CHAPTER 10
It was so strange to me. Back home, I could go for days without seeing a white face. There were so many of us slaves, and although the laws that held us in bondage were strictly and harshly observed, we lived our own lives amidst the terror. I learned that life was different for the American slaves. They were watched always, by master or overseer. Some were even made to sleep on the floor of the master’s room, not given the opportunity to even dream freely. Even their magic, their healing, had become a shadow of what I had learned on the island. And now I was one of them. Why had fate chosen this path for me?
Marlie placed the quill down and looked at Ewan. Three days had passed since he’d begun helping her with the translation work; Marlie spent even more time in her quarters than ever. Her world had for so long been no larger than Randolph County, and even the trips into town to shop and bring her wares to the pharmacy, and the occasional visits to the small farms to minister aid, had been few and far between. Sarah had always thought it safer for Marlie to stay at Lynchwood.
When the Fugitive Slave laws had been enacted, making free Negroes even less safe in their daily lives, those trips every couple of months had ended. She’d spent mornings in the nearby woods collecting roots and plants, but with bands of soldiers and impressment gangs wandering about, even that had become too risky. Her world had been scaled back to the house; the trips to Randolph had only been approved because Marlie had forced Sarah to see their utility to the Cause. Her utility. The arrival of Melody and Cahill had taken away that last freedom, and more; her days and nights were now spent in the three rooms that comprised her quarters.
She should have been more disturbed by that, but there was Ewan. His presence softened the blow of her undeserved punishment, quite a bit more than it should have. He was actually interested in her work, and helped her without complaint. She could talk to him about the different species of sassafras, and the difference in extract of bark and root and leaf. She could talk and talk, more than she ever had it seemed, and when she was done, he wanted to know more.
She had learned much from him, as well, about philosophy and politics, and anything except the War Between the States—that had fallen into the category of things they didn’t discuss after those first few days. Because discussing the war meant discussing the cause of it, and even if they were both on the same side, that didn’t mean there wasn’t still a hierarchy between them that was enforced with brutality in every corner of the land.
“I must go show my face or Sarah will come around looking for me to make sure nothing is amiss,” she said with a pang. Marlie felt no small amount of guilt that she hadn’t told her about Ewan’s presence, but Sarah was so very put upon every time they spoke that Marlie couldn’t bring herself to give her more reason to worry. And perhaps, just perhaps, there was a part of Marlie that enjoyed having one thing in her life that Sarah had not sanctioned or provided for her.
There was also the fact that every moment Marlie spent with Ewan, she was also spending with her mother. He’d become Vivienne’s mouthpiece, speaking her words into being. She’d thought it would be a simple exchange of words, but she quickly realized how wrong she was. Translation was an act that revealed as much about the person doing it as the text. The way his expression grew tense with anger as he parsed certain lines, or solemn with respect. The way he smiled when he came across a particularly sharp observation. How the passages sparked memories in Marlie, and her resulting stories had the reciprocal response in him. He learned about her childhood in a small shack in the piney woods. She knew all about his mother, older brother, and younger sister. Little was ever said about his father, but that empty space in his stories spoke volumes, and she was sure the spaces in her stories did, too.
Their translation felt like a greater intimacy than if he had pressed his mouth to hers, though she couldn’t help but wonder what that would feel like, too.
She tried very hard to remember that she was doing him a favor in harboring him, and he was simply returning it, but Ewan was giving Marlie her own history, and the line between appreciation and something stronger grew slimmer with each translated phrase. It wasn’t just Vivienne’s words that drew her to him, but his intelligence, and his own words, which, although sometimes too blunt, always resonated with her. Talking to him was easy. Too easy.
Because you’re living in a fantasy world.
Marlie couldn’t deny that they were living apart from reality. In the shared space of her rooms, they laughed. They spoke of family and favorite books and the best kind of pie. They debated scientific theories, and Greek, and Latin. They didn’t speak of war and the possibility that the Union would be forever rent asunder. They didn’t speak of the way people would look at them, a Negro woman and a white man laughing intimately, if they were on the street instead of in her rooms. They brushed hands and knees and shoulders—accidentally, of course. The room was small after all, and translating quietly required their sitting close and speaking in whispers....
Ewan put down his pages, the expression on his face like a man waking from a dream. “Oh. Right. Of course you have other things to attend to.”
Marlie reminded herself that this was a fantasy world for him, too. All too soon, he’d be off on the dangerous journey toward Tennessee and, if he made it back to his regiment, facing possible death at the hands of Rebel forces. The reality of war intruded into their private space, and she pushed away the thought of harm befalling him.
“I have quite the same feeling I had as a boy, when my mother would make me put my book down and come eat supper,” Ewan said. “It was like leaving a beloved friend behind.”
They’d been translating Vivienne’s recollections of her arrival in the US—how she’d been sold off after the rebellion, thrown onto a ship bound for the edge of the earth for all she knew. She’d arrived at Briarwood, the Lynches’ farm estate, and was acclimating to life as an enslaved person in a new and strange land. The passages were fascinating, as her mother struggled to reconcile her gift and beliefs with her life on the plantation.
“I’m loathe to leave her words behind, too. I wish she had told me these things when we were together,” Marlie admitted. When she looked at Ewan, he was scrubbing a hand over his eyes. They’d been working for hours—neither had been sleeping well, and they’d begun to work in the middle of the night, coincidentally while no one was up and around to disturb them.
“My father shared too many of his memories with us, especially after getting his hands on hard drink,” Ewan said. “A parent eager to share isn’t as marvelous as you might imagine.”
Marlie studied him, the way the fine auburn hairs of his stubble shifted from the frown on his face as he looked into the distance. Then his gaze jerked toward her abruptly, focusing on her much more intently than could ever be considered appropriate.
“Careful of Cahill,” he said. “The news reports you’ve brought me all say that the Home Guard has been having a string of successes against the draft dodgers, that they’re preparing for a large-scale maneuver against them. Nothing makes a man more dangerous than a bit of success.”
His fingertips brushed lightly over the back of her hand, sending a thrill through her, but he hesitated, then pulled his hand away.
“I can finish translating this section, if that pleases you,” he said, and oh, Marlie did not need to hear that last phrase from him. He smiled, a full smile that set her heart beating apace again. “I admit, I want to know what happens.”
“No, Mr. Socrates. If I must live with the suspense, so shall you.” She stacked the papers neatly—one part the original and one part the translation—and tucked them into her drawer.
“I’ll take this instead,” he said, reaching past her to grab a book from the shelf. His face came perilously close to hers as he leaned forward, so close that if she moved forward just a bit . . .
His gaze went from the book to her face, down to her mouth, and did not move. This close, Marlie could see the first spots of pink on his cheeks and how quickly they spread, accenting his sharp cheekbones. He’d stopped breathing—she’d feel it against her lips if he was. His head moved forward the slightest bit, then he stood abruptly.
Had she imagined what had just passed? Her racing heart testified that something had almost happened, but she couldn’t bring herself to think on the missed possibility.
“I’ve had enough reading for the day, actually,” he said, his voice suddenly terse. “I quite enjoy the translating, but all the talk of spirits and gods was tiring.”
The warmth Marlie had been feeling after their near collision iced over like a lake in deepest winter.
“Pardon?”
“It’s quite difficult to understand how a woman as obviously intelligent as your mother could believe in such things.”
Marlie was on her feet now, too. “What gives you the right to speak of my mother and her beliefs that way? What gives you the right to judge her? Or anyone?”
Ewan’s brows drew together. “Be logical, Marlie. If there was any truth to these hexes and hoodoo, why wouldn’t every slave master in the States have been struck down?”
“If there was any sense to the logic of the dead white men you and many of those slave masters so revere, why would there be cause to strike them down? And yet you do not dismiss their work as nonsense.”
Ewan scrutinized her expression, his face impassive. Marlie did not want to know what her face looked like because she felt as if she could throttle him for so deceiving her.
“You’ve said yourself that you know now that science, not spiritualism, is the right of things,” he said. “Why are you upset if you don’t believe in it, either?”
Marlie stared at him, shocked at the tears welling up in her eyes and hating the fact that she had no answer for him. She didn’t believe in those things, did she? If so, why did Ewan’s words make her want to rage? Sharing her mother’s writing with him had been a joy for her—had he been judging her mother the entire time?
“If the work is tiresome, your assistance is no longer necessary,” she said, tucking the papers into the portfolio and placing them under a pile of notes.
Ewan’s mouth opened and closed, like a catfish caught out when the creek runs dry. “I meant no offense—”
“And you managed to offend despite that. I must go, Ewan. Now.”
He moved back behind the desk. When she heard the latch of the small door, she slid the desk back and leaned her head against it, in the thrall of a strange sorrow. Part of her hoped that when she returned Ewan would have vanished, so she wouldn’t have to face him again. How could she? His words felt like a betrayal of some unspoken pact between them. She’d thought he understood her—or perhaps what she couldn’t face was that he understood all too well what she had become.
She left her rooms, taking a deep breath as she locked the door behind her, then crept quietly down the stairs. She had once moved about the house confidently, but now she tiptoed like a thief. She wore only simple dresses that required no crinoline so that her skirts made the barest rustle when she walked. She had gone through a period after her arrival at Lynchwood when she’d purposefully stepped on the left side of the third stair from the bottom, its groan announcing her like a butler, but these days she carefully avoided anything that would bring her attention.
She’d almost made it to the kitchen when a hand touched her shoulder. Her heart pounded as she whirled about, but it was only Tobias, a concerned look on his face. “Marlie, you told me you was gonna tell Miss Sarah. About that thing. You haven’t. What you think she gon’ do if she find out I’ve been hiding information from her? I ain’t her blood like you.”
Marlie’s anger at Ewan slipped away, replaced by chagrin.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was selfish in the extreme of me. I thought I was preventing her more worry, but I’ve only pushed it onto you.”
“You know I can’t stay mad at you, Marl, but this is getting out of hand.” He sighed and shifted uncomfortably. “And Lace and me are wondering what all you’re getting up to with that man that you never leave you rooms now.”
“Tobias! Absolutely nothing!” Her voice was high and heat rushed to her cheeks. It wasn’t a lie. “Making the tonics that bring greenbacks to the house and keep us in health.”
Tobias held up his hands. “Okay. Okay. Ain’t no business of mine. But I know you don’t have much experience, and a man is a man—men like to sniff after women, and you all so close up there, he might just catch your scent, if you see what I mean.” He sighed. “I just want you to be careful, girl.”
“Believe me, I am. But if sniffing is the problem, I’m safer in my quarters than with Cahill and his men down here.” She tried to keep the indignation out of her voice, and the shame. Another part of the fantasy world in her rooms was pretending no one knew what she was about—that no one conjectured. And that’s all it was, thank heavens, conjecture. Tobias didn’t know that Ewan came out of the drying room and spent hours upon hours with Marlie. That they talked about everything under the sun except those things that could hurt them. At the very worst, he might think they’d engaged in something carnal. That would have been the least of Marlie’s problems. She knew all about a man’s body, even if just from a strictly scientific standpoint. That she was growing more interested in Ewan’s heart and mind was the issue.
There was a familiar quick-paced slap of slippers on the floorboards and then Sarah appeared, smiling with relief. The smile twisted the dagger of guilt into Marlie a bit more. How could she hide anything from Sarah?
She hasn’t ever even acknowledged you as her sister, or your place in this family. Why is she entitled to know anything?
The angry thought shot to the surface of her thoughts just as Sarah engulfed her in a hug. Where had that come from? Surely Marlie wasn’t angry about something as silly as a label, after all Sarah had done for her.
“I’m so sorry you’re forced to skulk about in the attic like Mrs. Rochester,” Sarah said, and then released her. Marlie felt like she’d played a round of her childhood game: closing her eyes and spinning until her head felt scrambled and like it just might float off her shoulders. Maybe it was all the time spent in Vivienne’s world, with Ewan, but things between her and Sarah suddenly seemed even more misaligned.
“I’m fine,” Marlie assured her. “I get to hide away while all of you are forced to be pleasant and accommodating to those you disdain. That has to be much harder.”
“Anything for the Union,” Sarah said in a low voice before taking a fortifying breath. “This morning I reminded Cahill that while he is welcome here, his militia is not. They’ve been availing themselves of our hospitality and food for days, while Melody smiles and encourages them. Men have started to sleep in the parlor and last night they were bivouacking in the yard. The azaleas are ruined, and worse than that—”
She threw up her hands in frustration and Marlie knew what she meant. They could undertake no operations while the enemy lounged casually in the garden and made himself at home. Except that, unbeknownst to Sarah, they already were. Marlie’s stomach tumbled thinking about a house crawling with Rebs with a Union man hidden away in her rooms. What was she to do?
Tobias cleared his throat, then cleared it a bit louder, his gaze boring into Marlie.
“Are you well?” Sarah asked. Her brows raised in concern. “Who knows what sickness these men are bringing with them? Another reason they need to find another base of operations.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just been feeling out of sorts for a little while now.” Another meaningful look at Marlie.
Marlie felt slightly ill herself, but it was pure nerves. “Sarah, there is something I’ve been meaning to mention—”
The pounding of hooves and sudden racket of men’s celebratory shouts outside drew their attention.
“Oh no.” Sarah lifted her skirts and jogged into the parlor, toward the window looking onto the front of the house. What she saw made her raise a hand to her mouth in distress.
For an instant, Marlie thought to turn tail and run back up to her rooms, and the impulse frightened her. She was no detective, but she’d been doing Railroad work for years, had set up her own business in a white town, had walked into a prison teeming with men. Why should she run from Cahill? Still, she thought of their previous encounters, and the frown that marred Ewan’s face every time he spoke of the man.
There was the noise and commotion of men dismounting, and another kind of ugly sound.
A heavy thud, and then a shout. “Get up! You mangy skulker.” The sound of a fist connecting with something solid, and a muffled cry of pain.
Marlie joined Sarah at the window. A slender man with a cruel face was standing over a bound boy writhing in the middle of the lawn where, until recently, Sarah and Marlie had occasionally had picnics. The boy was a horrid puce color, and Marlie rushed out the door, leaving her logic behind her.
“He’s suffocating!” she said as she rushed past the cruel-faced man and went to her knees. She pulled away the dirty strip of fabric that bound his mouth and turned him to his side as he retched. Only a lifetime of experience with the scent of bile and sickness kept her from doing the same.
“David?” John and Hattie’s son, one of the many children she had tended to over the years, coughed weakly and retched again.
There was a sudden, sharp pain in her side and Marlie was sprawled behind the boy, clutching at herself as if that could stop the pain radiating from her rib cage. Cahill stood above her, his face impassive, as if the mud from his boot weren’t caking the side of her dress. “Roberts, I told you that these curs were to receive no aid.”
“This darkie came out of nowhere, sir,” Roberts said. His hand went to rest on the pistol holstered at his side and Marlie’s breath stopped in her chest for a moment. Her mind went clean as a steamed vial, unable to focus on more than the pain in her side and the gun that could be drawn at any second.
“Release my boy, now!”
The cry came from the far side of the lawn, near the entrance. Three women stood there, faces grim. Their dresses were the plain homespun of the local farmers’ wives, cheap and ragged from overwear. One woman stood near the front, older and obviously less afraid than the other two, and Marlie recognized her stern expression. Hattie. Her daughter Penny cowered behind her, with a woman Marlie didn’t recognize.
“Ma!” David’s cry was pitiful, and though the woman’s hard expression didn’t change, she held her eyes shut for a moment. When they fluttered open again, her gaze was fixed on Cahill.
“You Rebs are already starving us to death, then robbing us o’ the little we have,” Hattie said. “You took my husband and now you wanna take my boy? No. Release him this instant.”
Her voice, the anger and the fear and the resentment bound up in it, echoed back from the trees.
“Presumptuous trash,” Cahill said. “This is no boy. He lost that designation when I caught him bringing supplies to those malingerers in the forest. If he’s man enough to aid the draft dodgers, then he’s subject to the laws of the Confederacy. He is going to serve his nation, as we all must serve during these times. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot him on sight.”
Hattie didn’t cower at Cahill’s words.
“We just poor farmers. Ain’t got no slaves and don’t believe in no slaves. Why should my boy fight so rich men can keep on living off the work of others? Gimme my boy, or you’ll regret it. Your luck gonna run out eventually; the Heroes will see to that.”
She lifted her hand and pointed a finger at Cahill, and Marlie understood that a different type of conjuring was going on, even if Hattie didn’t: the power of a mother’s love throwin’ against the man who would take her boy away. That was a powerful thing, but not so powerful as it should have been.
Cahill grimaced. “I see where he learned his disobedience to the laws of the land. You’re one of these pathetic women, bringing food and vittles to deserters who cower in the forests like vermin, and you think I should fear you?” he asked.
Hattie didn’t answer.
“Aiding those who would subvert the Confederacy is punishable by imprisonment or death. Roberts, give me your gun.” He held his hand out, his eye still on the women.
Roberts started. “Sir? For a woman?”
“If she holds truck with criminals, she’s subject to the same law as them. Your pistol. Now.” His fingers moved in a beckoning motion.
The two younger women scrambled back into the forest, tugging at Hattie’s arms, but she shoved them off and stood fast.
Marlie looked up. Cahill was squinting to take aim. David thrashed as he fought against his bonds, trying to get to his feet. The militiamen looked on, unsettled but unwilling to question their commander.
So much of the claptrap of the Confederacy was about how their women needed to be protected, but Cahill intended to kill this one. Marlie realized that, just as she didn’t fit Cahill’s conception of a woman, neither did an impoverished farm wife in a raggedy dress.
There was silence, except for the cock of the gun and a single syllable, tinged with a hint of French and soaked in Carolina Southern that resonated in her head. Move.
Marlie darted up toward Cahill’s arm, her own arms stretched upward, just as his finger pressed into the trigger. There was a loud report that echoed across the lawn and into the trees, sending the birds flying, and then she was knocked away hard and thrown to the ground again. As she landed, she could see the back of Hattie’s skirt as she took flight into the trees.
Marlie’s ears rang, and she couldn’t hear the birds that she saw flying overhead. She felt strange as she watched the birds winging away, like she was seeing a memory playing back against the slate gray sky. Then Sarah was by her side, running her hands over Marlie’s arms, her sides.
“Marlie! Has he hurt you?”
Marlie was not unhurt, but she hadn’t been shot. “I am fine,” she said.
“Come now. Come.” She pulled Marlie up to her feet, pulled her through the militiamen and into the house, glancing back over her shoulder every few steps. It was only when they reached the house that Marlie looked back, too.
Cahill was still looking into the trees after his escaped quarry, but he had no reason to track Marlie’s movements: He knew exactly where to find her.