I take a swig of ale and curl up with my back against the fallen log, listening to the sounds of the swamp. At first, everything is quiet, as if the marsh is holding its breath at my intrusion. But then I hear the call of a heron. A bittern’s throaty warble. Life is everywhere here, apart from man’s bustle and hum. Prison acclimated me to loneliness, to solitude. Though the openness of the marsh is unsettling, I could manage to be happy out here, I think, with the sky as my ceiling and the trees my shelter.
I finish my ale, then drift off to sleep.
When I wake, the sun hangs low, a wash of pink swathing the sky. I rise and stretch with a satisfied groan. A twig snaps, behind me. I whirl, widening my stance defensively, my eyes scanning the tangled underbrush. It’s probably only a wild creature—a raccoon, or a deer, grazing at dusk. But if it’s one of the wild hogs the island is named for, or worse yet, the murderer—
There’s another snap, and a rustle. A flash through the trees, so fast I nearly miss it. Panic floods my limbs with cold fire. I slide my hand beneath my waistband, fingers curling around the kitchen knifetied to my outer thigh. “Who’s there? Is someone there?” The air stills, and a shiver of anticipation runs up my back. My heartbeat drums in my ears, but I strain to listen over its frantic rhythm. There’s nothing. Only the distant coo of a mourning dove. The gentle swoop of a pelican coasting overhead. Several minutes pass. Although I hear nothing more, the sense of being watched lingers. I sit again, my posture rigid against the rotting log.
I’m not alone out here. And though, for a moment, I convince myself I imagined it, I know what I saw. Eyes. And a glimpse of a white shirtsleeve.
Seven
Days pass without another sign of my mysterious visitor. I keep my knife close at hand and sleep lightly, sitting against the rotting log like a sentry on watch. But if they intend me any sort of ill will, it has yet to manifest. And so I do my best to get on with my new life in the marsh. At dead low tide, I cross Hog Creek to make camp farther inland, close enough to walk to Mount Pleasant to gather fresh water and steal, should I need to, but removed enough from civilization that I’ll be safe from curious eyes. In a clearing sheltered by sycamore and silver maples, I begin gathering materials to build a structure. I pile fallen limbs and sticks beneath a sturdy young tree and cut spartina with my kitchen knife to serve as thatch for the roof. At the end of the day, my hands are raw from the sharp edges of the winter-tough cordgrass, and I’m out of breath from my exertions. My hunger and thirst demand attention, so I sit to eat an apple and chew on a piece of venison before sleep claims me.
The next morning, invigorated with purpose, I attempt to make a three-sided shelter out of the sticks and spartina. I stack the limbs, alternating directions, and nestle them at right angles to each other. I observed a group of slaves building a log cabin on Daniel Island once, and they used a similar method. By midafternoon, the structure reaches the level of my hips—high enough for me to crawl inside to sleep, but low enough to remain stable in the wind. Now I just need a roof. But when I place the first limb across the stacked logs, I underestimate theangle. And my clumsiness. It knocks against the left wall. The entire structure collapses as I watch, helpless to prevent it, all my hard work now reduced to the same pile of sticks I started with.
I curse in frustration, tugging at my hair. A fitful wind starts up from the north, cold and wet with rain. I huddle beneath my cloak under the tree and wait for the storm to pass, thinking over the flaws in my construction. Then it comes to me. I need mud. Mud will hold the limbs together, will stabilize them. Once the rains have ceased, I go out to where the pluff mud meets the sand. Careful not to get stuck in the mud’s sucking softness, I use a large scallop shell I find on the beach to scoop up some of the foul-smelling stuff. I take the mud back to my campsite and use it to cement two sticks together. It works. Encouraged, I scour the woods for anything I might use to carry more mud and find a half-round scrap of tree bark to serve as a means of conveyance. It’s slow going, and by evening, my legs are aching, but I continue to work by the light of the moon until exhaustion pulls me under and I sleep.
I finish the walls the next day. Before adding the roof, I allow the mud to dry. This time, when I lay the limbs across the top, cementing them to the walls with more pluff mud, the structure holds. I let out a whoop of triumph, pleased with my progress. I finish the following day, thatching the roof with mud-dredged spartina and gathering pine needles for the floor. That night, I sleep inside my little hermitage for the first time, and though the air is brisk, with my warm cloak, I manage to stay cozy and dry.
Though I soon run out of the dried venison, finding food proves less of a challenge than I imagined. Oysters are plentiful, and at low tide there are always a few black drum or redfish left flopping about on the shoals. I get over my initial squeamishness at eating raw fish very quickly. It’s too risky to start a fire, even if I had the means to do so. The smoke would only alert people to my presence—defying my entire reason for coming here. While I’d much rather have steamed oysters, or chowder, the jail’s dismal fare made me appreciate the sustenanceanyfood might bring. Besides, raw fish is rather tasty—as flavorful as it is fresh from the briny, brackish water.
I find a few wild persimmons still clinging to their branches, wrinkled and dry, but with a lingering sweetness all the same. There are beautyberries and purslane. A spare bounty, but enough to add variety to my diet. Spring will come to the Lowcountry sooner than it does elsewhere, bringing with it a cornucopia of blessings. I need only be patient. There are far worse places one could be stranded.
It’s empowering, my survival in solitude. I think of the sheltered, cosseted girl I once was. I never had to worry about my next meal, or whether I’d have clean clothing to wear. Siobhan changed my bed linens weekly and emptied my chamber pot every morning. My only tasks each day consisted of music lessons, needlework, or reading. Prison broke me of all my soft ways. I was forced to do hard labor—if I wanted a clean cell, I had to scrub the floors and my chamber pot myself. Kitchen duty was particularly brutal, and I still bear scars from Cook’s mean lash when I failed to stoke the fires before her arrival one winter morning.
But out here, in the marsh, I’ve discovered a way of life I’d never considered. At first, I found the openness unsettling, accustomed as I am to confinement. But now ... now my perceptions have altered. No one cares about my plain looks out here. My manners. My mode of dress or my family’s name. Among the birds and creatures of land and sea, I am one with them. I’m free, with the horizon as my only threshold. Arabella Meade and others like her can have their gilded salons and their wide piazzas. The marsh is my palace, and it holds beauty beyond measure.
My reverie doesn’t last long. February comes in like a lion, with miserable, drenching rains that soak through my hastily built shelter. I shore things up as best I can with pine needles and waxy magnolialeaves, cementing them to the roof with pluff mud. But I can do nothing to stop the seepage from the ground. My clothes become caked with silty mud, and I spend the days between squalls trying to dry them. The creek overflows and transforms to a lake, inching perilously closer to my campsite at high tide. It’s rare for this much rain to come to the Lowcountry outside of hurricane season, but it doesn’t relent until my patch of dry land is an island in the tidal surge.
Most interestingly, despite the rising water, my visitor has returned, which means they must be in possession of a boat. I caught a glimpse of them last night, furtive eyes in the shadows, a dark face surrounded by a halo of frizzled hair. A girl, if I had to guess. Perhaps a Gullah girl, wondering at the strange, pale haint of a creature squatting on her land. Or perhaps she’s a maroon, escaped from her master. The Lowcountry marshes are a haven for fugitive slaves and a waypoint to freedom, where fishing boats and whalers from the North sometimes secrete fugitives in their holds on their way back up the coast.
That evening, the storms finally break, and I decide to leave my visitor an offering—to let her know I pose no threat. I comb through the jewelry in my pochette and select the sapphire ring, which I place on a stump near the edge of my camp, where the woods still provide cover. Once the sun sets, I eat the final, mealy apple I brought here from town, taking small, deliberate bites down to the core. Then I lie down and listen.
Sure enough, after an hour or so, I hear the sound of oars cutting through water, then the telltale rustle of footsteps through the brush. I slowly turn, watching through the gaps of my hermitage. My visitor cautiously tiptoes out of the woods, her head on a swivel. She’s dressed in a simple white frock with a wide blue sash around her waist, her dainty feet bare beneath the hem, her hair curling about her face. She’s young—no older than fourteen or fifteen—and pretty, with a sylphlike grace. She snatches the ring from the stump, looks right and left, and then disappears into the undergrowth once more. I smile and roll onto my back, drifting off to sleep.
The next morning, on the stump, I find a paper packet with benne wafers inside and something even more precious—fishing hooks and a length of twine.
Another week passes without a sign of my visitor. But thanks to her generosity, my belly enjoys as much redfish and tarpon as I could desire. I spend my days fishing and foraging, and at night I lie awake, restless, considering my future, and how I hope to spend it. Though I am safe and content for now, the days are beginning to bleed together. The marsh has welcomed me, and I’ve developed an affinity for the solitude it affords, but the thought of spending my life like this, alone and isolated, stirs my ennui. I need to seek out some semblance of civilization, even if I must remain on its fringes. And so, after the floodwaters recede, I decide to chance a trip into Mount Pleasant to see whether there’s any news from town ... and to steal, should opportunity present itself. I wait for the cover of darkness and make my way south, using only the moonlight as my guide. My senses have adapted to outdoor life. My eyesight is keener. My sense of smell sharper.
Mount Pleasant has grown since I last visited, some four years ago. New, handsome mansions line the outskirts of the small town. Though my fingers itch to break into any number of them, and raid their larders, I restrain myself. It isn’t worth the risk. On the boulevard along Shem Creek, I have a run of luck. A shop window, left carelessly open. I peek inside, giddy with delight. It’s a bakery. I hesitate for a moment, my conscience pricked. Apart from the drunken man, I’ve only ever stolen from the wealthy. But my survival—and my hunger—demands that I must put aside my reservations in this case. I push the sash up and climb through. While the kitchen is mostly bare, I spot two loaves of rye bread above the hearth, crusts brown and inviting. My mouth waters. I tuck one of the loaves under my arm and scan the small kitchen for anything else of use, but with no way to cook, flour and yeast will do melittle good, although I grab a tin of salt to try my hand at curing fish. I climb back out the window and lower the sash to its original position. I tear off a chunk of the bread with my teeth, the taste exploding on my tongue. After weeks of nothing but fish, oysters, foraged berries, and bracken, the bread is an ecstasy.
I meander along the docks, admiring the high-masted ships and fishing boats, remembering the stories Grandmama told me. George Washington boarded the barge that took him to Charleston here on Shem Creek. She attended the lavish ball welcoming the president to the city when she was a girl of nineteen, something she spoke about with great fondness until her dying day. She wore a blue silk gown and a fashionable French wig, decorated with an ostrich-feather cockade. Washington danced the minuet with her and called her the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She claimed they enjoyed an evening of bliss together, and she even had a lock of hair she swore was his, although Grandmama’s stories often bore too much shine to be fully believed.
I’ve nearly reached the middle of town, where I fill my water flask at a public well, when I see it. Tacked to a brick wall, alongside posters demanding the return of fugitive slaves, my own image stares back at me. It’s the drawing the artist made of me in the courtroom, my eyes hollow, my cheeks gaunt, lips scowling. Unlike my grandmother, I’ve never been much to look at, but this likeness is decidedly ungenerous.
Wanted
Lillian Carmichael
Convicted Murderer and Fugitive from Justice
Any Person with Knowledge of Miss Carmichael’s Whereabouts
Leading to her Capture Will Receive an Award
In the amount of$400
Do not Attempt to Apprehend this Dangerous Fugitive
