They leave Washington, unheralded. The total trip takes twenty-one hours. They ride on three trains and one steamship, crossing through Maryland, over planted fields and plantations, then through wild gorges and tumbled rocks. Harpers Ferry lies at the juncture of the Potomac and the blue necklace of the Shenandoah. “Remember Niagara?” John asks Asia. “Almost that beautiful. Almost forgot how tired and hungry I was. Almost.”

Finally they arrive at Charlestown. Rain is bucketing down, the ground a churn of mud. They must stand at attention in this storm, water streaming from their hat brims, while Governor Wise gives more speeches from the shelter of a nearby porch. Then the Charlestown city leaders make barracks for them out of houses and schools.

No abolitionists ever arrive. It now appears there was never an army on the way. The sortie turns social. The young women of Charlestown insist on a ball so that they can meet the soldiers. One red-haired flower tells John over a glass of punch that she feels as if she’s in an Austen novel.

He’s given the position of quartermaster sergeant, for which he draws a salary. He keeps a military discipline, drilling in the mornings, helping to manage provisions in the afternoon. In the evenings, he tells stories and performs soliloquies on command. He couldn’t have enjoyed himself more if there’d been actual fighting.

—

John Brown asks to be spared the steady stream of visitors come to gawk at him. He doesn’t wish, he says, to be a monkey show. And yet, on December 1st, John manages to enter his cell. He doesn’t tell Asia what they said to each other and she doesn’t ask. But she can see that the experience has moved him deeply. “He was a brave old man,” he says. “I could see him scanning the horizon for his rescuers when he stood before the scaffold. His heart must have broken when he felt himself deserted.”

John has a souvenir for Asia—John Brown’s spear with the words Major Washington to J Wilkes Booth written on the handle in ink. He swings her legs aside, runs upstairs to fetch it. Asia lies very still, waiting for him. Outside some men pass, singing drunkenly some song about the pleasures of being drunk. Irish by the sound of them, no surprise there. Probably relatives of Mary Devlin’s.

She sits up when she hears John’s footsteps. There’s a moment of dizziness, a brief blackness before her eyes, and then John puts the spear in her hand and she feels the weight, the reality of it. John Brown’s spear! Had he used it? The wood is splintering slightly. A tiny piece, like a thorn, goes into her palm. Not deep enough to make her bleed, just a prick. John pulls it out easily with his fingers.