Woman 99

by Greer Macallister

  I was dumbstruck. I had put myself at risk to get here and let her know what we were planning, that this would be her only chance to flee with us and leave this place behind. I intended this to be a gift. She didn’t seem to want what I was offering her.

  Then I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

  “I’m not going.”

  “Nora,” I breathed, unable to think of any other response.

  “I knew you all could use my help, heaven knows, but I was never going to leave. My place is here with Patrick.”

  “But why?”

  “You know. We love each other.” I’d last seen her wild, seemingly beyond all control or reason, but now she seemed calm, intent. “That isn’t something I can turn my back on.”

  “Does it matter so much to you that you’ll give up everything, everything else for it? His love?”

  “It’s all I have. There’s nothing for me out there anyway. In here, at least we have each other.”

  “But you’re at his mercy,” I told her.

  “I’ll always be at someone’s mercy,” she said, her wet eyes gleaming in the sliver of light. “Might as well be his.”

  I hesitated.

  “My money is in my chamber pot,” she said.

  I almost laughed;it seemed such a non sequitur. But she was serious.

  “Affixed to the bottom. Inside an oilskin pouch.”

  “You want me to bring it to you?”

  “I want you to take it. All of it. I don’t need it.”

  “Nora—”

  “Not another word. You’re running. You need something to run with.”

  I could argue, but there was no point. If I knew anything at all about Nora, I knew she was stubborn. She wanted to help me, and I needed help. Nor did I have time to waste. Instead, searching for words to express my gratitude, I said, “Nora, I. . .”

  “Lock the door as you leave,” she said. The corner of her mouth turned up in a smile as she dropped her skirt to cover the evidence of her long stay in Goldengrove. We both reached for the handle of the door to close it. The key turned silently in the lock.

  Then I heard her say, “And close that window.” So I did, leaving her, at her request, in the dark.

  I slipped down the hall furtively, peeking around each corner, pressing my body into each shadow. The key in my palm bit into my skin as I clutched it tightly. I welcomed the feeling. Nora had given me a gift, and I wasn’t going to reject it. She had something to stay for. I didn’t.

  I was going. And my sister would be with me. There was no way we were ready, and deep down, I doubted very much that we would make it, but one way or the other, I vowed the sun would not set on me again in Goldengrove.

  Phoebe’s ward next, then. There had been five of us who were going to run, and now there were four. Phoebe was the most important and the only one who had heard exactly none of our plans and discussions. She only knew that I had sworn to free her. I hoped she believed me. Again, I was amazed to think how she had saved me, as a child, from myself. Because of her, I did not drown in the lake. I was not trampled by the horse. I did not swallow the poisonous berries. I did not tumble from the cliff. And because of me, she would not suffer or die within these walls, victim of a cruel matron and a world that didn’t know what to make of a young woman who felt too deeply, who carried her worst enemy inside her own skull, who could coax a soaring, bright-winged bird from a tube of paint with only her fingertips.

  As I dashed for Euterpe, I forced myself to think of only the most practical matters. How would we find each other in the field? Martha swore that we would all be sent to the harvest no matter our condition, but did she know for sure? I told myself I wouldn’t leave without Phoebe even if Martha and Celia ran, and that was the only promise I could make. Hopefully, we would all leave together. But if it came to it, I would make my choice.

  I reached to open the door of Euterpe Ward, but it had already been flung wide. The doors of the rooms within stood open, the beds empty, not a single inmate nor nurse remaining. From the looks of things, Euterpe Ward had already been summoned to the field. I had to pray that my ward hadn’t also been taken. What if Martha had been right about what was happening but wrong about when?

  I took off at a flat-out run, headed back to Terpsichore, hoping against hope.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The vineyard by night was impossibly eerie and impossibly beautiful, a haunting vision of shadowed parallel rows stretching into eternity. By day, the fields were remarkable only in their sameness, but now, they came alive, hiding and revealing their secrets with the caprice of the night breeze. By chance, we had a full moon overhead to see by. Here and there, its light was supplemented by flickering lanterns, each small group of women clutching one to guide them.

  I could hear the lively chatter of the Clio Ward girls—for them, this was a merry adventure—dozens of rows away; closer, the women of Thalia Ward moved silently like ghosts in the night. The women of Melpomene had been released from their bandages for the occasion, the first time I’d seen it happen, and from them, we heard one burst, then another, of giddy laughter. Lanterns bobbed near and far. If Martha was right and every ward was here, that was nearly two hundred women, spread out among miles of vines. The wind was already whipping up, foretelling the storm that was to come, and it hissed through the leaves of the grapevines, its soft roar rippling across the rows. It sounded like the ocean. As far as we could tell, there was no fence around the vineyard, no barrier—beyond the vines lay open ground.

  In the wagon on the way over, swaying ourselves sick over rutted roads, Martha and I had whispered to each other, confirming the details of our plan as Celia huddled next to us, face pale with concentration. We would run separately, not together, until we reached the north edge of the field. If Piper turned to find three of us suddenly gone, the jig would be up. We would each look for our opportunity and slip away into the night, silent as cats. Everyone would wait for the others until the moon began to sink or until the wagons began to leave the fields, whichever came first. We pledged to wait for one of these signals and shook hands on the pledge. Even so, I was concerned I might never see Martha again after we climbed down from the wagon. What was to stop her from fleeing the moment she had the chance, with none of us to slow her down? Only her word.

  So we began the night harvest.

  We were directed down a long row and given wooden crates to place the grapes in. A hook-nosed farmhand, his hair damp with sweat, warned us intently about the importance of treating the grapes gently but moving with all due speed, and then he was off to instruct others, leaving our ward behind. Bad luck put me in close proximity to Piper, but I had reason to hope. The vines grew so thick, we could not see each other’s faces, only a row of feet in the dirt, our coral dresses washed of color in the darkness, grayish hems on grayish skirts swaying.

  I listened to the roar of the wind in the rows and looked around to orient myself to the field. In the distance was a gabled and turreted house, almost like a German castle, looming above us in the darkness. Light blazed from its stained-glass windows in a riot of color. I wondered if the family who lived there knew that their vineyards had been overrun by inmates from an asylum, pressed into service with no recompense, and if they cared. Likely only the patriarch’s opinion mattered. I hoped the women and children of the household weren’t cowering in fear, unduly alarmed by our presence. But one never knew, and in any case, there wasn’t much I could do to help. I had to execute my own task, and quickly.

  The first time I reached the end of a row and Piper had already moved on to the next one, I saw my chance. I wrapped my lamp in my skirt with great care and dashed to the opposite end of the row, then stepped out confidently as if I were exactly where I needed to be.

  Holding my lantern at my waist so that its light didn’t fall on my face, I began my search. I knew each of the nurses now, and as soon as I saw one—Edmonds of Thalia, Stewart of Erato—I hastened my pace. With the
lack of light, the nurses’ white dresses and our coral ones were harder to tell apart. This made my task more challenging, but it also worked in my favor. From a distance, I could be anyone. With my heart and mind racing, I kept thinking I saw the matron, whose light-blue dress would blend in with the others. She was the person I most feared. I had no idea whether she had even come to the field, but I was petrified of seeing her—and, much worse, her seeing me.

  Thirty rows in, I saw Nurse Martin of Euterpe, the freckled, violin-shaped one, struggling to corral women who were shoving, singing, cackling with unpleasant laughter. Beyond her, I saw pale-blond hair gleaming in the darkness. I caught my breath. It might be anyone at all, but it also might be my sister. I crept closer until I could see the set of her shoulders, her soft cheek, her nimble hands. Yes. Phoebe.

  I watched and worried that Martin would stick too close to Phoebe, making it impossible to spirit her away. The crew of inmates picked grapes in all innocence while I crouched nearby. I heard Martin threaten a complaining Irish girl—perhaps the Jennie Murphy my sister told me had been a seamstress—that she’d better get back to harvesting or instead of leaving her off at Goldengrove, Martin would keep going on the southerly road and take her to the state asylum outside Napa city and see how she liked that. Jennie fell in line.

  My mind raced to figure out a distraction. I could throw my lantern and likely set the field aflame, but such a plan could easily backfire. Commotion could make it either easier or impossible to slip away. Again, I wished we’d had more time to prepare. Why hadn’t we talked about what we would do if the opportunity came upon us suddenly? We assumed the hikes were the only way, and then when the hikes were canceled, we were still reeling. My days in Goldengrove had taught me the human mind could adjust to nearly anything, but it also taught me that such adjustments took time. Time was the one thing we had no way of negotiating or creating.

  I waited instead, but I knew I couldn’t wait long. Every minute seemed an hour. How long would Martha and Celia wait for me, if in fact they’d waited at all? Would they keep our promise? Had the chance for escape already passed us—passed me—by?

  At last, I saw my chance. A woman with legs like tree trunks flung down her grapes and shouted that she refused to do another minute of this work—she might be an inmate, but she wasn’t a slave. She stomped the grapes into the dirt, their juice darkening her shoes as she brought her foot down again and again. As all heads turned in her direction, including Nurse Martin’s, I stepped into line behind my sister, close but not too close.

  “Phoebe,” I said. “It’s time to go.”

  Her hand froze in its position next to a cluster of grapes. She turned slowly toward me, the hand remaining high.

  I said, “It’s me. Charlotte.”

  “I know.”

  “Now’s our chance.”

  Her expression was hard to read in the half-light. “We’ll never get away.”

  “We have to try.”

  “You’ve changed, Charlotte,” she said.

  I bristled, but then I saw her smile. “For the better?” I asked.

  “I never would have guessed you’d go so far to bring me home.”

  “As far as it takes,” I swore.

  Her eyes took in everything—the full moon, the field, the women near and far—and I waited a long, long moment to see what she would do.

  “Then I’ll follow,” she said.

  I gestured for her lantern, which she handed to me, no motion wasted. I turned the key to extinguish the light and set the lantern under a thick knot of vines so it wouldn’t immediately be obvious to a passerby.

  The nurse had talked the protesting patient back down, either with a reward or punishment, and we barely made it around the corner before I heard the nurse call, “Back to work, Euterpe. Look sharp.” Her voice was pleading, not powerful, and I wondered how long the inmates would listen and what they would do once they stopped.

  Phoebe and I moved quickly in the darkness, an island of silence in a sea of noise. I held my breath the whole way. Again, I thought I saw the small shape of the matron, sharp-chinned and sleek in the night, but she was not there. I prayed and prayed no one would mark us. I cursed the bright moon, though I knew I would give thanks for it later, if it lit our way to freedom. If.

  Now. If Martha and Celia had gotten away, they would be waiting for us at the northernmost edge of the field, the one farthest from the house. Now was the crucial moment. Were we to be caught, our intent would be obvious. We would clearly be runners. It was all or nothing. What would I see when open country was visible at the end of the rows?

  I saw Martha.

  We caught up with her among the rows just before the appointed spot, and when she heard us rustling in the vines behind her, she turned. I held up my palms, and she recognized us, giving no sign of approval or pleasure at my success, merely nodding. She had somehow managed to smuggle a small knapsack with her—under her skirt, perhaps?—which she now hoisted onto her back, and she either missed or ignored my curious look in its direction. She held onto a lantern with its light turned as low as it could go without going out. We had already agreed to keep the smallest light possible with us until we reached the end of the vineyard, at which point we would need to travel without light or sound. The slightest glimmer could betray us once we were clear of the vineyard, and we were almost clear of it now.

  I said to Martha, as quietly as I could, “Celia?”

  She raised her shoulders but did not move.

  How long could we wait?

  Then I saw Celia coming, striding silently in the darkness, an excited smile on her ruined face. When she reached us, we made for the edge of the field as a group, away from the great German castle of a house, away from the lights, away from everything we knew and feared.

  I peeked back over my shoulder to look out across the vineyard and again was struck by how lovely it was, lights dancing along the parallel rows, shadows that could be playful or menacing in turn. Behind us were the murmurs of women, the whinnies of horses, the thumps and clatters of life. Ahead of us was silence.

  Then, among the last of the rows, I saw a blur of white, and my heart stopped.

  Against the dark backdrop of bare vines, silhouetted by his own lantern, was a shape I knew well. I could not mistake Gus for any other attendant or any other man in the world. He was simply larger than anyone else could be. Heart pounding even harder, I looked all around him for the figure of the matron, terrified that the game was up. But he was alone. Still, did he see us? Had we happened upon our undoing?

  I should have accounted for the attendants. Of course they were here. They must have been stationed all around the edges of the field for this very purpose: to spot any inmates who tried to flee. And our luck was to run across Gus. We were past him, in fact; he couldn’t stop us. But he could raise the alarm. Would he?

  And I thought about our encounters, since the beginning. When Gus carried me out of the records room, he’d cradled my head to keep it from the doorframe, which suggested care, concern. He’d refused to meet my eyes when I was pretending to be a nurse, which he knew I wasn’t—he’d known who I was but not told. The only way I could be standing here now was that he hadn’t pressed his advantage, which meant he didn’t want to. I’d taken him for a brute. Perhaps he had been. But he was also something else.

  We were moving fast in the dark, and it was entirely possible he didn’t even see us. I couldn’t know for sure. All I could do was turn my attention forward and run to keep up with my friends, running, running free.

  As we ran, I expected every moment to hear footsteps behind us. Gus changing his mind, perhaps, chasing us, crossing the distance in a moment with his long limbs, his meaty fists grabbing our necks and ending whatever dreams we’d allowed ourselves to dream of freedom. He did not.

  When would they notice we were missing? How quickly would they come? I expected screams and sirens, yet there was only silence. The lanterns bobbed behind us in the field
as the inmates brought in the harvest. For our part, we were too frightened to use the lanterns we still carried, knowing how easy we’d be to spot against the dark backdrop of the night.

  And the storm was coming. What would we do when the storm was upon us, when it turned the dirt paths in every direction into mud?

  We ran and hoped it was in the direction of freedom.

  * * *

  The wind was howling more fiercely, but the rain had not yet begun to fall when we found the road. The air smelled wet and heavy. I wondered how much more time we had before the storm arrived; whatever it was would have to be enough.

  I felt faint with relief when we charged past a crossroads that gave us two arrows to choose from. One pointed north toward the hot springs of Calistoga, the other, south to Yountville and Napa. We exchanged grateful smiles but no words. None were needed.

  And we were all off, charging down the center of an empty dirt road, hopeful.

  I gripped Phoebe’s hand. She didn’t look behind her. Even though she’d been resistant to the idea of leaving the asylum, she didn’t appear to have any doubt now. I wanted to ask her feelings, but now was not the time. My heart was in my throat. If all this running was for nothing—if we ended up back inside those walls—I was afraid I would have nothing left to give. Once we were safe, then we could sort out all our feelings, our past, present, future.

  I hustled along in the darkness behind Martha. The moon was beginning to sink now; it had to be well past midnight. As we scuttled forward, she hitched her sack up higher on her back. It looked bulky.

  “What did you bring?” I asked in a whisper.

  “Necessary things,” she responded without looking at me.

  “I think you owe—”

  “Quiet, fool.”

  I wondered, not for the first time, if I’d made a mistake following her. Now that we were underway, I couldn’t deny that trusting her was almost as big a leap as chasing my sister into Goldengrove in the first place. It was too late, in any case. The lanterns in the field were now too far off to be seen, and we kept going.