Charlotte Spies for Justice by Nikki Shannon Smith

Author:Nikki Shannon Smith [Smith, Nikki Shannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Capstone; Stone Arch Books; Girls Survive; Nikki Shannon Smith; Alessia Trunfio; Civil War; Action & Adventure/Survival Stories; Historical Fiction; 9781496583840; 9781496584465; 9781496583895
Publisher: Capstone
Published: 2019-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

Richmond, Virginia

February 10, 1864

The next day I woke up with my stomach in knots. I didn’t know if I was more worried about getting caught or failing Miss Van Lew. As I sat next to Abraham in the wagon, I repeated her instructions in my head.

Stand in front of the General Store holding the basket. A woman will smile at you. If she has a chipped tooth, say hello. If she says, “How is Babcock?” give her the bread and walk away.

My legs shook as I made my way to the front of the store. Miss Van Lew had given me a note to show anyone who questioned me. It said: Charlotte is my servant and is picking up items from the store for me. —E. Van Lew.

Without this pass, she’d said, someone might take me for a runaway slave and capture me. The thought terrified me, and now the note was a moist ball in my clenched fist.

All I knew about the person I was meeting was that her tooth was chipped, so I squinted at the mouth of every woman who passed. A white woman frowned at me and mumbled. A young colored woman smiled at me, but her tooth wasn’t chipped.

Just when I started to wonder if something had gone wrong, a woman with a chipped tooth smiled at me. We had our little conversation, I handed her the bread, and she hurried down the sidewalk. I hurried off in the other direction.

Miss Van Lew sent me to town with a different basket each time. One day it was a dozen eggs that looked normal, except that three or four were hollowed out with a message inside. Another day it was a message baked into a loaf of bread. Sometimes it was a book with a coded message inside.

By day, I snuck through town, delivering messages. By night, I crouched in Miss Van Lew’s bushes, keeping watch as allies arrived to lead our hidden soldiers, a few at a time, to the North. I treated every job as if my life depended on it—because it did.

After the first few trips into town, my nerves settled. Abraham and I began to talk all the way there and all the way back.

“Abraham, were you one of Miss Van Lew’s daddy’s slaves?” I asked one day.

Abraham nodded. “Indeed I was.” Then he laughed. “She used to argue with her daddy all the time. Trying to get him to free all of us.”

“She fought with her own daddy?” I asked.

Abraham looked at me. “Sure did,” he said. “That woman is something else. A lot of people don’t like her, but they leave her—and all of us—alone. The Van Lew name carries a lot of power.”

“Were you a slave at the same time as Mary?” I asked.

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