“She’s all right,” he says.
“What’s that mean?”
“Your brother has her back down at the cabin, and he’s tending to her.”
“So, Elliott whipped her good?”
“He only got a couple of lashes in before Mr. Price showed up.”
“He got him to stop?”
“That’s what Moses says. Said the two of them men was fighting like a pair of pheasants.”
Cecily would have liked to see that. “Any word on Papa?”
Gilbert shakes his head and hands her a large burlap sack. Inside is a dress and some other women’s accessories.
“What’s all this for?” Cecily asks.
“For when we get where we’re going.”
“And where are we going?”
“Callum Murrow’s Carriage Shop. There’s a freedman named Samuel Jefferson, works in the barn. He’s going to give you a ride out of town, but he needs you to look like a lady doing it.”
“No stagecoach?” she asks, surprised.
Gilbert shakes his head no.
“Why?” asks Cecily, who is secretly relieved to learn that she won’t have to sit shoulder to shoulder with a dozen or more people who would just as soon turn her in as speak to her.
“Elliott Price has got runaway flyers up all over town.”
She feels like she needs to sit down. “Flyers?”
Gilbert nods. “Most of the description don’t mean much. A Negrowench, slim straight with a yellowish complexion, could be half the girls in the city, but he takes pains to describe your crooked finger, and I’m worried folks on the stagecoach—especially the conductor—will be looking for it.”
“Oh,” she says, a little taken aback. She runs her thumb along the bend in her finger. Somehow, it seems doubly unfair that Elliott should be able to both break the bone and then use the injury against her.
Gilbert reaches into his pocket and pulls out a slim leather sleeve. Inside are two pieces of paper, and he hands her one. “This is a pass, just to get you as far as the shop.”
She turns the paper over in her hand.
“If you got another pass, linking you to the Prices, you’d best get rid of it now.”
“I didn’t take anything with me to the theater.”
“Good,” says Gilbert.
Cecily hates having to ask, but with something so important, there’s no way around it. “What’s it say?”
“It says your name is Ruth, that you’re from King William County, and that you’re owned by Mr. and Mrs. Curtis Fry, of Piping Tree.”
“I don’t know nothing about King William County.”
He gives her a sly smile. “That’s why I picked it. You got a good chance the patroller won’t, either.”
“I see,” she says.
