A Hope Divided by Alyssa Cole (6)

CHAPTER 5

“What do you mean you can’t go back to the tent? The temperature is dropping and it’s gonna be colder than a witch’s tit, spring be damned.” Keeley handed Ewan his haversack, as he’d been asked, then shoved his hands into his pockets and shuddered.

“I’m afraid I can’t hang about here any longer,” Ewan said quietly from where he squatted beneath one of the lone remaining trees. Campfires opened up spots of light in an uneven pattern across the yard and he backed farther into the shadows as he checked the sack for the only item he’d really wanted: The Enchiridion, with Marlie’s letters folded safely between its pages. Keeley had nothing else with him, which concerned Ewan. “I think some officers are going to scarper tonight, and I intend to join them. That’s why I told you to bring your things, too.”

“You make it sound as if leaving is a simple task,” Keeley said.

Ewan wouldn’t call escaping simple, exactly, but it was certainly manageable. He simply hadn’t tried too hard, for reasons he couldn’t examine too closely. He was getting out and returning to his duty now, though. That was what mattered. Keeley would join him.

“What if these men are caught, and you’re caught with them?” Keeley asked. He stopped, and his thin frame was wracked by an awful, phlegmy cough. “Besides, we have a pretty good thing going. We can ride out the war and—”

Ewan’s firm shake of the head stopped the man’s wishful thinking. “Whatever you’re saying right now is motivated by fear, not logic. Be sensible, Keeley. You’re sick and getting sicker.”

“When the darkies come back, your freak-eyed lady can give me something to make everything right. They have to let them back in sometime, right?”

Ewan gritted his teeth against the way Keeley blithely dismissed the people he expected to provide his salvation, and against the thought that if Marlie did return, he wouldn’t be there.

All for the best, his mind said, but his chest cramped in a way that belied that.

“Keeley, there’s no guarantee of their return or that she’ll be able to help you if they do,” Ewan said, but he saw his answer in Keeley’s dull eyes and closed-off expression. “Or of riding out the war here, for that matter.”

“Well, there’s no guarantees out there, either,” Keeley said, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets. He shrugged. Twisted his lips.

Ewan sighed. His mind was spinning counterarguments, but common sense was no match against stubbornness and Keeley was as stubborn as they come. “You can have my tent and bedroll. Dig into the ground at the head of the bedroll and you’ll find a metal tin with some greenbacks to use if these guards ever come to understand that their purpose here isn’t to kill us.”

Ewan didn’t have much hope in that coming to pass, but he’d taken out what he thought he’d need for safe passage and could only hope that Keeley would be able to make use of the rest of it.

Keeley nodded, then reluctantly stuck out his hand, which Ewan grasped firmly.

He stopped. He’d learned long ago that wishes were about as useful as a holey fishing net. Wishes hadn’t kept his mother and siblings safe from his father. Ewan’s logic had done that. And though he should have regretted how things had turned out back then, the day his father had taken his rifle, walked out into the woods, and never come back had been one of relief for him.

“Be safe, Red.”

Ewan nodded but didn’t offer the same platitude. He knew Keeley was already searching for the next man who could be useful to him instead of thinking of how he could be useful to himself. Ewan didn’t judge him for his weakness—not much at least.

Keeley stumbled off, and Ewan felt a pang of guilt as the man stopped and looked helplessly about him, then continued on until he melted into one of the clusters of prisoners. Ewan pulled his gaze away; he had to keep track of those who held the key to his success, not those who wouldn’t even believe in the possibility of their own.

The barber and the other officer sat around a nearby fire, close to the darkness that rimmed the yard. Two other officers sat with them. He could hear their crude jokes, and then the songs they sang, but as it grew closer to time for everyone to retire—and for the nightly shift exchange for the prison guards—he noticed first one face disappear from around the firelight, and then another.

Ewan crept in the shadows between fires, keeping his steps silent. For a moment, he was a child again, creeping past his father as the man stared bitterly into the distance. Those years of living like a skittish cat had trained him well—no one paid heed as he passed the various groups of prisoners. Men talked and bluffed and gambled as they did every night at Randolph. Guards lazed about, as drowsy and ready for sleep as those they kept watch over.

Ewan walked on, toward an area that made the best sense for digging an escape tunnel. It was one he’d scouted out himself, although digging out had been one of several plans he’d come up with. Each plan had its dangers, but digging had also required a group of conspirators and he hadn’t trusted anyone besides Keeley.

Ewan’s trust only extended so far. Keeley knew nothing about him. If they were ever to meet again, the only thing the man who had been his closest friend in the prison would be able to recall was his name, maybe, and his restless energy. No one really knew Ewan, and that was for the better.

As he approached the looming wall of the stockade at the farthest point of the camp, he caught sight of shadows moving within shadows. It wasn’t a trick of the eye—it was the possibility of freedom.

The men had dug at the point farthest from the watch house. When the guard’s shift change occurred, they had their backs to this point for the longest period of time, and it took the longest for their replacements to arrive.

“And to think, I was worried about losing nearly a stone,” one man whispered. “But if it helps me shimmy through that tunnel, it’d be worth it. Come on, men. Abe’s waiting on us.”

Ewan crouched in the darkness, close enough to make out the men’s figures as the first man crawled down into the hole and began making his way through. A joke broke the silence between them every now and then, but not the tension. Forcing oneself into the earth driven only by the hope of emerging on the other side was a mad type of bravery, even for a man well-acquainted with the threat of death.

“Okay, who’s in next? Down you go, Hendricks.”

Ewan glanced about in the darkness, checking to see that none of the new shift guards had arrived early or none of the old shift guards had turned back. He was hoping the following men would move at a quicker clip, or he’d be in trouble. That was when he heard it.

There was a quick, sharp groan from the direction of the escaping prisoners. Not one made by men, but by wood. He heard something snap loudly—rope?—and then a more prolonged groan.

“Shit, it’s coming down,” someone shouted, fear overriding the imperative for quiet. Ewan couldn’t see it, not in this darkness, but he could hear the steady groan and the popping of twisted fibers and came to the only logical conclusion: A section of the stockade was falling. It appeared that although the men had had the sense to pick the perfect place to escape, they had chosen to dig near a point of support in the hastily erected wooden fence.

“Jesus. Run!”

There was an ungodly moan and then an impact that echoed through the camp loudly enough to wake the dead. Dirt and debris carried by the fence’s impact with the ground prickled against Ewan’s face.

The attempt was over, it seemed . . . or was it? The officers had scattered as soon as the fence began to fall, but now a section lay on the ground, leaving a wide-open path. A cool breeze pushed its way through the opening, cutting through the stench of the camp and funneling the scent of pine to Ewan.

He didn’t think. One moment he was crouching, the next he was sprinting forward, hopping onto the remains of the section of fence and running along it toward freedom. His execrable excuse for shoes tapped loudly against the wood with each long stride, and the logs rolled this way and that as he ran, forcing him to readjust his balance with every step. Behind him he heard a commotion. A gunshot rang out and he wasn’t sure if it was aimed at him or some other unlucky prisoner.

He hopped down onto solid earth, and relief shuddered up his leg at the contact. The ground was no different from what he’d just been crouching on, and he was still deep in Confederate territory, but he felt the fury of Athena springing from Zeus’s forehead surge through him as he leapt into freedom. He made no clarion call to the sky, however; he was no god or goddess, just a mortal who would now have to cower and crawl his way toward Union-held territory.

“Mmmmph!” He almost bypassed the muffled cry, but then he saw the vein of caved-in ground, and the pale hand sticking up in the moonlight. For a moment he thought to keep running; it was logical after all. Instead, he stopped and quickly began scooping up fistfuls of the soft dirt until a face was slowly revealed. His barber.

“Thank you,” the man said. His breathing was labored, his eyes wide as he strained against the heavy dirt. He was wiggling his way up through the soil, slowly, and Ewan tried pulling at his hand to speed things, but to no avail. Another shot, closer this time. More shouts, and the baying of a hound.

“Go,” the officer said. “Go quickly! Toward the river!”

“Good luck,” Ewan said. He didn’t think of what would happen to the officer when he was found. He hoped that by some turn of chance, he’d find his way out, too. But he followed the man’s command, running heedlessly because caution was a luxury he no longer had.

The dog howled again, and was joined by another.

He repeated the phrase in his mind as he had been taught when he was a child, giving himself a single task to focus on.

Ewan ran into something solid and thick at chest level, the hard thwack of it knocking him down onto his ass. A tree branch? No, it was an obstruction made of flesh; solid as oak, but all too human. He looked up and was able to make out a dark figure in the pittance of moonlight that shone down.

“Where are the others?” The whisper was harsh, hurried.

A bit of relief loosened the muscles in his back, which had been tensed and ready to spring upon the man. It seemed the appendage belonged to an ally and not a foe.

“Captured,” he replied, easing his way back. Just because he was an ally of the officers didn’t mean he’d be one to Ewan. “They brought down the stockade with their tunneling.”

There was a heavy sigh, followed by shouts from the direction of the prison.

“Let’s move. Now.” A hand reached down and interlocked with Ewan’s, the strong grip levering him up. Ewan made out the man’s shape turning in the darkness. After that his focus was fully on the man’s back, struggling to keep up, to move silently, to not fall and be left behind as they dashed through the dark woods. They crashed through trees, splashed through shallows in the river to evade the scent-seeking dogs. After what seemed like ages, Ewan realized he could no longer hear any sign of pursuit. He wasn’t sure if that was because they were no longer being chased or if the beat of his heart and the wheeze of his breath blocked out all other sound.

Ewan ran without heed of his surroundings, his sense trained on keeping up with his ally in the darkness. He regretted his tunnel vision when his foot came down into a hole and he fell forward, painfully wrenching his ankle.

He didn’t cry out as pain blasted through his ankle. “I’ve injured my ankle,” he said calmly, even as he struggled to his feet.

“Can you walk?” came the terse response.

Ewan tentatively tried to rest his weight on his injured ankle and bit back a low grunt as a million hooks of pain pulled in different directions as he applied pressure.

“I can manage.” He took a step toward the man’s voice and his ankle gave out from under him. He collapsed again, catching himself on his hands this time. “You can leave me. You’ve helped enough. Thank you.”

Ewan felt nothing at the thought of being left. It was often the most sensible solution to a problem, though rarely used because human decency and logic sometimes sat on opposite sides of the fence.

“I won’t,” the man bit out. “Besides, if you get picked up by a patrol, you could lead back to us, and I can’t take any chances.”

“I wouldn’t talk,” Ewan said. He wasn’t lying.

“So you say.” The man sighed. “I knew something like this would happen. All right, come on then.”

He knelt and pulled Ewan’s arm over his shoulders, sliding an arm around his torso to support his weight. They made their way slowly, Ewan trying his best not to be a burden. They soon arrived at the perimeter of a property. There they came upon a shack—Ewan could make out the silhouette of a large house in the distance—and the man used a key on the padlock that held it closed.

“In here for now,” he said brusquely, but his touch was gentle and slow with his own fatigue as he helped Ewan inside.

“Thank you,” Ewan managed. The words seemed inadequate, but the man gave his shoulder a pat and then moved back into the night, closing and locking the door behind him.

Ewan sat slumped against the wall of the shack, imagining what else filled the dark space. Gardening implements? Food? Weapons?

He lay with the dull sensations that throbbed through him, accepting the burst of red behind his eyes when he shifted his leg too quickly and jarred his ankle. He breathed through the pain. The stitch in his side and the dryness of his lips, his battered feet encased in shoes that had lost their soles miles before they reached wherever he’d found himself. All of those painful things were simply reminders that he was alive, ones that he dearly needed from time to time.

Ewan started up into a sitting position at the scratch of a key searching for the lock, although he hadn’t heard any footsteps. Had he fallen asleep? Likely.

The door opened and two figures stepped in, closing it behind them. A match was struck and held to the wick of a candle. The brightness dazzled him at first, and then he was sure he must be dreaming, because there was Marlie’s face illuminated in the circle of soft light. Her hair was braided into a crown on her head, like the laurel of antiquity, and her shoulders were bare save for a fold of white material.

Had his fantasy come to life?

Then the light flickered as she made some adjustment. She pulled her robe closed, a dark, heavy wool that covered her to the neck.

She stepped closer, and then those eyes that haunted his fantasies went wide. “Socrates?”

“I’ve been called such before,” he said, his pain well and truly forgotten. Ewan realized that his mouth had curved up into a smile, rather inappropriate given his current situation. He frowned, hoping to balance it out into some semblance of seriousness. “I also go by Ewan McCall.”

The man who had guided him stepped into the light and Ewan recognized the same wry expression he’d seen a month or so ago. Get in line, son.

“And you’re Tobias,” Ewan said. “Thank you for your help.” Tobias seemed a bit taken aback that Ewan knew his name, and he heaved a sigh when he turned to Marlie.

“You’ve injured your ankle, I hear,” she said in that lovely cadence that he heard every time he read her letters to himself.

“He wouldn’t be here otherwise,” Tobias said. “I told you—”

“Well, he’s here now, so let’s see what we can do.” She knelt before him and lifted his leg up so that the heel of his foot rested between her thighs, and Ewan let out a strangled sound that she mistook for pain.

“I’m sorry.” Her hands went to the hem of his too-short pants, raising them a bit to get a better view of his ankle, and her brows drew together at what she saw. Ewan’s gaze was so fixated on her face that he didn’t notice what her hands were doing until pain radiated through his ankle. He didn’t allow himself to cry out.

“Can you move your foot this way and that?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

She stared at him. “So do it.”

Ewan let out a pained laugh at his attempt. “Perhaps my injury is graver than I imagined.”

“Perhaps.” She began pulling off his shoe, gently, and Ewan found himself caught in a strange matrix of arousal and pain—and embarrassment. She was fresh and smelled of flowers, and he needed a scouring to be anywhere near clean. Still, she didn’t wrinkle her nose as she settled the heel of his bare foot back between her thighs, squeezing to hold it in place as she examined it. Ewan was acutely aware that she wore nothing but a shift beneath her robe.

“Looks like a sprain. A bad one. I don’t think you’ll get far if you try to go anywhere for the next few days.”

“Sarah is going to have my hide for this,” Tobias muttered, pacing behind Marlie.

“She said no new operations,” Marlie said. “This was already in place. Besides, if you hadn’t gone, what would have become of him?”

“Him? What about the others? I went for a group of men, not one.”

“Even one man is worth saving,” she said, a serious tone to her voice that Ewan had never heard before.

Tobias finally stopped pacing, his sigh indicating his acquiescence.

“He can rest out here for a spell, I suppose,” he said, peering over Marlie’s shoulder as she worked. “Melody’s been sticking that pointy little nose of hers everywhere in the house, but here is safe enough.”

“Hm. I’m not sure I agree.” Marlie’s voice was softer now, distracted, as she opened a bottle and soaked a strip of cloth with its contents. A strong herbal scent filled the air—Ewan picked up notes of sage and peppermint—and then she began wrapping the cool, damp cloth around his injury. “This shed is away from the house, that’s true, but he might be discovered at any time.”

Ewan watched the scene before him play out with detached curiosity. He combed through every bit of gossip he’d heard about Sarah Lynch: freed her slaves, paid her black staff, probable Unionist, gave freely to those imprisoned by the Confederates. At the prison he had assumed that Marlie and Tobias were at the same level, but there was something about the dynamic between them. He was deferential, as if he worked for Marlie. Which meant . . .

“Are you a Lynch?” Ewan asked, only realizing how tactless it was when both sets of eyes narrowed in his direction.

“The Lynches have the distinction of holding me in their ranks,” she said without looking up at him. He assumed the jolt his ankle received as she worked was a coincidence. Tobias rolled his eyes and resumed the conversation Ewan had interrupted.

“Melody never came out here before,” he said. “You think she’d be caught dead doing anything close to work?”

Marlie’s lips pursed. “She hasn’t come here yet, Tobias. But she could, and she likely will eventually to see what else she can try to claim as her own. Or if she keeps hinting to her Home Guard friends, Lynchwood might be searched. There’s only one place she has no access to, that would be overlooked in a search, and we both know it.”

“No,” Tobias said, drawing himself up tall. “It’s too dangerous. We need to go get Sarah.”

One corner of Marlie’s mouth turned up, as if the idea of danger was exciting, and Ewan felt the pull of her despite his throbbing muscles. “You knew it was dangerous when I asked you to do this, and yet you went out into the night to help those men. If I ask you to put yourself at risk, I must also be willing to do my part. I will handle Sarah.” She finished wrapping Ewan’s ankle and sighed. “Besides, one malnourished Yank won’t change our odds too much, given everything else.”

They looked at Ewan at the same time again, Tobias annoyed, Marlie unreadable.

“Do you know how to be quiet, Socrates?” she asked.

He nearly laughed, thinking of all those nights curled in a corner with a book in front of him; he’d peek over the top after slowly turning each page to make sure the quiet swish hadn’t caught his father’s attention.

“I’m well practiced in the art of silence, Miss Marlie.”

Finally, she smiled at him, and it was like the cool breeze that had induced him to run toward freedom back at the camp. Something danced through him, and he tore his gaze from her face. No feeling should have been dancing, prancing, or otherwise happily making itself known at the sight of her. Fantasizing about Marlie had been one thing, but this was reality, and in reality he was a man who was neither worthy of her nor available for attachment.

He forced himself to his feet, taking the pain and focusing on it instead of Marlie’s beauty.

“Come with me,” she said.