Ashes (5 page)

“Where were you headed?” Curzon asked Aberdeen.

“Spanish Florida,” Aberdeen said before he put a big spoonful of rice and beans into his mouth. “Twisted my ankle running and tried to hide in a tree. Would have made it, but the branch broke. So did my collarbone when I hit the ground.”

“Prentiss did the rest,” said Mister Walter.

That explained the boy's swollen eyes and the stiff way he walked.

“Fool doesn't have the sense God gave a goat.” Missus Serafina put the lid back on the barrel of peas and hit it sharply with a small mallet to make it fit tight. “Couldn't wait for the sun to set that day, had to be the first one across the field. Numbskull.”

Aberdeen scowled but said nothing.

Mister Walter took a sip of water, then asked, “See any soldiers close by?”

Curzon briefly described our adventure at the crossroads, giving details about the skirmish and the number of men on both sides. While he talked, I ate the beans and rice, tho' I tasted them not. My sister had denied me. Nothing else mattered.

“I thought all the British were holed up in Charleston,” Curzon finally said.

“Been terrible lawless out here since that city fell,” Mister Walter said.

I was heartily sick of hearing of armies and dangerous men. I murmured an excuse, stood up, and walked to the open door, where I could watch the barn for signs of Ruth.

“Why didn't you and your wife run?” I heard Curzon ask.

“Too old to move fast enough,” Mister Walter said. “Didn't want to put anyone in danger. If our Sirus and Jenny were still alive, they'd have put us on their backs and carried us. Our family would have been the first one gone.”

“Long gone,” added Missus Serafina.

“But they passed on years ago, and their children . . .” He paused for a moment, then cleared his throat. “We've no way of knowing where our grandbabies are. They were sold away from us. Mebbe that's why we became so fond of Ruth. She filled the hole in our hearts.”

No one spoke for a moment. Of all the wretched sins committed by the white people who stole our lives, the breaking of families was the most evil.

I needed to concentrate on the good of this circumstance, lest I lose my reason. Ruth was alive, had been well cared for. This old couple loved her and had raised her like she was one of their own. Indeed, she had become their own.

But did that mean she wasn't mine?

M
Y MIND WAS SORELY DISTRESSED AT THE THOUGHT OF BEING AGAIN REDUCED TO SLAVERY, AND SEPARATED FROM MY WIFE AND FAMILY.

–M
EMOIRS OF
B
OSTON
K
ING, WHO FLED SLAVERY TO JOIN THE
B
RITISH ARMY

D
ON'T STAND THERE IDLE,” MISSUS
Serafina said, motioning for me to join her at the worktable. “Help me sort these peas.”

I wiped the tears off my face, shook my head to clear away the clouds of melancholy, and took my place next to her. Her twisted fingers rubbed each pea slow and careful before she set it in the pot. I realized that her left eye was gone milky, and her right was not much better. Missus Serafina was nearly blind.

“Why don't you sit awhile?” I asked.

“I might just do that,” she said, sliding the heavy bowl over to me. “But you make sure to do the job right. No one likes stones in their soup.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I promised.

Missus Serafina dished out more food for the fellows at the table, then joined them with a bowl of her own. The conversating fell into the weary, familiar subject of the war. The fatigue of the long night fell across my thoughts like a welcome shroud. My hands fell into the rhythm of choosing the good from the bad:
Pea, pea,
pebble. Pea. Pea. Pebble. Pea.
I didn't look up until the bowl was empty some time later, startled to find I was alone with the old lady.

My heart pounded. Why was this happening, this dropping out of time and awareness? We were in dire circumstances. I needed to be alert; I needed to understand what we'd walked into.

“Your friend offered to split wood for us.” She poured hot water into a basin to wash the dirty bowls and mugs. “We're running low.”

The sound of chopping came through the window, and I felt more at ease. Curzon was close by.

“If you have another axe, I can help him.”

“The way your mind wanders?” she chuckled. “Cut your foot off, you would. You might could dry a few dishes if you want.” She handed me a cloth and pared a few soap shavings into the steaming water.

We worked in quiet, punctuated by the sound of the axe cleaving wood. She waited a bit before she asked the question that I knew was coming.

“How'd you come by that?” She pointed a soapy finger at the scar on my cheek in the shape of the letter
I
.

“Madam Lockton, with the help of a judge in New York.” As I spoke that hated name, I realized that Missus Serafina would understand better than anyone, so I continued. “When she told me that Ruth had been sold to the islands, I fought her. She had me arrested, and”–I motioned to my face–“the court took her side in the matter.”

Missus Serafina scrubbed hard at rice stuck to the bottom of a bowl. “That woman has a serpent where her soul should be.”

“Is she in Charleston?” I asked.

“Madam?” Missus Serafina chuckled low. “She and her mister got tired of the war. They're in London now, waiting for it to end.”

“London?” I could scarce credit her words. “London in England?”

“The very same.” She chuckled again. “I can just see Madam trying to worm her way into the Queen's parlor, and that old Queen telling a footman to shut the door in her pointy face.”

Loathing and rage against the Lockton woman had been the other constant in my heart as I'd searched for Ruth. Just as it had never occurred to me that Ruth wouldn't be happy to see me, I'd never once considered that my greatest enemy had fled over the sea to England. So much of what I thought to be true had been overturned in the course of one morning, I knew not the difference between up and down.

“That when you ran off? When they burned you?”

Missus Serafina's question tugged me back. “No, ma'am. That was in the summertime. I didn't learn that Ruth had been sent to Carolina instead of the islands till after Christmas. That's when I ran.” I paused. “That's when we ran.”

Before I knew it, I was pouring out our story to her in a way that I'd never done before. I described the frozen January night we escaped New York, then arguing with Curzon for months until the two of us went our separate ways, and the way Fate had brought us together again at the Valley Forge encampment. I explained all we'd endured there and how we'd run from Bellingham, the cursed man who'd tried to claim us as his property. By the time we'd finished the dishes and mixed up a batch of corn bread, I'd told her of the years we'd worked our way to Riverbend and the troubles that had slowed our journey.

Missus Serafina spread the corn bread batter into a spider pan and set it over the glowing coals that she'd raked to the front of the hearth. She slowly stood up and wiped her hands on her apron.

“And you haven't married the lad?” she asked.

My face flushed hot. “Like he said, we are respectable friends, nothing more.”

“Do you love him?”

“We are often at odds.”

“Sounds like a marriage to me,” she said. “How long you plan on staying?”

“Hadn't planned, in truth. I figgered Ruth was in Charleston. Only came here to see what we could learn about her circumstances.”

The pain inside my heart reached and clutched at my throat. I was caught in the worst nightmare imaginable, worse than anything I'd ever endured . . . worse than all of it combined. It felt as if the firmament of my world, of my soul, was cracking, and I didn't know how to stop it.

“Child?” Missus Serafina hobbled over to me. “What is the matter?”

I cleared my throat, forced out the words. “I . . . I never thought she'd forget me. She must have been so scared, she was so little then. I . . .” My voice was raw and ragged. “I'm so grateful, ma'am, so blessed that you and your husband cared for her, you love her and . . .”

My heart and my dreams broke at the same time. I sobbed loudly as I fell apart into countless pieces. The old woman wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close. She rocked me gently as I cried and cried and cried. Just as I thought the storm within me had ended, that motherly voice quietly whispered, “Hush now,” and I broke out in fresh sobs.

When finally the well of my tears ran dry, she sat me at the table, made me drink a mug of milk sweetened with honey, and gave me a clean rag to wipe my face with.

“You been too strong,” she said firmly. “I know about that. Strong starts out being the right thing. Your hands grow strong enough for your work. Your back strengthens under your burdens. Soon your mind becomes strongest of all; has to be to get through the hard days. You were mighty strong to come so far after our Ruth. That is a blessing indeed. But you haven't cried like that in a long time, have you?”

I shook my head, feeling like a child.

“Don't forget how to be gentle,” she warned. “Don't let the hardness of the world steal the softness of your heart. The greatest strength of all is daring to love. Now, you remember I told you that.”

I took a sip of sweet milk. “Yes, ma'am, I shall. Thank you.”

She dipped a rag in the hot wash water and rubbed at the worktable. “Where do you go from here?”

“Home,” I said. “To Rhode Island.”

“Your kin there?”

I paused. “We just have each other. Our parents died a long time ago.”

“Then why go back?”

“It's home.”

“You own a house there? A big farm, with chickens that Ruth can fuss over?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But I will. I'm smart, strong, and I work harder than most. I'm a fair hand when it comes to needlework, too. I can take care of her.”

Her gaze met mine, but I did not understand the expression on her weathered face. Outside Curzon's axe fell regular as the pendulum on a windup clock.

“I can see that she has a home here,” I said quietly. “But she needs to come with me.”

Missus Serafina rinsed out the rag in the bucket. “I agree.”

“You do?”

“Course, I do. I wanted her to run off with the others, but she wouldn't leave us.” She hung the rag from a peg on the wall. “Ruth is the most stubborn child ever walked, except maybe for you.”

“She acts like you are her family.”

“We are.” A tear escaped from the corner of her blind eye. “That means you are part of our family too.” She smiled. “That's why I can tell you how you ought live your life.”

“She . . .” I paused to swallow the lump that kept bobbing up in my throat. “She told me to go away.”

“I'll talk to her.” Missus Serafina rested her hand on mine. “Then we'll assemble the things you'll need.”

“Need for what?”

“You're leaving as soon as dark falls. All three–”

Aberdeen flung himself through the door, dust covered and gasping.

“Horses!” he cried. “Prentiss is back!”

W
ELL, NOW COMES THE DAY OF TERROR.

–L
ETTER FROM
E
LIZA
W
ILKINSON OF
S
OUTH
C
AROLINA DESCRIBING SOLDIERS INVADING HER HOME

H
OW FAR?” MISSUS SERAFINA ASKED
. “How many?”

“Two strangers and Prentiss,” Aberdeen panted. “Just turned down the lane.”

“Get them in the loft,” she said, hurrying to put away the clean mugs and bowls. “Ruth is already in the barn. Stay with them up there.”