CHAPTER 21
They passed through a cluster of small wooden shacks on the midsize plantation and made their way to a barn. The few cows lowed and swished their tails as Sallie led them toward the rickety ladder and up into the hayloft. She quietly descended, and the rhythmic sound of milk splashing into a metal pail broke the silence that hung between Marlie and Ewan. He wanted to say something, but perhaps silence was for the best. His silence couldn’t hurt her like the ill-chosen words could.
A few moments later, the ladder creaked and Sallie appeared in the opening. She handed up a bucket containing a bottle of milk, sandwiches, and a bit of cake. Marlie picked up the stale cake—dried out frosting and who knew how old—and tears stood in her eyes.
“If anyone is sick I can help them,” she said. “Or try to.”
“You got the gift?” Sallie asked, eyebrows raised.
“I can help,” was all Marlie answered, but Ewan noticed it wasn’t a denial.
“She comes from a long line of conjure women,” he said. “And she’s read as many books as any doctor. She’s got a gift.”
Sallie looked between them. “Don’t get into any foolishness up here, gift or no.”
Ewan drew himself up. “It’s simply a mutually bene—”
“Yeah, yeah. We got us a few sick folk, since they sold our root woman off after massa near died a few months back. Mistress was sure someone had laid a trick on him, instead of asking if maybe the Lord was punishing him for his sins.” Sallie shrugged. “You can tend to them before you go.”
She headed back down the ladder, leaving them alone. Silence fell in the loft again and Ewan wished he could think of words he was sure were the right ones, though conversation shouldn’t have been a priority given their predicament. It didn’t make him want to hear her voice any less.
“Suddenly you’re not tired of hoodoo talk?” Marlie asked as she settled into the hay a few feet away from him.
Ewan regretted his desire to break the silence.
“It was mean-spirited to say what I did that day.” Ewan picked some hay from his shirt. “If you want the truth, I said the first foolish thing that came into my head because if I didn’t, I would have kissed you.”
She moved a bit, producing a low rustle in the hay.
“So insulting my mother and my background was preferable to kissing me? Excellent.”
Ewan exhaled deeply.
“No, it was hurtful and wrong. Although I must point out that you were the one who said you no longer believed in those things.”
“Would you like it if I impugned one of your family members, Socrates? Because I thought you might agree with me?”
He didn’t like that she was calling him Socrates again. Before it had been something that joined them together, but now it was being used as a wedge.
“No. I shouldn’t have said anything. I have a tendency to say the wrong thing, often in service of doing the right one.”
She didn’t say anything for a long while. “I tried to go back home, when I first got to Lynchwood. First they found me down the road with one of the horses. Then I tried . . . I tried to lay a trick. I’d brought some dirt with me, from my mother’s house. I did everything I was supposed to do.”
He imagined Marlie as a girl, placing all her love and hope into a palmful of dirt.
“It didn’t work. And I felt so betrayed by that. Like my mother had sent me off with a knife that crumbled when I tried to cut the ropes binding me. But if you think science is any different, it’s only because it’s a white man with a fancy title giving it import.” There was more restless shuffling in the hay. “You have an idea. You decide to test it out. Sometimes it works, and then you have to figure out why exactly it did. Whether you think it’s the power of nature or the power of some higher being doesn’t change the outcome.”
“I can’t say that I’m a wholehearted believer, but I will check my presumptuousness in the future.”
“Good,” Marlie said. Then, more quietly: “Think about what my maman could have done if this country would have let her.”
He was going to answer that Marlie was an example of that, but that wasn’t true. Marlie had received more advantages, but in the end she was subject to the rules of the same society. Despite her name, and money, and skill, she was up in a hayloft running for her life because she could be sold on the basis of the color of her skin.
* * *
Later that evening, Ewan helped Marlie as she treated a baby who wouldn’t take its mother’s milk, a girl with a rash that covered her face and neck, and several older people with aching joints. Some people in the North assumed slave owners treated their slaves as they would any investment; they would have been surprised to see the sad state of these people who worked their lives away.
He wondered at the food Sallie had given them; his belly was full, and it had cost some of the people who gathered in the shack where Marlie tended to them. The fact that he’d been gone from the war so long had cost them, too. Ewan knew rationally that the War Between the States wasn’t contingent upon his participation, but he also knew that he’d gathered valuable intelligence before his run-in with Cahill and his time in the prisons. Any intelligence the North gathered brought them closer to victory—brought Sallie and her family and the other slaves closer to freedom.
“That’s it for now. Anything more and people will get suspicious,” Sallie said, handing them a few more pieces of chicken. “You should get on your way.”
“Thank you for your kindness,” Ewan said. He looked at the people around him. “We have food, if you need this here.”
“Consider it a loan,” Sallie said with a wink. “When you Yanks come riding in, you can pay me back then.”
Ewan nodded.
She kept pace with Marlie as they walked toward the forest. “I don’t know what you looking for when you get to Tennessee but I hope you find it.”
“I do too,” Marlie said. “I’ve never been so far away from home before.”
“The first thing I want to do after this war is won is go see things,” Sallie said. “Just walk out across this country and see everything I heard of and never got to see with my own eyes.”
“You sound so sure the North will win,” Marlie said.
“You the one with eyes like you can see the past and the future,” Sallie said. “You really think the South will win? You feel that they will?”
Marlie closed her eyes, inhaled, and then shook her head. “No.”
“Then I need to start planning. Think I might go out West and find me some gold.” She laughed softly. “Good luck.”
Ewan and Marlie walked off into the night once more.
“She said to just follow this star until we hit the railroad tracks, then we could follow those west,” Marlie said.
“Do you have any idea what you’re going to do when you get to Tennessee?” Ewan asked. Sallie’s words had brought to the fore the question that had been pressing at Ewan since he’d told Marlie she was coming with him. What would become of her?
“I’ll write to some acquaintances and see if there’s some way I can continue aiding them in the war effort,” she said.
“Continue?”
“It’s none of your concern,” she said.
Ewan took a deep breath.
“I have agreed not to touch you. I said I was a stranger to you, but that’s a lie. I care what happens to you and if you’re talking about contacting strange acquaintances, I want to help. I have connections too. There’s no reason I can’t—”
“I don’t need your help,” she said. “I’ll do just fine on my own.”
“Based on what evidence? To my knowledge this is the first time you’ve left Lynchwood without your sister or Tobias. A few days away from home doesn’t change the fact that you’re sheltered and inexperienced.”
He didn’t understand why she insisted on rebuffing his offer of help. It was illogical and irksome and just thinking of what could happen to her made Ewan’s hands curl into fists. Confederate soldiers weren’t the only danger to a woman like Marlie. The people who could hurt her without giving it a second thought were endless, and Ewan’s entire body went taut with anger at the thought of it.
Marlie made a sound with her tongue against her teeth. “You didn’t find me so sheltered and inexperienced that you didn’t touch me. Or is it okay to take advantage of a woman like me when you’re the one who benefits?”
Well. He had set himself up for that, he supposed.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve found our shelter and food, I’ve taken care of people, and I’m the one leading us to Tennessee! Stop acting like I’m just a lost little lamb!”
She marched off into the trees, and Ewan tried to gather his composure before resuming the conversation. She was right, but he wasn’t wrong. There had to be some rational compromise they could make about allowing him to help her.
“Marlie.” Her thrashing about in the underbrush abruptly stopped. The sound of cicadas and night birds filled in the silence she’d left behind. “Marlie?”
He sensed the gun against his back before he felt it, and reacted without thinking. He dropped to the ground, arm shooting up to grab the barrel and direct it away from him. Whoever was holding it pulled against the gun, digging their feet into the ground, and Ewan launched himself backward, knocking them down.
“Dammit,” a male voice croaked out, and Ewan jumped and turned, hand pressing into the fragile windpipe and cutting off any further sound.
“Marlie!” he called out, panic rising in him. His head was pounding, his breath was coming in gasps.
He needed to know where she was.
A flash of dancing red and yellow caught his attention and he turned his head to see a group of men coming toward him through the trees. One of them held Marlie, his hand clasped over her mouth as she struggled. Ewan’s gaze locked on her and he jumped to his feet, the gun he had taken from his assailant in his hand.
“Release her. Now,” he said. His voice came out as little more than a snarl.
“Looks like you’re a little low in numbers to be making demands,” said a shadowy figure from beside Marlie.
“Ouch!” the man holding her cried out, and then suddenly her voice rang out in the clearing.
“Show them the ribbon!”
Ewan had forgotten all about the red ribbon Penny had tied for him. He held up his wrist, as she’d commanded, revealing it.
“We are friends,” she said. “In fact, we are running from the same man who hunts you.”
“Anyone can wear a bit of red,” one man called out.
“And anyone can set upon a woman in the middle of the dark woods,” Ewan countered. “You call yourselves heroes?”
“Look at us!” Marlie said. “Do we look secesh to you?”
“Let her go,” one of the men said.
She came stumbling out beside Ewan, and he took her hand without thinking. A rumble of laughter spread through the woods, revealing that far more men were watching than he had thought. Far too many to even consider fisticuffs.
“We got two lovers in flight, men,” a man said. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“No,” Marlie said from beside him. “You’ve got one member of the Loyal League and one representative of the Army of the Potomac who are here to assist you.”
“Loyal League?” Ewan whispered. He’d known Marlie had mysterious depths, but she’d never mentioned they included spying. He had secrets of his own, but that didn’t stop the indignant betrayal he felt. “What are you doing?”
“Taking my life into my own hands for once,” she whispered back, harshly, then turned to the men. “Is anyone in need of medical attention?”