Southern Republic (The Downriver Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Chloe slowly came out of her reverie, realized she had only another 10 minutes before her next class, and took out her notes to review for the coming lesson.

  CHAPTER 3

  ‌Patrick Edgerton lived a double life. He had done so all of his 42 years, as had been his family’s tradition for the last 150 years.

  The Edgertons had lived in upstate New York for almost 200 years; and for much of that time had been operatives—first in the Underground Railroad, and later in the Railway Association. Both organizations served the cause of transporting liberated slaves from the South. The Underground Railroad had been extensively infiltrated by the end of the Civil War, so the new organization rose from the ashes of the old—smarter, more clandestine, and far more extensive.

  Patrick’s family had sprung, in the “New World,” from a sailing man who landed in New Bedford, Massachusetts back in 1808. Old Euphrates LaRue Edgerton decided to settle down, moved to New York City, and met and married Livinia Bascomb, the eldest daughter of a rather well to do merchant banker whose family was fairly scandalized by the union. In order to get out from under the never-ending scrutiny of Livinia’s family, the newlyweds moved to upstate New York, and once there prospered.

  From these diverse beginnings, the Edgertons went on to become a leading family in the area, producing its fair share of professionals, city leaders and scoundrels, and fully participating in the American experience.

  Patrick’s great-great grandmother, the former Lelia Manning, who married Jeremiah Bascomb Edgerton in 1851, joined the Underground Railroad as a young bride of 19; and the family’s devotion had never wavered since that time.

  In each generation, the Edgerton family designated one member who, by interest and temperament, demonstrated the greatest aptitude for fulfilling the family’s commitment to the R.A. Patrick was the designee of his generation.

  Unmarried, bookish and shy, Patrick had melded his two lives as successfully as possible. As a Cornell and MIT trained software designer and troubleshooter, Patrick was an unassuming tech genius whose talents put him in constant demand. He consulted with a number of large end-user customers with vast interconnected networks. Patrick billed himself as a one-man tech SWAT team and was often required to troubleshoot systems in several different cities any given week.

  His mobility, access to software, hardware and sizeable network of tech talent along with his ability to move about in near invisibility, all permitted him to conduct his tech business while at the same time running missions for the R.A.

  Patrick’s double life hadn’t left him much time for socializing, and his need for secretiveness has pushed away the few close friends he once had and inhibited his willingness to form intimate bonds for fear of security breaches. Funny how sometimes the outer appearance of a person can be part truth and full lie. Patrick had always been viewed by others as bookish, shy, a bit of a nerdy techno-geek and, well, boring. And almost all of those things were true—except the boring part. Patrick lived an active life of the mind because of his work and his natural tendency to reflect and brood; and an even more active physical life due to his work with the R.A.

  Patrick had held fast to his life with the R.A. for it was his tether, in a very real way, to his identity. Patrick was unlike other Americans whose roots to their old country grounded them in their current identities as Irish Americans or Italian Americans or German Americans or Slavic Americans.

  For Patrick, and countless other Americans of African heritage, the closest thing they had to the “old country” was the territory immediately south of them that held the children of their ancestors in bondage. Even for the hundreds of thousands of them who could not trace their lineage to slavery, the need to belong rivaled the shame that their kin were still in the shackles of servitude.

  Even for those who did not make the trek to the New World via the Middle Passage, the shameful open secret that was practiced mere miles away on people who looked just like they did and who had come from the same Mother Africa as they did, poisoned their minds to the freedom and liberty for all that was the motto of the only home they had ever known.

  Yet “Mother Africa” was no more maternal to the forlorn children of the Diaspora than America, and was worse still to the stepchildren of the Diaspora who couldn’t even claim that shred of solidarity with their people.

  So Patrick was one of that number, albeit an insignificant number in the scheme of things, who felt completely disconnected to the larger whole of humanity. Not a member of an identifiable segment. No place to fit into the burrowing comfort of a structured order. Not really a “real American” from the perspectives of those who were even more recent immigrants than himself. Not really African despite the endless lessons he’d endured as a child. He and others like him were eternal “others” no matter what their environments.

  And as any psychologist will confirm, a person disconnected from his community, however that concept is defined, is one step closer to Destination Madness.

  Patrick still walked on the path of what is commonly accepted as sanity, but he suffered from a schism of his soul—one part Euro-American acculturated; one part vestige of the African heritage rife with book knowledge and ignorant of real experience; and one part struggling like an ardent diplomat on the brink of world war trying desperately to make peace between the other two.

  This constant struggle was skillfully masked by Patrick’s practiced iron control. But it was constant nonetheless. And it cast a shadow over his soul, like a cloud passing over the landscape of his life, cloaking everything it covered in gloom.

  That slavery was allowed to continue in the other half of what used to be a unified whole of a country made Patrick an uncomfortable American. A citizen by birth but not wholeheartedly by allegiance, for what allegiance had the country shown to his people over the centuries? Enslaved and then ignored. But Patrick could not ignore them.

  He believed, in that tiny corner of his mind that hid from the logic police, that he could unify the disparate pieces of his fragmented soul, he could finally feel like he belonged, if only the slaves could be free.

  He had few pretensions or predilections toward any particular philosophical view and didn’t really consider himself political. No, to him, politics had very little to do with his motivation for working so zealously for the R.A.—and everything to do with simple right and wrong.

  Patrick had been indoctrinated early into the “family business.” He can even now recall, with near photogenic perfection, the scene that still burns in his memory. The scene that still sums up in his mind all the fear, hatred, and degradation associated with the evil institution of slavery.

  One chilled October Friday, when the bite of winter had yet to fully encompass Ithaca, but its promise made abundantly clear, Patrick was assigned the task of shepherding a little girl from one depot in the R.A. to another across town for transport to points beyond. Patrick was only a child himself—a fact the R.A. exploited gleefully, since it rendered him far less likely to attract attention. He was only a child of 9 when he first truly realized, truly felt in his pristine little soul, how much of a crime against the world slavery was. The enormity of that realization was matched only by the horror he witnessed when he first approached his charge that evening so long ago.

  Patrick had been puzzling out some solution to an imaginary problem he had created by fiddling with the software to one of his video games, hands stuffed in pockets filled with boy-toys like string, coins, the bumper to a model car he kept meaning to reattach to its owner; when we stepped out of the darkness into a pool of light spotlighting a scrawny little girl.

  She was maybe a little younger than he, it was hard to tell since she was nearly as tall, but thin beyond the healthy thinness of an active child—even Patrick could see that. She stood immobile in the glare of the streetlight, fixed to the spot, eyes stretched in the worst kind of unspoken terror as she watched his approach. Clearly terrified that she was about to be captured, but too afraid to run,
as if by her very stillness she could render herself invisible, she stood before him. The little girl started shaking as Patrick started to reach out for her, to reassure her, albeit awkwardly, that he was her friend and was there to help. She trembled visibly, her face contorted in fear, but still she said not a word. When Patrick told her, “Please, come with me, I’m here to help you,” the child seized up as if in a spell, voided her bladder and peed all on the sidewalk beneath her, the steam and stench of her urine wafting upward into the air.

  Patrick was finally able to get her to snap out of her trance-like state, and got her safely to her next stop. But the look of shame mingled with the abject terror of the unknown, of never knowing when life or liberty would be snatched away, of never being able to trust—the look he had seen on that little girl’s face haunted his nightmares from that day to this.

  CHAPTER 4

  “I’ll have the Chestnut gelding today, Joshua,” Olivia said in a honeyed voice, “And put an extra canteen of water on the saddle, I’m likely to be gone for awhile.”

  Olivia was looking forward to a nice, long ride. Away from the dreariness of the Protectorate, away from the hellish hypocrisy of the entire way of life that was sometimes just too much to bear.

  And the lurking depravity of the Protectorate made the physical beauty surrounding her somehow more sinister in its perfection. The seemingly infinite variations of green in the blanket of tall trees ringing the paddock, the gently rolling hills rising up to meet the crisp, clear sky, only masqueraded the insidiousness.

  She mounted the gelding, making sure Joshua had used her favorite saddle and had adjusted it to her liking, gave him an acknowledging nod and trotted out of the paddock.

  It was always best to be courteous to the slaves that provided you personal services, she felt; plus it didn’t hurt that Joshua was quite a fine looking quarter-breed who she wouldn’t mind sampling at all. Olivia got a little laugh out of that, for she relished breaking the rules and turning the double standard that permeated this outmoded system on its head.

  Quaint cottages, formerly called slave cabins, lined the path leading from the paddock and were assembled in rows circling the outer perimeter of the compound. Much of the protectorate compound could be considered quant. It was as if by retreating to an earlier time, they could regain some of their lost innocence, Olivia thought with a grunt of derision. Only problem was, the S.R. had never been innocent—not back then and certainly not now.

  The surrounding landscape hadn’t changed in a hundred years; and even the architecture mimicked that prevalent during the glorified era of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. So while the S.P.s’ clapboard cottages had been razed and replaced a few times since then, they always sprang up again, like a severed lizard’s tail—an exact replica of the original.

  Even the clothes the S.P.s wore were mired in yesteryear. For although F.F.C. could wear the latest Parisian couture, the S.P.s wore long skirts with aprons and neat cloth caps, or narrow suits of trousers and collarless jackets, demurely buttoned to the throat.

  Of course, Olivia considered, this trip down memory lane didn’t extend beyond the hallowed Protectorate Compound. The garment workers, nursery minders and field hands wore more practical unisex coveralls, conveniently color coded by role: blue for P.G.W., yellow for S.F. and red for the aged nursery minders, waiting out what remained of their lives in the company of children.

  Further down the lane, picking up speed, Olivia continued to rein her horse in to a trot until she reached the next row of outbuildings housing the nursery, where she relaxed the reins.

  Leaning into the wind, Olivia let the rhythm of the ride sweep her back in time. Olivia Askew had grown up on the Enrico County Virginia Protectorate, the daughter of Protector Askew, “scion of the Askew clan, defender of the faith and ravisher of the help.” Olivia snickered to herself as she sped up to a canter. Somehow any thoughts of her father put her to mind of that description she had made up when, at 23, she had returned home from graduate school to be confronted with her father drooling over a barely pubescent maid—Sulla.

  “I mean really,” Olivia fumed, still after all these years fixated on her father’s humiliation of her mother Eugenia. “There are protocols for such things and it just isn’t seemly for an old goat like that to be so obviously smitten with a little pickaninny.”

  Of course, the fact Protector Askew had later installed this “pickaninny” Sulla as his head of household and she had borne him two children, did nothing to diminish Olivia’s rancor at what should have been a regrettable, but expected, part of life on the Protectorate.

  Olivia felt she had earned her way to political consciousness that summer, finally recognizing her family and country for the barbaric, exploitative, decadent institutions that they were. She didn’t know then exactly how she was going to strike out at the fabric of this antiquated system, but she knew she’d find a way. And she had. Olivia had been a member of the R.A. for the past 8 years.

  Now, at 32, Olivia was an able businesswoman who had made it her business to do more than the partying and scandalizing that many of the children of the F.F.C. had taken to after their extensive educations had made them fit to rule a system that didn’t really need them. She was a woman of strong passions, a fiery woman, who didn’t know the meaning of the word “no.” With dark red hair, flashing grey eyes and a tight, compact body, Olivia strode around giving orders to and taking her pleasure from anyone she wanted. She knew she was smarter than most everyone gave her credit for, and constantly used their insolent arrogance against them in clever, albeit generally clandestine, ways.

  Olivia was in charge of the Protectorate’s horses, managing one of the finest stables in Virginia. Olivia had developed the breeding system, oversaw the stud fee program, acquisitions, training, and had made the Enrico County Protectorate nationally known for its stock. She was not only a natural rider but she had the gift of instantly seeing the strengths and weaknesses of a horse, and managing their training to heighten one while diminishing the other—all toward the end of creating marketable stock.

  Although she had to follow the Rules and marry a fellow F.F.C. member—a dullard who she swore came from a family of dullards and was undoubtedly a victim of the faded gene syndrome—she didn’t let that get in the way of her fun, or her mission. Bryce LaFollette Hempstead was just about perfect for Olivia. He didn’t ask too many questions and he was just grateful to be there.

  Hell, it was a good thing he didn’t ask too many questions, and another good thing that he had dark hair and eyes, otherwise one of Olivia’s more rebellious acts could have led to disaster. Olivia made it a habit to take lovers from among the compound’s S.P. staff and got a little careless once 4 years ago with a half-breed groom. She’d gotten pregnant and the math told her it couldn’t be Bryce’s, but luck had smiled on her broadly. Not only had she had a “premature” birth, but the child could—and did—pass for Bryce’s son.

  Come to think of it, little Winston’s birth also took the pressure off Olivia to have a child for the sake of continuing the family line, and Bryce had pretty much confined his amorous pursuits thereafter to women other than Olivia. Which was just fine by her.

  Anyway, Olivia mused, that had been a close one. But what the hell, she thought, what better way to give the whole corrupt system the finger than by “polluting” the precious family bloodline?

  If anyone had happened to point out to Olivia that her claimed hatred of her country’s evil institutions and her father’s prurient delights on one hand, and her own rampant conduct on the other presented a glaring contradiction, she would likely have been blinded by the glare.

  For Olivia could no more comprehend the hypocrisy inherent in her condemnation of her father’s exploits while doing her level best to emulate them, than admit that her lofty aims were spurned on by nothing more than common jealousy. And never could she admit the extent of the psychological legerdemain necessary to reconcile these dueling urges with s
uch aplomb.

  When Olivia was tormenting some terrified groomsman or valet, demanding sexual service on literal threat of death, in her mind she was striking a blow for female equality and lashing out at the double standards that had bound and chafed her nearly from the cradle. And when she was fervently wishing that Sulla and her entire black family would disappear whether that feat was accomplished by death, sale or by simply evaporating into the ether, according to Olivia’s view of the world she was merely displaying appropriate loyalty to her mother, while rebuking her father and his illicit co-conspirator for her mother’s unhappiness.

  Yet she so fully devoted herself to whatever course of action she decided to take, and so wholeheartedly (not to mention whole-bodily) engaged in her folly, that it was hard to blame Olivia for her excesses, as it could truly be said that for the most part, she came by them honestly.

  Olivia was at a full run by the time her thoughts turned to her triumph over her father’s hypocrisy by cuckolding her feckless husband; and she raised her fist and let out a whoop of purely wicked delight. The only thing that could make her life sweeter right now is if her father truly appreciated how well Olivia had learned the lessons he had taught by his example. She’d like nothing better than to see him destroyed—his power, his bloodline, and his precious Sulla. She had a fleeting image of Sulla and her two little bastards being transferred to another Protectorate, all of them crying piteously, and smiled.

  CHAPTER 5

  ‌Sulla looked at her two children, Gabriel and Sarah, and reflected on her own tumultuous childhood. A childhood dominated by the uncertainty of the unknown. Like all slave children, she was raised in the nursery until the age of 6. While she remembered much of that time fondly, her kind memories were tainted by the deaths of three of her minders. Old Octavius had been her favorite, and he just didn’t wake them up for their morning meal one day. No explanations, no church service, no nothing. Just no more Octavius.