Ashes

by Laurie Halse Anderson

  “You have a bizarre attachment to a cause that cares nothing for you,” I finally said.

  He cast down his eyes and scuffed at the dirt with the toe of his boot. “Figgered you’d say something like that.”

  Thomas Boon shook his head. Ruth leaned forward and patted his rump. Curzon cracked his knuckles.

  “You must choose a side, Isabel,” he said softly. “Rebel or redcoat.”

  “I am my own army,” I said. “My feet and legs, my hands, arms, and back, those are my soldiers. My general lives up here”–I tapped my forehead–“watching for the enemy and commanding the field of battle.”

  “This is not an occasion for jesting.”

  “I am dead serious,” I said. “Neither redcoats nor rebels fight for me. I see no reason to support them.”

  He stared at me intently. “What do you fight for, then?”

  “I don’t want to fight anymore. I want to be as far away from armies and war as possible. I want to live the rest of my days without fear.”

  He frowned. “No one wants to be in a war. But that is our circumstance. You must choose a side, else you become a target for both.”

  I hesitated. If we’d had this conversation the previous winter, I might have added that I wanted him at my side. I might have confessed that he’d make a fine husband for me, and that I would be a fantastical good wife. But between us now lay a poisonous swamp of misunderstandings, arguments, hurt feelings, and sadness.

  “What do you fight for?” I asked.

  “Freedom.” The firm resolve on his face made him look like someone I barely knew. “Freedom for everyone. That’s a cause worth dying for, don’t you think?”

  “You can’t help anyone if you’re dead,” I said.

  “At least I care enough to try.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The rest of the world can go hang, for all you care.”

  “The rest of the world hasn’t done me any favors.”

  “What about me?” he demanded.

  “You’ve done your share, as I did for you.”

  “So the accounts between us are balanced?” he asked in a raw voice. “You are well satisfied that I owe you nothing, having helped you recover Ruth? I can tell you that you owe me not a single thing. Done and done.”

  I swallowed hard. “Is that how the columns add up to you?”

  “Indeed they do, Miss Gardener.” He stepped away from me, his eyes hard and angry. “I shall take my leave of you now.”

  “Do as you wish,” I said, trying to ignore how badly his words hurt. “You need not trouble yourself with us anymore.”

  “Don’t you worry, Country,” he said in a voice that cut through me. “I shall never trouble you again.”

  CHAPTER XXII

  Saturday, September 15–Wednesday, September 26, 1781

  AMONG THE PLAGUES THE BRITISH LEFT IN WILLIAMSBURG, THAT OF FLIES IS INCONCEIVABLE. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EAT DRINK, SLEEP, WRITE, SIT STILL OR EVEN WALK ABOUT IN PEACE ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR CONFOUNDED STINGS. THEIR NUMBERS, EXCEED DESCRIPTION, UNLESS YOU LOOK INTO THE 8TH CHAPTER OF EXODUS FOR IT.

  –LETTER FROM ST. GEORGE TUCKER TO HIS WIFE, FANNY TUCKER, JULY 11, 1781

  CURZON WAS TRUE TO HIS word. Days passed, some filled with cold rain, others with an unwholesome, stifling heat, but none of them brought any sign of him.

  He ended our friendship, I told myself firmly. He chose his own path.

  I stirred boiling pots of breeches and shirts. I carried trays in the tavern. I split wood, hung laundry, heated irons, and hauled water, taking on extra tasks in a effort to tire myself out and drive the thoughts of him from my mind.

  I worked and worked and worked to quiet the sorrowful truth.

  He chose the war over me.

  More French and American soldiers arrived each day. The air filled with dust and the noise of thousands of men practicing their musket firing and maneuvering drills. Hundreds of wagons heavy with supplies and tools crowded the roads. Animals, too: horses for pulling the wagons and carrying officers; and cattle, sheep, and pigs destined for the butcher’s corral. To round out the rations, countless barrels of flour, cornmeal, salt, beans, and peas were unloaded from boats at the river landing.

  The tavern was so busy that I was often sent there to serve at mealtimes, and sometimes to help with the washing up as well. Mister Hallahan promised to pay me extra for my tavern work as soon as the Continentals settled their accounts with him. I gladly took on the work.

  ’Twas much easier to learn of the circumstances of the war in the tavern than in the laundry. A captain eating bean soup at the Gray Boar loudly proclaimed that the encampment held more people than the great city of Boston. The other men argued with him, but the captain had seen the muster rolls, and the numbers did not lie, he said. Mister Hallahan poured a steady stream of ale, wine, and rum for his customers. Miss Marrow prepared pots of barley soup, roasted rabbits, and onion pies, and I carried all of it to the tables. Messengers rode in and out of the town in anxious clouds of dust, sometimes stopping at the Gray Boar to quench their thirst. Everyone was starved for the latest news from Richmond and Philadelphia, including me.

  When I could, I smuggled newspapers under my skirts and read them in the privy. Spain and the Netherlands had promised to help America. The third son of King George, a young fellow called Prince William Henry, was in the British-held city of New York. I thought mayhaps the redcoats might crown the lad King of the United States. I was not certain if that would end the war or guarantee that it dragged on for generations.

  In the same newspaper I found the word “Aberdeen,” referring to the city in Scotland. I tore it out to give to our Aberdeen the next day, so he could learn the spelling of his name. Though I still did not trust him entirely, he was as regular as a well-wound clock, and it cheered Ruth to be in his company. I vowed to watch him closer, to see if I could figger why it was that she so preferred him to me.

  Our second full Sunday in Williamsburg, Widow Hallahan reluctantly gave us leave to attend church. We walked slow, for it was a glorious day: bright skies, gentle breeze, no stained breeches to scrub. I considered not going to church at all, but Momma would not have approved of that. She’d taken us to a small, clapboard-sided Congregational church when Ruth was a baby. They didn’t have churches like that here. Aberdeen had heard of a man named Gowan who preached in the Baptist manner to slaves and free folk. I wanted very much to hear this Baptist manner, but the congregation met in a grove miles away, and I could not afford the time nor the risk of searching for it.

  We headed for the big brick church in the center of town, Bruton Parish Church. I studied Ruth’s gait as she walked. Her foot was healing rapidly–helped, no doubt, by being able to eat every day and sleep soundly each night. I still didn’t have a good measure of her abilities. One day I’d think certain she had the mind of a child of five; the next I’d see a flash, a spark that made me suspect she understood quite a bit more. She was clever enough to know when Elspeth tried to give her extra chores. She would tell the kinds of falsehoods that an ordinary lass of twelve might tell, pretending she hadn’t eaten the last of the bread, or that she had no idea how the ashes had been dumped just outside the door instead of in the ash barrel.

  When I confronted her about her small lies, she simply crossed her arms and stared over my shoulder. She’d talk to the donkey, to Elspeth, Kate, Aberdeen, Widow Hallahan, and even the old lady’s friends who dropped by with a small bit of washing, but if I entered a room, she’d like as not snap shut her mouth like an irritated turtle and crawl into her shell. Even on her best day she rarely spoke more than a few handfuls of words to me. But as we walked to church, she cheerfully greeted every cat, dog, pig, and sparrow we passed.

  Outside the church we watched as gentry and army officers entered, the gentlemen doffing their hats, the ladies smiling. If we joined them, we’d be required to walk up narrow stairs and sit in the upper gallery. That was the only place for black-skinned folk. Wh
en we lived in New York, I’d thought that being in the gallery meant our prayers would get to God first because we sat closer to heaven. I was wrong. All it meant was that the white people in church wanted to chain our souls as much as our bodies.

  Instead I positioned Ruth and myself under a mulberry tree at the edge of the graveyard, close enough to the church that we could hear the prayers and hymns through the open windows. A scraggly, half-grown hound bounded between the gravestones and rolled on his back so that Ruth could scratch his belly.

  I leaned against the trunk of the tree, delighting in the luxury of a moment’s peace. Had it been only two weeks since we arrived in Williamsburg?

  The minister’s sermon floated on the breeze. “Pray for the happy period when tyranny, oppression, and wretchedness shall be banished from the earth; when universal love and liberty, peace and righteousness, shall prevail. . . .”

  I bowed my head. Most every person sitting upon the fine pews in there owned people who had been kidnapped from their families or held in bondage from birth. The foul hypocrisy of the sermon made me want to scream loud enough, long enough, to make the church, the Governor’s Palace, the laundry, even the building used for a hospital, crumble like the walls of Jericho. Maybe then the walls around their hearts would fall too.

  The congregation entered into song, praising God and His mercy.

  I prayed. I thanked God for leading me to Ruth. I asked Him to help me in my constant struggle to hold my tongue and control my temper and become a patient person. I asked Him again to soften Ruth’s manner toward me and to help me show her how much I loved her. I tried to pray for Curzon’s safety, but my confuddled sentiments had me thinking that he deserved to be shot in his backside, and that made me feel the worst sort of devil. My mother and the Lord Himself would be disappointed in me for such thoughts. I sighed at my failure.

  Ruth looked up. “You poorly?”

  “Nay,” I said.

  “You sound like a sick horse.” She imitated my sigh in an overly dramatic fashion.

  “Time to go back,” I said, starting for the road. “And I am not a horse.”

  She muttered something that sounded like “’Tis a shame.”

  * * *

  I began to hope that the coming battle might continue to be postponed. I cared not what would cause this; wet gunpowder would suffice, or an outbreak of the bloody flux suffered by both armies. If the American and French would stay content in Williamsburg, and the British holed up ten miles away in Yorktown, for just a few more months, winter would arrive. Armies rarely fought once the winter winds began blowing. We would benefit from such a circumstance, Ruth and me. Mister Hallahan would surely have the coin to pay my tavern wages, and our continued work in the laundry would pay for our lodging and meals. By spring we’d be in fine fettle and ready to walk home to Rhode Island.

  I amused myself by imagining that one day I might serve General Washington his chicken pie. I’d offer the suggestion of the army overwintering in Williamsburg, and he’d see it at once as a brilliant military tactic, and he’d give me a Spanish silver dollar for being so clever.

  Such thoughts were proof that I was much in need of sleep.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Thursday, September 27, 1781

  I NOW PERCEIVED THAT MY CASE WAS DESPERATE, AND THAT I HAD NOTHING TO TRUST TO, BUT TO WAIT THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY FOR MAKING MY ESCAPE.

  –BOSTON KING, WHEN A LOYALIST MILITIAMAN THREATENED TO REENSLAVE HIM

  JUST WHEN IT SEEMED THAT the countryside could not hold another soldier, musket, or canteen, General Washington declared it was time to fight.

  “We all knew this day would come,” Widow Hallahan said as we gathered in the courtyard. “You two.” She pointed at Kate and Elspeth. “I expect you want to visit your lads.”

  The girls nodded, faces flushed and eyes wide.

  “Don’t forget your modesty,” the widow warned them, “and be back by dark.”

  Ruth unhitched Thomas Boon from the wagon. Aberdeen headed for the water pump, buckets in hand. Widow Hallahan studied me.

  “You need to help with the serving,” she said. “Tavern’s full to bursting with sutlers. But when you’re done with that, take the rest of the afternoon off, you and your sister. Mind you get back in time to serve the supper.” She reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a tarnished coin, which she handed to me. “Buy yourself something nice.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” I curtsied and hurried away before she changed her mind.

  After I’d finished in the tavern, I made my way with Ruth and Aberdeen through the crowded streets to the baker’s. Ruth was determined that we should eat gingerbread, and indeed the smell of it was enticing.

  “You can only buy a small loaf for that coin,” the baker’s lad said.

  “That should be enough for the largest loaf, enough for six people,” I protested.

  “War troubles make everything more costly,” he explained.

  “Allow me.” Aberdeen pulled a small handful of shillings and pence from his pocket. “We’ll take the largest loaf you have, if you please, sir.”

  As if that weren’t startling enough, Aberdeen then led us to a merchant that sold all sorts of sundries, and there he bought a child’s toy fashioned of wood. It was a stick with a cup at one end, and a ball attached to a string on the other. The trick of the thing, he explained, was to catch the ball in the cup. ’Twas much harder to do than it seemed.

  He handed it to Ruth with a dramatic flourish. “For you, Miss Ruth.”

  She giggled and took it with a shy smile.

  “She needs new stockings more than a child’s frippery,” I said.

  “Isabel don’t like fun,” Ruth told Aberdeen.

  “Let’s go to the river,” he said. “Mebbe that will lift her mood.”

  As we walked down the well-worn path, the wind swirled, bringing first the sweet smell of the bake ovens, then the stink of rotting hides and offal from the slaughtering pens, and finally, the heavy stench of fish. I had a rare longing for the smell of the ocean, the clean salt air that would sometimes roll all the way to our door at the farm where we had been children.

  Ruth walked ahead of us, nibbling on the gingerbread and watching the hummingbirds, thrushes, and meadowlarks flitting through the trees. When we reached the water, she settled herself upon the grass and played with her new treasure. Aberdeen and I sat in clear sight of her, but far enough away that she could not overhear our words. It was the first truly private moment we’d had since we entered Williamsburg. I sensed that he had planned all of this. His aim was to hold a confab with me, not just to delight Ruth. Coming after his display of coin in the shops–coin that no butcher’s boy could possibly have earned in a few weeks’ time–I found myself mighty suspicious.

  I looked around to confirm that no one could hear us and then spoke plain. “Where did you get that money?”

  Aberdeen plucked a long blade of grass and chewed the end of it.

  “Have you turned thief?” I demanded.

  He acted as if he hadn’t heard me. “You still aiming for Rhode Island when all this rot is finished?”

  “Stealing will land you in jail or a grave. And yes, Rhode Island is our destination. Our home.”

  “Is it true what Ruth said”–he leaned back on his elbows–“that you want the British to win?”

  I narrowed my eyes, even more wary than before. “Why would Ruth say that?”

  He gave a snort. “Watches you like a hawk, she do. Tells me all kinds of things about you: the way you say you ain’t hungry, then give her your supper; the way you turn the other cheek when those looby laundresses are rude to you. She also says you want the British to win.”

  The sun bounced off the river, throwing sparkles into the air. Ruth happily played with her new toy. She was content in that moment, smiling. The calm peace on her face recollected the way she’d looked as a small child, before our lives became fear-filled and muddled.

  “Do
es she say why she’s mad at me?” I asked.

  He ignored my question again. “Is that true? Do you favor the British cause?”

  I studied him close. He’d grown a bit over the summer too. There was a fine cut on his chin and a patch of whiskers by his ear, signs that he’d begun to shave his face with a thin-bladed knife or the sharpened edge of an oyster shell. His shirt was new and his sling gone, for his broken collarbone was healed. If he’d been nine when Ruth arrived at Riverbend, then he was fourteen years old now, a difficult age in the best of circumstances.

  “Did you rob a Frenchman?” I asked. “That butcher you claim to work for?”

  He spoke quieter. “I work for the army, Isabel. I count the enemy’s men and guns. I listen outside tavern windows when they are muddy in drink.” He again patted the coins in his pocket. “The army pays good money for secrets.”

  “You’re a spy?”

  He nodded, excitement glowing in his face.

  “You are an addlepated lackwit,” I said. “I was a spy once. It ruined our lives.”

  “Mayhaps you chose the wrong side.”

  “I chose the same side as you and Curzon.” Saying his name aloud caused a bewildering ache in my chest. I cleared my throat. “I spied on the British on the orders of a Patriot captain who promised to help Ruth and me escape New York. He betrayed us. They’ll betray you, too. Might as well put your legs in chains right now.”

  Aberdeen eyed me calmly. “Didn’t say I spied for the Patriots.”

  I paused as the meaning of his words sank in.

  “You work for”–I whispered the last words–“the British?”

  He grinned.

  “They’re just as bad!” I declared.

  “Slaves running to the British get freed,” he argued.

  “Only if owned by Patriots,” I added. “Loyalist slaves are returned.”

  “So you lie to them. They won’t know, not around here. The redcoats just want hard workers. Fight for them, and you get to be your own master.”