South to Freedom

Lyddie set out at once. Or nearly at once. First Triphena made the girl put on her own second-best pair of boots. They were, of course, too large for Lyddie, so she had to wait while the cook fetched two extra pairs of stockings and paper with which to stuff the toes. When Lyddie objected, Triphena kept muttering, “A person can’t walk to Massachusetts barefoot, not in April, she can’t.”

Next, Triphena made her wait while she packed her a parcel of food large enough to feed a table of harvesters. And, finally, she gave her a tiny cloth purse with five silver dollars in it.

“It’s too much,” Lyddie protested.

“I’m not having your dead body on my conscience,” the cook said. “It will be enough for coach fare and the stops along the way. The only tavern food I trust is my own.”

“But the mistress …”

“You leave the mistress to me.”

“I’ll pay you back the money—with interest when I can,” Lyddie promised. Triphena only shook her head, and gave her a pat on the buttocks as though she were five years old.

“Just don’t forget me, ey? Give your old friend a thought now and again. That’s all the interest I’ll be wanting.”

It was three in the afternoon before she could even start her journey, but she would not let Triphena persuade her to wait. She might let the mistress talk her into staying or lose her nerve if she didn’t set out at once.

Her heart was light even if her feet felt clumsy in their makeshift boots and oversized stockings. She remembered Ezekial and thought: He walked north for freedom and I am walking south.

She had forgotten in the excitement that she had already walked above ten miles that day, but her feet remembered. Long before dark they were chafing in the unaccustomed bindings of stockings and ill-fitting boots, reminding her that they had done too much. She sat down on a rock and took the boots off. But before long she felt chilled, so she put them on again and started out, but more slowly than before.

Then, just at dusk, the sky opened, and it began to rain—not light spring showers, but cold, soaking torrents of rain, streaming down her face, icicling rivulets down her chest and legs.

She was obliged, reluctantly, to stop in the next village and seek shelter for the night. The mistress of the local inn was at first shocked to see a young girl traveling alone and then solicitous. “You look near drowned!” she cried, and asked her where she thought she was headed.

“Lowell, is it? Well, the stagecoach will be coming through the end of the week. Work for me till then and I’ll give you your board.”