Phoebe did not stop to set the stool upright again; even that would be a presumption, and she had done enough meddling for one day. Instead, she ran the ringers of her right hand over the pristine ivory keys, gently, as if to soothe the instrument, and a tinkling spray of forlorn and fragile notes rose in the wake. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Old Woman, brown hands folded, face as serene as an angel’s, keeping her silent vigil.
“If only I had left him alone,” Phoebe mused with quiet misery.
“You wanted to help,” Old Woman responded benignly. “Still, his is a wound of the spirit, and even you cannot heal it. That is a task only Mr. Duncan himself can manage, with the help of his Maker.”
Phoebe turned to meet her friend’s placid gaze. “You are a marvel,” she said with affection, though she was still too sad to smile. “How did you get so smart?”
“I have lived a long time,” was the answer. “I have watched and listened.”
Phoebe nodded and sighed, pondering. She announced the conclusion she had long since reached but had been unable to voice. “I can’t stay here,” she said.
Old Woman did not react verbally, but drew near and took Phoebe’s hand, as Simone had done, studying her palm at length. This time, Phoebe made no attempt to pull away, and in those moments she felt her very soul being examined, weighed, explored.
At last, a smile fluttered upon Old Woman’s full lips, like a bird lighting softly on a branch. “Yes,” she said. “You will go from this place. It is necessary.”
“You’ll help me?”
Old Woman gazed deeply into her eyes, and it seemed she saw visions and portents there, things Phoebe herself did not know. A shiver trickled down her spine, but the sensation was born of mystery, not fear. “Tonight a boat will take you away, to an island far north of this one. You must determine to be strong, though, for this will not be an easy journey.”
Phoebe had already learned that nothing about life in the eighteenth century was easy—it took all a person’s energy just to meet the most basic needs. Even simple things, like going to the bathroom, required strategic planning, and taking a bath was a monumental undertaking. “I’m not surprised,” she said reasonably.
She spent the remainder of the day sitting beside Alex’s bed, though he was unconscious again, reading aloud from a volume of Chaucer she had found in the drawing room. Although she was intelligent. Middle English was not Phoebe’s forte, and she understood little of what she read. Still, the task kept her mind off her own troubles and, she hoped, served as a thread, however tenuous, to link Alex with the world of the living.
At sunset, she ate in a dim corner of the kitchen, a place separate from the main house, and when night had settled over the island, a young native man came to collect her. He led the way along a tropical path to the shore without speaking at all, and once there, motioned her toward a sleek, canoelike craft resting upon the white sand.
After swallowing hard, Phoebe climbed aboard, clutching to her bosom a pitiful bundle containing a spare dress, underthings, some salt for cleaning her teeth, and a bar of soap, and sat down on a narrow bench. Coppery muscles rippling, the boy waded into the dark turquoise water, pushed the boat off expertly, and was soon rowing along the shivering, silver cone of moonlight spilling over the sea.
Old Woman had been right; the journey was hard.
First, there were mosquitoes. Then a bout of seasickness that had Phoebe retching over the side. They wove between dark islands, with the stars for a guide, and slipped into a sheltered cove at sunrise, where they slept, sprawled in the sand. Phoebe used her bag for a pillow.
For three days they traveled in just that way, gliding silently over the waters by night, resting on land by day, when there was a danger of being seen. Phoebe kept quiet most of the time, but once in a while she felt compelled to chatter, out of sheer loneliness. She told her mute companion about Jeffrey, and Professor Benning, about cars and airplanes and shopping malls, fast food and fat grams. He listened, smiling occasionally, and offered not a single word in reply.
At last, early the fourth morning, they arrived on an island, not isolated and uninhabited, like previous ones, but full of sound and fury, hustle and bustle. There were ships in the harbor, flying the British flag, and the shore was lined with wharves and barrels, slaves and freemen, wagons and carts and buildings. Phoebe thanked her escort and waded bravely ashore, with her heavy skirts practically pulling her under.
She had absolutely no idea where to go, except forward. So she did that.
Phoebe wandered up and down the muddy, manurelittered streets until her dress and shoes had dried, a tourist from another century. She passed a candlemaker’s shop, a weaver’s, a shipping office, and a general store. The most prominent structure by far, though, was the Crown and Lily, an obviously popular tavern.
After summoning up all her remaining courage, Phoebe stepped over the threshold and into the rollicking dimness beyond. She smelled malt and sweat, tobacco smoke and treason within those humble walls and proceeded directly to the bar, where a stout man in a stained shirt and cheap powdered wig dispensed pewter mugs spilling over with ale.
“To the rear with you, wench,” he said, before Phoebe could say a word. “There’s ample work for you here, I dare say, if you can serve up a mug and keep your thoughts to yourself. Speak to Mistress Bell—she’ll give you a pallet and a bite to eat.”
Cheeks burning, Phoebe restrained from telling the bartender off in vivid Anglo-Saxon terms for daring to talk to her like that and proceeded between the trestle tables to the back of the tavern. She needed to find work, if she was going to survive this strange cosmic odyssey, and serving drinks at the Crown and Lily was a beginning.
She couldn’t expect to advance to management, of course, but that was something she would think about later. For now, she only wanted a clean bed and food to eat.
Mistress Bell was an ample, unself-conscious woman in a coarsely woven gown. With her abundance of gray hair and gruff, good-natured manner, she reminded Phoebe of one of her favorite characters from the movies of the 1940s-Ma Kettle, as portrayed by Margery Main.
“My name is Phoebe Turlow,” Phoebe announced, hoping she sounded like a regular eighteenth-century woman and knowing she didn’t. Mistress Bell’s astute gaze had gone straight to her short hair. “I’m looking for a job. Work. A position.”
The older woman narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know you,” she said in her rough, booming voice. “Be you a bondwoman, run off from your master? Where did you come from?”
Phoebe swallowed. “I’m no one’s servant,” she said in a steady voice. “And I come from a place called Seattle.” It might have been better to lie, but she wasn’t good at impromptu prevarications; that had always been Jeffrey’s specialty. “I’m a very hard worker,” she added. “I waited tables in college.”
Mistress Bell gave a low, snorting hoot. “College, is it?” she mocked derisively, as though such a thing were impossible. Which, of course, it was, that being 1780. “You can sweep and wash pots and kettles and make a hearty stew with what comes to hand?”
“If pressed,” Phoebe agreed.
Mistress Bell chuckled, and the sound was deep and rich and utterly benign. “Suppose a man should invite you to share his bed, be he King’s man or rebel?”
“I would refuse,” Phoebe said.
“Aye,” replied Mistress Bell. “I think you would. Follow me, lass, and I’ll show you your room. There’s a pot of boiled venison in the kitchen, too—you may help yourself to that. No ale, though. Not until you’ve finished the tasks of the day. Are you agreed?”
Phoebe never considered refusing. She nodded, grateful that she’d fallen into a job so quickly, and followed Mistress Bell up a rear stairway of rough-hewn planks, then up another. Her room, it turned out, was a sweltering cubicle in the rafters, only a little larger than the average twentieth-century closet, graced with a rough wooden cot, one tattered quilt, and a bowl and pitcher teetering on a ri
ckety wash table. There was a chamberpot under the bed, and a single peg in the wall to accommodate her wardrobe. Which consisted of exactly two dresses.
“Thank you,” Phoebe said sincerely. Although she missed Duncan sorely, and Old Woman, this humble cell was at least her own. The door was heavy, and there was a bolt on it, and whatever the hardship, she could cross this threshold each night knowing that she’d paid her own way.
“You’re an odd lass,” Mistress Bell observed, one bristly gray eyebrow raised. “From whence do you hail? Since this place you call See-attle, I mean?”
“Boston,” said Phoebe, finding that she could lie promptly after all, if the situation called for it. She hoped the reply didn’t automatically mark her as a patriot, though, of course, she was just that. There were just as many Tories about, if her recollections served her correctly, as rebels against the Crown. Both groups, as a general rule, were following the dictates of their consciences, and both factions considered themselves loyal citizens. It was a matter of semantics.
“You know Samuel Adams, then? And those other troublemakers?”
“Only by reputation,” Phoebe answered cautiously, laying her bundle on the cot by way of laying a claim on that humble chamber. American History 101, she thought, with weary wryness. Samuel Adams, known for the egg stains on his lapels as well as for his leadership skills, recalcitrant nature, and formidable intelligence. “Are you a Tory, Mistress Bell?”
“Are you?” retorted that august personage.
“No,” said Phoebe, who had a lot invested, by that point, in personal honesty. Perhaps, in fact, her very life, for she had just declared her true loyalties, and the political climate was perilous indeed. “I’m backing the winning side. The Continental Army will triumph, in the end.”
Mistress Bell smiled the barest of smiles and revealed nothing of her own allegiance. “Some say so. Others disagree. You’ll serve this night, miss,” she said. “But first, you must wash, and rest a while, and take proper sustenance.”
Phoebe’s gratitude knew no bounds. She was an alien, a sojourner in a strange time and place, and thus in no position to expect more than the simplest concessions to survival, let alone comfort. She nodded acquiescently and would have turned to unpack her bundle, if Mistress Bell hadn’t spoken again.
“What became of your hair, child?” she asked.
“I suffered a fever,” Phoebe said. It was, for better or for worse, getting easier and easier to bend the truth. She could not, after all, tell this woman that she had come from another time, more than two centuries in the future, where people wore their hair any way they wanted. “But don’t worry. I’m not contagious.”
“Odd,” said Mistress Bell, still pondering Phoebe’s abbreviated tresses. “There’s more than just that that’s peculiar about you, but I suppose it’s of no moment. Work hard, miss, and bed Tories or rebels, if you will, but not both. That can only bring trouble.”
“I wouldn’t think of disagreeing,” said Phoebe. Without Duncan, the experience seemed less real somehow, for all its colorful authenticity. More like a very vivid dream. “All I want is a place to sleep, food to eat, and a few0—shillings?—to call my own.”
The mistress of the Crown and Lily harrumphed. “Shillings, is it? It’s ha’pennies that’ll find their way into your purse, miss, and then only if you prove diligent and behave in a seemly manner.”
Phoebe couldn’t resist a curtsy, though she did not mean it as a mockery. It was more a reflex, suggested by the environment and by Mistress Bell’s quaint manner of speech.
Mistress Bell was grudgingly pleased and instructed the new wench to wash the dust of the road from her person and present herself in the scullery immediately afterward. Phoebe obeyed, pouring tepid water from the pitcher to the basin when her new employer had gone, and splashing herself industriously. She used her fingers to comb her hair, tucked her bundle underneath the washstand, and hurried downstairs, her stomach grumbling.
The kitchen of the Crown and Lily was a crowded, steamy place, full of smells both pleasant and foul. Phoebe accepted a trencher of thick stew, too hungry to question its preparation, and sat on a bench near the slop bucket, eating purposefully. During the journey from Paradise Island, with her silent guide, she had subsisted on hard bread packed by Old Woman, accompanied by whatever fish, roots, coconuts, or berries her escort had been able to scare up along the way.
No one spoke to her, though she was subjected to a number of curious, speculative stares, just as she had been after being consigned to the laundry room at Duncan’s house. Phoebe was not timid, though she avoided trouble when possible, and she returned the gazes of the other women unflinchingly. Any sign of fear or subservience, she suspected, would doom her to being bullied and ostracized.
She washed her hands after her meal was done, the injunction to rest apparently forgotten, and was given a spotted apron and sent summarily among the customers.
They made a colorful bunch, the clientele of the Crown and Lily—there were British soldiers, in buff breeches, Hessian boots, and the famous crimson coats, along with plain men in homespun or buckskin—craftsmen and apprentices and farmers and tradespeople. Some of the latter, Phoebe thought, as she hurried to serve pewter mugs spilling over with ale, were rebels. Others were Tories, of course. Who was who was anybody’s guess, though King George’s supporters did tend to be more vociferous in offering their opinions.
The brew had been flowing from the taps in the kegs behind the crude plank bar for some time when one of the redcoats, who’d been addressed as Major Lawrence, suddenly grasped Phoebe by the apron strings and pulled her onto his lap. She struggled, but he only laughed, his strong hands almost encompassing her waist and subduing her easily.
Even in her extremity, Phoebe did not fail to notice that some of the other men lining the long trestle table, all English, were uncomfortable with the turn matters had taken.
“Let the baggage go, Major,” said a cultured voice from somewhere down the line. “It’s plain she’s ailing—look at her hair. All but gone.”
The major, bleary with drink and an overabundance of testosterone, pushed the furious Phoebe to the bony ends of his knees and studied her. “I’d think her a bloody boy, if it weren’t that there are curves and swells in all the proper places.”
Phoebe squirmed, flushed and sputtering with indignation.
“Let her go,” repeated Phoebe’s champion, but he didn’t stir himself to effect a physical rescue or even lean forward far enough that she could see his face and get some fleeting measure of his character.
“Mayhap the major fancies the lads,” observed some intrepid soul, punctuating the remark with a belch and a resounding fart. “Have a care, men, and keep your bums covered when he’s about.”
The major put Phoebe away from him with such haste and vigor that she nearly tumbled onto the filthy floor. In the next instant, Lawrence sprang to his feet, ruddy from the ale and the indignity of it all, and fumbling for his sword. “Who said that?” he demanded.
Phoebe might have laughed, if it hadn’t been for the gravity of the situation in general and the sword in particular. One man sat alone at the end of the bench, while the other members of the party were scrunched together at the other, wearing expressions of cheerful disgust.
Process of elimination, Phoebe thought, and no pun intended.
“Cheers,” said the digestive miscreant, raising his mug to the major. He was a small, sturdy person, with a bald head and a florid complexion, and one of the brass buttons sprang from his coat when he stood, clattering across the tabletop.
The major withdrew his hand from the hilt of his weapon and retreated a step, his long, aristocratic nose wrinkled. “God in heaven, Sergeant, you are a disgrace to the Crown,” he muttered. “I’d kill you where you stand, as a service to His Majesty, if it weren’t for the deuced legalities of the thing!”
The sergeant’s eyes twinkled as he groped for his button and dropped it into his pocket. “Ther
e is that,” agreed the bumbler in a merry tone. “The documents and such, I mean.” He donned a dusty tricorne, after fanning the air with it in a show of personal consideration, and winked at Phoebe as he turned to take his leave. “Farewell, good mistress,” he said.
Phoebe nodded in response and took herself well out of the major’s reach, just in case the party got rowdy again, but things were not the same after the sergeant had gone. One by one, the bored soldiers pushed away their mugs, rose from the benches, and left the tavern. Their leader lingered, brooding, refilling his cup, with an unsteady hand, from the wooden pitcher in the center of the table.
“I’d suggest coffee,” Phoebe whispered to another servant, a young girl wearing a shapeless dress of butternut muslin, a mobcap, and a dirty apron, “but caffeine might be worse for his disposition than alcohol.”
Her colleague—Phoebe had heard her addressed as Molly, over the course of her illustrious half-day career at the Crown and Lily—looked utterly baffled, and nearly dropped the trencher of roasted meat she carried. But then she gave a wobbly smile, and Phoebe hoped she might have made a friend. Besides the sergeant, that is, who had saved her from the unwanted attentions of the major with remarkable finesse, all things considered. Now all she had to do was stay out of Lawrence’s path; he might be an officer, but he was no gentleman.
Molly served the meat to the ravenous craftsmen gathered at a corner table and gave the solitary Brit a wide berth when she returned to the bar with an empty pitcher.
The place had emptied out completely, and Phoebe was industriously scrubbing a table, as instructed by Mistress Bell, who prided herself, she claimed, on her worthy reputation, when the woman came to stand at her elbow.
“He’ll have a flogging for insulting Major Lawrence the way he did,” she said in low and matter-of-fact tones. “I hope you prove to be worth that kind of suffering.”
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