The Emerald Embrace

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  One hand clasped over my heart as if to control its wild hammering, I told myself: Run. You may never have another chance. Get away from Amos Thornton.

  Find a hiding place!

  Run!

  It was sheer, unreasoning panic. Skimming down the steps, I swerved in the opposite direction from where the two men battled. My bare feet scarcely touched the prickly grass, and when my toe stubbed violently against a rock, I paid no attention. Mrs. Yarby’s stable loomed ahead, my only sanctuary. I tripped on the bean vine separating the properties, sprawling so hard on the dirt that the breath was knocked out of me. Immediately I was back on my feet, racing through my godmother’s little orchard. A branch caught my sleeve, and the fabric tore loudly.

  At the tall doors I raised the latch and pushed on rough, unpainted wood. Inside, the dark swallowed me. Mrs. Yarby kept no horse, but one of her boarders did: though the mare was gone a heavy animal odor remained. Feeling my way to the ladder, I climbed to the loft, crawling cautiously on wobbly, creaking boards to the farthest corner, sinking onto a pile of hot, moist hay.

  Who would win? If it were Amos Thornton, would he discover me here?

  My body quivered with each gasping breath and the raw lash marks pulled and ached. But my misery was far more profound than bodily pain. Until tonight I’d never been touched save with love, a happy girl, maybe too taken up with books but carefree nonetheless. Tonight Amos Thornton had stripped and beaten me. Here I was, cowering in a dark stable. Me. My shame burned.

  Toward the barn came footsteps. Who had won? I prayed the steps wouldn’t halt. But they did. The door creaked open and at the faint, luminous spill of moonlight I scarcely breathed.

  “Miss?”

  Relief flooded through me and I wanted to reply, but my annihilating sense of disgrace kept me silent.

  “Didn’t you come in here?” The pleasant voice echoed in the cavernous dark. “It’s all clear. You’re safe. He trotted off smartly. Miss?”

  I covered my mouth to keep from answering: I couldn’t face him—or myself. Fragmentary thoughts swirled in my head like crazed bats. Who was he? He was from the North, polite, well-bred, educated—his voice had told me that. What was it the bearded wagon driver had said this afternoon? Something about Commodore Delaplane’s men being about … had the flotilla arrived in Washington? Was this a flatboat officer? My schoolgirl infatuation spilled over onto my handsome rescuer, and the sweet throb in my chest, at such variance with my real situation, brought a bubble of hysterical laughter to my throat. My palm clamped my lips harder to keep back the titters.

  After a minute the door closed. “Miss?” he called. Soon his voice had faded into the cricket-filled night.

  Bits of straw jabbed and cut my open wounds and shifting to lie on my stomach didn’t assuage the pain. I could no more escape the torment of my lacerated flesh than avoid the knowledge that a parchment affixed with a judicial seal bound me to Amos Thornton.

  Six

  A rumble like faraway thunder awakened me.

  Straw cut into my ear and hard boards hurt my pelvic bones. I opened my eyes. A bright round of sunlight from a knothole showed me where I was and for a moment I blinked, trying to recall why I’d slept in Mrs. Yarby’s stable. Then I moved. Pain exploded through my lower body. Instantly I was wide awake and filled with the despairing shame of the previous night. I was shivering and my forehead burned to the touch.

  Again thunder rumbled. But it’s sunny out, I thought, so there can’t be a storm. Gasping, I pushed to my feet. Blood had dried, gluing the deeper lash cuts to my night-shift, and as I moved the muslin pulled free. My hips and knees had stiffened and each movement caused shooting pains. It took every ounce of my willpower to descend the ladder.

  The previous night had imbued me with dread, and using uncharacteristic caution, I inched open the tall door. Under a merciless blue sky lay a silent city. No wagons creaked by, no refugees rested in weary, bickering groups, no dishes clattered and no feminine conversations drifted from open kitchen windows. What had happened? Was a soul left in Washington—or had everyone vanished during the night?

  Again the rumbling sounded. It came from the north. The direction of Bladensburg. There, smoke was rising in fat, lazy puffs to melt into the clear blue morning.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered aloud. “Not thunder. Cannon fire!”

  A battle was being fought!

  I wanted to run. My lower joints, though, were fused and I jerked along, swinging each entire leg in turn, awkward as a spring-wound toy in my haste to get home.

  Upstairs. I peered with fever-glazed eyes into my mirror. I looked as debased and in as great agony as I felt. He’s my guardian, I thought, and can do this to me whenever he chooses. By the time I’m eighteen, will there be anything left of Liberty Moore save a spiritless husk?

  Hobbling into Father’s room. I got the rosewood medicine box. The jar of iodine-odored wound salve wasn’t enough to cover the entire crisscrossing of black lines. Gingerly, I daubed one of the oozing welts. The sunlit little room whirled, I grew faint and—unable to sit—leaned heavily on my dresser.

  In order to be able to tend myself, I unscrewed the bottle of laudanum prescribed for Father’s worst chest pains. My first sip of thick, milky-colored liquid was nauseatingly bitter and I retched. Drink it, I ordered myself firmly. Throwing back my head, I gulped all that remained in the bottle. In a minute it had lulled me and I was able to dress the wounds.

  But I had dosed myself too heavily. I began experiencing a dislocating wrench from reality. And after that nothing about that long, terrible day was coherent. Thoughts and events were equal. Time leaped spasmodically. One minute it was morning and I was buttoning my poplin frock, smiling about the handsome man and how splendid he’d been shoving Amos Thornton down the steps, and then, abruptly, an afternoon sun blazed copper and I stood at my window gazing in the direction of Bladensburg.

  Smoke no longer hovered. I leaned out to listen. No sounds reverberated. Was it a temporary lull? A truce? Was the battle won or lost?

  A black man was spurring a weary, laboring horse down Pennsylvania Avenue. Waving his hat, he shouted. “We’ve lost! The army’s in full retreat! Clear out while there’s still time!”

  His words had no particular meaning to my muddled brain beyond assuaging a remote curiosity. I stayed where I was, watching the city, which had looked deserted, spring to life. A coach careened along, its springs sagging under the weight of trunks lashed to the roof, and other vehicles emerged from behind houses, mingling with people lugging sacks and bundles. A wagoner stood like a chariot driver, whipping at his horses while atop folded red velvet draperies bounced Gilbert Stuart’s famed portrait of George Washington.

  So Mrs. Madison’s removing the White House valuables, I thought in my drugged serenity. Maybe it’s a good idea for me to pack.

  I shoved things into my bolster case but when my etching of Commodore Delaplane dropped and the glass shattered loudly it seemed a signal to quit. I went back to the window.

  Soon the District Militia were hurrying by. They bore no resemblance to their jaunty selves of three days earlier. Some wore rough bandages, all had filthy uniforms and powder-black faces. They held their muskets every which way as they followed their tattered red battle flags. Other brigades hastened after them.

  A momentary disquiet pierced my calm and I looked for the Maryland Militia. In the welter of soldiers, horses, gun carriages and supply wagons was no sign of Maryland’s bright blue uniforms.

  They must have retreated in a different direction, I thought, so I’m safe from Amos Thornton. Relaxing, I wondered absently if Washington was being abandoned.

  Time did another little shuffle and it was twilight. My curtains were drawn. Outside, to music of fife and drum, magnificently drilled boots marched in perfect cadence. Horses and the jingling of a small group of horsemen.

  “This is General Ross and you know my standing orders!” shouted a high-pitched English voice. “Any m
an jack of you who rapes an American woman will be shot! Looters will be flogged. We destroy only public buildings!”

  Echoing cries repeated the orders while the cadenced marching continued interminably.

  I have no idea how much later it was when the deafening banshee wails began and explosions rattled the windows. I held back a curtain.

  At both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue screaming, fire-tailed missiles arched into the night sky. Those must be Congreve’s rockets, I thought in my peculiar sense of remove, the terrible new British weapon of gunpowder packed into metal tubes.

  The rockets were landing on the Capitol building and on the White House. Smoke and flames billowed from the torn roof of the presidential mansion. A wind had come up. The blood-colored flames licked hungrily. The Capitol, built of limestone, caught more slowly, but in the meantime crimson sparks were borne on the wind like gaudy dandelion puffs, and here and there wooden buildings burned. The sky glowed crimson, so bright I could have picked up a needle. The smell of smoke made me cough.

  The livery in the next block caught.

  A spark from it landed on my porch roof and as I watched the tiny dot grew and a thin red flame appeared.

  For the first time since I gulped down Father’s poppy syrup, I was alarmed. Grabbing the packed bolster, I jerked stiffly down the stairs.

  In the front hall, I paused to look into the parlor. My gaze fell on the Egyptian chest. Locked inside were thousands of notes, the culmination of Father’s lifework, as well as the neatly tied foreign letters that were his vindication. This chest represented Father’s roots, his spirit, his bright, inquiring mind. It was him.

  “How can I leave it to burn?” I asked myself.

  Dropping the bolster, I opened the front door. Hazy smoke spewed onto me and I fell back coughing, to kneel by the end of the chest, grunting as I tried to shove it toward the hall. My wounds pulled. Drugged though I was, the pain throbbed excruciatingly. The heavy piece budged less than an inch. The smoke was growing thicker. “There’s no time, none,” I muttered.

  I ran onto the porch. A hissing crackle sounded over my head, but no flames were yet visible.

  “Help!” I screamed. “Help!”

  Nobody answered.

  I cried out again and, frantic, was about to go back in side when from the shadows at the side of Mrs. Yarby’s house emerged a tall, cloaked figure. I recognized the stranger of the previous night. Light-headed. I accepted as normal that he should be here, an American in a British-conquered city. He was here to rescue me again. Of course. Why not?

  As he ran toward me, he called in a low, urgent tone, “The roof’s on fire!”

  “My things are inside!” Smoke burned my nostrils. The heat was intense. “Important papers!”

  He was on the porch, darting swiftly by me into the hall, emerging with my bolster. “Here,” he said.

  “Not that!” I cried. Smoke went deep into my lungs, making me cough vehemently. “Father’s chest in the parlor. Very big and heavy.” I coughed again. “You’ll need help.”

  I turned to the door.

  He gripped my arm, halting me. At his touch, panicky, drugged and disoriented as I was, a thrill, vital and alive, coursed through me.

  “Are you crazy?” he demanded. “The roof’s about to go.”

  “Father’s dead! How can I let his papers burn?”

  “Just get off this porch!”

  “It’s the most important thing in my life!”

  He squinted up at the overhang. Flames were writhing in thin red lines along the shingles, thicker where the roof joined the house, reaching like blazing tendrils toward the windows.

  “When you’re standing down there on the grass I’ll fetch the chest. Not before,” he said.

  His tone was commanding and through my confusion I saw the naval insignia on his cloak. He’s an officer, I thought.

  The bolster banged awkwardly against my legs as I jolted down the steps. He pulled the cloak about his head so only his eyes showed and disappeared into the smoke-filled house.

  It was the same unique and instinctive bravery he had shown the previous night.

  Later, it occurred to me I should never have let him go inside, much less insisted on it. How could I have put a man’s life on the line for the yellowing notes of a discredited scholar? But the laudanum had warped and distorted my reasoning powers and I kept thinking how much I needed Father’s papers and letters. They’ll re-establish his reputation, I thought, watching the door.

  The first flaming shingle dropped, trailing sparks. Flames rose from the floorboards. The doorjamb caught. Swiftly fire framed the opening. Knuckles at my teeth, I watched the inferno.

  It seemed an eternity before the chest appeared, lurching forward. Behind it, he strained, his cloak-swathed head down, his muscular arms outstretched, his shoulders and back almost parallel with the top of the lid. A fiery shingle plummeted onto his shoulders. He shrugged it off. His cloak was afire, but he continued to push full force at the chest, propelling it down the now burning steps.

  I rushed toward him. “You’re burning!” I cried, slapping with my bare hands at flaming cloth. My drugged state finally disappeared in a surge of panic.

  He flung off the cloak and stamped out the fire. An odor of nauseating scorched wool arose.

  With a roar, the overhang collapsed. Sparks showered. Side by side, panting and gasping, we heaved the heavy piece of furniture away, across the lawn toward the Yarbys’ boardinghouse.

  “It’s safe here,” he said. “Come where it’s not so bright.” He pulled me into the purple darkness by Mrs. Yarby’s kitchen. “What was going on last night? Why didn’t you answer when I called you?”

  I didn’t answer his questions. Fire was racing through the interior of the house and every window blazed. My home—the place where I was born and the place where both my parents had died—was being consumed. My grief went far deeper than any numbing draft could reach, and tears poured silently down my cheeks.

  The officer put an arm around my shoulder, pulling me against him. Where our bodies touched was like sweet balm, and I leaned closer. Through the smell of fire on him came the odor of clean, salt sea.

  My tears halted almost immediately. “At least I have Father’s papers,” I sighed. “I’m so grateful you’re here. You came just in time.”

  “It’s no coincidence. I’m meant to be at the Naval Yard, but I couldn’t stop worrying about you. You were so distraught … I wasn’t sure you’d left. So when the fires began to spread, I came here, hoping you’d be gone.” His grip tightened. “No, that’s not true. More than anything in my life I wanted to see you again.” He drew a deep breath and his voice went low with guilt. “It’s the first time I’ve ever neglected my naval duty.”

  “What were you ordered to do at the Yard?”

  “The navy’s got kegs of powder hidden in the well. I’m to fire it.”

  “Our own powder?”

  “Yes. The British long line of supply is our main advantage. They have to ship ammunition and weapons three thousand miles. It’s imperative we destroy our gunpowder rather than let it fall into their hands.”

  “But Washington’s a captured city. What if they see you here?”

  “I won’t let them,” he said grimly. “That man, the colonel, are you really his ward?”

  “When you hit him, I loved you.”

  My reply didn’t answer his question, but he didn’t seem to care. At the words loved you, we looked at one another almost shyly, and his mouth softened and his breath trembled against my forehead. My body went weak. Once again I experienced that peculiar sense of recognition, as though I’d known him forever.

  Slowly, he drew me close to him, putting one arm around my waist, the other about my shoulders. How different it was from the obscenity of Amos Thornton’s embrace! I clasped him closer, letting myself sink against his hard muscles until his jacket buttons cut into me. My senses were reeling, my body drowning in exquisite sensations I’d nev
er known before. Everything vanished except him. There was no fire, no burning remnants of our handsome new public buildings, no smoke rising from the charred ruins of my birthplace, no pain from lash marks, no drugged distance, only this man who held me close.

  Lightning drew a brilliant line in the sky, thunder rumbled. It began to rain. His mouth covered mine and for an endless time our breath mingled, his heart seared its vital rhythm into my chest, the hardness of him pressed against me and his lips took mine as if he could never have enough. When the kiss ended we were both shaking.

  “Sweetheart,” he said in a low murmur. “I could have killed him for hurting you.”

  “He is my guardian,” I whispered shakily. At that moment, the horror of Amos Thornton was very far away. All that mattered was this man who held me in his strong arms.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Liberty … Liberty Moore. And you?”

  After an almost imperceptible pause, he said, “I’d better not tell you. Then if the British question you, you’ll have no answers to give.”

  “The British!” I returned to reality with a sickening jolt. “If they catch—”

  “They won’t,” he interrupted, stroking my hair. “It’s like silky gold.… Liberty, sweetheart, it’ll be a while before I can come back to you. The war! The damn, stupid war! We’re fighting decent men like ourselves, not our real enemies, those foul, tribute-hungry corsair pirates! But I’ll see you again, Liberty. You can depend on that.”

  The rain slanted down harder, crackling and sputtering as wind drove it against the fanned blaze. We didn’t hear the footsteps.

  A squad of maybe eight British soldiers tramped toward the still burning White House. They came to a ragged halt at my house.

  “A Yankee Doodle paid back.” The voice was heavy, slurred with drink.

  “Ahh, what’s the use, Charley? The fire ain’t got nothing to do with the flogging you ’ad yesterday.”