Lyddie Read online

  “Have you been to home at all?” she asked, turning back to her work and motioning him to sit on a low stool beside her.

  “No,” he said. “Nor you, ey?”

  She shook her head. She wanted to tell him about the money. How she wanted to get it safely home. Ask him what she should do, but she couldn’t, of course, with others about.

  “I saw Luke a few times,” he said. “He’s been up once or twice to look at the farm. The house is fine.” He lowered his voice. “He had a bit of a laugh about the way we blocked the door. He had to climb in the window.”

  She didn’t like the idea of Luke or anyone else climbing in the window. It made the cabin seem less secure. A coon or a bear might climb through the window as well, or a tramp. But she didn’t comment.

  “Do they work you hard?” she asked softly. He looked so small and thin.

  “They’re fair. The miller works as hard as any of us hands. The food is plenty and good.”

  Then why aren’t you bigger? she wanted to ask him, but she held her tongue.

  After he had gone, she thought of a hundred things she wished she had said. She could have told him about the frogs, if she’d remembered to. He would have laughed, and she longed to hear his laugh. She was much lonelier after he went. His presence for an hour had rubbed off some of her protection, leaving her feeling raw and exposed. He had left about noon, carrying some bread and cheese Triphena had pressed on him for his journey. He was wearing snowshoes that looked nearly as long as he was tall. Suppose it began to snow before he got back safely? Suppose he got lost? She tried to shake off her anxieties. Would someone let her know if something were to happen to him? It would be days, for they would let her mother know first, and then she might or might not write to Lyddie. It was too hard being separated like this. It was not right.

  “The weather will hold, ey?” Triphena said, reading her mind. Lyddie sighed deeply. “You’re worse than a little mother,” the woman chided, but her eyes were softer than usual.

  The weather did hold for another three days, and then the blizzard of the winter came. The stock was watered and fed, the cows were milked, but there was little that Otis and Enoch, the two hired men, could do outdoors, so the kitchen was crowded with men, seeking the warmth of the great fire as they made spills for the March sugaring, whittling four-inch segments of sumac, which they hollowed out with red-hot pokers. She thought of how she and Charlie had made spills last winter for tapping their own maples. Their own efforts were so childish compared to the practiced skill of these hired men.

  She could hardly move in the kitchen, large as it was, without tripping over the gangly legs of a man or having one of them bar her path to the fireplace with a poker. Triphena grumbled continuously under her breath and rejoiced audibly when they left to tend to the livestock.

  But Lyddie didn’t mind so much. Their bodies were in the way of everything she had to do, but as they worked they talked, and the talk was a welcome window into the world beyond the tavern.

  “They caught another slave up near Ferrisburg.”

  “The legislature can say all they want to about not giving up runaways, but as long as them rewards are high, somebody’s going to report them.”

  “Well, you gotta decide.” Enoch spat at the fire. His spit sizzled like fat on a hot griddle. “Who’s in charge? Down in Washington slavery is the law of the land. Man buys a horse fair and legal, he sure as hell going after it if it bolts. You pay for something, it’s yours. If the law says a man can own slaves, he’s got a right to go after them if they bolt. Ain’t no difference I can see.”

  “And if I happen to return somebody’s property, seems to me I deserve a reward.” Otis paused to pull his poker from the flames and thrust it smoking through the center of the sumac spill he held. “None of them high and mighty folks in Montpelier offered to pay me a hundred dollars not to report a runaway, now have they?”

  “Well, this weather they likely to be froze ’fore you find ’em. You reckon the reward holds froze or thawed?”

  “Why you suppose anyone’d try to run in winter? Don’t they know how easy it is to track a critter in the snow?”

  “Way I figure, it’s not snowing down there where they come from, ey? They don’t know what it’s like up this way. They just see a chance to run, they run. They don’t give it good thought.”

  I’d give it good thought, Lyddie said to herself. I’d get it all figured out close and choose my time right. If I was running, I’d pick me a early summer night with a lot of moon. I’d just travel by night, sleep in the day …

  “Can you believe these fools?” Triphena was saying in her ear. “They don’t know what it’s like to be trapped.”

  Lyddie had never seen a black person. She tried to imagine how one might look and act. In a way, she’d like to see one, but what would she do? What would she say? And supposing it was a fugitive, what then? One hundred dollars! Would they really give you a hundred dollars for turning in a runaway slave? Surely, with that much money, she could pay off her father’s debts and go back home.

  * * *

  * * *

  March came. The sap began to rise in the sugar bush, and Cutler’s was in a frenzy of activity. Willie went with the hired men to help in the gathering and boiling of the sap. Mr. Cutler had built a large sugaring shed two summers ago, and the only time any of the men were around the big house was when the livestock needed tending to. Even then, Lyddie was called on to help with the milking and the feeding and watering of the stock.

  Added to all her other chores was the task of clarifying the syrup brought up to the house. They had never bothered much with clarifying at the farm as there had hardly been enough syrup or sugar for the family, but the mistress was very particular and stood over Lyddie directing her.

  It was hot and exhausting work—beating milk and ash lye with the syrup and boiling the mixture until the impurities rose to the top in a scum and could be skimmed off—but the mistress, who only watched and commanded, declared the light, clear syrup worth the effort.

  Some of the clarified syrup was boiled until it turned to sugar and was molded into fancy shapes. Lyddie’s favorite among the lead molds was the head of George Washington, though sometimes the nose stuck and it was ruined.

  It was because of the molded sugar that Lyddie’s dream of taking the calf money home came true, though she couldn’t have known how that dream was going to come out.

  5

  Going Home

  By the second week of April, the sap had ceased to run, but it had been a good sugaring season. The mistress decided to take a large selection of the molded maple sugar to Boston. She could pay for her trip by selling the sugar, and it would give her a chance to see the big city and her perpetually ailing sister.

  Work did not disappear with the departure of the mistress, but it became as pleasant as a holiday. “If I could make life so happy for others just by going away, I’d go more often,” Triphena said. In two weeks Lyddie and Triphena and Willie, when they could catch him, turned the huge house inside out with scrubbing and cleaning. It smelled as good as the air of coming spring. And though there was a bit of fresh snow toward the end of the month, Lyddie knew it for the sham winter it was. Spring could not be denied forever.

  “Well,” said the cook one night. “The mistress earned herself a trip. I think the rest of us have, too.”

  “Where will you go, ey?” asked Lyddie wistfully.

  “Me?” Triphena said. She was knitting and her worn red hands fairly flew over the yarn. “I got no place I want to visit. I been to Montpelier twice. That’s enough. Boston’s too big and too dirty. I wouldn’t like it. Where would you go?”

  “Home,” said Lyddie, her voice no more than a whisper.

  “Home? But that’s hardly ten miles.”

  Lyddie nodded. It might as well be ten thousand.

  “You can go and be back in no more than a c
ouple of days at most.”

  What was the woman saying?

  “Go on. Tomorrow, if you like.”

  Lyddie couldn’t believe her ears. “But …”

  “Who’s going to care with the mistress gone?” She turned the row and began to purl without ever looking down.

  “Would it be all right?”

  “If I say so,” Triphena said. “With her gone, I’m in charge, ey?” Lyddie wasn’t going to argue. “If you was to wait, the ground would thaw to mud. Better go tomorrow if it’s fair. Take a little sugar to your brother on the way.”

  Lyddie opened her mouth to ask again if it would be all right, but decided not to. If Triphena said she could go, who was Lyddie to question?

  She was up before the sun, but she could tell the day would be a good one. She took a lunch bucket of bread and cheese and a little packet of molded sugar. The snow in the roadway was already turning to mud, and she slung a pair of snowshoes on her back in case the tracks up the mountain were still deep in snow.

  She reached the mill in less than an hour, but to her disappointment Charlie was not there.

  “I think he’s off somewheres,” one of the men said. “But you can ask up at the house.”

  A pretty, rather plump woman answered Lyddie’s knock. “Yes?” she said, but she was smiling.

  “I come to see Charles Worthen.” Lyddie seemed to stumble over the words, which made her flush with embarrassment. “I’m his sister.”

  “Of course,” the woman said. “Come in.”

  Lyddie stopped to leave her snowshoes and lunch bucket on the porch, then followed the woman into a large, fragrant kitchen. “I was just starting dinner,” the woman said as if in apology as she hurried to stir the stew bubbling over the fire in the stone fireplace. “Charles is at school today.” She replaced the lid on the kettle. “He’s a very bright boy.”

  “Yes,” said Lyddie. She would not be envious of Charlie. They were nearly the same person, weren’t they?

  “My husband is growing very fond of him.”

  What did she mean? Who was growing fond of Charlie? Charlie was not their child, not even their apprentice. She felt a need to explain to the woman that Charlie belonged to her, but she couldn’t figure out how.

  “Just tell him I was here, ey?” she said awkwardly. At the door she remembered the sugar and shoved it at the woman. “Some sugar,” she mumbled.

  “We’d be happy for you to stay awhile,” the woman said, but Lyddie was already picking up her things. “I have to go,” she said. “Not much time.”

  She realized later that she had forgotten to say thank you. But there was no going back. Besides she was in a hurry to get to the farm. She’d have time to clean the house well and check the roofs, as well as find a good place to hide the money. She’d just spend the night there, as it would be almost dark by the time she got everything done.

  If she got an early start the next day, perhaps she could stop by once more at the mill … but, no … She couldn’t stop by again and ask for Charlie and have him at school again. What would they think of her? And it might embarrass Charlie to have his sister clucking over him like an old biddy hen. She couldn’t stand the thought of Charlie being mortified by her in front of these people who thought so highly of him.

  Well, she was glad. Hadn’t she felt bad that he didn’t have a father and mother like Luke Stevens had to watch over him? But these weren’t his real family. She was his real family. More than their mother, really, who had shucked them off like corn husks to follow her craziness.

  Her anger, or whatever emotion it was that kept her head reeling, kept her feet moving as well. She was walking past the Stevenses’ farm by noon. She never stopped to eat, but on the last leg of the trip she suddenly realized her hunger and chewed on the now hard roll and dry cheese as she climbed the narrow track toward the farm.

  There was still plenty of snow on the track, but it was better packed than she had imagined. Mr. Westcott must be going back and forth to see to his cows. And then she realized there was snow on the pastures. There’d be no animals up in the fields. But of course—the sugaring. He had gone back and forth gathering sap from the sugar bush.

  When she rounded the bend, she half expected the cabin to have disappeared. But there it sat, sagging a bit, squat and honest as her father had built it. The firewood was stacked against the door as she and Charlie had left it. The roofs seemed undamaged from the snow—thanks, perhaps, to Luke Stevens. Those must be his tracks around the cabin. She felt kindly toward the tall, awkward young Quaker for taking care.

  She fetched the short ladder from the shed and propped it against one of the two south windows. Then she fetched a piece of split wood from the pile at the front door. The window should be easy to pry open unless it had swollen, but it hadn’t. Indeed, it seemed to open quite smoothly, as though welcoming her home. Lyddie propped it up with the wood. She put her right leg over the sill and scrunched her head down onto her chest to squeeze into the opening.

  Then she saw it at the fireplace—a shadowy form. She stifled a scream. “Luke?” she whispered. “That you?”

  The form turned and stood up. She could barely make it out in the gloom of the cabin. It was a tall man. But not Luke. There was a strange man in her home—the whites of his eyes seemed enormous. And then she realized what was so strange about him. In the dim light his face and hands were very dark. Only his eyes shone. She was looking at a black man.

  6

  Ezekial

  With one leg over the windowsill and her body pressed up under the window frame, there seemed no way to run. But why should she run? It was her house, after all, and what was one measly man, black or white, compared to a bear? Besides—she broke into a cold sweat—this man was likely to be worth one hundred dollars. Keeping her eyes on the intruder as though he were a bear, she managed to get her left foot across the sill and straighten herself to a sitting position on the window ledge. Pretending courage seemed to manufacture it, so she was just about to open her mouth to ask the man who he was and what he was doing in her house when he spoke to her.

  “Verily, verily I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” His voice was deep and smooth, almost like thick, brushed fur. She knew his words were from the Bible, but she was so astonished by the music of them that she sat there openmouthed, unable to protest that whatever he might be, she was no thief.

  “Never fear, little miss. My heart assures me that you’re neither a thief nor a robber.”

  “No,” she said, and then louder to show her authority, “I’m mistress here.”

  “Ah,” he said, “we meet at last. You must be Miss Lydia Worthen, my hostess. Forgive my intrusion.”

  “How do you know my name, ey?” She had meant to ask his, or at least what he was doing in her house, but, as before, he’d gotten the better of her with his fancy talk and quick mind.

  “Brother Stevens,” he said. “He felt you would be understanding.” He glanced at her, and for the first time since he had spied her at the window his expression seemed uncertain. “I hope he was not mistaken.” He smiled apologetically. “Here, do come down from there and share a cup of tea with me. You’ve had a long journey, I’d imagine, and a rude shock, finding your home occupied by a stranger.”

  What else was she to do? She took the hand he held out to her, surprised by its roughness, as his skin looked like satin in the dim light.

  He helped her to the floor. She followed as he led her to the rocker, and then she sat perched on the edge of the chair as he handed her a cup of birch tea. Why hadn’t she spied smoke, coming up the road? But the man’s fire was tiny, so perhaps there was none to see. The cabin was cold, though warmer than the outdoors. The man poured himself a cup and pulled up a stool on the other side of the fireplace to sit down facing her.

  “You’ve come from the village
,” he said.

  She nodded. The man could hardly be a runaway slave. He talked like a congregational preacher. But he was in hiding, that was plain.

  “I should introduce myself,” he said, reading her mind. “I’m Ezekial Abernathy, or was so called formerly. I was on the way northward when the snow delayed me last November.”

  Then he was a fugitive.

  “I was conveyed to Brother Stevens’s farm, where I stayed until it became clear that someone was watching their farm. That was when young Luke spirited me here. He thought your log pile at the door would discourage curiosity.”

  “We done it to keep out wild critters.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And you succeeded. I’ve been quite safe from wild ones here.” He took a sip of his tea, keeping his eyes on the rim of the cup. “So far.” He glanced up at her. “I would have left at once, but I was inconveniently ill. In the cold my lungs have been slow to clear.”

  “You talk like a preacher.”

  He relaxed a little. “Well, I am, or rather, I was.”

  “Then you ain’t a slave?”

  “Some have considered me a slave.”

  “But you talk nice.” She hadn’t meant to put it that way, but it came out unthought.

  He smiled. “So do you.”

  “No,” she said, “I mean you’ve had schooling—”

  “I was my own schoolmaster,” he said. ‘At first I only wanted to read the Bible so I could preach to my people. But”—he smiled again, showing his lovely, even teeth—“a little reading is an exceedingly dangerous thing.”

  “Reading the Bible?”

  “Especially the Bible,” he said. “It gave me notions.”

  “So you just left, ey? Just set out walking?”

  He leaned his head back, remembering. “Something like that,” he said, but she could tell from his eyes that it was nothing like that at all.

  “I couldn’t leave my home,” she said.

  “No? And yet you did.”