Chapter 6
Six
I wake to a cacophony of voices, my eyes snapping open, the remnants of my dream fading like fog.
The sun accosts my eyes, too bright. I spring to my feet, just as the owner of the fruit stall arrives.
He swats at me with his meaty hands, landing a glancing blow on my right ear.
“Out with you, boy! You’ll steal naught from me! ”
I flee, hiding my face from the crowds queuing in front of the stalls.
I ignore the pangs of hunger that the freshly caught fish and hearty boules of bread stir as I rush from the market.
I’ve slept much too late. The wharves are swarming with sailors from every far-flung corner of the globe, humming with languages both foreign and familiar.
They pay me no mind as they go about their work, but at this late hour, finding a solitary skiff to take me to the marshes will prove challenging.
I’m nearly to Fitzsimon’s Wharf when I hear a shred of conversation that stops me in place.
A longshoreman, with skin as dark as a storm and the kind of broad shoulders his work imparts, holds court like a king, leaning against a stanchion with several young men gathered around him.
“They found another girl last night,” he says.
“Over on Judith. Not a drop of blood in her body. A wealthy one this time. My Minnie is scared. But it seems he’s going after white women, and you all know what that means.
” The longshoreman shakes his head. “Sergeant Wesley was asking all sorts of questions this morning. If you’re a free man, make sure you have your papers on you.
Stay quiet and keep your head down. After your work is done, go straight home, well before the curfew bells ring.
If you’re a slave, be even more mindful. ”
A murmur ripples through the crowd of Negroes, their voices low.
Papa told me how often the finger of blame lands on men just like these—whether free or enslaved—whose every move is scrutinized, cataloged, and viewed with suspicion, simply because of the color of their skin.
The sense of vigilant wariness I feel now is something these men deal with every single day.
Two murders. In less than a fortnight. Both bodies drained of blood. This is no coincidence. It’s a pattern. For once, I’m not thinking of being captured, or of going back to jail. I’m thinking about the predator haunting these streets. A killer who might be anyone. Anywhere.
I pat my pockets, reassured by the weight of the coins there.
I have money. My jewelry. The knife tied to my thigh, beneath my breeches.
After buying a bottle of ale, some dried venison, and apples from the market, I find a dock with skiffs bobbing hopefully in the water and a sign tacked to the wooden post: Boats for Hire, with various landings and their tolls listed below.
I approach an ancient man leaning against the railing, his sun-bronzed forearms knotted with muscle.
“Hello, are you for hire? Can you take me across the river?”
“Yep.” He gestures wordlessly at one of the skiffs, and I lower myself into the shallow-berthed boat. He unties the skiff and joins me, taking up his oars. “Where to?”
“Hog Island, please.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Ain’t nothing there, boy.”
“I know.”
He merely grunts and shoves off, sweeping the oars steadily against the current. I’m grateful he doesn’t ask me questions for which I don’t have answers.
The crossing is choppy and tedious with a single oarsman.
Mid-channel, a miserable, spitting rain kicks up.
It frightens me, being out on the water in such a small boat.
I’ve never learned how to swim. My mind goes dire with a thousand tragic fantasies.
It would be the ultimate irony for me to survive my own execution and premature burial only to drown in the Cooper.
I huddle in the bow of the boat and cover my head with my cloak, convincing myself that the constant rocking is a comfort rather than something to be frightened of.
We make portage on a sand spit spiked with spartina, and after running the skiff aground, the boatman helps me out. I’m still shaking as my boots sink into the pluff mud. I pay him generously for his trouble and help him to shove off again.
And then I am alone.
I turn slowly, taking in the marsh’s unfettered wildness.
The wind cuts across the desolate scrap of beach, frigid on my skin.
Over the river, I can see the city’s many steeples and, farther out, the shallow profile of Fort Sumter, which brings William to mind.
I wonder whether he’s there, patrolling its battlements.
Whether he was disappointed that he didn’t get to see me hanged.
He loved Rebecca fiercely. Everyone did.
And who could blame them? She was beautiful.
Charming. Everything I was not. Arabella had been right about one thing: I was jealous.
Were it not for Rebecca, I’d be a married woman—an officer’s wife—with children of my own.
And if she hadn’t died, even if she married William, at least I’d be a governess by now, teaching wealthy children how to read.
It’s futile to think about what might have been.
I push aside my resentment and trudge across the beach, shells crunching underfoot, and make my way to solid ground, where a stand of sycamore and pine promises shelter from the rain.
I shiver beneath my cloak, hunger clawing at my belly.
Once I reach the copse of trees, I sit on a fallen log and eat an apple, savoring its sweetness on my tongue.
I chew down to the core and toss it into the underbrush.
My provisions won’t last long, even with rationing.
I’ll have to learn how to hunt out here.
How to forage and fish. My life has become a game of survival, my existence now at the mercy of this desolate place and whatever sustenance nature provides.
Once more, I’m struck by everything I’ve lost.
My life was easy, before prison. And while my time in jail hardened me, and made me resilient, it did not equip me for a life in the wilderness. I’m ill-prepared. Afraid of what might be lurking in the shadows. The streets of the city were at least familiar to me.
As if taunting me, the distant bells of Saint Philip’s ring out the hour—nine o’clock—and the other church bells follow, the wind carrying their chorus to me.
Mother will be rising about now. Has her routine changed at all, since Papa’s passing?
Will she dress in her mourning clothes and entertain callers?
Before Papa’s antislavery sentiments were discovered, she was one of the most celebrated hostesses in the city.
Now Mother is an outcast among them. Their ostracism was her punishment for being a fallen daughter of the planter aristocracy.
The wife of an abolitionist. I wonder, briefly, if she’ll go back to buying slaves to prove herself worthy of the chivalry’s good graces.
I wouldn’t be surprised. She and Papa were at odds over the matter of slavery, and she resented him for giving her lifelong lady’s maid her freedom papers.
Mother was ever doing her best to maintain the status quo.
I take a swig of ale and curl up with my back against the fallen log, listening to the sounds of the swamp.
At first, everything is quiet, as if the marsh is holding its breath at my intrusion.
But then I hear the call of a heron. A bittern’s throaty warble.
Life is everywhere here, apart from man’s bustle and hum.
Prison acclimated me to loneliness, to solitude.
Though the openness of the marsh is unsettling, I could manage to be happy out here, I think, with the sky as my ceiling and the trees my shelter.
I finish my ale, then drift off to sleep.
When I wake, the sun hangs low, a wash of pink swathing the sky.
I rise and stretch with a satisfied groan.
A twig snaps, behind me. I whirl, widening my stance defensively, my eyes scanning the tangled underbrush.
It’s probably only a wild creature—a raccoon, or a deer, grazing at dusk.
But if it’s one of the wild hogs the island is named for, or worse yet, the murderer—
There’s another snap, and a rustle. A flash through the trees, so fast I nearly miss it.
Panic floods my limbs with cold fire. I slide my hand beneath my waistband, fingers curling around the kitchen knife tied to my outer thigh.
“Who’s there? Is someone there?” The air stills, and a shiver of anticipation runs up my back.
My heartbeat drums in my ears, but I strain to listen over its frantic rhythm.
There’s nothing. Only the distant coo of a mourning dove.
The gentle swoop of a pelican coasting overhead.
Several minutes pass. Although I hear nothing more, the sense of being watched lingers.
I sit again, my posture rigid against the rotting log.
I’m not alone out here. And though, for a moment, I convince myself I imagined it, I know what I saw. Eyes. And a glimpse of a white shirtsleeve.