She did not seem disturbed in the least by her strange confession, or her time in the ship’s cell. She had already been a prisoner for twelve years, Duncan reminded himself. A dozen questions leapt to his tongue. When he approached, she glanced up, suddenly wary. He could sense her muscles tensing.
“I regret not getting to know the professor better,” he offered. “A learned man of great natural curiosity, especially about the New World.”
Sarah ran her fingers through her auburn hair, which at some point had lost its ribbon. In their time together, Duncan realized, a wild, almost ragged look had settled upon her. She had begun to make small twisting movements as if her tight-necked dress had become a straitjacket. “I would wake in my bed and he would be sitting there. There was always someone in the cabin with me, but he was the only one who kept to a chair beside the bed. The others always stayed away, at a table, reading to themselves. He was the only one to realize that in the small hours of the morning I was closest to wakefulness, and he arranged it so he was there in the middle of the night. He diminished my dose, so I would wake and we would talk, in whispers, and he never told the others. He had a daughter who had died of a fever years ago. She would have been my age. He said that God had smiled on him, to allow him the chance to be with me the next few years as I came of age.”
Duncan began to get a measure of the fragile balance of their conversation and spoke of his own conversations with the professor, of his respect for the gentle ways of the scholar as much as for his intellect, of Evering’s fascination with the night sky and his hoped-for comet. “The storm that day,” he said at last, “it was unlike any I had ever seen. I was in the mast when it struck. I heard my grandfather’s voice, though he’s dead these twenty years.”
Sarah gave one of her sad, wise nods, as if not at all surprised. “He brought me tea the night before. Real tea, not medicine tea, for the first time. He said I was well enough to stay up all night with him, that the day was his daughter’s birthday and his way of celebrating would be to hear more secrets about my life.”
“He had decided you had had enough medicine.”
She shrugged. “I can’t resent them for dosing me during the voyage.”
“I thought it was because they brought you against your will.”
“Young deer, unused to people, can take such a fright they run for miles.”
“But you bolted across an entire ocean. What frightened you so much, Sarah?”
He had done it, had broken the balance. She grabbed the papers on her desk and slipped away, watching him like a cornered animal. But she paused at the door to answer. “The world,” she whispered. “So many people without true skins.” She took a step across the threshold, then halted so abruptly it seemed she had been struck, her eyes fixed on something beyond the entryway.
Duncan darted to her side. Jonathan was throwing stones at old pots again, this time not only hitting the old crockery but stomping the pieces into the dirt after he had broken them. Sarah’s hand clutched her breast and she seemed to sag. She stepped backward as if to hide, seemed to sense Duncan’s presence, and put a hand in his, not fully enclosed, but intertwining the fingertips the way they had from their cells. It was not a touch of affection, but of fear. After a moment came the sound of shattered crockery, and she turned, her eyes awash with tears. Without a word she fell against him, clutching his neck, and wept like a little girl.
His lack of sleep the night before drove Duncan to his bed in the afternoon. He collapsed onto his pallet and was aware of nothing until a hand shook his shoulder. It was past sunset, and Crispin stood at his side. Sarah hovered shyly in the doorway, holding a lantern. She had tied her hair into plaits that hung from either side of her face.
“We have brought you something,” Crispin said as Duncan swung his feet onto the floor. Resting against the door frame was a small pack, made of canvas, with leather carrying straps, like those he had seen on the shoulders of Woolford and Fitch. “A blanket, a hand ax. A flour sack with dried meat and biscuit for two weeks. A loaf of bread wrapped tight in a cloth. A hand-drawn map to the Scottish settlements from Charleston, and another of the route to the Delaware from here. There is a downed tree at the edge of the old cemetery. I will place it there and cover it with bark. It will be there when the time comes. I knew men in the south who kept such things hidden, sometimes for months or years. Just having it kept their hope alive.”
“Crispin says he will teach me after you leave,” Sarah blurted out. She bit her lower lip and stared at the floor.
“At nighttime,” Crispin said solemnly as he positioned himself at the door, like a sentry. “Like my mother did for me. Until a new teacher comes.”
“I could believe you wish me gone,” Duncan said.
The words seemed to hurt Sarah. “I wish you free, sir.” Her voice, though strong, swirled with emotion. He had begun to understand something about her. Pushing against her emotion, her restless spirit, was what drew out her strength. “Free and safe, and in search of the truth. Crispin and I have both known what it means to be a slave. It is in our power to make it not so for you.” She looked up and met his eyes. “I know of no other way to repay you. You must let me repay you or I will bear dishonor. A life for a life. Mr. Lister, too, insists you must go. Crispin and I have discussed things. When you arrive in the Carolinas, you must write to the name on the map. The name is a settler a few miles north of here, a kind man who will know what to do with the letter. I will have news to write you then. We can find ways to delay the trial. Perhaps Lord Ramsey will lose interest. No matter what happens, you must promise to leave.”
Duncan looked up in alarm. “What is going to happen?”
“This is the edge of the woods. The place between worlds. I died here once before.”
The casual way she spoke the words made the hairs stand on Duncan’s neck. “You mean you were taken away before.”
“My parents buried me,” Sarah said, speaking very slowly now, as if English were again causing her difficulty. She looked into her hands and murmured to herself in her other language, the soft, swishing tongue of the forest people. “I existed only in their past. I was dead. It is the way of things for me. I die and become something else, like I did on the ship. I was once a little girl. I was once a prisoner. I was once a ghostwalker. I once lived only in dreams for two months. I lose mothers. I lose fathers. You are a Gaidheal, surely you understand what it is to be cut from your root.” She cupped her hands, her fingers slowly rising, like something growing, then she collapsed them and made a sharp slicing action with her hand.
Duncan glanced at Crispin and saw the same unsettling confusion he himself felt. The fear he felt from her words was unlike anything he had ever known. Something deep inside him seemed to be trembling. She was out on the mast again, and this time he knew not how to save her.
“Promise me, Duncan McCallum.” Her voice cracked, and she pressed her fist against her lips, her eyes closed for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was somber and insistent, her cheeks were flushing. “In all my life, I have never asked a thing of a man. Do me this one honor. If you value your life, if you value my soul, do this. Wherever Lord Ramsey wants you, there you must not be. If you stay or cross into the forest, he will use you. He will use you and destroy you.” He had heard almost the exact words before, from Adam. “Give me your oath you shall escape to the south.”