Chains (17 page)

Curzon approached me on Pearl Street and tried to talk.

I walked away from him and carried the purchases back to Madam's house, wings abuzz in my ears.

Hours later, as I ate my dinner of greens and cornbread with molasses, Becky entered the kitchen with a scowl.

“That Curzon boy, the one with the hat, he's in front of the house again,” she said. “You must tell him to leave.”

I lifted my eyes from my plate. “Why?”

“Because Madam wants him arrested, and I don't want trouble, that's why,” Becky snapped.

I did not move.

“Do you want his beating on your conscience?” she continued.

I chewed the last of the cornbread, then wiped my fingers and stood up.

“Tell him to stay away,” she said as I set my plate in the washing-up tub. “Blasted fool doesn't know what's good for him.”

When I lifted the latch of the garden gate, Curzon appeared, mouth a'flapping. “Finally! We've much to talk about.”

“Go away,” I said.

He glanced up and down the empty street. “Look, I'm sorry. The colonel … I thought sure he would help.” He stopped and leaned close to my face. “You don't look right. Camp fever?”

My tongue felt the ragged edge of a broken tooth. “I'm fine.”

He dropped his eyes to the ground. “Sorry's not enough, but … I am. Sorry. About all of it.”

I picked at a splinter of wood on the gate. There was something changed about him, but I could not figure it. Many things looked different since they burned me up. “Not your concern,” I said.

“'Tis so,” he said. “I've asked about your sister. A sailor I know thinks she was put on a ship to Halifax.”

“No. They sent her to Nevis.”

He opened his mouth but could not find any words.

“Go away,” I said, “or they'll arrest you. Madam said.”

“Has she received any letters from Lockton?”

The question hit me like a bucket of cold water. “You asking me to spy again?”

“Listen,” he started. “Our freedom—”

I did not let him continue. “You are blind. They don't want us free. They just want liberty for themselves.”

“You don't understand.”

“Oh, no. I understand right good,” I countered. “I shouldn't have believed your rebel lies. I should have taken Ruth and run the night we landed. Even if we drowned, we would have been together.”

He reached out and grabbed my arm. “Don't say that.”

His hand was strong, but so was mine. I grabbed his thumb and twisted it backward. “Turn me loose.” My body and voice shook as if trapped in one of Ruth's fits.

“Sorry.” He released me, and I released him. “I'm sorry for your sister and your face and your broken head.” He wiggled his thumb. “A hundred times as sorry as the hills.”

I moved to shut the gate in his face.

He held it open. “We all have scars, Isabel.”

“I'll never talk to you again.” I threw myself against the gate, shut it, and threw home the latch.

WE HAVE OUR COACH STANDING BEFORE OUR DOOR
EVERY NIGHT, AND THE HORSES ARE HARNASSED
READY TO MAKE OUR ESCAPE, IF WE HAVE TIME….
POOR NEW YORK! I LONG TO HAVE THE BATTLE OVER,
AND YET I DREAD THE CONSEQUENCES.
–LETTER WRITTEN BY MARY, DAUGHTER OF
PATRIOT BRIGADIER GENERAL JOHN MORIN SCOTT,
AS HER FAMILY PREPARED TO FLEE NEW YORK

The storm that hit the city the next night was the worst I had ever seen.

A thundercloud big as a mountain swept up the river just before sunset. Lightning danced at its edges like horses at a mad gallop, then the sky turned ink black and the storm crashed over us. The wind blew signs off buildings, overturned soldiers' tents, and stripped the clean clothes that had been pegged out to dry. Thunder boomed like a thousand cannons. A house three blocks over was struck by a lightning bolt and burned to the ground. Thirteen soldiers were killed by lightning, too, the coins in their pockets melted and their flesh roasted. One lightning-struck soldier survived but was turned deaf, blind, and unable to speak.

We were forced to concern ourselves with more domestic
matters. The window frames in the front parlor leaked terrible during the storm. Rain soaked the drapes and rugs and left the wall plaster soft and spongy.

“Tell the girl to clean up this mess.”

Becky asked around for days, but there were no spare carpenters to be found, no matter how much coin was offered. The men were all getting ready for war. The British had set up a new camp in Brooklyn on Long Island, and Washington was moving his troops around like pieces on a checkerboard. He sent most of his men across to face the British and others north to defend Fort Washington and Harlem.

The front windows continued to leak.

Becky began to talk of leaving for her uncle's house in Jersey. I pretended to listen to her. The streets were filled with the hurry-scurry of a moving army, splashing through mud puddles. Madam called for tea.

I left to fetch fresh water.

A few bees flew out of my head as I walked north with my buckets, blown out by the strong east wind. The pain helped, too. I had cut the palm of my left hand on a dull blade at breakfast. Becky wrapped it for me, but it stung to carry even an empty bucket.

Nassau Street was fair deserted all the way up to the Commons. Most folks had fled, afeard to be caught between two angry armies. That's why I was surprised to see a crowd at the water pump, a dozen or so men and boys—slaves who had been hired by the army to build barricades—and a few
women fetching water, like me. Beyond the men I could see the pile of paving stones that had been pulled up for the barricade. It was midday and the folks were gathered for a cool drink, a bite to eat, and some conversating.

The talk stopped as I approached. All eyes went to my face.

I had not been to the pump since my branding. I gripped the buckets tight, holding in the pain. Most in the crowd were strangers to me.

“Mercy,” muttered one woman as she studied my scar.

“Pain you much?” asked another, her hair wrapped in a worn yellow cloth.

“It tugs some, ma'am,” I said. “Not as much as it did.”

One man spat over his shoulder and said something in a language I did not understand.

The other men turned their eyes from me back to Grandfather, the old man who sat by the pump, and went back to their argument. I was grateful to have the attention leave me.

“You're not looking at the facts,” a bald man said to Grandfather. “The British Lord Dunmore in Virginia offered freedom—total freedom—to any slave who escapes to his camp.” He shook his fist in the air when he said “freedom.” “Thousands have run away and joined up already.”

Grandfather simply nodded his head. “With more behind them, I expect.”

A second man, this one with neatly trimmed hair, leaned on his shovel. “Dunmore freed the Virginia slaves so the crops would go unharvested and ruin the planters. The British care not for us, they care only for victory. Some Patriots own slaves, yes, but you must listen to their words: ‘all men, created equal.' The words come first. They'll pull the deeds and the justice behind them.”

“You're a fool,” the bald man said. He motioned to the piles of paving stones and the logs waiting to be dragged into position. “We should sabotage the barricades. If the British win, we'll all be free.”

“Shhh!” several people scolded.

I blinked. The bees in my head fell silent and hugged their wings tight to their bodies. The British would free us? All of us?

The men fell to arguing with each other, the women chiming in occasionally. Finally the bald man raised his hands. “One of us here was privy to the rebel plans, worked with one of the bosses there. Tell us, Curzon boy, what do you think of the rebel lies?”

At the sound of his name, Curzon stepped forward from the side of the building where he had been sitting in the shade. He looked even more changed than he had the week before. What was different?

“What say you?” Grandfather asked.

“I say I'm an American,” Curzon said. “An American soldier.”

It was his clothes. When I first met him, he was dressed like the house servant of a wealthy man, which he was. Now the tailored waistcoat was gone and his shirt was dirty with sweat and mud. It hung over a pair of working man's breeches that were cut off below his knee. He did not have on stockings or shoes. Even his fancy red hat was flecked with mud.

The wind caught at my skirts and swirled them around my ankles. Did he say
soldier?

The first man laughed. “You are an American slave.” He untied the cloth around his neck and rinsed it in the pump water before adding in a lower voice, “As are we all.”

Curzon shook his head. He was still stubborn as ever, if a bit worn. “Not me. Not for long. Master Bellingham promised me freedom for enlisting in his place.”

“And you believe him?” The man laughed louder. “He's feeding you to the cannons so he can be safe! If you don't die, he'll stick your neck under his boot again.”

“Lower your voices.” Grandfather held up a shaky hand and motioned to me. “Come, child. Get your water.”

I walked to him and set my buckets on the ground.

The woman in the yellow head cloth worked the pump for Grandfather. “The British promise freedom to slaves but won't give it to the white rebels,” she said as she pushed the handle up and down. “The rebels want to take freedom, but they won't share it with us.”

She set down the first bucket and picked up the second. “Both sides say one thing and do the other.”

“The British act on their promises,” insisted the bald man.

“No!” The man with the shovel drove it into the ground with frustration. “They lie. When the British fled Boston, back in the spring, they took escaping slaves with them. They promised them freeeeeeedom.” He stretched out the word until it sounded ugly. “Where are those slaves now?”

No one answered him.

“I'll tell you,” he continued. “Forced into the Louisbourg coal mines in Canada. They work and die under the ground. They never see the sun, and they'll never taste your freeeeeedom.”

We stood in silence as the pump handle creaked. At last, Grandfather chuckled.

“This is not funny, old man,” said the fellow with the shovel.

“Young people are always funny,” he said. “Funny and foolish.”

The woman in the yellow head cloth finished filling the second bucket. “What do you mean, Grandfather?”

“This is not our fight,” the old man said. “British or American, that is not the choice. You must choose your own side, find your road through the valley of darkness that will lead you to the river Jordan.”

“We don't have the river Jordan, here, Grandfather,” the bald man said as he retied the wet cloth around his neck. “We have the East River, with currents fast enough to kill a man, and the North River, two miles wide. Both are mighty hard to cross.”

Grandfather chuckled again. “You don't understand. Everything that stands between you and freedom is the river Jordan. Come closer, child.”

This last he said to me. I stepped in front of him and reached for my buckets, but he took my hands in his.

I stopped, unsure what to do next.

“Look at me,” he said.

I bent down a little, bringing my face level with his. He tilted my chin to the side so he could examine the brand on my cheek. I tried to pull away, but he held fast.

“A scar is a sign of strength,” he said quietly. “The sign of a survivor.” He leaned forward and lightly kissed my cheek, right on the branding mark. His lips felt like a tired butterfly that landed once, then fluttered away.

I stepped back and touched the cheek. The men were returning to the barricades. Other servants had formed a line for the pump.

Grandfather winked and handed me the buckets. “Look hard for your river Jordan, my child. You'll find it.”

*   *   *

Carrying those full buckets back to the Locktons' was powerful hard. The cut on my left hand pained me too much to use it, and my right hand was not big enough, my arm not strong enough, to carry two buckets at once. I journeyed in a crow-hop fashion—carrying one bucket for twenty strides, setting it down, then returning to fetch the second bucket and carrying it forward to meet its partner.

I made slow progress in this manner for two blocks when Curzon joined me.

He would not look at me. Didn't say a word, neither. He simply carried the buckets to the Locktons' gate for me, then walked away.

PERSONS EXPOSED TO GREAT DANGER AND HAZARD …
REMOVE WITH ALL EXPEDITION OUT OF THE SAID
TOWN [NEW YORK] … WHEREAS A BOMBARDMENT
AND ATTACK, MAY BE HOURLY EXPECTED–
–GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON, OFFICIAL HANDBILL
ISSUED TO NEW YORKERS, IN AUGUST 1776

The British thrashed the Patriots in a big battle in Brooklyn. Thrashed them but good. They killed or captured near a thousand rebels and sent the rest scurrying away. After the worst of the battle, the skies opened up again and we all waited—us in a house with leaking windows and a damp parlor, the soldiers in open fields and muddy ditches—for the rain to stop.

Madam wore a groove in the floor pacing back and forth awaiting news of the final British victory, her footsteps tipping and tapping in measure with the ticking of the clock. I poked at the logs in the kitchen hearth, trying to summon back the bees so they would chase out the thoughts invading my brainpan.

But the words of the bald man echoed.

Would the British truly free me? Should I flee to them? What about Ruth; would they help me find her?

The firewood was wet and green and would not catch. It smoldered and smoked and made a terrible stink.