Father Donal follows close behind as we pass into the cold, damp corridor. My gorge rises as the stench of human excrement and vomit accosts me. I’ve never grown used to it. The other prisoners peer through their barred windows as we pass, banging their breakfast spoons against the metal. “Godspeed, Miss Carmichael!” Claudia calls with a taunting lilt.
I ignore her, the sound of rain on the roof drowning out her cackling as we progress to the tower and down its spiraling steps. At the bottom of the stairwell, the strange sensation of being outside my body overtakes me. Gray light floods through the windows lining the passageway leading to the courtyard, where the gallows await.The Long Walk.The name given to it by the condemned.
I turn my head and glimpse Papa through the window, dressed in black mourning, his face mottled from the cold rain. His hair—white now—is plastered against his scalp. It was still a glowing copper the last time I saw him. William is there, too, at Papa’s side, his face aged beyond its five-and-twenty years. He catches sight of me and his eyes skitter away, his lips tugging downward. He’s here only for justice, then. Not for any lingering affection. Resentment curdles in my stomach.
Collingwood flings open the heavy wooden door. A blast of rain-chilled air drives into the vestibule. Water sluices across the floor, as it always does at high tide. Outside, the gallows stand, stark and grim. Six rickety steps lead up to the platform. All that remains is the muddy path ahead. The path to my death. At the sight of me, framed by the door, the crowd’s murmuring grows louder. Their faces blur. I begin to tremble. My heart beats so fast and hard I fear it may burst.
“It’s all right, dove,” Mrs. Banks soothes.
But it’s not. I don’t want to die. I don’t deserve to die. I didn’t kill my sister. I didn’t do anything wrong.
“Come on then,” Collingwood urges, his impatience palpable. “If you don’t move, I’ll be forced to carry you.”
Yes. Just like Lavinia Fisher, who had to be hauled up to the gallows to face her fate, only to bestow a volley of curses on the crowd gathered there. I channel some of Lavinia’s famed defiance, her anger. William’s disdain has piqued me. I’ll not give him the pleasure of seeing my fear.
But no matter how much I will myself forward, my feet remain firmly planted on the threshold, as if encased in ice. I try to speak, to let the warden know that I cannot move, but I find my jaw is locked, too. My breath catches in my lungs. This is more than fear. More than shock. Something else is happening. Something that has happened only once before—the memory of it faint and hollow. Cold seeps up my body, through my toes, as if drawn from the wet floor beneath me. My vision narrows until the world fades from view, taking the light with it, until everything becomes the same dull shade of gray. I feel Father Donal’s arms go around me as I fall, and then I feel nothing more.
Two
Drip. Drip. Drip.My hearing comes back to me first, ears tuning themselves to the repetitive sound of water falling on stone. The rest of my body slowly awakens, my limbs stiff, cold. My eyelids unseam painfully, but only darkness meets my vision. At first, I think myself returned to my jail cell, but my fingers sink into soft velvet instead of my scratchy, lice-ridden cot. I’m on a bed—the nicest one I’ve slept on in years. I try to sit up, but my forehead collides with something solid. A dull, painfulthunkreverberates through my skull. I press my hands upward, realization and panic flooding through me at the same time.
This is no bed. I’m inside a coffin.
I scream, my breath fogging the air. I kick and thrash, twisting as I try to fight my way out of this new prison. The last thing I remember is standing on the threshold of the jail, facing the gallows. Not being able to move. Falling backward into the young priest’s arms. I obviously swooned, somehow escaped my own hanging, but they must have pronounced me dead all the same. If so, I certainly didn’t stay that way. But if I don’t escape this casket, I won’t be alive for long. I’ve heard stories of people buried alive—have seen the coffin bells on the sides of gravestones. But the potter’s field outside the jail has no such bells. Once buried there, you are forgotten, with no marker to proclaim you ever lived.
I’ve dreaded my execution, but this death would be far worse. Slow. Agonizing. Trapped beneath the swampy South Carolina soil and left to suffocate.
Despite my panic and confusion, my animal instinct to survive takes over. I draw whatever precious air might be left to me into my lungs and buck my hips like a bull gone mad, over and over, stopping only to claw madly—and futilely—at the lid of the casket with my fingernails. Memories flood my consciousness. Rebecca toddling through the garden, one of Mother’s prized roses in her grubby hands. Papa lifting me in the air, the sun full on my face, my laughter bright and clear. My dearest friend, Eleanor, wearing the daisy crown I made for her, her rosy lips curving into a smile.
But my will to live is stronger than these dying memories. I turn on my side, the casket lid tight against my shoulders, and draw my knees up, much as I can, tensing my muscles and kicking explosively behind me. Once, and then again.
With a loud, splintering crack, the side of the casket splits, letting in the sparest sliver of light. I still ... Light, instead of dirt. I must be aboveground, then. A momentary sense of relief spreads through me. I might still be in the jail’s morgue, given the season—even with our mild winters, the ground was likely too stiff for the undertaker’s shovel.
There’s also a chance I might be in our family crypt. Papa was at the gallows. If he claimed my body, he’d have insisted on giving me a Christian burial. Thanks to Father Donal, Idiedin a state of grace, after all.
It seems folly, the chances slender as the crack I’ve made in the casket, but my hope rises all the same. I curl onto my side within the cramped space once more, tensing all my muscles, and kick. The crack in the side of the coffin widens, ever so slightly, letting in more light and the fragrance of stale lilies. I kick again, and again, until my muscles protest and my energy flags. I rest for a few moments and then change my tack, rocking back and forth, leveraging my weight. If I’m in the mausoleum, on a niche, and can make the coffin fall, it might break open on the marble floor, even if it’s been screwed shut. I rock back and forth again, harder this time. The coffin scoots begrudgingly forward. Progress.
I pause for a deep breath (at least I have plenty of air, thanks be to heaven), sweat running into my eyes, then with a determined cry, I buck and kick out hard, using all my remaining strength. The coffin tilts with a groan and then falls, taking me with it. It shatters around me in splintered cherrywood planks, dead lilies showering the floor with brown petals. I free myself from the detritus, tears springing to my eyes. I’m unharmed but for a single scratch on my arm, below the draped sleeve of my finest ball gown. Mother’s choice, no doubt. By the shriveled appearance of the lilies, I’ve been here for at least a few days, if not a week.
I stand on shaky legs. At the center back of the mausoleum, Rebecca’s gilded coffin accosts me. Hers was the first to grace this place and, as such, given rest in the choicest niche below the crypt’s rose window. “Well, sister, we’re together again,” I say aloud with a laugh. I half expect to see Rebecca’s ghost leering at me with disdain, but she makes no effort to appear.
Mother argued with Papa over the cost of building a mausoleum at the new cemetery. She called it a vanity—the churchyard at Saint Mary’s had been good enough for her people for generations. But when my twin sisters, Emma and Ruth, died of smallpox before their eighth birthday, Papa was devastated by the sight of their coffins being lowered into the ground. He commissioned the mausoleum as soon as the cemetery began selling plots. Papa’s “vanity” is proving to be my salvation.
An ungodly thirst clenches my throat. I’ve never been so thirsty. I tilt my head upward, searching for the source of the dripping I heard inside the coffin. A thread of water beads down from the vaulted ceiling, seeping in through the stonework. I stand beneath the meager stream, stretching out my tongue, the water rolling down my parched throat one agonizing drop at a time. It does nothing to slake my thirst. In desperation, I sink to the floor and lap the water from the puddle gathering there, the marble cold against my tongue.
Once I’ve satisfied my thirst, I rise, stretching my protesting limbs. Moonlight slants through the vent above the door. A wave of dizziness washes over me as I cross to the mausoleum’s anteroom and press my hand against the door. I push, gingerly. The door scrapes open a scant few inches before catching on the scrollwork gate, which is very much locked. I wriggle my hand through the opening, grasp the padlock, and tug downward, to no avail.
While the cemetery is upriver from town, in Charleston’s Neck, someone passing by still might hear me if I scream or rattle the gate. A groundskeeper, perhaps. But even if someone did hear me and unlock the mausoleum, I’d surely be sent right back to jail. Back to the gallows.
Panic ties my stomach in a knot once more. I scan the space, frantically, for anything I might use to try to pick the lock. I played at such things as a child, with some success. I’d always wanted to see inside my mother’s escritoire drawer, and one day, using a hatpin, I breached the lock. I discovered nothing of importance inside—only an envelope filled with receipts from our modiste and tepid letters from my aunt—but the sense of accomplishment was worth the effort all the same.
I pat my disheveled hair and find three hairpins tucked there, but they’re much too flimsy to be of any use on their own. Finally, I see it. A small statue of Saint Peter perches on a shelf above Rebecca’s casket. His shepherd’s crook, fashioned of metal, looks just sturdy enough and solid enough to tackle the massive lock.
I stand on tiptoe on the edge of Rebecca’s niche, using the casket’s lid to brace myself as I lean forward—she’s the whole reason I’m here, after all. I whisper a prayer of supplication to Saint Peter and give a tug to his metal crook, but Peter refuses to relinquish his hold. I extend my reach, my fingers brushing the porcelain saint’s robes. I lean farther, poised on one toe, but just as I grasp the statue, I lose my balance, my slippered foot sliding off the marble ledge. The statue topples to the floor and lands with a sharp crack, Peter’s head rolling to the corner, the rest of him in shards.
“Heavens. Forgive me,” I say, cringing as I bend to extricate the shepherd’s crook. “Please don’t hold this against me when it reallyismy time to appear at your gates.”
I rush to the door, my heart thudding against my rib cage. Hunger has supplanted my thirst, fierce and demanding. My body is fully awake now. Fully alive, with all its corporeal demands. I test the metal of the crook and find it pliable. I carefully bend the straight end into a square angle. Holding the padlock steady, I insert my hastily crafted pick through the keyhole, fishing around. I’ve always had sensitive fingers, and it takes me only a moment to discern the lock’s inner mechanism—it’s the sort meant to be opened with a skeleton key, which makes sense, given its purpose. Easy. I remove the crook and, bending it back and forth, break the metal to make a straight pick to work in tandem with the other.
