After several failed attempts, and a few curse words that would shame my mother, the tumblers finally engage, and the padlock falls open. With a small cry of triumph, I gather my wits and slowly push the door open, peering out warily. The sky is a deep indigo gray, streaked with feathery clouds. A sliver of moon hangs low, shining dimly through the moss-veiled arms of the oaks. I can hear the quiet susurration of the river in the distance. There’s not a soul about—only gravestones and the silent dead beneath them.
I slip outside, closing the iron door and its gate behind me. I secure the padlock once more and pull in a deep, greedy breath, filling my lungs with loamy air. I’m alive. I’m free. Two things I’ll never take for granted again.
Three
I stay near the banks of the Cooper, and follow it down to Charleston’s old quarter, my ridiculous pink gown useless against the cold, its overlong hem snagging on cobblestones and tripping me without the layers of stiff crinolines I’ve always worn beneath it. The bells of the Huguenot church ring out twice. Anyone about at this hour will think I’ve just come from a ball, scandalously unchaperoned. I must find warmer, less conspicuous clothing soon. My toes, clad only in satin dancing slippers, have gone numb.
My luck improves behind a tidy yellow house on Queen Street, where a row of washing hangs stiffly from a line. I ease through the courtyard gate and pluck slender trousers and a linsey-woolsey shirt from the line, along with a pair of knitted socks. Thievery seems a smaller sin once one has been accused of murder, so I think nothing of stealing the clothing. Hidden behind the house, I shuck my silk gown, contorting myself at odd angles to unbutton the back. I remove the busk from my corset to give more freedom to my movements and gather my shift and single petticoat between my legs, wondering why Mother thought a corset necessary for my state of eternal rest, but not drawers. I tuck the tail of the petticoat into its waistband to serve as makeshift bloomers, then don the breeches and shirt. Once I’m dressed, I wedge my feet back into the slippers, thick socks and all. I can only imagine how ridiculous I look.
But I’m alive.
My stomach rumbles, reminding me of my hunger and that it’s been days since I last ate. My refusal of Mrs. Banks’s offered last meal seems foolish now. I worried more about my pride and dignity in death than my comfort. What people would think if I soiled myself. Meanwhile, they didn’t care a whit about sending an innocent woman to the gallows.
In this, my newly resurrected life, I vow to be a little more selfish and unconcerned with the opinions of others.
I wad the gown into an untidy ball and shove it beneath the raised foundation of the house, then turn south toward Tradd Street. Toward home. I’ll sneak into the back of the house, through the kitchen, gather food, jewelry to pawn, my cloak. In and out. But as I near Broad, my anxiety rises. It’s been more than two years since I was last home. Since the day the City Guard came to arrest me. The memory of it all is still fresh. Two days had passed since Rebecca’s funeral, and my aunt was still with us, visiting from Columbia. Everyone wore black—Aunt Tillie was in mourning for her husband, who’d died the year before, and Papa and my cousin Michael wore bands around their sleeves. My stiff crepe skirt whispered with every movement as we went about having tea in hushed voices.
It was raining when the knock came, just after three in the afternoon. Mother parted the heavy drapes in the parlor and looked outside. “The City Guard’s come.”
Realization fractured the numb fog of my grief as the sergeant read the warrant for my arrest, as his officers tore me from my mother’s side. Though panic set me to trembling, I’d obeyed their brusque orders, done my best to go willingly, thinking it had to be a mistake. A misunderstanding that would sort itself out. Papa protested when they put me in irons, tried to reason with the sergeant, bless him, and sent counsel to the jail the next day. But my fate was sealed. Between Rebecca’s friend Arabella Meade, who testified she heard me quarreling with Rebecca three days before her death, and our family doctor’s assertion that he’d seen me place arsenic in her coughing tonic, therewas enough circumstantial evidence to try me for murder. I will never forget my dear aunt Tillie’s words to my mother as they led me away: “She’s a good girl, Caroline. Shouldn’t you say something?”
But she didn’t. I’d excused her inaction as a symptom of her grief. Three children lost, in the span of a decade. It had surely taken a heavy toll.
I take a deep breath, pushing my memories of that day away. I will always carry the hurt and betrayal with me, but there is no changing the past. I must move forward now, into whatever new life awaits me.
As I near home, the tight slippers pinching my aching toes, I consider the possibility that Mother and Papa might have been forced to sell our town house and move elsewhere. We’ve faced hard times in recent years. Though he’s always been circumspect in his dealings, rumors of Papa’s secret efforts as an abolitionist have circulated all the same. We’ve slowly been ostracized by the upper echelons of Charleston society as a result, and Papa’s earnings have suffered greatly. Rebecca’s marriage to William was meant to ease our burden. Now, with my sister dead and my family cloaked in scandal, there will be no help from the Camerons, even with our shared sense of Scottish pride.
But even if Papa and Mother have managed to keep our home, another worry presses me. There will be consequences if I’m seen by them, or by our maid of all work, Siobhan, who has always been a light sleeper. I can only imagine their shock. Everyone believes I’m dead, after all.
Papa has a weak heart, and Siobhan is a notorious gossip. As for Mother? I can’t even fathom how she would react. If they discover I’m still alive, they could be punished. Accused of harboring a fugitive.
Still, with no money, I haven’t many choices. Either I steal from my family, steal from someone else, or starve. I’ve been given a secondchance at life. But without money or food, my miraculous resurrection won’t feel miraculous for long.
The night air is heavy with expectation as I square my shoulders and turn onto Longitude Lane. The familiar hipped roofline of our row house emerges through the gaslit fog. I’ll have to be brave if I’m going to survive, so I might as well summon some gumption now. I stand in the alleyway outside our garden gate for a long time, peering through the ironwork. All the windows are dark, the dormant rosebushes cloaking the rear piazza in shadow. Siobhan always left a spare key beneath the pot of rosemary flanking the kitchen. Hopefully it will still be there. I lift the latch and push through the gate, which squeals in protest. I flinch, but no lights come on in our house, or those on either side.
I hurriedly cross the courtyard, keeping to the shadowed edges, and lift the rosemary pot. The key is right where I knew it would be. With trembling hands, I whisper a prayer before sliding it into the lock. It catches and turns, and in an instant, I’m in the kitchen, surrounded by warmth from the banked coals inside the hearth and all the familiar comforts I once took for granted.
Walter is there, sleeping on the rag rug before the fire. I try to creep past him, ignoring the sudden catch in my throat. But he hears me all the same, and wakes. He springs to his feet, tail wagging madly. He doesn’t bark, thank heavens, only shoves his wet nose into my palm with a thin whine. I kneel and bury my face in his shaggy, gray coat. “I’ve missed you, too,” I whisper, “but you must be very quiet, sweet. You mustn’t wake Mother and Papa.”
He looks at me with solemn eyes, as if he understands, then goes back to his spot on the rug, turning in a circle before lying down. I send him a lingering look and creep soundlessly up the servant stairs to the second floor.
Thanks to years of tremblers, the middle of our upstairs hall is uneven and rife with weak spots, so I keep close to the wall instead. A few of the sconces remain lit, their tallow candles burning low, but they provide more than enough light to see by. As I near my mother’sbedroom, I can hear her snoring inside, her breath rising and falling with a shrill whistle. I wonder what the past two years have done to her. Has she kept her famed beauty, or faded as Papa has? She’d always hidden her feelings from me, her demeanor placid and calm even when they came to arrest me. Yet she cried all the same when I was sentenced to die. A brief pang of yearning courses through me—the temptation to go to her is strong, to wake her and let her know I’ve survived.
But I cannot. Knowledge of my existence would only endanger my parents. Make them culpable.
I hear the bells of Charleston’s many churches ring out over the city and force myself away from her door. Three in the morning. Well paid as she is, Siobhan rises early. I must hurry. I rush to the end of the hall and the bedroom that Rebecca and I once shared.
The room is a shrine. Both beds are made, their coverlets taut and pristine. Our portraits hang above each of our respective headboards—Rebecca’s wistful and romantic, her copper curls streaming over her bare white shoulders, pink lips softly parted. She’d seen Winterhalter’s scandalous portrait of Queen Victoria in the papers and asked our portraitist to duplicate it.
My likeness, on the other hand, is somber and staid by comparison, my posture rigid, a book lying open on my lap, brown hair braided and looped below each ear, one arm propped on Papa’s desk, my modest, high-necked dress draped with the Carmichael tartan. I’ve always been practical. Stoic and reserved. Rebecca was the vanguard. The charming rebel. Though she was frail of health, her beauty gave her an advantage in life, one she capitalized upon. Her name was always above mine on any invitation, her wardrobe steadily documented in the social papers. She had her first marriage proposal at fourteen, well before she was out. Were it not for Papa’s insistence that I, as the eldest, be the first to marry, Mother would have likely entertained the thought. When William broke our betrothal, Papa did his best to comfort me.
Your mind is your greatest treasure, Lil. Beauty fades. But you are a keen and canny lass. It will serve you well.
I look up at our portraits again. Our likenesses reflect our opposing temperaments. If Rebecca was a wild rose, I am a thistle. Hardened by life. Bitter and sharp.
But thistles are strong. Resilient.
I cross to my wardrobe, where my gowns, underthings, and day dresses lay folded neatly on the shelves, my poke bonnets hanging from the hooks at the back. I find my carpetbag under the bed and hastily stuff it with my most practical clothing: shifts, drawers, woolen stockings, petticoats, and two of my favorite dresses. I sit on my bed and replace the satin slippers with my winter boots, my hands shaking as I lace them. I shove the ruined slippers beneath the wardrobe, toward the back, where Siobhan shouldn’t find them, and smooth the coverlet.
