Nobody's Angel Read Free Page A

allow her sisters to catch up with her. Emily's eyes were wide, and Mandy's cheeks were flushed with excitement. Sarah Jane merely looked worried, but even had she wished to she would not have been able to renew her protests because of the sheer volume of the activity around them. Enterprising hawkers peddled everything from pecans to hair ribbons at the top of their lungs. People everywhere moved, some leaving, more coming.
    Women in bright cotton dresses and with deep-brimmed sunbonnets on their heads clutched unruly children by the hand as they all strained to get a good view. Gentlemen in long-tailed coats and top hats rubbed shoulders with trappers in buckskins and roughly dressed farmers. Horses were tied to any conceivable hitching post. Wagons and carts with everything from farm implements to crated chickens in the back headed in both directions, clogging the street that ended at the green. A special stockade had been constructed to hold the convicts prior to the sale, and the auction block had been built just to the south of it. Only the week before, a ferry had crossed the Coosawhatchie River to discharge the human merchandise. The convicts had landed originally at Charles Town, the rumor went. From there they had been brought to Beaufort, considered the most prosperous small town in South Carolina, a distinction of which its residents were justly proud. It was hoped that the relative wealth of Beaufort's citizens would make the effort worthwhile.
    As the sisters approached the green, they were passed by two men, one after the other, each with what was obviously a newly purchased servant in tow. The first convict they saw had his wrists bound and was hobbled about the ankles with a short length of rope. He was forced to adopt an ungainly gait somewhere between a trot and a hop to keep up with his new master, to whom he was tethered by a rope that passed around his neck. The second convict had been left unbound, except for the tether-rope around his neck, and followed his new master with his head down and his feet dragging. Both men were unkempt and filthy, and for a moment, a flicker of doubt arose in Susannah's mind.
    "Susannah, they look misused!" Sarah Jane exclaimed almost in her ear.
    "What am I bid for this fine specimen here, a good worker, like all Scots, and strong as an ox?" The auctioneer boomed from the block, extolling the virtues of a stocky man with a shock of red hair who stood regarding the crowd with a cocky grin despite his predicament.
    "Now there's a likely-looking fellow," Susannah said, distracted from Sarah Jane's protest by the activity on the block. A little distance away, a trio of matrons spied the sisters. They waved and called greetings, the sense if not the actual words of which were apparent.
    "Good afternoon, Eliza, Jane, Virgie!" Susannah called back. Mistresses Eliza Forrester, Jane Parker, and Virgie Tandy were members of the Reverend Redmon's flock, and the sisters knew them well. Smiling, returning waves and greetings, Susannah missed her chance to bid on the man.
    "Going once, going twice, gone to Tom Hardy for two hundred pounds! You can pick your man up over here at the side, Mr. Hardy—and pay your money, too, of course."
    The auctioneer was Hank Shay. Susannah had known him, or rather known of him, in a vague sort of way from birth. He was an itinerant who traveled the Carolina coast, fetching slaves and bound servants impartially from the large port towns and peddling them across the countryside. His sales were notorious, and the Reverend Redmon had been known to denounce him as a hawker of human pain and suffering. He was a large-bellied, bald, and florid-faced man in his fifties, with a voice that boomed like thunder. It was booming now, as he called for bids on yet another unfortunate.
    "Are you going to bid or aren't you?" Mandy prodded Susannah's arm, while Emily, clasping her hands in front of her plump bosom, regarded the goings-on around her with transparent