by Alyssa Cole
There’d been a time when Marlie had thought her dreams portentous, but she hadn’t dreamt for years, and Vivienne’s death hadn’t changed that. She felt silly getting upset about what was simply another bit of superstition from her youth, but that didn’t negate her sense of loss. She’d stopped dreaming, and that meant she would never see Vivienne again.
She sighed and leafed through the pages before her. Marlie had often wondered what her mother did in her spare time without a daughter there to fuss over, and she’d found out: Vivienne had told her story. The first pages were clearly older, meaning her mother had started putting her life to paper long ago. The memoir started in Guadeloupe, the island of Vivienne’s birth, and Marlie supposed it ended in the home where she had grown up.
Everything Marlie had ever wanted to know about her reticent mother was inscribed on those pages, if she paid attention. Between the lines of a recipe for a salve for an aching back was the story of how Marlie’s grandmother had pulled a muscle carrying a sick child on her back as she chopped sugarcane. The tisane to stop blinding headaches had been learned after Vivienne’s sister had been struck in the head for talking back to the overseer.
All of the stories Marlie had been denied as a child had been delivered up to her, with one impediment: The text was in French.
“Ici mon passé écrit, pour toi, m’avenir qui vit,” Vivienne had written boldly on the first page. Here, my past written, for you, my future who lives.
She’d once been able to understand most of what Vivienne said when she slipped into the lyrical language. It had been fascinating, like watching her mother turn into a different person before her eyes. Who was this woman who could make an r sound like a living thing taking flight, who could unleash a torrent of beautiful sounds that made even the most high-falooting Southerner sound positively provincial? But Marlie hadn’t studied it in the ten years since she’d left home, and Vivienne had only spoken her somewhat clipped English in the times when she visited after. Marlie wondered if this weren’t a final test from a mother who had always pushed her to learn more, faster. To be better than Vivienne had been allowed.
Marlie pulled out the French-English dictionary she’d ordered from Raleigh and began the slow, painful work of transcribing a language she was still learning. If preparing the tonics she sold to Weberly’s Pharmacy couldn’t keep her mind off Socrates, wrapping her mind around French grammar certainly would.
“Fait pression sur la feuille avant que l’ebullition.” Marlie blinked at the words. She was only a fourth of the way through the pile, and some words were repeated enough that she knew what they meant. Pression. Pressure. To press. She thought of Socrates’s fingers again and sighed, dropping her head into her hands.
She didn’t know why she was drawn to him. In a camp full of men, all imprisoned for fighting the despised Confederacy, there were men more attractive than he. His hair was that shocking orange-red after all, his beard a darker shade that seemed out of place on his lean face. His nose was sharp, hacking its way forward between a heavy brow and clear blue eyes that were unsettling if they rested on you too long.
People often asked her if she had second sight because of her strange eyes, but Marlie thought it possible that Ewan could see clean through the mortal realm. There was an intensity to his gaze, as if he were examining every detail of the world around him to see how it fit in with his philosophy. She had the impression that most things did not. Perhaps that was why it made her skin warm and her heart beat faster when he approached cloaked in an air of uncertainty and blathered on about logic: It seemed that she had passed some kind of evaluation and had been found up to snuff.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Marlie? We’ve just had word from Diane Sims.” Sarah’s voice was high-pitched and excited, and that could mean only two things. Since Marlie hadn’t witnessed the Union army sweeping in and reclaiming central North Carolina for Lincoln, she’d have to assume work was ahead. They’d have passengers soon.
“Come in,” she called out. Before Sarah entered, Marlie quickly tucked the papers into a leather portfolio that lay on her desk.
Marlie pushed away the word sister and all it connoted and turned to Sarah as she entered the office, her nostrils flaring as the scent of the herbs hit her. She cupped a hand over her nose, as she always did.
Marlie reached behind her and pulled some of the books onto the portfolio, hiding it. As much as she loved Sarah, she didn’t want to share this part of herself. The part that had been born on a plantation hacked into the jungle of a tiny island, dragged to America in shackles, and had still managed to create a source of happiness and fulfillment for itself through sheer ingenuity. Hiding yet another thing from Sarah chafed like an ill-fitting corset, but this was not for Sarah. Not yet, and perhaps not ever.
“What did Diane say? How many are coming?” Marlie asked. She took up a basket from a shelf and began gathering the supplies that were generally needed to tend to runaways. Before the war, when Marlie had first convinced Sarah that she should take her abolitionist tendencies one step further and allow Lynchwood to be a station on the Underground Railroad, the passengers had been slaves heading North toward freedom. The war had changed the demographics. More and more whites passed through, Union troops or Southerners who opposed the war, as many in the Piedmont region did. Marlie still considered Lynchwood a safe haven for Negroes fleeing enslavement, but she had learned that others coming through now might talk to her like she was the help and treat her work as what was due to them, as had happened with the last batch of Yankee soldiers who’d passed through.
Marlie focused on the fact that she was helping, and she didn’t have to like a person to help them. But the contrast in the entitlement of the soldiers and the gratefulness of the escaped slaves was never lost on her. She learned something about the world outside of Lynchwood from that, too.
Whoever was coming, black, white, or native, would need the same care when they stumbled in, though: tonic of Sampson’s root to clean the wounded feet of folks who’d traveled for miles barefoot or in rags that could barely be called shoes; red oak bark for blisters; sassafras for stomach upset; rhubarb for diarrhea; slippery elm for wounds or, for those who had found the trip extremely stressful, ulcers; chamomile for nerves.
“Three are coming, maybe four,” Sarah said, ducking into the drying room and then reappearing with strips of linen that could be used for bandages. They’d formerly been the curtains in a guest room, but now served a more noble function. “Not sure who, but they’re heading North like the others.”
Marlie nodded as she continued gathering supplies. She didn’t like talking much when there was tending work to be done. She needed everything inside of her to go quiet, to make space for the feeling that came when she had a patient in front of her who needed her help. Before, when she was young and foolish, she’d believed it was something outside of herself that told her whether to use sorghum or sassafras, rattlesnake root or Life Everlasting. But she knew better now: It was simply study and experience, not some otherworldly power. Sarah had tried to convince her that the feeling was the love of Christ, but Marlie doubted it was a blue-eyed man with long hair who worked through her.
You wouldn’t mind having another blue-eyed man working through you. Heat charged through Marlie from her toes to the tips of her hair at the lewd thought. She wondered if there was a tisane to rid the mind of impure thoughts because she was sorely in need of it.
“Are you well?” Sarah walked over to her, concern in her eyes. She placed the back of her hand against Marlie’s forehead. “Maybe you should take a dose of something. You’re feverish.”
The sound of horse hooves clapping against the path leading up to the house drove Marlie’s stifled laughter away. They weren’t expecting company, and refugees heading North certainly wouldn’t draw attention to themselves with such a loud arrival. Sarah’s eyes met hers, wide with fear, and she knew they shared the same thought.
The Home Gua
rd.
Vance’s militia was ruthlessly hunting deserters and anyone who helped them. Another war was playing out alongside that of North versus South, and in many ways it was more brutal. The once quiet countryside was soaked in blood, and the Union wasn’t the cause of it—though anyone suspected of supporting them was at risk. Some of their most steadfast conductors, Friends and godless men alike, had been torn from their homes and families and imprisoned for their work on the Railroad and with deserters.
The hoofbeats drew nearer.
The Lynches had been suspected of Northern sympathies even before Sarah manumitted their slaves and began paying them a fair wage. And then there was Marlie, who was living, breathing proof that their ideas ran counter to that of the Confederacy. Her education and clothing and bearing were evidence enough. Had someone finally formally accused them?
Tobias pushed his way into the room then, rolling up his shirtsleeves. “I’ll move the desk.”
They’d already decided that Marlie’s drying room, which was a valuable hiding space, should not be discovered. Marlie pulled the door closed and Tobias shoved the desk in front of it with two heaves. Once it was in place, it was as if the room didn’t exist.
He turned to Sarah. “I’ll answer the door, but you should be right behind me. I’m not trying to get snatched up by these sad excuses for soldiers.” He was gone in a flash and Sarah tore out of the room after him.
Marlie put down the basket to follow and then paused to steel herself. She touched a hand to her chest out of habit, then remembered that she hadn’t seen the John the Conqueror root she’d once worn for luck in years. When had she decided her mother’s gift was no longer worth carrying?
“I’m so glad you’ve moved beyond those silly notions you had when you came here. You’re a Lynch. You don’t need hoodoo silliness to keep you safe.”
Sarah had spoken similar words several times over the years, and Marlie? Marlie had laughed at the silliness as she clutched her science texts to her chest. But now, something awful tickled the back of her neck and made the fine curls there lift. The restless energy that had plagued her all evening coalesced into fear.
She moved to untie the tattered apron she wore over her dress, then stopped. Strange whites wouldn’t tolerate a Negro woman sweeping down the stairs as if she were a member of the family, even if it was the truth. She tightened the knot on the apron strings, a reminder of how the world outside her home viewed her, as she walked slowly down the hallway. The telltale creak of the front door swinging open echoed in the foyer, and Marlie tensed, expecting to hear the clomp of boots and the sound of raised male voices. Instead Sarah gave a high, startled cry.
Marlie crept silently down the stairs, approaching the landing with a growing sense of dread. She couldn’t shake the certainty that something terrible had arrived on their doorstep. She reached the bend in the stairs that was the last area from which she couldn’t be seen and waited, trying to dispel the strange malaise that had enveloped her. Loss, was what it was—of what, she wasn’t sure, but the feeling was familiar to her, and it wrapped around her throat tightly, like a threat.
“Oh thank heavens! I thought you’d leave us out there forever and I am plum exhausted.” The loud, feminine voice that drifted up the landing was soaked in the accent of the Deep South, like sweet tea left in the sun too long. Marlie reluctantly turned the bend in the stairs and couldn’t hide the sound of surprise that escaped her.
Stephen Lynch, prodigal older brother and master in name of the house they lived in, had returned home. He’d married a woman out of Mississippi for her family’s money and discovered very quickly that they didn’t suit at all. He generally spent all his time handling family business in Philadelphia, but had been stuck at their Southern estate when full-out war erupted.
He looked up at Marlie with baleful brown eyes, and then his gaze skittered away as it always did. Stephen worked to end slavery as well, in his own way, but always seemed discomfited by Marlie’s presence. From what Sarah had told her, he had idolized their father; Marlie could understand why a living reminder of Mr. Lynch’s perfidy would upset him, though it didn’t make his rejection sting any less.
“Stephen has arrived, Marlie,” Sarah said tightly as she looked back over her shoulder. “And Melody. General Grant has not given up his assault on Vicksburg, and their home was destroyed by cannon volley. We’ll have the honor of hosting them until they can make further arrangements.”
Marlie wondered if anyone besides her could feel the anxiety emanating from Sarah. She hoped Diane and the passengers would see the carriage and move on to the next station, but then she noticed Tobias go through the door and knew he would light the lamp that meant “no sanctuary.” Her heart ached for whoever had thought they were reaching safe haven and would be turned away. Still, she feared more what would happen if they showed up and were seen by Stephen’s wife, who didn’t share his abolitionist sentiments.
“Further arrangements? These are the arrangements. I believe we’ll stay right here until those yellow-bellied Yanks are sent to tarnation,” Melody said. “I’m done with travel, and this house is much too large for one sad little spinster, now isn’t it?”
Melody was nondescript: brown hair, brown eyes, and a figure that was neither plump nor slim. She looked up and Marlie smiled, only to be met with a grimace.
“Why is that nigger hanging about on the stairs?” The question came out so easily, trailed by an incredulous laugh. “Get down here and take these bags.”
Marlie had been called that word before, but not often—folks knew her from her tonics at Weberly’s and the free care she occasionally offered to the poorest residents in the surrounding counties. More importantly, she was a Lynch. People didn’t have the nerve to call her such a slur, unless it was behind her back, and would most certainly never commit such a brazen act within the walls of Lynchwood. Not in the place that had been her sanctuary for almost half her life.
Her breath caught in her chest, stopped up there by the painful realization that, just like that, she was no longer welcome in her own home. The feeling of safety she’d felt for so long eroded beneath her feet as Melody looked up at her with contempt etched on her mundane features. Marlie stared back, her fingernails biting into the soft wood of the banister, not out of anger, but because she was holding on to her home for dear life.
“We don’t use that word here, Melody,” Sarah said. Her tone wasn’t anxious anymore, it was calm and lower than a snake’s belly, the voice she used when folks in the street slandered her Northern roots. “Not for Marlie, who is a member of the family, and not for any of the servants.”
Melody giggled, but it tapered off when she realized Sarah hadn’t been joking. “Silly girl, that’s what they’re called.”
“Not in my house, they aren’t,” Sarah countered, and Marlie knew exactly what Sarah’s face must have looked like: brows raised, cheeks starting to rouge.
“Darling sister, that sounds dangerously like Yankee rhetoric,” Melody said, her head tilted to the side. “This is the South. The Emancipation Proclamation don’t apply here, despite what Lincoln might have told you.”
“I don’t need a proclamation to tell me to treat other humans with respect,” Sarah countered. “That’s just the way things are done at Lynchwood.”
Melody laughed, but there was no joy in it. “Whatever notions you might have, I’ll remind you that this estate is actually in Stephen’s name. As his wife, I’m mistress of the house now, and your thoughts on how things are done here are no longer necessary.”
With that, Melody walked out of the foyer, her gaze taking in the room like a lioness surveying her new hunting grounds.
“I’m sorry,” Stephen finally said. His voice was struck through with fatigue and he looked about as pitiful as a man could get, his suit wrinkled and his hat crushed in his fidgeting hands, but Marlie felt no sympathy for him. He’d just served as Trojan horse for an enemy who was now loose in their home, free to plun
der and destroy. “I didn’t know where else to go. Our home was no longer fit to live in, and she refused to try to make it to our holdings in the North.”
“I’m just glad you’re safe,” Sarah said, hugging her brother. “It will be all right. Everything will be fine.”
Marlie felt a sudden stab of pain in her finger and jerked her hold on the banister to see a splinter embedded in the pad of her finger. A feeling of surety settled on her as she watched a pearl of blood well up, one she hadn’t felt so strongly since she’d left Vivienne. It pinned her to the ground as Sarah turned and smiled up at her reassuringly.
No. It won’t be fine at all.
Marlie was struck by the fact that she’d never buried a gris-gris of safety at the gate in all her years at the Lynch home—first she had forgotten, then she had outgrown such ideas. But now evil had just waltzed into her home, and she hadn’t made the most token attempt to prevent it. Vivienne would have been disappointed, indeed.
CHAPTER 3
“Now, Marlie, she might be kin to you, but I ain’t a Lynch.” Lace, the family chef, took one of the sharp wooden skewers on the counter and jabbed it through a piece of the seasoned meat in front of her. “I’m a free woman—I earned every cent used to pay for those free papers with my blood, sweat, and tears. I don’t got to take any abuse from that woman.”
Marlie’s back stiffened as she rolled up another slice of veal for the dinner that night. She often helped in the kitchen when the arrival of guests meant she couldn’t dine with Sarah, but she was always aware that her kitchen work was a choice, and not her job. Sarah discouraged it, and Lace occasionally wasn’t in the mood to indulge her need for a diversion. That Marlie had been born free and was a member of the family and not the staff was something she could never forget, even when she had tried.
