by Alyssa Cole
Hattie stood in the small parlor space, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her gaze slid to Ewan. “You conducting now?” The question was asked with the same skepticism Lace had shared at Marlie’s attempt at serving.
“I’m running,” she answered. “From Cahill.”
She didn’t add the why. Hattie had seen Marlie push the gun away. She didn’t need to know about Stephen and Vivienne.
Hattie looked at her hard. “You’re rich and giving him aid, and he still after you?”
Marlie dropped her gaze to the floor. “The Lynches are rich. The white ones. The Negro one is disposable, it seems.” She felt her anger well up again. She wasn’t being fair. Sarah hadn’t known what Melody was planning. She had to give her sister—her aunt—that much credit. And Sarah would be devastated when she learned what had passed.
“But her soul is white!”
Why were those words more painful than Cahill’s blows? Than Ewan’s tactlessness? Marlie shook the memory away.
“And you think I should help you, huh?”
Marlie thought of all the free care she’d provided over the years. She had done that because she wanted to, not to leverage favors, but the bond she had built with these people had to count for something, didn’t it?
“I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Just a place to stay and figure out our next step. Day is breaking soon and between the militiamen and those fighting them, it’s not safe.”
Some of the anti-secessionists were honorable men fighting against oppression, and some thought that war meant that the rules of society no longer applied. They’d have no qualms about robbing her and Ewan, or worse.
Hattie stared for a while. “We can barter. You do some healing and I’ll put you up.”
She moved aside the blankets and held her hands out and Marlie could see her thumbs were swollen and gnarled, inflamed so that they no longer looked like human digits but that of some strange creature.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” she gasped, rushing to cup Hattie’s hands and then remembering her own injuries.
“Bad, ain’t it?” Hattie shook her head. “I can’t afford the doc, and he’s secesh through and through. He barely showed his face around here before, and ain’t been back in months.”
“What happened?” Ewan asked, but they both already knew it wasn’t any malady found in nature. This was the work of men.
“Cahill and his guardsmen came after me. Slung a rope over a tree branch, tied it around my thumbs, and pulled until I was hanging with my toes just above the ground.”
Hattie wasn’t a large woman, but supporting the weight of her body with two bound fingers must have been excruciating. Marlie’s stomach turned.
“They said if I told them where the skulkers were, they’d let me down and let David go. They wanted me to go to a meeting spot and lure some of ’em out. I didn’t say nothin’.”
Hattie’s expression was hard, like many of the poor women in the region, but a proud smile tugged at her lips. It wasn’t one of joy, but of defiance, and it went through Marlie like an infusion of fire, burning up the remnants of her naiveté. Hattie wasn’t sad or scared. She was proud, just as she had been when she’d stared down Cahill.
She was willing to die for what she believed in.
Marlie had thought herself in danger before, but she’d had the protection of the Lynch name, despite the threats of those who suspected Sarah’s Unionist leanings. Hattie and the other women in the region had nothing to protect them, and the enslaved population even less.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Marlie said, trying to hide the shake in her voice. “Come sit over here. Ewan, can you get that fire going? Penny, can you put some water to boil? And have you got any thyme?”
“Marlie, perhaps you should see to your injuries first,” Ewan said. His words were phrased gently, but that didn’t hide the fact that they were an order. He was staring intently at her hands, his brow creased.
Marlie looked down at the abraded flesh of her palms. They still hurt something awful, but seeking shelter had been at the forefront of her mind. Funny how one could ignore something painful when necessary. “Ah, yes.”
She took a moment and recalled the area around her. She had carried some of her tonics with her, but it was best to forage from the land if they could. It would be an arduous journey, and the injuries encountered now were minor in terms of what could happen to them. She’d also need to think about bartering.
“Penny, can you bring me a branch from one of the pine trees out back, if it’s not too much trouble?” She smiled in Hattie’s direction. “That will be useful to both of us.”
Penny nodded and ran off. Ewan was already at work at the hearth, setting the twigs and kindling just so, which wasn’t surprising in the least. He gave it the same amount of attention he dedicated to all he did, including kissing her.
See, it was nothing special. He’d kiss any woman just as thoroughly because Ewan isn’t a man who does things in half measures.
He had called her perfect, too. Had that been true, or just a platitude to ease her pain? She couldn’t begin to conjecture.
As the flames sparked to life, more of the small, dark house came into view. It was a wreck. Objects were strewn all about, and a fine white powder that was likely flour covered the kitchen area in a thin layer.
“Cahill,” was all Hattie said when she tracked Marlie’s gaze. She took a seat in a chair that looked old and rickety enough to have belonged to Washington’s grandfather and stared into the fire. “They tell us this war is what’s right, it’s what’s best, but they tell us as they rip apart everything we got that they don’t steal.”
“While force is sometimes necessary, in this case it’s being used in place of persuasion,” Ewan said as he fed sticks into the fire. “None of these men can provide a coherent argument for this war, one that has nothing to do with profit or pride. Neither of those things are an honorable reason for secession. So they resort to fear, and when that doesn’t work, to force.”
Hattie gave a bitter laugh. “I seen so many slaves pass through here over the years, heading North to freedom. Been seeing whites on this road, too, last two years, all running up North like the devil’s bloodhounds were after ’em. Men like Davis and Vance and Cahill think you beat a man into doing what you want once, and that’ll keep him down forever. World don’t work like that, though. A man can be compelled to do something he don’t want, but he can’t be forced to believe in it, or to keep doing it. They gonna find that out one of these days.”
Penny arrived then, and Marlie took the branch from her in lieu of responding to Hattie. She winced a bit as she began to strip the pine needles, and then a hand rested atop hers, stopping the motion. She looked up into his eyes, both the same piercing blue but somehow stranger than her own. Strange and mesmerizing.
“Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,” Ewan said.
She didn’t know why those words caused emotion to surge into her chest, or why her eyes were suddenly stinging. Ewan was only being helpful, but the way he said the words . . .
“I’ll kill him if he tries to hurt you.”
Marlie pushed the memory away, and blinked back the sudden press of tears. They were no longer tucked away in her attic rooms and anything she had imagined then could no longer come to pass. The way Hattie was looking at them, brows raised in curiosity and mouth flat with judgment, assured her of that.
She pulled her hand away.
“Thank you. If you could get these pine needles into that water to make a tisane, that would be wonderful.”
Marlie reached for some of the sage she had stuffed into her apron pocket, and for the small folding knife she used for collecting cuttings. She tried to unfold it but Ewan was there again, pulling it gently from her fingertips to open it for her and then handing it back. He went back to stripping the pine bough.
Marlie swallowed deeply and then began cutting quick and light across the surface of each leaf. She glanced at the po
t of pine tea and leaned forward to drop the thyme in. The clean, strong scent of pine sap filled the air.
“Should I get some cloth to strain this through?” he asked as he stirred, and she again felt that strange prickly feeling in her eyes. They worked well together, just as they had in her work space. She wondered if her mother had thought the same of Stephen.
“That’s all right, we won’t be drinking it,” Marlie said, and kept at her work just so she wouldn’t have to look at him. Her face was hot and her eyes hurt and she wished she were back home in her bed—except her bed had been destroyed. Her life had been destroyed. There was no going home.
She pulled the pot from the flames and used a tin cup to scoop some of the liquid into a bowl. She placed that aside and then took up another cupful. When both had cooled, she placed the bowl in Hattie’s lap and had her soak her mangled thumbs in the warm liquid. Then she cupped her hands together over the edge of the fireplace, where anything spilled would soon dry.
“Can you?” She nodded toward the cup and Ewan picked it up and poured the warm liquid into her hands. Marlie blinked against the sting, but didn’t move as the liquid slowly sieved through her fingers. What pooled in her palms cleaned her wounds, and helped fight against festering. After a few moments, she released it from her hands and began taking up the macerated sage leaves. She dipped one into the steaming liquid, then placed it over her wound.
Ewan grabbed the next leaf from her and took over the job. “Faster this way,” he said, but his touch wasn’t rushed at all. He took his time plastering each leaf over the wound, spreading it flat with his fingertips. He was careful not to cause her harm, but his gentleness was stirring the direct opposite of pain in her. It was a stroke of sweet pleasure that licked through her at each caress of his fingertips. She trained her eyes impassively toward the fireplace, then forced herself to look at Hattie, who was staring resolutely at her own hands. Did Ewan’s touch look as intimate as it felt?
“Is that helping with the pain at all?” Marlie asked. “In a bit, we’ll wrap them up how I’m wrapping my hands, but with a poultice made to keep the swelling down.”
Hattie nodded, pulling her hands from the liquid to see if there was any difference. “I’d heard that they was doing awful stuff to women. But you hear all kinds of things. I didn’t think a Southern man, dashing about in a fine uniform, would hurt a lady like that. Though I guess men like Cahill don’t consider me good enough to call a lady, let alone treat as one.”
“All of the men who followed his orders, who didn’t stand up to him, are barbarous,” Marlie said. “War is one thing, but torture? I will never understand how someone could do that and still call themselves human. Ouch!”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to hurt you.” Ewan’s mouth was drawn, and she noticed his hands trembled slightly. He must have been exhausted from their journey, too.
He laid the last leaf down and then wrapped her hands with the strip of sheet they were using as a bandage, but didn’t meet her eye. She’d seen this look of agitation before when Cahill’s name came up. What was it that bothered him so?
With her hands bound, she moved to Hattie to finish cleaning her up. Ewan got to work cleaning the house, ever of service, but didn’t look her in the eye even as they were shuffled into the root cellar an hour later. She glanced at him before the door closed, and his face was blank as he stared down at the ground. They were confined together once more, but Ewan’s attentiveness was gone. There was only darkness and silence.
As exhaustion blanketed her, a vision of the crushed gris-gris filtered into her mind.
“Deliver me from Melody’s presence,” she had written. This was why Maman had always warned her not to throw: When you gave your intentions over to a power like that, you might get what you wanted, but not without paying for it.
CHAPTER 18
It had been dark in Ewan’s dreams, and he opened his eyes to a different shade of black. For the briefest of moments he was hit with a fierce longing for home. He didn’t think himself the nostalgic type, but the desire for his own bed and the familiar smells of his mother’s cooking welled up in him. It was hard not to miss the comforts of home when one had been sleeping in trenches, prisons, attic ceilings, and cellars for months on end.
His body ached, but he couldn’t remember the last time it hadn’t. He tried to move to a more comfortable position, but something weighed him down. He was about to shove the weight away when he caught a hint of wisteria. Marlie’s hair oil. That was when he realized the weight against him was warm, beneath layers of clothing, and breathing. His arm was wrapped around her, pulling her close, and her skirts pushed against his legs where she rested her thigh atop his.
Ewan thought of the disgust on her face when she’d talked about Cahill and his militia. It had been like a slap to the face, waking him from a foolish dream; yet another reminder that what they’d shared when she’d provided him with sanctuary had been nothing more than brief respite from too harsh reality.
Her bandaged hand rested on his chest, and Ewan picked it up gently by the fingertips to move it away, but found he was remiss to let it go. He’d never been so intimate with a woman, never felt the push of soft breasts against his side as he slumbered or awoken holding someone in his arms. Ewan had certainly never been called a romantic, and his relations with women had been perfunctory, though pleasurable. Army life meant he was no stranger to bedmates, but they were usually smelly, hairy, and of the platonic sort, give or take a few overtures for more. And although Marlie was only pressed against him due to her exhaustion and the small space they shared, Ewan found he quite liked it. He wished . . .
“Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.”
Right. There was no room for wishing. They would depart for the Tennessee line, and try to make it there as quickly as possible. Once they arrived, they would part ways. That was the sum and total of what could pass between them.
Something sharp and uncomfortable radiated in his chest at that thought. What would she do? Where would she go? She was leaving everything she knew behind. She had grown accustomed to a life with certain luxuries, but in the North, would anyone care about her skill? Her intelligence and wit? The war was to end slavery, but the sentiments in the North weren’t vastly better when it came to Negroes, free or enslaved. He had no say, no control, over her fate, but his mind held fast to the problem as if it were a riddle that could be solved.
She shifted against him in a way that let him know she had awoken, even if he couldn’t see her. Her fingers flexed in his, reminding him that he was still holding her hand. He froze, caught in the act, waiting for her to pull away. Instead, her fingers began to close slowly around his. He felt the wince go through her and knew she had only stopped because of her injured palm.
“Still paining you?” he murmured.
She nodded against his chest. Ewan marveled at that silent form of communication: her hair shifting against the fabric of his shirt and her chin pressing into his rib cage. They could probably communicate a great many things without speaking, there in the dark. If her thigh moved up a few inches more, she’d receive the rousing message that had been telegraphed to his nether regions as her fingertips brushed against the sensitive skin on the back of his hand.
Heat spread over his skin at the thought. Beads of sweat formed on his upper lip, even though the root cellar was cool and dry. He’d broken men’s wrists and fingers and calmly told them what else he’d break if they didn’t talk without perspiring at all, but Marlie settled against him, as if she were his, was all it took to make his palms go clammy.
“It’s the least of my worries right now,” she whispered in a husky morning voice. “Ewan, when you were upset before—”
“I wasn’t upset.”
“When you appeared to be upset, then. I know Cahill was often at Randolph. Did he do something to you? Is that why you escaped? Were you tortured?”
She sounded so concerned for him, and the naiveté of her question made him burn for her and want to push her away at the same time. Ewan held his breath to keep his chest from shaking with the rueful laughter that built up in him. If Marlie knew what had truly passed between him and Cahill . . .
“No,” he answered. “Do you know where to go once we leave here? We should have some kind of plan.”
She sat up, moving away from him. “I have a general idea. I’m sure Hattie will assist us with the specifics. I still can’t believe this is happening.” She sighed. “Even after seeing all those people running over the years, those people who looked like me, it never occurred to me that I could be in their shoes one day.” She sighed deeply.
“Marlie, I don’t think anyone could have envisioned what came to pass with Melody and Cahill.”
In the darkness he heard a trembling sigh. “Maybe not. But that’s just it. I felt that something awful was going to happen, but—” She paused, shifted against him some more. “I thought I saw the runaways I helped as people, but I think I was still seeing them as slaves. I should have known something like this could happen, but I thought my free papers had given me some kind of immunity. I never thought of myself as a slave because I was born free, but now I understand. Those people didn’t think of themselves as slaves, either.”
Ewan tried to wrap his mind around the immensity of her words.
There was a scraping sound, and then the door to the root cellar opened. “Y’all can come out now.”
Ewan helped Marlie move through the door and then climbed out into the room. Two plates sat on the sad excuse for a table, the corn cakes and poke salad showing just how lacking the pantry was.
He and Marlie sat down to eat on chairs so rickety it was probably safer to sit on the floor. Ewan’s eye kept catching on the mess Cahill and his men had made of the place that he hadn’t gotten to the night before: broken cabinet doors, supplies left in disarray. Mess always bothered him, and knowing how it had come to pass made this particular mess even worse.