“The way that pass is written, right now, you got permission to move around freely. So, if anyone stops you, just tell them you in town with your mistress for the funeral, and that you out fetching her something to wear for tomorrow.”
“Something to wear?”
He gestures toward the bag. “That’ll explain you carrying a sack full of nice clothes.”
“Right,” she says.
“We’re going to stay in the woods as long as we can. Follow First Street. Eventually, we’ll pop out on I Street and act like we got no reason not to be there.”
Cecily nods.
“When we’re moving, keep your head down and your eyes on the ground. Don’t make eye contact with anyone.”
She nods again. “All right.”
“I want you to walk ten or fifteen feet behind me. If I get stopped, for any reason, you just act like you don’t know me, and keep going.”
“And if I get stopped?”
He gives her a frown. “Sorry, Cecily. But you on your own at that point.”
Of course she is. She feels silly for having asked, especially when he’s done so much for her already.
“Is there anything else?”
She’s got more questions—about a thousand of them—but he’s pacing the room, and she gets the feeling he’s ready to move.
Before they head out, he gives her a once-over. “When we get into town, take off that coat and carry it over your arm. Young woman like you wearing a man’s coat makes you stand out.”
She doesn’t argue.
The walk through the woods feels like it takes longer than it did on any of Cecily’s previous trips, but it’s because Gilbert is so much more deliberate than she ever was. She follows behind him, as instructed, and every time he stops—to listen to the shrill cry of a chipmunk or the howl of a faraway coyote—so does she. After a time, they reach the edge of town, but they keep following the tree line, just like Gilbert said they would.
They are almost to E Street when they hear the baying of the dogs. At least three hounds, maybe more, coming from deep within the woods. Gilbert stops, then signals for her to catch up with him.
“Could be the patrol,” he whispers. “Now that they got that shawl of yours, they might be using dogs.”
The dogs are getting closer, their caterwauling more distinct.
“Not my first choice, but I think we got to walk straight through the city proper. Less chance Kemp will run his dogs through the center of town.”
Cecily is so terrified she can barely acknowledge what he’s just said. All she does is blink.
A steep gully runs between the woods and the street, and Gilbert helps Cecily down one side and up the other before separating from her once more. She remembers to remove Moses’s coat.
Gilbert doesn’t stay on First Street for long. Instead, he takes E and then weaves his way onto G, heading east. She knows he’s trying to get them intothe city’s dense interior, where there are more sights, sounds, and smells to distract the dogs, but the first time she passes another person, walking in the opposite direction, she starts to think she might have been willing to risk any number of hounds if it meant staying out of view.
It’s dark out, and that helps. But the streets in the city center are far from empty, and when she passes the Washington Tavern, she can hear the sounds of people arguing on the porch.Just keep your eyes on the ground, she tells herself over and over again as she walks past familiar street corners and storefronts.
At the Public Square they head north, which means the carriage shop can’t be more than a few blocks away. Cecily shifts the sack of clothes in her arms. A boy runs past her, so close that she can smell the salt on his skin. She doesn’t get a good look at him, but she wonders if he isn’t the boy from the theater. What was it he’d asked her that night?Is this real?Such a simple question, and one that—two days later—Cecily’s still not sure she’s got an answer to.
She is so consumed with this boy that she fails to notice a man, up ahead, blocking Gilbert’s path. Gilbert stops, but by the time she does, too, she’s practically on top of them. Her impulse is to pull back, to wait for the hammering in her chest to subside or for Gilbert to start moving again, whichever comes first. But she remembers what her uncle told her—that the last thing she wants is to draw attention to herself.
So, she puts her head down and keeps on walking, without giving either man a second glance.
SALLY
How’s the pain?” Sally asksMargaret when she goes to check on her before bed.
