“We went into the woods, ma’am. They can’t find us, without they have dogs.”
“I should not be so sure. And in any event, they will be back with dogs, and soon, I fear.”
“That’s right,” Caesar agreed. He couldn’t have heard Dunmore ’s threat, he just seemed to accept this as a given. “Some of them others, they down at the houses, gettin’ their things together. I come back for mine, and Queenie and Tom and Plato is outside. Poor Lucy’s still in a state. Queenie says she’ll get her things as well, if that’s all right with you, ma’am?” Queenie was the cook for Marlowe House, Tom and Plato the occasional houseboys.
“Of course, let them come in.”
Caesar opened the door, beckoned to the unseen people, and a moment later Queenie and Tom and Plato shuffled in, sheepish, apparently unsure of their reception.
“Oh, Queenie, boys, I am so relieved to see you,” Elizabeth said, and that seemed to go far to ease their minds.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, for all this trouble-,” Queenie began, but Elizabeth shook her head, interrupted, saying, “It is never your fault. It’s that bastard Dunmore, has been him all along. But whatever are we to do?”
“Well, ma’am…,” Caesar began, glanced at the others for encouragement. Queenie nodded her head.
“Well, Mr. Marlowe always said we was free, so we reckoned we’d head to the woods, hide out until we can come out safe again. Ain’t like we’re running, ’cause Mr. Marlowe, he always say we can go if we want…”
None of the freed slaves had ever tested this promise. None had wanted to, and they understood as well that there were not many places that they could go.
Caesar was clearly unsure of how their plan would be received.
“Of course. There is nothing else for it,” Elizabeth said, to the others’ obvious relief. “First we shall need food…”
“Beg pardon, beg pardon…” Billy Bird stood, wiped his mouth elaborately with his napkin. “Pray, forgive me, but these are intrigues I do not need to hear. By your leave, my dear Lizzy, I shall be off. I am at the King’s Arms for another fortnight or so, should you need my services. Until then”-he stepped around the table, took up Elizabeth ’s hand and kissed it with a flourish-“I say adieu!”
He grinned, nodded to the others, and was gone. Elizabeth did not think he was gone forever.
“Food, ma’am?” Queenie brought her back to the present.
“Yes, yes. Take whatever you can. You know better than me what is in the pantry. Plato, run down to the slave…your quarters there and bring back five or six more men. We shall take all the guns and swords and such from the drawing room, and the extra powder and shot from the cellar.”
“Guns, ma’am? Mr. Marlowe’s guns?”
“Yes, the guns that belong to Mr. Marlowe and myself. Do you not see a need for them?”
Caesar and Tom exchanged glances. This was a largesse they had not expected. “Oh, yes, ma’am,” said Tom. “We surely could use them, if you could see fit to part with them.”
“Of course. Now let us round these things up and be gone. I do not know when Dunmore and those other sodding bastards might be back. There is not a moment to lose.”
Elizabeth felt strong, in charge of the situation, and it was a good feeling. Things could not proceed without her to organize them, to issue orders; these poor people would be in an utter state of confusion. She understood how Thomas felt, standing on his quarterdeck, seeing things happen in reaction to his spoken word.
Queenie and Caesar turned their attention to the pantry and the cellar. Elizabeth led Tom to the drawing room where a majority of the guns were kept, everything from battered old muskets to lovely fowling pieces and matching braces of pistols. Edged weapons too: swords, cutlasses, hunting knives. Thomas had taken the best weapons with him on the Elizabeth Galley, but he had amassed enough of a collection over the years that there was still an impressive arsenal remaining.
They stacked the weapons up on the fainting couch. Soon Plato joined them, leading a half dozen men from the former slave quarters who gathered up the weapons in strong arms, the food as well, and packed it all in sacks they had brought with them.
Elizabeth raced up to her dressing room, stuffed her warm cloak and other clothes into a pillowcase, then hurried down the stairs again and out back where the others were waiting.
“Very well. Let us go,” she said.
Embarrassed silence, looks shot back and forth. Then Queenie said, “Bless you, ma’am, you ain’t figuring on coming with us?”
“Of course I am.”
“This ain’t your problem, Mrs. Marlowe. Ain’t no reason you should suffer this.”
“Of course it is my problem, it is all of our problem. I most certainly am coming with you. Now let us go.”
More looks, a few shrugs, and then the men hefted the sacks of food, slung muskets over shoulders, jammed pistols in belts and they all headed back toward the former slave quarters and the woods beyond.
Elizabeth could not have let them go alone. Billy Bird’s assurances aside, she knew that they could not survive without her. These simple people needed her to show them the way.
They took to the woods, hiking hard along trails that Elizabeth could not even discern. Her skirts caught on the brush, and she found herself tripping over obstacles half hidden by the bracken, but she pushed on, keeping pace, unwilling to let her people face these hardships without all of the help she might be able to offer.
They came to a clearing, an open place in the woods where the grass grew waist high over a half acre or so. “This looks a fine place to stop,” Elizabeth suggested. “Set up some sort of camp right here?”
“Well, Mrs. Marlowe, you right, no doubt,” said Plato. “But maybe we best get a little further from Marlowe House. We ain’t but a mile or so, and easy tracking through them woods.”
“A mile?” Plato had to be wrong about that; they were three miles at least, but Elizabeth did not want to argue. “Very well, let us go on.”
It was almost dark, twilight after the long daylight hours of summer, when they came to another clearing, not unlike the first. Where they were in relation to Marlowe House, how far they had walked, Elizabeth had not a clue.
But her people obviously did. It was not an empty field that greeted them, but one with a few crude tents already pitched, and firewood stacked up in a ring of stones. Four or five of the plantation’s former slaves were there already. Three horses were staked out near the edge of the woods.
There were greetings all around, hugs, kisses, and from those who had come ahead, somewhat disingenuous enthusiasm at finding that Elizabeth had joined them.
And once it was full dark, once smoke could not be seen over the trees, the fire was stoked up and there was roast chicken and corn bread and potatoes. Elizabeth ate with an appetite she had not felt in some time. Her feet were raw and swollen and when she surreptitiously pulled off her shoes and stockings she saw that they were bleeding.
She could feel the muscles in her legs cramping up. It was not the distance, she did not think, however far they might have walked, but the hiking over broken ground that she was unaccustomed to.
Queenie came over, asked how she did, piled up some sacks filled with some soft thing for her to lean against. Took Elizabeth ’s feet in hand and rubbed them with a pungent ointment. Elizabeth wanted to protest, to insist that she not be treated like some lady of the manor, but Queenie’s ministrations felt so good, and her feet hurt so much, that she kept her objections to herself.
“How is Lucy?” Elizabeth asked.
“Not so good, ma’am. She’s terrible worried about King James. Had a notion something would happen, and now she blames herself for not stopping him.”
“I’ll come and see her.”
“That would do a power of good, I reckon.”
Elizabeth stood, hobbled across the field to where Lucy lay in her tent. Her eyes were red, swollen from crying. She looked a wreck.
“Lucy?”
“Oh, Mrs. Marlowe!” Lucy got to her knees, threw her arms around Elizabeth ’s neck. She began to sob again.
“Lucy, Lucy…James is a clever one, you know that, he’ll get through this…”
“Oh, Lord, Mrs. Marlowe, why ever didn’t I stop him? I knew something was going to happen…”
