thomas: he remained impassive.

“My mother made comforts,” Donovan said at last, running his fingers over a name-Rachel Bright, an aunt of Honor’s. “Nothin’ like this, though. Hers had a big star in the center made out of lots of little diamonds.”

“That pattern is called a Star of Bethlehem.”

“Is it, now?” Donovan looked at her; his brown eyes had thawed a little.

“I have made that pattern myself,” she added, thinking of the quilt she had left behind with Biddy. “They are not easy, because it is difficult to fit together the points of the diamonds. The sewing must be very accurate. Thy mother must have been skilled with her needle.”

Donovan nodded, then grabbed the quilt and stuffed it back in the trunk. Locking it, he jumped down from the wagon. “You can go.”

Without a word, Thomas flicked the reins and the gray mare sprang into life. A minute later Donovan rode up alongside them. “You settlin’ in Wellington?”

“No,” Honor answered. “Faithwell, near Oberlin. My late sister’s fiancé is there.”

“Oberlin!” Donovan spat, then pressed his heels into the stallion’s belly and flew past them. Honor was relieved, for she had wondered how she would tolerate him riding alongside them all the way to Wellington.

His horse’s hoofbeats remained in the air, quieter and quieter, for many minutes, until at last they faded away. “All right, now,” Thomas said softly. Stamping twice, he flicked the reins over the mare’s back again. He did not hum, however, for the rest of the journey.

It was only miles later that Honor realized Donovan had not given her back the key to her trunk.

HONOR HAD SLEPT in so many beds by the time she got to Wellington that when she woke she did not remember where she was. Her dress and shawl were hanging over a chair, but she could not recall undressing or putting them there. She sat up, certain that it was not early morning, when she usually rose. She was wearing an unfamiliar cotton nightgown that was too long for her, and covered with a light quilt.

Wherever she was, there was no doubt that this was America. The quality of the sunlight was different-yellower and fiercer, biting through the air to warm her. Indeed, it was going to be a hot day, though at the moment it was fresh enough for her to be grateful for the quilt. She ran her hand over it: unlike most American quilts she had seen so far, this one was not appliquéd or pieced squares, but proper English patchwork, well made, so that while the cloth was faded, there were no tears or loose seams. The design was of orange and yellow and red diamonds that made up a star in the center of the quilt-a Star of Bethlehem like Biddy’s quilt, and what Donovan had described his mother making. Recalling her encounter with him the day before, Honor shuddered.

Though of a good size, and containing the bed she had slept in, the room was not a bedroom so much as a storeroom. Bolts of cloth leaned against the walls, many of them white but also solid colors, plaids and floral prints. Spilling out of open chests of drawers were gloves, ribbons, wire, lace and feathers dyed in bright colors. In one corner, dominating the room, smooth blocks of wood in oval and cylindrical shapes were precariously stacked, as well as peculiar oval and circular bands like wheels or doughnuts, some of wood, others made of a hard white material Honor did not recognize. She leaned forward to study them more closely. The blocks reminded her of heads. When Thomas had left her off late the evening before, she’d entered a shop of some kind. While at the time she had been too tired to take note of it, now she understood: she was in a milliner’s storeroom.

Quaker women did not wear hats, but plain caps and bonnets, and usually made their own. Honor had only been into the milliner’s in Bridport a few times to buy ribbon. She had often peeked in the window, however, to admire the latest creations displayed on their stands. It had been a tidy, feminine space, with floorboards painted duck-egg blue and long shelves along the walls filled with hats.

On top of the dresser full of trimmings was a china jug decorated with pink roses sitting in a matching basin, the same Honor had seen in homes all across Pennsylvania. She used them now to wash, then dressed and smoothed her dark hair, noting as she put on her cap that her bonnet was missing. Before she went down, she glanced out of the window, which overlooked a street busy with pedestrians and horses and wagons. It was a relief to see people again after a day on the empty road through the woods.

Honor crept down the stairs and entered a small kitchen with a fire and range, a table and chairs, and a sideboard sparse with dishes. The room felt underused, as if little food were prepared there. The back door was open, bringing in a breeze that passed through the kitchen and into the front room. Honor followed it to the heart of the house.

In many respects the shop was like the Bridport milliner’s: hats on shelves lining the walls, hats and bonnets on stands on tables around the room, glass cases along the sides displaying gloves and combs and hat pins. A large mirror hung on one wall, and two front windows made the room light and airy. The floorboards were not painted but worn smooth and shiny from customers’ feet. In one corner on a work table were hats in various stages of construction: layers of straw molded around carved wood hat blocks, drying into shape; brims sewn into ovals and awaiting their crowns; hats banded with ribbon, a pile of silk flowers waiting to be attached among a tangle of ribbons and wire. There was little order on the table; the order lay in the finished hats.

In another way the room was completely different, as so many things about America felt to Honor. Where the Bridport shop was orderly by design, the Wellington milliner’s felt as if it had come about its order by accident. Some of the shelves were crammed with hats while others were bare. The room was bright but the windows dusty. Though the floor looked as if it had been swept clean, Honor suspected the corners housed dustballs. It felt as if the shop had sprung up suddenly, whereas Honor knew that her great-grandmother would have bought plain ribbons from the Bridport milliner’s.

The hats and bonnets too were peculiar. Though no expert in trimmings since she wore none herself, Honor was startled by some of the things she saw. A straw hat with a shallow crown pinned with a huge bunch of plaid roses. Another flat hat rimmed with a cascade of colored ribbons bound together with lace. A cottage bonnet with a deep crown much like Honor’s own, but with white feathers lining the inside rim rather than the usual white ruffles. Honor could wear none of them, for Quakers followed rules of simplicity in dress as well as in conduct. Even if she could she was not sure she would want to.

Yet these hats must sell, as the shop was full of women and girls, gathered around the tables, sorting through frilly caps and sun bonnets, plucking at baskets of pre-cut ribbons and cloth flowers, laughing and chattering and calling out.

After a moment she noticed a woman standing behind the back counter, surveying the room with an experienced air. This was the proprietress, whom Honor had met briefly the night before. She caught Honor’s eye and nodded. She was not at all what you would expect of a milliner. Tall and thin, she had a bony face and a skeptical air. Her hazel eyes bulged slightly, the whites tinged with yellow. For a milliner she wore a surprisingly simple white cap, with a burst of scrubby fair hair hanging on her forehead. Her tan dress hung from her shoulders and exposed a ridge of collarbone. She reminded Honor of the scarecrows hanging on wooden frames in Dorset gardens. The contrast between her angular plainness and the frilly wares she sold made Honor want to smile.

“What you grinnin’ at, Honor Bright?”

Honor started. Donovan had entered the shop, his heavy tread among the customers causing them to fall silent and take a collective step back.

Honor remained still. She did not want to cause a fuss, so she simply said, “I wish thee good day, Mr. Donovan.”

Donovan rested his eyes on her. “I was passing and saw you in here. And I thought to myself, ‘Why in hell did Old Thomas leave a Quaker girl at Belle Mills’s when she can’t wear none of the hats?’”

“Donovan, don’t be so rude to our guest, or she’ll go right back to England and tell everyone what bad manners American men have.” Belle Mills had come out from behind the counter, and turned her attention to Honor. “You’re English, ain’t you, Miss Bright? I could tell from the stitching ’round your neckline. Looks like something only an Englishwoman would think up. I never seen such a striking detail, certainly not on a Quaker woman’s dress. Very fine, that. Simple. Effective. Did you design it or copy it from something?”

“I made it up myself.” Honor glanced down at the white V of cloth edging the neckline of her dark green dress. It was not the crisp white it had been when she left England. But then, nothing was quite as clean in America as it had been back home.

“Hey, you bring any English magazines with you? Ladies’ Cabinet of Fashion or Illustrated London News?”

Honor shook her head.

“Shame. I like to copy hats from ’em. By the way, if you’re wonderin’ where your bonnet is, I got it here.” Belle Mills pointed to a shelf behind her. Honor’s bonnet-pale green, with the crown and brim merged into one horizontal line-had been pulled over one of the hat blocks. “It needed a little attention. I just gave it a brush and a sprinkle of starchy water. Give it an hour and it’ll get its shape back. You got it new for your trip?”

“My mother made it.”

Belle nodded. “Good hand. Can you sew like that?”

Better than that, Honor thought but did not say. “She taught me.”

“Maybe while you’re here you can help me out. Usually I’m not so busy once the Easter-bonnet rush is over, but it’s heated up all of a sudden and everybody’s decided they want a new bonnet, or new trim on their hats.”

Honor nodded in confusion. She was not expecting to remain in Wellington, but to go immediately on to Faithwell. It was only seven miles away, and she hoped to find another farmer with a wagon to take her, or get a boy to ride there with a message for Adam Cox to come and fetch her. The thought of seeing him so soon filled her with dread, though; she did not know if he would welcome her as warmly without Grace at her side.

Donovan interrupted her thoughts. “Jesus Christ, is this what you gals talk about all day? Dresses and bonnets?”

The customers had been soothed enough by Belle’s chat to go back to browsing the merchandise. Hearing Donovan’s tone, however-so alien to a millinery shop-they froze once again.

“Nobody asked you to come here and listen to us,” Belle countered. “Get out of here-you’re scaring my customers.”

“Honor Bright, are you stayin’ here?” Donovan demanded. “You didn’t tell me that before. Thought you said you was headed to Faithwell.”

“You keep out of her business,” Belle said. “Old Thomas told me you was botherin’ her on the road. Poor Honor has had to meet the lowest of Ohio society before she’s even had a chance to catch her breath.”

Donovan was ignoring Belle, his eyes still on Honor. “Well, now, guess I’ll see you round Wellington, Honor Bright.”

“Mr. Donovan, may I have my key back, please?”

“Only if you call me Donovan. Can’t stand Mister.”

“All right-Donovan. I would like my key back, please.”

“Sure, darlin’.” Donovan moved his hand, but then stopped. “Aw, sorry, Honor Bright, I lost it on the road.” He held her eyes so that she would know he was lying but could not accuse him. His expression was no longer guarded, but intent, and interested. Her stomach twisted with a mixture of fear and something else: excitement. It was such an unsuitable sensation that she flushed.

Donovan smiled. Then he lifted his hat to the room and turned to go. As he reached the door Honor saw around the back of his neck a thin line of dark green ribbon.

The second he was gone the women began chattering like chickens riled by the sight of a fox.

“Well, Honor Bright, looks like you’ve already made a conquest,” Belle remarked. “Not one you’d ever want to take up with, though, I can guarantee that. Now, you must be starved. You didn’t eat nothin’ last night, and little on the road, I bet. Ladies”-she raised her voice-“you all go on home and get dinner on the table. I got to feed this weary traveler. You want to buy something, come back in an hour or two. Mrs. Bradley, I’ll have your bonnet ready tomorrow. Yours too, Miss Adams. Now I got a good sewer with me I can catch up.”

Honor watched the women obediently filing out, and confusion threatened to overwhelm her. Her life seemed to be in the hands of strangers-where she was going and where she stayed and for how long, what she ate and even what she sewed. It seemed now she was to make bonnets for a woman she had just met. Her eyes pricked with tears.

Belle Mills must have seen them, but said nothing, simply hung a CLOSED sign on the door and went back to the kitchen, where she heaped a ham steak and several eggs into a skillet. “Come and eat,” she commanded a few minutes later, setting two plates on the table. Clearly cooking was not something she spent much time on. “Look, there’s corn bread there, and butter. Help yourself.”

Honor gazed at the greasy ham, the eggs flecked with fat, the stodgy corn bread she’d had at every meal in America. She did not think she could face eating any of it, but since Belle was watching her, she cut a tiny triangle of ham and popped it in her mouth. The sweet and salt together surprised her, and opened a door in her belly. She began to eat steadily, even the corn bread she was so tired of.

Belle nodded. “Thought so. You were looking mighty pale. When did you leave England?”

“Eight weeks ago.”

“When did your sister die?”

Honor had to think. “Four days ago.” Already it felt like months and miles away. Those forty miles between Hudson and Wellington had taken her deeper into a different world than any of the rest of the journey.

“Honey, no wonder you’re peaky. Thomas told me you’re going on to Faithwell, to your sister’s fiancé.”

Honor nodded.

“Well, I sent him word you’re here. Told him to come Sunday afternoon to pick you up. I figured you need a few days to recover. You can help me with some sewing if you want. Earn your keep.”

Honor could not remember what day it was. “All right,” she agreed blindly, relieved to let Belle take charge.

“Now, let’s see what you can do with a needle. You got your own sewing things or you want to use some of mine?”

“I have a sewing box. But it is locked in the trunk.”

“Damn that Donovan. Well, I can probably get it open with a hammer and chisel as long as you don’t mind me breakin’ the lock. All right? We don’t have much choice.”

Honor nodded.

“You do the dishes and I’ll work on the trunk.” Belle surveyed the table, Honor’s clean plate and her own, almost untouched. Picking up the latter, she set it on the sideboard with a napkin over it. Then she disappeared upstairs. A few minutes later, as Honor was scrubbing the pan, she heard banging and then a triumphant shout.

“English locks ain’t any better’n American,” Belle announced as she came downstairs. “It’s broken now. Go and get your sewing things. I’ll finish up here.”

When Honor brought her box down, Belle was dragging a rocking chair through the back door. “Let’s set on the back porch, catch the breeze. You want this rocker, or a straight chair?”

“I will bring out a straight chair.” Honor had seen rocking chairs everywhere she went in America; they were much more common than in England. The sensation reminded her too much of the ship. Besides, she needed solid stillness for sewing.

As she picked up a chair in the kitchen, she noticed Belle’s plate of food on the sideboard was gone.

* * *

The milliner’s was on the end of a row of buildings that included a grocery, a harness shop, a confectionary and a drugstore. The backyards of these establishments were underused, though one had a vegetable garden, and in another there was laundry hanging out. Belle’s yard had nothing in it but a pile of planed wood and a goat tethered in the weeds. “Don’t go near the wood,” Belle warned. “Snakes there. And leave that goat be. It belongs to the neighbors, and it’s evil.” There was also an outhouse, and a lean-to along the side of the house for storing wood, but clearly Belle’s energy went into her shop.

Honor sat and opened her sewing box to lay out her things. This ritual, at least, was familiar. The sewing box had belonged to her grandmother, who, when her sight began to fail, handed it on to the best stitcher among her granddaughters. Made of walnut wood, it had a padded needlepoint cover of lilies of the valley in green and yellow and white. This was an image Honor had known from an early age; eyes shut, she could perfectly re-create it in her mind, as she had often done to distract herself during her seasickness. The upper tray contained a needlecase Grace had made, embroidered with lilies of the valley similar to the box lid; a wire needle threader; a porcelain thimble her mother had given her, decorated with yellow roses; a beaded pin cushion her friend Biddy had made for her; packets of pins wrapped in green paper; a small tin holding a lump of beeswax she used on her quilting thread; and her grandmother’s pair of small sewing scissors with green and yellow enameled handles, sheathed in a soft leather case.

Belle Mills leaned forward to inspect. “Nice. What are these?” She picked up pieces of metal cut into different shapes: hexagons, diamonds, squares, triangles.

“Templates for cutting patchwork. My father had them made for me.”

“Quilter, eh?”

Honor nodded.

“What’s underneath?”

Honor lifted the tray to reveal spools of different colored thread, each slotted into its place.

Belle nodded her approval, then reached between the spools to pick out a small silver thimble. “Don’t you want this in the top section with the other things?”

“No.” Samuel had given her the thimble when their feelings for each other were ripe. She would not use it now, but could not quite give it up.

Belle raised her eyebrows. When Honor did not elaborate, she dropped the thimble back into the spools to ruin their perfect order. “All right, Honor Bright,” she chuckled, “everybody’s entitled to their secrets. Now, let’s get you started. You sewed much on straw before?”

Honor shook her head. “I have not made hats, only bonnets.”

“Bet you only got two bonnets-winter and summer. You Quakers don’t go in for fancy clothes, do you? Well, then, let’s start you on cloth. I got a sun bonnet for Mrs. Bradley needs finishing. That’s easy-no straw structure, just corded. Most women make their own, but Mrs. Bradley’s got a fancy notion she don’t ever need to pick up a needle. Think you can manage this? Here’s the thread. I been using a size six needle.” She handed Honor a soft bonnet that had been cut and tacked together with loose stitches, and only needed sewing; it was a simple enough design, with a long, wide bavolet of cloth to cover the neck from the sun. The fabric was a light blue plaid crisscrossed with thin yellow and white stripes. It was not a style Honor was familiar with-no English woman would be willing to let so much fabric flap around her neck-but the sun was stronger here, so perhaps such covering was needed. At any rate, it would be easy to sew.

Honor reached for a spool and her needle threader and quickly threaded six needles, poking them into the pincushion in readiness. Though Belle’s scrutiny made her self-conscious, in the sewing realm at least she was confident of what she was doing. She began to sew the crown onto the brim using a back stitch for strength, and gathering the crown cloth into little pleats as she made her way around. Honor was a fast, accurate seamstress, though she went more slowly on this bonnet, to make sure she was doing what Belle wanted.

Belle sat in the rocker next to her and sewed cream silk over the top of the straw, oval-shaped brim of a bonnet. Every so often she glanced over at Honor’s work. “I can see I don’t have to look after you,” she remarked when Honor had finished the sun bonnet. “Now, watch the pleats I’m makin’ to get this cloth to lay flat around the brim. See, like this. Think you can do that? Here, try it. Use this-it’s a milliner’s needle-better for straw.”

When Honor had sewn enough to Belle’s satisfaction, the milliner stood and stretched. “Guess I got lucky with you comin’. When you finish that, you can work on these.” She patted a pile of bonnets in various stages of construction that she had placed on a table between them. “I’ll trim ’em later. You got any questions I’ll be in the shop. Got to open for the afternoon.”

It had grown warm, with the sun high in the sky and the porch less shaded. Honor had not been alone much since landing in America, and was glad to sit still on a bright spring afternoon with familiar work to do but nothing more expected of her. She would have liked a cottage garden to look at, with drifting borders of flowers such as her mother grew-lupins and delphiniums and columbine and love-in-a-mist and forget-me-nots. She didn’t know if any of these flowers even grew in America, or if Americans cultivated that sort of garden. She suspected not-it was not practical, especially here, where society was still being hewn from the wilderness and energy was directed toward survival rather than decoration. Mind you-she surveyed the pile of bonnets Belle had left her-Ohio women did allow themselves some frivolity in their headwear: the bonnets were in brightly colored ginghams and chintz.

She finished the cream bonnet and picked up another, of pale green fabric dotted with tiny daisies, and a brim that could be folded back to reveal another color-tan in this case. Honor would have expected pink, but she was not about to suggest so. As she worked on the second bonnet, the steady, familiar rhythm of sewing took over, its repetition meditative, freeing her to her thoughts rather as Meeting for Worship did. She felt her shoulders begin to sink, the tension she had been carrying with her since leaving England easing a little. Reaching the end of the thread, she let her hands rest on the bonnet in her lap and closed her eyes. That calm, and her solitude, gave her the space in which to think: of Samuel telling her he loved someone else, and her decision to unmoor herself from Dorset; of her sister’s death leaving her so alone in a strange place. Honor at last began to cry, painful sobs reminiscent of the heaves she had suffered on board the Adventurer.

The relief of her tears did not last, however. In between her muffled gasps, a sense came over her, just as it had on the road from Hudson to Wellington, that she was not alone. Honor glanced behind her, but Belle was not in the doorway or the kitchen; indeed, she could hear her voice back in the shop. And she could see no one in any of the nearby yards. Then she heard behind her, in the lean-to at the side of the house, the sound of a log falling from the woodpile.

It could be a dog, she thought, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. Or one of those animals we don’t have, a possum or a porcupine or a raccoon. But she knew they were unlikely to knock over a log. And she knew, though she could not say how, that the presence she felt now, and had felt on the road, was human.

Honor had never thought of herself as a brave person. Until coming to America, her mettle had not really been tested. Now, however, she resisted the urge to fetch Belle. Instead she put the bonnet aside, rose from her chair, and crept down the back steps. Hesitating would not help, she knew. She took a breath, held it, and walked over to the lean-to to look in.

The light reached only a foot or two inside the woodshed; then it was dim, leading to darkness. For a moment Honor could see nothing as her eyes tried to adjust. Then she made out wood stacked neat and high on the right; on the left there was a narrow gap between wood and wall, for access to the stack. In that gap stood a black man. Honor sucked in a shocked breath on top of the one she was holding, then let it out in a sudden exhalation. She stared at him. He was of medium height and build, with fuzzy hair and wide cheeks. He was barefoot, his clothes worn and dirty. That was all she could take in, or knew how to take in, for she was not familiar enough with Negro features to be able to gauge and compare and describe them. She did not know if he was frightened or angry or resigned. To her he simply looked black.

She did not know what to say, or if she should speak, so she did not, but stepped backward. Then she hurried to the porch, and began putting her sewing things back into her box. Piling the bonnets on top, she picked up everything and took it inside.

Belle did not seem surprised to see her. “Heat got to you?” she said as she adjusted a hat on a customer, sharpening the angle before sticking in a hat pin. Both women studied the effect in the mirror. “That’s better, ain’t it? Suits you.”

“Dunno,” the woman answered. “You’ve skimped on the violets.”

“Think so? I can make you some more, now I got me an assistant. Penny a violet all right?” Belle winked at Honor. “You finished Miss Adams’s bonnet? The green one. Yes? Good. You can work in the corner by the window-that’s the best light.” Before Honor could speak, Belle turned back to her customer to discuss violets.

* * *

She worked all afternoon on the bonnets, and gradually her hands stopped shaking. After a while she even wondered if she had imagined the man. Perhaps the heat and light and her own recent trauma had made her turn a dog or a raccoon into a man. She decided then to say nothing to Belle.

The shop had a steady stream of customers; all of them gazed on Honor as a curiosity worth commenting on, though they directed their questions to Belle rather than her. “What you got a Quaker in the window for, Belle?” they asked. “Where’s she from? Where’s she going? Why’s she here?” Belle answered over and over again. By the end of the day every woman in Wellington must know that Honor was from England and on her way to Faithwell, but had stopped with Belle and was helping her out with sewing for a few days. She even made Honor into a feature of the shop. “She’s got a fine hand-better than mine, even. You order a bonnet today and I’ll get her to sew it for you. Last you a lifetime, her stitching’s that strong, or till you’re sick of it and want a new one. Then you’ll regret buyin’ one o’ Honor Bright’s bonnets-it just won’t fall apart and give you the excuse for a new one.”

Later, when the light was fading, Belle closed shop for the day and took Honor on a walk around Wellington. Little more than a cluster of shops and houses around a crossroads, its few streets were wide and laid out in a grid oriented north and south, east and west. Main Street had been widened so that there was a rectangular Public Square with a town hall, a church, a hotel and shops-one of them Belle’s-arranged around it. Shops in the surrounding streets included several general stores, as well as a cobbler, a tailor, a blacksmith, a cabinet maker, a brickyard and a carriage maker. Most were two stories high and made of wood, with awnings and large windows displaying goods. A school had been built, and a train depot was almost finished for the railroad due to begin running to Wellington later in the summer. “This town’s gonna explode when that train comes through,” Belle declared. “Good for business. Good for hats.”

As they strolled, Honor had the familiar uneasy feeling she had experienced when passing through American towns on her way to Ohio: that they had been built quickly, and could be destroyed just as quickly, by a fire or the extreme American weather she had heard about, hurricanes and tornadoes and blizzards. The storefronts might be relatively new but they had already been ravaged by sun and snow. The road was both dry and wet, dusty and muddy.

Wherever they went, the road and the planks laid above the mud were spattered with gobs of spit. Honor and Grace had been astonished when they reached New York at how often American men spat, walking around with a bulge of tobacco in their cheeks and letting fly both outside and in. Equally astonishing was that no one else seemed to notice or mind.

Belle nodded at everyone they passed, and stopped to speak a few words to some of the women. Most were wearing everyday bonnets, but a few wore hats that Honor recognized as Belle’s, with their peculiar combinations of trimmings. Belle confirmed this. “Some of them make their own bonnets, but all the hats are mine. You’ll see more of ’em Sundays, for church. They wouldn’t dare wear a hat from one of them Oberlin milliners-they know I’d never do business with ’em afterward. Nothin’ wrong with Oberlin, but you buy from your own, don’t you?” Belle herself wore a straw hat with a wide orange ribbon around the brim, trimmed with flowers fashioned from pieces of straw.

On one corner of Public Square was the town hotel. For such a small town, it was surprisingly grand: a long, two-story building with a double balcony running all the way along its front on both floors, held up by several pairs of white columns. “Wadsworth Hotel,” Belle remarked. “Only place in town to get a drink-not that you need to know that. You Quakers don’t touch alcohol, do you?”

Honor shook her head.

“Well, I take my whiskey at home. And that’s why.” Belle nodded toward one end of the hotel, which faced the millinery shop across Public Square. Lounging on the porch out front were a cluster of men, bottles at their sides. Donovan was among them, his feet propped up on a table. On seeing Belle and Honor, he raised his bottle at them, then drank.

“Charming.” Belle led her on. As they passed the last pair of columns, Honor noticed a poster tacked on one of them. It was not the $150 REWARD in big letters that drew her in, but the silhouette of a man running with a sack over his shoulder. She stopped and studied it.

The description was remarkably specific. She pictured the man she had seen in the lean-to. Now that there were words for what he looked like, adjectives like chunky and African and shrewd, she could picture him, his calculating eyes taking her in, the strength in his shoulders-and his hair, bushy but parted on the side.

Donovan was watching her.

“Walk on,” Belle hissed, taking her arm and marching her around the corner onto Mechanics Street.

When they were out of earshot, Honor said, “Did Donovan put up that poster?”

“Yes. He’s a slave hunter. You worked that out, didn’t you?”

Honor nodded, though she did not know there was a name for what he did.

“There’s slave hunters all over Ohio, come up from Kentucky or Virginia to try and take back Negroes to their owners. See, we got lots of runaways through here on their way to Canada. In fact, a lot of traffic comes through Ohio, one way or another. Hell, you can stand at the crossroads here and watch it. East to west you got settlers moving for more land. South to north you got runaway slaves looking for freedom. Funny how nobody wants to go south or east. It’s north and west that hold out some kind of promise.”

“Why don’t the Negroes remain in Ohio? I thought there was no slavery here.”

“Some do stop in Ohio-you’ll see free blacks in Oberlin-but freedom’s guaranteed in Canada. Different country, different laws, so slave hunters got no power there.

“But Donovan’s interested in you,” Belle continued. “Funny, usually he’s suspicious of Quakers. Likes to quote a politician who said Quakers won’t defend the country when there’s war, but are happy to interfere in people’s business when there’s peace. But it ain’t good to get his attention: once you do it ain’t easy to get rid of him. He’ll bother you over in Faithwell too. He’s a stubborn son of a bitch. I should know.” At Honor’s questioning look, Belle smiled. “He’s my brother.”

She chuckled at the change in Honor’s face. “Two different fathers, so we don’t look much alike. We grew up in Kentucky. But our mother was English-Lincolnshire.”

A piece fitted into place. “Did she make the quilt on my bed?”

“Yep. Donovan’s always tryin’ to take it back from me. He’s a mean son of a bitch. We gone in different directions, ain’t we, even if we both come north. Now, we better get back.” Belle stopped in front of Honor. “Look, honey, I know you seen things goin’ on at my house, but it’s best if you don’t actually know anything. Then if Donovan asks, you don’t have to lie. Quakers ain’t supposed to lie, are they?”

Honor shook her head.

Belle took her arm and turned around to walk back toward the millinery shop. “Jesus H. Christ, I’m glad I’m not a Quaker. No whiskey, no color, no feathers, no lies. What is there left?”

“No swearing either,” Honor added.

Belle burst out laughing.

Honor smiled. “We do call ourselves ‘the peculiar people,’ for we know we must seem so to others.”

Belle was still chuckling, but stopped when they reached the hotel bar. Donovan was no longer there.

* * *

The next two days Honor sewed all day, first in the corner of the shop by the window during the morning, and on the back porch in the afternoon.

Belle had Honor work on bonnets again, finishing off some that customers were due to pick up that day. She edged one with lace, another with a double row of ruffles, then sewed clusters of cloth pansies to the inside rim of a stiff green bonnet and attached wide, pale green ribbons for tying under the chin. “Can you make more of them flowers if I give you the petals?” Belle asked when Honor had finished.

Honor nodded: though she had never made flowers, since Quakers did not wear them, she knew they could not be harder than some of the intricate patchwork she had sewn for quilts.

Belle handed her a box full of petals and leaves. “I already cut out the petals after you went to bed last night. Just me and the whiskey and the scissors. I like it that way.” She showed Honor how to construct the pansies, then violets, roses, clover and little clusters of lace made to resemble baby’s breath. Honor wished Grace were there to see the things she was making: creations more and more colorful and elaborate.

Belle’s customers continued to comment on Honor’s presence, even those who had been to the shop the day before and already discussed her. “Goodness, look at that Quaker girl’s lap full of flowers!” they cried. “Isn’t that the funniest thing! You’ll turn her, Belle, you will!”

Honor was only a short distraction, however, perhaps to be mulled over later. For now, once they’d made their remarks, the customers went on to the more important task of inspecting the latest goods and getting a bargain. Trying on the various hats and bonnets displayed on stands, they questioned Belle’s designs and criticized the shape and trim in order to drive down the price. Belle was equally determined to maintain her price, and a battle of words followed.

Honor was unnerved by the haggling, with its underlying assumption that the value of something could change depending on how badly someone wanted to buy or sell it. The lack of a fixed price made Belle’s hats take on a temporary quality. Quakers never haggled, but set what they felt was a fair price for materials and labor. Each product had what was thought of as its own intrinsic merit, be it a carrot or a horseshoe or a quilt, and that did not change simply because many people needed a horseshoe. Honor knew of merchants in Bridport who haggled, but they didn’t when she went into their shops or to their market stalls. The haggling she’d witnessed was offhand, even embarrassed, as if the participants were only doing it in jest, because it was expected of them. Here the haggling seemed fiercer, as if both sides were adamant that they were right and the other not simply wrong, but morally suspect. Some of the women in Belle’s shop became so indignant as they argued with Belle that Honor wondered if they would ever return.

Belle, however, seemed entertained by the haggling, and unbothered when, more often than not, it reached a stalemate and the hat remained unsold. “They’ll be back,” she said. “Where else can they go? I’m the only hat maker in town.”

Indeed, despite not managing to knock the price down, many women placed orders. Belle rarely measured their heads-most she knew already, and she could gauge a newcomer at a glance. “Twenty inches, most of ’em,” she told Honor. “German heads a little bigger, but everybody else is pretty well the same, no matter how much or how little they got up there.”

Her choice of hat shapes and trim was often unusual, but most customers accepted her judgment, saving their arguments for the price rather than the style. From what Honor could see of the customers who came to pick up their hats, Belle usually was right, often choosing colors and styles for them that were different from what they normally wore. “Hats can go stale on you,” she said to a woman she had just convinced to buy a hat dyed green and trimmed with straw folded and tucked to resemble heads of wheat. “You always want to surprise people with something new, so they see you different. A woman who always wears a blue bonnet with lace trim will start to look like that bonnet, even when she’s not wearing it. She needs some flowers near her eyes, or a red ribbon, or a brim that sets off her face.” She inspected Honor’s plain cap so frankly that Honor ducked her head.

“But you wear the same thing every day, Belle,” the woman pointed out.

Belle patted her cap, which was almost as plain as Honor’s, though with a limp frill around the edge and a cord at the back that when pulled made a little pleat in the fabric. “It don’t do for me to wear anything fancy in the store,” she said. “Don’t want to compete with my customers-you’re the ones got to look good. I wear my hats outside, for advertising.”

Despite the haggling, the frivolous trimmings, the feeling at times that she was an entertainment for the hat wearers of Wellington, Honor liked working for Belle. Whatever she was making, she was at least kept busy, with no time to think about the traumas of the past, the uncertainty she was living in, or what lay ahead.

As she sat by the open window, Honor twice heard the thudding shoe of Donovan’s horse and saw him ride past. One afternoon he stationed himself at the hotel bar across the square, leaning against the railing, his eyes on the millinery shop and, it seemed, on her. She shrank back in her seat, but could not avoid his gaze, and soon moved to the back porch, away from his scrutiny.

Belle had given Honor another pile of bonnets to work on, but before she began she sat for a few minutes, listening. There were no sounds from the woodshed, but Honor could feel that someone was there. Now that she knew who, and could even name and describe him, she felt a little less frightened. After all, it was he who would be frightened of her.

Belle had been so matter-of-fact about slaves before, but the idea was still new and shocking to Honor. Bridport Friends had discussed the shame of American slavery, but it had merely been indignant words; no one had ever seen a slave in person. Honor was astonished that one was now hiding fifteen feet from her.

She picked up a gray bonnet almost plain enough for a Quaker to wear. The lining was a pale primrose yellow, and she was to sew mustard-colored ribbons onto it, and add a yellow cord drawstring to the bavolet at the back of the neck where the cloth could be tightened and create a small ruff. Though at first Honor was doubtful of the color combination, by the time she’d finished it, she had to acknowledge that the yellow lifted the gray, yet was pale enough not to make the bonnet gaudy, though the ribbon color was more insistent than she would have chosen. Belle had unorthodox taste, but she knew how to use it to good effect.

During a lull in the shop, Belle brought out a tin mug of water. Leaning against the railing while Honor drank, she squinted into the yard. “There’s a snake sunning itself on the lumber,” she announced. “Copperhead. You got copperheads in England? No? Keep away from ’em-you don’t want to get bit by one, it’ll kill you, and it ain’t a pretty death either.” She disappeared inside, and came back out with a shotgun. Without warning, she aimed at the snake and fired. Honor started and squeezed her eyes shut, dropping the mug. When she dared to open them again, she saw the headless body of the snake lying in the grass, several feet from the planks. “There,” Belle declared, satisfied. “Probably a nest, though. I’ll get some boys in there to kill ’em all. Don’t want snakes gettin’ into the woodshed.”

Honor thought about the man hiding there, almost three days now cramped in the heat and dark, and hearing the gunshot. She wondered how Belle came to be involved in hiding him. When her ears had stopped ringing, she said, “Thee mentioned that Kentucky is a slave state. Did thy family own slaves?” It was the most direct question she had dared to ask.

Belle regarded her with yellowed eyes, leaning against the porch railing and still holding the shotgun, her dress hanging off her. It occurred to Honor that the milliner must have an underlying illness to make her so thin and discolored. “Our family was too poor to own slaves. That’s why Donovan does what he does. Poor white people hate Negroes more’n anyone.”

“Why?”

“They think coloreds are takin’ work they should have, and drivin’ down the price of it. See, Negroes are valued a lot higher. Plantation owner’ll pay a thousand dollars for a colored man, but a poor white man is worth nothin’.”

“But thee does not hate them.”

Belle gave her a small smile. “No, honey, I don’t hate ’em.”

The bell on the shop door rang, announcing a customer. Belle picked up her gun. “Donovan’s gone, by the way. Saturday night he always drinks himself silly up at Wack’s in Oberlin-that’s one thing you can count on. Guess he’s startin’ early today. You can stop hiding from him back here if you want.”

Belle Mills’s Millinery

Main St

Wellington, Ohio

6th Month 1st 1850

Dearest Biddy,

It grieves me to have to tell thee that God has taken Grace, six days ago, carried off by yellow fever. I will not go into details here-my parents can let thee read the letter I wrote them. How I wish thee were sitting here with me now, holding my hand and comforting me.

I think thee would be surprised to see where I am at this moment. I am sitting on the back porch of Belle Mills’s Millinery shop in Wellington, Ohio. The porch faces west, and I am watching the sun going down over a patch of land, at the end of which glints the metal track of a railroad. When finished, it will run south to Columbus and north to Cleveland. The Wellington residents are very excited about it, as we would be if the railway in England were to extend to Bridport.

Belle is one of the many strangers who have taken pity on me and helped me along the way. Indeed, Belle more than most has been kind. Her shop is only seven miles from Adam Cox, yet when I arrived, she did not pack me off to Faithwell as soon as she could. She sensed without asking that I needed a pause to gather myself after Grace’s death, and so has let me stay with her for a few days. In return I have been able to help with sewing, which has pleased me since it is a familiar activity, and I am able to feel useful rather than having to rely completely on others, or my purse, to look after me.

I am still stunned that Grace has been gone only a few days. Time and space have played funny tricks on me: the sea voyage seemed to go on for years, though it was but a month, and I already feel far from Hudson, where Grace is buried, though I have only been in Wellington three days. For someone whose life was so ordered and without surprise, a great deal has happened to me in a short time. I suspect America will continue to surprise me.

Already I am confused by its people, for they are so different from the English. Louder, for one thing, and they speak their minds in a way I am not accustomed to. Though they are familiar with Quakers, they think me odd. Customers in Belle’s shop have been forthright in saying so, and in an overly familiar manner that jars. Thee knows I am quiet; being around Americans has made me even quieter.

Yet they have their secrets. For example, I am almost certain that, barely fifteen feet from where I write this letter, a runaway slave is hiding. I also begin to suspect he was hidden somewhere in the wagon that brought me to Wellington. But I do not dare to find out, for men are searching for the slave, and thee knows I cannot lie if asked. At home it was easy enough to be truthful and open. I rarely had to conceal anything from my family or thee. Only the business with Samuel was difficult in that way. Now, however, I have to keep my thoughts close. I do not ever want to lie outright, but it is more challenging to keep to that principle here.

I can at least be honest with thee, my dearest friend. I confess that I am nervous about Adam Cox’s arrival tomorrow. He left for Ohio expecting only his future wife to join him, but now he has to contend with me without Grace. Of course I have known him and Matthew since the Coxes moved to Bridport, but they are older and not people I have been close to. Now they will be the only familiar faces amongst strangers.

Please say nothing of this to my parents, for I do not want them to worry about me. I do not think it is dishonest to withhold information about my feelings-they are not facts, and they are bound to change. Next time I write I hope to be able to report that I feel welcome in Faithwell and am content to live there. Until then, dear Biddy, keep me in thy thoughts and prayers.

Thy faithful friend,

Honor Bright

HONOR WOKE EARLY on Sunday. Adam Cox would not come to pick her up until afternoon, after Meeting for Worship in Faithwell had finished, but anxiety made her lie awake in bed, listening to the dawn chorus of unfamiliar American birds, running her fingers over the outline of the Star of Bethlehem in the center of the quilt, and waiting for the changes to come.

Despite staying up much of the night with a bottle, Belle was also up early. As they ate breakfast-more eggs and ham, along with hominy grits, a white, thin sort of porridge Belle said she’d grown up with in Kentucky-Honor wondered if the milliner would go to church. But Belle made no move to leave; after clearing up the kitchen she sat out on the back porch reading the Cleveland Plain Dealer that a customer had left behind the day before. Honor hesitated, then got her Bible out of her trunk and went to join her.

The moment she sat down she knew the man was gone from the lean-to. There was a subtle shift in the atmosphere, and in Belle, who seemed more relaxed. She glanced over at the book in Honor’s lap. “I don’t go to church much myself,” she remarked. “Me and the minister don’t agree on most things. But I’ll take you if you want. You got a choice of Congregationalist, Presbyterian or Methodist. I’d go for Congregationalist myself-better singers. I’ve heard ’em from outside.”

“There is no need.”

Belle rocked in her chair while Honor opened her Bible, trying to remember what she had last read, with her sister on her deathbed, a lifetime ago. She read a passage here and there, but could not concentrate on the words.

Belle was rocking faster. “Somethin’ I want to know about Quakers,” she announced, lowering the newspaper.

Honor looked up.

“You sit in silence, don’t you? No hymns, no prayers, no preacher to make you think. Why’s that?”

“We are listening.”

“For what?”

“For God.”

“Can’t you hear God in a sermon or a hymn?”

Honor was reminded of standing outside St. Mary’s Church in Bridport, just across the street from the Meeting House. The congregation had been singing, and she had been briefly envious of the sound.

“It is less distracting in the silence,” she said. “Sustained silence allows one truly to listen to what is deep inside. We call it waiting in expectation.”

“Don’t you just think about what you’re having for dinner, or what someone said about someone else? I’d think about the next hat I’m gonna make.”

Honor smiled. “Sometimes I think about the quilt I am working on. It takes time to clear the mind of everyday thoughts. It helps to be with others also waiting, and to close one’s eyes.” She tried to think of words to explain what she felt at Meeting. “When the mind is clear, one turns inward and sinks into a deep stillness. There is peace there, and a strong sense of being held by what we call the Inner Spirit, or the Inner Light.” She paused. “I have not yet felt that in America.”

“You been to many Meetings in America?”

“Only one. Grace and I went to a Meeting in Philadelphia. It was-not the same as England.”

“Ain’t silence the same everywhere?”

“There are different kinds of silence. Some are deeper and more productive than others. In Philadelphia I was distracted and did not find the peace I was looking for that day.”

“I thought Philadelphia Quakers are supposed to be the best there is. Top-quality Quakers.”

“We do not think like that. But…” Honor hesitated. She did not like to be critical of Friends in front of non-Quakers. But she had started, so she must continue. “Arch Street is a big Meeting, for there are many Friends in Philadelphia, and when Grace and I entered the room, there were not many benches still free. We sat on one that was, and were asked to move, for they said it was the Negro pew.”

“What’s that?”

“For black Members.”

Belle raised her eyebrows. “There’s colored Quakers?”

“Yes. I had not known there were. None came that day to Meeting, and the bench remained empty, even though the other benches grew crowded and uncomfortable.”

Belle said nothing, but waited.

“I was surprised that Friends would separate black Members in that way.”

“So that’s what kept you from God that day.”

“Perhaps.”

Belle grunted. “Honor Bright, you are one delicate flower. You think just ’cause Quakers say everyone is equal in God’s eyes, that means they’ll be equal in each other’s?”

Honor bowed her head.

Belle shrugged and took up her newspaper again. “Anyway, I like me a good hymn. Give me that over silence any day.” She began to hum, rocking in time to the simple, repetitive melody.

Later Belle had the neighbors’ boys bring down Honor’s trunk so that it was ready for Adam Cox’s arrival. After dinner they sat together in the shop to wait for him. Though the other shops were also closed, people strolled up and down, looking in the windows.

“Thankee for your help,” Belle said as they waited. “I’m caught up now. Won’t be so busy again till September when they bring me their winter bonnets to be retrimmed.”

“I am very grateful to thee for having me.”

Belle waved her hand. “Honey, it’s nothing. Funny, normally I don’t take to company, but you’re all right. You don’t talk too much, for one thing. Are all Quakers as quiet as you?”

“My sister was not quiet.” Honor gripped her hands so they would not tremble.

“Anyway,” Belle said after a pause, “you can come here any time. Next visit I’ll show you how to make hats. Now, I got somethin’ for you.” Belle went behind the counter and took down from a shelf the gray and yellow bonnet Honor had worked on the day before. “A new life needs a new bonnet. And this bonnet needs an adventure.” When Honor did not take it, Belle pushed it into her hands. “It’s the least I can do, as pay for all that work you did. And it’ll suit you. Go on and try it.”

Honor reluctantly took off her old bonnet. Though she liked the dove gray of the body of the bonnet, she didn’t think the yellow rim would suit her. Yet when she looked in the mirror on the wall of the shop, she was startled to discover Belle was right. The yellow brim was like a soft halo that lit up her face.

“There you go,” Belle remarked, satisfied. “You’ll go to Faithwell lookin’ smart, and maybe just a little more up-to-date. And here’s a bit of the yellow left over-not enough for a lining so it’s not much use to me. I know you quilters like your scraps.”

SHE COULD NOT stay. Honor knew this within half an hour of arriving at Adam and Abigail’s in Faithwell. It was not the messy kitchen, where dishes left over from dinner were still piled in the sink, or the mud that had not been swept from the hallway, or the inedible supper, or the smokiness from a stove that did not draw well. It was not the mouse droppings she spied in the pantry, or the tatters of cobwebs fluttering in corners, or the tiny room Adam showed her that held no more than a bed, so that her trunk had to sit in the hallway. None of these things would have put her off.

She could not stay because Abigail clearly did not want her there. A tall woman with a wide forehead and dark, staring eyes, she had broad shoulders and thick ankles and wrists. On meeting Honor she hugged her, but there was no warmth in the contact. Defensive after the unpalatable meal she served, she rattled off a list of excuses as she showed Honor around the house. “Watch thee doesn’t trip on that rug-it needs tacking down, doesn’t it, Adam?” “This lamp does not usually smoke-I was in such a fluster about thy coming so unexpectedly that I didn’t have time to trim it properly.” “I would have swept, but knew thee and thy trunk would bring in dust I would have to sweep away again.” Abigail had a way of making the faults of the household seem the result of everyone but herself. Honor began to feel guilty for being there at all.

As a child she had been taught that everyone has a measure of the Light in them, and though the amount can vary, all must try to live up to their measure. It seemed to her now that Abigail’s measure was small, and she was not living up to it. Of course she had recently nursed and then lost a husband, and so could be forgiven for being somber. But Honor suspected her unfriendliness was part of her nature.

Adam Cox did not try to defend Honor or make her feel welcome, but sank further into himself, sober and quiet-stunned by the double loss of his brother and his fiancée, Honor suspected. Though their courtship had been conducted almost entirely through letters, he must have looked forward to the arrival of a lively, beautiful wife. Now he was stuck with the quiet sister and a difficult sister-in-law.

He only became animated as they were sitting on the front porch after supper and Abigail brought up Honor’s decision to come to Ohio. “Adam told me about Grace’s family,” she said, rocking vigorously in her chair, her hands idle, for it was too dark to sew. “He said thee was to be married. Why is thee here instead?”

Adam sat up, as if he had been waiting for Abigail to bring up the difficult topic. “Yes, Honor, what happened with Samuel? I thought thee had an understanding with him.”

Honor winced, though she knew eventually this question would have to be answered. She tried to do so in as few words as possible. “He met someone else.”

Adam frowned. “Who?”

“A-a woman from Exeter.”

“But I am from there and know most of the Friends there. Who is it?”

Honor swallowed to ease the tightness in her throat. “She is not a Friend.”

“What, he married out of the faith?” Abigail practically shouted.

“Yes.”

“I assume Bridport Meeting disowned him?” Adam asked.

“Yes. He has gone to live in Exeter, and joined the Church of England.” That was what was hardest: Honor could almost manage the thought of Samuel no longer loving her, but for him willingly to leave the faith that was the very foundation of her life was a blow she did not think she could recover from. That, and the embarrassment in Samuel’s parents’ eyes whenever she ran into them, and the pity in everyone else’s, had made her say yes to Grace’s suggestion to emigrate.

Thinking of this, she found she was gripping her hands in her lap. She took a deep breath and tried to relax her fingers, but her knuckles were still white from being forced to think of Samuel.

Abigail shook her head. “That’s just terrible.” She sounded almost gleeful, but then frowned, perhaps recalling it was those circumstances that brought her this unwelcome guest. Something hard and cruel in her sidelong glance gave Honor the guilty feeling that, once again, she was at fault.

Though it was warm, that night she huddled under the signature quilt in the tiny bedroom, seeking solace.

TWO WEEKS AFTER her arrival, Adam Cox asked Honor to help him at his Oberlin store on a Sixth Day, as Abigail, who usually helped him when needed, was unwell. Sixth Days were busy ones in towns, with the stores in Oberlin remaining open late for farmers coming in from the fields. Honor was pleased with the prospect of going to a larger town, for she was finding the isolation of Faithwell trying. She was also glad to have time away from Abigail, who had become increasingly hostile.

Adam normally rode his horse to the store, or walked if he had the time. For Honor, however, he borrowed a buggy. Just as they drove past the general store, Judith Haymaker came out carrying a sack of flour. Honor hoped her eyesight was not keen enough to spot the gray and yellow bonnet she was wearing. She had not touched Belle Mills’s gift since arriving in Faithwell, but thought that it might be appropriate while working in Adam’s store-smarter than her everyday bonnet but not ostentatious. Of course it should not matter what she wore, as long as it was clean and modest. She should not care. But Honor did care about that inner rim of pale yellow, its reflection lifting her face from the gray of the rest of the bonnet, just as she cared about the inch of white cloth edging the necklines of her dresses. Such details made her feel clearer and more defined. She suspected, though, that Judith Haymaker would not approve. Adam himself had raised his eyebrows when Honor came down wearing the bonnet, but said nothing.

Now he nodded at his neighbor, and Judith Haymaker nodded back, otherwise standing motionless to watch them pass.

East of Faithwell the trees closed in, and Honor swallowed several times to force down a rising panic. She wondered if she would ever grow used to the monotonous Ohio woods. It made her miss the ocean-not traveling on it, but the shoreline, with its definitive break from the land and its open, promising horizon.

Once they had turned onto the road north to Oberlin, however, she could relax a little, for it was clearer, running past farms and fields of corn, and the pressure of the woods receded. There was enough sunlight along the road that wildflowers could grow, chicory and Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed Susans. There was also more traffic: other buggies and wagons and horses heading their way, or passing them in the opposite direction toward Wellington.

“Why do all the roads run north and south or east and west?” Honor asked. She had been puzzling over this regularity since first riding with Thomas from Hudson to Wellington. In England roads followed the contours of the landscape, which did not conform to rigid compass directions.

Adam chuckled. “Because they can. This part of Ohio is very flat, so there is nothing the roads need go around to avoid. Except for one dogleg by the Black River a few miles south of here, this road runs dead straight between Oberlin and Wellington for nine miles. The towns are more or less evenly spaced too, every five miles or so in either direction, like a net.”

“Except Faithwell.”

“No, we stand apart,” Adam agreed.

“Why did they place the towns so evenly?”

“Perhaps the surveyors of this territory were trying to bring order to a land they felt they had no control over.” Adam paused. “It is very different from Dorset.” It was the first time she had heard him compare Ohio to home since coming to live with him.

THE FIRST DAY after the Fourth of July, Honor had a visitor. She was sitting on the porch with Abigail and Adam, sleepy and a little queasy from the Sunday dinner they had just finished, in which fatty, oversalted ham played a large part. Honor had never eaten so much pork. She longed for lamb, and fish-delicate tastes simply served.

“I got a bone to pick with you, Honor Bright!”

Honor started and opened her eyes. A light buggy had pulled up in front of the house, with Belle Mills holding the reins. She threw them over the white picket fence in front of the house and hopped down. “You been sending me too many Oberlin ladies sayin’ ‘I want that gray and yaller bonnet the Quaker girl’s wearing.’ How am I gonna keep up with orders without you helping me?” Belle nodded at Adam and Abigail. “You must be Abigail. I already met Adam. I’m Belle Mills, the milliner over in Wellington. Don’t know what Honor told you about me-probably nothin’. She don’t talk much, do she? Now, you gonna invite me out of the sun? It’s mighty hot.”

Honor stood and waited for Abigail to ask Belle, deferring to her as the mistress of the house. But Abigail was staring at Belle’s hat: straw with a wide brim trimmed with a band of white lace over red ribbon, a clump of silk cherries pinned to the side.

Honor gave up on Abigail and greeted Belle herself. “I am very glad to see thee. Please join us.”

Belle stepped onto the porch and sank into the rocker Adam offered. “Oh, that’s good-no more jolting along that track,” she said, pulling off lace gloves. Honor had not seen her wear gloves in Wellington, not even when they went for walks. These dainty ones looked odd on her, especially when they were taken off to reveal Belle’s big hands and squared fingers. The gloves and her hat jarred with her lean frame and wide shoulders, so different from the plump curves and rounded shoulders that were the fashion. If women were meant to look like doves these days, Belle resembled a buzzard.

“Abigail, perhaps our guest would like something to drink,” Adam suggested.

“Oh!” Abigail hurried inside, embarrassed at having to be reminded.

“Well, ain’t this something,” Belle remarked, looking around. “I never been out this way. That the rest of Faithwell?” She nodded toward the general store.

“There are a few outlying farms, but yes,” Adam replied. “It is growing, however. New families are moving here all the time.”

“Sure they are. All of ’em Quakers, right? I can’t imagine anyone else willing to go down that track. What’s it like in the rain? Mud’s bad enough on the road between Wellington and Oberlin.”

When Abigail reappeared with four glasses, a bottle of dark liquid and a pitcher of water, Belle nodded. “Blackberry cordial, is it? I’m impressed you managed to save some from last summer. I would’ve drunk it all by October.”

Abigail paused in the act of pouring, as if she couldn’t do so and think at the same time.

“Don’t worry, honey, that’s a compliment,” Belle added. “It takes a good housekeeper to hold back the best stuff so she’s got something to give guests.” She turned to Honor. “I was wonderin’ if we would see you in Wellington for the Fourth of July, but I expect it was too far for you, wasn’t it?”

“We do not celebrate the Fourth,” Adam replied.

“Really? What, Quakers don’t like to have fun?”

“We do not wish to celebrate a document that does not include all men as citizens of America.”

“We went to Oberlin to listen to speeches opposing slavery,” Honor added.

“Of course you did. I should’ve guessed Quakers would be more entertained listening to abolitionists than shootin’ guns in the air. Me, I like the guns. How’s business up in Oberlin?”

“Fair,” Adam said. “I would like to see it a little busier.”

“Bet you don’t sell much satin or velvet, do you?”

“Not much, no.”

Belle chuckled. “Them Oberlinites don’t go in for anything fancy, do they? I wouldn’t be a milliner there-I’d never get to make anything fancier than Honor’s bonnet.” Belle glanced at Abigail’s and Honor’s plain dresses, at Adam’s collarless shirt and braces. “Which fabric supplier do you use in Cleveland?”

While Abigail finished pouring cordial and Honor passed it around, Belle discussed business with Adam with an ease Honor envied. But then, much of her job involved talking to people. Belle more than many managed to combine sincere interest with casual humor and offhandedness.

“You got a similar accent to Honor,” she remarked. “You two from the same place in England?”

Adam concurred, and Belle asked him and Honor question after question about Bridport. As they discussed their home town, Abigail began to rock faster and faster until she suddenly stopped. “Would thee like more cordial?” she interrupted, jumping up.

“Sure would, thankee.” Belle held out her glass, winking at Honor as Abigail filled it. “Where you from originally, Abigail?”

“Pennsylvania.”

“Well, there you go. We’re all from somewhere else. That’s how Ohio is.”

“Where was thy home?” Adam asked.

“Kentucky-can’t you tell from my accent? I came up here ’cause my husband went to Cleveland to speculate on steamboats on Lake Erie. I thought Cleveland would be more interesting than a Kentucky hollow. Well, it was, sort of.”

“Thee was married?” Honor exclaimed.

“Still am. Rascal ran off-encouraged by my brother, I’m sorry to say. Them two never saw eye to eye. No idea where he is now. Oh, he was no good, and I was a fool, but I would’ve liked to do the chasin’ off rather than leave it to Donovan. Bastard.” Belle paused. “Sorry for cursing. Anyway, just as well he left-railroads set to take over steamboats soon enough. In Cleveland I learned how to make hats-it’s one of the only businesses a woman can run on her own. Then I came out to Wellington to set up shop. Thought about Oberlin, but they don’t like feathers, or color, and I do. Now, Honor,” she continued, draining her glass, “you gonna show me the rest of Faithwell? I’m ready to stretch my legs. And wear that gray bonnet-I want to see it in action.”

Still reeling from the thought of Belle Mills being married, Honor ran to get her bonnet. It was not what she would have worn for a walk in Faithwell, but she could not say no to its maker.

Belle pulled Honor’s arm through her own as they walked west along the rutted track, nodding at the families gathered on their own porches in neighboring houses. All stared at Belle and her hat, and Honor and her bonnet. Belle seemed not to notice. “Donovan bothered you any since you been here?” she asked.

“He has ridden by a few times, but not stopped.” Honor did not mention that his grin and wave each time brought grimaces from Abigail and Adam.

“Good. Don’t expect that to last, though. He never can resist payin’ people attention when they don’t want it.”

They passed the smithy, then the general store. Belle peered in the windows, though it was closed. “Not much to choose from, is there?” she remarked. “How many families live here?”

“Fifteen, including the outlying farms.”

“Lord, that’s the size of the speck I came from in Kentucky. I know what it’s like. How we gonna get you out of that house?”

“What does thee mean?”

Belle paused and shook Honor’s elbow. “Oh, come on, now, you ain’t gonna stay there with those two, are you? Not with Abigail giving you those looks. Did you see how rattled she got when you and Adam were talkin’ about England? Thought she would rock the runners off that chair. Any time she felt left out she had to interrupt.”

“But-” Honor stopped.

Belle’s hazel eyes were laughing. “She’s jealous of you. Surely you can see that? Or maybe you’re too nice to. No, she wants Adam to herself, and she don’t like another woman-a nicer woman, and better looking, certainly better at sewing, and probably a better housekeeper-in her way. Hell, I think she was jealous of me, till I mentioned the husband.”

As they began walking again, Honor repeated to Belle what Judith Haymaker had said to Adam about their irregular household.

Belle snorted. “I ain’t surprised. You’d get comments about your setup in Wellington too, and we ain’t so strict as Quakers.”

“This is her farm where we come for milk,” Honor said in a low voice. “That is Judith Haymaker.”

The older woman was sitting with her two children on the porch of a large white house with green shutters. It was set far enough back from the road that Honor and Belle could simply wave without being obliged to walk up and say hello. Jack Haymaker nodded; Dorcas stared; Judith rocked. Honor could feel three pairs of eyes on her bonnet as they continued along the track, the Haymakers’ orchard to their right. The cherries were finished, the plums and peaches not quite ripe.

That is the second time Judith Haymaker has seen this bonnet, Honor thought. And we have to walk past them on the way back.

“Farm looks well run,” Belle remarked. “Good herd too.” She nodded toward the brown cows in the pasture behind the barn. Honor had not even noticed them.

They reached the end of the orchard, where the trees began again and the road became little more than a path crisscrossed with roots, winding through a thick wood Honor had not dared to enter. To her this was the West, wild and unknown and unwelcoming. Even Belle, who did not seem frightened of anything, stood at its edge without suggesting they go on. The trees were mainly maples and beech, with a sprinkling of ash, elm and oak-their leaves long and smooth rather than with the curled edges Honor was used to. Even a tree as solid and steady as an oak was transformed in America into something alien. As she peered into the dim woods, a raccoon scurried away, its humped back swaying back and forth. Only when it had climbed high into a maple did it feel secure enough to turn its masked face toward the women. Grace would have loved to see a raccoon, Honor thought.

“Belle, I do not know what to do,” she said.

Belle was rearranging the cherries on her hat. “About what?”

“Living here the way I am, in that house.”

“All right, let me ask you something: Do you want to marry Adam Cox?”

“No!”

“Then you’re gonna have to look around. Any other men in Faithwell take your fancy?”

The press of Jack Haymaker’s eyes flashed through her mind-and then Donovan, grinning at her, the ribbon that held her key around his neck dark with sweat.

“It’s simple, Honor Bright, you got a choice to make,” Belle declared. “Go back home to England, or stay here. If you stay, you got to find a man to marry. What’s it to be?”

Honor shuddered, making Belle laugh. “It ain’t easy, findin’ a man you can stand. C’mon, honey.” She took Honor’s arm. “Let’s parade past them Haymakers again and show off our headwear. You get nervous, just have yourself a look at the marigolds in the front yard. Planted in rows!”

JACK HAYMAKER WAS like a pulled muscle that Honor sensed every time she moved. She found she was looking out for him on the days when she went to the Haymaker farm to buy milk. Usually he was out of sight, and his absence was both a disappointment and an anticipation of his eventual appearance. Occasionally, though, she caught a glimpse of him coming out of the barn, or walking behind the cows in the pasture, or hitching the horses to a wagon full of surplus milk. When she did see him, it was like looking at the sun-she could not do so directly, but only glance, and hide her reaction. And whenever she did look, Jack was already smiling, even when not looking back at her. He always seemed to know that he had her attention.

At Meeting, when he sat across the room from her in the men’s section, his presence was so disruptive Honor began to think she would never be able to concentrate on the still small voice inside herself while he was in the same room. Afterward, when everyone stood chatting outside the Meeting House, she hoped he would not approach her and Abigail and Adam. In such a small community, every gesture was noted. He must have understood this, for he remained talking with the other young men, laughing and scuffling in the dried mud on the road so that his white shirt grew dusty. But though his eyes were not directly on her, Honor could feel him there, and wondered that no one else seemed to notice the connection.

He was not an especially handsome man: his features were flat and his eyes small and close set-though he was clean shaven, which Honor preferred to the beard that lined the jaws of most Quaker men. What made him most attractive was that he was attracted to her. Another’s interest can be a powerful stimulant. She could feel his eyes on her as an almost physical pressure.

At the Haymakers’ frolic, Honor was glad she had the familiar, steadying task of quilting to keep her occupied. Yet even as she worked, she knew Jack Haymaker would arrive at the day’s end to join the women for supper. While she was skilled enough to keep the mounting tension from affecting her stitches, after a few hours her wrists and lower back ached and her shoulders were tight. Coupled with the heavy heat she had not yet grown used to, she felt a headache creeping up. By the time Jack appeared with the other men she could barely see him for the pulsating lights before her eyes and the pain at her temples.

As the porch and parlor began to fill with people, Honor slipped through the kitchen and out of the back door, where she stumbled to a well in the center of the yard. After drawing up the bucket, she leaned against the curved stone wall and drank from a tin mug left out for the purpose. Then she took a deep breath and gazed up at the darkening sky, dotted with a few stars. It was still and hot, and fireflies blinked in the farmyard. Honor watched them flickering and marveled that insects could light up from within.

“Is thee all right, Honor?”

Of course he had followed her out, though she had not meant him to. “I was a little hot.”

“’Tis a hot night, even outside. I wonder at everyone willingly crammed into the parlor.” Jack Haymaker spoke with a faint drawl.

A firefly landed on Honor’s sleeve and began walking up her shoulder, its tail still blinking. As she craned her neck to look down at it, Jack chuckled. “Don’t be scared. It’s just a lightning bug.” He placed his finger in its path. Honor tried not to think about the pressure of his touch. When the firefly crawled onto his finger, he lifted it up and let it fly off, signaling its escape route with sparks of light.

“We do not have fireflies in England,” she said.

“Really? Why not?”

“Many things are different there.”

“Like what?”

Honor looked around. “The land is more-ordered. Fields there are divided by hedgerows and are greener. It is not so hot there, and there are not so many trees.”

Jack folded his arms. “Sounds like thee prefers England.”

“I-” Words had tripped her. It would have been better to say nothing. “That is not what I meant.”

“What did thee mean?”

Thinking back over what she had said, Honor understood she had made the mistake of presenting England in a better light. She would have to praise Ohio somehow. Americans liked that. “I do like the firefl-the lightning bugs,” she said. “They are cheerful and welcoming.”

“More so than the people?”

Honor sighed. Again he was taking her few words and twisting them. It exhausted her. This was why she so often kept quiet.

“It cannot be easy, living with Abigail and Adam,” he continued.

Honor frowned. Though she welcomed sympathy from the right person, she did not know Jack well enough to accept it from him. As much as his physical presence drew her in, she wanted to back away from his words.

“I’d best go in,” she said.

“I will come with thee.”

They went back through the kitchen and into the crowded parlor, where Dorcas Haymaker and her friend Caroline turned their faces toward them like two silver plates catching the light. Caroline’s cheeks were red-rubbed with mullein, Honor suspected, a trick Grace had used to brighten her cheeks when she thought she was looking too pale. Quaker rouge, she’d heard outsiders call the plant.

Jack did not seem to notice his sister’s friend. “Will thee eat?” he said. “Quilting all afternoon must give thee an appetite.”

Honor could not tell whether he was teasing her or not. It was hard to know with Americans: they laughed at things she did not find funny, and were silent when she wanted to smile. She said nothing, but stepped up to the tables heavy with food, hoping he would not follow, and that the buzzing in her head would subside. She did not know why he had such a physical effect on her. His easy manner unnerved her, much the way America itself did. Honor was accustomed to an efficient, organized life, and hers had been anything but that since leaving Dorset. Jack Haymaker was part of the American chaos that pulled at her, making her want to step back.

She surveyed the field of food laid out before her. It was already predictable: the shoulder of ham, the roast beef, the mounds of mashed potatoes, the string beans, the johnnycakes, the army of pies. She swallowed a surge of nausea. What she longed for was a buttered crumpet, smoked mackerel pâté, a lamb cutlet, strawberries and cream-food prepared simply and easily digested, not served in a heap. Then she spied a bowl of gooseberries, pushed to the back of the table, and reached for it.

At that moment there was a stirring in the crowd around the food, and it parted to reveal Judith Haymaker, carrying a large platter piled with ears of steaming corn, stripped of their husks and tassels. “Corn’s ready!” she cried, her face bright with heat and anticipation. For once she was smiling fully. There was a scramble as women moved dishes so that she could set the plate down in the middle of the table.

“First corn of the season,” Jack explained as people surged forward to pick out ears. “The ears are smaller than they will be next month, but they’re tenderer too. Where is thy plate? They will go fast.” He reached over and picked up an ear between thumb and finger. “Quick, it’s hot!”

Honor had no choice but to take a plate, and Jack deposited two ears of corn upon it. “I-” she began to protest, but Jack talked over her.

“Thee can have it with butter, if thee likes. See the plate there with the slab of butter? That’s for rolling corn in. But I think the first corn is better plain. It’s so sweet, it doesn’t need butter’s help. Come.” He led her to a bench pushed up against the wall and waited for her to sit so that he could hand her the plate and join her. Honor could feel more eyes on them besides Dorcas and Caroline-Adam and Abigail, Judith Haymaker, Caleb Wilson the blacksmith. Caroline had glittering eyes and a hard stare.

Honor ducked her head and studied her ear of corn, each kernel like a translucent tooth. Jack was already gnawing at his, turning it around and around as his teeth cut away the kernels with a chomping sound like a horse, or a deer crashing through undergrowth. Honor could not bear to look. Her brothers, Samuel, even Adam Cox would never make such a noise when they ate. Jack Haymaker ate joyously, brutally.

Dropping his spent corncob onto the plate they shared, he stood to go for more and noticed hers, untouched. “Does thee not like corn?”

Honor hesitated. “I have never eaten it on the cob.”

“Ah.” Jack smiled. “Then thee has a treat in store. This I must see.” To her embarrassment he remained in front of her, looking down, with his broad grin and his hair messy and a kernel of corn sticking to his chin. If they hadn’t been watching Honor and Jack before, everyone was now. She flushed a deep, hot red but knew she had no choice. To hesitate longer would draw even more attention. Picking up the ear, she turned it as if trying to find the best place to begin biting.

“Go on, Honor,” Jack said. “Jump in.”

Honor closed her eyes and bit down, slicing the kernels with her teeth. She opened her eyes. Never had she tasted anything so fresh and sweet. This was corn in its purest form, a mouthful of life. Turning the cob, she bit again and again, to savor the taste, so different from the other corn dishes she’d eaten over the past weeks. Then she couldn’t stop, and bit all the way up and down the cob until it was bare.

Jack laughed. “That did thee good. Welcome to Ohio, Honor. Shall I fetch thee another?”

HONOR DID NOT spend her first married night in Jack Haymaker’s bed. Their bed, as she would have to learn to think of it. After the marriage Meeting and a community feast hosted by the Haymakers, when the last neighbors had left and the sky was finally turning to ink, Jack led her upstairs and down the hall to their bedroom. “This will be more comfortable than the cornfield,” he said, smiling as he brought her to the bed. It was spread with the whole-cloth white quilt made at the frolic earlier that week-quickly and unevenly quilted by whoever could be spared. Honor held on to the iron bedstead to keep from swaying.

Jack removed his braces-“suspenders,” she must call them-and his shirt before noticing that she had not moved. “Will thee get undressed? Here, I’ll help thee.” Reaching over to unfasten the buttons that ran down her back, he let his hand rest on her neck for a moment, then frowned. “But thee is hot!” Jack turned her around and took in her flushed face, then made her sit while he felt her cheeks and forehead. “When did thee begin to feel like this?”

“I-’tis a hot night.” And it was-so stifling and still that Honor’s hot brow had seemed to her simply an extension of the weather. Jack called for his mother and sister, and Honor, having held herself together all afternoon, let herself slump on the bed.

Judith and Dorcas led her back downstairs and settled her in the sick room off the kitchen, a small, square room containing a single bed, a wooden chair, and a basin and pitcher set into a cabinet with a chamber pot inside. Above the cabinet a medicine closet hung on the wall, filled with strips of linen and bottles of camphor, mustard and other medicines unfamiliar to Honor. The bed was made up with old linen sheets and a gray wool blanket that she found unbearably scratchy. A window faced onto the backyard. The women left it open and the door to the kitchen ajar so that some air could circulate, though little did and it was very close.

For the first few days of her fever Honor swung between hot and cold, delirium and lucidity, a desire to have the Haymakers with her and a longing for them to leave her alone. Sometimes she pretended to be asleep when Dorcas looked in on her or Jack sat by her bed. Conversation-either speaking or listening-was too draining, particularly when she barely knew them. She had not yet built up the hours of talk about the weather, the cows, the chores, how well she had slept, the neighbors’ comings and goings, the milk souring in the heat, wonder over letters from relatives and friends. When Jack sat with her or Judith Haymaker spooned broth into her mouth or Dorcas hung in the doorway, they too seemed at a loss as to what to say, and often resorted to talking to each other, or rinsing the chamber pot when it didn’t need it, smoothing the sheets, opening or shutting the window, sweeping the clean floorboards.

Alone Honor lay and watched the light change on the walls, too weak and dazed to sit up and read or sew. At times the room was so hot she felt she and the air had lost any boundary between them and become one. Even in her delirium she knew this was nonsense, and then she welcomed the intrusion of a Haymaker or, once or twice, Adam, to remind her of who and where she was.

Apart from her seasickness on the Adventurer, she had never been so severely ill for so long. She was in bed a week before she could sit up, and another week before she could get out of bed even briefly.

Though the Haymakers were attentive in looking after her, they did not seem alarmed by the length or severity of her illness. “It’s ague,” Judith Haymaker replied when Honor wondered why she was not yet better. “It likes to settle in for a long visit. Everyone gets it.”

Her illness overlapped with the harvesting of the oats, though she was well enough by then that all the Haymakers could leave her to go to the fields, as every hand was needed. Honor regretted not taking part, as she had hoped it would help her to feel more a part of the farming community. She said as much to Jack when he came to see her briefly after the first day of the harvest. “There will be other years,” he said, and then fell asleep in the chair.

The window of the sick room looked out over the yard between the barn, the wagon shed and the henhouse, and Honor watched it for hours. Often it seemed nothing changed, but after a while she noticed small movements, of yellow and black butterflies hovering, of a breeze blowing leaves about, of the slowly shifting shadows across the dusty ground.

One day while the Haymakers were in the fields, Honor lay and watched two chipmunks chase each other around the well in the middle of the yard while the calico cat crept toward them, her belly low to the ground. She was not fast enough, however, and the chipmunks ran off. Later the cat recrossed the yard, three half-grown kittens following and then stopping to fight, the mother watching with indifference. The well cast no shadow now, for it was noon. A tin mug sat on its curved edge. Honor blinked, and then knew she must have slept, for there was a shadow to one side of the well. She blinked again. The mug was gone.

A pullet had managed to escape from the henhouse and pecked at the ground, unprotected from foxes, for Digger had gone to the fields as well. Honor wondered what she would do if a fox stalked the chicken, though she suspected it was unlikely to in daylight. She could now walk across the sick room, but she doubted she could get out into the yard and save the chicken without fainting.

Studying the shadow by the well, Honor thought she must be delirious again, for the darkness there was not a reflection of the shape of the well, but more like a sack of potatoes. As she watched, an arm extended from the dark shape and set the mug back on the well. If she hadn’t been looking, Honor would not have heard the metallic tap as mug met stone.

She sat up carefully so that she would not rustle the sheets. The idea of being alone on this farm, surrounded by woods, with someone crouching by the well, made her stomach twist with fear; she wished she could close her eyes and open them to find the man gone. Taking a deep breath, she sought inside herself to find steadiness. Everyone has a piece of God in them, she reminded herself, even a man hiding in the yard. But she was shaking as she slid out of bed to kneel at the window.

Honor had hoped the sun’s glare would blind the man so that he could not see her, but as she peered at the dark form she sensed a gaze back. He remained very still, so still that the pullet pecked close by. Honor did not move either. Beneath her nightgown she could feel sweat trickle down her back. As she watched, the darkness unfolded itself, stood and took the shape of a young black woman, barefoot, in a yellow dress. Around her hair she wore a strip of cloth torn from the hem of the dress. The chicken ran off, but she did not try to run as well. Instead she held out a hand toward Honor. A small, ambiguous gesture, it still had the power to untwist Honor’s stomach, for it said: I am running away. Help me. She and the woman were now linked by that gesture. She had grown up with the understanding that slavery was wrong and must be opposed, but that had been all thoughts and words. Now she must actually do something, though she did not yet know what.

The black woman lowered her hand then and stood by the well. All the movement in the yard seemed to have stopped. The chicken remained out of sight. There was no breeze. Even the crickets and grasshoppers were not chirping and ticking. It was as quiet as Honor imagined Ohio could ever get.

She stood, slowly so that she did not grow dizzy. Then she made her way to the kitchen, touching the doorway and walls to steady herself, and picking up the heel of a loaf of bread as she passed the sideboard. Out on the back porch she hesitated, then stepped down into the yard. There the hot bright sun stopped her. Honor held her hand up to shade her eyes, and squinted, but was still so blinded that her eyes streamed. It had been over two weeks since she was last in the sun.

The woman did not come to her, but remained by the well, her hand resting on its edge. She reminded Honor of a sheep who had to be approached carefully so that she would not bolt; even then, you knew it was almost impossible to get close enough to touch her. Once when she was younger, Honor after much patience had managed to place her hand on the neck of a lamb. It did not spring away as she’d expected, but seemed to submit to the attention. This woman did not look ready to submit; every part of her was poised to run.

Honor tried to think of something to say, but knew that gestures were more effective. Stepping closer, she held out the bread. The woman reached over, took the crust and nodded, but did not eat it, instead tucking it into the pocket of her dress. She was tall, much taller than Honor, with long thin legs and arms like fence posts. The dress had been made for someone shorter, as it only reached her calves, and her bony wrists poked well beyond the cuffs. It was filthy, rumpled and torn, as if she had lived in it day and night for weeks. Her face was shiny with sweat, and on her wide flat nose was a sprinkling of pimples. The whites of her eyes were yellowed, and the corners crusted. Honor wondered if she would agree to come inside for a wash, but doubted it. She needed quick, practical help, not a bath.

Before Honor could open her mouth to speak, the woman jerked her head, as if connected by a string to a sound far away. Honor listened, and heard what she had not for some weeks: the irregular hoofbeats of a horse with a thick shoe.

The woman’s eyes flashed, and Honor read in them the despair of having come so far only to be caught so close to her goal. She took a breath and tried to think, though the sun was confusing her and stars were swimming in her eyes. She could feel herself swaying. Just as her knees buckled she said, “Go inside to the cool room.”

When Donovan rode into the yard, Honor was lying in the dust. Dismounting, he ran to her, knelt and pulled her into his lap. “Honor, what’s happened? Did someone-” Donovan looked around at the empty yard, then peered at her pinched face. “You got the summer fever. What are you doing out here, you silly woman?”

The smell of his sweat was awful and intoxicating. Honor did not try to struggle out of his arms, as she did not want to offend him. “I-the chickens are loose. I must catch them.” This at least was true. As if it had heard her, a chicken appeared now near the barn, jerking its brown head and clucking in indignation at Donovan’s presence.

“I’ll round ’em up. Let me get you inside first. Don’t fight me.” Donovan scooped her up like a sack of flour and carried her inside. “Where is everyone?” he asked as he looked around the empty kitchen.

“Harvesting oats.” Honor indicated the sick room. “In there, please.”

He laid her down gently for such a rough man. “Honor Bright, what in hell’s name are you doin’ here?” he demanded, sinking into the chair next to the bed. “I ain’t seen you in weeks. Thought you was hidin’ from me at that other Quaker house, but turns out you’re here!” Donovan looked put out, as if she had been a poor friend not to tell him.

Honor took a deep breath. “Please could thee fetch my-my husband. Jack Haymaker. In the field south of here, a little west along the road. Please.”

A look crossed Donovan’s face before he covered it with a smirk. “Husband. Huh. Somebody got in there already, did they?”

Honor just looked at him. She should be frightened that they were alone. But she was not. She should despise him for what he did for a living. But she did not. There is a measure of the Light in him, she thought, if only I can find it.

“You want anything?” Donovan glanced in the white pitcher on her bedside table, a lace doily draped over it to keep out flies. “You want some cold water? I can get you some from the well, or the cool room if they got one.”

“No.” Honor tried not to snap.

“It ain’t no trouble.” For once Donovan was being solicitous when she didn’t want him to be.

“There is something I would like,” she began, to distract him from searching for the cool room, where he would find the woman among the shelves of cheese. “Does thee remember the signature quilt that was in my trunk the first time we met?”

“Yep.”

“Could thee get it? It is upstairs in my trunk. This blanket is so scratchy.”

“Sure.” Donovan bounded out, clearly pleased to have something concrete to do. She heard his footsteps on the stairs and then overhead, shaking the hallway and bedroom. Honor prayed the woman in the cool room would keep still and not panic.

Donovan returned with the quilt in his arms. Spreading it over her, he paused, then crouched and smoothed it so that his hand ran slowly down the outline of her body. His eyes glowed bright in his tanned face. Honor thought of how she had lain in the corn with Jack and imagined Donovan, and blood rushed to her face. It must be the fever confusing me, she thought-though she knew it was not.

Donovan watched her deepening red and responded with a flush of his own up his neck and cheeks. “Dammit, Honor. You didn’t give no one else a chance, did you?”

Honor swallowed. She had never imagined she would have such a conversation with him. “Friends marry Friends,” she said, “else we must leave the community. Besides, I could never-associate with a slave hunter.”

“But you’re associatin’ with me now.”

She shivered, and gazed at him, helpless. “Please get Jack,” she whispered.

The reminder of her husband seemed to rouse him. “I’ll just get the chickens ’fore the foxes do.”

“Don’t worry about the chickens. Jack will see to them.”

“No, I’ll do it. I want to have a little look around while I’m at it. That’s what I come here for, anyway-I’m lookin’ for somethin’. Didn’t know I’d find you.” Donovan paused. “How’d those chickens get out, d’you think?”

Honor shook her head.

Donovan looked at her. “All right then, Honor Bright. I’ll be seein’ you.”

He went back outside. Honor watched him walk through the yard, past the well with its mug gleaming on the wall like a beacon. Now that he had mentioned water, she was desperately thirsty. She closed her eyes. She could hear him whistling; then he pulled the barn door open and the whistling faded. It reappeared a few minutes later, and the chickens began to squawk as Donovan rounded them up.

Soon she heard his horse cantering toward the oats field. She must have slept for a few moments. Then she jerked awake, sure of a presence nearby. The room was empty, but a mug of water sat within reach on the table next to her bed. It was cool as if freshly drawn from the well, and tasted better than any water she had ever drunk.

A FEW DAYS later, when her head was clearer and she had regained her strength enough to be up and about, Honor found a response to Jack’s argument about slavery and cotton. It came so plainly to her mind that she wanted to pass it on before it lost its shine. And so at supper, to the astonishment of all three Haymakers, Honor spoke out without having been asked a question first. She was so eager to say what she was thinking, and so unused to leading a conversation, that she did not preface her words with any explanation. Into the silence-the Haymakers did not talk much when they ate-she stated, “Perhaps we should all pay a bit more for our cloth, so that cotton growers may use that extra money to pay the slaves, making them workers rather than slaves.”

The Haymakers stared at her. “I would pay a penny more a yard if I knew it was paying to dismantle slavery,” she added.

“I did not know thee had the pennies to be generous with,” Dorcas remarked.

Judith Haymaker passed her son a platter of ham. “Adam Cox would have to shut down his business if he raised the prices on the cloth he sold,” she said. “There are few pennies to spare these days. Besides, southerners would rather stop farming than pay their slaves a wage. It is not in their nature to make such a change.”

“‘The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.’” Though she had heard the words many times, Honor spoke them without as much force as she would have liked.

Judith frowned. “Thee does not need to quote Leviticus at me, Honor. I know my Bible.”

Honor dropped her gaze, ashamed of her attempt to engage in a true discussion of the issue.

“We come from a slave state,” Judith continued. “We moved to Ohio from North Carolina ten years ago, as many Friends did at the time, for we could no longer live in the midst of slavery. So we understand the cast of the southern mind.”

“I am sorry. I did not mean to judge.”

“There are a few farmers in the South who have given their slaves freedom, or allowed them to buy it,” Jack conceded, “but they are rare. And it is difficult for free Negroes to find a living. Many come north, leaving families behind, to settle in places like Oberlin, which is more tolerant than most. But even in Oberlin they are a separate community, and those who have run away are not entirely safe. That is why we support colonization. It seems a better option.”

“What is colonization?”

“Negroes come originally from Africa, and they would be happier living back there, in a new country of their own.”

Honor was silent, thinking about this. She wondered how Jack knew what would make Negroes happy. Had he asked them?

AS IT GREW colder, Honor began to worry about the runaways sleeping outside. Those she had glimpsed had few clothes with them, and nothing warm. Most fugitives passed through during the night, simply taking the food Honor left out. Occasionally, though, one got stranded there at daylight, and hid in Wieland Woods. As the frosts came, and then dustings of snow, she looked for a warmer place to hide them during the day, in case any needed hiding. The haymow was the most obvious place, where there was also straw for bedding. But since it was obvious, slave hunters were more likely to search it. Moreover, she and Judith and Dorcas milked the cows in the barn twice a day, and Jack was in and out, mucking out dirty straw and replacing it with fresh, and feeding the animals with hay from the loft. It was a busy place to hide someone in. However, she could not think of a better spot: the chickens would make too much noise with someone in the henhouse, and the cows and pigs and horses would be stirred by a presence in their stalls beneath the haymow. The wagon shed was less used but more exposed, and cold and uncomfortable. The woodshed was too close to the house. Besides, Honor felt the hay was the best thing about the farm; it was there she herself felt safest.

The first runaway she hid there was a boy of twelve or so. Honor found him crouched behind the henhouse when she went out to collect eggs one First Day morning, so cold he could barely move. Handing him a corn cake she had slipped into her apron pocket, she thought quickly. “Wait here until thee sees us leave for Meeting-church,” She corrected herself so that he would understand. “Then hide in the straw in the far corner of the barn. Keep still if anyone else comes. I will call out when I come to thee later.” Because it was First Day, and a day of rest, she knew Jack would not change the animals’ straw, but only feed them.

That evening it rained, a cold drizzle mixed with ice. Honor excused herself to go to the outhouse, where she left the lantern and ran blindly to the barn. “’Tis me,” she called softly. She heard the boy emerge but could not see him, only smelling his sweaty fear as he drew close. “Here.” She thrust some cold beef and potatoes into the dark.

His hands met hers as he took the food. “Thankee.”

“Thee must leave tonight and head for Oberlin, three miles north of here. Go behind the barn and head that way. At Oberlin, look for the candle in the back window of the red house on Mill Street.” She left before he could say anything, fearful of being missed inside. She could hear him wolfing down the food as she pulled the door shut.

The next day Honor slipped to the barn while Jack was out delivering cheese and the Haymaker women were stewing apples, taking with her a pail full of peelings to feed to the pigs. She wanted to check that the boy had left no trace, but was astonished to discover he was still there, asleep in a nest of straw. When she woke him, he jumped to his feet, ready to run. “Why is thee here?” Honor cried. “It is dangerous to remain.”

The boy shrugged and lay back down in the straw. “Too cold out. I ain’t been this warm in a long time. Someone came in this morning to feed the animals and I kep’ real still so he didn’t find me. You got anything to eat?”

Instead of scolding him, Honor gave him some of the apple peelings and promised to try to bring something else later. Unlike other fugitives she had met, he was talkative, telling her while he ate about his journey from Virginia. Honor learned that he had been traveling with an older man, but the two had become separated in eastern Ohio when they were chased through dense woods. The boy did not know what had happened to the other.

“I didn’t want to go up north jes’ to Pennsylvania or New York,” he explained with the assuredness of a twelve-year-old. “Yankee land still too dangerous. Canada’s safer. I had help most the way ’long, especially from the Quakers. You a Quaker?”

Honor nodded. “Thee is almost there,” she said. “It will take only a few more days to reach the lake, and then someone will help thee find a boat to Canada.”

“Yep.” But the boy looked indifferent. He has become so used to the journey, she thought, that he has forgotten about the destination.

Before leaving she covered him so that he looked like an authentic heap of straw. It worked as long as he lay still and did not rustle. The boy could not, though, for his youth made him restless: he jiggled his foot and jerked his legs, and repositioned himself, burrowing deeper into the straw. Honor hoped that if Donovan or another slave hunter came looking, the mantle of fear would silence the boy.

Donovan did not come looking, however, and the boy disappeared that night. She prayed that he reached Canada.

THE THAW WAS like a fist unclenching, with the world-and Honor in it-expanding in the newly formed palm. It was surprising how little time it took for the cold to lose its dominance. One day Honor woke and the air felt different: still icy but the sharp end of it blunted and less insistent.

She was finishing the quilt for Dorcas, quilting it herself rather than having it done collectively at a frolic, for food stocks were low and it was not the time for such a celebration. As she sat over the small oval frame that held the fabric taut to make piercing with a needle easier, Honor realized she was not holding herself tense to combat the cold. Then Dorcas laughed at something Judith said-a sound Honor had not heard all winter-and she knew others were feeling the shift too.

That night, as she lay against Jack’s warm back, monitoring another change that had taken place deep in her body over the past weeks, Honor heard the hopeful sound of dripping outside. Within a day the track to Faithwell had turned into deep, sticky mud, which was almost as hard to get through as snow had been. On her way to Meeting, Honor stepped up to her knees in it, and Jack, Dorcas and Judith all had to pull to extract her. Even then she left behind a boot, and Jack had to fetch a spade to dig it out.

The next day he put taps into some of the maples in Wieland Woods to drain sap for syrup. After fresh corn, maple syrup was Honor’s favorite food in America. She had not thought anything could taste so sweet and earthy and resinous all at the same time. It was not a taste she could easily describe in letters to her family, and she wished she could send them some.

After the dawn milking Jack took her out to Wieland Woods to collect sap for her first sugaring. Boiling it down for syrup took an entire day, so they must start early, bringing back sap that had dripped out during the night. Honor was glad to have a moment alone with her husband-so rare except when they were in bed. Winter had brought the Haymakers into a tight huddle that at times made her want to scream. Now, perhaps, she could enjoy his company without the press of Judith and Dorcas around them. At least there had been no spontaneous visits from Donovan to raise tensions further. As Mrs. Reed had predicted, there were few runaways in the winter; that, combined with the deep snow, had kept him away.

Honor and Jack worked together in the woods, going from tree to tree and transferring sap from the pails hanging on the taps into larger buckets they carried. With its trees bare of leaves and the tangled thicket died back, Wieland Woods had lost some of its wildness during the winter, and Honor felt more comfortable and less threatened there. In the companionable silence, she decided to tell her husband news that would please him. She had held back during the cold, but the thaw shifted something inside her as well. “Jack-” she began.

At that moment a black man stepped out from behind a bur oak, and Jack and Honor jumped.

“Didn’t mean to scare you, sir, ma’am,” he said, removing his hat and rubbing a scraggly beard. “I heard they was Quakers up this way would look after a man if he asked.”

“We are not-”

“Thee is not far from Oberlin,” Honor interrupted her husband. “It is just three miles that way.” She pointed north. “When thee gets there, go to Mill Street-the second right off Main Street. There is a red house near where the street crosses over Plum Creek. Look for a candle in the back window, and they will help thee.”

Jack stared at her in astonishment.

The man nodded. “Thankee.” Pulling his hat down over his ears and wrapping his buttonless coat around him, he ran off in the direction she had indicated.

Jack glared at Honor. “How does thee know all of that?”

Honor could not meet his eyes, and instead studied the thin, transparent liquid in the pail. It would only turn brown after hours of boiling.

“We knew thee was leaving out victuals, but didn’t know thee was talking to them and giving such detailed instructions-and talking as well to others working on the Underground Railroad, it seems.”

Honor looked up. “Thee knew I was hiding food?”

“Of course. It is difficult to hide anything from a farmer. I suppose thee hid runaways as well?”

“A few times.”

“I thought so.”

In a way it was a relief to have her activities out in the open. “Why did thee not say anything?”

“Mother wanted to, of course. She was furious that thee disobeyed us and was putting us at risk of being fined. And that thee was attracting that slave catcher.” Jack picked up the larger bucket and moved to the next tree. “But I asked her to let thee continue.”

Honor followed him. “Why?”

Jack took the smaller pail from the tap and poured the sap into the bucket. Then he gave her a sad, sober look. “I wanted to make thee happy, Honor, for I knew that thee was not. I thought if I could let thee act on thy principles, it would make thee more content to be my wife.”

Honor stared at him. She had no idea he had been trying so hard to please her. Taking a breath, she reached out a hand, but he had already turned to the next tree. She should speak, tell him what she had been meaning to say, but the words were stuck in her throat. Once the moment had passed, it was impossible to bring up the subject again, especially as Jack was careful to keep his back to her.

When they finished emptying the pails, Honor and Jack took the sap back to the farmyard. Jack had erected a temporary shack there, for boiling down sap created so much steam that it was best not to do it in the house. Judith and Dorcas had built a fire and hung a cast-iron cauldron over it. They would take turns stirring the sap all day, reducing it to a thick, dark syrup.

Honor had wondered if Jack would remain quiet, but he immediately announced that they had seen a runaway in Wieland Woods, and repeated what Honor had told the man.

Judith Haymaker glanced at her son as she took one of the buckets from him, and then at Honor. “Thee must not start that nonsense again,” she declared, pouring the sap into the cauldron. “I have deferred to Jack’s wishes on this subject long enough. I am sure he will agree with me that not only must thee not put this farm at risk-thee must also think of thy and Jack’s child. It would not be fair for him to come into the world with the farm ruined.”

Honor turned red. “What?” Jack barked.

Judith widened her half-smile, though it did little to warm her face. “Honor, surely thee did not think thee could hide such a thing from me? It is clear in thy face and in how thee walks.” She turned to Jack. “Thee is a man and would not notice such things. I thought to wait for Honor to tell thee herself. I am sorry it has come out in this way, but thee needs to know, to help thy wife understand how much is at stake if she persists in this foolishness.”

Jack turned to her. “Is this true? Thee is with child?”

Honor nodded.

Jack’s anger at her melted like snow in the sun. He put an arm around her. “I am glad.”

“Thee must promise not to get involved again in helping runaways,” Judith continued. “It is illegal, it is dangerous, and the Haymakers cannot tolerate it any longer. We have suffered enough already.”

“What-what does thee mean?”

The Haymakers exchanged glances. Judith sighed. “Back in North Carolina we lost our farm from having to pay a large fine when we hid a runaway. There have been fines to pay even before this recent Fugitive Slave Law was enacted. The new law is simply more insistent, and harsher.”

“Is that why the Haymakers moved to Ohio?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “We could not bear to live there after what happened.”

“I thought…” Honor stopped. Now was not the time to point out that he once said they had moved north because of principles, as most of the southern Quaker families who founded Faithwell had done. Perhaps principles were not as strong a motivation as the reality of losing money and land.

Dorcas was stirring the sap faster and faster, her brow furrowed. “What Mother has not said-” she began, but a shake of Judith’s head stopped her. “Am I the only one who has to stir this?” she demanded. “I suppose Honor will have to stay away from it in her condition.”

“Nonsense, she is not a fragile vase,” Judith said. “We will all take turns. So, Honor, thee must promise not to help slaves if they stop here.”

“All right,” Honor promised, her heart sinking.

“Good. Now thee can stir the sap. Dorcas, give Honor the spoon.”

HONOR’S DECISION NOT to help runaways any longer did not stop them coming. As the weather improved, a steady stream passed through from the south. Nor was it easy simply to turn them away as was expected of her.

The first time it was not so hard. A man appeared from behind the outhouse when Honor was coming out. He looked at her expectantly but said nothing. She glanced over at the kitchen garden, where Judith was turning over soil in preparation for planting. Her mother-in-law had stopped and was leaning on the fork, watching them. Honor repeated the words she had been practicing in her head for this moment: “I am sorry but I cannot help thee.” Then she added in a low voice, “Go three miles north to Oberlin, to the red house on Mill Street and ask for help. God go with thee.” Surely telling him this would not be seen as helping him. Even as she said it, though, she knew that Judith would not approve.

The man nodded, turned on his heel and disappeared into the woods.

That was not so bad, Honor thought, feeling only a little awful. She waited for Judith to say something, but she simply went back to forking the garden.

The next fugitive was an older woman, surprising Honor: most slaves who ran were younger, for they were stronger and more able to cope with the hardships of the road. She discovered her when Digger began to bark and snarl behind the henhouse, sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, watching the dog work himself into a frenzy. Her face was covered with deep lines, but her eyes were still clear, and yellow-brown like a cat’s. “Quaker lady, you got somethin’ to eat?” she asked when Honor had called off Digger. “’Cause I got a hunger.”

“I am sorry but I cannot…” Honor could not complete the practical phrase she had learned.

“Jes’ a piece of bread an’ some milk from one o’ them cows you got, an’ I’ll be on my way.”

“Wait there.” Honor hurried to the kitchen, dragging Digger with her and shutting him inside. Luckily, both Judith and Dorcas were at the general store, and Jack was delivering milk. As she cut a slice of bread and a slab of cheese and poured milk into the tin mug, she tried out in her head the reasoning she would use with Judith: I am not hiding her, I am simply giving her food, as I would any passerby who asked.

She watched the woman eat, keeping an eye on the track for any returning Haymakers. The old woman chewed the bread and cheese slowly, as she had few teeth left. After draining the mug, she smacked her lips. “Good milk. You got some fine cows there.” She rose to her feet and adjusted the rags bound around them in place of shoes, then brushed crumbs from her front. “Thankee.”

“Does thee know where to go?”

“Oh yes. North.” The woman pointed and, following her finger, began to walk.

At dinner Honor waited until there was a pause, quelling her stomach with sips of water. “A fugitive came to the farm today while everyone was out,” she announced. “An old woman,” she added, hoping to soften the news by making the slave seem particularly needful. “I-I gave her some bread and cheese, and some milk. Then she left.”

There was silence. “We have discussed this,” Judith said. “Thee has promised not to help runaways.”

Honor swallowed. “I know. But it is hard to say no to someone who asks for food as she did. It is only what I would have done for any traveler. I was simply being courteous, not aiding a fugitive.” Her rehearsed argument sounded feeble.

Judith pursed her lips. “Thy slave hunter, Donovan, would question that logic. In the future if thee has trouble turning coloreds away, come and get me.”

The next time a runaway passed through, Honor could not take up Judith’s offer. She felt strangely protective, and did not want to subject any of them to her mother-in-law’s smiling mouth and flat eyes. The refusal would sound softer coming from herself. “I am sorry, but I cannot hide thee,” she said to a light-skinned man a few days later. Saying “hide” instead of “help” sounded less rigid, as if holding out the hope that she could still help in some small way. She took to carrying a piece of jerky in her apron pocket so that when she next said “I cannot hide you,” to two teenage boys, she handed them the food-more to make herself feel less guilty than to give them sustenance.

Eventually, however, her practiced words failed her. One early spring morning, as she and Dorcas were crossing the yard after milking, she heard a cry from Wieland Woods that sounded like a baby. They stopped and listened. The baby’s cries came again, though muffled, as if someone were trying to quiet it.

Honor stepped toward the trees, fuzzy with the green buds of leaves about to open. “Surely thee won’t go out there and look,” Dorcas chided, trailing behind her. “Has thee learned nothing from Mother?”

“It may not be a runaway. It may be someone who has lost her way.”

A short, tea-colored woman with round cheeks like pancakes was crouching in the brambles, hugging a child to her breast. She was hardly more than a girl. “You come to turn me in?” she said.

“No,” Honor replied.

“I ain’t got no milk left for her. That’s why she cries.”

“Dorcas, go and get some milk, and something to eat,” Honor ordered.

Dorcas gave her a look, but turned and went back to the house.

While they waited, Honor tried to smile reassuringly at the baby, though it felt forced. “How old is she?”

“Four months. Don’t know why I ran with a little baby. Ain’t fair to her. But I jes’ couldn’t take it no more.”

“Where have you two come from?”

“Kentucky. Ain’t so far as some has come. But it’s close enough my master come after me, him an’ a slave catcher from round here.”

Honor froze. “Is his name Donovan?”

The girl shrugged.

“Are they close by?”

“They was in Wellington last I knew.”

“Not far, then. We cannot hide you both here. But if you stay in these woods, away from the road, you may be as safe as anywhere else.” She explained where Mrs. Reed was, but the girl was not listening, her eyes on something behind Honor. Dorcas was returning, and she had brought her mother.

Judith Haymaker held out a mug of milk to the girl, who took it and tried to tip it into the baby’s mouth. The child could not gulp, however, and the mother resorted to dipping her finger and letting her suck it off.

“Who has told thee to come here?” Judith demanded.

“A woman in Wellington, ma’am,” the girl mumbled, her focus on her child.

“What was her name?”

The girl shook her head.

“What did she look like?”

“White woman. Kinda yaller-looking. Sickly.”

“Where did thee see her?”

“It was the back of a shop.”

“What kind of shop?” Judith persisted. Honor tried to warn the girl with her eyes.

“Dunno, ma’am.” The girl paused, then brightened with a piece of information. “She had feathers in her pockets.”

Honor groaned to herself.

“What, she kept poultry?”

“No, ma’am. They was dyed, blue and red.”

“The milliner.” Judith glanced at Honor before turning back to the girl. “Has the baby finished the milk?”

She had, and was asleep. The girl looked as if she could do with some sleep as well, her head nodding over the baby.

“Then thee must go.” Judith stood as solid as her words. The girl’s eyes snapped wide. She handed the mug to Dorcas and scrambled to her feet, clearly used to doing so without waking the baby. Laying her in a length of striped cloth, she lifted her up onto her back and tied knots at her chest so that the baby lay like a cocoon against her. “Thankee,” she said, gazing at their feet, then trudged off through the woods, disappearing among the maples and beeches.

Judith turned toward the house. “I will go to Wellington to speak to Belle Mills and put a stop to her sending coloreds this way.”

Honor and Dorcas followed. “I would prefer to speak to her myself,” Honor said.

“I do not want thee to see her. She is clearly not a good influence.”

Tears stung Honor. “Then I will write to her. Please.”

Judith grunted. “Tell her not to come visiting here either, for she is not welcome. And show me the letter when thee has written it. I am sorry to say I do not trust thee to do as I ask.”

HONOR WENT WITH Jack to Oberlin to send her letter to Belle Mills. She had not been to the town in months: first because of the cold and the snow, then because when the thaw came the mud was so bad they could not use the wagon, and Jack would not let her ride a horse for fear of her falling and damaging the baby. Finally, however, the weather improved, and she accompanied him when he went to the college to deliver cheese.

Jack dropped her by Cox’s Dry Goods, but rather than go in, Honor waited until her husband had driven on, then hurried south along Main Street. There was someone else she felt she should inform of her decision.

Though she had described her destination often enough to fugitives, Honor had never been there. When she reached the turning, however, and gazed down Mill Street, over the bridge crossing Plum Creek to the little red house on the right, she lost her nerve, and decided to walk on a bit to regain her composure. It was a mild afternoon, full of the breezy sunshine she had missed all winter.

She thought she would continue south to the edge of town where the railroad was being built. Clearance of thousands of trees had begun, though it would be a year before trains would begin to run, eventually connecting Cleveland with Toledo, a hundred miles west. Honor could not imagine ever wanting to go farther west than Faithwell. She never even walked west through Wieland Woods, or west along any of Oberlin’s roads. Roads and trains running east were more tempting, though she knew that however far east she traveled, she would always run up against the barrier of the Atlantic.

The planks that made up the walkways along Main Street ran out south of Mill Street, and Honor picked her way through the heavy clay that sucked at her boots and turned the hem of her green dress gray. Toward the junction with Mechanics Street she heard shouts of raucous laughter and paused, trying to look as if she were being held up by mud. She had forgotten about Wack’s Hotel.

Oberlin’s founding principles of religious fervor, simple living and hard work made it a dry town, but Wack’s Hotel was just outside the Corporation line, where the laws did not apply. Run by Chauncey Wack, a pro-slavery Democrat, it was the only place in Oberlin where liquor and tobacco were available, and though most Oberlinites were teetotal, there was always a core of visiting drinkers to keep Wack’s in business. Several of them were lounging now on the porch facing the street, taking advantage of the fair weather. Among them was Donovan, leaning back in a chair. Honor caught her breath when she saw him. He was smiling at her, and toasted her with a whiskey bottle. She suspected he had been watching her progress all the way down Main Street.

Though she had not seen him during the winter, with the resumption of runaway traffic he had begun riding again along the track by the farm and lifting his hat at her if she was on the porch or in the yard. Each time she tried and failed to remain unaffected, her pulse beating hard in her throat. It occurred to her now that if she was not going to help runaways, they would stop coming to Faithwell and there would be no need for Donovan to make his visits. Already his reappearance had Judith muttering and Jack angry. I must do the honorable thing, she thought. For the baby; for the family.

She pulled in her stomach, though she knew that, only a few months’ pregnant, there was little yet to show. Then she began to walk toward him, clutching her shawl tight. As she approached the hotel, Donovan’s porch companions greeted her with jeers and catcalls. Honor stood still and waited for them to die down. “Donovan, I would like to speak with thee,” she said, her words renewing the shouts.

“Do you, Honor Bright. That makes a change. I thought you hated the sight of me.” Donovan let his chair drop to the ground and stood. “What do you want to talk about?”

Honor gestured toward the road. “Let us walk for a bit.”

Donovan looked a little embarrassed-whether from the attention of a woman or the feeling that for once he was not in charge of their encounter, Honor was not sure. However, he came down the steps to join her, shaking off the whistles and coarse comments about what Honor might do to him and he to her. Honor tried not to listen but walked purposefully along the road ahead of him, stopping only to let a wagon pass so that it would not splash her.

When they were far enough from the hotel that the men had lost interest, Honor slowed so that Donovan could walk at her side. By now he had recovered his composure and seemed amused. “What’s this all about?” he said. “You never wanted my company before. Haymaker startin’ to bore you? That didn’t take long. What-”

“I want to speak to thee about my involvement with runaway slaves,” Honor interrupted so that she would not have to hear his remarks descend into the crudeness he was accustomed to.

“Ha! You admit it, then. Course I was always sure you was hiding niggers, but it’s nice to hear you say it.”

“My husband’s family-my family-does not approve, and I do not want to go against their wishes. So thee does not need to come to our farm any more. There will be no one hiding there.”

Donovan raised his eyebrows. “Just like that, you’re stopping?”

“There have been no runaways over the winter, and only a few since. I will not start again.”

“What about your principles? I thought you hated slavery and wanted all niggers to be set free.”

“I do. But my family is concerned about the law, and I want to respect their wishes.”

“I’ll tell you what the Haymakers are concerned about, Honor Bright: keeping you in your place. They don’t want a woman who’s gonna think for herself.”

“That is not true,” Honor said, but didn’t defend the Haymakers further. She herself felt she was not telling the truth, though she was not exactly lying either.

They had reached the tract of land being cleared for the railroad line, where a narrow strip of trees-mostly ash and elm-had been cut down. Honor studied the stumps still waiting to be extracted, extending as far as she could see. “Why have they done that?” she asked. Around each stump a trench had been dug and filled with water.

“Water softens the wood so it’s easier to dig out,” Donovan explained. “They’ve left it like that for a time and gone to work farther along the line, toward Norwalk.” He gestured west.

They stood side by side, looking out over the highway of stumps, Honor wondering at the fact that she felt more at ease with Donovan than with the Haymakers, even though he was not a Quaker and his beliefs ran so counter to hers. He accepts me as I am, she thought. That is why.

Donovan scooped up a handful of pebbles. “Listen, Honor,” he began, throwing them one by one so that they bounced off the stumps. “You ever want to give it up and come with me, I’d stop what I was doin’. I could do somethin’ else. Work on the railroad, maybe.” His words were halting, as if he were embarrassed to say them. “We could go west. Bet I’d make you happier than Haymaker.”

What surprised her was that she could imagine it, even with a man like Donovan. There is a good man in there, she thought. “I do not doubt that thee could change,” she said aloud, “but I am carrying Jack’s child.”

Donovan grunted and spat in the street. “Was wonderin’ when Haymaker and you would get around to it.” His expression remained stiff, but it felt to Honor as if a door had been shut.

She would have liked to stand there for longer with him, looking at the stumps, but Donovan turned and began to walk back to town, and she had to follow. For a moment she felt sorry for him. He was willing to change, but clearly needed someone to change for. Now it would not happen. She watched his tall broad back ahead of her, and held back a sob.

At Wack’s, Honor insisted he not accompany her farther. “I have errands,” she said. She did not want him to see her going to Mrs. Reed’s.

Donovan removed his hat, held it to his chest and bowed extravagantly. “Fare thee well, Honor Bright. I might come past the farm now and then anyway for old times’ sake, to see you’re keepin’ honest. I won’t stop, though-promise.” He replaced his hat and hopped onto the porch, catching up a bottle as he did. By the time she had turned to continue on her way, he was leaning back in his chair once more, pulling hard at the whiskey.

FOR A MONTH the flow of runaways dried up. Indeed, Honor had little contact with anyone outside of Faithwell. Though he had threatened to, Donovan did not ride past the farm. There were no letters from her family or Biddy. She did not go to Oberlin, even when Abigail had her baby and Adam could have used an extra pair of hands at the store; nor did Jack offer to take her with him when he delivered cheese. Honor did not complain, but worked hard in the garden, finished Dorcas’s quilt and began another, and grew.

Only sometimes she reread Belle Mills’s letter and smiled.

She was planting squash in the garden one afternoon when something flickered in the corner of her eye. Honor looked up across the orchard to Wieland Woods and saw a figure ducking from one tree to another. When she went over to the edge of the woods and called softly, a young man emerged, limping, to stand by the brambles where Honor and Dorcas had picked blackberries. He was shaking, from fear or something else Honor did not yet know. As she prepared to explain that he could not stop here, she glanced down at his feet and sucked in her breath.

“Please, ma’am, can you help me?” The man leaned against a maple trunk. “I ain’t doin’ so good.”

“What happened to thee?”

“Got caught in a trap.”

Someone had tried to help by dressing the wound with a knot of pine resin, but his foot was swollen, and blood and pus dribbled from it. It smelled of a rotting sweetness that, now she knew what it was, made Honor want to gag. She could not imagine that Belle would have let him go on in this state. “Where has thee come from?”

“Greenwich. They told me to go to Norwalk. This Norwalk?”

Norwalk was twenty miles to the west. “No. I-We cannot keep thee here.”

The man stared at her with feverish eyes.

Honor sighed. “Wait here. I will get thee some water.” She hurried back to the well. As she drew up the bucket to fill the tin mug, Judith came out onto the back porch. “Thee has promised not to help runaways.”

Honor flushed. “I am just giving him water. I will not hide him.” The grim line of Judith’s mouth made her add, “He has been hurt, his foot caught in a trap. Infection has set in. Can thee look at it? There may be something we can do.”

“We are not getting involved in that colored man’s troubles.”

“But-”

“We have discussed this before, Honor, and thee agreed this family would not help fugitives. Whatever we may feel as Friends, it is against the laws of our government, and we cannot afford to break them. Does thee want thy husband to go to jail? Or thee, for that matter?”

“If thee could just meet the man, thy conscience would tell thee to help him.”

“I am not going to meet him.”

Honor stood still, trying to tamp down the rage that pushed up through her. “I have promised him water.”

“Give him the water, then, and go back to thy work in the garden.” Judith turned and went inside.

The hope in the man’s face as Honor handed him the mug of water was so painful to see that she dropped her eyes and stepped back. “Leave the mug there when thee has finished. Oberlin is three miles north of here. Go to the red house on Mill Street. They will get thee the doctor thee needs.”

She turned away and hurried to the garden, where she continued digging a furrow with the hoe, her back to the man, hot tears streaming down her face. Only when she had finished the row did she dare to turn around. The man was gone, and so was the tin mug.

That night she did not sleep. It was late spring, and warm, though not yet too hot-perhaps the best weather Ohio would ever offer. Honor lay next to Jack, the wedding quilt covering her except for her feet, which she left bare to keep her cool. Jack slept soundly, as he always did after they had coupled. Her growing belly did not seem to put him off, and he never asked if she would rather not. She submitted to his nightly expectation because it was easier to. There had been a window of time when Honor enjoyed what they did in bed, the surprise and novelty and shock of sensation-when their feelings for each other had briefly been like hay. Since the sugaring and her agreement not to help runaways, however, relations between them had become more like straw: dull and gray, the life cut from it. When she lay under Jack, letting him pump away, she no longer found her place in the rhythm of his movement. If he noticed, he said nothing, but fell asleep quickly afterwards.

Honor lay thinking of the man and his foot. She could not sleep, for she could feel he was still nearby, suffering out in Wieland Woods. She must do something to help him, but she did not know what she could do on her own. The Haymakers would not help; nor would Adam Cox, as he would not want to go against her husband’s family. She thought of the blacksmith Caleb Wilson, who had recited Whittier and often brought up the issue of slavery at Meeting. He was certainly a man of principle, and might help her-except that his respect for Judith Haymaker was also strong. Indeed, it would be hard to find anyone in Faithwell willing to defy her mother-in-law, even when the cause was just.

The answer hung like a ghost on the edge of her mind for some time before Honor allowed herself to think it. Then she could think of nothing else. Finally she got up and dressed quietly. Jack did not stir. Honor crept downstairs and stepped over Digger, who lay across the doorway. He growled but did not stop her.

Outside she sat for a time on the porch and waited. If Judith or Dorcas heard her and came down to investigate, she could always say she felt ill and needed air. Indeed, as she breathed in the mild night breeze, she felt sharper, fresher and more resolved. I have been obedient, she thought, and it has made no difference.

When she was sure no one had woken, she left the porch and set out across the dewy grass to the track that ran in front of the farm. A half-moon lit it, and she hurried toward Faithwell, through the trees that eventually gave way to the cluster of houses. She passed the general store, the smithy, and Adam and Abigail’s house; then she headed toward the main road between Oberlin and Wellington. Honor had never walked on her own at night in Ohio. All around her were the overlapped sawings and chirpings and croakings of thousands of crickets and frogs, the appropriate accompaniment for the multitude of stars spread overhead. It was hard to appreciate them, however, for there were other sounds too, rustlings in the undergrowth that frightened her. The bitter, pungent musk of a nearby skunk made her gulp several times, though she kept walking, wishing she had brought Digger with her. Even after nine months at the farm, she and the dog remained uneasy around each other, but Digger would have reassured her with his serious presence. The only way she could cope with the sounds and the dark was to hurry through them, thinking only of the comparative openness and safety of the larger road.

In the daytime the main road was full of riders and drivers and walkers heading north or south, but now when she got to it, she discovered that at this time of night it was empty of traffic and as dark and still as the Faithwell track. Honor stood in the middle of it, listening to the nightlife around her. What she wanted to hear was the sound of a horse with one thick shoe, coming from either direction-she was not sure which. He would not be asleep: if a runaway was in the area he would be out searching, for most traveled at night and hid during the day. Honor gazed up the road north toward Oberlin, then south to Wellington. She could stand and wait for him, but did not think she could bear to, for her stillness seemed to bring the rustling nearer, and made her fear grow. Better to walk steadily. She turned toward Wellington. If she did not meet Donovan she would go to Belle Mills. She did not dare involve Mrs. Reed. It was not safe for a black woman-particularly an ex-slave-to be out at night, away from her own people. Besides, she could not face Mrs. Reed’s flashing spectacles and jutting lower lip.

She walked with shaky steps toward Wellington, fighting her growing terror of the darkness and solitude. She had often felt alone even when sitting among the Haymakers or the Faithwell community at Meeting, but now for the first time in America she really was completely alone, forced to confront the vast indifference of the natural world around her and the stars and moon overhead. This feeling grew so strong that at last it overwhelmed her, the hard cruelty of the world pressing into her like cold metal she could taste in her mouth. Honor had to stop in the road, gulping again and again as if she were drowning. She tried to escape it by turning inward as she did at Meeting to find the warming Inner Light, but she could not shed her overriding desire: that Donovan would come to save her from that metallic taste.

He arrived half an hour later. By then Honor was limp from fighting her fear. She heard the horse with the thick shoe a long way behind her and waited by the side of the road, her cap and the V along her neckline dimly visible in the moonlight. Yet he didn’t see her until his horse shied, a side step away from Honor that made Donovan swear and clutch at the animal’s mane. When he had calmed the horse, he stared down at her. “Honor Bright,” he declared, clearly stunned to find her there.

Honor too could barely speak. “Donovan, I-Someone needs thy help.”

“Who?”

“I will show thee.”

He reached a hand down to her. “Come up.”

Honor hesitated-because of the growing baby, because she had to trust him when she didn’t, because she would have to put her arms around his waist and lean against his back and she knew what that would make her feel. But she thought of the man in the woods whom she had failed, and that made her put her foot in the stirrup, take Donovan’s hand and swing herself up.

“Where to?”

“Wieland Woods, next to the farm. But…” Honor did not want to tell him she was doing this secretly-though it must be apparent, else she wouldn’t be out on her own. “Please don’t ride through Faithwell or past the farm. I don’t want them to hear. We can leave the horse near the village and walk the rest of the way.”

Donovan twisted around to look at her. “There a nigger in the woods?”

“Yes.”

“You told me a month ago you weren’t gonna be tradin’ in runaways any more.”

“He strayed from Greenwich. I did not intend to get involved, but he is hurt and needs a doctor.”

Donovan snorted. “You think I’m gonna take him to a doctor?”

She did not reply. They sat on the horse, Donovan letting it take delicate side steps as it waited for its rider’s signal.

“Honor, you know I’ll turn him in. That’s what I do.”

Honor sighed. “I know. But he will die otherwise. It is better that he lives, even in slavery.”

“Why you askin’ me, anyway?”

She said nothing.

“You live in a town full o’ Quakers and you go to me for help? You got yourself a problem there, darlin’.”

“There is nothing wrong with Friends here. Many would do what they can to help. It is just… the Haymakers have had their principles compromised by circumstances. And they are influential in the community.” Without meaning to, Honor was leaning against him, the small hard bump of her belly pressing into his back. Donovan felt it and stiffened, then leaned forward so that they were not so close.

“Right,” he said at last. “Hold on.” He pulled the reins around, clicked his teeth, and set out back up the road.

THERE WAS ALWAYS going to be one last runaway.

It was the last day of the Eighth Month, hot and still, though the heat was chased by the threat of autumn. The sun was just off-center, the leaves dusty rather than vibrant green, an undertone of yellow creeping through them. Honor hurried through a landscape that seemed to be waiting for something to happen, a thunderstorm or the razing of a field or a fire sweeping through. She was late.

The Haymakers were bringing in the hay. It had been a wet summer, and this was only the second crop-a disappointment, as it meant they would be unlikely to add another cow to the herd as planned. Jack, Judith and Dorcas, as well as other Faithwell neighbors, were in the field to the north of Wieland Woods. They would not let Honor help them, however, and she was glad. She had awoken that morning with an uneasy feeling in her belly. Though the baby was not due for another month, it felt large and low, pressing on her bladder so that she had been up several times during the night to use the chamber pot. She sensed its desire to escape from the confines of her womb, and knew it would come early rather than cling inside as so many first babies did.

Judith muttered something about Honor missing this year’s harvest as well as last year’s, implying she had deliberately timed her pregnancy to do so. Her words did not bother Honor. Now that she did not have to answer back, nothing Judith said bothered her.

She finished milking alone so that Jack and Dorcas and Judith could eat and make a start at the hay with the others. Then she cleared the breakfast things and prepared the meat pies Judith had instructed her to make to take out to the field for dinner. It was a relief to work alone, and she thought of little except when the baby became insistent and she had to sit down. Twice Jack and Dorcas and a neighbor came back with the wagon piled high with hay they transferred to the barn. Honor did not go out to them, and they did not come inside, but drank from the well and refilled a jug for the others.

She even had a little time to spare, and sat out on the porch with a lapful of hexagons she had begun making into rosettes for a grandmother’s garden quilt. She had started with green and brown shapes she’d found half-made in her work basket, then gone on to add other colors: yellow and red and green. She had been sewing them for a month now, since finishing Dorcas’s final quilt. She had got out the special pieces she’d saved-Grace’s dress, Belle’s yellow and tan silks, the rust diamonds of Mrs. Reed’s daughter’s wedding dress-but found no inspiration in them. She wondered if she ever would. But she did not like to have idle hands and so had worked on the hexagons. She now had over a hundred rosettes made, without any idea what she would do with them.

Because she was not working toward a specific quilt, Honor was less focused on her work; the heat too was enervating, and soon she had closed her eyes. It was Digger who woke her. Made to remain behind with her, at midday he stood by her and growled. Honor jumped: she was late to take dinner to the others. Putting the pies, some bread and cheese, a bowl of tomatoes and a jug of milk into a basket, she then hurried up a track along the edge of the woods to the field, the heavy basket bumping against her legs.

They were still working when she arrived; they would have been waiting for her to appear before they stopped. The alfalfa had been cut a few days before and left to dry, then raked up the day before, ready to be brought to the barn. The wagon had been pulled up to one of the many haystacks dotting the field. As Honor set down her basket, Jack and Judith began to dig their pitchforks into the stack.

Suddenly there came a shriek that made Honor’s stomach lurch. She froze as a black woman burst from the stack, shielding her eyes from the sun. Before anyone could respond, she ran. Bounding like a deer startled into panicked flight, she headed straight toward Honor, veering away at the last moment. Honor glimpsed wild eyes and lips clamped tight. Then she was gone, crashing into Wieland Woods.

Honor stared after her, catching flashes of arms, a billowing brown skirt, a red kerchief on her head. Eventually she disappeared, though her crackling and crunching in the thicket went on for some time. Finally even that stopped. When Honor turned back, all the Quakers in the field were looking at her.

No, Honor thought. This is not to do with me.

But, apart from Caleb Wilson, who gazed at her with sympathy, she could see in their faces that they were already linking the appearance of the runaway with Honor’s arrival. Even if she broke her silence to protest that it was a coincidence, they would not believe her. Judith had already set her mouth in the familiar cold half-smile. She said nothing, but walked over and took the basket of food from Honor.

I cannot bear this any longer, Honor thought. Nothing I say will make any difference to what people think. My words mean nothing to them. It was as if something broke in her head. She could not wait, even for Judith to unpack the food, but turned and walked back along the track toward the farm, ignoring Jack’s calls. On one side of her was Wieland Woods: all was still now. Wherever the runaway woman was, she was keeping quiet.

Back at the farm, Honor cleared away the hexagons she had left out on the kitchen table and put them in her work basket. Then she climbed the stairs, pulling herself and the weight of the baby up with the handrail. She stood in the bedroom doorway and looked at the quilt she had smoothed out on their bed earlier. It was the Star of Bethlehem quilt from home-Biddy’s quilt, as she always thought of it now. She still felt guilty about having to ask for it back. The signature quilt from Bridport was folded at the bottom of the bed. She could take neither with her.

Honor picked up a shawl, a penknife and a little money she had left from her passage to Ohio, which Jack had never asked for. Then she changed her daily bonnet for the gray and yellow one; if she left it, Judith was likely to give it away out of spite. Back in the kitchen she took a round of hard cheese, a loaf of bread, some beef tack and a sack of plums. She had never packed for such a journey, and had no idea if she was taking the right things. She tried to think what the runaways she had met had with them. Nothing, usually. Often even their feet were bare. Honor changed the light summer slippers she wore for sturdier boots, and added two candles and some matches to the small store, which she tied up in a dishcloth.

She could not take the rosettes, or her grandmother’s sewing box, and that almost stopped her. Then she opened the box and took out the porcelain thimble, the needle case and the enameled scissors, as well as the pieces of special cloth she had been saving-the memories in them were irreplaceable.

Digger was lying across the open doorway, catching what little breeze he could. As Honor stepped over him, he did not growl as he would normally have done with her. He knows, she thought. He knows, and is glad.

Crossing the orchard-the apples on the trees reddening, the plums past their best and covered with yellow jackets-Honor entered Wieland Woods and picked her way steadily through maples and beeches, through brambles loaded with blackberries she could not stop for. The trees were thick with leaves in suspension between the ripeness of summer and the decline of autumn. While the oak leaves were still green, the maples’ were veined with red, ready to flush.

There was no sign or sound of the Negro. At one point Honor strayed close to the edge bordering the field where the Haymakers were working, and heard their voices, though not what they said. After that she went deep into the middle of the woods, where the woman must be hiding. As she walked she was followed by the song of the bobwhite, named for its distinctive call. Jack had teased her once when she asked what it was, refusing to believe such a common bird did not exist in England. On the road with Thomas over a year ago, she had not even recognized the cardinals and blue jays. There was so much to learn about America, not all of it good.

Eventually, beyond the bobwhite, Honor picked up the chattering of a squirrel, clucking and scolding as if annoyed at a child, or an intruder. Following the sound, she did not try to hide her own presence, but allowed her skirt to brush against the undergrowth and her boots to snap dead branches in the hope that the woman would look out and see who it was, and trust her.

The runaway was perched on the branch of a beech tree six feet above the ground, the squirrel protesting high above her. Honor stepped onto one of the tree’s roots, looked up and held out a plum. The woman looked at her. She did not take the plum, but after a moment she climbed down. Taller than Honor, she had long limbs and a yellowish cast to her skin. Indeed, the woman’s face was familiar, though it took a moment for Honor to place her. She was the first runaway, who had hidden by the well and left a tin mug of water by her bed-the mug that was now buried with the dead man nearby. Honor remembered that Donovan had caught her; she must have been taken back and was running away again. She looked healthier now: she had filled out somewhat, her skin was clear of pimples, her eyes whiter, and her dress looked newer, if dirty. She was wearing a pair of men’s shoes, and carried a bundle similar to Honor’s own.

The first time Honor had met the woman she’d held out bread to her. Now she pocketed the plum and untied her bundle to offer some bread and cheese. The runaway shook her head. “She done fed me up at the last place. Don’t need nothin’ for now. She said to say hello if I saw you-though she told me to go on through to the next stop if I could, an’ not to be botherin’ you, what with that an’ all.” She gestured at Honor’s belly. “I wouldn’t of been in that hay at all but for that slave catcher drivin’ me off course. Same one as last time. Caught me in these woods. He persistent, ain’t he? Don’t think he even knows who I am, but chase me anyway.”

The woman stopped. The squirrel had doubled its voice with two women to complain about, but now it went silent, and they could hear a horse in the distance, coming along the track to the south of them, with its uneven hoofbeats. It was the first time Donovan had come out this way since the runaway’s death. He did not know about Honor’s silence.

And now she was breaking her silence-a sensible, undramatic end to it. “I will go with thee.” Honor’s first words in over three months came out as a cracked whisper.

“Thankee, but I know where I’m goin’.”

Honor cleared her throat to ease the words from it. “We must leave these woods. He will come looking here.” As would Jack: in a few hours Dorcas and Judith would go back to the farm for the evening milking, find that Honor was not there, and raise the alarm.

They listened. They could not go north into the hayfield, where even now Honor could hear the distant voices of her family, the jingles of the horses’ bridles, the creak of the wagon. Donovan was blocking their escape east along the track past the farm and Faithwell. Honor did not want to go west: the track through Wieland Woods petered out halfway through, and besides would lead them into unknown territory, away from the main road and Oberlin. If they could get close to the main road between Oberlin and Wellington, they could then follow it, keeping in the fields on either side.

“If we cross the track that way”-Honor pointed south-“there is a cornfield that has not yet been cut. We can hide there till dark, then make our way east to the main road.”

The other woman nodded. “First I got to drink.” She led the way to the creek that bisected the woods, where Honor had rolled Dorcas in the mud to soothe her bee stings. There was little water in it other than a couple of standing puddles scummed over, insects hovering above. The women picked their way along it till they found a small trickle over a rock. The runaway placed her mouth there to suck up the water. After drinking, she stood up and gestured to Honor, who tried to crouch, then went on her hands and knees in an awkward position to accommodate the baby. She hesitated for a moment when she realized she would be putting her mouth where the Negro’s had been. But that thought was a mere flicker, and she lowered her mouth to the rock. The water tasted wonderful.

Afterward the woman helped her to her feet, then led the way south toward the track, clearly in charge. Honor did not mind. It was enough for her to be out walking in the woods on a late summer afternoon with a Negro, going… she did not know where she was going. She was running away.

The black woman moved through the woods silently, her feet sure, aware of her body in a way that kept her from brushing against branches or crackling leaves. Honor could not imitate her silence: she rustled through the undergrowth and got herself caught in brambles. She was also slowed by the weight she carried, and the pains along her groin and inner thighs. The woman did not slow down, though, and was soon little more than a movement among the trees. At one point Honor stopped and wiped her brow, and listened. She could not hear Donovan’s horse. He was probably searching the barn and other farm buildings. Behind her she could hear the wagon with its load of hay bumping down the track that led from the hayfield along the edge of Wieland Woods to the pasture and barn. If Jack came upon Donovan at the barn, what would they say to each other? Would Donovan ask if he’d seen the runaway? Would Jack tell him, or lie? Honor shivered, and hurried to catch up with her companion.

She was leaning against a maple at the wood’s edge, the track before them little more than a trickle of crusted mud spreading east and west. Diagonally across it, next to the woods, was the bright green shimmer of the Haymakers’ extensive cornfield. Tall and healthy and ripe, it would be left to stand until autumn when the ears had dried in their husks. Seeing it reminded Honor of first lying with Jack Haymaker in a cornfield. She flushed at the memory; only a little over a year ago, yet it felt as far away as England.

“You can go back now,” the runaway said. “I be all right from here. I jes’ wait in the corn till dark, then go on when no one can see me.”

Honor shook her head. “I will go with thee.”

The woman glanced at Honor’s belly. “You sure you want to go like that?”

“The baby’s not due until next month. I’ll be fine.”

The runaway shrugged and turned to look up and down the track, listening. “Come on, then.” She stepped out of the woods. Honor followed, the sunlight blinding her so that she ran without seeing where she was going. In a moment she was crashing into the corn.

“Shh!”

Honor stopped, the stalks banging together around her.

“Go slow or it makes noise,” the woman whispered. “And we got to go through without breaking the stalks, so no one know we been here. Get to the middle and wait. Follow me, now.”

They stepped carefully along a row, trying not to rattle or break the stalks. Honor kept her eyes on the woman’s back, where a patch of sweat was blooming through her brown dress. Several feet in, the woman turned and cut across rows, zigzagging and pushing carefully through the thick corn. Eventually she turned into a row and walked along it, on and on, for far longer than Honor would ever have gone on her own. “Please,” she almost said. “Please stop.”

She was about to reach out and touch the woman when the runaway did stop, and Honor almost stumbled into her. She was dizzy and the baby was pressing on her bladder.

The woman sat. “Let’s wait here.”

Honor went a little farther along to squat. It was so hot that the urine dried up just moments after she finished. She came back to sit near the runaway and opened her bundle. This time the woman took one of the plums. Honor savored the fleshy pulp, and sucked for a long time on the stone.

The woman was looking at her sideways. “I like that bonnet,” she said. “You think it’s jes’ gray, then there’s that little flash of yellow to give it spice.”

“A friend made it for me.” Honor felt a pang, thinking of Belle Mills. She had never replied to her letter, and now she would not see her again.

It was uncomfortable sitting in the cornfield. The sun beat down on them, for the stalks did not provide much shade. The leaves caught at her, their surfaces a rough softness. The ears bulged from their husks, but this was feed corn, its kernels too tough for human teeth, and the taste less delicate than the sweet corn Honor had come to love and crave. There was nothing substantial like a tree to lean against, and the corn grew close enough together that it was difficult to find space to lie out. She was exhausted from the sun and the physical exertion, however, and managed to nod off, jerking herself awake.

“You sleep a bit,” the runaway said. “I’ll keep watch. We’ll take turns.”

Honor did not argue. She laid her head on her bundle, curled around the baby and, despite the hot sun, the flies and the dull ache in her belly, soon slept.

HONOR WAS FINALLY beginning to appreciate rocking chairs. They were everywhere in America: on the front porches of almost every house, in corners of kitchens, in the parlors of travelers’ inns, outside of saloons, in shops by the stove. Only Friends Meeting Houses-and churches, Honor suspected, though she had not been inside one-did not have them.

Before Comfort’s arrival, she had always been suspicious of them: the rocking seemed to her an aggressive sign of leisureliness. The constant rhythm set by someone else bothered her when she was sitting near an occupied rocker. Americans demonstrated their own rhythm in a much more public way than the English, and it did not seem to occur to them that others might not care for it. Indeed, Americans often went their own way with little consideration for how others felt: proud of their individuality, they liked to flaunt it.

When Honor visited other Faithwell families, she had always chosen a straight-backed chair, saying it was better for the sewing she brought with her. Really, though, she did not want to rock in front of others and impose her internal rhythm on them.

Once Comfort was born, however, Honor discovered how soothing rocking could be, for baby and mother. She often sat with her daughter in the rocker by the stove in Belle’s shop, nursing or letting her sleep in her arms. Customers smiled and nodded at her, and seemed not to mind.

Perhaps, Honor thought one day, it is not that Americans are so wedded to individual expression, but that we British are too judgmental.

Given the violence with which she entered the world-the lengthy pain, the blood, the pushing and screaming that turned Honor briefly into an animal-it was perhaps not surprising that Comfort Haymaker was a vocal baby. She had corn-flax hair and her father’s blue eyes, but was small like her mother, and her tiny stomach filled and emptied quickly. She cried, was fed, slept for an hour, and then cried again to be fed, cycling through this infant rhythm all day and all night. Honor had never had such an insistent demand made on her, not even when nursing Grace through her final illness. For a time she was so exhausted she could do little more than doze with Comfort between feeds.

If she had been at the Haymakers’, Honor would have felt no guilt, for new mothers were expected to convalesce for several weeks. But at Belle’s she felt conspicuously idle, especially when she came down to sit in the shop rather than lie in the bedroom that had been given over to her. Belle seemed unbothered by either the crying or the idleness, but Honor insisted on doing what sewing she could when Comfort slept, though in her fatigue she kept unthreading her needle and sewing crooked seams.

Comfort soon grew used to her mother rocking her in the chair, and would wake and cry when Honor tried to transfer her to the quilt-lined basket Belle had lent her. Honor herself became tearful from exhausted frustration. Mother would know what to do to get her to sleep, she thought. Or Judith Haymaker.

Belle watched her struggle with the crying baby. “She needs a cradle,” she remarked pointedly.

Honor pressed her lips together and said nothing. The day after Comfort was born Belle had sent word to the Haymakers, and Jack had come to visit.

Honor was surprised by how glad she was to see him. When he held his daughter in his arms, gazing proudly on her sleeping face, Honor got that feeling she had when she was sewing together patchwork pieces, and saw that they fit. “She has thy hair, and thy eyes,” she said. They were the first words she had spoken to her husband in months.

Jack smiled, looking relieved. “It is good to hear thy voice.”

Honor smiled back. “And thine. I have missed thee.” At this moment, she meant it.

“I have made the baby a cradle. Mother says-” Jack stopped. “She can sleep in it when thee comes back to the farm.”

Honor felt her shoulders rise, and as if in response, Comfort began to cry. Jack had to hand her back, and the feeling of being a family was broken.

“Honor, why did thee run off?” he said. “I was so worried. We all were.”

Honor was positioning Comfort so that she would latch on to her breast. The initial sucking was so painful she caught her breath.

“It was irresponsible,” Jack continued. “What if the baby had come when thee was out in the woods, alone and far from anyone? You both could have died.”

“I was not alone.”

Jack frowned at the reminder of the runaway.

Though tempted to retreat back into the silence of the past months, Honor resisted. “I would like to name her Comfort,” she said. “Comfort Grace Haymaker.”

“Why didn’t you tell Jack to bring the cradle here?” Belle demanded when he had left. She must have been listening.

“It is his mother’s bargain. The cradle is ready for her, but only if I return to them.”

Belle looked as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t.

Various customers mentioned cradles as they watched Honor struggle to get Comfort to sleep. “Pretty baby. Where’s her cradle?” “Don’t that baby have a cradle to sleep in?” “You need to get yourself a cradle, young lady.” Then one morning a customer’s son brought in an old cradle carved from hickory, with faded cherries painted on the tiny bedboard. “I slept in this when I was a baby,” he said. “Now Ma’s holdin’ on to it for her grandchildren. But I’m headin’ west and don’t need no cradle yet. Can make one out there. So you can have it.” He left before Honor could even thank him.

The cradle was old and rickety, but it rocked, and Comfort immediately fell asleep in it. Then Honor could move it with her foot and still sew.

When Judith and Dorcas Haymaker visited, bringing with them a basket each of cheese and apples, Judith frowned at the old cradle. But her face softened and her smile was genuine as she took her first grandchild into her arms. Fighting the urge to snatch Comfort back, Honor sat very straight and clutched her hands in her lap. The baby flailed her tiny arms and moved her head from side to side, searching for her mother’s breast, blue eyes blurred and unable yet to focus.

Honor was more at ease when Dorcas took the baby. Rocking Comfort in her arms, Dorcas appeared more content than Honor had ever seen her. “A new family has moved to Faithwell,” she remarked. “From Pennsylvania. They’re dairy farmers too.”

Judith grunted. “They are restless at Meeting. The father speaks as if preaching.”

They were sitting in the tiny back kitchen, and Honor caught the amused looks of customers at the three Quaker women in their sober dress, contrasting with the bright feathers and flowers of the shop.

Then Comfort began to cry, and Honor reached for her daughter.

That evening, when the Haymaker women had left and the baby was sleeping, the two women worked, Honor sewing white rabbit fur around a green bonnet for winter, Belle lining a gray bonnet with light blue silk.

“How old is Dorcas?” Belle asked, holding up the bonnet and frowning at the rim. “Is this lopsided?”

“No. She is the same age as me.”

“It is lopsided. Damn.” Belle began to unpick the seam. “Why’d she mention the new family in Faithwell, do you think?”

Honor did not pause in her rhythmic stitching. “People often fill silence with words.”

“No, honey, these were pointing at something. You just didn’t notice ’cause you were fussing over the baby, but Dorcas was smiling to herself after she talked about ’em. And it made your mother-in-law look like she’d eaten a sour apple.”

Honor stopped sewing, looked at Belle, and waited for her to explain what she had clearly already thought through.

“There’ll be a husband in there somewhere for her,” Belle declared.

Honor began stitching again. She did not want to indulge in speculation. She was glad, though, that she had finished the quilts she owed Dorcas. She had five more quilts to make for her marriage, but before that she thought she would sew a quick cot quilt for Comfort. She did not yet know what the design would be; she would need to get to know her daughter first.

ONE MORNING AN older woman Honor had not seen before came into the shop. “Thomas is making a delivery tomorrow afternoon,” she told Belle. “Big one. Make sure you got the space.”

Belle nodded. “Thankee, Mary,” she said around the pins in her mouth, for she was attaching ruffles to a burgundy bonnet.

“Got both logs and kindling for you. That all right?”

“Course. How’s that li’l granddaughter o’ yours? Go on, take one o’ them ribbons for her hair. Girl always likes a new ribbon.”

“Thankee. You mind if I take two?” The woman chose two red ribbons from a basket on the counter. She hesitated at the door. “You all right, Belle? You’re mighty thin these days.”

“Tapeworm. It’ll pass.”

Honor looked up from her usual position, in the rocker feeding Comfort. The bones in Belle’s triangular face were even more pronounced, so that her hazel eyes blazed above the balls of her cheekbones.

“Belle-” she began when the woman had left.

“No questions,” Belle interrupted. “Usually I can count on you to keep quiet. Stick to that now. You done there?”

Honor nodded.

“Good. You mind the shop a little while-I got to make room for the wood coming.” She disappeared before Honor could be sure Comfort would not wake when she transferred her from her arms to the cradle. Perhaps Comfort sensed Belle’s no-nonsense attitude, for she remained asleep. Honor was able to serve the string of customers who appeared over the next hour while Belle was rearranging the wood still left in the lean-to. She also made several trips upstairs, which surprised Honor, though she knew better than to ask why.

Late the next afternoon, as it was growing dark and Belle was lighting lamps, a man appeared with a wagon full of wood. When he came in to greet Belle, he nodded at Honor, and she recognized him as the old man who had brought her from Hudson over a year ago. “Got yourself a little one, I hear,” Thomas said. “That’s good.”

Honor smiled. “Yes, it is.”

Belle took Thomas out back while Honor remained with the two customers in the store: a young woman and her mother dithering over wool linings for their winter bonnets. Finally they chose and paid. The moment they left, Thomas came back out and went to run his wagon around the back.

“I’ll just be helping with the wood,” Belle said. “Any customers come, you look after them. Keep ’em occupied.” She held Honor’s gaze a moment, then turned and hurried through the kitchen and out of the back door.

She had hardly gone before Donovan’s horse was heard trotting up the street. Then Honor understood. She closed her eyes and prayed that he would not stop.

He did. She watched from the window as he threw his reins over the hitching post. “Where’s Belle?” he demanded as he entered, his eyes flicking over Comfort in her cradle before they settled on Honor.

“She is out back, seeing to a delivery of wood.”

A woman passed along the boards outside, slowing to study the bonnets in the window. Please come in, Honor thought. Please. But she moved on; darkness was not the time for a woman to be out.

“Is she, now? Well, darlin’, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just have a look, make sure she ain’t gettin’ a load o’ green wood.” Donovan stepped around her and strode toward the kitchen.

“Donovan-”

He stopped. “What?”

She had to keep him with her somehow, so that he would not go back to the lean-to.

“I have always-I have always wanted to thank thee for helping me that night. In the woods, with the black man.”

Donovan snorted. “Didn’t help none-nigger was dead, wasn’t he? Not much use to you or me.”

“But thee found me when I was on the road, in the dark. I do not know what I would have done if thee had not come.” Though she did not speak of it, she was making herself remember the feeling she’d had with him that night, that brief moment when they’d shared a closeness. By recalling it she hoped he would too, and break off his focus on what was happening at the back of the house. “I wish,” she added, “thee would change thy ways.”

“Would that make any difference?”

Before Honor could answer, Comfort let out the little cry that signaled she would soon wake.

Donovan grimaced. “It wouldn’t, would it? Not now.” He turned and headed back to Belle.

Honor rocked the cradle, hoping the movement might send Comfort back to sleep. It did not, however, and she picked up the baby and put her over her shoulder, walking around the room and patting her back. At the same time she listened out for what might be taking place by the wood.

A few minutes later Belle reappeared, her arms full of logs, which she dropped in the box by the stove. Donovan was following her. “Donovan, no brother should let his sister bring in wood without carrying some himself. What the hell’s the matter with you? People like Honor here got a low enough opinion of you without you makin’ it worse by bein’ so ungentlemanly.” She squatted and began arranging the wood. “You gonna bring in another load or do I have to do all the work myself?”

Donovan frowned, then went back the way he’d come. He must be younger than Belle, Honor thought, reminded of the natural authority her older brothers had held over her and Grace.

Belle opened the stove and added another log, though the fire didn’t need it: there would be no more customers for the day and they would move to the kitchen fire. It was this unnecessary action that told Honor Belle was nervous.

Donovan came back with a stack of wood, Thomas behind him.

“That should see you up to Christmas, Belle,” Thomas said. “Though I’ll top it up when I’m in town, if you like.”

“Thankee, Thomas. What do I owe you?” While Belle and Thomas went over to the counter to settle up, Donovan began stacking the wood on top of what his sister had brought in. Comfort’s eyes had begun to focus and she followed his movements over Honor’s shoulder. This seemed to bother Donovan, and he hurried to finish. As Thomas was leaving through the kitchen to go back to his wagon, Donovan stood up and made a move toward the front door.

“You want some coffee before you go, Donovan?” Belle said, sounding amused.

“I’ll just scare off your customers. You watch yourself, Belle, Honor. I ain’t through here.” He banged the door behind him.

Belle chuckled. “That baby sure spooks him more’n anything else can. She should stay here all the time. That would keep him away, like a lucky charm.” She kissed the top of Comfort’s head, dusted with wispy white-blond hair. It was rare for her to show the baby affection.

They listened to Donovan’s horse clop away. “Honor, go to the window and check he’s ridin’ it,” Belle said. “He’s tried that one before.”

Honor looked, and recognized his tall silhouette slumped in the saddle. She watched till he was out of sight. “He’s gone.”

“Good. Now, you stay there, and make sure he don’t come back.” Belle hurried to the back of the house. A few minutes later Honor saw Thomas’s wagon go past, rattling now it was empty of its load of wood.

She and Comfort stood on in the window, the baby quiet, balanced on her mother’s shoulder and reaching her hand out toward the darkness. In the last few days she had stopped flailing so much, her movements more controlled.

Soon Belle was back. “All right. I’m gonna fix supper.” When Honor opened her mouth to speak, Belle interrupted her. “Don’t ask. If you don’t know, then you won’t have nothin’ to tell Donovan when he comes back. ’Cause he will come back tonight. He’ll be back for another look.” She was talking as if Honor knew what was happening. She did know. She just did not let herself think openly about it. Some things should remain hidden.

I have used many resources to create this book, but here are a few for those who want to pursue some of its subjects.

On the Underground Railroad and abolition: The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom by Wilbur H. Siebert (1898) is the classic from which all the others draw their material; Let My People Go: The Story of the Underground Railroad and the Growth of the Abolition Movement by Henrietta Buckmaster (1941); Freedom’s Struggle: A Response to Slavery from the Ohio Borderlands by Gary L. Knepp (2008).

On Quakers: The Quaker Reader, edited by Jessamyn West (1962); An Introduction to Quakerism by Pink Dandelion (2007); Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad, edited by Ben Richmond (1991); Slavery and the Meetinghouse: The Quakers and the Abolitionist Dilemma, 1820-1865 by Ryan P. Jordan (2007); A Fine Meeting There Is There: 300 Years of Bridport’s Quaker History by Suzanne Finch (2000; thank you, Marian Vincent, for finding this for me).

On Oberlin and its surrounds: Oberlin: The Colony and the College by James H. Fairchild (1883); The Town that Started the Civil War by Nat Brandt (1990); A Place on the Glacial Till: Time, Land, and Nature Within an American Town by Thomas Fairchild Sherman (1997).

Quilts: There are many books on quilts and their fascinating history, but those most useful to Honor’s quilting were Quilts in Community: Ohio’s Traditions, edited by Ricky Clark (1991), Classic Quilts from the American Museum in Britain by Laura Beresford and Katherine Hebert (2009), and Philena’s Friendship Quilt: A Quaker Farewell to Ohio by Lynda Salter Chenoweth (2009).

Writing from the period: Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877; thanks to Carole DeSanti for lending me this treasure); Our Cousins in Ohio by Mary Botham Howitt (1849)-less a novel, more a year in the life of an Ohio farm; and, of course, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852). For nineteenth-century English views on Americans, you can’t do better than Domestic Manners of the Americans by Frances Trollope (1832) and American Notes by Charles Dickens (1842); although both were highly critical of the United States, many of their observations still hold true today.

I am grateful to many people for their help with this book.

In Ohio: Gwen Mayer, Hudson’s most passionate archivist, and Sue Flechner, for her generous hospitality. I am sorry that Hudson did not figure larger; however, it did provide me with a name and profession: Belle Mills the milliner, for which I owe Hudson a great debt. Tim Simonson on Wellington history; Bob Gordon on farming; and a special thank-you to Maddie Shetler for twice showing me around her family farm. Various unsung helpers at the Oberlin Heritage Center and Oberlin College Archives. Finally, my biggest thanks are to Kathie Linehan and Glenn Loafmann for many and varied services on the ground (and, with Glenn, up in the air!), from sending maps to finding answers to big and small questions, connecting me with knowledgeable people, flying me over the landscape of the novel, putting me up and up with me, and taking such an active interest in my Ohio research that they became a part of the process itself. Oberlin is a special place, and Kathie and Glenn are head of the class of its finest inhabitants.

Hats: Rose Cory and her millinery class in Woolwich, and Shelley Zetuni for introducing me; Oriole Cullen at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Quilts: Of course I had to learn to make them myself. Thanks to Fiona Fletcher for teaching me the basics; and to the Flying Geese quilting group in north London, who have been so helpful and supportive through every step of making my first quilt. May your stitches always be even.

Quakers: Christopher Densmore at Swarthmore College for answering my varied queries; Hampstead Meeting for shared hours of waiting in expectation.

I would like to thank John Wieland for buying the privilege of having a wood named after him, in an auction to raise funds for the Woodland Trust, a UK charity devoted to woodland conservation.

For wordsmithery, thanks to Richenda Todd and Rick Ball.

Finally, thanks as ever to my handholders: Clare Ferraro and Denise Roy at Dutton, Katie Espiner at HarperCollins, Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown and Deborah Schneider at Gelfman Schneider.

Tracy Chevalier is the New York Times bestselling author of six previous novels, including Girl with a Pearl Earring, which has been translated into thirty-nine languages and made into an Oscar-nominated film. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., she lives in London with her husband and son.

***