“A brothel,” I repeated, somewhat louder. “In Elfreth’s Alley.”

He stood motionless for a moment, then turned and put the cheese back on the shelf, and glanced down at the clear brown water of the creek rushing past our feet.

“This might take a bit of time to explain, aye? Let’s go out into the sun.”

60

Just One Step

September 15, 1779

JUST ONE STEP. THAT’S all it ever took, all it ever takes. Sometimes you see such a step coming, from a long way off. Sometimes you never notice, until you look backward.

Here it was, right in front of her. The door of her cabin—hers, her home, the home of her marriage, of her baby’s first months, of her realest life—was open to the morning and the round gold leaves of the aspens lay flat on the wood of the stoop, gleaming with dew as the dawn came up.

One step over the threshold that divided her small rag rug, with its quiet, homely blues and grays, from that pagan abandon of golds and greens and red outside, and her life here was over. They might come back—Ian had promised that they would, and she trusted that he’d do whatever he could to make it so—but even if they did, it would be a different life.

Oggy—perhaps he would be walking, talking, might have a different name by then. He wouldn’t recall this early life, the closeness of waking against her body in bed, turning at once to her breast and yielding up his separate existence so easily, becoming one with her as he’d been when she carried him inside, just for those moments while he fed from her again. Somewhere he might be weaned, on the road between now and then. He would be a different person when they came back. So would she.

Jenny came up beside her, her face bright and a pack with food and drink, handkerchiefs, clouts, and clean stockings under her arm. She glanced at Rachel’s face, then at the inside of the cabin, as though making an inventory. There was little enough to take note of: the rug, the bed and its trundle where Jenny slept, Oggy’s cradle. They had already given everything else away; what they needed would be given back or built again if they returned.

“Well, then, laddie,” Jenny said to Oggy. “This will be your first journey from home, aye? It’s my third. Just pay attention to me; I’ll see ye right.”

Oggy promptly leaned out of Rachel’s arms, reaching for his grannie, who laughed and took him.

“Ye’re fettled, m’annsachd?” she said to Rachel. “Is the sense o’ the meeting clear? Let’s be off, then, and see what lies ahead.”

THE FIRST STEP took them from the cabin to the Big House to take their leave. They’d said goodbye to Brianna and Roger and seen them off with their wagon full of children and contraband sauerkraut three weeks before—an experience that had made Rachel’s heart uneasy. Now she was inexpressibly relieved to see Jamie and hear that he intended to accompany the travelers on the three-day journey to Salisbury in the Piedmont, where they would find the Great Wagon Road that would take them north.