The First Assassin Read Online Free PDF Page B

to listen. It always amazed Lucius how she talked with such certainty about things she could not possibly know. Today it seemed as if she had sat in on a dining-room conversation with the Lincolns the night before.
    “He’s gonna to help us, Lucius,” said Nelly again. “Hear me now. That man Lincoln is gonna to come down here and let our people go, like Moses did to Pharaoh.”
    “What makes you think a white will ever care enough about a black to do that?”
    “Lucius, I know of whites right here in Charleston who would free the slaves.”
    “You’re crazy, Nelly.”
    “I ain’t fibbin’.”
    “Maybe Lincoln is a good man. But there ain’t a single white person in Charleston who cares about the slaves, except to make sure they do what they’re told.”
    “Have you heard of the Underground Railroad?”
    “Of course, Nelly. Don’t say it so loudly.”
    “There’s a station right here in Charleston.”
    “That ain’t true.”
    “Lemme tell you something, Lucius—”
    A hard knock came from the front door.
    “Nelly, you gotta go now.”
    “I’ll slip down the hall. You get the door and I’ll come back.”
    The knocker pounded again, this time more urgently. Lucius sensed impatience on the other side. He raised his eyebrows. “Go, Nelly,” he said. “You know where the sugar’s at. Get some and get outta here.”
    The knocker banged against the door again, even harder than before. Lucius started for it. He placed his hand on the knob and looked over his shoulder to where Nelly had been standing. At last she was gone. Sometimes the only way to make her leave was to send her on her way. Lucius turned the knob and opened the door.
    A man stood on the porch, his hand raised as if he were about to knock again. It was getting dark outside, but Lucius recognized the caller immediately. This was Tucker Hughes, a familiar face in recent weeks. He stepped inside without an invitation, brushing against the slave’s shoulder. Lucius wondered why he had even bothered to knock. Before he could ask for Hughes’s hat, it was shoved at him. “Is he upstairs?” inquired Hughes.
    After a lifetime in servitude, Lucius had become accustomed, even numb, to the dozens of little indignities he suffered each day. But for some reason the behavior of Hughes gnawed at him. Over the last year or two, Bennett had taken a fatherly interest in Hughes and treated him almost as a surrogate son. Hughes was a frequent caller when Bennett stayed in Charleston. He had come by every few days since the middle of January.
    Hughes raised his eyebrows. “Is he upstairs?” he asked again, this time enunciating the words as if he were speaking to a half-wit.
    The nasty tone snapped Lucius out of his thoughts. “Yessir, Mr. Hughes, and I can take you—”
    Before Lucius could get the words out of his mouth, Hughes turned toward the steps and started up. Lucius tossed the hat on a chair and sprang after him.
    This treatment perturbed the slave. It was not merely the rudeness. He was used to rudeness from white folks. It was the total disregard for the role Bennett had assigned Lucius to play in this house. Lucius should lead Hughes upstairs and announce his presence. If Hughes just barged in, Bennett would think Lucius was not doing his job. The slave would look bad and Hughes would have gained nothing. It was supremely inconsiderate.
    Lucius wanted Bennett to think well of him. He had lived with Bennett almost his entire life. They were born the same summer at the Bennett plantation. Lucius’s mother had looked after both of them during their early years, and they played together in the rough egalitarianism of childhood. But it could not last forever—not when one of them was white and the other black. Bennett’s father, Richard, separated the boys around Langston’s seventh birthday. Lucius became a full-time slave hand. Bennett’s father introduced his son to the life of a plantation owner. In the mornings, a tutor taught him