Dark Shadows

by Jana Petken

  Mercy agreed with him. Getting to their destination was important – surviving until then was paramount. Speed of foot or horse no longer mattered.

  “Nelson, I’m sorry I got us lost. You’ve had a rotten life and now you’re going to freeze to death because of me. Please forgive me.”

  “Don’t you be worrying none ’bout me, Miss Mercy. If we find a town, you gotta leave me and find yourself a warm bed.”

  “No, and don’t you dare even suggest that again!” Mercy told him sharply.

  She unfolded the map, shaking in her numbed hands, and peered at the writing on it in the shadow of the flickering flames.

  Nelson watched her and said, “Why you looking, Miss Mercy, when we don’t know where we at?”

  Mercy’s chapped lips cracked when she spoke. “I just need to do something. But you’re right. I haven’t got a clue which way we went after Smithfield.” She folded the map and threw it in the fire. “If I die first, please bury me deep in the ground. I don’t want to be eaten by wild animals. Will you promise me?”

  “Ain’t no one dying, not you and not me, and that’s a fact,” Nelson said unconvincingly.

  “I want to believe you, but we must be miles from a town. We haven’t seen lights in the distance – nor have we seen smoke or shelter. I’ve been a fool. I thought I could do this, but I’ve never seen land like this.”

  “Guess dyin’ here is better than a hanging.”

  Mercy sobbed louder. “We have to move. We can’t stay here tonight. The branches are so heavy they’re dropping piles of snow on us. We’ll be buried in the stuff soon! And the bloody fire is useless! The horses will freeze to death, and they’re already starving. We can’t let those horses die. If they die, we die, and – and I don’t want to. I want to see Jacob!” Mercy covered her face with her hands, forgetting Nelson for the moment.

  Nelson watched her anguish. He nodded but said nothing. He went to the horses and rummaged through the bags on the ground. They would have to get rid of most of their load if the horses were to have any chance of surviving. He dumped the pans, extra clothes, plates, and heavy shackles.

  Mercy heard the rummaging and joined him. She began digging into the snow with the hatchet that she’d brought, struck now by the realisation that they had packed at du Pont’s house as though they were going on a picnic or adventure, when in fact they were like the blind leading the blind on a journey through treacherous and unknown territory.

  As Mercy dug with numbed hands, she wondered for a second time how she could have been so arrogant and stupid. “You’re pathetic, Mercy Carver,” she chattered to herself. She had been given love with Jacob and friends like Belle, Hendry, and Isaac; and she’d thrown everything away only to find death in some forest somewhere in Virginia. If she died, it would be her own fault. But if she lived through this, she was going to command Jacob to leave his wife. She had to picture that scene: his saying yes and both of them loving each other until they died of old age. She wasn’t going to die at the age of eighteen, like her father. She wasn’t!

  She dug through the snow and icy ground beneath, cursing herself yet again for making bad decisions and for wasting time digging a hole to bury clothes that no one would ever find in this godforsaken land anyway!

  Nelson took over the digging. When the hole was deep enough, Mercy grabbed all her clothes. The bloodied gown went first, followed by the hooped underskirt, which had long since been battered and hacked to fit inside the bag, and finally the bloomers. She suddenly laughed and then sobbed, until between laughing at the irony, sobbing with sorrow, and shivering with fear, she looked and felt like a madwoman.

  Nelson crossed himself. “C’mon now, Miss Mercy. C’mon, get up. This ain’t no time for sobbin’. Sobbin’ ain’t gonna help you keep your strength up.”

  Mercy tried to stand, but her legs were trembling with cold shivers. “You’ve become … very bossy,” she told him.

  Nelson lifted her to her feet and tightened the blanket knot around her chin. He helped her onto the horse, and she felt his own legs shake with her weight.

  Mercy dozed on and off, finding her body sliding off the horse’s back and then righting it again. As she looked down, trying to protect her face from the wind, she saw the snow jump up at her. It was like a crisp white cotton sheet. It looked soft and inviting: she could sleep on it and be quite comfortable. She was tired, and her muscles were relaxed. She felt that nothing could bother her, nothing at all. Yes, she could sleep quite easily on the ground and wrap that cotton sheet around her – she didn’t even feel cold anymore.

  Mercy felt no pain when she eventually slid off her horse some time later. She landed on the soft powdery snow and sighed with contentment. Sleep … She should sleep for a while …

  Nelson, slightly in front of Mercy, heard her fall and her horse whinny. He stopped and dismounted, feeling as though he were doing everything in slow motion. His body was shivering in spasms, which made walking in the knee-high snow almost impossible.

  He got to Mercy and shook her. There was no response. She seemed to be in a deep sleep. He tried again, calling her name, demanding that she get on her feet. He thought about lying down beside her. She looked so peaceful. But his instincts told him that if he did that, neither of them would awaken to see a new day.

  He took Mercy’s gun from her holster. He cocked it and fired it into the air. Mercy roused, and he shouted, “Move, Miss Mercy! You gonna die if you lie there. Get up now!”

  Mercy looked up at the black face and sighed. “Leave me alone. I don’t care!”

  Nelson lifted her and, with all the strength he had left, managed to drape her body across her horse’s saddle. He pulled the horse behind him and reached his own horse, but he didn’t mount it. Instead, he continued to trudge through the snow, one hand holding on to Mercy’s unconscious body and the other their horses’ reins.

  Time passed in a blur. The steps Nelson took became shorter and shorter. The scenery didn’t change, and even if it had, he couldn’t distinguish anything under layers of snow and the blackest of nights.

  He stopped abruptly and smelled smoke in the air. He left the horses and Mercy and trudged onward again, this time with a more vigorous effort. The smell of smoke was becoming stronger. He could see it clearly now. It was high, not a campfire but a funnel. He choked back a sob and walked another few feet. There, in a clearing, he saw a small cabin, candlelight coming from within and a chimney stack with smoke billowing out of it.

  He turned around and got back to Mercy and the horses as fast as he could, and then he led them to the cabin.

  Nelson saw no other choice. He had to ask for help for Miss Mercy. He might be shot at, but he would die trying to save her. He reached the door, his whole body shaking with cold, fear, and exhaustion. He thought that they might be trappers – bear trappers. Trappers were hard men. They would shoot him on sight, if they had a mind to. He banished the thought and lifted his fist.

  A grey-bearded man, hair tied back and balding at his hairline, opened the door before Nelson’s fist touched the wood. The man faced him with a rifle pointing at Nelson’s chest and suspicion etched on his face. He looked at Nelson, the horses, and the body draped over one of the horse’s backs. “What’s your business here?” he asked suspiciously. “Who is that?”

  A woman joined him at the door and looked Nelson over from head to toe. The rifle was still pointed just inches from Nelson’s body. No one spoke.

  Nelson’s shivering body was near to dropping where it stood. He tried to stand upright in front of the couple. Finally, he mumbled, “Help us – please?”

  Again the couple stared at him in silence.

  “Please,” Nelson murmured with quivering lips. “I knows I can’t come in – but the woman … She’s a white woman. She saved my life. Please, sir, ma’am, please warm her up. She dyin’.”

  The woman’s eyes darted to the body draped over the horse’s back. She pulled her thick woollen shawl up and over her head
and then ran out of the house and over to where Mercy lay. She lifted Mercy’s head up for a better look and gasped. “Good Lord, Charlie. He’s tellin’ the truth. We got ourselves a woman here.”

  Nelson stood aside. He watched Charlie run to the horse and grab Mercy in his arms. Charlie trudged the few feet and took her straight inside. The woman looked again at Nelson and said, “Well, what are you waitin’ for? Get inside before you freeze to death.”

  The woman turned to Charlie then. “Get those horses to the barn. Put some dry blankets on them and get them fed.”

  Charlie nodded and pulled on his jacket, which had been hanging behind the door on a hook. “Be back in a minute,” he told the woman, but not without leaving her the rifle first.

  The woman ushered Nelson inside.

  Mercy felt hands on her. They were undressing her. She tried to rouse herself from sleep to see who was touching her. Lifting an arm, she tried to defend herself, but it rose and then fell limp by her side. Again, she tried again to open her eyes, and this time she managed to see a blurred face. It was a woman. She closed her eyes again and felt heat on her skin. Her arms were being pulled out of jacket sleeves, and she was being covered by something warm. She opened her eyes, this time keeping them open, and saw the woman’s face clearly for the first time.

  The woman removed Mercy’s gloves and began rubbing her hands and fingers. She removed Mercy’s boots and socks and put another blanket over her feet.

  Mercy felt a tingling sensation, as though blood was rushing to her extremities, giving them life after days of numbness. “Where are we?” she found the strength to whisper.

  The woman smiled. “You never mind about that now, child. I’m Corslina. Call me Lina. What’s your name?”

  Mercy gave her a weak smile. “Mercy – Mercy Carver. Nelson … Where’s Nelson?”

  The woman looked at Nelson and asked, “That’ll be you?”

  Nelson’s body was wracked with shivering spasms, and his top and bottom teeth were clicking together loudly. “Yes, ma’am. Nelson Stuart.”

  “There’s a blanket on that chair over there. Git out of that jacket and those wet breeches, Nelson Stuart, and sit by the fire. Then tell me what the hell you’re doing all the way out here on a night like this.”

  Lina removed Mercy’s hat whilst waiting for the explanation. The hat had knotted tightly under Mercy’s chin. The string was caked in ice and hard as a twig.

  When the hat came off, Mercy’s hair tumbled out in a mass of curls to her waist and the woman sucked in her breath. “Oh my,” Lina said, astounded. “Why, you’re a comely child. Is he a slave?” she asked Mercy. “We don’t take kindly to slavery. We do what we need to do with our own God-given hands. Ain’t no call for slavery in our book. Are you a slaver? Are you a bounty hunter?”

  “No, I am not!” Mercy told her abruptly in a hoarse voice. “I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to shout. I hate slavery. I found Nelson. Some men were going to kill him. Since then, we’ve been making our way north, trying to get to a slave-free state – only I’m not too sure which one is closest.”

  “He’s a runaway, then?’” Lina turned to Nelson, ignoring Mercy’s answer completely.

  Nelson hung his head.

  Mercy thought she saw the first sign of trouble.

  Lina, who had risen, stirred a pot that hung above the flames in the enormous fireplace that filled almost one wall of the cabin.

  Mercy was now fully conscious, albeit drowsy. She watched Lina and then looked around the room. It was cosy. There were curtains on the window, plenty of ornaments, multicoloured blankets, two chairs in front of the fire, and a dresser which held plates, cups, and crockery.

  Mercy lay on top of a small, narrow bed just under the window. Nelson was sitting in an armchair with a blanket wrapped around him. She saw Nelson’s mouth move – he was likely praying, just as she was, for some of the food in that pot.

  Mercy studied Lina’s profile. She was quite elderly, although it was difficult to pinpoint her age. She had salt-and-pepper hair, but she was of athletic build and had darker skin than most of the Virginia women she’d seen. She had brown eyes and full lips. She probably had been very beautiful in her youth, Mercy thought.

  “I reckon you two must be as hungry as a bear just woken up from hibernation,” Lina said. She handed a steaming bowl and a wooden spoon to Mercy.

  Mercy stared at the hot meat stew. She looked up at Lina and thanked her, crying now with sheer relief and pent-up exhaustion. Lina bent over her and kissed her on the forehead, making Mercy cry even more.

  Lina said tenderly, “You get that inside you, child. That’ll get the blood flowing through you.”

  “Thank you,” Mercy whispered.

  Nelson got his bowl next and put it straight to his mouth, draining the hot gravy and not seeming to mind that some of it ran down his chin.

  As they ate the stew and tore at some bread with their teeth, Lina talked.

  “So you want to get Nelson here to the North. That’s a mighty kind thing you’re doing, but you’re more likely to get yourselves killed if you go on as you’ve been doing. You could cross into Pennsylvania, but you’ve still got a whole bunch of miles to go before you get there. You ain’t never gonna make it in this weather.”

  Mercy’s lips quivered as the cold, hard truth hit her. Lina was right. They wouldn’t make it out of this snow-ridden world alive if they left now.

  “Please, Lina, can you tell me where we are?”

  “We’re about ten miles east of Richmond,” Lina told her.

  “Oh my God, is that all – Richmond? That place is low down on the map.”

  Lina laughed. “Low down – you mean south?”

  “Yes,” Mercy said. “You see, I thought we were heading north. I thought we were much farther north. But this journey has been taking forever. We just keep going in a line from east to west and back and forth. Oh, no, Nelson, we’ve still got such a long way to go.”

  “I reckon you be right, Miss Mercy,” Nelson said, still shivering.

  “You got family?” Lina asked Mercy.

  “No, just some friends in Portsmouth.” Mercy sobbed again in between spoonfuls of stew.

  Lina looked at the pair of bedraggled travellers and shook her head in dismay.

  Charlie stomped back in the room. His hat was thick with snow. Mercy watched him stretch his arm out to shake the snow off it before he closed and barred the door with a thick wooden plank. He removed his boots and put on furry slippers which reached just above his ankles. He took his jacket off and stared with saucer eyes at Mercy as she gulped down the stew. “She’s a young ’un!” he exclaimed to Lina.

  “I know – young and not too bright by the sound of it. She thinks she’s going to walk her horse and a runaway slave through snow and ice all the way to Pennsylvania. Damndest thing I ever heard … Charlie, this is Mercy Carver, and this here is Nelson Stuart. Mercy’s English. She wants to free Nelson.”

  “Do you now? Well, that’s mighty interesting to hear, but you ain’t going nowhere tonight or tomorrow,” Charlie said, taking a bowl of stew.

  Mercy looked from one to the other and then at Nelson.

  “Y’all would be dead by morning,” Charlie continued. “I reckon your best bet is to stay here a while.” Charlie smiled at Nelson. “Son, you ever faced a black bear, shot a deer, or trapped a rabbit?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You wanna learn? I could do with the help. There ain’t many bears around; not at this time of the year. Most of them are hibernating or birthing, but I still get the odd one, them that come out sometimes if they’re hungry enough. If you two want to stick around until we can figure out what to do with you – well, I’d be appreciative of any help you want to give me. These old bones are getting as stiff as pokers in this weather. I got knees that swell up and fingers that can’t hardly grip nothing. You’d be doing me a favour.”

  “I’s a fast learner,” Nelson answered.

  “
I’ve never seen a bear,” Mercy said.

  “Then you’ve been mighty lucky,” Charlie replied. “A child like you would have been ripped apart in seconds had you come across one. You can thank the Lord they’s mostly sleepin’.”

  “Blimey, they sound dangerous. Who buys the bears?” Mercy asked.

  “We got a trading station not far from here. Traders come and go all winter. It’s real quiet here, but you’d be surprised how many trappers and traders are around these parts. Never heard of a young woman dragging a slave around in winter, looking for freedom, though. No, that’s a new one on me.”

  Lina turned to Mercy. “Child, you need a good night’s rest. You’ll probably sleep the day through tomorrow. We got an extra room you can sleep in so you won’t be disturbed. Nelson, you can sleep right here on this bed. You’re lucky to be alive, both of you, and it’s only by God’s grace that you still have all your fingers and toes. They’re turning pink, just like they should.”

  “I thought I had frostbite,” Mercy said.

  “Nope. If you had frostbite, might have had to take some of those fingers and toes – you’re one lucky child.”

  “Thank you for your kindness,” Mercy said.

  “Don’t thank me yet, child. You’ve got a lot of talking and explaining to do tomorrow. I’ll be wanting to hear the whole story. We’re gonna have to figure out how to get you to Pennsylvania without getting you both killed.”

  “Why are you being so kind?” Mercy asked.

  Lina laughed and sat on the bed. “Don’t you see what I am?”

  Mercy looked into her face. “No. What are you?”

  “Why, I’m a nigger, just like Nelson here. You might not notice at first, but that would be on account of me having three parts white blood and one part black. But I am a nigger, child,” Lina told her. “And I don’t care for Nelson here being caught by no slaver.”