Lyddie Read online

  “I had no choice,” she said hotly. “I was made to.”

  “So many slaves,” he said softly.

  “I ain’t a slave,” she said. “I just—I just—” Just what? “There was the debt my father left, so …” Whatever she said only made it seem worse. “But we own the land. We’re freemen of the State of Vermont.” He looked at her. “Well, my father is, or was, till he left, and my brother will be …” But Charlie was at school and living with strangers. She hated the man for making her think this way.

  “I left the only home I knew,” he said quietly. “I left a wife and child behind, vowing I would send for them or come for them within a few months. And here I sit, sick and penniless, hiding for my life, totally dependent on the kindnesses of others for everything.” He shook his head and she was sorry she had had a moment’s hate of him. Somewhere, perhaps, her father was saying those very same words.

  After a while he stood up. “I can offer you a little rabbit stew,” he said. “I’m afraid that’s about all I have at the moment. Brother Luke will be coming up tonight with more food, I think, but if you’re hungry—”

  “I have some bread and cheese,” she said.

  “A veritable feast,” he said, his good humor returned.

  “When I first saw you”—they were eating and somehow she needed to let him know—“I … thought …” But she was ashamed to finish the sentence.

  “It’s a lot of money,” he said gently. “I’d be tempted myself if I were you.”

  She could feel herself go hot and red. “But I won’t,” she said fiercely. “Now I know you, I couldn’t ever.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “A compliment as beautiful as the giver.”

  “It’s dark in here,” Lyddie said. “Or you could see I’m plain as sod.”

  “Or lovely as the earth.” He used such fancy words, but she knew he wasn’t using words to make fun of her.

  * * *

  * * *

  Luke did come in the night, but she had slept so soundly that she didn’t hear him. The proof was the odor of porridge bubbling over the fire when she awoke. She had slept in her clothes, and scrambled down the loft ladder at once.

  “Ah, the sleeper awaketh!”

  “It’s late,” she said. “I have to go.” But he made her wait long enough to eat.

  It was a strange good-bye. She did not hope to see Ezekial again. She hoped that he could cross the border fast as a fox—far away from the snares of those who would trap him. How could she have imagined for one minute that she could betray him? “I hope you get to Canada safe,” she said. “And I hope your family can join you real soon.” And then, without even thinking, she thrust her hand into her pocket and held out to him the calf-money bag. “You might need something along the way,” she said.

  The coins jangled as she passed them over.

  “But this is yours. You’ll need it. You earned it.”

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t earn it. It come from selling the calf. I was only going to bury it—till it was needed.”

  “Will you think of it as a loan, then?” he asked. “When I get established, I’ll send it to you care of the Stevenses. With interest, if I can.”

  “There’s no hurry. Wait till your family comes. I don’t know when my brother and I can ever get back.” She felt leaden with sadness. She pushed the stool to the window and climbed up. He held the window open as she climbed out. Someone—Luke perhaps—had left the short ladder in place.

  “I can never thank you, my friend,” Ezekial said.

  “It was half Stevenses’ calf by rights,” she said, trying to diminish for both of them the enormity of what she had done. “It was their bull.”

  “I hope you find your freedom as well, Miss Lydia,” he said. It wasn’t until she was well down the road that she began to try to figure out what he had meant. And he was right. At Cutler’s, despite Triphena’s friendship, she was no more than a slave. She worked from before dawn until well after dark, and what did she have to show for it? She was no closer to paying off the debt and coming home than she’d been a year ago. She needed cash money for that. She needed work that would pay and pay well. And there was only one place in New England where a girl could get a good cash wage for her work—and that was in Lowell, in the mills.

  * * *

  * * *

  The weather held and the trip back was mostly downhill, so she was back by early afternoon. She hung the unused snowshoes in the shed and the lunch bucket in the pantry before she entered the warm kitchen.

  “So! You’ve decided to honor us with a visit!” The mistress’s face was red with heat or rage. Behind her, Triphena grimaced an apology.

  She stood in the doorway, trying to frame an excuse or apology, but as usual the words did not come quickly enough to mind.

  “You’re dismissed!” the woman said.

  “The best one you ever had,” Triphena muttered.

  “Unless—”

  “No,” Lyddie said quickly. “I know I done wrong to go off when you wasn’t here. I’ll just collect my things and be gone, ey?”

  “You’re wearing my dress!”

  “Yes, ma’am. Shall I wash it before I go or—?”

  “Don’t be impertinent!”

  Lyddie went past the angry woman without a word and up the back staircase to her tiny, windowless room. She pulled off the calico dress and put on the tight homespun, but it was like laying off a great burden. She felt more lighthearted than she had since the day Mrs. Peck brought the letter.

  Triphena had followed her up. “Just stay out of sight today. By tomorrow she’ll have come to her senses. She knows you’re the best worker she’s ever likely to get—and at no price at all. Why she sends your mother fifty cents a week, and then, only if I remind her.”

  “I’m going to be a factory girl, Triphena.”

  “You what?”

  “I’m free. She’s set me free. I can do anything I want. I can go to Lowell and make real money to pay off the debt so I can go home.”

  “But your brother—”

  “He’ll be all right. He’s in a good place where he’s cared for. They’re even letting him go to school.”

  “How can you get to Massachusetts? You’ve no money for coach fare.”

  “I’ll walk,” she said proudly. “A person should walk to freedom.”

  “A person’s feet will get mighty sore,” muttered Triphena.

  7

  South to Freedom

  Lyddie set out at once. Or nearly at once. First Triphena made the girl put on her own second-best pair of boots. They were, of course, too large for Lyddie, so she had to wait while the cook fetched two extra pairs of stockings and paper with which to stuff the toes. When Lyddie objected, Triphena kept muttering, “A person can’t walk to Massachusetts barefoot, not in April, she can’t.”

  Next, Triphena made her wait while she packed her a parcel of food large enough to feed a table of harvesters. And, finally, she gave her a tiny cloth purse with five silver dollars in it.

  “It’s too much,” Lyddie protested.

  “I’m not having your dead body on my conscience,” the cook said. “It will be enough for coach fare and the stops along the way. The only tavern food I trust is my own.”

  “But the mistress …”

  “You leave the mistress to me.”

  “I’ll pay you back the money—with interest when I can,” Lyddie promised. Triphena only shook her head, and gave her a pat on the buttocks as though she were five years old.

  “Just don’t forget me, ey? Give your old friend a thought now and again. That’s all the interest I’ll be wanting.”

  It was three in the afternoon before she could even start her journey, but she would not let Triphena persuade her to wait. She might let the mistress talk her into staying or lose her nerve if she didn’t set out at once.

 
; Her heart was light even if her feet felt clumsy in their makeshift boots and oversized stockings. She remembered Ezekial and thought: He walked north for freedom and I am walking south.

  She had forgotten in the excitement that she had already walked above ten miles that day, but her feet remembered. Long before dark they were chafing in the unaccustomed bindings of stockings and ill-fitting boots, reminding her that they had done too much. She sat down on a rock and took the boots off. But before long she felt chilled, so she put them on again and started out, but more slowly than before.

  Then, just at dusk, the sky opened, and it began to rain—not light spring showers, but cold, soaking torrents of rain, streaming down her face, icicling rivulets down her chest and legs.

  She was obliged, reluctantly, to stop in the next village and seek shelter for the night. The mistress of the local inn was at first shocked to see a young girl traveling alone and then solicitous. “You look near drowned!” she cried, and asked her where she thought she was headed.

  “Lowell, is it? Well, the stagecoach will be coming through the end of the week. Work for me till then and I’ll give you your board.”

  Lyddie hesitated, but her sodden clothes and blistered feet reminded her how unsuited she was to continue the journey. She gratefully accepted the mistress’s offer and worked so hard that before the week was out the woman was begging her to forget Lowell and stay on. But Lyddie was not to be persuaded.

  She boarded the coach on Thursday in the same dismal rain she’d arrived in. Handing over three of her precious dollars to the driver, she settled herself in the corner of the carriage. There were only two other passengers—a man and a woman who seemed to be married, though they hardly spoke to each other. The woman gave Lyddie’s dress and shawl and strange boots a critical going over with her eyes, then settled again to her knitting, which the bumping of the coach made difficult.

  With the muddy roads, it took two days to get to Windsor. They had not even left Vermont. Lyddie often wished she had saved her dollars and walked—rain or no rain. Surely she could have made it just as fast. But at least the disagreeable people left the coach at Windsor. The bed in the inn was infested with bugs, so she felt both filthy and itchy the next morning, and was not happily surprised that the coach, which had seemed overcrowded with three, was now to carry six as far as Lowell.

  One of the passengers was a girl about her own age. Lyddie wanted to ask her if she, too, was going for a factory girl, but she had a young man with her who appeared to be her brother, so Lyddie was hesitant to speak. Then, too, she remembered the look the previous female passenger had given her.

  The six of them were jammed into the carriage. There was hardly room for any of them to move, yet the rolling and pitching of the coach seemed worse rather than better for the load. Lyddie tried to sit delicately on one hip and then the other—to spread the bruising out if possible. One of the gentlemen lit a large pipe and the odor of it nearly made her retch. Fortunately, another gentleman reminded him sternly that there were ladies present, and the first man reluctantly tapped his pipe against the metal fixings of the door. But the stench had already been added to the air of foul breath and strong body odors. Lyddie longed for a healthy smell of a farmyard. People were so much fouler than critters.

  And still, when the others weren’t concentrating on keeping their seats in the swaying coach, they were looking at her—at her clothes especially. At first she was mortified, but the longer they rode, the angrier she became. How rude they were, these so-called gentry.

  Everyone’s clothes were a disgrace before they’d reached Lowell. The thaw and spring rains had turned parts of the roadway into muddy sloughs, and despite the coachman’s skill, early on the last morning they were stuck fast. The passengers were all obliged to alight, and the four men ordered by the coachman to push the wheels out of the rut.

  Lyddie watched the hapless gentlemen heave and shove and sweat, all to no avail. The coachman yelled encouragement from above. The men grunted and cursed below as their fancy breeches and overcoats turned brown with the mud and their lovely beaver hats went rolling off down the road.

  After at least a quarter of an hour of watching, she could stand their stupidity no longer. Lyddie took off her worn shawl, tied it about her waist, and tucked up her skirts under it. She found a flat stone and put it under the mired wheel. Then she waded in, her narrow shoulders shoving two of the gaping men aside as she set her own strong right shoulder against the rear wheel, ordered the men to the rear boot, and called out; “One, two, three, heave!”

  Above, she heard the laughter of the coachman. The men beside her were not smiling, but they did push together. The wheel rolled over the stone, and the coach was free to continue the journey.

  She was filthy, but she hardly cared. She could only think of how ignorant, how useless her fellow passengers had been. None of them thanked her, but she hardly noticed. She was eager to be going, but not to ride inside. She looked up at the still smiling coachman. “Can I come up?” she called.

  He nodded. Lyddie scrambled up beside him. None of the gentlemen offered her a hand, but she needed none, having spent her life climbing trees and ladders and roofs.

  The coachman was still chuckling as he gave the horses a crack of the whip. Cries of protest rose up from the passengers below. He jerked the reins, his eyes twinkling, as more cries came up from the irate inmates as they tried to disentangle their bodies in the carriage and settle themselves on the seats once more.

  He shook his head at Lyddie and held the pawing team for a few moments until the jostling in the carriage finally ceased. “You’re a hardy one, you are,” he said, reaching into the box behind him to pull out a heavy robe. “Here, this will keep the chill off.”

  She wrapped the robe around her head and body. “Silly fools,” she said. “Not the common sense of a quill pig ’mongst the lot of them. Why didn’t you tell them what to do, ey?”

  “What?” he said. “And lose the entertainment?”

  Lyddie couldn’t help but laugh, remembering the sight of those sweating, swearing, filthy gentlemen, and now they were further poisoning the already stale air of the carriage with their odor and road mud. Indeed, someone was already raising the shade to let in a bit of cold, fresh air.

  “So, you’re for the factory life?”

  Lyddie nodded. “I need the money.”

  He glanced sideways at her. “Those young women dress like Boston ladies,” he said.

  “I don’t care for the fancy dress. There’s debts on my farm …”

  “And it’s your farm, now is it?”

  “My father’s,” she said. “But he headed West four years ago, and we haven’t heard …”

  “You’re a stout one,” he said. “Ain’t you brothers to help?”

  “One,” she said. “And he’d be a great help, only my mother put him out to a miller, so until—”

  “Have you someone to look out for you in Lowell? A relative, or a friend?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll do all right on my own.”

  “I’ve no doubt of that,” he said. “But a friend to put in a word can’t hurt. Let me take you to my sister’s. She runs a boardinghouse, Number Five, it is, of the Concord Manufacturing Corporation.”

  “I’m obliged for your kindness, but—”

  “Think of it as payment for your help.”

  “You could have had it out in no time, had you—”

  “But never such fun. Coaching can be a wearisome, lonesome job, my girl. I take my pleasure where I can. Did you see those gentlemen’s faces, having to be rescued by a slip of a farm girl?”

  * * *

  * * *

  They crossed the bridge into the city late that afternoon. And city it surely was. It seemed to Lyddie that there were as many buildings crowded before her as sheep in a shearing shed. But they were not soft and murmuring as sheep. They were huge and foreboding
in the gray light of afternoon. She would not have believed that the world contained as much brick as there was in a single building here. They were giants—five and six stories high and as long as the length of a large pasture. Chimneys, belching smoke, reached to the low hanging sky.

  And the noise of it! Her impulse was to cover her ears, but she held her hands tightly in her lap. She would not begin to be afraid now, she who had stared down a bear and conversed easily with a runaway slave.

  The other passengers in their muddy clothing and with their various trunks alighted at the Merrimack Hotel. Lyddie could tell at a glance it was too grand for her purse and person.

  In the end, she waited until the coachman had seen the horses and carriage taken care of and then let him walk her to his sister’s boardinghouse. “I’ve brought you a little chip of Vermont granite,” he explained to the plump, smiling woman who met them at the door. Then he added, “We’d best come in by the back. Run into a little muddy stretch on the way down.”

  8

  Number Five, Concord Corporation

  At first she thought it was the bear, clanging the oatmeal pot against the furniture, but then the tiny attic came alive with girls. One struck a stick against a box, making the flash and odor of a tiny hell. And all this was just to light a candle that barely softened the predawn gloom of the attic. In the clatter of five girls dressing and squabbling over a single basin, Lyddie was forced fully awake and began to remember where she was.

  Filthy as she had been, Mrs. Bedlow, the coachman’s sister, had kindly taken her in. The boardinghouse keeper hurriedly gave her brother a cup of tea and sent him on his way. Then she had her son, a boy about Charlie’s age, fill a tub of hot water in her own bedroom and ordered Lyddie to bathe. The mud-caked dress and shawl she carried away as soon as Lyddie shed them and plopped them directly in a pot of boiling water on the black iron cook stove.

  And what a stove it was! Lyddie had only heard rumors of such modern wonders. When she came in from the boardinghouse keeper’s bedroom, her face scrubbed barn red, her warm, lazy body straining every seam of her one remaining dress, the first thing her eyes lit upon was the stove. She stared at it as though it were an exotic monster from the depths of the sea. If she could have chosen, Lyddie would have pulled a chair close to it and felt its wonderful warmth and studied its marvels, but Mrs. Bedlow urged her into the dining room, which was soon filled with a noisy army of almost thirty young women, still full of energy after their long day in the factory. Lyddie’s own head nearly settled into the plate of pork and beans, so that long before the others had finished, Mrs. Bedlow helped her up the four flights of stairs to the attic room, where she fell into bed hardly awake enough to mumble thanks for the woman’s kindness.