Stealing Freedom (12 page)

“You must not neglect your lessons during the holiday,” he was saying. “You must study every day so that you will not all have become imbeciles by the time you return. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Teacher,” the children answered in unison.

“If you have younger brothers and sisters,” he continued, “teach them what you have learned. The best way to learn something is to teach it.”

“Yes, Teacher,” came the response.

“All right, then. You may go.”

Ann quickly moved away from the door. But in the moments she'd spent eavesdropping, the seed of an idea had been planted.

“Teacher says I'm a very smart young lady,” said Sarah, swinging her braids as she walked.

“Mmm-hmmm,” said Ann.

“And he told Nathaniel that he's the stupidest one in the class,” she continued proudly.

“That can happen to anyone,” said Ann.

Sarah gave her a sideways look. “It can not.”

Ann shook her head. “What do you think will happen if the other children study their lessons over the holiday, and you just play with your paper dolls? Even old Nathaniel will be smarter than you when you go back to school.”

Sarah scowled. “He will not!” she objected.

“He might be,” said Ann.

A flicker of worry passed over Sarah's face. “Then I'll study more than anybody,” she said with conviction.

“But your teacher said—I mean, it's supposed to be good to
teach
somebody else, not just study,” said Ann.

“But my little brother is still with my papa, so I can't teach him. I have no one to teach.”

Ann took a breath. “You could teach me—but not teach me to read,” she said quickly, before Sarah could object. “There's no law against teaching letters. You could teach me my letters, and that would keep you smart.” Ann crossed her fingers, waiting for Sarah's response.

Sarah eyed her suspiciously. “Just your letters. I wouldn't teach you any reading at all, right?”

“Right,” Ann assured her.

Sarah looked at her gravely. “You'll have to do all your lessons perfectly, or I'll rap your knuckles, just like Teacher does.”

Ann returned the grave look and nodded.

“We'll work at it every day, and by the time school starts again I'll be the smartest one in the class!” Sarah took off running down the frozen dirt sidewalk.

Ann wanted to shout out her exuberance. Instead, she walked briskly after Sarah, her face placid, as if she had not just launched a most exciting plan.

Christmas Day the smells were the same: a turkey and several chickens roasting over an open fire pit, and pan bread baking indoors. The sounds were similar: David on his banjo and Thomas on his harmonica making their lively music fill the tiny cabin. But the feelings were very different. Last year Ann had been so happy, with her whole family together, and all the cousins and aunts and uncles making her own cabin ring with music and laughter. This year she felt like an outsider looking on, wishing she were in Washington City instead.

“Evening, Miss Ann Maria.” Alfred scooted up next to her where she sat on a bench.

“Alfred, come help me flip this turkey over before it burns crispy!” Elizabeth called from outside.

Alfred held up one finger. “I'll be right back,” he told Ann.

“Ann Maria, help me fetch more water. These folks will be powerful thirsty once we start eating.” Hannah pulled her up from her seat.

Outside, the smells of fire and cooking meat swirled in the chilly air. Ann followed Hannah to the pump.

“You see, Alfred does have his eye on you,” said Hannah with one raised eyebrow.

“He only said hello,” Ann objected.

“We'll see if he does more than say hello when we go back,” Hannah challenged with a smile.

They each carried a bucket of sloshing water back to the cabin. Inside, more musicians had joined in, and Edmonia was dancing around the center of the floor with little Eliza on her hip.

“How did you disappear so fast?” Alfred asked when he found her. “I was beginning to think maybe Edmonia was right about you being an apparition!”

Ann tipped her head down and smiled.

“You're still in time for a dance.” He said it with a question in his eyes, and waited for her to accept or reject his offer.

Ann glanced quickly at Hannah for advice.

“Oh, go
on.”
Hannah gave her a gentle shove.

Alfred took one of her hands in his and slipped his other hand around the small of her back. He drew her into steps and circles and the rhythm of the song, until they were both out of breath and laughing, and Ann felt dizzy and light-headed.

The dizziness could have been because of all the circles. Or maybe it was because they hadn't eaten yet and she was very hungry. But it might also have been because Alfred's face and eyes and breath so close to hers, and his hands, holding her in the dance, made her heart beat faster than anyone's heart should beat, really.

Sarah always waited until Mistress Carol had gone to do the marketing or visit with the ladies in town. Then she would interrupt whatever Ann was working at and say, “Hurry up now, it's time for school.”

Ann gladly left the floor half scrubbed or the fireplace half shoveled out, wiped her hands on her apron, and joined Sarah
and her primer. Sarah was a mean schoolteacher. She kept a ruler handy, and if Ann gave a wrong answer, she rapped her sharply on the back of the hands. It stung, but the hardest thing for Ann was to keep from laughing as scrawny, pale little Sarah worked to sound just like her own short-tempered schoolmaster.

Sarah taught her her letters, the sound each one makes alone, and the sounds two or three make together. Ann practiced the sounds out loud, and drew the letters on Sarah's slate with a piece of gray chalk.

By the time the school holiday was ready to end, Ann had mastered the alphabet. She promptly complained to Mistress Carol that she was suffering from the cold, sleeping as she did on the drafty floor. She asked if she might line her bed with Master Charles's discarded copies of the
Baltimore Sun
newspaper. The mistress agreed.

At night, after everyone had gone to sleep, Ann lit one solitary candle. By sounding out the letters and joining the sounds together to make words, she began her painstaking study of reading. She was awestruck when the print, which before had been just black marks, began to take on meaning.

Wanted—The advertiser, who is a Protestant, with a wife and no children, wants a situation as a gardener and farmer.

Wanted—Cooks, Chamber maids, Nurses, and girls for General Housework. Catholics and Protestant. Apply at Mrs. Clancy's.

Wanted—One hundred able bodied young men (unmarried) between the ages of 18 and 35 years, for the United States Dragoons and Mounted Riders, to go to Oregon, New Mexico and Texas.

The cold winter months should have felt dead and dreary. The days were short and dark, and last year's garden lay muddy, with shriveled brown vines hanging from toppled stakes. But Ann had, each frozen, bleak day, a strange and stubborn feeling of springtime. Perhaps it was because of her newfound ability to read, which improved every night as she worked with the newspapers. Reading gave her a sense of freedom, as if she'd discovered a doorway into a new world, and because no one knew she could read, the doorway was her own secret.

The feeling of springtime might also have had something to do with Alfred. He had begun to meet her whenever he could on her walks between the Prices’ house and the schoolhouse. Master Anderson trusted him with marketing and running errands, and whenever Alfred could manage to make their paths cross, he did.

Sometimes he would arrive at her side, breathless, with just a few moments to spare, to give her a handful of the mushrooms he'd found growing in the barn or to tell her the sorrel mare was going to foal in the spring. Other days he would walk leisurely
with her, carrying a package from the post office or a sack of grain from the feed store. He always began by asking how she was faring that day. Then he would ask her about Unity and her family. Ann told him about sliding around the frozen pond with her brothers the winter before, and Alfred laughed out loud. “We'll have to try that on the Rock Creek—if it ever freezes,” he said.

She told him about gardening with her father and Catharine, and how they grew pole beans as fat as a man's finger. Alfred said, come spring, he'd show her where to buy the best seeds for her garden. And he said he'd bring her up some manure, too, seeing how the Prices had no cows or chickens.

By the time Ann had told Alfred all about her family—every one of the funny stories, and most of the sad ones—she began to feel as if he'd been there in Unity with them, as if he were one of them. She smiled when she thought of how, before Christmas, he'd said, “We'll be your family.”

Ann wasn't exactly sure what gave her this unexplainable feeling of springtime right smack in the middle of winter, but she suspected that reading and walks with Alfred both had something to do with it.

Finally, real springtime came and the earth turned warm and soft. Ann went with Alfred to the Braddocks’ store and exchanged the coins Mistress Carol had given her for an armful of small packages of seeds.

“Are you going to dig up that whole yard?” Alfred asked, his eyebrows raised.

“Most of it,” Ann said proudly.

She was very happy to be putting in a real garden, not just a late garden like last year. She turned the sod over in great clumps and greeted the wriggly earthworms. She dropped the seeds into neat rows and covered them carefully. And when she hoed the ground into little piles and placed three or four corn kernels in the center of each mound, she whispered, “I'm thirteen years old now.”

Alfred whistled when she told him. “Thirteen. I suspect you'll be getting married soon.”

“I will not!” Ann was horrified.

“Don't be mad at me, Miss Ann Maria. Mistress Anderson was just saying how she married the master when she was fifteen and how they'll find the right husband for Miss Julia now that she's turned fifteen. That's what made me think it.”

Sarah tugged on Ann to hurry up. The day was sunny and smelled of newly plowed earth.

“Fifteen is different from thirteen,” Ann said simply.

Alfred nodded. “I can wait,” he said.

Ann stopped walking and stared at him.

“Come on, Ann,” whined Sarah. “You can't get married anyway, so stop jabbering about it.”

Ann wasn't sure whom she was angrier with—Alfred for suggesting she get married, or Sarah for reminding her that by law she couldn't—but she felt like smacking both of them.

“We could get married,” Alfred objected, “if we both got permission from our masters.”

“Not in a church, you couldn't,” said Sarah. “And you wouldn't be allowed to live together. Not like me. I'm going to
have a long white gown, and my papa will find me a rich man to marry—”

“Stop it!” Ann shouted. “Stop talking, both of you.” Her voice trembled. “I'm
not
getting married. I'm thirteen. I don't want to hear any more about it.”

Alfred excused himself abruptly, saying he'd better get on to the post office. Sarah and Ann walked the rest of the way home without saying anything more about weddings.

It was over a week before Alfred ventured into the schoolyard to see Ann again. He carried a sack of groceries which, Ann suspected, Mistress Anderson was waiting for. Sarah had gotten involved in a game of tag with several other children, and since Mistress Carol was always happy to have Sarah out of the way in the afternoons, Ann had decided to stay and let her play.

“Miss Ann Maria, do you intend to hit me if I try to sit with you?” Alfred asked, giving her a sheepish look.

Ann tried to make her face cross, but a small smile broke through. “Just once or twice,” she said.

Alfred put the sack down and joined her on the grass. “I want to apologize for what I said when I saw you last. I had no right to speak of marriage so soon.” He kept his eyes cast down.

Ann felt herself blush. What did he mean, “so soon”? Did he really have thoughts about marrying her? She'd convinced herself that the other day he had simply been joking with her, and then arguing with Sarah over laws and principles.

“But I hope,” Alfred continued, “that when you turn fifteen, maybe we can talk about it again.”

Ann's eyes bugged out and she turned her head away to hide her astonishment. So David was wrong about Alfred having no time for girls. “Maybe we can,” she said softly.

Alfred traced the outline of her fingers where they rested on the lush grass. She lifted her hand and he grasped it in his. His hand was warm, and she didn't want to let it go.

Alfred changed the subject and started into the easy conversation that had become so natural between them. He told her that two of the sheep had just lambed, and she should come see the sweet woolly creatures before Master Anderson slaughtered them for Easter dinner. She told him about her garden, and how the radishes were already sprouting. All the while he held her hand, until Sarah presented herself in front of them, sweaty and dirty and out of breath.

“Miss Sarah, would you like to see a brand-new baby lamb?” Alfred asked.

Sarah gave him a bored look. “My father has a whole herd of sheep. I've seen more new lambs than you have, I bet.”

“And I still appreciate them every spring,” said Alfred. “And…I'm late with Mistress Anderson's groceries. I thought if you both come with me, she might not notice.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh, all right.” She wiped the sweat off her forehead with her apron.

They walked down Jefferson Street until they came to the Anderson house. Elizabeth ran to meet them. “The mistress is in a fit!” she cried. “Did you walk all the way to Gaithers-burg to buy these?” She whisked the sack out of Alfred's hands. “Quick, run to the far field and set to work. I'll try to calm her.”

But before Alfred had run two steps, Master Anderson appeared on the porch. “Stop right there, boy,” he commanded.

Alfred stopped and turned. Ann's throat tightened.

“I'll teach you to take advantage of my kindness,” he growled. “Thomas! Thomas, come here.”