Chapter 11
Eleven
The next day, Ruby arrives for her lessons at noon, eager to learn.
We go over the alphabet again, which she recites to me twice, without hesitation.
I carefully open the primer, its binding worn from years of use.
The illustrations are puritanical, and the language antiquated, but they’ll serve our purpose all the same.
“In Adam’s fall, we sinned all,” I recite, and Ruby follows, tracing her finger over the words. Everything is going well, until we get to the letter F.
“The idle fool is whipt at school.”
Ruby glances at me, then at the book. She pulls her lower lip inward. Her posture stiffens.
“What’s the matter, Ruby?” I ask.
“I can’t . . . I can’t say that, ma’am.” Her voice is soft, tremulous. She looks at me, her eyes wide. “You ever been whipped before?”
I have been. By the cook, at jail. I still remember the painful welts from her lash. “Yes. Once.”
Ruby grunts. “Well.”
“Let’s move on, shall we?”
But things don’t improve. The dismal alphabet is full of recrimination and punitive rhymes.
Ruby goes silent after “J for Job,” her hands folded on her lap.
Job’s story of suffering is certainly a somber one, but there seems to be something else going on beneath the surface of Ruby’s reticence. I close the primer and set it aside.
“Ruby, what’s the matter? We were doing so well.”
“I’m just tired. That’s all.”
But there’s something deeper behind her eyes. An old hurt I can’t fathom.
“If there’s something bothering you, Ruby, you can talk to me. You can trust me.”
She sucks in a quick breath, draws her lower lip into her mouth.
“They use Bible stories and verses . . .” she says, her words trailing away.
“The masters. They use them to make us think our suffering is some kind of glory. To keep us down. Their preaching ain’t no kind of blessing.
” She looks at me, her eyes narrowing. “Their god is mean.”
A wave of shame washes over me. I’ve witnessed what prison does to the enslaved.
How the warden forces them to labor. How they are sent to the jail by their masters, to be punished.
I should have considered Ruby’s past when I chose the materials to teach her.
I was rash. I push the book away. “I’m so sorry, Ruby.
We’ll choose something else to learn with.
No more Bible verses or stories. No moralizing. ”
“I . . . I do want to learn to read, Miss Mary. I do.”
“I know. But there are other books you might learn from. How about I read a story to you, instead?”
I open the other book to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and begin to read, running my finger along the sentences while Ruby looks on.
Eventually, her shoulders lower and her demeanor softens, drawn in by this charming story about a bachelor schoolmaster sent to the haunted countryside.
Although I worry when we get to the passages about Mr. Crane’s classroom discipline, Ruby seems unbothered, given the context of the words and the schoolmaster’s apparent favor for the meek over the strong.
“I like this, much better,” she says after a while. “Can I try?”
I place the book in front of her and point to a sentence. “You’ve seen this word several times, Ruby. What is it?”
“‘All.’ A-L-L.”
“Yes! Very good.”
She smiles. I point to the next word. “This one is longer, but you’ve seen a similar word as well.”
“‘The’?” she asks.
“Yes. Now, put an s on the end of it and extend the e sound. It’s called a long e.”
“Thes . . . these.” Her eyes brighten. “All these!”
“Yes!”
She progresses through the phrase with focused deliberation, until she’s nearly read the entire thing: All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness . . .
We talk about commas and semicolons, and then I close the book to mark our place, noting Ruby’s yawn and my own aching legs and back, stiff from hours of sitting.
“Why don’t you lie down on the davenport, Ruby, and take a nap, until your father comes to fetch you.
We’ve done a lot today, and a young mind needs rest. You’re safe here, I promise. ”
“Maybe I will, just for a little while. To rest my eyes. I won’t be able to come tomorrow. We’ve got to empty the crab traps. It takes all day.”
“All the more reason for you to rest.”
She nestles onto the leather-covered sofa in front of the crackling hearth. I cover her with a woolen blanket and leave her, closing the library door behind me.
I find Alex on the upper piazza, looking out over the marsh. He turns at the sound of my step on the boards, greeting me with a smile. “I heard you and Ruby laughing. Things are going well, I take it?”
I join him at the railing, basking in the warm glow of the lowering sun.
“Yes, she’s a quick and clever study.” I consider telling him about Ruby’s response to the primer but decide not to.
I’ve apologized to Ruby and will be more careful in the future.
I don’t want to give Alex any reason to question my abilities or cause undue concern.
“I’m not surprised she’s catching on quickly. She’s a bright girl.” Alex clears his throat. “I’ve been wondering about you, Mary. How did you come to be all alone out here? An educated young woman, who can read and write . . . quite rare for a vagrant.”
I school my face into a neutral expression. “I hoped to be a governess, but I was orphaned at a young age and was forced to leave my education behind. My father was a soldier. He died in the Mexican War.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
The lie about Papa is smooth, impressive, and believable, just as I hoped it would be. Now I just need the right sort of lie for Mother. “My mother passed when I was just a few days old—of puerperal fever. After Papa died, I was on my own.”
“Ah.” Alex turns to me, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “Yet your posture and manners are those of a gently bred woman. A lady. I watched you, last night, when we dined together. Absolutely impeccable, wiping your mouth before every sip of wine.”
I stumble over my words, trying to recover my wits. “Papa was an officer. He could afford a governess. She taught me proper etiquette. Dancing.”
“So, an officer who could afford a governess for his daughter, but died without leaving her either a pension or a guardian? You’re hardly the street urchin you’ve made yourself out to be, Miss Jones.”
I freeze, taken aback by his return to formality. “What do you mean?”
“Who are you? Really?”
Panic steals my breath, my tongue suddenly dry and useless in my mouth. “I . . . I’m not—”
“Are you married? Is that it? Ill-used by your husband?”
“No. Not—”
“Is it the law, then? Have you done something wrong? People don’t take to the marshes unless they’re desperate, or on the run.”
I grip the railing, my breath coming faster. This is what I feared. Why I isolated myself. To avoid these kinds of questions. “No. I . . .”
He fixes me with his steady, keen gaze, one dark eyebrow arching upward. “I see. You don’t trust me. How old are you? At least be honest with me about that.”
“Four and twenty.”
“And your real name?”
“Mary. I swear it.”
He smirks. In the distance, Fort Moultrie’s cannons ring out, as they always do at sunset, an apt counterpoint to Alex’s volley of questions.
“I’m not feeling very well, Mr. Mayhew,” I say.
“I’m going to go lie down.” My head is woozy, a tumble of nausea running through my gut.
I turn to go back to my room, leaving Alex on the piazza.
As I pass the library, I see that Ruby is already gone.
Once in my chambers, I splash cold water onto my face to calm my flushed skin, and turn down my bed, drawing the covers over me.
I’ll need to leave soon. Abandon this place of fragile respite.
But I don’t want to. I’ve grown accustomed to the comforts of Angel’s Rest. The purpose I’ve found with teaching Ruby.
The pleasure of Alex’s company and the thoughtful way he looks at me.
Against my better judgment, I’m smitten.
My misplaced affection could cost me everything.
Still, I consider what might happen if I told him everything.
Perhaps, if I were honest, he’d understand.
Ruby and Noah trusted him with their secret, after all, and they have just as much at stake as I do.
Instead of sleeping, I war with myself as the hours grow long.
Alex brings food and leaves it at my bedside.
I pretend to be asleep. After the house goes completely silent, and the moon glows through the windows, I rise and pace the floorboards in my room, my thoughts disjointed.
I go back and forth with myself, arguing in hushed tones.
I could tell Alex the truth. All of it. Or I could sneak out, tonight, and find another haven.
Some remote hummock of an island where I can disappear.
But how long will it be until the past catches up to me again?
I wonder about the murderer, and whether he still stalks the streets of the Peninsula. Whether there’s still a bounty on my head. It’s been over a month since I fled to the marshes. Ignorant of the news as I am, out here in the hinterlands, I’ve no knowledge of the wider world.
A sound interrupts my harried deductions.
I still, listening. Footsteps, coming down the hall, then descending the staircase just outside my room, followed by the creak of the entry hall door.
I rush to the window, parting the drapes ever so slightly.
A woman descends the front steps, long blond hair streaming loose down her back.
She wears a low-cut ball gown, her slippered feet quick on the tabby path.
She glances furtively over her shoulder, her rouged lips pursing, and then disappears between the oaks.