Trouble the Water_A Novel Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  Trouble the Water

  “… will seize readers from the first page and not let go.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “With compelling characters, a charming peek into Charleston society, a heart-racing romance, rich historical detail, and an epilogue that will have you holding your breath, Friedland has written a well-crafted novel that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.”

  —Susie Orman Schnall, award-winning author of The Subway Girls, The Balance Project, and On Grace

  “Friedland is a modern Bronte sister remixed with Kathleen Grissom or Leila Meacham. Trouble the Water is the riveting story of Abby, who travels across the sea, fleeing Liverpool, poverty, and an unsavory uncle, for Charleston, where a wealthy friend of her father, Douglas, lives. Douglas has pledged himself to the fight to end slavery, and for that, he has made the ultimate sacrifice. Abby fights inner demons and tries to find her place in Charleston high society while her brooding guardian reconciles the past and returns to his beloved cause. Lovers of Civil Warera historical fiction will rejoice at Friedland’s triumphant novel of love, friendship, and the most important issues of the day.”

  —Bethany Ball, author of What to do About the Solomons

  “The complicated history of the antebellum South comes alive in Friedland's debut novel and offers readers an exciting and fast-paced literary journey that explores complicated relationships, the importance of friendship, and the necessary power of love.”

  —Kris Radish, best-selling author of A Dangerous Woman from Nowhere

  “With a plucky heroine, a dashing hero, and the backdrop of the clandestine abolition movement in the antebellum South, Jacqueline Friedland masterfully weaves a tale full of passion and honor, duty and survival, evil and the beauty of basic human decency. Trouble the Water will make your heart pound and swell, and keep you reading well into the night. Highly recommended!”

  —Loretta Nyhan, author of I'll Be Seeing You, All the Good Parts, and Digging In

  “In a narrative tapestry woven of brilliant threads of history and drama, Jacqueline Friedland introduces her readers to seventeen-year-old British-born Abigail Milton; her generous but reluctant benefactor, Douglas Elling; and the complex world of antebellum Charleston. The evil of slavery, the nascent abolitionist movement, and the courage of an operative of the underground railroad are explored against the background of the vanished world of debutante cotillions, social intrigue, and the slow maturity and melding of skillfully drawn protagonists. Friedland’s research is impeccable, her writing fluid. Trouble the Water is that rare pedagogic novel that engages as it teaches.”

  —Gloria Goldreich, author of The Bridal Chair

  TROUBLE THE WATER

  Copyright © 2018 Jacqueline Friedland

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Published by SparkPress, a BookSparks imprint,

  A division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC

  Tempe, Arizona, USA, 85281

  www.gosparkpress.com

  Published 2018

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-943006-54-0 (pbk)

  ISBN: 978-1-943006-55-7 (e-bk)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959097

  Book Design by Stacey Aaronson

  All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To Jason

  For always being sure

  1

  CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

  1842

  Douglas urged his horse onward at a feverish pace, gripped by panic that his wife might have been taken, or his daughter. The evening’s vacant streets worked in his favor as the animal tore across the cobblestones, racing furiously toward his estate. The horse huffed and spat, sweating into the moonlight, as Douglas struggled to focus on speed, rather than on his dread. Rounding the corner onto Lightbourne Street, where candlelight emanated from the windows of quiet houses, he had the sudden thought that it couldn’t be today. Whatever that distasteful man, Wilson Bly, meant by the threat, Douglas told himself, it wouldn’t be this very same day when he had only just been alerted to the possibility of danger. He began to relax slightly, feeling added relief now that he was so close to home. He eased up on the horse, slowing to a trot and patting the animal’s hide in recognition of its exertion.

  He and the horse continued east at a lighter pace, and Douglas inhaled deeply, trying to calm his racing heart. As the humid air filled his lungs, he caught the scent of smoke, sudden and sour. His alarm returned afresh, beastly in its force. Digging his heels into the horse’s sides, he urged the animal to resume its breakneck pace. They barreled across the remainder of Lightbourne, and Douglas began to detect the din of disaster, shouts, and clamor from afar. As the horse cut onto Meeting Street, Douglas was greeted by a vision that would terrorize him the rest of his days.

  The Elling estate was alight against the dark night in roaring, spitting flames. Fire was bursting forth from the east side of the house, licking its way up the walls, reaching its hands sky-ward, like crackling, roaring calls of prayer. There were people running every which way, bodies emerging and disappearing behind the fog of smoke in a frenzied crush as they tried to help manage the fire.

  Douglas searched the crowd for his family as he rode onward, forcing the horse toward the fire. “Sarah! Cherish! They could still be inside!” He shouted into the air of the maddened crowd around him. At the perimeter of the property he jumped from his horse, still screaming as he rushed toward the flames. “Sarah! Cherish!”

  “No, Mr. Elling!” The family butler ran out from the masses, from the darkness, and grabbed Douglas’s coattails, trying to hold him where they stood at the edge of the drive.

  “Jasper! Oh, thank God! Where are my girls?” Douglas shouted over the popping and crackling of the fire.

  “Please, Mr. Elling, there is nothing we can do now. Come with me, to safety.” Jasper pulled Douglas’s arm, trying to move him back toward the street, toward the faceless crowd of onlookers.

  “No, take me to Sarah!” Douglas shouted again. “Where are they?” His voice was eclipsed by the sound of roof crumbling into the house below it.

  “Mr. Elling, I am so sorry!” Jasper leaned close and shouted into Douglas’s ear to be heard over the commotion.

  “The market! I was out at the market!” He shouted that again, as if his prior whereabouts were the main focus.

  “I am so sorry, sir!” Jasper was repeating himself, his bursting words nearly meaningless to Douglas. Though if the man was shouting, Douglas reasoned, Sarah and Cherish must be safe. People didn’t shout at times of death. There was no comfort in shouted words.

  “Where are they?” Douglas pressed, his eyes searching the darkness.

  “Sir, they didn’t make it out.”

  Douglas looked blank faced at Jasper. Then with a sudden start, he began running toward the house again.

  “No, Mr. Elling!” Jasper shouted, racing behind Douglas.

  A male house servant appeared from out of the bedlam, catching Douglas by the arm.

  “No, Mr. Elling! You can’t! There ain’t nothing you can do now. You’ll never make it out.”

  “Let go of me, Demett!” Douglas bellowed. “I have to save my family!”

  “Mr. Elling!” Demett shouted back, holdi
ng firm to Douglas’s arm, and motioning for other bystanders to help restrain his employer. “The mistress and little miss, they went inside not long before the fire started,” Demett explained as three other men, strangers, joined in detaining Douglas, their hands and arms straining against the force of his determination. “Time we saw the flames, me and the boys in the stables, we couldn’t do nothing about it. I come running over, but up by Miss Cherish’s bedroom was blazing the worst. They must have started the fire just underneath, probably in your study, sir.”

  “Demett!” Douglas roared. “Let go!” He bellowed as he struggled, pushing and twisting against the men, “Let me go!”

  “They wouldn’t have made it out in time anyhow,” Demett continued as though he hadn’t heard Douglas, as though he was unaware of the droplets of sweat drawing lines on his own soot-covered face. “There ain’t nothing you can do, sir,” Demett counseled, two hands still gripping Douglas by the arm. “You go in there, you’re sure to die. Nobody wants that. Not Miss Cherish nor Mistress Sarah, neither.”

  Douglas looked from Demett back to his smoldering home, calculating whether there was any hope. He needed to run straight inside the house and rescue Sarah and Cherish, just as he’d rescued so many others before them. He could carry his girls to safety and watch them take big, redemptive gulps of fresh air. It could still be a mistake. They might come running home from the opposite direction at any moment, letting everyone know they hadn’t been inside after all.

  But as he looked back at the crackling, raging flames and falling timber, he knew Demett was correct. The fire was raging precisely where Sarah and Cherish would have been that evening, the flames too violent, too fast to flee. With all his bravado and blasted ideas of his own invincibility, he had been too late. His five-year-old daughter with her bountiful blonde curls and exasperating will, his brave, sparkling wife—they were gone. They were lost, absent, consumed.

  Douglas sensed the air leaving him, the despair curdling into each part of his body as he registered the significance of the words he had been told. He felt the anguish arrive, piece by searing piece, to each vein, every muscle. The agony erupted, turning every bit of him to ash, to paralysis, to nothing. He gazed at the foundering structure that had been his sanctuary, blurred before him because of the smoke, the tears, or perhaps because he would simply never see anything with clarity again. Demett released his hold on Douglas’s arm, motioning for the other men to do the same. Douglas thought how Sarah would chide Demett not to give him much room at a time like this. Sarah would have reminded Demett of Douglas’s tendency to be impulsive, to be reckless, hotheaded. But now he felt only defeat. He was aware of his bulky frame crumpling onto the gravel beneath them. He saw Demett look to Jasper for guidance on how to proceed with their devastated employer. Jasper simply shook his head.

  Douglas absorbed the tableau before him as if observing his own poorly arranged dream. He watched from his knees, motionless in a sea of chaos. It was as if his world had gone silent, as though he was trapped outside a window, watching this impossibly horrific scene, the townspeople with their buckets, attempting to extinguish the firestorm, lest their own houses catch the flames.

  Douglas looked at his old friend, Jasper, and then back up at his smoldering home. He recognized a roaring in his soul, and then the world beyond his body faded to nothingness, turned to black, and was gone.

  2

  CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

  Three Years Later

  1845

  Abby glanced back toward the empty steamship, her face sticky with sweat and sea dreck, and she wondered again whether this journey hadn’t been a grand mistake. She despised Lancashire, but at least there, she wouldn’t have been trapped in this stifling Charleston heat, not knowing a soul. It was too late though, and there wasn’t any use in wishing that her foul bastard uncle hadn’t ruined her, ruined her plans, ruined her England. She edged her brow with her soiled sleeve and scanned the harbor crowds once more, searching for her escort. She had been waiting nearly two hours, watching the crush of people swarming around her while her stomach grumbled for food. Her da had sworn to her—on his only good carving knife—that Douglas Elling would receive her with generosity. She should risk this journey, he had said, and accept Elling’s charity, never minding that the man had returned only one of her father’s letters in nearly two years.

  She had been foolish to hope that life would be any better for her here. Elling had paid for her passage as a first-cabin passenger aboard the ship, but it didn’t mean he was upright, just rich enough where the money was of no consequence to him. Abby adjusted the twine in her dark hair, lifted her canvas sack, and hopped off the fence where she had been perched. Best to figure something out already. Still wobbly from weeks on the water, she craved a proper bath and a hot cup of tea. Even a damp cloth to cool herself would have felt like extravagance.

  Squinting through the harsh sunlight, she looked toward the storefronts at the far end of the wharf. There were crowds, crowds everywhere, and each person seemed to be hurrying about with such purpose. She made her way through the thrumming horde, consciously dodging eye contact with the men, whites and Negroes alike. She sensed herself disappearing into the sea of people, her worn gray dress rendering her nearly invisible against the women draped in vivid reds and oranges, the men with faces the color of coffee and peanuts, potatoes and milk. Her stomach growled again as she recalled her last meal, so many hours ago, as food stores ran low on the ship.

  She was looking for Elling Import & Export, but the only sign she could decipher from a distance read, Auction & Negro Sales. Maneuvering through the soupy air, she ignored the hooting peach sellers calling out about sweet juice and the fancy ladies lurking in nooks, pulling at the men passing by. Abby wasn’t certain what she had expected of Charleston, but it wasn’t this, this pandemonium. She reached the auction office and peered inside the large picture window. The place was dark, so she straightened her spine and plodded on. She heard an excited yelp down the wharf and turned to see a dark woman running with glee toward a younger Negro man. The woman had dropped her baskets and was shouting chirpy robust words in a language Abby had never heard. As her arms reached out for the fellow, a white man kicked the woman to the ground. Abby felt a twinge, a rising of bile, but she forced the feeling down to that place inside herself where she locked all her suffering. This voyage wasn’t about anything but her own survival.

  She walked past two more office doors, neither of which seemed like they could belong to Douglas Elling, the man who was supposed to be her new patron saint.

  “You lost, darling?” An older gentleman, wearing a bow tie and carrying a folded satchel, materialized from the crowd.

  “Could you tell me where to find the office of Elling Export?” she asked, speaking for the first time since her arrival.

  “That’s an easy one,” he answered in a gravelly drawl. “Just three doors on that way.” He pointed a finger in the direction she had been walking. “A word to the wise, Miss,” the lines in his face folded deeper, “you’re better off doing what business you’ve got elsewhere.” He tipped his hat and walked on.

  Well, that was all well and good, but where, pray tell, could she go instead? She would not add to her parents’ burdens by failing to arrive where she’d been expected. Abby walked on, finding the correct door and pushing it open cautiously. Though the door had been unlocked, the office was empty. Scattered papers and pristine mahogany desks told her that the office was still in use, just unoccupied at present. There were only a couple hours remaining until it would grow dark. Perhaps she could spend the night here and hope someone helpful appeared in the morning. The leather chair in the corner was spacious enough to accommodate her for the night. Better than being left alone outside at the port. She could at least sit and remove her boots if nobody came.

  But then she heard muffled voices and sounds of movement, likely from a cellar beneath her. She knew she ought to call out, let someone know she w
as there. She placed her bag down on the bulky chair, careful to keep quiet, and started for the cellar. The first door she opened revealed only a closet crowded with boxes, so she moved to the door across the room, but again found only a closet, this one stocked with books and papers, inkpots and envelopes. She scanned the large room, turning in a circle until she noticed a tall bookcase askew from the wall, protruding at an inelegant angle. Peering behind the bookshelf, she saw the staircase for which she had been searching. It was like something from the books she had read as a child, when her life had allowed for luxuries like pleasure reading. This stairwell wasn’t meant for the public. Abby hardly counted as the public though, did she? Houseguest or charity case that she was.

  She’d already waited long enough for the hallowed Mr. Elling to remember fetching her. Elling had been a childhood friend of her father’s. More like a much younger brother, her da would say. But what did they know about the man now? Only that his wife and daughter were long dead, and that he’d become something of a bear ever since. The man had made arrangements for her in response to her father’s plea. But there wasn’t reason to credit any of it. She would not allow herself to be hunted again, not by bear or bastard.

  Down the steps she went, doing her damnedest to step lightly so she might catch a glimpse of what lay below her before she announced herself. Curse her factory boots and their clunky soles, made to withstand hours at the weaving loom, never minding how the foot inside felt about it. She managed to creep quietly, reaching the dim landing at the bottom, in time to make out several men huddled at the far side of the cellar. It was too dark to see clearly what they were doing. It looked as though one man was punching another repeatedly in the gut, but the rustling noises didn’t match the jolting action. She could hear hurried, hushed conversation, bits about haste and payments. She wondered if she was walking in on something illegal, gambling, or smuggled goods, which might make sense so near the waterfront. Wouldn’t it be just her luck to traverse the entire Atlantic only to find herself with a criminal for a guardian?