Love and War
Chapter II - Running
The next morning was almost mockingly beautiful, as if teasing Marian. She padded across the oriental rugs that adorned the hardwood floors of her bedchamber, looking out over the plantation she called home. It was nearly nine and the slaves had long since begun their work. Her eyes swept over the landscape she was so in love with. From her vantage point she could see the forest. Though she could not see, she knew what lay beyond.
A good many plantations such as her own, and then Charleston east towards the sea. She loved Charleston, the streets, the buildings, the people. Every banner proclaiming independence between the stripes of Old Glory lifted her spirits. But no chance of that in England, or in Charleston, for that matter. It fell to the British, much to her sadness and dismay.
She sighed to herself, laying a hand on the thick glass window, warmed by the morning sun. "I can't leave," she murmured. "I will not." Resolve seeped into her voice as she clenched her fists.
Marion needed to prepare. They were leaving tomorrow morning. She didn't have much time.
She didn't need much time.
Charles Foster was never a sickly man. But when his first wife died, things changed. He turned to alcohol to drive away his pain, sometimes retreating to his quarters for days at a time. Marion was sent away to school in Boston when she was twelve; when she returned five years later, she barely recognized her once proud father.
He had become squat and fat, his skin pale tinged with purple at his outer extremities. He stopped riding horses, something Marion loved dearly, and his melancholy wasn't a secret to anyone. He had begun escorting Elizabeth Whitely, a recent widow of a high-ranking British officer, during Marion's last year of school and married her a few months after Marion's return to South Carolina.
If things had been terrible before, they were certainly worse afterwards. Elizabeth was a leech, for lack of a better word, feeding off the last of Charles' strength and his seemingly endless wealth. Three months after the wedding, he was told he was suffering from disease of the liver, due to his excessive drinking. Confined to his house, he didn't leave his bedchamber for the next two years and wasn't even in attendance to his daughter's Coming-Out Ball on her 18th birthday. That was when Dr. Morse came into the picture.
The man was a prior acquaintance of Elizabeth's, and had become Charles' private physician in 1775. Marion never liked him much, and didn't trust his judgment farther than she could throw him. She was sure Elizabeth had something to do with his diagnosis of her father, saying that he was 'recovering' when in reality he had been reduced to bed rest and could barely move his body, let alone survive a sea voyage.
Marion didn't like what was going on, and she knew Elizabeth was behind it all.
Night fell like a dark curtain, veiling the plantation in cool darkness. Marion waited anxiously on the terrace outside her bedroom, watching the windows away to the north. The lamplight in them flickered for a moment before being extinguished, plunging Marion into the black of the night. She held a sack close to her body, and pulled a shawl around her shoulders. Next to her, she had stowed away a rope made from her bed sheets. In a flash, she had put it to good use and was slowly descending onto the cool, level lawn that ran away to the fields and the forest beyond.
As she felt her feet, shod in short leather boots, touch the ground, she turned to run. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw the silhouette of a portly figure in the window of her father's room. For a moment, she debated turning around. But only for a moment.
Her steps were muffled by the moist grass and not a creature stirred as she turned onto the gravel road leading to the stables. Most of the horses were asleep as she hastily tacked up her mare, who was barely awake. Marion pulled a stash of saddlebags from its hiding place in a bale of hay and fastened it to her horse's saddle. The horse whinnied softly and Marion began rubbing her neck, cooing to the horse soothingly. "I know, Lark, I know," she murmured. "I wish I didn't have to do this either."
The horse batted her long eyelashes, as if begging Marion to reconsider her hasty decision. "I can't stay here," Marion whispered. She patted the horse again before using a bale of hay as a step to clamber into the saddle. Grabbing the leather reins with the slightest of sighs, the woman glanced to her left and then to the right, her eyes focused, searching for anyone that could hinder her. Seeing none, she dug her heels into Lark's sides, spurring the horse onward.
No one in the house was conscious enough to notice the steadily fading gallop of a horse, but on the edge of the woods, a single slave woman stood outside her crudely made shanty, holding back heavy tears.
"Godspeed, Missa Marion."
It was nearly midnight when flecks of foamy sweat began to form on Lark's flanks and Marion knew her steed was growing more tired by the minute. Marion herself could feel her eyelids begin to droop and she slowed Lark to a walk. "Whoa, girl," she said softly, noticing that every little noise seemed to make the horse spook.
Looking over her shoulder, Marion could see by cool moonlight as far as the next bend in the beaten dirt road. Forest surrounded her, and she knew her horse could not handle another mile. It seemed she would be sleeping among the trees that night.
"Come on, Lark," she crooned, resorting to conversations with her horse she was so lonely. The woman dismounted slowly, leading her horse into deep enough into the forest to be hidden, but not so far that she lost sight of the road. She had tied her horse to a tree using a bit of rope and climbed a few feet up a slight elevation, convinced sleeping on the ledge would keep her safe from snakes and the like.
Marion certainly was not the wilderness type, yet she wasn't exactly about to scream at the presence of a leaf within a four foot vicinity of her person. Even so, sleeping on the ground in the middle of a forest during war time was not on the top of her list of things to do and it was with some reluctance that she lay down a few feet away from her horse and waited for sleep to claim her.
She couldn't exactly when remember when she had become a patriot, but knew it was during her years attending school in Boston. Having come to Boston in the fall of 1769 and graduating in the late spring of 1774, Marion was present for many acts of revolution in Massachusetts, including the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. She had attended many a womens' rally under the banner of independence, despite her family's strict reputation as Loyalists.
Boston turned her cheek from her family's way, opening her eyes to the faults of the British Empire. She saw the affect the taxes had, how the people suffered from the oppression of the British. She came to despise the Empire and all her sons, vowing never to allow herself to bend to their will.
The foundations of her beliefs were about to be sorely shaken with the entrance of a certain British colonel into her life.
Omg, four reviews already? Hell to the yeah! Stay tuned for Marion's first meeting with Colonel William Tavington. SQUEE!