A Hope Divided by Alyssa Cole (18)

CHAPTER 17

Marlie told herself that she was not afraid as she approached Hattie’s door. That was partially true; the flight from her home had left her too tired and sore for fear. She was mostly angry and disappointed, the feelings mixing into a toxin that seeped into her veins, willing her to give up. Those feelings should have been familiar to her, given her race and sex, but she’d been shielded from so many of the ugly truths of the world. Every shield has its breaking point, and the fragments of the lies that had been protecting her had been raining down since Melody had arrived. A shield, once broken, was only so many splinters, and Marlie was discovering just how sharp those splinters could be.

She felt Ewan’s rangy presence next to her, and took some comfort in that, even though she shouldn’t have. She harbored no fantasies of protection, but Ewan was reliable, and that was one thing she needed just then. And he was honest, to a fault. He said what he was thinking, even if it was rude, as she’d learned. She didn’t always like it, but she’d take his lack of etiquette over the polite lie she’d been living for so many years.

They stepped onto the rickety porch and Marlie took a deep breath, then rapped lightly on the door. She winced against the pain of closing her hand into a fist. In the trees, the birds that signaled the first stirrings of dawn began to tweet. She knocked again, a bit more urgently.

There was movement, shuffling about, and then a trembling voice asked, “Who is it?”

“A friend in search of shelter,” Marlie said. “A friend who needs a hero.”

Marlie hoped she’d said the right thing. She wasn’t sure what passcodes the Heroes of America were using now, but that was a close enough approximation, it seemed. The door creaked open and a sallow face peeked out: Penny, Hattie’s daughter.

“Miss Marlie?” She looked back over her shoulder, then opened the door wider. “Get in, now.”

She closed and latched the door after Marlie and Ewan had entered.

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.

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.

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 . . .

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 pot 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.