Chapter 2

I weren't born to being a lady. This wasn't the problem I imagined it would be in Saint Denis. In fact, I spent a good deal of time and money as Mrs. Bostik. As one predilected to pushing my luck, I did just that. Cards and letters came to the hotel room I'd rented, or more accurately put on credit against my "husband's" name. I ignored these to my detriment.

People had noticed my skin was no longer arsenic white, that my hair was decidedly red rather than blond, and that I often misspelled my own name. Does Varity have two R's? Ending in a Y or an IE? Bostik must have a C before the K. I tried all combinations and it did not go unnoticed. If I'd bothered to read any of the notes, rather than let them collect in a silver tray by the door, I would have known my cover was long since blown and that I should flee rather than settle further in by renting a small house near the park where they sometimes held hangings.

This is where the police, accompanied by Mr. Bostik, found me. Yes, I'd been impersonating her. No, I didn't know where she was. We'd met on the boat and then she vanished. I simply took an opportunity that I oughtn't have. I was hungry and scared. That was all. Nobody believed me despite most of what I was saying being at least mostly true.

The police wanted to pin the murder on me. No body, no weapon, no witnesses, and the ship we'd traveled on had already sailed for Belize. I thought Mr. Bostik would spend cash, gold, and every favor he'd ever collected to chase me to the gallows, but he didn't. In fact, he stated his wife probably met with an unfortunate accident. She was the type to stumble, make grievous errors in judgment, and he'd long feared it would catch up to her one day.

I was swiftly arrested, tried, and convicted of fraud, impersonation, and minor theft of clothing, some jewelry, and luggage. Six years in all on Sisika Prison's women's wing. I fancied I'd escape. Swim for the shore, steal a horse, and fly to the west with my spurs burning. This was, of course, a fool's notion.

After a few months in lockup, I learned Mr. Bostik hadn't wanted his wife murdered, but accidentally dead. Apparently the insurance policy he'd taken out on her wouldn't pay nearly as much if she met an untimely end at the hand of someone he perhaps had hired to do the deed. If she accidentally disappeared and he could obtain affidavits from the captain and crew of the ship that she'd fallen overboard in an accident, testimony I'm sure he bribed well for, he could obtain the whole of the policy, which I never did learn the total sum of. His greed kept me from the gallows and I never did thank him.

I shared a cell with a freewoman named Betty Scruggs. She was from Lagras out in the bayou and said her auntie sold bait and lures, best in the world. I was never much for fishing, but I liked listening to her talk in her pidgin mix of Creole, French, and English. She had a voice like music and black hair prematurely streaked with silver. I couldn't make heads or tails of most of what she said, but it was pleasing to listen to all the same and she didn't much mind that I didn't keep up my end of the conversation.

In the muggy darkness of night, I'd think about Varity and the way her soft, straight blond hair would combine with my wild, wavy red on the pillow. The way she'd kiss the inside of my wrist and call me her sweet Coriander. She didn't cook much or know anything about what she ate, so she didn't know coriander is tart, not sweet, and I wasn't inclined to correct her. I was sour and acidic, but liked being called sweet, even inaccurately.

Then I'd wake and the French perfume, clean linen, and the smell of sex would be replaced with the stench of body odor, urine, and mildew. I'd bind my hair in a braid because we weren't allowed to leave it free unless you were a freewoman because all the guards were white and the warden didn't seem to think white boys would have much interest in colored women. The warden was a thunderous moron in many ways, including that one.

I asked Betty about the terms, colored, freewoman or freeman, or whatever else her kind got called. There weren't any like her where I was from in Maine but the prison and most of Saint Denis boasted more than a few and so I thought I should learn what was right and proper. She said freewoman only made sense for those that were slaves once, like herself. Excepting, she wasn't free no more. So she said she was probably just colored like the rest. It all seemed pretty arbitrary to me, but I guess someone put some thought into at some point since a lot of folk seemed to agree on who was called what. Since I couldn't make sense of the rules and they didn't seem important unless you had it in your mind to be a bastard to someone, I never brought the conversation up again, simply using her name to avoid the matter. She was my friend, or so I hoped, and the subject seemed to vex her. Satisfying my curiosity weren't worth vexing a friend.

Betty got me on the work detail that got to leave the prison, replacing another towering redhead with a scar on her cheek. The new girl was an angry sort, swore up and down she didn't belong there, and made a general nuisance of herself. It was all too easy for Betty to convince the guards one redhead with a scar was as good as another and to take me instead. I didn't talk much and could swing a hammer just as well or better than any woman and most men. I never learned the source of the other woman's scar. I escaped that day in her stead and she was hanged a week later for a crime she swore she knew nothing about.

The story behind my scar that runs from my right eye down my cheek and nearly to my jaw line isn't all that interesting. I was trying to work as an apprentice ferryman one summer and took a boathook to the face because I didn't duck when I was supposed to. The doctor in our town was a good for nothing drunk so the stitches went in crooked and I ended up with a nasty line as a reminder to keep my head down when metal is flying.

I met Mr. Horley up in the forest between West Elizabeth and the Heartlands. Him and a couple hired guns stopped the cage wagon, told the guards to skedaddle, and set everyone free excepting me. I never seen three women so tired from rock breaking run so fast. Betty Scruggs was over the hill and past the horizon before my shackles were off. He had a story about a murdered man, a miscarriage of justice pinning it on me, and an opportunity to keep my life and clear my name. You, me, and the devil below knows I was guilty and it weren't of killing a man, but Mr. Horley seemed nice, he offered me freedom, and he seemed to have a plan. Out of curiosity and nothing better to do, I followed him to the woman he called his Mistress.

Mrs. LeClerk, Jessica I believe was her given name, was a striking woman, older, but in a way that lent gravitas rather than enfeeblement. Mr. Horley seemed taken with her, not the way I was, but in a wholesome, loyal dog sort of way that I'd seen before in men, but hadn't ever understood. Mrs. LeClerk was the money and driving force behind the revenge plot that was supposed to clear my name and avenger her late husband. She wore a gold band on a string around her neck, I'm guessing it was her husband's wedding ring and not just a favored bauble. I considered asking, but thought it better to say little or less so as not to give myself away as the wrong girl.

She gave me clothes, armed me, and set me up with a servant of my own. When she called me Sara, I nodded and agreed to whatever she wished of me. What was one more name that couldn't be traced back to Maine and my mother? Get a horse, make some contacts, learn of the plot that undid Mrs. LeClerk's husband and upended her world, then aid in whatever means I could to set things right. I'd be an outlaw, Mr. Horley told me, and I could do whatever I wished with that freedom as long as I came when his Mistress called. I didn't tell him that I would beg, bark, and curl up at Mrs. LeClerk's feet in my small clothes if she asked it, although I assume he'd do the same and wouldn't get quite the same thrill out of it that I would.

I took the guns, the threadbare clothes, my freedom, and let down my hair. What I'd done, I should feel bad for, and I did in part, but rotting for years in prison wouldn't bring back Varity and her husband had made money off the whole ordeal even with my wanton spending.

"Can my Mistress count on you, Miss Baldrich?" Mr. Horley asked.

"Indeed she can," I replied. "And Sara is fine."

Why shouldn't I breathe free? Why shouldn't I help a handsome mourning widow avenger her husband? Why shouldn't I take with both hands and never say sorry for filling my pockets? I ain't earned the right, but neither had anyone else who had ever done the same.